is Israeli response to Palestinians disproportionate?

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:38 am

ot

grateful for the troll blocker (see my sig)

/ot

Mr. Obvious · Post by **Mr. Obvious** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 2:40 am

Cornswabbler is a child.

friend_kami · Post by **friend_kami** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 2:48 am

ill be damned, even a serious discussion such as this cant withstand the awesome power of the idiots.

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 2:56 am

jonny72 wrote:
Machinesworking wrote:To be fair here, Hamas does OK suicide martyrs, so it is possible that a few terrorist gunmen were intentionally doing this for the news it would create.
Not according to the UN, quote from the Guardian article:

A United Nations official in Gaza said the school was clearly marked with a UN flag and its location had been reported to Israeli authorities. John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said that three artillery shells landed at the perimeter of the school where 350 people were taking shelter. "Of course it was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in that area there would be a high number of casualties," he said.

Asked whether there were Hamas militants in the area at the time of the attack, Ging said it was the scene of clashes "so there's an intense military and militant activity in that area." He said UN staff vetted Palestinians seeking shelter at their facilities to make sure militants were not taking advantage of them. "So far we've not had violations by militants of our facilities," he said. Ging called for an independent investigation of the strikes near UN facilities.

I find it somewhat laughable that we're dealing with a militia that doesn't wear uniforms and hides amongst civilians and we're supposed to believe that with absolute certainty they aren't hiding out in these designated safe zones, as if it's against their morals.

"Lance Hunt can't be Captain Amazing because he wears glasses and Captain Amazing doesn't" - Mystery Men

I also think Hamas was intelligent about this and got exactly the kind of reaction (not the Palestinians) they wanted. Keep firing rockets and missiles into the territory until Israel does their usual show of force and the world goes "booo Israel" and Hamas goes "see, we're just helpless victims here!".

+1 to Hamas for psychology.

ikeaboy · Post by **ikeaboy** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:49 pm

Even if Hamas are Using their own people as shields and publicity pawns (I'm not saying thats what i think is happening) and using their people as hostages as Israel put it to the UN - Killing 450 of those hostages in order to take out 50 Hamas?

If there were 20 or even 2 known Israeli hostages in the zones the IDF were about to hit does anyone think they would sacrifice them to kill 50 Hamas? let alone 450 Israel men, women and children. It's very clear how the IDF value a Palestinian life. Meanwhile the most significant gesture form the west is some sort sentences from Obama about his concern, so much for the US restoring a positive reputation.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 5:59 pm

The UN workers deny any activity within the building. So at most the possibility is Hamas were on the street out front of the building, which UN workers deny. So enough bombs were dropped to kill 30+ inside the building.....

This sort of speaks for itself, it's a disproportionate response no matter how you look at it.

Why isn't there a permanent UN presence in Israel anyway? Never have figured out how that works, except that Israel won't allow it I guess... blah.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 11:02 pm

Thought this was poignant.

latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la- ... 0342.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Opinion
Middle East 'proportionality'
Israelis and Palestinians are dying; neither math nor logic applies.
By Etgar Keret

January 7, 2009

From Tel Aviv — Since Dec. 27, when Israel began its aerial bombardment of Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians -- reportedly more than 200 the first day -- the word most frequently used by the world media is "proportionality."

How many bombs, it is asked, should Israel have dropped on Gaza in response to the missiles launched -- hundreds in recent months -- at Israel's southern settlements and towns, and how many Palestinians could be killed for the response to be considered proportional?

There is something soothing in the proportionality debate because it takes unquantifiable parameters such as anxiety, pain and even human life and seeks to introduce them into a seemingly objective equation. Similar to Newton's laws or the second law of thermodynamics, this is an a priori law of nature: an equation that contains the suffering and victims of Israel's southern settlements on one side and produces a reasonable number of corpses on the Gazan side. Something like 23.5 (the half could, perhaps, stand for a particularly serious injury or the death of an elderly person or an infant).

To be clear, I have no objection to the logic in the proportionality principle and the positive, sincere aspiration behind it. The very thought of introducing a rational criterion into the harsh and irrational Middle Eastern conflict helps clarify the distorted reality we live in, and it constitutes a kind of desperate attempt to regulate something that is neither regular, normal or essentially comprehensible.

But let's pretend for a moment that logic can be forced onto the hatred and fear that have ruled the Middle East for more than 60 years. Can both sides here agree on identical criteria for what constitutes proportionality?

If you ask an Israeli right-winger who is under rocket attack in Sderot, he'll explain his own equation this way: Hamas is trying to kill as many Israelis as it can without discriminating between soldiers and civilians, or among men, women and children, and so, according to its proportionality principle, we too must try to kill as many Gazans as possible. The fact that Israel has state-of-the-art military equipment and the capability of killing thousands of people in Gaza should not be part of the proportionality equation. What tips the scales is the degree of aggression and brutality. After all, the Palestinians know that we have more and better armaments than them, but that didn't stop them from launching rocket attacks daily at our southern settlements in recent years. They've continued trying as hard as they can to kill us, and now it's time for our side of the equation. It's time for us to kill them.

If you ask a Palestinian in Gaza, he'll tell you that the reason Hamas did not stop firing rockets when Israel and Egypt sought to extend the cease-fire that had been in place for six months was precisely because Hamas tried to maintain another, different, but no less just, proportionality principle: As long as Gaza is isolated and the Israeli Defense Forces controls the border checkpoints and our population is suffering, Gazans must create similar suffering on the Israeli side. For if things are very bad for the inhabitants of Gaza, but they're not all that bad for the citizens of southern Israel, the proportionality principle is violated. And for that reason, Hamas continued to launch rockets at Sderot and other places.

