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Amnesty International's report on the Israeli Wall

Almo

Masterblazer
Almo
Joined
Aug 30, 2005
Messages
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Location
Montreal, Quebec
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde150162004

Notable quote:

Since September 2000 the Israeli army has killed more than 2,300 Palestinians, most of them unarmed and including more than 400 children. In the same period, Palestinian armed groups have killed some 850 Israelis, most of them civilians and including 100 children. Amnesty International has repeatedly called on both sides to put an end to the killing of civilians.
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Amnesty is not saying that one side is blameless. I find that fact to be important in determining the relative objectivity of their position as a whole.
 
It's rare to find any side blameless in any war, but I think the constant targeting of innocents in this particular conflict is particularly heartbreaking.

I'll side with the Israeli's building of a wall on their own land to protect their own people, but building walls is never the way to encourage the symbiosis that would result from diplomacy.
 
Mephisto said:
It's rare to find any side blameless in any war, but I think the constant targeting of innocents in this particular conflict is particularly heartbreaking.

I'll side with the Israeli's building of a wall on their own land to protect their own people, but building walls is never the way to encourage the symbiosis that would result from diplomacy.
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Yup.
 
Recommendations

To the Palestinian Authority

· To take urgent concrete measures to prevent attacks by Palestinian armed groups on Israeli civilians, inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories.
· To thoroughly investigate any such attacks and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice in proceedings that meet international fair trial standards.

To the Palestinian armed groups:

· To put an immediate end to their policy of killing and targeting Israeli civilians, whether inside Israel or in the Occupied Territories.


The document sounds much more blamy toward Israel to me. It lays out numerous violations and unjust policies the Israeli's utilize to secure its borders. Then it recommends the Palestinians make the above adjustments. AI does not offer any suggestions on how to accomplish "putting an end to their policy of killing Israeli citizens."

"Just do it," is what the organization is saying. That is not, unfortunately, how the world really works.
 
(shrug)

Amnesty--of course--ignores the reason for both the Intifada and the wall: namely, that the so-called Intifada is actually a terrorist war of annihilation whose goal is to kill as many Jews as possible with the ultimate goal of destroying Israel, and that the wall is part of Israel's defense against it.

The "no side is blameless" holier-than-thou attitude sounds morally "fair", but in reality it's merely equating aggressor and defender, would-be genocidal murderer with his would-be victims. Amnesty's view shows moral bankruptcy, not moral "fairness".
 
The "no side is blameless" holier-than-thou attitude sounds morally "fair", but in reality it's merely equating aggressor and defender, would-be genocidal murderer with his would-be victims. Amnesty's view shows moral bankruptcy, not moral "fairness".
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so one side is indeed blameless?
 
The Fool said:
so one side is indeed blameless?
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Is it necessary for one side to be utterly blameless for there to be a "good" side and a "bad" side? Surely one can sometimes be driven to commit acts that may be morally contentious (the Dresden bombings of WW2 for example) while still being recognisably the "good" guy, reacting to the other sides aggression?
 
The Fool said:
so one side is indeed blameless?
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Coparatively speaking, yes, for two reasons:

1). Unlike the deliberate targeting of innocents and non-combatants by the Palestinians, most Palestinian non-combat casualties are due to the Palestinian fighters deliberately seeking shelter among the civilian population.

2). More generally, when one side starts a war of annihilation against the other, the agressior side is morally responsible for the war and for the resulting outcome on both sides. The moral responsiblity for Dresden and Hiroshima lies with Hitler and Tojo, not with the allies, if it lies with anybody.

It has, by now, become crystal clear what the Palestinian goal really is: the destruction of Israel and the expulsion and murder of the Jews. "The occupation" has nothing to do with it--the less occupation there was, the more terror and killing of Jews there was. This is what Palestinian "liberation" is all about, as is obvious to anybody who reads the Hamas or PLO charters or who listens to their leaders' speeches or who sees their actions.

To support the Palestinians because of their suffering--when that suffering is mostly self-caused due to them refusing a state and starting a war of annihilation--is, morally, equivalent to supporting Germany in WWII because its population was suffering from the Allies' strategic bombing campaign.
 
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Giz said:
Is it necessary for one side to be utterly blameless for there to be a "good" side and a "bad" side? Surely one can sometimes be driven to commit acts that may be morally contentious (the Dresden bombings of WW2 for example) while still being recognisably the "good" guy, reacting to the other sides aggression?
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no...but I'm not the one constantly dumping on the suggestion that no side is blameless. I can only assume that if this is a constant chant the person must actually believe one side is indeed blameless....
 
Skeptic said:
Coparatively speaking, yes, for two reasons:

1). Unlike the deliberate targeting of innocents and non-combatants by the Palestinians, most Palestinian non-combat casualties are due to the Palestinian fighters deliberately seeking shelter among the civilian population.

