I can't say I'll never make another Jewish mother joke, but I will feel a tinge of guilt when I do. I have heard Israeli mothers speak of their pride that their sons died to defend their people, however grief-stricken they may be. I don't think I've ever heard a Jewish mother encourage her children to murder other people.

Or a Jewish child encourage his mother to blow herself up in order to kill other people.

Though one does wonder whether there were other circumstances going on here. Comes a point, it might be expedient from the POV of the children, economically, for a mother/grandmother to remove herself, if she is a burden.

Or it may be that she was depressed or ill herself.

In the past, Hamas sponsered female suicide bombers have generally had social problems, such as charges of adultery against them, or one had been severely burned on her face before her attempt and was consequently deeply depressed.

But a granny is something new of the depraved scale, even for Hamas.

The only wish I might have for such as this charming grandmother is she had killed herself before she had any children.

May God execute proper judgment on this harridan.

I wonder how many virgins she . . . , ah, never mind.

I note that you couldn't resist a reference to the "faulty equipment" which led to the politically inconvenient deaths of those all-too-visible civilians at Beit Hanoun. What a pity the IDF's "faulty equipment" still managed to kill 19 innocent civilians, as against granny's "faulty equipment" which killed only her. (At least, I assume her plan was to kill somebody else.) I don't mourn her for a single second; I'm glad she killed herself and nobody else; and I wish the injured soldiers who got in her way a speedy and complete recovery. Why you feel the need to turn dead civilians (whose misfortune was not to be Israeli) into cheap punchlines is a matter for your own conscience. If you have one, that is.

Rob, snort, why do you assume that I'm turning 19 dead civilians, mostly children, into a punchline.

Does that make you feel better about yourself or something - the righteous indignation factor?

But I don't believe - at least not without solid proof - that those specific killings were intentional. I think it was a regrettable accident. The Israeli army does not purposefully target sleeping children.

Most of the time Hamas doesn't "purposefully target" anybody either: it simply fires rockets in the general direction of populated areas and waits to see whether they hit anything. Substitute shells for rockets and you have exactly the result of the IDF's "faulty equipment". I missed the part where indiscriminate slaughter was a good thing. Presumably if "faulty equipment" had led to the deaths of nineteen IDF soldiers the Knesset would still be buzzing with the outrage.

And anyway: "The Israeli army does not purposefully target sleeping children." Indeed not, it prefers them to be awake.

I assume the snort at the beginning of your comment was the choking back of crocodile tears for dead Palestinians. Save then for your more credulous readers.

Precisely, Rob, from your own article: The idea was to set a trap in an area from which Palestinian gunmen had been repeatedly attacking Jewish settlements and IDF outposts.

And then: "From an initial inquiry by OC Southern Command Maj.- Gen. Doron Almog, the possibility arises that the children were killed as a result of playing with a bomb which an IDF force had set in a sandbagged position that had been used to shoot at and attack our forces."

I don't see there was any purposeful targetting of children here. I see a tactical decision that had a dreadful outcome, which happens while fighting insurgencies, particularly ones in which the insurgents position themselves near civilian targets.

As it happens, and even with these dreadful tragedies, the Israeli army is more careful and more restrained about its targets than any other army in the world.

And sure suicide bombers target people on purpose. They walk into places filled with young people and old people and indiscriminately kill them all.

As far as their Qassam rockets, they're crude, sure, but that is the best they have right now and as soon as they have higher tech available to them, they'll be using them indiscrimately as well. The point is they're happy to kill whomever they do kill.

There is nothing alike in intent between that and using targeted missiles.

And if Hamas had killed 19 soldiers, sure that would be a lot of anger, and a lot of it directed towards the Israeli commanders in the field for making such errors as to underestimate the danger to their troops.

And anyway: "The Israeli army does not purposefully target sleeping children." Indeed not, it prefers them to be awake.

[...]

Rob | November 26, 2006 11:44 PM

And you accuse Alcibides of cheap humour, eh?

Rob,

It is a kind of deliberate moral conceit and blindness, this trumpeting of intentional and unintentional acts as equivalent. Philosophers have weighed these issues through the ages, and the consensus is that intentions matter as much or more than outcomes in considering the ethics of an action.

Consider first, our leniency towards very young children, the insane, animals, natural events, and other forces that can make no moral distinctions at all. If you are mauled to death by a tiger, you would probably experience far more pain and horror than a typical terrorist bomb victim, but we certainly wouldn't think of the tiger as "evil". Some cultures would, certain cults in India would claim a particular tiger might be demonically posessed, but we're supposed to be enlightened- to us, the tiger didn't do anything morally wrong.

