Huh? Are you saying that the individual soldiers didn’t know they were firing them? Or that their commanders didn’t? Or are you sarcastic? I can’t tell.
I’m saying that the soldier and their commanders thought they were firing (non-lethal) smoke rounds, which they were. I’d be willing to bet that they didn’t make the connection to WP until they saw the media coverage.
Look, you seem to be confused. There are two different types of mortar/artillery shells: there are WP shells, which are designed to kill people, and there are smoke shells that contain a small amount of WP. IDF artillery batteries and mortarmen are issued both types. In Gaza, only the latter - the smoke - were used. When the IDF claimed that its didn’t use WP, it meant it didn’t use the former type - the type designed to kill people, which is described in military nomenclature as “phosphorous rounds” - and didn’t make the connection to the other.
She didn’t looked like a teenager on the picture.
Of their own free will? How often do you let your kids, or kids in general, around bombs? Even if I had wanted to write messages on bombs when I was a kid, I don’t think I’d have been allowed anywhere near them, nor by my parents, nor by the army.
There’s nothing surprising in little girls being enthralled at the prospect. There’s something very sick with letting them even envision such a thing, let alone actually letting them do so.
There’s really never anything done by an Israeli, whatever it could be, that you allow people to criticize.
I wouldn’t have allowed Anne Frank near a bomb, either. And I’d rather you not comparing her with an Israeli kid. They aren’t even remotely in the same situation.
Yes, I was confused. Your contention is clearer now. But, are the kind of burns that have been mentioned or shown compatible with the smoke rounds you’re referring to, according to you?
My gosh, this is (no offense) why I find this so unhelpful. Why does the (alleged) degree of similarity between X and OMG HITLER matter? Don’t we have enough moral sense to determine, independently, whether X is good or bad in se?
The Nazis can provide some useful teaching or reinforcement on particular moral points but my God, it’s not as though we are lacking in milennia of brutality, not to mention our innate (fingers crossed?) sense of natural law, and whatever moral and religious precepts we subscribe to (all of which date back hundreds or thousands of years). If I were to point to anything uniquely bad or uniquely instructive about the Nazis, it would likely be the misuse or perversion of modern science (eugenics, Mengele) and the legalistic “I was just following orders.” And I suspect even those have been seen before. And no one is accusing the Israelis of either of those.
Are they accusing them of ethnic favoritism, or excessive violence, or of ghetto-izing a population? Those are all (whether the Israelis are guilty of them or not) centuries old. Probably as old as human history.
Killing people without justification (I abstain on whether the Israelis are doing this) is wrong. The Nazis did this. It was wrong. If I do it today, it is not wrong because the Nazis did it. It’s wrong because it’s wrong. The Luftwaffe had some really snazzy uniforms. If the Israeli air force, out of purely aesthetic reasons, adopted a similar uniform, I would say, hey, cool uniforms, now please explain and justify how you are deploying your airpower against the Palestinians.
I begin to see just how right Godwin was – unless one is debating Nazism, as such, discussing the Nazis becomes not just a slur against those who are accused, but truly, the end of rational argument even when rational argument exists on both sides (as I think it does here). Beyond saying “Israelis (who of all people, given their history, should be wary of not brutalizing a particular ethnic group), need to reconsider their policy of X for Y reason,” with Y /= Hitler, talking about 1930s Germany in evaluating a 2008 Middle East conflict has little to offer.
Here are a video showing Israel using WP against sivilian (according to Amnesty international): http://www.abctv.no/node/3839
The USAF attacks on Hanoi may have killed 365 civilians. This is the number given by the Vietnamese, although a quick check of Wiki provided no cite, so I will add an IIRC.
Hard a drop in the ocean, unless you were one of the 365.
I suppose if the person was unlucky enough to stand exactly where the round landed, or was wounded by secondary fires, then yes. I think, in retrospect, the IDF made a mistake in using WP-based smoke rounds.
However, I also believe that it was an honest mistake, and that they did not intend to kill anyone with them. If the thing in WildfireMM **'s video had been an actual anti-personnel WP round, everyone in the building - as well as the cameraman - would have died instantly. Those things are very, very effective.
===Opps===
I may be correct saying 365 were killed in the Hanoi bombing, but WIki gives figures for overall PRVN civilian deaths starting at 50,000.
Will you all pardon me interjecting random thoughts into a heated debate? Thanks.
