In one of the threads in GD, someone asks what the deal is with the rocket attacks against israeli towns. I’d say blind rockets attacks are about as effective compared to the israeli offensive as a bunch of people throwing stones are against an armed military squad.
As many of you know, we are surrounded by spin and our lives are significantly affected by it. Spin is very, very effective. The U.S president employs a great spinner who speaks to the press. All big companies have several spinners working in their marketing and PR departments.
That said, it irks me when news sources present this conflict as a somewhat even-sided conflict. It is proveably not so. In general, whenever you are dealing with an armed conflict of any kind, count the dead. Dead Combatants, dead civilan men, women and children on each side. Compare both figures and draw your own conclusions.
I do not have hard figures but if anyone cares to find some cites, I am confident there will be a pronounced assymetry in the number of casualties for each side. I wonder how many regular joes know this and whether it would change their perspective.
The other thing I’d like to point out is that only a tiny minority of arabs actually support the killings perpetrated by hizbollah or hamas. A solid majority of israelis support the current offensive. Does Israel truly have the moral high ground here?
It would be good if you could provide substantiation for this statement. A common refrain in these (interminable) discussions is that the forces arrayed (not allied) against Israel are nearly unanimous in their support for every action taken against Israel or Israelis. If you have contrary evidence, that may move this past the point of “is so/is not” argumentation that these threads usually hang up on in the first ten or twelve posts, extending through the next 200.
The only conclusion there would be which side is better at killing. You also have to consider which side intentionally targets civillians, and which side at least tries to avoid civillian casualties. Yeah, it sucks when a jet bombs the wrong building, but at least that is arguably accidental. Launching rockets, or detonating a suicide bomb with the intent to kill as many civillians as possible is not arguably accidental.
I’ve been watching/reading (too damn much) news. I haven’t noticed that happening. Can you elaborate on that?
I’m curious what conclusion you view as being ‘more correct’ than other possible conclusions. In my mind such disparities show which side is more effective in prosecuting their part of the war and that any other conclusions will necessarily vary situation by situation. I take it you draw a different conclusion?
There is, without a doubt.
Many more Lebanese have been killed.
I have seen quite a few news reports which focus on that, actually. Statements urging ‘proportionate’ responses have been rife in opinion pieces in the US media, for example. I’d wager that many average joes at least have access to the news. Whether or not they’re well informed is another question
I do not think that’s true.
Hezbollah: Cite. Cite. Cite.
As for Hamas, judging by the margin they were elected by, it seems that the Palestinians like them well enough. Although I admit I’ve not done enough research on polls out of Palestine during the last month or two to have a current factual basis for my view. I may be wrong. It does however appear that Hamas has had problems with other Arab nations, like Jordan for example. I don’t know how deep that rift currently goes, as most of the news and my own research has been concentrated on the situation in Lebanon.
Do you have cites to back up your contention?
More likely than not true. All the reports I’ve seen speak of only a small demographic opposed to the war and/or its mode of prosecution.
Is it safe to assume that this is the main thrust of your OP?
Is it also safe to assume that you will base claims of morality upon the number of casualties on each side, the military power of each side, and the degree of support of the populace of each nation for those fighting?
Saying you are avoiding civilian deaths is not the same as avoiding them . It is lip service. They are leveling neighborhoods, destroying airports , roads, manufacturing sites and bridges. They are in the towns where people live. The people cannot even get out any more. Reports of cluster bombs are rampant. Their bombs are huge and much collateral damage is being done.
Who says it’s even sided? Everyone can see that Israelis are using sophisticated aircraft and that Hezbollah fighers are using pretty inaccurate rockets. But so what? War isn’t like a boxing match where you have weight classes so that it’s “fair”. Hezbollah appears to be using it’s most sophisticated weapons in an indiscriminant manner. Israel, despite appearances, is being restrained in its use of force. If it wanted to, it could level the entire country.
First of all, how do you equate “Arabs” with “Israelis”. So what if an Arab in Algeria or Saudi Arabia does or does not support what Arabs are doing. You might as well talk about whether or not Jews in Europe support what Israel is doing.
Secondly, where do you get the idea that a “tiny minority” of Arabs support what Hezbollah is doing? There were initially some surprising comments from the heads of state of several Arab countries, but that doesn’t tell us much about the what the average Arab is thinking. The heads of the governments are mosly Sunni, and don’t like the idea of rising Shiite power in Iraq and, now, Lebanon.
8 civilians were killed by those “stones” yesterday. More significantly, a million Israelis are sleeping in bomb shelters out of fear of these completely random attacks.
Attacks that cause fear is the very definition of terrorism; the amount of damage they actually do is irrelevant.
Boilerplate.
That’s because one side cares about its civilians, and the other doesn’t. From a PR standpoint, every civilian death - on either side - is good for Hizballah and bad for Israel.
