Israel to World: "Suck It."

I believe that civilians in Gaza are innocents and I believe that the IDF takes numerous precautions to preserve civilian life including calling ahead to buildings and dropping leaflets warning civilians to clear target areas.

This is kind of belied by officials saying publicly that we need to punish Gaza, bomb it back to the stone age, etc. Also, official policy and what the people with guns in their hands (or soldiers at their command) actually do are not always the same thing.

I mean, I'm not saying they try to maximize civillian deaths, or that they don't take some measures to reduce them, but the whole "nicest military in the world" schtick is starting to run a little thin

Yeah it's bullshit.

Sharon Udasin reports on on environment, energy, scientific innovation and Negev issues. New Jersey born and bred, Sharon moved to Israel in September 2010, after spending two years as a staff writer at The New York Jewish Week in Manhattan. Prior to her position there, she earned a Master's degree in 2008 from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, which directly followed her four years as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania.

But of course.

IDF consistently has the lowest civilian to combatant casualty ratio in the history of armed conflict.

Colonel Richard Kemp, former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, spoke in 2011 about Israeli operations in the Gaza War. He said that a study published by the United Nations showed "that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza was by far the lowest in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare." He stated that this ratio was less than 1:1, and compared it favorably to the estimated ratios in NATO operations in Afghanistan (3:1), western campaigns in Iraq and Kosovo (believed to be 4:1), and the conflicts in Chechnya and Serbia (much higher than 4:1, according to anecdotal evidence).

Quiddities and agonies of olim.

an 1 for an 1.

re: that media center

4:47 P.M. Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad says an Israeli strike on a Gaza media center has killed one of its top militant leaders. It's the second strike on the building in two days. The Hamas TV station, Al Aqsa, is located on the top floor.

Islamic Jihad has sent a text message to reporters saying that Ramez Harb was killed in the strike Monday. Harb is a leading figure in their militant wing, the Al Quds Brigades.

Sharon Udasin reports on on environment, energy, scientific innovation and Negev issues. New Jersey born and bred, Sharon moved to Israel in September 2010, after spending two years as a staff writer at The New York Jewish Week in Manhattan. Prior to her position there, she earned a Master's degree in 2008 from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, which directly followed her four years as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania.

― buzza, Monday, November 19, 2012 10:59 AM (22 minutes ago)

update to "all sad"

Dude, just because they weren't firing on a TV station for being a TV station, doesn't mean they weren't, you know, firing on a TV station.

There are people who are deliberately self-hardened to the suffering of others. I would like to believe that the Sharon Udasins of the world are not like this, but rather are just so sheltered that they have never even been able to conceive of the suffering of others, and that maybe they would be capable of change with exposure to the right circumstances.

The IAF killed senior Islamic Jihad member Ramez Hamez, who was involved in launching long-range missiles toward Israel. The IDF reports it hit three more Jihad operatives: Baha Abu al-Alta, a member of the organization's supreme military council, who was also involved in launching long-range missiles; Tayasir Jabari, also a member of the military council in charge of its operations portfolio; and Khalil Bahatini, also involved in long-range launches. According to the report, the four were hit at the Gaza media center. Antennae and other broadcasting equipment stationed on the roof of the building were also damaged.

Hamas keeps its militants located at civilian areas like TV stations, hospitals, and schools, so that they can maximize civilian collateral damage.

xp Maybe she just has a shitty job?

yeah, actually it's also possible that this was her editor's idea, not hers

mordy, i think everyone accepts hamas does that. the quibble is whether it's then ok to fling a fuckin rocket towards them anyway, on the off-chance

It obviously wasn't flung on the off chance that maybe they were there. It was fired because they had intelligence that indicated they were there. It wasn't a lucky random hit.

ha fair enough

The quibble is that it's not ok, even if you're 100%

Hamas keeps its militants located at civilian areas like TV stations, hospitals, and schools, so that they can maximize civilian collateral damage.

Well that ought to work out pretty well for them I think, I mean what kind of monsters would intentionally aim at those targets?

If the chance of civilian fatalities should preclude any military response to violence, then that's a first principle I can respect but with which I disagree.

According to Haaretz, Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said this about Israel's attacks on Gaza: "The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages." Let me know if any of the US Sunday talk shows mention that tomorrow during their discussions of this "operation".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/17/israel-gaza-us-policy

It's a good thing that Eli Yishai does not dictate strategy to Ehud Barak.

that might be superfluous and redundant.

that old chestnut "doctrine of double effect" is relevant here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/

you are welcome to disagree with it but the idf did not invent it

note however that neither aquinas nor any other moral philosopher would defend sharon udasin's lifestyle piece about freaked-out pets

well st. francis might

god has given the rocket to government with good reason

I don't read the Jerusalem Post but, assuming that most of their coverage is concerned with the actual major issues of the fighting and its effects on people, I'm not sure that it's a moral error to also throw in a fluffy piece about the effect of sirens on pets, although I get why it's kind of funny.

especially at the end when she says "I'm totally open to writing about Gazan pets too!"

I loled irl, don't get me wrong.

sund4r I might agree if I saw a little more *human interest* in Palestinians from the JPost.

