If you read the cite from Israeli-Weapons.com you can see there have been instances of deliberately bringing down the house on the heads of people still inside. Knowingly providing the equipment used to commit war crimes, as the suit alleges, is indeed a serious matter.
Enjoy,
Steven
No.
IIRC, all three of these men were shot by the Ku Kluxers.
Had they been playing chicken with a Three-K bulldozer and gotten squooshed, then yes they would have been idiots.
From the complaint
Enjoy,
Steven
Yeah, but they were in Mississippi agitating for Civil Rights. It’s not like they couldn’t have known that was putting them in danger. You can disagree with the reason Ms Corrie was there. You can believe it was truly an accident. But to claim she was an idiot for getting killed is imbecilic. She was engaged in a non-violent protest with many others in a manner that had a track-record of success. She must have believed that the driver would stop. According to witness accounts once it became clear the driver wasn’t stopping, she did try to move but was hampered by the moving earth and then trapped by the dozer’s blade. Of course Emmitt Till probably didn’t think flirting would get him killed either. Seems young people can be wrong sometimes.
And now that manner of protest doesn’t have the same unblemished track record of success. Maybe the next peace* protester will realize that before playing chicken with heavy machinery. To compare her actions with Emmett Till’s is asinine. Her actions were Darwinesque, despite the fact that others who had done the same hadn’t died.
*IMHO she wasn’t agitating for peace, ymmv.
She knowingly engaged in an activity that risked her life in order to effect policy changed. She died as a result of risking her life in order to effect policy change. She’s being taken up as a cause celebre by other people in an effort to effect policy change. Her death may end up effecting policy change.
In no sense that I see are her actions Darwinesque, unless you mean that, like Darwin, she’s going to have a substantial effect in the world. If that’s what you mean, you give her too much credit.
Daniel
And I think you give her too much credit too. The only policy change her death will effect is a “WARNING: DO NOT STAND IN FRONT OF MOVING BULLDOZER” sticker.
That and making her family a penny or two.
Dammit, I called dibs on the crystal ball next! How come y’all keep bogarting it?
Daniel
Indeed, there is a giant and slow moving engine in play here. One that progresses slowly and nearly unstoppably to persons who will not move out of the way.
The great engine of the law.
A legal verdict stating that the US and Israeli governments and their corporations are in a confederacy of wrongfulness is a powerful thing.
More so for what Ms Corrie presumably wished to achieve than an award of damages.
Consider the damage done to the US by the Guantanamo verdicts, painting “War Criminal” indelibly in bold letters on the stars and stripes.
Am I missing something here? I believe that Israel is just fine as it is, and is simultaneously illegal. I mean that in the same way that Napoleon and Alexander the Great were criminals, and the same way that American soldier killing hostiles is illegal. Theoretically. They fought for that land and died for it. If they were not fighting back, they would be killed. What do you envision happening, if your defintion of justice prevailed?
Firstly, it’s no longer permissible to “fight for that land.” Only in defence. Wars of conquest are unlawful.
To the present concern, should Ms Corrie’s heirs achieve a favourable verdict, that fact, of itself will advance her cause.
Like they ever were? Face it, if the invading side lost, you can bet they would be persecuted in a court of law. Or anywhere.
The international instruments that specify what is and isn’t lawful are comparitively recent.
“international instruments”, my ass! Let’s pretend I am one of my ancesters in Belarus. I am a peasent . It is illegal for me to kill another peasant. It is illegal for a knight of this country to kill me, without having first been told to do so by one of his supperior officers. A knight from a nearby country, not this one, comes by and cuts my head off. I clearly have a case against him in court.
What’s that you say? The case is moot? I’m right, none the less.