Dominus Paradoxum

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...p?story=417140

Now I think Pechtel will be deprived of his excuse that the IDF acts the way it does out of necessity. If they can be leinent with their own people, they could also be leinient with Palestinian non-combatants.

Lohan

Ultimately, I find an army's reluctance to fire on its own people not really an example of "hypocrisy." No army in the world would do that to its own people unless under a brutal dictator like Stalin (uh oh, are Totalitarianist's dogs about to get sicked on me? ), the Communist regime that opened fire on protesters in Tienamen square (can't remember the leader at the time's name), or Kim Jong Il. No matter what you think of Ariel Sharon's typically far right-leaning politics, Israel is a parliamentary democracy. If you think he or his generals would ever fire on Israeli protesters, there are some things you should probably get straight first. However, as he and his army seems to view Palestinian civilians as enemy combatants and very real threats to Israeli lives, their willingness to fire on them makes more sense.

Please don't take this as argument for the needless slaughter of Palestininan noncombatants by the Israeli army. However, I would not venture into the realm of hypocrisy because an army won't go so far in suppressing protest of its own people than well another group or nation of people. It's common sense. What else do you expect?

Dominus Paradoxum

There's two ways of taking the hypocrisy charge. One is to say that, to be consistent, the army ought to be rougher with its own people. This is the way you seem to have taken it. The other way, the way I intended it, was that the army shoud, to be consistent, go eaiser on the palestinians. You said:

But the vast majority of them are not enemy combatants, though they are treated as such by the IDF. Do you see the problem? And this was not a protest. It is a matter of the Israelies tearing down their own settlements. I was pointing out that the argument that Pechtel used to justify the murder of Rachel Corrie would just as well have justified the army in bulldozing their own settelers. After all, they have a lot of settlements to dismantle over the summer if they want to keep up with Bush's peace plan, and they can't just stop for every settler who stands in front of their home, for then all the settlers could prevent their homes' destruction by standing in front of it and the job would never get done! Isn't that right, Loren?

Loren Pechtel

Note that in *BOTH* cases the bulldozer stopped.

If she had sat down I think she would be alive today.

Dominus Paradoxum

Yes, but he 'stopped' after he had already crushed her to death, not before. Big difference.

echidna

From here,

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...828440535.html Much as I dislike him & disagree with the Israeli policy of settlement, I think it is quite politically courageous of Sharon to take on the settlers. This one is only testing the water & likely it's going to get much much worse.

Loren Pechtel

That standoff was the better part of an hour. She was standing up so the bulldozer driver could play chicken. Unforotunately she fell.

Had she been sitting there would have been no game of chicken.

Sauron

Earlier you said that she was crushed because she wasn't visible to the bulldozer driver. The dozer is high, and has a bucket or a shovel in front, blocking her way.

Now you're suggesting that if she had sat down in the path of the dozer, she would have lived. Even though she would have been even less visible, due to being a smaller 'target' and closer to the ground.

Care to explain/backpedal this inconsistency?

And while you're at it, explain why sitting down should be a "safety zone" but standing up in front a dozer makes the peace activist fair game?

slept2long

The Israeli investigation doesn't sound like any of the stories people are telling here.

From Palestine Chronicle

The army report claimed Corrie �was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death.�

Contrary to eyewitness accounts, the report further alleged that �the finding of the operational investigations shows that Rachel Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved.�

And from Guardian

"The army report obtained by the Guardian says Corrie: "was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death.

"The finding of the operational investigations shows that Rachel Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved."

Interesting huh?

Totalitarianist

Your statements about stalin are slanderous and detestable. Stalin was a "leader", and he only shot soldiers who retreated when and only when to do anything else meant far worse -- meant enslavement and slaughter of all Slavs, a race regarded as almost equally inferior to the Jewish race by the Nazis. No nation in the history of mankind has suffered as much as Russia as a result of German barbarity and in consequence of that Stalin's orders of which you are speaking and which are exaggerated by Westerners are 100% justified -- even if we accept the exaggerated, Western version of the whole thing.

I am not saying that Stalin was a good person: I say only that his orders were absolutely justifiable in consequence of the circumstances. (A capitalist society, by the way, would have been destroyed for ever were it to suffer as Russia had suffered -- but not a Stalinist society!)

But we need not discuss this here; it is off topic. I only wanted to make a simple correction. Now we need return to that which is relevant.... Again, I made this message only to correct a what might be regarded by some as a trivial error, but what is to me slander.