Three Palestinians killed by Israeli troops

[Scurrilous]

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FC55FE9C-3A19-480F-BADF-F7059A27E2F8.htm

<snip>

"Three Palestinians including two teenagers have been shot dead by Israeli occupation soldiers in the occupied territories.

Palestinian medical sources said the two teenagers were killed on Friday near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.

The two were later named by family sources as Muhammad Khalaf and Muhammad al-Ashqar. Both were reportedly members of the resistance group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Another Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli troops in the Hebron region of the southern West Bank, witnesses and Palestinian security sources said."

[The Magistrate]

1. Members Of Al Aksa Are Combatants

There can be no reasonable complaint over these two, in any case. Persons who take up the gun may expect to die from it.

[lynx rufus]

3. Thank You for the 'blinders on' interpretation, which I reject.

First, saying there can be 'no reasonable complaint' before actually hearing the complaints, in fact, proves absolutely nothing.
The bias in the statement only serves to taint the authority
of your message.

Your faux truism "Persons who take up the gun may expect to die from it" fails to address the issues at hand in any manner whatever.

One might just as easily say:
There can be no reasonable complaint when Settlers who illegally
occupy Palestinian land are killed by those Palestinians
they have dispossessed. Particularly in light of the fact that the
illegally Occupied Territory was taken and is held through violent means.
Those who live a life of crime can expect to die a violent death.

Let me give you this to think about:
There is an impasse on this issue because people have taken sides.
No one looks at the process needed to bring peace; every one looks at and reacts to the daily violence.
It is time to start thinking about this on the level of populations rather than that of individual organisms, because it is populations which evolve, and not organisms. A Jungle Cat (Felis chaus) will never evolve into a house cat (Felis catus), but some time in the distant past, a population of Jungle Cats was domesticated and have since evolved into a population of house cats.

[The Magistrate]

4. Not At All, Mr. Lynx

Any old habitue of this forum knows the drill, and complaints of this action, on ground of age or some other feature of the incident, can be expected to arise when such reports are put up. There is something to be said for pre-emption in such situations.

Where you detect bias in my comments is beyond me. Persons who are combatants have died in combat; that seems wholly unexceptionable to me, and my reaction had the butcher's bill been turned around, and it been a few Israeli soldiers shot instead, would have been no different. It is true that bodies like Al Aksa seldom give me an opportunity for such a reaction, but that is a seperate question.

Your attempt at debate by mirror has little merit here; at least, it cannot soundly be pushed quite so far as you attempt to push it. Settlers remain civilians, and by no stretch of the laws of war can be considered combatants, at least generally, nor are the various irregular armed bodies of Arab Palestinian fighters in possession of any warrant to enforce international law on their own hook, regarding such questions as illegality of settlements and land acquisition. Nor are such things, if judged offenses, capital crimes.

In particular cases, matters may be otherwise, somewhat. Settlers who are members of armed irregular bodies themselves, as some certainly are, may be viewed as combatants and engaged accordingly. As a question of policy, it would certainly be wiser for the Arab Palestinian irregulars to assail settlers than to strike into Israel proper, for it is a wise strategy, from their point of view, to drive a wedge between the great body of Israeli citizenry and the settlers, and a policy of armed violence only against settlers could well have such an effect. It ould not make it any more legal, but it would be a great deal more sensible.

Your final peroration conveys little meaning to me. These peoples are at war, and so certainly it could be said the conflict exists and persists because people have taken sides, but to do so adds nothing to understanding the matter. This war will continue until either one side succeeds in imposing its will on the other by violence, or until both sides realize they can likely gain a greater proportion of what they want by negotiated compromise than by perseverance in a war they might lose, and in losing, lose all they hope to attain. As the military balance is so greatly weighted against Arab Palestine, and they have no real chance of success through violence, it would seem to me the wisest course for the political leadership of that people to down arms and commence serious negotiation.

[Darranar]

5. There is a very clear difference...

settlers are noncombatants, and therefore illegitimate targets; members of the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade are combatants, and therefore legitimate targets.

Seeing how these men were armed and approaching a Jewish settlement, I cannot blame the soldiers for shooting at them.

[DuctapeFatwa]

6. Are settlers noncombatants?

And is it in Israel's long term interests to consider them so?

On the one hand, it seems ideal. Settlers are non-combatants, regardless of whether they attack Palestinians are not, and there are no Palestinian noncombatants.

That works fine for Israel now, but what happens in the second half of our show, when the values double and the scores can really change?

