As we all know, the current war in Lebanon and Israel started when Lebanese Party of God terrorists crossed into Israel and kidnapped two soldiers, murdering others. The original goal was apparently to force a prisoner exchange. In particular the Party of God seeks the release of Samir Kuntar, whom Israel has refused to release in prior prisoner exchanges. Who is Mr. Kuntar, and why is he in an Israeli prison?
Mr. Kuntar is a killer. In 1979, at the age of 17, he and three others, recruited by a Palestinian [terrorist] group ... launched a small boat from the tip of Lebanon’s southern coast and came ashore at the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. There, they killed a police officer they encountered, before taking a family of four in an apartment hostage.
The mother, Smadar Haran, had managed to slip into a crawl space with her two-year-old daughter Yael and avoid detection. But as police began to arrive, the gunmen took her husband Danny and four-year-old daughter Einat down to the beach, where they shot Danny in front of his daughter and smashed in her skull with a rifle butt.
Apparently, Kuntar is a hero not only to the Party of God, but to many Palestinians.
Kuntar should have been executed well over twenty years ago, not necessarily in a pleasant manner. Unfortunately, Israel does not have the death penalty except for Holocaust perpetrators, leading to consistent-hostage taking to try to win the release of the likes of Kuntar.
In any event, Kuntar came to mind because I received an email from a reader suggesting that I try to understand things from the perspective of the supporters of the Palestinian and Party of God terrorist groups. Sorry, but while I'm reasonably well read on the radical Arab perspective, whatever someone's grievance I refuse to "understand" those who idolize cold-blooded murderers of children. [Remember the exhibit at a Palestinian university celebrating a mass terrorist murder at Sbarro's Pizza in Jerusalem?] The fact that Kuntar is a hero to the Party of God and to the Palestinian terrorist groups reveals just about all one needs to know about them.
I recently read Rabbi Daniel Gordis's book, Home to Stay, about his aliyah to Israel. The book was only moderately interesting, mostly for its account of how Gordis went from being an ultra-dove when he moved to Israel to being much more of a realist after Camp David 2000. Gordis did made one point in particular that stuck with me: living in Jerusalem (one of the more "right-wing" parts of Israel) during the worst of Palestinian-Israel violence of the Second Intifadah, he never heard a single Israeli ever express glee at [unintended, but inevitable given the urban warfare involved] civilian deaths on the Palestinian side. [Someone is bound to bring up the few on the lunatic fringe who consider Baruch Goldstein a hero. Duly noted, but it's called the lunatic fringe for a reason.] Some accepted these deaths as the unfortunate price of defeating the Second Intifadah, others protested against them, but no one ever celebrated them, or expressed joy at the suffering of the survivors. Contrast that with grisly recreations of pizzeria bombings, candies being handed out in Palestinian areas when a terrorist murder takes place, the celebrations in the streets in 9/11, and so on, and you see the difference between a decent, modern society, and its enemies.
Well, it's not the first endorsement of torture we've seen from a VC poster. I haven't quite lost my capacity to be surprised, but I suppose I can't keep up that kind of reaction forever.
I'm just sayin'.
I must also enter into the discussion the fact that for every Israeli who has died at the hands of Muslims, roughly ten Muslims have died at the hands of Israelis. The Americans have "achieved" an even higher kill ratio. This kill ratio cannot be justified by any principle of ethics.
Dear Mr.Bernstein,
I agree with you.My field is medicine,so we're not as skillful in words as an attorney.Could you tell me if I've summarized things correctly.
1)Israeli's(i.e Jews) are subjected to random murders,terror and a constant state of attack.
2)Israel isn't perfect.
3)Therefore who's to say who's more at fault in this conflict.
Corwin
Are you suggesting that warfare is unethical unless both sides have an equal number of combatants killed?
The US had a very high kill ratio against Japan in the Pacific Theater. Does this mean the US acted unethically? The Japanese went to war with a fanatical attitude, and the Japanese (unlike the American) soldier did not expect to return home. In many if not most cases the Japanese would not surrender. So is it any wonder we had a high kill ratio?
As a political or military leader it’s your job to save the lives of your soldiers and citizens even at the expense of the enemy’s soldiers and civilians. Yes our soldiers are worth more to us than even their citizens.
1. The difference between a declared war with a defined beginning and ending, carried out between nation states; and a punitive action. To punish civilians for the actions of terrorists is morally indefensible, something to be condemned by all civilized persons.
