You do however need to know, and make allowances for, more than simply a body-count to explain “the differences between WWII and the Israel/Palestine situation”.
Thus, quite obviously, a mere accounting of casualties isn’t sufficient to explain who is morally right or wrong.
Which is my point.
Well, no, because it does not account for the impact of Hamas’ actions on innocent Palestinians. Since Israel is attempting to minimize the impact on innocent Palestinians, and Hamas is attempting to maximize it, this shifts the responsibility away from Israel to an undetermined but non-zero degree.
This is one of the more bizarre things about this whole mess - Hams is targeting its own people, and Israel is getting blamed for it.
Regards,
Shodan
You haven’t thought this through, have you? I get your point, but your scenario makes it just as dangerous to stay home.
No. It’s a false analogy. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not sufficiently like the WWII, or any other conflict I can think of. And by the way, American attacks that targeted civilians in WWII were immoral. The bombing of Dresden, for example.
Perhaps everyone accepting a ceasefire is a good thing, even if the initial intent is to cut losses or just reload. Another possibility is that neither side knows where the new American administration will come down tomorrow afternoon.
Sure, but the situation we aren’t looking at isn’t remotely close to the black/white good/evil WWII situation. There’s enough blame to go around that you can’t say it’s Good Israel vs. Evil Palestinians.
I don’t think Hamas is attempting to maximize their own populations causalities. What they do to fight Israel is what they have to do in order to keep fighting. As I alluded to earlier, I’m sure Hamas would love to have tanks and F22s to fight Israel with, but they don’t have those. They either fight Israel in urban areas, where they can hide and escape, or they fight Israel out in the open. The latter is not much more effective than mass suicide.
I think you have to look at it from Hamas’s point of view. Their (or their recent ancestors) land is now under the control of Israel. If they want it back, they have to fight for it. That’s what they are doing, and they are doing it in the only way possible. If they stop, then there is no reason for Israel to negotiate, and their land is gone forever. It probably is anyways, but humans are nothing if not stubborn.
You miss the point. I am not attempting to argue that WW2 is analogous, merely that simply adding up civilian casualties on both sides says nothing in particular about the morality of a conflict, without an appreciation of the context.
The Gaza attack is in no way analogous, for example, to the fire-bombing of Dresden. If Israelis had actually engaged in such tactics, civilian casualties would be measured in the multiples of tens of thousands.
I’m not attempting to claim either conflict was good vs. evil, merely that the methodology for analysing ‘relative morality by body count’ is wrong.
By hiding their rocket launchers and other military targets in places surrounded by civilians, I think they are. And, as mentioned, the Israelis do things like telephone apartment buildings and tell the inhabitants to get out in advance. So one side is working to minimize civilian deaths, and the other is not. Yet the first side seems to be getting most of the blame.
I see no reason to believe that, if Hamas were as well armed as the other nations were who went to war with Israel, they would do any better than those nations did.
I think Hamas is perfectly well aware that they stand little chance in a straightforward war, regardless of how many tanks Iran sends them. Their only chance is to provoke Israel into striking, and then look to the reliably anti-Israel parts of the world to condemn Israel for not showing “restraint”. Why is Hamas not expected to restrain itself from firing fucking rockets off at Israelis?
It’s the looking-glass nature of the debate that is so upsetting. “Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today”. Israel seems to be expected to simply accept a steady rain of rockets, and to chalk it up to youthful high spirits by the Palestinians. Boys will be boys, after all. But when they get tired of it and try to do something about it, and those assholes in Hamas are doing their darndest to kill as many of their own children as they can manage, then the UN General Assembly has a fit of the vapors.
Weird.
Regards,
Shodan
No one is using a straight forward body count. Everyone in this thread is aware of the history, and their statements are made in the context of that history. So unless there is some good/evil argument you wish to make, your statements don’t have any relevance.
Hamas isn’t sitting around saying “alright boys, how do we get as many of our civilians killed as possible”. I think the conversation is “how do we fight Israel”, and the inescapable answer to that question is to fight amongst civilians. Any other answer is the equivalent of giving up.
This only counts as minimizing civilian deaths if the two options are (1) bomb the building and (2) warn civilians, and then bomb the building. Those are not the only two options. Israel has other options that would do a lot more to protect innocent civilian causalities.
This a straw man. There are plenty of options short of a full scale bombing campaign and invasion that would be a proportionate response to Hamas rockets. No one expects Israel to sit by and do nothing. We expect (well, hope) that they would do something that didn’t result in hundreds of dead Palestinian children.
Adding up civilian deaths is just that. An argument then needs to be developed, not snidely assumed in half a sentence. The WWII civilian bombings on both sides had justifications that the various principles used to convince themselves. Only the Germans and Japanese were tried. The firebombing of Dresden had no military usefulness as against the Germans that could possibly justify it. It was an act of evil. Maybe the same could be said of the fire bombing of Tokyo.
