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| quote: | Originally posted by djpsi
id still like to see a whole page of writing to explain why soldiers decide to shoot at kids with stones....please enlighten me Yoepus...you seem quite the educated fellow. Dont come back at me with the" What are my comrades supposed to do, stones can kill you know, israeli soldiers have to protect themselves from kids with stones." |
Hello djpsi, I do not have the time right now to right a long article about this topic, but can do so in a couple of days if you are interested to hear more points.
However, as a general rule this is a misconception brought by the first intifada (back in the late 80s). At this time non-lethal alternatives was almost unheard of and non-existant. The resistance waa a new thing to the army, and it was not suited to police them. Years of this low intensity conflict have changed the doctorine and has made the Israeli army very suited in such low intensity conflicts and very fimilar with new technologies of non-leathal weapons.
So what I am saying, they might have done it earlier.. any unexperienced force faced infront of a large angry mob (regardless of who is in it) is a very, very frightening thing, with inexperience and lack of alternatives, one would open live fire in to a very hostile yet 'unarmed' crowd. A good example of this is the recent World Trade Organization conference in Sweden, where the police their shot and killed a number of protestors (I think it was 7 or so). And this is Sweden, so you see mobs are very dangerous and with lack of doctorine and if you only have live ammo in your hand your going to shot.
But let me also point out which mother would allow her child to go out in the streets when she knows he is trying to annoy, hurt, and kill other Israelis soldiers, particularly when they are well armed, and if they feel their life is endangered will shot to prevent it from being taken away from them.
As a general rule in the Israeli doctorine you may shot to save your live. Dispersal of a crowd, is mainly done through an inital annoucment (never works anymore so they don't do it much), warning shots (again doesn't work), tear gas (works and is the primary means to disperse crowds, especially those of unarmed children), and ruber bullets. Now if you have a person carrying a bomb, a machine gun, or other arms in the crowd endangering the lifes of the soldiers, no matter if they try and hide behind their children, pregnent women, or such, the Israelis will try and eliminate the threat with all means possible to the ability to cause as few as possible innocent casualties (believe me, anyone who is human and sane does not enjoy doing this). Now a note I will also mention here. Many innocent Palestinian civilians have lost their lives in the conflict, it is to my personal opinion that more Palestinian civilians have been killed in crossfire with their own militant Palestinians as opposed to the Israeli Army. Think of it, you have a group of people who have recieved no basic training, are not experienced in firing arms, and the arms are old, ammo is inaccurate and often misfires. The army on the other hand rigerously trains its troops with their rifle, often more accurate and more modern guns then those of the Palestinians.
I will add that their is no place for innocents in a battlefield, especially children. It is at the fault of primarly the Parents, and the government who have propopgated the youth to such acts of hate with their full pledged incitement (look at the first post link for a few pics of this, this really happens).
It is really sad when a people train and force their kids to go to the streets to try and make trouble in hopes that the Israelis will kill them so they can make them mayrters and 'legitimize' their cause to rid the map of Israel.
Think of it, if no kids were throwing stones, or their they could not die. It is like Golda Meyer said something along the lines of(former Israeli PM) "We can forgive the arabs for killing our children, but we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children".
It is a sad truth, no moral human enjoys killing.. especially innocents, but what can you do? This is a war forced upon you. The Palestinians are like the Taliban and Al quedia, they forced a war upon you and you have to fight back.
Ok to reinforce my position, I give you an essay that is not mines but sounds pretty good anyway and should shed some light onto the topic for you;
| quote: | In general Israelis are not happy that they are hurting palestinians (you can always find a few wackos in every society but I am talking about the overwhelming majority on all sides of the israeli political scene). Well, israelis have learned to defend themselves very effectively, and war, as an american general who burned his way across the southern states of the usa once said “is Hell!”. You can see in the long essay on how the palestinians have repeatedly refused to make peace (ever since the late 1930’s) and have repeatedly attacked israel and especially israeli civilians. But I will confine myself to just this round of the conflict and why, though they don’t feel good about killing and wounding palestinian civilians (and if you don’t believe me try reading israeli media or seeing israeli tv). Arafat’s strategy throughout the war has been to attract western sympathy by forcing the israelis to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible. This is of course a new concept in the responsibility of a political leader to his people. How is this being done? First of all by sending children to pelt israeli soldiers with rocks and molotov cocktails – this attracts the press but the israelis prefer not shooting the kids, so step two is to hide riflemen behind the children who open fire on the israeli troops in the hope that these will return fire and kill some of the kids. The israelis reacted by allowing only specially trained snipers to shoot the palestinian riflemen. This didn’t ensure that no kids would be hit but it reduced it to a minimum. As opposed to the aimed fire of the israelis the palestinians fired automatic fire over the heads and through the crowds of children – no one knows how many children were hit by palestinian fire and how many by the israelis, the palestinians have the bodies and don’t allow anyone to check them (remember the kid made famous in his death a year ago [the one hiding behind his father] – he got hit by a burst of automatic fire near an israeli position that was being fired upon from three different directions, one near him, one on the opposite side of the israeli position – unlike hollywood, in reality bullets that miss the intended target don’t disappear into mid-air).