2. Your claim that the life of one of your soldiers is of greater moral value than the life of an enemy is without any ethical justification. You are welcome to your own beliefs, but you cannot justify it by any known theory of ethics.
Am Catholic and fairly recently converted to the 'no use of capital punishment in the ordinary circumstances of the 21st century' position: but, alas, this is war and I would have executed Mr Kuntar for his crimes; the fact that Israel won't says a great deal, so far as I'm concerned.
Islamic fascists will stop at nothing to murder Jews in their soveriegn country of Israel. Forget voting, debating, or conversing with Israelis, Islamic fascists just resort to murdering them.
Israel must kill as many of these Islamic facists as possible now, because the more that are out there, the more suffering at the hands of both Israel and the U.S.
First I dispute your characterization of Israel’s military actions as punishment of civilians. If Israel really wanted to punish civilians a lot more than 400 would be dead. The problem lies with the terrorists using civilians as shields. Is Israel just supposed to remain passive because they can’t retaliate without collateral damage? Secondly Israel is in a state of war. Remember 5 Arab nations, including Lebanon, declared war on Israel in 1948 and proceeded to launch a genocidal war. Most Arabs consider themselves to be in a constant state of war with Israel.
You have a very limited notion of a war. Wars don’t have to be formally declared between nation states. For example the US made war on the Barbary Pirates—The Barbary Coast Wars. While the US Congress never formally issued a declaration of war they did authorize Jefferson to instruct the commanders of armed vessels of the United States to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli "and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify." There was also an undeclared war on French privateers in 1790.
“Your claim that the life of one of your soldiers is of greater moral value than the life of an enemy is without any ethical justification.”
Read me more carefully. Our soldiers have more value *to us* then the soldiers or citizens of the enemy. Any leader who does not subscribe to this doctrine is not going to remain a leader for long. We fire bombed Tokyo and we used nuclear weapons against two other Japanese cities killing hundreds of thousands of civilians so we would not have to invade Japan. We didn’t want to invade Japan because it would have cost us something like 500,000 Americans dead. Here is a specific example of the US putting more value on the lives of Americans than Japanese. Are you suggesting we fought Japan unethically? What would you have us done with Japan?
I don't find this difference that significant. Let's look at WWII Japan again (though obviously thousands of other examples would work too). The Japanese Junta wasn't elected. As a seamstress in Osaka I might not have supported them; indeed, I might have found them abhorrent. But I still got bombed. To put it another way, what is a regime (an un-elected one, anyway) but a bunch of terrorists with bigger guns? I fail to see what difference it makes if they are in control of a nation-state or not.
Also, I've always found this odd:
I struggle to come up with a single conflict in history that had a "defined ending" -- except, obviously, in retrospect.
And I suspect even a defined beginning is dicier than you seem to realize. Who defines it? By what standard? A declaration of war? Open hostilities? Covert violence? I bet their have been plenty of conflicts where the participants "defined" the beginning of it differently.
I don't pretend to have any of the answers to any of this. Heck, by nature I'm a gentle guy, and the thought of innocent children suffering and dying literally turns my stomach. But surely it must give you pause to consider that fact that terrorists hide behind these human shields precisely because they are counting on people thinking the way you do?
- Alaska Jack
Unfortunately, Israel does not have the death penalty except for Holocaust perpetrators, leading to consistent-hostage taking to try to win the release of the likes of Kuntar.
As I read that, it says that the absence of the death penalty in Israel has lead to "consistent hostage taking. . . ."
Mr. Bernstein, do you care to offer any proof that shows something other than correlation, i.e., causation? Many Party of God members willingly participate in suicide missions. It doesn't make any sense that the death penalty would act as a deterrent for such people.
I think the Pacific War against Japan had a defined ending (for the US) prospectively: unconditional surrender. We might have ended the Pacific War earlier and with less loss of life on both sides had the US not insisted this “defined ending” of the war. Indeed many we should not have insisted on unconditional surrender. However I think the US was wise to have stuck to those terms, otherwise we would still have a Japanese problem. Look at the Korean War (also undeclared), it left the Communists in power and 56 years later we still have a Korean problem. Now what would have been the “defined ending” from the point of view of the Japanese? I shudder to think. So all in all I agree with you completely, a war only has defined ending retrospectively if it has it at all.
This is a vicious lie, and anyone who has read a serious history of the 1948 war knows it. There were massacres on both sides, especially by irregular forces. But when regular Arab forces took Jewish population centers, they did not exterminate the inhabitants or attempt to.
