OK, sorry but Im still struggling with the Israeli response issue. For the sake of argument, lets accept that Hamass objective is to wipe out Israel. Lets also accept that Israel are dropping leaflets to warn of strikes in sufficient time, that the people arent leaving and presumably choosing to be martyrs (and for their children to be martyrs too!). And lets assume those homes/schools/hospitals DO house rockets or whatever. How is the response justified? Look at the amount of deaths on each side, in particular, the deaths of civilians. I always find things better to understand using analogies and seeing as Im in Ibiza... So lets imagine that a big, powerful German family (nice irony having them as German and Im nothing if not one for racial stereotypes) have been given a spot of prime land on the top of a hill near Santa Getruides and theyve built a massive villa there, with all mod cons, blah,blah, blah. The locals who think the land is theirs hate the Germans so much that not only do they want them to leave but some of the more militant locals would actually like to kill them (and this is the framework of an analogy so I dont need any geo-political pedants trying to add to the analogy by going on about who the land belonged to 3000 years ago or whatever). So, the locals periodically attack the Germans but most of their attacks are useless cos the Germans have a massive dome of toughened glass around their property, a bit like the one around Springfield in that episode of the Simpsons, where Homer rides up the side of it on a bike. Even the biggest stones they throw dont get through. But the Germans get pissed off with them throwing stones and occasionally injuring or even killing some of the security guards that patrol their property. The Germans even know its not all the locals who are throwing the stones anyway, just some in a hardcore gang who are pissed of theyve lost the car park where they used to park their cars, drink beer and play shit music on their car stereos every weekend. So, even though the Germans KNOW its the gang causing the trouble and would like to kill them if they could and even though they KNOW that for the most part, the toughened glass dome will stop the stones or even worse getting through, they make a decision. They decide to use some of their really sophisticated bombs that are hidden in the massive room full of towels next to the swimming pool and fire them at the locals. So what happens is that rather than killing just the gang members, they kill and injure loads of other local families, blow up Morna Valley school whilst innocent kids are in there and all that they really achieve is to turn the rest of the island against them, some of whom probably never previously even had any interest in what was going on. In my thick, simplistic way, what am I missing here? Moving away from my little la-la land scenario and back to whats happening, Im still struggling to see how Israel can justify the ferocity of the attacks when the people who are dying and being injured, arent actually members of the gang... Although one thing is for sure - a lot of them soon will be after whats been happening.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 21:34:00 +0000