Then they add play-acting – I saw one videotape which shows two palestinians carrying a “badly-wounded” comrade to an ambulance. Unfortunately for them the driver did not see them and backed into them knocking them over – the first to recover was the “badly-wounded” teenager who suddenly got to his feet all well again…[ahh yes i have seen plenty of these myself. Just the other week a perfectly fit teenager was rushed into an ambulance]
Another trick is to walk into the apartment of a family [palestinian one] and open fire on the israelis who of course fire back – sometimes hitting members of the family as well. If the same house is used again and again and is near an israeli position or civilian traffic the israelis evict the family and knock it down. Now you get beautiful photos of israeli bulldozers and screaming women. If the house was derelict – no problem, for a dollar or two you can bring up some screaming women with their children for the cameras to see… etc etc etc. [this is the case of a month ago when the world was 'outraged' how Israel bulldozed houses in Gaza. The Israeli army said they were emtpy and they were right, but the Palesitians shipped in hundrends of refugees to the scene with their belongings to make it look as if they were inhabited.]
The israelis have a problem – either they let their people get killed or they fight back and every once in a while they also kill the wrong person. And even when they kill only the right people – i.e. palestinian combatants – no problem, most of them don’t wear uniforms anyway, so a palestinian spokesman or woman says that they were not armed (who can check anyway?). Only when the bodies are left in Israeli hands do you see the weapons.[of course the Palestinians would want to take the weapons away so they could use them for another time as well, and the Israelis would take it away to prevent this] And since most (not all) of the western media has an anti-Israeli bias they don’t really make an effort to find out what really happened. As opposed to israeli casualties of which two thirds are civilians (and deliberately so – see the bombings and shootings in israeli restaurants, buses, discos and schools well away from any military target as an example), the vast majority of palestinian killed are combatants. All told this means that the israelis may have killed a couple of hundred non-combatants in a year and three months of CONTINUOUS fighting (over 10,500 recorded incidents in which palestinians used rifles, machineguns, hand-grenades, rifle-grenades, mortars, short-range rockets, mines of various types and a large variety of explosive devices against israeli civilians and security personnel – notice that I am NOT counting stone-throwing incidents, only real weapons). Now let’s compare this to another war that lasted only 73 days in which NATO aircraft (mostly americans) killed, according to the american general commanding them, 1,500 civilians! During the past year and three months the israelis lost 253 killed (civilians and soldiers) and possibly 4,000 to 5,000 wounded (the number of israeli wounded receives so little press coverage I am not sure about the total) [these are statistics from January 10th, the numbers are much higher now]. How many nato pilots died in combat over serbia? None! They flew so high to stay out of trouble they often hit the wrong targets. How many nato civilians were killed by the enemy in their homes or restaurants etc? none! [actually a quiet a few but nevermind hehe] Now let’s have a look at afghanistan – how many afghan civilians who were not only NOT members of the taliban but consider themselves oppressed by them were killed? God alone knows but AT LEAST hundreds. How many of them lost their homes to american bombs? God alone knows but if the publicized list of targets hit and the snippets of videos are any indication – at least hundreds. So if we compare the israelis by the standards set by the western armies of whose morals we are so proud I think they come out pretty good (and I am NOT being cynical, only someone who has experienced combat has any inkling how difficult it is to do things correctly, how confusing everything is). Are the israelis perfect? Ofcourse not. No one is. Israelis are ordianry fallible human beings – some are bad, some are decent sometimes they make mistakes (don’t we all? And in combat ten times as many, as someone once said – I think it was napoleon – battles are won by the side that makes fewer mistakes). I think an in-depth study shows that only a few are bad (just as you would find in any western state or army) and the vast majority are decent.[once again rates in a democratic army are much fewer, since they uphold law and are courtmarshaled and punished if they abuse the law.. even the laws of war] They have no reason to feel shame. If anything, I think the vast majority of Israeli soldiers have earned the right to feel proud of their achievements and moral fibre. |
Ok well he spared me from writing a detailed essay, he has many valid points, some reinforce the points I made above.
If you have any more questions I will be glad to give you an answer, as I have said earlier this is quiet a clear cut situations. The Israelis are the good, the Palesitinians are the bad. Don't believe me? try and disprove it and you will see.
Yoepus
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!
Monty Python's Holy Grail, a comment on how Arthur got Excalibur
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