Israel/Palestine

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Israel/Palestine

(Thread IKs: Main Paineframe, Irony Be My Shield, punishedkissinger)

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

skeet decorator posted:

In this case it does, they explicitly spell it out :

In addition to what Xander noted, nothing in that implies that those granted derivative refugee status can extend that status to their dependents as well.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2015 10:03

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 05:19

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Cat Mattress posted:

As history showed, the Jews turned to oppress the Arabs as soon as they got in a position of force to do so. Since you and TIC are arguing that preemptive oppression is a Good Thing, then you have to conclude that it was a good, necessary, and justified thing.

If you claim it wasn't, then you cannot also claim that continued oppression of the Palestinians is a good thing. At least, you cannot do so without having to rely on racism.

I don't think anyone is arguing that Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is a good thing. The way I understand the argument is this:

The modern history of the middle east has an alarmingly common pattern of disenfranchised groups retaliating against the previously ruling group as soon as they get the levers of power, and attempting to consolidate their power rather than form a representative government. If Israel allowed a Palestinian return in the way most Palestinian activists envision it (it wouldn't be a token number) and allowed Palestinians equal representation, and otherwise stopped its efforts to ensure a Jewish majority, the almost certain outcome would be Jews becoming a political minority within a relatively short timeframe.

Given the almost universally poor treatment and disenfranchisement suffered by minorities in the middle east, (including, yes, in Israel) it is quite reasonable for Jewish Israelis to believe that their rights would not be respected should such a situation come to pass, especially in light of the irredentist and anti-Semitic themes in Palestinian rhetoric.

While it is possible to point to South Africa as an example of a relatively peaceful transition to unified a post-colonial government, it must be pointed out that, 1) it was an outlier, and 2) in neighboring Zimbabwe, the post-colonial government almost immediately abrogated the power sharing agreement meant to protect the rights of the white minority, crashed the economy, suffers from wide-spread corruption, and did/does nothing to protect the rights of minorities from violence and property seizure by the new ruling class. It's the worst case scenario Israelis rightly fear.

While it is quite reasonable to argue from a moral and normative perspective that Israel should stop its attempts to ensure that the electorate is Jewish-majority by shutting Palestinians out of political power, it's a little disingenuous to refuse to engage the reality that would be the most likely outcome in such a situation.

I can see why people would be reluctant to engage with this point, since it would require arguing either that a government with a Jewish minority would never arise, that a government with a Jewish minority would protect Jewish citizens' rights, in contrast to every other government in recent regional history, or that Jewish citizens have a moral imperative to accept whatever outcome happens, no matter how terrible.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2015 00:30

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Main Paineframe posted:

The thing that stands against the arguments you're making is that if rockets weren't beneficial to anyone, why would anyone bother with them? Originally, you asked why Hamas launches rockets when you asserted that there was no benefit whatsoever to doing so. And I've answered you very simply - obviously Hamas wouldn't launch rockets if they thought there was no benefit to doing so or if they thought the downsides totally overwhelmed the benefits, so it naturally follows that at the very least they (and other Palestinian militant groups) believe that the benefits of rocket launches are worth the risks. Maybe you disagree, but that doesn't mean you're right and everyone else (ranging from internet commenters to the people actually involved on the ground) is wrong.

I think TOS is arguing that rocket fire is useless from a military and strategic perspective, and only serves to harden those factions opposed to a durable peace. Hamas launches rockets because they consider killing and terrorizing Israeli civilians a worthwhile goal, and they don't see Israeli retaliation as a downside. They are pretty open about this. Arguing that Hamas' logic is good and correct is a rather queasy idea. I'd also note that Palestinian suicide/knife/etc attacks have overwhelmingly targeted civilians.

Some people seem to think that being oppressed gives your side carte blanche to ignore certain parts of the laws of war, I disagree.

Dead Cosmonaut posted:

I hate to bring this up, but

I believe you don't know what the word invasion means. Israeli cannot arbitrarily choose whether or not Palestine is a sovereign country. They entered a sovereign country with an army and a hostile intent. That counts as an invasion.

That goes both ways though. If the Gaza strip is a sovereign entity, digging a sapping tunnel across the border into Israel (which is what the Hamas members the Israelis killed were engaged in) is an overtly hostile act. Given Hamas' statements that the struggle with the Zionist Entity is ongoing, it's quite reasonable to say that the two parties are in an ongoing de jure state of war. Also, not every military border violation constitutes an invasion, which generally implies a long terms presence and intent to accomplish wider objectives, rather than a cross-border raid and rapid withdrawal.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 21:25

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Volkerball posted:

Terrorizing Israel as a strategy is a lot larger than Hamas. The onus comes down on Israel to change its policies if your goal is to cut support for that type of act.

That's insane. You can't say, "hey, if Israel doesn't want their citizens deliberately targeted for murder, maybe they should stop angering people who murder civilians" and expect people to take it as a serious & moral argument. Hamas and the other factions that perpetuate attacks against Israeli civilians have agency too.

Nevvy Z posted:

Generally when one side has the majority of power you assign them the majority of responsibility.

That's not at all how it works at all. Winning a war doesn't make the winning side morally responsible for the other side's war crimes.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 04:49

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

rscott posted:

I think it's less angering and more making millions of people live lives of misery to ensure your ethnic superiority in a region

That doesn't have anything to do with deliberately targeting civilians though, unless you want to argue that all Israeli citizens can be justly killed because of their government's policies.

Nevvy Z posted:

This isn't remotely a war. It's not so much a fight as a man killing a caged opponent with a knife. Slowly. For fun.

It's a cop kicking a man in the face as punishment for moving while another cop pokes him all over with a pin.

Even this really awful metaphor still doesn't justify your position, because randomly killing the families of officers from that department isn't moral.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 21:58

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

drilldo squirt posted:

Isn't that illegal? I remember reading somewhere that boycotting Israel was a crime.

Nah, the law just prohibits U.S. entities from agreeing to participate in foreign government boycotts, or to provide information for that purpose. You, by yourself, can boycott whatever you want, as long as you don't do it in collusion with a foreign government.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 09:28

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Ytlaya posted:

This is the part I can't wrap my head around. Most of the people who defend Israel in conversations like this tend to genuinely believe that government-sanctioned violence committed by an organized military is somehow less bad than private individuals committing acts of terror. Usually I can at least understand the warped logic that leads to dumb right-wing opinions, but I honestly don't know where they're coming from here.

