El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:22 am
LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 9:00 am
If a >0 n of armed individuals in a crowd is justification for killing anyone in that crowd, well let the barrell bombs fly.
Policing is hard. ROE suck. That's life for non-murderous governments.
Personally, as a rule I just avoid crowds that look like they'll get unruly and would never put my kids in one. Retreat is the best solution. But then I'm not a Palestinian and I don't live in the Gaza Strip. I can say with some certainty that I have no idea what it's like.
I think it's not "some armed individuals gives authorization to shoot anyone" and more "some armed individuals means that they have to take the threat of violence seriously, because they don't know who in any crowd is armed". And as Paingod noted they are using non-lethal methods - tear gas, rubber bullets, etc. But of course, there's no perfect non-lethal method - the baby that died (that Rip was pretty callous about) was killed by tear gas. And it certainly doesn't help that the group organizing all of this (Hamas) affirmatively wants people to die, because that's what it needs out of all this.
Which is not to say that the IDF is handling this perfectly. Just from knowing how police / military operations often go in the United States, I assume that in all of this some IDF soldiers and commanders are making poor or callous choices in the use of force. But turning back large angry crowds of partially armed people (some of whom are willing or eager to die, and some of whom will try to kill you) without hurting anyone is not an easy thing to do.
Point is just that it's way more complicated than "villanous government mowing down peaceful protesters".
I was gonna post something on the Israel/Gaza situation, but El Guapo’s post above pretty much captures my feelings on this, especially the bolder portion.
Also, I wanted to add that on NPR yesterday, they had a segment that featured voices from Gaza. The first one up was a British emergency room trauma surgeon who had flown into a hospital 3 KM from the border a day before the May 15 protests. In the interview, he said reps from Egypt and Hamas had coordinated him being there, and they had explained they would need him at the hospital because they expected to be overwhelmed shortly with gunshot wounds resulting from the protests. Point being, the Palestinians (and their elected leaders in Hamas) are purposefully inciting the IDF to shoot them. This is not unexpected or avoidable. When you have a massive protest made up of some subset of people who’s goal is to provoke a violent response from an opposing military, violence is going to happen.
This doesn’t mean I fully endorse Israel’s response in all regards. Only that the massive outpouring of international sympathy for the Palestinians and condemnation for Israel is exactly what Hamas intended when it sent the Palestinians to the border to face off against the IDF.
Final thing: For those who were OUTRAGED about RIP’s comment about the 8 month old baby who died, you should reread his comment. RIP was clearly blaming the parents for bringing the baby to the protests. He was neither (1) blaming the baby; or (2) disregarding the baby’s death because of the sins of its parents. Come on. Please stop making me have to defend RIP. It feels . . .