Israeli's blow apart farmers with tank shell

[nascarblue]

Gaza Strip - Israeli troops shot dead seven Palestinians in a strawberry field in north Gaza on Tuesday after mortar fire from Palestinian militants there wounded two Jewish settlers.


“We collected the bodies, three of them teenagers, in a strawberry farm and we believe all were farmers. The bodies were blown to pieces by a tank shell,” said Mahmoud al-Assali, hospital director in the Palestinian town of Beit Lahiya.

<snip>
A Reuters news team found the strawberry grove splattered with blood and bits of flesh. A severed foot lay in the field.

Palestinian medics said six other Palestinians were seriously wounded by the tank burst.


http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayArticle.asp?col=§ion=middleeast&xfile=data/middleeast/2005/January/middleeast_January87.xml

[crunch]

1. Right - teen age farmers "picking strawberries"

ah huh. You betcha

[mdhunter]

3. When you live in a society that is only precariously above subsistence

teenagers do work for families.

In fact, I knew teenagers who worked on cranberry farms in BC, so I don't quite understand your tone. Perhaps you could explain it to me?

[sherilocks]

4. Teen-agers are suicide bombers

So the fact that they are "teen-age" strawberry pickers doesn't prove that they did or did not take part in the mortar attack:

<snip>

Israeli medics said the mortars landed near a bus filled with settler children, lightly injuring two adult escorts.


<snip>

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04346341.htm

[mdhunter]

6. All of them, huh? Didn't know that.

"So the fact that they are "teen-age" strawberry pickers doesn't prove that they did or did not take part in the mortar attack."

Nor does the fact that they are now dead at the hands of an Israeli tank shell.

Better, I think, to ask questions first.

I was merely responding to Crush's incredulity regarding the situation. It seems to me to be at least as likely that there were 3 kids picking strawberries with some others as there were 3 kids standing around a mortar, especially since, as is claimed, that the militants responsible for the mortar attack fled.

[sherilocks]

11. Seems to me that we don't know

nor does the Reuter's report tell us much, except what some villagers said. We do know that militants tried to blow up kids and that kids got blown up. Seems like some empathy is in order for all kids. The fact that the strawberry pickers were teen-agers doesn't say much one way or another, since teen-agers can be as militant as their adult counterparts. But kids on there way to school, are clearly not about to attack.

[mdhunter]

12. Agree 100% with all that (nt)

[Ian David]

2. This belongs in the Israel-Palestinian forum

[Ian David]

5. We're even worse than Israel now

Before you go condeming Israel, consider this:

What has our own country become after 9-11?

Has Israel ever invaded Iraq?

Whatever injustices Israel may or may not have perpetrated, they have still shown the restraint to not simply wipe the Palestinians from the map. They could have done that quite easily.

The fact is, the Israelis are justifiably scared. Rather, terrorized. By terrorism.

Say what you will, but Israel's response has been far more restrained and measured than America's.

[Darranar]

13. What was our country before 9/11?

Has much changed, except for the justifications given?

The US record is far worse than the Israeli one, that is undeniable. But the same is true of much of the world.

[Jim Sagle]

33. And yet not much of the world gets the same scrutiny. Why is that?

[Englander]

7. Vile tactics used by the "Hamas" mortar crew here....

Use the strawberry fields as cover to fire the mortars,then run & leave the families farming the fields to get hit by the (flechette,probably) IDF tank shells.

And,of course,the Idf are too feckin' stupid to realize that the mortar crew would not stand around & wait for the returning fire.
I'm sure that the concept of not firing tank shells into a fruit field being harvested, was,of course,not even considered.

[The Magistrate]

8. You Have, Mr. Englander

Noticed the most salient element here. Whatever else can be said about this incident, the one thing that is certain is that no one would have been killed or injured had a parcel of malicious fools refrained from working a mortar in this vicinity. The entire responsibility for the matter rests with the wretches who did that, and no one else.

There is insufficient information in the report to reach a conclusion about whether the people hit were involved in the shooting or not. It would be necessary to know the amount of time between the mortar firing, and the tank firing, and whether the mortar was on the scene, to do that. The reports of local persons that the shooters had departed may be accurate, and it may not be.

