Hezboi (aka Strewth),

The race is run, although you fought valiantly the Fates were not with you this time. Events have moved on and you have lost.

They pay no heed to the obvious correctness of your positions anymore, the filthy Zionist swines and ingrates. A minor quibble, that exclamation key is to be avoided (like the plague) if you wish to maintain your position among the cognoscenti. Surely you can appreciate this, labouring as you do under the weight of that superior intellect? However, even the rubes can tell that this is not the reason for the bedraggled stoop and ambling gait. No, the unmistakable stench of defeat hangs about you now. It is too late. The time to strap on that suicide vest and finish the battle honourably is upon you old boy.

Face it like a man! Wont you?

This messy argument rides on the back of a colonial attitude, whose caveat of respecting existing people was ignored, the boundaries expanded and the refugees ignored.
Israel in an area not easily defended, claimed the need for security such to be achieved by territorial expansion and acceptance of the Palestinians by the Arab nations. Needless to say the Palestinians were peeved and then as now various important people started playing geopolitics. This for the good of the people for democracy one might say.

Similarly the present dispute seems likely to be ‘resolved’ ignoring this fact.

As with Iraq the fear is edged up by the proposition Iran has or wants nuclear weapons. Maybe some one has definite information or maybe the litany of deceit simply extends.
Foreign policies? The rule of might?

Meanwhile Iran must desist from nuclear efforts even if directed at energy production contrary to NFP treaty, must not supply arms or help to Lebanon. The Israeli make their own!
Not so when the Shah reigned, even help freely offered for nuclear ambitions, but like Sddam once was he was ours!.
The new Colonial world meanwhile can ignore non proliferation proceed with development of smaller Nuclear battle field weapons, rearrange the Middle East to its own honest, as honest as many Governments of the area our foreign policy progeny, likings and pretend moral certainty.
Even go to Church on Sunday, cognitive dissonance fuelled by dishonest ignorant self serving definition of terrorism.

Why should The Lebanon be forced to harbour a private army of thugs like hezbollah? These maniacs haven't crawled down from the trees yet but they really should choose something other than the Cedars to hide in.

In an ideal world, no one would ever stoop to mimic terrorists by bombing but instead arrest them, place them before a court and imprison them. But these are pathological religious bigots that hide amongst families, set off bombs and invent obscene mythologies of "martyrdom". If you did it over here you'd be a coward, a racist, a sexist, a religious loonie and, best of all, an inmate. If you do it there you're a 'hero'. We have distance from damaged goods like hezbollah, the Israelis have bomb shelters.

Iran's administration is also appalling. It's president says (shia) muslims are "persecuted" yet he also wants to wipe israel "off the map" because it's a "tumour". What rubbish. He says that america shows no respect for other nations, yet he advocates another holocaust, and funds homicide in foreign countries every day.

Ahmedinejad couldn't recognise hypocrisy if it headbutted him. He certainly couldn't care less about the Palestinians. If he nukes Israel(he has recently said "a big storm" is coming to the region) he KNOWS that it would destroy the palestinian territories. But he and his mullahs don't care, palestinians are still handy little "martyrs" to his bizarre genocidal cause.

And nuclear Iranians aside, it is rude enough that the Syrian government today still does not officially recognise Lebanon's government, it is utterly disgusting that it actively plots against it. Thanks to crusaders like the dreadful and illegitimate hezbollah, the region is the Sadr not the wiser.

Strewth

Why do you assume that everyone who supports Israel is a Zionist?

Perhaps suicide bombing of 3000 New Yorkers 100 Australians in Bali and huge numbers blown up trains in London Madrid and now Mumbai has made just a few people distrustful of some Islamic groups.

You cannot blame Israel or Zionists for any of the above, although I suspect that you will try.

Strewth,

Thank god not everyone is fooled by the Israeli media machine.

keith,

I couldn't agree more. Even though I agree with Strewth and think the whole Iran nuclear issue is more Israeli hysteria, if the Iranians did ever declare they had a nuclear bomb it would be a great day for peace in the Middle East.

After all those years of Israel being asked to make concessions that were 'too painful', 'too hard' and completely 'impossible', suddenly they would be possible and there would be peace.

I guess in a way the best result for the region and the world would be if the usual Israeli hysteria actually turned out to be true. But unfortunately for us (and the hundreds of Arab civilians destined to be slaughtered by Israeli 'precision' bombs) it's just hard to believe anything the Israelis say.

To Strewth and those blind to the fact that behind it all are the mullahs and clerics under pressure from a more liberal world. Israel is hardly exclusivist, with mosques operating in the cities (with speakers blairing the call to prayer at 5am). Arabs are in government and are even exempted from military service if they choose. But Israel feels lonely and justifiably so....

At the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem there are extracts of official responses to the refugee (and extermination camps) problem of WWII that underpins the Israeli perception. Reflect on this before commenting on Australia’s response to taking in Jewish refugees .
At an international conference to consider refugees, Australia’s response to taking in Jewish refugees (to save them from the Holocaust) was: “We don’t have a racial problem and we don’t want to import one.” Hmmm, no wonder the Israelis feel and act isolated.

Nietzsche, the philosopher summed it up nicely....

”The whole problem of the Jews exists only in nation states, for here their energy and higher intelligence, their accumulated capital of spirit and will, gathered from generation though long schooling in suffering, much become so preponderant as to arouse mass envy and hatred. In all contemporary nations, therefore – in direct proportion to the degree to which they act up nationalistically – the literary obscenity is spreading of leading the Jews to slaughter of every conceivable public and internal misfortune