Huh? The latest (like nearly all previous) attack was on the terrorist’s vehicle, using helicopter-launched (smaller) anti-armor (less environmental damage outside the vehicle) missiles.
The “proper” way (militarily) to have done this would have been to drop a half-ton guided high-explosive bomb on his car. But then the carnage would have really been terrible. So we did it the hard way.
Dan abarbanel
Over the past decade, how many cease fires have there been between the Israelis and Palestinians? How many of the cease fires have been broken by IDF and how many by Hamas?
Granted, my memory of these things may be a bit wonky, but it seems to me that the vast majority of acts that have ended periods of calm originate from the Palestinian side. Of course there is no outcry for the original violence, only when Isreal retaliates.
With tactics like missile strikes in public streets I too keep forgeting that it’s terrorists that are being targeted. I think it would be fair to say that Palestinian civilans are at least secondary targets with these strikes.
Yes, Daniel but so far only 113 miltants have been killed as the result of ‘targetted’ assasinations (also a further 78 innocents have been killed), alot of the other deaths are from Israeli soldiers firing on both violent and non-violent protests and incurisons on civilian areas in order to flush out militants (though of course there’s no way of actually knowing wheter these militants are involved in terrorism in Israel or if they are simply armed Palestinians attempting to resist the incursions).
The problem is the methods used to fight terrorism just create more terrorism so it’s like fighting a many-headed hydra (indeed the acadenic who carried out the bus-bombing appeared to do so due to the assasination of his friend who was a Hamas leader earlier this month).
The 300 prisoners released were just Palestinians in Israeli jails for working in the country illegally, not militants.
Also while many Israeli leaders seemn to blame this attack on the PA for not doing enough to fight terrorism, they miss the point that the latest suicide bomber (like the one before) came from the town of Hebron, a place that Israel refuses to let the PA enter.
It seems like it only takes a few knuckleheads to keep the situation simmering.
I can’t recall Israel breaking any ceasefires.
[quote]
Of course there is no outcry for the original violence, only when Isreal retaliates.[/quoite]
where exactly has been the lack of outcry against the bus bombing?
This is the first ceasefire that Hamas havce declared, of course during this time there has been violence perpetrated by both sides, indeed as I said above Hamas claimed this latest attack was in revenge for the assasination of one of it’s leaders (in an incursion which also killed 4 others), Israel has still been conducting military operations during this period and this is not the first suicide bombing during the current ceasefire.
Also during the intifada there have been a couple of periods where no suicide bombings have occured where Israel has stepped up it’s operations in the Ocuupied Territories.
Both sides see themselevs as simply retatilating for the other sides violence but the truth is both are perpetuating the cycle of violence.
I cannot agree with that. While the do target terrorists, they don’t target civillians. They just aren’t worried about the civillian casualties as long as the target is dead.
Do you think this strategy is actually working? There seems to be no evidence (to my eye) that this is the case. It only serves to create more resentment and bitterness, then even more retaliation sadly follows. It is the act of stepping out of this cycle of blame, hate, repetition and death that will ultimately have to happen before change can truly be implemented. There is no reason to forgive or to forget the violence, but to accept it happened and look forward. Looking back will always feed the wrong emotions.
I understand and accept the sentiment, but am sceptical as to whether this approach is the answer. I see it as only a way to prolong the violence and suffering, or to postpone it. Not to help stop it.
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Maybe, but an innocent life to me is an innocent life, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. I sympathise wholly with the situation and the families of the bereaved and hope those responsible for the tragedy can be brought to justice. I just don’t see real, actual justice as the bombing a vehicle holding a potential suspect. I would prefer to see arrrests and charges brought, especially as the IDF seem very sure of who they are targetting and where they are.
It’s threads like this that really make me think the Onion is the greatest source of wisdom on the web.
http://www.theonion.com/onion3734/god_clarifies_dont_kill.html
If we can trust MC Master of Ceremonies’s numbers (for which I would like a cite for). I find it hard to believe that Israel can get a 1-1.4, civillian-terrorist ratio without being proactive. However you are right, simple lack of caring for Palestinian civillian lives could be the cause too.
