When does a proportional response become an over reaction?
1000 and counting the amount of Palestinian civilians killed by Israeli retaliatory strikes. I don't know the amount on Israel's side however this seems comparatively small, any loss of innocent life is a travesty. I struggle to reconcile myself with western political posturing, nowhere in Europa or America will anyone take Israel to task over its recent domestic policy.
A proportional response would be to hit back in equal measure against Hamas, however unless I am mistaken Israel is being very much pre-emptive and striking first in Gaza. I am not a time keeper but I do wonder when we get to the point and say enough is enough?
A proportional response would be to hit back in equal measure against Hamas, however unless I am mistaken Israel is being very much pre-emptive and striking first in Gaza. I am not a time keeper but I do wonder when we get to the point and say enough is enough?
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Israelis killing Palestinians is big news
Muslims killing committing ethnic cleansing of Christians and other Muslims in Iraq - not so much anymore
In the central African republic in a Christian vs Muslim ethnic conflict militias have been slitting childrens throats and throwing people to crocodiles alongside mass burnings of houses - but its barely mentioned at all in our media.
Muslims are murdering Muslims by the hundreds if not the thousands in Syria - our tv companies seem to have forgotten?
Many other wars and atrocities - around the world.
Yet no protests on the streets here about these events, no outrage from the Guardian - or do people only care about Muslims dying when they are being killed by Jews and not Christians/other muslims? Just because they aren't on Sky News and CNN - do some people matter less than others?
Just observing this odd contradiction - is our coverage of Israel and Palestine relative to other wars not disproportionate?
Interesting point - the attention paid to the conflict in the region is certainly disproportionate - wonder why.
Proportionality isn't measured in casualties. Its measured in terms of threat and response, and objectives versus unavoidable collateral damage. By your logic, World War Two would have stopped as soon as we had killed as many Germans as they had of us - sometime in 1942. We would have done nothing about V2s dropping on London in 1944 as taking them out would have killed more Germans. Wars are not fought to kill people and count them they are fought to remove threats and achieve goals. Defensive goals are allowed. It doesn't matter that all but 2 or 3% of the 2500 rockets Hamas has fired didn't hit anyone - Israel's problem is that some have, more could, and Israeli casualties could soon grow with a few hits in the wrong places. Removing the rocket threat is a perfectly proportional response. You can delay hitting something that has civilians nearby sometimes, but not always. As Hamas refuses all ceasefire offers, destroying the rocket threat means moving forces to where the rockets that can't be bombed are. .
The threat has also acquired a more strategic dimension - since Hamas attack tunnels have been found under the border. The aim there was to insert a large number of terrorists, in multiple areas, near israeli communties, and to seize civilians either in situ, or as hostages back in Gaza. That would give Israel a massive problem as the only response might be to storm schools, or occupy Gaza to find them, and the casualties would potentially be in the hundreds, or worse. The Russian experience of this model of fundamentalist raid, at Beslan, was three hundred dead children. The proportional response to that is to destroy any remaining tunnels , and to make sure no more can be built - which requires continuing control of concrete imports and international supervision of Gaza. You don't have to wait till its happens and react after the tragedy.
You also have whats effectively a full scale war going on in Gaza between armies. Its not like dealing with a few IRA men , or criminal gangs. With the tunnels, its a more intense combat than our worst problems in Iraq. In Gaza, you have battalion sized units of Hamas armed witn standard military weapons, fighting from civilian houses and public buildings, so its no wonder there's civilan casualties. There's nothing in the laws of war that says you can't conduct a military operation if civilians refuse to evacuate an area, or that the inevitability that some rounds will miss, precludes their use. You have to take reasonable measures to avoid civilian casualties, but that doesn't include letting the enemy kill your men by withholding fire support , or always stopping because some civilians might be in the way. Nor does it mean you can' t attack enemy commanders who are directing the fighting if they keep their wife and children in the room with them.
There are no reliable casualty figures for Gaza even if anyone wanted to measure civilain casualties. . What there is comes from Hamas ministers . Those figures show vastly disproportionate numbers of male adults killed. If non involved males were dying at the same rate as females- which is what you might expect - you would still have 60% of the dead who were not adult male, adult female or under 18 civilians. The Israelis claim about 300 Hamas and other group's fighters killed in action , but they don't claim what they don't know , which must include many of the Gazan fighters killed in airstrikes, explosions or in collapsed tunnels, so 60% of the total imay not be an unrealistic estimate of total Hamas losses. Time will tell, when proper research is doen to find out.
