Israeli airstrikes in Gaza kill more than 200

Quote:

Thank goodness no American military are needed to die, as occurred in protecting Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea, South Vietnam, France, Italy, Britain. In other words, it is nice to have an ally that can fight its own battles

seems like an ass backwards way to look at it too me....how about we consider how much our interests would be further ahead if we did not have the war mongering idiot Israelis as a "friend"? It is long past time to dump this relationship, it just is not working for us.

Foofie wrote:

By the way, for those Americans that are watching this drama play out, the good news is Israel does not need our military to assist them. I mean Israel is not Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea, Vietnam, France, Italy, Britain. In other words, in Israel's wars, only Israelis die; no American military dies. Let us dwell on that as the good news. Perhaps, that is what really matters - an ally that does not ask us to die for THEIR battles.

This is only partly true. Israel lives with an implied (and indeed in some areas explicit) American guarantee of security. This is what enables them to cling to the anachronistic concept of a modern tribal or theocratic state in an environment and historical context that make such an outcome a completely unrealistic expectation. There can be no peace and justice for all the people of the region until a pluralistic state is created there able to accomodate all the people. This, of course, won't happen until the zealots on both sides give up their sectarian dreams.

mysteryman wrote:

Israel should treat Hamas like the govt it wants to be.
They should cut off all supplies of fuel, electricity, or other supplies they send to the Gaza Strip.
They should close the borders to any Palestinian that doesnt have a Palestinian passport, one recognized by the world.
They should stop allowing any Palestinians into Israel to work.

After all, if Hamas wants to be the govt of the Gaza Strip, then its up to them as the govt to support their own citizens, maintain the infrastructure, issue passports, and provide their citizens with jobs.

So basically you call for the creation of a country-sized prison to house the Palestinians.

Wow, that'll sure stop the violence. Amazing how smart you guys are.

Cycloptichorn

Israel is doomed because it is run by psychotic idiots who are bent on a "Greater Israel" strategy. Zionist religious fanatics who somehow think that by becoming like the White Anglo Saxon Protestants (W.A.S.P.s) who nearly wiped out the Jews in Europe in World War Two, by adopting the "Let Someone else suffer now" philosophy Zionists think they will be allowed to succeed in their expansionist plans.

"Considering the Hamas government does not recognize Israel's right to exist"

Have Israel recognized Palestinians "right to exist" ?

Egyptians could open the gates and Gaza would be empty thirty minutes later. Ask yourself why that doesn't happen...

... as 3rd class citizens, one presumes.

What? Palestineans never built up their state to be a thriving modern industrial state. Blame Israel?

By DAVID GROSSMAN
Published: December 30, 2008
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Until last Saturday, Israel " under the military leadership of Defense Minister Ehud Barak " acted with impressive level-headedness. We must not lose our perspective now, in the heat of battle. We must not forget, even for a moment, that the inhabitants of Gaza will continue to live on our borders and that sooner or later we will need to achieve neighborly relations with them.

We must not under any circumstances strike with such violence, even though Hamas has for years made life excruciating for the Israelis who live on Gaza’s perimeter, even though Hamas’s leaders have rebuffed every Israeli and Egyptian endeavor to achieve a compromise and prevent a conflagration. Restraint, and our duty to protect the lives of Gaza’s innocent inhabitants, must remain our commitment today, precisely because Israel’s power is almost limitless compared to that of Hamas.
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Can Israel Win the Gaza War?
It depends how you define success.
By Shmuel Rosner
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008, at 4:02 PM ET

A target in the northern Gaza Strip following an Israeli air raidIn a 2006 article about Israel and the doctrine of proportionality, Lionel Beehner of the Council on Foreign Relations explained that applying the test of "proportionality" to Israel's military operations can be a tricky exercise. According to the doctrine"originated in the 1907 Hague Conventions""a state is legally allowed to unilaterally defend itself and right a wrong provided the response is proportional to the injury suffered. The response must also be immediate and necessary, refrain from targeting civilians, and require only enough force to reinstate the status quo ante."

