Israel vs Lebanon, the sequel

The experts warned that the first people at risk from the "toxic spray" were the two million inhabitants of Beirut.

They also said that large quantities of dead fish along Lebanon's shores had been killed by the oil pollution.

A spokeswoman for Unep's Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP) said it was too early to judge the impact of the pollution on the area's environment.

"It is premature to derive any conclusion on the type of oil and the potential health impacts before having conducted a sample analysis of the spill," said Luisa Colasimone.

"No conclusion can be done at this stage before we have people on the ground".

She added that a team of UN experts had arrived in Syria on Tuesday and one of their tasks would be to take samples of the oil spill.

Basma Badran, a Beirut-based spokeswoman for Greenpeace, said no clean-up operation would get under way until workers' safety could be guaranteed.

"It is an extremely risky task to make the proper assessment while under fire," she told BBC News.

"Several countries are on stand-by to send technical and expert assistance if the safety of their supplies and teams can be guaranteed."

Ms Badran added that international help was essential because the Lebanese authorities lacked any capacity to deal with such a large spill.

The Lebanese environment minister said the latest satellite images showed the oil slick was continuing to spread across the eastern Mediterranean Sea, threatening the coastlines of Turkey and possibly Cyprus.

However, a spokesman for Turkey's prime minister said the risk to the country's shores was "fairly limited", but aircraft were carrying out regular monitoring flights and that naval vessels were ready to deploy floating barriers if needed.

Marine experts from Inforac, an organisation with links to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), issued a warning on Tuesday that the raid on the Jiyyeh Power plant in mid-July could pose a cancer risk to people living in the area.

Spokeswoman Simonetta Lombardo said the spill of fuel oil was a "high-risk toxic cocktail made up of substances which cause cancer and damage to the endocrine system".

Originally posted by Omar al Hashim And thats a good post too Cezar. I'm going to nominate that. I do believe that the only way to solve this peacefully is for Israel to become multi-ethnic, even if it is impossible. That this poor 6 (?) year old boy, who has been brainwashed by his elders to throw stones at Israeli tanks and thus endanger his life, I don't think he requires any brainwashing. And his elders would surely be very upset if they knew that he was risking death like that. Can you imagine what his mother must think?

Making of a Suicide bomber

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5980262910298128220

Has anyone watched this?

Its amazing what kids do. And apparently there are people here who actually think that Palestinians would place there kids in harms way deliberativly. Its all part of the de humanising experience, and its sad that it works on history buffs since accusing the enemy of being baby killers and hiding behind women and children has a long and distinguished history.

Originally posted by �ok ge� Originally posted by arch.buff   From my knowledge on the issue this above post by Duke is exactly correct. Israel was founded to create a safe homeland for Jews worldwide, and in the begining Israel was at a serious disadvantage. Just think if the Arab didnt start the conflict in the first place then would there be any?   So do they teach you in history book that the earliest colonists and the government of the United States had the right to massacre some Native American tribes and force them to move west, because the American colonies were founded to create a safe homeland for religious prosecuted Christians worldwide, and if those American tribes moved to west peacefully and if the Seminole did not fight, they would have not lost their lands, people and pushed out as losers?   I hope you see the flaws of such argument.

Finally a ceasefire has been declared!

Unfrotunately, for this Lebanese kid it came too late.

7 news reports that its holding after a heavy last minute barrage by both sides.


Edited by Omar al Hashim - 14-Aug-2006 at 04:11

Originally posted by arch.buff Not saying youre wrong here but can this be proven Omar?

Apart from the fact that trying to prove it would be extremely controversial as the Israelis naturally want to maintain the myth that they were living their 2000 years ago. I think it could by DNA of course, but here is my logic:

2000 years ago the population in Palestine was Jewish. But after the prophet Jesus a few started to convert to Christianity, slowly at first. The jewish revolts and subsequent diasporas spread the population throughout the Roman Empire and the middle east, but imporantly, cannot possibly have displaced more people than those who stayed behind - just like the current Palestinian diaspora. The population after the diaspora was still jewish and christian, and therefore still the same people who lived there before the diaspora.
As christianity gained in power and influence more and more jews converted to christianity, until the time of the Arab conquests when palestine was majority christian, but with a large jewish minority. The arabs were always outnumbered by their other middle eastern counterparts so a large scale migration into palestine at the time after Arab conquest is simply impossible. Islam then began to take converts from both Juadism and Christianity until there was a muslim majority with a christian minority and a smaller Jewish minority. This was still the case in 1900. There were a large number of left over Crusaders that had been thrown into the ethnic mix of the region but most of them were in Lebanon, and again, did not replace the population.
So by the time of the zionist migrations beginning in the early 20th centuary. The palestinian population must have the decendents of the people who lived in Israel in 5 BC (the bunni Israel)

Now the Jews. A large population of Israeli are jews from eastern europe. Poland, Russia, the Ukraine. We know that a large number of Jews were spread throughout the Roman empire, but that does not account for jews in eastern europe. The romans never controlled those areas and the chances that jews fleeing persecution in western europe would go to eastern europe where they were even more persecuted is highly remote. The are much much more likely to flee to Iraq during pre-Islamic times, or to Spain post Islamic. (Andalucia we know had a very large jewish population). I think most would have run to spain, since this is an ex-roman provence where jews could live freely.
The Khazar turks who controlled Ukraine converted to Judaism in about 700AD. Much of the population would have followed, as following the royalties religon is highly common. Over the next 1200 years, it is highly likely that a significant proportion of the population would have stayed in the same region, ie Eastern Europe. Which would easily account for high numbers of East european jews, who account for a high percentage of the Israeli population.

Therefore we can state that:
the Palestinian population is highly likely to be decendent from the bunni Israel
the Israeli population, while some must be decendent from the bunni Israel, is largly decendent from the completely unrelated Khazar Turks. Whose ancestors have never lived in Palestine.



Edited by Omar al Hashim - 14-Aug-2006 at 06:07

Omar, please never let facts get in the way of realpolitic.

I think Hezbollah has won this war in every way that Hezbollah could win this war. It now has tremendous public support from the Lebanese people, including the Christians. It now has tremendous humanitarian endeavors it can carry out (reconstruction, etc.) - which is the means it has always used to cement its support. Those two factors alone ensure it is going nowhere, and will be even stronger.

So bravo, Israel's right. You accomplished exactly what you needed to accomplish to ensure peace is a long way off and won't possibly come before you're done annexing the occupied territories with illegal colonies.