I don't get it. Israel has strived very hard to appease the terrorists. They evacuated Gaza with much internal protest. They set out to evacuate the West Bank to a bunch more internal protest. Both pieces were theirs by any acceptable 'right of conquest.' Our societies have been honoring the right of conquest premise for a millenia or more. If nothing else they should know by now that appeasement does not work and never will, especially when dealing with madmen. The shade of Chamberlin could have told them that. As I see it the Muslims don't want peace and will commit any atrocity to guarantee an Israely reaction so that they can play the media like a swinette. AND it works. The predominant babble coming from the media and many governments is anti-Israel. All this for a nation and a culture that merely asks; Leave us alone.

The Strange Morality of Kenneth Roth
By P. David Hornik
August 4, 2006

There were two kinds of people who reacted with instant condemnation to the news of Israel’s strike on the building at Qana. One kind consisted of Arabs and Muslims who grew up in authoritarian countries or social frameworks and mostly had been indoctrinated in hatred of Israel and Jews. The other kind consisted of people who grew up in free and tolerant frameworks in democratic countries and supposedly absorbed ideals regarding fairness and evidence.

Notable in the second category of reflexive Israel-bashers is Kenneth Roth, whose organization Human Rights Watch posted on its website a statement called “Israel Responsible for Qana Attack: Indiscriminate Bombing in Lebanon a War Crime.” According to his staff biography, Roth, who has been executive director of Human Rights Watch since 1993, “was drawn to the human rights cause in part by his father’s experience fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938.” Roth is a graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, and served, among other things, as a federal prosecutor for the Iran-Contra investigation.
But in the statement on Qana—posted already on July 30, the same day as the incident—the experienced lawman’s website did not hesitate to proclaim that: “Responsibility for the Israeli airstrikes that killed at least 54 [later revised by Human Rights Watch to 28] civilians sheltering in a home in the Lebanese village of Qana rests squarely with the Israeli military. . . . It is the latest product of an indiscriminate bombing campaign that the Israel Defense Forces . . . have waged in Lebanon over the past 18 days. . . . ”



Roth himself is quoted: “Today’s strike on Qana . . . suggests that the Israeli military is treating southern Lebanon as a free-fire zone. The Israeli military seems to consider anyone left in the area a combatant who is fair game for attack. . . . Just because the Israeli military warned the civilians of Qana to leave does not give it carte blanche to blindly attack.”


The article goes on to proclaim: “Human Rights Watch researchers have been in Lebanon since the onset of the current hostilities and have documented dozens of cases in which Israeli forces have carried out indiscriminate attacks against civilians while in their homes or traveling on roads to flee the fighting.”



After a full page and a half in this vein, the article manages to eke out these two sentences: “Human Rights Watch has also documented Hezbollah’s deliberate and indiscriminate firing of Katyusha rockets into civilian areas in Israel, resulting in 18 civilian deaths to date. These serious violations of international humanitarian law are also war crimes.”



But—not to keep the spotlight in the wrong direction for more than a moment—the article ends with Roth declaring: “War crimes by one party to a conflict never justify war crimes by another.”



This disproportionate interest in Israel is of course not new to Kenneth Roth and Human Rights Watch. Israeli professor Gerald Steinberg notes:



As a detailed NGO Monitory study has shown, between 2001 and 2004, during the height of the terror attacks against Israel, HRW focused one-third of its entire Middle East effort on condemnations directed at Israel. This went far beyond legitimate criticism, and suggested an obsession. Far more pages, reports, press conferences, letters, films, and photography-exhibits sponsored by HRW were devoted to allegations against Israel than to the slaughter taking place in Sudan, or the Palestinian terror campaign [itself].



And just lately, Roth was involved in an exchange with Israeli law professor Avi Bell and the editors of the New York Sun in that newspaper’s pages. In his July 31 letter to the Sun responding to Bell’s July 25 article there, Roth asserted: “An eye for an eye—or more accurately in this case twenty eyes for an eye—may have been the morality of some more primitive moment.”



The Sun replied that same day in an editorial:



Mr. Roth concludes his letter with a slur on the Jewish religion itself that is breathtaking in its ignorance. . . . To suggest that Judaism is a ‘primitive’ religion incompatible with contemporary morality is to engage in supersessionism, the de-legitimization of Judaism, the basis of much anti-Semitism.”

