the Israeli army has finaly let a UN fact finding mission in Jenin, maybe we will find out more facts in what happened there.
First off, the media bias: Here is the quote from the BBC on the impartial expert who says that there was a massacre
Or to quote Judge Roy Bean
He knows “the truth” before seeing the evidence, guilty unless proven innocent. No bias here.
But according to efrem my thinking that
Nope, you never called me a racist.
Funny thing. When the subject is a Jew suspecting that someone’s motivation for pervasive distortions and lies about Israel’s record is antisemitism, there is no shortage of posters to jump up and declare it unfair. Yet when a poster calls a Jew rascist for believing that the press is biased for Palestinian causes … it remains very quiet. Funny. I wonder why?
And, no, I can’t be more direct. It would require taking it to The Pit. I generally don’t go there. Not my style.
I attack Sweet Willy in order to establish the possibility that his posts might be distorted. In this case, Sweet Willy didn’t make a strong point. He said that he’d “heard” about something. His statement had no support, and I, for some reason I don’t completely understand, decided to take the action I did instead of asking for him to support his statements. This was a mistake, I’ll admit, but if Sweet Willy had made a stronger point to begin with, I might have tried to address it.
The Palestinian claim that the Israelis have slaughtered hundreds and then buried them in mass graves under the rubble of demolished houses is extremely suspect.
Why? Because it makes no sense. That rubble will be cleared away eventually, and it will become obvious if there are graves there or not. And if there were, the Israelis would take tremendous amounts of flak for it, because they have claimed that they didn’t do that.
They did dig a mass grave or two, simply to get the decaying bodies off the streets. They are now letting relatives re-dig those graves to give the people proper burials. I don’t believe they are hiding anything.
The Israelis say that no more than “A few dozen” people were killed, most of whom were armed men resisting. Of course, there is also collateral damage, which happens in almost any military action.
Also, what evidence do we have that a massacre actually occurred? It seems to me that little has been discovered, except perhaps a few civillians who were killed in the cross-fire (though I do recall having heard an Israeli…I can’t remember, he was on Nightline last night, but he said they told civillians to leave.)
told civilians to leave… Was that before or after they bulldozed their house? And if it was before how do explain body parts sticking out from under the rubble and the stench of rotting corpses?
An investigation needs to take place, but if even 2 dozen civilians were killed it would still be a massacre in the same way that the passover bombing was.
Could you please just read what he said in your own quote, before you make these accusations.
*“I must say that the evidence before us at the moment doesn’t lead us to believe that the allegations are anything other than truthful and that therefore there are large numbers of civilian dead underneath these bulldozed and bombed ruins that we see.” *
He makes the statement based on the evidence before him, not “before seeing the evidence” or “guilty unless proven innocent” how is this guy not impartial?
BTW since you are so adament about the right of due process and innocent before proven gulity what do you think about the campaign of assassination for any Palestinian deemed a threat by the Israeli Government. I bet you are willing to yell from the rooftops on this injust and horrific practice of liquidation and extra-judicial killings carryed out by the Israeli Government, right?
When you answer please remember; to make one set of rules for Israel, and another for the Palestinians is racist reasoning.
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I didn’t call you or anyone else on this board a racist. However, I repeat for the umpteenth time (hyperbole, don’t really check the # of times) to concider these deaths of Palestinians any less tragic then if they were Israelis, is racist.
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1. For the (hopefuly)last time, I never called you a racist. I do believe to have a “sub-catagory” for dealing with Palestinians is racist.
2. Read my words, I said: “However, if you seriously think that the whole “world media consistently reports in a Palestinian slant” maybe it’s your objectiveness that should be in question?”. Have you addressed this?
3. Are you accusing me of “pervasive distortions and lies about Israel’s record”? If so, I cited all my sources I do suggest you read them.
Please, you can be as descripive as you want without using any swear words here. I can’t reply to your comment without knowing what you said, and if you don’t want to explain what you meant then retact your statement.
here they report that:
“Palestinian medical sources said about 40 bodies have so far been recovered, while a Jenin hospital official said the body count was expected to climb.”
Only time will tell just how bad this could get.
Please, let’s not forget the difference between body count and morality. There could be hundreds of dead, but if it turns out that the vast majority of them were activists shooting at Israelis, then Israel did nothing wrong.
And by all accounts, there WERE a lot of people shooting at Israelis in Jenin. I saw an interview with a ‘gunman’ who had lost an arm to shrapnel, and he was bragging about what a fight his group gave the Israelis. He said that there was a large group of them, and that only one or two got out of Jenin alive.
Israel itself says that the action in Jenin was due to their being large pockets of terrorists in the town, and the amount of arms and explosives they have collected would back that up.
