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Israelis Sue Government For Laser Cannons
An anonymous reader writes "Residents of a southern Israeli town want a real-life laser cannon to protect them against Palestinian rocket attacks. And they're suing the national government, for failing to provide the ray gun defense.
The U.S.-Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser project was widely considered to be the most successful energy weapon ever built. But the toxic chemicals needed to generate THEL's megawatts of power made the thing a logistical nightmare. It was scrapped. Now, the residents of Sderot want it back. And they're taking Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to court to make it happen."
Can we all please make an effort to keep the comments on track, and not diverge into a "Israelis/Jews are evil" fest?
The residents of Sderot have every right to expect their government to protect them and if the government is refusing to take any preventative action, while over 7,000 rockets have fallen on the town, then suing the government seems a very reasonable action.
Please note that they're not strapping bombs to themselves and running into cafes or government buildings - they're taking a legal action in a desperate request for help.
To pre-empt the comments that will follow, it's not relevant to point out Israeli action in Gaza and get into a debate over whether it's justified or not - this topic is about residents of Sderot taking completely non-violent, legal action, over repeated aggressive and violent attacks from a neighbouring region.
If only everyone in the region sought such a solution, instead of violence meets violence.
...is it a viable country?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The town in question is Sderot, where most inhabitants are of North African (especially Moroccan) origins. Those tend to be not so hell-bent on Zionism as European Jews because they weren't persecuted as much. I like to think that the government of a country founded on Zionism and so proud of it, would be slightly biased towards the inhabitants of Sderot.
Also, has anyone of you ever seen the damage katyushas make? Calling those things rockets or spending money to intercept them is ludicrous.
Res publica non dominetur
They're not going to just cry and go running home after a FREAKING laser attack. Oh no. You can bet that handfuls of Qassam missiles will rain down on a pretty regular basis. What Israel needs is a good read of Dr. Suse's Butter Battle Book and have a sudden outbreak of common sense. Palestine needs to grow the hell up and stop acting like an angry child too.
Probably not, seeing as how the laser has been proposed as a strictly defensive weapon, to shoot down the rockets/missiles that are ALREADY raining down on a 'pretty regular basis'. Matter of fact, the citizens of the town could suddenly decide to start lobbing explosives back the other way and the attacks wouldn't increase significantly, as Palestine is already throwing as much as they can at them.
I don't read AC A human right
These centuries old disputes about whose pretend friend is actually real are definitely worth spending all these countless millions of dollars on and losing all these lives over.
Please don't send a Word document when a text file will do the job.
the point may sink in that firing such a missile is equivalent to firing on your own people.
Uh, you do realise that the Islamists are already quite happy to blow themselves up in order to make a political point?
You've fallen into the common trap of projecting your own morals and rational thought, onto people brainwashed their entire lives to hate Jews and want to kill them. Meanwhile, after tens of billions of dollars in 'aid' from the US, EU and even Israel, the only significant thing the Palestinian society produces, is terrorism.
Intent matters.
The Palestinians try and kill as many babies, women, children and non-combatant civilians as possible. When it happens, they celebrate, just as they did on 9/11 and just as they did last week.
The Israelis do not try and kill non-combatants, however their job is made harder because the rockets are fired from the middle of townships, as Hamas knows dead Palestinian kids make for good propaganda. Certainly no Israeli celebrates when it happens. That's the difference and it's important.
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Actually there are lots of news incidents about Sihks. At least here in Canada.
Sikhs make the news way more than "jews" but way less than "israel"
Do you have a problem with that?
The part where "terrorist" is defined as "whoever we killed"?
The Palestinians try and kill as many babies, women, children and non-combatant civilians as possible.
That's what they do, not what they say they do. If you ask Hamas, they'll tell you that they're shooting at a military base near Sderot but - oy vey gevult - they don't have any guided missiles like Israel does, hashem knows where their rockets will land. Who cares if it hits Sderot citizens, all citizens of Israel are terrorists anyway by Hamas's definition.
Then the Israelis get mad and fire back. They use guided munitions. They hit exactly where they want to hit. "want" is they key word here. They know that the rocket launching teams are hiding out amidst civilians. They have a choice: fire back at the precise location, possibly killing lots of innocent bystanders, or look weak because they didn't retaliate to each and every provocation. They choose to murder terrorists and anyone in the vicinity because they think the image of a merciless butcher is a better reputation to have than a touchy-feely nice country that's only defending itself. Besides, all citizens of Gaza are terrorists or terrorist sympathisers anyway.
