Patterico's Pontifications

11/19/2012

Did Hamas Kill a Gazan Child?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:32 am



Breitbart.com:

Hamas has once again apparently been caught faking an image of a dead Palestinian child–this time using a child likely killed by its own rocket fire and claiming that an Israeli attack was responsible. CNN’s Sara Sidner ran a full report on the child’s death, strongly implying that an Israeli bomb had been responsible.

The dead child was paraded before the cameras during the visit of Egyptian prime minister Hisham Kandil, who kissed the dead child in the presence of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. But even the New York Times was suspicious.

Breitbart.com quotes the evidence cited by blogger Elder of Ziyon:

The IDF did not launch any airstrikes in Gaza while Egyptian PM Kandil was in Gaza…

If it was an Israeli missile, you can be sure that it would have been shown to the media! Furthermore, PCHR, which is keeping track of everyone killed in Gaza (and which admits that most of the dead have been “militants,”) did not list Mahmoud Sadallah or Aiman Aby Wardah in their list of victims of Israeli airstrikes, although they even include one person who died of a heart attack.

Put this together with the fact that Hamas and other terror groups were firing rockets throughout Friday morning while the IDF did not, plus the fact that over 100 rockets have fallen short in Gaza (both using past performance and IDF statistics as proof), and the fact that the shrapnel in the video matches almost exactly the shrapnel damage we have seen from rocket fire into Israel, and it is very clear: this child was killed by Gaza rocket fire, not by Israel.

Terrorists love to engage in false victimhood. Palestinians and Gazans have done it forever. (Political terrorists do the same thing, and those who have been paying attention lately know exactly what I mean.)

This happens every time there is a conflict involving Israel, and apparently only the blogs are willing to ask the tough questions.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Recent Comments should be re-appearing soon. It seems they were responsible for the site bugginess we had been experiencing. I have someone I trust on the job, and things should be back to normal pretty soon. In fact, we’ll even have some improvements — easier to read comments, for one. (I’m looking at you, Mark.) So stay tuned.

91 Responses to “Did Hamas Kill a Gazan Child?”

  1. Back in the old days when LGF cared about such things, that guy used to post multiple pictures of Palestinian “car swarms” whenever the IDF targeted some dirtbag with a missile. The locals would swarm all over the car, dipping their hands and clothes into the bloody corpse and displaying them proudly to the cameras.

    Does this still happen, I wonder? But now they are using children?

    Pious Agnostic (7c3d5b)

  2. http://www.eureferendum.com/ was good back in the day of “Green Helmet Guy”, but they haven’t carried this yet.

    But, then again, most everyone willing to listen already know these things happen, and those that don’t know don’t want to listen.

    Though when you see twitter feeds of how precise the IDF hits targets, it should be pretty clear that if civilians were killed it was probably because they were downstairs in the building where the missile was fired from the roof.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  3. It wouldn’t be surprising if they put a dead child or several on ice to be used for propaganda purposes later on. The high value targets surround themselves with children as human shields and it wouldn’t be surprising if some children deaths went unreported early on when Israel took out the Hamas military leader and other earlier targets. They normally wait until another Israeli shelling to thaw out the dead children to use as “real time” victims, but the Egyptian guy being in town was too good of a propaganda opportunity to wait.

    They are also capable of just finding a kid and killing her and saying Israel did it, but it probably wasn’t necessary in this instance.

    j curtis (be21dc)

  4. j curtis, the Palestinians use the “virtual” dead and wounded now. They surf the web looking for vaguely ME looking dead and wounded kids, then put their pics up on facebook or tweet them and claim these are casualties of Israeli “aggression.”

    They even tweeted a picture of an Israeli child wounded in a Gazan rocket attack at Kiryat Malakhi and claimed it was a Palestinian child. I bet Hamas was laughing as the gullible press ate that one up.

    The rescue worker holding her had his name written on his shirt in Hebrew.

    Keep that in mind when some journalism school grad is propped up as some ME “expert” merely because they spent time there or was something like the Beirut bureau chief for some rag.

    The liberal hack probably can’t tell (not read, just recognize) the difference between Arabic and Hebrew.

    Steve57 (7a880e)

  5. When one writes that Hamas was “caught” faking a deadchild claim, it sort of implies that there is a consequence to being “caught”.

    Unfortunately, there are no consequences for Hamas’ lies at all. They are successful in convincing who they want to convince. And being “caught” in the lie does nothing to reduce the effectiveness of these false claims to the actual target audience.

    SPQR (768505)

  6. To answer the question in the post title: “Does a bear shit in the woods? Of course they killed a kid. It’s what they do. They revel in it. If they could bathe in buckets of blood, they’d do it. The only thing that matters to Hamas and their like is their hatred.”

    Rob Crawford (c55962)

  7. j curtis, the Palestinians use the “virtual” dead and wounded now. They surf the web looking for vaguely ME looking dead and wounded kids, then put their pics up on facebook or tweet them and claim these are casualties of Israeli “aggression.”

    This is an old, old tactic of theirs. One of the first times I became aware of media manipulation was at the time of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Just about every newspaper in the world ran a front-page picture of an adorable Lebanese boy lying in hospital in a body cast, with a caption saying that he had been burned by an Israeli phosphorus bomb (if I recall correctly). A real heartstring-tugger, even if you wholeheartedly supported Israel and the goals of that invasion, and understood that in any war collateral damage is inevitable. Until you learned that the photo had been taken six years earlier during the Lebanese civil war.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  8. It wouldn’t be surprising if they put a dead child or several on ice to be used for propaganda purposes later on.

    See “Hussein, Saddam — propaganda against sanctions” for examples. They’d store up every stillborn baby with visible defects and trot them out for obliging leftists and journalists (a near unity set) to “prove” the Ebil US Sanctions (passed and imposed by the UN) were killing babies.

