What is proper resistance?

[LordKiran]

With the exception of a few true pacifists, everybody considers murdering children who happen to get caught in the crossfire, a good thing. That is to say, they have no objections to it. Occasionally, they are unhappy with which particular children it happens to be, but nothing is every done to prevent it from happening again.

Are you claiming these particular Israeli children have some special sanctity and they deserve to be treated differently than all the other children who died in a political conflict?

We(Americans) lost 22 children in a school, because a mentally ill person had access to an assault rifle. This was a clearly criminal act, with no political issues at all. Even then, we did not change anything as a result of their deaths. Nothing.

I think you are asking a lot from people, if you expect them to do something different, just because you told them about your dead school children.

Children getting caught in the crossfire is an unfortunate part of war. Children being targeted is pure evil.

- - - Updated - - -

So you consider murdering children to be a good thing if they're in the wrong place?

How can you people live with the evil in your hearts?

It helps when you realize "Good" and "Evil" are concepts invented and held by idiots.

Does it not occur to you that more goes into people's judgement beyond "The children?" Or are "The children" in this case nothing more than a convenient moral justification for your argument of the day, where were the roles reversed you wouldn't even bat an eye and whats more, you expect the rest of us to buy your insincere moralizing of a complicated political situation?

'Cuz I'm guessing it's the latter.

Once again, an attempt to pretend evil isn't evil.

You can call it whatever you choose. It doesn't make your moral protests any less insincere though.

 

[Jayjay]

It's no more evil than condoning Israeli air strikes against targets who are hiding behind human shields. Of course it is not a good thing when innocents end up being killed, but the main responsibility lies with whoever is using those children as shields, not the person pulling the trigger.

EDIT: Also, a distinction should be made with whether I think something is good, and whether it's justified. I am not saying Palestinians should be murdering children, just that in some cases I can see how it can be justified as resistance against oppression.

Except in the case I was citing there was no human shielding going on. The children were targeted.

Remember that we are not talking about the same case, but a hypothetical of it happening in Israeli settlements in West Bank. All the zionists are there illegally; the adults because they are religious fanatics, and the children because their parents brought them along. Whatever happens to the children is the responsibility of the people who brought them to harms way, and in that sense they are no different from human shields.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except in the case I was citing there was no human shielding going on. The children were targeted.

Remember that we are not talking about the same case, but a hypothetical of it happening in Israeli settlements in West Bank. All the zionists are there illegally; the adults because they are religious fanatics, and the children because their parents brought them along. Whatever happens to the children is the responsibility of the people who brought them to harms way, and in that sense they are no different from human shields.

It's amazing the contortions you will go through to justify the murder of Jewish children.

 

[Jayjay]

Remember that we are not talking about the same case, but a hypothetical of it happening in Israeli settlements in West Bank. All the zionists are there illegally; the adults because they are religious fanatics, and the children because their parents brought them along. Whatever happens to the children is the responsibility of the people who brought them to harms way, and in that sense they are no different from human shields.

It's amazing the contortions you will go through to justify the murder of Jewish children.

They are exactly the same contortions you go through to justify "murder" of Palestinian children. That's in quotes, because it's not really "murder" in either case, it's self defense or legitimate resistance against an occupation.

If you want to think of it as a "murder", then fine, but keep in mind the murderers in this scenario would be the parents of these children. Who brings children to a warzone? Or civilians in general, for that matter. And why are you defending it?

 

[Bronzeage]

With the exception of a few true pacifists, everybody considers murdering children who happen to get caught in the crossfire, a good thing. That is to say, they have no objections to it. Occasionally, they are unhappy with which particular children it happens to be, but nothing is every done to prevent it from happening again.

Are you claiming these particular Israeli children have some special sanctity and they deserve to be treated differently than all the other children who died in a political conflict?

We(Americans) lost 22 children in a school, because a mentally ill person had access to an assault rifle. This was a clearly criminal act, with no political issues at all. Even then, we did not change anything as a result of their deaths. Nothing.

I think you are asking a lot from people, if you expect them to do something different, just because you told them about your dead school children.

