Posted on 01/05/2009 9:58:19 AM PST by SmithL
If you shove me in the checkout line at the local market, can I club you across the head with a baseball bat in self-defense? Of course not. Yet such belligerence seems to inform Israel's latest pummeling of the Gaza Strip. As of this writing, more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed. Many Palestinian victims were civilians, including young men who joined police forces simply to feed their families in a region with 45 percent unemployment.
The United Nations charter enshrines a nation-state's right of self-defense against armed attack by another state. Even when properly triggered, however, the right is limited. The exercise of self-defense must be necessary and proportional to the harm it seeks to redress. Israel's bloodletting in the Gaza Strip fails this test in three respects.
First, Israel has not suffered an armed attack sufficient to justify its intensive bombing. International law sensibly declines to designate minor provocations - which are common - as "armed attacks." Otherwise, nations could routinely claim self-defense as a pretext for launching all-out wars. While the standard for an "armed attack" is admittedly imprecise, it would certainly not apply to the truce period prevailing in Gaza/Southern Israel from June to December of last year. The truce was imperfectly observed - Israel, for its part, never lifted the crushing siege it had imposed against the Gaza Strip as promised, and continued to kill and capture Hamas members in the West Bank, while Hamas permitted sporadic rocket fire. Still, Israelis suffered no casualties for six months. The escalation of rocket fire preceding the bombardment was provoked by Israel's own act, when it raided the Gaza Strip on Nov. 4, killing six Palestinians, and thus cannot justify self-defense.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
No, Israel should use the logic and concepts of sharia law to point out that it is using WAY less force than allowed.
Maybe not, but if you launch a kassam rocket from your basket to mine, I can, and I will, kill you.
Hate, including hatred of Jews, is a San Francisco value.
How about this. “If you stab me in the back with a knife in the checkout line at the local market, can I club you across the head with a baseball bat in self-defense?” You dam right I can.
“Many Palestinian victims were civilians, including young men who joined police forces simply to feed their families in a region with 45 percent unemployment. “
Wait wait wait...
They are calling members of the MILITARY “Civilians” because they joined to get money??
Oh dear me. The spin is amazing.
“If you shove me in the checkout line at the local market, can I club you across the head with a baseball bat in self-defense?”
Leave it to this leftist moron to pick the most inane analogy. Being shoved out of a checkout line isn’t the same as living near the Gaza border and being subjected to regular, indiscriminant bombardment by terrorists...ie, no one dies being shoved out of the checkout line.
Easy answer - NO!!!
Judaism should adopt a doctrine of the complete elimination of Islam as being conducive to the achievement of World Peace.
I have a better analogy. When I was in middle school, I had this kid who would pester, badger, bully and needle me pretty much every day on the bus. I was a fairly reserved kid and took this teasing for a while until one day, I had enough and snapped. I beat the everloving crap out of this kid and you know what? He stopped bothering me.
A better analogy would be if you shove me at the checkout line, shove me at my home, shove my children and wife, threaten to kill me and wipe me off the map, ignore a restraining order that no one else seems to care about and THEN I club you over the head with a baseball bat. That would be a little more accurate.
There’s not enough dead jews for those anti semitic fags to support this.
I'm afraid, short of complete subjugation/extermination, these zealots will always be around and will require periodic culling as the Israeli's are now doing.
What a waste on all dimensions.
I wonder if the good professor Bisharat was outraged by the 9/12/01 videos of Palestinians dancing in the streets, and passing out candies in celebration.
I wonder what he proposes Israel do in response to rockets being launched indiscriminately. Use harsh language?
I would say he’s stupid, but its more likely he’s evil.
The comparison is more like: A skinny, diseased moron with a clapped out .22 says “I’m gonna kill you” and lets fly in your direction.
Yes, you would be justified in shooting back with whatever comes to hand.
I lived in San Francisco for two years, long ago. I can vouch for a quip that Tom Lehrer said at the hungry i. He said that the announcement of the Multi-Lateral Nuclear Force "occurred during the baseball season, so the Chronicle may not have covered it."
The Chronicle is one of many tragedies that are inflicted on the residents of San Francisco because they don't know any better.
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "The Non-Constitutional Crisis from Illinois"
The Declaration, the Constitution, parts of the Federalist, and America's Owner's Manual, here.
Ah, but not in NYS. Here crime vics have a "duty-to-retreat". I kid you not.
Apparently lefties think something similar should apply to Israel as well.
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