The (International) Noise Conspiracy

Von Brigate

Some might say they are copycats, having stolen their style from THE MAKE UP. I dont`t know, neither do i care. Rising (or falling?) from the ashes of REFUSED, another band that i was never really into, T(I)NC offers a fashionable mix of Neo-60iesque rock music and »leftist« appearance. Obviously, the attempt to combine whatsoever »radical« politics with popcultural products, their popularity and last but not least their accessability (they played in Leipzig @ Conne Island – 10–29–05) made them the perfect interview partners for the beatpunkies. I was asked nicely to go for it and so I did, spending about an hour and a half with T(I)NC`s friendly guitar player Lars Strömberg, talking about the dangers and possibilities of their »radical chique« and their and our views on whats happening in the world, esp. the middle east today. Of course, that was where our ways split. Little surprise.
By the way, after our talk I asked him to put us on the guest list, which he did of course.

Beatpunk (Frikandel): You´ve just released the third album. It seems you are pretty succesful with your music and you try to use your position in public to state your political ideas. What are you trying to tell the people who come to your shows or listen to the records?
That´s pretty hard to say because we do talk about a lot of different things. The main stand of the band is that we are very much opposed to the current capitalist culture and to capitalism as a concept. Because we do feel that it does not treat people fairly and it does not allow people to express themselves in a way that would be fruitful for everyone.
But I mean we do talk about a lot of different issues. We do talk about the fact that it´s important for people get together and organize an aggressive level and to feel that they can actually have power of their own lives. Just really basic concepts and thoughts that a lot of people forget because they feel so lost and alienated. You´re only allowed to paticipate in what they call a democracy once every four years. We do want to talk about empowerment, we want to talk about the fact that people can take control of their own lives.

I asked this as a first question because I had the impression that with the use of leftist symbolsm like the red star, a raised fist and sometimes even hammer and sickel, you see yourself related to marxist philosophy?
To some extend we do. We´ve read marxist philosophy and the economics more than anything and we take some of that to heart, but we don´t really call ourselves marxists or communists or anarchists. You can look into history and all the political movements that have been and all the theories, you can pick and choose what you think is good and what applies to modern day. Where you feel you can take to heart, just go for it. It´s pretty dangerous to just call yourself one thing. Like okay I´m going to be communist and that´s going to be it – like I`m maybe be leninist. You kind of limit yourself to a big extend by doing that. It´s good to be open for a lot of types of theories and for a lot of different kind of thoughts because there´s so much to feel good about and which you can actually use.

Contrary to most other political bands, you make only little use of catchy slogans in the lyrics especially on the new record »Armed Love«. How does this relate to the AgitProp aesthetics of your performance?
On our last couple of records, we used a lot of slogans and such catchy raise-your-fist-in-the-air-type sentences, but our new record is a lot more emotional, it´s written much more from the heart. When you see us play, no one´s going to be confused about the fact that we are a political band, but we try to put out an emotion, more than we try to tell people exactly what it is. We don´t just stand there and say whatever slogan you can think of. I mean slogans can be used that would be valid and so forth, but we try to have the whole concept comfort the songs and the way we look and the way we talk. Everything should put out the same emotion on stage. The aesthetic as a whole should prove that we´re a political band and that we have a lot of things on our minds not just the use of the slogans.

In order to transport your position you use symbols of a leftist code frame like the red star or hammer and sickel. Don´t these symbols because of the fact that they are symbols already realize themselves on the symbolic level? It´s difficult to offer a real criticism of society under these circumstances, isn´t it?
The symbols are just symbols. Everything will get bought up, and everything will be taken up by capitalism. Everything can be resold which is why the portrait of Che Guevara is the most reproduced image in the world in history. With the use of symbols we try to get people´s attention. Seeing the aesthetic of the rockband that also have the socialist aesthetics and the revolutionary aesthetics. So you can mix that into one and hopefully make people interested in what we have to say. But we do go a lot beyond that. We do a lot of interviews and try to talk as much as we can. We hang out after the shows, and if people are angry with us or want to discuss something, we do that. We really want to have the debate going. We try to be open to everything that is beyond the use of the symbols because if you only have the symbol, if you only have the raised fist and that´s all you´re not going to get very far. We´re really careful of not only using symbols because that will in the end be pointless.

