I've always found it interesting that Israelis have the right to defend themselves, while I've never heard a single peep from any major media or government officials about Palestinians' rights to the same.But Palestinians don't have to defend themselves: they're under the protection of Israel. In fact, it's as true today as it was in Golda Meir's time: "there are no Palestinians." There is only Israel.
How many rockets hit Israel before Israel struck back?How many of those rockets actually injured people?
Do you consider that the Palestinians had a right to commit approximately 8600 rocket attacks againstAgain, how many of those rockets caused any injuries? As far as I know, only a handful and only a few people (if any) were killed.
Ignoring causality only continues the killing.There is a difference between "causality" and "who started it". The problem is you go right down the rabbit hole of arguing whether or not something counts as a 'provocation' or not. Israel bombs gaza because Hamas fired rockets because Israel fired a few rockets because Hamas was digging a tunnel because Israel closed the border because bla, bla bla. It's a completely pointless argument.
This argument is problematic to the extent to which it creates an equation in which it is Israel's interest to suffer more losses and thereby "even things out."No, it does not. In fact, that's a completely insane thing to say.
The rockets are actually perfectly capable of killing people.Except, they didn't. IIRC they killed only one or two people. Israel responded by an offensive that killed 1,400 people or something like that. That's not a proportional response.
I would want the U.S. to do whatever it could to destroy that enemy's capacity to bomb me again, while minimizing civilian casualties in that action as far as possible.Why does it matter to me, or anyone else what you want? Massacring people isn't okay because you "want" to do it.
The answer is: probably not a terrorist organization whose goal is to permanently end Israel and which regularly attacks Israel and Israelis at present and throughout the history of its existenceHamas "wants" to end Israel, and that's an insurmountable problem, yet Israel has in fact succeeded in ending Palestine and continues to occupy the west bank, and that's not?
At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel.
Israel has to be a violent state, because they are surrounded by people who want to kill them and take their land. However, Palestine cannot be a violent state, even though they are surrounded by people who are killing them and have taken their land.I will never understand this line of thinking.
These are houses within large towns, towns that will certainly remain part of Israel under any peace settlement.Of course they will, because the only type of "peace settlement" that Israel will agree to is one with a bigger Israel.
Israel is a sovereign state and has the right to protect itself.Palestine is not a sovereign state, and it doesn't.
During the 1948 War, around 10,000 Jews were forced to evacuate their homes in Palestine or Israel, but in the three years following the war, 700,000 Jews settled in Israel, mainly along the borders and in former Arab lands. ( source )According to what I've read, between 400,000 and 700,000 Palestinians were forced off of their land in the 1948 War. If it's worth it to you to keep the war going for the pride of 10,000 citizens who are probably dead, I guess that's one choice. Another could be to honor their desire to have a safe homeland by ending the colonization of Palestine.
The scene was both pathetic and outrageous. The last of Netanyahu's devoted followers, who believe he is the man who will bring peace, would have immediately changed their minds. Presidents Barack Obama and Shimon Peres, who continue to maintain that Netanyahu will bring peace, would be talking differently had they seen this secretly filmed video clip. Even the objection of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to conducting direct negotiations with the man from the video would be understandable. What is there to discuss with a huckster whose sole purpose is "to give 2 percent in order to prevent 100 percent," as his father told him, quoting his grandfather.The Palestinians are not going to roll over and allow Israel to take the rest of Palestine. They will fight back with every desperate tactic they can think of, and they are. The problem with this line of thought is that the United States is currently the only nation willing to arm Israel for free. If Israel refuses to stop the settlements and refuses to negotiate, it is only increasing the likelihood that one day a truly well armed Arab force will invade. And since you continue to establish the precedent that might makes right, they may well destroy all Israeli military targets that are not within the 1967 borders.
Israel has had many rightist leaders since Menachem Begin promised "many Elon Morehs," but there has never been one like Netanyahu, who wants to do it by deceit, to mock America, trick the Palestinians and lead us all astray. The man in the video betrays himself in his own words as a con artist, and now he is again prime minister of Israel. Don't try to claim that he has changed since then. Such a crooked way of thinking does not change over the years.
Forget the Bar-Ilan University speech, forget the virtual achievements in his last visit to the United States; this is the real Netanyahu. No more claims that the Palestinians are to blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu exposed the naked truth to his hosts at Ofra: he destroyed the Oslo accords with his own hands and deeds, and he's even proud of it. After years in which we were told that the Palestinians are to blame, the truth has emerged from the horse's mouth.
