naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
King David had a non-terror objective, if a stupid one
Wikipedia has a few different cites saying that at least one of the goals was to destroy paperwork linking the Jewish Agency to attacks, but even if you're skeptical of that, somewhere between half to two-thirds of the hotel had been used for the British Mandate's administration, which was heavily disrupted by the bombing. Clearly not worth the moral sin (or negative publicity), but very separate from the purpose of changing policy by violence (which they did use elsewhere) or violence for its own sake/'revenge' (ditto).
Those resulting in fatalities usually result in conviction and serious sentencing by Israeli justice systems
Well, of the two I linked... for the Duma arson, Amiram Ben-Uliel was found guilty of the Duma arson and sentenced to life imprisonment, though the minor who assisted in planned only got a short sentence (~10 months plus what had been served during the trial). For Abu Khdeir, Yosef Haim Ben-David got a life sentence-plus, one of the unnamed minors got life(ish) and the other 21 years (... probably will end up closer to ten).
((This complaint about too-short sentences isn't specifically tied to the Israel-Palestine stuff; see Schlissel. But obviously there's both more options and more harm in the context of the West Bank.))
There have been failures to convict (or even try or find) some Israeli civilian murderers of clear homicide, and the environment there makes claims to self-defense extremely difficult to treat fairly, so there's a reason I say usually. And the rules of engagement for the IDF specifically are a very bad joke. But there's a lot of summaries of settler violence that try to give the impression that it's a no-bag-limit hunt, and the presence of any convictions makes that hard to support.
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Notes -
Wikipedia has a few different cites saying that at least one of the goals was to destroy paperwork linking the Jewish Agency to attacks, but even if you're skeptical of that, somewhere between half to two-thirds of the hotel had been used for the British Mandate's administration, which was heavily disrupted by the bombing. Clearly not worth the moral sin (or negative publicity), but very separate from the purpose of changing policy by violence (which they did use elsewhere) or violence for its own sake/'revenge' (ditto).
Well, of the two I linked... for the Duma arson, Amiram Ben-Uliel was found guilty of the Duma arson and sentenced to life imprisonment, though the minor who assisted in planned only got a short sentence (~10 months plus what had been served during the trial). For Abu Khdeir, Yosef Haim Ben-David got a life sentence-plus, one of the unnamed minors got life(ish) and the other 21 years (... probably will end up closer to ten).
((This complaint about too-short sentences isn't specifically tied to the Israel-Palestine stuff; see Schlissel. But obviously there's both more options and more harm in the context of the West Bank.))
There have been failures to convict (or even try or find) some Israeli civilian murderers of clear homicide, and the environment there makes claims to self-defense extremely difficult to treat fairly, so there's a reason I say usually. And the rules of engagement for the IDF specifically are a very bad joke. But there's a lot of summaries of settler violence that try to give the impression that it's a no-bag-limit hunt, and the presence of any convictions makes that hard to support.
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