If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
It took you this long?
As you already know, I'm quite thick, so mind explaining me how you can rationally compare the Warsaw Ghetto and what's happening now?
Second of all this is not a war against "dirty arabs" as some of you have disgustingly put it. May I remind you that a Hizbolla Katusha hit 2 Israeli Arab children yesterday? That one of the first Israeli soldiers to die was a Druze?
Aladdin, no I do not condone the killing of civilians and truly feel sorry for them.
But I do believe that Israel was right in taking action. Though maybe it could have been done in another way. I don't know.
Unlike a couple of others who think it's alright to destroy entire neighbourhoods.
and
I laughed even more that the campaign is so behind the news that it thinks Conrad Black still owns the Telegraph.
I reckon the evil hand of Barbara Amiel is still pulling the strings there.
That's alright I boycott the Guardian for its leftist sympathies (or rather I do the next best thing and only read it free online which has the added advantage of making them pay more for servers).
Still if they've got the Tele wrong - how can you be sure the rest is accurate and you could be boycotting companies which are either Arab owned or don't invest in Israel.
But there is some progress already. One of the sites I was browsing earlier tells that ''due to customer pressure'' Tesco is phasing out Israeli peppers
And how many Arabs has that put out of a job? How far has that pushed Israel further into a corner? How much sucour has that offered to radicals on the Palestinian side who don't feel any need to compromise?
Some Israeli farmer is not deserving of being punished for the actions of the IDF in the same way that the people of Lebanon are not guilty for the kidnapping of Israeli military by Hizbullah surely?
Not far enough. For it to have an effect a lot more people have to join.
But then it's not just about trying to change things. It's about having a conscience and not wanting to support a State that commits terrible crimes against other people.
I doubt it has much of an effect on the Palestinians either way.
But it is certainly nice to let them know a lot of people in the West do not approve of their governments' cowardly stance towards the conflict.
And whereas that might indeed affect some farmer negatively, the aim is to put pressure on the Israeli government and State. Better doing it that way than doing it the usual way, which is bomging everyone to fuck.
and this time it isnt going to be franz ferdinand, it will be the arctic monkeys
and you luke should have a read of this ...from a reputable group of people?
it didn't realy make much sense at the time but it does now.
WW3 started with the invasion of iraq and afghanistan.
I'd have thought that it would be pretty important to find out - given that most of the people employed in picking them will be unskilled labour and disproportionately Arab.
Why are you just boycotting israel then? why not boycott the states which allow their territory to be used to launch rocket attacks against civilian populations? Why not boycott China? Or Cuba, come to that? Did you used to boycott the Eastern Block countries?
and that if they continue in their path, hellbent though it is on destruction (self as much as towards Israel) that they will have your support?
No one can fight all battles at once. Does it really matter if someone is not consistent? Boycotting someone who deserves it is certainly better than boycotting nobody at all. Two wrongs (or in this case, dozens of wrongs) don't make a right, and whether there are other States as bad as Israel is irrelevant.
I can't afford to support all the charities that exist. I guess I'd better stop the monthly donations to the 2 I support, lest I am seen as a hypocrite.
For as long as they remind an extremely oppresed, desperately poor and homeless people they will have my support. Not that I have a direct debit set up with Hamas or anything :rolleyes:
Basically, what is happening in the middle east i find myself more and more apathetic to each day i read more and more arguments on these boards...it actually makes me care less not more.
its about not having blood on your hands.
That's fucking rich coming from a man who has never condemned Hamas or any other terrorist organisation for attacking Israel, especially when you consider that in this very thread I have condemned Israel's actions rather tha defended them.
For a man who claims to read widely you seem to struggle with reading comments made on these boards.
Again, missing comments I have previously made comparing the two directly. Though I must admit that I haven't done that in this thread. Worth noting that I also compared Israel to South Africa during apatheid in the past too.
But not when they are also sharing weaponry....
So what is exploding in Haifa?
Agreed. So when are we going to see equal condemation? When are you going to post pictures of damaged Israeli buildings and metion the number of Israeli who have been killed?
Or don't those lives matter to you?
I don't disagree. So why are the lines on these board also so divided, if it is that easy?
What you really mean is that you want the "world leaders" to openly condemn Israel to the same degree (although I suspect that you want them cemndened to a greater degree) and yet you cannot do the same as you want from them.
