‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza
‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza
IDF says it ‘completely rejects’ charge that its soldiers deliberately fired on any of the thousands of civilians killed in Israeli offensive
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Sadly, the targeting of kids is a longstanding tradition in war. The US does it too, and Trump even honored a child killer at the White House during his term.
Fair point but most countries at least make some effort that there's an actual war going on against armed adult combatants when the people on the ground do their little occasional war crimes. Israel as far as I can tell is just going into a mostly-disarmed-and-civilian population and shooting whoever they feel like including children and doctors and aid workers; I actually don't know what the word for that is but calling it "war" is sugarcoating by an obscene amount what it is.
Israel as far as I can tell is just going into a mostly-disarmed-and-civilian population and shooting whoever they feel like
Again, also what the US does. We haven't fought a war against an opponent that can actually fight back in 50 years. And in that war, the guy that perpetrated the My Lai Massacre got house arrest, but only after someone leaked documents on the massacre to the press.
Vietnam was an unusually innocent-civilian-killing war by US standards, which is saying something. Mass murder of civilians including carpet-bombing of defenseless villages happened there on a scale much larger than Israel is currently doing in Gaza, yes.
But even within the context of Vietnam, something like My Lai was a big, big deal. The whole incident is pretty fascinating if pretty grim reading. We all instantly know of that single event however many generations after it happened. Even before the press got it, lots of the military brass became involved, congress was involved, a lot of people whitewashed it, but also, a lot of people didn't. The army had already charged Calley with murder before the press found out about it; his prosecution (which they'd attempted to keep quiet) was actually what leaked to the press initially and got them to start digging for more details.
Hugh Thompson was the US commander who landed his helicopter between the Americans and Vietnamese civilians and ordered his men to shoot the Americans if they tried to get past. He was awarded a distinguished flying cross, and his men received bronze stars. Most of the country back home treated him as a traitor, but at least on paper, the army actually didn't. He threw away his medal because the army had continued the whitewash in the description of the incident when they gave him the commendation, and the army found out, and they gave him a soldier's medal instead, which was the highest honor they could give him which came along with an accurate description of an event that didn't involve contact with enemy forces.
Calley was originally given life, then it was reduced to 20 years. I remember it being Nixon who pardoned it down to house arrest a couple years later, but Wikipedia says something different. IDK. Fuck Nixon.
The reason I'm saying all this is: I'm not trying to give the "finger fucking and carpet bombing" US military any kind of free pass on what they do. But also, when anything like all of that happens within the IDF or Knesset as a result of Israel doing approximately one My Lai per 2-3 days, let me know.
I remember it being Nixon who pardoned it down to house arrest a couple years later, but Wikipedia says something different. IDK. Fuck Nixon.
The Wikipedia article says
[Lieutenant William Calley Jr.] was originally given a life sentence but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after U.S. president Richard Nixon commuted his sentence.
So it seems to say how you remember, no?
Oop, you’re right. I didn’t read the intro and it wasn’t mentioned lower down; in the main article body it just says the secretary of the army paroled him in 1974. But yeah it says Nixon.
At least Nixon left him with house arrest. In today’s climate he might have been pardoned by Trump like those Navy Seals and hosting a show on Newsmax or something.
It is really disturbing to see people falling all over themselves trying to make this shit out to be just a normal war.
I think mostly they just don't know. The news says "war" and Israel says "war" and the US says "war" and so it's easy to use that model. It's not a war, though. I realized what the word is; it's terrorism, ten 9/11s so far and counting, and aimed a lot more at children and families than 9/11 was.
It's also being perpetrated by those that hold power in the status quo of the world stage, rather than a response to policy. While it was a civilian target, it was at least a civilian target in an actively militarily aggressive country pushing an agenda in the region. Palestine may have guerillas engaged in attacks, but as a country they're being held down and stomped on rather than out there being an international bully.
It's worse than 9/11, even if you don't compare the numbers.
It's like if Germany started the Holocaust openly and the world was just like okay whatever. Except there aren't any big Western powers to come to the rescue anymore, because they're footing the bill and literally providing the gas.
Wars are all horrible.
But the world's humanitarian NGOs, experienced in war zones, are saying this is unusual in its scale and scope of pediatric and civilian deaths.
There are also experimental weapons being "combat tested" against Palestinians. Sniper drones are an example.
I don't see why you would want to downplay these things.
Palestine has its own special medical circumstance which isn't common enough anywhere else in the world -- in any war or disaster zone -- to need its own acronym. Only in Gaza.