Good God, what the hell is going on in the middle east? Hezbollah are clearly nutters – bombing Israel was a pretty bad idea in most people’s estimation. But Israel’s response???? To destroy roads, bridges, infrastructure… Lebanon is in a fairly dodgy state economically, and the Israeli army have pretty much finished it off by targeting civilian areas. And of course, hundreds of civilians have been killed/injured/rendered homeless. Under the geneva convention, bombing civilian targets is a war crime. This is a war crime. Yes, Hezollah are very very wrong to be bombing Israel – no-one is suggesting it’s a good thing, but there are ways to deal with this, and fucking up the entirety of Lebanon’s infrastructure is just evil. In the same way that the Israeli civilians deserve to get on with their lives and not have bombs raining down on them, the Lebanese people deserve the same bomb-free skyline, to have the bridges that were there yesterday to carry them to work still be there today, not bombed to shit by some Israeli war-head.
And the US? Israel’s biggest financial backer? ‘we’re not going to tell Israel how to defend itself’. Great. We’re all fucked.
Stop the world, I want to get off.
Actually this is interesting –
I’ve done a lot of reading around this subject today. I think the problem sometimes is that its very easy to get sucked into the blame game and take sides.
It is interesting to talk about what’s going on at the moment, but if you’re anything like me, I tend to take the side of the oppressed Palestinian/Islamic states around the area, and see Israel and the US as imperialist bastards.
But I wonder how constructive that is? Maybe the creation of the state of Israel wasn’t the smartest idea way back in 1948 (Or maybe, if it had to be done, it could’ve been handled a lot better), but at some level, what’s done is done. I think it would better to put energy into getting involved in and supporting peace initiatives for the area, and trying to get both sides to stop pursuing the same policy which has already failed and will continue to fail: Military action (did it ever work?)
I think you’re right, Mike – it’s not just a matter of Palestine=good, Israel=bad. Far from it – there are a lot of people in Israel pursuing peace, and a lot of war-mongering murdering fuckheads in Palestine/Lebanon/wherever.
The problem for me in this instance is just the scale of the Israeli military response. Not that they shouldn’t have done something at this point – I mean, they’re being bombed! But it doesn’t seem like the Lebanese government have that much say over what Hezbollah are up to, so bombing the shit out of Beruit seems like a really retrogressive step for anyone wanting peace in the region…
But you’re right, peace processes are definitely the way forward.