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Militants fire rockets into Israel after cease-fire

I know people keep banging on about proportionality but that is what worried me. It seems to me Israel went ape**** and started collective punishment.

If it was me being rained down with rockets? I don't know but i hope i would stick with my view that the answer to this conflict will not come out of military power.

I do not agree. Collective punishment is a PR tool used by Hamas militants who do not want to live with the consequences of their actions.

If not for Hamas, the whole conflict would never have occurred.

All of the blood in Gaza is on Hamas' hands.
 
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You think the past three weeks is "taking the gloves off?" Do you have ANY military experience whatsoever?

Do I need to be a soldier to see that an army deploying tanks, planes and helicopters, and killing 1,200+ people is "taking the gloves off"?

What else could they have done? Carpet-bomb Gaza? Flamethrowers? Nukes?
 
Time for Israel to take off the gloves and do everything it can to destroy Hamas. Sorry for the civilians, but anyone who can't see that Hamas is to blame for this simply has no sense of perspective or justice.

I agree The only thing these one sided ceasefires do is prolonging the conflict. Israel should exterminate Hamas like the roaches they are. If politicians on our sided waited as long as Israel did before retaliating they would be out of job.
 
I saw your post for what it was, a pathetic excuse for excessive violence. "Our neighbors do it, so we must do it too. We're right though and they're wrong." You may think it was insightful and enlightening but it really just shows your arrogance and unwillingness to keep your country to the standards of its peers.

So Israel should just kill the same amount of civilians that Hamas did and leave?

Proportionality in warfare is a load of horse crap. If someone was in Mexico or Canada launching random attacks at civilian areas into the US
like Hamas did with Israel, I would hope our government would use anything they can and as quickly as they can with the least amount of risk to our military to turn those who attack us into **** stains on the sidewalk.

Well of course a nation has the right to defend itself but Israel took it way too far, it was bad enough with the air campaign but then invading the most heavily populated area knowing that high civilian casulties was inevitable?

If Hamas is still attacking then Israel didn't go far enough.


It seemed pretty stupid to drop leaflets, i mean honestley.

I agree,why let the enemy know where you are going to attack. If you see some guy on a roof top launching mortars and what ever else they can at another country then wouldn't logic dictate that other country target that area where that guy fired mortars from?

Where are you supposed to run to? Gaza was locked in and Soldiers was in almost every direction

Seeing how Hamas likes launching attacks from populated areas then logic would dictate that you stay away from populated areas.
 
I saw your post for what it was, a pathetic excuse for excessive violence. "Our neighbors do it, so we must do it too. We're right though and they're wrong." You may think it was insightful and enlightening but it really just shows your arrogance and unwillingness to keep your country to the standards of its peers.

No. What you did is what you always do. Attack Israel. Her post was nothing of the kind that you claim. You projected your biased agenda on it. That's the truth of the matter.
 
So Israel should just kill the same amount of civilians that Hamas did and leave?
He never said that.
Proportionality in warfare is a load of horse crap. If someone was in Mexico or Canada launching random attacks at civilian areas into the US
like Hamas did with Israel, I would hope our government would use anything they can and as quickly as they can with the least amount of risk to our military to turn those who attack us into **** stains on the sidewalk.
America would not know how to respond to neighbors it has many peace and trade agreements with. It's not even a comparable analogy.

If Hamas is still attacking then Israel didn't go far enough.
If you instigate conflict, don't expect a backlash.

I agree,why let the enemy know where you are going to attack. If you see some guy on a roof top launching mortars and what ever else they can at another country then wouldn't logic dictate that other country target that area where that guy fired mortars from?
Because Israel knows that 10,000 Hamas militants can divide up nice between the rest of the 1,390,000 civilians. During times of war you have to respect civilian lives regardless.

Seeing how Hamas likes launching attacks from populated areas then logic would dictate that you stay away from populated areas.

Show me areas in Gaza that are not populated. Show me areas in Gaza that are uninhabited.
 
...isn't it what they said like 3 weeks ago?

you can see the result of this policy in the first post of this thread

Except they didn't follow through.
 
He never said that.
America would not know how to respond to neighbors it has many peace and trade agreements with. It's not even a comparable analogy.

I know we have trade and peace agreements with our neighbors, it still does not change the fact that if America was in Israel's situation and our politicians waited to retaliate then there would be some politicians out of a job.
If you instigate conflict, don't expect a backlash.

Apparently that is what Hamas and their apologist think. Launching mortars into Israeli neighborhoods will not get you a response.

Because Israel knows that 10,000 Hamas militants can divide up nice between the rest of the 1,390,000 civilians. During times of war you have to respect civilian lives regardless.

Not all Hamas terrorist are "militants and a majority of those 1,390,000 civilians support Hamas. IF civilians want to use themselves as human shields then they have no one to complain to about being blown up.

Show me areas in Gaza that are not populated. Show me areas in Gaza that are uninhabited.
The Gaza strip is not one city.
Gaza Strip - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Because Israel knows that 10,000 Hamas militants can divide up nice between the rest of the 1,390,000 civilians. During times of war you have to respect civilian lives regardless.

No You Don't.

It has been explained so many times in this thread, in so many ways. When you use the people of an area as human shields, you are responsible for their lost lives, not the army that is trying to get at you.

The Palestinians should capitulate. They lost, and now they are supporting guerilla warfare to try and keep the fight on. Their lives are their own to waste.
 
I know we have trade and peace agreements with our neighbors, it still does not change the fact that if America was in Israel's situation and our politicians waited to retaliate then there would be some politicians out of a job.
Yes, some politicians may be out of a job, but that would be during the next election time. (PS - The US waited a year a half after 9/11 before deploying troops into the ME)

Apparently that is what Hamas and their apologist think. Launching mortars into Israeli neighborhoods will not get you a response.
And what response did Israel expect when they took the preemptive approach to Hamas obtaining a majority of seats in Palestine's parliament? Israel pushed for elections to oust more Fatah members. Israel indirectly funded Hamas for 20 years.

