The Black/Israel Fallacy

[Conspiracist]

If you use a civilian structure as a military position, you bear the weight of the blame for the damage the civilians take when the other side takes it out.

The Palestinians routinely use human shields. All of Gaza is effectively a human shield these days. The Palestinians shoot rockets into Israel indiscriminately. Israel does its best to make sure only the bad guys get hurt.

The only reason we are even bothering with this discussion is Israel and the international community carres what Israel does. The Palestinians.... the damage they do no one cares about.

I understand what you are trying to get at here but blanketing the Palestinians as uncaring is wrong. They have watched their people, (women and children), die as well as Israelis have. The activists on the Palestinian side are not the majority. Israel has more control over the situation than Palestinians have so Israel should be held more responsible just as we are when we enter into combat.

As far as Israel doing its best to be sure only the bad guys get hurt, did you read any of the quotes from the Israeli soldiers in this thread?

 

[The Rabbi]

And virtually every one of these stories is later debunked when it is discovered that there is no Israeli soldier verifying any of it.
More grist for the anti-semites.

You don't have any idea what you're talking about

http://www.shovrimshtika.org/oferet/ENGLISH_oferet.pdf

That's testimonies from 30 IDF soldiers, regular combat and reservists, from a wide spectrum of units, specialties, and places, about their experience in the Gaza siege. Their testimonies confirm the use of "white phosphorous in populated areas, rampant and intentional killing of civilians using small arms, destruction of homes and mosques for no military purpose, and the use of civilians as human shields (called Johnnie's)."

Those testimonies are written by members of Breaking the Silence, an NGO established by the IDF for soldiers and veterans to discuss what they experience in their service and to "break the silence' of IDF soldiers who return to civilian life in Israel and "discover the gap between the reality which they encountered in the [occupied] territories, and the silence which they encounter at home." By publishing soldiers' accounts, Breaking the Silence hopes to "force Israeli society to address the reality which it created" and face the truth about "abuse towards Palestinians, looting, and destruction of property" that is familiar to soldiers."

It's a group formed by and comprised entirely of current and former members of the IDF whose stories are corroborated against one another.

If what you meant was that the Israeli government denies the reports of Israeli and foreign journalists who witnessed the siege and of the many soldiers who have spoken and written about the war crimes they witnessed and took part in, well duh. There isn't a government in the world that freely admits it commits war crimes, they have a strong and vested interest in trying to appear as though they behaves according to the rules of war. But in addition to the humanitarian aid workers, journalists, IDF soldiers, and Palestinians who personally witnessed all of this and whose independent stories match one another, the UN also investigated and concluded Israel was guilty of war crimes.

Shock!: A government lied about committing crimes against humanity. If you're so gullible and biased as to believe "if the accused doesn't admit it, it must not be true" and that every other entity involved must be lying (since the IDF has a long history of anti-semitism, right? ) then the fact is you don't care about the truth and it doesn't matter to you what happened, you're going to stick to whatever pre-decided blindly pro-Israel position you started with.

You are quoting a left wing advocacy group that admits:

There are many significant gaps between the testimonies we gathered

i.e. they don't make much sense.
Newsflash: there are self hating Israelis just like there are self hating anything else in the first world.
I would have more of an open mind about it except that these stories come out periodically and are debunked as being without evidence,but not before being picked up by the anti-Israel media and its amen corner on this site.
CAMERA: Did Israel's Use of White Phosphorus Constitute a War Crime?

 

[P F Tinmore]

And virtually every one of these stories is later debunked when it is discovered that there is no Israeli soldier verifying any of it.
More grist for the anti-semites.

You don't have any idea what you're talking about

http://www.shovrimshtika.org/oferet/ENGLISH_oferet.pdf

That's testimonies from 30 IDF soldiers, regular combat and reservists, from a wide spectrum of units, specialties, and places, about their experience in the Gaza siege. Their testimonies confirm the use of "white phosphorous in populated areas, rampant and intentional killing of civilians using small arms, destruction of homes and mosques for no military purpose, and the use of civilians as human shields (called Johnnie's)."

