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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (111774)	8/17/2003 1:47:08 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "Two years after the Holocaust, nobody would have said boo if Israel had cleared the land under cover of war." I have no doubt that the fathers or grandfathers of today's Israelis were morally superior to the present generation. Having just seen Germany go nuts over lebensraum they were probably not inclined to imitate. But to take territory requires soldiers, and Israel probably didn't have enough back then. Suffice it to say that that was then, this is now. Re: "This goes to show that something other than external disapproval was in operation." Like I said above, today's Israelis aren't nearly the same as the ones of 1948. So even if I agreed that Israel *could* have cleaned out the whole "Palestine" back then, and even if I agreed that the reason that they did not was morality, it would not give evidence for what restricts Israel's actions now. You said above "... nobody would have said boo ...", which is an admission that now, people would, at least, "say boo". So your admission that things were special back in 1948 is evidence in favor of my statement that international disapproval restricts Israel's actions now and in the future. Re: "Um, do you consider the West bank of the Suez Canal in Israel's immediate neighborhood?" Yes, I consider Egypt to be Israel's immediate neighborhood, LOL. The total casualty counts for Israel's "wars" wouldn't make the top 100 list for Germany's. The whole Sinai peninsula is only 23,552 square miles. It's only 1/16th the area of Egypt itself. I don't think you realize how tiny Israel and its neighborhood truly is. The single state of Alaska is 656,425 square miles, 27x bigger than the Sinai. Texas is 11x larger, California is almost 7x larger. There are 41 US states that are larger than the Sinai peninsula. And it's not like the Sinai has a lot of stuff in it, LOL. There are 147 cities / metropolitan areas in the US that have more people in them than the whole Sinai desert. As far as distances go, Germany, Britain and the US fought over North Africa and the Middle East from Morocco to Iraq as a *minor* theatre in WW2. And you bring up the Sinai campaign to prove that Israel is a big dog??? Jesus weeps! Re: "Say, why don't you try learning something about Israel's wars before pontificating about them?" Israel's military history is very interesting, so of course I am familiar with it. But just because everybody knows about something doesn't mean that it's big, LOL. Look, Israel is a shitty little country that has never been involved in anything other than a shitty little war. Your example of the 1973 campaign is a joke. Every war that Israel has ever been in, (even including the ridiculous exaggerations in the Old Testament) doesn't amount to a hill of beans compared to the death toll when Hitler went after the Jews. And that was only a tiny part of WW2 that no one really took notice of until *after* the war was nearly over. Re: "Israel is a regional military power, but as a military power is sufficiently strong that the Arabs have given up the idea of conventional warfare." I doubt that they've given up on the idea, except in the near term, but it is interesting that you put it this way. One could also note that Israel has developed nuclear weapons, which suggests that perhaps they are not so sure of their continued success with conventional ones. And in any case, regional military powers aren't big enough to get away with genocide against ethnic groups that severely outnumber them. While the Arabs may not be able to defeat Israel militarily, international sanctions against Israel would eventually destroy it. -- Carl