Posted on 01/05/2009 9:58:19 AM PST by SmithL
If you shove me in the checkout line at the local market, can I club you across the head with a baseball bat in self-defense? Of course not. Yet such belligerence seems to inform Israel's latest pummeling of the Gaza Strip. As of this writing, more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed. Many Palestinian victims were civilians, including young men who joined police forces simply to feed their families in a region with 45 percent unemployment.
The United Nations charter enshrines a nation-state's right of self-defense against armed attack by another state. Even when properly triggered, however, the right is limited. The exercise of self-defense must be necessary and proportional to the harm it seeks to redress. Israel's bloodletting in the Gaza Strip fails this test in three respects.
First, Israel has not suffered an armed attack sufficient to justify its intensive bombing. International law sensibly declines to designate minor provocations - which are common - as "armed attacks." Otherwise, nations could routinely claim self-defense as a pretext for launching all-out wars. While the standard for an "armed attack" is admittedly imprecise, it would certainly not apply to the truce period prevailing in Gaza/Southern Israel from June to December of last year. The truce was imperfectly observed - Israel, for its part, never lifted the crushing siege it had imposed against the Gaza Strip as promised, and continued to kill and capture Hamas members in the West Bank, while Hamas permitted sporadic rocket fire. Still, Israelis suffered no casualties for six months. The escalation of rocket fire preceding the bombardment was provoked by Israel's own act, when it raided the Gaza Strip on Nov. 4, killing six Palestinians, and thus cannot justify self-defense.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
No, Israel should use the logic and concepts of sharia law to point out that it is using WAY less force than allowed.
Maybe not, but if you launch a kassam rocket from your basket to mine, I can, and I will, kill you.
Hate, including hatred of Jews, is a San Francisco value.
How about this. “If you stab me in the back with a knife in the checkout line at the local market, can I club you across the head with a baseball bat in self-defense?” You dam right I can.
“Many Palestinian victims were civilians, including young men who joined police forces simply to feed their families in a region with 45 percent unemployment. “
Wait wait wait...
They are calling members of the MILITARY “Civilians” because they joined to get money??
Oh dear me. The spin is amazing.
“If you shove me in the checkout line at the local market, can I club you across the head with a baseball bat in self-defense?”
Leave it to this leftist moron to pick the most inane analogy. Being shoved out of a checkout line isn’t the same as living near the Gaza border and being subjected to regular, indiscriminant bombardment by terrorists...ie, no one dies being shoved out of the checkout line.
Easy answer - NO!!!
Judaism should adopt a doctrine of the complete elimination of Islam as being conducive to the achievement of World Peace.
I have a better analogy. When I was in middle school, I had this kid who would pester, badger, bully and needle me pretty much every day on the bus. I was a fairly reserved kid and took this teasing for a while until one day, I had enough and snapped. I beat the everloving crap out of this kid and you know what? He stopped bothering me.
A better analogy would be if you shove me at the checkout line, shove me at my home, shove my children and wife, threaten to kill me and wipe me off the map, ignore a restraining order that no one else seems to care about and THEN I club you over the head with a baseball bat. That would be a little more accurate.
There’s not enough dead jews for those anti semitic fags to support this.
I'm afraid, short of complete subjugation/extermination, these zealots will always be around and will require periodic culling as the Israeli's are now doing.
What a waste on all dimensions.
I wonder if the good professor Bisharat was outraged by the 9/12/01 videos of Palestinians dancing in the streets, and passing out candies in celebration.
I wonder what he proposes Israel do in response to rockets being launched indiscriminately. Use harsh language?
I would say he’s stupid, but its more likely he’s evil.
The comparison is more like: A skinny, diseased moron with a clapped out .22 says “I’m gonna kill you” and lets fly in your direction.
Yes, you would be justified in shooting back with whatever comes to hand.
I lived in San Francisco for two years, long ago. I can vouch for a quip that Tom Lehrer said at the hungry i. He said that the announcement of the Multi-Lateral Nuclear Force "occurred during the baseball season, so the Chronicle may not have covered it."
The Chronicle is one of many tragedies that are inflicted on the residents of San Francisco because they don't know any better.
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "The Non-Constitutional Crisis from Illinois"
The Declaration, the Constitution, parts of the Federalist, and America's Owner's Manual, here.
Ah, but not in NYS. Here crime vics have a "duty-to-retreat". I kid you not.
Apparently lefties think something similar should apply to Israel as well.
Took me a while to get the nerve up to squelch these inbred types, but after that I was free as a bird.
It began to be downright pleasurable.
Another Israel/Jew hating loon.
“First, Israel has not suffered an armed attack sufficient to justify its intensive bombing.”
