During current Israeli invasion of Gaza, Israel has killed at least 919 people, including 284 children. Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, estimates vary from 250 000 to 1 000 000 dead Iraqis.
So I ask you, who are the terrorists? Have Hamas or Hezbollah killed 284 innocent Israeli children? Did Saddam Hussein kill a million Americans?
What the American and Israeli forces are engaged in is genocide. They are not, have never been, simply protecting themselves.
War on Terror my ass. Nothing incites terror more effectively than a genocidal invasion.
Update: I’m not the only person calling this attempted genocide. Bolivia is calling for “the International Criminal Court to bring genocide charges against top Israeli officials.”
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Unlike Hezbollah, Israel does not, nor has it ever targeted civilians. The death of innocents is a tragic inevitability of war. my heart goes out to all those caught in the middle. The sad fact is that the Palestinian people are being held hostage by Hamas. Just as it is clear that Hamas is morally culpable for any harm done to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli hostage that they hold, so too are they culpable for the fate of Palestinian innocents amongst whom they hide. A civilian who is killed while being used by a terrorist as a human shield is a victim of the terrorist, not the Israeli army, who does not target innocent civilians.
Israel is waging a defensive war. In war, you don’t measure your response to the enemy by what they have done to you in the past, but rather by what needs to be done to stop them from attacking you. Israel must destroy Hamas’ capability to continue shooting rockets at Israeli cities. Israel’s actions are proportionate to the present and future threat, not just the damage done in the past.
Feelings of frustration, anger, fear and rage do not make you into a terrorist. A culture of death and an education of hate does. Israel doesn’t need to do anything to create terrorists – Islamic extremism does that – but Israel must act to destroy those who threaten its people.
Israel would not touch Hamas if Hamas would stop sending rockets and suicide bombers into Israel. Israel seeks to live in peace with its neighbors; Hamas and its allies seek to destroy Israel, no matter what Israel does.
There is a world of difference between the Hamas terrorists and the Israeli soldiers. The Hamas terrorist seeks violence as a way of life; his aim is to sow war and death. For the Israeli soldier, war is a necessity, and a moral duty, because Israel’s citizens are being attacked and innocent lives are being threatened. The Hamas terrorist seeks to maximize civilian casualties; the Israeli soldier does everything in his power to minimize them.
Genocide? Bullshit.
Good call Josh.
And Kavan, I know. I know, innocent people killed and all… everyone would go against violence like this. But when it comes to the invasion on Gaza, what’s the root to this problem? Josh was straight to the point, “Israel would not touch Hamas if Hamas would stop sending rockets and suicide bombers into Israel”. Israel had been patient. Now is their turn.
@ Joshua,
Thanks for the well-thought-out comments. I have three counterpoints. First, while I agree that “the death of innocents is a tragic inevitability of war,” I would point out that the war is not inevitable. It is not reasonable to kill 1000 people in response to rocket attacks that killed… one person? Furthermore, if Hamas is indeed a ‘terrorist organization’ then it is not reasonable or lawful to invade a country, Palestine, because of the actions of some people in that country, who are not its military.
Second, the fact is that the Palestinian people are poor, constantly oppressed by the Israelis, and have no where to turn. The international community threw them out of their homes to make way for what is now Israel, and as far as I know, little help has been given to them. Israel gets somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.7 billion per year in defense funding from the US alone. What does Palestine get?
Third, what makes someone a terrorist is ‘using terror especially as a means of coercion.’ Israel and the US are much more effective at this than Hamas.
Fourth, while Israel might not invade Palestine without the rocket attacks, it would and has continued to undermine all possibility of prosperity in that region.
Fifth, the most salient difference between Israeli soldiers and Hamas is that the former are about 1000 times as effective at killing people than the latter. War is rarely a necessity and almost never a moral duty. If Hamas seeks maximum civilian casualties, why is it that Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians in its invasion while Hamas killed only 1 in its rocket attacks?
@JC,
The root of the problem is poverty in Gaza and the oppression of the Palestinians. Rich and prosperous people do not, generally, support violent, extremist regimes.
Kavan, thanks for posting on this. Watching this situation has really been bothering me. I feel somehow that we in America are making the same mistakes our grandparents made in not taking a more active position against this genocide. If this were another country and another religion, we would have sent tanks in to stop them; but as it is, we don’t just look idly by, we _condone_ their actions. Did we learn so little from the Nazis that we’re going to let the very people hurt by them commit genocide?
@Joshua, if Israel were not interested in killing civilians, they would use Moussad, and not rockets, to deal with the terrorists. Israel has some of the most effective counter-terrorist units in the world. Instead of using them, they are dropping bombs on an area the size of Washington, D.C. with 1.5 million people living in it – most of them have never fired a rocket at an Israeli, or strapped a bomb to anything. Most of them are mothers, children, and fathers trying to survive in a poverty-stricken part of the world.
