It "little boys with guns" that keep that idiot safe in her bed pretending we don't exist.

Terrorists pick soft targets.Criminals choose people with "Gun Free and Proud of It" bumber stickers.
And "Progressives" don't understand why they get robbed more than little-boys-with-guns.When they hit us again(and they will)I have no doubt it will be a soft target like,say,Cambridge or the Marina district where they know the ppl will ignore suspicious behaviour.

RE: Little Boys with Guns?

Not very little anymore. Not after 23 years in the infantry.

We'll always have the likes of Alina with US. No amount of education in school or discussion will dissuade them from their (ig)noble quest.

There IS one thing that would change their mind, being stabbed or beaten to death, knowing that if they had a gun they could defend themselves.

But that's a bit too late.

RE: Hateful Speech

So she wants US blow-up? Isn't that loving of her....

I think she's just horribly frustrated. Maybe she needs a new boy friend.

Chuck(le)

"In other developments Thursday, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy breaking curfew in the West Bank town of Ramallah to buy cigarettes for his father was killed by shots a witness said were fired from a nearby Israeli tank. The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident."

Apparently, it's also a crime to buy cigarettes...?

Out of context, some might be inclined to dismiss that report as mild anti-Israeli propaganda on the part of the WaPo, but it was the second-to-last paragraph in an article on the 9/19 Tel Aviv bus bomb that killed six and wounded 49.

So, those of us who have our moral mittens pinned to our jackets all year 'round would like to know: random murder? Regrettable incident? Or merely a "development"?

Grow up, Ian. We're not talking about a buried paragraph in an admittedly buried paragraph.

We're talking about the Israeli attempt to force a known terrorist into turning over suspected terrorists, in some appropriate manner that doesn't get anyone martyred.

How that relates to a father more concerned with a midnight smoke than the safety of his child is beyond me.

Unless, of course, you want to argue that the irresponsible father represents Arafat, the little boy he sent off to do his bidding in a war zone represents the Palestinian people...

Ian, LGF has a different version of that story with the kids throwing a grenade at the tank.

That would be an appropriate metaphor, wouldn't it? But it's not really what I'm after.

The incident probably "relates" mostly in terms of my own curosity. I'm not here trolling with an argument that the Israelis are all evil because they shoot little kids, etc. etc. Study of applied moral/ethical theory (particularly in the midst of religious conflict) is my bag, so I bug people about it.

You piqued my interest because, in the course of your quite appropriate...ah, correction...of Alina, you made some moral claims (none of which I'm disputing; briefly, you a) reference the innocence of Israeli victims of terror b) object to random murder and c) claim a certain degree of moral authority). I wanted to see how you might apply those claims to another situation.

If I'm reading you correctly, you hold that the responsibility for the death of the 12-year-old lies w/ the father, for sending his kid out into what he must have known was a dangerous situation, on a frivolous errand.

Can I also infer that you might suspect the father of, essentially, sending his child out to be martyred?

Yes you can.

A question, Ian: do you think that there is anything at all wrong with kids throwing rocks at tanks, "enemy" forces or no? You do know why the Palestininnies have been tacitly encouraging this sort of behavior in their preteens, don't you? Ever heard of using someone's best instincts (such as, the instinct to not shoot at a child, no matter how annoying he is) against them? This is how these people* fight. Then they can turn around and say, "Look at the cruel, inhuman Israelis, how they mowed down those little kids who only had stones as weapons." Even though some of the "stones" turned out to be hand grenades.

Let's play a game. Let's imagine the roles are reversed, and it's Palestinians in tanks against Israeli kids with stones. Do you suppose that the Palestinians would 1) hesitate to mow down the tykes, and 2) be at all sorry for it? Oh but that's unfair of me. Forget I ever said anything.

*"These people" being a reference to those Palestinians who tacitly or openly approve of and encourage the tactics used in the current stupidfada. I am not including those Palestinians, number unknown, who don't support terrorism and certainly keep their kids at home instead of letting them out during curfew and then using the feeble excuse of "all I did was send my son out for cigarettes" when one of them gets killed.

"Apparently, it's also a crime to buy cigarettes...?"

No, not a crime to buy cigs, but just real damn stupid to send your son out after curfew to get them for you. Terminally stupid, in this case.

Cry me a river.

Andrea,

I wouldn't necessarily call it "unfair," but I don't really see its value as an exercise. In order to truly reverse the situation you’d have to posit the Palestinians as a 5,000 year-old culture historically subject to dislocation, oppression, and genocide, and the Israelis an impoverished, ill-regarded minority in the backwaters of what was, until very recently, their religion’s last attempt at something resembling an empire. Just theoretically placing one group in tanks doesn’t really accomplish much.

As far as your second question goes, yes, I’m aware of that. I’m also aware that, historically, not every instance of this sort has been a result of grenade-lobbing. To answer your first question, I think that hucking stones at tanks--the occupants of which have been known to shoot back and kill people who do so--is a fairly dumb idea. Then again, I’m not a hormone-addled adolescent whose friends are into that sort of thing. I’m not at all sure what you intend by “‘enemy’ forces or no.”

Again, my purpose was to discover what Stephen might think about another incident that, quite arguably, also involved an innocent victim and random murder. Stephen’s answer sensibly places the blame on the father. Other answers I’ve gotten to similar questions I’ve asked elsewhere are also reflected here: 1) the casualty wasn’t innocent; 2) the casualty was a propaganda tool and therefore a victim of his own people’s ideology; and 3) the casualty isn’t worthy of consideration.