The only thing I can think of is that they consider military violence more justifiable solely because the military (in this case the IDF) attempts to make excuses for its violence, whereas terrorists just flat out say "yeah we wanted to kill civilians." Like, it's somehow better for the IDF to kill orders of magnitude more civilians as long as they claim it wasn't their primary goal.

Tiler Kiwi posted:

I'd say its a product of warped ethics.

The idea that violence in pursuit of national interests committed by identifiable, accountable agents of a state who comport themselves at least somewhat in line with the practice of other states is morally superior to a bunch of people loosely banding together for the purpose of killing as many identified "enemy" civilians as possible isn't novel anywhere, except apparently this thread. It's the basis for pretty much all of customary and written Law of Armed Conflict. Sort of like how, if the sheriff's deputies put someone they reasonably believe committed a crime in jail, but end up releasing them when it turns out they are innocent, people don't get terribly upset, but if Bob, Steve, and Earl throw a sandbag over the head of the guy who they suspect robbed Bob's house, and keep him chained up in Earl's basement while they conduct a Star Chamber-style inquisition, it isn't a good thing.

And yes, intention is a large part of criminal culpability, war crimes or otherwise. Even LOAC accepts that things will go wrong due to the fog and friction of war. That's why administrative discipline for the crew of an American AC-130 that accidentally whacked a MSF hospital through a series of miscalculations and bad information is a just outcome, while Syria's deliberate targeting of hospitals in order to deny medical care to soldiers and civilians in rebel areas is a war crime, even though the result in both cases is a blown up hospital. Justice and criminality don't turn on outcomes or body counts.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2016 23:40

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Hong XiuQuan posted:

Hmmm.

Accountable to their superior officers who take responsibility for their command, not to some international body or to you personally. Israeli soldiers pretty clearly meet this criteria. Terrorist groups like Hamas generally don't.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2016 23:52

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Irony Be My Shield posted:

Hmm yes the MSF hospital targeting in which the US military investigated the US military and decided that the US military had done nothing wrong is a good, uncontroversial example.

Given that the crew was suspended from duty and subsequently disciplined after a lengthy investigation, it's gonna be real hard to argue that they weren't lawful combatants acting under the command of a competent authority who they were answerable to. If you think their wing commander or whichever other officer presided over their discipline and declined to press charges has been so willfully indifferent in his duties as to tacitly endorse or support a war crime, you can go that route too, but again, gonna be a hard sell.

Ratoslov posted:

So then wouldn't Syria's deliberate targeting of hospitals meet this criteria too? The people involved are accountable to the Syrian government and not some international body or us personally, after all.

Syrian pilots are almost certainly lawful combatants. Their personal degree of culpability would hinge on what they knew and when they knew it. Even if by some miracle you nabbed the pilot that dropped the bombs, and were certain that you could show he knew he was committing a war crime by attacking a protected place when he pulled the trigger, he would still be a lawful combatant and entitled to a fair trial under military courts martial. Unless the Syrian Air Force is in such a sorry state that pilots are deciding what to bomb on their own initiative, you could go after his commander as well for authorizing the mission, all the way up the chain to whoever gave the order in the first place, because that's pretty much the definition of being under a responsible command. It's not exactly novel to insinuate that Assad and his senior generals are not just indifferent to war crimes but are actively sanctioning them as a matter of policy though.

# ¿ May 1, 2016 00:25

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Tiler Kiwi posted:

While intent does matter to a degree in criminal culpability, outcome is significantly more relevant when discussing broader outcomes. The goal of justice is not simple retribution, it is restitution, and protection of people from unfair outcomes. I wouldn't want to a doctor to maintain a licence if they kept killing their patients for whatever reason, no matter what their intentions were, because I would rather not see dead patients as an outcome. The question of criminality or legality is actually incredibly irrelevant to this. On a teleological ethical level (the very kind that excuses hospital bombings for a greater good), if the ends are poo poo, then you should really do something to change the ends instead of going on about how noble the means are.

And this right here is why basing your moral judgements on outcomes is incredibly stupid. An oncologist is going to end up with a lot more dead patients than a pediatrician, yet by your logic the oncologist must be doing something wrong, no matter their intentions and methods, because their patients just keep dying. There is a reason that liability and ethics in medicine are based on "an appropriate standard of care" not "did the patient survive."

It's also weird to talk about separating criminality from broader concepts of justice when talking about LOAC, because the two are pretty much inseparable. Jus In Bello exclusively deals with what constitutes just conduct in waging war; there isn't a war crime traffic code where the U.N. monitor comes around and puts a ticket on your tank because it's double parked.

Tiler Kiwi posted:

Military operations will kill innocent people, and that can be okay if the ends being pursued are reasonably achievable and due diligence is taken. But the problem here is that I don't actually believe that due diligence is being pursued by many institutions whom have the ability to kill civilians, whether through callousness, groupthink, or just sheer incompetence. As a person opposed to hospital bombings, I do not believe that measures will be taken to prevent these sorts of things from occurring in the future as opposed to those involved just taking the easy way out and going "well poo poo happens", nor am I convinced that hypothetical measures taken to prevent these incidents would jeopardize the goals of the military operation, and I do not think it is reasonable to expect an institution is going to act against its own interests, so taking their internal investigations and statements at face value is a poor way to gauge intent or good will. Thus, I think moral high ground that they stand upon while they rack up a death toll that sometimes dwarfs those they oppose is worth regarding with a great deal of skepticism.

By the by, your cop analogy is a bit bent, since the actions are not really equal. If Bob, Steve, and Earl "put someone they reasonably believe committed a crime in [their basement], but end up releasing them when it turns out they are innocent", while the cops "[threw] a sandbag over the head of the guy who they suspect robbed Bob's house, and keep him chained up in [jail] while they conduct a [Kangaroo Court]-style inquisition", then I'd probably give the cops a hell of a lot more poo poo about it, regardless of whatever the law says. The police have more ethical leeway to make mistakes since in their line of work it is rather unavoidable, but treating it like carte blanche ability to gently caress up constantly because "aw shucks they try their best and they say they're good" is not good, either. There needs to be oversight and accountability, and preferably oversight and accountability by parties that are not sympathetic to them, such as, well, themselves.

