Israel sent several tank divisions into the Gaza Strip to obliterate Hamas? No way, guess I haven’t been paying attention… I mean that is what a full scale military attack would mean, right? Since Israel isn’t doing that, they aren’t in fact launching an attack by your definition, so again, who gives a shit?
Seriously, could you at least admit that your definition of an attack isn’t what the rest of the English speaking world uses as a definition?
I think what has made me the most depressed in this discussion is the apparent belief of many in this thread that this situation started over the past few weeks, months or even handfull of years. Im talking about statements like this:
That is so inaccurate I actually feel a little bit embarrassed for Clothahump. The whole point of this conflict is that who “fired the first shot” has been lost to the mists of time. It happened decades ago. Huge amounts of people on both sides have been born into an environment of pure hate for the other side. “You shot first” isn’t a valid argument as, due to the complexity of the situation and the sheer amount of time it has been going on, whoever really was the agitator has been obfuscated to the point that, with good reason, the viewpoint of both sides is that the other side “started it”.
No intelligent person can sit down, look at the facts of what has happened in the twentieth century and decide that it is all one side’s fault. The Palestinians have done some terrible things and the Israelis have done some terrible things. Neither side is really helping matters at all and really need to stop with the killing and have a good think about where to go next.
Those that insist that it is all one side’s fault is showing an unfortunate bias brought about by their religion, nationality or the bias in their own media’s reporting that is doing nothing more than prolonging the situation.
You may not like hearing it, but if you honestly believe that it is all one side’s fault and that one specific side “started it” then you are just simply wrong and until you get over that essential error in your reasoning nothing is going to come of any debate with you regarding the matter.
And that applies to supporters of both sides.
In what part of the “English speaking world” is sending your troops across a border, and engaging in combat NOT considered an attack?
Oh, and in my opinion, firing rockets across said border is ALSO an attack, and the people who do it shouldn’t be surprised when they get an armed response.
No, that’s the point: any native English speaker not arguing disingenuously would admit that launching rockets and invading are both attacks, rather than this absurd display of semantic gymnastics whereby trying to murder people with anti-personnel rockets isn’t an attack because it isn’t going to topple the government.
So, Germany wasn’t actually attacking England during the Blitz? Those V-2 rockets should have been just ignored?
Of course not.
The Blitz was clearly not an attack and Britain was not only in the wrong for responding as if it was, but for attacking German military targets in such a manner that civilian casualties were bound to follow. Britain only should have attacked German targets if they were in places were no civilians were present. Preferably the moon or Mars.
In fact, morally, Britain could have done absolutely nothing in response other than sending a strongly worded note, although that still would have been pretty rude of them.
**Dio **-
There are some essential points I don’t think you fully grasp.
Yes, the Hamas attacks on Israel haven’t killed many people and haven’t caused much direct damage. That isn’t their goal. The rocket attacks from Gaza are *terrorist * attacks, and as such, their main goal is to inspire terror. In this, they have been very successful.
Since a week prior to Israel’s response, 250,000 people in southern Israel have been living in fear of air raid sirens and sudden, random explosions. They’re afraid to go to work, afraid to go shopping, afraid to take their kids to school, afraid to take their kids out to play. Have you ever lived in a state of constant fear? In some ways, it’s worse than death.
You don’t need more than a dozen rockets a day to terrorize a population.
The State of Israel cannot allow a state of affairs in which its citizens are living in fear. No government that claims the right to call itself a government can allow it. Fear is the enemy of freedom, and in a very real sense, I want my government to protect its citizens’ freedom.
And when a nation kills a Hamas leader, all his family and whoever else was living in the 8 storey apartment building? What are we calling that nowadays? State Terrorism or just plain old war-crime?
And no - as others have pointed out - ‘collateral damage’ doesn’t cut it. You bomb an 8 storey apartment of families you fully intend to kill everyone in that building.
I’m going with Unspeakable Barbarism.
Again, can we have a cited (a dictionary, some qualified historian or political scientist) to back that up? You say it can’t be defined any other way, and yet I’ve never seen it defined that way.
Again, can we have a cite for that? I’m not interested in arguing against your opinion in this forum.
