Caltrops - Biohazard: Code Veronica





	[quote name="Senor Barborito MetaFilter Post"] If Israel really were the butchers some here proclaim them to be, Lebanese civilian casualties wouldn't number 600, they'd number 600 thousand. It should be pretty clear by now that their policy is simply one of killing Hezbollah fighters at all costs, regardless of who gets in the way. Israeli civilians would count themselves lucky to have an enemy so disinterested. I'm going to go on a tangent here: I used to genuinely believe in the moral equivalence of Israel and Palestine. Israel was headed by a war criminal (Sharon) and constantly acting in bad faith - using every suicide bombing as an excuse to kill dozens of Palestineans, despite knowing full well that no amount of effort would ever root out all the people making the explosives and recruiting the bombers. The Palestinean government was at best failing to make any sort of real effort to rein in the bombers, if not outright colluding with them, and were themselves constantly acting in bad faith at every step along the supposed path to peace. Moreover, far too many prominent Palestineans unashamedly proclaimed their desire to drive Israel into the sea, while at the same time Israel appeared to have its own plan - in the form of the settlements - to breed out the Palestineans entirely. All of that has changed in the past year. Sharon had what appears to have been a last-minute attack of conscience and pulled out the settlements. Did the Palestineans respond with an equal showing of good faith? To the contrary, they did the exact opposite and elected Hamas. That, to me, was the breaking point as far as viewing Israel as the moral equal to its opponents. I may not think very much of either side in that conflict, nor in this related one with Hezbollah, but it is clear to me now that Israel is in both cases, at the very least, a lighter shade of black. posted by Ryvar at 3:28 PM PST on July 30 [/quote]