Those testimonies are written by members of Breaking the Silence, an NGO established by the IDF for soldiers and veterans to discuss what they experience in their service and to "break the silence' of IDF soldiers who return to civilian life in Israel and "discover the gap between the reality which they encountered in the [occupied] territories, and the silence which they encounter at home." By publishing soldiers' accounts, Breaking the Silence hopes to "force Israeli society to address the reality which it created" and face the truth about "abuse towards Palestinians, looting, and destruction of property" that is familiar to soldiers."

It's a group formed by and comprised entirely of current and former members of the IDF whose stories are corroborated against one another.

If what you meant was that the Israeli government denies the reports of Israeli and foreign journalists who witnessed the siege and of the many soldiers who have spoken and written about the war crimes they witnessed and took part in, well duh. There isn't a government in the world that freely admits it commits war crimes, they have a strong and vested interest in trying to appear as though they behaves according to the rules of war. But in addition to the humanitarian aid workers, journalists, IDF soldiers, and Palestinians who personally witnessed all of this and whose independent stories match one another, the UN also investigated and concluded Israel was guilty of war crimes.

Shock!: A government lied about committing crimes against humanity. If you're so gullible and biased as to believe "if the accused doesn't admit it, it must not be true" and that every other entity involved must be lying (since the IDF has a long history of anti-semitism, right? ) then the fact is you don't care about the truth and it doesn't matter to you what happened, you're going to stick to whatever pre-decided blindly pro-Israel position you started with.

You are quoting a left wing advocacy group that admits:

There are many significant gaps between the testimonies we gathered

i.e. they don't make much sense.
Newsflash: there are self hating Israelis just like there are self hating anything else in the first world.
I would have more of an open mind about it except that these stories come out periodically and are debunked as being without evidence,but not before being picked up by the anti-Israel media and its amen corner on this site.
CAMERA: Did Israel's Use of White Phosphorus Constitute a War Crime?

CAMERA is a card carrying member of Israel's BS machine.

Their report:
The IDF used two different types of munitions containing white phosphorous – exploding munitions and smoke projectiles... Exploding munitions were used only in open unpopulated areas for marking and signalling. No exploding munitions containing white phosphorous were used in built-up areas of the Gaza Strip.

The truth. Not CAMERA lies.
http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/fosforgroot.jpg

 

[Toronado3800]

It is a war crime for Israel, in the pursuit of retribution towards Hamas, to kill ~1,400 Palestinians, over 1,000 of them civilians of which at least 320 were children and 110 were women, in indiscriminate and intentionally belligerent and open warfare against an enclosed, trapped civilian population. It is a war crime for them to intentionally block aid, food, water, and medical care to the civilian population for days on end as they did.

Damn. Makes the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden and all the aid providing railroads in either country sound like a war crime.

Israel is in a cold, sometimes hot, war with a handful of countries who would like to wipe it off the map. Stuff happens. Folks blow up skyscrapers. Drones kill civilians unintentionally when they don't do a good enough job of ratting out little Guiseppi when he joined the mob, er Al Qaeda.

IF the Middle East Muslims weren't such a pain in the rump to the rest of the world they would get some sympathy.

(Not that I cut Aryans much slack either, they're an awful bunch who can spot a Jew at a mile or care what side of Ireland you were born on. IRELAND! The place just isn't that big. Just this whole "hiding the mob/terrorist thing" or turning the other cheek when the your neighbors know where the godfather is thing is getting old. If your one son is a Crypt and you don't do anything about it don't be surprised when him and your other son both get killed on their way to the grocery store)

 

[QUENTIN]

You're either being intentionally dishonest, or you genuinely are mistaken but either way that's not at all accurate.