Children getting caught in the crossfire is an unfortunate part of war. Children being targeted is pure evil.

- - - Updated - - -

So you consider murdering children to be a good thing if they're in the wrong place?

How can you people live with the evil in your hearts?

It helps when you realize "Good" and "Evil" are concepts invented and held by idiots.

Does it not occur to you that more goes into people's judgement beyond "The children?" Or are "The children" in this case nothing more than a convenient moral justification for your argument of the day, where were the roles reversed you wouldn't even bat an eye and whats more, you expect the rest of us to buy your insincere moralizing of a complicated political situation?

'Cuz I'm guessing it's the latter.

Once again, an attempt to pretend evil isn't evil.

Are you going to stand there with a straight face and say there is a difference between seeing the children you shoot and dropping bombs on populated areas?

If there is a difference, please explain it in terms that make sense.

I've spent a lot of time listening to sanctimonious bullshit from my fellow Americans who seem to think the Israelis are a bunch of Boy Scouts who operate under some kind of moral code of conduct, and they never do bad things. Then, they go on to propose that the Palestinian cause is bad because Palestinians don't play by some kind of rule book.

More than once, I asked the same question. Suppose a foreign power invaded your hometown and denied all legal and property rights to the citizens of your home town. This means you could be kicked out of your house, and have no legal recourse. If you make too much trouble, they will shoot you and anyone standing near you. What is your course of action?

So far, no one has tried to answer the question.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If there is a difference, please explain it in terms that make sense.

I've spent a lot of time listening to sanctimonious bullshit from my fellow Americans who seem to think the Israelis are a bunch of Boy Scouts who operate under some kind of moral code of conduct, and they never do bad things. Then, they go on to propose that the Palestinian cause is bad because Palestinians don't play by some kind of rule book.

More than once, I asked the same question. Suppose a foreign power invaded your hometown and denied all legal and property rights to the citizens of your home town. This means you could be kicked out of your house, and have no legal recourse. If you make too much trouble, they will shoot you and anyone standing near you. What is your course of action?

So far, no one has tried to answer the question.

Why are you incapable of comprehending the concept of intent?

 

[Bomb#20]

More than once, I asked the same question. Suppose a foreign power invaded your hometown and denied all legal and property rights to the citizens of your home town. This means you could be kicked out of your house, and have no legal recourse. If you make too much trouble, they will shoot you and anyone standing near you. What is your course of action?

So far, no one has tried to answer the question.

Oh, was that a serious question?

My course of action is to comply with the invaders' demands, keep my head down, not make too much trouble, not attract their attention, stay alive as best I can, engage in minor acts of obstruction to whatever meager extent I can be sure of getting away with them, and hope that some day my nation's army wins the war and liberates me, or, failing that, that some day the occupiers evolve into a civilized government. Same as 90% of my neighbors' course of action. Duh.

Why, what's your course of action? Sneak past the guards into the house the local commandant moved into and strangle his newborn?

 

[Jayjay]

More than once, I asked the same question. Suppose a foreign power invaded your hometown and denied all legal and property rights to the citizens of your home town. This means you could be kicked out of your house, and have no legal recourse. If you make too much trouble, they will shoot you and anyone standing near you. What is your course of action?

So far, no one has tried to answer the question.

Oh, was that a serious question?

My course of action is to comply with the invaders' demands, keep my head down, not make too much trouble, not attract their attention, stay alive as best I can, engage in minor acts of obstruction to whatever meager extent I can be sure of getting away with them, and hope that some day my nation's army wins the war and liberates me, or, failing that, that some day the occupiers evolve into a civilized government. Same as 90% of my neighbors' course of action. Duh.

Why, what's your course of action? Sneak past the guards into the house the local commandant moved into and strangle his newborn?

Why did he bring his newborn with him to a military occupation? Just wondering. And the second factor is, would it be effective? Is killing his newborn going to hamper him from doing his job somehow? And third, it's not really a question what we would do. The decision is up to those who are actually in that situation. And to fight back often requires that you are a little bit crazy, or a religious fanatic.

 

[Bronzeage]

If there is a difference, please explain it in terms that make sense.

