Is this anti-semitism?

i think Bibi understands that every dead Palestinian child undermines the international support he needs to degrade hamas military infrastructure and shut down the tunnels - i think he's keenly aware of all the pressure on him to stop the operation. since he sets military protocol and ayelet shaked doesn't, it doesn't really matter what she thinks.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-want-to-mourn-for-gaza/

if only Palestine would stop stepping on that rake

it is crazy to me that the level of discourse remains at this cro-magnon "stop hitting yourself" level

i was hoping that ilx would at least be free of it

pretty sick to describe this as "stop hitting yourself" http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180400/hamas-killed-160-palestinian-children-to-build-terror-tunnels

this is obv a pretty fucked up evil organization committing war crimes against the civilian population they control

yes, but dude does seem to also be blaming the deaths of children in this war on Hamas

do you want us to say that hamas is a bad, violent, fucked up organization, mordy? okay - hamas is a bad, violent, fucked up organization. totally. i totally agree with you. seriously.

as am i - they are primarily responsible for the civilian deaths in gaza. btw it's not true that there's nowhere else for hamas to conduct their military operations out of - they is plenty of empty farmland in the gaza territory. they intentionally pick civilian homes, hospitals (including UNRWA hospitals and schools), and streets to fight this war.

xp

I primarily blame Hamas as well, but I also can reserve some responsibility for Israel because how could anyone take me seriously otherwise.

Hamas is "primarily" responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza? Come now...

doling out responsibility for death is always sketchy but yes, primarily and by a vast gulf

the moment they store rockets in a school and hospital, and then engage the IDF in firefights around that school or hospital, that gives them direct culpability for the secondary explosions incurred when an errant strike on either side hits that stockpile. when they launch a rocket that is so inaccurate it doesn't even get out of gaza airspace - that is direct culpability. when they put children to work in tunnels that collapse on them, killing hundreds, that is direct culpability.

Would you say that the Viet Cong were primarily responsible for the carpet bombing the US delivered?

There are no clean hands but the further Israel gets from a proportionate response, the harder it is to avoid a much heavier share of the culpability.

Israel is not carpet bombing Gaza, which is an important distinction. And from what I've seen, the ratio of civilians to combatants is close to 1:1 which is as proportionate as war has ever been.

the ratios i've seen are way off 1:1, unsurprisingly

Iirc it's not Hamas fault that Israel is bombing hospitals, killing kids on the beach, killing all families in a whole neighbourhood. I understand your position but it's rich to say Hamas is primarily responsible.

Israel occupies Gaza, the people have nowhere to go. They are cut off frequently from electricity, water, supplies. They are bullied, degraded, tortured and now killed. They can't work like others can and earn an income.

Hamas is an appalling organization who don't care too much about life on either side. But what can you expect other than some desperate firing of rockets in vain to the occupier?

As long as Israel won't opt for a two state solution, and won't end the occupation, this will not end. Because what does one in Gaza have to live for, when you're occupied? There is only one goal then: to not be occupied any longer.

What is the best argument for Israel purposefully killing civilians? I don't see how demoralization of civilians helps them in the long run for this kind of war. It could help diminish support for Hamas in the short term, but it diminishes other nations' support of Israel and may radicalize more people nearby.

Yeah, any kind of moving the culpability from Israel to Hamas would have to include some kind of justification for the missile attacks, which was not just pro-forma - Israel is as far as I can tell quite justified in bombing a school if enemy combatants are hiding there, according to international law - but actually justified in any long-term strategic sense. Which I haven't seen. Again, it will just stop the bombs for a short time, which in any way is stopped by the shield at this point. They don't have to bomb the school, there's no point in bombing the school, even though Hamas is hiding there. Therefore, I don't think it can be said to be Hamas' fault, but the fault of a faulty Israeli military strategy.

- Israel is as far as I can tell quite justified in bombing a school if enemy combatants are hiding there, according to international law

Not really. It may be a legitimate target for action but the action would have to stop short of disproportionately affecting civilians. You can't chuck a hand grenade into a crowded train because you saw a soldier get on it. Any building known to be full of civilians would be a hard sell as a legal target.

Israel's best defence is that their actions are proportionate to the threat but this pretty much means you need to be extremely, extremely careful. It's not enough to simply not deliberately target civilians.

sharivari otm

yup

Yeah, but from what I heard, that specific bombing resulted in 15 deaths. Which seems to me to indicate that there had been some intelligence as to the amount of civilians in that building.

the ratios i've seen are way off 1:1, unsurprisingly

Obviously we won't know anything for sure probably for months until all the facts come out. This is worth looking at:

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/07/half-of-dead-in-gaza-are-terrorists.html#.U9KbsBZ1ZfM

As well as this from Cast Lead in 2009:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print=1&x_context=7&x_issue=76&x_article=1952

'The elder of ziyon' is hardly a credible, independent source tbh

what the don't the elders know they're supposed to be SECRET

The Elder of Ziyon III: Morrowind

hahahaha

Why isn't he credible? Bc he's pro Israel? He is like every other blogger on the internet. He analyzes primary sources and gives his opinion. You should be reading all media skeptically.