I wake up to read this same old ANALogy of Hamas is about the same level of threat to Israel as a 5 year old is to an adult, and that the rockets are only a nuisance. 6,400 rockets being fired into Israel is more than a nuisance, and 5 year olds don’t kill innocents and cause terror. That’s an insult to every 5 year old out there. http://committedtoromney.com/
The leaders of Palestine will have to take a larger responsibility for the civilian deaths than Israel.
For one, it was their intent to provoke a response from Israel. Ask, and you shall receive.
Two, many Hamas leaders didn’t take adequate steps to remove civilians from many of the targeted areas. Some areas in which Israel even said they were going to strike.
Three, they need to quit building their targets around, schools, mosques, and residential areas.
Four, start getting real jobs, quit relying on world-aid and the welfare of others, start spending time more constructive besides digging hundreds of tunnels. How many of them actually have a real full-time job instead of depending on hand-outs?
The best way the world can help the Palestinian people in my opinion, is not give them one more penny of welfare aid. I still can’t but help like Hamas and other Palestinian leaders in the past instigate this shit when their coffers are running low again. How often do they do this?
Dio,u think you are making some big moral argument, but all you are really saying is that you disagree with Israel’s actions. Your judgment that Israel is acting unethically is just so much meaningless blather–it has no real-world consequences whatsoever.
People who don’t know any better can call it all sorts of things, I suppose.
We’ve already had one bit of bombastic bullshit thrown around with the label “pogroms”, why not “State Terrorism” or “war crimes” while we’re at it?
Of course, as already pointed out, it’s specifically legal under the 4th GC.
So provide a single military response from Israel that would produce zero collateral damage. Just one.
Can’t, right?
Your demand is functionally equivalent to a demand that Israel simply not defend itself from rocket attacks.
Re: The 5 year old
I agree it’s a bad analogy because the 5 year old is a child and is not using deadly force. I agree that an inept midget is a much better analogy.
That said, I am somewhat skeptical of these sorts of analogies to interpersonal relations. However, since we are throwing them around, I have a question for Diogenes:
Let’s suppose you are in a grocery store where you have to put a 25 cent deposit into a machine to get a shopping cart. Shortly after you get your cart, you leave it alone for a moment to take care of something. In the meantime, a woman takes your cart and starts using it. You ask her to return the cart and she ignores you. Would you phsyically confront her if necessary to get your cart back? Or would you just let it go? After all, it’s only a quarter.
Just to point that Diogenes’ opinion is not at all in keeping with international norms, the rocket attacks on Israel are in many ways comparable to the al Qaeda attacks on the US. Note that the US had near universal support in the international community for invading Afghanistan as a result of that attack (or, you might consider that there have been multiple attacks of the years).
Now, just because a lot of people think a certain way, doesn’t make that way “right”, but I’m not sure there is a “right” answer to questions involving international relations, other than trying to keep as much to the norm as possible. Lobbing thousands of rockets across the border and deliberately targeting civilians, especially when done by a governmental authority, cannot be anything but an act of war, regardless of the disproportionate military capabilities of the two entities. Acts of war are not dependent on whether or not one side can annihilate the other. If we take the position that they do, then that gives weaker states the ability to act violently against stronger states with impunity, since any violent act by the stronger state would be considered an act or war, and therefore an act of aggressive war.
ETA: that anology that **Brazil **is offering is absurd, and will only result in hijacking this thread into an entirely useless direction. Please, other posters, don’t respond to it seriously. We have enough ridiculousness going on here in this thread with the stupid analogy of the 5 year old.
I disagree that it’s absurd. Granted, it’s a worse analagy than the inept midget, but there’s one advantage, which is that Diogenes has already admitted in another thread that he would resort to a physical confrontation in the situation I described.
It would be accurate if Hamas were sneaking over the border and tipping over garbage dumpsters. Unfortunately they are using bombs which are considered deadly force by any rational human being.
If I am your next door neighbor and I’m taking potshots at your children in your yard with a .22 , I have just given you carte blanche to do anything to protect your child. Case closed. If you don’t see that I’d hate to have you for a parent.
For such a smart guy you can be extremely dense.
[update] I was so incensed by your post I didn’t read any further. I see others have taken a similar counterstance.