And in Bell’s response, also that day, he noted:

nearly all HRW documents released since the onset of fighting on July 12 . . . focus their very partisan criticisms on Israel. HRW’s and Mr. Roth’s near-silence on Hezbollah’s, Lebanon’s, Syria’s and Iran’s crimes and obsessive accusations about Israel even in the absence of evidence of crimes speak volumes about Mr. Roth’s and his organization’s patently political, non-legal and nonobjective agenda.”

The recent mounting evidence that the whole Qana incident was staged by Hezbollah casts an even more glaring light on Kenneth Roth and his outfit’s reflexive bias. After the initial reports of the incident on Sunday, any reasonably informed, fair observer could have noted that:

* Suspiciously, it was precisely at Qana ten years ago that an Israeli airstrike that killed a large number of civilians ended up causing Israel to call off its offensive against Hezbollah.

* Hezbollah in the current situation was hurting, losing men and weaponry to Israel’s ongoing campaign amid talk of an international force that would seek to keep it disarmed.

* Hezbollah is an Islamic terrorist organization that functions entirely outside the framework of morality—or at least of Western morality.

Such realities would have led any levelheaded person—at the very least—to withhold judgment after the initial reports of the airstrike and wait till more facts came in and the various versions were sorted out.

But that would have been far too much objectivity for Kenneth Roth, who in his zest to pillory Israel at every turn is little more than an ally of the barbarians.

you would have made a good nazi sard!!!!!!!!

wipe israel off the map!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sard,
I think the reason you "don't get it" is that you are looking at things differently from the get-go. You are assuming Israel's right to exist. Suppose you thought that the creation of Israel was artificial and non-justified.?. Would you still honor the "right of conquest" if you felt Israel should not be there in the first place?
There are obviously a great many people of all persuasions who have not yet been convinced that Israel has any right at all to exist. I'm sure you know that. Doesn't that explain everything?

I would make good at whatever I address, Lupo. It's my nature. If I thought you knew what "nazi" meant I might be irritated. But since your college education went beyond your capacity it must have cleared some fuses. And I won't hold that against you. You can't help it.
I do wonder tho. Do you read the posts or do you just knee-jerk a response?

Not really Moe. The people I refer to when I say, I don't get it, are to folks of Western Civilization if you can call it that. I know where the Sons of Abraham's slave are coming from. I also know that the People of the Covenant came out of the wilderness and were pointed to what we now call Palestine. They became Palestinians just like the Arabs that lived there too. The Diaspora effectively spread them all over the planet. In recent times many have managed to go home to Palestine.
Next year in Jerusalem they said for 2000 years. Well it's next year and the Arabs need to find a concordat with the Israelis that will let them live together.
You hear all the moans and groans about bigotry, racism, and religious persecution and yet anti-semitism is obviously alive and well here in the modern civilized Western society. There is no other name for it, bigotry, and some, like Lupo wallow in it.

Should we maybe make bigotry a crime then?

you dont even know what anti-semitism means sard!!!!!!!! look it up and you will see that it is YOU.............. because less than 10% of semites were jewish and the majority were arab........doesnt that make you and israel and the US federal govt. the most anti-semitic people on earth?

should we americans along with all native americans be forced off of our land at gunpoint and a following plan of extermination, to allow kennywick man or some other culture that has not lived here for 2000 years to come back and own everything??????............if not then why did it make sense to do that to others?

why is it that albert einstein was against the creation of israel???? was he a bigot too?

ps sard- many of my familly have the last name hornstein-------- you know nothing about me as usual......time for your jello old man

The Arab states chose to reject the 1947 UN Partition Plan that created both an Arab State and a Jewish state with the region that is now Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. And instead of petitioning the UN for a different plan, instead of proposing changes that would be acceptable, they chose to attack the newly founded state. They lost that war.


They started it, they lost it. I feel little sympathy for the Arab states as political entities, I feel sorry for the poverty stricken, misguided arabs that get shelled because they choose to support militant terrorism. Or maybe I don't feel too sorry.

lol, Hornstein? Does that mean to drink your mead from a horn. I always thought a boot of beer was a rite of passage for a fine Tuetonic youth.
Don't care a lot for jello. I like Tapioca pudding tho.
Einstein was a great outside the box thinker and mathematician. He couldn't balance his own checkbook tho. Had to have his secretary take of that matter. Whether he wanted the Zionist state or not, I couldn't say. I do suspect if he were around today he would know who to fight.
I'm so glad you are around and frisky Lupo. Your preferred posture validates many of the things I learned in Psych.