Joanna
Joel Schalit wrote:
> you're still rationalizing the targeting of civilians, ravi - even as
> an act of self-defense.
>
>
> On Sep 14, 2006, at 12:43 PM, ravi wrote:
>
>> At around 14/9/06 3:06 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 14, 2006, at 2:41 PM, ravi wrote:
>>>
>>>> How is Carrol's analogy inapplicable, except in terms of scale?
>>>
>>>
>>> In this case, scale is no minor matter, but residents of Israel, a
>>> category that includes many Arabs and many people alienated from the
>>> government, are not the same as the SS, are they?
>>>
>>
>> Appreciate the response. If I am reading it correctly, the analogy is
>> not so much: Hezbollah==Jews and Israel==SS, but "the relationship
>> of SS
>> to Jews and the action/reaction" == "what the Israelis do to
>> Lebanon/Palestine/Hezbollah and their actions and Hezbollah reaction".
>> So even though the analogy does not hold very well by some measures
>> (the
>> Jews were not a military entity; they were attacked by their own state;
>> Israel is a democracy with some level of respect for law, human rights;
>> etc), here, from my naive outlook, are the similarities (just off the
>> top of my head):
>>
>> 1. Both "victims" were set upon by the aggressor (in the case of Israel
>> starting with the occupation)
>>
>> 2. Significant imbalance of power in favour of the aggressor
>>
>> 3. Indiscriminate mass targetting (dare I say murder?) by the aggressor
>>
>> 4. Any response from the victim arises out of and is a form of
>> impotence
>> (in terms of power). When this came up last, I used the analogy of the
>> crimes of Palestinian boys throwing rocks.
>>
>> I would suggest that in evaluating the analogy, it is irrelevant that
>> Hezbollah has sources of money and weapons, or has a history (though I
>> have found little evidence of it) of terrorist action. What is
>> significant, IMHO, to the analogy is: is Hezbollah, akin to the Jews
>> and
>> the Palestinian boys, a weaker entity suffering aggression without
>> [larger] cause, and most of all, without means to respond in a
>> legitimate fashion?
>>
>> When you are herded into ghettos or being marched to the gas
>> chamber, or
>> bombed to smithereens from 10,000 feet, what can you do? Nothing. You
>> flail about. You kick and scream. You throw rocks. You lob rockets.
>> Hezbollah or the Palestinian boys cannot be guilty of war crimes
>> because
>> they are incapable of participating in a war. They can either lie down
>> and take it, or throw tantrums. Much like us leftists in the USA. ;-)
>>
>> Now, you are smarter about these sort of things than me, so I look
>> forward to seeing you punch holes in my argument!
>>
>> --ravi
>>
>>
>> P.S: There is one more issue here: the definition of war crimes is
>> based
>> on certain institutions of which Israel is a powerful part and from
>> which entities like Hezbollah are deliberately excluded, yes? Take the
>> case of the businessman who was recently arrested in Florida for
>> offering to provide a feed of Al-Mannar to an undercover FBI agent. By
>> being declared a terrorist organisation at the outset, the Hezbollah
>> are
>> deprived of the means to offer their view, which might include a
>> rebuttal of the accusation.
>>
>> P.P.S: This could be the point where Ramesh from Nepal could remind us
>> that Gandhi's incoherent advice to the Jews was to march into the gas
>> chambers with pride, or some such.
>>
>> --
>> Support something better than yourself: ;-)
>> PeTA: http://www.peta.org/
>> GreenPeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/
>> If you have nothing better to do: http://platosbeard.org/
>> ___________________________________
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>>
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