A war does not decide which side is more evil, it decides who holds the ground afterwards. The survivors then go tend their wounded and mourn and bury their dead. Maybe a lasting peace will result, but not in this case. The sides pretended they would talk, but did not actually talk. Israel, as a result of this war, now no longer allows Arab Israeli citizens to form parties that may run in national elections. I have been wondering for years when they would do this and abandon one more pretense of civilized democracy, and now I know: while Bush is still president, because he won’t raise a finger about it. Next week, let’s see if Obama has any spine.
This is simply false.
Two specific parties were banned for their alleged actions, including opposing the state of Israel, voicing anti-Israel incitement to violence and supporting Israel’s enemies. They’ve also been in violation of Israeli an law which prohibits contact with regimes like Syria. Whether or not the ban will even hold up will be up to the high court. There was also no ruling that Arab Israeli citizens are not allowed to form other parties in the future.
Nor is there a lack of precedent for Israel banning political parties. The last to be banned was Kach, and they were banned for advocating the expulsion of Arabs from Israel.
While I’m at it, it should also be noted that it’s a preliminary ban which the Central Elections Committee itself admits will most likely be overturned and which the Attorney-General’s office has already stated doesn’t have enough evidence to stand.
There was no vote, anywhere, to ban Arab Israelis from forming other parties.
The situation, also, isn’t all that simple. Balad, for example, had its founded wiretapped during the war against Hezbollah, and evidence was gained which most likely would have been sufficient to charge him with treason had he not fled the country. Balad members admitted that they’re still in contact with him. Tibi, of the Ta’al party, committed slander and claimed that the IDF was targeting civilians and engaged in a campaign of genocide. Another Balad member, Said Naffa, is under investigation and may be charged by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz for actions he may have taken while illegally visiting Syria.
Now, simply for the record, absent more significant evidence I am opposed to banning the parties. The bans will, in fact, most likely be overturned. I would hope, though, that some of the nuance of the situation is clear though. In a nation with an actual fifth column, engaged in a war, when one of its political parties is still connected to someone most likely guilty of high treason and another is committing slander against the state itself, tensions can run high. However, unless there is actual criminal wrongdoing though on the part of the parties, they shouldn’t have been and shouldn’t be banned.
Hamas was firing rockets at Israel, an act of war, which of course was provoked by Israel’s blockade of Gaza, an act of war. Hamas did it in such a way that nobody was killed, but it made the point.
Israel could have yielded the point, and sat down at the table with Hamas to try to negotiate a lifting of the blockade in return for the cessation of Hamas’ rocketry. That would have been the most obvious thing.
Or it could have maintained the status quo - continued their act of war in response to Hamas’.
Or it could have identified where the missiles were coming from, and bombed just that place, instead of hitting mixed military/civilian targets all over the place.
Or it could have sent ground troops to that place, and eschewed the air attack altogether.
Or maybe the famous Mossad could have worked some of its legerdemain. Or are they magical and not real? Hard to tell.
Instead, you reject anything less than total, all-out war - any military target is fair game, no matter how unrelated to the problem at hand, no matter how many civilians will be killed as well - in response to a zero-casualty event.
Did you know that there is family housing on many U.S. military bases? Suppose a U.S. border guard accidentally took out a Mexican border guard. By your standard, Mexico would be quite justified in blowing up a U.S. military base in response, complete with all its family housing. After all, what else is there to do but attack any and every U.S. military target in response, innocent lives be damned?
If you’re a Hatfield, there’s no reasoning with the McCoys. And if you’re a McCoy, there’s no reasoning with the Hatfields. While your chances of persuading the people who are theoretically on your side may be slim, that’s the only chance you’ve got: the other side can more or less be expected to act as a force of nature might act. Hell, even your own side will be that way anytime you don’t have any leverage over them.
But also, there’s this sense that we’re supposed to be on Israel’s side because they’re the ‘good guys.’ I expect Israel to be at least a little better, a little more grown-up, than Hamas because if they’re not, then they’re not the ‘good guys’ anymore, and why should I give a flying fuck about them?
Wrong. One act, indiscriminately firing rocket at civilian areas, is an act of war. The other is explicitly authorized under the 4th Geneva Convention. In fact, under the GC, the only articles that a state is obligated to let through are “all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians […] all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases.”
Even those can legally be withheld if the occupying power is not satisfied that there isn’t a serious reason for fearing:
Of course! The most obvious thing would have been to give in to terrorism and grant Hamas the right to import whatever weapons it wanted over its border.
Well, that’s the obvious thing for some folks.
Not quite everybody.
Some of us are still able to realize the nature of a demand that Israel let political parties which are committed to its genocide, freely import all the weapons they can afford. Some of you then go ahead and make that demand.
You really should try learning about topics before you take a position on them.
The fact of the matter is that even according to Palestinian sources, the bombing campaign was incredibly precise with the vast majority of casualties being militants.
As the air attack was much less damaging than the ground attack, or indeed any possible ground attack, it’s rather obvious what state your argument is now in when you’re suggesting that house to house fighting would somehow yield a better outcome.
Ahhh, the Super Commando Ninja approach.
