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Jandar
Joined: 11 Jun 2008
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 Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 2:56 am Post subject: |
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| They have already admitted that Hamas uses human shields. |
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RJjr
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: Turning on a Lamp
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:26 am Post subject: |
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| sojourner1 wrote: |
| Scared shitless. Why can't they stop fighting over there? They just never come to an end to this conflict. |
Someday in the future, when the Chinese inevitably welcome themselves to the Middle East for oil resources and frontage on the Mediterranean, the conflict will come to an abrupt halt. |
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rusty1983
Joined: 30 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 11:02 am Post subject: |
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| RJjr wrote: |
| sojourner1 wrote: |
| Scared shitless. Why can't they stop fighting over there? They just never come to an end to this conflict. |
Someday in the future, when the Chinese inevitably welcome themselves to the Middle East for oil resources and frontage on the Mediterranean, the conflict will come to an abrupt halt. |
This is interesting! Wouldnt they have to muscle America out first? Dont know how much there would be left of the Middle East (or anywhere else for that matter) after that battle. |
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RJjr
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: Turning on a Lamp
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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| rusty1983 wrote: |
| RJjr wrote: |
| sojourner1 wrote: |
| Scared shitless. Why can't they stop fighting over there? They just never come to an end to this conflict. |
Someday in the future, when the Chinese inevitably welcome themselves to the Middle East for oil resources and frontage on the Mediterranean, the conflict will come to an abrupt halt. |
This is interesting! Wouldnt they have to muscle America out first? Dont know how much there would be left of the Middle East (or anywhere else for that matter) after that battle. |
How many decades or centuries will our military be there? We won't stay there for all of eternity, even though it may seem that way now. Besides, it's been proven time and time again in places like Vietnam and Somalia that we're not invincible. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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| RJjr wrote: |
| Besides, it's been proven time and time again in places like Vietnam and Somalia that we're not invincible. |
Vietnam has already been kicked around in this thread, but are you seriously suggesting that Somali forces defeated the US?
Guy, that was a peacekeeping mission that lost public support after the helicopter went down and Americans saw what a bunch of animals were living in that place. That's why the plug was pulled on that very limited mission, not because the Somalis proved more than a match for the US military. |
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RJjr
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: Turning on a Lamp
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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Let's not kid ourselves. Going into the mission, we already knew the place was a zoo. We ostensibly went into Somalia because the people were animals, but pulled out because of casualties.
And the problem was more than just a helicopter going down. In the Battle of Mogadishu, two Blackhawks were shot down, three more helicopters were damaged, 18 American soldiers were killed, 83 more were wounded, and some of our dead soldiers were dragged through the streets by the Somalis. Then, we left.
Mission not accomplished. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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| RJjr wrote: |
Let's not kid ourselves. Going into the mission, we already knew the place was a zoo. We ostensibly went into Somalia because the people were animals, but pulled out because of casualties.
And the problem was more than just a helicopter going down. In the Battle of Mogadishu, two Blackhawks were shot down, three more helicopters were damaged, 18 American soldiers were killed, 83 more were wounded, and some of our dead soldiers were dragged through the streets by the Somalis. Then, we left.
Mission not accomplished. |
Well, that's American democracy, I guess. Maybe the Muslim world is right and we don't have the stomach for troop casualties. The public wants to believe in noble causes, so the mass killing of indigenous populations results in a PR nightmare.
Vietnam was winnable, but it would have involved killing millions of Vietnamese, Chinese and others. Public support wasn't there. |
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Jandar
Joined: 11 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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Somalia and Vietnam have their own threads.
This thread is to Demonstrate how Hamas leadership in Damascus uses children as Human Shields in Gaza. |
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RJjr
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: Turning on a Lamp
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Using a human shield would be a feasible defense tactic if Hamas was fighting American soldiers, but they're fighting Israelis so why bother? If Hamas was using Jewish kids as human shields, that would work, but not Arab kids. Typical government incompetence. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 1:24 am Post subject: |
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| RJjr wrote: |
| Using a human shield would be a feasible defense tactic if Hamas was fighting American soldiers, but they're fighting Israelis so why bother? If Hamas was using Jewish kids as human shields, that would work, but not Arab kids. Typical government incompetence. |
That brought a wry smile. |
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daskalos
Joined: 19 May 2006
Location: The Road to Ithaca
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| Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 10:08 am Post subject: |
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I know I won't gain any friends on this board by mentioning this, but Christ Jesus doesn't it just piss me off when anyone implies that an innocent child's life is somehow more important than an innocent adult's life.
I get it, I'm not a parent and I never will be, but why the hell should the age of an innocent be a factor in a rational point, unless the place from which we argue is purely an emotional one?
If innocent people are being slaughtered, their ages are irrelevant. If little ten-year-old bastards are allowing themselves to be used as human bombs, the guilt lies with their parents. If 16-year-olds are doing so, *beep* 'em, they're no longer innocent, however earnest they are.
I'm not saying I can't understand why any quasi-adult Arab might strap onto himself a bomb, I'm just saying that I can't see why the death of an innocent child seems to carry more emotional weight than the death of an innocent adult, even if that adult did have the possibility of not voting for terrorists to be his/her public face.
