Morality dictates we shouldn't fire back and turn the other cheek. Most christians who held that belief were fed to the lions - not a viable option, you agree I'm sure.
I'm taking the pragmatic route because it's pretty hard to act moral when you're dead.
Because I happen to hate being on the recieving end of a wrong accusation. The gunner may have fired the shell, but the orders came from the Divisional command and this is hardly a case of bloodlust - this is of course a very unfortunate and saddening incident. I'm not going to stand here and tell you they had it coming because they didn't - there's no defending this kind of thing. The principle behind it however does hold some water.
Tens of thousands? There's a flat out lie if I ever saw one... There haven't been any more than 7,000 deaths in the entire conflict over the span of the last decade!
I wish to see your sources for this number. The present figures I know of speak of a 66% combatant to
non combatant ratio for Palestinians killed and a 70%
non-combatant to combatant ratio for Israelis killed...
We're soldiers. The only orders we don't do are those which call for us to kill the obivously innocent or the inhuman - and being damn fine soldiers too we don't question the orders when they're legitimate. If my commanding officer asks me to mark a house and tells me there's a terrorist cell in the basement, I'll flag it and pass down the intel to the guys in the field who either lift a chopper to the air to Hellfire it into the afterworld, or break into the house and capture him if he's worth the bust. If a ship captain has reason to believe he's seeing a launch site and intel from battalion confirms, the gunner has no reason not to fire a shell at the target.
As stated previously - we're the military. We're there to blow things up, and as politically incorrect as it may sound, our job is to end lives. It's up to command to decide how we get the job done and up to the political branch to decide which jobs they pass on to command. The guy in the line just does as he's told.
Inanimate objects do not respond properly to negotations. I'd rather negotiate with the Palestinians.
Let's try this again, only with
links and evidence this time.
In your home country of Britain there is a law called "Adverse Possession for Squatters", which falls under the jurisdiction of property law.
The "new scheme" talked about means you no longer get to own land immediately after 12 years - you have to prove one of three conditions:
Via sections (a) and (b), Israel is more than legally entitled to hold the land it has had in its possession for over 58 years, even if your were to consider the Palestinians to be the rightful owners.
Legally speaking,
even in your own country, kicking someone out from your property after you've neglected it for over a decade because suddenly the squatters made it heaven is illegal and the squatter generally has the law on his side.
Even assuming you're right (which I firmly belive you're not) and we're here illegaly (and we're not), we've been here for more than long enough to fulfill the conditions of the squatter's law. We own the place by possessions.
