Israel Drops White Phosphorus Bombs On Children

It seems to me that you are awfully literal minded. In the first place, large-scale aerial bombing has only taken place three times since the Second World War, outside the middle east and leaving aside Serbia for now, and that was in Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan during the Soviet war. I believe that one can reasonably exclude the Falkland Islands War, as Argentine fighter-bombers were attacking Royal Navy shipping in the sound between the eastern and western main islands.

In Korea, we had the authority of the United Nations, and i know of no serious charge that the United States and its allies there knowingly violated the Geneva Conventions. During the war in southeast Asia, it was alleged that the United States committed negligent and "illegal" bombing, although i know of no one who has successfully prosecuted a case based on that. Similar charges were made against the Russians in Afghanistan.

During the Second World War (before the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war were promulgated and ratified), the RAF decided upon a policy of nighttime area bombing of residential civilian areas. Winston Churchill freely admits as much in his multi-volume work, The Second World War, and states that he and Air Marshall Arthur Harris ("Bomber" Harris) made the decision that workers who get no sleep will not be productive the following day. Quite a skimpy fig-leaf to cover the horror of the fire storms first generated at Hamburg, and later intentionally triggered through a careful bombing method. It also covers the fact that the RAF did not dare bomb in dayling, any more than did the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe had attempted precision nighttime bombing agains the docks in the east end of London, with disasterous results for the residents. However, only the Americans actually persued a policy of high-altitude, precision daylight bombing--and greately to our cost, as 30,000 American aircrew were lost over Germany and France. The English and the German policies were intended to be terror bombings, and they intended to use terror as the weapon absent the ability to deliver bombs to crucial targets with precision.

It is noteworthy that after the war, Herman Goering was to be prosecuted for his participation in the National Socialist government, and not his position as commander of the Luftwaffe--but he took his own life and avoided a conviction at a war crimes trial. None of the high ranking officers of the Luftwaffe were ever prosecuted for the prosecution of the air war. Albert Kesselring was prosecuted for war crimes because of his role as supreme commander of German forces in Italy. Although Kesselring was one of the commanders of the air fleets which attacked England in the Battle of Britain, he was not prosecuted for that, nor were any other air fleet commanders. Adolf Galland, although commander of the fighter wing of the Luftwaffe, and although held as a prisoner of war for almost two years after the war, was never prosecuted for war crimes. The reason is simple--the Allies had practiced terror bombing, too.

The provisions of the Geneva Conventions which succeeded that war in particular sought to prevent abuses which had taken place in that war, including some types of aerial bombardment. Among the violations of which the Israelis are currently guilty, and which i therefore categorize as state terror are violations of the following provisions of Third Geneva convention:

Part I, Article 3, Section 1, paragraph d: The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.--Israel has launched missle attacks at apartment buildings, alleging that terrorist leaders are in them, but without meeting this provision for judicial guarantees. Of course, they have also done so with blantant disregard for the consequences to other inhabitants of such buildings.

This one is for you, Brandon: Part II, Article 13: The provisions of Part II cover the whole of the populations of the countries in conflict, without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on race, nationality, religion or political opinion, and are intended to alleviate the sufferings caused by war. (emphasis added)--since you are so fond of saying that the Palestinians deserve to get it in the neck because they support Hamas.

Part II, Article 20: Persons regularly and solely engaged in the operation and administration of civilian hospitals, including the personnel engaged in the search for, removal and transporting of and caring for wounded and sick civilians, the infirm and maternity cases, shall be respected and protected.--that means your boys in the IDF don't get to shoot up ambulances, Brandon.

Part III, Article 33: No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.--if one thing stands out starkly in the Israeli seige of Gaza, it is the character of collective punishment being inflicted.

Article 49 reads, in part: The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.--the Isrealis have violated this repeatedly since 1948.

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I didn't even get half-way through that Convention, Brandon. Israel consistently and cavalierly violates the provisions of the Geneva Conventions in a casual manner. That you don't wish to recognize that in no way alters the fact. Not only will you not acknowledge any parity in the horror of the acts committed by both sides, you won't admit that the Israelis ever do anything reprehensible. You claim that the Israelis are singled out for special censure, although you've not provided any evidence to that effect--but you, in fact, will countenance no accusation which censures the Israelis. You consistenly characterize the victims of Israeli state terror as the unfortunate bystanders who are killed in any war. You have characterized this as "some casualties," "a few casualties"--ignoring that more than 2,000 were killed in the Lebanon, and thousands more injured, and all in just a few short weeks.

