Bulletin N°401
Subject: ON THE LOSS OF CONFIDENCE AND OTHER DISADVANTAGES.
24 March 2009
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Toward the end of his life, Mao Zedong was reported to have commented in response to a question about the future of humanity : "If a big meteor hit the earth and destroyed everything that would be a major event for the solar system but a relatively minor event for the galaxy." From the galactic perspective, whether humankind learns to flourish together with beauty and ethical relations among one another, or simply ceases to exist, is of no importance. It is the human project --the means by which we project ourselves into the future-- that determines our meaning. There are no guarantees and as Jim Morrison once said: "Nobody gets out of here alive!"
Continuing our preparation for the colloquium on "Ethics and Social Class Relationships in the United States," which will be held on 6 May 2009 at The University of Paris10-Nanterre, we have confronted both materialist and idealist descriptions of the formation of ethical behavior. Hazel E. Barnes, the American translator of Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943), criticizes Sartre for failing to realize that "the confrontation of freedom" (i.e. "the consciousness' recognition of its Nothingness" which accompanies Being) is not necessarily "a moment of anguish and despair," from which most people flee in "bad faith," taking refuge, as Sartre writes, in the serious world, "that realm of convention where one unquestioningly accepts as absolutes the prevailing values of the group in which one finds oneself." In contrast, Barnes argues that humankind's capacity to separate itself from its objects, i.e. its capacity for effecting a nothingness to achieve this separation, "may just as well be grasped as a moment of self-realization and that one may cling to it as such, either with an attitude which Sartre, too, would call ethical or by making of it a reason for choosing the nonethical." [An Existentialist Ethics,(1967, 1985), p.18]
In short, the choice is not merely between authenticity and unauthenticity. It is threefold, and those critics are right who have pointed out that authenticity by itself does not necessarily result in what may properly be called the ethical life. Persons who take refuge in unauthenticity and bad faith do not deliberately choose the nonethical. They recognize a need to justify their lives but are terrified at the thought of trying to do so without some clearly defined, impersonal standard which from outside themselves would guarantee certain absolute rights and wrongs. They want a certainty which they cannot feel so long as they realize that the choice of values derives from their own freedom. We cannot call their position ethical inasmuch as it is based upon self-deception, but it is the very opposite of an open choice of the nonethical. It is in reality a choice of the appearance of the ethical.
The choice to live unauthentically rests upon a refusal to recognize the existence and demands of freedom; it seeks to hide from itself the very fact that it is a choice. The choice to be ethical embraces both the recognition that one is free and the acceptance of the responsibility which freedom entails. It is an authentic choice [when] the decision to justify one's life derives from one's own spontaneous desire and is not imposed from the outside.
This is the process which I have spoken of as the genetic assimilation of an acquired character. Although its mechanism is quite different from the Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters, being entirely based on the concepts of orthodox Mendelian genetics, it can in fact play in evolutionary theory the vary role for which Lamarckian hypotheses have often been invoked.
To obtain a complete picture of the evolutionary system, we need to take into account one further set of factors. These may be spoken of as the 'exploitive system'. Animals are usually surrounded by a much wider range of environmental conditions than they are willing to inhabit. They live in a highly heterogeneous 'ambiance', from which they themselves select the particular habitat in which their life will be passed. Moreover, not only do animals exhibit behavior which can be considered as the exercise of choice between alternative environmen5ts but in many cases they perform actions which modify the environment as it was originally offered to them; for instance, by building nests, burrows, etc. Thus, the animal by its behavior contributes in a most important way to determining the nature and intensity of the selective pressures which will be exerted on it. Natural selection is very far from being as external a force as the conventional picture might lead one at first sight to believe. Clearly, a whole series of problems arise in this field, but they have as yet been rather little studied, and as understanding of the mutual dependence of selection and behavior is still largely a matter for the future.