I've spent a lot of time listening to sanctimonious bullshit from my fellow Americans who seem to think the Israelis are a bunch of Boy Scouts who operate under some kind of moral code of conduct, and they never do bad things. Then, they go on to propose that the Palestinian cause is bad because Palestinians don't play by some kind of rule book.

More than once, I asked the same question. Suppose a foreign power invaded your hometown and denied all legal and property rights to the citizens of your home town. This means you could be kicked out of your house, and have no legal recourse. If you make too much trouble, they will shoot you and anyone standing near you. What is your course of action?

So far, no one has tried to answer the question.

Why are you incapable of comprehending the concept of intent?

Of course I am, but again, what difference does it make? If you know there are children in the area, and bomb anyway, does this intention to kill enemy soldiers somehow sanctify the death of the the children. If you hold the opinion that the children of the opposition group are expendable if you're trying to kill the opposition group, I am incapable of seeing the difference between you and those Palestinians in the school.

So, does the best of intentions erase the death of children?

 

[Bronzeage]

More than once, I asked the same question. Suppose a foreign power invaded your hometown and denied all legal and property rights to the citizens of your home town. This means you could be kicked out of your house, and have no legal recourse. If you make too much trouble, they will shoot you and anyone standing near you. What is your course of action?

So far, no one has tried to answer the question.

Oh, was that a serious question?

My course of action is to comply with the invaders' demands, keep my head down, not make too much trouble, not attract their attention, stay alive as best I can, engage in minor acts of obstruction to whatever meager extent I can be sure of getting away with them, and hope that some day my nation's army wins the war and liberates me, or, failing that, that some day the occupiers evolve into a civilized government. Same as 90% of my neighbors' course of action. Duh.

Why, what's your course of action? Sneak past the guards into the house the local commandant moved into and strangle his newborn?

In any group of people, I'm the smart guy. The occupiers are not going to evolve into civilized government, unless you consider the Federal Government's Bureau of Indian Affairs to be civilized.

Your hope of your nation's army coming to your rescue is a fantasy. You don't have a country or an army. You probably don't have a house either, because it was destroyed in the invasion.
Your plan of knuckling under is probably the most practical. If you can manage to forget the deaths of your parents and most of the rest of your family, along with the loss of all their property, you'll probably gain all that back in a generation, or two.

Of course, if you come from one of those cultures which puts a high value on family honor and vengeance for past wrongs, you may have trouble with your neighbors, who see you as a traitor and an aid to the enemy. Good luck with that.

 

[Bomb#20]

Oh, was that a serious question?

My course of action is to comply with the invaders' demands, keep my head down, not make too much trouble, not attract their attention, stay alive as best I can, engage in minor acts of obstruction to whatever meager extent I can be sure of getting away with them, and hope that some day my nation's army wins the war and liberates me, or, failing that, that some day the occupiers evolve into a civilized government. Same as 90% of my neighbors' course of action. Duh.

Why, what's your course of action? Sneak past the guards into the house the local commandant moved into and strangle his newborn?

Why did he bring his newborn with him to a military occupation? Just wondering.

He didn't. It's a newborn. He brought his mistress with him to a military occupation, and he knocked her up, and she gave birth right there in the house because his men accidentally blew up the local hospital. As to why he brought his mistress with him to a military occupation, I'll leave that to your imagination.

And the second factor is, would it be effective? Is killing his newborn going to hamper him from doing his job somehow?

No; but then what Palestinian terrorists do to Israeli civilians hasn't been effective either. The most effective thing the Palestinians ever did to get themselves a country was throw rocks at the IDF. No wonder they abandoned that approach.

And third, it's not really a question what we would do. The decision is up to those who are actually in that situation. And to fight back often requires that you are a little bit crazy, or a religious fanatic.

That, you'll have to take up with Bronzeage.

 

[Bomb#20]

Why, what's your course of action? Sneak past the guards into the house the local commandant moved into and strangle his newborn?

In any group of people, I'm the smart guy. The occupiers are not going to evolve into civilized government, unless you consider the Federal Government's Bureau of Indian Affairs to be civilized.