So I *expect there to be dozens of dead people. Israel SAYS there are dozens of dead people. So if there are 40, 50, 150 bodies, but most of them are palestinian adults or older teenagers, then it’s going to be hard to prove that Israel did anything wrong.
What I’d be looking for as evidence of wrongdoing would be a large number of houses destroyed, in which we find the bodies of women and children.
Given the fact that Israel lost something like 26 soldiers in Jenin, and given the historical effectiveness of the Israeli military, I would expect that they were facing hundreds of armed opponents. If that’s the case, then I also expect there to be a fair number of civilian casualties. You just can’t conduct massive urban warfare campaigns without getting innocents. A guy shoots a rifle from a window - you respond with a .50 cal machine gun burst. With that kind of ordnance flying around, there WILL be innocents killed.
The morality of action is not determined by the number of deaths. The U.S. has killed thousands of innocent people over the years in various military actions. My neigborhood in Edmonton is mourning right now because four Canadians from here were killed by a U.S. aircraft a few days ago. Those four guys went to the same corner pub we hang out in. So I understand collateral deaths. It happens. But the morality of the act is determined by the context, not the body count.
efrem: Well, just to throw DSeid a bone 
, you said:
Though you may have not meant it exactly that way, the implication here is that DSeid or anybody who believes that the reports of a massacre may be inaccurate or wrong because of some pro-Palestinian bias that may infect the media ( and DSeid is demonstrably of this opinion ), then they are racist. But this is incorrect. There is nothing inherently racist about believing that the mass media ( of one sort or another, or in one place or another ) has a pro-whoever slant and therefore their reporting might be a little suspect, barring firm confirmation. He might be wrong ( and I believe in part he is - the media is both pro-Palestinian ANDS pro-Israeli, depending on the time, place, and what will ratchet up the ratings the most - massacres are “sexy type” from a journalist perspective ), but he’s not necessarily racist.
On the other hand, to throw you your own bone…
…I agree fully with this ( as long as we are talking comparable figures - i.e. the deaths of Palestinian ands Israeli civilians are no more or less tragic than the other ).
But that is not quite what you said above. Perhaps a wording problem on your part ( I make them constantly ).
- Tamerlane
In fact I just did ( screw up my wording that is ). I’m apparently just horrible at on-the-fly revisions 
.
- Tamerlane
Did nothing wrong? Depends on the point of view. If some foreign military units where entering my hometown, I suppose that in most cases I would consider the “activists shooting at them” very right, and the soldiers killing these activists very wrong.
In the people killed were only (or in their overwhelming majority) fighters, you could certainly state that Tsahal isn’t guilty of commiting a massacre. But to state that “Israel did nothing wrong”, you have to assume that they were right to enter in Jenin (or anywhere else).
Since I personnally believe that Tsahal was wrong when entering in these towns at the first place, even if only fighters were killed, I certainly wouldn’t state that “Israel did nothing wrong”. They, in my opinion did something which was very wrong. At best, I won’t learn it was even worse than expected.
Some people here state that it’s a war, so civilian deaths are unfortunate but unavoidable. I state that this war is unjust, hence these civilian (and even military) deaths were both avoidable and unjustified.
Okay efrem you want it direct. You have officially been given the benefit of the doubt. I have long suspected that your motivations are antisemitic because I couldn’t imagine that anyone could be so stupid as to habitually misrepresent data and twist basic logic. I generally would never call someone that, even when convinced, because I do not know for sure, and it accomplishes little. But I’m willing to believe that you are just an absolute idiot.
To call my thinking “ouright, disgusting, and balatant racism” isn’t calling me a racist … just my thinking and motivations. My toenails are not racist, huh.
This is the kind of logic your posts consist of.
The BBC report. Do you process words or just look at them as individual things to twist as you please? Let me type slowly … the … quoted … BBC … eh. The quote illustrates that he felt he already knows the truth, that this was a Bosnia (phrase 1) despite the fact that he has not yet seen any evidence of such. His presumption is that the allegations are true unless proven false, that the IDF is guilty unless evidence proves their innocence. (phrase 2)
At no time did I claim that any death is not tragic (although there are some whose deaths I would not mourn) and certainly I did not state that innocent Arabs of the West Bank dieing is any less tragic than that of Jews in Haifa. I did say that having murder as your goal is different than a bystander being killed by police in crossfire with bad guys. The police may be guilty of poor judgement. They may be somewhat responsible. But it isn’t murder. In the Branch Davidian standoff the US government made some errors of judgement that resulted in the deaths of women and children. It could be called murder (or a massacre) if the deaths of the women and children was intended. But whether or not it was intentional it was tragic. What part of “intent matters” do you not comprehend?