When the Jordanians took the Jewish quarter of East Jerusalem, 2,500 Jewish lives came into their hands. The combatants were taken prisoner, and the rest were repatriated to West Jerusalem. (Abba Eban, Personal Witness: Israel Through My Eyes, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1992, p. 158; Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998, p. 198; Golda Meir, My Life, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1975, p. 273; Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1999, p. 225.)
I'll say it again. This is typical of Zionist propaganda aimed at demonizing Arabs.
Radio Japan on Thursday had commentary on who started it, and it turns out to be Israel.
http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/fault.ram
``The violence commenced on July 12th in the form of Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah's seizure of two Israeli soldiers.''
It is not only the number killed and under what circumstances in chaotic situations, it is ultimately the intentions behind it.
Anyone who equates the system and intentions of Israel with those of it's enemies, seriously misses a grip on both reality and ethics.
Best these people seem to be able to do is vacillate. ("Therefore who's to say who's more at fault in this conflict.")
I'd like to put it stronger, but that would be very rude.
Especially in Europe, this moronic equating by some of free societies with totally vile ones, is persistent. Includes the UN and a number of sources in the US. Seems it began with Vietnam.
Why is it that they can not see reality, can not apply rational thought, can not see that if people of the Hezbollah, PLF and Iranian mullah persuasion ever gain power over them, directly or indirectly, their freedom to write or to speak their minds will be gone?
An interesting tidbit was that Congress did not declare the end of the war with German, until sometime in the 1950's. (Even though hostilities had ended long before that).
The Erasmussimos statement that a war should have a declaration, a definite beginning and end is ridiculous.
Their may be a point were historians can say this event marked the beginning of the war. I.e "Pearl Harbor marked the beginning of the US War with Japan". However the US didn't declare war until Monday Dec 8th. So were the soldiers who fought back on the evening of December 7th committing a crime?
The declaration of war requirement/argument I think harkens back to back to the start of the US involvement of Iraq, when Congress authorized the president to take action against Iraq, but failed to declare war.
(Israeli soldiers killed + Israeli civilians killed + Arab civilians killed because Arab war criminals put them in harms way + Arab war criminals killed)
in a ratio to
(Arab soldiers acting as lawful combatants killed + handful of civilians killed by Israeli nutcases)
Looks to me like the ratio is more like 10,000 to 1 than 1 to 10.And the Lebanese child is just as much a victim of Hesbollah's war crimes as the Israeli child is. And the IDF is just as innocent of the Lebanese child's murder as they are of the Israeli child's murder.
cathy :-)
I don't think that David said that the executing criminals would deter the criminals themselves, but that it would deter (really, reder impossible) later attempts to gain a prisoner's freedom by taking hostages as ransom. People aren't as likely to take hostages and try to trade them for a corpse.
Also, anyone who is being held by the Israelis wasn't, by definition, a suicide bomber. The prisoner may have valued his lives more than a suicide bomber.
First, several commentators take issue with the notion of a war having a defined beginning and a defined ending. I will remind them that the defined beginning of a war is the declaration of war, and the defined ending is the formal surrender. Yes, there are all sorts of military operations that don't meet this definition of war -- but I was drawing a distinction between war and punitive actions.
Second, Cathy blames all Muslim deaths on the terrorists who hide behind civilians. I could agree with this if terrorists were literally using civilians as human shields. But the terrorist act of residing in a city does not constitute using city dwellers as human shields. Terrorists could well live in cities for the perfectly normal reason that most people live in cities.
Third, on the claim that enemy lives are of less value than our own lives, I offer a quote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal..." Note that this says, 'all men', not 'all Americans'. Do you deny these words?
Finally, M.Stack recommends that Israel must kill as many of these Islamic fascists as possible. I wonder how M.Stack proposes to differentiate between Islamic fascists and innocent civilians? Lacking such differentiation, is there any difference between his proposal and genocide?
Whereas if those captured comrades were dead, then Hezbollah wouldn't be kidnapping Israeli soldiers for the purpose of making a trade.
Oh, good! I've been a little lost over this whole conflict. (What is the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah again?) Thankfully, DB has given me a way to understand what I need to catch up.
This Kuntar guy is obviously a cold-blooded terrorist. He is also a hero to these other groups. I conclude from this that these people are some sort of Satan worshippers. They seem to worship the death of innocents from what I can tell.
Wow. I'm appalled. I had no idea that people could be so different. I mean, you can always find one or two wackos anywhere, even the USA. How they got so concentrated in these few small areas is worth further study. Do you think it's because Arabs as a whole have a genetic/cultural disposition towards irrationality and violence? It must be something like that.
