I know, I am an evil, horrible person for even suggesting it (and of course stupid and a doofus as well)..

Nothing you have posted here gives me any reason to think you are stupid.

an honest attempt to minimize civilian casualties

How’s that one working out?

It’s ironic, you know. I’ve been to Israel a dozen times. I’m tremendously impressed with what Israelis have achieved, in a relatively short time and with few resources. Like you, if I had to choose I’d say I “like” Israel better than I “like” the Palestinians (or, to be more precise, most of the Palestinian leadership at any rate). Yet if any of the apologies for the current slaughter could shift my opinion, it would be your more-in-sorrow-than-anger jesuitry long before it would be the eliminationist shriekings of the openly genocidal fascists who are S,N!’s more usual targets.

The thing some of these clowns were simply unable to grasp is that you don’t treat your enemies with respect and dignity, ensuring their protection under Geneva because they’ve somehow EARNED it, because they belong to some kind of club, or they meet some minimum qualifying threshold.”

No, it is nothing like that argument. This argument is related to why attacking a enemy force that has embedded itself in a civilian population is not a violation of the Geneva conventions. No one is saying once/if those enemies are captured that they are not subject to the articles of the Geneva convention regarding prisoners of war or that Israel does not have a duty to minimize civilian casualties.

The point of this argument is that Israel IS following Geneva and thus their activity in Gaza does not constitute a war crime. Civilian deaths does not necessarily equal a war crime if other criteria are present (an enemy force deliberately launching an attack from civilian centers, an honest attempt to minimize civilian casualties).

The thing some of these clowns were simply unable to grasp is that you don’t treat your enemies with respect and dignity, ensuring their protection under Geneva because they’ve somehow EARNED it, because they belong to some kind of club, or they meet some minimum qualifying threshold.

No. You treat them humanely under your treaty obligations not because of who THEY are, but because of who YOU are. What kind of society do you have? What are your core beliefs? What, at the end of the day, is simply non-negotiable?

And sadly, just as we learned the answers to these questions about ourselves, we have also, once again, learned them about our vaunted democratic allies, the Israelis…

mikey

YES!! The Palestinian militants (not civilians, the fighters) are in violation of some of the basic, reasonable “rules of warfare” You CANNOT use your opponents war crimes to justify your own war crimes. You have still commited war crimes.

It’s exactly the thing Dick Cheney refused to believe. Yes, al Quaeda attacked us on nine eleven. It was horrible. But if we commit crimes as a response to their crimes, THEY’RE STILL CRIMES.

Honestly, it just isn’t that hard to grasp…

mikey

Look at it this way (not my words, quoted from the coments in the articel you linked):
“If someone wants to argue that Hamas using ambulances illegally means that all ambulances everywhere in Gaza ought to be subject to bombing, I would say they are crazy. But let’s say that delaying ambulance access to civilians would normally be a war crime (I don’t really know if it would be, but for the sake of argument….) If Hamas uses ambulances illegally, delaying ambulances to search them for illegal use is no longer a war crime because the illegal conduct cannot be used to gain advantage. Similarly if you put your strategic operations command on top of an apartment, while bombing apartments isn’t normally allowed, you can’t gain immunization from attack by doing so.

The problem if you don’t do so, is that you incentivize the putting of civilians in harms way—which goes exactly against the aims of the laws of war which are to incentivize the removal of civilians from harms way as much as possible. And it isn’t a theoretical problem, we have actually seen it play out that way.

Now maybe you disagree with my premise, but it seems to me that the laws of war are largely about trying to get warring parties to hash it out amongst themselves in such a way as to cause less civilian damage. It does so in two ways. First it tries to as-clearly-as-possible separate civilian people and objects from military people and objects. Second it tries to get wars over with by having the warring parties actually fight it out with each other, and kill each other, and make peace with each other. An interpretation which incentivizes human shields and the like causes problems in both those areas. If you interpret the laws of war as you seem to want to, it looks like they would put MORE civilians in harms way and that wars would be LONGER which tends to impact civilians more than shorter wars.

That seems deeply counterproductive to the purpose of the laws of war as I understand them.”
“

Tha Gazans firing rockets from civilian areas.

I’m not sure you know what a military advantage is.

Israel’s reluctance (for moral reasons and as signatories to the Treaty) to attack civilian areas

Well, that’s through the looking glass.

Tha Gazans firing rockets from civilian areas. The advantage is that the Geneva conventions discourage civilian deaths so they are exploiting Israel’s reluctance (for moral reasons and as signatories to the Treaty) to attack civilian areas to gain a military advantage.

1. A belligerent cannot be allowed to gain a military advantage by acting illegally

Which belligerent had a military advantage?