    I recall an ob-gyn commenter at LGF during its sane days going through the photos giving diagnoses of the various problems. Vitamin deficiencies — and vitamins were NOT forbidden by the sanctions — and congenital abnormalities on end.

    Rob Crawford (c55962)

  9. The liberal hack probably can’t tell (not read, just recognize) the difference between Arabic and Hebrew.

    First, they’d have to care…

    Rob Crawford (c55962)

  10. To answer the question posed in the headline: no.

    The problem is the use of the singular “a”. A better question might be “how many Gazan children has Hamas killed?”

    egd (d580cc)

  11. Did Hamas kill a Gazan child for propaganda purposes?
    It is what Fascists do, is it not!

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  12. Senatus Populusque Romanus wrote:

    When one writes that Hamas was “caught” faking a deadchild claim, it sort of implies that there is a consequence to being “caught”.

    Exactly right, but this does not go far enough. The problem isn’t that some Palestinian children may have been killed, but that not enough Palestinian children have been killed.

    Israel has defeated the various Arab military several times now, but has never actually won its wars. All of the conflicts have resulted in cease-fires, but none have ended in surrender, none have ended with an acknowledgement of defeat. Rather, the Westernized Israelis stopped killing the Arabs when the threw up their hands, but never imposed upon them the truly crushing defeat that was required.

    In World War II, the Allies smashed the German and Japanese military, sure enough, but we also bombed their countries, destroyed their industry, and slaughtered millions of their people; it wasn’t just the German and Japanese military which were defeated, but the German and Japanese nations which were defeated, defeated so thoroughly that there was no hope left, none at all, of resistance.

    Contrast that with World War I, in which Germany surrendered with her armies still on foreign soil; Germany was not smashed, and the nation itself was untouched enough for the “stab in the back” mythology to take root and grow, and 21 years later the Nazis came roaring out of their land to fight again.

    The Israelis lost their war back in 1967. They should have rounded up every Arab in the territories they conquered and expelled them all, into Jordan, into Syria, into Lebanon. If they were not willing to do that, if they were not willing to behave like conquerors, they needed to get the Hell out of the territories they were unwilling to rule as conquerors.

    There would have been cries around the world about the brutal Israelis, but had they done that in 1967, they’d have that land, and there would be no occupied territories, and the Middle East would be a quieter place than it is today. Now, it’s almost certainly too late to try that.

    The coldly realistic Dana (3e4784)

  13. And earlier there’s the famous “napalm girl” photo. How many people who saw the photo realised that: 1) the napalm was dropped by her own people who were trying to defend her, 2) mistakenly believing from the air that the armed group she was with were enemy soldiers, or that 3) Americans had nothing at all to do with it?

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  14. More on the napalm girl.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  15. And of course there’s the infamous case of Little Saint Muhammad al Dura, who, like the child in the picture we’re discussing, was killed by his own people (if he was killed at all), and then used to stage a blood libel against the IDF.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  16. And yes, the allusion to Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln was deliberate.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  17. Yes, Al Dura was the incident I was referring to,

    narciso (ee31f1)

  18. we’ll even have some improvements — easier to read comments, for one.

    So stay tuned.

    Hey Patterico,

    Another thing that you should consider is having embedded links start in a new tab. Every blog I read except yours does this. You are definitely losing traffic by having people leave the site in the same window in which they arrived. After I read a link here, I usually “X out” and don’t come back for a long while.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  19. Yes, Al Dura was the incident I was referring to

    May I ask which comment this refers to? I can’t see any earlier comment by you on this thread. Is this a glitch in Patterico’s software?

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  20. Another thing that you should consider is having embedded links start in a new tab. Every blog I read except yours does this.

    If you don’t read Instapundit, Legal Insurrection, Just One Minute, or any of the many others that don’t do this, you’re missing out.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  21. The previous incident, where they used an innocent Palestinian child, as a sacrifice to the Media mob.

    narciso (ee31f1)

  22. While the rockets from Gaza are occupying everyone’s attention, the rock- and firebomb-throwers have not been idle.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  23. Personally, I feel those filthy Israeli opportunists new Down Low was stuck in Asia this week slaughtering pronunciations and unable to keep on top of genocide in the ME.

    Lot of world class golf courses in Thailand.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  24. HJamas thought that israel destroyed its television station because of the false claims they are making but really it was porobably part of a campaign of destroying Hamas assets (in part because anything they consider off limits is used for weapons storage)

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  25. Thanks for the reminder Millhouse. I hadn’t read Instapundit in a long time.

    carlitos (49ef9f)

  26. Jewish World Review is back with full issues (for the time being there will be 3 full ones and 2 small ones a week)

    Here is what they have today about Gaza:

    http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg111912.php3 (he expects a war. If so, a success won’t eliminate that threat)

    http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1112/emerson111912.php3

    http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1112/gaza_smugling_egypt.php3

    http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1112/mccain_clinton_to_gaza.php3

    http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1112/gaza_cyberattacks.php3

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  27. Hamas thought that israel destroyed its television station because of the false claims they are making

    And what if it were? Wouldn’t that be sufficient cause? The USA took out Serbian TV for that reason alone.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  28. 26.
    “Hamas thought that israel destroyed its television station because of the false claims they are making”

    Comment by Milhouse — 11/19/2012 @ 11:43 am

    And what if it were? Wouldn’t that be sufficient cause? The USA took out Serbian TV for that reason alone.

    It would, it would. (although foreign correspondents complained. But none got hurt)

    Of course you might want to announce it in that case.

    But I don’t think there’s too much rationality to the bombing now. They are just looking for targets, and don’t really have anything to hit. They are hoping if they do more, they won’t have to do an invasion.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  29. >> easier to read comments, for one. (I’m looking at you, Mark.) So stay tuned.

    That might make it harder to read. You have to be careful. It’s fine now. Maybe whwre you have something like:

    Comment by Milhouse — 11/19/2012 @ 10:38 am – you might fill out the line with dashes. But not so as to go ovee into a second line.