Thanks for the educational post.
Your statement is racist. No, Arabs do not have a genetic or cultural disposition towards irrationality and violence. The Israelis have killed more Arabs than the Arabs have killed Israelis -- does that mean that the Israelis have a genetic/cultural disposition toward irrationality and violence? No. And neither do Arabs. The problem here is hate, not innate dipositions.
Anyone who ignores the apologist propaganda from CAIR and who actually reads the Koran knows that it explicitly, clearly advocates the wanton murder and slavery of non-Muslims, *and* that this behavior is widely, currently practiced in areas of the world where Christians, Jews, Buddhists and other members of other religions are not heavily armed and able and willing to savagely fight back.
It's been said before, and I'll say it again. This is a fundamental clash of modern Western civilisation against an ancient barbarianism. Islam needs to be utterly eradicated in the same way that Communism *should* be eradicated and the way that Nazism actually *was* eradicated.
Mr. Bernstein's altered quotation:
Claiming to quote something, but leaving out or modifiying portions that do not accord with one's ideology is, well, a bit unseemly.
There's only one word for this behavior. Evil.
and:
It appears that there is no difference between the policy you recommend and the policy you condemn -- other than a reversal of who does the killing and who gets killed.
I would also advocate, for instance, giving Ku Klux Klanners an explicit choice between publicly and clearly abandoning their murderous ideology or being put to death, were it not for the fact that Klucker groups have been 99% FBI informants for about thirty years and a joke for longer than that.
The same logic holds for any hate group that has as its core values the slavery, violent oppression or murder of non-members. They deserve to get just what they dish out, that is, a refusal to leave them alone to live in peace and quiet. Justice is served.
There is no moral equivalence whatsoever between a mugger or rapist and the woman who shoots the thug stone cold dead, no matter how the apologists attempt to mulch the difference in an inky cloud of obfuscatory lies.
I'm reasonably strongly pro-israel (though also stridently anti-settlement...they were always a stupid idea) and I'm sympathetic (but not totally convinced) to the idea that israel should take a much more hardline stand (but only if unilateral withdrawal fails). Proportional response is the worst of all possible worlds.
However, despite this I am appalled by your statement that you I refuse to "understand" those who idolize cold-blooded murderers of children.
First of all I suspect it isn't really true. I suspect you are perfectly willing to understand the US military planners who choose to bomb german civillian areas in WWII knowing this would kill millions of children. Quibbling on whether it counts as murder is just silly since the palestinians in question clearly believe this is a war.
Also I don't see what is particularly worse about killing young kids than killing 18 year olds or even the difference between killing civilians and members of the military.
Evolutionarily we have strong instincts to protect children but this doesn't mean that it is really more wrong to kill children than anyone else. Everyone is equally defenseless to a suicide bomber and death is no worse for a kid than an 18 year old. Parents are going to be just as devastated if their child dies at 18 and they probably have more friends and even significant others who will suffer.
Also the idea that somehow civillians should be off limits is absurd, especially in a democracy. In israel joining the military is mandatory so we can hardly say soldiers have made a choice which makes it more okay to kill them. How can it possibly make a moral difference whether you take someone's life during the 2 years they serve in the military or some other time? The fact that you have made someone pick up a gun doesn't suddenly make it more okay to kill them. Thinking that it is more okay to kill people who 'can defend themselves' is a silly hold over from chivallry. Dead is dead and if you blow someone up from a bomb the fact that they could have turned around and shot you hardly makes it less bad.
In a democracy it is the people as a whole who decide what the country's military will do. A young 18 year old soldier who has just been given the right to vote is less responsible for the actions his country has taken than a random 40 year old civillian.
Ultimately war is about inflicting enough suffering on the other side that they give up. The moral thing to do is to inflict the minimal suffering to achieve your goal. Had we limited our attacks only to german and japanese soldiers during WWII far more people would have died and more total suffering would have occured. In general only killing soldiers and letting the voters who made the deciscion to go to war and drive the economy which produces the war machinces go unharmed just prolongs the conflict.
If it was right to resist israel militarily then it would be perfectly fine to blow up kids and civillians to make israel cave in as quickly as possible. Just as it is acceptable for israel to knock down houses adjacent to terrorist homes or carry out targeted assasinations in civillian areas because it will do more to end the violence.
The sin of the Palestinian terrorists isn't killing women and children it is doing violence to no purpose. If the palestinians would step back think about the situation from both sides and figure out what the best course of action was we wouldn't have any terrorists but instead they choose to think in terms of moral absolutes and the outrages the other side perpetuates. You are doing exactly the same thing by refusing to even try to understand the motives of a palestinian terrorist You don't have to agree they are a good person but there is no justification for not trying to understand them and their motives.
