You have a modern army fighting against smaller numbers with makeshift equipment, and in the case of Gaza, in a very geographically small and population dense area. If you are Hamas the only advantage you can have is to embed yourself in the densest place of civilians to use as cover to launch from; the civilians in question not having much of a say in this arrangement, and bearing the brunt of punishment. The result shouldn't surprise anyone. Even with it the way it was, it was after months of intelligence gathering by Israel. Without this, it would have been an order of magnitude worse.
I'm going to try to be quick here as I have somewhere to be. Fundamentally, I appreciate your points and you are reasonable in your concerns. I did respond to this thread because people ‘called me out’ as if I were hiding, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Once they drag me into it, I think it is reasonable to assume that as an unwilling participant, I may deviate from the core message of, “Israel is bad.” If you don’t want to go off message, don’t call me out. I consider an Egyptian cleric to be related as Hamas is essentially an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Regarding the moral position, you are taking my comments from the earliest part of the war. I still stand by the fact that the air component of the war was among the most painstakingly restrained uses of military force possible. Elsewhere, I have acknowledged that the ground component in practice somewhat systematically failed to live up to the high institutional ideals. I think there are some systematic problems that need to be addressed. I don't want to digress too much, but many of the collectivist 'peoples army' traditions of the IDF result in similar or worse problems to what the USA experienced in Vietnam. But I still see a difference between failures to ensure the implementation of the general moral principals, and the complete absence of principals of moral restraint. So Israel gets a demerit in my book. It appears they are addressing the problems in an open, public way. If, in the inevitable next war (I’ve seen first hand accounts from some local observers who think Hizballah is beginning to agitate for another round in southern Lebanon), the same problems reappear in volume, then they will take a much more serious hit in my book. Sorry if that didn't touch on everything, as I have to run out the door and don't have a chance to proofread, etc.
How many civilians have to be brutally murdered before there is a poor reflection on the IDF, or in the case of Ottomatton, the IDF gets another "demerit"?
Like i've said before, Hamas needs to tattoo a holy cross on the foreheads of their suicide bombers, that way it'll be okay for them to counter the counter attack. terrorism is the war of the poor, war is the terrorism of the rich.
hey are u from central or south america? if so i am really interested in ur view of a comparison between ur peoples struggles against colonialist policies and a parallel with the palestinian conflict. from what i read there seems to be rising or at least secret support for palestinians in there resistance against israel i know american officials are now terrified that latin america is becoming too pro palestinian and hezbollah and maybe even actively sending money and weapons there
That distinction is fairly obvious. No rational actor is advocating a complete abandonment of Israel. What I am asking for is just some even handedness, especially when it is apparent that the conflict is an underlying root cause of Arab American resentment (justifiably or not, I personally find it a convenient scapegoat for the economic/political failures of their pathetic regimes, but I digress). Forget about abandonment, use of force, or even censure. The very fact that we have somehow devolved to a McCarthyite environment where mere objectivity and the very notion of an American president expressing grief/concern over the obvious human suffering and mass bloodshed would be chided as an extreme proposition would be alarming if I wasn't already numb to the reality. With your exercise of moral relativity, what you fail to understand is that it is this very presumption of moral infallibility that lies at the crux of the dilemma. We predeterminately excuse Israeli aggression because we operate under this assumption. The reports of indiscriminate killing were outright dismissed as fiction because it was completely unfathomable that an army that held itself in such high esteem with regard to moral virtuosity could be capable of such atrocities. The notion wasn't even given slight credence. And this was the mainstream opinion. That, IMHO, is problematic, and symptomatic of our entire handling of this mess. You can't even begin to tackle the greater issue of statehood if one side is already completely absolved from all past and even future culpability from the outset.
NO HE DOESN'T. Nor do the views of people "in the region" have anything to do with this. This is not a war on the region.
This is hardly the first time that Israel has killed a bunch of women and children in the name of self-defense. They completely destroyed Lebanon's infrastructure just two years ago. Over a thousand civilians killed and hundreds of thousands of people had to flee from Israel's bombing. What else is new? Israel is enforcing its own version of apartheid and they expect to pacify a population that they treat like dogs. When unguided rockets injure a couple of Israelis, they load up their tanks and jets to destroy entire cities. It's an outrage. No country in the world would be allowed to do what Israel does in that region, none.
