"Iron Fist"

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14 Jan 2009 08:28 am

Goldberg's "thoughts" on alleged Israeli war crimes:

Unlike Andrew, I don't think Israel is committing war crimes. Israel is fighting an enemy that intentionally seeks to kill civilians; in the course of fighting Hamas, Israel does some stupid and brutal things, but, by Andrew's standard, every act of self-defense by a Western nation against Islamist insurgents is a war crime.

Er: no. There are countless acts of war, including invading Gaza and pounding Hamas, that do not necessarily come close to war crimes. (And for the record, I've stated that every undirected missile against Israeli civilians from Hamas is a war crime.) Maybe there's a confusion here: I was not referring to the vexing question of proportionality (where I think Israel has stepped over the line, but agree this is a debatable point). I was referring to testimony from the Red Cross that reported actual war crimes - for example, leaving infants to live alongside the recently created corpses of their parents in the wreckage of what was once their homes. Maybe Jeffrey has some evidence to counter these claims, reported in the New York Times and elsewhere. If he does, I'd be glad to post it. But until he does, whether he "thinks" Israel is committing war crimes is as irrelevant as what I might "think". It's an empirical question. Either they happened or they didn't.

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