Bodies for Ballots (more Palestinians killed in Gaza yesterday than Israelis killed in past 3 years)

[morningfog]

* * *

The Israeli spin machines are out in full force in the hopes of convincing Israelis and the rest of the world that the attacks on Gaza are in self-defense. But anyone following the situation closely and over time will tell you that cannot be the case.

Gaza is a tiny territory where 1.7 million Palestinians, most of whom are refugees, are denied the right to return to their homes simply because they are not Jewish. It is from this besieged territory that militants have fired mostly rudimentary projectiles at Israel. While Israeli officials are quick to rattle off the numbers of projectiles fired from Gaza, rarely do they tell you what they fire into Gaza, what the effects of this fire is and what the fallout from it is.

For example, in 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza have been responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 where women or children, and the injury of 468 Palestinians, of which 143 where women or children. The methods by which these causalities were inflicted by Israeli projectiles breaks down as follows: 57 percent, or 310, were caused by Israeli aircraft missile fire; 28 percent, or 150, where from Israeli live ammunition; 11 percent, or 59, were from Israeli tank shells; while another 3 percent, or 18, were from Israeli mortar fire.

Through September 2012, Israeli weaponry caused 55 Palestinian deaths and 257 injuries. Among these 312 casualties, 61, or roughly 20 percent, were children and 28 were female. 209 of these casualties came as a result of Israeli Air Force missiles, 69 from live ammunition fire, and 18 from tank shells. It is important to note that these figures do not represent a totality of Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza but rather only Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza which cause casualties. The total number of Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza is bound to be significantly larger. For context, consider this: more Palestinians were killed in Gaza yesterday than Israelis have been killed by projectile fire from Gaza in the past three years.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/15/bodies-for-ballots.html

[Honeycombe8]

1. Wow. That makes no sense at all. It's not the point whose weapons were more

effective. What matters is who started the attacking.

If you are small and you attack a giant, do not complain that the giant hit you back harder than you hit him, when you started it. You were foolish to hit a giant.

When we got attacked on 9/11 by AQ, we took out AQ in Afghanistan. We didn't just kill a few, to retaliate. We tried to get to the heart of who attacked us, in order to try to prevent future attacks. It was not the U.S. goal to kill innocent people, but that happened, of course. As opposed to the 9/11 AQ attack on us, which was intended to kill innocent people.

I see a similar situation here. If the point is that small rockets aimed at innocent civilians, who hurt just a few children and parents, does not justify big rockets going at the heart of where the small rockets came from, that argument falls flat.

If you want small rockets aimed at you, then pick on someone with small rockets. Another terrorist group, maybe.

Sounds like Israel went after the heart of the terrorist operation, and they got one of the Hamas leaders. Which was no doubt the point of the operation. Not to kill innocent people.

The terrorists are responsible for inflicting the violence on their own innocent people. They live and hide behind women's skirts because they know it complicates matters for Israel.

[Chemisse]

4. Isn't it true that there was a cease fire and the Israelis broke it with the assasination?

If that is correct, then it was not the Palestinians who started it.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. There was no ceasefire in effect. There had been over 100 rockets launched at Israel this week

prior to the IDF striking back

[Honeycombe8]

10. That is not my understanding. Some militants/terrorists or whoever was lobbing

rockets, lots of 'em, into Israelis neighborhoods, one landing in Jerusalem in the days leading up to the Israel operation. That's what prompted this operation by Israel, to stop the attacks.

If someone did that here, the U.S. would sure as heck react swiftly and violently. We would aim to take that group or those people out, to stop the attacks. And we would attack using our giant weapons, if necessary.

[azurnoir]

13. Here is a thread about that currently in I/P

but that the Palestinians started 'it' whatever it is is a going theme sometimes going back 100+ years

http://www.democraticunderground.com/113421422

[Chemisse]

15. Thanks.

[morningfog]

6. You get no agreement from me when you cite the Afghanistan debacle in support.

How long have we been bogged down there? Over 11 years now? How much has it cost us? $500,000,000,000+ and counting?

How many US citizens have died there? Over 2,000?

That, my friend, is one losing ass argument.

[Honeycombe8]

9. My point had nothing to do with the continuing and current presence there.

Which is supposedly to help the Afghans be prepared to take over their own military operations. I was speaking of the initial "war" in Afghanistan, aimed at AQ that was being trained there in training camps and protected by the Taliban. We took 'em out.

[morningfog]

11. And you do not get the benefit of separating out that "initial" war from

the reality of our continued presence. This is exactly my point. You confuse disproportionateness with the ability to achieve some idea of success or a win. There is no such correlation. We have lost far more by engaging in Afghanistan than AQ or the Taliban ever were able to inflict on us.

[Cynicus Emeritus]

7. AQ attacked us on 9-11?

Don't mean to be critical of your statement about AQ and 9-11. But my humble opinion is that self interested politicians who benefited enormously from 9-11 came up with their own impotent Commission and a song and dance that claimed 19 untrained Arabs from a cave in Afghanistan somehow navigated and flew state of the art multi-engine jet planes at near max speed with precision heretofore unknown to most aviators, into 3 buildings. They did asymmetrical damage to 2, and somehow that resulted in the impossible symmetrical collapse of 3 into their own footprint. Their story still stretches the disbelief of anyone with an ounce of understanding or critical thought left in their skull. Most Americans are too afraid to allow themselves to believe anything but the "official" story.

We're not seeing just terrorists but also countries and their unethical leaders grossly abuse their position and use blatant massive force against innocent people and they deserve to be held accountable for murderous actions against humanity and many innocent people, just as some were at Nuremberg. We need to see charges on the world court and some hangings of those responsible. A terrorist in the midst of a village does not warrant the wanton murder and destruction of said village.

[holdencaufield]

8. Aw...

... the Truther Argument.

Part of any nutritious breakfast.

[Scootaloo]

12. Your argument swings both ways, you understand

For every argument that you present that justifies Israelis blowing up Palestinians, there's a counter-argument that justifies Palestinians blowing up Israelis. For every bloody shirt on your "side" that you wave around, there is at least one bloody shirt for the other side to show. Whenever you bring up some event from a hundred years ago, the other side can do the same.

This results in the argument being a downward spiral of useless trivia, niggling semantic arguments, and closes avenues for useful thought. This is of course the entire point of the argument, to shut down discussion and thought, replacing it with a pointless, dithering argument of non-important shit.

it's a bad argument for that reason, and should be discarded. Quite frankly no, it doesn't matter who "started it." What matters is how to end it.

I think that you are probably a reasonable person. I ask you, does blowing people up solve a conflict?

If blowing up Israelis improved the lives of Palestinians, Palestinians would be living great and there would be no need to continue.
If blowing up Palestinians kept Israelis safe, then Israel would never have to worry about those rockets.

Neither of these outcomes is going to be achieved in this way. Ever. Spinning around in circles trying to justify your "team" blowing up the other "team's" people is non-productive, to say the least.

[Chemisse]

2. The plight of the Palestinians is so sad.

Now I'm afraid the Israelis will move in for another massacre like they did a couple of years ago.

It is really shameful that we support Israel as they continue the oppression.

[rl6214]

14. What's so sad is how some people put their own people in danger

Because they feel they need to lob rockets while hiding behind the women's skirts.

[GitRDun]

3. I'll believe Israel wants peace when they start acting like it.

The idiot Palestinians should take a lesson from MLK, their violence only hurts themselves, but Israel's violence and continued aggressive settlement construction has changed my mind about them over the past several years. They have no desire for peace at all...they are looking to crush the Palestinians...