Do you consider any government to be civilized? Yes or no.

If yes, show me a government that you consider civilized and I'll show you an oppressive invader that evolved into a civilized government.

If no, then what's the issue? Your old government also denied legal and property rights to the citizens and could kick you out of your house or shoot you. You were oppressed before and oppressed now. How is your being dissatisfied about which oppressor is oppressing you supposed to justify anything?

Your hope of your nation's army coming to your rescue is a fantasy. You don't have a country or an army. You probably don't have a house either, because it was destroyed in the invasion.

Maybe your ex-country still has friends with a country and an army. Worked for the French.

Your plan of knuckling under is probably the most practical. If you can manage to forget the deaths of your parents and most of the rest of your family, along with the loss of all their property, you'll probably gain all that back in a generation, or two.

Not sure why I would need to forget all that in order to not blame the local commandant's newborn for it; but if that's what you'd need to do, I hope you have a poor memory.

Of course, if you come from one of those cultures which puts a high value on family honor and vengeance for past wrongs, you may have trouble with your neighbors, who see you as a traitor and an aid to the enemy. Good luck with that.

If my neighbors seriously can't tell the difference between actively helping the enemy and merely giving up, or the difference between vengeance on perpetrators and "vengeance" on innocent bystanders, or the difference between accidentally catching someone in crossfire and deliberately murdering him, then it's unlikely that my old society was less oppressive than the one the invaders are creating. So why should my side have any right to win? That is the point of attempted justifications for terrorism, isn't it? That without it the terrorists' side will lose?

But hey, if any captured terrorist wants to argue in court that he should be acquitted because he never willingly deliberately targeted innocent bystanders, I'm happy to give him the opportunity to convince a jury his neighbors really would have murdered him if he hadn't. We actually did let an awful lot of Nazi war criminals off because they were just following orders and would have been shot if they'd disobeyed. Of course that defense tended to work better for privates than for colonels.

Anyway, you didn't answer. What's your course of action?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Oh, was that a serious question?

My course of action is to comply with the invaders' demands, keep my head down, not make too much trouble, not attract their attention, stay alive as best I can, engage in minor acts of obstruction to whatever meager extent I can be sure of getting away with them, and hope that some day my nation's army wins the war and liberates me, or, failing that, that some day the occupiers evolve into a civilized government. Same as 90% of my neighbors' course of action. Duh.

Why, what's your course of action? Sneak past the guards into the house the local commandant moved into and strangle his newborn?

Why did he bring his newborn with him to a military occupation? Just wondering. And the second factor is, would it be effective? Is killing his newborn going to hamper him from doing his job somehow? And third, it's not really a question what we would do. The decision is up to those who are actually in that situation. And to fight back often requires that you are a little bit crazy, or a religious fanatic.

You seem fine with killing the children if they are Jewish.

 

[Jayjay]

Why did he bring his newborn with him to a military occupation? Just wondering. And the second factor is, would it be effective? Is killing his newborn going to hamper him from doing his job somehow? And third, it's not really a question what we would do. The decision is up to those who are actually in that situation. And to fight back often requires that you are a little bit crazy, or a religious fanatic.

You seem fine with killing the children if they are Jewish.

No, I apply the same rules regardless of who the victims are. If Israel has a right to defend itself by killing Palestinian children in Gaza, which is something you have defended multilple times, then Palestinians have the right to resist the occupation by killing Jewish children in West Bank. I'm merely being consistent.

 

[Bronzeage]

In any group of people, I'm the smart guy. The occupiers are not going to evolve into civilized government, unless you consider the Federal Government's Bureau of Indian Affairs to be civilized.

Do you consider any government to be civilized? Yes or no.

If yes, show me a government that you consider civilized and I'll show you an oppressive invader that evolved into a civilized government.

If no, then what's the issue? Your old government also denied legal and property rights to the citizens and could kick you out of your house or shoot you. You were oppressed before and oppressed now. How is your being dissatisfied about which oppressor is oppressing you supposed to justify anything?

Your hope of your nation's army coming to your rescue is a fantasy. You don't have a country or an army. You probably don't have a house either, because it was destroyed in the invasion.

