Israel to World: "Suck It."

If the chance of civilian fatalities should preclude any military response to violence, then that's a first principle I can respect but with which I disagree.

According to Haaretz, Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said this about Israel's attacks on Gaza: "The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages." Let me know if any of the US Sunday talk shows mention that tomorrow during their discussions of this "operation".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/17/israel-gaza-us-policy

It's a good thing that Eli Yishai does not dictate strategy to Ehud Barak.

that might be superfluous and redundant.

that old chestnut "doctrine of double effect" is relevant here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/

you are welcome to disagree with it but the idf did not invent it

note however that neither aquinas nor any other moral philosopher would defend sharon udasin's lifestyle piece about freaked-out pets

well st. francis might

god has given the rocket to government with good reason

I don't read the Jerusalem Post but, assuming that most of their coverage is concerned with the actual major issues of the fighting and its effects on people, I'm not sure that it's a moral error to also throw in a fluffy piece about the effect of sirens on pets, although I get why it's kind of funny.

especially at the end when she says "I'm totally open to writing about Gazan pets too!"

I loled irl, don't get me wrong.

sund4r I might agree if I saw a little more *human interest* in Palestinians from the JPost.

OK, like I said, I don't read JPost so I'm probably missing context. If that op-ed upthread is typical, then this suddenly seems much darker.

JPost is pretty right wing, not as bad as Arutz Sheva, that op-ed was pretty horrific but not typical in my experience (nb I don't read particularly often).

If the chance of civilian fatalities should preclude any military response to violence, then that's a first principle I can respect but with which I disagree.

― Mordy, Monday, November 19, 2012 11:35 AM (57 minutes ago)

you...surely can't mean this. any civilian casualties? disproportionately large civilian casualties? you must draw the line somewhere

I didn't say that.

in your 1:1 combatant/civilian death ratio above mordy, both those ppl are still statistically likely to be palestinians, right? I mean, it's a weaselly-worded stat if i'm guessing right.

I don't know why it's weaselly. Israel is fighting Hamas. Hamas is a Palestinian organization.

you didn't say what?

the ira is an irish organisation, even at the height of it the brits managed not to discriminately slaughter too many of the rest of us.

K3v, saying "I disagree that a chance of civilian fatalities should (always) preclude any military response to violence" isn't the same as saying "a chance of civilian casualties should never preclude any military response to violence"

k3v, I did not say that any number of civilian casualties is justifiable, and the term 'disproportionately' indicates the subjective ambiguity of what constitutes a proportionate v. disproportionate strike. All I said is that I reject the claim that risk of civilian casualty should preclude military responses to violence. (xp what Andrew said.)

darragh, I am not conversant enough in the IRA situation to speak to the ways that it is and isn't similar to the Israel/Hamas conflict.

me neither tbh

but the parallel i drew seems simple enough to remark on, to my mind. 'Hamas is a palestinian organisation' is no softener to palestinian civilian casualties, and is far too close, in context & imo, to saying 'all palestines are equivalent to hamas'

Some Palestinians are legitimate military targets because they plan and commit war crimes against Israeli citizens. Most Palestinians are not legitimate military targets because they are innocent civilians. When prosecuting a war against legitimate military targets there is always a risk of civilian casualties. It is a moral imperative to take actions to reduce the risks of civilian casualties. The ratio of legitimate targets to civilian casualties is not a terrible way of gauging how well those risks were reduced. Am I misunderstanding your contention?

hamas is also an organization that was elected into governing power, the IRA was not

The crucial differences are I think a) IRA and their sympathisers in Northern Ireland are still, from the UK's point of view, UK citizens and b) the sympathizers outside are in a country with an actual army.

