Sauron

False dichotomy. Those are not the only two choices - I notice that you leave out several others. Hmm. Wonder why?

(1) There was no need to destroy the houses at all - the idea of wiping out an entire house or an entire neighborhood to get 1 or 2 people is one of the more barbaric aspects of that particular zionist policy;

(2) As peace activists and non-combatants, they should not have been targeted by IDF forces or bulldozers, no matter how you slice it; and

(3) Should there ever have been any such need to destroy buildings, then it should have been carried out with the same level of care and velvet-glove decorum that was shown to the ultra-rightist Jewish settlers in the West Bank. But it wasn't, thus exposing the hypocrisy of Israel.

Your crippled excuses for anything Israel does have become so threadbare that their only purpose is to serve as target practice for the rest of us, Loren.

Loren Pechtel

The point is that you think that blocking one approach to doing something will stop them from doing that something. They'll just find another way.

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by Sauron
BZZT. Doesn't work.

In the first place, that's not factually correct recounting of the events.

Yeah, the stuff posted recently on here shows she wasn't run down in the first place.

In the second place, Your claim that "she fell where the driver couldn't see her" doesn't work. Earlier you said she would have been visible, had she been sitting.

But if she was in the driver's range of vision while sitting, then she would also have been visible having just fallen down.

So according to your logic, the bulldozer driver should have stopped. But he did not.

No. Had it gone down as originally reported she would have been safe if she was sitting.

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by Sauron
False dichotomy. Those are not the only two choices - I notice that you leave out several others. Hmm. Wonder why?

You are assuming that by keeping them from doing it with bulldozers that they would be stopped. False.

(1) There was no need to destroy the houses at all - the idea of wiping out an entire house or an entire neighborhood to get 1 or 2 people is one of the more barbaric aspects of that particular zionist policy;

They don't destroy houses to get 1 or 2 people. They destroy houses to punish those who attack Israel. Since they are normally dead there's no direct way to punish them. If they know that by attacking Israel they are going to bring bad things to their family instead of good things it may keep them from doing it in the first place.
It's a brutal policy but not nuts.

(2) As peace activists and non-combatants, they should not have been targeted by IDF forces or bulldozers, no matter how you slice it; and

They were *NOT* targeted. She got hit by debris disturbed by heavy equipment, nothing was aimed at her.

(3) Should there ever have been any such need to destroy buildings, then it should have been carried out with the same level of care and velvet-glove decorum that was shown to the ultra-rightist Jewish settlers in the West Bank. But it wasn't, thus exposing the hypocrisy of Israel.

When you expect hostile fire at any moment you can't take as much care.

Sauron

Uh, no, it doesn't. If you think it does, feel free to support your revisionism.

Still doesn't work, Loren.

Whether it happened
a. "as originally reported", or
b. as in your revisionist version,

it doesn't matter to your argument. You claimed that had she been sitting, then the driver would have seen her. Because someone sitting fell within the driver's scope of vision.

If that's true, then it also holds true for someone who fell. If she fell, she would have still been in the driver's field of vision, since that vision included someone low enough to the ground to be sitting.

Buddrow_Wilson

Whether or not she was killed purposely being put aside, you still don't seem to get what Loren is saying.

If she was sitting down from the beginning as they approached the people would have seen her from a distance, the difference being that if you are standing and moving around a few feet in front of the machine and fall down all of sudden the person is out of view. An argument (although weak) could be made that the driver thought she had moved out of the way, but this argument certainly would have no weight in a situation where a bunch of people are sitting down in protest as the machines approached.

Sauron

Wrong as usual.

You are saying that the houses would have been destroyed anyhow, so it's better to do it with bulldozers than with aircraft.

1. That ignores the moral question of whether or not the houses *needed* to be destroyed - and I am not going to let you ignore that question, merely because it makes you uncomfortable.

2. Your position also ignores the fact that the very policy you say is inevitable is immoral - destroying a whole neighborhood to get 1 or 2 people; and

3. Your position also ignores the hypocrisy of the Israeli govt, by comparing how they dealt with rightwing settlers and their houses, vs. how they dealt with Palestinian houses. And that question of hypocrisy is another question that I am not going to let you skip.


Yes, they do.

If "those who attack Israel" are normally dead, then any destruction of houses is nothing but mindless revenge.

Behold another reason why the policy is immoral. The family, the neighbors, etc. were not among "those who attack Israel". Yet, by your own admission, the Israelis destroy innocents in the hope of intimidating others. There's something positively Aryan about the morality and mechanical brutality of such a policy.

Note, of course, that the policy doesn't seem to be working very well. Which leads one to believe that the real reason for the policy isn't even intimidation - it's to satisfy the bloodlust and need for revenge among the conservative Israeli public.


Who said anything about nuts? The USA could institute the death penalty for every possible infraction. I'd bet that crime would plummet. The fact that a policy might be effective does not make it moral or justified.

And (I remind you) we *are* discussing the morality of such policies, and Israel's hypocrisy.


Sure she was. She was in plain sight, and was still run over. As usual, the Israeli govt swept the incident under the rug, and nothing will be done.


There was no such concern at the camp where Rachel Correy was. Nor in many other camps, where the Israeli bulldozers came in and leveled houses and neighborhoods.

You're not going to dismiss this away by some vague handwaving about "expecting hostile fire" - especially when such hostile fire (more often than not) is a bunch of kids and teenagers throwing rocks. Trying to stretch that reality to make it sound like a military assault is lying-by-exaggeration, Loren.

Sauron

I get what Loren is saying.

You're simply uninformed about the facts of the case.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml

The protesters had been there for TWO HOURS, playing cat-and-mouse with the bulldozer driver.

Your explanation (and Loren's) still doesn't work. If you're a responsible bulldozer driver, having suddenly lost sight of someone that he knows what there just a moment ago, what do you do? Proceed anyhow, because "out of sight, out of mind"? Or do you stop and double-check, to make sure?

Loren's been told all that before. As expected, he backpedaled and somersaulted like a gymnast. This very point was also brought up in this thread. Loren skipped that as well.

This act is not excuseable.

Sauron

More info showing that the bulldozer drivers had engaged in dangerous acts before Rachel Corrie died:

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsourc...vist+bulldozer


In an e-mail earlier this month, Corrie described a Feb. 14 confrontation with another Israeli bulldozer in which she referred to herself and other activists as "internationals."

"The internationals stood in the path of the bulldozer and were physically pushed with the shovel backwards, taking shelter in a house," Corrie wrote in the e-mail, distributed in a March 3 news release by the International Solidarity Movement.

"The bulldozer then proceeded on its course, demolishing one side of the house with the internationals inside," she wrote.

Ion

1) I would stop and double-check.

2) In the first place though, I wouldn't be in an occupied territory to begin with.

Because of 1) and 2), that's why I am not a murderer of anyone, nor an apologist for murderers.