Your first paragraph is is basically admitting that you have no evidence to back up your instincts about the situation, but you're damned if you're going to let that change your views. The US has been conducting air operations in Afghanistan for going on 15 years now, and given that an accidental strike on a protected target is so rare and novel as to be headline news, you either have to assume that the US has rules and procedures in place to prevent such things that have generally been working, or we have the luckiest Air Force in the world. You've also managed to completely miss the point of the sheriff analogy, which is that identifiability and accountability to lawful, competent authority are two of the bare minimum criteria for being considered a lawful combatant, rather than a murderer or bandit. The same things that separate sheriffs from vigilantes.

Tiler Kiwi posted:

Also a genuinely curious question since you seem to know a lot about this sort of thing; when has this sort of military self-investigation deal actually gone and said "Oh poo poo that sort of broke international law, someone call the ICC"?

Never, because the ICC is meant to complement national judicial systems, and only steps in when local courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute. As far as I know, every military that actually does things like inquiries into civilian casualties also refers cases to their own prosecutors when the evidence supports war crimes charges. If you're asking when has a military war crimes investigation resulted in charges and convictions, the most recent ones I can think of off the top of my head are Robert Bales, the five convicted over their role in the Mahmudiyah killings, a few of the MPs from Abu Ghraib, and the members of the Maywand District kill team. There were a few more who plead guilty to things like executing prisoners in Iraq.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 09:14 on May 6, 2016

# ¿ May 6, 2016 09:10

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Cat Mattress posted:

Oh the poor dears, they're been suspended from duty (read: they get to go on vacation instead of being in a warzone) and they've been disciplined (some dude with more bling on his uniform than them has wagged his finger at them for a few minutes). That's not a just punishment for a war crime. And besides, they're just the grunts. What about mission control? These guys don't just decide to climb into a plane then wander around looking for things to shoot on their own initiative, they've been told to go there and shoot stuff at such and such coordinates; those who gave them these coordinates and those who okayed the attack are equally culpable.

There's a reason MSF wanted an independent external investigation in this issue; and it's also a reason the USAF denied it: this was a war crime, plain and simple, and an internal investigation is just a way for the USAF to cover its dirty rear end while pretending to save face as much as possible.

The crew didn't commit a war crime, since their conduct was neither intentional nor reckless, and I'm honestly not sure it's possible to commit the vast majority of what laypeople generally call war crimes (violations of the principles of proportionality, humanity, chivalry, or discrimination) under a theory of negligence. Maybe if you forgot to feed a POW and he starved to death or something, but that's a rare case. Given that their conduct wasn't criminal, a reprimand that will severely impact their ability to continue to work in their field seems appropriate. The operational control didn't send them out the door with orders to hit a hospital, so they're in the clear. The JTAC who gave them the coordinates for the strike gave them correct coordinates, so he's in the clear. It sucks that a bunch of doctors got blown up despite no one doing anything intentional or reckless, but unless you have some alternate theory of how this conduct is criminal, you have to accept this sort of thing is why war is so terrible.

# ¿ May 6, 2016 09:11

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

eSports Chaebol posted:

There were injured Taliban fighters in the hospital whom the military wanted dead, so they killed them. That's a war crime because they're hors de combat in a hospital, and also the doctors aren't even combatants at all!

Do you have literally any evidence to support this accusation?

Fat Samurai posted:

According to the General in command of the Afghanistan forces, the airstrike (caused by "preventable human error") happened because:

- The crew misidentified the clinic as a nearby Taliban-controlled government building.
- The crew did not consult their no-strike list, which included the co-ordinates of the hospital. This, according to you, does not fall under "recklessness"
- The aircraft had faulty electronics which prevented them from receiving communications.
- The aircraft also had faulty navigation and targeting systems, which allowed the gunship to target the wrong building.

So unless your argument is that the entire USA Army, from the people who issue the orders to the foot soldiers, and including whoever checks their equipment and gives the technical thumbs up to a mission are loving lazy and stupid, and that it's OK to give loving lazy and stupid people enough firepower to level a city, there was a healthy dose of intention and/or recklessness involved.

The crew didn't decide not to consult their fragment of the No-Strike list, they didn't have the tactical data for their mission loaded into their systems, because they had to take off 69 minutes before schedule due to an "emergency call," presumably troops in contact. Their positioning/targeting systems were not working properly due to evasive maneuvering and other factors. The crew attempted to identify the correct target despite the malfunctioning systems, and from the time they pulled the trigger until the end of their fire mission, they believed they were attacking the lawful target they had been cleared to hit. A crew exercising due diligence and prudence would have realized that they had insufficient means to identify the target and held fire, which is why their conduct was negligent. If they had been lobbing shells into the city at random because they just didn't give a gently caress and hit the hospital, they would have been engaging in reckless conduct. The (lack of) knowledge that what they were doing would carry an unjustifiable risk of non-combatant casualties is what differentiates the two.

Fat Samurai posted:

Well, I guess that's all right, then. poo poo happens and now 42 people are dead due to, and I quote General John F. Campbell "preventable human error", but impacting their ability to continue to work in their field makes it all fine. Water under the bridge and all that.

Pretty much, yeah. That's war. Terrifying destructive power is wielded by young men and women who might kill dozens with little more than a transposed number. It's proper to be frightened and worried by the implications of that, but it doesn't mean that simple mistakes rise to the level of war crimes.

Ultramega posted:

oh loving blow me

If you want to jump in and defend "bad outcomes can only be the result of unjust actions," which is what his argument was premised on, be my guest.

Main Paineframe posted:

The trick is in how you define "protected target". The Gaza beach shelling, happened in part because the only building on the beach was a fisherman's shack that was deemed to be owned by Hamas, and thus the entire beach was declared a free-fire zone where anyone inside could be assumed to be a Hamas agent with no further verification necessary. And that's why some artilleryman faced zero consequences for intentionally blowing up four kids - he followed a process and RoE that told him it was perfectly okay to blow up those kids, and therefore was cleared of any responsibility for his decisions.

That doesn't really have anything to do with what we're discussing.

# ¿ May 7, 2016 09:27

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

eSports Chaebol posted:

Uh, they bombarded a hospital with Taliban fighters in it for over an hour. It wasn't a single errant bomb. That a government claims to have investigated and found nothing deliberately wrong with this is hardly credibly whether it's Americans claiming to be shocked, shocked that they blew up a hospital, or Russians amazed at how many well-armed tourists suddenly went on vacation in Ukraine without their knowledge.