Many, many things compare to the Holocaust, the fact that it was the largest mass-killing with ethnic implications notwithstanding. In fact, President Clinton opened the Holocaust Museum in DC during the height of the Rwanda Genocide without the slightest trace of irony. Now, the Holocaust was certainly better organized and better whitewashed than most genocides, and it happened in the country with the world’s best education system, but all that tells us is that an increase in human knowledge can’t eliminate our violent tendencies. To which I say, no joke.
On the other hand, most soldiers are college age or younger. Let’s face it, we consider college kids fully culpable for their actions.
The standoff with the Branch Davidians at Waco resulted in scores of dead children. Police in the US occasionally shoot children in error (there was a case in Montréal, Canada, last year). It clearly happens.
But you have ? You have every assurance that the IDF took every precaution not to harm civilians, provided aid and assistance to would-be refugees and there is absolutely no need for investigation nor scrutiny ?
Also, appeal to ridicule cum ad hominem. Double fallacy ! I feel so rethorically clever right now :rolleyes:.
That means a lot, coming from you of all people. I mean that in the best possible way - I really think better of you for that statement.
Riiiight. One group was trying to kill her, and another was trying to kill the girl in the photo, and both wished that the pepople trying to kill them would be, themselves, killed. Of course, you won’t explain why it was fine for one girl to wish that the people trying to kill her would be stopped while just terribly awful that another girl did the exact same thing. But then again, the Israeli girl was by (gasp!) a bomb! Not that the bomb was fused or going to explode or anything but, ya know, she was writing on it. That obviously converts her wish of death on the people trying to kill her, into a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad thing.
Equally horrible, I’m sure, were French children who cheered on their liberators during WW II. Didn’t those horrible horrible French children know that they were cheering on the horrible, horrible killing of Nazis? God, French culture must’ve been really fucked up. There should have been a somber mood when the Nazis were defeated. What the fuck was wrong with those horrible French people? I’m sure you can join me in righteous indignant that the French would dare be happy that the allies used military force successfully.
Maybe Kobal would like to talk about how horrible it was that they’d wished death upon their “neighbors”.
Speaking of which:
Look, you’ve already demonstrated that you don’t even know that ‘neighborly’ Hezbollah aren’t Palestinians, or that you thought I was calling Hezbollah Nazis. You’re obviously not even playing fair here. So I’m just going to fight some ignorance and you can go back to posting.
For instance, cite where i said I’m totally sure of anything. You are dishonestly shifting the discussion from the fact that Falk is not credible to some fantasy about how I’ve claimed that there is no need for even scrutiny. Clair tried much the same bit of obfuscation recently when I pointed out that the UN has a history of covering up its actions in the region while lying in order to demonize Israel. Clair’s response was to try to divert the debate with rhetoric crap about how if I didn’t trust the UN because of their proven history of coverups and lying about Israel, then did I implicitly trust Israel as a source with no critical thinking? It’s a funny dodge, and it shows that when faced with someone who has a legitimate lack of credibility, the ‘answer’ is to change the subject.
But yes, as I read the news, I was aware that Israel allowed aid to be delivered to Gaza. Even if it hadn’t, please quote the relevant portion of international law that you are basing your claims on and which you believe requires an investigation.
Actually, it’d be nice if you knew what logical fallacies were, just as a start.
Pointing out that 9/11 truther have poor judgment and analytical skills is not a fallacy, and certainly not appeal to ridicule. It’s just a fact.
Further, pointing out that someone with poor judgment and analytical skills is not a credible source, especially when they’ve performed no investigations and are only claiming a prima facie justification for their conclusions, is not a fallacy, it’s just a fact.
For those reading along, Falk is a man of almost singularly poor judgment. He’s ‘questioned’ the ‘official’ 9/11 ‘story’, and hasn’t retracted that view, either. He wrote the forward to David Ray Griffin’s conspiracy theory book, *The new Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 *. In that book, Griffin comes to a conclusion regarding the 9/11 commission report, namely that “the entire Report is constructed in support of one big lie: that the official story about 9/11 is true.”
Of this conspiracy lunacy, Falk went on record in the preface as saying “There have been questions raised here and there and allegations of official complicity made almost from the day of the attacks, especially in Europe, but no one until Griffin has had the patience, the fortitude, the courage, and the intelligence to put the pieces together in a single coherent account.”
