Soccer Dad

Great post! I really like your blog!!
COMMON CENTS
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com

ps. Link Exchange?

Goldstone had to obscure Hamas' involvement to buttress the impression it played no role in the Gaza War - and indeed Hamas is mentioned by name only ONCE by name in the entire report and that in the context of trying to suppress rocket fire at Israel. The asymmetrical obtuseness of Goldstone then did not redound to Israel's benefit.

For a response to Halbetal's essay by an Israeli colleague, see

http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-philosopher-meets-judge-moshe.html

I read your essay with some interest. You write:

"it would be better to leave the term 'terrorist organization' for those groups whose goals are nothing more than to terrorize the other side, something that cannot be said either of Hamas or, for that matter, the Hagganah and Lehi."

Doesn't terrorism always have some goal? What would be an example of a group "whose goals are nothing more than to terrorize the other side"? The Sadist Liberation Front? What normal military goals can Hamas accomplish with its Qassam arsenal besides terrorizing Israeli civilians?

Yitzchak, that is easy. By "terrorizing Israeli citizens" they can provoke Israel into a massive retaliation which will discredit Israeli in the eyes of the world.

What normal military goals can Israel achieve by terrorizing Gaza civilians. That is also easy. They can show them the price for supporting Hamas and make life miserable for them.

I have no problem calling the deliberate targeting of civilians in order to further political goals "terrorism" provided that you include state-terrorism in the definition. And Goldstone's point is that there is evidence that Israel deliberately targeted civilian structures. And that point is deemed worthy of investigation by Israelis like Halbertal.

The only difference between Hamas' targeting of civilians and Israel's targeting of civilians is that Israel has other military options whereas Hamas doesn't. That is why Israeli war crimes are worse, in my mind, than Hamas's (aside from the fact that they have far worse consequences.)

If you were leading Jewish resistance fighters against an enormously powerful enemy, who had virtually complete knowledge about your whereabouts, what would you do? Aim your primitive rockets at non-existent army camps? Wear army uniforms and sleep in your own army camps?

Yitzchak, that is easy. By "terrorizing Israeli citizens" they can provoke Israel into a massive retaliation which will discredit Israeli in the eyes of the world.

I said "normal military goals." Deterrence is a normal military goal. You are ascribing A political goal to Hamas violence, so you are admitting it is terrorism. And you are not correct about their motivation--it isn't anything so convoluted. They are treading the glorious path of resistance and martyrdom.

What normal military goals can Israel achieve by terrorizing Gaza civilians. That is also easy. They can show them the price for supporting Hamas and make life miserable for them.

Deterrence is a valid military goal. And they did not mainly target Gaza civilians. The raw numbers make that clear. During the Second Intifada the percentage of women among the Israeli fatalities was often higher than 30 percent. The percentage of women among the Gaza fatalities was about 8 percent. You can fudge who is a civilian and who isn't, but you can't do much to obfuscate gender. Most of those killed in Gaza have already been identified by name as members of the Al-Qassam brigades or something comparable, but you wont learn this from your favorite NGOs or the Goldstone Report.

I have no problem calling the deliberate targeting of civilians in order to further political goals "terrorism" provided that you include state-terrorism in the definition.

"State terrorism" properly refers to policies such as those of Stalin.

The only difference between Hamas' targeting of civilians and Israel's targeting of civilians is that Israel has other military options whereas Hamas doesn't.

Ah, the old America has fighter jets and poor Timothy McVeigh doesn't so he has to use truck bombs argument.

If you were leading Jewish resistance fighters against an enormously powerful enemy, who had virtually complete knowledge about your whereabouts, what would you do? Aim your primitive rockets at non-existent army camps? Wear army uniforms and sleep in your own army camps?

Expediency trumps the Geneva Conventions? On what basis were you criticizing Israel again?

Just a correction/clarification: the number of those "identified by name as members of the Al-Qassam brigades or something comparable" is 661 on the EOZ blog.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-of-those-civilians-killed-in-gaza.html

That's more than half of the IDF total but less than half of the PCHR total. IDF gave the number of "Hamas terror operatives" as 709. I should not have used the word "most" for those identified by name although probably more than half of those killed were members of the various "brigades." Some of those killed have not been identified at all.