Geez, use hoses and vicious dogs next time!
Catholic children walking to the Holy Cross School in the Ardoyne region in North Belfast were subject to Verbal abuse, intimidation, threatening behaviour, rocks and pipe bombs at the hands of a loyalist community who didn’t want them walking down their road. It is believed that the protest was organised by loyalist paramilitary forces.
for more information:
Rubber clad metal bullets are only less lethal, and they most certainly can introduce ‘long term effects’ including that most long term of conditions: death.
I have serious doubt about the humanity of someone that could fire a weapon at a child, even with less lethal ammunition.
I object to the claim that it’s easy to kill a person with a thrown rock. We’re talking about rocks thrown at IOF soldiers, soldiers who wear helmets designed to repel bullets. I SINCERELY doubt that a fourth grader can lob a rock big enough to even cause a headache with enough speed to do any damage through a helmet or body armour.
I don’t. You weren’t there, to say across the board that the use of tear gas and rubber bullets is wrong is to bury one’s head in the sand. In any case, a site to palestine-pmc.com is probably not what I would consider an unbiased source.
so you have no problem with the 17 children killed at the hands of the British Army in Northern Ireland because of the use of plastic bullets?
My apologies, I didn’t realize that you were there. Please give us your first person account of what really happened. At the moment I’m assuming that the soldiers were acting on their ongoing policy to break up, by force if necessary, any organized demonstration. It is not the policy itself, but the indiscriminate implementation that is flawed, and has lead to unnecessary injury and death. You will also note that I took specific issue with firing on children who may or may not have been throwing rocks. You can retract your assertion that I have made any ‘across the board’ statements.
I’m open to seeing someone counter the links I used, one to MSN, the other to The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, but I fail to see why either should be dismissed out of hand. Is it just easier that way, or are there more demonstrable flaws?
Kill? Probably not. Injure severely? Sure. Unless these guys were in full riot gear with face shields, a rock could cause severe facial trauma or blindness. If 2000 kids are throwing rocks, the odds are pretty high that one of them is going to get a lucky shot in.
I’m sorry, but you can’t give them chide the soldiers for defending themselves against children if the children are throwing rocks. You don’t get an age-related free pass if you’re chucking stones.
Especially if you can’t be sure they didn’t borrow some grenades from their parents.
Regards,
Shodan
Waverly, you said you had doubts about the humanity of anyone who could fire a weapon at a child. I disagree with that blanket condemnation. As several posters have pointed out, there isn’t anything magic about a rock thrown by a wittle bitty baby that makes it hurt any less.
Anyone find anything new on this topic? All we seem to have is a very biased report. I find it very hard to believe that an advanced army such as the Israelis fired tear gas at harmless children doing something as harmless as throwing rocks. Maybe these children were teens, who knows we should have some new stories two days afterwards otherwise this probably didn’t happen at all.
why is it so hard to imagine? other Armies in democracies have done worse.
Other than it being a PR nightmare especially for a country who doesn’t need that right now I don’t see why they would’ve done it to a bunch of “harmless children”. And with no news of it coming out I find it hard to believe this happened especially considering all the other reports and accusations of Israel doing things to Palestinans.
I saw footage on one of my TV news programs, either the government sponsored ABC or the multi-cultural and also government supported SBS as they are all I watch. This is from recollection as it was a couple of days ago:
A palestinian children’s festival for peace was going on. An armoured Israeli vehicle showed up and just sat there. Some older kids threw rocks at the vehicle, nobody got out but as it sped off the back doors opened and some sort of weapon was fired. The kids were got back under control and the festival continued. 2 armoured Israeli vehicles showed up and drove through the crowd firing as more rocks were thrown by older kids, unfortunately the youngest kids were down the front and most affected by the action.
The actions of the Israelis were described as provocative by the voice over.
Given I haven’t been able to find it on either news site of the stations concerned there may have been more to the story that came to light later that forced its withdrawal, or perhaps the time has just passed for the story to be online.
I finally found brief mention of the story in a pop up transcript generated on this SBS page by selecting 30 March then clicking the story titled JAKARTA SEES BIGGEST ANTI-WAR DEMO YET
Interesting that no mention is made of rock throwing.
Regards,
Shodan
Not in that short transcript Shodan, it was clear on the footage I saw but I know that saying I saw it doesn’t cut it around here so I just found this
The footage I saw showed youths throwing rocks but given it was at an armoured vehicle it is hard to see that anyone was in danger from it or that the response to it that endangered small children was called for. There was no way to tell if they were part of the protest.
Interestingly the Palestine Chronicle mentions the protest but not any of the violence that occurred from either side. Clearly we live in times where this does not rate as big news. I find that rather sad.
I’m sure that even if that little girl hadn’t thrown a rock, she was seriously thinking about it.
Resolved: it is safe and humane to assume all children in a group are rock-throwers and open fire on them.
Phew. I’ll miss color, but life is so much simpler in black and white.
Resolved: In Waverly’s world children are incapable of doing wrong.
What an idiot you are.
You know, all witty repartee aside (and ignoring your second strawman,) if you can excuse the maiming of a little girl because some children might have been throwing stones, you are an unworthy human being.
I’m guessing that if you were struck by a rubber bullet simply because you were caught in a crowd that might have been throwing objects at the police, you would 1) wet your pants 2) phone a lawyer.
But when it happens to a child who is unfortunate enough to live someplace where these things happen, c’est la vie.