Israel has inflicted a massively disproportional attack on Gaza. Apologists for the Israeli government and military are quick to proclaim that Israel doesn't target innocent Gazans, that it doesn't intentionally kill innocents.
Bullshit. Utterly vile, rotten bullshit.
As I've written so often, we're all deemed to intend the logical and foreseeable consequences of our acts. If I knowingly ignore a red light and drive my car into a busy intersection, hitting another car and injuring or killing the occupants of that car is both a logical and foreseeable consequence of my act. I don't get to say "whoopsie, accident!"
When you use weapons like these bombs, you unquestionably intend to cause the deaths and injuries sustained by everyone unfortunate enough to be within the lethality range of these weapons. You may wish that didn't include innocent women and children but that's no excuse. You didn't let your wishes override your decision to kill them anyway.
Some times the bluntest examples are best. Did the United States intend the deaths of every man, woman and child within the lethal range of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Of course they did. At least they had the courage not to try to hide behind excuses about unintended, collateral damage.
Let's be honest here. These bombing strikes weren't military operations, they were assassinations. The bombs that were used, weapons that cause entire wings of university buildings to collapse or that make entire houses disintegrate and destroy every surrounding house for good measure, are anything but surgical.
Our military uses these bombs when our soldiers are in dire straits, under attack. What Israeli soldiers were under attack from the police stations that were bombed or from the homes of Hamas leaders? You might as well ask yourself how many Israeli soldiers suffered so much as a hangnail during this bombing campaign? There was no military necessity to use area bombing as a means of assassination.
Aerial bombardment is sanitized war, bordering on cowardly. How many jets have we lost in Afghanistan, how many has Israel lost over Gaza. These poor sods don't even have anything that can pass for air defences. They're helpless to fight back and that makes the use of bombing campaigns so attractive to pols wishing for a "bloodless" war (at least on their side).
What we do in Afghanistan is bad enough and it certainly operates as an effective recruiting tool for the insurgency. But at least we do it when we're in combat and our troops need it for their safety. At least we have some thin excuse to claim we don't intend the suffering of innocents we inflict.
Bullshit. Utterly vile, rotten bullshit.
As I've written so often, we're all deemed to intend the logical and foreseeable consequences of our acts. If I knowingly ignore a red light and drive my car into a busy intersection, hitting another car and injuring or killing the occupants of that car is both a logical and foreseeable consequence of my act. I don't get to say "whoopsie, accident!"
When you use weapons like these bombs, you unquestionably intend to cause the deaths and injuries sustained by everyone unfortunate enough to be within the lethality range of these weapons. You may wish that didn't include innocent women and children but that's no excuse. You didn't let your wishes override your decision to kill them anyway.
Some times the bluntest examples are best. Did the United States intend the deaths of every man, woman and child within the lethal range of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Of course they did. At least they had the courage not to try to hide behind excuses about unintended, collateral damage.
Let's be honest here. These bombing strikes weren't military operations, they were assassinations. The bombs that were used, weapons that cause entire wings of university buildings to collapse or that make entire houses disintegrate and destroy every surrounding house for good measure, are anything but surgical.
Our military uses these bombs when our soldiers are in dire straits, under attack. What Israeli soldiers were under attack from the police stations that were bombed or from the homes of Hamas leaders? You might as well ask yourself how many Israeli soldiers suffered so much as a hangnail during this bombing campaign? There was no military necessity to use area bombing as a means of assassination.
Aerial bombardment is sanitized war, bordering on cowardly. How many jets have we lost in Afghanistan, how many has Israel lost over Gaza. These poor sods don't even have anything that can pass for air defences. They're helpless to fight back and that makes the use of bombing campaigns so attractive to pols wishing for a "bloodless" war (at least on their side).
What we do in Afghanistan is bad enough and it certainly operates as an effective recruiting tool for the insurgency. But at least we do it when we're in combat and our troops need it for their safety. At least we have some thin excuse to claim we don't intend the suffering of innocents we inflict.