I think this provides a wonderful example of how the conflict gets perpetuated. Realizing how often people believe false things and cherry pick examples to favor them it is easy to see how both sides could think they were totally in the right and if both react with this sort of moral absolutism violence is sure to be perpetuated.
Just checking the quotes, Bark. Sorry that it doesn't fit in with your ideology.
"This is quoted material that has been altered to more clearly describe the truth. The original quoted material may be seen here: [URL]."
What with the flood of nasty mind-rape propaganda spewed by CAIR and other thug apologist groups, I've become way touchy about it. :(
Mr. Bernstein? Is CaDan right? Did he accurately represent the original quoted material?
I would suggest that war is a matter of convincing the other side that they are beaten. It's not the suffering, it's the psychology that results from the suffering. Thus, Hiroshima is much better than Verdun. If the casualties just dribble along in a steady stream, people get innured to them. In today's world, there are so many people that you cannot kill even a significant fraction -- you need shock rather than quantity.
The worst possible strategy is to inflict suffering without shock -- this breeds hate, not a sense of defeat. And that is precisely the policy that Israel has been pursuing for decades. It preserves the Palestinian people in a state of misery, continually kills a steady dribble of them, and never brings the conflict to a conclusion. The Palestinians respond exactly the same way, and so we have two incompetent strategists mauling each other without purpose.
Having bred a generation of Palestinians who are inured to such violence, I submit that the Israelis no longer have any policy that can shock the Palestinians into surrender. Therefore, the Israelis must choose between the indefinite continuation of the current situation, or a unilateral separation of the two nations. Neither choice is palatable -- that's what happens when you screw up bigtime. The best the Israelis can do at this point is accept that reality and move on.
Oh, look! A Straw Man!
The phrase in the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal..."
is part of a mission statement, and it must be interpreted. It’s certainly not true that all men or people are created equal in every imaginable sense. When we say “equal” we usually mean equal under the law so that laws of the US are applied the same way to everyone. Moreover I doubt Jefferson and Franklin meant that the lives of the enemy in a time of war must be given the same value as the lives of Americans.
The purpose of a business is to turn a profit, right? So profit is the goal of business, and businesses recognize among one another that turning a profit is a right state for all businesses. Now suppose one business owner decides to embrace an unprofitable business plan. Suppose, rather than a profit, he makes the goal of his business to enrich his status in certain social circles. Is it the duty of other businesses to make him profitable? Obviously not. You can recognize the virtue of the pursuit of profit, while simultaneoulsy understanding that it every businesses responsibility to pursue it's own profit. It's no debasement of "profit" to put the onus of producing one on the individual businesses.
Similarly, it is not incumbent on free men, who have secured for themselves a government that protects their freedom, to sacrifice themselves trying to provide rights to those who have taken no action to secure their own liberty. To say nothing of those who actively try to attack and violate the rights we hold so dear. If a citizen of this country commits a crime, then we have a process which respects those rights he inherits as a citizen of our nation. We, as Americans, have a covenant with one another to reconize one another's rights and follow certain processes in resolving disputes. That covenant does not extend to the rest of the world. We might recognize that it would be a virtuous undertaking for them to take the steps necessary to secure freedoms such as ours, but until they do there is no onus on us to extend them those privileges.
Here we have the perfect equivalency: a death is murder whether someone dies inadvertently from a bomb aimed at terrorists, or whether a terrorist deliberately bashes a child’s head in. One can almost hear the high pitched outrage: the ascent to the moral “high ground,” the contented purr of the morally superior ubermensch sitting somewhere safe in his room, behind a computer screen, passing judgment on men who must fight for their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren, lest they and their progeny die with a rifle butt to the head or a bomb set off in a crowded bus.
And then the inevitable moral calculus. How dare you fight back effectively. How dare you kill more terrorists than terrorists kill your people. The Erasmussimo’s of this world demand that since there is moral equivalency, there must be death equivalency. Until both sides take a “time-out.” At which point, as surely as the sun rises in the East, Katushas will rain down on Israel and the Erasmussimo’s will avert their eyes. Because it’s only Joooooooos dying.
Gee, I wasn't aware that the American justice system was the "contented purr of the morally superior ubermensch", but apparently it is since most US jurisdictions consider killing in reckless disregard of human life and killing someone with malice aforethought to both be types of murder (albeit the former second degree and the latter first degree).
