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20 hours ago
Thursday, 1 January 2009
WHERE IS THE LINE BETWEEN COMBATANTS AND NON-COMBATANTS '
Israel has killed Nizar Riyan, a rather top Hamas figure. No apologies called for. Leaders of Hamas are legitimate, indeed, preferable targets, as they're the ones who bear direct responsibility for the violence. Riyan sent his son Ibrahim to be a suicide murderer, back in October 2001, so great was his hatred of the Jews, and he was considered one of the most extreme of the whole sorry gang of murderers.
The attack also killed his wife, three sons, and others.
After his home was hit, there were a series of secondary explosions, clear evidence that he was storing ordinance there. This underlines the problematic of distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty in this nasty little war: A mother who allows her son to go murder Jews at the certain cost of his life: is she innocent? When she allows weapons to be stored in her home, the place she raises her children, is she still innocent? If the children are teenagers or young adults, and they participate in storing those weapons in their bedrooms, are they innocent? Or are they perhaps proud fighters in the fight for their land, a fight that could long ago have been ended had they been willing to compromise?
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
IS THE TIDE SLOWLY TURNING ?
The readers of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the FAZ, are mostly conservative, but their paper is the most important in the country. Today the paper has an online poll, asking if the Israeli operation is justified or not. I've been watching it for a few hours, and the numbers have inched slightly in the wrong direction, but as I write 72.58% of the responders justify Israel, and 1.3% think Israel is right but over-reacting. (1.41% think things are too complicated to tell). Fewer than a quarter (24.71% at the moment) blame Israel for blocking peace initiatives.
Such polls never have statistical significance, since the participants are not chosen randomly, but it's interesting to note that about 130,000 people have responded; since it's a German publication, it's unlikely that Israeli or American Jews have piled in to ensure the result they want.
Is it possible that a decade of the Islamist War Against Mankind is beginning to make an impression? I don't know, but if so, better many years too late than never.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
WHAT A WIERD WAR
I'm posting a set of paragraphs from the NYT report this morning, simply as links for future reference. You don't need Ruminations to find the NYT.
Meanwhile, overwhelmed hospital officials in Gaza said that of the more than 390 people killed by Israeli fighter planes since Saturday, 38 were children and 25 women. The United Nations, which has estimated the number of dead to be between 320 and 390, said 25 percent of those killed were civilians. Israel said that it was still checking the numbers.
Children are, by definition, non-combatants, though the cutoff line isn't clear: is 16 a child? 17? By those ages, I'd say their actions begin to be more significant than their age. Women may well not be combatants, but the certainty they aren't is puzzling, since sometimes they are.
In the Jabalya Refugee Camp north of Gaza City, hundreds lined up for hours in the rain for bread and other staples as F-16 jets menaced overhead. At one point, two rockets were launched from within the camp — among about 60 shot into Israel on Wednesday — and an Israeli missile then hit the launcher.
The rockets that have been sent some 20 miles into the Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod and Beersheba in recent days are known as grads. They measure nine feet in length with warheads that weigh 30 to 40 pounds and were not manufactured in Gaza but were bought abroad and smuggled through tunnels from Egypt, Israeli officials said.
A senior Israeli official said the country was seeking ways to increase humanitarian aid so that its military endeavor could continue without further pressure to stop. It permitted a dozen wounded and ill Gazans into Israel on Wednesday for treatment at hospitals here and allowed in some 100 trucks of food and medicine.
He also said that one limitation on the aid was that crossing points had come under attack by Hamas. A second, he said, is that donors are not bringing enough goods. Of the donations so far, some come from United Nations agencies, but most are from private donors.
Tens of thousands of Gazans have received recorded phone calls from the Israeli Army warning them that their houses have been marked as targets because they harbored either militants or weapons facilities like rocket workshops. Noncombatants were urged to clear out. Hundreds of thousands of leaflets gave the same message.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
MEANWHILE, IN THE WORLD OUT THERE...
The Economist has a fine article about how booms and busts sometimes leave different legacies than the contemporaries thought; how Darwinism re-evaluated can explain parts of human nature; about William Tyndale, the real author of most of the King James Bible, murdered by Henry the 8th, tyrant of his day; and about the anonymous men, engineers and builders, who altruistically toiled to save lives of strangers by creating a spectacular lighthouse.
The Darwin article, though stimulating, does rather miss one point: Even if there are solid evolutionary reasons for patterns of human behavior - and on this, the article is rather persuasive - the ability to over-ride them through moral thought can always be stronger.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
BURNING BOOKS IN THE 21st CENTURY
There are more books being published now than ever before, and I mean the paper ones. Still, the most urgent forum for public discussion, the central Agora, if you will, is the electronic media, and the Internet is a major part of that. Which is why the urge to repress information, to ban understanding, and thereby to control knowledge and power, is most obvious there. Burning books, even if one were to try, would be futile, since so long as one copy remains to be scanned, it can be put online for everyone everywhere to see. (Well, most everyone, most everywhere. China and Iran come to mind, don't they).
It may no longer be worth the effort to burn books, but the impulse is still there, obviously: human nature doesn't change just because human technology does. It merely adapts. The good folks at Powerline are onto the unfolding story of how the book burners of yore are now doing their worstest in a concerted effort not to let anyone see what the Israelis are doing in Gaza unless it be through the authorized version of the Moral Idiocy Brigades (in earlier ages it was called the Index, and was run by the Inquisition).
Specific relevant posts are here, here, here, here and here, but since the story isn't over you should be visiting Powerline periodically. (Now, and always).
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
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