Furthermore, how many Americans do you know who wouldn’t become ‘terrorists’ if another group of people came into this country, kicked us all out of our homes and put us in far shittier accomodations, and strip-searched our sisters every time they went to the grocery store. Have you ever been harrassed by a customs officer? Try that every day, except they’re pointing guns at you, screaming in your mother’s face, and treating you like a lesser person.
Israel is the very reason groups like Hamas can exist. You reap what you sow.
Thank you Kavan and Riley. Yes! Israel could effectively use Mossad to strategically excise the terrorists. Furthermore, Israel is treating the Palistinians just like the US treated the American Indians in the 1800s. Hmm. Perhaps that is why we support Israel in this mess.
@ Riley and SFC – thanks and good points.
What people don’t understand is that “terrorism” is not the problem. Fear, hate and violence are the problems. You cannot reduce fear, hate and violence through more violence. Violence begets more fear, more hate, and more violence. The only solution is to stop escalating the cycle of violence.
Israel seeks to defend itself in a highly complex environment, where the adversary, Hamas, cravenly uses civilians as shields and mosques as armories. For that right to protect its citizens, which any sovereign nation would exercise under similar circumstances, it is labeled as the successor to the demonic force that wiped out two-thirds of European Jewry, including 1.5 million children.
How many times does it need to be said?
Israel left Gaza in 2005. Israel has repeatedly renounced any territorial ambitions there. Israel gave Gazans the first chance in their history to govern themselves.
Israel has a vested interest in a peaceful, prosperous, and developing Gaza. This point cannot be stressed enough. After all, the two are destined to share a common border.
Israel has only one overarching concern in Gaza: Does it pose a security threat to neighboring Israel? The answer, tragically, is clear. That was the result of a decision taken in Gaza, not Israel. Hamas was chosen to rule, and choices have consequences. After all, Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist.
Why were tunnels built across the Egyptian border? What are the Iranian-made Grad missiles going through those tunnels to Gaza meant for? And why are Hamas fighters going through those tunnels in the other direction for training in Iran and Lebanon?
More than 10,000 rockets, missiles, and mortars have been fired at southern Israel from Gaza in the past eight years. Towns and villages have lived under constant threat. If some of those projectiles were crude and missed their targets, it was not for lack of trying. Their aim is to kill, maim, and intimidate as many civilians as possible. Everything is fair game—homes, hospitals, schools, playgrounds. The trauma this has created cannot be adequately described.
And for what? To “liberate” Gaza? Well, Gaza is already under Hamas, not Israeli, rule. No, more likely, to eventually “liberate” Israel from Israeli rule.
There is such a thing as a just war. War should be the last option, but there are times when it must remain an option. Had the Allied nations not declared war on the Third Reich, how would the world have looked? Mind you, that war was neither “clean” nor “surgical,” and Allied leaders were hardly preoccupied with debates over “proportionality.”
As diplomacy offered no solution and restraint met with no reciprocity, what was Israel supposed to do in the face of Hamas’s arms buildup and daily barrage of fire? Simply accept the role of sitting duck so that it might aspire to the moral high ground of victimhood?
Targeted assassinations may be part of the solution. They may also just lead to escalating retaliatory attacks with no winners.
@ Joshua,
The fact that someone tried to wipe out the Jews in the past does not give the Jewish state the right to try to wipe out or otherwise marginalize the Palestinians in the present. You can’t seriously compare Hamas to the Nazis.
The right to self-governance of Gaza was not for Israel to give. All people have a right to govern themselves. The two are not destined to share a common border if Isreal wipes out the palestinians, or terrifies them into leaving. And Israel has kept Gaza under a steady economic siege even when they weren’t bombing it.
Whether or not Gaza poses a security threat, Israel has no right to invade. The United States poses a clear security threat to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and a host of other countries. Does that give Pakistan the right to invade the US? The logic of preemptive strikes is analogous to being guilty until proven innocent. Countries can’t pull this ‘we’re just protecting ourselves’ crap unless there’s been a bona fide act of war. Gaza is not a country. It does not have a military. Therefore the rockets you speak of are not acts of war, but acts of terrorism, by specific individuals. I support effort to round up those individuals and bring them to trial, but not rolling tanks into suburbs and murdering civilians, or consciously taking actions that you know will result in civilian casualties.
I’m not saying Hamas is in the right. Anyone who uses violence for political purposes is wrong in my books. I’m saying that invasion is not a moral or reasonable response to terrorists. It also doesn’t work. There is no known case of a terrorist group being wiped out by violence. Terrorist groups dissolve when they are incorporated into the political process.
Israel didn’t go in now because of rockets, they went in because the US administration is about to change, and they’re afraid the new administration will condemn this unjust war.
