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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Hotwire wrote: |
^^^^
In an ideal world, sure. |
What? No. In an ideal world, the woman wouldn't get raped. Regardless of whether the world is ideal or not, the woman doesn't deserve to get raped. Or are you seriously sitting here arguing women deserve to get raped because the world isn't ideal? Is that what you're saying? That civilians living in dangerous places deserve to get murdered and women deserve to get raped because the world isn't ideal? Because if you aren't saying that, then you aren't interacting with my argument.
| Hotwire wrote: |
| Ignorance based on idealisation of how one wants the world to be is a dangerous thing. |
Yes, it is, but that doesn't mean they deserved to get murdered. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Hotwire wrote: |
| That said it was a millitary incident and she COULD have been a geurillla carrying a mine / grenade / IED etc. |
From the article:
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| In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot. |
Since they'd determined the bag wasn't a threat, and since she was now heading away from them, why did he need to follow her and shoot her?
There is a feeling of impunity in the IDF (probably the norm in an occupying army) where it is understood that they will rarely be prosecuted (almost never) for such incidences, and almost never found guilty. I can only think of a couple of cases where a guilty verdict was returned. The IDF marksman (a Beduoin) who killed Thomas Hurndall and more recently an IDF soldier found guilty of unlawfully killing a 10 year old boy. An Israeli friend who did his national service not long after the intifada broke out at the turn of the century once talked very grimly of an incident where his fellow soldiers fired blindly over their shoulders (behind them) into streets with young boys and joked "what children!? I can't see any children!?" He didn't say if anyone was hit and I didn't ask - I think I was too shocked.
http://www.counterpunch.org/kchristison1022.html
| Quote: |
An Israeli journalist conducted a lengthy interview with an Israeli sharpshooter in November 2000, who described himself as very careful about when he fired and described IDF orders for opening fire as "moderate"--meaning "sharpshooters are given precise orders to open fire. On people who throw firebombs, you aim for the legs, but people who pull out weapons can be shot straight on." They discussed the permissible age of Palestinian targets. "You haven't shot children? All the sharpshooters haven't shot children. If they were children, they were mistakes. They forbid us to shoot at children. How do they say this? You don't shoot a child who is 12 or younger. That is, a child of 12 or older is allowed? Twelve and up is allowed. He's not a child any more, he's already after his bar mitzvah. Something like that. Thirteen is bar mitzvah age. Twelve and up, you're allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us. Again: twelve and up you're allowed to shoot children. Because this already doesn't look to me like a child by definition. So, according to the IDF, it is 12? According to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don't know if this is what the IDF says to the media. In the 10 seconds that I have, I have to estimate how old he is. And in what the direction the wind is blowing, and the deviation here and there, and which way he'll jump the next moment. Yes, but there are hardly any mistakes by sharpshooters. The mistakes are made by people who aren't sharpshooters. And it turns out that they happen to hit the children's heads, and all this is just by chance? If you say you have seen children that have been hit in the head a lot, then it is sharpshooters." ["Don't Shoot Till You Can See They're Over the Age of 12," by Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, November 20, 2000]
Another American reporter described the following incident in Gaza in June 2001: "It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker. 'Come on, dogs,' the voice booms in Arabic. 'Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!' I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: 'Son of a bitch!' 'Son of a *beep*!' 'Your mother's cunt!' The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos. Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered--death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo--but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport." ["A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising," by Chris Hedges, Harper's magazine, October 2001] |
Palestinian life is cheap.
All I can say is that I am so grateful my two young boys do not live under occupation. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Another American reporter described the following incident in Gaza in June 2001: "It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker. 'Come on, dogs,' the voice booms in Arabic. 'Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!' I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: 'Son of a bitch!' 'Son of a *beep*!' 'Your mother's cunt!' The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos. Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered--death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo--but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport." ["A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising," by Chris Hedges, Harper's magazine, October 2001 |
Jesus. What do they think is going to be the outcome of this. This kind of behavior is suicidal. There are more than 350 million Arabs. |
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Hotwire
Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Location: Multiverse
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| Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 9:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Hotwire wrote: |
^^^^
In an ideal world, sure. |
What? No. In an ideal world, the woman wouldn't get raped. Regardless of whether the world is ideal or not, the woman doesn't deserve to get raped. Or are you seriously sitting here arguing women deserve to get raped because the world isn't ideal? Is that what you're saying?
IT IS OBVIOUS I AM NOT SAYING SHE DESERVES IT. I'LL LEAVE THAT THERE.