This just goes to show why liberals cannot ever be in charge (and unfortunately now they are). They advocate suffering massively before retaliating.
Are there any pali survivors?
If yes, Israel’s response has not exceeded its right to defend itself.
You know, funny thing is..if memory serves...he sort of did. lol
All I can say is God bless the IDF.
I would like to be in a line with Bisharat. Wonder what he would do if I started shoving him? What a jerk. He equates shoving in a line with Rockets raining on homes.
“The exercise of self-defense must be necessary and proportional to the harm it seeks to redress.”
This of course is how coddled American law professors view war...thank god we had men like Patton who said “Go forward until the last round is fired and the last drop of gas is expended...then go forward on foot!”
And Shin Bet. And the Mossad.
” He equates shoving in a line with Rockets raining on homes.”
Because Hamas’ aim is bad, he believes they’re innocuous. What a moron.
I can't believe the author is making such a laughable and pathetic relativism.
Amen.
Anything I do against a checkout line shove isn’t a self-defense response in the first place. Any response in that situation would really be retaliation.
That is this guy’s “subtle” point. Isn’t he smart? And he uses a straw man argument to boot.
“The exercise of self-defense must be necessary and proportional to the harm it seeks to redress.” The good professor seems to contradict himself. Since the “harm” that Hamas intends is to eradicate Israel and exterminate the Jews, then a “proportional” response would be to eradicate Gaza and exterminate the Palestinians.
Well, George, when we nudge you out of the readership line in the media market, you want to club us across the mouth with The Fairness Doctrine in self-defense, right?
.
That's EASY!
No.
israel should withdraw from gaza and everytime a kassam rocket is fired, reply by firing a MLRS salvo into gaza city.
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/November_2003/0311054.html
He is not to be taken seriously.
oops. I should have typed: SCROOGLE.
I wonder what the “professor’s” response to indiscriminate rocket fire on San Fransicso would be?.
What a stupid analogy. The author forgot that Israel gave Gaza to the Palastineans, and they immediately used it as a means to launch indiscriminate attacks deeper into Israel. The author forgets that many Israelis were forcebly uprooted from their homes.
All this proves is that the 'land for peace' stuff is a mistake.
Meanwhile, Obama votes 'present' on the issue.
You are correct. What vexes me, though, is how many of those folks you so aptly described are lapsed Jews themselves. It seems anymore that the most hateful and anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli people to be found are not Muslims or Nazis, but lapsed Jews. I have no idea what sickness is in their hearts that they hate their own people so much.
LOL!
If you launch 6000+ rockets into my country and kill my citizens, do I have the right to kill as many of you as I can and destroy everything in your little shit hole of a country? Yes.............
That actor was on “Cold Case” last night. Really.
The checkout line analogy is inept, as analogies so often are. But the real problem with this guy’s thinking is,
“The exercise of self-defense must be necessary and proportional to the harm it seeks to redress.”
The point of self-defense, for an individual or a nation, is not just to redress injuries already sustained, but to PREVENT future injuries. And arguments over proportionality are meaningless when people are dying.
Hamas will not rest until Israel is wiped off the face of the map -- they cannot be allowed to exist AT ALL.
"Israel is not a legitimate entity, and no amount of pressure can force us to recognize its right to exist."
-Dr. Mahmud Al-Zahar, Hamas leader in Gaza, Washington Times, February 4, 2006"Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day."
-Dr. Mahmud Al-Zahar, Hamas leader in Gaza, Washington Times, February 4, 2006"Neither the liberation of the Gaza Strip nor the liberation of the West Bank or even Jerusalem will suffice us. Hamas will pursue the armed struggle until the liberation of all our lands. We don't recognize the state of Israel or its right to hold onto one inch of Palestine. Palestine is an Islamic land belonging to all the Muslims."
-Dr. Mahmud al-Zahar, Hamas leader in Gaza, The Jerusalem Post, August 18, 2005"Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing."
-Khalid al-Mish'al, leader of Hamas, Al-Jazeera TV, February 3, 2006"She [Hamas suicide bomber Re'em Al-Riyashi] is not going to be the last because the march of resistance will continue until the Islamic flag is raised, not only over the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe."
-Dr. Mahmud Al-Zahar, Hamas leader in Gaza, Associated Press, January 15, 2004"To hell with you all."
-Khalid al-Mish'al, leader of Hamas, speaking about German Chancellor Merkel's call for Hamas to recognize Israel, Al-Jazeera TV, February 3, 2006
These quotes found at Shattered Paradigm.
You're right. Israel should just lob 5000 rockets into Gaza with no attention to targeting combatants and be done with it.
Actor is Zack Ward.
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