JB Globe

Aside from the photographic evidence of children being used as human shields, and the damage done to the hospitals by white phosphorous and missles, and the repeated firing on paramedics wearing orange vests in broad daylight. Generally, eyewitness accounts by professionals such as doctors and others aren't considered hear-say evidence. And considering there are photographs of children being used as human shields by the IDF, and all of the testimony we've heard from IDF soldiers themselves about how they were instructed by commanders and IDF Rabbis to view the Gaza populace, I think it's dishonest of you to COMPLETELY dismiss these allegations outright. And it's JUST as likely that the IDF would cover something like this up, which is why would should get an open investigation into this, but of course human rights officials are barred from Gaza and can't conduct one, so all we have is the IDF investigation that goes on behind closed doors.

C'mon, doesn't the Canadian military also strap kids on the front of Humvee's to ward off sniper fire? Don't they? . . . It's amazing that one of the world's most sophisticated armies still managed to hit 59 hospitals and medical clinics which they had the exact coordinations for. Either it was a deliberate strategy to erode the humanitarian capacity of Hamas in order to make them appear weak or incapable to their own public (who would then presumably support Israel's preferred negotiating partner Fatah? Really?), or they aren't actually a competent military power any more and aren't capable of not hitting hospitals.

That's not an apology, that's a denial that's written to sound like an apology. Notice how he only admitted to mis-communicating, he didn't admit to any wrong-doing. He doesn't think his message was wrong, just the manner in which he delivered it. He goes on to say that it wasn't his intent to direspect the Canadian military, but that was the entire point of the piece, so he's lying. The irony of this is that he was essentially calling the Canadian military a bunch of cowards for wanting to take a year to re-organize after the Afganistan mission ends . . . But he's not even enough of a man to admit when he's made a mistake on a TV show . . . Something tells me if this is how he acts when he makes a dumb mistake in a TV studio, he would be crying for mommy if he were ever in an actual fire-fight. The guy is the former editor of Maxim, I've always said that those chauvinistic douche-bags who do all of the chest-thumping "I'm such a man!" are actually the biggest cowards (and closet queens) and it's all just overcompensation.

Considering Hamas is the key actor in doing those things, and foreign aid does not go to Hamas I fail to see how Western money is funding any of those things. It's both a policy decision not to give aid to Hamas, as well as a legal decision - since almost all Western nations have them listed them as a terrorist organization, it would be illegal under their own national laws for them to give them money. Perhaps you could explain to me just how Hamas is recieving money from Western governments, because I'm not aware of it. I'll give you that, since all Western aid goes to Fatah now, which is now not only corrupt but also essentially seen as a puppet of the West by many, which means their authority is not respected, which also means that the Palestinian public will reject any agreement that Fatah hammers out with Israel if Hamas is not present at the table. Considering I stated in the post you quoted from that Hamas employs terrorism, what do you think my response to this question would be?

Testicles and facial hair for one. Those are clear indicators as to whether someone is a Hamas fighter on the one hand, or a child, or an old woman on the other. And as we've heard, IDF soldiers have shot unarmed women and children. I find it interesting that you're trying to justify potential breaches of international law on the part of the IDF with breaches of international law on the part of Hamas. It's not a cliche, it's a truism: Two wrongs don't make a right. Especially when throughout this conflict Israel has made repeated statements about how much they value and international law. And honestly, do you really expect uniforms out of a government that doesn't have enough money to feed even a small portion of its population? What would you spend the money on? And besides, even if they did have the money, they are a government which employs TERRORISM, do you really expect them to have the decency to wear uniforms? If some sliver of tactical advantage is to be gained by not wearing uniforms, they'll do it, because they don't have much else going for them. Especially since nothing their down is helping Palestinians advance their cause of a two-state solution.

Like I've said a few times before, it's not that difficult to discuss Israel without being anti-semitic.

