Pretty disturbing footage, which proves only that the Pallywood propaganda machine is very talented at producing such images. They aim to inflame the Arab world, and horrify sensitive Western viewers.

Historically they have gone so far as to produce child corpses from morgues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salam_Daher
Or in the case of Mohammad Al Durah, shooting a child themselves, filming it, and blaming the IDF.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200306/fallows
Or were the poor children being dragged around as human shields?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOUQWcpH4wI

So however they died, that sucks! But don't take the story at face value.

I'm not taking either side of the issue, so don't think I'm implying anything by asking this question but:

Is the "appropriate" response, while a mortar attack is ongoing and potentially killing innocent people at the receiving end, to sit by and allow the attackers to continue their assault indefinitely?

Putting aside why either side does what (e.g., launching mortars from a school), just generally speaking in terms of offense/defense, if someone is continually launching weapons killing people from a distance and they don't stop (because they have no reason to stop while Israel exists), what should the response of the attacked people be? I'm trying to conceive of a viable alternative to 1) sitting and watching as innocent people in your own country are being killed, hoping it stops some time soon, and 2) launching an attack against the attackers to force them to stop.

Again, I'm just looking for a better understanding of the differing points of view, not spouting rhetoric.

Also, I don't know the results of this specific incident. Did the IDF drop a bomb destroying the entire school?

[edit]
To be clear, my questions are more in general than this specific attack. Whether mortars or rockets, near or far, schools or hospitals, the issue remains.

Forces the IDF? Please.

The IDF has total discretion in picking its targets, they wanted to bomb them so they did, the US and ISAF forces don't even bomb areas in Iraq and Afghanistan if they know it could result in needless civilian casualties.

Terrorism in Judea is symptom not a disease, when paths for peaceful resistance is shut down only violent resistance remains, remember that Hamas did not exist 50 years ago.

The UN passed resolution 242 that requires Israel to withdraw back to the borders of 4th June 1967. Palestine accepted the 1967 border agreement in 1988 as a concession to end hostilities between both nations.

Israel's approach is however to claim that any lands occupied by Isreali citizens should be cede backed into Israel, however lands occupied by Palestinians is up for debate. The University of Tel Aviv was actually built on Palestinian land (this was in the http://www.haaretz.com/).

Encroaching Israeli settlements mean that Israel captures more land, there is documented evidence of how Israel demolishes Palestinian homes and brings over Israeli settlers, when the Palestinian people revolt against this it's presented as Israel defending itself against terrorism, the fact that it was Palestinian land never makes the media reports.

Thus Israel cannot accept the full 1967 border zone because settlements within West Bank divide Palestinian land into a cadre of small islands surrounded by barbed wired, IDF and armed Israeli settlers.

The Zionists believe that all of Judea is rightfully theirs at any cost.

Ironic that what Israel is doing is the same thing Nazi Germany did when it captured Czechoslovakia, when it claimed there was a native German population at the border that needed to be joined back to Greater Germany.

>> ^Irishman:
Free Palestine. End the illegal occupation. Stop the oppression.


This trite sloganeering illustrates the flaccidity of Pro-Palestinian Western activists.

If you try and engage them in dialog that won't fit on a sign or tee shirt, they fall back to a last resort of branding one a "Racist" who supports "Genocide" and "Occupation".

These slurs ring as hollow as the 7.62 rounds that glance off the armor of the IDF tanks.

So if we're going to take Hamas to task on their ambulances then let's go, and unless we want to be branded as hypocrites then we'll want the Israeli government in the Hague and behind bars for their decades of war crimes against the Palestinian people as well.


Finally something I think we can both agree on, at least mostly. I'd say that would be a good first step, but you simply can't limit the Israel-Palestine conflict to just those two nations, I think that overly simplistic to the point of being false.

Let's be honest about the conflict. Even if Hezbollah, Hamas and all the palestinian people united to make a well co-ordinated surprise assault on Israel, the IDF would have it stomped out entirely within the week. The fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants is a real security threat to both, but I think it is only a small part of a bigger picture. It's like looking at the Korean or Vietnam wars without talking about the tensions between the US and USSR.