I agree, it’s assymetrical. Hizballah has a HUGE advantage. For Israel to win, it has to stop Hizballah attacks. For Hizballah to win, it doesn’t have to stop Israeli attacks - it just has to keep on attacking. For Israel to win, it has to destroy Hizballah completely. For Hizballah to win, it doesn’t have to destroy israel, it only has to let a few of its members survive.
If you want to talk about symmatry, let’s talk about equal victory conditions.
If the vast majority opposes their actions, why don’t they stop them? It shouldn’t be that hard. After all, they’re only a tiny minority.
My evidence is anecdotal. I’m an arab and none of all the arabs I know (and I know many) condones murdering civilians. Any muslim knows, for instance, that killing an israeli civilian is just as wrong as killing a peruvian christian or an arab muslim civilian. A vast majority of arabs are (understandably) anti-israel and would like it to become a laic state , adhere to the oslo convention of 93 and maybe let some of those exiled palestinians who lost their homes back. Nobody but the craziest, stupidest people actually think they can kick the jews out of Israel. There are a few of those and they are vocal but they are dwarfed by the silent, inert majority.
As for the rest, most of them would not object to the killing of israeli soldiers bulldozing your home. I also understand that people more affected by the conflict (A mother who’s 5 yo boy is killed by israeli bullers for instance) will not be as reasonable. It takes a lot of hatred, a lot of pain or a lot of stupidity to become a suicide bomber or a rocket launcher. Semites (both arabs and jews) are no more hateful, fragile or stupid than any other human beings.
Anyways, that’s my take on the situation. I do try to be as fair as possible within the confines of my cultural bias. I do condemn acts of violence not committed in self-defense (REAL self-defense, none of that “Offense is the best defense” crap). I support Israel’s right to exist (preferably as a Laic state like France or Sweden) within the borders of 67 and the signed agreements of 93’. Oh, and I think Israel destroying $20 Bn of lebanese infrastructures (bridges, power plants, roads, airports, etc.) is totally f***ed up. I mean, how would you feel if some nutjob new yorker from the Bronx (of COURSE he is from the Bronx) killed or kidnapped a handful of canadian soldier only to have canada destroy all the state roads and interstates leading out of new york, then proceeded to destroy JFk and laguardia airports, power plants, bridges, any buildings suspected to host people from the Bronx and ended up killing several hundred innocent people ontop of it all. Probably very angry at the canadians.
:smack: Gods…another one. These things are like mushrooms lately.
I haven’t heard anyone say the conflict was one sided. As others have asked, could we perhaps get a cite for that from a main stream news source?
I also don’t agree that when dealing with a conflict one need count the dead to see which side has the moral high ground. I know Finn hates analogies (I love the things), but if we look at the figures of dead civilians in WWII between Japan and the US and base right and wrong solely on that, the clearly the US is by far the most evil. Even if we look only at the total military dead in the conflict the US comes out on top of the evil rating. Now, Der hasn’t poked his head in yet, but he might agree with that…do you?
Problem is, its more complex than ‘look how many Lebanese dead there are! Bad bad Israel!’. Things a reasonable person must factor in would be…who started hostilities? If a little man goes and kicks a big man in the nuts with the expectation that the big man will simply take it, being big, but instead gets his ass kicked…well, I suppose one COULD say the big man is at fault since he’s bigger and stronger. But most reasonable people would probably say the little asshole deserved what he got. Of course, the Lebanese CIVILIANS didn’t ask that little asshole to go kick that monster in the nuts (we will assume this is so for arguements sake). What of them? Brings us to the next point. If one side deliberately attempts to fight from within cover, from within a population of civilians with the express intent of using those folks as a shield, deliberately park their weapons near them, store their ammo in their houses, run into those houses when threatened…well, again, reasonable people would conclude correctly where the fault for those who lose their lives in such a situation REALLY lies.
Why this disparity of casualties so facinates those opposed to Israel is hard for me to grasp…though I suppose that its difficult to find anything ELSE on Hezbollahs side to bring things close to parity (or parody more likely) morally speaking. They started the conflict. They use their own people as human shields, parking and USING their weapons in close proximity to them, they store their munitions in their homes and run into buildings full of civilians when the air strikes come…then (in public) they tear their hair and scream about how Israel is when civilians are killed by bombs trying to get at THEM (or by secondary explosions from the munitions THEY put in buildings full of civilians to shield them).
Badger badger badger badger badger badger badger…
Yeah, can’t we get back to fighting each other over Iraq?
Well, I think that in general analogies are suspect, and often they’re useless and can be obfuscatory. In many cases it’s much more usefull to talk about the actual situation, rather than using other situations which may not correlate very well. I think that analogy, however, is a good one. At least to demonstrate that numbers of casualties don’t always mean anything about the morality at play.
