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An adaption from an earlier comment of mine: Lets be frank, this was a targeted assassination by a nation state that consistently tries to paint itself as a be
by cup 14y ago
An adaption from an earlier comment of mine:
Lets be frank, this was a targeted assassination by a nation state that consistently tries to paint itself as a beacon of democracy in the region.
Say all you want about Ahmed Jabari but his modus operandi was a direct result of a life of occupation and subjugation. You don't go into prison at the age of 22 and come out 13 years later a happy individual. I mean it was only 6 years ago that Hamas was democratically elected in a process considered fair and transparant, only for the elections to be found null and void by those (US/Israel et al) outside of Gaza!
Edit: On a side note, I wonder whether many people know that Likud, the Netanyahus political party, does not recognise Palestines right to exist!
- philwelch 14y agoI find it very strange that people criticize Israel for assassinating terrorist, but say nothing about Obama's kill list or drone strikes.
- gyardley 14y agoInteresting, how people hold the world's only Jewish state to a different moral standard than every other country. There's a word for that.
- skrebbel 14y agoI'm sure there's people who do this, but I doubt there are many of them in this thread. The fact of the matter is that both the Israelis and the Palestinians consistently commit horrible crimes, in the name of some perceived God-declared right to a strip of desert. On individual cases, you can't blame Israel for defending against hand-made rockets flying over the Gaza strip border. Similarly, you can't blame your average Palestinian for joining the resistance after an Isreali army bulldozered his village to make place for Israeli houses and theatres. Both sides, in many ways, are equally bad. The main difference is that Israel can choose to stop colonizing, can choose to give Palestinians basic human rights to allow some sort of economy to develop. The only thing Palestinians can choose to do is to stop fighting. There's a difference here. I don't see how all of that has anything to do with Israel being a Jewish state, except of course that declaring a single-religion state, in general, is asking for trouble. EDIT: In a different set of comments here, it was pointed out to me that Isreal is in fact a "surprisingly secular state". I tend to believe that. So in that case, you can scratch my last line. In exchange, we all stop calling Israel a Jewish state.
- philwelch 14y ago> I don't see how all of that has anything to do with Israel being a Jewish state, except of course that declaring a single-religion state, in general, is asking for trouble. Israel isn't a state for Judaism, it's simply a state for Jewish people. The set of Jewish people is not equal to the set of people who practice Judaism.
- cema 14y agoYou know, many people don't know that Jews form an ethnic group, not just a religion. There is a surprising lack of knowledge about our, admittedly small, but still widespread and supposedly familiar group of people.
- skrebbel 14y agoRight, good point. I see I've been mixing those up. So it's a single-race state? Or not that, either? (not intended in any offensive way - I'm just trying to understand what you're saying)
- philwelch 14y agoEthnicity would be a better word than race, I suppose. Or nationality.
- fusiongyro 14y agoI'm not going to say Israel is a font of ethical behavior or that your analysis is, in broad strokes, wrong, but there are a few facts that should get clarified. First, the settlers aren't settling in Gaza, they're settling in the West Bank. This makes the idea of rockets-as-retribution a bit strange, since relations with the West Bank are decent and they obviously undergo a lot more daily molestation than Gazans do since Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_statistics_for_Israeli_Gaza_Strip_settlements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_statistics_for_Israe... Also, Israel is in no sense a single religion state. There is complete freedom of religion in Israel. There is an "official" orthodox Judaism there which sadly has the authority to determine if you get a real Jewish wedding among other things, but there are Muslim and Christian Israelis among everything else, and the stripe of ones Judaism is not relevant to immigration.
- cubicle67 14y agodifferent in that Israel is allowed to do things we'd never accept from any other nation?
- avolcano 14y agoErm, I haven't seen this at all. In fact, most of the people I know who are most critical of Israel are also critical of Obama's foreign policy (though most begrudgingly voted for him anyways, because, y'know, Romney).
- philwelch 14y ago> though most begrudgingly voted for him anyways Is there anyone in Israel running for office on the platform of "let's not assassinate terrorists"? Are these people under the illusion that they would vote for such a person, or abstain from voting if no such candidate presented themselves? Once you vote for an assassin in your country, you lose the moral authority to denounce another country's assassinations. Romney or not.
- TDL 14y agoSo they wouldn't truly be critical of him then.
- skrebbel 14y agoMost people I know who tend to criticize Israel, tend to also believe that America's self-assigned world wide license to kill is an atrocity.
- illuminate 14y ago"I find it very strange that people criticize Israel for assassinating terrorist, but say nothing about Obama's kill list or drone strikes." You should try asking them how they feel about this instead of claiming hypocrisy.
- pinaceae 14y agodoes Hamas recognize the right of Israel to exist? this is war.
- cup 14y agoNo, this is occupation and apartheid.
- YZF 14y agoSince this is HN let met just say that I hope you don't apply the same sort of oversimplification to the code you write. Technically Gaza may have been under Egyptian control historically but Egypt doesn't want it back. Israel has no presence in Gaza. So there's no occupation in Gaza and no apartheid in Gaza any more than there is South Korean occupation and apartheid in North Korea. That doesn't mean everything is right in that region but unfortunately there are no simple solutions that satisfy the wishes of both sides.
- cup 14y agoIf Israel has no presence in Gaza then why is the municipality not given access to the sea and to the air. Is there a sea port in Gaza? Attempts to whitewash Israels treatment of the Palestinians falls short the minute facts enter the argument.
- philwelch 14y agoBecause if they had that access, they would import weapons to use to kill Israeli civilians. Are you forgetting which side of this conflict tends to strap bombs onto their chests before walking into a nightclub?
- cup 14y agoIs it the same side that straps children to the front of armoured troop carriers? You're trying to make this a dichotomic issue when its not. How do you expect Hamas to maintain a truce with Israel when Israel prevents them from acquiring the basic tools necessary to govern! Why does Israel ban confectionary into Gaza?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- YZF 14y agoWhat do targeted assassinations have to do with democracy? The USA, the great bastion of democracy, engages in those as a matter of daily practice. I don't think these tactics are always useful but it's one of the things that can happen in situations where you have two parties who want to fight a war. I would say the outcome was a result of choosing to wage an armed struggle (mostly targeting civilian population) towards the destruction of Israel. He made his choices (which included firing hundreds of rockets to population centers). What does "recognizing" someone's right to "exist" mean in this context? "Palestine" is not recognized by anyone in the world so why should the Likud recognize it? This is a new entity that the Palestinians want to create. Perhaps it is the best solution for the region but for it to actually exist some sort of agreement has to be reached.