Who Drew First Blood?

In trying to understand who started what, is there a beginning point in this latest round of mid-east conflict? Two solders were kidnapped, but did it start before that? Can anyone provide a time line to help my understanding of the situation?

Thanks.

And we BOTH know this is no laughing matter!

And NO... it WAS NOT about the 2 soldiers. If you really want to get some good insight, and I found it to be fair reporting because it pointed fingers all around, please check out what Robert Fisk has written about this LATEST situation. Today on Democracy Now he talked with Amy Goodman about his thoughts and I dare say perhaps some REAL truth. He lives in Beirut and he was reporting from there.

I posted a thread earlier today about this, but that was many threads ago. Check out www.DemocracyNow.org and see what Robert Fisk has to say. I think you will see that he reports from the heart. Lebanon is being punished for the sins of many!

They also had a good interview that had been recorded with Asad of Syria... even though I feel they & Iran have been pushing the envelope, I also think Israel is action extremely reckless! I was on the fence to some extent, but now I'm actually very unhappy with how Israel is going about "making a point!" Crying foul when they seem to be just as duplicitous!

then Israel started bombing Lebanon...
then Hezbollah started shooting rockets into Israel...

Hezbollah had been firing rockets into Israel a long time before the soldiers were kidnapped...

but I think the OP was talking about this cycle of violence. Hezbollah shot off the rockets at Shelomi as a diversion. They stopped until the IDF attacked back, and then Hezbollah started the current barrage of rockets.

muslim girl 1,300 years ago. an exagerated Hatfield vs. McCoy.

IMO

Sarah

but hey, one might just say that revenge is not the answer.

Just my opinion.

Howvever if you want to go back several years, the day after the UN resolution
"First phase: 29 November 1947 - 1 April 1948
On the day following the adoption of the UN resolution seven Jews were killed by Arabs in Palestine in three separate incidents: at 8 o'clock in the morning, in what came to be seen as the opening shots of the 1948 War <52>, three Arabs attacked a bus from Netanya to Jerusalem, killing five Jewish passengers. Half an hour later a second bus attack left one passenger dead. Later in the day a twenty-five-year old man was shot dead in Jaffa,<53> where wild rumors spread about alleged attacks on Arabs by Jews <54>. Arab prisoners also attempted to assault Jews in Acre prison, but were beaten back by guards. In Jerusalem the Arab Higher Committee called a three-day general strike from Tuesday, 2 December to be followed by mass demonstrations after Friday prayers. The Committee's statement included eight resolutions, the last of which called on the British Government "to hand over Palestine forthwith to its Arab people".<55> On 2 December a mob looted and burned shops in the Jewish commercial district in Jerusalem, unopposed by British forces. From the beginning of the strike onwards Arab and Jewish clashes escalated and by 11 December the Jerusalem correspondent of The Times estimated that at least 130 people had died, "about 70 of them being Jews, 50 Arabs, and among the rest three British soldiers and one British policeman". <56>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab-Israeli_War

the stoned age. (SP) intentional.

ON EDIT: I've had a Guinness.... beware.

...by Palestinian assailants. Israel went over-board in its response to get him back. Hezbollah naturally then took advantage of the situation, kidnapped two more while killing some others, and lobbed some missiles into northern Israel while it was at it. Then Israel went after them in Lebanon and there you are. Fuck, it's like a soap opera with these people, but the storylines aren't nearly as engaging and the characters are far more shallow and one dimensional. :eyes:

I just needed a short version..........

started bombing and hit their only power plant, I believe. The effect was to cut off a clean supply of water to the Palestinians. Not a military response to a military action, but a military response directly against civilians.

They've also gone in with tanks, haven't they?

Regarding Lebanon---there was a thread that said that MSNBC actually reported that Israeli soldiers had first crossed the border........almost a provocation.
I wouldn't be surprised since this whole action has supposedly been planned ....and I'm wondering if Bushco gave the go ahead.

:shrug:

All people are good. Only actions are bad. Blame is almost always irrelevent, it is the action that needs to be stopped.

It kinda didn't work out this time.

The "People of the Book", Jews, Christians and Muslims, have been doing "God's Work" of slaughtering each other in the same God's name for centuries.

They all should get a new God cuz the one they have is trying to kill them.

http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/101conflict.shtml

Hope this helps, I think you have to go back to the United Nations and the founding of 'Israel'.

If I remember correctly, what my Jewish Grandmother said was, Israel was the name of the tribal leader of
a band of nomadic people and the "father of Jews". The 'land of Israel' was the land they used to graze the
herds of goats and sheep and could have been anywhere in the middle east.

just the ramblings of an old woman.... I miss Her.

2 soldiers and killed 3 soldiers.

Israel's two-front offensive against Islamic militants began on June 25 when Hamas-linked guerrillas in the Gaza Strip carried out a cross-border attack on a military outpost in Israel, killing two soldiers and capturing one. Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas joined the fray this month, attacking a military patrol on the border in northern Israel, killing three soldiers and capturing two.

