Will this increase or decrease the likelihood of terrorist actions in America, Europe and the rest of the world?

If you were a member of a family murdered in this conflict, would you be seeking revenge?

Should Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, be tried for war crimes if or when this conflict comes to an end?

What will the price of oil be in 4 weeks time?

I thought somebody was leaving the country!

I thought somebody was leaving the country!

PS Social services won't upgrade my ISP.

I said they should raise taxes!

Just in case there are any posters who have not read the below.

~And also the possibility that some might have the humility to retract some of their offensive remarks.

"UN condemns 'war crimes' in Gaza
Richard Goldstone comments on 'crimes' committed by Israeli and Palestinian forces
There is evidence that both Israeli and Palestinian forces committed war crimes in the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip, a UN report says.
It accuses Israel of deliberately using "disproportionate force" in the three-week operation in December and January.
The report also condemned rocket attacks by Palestinian groups, which sparked the Israeli offensive.
Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans were killed, but Israel puts the figure at 1,166.
Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.
The report said Israel must be held accountable for its actions during the war, a process which could lead to the conflict being referred to the International Criminal Court.
The military operation was a result of disrespect for the fundamental principle of 'distinction' in international humanitarian law


Key extracts from UN statement

Israel, which had refused to co-operate with the UN fact-finding team, said the report was "clearly one-sided".
It reiterated that it was "committed to acting fully in accordance with international law and to examining any allegations of wrongdoing by its forces".
The investigation, led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, found evidence "indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict", a UN statement said.
Israel also "committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity".
Israel said the conflict was to end rockets attacks from Gaza
The report accuses Israel of imposing "a blockade which amounted to collective punishment" in the lead-up to the conflict.
It "concludes that the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population," said the UN statement.
Statement by the Israel military that its operation involved very few errors showed, said the report, that its failure to distinguish between military and civilian targets was "the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions".
'Arbitrary arrests'
The report found there was also evidence that Palestinian groups had committed war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity, in their repeated rockets and mortars attacks on Israel.
It said there launching of rockets which "cannot be aimed with precision at military targets" breaches the fundamental principle of sparing civilian lives.
ANALYSIS
Tim Franks, BBC News, Jerusalem
If this report is to matter, it will be for a number of reasons. One is its length. There have been a slew of reports into the war in Gaza. This is the lengthiest, weighing in at 575 pages.
There is the man who wrote it: Richard Goldstone is a judge and judicial investigator with an impressive record. The UN Human Rights Council, for whom he wrote this, is also no longer a body which is quite as easy for Israel to dismiss as a congenitally biased. The US has recently run for, and been elected to a seat on its council.
Mr Goldstone has also shown a measure of political astuteness. This is not the first time that Israel, or Palestinian militants, have been accused of war crimes - and in Israel's case, crimes against humanity as well. But previous allegations have quickly begun to moulder on the shelf.
Mr Goldstone recommended that the Security Council require Israel, and the Gaza authorities, to report in six months about its own investigations into the alleged crimes. If they did not come up to scratch, then the International Criminal Court should become involved. Who, said Judge Goldstone, could object to that?
"Where there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into civilian areas, they constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population," it said.
It called for the immediate release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier seized in a Palestinian raid in 2006 and taken to Gaza.
Both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities are criticised for the treatment of their own civilians during the conflict.
Israel's interrogation of political activists and repression of criticism of its activities had "contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent was not tolerated", it said.
Meanwhile, the alleged "arbitrary arrests" and "extra-judicial executions" of Palestinians by the authorities in both Gaza and the West Bank were also criticised.
The 574-page document recommends that authorities in both Israel and Gaza be required to investigate the allegations and report to the UN Security Council within six months."

maybe in a few days time i'll tell you all about my visit today to Dachau ...... now that was REAL and scary and sickening experience and not just sabre-rattling propaganda hocus-pocus

Cynic,

Dachau was appalling and should be remembered.

I would have hoped that governments would have learnt from this horrendous period in history and not repeated the abuses of one race/community against another.

This pattern of abuse, although at a lesser degree, appears to happening in the Middle East at the present time.

Also, although the majority of those persecuted at Dachau were of Jewish religion, they were not the only group persecuted during that period.

I think one should learn from history, but not use it to justify present actions.

Present actions should be based on the information of the present period, although understanding "should" based or previous experience.

They are tired of fighting. Should be ready to compromise, sit and talk.
Those who are not tired of killing each other will join the rest soon I hope.

Fred - you actually rather miss the point, though it is not absolutely clear ...... photographs and newsreels are easy to stomach, as they come across rather like cinema - i.e. unreal ..... it was all quite fine, even seeing the ovens in all their g(l)ory, apart from a guy treating it all as a photoshoot with his pal, until i reached the "shower room" ..... it was at that point that the full horror became all too apparent.

i had had enough, and left feeling pretty shell-shocked and sick, though there was still a museum and film to watch - not for me there wasn't.

===============

the close proximity (just 2/3 miles away) of the sleepy little medieval town of Dachau was alo a bit of a shaker ...... i have no intent to stir up enmity, but my goodness, how on earth could the locals pretend that they knew nothing, not least because the prisoners were marched from the local station to the camp ..... surely they couldn't have imagined the "visitors" were off on a jolly to Butlins

I made no attempt to diminish the "horror" or the extent of the "crime" at Dachau. I have not visited the site or objected to it being a memorial to the events of that period.

However, over the last ten years, I have visited on two occasions:

" Oradour-sur-Glane is a town and commune in the Haute-Vienne dartement, Limousin rion of west-central France.

The original village was destroyed on June 10, 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants were murdered by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built post-war on a nearby site and the original has been maintained as a memorial."

At the first visit I thought I knew what to expect, but was horrified when witnessed the results and recollected on the "barbarities" which occurred in 1944 or German occupied Europe.

