Comment by quinnchr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quinnchr | Hacker News Reader

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"Ariel Sharon, who led the attack, later wrote in his diary that he had received orders to inflict heavy damage on the Arab Legion forces in Qibya: 'The orders were utterly clear: Qibya was to be an example for everyone'. Original documents of the time showed that Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve "maximal killing and damage to property", and post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting."

I'm not sure I would call an attack by IDF troops, ordered by the government, and executed by a man who would become the future prime minister not indicative of the government's mindset. Sure that was a long time ago, but you did claim "it has never carried out terror attacks specially targeted at civilians".

A civilian is someone who is not a member of any armed forces. The Iranian scientists assassinated were not part of the armed forces, they were civilian scientists working on a military project. Much like the thousands of American civilian scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. Furthermore, several family members of the Iranian scientists were wounded in the attacks, so whichever way you slice it they were attacks on innocent civilians. And by the way, MEK was considered a terrorist group by the US State Department at the time of the assassinations, it wasn't just Iran saying it.

So what if all of that is true? Maybe that means there is in fact a double standard, in that Israel is allowed to violate the NPT while engaging in the same behaviour as its neighbours.

if you are going to quote from the wiki page and from what Sharon said you can maybe add some other quotes from the same wiki such as: "I couldn't believe my ears. As I went back over each step of the operation, I began to understand what must have happened. For years Israeli reprisal raids had never succeeded in doing more than blowing up a few outlying buildings, if that. Expecting the same, some Arab families must have stayed in their houses rather than running away. In those big stone houses [...] some could easily have hidden in the cellars and back rooms, keeping quiet when the paratroopers went in to check and yell out a warning. The result was this tragedy that had happened."

And even in your own quote it said that "Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve" so if you want to have a blame game that the persona responsible.

Again from the same "Orders to inflict heavy damage on the Arab Legion" not to directly kill civilian indiscriminately.

"Civilian scientists working on a military project" - and that's make them a valid target, remember that weren't doing space exploration they were building nuclear weapons!

Innocent civilian die all the time, it's unfortunate and sad but true. But there is a difference between killing for the sole purpose of of killing them and when they are collateral damage - and when it happens Israel regrets that, and remember that Israel tries to minimize it as much as possible, no one is happy when that happens unlike their fellow neighbors.

The MEK has denied any involvement in the assassinations and the existence of any alliance with Israel, and as you said they are no longer on the terror list, it was even lifted in 2009 by the Council of the European Union and on 2012 by the US, MEK is different than what it was in the 70s. I can't say the same for Hamas or Hezbollah, both funded by Iran, with the sole purpose of destroying Israel.

Israel isn't violating the NPT because it didn't sign it. I would think that once there is no threat to the existence of Israel the need to be a nuclear power will be gone. Israel was pushed to that by the continued aggression of the Arabs in the region.

Ha, maybe you'd like to include the very next line from the wiki article:

"UN observers noted that they observed bodies near doorways, and bullet marks on the doors of demolished houses, and later concluded that residents may have been forced to stay in their homes due to heavy fire.[10]"

I get that Israel has their own narrative of events when it comes to Qibya, but if you would read the article, you'd see that it wasn't an isolated instance but the end result of several months of punitive raids by the IDF and civilians with the specific goal of targeting civillians. And yes those orders came from the top of the government: "Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon gave the order, in coordination with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion." The international consensus on what happened in Qibya is pretty clear.

"Over the year leading up to the raid, Israeli forces and civilians had conducted many punitive expeditions, causing destruction of infrastructure and crops and many civilian casualties against Palestinian villages, with Latrun, Falameh, Rantis, Qalqiliya, Khirbet al-Deir, Khirbet Rasm Nofal, Khirbet Beit Emin, Qatanna, Wadi Fukin, Idhna, and Surif being the most notable examples"

MEK and Israel can deny involvement all they want, and you're correct there's no way to prove what actually happened, but the US intelligence services seem pretty damn convinced: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/isr... And by they way, one of the scientists was gunned down while driving home with his wife and kid after picking them up from school. That doesn't seem like trying to minimize civilian casualties to me.

MEK is funded by Israel with the sole goal of destroying Iran. Maybe if there was no threat to the existence of Iran they wouldn't have needed to pursue a nuclear program.

You're right the NPT not violating it since they didn't sign it, doesn't mean that there's not a double standard in the way we treat Israel's nuclear program. It's pretty inarguable the Israel has specifically targeted innocent civilians and funded terrorist groups, both of which you gave as reasons as why Israel should be allowed to have a nuclear program without that same sort of scrutiny it's neighbours undergo.

I'm sorry but UN reports are meaningless, it's a corrupt spineless organization which takes things at face value. Helped hide terrorist in UN facilitates, rapes little girls, and is overly one sided due to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Punitive raids due to Palestinian raids, it's the chicken and the egg.

And to continue the next line from your quote "Meanwhile, Palestinian guerilla raids into Israel continued. Over a two-week period in late May and early June, four raids by Palestinian fedayeen killed 3 and wounded 6 people in Israel, at Beit Arif, Beit Nabala, Tirat Yehuda and Kfar Hess which, according to the UN, greatly concerned both the Israeli and Jordanian governments"

US intelligence services is known to leak misinformation, I don't know if Israel has involvement with MEK but it's pure speculation at this point. I don't remember Israel declaring the need and will to destroy another nation, have you seen the size of Israel and the size of Iran? I'd say the scale tips in their favor, so "threat to the existence of Iran" is BS. It's just fanatics wanting to remain in power by aligning the opposition with an enemy, age-old trick.

Minimizing civilian casualties doesn't mean zero casualties, that's called collateral damage, we don't know the operational decisions in regard to the assignation.

I'd argue that Israel is being held up to a much higher standard than the rest of the world, which arguably isn't fair considering the neighborhood and the people criticizing Israel.

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