My Understanding..
...of the happenings in the Middle East.
After WW2, UN formed Israel for the Jews cos they didn't have their own state and people around the world hated them being in their country.
They plonked this new state in the middle of Palestine because Jerusalem is there and it's their "holy land", even though they have been expelled from that land hundreds of years prior, back in the day where it was common for one kingdom to conquer others. Understandably, the Palestinians got really pissed off at having their land just taken away like that and thus the resistance, and the fighting, and the suicide bombers, etc, etc. And of course US sided with Israel and armed them to the teeth. And just to rub it in a bit more, Israel isn't happy with the amount of land they got in the first place and are graduately taking more land from Palestine, waging wars on the basis of "They started it! They kidnapped 2 of our soldiers! We will bomb the F!&$*!~ crap out of you for what you did!"
If US doesn't support Israel, it'd be like saying to the world that they were wrong in forming Israel in the first place, Palestine would rightfully claim back their land, Jews would no longer have a country of their own and would have to spread out across the world again, and risk pissing certain people off to the extent of holocaust...again.
How'd I go?
Not too sure about that last lil holocaust bit; I semi-made it up.
Someone correct me! ^^
Iran is a hardcore religious state at the ruling level, it is in fact a theocracy, ruled by priests. According to my understanding at the lower levels it is a more moderate muslim state. The fact that iran is populated by moderates has no effect on the military policy because the high up positions in the military and government tend to be filled by more hard liners.
the main conflict with the palestinians apart from the wholesale theft of thier land after WW2, or thats the way they see it anyway, is the land that israel took during the 6 day war in 1967.
What basically happened in teh six day war is as follows:
after the 1956 suez war the UN had a peacekeeping force in place along the egypt-israel border. At this time all teh arab states did not recognize israel and were activley opposed to them existing. Egypt stepped up its rhetoric, ordered teh peacekeepers away from teh border and massed its military along it, They also blockaded the straights of tiran blocking key israeli shipping.
After a few weeks of diplomatic wrangling israel launched a preemptive strike on arab airfields, they then routed the eqyptian, ayrian and jordanese form theier respective fronts, after the dust had cleared isreal had tripled its size and now ruled over more than a million mainly palestinin arabs. Israel was created as a jewish state , at teh end of teh sixday war it had a large arab population leading to internal conflicts till teh present day.
Thus ends my history lesson
I guess the thing that annoys me most is the hypocrisy of Israel and the US. The fact that hezbollah was created to defend southern lebanon when israel invaded lebanon in the 80s doesnt seem to come up too often these days. The fact that they continue to kill civilians until a UN force is put in place ( not gonna happen while israel is still shelling the shit out of the country) is ridiculous and is jsut an excuse to keep the war going. i hate alot more to say but no more room to say it, goodnight
like andrew is saying, it's not about isreal defeating their enemies. so long as they want to "defeat" their "enemies" they will have "no hope of actually defeating" said enemies, like lachie says.
which doesn't mean that there's another path, but one that's difficult enough for most people, and especially difficult for a nation baptised and taught by war, whose primary sponsor is almost as warlike.