Re: Terror Tunnels ?
So if there are no occupying troops, an attack against civilians isn't legitimate and neither is an attack on troops who are sent into the territory to protect the civilians being targeted?
An attack against/targeting civilians isn't legitimate regardless of whether there is an occupation or not. It's just not legitimate full stop. I already said this. If troops are occupying your territory you have the right to target them for attacks , legitimately. It's legitimate resistance to attempt to free yourself from foreign occupation
Right, so in principle Atta is a terrorist scumbag and we have a right to hit him but in reality if we try by putting boots on the ground to go get him our troops are the bad guys and the terrorists are suddenly the good guys and have a right to kill our troops, sent there to protect our civilians?
Good guys, bad guys is a childish way and a highly subjective way to view things imo. Better speaking of just legitimate and/or illegitimate acts. Once you morph into occupiers the people you are occupying have the right to resist that occupation up to and including the use of armed conflict
Just trying to flesh this out a bit.
And there's me thinking you were trying to spin things again
Yes of course. But what if the entire government is hostile and attacking civilians? I know we have to go back a while, but if you look at the conduct of the Axis governments in WWII, stopping them from enslaving civilians required holding their territory and occupying their people. When US boots set foot in Japan, ending the massive rape of eastern China and the pacific by Japanese troops, did the US troops suddenly become the bad guys and the Japanese imperialists the resisters? Was the US occupation of Okinawa during the war illegitimate?
You are trying to compare a world war situation , with states with massive armies that have engaged in total and declared warfare, to a nationalist struggle for self determination against an occupying power. The Palestinian struggle is more like the struggle Algerians had with the French after WW2 ended
The pegs only seem the wrong size to you because you never recognized Israel's right to protect its people before 1967 either.
Nope , the pegs are different shapes. You keep trying to put the one that is registered as signifying illegitimacy into the space marked legitimacy. You , because you are the occupiers , are the legitimate target for the occupied
I said I think the giving of one land by one people ( the British ,) that belonged to a second people , the Palestinians to a third people the Jewish people has no validity wrt justice and that that is the crux of it all. All people have a right to defend themselves but let's be clear on the situation before we start talking about rights and justice etc
"self determination" has been offered a number of times and has always been rejected. there is no occupation of Gaza.
Palestine consists of the West Bank , Gaza and East Jerusalem. They are indivisible . What you are saying is like Canada would not be occupied if Quebec was. I would argue , and have argued . that the Israeli control over Gaza and Gazans is amounting to an effective control of the territory and as such an occupation
And once again those troops are only dispatched to those places to prevent the terrorists from murdering civilians. That's why they are on the border, that's why there are incursions, and that's why they are patrolling around Israeli villages in the periphery. Not one of those is related to "occupation" of Gaza or Hamas' territory being occupied.
Even if we drop the occupation charge , people have also the right to break a siege being imposed upon them too.
What you want is to grant all of the legitimacy to one side , every act being legitimate , and for the other nothing. No legitimacy for any and every act or action. That's why we clash so much. I don't agree with that imbalance and thus argue the toss over theses things here