Proportionality also has to reflect whats possible, and there's no obvious examples of any army doing better at minimalising civilian casualties operating in a built up area against similar numbers and tactics. . Gaza is flattened in some areas , but it looks nothing like other case where defenders have adopted similar tactics. Hue in 1968 with similar tunnel defences to be overcome, was flattened. Grozny was obliterated by massed Russian artillery in 1994. And Fallujah was flattened by US forces in Iraq fighting a smaller opposing force in 2004.
The nature of warfare has changed so much since 1982 when the Falklands War was a clear cut conflict between two clearly identified protagonists, which was fought on battlefields with minimal civilian casualties (only one dead civilian, in Port Stanley as I recall, and that was accidental..!!)
Now the nature of warfare has changed so much. See my post which is number 14 on:
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1990521
Sadly, it seems that the only thing that will ever reduce the conflicts in these regions is the attrition rate. Sooner or later, the death toll on one side, or possibly both, will rise to a state where the populations are denuded to such a level that the conflict is simply no longer sustainable.
I know that last part sounds daft, but without the political will to resolve what seem to be insurmountable differences, and with the weapons to fight the conflicts so freely and readily available, war is not just likely, it is inevitable.
As are the civilian casualties that go with it.
Probably the most sensible post I have read about the current situation in Gaza on DS.
Well done
More propaganda. Do you get sent this or construct it yourself?
Palestine does not have an army. It's no good comparing it to declared wars either, the latest onslaught was as a result of a criminal act. No criminal proceedings, no evidence, no trial, just move straight to heavy armed response...and keep going.
Do you, or any other Israeli supporter advocate similar measures here for crime? Do we send the army to shell an area where murder is committed? How about taking out kids on the beach, just in case?
It's madness and anyone supporting it can only be doing so because of ideology. Unless they wish to see the same thing elsewhere in the world?
Even if the response was to fire the exact same number of rockets back that are fired at you Israel would be firing into a much more densely populated area and likely to cause more casualties than they suffered themselves so short of it being a "you kill ten of our we'll kill ten of yours" kind of tit-for-tat exchange an Israeli response is always going to look disproportional
Hamas knows what the Israeli response will be..... but don't seem to care.
Israel knows that it's response will simply trigger more hatred towards them.... but don't seem to care.
Arguably the Israeli's could defuse the situation by not taking their default military response but the rockets would still rain in - the justification would simply revert to them being fired because of the blockades. If Hamas stopped firing and toned down the language then the blockade would look increasingly less necessary.
Chicken - egg - egg - chicken.
I've no time for any of them.
Here you go again, with your """Zionist""" conspiracy domination theories.
Is that really the best you can do in the face of a well reasoned, thoughtful post, which basically answers the (not unreasonable) question posed by the OP?
Why are you completely and utterly incapable of engaging properly or at all with thoughtful posters like Networkbabe? Is it because you are ties to a blind, busted flush of an ideology?
By the way, the Palestinians elected Hamas and it's terrorist army. My guess is that they had read or were at least aware of its attitude toward Israel. So no real surprise they find themselves in this situation.
Unusually in this era, I would also want to talk about broader issues and take those into account in any application of proportionality. Things like good values and self-responsibility. On the former, neither a strong preference for an apartheid state or a rampant anti-semitism accompanied by a wish to obliterate a nation are endearing. In fact, they are both arguments for reasonably dismissing any claims of them being like other states, and justifying similar rights, including, indeed, standard perceptions on what is proportionate. As for the latter, the area of land in this instance is small. That both sides are breeding like there is no tomorrow - an average of 5 and 4 children per family respectively - an element of contempt on that matter alone should, internationally, be highly appropriate. Conflict is not a good form of controlling your own population numbers but that is what both sides are doing subconsciously.
There are, in fact, many lessons to be learnt. For those whose ideal future is greater urbanisation, with people living in each others laps, it is a good opportunity for asking themselves how it actually works in practice. That, I think, is the primary poverty issue in Gaza. They have homes and hospitals. They have schools and the men wear western clothes. Their main poverty is in their lack of space. The second poverty issue is restricted access but that is not particularly easy to solve. And the third is what one finds throughout the world. How do you cope when you have the indignity of living next door to a filthy rich neighbour? That is not poverty per se but it can have a very serious impact on peace and it is systemic. Stick with the international consensus and get a Gaza on your doorstep.