Where does the Constitution say this? The 14th Amendment suggests otherwise: "citizens" are guaranteed the privileges and immunities of every state, but no state can deprive "any person" of life, liberty, or property without due process.
Your analogy comparing business to government is faulty. Every government is "unprofitable," because the inherent purpose of organizing a state is to rein in freedom, not maximize it. Our gov't has just been less successful than the Nazis in stamping a boot on the face of humanity forever.
"Gee, I wasn't aware that the American justice system was the "contented purr of the morally superior ubermensch", but apparently it is since most US jurisdictions consider killing in reckless disregard of human life and killing someone with malice aforethought to both be types of murder (albeit the former second degree and the latter first degree)."
Perhaps I've been living under a rock, but I don't seem to have notices the US having degenerated into a civil war.
The rules which are appropriate between people living within a peaceful civilized society are not the same rules appropriate for people in a war or warlike situation.
The use of suicide bombers to target civilians is morally repugnant, of course. That should go without saying, but I've said it anyway. Terrorist tactics are disgusting, awful, terrible, evil. But I can't endorse bulldozing the houses of the friends/family of the suicide bombers, either. I understand that attrition is a valid military tactic, but that doesn't mean I have to support it.
The tactics that have been used for the last forty years do not appear to be having a positive effect. Isn't that the definition of insanity -- doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results?
Terrorists are products of the society in which they inhabit. Bulldozing their familiy's homes - collective punishment for raising a child to commit terrorist acts - is a positive step in the right direction, but unfortunately not far enough. For every terrorist killed there is going to be a wife, child, mother, or brother who contribute to the next wave of terrorism. The only solution to this problem, as someone mentioned earlier, is to shock the enemy into defeat - not anger and retaliation, which occurs when Israel attacks now - but attacks so massive as to force acknowledgement that they are facing an enemy who will NOT go away, and will continue to exist despite future conflict.
The correct way to accomplish this is to firebomb and level to the ground every city is S. Lebanon with a large concentration of Hezbollah supporters and fighters. The civilian population has been given ample opportunity and warning to leave the area, and Israel is not responsible for foreign citizens who refuse to leave a warzone from which Hezbollah shoots hundreds of rockets a day into Israel population centers.
Not exactly. In fact, killing in reckless disregard of human life is in most jurisdictions involuntary manslaughter, not murder (voluntary manslaughter would be provoked murder). To get to the point of 2nd degree murder, the category you're looking for is "abandoned and malignant heart" or extreme disregard for the value of human life, or extreme recklessness (or, otherwise, intention or knowledge; 1st degree murder is achieved through premeditation and deliberation, not mere intention). Simple recklessness won't get you there.
This might seem off-topic, but it seems to me a good analogy: intentional murder as aiming rockets at civilian areas to kill civilians, or bashing a young girl in the head with a rifle, and involuntary manslaughter as bombing a terrorist-occupied area, knowing of and disregarding a risk that innocent civilians will die. It's easier--not easy, but easier--to justify the latter. So in contrast to what Erasmussimo suggested above, justifying the latter while condemning the former does not reflect an idea that "anything Israel does in retaliation is justified." As one commenter above suggested, if Israel's tactics were the same as Hizballah's, the number of Lebanese civilians dead would be far, far higher than 400. If this was the case, I would certainly join the condemnation of Israel. But it's not the case and I hope that remains so.
Since I am fairly familiar with history, I don't recall the trials of American bomber pilots following World War 2. Perhaps the lawyers on this site will refresh my memory.
Before we get carried away with the death count, can we get a citiation from an unbiased source about the number of deaths on either side? And how do you tell a Lebanese civilian? What does the Hezbolla unform look like?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, it seems that all the stories I hear about "civilian" deaths in Lebanon involve 70-something grandmothers and 5-year-old girls. Amazing weapons those Israelis have, able to pick and choose the old and the young, leaving the military age population unscathed.
Not to be too cynical about it, but I vividly remeber the video of the Palestinian funeral that accidentally dropped the body, who then proceeded to get up and climb back into the coffin.
This all was very specifically why I mentioned "... *and* that this behavior is widely, currently practiced in areas of the world where Christians, Jews, Buddhists and other members of other religions are not heavily armed and able and willing to savagely fight back." It's odd that you saw fit to remove this highly relevant portion.