This is very bad. The soldier's stories weren't compiled by a "lefty, self-hating, Jew" Israeli human rights group either - they were compiled by the head of an Israeli military academy who's also a Battalion Commander in the IDF Reserves. He was interviewing officers from his classes on their experiences fighting in Gaza IN GENERAL, and they just kept telling him these stories regarding civilians, he didn't even really prompt them, they just needed to get this stuff off their chest because it was so rampant it was really messing them up psychologically. He says he was and still is in shock, he wasn't prepared to hear this when he did the interviews. From what the soldiers say it wasn't even close to a case of "a few bad apples" or even "one bad policy" it was a systemic problem across the whole operation in Gaza that centred around the inability of soldiers on the ground and the folks planning the whole invasion to distinguish civilians from combatants. And putting all those Israeli claims that "that school was being used by Hamas and that's why we bombed it and those families sheltering inside died" are now going to be viewed as extremely suspect. What remains to be scene is if there was any malice behind this blurring of the lines between combatant and civlians or if it was sheer incompetence. Some quotes and examples: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle5939611.ece “That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him,” "When we entered a house, we were supposed to bust down the door and start shooting inside and just go up storey by storey… I call that murder. Each storey, if we identify a person, we shoot them. I asked myself – how is this reasonable?" The same unnamed NCO said that his commanding officer ordered soldiers on to a rooftop to shoot an old woman crossing a main street during the fighting. "I don't know whether she was suspicious, not suspicious, I don't know her story,” the NCO said. “I do know that my officer sent people to the roof in order to take her out… It was cold-blooded murder." Another disturbing element reported by the soldiers was the role of military rabbis in distributing booklets that framed the fighting as a religious war. “All these articles had a clear message: we are the Jewish people, we have come to the land by miraculous means, and now we have to fight to remove the Gentiles who are getting in our way and preventing us from occupying the Holy Land… a great many soldiers had a feeling throughout this operation of a religious war,” said one soldier. http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSLK403734 Aviv said "there was a very annoying moment" when he briefed his men and one challenged that order, saying: "Yeah? Anyone who is in there is a terrorist, that's a known fact..." "And then his buddies join in: 'We need to murder any person who's in there, yeah, any person who's in Gaza is a terrorist' and all the other things that they stuff our heads with, in the media," Aviv was quoted as saying.

Debating isn't fighting, and properly researching your points won't get you banned. As I stated before, if you're not going to put any effort into properly informing yourself about the topics you're talking about, or employ logical fallacies as a means of covering up the fact that you're uninformed about said topic, than there really isn't any point to discussing anything with you. I have debates all the time on here and elsewhere with people who disagree with me, they just do their homework.

JBG, Why are you digging up this old thread? Especially after accusing me of stalking you a few months ago. There is ABSOLUTELY no incentive for me to respond to anything you write, because no matter how well-written, well-thought out, and how substantial my points are, you ALWAYS respond with one-sentance observations, which many times are actually generalizations or facts taken grossly out of context. Your latest post illustrates this very clearly. If you want me to respond to your posts, BUILD AN ARGUEMENT. One-liners aren't arguments. Otherwise it's a waste of my time - I'm too busy researching for a living among other things to be doing it pro-bono in a debate with someone who is completely incapable of having a REAL debate about an issue.

This of course, is an extreme generalization of your own creation, and not an objective fact, hence why no one cares that you want the following: You cannot expect anyone to support a policy idea of yours if you can't prove that policy is necessary with objective information.

Ugh. What he SHOULD have said is: "Biofuels are a sin because they contribute to world hunger"

It is entirely possible to critique what's going on in Pakistan without resorting to logical fallacies. Hasty generalizations are the hallmark of intellectual laziness.

Either you are completely ignorant of the effects of WP on humans or you're being dishonest in an attempt to downplay a fact which could hurt your overall argument here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phospho...fects_on_humans Your statement that WP fired into a crowded civilian area would only produce smoke, and cause no civilian causalities is utterly false as proven by the effects of using WP in Gaza during the conflict. There is a reason why the use of WP is banned in civilian areas under the Geneva Conventions, Protocol III. You also allude to it's lethal properties a few sentences later in an apparent contradiction: And of course, the reason you wouldn't use WP when your troops are actually on the ground is because it might burn their skin off. I'm sorry, but it's not enough to offer your personal opinion that an expert isn't credible, you have to provide evidence that an expert isn't credible. None of us here are experts on international law, or military munitions, which is why we turn to expert sources (preferably, those without a conflict of interest on a given issue). We cannot simply discount expert opinions we find inconvenient, we have to prove why they are false.

