Is it okay when one UN member calls for the elimination--elimination, not expulsion, of another UN member? So far as Israel is concerned, I guess so, having heard no UN condemnation of the president of Iran for calling for the elimination of the State of Israel. But then, we have Richard Cohen in The Washington Post pronouncing the establishment of Israel a "mistake." (Mel Gibson did not say that the establishment of Judaism was a mistake--he only is said to have declared that Jews are the cause of wars. Darn those Elsters of Zion.

Genies usually don't get put back in their bottles. Now that the Israel-kills-civilians genie is out of the bottle--how long until Germans dermand apologies for the allied bombing campaign of the Secoind World War that killed rather more than 100 civilians. And perhaps Japan will reflect on US-created firestorms that copnsumed its citiers and their civilians. (Need I mention, also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki+/

Did we hear much about civilian deaths during the bombing campaign waged by NATO against Serbia? I don't think so.

The jaundiced view of Israel's sovereign rights and powers did not emerge for the first time this summer. Philip C. Jessup, acting U.S. representative at the U.N. 58 summers ago, sent Secretary of State George C. Marshall an analysis "on the peaceful adjustment of the future situation of Palestine" suggesting that Israel's independence "might be described as an extra-legal act...." The Jessup comment (in a July 1, 1948 memorandum marked "TOP SECRET" --printed in Foreign Relations of the United States,1948, Vol. V, pp.1180-86, quoted at 1185,Goverment Printing Office, 1970) fairly implies, I think, that Jews in Palestine did not have a right to national self-determination, but had to ask others for permission to national existence. This expression of national deference is indicated in calls on Israel's enemies to recognize her "right to exist." Is there any other state on the planet whose "right to exist" must be recognized? I don't think so. (Any Israeli who would issue such a call carries the deferential virus that Shakespeare recognized when he had Shylock point out that sufference is the badge of medieval Jewry.)

Those who today denounce Israel for using military means to fight a war are, I believe, modern proponents of the invidious "sufferance" demand noted by the Bard.

The point is that the American taxpayer is funding Israel's crimes and without that funding Israel wouldn't be in the position to steal land and resources from its neighbors and attack and kill them, too. Israel exists at the expense of the American taxpayer and all too often this is forgotten by both Israel and the American taxpayer.

It doesn't matter who "started it" (and we could, I bet you, come up with a list of at least a dozen disparate parties if we all tried). It just doesn't matter. Israel is the biblical and Talmudic heir to the "holy land." Jerusalem is the holiest of holy cities to all three Abrahimic reltigions and all their sects. Israel was supposedly founded as a homeland for a dispersed and persecuted, yet somehow always more-heroic-than-anyone-else people, and ever since its establishment, it has endured stones (and rockets, bullets and other crap) thrown at it. Because of the west's (and most especially the US's) obsession with taking care of "God's chosen people", at least up til the moment when Jesus returns to send a large portion of the planet's populace, Jewish, Christian and otherwise, straight to the Lake of Fire Theme Park. When that happens (and I understand it's gonna be soon, if Fallwell, Robertson, & Co. are anything to go by) all bets are off regarding the "holy" standing of the state of Israel. Meanwhile Hezbollah uses Iranian missiles (unguided - kind of like Tiajuana on Cinco de Mayo) which were of course originally made somewhere ELSE, while Israel responds, eye-for-an-eye (substitute whatever body part applies in a given death) over and over and over again, and we, the good Christian volk of the United States, continue to sit back, fund and supply these crimes by two equally idiotic groups,in committing their - now read this slowly - Crimes Against Humanity. No, NOT "war crimes." I'm not sure this can be called a war any more than Dubya's dumping of Iraq in the name of stopping "terror."

The terror is in the eye of the beholder, Bub, and the beholders, in this case, are, more often than not, innocent Arab children, women, old people, confused people, people who have nothing and WANT nothing to do with Hezbollah, they just would like to get the hell out of the way of this idiot's shoot-out.

Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass who "started" it, or who finishes it. "It" would not be happening right now if we, the citizens of this once-great nation of ours, didn't sit back and nod and mutter significantly about how eggs must be broken to make an omelet when we could be making history by pushing our President's back against the wall and demanding that he account for his part in making these Crimes Against Humanity possible. And enjoying them. (Yeah, I know, if we got our fingers out of it Israel would disappear over night. Oh well. That's how it got there).

We own the real "war criminal." The rest is all just sound and fury, truly signifying nothing.

of children and women crying and all the devastation could easily be interchangable with any picture from Iraq. The world and the U.N. are screaming for a cease-fire and virtually everyone is yelling that Israel is going overboard.

Iraq didn't even kidnap any american soldiers and where is the outrage of the U.N. and the world for the horror of the citizens of Iraq? Add rape, torture and cold blooded murder to the list of horrors while your at it.

Equal horror for equal carnage regardless of location or perpetrator or keep quiet. Selective outrage makes one look ridiculous.

Maybe Israel should tell the world that it's just liberating the people of Lebanon and everyone will shut up.