    So it would be:

    Comment by Milhouse — 11/19/2012 @ 10:38 am —————————————————————————————————————————

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  30. 28. Yes, they are going after the leadership of Hamas in Gaza. (or in this case, Islamic Jihad) especially anyone involved in firing the rockets.

    They must have thought this was a safe place. (Not that safe – Hamas reserves its best places for their own leaders)

    Last time, Israel destroyed a Hamas prison, or what made it a prison, prisoners were taken to a hospital, and some were executed practically in front of a New York Times reporter.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  31. One comment there on the website narciso linked to: Hamas refused to allow reporters who wanted to get out of Gaza to go to Israel. (except for Russians)

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  32. Mistaken Lull, Simple Errand, Death in Gaza Nov 17 NYTimes

    Shortly before noon, masked gunmen from the Qassam Brigades killed a man in a public square whom they accused of collaborating with Israel, witnesses said.

    The man, identified as Ashraf Ouaida, lay dead for about half an hour in a traffic circle beneath a billboard showing a Hamas fighter holding a rocket, as more than 100 men and boys, some still carrying mats from Friday Prayer, crowded around. At first, his bloodied head was covered with a poster in which the Qassam Brigades took responsibility for the killing and blamed Mr. Ouaida for the deaths of 15 Palestinian leaders. Later, it was covered with a dirty plastic sheet.

    Wael Mohammed, a taxi driver, was standing at the steps of the Aman Mosque when he saw two masked men drag Mr. Ouaida from a vehicle.

    “They took him out from the Jeep with his hands cuffed behind his back, they pushed him under the poster and fired three gunshots at his head from the back,” Mr. Mohammed said.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  33. 26. And what if it were? Wouldn’t that be sufficient cause? The USA took out Serbian TV for that reason alone.

    It would, it would. (although foreign correspondents complained. But none got hurt)

    Of course you might want to announce it in that case.

    Sammy, they warned everyone including journalists to avoid Hamas facilities.

    But I don’t think there’s too much rationality to the bombing now. They are just looking for targets, and don’t really have anything to hit. They are hoping if they do more, they won’t have to do an invasion.

    Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 11/19/2012 @ 11:52 am

    Sammy, they haven’t even got around to the short-range rocket manufacturing facilities.

    They have a targeting list longer than your arm.

    Steve57 (7a880e)

  34. “The only way to peace with the Arab is when they love their children more than they hate us.” – Golda Meir (from memory, may not be exact).

    Still so effing true.

    Ghost (2d8874)

  35. Is Dana calling for genocide here? Her quote:

    “The problem isn’t that some Palestinian children may have been killed, but that not enough Palestinian children have been killed.”

    Does this square with the pro-life view on abortion that children are innocent of their parents actions and that every human life is sacred?

    So is it that they are dark-skinned, or that they live in the wrong place that they deserve to be killed, because we all know they are too young to understand politics or religion.

    Does anybody here support Dana’s view that Palestinian children should be specifically singled out and killed? Is this going to be removed or censured — or condoned?

    Mahalia Cab (7872b4)

  36. Comment by The coldly realistic Dana — 11/19/2012 @ 9:34 am

    I vote with Dana here.
    In 1967, the Israeli’s could have had a world-wide fundraiser to get enough for a down-payment on bonds to buy out every single property owner in the West Bank, and Gaza.
    Then announce that the new borders of Israel were the Suez Canal on the West, and the Jordan River on the East.

    For now, seal the eastern line of Gaza, and start pushing the population south into Egypt, and bulldoze the buildings as you go.
    They could have a quite nice resort there with some proper planning.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  37. Is Dana calling for genocide here? Her quote:

    No, Mahalia. As per normal, you remain ignorant.

    Does anybody here support Dana’s view that Palestinian children should be specifically singled out and killed?

    That is not Dana’s position. You are a filthy liar.

    JD (318f81)

  38. Is this going to be removed or censured — or condoned?

    You are a liberal idiot, Mahalia.

    JD (318f81)

  39. Miss Cab, war is Hell, and bullets and bombs don’t discriminate between adults and children, combatants and civilians. But if Israel is going to have a war with the Palestinians, they need to know what war is.

    Had they done what I said they should have done in 1967, it would have been a huge human tragedy, but 45 years of subsequent fighting would have been avoided.

    For Israel to have peace with the Palestinians requires that they defeat the Palestinians in war. Kicking a little butt against today’s guerrilla fighters simply means that the next group of guerrilla fighters will continue to snipe at Israel. For Israel to have peace with the Palestinians requires that the Palestinians be so thoroughly beaten that today’s twelve-year old boys are so cowed and part of such a beaten society that they will not believe that they can rise up and fight Israel when they turn 16 and 17 and 18.

    A very simple truth: if you leave your enemies with the will to fight you, then they will fight you.

    The coldly realistic Dana (3e4784)

  40. cab, you are a clown. Your misrepresentation of Dana’s point was just cheap namecalling by a troll.

    SPQR (7c2e45)

  41. To clarify, Mahalia Cab, the “coldly realistic Dana” is a male, and not me.

    With that, you willfully ignore the substance of his comment and that is intellectually dishonest. It is a difficult enough argument he presents without you diminishing it with accusations of genocide and bringing skin color into it. War is a nasty barbaric matter, but one that is part of this life on earth. Collateral damage is always a tragic cost of it.

    Best not to speak without giving his point the serious thought and consideration it deserves.

