israel levels an entire city within an hour

[norseamd]

He will just snark "Well then give them death".

 

[werepossum]

Nah.

International law isn't broken without consequence, it's just that the consequences are much more significant for third world countries.

First world countries use it around the margins of their relationships all the time, and third world countries use it as part of their diplomatic strategy quite frequently. Having spent a good bit of time working in and around the UN I've found most people's understandings of how it works are pretty flawed.

We've both been here for eight years and I've yet to see even one subject of which you don't consider most people's understandings of how it works as pretty flawed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_conflict

Well I would probably recognize this as more of moderate intensity warfare but the fact remains that this is nothing like World War 2. The fact that nuclear weapons were even used in World War 2 tells just how big that war was.

Rockets are artillery, dude, and Hamas' are aimed at population centers.

 

[fskimospy]

We've both been here for eight years and I've yet to see even one subject of which you don't consider most people's understandings of how it works as pretty flawed.

You had gone several months without concocting some new way of convincing yourself that people who criticize you are all terrible. I'm glad to see you've righted the ship!

 

[fskimospy]

Hey now, let's stick to the facts before shouting out big words.
Israel never done any of those things, because Israel never targetted Palestinians, but Palestinian terrorists.

Unless of course they are bulldozing the houses of family members. These are the same excuses that are used by every occupying power, that they are only after the "terrorists". It is not convincing.

Did you know that in 2005 Israel completly vacated Gaza, leaving all of the area to the control of the Palestinians? Ever since Israel left, Hamas took over and empowered to what you see now.

I did! They of course never actually relinquished control over the area. That is why the UN never stopped considering Gaza to be occupied territory.

Do you know that Israel tranfers everyday huge amounts of goods into Gaza, knowing big part of it will be used by Hamas for rockets and tunnels?

Do you know that Israel supply Gaza over 60% of it's power consumption, and it kept supplying it while fighting, until Hamas rockets hit the supply lines of itself?

I did! Did you know that those goods comprise a small fraction of what would have been moved without the Israeli blockade and that Israel has basically blocked all human movement in and out of Gaza?

It seems odd to throw someone in jail but then say "look how nice I am for bringing you food in the prison I threw you in". The blockade currently in place is also considered to be illegal, just so you know.

Supplying these goods is actually part of Israel's legal obligations to Gaza as it is the occupying power there. It does so exceptionally poorly and keeps the area under blockade, which has led to appalling humanitarian conditions there.

I gotta say one more thing about that, the world media shows a realy false and decieving coverage about what is going on here. So you should take what you read on BBC, CNN e.t.c with a grain of salt.

Can you describe specifically what you think is false and misleading?

 

[werepossum]

You had gone several months without concocting some new way of convincing yourself that people who criticize you are all terrible. I'm glad to see you've righted the ship!

People who criticise me? LOL You are perfectly free to criticize me. I'm just pointing out that if you were smarter, you would at least pretend to find some good points on the other side so as to appear to be at least somewhat reasonable. If that seems too draconian, feel free to do so only on the issues on which we agree. I promise I won't hold it against you as with the exception of gay marriage I can see good points on both sides of most every issue regardless of which side I adopt. As it stands, it's difficult to take you seriously on any subject when you proclaim your superior understanding of every subject.

Besides, your only criticisms of me have been regurgitated criticisms I've made of you. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I can hardly hold those against you.

 

[fskimospy]

People who criticise me? LOL You are perfectly free to criticize me. I'm just pointing out that if you were smarter, you would at least pretend to find some good points on the other side so as to appear to be at least somewhat reasonable. If that seems too draconian, feel free to do so only on the issues on which we agree. I promise I won't hold it against you as with the exception of gay marriage I can see good points on both sides of most every issue regardless of which side I adopt. As it stands, it's difficult to take you seriously on any subject when you proclaim your superior understanding of every subject.

Besides, your only criticisms of me have been regurgitated criticisms I've made of you. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I can hardly hold those against you.

I've made plenty of my own criticisms of you don't sell me short! Primarily, you appear to subscribe to a delusional view of the world where huge swaths of America, the media, scientists, researchers, economists, etc are part of a conspiracy to trick you.

The only criticism you have leveled at me that I have sent back your way is that you are a serially dishonest individual. I don't care where it came from, in your case it has the unfortunate fate of being true.

 

[CitizenKain]

Hey now, let's stick to the facts before shouting out big words.
Israel never done any of those things, because Israel never targetted Palestinians, but Palestinian terrorists.

