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I just wanted to know if the links you provided disputed the specific numbers that Zeev posted, and I didn't especially want to read every page of all five of the Web sites in order to find out. You have answered the question.
You're making me blush.
To tell you the truth, it's Zeev's integrity and forebearance from mudslinging that inspire me to maintain whatever degree of civility I manage to achieve here. I have been kind of amazed that he has put up with your inflammatory comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, and your accusations that he is lying, as long as he has.
I'm not voting for banning, because I think it's better for one-sided propaganda like yours to be voiced out in the open where it can be challenged. On the other hand, I have sympathy for those who are, because I have to admit that I do not have the time or tenacity to keep after your incredible volume of posts. I can only take so much of it in any given week.
Here is the UN report on the incident:
http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/
Palestinians had claimed that between 400 and 500 people had been killed, fighters and civilians together. They had also claimed a number of summary executions and the transfer of corpses to an unknown place outside the city of Jenin.
The number of Palestinian fatalities, on the basis of bodies recovered to date, in Jenin and the refugee camp in this military operation can be estimated at around 55. Of those, a number were civilians, four were women and two children. There were 23 Israeli fatalities in the fighting operations in Jenin.
CT, you appeared to be disputing Zeev's statement that the claimed 500 or 1000 casualties in the Jenin massacre had been brought down to a much smaller number. The passage you quoted says nothing whatever about that. Do you have any RELEVANT sources you can quote?
"Zeev could say what ever biased thing he wants. That is why I try and provide as many links as possible from as many neutral sources as possible (even Israeli sources). So I asked for a link. Not a link to Zeev's biased words. But a link from a neutral media source. I hope your news media source isn't just Zeev's word..."
Posting an Israeli source does not make it unbiased. Israel, having freedom of speech, has a wide variety of points of view. The fact that the ones that you choose to quote all agree with you suggests that they were selected by you according to whether they agree with you.
All of the Jewish ones that I've seen you quote have a very obvious point of view, and I have never seen them post anything that does not support that point of view. That is not a neutral source. A neutral source is one that does not select its facts according to whether they support a particular point of view. It's easy to tell the difference, because everything that is published by a biased source supports their point of view. That is not true of a neutral source.
I happen to think that Zeev has integrity enough, and ability enough, to consistently post data that is from reliable sources. That is why I am willing to accept his numbers as being at least approximately right. If you aren't, fine, but that does not prove that his numbers are wrong. At most it proves that the correct numbers have not been established.
"And this wasn't just 15 people. Yet we did it. That should tell you something."
What it tells me is that it is very foolish to try to convince the citizens of a very well-equipped military power that targeting civilians is OK.
One thing that might be helpful to know is that Zeev has stated his goal as being right 60% of the time.
One strategy I can tell you does not work (for me, anyway) is trying to mirror Zeev's trades. The big problem with that approach is timeliness of information, i.e., the market moves faster than Zeev can post his trades. Also, since he does not charge for the information, he is under no obligation if he is late or makes a mistake in reporting. The best I was able to do with it was about breakeven.
I have found him to be very good with general market direction if your expectations are reasonable, and he is excellent at understanding the markets.
"Zeev, have you ever served in the IDF?"
That question seems irrelevant. If he has not served in the IDF, one might argue that he should defer to the opinions of those who have, but if so, then he still has to decide which ones, the 500 refuseniks, or the 499,000 who remain in service.
Zeev said there were claims of "500 or a thousand civilians" killed in the Jenin Massacre, and that these numbers were "brought down to around 17 civilians and 30/40 arm bearing terrorists." In answer to those numbers CoalTrain provided a bunch of links to home pages of Web sites. I was just asking if he could be more specific about where the relevant data is, as I really don't have time to search every page of every site in hopes of finding something relevant.
Zeev would be in a better position than I to say what his source was.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=811562
Thanks for filling in the details.
There are some who say that the Palestinians in the occupied territories are pawns of Arab governments who don't really have the best interests of the Palestinian people at heart. The measures that have been taken by some Arab governments in perpetuating the Palestinian refugee situation certainly lends support to that thesis.
I think it was wrong.
That Web site appears to agree with the Palestinian position in every detail.
Oh I see. So what you are saying is that you will separate the world into those that have modern warfare and their people can tell their modern warfare militaries to go to another country and kill their people, versus the ones that do NOT have modern warfare and should assume the fetal position. Is that what you are saying?