The laws of war

Proportional to what?
Dec 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition

The rights and wrongs of killing civilians


IN THE arithmetic of death, the latest fight between Israel and Hamas has been an unequal contest: more than 350 Palestinians killed in Israeli air strikes in the first four days, many of them civilians, against four Israelis killed by Hamas’s rockets. But does such one-sided bloodshed make Israel guilty of using “disproportionate force”, as argued by, among others, Amnesty International and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, just ending his six-month presidency of the European Union?

Proportionality is intimately bound up with notions of the just war, and has been enshrined in treaties regulating warfare’s conduct since the Hague Convention of 1907. But familiar as it is, proportionality is a slippery idea. It has two different meanings in Western theory. On the grounds for going to war, jus ad bellum, the cause must be important enough to justify force; any good that will follow must outweigh the inevitable pain and destruction. In the conduct of war, jus in bello, any action must weigh the military gain against the likely harm to civilians.

Human-rights law has developed mostly in terms of jus in bello. The Geneva Conventions of 1949, dealing mainly with the protection of non-combatants in conflicts between states, were updated in 1977 to include more explicitly wars within states. Israel and the United States have not ratified the later protocols, though they do not really question the principle that armies must avoid “an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”.

The arguments are over the nebulous facts of a particular incident. Did Israel do enough to avoid civilian deaths? Do Palestinian policemen count as combatants? For Israel, the use of overwhelming force is both legitimate and, given its desire to restore its “deterrent effect” towards its enemies, sometimes necessary. Israel says that intent is what matters: it says it tries to avoid civilian deaths, whereas Hamas deliberately seeks to kill Israeli civilians with its rockets, relatively ineffective as they may be. Hamas responds with two arguments: as the disproportionately weaker party, Palestinians must use the crude means at their disposal to free their lands from Israeli occupation; more controversially, it often says there are no Israeli civilians since most Israelis serve in the army.

Proportionality in jus ad bellum and jus in bello are hard to separate: indiscriminate killing will colour the view of whether a war is justified; and even proportionate actions in battle will be denounced if the war is deemed unjust. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, arguments about legality fast turn into ones about history. If the tit-for-tat starting point is Hamas’s rocket attacks, then the Israelis have a right to defend themselves; if it is Israel’s occupation of Palestine or the dispossession of Palestinians when Israel was born in 1948, then Palestinians can argue for a right to resist. Proportional or not, the killing of innocents will go on until the dispute is settled.

I beg to differ: the Americans did very well: but they did have to do a little genocide first. possibly why they support Israel.

Also that many Protestants identify with Israel, inasmuch as old line Protestant families also came to the U.S. as a homeland, to avoid religious persecution in Europe. ... ... ...

georgeob1 wrote:

Foofie wrote:

By the way, for those Americans that are watching this drama play out, the good news is Israel does not need our military to assist them. I mean Israel is not Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea, Vietnam, France, Italy, Britain. In other words, in Israel's wars, only Israelis die; no American military dies. Let us dwell on that as the good news. Perhaps, that is what really matters - an ally that does not ask us to die for THEIR battles.

This is only partly true. Israel lives with an implied (and indeed in some areas explicit) American guarantee of security. This is what enables them to cling to the anachronistic concept of a modern tribal or theocratic state in an environment and historical context that make such an outcome a completely unrealistic expectation. There can be no peace and justice for all the people of the region until a pluralistic state is created there able to accomodate all the people. This, of course, won't happen until the zealots on both sides give up their sectarian dreams.

I was not talking about a future scenario that is fictional as of today. The fact remains Israel fights its own wars, as far as who dies. Every war the U.S. has been in since the Civil War has not been to protect our territory (was there a war with Mexico that might not count for the small incursion into our territory?). Our military personnal died in the 20th century protecting, aiding military of other nations. That is a fact; please do not trivialize it with "this is partly true." It is totally true!

And, when there would be a two-state solution, the other (Palestinean) state could also be thought of as an "anachronistic concept of a modern tribal or theocratic state" (your choice of words from above). So, it would seem that it would be incongruous for Israel to not be like the other states in the neighborhood.