Re: Amnesty International Report "Operation Cast Lead" - 22 days of death and destruc
Point 1: Jimmy Carter is an idiot. You did pay some attention to his term as president? He obviously has NO concept of the use of military power......that's why Americans spent 444 days of his presidency in captivity in Iran, and were released the DAY Ronnie Reagan was sworn in. He should have stuck to carpentry.
Point 2: The Hamas killed by Israel were in the process of digging tunnels into Israel....in other words, the Israelis intervened into an attack. I know, I know, those damned Jews just don't line up for the slaughter like they used to.........but look, it gives you SO much to whine about.
Point 3: Considering the Hamas killed were militants on assignment, Hamas could have simply complained and not upped the firing of missiles....they were looking for a fight....a mistake with Israel.....and rightfully so.
Regarding Point 1: I disagree with your appraisal of Carter. He negotiated a middle east peace deal between Egypt and Israel and never started any wars. He has friends throughout the middle east and was partly responsible for kickstarting the events which led to the June 2008 Gaza/Israel ceasefire agreement. Carter is an obvious force for peace in this conflict and all sides consider him an honest broker.
The Carter center publishes some excellent reports! This one for example:
http://www.cartercenter.org/resourc...ement_and_fatalities_report FINAL 1 22 09.pdf
Its mostly factual, but you'd be hard pressed to find many of these facts all pulled together in one short three page document.
Regarding point 2 - The IDF never offered any proof backing up this claim. Hamas claims it was a defensive bunker. I don't trust either side's claims. Normally during a ceasefire, one side can't send commando into the other territory to blow things up and kill people. Regardless of the cause, must people would consider a ceasefire dead at that point. The fact that Israel is so adamant that their commado raid wan't really a ceasefire violation despite the requirement to twist logic in impossible ways, indicates to me the Israelis are lying.
Regarding point 3. Wow, not only do you not consider a commando raid into Gaza to kill people and blow stuff up not to be a ceasefire violation, you don't even consider it to be an escalation, unlike the resulting barrage of missiles fired from Gaza in response. Can you give me a definition of a ceasefire which would include killing people because they were "on assignment". Can you define it in such a way that Israel can kill people on assignment, but their adversaries can't fire missiles back in response. Because if I understand your definition of cease fire, it doesn't seem to include both sides cessation of firing.
