This week happens to be the 42nd year since the Six Day War began on June 5th, and among other things, involved the attack on the USS Liberty AGTR-5 on 8th June - ( the USS Liberty incident ).

BBC4 in August 2004 produced an interesting documentary titled:

Dead in the Water ( 69 mins )

I believe the attack was deliberate

Who was attacking who in the six day war again?

And more importantly, why?

This year is also the 50th anniversary of the Hola and Kirkuk Massacres. It is also the 100th anniversary of the Adana Massacre. It was also 40 years ago that the My Lai Massacre became public knowledge.

The point is that for all the good the humans beings can do, there are those that are evil. Every nation has skeletons in the closet and I am not sure that any of us are in a position to point the finger. What we should be doing is working hard to lobby respective governments to find ways to achieve peaceful settlements. Continuing to harp on about who did what 40, 50, 60...100 years ago is not constructive. In fact the inability to see past our history is one of the main reasons we are unable to move forward.

And don't forget it's the 2000th anniversary of the massacre of the Teutoburg Forest! I'll never forgive those Germanic barbarians.

I agree with your quotes ,except israel is still denying it

I wrote about this earlier in this forum.
I think that it was prompted by Ray McGovern’s anti-war speeches in Nov 2007, and his article in ‘counter punch’ http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern10062007.html
Which ends with this:
Israel had, in fact, prepared well militarily and mounted provocations against its neighbors, in order to provoke a response that could be used to justify an expansion of its borders. Israel's illegal 40-year control over and confiscation of land in the occupied territories and U.S. enabling support (particularly the one-sided support by the current U.S. administration) go a long way toward explaining why it is that 1.3 billion Muslims "hate us."
It is clear from McGovern’s articles that he is very critical of AIPAC, of course the anti-Israel press Arab and Iranian press ran the story.
June 20, 2008 the New York Times carried an article about the Israeli major military exercise – a rehearsal to knock out Iran’s nuclear program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/wa...on/20iran.html
I didn’t really understand the timing of the exercise, until I read about possible transfer of S-300 surface-to-air missiles from Russia to Iran and the advanced anti-missile system.
A few weeks after the exercise, Mullen made a surprise visit to Israel where it is reported that he warned Israel that the US would not tolerate another USS liberty.
In July 2008 the then senator Obama visited Israel, he promoted a message of tough diplomacy before strikes.
In April this year Turkey carried out Military exercise with Syria and there is a proposal for Turkey to sell arms to Lebanon, which the Israelis find disturbing. I am guessing that the arms deal and aid will be on hold until after the elections in Lebanon.
It all sounds to me like a dangerous game far too close to being brinkmanship. However, I do feel that this stream of events would have been very different if it was not deemed highly possible that Obama would become president

Should we officially announce this thread is replacing bloody never ending thread of Israel palestine ....?

I'm surprised that a "super moderator" would start such a contentious thread given the lack of obvious link to Switzerland....(which is, I thought, what this forum is all about, or so we are always being told).

I agree with you, this is not the place for such propaganda. its fine to voice your opinion, and its also good to be able to make your comments on any such kind of thread. But really what is the point , ? is the intent to spread political gossip, to provoke contencious thought, or to provoke a political debate.. this is not really the right place for any of the last three. and certainly not from a Super Moderator...

I agree. This moderator seems to be pushing some kind of agenda.

So much for free speech!

I fail to see how posting a link to a BBC produced documentary should be out of bounds for any EF member. Mods are able to have/post opinions just like any other member. Our original Super Mod, Lob, went through this discussion countless times.

The thread is in International Affairs/Politics, so how is that inappropriate? And it appears that the documentary was released to coincide with an anniversary of the attack. It prompted me to watch the entire documentary and to do some follow up research on an interesting int'l incident. Thus, I am glad it was started.

More interesting than most of "fluffeh threads" from the past few days...

fduvall

I'm actually grateful that the link was posted. It's an incident that I'd often heard of, but never really knew any of the details of. I certainly never heard of the cover up and inconsistencies in the story. And it's been an eye opener for me.

And yeah, it is in the Off-Topic>International Affairs/Politics section, so I can't see any problem with it.

Talkin about "PUSHING SOME KIND OF AGENDA "!!

I'm not against free speech. But there are tons of more appropriate forums where these particularly contentious issues can be discussed. Whilst I understand that mods try to liven up the forum somehow, I didn't realise that ****-stirring was part of the brief, because that is exactly what it is. The Israel/Middle East issue is one which polarises wherever it is discussed and if the mods idea of livening things up is to create a discussion which will inevitably lead to posters going beyond the forum rules then that's fine.
I just think that it shows extremely poor judgement.

My 0.2c worth...

I usually stay away from these discussions but until you think that the moderating of these controversial issues is one-sided I don't see a reason why a mod should limit himself to the forum areas that are relevant to Switzerland. If you think it's problematic, Forum Support is probably the better place to discuss this. But thanks for limiting yourself to the contribution of a fifth of a cent, Snoopy

Hey, I'm cost conscious...

Again, I don't see how posting a link to this documentary is ****stirring or pushing an agenda. He just said it is interesting...

The documentary seems to raise the question of who was involved in this attack; at best, it posits that the US and Israel worked together to give the US a reason to attack Eqypt (possibly with nuclear weapons). At worst, it posits that Israel attacked a US ship to keep it from finding out about its own plan of attacking Eqypt and possibly Syria.

If I remember correctly, jrspet is usually on the side of Israel, so this would hardly be "pushing his agenda." In any case, interesting topics CAN be debated on EF if we keep the discussion rational and free of personal attacks...no?

fduvall

If you limit the news to Switzerland this forum will shrink considerably. Besides if you don't like it, post some of your own Swiss/ International threads.