It's this kind of fucked up thinking on both sides that mean a permanent state of warfare until one side is completely and utterly wiped out. And my money's not on the Arabs.
There are a lot of people in the world who believe that unarmed Israeli civilians somehow deserve to be shelled.
Those same people frequently believe that armed rebel terrorists firing the rockets at them do not deserve to be shot back at by the Israeli military.
I don't understand it myself, but I'll tell you when I do.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The tit-for-tat Palestinian/Israeli thing is really getting old. I see this behavior in my 10 year-old students.
Islamic fundi's would NOT stop harassing Israel even if Israel did nothing in return. These are people who whine about fights that happened thousands of years ago and threaten death over Mohamed cartoons. Zealots don't stop.
I agree Israel's attitude doesn't help, but Islamic fundi's run Gaza far more than Zionist fundi's run Israel.
Table-ized A.I.
Depends what you mean. They have more Jews in the news than Sikhs, but more "Sikh"-topic stories than "Jew"-topic stories. This is because Jews are more normalised in Canadian society than Sikhs and Canadian media is obsessed with reporting on the "broad strata" of Canadian "communities", not that people actually care what the nature of God is now that new immigrants have come in with The Truth(c) (did you know God doesn't want you to wear a motorcycle helmet anymore? Go figure). How many "Protestant" news stories do you see? The only one really going on lately has been the Anglican church gay marriage thing. Probably more Sikh stories than Protestant stories, yet I think Protestants still form a community of some size in Canada.
There are a number of games that you can play where the optimal result requires perfect cooperation between the different teams/players, but where individual greediness can lead to a significant individual gain. That individual gain of course comes at the expense of all other players.
There is a variant of this type of game that disallows communication between teams. It's been shown that with that setup, there is exactly one way to play:
1st round: no information is available, so assume maximal cooperation from all other teams, and play your turn accordingly.
2nd round: Reciprocate the other teams' play: if they played greedy, play greedy. If they played nice, play nice.
3rd round: repeat approach from round 2 until the end.
The logic behind this is that greedy players will only play nice when they see the exact consequences of their actions imposed on themselves, and when they see that playing nice is rewarded.
Applied to the Israel/Palestine conflict, it could mean that the appropriate response to random rocket launches is an immediate retaliatory strike with equal destructive power, aimed at the source of the rockets. On the other hand, the appropriate response to suicide bombers is a little more fuzzy. Send in robot-bombers? Drop a bomb in a random place? Also, it is unclear what the positive feedback for no rocket launches or suicide bombers would be. Resume normal conditions? Stay put? Unlock frozen support funds for hamas?
I definitely think though that Palestinians in general have to understand that rockets being launched from their territory means that rockets will be launched against them in general as well. It'd be difficult to implement, as it's a completely different approach to dealing with rocket attacks and suicide bombers: personal responsibility and punishment is out, collective punishment is in. Not to mention that a lot of the current preventive measures would have to go out the window as well.
I doubt that anybody in Israel has the courage to experiment with that.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
A very, very important point that cannot be overemphasized must be made here: The terrorists actually want innocent Palestinians to get killed when Israel fights back. Yes, this is absolutely true. As has been documented time and again, they fire their rockets from right next to a school, or a mosque, or a home where there are many children. If Israel fights back, innocent people are sure to get killed. The terrorists want their neighbors to get killed because it serves their cause. Innocent people get killed, and there is a worldwide uproar against Israel. That's where you get statements like, "120 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military." Yes, it is a factual statement numerically, but you forgot to mention that most were terrorists. Some innocent bystanders were killed too. That is very unfortunate, and it's a situation the Israelis try very hard to avoid. It happens. It's the unfortunate result of being at war. Innocent Israelis are getting killed all the time, too. Don't forget that.