Biological evolution, then, is carried out by an 'evolutionary system' which involves four major factors . . . : a genetic system, which engenders new variation by the process of mutation and transmits it by chromosomal genes; an epigenetic system, which translates the information in the fertilized egg and that which impinges on it form the environment into the characters of the reproducing adult; an exploitive system, by which an animal chooses and modifies the environment to which it will submit itself; and a system of natural selective pressures, originating from the environment and operating on the combined result of the other three systems.(pp.95-96)
It would seem that there are some things we do not yet know about inherited traits:
In the 9 items below we offer CEIMSA readers discussions which would pertain to the art of disarming dangerous people, requiring a knowledge of strategy, tactics and logistics. This art is all but impracticable in an environment where conflict is profitable and peace exists only as a perceived threat to private advantage, where man is perceived as "a useless passion" and "thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations." In this context, "bad faith" poisons the environment which is sure to reproduce more of the same.At a relatively crude level of argument, it is clear that the killing of one member of a human group by another member of the same group will tend for a number of reasons to lead to the weakening of that social unit. During much of human history there must have been a powerful intergroup natural selection, and this would lead to the spread of hereditary factors which would tend to inhibit behavior of such an anti-social kind. This is the process of the biological evolution of altruism as Haldane and Muller have discussed it; the process which Chauncey Leake christened 'ethicogenesis'. In my opinion it is likely to have had some, but only a restricted, importance.
The more important determination of man's ethical attitude toward killing are to be found in the social rather than in the biological sphere. There is, in the first place, the fact that our ethical beliefs originate in experiences with our parents and others which initially inculcate lessons of co-operation and sympathy with other individuals. However much this substratum may become overlaid in the later developments of the super-ego, every man's ethical beliefs are bound to begin with a bias in this direction. Again, at quite a different level, we must recognize that the anagenesis of man has been toward the production of personalities capable of an ever richer experience, which arises in the main from his interactions with other people in his social environment; and the type of inter-personal experience of which a man is capable is not independent of the permissiveness of his ethical system toward killing. Men who can with equanimity bring about the death of another human being are in general characterized by some insensitivity towards other individuals, and this insensitivity is likely to be increased if an act of killing is actually performed. It is, I think, these considerations concerning the killer, rather than those concerning the person killed, which have played the major part in bringing about the evolution of the widespread condemnation in modern societies of practices such as dueling, or the murderous violence of the Italian Renaissance, or even capital punishment. And it is on grounds such as these that, if we look as human ethical systems from the standpoint of evolution, we can conclude that, although death is a biological necessity, an ethical system which condemns the procurement of the death of a human individual is to be commended.(The Ethical Animal, pp.214-215)
USA Has Two Options To Save its Economy:
Declare Default or Trigger War
by Ekaterina Yevstigneyeva
Is the Israel lobby in Washington an all-powerful force? Or is it, perhaps, running scared?
Judging by the outcome of the Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman affair this week, it might seem as if the Israeli lobby is fearsome indeed. Seen more broadly, however, the controversy over Freeman could be the Israel lobby's Waterloo.
Let's recap. On February 19th, Laura Rozen reported at ForeignPolicy.com that Freeman had been selected by Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, to serve in a key post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). The NIC, the official in-house think tank of the intelligence community, takes input from 16 intelligence agencies and produces what are called "national intelligence estimates" on crucial topics of the day as guidance for Washington policymakers. For that job, Freeman boasted a stellar resumé: fluent in Mandarin Chinese, widely experienced in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, and an ex-assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration.
A wry, outspoken iconoclast, Freeman had, however, crossed one of Washington's red lines by virtue of his strong criticism of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Over the years, he had, in fact, honed a critique of Israel that was both eloquent and powerful. Hours after the Foreign Policy story was posted, Steve Rosen, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), launched what would soon become a veritable barrage of criticism of Freeman on his right-wing blog.
Rosen himself has already been indicted by the Department of Justice in an espionage scandal over the transfer of classified information to outside parties involving a colleague at AIPAC, a former official in Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, and an official at the Israeli embassy. His blog, Obama Mideast Monitor, is hosted by the Middle East Forum website run by Daniel Pipes, a hard-core, pro-Israeli rightist, whose Middle East Quarterly is, in turn, edited by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Over approximately two weeks, Rosen would post 19 pieces on the Freeman story.
The essence of Rosen's criticism centered on the former ambassador's strongly worded critique of Israel. (That was no secret. Freeman had repeatedly denounced many of Israel's policies and Washington's too-close relationship with Jerusalem. "The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending," said Freeman in 2007. "American identification with Israel has become total.") But Rosen, and those who followed his lead, broadened their attacks to make unfounded or exaggerated claims, taking quotes and emails out of context, and accusing Freeman of being a pro-Arab "lobbyist," of being too closely identified with Saudi Arabia, and of being cavalier about China's treatment of dissidents. They tried to paint the sober, conservative former U.S. official as a wild-eyed radical, an anti-Semite, and a pawn of the Saudi king.
