As a supporter of Israel and someone with Jewish roots, it is really sad and disheartening to hear of these accounts. This pretty much amounts to admission to war crimes by involved IDF soldiers. It is difficult for me to say, but the state of Israel today has failed to uphold its moral high ground against the likes of Hamas. It is easy to condemn the terrorists because they clearly target civilians, but when states do it it is even more abhorrent and evil because they violate a much bigger trust. Looks like all the human rights people like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were right after all
That type of stuff is almost inevitable in those conditions. Hundreds killed without censure in the bombings, so what's a few more? Very sad.
1300 civilian death is tiny compared with what US army had done in Iraq. Cheer up, Israeli soldiers, 1300 down, several million to go to achieve the peace.
why am i not surprised for lack of interest in this admission? lol if it was a muslim or mormon thread then maybe u would get 10 pages by now lol just more proof avg american dont give a ****zo about em a-raaaaabs and towel heads. it is a question of who is doing the killing and whos the victim not some fake human rights agenda that is used by countries to justify killing there enemies
Yeah I'm actually wondering where all those people are who were so vocal about the whole thing. Suddenly there are crickets chirping, this thread will die, and all will be forgotten. Sigh.
Obviously this is a dead end argument, like arguing politics with T_J but here goes: Reverse the situation - Khaled Mashaal finds out some elements of Hamas have killed innocent Israeli Jews. What is reaction? If you are at all honest with yourself you have just distilled why this yet again proves Israeli moral superority between the two combatants. Watch this, if you really don't think you know what Mashaal would think - <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FNj3xQRBl6U&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FNj3xQRBl6U&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
two wrongs dont make a right but nice try at changing the subject yes hamas was wrong and firing rockets is wrong but all iam saying is israel is NOT morally superior and is just as criminal as the people they are fighting i am done with both sides and u can try to spin it any way u want
It isn't changing the subject. You can only place things in the world by comparing them and contrasting them with other things and placing them in context. I know that Kobe Bryant is a good NBA scorer because when I compare his 27.7 points per game with all other players in the NBA, I see that he has the third largest average among qualifying players. But if the average player scored 50 points per game, then we could determine that Kobe's 27.7 indicates that he is not a good scorer. Relative contextual ranking is how we judge the world in practical ways.
fair enough. so israel is on the level of the militants? iam not sure what ur point is with all due respect no love lost for anyone there man but i do feel really bad for these innocent people killed or terrorized daily on both sides do u see a solution? is there any hope there or should darwinian principles take over and we can cry about it for a while and then move on? i got no faith in people anymore, i really think when push comes to shove we are selfish and evil creatures
No because morality isn't a game of scales. Right wing pundits have been mocked routinely when justifying torture on the grounds that the terrorists do worse things. Justifying immoral behavior with more immoral behavior just seems silly and circular. Immoral behavior is wrong period and your aside is answering a question that hasn't been asked. No one said this is proof that Israel is morally wrong on the entire issue but the OP's sentiment is the heart of where this article hits. Israel has claimed that what separates them is their norms of humanitarianism and engaging in the rules of war. This article seems to indicate that this assertion isn't true. Furthermore, morality isn't a concrete measure and I find it hard to simply "compare" who's worse. Is it judged by the number killed? What type of people were killed? Is Rape less or worse than death? Do children weigh more in terms of deciding who's worse? Way way too many questions about who's morally worse which makes comparison a near impossibility, which is why no one else is making absolutist morality claims. They're simply saying that what Israel did is wrong and hypocritical and I find it hard to dispute that.
The point is, if I have to choose sides, I'm much more comfortable with a side that has a general societal moral principal of avoiding civilian casualties, which it often fails to live up to and which, when this happens engages in handwringing and soul searching, as opposed to the side that actively targets civilians and cackles manically about it, praising it as God’s will every time an innocent is killed. The best comparison I can think of here is Abu Ghraib. Of course it was evil. But the fact that it existed didn't somehow make the USA the bad guy and Saddam the good guy. In the USA, we at least had enough sense of right and wrong to know what we did was wrong, and enough shame to attempt to fix the problem in an open and public way. Saddam and the Baath Party tortured and murdered and Sadam thought he was morally in the right until the day he was hanged. Do you see the moral difference between the two? I think very clearly it still is. Do you see any Hamas members who are the least bit upset or display the slightest qualms about killing innocent Israelis?