That quote you pulled is out of context and I do believe you're intentionally misrepresenting it:

Although this publication
does not claim to provide a broad, comprehensive review of all the soldiers and
the units who carried out the operation, these narratives are enough to bring into
question the credibility of the official IDF versions.
There are many significant gaps between the testimonies we gathered. These
testimonies describe use of the ‘neighbor procedure’ and of white phosphorus
ammunition in densely inhabited neighborhoods, massive destruction of buildings
unrelated to any direct threat to israeli forces, and permissive rules of engagement
that led to the killing of innocents. We also hear from the soldiers about the
general atmosphere that accompanied the fighting, and of harsh statements
made by junior and senior officers that attest to the ongoing moral deterioration
of the society and the army. during the operation, the military rabbinate made its
own contribution to these expressions when it introduced controversial religious
and political interpretation under the auspices of the idF and with its blessing.
Although certain features characterized this operation as a whole, significant
differences can be found among the various geographic areas and units. such
variation is also addressed in this publication.

That doesn't mean at all that the testimonies don't make sense, rather it means it's the testimonies of 30 people who were performing different roles in different parts of the occupied territories. In order for there to be no gaps and for the report to be "comprehensive," they would have to have testimony from every single member of the IDF who was involved in the siege. You take their honesty, their recognition that is is not every single side of the story nor could it be, but it is "enough to bring into question the credibility of the official IDF versions." because of the breadth of firsthand accounts from sources that did not interact but largely corroborate the general atmosphere and specific violations that were most widespread, and try to twist it to mean "this is hogwash."

Then, dear lord, you wallow in the singularly most inane non-argument of the blindly and unconditionally pro-zionist. "Everyone who isn't Jewish who doesn't fully support everything the Israeli government does is an anti-semite. Everyone who is Jewish who doesn't fully support everything the Israeli government does is a self-hating Jew."

Get out of here with your intellectually bankrupt smears. What you're claiming is that for no apparent reason whatsoever except that they all hate themselves for being Jewish, a large and diverse group of Israeli soldiers and journalists made up claims to defame the Israeli military and somehow secretly got together to make sure they were all making the same claims. On top of this, a large and diverse group of humanitarian aid workers, European journalists, UN representatives and investigators, who witnessed firsthand or examined the aftermath of the siege made up the same claims to defame Israel because they hate Jews. That's so patently absurd as to be laughable, if it weren't so sad.

None of the news stories and certainly not the Breaking the Silence collection have been debunked. Instead, the reporters captured quotes in a war zone from soldiers participating in an active military campaign. They asked questions and got answers, and the Israeli soldiers who spoke of the atrocities they witnessed or took part in didn't give them their full names or pose for pictures because that's a ridiculous expectation in such a situation and beyond the danger and difficulty of doing so under such circumstances, if they had their names attached to their comments they'd be reprimanded by the military. The alternative, that your argument relies on, which far as I can tell is merely based on the fact that the culpable government denied it, is that Haaretz and BBC journalists made quotes up out of whole cloth, again because they're either self-hating or anti-semitic.

The collection of testimonies of IDF soldiers has even more inscrutable credentials and is far more thorough, specific, and damning. When the Israeli government condemned the group for releasing the collection and claimed it was lies or any misconduct was the action of the infamous "few bad apples," Breaking the Silence offered any Israeli or independent investigative body access to the people whose testimonies were recorded, on the sole condition that the names not be made public following the investigation because anonymity in blowing this whistle is essential to the safety and well-being of soldiers who are mostly still active duty.

That political or even extremist groups will pick up on the negative actions of a group or nation they oppose for use in their propaganda has no bearing on the validity of the recorded actions and it doesn't associate unaffiliated groups with them just because their honest information is reused for nefarious aims. By your rationale, because Al Qaeda has highlighted that settlers took our land by force and coercion from Native Americans, we had a long history of slavery, and interned Japanese Americans, none of those things actually happened since they're utilized by someone else's propaganda.

You are not a remotely intellectually honest person, Rabbi. You will make any absurd and irrational claim you see fit in order to deny what is abundantly clear to anyone who approaches the issue with an ounce of objectivity. To believe in the wild conspiracy theories you do, and that all who are not aligned with you either hate all Jews or themselves for being Jewish, is the sign of a person decidedly not interested in serious debate but rather wishes merely to malign his opponents to deflect from his own weak and unsubstantiated argument.