    Dana (292dcf)

  42. It was an equal influx of Jews from said countries, in 1967, the UN which included future Iraqi kingmaker Pachachi was the one who set those rules,
    in the aftermath of the war, then came Arafat’s three nos in Khartroum,

    Of course, what the Turks do, as with the Armenians in 1915, was called itijihad, or ‘cleansing’, which is their default seating

    http://freebeacon.com/admin-wont-criticize-turkeys-israel-accusation/

    http://freebeacon.com/admin-wont-criticize-turkeys-israel-accusation/

    narciso (ee31f1)

  43. Did Hamas kill a Gazan child?
    Does the pope shit?

    mg (31009b)

  44. If I knew that about the “napalm girl” I had forgotten it…not surprising, though.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  45. Remember, Mahalia is a fiscal conservative. LOL

    JD (185efa)

  46. ______________________________________________

    Does this square with the pro-life view on abortion that children are innocent of their parents actions and that every human life is sacred?

    By the same token, does the belief that single, underaged girls need to get parental consent before visiting a tanning salon but don’t require such consent when seeking an abortion square with the assumption that liberal values imbue one with great humanity and compassion? Incidentally, what I describe is exactly the way things are (legally, legislatively) in very-blue, true-blue, beautiful, humane California.

    So is it that they are dark-skinned, or that they live in the wrong place that they deserve to be killed, because we all know they are too young to understand politics or religion.

    So are Palestinians given lots of benefit of the doubt (among mainly the left) because of the assumption that the further removed a populace is from European culture and ethnicity, the more heroic, noble, touchingly pathetic and appropriately grievance-filled such people are?

    I will say that the following is so absurdly non-politically correct in the context of the increasingly effete, amoral US/Europe/North America, that if such cultural trends do worm their way into this part of the world, I admittedly will feel amused at the likely reaction of various liberals.

    theblaze.com, June 2012:

    Yesterday, we reported about the Palestinian puppet show in East Jerusalem teaching the children that while it’s bad to smoke, it’s admirable to tote a machine gun and target Jews.
    Now it appears that no child is left behind in Gaza, where kindergarteners recently held a jihad-promoting graduation ceremony replete with camouflage make-up, fatigues, fake machine guns and a kiddie version of water-boarding.

    Ynet News translates from Islamic Jihad’s website which posted the photos: “It is our obligation to educate the children to love the resistance, Palestine and Jerusalem, so they will recognize the importance of Palestine and who its enemy is,” the kindergarten’s director said.

    The children were dressed up in uniforms of Jihad’s armed-wing, the al-Quds Brigades, and each of them received a toy rifle […] One child, Hamza, said “When I grow up I’ll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I’ll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid [martyr] and join my father in heaven.

    “I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing,” he said.

    Here are some of the photos, captured by the pro-Israel bloggers Challah Hu Akbar and Elder of Ziyon:

    Beautiful!

    Noble!

    Heroic!

    Ynet translates one teacher who said: “At every kindergarten graduation ceremony we focus on the children to represent the role of struggling and resistance in the way of Allah so they will grow up to love the resistance and serve the cause of Palestine and Holy Jihad, as well as to make them leaders and fighters to defend the holy soil of Palestine.”

    ^ Notice the peculiar mix of generally liberal sentiment (ie, anti-smoking) infused with the essence of non-politically-correct pro-gun, pro-war sentiment. But while more than a few liberals throughout the Western World love to shed tears over the plight of the Palestinians, far fewer conservatives of the West love to whoop and cheer because the Palestinians are so apparently into guns, weapons and combat.

    The irony is so thick, it can’t be cut with even a very sharp knife.

    Mark (52bc92)

  47. Several random thoughts re the Coldly Realistic Dana’s comments:

    We (U.S.) no longer fight wars in the historic sense of the word. We are nation builders first and foremost, and that includes embedding in country and bringing social relief and humanitarian aid along with guns. Doesn’t this new paradigm redefine ‘war’?

    Because of the change in definition, Israel could not proceed with the determination to not only wipe out those fighting but also those potential soldiers because it would be seen, in our blurred prism of warfare, as just what Mahalia Cab claims: genocide. Israel would be, if possible, more hated than ever before. And, given the hatred f Israel by those surrounding her, she would no doubt be wiped out immediately, whether or not that want taking on the U.S. as well.

    Dana (292dcf)

  48. 45. Mahalia is a moby. Not a particularly deft one at that.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  49. Along with above, I have spoken to 3 military wives in the past month who all state that their husbands’ biggest frustration with their mission(s) as they are deployed to various areas in Afghanistan, including Helmsland Province, is they don’t really know anymore precisely what the mission is. they each say it’s completely demoralizing the foggier the objectives get.

    I can’t remember where I was going with this but something about the blunt diffence with that and with Israel’s mission… I think.

    Dana (292dcf)

  50. 34 “Does anybody here support the [Pali] view that Palestinian children should be specifically singled out [for ‘sploding Joooos]?

    FIFY

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  51. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told the Eurasian Islamic Council conference in Istanbul that the Jewish state is systematically mass-killing Muslims.

    “Those who associate Islam with terrorism close their eyes in the face of mass killing of Muslims, turn their heads from the massacre of children in Gaza,” Erdogan said, according to Reuters. “For this reason, I say that Israel is a terrorist state, and its acts are terrorist acts.”

    Dana (292dcf)

  52. I can’t help but notice that Palestinians aren’t particularly dark-skinned. In fact, many of them are as pale as anyone in my family (except for the Norwegians from Wisconsin, who are semi-transluent).

    Is that why they are evil? Is it the white skin?

    Pious Agnostic (2c3220)

  53. I have a friend, former member of French military, physician and naturalized citizen who agrees with you completely.

    The purpose of war is to break the other side of the will to resist. We did not kill nearly enough Sunnis in Iraq to keep the peace.

    Nation building in Afghanistan was, is and will always be insane no matter the good to be done.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  54. 49. So Mr. Erdogan, what do you call Turkish treatment of Kurds and Alevis? Loving discipline?

    Turkey’s account surplus is running something like 12%. He’s probably behind Syria’s attacks.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  55. Dana @45, we don’t have to cooperate as leftists in the lawfare business attempt to redefine warfare.