Which is not to suggest that the UK would be acting like the IDF but for these circumstances!

xp iatee unless I'm misreading you, that's a little close to "but they voted for them!" - surely some of EG the doctors and nurses in the hospitals might have other political allegiances (or none)

mordy, dont agree w u but im apologizing anyway. xpost

On IDF having the lowest civilian-to-militant death ratio: That is probably not their fault, right? (that wiki-article is not that precise) Most civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and Kosova was killed by the sectarians and terrorists themselves, the low ratio mainly means, that Palestinians are unusually united (though I did read some articles on how Hamas usually took advantage of Israeli attacks to eliminate their internal enemies as well)

"IDF consistently has the lowest civilian to combatant casualty ratio in the history of armed conflict."

something about "in the history of armed conflict" makes me wanna roll my damn eyes

for starters: what a hilariously grandiose claim. also false. if we're considering the HISTORY OF ARMED CONFLICT then, you know, battles fought on battlefields by dudes explicitly there for battling are gonna turn out better civ:soldier casualty ratios because those ratios are basically going to be zero; if you were there, with a sword in your hand, you were not a civilian (even though you probably were). but w/e

anyway, i don't think that the IDF's interest in minimizing civilian casualties should be seen as special or unique; it's an interest shared by virtually all modern militaries. a really great civ:soldier death ratio just means the IDF is really good at killing certain people, not that they're inherently ~nicer~ than other armies, or, like, going above and beyond what should really be expected of them. i mean, think of how grotesque that idea is: the IDF is a great army because...they're NOT killing people that they could totally be killing right now. making too much of it gets you people saying stuff like this, which is really nagl:

Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School stated that the 2008 figure of 1:30 represents the lowest civilian to combatant casualty ratio in history in the setting of combating terrorism. Dershowitz criticized the international media and human rights organizations for not taking sufficient note of it. He also argued that even this figure may be misleading because not all civilians are innocent bystanders.

a-bloo-hoo-hoo, no one is giving props for tactics like:

Pinpoint targeting - singling out terrorists for an airstrike in a way that won't harm civilian bystanders.
Aborting strikes due to risk of civilians being injured or killed.
Advanced technology - the IDF has heavily invested in smart bombs, and has developed special missiles, such as the F-16I Sufa and the Delilah Missile, which has the ability to cancel a strike while in the air.

it's not that we only very recently decided that it might be a good idea to shoot the missile EXACTLY where the bad guy is, it's that now we can.

what's so smart about bombs anyway

As I understand it (and I'm not a serious scholar of the history of war so I may be misinformed), civilian casualties in war have trended significantly downward over time and despite the picturesque image we may have sometimes of two armies meeting on a battlefield, they always had a devastating impact on the civilian population.

Would be interesting to know how 'combatant' is being defined here. Presumably not guys with rockets in their hands aiming them at Israel.

Civilian casualties were often huge in warfare back then, armies were often maintained by pillaging (and raping, and killing) the civilian populace, that is very true. And if the IDF kill fewer civilians in their air-strikes than the Americans does in their drone-strikes, then I find that pretty important information. But I'd still be suspicious of the claim that the IDF kills a smaller proportion of civilians over all. I'd need much more information on how that is measured, and even on what it means precisely, to take that claim seriously.

what about when Burma and Thailand had those two princes fight on elephants to decide the conflict, that one had a sick ratio prob

idk- i don't agree with mordy on this but if gbx's c&p info is correct then it's hard to ask more, given guerilla tactics.

Btw sinn fein have had political presence since the IRA existed, tho tbh i'd need to look up the further history as to whether they'd ever held any actual role in a parliament before ceasefire/devolution- but catholics were voting for the IRA in most senses.

Not sure i'd accept fully that UK considered sf voters uk citizens so much as internal hostiles. Voting districts and proportions alone argue that way.

does anyone know if there's an apolitical site out there devoted to fact-checking media stuff about the conflict? So much crap goes around in e-mail forwards, message boards, websites, etc.? Sort of a snopes of Israel/Palestine? I think the world could really use something like that, especially with such sophisticated propaganda machines involved, arguably on both sides.

xps

my (rambling, not well made) point above wasn't really about whether or not the IDF really is in fact good at minimizing casualties (i'm willing to believe it is), or if it presides over a new era of enlightened warfare, or if its numbers are accurate; it's that being good at minimizing casualties does nothing, says nothing, about whether or not those minimal casualties are justified in the first place.

