How to form an opinion

What about Israel/Hezbollah war? Try it on yourself. Imagine that two US marines were kidnapped at the Mexican border and bombs from Mexico are falling down in your local town. Would you have an opinion on what's a proportional response would be?

How about this? Imagine two Mexican soldiers were kidnapped at the US border. Mexican forces proceed to bomb civilian targets, including airports, apartments, and houses. The death toll is about 350 US civilians and 30 US soldiers. The entire world, with the exception of one country is pleading for the Mexicans to stop killing innocent civilians. Is the Mexican response proportional? (or have not enough civilians died yet?)

How is it that a person or group can kill one soldier and 10 civilians, including women and children, and they are applauded for defending themselves, while another person or group does the same thing and they are called terrorists?

John,

you may find my answer to your question in one of my earlier blogs: http://yakovfain.javadevelopersjournal.com/i_support_israel.htm

Please read the readers' comments as well

Yakov,

I think that John made an extremely important comment on this issue. To put it bluntly: all the previous USA-Mexico examples were so bad use of try-it-on-yourself that it's almost humiliating to the parties involved. John was the first one to put the roles right. Do you think that Mexico would have the right to demand evacuation of Texas, kill US civilians and have Mexican troops cross US borders if, for example, some US right-wing extremists raged in Mexico? There's not much in your earlier blogs that would give an answer to this (though reading the earlier blogs for Mini's comments is a good idea).

Israel massacred women and children in Qana. Israel even managed to bomb a UN base even when they had been warned 12 times that their actions put UN monitors to risk. Four monitors died. It is not that Israeli rockets, bombs and missiles are not smart enough - they are used in a totally unacceptable manner.

One of the killed UN monitors was Finnish (that's my nationality). Following the common logic presented in these blogs Finland should propably now declare war against Israel. But states can't act like that, they need to be more responsible. There will always be individuals full of hate on this planet, but states can't lower themselves to that level. The fact that terrorists kill civilians is not an excuse for the armies to do the same. This should be self-evident, why do I have to blog about this?

Try it on yourself: your wife and children were murdered in Qana. What is a proportional response?

(And as a note for the hysteric anti-terrorism fanatics out there: no, my negative attitudes towards the killings of Lebanese civilians do not make me a pro-terrorist lunatic.)

Killing civilians is bad. But example with killing my wife and children does not work here, because neither my wife nor my children host terrorists in my backyard and my basement. You may say that poor wifes and kids from Qana did not have much choice. True. What about their husbands and brothers? Did they have a vote in allocating Katyushas and storing bombs in their residential neighborhoods? If they did not have a vote either, this means that they are the Hezbollah hostages. Unfortunately, I do not see the resolution to the Middle East crisis. Both Hamas and Hezbollah have a premise that Israel has to be destroyed. This is how they raise their children. Iran wants it too: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/03/iran.israel.ap/index.html

This is what they try to achieve paying with the lives of innocents.

Wasn't the reason the UN post was bombed was due to Hezbollah using it as a place for cover?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/middleeast-crisis/un.html http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744393.html

Daniel,

what do you mean? That it was ok to kill the UN monitors if there was some Hezbollah activity in the area?

I say that it's likely that most of the Lebanese civilian casualties did not host terrorists in their backyards, unless you define that half of the Lebanon is part of their yard. Even if they did host terrorists I find it difficult to accept that bombing residential areas in another sovereign state was the right way to go.

I have a hard time to understand why it would be ok to kill civilians if they are used as human shields. That's why I can't support Israel on this one. The atrocities in Chechnya and Afganistan do not justify atrocities in Lebanon. Wrong is not right even if many are quilty of it. I have a decent military training and I understand that a war without any civilian casualties is not a realistic idea, but I think that in this case Israel is so indifferent to the civilian suffering that the term war crime comes to mind. Bombing the house in Qana and the UN base are just details in all this but they give you an idea how accurate the fire is and how good control Israeli army has over its actions. Of course it might be that the UN base was destroyed on purpose but that's even worse.

I'm sad to agree that a resolution to this crisis is now far beyond reach. I was stupidly optimistic when Israel emptied its colonies. But then we saw Hamas winning the elections and now this.

No it was not ok to kill the UN monitors any more than its ok to kill civilians. My point is Hezbollah do not care who they use as human shields. Israel are trying to stop the constant bombardment of their country, a country that Hezbollah have sworn to destroy. Hezbollah are the bad guys here and they are trying to make Israel look worse than them by using innocents as shields. This is unfortunately is a trap Israel has fallen into. What is worse, using innocent people as a shield so that you can kill repeatedly, or to stop the killers from killing again and again?