As a result of the kind of »rebel chick« that you perform, the audience at the shows is yelling somewhat radical slogans, but the next day they probably have a hangover and don´t want to hear about that anymore. Can a rebellion for one night be a factor of reproduction in the capitalist system? How far do you reflect your role in this system?
We were very much apart of that. As I said, we´re on a record label and they use us not to spread revolutionary propaganda and ideas, they want to sell records and make money, obviously. We kind of prostituting ourselves and our ideas when it comes to that, but at the same time we are allowed to go on tour and we are allowed to meet all these people. Through the years we´ve played in front of thousands and thousands of people. As you said, a lot of people will go to the party and they will dance and they will drink the beers and they´ll maybe buy a t-shirt, and the next day they´ll have a bad headache. But at the same time, if we didn´t do that, they wouldn´t even do that. What it comes down to is that a lot of people are into ideas come to the shows and see our band. The whole idea is to create an atmosphere where we can discuss all these things and put the ideas out there. We´re not going to change the world by playing music. It´s not going to happen because if that was possible the world would be beautiful by now because there are so many good protest musicians out there. Protest music is very, very old. If music would change the world then the world would be perfect. But what I do know that music can do, because I know how it changed me, is that just by listening to bands like dead kennedies or public enemy, you get curious about what they have to say and start thinking about it. I was influenced through Reaganomics and through Dead Kennedys. Just bands like that. Music can change the way you think about certain issues and from there you can spin off. We try to pass on that legacy of having been inspired and passing that inspiration on. We are going to play in front of probably quite a few people tonight, but we´re not going to change them, we´re not expecting that to happen. We´re expecting people to have a good time in an environment that can promote thinking about these ideas.

But isn´t that a problematic legacy, especially when you point out a band like Public Enemy? They had this huge scandal about anti-Semitism and their Holocaust-denial. Isn´t that also very problematic?
You´re not going meet a person ever that you´re going to agree with a hundred percent. I do think that Public Enemy, even though some of the things they say are really questionable, Holocaust-denial just isn´t a cool thing at all, but where they came from and how they radicalized the civil rights struggle and how they gave marginalized people a voice, that was really important in their context. There´s not going to be one person that can speak for everyone. You have to look at different people speaking for different people. Be aware of whom they are speaking for and where are they are coming from. I don´t agree with everything Dead Kennedys say either. I don´t agree with everything that anyone says. You always have to be really conscious of what they saying and why they are saying it.

Approaching on the symbolic level forces you to cut down content to easily reproducable symbols and phrases. In your latest video clip »Black Mask« capitalism is portrayed with the image of nice car, as a symbol for decadence and luxury. Are expensive cars the problem of society? Isn´t the problem of capitalism rather poverty than wealth?
Just using symbols is not criticism on a deep level. But as a band we know we have a very limited amount of time and we have a very limited space. We have to use that in way that will hopefully make people more interested in us as a band and then dive into more interviews. We were inspired writing this by actually looking at a book list that we got. Just getting into literature and into the bigger theories on things. But just not videos. A video is not enough to present an entire problem, a record is not enough to do that. Even a book is not enough to present an entire problem. We want to make people curious to the fact that there is so much out there and there is so much knowledge to be found. Hopefully it could work for some people. We´re not in the position to know if it´s going to work or not.

I wanted to point more in the direction the question of poverty and wealth. Is there a certain danger if you give people an image to project their thoughts of capitalism on? The main problem of capitalist culture, of the capitalist economic sytem is not that it produces wealth and luxury for some people, but that there are millions of people who starve and live in poverty.
Right, the distribution of the wealth that is produced in capitalism is the biggest problem of all.