I AM SAYING SHE WILL GET RAPED THUS SHOULD BE MORE VIGILANT. THIS IS A REALITY OF THE WORLD. YOU CANNOT DEFEND YOURSELF IN A RIO SLUM WITH MORAL JUDGEMENTS.
That civilians living in dangerous places deserve to get murdered and women deserve to get raped because the world isn't ideal? Because if you aren't saying that, then you aren't interacting with my argument.
NEVER ONCE SAID THAT. AND YOU KNOW IT. QUIT THE SPURIOUS HYERBOLE PLEASE IF NOT FOR ME THAN OUT OF RESPECT TO THE OTHER POSTERS IN THE THREAD.
| Hotwire wrote: |
| Ignorance based on idealisation of how one wants the world to be is a dangerous thing. |
Yes, it is, but that doesn't mean they deserved to get murdered.
I NEVER ONCE MENTIONED THE WORD 'DESERVED' YET YOU HAVE PEPPERED YOUR RESPONSE TO MY POST WITH IT. HMMM.
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Damn bold, underline, color, italics not working on this computer. Internet super slow too, so I'm not sure how this will come out. Hence the caps. Beginging to think torrents are not good for computers. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 9:24 pm Post subject: |
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Please don't respond in my quote box. It's lazy and imprecise. Most of us use nested quotes for a reason: they are highly legible and lend themselves to on-going conversation.
| Hotwire wrote: |
| IT IS OBVIOUS I AM NOT SAYING SHE DESERVES IT. I'LL LEAVE THAT THERE. |
If you aren't saying she deserves it, then you aren't arguing with me. If you aren't arguing with me, then there's nothing for us to discuss, as I don't find anything particularly interesting or discussion worthy about the totally obvious and non-controversial claim that sometimes people put themselves in dangerous circumstances.
| Hotwire wrote: |
| QUIT THE SPURIOUS HYERBOLE PLEASE IF NOT FOR ME THAN OUT OF RESPECT TO THE OTHER POSTERS IN THE THREAD. |
I was not engaging in hyperbole. Rather, I was generously trying to give you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you were actually adding something to the conversation instead of posting something totally unimportant. Obviously I was wrong to do so.
| Hotwire wrote: |
| I NEVER ONCE MENTIONED THE WORD 'DESERVED' YET YOU HAVE PEPPERED YOUR RESPONSE TO MY POST WITH IT. HMMM. |
Of course I've peppered my response with it. It was the topic of the post of mine to which you responded. If you didn't want to talk about desert, then you had no business responding to my post at all. Again, I was evidently wrong to you were actually trying to make a salient point. Instead you were evidently saying, "Hey, sometimes people go to dangerous places!" |
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geldedgoat
Joined: 05 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 10:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Another American reporter described the following incident in Gaza in June 2001: "It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker. 'Come on, dogs,' the voice booms in Arabic. 'Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!' I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: 'Son of a bitch!' 'Son of a *beep*!' 'Your mother's cunt!' The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos. Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered--death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo--but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport." ["A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising," by Chris Hedges, Harper's magazine, October 2001 |
Is this from a movie? A book maybe? |
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Reggie
Joined: 21 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 10:34 pm Post subject: |
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| And my tax dollars financed the execution of the girl thanks to Israel first Jews in America. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 4:47 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Another American reporter described the following incident in Gaza in June 2001: "It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker. 'Come on, dogs,' the voice booms in Arabic. 'Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!' I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: 'Son of a bitch!' 'Son of a *beep*!' 'Your mother's cunt!' The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos. Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered--death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo--but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport." ["A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising," by Chris Hedges, Harper's magazine, October 2001 |
Jesus. What do they think is going to be the outcome of this. This kind of behavior is suicidal. There are more than 350 million Arabs. |
Good thing it probably didn't happen then.
http://honestreporting.com/articles/critiques/Eyeless_in_Gaza_-_Part_2.asp
As the link points out Hedges fails to provide any evidence that he actually was there and saw these things..."no photos no videos no outside verification"
A professional reporter failing to provide a single shred of proof? Then again for the anti-Israeli crowd proof is just an inconvenience. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 4:57 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
-Edit: Missed that Leon had made two posts.
| Leon wrote: |
| It is not an intellectually dishonest view to say that settlers are an antagonistic group that Palestinians could reasonably view as an enemy. The actions of the settles have real consequences for the Palestinians, it's not entirely out of line to think of them as an invading force. |
It is intellectually dishonest. Justification for killing civilians is justification for killing civilians. It's that simple; there's no nuance here. Murder of civilians is murder of civilians. The fact that these settlements at times result in deaths (both Palestinian and Israeli) is certainly a factor the Israeli government needs to take into account with regards to it's decisions regarding them, but with regard to the incident itself, it's meaningless.
