Israelis and Palestinians can’t go on like this. Weep for us.

[Harel13]

Then you do believe killing civilians is morally justified, you just require military PR departments to do a little extra work in order to justify their killing. (Needless to say, I never trust a military source when it claims that such-and-such civilian killing was justified. For the record, I also do not think there is any moral justification to be had for the victims of Hamas' rocket attacks - but, it should also be on the record that neither Hamas nor their supporters so far have even tried to invent flimsy excuses to justify child murder.)

Wait, do you never believe any military? Say a military official shows you personally all of the evidence for something. You wouldn't believe him merely because he's from the military and the evidence has the signature of the military? It would all be fabricated in your mind?

 

[Kooky]

Wait, do you never believe any military? Say a military official shows you personally all of the evidence for something. You wouldn't believe him merely because he's from the military and the evidence has the signature of the military? It would all be fabricated in your mind?

I wouldn't believe them because a military at war has a vested interest in presenting any information they have in a manner that furthers their political and military goals, including, but not limited to, the cherry-picking, distortion, and outright fabrication of facts on the ground.
As the old adage goes, the first victim of any war is the truth.

You are also presenting a ridiculous situation on purpose to make my stance look ridiculous. Can you name a single instance where you personally observed the destruction the IDF waged in Gaza on the ground, as an objective disinterested observer, with no social or political pressure to present your findings in a certain way? Probably not, and neither can anybody else here in this thread - neither the most ardent cheerleaders of the IDF's bombing campaign, nor its most ardent detractors.

 

[Harel13]

I wouldn't believe them because a military during war has a vested interest in presenting any information they have in a manner that furthers their political and military goals, including the cherry-picking, distortion, or outright fabrication of facts on the ground.

Who'd you trust for info during wartime?

 

[Kooky]

Who'd you trust for info during wartime?

Nobody with a vested interest in distorting the truth.

By comparison, MSF or the NRC are international organizations of some repute who have no interest in lying for one or another warfaring side's benefit - at the very worst, their vested interests lie in getting more support for their work on the ground, which I don't see as a motive with a strong potential to distort an accurate view of facts on the ground.

Of course, no source is perfect - but there is a difference between trusting in an imperfect account with a certain point of view, and allowing one's view to be filtered entirely through war propaganda (and make no mistake, the IDF are consciously producing war propaganda)

 

[Poisonshady313]

it should also be on the record that neither Hamas nor their supporters so far have even tried to invent flimsy excuses to justify child murder.)

That is just plain false. I'll provide links when I find the time... but a lot of what I was talking about in my post is exactly that... Hamas and their supporters trying to invent flimsy excuses to justify child murder.

 

[Lyndon]

Speaking of flimsy excuses, the Israelis claim that all the men and a good portion of the women and children killed in Gaza were Hamas militants, the numbers don't add up any other way.

 

[Kooky]

That is just plain false. I'll provide links when I find the time... but a lot of what I was talking about in my post is exactly that... Hamas and their supporters trying to invent flimsy excuses to justify child murder.

So that is the one item you took from my entire series of posts on the issue. Not the fact that the IDF was gleefully bombing civilians and murdering them by the hundreds with flimsy figleaf excuses of "terrorism" tacked on, but that Hamas may not be on the level in their PR campaign to justify civilian casualties they inflicted.

Much like the air strikes themselves, these defenses seem to have the sole goal of"defeating" the Palestinians in some way.

 

[Colt]

In what way are Israeli Arabs oppressed? They actually have more rights than Jewish Israelis, in that they aren't obligated to serve in the IDF.

I get the impression that the average citizen of the world doesn’t know: “In 2016, the total population of Jerusalem was 882,700, including 536,600 Jews, 319,800 Muslims, 15,800 Christians, and 10,300 unclassified. In 2003 the populationof the Old City was 3,965 Jews and 31,405 "Arabs and others"