Not all Hamas terrorist are "militants and a majority of those 1,390,000 civilians support Hamas. IF civilians want to use themselves as human shields then they have no one to complain to about being blown up.
Majority of civilians in the Gaza Strip are under the age of 14. That's at least 750,000 pre-teens. Who raises there voice for them?

[/quote]

So are you telling the one million refugees who rely on UN aid in Gaza to go to live elsewhere and survive off the land? If you have never been to the Gaza Strip, then I can see why you'd suggest such ridiculous things. UN facilities become refuge centers during these conflicts and civilians still die in large numbers.
 
No You Don't.

It has been explained so many times in this thread, in so many ways. When you use the people of an area as human shields, you are responsible for their lost lives, not the army that is trying to get at you.

The Palestinians should capitulate. They lost, and now they are supporting guerilla warfare to try and keep the fight on. Their lives are their own to waste.


Oh, so because Hamas does something, civilians give up there right as protected persons? That is what you are insinuating.

Show me this exception:
Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War

I suggest you read the beginning of Article 4:
Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.

Regardless of what any side does, civilians are still protected persons under IHL
 
This is why Hamas should be charged with human rights violations towards their own citizens.

I agree, but by who?

Just an off-topic question for you: Do you think the assassination of Yassin was proper?
 
Do I need to be a soldier to see that an army deploying tanks, planes and helicopters, and killing 1,200+ people is "taking the gloves off"?

What else could they have done? Carpet-bomb Gaza? Flamethrowers? Nukes?

Taking the gloves off is to kill all indiscriminantely to get at Hamas targets. Wipe them out. Israel has exercised EXTREME restraint this far. Time to take the gloves off and root out Hamas once and for all.
 
That would be the UN/ICJ. Don't think anyone would even be charged with anything.

That's what I assumed. To both the "who" and the "if". Hamas should.

Ahmed Yassin, co-founder of Hamas.

Oh, for a moment I thought you meant Der Yassin, and I thought, "what does that have to do with this?"

I am not overly thrilled with the policy of assassination. Tends to make martyrs out of these leaders. He should never have been released from prison. Never. He did not distinguish between Israeli's and Jews, and had a hand in ordering many suicide bombings. I would have imprisoned him forever, and prevented him from sending out any of his rhetoric, but I am not sorry he was killed.
 
That's what I assumed. To both the "who" and the "if". Hamas should.



Oh, for a moment I thought you meant Der Yassin, and I thought, "what does that have to do with this?"

I am not overly thrilled with the policy of assassination. Tends to make martyrs out of these leaders.

A dead terrorist is still a dead terrorist, Most likely the only virgins he will see are these.

72_virgins.JPG


He should never have been released from prison. Never. He did not distinguish between Israeli's and Jews, and had a hand in ordering many suicide bombings. I would have imprisoned him forever, and prevented him from sending out any of his rhetoric, but I am not sorry he was killed.

Seeing how Israel eventually caves to terrorist demands, he would have eventual been released. Killing him ensures that he will never be released.
 
It doesn't bother anyone that he's a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair with partially blind eyesight?

When I saw the aftermath of the assassination I was almost disgusted.
 
It doesn't bother anyone that he's a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair with partially blind eyesight?

When I saw the aftermath of the assassination I was almost disgusted.

His physical state is pretty meaningless. He was pretty evil in ordering all of those suicide bombing that killed innocent people. I have little sympathy for his paraplegia.
 
It doesn't bother anyone that he's a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair with partially blind eyesight?
Not this camper.

When I saw the aftermath of the assassination I was almost disgusted.
I'm disgusted that you were almost disgusted about a dead terrorist.

Anyone else disgusted?

Let's have a "disgusted" fest.
 
Here is something that most Westerners do not quite grasp. War in the ME is not equitable to what those in the West understand as war. Never has been. No quarter is asked and none is given. Over 1,000,000 deaths and casualties in the Iraq/Iran war. 20,000 civilians killed in a Syrian city attacked by the Syrian military. The religious inspired civil wars wars in Lebanon. What Iraqi forces did in Kuwait City, the extremely bloody pre-partition violence between Arabs and Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine, etc. etc.

I tend to think this mindset stems from the ancient scripture of both Muslims and Jews. In both the Torah and Qu'ran, there is endemnic violence on an unprecidented scale. This mindset persists to this day in a region that is soaked in religion and bad memories.

I'm not excusing this, I'm just telling it like it is. It is folly to expect ME wars to mirror wars waged in the West. Perhaps and hopefully, this will change someday.

I think you absolutely hit the nail right on the head, here, Tashah.

We should not expect things to go the same as we would expect a western war to be waged. We can always hope for it, and make a serious effort for the wars to be waged as such, but to expect it is definitely folly and shows a lack of undersstanding of what the driving forces behind the respective mentalities in the region really are.

In all, a fantastic post, IMO.
 
I think you absolutely hit the nail right on the head, here, Tashah.

We should not expect things to go the same as we would expect a western war to be waged. We can always hope for it, and make a serious effort for the wars to be waged as such, but to expect it is definitely folly and shows a lack of undersstanding of what the driving forces behind the respective mentalities in the region really are.

In all, a fantastic post, IMO.

Is the Iraq war a "western war"? I for one feel we're doing quite well there since we have adapted our tactics. If you excuse Israel for fighting in "just another ME war", you only prolong the cycle. The ME war style rarely results in a lasting peace, more often it results in catastrophic casualties.
 
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