Welcome to the Newschoolers forums! You may read the forums as a guest, however you must be a registered member to post. Register to become a member today!
another huge issue with this war is the fact that israel is not only fighting to protect their citizens within rocket distance of gaza, they are fighting to regain national pride and respect for their military after their defeat by hezbollah.
Israel won't be content to quell the latest uprising from hamas, they want to eradicate them, and in doing so, to put on a show of force and might so strong that other millitant groups will see the consequences of attacking israel and rethink doing so.
alot of experts are predicting muddy waters ahead though, as there doesn't appear to be a clear "end-game" for this operation from the israeli side. hamas is a huge (i heard a figure on bbc the other day claiming 20,000 trained troops) and is trained for city fighting/terror tacticts better than basically any group in the world.
that plus their willingness to sacrifice themselves and civilians in close proximity to their strongholds will only lead to a situation where israel runs out of steam and much of hamas is still intact, but israel will be resistant to such a conclusion.
the other thing to worry about is the perception of all those "green nations" from iggy's map.
protests are in full force in nearly every muslim country condeming israel for their air strikes and the pending ground attack, and nearby countries like egypt and iran are being pressured strongly to attack israel in defense of the muslim citizens. that could lead to us involvement, stretching our resources even more thinly while we still try to pull out of iraq and up intensity in afghanastan.
the way obama approaches this in his first days as president will set the tone for us/muslim relations throughout his presidency
dp, i know, my apoligies, but we need to keep the facts accurate in here.
Each side blames the other for violating an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. The truce formally expired December 19, but it had been weakening for months.
from: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.israel.airstrikes/index.html
why the fuck would you come to an intelligent thread about a subject that could have serious consequences worldwide and post something this absolutely ignorant and blatantly stupid?
what did this add to the thread, ns.com, or even to anyone's life in general? your statement doesn't apply to anything stated in the thread previous to this point, and it could lead to an intelligent, spirited discussion being forced to a halt by the staggering weight of your ignorance.
there are many things wrong with your fundamentally stuipd statement, the first of which is that many non-skinny people have been some of the greatest popular comics of all time (belushi, candy, farley, etc..) while many skinny people are in no way remotely funny ( jimmy fallon, carson daly, the cast of the new 90210)
you should be as ashamed of your ignorance (and moronic need to be heard despite the fact that you say nothing remotely useful or interesting) as the rest of us are disgusted by it.
the Israel Defense Force has a youtube account where they are posting footage of this week's air attacks and other similar content.
http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk
does anyone else find this unsettling?
i suppose it is just unusual to see such transparency in military campaigns from a government.
rowen, hasn't there been an embargo on gaza for some time, requiring them to use elaborate tunnels to get food, supplies, gasonline, etc.. through? in the past have other nations provided aid, or is this an ongoing issue that is unrelated to this current military action?
i don't think that israel believes that they will change the viewpoints of the gaza region with this latest round of warring at all.
i think that the scale and determination of this wave of attacks is a direct result of their percieved defeat by hezbollah recently. israel's military leaders feel that the best way to ensure the safety of its citizens is to have unquestioned military strength and dominance in the region, and the fact that they were unable to meaningfully affect hezbollah in a long lasting way while absorbing all the damage and loss of life they did made them vunerable in the eyes of many other anti-israel groups, and more importantly, in the eyes of israeli citizens and officials.
they will do their best to systematically destroy hamas not because they think it will change how the gaza region feels about anything, but because it will restore the fear and wariness to israel's enemies leading to fewer attacks in troubled zones and restore confidence in the state's defense policies to the citizens of israel.