Yeah, what's the big deal? It's just a couple Israelis. No country would let its neighbor lob missiles and not defend itself. Please, get back to reality.
Right, five injured Israelis demands 1,000 Palestinian deaths and billions of dollars in destruction. That's the appropriate response. They might not lob rockets if Israel weren't occupying land that doesn't belong to them. Even Ghandhi would be ready to kick some Israeli ass after the way they've treated the Palestinians.
Yeah, Ghandi would strap on some dynamite and walk into a nursery to blow up babies, right? It's just a couple Israelis.
Not that we'll ever find the answer, but this all really depends on who is defending themselves and who is intiating right? I mean, everything in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a response to something, then it begs the question of who is the initial aggressor right? I don't think we'll be able to figure it out. Nor will I try. All I know is WAY too many humans died for the actions of idiotic "leaders". But logically speaking, if self-defense is ok (Regardless of whether it's proportionate to the action), then the only mess-up is the first mess-up right?
This is exactly why the Israelis censored the press and banned the media from coming in during their invasion of Gaza.
I'm sure the number of Palestinian children killed by the IDF dwarfs the number of Israeli babies blown up in nurseries. It's just tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese at the morgue.
This may be somewhat radical thinking here, but is anyone else thinking that Israel may actually benefit from a region that is more militarily balanced? I think Israel gets lambasted in the press a lot more for being the only regional military 'superpower' than for its actions in Gaza or elsewhere. Although, to be honest, I am not sure why Saudi, Iran, Turkey and Egypt are not on that list. They may not be nuclear powers, but they too have sizable military forces that act as a reasonable deterrent.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25233680-401,00.html "T-SHIRTS showing a pregnant Muslim woman in rifle crosshairs above the slogan "1 shot 2 kills" have been worn by Israeli soldiers to mark their graduation into the country's military. Another shirt showed a child carrying a gun with the words: "The smaller they are, the harder it is"."
Some real crazy stuff below.... http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/03/23/israel.gaza.un.report/index.html U.N. report condemns Israel for Gaza operation (CNN) -- Israeli soldiers routinely and intentionally put children in harm's way during their 22-day offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, according to a United Nations report made public Monday. The report said a working group had documented and verified reports of violations "too numerous to list." For example, on January 15, in a town southwest of Gaza City, Israel Defense Forces soldiers ordered an 11-year-old boy to open Palestinians' packages, presumably so that the soldiers would not be hurt if they turned out to contain explosives, the 43-page report said. They then forced the boy to walk in front of them in the town, it said. When the soldiers came under fire, "the boy remained in front of the group," the report said. It said the boy was later released. Also cited were "credible reports" that accused Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that runs Gaza, of using human shields and placing civilians at risk. But it singled out the Israelis for more sweeping criticism. A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister called the report another example of the "one-sided and unfair" attitude of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which requested it. The report cited two alleged incidents from January 3. In one, it said, after a tank round struck near a house, a father and his two sons -- both younger than 11 -- emerged to look at the damage. "As they exited their home, IDF soldiers shot and killed them (at the entrance to their house), with the daughter witnessing," the report said. In the second, it said, "Israeli soldiers entered a family house in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Standing at the doorstep, they asked the male head of the household to come out and shot him dead, without warning, while he was holding his ID, hands raised up in the air, and then started to fire indiscriminately and without warning into the room where the rest of the family was huddled together. "The eldest son was shouting in vain the word 'Children' in Hebrew to warn the soldiers. The shooting did not stop until everyone was lying on the floor. The mother and four of the brothers, aged 2-12 years, had been wounded, one of them, aged 4, fatally." Don't Miss Israeli general: Soldiers did not act in "cold blood" Israeli military to investigate allegations The alleged instances occurred during Operation Cast Lead, which was launched December 27 to halt rocket attacks into southern Israel from Gaza and ended January 17 with a cease-fire. The U.N. report called the response by Israel disproportionate. Of the 1,453 people estimated killed in the conflict, 1,440 were