One could interpet these missile strikes as also a message to the Palestinian people (terrorists and civillians). The message that, Israel is powerful, venegful, and dirty (so don’t mess with us). In other words blowing up a car in the middle of a public street with an air-to-surface missile might scare the shit out of some. It’s public show of mussle, something Israel has a lot of.
Swami the figures are all avaidable on the statistics page of B’Tselem.
http://www.btselem.org/ (you can only link to the front page)
There are no reliable breakdowns of Palestinian deaths in terms of militant non-miltant (except for those given in the B’Tselem list section, but they give no summary data on this and there are alot of unknowns). An Israeli advocacy group brought out a study of Palestinian deaths (but the study was partizan and obviously flawed in several areas) which gave a total of 45% of Palestinian deaths were combatants, this reflected the view of an Israeli minister who siad that no more than 55% of Palestinians killed were not militants.
To compare this with these studies I sampled random months from the B’Tselem statistics and a figure of 65%-55% non-combatants was obtained.
You can’t scare anyone that is sick enough to strap an explosive bag full of nails to themself and detonate it.
What tactic do you recommend when your target deliberately surrounds himself with “civilians” specifically to avoid being targeted? It’s called “realism”, Twisty. You can’t sprinkle flowers everywhere and hope it’ll pull everyone together to sing Kumbayah. When you’re dealing with an enemy that will accept nothing less than your total and utter destruction, you CANNOT pull any punches, no matter how many butterflies you have fluttering about in your Disneyesque view of the universe.
You mean ban religious fanaticism? I’m all for that.
this latest episode just reinforces my sense that the Palestinians are the most strategically inept people-group in recorded history (I say recorded history because I’m sure there have been groups just as inept in ancient history, but they, of course, have disappeared from history–and I’m thinking there won’t be much mention of Palestinians in the history books of Earth circa 2800 CE at the rate they are going). How can anyone not condemn the bombing of a bus full of children? Unless I missed something, the PA leadership did nothing more than issue some press release, right? Has the PA leadership actually done something concrete in the last 72 hours to show the world that Hamas is indeed not representative of the beliefs and views of Palestinians as a whole?
There’s no indication at all that the Hamas leadership surround themsleves with civilians, I mean what do you expect to find in a civilian area? civilians that’s what. Most Palestinians especially in Gaza Strip are ghettoized into small areas and moving gfrom one town to the next can take as long as 10 hours due to frequent road closures. Infact the only recorded use of human shields is the Israeli border police’s use of Palestinian’s as human shields.
The bombing doesn’t detract from the oppression and the correctness of the Palestinian cause any more than the Church Street massacre detracts from the correctness of the ANC’s cause. Indeed suicide bombing is only a recent development, before attacks were mainly against miltary targets yet the oppression land seizures and settlemnets still carried on unabated. (In the eighties and seventies more Israeli soldiers died than Israeli civilians, indeed the death figures for the Palestinians were infact about 7 times higher than they are for the Israelis).
Im not talking about the rightness of your cause. I’m talking about how intelligently you go about advancing your cause. Your ANC analogy is wholly inapt, because Israel is not a minority government like the apartheid regime. Apartheid (like the modern Communist states that have become a rarity now) was an inherently unstable and illogical system of government that was destined to fail given enough time. All ANC had to do was hang around and maintain its (to coin a phrase) viability within the system. I think most dispassionate observers wouldn’t describe Israel in the same way.
Oh, the IRA were pretty shoddy too, in terms of public image, especially in the UK. Indeed, most terrorist groups are, to right-thinking people. That’s why I’m pretty awestruck that the British government actually negotiated with them, despite all the atrocities, and didn’t retaliate militarily to them (well, they did very occasionally, but not to anything like the same scale, and usually with a public enquiry afterwards). The result: peace.
yes, but the IRA also knew when it was time for a cease fire to stick. Do you think there would be peace in N. Ire. if the IRA kept right on with the bombings while their political wing was proclaiming otherwise? Hamas seems utterly bloodthirsty and senseless and the fact that right-minded Palestinians haven’t come forward to condemn them shows they either don’t exist, are cowardly, or are clueless.