Ball bearings. Ball bearings aimed at civilians are disproportionate force:
The charred, dismembered bodies, and blood splattered against a stone wall, turned the stomachs of hardened emergency service workers.
“Even in this war I have not seen a sight like this,” said Eli Peretz, an ambulance driver. “The wounded people were all over the place. Part of them inside the cars, and others outside the cars.”
I’m sure, by the way, that the NY Times writer who wrote the story I linked to didn’t mean to sound as if he was condemning the victims for not getting to a bomb shelter, rather than Hezbollah for packing ball bearings into its missiles aimed at civilians. Nevertheless, that’s exactly how the article reads.
That is, the article’s spin is about how the residents of the community struck would have known to get into the bomb shelter, but the reservists waiting in a parking lot decided not to do so. The article mentions only once the fact that the missile was packed with ball bearings, and then makes no further reference to the fact that the ball bearings are intended to cause maximum human death and suffering. Had it not been for the fact that I know precisely why Hezbollah packed with ball bearings a missile intended to hit civilians, I, upon reading this article, would have passed over that detail without thought and merely tut-tutted about the victims’ own foolishness.
UPDATE: The Chronicle runs a doom and gloom (if you support Israel) article about how Israel is not able to defeat Hezbollah, focusing on its six year arms and troop build-up since Israel’s withdrawal. It’s not a bad article, but it fails to mention Hezbollah’s secret weapon: Israel’s conscience. If Israel, like Hezbollah, were a conscience-less military that had no compunction about targeting civilians, Israel probably could have destroyed Hezbollah in a week or two. Israel’s problem, which is exactly the same as America’s problem in Iraq, is her moral inability to use appropriate military force against an enemy that entrenches itself among civilian populations.
Talking to Technorati: Israel, Disproportionate force, Ball bearings, Hezbollah, Hizbollah, Katyushas, Media bias
Filed under: Hezbollah, Israel, Media matters
The charred, dismembered bodies, and blood splattered against a stone wall, turned the stomachs of hardened emergency service workers.
“Even in this war I have not seen a sight like this,” said Eli Peretz, an ambulance driver. “The wounded people were all over the place. Part of them inside the cars, and others outside the cars.”
I’m getting hungry, can I have a video of that?
Not to seem cold hearted, but I’m eating some spiced meat with rice, and I’ve always wondered how my stomach would compare to those guys puking their guts out at a crime scene or civilian slaughter scene. The smells, the gut wrenching discolored intestines and brain matter.I’m just curious whether I’d lose the contents of my stomach or lose my appetite.
I’m naturally squeemish about blood and what not, the mere thought of a doctor doing surgery on a live patient, sticking his hands in the blood coated insides of living people, always gave me the shivers. The terroists have taught me much about stamina and tolerance for seeing and feeling the destruction over human life.
And I appreciate the lessons from the Left as well, in teaching me as how to control my emotions, and see past manipulation and propaganda and lies. I’m sure Bookworm is equally thankful for her prior experiences in life, that have taught her what and what not to do, what is or is not right, and what was or was not true.
I can’t say much for the civilians in Israel. Their life is theirs to live, and to fight for. It does bring to mind a quote however.
“‘He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desert is small,
Who fears to put it to the touch,
And win or lose it all.’”
Is Israel going to put their enemies to the nuclear torch, to win or lose it all?
That first link of yours was pretty good. If I could make someone read that 24/7 and restrict their access to anything else, I think I could make them suicide due to depression. If it was an Israeli living in the North, chances would probably rise rather high.
It creates an ambiance of… helplessness, despair, futility, and all the wonderful emotions that make people kill themselves.
I’d rate it a 5, pretty average.
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Paul Greenberg has long been a favorite of mine. His thoughts on the conflict (link below) are notable. And this observation from them:
“The French have a word for it, and the word is “disproportionate.” That’s how Jacques Chirac, French president and embarrassment-in-chief, described Israel’s both-barrels response to Hezbollah’s long record of attacks on the Jewish state – a record that now has led to all hell, or at least an awful lot of it, breaking loose in the Middle East.