To me it makes more sense to critize poverty than to make the fact to the subject of discussion that some people earn a huge amount of money each month.
As I said, it´s a really big problem to present this in a video. When you do a video and you´re not entirely sure how it´s going to turn out until it is actually done. The »Black Mask« video isn´t the best video we´ve done. It´s not very efficient, it´s not perfect by any means. But what it comes down to is you don´t want to just have a video. You want to be able to talk about these things afterwards. You want to be able do interviews. You want to be able to meet people and discuss all these topics, like we are doing right now. I think that´s the most important part of it. If you only have a video that would trvialize the problem. That would make the problem seem very small when it is actually grand and affects everyone.
But I agree, the biggest problem is the distribution of the wealth that is being produced. You need to question why we producing certain types of wealth. It´s not really important that we produce luxury cars and huge apartments for rich people. We could be a lot more efficient. There is enough wealth and resources to have everyone in the world eat food and have everyone live some place and have some good form of public transportation that people can use. It´s just a matter of redistributing everything.

You play your shows wearing uniforms and you do this to show that you are a collective where everybody is equal. But uniforms always decrease the importance of the individual. Isn´t the communist intention to show people as individuals that they deserve something better than capitalism. That there actually is a possibility to built a society orientated on individual needs and not simply on capital accumulation. Wasn´t the idea of communist, leftist or radical theory always about individuality?
It is about the individual and the collective, because the organization and the creation of a collective effort is really important, too. You can´t do these things by yourself as only an individual, you need to come together in some kind of collective to be able to make a change.
One of the bigger reasons we wear outfits on stage is that we want to show us as a collective. We want to show that no one in the band is more important. On stage we´re all the same and we´re doing the same thing and we´re coming together as a unit. But at the same time, I think if you look at us on stage you´re going to see that there are five different people up. We´re not behaving in the exact same way. We don´t even look the same way because we have similar outfits but we all have our little distinct diffrences. We´re a rock`n`roll band and we want to look good. It just produces this aesthetic on stage that could be fun to look at. For me, it´s always more fun to see a band that has a sort of idea what they do on stage and how they present themselves. For us, the outfit is just a way of eye-catching and having people remember us further than maybe the show.

One of your band members said in an interview once, »The culture of music has always been against the norms and regulations of society.« How can music be against something it is in fact a product of, and how do you reflect that within your musical form?
The main reason we´re playing music is because we love music. We defenitely don´t play the music we do and sing about the things we do to become successful because that would be pointless. No record labels are going to put everything into a band that is critizising all the time. Maybe it´s the new cool thing to have a revolutionary rock band on their label because that might be considered hip. I don´t really know. It´s not one of my concerns why someone releases our record. I play music because that´s what I do best and what I have the most fun, and that´s when I feel I can reach out to the most people. I get to travel, I get to meet all kinds of different people and get into all kinds of different discussions. I get the great opportunity to grow as a human being by being exposed to different types of human cultures. That is the most important thing music has given me, apart from the fact that I love playing.
But as you said, you need to be really conscious that playing music in this day and age will lead to certain contradictions and you will have to compromise things if you want to be on a record label and if you want to play in front of more and more people. And that is the struggle and the conflict we live with. We know we had to compromise from the first day we signed a recording contract. If a band like us can be doing an interview for VIVA or MTV where we are just talking about why we don´t like corporations like VIVA and MTV, I think it´s better that we do that than just have another band talking about nothing. So we can take up some of their air space on those channels. It´s a good opportunity and then we´ll see if people can embrace that.

