Thanks!

But I don't think this mantra is really regarded as "reasonable" when it is applied to Israel.

When I say that, for example, Mr Peterson, accused of murder by an unnamed source, should be considered innocent at least until the unnamed source becomes a name, everyone would agree that I am being reasonable.

But when I say the same thing about Israel and unnamed accusers, I am being an unreasonable bigot who defends Israel even when it obviously committed horrible crimes.

Israel simply doesn't have the status of "could be innocent". Everybody already knows that Israel must be guilty of _something_. How could it be an angel? And how could there be any acceptable level between "angel" and "guilty of war crimes"?

I sometimes do believe unnamed sources. But I don't pretend that not believing them is some type of bigoted fanaticism. There are unconfirmed (who could confirm it?) stories of the Iranian regime using Hizbullah and other Arabs to beat up protesters in Iran. Apparently Hizbullah and the Basij "militia" have attacked university dorms in Tehran. I believe the story because I know from my own experience that Hizbullah are not above attacking student dorms.

Similarly I would assume that someone who has actually been witness to an Israel war crime should be likely to believe accusations of further war crimes.

But the problem I have with the world is that people believe stories about Israeli war crimes even though they haven't witnessed them while my believing, for example, the Iranian reports might be considered ignorant and blind by those same people despite the fact that the same thing reported happened to me to.

Those criminal idiots in the "Israeli Defence Forces" still think that they are entitled to specific accusations and to know the names of the accusers, as if they were human beings entitled to the same rights and privileges as everybody else.

The Israeli embassy in Germany apparently published an open letter:

http://newsletter.cti-newmedia.de/index.php?site=artikeldrucken&nid=496&sid=NA==&id=3915

They obviously do not know that accusing Israel of war crimes without evidence or identity constitutes proof that Israel committed war crimes.

Only a bigoted fanatic could possibly argue that Israel is innocent until proven guilty and that anonymous accusations are not enough proof to condemn someone (if that someone is an Israeli).

By denying those horrible crimes, Israel is just defending those crimes. If Israel were innocent, why people anonymous people accuse Israel? It doesn't make sense. Israel MUST be guilty because Israel CANNOT be an angel. (We ruled this out for entirely non-anti-Semitic reasons. We would apply this rule to non-Jews too, but people get angry.)

Note that this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Absolutely anybody would be regarded as a war criminal if an anonymous accusation is made against him, although I cannot now think of anyone non-Jewish to whom this happened.

Why?

How can somebody prove the IDF has done wrong if even questioning their tatics is anti-semtic?

The British tactics in Iraq and Afgansatian are being questioned.  So are the US ones.  It is more a case of 'western' nations get questioned more than 'non-western' nations rather that Isreal gets questioned.

I believe that in diplomacy everyone is on an equal footing; be impartial. I'm not saying that you shouldn't put your foot down when they've run you around.

That's the gist of my point, but whatever.

All I'm saying, is that if Israel did shit, then they should be held accountable for their actions. No gimmes, no slap on the wrists. I would like to see the US treat them as a foreign country, not...what it comes across as...butt buddies. That's it, that's all I would like to see.

That being said, I'm bowing out of this because I don't feel like rehashing something that we've already gone over.

~A

You didn't quote the entire sentence, it was qualified:

"It is anti-semitism to question the tactics of the IDF, who have a track record of harming far fewer civilians than any other victoruious army in the world."

This was about questioning the (or those) tactics of the IDF that have already created a better track record than all other armies in situations anywhere near similar to those handled by the IDF.

Questioning successful tactics, which are proven to harm fewer civilians than all others, because the IDF employs them, is anti-Semitism, no matter how you turn it. Nobody questions a tactic unless there is reason to believe that there is something wrong with it. A tactic that causes fewer civilian deaths than others obviously doesn't have the "excessive violence" fault. So what is the problem with it that makes people want to question it?

They can start with questioning those tactics that have not already demonstrated superiority.

Focusing on that which the IDF does better than others, just because it is the IDF and hence there must be something wrong with those tactics has absolutely nothing to do with "proving" anything.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25635162-2703,00.html

The US missile strike, which killed at least five people in South Waziristan, capped three days of extraordinary violence, even by Pakistan's standards, in the country's strife-torn northwest.

I have no idea who those five people were, neither do the US or anybody else. This happened a lot of times. A lot. It adds up to hundreds of deaths, probably more, many of them civilians, probably mostly human shields. I do not blame the US (or even Obama) for the deaths.

But somehow I don't see the world demanding an inquiry or a list of names where every casualty is explained in detail. I don't see special UN security council meetings discussing the situation (the war they discuss, the specific question of how many people the US killed and whether their actions constitute "war crimes" they discuss not).

President Obama has as much blood on his hand due to the war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) as Prime Minister Olmert had due to the war in Gaza. Neither man started the war and neither man had the choice of not hitting vicilians while trying to hit terrorists who hide among them. But somehow President Obama is not wanted for war crimes in Spain because of this.

If you had read what I wrote, you might have noticed that I am not against questioning Israeli tactics.

I am against looking for faults for no other reason than the fact that the IDF are (mostly) Jewish. And given that the IDF has, as I said before, a better track record than all other armies, what specific reason is there to accuse and accuse and keep accusing the IDF?

That's true too.

But the Americans are not asked for, and do not deliver, a name-by-name list of every person killed in an attack. The Israelis have provided such a list for Gaza. And the world did not recognise that as an amazing feat but simply treated it as a normal procedure any Jewish army is expected to go through.