18 comments:
Does your rant also include Hamas assassinations of Israelis when they fire hundreds of rockets into Israel everyday? Rockets that hit and kill women and children? Innocents who cannot fight back but must rely on their counties military to clean up the Hamas stack of deadly rockets.
I am sure that you will be fair, eh?
Not to diminish the lives lost anywhere and under any circumstances but more lives were lost in the past week to avalanches than the total losses of Israeli lives at the hands of Hamas' deadly rockets over the past two years. As for the death toll of Palestinians, I believe it's nearing 500 in ten days. At this rate, it takes practically 100 Palestinian deaths to avenge the death of one Israeli.
Kitt, before you get overwhelmed by your limited perspective, look this up. How many of these feeble rockets have been launched out of Gaza and how many innocents have they actually killed? The hard figures you probably don't want to consider.
Do I think the militants firing these rockets intend the logical and foreseeable consequences of their acts? Absolutely.
However I don't care to evaluate Israel and Hamas on the same plane. There's a reason we don't allow Hamas to have jet fighters and cluster bombs. Can you grasp the distinction?
I support neither Israel nor Hamas in this, another point you need to grasp.
Please tell me what you know of the "Hamas stack of deadly rockets." If they were all that deadly there would be casualties on the Israeli side vastly beyond what has actually been suffered. They're pretty feeble ordinance - unguided, unreliable, limited damage when they do hit something.
How's that for fair,Kitt?
But they dropped leaflets telling the civilians they were coming MOS.
There is also mention that they are using cluster bombs.
I hadn't heard about the leaflets, James. The eerie, psy-ops telephone campaign is, however, well known. People getting called by strangers warning them that their neighbourhood, their house is next. That is genuinely diabolical. Only an evil fuck would think to do that to civilians.
And MLJ, I hope the information about using cluster bombs in Gaza is no more that rumour. I really do. I'm not sure what the limits of violence against Gazans is but I have to hope that it stops well short of cluster munitions.
I don't know how to copy and paste but if you Google in "cluster bombs/gaza," you will see articles.
War is not pretty. It never is, nor is it supposed to be. The reasons for it are varied but always the same. In this case people are condeming Israel because it is mightier than Hamas, and the damage being done is greater. That does not change the actions of Hamas, that have caused this from the beginning. Hamas chose war over peace when Israel left the strip, and started firing rockets. Now they are getting the payback for years of terror and destruction. As far as the "innocents" only the children can be called that. The people living there know of the rocket sites and say or do nothing, and in many cases aid the Hamas. That makes them just as guilty.
Perhaps the Hamas terrorist organization should have thought of the consequences of 'proportionality' before they decided to launch their rockets and rain down mortar bombs.
Just because the rockets are not as sophisticated as the Israeli ordinance does not make them any less lethal if one lands on your house, in the parking lot or on your school.
Perhaps you are under the impression that these items are akin to bottle rockets, you should look them up and see what they really look like and what they can do.The terrorists do not only fire smaller rockets..
http://www.weaponsurvey.com/missilesrockets.htm
60,80 and 120mm mortars (and larger) can be even more lethal, with a killing radius of hundreds of metres.Have you ever seen the size of an 80mm mortar shell?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(weapon)
I will leave you with one last thought..in the second world war, one of the greatest fears of infantry was rocket guided munitions..the Katyushas for the Russians and the Nebelwurfer for the Germans.Fired in salvos, they were a destructive force.
The only reason these rockets are not more lethal is that Hamas lacks the capability to launch them in the manner they were intended.
That of course is not the Israelis fault, the intent is what matters.If you say by your actions you want to kill me, and don't..why should i not have the right to make sure you never get another chance to make good on your intent?
kursk, you are saying that Hamas does not know how to aim well their rockets. Does that mean Israel is showing them how to aim right at houses and apartments buildings and kill women, children and elderly by the hundreds. That is what Israel is doing. I admire your loyalty to Israel but in face of current slaughter such loyalty and defence of Israel is backfiring. Europe is losing sympathy for Israel and with the fair-minded leaders in North America it is going to happen here too. This mass killing will not end the conflict but further sparkle it. Mass murder in this manner cannot be justified and defenders come across as equally guilty.