From Rosen's blog, the anti-Freeman vitriol spread to other right-wing, Zionist, and neoconservative blogs, then to the websites of neocons mouthpieces like the New Republic, Commentary, National Review, and the Weekly Standard, which referred to Freeman as a "Saudi puppet." From there, it would spread to the Atlantic and then to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, where Gabriel Schoenfeld called Freeman a "China-coddling Israel basher," and the Washington Post, where Jonathan Chait of the New Republic labeled Freeman a "fanatic."
Before long, staunch partisans for Israel on Capitol Hill were getting into the act. These would, in the end, include Representative Steve Israel and Senator Charles Schumer, both New York Democrats; a group of Republican House members led by John Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader, and Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican Whip; seven Republican members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; and, finally, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who engaged in a sharp exchange with Admiral Blair about Freeman at a Senate hearing.
Though Blair strongly defended Freeman, the two men got no support from an anxious White House, which took (politely put) a hands-off approach. Seeing the writing on the wall -- all over the wall, in fact -- Freeman came to the conclusion that, even if he could withstand the storm, his ability to do the job had, in effect, already been torpedoed. Whatever output the National Intelligence Council might produce under his leadership, as Freeman told me in an interview, would instantly be attacked. "Anything that it produced that was politically controversial would immediately be attributed to me as some sort of political deviant, and be discredited," he said.
On March 10th, Freeman bowed out, but not with a whimper. In a letter to friends and colleagues, he launched a defiant, departing counterstrike that may, in fact, have helped to change the very nature of Washington politics. "The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth," wrote Freeman. "The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views."
Freeman put it more metaphorically to me: "It was a nice way of, as the Chinese say, killing a chicken to scare the monkeys." By destroying his appointment, Freeman claimed, the Israel lobby hoped to intimidate other critics of Israel and U.S. Middle East policy who might seek jobs in the Obama administration.
On Triumphs, Hysterias, and Mobs
It remains to be seen just how many "monkeys" are trembling. Certainly, the Israel lobby crowed in triumph. Daniel Pipes, for instance, quickly praised Rosen's role in bringing down Freeman:
"What you may not know is that Steven J. Rosen of the Middle East Forum was the person who first brought attention to the problematic nature of Freeman's appointment," wrote Pipes. "Within hours, the word was out, and three weeks later Freeman has conceded defeat. Only someone with Steve's stature and credibility could have made this happen."
The Zionist Organization of America, a far-right advocacy group that supports Israel, sent out follow-up Action Alerts to its membership, ringing further alarm bells about Freeman as part of a campaign to mobilize public opinion and Congress. Behind the scenes, AIPAC quietly used its considerable clout, especially with friends and allies in the media. And Chuck Schumer, who had trotted over to the White House to talk to Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, later said bluntly:
"Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing."
Numerous reporters, including Max Blumenthal at the Daily Beast website and Spencer Ackerman of Firedoglake, have effectively documented the role of the Israel lobby, including AIPAC, in sabotaging Freeman's appointment. From their accounts and others, it seems clear that the lobby left its fingerprints all over Freeman's National Intelligence Council corpse. (Indeed, Time's Joe Klein described the attack on Freeman as an "assassination," adding that the term "lobby" doesn't do justice to the methods of the various lobbying groups, individuals, and publications: "He was the victim of a mob, not a lobby. The mob was composed primarily of Jewish neoconservatives.")
On the other hand, the Washington Post, in a near-hysterical editorial, decided to pretend that the Israel lobby really doesn't exist, accusing Freeman instead of sending out a "crackpot tirade." Huffed the Post, "Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister 'Lobby'... His statement was a grotesque libel."
The Post's case might have been stronger, had it not, just one day earlier, printed an editorial in which it called on Attorney General Eric Holder to exonerate Steve Rosen and drop the espionage case against him. Entitled "Time to Call It Quits," the editorial said:
"The matter involves Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former officials for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC... A trial has been scheduled for June in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Mr. Holder should pull the plug on this prosecution long before then."
In his interview with me, Freeman noted the propensity members of the Israel lobby have for denying the lobby's existence, even while taking credit for having forced him out and simultaneously claiming that they had nothing to do with it. "We're now at the ludicrous stage where those who boasted of having done it and who described how they did it are now denying that they did it," he said.
