This whole strategy is incredibly counter-productive.

I don’t understand why anyone tries to shield themselves with “We don’t target civilians.”, and I’m not just criticizing Israel here, but I hate when some spokesperson comes on and defends these actions with that insipid line. You knew civilians were going to die when you started this strategy. You chose to kill them them you chose a military strategy that inevitably led to their deaths. Does it really ease your conscience to hide behind such platitudes? Do you think their families care that you didn’t “target” their dead loved ones? Do you think you’ll avoid creating more violent extremists because they’ll think “At least my dead family member weren’t targeted.”

Saying you don’t target or intend to kill civilians when bombing and attacking densely populated civilian areas is like saying you don’t choose to put CO2 and NOx into the air when you drive your car to work. Just come the fuck out and admit it. You believe your security is worth the death of those civilians. Their lives were a price that needed to be paid. That’s the honest answer, and everyone knows it, so why play these games?

Well, no, because it’s a limited area, people can’t escape, and with diligent prosecution of the attacks Israel *can* kill them all.  And it’s already been demonstrated that no outrage would be so great that the US would withdraw its substantial subsidization of the Israeali war machine.  Scuse me, I mean “economy.”

I always love how weapons smuggling to the Palestinians from Iran or Arab nations is painted as a huge and shocking crime, too.  Looking at these pictures makes me want to go out and buy them some anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles myself.

Fuck it - my own organisation does work with an Israeli firm.  It might be worthwhile looking at some way to express outrage through that.

Of course, some of the wingnuts have been arguing that the IDF should target civilians, because the shock and awe will be more effective that way…

You begin to wonder whether even the people mouthing such bull believe it (although the wingnut commentariat makes it clear some people can become deluded enough to believe pretty much anything).

You know, one step towards balancing the US budget might involve suspending aid towards Israel…

I heard the idea of screwing around with Social Security mooted.

I.e. defaulting on part of the US Treasury debt.

Yeah, *that* sounds like a wonderful idea to restore confidence.

You know, one step towards balancing the US budget might involve suspending aid towards Israel…
Phoenician in a time of Romans on 01/08 at 01:59 PM

You know we send aid to countries that do much nastier things than Israel, right?

You know we send aid to countries that do much nastier things than Israel, right?

Perhaps you can make a detailed list, so when those countries come up in a thread you’ll be ready with the info.  But right now we’re talking about Israel.

Perhaps you can make a detailed list, so when those countries come up in a thread you’ll be ready with the info.

Azerbaijan springs to mind most readily, unless boiling your enemies in oil is standard operating procedure now.

I was thinking of the $20 billion in arms sales to a certain absolute, repressive, theocratic monarchy known as Saudi Arabia. But pretty much any central Asian country works, too. Or Colombia (“Drug war” money that goes God knows where).

Does Israel have the right to strike back against launching sites with any means at all?  The school was, supposedly, either the site of a mortar launch or close enough that projectile drift caused the hit.

C’mon, people, be honest—you want a sovereign state denied its right to reply to attacks against its civilian population.  Even the finest-tuned, smallest-scale reply—laser-guided missiles from Predator drones—will inevitably kill bystanders.  Admittedly, using artillery in Gaza is idiocy.  There are no good options, as an Israeli medical 1st responder I actually think Hamas/Hezbollah have found the key to destroying Israel—a democracy cannot use indiscriminate force unless it is, say Croatia.  However, I think the dilemma is perfect:  negotiate, concede, discuss, knowing what Hamas wants, assuming that it is sincere in the words of its Charter, and that the missiles next time will reach Tel Aviv.

I assume that some replies will address the cease-fire.  Why not just admit you think the State of Israel was a historical mistake?

I wouldn’t deny their right to do it. But that’s not the question I’d ask. The question would be, “Would undertaking air strikes, a ground invasion, and a re-occupation of Gaza end up with fewer or more dead people, and would we end up with more or less good will in the world?”. I.e. would it create more problems than it solves?

The answer is clearly yes, it is creating many more problems than it is solving. They have the right to conduct a stupid, counter-productive policy, but that doesn’t mean they should be doing it.

C’mon, people, be honest—you want a sovereign state denied its right to reply to attacks against its civilian population.

Does Palestine also have that right?

Hamas kills 5 Israelis.  Israel kills 500 Palestinians.  Does that mean Hamas now gets to kill 50,000 Israelis?

Or, you know, is there a principle called “proportionality” involved?

Why not just admit you think the State of Israel was a historical mistake?

That’s right—if we think that killing 500+ Palestinians in response to rockets that have killed a grand total of four (4) Israelis since this all began shortly after Christmas was a disproportionate response, that means we all hate Israel and think it should be destroyed.

Yep, that’s us.  You’ve got us there.  Why on earth would anyone think that killing 60 children and wounding hundreds more by bombing a school that people were told to go to for shelter from the bombing would be frowned upon?  The only people who could possibly object to a UN school that was specifically marked as a shelter being bombed are anti-Semites who hate Israel.

I stand humbled by your immense insight that any objection to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people can only be the product of anti-Semitism.