    This is the frustrating thing; many people on the right who should have a historical perspective and should know better have been bamboozled by these redefinitions.

    For instance, this article has been cited favorably by many on the right recently:

    America, Israel, Gaza, the World

    As Israeli airstrikes and naval shells bombarded Gaza this weekend, the world asked the question that perennially frustrates, confuses and enrages so many people across the planet: Why aren’t the Americans hating on Israel more?

    …Commentators around the world grasp at straws in seeking to explain what’s going on.

    …Americans as a people have never much believed in fighting by “the rules.”

    …One of the criteria for jus in bello (fighting nice as opposed to jus ad bellum which is about whether it is just ) is proportionality. If the other guy comes at you with a stick, you can’t pull a knife. If he’s got a knife, you can’t pull a gun. If he burned your barn, you can’t nuke his capital. Your use of force must be proportionate to the cause and to the danger.

    Yeah! We’re ‘Murr’cans. We don’t fight by the rules.

    The problem is it’s all wrong.

    Proportionality has nothing to do with “fighting nice” or using no more force than the other guy uses. It means using no more force than required to accomplish a military necessary task.

    For instance, most people haven’t heard the name Lothar Rendulic. He was a German general acquitted of war crimes at Nuremberg despite committing what most people today would consider an atrocity. He ordered a scorched earth policy across Lapland as his forces retreated from the Russians. Thousands starved as a result.

    Lapland War

    In their retreat the German forces under General Lothar Rendulic devastated large areas of northern Finland with scorched earth tactics. As a result, some 40–47% of the dwellings in the area were destroyed, and the provincial capital of Rovaniemi was burned to the ground, as were the villages of Savukoski and Enontekiö. Two-thirds of the buildings in the main villages of Sodankylä, Muonio, Kolari, Salla and Pello were demolished, 675 bridges were blown up, all main roads were mined, and 3,700 km of telephone lines were destroyed.

    Does that sound like “fighting nice?”

    Scorched earth as a tactic can be justified due to military necessity (the first of three criteria the Law Of Armed Conflict requires for an act to be lawful). Proportionality (the second criteria) means using no more force than required to accomplish the task. That can still mean one hell of a lot of detruction, if that’s what it’s going to take. Look at the devastation Rendulic inflicted on Lapland and still managed to get acquitted (although he was convicted of war crimes for activities earlier in the war in Yugoslavia). It’s important to note that anyone who starved as a result evaded German efforts to evacuate them.

    If it’s going to take the atom bomb to get Japan to surrender, then the atom bomb represents proportionate force. It doesn’t matter that Japan didn’t have anything that could approach that level of destructive power. Modern lawfare artists would claim that makes it “disproportionate.” They have their heads up their butts.

    The fact of the matter is if Israel has to use a level of force that will flatten Gaza in order to reach militarily necessary objectives, that’s lawful. On the other hand Hamas, EIJ, etc., with their pipsqueak rockets are war criminals for firing into civilian areas from Gazan civilian areas (distinction is the third criteria; you must distinguish military from civilian targets and distinguish yourself from the civilian population).

    There is something to be said for aiding reconstruction after you receive your enemy’s surrender. Certainly after sending a country into chaos in most if not all circumstances it helps to have boots on the ground.

    But we don’t have to buy into the delusions and moreover it’s important to point and laugh and make clear the people who do are delusional.

    Because just as the Taliban laugh at us for having ROE that says if they drop their weapons even temporarily then we must stop shooting at them. Similarly it’s not a war crime for Israel to keep fighting even after Hamas starts begging for a ceasefire when things become uncomfortable for them. That’s not enough; things have to become unbearable for them. It is not a war crime for any country that has been attacked to reject a ceasefire until it destroys its enemy’s ability to attack it.

    Especially when that enemy repeatedly breaks ceasefires.

    Steve57 (7a880e)

  56. The much prettier Dana wrote:

    We (U.S.) no longer fight wars in the historic sense of the word. We are nation builders first and foremost, and that includes embedding in country and bringing social relief and humanitarian aid along with guns. Doesn’t this new paradigm redefine ‘war’?

    Quite frankly, what it defines is defeat.

    We succeeded in nation building in Japan, under General MacArthur, but only because we had so thoroughly beaten down the Japanese, so totally destroyed their nation, that it had to be rebuilt from the ground up. We imposed women’s suffrage, where it did not exist before, and de-deified the Emperor.

    In Iraq, we tried our best to kill only the Ba’ath Party fighters and the insurgents, and do as little collateral damage as possible; we tried nation-building on a society in which we had destroyed the political system but left the culture and much of the economy intact. And we are trying to follow our “success” there with the same policy in Afghanistan.

    Anyone here think that that will work?

    The historian Dana (f68855)

  57. It is good to know that Mahalia Cab is part of the tolerant left that endorses the Palestinian position of beating wives and executing gays.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  58. Comment by The historian Dana — 11/19/2012 @ 4:51 pm

    In Iraq, we tried our best to kill only the Ba’ath Party fighters and the insurgents, and do as little collateral damage as possible

    That was not the problem – the problem, for a long time, was that Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush thought we were fighting Ba’ath Party holdout, and we were not.

    We were fighting people being sponsored by Iran, Syria and Saudi Aarabia, who were determined not to let a democracy take hold, not to let anyone in Iraq feel good about the toppling of Saddam Hussein, not to have their people look upon it as an example they hoped was repeated.

    In Afghanistan we are fighting people sponsored (and sheltered) by Pakistan’s rogue military intelligence agency.

    I think people underestimate the importance of intelligence in war. It was bad in Iraq – it was bad in Afghanistan. That’s the whole story.

    Petraeus’ strategy was something of a success because it improved intelligence, at least on the local level. Once people felt safe, and that the U.S. was interested in protecting them., they would tell us things.

