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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

I find it very strange that people criticize Israel for assassinating terrorist, but say nothing about Obama's kill list or drone strikes.

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Erm, I haven't seen this at all. In fact, most of the people I know who are most critical of Israel are also critical of Obama's foreign policy (though most begrudgingly voted for him anyways, because, y'know, Romney).

> though most begrudgingly voted for him anyways

Is there anyone in Israel running for office on the platform of "let's not assassinate terrorists"? Are these people under the illusion that they would vote for such a person, or abstain from voting if no such candidate presented themselves?

Once you vote for an assassin in your country, you lose the moral authority to denounce another country's assassinations. Romney or not.

So they wouldn't truly be critical of him then.

Most people I know who tend to criticize Israel, tend to also believe that America's self-assigned world wide license to kill is an atrocity.

Interesting, how people hold the world's only Jewish state to a different moral standard than every other country. There's a word for that.

I'm sure there's people who do this, but I doubt there are many of them in this thread. The fact of the matter is that both the Israelis and the Palestinians consistently commit horrible crimes, in the name of some perceived God-declared right to a strip of desert.

On individual cases, you can't blame Israel for defending against hand-made rockets flying over the Gaza strip border. Similarly, you can't blame your average Palestinian for joining the resistance after an Isreali army bulldozered his village to make place for Israeli houses and theatres.

Both sides, in many ways, are equally bad. The main difference is that Israel can choose to stop colonizing, can choose to give Palestinians basic human rights to allow some sort of economy to develop. The only thing Palestinians can choose to do is to stop fighting. There's a difference here.

I don't see how all of that has anything to do with Israel being a Jewish state, except of course that declaring a single-religion state, in general, is asking for trouble.

EDIT: In a different set of comments here, it was pointed out to me that Isreal is in fact a "surprisingly secular state". I tend to believe that. So in that case, you can scratch my last line. In exchange, we all stop calling Israel a Jewish state.

> I don't see how all of that has anything to do with Israel being a Jewish state, except of course that declaring a single-religion state, in general, is asking for trouble.

Israel isn't a state for Judaism, it's simply a state for Jewish people. The set of Jewish people is not equal to the set of people who practice Judaism.

You know, many people don't know that Jews form an ethnic group, not just a religion. There is a surprising lack of knowledge about our, admittedly small, but still widespread and supposedly familiar group of people.

Right, good point. I see I've been mixing those up. So it's a single-race state? Or not that, either? (not intended in any offensive way - I'm just trying to understand what you're saying)

Ethnicity would be a better word than race, I suppose. Or nationality.

I'm not going to say Israel is a font of ethical behavior or that your analysis is, in broad strokes, wrong, but there are a few facts that should get clarified.

First, the settlers aren't settling in Gaza, they're settling in the West Bank. This makes the idea of rockets-as-retribution a bit strange, since relations with the West Bank are decent and they obviously undergo a lot more daily molestation than Gazans do since Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_statistics_for_Israe...

Also, Israel is in no sense a single religion state. There is complete freedom of religion in Israel. There is an "official" orthodox Judaism there which sadly has the authority to determine if you get a real Jewish wedding among other things, but there are Muslim and Christian Israelis among everything else, and the stripe of ones Judaism is not relevant to immigration.

No but you can think of Gaza as a giant prison camp and the rockets as the equivalent of throwing rocks over the wall

Not really. Rockets are rockets. You'd be an imbecile to think you could fire nearly a thousand into the country across the border without experiencing military repercussions. If you live in one of the densest places on earth, you're not just a moron, you're also endangering hundreds of innocent bystanders by doing it. If you've seen the results of this antagonism in the past and you do it anyway, you're maliciously insane. If you launch your rockets from your apartment building, your kid's school, you must know what's going to happen as a result. Israel hasn't summarily executed six people in the street for being "Palestinian conspirators" during this mess, but Hamas has. Ten percent of rockets fired by Gazans land in Gaza, destroying their own buildings, infrastructure and killing their own people.

Who's holding the gate closed to this giant prison camp? Nobody, as it turns out, except Gaza itself. Look at questions 14 and 15 on this poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion:

http://www.pcpo.ps/polls/poll171.htm

80% of Palestinians won't give up on right of return, and they won't accept a cash buyout either. The former is as likely as America peacably returning the land to the Native Americans. The latter is an actual possibility, but what's the point if they don't want it. The Palestinian Authority doesn't want a large migration rate out, because it hurts their appeal for statehood and the argument for right of return. Hamas is responsible for turning Gaza into a prison camp, not Israel. Compare to the situation in the West Bank, where you could legitimately say there is too much Israeli interference, yet there is peace. If Gaza wants peace, they should show Hamas the door and elect Fatah. It worked for one half.

Israel has a fundamental responsibility to its citizens to guarantee their safety, and that responsibility has precedence over protecting the lives of innocent bystanders living in an enemy territory surrounded by agents who are actively attacking them. As far as this particular Gaza expedition goes, their hands are clean. This one's on Gaza.

different in that Israel is allowed to do things we'd never accept from any other nation?

"I find it very strange that people criticize Israel for assassinating terrorist, but say nothing about Obama's kill list or drone strikes."

You should try asking them how they feel about this instead of claiming hypocrisy.

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