No. I'm saying that intentionally selecting civilian targets in preference to military ones is wrong.
Cause excuse me, if you were attacking my country, I don't care if I had a pitchfork.
Neither do I.
I will try and find every freaking way possible to inflict damage to you and your people that will force you to get the hell out. War is war and you fight it the best you can with what you have. To me your B.S. of "I have modern warfare so I assume everyone should use my means of killing" is total hogwash, egocentric and totally out of touch with the reality of what is war.
It's not the means of killing that's the problem, it's the selection of targets. The fact that one side has a stronger military than the other is not a justification for preferring civilian targets.
If a pregnant woman became a casualty in the Palestinian-Israeli war, why should that outrage anyone more than any other casualty? It sounds pretty sexist to me.
Until one side or the other surrenders, or until the two parties agree to a cease-fire and keep their agreements, the war will continue. That means there will be casualties, and some of them are going to be pregnant women. It's inevitable. Why obsess over this one in particular?
Specifically where in any of those Web sites are the figures Zeev gave disputed? Providing a bunch of links to home pages is not very helpful.
"What does "as many as you can" mean?"
Well, if you sent people into places that were crowded with civilians to blow themselves up, and if you chose those locations BECAUSE there were a lot of civilians there, that would be an example of trying to kill as many civilians as you could. Similarly, if you sent soldiers out with instructions to shoot civilians regardless of whether they were attacking or threatening your forces, that would also be an example of trying to kill as many civilians as you could.
"Why you don't have a problem to a methodical killing of a few each day with 10x the total at the end, but you have a problem with many at one time but 1/10th the total at the end."
I have a problem with both.
"Is it because it doesn't hit you all at once?"
It's because I haven't seen substantiation of that 10X number from a source that I know to be reliable and neutral (or for that matter from ANY source). I also have not seen confirmation that it is methodical on the part of the Israelis.
Good! I'm glad SOMEBODY agrees with me!
"I looked and I can find no recent news that says Israel has jailed anyone from the IDF over the deaths of innocent civilians."
As I recall, the article you linked said that the IDF was investigating. Or do you want them to be convicted without an investigation?
"As far as I know, any Palestinian who killed innocent civilians is already dead."
How about the people who ordered the attacks? Anyone who orders the killing of persons who take no part in the hostilities is guilty of a war crime too, you know.
"As I pointed out, we, the U.S., killed 90% civilians during Vietnam. Did we commit a war crime?"
The percentage itself is not a war crime as far as I know, but it's certainly possible that it includes some number of war crimes. I know of at least one documented case.
"If yes, did I miss the trial?"
Apparently so. I provided a link to the My Lai massacre court-martial in another post.
Do you mean Cornwallis? He was on the British side. The claim was that the American side did it.
"You really think that both the British and Patriots did not kill civilians?"
I don't think it's possible to have a war in which zero civilians are killed. That does not justify going out and killing as many as you can, as modern-day suicide bombers do.
I think the Vietnam war was a bad idea. The extremely high percentage of civilians killed, if accurate, is one more reason for thinking so. I think a lot of things have improved about the U.S. military since those days.
Do you remember the My Lai massacre? The officer who led it was convicted of murder for it, is spite of public opinion to the contrary.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/mylai.htm
BTW, the amount of firepower has nothing to do with whether something is a war crime.
Here is a link to the Geneva Conventions which shed light on what war crimes are:
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebCONVFULL?OpenView
Can you cite a source on that?
"Why would one side be war crimes and the other won't?"
What makes you think it matters which side you're on? If both sides commit war crimes, then both sides are guilty and should stop doing that, and the responsible parties should be punished. Apparently the Israelis have jailed a few of their soldiers for this. Have the Palestinians jailed any of their people for war crimes?
"Are you saying that Hitler who similarly occupied other people's land was not committing a war crime but the people that resisted him and fought back did?"
Occupying someone else's land is not a war crime. I don't know whether aggression is. It's for sure that gassing the Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals in every country he took over was. The people resisting Hitler did not commit war crimes if they attacked targets of military significance, but if they went over into Germany and picked civilians at random to kill as many as they could I would think that would be a war crime.
I don't think there is any conceivable way that George Washington would have adopted a policy of killing British civilians even if they had lived next door. I'd like to remind you that America had a goodly percentage of the population that wanted to remain British subjects, so he wouldn't have had to go far to find them if he had been inclined to stoop so low.
