Zionist plotting?

Unfortunately I have been told the comments section of my last post (Israel/Lebanon) doesn't work. Please feel free to post comments here instead.

Lebanon -now what?

I am scheduled to make a fact-finding trip to Israel in November to see for myself the situation in the Middle East.

I am not currently a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel group who are organising the trip but I am generally sympathetic to Israels plight and believe that they have a right to defend themselves from attack.

However the recent Lebanon war in my view exceeds what is a fair and rightful response to the attack from Hezbollah. The best analogy I can think of is that if you had neighbours whose kids were throwing stones at your cat, would you be entitled to break into their house, trash their furniture and beat up the parents?

How would the world have reacted if, during the 1970's IRA attacks in London, the RAF had bombed bridges and power stations in Dublin?

In the modern age of 24 hour tv news overwhelming brute force is often less useful than winning the war of hearts and minds. Unfortunately Hezbollah have come out of this as the underdog heroes and are now stronger and more powerful than ever, in my view.

The shame of it is that the Israeli's, like the Americans after 9/11, have over-reacted exactly as the Arab extremists intended making the terrorists much stronger and free democracies weaker.

Perhaps the fact that the Israeli's appear to have lost this war might in the long run serve a useful purpose. The realisation that having the strongest army in the region is not enough to beat a determined unsurgency might persuade the Israelis that they have to consider occasionally turning the other cheek when provoked by their enemies.

I will know more when I return.

We spent the afternoon with friends and all the children watching the Red Arrows perform over Torquay Harbour this afternoon.

I am fortunate enough to have a house that has a terraced Garden that looks out across the Bay from directly above the harbour and we had a superb viewing spot.

There is no doubt that the British Armed Services are the most proficient in the world.

Seeing the planes in action reminded me how stretched our armed services are at the moment, when - since 1947- have we had soldiers fighting for their lives in so many places at once?

Why is it that we seem to have been dragged into so many conflicts?

Could it be because the 'war' on terror is a nice little distraction from the less pleasant realities of the way the country is (or isn't) being run - or is that being just too cynical?

There is a very good satirical movie (can't remember the name) in which Dustin Hoffman plays a Hollywood film director called in to stage a fake war to ensure the US President gets re-elected on a wave of patriotic euphoria.

Fiction, or course.

MY HOLIDAY

Many thanks for all the comments (and complaints) that the site has been stagnant for a fortnight; I forgot to update it before I went on holiday.

Well, I am back and there will be an update before the weekend.

My apologies to any posts that have not appeared - I wasn't able to moderate them from the beach, unfortunately!