But let's talk about innocent Palestinians for a moment. Suppose someone is shooing at a police officer. The police officer, in self defense, shoots back. Unfortunately, an innocent bystander gets killed. Who's fault is it? It is legally and morally the fault of the criminal, NOT the police officer. Had the criminal not initiated the shooting, none of the following events would have taken place. Since it was the criminal who forced the police officer to shoot, it is entirely the criminal's responsibility and fault that someone got killed. Does this prevent the police officer from having nightmares about this for the rest of his life? No. And such is the case with Israel. The terrorists in Gaza fire rockets. Israel fights back. Some innocent people get killed on both sides. Israelis feel terrible when this happens. But it's not Israel's fault. Israel is fighting in self defense. The terrorists against whom they fight are fighting to get innocent people killed. There is a huge difference. There is no moral, ethical, or legal equivalence between Israel's accidental killing of innocent Palestinians and the terrorists' deliberate killing of both Palestinians and Israelis. When people get killed in this conflict, it is entirely the terrorists' fault, not Israel's, not America's, not the UN's, not George Bush's, not even CmdrTaco's.
1) Abandon further settlement development. Right now, Abbas won't even negotiate with them because they are taking more land from Palestinains for settlements.
..., get elected PM of Israel. Yes, the world has gone mad.
2) Begin negotiating with Haniya. Like it or not, he is the fairly elected representative of the Palestinian Authority. The problem is that, as you point out, Hamas sees its goal as the destruction of Israel, but Haniya has shown that he is more moderate than that, and negotiation is the only way to change the propaganda. Note that good thing can grow in questionable ground-- Shamir was an old wannabe Nazi* and yet he contributed greatly to the peace process. Sharon was a convicted war criminal** and yet his administration began the abandonment of large sections of settlement blocks, paving a possible road to peace. If we judged everyone by the past, Israel's leadership would be disqualified for past affiliations/war crimes/etc.
* This is not meant to invoke Godwin's law. Shamir was a top leader during WWII of a group which was fighting for Israeli independance against the UK. This group (ELHI, aka the Stern Gang) was a terrorist organization which openly idolized the Nazis, celebrated Nazi field victories praised the rounding up of the Jews by the Nazis (on the basis that this way at least they were effectively self-governing), and even in 1942 attempted to form a military alliance with Hitler. Funny-- celebrate Nazi victories, try to enter into an alliance with Hitler,
** Sharon was convicted of an Israeli military tribunal of being in part responsible for the massacres in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebannon in the 1980's.
My own suspicion is that we are going to see yet another "Operation Defensive Shield" which will force the government to once again consider abandoning settlement blocks. No, Israeli politics is far from rational. It would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. In the end, though, the civilians on both sides are the losers.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
There are a lot of people in the world who believe that unarmed Israeli civilians somehow deserve to be shelled.
And there are just as many idiots that believe that unarmed Palestinians deserve to be shelled. A Jewish soldier shoots and kills a few Muslims boys playing football so a Muslim soldier (we call them terrorists because we don't like Muslims) fires a rocket at a Jewish village so the Jewish army send in a helicopter to blow up a Muslim market and the Muslims go and blow up a Jewish market...
and the plebs take sides. Why can't people see that until we stop killing each other there will never be peace. The people in power, both Jewish and Muslim, do not want peace. They are not stupid. They make their money from the fighting. All the shouts of "He started it" just sound like 10 year old boys fighting in the playground. They are both killing each others children and the fighting will not stop until those in power give peace a chance.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Do you take the same attitude to WWII?
When people's countries are occupied by others who believe they have some ancient right to lebensraum, you can't expect to be able to scold both sides and tell them to play nicely. This is life, not the playground.
Lawyers with frickin' lasers attached to their heads?
That would be very scary.
Okay, I'll bite. You've provided one example. Let's say the story is entirely as you tell it. Can you now refer me to the video of Israelis dancing in the streets, handing out sweets? Or perhaps the Israeli streets named after the shooter?
No, I didn't think so.
If Palestinian children are being hit by gunfire, perhaps Palestinian gunmen shouldn't be firing from near children.
It happens all the time in Israel and abroad. Islamists know dead children and crying mothers are good shields when alive and good propaganda when dead.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/05/22/lebanon-battles-070522.html
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/06/index.html
http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2007/03/iraqi_jihadists.php
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I really hate this topic. But I feel obligated to respond to it every time.
Nobody, for some reason, can admit that BOTH are wrong, and probably share equal blame in the matter. The Israelis invades already occupied land and expects them to hold the Israelis sovereign because some ancient book says so, of course the Palestinians fought back. In this Israel is wrong. The Palestinians purposely targetting civilians is ALSO wrong. The Israelis near genocidal clamp down on said Palestinians is ALSO wrong. And so it goes.
