It isn’t fine that your mother dies. It’s entirely regrettable, as a matter of fact.
On the other hand, if you want to reduce a 70 year conflict to black and white conclusions by drawing incorrect analogies for the sake of simplicity, don’t expect to be taken seriously.
Agreed. If there’s the slightest inaccuracy in our analogy then we will never know how people will react to innocent family members being killed. The point of the analogy isn’t “how would you react if your mother was killed,” it’s “how would you react if your mother was killed, as part of the historically accurate larger context of the Israel/Palestinian conflict?” Thanks for clarifying.
Just so we’re clear, there’s enough blame to go around on both sides. Nobody’s hands are perfectly clean and neither side is going to kill their way to a peaceful solution.
I don’t think your scenario matches the reality on the ground. For one thing, we’re talking about war here. Issues of national security. The right for a country to defend itself against aggressors. Israel faces an ongoing campaign of terrorist attacks against both military and civilians. Hamas was elected with their stated positions against the right of Israel to exist and in favor of killing Jews, waging Jihad against them, committing terrorist attacks.
Syria right next door is experiencing a civil war where hundreds of thousands have been killed. That’s hardly news anymore. The Iraq War has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. And if you ask anyone on the streets of the US whether Iraqi casualties or the thousands of service members who gave their lives bothers them more, they’re going to answer the American service members. It’s only Israel we hold to this high bar, second guess, and find fault.
If I were a Palestinian, I would want a deal.
Also, most people in Gaza are not Hamas terrorists or rocket-makers. Hamas has captured the region, and won’t allow an opposition party to form. The people are imprisoned twice, once by the Israeli/Egyptian blockade and once by Hamas.
In general I’m not comfortable with discussions that begin: “You wouldn’t think it’s moral to kill thousands of innocent people, but…”
or maybe, the 1990s or 2000s were an example of when the left in America was a lot more moderate and normal.
I have heard reports that leaflets are air dropped near target sights to try to warn people to get clear as a strike is imminent, that tells me all I need to know. One group is trying to defend itself while also making some attempt to preserve innocent life, while the other is deliberately trying to murder innocents, less effectively because of their own lack of power, and using their own innocent population near rocket sites as a magnifying lens of carnage to make Israel look worse to the leftist fools around the globe who laser focus on the incidental body count of their retaliation rather than willful acts of murder.
You know what the kill ratio would have been if the palestinians were not firing rockets from civilian sites? ZERO. Got that? Z E R O.
I sometimes wish I could wave a magic wand and let people like Ace live under the conditions and restraints they wish upon Israel. Neighborhood in range of rocket fire? Suck it up. Fire back? Sure, oh wait, they put the launch site on top of a hospital building (lovely move there), never mind, fire away! We can’t attack that site, innocent people will be killed, more than are in danger on our side!
With all do respect to the attitude that demands such restraints, f*ck that.
The worst part of all of this are the decent palestinians are held hostage by the savages that care more about using their dead bodies as PR shots for Europeans and leftists than making their lives better. THESE are the people that are the greatest barriers to peace, how the hell can ANYONE make peace with that behavior and attitude? Without them the Palestinians would have had a state decades ago and have long since moved on.
Would that the left focused more animus towards HAMAS as they do towards Israel. (but that would be “punching down” or pointing out that oh, maybe brown skinned non western people can be the bigger problem in a conflict too!)
If Israel had a more credible partner for peace, that was not under the boot of entities like HAMAS, the far right would be drastically weakened. Israelis are far more decent than the far left gives them credit far. I can’t say the same for a large chunk of the Palestinian population.
It reminds me of the perverse mindset that allows one to support a group that is so harmful, just because they might provide some other assistance to the poor.
Que Tarek Fatah for more moral clarity against this type of thought/argument.
If only there was some way those decent Palestinians didn’t have to die! Oh well, gotta break some eggs to make an omelette.
P.s., it’s “due”
Your characterization of the left has been extremely inaccurate and seems to be plucked from right-wing radio.
Part of the Palestinian tragedy is that they have been using tactics that have had a proven track record in the decolonization conflicts of the '50s through '70s - only, they are dealing with what amounts to a local ethnic conflict, not a decolonization conflict.
The Israelis are not ‘colonists’, they are now local inhabitants. They cannot be frightened or shamed into leaving, as they have no ‘metropolitan’ nation to go to. Half the current population’s ancestors in any even were immigrants from - elsewhere in the ME. Israelis are not reliant on economic exploitation of an Arab majority, as in SA: the conflict is not about such matters, but is more akin to balkanization - with Israel attempting, in the absence of a deal, to impose one by force that sees them getting the biggest cut.
Therefore, these tactics have no hope of success. All they have succeeded in doing, is in inheriting a certain amount of legitimacy among Western sympathizers who are attracted to the rhetoric of decolonization. A small consolation for their currently wretched state.
shame that Alan Dershowitz, a liberal at heart like myself, agrees with me.
He’s a moderate at best. In any case, you and he are wrong, especially with your repeated totally false accusations towards Obama.
Just popping in to say, don’t click on that link. It will grab your browser and won’t let go without some serious ctrl-alt-del.
Please. It doesn’t even approach proportional. You know it, I know it, the Israelis know it, the Palestinians know it.
The Israelis clearly knew that civilians would end up being targeted.
Go back and read that article about the Israeli Gaza attacks I posted. They had a technique where they would hit a building that was to be bombed with a non-explosive missile one minute before they hit it with an explosive one. (Pretty stupid on its face, because you’re also warning possible terrorists to get out.)
Even given the (unlikely) lack of knowledge that they were going to kill a large proportion of civilians, you can’t claim that they didn’t know it after the first and second Operations, either.
Dunno where you come from, but 50% is clearly excessive civilian casualties, especially on the scale of killing we’re talking about here AND given the fact that there’s no way the Israelis weren’t aware of it at the time.
So glad you have heard reports. I guess the actual, you know, figures (i.e. evidence) contradicts you.
I’m really getting sick and tired of people telling me how fantastical my point of view is. Go back and read post #175. Sorry if I don’t let Israel off the hook, as you’re clearly more than prepared to do. It ain’t that easy.
But preach on how Israel are the white hats and Palestine are the black hats. The louder you say it, the more right you’ll be.
Well, in this case, I honestly do believe the Israelis are more justified in their actions than the Palestinians are.
I don’t believe anyone is actually foolish enough to say it’s all one way (or the other.) It isn’t “black and white” and no one here actually has said that.
Just off hand…what is your opinion of the rocket attacks? I can’t believe that you believe they’re the right thing to do. Do you actually condemn them?
This might be an election issue, but your OP was so broad that it has turned into a Great Debate.
Moving from Elections.
This I don’t get. How is it “war”? The situation is described by the Israeli High Court of Justice itself as a “belligerent occupation”. Israel controls (and increasingly claims) the territories, whose Palestinian inhabitants have no acknowledged nationality and no citizenship, and no effective or sovereign government other than Israel itself. What the violent Palestinians are doing is some combination of terrorism, guerrilla fighting, and colonial uprising, but I don’t think that’s really conveyed by calling it “war”.