In an interview you gave the German magazine Intro, you said that there is nothing you´d like about capitalism – which is quite appealing. In how far do you reflect your specific situation as a bourgeois subject? Considering the global situation at the moment, there are even more reactionary forms of society than ours – fascist states or islamist religious fascist regimes. As a pop group which is a very bourgeois thing, what´s your position on that?
That´s a pretty hard question. As much as we like to be the rulers of our own subject matter, we´re still a product of someone else. I mean, we are the product of what we do to ourselves, but we also become the product of someone who want to sell our records and all that. If we were to only have these ideas but now want to be a band, if we had regular jobs, we´d still be as much a product of that, and we´d be as much victims of that. Whatever you do, there will be money generating and it and all will just go back into capital. It´s important that you have a criticism that reaches beyond that. We chose to do this because it allows us to present ideas to people that might not be exposed to, and the fact that we tour a lot an we try to expose ourselves to different types of places to see different types of people and realities, and become sympathetic about other people´s lives. It´s a bit an enlightment part for yourself. You need to be out there and see what we´re actually talking about. But you do have to compromise a lot. It is impossible to live outside of capitalism or the capitalist world. You can´t really be a socialist in a capitalist world. You can´t live like a socialist because you have to pay your rent, you have to buy your food, you have to buy your plain tickets to go on tour some place or buy a guitar. I wished it doesn´t have to be that way, but right now it does, and you have to make the best of it.

So it probably should be pretty difficult to set up shows in Syria?
It wouldn´t be difficult. We had offers to go to Palestine and we´re thinking about it. Our first tour that we ever did was an illegal tour in the Republic of China, so it is possible to go to places that people don´t really ever go to. You just have to put your mind and yourself into it, and then let´s just do it for the hell of it.

What´s your view of the »war on terror«, the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan? The war on Iraq was a very questionable thing, but the question if the war was legal or illegal is not that relevant anymore because Saddam Hussein is now in prison, and there is a little chance that Iraq will turn out as a democratic state You probably could sell records to them. The former ba´th regime in Iraq who supported the terror and financed families of Hamas suicide bombers with 20.000 US dollars is now gone. How do you see that?
I agree, Saddam Hussein wasn´t a great person, he was a fairly bad dictator. But the really interesting thing is how he was funded and how he actually came to power and how he was supported by the people who are now against him. Because he was very much funded by the US until a little bit after he went into Kuwait. The US was giving him money and a lot of support which made him to who he was until that point. They even let him go into Kuwait without saying anything until someone decided that wasn´t cool anymore. I think it´s interesting to realize how he was constructed and put into power, and how that will illegitimize any effort of the United States to take him out of power. Because they put him there. They should have know about this a long time ago, when they were starting all the sanctions to furthermore make life for the Iraqi people a lot worse. Also the situation is not better for the Iraqi people now that he´s gone. It´s actually a little bit worse because now there is no infrastructures, there are no roads, there is no water, there is no medicine. It just became a little bit worse since he is gone which is a terrible thing. Now they are supposed to have democracy and free elections, they´re really don´t have any of that. The efforts so far have killed a lot of civilian people and has left the country in ruins.

It´s definetely true that the politics of the United States concerning Iraq are partly hypocritical, if you see the moral standards that they try to tell the people that they have, but it´s not completey true to say Saddam Hussein is a product of the US politics.
Not entirely a product, but he would not ever have reached that amount of power, if it wasn´t for a lot of US support, military and finacially. It´s the same thing with the situation in Israel vs Palestine right now. Sharon wouldn´t be able to have all the power that he has, if it wasn´t for financial and military support by the US. That´s been the issue of the US interference in the Middle Eastern politics for a long time. That´s simplified, of course, but the points are there.

