“Is Hamas a terrorist organization?"

[heavycola]

Interesting bit of news today - the Israeli Army captain whio emptied an entire semi-automatic magazibe into a 13-year old palestinian girl has been cleared of severak minor charges connected with her death:

A recording of radio exchanges between Capt R and his troops obtained by Israeli television revealed that from the beginning soldiers identified Iman as a child.

In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot.

Although the military speculated that Iman might have been trying to "lure" the soldiers out of their base so they could be attacked by accomplices, Capt R made the decision to lead some of his troops into the open. Shortly afterwards he can be heard on the recording saying that he has shot the girl and, believing her dead, then "confirmed the kill".

"I and another soldier ... are going in a little nearer, forward, to confirm the kill ... Receive a situation report. We fired and killed her ... I also confirmed the kill. Over," he said.

Palestinian witnesses said they saw the captain shoot Iman twice in the head, walk away, turn back and fire a stream of bullets into her body.

On the tape, Capt R then "clarifies" to the soldiers under his command why he killed Iman: "This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the [security] zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed."

At no point did the Israeli troops come under attack.

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/16/israel2

Are the IDF also terrorists?

Hamas definitely falls under the decription of a terrorist organisation, but so, then, does the IDF. And the US military, of course.

[tzor]

So what exactly do you have against Townsville Grammar School?

Are you referring to the "City of Townsville?" I have to admit that I haven't really keeping that close of an eye on my own thread.

Personally, I think the mayor is an idiot there, but at least he has a secretary with a good head on her shoulders (I think).

[GabonX]

Interesting bit of news today - the Israeli Army captain whio emptied an entire semi-automatic magazibe into a 13-year old palestinian girl has been cleared of severak minor charges connected with her death:

A recording of radio exchanges between Capt R and his troops obtained by Israeli television revealed that from the beginning soldiers identified Iman as a child.

In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot.

Although the military speculated that Iman might have been trying to "lure" the soldiers out of their base so they could be attacked by accomplices, Capt R made the decision to lead some of his troops into the open. Shortly afterwards he can be heard on the recording saying that he has shot the girl and, believing her dead, then "confirmed the kill".

"I and another soldier ... are going in a little nearer, forward, to confirm the kill ... Receive a situation report. We fired and killed her ... I also confirmed the kill. Over," he said.

Palestinian witnesses said they saw the captain shoot Iman twice in the head, walk away, turn back and fire a stream of bullets into her body.

On the tape, Capt R then "clarifies" to the soldiers under his command why he killed Iman: "This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the [security] zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed."

At no point did the Israeli troops come under attack.

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/16/israel2

Are the IDF also terrorists?

Hamas definitely falls under the decription of a terrorist organisation, but so, then, does the IDF. And the US military, of course.

No bro...

If Israeli soldiers killed a child for the sake of promoting terror, this would be a terrorist act. That's not the case here. What happened was a kind of mistake which is inevitable due to the vile practices of Hamas.

Hamas, the Palestinians, and many more groups have a nasty tendency to use children as suicide bombers/combatants. Many people are unaware of this, but do a google image search on Palestinian children and you'll begin to see the real ugliness of what Israel contends with.

Just last week I spent one day in Jerusalem. I saw a cute little Palestinian kid out walking with his mother, he couldn't have been more than 6 years old. He had a toy machine gun and was dressed in military camo from head to toe. On his shirt were embroidered the words "Ready for Paradise". I'm fairly certain that this child could not speak English, so I'm left to assume the mother just wanted us to know he was "Ready for Paradise". Is dressing a child in clothes like this not an act of terrorism in and of itself?

Women and children commonly are active combatants in military conflicts in Palestine (and many other places). This is almost never reported and it is because of this that the "civilian casualties" are commonly inflated in these conflicts, that is to say that many dead people who are reported to have been "civilians" were actually active combatants.

What's more, Hamas tries to increase the number of civilian deaths on there own side.. They'll do something like fill a school with children, and then fire mortars from the school knowing that Israel must take action. The goal is to have Israel kill as many children as possible so that they can gain sympathy in the media, and by giving them that sympathy you in fact encourage this kind of behavior.. So shame on you!

There's no question that Hamas does this as it's openly stated in their own documents. It's a truly disgusting (and discouragingly affective) strategy that Hamas uses to demonize Israel, and you play right into their ploy by calling the IDF, aka all Israelis, a terrorist organization. I know that Israelis don't like that they have to do some of the things they need to do, but if they do not they will be killed.

I think Golda Meir said it best:

We can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for forcing us to kill your children.

[heavycola]

Interesting bit of news today - the Israeli Army captain whio emptied an entire semi-automatic magazibe into a 13-year old palestinian girl has been cleared of severak minor charges connected with her death:

A recording of radio exchanges between Capt R and his troops obtained by Israeli television revealed that from the beginning soldiers identified Iman as a child.

In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot.

