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| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
I understand this point. Fear does NOT equal terrorism however.
What you must prove is that Israel is systematically (an organized process) of using violence to intimidate (achieve fear in) the Palestinian society for some purpose (typically political).
Yes, I will admit the Palestinians probably FEEL terrorized, but that does not mean they are being terrorized! The Iraqi civilians surely felt terrorized when the bombs fell upon their country. Every civilian in a theatre of war feels fear, feels scared, and therefore feels terrorized. Hwoever feeling terrorized does not mean that there is a terrorist! If you want to find terrorized people, look at any violent act, be it a murder, a war, a robbery or what not, however we do not call those who say perpetrate a murder a terrorist, why? Because he did not systemtically want to intimidate a society or government, he simply wanted one person dead.
You can also find feelings of terror from none-violent acts, such as accidents. Ask how a near-fatal accident survior felt when his car slipt off the road, and you'll find he felt terror. But there is no terrorist in this act.. who can we blame? The rain that made the road wet?
So do the Palestinians feel terrorized, yes. Does that make Israel a State support of terrorism? No!
Also, even if I were to agree with your statements above the strongest argument you can make is de facto Israeli terrorism. As it is NOT state support. In fact, the State of Israel fights relentlessly against organization and individuals with in (and out) of its boundraies that are suspected of commiting a terrorist crime, be them black, white, Arab, Israel, Jew or Muslim. I believe though you concede this point.
At a final note, Israel's use of human shields is a violation of the Geneva convention, and therefore one might brand it illegal. But as I have mentioned before (with the abuse of ambulance neutrality) the Geneva convention is actually a contract between two warring parties. So therefore if the Palestinians use human shields, they are breaking the contract and Israel is no longer liable to uphold at least that specific clause of the agreement. So although many of you won't agree since your are drug-senced-hippies, the truth of the matter is that Israel carries no legal, or in a theoratical sense moral responsibility for this tactic.
You can not have an organization call Israel's use of human shields inhuman, or immoral if you take it out of context, and do not blame the Palestinian militant organization for the same, and grosser abuses which caused Israel to try and use such strategies themselves.
oh and i forgot. the example you gave is not an example of "intentional behaviour the IDF has in terrorizing palestinians" as the IDF does not intend to cause terror, or to intimidate the Palestinians by this behaviour, their goal is to actually save Palestinian, and their own lives. They are trying to have the trigger-happy terrorist open the door for the IDF without shooting at them, so the IDF won't have to use their only other option of blowing down the militant's doors, which usually thanks to sturdy Palestinian permit-free construction, means most of the house too.
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...a/israel_strike
How is this not terrorism...throwing missiles into crowded city streets... not giving a shit about innocent bystanders...whether it is intended or not, people are terrorised by these "explosions" just like a bomb on a bus.
Do you think it is OK to throw missiles into crowded israeli streets if that same car was driving there? Please answer this!
Here is a piece on how Israel uses systematic terrorism.
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On the one hand, Israel wants us to believe that 400 of its own civilians were deliberately targeted, while more than three times as many dead Palestinians all somehow just got in the way of what Israel claims is its humane and disciplined army. It is, in essence, an argument that 1,500 people all died by accident.
Every human rights group that has examined Israel's practices has documented systematic and deliberate use of violence targeted at unarmed Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces. Physicians for Human Rights USA which investigated the high number of Palestinian deaths and injuries in the first months of the Intifada, concluded that:
"the pattern of injuries seen in many victims did not reflect IDF [Israel Defense Forces] use of firearms in life-threatening situations but rather indicated targeting solely for the purpose of wounding or killing."
[Source: PHR USA, 22 November 2000]
This finding was based on "the totality of the evidence" the investigators collected about :
"the high number of gunshots to the head; the volume of serious, disabling thigh injuries; the inappropriate firing of rubber bullets and rubber-coated steel bullets at close range; and the high proportion of Palestinian injuries and deaths."
The findings of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch confirm this pattern. Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has documented and condemned the targeted use of violence against Palestinian civilians and has found evidence of systematic torture of thousands of Palestinian detainees, including children.
What has been confirmed by human rights groups has also been observed directly by journalists.
In October 2001, Harper's magazine published the "Gaza Diary" of journalist Chris Hedges. Hedges' entry for June 17, 2001 provides even more shocking evidence of the wanton and deliberate killing of Palestinian children by Israeli soldiers at Gaza's Khan Yunis refugee camp.
Hedges writes:
"I sit in the shade of a palm-roofed hut on the edge of the dunes, momentarily defeated by the heat, the grit, the jostling crowds, the stench of the open sewers and rotting garbage. A friend of Azmi's brings me, on a tray, a cold glass of tart, red carcade juice."
"Barefoot boys, clutching kites made out of scraps of paper and ragged soccer balls, squat a few feet away under scrub trees. Men in flowing white or gray galabias -- homespun robes -- smoke cigarettes in the shade of slim eaves. Two emaciated donkeys, their ribs protruding, are tethered to wooden carts with rubber wheels."
"It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker."
""Come on, dogs," the voice booms in Arabic. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!""
"I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: "Son of a bitch!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's ****!""
"The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. Three ambulances line the road below the dunes in anticipation of what is to come."
"A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos."
"Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered -- death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo -- but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."
There can be no doubt that Israeli troops have been targeting innocent Palestinian civilians for death from the beginning of the uprising. This understanding was also reflected in UN Security Council Resolution 1322, passed on October 7, 2000, which
"Condemns acts of violence, especially the excessive use of force against Palestinians, resulting in injury and loss of human life."
In making the moral superiority claim, Israel's apologists are either shamelessly denying the irrefutable evidence cited above and are simply lying, or they are asserting that some forms of murder are morally superior to other forms of murder. |
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"This place isn't big enough for me to blow it up."
-MARCO V
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