True, but for the most part the Israeli's were able to evacuate before hand in all fairness. That's why their casualities have been comparitively light. Also, their early warning system works, the Lebanese have none. And in Israel, every building has a fortified bomb shelter.

So, it's okay for Hezbollah to target civilians, because they have bomb shelters?

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

True, but for the most part the Israeli's were able to evacuate before hand in all fairness. That's why their casualities have been comparitively light. Also, their early warning system works, the Lebanese have none. And in Israel, every building has a fortified bomb shelter.

So if, as a civilian, you have a bomb shelter, that makes you a legitimate target?

Few of you are addressing the actual issue here, which is not the proportionality of the response, nor the ratio of comparative damage. Israel is attempting to destroy those who have both sworn to destroy Israel and have begun to actually destroy it. Israel has every right to do so. Overwhelmingly and decisively.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Fewer than one-tenth the usual number of rockets have been fired into Israel today. This could be statistical noise, or Hezbollah can no longer keep up the illusion of full effectiveness.

Even if rocket fire ceases, there are still many dug-in Hezbollah fighters that someone has to eliminate. In Israel's perfect world, that job would be left to a heavily-armed international force.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

True, but for the most part the Israeli's were able to evacuate before hand in all fairness. That's why their casualities have been comparitively light. Also, their early warning system works, the Lebanese have none. And in Israel, every building has a fortified bomb shelter.

So, it's okay for Hezbollah to target civilians, because they have bomb shelters?

No, that was not my intention, nor did I insinuate that either.

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Account frozen...

True, but for the most part the Israeli's were able to evacuate before hand in all fairness. That's why their casualities have been comparitively light. Also, their early warning system works, the Lebanese have none. And in Israel, every building has a fortified bomb shelter.

So, it's okay for Hezbollah to target civilians, because they have bomb shelters?

No, that was not my intention, nor did I insinuate that either.

But do you see why it reads as an "excuse" for why those who condemn Israel don't also condemn Hezbollah in even stronger terms?

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

True, but for the most part the Israeli's were able to evacuate before hand in all fairness. That's why their casualities have been comparitively light. Also, their early warning system works, the Lebanese have none. And in Israel, every building has a fortified bomb shelter.

So, it's okay for Hezbollah to target civilians, because they have bomb shelters?

No, that was not my intention, nor did I insinuate that either.

Then what was your point? That Israel must play nice with those that have sworn to destroy them? That's silly.

That's just a recipe for fighting for all eternity, kinda like they have for all recorded history.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Fewer than one-tenth the usual number of rockets have been fired into Israel today. This could be statistical noise, or Hezbollah can no longer keep up the illusion of full effectiveness.

Even if rocket fire ceases, there are still many dug-in Hezbollah fighters that someone has to eliminate. In Israel's perfect world, that job would be left to a heavily-armed international force.

It appears that is was statistical noise...

or Hezbollah took offense at my insinuation :-)

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

THE MEDIA WAR AGAINST ISRAEL
The Jewish state is fighting not one enemy, but two: Hezbollah, and those who peddle its propaganda
TOM GROSS in London
National Post


Large sections of the international media are not only misreporting the current conflict in Lebanon. They are actively fanning the flames.
The BBC world service has a strong claim to be the number-one villain. It has come to sound like a virtual propaganda tool for Hezbollah. As it attempts to prove that Israel is guity of committing “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity,” it has introduced a new charge — one which I have heard several times on-air in recent days.

The newscaster reads out carefully selected “audience comments.” Among these are invariably contained some version of the claim that “Israel’s attack on Lebanon” will serve as a “recruitment” drive for al-Qaeda.

But if anything is going to win new recruits for Osama bin Laden and his like, it will not be Israel’s defensive actions, which are far less damaging than Western TV stations would have us believe, but the inflammatory and one-sided way in which they are being reported by those very same news organizations.