| Leon wrote: |
| Where did I say it was acceptable for Hamas to kill people. |
Someone pointed out Hamas murdered four civilians. Your response was that they were settlers, and thus, "a touch different" than civilians. Now, either their "difference" mitigates to some extent the severity of Hamas' offense, or it doesn't. If it does, then you are to some extent lessening Hamas' culpability based on where these people chose to live. If it doesn't, then your statement was wholly irrelevant to the conversation. I personally don't think you're in the business of making random irrelevant statements, so I very reasonably interpretted your statement as I did.
| Leon wrote: |
| It's not acceptable, but it isn't arbitrary. |
Murder being less arbitrary doesn't make it more tolerable or ethical. Most murders aren't arbitrary; murderers generally have a reason. Again, you're trying to mince words here in defense of Hamas. Perhaps you aren't trying to excuse them completely, but you are trying to excuse them to some extent (or, alternatively, you are just pointing out random facts about the situation which have no real import within the context of the discussion, but we both know you aren't).
| Leon wrote: |
| The opening of settlements is in and of itself a antagonistic act, so therefore the is push back. |
And here we are with another attempt to excuse Hamas, at least to some degree.
| Leon wrote: |
| Many of the settlements aren't legal, I don't know if the four were legal or illegal settlers, but I do think it makes a difference. |
Mises sums up my response to this perfectly:
| mises wrote: |
| A civilian is a civilian, regardless of where they decide to live. |
| hotwire wrote: |
Fox's analogy is completely misleading.
It should be more along the lines of
"Yes, and a woman who walks around at night in a Brazillian Slum full of crack dealers, rapists and gangbangers in a miniskirt is virtually asking to be raped, right?"
More fitting to the circumstances I believe. |
You say my analogy is completely misleading, then you slightly modify it in such a fashion that the overall point remains exactly the same: regardless of what the woman wears, or where she choses to walk, she doesn't deserve to be raped. Not even a little bit. The same goes for the settlers; where ever they chose to live, they don't deserve to be murdered by Hamas. Not even a little bit. |
I'll make a blanket statement, I think that no one deserves to die regardless of war or anything else. Both Hamas and the IDF are morally culpable for their actions as groups and as individuals in groups. Arguing about morality of killing in war, including collateral damage is futile.
That being said to kill a settler is strategically different than to kill a civilian. What Hamas is doing is the same thing that Israel is doing, it wants to make an area miserable to live in to affect the politics of the area. Israels aim is to make life intolerable in Gaza, Hamas is the same when it comes to the settlements. A civilian is not always a civilian in the sense that if they are trespassers they become something else. If they are illegal settlers then they are trespassers and there situation is not so cut and dry.
Lastly Fox, what do you propose the Palestinians do? What should their strategy be? Should they capitulate to the demands of Israel? If they feel they are abused by Israel what should there recourse be? Should the killing done by the IDF be sanctioned by their uniforms and State backing, are they more legitimate arbitrators of force than Palestinians? Imagine the response if Palestinians tried to settle in Israeli territory?
Is it more moral to resist an oppressive force, and have civilians die, for statehood, or is it more moral to give up freedom and capitulate to an oppressive force? I'm not sure myself. |
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Man on Street
Joined: 28 Aug 2010
Location: In the Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 5:53 am Post subject: |
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| I never focus on this stuff because I grew up among American WASPs and found that both sides just kill each other a lot. If I pretend it doesn't exist, I am very far away from it, so it pretty much doesn't. |
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asylum seeker
Joined: 22 Jul 2007
Location: On your computer screen.
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 9:16 am Post subject: |
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| Summer Wine wrote: |
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The army's initial investigation concluded that the captain had "not acted unethically". But after some of the soldiers under his command went to the Israeli press to give a different version, the military police launched a separate investigation after which he was charged.
Capt R claimed that the soldiers under his command were out to get him because they are Jewish and he is Druze.
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So whats your conclusion?
The Israelis will never convict a soldier?
That they don't discriminate when convicting thier soldiers?
That it might have been an individual personal decesion on his part that was not punished?
What are you trying to say?
Hamas just claimed they killed 4 civilians today, should we expect them to even be charged by anyone let alone convicted by Hamas? |
Personally I think these points from the article are very salient when making a conclusion about this case:
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1) '...witnesses described her as at least 100 yards from the military post which was in any case well protected.'
2) 'In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death".'