All this bullshit about the right to protect your country and just wars and a reasonable response is only being floated because it’s Israel attacking palestine and not the other way around. When the U.S. or Israel makes a preemptive strike, that’s fine. When Hamas or Hezbollah makes a preemptive strike, it’s terrorism. It’s all bullshit. On Jan 29th, the US CIA sent an unmanned aircraft into Pakistani airspace and fired two hellfire missiles killing at least one person. That is an act of war. By your logic, Pakistan would be justified in invading the US.
Violence is bad. Rolling tanks into someone else’s territory and shooting people is bad. Bombing a city because some dude shot a rocket at you is unjustifiable. I don’t give a fuck why they’re doing it.
“Violence is bad.” – agreed
“Rolling tanks into someone else’s territory…is bad.” – agreed.
I also agree that, in general, invasions don’t work (see – Iraq).
Your point that “The United States poses a clear security threat to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and a host of other countries. Does that give Pakistan the right to invade the US?” is mute, since those countries are halfway around the world. In Israel’s case, proximity is a factor. What would you have the US do if Mexican nationals, fighting on behalf of the cross, began firing rockets into Texas, or California.
The Islamic extremists are fighting a holy war – a war that is no more justifiable than any fight brought on by a make believe religion. Do you really think that if Israel left Gaza and returned to pre-1967 borders (see -2 state solution) all this will stop? No – because Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran fundamentally disagree with Israel’s right to exist.
All religions are bullshit, and when you have a small core group of people willing to die for a book, you end up with our current situation in Israel.
Israel is defending her right to exist. And even if Israel were to send in their counter terrorist teams and systematically remove those in charge, history has taught us that someone even more vile will take the reigns, hoping to die as a martyr, and dreaming of all those virgins waiting for him in make believe land.
This is a complex problem; these people have been at each others throats forever.What do you suggest Israel do? It is easy to harp on the issues, but difficult to generate productive solutions. I hope we can at least agree on this last point.
@Joshua, there is a slight difference in the situation in Gaza and your hypothetical Mexican terrorist attack. For one thing, we have not spent decades forcing Mexicans to go through checkpoints twice a day, we have not spent countless hours harrassing the Mexican people, treating them _all_ as if they are terrorists, and we have not, last I checked, told the Mexican people we are going to occupy their land, and they can all live in Tijuana under oppression.
I’ve got to reiterate Kavan’s point that the people who attacked Israel are NOT a legitimate government. They are terrorists and extremists. If three black people commit a crime, do we arrest all black men, or just those who committed the act? That’s what Israel is doing. They are killing regardless of blame, and that’s not right. It’s the 21st century – genocide and barbarism should be things of the past, but clearly the nation of Israel would prefer to go back to the days of pestilence and savagery. It seems like Israel has reflected on all the mistreatment of the Jewish people and decided to have their turn. I suppose they could just enslave the Palestinians, to reflect the other great injustice committed against them, but _that_ might be just enough to tip America against them.
You want a productive solution? Stop killing each other. It’s not that fucking hard. If you’ve got such strong religious convictions you’re willing to die for them, as these people do, then how do you reconcile the fact that you’re killing everyone who disagrees with you despite the messages of peace inherent in these religions?
I don’t suggest Israel do anything. What motivation do they have to do anything? The world sits idly by while they massacre an entire region. Do you EXPECT them to work for peace, if we’ll tolerate slaughter instead? It’s the rest of us who should be doing something – and that something is telling Israel that genocide is not tolerated anymore, regardless of who commits it.
But that won’t happen, and it has nothing to do with their war being justified, with injustice against the Jewish people, or anything else that is relevant. It has solely to do with them being God’s chosen people, and that’s bullshit. If god was any kind of decent deity he’d have abandoned them when they became their own oppressors. Israel is the cause of the world’s conflict in the Middle East, the cause of ‘world terror,’ and the West is to blame for it.
I keep hearing about catching Osama. If America wants to catch the people to blame for 9/11, it should look in the mirror, then look at Israel.
@Joshua,
I agree in part. My only counterpoints are: 1) if you think proximity is an issue, would you then agree that Pakistan has the right to invade afghanistan and take out the temporary American military installations that launched said missile attacks? 2) I disagree that invading another country can be considered ‘defense.’ When someone invades your country, and you fight them back to your border, and bomb their military installations, that’s defense. When you cross the border and fight them on their land, they are now defending and you are now engaged in offense, not defense.
If Israel wanted peace, they would help Palestine prosper through aid and trade deals. People are less likely to support violent regimes when they aren’t desperate and persecuted.
@Riley,
Good points. But, are you sure Hamas is not a legitimate government? If there’s evidence that the election was rigged, I’m not aware of it.
I don’t normally comment on blogs but your post was a real call to action. Thank you for a great read, I will be sure to bookmark your site and check in now and again. Cheers, Amy xXx.