Does anyone here actually believe Israel is aiming at Hezbollah

[Constitution]

Given all the children they hit, they must be worse shots than the 1000 Italian sharpshooters who put the fatal bullet in Mussolini or they must be actually aiming at the kids.

[rockymountaindem]

1. Yes

[Betsy Ross]

2. Yes.

[Drum]

3. I think it's indiscriminate

(though that may actually be the wrong usage of the word!)

I think Israel is just happy to point their guns at anyone over there who isn't Israeli....

:shrug:

[jrd200x]

4. Yes, of course they are. What kind of question is that?

If they wanted to "destroy" Lebanon, it would be a lot worse. They have the military power.

[arcane1]

6. the o.p. didn't say anything about "destroying Lebanon" n/t

[ThomCat]

12. Have you seen the satalite photos of the cities and towns

they've flattened? We didn't do too much more damage to Dresden during WWII, and that is considered the standard for carpet bombing.

How much more damage would you need them to do before you consider it indescriminate?

[bowens43]

14. Funny how they seem to only be killing

civilians. They aren't trying to destroy Lebanon but they are trying to kill as many Lebanese civilians as they possibly can without being accused of genocide.

[Recursion]

22. What do you mean "without being accused of genocide"???

They've been accused of genocide since day 1 of the war.

And, yes, Hezbollah is claiming everyone they have killed is a civilian. Think about that for a second.

[Lerkfish]

27. ok, I've thought about it, so what is your point?

Hezbollah is targeting civilians. Isreal is targeting indiscriminately Lebanese civilian infrastructure and preventing aid from safely getting to Lebanese civilians.

note the bolded words. What is different about them? Think on THAT for a second.

[arcane1]

5. they're aiming at Lebanon, which contains Hezbollah

for me to say "yes" to your question, I'd also have to say that I believe America is "aiming at al Qaeda" in Iraq

[ixion]

7. Here's my thought on it...

When I was a young man I hunted upland game birds and waterfowl. When you're shooting at a moving flock of ducks or quail, you're taught to target only one item, rather than just firing blindly into the flock.

Now, these military types do nothing more than sit around and play with their weapons, so I would imagine that they're at least as adept with their automatic weapons and rocket launchers as I was with my 12 gauge. I know that technically it's a somewhat distant comparison, but the fundamentals remain the same, when you are talking about a weapon you point and shoot.

So, I figure they're hitting what they're aiming at, which means they're guilty of war crimes.

Just my two cents.

[TahitiNut]

8. Nope. It's "Shock and Awe" - state terrorism.

The thinly-veiled 'strategy' is to punish ordinary people who're supposedly sympathetic to Hizb'allah, which itself includes people who've been diligent in offering services to people not gotten elsewhere, as well as the armed militia formed as a reactionary force.

A plague on both their houses - in proportion to the deaths caused! (That means 90% of my condemnation goes to the IDF - causing 90% of the deaths to children and other innocents.)

[azurnoir]

9. No

If their real target was Hezbollah shouldn't they be going after a couple of others-namely Syria and Iran. Instead they chose the "soft" target, the one country smaller than Israel and the one country with the best chance for a stable working democracy. Just why is that? And no because Hezbollah was firing rockets from there those oh so deadly ones that killed 3 or 4 Israeli's a year does not cut it, if that was the case they'd have limited their attack to Southern Lebanon, they have not and I believe have no intention of doing so.

[Fredda Weinberg]

10. Yeah, those sub-human Israelis, just blood thirsty for Arab kids

Reminds me of the stories about how Jews killed Christian babies to use their blood for matzoh.

The more things change ...

[arcane1]

16. please, why inject race into this?

we are talking about the actions of a government, run by human beings

a general from Israel can be just as merciless as a general from any other country/race/religion

are Americans sub-human when they bomb the hell out of an Iraqi city? Do you hold Israelis to a higher standard?

your post is thinly-veiled racism

[Fredda Weinberg]

26. Israel is a national homeland - that injects my race

And don't think I haven't heard this crap before - deliberately aiming at kids ... feh.

[Karenina]

28. Several generations of Israelis

have been raised with the idea that Arabs are Üntermenschen. The only language "they" understand is violence. "They" want to drive Jews into the sea. 10,000 Arabs are not worth one Jewish fingernail. "They" never did anything with the land, anyway. The Israeli version of white supermacy is particularly noxious coming from a people who have suffered so due to those same concepts.

[bowens43]

11. Of course not.

It's quite obvious that they are targeting civilians. Probably thinking they 'teach them a lesson'.

They're a bunch of murderous thugs.

[ThomCat]

13. They're aiming at any piece of functional real estate.

Israel is out to destroy southern Lebanon. Their strategy seems to be that if there's nothing left then Hezbollah must be gone too.

[Igel]

15. Over three thousand sorties,

not to mention the artillery fire ... to kill a thousand people?

With 2-3 dozen strikes each accounting for more than a dozen people killed?

On the other hand, we actually have firm idea what the death toll is. The official government count may well include assumed dead (as it has a time or two for given strikes), and is a few hundred higher than the press' 'count up each incident'.

So we're talking maybe 1 person dead for every 3-4 bombs. And that doesn't include artillery shells from land and sea.

If they're aiming at civilians, they're worse shots than you think.

[uppityperson]

18. not aiming AT civilians, just not AVOIDING them

[Lerkfish]

24. I think that is the correct answer: they aren't targeting civilians, but

they don' t really care all that much if the civilians get in the way.

the real target is Lebanon's infrastructure. They are using collective punishment to take away all livelihood of the lebanese for "harboring" Hezbollah.

[uppityperson]

17. shooting into a crowd, hoping to hit 1 person who may or maynot be there

[Marie26]

19. Of course.

They just don't care as much as they should about the civilians caught in the cross-fire.

[Selatius]

20. If they're aiming at Hezbollah, they're piss poor in their aim

blowing up power stations near the water and dumping tens of thousands of barrels worth of crude into the Mediterranean is really going to hurt Hezbollah...not.

[Recursion]

21. Yes

I do. Doesn't excuse it, but I don't think they're deliberately trying to kill civilians.

[leesa]

23. Nope. They're trying to get Iran and Syria to respond.

[Lerkfish]

25. and this is the OTHER correct answer.

[Broken_Hero]

29. Locking

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