Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: Stop ignoring the facts about Cast Lead [View all]Shaktimaan
(5,397 posts)His assertion is pretty straightforward. If the numbers are correct then there's no denying it. Amnesty's reports are not comparative to anything. They list the things that they view as war crimes or negligent or bad in some way. But what are they comparing it to? In war bad things happen. If their standard is a perfect execution without any collateral damage or mistakes then they have an unrealistic benchmark, to say the least.
B'tselem is a fair organization. And they freely admit that they exist to criticize Israeli actions in the hopes of making them better. This is a noble goal and unlike Amnesty they do a good job of looking at those actions within the greater context of the conflict at large.
If anything is to be taken from these reports then I believe it is that Israel can take more precautions than any other army does and a large number of civilians will still die. That said, those precautions do work in limiting the amount of mistaken casualties that occur. Israel can make these mistakes while still being the best nation out there WRT humanity in warfare.
Why are his assertions backed up by no other independent group?
Are they not? I have not looked. Let's see... it looks like the founder of human rights watch fully supports his findings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html
Do you realize the flaws in his assertions, on any level??
By all means elucidate.
edit: what I obliterated was your comment about shira's post being unsubstantiated. Now, just because you don't LIKE what the expert (by any measure), said doesn't mean that his work does not exist or is lacking validity in some way.