Ian, the kid obviously WAS a propaganda tool, since the story line that showed up in your link was about a "poor kid shot by tank while getting cigarettes," which was a lie; he was throwing a grenade at the tank! I'm not surprised it was in the WaPo that way, though, or in Reuters, either. Lefty media sources have a strong disdain for things like "facts" and "truth" when they interfere with propagandizing.

BCK--

There's some debate about whether the kid who got shot was the kid who was lobbing stones, or grenades, or what-have-you. In any case, a pertinent question is whether he was a propaganda tool before he was killed or became one afterwards.

Unlike the good folks at LGF, I do not have untrammeled faith in IDF incident reporting. Nor do I take WaPo or Reuters (or the Arab News, for that matter) as gospel. In fact, to complete my sail into irrelevancy I'm going to get utterly academic here: I find it highly doubtful that anybody who wasn't there can claim to know precisely what happened. Which is an epistemological problem, really, but I do find it interesting that many people seem to lend the most weight to the account that most closely agrees with their existing inclinations.

Well, Ian, for someone who doesn't take WaPo or Reuters "as gospel", your first post assumed the truth of the claim about being sent out to get cigarettes without qualification.

They should follow the example of France (a much superior country to the US and Israel btw). They never have this kind of problem.

As with many academic engagements with current events, Ian's hypothetical floats somewhere between facts and theory (allowing further pushing on real instances if it passes or further backpedaling into theory if it is rejected).

Yes: a boy shot at from a tank in the distance, no questions asked, simply for being out after curfew would represent a moral failing on the part of the soldier who fired the weapon (and, to the extent that he was instructed to do so, the military that he represents) as well as on the part of the father.

However, the culpability shifts toward the father to the extent that the soldier was justified (a mistake, with somebody else throwing grenades, or defense against the actual grenade thrower if that's what the boy was) and to the Palestinian terrorist regime that encourages such behavior (provides grenades?) and plays the decisive role in keeping the Palestinians in their predicament (although that's a broader argument).

No matter to whose account you subscribe, you'd have to accept the most extreme for your "theoretical" question to have any real validity. Besides, the Israelis killed for "buying lunch" are deliberately sought and aren't even breaking a curfew.

France's example? And which would that be? Death squads in Algeria or French intel getting caught blowing up Greenpeace's ship?

Robin--hence, "apparently...?" You also probably noted that Stephen didn't debate the account, and I don't think that he reads WaPo as scripture, either. As a bit of propaganda, it wasn't particularly well-executed, which is what I intended to indicate by mentioning the fact that WaPo buried the item near the bottom of a report on the 9/19 Tel Aviv bus bomb (clearly I failed). As for Reuters...well, they like to use scare-quotes around the words 'war on terror' in their wire reports.

Justin--considering that the news item itself "floats somewhere between facts and theory," I think it's entirely appropriate that the question I posed does so as well. As far as "extreme accounts" go, we have, on the one hand, the WaPo/Reuters/Yahoo version, which depicts a single kid out to buy cigarettes for his dad getting shot dead, and on the other we have the IDF reporting a mob of 50-80 children lobbing explosive devices. The truth, I would guess, is somewhere between the two, and I've noticed that the "extreme" in each case is often used to give total moral justification to either the Palestinians or the IDF, depending on who's making the argument. That's not what you're doing, of course, but there are plenty of folks willing to accept either extreme, thus lending my question your required validity. I must admit that I'm puzzled by the idea that a question must have 'validity' before it's considered. That would tend to limit inquiry, don't you think?

But again, as you rightly note, this is academic, and although I probably don't view the word as the pejorative that you seem to, I would certainly agree that it makes not a whit of difference to either deliberately sought targets at an Israeli café or a dead Palestinian 12-year-old.

You want to know the really odd thing?

She worked at the Cato Institute - along with a good friend of mine - as an intern the summer before last. I generally find them to be pretty smart and rational people, but probably because they don't focus much on foreign relations and war (in which they're usually wrong).

She actually has a quote that I put on my quotes page (linked above) "If I had a left wing, I'd cut it off."

Alina's attitude speaks very highly for the United States. It says that the in US some people have never known war or violence. Just keep them out of foreign policy and law enforcement.

NOT ALWAYS is the truth in the middle

that kind of reasoning is extremeley cynical (and oftern used by stupid people to others of the same category make believe they're smart)

though you have an interesting website mr. wood
http://www.astonishedhead.com/archives/cat_verbiage.htm

sometimes the extreme can be true and sometimes not

its up to a case-to-case studfying of facts; mostly depending on background facts and the current 'web' of actualities theyre spon in.

If a hundred years from now people are going to dig up ancent records about 9/11

AND THEY DONT BELIEVE IT?!

what than? 3000 thousand people all at onece ? theyll say

and the two towers fell after eachother?

OBVIOUSLY this is exhauterated; most likely only 300 people and only tower collapsed and it was probably a really small tower much lowerd than they claim

thats what youre grantchildren might say

be carefull mister green; about sticking to the most cynical mid-way

I believe the ISraelis~they dont got anything to loose all the world seems to hate them already and that makes them more reliable than every arrogant (and, yes, also the humbles ones) politicians on the globe