- Kurdish "terrorists" have engaged in numerous acts of violence inside Turkey, killing innocents.
- Israel is about to form and alliance with the Kurds
- Israel supports terrorists?
Funny how the world looks like nothing other than a snake eating its own tail. It also makes it absurd to watch people be so supportive of one people / government over another, when they're all simply acting for themselves at the expense of others.
Israel is forming an alliance with the northern kurdish state that is emerging in north Iraq. Not the PKK.
Even then you're vastly overstating the PKKs role in terrorism. The PKKs attacks are carried out largely against soldiers. The PKK does not purposely attack civilians the way Hamas does.
Israel is forming an alliance with the northern kurdish state that is emerging in north Iraq. Not the PKK.
Even then you're vastly overstating the PKKs role in terrorism. The PKKs attacks are carried out largely against soldiers. The PKK does not purposely attack civilians the way Hamas does.
1. Talabani's PUK and the PKK are long allies since the 90s. They're now allied against Barzani.
2. As for your characterization of the PKK's actions, it's so incorrect as to be insulting.
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Also note that Netanyahu has been vague about these Kurdistan affiliations. Reasonable to assume that he is playing both sides in the manner that best serves his country. A reasonable strategy.
Last edited by Flames Fan, Ph.D.; 07-22-2014 at 03:04 PM.
Latest shelling by Israel was on a hospital. I thought purposely hitting medical centers was considered as bad practice.
Video Includes Hospital aftermath, Israel P.M. and John Carey
It is bad practice. Which is why Israel was most likely targeting a missile launcher or some other Hamas activity that was hidden in, on or beside the hospital.
They have nothing to gain and everything to lose by purposely targeting a hospital.
I'm pretty sure both sides target civilians to be quite honest. They're the easiest targets and it causes fear to grip the other side in order to advance your political goals.
For the questions "what does Israel gain from bombing hospitals?" Easy, it scares the hell out of the Palestinians in the hopes of deterring them from supporting Hamas or leaving Gaza. Both outcomes are wins for Israel. Israel also has a pretty easy cover for this "Hamas made us do it because they were hiding among civilians".
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It is bad practice. Which is why Israel was most likely targeting a missile launcher or some other Hamas activity that was hidden in, on or beside the hospital.
They have nothing to gain and everything to lose by purposely targeting a hospital.
One important point to make here:
Unless there is proof available, the bolded point is an assumption. I take a skeptical stance towards all claims by either side. So just because Hamas says a location was housing civilians and not insurgents, or just because the IDF tweets that the location they hit had insurgents or missiles, means very little to me absent independent or verifiable proof.
The need for skepticism being the baseline stance has been reinforced many times throughout history, recently and famously by the Iraq war. These days, if you're willing to take any official claim without independent proof, that's just your bias at work.
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I'm pretty sure both sides target civilians to be quite honest. They're the easiest targets and it causes fear to grip the other side in order to advance your political goals.
For the questions "what does Israel gain from bombing hospitals?" Easy, it scares the hell out of the Palestinians in the hopes of deterring them from supporting Hamas or leaving Gaza. Both outcomes are wins for Israel. Israel also has a pretty easy cover for this "Hamas made us do it because they were hiding among civilians".
I disagree. It doesn't scare them, it emboldens them. When there's no refuge and only anger, the fighting really can only intensify. It's a stupid plan if that's what they're trying to do as all they've done effectively is create more soldiers and more political will against them.
I disagree. It doesn't scare them, it emboldens them. When there's no refuge and only anger, the fighting really can only intensify. It's a stupid plan if that's what they're trying to do as all they've done effectively is create more soldiers and more political will against them.
Maybe you're right and maybe that's what they want. Embolden the other side so they never have to negotiate peace. A constant state of war will give justification to the extreme right wing in Israel to keep voting for Netanyahu and the like.
I think, however, during times of war, the last thing on your mind is the safety of the side you think is the enemy.
