Olmert: No other country can teach us morality

[sabra]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153292043234&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Olmert: No other country can teach us morality

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke out on Monday against international criticism, saying that Israel was responding to threats just as any other country would.

Speaking before northern residents in Karmiel, Olmert said that Israel was committed to the most basic laws of morality that have been part of the Jewish heritage for millennia, adding that no other countries could teach Israel morality.

[coalition_unwilling]

1. When the IRA bombed London, the RAF didn't turn around

and bomb the airport in Dublin, for God's sake! So Israel is NOT responding to threats "just as any other country would." In fact, Israel is responding exactly like ONLY the U.S. responded (by bombing Afghanistan and invading\occupying Iraq).

[sandnsea]

9. Ireland condemned IRA attacks

http://foreignaffairs.gov.ie/Press_Releases/19970425/308.htm

That's one of the biggest differences. In addition, Ireland wasn't part of a collection of countries and groups seeking to permanently destroy Great Britain and its people.

[coalition_unwilling]

11. Lebanon isn't part of a collection of countries and groups

seeking to permanently destroy Israel. (More like the other way around, imho: Israel is part of a collection of countries with US and UK, seeking to permanently destroy Lebanon.)

[sandnsea]

17. okeedoke

And I've got a place for you too - zzzzzzzzzzzz

[Lerkfish]

19. might as well put me, there, too because I think he has a valid point.

the first point, not the parenthetical second point.

[Jim Sagle]

30. Include me as well. He's fuckin' A right.

[coalition_unwilling]

31. I'd like to propose a permanent DU partition, into those

who support Israel no matter what it does (like you) and those (like myself) who reserve the right to criticize Israeli policies that are injurious to Israel's long-term interests, in our opinion.

We could call your side of the partition: "My Israel, right or wrong."

[GAPeace]

29. And supported Apartheid

In its own territories and South Africa. The point is that it follows horribly racist policies, which brings about the destroy Israel hyperbole which everyone understands to not be a policy statement persay.

[kamtsa]

24. The IRA did not have 13,000+ rockets ready to hit British towns

[daleo]

27. The IRA did plenty of damage in its day

That includes killing Louis Mountbatten and nearly taking out the Prime Minister and her cabinet. I doubt if Hezbollah has managed to come that close to the prime minister of Israel.


SIGNIFICANT ATTACKS

Feb. 6, 1971 IRA kills first British soldier in a sniper attack in north Belfast.

July 21, 1972 "Bloody Friday," when 20 bombs detonate in Belfast within an hour, killing nine people and wounding 130.

Nov. 21, 1974 Two bombs devastate pubs in Birmingham, England, killing 21 and wounding 160 - the IRA's worst toll of bloodshed in a single attack.

Jan. 5, 1976 the Kingsmills massacre, when the IRA shoots to death 10 Protestant civilians at a roadside after stopping their bus.

Feb. 17, 1978 IRA firebomb burns to death 12 Protestants in a suburban Belfast hotel.

Aug. 27, 1979 IRA bombs Lord Louis Mountbatten, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, and three others on his private boat in the Irish Republic. On the same day, the IRA kills 19 members of the British army's elite Parachute Regiment with two remote-controlled roadside bombs.

Oct. 12, 1984 IRA bombs hotel on south English coast hosting the annual party of Britain's ruling Conservative Party, narrowly missing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher but killing five others, including a lawmaker.

Nov. 11, 1987 IRA kills 11 Protestants in a bombing in Enniskillen during a memorial service for World War I and II dead.

Jan. 17, 1992 IRA kills eight Protestant construction workers with a remote-controlled roadside bomb at Teebane crossroads.

Oct. 23, 1993 IRA kills nine Protestant civilians, including two children, and one of its own members in a botched bombing on Shankill Road, a hard-line Protestant district of Belfast.

June 16, 1997 IRA kills two Protestant police officers, shooting them in the back of the head at close range in the town of Lurgan. IRA calls a cease-fire 34 days later.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2005/07/29/sections/nation_world/nation_world/article_614859.php

[kamtsa]

28. Peanuts ...

These are peanuts. Just a gang with few hundreds KG of explosives and light weapons. Far cry from a well supplied and trained militia with its own territory, bases, 13,000 rockets and long range missiles.

Last time that British cities were under attack, the British destroyed entire German cities and targeted and killed tens of thousands of civilians.

I presume that by your standards, Churhill was a war criminal.

[daleo]

33. If you want to trivialize IRA killings, that's your choice.

Comparing Nazi Germany to Hezbollah isn't helpful. Nazi Germany was the most powerful state in the world in the early part of WWII. And WWII developed into a total world war between the most powerful states in the world, and their allies and client states.

[sg_]

36. Teebane

"Jan. 17, 1992 IRA kills eight Protestant construction workers with a remote-controlled roadside bomb at Teebane crossroads."