You really had a gall to suggest that Israel is singled out for special censure. You are positively pathological in your inability to admit Israeli error. Another member has provided the evidence for an attack on a well-marked ambulance in daylight, in which article witnesses said that Israeli rockets struck the area of the ambulance station again later in that same day. I provided you evidence of attacks on waste water treatment and the power grid--but what do we get from you?

If you think that bombing a munitions factory and bombing a school bus are morally indistinguishable, then it only signifies that you are amoral.

None of the links provided and the attacks allude to were attacks on a munitions factory. It was pointed out pages ago that the Palestinians don't have any munitions factory, so Tico or McG or another of your cronies trots out to dig up a story about the bombing of a garage in which weapons were stored or manufactured (no proof offered, must Israeli propaganda)--even though those who disagree with you have consistently pointed to Israeli attacks on civilian targets and not military targets.

You cannot possibly climb down and admit any significant error on the part of Israel--your attitudes have become ossified and you show no sense of justice or proportion.

Attacking an apartment building because it is alleged that an Hamas member is in the building violates the Geneva Convention provision for not putting civilians unnecessarily at risk, and no condemning of executing anyone without judicial process--that is an atrocity countenanced by the Israeli government. Attacking an ambulance is a clear violation of the Geneva convention--that is an atrocity countenanced by the Israeli government.

I haven't the least doubt that you'll now attempt to claim that these were regretable accidents, or the actions of rogue soldiers. It that is true, then surely you can provide us links to the investigations of these incidents, or the prosecution of the soldiers involved. After all, you whine about people who disagree with you not providing links to evidence, it should be a simple matter for someone with such high standards to live up to his own standards.

The source for this statement in a press release by the United States Embassy in Isreal.

What do you say, Brandon? Even your boy the Shrub condemns this. This is a clear violation of that provision of the Geneva Convention which prohibits: "The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."

No, an apartment building is not a valid target. This is immoral. They should have sent in a team of assassins on the ground. Unless I learn something to alter the picture, this is what I would describe as an atrocity. I still would say, though, that this type of act is the Palestinian MO, and they don't even need the rationale of a terrorist leader living there.

So, even when you acknowledge that the Israelis are guilty of an act of state terror (and i've been hammering this incident for pages and pages and pages before you finally acknowledge it)--you still intend to assert that the Palestinians are worse.

Yes, apparently, this was an act of state terror, and yes, the Palestinians are much worse, since this is their habitual mode of attack.

What you are completely unwilling to acknowledge, is that state terror has been habitual for the Israelis since 1948. You're going to insist that someone prove it to you incident by incident, because you've decided, based not upon knowledge but upon adherence to political propaganda, that the Israelis are always innocent victims, and the Palestinians--every last mother's son of 'em--are wild-eyed and immoral terrorists. You not simply don't, but refuse to see what the Isrealis have done to the Palestinians since they began running them off their land in 1948.

You attempt an idiotic and puerile tactic of suggesting that people are "singling" the Israelis out for special censure. But, in fact, you do nothing but censure the Palestinians, as an entire class of people, without regard to distinctions of the actions of individuals; all the while, you resolutely turn a blind eye to the continuous and concerted policy of the Israelis for almost sixty years, which blatantly violates every precept of war and of national policy acceptable to the greater international community in times of conflict and in the occupation of other nation's territory. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank were occupied by Israel in 1967. The Geneva Conventions prohibit a nation moving their own citizens onto occupied territory--but Israel has done it consistently. Their settlers go about heavily armed, and for years have shot Palestinians out of hand, often for no more than throwing rocks. Small wonder the Palestinians have turned to crude explosives. The Israelis have driven Palestinians from their homes and bulldozed them. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, they have prevented the Palestinians from the pursuit of their ordinary and peaceful economic pursuits.

All of those violations also violate the General Assembly Resolution (#181) which estalished the state of Israel, which i linked earlier--in itself a dubious proposition of giving Jews a homeland to assuage European guilt at the expense of the Palestinians. But we'll never get a rational response out of you on this, because it contradicts the propaganda with which you are familiar and most comfortable--and for however much you may seek the truth and admit error in a scientific pursuit, you are wholly incapable of it in any political matter.