Maybe your ex-country still has friends with a country and an army. Worked for the French.

Your plan of knuckling under is probably the most practical. If you can manage to forget the deaths of your parents and most of the rest of your family, along with the loss of all their property, you'll probably gain all that back in a generation, or two.

Not sure why I would need to forget all that in order to not blame the local commandant's newborn for it; but if that's what you'd need to do, I hope you have a poor memory.

Of course, if you come from one of those cultures which puts a high value on family honor and vengeance for past wrongs, you may have trouble with your neighbors, who see you as a traitor and an aid to the enemy. Good luck with that.

If my neighbors seriously can't tell the difference between actively helping the enemy and merely giving up, or the difference between vengeance on perpetrators and "vengeance" on innocent bystanders, or the difference between accidentally catching someone in crossfire and deliberately murdering him, then it's unlikely that my old society was less oppressive than the one the invaders are creating. So why should my side have any right to win? That is the point of attempted justifications for terrorism, isn't it? That without it the terrorists' side will lose?

But hey, if any captured terrorist wants to argue in court that he should be acquitted because he never willingly deliberately targeted innocent bystanders, I'm happy to give him the opportunity to convince a jury his neighbors really would have murdered him if he hadn't. We actually did let an awful lot of Nazi war criminals off because they were just following orders and would have been shot if they'd disobeyed. Of course that defense tended to work better for privates than for colonels.

Anyway, you didn't answer. What's your course of action?

If I were a Palestinian, I would have worked for a political solution which would include acceptance of Israeli sovereignty, in exchange for full voting rights in Israeli election, freedom of travel inside Israel, and full equality under the law. In a generation, Palestinians would be a majority and we'd have our country back. Of course, I would be assassinated either by Palestinians or Israelis, whichever got me first.

Let's try to get back on topic, please. We are discussing the Palestinians and the Israelis, and you want to play war games with French Resistance. This is not a scenario where rolling the dice has any relevance.

Your concept of "innocent bystanders" does not exist in the real world. They are called "collateral damage" and it's one of the costs of waging war.

You want us to condemn the Palestinians and their cause, because of the way they wage war. One of the primary factors in how to wage war, is we must choose from the available options. I'm sure if the Palestinians had precision guided missiles, we'd see less suicide bombings, but they have bombs and suicidal people, so that's what they use.

If you want a solution to this problem, look at the causes of the problem, not the problems it has caused.

 

[Arctish]

What is proper resistance?

As others have pointed out, resistance isn't something done with the permission of authorities. Also, to be a proper resistance there must be an authority to resist, otherwise it's simply aggression. Active opposition by the Palestinian people to the Occupation and colonization of the West Bank is proper resistance in that sense.

Judging by the rest of your post, what you really want to discuss is what we all consider to be acceptable tactics of resistance. So then, let's discuss tactics.

In the past you have suggested the Palestinians should adopt Gandhi-like tactics as their main means of protesting and working for change. I agree that Gandhi-like tactics are acceptable forms of resistance. They include

1. Civil disobedience. This means Palestinians should ignore Israeli demands that Palestinians seek and comply with Israeli building permits when building in the West Bank and Gaza. They should not obey instructions on which roads they may use, or where they can install or repair a well, or how many of them can be gathered in one place at a time, or what they can bring into or out of the West Bank and Gaza. Bringing in items with military uses would be an important part of the resistance but it's not quite Gandhi-like so that can come later if the pacifist tactics fail to produced the desired results.

2. Blocking the roads to the Settlements in the West Bank unless and until ordinary Palestinians are allowed to live and work there, or until the Zionist colonists decamp and return to Israel. The land on which these illegal colonies have been built should be returned to the families and communities from which they were taken. Immigrants should be allowed to join the Palestinian communities, not displace them.

3. Petitioning the Israeli government, the UN, and the World Court for the redress of their grievances and to enlist aid in the defense of their human rights and the Rights of Refugees.