So there we have a foundation for an understanding that moral judgment must first be applied only to those capable of manifesting moral judgement themselves. The outcome of the act alone, we conclude, is insufficient as a basis for moral consideration. The tiger victim was not slain by an evil tiger, no punishment or retribution is warranted.

From there, we cross to the next plateau of thinking- incidents in which morale thinking is present, exercised, but the outcome not the intended one. We can make one blanket statement: the morale person must be expected to make a reasonable prediction of the outcome of an action. A tiger can do this. When it pounces, it expects to kill you, but we have already excused the tiger. What about the child old enough to know that killing is bad, too young to know that the medicine she just gave grandma is the wrong one and will cause a heart attack? Again, we excuse the child. A terrible tragedy, not a crime.

As mental capacity increases, we expect the ability to predict outcomes to increase. But, it never, ever reaches certainty. We can have very well thought out but wrong suppositions. A surgeon might be unaware that a blood vessel is dangerously weakened. An ambulance driver racing from an accident site might be unaware that just around the next corner, his left front tire will blow out. And an artillerist might be unaware that the fire control computer has the wrong digits. Thus, even here, we must fall back on intention. The outcome cannot be predicted with certainty, and without consideration of intention we are left with the bizarre circumstance of our own moral standing being left to the whim of outrageous fortune. You could be an evil monster yourself, if perhaps this morning you have unwittingly set in motion a tragic chain of events.

The converse is also true- we do not hail as heroes those who inadvertantly create positive outcomes, despite evil intent. Perhaps somewhere in Israel someone is alive thanks to a Hezbollah rocket, because he or she ran for a bunker and off of a street where moments later, he or she would have been hit by a van. It is entirely possible that a suicide bomber has saved a life but this is not cause for celebration.

So, we see that we cannot exclude the intent of an act from its morality. What is a Palestinian rocketeer trying to do? He is trying to kill as many innocent people as possible. He may succeed, or fail. The Israeli gunner is trying to kill the rocketeer. He may succeed or fail. In failing, he may kill nineteen people. So might a train engineer. Yet, don't you think it would be ludicrous to say "Palestinian rocket crews, train engineers, they're really all alike because dead is dead"?

The questions we have to ask of a gunner, on either side, are these:

What was the target?
What steps were taken to minimize the chances that non-targets would be hit?

Imagine the responses of an Israeli, and his Palestinian counterpart:

1: "A rocket launcher crew". vs: "Jews".
2: "I checked the coordinates with the fire control officer before firing, and verified the range and deflection settings for my weapon." vs: "What do you mean, non-targets?"

Not by any stretch of philosophy morally comparable.

Ben

As a followup, Rob,

If you still think outcome, and not intention, is the key to assigning morality to an action, then you clearly stand with those Americans who think a child is just as culpable for a crime as an adult. Therefore, I hereby revoke your claim to liberal-hood.

kidding, kidding... you can still be a liberal even if you believe in lifetime incarceration for eight year olds... or can you?

Ben

Alcibiades

"The Israeli army is more careful and more restrained about its targets than any other army on the world."

And I am Marie of Rumania.

"The point is they're happy to kill whomever they do kill."

As are the IDF. Do read the Bradley Burston citation below, and feel free to feel some shame.

Lynne

At least my cheap humour is based on facts rather than the long-debunked myth of Israeli "purity of arms". No, actually I'm sure the IDF couldn't care less whether the children are asleep or awake. Hell, they're all the enemy, right?

Ben

"What do you mean, non-targets?"

If you really imagine that that isn't the modus operandi of the IDF these day, I think you're even more detached from reality than I had thought. My point, Ben, is that neither Hamas nor the IDF gives a f*ck. Nor, mostly, does either pretend to any more.

I can remember a time, back in my student days, when Israel was (as far as I can tell) universally thought of here in Britain as the nation in the white hats, as against the Palestinians who were thought of as the murderous bastards who had killed the Israeli athletes in Munich, to mention only their most famous atriocity. What's changed? Well, I grant that the Palestinians have become more canny at PR. But more significantly, the IDF and IAF have become more careless about aiming; Mossad's intelligence (once a byword for the best on the planet) appears to have become slipshod; and perhaps most of all, vocal American supporters of Israel (such as yourself) have
become apologists for the casual elimination of civilians. As I said, had a similar "equipment failure" led to the death of even one Israeli there would have been an outcry in the Knesset. Nineteen Palestinian civilians? Well, everyone knows (because they read sites such as Kesher Talk) that all Palestinians are potential terrorists, so where's the harm?

