Comments:International Committee of the Red Cross condemns Gaza blockade

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ICRC is taking sides. Can they (ICRC) guarantee that no Quassam rockets will be fired from Gaza ?

No but Israel can easily by agreeing to a ceasefire instead of breaking one like they did in November of 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians Soapy (talk) 17:37, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Can we please move past the "rockets are a threat to Israel" thing? Less than 10 Israelis have been killed by rockets in the last 10 years, making them a threat perhaps comparable to bee stings and lightning strikes, and far less dangerous than, say, defective consumer products or car crashes, which no one in Israel seems too worried about. By comparison, many thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese have been killed (in their own lands and in many cases their own homes) by invading IDF forces.

And, as we have seen, even when Palestinians fire *no* rockets, the Israeli government has no compunction about invading neighboring lands and killing people who have nothing to do with the conflict.

The whole rocket issue is yet another smokescreen. Please stop parroting it.

So...ten innocent Israelis don't matter? At least when IDF forces kill civilians it is collateral damage, they are fairly precise, and try to target actual threats to Israel, as opposed to Israel's enemies, which want them to just die, men, women, children, all civilians, just because they are Israeli. They launch rockets aimlessly into Israel, with the sole intent of killing civilians. See the difference? One is a response to aggression with the intent of ending it, whereas the other is an act of aggression committed solely for ideological reasons with the intent of killing civilians. There haven't been very many rockets since we invaded Gaza, so I guess it worked, didn't it. Maybe the only reason for that is because of the blockade, which prevents weapons and their components from being smuggled in.

The whole concept of "civilians" and "combatants" becomes very clouded when a militant can throw down his weapons and claim to be a civilian the next day, they are not wearing uniforms, and every estimate of civilian casualties assumes a lot of things when there is simply no basis for making that claim. The Battle of Mogadishu was a similar instance of confusion between civilians and combatants. A civilian becomes a combatant as soon as he picks up a weapon, but long before that he was willing to kill. At least IDF forces have enough dignity to wear their country's colors and fight to protect their country. Can terrorists and non-aligned combatants say the same?

For comparison, consider what would happen if the US had a blockade under similar circumstances. We would 1) make a command for the vessel to turn back 2) fire a warning shot 3) sink the ship. Israel attempted to commandeer the vessels, and they were stabbed, beaten, and kidnapped before they use lethal force. Furthermore, the stories were blown out of proportion, trying to make Israel seem like the bad guys. Weapons were cropped out of pictures to make the flotilla seem peaceful, but we all know what was really happening, and it only further emphasizes the importance of the blockade in preventing the smuggling of weapons and weapon components. Israel is continually criticized for their heavy-handed tactics, and in my opinion, they have every right to use them. I can say that anyone would do the same. Try being as peaceful, calm, and reluctant to use lethal force when every bordering country wants you dead because you are Jewish. Israel should never have to defend the action of defending itself, and I hope that anyone who seeks to bring violence upon them learns the hard way not to mess with the IDF. If you don't know what i'm talking about, read up on the Six-day war.

No not anyone would have done the same. If there is the possibility of a confrontation with violent people armed with bats, wrenches and similar you send people who can overcome them without resorting to lethal forces. By your reasoning every time there is a riot the answer is to shot the people involved. Lucky in the US, Europe and the rest of the civilised world this doesn't happen. On the other hand the police or the army shooting protestors is quite common in a lot of regimes i'm sure you despise. Just a question for you: if something similar was done by Iran or North Korea would you defend them saying they have a right to kill rioters?

Of course ten Israeli deaths matter just as ten Palestinian deaths matter. The problem with brutal sanctioning is that you don't only punish the specific people/groups that are responsible - in fact you primarily punish innocent people. The people who have established this sanctioning are well aware more that many innocent people will be killed directly and many indirectly because of this sanctioning. It would not take much knowledge and experience to know fairly surely that your policies will bring death to innocent people in numbers that are far from proportional - numbers which do not seem well justified even in the name of protection of innocent Israeli citizens from terrorist violence.

It would be convenient to just stand on principle and hold evil enemy governments responsible for their own citizens and blame them for the fate of their innocent populations when they become "collateral damage" - but standing on philosophical abstraction is not a position that justifies so much death. The same situation applied to Iraq BEFORE the second Iraq war - we can blame Saddam all we like but U.S. sanctions killed thousands of innocent Iraqis long before any occupational force returned - do we have the right to put the lives of all those innocent people in the hands of someone like Saddam just so we can prove to him our own strength? What good will holding him responsible do for them? These kinds of tactics show weakness - not strength. No innocent deaths should be taken lightly and potential for future hazard to innocent life is not an automatic justification for going on the offensive and killing more Palestinian citizens - especially in completely unproportional numbers.

Israel sent their very best special forces, not their worst, because they knew these experienced soldiers would only resort to lethal force in order to protect their own lives. It was not a riot, it was an organized attempt to evade an established blockade and bring supplies, including weapons, into Gaza. The occupants of the ship had prepared weapons beforehand specifically for this violent purpose. Furthermore, they refused to allow Israel to inspect the supplies before they were transferred by established land routes into Gaza. Why? I can't think of any good reasons, only bad ones, which further justify their commandeering of the vessels. There was a peaceful solution to that confrontation, but they chose the violent route.

And if you ignore the facts its easy to side with the protesters, such as omitting knives from your list of weapons that they had to make them seem less threatening, just an obvious deception on your part. What about the fact that a few soldiers were kidnapped, and one thrown to a lower deck? The people on board those ships, at least a portion of them, were planning to kill the Israeli soldiers from the start. They attempted to overwhelm the IDF, and the IDF responded by using lethal force, if that's not how you see that one scenario you have your facts wrong.

Jews aren't innocent lol, israeli forces are killing more innocent people right now. Hitler proved it! Woot hitler is awesome. anyway this war between the stupid muslims and jews is ridiculous! this is like Crusade lol so why don't you all die in hell like you already will when you die lol. Fuck Israel and Palestine.

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