If you decide to rise above baseless name calling and unfounded but serious accusations of prejudice that span everyone but you and a handful who follow lockstep, I'm happy to discuss this. Until then, you've just gone round in circles repeating the same dishonest claims. No reason to bother going round again.

 

[QUENTIN]

Damn. Makes the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden and all the aid providing railroads in either country sound like a war crime.

By any definition imaginable, the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden were war crimes. The perpetrators of both knew as much and admitted as much. Intentionally killing a massive number of civilians is a war crime. When done for political aims, as both of those were, it is also by definition terrorism.

I find it more than a little ironic that seemingly everyone who claims of racism against those who don't support belligerent Israeli military action, themselves group all Palestinians and sometimes even Muslims together as a single entity deserving of death.

There are examples of racism in this thread, but so far, only from Zionists.

Regarding "ratting out" and also Hamas using civilian areas to launch attacks, this isn't America here with the Army rolling out of a base and into a metropolitan city to hide among the civilians for safety. It's a tiny, entirely caged in and densely populated area. Innocent civilians have nowhere to escape to if someone runs into their building firing a gun. Fighters have nowhere to go, particularly when every legitimate military target is destroyed in a day or so, but populated areas. Those in the populated areas have nowhere else to go either. But it's not as though the IDF is then forced to kill all those civilians because there's one legitimate target among them.

If you're running from a bunch of guys with guns and tanks trying to kill you, you hide in the nearest available spot for self-preservation. And if you're a bunch of guys with guns and tanks going after a couple guys and they run into a well-populated area (or school for the love of god) you have a responsibility not to intentionally and wantonly kill civilians. Killing one bad guy is not worth murdering 40 innocent people. With infinitely superior numbers, arms, intelligence, etc, there comes a recognition that one dead combatant is not worth the deaths of scores more non-combatants. Israel lost 10 soldiers, 4 to friendly fire, while the Palestinian death toll was ~1,400, with ~1000 being civilians. If that doesn't demonstrate to you that there force was extraordinarily excessive and disproportionate and their concern for civilians minimal to non-existent, I'm not sure what to tell you.

 

[Kalam]

What supporters of Israel tend not to realize is that their accusations of "anti-Semitism" have been rendered impotent through copious overuse. Take Rabbi, for example, who will level that accusation against anybody who so much as refuses to kiss the ground after it's been graced by Jewish feet. Even when they're the oppressor, Zionists need to pretend as if they're being persecuted. In this way, they're no different than the filthy Russian infidels who tell Chechen women and children that they're "enemy combatants" if they stay in their homes, then turn around and accuse the mujahideen who defend them of "terrorism."

 

[Conspiracist]

Rabbi, your own lack of open mindedness toward discussion eats you up. You have a knack for labeling and just dismissing anyone you cannot easily sway or use their unjustified sense of guilt against.

Keep holding yourself on your pedestal.
Good Day

 

[Conspiracist]

Good luck and great thread Quent. I am now labeled an anti semite also! ROFL!



Good job Rabbit and keep runnin!

 

[QUENTIN]

The big discrepancy here, which is pretty obvious, is also pretty simple. It's a matter of consistency. Orwell nailed it in my sig.

Some people find actions to be good or bad based on what the actions are. The merits and morality of what happens. Killing civilians is wrong, the consistent person says. Using chemical weapons against people, especially civilians, is wrong the consistent person says. It matters not to them who commits the action, Israel, Palestine, the U.S., China, Germany, USSR, etc.

Other people find actions to be good or bad entirely dependent upon who does them. These people have a tribalistic loyalty to a certain group that supersedes any notions of right or wrong, moral or immoral, legal or illegal. When X kills civilians, it's wrong, they're evil and crazy and do it because they're blood thirsty, but when Y commits the exact same deed, they're morally righteous and justified and reluctantly did it because they had no other choice. This inconsistently creeps into every aspect of such a worldview and essentially erodes any concept of objectivity, reason, or morality. Whether fueled by racism, nationalism, religion, or ideology, the essential breakdown is the same and is perfectly described as unrepentant, shameless hypocrisy.