While the slanted comments and interviews are bad enough, the degree of pictorial distortion is even worse. From the way many TV stations worldwide are portraying it, you would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of Second World War air raids. International television channels have used the same footage of Beirut over and over, showing the destruction of a few individual buildings in a manner which suggests half the city has been razed.

A careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hezbollah command centres in the city’s southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites such as airport runways used to ferry Hezbollah weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched.

From the distorted imagery, selective witness accounts, and almost round-the-clock emphasis on casualties, you would be forgiven for thinking that the level of death and destruction in Lebanon is on par with that in Darfur, where Arab militias are slaughtering hundreds of thousands of non-Arabs, or with the 2004 tsunami that killed half a million in Southeast Asia.

In fact, Israel has taken great care to avoid killing civilians — even though this has proven extremely difficult and often tragically impossible, since members of Hezbollah, the self-styled “Party of God,” have deliberately ensconced themselves in civilian homes. Nevertheless the civilian death toll has been mercifully low compared to other international conflicts in recent years.

Last week, a senior journalist let slip how the news media allows its Mideast coverage to be distorted. CNN “senior international correspondent” Nic Robertson admitted that his anti-Israel report from Beirut on July 18 about civilian casualties in Lebanon was stage-managed from start to finish by Hezbollah. In particular, he revealed that his story was heavily influenced by the group’s “press officer,” and that Hezbollah have “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations.”

When pressed a few days later about his reporting on the CNN program Reliable Sources, Robertson acknowledged that Hezbollah militants had instructed the CNN camera team where and what to film. Hezbollah “had control of the situation,” Robertson said. “They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn’t have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath.”

Robertson added that Hezbollah has “very, very good control over its areas in the south of Beirut. They deny journalists access to those areas. You don’t get in there without their permission. We didn’t have enough time to see if perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a Hezbollah fighter by night.”

Yet Reliable Sources, presented by Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, is broadcast only on the American version of CNN. So CNN International viewers around the world will not have had the opportunity to learn that the pictures they saw from Beirut were carefully selected for them by Hezbollah.

Another journalist let the cat out of the bag last week. Writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton casually mentioned in the middle of a posting: “To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loath to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”

Robertson is not the only foreign journalist to have misled viewers with selected footage from Beirut. NBC’s Richard Engel, CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer, and a host of European and other networks, were also taken around the damaged areas by Hezbollah minders. Palmer commented on her report that “Hezbollah is also determined that outsiders will only see what it wants them to see.”

Palmer’s honesty is helpful. But it doesn’t prevent the damage being done by organizations such as the BBC, whose bias is obvious to those who know the facts. First, the BBC gave the impression that Israel had flattened the greater part of Beirut. Then to follow up its lopsided coverage, its Web site helpfully carried full details of the assembly points for an anti-Israel march due to take place in London, but did not give any details about a rally in support of Israel also held in London a short time later.

Indeed, the BBC’s coverage of the present war has been so extraordinary that even staunch BBC supporters in London seem rather embarrassed — in conversation, not on the air, unfortunately.

If the BBC were just a British problem, that would be one thing, but it is not. Thanks to British taxpayers, it is the world’s biggest and most lavishly funded news organization. No other station broadcasts so extensively in dozens of languages, on TV, radio and online.

The BBC’s radio service alone attracts over 163 million listeners. It pours forth its world view in almost every language of the Middle East: Pashto, Persian, Arabic and Turkish. (Needless to say, it declines to broadcast in Hebrew, even though it does broadcast in the languages of other small nations: Macedonian and Albanian, Azeri and Uzbek, Kinyarwanda and Kyrgyz, and so on.)

It is not just that the supposed crimes of Israel are completely overplayed, but the fact that this is a two-sided war (started, of course, by Hezbollah) is all but obscured. As a result, in spite of hundreds of hours of broadcast by dozens of BBC reporters and studio anchors, you wouldn’t really know that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been living in bomb shelters for weeks now, tired, afraid, but resilient; that a grandmother and her seven-year old grandson were killed by a Katyusha rocket during a Friday night Sabbath dinner; that several other Israeli children have died.