In keeping with the subject of this own thread’s object lesson of an OP, Falk also claimed that Israel was “genocidal”, that there is “a Palestinian holocaust in the making”. Now he claims a “prima facie” case for “war crimes”.
This loon has no credibility, at all. And when someone simply cites this conspiracy nut, anti-Israel bigot to talk about “prima facie” claims, the correct reaction is to laugh. Especially since, like other agenda driven folks given to bombast and bullshit, Falk isn’t above lying to support his position.
No, “prima facie” evidence simply on the say-so of this schmuck is hardly a credible claim. Not when the same pattern of judgment gets him to ‘question’ the ‘official story’ of 9/11 of claim that there is a Palestinian Holocaust in the making. His unsupported statements should be viewed in the context of who he is. That’s not a fallacy, that’s credibility. And there’s a huge difference.
You were equating that Israeli girl’s plight to Anne Frank’s. That equates Palestinians with Nazis, doesn’t it ?
Or Hezbollah, or whatever, I don’t really see how who she’s writing to on a bomb nor why makes a lick of difference - it’s a kid. Writing on a bomb. Hoping it will blow someone to bits. And adults condoning that. You seem to think it’s acceptable under certain circumstances. I most certainly don’t.
It’s probably also hypocritical on your part. Had it been a Palestinian girl, writing anti-Israeli sentiments on and IED because the IDF bulldozed her house, would you have deemed it acceptable, or repulsive ?
And **Clairobscur **has a point. Most of the cites you give are based on IDF quotes (e.g. the “Palestinians have IR missiles” one). How are they credible on the matter of Palestinian aggression ?
Just as he has a point in accusing you of disallowing any criticism of Israeli policy. Here’s another amusing question : at which point exactly would you think Israel is going too far and the whole “we’re doing what’s necessary to protect ourselves” schtick wouldn’t cut it anymore ?
I’d also like a cite on the UN “history of lying about Israel and trying to demonize it”. The UN can be accused of uselessness, futility and impotence, but evil intent or partiality is a new one for me.
Falk accuses them of penning the Palestinians in and not letting them go out of the war zone. I don’t know that’s a fact, but I don’t know that it isn’t, either. Nor do I know whether the smoke shells were used for legitimate or illegitimate purposes (even though I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt, provided they don’t keep on using them). Hence, investigation, independant scrutiny = good. Which is what he’s asking for.
Delivering aid doesn’t really mean crap if it’s a token gesture - providing medical care to the people you bombed the hell out isn’t giving aid. It’s hypocrisy of the “no offense meant !” kind. If Israel really did provide shelter to all the people who wanted out of Gaza before their assault, then good. That gives them “decent people” cred. Is there any incentive *not *to investigate whether they did ?
And for the record, I really don’t give a good goddamn about the existing international laws. There’s right, and there’s wrong. “Legal” doesn’t mean crap, especially when wars are concerned. By legal rules, Nazi leaders shouldn’t have been convicted of crimes against humanity because the laws were drafted after the crime took place (and for that matter, the Allies should also have been tried for bombing civilian populations purposefully). Bush made torture legal in the US. A few decades ago, segregation was internationally legal. Need I go on ?
FinnAgain, it might be more compelling to argue that the picture of the girl doesn’t match up to Nazi Germany (in which children were drafted into a government brainwashing program) while conceding that the picture is still pretty creepy.
No.
As should be obvious, you said it yourself. It equates one girl’s plight with another’s, not one aggressor with another. Both were living under threat of death and wanted the people, who wanted to kill them, themselves killed.
And while Hezbollah is genocidal, they’re not the Nazis.
And yet you can’t explain what’s wrong with a girl who wants the people who are trying to kill her, dealt with via military force. But you assure us, it’s just awful.
Your argument keeps getting more absurd. Try to figure out the difference between ‘trying to kill her’ and ‘bulldozed her house’.
You keep making these absurd leaps, hoping that your fantasy will result in my actual hypocrisy. Here, I’ll throw you a bone. If Israel was indiscriminately raining rockets down on Gaza and trying to kill as many civilians as possible, I’d have no problem with any Palestinian expressing support for attacking the IDF.
And we’re at a new quantum stage for absurdity.