Running Scared
The Israel lobby has regularly denied its own existence even as it has long carried on with its work, in stealth as in the bright sunlight. In retrospect, however, l'affaire Freeman may prove a game changer. It has already sparked a new, more intense mainstream focus on the lobby, one that far surpasses the flap that began in March, 2006, over the publication of an essay by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt in the London Review of Books that was, in 2007, expanded into a book, The Israel Lobby. In fact, one of the sins committed by Freeman, according to his critics, is that an organization he headed, the Middle East Policy Council, published an early version of the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis -- which argued that a powerful, pro-Israel coalition exercises undue influence over American policymakers -- in its journal.
In his blog at Foreign Policy, Walt reacted to Freeman's decision to withdraw by writing:
"For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel lobby,' or who admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence, or who thought that the real problem was some supposedly all-powerful 'Saudi lobby,' think again."
What the Freeman affair brought was unwanted, often front-page attention to the lobby. Writers at countless blogs and websites -- including yours truly, at the Dreyfuss Report -- dissected or reported on the lobby's assault on Freeman, including Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe at Antiwar.com, Glenn Greenwald in his Salon.com column, M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Peace Forum, and Phil Weiss at Mondoweiss. Far more striking, however, is that for the first time in memory, both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran page-one stories about the Freeman controversy that specifically used the phrase "Israel lobby," while detailing the charges and countercharges that followed upon Freeman's claim that the lobby did him in.
This new attention to the lobby's work comes at a critical moment, which is why the toppling of Freeman might be its Waterloo.
As a start, right-wing partisans of Israel have grown increasingly anxious about the direction that President Obama intends to take when it comes to U.S. policy toward Israel, the Palestinians, Iran, and the Middle East generally. Despite the way, in the middle of the presidential campaign last June, Obama recited a pro-Israeli catechism in a speech at AIPAC's national conference in Washington, they remain unconvinced that he will prove reliable on their policy concerns. Among other things, they have long been suspicious of his reputed openness to Palestinian points of view.
No less important, while the appointments of Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state and Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff were reassuring, other appointments were far less so. They were, for instance, concerned by several of Obama's campaign advisers -- and not only Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who were quietly eased out of Obamaland early in 2008. An additional source of worry was Daniel Shapiro and Daniel Kurtzer, both Jewish, who served as Obama's top Middle East aides during the campaign and were seen as not sufficiently loyal to the causes favored by hardline, right-wing types.
Since the election, many lobby members have viewed a number of Obama's top appointments, including Shapiro, who's taken the Middle East portfolio at the National Security Council, and Kurtzer, who's in line for a top State Department job, with great unease. Take retired Marine general and now National Security Advisor James L. Jones, who, like Brzezinski, is seen as too sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view and who reputedly wrote a report last year highly critical of Israel's occupation policies; or consider George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, who is regarded by many pro-Israeli hawks as far too level-headed and even-handed to be a good mediator; or, to mention one more appointment, Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell and now a National Security Council official who has, in the past, made comments sharply critical of Israel.
Of all of these figures, Freeman, because of his record of blunt statements, was the most vulnerable. His appointment looked like low-hanging fruit when it came to launching a concerted, preemptive attack on the administration. As it happens, however, this may prove anything but a moment of strength for the lobby. After all, the recent three-week Israeli assault on Gaza had already generated a barrage of headlines and television images that made Israel look like a bully nation with little regard for Palestinian lives, including those of women and children. According to polls taken in the wake of Gaza, growing numbers of Americans, including many in the Jewish community, have begun to exhibit doubts about Israel's actions, a rare moment when public opinion has begun to tilt against Israel.
Perhaps most important of all, Israel is about to be run by an extremist, ultra right-wing government led by Likud Party leader Bibi Netanyahu, and including the even more extreme party of Avigdor Lieberman, as well as a host of radical-right religious parties. It's an ugly coalition that is guaranteed to clash with the priorities of the Obama White House.
As a result, the arrival of the Netanyahu-Lieberman government is also guaranteed to prove a crisis moment for the Israel lobby. It will present an enormous public-relations problem, akin to the one that faced ad agency Hill & Knowlton during the decades in which it had to defend Philip Morris, the hated cigarette company that repeatedly denied the link between its products and cancer. The Israel lobby knows that it will be difficult to sell cartons of menthol smooth Netanyahu-Lieberman 100s to American consumers.