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I disagree. It doesn't scare them, it emboldens them. When there's no refuge and only anger, the fighting really can only intensify. It's a stupid plan if that's what they're trying to do as all they've done effectively is create more soldiers and more political will against them.
Exactly. How does Israel see this ending?
Honest question:
Let's say that Hamas is defeated. They're gone.
Are Gazan's simply supposed to forget the deaths of their sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers and the destruction of their homes, schools and hospitals?
Are they supposed to say "it was our own fault".
It's more likely that Israel is creating another generation of Palestinians that hold Israel reasonable for the death and destruction and understandable so from their perspective.
Seems like Al Jazeera has pissed off every government in the Middle East. They've been accused of being pro-American, a Zionist tool, anti-Arab, anti-American and now Hamas' mouth piece.
Personally, I think they must be doing something right if they make all the world's governments squeamish.
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Seems like Al Jazeera has pissed off every government in the Middle East. They've been accused of being pro-American, a Zionist tool, anti-Arab, anti-American and now Hamas' mouth piece.
Personally, I think they must be doing something right if they make all the world's governments squeamish.
Except that Al Jazeera is not pro-Zionist/American...that's just a go to insult people like to throw out.
The truth is that Al Jazeera is owned by the royal family of Qatar, which is one of the most conservative countries in the world. Al Jazeera gives some interesting viewpoints, but they're essentially a middle eastern Fox News.
Except that Al Jazeera is not pro-Zionist/American...that's just a go to insult people like to throw out.
The truth is that Al Jazeera is owned by the royal family of Qatar, which is one of the most conservative countries in the world. Al Jazeera gives some interesting viewpoints, but they're essentially a middle eastern Fox News.
Except that Fox News is an extreme right wing news channel that's respected by nobody outside of a few hillbillies in the deep South and Al-Jazeera is a left wing, secular media empire with viewership spanning across the globe and has been rated as one of the top 5 most influential brands in the world.
A few things about Al-Jazeera:
- first 24 hour news channel in the Arab world
- first Arab channel to refer to Israel as Israel rather than "the enemy" or "the Zionists entity"
- first Arab channel to invite Israeli Jewish politicians on the air, allowing their voices to be heard and debated along with Arab counterparts (some from countries that don't even recognize Israel). All this while their main sponsor, the government of Qatar is still at war with Israel.
- first channel in the world to show live coverage of the war in Afghanistan
- first channel in the Arab world to challenge Arab policies, allowing callers to voice their concerns in a free and democratic manner. So much so that Qatar has gotten into hot water with the GCC for allowing criticism of their policies.
All of this while also posting articles about Arab women's rights and other important topics on their website.
There are hundreds of things wrong with the middle east. Al Jazeera is certainly not one of them.
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The "morality" (or moral justification) of bombing civilians in Gaza:
Quote:
The logic is straightforward: insofar as Hamas hides weapons in houses (illegitimate), Israel can bomb them as if they were military targets (legitimate). Within this framework, a single function (hiding weapons) out of many existing functions (home, shelter, intimacy, etc) determines the status of an urban site (in our case the house), so that the edifice's form loses its traditional signification.
The question "when does it become a legitimate military target?" is merely rhetorical. Its real meaning is: "All houses in Gaza are legitimate targets" since all houses are potentially non-homes.
Not unlike colonial as well as other vastly asymmetrical wars, Israel's legitimization for its indiscriminate bombing is premised upon a profound moral disjuncture between Israelis and Palestinians. In the poster "Israel uses weapon to protect its civilians. Hamas uses civilians to protect its weapons", Palestinians are depicted as barbarians who ignore the elementary grammar of international law.
Quote:
Again, the logic is clear. All civilians in Gaza are being held hostage by Hamas, which is considered a war crime and a gross violation of international law governing armed conflict. This, then, provides legal and moral justification against the accusation that Israel is the one killing civilians. Presumed human rights violations carried out by Palestinians against Palestinians – taking hostages and human shielding – thus become the legitimization of lethal and indiscriminate violence on the part of the occupying force.