3) 'After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot.'
4) On the tape, Capt R then "clarifies" to the soldiers under his command why he killed Iman: "This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the [security] zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed."
5) At no point did the Israeli troops come under attack. |
From this evidence presented, to me, the killing seems totally unnecessary. Yes she was in a defensive zone but she was moving away from the base and she was over 100 yards away.
I understand the Palestinians do sometimes use the despicable tactic of suicide bombing but I do not feel the Israeli soldiers were under any direct threat at this time and could have just let the girl leave the security zone. More generally, I believe soldiers should try not to kill civilians unless absolutely necessary and I don't believe in this case the necessity was present at all.
I think the very fact that 'some of the soldiers under his command went to the Israeli press' is further proof that this was probably an unjustified murder rather than a defensive act of war.
Therefore I'm disappointed that this man was not charged with a more serious crime and found guilty. I'm guessing since he was acquitted on all charges he will be free to continue his military career?
Now the fact he was found innocent may just have been a bad decision on the part of this particular judiciary or it may indicate an overly protective attitude by the IDF towards their own soldiers. I don't really know enough about Israeli military prosecutions and their outcomes to speculate further.
As for Hamas members killing civilians they definitely should be charged with murder too. As Hamas is a terrorist organisation sadly this is unlikely to happen, unless they are caught by the IDF.
I'm not sure if you're trying to make some point here that the actions of Hamas justifies an Israeli military court finding a murderer innocent but I would say no it doesn't. Just like I don't believe 9/11 in any way justifies torturing prisoners.
Israel and every other state in the world should try to hold itself to higher standards than terrorist organisations, in my opinion.
What's your conclusion about it? |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
| That being said to kill a settler is strategically different than to kill a civilian. |
So what? That doesn't make it more okay, and as such, that fact is completely irrelevant to this conversation, which last I checked isn't about whether any of these civilian murders on either side of the conflict had strategic value. Even bringing it up is completely perplexing.
| Leon wrote: |
| A civilian is not always a civilian in the sense that if they are trespassers they become something else. |
No, this is rubbish. A civilian is a civilian so long as they aren't actively serving in a military or police organization. That's what a civilian is. The fact that you're trying to change the definitions of words to defend Hamas here says a lot (and yes, for all your "no one deserves to die" rhetoric, you're still defending them).
| Leon wrote: |
| If they are illegal settlers then they are trespassers and there situation is not so cut and dry. |
Yes it is cut and dry: they are civilians, and killing them isn't okay. See how cut and dry that is? It's only when you have a political commitment to attack Israel and defend Hamas that you are forced to attempt to construe it as more complex.
| Leon wrote: |
| Lastly Fox, what do you propose the Palestinians do? What should their strategy be? |
Palestinian stands precisely zero chance of a military victory against Israel. Indeed, the only reason Palestine continues to exist as a territory at all is because of Israeli forbearance. As such, first I'll tell you what I wouldn't do: go around killing Israeli civilians. It can't possibly achieve my goal, and as such, it's pure, unmitigated evil.
This goes a bit beyond the scope of the thread, but I think we can briefly indulge it. From a Palestinian perspective, my strategy would focus 0% on killing and 100% on getting international opinion on my side. Things like killing Israeli civilians, committing terrorist acts, or launching rockets only works against Palestinian goals. They make people say things like this:
| Man of Street wrote: |
| I never focus on this stuff because I grew up among American WASPs and found that both sides just kill each other a lot. |
The world is far more likely to stand up for a Palestine that embraces its helplessness against Israel than one that tries to fight back (and in ways the global community generally condemns, no less), and world opinion is the only hope Palestinians have of achieving their objective. Perhaps that doesn't sound like much, but the Palestinian people are in a pathetic state; that's the best they can do. It may or may not be effective, but killing civilians certainly won't help, and as such, it should be avoided.
| Leon wrote: |
| Should they capitulate to the demands of Israel? |
Depends on the demand. If you list individual demands you'd like me to address, I'd be happy to list how I feel they should be responded to.
| Leon wrote: |
| If they feel they are abused by Israel what should there recourse be? |
Here are their two choices:
1) Don't respond with force, take it to the court of international politics and possibly see things turn a bit in their favor as a result of such abuses as a result of international pressures.
2) Kill Israeli civilians in response, and make it look like the tit-for-tat that makes this issue more ambiguous in many people's eyes that it otherwise might be.
