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I dunno, acording to al jazeera today its something along the lines of:
45% support military action
40% support diplomatic action
rest are undecided
You only need to look as far as haaretz to see that opinion is definately divided in Israel.
But ofcourse, all hamas propaganda.
All hamas propaganda that the International Red Cross has reported:
at least 20% of those killed are women and children
at least 40% of those injured are women and children
all hamas propaganda that the EU today has called on Israel for an immediate cease fire and said it does not agree with Israel's desire to complete it's military objectives first
all hamas propaganda despite Israel spending millions on a PR campaign to get international opinion on it's side (according to the indepedent yesterday)
Anyway, here's an interesting article frmo the independent (was trying to find the other one about the media coverage, but couldn't). I worry some of us may be guilty of "species pseudo-differentiation".
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-israel-is-in-danger-of-fighting-the-last-war-not-the-next-one-1225816.html
Whether we say Israel is right or Hamas is right or they're both wrong, or whatever - the fact remains that innocent people are dying. And that could stop today. I just want people to pretend the people dying are their best friends. Hiding in basements waiting for the bombs to drop like so many others in so many other conflicts before.
As a human race, are we not better than that?
You think violence is democratic? :shocking:
As do Hamas.
Yep. The IDF have their own YouTube account apparently.
It's where they posted a video which 'prooved' that they were accurately hitting Hamas rockets. Backfired on them though when it turned out it was a bunch of civilians loading their truck with Oxygen cylinders.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WPFpQi6zXi4
Depends on the circumstances, but yes it can be.
I'm not disputing that.
Explain?
I know you're posting these to make your point, but all I can say is that is a really low level of civilian casualties for the type of fighting and where it's taking place and actually supports the argument that Israel is targetting 'military' personell.
We all want wars where there are no civilian casualties - unfortunately wars are very seldom fought in the North Pole.
Violence isn't neccessarily undemocratic (in fact they're not linked at all). if you want an example I would say we were right to fight WW2 and also that the UK Government was a democracy.
And when Israel targets a police recruitment ceremony (police that, let's make it crystal clear, has absolutely nothing to do with the firing of rockets or any other activity directed at Israel) and kills 40 teenagers and young men, it is deliberately targetting non-combatants and thus commiting a war crime.
Bombing the Interior Ministry and killing medics there also qualifies.
So while Israel is not killing as many as it could, it certainly has no problem 'teaching lessons' to the Palestinians in the form of killing a good number of perfectly innocent people on purpose. Again, a war crime.
Nor that any of our spineless leaders have the balls to say as much loud of course.
I don't really have anything to compare it to, but that is only women and children. It doesn't include the elderly, or men who aren't combatants, and so on. The International Red Cross are rightly concerned that so many innocent people (we can guess about 60 killed and 1000 injured at least?) are being hit.
I know you're saying 'for the type of fighting' but who had the brainwave of using heavy artillery in residential areas in the first place? It's like saying Israel nuked Gaza and only 10,000 innocent civilians were killed... were they right to use those tactics with the collateral damage it would incur?
Again, it's down in black and white in the geneva convention (although Israel hasn't signed this) regarding proportionality.
Add another 10-15% (being generous) and it'll still be low
#
The person who thought massed human waves attacks without artillery support would be a failure. Given the situation I can't see what other tactics would work - they're trying to clear built up areas of enemy forces. yeah it would have been nice if Hamas had parked in a desert somewhere, but they didn't (sensibly enough on their part)
Proportionality is the key word. Proportionality means you can't kill 100 civilians to kill 1 combatant, but does it mean you can have equal civilain military casualties 2 civilian for everyone military or 2 civilians for 3 military? that isn't specified.
But in 1939 Germany was no longer a democracy (even if Hitler had initially been democratically elected). How far the German people supported him is one of the great questions of history - all of them according to Goering in 1939; none of them according to the Germans I met in the early 90s.