The manufacture of civilian casualties is one of the leading tactical aims of the various militant bodies of Arab Palestinians. It is a clear-cut crime of war to take up, and engage in combat from positions, in which you know civilians are likely to be injured by enemy fire directed at you.

[Metrix]

9. The settlers are fools

They bear some responsibility for choosing to live in occupied territory.

[The Magistrate]

10. They Are Fools, Ma'am

But not responsible for the incoming rounds....

[Paleocon]

14. I blame the chicken, you blame the egg...

Which came first????

:shrug:

[The Magistrate]

15. The Man Who Decides To Do A Violent Act, Sir

Is responsible for all consequences of it, including harm to persons near where he committed it. No matter how great a provocation, people have a choice over what their response to it is, and are responsible for whatever choice they make.

Once the Sage wrote: "What others teach, I teach also: 'A violent man will die a violent death!'"

[Paleocon]

16. And I've got a pithy quote for you sir!

"I got a gal and her name is Sue, prettiest gal in town
She sets my mind to worryin every time I'm gone
I'll be home tonight so I wont be worried long

It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
Im worried now but I won't be worried long"

So you see good sir, think of me as the worried man in the above lyrics by the Kingston Trio...

"I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long..."

What's going on in the middle east worries me, what our troops are doing in our name in Iraq and Afghanistan worries me.

"I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long..."

By the way, not to drive a bulldozer through the holes in your logic, but isn't it fair to say that the violent stealing of another mans land is in itself a violent act? In that case I have one more pithy quote for you...

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap..."

[The Magistrate]

19. Is That Not, Sir

At least a variation on a lyric by Mr. Guthrie?

"The gamblin' man is rich, and the working man is poor."

[The Stranger]

18. You are condemning Israel with this pseudo legalese.

You should be more careful.

[The Magistrate]

20. A Pleasure To See You About, Mr. Stranger

There is always amusement in a day when you appear....

The tank commander in this instance is certainly responsible for what he did. But he did not act in a vacuum. Had no mortar been fired, he would not have been told such a thing had occured at a certain range and azumith from his position, and on seeing figures in that approximate location, he would not have concluded these were the mortar team, and ordered his gunner to fire. There is no real reason to suppose that this man simply saw people in the field, grinned an evil grin, and ordered a round to be directed into their midst. You know that, Sir, and everyone here knows that.

A final twist is added, of course, by the fact that such mortar sniping cannot accomplish anything. It cannot advance the cause of Arab Palestine a fraction of a millimeter. Deliberate futility is an execrable thing, particularly when it entails predictable consequences such as this. Whoever fired that mortar knew there would soon be heavy fire directed at that spot, and chose it knowing there were were children harvesting there. Indeed, it is quite likely the spot was chosen because of this, since the presence of other people would constitute a species of camouflage for setting up the mortar, and their presence provided as well the possibility of a useful prapaganda harvest....

[Darranar]

21. So the person who fired the tank shell is responsible...

for these deaths, then....

[The Magistrate]

22. You May, My Friend

See No. 20 above. He is certainly responsible for his own actions, but is not responsible for initiating the incident; no deaths would have occured without the mortar team's actions....

[Darranar]

23. It is not my intent to excuse the mortar team's actions...

However, one could point to a whole series of events, resulting from the actions of a variety of people, that without which this event would never have occurred.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that these deaths are the fault of no one but the killer.

[The Magistrate]

24. That Is All Very Well, My Friend

Yet it remains the cae that, but for the decision to fire the mortar, and fire it from the midst of children harvesting a crop, no deaths would have occured at all that day. The tank commander made a mistake; the circumstance in which he made it was deliberately created by the mortar team.

[Darranar]

25. I am not at all convinced that it was a mistake. n/t

[The Magistrate]

26. There Is No Evidence, My Friend, It Was Not

It is a sort of thing that very often happens by mistake. It is my practice to give people the benefit of doubt until impossible to do so without feeling foolish....

[Darranar]

27. The Israeli gunner seems to have retaliated...

in a manner that was not at all discriminate.

While perhaps it was not his specific intention to kill these particular people, it is a tactic that is not effective at much but causing collective punishment.