I’d still like to see if the OP won’t make his assumptions and main contention clear and debate them. I think I’ve pinned them down, but he only responded to tom, so I can’t be sure. Gozu: I’m curious, do you plan on elaborating on the point I asked about? Was that, indeed, the main thrust of your OP?
The plural of anecdote is not…
Ahem.
You’ll probably find that as for cites, you’ll have to do much better.
It takes two to adhere to an agreement, and they have already let some of the exiled Palestinians back. I can check on the total numbers over time, but they are at least in the tens of thousands.
Well, how do you know what the vast majority thinks if your only evidence is based on personal anecdotes?
Analogies are always suspect, this one is very bad. To make it begin to approach current events, we’d have to massively alter it.
“I mean, how would you feel if some organized group of nutjobs living in the Bronx had the US’ explicit approval to commit attacks in their name against Canada, and the US helped supply them with weapons. The group had a long history of attacking Canada as well. After a while of launching rockets at Canada, the group attacked Canadian soldiers and continued launching rockets at Canadian civilian targets. The Canadian military responded by destroying dual-use targets that could aid in the rearming and reinforcement of the group based in the Bronx as well as those that could be used for C&C functions, attacking suspected “Bronx Nutjob Organization” targets, etc… What if this terrorist group, based in the Bronx, continued attacking Canada but hid among civilians and couldn’t easily be isolated.”
The anology still isn’t great, but it’s a lot better than yours, which pretty much first equates a specific ‘nutjob’ from the Bronx (Lebanon) with Hezbollah, and then claims that the current response would be analagous to attempting to destroy any building that had any Bronx (Lebanese) residents in it. Obviously Israel isn’t trying to kill all the Lebanse, unless they’re just really, really, really bad at it.
Israel has been harrased and attacked again and again. They most certainly have the moral high ground and have every right to defend themselves. Luckily, they can.
Thank you Gonzu for referring to Hezbollah as “nutcases”. That said, why are the Lebanese leaders not speaking out against them. I’d understand if the Lebananese leaders said “ok Hezbollah, you want to pick on a bully? Take it to the border but GET OUT of the cities and away from any civilians!!” But instead we see “hey Hezbollah…over here! the view is better from the top of this hospital (hi rise, school)”. Where is the outcry from the Lebanese people when Hezbollah moves in next door? I watch the news and listen for ANYONE Lebanese begging for Hezbollah to get away from the civilians and stop using the infastructure but I never hear it. Why is this?
The part I don’t get is that the Lebanese civilians aren’t without complicity. Hezbollah is pretty much the civil authority in southern Lebanon. I somehow doubt that they came to this situation without the local population tolerating it.
When you knowingly and intentionally harbor and help out known organizations who are intentionally yanking the tiger’s tail, it’s not surprising that you’ll get it in the neck when the tiger finally gets pissed off.
The people in southern Lebanon had and have the ability to eject Hezbollah and not be part of it. Now that the Israelis are finally fed up, we’re supposed to feel sorry for these people? Fat chance. Sure, it sucks that women and children are getting killed. But… if the heads of those households had really cared, they’d have moved, or done their damnedest to get rid of Hezbollah, especially when they started kidnapping Israeli soldiers and the like.
I know that Hezbollah runs hospitals and other social welfare programs in those areas, but people can’t have it both ways- you can’t support them for the hospitals, and then expect not to suffer the consequences for whatever else the organization does.
I don’t see anything hypocritical about it. Civilians in Lebanon need help, so we give it. Israel has the right to protect itself, a goal we are committed to, so we sell them weapons. (note that they are “lethal” weapons. I guess Congress refused to authorize the Nerf Nuke™ that Israel wanted) In fact, I think the two go together quite logically. We support the right of Israel to defend itself against attack. Israel’s goals in this conflict are to destroy or severely damage Hezbollah with the smallest amount of civilian casualties possible, humanitarian aid to civilians is entirely consistant with that goal. What you and the other Anti-Semetic posters utterly fail to recognize is that there ARE going to be civilian casualties, they are a by-product of the war that Hezbollah started, a by-product that Hezbollah wants and tries to maximize. The fault here lies with Hezabollah, not Israel. There is no conflict of interest here. The humanitarian supplies are to ease the suffering and pain caused by Hezbollah while the “lethal weapons” (snicker The blatent bias is too fucking funny) are for Israel to defend itself.
Thats what gets me… I think Israel is going pretty far overboard with the airstrikes, but they wouldn’t even need to intervene if the Lebanese government and civilians just stood up and held these guys (hizzbola etc) accountable or handed them over for trial. Using Gozu’s analogy, thats exactly what would happen in the US if some crazy new yorker pull that crap. We’d arrest him and his buddies and hand em over to Cananda for trial. There is no moral high ground here. They’re both ‘wrong’ and both their failures are continuing to perpetuate this nonsense.