Perhaps you should read yesterday's Ha'aretz. Yes, Hamas's indiscriminate bomardment is criminal. Yes, so is the IDF's. What part of "indiscriminate" don't you get?

Oh, and do follow Bradley Burston's link to Human Rights Watch (I know, I know: they're dreadful lefties who want to destroy the world, just like the UN and Rachel Corrie).

P.S. Re the eight-year-olds comment, remember you come from a country that still executes juveniles (like Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen). At least locking them up for life would allow for their release if they were innocent.

And boo-hoo, nasty Ben whose opinion is so important to me, revokes my liberal credentials. Guess I'll have to get by with just, you know, the whole of Europe and most of the rest of the planet (including, it would seem, quite a chunk of Israel and the US) on my side then.

Alcibiades

"The Israeli army is more careful and more restrained about its targets than any other army on the world."

And I am Marie of Rumania.

"The point is they're happy to kill whomever they do kill."

As are the IDF. Do read the Bradley Burston citation below, and feel free to feel some shame.

And which army do you think is more careful, given the same amount of daily, unceasing pressure against them, the same acts of unceasing state terrorism?

The problem of being in such an ongoing war is that it coarsens everyone. Arafat knew that well, as does Hamas.

But Sharon didn't withdraw from Gaza with the thought in mind that even after the withdrawal, the qassams would never cease.

I read the Burston piece, and no it doesn't make me ashamed. I agree that the matter should be investigated, and if it was found to result from anything other than faulty equipment, the troops involved should be punished severely. And that given this result, the tactical decision to set off such rounds should be re-examined.

OTOH, if the Palestinians didn't want a permanent intifada, one wonders why they voted in such a government. True, they didn't have good choices, but it is not like the ongoing policy of Hamas vis-a-vis the destruction of Israel was a surprise to them.

I also agree with another post of his that states that Amir Peretz is entirely unsuited to his job as Defense Minister. I've been saying that he was a disaster since before he took the job.

As for your boast to Ben that you are in the majority of the world which condemns Israel routinely, no doubt you are very proud of that position. Group think and herd mentality mixed with prejudice. Go team!

Yes, we know here in the USA that you over in Britain voted Israel the worst country in the world.

You can be proud of that stance as well. It just goes to show how well-informed and non-prejudiced most of your country's evaluation of Israel is in the first place.

Rob,

It is you, not I, who are detached from reality right now. Yes, there must be a few within the IDF who really don't care. But on the whole? How is it they keep hitting those "militants" who, we are told, are such a small percentage of the Palestinian population? Targetting, Rob. Even the Palestinians know the Israelis target, that's why they call it "targetted assassination". That's why they surround fighters with children. It's a simple bloody fact, Rob: the losses sustained by Israel are spread across age and gender roughly in accordance with the general population, the losses sustained by the Palestinians are concentrated in able bodied men. You may choose willfully ignore this, but it's reality. Stop lying- not to me, because I know better, but to yourself. Open your eyes to reality. Even the "neutral" international organizations that track the deaths admit this discrepancy.

And by the way, Rob, 1)the USA no longer executes juveniles, only the ignorant claim it "still" does- like you. and 2) when it did, many of us weren't proud of it, and as a result this changed. Get with the 21st century.

Do you not know what "indiscriminate" means? The Palestinians are indiscriminate. The Israelis are the opposite, highly discriminate- but subject to human error. They fire at targets, and do to a variety of causes, not the least of which is the Palestinian habit of closely confusing "target" with "non-target" in time, space, and appearance, they sometimes err. I am sure you are above error, after all, you are European! And you have the absolute unmitigated gall to think they are in any way thinking alike? Because you claim to have psychic powers, reading their minds as they shoot?

You want to prove some equivilant morality here? I dare you: find me just one, one, ANY ONE, Palestinian punished BY PALESTINIANS for the wrongful death of an Israeli Jew. Just one. Until then, you have nothing worth saying. It doesn't even have to be a death sentence, hell, not even time served- I'll settle for ANY punishment demonstrating that the Palestinians consider wanton death of civilians to be at all an issue. Just one. Or shut up, foolish apologist. Don't tell me "oh, they can't, they have no courts, occupation, zionism... BULL! They pass down sentences for other offenses all the time. They kill for "collaboration"*. Just find one.