You wouldn’t have any real understanding of what it is like to have over 2,000 Iranian and Syrian rockets rain down indiscriminately on towns, villages and farms across one third of your country, aimed at killing civilians.

You wouldn’t really appreciate that Hezbollah, far from being some ragtag militia, is in effect a division of the Iranian revolutionary guards, with relatively advanced weapons (unmanned aerial vehicles that have flown over northern Israel, extended-range artillery rockets, anti-ship cruise missiles), and that it has a global terror reach, having already killed 114 people in Argentina during the 1990s.

The BBC and other media have carried report after report on the damaged Lebanese tourist industry, but none on its damaged Israeli counterpart, even though at least one hotel in Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, was hit by a Hezbollah rocket. There are reports on Lebanese children who don’t know where they will be going to school, but none on Israeli children.

Many have grown accustomed to left-wing papers such as Britain’s Guardian allowing their Mideast coverage to spill over into something akin to anti-Semitism. For example, last month a cartoon by the Guardian’s Martin Rowson depicted Stars of David being used as knuckle dusters on a bloody fist.

Now the Conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph, Britain’s best-selling quality daily, and previously one of the only papers in Europe to give Israel a fair hearing, has got in on the act. The cartoon at the top of the Telegraph comment page last Saturday showed two identical scenes of devastation, exactly the same in every detail. One was labelled: “Warsaw 1943”; the other: “Tyre, 2006.” The suggestion, of course, is that modern Israel is no different from Nazi Germany.

A politician had already given the cue for this horrendous libel. Conservative MP Sir Peter Tapsell told the House of Commons that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was “colluding” with U.S. President George W. Bush in giving Israel the okay to wage a war crime “gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.”

Of course, there was no “Jewish quarter” of Warsaw. In case anyone needs reminding (Sir Peter obviously does) the ghetto in the Polish capital, established in October 1940, constituted less than three square miles. Over 400,000 Jews were then crammed into it, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. 254,000 were sent to Treblinka where they were exterminated. Most of the rest were murdered in other ways. The ghetto was completely cleared of Jews by the end of May 1943.

The picture isn’t entirely bleak. Some British and European politicians, on both the left and right, have been supportive of Israel. So have some magazines, such as Britain’s Spectator. So have a number of individual newspaper commentators.

But meanwhile, anti-Semitic coverage and cartoons are spreading across the globe. Norway’s third largest paper, the Oslo daily Dagbladet, ran a cartoon comparing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the infamous Nazi commander SS Major Amon Goeth, who indiscriminately murdered Jews by firing at them from his balcony — as depicted by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. (A month earlier, Dagbladet published an article, The Third Tower, which questioned whether Muslims were really responsible for the September 11 attacks.)

Antonio Neri Licon of Mexico’s El Economista drew what appeared to be a Nazi soldier with stars of David on his uniform. The “soldier” was surrounded by eyes that he had apparently gouged out.

A cartoon in the South African Sunday Times depicted Ehud Olmert with a butchers knife covered in blood. In the leading Australian daily The Age, a cartoon showed a wine glass full of blood being drunk in a scene reminiscent of a medieval blood libel. In New Zealand, veteran cartoonist Tom Stott came up with a drawing which equated Israel with al-Qaeda.

At least one leading European politician has also vented his prejudice through visual symbolism. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wore an Arab scarf during an event at which he condemned Israel, but not Hezbollah, who he presumably thinks should not be stopped from killing Israelis.

It’s entirely predictable that all this violent media distortion should lead to Jews being attacked and even murdered, as happened at a Seattle Jewish centre last week.