And how did he do it? He recalled how he conditioned his signing of the 1997 Hebron agreement on American consent that there be no withdrawals from "specified military locations," and insisted he choose those same locations, such as the whole of the Jordan Valley, for example. "Why is that important? Because from that moment on I stopped the Oslo Accords," he boasts. The real Netanyahu also brags about his knowledge of America: "I know what America is. America is something that can be moved easily." For the White House's information. ( source )
Israel has cancelled work permits for 45,000 Palestinians who worked inside Israel, cut off the Gaza Strip from any external contact, vastly restricted imports of consumer goods, uprooted crops from thousands of hectares of orchards and imposed a curfew that is so severe that people find it difficult to get even to hospitals, let alone places of work. Sewage plants, irrigation systems, power facilities, radio towers, roads and airport runways have been the favourite bombing targets. All exit and entry points are controlled by Israelis, air links have been cut off, and a maze of networks control the movement of Palestinians within their neighbourhoods. In the Gaza Strip, all of which is surrounded by barbed wire, there are two main roads for the Palestinians, both of which have been bombed or bulldozed. Even the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics had its computers ransacked and its files destroyed. And Arafat is of course under house arrest in Ramallah, with high-tech armour surrounding his residence.If your standards meant anything, you would hold the Israeli government to account for their role in the violence. Hamas can say they want to destroy Israel, even if they have no way to do it except for desperate acts of terrorism, and you call them criminals. Israel can create blueprints for destroying out the Palestinian people, carry it out, but as long as they only accidentally kill Palestinians and keep their entire culture on life support and expect Palestinians to grin and bear the occupation, and then use any flare up as an excuse to take more from them, you seem to have no problem with the intent or effect of the Israeli government's actions.
The policy thus seems to have three objectives:
1. To beat the populace into abject submission through military assault, political repression, encirclement and starvation;
2. The permanent destruction of infrastructure as well as the Palestinian Authority as such, so that living conditions become so insufferable that sizeable numbers of people would be forced to flee the occupied territories;
3. The toppling of Arafat and negotiating with local leaders so that the leaders become the equivalent of the "chiefs" in colonial Africa and are then made to manage the remaining population on the model of the Bantustans in apartheid South Africa. Nelson Mandela's old remark that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories was "worse than apartheid" is thus becoming remorselessly true.
Alex Fishman, who is reputed to have excellent connections with top security officials, reported in Yediot Aharanot, the rightwing Israeli daily, in December 2001 that Sharon had prepared a plan to get rid of Arafat "even before the election" of February 2001. . .
Similarly, Foreign Report (Jane's Information Group) of July 12, 2001 disclosed a plan by the Israeli Army for an "all-out assault to smash the Palestinian Authority, force out leader Yasser Arafat and kill or detain its army". The blueprint, titled "The Destruction of the Palestinian Authority and Disarmament of All Armed Forces", was presented to the Israeli government by Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz on July 8 and envisages the suicide bombings by the Hamas militants as sufficient justification for it. ( source )
The starting date of the Second Intifada is disputed. One source records the start of the uprising as September 27, 2000, "when a Palestinian security officer on a joint patrol with Israeli forces turned his firearm on his Israeli counterpart and murdered him"; however this incident, referring to Yossi Tabaji, took place on the 29th. More commonly cited is September 28, 2000, when Palestinian rioting erupted following Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, an area known to Muslims as Al-Haram Al-Sharif. Still others believe it started a day later on Friday September 29, a day of prayers, when an Israeli police and military presence was introduced and there were major clashes and deaths. . . In the first five days of rioting and clashes after the visit, Israeli police and security forces killed 47 Palestinians and wounded 1885, while Palestinians killed 5 Israelis.The deaths of Hamas combatants are not a "fault" of anyone, they are a credit to the marksmanship of those who dispatch them.
A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense usually for territorial gain and subjugation. The phrase is distinctly modern and diametrically opposed to the prior legal international standard of "might makes right", under the medieval and pre-historic beliefs of right of conquest. Since the Korean War of the early 1950s, waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law. It is generally agreed by scholars in international law that the military actions of the Nazi regime in World War II in its search for so-called "Lebensraum" are characteristic of a war of aggression, the waging of which was called the supreme crime by Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg Trials.Israeli policy is land for peace, land for war. Arafat chose to resume war within days of starting the Oslo process. And so, Israeli expansion continued. Ain't life a bitch.
Israel was one of the countries behind the ICC initiative, but changed its stance at the last minute, once settlements in the territories were included in the list of serious crimes under the court's jurisdiction. At the end of 2000, following an intense debate in the government, Israel signed the Rome Statute from which the International Criminal Court was established, but said it would not ratify its signature because of concerns that the institution would be used for political ends. Since then, Israel has stuck by its refusal to join the ICC and be answerable to its judgments.posted by notion at 7:56 PM on April 3, 2011
Barak said that "Israel is part of the international community, and it must conduct itself in accordance with the interpretation that is common in international law." As president of the Supreme Court, Barak changed an entrenched approach that rejected court involvement in security considerations. In a ruling on the issue of the route of the separation fence, he established the formula of "reason and proportionality" in the exercise of security authority in the territories. His approach also guided the current court president, Justice Dorit Beinisch, in last week's ruling regarding the use of Route 443 by Palestinians.
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.So, Israel is subject to International Law under the UN Charter, and according to the Supremacy Clause in Article 103, they have to abide by the UN Charter if it conflicts with any other international agreement. Even though Israel has kept the Palestinian territories in a legal black hole - the ICC is currently trying to determine if it can qualify as a state and sue Israel - that does not absolve them of their legal obligations.
