Or a better simile if Mexico started firing rockets at El Paso and San Diego.
I mean Mexico has some legit complaints about the USA. But can you imagine what the USA would do if mortars started killing people in San Diego?
Voted neither since I have not seen any evidence that either side is interested in ending this conflict.
I believe both sides are very interested in ending it.
Israel wants the rockets to stop and the destroy the tunnels.
Someone from Hamas said, “We have invested too much to not gain anything”.
Both are interested in obtaining their goals before they stop.
We’d freak the hell out, rightfully so, and we’d probably take some kind of action. But that doesn’t mean that we would* invade as aggressively, killing as many uninvolved civilians as Israel’s doing. That’s one of the things I object to from those on the pro-Israel side of the debate; the question is posed as though Israel has no options between meekly allowing terrorists to fire rockets into Israel and brutally invading Palestinian territory with tanks and airstrikes, killing many more civilians than terrorists. I believe there’s a middle ground here, and I dislike it when people pose this in a binary way where I’m asked to take sides.
EDIT: Also, let’s recognize that the terrorists who are firing rockets are aligned with Hamas, and Hamas is the leading governmental party in Palestine, but they’re not one and the same. When you say “Mexico started firing rockets at El Paso and San Diego”, you’re implying the Mexican government is committing an act of war, which is not precisely analogous to what terrorists are doing in Gaza.
*OK, realistically, we would invade at least as aggressively, but that doesn’t mean we’d be right to do so.
What are their options? Hamas is a terrorist organization, dedicated to destroying Israel. They show this on a daily basis. They have little concern over their own people, gleefully allowing them to be killed so that they can show this on the news as how “evil the Israelis are”.
Don’t get me wrong, Israel hardly wears the white hat here, but it’s clearly the lesser of two evils.
Sure but I was recognizing how evil Canada is.
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- Rockets launched from Mexico are landing in the U.S.A…
- The Mexican government would be expected to stop the terrorist attacks launched from Mexico.
- The U.S. military will stop the attacks if the Mexican government can not do so.
Every country, and every person, has a right of self-defense.
Right, exactly. Limited airstrikes that actually succeed in stopping rocket or mortar attacks and kill mostly actual guilty terrorists would be justified. Limited boots-on-the-ground missions that actually capture or destroy Hamas terrorists or military equipment and minimize civilian casualties would be justified. But Israel’s attacks, not only this month but in past years, seem to kill mostly civilians whose guilt is nothing other than to live in the same area as terrorists, or at worst to have voted for Hamas as a government.
I’m not an absolutist on the point; I understand that no military operation is perfect and there are always going to be some casualties from collateral damage, especially because Hamas terrorists insist on intentionally launching rockets from locations that have lots of civilians. But Israeli military strikes seem to kill many more innocent Palestinians than guilty ones, and so I can’t view their actions as just or proportionate to the crimes committed by Hamas.
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The Palestinians are deliberately launching their vengeance weapons from populated areas. If you want to destroy the rockets, rocket launchers, and the terrorists launching the rockets, you have to target the areas where they are being hidden.
The fact that the Palestinians are incompetent, or incapable, of successfully murdering Israelis in large numbers, doesn’t change the fact that they are continually trying to do so.
http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/21/hamas-teaches-gazas-facebook-users-secret-spinning-terror/
The Middle East Media Research (MEMRI) published Thursday a translation of a new Hamas internet campaign to provide guidelines for Gaza’s social media users. According to MEMRI, the Hamas Interior Ministry has instructed Gazans to use Facebook and Twitter to “play their part in strengthening the home front and properly convey information worldwide.” The guidelines in fact instruct social media users to mislead the public and propagate disinformation worldwide.
The interior ministry’s “Be Aware – Social Media Activist Awareness Campaign” centers around an instructional video and posters published on the ministry’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Gazans are taught, first and foremost, to refer to all terrorists as innocent civilians.
“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank,” the guidelines state. “Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.” Mainstream media outlets would do well to remember this when quoting distorted reports from Gaza of civilian casualties.
The guidelines go on to tell Facebook and Twitter users how to spin Hamas terrorist activity aimed at harming Israeli civilians to appear legitimate.
“Begin [your reports of] news of resistance actions with the phrase ‘In response to the cruel Israeli attack,’ and conclude with the phrase ‘This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza.’ Be sure to always perpetuate the principle of ‘the role of the occupation is attack, and we in Palestine are fulfilling [the role of] the reaction.”
Social media users in Gaza are instructed not to mention Hamas’ exploitation of civilians as human shields. Nor the fact that it urges civilians to ignore the IDF’s warnings about impending strikes.
“Avoid publishing pictures of rockets fired into Israel from city centers. This [would] provide a pretext for attacking residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Do not publish or share photos or video clips showing rocket launching sites or the movement of resistance [forces] in Gaza.”
Your cite is an opinion piece behind a paywall. Do you have another one, preferably one that isn’t the IDF blog? They’re not a disinterested party on this issue.
Huh? The IDF blog is citing MEMRI, which translated the Palestinian web page. Of course IDF is interested in exposing Hamas’s lies - but what exactly do you find inaccurate?
As for the first link, I gave you the wrong one. Here is the right one: http://www.israellycool.com/2014/07/26/latest-analysis-of-gazan-casualties-in-operation-protective-edge-as-of-july-25th/
While the ineffectiveness of Hamas terrorists doesn’t make them any less morally reprehensible, it does affect the amount of Israeli force required to be proportional. Because the rockets are largely ineffective, the kind of large scale Israeli response we’re seeing is very disproportionate, and so the many civilian casualties among the Palestinians are not justifiable, at least to me.
In addition, the trigger for this month’s aggression on both sides was the kidnapping and murder of some Israeli teenagers by a terrorist not acting with mainstream Hamas. The Israeli government has even admitted that they knew that from the get-go. Rocket firings weren’t the trigger for this month’s events.
Again, please remind me, what was the ratio of Americans to Serbians killed in Kosovo?
I could wish that there were an actual strategy that the IDF could use that would result in a more proportionate level of casualties. I’m afraid I’m of the view that it is the Hamas strategy itself that is causing the casualties: they’re firing rockets from city neighborhoods, instead of from remote sites. They don’t even use vacant lots or empty farmland.
Historically, this kind of thing has warranted high-altitude carpet bombing, like what happened to Berlin, Tokyo, Hanoi, and so on. In terms of purest international laws of war, this would be legal. That would be disproportionate.
Counterbattery fire? That’s strictly legitimate, always.
Hamas is responsible for the civilian casualties, because of how they’re conducting their attacks.
Mushir Al Masri, a Hamas MP and media spokesman, told an Arabic-language television interviewer that Hamas has no intention of reaching a long-term truce or a peace agreement with Israel, and would use any lull in fighting to re-arm its troops.
…
“‘A truce’ in the dictionary of the resistance means preparing for the next battle,” he said. “Our resistance will keep on developing, producing and filling its arsenals and in the production of surprising elements for the next battles until the Zionist enemy leaves our land, with the help of Allah.”
I believe that these guys suffer from testosterone poisoning.
Well I know Kerry doesn’t believe the Hamas spokesman. Or does he?
Probably not.
I believe he wants to look like a diplomatic hero in finding a way to stop the shooting.