My little opinion so far for this troubled land: I don't see it makes sense for Palestinians to blow themselves up, if not some kind of unbearable external circumstances.
"Well, but you see only Islamic fundamentalists are that violent, that evil."
But that cannot deny the fact that They Did Blow Up Themselves For Reasons.
See the economic status, the scale of force and terror etc. of each side, I simply cannot see any justification for Israel to do what they did, if not for Palestinians either.

Israel has done what it has done for racist reasons--they want a pure Jewish state. The Palestinians have done what they have done from desparation. They were driven out of their lands in 1948 to Gaza and the West Bank. They were driven from Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 to, primarily, Jordan (those who went to Egypt were mostly sent to Jordan). In 1971, the Jordanians drove them out, and as the Syrians didn't want them, the Palestinians ended up in southern Lebanon--the only state in the region insufficiently powerful to prevent the exodus with Syria, Egypt and Jordan leaning on them to take the refugees. Eventually, Israel crossed the Litani River in the Lebanon, to attack the Palestinians there, restarting the Lebanese civil war, and destabilizing the region yet again.

Israel has a modern military establishment, heavily funded by outside donations, many private, and especially by American aid. So they attack apartment buildings with helicopter gun ships, and drop cluster bombs on southern Lebanon. The Palestinians have no such modern military establishment, and no such rich funding, so they strap explosives to themselves, and go among crowds of Israelis and detonate the explosives.

It's not hard to understand--it is hard to get a version of events which is not perverted by someone's propaganda agenda.

Of course the Palestinian terrorists are worse. Are you intending to assert otherwise?

Prove this statement.



... then prove that statement.

And then address the question of whether the actions of Israel are done out of "desparation" or merely self-defense, based on their continually being attacked by their neighbors over the years.



And who is the main target of those attacks? The citizens of Gaza? The citizens of southern Lebanon?



And, in contrast, who is the main target of those attacks.

Out of "desparation," to put your romantic spin on it, the Palestinians intentionally target for death innocent Israeli citizens. That is a purely dispicable act, and one that cannot be defended by anyone with an ounce of moral character.

I don't intend to play your games, Tico, because you have long ago demonstrated that you are just concerned with playing a game and not with the truth. Given the numerous occasions upon which you have followed me to other threads to level hysterical charges against me, and the willingness you have displayed in so many threads to ignore the consequences of Israeli state terrorism, i will give your remarks about what is and what is not moral exactly the attention it deservers, to wit:





<cue the crickets>


















</cue the crickets>

The implication being that you are in search of the truth, while I am not.

So because you arrived at this thread first, because I have now joined the thread and challenged you, you assume I am "following you"? Don't flatter yourself, Set. I've seen you level charges against others that they are stalking you around these fora, as if you are something to be pursued. Did you forget about all of the "numerous occasions" it appears that you followed me to other threads just to make a snide remark or two, or to make "hysterical" accusations against me?

So in lieu of discussing the issue of this thread, you bail, on the pretense of not "intending to play my games." I suppose that is a better course of action for you to take than simply resorting to your usual tactic of the personal attack. And because what I did in my prior post was to pose to you several questions relating to your post, it appears "my game" is to ask you to substantiate your remarks, and it is that which you are loath to do.


Run away, Set ... run away.

No, i don't claim that you have followed me to this thread. You used to do that, you don't do it any longer since you embarrassed yourself so badly in the pitbull thread.

I have been discussing the issues of this thread, and will continue to do so. I just won't discuss them with you.

Go find someone else to bully, Ah-nold.

ok kids there is enough for all of us!!

The "pitbull thread" .... is that the one where you accused me of lying, then later said you never did think I was lying, then later claimed you didn't know whether I was lying but accused me of lying just to see how I'd react, then accused me of lying yet again, but failed to respond to my reply to your pathetic accusation? Yes, I believe it is.

And since I posted well-before you in the "pitbull thread" (3rd post), I believe it's quite obvious that you followed me to that thread, not the other way around.

It appears you have misremembered what transpired in the "pitbull thread." Here is a link so you can refresh your memory.

LINK