So, what do you call intentionally killing children then? Is it a sport over there? Like, who could get the most kids with a single artillery strike? You seem like the kind of person who gets you rocks off to that.

 

[Nebor]

Preemptive raids by SF on helicopters under the cover of night who go after known Hamas members. Think that was never done? And never by some evil oppressive country? The US has done that in Iraq and Afghanistan for decades now. When did the US ever wholesale bomb villages and cities full of civilians? Surprised?

The materiel available to Hamas makes air assault operations extremely dangerous for Israeli helicopters, even at night.

 

[SandEagle]

The materiel available to Hamas makes air assault operations extremely dangerous for Israeli helicopters, even at night.

what material? sand and rocks?

 

[Nebor]

what material? sand and rocks?

RPGs and SAMs. It doesn't take a very sophisticated SAM at all to take down a helicopter dropping off troops. And we've lost plenty of good men in Afghanistan to simple RPGs hitting helicopters as troops loaded\unloaded.

 

[Nebor]

what material? sand and rocks?

But you shouldn't underestimate the danger of Palestinian rocks. The IDF considers them deadly weapons for a reason.

 

[SandEagle]

But you shouldn't underestimate the danger of Palestinian rocks. The IDF considers them deadly weapons for a reason.

reminds me of this
http://www.theonion.com/articles/israel-intercepts-massive-palestinian-rock-shipmen,1694/

 

[norseamd]

reminds me of this http://www.theonion.com/articles/isr...-shipmen,1694/

lulz

Yah I remember that.

 

[Caravaggio]

I think your idea of how modern warfare works is from a combination of video games and movies.

That's rather patronising.

I have never played a 'video game' and the last war movie I saw was 'Saving Private Ryan', which seemed remarkably realistic.
My only experience of guns is where you pull a trigger and something heavy, hot and very fast, comes out of a barrel. Done a fair bit of that.

By the way, patronising means to look down on, or to demean somebody.

 

[emperus]

I think your idea of how modern warfare works is from a combination of video games and movies. Innocent people die in wars. The more of them that are around, the more that are going to die. Intelligence isn't perfectly up to date every minute. Then throw in the fact that Hamas is purposely putting civilians in harms way and it becomes impossible to spare them. I hesitate to call anyone in Gaza "innocent" since they elected Hamas and still support them.

Well everyone including the United States has called out Israel on the amount of civilian deaths.

It's interesting your analogy of what innocent is. By your analogy, in the eyes of Hamas and the Palestinians there is no one innocent in Israel as they elected the government. How did you feel about 9/11? By your analysis, no US citizen is innocent as well, as our government gives military aid to Israel and we elected out government.

By the way, when you Bomb a UN school where children slept, killing those children and UN workers when you were warned that they were a UN school, even though you may have believed a rocket was fired from that vicinity. That is pretty evil. And that has nothing to do with a lack of immediate intelligence, but just not caring about the collateral loss of life.

 

[shira]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud5tKtS5GSY

this is a shame. hundreds of civilians already killed. tv stations and power plants destroyed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ea-deny-providing-arms-Palestinian-group.html

this says it all

I guess if Hamas is so concerned about the welfare of civilians it shouldn't be hiding its soldiers and weapons and tunnels in civilian areas.

 

[Darwin333]

Gaza overwhelmingly elected Hamas to represent them. Then how can they complain about the results?

The residents cheer for when the rockets are launched; yet they complain about retaliation by Israel.

they know their houses are being used for munition storage then wonder why they are being targeted.

Are they that naive to think that Israel will still stand and take abuse?

Last I heard just about every border they have access to is, and has been, shut down. If you are a Palestinian the chances are you couldn't possibly move out of the country if you wanted to. You are just plain stuck in shit creek with, as far as I can tell, no options to get the hell out. Hell you probably stand a much higher chance of getting killed trying to get out of Palestine than you do staying there even now.

So the people that didn't vote for the assholes or the ones that couldn't vote at the time or whatever, do you have sympathy for them? Or is it guilt by association and fuck em?

What about us? We have started MUCH larger and many times more deadly wars based on bullshit. If we got the shit bombed out of us and that was the justification would you be saying the same thing? We do still have bombs so they can easily claim they fear we might do it again....


Bottom line is war fucking sucks and innocent people, including women and children are going to die and its horrible but it is a cold hard fact of war. With that said, you can simultaneously say that you agree with the war while having sympathy for the poor sonsofbitches that are just caught in the crossfire. Its called being a decent human being with just a smidgen of compassion.