Not at all, the Israeli right-winger will argue; the effective blockade imposed on Gaza is what preserves the proportionality principle. As long as Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured more than two years ago in Gaza, is being held captive without being accorded the basic rights dictated by the Geneva Convention, restriction of freedom and movement to a proportionate degree must be imposed on the regime holding him.

You're wrong, the Gazan will counter; Shalit must remain in captivity to create a proportional balance with the hundreds of Hamas detainees being held in Israeli territory and here.

Thus, it appears that the proportionality debate presents objective criteria for a situation that is essentially subjective, in which two contradictory narratives clash and neither side is prepared to include the other and its suffering.

Is there anything in the proportionality principle that can rationally justify killing of any kind?

The motives of vengeance, which drive us to kill those who have killed people we love, are completely irrational, even if we try to wrap them in rational packaging. We exact vengeance because we hate and are hurting, not because we excel in mathematics and logic. Early in the aerial bombing of Gaza, five young girls from the same family were killed, and many more children have died on both sides of the border in recent years. The attempt to introduce their bodies into an equation that would make their deaths justifiable or comprehensible might be necessary to influence current events, but it is still enraging.

The only equation I can wholeheartedly accept is one whereby zero bodies appear on either side of the equation. And until that time comes, I'll choose outcry and protest that appeal solely to the heart. I shall reserve my appeals to the mind for better times.

Etgar Keret is the author of, most recently, "The Girl on the Fridge and Other Stories." This essay was translated from Hebrew by Anthony Berris.

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 12:55 am

Chang wrote:And opposite, the absolute self admitted undeniable fact that Hamas entire ideology is based on the total destruction and death of every single Jew on earth even if it means committing suicide and using innocent Palestinians as human shields?

Actually thats bollox - hamas want the destruction of the Israeli state - israei state is not jews.

They were voted in on two things -

1. thier hardline view of israel - ie there cannot be peace while israeli wont allow people back to their homes. The PLO has given up on this, which for some palestinians meant to permenant loss of current familay homes etc (current as in people who actually lived in those homes are still alive today - not some claim dating back 2000+ years)

2. unlike the PLO, hamas promised to put some effort into trying to develop the concept of palestine as a state (and have indeed tried) - ie attempt to improve facilities and services and forge external economic relations with approprioate countries etc rather than just winging all the time.

Now as a generally peace loving person in the comfort of the west (without any fuckers severly restricting my life and taking away my home for no good reason etc), then naturally I cant agree with their methods - sending rockets over the fence, suicide bombers etc etc.

However putting myself in the place of a palestinian who has lost everything and where the perpetrators are simply getting away with it and the rest of the world is letting them, and worse encouraging them - actually I would probably be hell bent on the destruction of that same state as well (and yes I can relate to it - Ive been their often enough, worked there and lived in the middle east and experienced war so i know first hand some of the horrors of it etc).

Hell - israel terrorists back in the 30s and 40s turned on the british when we were paving the way for the israeli state of the future - simply because it wasnt happening fast enough (in simple terms) - ffs!

As a country, I actually quite like israel, but it aint no fun living in fear of some nutcase blowwing shit up, OTOH - they are stupid enough to build flats immediately on land they have just stolen from someone... - wtf should they expect to happen?

Chang · Post by **Chang** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:04 am

Khazul wrote:
Chang wrote:And opposite, the absolute self admitted undeniable fact that Hamas entire ideology is based on the total destruction and death of every single Jew on earth even if it means committing suicide and using innocent Palestinians as human shields?
Actually thats bollox - hamas want the destruction of the Israeli state - israei state is not jews.

Watch until 4:52 and post back your thoughts. "Once we muslims rule the world, even the stones and trees will want the muslims to finish off every jew". Palestinian TV of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whU2qFd89fA

Chang · Post by **Chang** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:09 am

I have gone back and change some my posts out of respect for ableton and machinesworking. Was over the top.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:21 am

Chang wrote:I have gone back and change some my posts out of respect for ableton and machinesworking. Was over the top.

Good man.

Concerning your post just before.

I must say it's a little too convenient for you to only point to radicalism as an argument.

I'm curious, what are your views on Tibet. I'm guessing you're from China.

Homebelly · Post by **Homebelly** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:32 am

knotkranky wrote:
I'm curious, what are your views on Tibet. I'm guessing you're from China.

I'm thinking Chang is a bit of an ill informed dick, in fact I'd put money down on him being a sock puppet/troll. But, to be fair, Tibet and Palestine are not the same thing.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 3:08 am

Homebelly wrote:
knotkranky wrote:
I'm curious, what are your views on Tibet. I'm guessing you're from China.
I'm thinking Chang is a bit of an ill informed dick, in fact I'd put money down on him being a sock puppet/troll. But, to be fair, Tibet and Palestine are not the same thing.

Oh yes, of course they're not the same thing. I was just wondering if something interesting was to come from my Q. Hmm, a troll you think? I dunno.
Ill informed? Sure, but still tolerated. Though the dude is getting some decent education here, lol.

Chang · Post by **Chang** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 3:25 am

knotkranky wrote:
Chang wrote:I have gone back and change some my posts out of respect for ableton and machinesworking. Was over the top.
Good man.

Concerning your post just before.

I must say it's a little too convenient for you to only point to radicalism as an argument.

I'm curious, what are your views on Tibet. I'm guessing you're from China.

I point to radical view because Hamas is in control of palestine by vote and if hamas is not radical than i dont know who is. After this mess and your're a dick, fuck you chang, asshole etc i am not going to begin to talk about Tibet no matter what my views are.

To Homebelly. I had to look up sockpuppet troll, and can tell you i have no other identity on this forum, I am not a secret other person from what I gather from the definition. And I'm have helped in mpc threads and other non political threads so i dont come on here just to start abrasive threads in the general section.