Author Topic: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]  (Read 161349 times)

Manedwolf

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #175 on: January 18, 2009, 01:30:08 PM »
I was not criticizing Shalit, just making an observation.  For all the mewling about US treatment of unlawful combatants, there is little attention paid to the vile treatment of prisoners by militant Islam.

Like Daniel Pearl?

lupinus

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #176 on: January 18, 2009, 06:43:05 PM »
Quote
They have just announced one:
Very good.  Now if they actually refrain from using a cease fire to turn the strip into one big launch pad, it should stay that way.
That is all. *expletive deleted*ck you all, eat *expletive deleted*it, and die in a fire. I have considered writing here a long parting section dedicated to each poster, but I have decided, at length, against it. *expletive deleted*ck you all and Hail Satan.

Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #177 on: January 18, 2009, 07:19:13 PM »
Okay, so if you don't condone "having it out all the way" or whatever language you used, but actually condone restraints, how do you propose that either side will end up forcing its terms on the other side? 

I'm re-reading what you said, and that sure looks like a plug for total war. 
Defeating your enemy and protecting your own is the goal.  Terror attacks on innocent civilians don't accomplish that.  It murders innocents to no end, wastes your military resources, steels your enemy's resolve, and brands your side as barbaric and despicable.

And deliberately murdering innocent civilians is still indefensible.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2009, 07:30:51 PM by Headless Thompson Gunner »

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #178 on: January 18, 2009, 08:01:24 PM »
htg   you familiar with the history of isreal vis a vis terrorism and attacks on civilians?  particularly early on?
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


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MicroBalrog

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #179 on: January 18, 2009, 08:09:53 PM »
htg   you familiar with the history of isreal vis a vis terrorism and attacks on civilians?  particularly early on?

CS&D is right. There were plenty of attacks on civilians in 1948. By everybody.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_committed_prior_to_the_1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_war_in_Mandate_Palestine
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

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Regolith

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #180 on: January 18, 2009, 08:19:38 PM »
Quote
CS&D is right. There were plenty of attacks on civilians in 1948. By everybody.

There were plenty of attacks on civilians only a few years prior, too, except it was the Europeans, Japan and the US committing those particular attacks.  It was a fairly standard component of warfare at that time, for a variety of reasons.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. - Thomas Jefferson

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. - William Pitt the Younger

Perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything. - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #181 on: January 18, 2009, 08:38:01 PM »
the europeans planted bombs in hotels?  i musta slept through that part of history class

http://www.spectacle.org/495/deir.html

The Assassination of Count Bernadotte
On September 17, 1948, four men dressed in Israeli Army uniforms assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, the man appointed by the United Nations to mediate the growing Arab-Jewish dispute. The four killers were never brought to justice.

Israel's founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, knew who the assassins were: members of the so-called Stern Gang, a Jewish terrorist group of several hundred members founded in 1940. Ben-Gurion made a behind-the-scenes deal with the murderers: freedom from prosecution if they would cease violence. The man who organized the killing of Count Bernadotte was Yitzhak Shamir, who later became Prime Minister himself.

Kati Marton, writing in the November New Yorker, summed up the reasons for the murder:


Stern's explosive rhetoric and uncompromising nationalism foreshadowed those of today's Palestinian radicals. Like them, Shamir's underground hated what the United Nations mediator stood for: compromise, conciliation, the abandonment of maximilist demands in the service of turning enemies into neighbors.
The killing of Bernadotte contributed materially to the successful sabotage of the peace efforts. More than five decades of murder and counter-murder have finally brought us back to a serious prospect for peace in a bloody land. But there are still terrorists on both sides, the Jewish machine-gunner in the mosque, the Arab suicide bomber, determined to prevent this.


Deir Yassin
Certain names should be on everyone's lips, but are on no-one's. Most of the people I ask about Deir Yassin, people who profess to understand the politics of Israel, to be intimately involved with them, have never heard of it.

On April 9, 1948--thus five months prior to the killing of Count Bernadotte-- the combined forces of the Stern Gang and the Irgun (military arm of the Revisionist party, commanded by Menachem Begin, later Prime Minister) carried out reprisals in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. Like the Stern Gang, the Irgun was responsible for many horrors; but Deir Yassin may have been the worst.

The villagers had actually signed a nonaggression pact with a nearby Jewish village when the Stern Gang decided to destroy Deir Yassin to teach the Arabs a lesson for over-running other Jewish settlements. As a senior Irgun officer later said:


The clear aim was to break Arab morale and raise the morale of the Jewish community in Jerusalem which had been hit hard time after time...
The villagers resisted the 120 Jewish attackers, as they had a right to, and a heavy machine gun and a mortar were brought up to end the battle. Then the raiding party entered the village and started behaving like a Nazi Einsatzkommando. Twenty-three men were led off to a quarry and executed in cold blood, and between 90 and 230 others were shot down in the village.