Well, perhaps it'll sink thier economy then?
Two brids with one stone?
You're missing the point. There weren't any rockets hidden in the Beirut neighbourhood that was flattened- not even Israel has suggested that, only Luke in his delusions.
The South Beirut neighbourhood was flattened because Hezbollah "has its HQ there"- which usually means an office in a flat. They destroyed many buildings over a large area. There is no military justification whatsoever for that. The attack was a deliberate attempt to terrorise and to kill innocent people.
I have condemned attacks on Israeli civilians repeteadly. However one's attention tends to get caught if some events are disproportionally bigger than the others. By far the larger atrocity here has been the killing of hundreds, terrorising of hundreds of thousands and massive, widespread basic infrastructure destruction spanning two different countries.
A sense of perspective please.
Oh that'll be because being a true rightwinger comes as a package: if you are a Republican/neocon/rightwing warmonger you must support the State of Israel blindly, no questions asked, no thinking allowed.
As said before, I have many times.
Yet one side is comitting by far more serious crimes, by a long, long mile, and it doesn't get any criticism whatsoever from some. Even though it deserves not as much blame, but yes, a lot more blame than the other side.
If a kid from a council state throws a stone at a policeman and the police responds by sending 200 coppers through the state and beating the shit out of every kid on sight, would you say both sides deserve the same amount of blame?
Attacking enemy HQ's is certainly militarily justified. I think you might mean morally, which a) isn't the same thing b) may not be true if taking out the enemy control shortens the fighting and saves lives in the long term
That's because you're missing the context. If the Middle East had been Eden up until a few days ago and then suddenly Israel out of the blue launches an unprovoked attack on its neighbours you may have a point. But that's not the true state of affairs, since 1948 Israel has been fighting for its existence. Its been at war, either singularly or together with the armed forces of Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. It has suffered regular suicide bombings in its cities. Its diplomats, athletes and ordinary citizens going about its business have been murdered all over the world. Only a couple of days ago it was the 12th anniversary of a bombing in argentina which killed 85 Jews (and no-one has been brought to justice for that or the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buneos Aires which killed 29).
Now the Israeli's may be overreacting in this instance, but they've often been the victims too and perhaps given past history there a little bit nervous about rolling over and trusting to the leadership of an organisation who shot and then pushed an elderly, Jewish man overboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro
But that's not what happened. The neighbourhood was bombed to complete oblivion. The entire neighbourhood. As the image on page one shows.
It was a completely unjustifiable disgusting act of deliberate murder on innocent civilians, and if some people aren't even prepared to concede such undeniable and basic fact, we might all as well quit posting because there is no bloody point exchanging any more words. I might as well try to talk the wasps out of approaching my beer.
As far as I'm concerned anyone who is prepared to defend the indefendable or to deny the bleeding obvious is an extremist beyond rationale.
It still doesn't justify bombing and killing civilians on purpose, or terrorising the entire innocent population. Which has been my point all along.
And let's remember that the Lebanase have themselves been the victims of the most brutal Israel-driven civil war imaginable. Let's remember the Israeli-sponsored death squads that killed tens of thousands and massacred more than 1,000 innocent refugees in a 24 hour period. Let's remember that not too long ago Beirut was a savaged hellhole that made Bosnia look an attractive proposition by comparison. Let's not forget that the Palestinians have consistently had between 3 and 5 times people killed and injured as the Israelis throughout the conflict.
It certainly goes both ways. And yet, I never ever hear people saying Palestinians or Lebanese have a right to defend themselves, like I always hear when people try to justify unspeakable atrocities commited by the Israelis.
Secondly, even though Israel is showing NO REGARD FOR A CIVILIAN LIFE with it's bombing raids, condemning just Israel will not solve anything, it will only spur them on and make them feel even more isolated, and what happens when you push a wounded tiger into a corner???
For those who say that they are boycotting Israel stuff or whatever because they don't want blood on their hands, you live in Western Europe, you have blood on your hands for the things that esp the UK and US governments have done over the years around the world.
Funny how people have short memory spans.
Nothing can justify Israel's disregard for a human life at the moment.
As for Hamas or Hazbollah, they do not have the right to defend themselves, they have a right to be exterminated.
I just wish the Palestinians and the Lebanese would realize this and kill em off themselves.