No pain, No gain or lots of Pain with no gain?

We all used to have a lot of sympathy for Jewish people, given what they had suffered during the second world war, which nearly put the whole race under extinction. And we all have a lot of respect for them too, given the fact they are very talented and hard working people who have contributed tremendously to the world. And personally, I think they share a lot of similarities with Chinese. And we at somepoint all braced the idea of giving them a home - establishing a Jewish state.

And it is absolutely right for Israel to defend their country and its people from terrorist attacks. However, self defence should have guidelines which says they should seek best possible ways to avoid casualities of civillians and help the affected in whatever way they can.

Lebanon didn't support the hizbollahs and they didn't choose to be the base for the hizbollah guerrillas. And yet, the people in southern lebaonon are forced to leave their homes and their businesses which they have relied on for a living and go on to seek refugee somewhere. "We have given you ample time to leave, and you stay then you will be treated like terrorists.". That is the voice from the people whose grandparents had been forced to the concentration camps. But why I should flee my own country and end up in a refugge camp (if I am lucky) or end up on street begging for a living? My home is the only thing I have and there is no possibility for me to make a living elsewhere.

Well, tough life, if you don't want to be killed in the air raid, you better leave, cause whe we drop bombs even UN observers might be killed. So no one is safe to stay there.

Theoratically, whoever starts the war and make the damage should be responsible for reconstruction and providing aids as well. You can't just throw people out of their own homes and don't care about their well beings. All lives require same respect.

Unfortunately we can't count on the Israelis because they are too busy defending their own state. So here comes the UN, the organization set up after the second world war to safeguard peace in post war era. Although as a weak, bureaucratic and probably corrupt organization who have failed to do anything to prevent war or promote the diplomatic corridor for peace, the only task he can take on is providing aids. Pathetic!

I am still puzzled by what is going on there. So it seems self defence is a justified cause even it means flattening out half of a sovereign country. If we follow this logic, then whenever there is a conflict, we don't go out and seek help from internaltional community we just go in and do our own job and let the UN and international community clean up the mess and take care of post war reconstruction. Because we don't believe negotiation and diplomatic means could lead to ceasefire and avoid humantarinian disaster.

I am worried, if this simple logic applies, then we can abandon police force in every country and just let the victims or their relatives try to catch the criminals by themselves, even that could mean a lot of irrational act and unneccessary damage to other people's lives.

Something has gone very wrong here.

And do I believe this single minded military act will root out Hizbollah completely? No, I don't. On the contrary, I worry this will provoke more hatred and violence in the middle east. This might be a war with not much gain. And it certainly doesn't help Israel's image in the Islamic world.