You´re talking about the situation hasn´t changed for the better for the Iraqi people, but there were lots of Iraqi democratic or communist groups as well as the Kurdish groups and parties in the north who very much supported the intervention of the US. They welcomed the situation. Most of the radical left in Iraq were killed by Saddam Hussein during his reign.
I´m not a supporter of Saddam Hussein at all, but is the country which he ruled over better off after the US invention? That is one of the main questions. The past twelve years the Iraqi people have suffered more than anything because of US sanctions against the Iraq, and the fact that they were not allowed to bring food and medicine into the country. A friend of mine, who is from Iran but lives in the States right now, was working for an organization called »Voices In The Wilderness«. They tried to bring medicine to Iraqi people. First of all, they were not really allowed to go into the country because that was going to be a violation of the sanctions. So they got sued by the US government for wanting to just give medicine to people. I think that is what made Iraqi people suffer for at least the last twelve years. I`m not as much up to date with the history for the last thirty, fourty years of Iraq as I would like to be. I´m fairly hypocritical talking a lot about it without knowing exactly everything, but what I do know is the sanctions that have been going on has made the people there suffer more than the rule of Saddam Hussein. If you don´t have access to clean water and access to medicine and access to vaccinations, that is going to kill a lot more people than Saddam Hussein did with dissidents. The people that died more than anything were children, and Saddam Hussein didn´t actively kill children because they were dissidents. The kids died because they didn´t have food, and that was mainly because of the western sanctions against this country.

I don´t want to compare the numbers. You can´t really understand the historical and political development by simply comparing numbers. That´s totally unscientific. The fact that the ba´th regime supported families of Palestinian terrorists with high amounts of money shows to a certain extend it´s a home-made situation. The situation of the civilians in Iraq during the times of the sanctions was also a home-made situation. The ba´th regime didn´t care for the people but did care for their security and bought many weapons, although not the weapons that the US government said they would have. But it´s to easy to blame just the US for the momentary situation in Iraq and in the nineteen nineties. Saddam Hussein didn´t really care about the population.
I´m not saying he was a good leader. I do believe people have it worse right now. When he was the leader of that country, he did very terrible things, but there were roads that functioned, there were hospitals that functioned, and people had some form of humanitarian aid to go to, even though there were a lot of people who were marginalized at that time. But all this has happened. Saddam Hussein is gone, and there has been a US intervention in the country, and it has been supported by at least some nations. What is the definition of democracy that they try to install in this country. Democracy, what it means is that people rule, obviously. And now they are trying to create a democracy, and push a democracy into a country whose people´s traditions of ruling themselves as a people is so much older than the concept of democracy that the US and the rest of the western world is trying to instill. It´s a complicated matter how you going to get the people used to that western few-party democrcay in a country were that hasn´t even existed. The important thing to discuss is what the meaning of the word democracy is and what they trying to install in this country.

Refering to the title »Armed Love«, can you say something about its meaning?
Many people told us that »armed« and »love« in the same title would be a contradiction. We´re in a oppositional struggle, we´re fighting against something for something else. The wealth of the world is not going to be redistribute itself. Someone´s going to have to fight for it to change because people that are in power and that are in wealth are not going to say, I`m sorry, we´ve kind of fucked up, we´re going to give that to everyone now and we´re going to be a big happy family – that´s not going to happen. There has to be an opposition, there has to be a fight towards that. You do have to arm yourself wether that will be with weapons or knowledge or mass protests or even a guitar. You have to arm yourself with something depending on what your situation where you live is. We live in Sweden, it would not make much sense for us to grap weapons and run shooting politicians. That wouldn`t really bring a whole lot of change. But in some parts of the world like in Chiapas in Mexico, people do have to arm themselves with weapons because they have been persecuted by a corrupt government that does kill them, so they have to defend themselves with weapons. You arm yourself with what you have to arm with in order to keep this struggle going. The word love comes in when you always bear in mind what it is you´re fighting for. You have to know that what you´re fighting for is your sister and your brother and your parents and your loved ones, your friends all over the world. You have to realize that what you´re fighting for is the kind of life you would like to live which should be a very compassionate and caring one. While you´re fighting, you need to try and live as much as you can the way you want to live after the fight is over. If the fight is ever over. I´m not very utopian. I don´t think we´ll reach the perfect society, I think it will keep evolving. But you can defintely find better ways to live compared to what we have now, the very oppressive state of affairs.