Although the military speculated that Iman might have been trying to "lure" the soldiers out of their base so they could be attacked by accomplices, Capt R made the decision to lead some of his troops into the open. Shortly afterwards he can be heard on the recording saying that he has shot the girl and, believing her dead, then "confirmed the kill".

"I and another soldier ... are going in a little nearer, forward, to confirm the kill ... Receive a situation report. We fired and killed her ... I also confirmed the kill. Over," he said.

Palestinian witnesses said they saw the captain shoot Iman twice in the head, walk away, turn back and fire a stream of bullets into her body.

On the tape, Capt R then "clarifies" to the soldiers under his command why he killed Iman: "This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the [security] zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed."

At no point did the Israeli troops come under attack.

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/16/israel2

Are the IDF also terrorists?

Hamas definitely falls under the decription of a terrorist organisation, but so, then, does the IDF. And the US military, of course.

No bro...

If Israeli soldiers killed a child for the sake of promoting terror, this would be a terrorist act. That's not the case here. What happened was a kind of mistake which is inevitable due to the vile practices of Hamas.

Hamas, the Palestinians, and many more groups have a nasty tendency to use children as suicide bombers/combatants. Many people are unaware of this, but do a google image search on Palestinian children and you'll begin to see the real ugliness of what Israel contends with.

Just last week I spent one day in Jerusalem. I saw a cute little Palestinian kid out walking with his mother, he couldn't have been more than 6 years old. He has a toy machine gun and was dressed in military camo from head to toe. On his shirt were embroidered the words "Ready for Paradise". I'm fairly certain that this child could not speak English, so I'm left to assume the mother just wanted us to know he was "Ready for Paradise". Is dressing a child in clothes like this not an act of terrorism in and of itself?

Women and children commonly are active combatants in military conflicts in Palestine (and many other places). This is almost never reported and it is because of this that the "civilian casualties" are commonly inflated in these conflicts, that is to say that many dead people who are reported to have been "civilians" were actually active combatants.

What's more, Hamas tries to increase the number of civilian deaths on there own side.. They'll do something like fill a school with children, and then fire mortars from the school knowing that Israel must take action. The goal is to have Israel kill as many children as possible so that they can gain sympathy in the media, and by giving them that sympathy you in fact encourage this kind of behavior.. So shame on you!

There's no question that they do this as it's openly stated in their own documents. It's a truly disgusting strategy that Hamas uses to demonize Israel, and you play right into their ploy by calling the IDF (aka all Israelis) a terrorist organization. I know that Israelis don't like that they have to do some of the things they need to do, but if they do not they will be killed.

I think Golda Meir said it best:

We can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for forcing us to kill your children.

I'm not sympathising with anyone especially, except maybe the civilians killed on all sides. Hamas and Israel both behave disgustingly; the manner of their misdeeds is attributable to their respective statuses rather than anything else. if the sides were switched - if Israel was a desperately poor and blockaded enclave being gradually annexed by a much more powerful neighbour with huge amounts of foreign military aid at its disposal - then its tactics might be different and might well include using children as bombers. Conversely, why would hamas bother with suicide bombers if it had 400 F-16s and F-15s at its disposal?
I was only pointing out that it isn't as easy as 'this side is black! That side is white!', and that maybe state-sponsored terrorism is still terrorism. I would certainly hesitate before blaming hamas when an Israeli captain empties his clip into a 13-year old girl (although i can see the point you're making).

[joecoolfrog]

also wanted to add, that before the war all the so-called progressives were constantly complaining about the sanctions against iraq, then when we went to war they were complaining that we didnt give time for the sanctions to work. Just don't get it.

if these people were around when the second world war broke out, i'm sure we'd all be doing the goosestep and shouting Heil Hitler right now. because of course there's no right or wrong, no good or evil.

make a judgment for once in your lives!

Yes everything is clearly black and white , Hitler was obviously evil , remind me why the US took 2 years to realise this and join the second world war ?

[Juan_Bottom]

I just want to point out, as I had already posted in this thread,
If you fire upon an unarmed civilian - that is a CLEAR violation of the Geneva Convention and it's accords. You HAVE TO MAKE CERTAIN that you are firing upon an enemy, ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN. The Geneva Convention allows no room for errors. Shooting that girl would be/is a war crime. There's no argument that can change that fact.

[jimboston]

Yes everything is clearly black and white , Hitler was obviously evil , remind me why the US took 2 years to realise this and join the second world war ?

This is an idiotic comment.

Is it our job to police the world?

There is evil all over the world... we can not and have no responsibility to clean it all. The mandate of our military is simply to protect us and our interests. If evil exists and doesn't threaten us... f**k it.

[tzor]

Yes everything is clearly black and white , Hitler was obviously evil , remind me why the US took 2 years to realise this and join the second world war ?

Who said we did? (That was a serious rhetorical question by the way.) Basically there was a combination of protectionist isolationism and pacifism that was predominant and strong after our involvement in WWI. FDR was slowly throwing away the Constitution, turning himself into an emperor for life and implementing progressive socialism in the nation. Getting into a war with Germany was literally the last thing on our minds at the time. That is why we entered the war through the back door by having Japan attack us. Germany then declared war on us and the depression weary population was not one to question the great wisdom of the great FDR.

