Topic: Israel: Operation Protective Edge - page 15. (Read 14685 times)

there is nobody defending Hamas that's why...
there are people defending Israeli war crimes so that is why people are criticizing them.

it is only deranged pro Isreal supporters who believe that the act of Defending the human rights of Palestinian and Isreali civilians is some how a Hamas or Leftist plot.

if someone came onto this forum saying some BS about Blowing themselves up or jihad Inspired killings being ok.. just watch how many people would criticize them.
but no.. as far as I have seen,  nobody has ever defended any of the Hamas war crimes on here.

I highly doubt that the outcome a state wants is reflected in global isolation or in a failed state status.


So then you believe that you should be targeted then? Afterall if you are in Moscow then you live in a country where you allow terrorist groups to exist and carry out attacks. So you must be supporting them right?

I'm not dismissing anything. If Israel did indeed bomb the school simply to kill kids and UN staff then there should be an appropriate reaction to it. If it is reactionary to Hamas playing their standard game then the UN should take their resources and oust Hamas leaders. Granted, that will not happen. Sure, people seem to note it but don't give a shit what Hamas is doing.

if you look at GW Bush's track record it wouldn't be too far from the truth.
Bush wanted to unleash fire and brimstone on gog and magog for the final showdown.. that is reportedly what he told Jacque Shirac and looking at how the people in Iraq are suffering right now from the hordes of terrorist inspired maniacs.. for them at least it would seem like Armageddon or the Apocalypse.

Electing Bush has got to be the biggest mistake the US has ever made. far bigger than going to war in Vietnam or arming and training the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan to fight a covert cold war against the USSR which turned out to have never really been a threat anyways.

as for netanyahoo look at his track record.. he holds a hammer in one hand and a noose in the other.

will netanyahoo be the biggest mistake Isreal has ever made? or will they elect someone even more right wing.

only time will tell.

They derive support from small cells and specific families. Trying to tie them directly to the rest of the population and then justify targeting said civilian population because of ethnic ties is dumb. It would be like saying that Syria should bomb all ethnic Russian civilians (or that the Russian government should) simply because there are ethnic Russians that engage in terrorist attacks in Russia and who are fighting jihad in Syria.

Which is also a war crime, but does not diminish the responsibilities and legal obligations that Israel has under international law.
We do, the difference is that there aren't a lot of people trying to suggest that Hamas isn't engaging in war crimes, whereas people like you seem fairly willing and indeed eager to dismiss illegal actions engaged in by Israel.

Then you'd be wrong legally speaking. It absolutely can be, it depends on what the response is. That doesn't have any bearing on whether or not the shelling of the schools constitutes a war crime. Or whether or not the use of flechettes or cluster munitions in urban settings does, or whether or not the targeting of civilian infrastructure like the water reservoirs and the power plant does. In short: that is a poor foundation from which to claim innocence.

Well that's a classic one I remember when Chavez called Bush a Devil who walked the halls a few days earlier XD
But it's no secret that they do not approve of Israeli actions there.

He does argue a fair point though

Ortega also claimed that Israel was “committing genocide” in Gaza, and compared it “to the crimes of the Nazis.”

“Why doesn’t anyone condemn or sanction the state of Israel?” Ortega questioned to Globovision, adding that Netanyahu wants to “annihilate the Palestinian people.

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As always the Washington CBS comments are super polarized
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ch%C3%A1vez_speech_at_the_United_Nations

Speaking one day after Bush addressed the same session of the General Assembly, Chávez announced, "The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of." At that point, Chávez made the sign of the cross, positioned his hands as if praying, and looked briefly upwards as if invocation of God. He continued "Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world." Chávez also said that President Bush "...came [to the General Assembly] to share his nostrums to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world." Chávez began his talk by recommending Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: "It's an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and what's happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet." Citing Chomsky's book, Chávez explained, "...the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.