30 minutes, not an hour. 2:08 AM - 2:38 AM.

Do you understand that "oh no, we confused a building for another, similarly shaped building 400m away and weren't able to cross-check because our poo poo was broken" is a lot more plausible than someone deciding "LET'S GO FOR IT, LET'S DO THE WHOLE loving <HOSPITAL>" in TYOOL 2015, running it up the chain to the theater component command level, and everyone from the guy taking messages to the General in charge to the air crew pulling the trigger being totally cool with having their fingerprints on publicly blowing up a hospital? And then three uninvolved Generals deciding to go along with it and making up a 3,000+ page report out of whole cloth detailing an extremely plausible set of human and equipment errors that none the less manages to jibe with the testimony of all witnesses? In this scenario you've made up, what motivation do the aircrew losing their careers over a strike they were ordered to execute by their superiors have for keeping quiet?

Yardbomb posted:

42 dead people is kind of worth more note than a "simple mistake", war crime fits pretty well when it comes to blowing up doctors in a hospital.

Before I go any further in replying to you, do you understand what Mens Rea is?

Kajeesus posted:

What are you discussing, then? You were arguing that it's not a crime to bomb a hospital as long as it's just an oopsie, and he responded by bringing up a situation where someone repeatedly and deliberately shelling defenseless children was also not a crime because someone higher up the chain had said they were a legitimate target. Why is no one accountable in that scenario? Is it also moral to bomb volunteer doctors if a US marshal tells you to, and an internal investigation decides that he was in the right?

Well, I was initially replying to Ytlaya and Tiller, who expressed disbelief that anyone of sound morals could consider violence done by an organized state military to be morally superior to violence done by bandits and terrorists. Ytlaya also added that they didn't understand why killing people by accident was considered less wrong than killing people deliberately, especially if more people die due to accident than due to malice.

I have been attempting to explain why these distinctions that Ytlaya and Tiller were were confused by are integrated into statutory and customary Law of Armed Conflict, as well as most Western legal systems, and why they matter. I cited the USAF accidentally shelling a hospital in contrast to the Syrian regime's deliberate targeting of a hospital to illustrate a case where law and morality properly make distinctions based on intent and mental state rather than outcome. This in part grew out of a discussion of whether U.S. forces could be considered accountable/responsible to superior officers because some posters felt that insufficient punishment for what they personally considered a moral wrong negated the concept of responsibility as a whole.

I haven't really got to the point of drilling into specific examples from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict yet, because some posters still haven't been willing to accept that "War Crime" has a formal definition beyond "a bad thing happened" and "Lawful Combatant" is a non-arbitrary distinction, which are basic principles that have to be articulated before you can have a serious discussion about war crimes. Irony Be My Shield and eSports Chaebol have been arguing that distinguishing between the Kunduz airstrike and the Syrian bombing of a hospital in Aleppo is wrong because the U.S. airstrike in Kunduz was in fact a deliberate act that has been covered up, rather than an accident, despite there being literally zero evidence to support this assertion.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 18:32 on May 7, 2016

# ¿ May 7, 2016 18:24

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Irony Be My Shield posted:

e: The idea that it happened entirely accidentally and with no negligence on the part of anyone is an extraordinary claim and requires an actual independent investigation to support it, rather than an internal PR job. It also as a point of fact does not prevent it from being a war crime.

Actually, even if we treat "all these people are lying" as an ordinary claim rather than an extraordinary one, you still have to have some affirmative evidence to support it.

I just explained that the report does in fact conclude that the hospital was struck due to negligence (rather than recklessness) on the part of the aircrew. You'd know that if you actually read the report. And yes, it does preclude it from being a war crime. It's not (usually) possible to commit a war crime through negligence for the same reason it isn't possible to commit murder or manslaughter through negligence; purposeful, knowing, or reckless conduct are (again, usually) required elements of the offense.

Cat Mattress posted:

MSF counted 2:08 - 3:15.

Based on what? The investigators had access to a time-stamped tape of the entire fire mission, so I'm inclined to believe their numbers more.

# ¿ May 7, 2016 19:27

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

team overhead smash posted:

I haven't really been paying much attention to this discussion about a non-Israeli/Palestinian related bombing, but this seems dead wrong to me. Some crimes (both normal and war) require intent, but others don't. Manslaughter, which you mentioned, is a fine example of this.

Some war crimes require an active role (akin to murder). Using human shields, for instance (referencing GC 4, AP 1, Article 51 (7)) it's clear from it's language of "render" and "in order to attempt to shield" and the like that an active intention is required to want to use civilians as human shields. You can't negligently use human shields.

In other instances there are responsibilities for how soldiers need to act and if they feel to meet them then they're committing a war crime regardless of the rationale for that failyre. For example when someone surrenders (according to GC 4, AP 1, Article 41 (3)) "all feasible precautions shall be taken to ensure their safety". There is no wording or language which in any way suggests a failure in precautions need to be wilfully planned. A failure through negligence fills all the criteria just as well.

Under the model penal code, negligent homicide is a lesser offense than manslaughter (which is distinguished by recklessness). I understand that some jurisdictions use different names for the different gradations of criminal/unlawful homicide, but the concept that killing someone through recklessness is a different offense than killing them through negligence is fairly common.

Also, this is why I caveated my statement with "usually." While there are a selection of offenses under the Geneva Conventions that can theoretically be committed by accident, (I specifically addressed somehow forgetting to feed a POW earlier,) they aren't relevant to either the Kunduz airstrike or the Gaza Kids on a Beach example mentioned earlier, and they definitely aren't what laypeople mean when they talk about capital-W War Crimes. Violations of the principle of discrimination, which is the framework under which you can accuse someone of committing a war crime by attacking a hospital, by their nature require knowing, voluntary acts, the very word "discrimination" implying a conscious delineation.

Yardbomb posted:

Looking at a hospital and pulling the trigger, then continuing to pull the trigger doesn't have much wiggle room for "But I didn't mean to!" in my mind. Like if you're going for that drat long I'm gonna have to go with the feeling that the intent there was to spray down whoever just happened to be around, as they kinda did.

