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Originally posted by taxwonk
You see nothing wrong with attacking an entire village, shelling it, killing women and children, eradicating the whole population, because certain unidentified members of the village are terrorists. You admit that you can't, or simply don't care to, make any effort to identify the terrorists so your solution is to kill them all.
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Never said anything like this. It is a tragedy when innocent life is taken and it seriously pains me, especially when I see children killed. However, there is a serious problem here. Those that Israel is fighting are completely interwoven with the society at large. They are are part of a democratically elected government, which means that the people that put them into office likely (a) agree with their position regarding Israel and (b) therefore must bear some of the blame (i.e., they are not completely innocent). In addition, Hezbollah hides within the civilian population. That is somewhat unfair to the truly innocent civilians, but I find it to be more of Lebannon's concern than Israel's. IMO, Israel must primarily concern itself with the best way at proteting ITS OWN CITIZENS. Within that framework, it should choose a path that cause the least amount of collateral damages, but that should not be its primary goal.
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I support Israel in its efforts to maintain its safety. I firmly believe there must be an Israel. But shelling an entire village, or suggesting that it is morally right to kill Arabs because they are Arabs and Arabs are the enemy? That's just wrong. Even if some of those Arabs believe that all of Israel must be chased into the sea.
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I never suggested it was morally right to shell an entire village, and I certainly didn't suggest it is morally right to kill Arabs based on their ethnicity. But it is morally right to exercise self defense, and I find it ludicrus that the burden should be on Israel, the country of 8 million that has been under continuous fire from nearly every single one of its neighbors for the last 60 years, to error on the side of caution.
ETA: Just to day we read:
- The words of a Canadian United Nations observer written just days before he was killed in an Israeli bombing of a UN post in Lebanon are evidence Hezbollah was using the post as a "shield" to fire rockets into Israel, says a former UN commander in Bosnia.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=37278180-a261-421d-84a9-7f94d5fc6d50
