It would be tough to recruit the first few hundred or first few thousand in that border crossing.
Someone else has wrapped them around Netanyahu’s finger.
Who? And if so why do Netanyahu and Obama have such bad relations?
I don’t get why everyone is so caught up in “proportionality”. War is not and should not be proportional - that would defeat the whole purpose.
And there are so many measures for “proportional” that you could never realistically settle on one anyone.
Instead - I propose that you should be evaluating the response based on what is “right”, what is “needed” and what will achieve your goals.
So - for your case of the policeman - is it “needed” that the officer responds with a shot at all - or are there other ways to arrest the stupid gunman?
Or to put it another way, imagine the 16 year old gets hit by his 3 year old brother - what sort of a response should he give? Recognising fully that the 3 year old is neither rational nor in control of his emotions?
He can’t “ignore” the beating, but at the same time - beating back will achieve what exactly? Even if he uses exactly the same force. What response will get him the results he needs? Wouldn’t this be a far better area to focus?
Same with the current conflict (in my eyes) - what Israel is doing, isn’t working. As they are the ones with far greater power, with far greater resources, with far greater strength to do something different, they are the ones that are under a responsibility to act.
And that action should be supported by the international community - cause if we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting what we’ve always got.
In the specific case of the gunman I mentioned in Los Angeles, no, as he was actively firing at police officers.
In other cases, yes, definitely the police often wait suspects out in long standoffs without shots being fired. They tend to prefer this. Safer for everyone.
For the purposes of this metaphor, the rocket attacks from Gaza are similar to the gunman firing into the street. But…as we’ve seen with the abortion issue…metaphors don’t have much persuasive power in highly polarized debates like this one.
By the way, a good article here:
Let’s get this one straight. Israel is culpable because (a) it won’t accept a Palestinian government that includes a terrorist organization sworn to the Jewish state’s destruction; (b) it won’t help that organization out of its financial jam; and (c) it won’t ease a quasi-blockade—jointly imposed with Egypt—on a territory whose central economic activity appears to be building rocket factories and pouring imported concrete into terrorist tunnels.
This is either bald moral idiocy or thinly veiled bigotry. It mistakes effect for cause, treats self-respect as arrogance and self-defense as aggression, and makes demands of the Jewish state that would be dismissed out of hand anywhere else. To argue the Palestinian side, in this war, is to make the case for barbarism. It is to erase, in the name of humanitarianism, the moral distinctions from which the concept of humanity arises.
That’s just common sense. But an insight further on:
n 1979, the Arab-Israeli dispute looked like a clash between civilizations, between a Western democracy and Middle Eastern autocracy. Now the Arab-Israeli dispute looks like a piece of a clash within Arab civilization, over its future.
I am not fully convinced of this argument. But it is an interesting one.
Oh please. Anyone familiar with the negotiations between Sadat and Begin would laugh at that.
Begin was willing to make peace with Sadat because Sadat went out of his way to make it clear he’d make peace with them and was willing to greet the Israelis with open arms in ways that none of the other Arab leaders were willing to do.
Which if any Pakestinian, much less Hamas leaders have been willing to do that.
Beyond that, the PLO in the 90s didn’t represent anymore of a threat to Israel than Hamas today, yet Israel was willing to make peace with them.
Once again, you really ought to read up on the situation.
If you’re genuinely interested as you’ve claimed, I’ll be happy to help out.
And of course TheTablet Mag is neutral on the matter!
Just War
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/justwar.htm
A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.
A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.
A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient–see point #4). Further, a just war can only be fought with “right” intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.
A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.
The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.
The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.
The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.
Is there a reason it should be distrusted?
It’s a well-regarded journalistic publication pit out by people who aren’t citizens of Israel or it’s declared enemies?
Why should we be opposed to using it as a source.
I’ll assume you agree with me that the Fox News anchor who suggested that Reza Aslan shouldn’t be trusted as an academic source on Jesus of Nazareth because he was a Muslim, was making an outrageous, borderline bigoted claim.
Not really. The British occupied plenty of places for centuries and faced off-and-on rebellion the whole time.
And historically, not giving up has been much more likely to result in an oppressed faction getting at least something of what they want than submitting has. There’s no reason to think that Israel will leave them be if they stop firing rockets or otherwise acting out.
Not really; the weaker side wins wars all the time if it’s determined enough and the strong side isn’t willing to make enough sacrifices or commit genocide. American didn’t lose Vietnam ad Iraq because it was weak, but because the local people wouldn’t submit to us and we weren’t willing to keep pouring resources into an unending conflict indefinitely.
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is more intractable since both sides are in their homeland, so they can’t just give up and leave like we did.
That makes no sense; power has nothing to do with right or wrong.
Most likely IMHO they massacre the Palestinians and complete the process of turning into the kind of people who used to persecute them.
Bzzzzzt - wrong. The two excerpts - one is from WSJ and the other is from NYT.
[QUOTE=Trinopus]
. . . Most nations, historically, when in a position that is militarily untenable, simply cease fighting . . .
[/quote]
But for most of that time, the British were winning. There were setbacks, like the Indian Mutiny or the Mahdi at Khartoum, but in most cases, the British popped right back and won the war.
I’m thinking of cases like Germany and Japan in 1945, or the Confederate States of America in 1865. They couldn’t win any more battles. There was no longer any military functionality. So they surrendered.
Hamas should surrender; they can’t accomplish anything the way they’re behaving now.
From whom?
From the IDF. Which, in the past, turned out to be the only accurate source for the number of dead Hamas combatants.
I’m a little confused by this post. You’ve indicated in the past that you don’t support Israel. But every one of the items you’ve just listed would indicate that Palestine is wrong and Israel is fighting a just war.
Hamas began firing rockets into Israel. This was clearly a violent option when non-violent options were available.
Hamas is not recognized as a legitimate government even by the Palestinians.
Israel fought back after it was attacked by rockets. Clearly this was self-defense against an armed attack and therefore is a just cause.
It’s impossible to imagine Hamas is going to defeat Israel. You, along with other people, have pointed out how “disproportionate” Israel’s response has been. So how can you call the Hamas cause anything other than hopeless? It seems to have been designed to provoke Israel into inflicting Palestinian casualties.
I haven’t heard anyone saying they see peace on the horizon.
Again, this condemns Hamas for launching all those rockets when it did not have a just cause to do so.
Rockets. Being fired at random.
And Hamas seems to be trying to maximize the civilian casualties among its own population. So not only are they directly targeting Israeli civilians but they’re also indirectly targeting Palestinian civilians.
If you intend to give me a reading list then, no thank you. If you wanted to recommend one reasonably brief book that is fairly unbiased, I will read it; but the last time you suggested something like 3 or 4 books that according to Amazon had a combined page count over 1000 pages.
Obviously you haven’t heard the phrase “might makes right”
I think that there are enough Israelis that are uncomfortable enough with how close they are getting to being an apartheid state that they will never get to the point of making bulk purchases of Zyklon B
Israel invaded Gaza to eliminate the will and ability of Hamas to fire rockets
Today Hamas launched 60+ rockets - Israel failed to reach it’s goal
Proportionality requires that civilian casualties be in proportion to the strategic value of the operation that endangers them
Israel has killed hundreds of civilians pursuing a futile goal
The IDF has been embarrassed because they did not know about the smugglers tunnels
The IDF has been embarrassed by their inability to destroy Hamas
The IDF has been shamed by the desperation and lack of discipline that resulted in so many civilian deaths
Hamas has won this round
So, on topic, what else can Israel do?
Crane
Der Trihs seems to be suggesting that genocide (or something like it) might be next.