    Sammy Finkelman (69e89f)

  59. Well we were fighting both, Sammy, the former ‘switched sides’ in the Anbar Awakening, the Sinjar files, indicates the predominance of Saudis, although Libyans from Cyreniaca, were a close second,

    narciso (ee31f1)

  60. Comment by Steve57 — 11/19/2012 @ 4:47 pm

    It is not a war crime for any country that has been attacked to reject a ceasefire until it destroys its enemy’s ability to attack it.

    It’s not wise. Especially

    Especially when that enemy repeatedly breaks ceasefires

    But Hamas doesn’t want a ceasefire anyway.

    And what’s needed is something to prevent them from being re-supplied with missile.

    Israel’s enemy is not really Hamas. Hamas is only doing this because basically they’ve been bought and paid for. No rational person would do what they are doingif their only concern was the territory they rule, and Israel.

    Sammy Finkelman (69e89f)

  61. palestinians are gayer than letting putin loose in a thomas kincade boutique

    happyfeet (acbee0)

  62. Alice Coopers gonna need to hire some dead babies for his farewell tour

    pdbuttons (71b691)

  63. @ Steve57′

    Dana @45, we don’t have to cooperate as leftists in the lawfare business attempt to redefine warfare.

    This is the frustrating thing; many people on the right who should have a historical perspective and should know better have been bamboozled by these redefinitions.

    Many people on the right do know and haven’t been necessarily bamboozled but rather, outnumbered. Our current administration reflects the current change in definition.

    Dana (292dcf)

  64. a dead baby is only as good as his or her agent

    happyfeet (acbee0)

  65. Is Rick Santorum available?

    pdbuttons (71b691)

  66. The historic Dana @ 54,

    I agree that it is a policy of defeat, however, what constitutes “victory” seems to have changed along with warfare.

    We are more concerned with nation building and retaining culture and being unoffensevie to the native populace, whil simultaneously tightening the ROE to the point of impotence, that it almost seems as if victory is secondary at best.

    I’ve really appreciated your comments here on this thread. As uncomfortable as they might be.

    Dana (292dcf)

  67. Beautifuller Dana: if “what constitutes ‘victory’ seems to have changed along with warfare,” then we have truly reverted back to 1984: Defeat is Victory.

    What we have now is a prescription for endless occupation, and an open-ended hemorrhage of dollars, to build something which cannot be built: we cannot impose a Western culture and Western values on a country unless we have so thoroughly destroyed the culture and values it had before as to make them meaningless.

    We have made the terrible mistake of thinking that we can defeat a government without defeating a country, and everything will work out just fine; just where has that worked before?

    The very realistic Dana (f68855)

  68. Our esteemed host wrote:

    Recent Comments should be re-appearing soon. It seems they were responsible for the site bugginess we had been experiencing. I have someone I trust on the job, and things should be back to normal pretty soon. In fact, we’ll even have some improvements — easier to read comments, for one. (I’m looking at you, Mark.) So stay tuned.

    Perhaps you need to change the Recent Comments widget. You have been using a different one that I have — my site is WordPress as well — which presents differently. If your old widget was buggy, try a different one; there are several out there.

    The blogger Dana (f68855)

  69. a dead baby is only as good as his or her agent

    Comment by happyfeet — 11/19/2012 @ 7:02 pm

    Is Rick Santorum available?

    Comment by pdbuttons — 11/19/2012 @ 7:04 pm

    Crude and vile there, fellas.

    Dana (292dcf)

  70. _____________________________________________

    Israel’s enemy is not really Hamas. Hamas is only doing this because basically they’ve been bought and paid for. No rational person would do what they are doingif their only concern was the territory they rule, and Israel.

    Hmm. That sounds awfully close to the sentiment of: “That criminal has led a life of robbing, mugging, raping and killing because, well, his mother didn’t have access to good healthcare for her entire family, there weren’t after-school programs for him to take advantage of, his teachers weren’t paid enough, public assistance hasn’t been generous enough, college tuition hasn’t been subsidized enough, and there’s still too much racism in our culture.”

    Or: “Yes, Islam is a religion of peace. And the way it is being twisted and distorted by some of its current, most devout followers is not a reflection of the, er, uh, um, fanatical, ruthless, vengeful history of its founder.”

    Mark (52bc92)

  71. ______________________________________________

    In fact, we’ll even have some improvements — easier to read comments, for one. (I’m looking at you, Mark.) So stay tuned.

    Patterico, whatever it takes to get your blog a bit closer to (but not too much—since forums that have hundreds and hundreds of users within a few hours becomes daunting) the posting volume of hotair.com (I won’t say anything about — phooey — the huffingtonpost.com), will make me happy. Your website deserves no less.

    Mark (52bc92)

  72. i have trouble taking palestinian theatrics seriously but here look i’m making my anderson cooper face!

    happyfeet (acbee0)

  73. 69.MSNBC is reliably insane as always.

    MSNBC ANCHOR TELLS ISRAELI AMBASSADOR HAMAS ROCKETS ‘RARELY DO DAMAGE’

    Comment by Gerald A — 11/19/2012 @ 7:34 pm

    Somebody needs to slap these idiots. Hard. Several times.

    Of course the rockets do damage. They do plenty of damage. What the dumb broad meant was that they rarely kill people. Which is true.

    But not because the rockets aren’t lethal. It’s because the Israelis build air raid shelters.

    WTF does she think those sirens are for?

    Hamas on the other hand is trying to boost casualty numbers among its own civilian population by placing launch sites and other legitimate military targets in their residential neighborhood. The last thing they’d ever do is build an air raid shelter. It defeats the purpose of what those ghouls are all about.

    Israel spends billions on Iron Dome and on civil defense and when they do too good a job the media then thinks the Palestinian rocket barrage is no big deal.

    Hamas spends millions hazarding its own civilians, and the media blames Israel.

    The thing is, in this case it’s completely unconscious. Not the bias, which is always there, but the inability to recognize they are incapable fo thinking things through.