Indeed, Freeman told me:
"The only thing I regret is that in my statement I embraced the term 'Israel lobby.' This isn't really a lobby by, for, or about Israel. It's really, well, I've decided I'm going to call it from now on the [Avigdor] Lieberman lobby. It's the very right-wing Likud in Israel and its fanatic supporters here. And Avigdor Lieberman is really the guy that they really agree with."
So here's the reality behind the Freeman debacle: Already worried over Team Obama, suffering the after-effects of the Gaza debacle, and about to be burdened with the Netanyahu-Lieberman problem, the Israel lobby is undoubtedly running scared. They succeeded in knocking off Freeman, but the true test of their strength is yet to come.
______________
Robert Dreyfuss is an independent investigative journalist in Alexandria, Virginia. He is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, the Nation, the American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Washington Monthly. He is also the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan). He writes the Dreyfuss Report blog for the Nation magazine.
[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project, author of The End of Victory Culture, and editor of The World According to Tomdispatch: America in the New Age of Empire.]
_________________
F.
from Information Clearing House :
Date: 20 March 2009
Subject: Israeli Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza.
March 20, 2009 " Haaretz"
UN Envoy: Gaza Op Seems to be War Crime of Greatest Magnitude
by News Agencies
Gaetano Bresci, à 20:49 le 23 mars
I don't have time to read the entire post right now, I promise I will later but let me just say that Israel wouldn't bomb Mosques if Hamas didn't use them as weapons depots
Amal Hliwi, à 20:54 le 23 mars
yeah right !! funny, but never mind, that's just one minor episode in the Israeli Crime history
but DO plz read the Geneva Convention relative to Civilian pple !!
Gaetano Bresci, à 20:56 le 23 mars
Amal, the Geneva convention states that when a religious site is used as a weapons store house or a military base, it loses its protected status.
Mosques that have weapons or Hamas fighters in them are not protected
Amal Hliwi, à 20:59 le 23 mars
r u serious, ur reading a different Convention my dear, trust me, i have it right in front of me, any way there is nthg that justifies this savage killing, u said that b4 !!!!
by the way, the article is not abt the killing itself, it's rather abt the soldeirs bragging about it !!!!!!
Doghmani Houssem, à 21:26 le 23 mars
useless to talk, everybody know
Racism and hypocrisy are the initiations of Zionism it's creation !!!!!!
but the problem now it 's, how to deal with all this in a legal order ????
no way ,hence the required breakthrough acts !!!
Amal Hliwi, à 21:30 le 23 mars
Don't worry Houssem, legal procedures are being prepared for those war criminals, when french and british lawyers decide to join the prosecutions, then it's getting serious !!
Doghmani Houssem, à 21:40 le 23 mars
Don't forget Amal ,that they were the ones who are causing the current situation since 1944 ;History speaking itself
Amal Hliwi, à 21:41 le 23 mars
yeah, well, we know, the rest of the world shall know some day !
Doghmani Houssem, à 21:44 le 23 mars
exactly , media can be the source of the remedy !!!
Gaetano Bresci, à 21:48 le 23 mars
Acts of hostility towards places of worship in international conflicts are prohibited. Places of worship may not be used in support of the military effort, and they cannot be the objects of reprisals. (Protocol I, Art. 53)
Hamas also breaches the Geneva convention by fighting from amongst the civilian population:
Feigning of civilian or non-combatant status is perfidy and prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. (Protocol I. Art. 37, Sec. 1)
Gaetano Bresci, à 21:49 le 23 mars
Hamas and the PLO have, on more than one occasion, used ambulances to launch attacks or to transport weapons and fighters.
Medical units may not be used to commit acts harmful to the enemy. If they do, they lose their protections under the Geneva Conventions after due warning has been given and a reasonable time limit has passed. (Convention I, Art. 21)
Amal Hliwi, à 21:52 le 23 mars
so, where is the phrase that says the army can target these places, even if they r used as a shelter ?? u know better my friend !!
HAMAS ??? how? by shooting some home made rockets every now nd then??? looooool, great balance of powers and comparisons !
Who's feigning what ?? u can never tell ! but what i DO know, is that those bastards are not only criminals but inhuman, braging abt their crimes and inciting violence !!
Gaetano Bresci, à 21:52 le 23 mars
In international conflicts, guerrillas must distinguish themselves from the civilian population if they are preparing or engaged in an attack. At a minimum, guerrillas must carry their arms openly. (Protocol I, Art. 44, Sec. 3)
Hamas doesn't always do that.