I think it's obvious which is better.
| Leon wrote: |
| Should the killing done by the IDF be sanctioned by their uniforms and State backing, are they more legitimate arbitrators of force than Palestinians? |
Just as with Palestinians, killing done by the IDF is acceptable (and I use that word grudgingly, given my stance on the military in general) only insofar as it involves legitimate military targets. When the IDF needlessly kills a civilian, it's just as bad. And if you were to ask me what my strategy would be as the Israeli government, I assure you, avoiding civilian casualties would be a priority.
| Leon wrote: |
| Imagine the response if Palestinians tried to settle in Israeli territory? |
As I imagine it, I imagine damning without qualification any military forces that gunned them down for doing so. Killing civilians isn't okay.
| Leon wrote: |
| Is it more moral to resist an oppressive force, and have civilians die, for statehood, or is it more moral to give up freedom and capitulate to an oppressive force? I'm not sure myself. |
Resisting an oppressive force can be done without killing civilians. There are different types of resistance, and unarmed resistance is the wisest course for the Palestinians to take. Armed resistance in the form of killing unarmed civilians, on the other hand, is just about the stupidest thing they could do. This isn't a question about whether they should simply "give up". It's a question of what the best form for their resistance to take is. |
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wintermute
Joined: 01 Oct 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 4:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| A civilian is not always a civilian in the sense that if they are trespassers they become something else. |
No, this is rubbish. A civilian is a civilian so long as they aren't actively serving in a military or police organization. That's what a civilian is. The fact that you're trying to change the definitions of words to defend Hamas here says a lot (and yes, for all your "no one deserves to die" rhetoric, you're still defending them).
| Leon wrote: |
| If they are illegal settlers then they are trespassers and there situation is not so cut and dry. |
Yes it is cut and dry: they are civilians, and killing them isn't okay. See how cut and dry that is? It's only when you have a political commitment to attack Israel and defend Hamas that you are forced to attempt to construe it as more complex. |
I agree that these killings were unjustifiable and counterproductive, if in fact they were the kind of settlers who just want to go about their own lives without molestation, and respect that right in others. They seem to be just ordinary people going about their business. If they were four armed settlers cruising around looking for people to shoot, I would feel differently.
You make a distinction between attacking "civilian" and military targets, implying one is less bad than the other, and I agree with that concept.
I disagree with your cut and dry definition of a civilian. SOME of the settlers could fit into the category of "members of a civilian militia", or "criminals". ANYONE who takes up a gun, figuratively speaking, with the intention of causing harm to another, gives up their right to be free of molestation, their "civilian" status. Likewise, using violence and intimidation to take control of someone else's land is an aggressive criminal activity that, again, amounts to a voluntary relinquishing of "non-combatant" status.
Israel itself takes a very nuanced view on exactly who is a combatant and who is not - I'm not sure why you think a black and white view is an appropriate way to look at the situation. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 4:38 pm Post subject: |
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| asylum seeker wrote: |
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Israel and every other state in the world should try to hold itself to higher standards than terrorist organisations, in my opinion.
What's your conclusion about it? |
And Israel does. An investigation was called into the possible misconduct of this captain. That alone shows higher standards than Hamas. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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| wintermute wrote: |
[q
I agree that these killings were unjustifiable and counterproductive, if in fact they were the kind of settlers who just want to go about their own lives without molestation, and respect that right in others. They seem to be just ordinary people going about their business. If they were four armed settlers cruising around looking for people to shoot, I would feel differently.
You make a distinction between attacking "civilian" and military targets, implying one is less bad than the other, and I agree with that concept.
I disagree with your cut and dry definition of a civilian. SOME of the settlers could fit into the category of "members of a civilian militia", or "criminals". ANYONE who takes up a gun, figuratively speaking, with the intention of causing harm to another, gives up their right to be free of molestation, their "civilian" status. Likewise, using violence and intimidation to take control of someone else's land is an aggressive criminal activity that, again, amounts to a voluntary relinquishing of "non-combatant" status.
Israel itself takes a very nuanced view on exactly who is a combatant and who is not - I'm not sure why you think a black and white view is an appropriate way to look at the situation. |
Did you even bother checking Google for the situation in question before throwing out hypothetical situations in a desperate attempt to excuse Hamas?
Apparently the settlers were just simply driving in a car. One was a pregnant woman...I'm fairly sure that the settlers don't take along pregnant women if their goal is to use violence and intimidation.
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=679333
Hamas praised the people who committed this act. Contrast that with the not ONE but TWO investigations of the Israeli captain. It seems fairly clear that Israel consistently holds itself to a higher standard than Hamas just as it seems fairly clear that the only standard certain people will accept is Israel ceasing to exist at all. |
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