4. Gaining control of Palestinian resources such as water and natural gas. This would entail the seizure and/or disabling of infrastructure pumping water from Palestinian aquifers into Israel and the Settlements, and the seizure of the LNG facilities where Israel takes Palestinian natural gas. The seizures and occupations should continue until Israel pays the Palestinians a fair market price for its resources and allows the PA to set production goals and distribution policy.

5. Tearing down the Separation Wall in places where Palestinians are denied access to their land, or where Israelis are attempting to build beyond the 1967 borders. Also tearing down the walls along the borders of the West Bank and Jordan and Lebanon, and Gaza and Egypt, unless the Palestinians themselves want those walls to remain. Palestinians should resist all attempts made by Israelis to encircle and imprison them.

These last two will no doubt result in bloodshed. That is not necessarily the fault of the Palestinians. The IDF will use force to defend the ill-gotten gains of the beneficiaries of natural resource extraction in the West Bank lands and Gaza territorial waters. But it still would be proper resistance to return control of those resources to the Palestinians, even if it means shooting and rocket attacks.

Also, anyone engaged in Gandhi-like tactics will most likely spend years in prison for the crime of inciting others to resist. Gandhi did, and all the Gandhi-like Palestinian leaders I've heard of have. Some of them have even been deported, as though Israel had any right to deny a Palestinian the right to live in a place that isn't Israel. So the fact a person has been imprisoned shouldn't been seen as an indication their resistance wasn't proper.

Many on here have said the Palestinians are engaging in acceptable resistance.

http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=21483

Killing 22 children is a heroic act?? They targeted a school, they took children hostage.

How can anyone on here defend this?

Killing hostages and bystanders isn't proper resistance IMV.

 

[Bomb#20]

Anyway, you didn't answer. What's your course of action?

If I were a Palestinian, I would have worked for a political solution which would include acceptance of Israeli sovereignty, in exchange for full voting rights in Israeli election, freedom of travel inside Israel, and full equality under the law. In a generation, Palestinians would be a majority and we'd have our country back. Of course, I would be assassinated either by Palestinians or Israelis, whichever got me first.

Let's try to get back on topic, please. We are discussing the Palestinians and the Israelis, and you want to play war games with French Resistance. This is not a scenario where rolling the dice has any relevance.

Get a grip. You're the one who wrote:

Suppose a foreign power invaded your hometown and denied all legal and property rights to the citizens of your home town. This means you could be kicked out of your house, and have no legal recourse. If you make too much trouble, they will shoot you and anyone standing near you. What is your course of action?​

I answered the question you repeatedly asked, because you complained no one would answer it. So when you feel an impulse to get snotty at me for not answering some other question you subsequently decided you meant to ask, grow an impulse control. The French and the dice have exactly as much relevance to your question as the Palestinians.

And, it bears pointing out, the Palestinians have powerful friends too. If the Arab countries ever learned to work together they could crush Israel, so the dice are relevant even there.

Your concept of "innocent bystanders" does not exist in the real world. They are called "collateral damage" and it's one of the costs of waging war.

Of course it exists in the real world. Your decision that established international law and prevailing moral codes don't satisfy you does not constitute a constraint on the rest of us. If you want to stand on a street corner shouting "But there's no moral difference between aiming at children and hitting children by accident when you're aiming at attackers! There really really isn't!" until you're blue in the face, that's your right; but it doesn't mean the rest of us ought to give your irrational religious dogma any weight in our decision process.

You want us to condemn the Palestinians and their cause, because of the way they wage war.

Excuse me? Where the bejesus did I say you should condemn the Palestinians and their cause? Broad-brushing people is your department.

One of the primary factors in how to wage war, is we must choose from the available options. I'm sure if the Palestinians had precision guided missiles, we'd see less suicide bombings, but they have bombs and suicidal people, so that's what they use.

What's your point? Why should we care whether they use suicide bombings? Japan used suicide bombings on our warships. Pretty damn heroic if you ask me. It's not the weapon that makes a war crime a war crime. It's the intended target.

If you want a solution to this problem, look at the causes of the problem, not the problems it has caused.

And by "the causes", do you perhaps mean "In the cycle of violence, reprisal leading to counter-reprisal without end, Israeli reprisals are Israel's fault and Palestinian reprisals are Israel's fault."?