That said I'm not sure you can call wars democratic or non-democratic. It wasn't undemocratic for the UK to go to Iraq* any more than it was undemocratic for us to abolish the death penalty when most people wanted it kept. A democratic nation puts forward elected representatives who make decisions on the states behalf and the electorate decide every few years whether they're doing a good job.
* I've lost the polling figures, but actually it seems the country was pretty split - it's not as one-sided against it as people now assume (shades of the support for Hitler).
The 'democratic' tag is in this case as useful and relevant as a motorcycle ashtray. I very much doubt the mothers of the many, many children murdered by Israel in the last week will take much consolation in the fact that their children were killed by a democratic regime rather than a dictatorship.
Pretty much Israel are arguing with rather than working with the UN and the International Red Cross now. Saying "there is no humanitarian crisis", "we are taking appropriate measures to prevent civilian casualities" and so on.
That's not really for them to judge when they believe 1000 injured is ok.
"At least 562 Palestinians have been killed and 2,470 injured"
"Four Israeli soldiers were killed and 24 wounded in battles around Gaza City on Monday night, the Israeli military said early on Tuesday, bringing the Israeli death toll to eight."
Some perspective there.
I remember thinking that when I kept hearing the BBC reporters saying, "foreign journalists are banned from Gaza." Never a good sign. Even America didn't do that in Iraq. On reflection, they probably should've.
Notice their little friends in Washington making sure that nothing of importance is said about this by the UN. :rolleyes:
Motherfuckers :mad:
Would any of the apologists care to justify this? Still a proportional response?
It's hamas propaganda. They were training the school children to use bombs and rockets. And there were bombs hidden in the school. And so on and so forth.
I suspect it'll just be ignored same as the anti-Israeli's ignored this thread
http://vbulletin.thesite.org/showthread.php?t=125629
A few quick points.
1. By 'anti-Israeli', do you mean against the actions of the Israeli government, or are you suggesting there are posters here who hate the State of Israel and oppose its existence? The expression gets mentioned often enough on these boards so I'd like to be sure I know what is being implied.
2. The comparison seems poor. The scale of the current conflict is far, far more grave than the one you quote. That does not mean that the first incident was not serious, but just not commenting on every single story relating to an issue (and let's face it, there are countless such incidents coming from the region all the time) does not mean one does not care about it, or that supports the actions of the perpetrators. Frankly, the comparison seems a bit like a strawman.
3. In any case it is relevant to ask the question I asked, since a number of people had voluntarily contributed to the thread repeteadly over the last few days arguing that the Israel's actions have been appropriate and justified, and that Israel does not target civilians. So I think it is not unreasonable to ask whether they still claim the same after this latest atrocity.
Bottom line: some people still seem uncapable to admitting that Israel is perpetrating completely unnaceptable and unspeakable acts.
So much for wanting peace in the Middle East and for applying an 'ethical' arms sales policy, eh Mr. Brown? Next they'll be selling electric batons to Robert Mugabe. :rolleyes:
By anti-Israeli I mean those who are taking the side of Hamas and who didn't comment on the mass murder of children. Take it how you will; whether that means you're against the Israeli Government, the people or Jews in general will depend on the poster (for the record I certainly don't think you personally are the third, though I'm not sure whether you are the second or not)
It's not a perfect comparison, but you put up a challenge and my point was that people don't comment on 'atrocities' all the time, as you can see by the fact only one person added to the thread.
However if we are comparing them one is a deliberate attack on a school during a period of comparative calm and the other may or may not be a deliberate attack on a school during the middle of a warzone.
But then my post shows that despite the number of people commenting on the Middle East in general lots of people (and not just the Israeli Government cheerleaders as you call them) don't comment on things where it might force them to confront uncomfortable truths.
and some people seem to be unwilling to confront that they're not the only ones.
Not that I think I'm an Israeli Government cheerleader, I'm neither Jewish or Arab and am pretty neutral. But any neutral view has to take into account the Israeli's fears as well as that of the Palestinians.
