Gaza Raids 'war crimes' (so says Amnesty International)

[morebunk]

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1429823,00.html

[mike_c]

1. tick, tick, tick....

Counting down to the premature burial of this post in IPA....

[madrchsod]

3. no one is awake?

must be sleeping or watching tv.....

[cprise]

2. I would enjoy putting an A.I. sticker on my car again

sign me up...

[CWebster]

4. Israel could care less.

.

[durutti]

5. AI Lies!

Only Daniel Pipes tells the truth!

[Jim Sagle]

7. You saw the light.

Psst - since your sarcasm tag was invisible, I didn't see it. ;-)

[Gimel]

6. Passing reference

The one-line reference to terror attacks targeting civilians is not enough. The condemation is like a slap on the wrists of the Palestinians, while continuing to lay blame on Israel. Fi Fi to the AI organization. I had better hopes for it.

"Amnesty also urged Palestinian armed groups to "immediately halt" deliberate killings of Israeli civilians. "

However, this seems to be a South African site. They have a strong bias against Israel. Where is the condemation of the suicide bombing that killed 20 innocent civilians, including children and grandmothers just 10 days ago?

[dudeness]

8. interesting view of the world

from those lofty heights??

anything slightly critical of Israel = propaganda

anything critical of palestinians = factual

[Gimel]

9. No one mentioned propaganda

It's the presentation of the events, and the strong condemnation of Israel, whereas the suggestion that the urging of the PA to halt the terrorist attacts is seen as a modest suggestion.

[cprise]

10. Propaganda

"PA terrorist attacks"

And blather.

[Gimel]

11. Your quotes

This is not the phrase I used: "PA terrorist attacks"

The PA has failed to halt the terrorism. Arafat is complicit in the terrorism against Israel because he has failed to act on the terorism that thrives in the Palestinian territories. Because of the attack on the US convoy he has sent secuity police to arrest terrorists for the first time in 3 years. Those he arrested are merely scape-goats.

[cprise]

12. You want the PA to foist a totalitarian police state

...on Palestinians in addition to the fact of occupation. You might as well accuse Arafat of not using mind-control.

The bulk of the killing has been done by the Israeli side (also against civilians for a political end). When anti-Israeli terrorism is relentlessly focused on in this context, then what I am reading is someone who insists on preferential treatment.

[bluesoul]

13. Police state

Not even mentioning the fact that Arafat doesn't have control over all those various fractions even if he wanted to...

[Gimel]

15. The bulk of the killing

Are you weighing commodities? The "bulk of 2:1 negates the i even if the 1 existed before the 2? You wouldn't make a good mathematician or scientist.

what is possible, is for the Palestinians to use their resources in a more humanitarian manner, instead of attaking Israeli civilians. The b
bulk of the deaths on the Israeli side are civilians. More civilain women have died at a ratio greater than 2 to 1. Yet you consider this insignificant.

http://www.idf.il/daily_statistics/english/1.doc

http://www.idf.il/daily_statistics/english/3.doc

Furthermore:
Since January 2001, 52 Palestinian suicide bombings have killed some 250 civilians and injured 2,000 more. Well-established principles of international law require that those in authority be held accountable when people under their control commit war crimes or crimes against humanity. Leaders who order such crimes, fail to take reasonable preventive action, or fail to punish the perpetrators are also responsible for such crimes.
November 2002
http://docsmgmt.hrw.org/is-ot-pa-pubs.php

[Resistance]

16. .

You ask Palestinians to "use their resources in a more humanitarian manner, instead of attaking Israeli civilians" and that is a good point.

But you never, not once, have ever asked Israel to be more humanitarian, instead of attacking Palestinian civilians. Nope, instead you make excuses for Israel's terrorist attacks on Palestinians.

My point is this: why don't you start condemning attacks from both sides, rather than pretending like Israel does nothing wrong and is only defending itself. That is such bullshit, Gimel - nobody but a select few here believe it anymore.

[Gimel]

18. Condemning attacks

I've always expressed regret at the loss of innocent lives. I read that a 4 year old killed his brother and seriously wounded a sister in the US. I think the gun laws there ought to be changed. That is intollerable in a civilized modern society,.