It was only later, when allied commanders started seeing the concentration camps that they realized what had really happened. It also helped that compared to a lot of other countries, Hitler’s Germany treated the Allied prisoners of war relatively well. (Extremely well when compared to Japan.) The differences between the camps were striking.

[heavycola]

Yes everything is clearly black and white , Hitler was obviously evil , remind me why the US took 2 years to realise this and join the second world war ?

Who said we did? (That was a serious rhetorical question by the way.) Basically there was a combination of protectionist isolationism and pacifism that was predominant and strong after our involvement in WWI. FDR was slowly throwing away the Constitution, turning himself into an emperor for life and implementing progressive socialism in the nation. Getting into a war with Germany was literally the last thing on our minds at the time. That is why we entered the war through the back door by having Japan attack us. Germany then declared war on us and the depression weary population was not one to question the great wisdom of the great FDR.

It was only later, when allied commanders started seeing the concentration camps that they realized what had really happened. It also helped that compared to a lot of other countries, Hitler’s Germany treated the Allied prisoners of war relatively well. (Extremely well when compared to Japan.) The differences between the camps were striking.

I wish I knew how to quit you.

[SgtMadDog]

"a Palestinian gunman opened fire Tuesday on an Israeli vehicle traveling near the West Bank city of Hebron, killing four passengers .

The militant Hamas movement, which rejects Israel's right to exist and opposes peace talks, claimed responsibility. Israeli officials called the shooting an attempt to sabotage the discussions and the White House weighed in with its own condemnation."

What they did wasn't right or wrong, just misguided?
Wake the f*ck up people, drop the semantics, Hamas IS A TERRORIST ORG!!!!

[natty dread]

Sgt. Are you purposefully misunderstanding things or are you actually that stupid?

A persons actions can be wrong, or even "evil" (however that is defined) but a person itself cannot be called evil, because that would imply that there's some kind of fundamental difference in that person, making him somehow "less human".

Of course for some people it's far easier to demonize people who do bad things. After all, it'd be such a mindfuck to realize they are just human beings like everyone else.

Yes, I can very well claim that even Hitler was not fundamentally "evil" as a person. The things he did were unbelievably evil and horrible, but does that make him as a person evil? No, he was a human just like any other human, he was just a deeply disturbed individual who should have been put in a mental hospital instead of in charge of a country. But that doesn't make him an "evil person".

In fact, when you demonize a human being and declare him "evil", you are doing the same thing Hitler did to Jews - declaring them "less human" to justify their slaughter.

[SgtMadDog]

Sgt. Are you purposefully misunderstanding things or are you actually that stupid?

A persons actions can be wrong, or even "evil" (however that is defined) but a person itself cannot be called evil, because that would imply that there's some kind of fundamental difference in that person, making him somehow "less human".

Of course for some people it's far easier to demonize people who do bad things. After all, it'd be such a mindfuck to realize they are just human beings like everyone else.

Yes, I can very well claim that even Hitler was not fundamentally "evil" as a person. The things he did were unbelievably evil and horrible, but does that make him as a person evil? No, he was a human just like any other human, he was just a deeply disturbed individual who should have been put in a mental hospital instead of in charge of a country. But that doesn't make him an "evil person".

In fact, when you demonize a human being and declare him "evil", you are doing the same thing Hitler did to Jews - declaring them "less human" to justify their slaughter.

What does this have to do with my last thread?

In response, a person who commits EVIL acts is an EVIL person. I have no problem saying it, why do you?
I live in the real world, i'm not hanging around a university coffee house bantering about the semantics of calling a person evil as opposed to calling their acts evil. Both are true!

[natty dread]

You also seem to have no problem with making a complete fool out of yourself.

[SgtMadDog]

ARE YOU STILL PLUGGED INTO THE MATRIX????

If so: Take the pill!!!

[natty dread]

Uuh, matrix references. What's next? Please don't call me a sheeple.

[heavycola]

Take the pill!!![/i]

I'm sure there are forum rules about advocating the use of drugs. Kids read these boards, for god's sake. Take your bladder-exploding filth elsewhere, please.

[Woodruff]

I didn't give you a "diatribe". I asked a simple question which would've taken you less time to answer than that ridiculous post. Again - are you in the service or are you a wannabe "sgt"? Have you put your life on the line for your obstinate and unfounded beliefs or are you part of the peanut gallery that feverishly waves that flag from the safety of the sidelines?

Not in the service currently but was in the 82nd ABN, 2/505th in the early 80's. Being an American you do understand that even if i had never served, it still wouldn't mean i'd have no right to an opinion on the matter! Your Marxist/Contrarian friends havent served and yet you weren't concerned enough to ask for their "so-called" credentials. Surely because you agree with their positions. Hypocrite!

B.K. is a Marxist? Welcome to the club, B.K.! (Is this just ViperOverLord's multi or what?)