I don't know whether war with Iraq would be just or not. I think that is a separate issue from the legality of it. I plan on studying Professor Cohn's article, and if I have comments, I will post them.
That amounts to saying that the losing side has license to commit war crimes. I disagree.
I also think that even in war, killing has to have some plausible possibility of achieving the desired result in order to be justifiable. The results in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict merely seems to be to harden Israeli resolve.
"Innocent civilians means innocent civilians. They have nothing to do with this."
If they had nothing to do with attacking the tank, and played no role in the Palestinian war effort, then they shouldn't have been killed unless it was an unavoidable consequence of attacking a legitimate military target.
"Now put yourself in a Palestinian's position. Let's say your mom was the pregnant woman who was days away from giving birth to your brother. Instead the Israelis kill her and your 9 month unborn brother. What would you do?"
In the face of a personal loss like that, it's hard to say. The emotions of such an event might be enough to cause me to abandon my conviction that the war was futile, and enlist in the Palestinian war effort, but one thing it definitely would NOT cause me to do is go into an area primarily populated by civilians and take out as many of them as I could. Such an act would dishonor her memory, as it would be very much against everything she stood for.
"But surrender? Are you kidding me?"
You asked me what I would do. Your mileage may vary. I don't think that the Israelis are the monsters that you make them out to be, and I don't think the Palestinian Authority gives one hoot about freedom. Personally, I think there has to come a point in every war when the losing side admits it is hopeless and surrenders. Otherwise no war would ever end. But if the Palestinian people think it hasn't reached that point, they are free to go on fighting if they want.
"Why isn't America surrendering to the terrorists?"
Because we don't think they have a snowball's chance in Hell of winning.
"Why didn't we surrender to the British?"
Because we had an army and a great general to lead it. Notice that he won the war by fighting the British military. He did NOT send people over to Britain to attack their civilians.
History is full of examples of peoples who have given up fighting and admitted that the war was lost. Even the U.S. has done it. Sometimes it's the right thing to do.
Sorry to be late in replying to this one. IHub seems to have a bug that prevented me from seeing a link to some posts in my inbox, so I had to note the time stamp and go onto your profile page in order to read it.
If that article is correct that three-quarters of the Iraqi dead in the Gulf War were civilians, then I think we ought to try to find a way to lower that percentage in future wars. Have you found any percentages for the Afghanistan war?
As for economic sanctions, I'm against those in general (including the ones against Cuba) because I think they do more harm than good.
"<Palestinians have the opposite policy.>
Is that right? And you say this because.....??? Please provide proof equivalent to the numbers of innocent Palestinians killed by Israel, innocent Afghanistanis by the U.S. and innocent Iraqis during the last war and now during the new one."
I say that Palestinians have the opposite policy because they have sent out suicide bombers into places that were characterized by concentrations of civilian populations, and little or nothing of military significance. There have been many such attacks, but the actual number is irrelevant, because they shouldn't have been doing it at all. If anyone else is doing it, including our forces or the Israelis, then it is wrong and they should stop doing that.
Uh, if you don't mind I think I'll decline that assignment. Convincing religious zealots of anything is not my strong suit. <g>
"So what you are really saying is that Palestinians have the right of self defense but they should get into the fetal position and be exterminated? Is that what you are saying?"
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if they want to make war on Israel (which they are in fact doing), then they have the same responsibility as any other combatants to go after military targets and not nightclubs, school buses, etc. If the Palestinians are in fact being exterminated, then blowing up Israeli civilians at random is not going to save them. If anything, it increases public support for harsher measures on the part of Israel's military.
"To me, what the Israelis are doing now is no different than the Palestinian suicide bombers were doing. After all, I have been posting for almost a month now nothing but scores of innocent Palestinians dead and all because they blew up a tank and killed 4 IDF soldiers who were in their land, destroying their homes and killing their people."
Any persons who participate in blowing up a tank are not innocent civilians anymore, they have made themselves into combatants. If the Israeli military's response to the blowing up of a tank is to kill noncombatants, then that is wrong. However any civilians who played a part in attacking the tank, or in other attacks on the Israelis, are legitimate military targets, regardless of whether they wear a uniform.