But:
1) If it was a deliberate attack to kill civilians though who ordered it and those who committed it should be held to account.
2) If the Israeli's are right (and no reason they're telling the truth any more than Hamas is) and the school was being used to fire mortars to which the Israeli's responded, it should be Hamas who are held to account as they were the ones who committed the breach by breaking the areas neutral status (I'd possibly not worry to much about it in reality, because if I was them I'd probably be doing the same).
3) If it was a cock up there needs to be an investigation to see what can be done to stop similar accidents happening again. If there was criminal negligence (not just a mistake by tired, stressed and scared young men) those who committed that negligence should be held to account.
There are countless instances of this, from single victim murders (including journalists and foreign peace protesters) to mass-scale bombardment of civilian neighbourhoods such as that in Beirut two years ago that goes against just about every single international convention and law on the subject ever written. Did Israel everadmit to disproportionate response? Did it apologise for the deliberate targeting of civilians? Did the international community did anything at all about one of the most blatant war crimes since the Balkan War? Did they fuck.
I am afraid Israel's long record of such atrocities speaks for itself when it comes to their intentions and the targeting of non-combatants.
They might claim otherwise of course. In the case of the Beirut neighbourhood, the hard evidence in the shape of entire blocks demolished simply can't be explained away.
In other cases they do try to weasel their way out of their actions, such this particular incident. Paraded around as an example of Israel's surgical attacks that should apparently be of no concern to civilians (unless they decided to use shells and the hell with it, as yesterday showed), it seems that the 'terrorists' were in fact innocent workers and the 'rockets' oxygen tanks.
When confronted by this, they changed the story to say that the house where the cylinders came from "was being used to store weapons".
I mean, what the fuck? This is paramount to Saddam Hussein claiming he never gassed any Kurds. We are tolerating a catalogue of atrocities and subsequent lies that no nation on Earth bar the US, Russia or China have ever got away with. What is it going to take?
But why do we need to compare apple's and oranges? Basically, the conflict in Israel is currently ambiguous because the US, Israel and that side are saying it's pretty much all hamas, arab protesters in the region and me obviously believe it's Israeli aggression based on a manufactured casus beli (by refusing to compromise with Hamas and backing them into a corner, what else were they going to do? Just like a cornered dog will bite. It doesn't mean it's right, but then Israel gets a massive stick and starts beating the shit of the dog and says "look! it bit me!!"). And of course, there are plenty in the middle. It's a big debate.
I'm a bit suspicious of people throwing up threads saying "where is the outrage?!" at anti-semitic violence around the world because that's a clear cut obviously wrong thing. Nobody is trying to defend it. Like Wendy had said earlier in the thread in response to all this crap going on that her life was now in danger... whilst I can appreciate that's scary it just seems to be something designed to misdirect attention.
According to the BBC, who were reporting from Palestinian sources, 1 in 3 killed is a child. A scary statistic whatever side you're on. It's probably inflated, but what do you expect when Israel doesn't allow journalists to glance an impartial eye over the situation?
Thankfully today they are considering accepting the truce brokered by France and Eygpt, but at what cost? 600 odd Palestinian dead. 8 Israeli dead. There can be no victor, because nobody has 'gained' anything. Just lots of blood, and corpses, and broken families on both sides of the border.
What's worse is Israel has unconditional and unwavering support from the current US government. They have a licence to kill. Whether they are right or wrong (and you have to admit there are serious concerns around the world whether they ARE right), they cannot be held to account in the current climate.
It would be like a government agent shooting someone in broad daylight and there being no inquiry because it was blocked. Sure, we can trust the government, believe them when they say it's right... but is trust enough?
tl;dr we all suck because for all our arguing it doesn't bring back the dead
The only question left is whether this is still a War Crime, or we can safely elevate it to Crimes Against Humanity.
Nor that the US is going to allow any such charges to be brought, of course.
What a repulsive world we live in...