What surprise me that on my second visit, while extremely interested in the detail of the massacre and the reasoning behind it, I seemed to have become to a certain degree desensitise and more dispassionate. I was more interested in observing the reaction of others at the scene.

Probably, doesn't say much for me, but on reflection it did give me a little more understanding of how others could carry out such actions with seemingly little remorse.

If you are in that part of France, pay a short visit to the Village. I respect the French for keeping it as a memorial.

Likewise, I feel the mass graves of civilians in the woods in other parts of Europe.

The veneer of civilisation is very thin.

My mother's brother was a wartime photographer and one of his jobs at the end of the war, after doing secret underwater photography, was to go to Auschwitz and a few other camps to record images of the places. I am in no doubt as to the extent of the holocaust and I think we should never forget what happened.

However, I do agree with Fred to quite an extent about the current behaviour of Israel. There are also many Israelis who have condemned their government over Gazza. I am no supporter of Israel and will continue to support the Palestinians certainly while Israel still has land that does not belong to them. They are still building on stolen land even now.

i was not suggesting israel's actions are in any way justified by what happened 70 years ago ..... more than anything, i just wanted to post something about Dachau and this seemed a sensible (i never said that!) place so to do

Cynic, I did not have the impression that you were justifying present Israeli "government" action.

good ..... as i posted, i really just wanted to say something, and this was a reasonably appropriate site to do so

Israelis Discuss Support for President Obama and Two-State Solution

http://www.jstreet.org/campaigns/current

I watched the video and the longer version. There has never been a shortage of Israelis with that view. The trouble is that there are not enough of them and they are not representative of the majority. The right wing of the government will always stop peace on sensible terms.

Most Israeli governments only stay in power as a coalition with religion exercising too much power. The average Israeli government lasts 22 months due to the right wing constantly bringing it all crashing down.

There are 3 religious parties alone. There are 12 parties with representation in the Knesset and 21 other parties that did not reach the electorial threshold. There are also 88 other parties that have existed at one time or another.

A 1918 statement by the President of the US (Woodrow Wilson)

The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or political relationship, rests upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery. If that principle is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestines population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine nearly nine-tenths of the whole are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed upon than this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted, and of the Peoples rights, though it is kept within the forms of law.

And that is still the case today and just as true.

Agreed.

I find it difficult to understand why the "Israeli Leadership" can not or will not understand the "feeling" of abuse that they are subjecting the Palestinians to.

Until they do so, the conflict will continue with continuing pain and misery to both sides.

This is not gainful to the "ordinary" person living in that area.

I can remember a catholic peasant talking to a moslem peasant saying " It was alright until we appointed leaders."

It was interesting to hear Netanyahu condemning Iran at the UN, at the same time as building on Palestinian land and ignoring UN "directives".


But with this political legacy can you expect better?

"
"Ehud Olmert defiant as corruption trial begins
Former Israeli prime minister faces charges of secret campaign funding, fraud over travel costs and personal favours
'I believe my innocence will be proven,' said Ehud Olmert as his trial began on corruption charges. Photograph: Lawrence Jackson/AP
Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, has appeared in a Jerusalem court at the start of a high-profile corruption trial, insisting he will be acquitted.
Olmert, 63, resigned his party leadership in September 2008 as the pressure of several corruption investigations mounted against him. Last month he was charged with crimes including fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases dating back to when he was Jerusalem mayor and then a government minister.
He is the first Israeli leader to face such serious corruption charges and could face up to five years in jail on each of four counts.
As he walked into the Jerusalem district court today, Olmert continued to protest his innocence. "I came here as an innocent person and I believe my innocence will be proven," he said.
Olmert had been the target of an "unfair" legal witch-hunt over three years, Olmert said.
In one case he is accused of breaking campaign finance laws by taking cash-stuffed envelopes from an American businessman and long-time supporter. He is also accused of double-billing for flights booked through his travel agency and of committing fraud by giving personal favours to his former legal partner.
Olmert stood down at a leadership election in September last year but under Israeli law stayed on as a caretaker prime minister until the rightwing Binyamin Netanyahu formed a government in March after general elections.
A conviction at this trial would probably end Olmert's hopes of returning to political life.
He is not the only Israeli politician to run up against the law this year. In June a former finance minister, Avraham Hirchson, was jailed for five years and five months for corruption; and a former welfare minister, Shlomo Benizri, was jailed for four years for taking bribes. In March the former Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, was charged with rape and other sexual offences."

======"

Is it one rule for the Iranians and other Arab states and a different rule of Israel and other independent states?

It seems to me that Israel with its present administration a greater threat to stability in the Middle East than Iran or any other Middle East country

Is it time for the International community to require Israel to have UN inspection of its Nuclear enrichment plants and other research and development to be examined for their war like preparations?

If Israel does not agree is it time to implement sanctions against them unless the give up their nuclear arms and agree to stop building the settlements on Palestinian
land?

Is Israel stoking up international hostility to Iran with remarks such as below, in order to divert attention from its own crimes?

=========

Israel calls for action on Iran when remarks like

Israel says the disclosure that Iran is building a second nuclear enrichment facility proves it "wants to equip itself with nuclear weapons".

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Israel wanted to see an "unequivocal" Western response to the development.

Tehran insists that the site, under construction near the city of Qom, is being built in line with United Nations regulations, though this is contested.

Iran says it wants atomic power only for the production of electricity.

But the new revelations have raised tension days before talks between Iran and six global powers negotiating over Tehran's atomic programme.

Meanwhile Iranian media reported that the elite Revolutionary Guards would start missile defence exercises on Sunday, in a move which seems guaranteed to increase tensions further.

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As per usual, I am sure the Mighty Microbe will have some inane response!