One of your members` side projects is called Totalt Jävla Mörker…
It means, total fucking darkness.

This band made a clearly anti-Zionist statement. What´s your opinion on the Middle East conflict and Israel in particular and the interrelation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism? Jean Amery once said, both anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism go together like thunder and lightning in a clowd.
I wouldn´t agree that they are the same at all. Zionism is more, at least when relating that to the Israel/Palestinian conflict, when one group of people think that they have the right to occupy a land somewhere in the world just because it´s said so in a book. There is that theological theory that they are supposed to be there and then they can treat the people that are already there whatever way they want. That´s absurd. Israel is the only state in the world that claims a religious right as to why they should be there. That´s interesting and really scary at the same time. They oppress the Palestinian people and impose on their land, and they kill them in vastly higher numbers than the Palestinians do retaliate. It´s just a state of oppression in the Middle East. It has beeing criticised to a big extend, there is a big Swedish tradition of criticism towards Israel because of what they doing in the Middle East and towards Palestine, but it´s really sad that they´re able to carry out all this because they do have the support of more than one of the nations. Thre´s such disrespect for human life and for people who were actually there and just trying to live there lives.

Do you ignore the ideological function of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as a social glue in the Arab states? The people who founded Zionism didn´t come there simply because they were religious and wanted to put up a religious state in Palestine. That wasn´t the only motivation, but the Zionist ideology evolved due to the circumstances of European anti-Semitism, and the foundation of the state of Israel is a direct consequence of the Holocaust. It still is a state where oppression takes place and that in some ways harms the rights of Palestinian people, that´s no question. But at the same time, Israel is a state whose function is to provide security to a group of people who were killed for their religious believe and for their identity as Jews.
I can not denying that and I wasn´t saying it wasn´t horrible, but what is going on with Israel towards Palestine right now has nothing to do with that. It doesn´t really reflect upon the Holocaust. Israel is trying to gain control of this territory of land, and they are building physical walls, they imposing on territory, and they´re seperating people from their land. They are making people poor, they are making people more hungry, they are killing people left and right. I don´t think it´s anti-Semitic to be opposed to Israel´s invasion of Palestine at all.

What´s your definition of Palestine? Is it Gaza and the Westbank or the whole area?
It was a whole territory. Israel had borders that were sanctioned by the UN, and that was still while Palestinians and Arabs were protesting, they weren´t totally satisfied with that, but they said, we´ll do that because everyone wants peace. Regular people don´t want a war situation, they don´t want an occupation situation. They want to be able to live their lives and be at peace with that. But the fact is that Israel has been imposing themselves even more after that and they continuously try to, as a pre-emtive measure to stop the attacks from Palestine before they happen. As a matter of what they call national security. It´s in the definition, they have something called the occupied territories. They are occupying Palestine, and don´t think that´s cool at all, and I don´t think you have to be anti-Semitic to say that.

If you see Zionist ideology and the state of Israel as a result of European anti-Semitism, regardless of the fact that there is an occupation of Gaza and the Westbank, it´s a contradiction to be in a harsh criticism of anti-Semitism and at the same time to deny the Jews their right to put up a state as a place of security. Anti-Zionism – and you made it clear what I refer to as an anti-Zionist position – not only aims at the occupied territories in Gaza and the Westbank, but also aims at the pure existence of the Israeli state at all.
Jews in Germany and in Poland, they were really oppressed, millions were killed. And no matter how terrible that is, does that give someone the right to move into a completely different territory where people are living and impose yourself on that territory and show no respect for them? Should the people from East Timor be able to move to somewhere in Thailand and just take an island and chase everyone out? Should gay people, having been persecuted, be able to form their own state? If you´re being oppressed, how much can you do to other people to have your own save state, your save haven? If that is why the state of Israel should exist I don´t think that´s entirely legitimised. Because there are a lot of Jewish people around the world that aren´t being persecuted, there places people could live without being killed.