You're insinuating through sarcasm that HRW is a biased organization, correct? If that's the case, why do media and governments regularly cite their reports? For example: Bush cited their reports on Saddam Hussein's human rights record to build his case for the US invasion of Iraq. Of course, he later completely discounted their reports on American human rights relating to Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, and US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. The same codes of practice were followed in each case, so if one study is reliable than the other should be as well. I think that example illustrates the role that HRW plays in the world, that they tell attempt to tell the ugly truth regardless of whom that truth is about. As a result, people like to accept their findings when they're about "the enemy" and completely discount them when they're about their own nation, or in the case of Israel & Palestine, when they're about the side in the conflict a person happens to be rooting for.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent are actually one organization, founded and based in Geneva. Like I said earlier, I trust Red Crescent & Red Cross statistics.

Because those conflicts don't have the fortune to be occurring in a region that is at the centre of Christianity, or involve a people at the centre of the supposed Rapture. If us Jews weren't in the bible, or Jesus was born in Addis Addaba, than people would simply not care much about either the creation of Israel or Palestinian independence. How often do we hear about Kurdish independence for example? Not much. While I admit that there is definitely some bias and over-emphasis in the amount of coverage Israel gets, there are also some rational reasons why this is the case. Like I mentioned before: Israel recieves aid from the US, Sudan doesn't, Canada voted down security resolutions that would have limited Israeli actions in Gaza - but it initiates resolutions AGAINST Sudan. In short, most Western governments are involved in supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine to some degree, some more than others. People are generally more politically active when something bad happens and their government is directly involved, versus Sudan where the case is that governments are simply negligent in dealing with the problem but not physically or politically supporting it.

The same reason that makes me think the Red Cross is neutral.

I don't think anyone here is denying that worse war crimes have happened elsewhere in the world. However I think you're making a big mistake to say that we should only care about war crimes only when they reach some sort large level of destruction. The whole concept of peace-building after all revolves around intervening in situations before they spiral out of control. Also consider that in none of the examples you mentioned was the US giving any of the perpetrators billions a year in military and economic aid. Nor was the Canadian government giving the perps tacit support in their operations. As well none of the perps in the other examples could be classified as a "democracy committed to upholding international law and human rights" yet people consistantly ascribe this label to Israel. And, as I've said before, the only thing worse than a military strike that uses collective punishment on civilians in an effort to attain an objective is a military strike that uses collective punishment on civilians in order to score political points in an upcoming election. Anyone who believes that Israeli actions in Gaza were about self-defense are fooling themselves as badly as those who think Hamas' actions have anything to do with self-defense.

Constant rocket attacks then. Neither this nor settlement building help the situation - they're only useful to a select group on either side of the conflict who use them for their own political gain (Hamas on one side, Jewish Settlers and far-right groups on the other).

They're about as big a barrier to progress in the region as suicide bombings are.

That's all true. However it's also true that the IDF has a long history of deflating body counts and classifying civilians killed in the midst of gun battles with militants as militants. Which is why no rational person should look at IDF or Hamas statistics, but instead get their information from neutral observers such as the Red Crescent

That's all true. However it's also true that the IDF has a long history of deflating body counts and classifying civilians killed in the midst of gun battles with militants as militants. Which is why no rational person should look at IDF or Hamas statistics, but instead get their information from neutral observers such as the Red Crescent

So long as you engage in troll-like behaviour, I'm not going to bother with you anymore. If you ever change your ways and start acting like an adult, let me know and then we can have a discussion like two human beings.

I'd ask you why you're consistently vague when pressed for your position, but I have a feeling you'd refuse to answer, therefor, you leave me no choice but to draw my own conclusions. Committing to a end, then refusing to commit to any means to that end. Therefor when a certain means works you can latch onto it as an example of why you were right, but if it fails you can say you never supported that means. Essentially, your vagueness is an attempt to insulate yourself from being proven wrong. I'm sure the answer you're going to give is "Well it's not my country, so who am I to tell Israelis what to do." Of course, you ARE telling them what to do, you're saying "destroy Hamas" you're just not wanting to say HOW exactly because of the reasons I mentioned above. And yes, saying "destroy Hamas" IS a position in and of itself, because the destruction of Hamas can only be accomplished through full-scale military action that directly targets the civilian population as well, because as we've seen, simply targeting Hamas targets doesn't work. I mean really, accountability to one's own opinions shouldn't be such a radical concept.

You never said otherwise either. Thank you for supporting the only plan that will reduce Hamas' long-term influence and contribute to long-term peace and stability for Israelis and Palestinians - thank you for supporting the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.