"...See if you can focus on eyewitness testimony and first-hand confessions from some Jews who find war crimes more psychopathic than you apparently do..."
I, too, find many war-crimes to be reprehensible, and I, too, as a parent, perceive the intentional targeting of innocent children to be despicable and indefensible.
We differ greatly with respect to...
1. what constitutes a war-crime, in this context...
2. what constitutes a 'child', in this context...
3. the context in which such injuries occurred...
4. the scale in comparison to
all child-related injuries...
5. the objectivity with which such Intentions or Motivation are attributed...
6. whether it is accurate to label these as systemic or endemic rather than isolated or limited in scope
"...The article began: 'On just one day last week staff at the El-Arish hospital in Sinai were called to perform sophisticated CAT brain scans on a nine-year-old, two 10-year-olds and a 14-year-old ? each of whom had a bullet still lodged in their brain, after coming under fire during the Israeli ground assault on Gaza.'..."
* Is it certain that it was an IDF round (rather than a Hamas round) responsible for each injury?
* Where were each of these children at the time they were shot? Home? Shelter? Street? School? Mosque? Store? Other?
* If they were within a structure, was that structure used by (or suspected of being used by) Hamas at the time they were shot?
* If they were on the street, where were their parents and why were they allowed to be present in such danger zones?
* What were each of these children doing at the time they were shot? Anything hostile?
* Were any of them participating in a riot that was suppressed by small-arms fire?
* Were any of them caught-up in a legitimate military firefight and got in the way?
* Was fire directed at them individually or as part of blanket-fire against an adversary?
So many things we don't know about each of those four cases.
And, of course the Big Math Question...
* What percentage of ALL child-injuries due to small-arms fire that day were those four (4) head shots?
If there were 100 child injuries from gunshot that day, then those four would represent 4%.
If there were 4 child injuries from gunshot that day, then those four would represent 100%.
The 100% (or any high) number would be indicative of an intentional headshot targeting or one heulluvan unlikely coincidence.
The 4% (or lower) number would be indicative of absolutely nothing.
Neither your UK Telegraph article nor anything else that you've provided here serve to supply us with the richer context that we need in order to arrive at the conclusion that these children were intentionally targeted for head-shots.
Much more is required in order to substantiate such a claim, within the realm of pattern-analysis, even while conceding the point that not ALL such questions may prove answer-able, and that we may be obliged to deduce one or two of the data points based upon a richer data set than you have heretofore supplied.
Yes, Doctor, as a Scientist and Man of Truth and Honesty first, and a Palestinian second, you, too, realize that you cannot reliably decide such matters, based upon the scanty evidence in your possession, and absent the sort of data bullet-pointed earlier, above.
One of the
dumbest things that I've
ever heard out of the mouth of a credentialed scientist.
Of
COURSE the gun was pointed directly at the child!
It would be a little difficult for the round to hit the child if the gun had been pointed
AWAY from the child,
wouldn't it, Doctor?
The supplemental and salient questions here are:
* In each such case,
WHY was the gun pointed towards the child?
* In each such case,
was it intentional or simply part of a broader fire-mission/firefight?
* In each such case,
WHOSE gun WAS it?
We do not appear to know the answers to these important questions, based upon the data provided in the article.
Also, note that the Doctor said '
SOME of these cases'... I mean, Good Lord - there are only four (4) cases total in this sampling deck to consider... and SOME means less than ALL... so we're certainly looking at fewer than four (4)...
how many kids in a 'SOME', Doctor? 1? 2? 3? Is that a sufficiently sampling-deck to make any sort of judgment call as to cause and effect and intentions?
In actuality, the Doctor told the truth, as he saw it, and then propaganda-shills and disinterested journalists 'fluffed-up' this sparse data, to try to self-declare or strongly hint-at a Trend or Pattern, when an objective and dispassionate analysis of the data at-hand indicates no such Trend or Pattern to-date.
Both your sampling deck and the requisite context-data are grossly inadequate to the task of substantiating a Trend or Pattern here.
Sorry.
"...'Israeli soldiers in a group called 'Breaking the Silence' have provided chilling testimonies about Israeli military culture; the titles alone tell a great deal. Following are a few:'The battalion commander ordered us to shoot anyone trying to remove the bodies', 'The commander of the navy commandos put the muzzle of the rifle into the man’s mouth', 'They told us to shoot at anybody moving in the street', 'You can do whatever you feel like, nobody is going to question it.'”
Yes.
War, including ongoing guerrilla and urban warfare and ongoing border confrontation and adversary-suppression is a nasty and bloody business and forever affects those who participate on both sides.
In Vietnam, US troops perpetrated the My Lai Massacre, and a fair number of other atrocities. In Afghanistan, Soviet troops perpetrated several massacres and atrocities. In virtually every war (declared and undeclared, ongoing or sporadic, mainstream forces or guerrilla) there are atrocities and wrongdoings.
Soldiers are obliged to harden their hearts in order to kill their fellow man; some take to this grudgingly, some easily; many are traumatized by their own experiences and actions and cannot live with the guilt or memories. And, oftentimes, this is with respect to troops fighting enemies who are NOT suicide-bombing and and mortaring and rocket-barraging their own wives and children and parents.
I would not be surprised in the slightest to learn that the IDF contains its own fair share of both sociopaths and guilt- or horror-ridden veterans; nor would the rest of the world, I expect. Dog bites man. Not exactly news. But none of that is evidence - legal or even reasonable in an extralegal context - that such things are systemic or endemic within the IDF.
We Americans, too, have seen similar pronouncements from various US-based 'Veterans Against the War' initiatives and organizations; dealing with PTSD, guilt (real and misplaced, etc.), and their own political agendas.
Such testimony should always be granted an audience and carefully considered, but does not, ipso facto, translate either into (1) Truth or (2) Accuracy or (3) incontrovertible substantiating evidence that such practices are systemic or endemic or institutionalized.
The organizations gathering and spin-doctoring such testimony should ALSO be placed under a very close scrutiny when making such judgments, with respect to their status as liberal-leaning human-rights or peace-activist organizations, or actual subversive organizations, or sincere domestic efforts, especially when those organizations receive tons of funding from overseas and external sources, lending an air of questionable motives and agenda to their operations, as is the case with this particular NGO...
Breaking the Silence (non-governmental organization) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This does not mean that some or even all of the testimonies advanced by this particular NGO are not accurate or true, in whole or in part. It merely means that they need to be filtered through a more holistic lens, without blindly accepting such things as operative.
"...Of course, for some Jews such behavior applies equally to their own children... "A month after... Kristallnacht... Ben Gurion... "
Straw-Man argument, and non sequitur in the context of modern-day IDF policy; unless one of your NGO boys or girls testifies that they've seen documentation pertaining to such official high-level policy or heard official high-level policy pronouncements to that effect.
