I guess it depends on how you are using the word ‘illegal’. If by that term you mean ‘I don’t like it’ then, sure…it’s ‘illegal’. If by that term you mean ‘not legal’ then on what basis do you make this statement? IOW, why does ‘punish the general population’ equate to ‘illegal’ in your mind? Illegal how? To who? On what basis?
You do realize that just about every embargo ever put into effect would equally be ‘illegal’, right? I mean, the embargo against Iraq prior to the second GW…‘illegal’. The embargo against North Korea…‘illegal’. The embargo against Iran…‘illegal’. All of them most certainly ‘punish the general population’, so therefore would be ‘illegal’ by your definition here. Of course, if they ARE ‘illegal’, then that term really doesn’t mean anything…does it?
Well going to somewhere like Wikipedia and finding it saying something the complete opposite to what you believe to be true should have been a hint that something was up.
You’d have a point if I had actually made a blanket claim. The problem is, I was talking about Gaza as the discussion was about Gaza.
Example: If we were discussing Iraq and I said “the US failed to find WMDs”, that wouldn’t be a blanket statement of the US not finding WMDs anywhere they’ve ever looked. It would obviously be about Iraq as the discussion was about Iraq. Adding “in Iraq” is not required for everything as it is the focus of the discussion.
I can’t believe you need this explaining to you. Just face it, you were wrong. Stop trying to squirm out of it.
The very first line of the Wikipedia page on White Phosphorous:
See up there ^^^regarding your pathetic attempt to pretend I was making a blanket statement regarding israel rather than a statement about the focus of the discussion, Gaza.
Please cite where I made “silly statements”.
Cite please that “acute watery diarrhoea” (WHO) and “acute bloody diarrhoea” (UNICEF) are the same thing.
Additionally, the WHO’s report is for children under 3 years of age. UNICEF doesn’t state what their metric is.
English comprehension again not being your strong point. I said I couldn’t find it when I was writing that post. This in no way means that I did or did not read the cite earlier, just that when i specifically went back to look for it I couldn’t find it.
Give me a link to the answer and I will do. It is 3:47am here, I am not going to search through this thread to find something that you seem to want to refuse to restate, even when you are asked.
If these magical caveats even begin to mention “Occupying Power” I swear I am going to lose it.
My understanding was that Egypt was cooperating because they recognized that hamas would make a horrible neighbor and might radicalize their own population.
So Palestinians had to choose between crazy and incompetent and they chose crazy. Perhaps we should be doing more to buildup these institutions, isn’t there something we can do to build these institutions without creating puppets?
However, while that is explicitly prohibited, damaging an enemy’s economy and instituting an embargo in order to force them to devote their resources to non-military endeavors is explicitly authorized. I think that would tend to suggest that that which is explicitly authorized is not the same behavior as the one that’s explicitly prohibited.
I don’t think you understand what I was saying. The Cuban Miisile Crisis is exactly what I was referring to.
Some people have been talking about Israel’s “right to blockade” as if any violation of the blockade was a violation of Israel’s rights. Israel doesn’t have a “right” to the blockade, they may blockade without violating international law, I don’t think its a particularly subtle difference.
If a Russian freighter came along and the USA told them to open themselves to inspection, would the freighter be breaking any law by saying “no thank you” Would they be violating America’s right to blockade? America would obviously snort and just board and inspect the freighter anyway but the freighter didn’t violate America’s rights and if Russia comes along and busts the blockade, did Russia violate Americas rights?
The reason i bring this up is because some posters have been saying things that show that they think that Israel has some sort of rights to the blockade. The right to blockade (declared or not) in this instance merely means that they “MAY” blockade and if done correctly it would be within the rules of war.
Well, I’ve provided an actual cite for the actual law that says some smoke or illuminants (WP serves as both) but also has incendiary effects is not an incendiary weapon.
You have the first line of a Wikipedia cite that goes to a page called “Pyrotechnics, Explosives & Fireworks.” One that, by the way, says that WP once used used in incendiary weapons.
Wrong.
The WHO did not confine its analysis to children under three and it did not confine its analysis for only one disease, it looked at all major infectious diseases.
Feel free, although they’re not magical and they are very clearly spelled out.
We’ve already been over that many times too. Self-identification does not determine if the 4th GC can be applied or not.
Must be? The USA didn’t keep out construction material from Cuba (or coriander for that matter).
I didn’t read anywhere that Israel MUST keep out construction material.
Anyways my point was that there were ships that only had items that were on the restricted list. the post that generated this issue was a comment that these ships should have just let the Israelis distribute the goods to Gaza and the response was that something like 75% of it was considered contraband by Israel. Someone replied that this number seemed really high and I noted that there were ships that had nothing but contraband aboard. Concrete may very well be an appropriate item to put on the restricted list.
Because they do. We’ve already identified that, cited it, quoted it, yadda yadda.
Blockades are allowed under Sam Remo in accord in Article 51 of the UN Charter. Article 51 justifies self defense.
As such, nations have a right to self defense via blockade. For instance, stopping Hamas from getting rockets that they can then shoot at civilians.
