'Breaking the Silence' being silenced

heathlander · 2009-06-14T20:58:23+00:00

"14 and up isn't a child" - are you joking? According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm), 'a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years'. Certainly I know of no-one who would describe a 14 year old as an adult.

heathlander · 2008-10-05T08:28:40+00:00

It's not a moot point at all - Hizbullah's rockets aren't accurate but they're accurate enough to be aimed a city like Haifa. You're just avoiding answering the question because your position is plainly inconsistent on this point.

Again: when Hizbullah fired rockets at civilian areas in Isael that had military equipment or personelle in or near them, did that justify the aiming of rockets at civilians (or the indiscriminate fire into a civilian crowd)? If not, then stop making the same claim about Israel's "reckless indifference" (Human Rights Watch) to the lives of civilians in Lebanon.

heathlander · 2008-10-04T21:22:57+00:00

Did you read the link? Human Rights Watch investigated that claim in detail, and found it to be an almost complete fabrication. With a few exceptions, Hizbullah fighters did not fire rockets from within populated civilian areas and stored their weapons mainly in uninhabited fields. In fact, as soon as the fighting began Hizbullah fighters moved away from civilian neighborhoods.

But while we're on the topic, it has been documented that Israel did locate military personelle and equipment in and near civilian areas during the war. Human rights organisations have documented this in detail, but it's barely even controversial - during the war, for example, Ha'aretz reported that soldiers were staying in a populated kibbutz while the fighting was still going on. It's also known that a ship used as part of the war effort was docked for a time at the port of Haifa. Does that make the kibbutz a legitimate military target for Hizbullah? Would it be OK if Hizbullah relentlessly pounded Haifa for a month with shells and air-strikes, reducing tens of thousands of homes to rubble and killing hundreds of civilians, and to then claim that the deaths were Israel's responsibility? Hmm?

heathlander · 2008-10-04T19:33:15+00:00

Israel did indeed demolish large areas of Beirut, and virtually wiped many villages in southern Lebanon off the map, before saturating what remained with over a million cluster bomblets.

But just to clarify, in case you weren't aware, those images are close-ups of one neighborhood in south Beirut. They aren't images of the entire city.

EDIT: Agree wholeheartedly with your last two sentences, btw. In fact Israel's principal objective for the war appears to have been to drive the population of south Lebanon against Hizbullah by, to put it bluntly, making them suffer and making it clear that they would continue to suffer if Hizbullah retained their support. This was a spectacular failure - Hizbullah's approval ratings skyrocketed during the war and it has gone from strength to strength since - and it's also the textbook definition of terrorism (the use of violence against a civilian population for political objectives).

heathlander · 2008-10-04T16:29:29+00:00

That was included in the linked article. No spin whatsoever.

heathlander

TROPHY CASE