Consider what happened the last two or three years in France and in Germany, there were many attacks on Jewish people. That´s a matter of fact.
That may be well so, but aren´t there other things you should work towards as supposed to just having all the Jews move to one place? Doesn´t it make more sense to look at the social structures which will allow certain things to happen.

It´s not the plan to tell all the Jews to move to Israel…
Because it makes no sense. The state of Israel and the leaders that Israel has to oppress people and they kill people. That needs to be questioned, not the reasons why people want to have the state of Israel. They need to realize what it is doing in the world, that it is using terror tactics and military funding to kill people.

They don´t kill people because they simply love to kill people.
I don´t think so either, but a certain social structure leads them to do that. That´s what needs to be analysed.

But it´s not only the social structure, it´s also the Palestinian terror.
It´s interesting to try to understand why some of the groups want to strap explosives around themselves and walk into places where civilians are and just blow themselves up. I don´t agree with that, but why is that happening, and why is that so much more questioned than when an Israeli super helicopter blows people to bits with missiles? Why isn´t that regarded as terrorism, why isn´t that regarded as the exact same thing although it kills so many more people? Just looking at numbers as to how many people died in Israel vs Palestine, there are so many more Palestinian casualties, it´s almost ridiculous.

During the first Intifada many Palestinians were killed, but if you look at the statistics, more Palestinians were killed by the Palestinian authority because they were considered as dissidents than Palestinians by the Israeli military. You also have to reflect that there is a regime in power in the occupied territories and that´s the situation people in Palestine have to face. If they want to establish democratic structures, or if they want to act as gay as they feel they people get huge problems, especially in Gaza or so where Hamas has really a strong grip on the social structures.
You still dwell on the term occupied territories which is the main focus of my criticism. They are occupied, they´re being cut off from their land, they´re not able to cultivate their land. I´m not saying that there are not a regime problems in what is referred to as Palestine, they´re not perfect and I´m not saying that they don´t have things they need to work with, but they are occupied and oppressed by a state that is imposing itself on them. When you say occupied territories, that means someone is there unlawfully because they´ve taken it, they´ve stolen it.

Israel/Palestine is not an island somewhere but surrounded by many Arab states. Isn´t it also to be taken into consideration that states like Lebanon or Syria financed terror groups but did not give help and finance democratic human rights groups in Palestine? They financed the terror instead of integrating Palestinian refugees and their children. The situation is not only the Israeli fault but also the fault of the Arab regimes who tried to hold on to the Palestinians as a means of threat towards Israel. They want to destroy the state of Israel and get rid of the Jews there. These are facts which are not very much promoted in Europe. If you´re over in the US you can read about these facts in the newspapers, where the problem of the Arab regimes and the situation of the Palestinians is strongly expounded, and how they use the bad situation of the Palestinians as tool to work towards Israel.
But does that really legitimize what Israel is doing? Just because some people don´t like Israel and even don´t like Jews, does that excuse the fact that Israel is still doing these things to Palestinian people? Other people in the Arab states don´t like Israel, and it´s a horrible thing to use Palestinian casualties and Palestinian victims to promote whatever it is you want to promote, but it doesn´t excuse Israel`s behaviour at all. They´re not really defending themselves against Lebanon by imposing themselves on Palestine.

My position is that they definitely have the right to defend themselves…
Not really defending themsleves, they are occupying a different territory. That´s not really defence but offence and attack. How do they defend themselves by building a wall that is going to cut off a farmer from his land so he can´t eat? How is that defence?
It´s the notion of pre-emptive striking which is what the US wanted to do with Afghanistan and Iraq. They wanted pre-emtively to go in there, so they could stop things from happening in the future which is the same minds that Israel has.

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