Ben
*Something the Israelis have obviously missed: If they really, really wanted to kill random Palestinians, its as simple as having an Israeli soldier or policeman smile at a Palestinian, wink, and hand him an envelope full of cash. The barbarians will see to it that the poor dupe comes to a gruesome end. For the price of one smart bomb you could take out dozens that way.

Rob,

while you are busy but hopelessly searching for the "Just One", you can add the Palestinians to your short and partly incorrect list of jurisdictions in which juveniles are sentenced to death.

Nice fascist friends you got there.

Or is it okay to do that now? If the Palestinians do it, it can't be evil, right, it must be simply equivalent to what others do, right?

Do you know what Richard Dawkins said about compromise and consensus when opinions differ? And what Isaac Asimov said about wrong and wronger? Both apply here.

Ben

Golly, Ben, you like the sound of your own typing.

Only the ignorant claim the USA still executes juveniles - like me, you say. Oh, and the USA section of Amnesty International. And yes, I checked the date on the page: 2006. Oh, but let me guess: Amnesty are wicked supporters of terrorism, and not worthy to lick the boots of a liberal like yourself.

Amusing that you call me a liar, though, eh?

I love your revealing comment about the envelope of cash (copy and paste don't work on KT comments for some reason, but I'm sure you remember it). So ALL Palestinians ("...smile at a Palestinian...") are corrupt: you would of course know this because you have first-hand knowledge of the state of mind of every one of them. Explain to me how you obtained this, or shut up, foolish apologist yourself. You are the one with nothing worth saying (and spending far longer saying it).

Amusing that you accuse me of pretending to psychic powers, though, eh?

And Palestinians are "barbarians"? I didn't know racism was part of the "liberal" mindset in the US. See, that's why I got confused earlier and thought you were just another right-wing nutcase like European racists.

Amusing that you accuse me of having fascist friends, though, eh?

P.S. Despite your assertion, Palestinians don't refer to targetted assassination (unless quoting other people): that's the Israelis. The Palestinians usually call it murder, which is equally wrong: in UK terms it's manslaughter or culpable homicide (not "I set out to kill X" but "I acted in such as way as to kill X when I could have acted otherwise and allowed him to live").

Amusing that you give yourself airs as having some kind of superior wisdom to impart concerning Palestinians, though, eh?

Rob,

1) US Supreme Court, Roper vs Simmons: Execution of Juveniles is cruel and unusual punishment, barred by US constitution, and trumps the individual policies of states. The neanderthals at Amnesty International are clearly as ignorant about the situation as you are. Don't ignore them because they're leftist, ignore them because they are WRONG.

2) You have failed to find the "just one"- proving my point. THere is no moral relativity here.

3)You utterly failed to fathom my envelope of cash paragraph. It has nothing to do with whether an individual Palestinian is corrupt, it has everything to do with what the barbarians would do to ANY Palestinian they THINK works for the Israelis. Why do YOU think they are all corrupt? I certainly didn't say so.

4)You failed to note that my reference to Barbarians has nothing to do with the entire palestinian population. I was referring only those that do- and suypport- the killings of "collaborators". But there are quite enough of them, aren't there? Why do YOU think they are all Barbarians? I certainly didn't say so

5) killing enemy troops in wartime is hardly a culpable act in any society, not murder, not even manslaughter. IF you draw such a broad net for manslaughter, I must insist you turn yourself in right now, because in using the internet you increase the demand for power in the UK, which increases the working hours for those in the power and mining industries, which have higher accident rates than other industries. (Well, most other industries- if you eat fish you are shameless) Or do you accept the fact that a number of innocent workers will die as a result of your (collective)and entirely reasonable actions, just like a number of innocent palestinians will die in Israel's entirely reasonable response to enemy rocket barrages? Both functions- provide power, eliminate terrorists- are legitimate, both will result in unintended deaths. Yet, you justify one but demonize the other?

Rob,

1) US Supreme Court, Roper vs Simmons: Execution of Juveniles is cruel and unusual punishment, barred by US constitution, and trumps the individual policies of states. The neanderthals at Amnesty International are clearly as ignorant about the situation as you are. Don't ignore them because they're leftist, ignore them because they are WRONG.

2) You have failed to find the "just one"- proving my point. THere is no moral relativity here.

3)You utterly failed to fathom my envelope of cash paragraph. It has nothing to do with whether an individual Palestinian is corrupt, it has everything to do with what the barbarians would do to ANY Palestinian they THINK works for the Israelis. Why do YOU think they are all corrupt? I certainly didn't say so.