By taking the position that settlers are by definition non-combatants, Israel may be hindering the cases of its own operatives in future war crimes trials, where there may be an insistence of applying one standard, with results like:

settlers who engage in hostilities are combatants

OR

Almost all Palestinians are civilians

It will also be interesting to see what happens when children of settlers who have suffered injury as a result of being in a settlement explore their litigation options.

Not long after the current intifada started, I believe there was at least one custody case in Alabama, of all places, where the mother lost custody because of her stated intent to take the child to a settlement, and the judge ruled it as basically a stated intent to expose the child to harm.

[Darranar]

7. Settlers are not necessarily combatants...

they certainly can be, but they are not inherently so. Members of the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade are.

Propagandists often apply different standards to different groups. There are certainly people who seem to think that suicide bombings are perfectly okay despite the fact that they target civilians, while IDF attacks are despicable because they target civilians.

[Aidoneus]

8. do you consider Gush Emunim members, for example, to be combatants?

or any of the other yesha militant orders?

[The Magistrate]

9. It Is My Inclination, Sir, To View Those As Such

Certainly the males of military age among them, anyway. It is rather a border-line call, but there is enough violence emanating from such organizations to justify it.

[Darranar]

10. Yes.

[DuctapeFatwa]

12. It depends. I am going to give everybody a chance to call me simplistic

If a person is engaging in combat, he is a combatant. If he is not, then he is not.

I will make the distinction between self-defense, defense of one's family, one's home, even one's neighborhood, and say that I do not consider that to be combat, because at some point you have to recognize that people have a responsibility to do whatever they can to protect those who depend on them.

The question of settlers and who is engaging in combat and who is engaging in self defense will eventually come down to the question of who is responsible for the settlers being there? The settlers themselves, who go there voluntarily, knowing that their presence is illegal and will be considered an invasion even if they engage in no aggression?

Or is it the government of which the settlers are citizens, which may be presumed to have a certain degree of responsibility for protecting those citizens?

Some court will answer all that one day. In the short term, Israel has no need to make its case, or put itself clearly in the right by simply pulling the settlers out and staying out of Palestine, thus throwing the burden of the conflict onto its adversary.

In the short term, Israel is right because the US says that Israel is right.

In the long term, a pitbull with every orifice crammed with dynamite sticks is neither an effective weapon, or a pitbull that is likely to suffer geriatric ailments.

[The Magistrate]

13. Not A Good Definition, My Friend

It seems to contain an unexamined disapproval of combat, for you do not define as combat violence of which you approve. Persons who are defending their homes, etc., are engaged in combat when they do so in a context of military violence.

[DuctapeFatwa]

14. If you have to defend your home, it's no longer military violence, because

you are doing the same thing you would do if a civilian criminal attacked your home and for whatever reason, no help from law enforcement was available.

That is my distinction, and I don't know if "approve" is the word I would choose, or the most accurate.

I would not approve of throwing a child into a tub of cold water, but if the child had a fever that did not respond to cool cloths or other home remedies and no professional medical care was available, most people would dunk the child, and would consider themselves derelict in their duties to take all possible measures to preserve the child's life and health.

(Note: this is just an example, if this is no longer the accepted emergency treatment for pediatric fever, choose a better example)

[Darranar]

15. But you are still a combatant...

If someone fires at someone else in a war, the person being fired at has the right to return fire, whether the firer is defending his home and family or did so in cold blood. Such an action, though it is targeting the original firer, would be perfectly legal.

The original firer is a combatant. Whether or not you approve of his use of violence is irrelevant.

[DuctapeFatwa]

16. Yes the original firer is. If you are sitting in your living room

painting Pikachus on all your HotWheels and someone comes up the walk and kicks in your door, or starts shooting, or otherwise gives you a very unmistakable indication that your life and that of your baby sister and poor old elderly aunts in the next room are in mortal danger, and you shoot at the intruder, you are not a combatant, and he is, whether either or both wear uniforms or not.

And at the risk of offending the inner libertarians of lurkers, I would say the same if he drives a tank down the street, and starts firing and you come out of your house and shoot at him because the shells are landing very close to the house across the street where the old Baldwin sisters live.

[The Magistrate]

17. Well, Mr. Fatwa

Civil life and war are different states, and it is not too wise to try and blur them.

When the armor column comes down main street, Sir, it is war, and no mistake. If the village militia turns out and shoots, they are combatants, just like the soldiers in the tanks and personnel carriers. Whether their cause is good or bad, that is what they are.