When live Jews can’t be found, dead ones are targeted. In Belgium last week, the urn that contained ashes from Auschwitz was desecrated at the Brussels memorial to the 25,411 Belgian Jews deported to Nazi death camps. It was smashed and excrement smeared over it. The silence from Belgian leaders following this desecration was deafening.

Other Jews continue to be killed in Israel itself without it being mentioned in the media abroad. Last Thursday, for example, 60-year-old Dr. Daniel Ya’akovi was murdered by the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the terrorist group within Fatah that Yasser Arafat set up five years ago using European Union aid money.

But this is far from being an exclusively Jewish issue. Some international journalists seem to find it amusing or exciting to bait the Jews. They don’t understand yet that Hezbollah is part of a worldwide radical Islamist movement that has plans, and not pleasant ones, for all those — Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Jew — who don’t abide by its wishes.

Tom Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph. His Web site is http://www.tomgrossmedia.com

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Great article!

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

There are always two sides to every story, and in war, the first casuality is always the truth.

There are always two sides to every story, and in war, the first casuality is always the truth.

And it's about time we got a taste of the other side found in the above article exposing the one sided bias of the majority of the non U.S. press.

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

And it's about time we got a taste of the other side found in the above article exposing the one sided bias of the majority of the non U.S. press.

Speaks for itself.

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Reality Internet Personality

And it's about time we got a taste of the other side found in the above article exposing the one sided bias of the majority of the non U.S. press.

Speaks for itself.

...but has little truth to offer. ;)

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Here's a nice little wrinkle in all of this.

It can be argued that the majority of Israels military actions have fallen within the Geneva Conventionsfor fighting...

"Combatants must distinguish between civilian and military objects and attack only military targets" and "Legitimate military targets are those which make an effective contribution to military action and whose destruction, capture or neutralization offers a definite military advantage"as well as"Children under 15 must not participate in hostilities and must not be recruited into the armed forces."

*Note: we have ALL seen pictures of kids in the mideast holding AK-47 assault rifles, and these are not advertisements for the rifle companies.*

...where Hezbolla could not be charged with the same observance of the Geneva Convention rules of engagement. So then, the obvious question begs to be asked;

How can anyone defend the actions of a military group who fails to observe the basic dogma of military action? Like it or not, war does have its rules of conduct and while we may not like war, but it is a basic fact of life as long as two opposing views cannot be resolved through the use of dialogue. So why not have some basic rules, that can be agreed upon by civilized nations?

But there's the rub, "civilized". Has anybody read Jean Sassons book titled "Princess"? It details the treatment of a Saudi woman of royalty as well as the treatment of women in general within the Muslim nations. It is interesting to note that NOTHING in the Koran supports the subjucation of it's women, yet that is a common practice in most areas of the region.

The reason I point this out: How can you defend the actions of a group that doesn't even follow the tenets of its own religion? There are NO RULES here. Only the belief that if you are not one of THEM, you must die.

The reason I point this out: How can you defend the actions of a group that doesn't even follow the tenets of its own religion? There are NO RULES here. Only the belief that if you are not one of THEM, you must die.

Oh Dear Oh Dear Oh Dear!
This is the VERY sort of blinkered and uneducated view of a VERY complex subject that none of you sabre rattling guys knows diddly-squat about.
The tenets of the religion are contained in the Q'uran. The Word of God - as communicated to the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). You are CERTAINLY correct in your assessment that the Q'uran calls for the humane treatment of ALL men and women, whatever the circumstance.
But I wonder if you have EVER heard of the Hadith?
You CERTAINLY have never heard of the Sharia (under which the Princess was judged) - otherwise you would not have made that erroneous assessment.
These 3 pillars of Islam (The Q'uran, The Hadith and the Sharia) are as separate as in the West. You know them as the Executive, Administrative and Judicial arms of Western Governments.
If you wish to make a statement on Islam, I beg that you immerse yourself in the whole system before coming to a false conclusion. This is meant in complete friendship and total honesty. I do hope that you take it in that vein.
[edit] added ... The Q'uran, The Hadith and the Sharia

You are CERTAINLY correct in your assessment that the Q'uran calls for the humane treatment of ALL men and women, whatever the circumstance.
But I wonder if you have EVER heard of the Hadith?
You CERTAINLY have never heard of the Sharia (under which the Princess was judged) - otherwise you would not have made that erroneous assessment.
These 3 pillars of Islam (The Q'uran, The Hadith and the Sharia) are as separate as in the West. You know them as the Executive, Administrative and Judicial arms of Western Governments.

