Quote:
Originally posted by Kevin Andrew Murphy:
Please, by all means, link to them. I think Ahmedinjan is a religious nutjob, but the upsetting thing is the past couple weeks, all I've seen in the way of pull quotes from him are requests for economic boycotts and assorted other arrows from the diplomat's quiver.
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It took me all of 5 minutes to find something I would not call an "arrow from the diplomat's quiver:"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060803/...ea/iran_israel
Quote:
Ahmadinejad: Destroy Israel, end crisis
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis is to destroy Israel. In a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders, Ahmadinejad also called for an immediate halt to fighting in Lebanon between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.
"Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," he said.
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He goes on and on, as always. I don't have the time to find you other examples within your chosen time frame, (again -- and senselessly -- Ahmadinejad must have acted evilly within the
last two weeks for consideration!) but I don't doubt these examples can be had.
It is refreshing, however, that the argument for hating Israel has moved on. We have now abandoned the argument from just war theory, the argument from fraudulent history, the argument from illegitimate ("non-semitic") peoplehood, and the argument from opponents' use of pronouns.
We have arrived now at the argument from sound bite aesthetics. An Israeli spokesperson -- who, because she is Israeli and female, is a "spokeswench" -- did not, to your unbiased eye, emote appropriately upon expressing national condolences.
But there’s hope. At the end of your last post, we came back around to this:
Quote:
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As for value of human life, I use the fairly common calculus of valuing civilians over soldiers and children over adults. Apart from that, the only way lives in my book have lesser value is if less of them are being lost.
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This is the nut of the issue I think. Israel is at war with the terrorists next door, trying to root them out of their strongholds, despite the fact that they use the local population as human shields –
and despite the fact that they do so knowing Kevin Andrew Murphy will not consider this fact.
This is a complaint against war in general, Kevin, not against Israel. We’ve established already, over and over, that Israel has the right to
go to war. And now that Israel is
at war, a few considerations have to come into play when judging her combat tactics:
1) Is Israel
trying to hit non-combatants?
a. Israel’s actions show the contrary.
b. Hezbollah glories in civilian casualties, based on a martyrdom theory
c. Various other media reports point to Hezbollah complicity (speaking of crocodile tears.) For example, the Qana raid was seven hours
before the collapse of the house.
2) Hezbollah has shown several traits that combine to call into question this specific complaint against Israel (that is, that Israel is a “bad actor”
in bello):
a. Hezbollah’s own tactics maximize, rather than minimize, carnage among common Lebanese.
b. Hezbollah has shown itself, on a number of occasions, to be an extremely media-savvy organization.
c. Inconsistencies – such as the Qana timing, the “sickbed interviews” in what local Lebanese call an “empty” hospital, etc. – suggest that there is a good deal of “staging” and “magnification” going on. This goes directly to the argument that a life is “only worth more if more lives are lost.” One clip showed what seemed to be the same man mourning what seemed to be the same dead child, in two distinct “Israeli attacks,” for instance.
3) Israel does everything possible to limit casualties among Israeli civilians, as well as among Lebanese civilians. This influences the Argument from Body Count. You cannot build a building in Israel – nor could you, for many years – without one or more designated bomb shelter(s). Why? Because of the belligerence of her neighbors. Through the logic of victimhood, Israel must therefore be in the wrong. In a limited and unintended way, this argument, from an Israeli perspective, comes down to "die as a victim, or live as a “ghoul,”" since more Lebanese are dying than Israelis.
The human toll of this war on Lebanon’s people is not trivial to Israelis or supporters of Israel (I cannot say the same of Hezbollah). The fact is, though, this toll did not arise in a vacuum, and is almost certainly being magnified for media consumption, much in the manner of the non-existent Jenin “massacre” a few years ago.
Does it seem strange to you that Lebanon has come out
against the US/French-suggested cease-fire?
The argument, of course, is that the cease-fire “favors Israel.”
It strikes me that the cease-fire would preserve the lives of these innocents, regardless of your perception of “advantage” and “disadvantage.” It would also provide another opportunity to remove the non-combatants from the area, if not to create permanent [sic] peace. Lebanon has announced publicly she has no sovereignty over her territory – now she puts her sovereignty over the wellbeing of her people???
I did not see an Israeli complaint against the cease-fire, although that doesn’t mean one won’t come. But since Lebanon expresses no interest in her sovereignty, but only in the loss of her civilians, how can Lebanon have an issue with a cessation of hostilities?
But then, removing non-combatants
does favor Israel, doesn’t it? After all, you cannot have an outcry against the killing of civilians, if they all get away.
Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah’s funding-source, even favored a peace-fire – at least, five days ago. Now that one is available, I wonder if he finds its form insufficiently pro-Hezbollah.
Dan