There isn't some sort of ambient hatred that lurks around the Middle East welling up every now and then on the battlefield. I don't know that any geographic region has been free from bloodshead for any long period of time. But to declair that conflicts in the middle east are just part of the cultural or historical landscape, instead of looking to the recent political events that caused them, is a cop out at best. At worst its a racist attempt to say that people from that region are simply violent to their core.

I can understand why someone like Markos, who wants to work within the framework of the Democratic Party, doesn't want to address what is happening between Israel, Palestine and Lebanon right now. You simply cannot take a strong critical line on Israel in mainstream American politics these days. Backing Israel, on the other hand, will endorse the chaos that they're creating. So what are you left with - flaccid appeals to negotiation, or declairing that it is inevidable so we might as well ignore it? Take a step back and hope that the Bush Administration implodes over this?

Given that the US is blocking the UN from getting involved, I would suggest that it does matter what the president of the US says.

Given that the same necons that helped cheerlead us into Iraq are now calling for us to invade Iran and that per Seymore Hersh's reporting in the New Yorker the plans for attacking them have already been drawn up, I think that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.

If this blows up like it could, we will be left waxing nestolgic over the days when gas was only $3 a gallon, and the death rate of US soldiers in Iraq was only a few dozen a month.

Given what appears to be Hezbollah's newly discovered competence in fighting against Israel, and what may or may not be Iranian influence with Hamas and Hezbollah, I am curious if you still believe that Israel does not need our loan guarantees in order to defend itself.

The underlying point is that Israel's behaviour produces externalities which affect US welfare.

dailykos is full of threads discussing Israel, Lebanon and Gaza, so the question is not that of silence, but of taking an official stand.

In that Markos pretty much emulated tpmcafe whose writers agree to disagree. It is a bit hopeless to strive for a consensus position at this point.

By the way of contrast, there is a wide consensus on the issues of Iraq war. E.g. that a long list of justifications of this war is boloney (this is the wide connsus shared by non-trolls here and on dailykos). When the approval of the war is combined with the approval of torture, authoritatian SCOTUS candidates etc. the consensus of the opprobrium is yet higher.

I would argue that the Hezbollah movmenent is painted with nationalism to give their real motives a reasonable goal. What nation are they trying to defend? Southern Lebannon? The Sheeba farms? Their goal is not to end the occupation of some set of lands thay they claim. Their goal is to destroy Israel which the international community has agreed has a right to exist and recognized as a sovereign nation. I do not argue that the violence of one group is more pure than another. I am arguing that one is inflicting pain on the other to provoke more violence and kill civilians, while the other is trying to stop the violence by striking Hezbollah strong holds, offices, and military sites. Do I think that Olmert has rage when he order strategic attacks that do their best to avoid civilian targets, yes, war is the last result. Do I think that the Hezbollah soldiers firing missiles at civilian houses, hospitals, and ports have rage, absolutely.

I understand how Hezbollah and Hamas were formed, and I understand their goals. I think war is a terrible thing, and civilians die. It is not a reason to not protect your civilians.

Israel has to force Lebannon to move into action. If they can't I think that Israel will have to probably wage a ground war to secure the southern part of Lebannon and then working with the Lebannon gov't establish a secure southern border with international soldiers or monitoring.

Syria needs to be dealt with diplomatically and forced to recognize Israel as well as Iran doing the same. These have to be done. The international world needs to realize that stability can be achieved, it takes much work and skill, but is necessary.

Matt never said they don't need it. He just said they get a lot. Not nice to mischaracterize.

I'm not trying to set up any sort of false moral equivalency, but in all fairness, you have to admit that Israel/Olmert are striking non-Hezbollah sites including civilian infrastructure in Lebanon. You could argue that it's necessary, but that's a different argument from the one you made.

Not sure how likely diplomacy is to result in Syria and Iran recognizing Israel, although I suppose if it were possible we could probably find enough $$ in the budget to fund such an undertaking, as it seems we do with Egypt. Won't be good for democracy-promotion, however.

btw, compliments to both of you on an exceedingly civil discussion, the likes of which both Matthew and Josh have noted have frequently been lacking from most discourse on these issues.

"so the question is not that of silence, but of taking an official stand."

In other words, he's like Josh - keep quiet (unless someone insults a contributor.)

That way no one will know where he actually stands - and that way he doesn't have to defend his stance against his own contributors and readers - which might hurt the revenues if some of them decided they didn't want to support the site given the stance of the owners.

Clever.

Assuming your numbers are correct, it seems you just tallied up $35B in defense budgets from what I would consider to be Israel's neighbors. And according to your numbers, Israel tries to match that with $10B. Seems like losing $2B would be very significant indeed.

