You need a cite that you aren’t allowed to commit murder in other sovereign nations? Really?
You act like there is this official definition of what a terrorist is. To you he may be a smiling old man, but to China might be considered a terrorist. What makes China’s definition of a terrorist less valid than yours? Or Iran’s for that matter.
Well, I expect we would get the Swiss’s permission or declare war on them. More importantly if Hamas murdered the prime minister of Israel in France would that be a justified act of war? They would just be engaging in sound strategy after all. Or only your side gets to do that? I know I know moral relativism means you can avoid the question.
That is flat out wrong as had been pointed out over and over again in the thread.
Thanks for a couple of things here by the way. Continuing to use what some people (myself included) find an insulting term for a different nationality after being asked not to. And thanks as well for selective cutting of the response - very honorable.
The time before, when the Israeli government promised the British government it would never happen again, I believe it is the case that the passports were never used in clandestine activity, and that the scheme was discovered before.
I don’t know what “proof” you are looking for. These things aren’t quantifiable, by their very nature. The British government considers Israel, generally speaking, as an ally. That they are up in arms about this is a pretty good indicator they believe it has negative consequences. I am sure the Norwegian or Argentinian or Micronesian governments would think similar, but having no connection to those countries, it isn’t really up to me to speak for them, nor is it really up to the British government to take action to defend the interests of travellers on those passports (though obviously the EU might on behalf of Norway).
So on the one hand I have your “proven” statement that no negative consequences will come of this. On the other I have the government of my home land irate about a situation, and willing to risk a diplomatic dust up with a country it considers an ally. Oddly enough, I consider their opinion of whether there are negative consequences more likely to be true than yours.
The reason I talked about US people travelling on non-US passports is that I live in the US, though am still a UK citizen. That is the analagous situation I see ona regular basis.
What Israel has done has reduced the level of protection a British passport offers to its bearer in the Middle East. To be honest, it doesn’t matter how small that reduction is, given that Israel had promised never to do it. Your argument is that the reduction in protection is zero. I don’t think that makes any sense at all. However, there is no way I am going to be able to persuade you otherwise (and I don’t see how you can persuade me either).
I came into this thread in particular in respose to Allesan’s idea that using British passports might have been deliberate, and a justified attempt to ‘tweak noses.’ Were that to be true, it would be a far more serious matter. As it stands now, it is a bad thing, but not critical. Sending a spy or two home wouldn’t be an overreaction.
But the greatest negative effect is that Britain is now unable to put any credence on Israeli promises. I hope that doesn’t have any long term consequences for intelligence cooperation, as that could be a bad thing for both Britain and Israel, neither of which I want to see hurt as a result of this.
What makes you think there were no disguises? If you do it right, a disguise should appear natural. Hair style/color are easily altered, eye color too, with contact lenses. Dental work can be done. Facial hair can be grown/cut as needed, even skin tone can be altered. I’d be willing to bet none of the hit team look very much like the pictures captured by the security cameras, and certainly do not look like that now. Plastic surgery is also a possibility.
Except it isn’t just Arab and Muslim nations condemning them. Pretty much every nation not named USA has done so at one point or another. Statements like this make me think you are biased, since I can’t see how an objective individual would think Israel has never done anything that deserved condemnation.
As there was no ‘selective cutting’, what kind of behavior is alleging it?
Irrelevant. Your claim is that now that people know that the Mossad uses Israeli passports, badness follows. Well, they knew then too. What badness followed?
I take it that you can’t actually point to any, at all?
A silly dodge. “In year A no Brits were hauled aside and interrogated on suspicion of being Mossad but in year B 476 were!” If you had any evidence (you don’t), it would be quite easy to back up your claims. But like I said, the null hypothesis stands serene and undisturbed.
No, they’re not up in arms. The response has been downright tepid.
Even if we take your fallacious logic as non-fallacious, all that actually yields is “Brits think this will have negative consequences”. Not “this proves that there will be negative consequences.”
No, you’ve just proven that you don’t understand how the burden of proof or the null hypothesis work. I don’t have to prove that things won’t be the same as they’ve always been, you have to prove that they’ll change. And despite (or because of) all the handwaving, you can’t.
So when faced with the fact that you have no evidence to back this claim up and cannot support it, you feel that the best tactic is to wait a bit and then just repeat it. Okay.
Yes, it might rate an entire seven tisks on the harumph-o-meter. As, of course, you’re still unable to point to any actual bad consequences from this (other than some diplomatic harumphing, which you assure us is not proof of the harumphing but that the harumphing itself is proof of something else).
Riiiiiiiiiiight. If we’re going to play that game, Israel has no reason to trust the UK after the UK deliberately tried to disarm the proto-Israelis while allowing the Arabs to arm (and in some cases leading their armies) in preparation for wiping out Israel in '48. Of course, no such “lack of trust” will develop. And yet again, it hasn’t even been proven that Israel was behind this.
So it seems Hamas is now saying two of the suspects were Fatah ex-officers. Not sure how much credence to put on that, but if this was a Fatah operation not an Israeli one, I’d hope the British government takes the same steps against Fatah it woudl have done against Israel.
Strikes me as incredibly stupid of Fatah if it was. Britain being pissed is much more significant to them than to the Israelis.
It seems someone here is very poor in reading comprehension and has taken my words and completely twisted them.
Here is what I wrote
Please note the bolded part.
For those who are unclear as to what this sentence says, I shall endeavour to explain.
The Arab world will portray this incident as being the responsibility of “The Americans an the Zionists who control them”
You will note the added and rather crucial part " even if the facts are nothing like this at all"
A certain poster has become so embroiled in his own small world that he has slceted the first partof my statement, and completely ignored the rest, but this is the sort of debating tactic I expect from certain quarters.