 

[Darwin333]

I guess if Hamas is so concerned about the welfare of civilians it shouldn't be hiding its soldiers and weapons and tunnels in civilian areas.

Agreed. Still doesn't mean we should simply be numb to innocent civilians getting dead. It might have been necessary for the campaign and the "greater good", thats an entirely different conversation, but the least we can do is agree that it sucks that innocent women and children were killed.

 

[Darwin333]

So, what do you call intentionally killing children then? Is it a sport over there? Like, who could get the most kids with a single artillery strike? You seem like the kind of person who gets you rocks off to that.

In all fairness, they are fighting against one of the most densely populated places on the entire planet. You probably couldn't fire a bottle rocket into Palestine without hitting someone.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

Last I heard just about every border they have access to is, and has been, shut down. If you are a Palestinian the chances are you couldn't possibly move out of the country if you wanted to. You are just plain stuck in shit creek with, as far as I can tell, no options to get the hell out. Hell you probably stand a much higher chance of getting killed trying to get out of Palestine than you do staying there even now.

So the people that didn't vote for the assholes or the ones that couldn't vote at the time or whatever, do you have sympathy for them? Or is it guilt by association and fuck em?

What about us? We have started MUCH larger and many times more deadly wars based on bullshit. If we got the shit bombed out of us and that was the justification would you be saying the same thing? We do still have bombs so they can easily claim they fear we might do it again....


Bottom line is war fucking sucks and innocent people, including women and children are going to die and its horrible but it is a cold hard fact of war. With that said, you can simultaneously say that you agree with the war while having sympathy for the poor sonsofbitches that are just caught in the crossfire. Its called being a decent human being with just a smidgen of compassion.

Providence

 

[Lonyo]

In all fairness, they are fighting against one of the most densely populated places on the entire planet. You probably couldn't fire a bottle rocket into Palestine without hitting someone.

Not to mention that Israel decided to make nearly half the territory an evacuation zone, meaning the remaining area would have a population density approaching San Fransisco.

Imagine that your opponent is in San Fransisco or Jersey City, and they are firing rockets. Where do they go to fire that's NOT a civilian area?

Population density ~10k/km^2 before.
Then Israel said the buffer zone is 44% of the Gaza strip, meaning now ~17k/km^2
San Fran = 17k/km^2, Jersey City = 17k/km^2

 

[werepossum]

Last I heard just about every border they have access to is, and has been, shut down. If you are a Palestinian the chances are you couldn't possibly move out of the country if you wanted to. You are just plain stuck in shit creek with, as far as I can tell, no options to get the hell out. Hell you probably stand a much higher chance of getting killed trying to get out of Palestine than you do staying there even now.

So the people that didn't vote for the assholes or the ones that couldn't vote at the time or whatever, do you have sympathy for them? Or is it guilt by association and fuck em?

What about us? We have started MUCH larger and many times more deadly wars based on bullshit. If we got the shit bombed out of us and that was the justification would you be saying the same thing? We do still have bombs so they can easily claim they fear we might do it again....


Bottom line is war fucking sucks and innocent people, including women and children are going to die and its horrible but it is a cold hard fact of war. With that said, you can simultaneously say that you agree with the war while having sympathy for the poor sonsofbitches that are just caught in the crossfire. Its called being a decent human being with just a smidgen of compassion.

Well said, sir.

I have sympathy for all the Palestinians trapped in this hell, but I'm never forgetting that they elected a terrorist organization as their leaders. This is the beauty of representative democracy - we get what we deserve.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

but I'm never forgetting that they elected a terrorist organization as their leaders.

So you actually think voting in Palestine is the same as the US and not like other places where people are told who they will vote for in a given election.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

So you actually think voting in Palestine is the same as the US and not like other places where people are told who they will vote for in a given election.

That pretty much sounds like the United States.

 

[werepossum]

So you actually think voting in Palestine is the same as the US and not like other places where people are told who they will vote for in a given election.

Roughly, yes. If Palestinians are told for whom they will vote in a given election, then by rights Fatah would have been in power forever or until an armed revolution occurred. Instead, Hamas won power by election and got a split result in the fighting that occurred afterward.


It's also worth pointing out that Fatah is also a terrorist organization, just one aged into a bit less rabid than Hamas. (Or if you prefer, one that had alienated most of its state sponsors.)