This sort of dishonesty is why I gave up on FidoNet many years ago (it's an old and limited precursor to the modern Web). Once people have decided to handle inconvenient truths by selectively ignoring them, that's it. It's over. It has become not a debate, but an exercise in propaganda and counter-propaganda. Spending any more time on it invokes the old saying about a fool and what it says about the man who argues with him.
Ivan suggests a more nuanced view, that the atrocities of the terrorists justify some degree of Israeli punitive behavior. I agree that *some* degree of retaliation would be justified, but the two questions are:
1. *How much* retaliation is justified? The Israelis are currently using a 10:1 retaliation ratio: for every Israeli who dies, about 10 Muslims must die. Is this the correct ratio? Would 100:1 be justifiable? Or would Ivan draw the line at 2:1?
2. Far more important, does any of this accomplish anything? Retaliation doesn't work. Israel has been retaliating for three decades now; it's current crop of soldiers weren't even born when this started, and they're fighting Muslims who weren't even born when this started. What's the point of all the killing? Is killing morally justified when we know it won't accomplish anything?
May Israel never send another live body back to muslim lands in a prisoner exchange.
Anyone who actually reads the Koran knows that it teaches no such thing. On the contrary, it teaches that Muslims should not go to war even against unbelievers without a just cause. 'God does not love aggressors.'
Muhammed began his career preaching peacefully in Mecca. His followers were persecuted. As ruler of Medina he fought a long war with Mecca. The Koran has a few (surprisingly few) speeches in which he encourages his warriors to fight hard against the Meccans, sometimes emphasizing that the Meccans were the aggressors. He calls the Meccans 'unbelievers' and talks about killing them in battle, not murdering innocents. A handful of such passages, taken out of context, are the only support for the lie that the Koran teaches 'wanton murder' of 'non-Muslims'.
The 'slavery' part is pure nonsense. Non-Muslims have been subject to discriminatory regulations in most Muslim socities, but generally these were less onerous than the treatment of Jews in pre-Enlightenment Christian societies. I've never heard of a Muslim society in which non-Muslims were automatically slaves. Usually they could own slaves themselves, though I think not Muslim ones. Their opportunities for attaining high government offices were, again, better than for Jews in Christian socities.
Of the various restrictions that Muslim societies have put on non-Muslims, a special tax is the only one required by the Koran.
I agree that the vast majority of the international community would strongly condemn Israel; that is nothing new. They lack the moral fiber, conviction and resolve to stand up to militant Islam: this will hurt the world in the long term, especially in Europe, but they will avoid the issue until it is too late to resolve. Regardless, the international community will stay out of it (sans perhaps sanctions from a few countries) because Israel has nukes and no one cares enough to get involved. Worldwide anti-semitism and attacks against Jews would surely increase, unfortunately, this is the only legitimate action Israel can take: it has painted itself into a corner through decades of hostage swapping, land giveaways, and proportional retaliation: at this time, massive and shocking retaliation is the only way to change the rules of the game in Israel's favor.
I don't necessarily agree that the United States would abandon Israel if it destroyed S. Lebanese cities with Hezbollah strongholds.
The morally justifiable answer is: whatever it takes to stop terrorst attacks against Israel. Having agreed with your statement about Palestinians being inured to proportionate or near proportionate retaliation, this leaves open the door to stronger steps.
Are you suggesting it's better to lay over and die? Hezbollah, Hamas, and a great number of other Muslems in the surrounding areas, not to mention Iran, will settle for nothing other than the complete and utter destruction of Israel. Retaliation is necessary to prevent or deter greater attacks from such groups in the future. The bottom line is this: If militant Arabs stopped attacking Israel, there would be peace in the middle east today. If Israel stopped defending itself today, Israel would cease to exist.
It's especially crazy in this context. From 2000 (when Israel withdrew from Lebanon) to June 2006, the violence inflicted on Israel by Hezbollah amounted to: twenty dead (of which seven were civilians), thirty-four wounded (of which seven were civilians), and three IDF soldiers and two Israeli Arabs captured. Add the seven dead and two kidnapped in July.
Hezbollah's direct attacks on Israeli civilians were revolting war crimes, and even their military attacks are unjustified because their cause is racist, genocidal, and utterly illiberal.
But consider the response: 300 dead Lebanese civilians. At least 600 wounded. The infrastructure of Lebanon's hopefuly democracy, demolished. At least 600,000 -- six hundred thousand -- people forced out of their homes. Being a refugee is not healthy, and a fair number of those people will die. Israel's officials admit that even this offensive will not come close to eradicating Hezbollah.