Talk about a totally disproportionate response to an act of war, consider the not-so-little incursion into Normandy that began June 6, 1944, aka D-Day. Think of the troop ships that covered the ocean to the horizon, the unending bombardments from sea and air, the armor and artillery and paratroops and supplies and support of every kind, the innocent civilians caught in the middle . . . and even then, as Wellington said of Waterloo, it was a damned close-run thing. Now there was a totally disproportionate response. Thank God.”
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=notes_on_a_war&ns=PaulGreenberg&dt=07/31/2006&page=2
Here was my post on the Solomonia Weblog (www.solomonia.com) dealing with the issue of “disproportionate force”.
Israel is taking so much grief from so many countries over its “disproportionate” response to the Hezbollah terrorist attack. I was wondering what the record of some of those countries who are criticizing Israel might be.
Let’s see, why don’t we start with Russia. Ah, the Russians are a peaceful group, aren’t they? Why, look at what they did in Chechnya. Estimates range from 20,000 to well over 100,000 Chechen civilians were killed when Grozny was levelled. Now, the Chechens undoubtedly have engaged in terrorist acts against Russia, but they didn’t killed tens of thousands. So, methinks the Russian response was, shall we say, DISPROPORTIONATE.
Okay, what about those wonderful nations of Western Europe. I’ll give you that they don’t like to use military action. Hell, they were protected by the American nuclear umbrella for 50+ years after WWII, so they really didn’t have to do much (though the ultra-hypocritical French managed to knock off some 82,000 Algerian civilians when that country dared to assert that it should not be a French colony), but now they’ve been involved in some military adventures of late, like in Bosnia and Kosova (through NATO). How many civilians were killed there? Well, according Human Rights Watch, over 1,000 civilians were killed in those two actions. See here and here.
Now, near as I can tell, Serbia NEVER threatened Western Europe, and NEVER posed an existential threat to France, or Holland, or Great Britain, or Germany, etc. Any of you remember Serbian suicide bombers blowing themselves up in Parisian cafes? How about in London pubs? No? What about in German brauhaus’? I didn’t think so.
And of course, Israel has been condemned by those paragons of virtue, the Chinese. In Tiananmen Square, the government itself admits that it killed at least 200 people, but estimates range into the thousands. See here.
Those numbers too low for you? Ask the Tibetans how nicely they’ve been treated. Over 1,000,000 (a conservative estimate, according to some) of them have died as a result of the Chinese takeover. See here. Let’s do the math, shall we? That works out to 18,181.8 people per year since 1951, when the Chinese moved in. Gee, sounds kind of DISPROPORTIONATE to me, especially given that I don’t believe that Tibetans have ever lobbed so much as a snowball in the direction of Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Guangzhou, etc., etc.
Then there is the Arab League, and the various Muslim organizations around the world. I wonder what they have to say about Darfur, where over 300,000 people have died and 1.2 million have been rendered homeless? See here. Gee, not a thing. What a shocker! Then again, that situation involves Muslims killing non-Muslims, so that’s justified, I guess.
And what about Rwanda? Twelve years ago, 500,000 Tutsis were murdered by the Hutu government. See here. Yet, the world did nothing, and I don’t recally any mass protests around the world to decry what was going on. I don’t recall Security Council condemnations being issued, or resolutions being contemplated. Where was France then? Where was Russia? Where was China? Where was the Arab League?
What’s my point in all of this? It is simply this: There is one standard for Israel, and another for the rest of the world. The discussion of “proportionality” is a joke, offered only because those who hate Israel or simply can’t bring themselves to say that they don’t like Jews can’t come up with anything better to say in response to what is obviously a defensive action. It’s frustrating and it is simply wrong.
If you read isirota’s post, you should know by now that your only defense against the nagging nabobs of the world is to unleash the limits, and destroy more people. The more people you destroy, the more they fear you, and the less they criticize. Intimidation works, Europe always caves under intimidation backed by sweet words of nothingness.
Whenever you hear a bunch of weaklings criticize someone, that means either those weaklings are picking on someone weaker than they, or they are picking on someone strong that they know for a fact won’t turn and squash them for daring to be annoying.