In the specific situation we are discussing, once one gets past the theoretical concerns, there remains the practical fact that the claim to be defending the people offered by the Arab Palestinian irregulars falls rather flat. In an action like the recent one in Gaza, it is the resolve of the irregulars to fight that presents the greatest danger of death and injury to the local inhabitants, and the irregulars clearly lack the combat power to stand off or drive away the soldiers, and so cannot claim to balance this danger by an effective defense that might bring greater safety in future. The soldiers will do as they please whether the irregulars resist or no, and the only difference is the number of non-combatants exposed to gun-fire: this will be minimal if their is no resistance, and maiximized if there is resistance.

How such a thing is regarded is, to some degree, a matter of taste and temperament: some people's tastes run to forlorn hopes and glorious stands, but mine do not. My view is that if you cannot prevail, you ought not to fight, but seek to evade and survive until a circumstance in which you can prevail can be contrived. Pride and honor are, in the context of combat, thoroughly bad and murderous things, that to me are the height of moral folly, and those moved by them deserve only contempt. The only exception to this is if the enemy is marching to the cry of "Kill them all!" and that is clearly not the case when an Israeli column moves into a Gaza neighborhood: if it was, the death toll would be numbered in the hundreds with each instance, and it never is.

[DuctapeFatwa]

18. It may be war on the part of those who drive the tanks in

Those who live on the street may or may not consider themselves at war, they are defending their homes, as I imagine Israeli citizens would do if Al Aqsa got hold of a tank and drove it down a residential street in Tel Aviv with guns blazing.

At that point, whether the residents of that street perceive the tank as an act of war or a criminal act, their responsibility is to do their best to protect those of their number who are unable to protect themselves.

It is not a question of glory, or making a stand, and it changes whatever stand or glory Al Aqsa might have hoped to express by driving into the street and shooting. That no longer matters. What matters now is shooting the driver before he shoots the sweet old Baldwin sisters, just as in the previous example where someone kicks in the door of your home as you sit there.

It is easy to fall into the cadence of bellicose regimes, as we see in Iraq, the crusaders kick in the door, and the man who shoots to defend his family is termed an "insurgent" if not a "terrorist" in the next press briefing. He is neither. He is the same as the upper middle class suburban homeowner who suddenly finds himself on the receiving end of a 'home invasion'.

[The Magistrate]

19. It Is War, Sir

Defending one's home, and war, are hardly exclusive states. It is undeniable that the peoples of Israel and Arab Palestine are at war, and have been for many decades.

The problem with your protection thesis remains that these irregulars have no power whatever to protect anyone from the armor column, and that the volume of fire produced by the armor column, which does endanger persons in the neighborhood, is loosed off solely because of the actions of the irregulars; indeed, the armor column is there solely because of the existance of the irregulars. It is a rather clumsy version of a protection racket; these fellows cause the danger to their neighbors, use that as an excuse to cause more danger to them, and claim a coin of hero's regard out of the process, all without causing the slightest real harm to the foe's military power, or hampering in the slightest degree his military operations.

On the semantic question, Sir, you may have noticed my rather scrupulous practice of avoiding such loaded language. We are in agreement it tends to cloud clear analysis.

[DuctapeFatwa]

20. And Al Aqsa could say the same thing as they go into the Tel Aviv street

They can say that an IDF commander lives there, or they can say nothing. The residents of the street don't have the power to repel the tank. Now they can call the IDF, and the Palestinians have no one to call, but that fact does not really throw the IDF's actions into a favorable light, nor does help your argument that those who are attacked by a stronger entity should kneel and meekly accept their fate.

[The Magistrate]

21. If In Fact, My Friend

Al Aksa made any real attempt to kill military figures at home in the manner you suggest, my attitude toward civilian casualties incidental to such attacks would be no different than my attitude towards such casualties in an Israeli army operation against Al Aksa leaders. But they do not make any such attempt, and so it cannot be raised as a consideration in analysis of the situation that actually exists. What actually happens is that the various Arab Palestinian irregular bodies aim the great bulk of their operations specifically to kill civilians, and only occassionally direct them against Israeli soldiers, while Israeli military operations are aimed at the various irregular combatant bodies, although there is a good deal of injury done to civilians in their execution, some of it unavoidable, and a portion of it wanton. These facts are inconvenient to some political views and outlooks, but that is no concern of mine.