 

[Bronzeage]

If I were a Palestinian, I would have worked for a political solution which would include acceptance of Israeli sovereignty, in exchange for full voting rights in Israeli election, freedom of travel inside Israel, and full equality under the law. In a generation, Palestinians would be a majority and we'd have our country back. Of course, I would be assassinated either by Palestinians or Israelis, whichever got me first.

Let's try to get back on topic, please. We are discussing the Palestinians and the Israelis, and you want to play war games with French Resistance. This is not a scenario where rolling the dice has any relevance.

Get a grip. You're the one who wrote:

Suppose a foreign power invaded your hometown and denied all legal and property rights to the citizens of your home town. This means you could be kicked out of your house, and have no legal recourse. If you make too much trouble, they will shoot you and anyone standing near you. What is your course of action?​

I answered the question you repeatedly asked, because you complained no one would answer it. So when you feel an impulse to get snotty at me for not answering some other question you subsequently decided you meant to ask, grow an impulse control. The French and the dice have exactly as much relevance to your question as the Palestinians.

And, it bears pointing out, the Palestinians have powerful friends too. If the Arab countries ever learned to work together they could crush Israel, so the dice are relevant even there.

Your concept of "innocent bystanders" does not exist in the real world. They are called "collateral damage" and it's one of the costs of waging war.

Of course it exists in the real world. Your decision that established international law and prevailing moral codes don't satisfy you does not constitute a constraint on the rest of us. If you want to stand on a street corner shouting "But there's no moral difference between aiming at children and hitting children by accident when you're aiming at attackers! There really really isn't!" until you're blue in the face, that's your right; but it doesn't mean the rest of us ought to give your irrational religious dogma any weight in our decision process.

You want us to condemn the Palestinians and their cause, because of the way they wage war.

Excuse me? Where the bejesus did I say you should condemn the Palestinians and their cause? Broad-brushing people is your department.

One of the primary factors in how to wage war, is we must choose from the available options. I'm sure if the Palestinians had precision guided missiles, we'd see less suicide bombings, but they have bombs and suicidal people, so that's what they use.

What's your point? Why should we care whether they use suicide bombings? Japan used suicide bombings on our warships. Pretty damn heroic if you ask me. It's not the weapon that makes a war crime a war crime. It's the intended target.

If you want a solution to this problem, look at the causes of the problem, not the problems it has caused.

And by "the causes", do you perhaps mean "In the cycle of violence, reprisal leading to counter-reprisal without end, Israeli reprisals are Israel's fault and Palestinian reprisals are Israel's fault."?

Lighten up Francis. I may have included responses to Loren in my reply. That's understandable.

In the real world, "innocent bystanders" are an afterthought. We bomb them and they bomb them too.

 

[Jayjay]

Sometimes, children are not just innocent bystanders, but tools. Palestinians encourage their children to throw rocks at IDF, for example. In case of the settlers, theire presence in West Bank is a war crime. That includes the children. If some of them happen to die due to resistance, whether it's by accident or if they are deliberately targeted, the fault lies with the people who brought them there.

Let's say a Palestinian kid puts a bomb on a bus, then goes around the corner with a trigger. IDF soldier notices what happened and he has a choice to either put a bullet in the kid to stop him from blowing up the bomb, or try to capture him alive but risk the lives of everyone on the bus. Could we blame the soldier if he chooses the former?

 

[LordKiran]

Sometimes, children are not just innocent bystanders, but tools. Palestinians encourage their children to throw rocks at IDF, for example. In case of the settlers, theire presence in West Bank is a war crime. That includes the children. If some of them happen to die due to resistance, whether it's by accident or if they are deliberately targeted, the fault lies with the people who brought them there.

Let's say a Palestinian kid puts a bomb on a bus, then goes around the corner with a trigger. IDF soldier notices what happened and he has a choice to either put a bullet in the kid to stop him from blowing up the bomb, or try to capture him alive but risk the lives of everyone on the bus. Could we blame the soldier if he chooses the former?

Yes, because he is an invader and occupier. He is in the wrong to begin with.