Muslim "fury" at speech by Pope

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Eh, I forgot who I was talking to for a second, I'm not going to waste much time on this....

Let's start with a few facts. We invaded a sovereign state, and occupied its capital in 1982.

Lebanon was far from Soveriegn in 1982, with Arafat and his PLO regrouping from their failed coup attempt in Jordan by occupying Lebanon with 18,000 troops, and another 5,000 foriegn mercenaries. How soveriegn are you with a terrorist group armed with Russian tanks at your border? The PLO was responsible for 275 terror attacks against Israel in 1981, and countless horrific abuses against native Lebanese. When Israel complied with Resolutions 425 (which was issued in 1978, four years before they invaded Beirut) and 426 in 2000, Lebanon had yet to reclaim it’s Southern territory from militia factions.

Approximately 14,000 civilians were killed between June and September of 1982, according to a conservative estimate.

These figures were never varified. Some came from the Palestine Red Crescent, headed by Arafat’s brother. We’re also talking about attributing death tolls for an entire period of civil war, to Israel, who were a third party.

In Operations Accountability and Grapes of Wrath, we caused the mass flight of about 500,000 refugees from southern Lebanon on each occasion. There are no exact data on the number of casualties in these operations, but one can recall that in Operation Grapes of Wrath, we bombed a shelter in the village of Kafr Kana which killed 103 civilians.

Your irrefutable author goes on to admit these deaths were accidental, but it’s because of the memory of these unfortunate casualties that Israel was so quick to accept responsibility in Kana again for what turned out to be falsified and manipulated claims with the fictionalized massacre. The disasterous bombing of 1996 led to disbanding the entire operation, and a precedence for Israel ending their manuevers in vain. This was only two months prior to the vulnerable Israeli elections during the Palestinian peace process, and resulted in ‘the Grapes of Wrath Understanding” of April, 1996, a US proposal which served as the closest thing to a treaty between Lebanon, Syria and Israel. It would also serve as the blueprint for UN Resolution 1559. The moral of that story is to finish what you start, or you will be back where you started irregardless of your own personal wishes.

On July 28, 1989, we kidnapped Sheikh Obeid, and on May 12, 1994, we kidnapped Mustafa Dirani, who had captured Ron Arad. Israel held these two people and another 20-odd Lebanese detainees without trial, as "negotiating chips.

Here the author appears to be inadvertantly arguing that you can’t negotiate with terrorists. Dirani was the subject of succesfull negotiations for a prisoner exchange. Sheikh Obeid was held responsible for kidnapping and murdering an American Colonel who was serving a UN peacekeeping mission, and was used in negotiations. So okay, Israel didn’t get Ron Arad but they did get an Israeli businessman, a group of Israeli Arabs, and the remains of some kidnapped IDF soldiers.

Approximately 25 Israeli civilians have been killed as a result of Katyusha missiles to date. The number of dead in Lebanon, the vast majority comprised of civilians who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, is more than 300.

So Israel’s morality should be weighed by Hezbollah’s ability to kill Jews succesfully? It’s clear that Hezbollah would kill as many Jews as possible if they had the ability and if they could increase death tolls, they would not hesitate to do it. What’s not in dispute is Israel’s ability to wipe Lebanon or Syria off the map if they so desired. But that hasn’t happened, and that puts an end to the question of Israel’s morals.