OK, like I said, I don't read JPost so I'm probably missing context. If that op-ed upthread is typical, then this suddenly seems much darker.

JPost is pretty right wing, not as bad as Arutz Sheva, that op-ed was pretty horrific but not typical in my experience (nb I don't read particularly often).

If the chance of civilian fatalities should preclude any military response to violence, then that's a first principle I can respect but with which I disagree.

― Mordy, Monday, November 19, 2012 11:35 AM (57 minutes ago)

you...surely can't mean this. any civilian casualties? disproportionately large civilian casualties? you must draw the line somewhere

I didn't say that.

in your 1:1 combatant/civilian death ratio above mordy, both those ppl are still statistically likely to be palestinians, right? I mean, it's a weaselly-worded stat if i'm guessing right.

I don't know why it's weaselly. Israel is fighting Hamas. Hamas is a Palestinian organization.

you didn't say what?

the ira is an irish organisation, even at the height of it the brits managed not to discriminately slaughter too many of the rest of us.

K3v, saying "I disagree that a chance of civilian fatalities should (always) preclude any military response to violence" isn't the same as saying "a chance of civilian casualties should never preclude any military response to violence"

k3v, I did not say that any number of civilian casualties is justifiable, and the term 'disproportionately' indicates the subjective ambiguity of what constitutes a proportionate v. disproportionate strike. All I said is that I reject the claim that risk of civilian casualty should preclude military responses to violence. (xp what Andrew said.)

darragh, I am not conversant enough in the IRA situation to speak to the ways that it is and isn't similar to the Israel/Hamas conflict.

me neither tbh

but the parallel i drew seems simple enough to remark on, to my mind. 'Hamas is a palestinian organisation' is no softener to palestinian civilian casualties, and is far too close, in context & imo, to saying 'all palestines are equivalent to hamas'

Some Palestinians are legitimate military targets because they plan and commit war crimes against Israeli citizens. Most Palestinians are not legitimate military targets because they are innocent civilians. When prosecuting a war against legitimate military targets there is always a risk of civilian casualties. It is a moral imperative to take actions to reduce the risks of civilian casualties. The ratio of legitimate targets to civilian casualties is not a terrible way of gauging how well those risks were reduced. Am I misunderstanding your contention?

hamas is also an organization that was elected into governing power, the IRA was not

The crucial differences are I think a) IRA and their sympathisers in Northern Ireland are still, from the UK's point of view, UK citizens and b) the sympathizers outside are in a country with an actual army.

Which is not to suggest that the UK would be acting like the IDF but for these circumstances!

xp iatee unless I'm misreading you, that's a little close to "but they voted for them!" - surely some of EG the doctors and nurses in the hospitals might have other political allegiances (or none)

mordy, dont agree w u but im apologizing anyway. xpost

On IDF having the lowest civilian-to-militant death ratio: That is probably not their fault, right? (that wiki-article is not that precise) Most civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and Kosova was killed by the sectarians and terrorists themselves, the low ratio mainly means, that Palestinians are unusually united (though I did read some articles on how Hamas usually took advantage of Israeli attacks to eliminate their internal enemies as well)

"IDF consistently has the lowest civilian to combatant casualty ratio in the history of armed conflict."

something about "in the history of armed conflict" makes me wanna roll my damn eyes

for starters: what a hilariously grandiose claim. also false. if we're considering the HISTORY OF ARMED CONFLICT then, you know, battles fought on battlefields by dudes explicitly there for battling are gonna turn out better civ:soldier casualty ratios because those ratios are basically going to be zero; if you were there, with a sword in your hand, you were not a civilian (even though you probably were). but w/e

anyway, i don't think that the IDF's interest in minimizing civilian casualties should be seen as special or unique; it's an interest shared by virtually all modern militaries. a really great civ:soldier death ratio just means the IDF is really good at killing certain people, not that they're inherently ~nicer~ than other armies, or, like, going above and beyond what should really be expected of them. i mean, think of how grotesque that idea is: the IDF is a great army because...they're NOT killing people that they could totally be killing right now. making too much of it gets you people saying stuff like this, which is really nagl:

Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School stated that the 2008 figure of 1:30 represents the lowest civilian to combatant casualty ratio in history in the setting of combating terrorism. Dershowitz criticized the international media and human rights organizations for not taking sufficient note of it. He also argued that even this figure may be misleading because not all civilians are innocent bystanders.

a-bloo-hoo-hoo, no one is giving props for tactics like:

Pinpoint targeting - singling out terrorists for an airstrike in a way that won't harm civilian bystanders.
Aborting strikes due to risk of civilians being injured or killed.
Advanced technology - the IDF has heavily invested in smart bombs, and has developed special missiles, such as the F-16I Sufa and the Delilah Missile, which has the ability to cancel a strike while in the air.

it's not that we only very recently decided that it might be a good idea to shoot the missile EXACTLY where the bad guy is, it's that now we can.

what's so smart about bombs anyway

As I understand it (and I'm not a serious scholar of the history of war so I may be misinformed), civilian casualties in war have trended significantly downward over time and despite the picturesque image we may have sometimes of two armies meeting on a battlefield, they always had a devastating impact on the civilian population.