Posted on 01/04/2009 4:13:33 PM PST by goldstategop
Israel's attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but stupid. No country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from neighbouring territory day after day. If Mexico had a group of anti-imperialists bombing Texas, imagine how long it would take for America to mobilise a counterattack. Israel has every right to respond.
But the kind of response matters. Killing 500 Palestinians and wounding 2,000 others (at the time of writing) is disproportionate. Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel. And just as Hamas's indiscriminate bombing of population centres is a crime against humanity, so is Israel's killing of civilians (at least 130 so far in Gaza, not to mention the thousands in the years of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza).
Hamas had respected the previously negotiated ceasefire except when Israel used it as cover to make assassination raids. Hamas argued that these raids were hardly a manifestation of a ceasefire, and so as symbolic protest it would allow the release of rocket fire (usually hitting no targets). But when the issue of continuing the ceasefire came up, Hamas wanted a guarantee that these assassination raids would stop. And it asked for more. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing acute malnutrition, Hamas insists that the borders be opened so that food can arrive unimpeded. And in return for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, it asks for the release of 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Michael Lerner bio bookmark.
Thanks.
Michael Lerner is a leftist lunatic. He is a pro-Palastinian propagandist. How can people talk about proportionality of response when Hamas has never stopped sending missles into Israel trying to kill as many Israelis as possible. They make no distinction between women and children. Their targets are civilians.
Now Israel has been forced to try to eliminate Hamas as a threat. It remains to be seen whether they will be successful, but this garbage about Palastinian civilians is intolerable. There is no way to seperate Hamas terrorists from so called civilians. Everybody knows that.
These creeps in the media know it. Even the so called fair and balanced Fox News is hammering that theme. Israel is on its own now. The United States has been telling them for decades not to respond too strenuously when they engage Hamas. What we have is a world full of hypocrites who really just wish that Israel cease to exist.
It would make perfect sense to me if Israel finally said that they are doomed as a nation over the long run and all stops are removed. They should use any means necessary to destroy those Muslim monsters who want them dead. If they are doomed anyway why not go out with a bang?
As far as the repercussions for the Middle East and even for America, that will not be their problem.
Michael Lerner is the Jewish Rabbi that was banned by the organizers of the anti-war demonstrations in SF, prior to(or during)the Iraq war for being Jewish.
The entire concept of proportional response in war is a sick and perverted doctrine of sado-masochists and enemy propagandists. It only ensures that a conflict is never ending.
So which is Michael Lerner?
Gotta agree here. Israel should kill them all
Given that
(1) Islam dictates that Jihad continue as long as any land that was once Muslim is under the control of non-Muslims, and thatthe aggression will continue until the Gazans are all dead or they abandon Islam.(2) the Arab aid-providers that finance Hamas will only continue funding Hamas as long as Hamas behaves according to Islam,
Terrorism is by definition, asymmetric.
Yes, Lerner is a moron.
But worse, Lerner is dishonest. Lerner is certainly aware that Israel has been tipping off the Palestinian civilians about impending strikes, and he is also aware that the Hamas terrorists quite deliberately use civilian women and children as shields for themselves and their armaments, and those shields then serve double duty as propaganda fodder after they are killed. ...Just the way Hamas has planned it.
The Israelis have rightly decided to tell the Euro-socialists and American liberals (like Lerner) to drop dead because Israel is finally going to do what must be done - - eradicate the terrorist threat, relentlessly, mercilessly, and thoroughly. To do anything less would be stupid.
Since Israel has sent warnings to these folks before they bomb, there shouldn't have been ANY people killed. Hamas leaders are willing to keep people in places they know will be attacked, because they WANT those bloodied bodies to show on TV.
And yes, Hamas CAN do harm to Israel, by trying to manipulate media coverage to THEIR cause, and against Israel, which only encourages more attacks by crazed Muslims.
Hold onto your wallet! Here comes Zero and Lerner and all the rest of the socialist scumbags to steal whatever they can get their filthy paws on.
We can love our enemies and still see them as our enemies, and still fight them, even kill them if it is called for. Nothing in the Bible against that.
“progressive Jewish”=anti-semitic!
I am with you!
This one is more leftist than Jew.
melt those puppies down into new weapons for the IDF. Way to go.
A proportionate war is a perpetual war.
Everyone that considers starting a conflict should be very concerned about disproportionate responses.
The enemies of Israel, the U.S., the UK and Canada invent these lexicons politically correct sounding terms so that they can have them available to sound highminded in their sigle-minded plans to destroy the West. Most people think the lexicons must be just; they’re past of the propaganda machine of Marxism.
Michael Lerner remains an arrogant fool. It is obscene that the word “rabbi” has ever been associated with this piece of work.
Anyone claiming ‘measured’ response hasn’t a clue how to fight a war.
They come at you with fists, you bring a club.
They pull a knife, you pull a gun.
The only correct response is one where the enemy never wants to mess with you again.
JB
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