Of course, even when Israel had troops occupying Gaza, they couldn’t capture/kill all members of the terrorist organizations there. Now that Israel withdrew ,it’s totally reasonable to expect them to accomplish what they couldn’t when they controlled the place.
I see we’re at the bombastic bullshit analogy stage.
A less absurd analogy would be that the elected government of the US was repeatedly launching rockets at Mexican cities, and refused calls for a cease fire after a previous one expired. And that after the US had allowed groups to launch rockets at Mexico during the ceasefire and admitted that it had no intention, at all, of stopping them. Under those circumstances, hell yes Mexico would be justified in bombing US military bases. And unlike Gaza, I’d wager that they’d be massive protests and/or attempts to impeach whatever politicians were found guilty for launching rocket attacks on Mexico in the first place.
These points are well made. There is further room for thought here:
How and why does the US media downplay or leave out facts like these? They are fairly crucial.
What happens with public opinion, where the detail of serious colonization by the Israelis is kept from them?
If you judge by what is said the goals are diverse. Alternatively, the inference from what is done is that the goal is to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their home, in furtherance of a greater Judea and Samaria.
It is an open question. Israeli soldiers are documented shooting Palestinian children for sport.
Why not. The British did. And unlike the Hamas bottle-rockets the Israeli terrorists were pretty effective.
The Geneva Conventions, among other things, define the outer bounds of acceptable conduct during wartime. I had never heard that they define what is, and what isn’t, an act of war to begin with, and there’s nothing in the material you quote to indicate that they do so here.
In general, nations consider it an act of war when other nations impede the free flow of commerce to their borders. Whatever GC4 says, we’d consider it a hostile act if Canada prevented normal commercial shipments from other countries from reaching our shores.
You must be operating out of the Gamma Quadrant Dictionary. In the one on my shelf, ‘try to negotiate’ doesn’t mean ‘give the other side whatever it wants.’
Well, if you’re going to restate what I said in a manner that has only the remotest connection to the plain meaning of my words, I’m afraid this is going to be a short conversation.
The non-Palestinian news reports I’ve read don’t regard your ‘facts’ as facts.
Judging by your post, I find it hard to disagree.
No… as should be rather obvious, the 4th GC handles what one nation is allowed to do when it is occupying another nation.In fact the 4th GC has, as its standard throughout, the safety and security of the occupying power. Article 78, for instance, allows an occupying power to assign even protected person to internment if it’s an issue of safety and security for the occupying power.
Nations cannot, however, invade with the design of ethnically cleansing another’s territory. Even if you don’t care about the facts and prefer nifty rhetoric to them, that should begin to give you a clue that even activities undertaken during GC sanctioned occupation are not the same as those undertaken outside of the context of occupation. Or, to put it in even more obvious terms for you, setting up a military blockade on a nation you’re not occupying is an act of war, and wars of aggression are actually against the law (I know, who’d a thunk it? You could try research). Blockading a nation you’re already occupying is not only not against the law, it’s specifically sanctioned by it.
No, you just still need to learn even the basic facts of the issue. Opening the borders for Hamas, which please don’t weasel now, was indeed exactly what you said the goal of negotiation should be, would allow them to freely import weapons.
Which means you’ve called for Hamas to be allowed to freely import weapons.
Which means that, as a result of their terrorism, you believe that Israel should give in to their demands and allow them to freely import weapons.
Funny how you won’t just admit it though.
“I say we kill him, pre-plan it, and carry out the killing with malice aforethought.”
“Wait, you mean murder in the first degree?”
"Ayieee! How dare you! That’s not even remotely what I said. How dare you pay attention to what I said and then repeat it to me!’
Interesting that you can’t even admit to what you’re saying. Why not? Why do engage in such such silly tap dancing to avoid admitting what you yourself are arguing for? You want Israel to allow Hamas to import whatever weapons it can get across the Gaza border. Why not just argue your position instead of this sideways-sidling silliness of saying that Isirael should allow a genocidal enemy to have open borders but (gee wiz) you’re just not sure if that enemy would then import weapons.
Why not just clearly state your position without being disingenuous about the very substance of what you’re asking for?
That’s probably because they’re full of shit.
There’s an object lesson in here, somewhere.
[
](Sources: Gaza death toll from Israeli offensive exceeds 375 - CNN.com)
The bombing campaign ended roughly 48 hours after that point.
This really is fascinating. You compare a campaign of rocket attacks, over years, and allowing other groups to launch rockets even during a truce which Hamas itself agreed to in the territory it governs, while that government itself sponsored terrorist attacks against civilians and rejected the possibility of extending the case fire… with a single attack, which wouldn’t have the support of the government.
And you refuse to recognize that you’re deliberately using a bullshit analogy to sell your agenda.
The truth is that the analogy I just gave pretty much takes all the known and agreed upon facts, and simply substitutes the US government for Hamas.
That the facts of the matter are evidently totally alien to you is, again, interesting. Are you posting without knowing what’s been going on?
Should I be surprised?
It’s always interesting when folks are reduced to such false-to-facts absurdities that they’re calling anti-personnel rockets “bottle-rockets”. It’s a good clue that their arguments cannot support themselves without distortion.