Not only did the IDF harm fewer civilians than any other army ever has in such a situation (or say, in the last 20 years or so), but the world not only didn't recognise that fact but also demanded special proof because the IDF apparently cannot be trusted like the other armies can, who are not asked to provide evidence like that.

The IDF is always guilty until proven innocent. And don't tell me that there is a good reason for that other than the fact that the IDF is Jewish.

The IDF simply does not have a history of excessive violence. (It does have a history of being accused of excessive violence though.) So what is the basis for this special scrutiny if not anti-Semitism?

What you actually said sounded quite different.

You attacked me for not believing an anonymous accusation.

Sounded like you believed the accusation and therefor thought that I was blind and ignorant for rejecting it.

Mmm, well with communication sometimes what one person says isn't what the receiver thinks they hear. Or however the theory goes. I apologize for coming off as attacking.

~A

Because if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes truth.

I don't think the bias you constantly rail against is always rooted in anti-semitism. It's got a lot more to do with media optics and psychology. After all, if Israel is accused of horrible things ALL THE TIME then at least some of them must be true, right? I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of subconscious reasoning, as fallicious as it is, was the root of a lot of the behaviour we see. Throw that in with a general prejudice towards "innocent civilians" and against governments (the poor people must be being oppressed and the government must be lying to cover its tracks, obviously!) And, of course, since EVERYONE believes it, it must be right, obviously!

And then there is, of course, the anti-semitism, but I suspect that the western sources of anti-israel rhetoric are working off of different biases than racial/religious prejudice, with a healthy dose of groupthink.

In other words, they aren't malevolent, they just don't know what the hell they're babbling about.

Yes, it is all anonymous accusations.

My Lebanese friends who had to abandon their vehicle and run into the ditch because the IDF was shooting at anything that moved told me quite a different story. Why would they lie to me about something like that?

Because I know them personally, I believe their words.

The pictures of apartment buildings and high-rises in Beirut and other Lebanese cities that were flatenned during the war is also testament to the IDF's tactics of "force projection"

Again, for the sheer amount of -guided- ordnance fired and the thousands of civilian buildings leveled in Lebanon, the IDF had tens of thousands of troops -still- bogged down in small unit actions that didn't make it terribly far into Lebanon despite several weeks of concerted effort. If you want to call that a "victorious army" then by all means, be my guest!

So what does that tell us? It tells us that most of the bombs dropped by the IDF didn't kill many Hezbollah members or damage their capacity very badly. If it -did-, then who the heck was fighting the IDF in the field? Remember that Hezbollah at the time only had a few thousand actual combatants that were outnumbered 10 to 1 in the field to begin with.

So, if most of the bombs dropped by the IDF didn't seriously impact Hezbollah, then what, praytel, could the reason be for that? Keep in mind that they pulled out all stops to take Al-Menar off the air, this failed. They pulled out all the stops to kill command and control, but this too failed. Despite all their talk of taking out launch sites and depots 'hidden' in civilian buildings they were unable to create the conditions in the rear that had any appreciable impact on the actual front in the field. So why, could the IDF bombing, for the sheer amount of bombs dropped, have been so incredibly inefectual?

1) The IDF had the wrong intelligence.

2) The IDF didn't know where Hezbollah really was, and when the army got bogged down at the front they stepped up bombing of urban areas in order to prompt the population to 'turn' against Hezbollah.

Yes, truly the most humane army in the world!

You haven't told us the story, just that you believe it.

I was very much in two minds as to weather to quote the whole sentance or not.  I didn't because it was pointless. 

Without questioning the tactics how can anybody tell if those tactics have a better track record?

It requires the questioning to 'prove' that the tactics are/were the best the in world.

But according to what you wrote the shere questioning of the tactics is anti-semetic even if the result would be 'these tactics are the best in the world'.

The comment positing that the tactics of the IDF should be questioned or examined was made in the context of a discussion of unconfirmed, unattributed accusations of targeting civilians and using civilians as human shields.  The very comment itself is predicated on and in response to the assumption that the IDF is guilty of excessive disregard for civilians.  If there is no assumption that the IDF is using civilian-targeting tactics, what, exactly, needs to be 'questioned?'  Leauki is more than happy for the IDF's tactics to be examined and believes they will stand up to scrutiny.  It's not anti-semitic to examine the IDF's tactics, it's anti-semitic to assume they are deficient without evidence.

Technically, no, it's just stupid. It's only antisemitic if the inspiration was the jewishness of the accused. Labelling it antisemitic just devalues the word. Barring evidence of racist intent, I'm content with "dimwits" instead of "malevolent dimwits".

I give you the 'technically' - Leauki's point was that there was no reason to accept that they needed to be 'questioned' except that the IDF is Jewish.  At least I think so.  I'm sure he'll speak for himself.

Don't underestimate humanities capacity to find excuses to be stupid. I think that the reason that the IDF gets this kind of ciriticism is a longstanding feedback cycle of "well, people have accused them of this in the past, so it must be true!". The degree of truth of the allegations is, unfortunately, completely irrelevant to that kind of reasoning, which is only interested in superficial gut feelings. Israels enemies have done a brilliant job of smearing her reputation over the last half a century, and it's become ingrained in public consciousness as a result.

So while I'd agree that the original accusations were probably anti-semitic in nature, the majority of them today are not. It's got more to do with people not turning a critical eye to what they're told, and subscribing to blatant groupthink.

Ultimately, that's worse for Israel then mere anti-semitism. Not only are they up against an army of bigots, but also against the inertia of half a century of well meaning individuals buying into a smear campaign combined with the overwhelming force of human stupidity... and frankly, trying to deflect human stupidity is probably an unwinnable battle.