1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
103. In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.
In 1950, the Nuremberg Tribunal defined Crimes against Peace, in Principle VI, specifically Principle VI(a), submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, as:I had to refer to WikiPedia again, because you lack a fundamental understanding of international law.
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). . .
The relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations mentioned in the RSICC article 5.2 were framed to include the Nuremberg Principles. The specific principle is Principle VI.a "Crimes against peace", which was based on the provisions of the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal that was issued in 1945 and formed the basis for the post World War II war crime trials. The Charters provisions based on the Nuremberg Principle VI.a are:
Article 1
Article 2, paragraph 4
Article 33
Article 39
Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal on Wednesday urged supporters around the world on to send Hamas arms, fighters and money to back its fight against Israel.They're saying 'Won't you please send us money so we can kill the Jews' and telling those same Jews, 'We promise not to slaughter you, we swear.'
"We ask all the people in surrounding Arab countries, the Muslim world and everyone who wants to support us to send weapons, money and men," Mashaal said in a speech at a pro-Palestinian event in Qatar.
Hundreds of civilians were killed in attacks carried out using high-precision weapons -- air-delivered bombs and missiles, and tank shells. Others, including women and children, were shot at short range when posing no threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers. Aerial bombardments launched from Israeli F-16 combat aircraft targeted and destroyed civilian homes without warning, killing and injuring scores of their inhabitants, often while they slept. Children playing on the roofs of their homes or in the street and other civilians going about their daily business, as well as medical staff attending the wounded were killed in broad daylight by Hellfire and other highly accurate missiles launched from helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, and by precision projectiles fired from tanks.Interestingly, none of this is contradicted by Richard Goldstone's statement that "civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy."
Scores of civilians were also killed and injured by less precise weapons, such as artillery shells and mortars, and flechette tank shells, which can be accurately aimed but which disperse thousands of deadly metal darts at great velocity over a large area.
White phosphorus, a highly incendiary substance, was repeatedly fired indiscriminately over densely populated residential areas, killing and wounding civilians and destroying civilian property. [...]
Israeli forces could not conceivably have been unaware of the presence of civilians in locations which were repeatedly attacked, including with white phosphorus and other imprecise weapons, given that these areas were under close surveillance by Israeli drones.
Even though Israeli officials knew from the first days of Operation “Cast Lead” that civilians were killed and wounded in significant numbers, Israeli forces continued to employ the same tactics for the entire duration of the 22-day offensive, resulting in growing numbers of civilian casualties. The pattern of attacks and the resulting high number of civilian fatalities and casualties showed elements of reckless conduct, disregard for civilian lives and property and a consistent failure to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects.
Amnesty's report has two fundamental flaws.What are they? You only listed ad hominem attacks on Amnesty, nothing about the report itself.
The IDF believes that about two thirds of Hamas' underground rocket launch sites in the northern Gaza Strip were destroyed in the first round of Air Force sorties, on Saturday.Yes, if the Israelis were targeting civilians indiscriminately, they would be wrong to do so. I see disproportionate attacks here, but not "indiscriminate" ones.
Additional bunkers were destroyed in the days that followed, after a way was found of striking them when civilians were not in the vicinity.
The IDF has made frequent use of what is known as "knocking on the roof": Militants are warned by phone when a residential building used to store arms will be bombed, and told to vacate the premised together with their neighbors. The weapons caches are hit only after the residents leave.
Hamas has tried placing civilians on the roofs of such buildings when the phone call warning comes in. In these cases, the IDF fired antitank missiles near the building, and in a few cases the residents left.
The IDF believes that about two thirds of Hamas' underground rocket launch sites in the northern Gaza Strip were destroyed in the first round of Air Force sorties, on Saturday.Yes, if the Israelis were targeting civilians indiscriminately, they would be wrong to do so. I see disproportionate attacks here, but not "indiscriminate" ones.
Additional bunkers were destroyed in the days that followed, after a way was found of striking them when civilians were not in the vicinity.
The IDF has made frequent use of what is known as "knocking on the roof": Militants are warned by phone when a residential building used to store arms will be bombed, and told to vacate the premised together with their neighbors. The weapons caches are hit only after the residents leave.
Hamas has tried placing civilians on the roofs of such buildings when the phone call warning comes in. In these cases, the IDF fired antitank missiles near the building, and in a few cases the residents left.
Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.Joe, don't be so fucking petty and try to insinuate that I'm a racist. If that's what you think, come out and say it. I'm merely commenting on the recorded reality of IDF strategy.
Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip.
This intelligence-gathering effort brought back information about permanent bases, weapon silos, training camps, the homes of senior officials and coordinates for other facilities.
The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops. ( source )
« Older "I'm proud of being recognized as an artist, but I... | With $365 million in debt, mal... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
In the states, we call that type of reporting "fair and balanced". Well actually...only one side does.
posted by hal_c_on at 3:57 AM on April 2, 2011