The real tension around Israel then is in fact between them and Syria and Iran. Syria and Iran together pose a vastly more credible threat to Israel. Both Syria and Iran fund Hezbollah and Hamas as proxies to strike at Israel without mounting direct military action. Hamas and Hezbollah then become sacrificial lambs/martyrs to Syrian and Iranian goals. Dying as underdogs to make Israel play the role of the bad guy. Israel for it's part plays right into it, as their foreign policy can accept collateral civilian casualites more readily than it can weakness. It's all a big mess like most conflicts in the world, but simply saying that Israel should be condemned and Hamas forgiven is throwing wood on the fire.


And if we want to talk about Hamas' charter which calls for the destruction of Israel, then let's talk about it:

In 2006 Ismail Haniyeh became Hamas prime minister. He offered the Bush administration a truce in return for an end to the illegal Israeli occupation. He was completely ignored.


Well let's talk about Hamas' charter then. Ismail Haniyeh's offer for a truce may not have been taken seriously because his foregin minister(and a Hamas co-founder) stated the following after their election "dreams of hanging a huge map of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it...I hope that our dream to have our independent state on all historic Palestine (including Israel). This dream will become real one day. I'm certain of this because there is no place for the state of Israel on this land". Surely Hamas own charter and statements by other co-founders like Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi(who also denies the holocaust) stating their goal is "to remove Israel from the map" make negotiations with them difficult to neigh on impossible.

I know you strongly disagree, but I am willing to understand Israeli relutance to trust a truce with an organization with that kind of leadership. A truce that is openly discussed as acceptable only because 'a phased liberation of all historic Palestine may be necessary' just doesn't strike me as in Israels best interests.

Yes, it is a spectacularly inefficient genocide, it is known as "slow motion genocide" and it is the same thing that happened in Darfur. It has been going on for decades. I first heard it described as this 8 or 9 years ago.

In 1998 an expert in international law called Francis Boyle told the Palestinian president to start legal proceedings against Israel in the international courts and in the Hague for breaching the Genocide Convention.

Israel has breached almost all of the 150 odd articles of the Geneva Rights Convention and committed crimes against humanity under the Nuremberg Charter - all confirmed and on record at the UN.

So if we're going to take Hamas to task on their ambulances then let's go, and unless we want to be branded as hypocrites then we'll want the Israeli government in the Hague and behind bars for their decades of war crimes against the Palestinian people as well.

And if we want to talk about Hamas' charter which calls for the destruction of Israel, then let's talk about it:

In 2006 Ismail Haniyeh became Hamas prime minister. He offered the Bush administration a truce in return for an end to the illegal Israeli occupation. He was completely ignored.

The last truce that was brokered by Egypt was broken by Israel - they sent in the IDF and wiped out 6 Hamas members. Both sides called for peace even after this, but the IDF continued hostilities.


I cannot in good conscience condemn Hamas for using medical vehicles for troops because I know too much about the sickening war crimes that have been committed by Israel against them for decades.

>> ^Irishman:
I would hope that my government would use every single dirty trick in the book if my country came under an invading army waging genocide.
You CANNOT target medical vehicles under the Geneva conventions, it is a war crime.
Similar tactics were used by the British during WW2.
5 medics have now been killed in Gaza and HALF of the medics have been injured. It's a systematic genocide.


So then I take it you don't condemn any of Israel's tactics in the war of '48? Don't have to answer right away, maybe your so far gone you even consider the Arab population to have been acting in self defense back then too.

I'm sorry, but it disgusts me to no end to see you condemning Israel for targeting medics and at the exact same time defending Hamas' use of ambulances as troop carriers. Your honestly going to look at a group of people firing rockets at civilians and then hiding in ambulances as a legitimate self defense?

Please tell me, if the IDF is trying to commit genocide against the Palestinians, why aren't they trying harder? They sure have handled their 'genocide' in a spectacularly inefficient manner compared to every other operation they normally execute. They are without doubt one of the best trained forces in the world, and yet if anything they seem to be trying to target only the militants. It almost would seem as if they were only interested in killing the militants and not civilians, shocking!

If you want a real genocide to criticize, try Pol Pot or the RGF(or their remnant in the Congo today), or even Saddam's campaign against the Kurds. All of them make even the worst of Israel's attacks on Palestinians(of which many deserve condemnation) look like a nice day at the park by comparison.

Would you like me to google it for you?


In reply to this comment by mharvey42:
In reply to this comment by Irishman:
Was this busy market collateral damage?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cyk7zH6DeE&fmt=22

What about civilians executed on the street during the last 18 months by Israeli police enforcing illegal blockades?

What about the civilans being given 7 minutes to abandon their homes before blowing them up?