I had assumed, wrongly it seems, that you knew the difference between a missile and a rocket (you don’t), that you’d heard that Hamas had been using missiles like the Grad (you din’t) or that an anecdote might job your memory (it didn’t). The fact is that Hezbollah has been smuggling weapons to Hamas for some time now, and a possible weapon system among that was the Kornet. A missile which, yep you guessed it, used an IR scope in order for its operator to select and track a target.
Further, your claim is full of shit. “Most of the cites I give?”
You’re inventing that bit of un-truth due to one single cite.
Yes, that ‘point’ is fortunately also full of shit, as I’ve gone on record here as criticizing Israeli policy myself.
But one of the hallmarks of those who can’t argue on factual terms is that they have to invent some sort of reflexive Israeli supporter.
It usually shows that they’re about at the end of even a pretense of rational argument.
Ya don’t say? So you’re participating in a debate, and challenging my claims, without knowing the facts?
Well, it’s a Dope thread on Israel. I think that there’s some sort of clause that at least a few people need to argue a position based on their ignorance of the facts surrounding it.
The first is explicitly legal under the 4th GC, if you claim that the second is a war crime, cite the relevant law. This is the second time I’ve asked.
And yet you want supposed violations of international law investigated.
Go figure.
I don’t see it as at all creepy, and I’ve been trying now for (what, 24?) hours to get someone to explain, rationally, why it’s at all objectionable.
It seems to be a case of “This animal is very wicked. When attacked it defends itself”.
It is human nature to not want to be murdered, and to not want people to murder you. It is human nature to want those trying to murder you to be stopped. I see absolutely nothing wrong, at all, with a teen (or even a younger child) cheering on soldiers who are going to try to stop those who are attempting her murder.
The girl in the picture had (again, IIRC) been hiding in a bomb shelter for days in the midst of a civilian-targeted rocket campaign that would see about 1000 rockets hit her town. She voiced her support for those who were going to go and try to stop those rocket attacks. What’s the problem? Because she wrote it on a bomb? Why’s that a problem? If she’s written in to the local newspaper “Good luck to the IDF in stopping the rockets”, that’d be okay? What if she said “Fuck you Hezbollah!”, that’d be okay? What about “Fuck you Hezbollah, I hope they catch you and bomb you so you stop firing rockets”, that’d be okay? Why, then, is it so horrible if she wrote it on a piece of ordinance?
So far all I’ve gotten as a response is emotional responses as to how very awful it was. But not one reasoned response.
Will you offer one?
Look. You’re posting in the thread where you explain that the Palestinians can’t be compared with the victims of the nazis.
And at the first opportunity you have you do exactly the same thing : you equate Israelis kids with the victims of the nazis.
And you dare talking about double standards?
Will you withdraw your comparison or not? If not, you’ve no business criticizing people who do the same.
Listen. You’re free to have your children around bombs and write message on them, and think it’s all fine and dandy. But I don’t think you’re going to convince many people that it’s the best way to raise a kid.
Sure. First of all, writing a message on a bomb is by no means rational. It doesn’t make the bomb more effective, nobody will even read it; it’s just a symbolic middle finger. Secondly, we generally do not associate spite in politics with children, the innocents who we protect and for whom we fight to make a better future; this is particularly the case when, as in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, a significant factor in continuing hostilities is the utter hatred both peoples have for each other. Why does she want more than to make the bombing stop? Third, Israel’s government has been at pains this time round to talk about its purely defensive intentions. Spite and defense are not the same emotion in any sense of the word. Fourth, why would someone let her do that?
It’s like that old AFV video of a little toddler who had been trained to call Bill Clinton a jerk. Even if you think Bill Clinton is a jerk, you’d just as soon not have the toddler think so.
Simply put, the picture shows a girl who has been brought into the political world as a spiteful, hateful creature; it shows the destruction of innocence with the tacit consent of both parties.
And that is way more psychoanalysis than one picture ever deserves. I feel silly now.
ETA: I missed your line that clairobscure quoted. I think the point is that kids just want fighting to stop, by nature, and their accounts of conflicts and wars confirms that idea. The very personal hatred and wish to kill the people on the other side is something that should not be nurtured in children.
Then, you don’t have any issue with posting pictures of children killed in Gaza along with pictures of children killed in Poland in 1942, I assume? They’re just equating one child’s plight with another child plight’s, right? That’s all there is to this, of course? Certainly, you approve the comparison and wouldn’t consider criticizing it?