    Is it any wonder they swoon over Obama?

    Steve57 (7a880e)

  74. The last thing they’d ever do is build an air raid shelter. It defeats the purpose of what those ghouls are all about.

    Yup.

    The Israel conflict is as close to good vs evil as you’re ever going to find in our world. It’s a sign of our cultural decay that there’s any credible attempt to portray this as something other.

    Dustin (73fead)

  75. No other nation in the world would tolerate what the world makes Israel tolerate.

    Look at how the Russians treated the Chechnians for their terrorist attacks on Russia? Massive invasion by entire army corps, massive artillery barrages on cities.

    SPQR (768505)

  76. They blew up a Chechen political leader in Doha,
    SPQR, that’s how far they go.

    narciso (ee31f1)

  77. Sorry to the female Dana for confusing you with the child-killing advocate Dana.

    I see I touched a nerve, the hypocrisy of the pro-life view against the trigger happy pro-war view which sees refugees and bystanders as enemies, because they fall under a label of some kind, even when their “official” government is at the negotiating table.

    Just because right wing Israelis and Americans decide this is “war”, does that mean it really is? Definitely NOT, according to the US Constitution, and even if it was, specifically killing kids is violates international war crime conventions. Hamas is saying Israel is intentionally targeting civilians, which gives them the excuse for fighting back in a neverending cycle of violence.

    The description of jihad school described above is eerily similar to the indoctrination of American kids in the movie Jesus Camp, featuring Ted Haggard. Let’s try an exercise, say there is a Palestinian kid that doesn’t go to jihad school, her parents aren’t militants, she just spends all day scrounging for food. Do the “conservatives” in this forum agree with CR Dana that the kid deserves execution, simply because “Palestinian” describes her?

    Can CR Dana offer an excuse for why that kid deserves to be murdered? Maybe a pro-life couple in Tennessee could adopt her instead?

    Then we heard about the kid-killing done by Turks and others through history. OK, but does that describe the modern American standpoint? Has the War on Terror changed our morality so that we sound like those backwards, fundamentalist dead-enders?

    Next, think of it from a fiscally conservative standpoint. The US War on Terror took al Qaeda from membership of under 500 to over 50,000 today, a complete and utter failure to contain the problem and walking right into the trap set by bin Laden, who bragged his main intention is to see us spin our wheels till we bleed to death economically like the USSR.

    The Afghanistan war is achieving bin Laden’s aim, with the Iraq war thrown in to speed the process – but an extra bonus for bin Laden is the way our “conservatives” now define their morality – they now say we should fight fire with fire, a “holy war” where we torture, render and ignore the human rights advances we fought for, spearheaded by Ronald Reagan.

    When we treat terror cells like nations, declare war, go into debt to fund ground wars, we are fulfilling the wishes of bin Laden who knew this was a flea attacking a giant and that he had to get into our head.

    I am not telling Israel what to do, the problem of rockets incoming has no easy answer, but the debate in Knesset is healthy and diverse, with a lot of support for the plight of non-militants caught up in the crossfire. What I’m positive we should NOT do is call for the killing of Palestinian CHILDREN, a cowardly idea.

    Mahalia Cab (909ffb)

  78. The esteemed mISS cAB WROTE:

    Just because right wing Israelis and Americans decide this is “war”, does that mean it really is? Definitely NOT, according to the US Constitution, and even if it was, specifically killing kids is violates international war crime conventions. Hamas is saying Israel is intentionally targeting civilians, which gives them the excuse for fighting back in a neverending cycle of violence.

    It’s not war, “according to the US Constitution?” Considering that our Constitution specifies only the process through which the United States declares war, just how silly is it for you to assume that because we have not declared war in a fight between two sides which are not American that it isn’t a war?

    The description of jihad school described above is eerily similar to the indoctrination of American kids in the movie Jesus Camp, featuring Ted Haggard. Let’s try an exercise, say there is a Palestinian kid that doesn’t go to jihad school, her parents aren’t militants, she just spends all day scrounging for food. Do the “conservatives” in this forum agree with CR Dana that the kid deserves execution, simply because “Palestinian” describes her?

    More silliness. Where, precisely, do you find in a “Jesus Camp” any indoctrination to go out and kill other people?

    The kid scrounging for food is in danger because his parents put him there. When your parents, or the people your parents support, start shooting at a much more powerful neighbor, those parents have placed their own children in danger.

    Golda Mier once said that there would be peace in the Middle East once the Arabs learned to love their children more than they hated Israel; that time has not yet arrived.

    The coldly realistic Dana (3e4784)

  79. “I see I touched a nerve, the hypocrisy of the pro-life view against the trigger happy pro-war view…”

    LOL.

    Pro-“Choice” position: Deliberately killing American babies is a right. Accidently killing Palestinian babies is a heinous crime.

    Dave Surls (46b08c)

  80. cab, I hope you are posting drunk because I am hoping no one would hold such inane opinions and repeat such fabrications sober … other than Biden.

    SPQR (7eb50a)

  81. “Then we heard about the kid-killing done by Turks and others through history. OK, but does that describe the modern American standpoint?”

    How modern?

    Hamburg, Tokyo, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki?

    How many kids do you figure liberal heroes, Roosevelt and Truman fried in order to win their war?

    Dave Surls (46b08c)

  82. 78. “Hamas is saying Israel is intentionally targeting civilians, which gives them the excuse for fighting back in a neverending cycle of violence.”

    Yeah, and if you believe Hamas about anything at all, you need to be forcibly sterilized.

    I’m on the coat hanger, who’s with me?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  83. “The Afghanistan war is achieving bin Laden’s aim…”

    You should really stop embarrassing yourself with moronic statements like this. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

    Jack Klompus (28be37)

  84. A cousin of mine, now deceased, was a Professor of History in a NY university. A few years after WWII, he traveled to Germany to teach in an exchange program. While there, the Germans would complain about their treatment by the Allies during the war, the bombing, etc. He always answered them the same: Next time, don’t start a war. Your start one, expect to suffer.

