Israel / Guantanamo

[zarq]

To rescue a single soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, (19), Israel has mobilized for war. (I keep thinking about the “Men are not potatoes” line from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.) They have arrested 64 members of the Palestinian governing party, Hamas, including eight of its cabinet ministers, in “a massive overnight sweep slammed by the Islamists as a

Comments

[solarbird]

Ironic, considering that one of the judges who ruled against [the administration] was their own recently appointed Chief Justice.
Um, no. He sat out the case, and had ruled for the Administration when on the appeals court:Chief Justice John Roberts did not participate in the case because he ruled on the case, in favor of the government, at the appellate level.

[zarq]

Aw crud. I missed that. :(

Thanks for pointing this out. I'll fix the post now. :(

[zarq]

Wasn't it though?

I need to read that pdf file. The arguments Alito and Scalia made in their dissent must be interesting.

[happydog]

This is so completely sad and stupid, because the Palestinians just screwed themselves out of having a homeland. They simply could not have done anything more idiotic, from the election of Hamas on down to this. It was almost like they planned to screw the pooch, it's that bad.

[rfmcdpei]

That argument assumes, mind, that they haven't been screwed out of a homeland well before now.

It's a pity. Israel could have had a Palestinian state working well alongside it, working as a neighbour, after the 1967 war. Instead, it opted for the colonial route. That was bound to end horribly. (It hasn't ended yet.)

Who would Israel have given Palestine to?

[gbam]

In 1967, the West Bank was owned by Jordan and the Gaza Strip was owned by Egypt before Israel took over the lands during the Six Day War. The idea of one unified state run by the Palestinians wasn't even a consideration back then - there was certainly no pressure for one in the 20 years since the formation of Israel in 1948

Re: Who would Israel have given Palestine to?

[rfmcdpei]

The creation of the settlements is certainly debateable and/or illegal[.]

Actually, it isn't debatable. At the very least the settlements' creation, on disputed land at the expense of the landholders, demonstrates that Israel wasn't at all interested in an equitable peace with the Palestinians. I was struck, on reading Friedman's From Here to Jerusalem, to discover how even before the intifadeh of 1987 the Israeli state exiled so many Palestinian political leaders on the ground--secular ones, often sympathetic to the PLO, often not--on the grounds that they threatened Israeli rule. They did; instead, Israel sponsored the forces that ended up producing Hamas.

[B]ut the Israelis couldn't just walk out of what was then Jordanian and Egyptian territory without some kind of resolution to the state of war between them. Eventually the Jordanians and Egyptians gave up on the land themselves leaving Israel with an intractable problem and a hostile population whose democratically elected governement still claims the right to Palestine and

[rfmcdpei_privat]

It's simply and bitterly ironic that Israel, as a state, came about only after a campaign by terrorists who (among other things) kidnapped and executed British soldiers and Scandinavian diplomats to the praise of their overseas compatriots.

The universe turns out to be curved, after all.

[gbam]

This may be partially true, but Jewish terrorists never had the support of the people as you seem to claim and as soon as the State of Israel was formed, the government went after and killed and imprisoned members of the Jewish terror groups that existed. (See the Atalena episode -http://atalena.quickseek.com/... )

[rfmcdpei]

This may be partially true, but Jewish terrorists never had the support of the people as you seem to claim and as soon as the State of Israel was formed, the government went after and killed and imprisoned members of the Jewish terror groups that existed. (See the Atalena episode -http://atalena.quickseek.com/)

It's worth noting that this occurred only after the full withdrawal of British troops. Israel wasn't trying to disarm the terrorists while the British were installed in their cantonments.

There's a letter to the NY Times from 1948 where prominent American Jews, including Albert Einstein are harshly critical of the Jewish terror groups.
http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study_res/einstein/nyt_orig.html

This is true. And yet, despite the opposition of these Jews in the diaspora, other Jews in the diaspora supported them. Mordechai Richler's This Year in Jerusalem

[interactiveleaf]

And this is only going to make things uglier.

[zarq]

They're not entirely sure it's him, though. There have been conflicting reports from forensic identification.

[sophiaserpentia]

Hmm, in light of the immediate and looming humanitarian crisis for 1.4 million people which the Israeli army created in just one day, which will take at least six months to fix, i think i would still characterize it as an overreaction.

[zarq]

I have my doubts that the crisis will become one. Israel is already working to solve the food and gas problems that have been created in recent months. I hope it doesn't happen.

But I can't agree that this is an overreaction. Israel hit a military target in response to an invasion and attack on their sovereign territory by operatives from a foreign government. The Palestinian government admitted to being behind the attack. I tend to think most countries would have been much nastier if the same had been done to them. Can you imagine the response of Britain (or heaven forbid, China) to such a provocation?

[sophiaserpentia]

You know that i am a pacifist, right? I do not believe that endangering civilians is EVER acceptable, especially when it is avoidable. The Israelis could have responded in many ways to the kidnapping of one of their soldiers. For example, they have perfected the art of the surgical strike. If ever a situation called for a surgical strike, this was it. As for isolating the Palestinians, could they possibly be any more isolated than they already are?

The likelihood that imperialistic powers like Britain or China would have reacted even more harshly does not count as an argument in favor of the Israeli action. It's like saying that being punched is okay, compared to this other guy who would have probably hit you with a baseball bat instead.

[zarq]

With all due respect.... I don't believe pacifism is a realistically feasible stance when your neighbor is lobbing explosive rockets on a regular basis into your towns, refuses to recognize your existence, teaches its children that you are the enemy in their schools, has sworn to wipe you off the earth and regularly target your civilian population with deadly bomb attacks. The Palestinians have never, ever made the slightest attempt to avoid targeting Israeli civilians. They use weapons that are indiscriminant and refuse to restrict themselves to military targets.

And yes, this makes a difference. It is extremely important to recognize that Israel has been dealing with the above situation for more than two (three? four?) decades when we consider their reactions. They have withstood many, many provocations that any other country would not have. It is certainly not like saying "being punched is ok, because the other guy would have hit you with a baseball bat." It is saying outright that Israel's response to the repeated