The official position of Israel's Justice Minister is that "all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah," because "Israel ha[s] given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and therefore anyone still remaining there could be considered a Hezbollah supporter." The idea here is that once a foreign government tells civilians to leave, no matter what their health, what their economic condition, what their personal situation, they ipso facto become terrorists and legitimate military targets. Again: that way war crimes lie.
The emotional and psychological pressure on Israelis is intense and difficult to imagine. The Jewish faith has been targeted, time and again through the centuries, by murderous and often racialist bigots. Israel is a small country, surrounded by enemies of various stripes, to which it is massively superior militarily but nevertheless beseiged on a small scale. Sympathy comes easy (to me, at least), as does scorn for many of Israel's Islamist opponents. But blame is not a zero-sum game. Neither people nor nations are cordoned off from morality by the iniquity of their enemies. Israel's revenge offensive is unjustified. The calls in these comments and elsewhere for the mass killing of Muslims, Lebanese, and Arabs (three disjoint sets) is unjustified by anything other than a bloodlust that is better left consigned to parts of the Tanakh (the Old Testament) that people generally skip over today.
You give the game away, here. Next time you try for moral equivalence, try to avoid using code words that betray your motives.
What on earth are you talking about? I didn't say anything about "moral equivalence."
That gets to your second point--can the killing be justified if we know it won't accomplish anything? The answer to that is obviously not. But that's a pretty broad claim of knowledge. I think there's a good chance Israel's attack will reduce the damage Hizballah can do to Israel in the near future, a fair chance that they'll be able to effectively eradicate Hizballah as an organized force (since they've cut off many avenues of escape), and a slight chance of eliminating Syrian/Iranian influence in Lebanon. But I really don't know and neither do you. All the back-and-forth fighting certainly seems futile, but let me ask you this: If Hamas/Hizballah unilaterally stopped attacking Israelis, what would happen? Now how about if it was Israel that unilaterally stopped attacking? I think, if the former, the violence would stop. If the latter, it would escalate. Yet we keep calling on Israel to somehow "stop the cycle of violence."
In examining the potential for reduced bloodshed arising from the actions of the IDF, we should consider the long range as well as the short range view. Taken strategically, Israel's actions are utterly futile. Let's suppose that Israel wipes out 80% of Hezbollah's weapons stores and kills 50% of its fighters -- a pretty optimistic assessment. In the long run, will this change anything? I don't think so. It may take a few years, but Hezbollah will rebuild its strength and within a few years Israel will be right back where it is now. In strategic terms, the Israeli offensive is a complete waste of time.
You asked, what would happen if Hamas/Hezbollah stopped attacking. My answer: there would be reduced violence in the Middle East, but some Islamic fanatics would continue fighting, they'd kill a few Israelis, and then the Israelis would strike back, killing some Hamas/Hezbollah people, and then Hamas/Hezbollah would ask, "what's the point of peace? The Israelis will just attack us again." This is the endless cycle of violence. It goes on forever, and both the Israelis and the Palestinians are caught up in the cycle and neither will ever be able to pull themselves out of it. The only way to achieve peace in the Middle East is for the outside world to impose and enforce a peace settlement. And America is the country best suited to do that. But we just sit on the sidelines and ship munitions to Israel.
I'm not a fan of appeals to authority, but I'm curious if you have a background that makes this claim credible, whether military, diplomatic, or political. That was my point in the second paragraph above, that we are speaking here with low levels of knowledge both of what is actually happening and what might be achieved. This obviously shouldn't be a bar to debate, but I think it should bar the conclusory statements you're making.
As for the outside world imposing and enforce peace settlement, I don't think that's either (a) possible or (b) desirable. Because of the irregular nature of terrorist attacks in Israel, the international enforcement would have to be capable of patrolling the entire border. But what would be the border? That would presumably have to be set by the 'outside world' as part of the peace settlement. But what if either side doesn't like it? Can we simply annex land from Israel to try to impose a peace settlement? What if it doesn't work, then will Israel have to seize the land back to defend itself? And if Hamas/Hizballah have the same incentive to keep up the campaign of rockets and suicide bombing, how long until the outside world will get tired of patrolling and dying and leave and we get back to the status quo?
I don't think any international solution could be workable without the consent of all parties, which we almost had at Camp David but I don't think we'll see again anytime soon. I hope I'm wrong about that, but I doubt it. In the meantime, I'd rather sit on the sidelines and ship munitions to Israel than do nothing, because at least we're supporting the region's only real democracy rather than joining its isolation over self-defense.
I'll let you have the last word on this one, though, since I'm about to take off for a week and this thread should be well and truly dead by then.