Hamas needs to stop hiding behind civilians, then crying foul when their ‘shields’ get hit.
What switcheroo? I just followed the second link in the first post on the subject. I assumed that the link led to the study under discussion. But hey, thanks for catching my error, and thus showing that we have not one but TWO studies showing that Americans prefer, by a wide margin, that their government adopt a position of neutrality in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute.
The polls you have cited don’t get to that question at all.
Aha! So it was an “attack”, just not a serious attack. While I disagree that a plan that destroyed the WTC (and all that it housed) and flew at jet liner into the Pentagon (which I think has something to do with the U.S. military and protecting the U.S.) is unserious, at least we have you touching a toe back with the rest of us.
:rolleyes: I admitted it wasn’t a “question”. But you may have gleaned from your tie on these boards that every once in a while people respond to each other without that little squiggly thing being present in each post.
But you’ve not addressed what I wrote. Is it sometimes the case that there is zero collateral damage, due to both precision bombing and Israel giving warning. Sometimes there is collateral damage, but less than anticipated, due to those same efforts by Israel. You’re acting as if that their using rockets that minimize collateral damage, their warnings, and the chance that there will be zero collateral damage don’t exist. But they do. You’re just choosing to ignore them, or their effects.
The fact is that “intent” is the primary thing to look at when ascribing moral responsibility, whether it be positive or negative.
First off, I’d like to clarify that I’m not “newcrasher” and I did not start this thread.
Now going back to my question on the attitudes toward the side with big guns. Personally, I think the same people who are using this type of justification for what is happening in ME are no less insidious than large portion of European and US population that saw “something” in Nazi Germany – something about powerful force of history in a given context. I know, as you read this you will feel a sting of offence along your spine and a hurried response will surely follow. Alas, too late and you know it.
The reason I asked the question is to provide you with a comparison to a recent - albeit long in making - local war in former Yugoslavia. I was 18 at the time when the war started and did not understand much but with time and distance anyone arrives at a certain understanding. My hometown is in Bosnia but we had a poor luck since Serbs decided that my hometown would become part of Greater Serbia. To ensure that in a long run there is no serious contention but only an annoyance from other parties – namely Bosniaks and Croats they performed what I call a limited genocide. They actually killed off male population of a certain status – doctors, lawyers, businessmen, sportsmen, teachers and professors and other intellectuals. This plan accounted for about 20% percent of the target male population. I know this because my 8 years older brother (and several other members of extended family) got killed for exactly that reason; aside from the fact that he was slated to actually become city mayor.
Now, what Serbs got for this is twofold – for one, it was an instant fear inducing action that prevents anybody else of a lesser capacity to stage anything. And for second, they got themselves a long run assurance that no viable opposition of equal strength is available in years to come as the generation of high hopes has been swept away in mass murders. Interestingly, even though on a mass scale, having it at 20% only, it does not amount to what we usually call genocide – the only reason is because definition of genocide is from different times. My take is that it is but I may be a bit subjective. FYI - I live in Canada for the last 15 years.
Now, you ask what does this have anything to do with the thread.
Well, now actually what has left back home is portion of non-Serb society that just simply cannot mount any meaningful and thoughtful opposition as the quality of the pool has been severed. And, the Serbs continue to dominate areas in Bosnia where they performed these horrible acts while non-Serbs live as 2nd class citizens. And the case for non-Serbs only goes worse every year, which causes some outside to wonder if the country itself is viable in that situation.
And this brings me to the issue at hand – throughout the last few decades the situation was in full control of only one side. And that side found grievances and requests by Palestinians to be outrageous and worked hard at replacing them in the hope (I’m guessing) that the next guy will ask for less. But what happened is that the next crop of only got less patient and more violent (as they, by definition of how they came into power, cannot be better than previous lineup). And just like that, the next crop will be in more dire situation it will be that much more violent and irrational.
The conclusion of what I’m saying is quite clear but I wonder what do you think about the idea that this situation is actually by design (especially part of limited genocide that is so similar to the story above) from the side that is in full control as it seems that it is easier to deal with them as annoyance than discussing the real root cause of the issue – such as but not limited to - right of the return, Jerusalem as a common city, two state solution etc.