Mnemosyne, to paraphrase the next Senator from Minnesota, right wingers “support” Israel in the same way a four year old “supports” his mommy. Mommy never does anything wrong, ever, and can never be criticized! Mommy is always right.

There are no good options, as an Israeli medical 1st responder I actually think Hamas/Hezbollah have found the key to destroying Israel-

As opposed to Israel nurturing Palestine by shovelling 1.5 million of them into a desert and systematically depriving them of food, water, humanitarian aid and electricity?  And then screaming “victim!” and pounding the shit out of them when groups of hotheads predictably resort to terrorism in response?

Peace is NOT simply a matter of no guns firing.  Israel has not offered Palestine peace, but is more than happy to offer them war.

A plague on both your houses.

Apparently Eurosabra thinks that Israel’s right of defense includes killing Red Cross workers.  And not accidentally by bombing them, but by directly confronting and shooting them.

I guess the Red Cross is full of Israel-hating anti-Semites, too, if they dared go in to Gaza to try and help some of the injured, so those Red Cross workers deserved to die, amiright?

And, hey, now Hezbollah is joining the action!  That disproportionate response is looking like a great strategy now that you have a third group joining in and spreading the rockets.  I guess another invasion of Lebanon is the next step, because that worked out so well last time.

I’m so disgusted by what Israel’s doing right now that I’m with PiaToR about cutting aid to Israel, and to every other nation that does things as bad or worse.

This wasn’t necessary.  It hasn’t stopped the rocket attacks.  It’s making everybody who has lost loved into people who will want revenge against Israel.  Some of them will become suicide bombers, whereas they wouldn’t have been before.  Others will join Hamas after Hamas regroups, or Hezbollah, or another group that’s working against Israel.

And why?  Why the FUCK did they decide on killing hundreds of people in order to prevent another half dozen or so from dying?  Saving half a dozen Israeli lives is not worth the sacrifice of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, and they could be kept safe in other ways.

For instance, those people could evacuate the area the rockets were hitting.  Then the rockets wouldn’t hit anybody.  Israel’s apologists always say that Israel tells people when it’s going to bomb, and tells them to evacuate the area.  That makes it all right, and if people still get killed after that then, those same apologists say, it’s not Israel’s fault.  Well, what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander.  How about the Israelis evacuate, leave their homes, settle in another part of the country until the attacks stop?  They can’t possibly object to being asked to do so; they ask Palestinian civilians to do the same thing to avoid death, so it would be hypocritical to object to it.

Truthfully, if I lived in a place that were under attack, that is exactly what I would do.  I would get the hell away from there.  Who in their right mind wants to live in an unsafe area?

Since I feel like being a smartass towards people who defend this slaughter of Palestinians, here’s an idea for a proportional response from Israel: why doesn’t the IDF launch exactly the same kind of rockets into Palestine?  Think about it; they’re already dead set on doing something that’s going to kill people.  At least if they launched rockets exactly like the ones Hamas is using, they’d kill many, many, many fewer people.  And they could say afterward that they did something, and they could brag about having done something instead of nothing.  Being able to say that they did something seems very important to them.

But no, they don’t want to use the same weapons as Hamas…the weapons that have killed a mere handful of Israelis…because they like to pretend they’re morally superior to Hamas.  They show that moral superiority by bombing Palestine into the stone age and killing more people than these guys with the rockets could ever hope to.

Even the finest-tuned, smallest-scale reply—laser-guided missiles from Predator drones—will inevitably kill bystanders.

Great.  Now, what about Israeli soldiers chasing down and shooting 13 year old girls?  More collateral damage?  Did he mistake her for a missile, perhaps?

I’m terribly sorry for questioning this.  Is my disgust for a nation that has its soldiers chase down and empty ten bullets into fleeing children just more “anti-Semitism”?

C’mon, people, be honest—you want a sovereign state denied its right

What nonsense. States don’t have rights. People have rights.

Self-defense does not include the right to kill defenseless children.

Assuming that there were rockets being launched from the United Nations school (a huge assumption, which I’m not buying, but for the sake of argument) then the response could have been to walk through the school and find the rockets.

Article 51 of the UN Charter.  “Members” refers to states.  Then again, everyone gets pretty flexible about the UN concerning Israel.  And you need to do research on “proportionality” in the laws of war, which does not mean what you think it means.  The Gaza mess was wholly predictable, but I’m telling you—as a former 1st responder with tons of Civil Defense experience in Israel—that the dilemma is PERFECT, either strike back with civilian casualties or allow the development of a permanent, insoluble security threat that will soon take on existential scale.  Hamas should be HAPPIER, they’re getting what they want:  “Israel will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”(Hamas Charter).  While I’m not willing to condone the response, I think smaller-scale ones won’t work either.  The Kobiyashu Maru scenario, if you will.