I'm going to take that as a "no," with a side of "I didn't actually bother to read what happened beyond the headline, since the crew never identified the building as a hospital, and it didn't have any identifying markings that were visible from above at night."

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 07:30 on May 8, 2016

# ¿ May 8, 2016 07:26

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

You really should not listen to hearsay, especially from Cat Mattress. The crew didn't have access to the coordinates, because they had to take off early in response to an emergency tasking, and a failed communication system prevented them from receiving it mid-mission. You can read about it here. Also, entrance signs on the front of a building generally are not visible from aircraft.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ May 8, 2016 07:51

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Hong XiuQuan posted:

I think the essential point here is that when talking about Palestinians it takes some chutzpah to make suggestions about what they should do, accept or where they should go.

I guess that's technically correct, but I think a rational person can look at the situation and say that the Palestinians' irredentist demands for a return to the status quo anti bellum are counter-productive and unrealistic.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 01:00

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Absurd Alhazred posted:

I wonder if this will hold up in court? Seems like both executive overreach (this failed to pass in the State legislature) and State overreach (seems to be impinging upon the Commerce Clause).

I don't think there is any interpretation of the commerce clause that dictates how states choose what organizations they do business with. If they were taking some sort of enforcement action against organizations that boycott Israel there would probably be a much stronger Federal interest. I don't know enough about NY state law to comment on the former question.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jun 7, 2016

# ¿ Jun 7, 2016 04:05

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Xandu posted:

How much broader is this than the federal anti-boycott law?

Ironically, it might actually be a violation of the federal anti-boycott law. The federal law prohibits U.S. persons and organizations from participating in foreign boycotts not sanctioned by the U.S. government. If it could be shown that Cuomo was acting in collusion with or at the behest of any Israeli government reps or agents, he might be violating it.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2016 05:32

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Crowsbeak posted:

Could Cuomo be arrested for violating the law? Mostly I want to see that nepotistic back stabber humiliated.

Honestly I think it's mostly financial penalties, but you'd want to talk to someone who knows way more about import/export and overseas business law than I do.
EDIT: Yeah, apparently it's a great big ball of legal spaghetti. _{(Spaghetti positively certified to have made and processed in Italy, rather than spaghetti certified in the negative to have not been made or processed in Certain Blacklisted Countries)}

The Insect Court posted:

What, if any, reason do you have to think that Cuomo was "acting in collusion with or at the behest of any Israeli government reps or agents"

None whatsoever. Xandu asked how this compared to the federal prohibition in participating in foreign boycotts, but it's different from that because it's more like a counter-boycott. Given that it was announced at the "Celebrate Israel Parade" for the explicit purpose of showing New York's solidarity with the state of Israel, I'm sure Cuomo was extremely careful to comply with the federal regulation meant to keep U.S. entities from engaging in these sort of shenanigans at the behest of foreign governments.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jun 7, 2016

# ¿ Jun 7, 2016 05:52

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

emanresu tnuocca posted:

Murder is murder, Ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing, one does not justify the other if that is what you seem to be struggling with. Murdering children is never justified and should be dealt with in accordance to the moral standards of a modern society in the 21st century, apprehend the felon and bring him to trial, using a military force to collectively punish entire cities for the actions of individuals has nothing to do with law enforcement of justice, you are promoting the rationale of colonialism.

You can't really cut the individual killing away from context though. Hallel Yaffa Ariel wasn't killed over some personal quarrel or in a robbery gone wrong. She was killed by a Palestinian as part of an ongoing series of attacks by Palestinians with the objective of killing Israeli civilians in the context of... whatever you choose to characterize decades of Israeli/Palestinian violence as. It's not comparable to an ordinary criminal homicide, and goes beyond a basic law enforcement matter.

team overhead smash posted:

No. As mentioned Palestinians have a right to resistance which allows them try and regain their freedom through force of arms. The deciding factor as to the legality/morality of this attack is not which side of the border it occurred on but whether a legitimate military target has been chosen. Under IML Palestinians can target soldiers (or other legitimate targets, which includes some stuff you wouldn't think like tv stations) in Israel or Palestine and can target civilians in neither.

Given that you've previously argued that military actions need to be considered in light of larger jus ad bellum issues, the Palestinian "right to resistance" should be limited by the LOAC considerations applied to other actors. It is generally considered immoral to take military action which has no reasonable chance of achieving its objectives, or to prolong a conflict after all possibility of achieving military objectives has been lost, because even if jus in bello principles are strictly followed, it results in unnecessary deaths on both sides. Palestinian violence against Israelis is fundamentally immoral on this basis; it causes death and suffering, but has no chance of accomplishing any legitimate military objective.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2016 19:38

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Ytlaya posted:

Like I mentioned in a past post, I think part of it is the perception that violence committed by a military is somehow "cleaner" and less immoral than violence committed by individuals.

The idea that violence committed by organized, identified, accountable agents of the state is better than violence committed by random private individuals is hardly strange nor novel. Like, there's a reason no one bats an eye if the sheriff's deputies take someone to jail on a theft charge, but for some reason you'll get in trouble if you, Jim, and Bob decide to chain a guy up in Bob's basement for stealing from you.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2016 01:11

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Ultramega posted:

And israeli violence against palestinians is equally horrible, no?

Depends on the violence. That guy who had his troops shell a building in memorial to a fallen soldier, for example? Pretty obvious war crime. Israeli violence can be immoral for other reasons as well, but given that Israel actually has the capacity to accomplish legitimate military objectives, the violence by the Israeli state doesn't suffer the fundamental fault that Palestinian aggression does of being without legitimate purpose. On the other hand, price tag attacks and the like are equally reprehensible.

team overhead smash posted:

However to treat it as just that does a disservice to the lopsided nature of the conflict, even beyond the asymmetric nature of the conflict.

The driving force in the conflict is the continual war crimes committed against the entire populace of the OPT. I'm being literal there. I don't mean simply mean the regular war crimes that are omitted against some, like the killings of innocents civilians of the people used as human shields. I'm not talking about the continual war crimes that are committed against a fraction of the populace like imprisonment without trial... It's the fact that the entire population of the OPT is under an illegal occupation which does not hold to the Geneva Convention or other relevant standards of IML and is oppressing and impoverishing them constantly in a host of ways.

There is no moral principle that obliges the stronger side to limit their force to that which their opponents can muster.