[Gimel]

22. Excuses

Indeed, some of the civilian deaths could have been avoided with ideal conditions and more care on the part of IDF soldiers. They are not, however, terrorist attacks. This is a continued arror on your part.

I personally feel sorrow over deaths of innocent civilians, Israeli or Palestinian. I also feel pain over senseless deaths of children in the USA. These deaths could have been avoided as well.

[cprise]

17. Balking at commodities? So now Palestinian lives are priceless?

Or should I say, Palestinian lives are considered worthless and Jewish lives are considered priceless.

And Isreal's extra-judicial determination of who is and isn't a civilian and thus who is suitable for assasination is worthless to me. All of the people in that land are charges of the Israeli state whether they are considered voting citizens or not.

The more resources/power available to a group, the greater their responsibility. That is a core progressive value that I am going to stick with.

[Equinox]

19. Maybe they realize the PA can't do anything against the "terrorists"

:shrug:

[Resistance]

14. the actual AI report

can be found here: http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde150912003

Amnesty International condemns in the strongest terms the large-scale destruction by the Israeli army of Palestinian homes in a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, which made homeless hundreds of people, including many children and elderly people.

On this occasion, as in many previous operations by the Israeli army involving the destruction of homes, at least six Palestinians, including two children were killed and scores of others, many of them children, were injured during the period of 10 to 12 October.

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War clearly states that "collective penalties are prohibited... Reprisal against protected persons and their properties are prohibited." Article 53 of the same Convention states that "any destruction by the Occupying Power... is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations."

[The Magistrate]

20. There Is One Problem With This Sort Of Thing, Mr. Resistance

The term "war crime" has a different meaning in fact than it often is heard as. Any violation of the laws of war is a "war crime", but people mostly hear, and react to the words, as indicating the sort of murderous outrages that popularized the term. Vandalizing property and murder are both "civil crimes", but no one would think to use the same term to denote both acts. The former is clearly a lesser thing than the latter, and no one gains any propagandistic benefit by seeking to blur the distinction.

The war crime of directing military operations to the sole purpose of killing enemy civilians is a crime of much graver nature than the war crime of destroying a number of houses. The war crime of directing military operations to the sole purpose of killing enemy civilians is a crime of much graver nature even than the war crime of taking insufficient precaution to reduce casualties to enemy civilians incidental to a military operation directed against enemy combatant personnel. Blending all these various things together under a single trumpeted term serves no good purpose: it obscures the real nature of the events being described. After all, a man who says he loves his wife, loves his daughter, and loves a good hamburger, had better be meaning different things in each instance.

[bluesoul]

21. Crimes

A crime is a crime. There is no difference if a Palestinian kid or other civilian gets killed or a Israeli civilian gets killed. Both die. Both families have lost their love ones. How they are killed, either via suicide attacks, shots, bombs, rockets or bulldozers doesn't change it even a bit.

[The Magistrate]

23. No, Sir

A "crime" is not just a "crime", and no more. Law in matters criminal consists largely of defining the differences in crimes, based on the harm done and the intent of the perpetrator. In just the question of homicide, there are many degrees of variation, ranging from the coldly planned killing to the accidental result of negligence. These are considered different in gravity, and the punishment and opprobrium attached to them varies accordingly. This is proper: otherwise we would soon be back to hanging children for pick-pocketing, or drawing no distinction between killing a child by splitting its head with an axe, or by leaving an uncovered swimming pool unattended.

The cry that "a crime is a crime" is, in this instance, a mere propagandist's ploy, to blur the very real and clear distinction between military acts with the sole object of killing enemy civilians and such things as demolishing houses, or taking insufficient precaution to avoid harm to enemy civilians when engaging enemy combatants. This is done because progressives who support a party to a conflict which routinely directs its military actions to the sole object of killing enemy civilians find it somewhat embarrassing to do so, and grasp at rhetorical straws for solace of their self-image, being unwilling to accept they are ranging themselves alongside murderous criminals. That discomfort is understandable, but would be better avoided by openly acknowledging great evil is being done in the cause they support, and either admitting that it does not much bother them this is so, or denouncing that evil and recognizing that, rather than advancing the cause they support, that evil undermines it profoundly.

