Death Toll:
Israelis: 13
Enough said eh?
Well, maybe not.
I know that this situation is one of the most complex and long running conflicts around and it is usually foolish to look at any event outside of a historical context but I think this is an exception. The facts here are that there are now 800 Palestinians who are dead and many times more injured as a direct result of a decision by Israel. You simply cannot justify that.
The phrase of the day is 'proportional use of force'. Israel says they will do whatever it takes to stop the rocket attacks by Hamas, but what does that mean? If they killed everyone in Gaza and bulldozed all the buildings down they would stop the attacks, but that would be considered disproportionate. There is clearly a point where the use of force is unjustified. Israel have clearly crossed that point.
The most sickening aspect in my book is the use of air strikes in such a heavily populated area. The IDF PR spokespeople can talk about 'tactical strikes' all they want but everyone knows that bombs miss and terrorists don't stand out in empty carparks waiting to get bombed. So what you get is huge numbers of civilians killed. Innocent people, living in a shithole, having little hope of a better life, get blown to pieces because their neighbour in 13A is a member of Hamas. Not right in my book. It's not right when the Yanks do it in Afghanistan and Iraq and it's not right when the Israelis do it in Gaza.
Of course what does it all matter when Israel doesn't really care what the world thinks of them. The UN Security Council can do nothing because the US has veto power and they are 100% behind Israel. So the offensive keeps on going and we get bored of it as it slips off the front pages. Gaza gets set back another 20 years as their infrastructure burns and 100,000 Gazans have a new reason to strap bombs to themselves to try and inflict at least some damage to the Military Goliath that keeps smashing them from next door.
But Hamas are terrorists. You can speak of elected governments all you like but firing rockets blindly into an area populated by civilians is pretty much the definition of terrorism. And once you are labeled the big T it's pretty much all over in terms of Western support for your cause nowadays. The US started this in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was quickly followed by other countries around the world. America set the precedent that you can do anything you want if you are trying to protect your people from terrorism. So the Israelis have the best comeback of all to world condemnation, "What would your country do if rockets were raining down on your people?". You sure as hell know what the yanks would do, and the UK and probably Australia. But that still doesn't make it right in my book. Israel are swatting flies with a sledgehammer.
And yes, the rocket attacks are like flies compared to the military might of Israel. They are unguided rockets so if they managed to his anything it is pure blind luck. I'm sure they do an excellent job of terrorising the population under fire, but so does shooting rockets from fighter jets and helicopter gunships only that method kills several orders of magnitude more people. Here is a quote from Israeli Defence Ministry in 2006 about the rockets:
"...but we need to remember that Qassams [the Hamas Rockets] are more a psychological than physical threat."
Basically, desperate people do desperate things. The Gazans are living in a hellhole of a refugee camp and are continually subject to Israeli blockades and military strikes. There comes a point where it becomes useless to talk about the rationality of certain actions. If you are continually near starvation, have no hope of a better life and are constantly victimised by a much more powerful enemy then you are not going to act in a rational way. There are two ways to look at it. Either Palestinians are inherently evil people who have no capacity to live in peace or they are desperate people who act or support those who act in violent ways because they see no other method of being heard.
I have faith in all humanity so I choose the latter.
8 comments:
I love CNN's coverage:
"The combined death toll is now over 800"
Technically correct, though a tad misleading methinks.
Does anyone have reporters actually inside the Gaza strip? They all seems to be reporting from Israel.
CNN itself just answered my question.
"International journalists are barred from going into Gaza"
Update: Israel are using White Phosphorus against the Palestinians. Isn't it a war crime to use that in populated areas?
I love Joe the Plumber's sheer insanity (as well as the insanity that he is a war correspondent:
"To be honest with you, I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war [sic]. … I liked back in World War I and World War II, when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for them. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to down soldiers -- our American soldiers, our Israeli soldiers. I think media should be abolished from reporting. You know, war’s hell, and if you’re gonna sit there and say ‘Well look at this atrocity’ -- well you don’t know the full story behind it half the time. So I think the media should have no business in it."
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2009/01/05/politics-morality-isnt-math.aspx is a good opinion peace explaining why it is way too simplistic to use math to define morality like you have.
It must be so easy for you to comment when it's not you, your family and your whole nation that is threatened.
Very interesting article Truth Seeker, thanks for posting.
Here is a link for the lazy.
He says that most Gazans are people who just want to live their lives in peace, just like everyone else. I agree with this, but you then have to wonder why these peace loving normal people would elect a militant organisation to govern them?
As I said, are they inherent warmongers or just desperate people? Extremists find the most support among the desperate.
I'm still not convinced that this is the moral thing to do. It is like the child throwing rocks at the tank and it's just not right when the tank fires back.
Watching an interview last night, the question was asked of the Israeli spokes person "How many civillians will you sacrafice to kill an Hamas militant?", to which the spokes person said "We don't make such callous calculations!". Hence the reason why the bomb schools. In one example they suspected that there might have been gunmen at the school, where they knew there were hundreds of children.
If the Israelis ever did the cold calculation of : 'Is killing 100 children worth the chance of killing 2 militants?' they may answer no, where as a righteous person can justify any atrocity because there cause is righteous. And when both sides in a conflict know they are right Hamas because they live in a besieged city, Israel, because they are being terrorised by Hamas, well, then you have the seeds of a holocaust.
And to all those people who ask ‘what would you do if missiles were raining down on your suburb’. There is a reason why we don’t let victims of crime metre out justice, it’s because they don’t have any sense of proportion, and you end up with kids being lynched for stealing a loaf of bread. That’s why we have judges and police, and a calculated proportionality in the response to crimes.
So why don’t Hamas and Israel invite in the cops (with suitable harsh ROE’s) and let a un-biased third party help them out… Well its because they are RIGHT of course, and there is no way either side will want anybody interfering with their JUST cause! Let the blood run…
Nice post Matt, depressing but probably true.
I have to say that the rockets fired by Hamas do NOT land on Israeli cities. They in-fact land on Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel.
Israel has flaunted United Nations resolutions calling them to leave the occupied territories for almost 40 years. This is the source of the decades-old bloodshed.
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