2). More generally, when one side starts a war of annihilation against the other, the agressior side is morally responsible for the war and for the resulting outcome on both sides. The moral responsiblity for Dresden and Hiroshima lies with Hitler and Tojo, not with the allies, if it lies with anybody.

It has, by now, become crystal clear what the Palestinian goal really is: the destruction of Israel and the expulsion and murder of the Jews. "The occupation" has nothing to do with it--the less occupation there was, the more terror and killing of Jews there was. This is what Palestinian "liberation" is all about, as is obvious to anybody who reads the Hamas or PLO charters or who listens to their leaders' speeches or who sees their actions.

To support the Palestinians because of their suffering--when that suffering is mostly self-caused due to them refusing a state and starting a war of annihilation--is, morally, equivalent to supporting Germany in WWII because its population was suffering from the Allies' strategic bombing campaign.
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Thanks for that....as you view that any one side is blameless in a complex and ongoing conflict precludes you from rational discussion of these events I'll leave you to continue your ongoing campaign.
 
The Fool said:
Thanks for that....as you view that any one side is blameless in a complex and ongoing conflict precludes you from rational discussion of these events I'll leave you to continue your ongoing campaign.
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Why stop here, Fool? Why not take the "no side is blameless" attitude and apply it to world war II? It, too, was a "complex and ongoing conflict", and it, too, was a case where both sides committed atrocities.

So let's stop all this "Hitler was evil" nonsense and start viewing WWII rationally, realizing that no side was blameless just because Hitler and his allies started a war of annihilation against the Jews and the democratic world at large.

Surely that's a myopic, irrational view of the complex and ongoing conflict known as WWII, right?

Consequently, I suggest you start a s**tload of threads about how evil the allied bombing campaign was, how many innocent Germans were killed in the conflict, how Allied soldiers (Soviets, especially) raped German women just like Goebbles said they would, etc.

Oh, wait. There's a name for people who do just that on the internet--they are known as "Nazi sympathizers" and "neo-nazis", when (using your analysis) all they really want is to make the point that "no side is blameless" and engage in a "rational discussion" of who is really to blame for WWII--whether it's really Hitler, or perhaps the Jews?

Just ask them--they'll tell you that this "rational discussion" is all they want! Why is everybody opposed to such a "rational discussion", I wonder?
 
AI is saying both sides are to blame. That sort of sounds like "there is plenty of blame to go around." But there isn't. They seem to be saying the same old stuff, "Israel is the bully of the neighborhood," oh, and "Palestine, please stop killing the Jews. It's just wrong."

I am saying Palestine sucks the big watoosie. They were on the wrong side of the Gulf War, and they blew yet another chance in Gaza by acting like animals rather than living together with their own kind like humans.

AI and the UN need to go to a damn dentist and get some teeth. And Palestinians need to go to the dentist and get their fangs removed.

(shrug)
 
a_unique_person said:
Where is the "Nominate Strawman of the Month Award button"?
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It's an analogy, not a straw man.

It would be a straw man if Skeptic were claiming the Fool really did hold that opinion on WWII. Instead he points out that belief would be a natural extension of his opinion of the Israeli/Arab conflict, which makes it an analogy.
 
PLA ? What's that mean?

ahmadinejad_meshal248_reu.jpg

This is what Israel is up against.
The security barrier is just one element of an overall defense strategy, to stop the kinds of suicide bombers that are rampant in Iraq, and would be rampant in Israeli cities if there were nothing to prevent them. The mujahadeen of the PLA (?) are not any different than the mujahadeen across the MidEast.

Israelis are not stupid. We know perfectly well what we face.
"The [Palestinian] government should use its brave and pious (mujahadeen) forces to continue resistance against the Zionist regime [Israel]," Ahmadinejad told Meshal in Tehran today.
 
Shame, Webfusion. Don't you see it's a "ongoing and complex conflict" and that you are just one-sided? I mean, just because Haniyeh and Ahmanedijad both want Israel destroyed and the Jews expelled and killed doesn't really mean they're the bad guys, or anything. Say "it's the occupation fault!" 15,664 times, and that will be clear to you.

Essentially, Menahem Begin was proven correct (unfortunately): the more land was given to the Palestinians, the more belligirent and violent they became and the more they threathen to destroy Israel. The real cause of the conflict isn't "the occupation", but the Palestinian desire for a second holocaust, since the Arabs will not accept any Jewish state, in any borders.

I clearly remember Begin saying just that and being villified for "demonizing" the Arabs and "cheapening" the holocaust. Turns out he was saying the simply truth.
 
As Christopher Hithens put it, When one starts with the claim that the agressor and the would-be victim are both "not blameless", one ends up quite quickly taking the agressor's side and claiming the victim somehow "incited" him.

The sages of the Talmud put it a bit differently: they said, "he who is kind to the cruel, ends up being cruel to the kind". Those who "understand" the Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers quickly end up not understanding their victims.
 
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