Dreams on the Bitface

I’ve been thinking that I should write about the state of things between Lebanon and Israel, as it is the most profoundly dangerous ongoing event in the world at the moment. But I would have found it hard to express what I wanted to say without coming over as anti-Israel, and so running the risk of being called anti-semitic.

In fact I’m opposed to the actions of both sides, where the ‘sides’ are defined as the Israeli government and Hezbollah. And it is the innocent civilians of both nations who suffer.

Anyway, it turns out that Tim Bray has already written a better post about this than I could have, expressing pretty much everything I wanted to say:

Once again: Military violence against civilians is wrong, and if you have an argument that convinces you it’s right, your argument is broken.

And:

Those leaders, though… anyone who’s read first-hand reportage about the Hez leadership knows they’re bloodthirsty racist fundamentalist barbarians who would really like to kill all the Jews and revert the world to fourteenth-century ways. Scum.
As for the Israeli political leadership, we have to act on the assumption that they actually kind of understand what’s going on around them, and that they launched this in full knowledge that they intended to kill hundreds, displace hundreds of thousands, and break a country. And there’s a sickening suspicion that they knew it wouldn’t work, that this is all playing to the domestic political theater; which would be getting into Miloševi? territory. Scum.

I recommend reading the whole thing.

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This entry was automatically crossposted from my blog, A Labourer at the Bitface. You can comment here on LJ, but it might be nice if you commented over there.