Hence, the use of human shields is not only a violation. In contemporary asymmetric urban wars, accusing the enemy of using human shields helps validate the claim that the death of "untargeted civilians" is merely collateral damage. When all civilians are potential human shields, when each and every civilian can become a hostage of the enemy, then all enemy civilians become killable.
In order for all this to be convincing, the Israeli military depicts the asymmetric context in which it unleashes its violence against a whole population as symmetric. This is carried out, for instance, through the poster "Some bomb shelters shelter people, some shelter bombs". Here a radically disproportionate situation is presented as if it were balanced.
Some people in this thread are moronically suggesting that Gazans had it coming because they supported Hamas democratically. Two things, what were Gazans as being occupied for 40 years supposed to do? Be calm cool and collected in the face of what they perceived as an existential injustice? What would YOU have done if you were a Gazan, your children potential killed in indiscriminate bombing, your land taken? Would you have been likely to turn a bit extreme yourself?
And second, and more convincingly: From The American Conservative
Quote:
Thane Rosenbaum unintentionally endorses the logic of every terrorist group in history:
On some basic level, you forfeit your right to be called civilians when you freely elect members of a terrorist organization as statesmen, invite them to dinner with blood on their hands and allow them to set up shop in your living room as their base of operations. At that point you begin to look a lot more like conscripted soldiers than innocent civilians. And you have wittingly made yourself targets.
This is perverse and absolutely wrong, but it’s the sort of argument that one will end up making in order to defend a military operation that has already killed hundreds of non-combatants. Civilian deaths reportedly make up the overwhelming majority of Palestinian casualties in Gaza over the last few weeks, and these have resulted from the indiscriminate use of force in a densely populated area. More to the point, Rosenbaum’s argument is extremely similar to the justifications that terrorist groups use when they target civilians in their own attacks. It is based on the completely false assumption that there are no real innocents or bystanders in a given country because of their previous political support for a government and its policies, which supposedly makes it permissible to strike non-military targets. It is very important to reject this logic no matter where it comes from or whose cause in a conflict it is being used to advance, because this is the logic that has been used to justify countless atrocities down through the years.
Rosenbaum muddies the waters a bit by talking about civilians when he is really talking about non-combatants. Non-combatant status can be forfeited only by becoming a combatant, and that doesn’t happen by having voted for the current rulers or simply by living under their rule. Forfeiting non-combatant status requires taking up arms or directly lending aid to those that are fighting, and that doesn’t appear to apply to the civilian victims killed during the current operation at all. It may please Hamas to make use of these victims’ deaths for their own purposes, but that doesn’t absolve the Israeli government of its responsibility for causing those deaths. If Hamas benefits politically from these civilian deaths, and it seems likely that they do, it would seem obvious that Israel should not want to cause any more, and yet at each step over the last few weeks Israel’s government has responded with tactics that are guaranteed to continue killing many more non-combatants for as long as this operation continues.
Some people in this thread are moronically suggesting that Gazans had it coming because they supported Hamas democratically. Two things, what were Gazans as being occupied for 40 years supposed to do? Be calm cool and collected in the face of what they perceived as an existential injustice? What would YOU have done if you were a Gazan, your children potential killed in indiscriminate bombing, your land taken? Would you have been likely to turn a bit extreme yourself?
And second, and more convincingly: From The American Conservative
The problem with peace keepers is that in order to keep the peace, there needs to be peace to begin with. And in order for there to be peace, someone needs to eventually win (or lose) the war. Nothing brings the other side to the table faster than when they clearly have something to lose (usually land). Unfortunately, these things come with a human toll that our 21st century sensibilities have trouble reconciling.
I think Israel has come to the point that to end it, they need to win it decisively.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