Begin's statement afterwards:


Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest....
News of Deir Yassin spread quickly and was influential in causing much of the Arab population to flee the borders of the newly declared Israeli state. Israel, of course, has built a whole structure of ownership based on the "abandonment" of their houses and lands, as well as arguing ceaselessly that those who fled in 1948 did so needlessly and do not deserve to come back.

(Source for the Deir Yassin information: Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (Harper Perennial, 1987).

What do these two events--the murder of Bernadotte, and "ethnic cleansing" at Deir Yassin--establish? That the state of Israel is rooted in the blood of one of its native populations, the Arabs. Two men, Begin and Shamir, later leaders of their country, were terrorists who planned and executed murders, and a third, Ben-Gurion, knew of murder and made secret deals protecting murderers.

Reverting to the issue of the Holocaust as a shield or an excuse for the Israelis, Israel is not, and has never been, primarily a nation of Holocaust survivors. Political Zionism has its roots in the 19th century and before. While Begin was a refugee from Poland, Ben Gurion had been in Palestine since early in the century, as had many of the early leaders of the new Israeli state. One early right-wing Zionist leader was Vladimir Jabotinsky, who wrote in 1923:


Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot--or else I am through with playing at colonization.
(Quoted in Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins, (Olive Branch Press 1992), a book by an Israeli professor which I highly recommend. Beit-Hallahmi sums up as follows:


It was easy to make the Palestinians pay for 2,000 years of persecution. The Palestinians, who have felt the enormous power of this vengeance, were not the historical oppressors of the Jews. They did not put Jews into ghettoes and did not force them to wear yellow stars. They did not plan holocausts. But they had one fault. They were weak and defenseless in the face of real military might, so they were the ideal victims for an abstract revenge...
A country founded in blood--built on the backs and the corpses of a group of its inhabitants--is badly off-balance and will never recover, if it does not undertake a terrible soul-searching, a flight from violence and lies. There is a stirring, a yearning for peace and relief from violence today, but it is still being mitigated by hatred, denial, greed, and the desire for revenge. When the Israelis learn to police their own lunatic fringe, can avoid offering with one hand what they withdraw with the other, and face the Palestinians with firm honesty, there will be a chance.


maybe thats why the us backs israel  similar bloody pasts
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


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cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #182 on: January 18, 2009, 08:40:48 PM »
http://www.google.com/archivesearch?q=stern+gang&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7RNWE&um=1&ie=UTF-8&scoring=t&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&resnum=10&ct=title

Apr 9, 1948 - However, on April 9,1948, Irgun and Stern gang members, lead by Begin and Shamir, both of whom later became Israeli Prime Ministers, entered our village and slaughtered many people. They lined men, women and children up against walls, and shot them. Two hundred ...However, on April 9,1948, Irgun and Stern gang members, lead by Begin and Shamir, both of whom later became Israeli Prime Ministers, entered our village and slaughtered many people. They lined men, women and children up against walls, and shot them. Two hundred and fifty-four people were killed. I lost many family members: my father and grandfather, my brother, my oldest sister and her son. My mother lost a brother. CATHY: What happened to you after that?
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #183 on: January 18, 2009, 08:42:15 PM »
The United Nations mediator and Serot, his French aide, were slain Friday in the Jewish part of Jerusalem. The Israeli government has accused the Stern Gang, a Jewish extremist group, with responsibility for the shoot . authorities not only took vigorous measures to apprehend the ...
From Jews Arrest Stern Gang Terrorists . - Related web pagesnews.google.com/newspapers?id=th8LAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EE8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2813,5751126&dq=stern+ gang


plenty more

and i hold the uss liberty trump card
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

Regolith

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #184 on: January 18, 2009, 08:48:54 PM »
Quote
the europeans planted bombs in hotels?  i musta slept through that part of history class

No, they just firebombed entire cities.  Then there was that whole nuke thing we did.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. - Thomas Jefferson

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. - William Pitt the Younger

Perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything. - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth

MicroBalrog

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #185 on: January 18, 2009, 08:52:46 PM »
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and i hold the uss liberty trump card

Lavon affair was far creepier.

Remember that? A chain of attacks on American and British targets?
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #186 on: January 18, 2009, 08:52:58 PM »
Yup, the Israelis did some pretty nasty stuff early on.

I don't see how that changes anything today.  Indiscriminately, deliberately murdering civilians is wrong.  "They did it too a long time ago" isn't a valid defense.

And no, this is not comparable to the strategic bombing that was done in WWII.  That bombing was intended as an attack the enemy's military industrial complex, to disrupt their war production capacity.  There is no comparable military or strategic value gained by targeting enemy pizza parlors and nightclubs.