My problem with this is when someone has the balls to criticize Israel they get branded either pro-Palestinian, or worse, anti-Semitic. To entertain a probable straw-man, don't say that EVERYONE does this, you rarely hear of the Israeli terrorists, or the Palestinian freedom fighters, these terms are just as valid this way, as the way they are commonly used thanks to the brutal tactics on BOTH sides. And yes, both sides can be looked on with sypathetic rhetoric, the Israelis are fighting for their existence, and the Palestinians are fighting against tyranny. Fine... To me this is an indicator that siding with one faction is impossible, since both are semi-justified, and semi-evil.
Neither side wants compromise, so bloodshed they shall get, and probably deserve.
The only point of policy I can come down on is that the U.S. has no right to assist either side. Either way we are left morally tainted and bloodied. This is especially true today when our support of Israel is a major contributing factor to the hatred of the West. I'd support which ever side decided to deal with things in accord with international law, and humanistic values, and for the time being it looks like neither even want to come close to this.
The only fair (albeit now dated) version of this conflict I've seen way David K. Shipler's Arab And Jew. Both sides are indoctrinating each other towards pure hatred and violence, there will never be a valid conversation on this until that stops.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
"so a Muslim soldier (we call them terrorists because we don't like Muslims)"
No, they are called terrorists since they are not legal combatants, and their targets are explicitly civilians. A legal combatant is not allowed to conceal his identity as such prior to an attack.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
"It was given to them by the Allied forces in recompense for what was done to them"
If that was true, they'd deserve to have it taken away again as punishment for doing exactly the same to the Palestinians ever since. These people are not nice, clean-shaven pseudo-American suburbanites under inexplicable attack from nasty, bearded Arabs, as the US media would have you believe. They're heavily armed military colonists.
How people can have more sympathy for people randomly shelling unarmed non-combatants than for their victims is something I really don't want to understand.
Wait, are you talking about the Israelis or the Palestinians there? Both?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
..and their targets are explicitly civilians...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive
bickerdyke
As a Jew I am outraged by this. The so-called Zionists don't like to hear this, but they are doing to the Palestinians exactly what the Nazis did to us. And there are a lot of Jews who agree with me -- don't let AIPAC fool you.
Of course the Palestinians retaliate. What do you expect them to do when their children, their brothers, their sisters, their cousins, their uncles and aunts, their fathers and mothers are killed?
I'm posting as AC because when I've protested these atrocities before, I've gotten threatening phone calls at home from thugs who looked me up ("we know where you live"). But when it's time for me to speak out in public, they can't intimidate me.
It is encouraging to me that most of the posters on Slashdot, who include a fair sampling of intelligent people, don't fall for this Israeli (and U.S.) propaganda bullshit.
I'm also glad to see a lot of insight into the fact that you can't rule the world with military superiority. That didn't work for Bush in Iraq and it won't work for the Israelis.
I'm afraid that if the Israelis continue in their arrogance, the Palestinians are finally going to come up with a weapon that the Israelis won't be able to defend against. I won't be happy to see that, but they're bringing it on themselves.
Well, if you're in Israel you apparently can sue. In the USA the Second Amendment allows you to own your own laser cannon but the government is not required to buy one for you.
With the added irony that if the Israelis do deploy these it'll most likely be the US paying the bill.
Well because i am an Estonian i do take the same attitude to WWII. First being occupied by Russia then Germany and then again by Russians for 50 years. Both powers were horrible, Germans maybe a bit less because the didnt stay as long as Russians.
When we stole Texas from the Mexicans, we did it hard and fast and we held it on our own. The residents evicted from the land Israel now occupies seem to be a bit more determined than the Mexicans!
Blar.
Your right on the history, but you can see how it can be interpreted either way
It would take a great amount of spin for people to get this wrong and in my view this is precisely what is going on in media centers around the world (even in the US and Canada). Anyone who spends more than 30 minutes reading up on the history of the middle-east should know better. The problem is that people only know what they watch on TV (few people open books or research stories in depth online). The problem with news agencies is that they:
1) Present very short sniplets with no historical context.
2) Side with the perceived underdog, regardless of their past actions.
3) Apply double standards to Israel and other countries all over the world.
Let me give you a specific example of what I mean.