Again, Sir, if it were not for the operations of the irregular armed bodies, the armored column would not be coming into the neighborhood. The irregulars are not an attempt to defend the neighborhood against intrusion, but the cause of the intrusion, and without them, there would be no such intrusions. No one has yet proposed to me any practicable way for the Israelis to deal with the armed irregular bodies under the present circumstances that differs much from the course the Israelis follow already; so long as these continue to proclaim their rejection of the existance of Israel, and their intention to attack its citizenry, the government of Israel must take action against them, for it is clear they cannot be negotiated with to any good effect.

On a more minor note, Sir, it is precisely the language of "meekly kneel and accept their fate" that seems to me to originate in pride and honor, rather than a sound appreciation of circumstance. There are limits to what violence can accomplish, and circumstances in which it is foolish to pursue a violent course. It can hardly be denied that the political leadership of Arab Palestine has adopted a course of violence for decades, and it is time to recognize and accept that course has failed. Throughout the period of time that course has been persisted in, the situation, and the prospects, of the people of Arab Palestine, have deteriorated. They have less land, less liberty, and less prospect of statehood, than they had three years ago, or ten years ago, or fifty or sixty or eighty years ago. A choice must be made, and that choice is whether statehood and land and liberty are be pursued seriously, or emotional gratifications of pride and honor and vengeance are to be pursued instead. If the latter is chosen, the result will be that statehood, land, and liberty will never be achieved.

[DuctapeFatwa]

22. I am not sure that the instinct to survive and protect one's young can be

argued away. Whether the door-kicker or tank shooter is Israeli, Palestinian or a street gang, and regardless of how right and just you or they believe that door-kicking and tank shooting to be, or whether they are simply doing it for kicks, those on the receiving end are less likely to be moved by your arguments that their reaction should be to offer no resistance and surrender themselves and their children for slaughter than by a very strong and immediate human instinct to protect their lives and those of their loved ones, and while in retrospect, they may indeed claim that they were motivated by sorts of lofty concepts, but in reality they are thinking neither of politics nor the aggressor's opinion of their humanity, but exhibiting incontrovertible evidence of it.

[The Magistrate]

23. Again, Sir

In this particulart instance, without the armed irregulars, no one would be kicking in the doors. The sequence is important, and you have rather reversed it. It is not: people come kick in doors, so people shoot back. It is: people gather in arms, people come to break that mustering, and doors are kicked in.

[DuctapeFatwa]

11. Not just propagandists, states, too. Oh wait ;)

ok, states are the biggest propagandists in the dish, but I think sometimes different standards are applied based on expectations.

However, this tends to be self-limiting. For instance, there has been a tendency, historically, on the part of some people to expect a higher standard of behavior, of ethics, etc. from the United States government, and all its representatives, including its military, than one would have say, of the Abu Sayyaf or a gang of neo-nazis in a Berlin slum.

As events make plain that that distinction is at odds with reality, you will see less of that.

And I guess the reason it lasts as long as it does, is back to your point, propaganda.

If the US government seizes someone's wife and child for "interrogation" to pressure the husband/father to turn himself in in the hope that he will be allowed to take his child's place in the "interrogation facility," the US has the resources to give its actions attractive and official-sounding names and draft a convincing wording of "the guy had some stuff that we wanted because it's worth money."

When the neo-nazi gang seizes the wife and child of an immigrant they know has some cash stashed somewhere, to pressure the husband/father etc etc, they do not have the resources to do any of that.

Anyone who takes exception to the actions of the US can easily be either bought off or blown up.

The gang does not have the resources to match that either.

So the end result is that the US ends up being unfairly held to a higher standard than a street gang simply because people have a perception that it is somehow superior to one, and therefore have higher expectations.

Israel has the same problem, but that problem, at least will correct itself in time.

[Blitz]

2. More from the article

. . .

The two Palestinian teenagers were killed when Israeli troops opened fire at a group of men who were approaching the Jewish settlement in northern Gaza.

"We have identified a few armed figures approaching the community of Dugit. They were around 150 metres from the community, armed with an RPG and an explosive," an Israeli military source claimed. "We identified a hit."

The other Palestinian killed in Hebron was identified as Jihad al-Sweiti.

Wanted by the Israelis, he was shot dead when a gun battle broke out while Israeli soldiers tried to arrest him from a house where he had taken refuge.

. . .

Those poor teenagers. Those poor, poor, innocent children. Killed in another IDF terrorist killing spree while innocently playing Dungeons and Dragons (RPG). What is the world coming to?