Civilian casualties during a military operation is not the same as murder. Usually they are difficult to avoid. In a situation where hundreds of terrorist were engaging in a firefight and boobytrapping buildings and alleyways, I would imagine that people will get killed no matter how much the intent is to avoid it. If, as the IDF departs, hundred of middle aged women and children (those clearly not likely to be terrorist threats) are found buried, then such charges should get press play. Without such evidence then the eagerness to portray the IDF as guilty of a massacre is biased to be most polite.
And Tamerlane, no offense, but you can keep your bone to yourself.
Let’s say that all actions in Jenin where appropriate. Soldiers targeted terrorists and the civilian casualties where accidental and unavoidable.
How about what happened after the initial actions. The delay in letting in aid to the camp IMO was disgraceful.
Sorry if I came of as patronizing, I was just trying to lighten my tone a bit. But it was probably bad timing on my part. My apologies.
- Tamerlane
Well, maybe. According to an article in the Jerusalem Post, Israel nixes UN’s Larsen, Robinson as fact-finders’ “Israel has agreed to cooperate with a UN fact-finding committee investigating the battle in Jenin, as long as it does not include UN Middle East envoy Terje Larsen or UN Human Rights High Commissioner Mary Robinson.” (italics added). So this is beginning to look like an Iraq-style situation, where all kinds of conditions are added to block anyone from ever actually investigating.
Thousands of people work for the UN. These 3 have demonstrated and are committed to an extreme anti-Israel position. Obviously their findings could be suspected of bias. The UN ought not want them to be part of the group either, for that reason.
Please tell me where I misrepresented data, in all of my posts I clearly stated what I meant and my source. Again if you have a problem with any of my sources, show them.
Also is it because I disagree with you or disagree with Israeli policy, you claim my “motivations are antisemitic”. Believe that if you want, but to say that for someone who criticizes Israeli policy (you will find that there is a lot of those who do) only cheapins the word for people who are really suffering through Anti-Jewish attacks.
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Your right, it does acomplish nothing. Also while attacking someone’s agrument is allowed, I don’t believe personal insults like: “stupid and idiot” are in GD. My stupidity (although might rightly be agrued) is not an issue, and only serves to provoke anger not suited for this form.
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Yes, I tried to not outright point to you (or anyone else on this board) and say “s/he is a racist!”, because it might be unproductive in alienating that person or catogoryizing him/her in a neat little box marked “racist”. While people might believe one thing or an other; to put publicly put them “in a box marked racist” would be to ignore everything about them, and go by what little you can piece together from what they said on this board. This would be neither helpful or accurate. So, I state the only thing I can be sure of, “to hold an Israeli life over a Palestinian life would be racist”, is it not true?
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I don’t get it?
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Please, I addressed this in my last post. Read his statements again his exact words were:
*"The truth will come out, as it has come out in Bosnia and Kosovo, as it has in other places where we’ve had these kinds of allegations. (it sounds like he is raliroading the IDF like DSeid said, BUT WAIT he has more to say)
I must say that the evidence before us at the moment doesn’t lead us to believe that the allegations are anything other than truthful and that therefore there are large numbers of civilian dead underneath these bulldozed and bombed ruins that we see."*
He is making this claim on "the evidence before us at the moment" not as you claim "despite the fact that he has not yet seen any evidence of such". I would agree with you, IF he didn’t make that last stament.
Also I repeat my words and say, since you are so vocal about the RIGHT to due process and innocent unless proven gulity (you claimed as much in defence of the Israeli army). What do you think about the Israeli campaign of assassination for any Palestinian deemed a threat by the Government. You think it is an injust and horrfic practice of extra-judicial extermination and murder, right? Please, remember when you answer this “to hold laws less to an Israeli then a Palestinian is racist”. I will be waiting for your answer.
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We weren’t talking about the average Palestinian shot dead by the Israeli police (that is for a new thread) we were talking about the massacre at Jenin by the Israeli army.
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I stated why I think they were intental four posts ago. You haven’t accepted or refuted them.
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Civilian casualties during a military operation goes to intent, the army either intended for civilians to be bulldozed over or they didn’t care, reguardless they are dead Palestinians. You might be willing to accept this, but if it happened to your family/hometown would you? If you wouldn’t, then your only reason for accepting the deaths is that they happened to Palestinians and that is racist.
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Again, I showed you why I believe it was a massacre four posts ago. Please read them, and accept or refute them.
Your attempt to “bridge the gap” was not lost on me, and maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh in condemnation. However, to my denfence if I did call him a racist, because he believed the media has a pro-Palestinian bias, I was wrong.
However, I clearly corrected myself and said: “All right, “to each his own”. However, if you seriously think that the whole “world media consistently reports in a Palestinian slant” maybe it’s your objectiveness that should be in question?”