I know the history, of course.  Has the Red Cross talked to Gilad Shalit lately?  I can tell you as the recipient of a PFLP car bomb placed among Israeli ambulances in Dec ‘01 that medical immunity is a sick joke on both sides, but we’re mainly playing “tu quoque” and your fake universalism gives Hamas a pass for its ineffective rockets but for some reason your objection is to ISRAELI actions.  I just think you’re KIDDING YOURSELVES if you think UNRWA, which is pretty much a Palestinian organization, is able or willing to prohibit “resistance” use of its facilities or that Israelis or international observers could “walk through” a UN school in Gaza.

The large-scale military response is necessitated by Hamas’s control of Gaza and the presence of heavy weapons, which prevents a 1970-style combing of Gaza, which actually WORKED.  Sending in the IDF with instructions to act as a civil police force COULD have worked at some point.  That point passed about 1990.  It’s also nice to know that Hezbollah has decided “go big or go home.”  Real comforting.

Incidentally, Captain R, Piator’s shooter, is a Druze Palestinian of Israeli citizenship from the Galilee.  It’s absolutely horrific that he could give a clearly illegal order without his soldiers objecting, but he acted alone and his men talked freely about the incident as he was not well-liked, there was no closing of ranks.  The initial shooter who wounded the girl should also have been indicted, but was unidentifiable.

Red Cross link does not work.  Incidentally, a few Israelis used a compressed-air cannon to fire vegetables into Gaza as a response.  Israeli response tends to go through state channels because underground groups in Israel are both indiscriminately nasty (cf. the Machteret Yehudit’s attempted bombing of an Arab girls’ school) and a challenge to state power, so they get suppressed.

Firing back effectively against rocket launchers might be the least damaging-response, but that leaves tunnels and stockpiles untouched for Hamas to initiate a wider war when more effective rockets are smuggled in.  And opening the border does nothing to alleviate terror.  There IS NO solution.  As Hamas intended.

There’s a line that separates a moral person from an amoral one, Eurosabra, and as far as I’m concerned both Israel’s leadership and Hamas’ crossed that line when they decided the deaths of civilians were acceptable.

Then you look at which has the most blood on their hands since this started, and its no contest.

It clearly is worth it to the Israeli government.

I hope that someday Ehud Olmert gets tried for war crimes, I really do.

Incidentally, Captain R, Piator’s shooter, is a Druze Palestinian of Israeli citizenship from the Galilee.

Y’see, this is why you are the racist and we are not.  We don’t care about his ethnicity - it’s the “israeli citizen” and “Captain” bit that concerns us.

It’s absolutely horrific that he could give a clearly illegal order without his soldiers objecting, but he acted alone and his men talked freely about the incident as he was not well-liked, there was no closing of ranks.

ES, he chased down a 13 year old girl and emptied a clip from an assault rifle into her.

The IDF charged him with “CONDUCT UNBECOMING AN OFFICER”!!!

Yes, as an individual, he is undoubtably fucked up three ways from Sunday.  But do you not see why people might be disgusted with Israel?

Is my disgust for a nation that has its soldiers chase down and empty ten bullets into fleeing children just more “anti-Semitism”?

No.  It’s only anti-Semitism if you DON’T have disgust for ANY OTHER NATION that has its soldiers kill children.

Thing is, it’s his culture that is relevant, to the extent that he may have had grievances real or imagined against non-Druze Palestinians that a more mainstream Israeli (someone who was not, say, from a hated “heretical” minority of the Islamic world) might not have had.  We can’t really speculate, as he refused to testify.  Druze Israelis are over-represented in the army, and also over-represented among those Israel prosecutes for aiding the enemy, and a Circassian was framed by the military police for weapons trafficking.  All that tells us is that there’s a chicken-and-egg problem of cultural minorities in the IDF.  Certainly his men regarded him as an authoritarian, abrasive type, ill-suited to command, and whether that arose from his personal psychology or any slights he may have felt as a Druze in the army is unknown.  But thank you for the venom.

It’s worse, actually:  he approached a wounded, immobile girl and riddled her with bullets.  No one tried to stop him even though he was disliked by most of his men and clearly intended to commit a crime.  The “conduct unbecoming” was because none of his men would testify that he shot *the girl* rather than appearing to fire into the ground near her body because the initial shooter was unknown, and quite possibly in their calculus that meant that ANY of them could be charged with murder.  Witnesses whose possible perjury is unproven and unprovable are a pain.

No.  It’s only anti-Semitism if you DON’T have disgust for ANY OTHER NATION that has its soldiers kill children.

Interestingly enough, I don’t see a Serbian on this thread talking about how it is necessarily to shoot Bosnian children.  When I see one, I shall also express my disgust.

The difference between Serbia and Israel is that Israel has been carrying out the ethnic cleansing slowly to try and keep the PR cost down, and Israel picked the better superpower as a sponsor.

Piator:  Okay, so what you are saying is soldiers killing children is NOT enough for you to feel disgust for a nation?  Instead, you feel disgust for a nation when several of its more extremist members argue that it is necessary to kill children?  Okay.  And, are you saying that you have never, ever seen an example of a non-Israeli advocating or justifying the killing of children by non-Israeli soldiers?  I mean, haven’t Palestinian soldiers deliberately killed children?  And haven’t (some of) their compatriots celebrated those acts?