How much is one Israeli life worth? About one hundred Palestinians, apparently.
Earlier in the week Palestinian militants fired a rocket into Israel and killed one Israeli. The retaliation by Israel in Gaza has resulted in about 100 Palestinian deaths, including some young boys playing football in a field.
Gaza is the most densely populated plot of land on the planet – firing a missile into Gaza City is like dropping a grenade into a tin of Sardines with the intention of missing the fish. The general attitude of the Israeli military toward Palestinian life is similar to that of Australians toward Aborigines in the first half of the last century, when they were classed as animals and it was legal to hunt them. The civillian deaths in Palestine aren’t collateral damage, it’s punishment.
Whether you support Israel and it’s illegal occupation of Palestine or not, there is no way you can reasonably justify the deaths of 100 Palestinians in response to the death of one Israeli. It’s not self-defence, it’s morally and legally wrong. Deliberately targeting civillians is prohibited by the Geneva Convention and international law says that the response to an attack must be in proportion to the threat. A group of militants in Gaza firing rockets into Israel is not the same as a land and air attack by the Israeli armed forces.
There is only one way that the conflict in Palestine and Israel will ever end and that is for Israel to pull out of Palestine. That is never going to happen whilst the Americans continue to support Israel.
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As far as I’m aware Israel has pulled out of Palestine as in they don’t occupy Gaza or the West Bank anymore. Or are you suggesting as Hamas does that Israel should be driven into the sea to take back a land that the majority of Palestinians weren’t born in and no longer have ties too?
It’s been 60 years now since Israel was founded, all the worlds refugee problems in that time have been sorted, there are no Pakistani refugees waiting on the border of India, etc. The whole thing is just a con run by the Palestinian leadership to garner sympathy and cream off funds to live their lifestyles whilst the proles suffer.
Get the UN to do some good and remove arms from the Palestinians and depose their leadership and then, you’ll make progress.
Dear Wonka,
I agree with your concerns about the value of human life. I hope you will forgive me for repeating underneath this comment on your site something which I just also put on as a comment at Harry’s Place (Comment 280something below a load of semantic bollox about what some Israeli minister may or may not have said meant when he mentioned the word ‘shoa’ or holocaust when discussing killing Palestinians.)
“At the expense of being flamed by all sides, can I just say I have read all this and have come to the conclusion that I do not know what the truth is. That is not odd. I have however decided that I do not care about trying to find it out anymore.
I consider all sides in the Arab-Israeli disputes, Jews, Muslims, Zionists, Socialists, Fatahistas, Jihadis, Peaceniks, Christians, Palestinians, Investors, Hezbollah, Settlers, On-lookers, Israelis, Bankers, Refugees, Envoys, Arabs, War Heros, Mediators, Arms Salesmen, Politicians, Deserters, Egyptians, Soldiers, Diplomats, Jordanians, Terrorists, Victims, Innocent Victims, Bystanders, Collaborators, Lebanese, Crying Women with Babes in Arms, Cultural Icons Nodding Sagely, and Commentators have FOR MY ENTIRE LIFETIME, been splitting hairs, lying, evading the truth, hiding the facts, wilfully misunderstanding each other, provocatively playing stupid, irritatingly wheedling, diving, ducking, weaving, dodging, sniping, play-acting, milking it, nose-thumbing, losing it in translation, passing phoney resolutions, unconvincingly over-dramatising, hiding behind the small print, suspiciously understating, artfully manipulating and generally been all-round pains in the ass.
But none of you ever started anything or did anything wrong. I am totally fed up with it.”
I can’t imagine, Dave H, that the Palestinian leadership are living it up all that much – they are living in Gaza and the West Bank, after all. Hardly a great place to raise your kids…
It’s an insult to Wonko to suggest he’d countenance Israelis being driven into the sea. And as for your suggestion that the UN should oust the democratically elected leaders of the Palestinian people…
Wonko’s main points are spot on: there cannot be moral equivalence between militants firing home-made rockets into Israel and the IDF flying over Gaza in helicopter gunships to blow up houses. Both are wrong, of course – but one is more wrong than the other. I doubt that the US government will be able to sustain the levels of subsidy to Israel over the next few years – a subsidy which is harmful to the Israeli people as it prevents peace.
By the way, the Israeli defence minister who threatened to repeat the Holocaust in reference to incursions into Gaza offended the survivors of the Holocaust as well as those Palestinians in Gaza.
Dave, I don’t advocate Israeli’s being driven into the sea. As Charlie says – and I have said many times before – Palestinian militants firing homemade rockets into Israel is not the same as Israel sending in tanks and helicopter gunships. International law says that the response must be proportionate to the threat.
Hamas was elected in free and fair elections. Israel tried to hamper the elections but they didn’t succeed. They might share a name but Hamas the political party and Hamas the terrorist group aren’t the same – it’s like the IRA and Sinn Féin. Would you have elected Sinn Féin MPs and Assembly Members booted out of Northern Ireland?
The self-defence argument just doesn’t stand up any more. It’s gone way past self-defence and into revenge. Israel is guilty of human rights abuses, breaking international law and willfully violating UN resolutions and the Geneva Convention. If it was anyone other than Israel, the Americans would have invaded by now.
I couldn’t let the comment from ‘Dave H” pass by without contributing a little story of my own. When I was up at university in the late 1960’s, I had a Palestinian friend whose family had been merchants in Jerusalem since the 16th century, had indeed occupied the same desirable town house since before the year 1600. When the Israeli state was proclaimed in 1948 my friend was just a few months old. A week after the formation of Israel his father found a row of rifle bullets on their doorstep; the same number of bullets as there were members of his family. They took the hint and became refugees. This method of acquiring Arab property by the Jews was repeated all over what was then Palestine; the question for Israeli apologists is, at what stage did the thieves acquire a legal title to the stolen property? The Israeli state declared that such property had been ‘abandoned’ by its rightful owners, as they tried to recently with Palestinian farmland made inaccessible to its owners by their horrendous Apartheid Wall, but even the Israeli courts wouldn’t wear that one.
Keep up the good work, Wonko, Cheers, Kevin F.