And these pillars contradict each other in the treatment of princesses?

In any case, please enlighten us as to how the Hadith and the Sharia justify launching indiscriminate attacks upon noncombattants.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

The most important concept of Islam is the Shari'a, or "the path." which embraces the total way of life ordained by God. There are four main sources of the Shari'a: the Koran, the Sunna, the Ijma and the Qiyas.

Crimes are classified into three divisions: Hudud (theft, drinking of alcohol, defamation of Islam, fornication, and adultery (interesting because many muslim men have concubines); Tazir (similar to misdemaeanor crimes in America); Qisas (crimes against a victim or his family - murder, mutilation)

Who may testify in Criminal Proceedings.
The witness must be deemed sane and a Muslim. Women may not testify unless its a personal matter that did not occur in the sight of men. Actually, the testimony of a woman is not regarded as fact but rather as presumption.

Why women are forbidden to testify in criminal proceedings.
Therre are four reasons:
1. Women are much more emotional than men and will, as a result of their emotions, distort their testimony.
2. Women do not participate in public life, so they will not be capable of understanding what they observe
3. Women are dominated completely by men, who by the grace of God are deemed superior; therefore, women will give testimony according to what the last man told them
4. Women are forgetful and their testimony cannot be considered reliable.

I briefly took you off filter to see if you had anything of intelligence to say about a nation of people that subjugates their women in the name of religion, and the irony that some people miss while defending "religious" groups that adhere to these tenets.
But since you do not, and seem to wholeheartedly agree that such treatment is a valid method for control of 1/2 of the worlds population (give or take a percentage point). And since you seem to think that this person "got what they deserved" in a "court of law" by citing the Shari'a (I guess, you seem to think I'm 'sabre'rattling) I rescind my decision to look at your confusing diatribe further.


:edit for clarification:
In response to a post by Bodley

But I wonder if you have EVER heard of the Hadith?

The Qur'an is the ONLY Hadith (book) of Islam to be followed, as stated within the Qur'an itself:

"And obey God and obey the messenger and be cautious; but if you turn back, then know that the SOLE DUTY of the messenger is the deliverance (of the message)" 5:92

"And obey God and obey the messenger, but if you turn back, then upon Our messenger is the SOLE DUTY of the clear delivery (of the message)"  64:12

"Shall I seek other than GOD AS A SOURCE OF LAW, when He has revealed to you THIS BOOK fully detailed?" 6:114

"They follow idols who decree for them RELIGIOUS LAWS NEVER AUTHORISED BY GOD. If it were not for the predetermined decision, they would have been judged immediately.  Indeed, the transgressors have incurred a painful retribution."  42:21

"These are God's revelations that We recite to you truthfully. In which Hadith OTHER THAN GOD AND HIS REVELATIONS do they believe?" 45:6

The Qur'an came from God, the other books were the works of man... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

"They follow idols who decree for them RELIGIOUS LAWS NEVER AUTHORISED BY GOD. If it were not for the predetermined decision, they would have been judged immediately. Indeed, the transgressors have incurred a painful retribution." 42:21

Take note as I dare not venture into the waters known as "Lake Jeffrey" often. :^)

This is precisely what I am referring to. Man-made interpretations of the Koran that have nothing to do with the religion other than to serve their own twisted purposes, and the people who have misguided their support for those that say they are upholding Islamic faith by killing anybody that doesn't 'believe'.