    Bored Lawyer (a0043c)

  85. To CR Dana: a war is a conflict between nations. This asymmetrical conflict is between a nation and a terrorist faction with nowhere near equal firepower. That makes this closer to an insurgency than a war.

    You asked: “Where, precisely, do you find in a “Jesus Camp” any indoctrination to go out and kill other people?”

    The answer is easily found in the documentary “Jesus Camp” which portrays small children dressed in military gear and armed with symbolic weapons, taught to hate people of other religions by megachurch pastors like Haggard. It’s worth seeing.

    “The kid scrounging for food is in danger because his parents put him there. When your parents, or the people your parents support, start shooting at a much more powerful neighbor, those parents have placed their own children in danger.”

    Bingo, you just validated abortion on demand. By tying the fate of the child to any actions undertaken on the part of the parents, you cement the basic moral argument that government should NOT overstep the family bounds to preserve life.

    On the other hand, your definition is simply wrong in many cases. It doesn’t cover a kid whose parents were slaughtered, or any kid whose parents oppose Hamas and the idea of bombing Israel, fighting for peace every day. Suppose too there were Palestinians doing everything right according to you, but live in the same proximity of a terrorist and get caught in the blast?

    The IDF knows this is inevitable, they even set estimates of collateral casualty counts before they greenlight any strike against a HVT. But their “acceptable” ratio is set so high, it’s been a PR nightmare, blowing back worldwide criticism.

    Are conservatives so dim they think “Palestinians” are all like-minded? It was only 2006 when moderate Fatah forces engaged Hamas in a full on Civil War, fighting against the anti-Israel charter and calling for a two-state solution.

    So your call to kill Palestinian children would clearly lump in completely, totally, 100% innocent kids of completely innocent parents. You are now painted into a corner and must explain why ALL Palestinian children deserve to die without sounding prejudice – but also — must thread the needle to explain why the government should step in to preserve a fetus against the wishes of a mother seeking an abortion. We await the response.

    You said: “Golda Meir once said that there would be peace in the Middle East once the Arabs learned to love their children more than they hated Israel; that time has not yet arrived.”

    Now you just validated the surrender of the French to the Nazis. They obviously loved their children more then they hated the Germans, right? And Bush hated Saddam more than 4,400 American soldiers, right?

    Not that simple – Meir said this in 1957 when the Arab world was just realizing Palestine was being wrested away. They vowed they would resist for generations, just like the Native Americans, just like many societies in history. Forced assimilation is a torturously slow process, but it explains why the Mid East has been in turmoil for our entire lifetimes.

    CR Dana holds the view that Israel should have made the whole thing ‘clean’ and wiped the Palestinians off the map a long time ago – but since it’s inception, Israel and the League of Nations/UN has also had contingents fighting for humane treatment and civil rights for the Palestinians.

    CR Dana saying we should speed the process up via ethnic cleansing and genocide. Well, that was the preferred method before the age of enlightenment.

    To Dave: When you falsely said Israelis are “Accidently killing Palestinian babies”, aren’t you accusing them of incompetence? You must know all modern military forces have tactical actuaries that estimate casualty counts ahead of time, and technologies like infra-red scanners tell them exactly how many warm bodies are in a building before they strike it. Bibi has already acknowledged he is intentionally killing civilian families when he calls out Hamas for use of ‘human shields’.

    “Then we heard about the kid-killing done by Turks and others through history. OK, but does that describe the modern American standpoint?”

    Dave said: How modern? Hamburg, Tokyo, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki?

    Good point, but FDR is held up as an economic liberal, not a social liberal – he was protested for interring innocent Japanese, stacking the courts and more. I haven’t heard Truman was a liberal hero and it was Albert Einstein who led opposition to the use of the atomic bomb on civilians, admitting he had created a frankenstein.

    So I’ll tell you “how modern” – it’s only been since the 60s-70s that we as a society realized spanking kids is counterproductive, it models violence which will fester and only reoccur stronger in the long term. Similarly, a war power that greatly outmatches an enemy must think about a response that will actually deter them, not escalate. The whole idea of terrorism is to provoke, to draw a larger power out into a conspicuous ideological struggle to help the underdog promote and recruit.

    When the larger power overreacts, the terrorists get lots of propaganda for their PR department. Look at the growth of al Qaeda which is bigger and more popular today than it ever was. They easily recruit by publishing pictures of US troops torturing and sexually humiliating detainees.

    Look at the news and protests today against Israel for their 100-to-1 policy of “spanking” Hamas. They have no military reason to enter ceasefire talks, the Iron Dome is holding almost all missiles in abeyance and they can penetrate Gaza like butter.

    Israel is being forced to do this because of bad press.

    There is a school of thought that says bombing the general populace incentivizes them to take up active resistance and help root out the insurgents. But they need arms – Afghanistan taught us sometimes the people are too poor and unable, and Iraqi death squads taught us average people can’t easily take on today’s militias.

    To SPQR: Cheers!

    Mahalia Cab (740e05)

  86. Mz Cab, it is rare to read anything that combines moral confusion with complete historical, legal, cultural, military, and technological illiteracy into such a display of utter uncomprehension. It’s like the ultimate tangled fishing line after an inexpert cast; the “bird’s nest” that can’t be undone. It’s impossible to know which strand looping out of the whole balled up mess to try to pull first. I will note just one of your chestnuts of illogic. You claim that by “tying the fate of the child to any actions taken on the part of the parents, you cement the basic moral argument that goverment should NOT” overstep the family bounds to preserve life. You also make the bizarre claim CR Dana has validated abortion on demand. No. He has demanstrated in certain extreme circumstances CPS has its place. Government, or my preference extended family or friends if they exist, must intercede to preserve life.

    Steve57 (43b783)


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