[bluesoul]

24. really?

You may twist it any way you want (for evident reason - taking side) but a child murdered by Israelis equals to child murdered by Palestinians. You can spare me the justifications, excuses and all the anti-terrorist crap in justifying Sharon's policy...

[The Magistrate]

25. Wriggle All You Like, Sir

It provides amusement and instruction for all.

You are clearly laboring under the misapprehension "murder" is a synonym for killing. It is not; it is not even a synonym for killing of which you personally disapprove: murder is a killing defined as such under law.

A combatant who deliberately employs his weapon to kill enemy civilians commits a murderous crime of war. A combatant who in discharging his weapon at an enemy combatant kills a nearby enemy civilian may have committed a crime of war, but one which falls short of deliberate murder. The enemy combatant he aimed at may also have committed a crime of war, by positioning himself in such a way as to expose civilians to possible harm in the operation he was conducting.

[bluesoul]

26. Aha

Obviously you have never heard about target practicing and intentional killings. Btw what crimes did Rachel Corrie committ to be bulldozed by the Israelis (which was illegal to start with)? I am sure the IDF is the most moral army on earth and would never kill Palestinians intentionally...

[The Magistrate]

27. Quoting Piglet To The Hephalump Will Get You Nowhere Better, Sir

The matter of the unfortunate Ms. Corrie has been worried over at great length here. It does not seem to me, on the various reports of witnesses and the driver, that the death was intentional: you may well disagree, and we are unlikely to settle the matter between us today. My own view of Ms. Corrie is that she was a courageous and principled young woman, and that her death is most regrettable. It is an unfortunate fact that, for the Ghandian gambit to achieve any political impact, such things are required.

Your reference to "target practice" indicates you have little understanding of shooting in combat. Targets do make themselves rather scarce, you know, and hands do tremble: what can be done on a target range cannot be reproduced in action. Your refernce to intentional killings is unclear: members of Hamas, et al, are combatants, and liable to being killing at any instant, just like any other combatant in a war. There other instances of killing by Israeli soldiers that are murderously criminal, such as the use of lethal force to enforce curfews. Those things do nothing to advance the cause of Isral, but rather undermine it badly. So does the continued confiscation of land, and expansion of settlements in the lands overrrun in '67.

What you most pointedly ommit to engage, Sir, is the quantity of crimes conducted by the military factions of the cause you support. You would be well advised to do so.

[Equinox]

28. Your whole hypothesis rests on the assumption

that one side "always" accidentally shoots civilians and one side "always" purposely shoots civilians.

If you evened out the playing field to include the possibility that some IDF personnel (or your term, combatants) deliberately target and "kill/murder" civilians...then I would agree with both you and bluesoul.

It doesn't seem that you wish to do so, however, I hope I'm wrong.

Edit: I read your previous post...so mine stands moot.

[The Magistrate]

29. Thank You, Mr. Equinox

Our disagreement in these matters is likely less than meets the eye. It is my conclusion that the great bulk of operations by the various irregular bodies of Arab Palestine are indeed aimed at killing civilians, but there are certainly some operations conducted against Israeli soldiers. These latter are legitimate acts of war, and certainly the people of Arab Palestine have a right to resort to war in defense of their land and themselves, as does any people. It is also my conclusion that the ordinary operations under orders of the Israeli armed forces are aimed at engaging combatants. There do seem to be occassions where insufficient care is taken in such operations to avoid harm to enemy civilians, or where the direct military gain from the operation is not sufficient to outweigh the harm done to enemy civilians. That is the Geneva standard, and it is a subjective one: we might well disagree in its application to any particular case. Some instances, such the curfew enforcement referenced above, are clearly done under orders, and those orders are criminal. There are also certainly instances where soldiers act against orders, and the frequent lack of punishment in such instances is in itself a crime under the Geneva conventions.

[Equinox]

30. Agreed...

...and I most certainly agree with you that actions (crimes of war) directed at civilians (regardless of which side commits them) are more dangerous to the cause and outweigh any political gain such actions are mistakenly hoped for.

:toast:

Edit: fixed a sentence that still looks like shit...but oh well.