Spy, A body count might not necessarily tell the whole story, but it's a pretty good start. Especially when one is conducting a body count of civilian deaths. Whilst you may be correct about the one-sidedness of the article - and with that I agree - I believe you are incorrect concerning Hezbollah's targets during the war. From what I've read less than 25% of Hezbollah's rockets were fired into civilian areas - and that excludes of course their use of anti-tank rockets. Thus the total number of Israeli dead consisted of 119 soldiers and 44 civilians. Those proportions are not the same on the other side of the conflict, are they?

As for how it started.. Well, you can go back and go back and go back. But a starting point for ending the cycle is not to engage in collective punishment of civilians for the alleged crimes of a militia group.

Bill02... They let some strange people into here, but you're the real door prize. Congratulations.

The UN, in 1948 with its declaration of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, had a basic mandate rising from the ashes of the Holocaust. Since then, the General Assembly has never adopted a single resolution dedicated to "anti-semitism" in its history.

This absurdity has arisen because the Islamic bloc of fifty-six states has waged a steady campaign in key UN bodies to gut anti-Semitism of its meaning, using the ludicrous argument that the term also refers to hatred against Arabs and Muslims. This is a pernicious distortion of language and meaning - designed to prevent the UN from coherently expressing sympathy for Jews as victims, and to create a form of immunity for Arab and Islamic states accused of fostering anti-Semitism.

The grounds for peace simply cannot and do not lie within an organisation such as the UN - certainly it is legitimate for UN bodies to criticize Israel, but not when they do so unfairly, selectively, massively, sometimes exclusively, and always obsessively.

in 2006-07, the Human Rights Council passed one hundred percent of its condemnatory resolutions against Israel, ignoring the other 191 UN member states, including the world’s worst abusers.

Paradoxically, one of the greatest violators of the UN Charter's equality guarantee has been the UN body charged with establishing and enforcing international human rights, the Human Rights Council. The 59th Session of the General Assembly did not pass a single resolution on Sudan's genocide in Darfur - instead valuable time was atrophied by ambassadors enacting the nineteenth anti-Israel resolution of the year.

The U.N. has a lofty charter, with an idealistic blue-print for peace, but a crippling bias has 'buggered' any possible apparatus in its achievement.

Dear Leigh,

What level of education have you achieved?

I'm just curious as to how qualified you are to judge Antony
Loewenstein's intellect...

Antony is a Sydney-based journalist and author. He's written for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun-Herald, The Australian, The Bulletin, Crikey, Znet, New Matilda and Counterpunch. He was also a contributor to the 2004 bestseller, Not Happy John!.

He is a board member of Macquarie University's Centre for Middle East and North African Studies.

And what have you done?

Or are you the type of person who labels people and puts them down
simply because they don't agree with your 'intellect?' and or -
political inclinations...

We've got a few of those on this Forum - they can't see further then
the ends of their noses, but unfortunately they have an opinion on everything.

Actually Relda, anti-semitism only refers to hatred of Semites (i.e., Arabs, Hebrews, Maltese, Aramaic etc.

It's usage against Jews was because certain racists, who also considered Jews an enemy religion, also claimed that they were of a different race. ie., that they were Semites, not Indo-Europeans.

As the racist Ernest Renan wrote:

"The Jews are not merely a different religious community, but—and this is to us the most important factor—ethnically an altogether different race. The European feels instinctively that the Jew is a stranger who immigrated from Asia. The so-called prejudice is a natural sentiment"

In other words, the European racists erroneously claimed that because Jews were Semites racial discrimination was justifiable against them (which piggy-backed neatly on the existing religious prejudice).

Of course, it was false as only a minority of Jews can legitimately claim to be Semites, but muck sticks and sadly, some now try to claim "anti-semitism" as only something that can be applied against one religion!

If I am to give an unfortunately grimly ironic application of anti-semitism, I can think of none better than the following.

"'After lunch, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee spoke with great intemperance about the Arabs. When he drew a breath, I was constrained to say, 'Dr Hacohen, I am profoundly shocked that you should preach of other human beings in terms similar to those in which (Nazi) Julius Streicher spoke of the Jews. Have you learned nothing?' I shall remember his reply to my dying day. He smote the table with both hands and said, 'But they are not human beings, they are not people, they are Arabs.'"

Now that is anti-semitism.

Lev,
Whilst it is correct to infer a cultural commonality between modern peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including the Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs by using the word 'Semite', the term 'anti-semite' provides a totally different historical connotation. The word 'Semitic' was originally applied to all descendants of Shem, the eldest son of the biblical patriarch Noah.

The roots of anti-Semitism basically occurred with the rise and eventual domination of Christianity throughout the Western world, discrimination against Jews on religious grounds became universal, and systematic and social anti-Judaism made its appearance. Jews were massacred in great numbers, especially during the Crusades - the roots of modern anti-Semitism came to be firmly imbedded in aspects of Christian theology. Christianity "had polarized the actors of the Bible (original-Old Testament) into bad Jews and good Hebrews and thought of themselves as the descendants of the Hebrews and the true Israel. People as diverse as Martin Luther and Henry Ford have expressed anti-Semitism. The term continues to have specific meaning - anti-semitic propaganda has existed in Russia and the United States. The term distinctly refers to Jews and not Arabs.

Anti-Semitism continues to refer to the political, social, and economic agitation and activities directed against Jews. Its use denotes speech and behavior that is derogatory to people of Jewish origin, whether or not they are religious.

As with the holocaust denial, it is a form of blatant deception to deny the true historical context of 'anti-Semitism' and also its current usage. A politically correct refashioning of its meaning, as the UN appears to attempt, does in no way retract from the intent to wipe Israel off the map.

Arguing about UN Declarations, Balfour declarations, body counts, semantics over Semites and ancient History! What a bunch of rubbish. Fruit for the side board. Who holds real power? The UN matters - but for the big boys it only matters up to a point. History is littered with States breaking conventions or acting unilaterally when it suits their own interests.

People have got to stop carping on about the past. We know what the situation is on the ground, we know what hasn't worked in the past. We know what all these rancid ideologues believe. Now how can we go about changing the situation? Who (outside the Palestinians and Israelis) has a stake and is influencing. What are the roles being played out and why? Regardless of the rhetoric, it is a great game indeed.

Maybe the justification is "we'd rather have thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis dead over the decades than a hot war taking out millions in half a decade? Maybe those policy makers are right? This is the way it works - Robert Mcnamara explained in "The Fog of War" how Realpolitik works at this level, so why can't we acknowledge the massive role the big geo-political power brokers play in this and cut out all the mindless drivel and petty acusations. If there was 5 years with no violence, you could be sure most people there wouldn't be worried about Caliphates or Ancient prophecies. You're average Joe there now doesn't! The situation would be transformed. Big powers give oxygen to fanatics and perpetuate the situation.

When this is acknowledged properly, the solutions to the problems may actually be alot clearer and simpler than they appear, and the people of the region may be able to get on with what most of them want to do - just living their simple humble lives like the rest of us.