I just, um.. no, actually I did forget. No matter, there is much here to discuss. Thanks for replying this time, even though my posts in this thread are not as good as my posts in that DU1-thread that went unanswered.
The bombing of the US Marines by the Hizbulla is seen in the history of terrorism as a great success.Success I'll not dispute, but 'terrorism'? How so? The target, means, goals, and execution of that were all military. Does it have to do with the different flags?
Superficialities aside, there is a great deal of difference between the events in Lebanon and the Kenya/Tanzania massacres. Except through extremely hyperbolic reasoning, the United States was not carrying out acts of warfare against Kenya and Tanzania, as it was in Lebanon in the 80s. To the best of my knowledge the operations were not carried out by Kenyans and Tanzanians to protest some unwanted aggressive involvement, etc etc. The African embassy bombings were simply a massacre directed at targets of opportunity; had that been a US military base I might classify it differently, but it wasn't--even the victims were mostly Africans and not Americans. To compare them with the events in Lebanon previous to that is the place of propagandists preying on the easily manipulated and hasn't a place in serious discussion (though I feel myself no authoritarian arbiter on what counts for "serious discussion" or not).
I am not particularly well versed on the political aspects of the Israeli war in Lebanon.Luckily for us, I consider myself to be somewhat versed. There is much I am still confused about, though it is not through a lack of effort; trying to follow the byzantine politics of the period takes genius or insanity.
There is no attempt to equate casualtiesThat is understandable, for any attempt to do so looks quite bad for the Israeli military..
...only I might add that the shellings of Israel's northern boarder settlements, including the sizable town of Kiryat Shemona, are just one of the justifications for the invasion.That is true to a point, but it should be understand that there were reciprocal events between IDF-IAF/PLO in the period, the rockets weren't just flying from one direction. At any rate, as you were corrected above, the ceasefire on tbe northern Israeli border had been held by the PLO up to '82, despite a few provocations by the other side into Lebanon in the same time period.
According to this citation,
... 'I think the Israeli government's decision (or to be more exact its two leaders' decision) resulted from the fact that the ceasefire had held…Yasser Arafat had succeeded in doing the impossible. He managed an indirect agreement, through American mediation, with Israel and even managed to keep it for a whole year…This was a disaster for Israel. If the PLO agreed upon and maintained a ceasefire they may in the future agree to a more far-reaching political settlement and maintain that too.' (Ha'aretz, 25 June 1982)...Ultimately, if the official version is to be believed (something I would not ordinarily recommend, but bear with me here..), it was an assassination by the Abu Nidal group that prompted the invasion of Lebanon. A few obvious points should be pointed out:--the Abu Nidal group was not connected or allied to the PLO, and was in fact it's enemy. But thankfully General Sharon did not let these appallingly contradictory facts get in the way of a good killin' (when has he ever?).
There was an attack on a civilian bus a few months earlier, near the northern boarder, which was attributed to Arafat and the PLO. Also the attempted assassination of an Israeli diplomat in London, which although didn't kill him, left him severely disabled for life.The latter is true, but as I say above, it was Abu Nidal and not PLO that was behind this. As for '78, that may be true, but I think there were other factors involved; and again, it was the case that it was not just in one direction that provocations were flying. Israel had, before '78, a history of operations within Lebanon that could be referred to as "terroristic" if they were carried out by somebody with a different flag.
One of the arguments given in favour of the invasion was that, in the process of invading Lebanon ("Operation Peace For Galilee"), a seperate peace could be hammered out; it was even spoken of in humanitarian terms. Peace through mass murder, indeed!
(On edit: to add more specific information on the bombing of an Israeli bus by the PLO: MARCH 1978. . . ARAFAT'S "FATAH" GUERRILLAS ATTACK BUS IN TEL AVIV, ISRAEL KILLING 35 PEOPLE. THREE DAYS LATER IDF FORCES PURSUE PLO TERRORISTS INTO SOUHERN LEBANON. ( UNITED NATIONS PASSES RESOLUTION 425 ) http://focusonjerusalem.com/lebanon.html)Seems to be a fundamentalist Christian website. That act indeed happened, and may or may not have been a factor in the first full invasion of Lebanon, though I would encourage building one's case on a more reliable bedrock. That aside, one must always assume that the reasons a government spits out when they want to blow something up outside their borders are at best a fraction of their own internal reasons.
The shellings of the streets in K. Shemona resulted in residents living in bomb shelters for long stretches. Each house there is built with a reinforced windowless room to serve as a shelter. Life under those conditions is not normal. It is not as though one or two katushas fell in open fields. The city was in fact under siege. Sure, the residents sought shelter. Thank G-d there were no more casualties. Can a nation which frequently attacks its neighbor in this way be tolerated?That was probably the intended point. Lebanese cities were being indescriminately bombed, and Hezbollah wanted to fire back just as some gesture of standing toe-to-toe with the IDF/IAF. At least during the 1990s, it was found by observers that nearly all of the katyushah firings were retaliations against the frequent Israeli bombing of civilians in Lebanon. That doesn't make it right, but there's a tremendous difference bewteen the two:--it was nothing at all like the destruction heaped upon Lebanon by Israeli rockets and bombs, but the retaliatory gestures are for some reason judged on an entirely different scale than the relentless bombings of Lebanese cities. I think it's the different flags, again--that seems to have a lot to do with how things are recorded in a lot of situations.
Your last line seeths with tragic irony:--while applied to the PLO it fits, to be fair, it also applies to Israel (and exponentially so if one factors in the actual scale of damage inflicted).
The IDF report leaves much out, most of the missing matieral is unflattering (that in itself is no surprise).
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