Hamas leader is killed

[YoMartin]

Kick some ass Israel

Hopefully not yours...

That´s the problem with "selective attacks" -who does the selection? Even if this time they really killed a terrorist (and even ignoring the obvious consequences this will have in any peace process for years), I can´t agree with giving any state a free hand to kill whoever it wants. Especially if a war criminal runs that state...

BTW, I wouldn´t be surprised if this conflict lasted for decades. Unless some secular values replace the dogmatic-religious ones that currently prevail in both sides, the problem won´t be solved by any compromise about which territories belong to Israel and which to Palestine. I don´t see the mindsets there ready to accept this kind of pragmatic solution to the problem. But I don´t foresee a bright future for atheism there...

[YoMartin]

Israel is completely dominated by religious values? You are clearly confused about this. Israel's Jews are about 60% secular, 20% somewhat observant, and only 20% very observant. A major party and one of Sharon's coaltion partners, Shinui, is a specifically secularist, anti-religious party. The parties of the Left are generally secularist, and and Likud, Ichud Le'umi, and even Mafdal are not religious so much as nationalist. The specifically religious parties currently have a grand total of 14 of 120 Knesset seats.

As for dogmatic, what has Israel not tried? War, peace, occupation, withdrawal, negotiation at gunpoint and in luxury at European palaces, American mediation, European mediation, you name it.

Sabra and Shatila, as dunn points out, was a massacre by Lebanese Christians of Palestinian Muslims. no Israelis or Jews were involved. Or are you trying to pin Jenin massace on him, because that was a battle, not a massacre, just like Deir Yassin was.

Who does the selection? The best intelligence services in the world, buddy: the Mossad and ShinBet.

Israel is not a secular country. There´s not even civil marriage, only religious one! Yes, the Shinui is a liberal-secular party, but it got... 12% of the vote... Even the existence of a party almost exclusively based on a secular agenda shows that the country is currently not secular... Only in 2003 -after 40 years!- Israel had a government without Ultra-orthodox parties (which still receive substantial state funding for their various organisations).

I´m not sure is Sharon is a war criminal or not. But, as Human Rights Watch (not Yasser Arafat) stated, “There is abundant evidence that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed on a wide scale in the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, but to date, not a single individual has been brought to justice. President Bush should urge Prime Minister Sharon to cooperate with any investigation.” If he cooperated with the investigations, he could clean his name... or maybe not... So far, investigations say he could be guilty: "The Kahan Commission (named after the President of the Israeli Supreme Court) that investigated the massacre in 1983 concluded that “Minister of Defense [Sharon] bears personal responsibility” and should “draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office.” The commission recommended that Prime Minister Menachem Begin remove Sharon from office if he did not resign".  Even the US envoy back then (1982) told the BBC that after the killings began he cabled Defense Minister Sharon, telling him, “You must stop the slaughter…. The situation is absolutely appalling. They are killing children. You have the field completely under your control and are therefore responsible for that area.” So, let´s not discharge the allegations so quickly: Sharon had personal and political responsability about the actions of the Phalangists. Yes, they were Lebanese, but Sharon was in charge and let the massacre happen!

Maybe the Mossad is the best secret service in the world -not really sure, however, I live in a city that suffered two devastating attacks in jewish institutions. But still, it´s not a question about efficiency. It´s a question of how much discretionary power are we willing to give to (any) state. I believe in accountabilty, separation of powers, checks and balances, rule of law... I know international affairs work differently than national levels, but that´s no reason to give any state the right to kill whoever it finds undesirable. In that case, I would even prefer an inefficient state...

[YoMartin]

And there should DEFINITELY be a wall/fence along the entire length of the border. I'd stop letting the Palis in as workers, too - let them, in their new independent state, deal with their own problems, and not export them like, say, Mexico does.

Now I realise why we are 8 points apart in the libertarian/authoritarian scale...

[YoMartin]

The Mossad is not charged with protecting Jewish Institutions Worldwide, only the state of Israel. Really it shows the weakness of Argentine security services, the reach of Hezbollah and Iranian terror, or, some would say, Menem's ties to certain unsavory Islamic figures.

I think any secret service tries to protect its own embassies (the legal responsability belongs to Argentine authorities, but I´m sure they have some agents in a city that has one of the largest jewish communities in the world), or to investigate better than what they did here. But, againl, I´m not questioning the efficiency of Mossad, I´m just saying that no government should have the right to eliminate people according to its likes and dislikes.