"So what would you suggest they do? Get into the fetal position? I'm really interested to hear if you where in their shoes and with their non-existent military, being killed like fish in a barrel, what would you do when the occupying force was killing your people and taking your land, and every time you tried to defend yourself by taking out a tank, your people and family were slaughtered?"
The Palestinians and the Israelis are at war. Nobody seems to want to admit it, but that's what it really is, IMO. I believe the Palestinians have no realistic hope of victory in this war. Given that, I think the Palestinians should surrender. I think the Palestinians should cease all acts of violence, and if they did that, I think the Israelis would do the same. If the Israelis did not do so, I think they would lose the support of the American people in short order, and they know that.
But if the Palestinians want to continue fighting this futile war, it is their right to do so.
Thanks for the info. I'll look at that article.
My understanding is that Dresden was primarily a cultural center, with little or no impact on the war effort, so I think that the firebombing of Dresden was wrong.
My understanding is that a lot of the production of war materials in Japan was spread out among the neighborhoods, so that it was not possible to separate them. Whether it was necessary to bomb as widely as was done there, I just don't know.
World War II was very much a war against civilians, and those who argue in favor of preferring civilian targets by Palestinians or anyone else is in effect arguing for a return to the bad old days. I can only hope that they do not succeed in convincing nations with major military power that preferring civilian targets is OK, because if they do, the term "blood lust" will achieve a whole new and horrible meaning.
Palestinians have a right of self defense too. What they do not have, in my opinion, is a right to try to kill as many civilians as they can.
I don't expect a poorly equipped force to achieve the same effectiveness as a well equipped one in avoiding civilian casualties. I do expect ALL combatants to do the best they can, and I think that trying to inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties is wrong for ALL combatants. I don't think the fact that one side is outmatched is sufficient justification for PREFERRING civilian targets.
I recognize that you support the Palestinians' cause and not Al Qaeda's, and it is your right to do so, but the fact remains that they both use a tactic that I abhor, and that is the preferring of civilian targets.
If you think my numbers are wrong, what are the right ones? Of the people killed by Palestinians, what percentage do you think are civilians and what percentage are military?
The goal I stated of ten percent or less civilian casualties is what I would like to see on the part of a modern military. I have no idea whether the military arts have advanced to that degree, and I certainly would agree that many, and perhaps even all, past wars came nowhere near that goal. I'm just saying that the goal should be to minimize it, not to maximize it. For example, if you're thinking in terms of World War II, the U.S. and its allies certainly had much poorer capabilities to avoid civilian casualties than they do today. However, there were also some targeting decisions which in the benefit of 20/20 hindsight seem wrong to me, such as area bombing of those cities whose activities were of little importance to the enemy's war effort.
I think you're really skating on thin ice to call the U.S. founding fathers terrorists. I don't know if the American Revolutionaries attacked any civilians or not, but their main target was the British Army. There's a big difference between dumping tea in the bay and slaughtering as many civilians as you can.
You asked, "why aren't you screaming at the 10x as many innocent civilians on the Palestinian side?"
I don't see anything in your three links that says ten times as many innocent civilians have been killed on the Palestinian side.
Have you read this article?
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31194
I have not heard of any rule in international law that says a nation must get U.N. permission before going to war. Can you provide a link?
Legally, it would be a continuation of the Gulf War. There was no peace treaty, only a cease fire which was conditional on Iraq's abiding by the terms of Resolution 687, which it appears they have not. Resolution 1441 promised consequences without spelling out what they were, and has no provision preventing the U.S. and its allies from delivering those consequences.
The question in my mind is not the legality, but whether it is a good idea.
OK, I said you think the 9/11 attacks were justified, and you said I was wrong, so I guess that answers the question.
So if the 9/11 attacks were not justified, do you agree that the suicide bombings by Palestinians are wrong as well? Isn't deliberately targeting civilians wrong no matter who does it?
"My original question to you remains unanswered. I wonder why?"
Because you type faster than I do. If you go back and look again, you will see that I have posted a reply.
It is not possible to make war without killing civilians. What I say is that people who are at war have a responsibility to do the best they can to minimize civilian casualties. Al Qaeda and the Palestinians have the opposite policy.
"War and terrorism are never justified."
If you think war is never justified, then what do you think the proper response would have been to the biggest attack on U.S. soil since World War II? Just lay down and hope they don't do it again?
We have the right of self defense, and that includes the right to make war on those who attack us.