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #187 on: January 18, 2009, 09:04:37 PM »
That bombing was intended as an attack the enemy's military industrial complex


no  firebombing whole cities doesn't pass muster on that
dresden and tokyo are just 2 good examples  carpet bombing was designed to break an enemies spirit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


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cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #188 on: January 18, 2009, 09:09:38 PM »
thank you mb for teaching me something.  i owe ya a home cooked meal  when you get here.
try looking up the stalker affair for some brit skullduggery in ireland  or their plans that were leaked about "ethnic cleansing " in the north
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

MicroBalrog

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #189 on: January 18, 2009, 09:19:25 PM »
Quote
dresden and tokyo are just 2 good examples  carpet bombing was designed to break an enemies spirit

Dresden is very, very debatable, but I don't want to derail the thread.
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

"...tradition and custom becomes intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. " ~ William Graham Sumner

Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #190 on: January 18, 2009, 09:20:58 PM »
The firebombing of Tokyo is similarly debatable.  I believe you'd have to establish that Tokyo had no military value to Imperial Japan, nor any significant war-production capacity.  Otherwise it seems plain that Tokyo could be justified as a legitimate target for military operations.

There's a quote by one of the commanders who oversaw all bombing operations in the theater.  It goes something like "for lack of a scapel we had to use a bludgeon".  I bet they'd have traded all of their firebombs for an accurate bombsight that could have hit the factories and bridges and left the suburbs alone.

Suicide bombing a pizza joint or sending rockets at the elementary school in micro's hometown are not in any way comparable to strategic bombing.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2009, 03:25:13 AM by Headless Thompson Gunner »

MicroBalrog

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #191 on: January 18, 2009, 09:33:01 PM »
Israel will be retreating from Gaza today because of the inauguration. Victory had not been achieved.

Idiots.
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

"...tradition and custom becomes intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. " ~ William Graham Sumner

Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #192 on: January 18, 2009, 09:34:05 PM »
Israel will be retreating from Gaza today because of the inauguration. Victory had not been achieved.

Idiots.
Is that for real?  Israel is withdrawing because of Obama and/or the inauguration?

MicroBalrog

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #193 on: January 18, 2009, 09:34:57 PM »
Is that for real?  Israel is withdrawing because of Obama and/or the inauguration?

At least that's how Yedioth Ahronoth has it.

This is the Englis version, here:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3658377,00.html

Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

"...tradition and custom becomes intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. " ~ William Graham Sumner

Manedwolf

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #194 on: January 18, 2009, 10:13:18 PM »
Israel will be retreating from Gaza today because of the inauguration. Victory had not been achieved.

Idiots.

So they get time to rearm, reload, and set up rocket launchers atop the remaining nursery schools.

They might even get more Grads set up.

Lovely.

roo_ster

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #195 on: January 18, 2009, 10:29:03 PM »
That bombing was intended as an attack the enemy's military industrial complex


no  firebombing whole cities doesn't pass muster on that
dresden and tokyo are just 2 good examples  carpet bombing was designed to break an enemies spirit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing

A goodly bit of Japanese manufactured war material was produced from decentralized, home fabrication facilities.  It was a different model than, say, the USA's war material production.  Japan had modernized, but was still not nearly as centralized, automated, or industrialized as most western powers.  The residential location of these manufacturies was not going to deter the USA form trying to disrupt them.

Also, by the time in WWII that our bombers could reach mainland Japan, the Japanese had used up any consideration for their own civilian populations by Japan's treatment of opposing countrys' populations.

Add to those damning facts several years' worth of war propaganda in the USA, and I bet not a whisper was made for the consideration of civvie casualties by the decision-makers.

The quote I pasted by Orwell earlier in this thread applies to this case in spades.
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roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #196 on: January 18, 2009, 10:55:03 PM »
i think its kinda amusing that  a country with 2 prime ministers who qualify as terrorists is being defended particularly in the light of

http://www.deiryassin.org/

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.






http://www.deiryassin.org/shimontzabar.html
even worse description here
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


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MicroBalrog

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #197 on: January 18, 2009, 10:59:57 PM »
Quote
i think its kinda amusing that  a country with 2 prime ministers who qualify as terrorists is being defended particularly in the light of

Dir Yassin is not the really disgusting part of 1948.

Dir Yassin was at least admitted to by Israel's government and to this day Israeli schools hold a memorial day to it.

Other, similar acts by other factions (*cough*Haganah*cough*) are played down by Israel.
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

"...tradition and custom becomes intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. " ~ William Graham Sumner

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #198 on: January 18, 2009, 11:02:11 PM »
winners write the history books   us history has similar things
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

MicroBalrog

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Re: This was uncomfortably close [A rocket fell a block away from me]
« Reply #199 on: January 18, 2009, 11:03:34 PM »
winners write the history books   us history has similar things

Well yes. I take limited solace in the fact we at least admitted to Deir Yassin and teach to our kids that this was an atrocity.
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

"...tradition and custom becomes intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. " ~ William Graham Sumner