Palestinian, including 431 children and 114 women, the report said. The 13 Israelis killed included three civilians and six soldiers killed by Hamas, and four soldiers killed by friendly fire, it said. The report said the Israeli operation resulted in "a dramatic deterioration of the living conditions of the civilian population." It cited "targeted and indiscriminate" attacks on hospitals and clinics, water and sewage treatment facilities, government buildings, utilities and farming and said the offensive "intensified the already catastrophic humanitarian situation of the Palestinian people." It said Israeli strikes damaged more than 200 schools and left more than 70,000 people homeless. "There are strong and credible reports of war crimes and other violations of international norms," it said, adding that many observers have said war crimes investigations should be undertaken. "The alternative is de facto impunity," it said. It called for the end of Israel's blockade of Gaza and the free passage into the territory of food, medicine, fuel and construction supplies. Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, called the report "another example of the one-sided and unfair attitude of the rapporteur of the Human Rights Council, a council that has been criticized by current and previous secretaries-general for its unbalanced attitudes toward Israel." He added, "The negative fixation on Israel by the council has done a disservice to the issue of human rights internationally as has been attested to by the leading NGO's [nongovernmental organizations] on human rights." Another report issued Monday also was critical of the IDF. The report from Physicians for Human Rights said the Gaza incursion violated IDF's own code of ethics. The report by the medical group, which shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, cited instances where it said IDF forces did not evacuate injured civilians for days and prevented Palestinian teams from reaching the wounded, and said some of them died as a result. It said 16 Palestinian medical personnel were killed by IDF fire and 25 were wounded during the IDF operation, and accused the IDF of attacking 34 medical centers in violation of the IDF's own "ethical code for fighting terror." In response, the IDF accused Hamas of having used medical vehicles, facilities and uniforms to conceal its members' activity. "Hamas used ambulances to 'rescue' terror activists from the battlefield and used hospitals and medical facilities as hiding places," the Israelis said in a written statement. "Despite this, throughout the fighting, IDF forces were instructed to avoid firing at ambulances, even if they were being used by armed fighters. They were instructed only to shoot if there was fire towards our forces emanating from the direction of the ambulance." Regarding the reported delays in casualty evacuations, "there existed real difficulties in evacuating the injured, due to the roadblocks, booby-trapped roads and dirt mounds placed by the Hamas as well as the considerable damage to the infrastructure," the statement said. Nevertheless, it said, an IDF investigation is ongoing and its conclusions will be made public once it is complete. But Dr. Dani Filc, PHR-Israel chairman, was skeptical that the investigation would prove useful. "There are considerable doubts that the IDF is the correct institution to investigate suspicions of these violations," he said. "The IDF's repeated promises to the High Court to look into attacks on medical teams and medical centers have gone unfulfilled, and there are suspicions concerning its seriousness and readiness to carry out the matter." The Israeli military did accept criticism Monday on another matter -- the practice of some Israeli soldiers of wearing T-shirts that appear to condone acts of violence against Palestinians. The Israeli daily Haaretz newspaper reported that Israeli soldiers who had finished basic training ordered the shirts, one of which showed a pregnant Arab in the crosshairs of a gun sight with a caption reading "1 Shot 2 Kills." Another showing a small child in a gun's sight was captioned, "The smaller they are, the harder it is." "The examples presented by The Haaretz reporter are not in accordance with IDF values and are simply tasteless," the Israeli military said in a written statement. "This type of humor is unbecoming and should be condemned." Israeli soldiers said last week that Palestinian civilians were killed and Palestinian property intentionally destroyed during Israel's military campaign in Gaza, according to Haaretz. The IDF has said it is investigating the claims, but its top general expressed skepticism Monday. "I don't believe that soldiers serving in the IDF hurt civilians in cold blood, but we shall wait for the results of the investigation," Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi, the chief of staff, said in a speech. "I tell you that this is a moral and ideological army." He blamed Hamas for choosing "to fight in heavily populated areas. "It (was) a complex atmosphere that includes civilians and we took every measure possible to reduce harm of the innocent," he said, according to an IDF statement.