Hezbollah is responsible for this escalation, not Israel

I think you mean it started when Germany attacked Pearl Harbor.

imo

in May and June.

I find this to be a good article...

Lebanese man confesses to killings on behalf of Israel

By Reuters (from early June)


A Lebanese man has confessed to assassinating a series of senior Hezbollah and Palestinian militants over a seven-year period on behalf of Israeli intelligence, the Lebanese Army said on Tuesday.

It said Mahmoud Rafeh, arrested along with three others last week in connection with the May 26 killing of two Islamic Jihad officials, was a leading member of a "terrorist network" behind at least three other major assassinations in Lebanon.
"Investigations by military intelligence showed that the terrorist network that was discovered had links to the Israeli Mossad for several years and that its members underwent training both inside Israel and outside," the army statement said.

"The network was tasked by this agency with carrying out these operations and was given secret communication and monitoring devices for this purpose along with detailed maps of the target... forged documents and bags with secret pockets." Israel has dismissed accusations it was behind the car bombing last month that killed Mahmoud Majzoub, known as Abu Hamze, and his brother Nidal, both members of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon.Several Palestinian militants and Hezbollah officials have been killed in Lebanon in recent years in attacks their organizations have blamed on Israel.

Two days after the last assassination, rockets fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel wounded an Israel Defense Forces soldier, prompting the Israel to launch its heaviest air raid against Syrian-backed Palestinian militants and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon since it withdraw from the area in 2000. Rafeh admitted to the murder of Hezbollah official Ali Hasan Deeb in 1999 in the southern town of Arba, the killing of another Hezbollah official in Beirut in 2003 and the killing of Palestinian militant Jihad Jibreel in 2002, the army said.

Jibreel, killed in a bombing aimed at his car in Beirut, was the son of Ahmed Jibril, head of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.The army said Rafeh had also confessed to planting other bombs that were either found and defused before they were detonated or missed their targets.

Syrian and Iranian-backed Hezbollah as well as Jibril welcomed the arrests in interviews with Hezbollah's al-Manar TV.
Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud said they proved that "Israel had not ceased its attempts to sabotage Lebanon."

more (Haaretz): http://www.nogw.com/download/2006_leb_man_killed_for_mossad.pdf


Hezbollah lobbing rockets , Israel up to their old tricks running espionage, troop incursions and assassinations within Lebannon via proxies.

Is the 2 kidnapped soldiers excuse...just an excuse?...you bet

I have friends who are Jewish and also Muslim. I am having a hard time getting objective answers out of either party.

That the Lebanese tried to go to the UN with this very damaging new evidence implicating Israel in serious crimes but they were blocked by the US Ambassador
Jeffery Feltman.


here's a snippet from a German report 7/14 (translation not very good):

The Lebanese State Department confirmed on Tuesday that under those, which spoke with Lebanese official ones, in order to induce the political guidance in Beirut to the break of desiring also US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman was. Feltman had already intervened, the affair could impair the American-Lebanese relations and the military aid for Lebanon. In the State Department "one regrets this policy of the double standards operated by western powers". In particular the USA and France urge well-known-measured on brisk conversion of the UN-resolution 1559, which demands a complete disarmament of the Shiite Hisbollah. The State Department stressed, to” Beirut in a meeting of the security council will persist “.


http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.jungewelt.de/2006/07-14/014.php&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search?q=meir+dagan+junge+welt&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=G

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5065008.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5066768.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1794304,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1796691,00.html

Palestinians killed on a beach on June 9.

It is the perfect response for retaliating. I use it with my students when there is a conflict. The person who threw the first punch is the one who drew first blood.

you wrote:

---------------------------------------------
Jun 1
BEIRUT: Israeli warplanes Sunday bombed bases of a pro-Syrian Palestinian group in Lebanon, including positions near Beirut, after militants fired a rocket salvo deeper than ever before inside the Jewish state.


Six Palestinian fighters were wounded, three of them seriously, and an Israeli soldier was slightly injured in the tit-for-tat attacks, according to the Israeli military and Lebanese police.
The air force raided two bases of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), while Israel (I am not sure if they mean Israel or Lebanon here) angrily announced it would lodge a complaint with the United Nations.
Israeli fighter bombers swooped several times to fire 15 missiles at a base in Sultan Yaacub, causing the casualties, said police. They then targeted a base in Naameh that comprises a network of underground tunnels and has been the target of several past Israeli air strikes.

The bombing of the base, located near the busy highway linking Beirut to southern Lebanon, triggered traffic jams and panic among motorists, police said.

Earlier, militants in south Lebanon fired several Katyusha rockets towards an army base in northern Israel, wounding a soldier and causing damage, said an Israeli army spokeswoman. The rocket salvo hit a base near Safed, 20 kilometres south of the international border with Lebanon.
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It was lebanon who was going to lodge the complaint..see post #33

& #23

After that, things get murky. Especially after WWI when the British carved up the middle east for themselves.

Not based on a recent news or op-ed article

Lithos
DU Moderator