Sorry this is false. Morality is not relative or contextual. Everyone in the world can be wrong. The least wrong person in the world may be the best person in the world, but that doesn't mean he/she is not wrong.
This video you posted has nothing to do with Hamas itself. It is someone commenting on Hamas, big f'ing deal. There are a lot of idiots doing this. Should I bring up a random person from the other side? Do you think I can't counter your video? IDF soldiers did this intentionally. These are war crimes. This is not a competition to see who is less f'ed up in their war tactics. Hamas has done horrible things in the past. But that doesn't change the fact that these are war crimes, full stop. Do you or do you not condemn the actions discussed in the article?
So because there are three unsourced anecdotes, the IDF is riddled with war criminals? Seems to me that there are going to be crazies involved in any large scale military action. Those that break the rules should be punished, and they should not reflect generally on the military/state as a whole.
You're really shifting the scope of the issue here. First of all, I'll assume your initial post was targeted at the sentiment espoused by God's Son, Mathloom, and Kwame. From my vantage point, nothing in their posts claimed the moral high ground for one side. You posted a video of a non-Hamas affiliated Egyptian Muslim cleric as representative of what you would assume would be representative of Hamas' (Mashaal) sentiment. Fair enough, given the explicit text of the Hamas charter, it's safe to assume he would hold a genocidal attitude. You then, as quoted above, express favor for a "side that has a general societal moral principal." I find this confusing given your use of an Egyptian and the term 'societal.' It would seem to appear that you are enlarging the scope of this issue from what it is/was, the Hamas-IDF conflict, to an Arab/IDF conflict. That all Arabs in the surrounding region don't support the killing of innocents isn't even the greatest fallacy of your argument. The point here isn't about choosing sides. Per our discussion in that initial thread, I repeatedly denounced Hamas for their actions in continuing the rocket attacks. You, and a few others, continuously refused to denounce the IDF in any way as culpable in the conflict. You went to great lengths in asserting your claim that the IDF was painstakingly avoiding civilians seemingly by virtue of some greater morality. This damning evidence completely destroys that argument, and predictably you've shifted your tune. The point is that the IDF is not the infallible bastion of humanitarianism and morality that western society illustrates it to be. This perception is representative of and attributing towards the complete and unwavering western bias with regard to the conflict. It's pretty easy, as you so relentlessly proved in the initial thread, to dismiss unwarranted aggression and overlook human suffering, when you have already defined one side as morally infallible. It's unfortunate that you would hold the IDF to the standards of Hamas in your apologetics. The former is the premiere military force in the region and more importantly the model democratic hope for the Middle East. The latter is a terrorist group already devoid of credibility. Do you care more about scoring points or rather for settling the greater issue? It seems to me that this notion of Israeli exceptionalism is representative of the total western attitude towards the conflict. You don't see the relevance yet? You and others could not even assess the bloodshed with neutrality/objectivity because you were operating from the very presumption of Israeli moral infallibility. Your very premise was that the claims of targeting civilians were false simply based on this characterization of the IDF's moral virtuosity. That argument has been destroyed.
The incursion into Gaza was a pointless waste of time and resources (not to mention lives), and was one reason I supported Hadash in the last election. By Israel's own standard, the war was shameful and caused needless loss of civilian life. But while I think the government had its head up its collective ass when it decided to bomb the crap out of Gaza, it was long overdue to do something to stop the rocket attacks (fail), to address the captivity of Gilad Shalit (double fail), and win the straggling rightwingnuts over to the idea of lasting peace and getting out of the territories so a real Palestinian state can be made (fail x10). I blame the people in charge who sent them there; no different than I feel about stories about nasty things the US and UK troops did in Iraq. Ottomaton's point seems to be lost in detail. The point is this: It's not like there could have been a way that action against Gaza could have been conducted in a way that would have satisfied those that hate Israel in the first place, whomever they might be. EDIT: An Egyptian cleric might seem a bit off-topic, but he does represent a very mainstream view of the people in the region.
It's curious why the Palestinian death tolls are always so high in relation to the Israeli death tolls and how the percentage of those Palestinian death tolls are so high among women and children. 1,300 Palestinians killed to 13 Israelis killed with 42% of the 1,300 Palestinians being women and children. Their use of force always seems disproportionate and misdirected. As military technology proliferates around the Middle East, Israel is going to be in deep crap.