Yes, statements like 'No NGO in Gaza is checking up on those, because they have a vested interest in making Israel look as bad as possible.' is clearly based on primary sources.

Add the three missing days of casualties (roughly 40 total, assume 20 terrorists), plus some percentage of the 41 who were undetermined last week, and it is clear that roughly half of the dead in Gaza are in fact terrorist - despite the horrific reports of entire buildings collapsing on families that seem to indicate otherwise.

Some assumptions. Some rough percentages.

sorry. first paragraph should have been in quote.

I find even calculating a ratio of terrorists:civilian dead offensive tbh, precisely the kind of horribly cynical calculus that drives this never-ending bullshit. Just the idea that you can draw a line (how many deaths is too many?) is gross. Human lives are not a math equation.

"like oh we killed a kid but we also killed a terrorist - MORAL VICTORY!" fuck you

better a guilty man goes free than an innocent man dies etc

If you want to discuss proportionality that's what is required.

I thought proportionality had to do with the deaths on each side

not the different types of death on just one side

I'm pretty much repeating myself, but proportionality has to do with civilian casualities compared to military importance. Not just terrorist >< civilian.

Therefore, again, the lack of strategic goals with this war is damning.

strategic goal is obviously to cripple Hamas (actual provocation is just a handy pretext)

Does anybody expect them to achieve that? And if they don't, if another war like this break out in a few years, will Israel all of a sudden say they lost this war?

Israel expects to achieve it. Hamas expects that they can goad Israel into committing enough atrocities that Israel will withdraw and some of Hamas' external sources of support will reestablish themselves.

idk which is more likely outcome tbh

that should say "enough atrocities that international pressure will force Israel to withdraw"

the whole thing is super hard for me to take. mixed in with all the airline crashes the scale of senseless suffering in the news is at psychically insupportable levels

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, July 25, 2014 10:23 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For what it's worth, and I don't mean to be overly dramatic about this, especially while sitting safely in the United States, but I have been in pretty much constant serious psychic distress over this for all of my waking hours for the past several days. I guess it's a combination of sadness at the loss of life, guilt at feeling like I am somehow associated with the conflict, fear of retributive antisemitism, and dissonance between my opposition to the Israeli military campaign combined with my inability to come up with a good answer to people I know who say that they or their relatives live under constant stress and fear from rockets (regardless of whether they are ultimately ineffective, it's still constant sheltering, sirens, and the occasional explosion), and this includes members of my own family by marriage who I have found warm and wonderful people and yet are capable of blindness and sometimes even hate that shocks me.

'live under constant stress and fear from rockets (regardless of whether they are ultimately ineffective, it's still constant sheltering, sirens, and the occasional explosion)'

otm. and at the risk of being completely facile, anyone who can't see this should read Gravity's Rainbow. hamas' rocket attacks might be the purest form of terror, in that they at this point can't be thought to hit anything, their only reliable function is to inflict terror.

I find even calculating a ratio of terrorists:civilian dead offensive tbh, precisely the kind of horribly cynical calculus that drives this never-ending bullshit. Just the idea that you can draw a line (how many deaths is too many?) is gross. Human lives are not a math equation.

― Οὖτις, Friday, July 25, 2014 7:32 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"like oh we killed a kid but we also killed a terrorist - MORAL VICTORY!" fuck you

― Οὖτις, Friday, July 25, 2014 7:33 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is this called 'moral posture'?

If someone frequently debates the morality of something, it makes them look like they are in fact moral, even when they're not. Or they are intensely interested in one moral issue, and this confers a sense of morality to actions taken on another issue, which in fact they've not thought about and are really acting on a base instinct.

For example, say I'm really interested in animal welfare issues, and always discussing them. Meanwhile I'm mistreating my partner pretty badly. The people who know me from the discussion group hear about this and think, well, you know, seems like a thoughtful guy, right? It doesn't sound like him to mess people around like that.

Meanwhile, if someone never really discusses morality, they can still be moral, but may look immoral by comparison to someone who we know is 'always thinking about right and wrong'.

Do countries, though, have this same 'moral posture' or is it only individuals? Do the IDF and/or Hamas put on moral postures?

If I say it whilst killing, is 'We regret that we have to kill children' better or worse than 'We must save our children'? Is either of those an accurate account of what the IDF and/or Hamas say?

Why isn't he credible? Bc he's pro Israel? He is like every other blogger on the internet. He analyzes primary sources and gives his opinion. You should be reading all media skeptically.

― Mordy, Friday, July 25, 2014 2:18 PM (2 days ago)

you realize his "primary sources" are the IDF press releases?