Also, we might ask what happens when there is demographic skew in terms of the population as a whole or political representation. If Israel is a useful example of "old grandfathers in power", Gaza tells us about states where the average age of a citizen is 19. In both cases, males are dominant and women are reduced. Religion and politics aside, it is merely a classic battle between young immaturity and old immaturity. And if you tunnel up from that point, all the emphasis on religion becomes baloney.
I do agree that our coverage of international conflicts is 'patchy' at best, but the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been going on for years, with sketchy coverage at most. I think one of the reasons for the attention now is that people have twigged that it was under-reported for ages, and because there has been Western involvement in the politics, with American funding for Israel etc.
Surely the point is most of the other examples you have given are of atrocities carried out by terrorist groups.
Israel claims to be a modern, westernised democracy.
Or are you implying that Israel operates by the same ethical standards as groups like ISIS and rogue militia groups?
I've read WindWalker's post twice. What part of it refers to Zionist conspiracy theories?
And I love the way you identify the pro-Israeli networkbabe as being "thoughtful" ( "a full scale war between armies" indeed!) while those who criticise Israel's actions are continually described as being anti-Semitic.
The more lives the Palestinians lose, the more Hamas "win" the PR battle. Neither side values the lives of civilian Palestinians (as far as I can tell), so there is no incentive for Hamas to stop firing rockets, and Israel will forever repeat the phrase "We have the right to defend ourselves", while committing war crimes (not yet proven, but shelling kids on a beach can not be considered anything other than a war crime in my opinion).
This is an asymmetrical conflict. One side claims to wish to destroy the other, but has weapons so pathetic they barely inflict a scratch. The other side claims to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties but has killed over 1000.
Its all very tragic. Sorry, I don't have a solution to propose.
Very good post.
I agree neither side values the lives of civilian Palestinians but would go further. Both are anti-semitic. Hawkish Israel - and its US equivalents - do about as much for the reputation of Jewish citizens internationally as do Arab fundamentalists. A part of my solution in the quieter times would be for an extremely heavy and consistent dose of international humanitarian broadcasting into the entire region. That could present better principle and also what positive things in life the two sides - and others - share. But its hard emphasis should be on the way in which their respective leaders have huge amounts in common and should be seen to have little in common with their citizens:
- Both are virulently racist
- Both have an atrocious record on child welfare
- Both have large numbers of millionaires
- Both have acquired huge wealth from their own people
- Both have no ability to keep the peace
- Both have no policy to address spatial constraints
- Both have no concern for international consequences of their actions
- Both to some extent scrounge off foreign donations
- Both claim to believe in religion but are the opposite in their actions
- Both use supposed stances on human rights as weaponry
I really think that the time is over for trying to reason with this side and reason with that side and to plead that each understands the other's point of view. Because all will play around for ever more with the myths that they have huge amounts in common with their leaders, their leaders are on their side, and the entire political framework is by definition about diametrical opposition. Not only is that not the case but it needs to be grabbed - and strangled.
All also share a fed belief that external forces will automatically drop whatever they are doing as soon as the latest kicks off and fly there immediately, pretending every other problem in the world is trivial. That, alas, may well always need to be done, if for no reason other than international security. But I do think that the quid pro quo is that we should be doing more to make citizens realise they live in pariah states. As far as I can see, the only barrier to doing that is the combination of vested financial interests in Israel internationally. That must be challenged first. Only then can we work towards one country in and via broadcasting as a precursor to one country on the ground.
That might have been the spark that ignited this particular round of conflict, but isn't the real issue.
And what about the 1000s of rockets that continue to be fired into Israel?
But when that crime is carried out by citizens from another state and that state refuses to help in the investigation or hand over the suspects, then what?
I think we all know why
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/opinion/ian-burrell-with-charter-renewal-on-the-horizon-complaints-over-gaza-are-dangerous-for-bbc-9632093.html?origin=internalSearch
Indeed we do.
The vast majority of the killings of innocents are being carried out by a nation state that claims respectability on the world stage.
Indeed it does, so what ratio of Israeli to Palestinian deaths do you think is acceptable? and which side keeps violating ceasefires?
Thousands? Has it even broken 2,000 yet?