A person my father worked with was murdered in that bombing.

[sui generis]

2. what a crock.

Bad public policy is bad public policy, no matter what kind of "history" you dress it up in.

Anyway, it's a how many times do you beat your wife approach. This isn't about "teaching morality". It's about relying on resources from any other country as they go about expressing their "commitment to morality" in their own fashion.

Somebody at least get the guy a PR advisor. I hate seeing Israel do this to itself.

[xchrom]

10. not to mention --

it sounds just a LEEEEETLE bit loony.

[enid602]

3. morality

"Olmert: No other country can teach us morality." To the contrary, I think the world will teach Olmert a bit of morality when this is over. Too bad. They've lost the moral high ground.

[saigon68]

26. Israel is incapable of morality

right now, they are a bunch of out of control thugs and hoodlums

[panader0]

4. The US surely cannot teach morality

[AliceWonderland]

5. This is not about "teaching morality."

Though dear heaven, a morality lesson for a lot of world leaders wouldn't come amiss.

Rather, it is about international standards for law and human rights. If we hold some parties to be "more human" than others, than we have lost all ground.

In the midst of all the polemics, all the rhetoric and all the claims of moral superiority and victimhood, the only solid ground one has is an impartial and universal standard of international law and human rights.

End of story.

[mom cat]

35. Thanks for pointing out international law.

[Malikshah]

6. Is it CAN or MAY? Some may wish for the latter others may

bemoan the lack of the former.

[atreides1]

7. Would this be some of that morality????

In 1951 the High Court of Justice ruled that the residents should be allowed to return, but in December of that year the army demolished the buildings of Ikrit and in September 1953 the stone houses of Biram were destroyed. The farmlands of the two villages, some 28,000 dunams in total, were expropriated for the kibbutzim and moshavim along the Lebanese border -- Baram, Sasa, Shumra and Dovev.


Gentile Villages


The Supreme Court verdict which ordered the government to let the Arab villagers of Baram and Ikrit return to their villages has never been made effective5 and the Meretz ministers in the present government did not help these villagers either.

5 The verdict was issued in 1951. Ben-Gurion's response was to order the Israeli air force to bomb the two villages on Christmas Eve of that year, with the adult male villagers rounded up and forced to watch from the nearby hill as their houses were being demolished. Such practices are possible because Israel has two systems of laws, both equally in force. One comprises various "emergency regulations" which are hardly ever applied against the Jews, and the other relatively liberal laws applied whenever the Jews are concerned.

[Solly Mack]

8. Yeah, we all have our own morality...doesn't mean

we get to use it to hide behind though

[bemildred]

12. Pompous ass. nt

[stop the bleeding]

13. all dogs can learn new tricks

:argh:

[HuffleClaw]

14. wow, some candid truth for a change.

war-mongering idiot

[tocqueville]

15. same stuff a s usual

we are above criticism because we have been persecuted. I wonder why Armenians, Ukrainians, Tutsis and other people that have been persecuted, are in diasporah or/and have been victims of genocide (the Ukrainians lost 17 million people during Stalin) don't say the same thing...

BTW this kind of BS is perceived as an insult by all black descendents of slaves or colonialism in Europe and even in the US. No wonder that anti-semitism is growing in those groups...

[Lance_Boyle]

16. Further proof that 'kadima' is the Hebrew word

for "lipstick on a pig."

[IndianaGreen]

23. The Defense Minister is the Labour leader

This is one war that cannot be blamed on the Likud, and one trembles to think of what the war would look like if Bibi had been PM instead of Olmert.

[Lerkfish]

18. apparently not

since you seem incapable of learning it, mr. olmert.

[katty]

20. So sick of Israel, Israel, Israel like NO other nations EXIST

[CBHagman]

21. I'm curious about a direct quotation.

The snippet was maddeningly brief.

Olmert, though, by proclaiming no country capable of teaching his own nation about morality strips himself bare on the world stage as nothing but an arrogant, racist, jingoistic, incompetent leader.

[IndianaGreen]

22. I don't think Sharon ever engaged in such hyperbole

The world is so screwed up that I find myself wishing Sharon was back sitting on the PM's chair. That's pretty bad!

[fujiyama]

25. It feels like Bizarro world

I almost think that atleast Sharon may have learned some of his mistakes from his time in Lebanon and may not have escalated this conflict to the point it's at.

[itzamirakul]

34. Sharon is the one who said,

"We control America." or words to that effect. At any rate, through the Lobby, the Israeli gvernment has a great deal of influence on the American government. I don't think I would be happy to see him back. In fact, I can't think of a single leader of Israel that I feel even came close to having a heart, so I wouldn't wish for any of them t come back.

[AnOhioan]

32. But it would sure seem like Olmert can teach.....

the world alot about immorality.