Nicaraguan President: Netanyahu Is ‘Possessed By The Devil’
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/08/05/nicaraguan-president-netanyahu-is-possessed-by-the-devil/

I'm going to be devil advocate here, but a unilateral ceasefire, is not really a ceasefire. not like Israel didn't break if fair share of agreed ceasefire, heck even this whole massacre started by Israel

Too bad Hamas keeps violating evey ceasefire

Actually there geopolitical reasons here, mainly tied to Iran, Saudi Arabia trough GCC is pushing to isolated Hamas as it has ties with Iran, at the same time Egypt is doing the same thing because of this same reason but also and mainly because Hamas has ties with Muslim brotherhoods and the previous goverment that was overtrown by the army, so Hamas is kind of isolated hence you don't hear the Arab countries in the region making aggressive diplomatic moves against Israel and in fact, you can see these countries are even blaming Hamas. Well on the good side, most countries has sent millions of dollars in humanitarian helps and hopefully the medical equipement, food and water can get to Gaza population before the situation degenerate to an irreversable situation with diseases spreading and what's not

such argument, much brainwashing.

If Israel is to be held to such war crimes then why isn't the UN, you, others going after Hamas leadership for their actions where the intended outcome is the death or maiming of civilians? Seems Hamas is simply not to blame for their mortar firing and use of human shields. That's pretty damn laughable.

Responding to live-round fire is not what I would call a war crime simply because innocents were injured.
Israel has gone WAY out of their way to drop leaflets and everything else as a means to lower civilian injury. Hamas intent is to ensure there is plenty of "innocent" people killed as a means to "win" by taking away their capabilities due to the international community being up in arms over the pictures coming across.

In short: deliberately killing innocent civilians, even if they are being used as human shields, may very well still be a war crime if the military threat does not outweigh the threat to said human shields.

Israel should be punished for destroying all the nice tunnel work that cost hundreds of kids lives during their construction. Who cares if it was Hamas leadership that had the kids do the dangerous work in the first place.

Now there is nothing left to show the effort put forth by those poor dead kids

War crimes are war crimes regardless (to some extent) of the motivation behind them. Israel has a responsibility to minimize civilian casualties, bombing a school full of civilians doesn't do that. As far as your comment on motar fire from them:

1.) The burden of proof for that is on Israel and if you are defending the action: on you. So prove that each case involved Hamas fire from that location.

2.) Even if you can (which you can't and third party testimonies in several of these cases have indicated limited to no militant activity in the area), it could still very well be a violation of the rules of war (thus a war crime) as the perceived military payoff in military strikes has to outweigh the threat to civilian life (the threat to civilian lives in these cases being extremely high), and there is little reason to believe that such would be the case in these scenarios. Mortar fire (especially the kind we see here) generally doesn't represent just cause for the deliberate killing of civilian human shields.

interesting

Is this going to be another case of "guilt due to outcome" against Israel regardless of why? There have been at least 2 other school related incidents over the last few years where Hamas fired mortars from inside or near a school which resulted in return fire and kids/etc hurt. This seems to be quite a common occurrence from a leadership who hides beneath a hospital.

Well thank you for the compliment, but I wouldn't say that I am well versed in modern politics per say, I don't tend to be very up to date on domestic US issues for example despite living here, when it comes to international affairs / international economics / conflict and terrorism, those are simply my primary areas of study. But even there I specialize regionally (specifically in Africa, and to a lesser extent MENA). I know little of South American or even European Union politics, and while I have taken some time to look at East and Central Asia, they generally fall outside of my area too.

As far as my target areas: I took the time to get my masters in them, i read the news and all of the reports from thinktanks on them that I can, I pay money to be part of certain intelligence gathering organization so that I can analyze data, and I watch for and read books and academic papers written by experts in specialized fields.

As for why? It is the field of work that I would like to end up in with regards to my career, and I find it fascinating which means that much of my research and work is enjoyable and recreational for me.