4)You failed to note that my reference to Barbarians has nothing to do with the entire palestinian population. I was referring only those that do- and suypport- the killings of "collaborators". But there are quite enough of them, aren't there? Why do YOU think they are all Barbarians? I certainly didn't say so

5) killing enemy troops in wartime is hardly a culpable act in any society, not murder, not even manslaughter. IF you draw such a broad net for manslaughter, I must insist you turn yourself in right now, because in using the internet you increase the demand for power in the UK, which increases the working hours for those in the power and mining industries, which have higher accident rates than other industries. (Well, most other industries- if you eat fish you are shameless) Or do you accept the fact that a number of innocent workers will die as a result of your (collective)and entirely reasonable actions, just like a number of innocent palestinians will die in Israel's entirely reasonable response to enemy rocket barrages? Both functions- provide power, eliminate terrorists- are legitimate, both will result in unintended deaths. Yet, you justify one but demonize the other?

Ben

(1) Roper v Simmons - clearly AI(USA) needs to update its page, or if it has the right stuff to move it front and centre. Fair enough, and I apologise. But telling me to "get with the 21st century" because I said the US executed juveniles? Er, that would be Roper v Simmons (2005), so for most of the 21st century here in my universe, the US did execute juveniles.

(2) I didn't bother looking. Provide me with just one IDF soldier who has been actually punished (not just enquired into or put on trial) for killing civilians and maybe I'll think about it. Otherwise don't waste my time.

(3) I'm sorry, your pathetic fantasy in the envelope of cash paragraph was so convoluted that, yes, I misunderstood it. Now I understand it, I can laugh at you properly.

(4) Your original reference to barbarians was charmingly unspecific. Nice to see you backing off from your racism when challenged though.

(5) Sometimes, Ben, you are beyond parody. Nobody is complaining about the IDF's having chucked their laptops at Beit Hanoun (though if they'd done so at several hundred miles an hour they'd still have hurt). Nor about killing enemy troopps in wartime. I was talking about killing civilians supposedly under their protection during an illegal military occupation. If you wish to remain in denial about that, fine. I might copy your comment so more people can see it and laugh at you.

Oh, and it isn't me that's the moral relativist in this exchange. I'm wholly consistent: I don't support the killing of civilians and belive it should be avoided. Don't support it when Hamas of Hezbollah do it. Don't support it when the IDF (or the British Army, come to that) does it. Hell, I'm not dead keen on killing soldiers either, and I'd rather see the terrorists thrown in jail to rot. But I can live with that stuff.

The similarity between our positions is neither of us believes Hamas makes any attempt to avoid civian casualties and concentrate on military targets. And given their track record, I can't imagine anything that would make me (or presumably you) believe that to be the case right now. OK, they might change in the future. The silence you hear is not me holding my breath waiting for that change of heart.

The difference between our positions, Ben, is that you believe the ODF still take pains (a) to distinguish legitimate military targets from civilian ones and (b) to target the former rather than the latter. I believe they once did, since once upon a time military targets was what they hit. As for many years now the military successes have been by-products of massive civilian slaughter, I must either conclude that there has been "equipment failure" on a massive scale, affecting everything from the sights on M16s to the targeting systems on F16s; or I must conclude that either (a) or (b) or both is no longer true. I will admit that (a) has become harder, but I've never heard anyone claiming that either Mossad or the Israeli military intelligence branches are anything but highly competent. I don't believe they couldn't distinguish targets from non-targets; but in any case, if they can't so distinguish, or if they can't reliably hit thosee targets and avoid the civilians, their duty (both moral and under international law) is clear: they should hold their fire.

I don't expect you to agree, and I can (and do) respect your position while disagreeing vigorously with it. But let's be clear: you're the apologist for the killing of civilians, not me.

BTW, your last comment posted twice. As a KT resident you can probably fix that, but you probably didn't notice. heck, I only noticed on my return trip.

It would seem that AI(USA) aren't ignoramuses/a> but simply don't set out their web pages very well. So my fault for not reading the small print. Though I must say Roper v Simmons didn't get as much publicity over here as I would have expected (and if you think that's because we're all anti-American, it would be very easy to put a here-comes-America-dragging-itself-up-to-where-we-were-seventy-years-ago slant on the story).

UK: last death sentence on a juvenile was on 18 November 1932 (he was subsequently reprieved). UK: Last actual execution of a juvenile: 26 July 1833.

Sorry about the displaced tag: meant to preview and hit post instead.