On it's Northern Border, Israel has two soldiers abducted by a terrorist organisation who take them to an undisclosed location on foriegn soil. So Israel blockades the Country be sea and air, completely destroys the infrastructure of Lebanon, taking out dozens of bridges in the South of the Country, as well as the Country's only significant civillian airport. It is also bombs targets which we are led to believe are conected to Hezbollah within Beirut. The latest death count stands at fourty, which will certainly rise in the comming days. Who knows what the Israeli government are thinking, but if they believe that by taking this action will get their soldiers back in due process they are gravely wrong. Lebanon is heavilly tied to both Syria and Iran and much of the Arab World- all it will take to send this into full scale war is the Lebanese to put up resistance to the Israelis, which they have every right to do so. Israel in these last few days has pushed the Middle East to the brink of War, destroying any progress being made against terrorism and stability in the region.

of course not; the only time israel has gone too far is when peace breaks out :roll:

It's all touch and go at this point. I have supported Israel in the past, but for now Im still deciding.

Only Bush has come out in full support of Israel (surprise, surprise) and confuses a terrorist group with a state, France, Germany, Russia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, The European Union and the United Kingdom have come out and condemned Israel. Though if it was the other way round, the World would be crying for war.

It's all touch and go at this point. I have supported Israel in the past, but for now Im still deciding.

Usually I do- I can't see how Israel believes that they are going to gain from this- best case scenario is that they'll get wave after wave of suicide bombings, the worst case is to horrific to contemplate. It only needs a little spark like this to send the whole Middle East to war

- It has now come out that Israel have destroyed two Lebanese Military Air Bases -

Are they trying to send the region to total war??

they should have gone after syria then...

they should have gone after syria then...

or Syria will go after them, Israel have completely flipped

not israel; the entire region...

anyways, it's my opinion that any time you have 3 of the worlds most populous religions, with 2 of them in conflict, it's only natural to have this shite...

judaism vs. islam: the worlds largest, oldest sibling rivalry, which is all it is.

not israel; the entire region...

anyways, it's my opinion that any time you have 3 of the worlds most populous religions, with 2 of them in conflict, it's only natural to have this shite...

judaism vs. islam: the worlds largest, oldest sibling rivalry, which is all it is.

well it's threatening all of us now, Israel have said they will do all in their power to get their soldiers back, Hezbollah in the last hour have said they will transport the two soldiers to Iran

UPDATE: A US Navy Vessel is evacuating Haifa Bay

Um, I told you so?

yeah i do think they are going too far,, but it's not like everything happening is a big suprise. They were poking eachother and i think the punches are coming now.

by the hour this is going further and further- nightfall has now come in the Middle East and shit truly will hit the fan. The Israeli Foreign Office stating this evening

"Syria and Iran are playing with fire, and they will face pay the heaviest price for their consequences" Israel


The Israeli Deputy PM just spoke on British Television and claimed that Israel wasn't attacking Lebanon, it was attack Hezbollah (???) which shows Israel's stupidity and gross negligence. After missiles hit Haifa, the Israeli foreign ministry stated:

"We view this as a major, major, esculation" Israel

That being after Israel has crippled a nation. One thing is for certain, Beirut will be the most dangerous place on Earth tonight, it will make the Baghdad nightlife look like Vegas

UPDATE: The Israeli Navy has just opened fire on Beirut

Why do so many otherwise sensible people continue in this fantasy that we are fighting against 'terrorism'? The real conflict in which the world is now engaged is between between Islam and Zionism. Or more specifically, Islam vs. Zionism and Everyone Else. The core of this conflict is grounded in faith and all the horrors it entails. Part of me wants to type out another angry anti-religious tirade, but it's just easier to let my current favorite author, Sam Harris, have the final say:

Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live. Despite the ecumenical efforts of many well-intentioned people, these irreconcilable religious commitments still inspire an appalling amount of human conflict.

In response to this situation, most sensible people advocate something called "religious tolerance." While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive. It has also obliged us to lie to ourselves — repeatedly and at the highest levels — about the compatibility between religious faith and scientific rationality.

The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science. It is time we conceded a basic fact of human discourse: either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or he does not. When a person has good reasons, his beliefs contribute to our growing understanding of the world. We need not distinguish between "hard" and "soft" science here, or between science and other evidence-based disciplines like history. There happen to be very good reasons to believe that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Consequently, the idea that the Egyptians actually did it lacks credibility. Every sane human being recognizes that to rely merely upon "faith" to decide specific questions of historical fact would be both idiotic and grotesque — that is, until the conversation turns to the origin of books like the bible and the Koran, to the resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad's conversation with the angel Gabriel, or to any of the other hallowed travesties that still crowd the altar of human ignorance.

Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world. If there were good reasons to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse, these beliefs would necessarily form part of our rational description of the universe. Faith is nothing more than the license that religious people give one another to believe such propositions when reasons fail. The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments, and a passionate unwillingness to do so. The distinction could not be more obvious, or more consequential, and yet it is everywhere elided, even in the ivory tower.

Religion is fast growing incompatible with the emergence of a global, civil society. Religious faith — faith that there is a God who cares what name he is called, that one of our books is infallible, that Jesus is coming back to earth to judge the living and the dead, that Muslim martyrs go straight to Paradise, etc. — is on the wrong side of an escalating war of ideas. The difference between science and religion is the difference between a genuine openness to fruits of human inquiry in the 21st century, and a premature closure to such inquiry as a matter of principle. I believe that the antagonism between reason and faith will only grow more pervasive and intractable in the coming years. Iron Age beliefs — about God, the soul, sin, free will, etc. — continue to impede medical research and distort public policy. The possibility that we could elect a U.S. President who takes biblical prophesy seriously is real and terrifying; the likelihood that we will one day confront Islamists armed with nuclear or biological weapons is also terrifying, and growing more probable by the day. We are doing very little, at the level of our intellectual discourse, to prevent such possibilities.

In the spirit of religious tolerance, most scientists are keeping silent when they should be blasting the hideous fantasies of a prior age with all the facts at their disposal.

To win this war of ideas, scientists and other rational people will need to find new ways of talking about ethics and spiritual experience. The distinction between science and religion is not a matter of excluding our ethical intuitions and non-ordinary states of consciousness from our conversation about the world; it is a matter of our being rigorous about what is reasonable to conclude on their basis. We must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not require the abject embrace of the preposterous. We must learn to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity — birth, marriage, death, etc. — without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality.

I am hopeful that the necessary transformation in our thinking will come about as our scientific understanding of ourselves matures. When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths. Only then will the practice of raising our children to believe that they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu be broadly recognized as the ludicrous obscenity that it is. And only then will we stand a chance of healing the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world.

In response to the violence, Lebanon asked the U.N. Security Council to demand a cease-fire. The Council set an urgent meeting for Friday.

Dont you guys think this is a little more urgent than... "lets meet on friday and talk about it?"

Israel is not fighting for Judaism, many Israelis if not most are not religious they are fighting to survive. The Palastines fight behind religion but their cause is really to remove the Jews. With that said:

Israel hit the wrong people. I firmly support Israel but I have very little faith in the rulers there. Lebanon itself was no threat to Israel. Hizzbola has influence for sure but they more hold the legitamite government hostage there. If Israel wanted to make an impact on Hizzbola they should have taken out the Syrian government a true enemy not the Lebaonese who by and large have no issue with Jews.

if i'm not mistaken, doesn't Lebanon have one of the largest Christian populations in the Middle East?
and yes i think that they went too far when they started bombing within Beirut. they should have kept the bombing and fighting in the south where the Hezbellah terrorists are based

Israel is not fighting for Judaism, many Israelis if not most are not religious they are fighting to survive. The Palastines fight behind religion but their cause is really to remove the Jews. With that said:

Israel hit the wrong people. I firmly support Israel but I have very little faith in the rulers there. Lebanon itself was no threat to Israel. Hizzbola has influence for sure but they more hold the legitamite government hostage there. If Israel wanted to make an impact on Hizzbola they should have taken out the Syrian government a true enemy not the Lebaonese who by and large have no issue with Jews.


Well it's typical Israel, we all know that it is Syria that are behind Hezbollah but they attack and paralyse Lebanon, why? because they can, and because they can get away with it. If they attacked Syria, Damascus would be more than happy to fight them back. Normally I support Israeli actions, though on this affair I couldn't be more anti. Because two hostages are taken, Israel doesn't attack the group, it attacks a state. And by doing so they have started a war, with which Syria and Iran are only one tiny incident away from joining. Politics in the region are similar to that of the Cold War, where anything is everything and can start world war three. Though if the time comes when Syria and Iran bet involved would the United States be prepared to intervene and the rest of the Western World.