In the case of an internal conflict, combatants must show humane treatment to civilians and enemies who have been wounded or who have surrendered. Murder, hostage-taking and extrajudicial executions are all forbidden. (Convention I, Art. 3)... Lire la suite
I seem to remember Hamas throwing captured Fatah members off the tops of buildings. Hamas are guilty of extra-judicial executions, although I must admit so is Israel, but it confuses me that Palestinians support Hamas and Fatah and the PLO, all of whom execute their fellow Palestinians in even greater numbers than Israel.
Gaetano Bresci, à 21:55 le 23 mars
Also, don't claim that Israel practices Apartheid, as there are Arab members of the Israeli Knesset, who regularly vote in favour of the Palestinian cause. The Apartheid argument is blown apart by that single piece of information.
The genocide argument is also false. If Israel, owner of one of the worlds most powerful armies and backed by the U.S... Lire la suite, was perpetrating a deliberate genocide against the Palestinians, why has the Palestinian population increased by 30% over the past decade? Israel must be pretty bad at what they do...
Amal Hliwi, à 21:57 le 23 mars
remember ?? lool, how? were u there? well, no my friend, that was a stupid civil clash, a flaw in the palestinian strategy
As for the Geneva convention, it's clear who's targeting whom, Israel is clearly targeting civilians, they even bombarded the UNRUA schools with dime, all the world saw that, as for HAMAS using civilians, these r just .... Lire la suitesepculations, am pretty sure they would not do that !
As for statistics, seems like ur weak point my friend, inner clashes betw palestenians did not kill 1/1000 of what Israel is massacring, just lately 5000 in gaza, not to mention the successive massacres !!
Amal Hliwi, à 21:59 le 23 mars
and by the way, detainees without trials are by thousands in the Isreali prisons so, Shalit is a one pathetic case of hostage compared to the prisons stuffed with palestinians !!!
Doghmani Houssem, à 22:00 le 23 mars
all excludes , imagine that someone has taken your past and your future ...
no more reason, more logic ;dear !!!!
Gaetano Bresci, à 22:04 le 23 mars
What, exactly, makes it "clear' that Israel is targeting civilians? Women and children account for 75% of Gazas populations, and yet they accounted for fewer than half of the casualties of the recent conflict, even though the fighting was in densly packed civilian areas. If Israel was targeting civilains ,the death toll would be far higher! Also, regarding the UN schools:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7087002.stm
look at that! Hamas was firing mortars from them! what a surprise!... Lire la suite
5000 people did not die in Gaza during operation Cast Lead. It was around 1200, and more than half of them were fighters.
It's not a speculation that Hamas fights from amongst civilians, it is documented fact. Then again, you consider everything that isn't virulently anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian to be automatically false propaganda, so there is no point in even arguing with you
Gaetano Bresci, à 22:11 le 23 mars
"so, where is the phrase that says the army can target these places, even if they r used as a shelter ?? u know better my friend !!"
Art. 52 line 2. Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an ... Lire la suiteeffective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.
I.E, a building that contains 3 dozen mortar launchers is a military objective; it doesn't matter if that building is a mosque or a school, it becomes a military objective
Gaetano Bresci, à 22:13 le 23 mars
http://www.spj.org/gc-text5.asp
The Geneva Convention, in full. Read up on it
Amal Hliwi, à 22:15 le 23 mars
oh come ON !!
U r victimizing the criminal and demonizing the victim !
am looking at Israeli sources admitting all what I've said, read LE FIgaro's interview with soldiers admitting war crimes in Gaza !
Besides, even monstres should not brag abt killing a pregnant woman only coz it means getting rid of two souls, NOTHING JUSTIFIES THIS !!
U hav not read the article I presume, so do it as soon as u can, I ca only argue abt stuff U KNOW !!
Gaetano Bresci, à 22:18 le 23 mars
Also, it turned out that that UN school wasn't directly shot, an Israeli tank shot NEAR the school, the school wasn't even damaged!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25013734-601,00.html
Amal Hliwi, à 22:19 le 23 mars
I did my homework friend, I totally understand the clauses, just prove the UNRUA or that specific mosk or that civilian house is full with fighters, Israel never proved anythg, they just either suspect and bomb or not even suspect, just shoot and say sorry it was meant for HAMAS fighters ! absurd !!!