It is going to be tought to ever find out about what happened at Sabra and Shatila. Here is one reason.
Any source I cite will be either ‘pro-Arab’ or ‘pro-Israeli.’ Including, I would presume, the one I just cited. I would suggest a Google using “Sabra Sharon.” This is a good starting point.
Or, read this and decide on your own search terms. Strange. I used to do these searches and come up with hundreds of hits. Now, I can only get 20, exactly, no matter what I do. I need some computer knowledge.
From the last cited article written by a Dutch doctor who was in Sabra and Shatila in 1982.
Read the whole article. I think it is absurd to claim that the IDF did anything to prevent the massacres. Quite the opposite. I have done searches on this topic before, even many IDF soldiers - to their credit - have acknowledged the complicity of the soldiers there. Sharon was in charge, he cannot claim he was just following orders.
Eesh. I should know better than to read anything started by december while I’m supposed to be working. Your cites of previous threads don’t impress me; there have been plenty of people who have started innocous threads but ended up being banned anyway. The sooner you and your warped view of the world are out of here, the better.
No doubt you are correct, particularly twenty years after the fact.
However, it should be possible to verify the truth of gobear’s specific claim about a commission finding: “An Israeli commission found that Sharon facilitated the massacre of civilians…” Even if the Commission Report isn’t on the web, one would expect to find references to it.
Indeed, your cite, Dr. Alofs writes, “The conclusions of the Kahane commission were fatally flawed and Sharon was merely deemed to be indirectly responsible and therefore not fit to be a minister of defense.” Since Alofs was claiming that Sharon is a war criminal and since he referenced the Commission report, it seems likely that he would have mentioned a finding that Sharon “facilitated” the massacre. Unless gobear returns to support his allegation, I think we must conclude that he stretched the truth. [whine]Why do I get blasted for making factual criticisms of Arafat, but it’s OK to make unsupported criticisms of Sharon?[/whine]
I fully agree. Sharon is guilty. We are only debating the extent of his guilt.
I am unimpressed with the theory that Sharon ordered the killing of Elie Hobeika.
This is tin-foil hat territory, in my opinion. It just goes to show that Sharon is fair game for any crackpot accusation. That’s good strategy for his enemies, but there’s less excuse for us to take these unsupported charges seriously.
Because gobear, unlike you, is not a broken record whose “factual criticisms” are routinely shown to be false, misleading, ore woefully incomplete.
Any number of SDMB posters, including gobear, have denounced Arafat and various other Palestinian extremists, often in the strongest of terms. But for some strange reason, only one of them gets disembowled every time he brings up the subject. So quit with the attempted martyrdom, already.
For Sharon to not do enough to prevent a massacre was a serious misdeed. However, I think we now all agree that the Kahane Commission did NOT make a finding that he facilitated the massacre, which would be even worse.
Sharon “was found responsible for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge when he approved the entry of the Phalangists into the camps . . . .” Considering that he knew of the substantial risk of Phalangist killings and approved their entry anyway, he at least acted recklessly and probably acted knowingly (to borrow the American legal standards). Under American law, that would make him guilty of either manslaughter or second degree murder.
Please Andros, let’s not make this personal. I apologised to you for that comment 2 years ago and again later if I remember correctly. I also didn’t really mean it, but thought it was appropriate for a pit rant. Like come on, I called you a sour cream puff in the same post. I didn’t realize that pit comments were to be taken as seriously as I now understand. Could you puhleeeeze let it go?
Now to those who feel that they have cited atrocities comparable to that in the OP, I must disagree. There is something completely horrible about when a group tortures one of their own children and forces them to kill their own mother. The other incident of a mother encouraging her own son into oblivion was completely horrible. Show me an incident where the Israeli government/army have done similar to one of their own citizens, and I will be convinced. Now the only purpose in this challenge is to respond to the claim that Israeli’s have committed similar atrocities(I hope I have paraphrased correctly)
I will take your word for the legal analysis. Sharon absolutely committed a most serious misdeed.
OTOH Arafat called an intifada in which numerous people were killed. Money that he controlled went to terrorist organizations who directly commited the murders. (According to information the Israelis say they found in his Ramallah headquarters.) Under American law, that would make him guilty of first degree murder. Since there were multiple murders in his intifada, he would be eligible for the death penalty in many states, as I understand the law.
Nope, not gonna bother (though I wouldn’t be surprised if it has happened). It’s no better or worse, IMO, to commit an atrocity against your own people than it is to commit an atrocity against somebody else’s people.
By the way, you’re also factually incorrect. The Al Aqsa assholes did not make the kid kill his own mother, as even a cursrory reading of the story quoted in the OP would reveal; they killed her themselves. Nor did the Al Aqsa assholes torture “one of their own children”; they tortured somebody else’s child.
december, there are those in Al-Qaeda who would claim that they were “provoked” into “retaliation” against the US and that the events of September 11 last year are dwarfed by the “sins” of US.
There are undoubtedly people on both sides of the Northern Ireland debate who would claim that they only “respond” to atrocities committed by the other side.
There were almost certainly people in Nazi Germany who saw Hitler’s actions as the only appropriate response to perceived “wrongs” committed against the German people.
It’s scary how similar to those kinds of viewpoints your arguments are starting to sound.
History shows that none of the parties to war are inclined to treat those they believe to be spies or collaborators kindly, but your willingness to accept news reports of atrocities committed by one side of this conflict as “proof” while demanding “objective” evidence of any atrocities alleged to have been committed by the other is mind-boggling.
If only the world was that black and white. Cliched though it might be, truth is both the first casualty of war and its final hostage.
Why is it so hard for you to accept that both sides of this conflict have legitimate grievances and both sides of this conflict have committed terrible acts in pursuit of their claims?
By turning the Palestinian/Israeli conflict into some kind of “but they did worse things than we did” oneupmanship game, it is you who are trivialising the terrible human cost of this conflict - and you’re doing so without offering any suggestions of how the conflict can be resolved.
I’m beginning to wonder whether your quest to prove your viewpoint “right” and that of anyone who isn’t a passionate defender of the pro-Israel stance hasn’t turned your reading of the media into some kind of game where your first thought upon reading these articles is “slamdunk, one for my side”, rather than “oh my fucking God, this is truly horrible, how can we end this?”
Which is worse:
The events described in the article
Or
December reading the article, smiling, and cheerfully skipping over to the SDMB to use it as fodder for another of his threads?
Can't the moderators change December's status from Member to PermaTroll ?
This is, after all, what December is. He is a troll who never quite breaks the rules. I've never seen him debate. He cites some source or another and then spews hatred.
The more well meant comments based on ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ people I witness on this board I become convinced that even the mildest form of nationalism and patriotic pride is a vile curse to humanity that needs to be eradicated like a disease.