This is the reality, the incident will be used to reinforce anti-Israel propaganda by the terrorists with the intention of reinforcing a lie, and to stir up the ignorant to commit further terrorist outrages.
The fact that is that that this is how it will play, despite its being completely untrue.
One Hamas individual is dead, and there are plenty more to replace him.
Actually, whose word do we take that he is involved directly in terrorism, I don’t doubt its true, but, Israel has something of a dog in this fight and is making it very much harder to accept what is states at face value.
We have a war without any prospect of end, Israel has decided not to bother with the law, as it is inconvenient, its too difficult for them to handle. If there had been some clear and compelling case, then the evidence should have been presented, he should be tried in abenstia and then a verdict arrived at.
We have no oversight, we have information obtain by whatever means is deemed acceptable, we have no review, appeal or even any competance - judging by the botched operation.
One wonders how many lesser known individuals have died without due course, this is just a high profile event.
It’s interesting that in claiming I didn’t understand something… you totally failed to understand everything I said. I’m sure your keen eyed observation will, this time, pick out the fact that I never said you’d endorsed ZOG nonsense, just brought it up as a silly argument.
Here, since you didn’t understand it the first time, I’ll help you and repost it. Surely it’ll get easier the second time.
Here, I’ll even help you and quote the specific parts above which directly go to rebutting your silly claims that I didn’t understand. Hang tight.
A certain poster (you) has an argument that’s full of shit and you’re claiming I said something that I did not.
Here, let me help you figure out whether or not I said you were endorsing the ZOG nonsense, or simply using it an absurd non-issue and acting as if it had weight:
That is perhaps one of the worst explanations of a series of rubbish posts I have seen in a long time.
At no stage have I even hinted that the US may be less safe, nor have I mentioned ZOG, which is a term that may be used qute a lot in your neck of the woods, but it is not one with which I am familiar.
I don’t even know what ZOG is supposed to represent, so its quite difficult to evaluate wether this is stupidity or idiocy.
My point stands, killing this person has not degraded Hamas in any meaningful way, it has gone against the laws of several nations, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland, not to mention Dubai, and actully I would be somewhat interested to know if this action was legal under Israeli law.
It is true that this will be used as propaganda, it is true that lines will be drawn toward unsupportable facts - lies if you will.
As to your analogy, or whatever specious point you make with abortion, well perhaps you know what you meant to say in the real estate you call your head, but it does not read the way I think you intended it to read. It is garbled, irrelevant, and there are far better ways of saying directly what you intended to say, instead of bringing up some twaddle about a social issue in a country that is thousands of miles away - way to go with the straw man there.
I take it you’re referring to your own. Unfortunately I’m just going to spend a bit of time showing why your argument is utter rubbish, and perhaps you’ll stop making it.
Bullshit, falsified by your own words.
That is clearly a statement that some will view us as being “controlled by Zionists” and may “bring some of that war” “into our borders”.
:rolleyes:
“I didn’t ever talk about Murder 1, honest! I just talked about murder with malice aforethought!”
The fact that you read a very clear analogy as “garbled” is funny though, and view it as “irrelevant” is even funnier. That you then think it’s a strawman is just icing on the cake. Please at least look up the definition of the word “strawman” before you use it again.
However, that seems to move the question of “justification” onto some pretty subjective ground. Who gets to decide what are sufficiently “bad consequences” to render a particular action “unjustified”?
If mere illegality doesn’t count as a reason to consider something “unjustified”, then where do we draw the line, and who gets to draw it?
For instance, does it make a difference whether the faked passports had completely fictional identities or, as Paul in Qatar noted, they were pretending to represent actual living UK citizens?
Clearly Mr. Mildiner considers that having his identity fraudulently assumed by an assassin did involve actual “bad consequences”. Do we get to tell him to just suck it up and quit whining, or should his opinion be taken into account when assessing the situation?
Go open a thread somewhere in which you can actually quote Finn posting anti-Arab or anti-Muslim diatribes. Otherwise, I will note that you are interrupting this thread for no purpose other than to pick fights with other posters and staff.
And if you have a statement from me that indicates a belief in Finn’s impartiality, you may quote it in another thread, otherwise I will have to consider you to be trying to pick fights, as well. There is a large spectrum of expression between a claim of impartiality (that I have not made) and an accusation of invincible bias that has been lodged against Finn. You have been around long enough to understand the concept of the excluded middle, so it would be well for you to not employ it, here, particularly for the purpose of picking fights.
The same way and with the same people who always do such things. Unless you agree that violating miscegenation laws was a horrible thing to do.
Except, they didn’t. He got upset and blah blah blah, but despite his silly claims, he’s already had his name cleared. And is that now what the argument has been whittled down to? It’s not much the fake passports but that they were duplicates of real people’s names? Okay, fine then. It would be much preferable if they chose to clone passports from the recently deceased.
Well, to argue that it’s “silly” for somebody to be upset about having his passport forged for use in an assassination does seem kind of subjective to me. Who gets to decide which concerns about identity theft by secret-agent assassins are “silly” and which are legitimate?
Just to clarify, then: Are you opining that Israel isn’t justified in forging passports of actual living allied nationals for its agents to use in assassinations, or are you saying merely that they’re justified in doing so but it would be nice if they avoided it?
Isn’t that kind of subjective, though? Different people draw such lines in different places.
Oh no, I definitely agree that civil disobedience of unjust laws is a good thing. But is that the analogy you’re making? Are you arguing that laws against forging other people’s passports are bad or unjust, like anti-miscegenation laws?