Well since apparently you define “decent argument” as “things you agree with” that doesn’t give me much room to maneuver does it? /shrug

How’s this:

1. A belligerent cannot be allowed to gain a military advantage by acting illegally
2. Therefore, one is entitled to disregard (to a greater or lesser extent) civilian collateral damage which occurs as a result of the enemy’s failure to fulfill its duty to protect civilians
3. Therefore the siege of Leningard/the bombing of Gaza/the Hyde Park and Regents’ Park bombings were OK.

Dude, I was using his wording to make a point. He specifically said in the previous thread the same thing about me and my feelings toward Israel.

My bad. But up to now you haven’t made a decent argument about anything that I can see except that you want us to reiterate that Hamas does bad things. That kind of flailing eventually becomes evidence I suppose.

Dude, I was using his wording to make a point. He specifically said in the previous thread the same thing about me and my feelings toward Israel.

What I am getting here is you “like” Palestine

This is what pisses people off: you are attempting telepathy and continuing as if you have succeeded.

Ah, the thread in which DAS literally took every chance available to insinuate that his liberal enemies, “redolent of anti-Semitism,” fail to empathize with Jews but instead desire to see them “driven into the sea.”

MAN: Texi! Texi keb!

CABBIE: Heh-heh.

MAN: Oy, to the hotel right now, please.

CABBIE: Heh-heh. Allahu akbar!

MAN: Oy, turn dis keb around. Vhat is dis here, a fishing pier or some such thing?

Look harder:

:”He’s the exemplar of how the PR game is rigged on Israel’s side. He has skin in the game. At the same time, you have smooth-talking Aussie-born spokesbot Mark Regev showing up on every TV station, buddying-up with people like the former JPost writer Wolf Blitzer. This is more sophisticated than “omg Joooz rule the media!”: it’s that Israel has spent a lot of time and money on creating a PR apparatus that integrates seamlessly with the US media. “

As for this week’s crop, I like the rationalization that goes, ‘Israel is invading Gaza because Jews love life.’ I think it’s also because they support puppies and can turn the world on with a smile. Another fave is that Palestinians are trying to get killed to make Israel look bad. Not that it ever does, as far as you guys are concerned!”

I think the rational is pretty obvious: Israel invaded Gaza to stop them from lobbing rockets at Israeli cities.

Everything else is an argument about whther the response is proportional, justified or even if proportion or justice has anything to do with it. Both sides are making some pretty wako arguments.

What I am getting here is you “like” Palestine and want them to be the good side, so you need to develop a series of arguments as to why everything they do is completely justified and why Israel is always an asshole. “Objectivity” is in the eye of the beholder.

I’ll be honest, I am probably more in the Israeli camp thant hte Palestinian camp, but I can understand why the Palestinainas are doing what they are doing and the Israeli’s are doing what they are doing. Maybe there are no good guys or bad guys. Maybe their are just a bunch of dudes fucking shit up. And if so taking sides doesn’t help anything.

I don’t see anything in that thread which accused Jews of controlling the media, but I’d be willing to read an actual cite. I searched a bit and couldn’t find anything.

Does not the indisputable fact that it is NOT POSSIBLE for them to “drive Israel into the sea” in and of itself contribute to the likelihood that there are factions in the Israeli government who are CHOOSING a path of massive violence against the Palestinian people, for whatever reason they might do so?

I mean, if I stated I wanted to “Drive the Illegitimate government of Mexico into the Sea”, if that was my stated political ideology and manifesto, would the Mexican airforce be entitled then to bomb my neighborhood?

Because, honestly, Hamas no more represents an existential threat to Israel then al Quaeda represents to the US. C’mon, dude, they kill TWO Israelis a year. At that rate, the seas are going to dry up first…

mikey

Look, the history books are full of regional conflicts between groups who unwillingly share a geographical base.

Every single time, people one one side have thought that they were totally,100% right, while people on the other side have thought the same thing about themselves.

What I’m getting here is that you ‘like’ Israel and want them to be the good side. Maybe if there’s ever a good side, then they are one; I don’t know.

But they certainly seem, objectively, to be acting like assholes a lot of the time, making you guys — you Israel boosters — have to find weirder and weirder reasons that they’re perpetually in the right.

As for this week’s crop, I like the rationalization that goes, ‘Israel is invading Gaza because Jews love life.’ I think it’s also because they support puppies and can turn the world on with a smile. Another fave is that Palestinians are trying to get killed to make Israel look bad. Not that it ever does, as far as you guys are concerned!

I say just put them in camps and strafe them with A-10 Warthogs, all the while complaining of the great moral depravity of a people who would force someone to strafe them with A-10 Warthogs.

No no, seriously, here’s one: The Palestinians must be crushed because of the moral harm they bring to Israel, through the necessity of generationally oppressing them.

You guys will fall for it, too.