I not going to do more than scan your comment - this seemed clear to me, though - your view of international law is tendentious because it does not apply equally to Israelis, Hamas and other countries at war. It is rather applied narrowly and strictly only to Israel, with a purpose that I as a resident and supporter of Israel am increasingly aware of, and am deeply and disagreement with.
You always assume that the law as applied would convict Israel of war crimes, and never speak of any allegation as what it is - alleged and speculative. Your propensity to cite law does not inspire you to the temperance required of law, to try before conviction. Neither you or even any court has substantive evidence to convict Israel of a war crime.
In part the reason you don't have that evidence is that the guidelines for when an action tips over into the realm of "war crime" rather than legitimate action are subjective and that's why everybody who hates Zionism feels they are entitled to hector Israel on these matters - their judgment is as good as anybody who really knows what they're talking about, and they push the subjectivity of morality to the hilt in service of their cause. Indeed, so subjective is their morality that they conflate international law, which DOES examine matters of reasonable intent, with their ammorality, which finds Israel more guilty than Hamas just because Israeli weapons kill more Palestinians than Hamas weapons do - irrespective of reasonable intent. Odd.
It is also tendentious because it is obviously their cause that they seek to advance - and no price is too high to pay, even if it serves the interests of a bigoted, theocratic, fascist movement (Hamas) at the expense of a state that has sought to avoid conflict, has made feasible, fair and realistic proposals to resolve the conflict, who is CURRENTLY in negotiation with the elected government of the Palestinians (PA) to do so, an effort that is purposefully being undermined by Iranian and Syrian proxies within Hamas - and yet, you'll fight the Israelis to the last Palestinian.
How noble.
Let's call you out for what you really are. You are a narcissist. You've made the Israeli/Arab conflict your hobby. It is the mirror by which you may look at yourself and crown yourself righteous. How beatified you must be, how saintly, to be able to excoriate the Jewish state, who made the rest of the world shift in its seats over their silence in WWII, by accusing it of the same acts. Cut them down to size, so that you may in your own eyes appear bigger than you are.
But you don't fool me. Real people live in the real world. They need to make decisions about real life and death situations. They sometimes have to decide whether as a price of defending themselves, their property, their family, their country - if another might or must die.
Your understanding of how these decisions are made betrays your ignorance, because you seem unaware that defense decis
Your understanding of how these decisions are made betrays your ignorance, because you seem unaware that defense decisions operate within ranges of more likely and less likely, rather than certainty. Wars are dangerous places. People get hurt - even by friendly fire - and mistakes are made and sometimes innocents are hurt accidentally just as Israel's own troops are. And sometimes they make a decision to fly higher to avoid getting shot by anti-aircraft missiles, but this reduces accuracy and increases the chance civilians will die. If it was your son in the aircraft, how much additional risk would you take upon his head to ensure less enemy civilians died in the attack? Can you quantify that in ounces, feet, numbers of deaths? No, you can't. So you just cast judgment and damn every decision the Israeli army makes because, after all, you are a saint, and they are devils.
Your analysis of international law would make wars of self-defense illegal because they'd be infeasible. The world would be a more beautiful place no doubt if your world-view were true - but when those who enforce international law are unwilling to rewrite the rules of war to address asymmetrical warfare rather than conventional warfare, when they aren't even willing to extend the laws of piracy that have been on the books for 400 years to terrorism (because the UN can't define terrorism in a way that includes Israel but excludes Palestinians), when they can't even find it possible to recognize Israel's right to self defense or even lift a finger to prevent the tunneling from Egypt, reassert PA control in Gaza, regain the freedom of Gilad Shalit or ensure that the financial resources expended on Gaza go for Gazan welfare rather than weapons, why suddenly do they discover your voice? Might it be that it was always in their interest to fight this war by diplomacy, a "war by other means", to achieve its goal? Might it be that the only way Palestinians can achieve their objective is by making Israel's defense of itself illegal, and thus badgering its residents with no option other than capitulation to Palestinian demands for dismantling Israel? How is it that the only reasonable alternative to a two state solution is the elimination of a Jewish state, rather than returning the occupied territories to Jordan and Egypt from whom they were taken? Because the subtext of your perspective and those you share your perspective with is that Israel is from its beginning a state with no right to exist. Pardon me, but Israelis don't go along with that and don't expect to have Israel disappear with a whimper. You want a bang, you'll get it.
Lastly, Israel would slowly cease to continue as a viable state if it didn't respond to the unprovoked attacks of the Hamas forces, and I suspect you realize that and support that. For the 3 years since the Gaza withdrawal, and the 5 years previous, Hamas has fired rockets on Israel with only occasional retaliation by Israel.
Every time ports or crossings were opened, the Hamas forces would increase fire or damage the crossings. You need only open your eyes to see that Hamas is uninterested in advancing peace, seeing as they do that time is on their side and that conflict serves their purposes. Yet, all you can do is recite a litany of violations - as though all of Israel's actions occured in a vacuum, and nothing preceeded them - as though they were unprovoked, and as though they serve no purpose other than the exact opposite of what Israel says it wants. Everything Israel does is in your view a pretext, an excuse, "surely" one thing or another - with such conviction you speak. Well, indeed you have your certainty - but it's a foolish certainty.
Unfortunately, war is not like a computer game - there is no reset button, there is no way to defend yourself without harming others, sometimes even those who do not deserve harm. You can do your best, and I'm satisfied Israel tried to do its best, and frankly I believe that's something we needed to establish for ourselves because being respectful of life is a value that separates us from our enemies, a distinction that we, if not you, are always aware of.
2 comments:
1. Having a belief that states should not exist, will obviously bias you against States that appear stable and strong,and you would begin to advocate positions that reduce the strength of any state. You would also make the methodology of protecting a state so impossible as to result in the end of Statehood. So to claim that you are unbiased from your personal beliefs is unwarranted.
2. Most, if not all examples of Israel doing something which you think is against the law, would be done because of instances where people were put in danger if the law was followed. For example, many ambulences have been used to move terrorists around, and have been used as bombs. This means that Israel can not trust the sign on a vehicle as being an ambulance. First you must deal with the breach of law commited by Hamas by using Ambulences for non medical reasons, and then you can discuss Israel's refusal to allow an amublence through a checkpoint.
Oh, it is the longest post I have evr read and all comment are also very long. So actually, I am not very good in all this politics, but it was very interesting for me to read this.
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