1) They only cover terrorist attacks in Israel. Rarely (if ever) do they cover anything positive in Israel. This is precisely why people think you're insane if you say you're planning to move to Israel or vacation there. Everyone thinks is a constant war-zone, which it is not.
2) The real struggle is between all of the Arab countries and Israel, not the Palestinians versus Israel, yet the media never presents it in this light. Let's be honest here: everything that goes wrong in the UN happens because of the automatic majority of middle-east tyrants hold there. All the money, weapons and political pressure which Palestinian terrorist groups come directly from Arab countries. If this was a simple dispute between Palestinians and Israelis it would have been over decades ago. Secondly, the media seems to ignore the past actions of the Palestinians. Take for example Mr. moderate Abbas and the great Arafat before him. In both cases these people have repeatedly denied the Holocaust and called for Israel's destruction through terrorism but the media refused to carry this story. So these people carry one saying one thing in English and a totally different thing in Arabic. You can't report this story honestly unless you report on their full history. You can't claim Abbas is a moderate when he repeatedly exalts "the sacrifice of martyrs". When that psycho gunned down children in Jerusalem last week Abbas glorified his actions on official PA television. You can bet this story never made it to North American TV, because it doesn't fit nicely into the dumbed-down story they're trying to sell you.
3) When Hezbollah shelled Israeli civilians, killed some soldiers and kidnapped others, Israel replied by declaring war on them. The UN and NGOs immediately blamed Israel for sparking a war and even the UN cautioned Israel not to do anything rash. The same story repeated when Gaza shelled Sderot civilians with over 7000 missiles over the past couple of years and Israel finally decided to respond. We keep on hearing the words "disproportionate response" coming out of people's mouths. In my view, a "proportionate" response would be for Israel to shell Gaza indiscriminately and pass out candies in the streets with civilians get hurt or die. What Israel has been doing is sitting on its hands while its civilians get massacred. As far as I'm concerned anyone other country would have shelled the crap out of Gaza if it would have pulled this sort of thing on its own civilians and it's outrageous for them to ask Israel to show more restraint than they would.
A lot of bloodshed would be spared on both sides if Israel was allowed to kick the crap out of these terrorist groups, deport their people and make sure they never came back. The sooner all the extremists get kicked out, the sooner Palestinians moderates can take power and form a sovereign state. Israel wants this as much as anyone else. Can you begin to imagine how much everyone's economy would benefit from a true peace agreement in that region?
Your also right it is a holy war, but I don't think the term just pertains to the Muslims, why else would the future Israelis really want that land?
Israel has tried, repeatedly, to
A. As the GP posted, people were not kicked out in 1948. Virtually all of the peoples chose to leave and became refugees. Some of it was due to wartime activity. A war, which, by the way, was started by those same people who were later complaining (The Jewish side accepted the peaceful UN division plan).
B. Millions of other refugees were created by WWII around that time, none of which remained refugees 30 years later. These Palestinian refugees are still considered refugees 60 years later! They should assimilate into whatever lands they live in, they are not refugees anymore.
C. Even if any wrong was done 60 years ago, the grandchildren of the refugees from 1948 are indeed "bad" to be shooting rockets at the grandchildren of the Jews from 1948, who were born to parents who were born there. Whatever happened 60 years ago is now irrelevant to who the lands belong to.
D. They are not really trying to "conquer back the lands", which would, if successful, require another holocaust, but are just trying to kill as many civilians as they can. They know they cannot conquer the lands or achieve anything but propaganda success with violence, and are indeed focusing on the propaganda side.
- will pick targets apparently at random
- targets with absolutely no military or strategic values are attacked with full force
- friendly civilian casualties are part of the battle plan
- always disguised as a civilian
- central command structures, guidelines and rules are flexible, nonexistent or a joke
Apart from "always disguised as a civilian" you have described both sides of this dispute. The true definition of 'terrorism' is about the use of fear as a weapon. To instil terror as a weapon. Both the Jews and the Muslims are doing that.
Israel was established by terrorist activity so the Jews are by definition terrorists. There is no dispute here, they were blowing up embassies etc. in what was Palestine. Now they continue to blow up and kill innocent people but with US backing so it is OK... The Muslims carry on retaliating as any normal person would. If you blow up my family I will do what I can to get revenge, just as any other person would. So as I said before, the killing will continue because both sides want it to.
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