If the Palestinian Territories are under occupation by Israel, then the occupation authorities have fairly wide latitude under LOAC to detain people without trial until the cessation of hostilities, freedom to dictate governance to a large extent, and freedom to move their military forces through the territory unimpeded, but assume responsibility for the welfare of the Palestinian people. If the Palestinian Territories aren't under occupation, that raises a whole other set of questions, mostly surrounding the de facto state or war that exists between the Territories and Israel, and possibly each other. You can't have it both ways, one set of your complaints or the other is unfounded.

team overhead smash posted:

I agree with the principles, but those principles don't apply to the Palestinians.

In these situations the idea behind the military force isn't to defeat Israel in battle and dictate terms to them because that is clearly unfeasible. Rather it is to put pressure on Israel to agree to a political accord. This is the time tested behaviour of resistance organisations to military forces they can't hope to openly defeat like the Nationalists in Ireland or the ANC in South Africa.

This is somewhat muddled because the stated goals of some militants and militant groups is clearly unfeasible - for instance Hamas's charter talking about taking back over the land of Israel - but they don't represent all Palestinian militants and even then if they were acting within the confines of IML then it would still work towards that feasible and moral goal regardless of the goal of each individual.

The only moral war crime is my side's war crime.

Your whole argument seems to be based on the premise that necklacing people, assassination, terror bombing, and threatening the families of politicians is OK as long as you're on the weaker side (and that side is morally approved by you personally). It's a fundamentally flawed idea, because it legitimizes groups like ISIS, and encourages a state of perpetual conflict where terrorism is a valid alternative to surrender.

icantfindaname posted:

You're talking about accountable, morally justified states, not ethnic supremacist, colonial apartheid states

Swan Curry posted:

lol if you think israel and its army is accountable for its actions

You don't understand what accountable means in this case. Just because the UN or whomever can't put Israel over a barrel and make them comply with whatever norms you have in mind doesn't mean their soldiers aren't accountable to competent authority.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2016 08:17

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

icantfindaname posted:

SS commandos were accountable to their superior officers and to the German general staff. Therefore, Nazis did nothing wrong

Actually, an instructive example. SS officers who committed war crimes were tried in their individual capacity, and their leadership was tried under the theory of command responsibility; the authorities they were answerable to were accountable for their actions. The vast majority of Wehrmacht were not punished, despite being under the command of the same leadership. On the other hand, guerrillas and francs tireurs were subject to execution upon capture, and the Nuremberg trials found that there was no criminal action by those who ordered and carried out such executions.

Cat Mattress posted:

Palestine is in a state of surrender; the Palestinian authority is submissive and collaborative. What more do you want? For every single Palestinian to pledge their life to the service of an Israeli master, calling them "Bwana" and licking their shoes clean every night? Palestinian terrorist groups appear because the endless oppression is intolerable and they don't see anything else they could do.

The Palestinian authorities have never surrendered, though. No Palestinian leadership has ever recognized Israel's right to exist on its own terms, or otherwise take the actions that would be considered surrender in the normal sense. Compliance isn't the same thing.

Kajeesus posted:

I'm pretty sure that's exactly the issue with the illegal occupation. Israel is currently having it both ways because they have deliberately refrained from defining the occupation. "Well at least half of what they're doing must be legitimate" is exactly the kind of bullshit reasoning that has allowed it to continue for so long, and I'm frankly flabbergasted that you would sincerely argue this.

You're trying to set up this situation where Israel has all the responsibilities of an occupying power, but any time they try to exercise the rights afforded to an occupying power, they're in the wrong, because the occupation is illegal in your opinion.

Kajeesus posted:

Just to be clear, are you of the position that any resistance movement is invalid and legitimizes groups like ISIS if it opposes a state sanctioned force with violent means, but can't expect to effect meaningful change?

"Resistance movement" is a slippery term that can mean a lot of things, and a movement might be composed of multiple groups, some of whom take morally justified actions, and some of whom take actions that are immoral. To be clear, I think that violence by unlawful combatants and deliberate targeting of civilians are always wrong.

ANIME AKBAR posted:

Suppose you are walking down the streets of Gaza City and you come upon two youths locked in a struggle. Conveniently one is clad in an IDF uniform while the other wears a green headband. As you cautiously move towards them to inspect the situation, you notice that the Israeli soldier has the Palestinian in a firm chokehold. The Palestinian's face is noticeably turning blue, his eyes are glazing, but his limbs trash about erratically. Occasionally a fingernail scratches the Israeli's face, or an elbow bruises his ribs. This startles the Israeli, allowing the Palestinian to steal a small gasp of air. But otherwise the Israeli maintains his firm submission hold.

After watching for what seems like decades, you address the Israeli:

"Sir, could you not let this man go?"

The Israeli replies:

"I would like to let him go, but I obviously cannot until he completely stops resisting."

Except that the prelude to this was that the Israeli and the Palestinian were trying to kill the poo poo out of each other, and every time someone asks the Palestinian of he will attack the Israeli again if he lets him go, the Palestinian says that final status questions like whether or not the Israeli should be killed cannot be addressed until the Israeli releases him and gives him back his knife.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2016 21:11

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Cat Mattress posted:

Yeah, the "right to exist on its own terms" because just them recognizing Israel's right to exist isn't enough, they have to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state for Jews only. Because the minority Arab population of Israel need to be told by their occupied brethren that they aren't legitimate citizens.

And what are the other actions they need to take for the surrender to be formal?

Saying that you're OK with something called "Israel" existing but being deliberately cagey about exactly what land it is allowed to exist on and what sort of country it is allowed to be, and what right its citizens have to define it isn't exactly confidence-inspiring.

Typically surrender involves a declaration by the political leadership of a nation or group ceding their sovereignty and territory to the occupying power, a call to loyal forces to cease resistance and lay down their arms, and acceptance of an imposed peace on the terms of the victor in order to avoid further loss of life following a defeat. The various Palestinian leadership organizations have chosen not to do this, for a variety of reasons.

Kajeesus posted:

Fair enough. What then, are the legitimate actions an individual Palestinian can take to someday be freed from the occupation, in your opinion?

