Hey-hey-hey! I’m the one who proposed it, though it was just to illustrate that for all his blather about moral equivalence, it’s far safer to protest the Knesset’s actions than Hamas’s. He sufficiently hates Israel, though, that he’s engaged in a stubborn Bush-like denial of reality, much like Sevastapol.
I’ve served my country. Have you?
I don’t hate Israel. Accusing me of that is just as stupid as accusing people of hating America if they oppose what the government does. I strongly disagree with Israel’s disproportionate responses to Hamas. I don’t think they can achieve peace by killing innocent people. It’s just that simple. That doesn’t mean I hate Israel or think it shouldn’t exist.
And what difference does it make what it’s safer to protest? How does that make it ok to kill children?
Without jumping in on the “disproportionate response” side of this debate, does anyone on the other side actually think that a proportionate response would do anything to end the conflict? Should Israel start lobbing unsophisticated rockets indiscriminately into Gaza at the same frequency that Hamas is lobbing them into Israel? Given the way Hamas operates, I don’t see how it is possible to avoid civilian casualties with any type of armed response.
I have no dog in this fight (I’m more of the “kill them all; God will know his own”) school), but I’d happily go in dtC’s place. I could use a free vacation right about now.
Coulda fooled me, Jack.
Nothing. It was a statement on the attempt to draw moral equivalence between the conflicting sides.
So a ghettoized population in Palestine with little food and medicine,and people dying every day day should do what? What is a proper response for the mistreatment that they experience? How do you react to a life of checkpoints and being treated like vermin?
The same frequency? Israel has already killed three times as many civilans in the last three days as Hamas has killed in the last eight years. Killing civilians with the same frequency as Hamas would be a huge step DOWN.
And the crux of the matter is that Hamas knows this, and it is the mode of operation to commit these attacks, hide behind civilians, and then trumpet the blood of those now dead civilians to play the martyr.
I agree with the OP. Fuck Hamas. If Israel pushed them into the sea, the world would be better off for it.
Are saying there’s a moral difference? Are Israeli children more innocent than Palestinian children?
In one sense, yes. But it would be nice if we could trust them not to act as a mob.
Actually yes I could. Japan was finished anyway. The shock of the bombs hastened the process but did not end it on their own. It was kicking a dead dog.
Alessan asked earlier what was the virtue of a proportional response. I presume by his phrasing that he knows the West Wing answer. It’s fairly valid. They are what civilised countries do. And they don’t lead to interesting debacles like the war in Iraq.
ETA
No, they should try and negotiate and compromise.
Israel doesn’t actually HAVE to kill civilians, you know. You can’t just absolve them of responsibility that easily.
And nobody plays the martyr role better than Israel, by the way.
That’s a rant, not an answer to the question.
If the Pals do not want to be treated like vermin, maybe they should stop acting like vermin. Israel isn’t attacking Gaza for shits n’ giggles; it is responding to indiscriminate attacks on its own population.
Mind, I’m no fan of Israel; I’m tired of propping them up financially without getting any ROI. But the Pals are incapable of running a country. The Palestinian government is insanely corrupt and inefficient, and the Pal leadership is content to keep its population focused on killing Israelis to distract them from demanding competent leadership.
Israel wants the violence to end and has offered the PAas deal after deal for decades. In return the Pal leadership continues to amp up their people’s desire for the ertermination of Israel and its people.
Your question was, “Should Israel start lobbing unsophisticated rockets indiscriminately into Gaza at the same frequency that Hamas is lobbing them into Israel?”
The answer is that they’re already bombing with far more efficiency and much higher civilian casualties. To your precise question “should they,” the answer is still no, but that it would still be an improvement over what they’re doing now.
Israel does not have the best record of holding up its end of the deal. The Palestinians have no reason to trust that Israel is negotiating in good faith.
I don’t know what Israel is hoping to achieve with their retaliation beyond cold blooded (not to mention hugely disproportionate) revenge. This is only going breed more support for Hamas because they’re giving more and more reasons to hate Israel. I don’t think the average Palestinian (or the average anyone in a 3rd world country with shoddy education along with all the other joys of poverty) is going fully appreciate that Hamas is an extremist nutso organization. I think he’s more likely to notice that his city is fucked and his uncle is dead.
Beat Palestine into submission? Yeah, asymmetrical warfare has always worked out great. And that’s ignoring Iran of course…
This is a huge fucking mess and I don’t think Israel’s response was appropriate even with their own best interest in mind.
When the people that are shooting at your civilians hides behind their civilians, you have two choices:
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Let your enemies hide behind their civilians and indiscriminately slaughter your people;
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Shoot at your eneimes anyway, and hope for one of two outcomes:
A. The civilian “shields” get tired of getting shot up inbetween to opposing forces, and give up/sell out/repudiate the bad guys;
B. The bad guys run out of civilian “shields”
In an abstract sort of way I might be interested in the tortured, twisted reasoning that went into the “Israel Plays Martyr” comment, but frankly, if you told me the sky was blue, grass is green, and that shit stinks, I’d double check before accepting your word, so any exposition on your part would be meaningless, inspite of its 99% nonsense quotient.
What are you talking aobut? Israel handed over territory to the Palestinian Authority in 1994 as aggreed to by Rabin and Arafat, and their reward was a string of suicide bombings of Israeli civilians and the launch of Intifada II.
And why are the Pals the responsibility of Israel, anyway? The Pals are really supposde to be in Jordan, so why doesn’t the US make King Abdullah take them in? Why hasn’t the Arab world given the PAls homes? Because the Arabs do not and have never wanted peace with Israel–they want to finish what Hitler started.