- Joined
- Sep 29, 2014
- Messages
- 8,210
- Reaction score
- 4,030
- Location
- UK
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Socialist
Re: Sanctions Against Muslim Nations that Make Use of Human Shields?
Your problem is that you completely ignore or try to justify Israel's illegal actions. They destroy olive farms as a form of collective punishment, this has been firmly established. Israel also has a history of using human shields.
Yes, homes have been destroyed if they're within the post-67 borders and have been used as hot-spots for terrorist activity. This is true. Olive groves have (much less often) been destroyed for the same reason - to keep the terrorist element at bay.
None of that has to happen, and it would not happen, if the Palestinians did not keep lobbing rockets into Israel. That's the trigger, as I'm sure you know.
That said -- international law considers buildings that house munitions to be valid military targets. The law also permits strikes on buildings from which attacks are fired.
What is against international law is using civilians as human shields, as both Hezbollah and Hamas have been doing for years.
While this bill (if it passes) will likely not stop the terrorist factions -- there's a chance that just the official recognition of the use of human shields will convince the intentional community to take a second look at the situation.
Historically, the problem has been that these factions, like Hezbollah, will fire attacks from Lebanon, and then Israel will fire back on valid military targets (according to international law). But, by the time Israel fires back. Hezbollah will have put many civilians in the path of the oncoming attack, purposefully putting those people in danger. And, of course, they are then killed.
While it's horrific to see the pictures of little ones torn limb from limb, it's important to recognize why it actually happened.
Consider a similar situation here in the States. Imagine if a terrorist faction in Neuvo Laredo (Old Mexico) starting firing rockets into Laredo (on the US side). There may initially be some warnings -- some beefing up of the border in that area -- but if the rockets continued, the US would hit back. And, over the course of decades of attacks from terrorists in Neuvo Laredo, it might even hit back hard at times. We might push the border back in that area in order to push the terrorist element back and tensions would run very high.
Then imagine that the US fired on the terrorist munitions storage on the outside of Neuvo Laredo, but by then, the terrorists were able to put all their wives and children at the storage facility. The US hits and there's a lot of collateral damage, but the fault for the deaths would not lie at the US' door, but rather at the terrorists' door.
That's what's happened since Israel became a state -- and the attacks continue today. Yes, Israel pushes back -- sometimes hard -- and sometimes with collective punishment, but, in the final analysis, the real fault lies with the terrorist factions that still refuse to acknowledge that Israel has a right to exist, and continues to lob rockets into the tiny state.
That's some background to how we reached this point, but this thread is really about what you think sanctions would (or would not) accomplish if officially used against Hezbollah and Hamas.
Your problem is that you completely ignore or try to justify Israel's illegal actions. They destroy olive farms as a form of collective punishment, this has been firmly established. Israel also has a history of using human shields.