[YoMartin]

Governments should not have the right to kill random people. But remember, this is several hundred body bags later. And it will most likely end up saving lives in the long run. This is the same reason I think Truman was right to nuke Japan, and Chamberlain was wrong to start the war early. In the long run, this would have saved lives.

I don´t think this will save lives, quite the contrary. It´s a dangerous precedent. Like many laws that are being passed in different countries.

[YoMartin]

And there should DEFINITELY be a wall/fence along the entire length of the border. I'd stop letting the Palis in as workers, too - let them, in their new independent state, deal with their own problems, and not export them like, say, Mexico does.

Now I realise why we are 8 points apart in the libertarian/authoritarian scale...

Yep.  Note that I'm closer to the center than you are. I also took the Political Quiz Show, and ended up at 25, a little bit right-of-center...

I don't think, after all the civilian Israeli noncombatants that the Palis *deliberately* killed (often by using Israel's desire for cheap labor) that the Palis have any *right* to enter Israel proper. It takes quite a twisted outlook to, as the Palis do, simultaneously call for the destruction of Israel and ALSO complain that Israel doesn't let them in to work...  

And given how effective the wall/fence has been in preventing Pali suicide bombers, damn straight the Israelis need it!

Sometimes it´s better to be apart from the centre... Or what the creators of the quiz regard as "the centre".

Israel has killed many civilians too. In fact, it´s a country that´s violated more UN resolutions in the last decades than, say, Iraq... I´m against the wall, but I realise why many people support it. But you seem to endorse a wall dividing Mexico from the US, and I don´t see the point there.

[YoMartin]

I'm sure you've all seen this before, but the 'spiritual leader' of Hamas, Scheyk (English spelling?) Yassin, was killed yesterday by Israeli forces...and it seems to have triggered a new rise in activity on both sides. Though I suppose we should all be happy to see him go, a more imortant question might be how this will affect the peace process. Any thoughts?

It makes the final, necessary fight-to-the-death between the two peoples that much closer.  I like it.

You like the fact that a lot of people will die? That's pretty disgusting...

On the issue, it seems likely that the spiral of violence will just keep on going...at least fighting Hamas is better than fighting the PLO, if Hamas were wiped out things would be a lot easier.

No, I like the fact that the issue will be resolved.

It won't. Sure, if one side, persumably the ISraelis, killed all Palestinians, but I don't see that happening. I think Israel is too civilized for the kind of ethnic cleansing that it would take. And it's hardly doable anyway. Not even in places like Rwanda did wars actualyl resolve the conflict.

Until one side either kills or demographically absorbs the other side there'll just be more of the same ongoing low level war.  If you think about the major political and cultural changes throughout history, they always involved quite a lot of genocide, or at least loss of much of the male population in war.

Give me some examples please. A lot of old conflicts have been solved through the trans-formation on states into modern civilized democracies. That's happened in Europe, for example. There is overwhelming emprical evidence that democracies never go to war with each other. It's a much better way out than genocide.

Most contacts between Christendom and Islam have involved genocide and all out war - the Crusades, the Ottomans in the Balkans and Hapsburg lands (almost lost Vienna!), the Spanish driving the Moors out.  And don't forget the slow, painful annihilation of the Byzantine Empire.  Don't get me wrong - Christianity used to be dangerous too, but never like Islam.  

More recently even the supposedly 'idealistic' US used genocide to great effect in WWII - firebombing of Dresdent, Tokyo, etc, and of course Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Failing to use it in Korea and Vietnam was a main cause of the poor results there.

I think the only reason why christian countries have more freedom than islamic ones, is because nobody nowadays takes the bible seriously. Or at least -almost- nobody thinks a country´s legislation should emanate from the bible. But the intolerant content is similar...

I would say all monotheist religions are in principle (there´s only one real god, one way to live your life, one way to paradise, and all the rest are false) against pluralism. So is marxism and any ideology that claims to posses the "authentic" truth. This is the kind of mindset that must change to avoid the repetition of previous genocides (P.S.: mankind is not doomed to repeat the same things over and over, and there are plenty of this examples too). As Axl Rose says, you can´t trust peace when everybody is fighting for their promised landing...