 

[Toronado3800]

By any definition imaginable, the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden were war crimes. The perpetrators of both knew as much and admitted as much. Intentionally killing a massive number of civilians is a war crime. When done for political aims, as both of those were, it is also by definition terrorism.

Huh. So punishing a population which supported an evil empire or removing their standard of living is unacceptable? Ideally leveling Dresden or Tokyo would have lead to open revolts in the streets of Germany or Japan against their governments who lost them the wars.

I'll make the same decisions a dozen times over. Amazing in 1973 Israel didn't go level Damascus in an attempt to show the Syrians it was time to do something about their war mongering elite. I would have supported that to.

It goes back to something I call the "Sopranos" principle. If you admire the criminal next door or even don't do what you can to bring about his downfall, bad things are coming to you. If little Abdul is delivering messages for the Taliban and his neighbor knows it and does nothing about it she is fair game.

 

[Toronado3800]

Now also if Hitler could have firebombed New York in 1945 what could I have said? Yup, we had it coming.

Soon as our Muslim friends remove themselves from the 13th century they'll get much more support from the rest of the world. The most tolerant thing I can come up with is their religion is 600 years newer than Christianity which was itself pretty miserable in the 600 years ago so maybe the Muslims have some maturing to do.

 

[P F Tinmore]

By any definition imaginable, the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden were war crimes. The perpetrators of both knew as much and admitted as much. Intentionally killing a massive number of civilians is a war crime. When done for political aims, as both of those were, it is also by definition terrorism.

Huh. So punishing a population which supported an evil empire or removing their standard of living is unacceptable? Ideally leveling Dresden or Tokyo would have lead to open revolts in the streets of Germany or Japan against their governments who lost them the wars.

I'll make the same decisions a dozen times over. Amazing in 1973 Israel didn't go level Damascus in an attempt to show the Syrians it was time to do something about their war mongering elite. I would have supported that to.

It goes back to something I call the "Sopranos" principle. If you admire the criminal next door or even don't do what you can to bring about his downfall, bad things are coming to you. If little Abdul is delivering messages for the Taliban and his neighbor knows it and does nothing about it she is fair game.

"Huh. So punishing a population which supported an evil empire or removing their standard of living is unacceptable?"

So, are you saying it is OK for Palestinians to rocket Sderot because those people support the occupation of their land?

 

[Toronado3800]

And the same Palestinians should expect Israeli soldiers to come kill them. It sucks. Just like war I suppose.

IF you're thinking I'm pro Israel, you're right. Not because I really think or care if the Israeli's should own everyone's holy land though (really, who knows who 'should' own it). I just think they're less trouble for me and the future of the world than a strong Muslim world.

 

[QUENTIN]

Toronado, I think you've got a reprehensibly immoral outlook that sets the human race back a millenia and essentially thinks of all wars as just and total wars, wherein an innocent civilian population is and should be at the mercy of their government (or even other problematic citizen) and deserves to be slaughtered en masse by the enemy if they happen to live somewhere unfortunate (and I think you're remarkably naive about civilians' options, especially in a time of war), while also seeming to argue that might makes right.

But I'll tell you what, unlike the other people I was haranguing here, you're consistent. I can respect that.

 

[Toronado3800]

Thanks Quentin. I really mean that. If I have one redeeming factor it is that I can see both sides of a conversation or issue.

Some wars are just, some wars are just stupid. Sometimes a disagreement can't be easily avoided.

The terrible abortion issue is one. Imagine the pro-life true believer who feels a murder is about to occur at the abortion clinic, and the unfortunate young lady in there about to have an abortion for what to her are justifiable reasons. These two are on a collision course if not for the power of Uncle Sam to keep the peace.

Isreal, Islam, the holy land wow. What a grenade. Using modern Yugoslavia as an example we could use Stalin to keep them from killing each other.