i kinda blundered into this thread so maybe i misunderstood what anyone was talking about, but citing the IDF's willingness and ability to reduce collateral damage as evidence of a moral high-ground (vs those bad old militants using 'human shields') just doesn't wash with me (nb i am not sure if anyone was trying to do that). particularly because it implies that hamas' possibly legitimate grievances (or the IRA's or whoever's) can be dismissed or marginalized because they play---because they literally have to play---according to different rules of engagement.

asymmetric conflicts are by definition conducted along gradients of power, right? the IDF has the tech and the matériel to coordinate pin-point missile strikes, hamas does not. if hamas did not hide among the populace (like the VC, like the IRA, like the American revolutionaries), they would wink out of existence. along those lines, if the IDF said 'fuck it' and just went ham, civilians be damned, that would not be in its best interests, nor in those of the people it defends.

maybe it isn't ~fair~ to characterize the IDF as baby killers if, in fact, they are studiously avoiding killing babies, but who cares? i have friends in the US military (that served in Afghanistan and everything!) who i will strenuously defend as definitely not people that kill babies, but that doesn't have any bearing on how i evaluate the validity of our military engagements

Evaluate the validity of the military engagement. Does Israel have the right to use their military to stop Hamas rocket attacks on their cities and civilians?

I believe they have an obligation.

http://www.crownheights.info/index.php?itemid=48339&catid=25

comments thread from this is kind of fascinating (mostly haredi jews discussing the deaths of three from rocket attacks) -- I don't think you can generalize from a thread like this, but I think it suggests that the hardest right wingers don't necessarily come from the most religious communities, as opposed to the canard that this is just angry theocrats facing off.

mordy when you put it that vaguely it's a little difficult to argue with you. do the severity of the rocket ttcks mtter? are there limits to what their military can do to retaliate? you seem content to justify whatever is done based on that vague declaration; it's a kind of politician's syllogism

he doesn't care, all that matters is rejoicing in the deaths of your enemies.

alright come on that's not fair

do the severity of the rocket ttcks mtter? are there limits to what their military can do to retaliate? you seem content to justify whatever is done based on that vague declaration

Do they? How many rockets with how much damage correlates to what kind of proportionate response? I won't justify everything that is done, but a state loses its legitimacy if it can't protect its citizens from enemy attacks. I think that Israel tolerated a lot of rocket fire before responding, and so far has restricted their reaction to targeted airstrikes while they wait for Egypt to deliver a cease fire. I don't think you can ask a country to sit forever while rockets fall on them, and you certainly can't ask them to open up a blockade that would certainly bring more weapons in.

I hope there is no invasion on the ground. I think it would generate a lot more civilian casualties and would only be a temporary setback for Hamas. I think that Hamas daring Israel to invade indicates what kind of organization they are. They know what an Israeli invasion of Gaza looks like and if they wanted to protect the people who voted for them at all they would be sitting down to negotiate, not daring Israel to march back in. This is a political attack designed to destabilize Israel's relationship with Egypt (and maybe Turkey).

It's not being reported anywhere but I was just texted a rumor from Crown Heights that the army is entering Gaza (probably relayed by people there w/ family in the army, I'd imagine).

Meanwhile Haaretz last reporting:

3:54 A.M. Al-Arabiya reports cease-fire between Hamas and Israel a few hours away (Army Radio)

Here's the text The army is entering Gaza, the Rabbanim are asking everyone to say Tehillim: 130, 121, 83, 20, 91, 143.

I hope it's a mistake. I'm so upset I feel like I'm going to cry.

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/19/u-s-sends-warships-near-israel-in-case-evacuation-needed/

"Does Israel have the right to use their military to stop Hamas rocket attacks on their cities and civilians?"

Right sorta doesn't play into when Israel aren't terribly interested in establishing a peaceful alternative (same applies to Hamas, but I think this where the equitability of the playing field puts more of a greater onus on Israel to be trying--rather than just building up more settlements.)