This does not mean what you think it means. Even if one use of the material is forbidden, this does not mean that all uses of the material are forbidden. A ban on using phosphorous to set targets on fire does not also ban the use of phosphorous for creating smoke, or to make tracer rounds easier to see.
Does that really have ANYTHING to do with the topic of this thread or advance the debate in any way other than to play gotcha by quibbling about irrelevant facts? I sense another “Lebanon bombing sub-thread” any moderators wanna nip this one in the bud or do you want to wait until it drags on for page after page?
there will be no more observations about what another poster has said.
You may quote the text of another poster and then post a reply that challenges that statement, but you are no longer permitted to claim that another poster “really” said something else or to make the observation that they are wrong or misguided or failed to read something or anything similar.
The majority of the heat in this thread is arising from snide comments based on interpretations of other posters’ remarks and the rest of it is the result of niggling over fairly sophomoric attempts to get over other posters with semantic games.
It stops here.
We have attempted to keep this discussion at the serious level that it deserves, but if you all cannot post without getting into pissing contests, we are going to close this and send you to the BBQ Pit.
In thought I responded to this post a while ago but I guess not.
One more time in all caps: SAYING “YOU SHOULD DROP THE BLOCKADE” (in response to a question asking what Israel should do) IS NOT THE SAME THING AS SAYING “ISRAEL DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF” no matter how much you want it those phrases to be synonymous, they are not AND IT IS DISINGEUOUS TO SUGGEST THAT THEY ARE. SAYING “ISRAEL WILL NOT GET A SECOND BITE AT THE APPLE” (in response to suggestions that everyone should back off and let Israel modify the blockade to avoid the stuff that everyone seems concerned about) IS NOT THE SAME THING AS SAYING “ISRAEL DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF” AND IT IS DISINGENUOUS TO SUGGEST THAT THEY ARE.
I do not think that Israel does not have the legal ability to blockade, i just think that in light of recent events, they should drop it especially since those weapons now have an avenue of entry through rafah anyways. But in any event I am not saying Israel must lay down and die and it is disingenuous of you to suggest that is what I am saying.
sheesh.
Prohibiting? Are you a native English speaker? I don’t mean any offense but you seem to keep using words that i a gross general sense mean what I think you mean but have nuances and applications that make them inappropriate for what I think you are trying to say. It would explain a lot. I say this because the humanitarian aid workers aren’t prohibiting the blockade any more than Gandhi was prohibiting the British monopoly on salt. They certainly aren’t “prohibiting” Israel from engaging in self defense.
Yeah I got that from another poster as well. I only bring it up because the San Remo Manual talks about effectiveness and maybe I admit I may be reading it wrong but if the blockade is no longer keeping stuff out of Gaza I thought it made the blockade ineffective, I could be wrong but I hardly think its “nonsense” I thought it was a pretty reasonable interpretation of the word “effective”
It was also set up to prevent coriander and cement from getting to Gaza. If you had set it up to only exclude offensive weapons and chocolate, people might not have gotten so upset about it.
In other words you admit you were wrong to equate what I said to mean “Israel doesn’t have the right to defend itself” but you really really really feel that people should be able to treat me as if that is in fact what I said…
The opening of Rafah already punched a hole in that prophylactic.
It is a prediction. If Hamas has learned ANYTHING from this fiasco (and I hope they have the ability to learn), they will have learned that there is a better way to fight Israel, call the media and stage a peaceful march where IDF will be forced to engage in brutality to enforce the border and the blockade. It would encourage this sort of behaviour if America would do something dramatic in response to the killings of the humanitarian aid workers. Perhaps reiterate our intention to honor our NATO obligations.
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calling a fact an “opinion” because the fact harms your argument is not an effective tactic of making the fact go away.
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You are making a prediction about the future actions of human being, your level of certainty might be very high but it is not 100%. I think you probably are right but it is still just a prediction at this point. But lets not quibble about this and assume that Hamas will in fact get weapons through Rafah and they will use them.
They don’t talk about people starving to death in the streets but their definition of humanitarian crisis doesn’t seem to require genocide.
Wait… What? Huh?
You made a statement that said there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza because the birth rate was high. So I picked one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world and showed you that they also have a positive birth rate that exceed the birth rate of industrialized countries and you take this to mean that North Korea sets the standard for defining humanitarian crisis? That seems like an odd way to respond to my posts.
/sputter. WTF!!! I am not comparing Gaza to North korea, I don’t think they are comparable I was using the North Korea example to show you what utter crap your argument about birth rates are. You couldn’t in good faith be taking these disingenuous position so you must have misread what I said. Please go back and read my prior posts.
NO THEY DON"T!!! They may engage in the blockade without breaking international law but noone else has to respect that blockade. Turkey is not violating Israel’s rights when they send a warship to escort the next shipment of humanitarian goods and breaks the blockade.
Israel may very well be engaging in the blockade out of self defense and that is why blockades are allowed because sometimes they are the best way to defend yourself without a lot of bloodshed. But they don’t have some right that will be violated when Turkey breaks the blockade.
Is anyone else confused about the point I am making? Because several people now seem to act like Israel’s rights are being violated when people choose to disregard the blockade. I didn’t think it was a difficult concept, or are people being intentionally obtuse.