[The Magistrate]

28. Retaliated For What, Sir?

A few ineffective mortar rounds? That is hardly a thing to heat the blood to such a point.

Had this occured with a day or so of some bloody outrage against Israelis, what you propose would have a ring of reason to it: there have been a few instances in the past where the proposition a soldier acted, under color of military necessity, in vengeance for such a thing seems plausible to me.

There does not seem to me any reason to suppose this was anything but an attempt to target a mortar team that miscarried; certainly no evidence of anything else emerges so far from accounts of the incident. It is not even possible to say for certain some of those killed were not involved in firing the mortar, though certainly there have been denials that was so, and it may well be the case.

[Darranar]

29. I did not say it was not an attempt to target the mortar team...

I said the retaliation seemed indiscriminate; while the Israeli gunner may have been trying to kill the people who had fired the mortar, he seems to have not made the attempt with much care for civilian casualties.

At the very least this was a disproportionate response.

[The Magistrate]

30. A Mortar, Sir

Is moved and operated by several people; they are weighty objects, and to move them up into position serreptiously, and flee with them to safety quickly, both take some doing. Thus the sight of a small group would not have suggested anything but participants in the attack. It is not as if a distinctive costume is worn by the combatants in such a situation, after all, and the older members of the group, certainly, would have seemed likely fighters. The younger people might not even have been seen at all; it is unclear what sort of vegetable cover was present. More detailed information might well settle both our doubts concerning this matter, obviously.

But there remains the factor of the mortar team's decision to deploy themselves in the midst of civilians. This was clearly a deliberate decision by those men, as there has not been any suggestion the persons killed arrived in the field after the departure of the mortar crew. Those men made a deliberate decison to use their fellow Arab Palestinians as human shields, and that is a crime of war no matter on which side it is committed. It is hard to believe they could not have found a point in range of their target away from any Arab Palestinian civilians.

[Darranar]

31. We agree that what the mortar team did was criminal...

Their actions were immoral and utterly unhelpful to their cause.

It is clear to me that the people killed were targeted by the tank gunner, for whatever reason. If they were not, the number of casualties would not be so high. If Palestinian witnesses are to be believed, those killed were not those involved in the mortar strike. Therefore, the gunner was targeting people indiscriminately in the vicinity of the place where the mortar was fired. Whether or not he did so under the suspicion that they were in fact involved is irrelevant to that.

[The Magistrate]

32. If The Man Had Real Grounds For His Suspicion, My Friend

Then his act was not indiscriminate. It seems likely to me that he had such grounds. It is also clear that what occured was a ghastly thing, that no one can feel anything but great regret and sorrow over. It would surprise me very much if the men involved do not spend most of their remaining years in a hell of self-reproach, and would not give anything to have that moment's decision back to do again another way.

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Englander]

34. From the NYT;

In Gaza's Berry Fields, a Family Reels After Losing 7 Boys to Israeli Fire
By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: January 9, 2005

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza, Jan. 7 - The neighbors had heard that Muhammad Ghaben, 18, had died in the hospital during the night, but no one wanted to tell his mother.

"How can we tell her?" asked Im Yehya Fadoos, walking along a muddy path between the poor houses and the strawberry fields of northern Gaza. "She was kissing him last night in the hospital. She's lost so much."

Three sons of Mariam Ghaben, 50, died Tuesday, all at once. They were blown apart by a single Israeli tank shell that was aimed at militants firing mortars toward Israel. In all, seven boys from the extended Ghaben family, ages 11 to 17, died in the explosion.

Mrs. Fadoos did not tell Ms. Ghaben that Muhammad had died, and as it turned out, he is still alive. But his legs and a hand were blown off and he lost an eye, and doctors say he is in critical condition, along with three others of the six Palestinians wounded in the same explosion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/international/middleeast/09gaza.html?ex=1106299891&ei=1&en=00ef1174eb3792fa

[Paleocon]

35. Strawberry fields forever?

:silly:

[undergroundrailroad]

36. Locking per I/P Guidelines.

New threads must be based on a recently-published news item or op-ed piece. They may not be based on editorial cartoons or photographs. Citations and references should include a link to the original source.

Undergroundrailroad
DU Moderator, I/P Affairs