Reply to penalty kicks

Submitted by Les Lieberman (United States), Jul 24, 2006 at 04:14

How interesting it was to receive your comments -- void of awareness of the real history of the problem. It seems that you should at least have some of the rudiments of the game before you criticize the players.

#1. Last I heard, Iraq and Iran were separate countries. I seem to recall Iran sending approximately 100,000 unarmed children to "overrun" the Iraqi positions during their war, with instructions to take the rifles of the fallen soldiers they overran if they wanted a weapon of their own. As Golda once said, "When they learn to love their children more than their hatred of ----." you can fill in your own blank. Sunni vs Shite? It is Moslem vs. Moslem. What did the IDF, US foreign policy, British Petroleum or OPEC have to do with that?

#2. The IDF is handing Lebanon over to Syria? Huh? Syria has thought Lebanon to be its vassel state for hundreds of years. If Iran (read: Hezbollah) and Syria would GET OUT of Lebanon, it would certainly once again become a flower of the Middle East. The Lebanese have long had a reputation within the Islamic world of being a "high culture" within their midst. If Hezbollah would be vacated from Southern Lebanon and the Lebanese government be allowed to assert full control over this area, there would have been no need for Israel to re-cross their northern border to root out the criminals who have been bombarding Israeli land for the last umteen years! I do not think the United States would stand idly by were Mexico or Canada allowing "outlaws" in those countries to violate USA space. The Hebollah irregulars are using innocents to shield them from retaliation from their criminal forrays. Israel has a right, through the inability of the Lebanese government to control this criminal element, to conduct a house to house search for the weapons being used against Israel, and when finding them, destroying them and the criminals who are hiding them!

#3. Who started the adventure? Probably the Romans -- but we are taking here and now. The Arab population was exhorted to leave the newly formed State of Israel by their own "holy men." I guess Allah didn't akbar the war of 1948 for the absentees, who chose to flee rather than work with a population which had already proven its ability to resurrect the land and turn the hills green again. The Turks had denuded the hills of Lebanon -- the Israelis wanted to help the entire region glow and flow with milk and honey. I guess that this image of plenty and comfort was too alien for the indigenous population to accept. What a shame.

So, who started the modern adventure? The first massacre of pilgrims coming back to the "Promised Land" after 1800 years, having been sold land and being massacred afterward, allowing the land (under Turkish law) to be sold again to innocent pilgrims seems to have started the adventure. Maybe it was just the Jews refusing to give up and leaving the Arabs of Northern Israel in poverty and squallor who were really the starters. Either way, the adventure goes on -- constructive dreamers vs. destructive and ignorant anti-woman, anti-science, anti-law, anti-human rights, anti-growth, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-western thought and anti-diversity usurpers of Allah's law and hope. Once the flower of culture of the entire world, the Islamic culture seems to have been kidnapped by hooligans and thugs and they have led their people from the once great heights enjoyed, to an ever-widening ash-heap of ignorance, destruction and death.

4. Germany no longer attacks France. Russia no longer attacks Poland. Japan no longer attacks China. When wars are "stopped," one popluation seems to accept the consequences and allows the other to live in peace behind secure borders. This is in the interest of peaceful co-existence for both combatants. When one population refuses to stop fighting after the results of the major conflagration are determined, it is the responsibility of both major societies to stop the criminal action which inflames and threatens the peace of both. If Lebanon had been allowed to eliminate the Hezbollah terrorists from enbedding themselves within the civilian population, none of the current military action in Lebanon would be taking place today. But Syria had Lebanon in an economic and military stranglehold. The Israeli incursions today are the result of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon, nothing more, nothing less. The ability of Hezbollah to terrorize Northern Israel is appropriately being minimized.

5. That fact that Israel must be everlastingly vigilent against criminal arab brigandry does not imply a win/loss problem. It implies that vigilence is the price of democracy, whether in Israel or anywhere else in the world where individual rights sprout in sometimes hostile theocratic atmospheres -- this vigilence implies sacrifice, hopes, diplomacy and in the final analysis, whatever means are needed to insure the continuation of the free state.

6. Please go play soccer elsewhere -- you have just gotten a red card!

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