I'm not getting it, and I want to, but not on the basis of an appeal to emotional horror. |
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rusty1983
Joined: 30 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:57 pm Post subject: |
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| daskalos wrote: |
I know I won't gain any friends on this board by mentioning this, but Christ Jesus doesn't it just piss me off when anyone implies that an innocent child's life is somehow more important than an innocent adult's life.
I get it, I'm not a parent and I never will be, but why the hell should the age of an innocent be a factor in a rational point, unless the place from which we argue is purely an emotional one?
If innocent people are being slaughtered, their ages are irrelevant. If little ten-year-old bastards are allowing themselves to be used as human bombs, the guilt lies with their parents. If 16-year-olds are doing so, *beep* 'em, they're no longer innocent, however earnest they are.
I'm not saying I can't understand why any quasi-adult Arab might strap onto himself a bomb, I'm just saying that I can't see why the death of an innocent child seems to carry more emotional weight than the death of an innocent adult, even if that adult did have the possibility of not voting for terrorists to be his/her public face.
I'm not getting it, and I want to, but not on the basis of an appeal to emotional horror. |
It's an interesting point and well made. Someone mentioned on these boards that childhood is a recent creation. Not so long ago as soon as you were big and strong enough to do manual labour you were effectively out there making money the same as adults.
I think the emotional weight parents carry imagining their own children in these situations is really heavy, and most people like to look back on their own childhood as innocent and carefree. Times like these show that in many places in the world childhood as we know it is an alien fantasy. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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Children of GazaA freelance filmmaker in Gaza shot this material for Save the Children at a UN-supported school for pupils displaced from their homes by the Israeli bombings
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Children of Gaza
Save the Children have an online petition, though I suspect only Brits may participate, as it asks for a postcode.
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/
daskalos, I'll reply to your post a little later when I have more time. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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[url]'They've killed us. Me, Amal and Soso They've gone to heaven'[/url]
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Four-year-old Samer Abed Rabbo lay half-covered by a blanket yesterday in her hospital bed as she tried to explain the bullets that crippled her and killed her two sisters.
Samer was hit by a bullet in the back that damaged her spinal cord and left her arms and legs paralysed, probably permanently. Her sisters Amal, two, and Suad, eight, who was nicknamed Soso, were killed outright when their house in northern Gaza came under attack from an Israeli tank last week.
"They killed us. We're dead. Me, Amal and Soso. They've gone to heaven," she said. "I was at home. The Jews destroyed the house and I don't want to go back there. I love Amal and Soso."
Israel's military says it does not target civilians and blames Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza, for the high civilian casualty toll because it fights from within urban areas. The Israeli military is in turn accused of using its immense firepower indiscriminately in built-up areas packed with civilian families trying to shelter from the fighting. More than half of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants are children.
The extraordinary number of civilian deaths, and of children in particular, is for many a defining and shocking feature of this 18-day offensive. The figures are stark. At least 910 Palestinians are dead, among them 292 children. At least 4,250 are injured, among them 1,497 children. Many have injuries that will leave them permanently disabled and facing more operations and months or years of rehabilitation therapy.
Samer and her sisters lived on the eastern edge of Jabaliya, a poor farming area close to the border with Israel and the site of many militant rocket launches and Israeli incursions in the past. At around 11am last Wednesday they saw Israeli tanks approaching.
"The tanks moved closer but before they arrived in front of our house they started shelling," said the girls' mother Kawather Abed Rabbo, 29. "They attacked the upper floors and destroyed them. We stayed on the ground floor."
The house next door was also hit. Then the children's grandmother decided they should run to safety. She opened the door, with the girls following close behind her. "They had a white flag, made out of our scarves. But as they opened the door there was machine gun fire from the tank." Their father, Mahmoud, pulled the girls back into the house and called an ambulance. But Amal and Suad were already dead.
They waited an hour until the ambulance got as near as it could, then the parents and an uncle each picked up one of the girls and walked out for around 500 metres to the main road. "We walked past the tanks and the soldiers were telling us in Hebrew to hurry," Abed Rabbo said. There they met the ambulance and were rushed to a nearby hospital and then on to the Shifa hospital in central Gaza City.
Abed Rabbo said she was not aware of any militants near the house when the Israeli tanks arrived, though she admitted it had been a "dangerous" area in the past, caught between militant rocket launchers and Israeli raids. "We're not fighters but the Israeli army are so scared they think every child can resist," she said.
Efforts are under way to take Samer out of Gaza and fly her to Belgium for an operation on her spinal cord. Her doctor, Nabil Hadad, said he believed she had been hit by a large machine gun bullet, which entered her back, hit her spine and then exited, leaving her with quadriplegia and spinal cord damage.
The hospital is full of similar stories. In the intensive care unit yesterday was Muhammad Baha, 10, who had been brought in from Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza. He had been hit in the head by shrapnel and was spending his fourth day in a coma in a critical condition.
In another room was Muhammad Samouni, five, one of the survivors of an Israeli attack on a house in Zeitoun last week in which up to 30 members of one family were killed as they sheltered from the bombing. Muhammad's right arm was broken in several places and he wears a metal brace pinned into the skin. His uncle, Awani Deeb, 22, sleeps on the floor next to his bed. "Every night he wakes from his sleep screaming 'Warplane, warplane'," he said.
"I"m afraid of the missiles at night," said Muhammad. "Last night they were attacking again. The sound is so loud."
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canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
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| Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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To answer the OP:
It sucks. |
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