Tuesday 18 July 2006, 18:07 Makka Time, 15:07 GMT

At least 29 people have been killed in the latest air strikes by Israeli warplanes in Lebanon, raising the toll there to more than 230.

Israeli aircraft struck targets across Lebanon on Tuesday, hitting many areas north and east of Beirut that have so far been quiet.

Nine civilians, all from one family and including children, were killed and four wounded in an air strike that destroyed a house in the south Lebanese village of Aitarun. Four others died in strikes elsewhere in the south.

Full story.fixing link

[ 18 July 2006: Message edited by: blake 3:17 ]

[ 18 July 2006: Message edited by: Critical Mass2 ]

The Germans in WWII weren't quite as sophisticated as the Allies ended up being, at carpet bombing.

Just look at the American raids on Japan and you will see what I mean.

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Originally posted by josh:
Nothing of the kind. It just struck me that Israel's carpet bombing was quite reminiscent of Goering's. I could have made the same comparison with the U.S.'s bombing of North Vietnam. But being Israel, I thought the comparison would be even more effective in bringing home the reality of the situation.

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A nation that mandates the primacy of one ethnicity or religion over all others will eventually become psychologically dysfunctional. Narcissistically obsessed with its own image, it must strive to maintain its racial superiority at all costs and will inevitably come to view any resistance to this imagined superiority as an existential threat. Indeed, any other people automatically becomes an existential threat simply by virtue of its own existence. As it seeks to protect itself against phantom threats, the racist state becomes increasingly paranoid, its society closed and insular, intellectually limited. Setbacks enrage it; humiliations madden it. The state lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.

The pattern played out in Nazi Germany as it sought to maintain a mythical Aryan superiority. It is playing out now in Israel. “This society no longer recognizes any boundaries, geographical or moral,” wrote Israeli intellectual and anti-Zionist activist Michel Warschawski in his 2004 book Towards an Open Tomb: The Crisis of Israeli Society. Israel knows no limits and is lashing out as it finds that its attempt to beat the Palestinians into submission and swallow Palestine whole is being thwarted by a resilient, dignified Palestinian people who refuse to submit quietly and give up resisting Israel’s arrogance.

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You make my point exactly. You gave forethought in invoking the nazi comparision to the only Jewish state in the world. It is not only false but speaks to the extremes to which you are clinging. Whether you like it or not it is this very same rhetoric I read on the American neo-Nazi sites.

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No, it is merely to point out a tragic irony that a supposedly Jewish state is resorting to such thuggish tactics. But rather than addressing those tactics, you, and too many Jews worldwide, remain silent and choose instead to attack the messenger.

[ 18 July 2006: Message edited by: josh ]

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A nation that mandates the primacy of one ethnicity or religion over all others will eventually become psychologically dysfunctional.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

The insane brutality of the state of Israel -- By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON, former CIA analyst

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Cuckoo. Departure from reality, no connection to any concrete thing or policy any movement or government or diplomat can grasp to start finding a real solution for the real people on all sides in that region. Just extreme rhetoric.

Full of hate.

As usual.

[ 18 July 2006: Message edited by: Critical Mass2 ]

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Originally posted by cdnviking:
A more accurate tactical analysis to draw would be the Allied carpet bombing of Dresden (using incendiaries to set everything ablaze).

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Originally posted by Kinetix:

The germans did it first in the blitz, December 1940; their goal was to destroy london. If it wasn't for the harsh winds in the morning, the bombing would have continued.

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Neither Nazi Germany nor Al Quaeda should be yardsticks against which to measure moral behaviour. Yet people always use that argument - 'well, they do worse, or did it first' to justify monstrosity. It's a bogus argument.

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Originally posted by Critical Mass2:
Full of hate.

As usual.

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Okay, well, I guess you've expired this account too. Don't bother signing up with a new one, because you've run out of 10th chances.

And josh, good grief. You know what happens - why give them a way to derail the thread?

[ 18 July 2006: Message edited by: Michelle ]

It would be useful to know just what sort of bombing this is. The IDF says they are targetting specific Hezbollah locations. They seem to be taking out a little more besides. Vans filled with fleeing refugees etc.

What if any is the 'terror' component of these raids? I like to think there isn't any but I suppose I am skeptical; witness the electric station in Gaza, not a military target. The brand new 300 million euro Beirut airport? But I digress.

This is 'tactical bombing'.

Firebombing, by the way, was invented in the second war; the first firestorms were accidental. But they were just so damned good the Allies developed it into a science. Large heavy bombs with a big blast to take the rooves off buildings and open up the architecture. Clusters of four pound phosporus bombs to set the blast exposed timber and materiel alight.

[ 18 July 2006: Message edited by: Merowe ]