I don't understand the question. Do you mean practically or morally? Because practically speaking, there is nothing the Palestinians can do, violently or non-, individually or collectively, to compel Israel to do what they want.

team overhead smash posted:

You previously just said that Israel is accountable regardless of the fact that there is no international body it reports to (although you offered no actual reason why that was the case). Your explanation here relies on how Nazi Germany was accountable (in the end) to an international body which judged the crimes it had committed and punished perpetrators.

Your rebuttal is mutually exclusive with your original point.

You are confusing accountability of individual lawful combatants, which was what the original discussion was about, with accountability of nation-states, which isn't really a "thing," given that the entire concept sovereignty is orthogonal to accountability to a higher authority. An individual can be a lawful combatant who is accountable to competent authority, in the armed forces of a nation state which is accountable to no outside power, and this is in fact the normal state of affairs. For example, a Private in the IDF is accountable to a superior officer who he knows and is known to. This officer is responsible for commanding the Private, and for disciplining him if he breaks laws, orders and regulations, and is answerable for his actions. He in turn has superiors who he answers to and who have vested this authority in him, and are similarly responsible for the actions of the officer, all the way up to the national leadership, who are answerable to the voters, but not any outside powers, because, again, that is what sovereignty is. This is what distinguishes lawful combatants from, for example, HAMAS.

Contrast this with the situation in the Gaza Strip, where any time a rocket sails over, we can't really say who fired it or who ordered it, or who the people who launched it are accountable to. :iiam:

team overhead smash posted:

That isn't what you were asked.

The question was: "are you of the position that any resistance movement is invalid and legitimizes groups like ISIS if it opposes a state sanctioned force with violent means, but can't expect to effect meaningful change?"

I've been pretty clear that I think any organized political violence incapable of achieving legitimate military ends is immoral. Resistance without the means to resist is pointless violence. You said earlier that you agreed, but felt that Palestinian resistance was exempt from this (and went on to cite the IRA as a good example) but never really explained why some pointless, terroristic violence is OK but some isn't.

team overhead smash posted:

Poor analogy. You invoke the idea that Palestine is an existential threat to Israel, which is laughable considering the power differential.

This is the heart of the matter, really. You think Palestinian violence and irredentist rhetoric is less reprehensible because Israel has deprived them of the means to pose an existential threat.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2016 08:11

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Main Paineframe posted:

Are you telling me that a resistance organization in an occupied or conquered territory wants to overturning outsider rule and restore their own control and sovereignty over the stolen territory? Perish the thought!

yes, I know that you're trying to bait people by acting as though "removing the Israeli government" means "slaughtering every Jew in Palestinian and ex-Palestinian territory, en masse", but I'm still going to make you spell out all your racist assumptions and premises rather than let them be taken for granted

I'm curious what exactly you think would happen if somehow the Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip became the sovereign authority over the entire territory of Israel & Palestine over night. Looking at the modern history of the Middle East, I'm having a really hard time coming up with an example of a previously repressed minority getting a hold of the levers of power that ends with, "and then everything was totally cool, no reprisals or purges of government bureaucrats, and things just kept trucking along like they had before."

# ¿ Oct 1, 2016 02:04

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Ah, South Africa, that famous middle eastern country known for its primary export of being analogous to whatever is convenient.

"Yes, you see, South Africa was able to unwind its government without bloodshed." *looks nervously at Zimbabwe, Angola, Eritrea, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, etc* "That is totally a thing that will happen in this completely different situation." *across the room, Yemen continues to self-destruct*

# ¿ Oct 1, 2016 02:20

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

fool_of_sound posted:

Hmm, it's almost as if there is something else the Israeli and South African apartheid governments have in commons. Something to do with their relationship with the USA and Western Europe.

What, you think being reliant on the U.S. is the secret sauce to a successful transition to multi-party democracy... and we just forgot to tell the Iraqis and Iranians?

Cat Mattress posted:

I posit that everything would be fine for everyone.

So you don't think that a militant group that suddenly found itself ruling the people it had demonized for decades would do anything like, say, try to extract wealth from the previous ruling class, engage in land transfers based on ethnic affiliation, or purge the government of bureaucrats in order to replace them with loyal members of the movement? That's a rather bold prediction, at odds with the way most similar transfers of power have gone in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Cat Mattress posted:

The first question you have to ask yourself is how this hypothetical would come to be in the first place. The only possible way this could happen would be if the Israeli all decided to emigrate to somewhere else and left; therefore the Palestinians would be unable to conduct any sort of revenge against people who wouldn't be there anymore.

So you're telling me that the only way for Hamas to accomplish its stated goals without bloodshed is if all the Jews were to somehow... go away.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2016 02:54

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Main Paineframe said that removing the Israeli government (allegedly Hamas' aim) was totally different from killing Jewish Israelis, so I asked him what exactly that would look like, even if we use the power of fiat to assume that it can be achieved without bloodshed.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2016 03:14

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Uh, people in this thread have repeatedly assured me that Israel is a foreign, colonialist government.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2016 03:38

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

fool_of_sound posted:

Cool deflection

Seriously though, Zimbabwe and to a lesser extent Angola are archetypal examples of negotiated settlements imposed with the help of outside powers that imploded immediately. The Zimbabwe parallels in particular are obvious: a power sharing agreement with international backing was supposed to protect the rights of the formerly-empowered minority, and the whole thing went to pieces, because it turns out that radical militant ethnic militias don't feel bound to keep their promises or make any attempt to govern with an even hand.

Or for an even more obvious parallel, look at Israel and the Palestinians' own history. The partition plan didn't work, neither side signed on to it, the whole thing collapsed into a civil war, and afterwards both sides used state power to gently caress with and expel their ethnic/religious rivals in the territory they controlled. The most generous interpretation of calls for a return to the 1947 borders to be imposed by outside powers via economic pressure (because lol there is no reason for Israel to do it unilaterally) is to get a reset to '47, which would immediately collapse into fighting again, because none of the underlying issues have been resolved since then, and the one state solution is somehow even worse.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2016 04:47

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Crowsbeak posted:

So let's here your solution, and no the status quo is not acceptable.

Why? If I think every likely outcome is equally bad as the status quo or worse, why would I support spending energy and resources to change things? I've posted my ideas about what a feasible solution would look like before, and I was told they were totally unacceptable because they required the Palestinians to give up things too.

Panzeh posted:

And then whenever a binational state is brought up every Israeli talks about "demographic issues" which would indicate their lack of commitment to democracy or equality before the law.