I also think your per capita number seems silly on its face. But maybe I don't understand your reasoning. I would expect China and India to have a low per capita security costs, and perhaps Monaco, Lichtenstein, and Sealand to have some of the highest per capita security costs.

As I indicated above, I suspect the primary reason for Kos not taking a stance is similar to Matt's previous article about how NOT blogging about it was the safest route and Josh's apparent intent to maintain a low profile on Middle East issues (GOP corruption is so much easier to deal with, since it involves strictly "partisans" - and by definition a political partisan doesn't care about political partisans on the other side - in other words, they aren't your readership or your advertisers.)

If your site is taking revenue in, obviously Kos, Josh and others think it's not smart to get in the middle of a REAL "hot button" argument which might cause some of your contributors, readers and advertisers to head for the exits because they feel you've insulted their religion or their ethnicity.

"That is the only explanation for that nuclear arsenal."

I don't think that is the only explanation. One can have nukes as a deterent and not as a way to dominate a region. Clearly, since they have the nukes and don't dominate the region.

"That's not necessarily true either based on Israeli polls indicating that over 60% of Israelis want Israeli Arabs out of the country."

That is different from forming a militia and attacking their civilians. While there have been a few radical Israeli terrorist attacks, they are no where near the number coming from Hamas, Fatah, or Hezbollah. Imagine if a group of the Labor movement formed a militant wing and attacked civilian targets during the day and then the Labor politicians said, that there was nothing they could do, they are just the political wing. Sort of a tangential argument, but you see my point that talk in a poll is different from voting patterns and actions.

"I might. It's pretty clear from the comments of a lot of posters in the blogosphere that there is quite a bit of hatred - real, genuine hatred - for not only Al Qaeda but "Ay-rabs" in general."

Yes, there are a lot of bigots in the US. You really think that this is the same. I am not saying one is better than the other. I am saying that the extent they will go to prove their point is different. I don't see one of the Ay-rab hating Americans starting a militia and going to say Indonesia to kill some kids at a dance club. I am not defeding either group. I am saying you handle them in different ways. The people of Hezbollah are not just bigoted and angry, they are militant.

"I don't see any point in trying to match "hatred with hatred" and then somehow choosing the "lesser" hatred as some sort of attitude to be proud of."

I think that there is a difference between hatred and defense. Do you believe as I do that if the Arab nations agreed to recognize Israel and stop militant action and followed this will an economic package with Israeli assistance into Palaestine, this would stabalize the region? No if this happened do you think Israel would launch rockets into Lebannon to reclaim territory? How about Hezbollah, would they launch rockets into Israel to claim some territory they see as theirs?

My favorite illustration of the problem is the true story that in Jerusalem there is a Coptic monastery in which Ministry of Religious affairs keeps a policeman on the roof.

The monks come from Egypt and Ethiopia, and they reach a complex agreement how to divide the use of the monastery. However, there was no agreement who can use the roof -- from which one can see the Olive Mount (if I recall). One group think that since they were the origial owners of the monastery, they surrendered some cells, per agreement, but not the roof, so the monks from the other group have no right to gaze at the Mount from the roof.

Each day both representatives of both Egyptian and Ethiopians bring their chairs to the roof and sit there, under the gaze of the policeman -- so they do not bash each other with chairs.

Ordinarily a view from the roof is just a view from the roof -- but when you are so close to the Holiness, this is a view worth breaking some chairs for.

Reducing the problems of the Holy Land to mere reason is hard. As in the case of the Existence of God, we have to agree to tolerate diverse views. The issue should be debated, but we will not resolve it (because of the idiots who do not understand the correct positions, as all of us could say).

Josh and Markos have to behave a bit like politicians -- take one position too many and you will be getting flack for years to come.

Well, it depends on whether you consider some of the players actually "threats" to Israel's security. I doubt Egypt is, and Saudi Arabia may be in terms of the neocons, but the fact is the Saudis aren't going to attack Israel as long as they want to sell oil to the US. So that knocks out about $24 billion, since the Saudis spend the most.

The fact is that really only Syria and Iran are significant "enemies" of Israel.

As for the per capita number, I'm just repeating what I heard. Do the math. $100 billion in budget, $10 billion for defense, X million Israelis. Since Israel has the 13-15th largest military budget in the world, and is one of the smaller countries, the per capita comparison seems appropriate to me. China and India do have low per capita costs. I would expect Sealand to have almost no security costs because they have no money compared to a nation state.

If you want to argue that the per capita cost is not terribly relevant, I can go along with that, because the real issue is always going to be WHY a nation is spending X amount percentagewise of their budget on the military - just as we in the US ask why we're spending more than most of the world put together.