Kursk, like Kitt you seek to justify Israel's assault on some notional relativity. That's an argument that doesn't much interest me beyond the relative suffering each side has inflicted on the other.
Unlike you, I carry no brief for either side. I'm not supporting anybody but I also draw a clear distinction between Hamas and the civilian population of Gaza.
With the weapons being used in the air assault and their lethality, Israel plainly embraces collective punishment.
The militants' rockets, whether from Hamas members or the various other groups, are clearly terror weapons. In fact, given the minimal damage they've inflicted over the years, they're mainly a weapon of terror. Obviously if one lands in your lap you're in a world of trouble but the casualty figures show that few of these rockets actually hit anything of consequence.
Israel's choice of weapons is different. They're far more lethal and they hit where they're intended to strike. And yet they're still terror weapons.
To me, both sides are far to destabilizing to regional and global security to allow this pointless violence to drag on another sixty years.
Neither side has the minimal goodwill toward the other necessary to finding a negotiated peace so a solution must be imposed on them by the international community. They need to be separated, the 1967 border restored and the occupied territories cleared of all Israeli settlers. There are already laws to govern problems like shared water resources, etc. although Israel might get upset at the notion of equitable distribution. C'est la vie.
This nonsense has to stop. I'm as old as the state of Israel and there's never been a day of peace there while I've drawn breath.
Enough.
Careful there Mound. You may end up taking the wrath of Ezra Levant.
http://ezralevant.com/2009/01/the-canadian-left-vs-israel.html
Wow James, I'm impressed! I never imagined you would be so popular with Levant. What he said, though, is that we have to pick sides and, so long as we're not pro-Israel, we go into some weird pro-Hamas mode by default.
The "pox on both their houses" option isn't valid to Levant but that speaks volumes for his one-channel mentality. I don't support my own country as unquestioningly as Levant would demand we support Israel for reasons he really can't explain very well at all.
Let's cut right to the heart of the matter:
Please define a proportionate response.
Is it lobbing an equal number of unguided rockers into Gaza? Is it having border snipers pick off an equal number of civilians?
If what Israel is doing is incorrect, then what is the correct course of action? What if Hamas continues to shell/rocket/mortar Israel even during a ceasefire?
A proportionate response (on either side) ensures a steady, everlasting war. Either both sides have to back down or, as in WW2, one side has to deploy a response so disproportionate that the other side gives up.
THERELIVE.COM
ofcourse, don't expect too many bloggers from Gaza since they have no electricity... or bread.
LACK OF PROPORTIONAL RESPONSE
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hamas has a stated goal of killing every Jew in Israel.
Israel is just trying to kill the Hamas terrorists, leaving the morons who voted Hamas into power untouched as far as possible.
I say the Israeli response is not proportional, it is very limited.
Hamas can say it wants to eat the moon, it can say anything. That isn't what determines proportionality. Those are threats without any substance.
Israel hasn't learned that it's routine response of invasion hasn't improved its security or the stability of its region one bit. It just stirs up a hornets' nest of resentment and smouldering desire for retaliation.
Killing 600 or 6,000 isn't going to change the dynamic between Israel and the Palestinians.
We need to do what we perhaps should have done at the outset. Establish a demilitarized buffer zone along the borders defended by well armed international forces with a mandate to stop intruders from either side whether by land or by air.
Separate them for two decades, probably three. Invest heavily to develop a viable, prosperous Palestinian state. With time, and a generational change, peace might just break out on both sides of the line.
That would mean clearing all 430,000 Israeli settlers out of the West Bank and restoring the 1967border. Israel might not like that but I'm sure the Palestinians will also grumble dissatisfaction over the loss of right of return but that's life.
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