Yuuup. This is the fundamental problem with a democratic one state (and to a certain extent, negotiated two state) solution. It requires that there be some sort of check on the power of the majority that the minority believes will be respected. Minority control of the apparatus of power doesn't really cut it, since that isn't what most people mean by democratic, and there is no basis for trust in a legal solution.

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

Your worst case scenario is exactly the same as the current status quo, but with the signs reversed. Perhaps that means the current status quo is also really terrible and the ideal solution involves some kind of... whatever the opposite of a gross imbalance of power is?

Last time the sides had relative parity in terms of power, they went to war, and the result is what we have today. Why is parity of power a good thing, especially if the underlying issues remain unresolved?

Cat Mattress posted:

What makes you imagine that Hamas would obtain power over six million Jewish Israeli without their explicit consent?

What makes you think the IDF, which as far as I know is made up mostly of Jewish Israeli, some Druzes, and basically none of the Israeli Arabs, would follow Hamas' orders to exterminate the Jews?

All you're really doing here is making an argument that a democratic bi-national state would likely collapse into civil war or coup.

Cat Mattress posted:

The right to return is a necessity.

Why? For what? Why is irredentism a good thing?

# ¿ Oct 2, 2016 18:46

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Cat Mattress posted:

LOL irredentism.

Israel, the entire Zionist philosophy, is turbomegairredentism 9000. Don't begrudge the right to return of people who lived there 70 years ago when you posit that the right to return of people who allegedly lived there 2000 years ago is sacrosanct.

I don't actually care who stole whose land when. I care about the facts on the ground as they exist right now.

You haven't answered the question. Why is the right of return important? If it isn't irredentist in character, do you think it is unrelated to the expressed desire of Palestinians to return to and occupy lands incorporated into Israel in 1947? If, as another poster suggested, the number of people who would take advantage of it is so small as to not effect the demographics of Israel, why does it matter? Why can't Israel set a limit on the number of returnees in that case?

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Oct 2, 2016

# ¿ Oct 2, 2016 20:49

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Ultramega posted:

I think one of the really fundamental things I've noticed about a lot of the people posting in israel's defense of its horrible crimes, is this default to legalistics. Anyone who is honest will admit to themselves it's not really laws that govern the world and people's actions, it's power and the relative chance they'll be forced to confront that power whatever form it takes. I think there's just something inherently false to when someone is confronted with evidence of say, an israeli atrocity and the first response is "uh well it's technically legal", because one of the very functions of law, and to a lesser extent, civil/criminal laws, is to justify violent responses from law enforcement without the concomitant feeling of remorse and guilt over having killed or injured other people.

Would anyone here who's tried using law or some sort of sacrosanct observance of military law/rules of engagement be as generous with it's applications if they had a family member or a loved one who suffered from state violence? It's absurd on the surface of it; people don't think like "my cousin went to get ice cream for his wife and because he was driving a bit erratically and it was late the idf blew his windshield and most of his face apart but its alright because they felt threatened and were just following the rules of engagement". You can defend israeli actions all you want like that just know that everyone else here thinks you sound like a kid with the D&D player's handbook tearfully trying to explain to their DM how their character actually did survive a trap/fall/combat because just look at this rule here, you're not interpreting it correctly, you need to follow the rules etc.

Well, part of it is that people like to throw around the term "war crimes" a lot as a moral cudgel, and since war crimes, like other crimes, are defined acts subject to legal analysis, a legalistic approach is unavoidable when discussing them. A legalistic approach is also part of the idea that actions should be analyzed against a universal standard of whether or not they are permissible, irrespective of our feelings about the parties involved. On a personal level, I'd be horrified if one of my relatives was shot at a military checkpoint, but my personal feelings on the matter have no bearing on whether the shooter's actions were criminal.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2016 22:54

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Ultramega posted:

hot take from the guy who defended the bombing of an MSF hospital by the USAF.

If you don't understand how saying "this doesn't meet the definition of a crime" is not the same as supporting something, this may be the source of your confusion.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2016 20:04

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Brainiac Five posted:

I'm not supporting this action, I'm merely, as the rational adult in the room, insisting that it should bear no consequence for occurring, nor should it be prohibited from occurring in the future.

Not being illegal is not the same as not having consequences. This is a distinction most rational people make. For example, I think adultery is wrong, but I don't think it should be illegal.

Ultramega posted:

way to prove me right, dude.

So is your contention then that legal analysis has no place if something you personally believe to be a moral wrong has occured?

# ¿ Oct 16, 2016 20:44

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Unfortunately for them, much like the rest of us, not taking him seriously is no longer an option.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2016 08:06

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Volkerball posted:

It starts the cycle of ostracizing Israel... The resolution is very significant in that regard.

ModernMajorGeneral posted:

Isn't the condemnation of settlements based on the four previous resolutions already saying they are illegal? Why are pro Israeli figures losing their minds over this particular one other than it being today rather than the 1970s?

Yardbomb posted:

Big bully has to get indignant any time someone tells them they're still being awful.

It can't be both, guys.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2016 18:58

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

The Kingfish posted:

Obama is a coward.

emanresu tnuocca posted:

Yes.

I really don't get why so people are so hyped about this, it just goes to show that there was a president who knew which side is up and had a pretty good grasp on how to go about unscrewing the i/p pooch but chose to do absolutely nothing for 8 years , this timid wrist slap which only sets the stage for Trump to win the favor of AIPAC is absolute dogshit and nothing to be pleased about.

Why on earth would Obama step out and make a political move with literally zero domestic upside? It's not like there are a lot of single issue Palestinian voters he could sway to his side, or a pro-Palestinian lobby in Congress that would back his play, help him move legislation, or owe him favors. Internationally, everyone who gives a poo poo about Palestine as anything other than a cynical tool already either loves Obama more than his political rivals or has staked out a hard position in the Middle East power game.

Literally all he could do would be to distract from his other priorities by throwing himself face first at a Gordian knot that has vexed all his predecessors.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Dec 29, 2016

# ¿ Dec 29, 2016 03:38

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 05:19

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Cugel the Clever posted:

He's less than a month from the end of his presidency. I don't think he has to worry about his political capital at this point...

People were calling him a coward for having not done it earlier.

TBH, I don't honestly envision a two state solution that doesn't result in another war within a decade.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2016 04:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Israel/Palestine

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