Hamas War

Friday, August 8, 2014

Dumb Questions: 1- Americans Killing Innocent Civilian Iraqis? 2- Anti-Democratic to Ban Hamas in Gaza? 3- What Ceasefire if Hamas Attacking Israel?

Here's some food for thought aka my "dumb questions:"

1- Americans Killing Innocent Civilian Iraqis? 
I can't wait to see how the Americans will "pinpoint" their attacks to prevent the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians.
The US has prepared "targeted" strikes against ISIS as it bears down on the city, should its convoys advance, the White House said.
ISIS now controls large swaths of the country's north and Syria's east, issuing license plates and collecting taxes from people under its domain. ISIS has called for the enslavement and genital mutilation of women, and the murder of all men who are not Sunni, and who will not convert.
At least 4 million women live in the region currently under ISIS control. (Jerusalem Post)
Of course, the easiest way is just to count differently.
Weapons and ammunition
 found by the IDF in the bedroom
of a Gaza home, July 2014.
(Image source: IDF)
It's a mystery why so many in the media accept as gospel Hamas-supplied figures on the number of civilians killed in the recent war. Hamas claims that of the more than 1800 Palestinians killed close to 90% were civilians. Israel, on the other hand, says that close to half of them were combatants. The objective facts support a number much closer to Israel's than to Hamas'.
Even human rights group antagonistic to Israel acknowledge, according to a New York Times report, that Hamas probably counts among the "civilians killed by Israel" the following groups: Palestinians killed by Hamas as collaborators; Palestinians killed through domestic violence; Palestinians killed by errant Hamas rockets or mortars; and Palestinians who died naturally during the conflict. I wonder if Hamas also included the reported 162 children who died while performing child slave labor in building their terror tunnels. Hamas also defines combatants to include only armed fighters who were killed while fighting Israelis. They exclude Hamas supporters who build tunnels, who allow their homes to be used to store and fire rockets, Hamas policemen, members of the Hamas political wing and others who work hand in hand with the armed terrorists. (Alan Dershowitz, Gatestone Institute)

2- Anti-Democratic to Ban Hamas in Gaza? 
Since Gazans did elect Hamas to rule them and democratically rejected Fatah then wouldn't it be "undemocratic" for outsiders to try to enforce a change?

Trying to push Fatah and Abbas on the Gazans is useless and undemocratic.
In contrast to Kerry’s previous adoption of all of Hamas’s demands as official US positions, Ignatius wrote that “Over the past week, [Kerry] has been crafting a cease-fire plan that seeks to stabilize Gaza under the leadership of Abbas and the moderate Palestinian Authority….[The PA] (with the support of the international community) would have overall responsibility for the rehabilitation of Gaza.” (Caroline Glick, read more...)

American ad campaign

And IMHO it's rather idiotic to think that the beach-side living Gazans, are as peaceful by nature and ideology as those of Florida or New Zealand. There's no way to "sweet-talk" Gazans out of their support of Hamas. Only if they see Israel as stronger than the Arab terrorist Hamas would they changer their tune. Israel's conduct in this war just strengthened the terrorists' hold on the people.

3- What Ceasefire if Hamas is Again Attacking Israel?
The honeymoon is over. No surprise that Hamas has already resumed firing potentially deadly rockets at Israel.
Cease-fire set to end within hours with no long-term solution in place; Hamas calls for Palestinian negotiators to leave Cairo talks.HamasHamas Photo: REUTERS

Two rockets have apparently landed in southern Israel after being fired from Gaza, the IDF reported on Friday morning.
The rockets violate the current cease-fire in place, which stands to expire at 8:00 a.m. Delegations negotiated in Cairo for a long-term solution throughout the night Thursday and into Friday morning. (Jerusalem Post)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What an upside down world, as most realize by now. When moral equivalence takes over, there's nothing to say, but - Help, H'.
Media of all kinds has been the biggest influence on humanity in the last 100 years or so, to confuse everyone, mainly the uninformed & even those who think they are the intellgensia, thus good becomes evil and evil becomes good. Chazal knew this would be at the end of days.

Sammy Finkelman said...

1. You can ask not just about the U.S.A, but the Nigerian Army (which is really bad) or the Iraqi Air Force (so bad that it is beinbg blamed for ISIS being able to get Allies) and the Ukrainian army.

But when mentioned in other places, there is no "moral" drawn.

The United States has changed "rules of engagement" a number of times because of civilian casulaties, and not for the better. The U.S. also takes advantage of a provision of Islamic law, whereby a murderer can redeem himself put of the death penalty by compensating the family. The U.S. says it was not a crime, and the payment is just goodwill or something, but this allows this to be treated by others as a crime, but forgiven.

(Hamas and Fatah long ago prohibited Palestinians from accepting any kind of compensation from Israel, like for a lost field.)

2. It's not anti-Democratic. Hamas was never elcted to this. They won - within the Gaza Strip a majority of the seats in the Palestinian Parliament, partly because Fatah was corrupt. The actual support for Hamas must be very small now. There's a poll even:

http://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-huge-majority-in-gaza-want-lasting-ceasefire/#! (92%)

3. At least you can see how many people get killed in Gaza when it is only Hamas firing.

Batya said...

a, Sammy, what a crazy world. Sammy, don't forget that Israel has the only truly democratic country in the middle east. Polls can't be trusted when elections can't be...