What about the Depleted Uranium being used in Gaza right now?

After another few days of this you will see how very wrong you are.

Yes, the market shelling is collateral damage: a sad but predictable result of Hamas' aggression. The blood is on their heads.

"Illegal Blockades" you give no example.

"Civilians given 7 minutes to leave their homes" Extraordinary efforts by the IDF ti avoid civilan casualties. If Hamas were half so humane, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

"Depleted Uranium" You make me laugh!


"Another few days" We'll see. It's going swimingly so far. Hamas will never be an honorable foe, but the more sent to allah, the better.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
Was this busy market collateral damage?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cyk7zH6DeE&fmt=22

What about civilians executed on the street during the last 18 months by Israeli police enforcing illegal blockades?

What about the civilans being given 7 minutes to abandon their homes before blowing them up?

What about the Depleted Uranium being used in Gaza right now?

After another few days of this you will see how very wrong you are.

Yes, the market shelling is collateral damage: a sad but predictable result of Hamas' aggression. The blood is on their heads.

"Illegal Blockades" you give no example.

"Civilians given 7 minutes to leave their homes" Extraordinary efforts by the IDF ti avoid civilan casualties. If Hamas were half so humane, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

"Depleted Uranium" You make me laugh!


"Another few days" We'll see. It's going swimingly so far. Hamas will never be an honorable foe, but the more sent to allah, the better.

"Lets hear no whining when the IDF targets these vehicles."

As if you gave a shit you racist bastard.

You dehumanize the Palestinians at every turn.

You're not fooling anyone.

>> ^bcglorf:

Only replying once, because I really don't care for internet arguments, but here goes:

Yes, it's obvious that they are holding back from their full potential. It's widely understood that they have nuclear arms, and I have yet to see pictures of a mushroom cloud over the strip. Clearly they could do more damage if they wanted to, and they could be less discriminate about civilian casualties.

On the other hand, they've caused injuries to over 1,500 people already. Aside from cost to life and limb, the IDF has caused considerable infrastructure damage to a place that was already in precarious third world conditions.

If you honestly think that Israel does its best to minimize civilian casualties, then please explain this:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/761781.html

The reason they aren't going farther is because they're playing politics. The world wouldn't be able to ignore it, and the US wouldn't be able to back it if Israel decided to "turn Gaza into a giant glass crater." Without US support, they fall. Therefore, they won't obliterate Gaza in one swift strike because they can't, so long as they too wish to survive as a country.

Killing civilians is deplorable, and war is deplorable, end of story. I have less sympathy for Israel in this conflict because they're the aggressors. Take a look at a few historical maps, and its pretty clear that Israel simply wants more territory. Hamas leaders have repeatedly stated that they could co-exist with Israel as defined in the Camp David Accords. The only problem is that Israel isn't interested in honoring that agreement.

Israel has Palestine backed into such a corner that parents can't properly feed their children, it's unsafe for people to walk their own streets, and unemployment in the country is over 20%. How can you possibly be surprised that parts of the populace want to strike back at their common enemy? Do you think they'd still be firing rockets blindly at towns if they had US-made F-16s of their own?

I assume that post up there ^ ^ ^ is some clever parody. It points out the irony of the heirs to Nazi philosophy (though most of them did hang at Nuremberg).. ok well the flip coin "heirs" of Nazism... doing their damnedest.

No one finds it ironic that the IDF is reigning terror and bombs and sonic booms on a people diminished to the worst refugee camp / apartheid village in decades..

Essentially, if I put you in jail (rightly, wrongly, who cares).. so I put you in jail for 10 years and rape you and beat you daily. Then you still persist to throw rocks at the jailer, then they deserve more crushing????

It really is like a boxer and a cripple in a wheel chair going at it over the last twinkee.

This is terrorist propaganda rather than journalism. These people elected and actively support Hamas; they act as willing human shields.

There are no Palestinian civilians, they are combatants every one. Now they reap the whirlwind. No people have been as forbearing and long-suffering as the Isaelis. No other nation would be expected to remain passive in the face of the horrific Palestinian provocations.

Let the IDF be merciful, and crush these heirs to Nazi philosophy swiftly and completely.

Hilarious, then they roll around and build illegal settlements in Palestinian lands, then roll in the IDF and shoot at people pissed off that their land was stolen by the state of Israel. CNN put it up and claim it's Israel defending itself against terrorists.