On Sept. 17, just before 3:30 p.m., the small waiting room of Dr. Nour’s three-room pediatrics clinic in southern Beirut was packed. A mother was waiting to get preschool checkups for her three children. Two elderly patients were booked in for cataract treatments at the ophthalmologist office next door. Sitting next to them was a young couple whom Nour, whose name has been changed for security reasons, had not met before. The father bounced a 10-day-old baby on his lap. Clipped to his belt was a Gold Apollo Rugged Pager.
Nour brought the young couple into her examination room. She pulled out a blank file for the newborn and wrote his name: Aiman. She placed him on the scales: a little over 7 pounds. She lay Aiman on his back on an examination table and began to record his weight. As she did so, the man’s pager beeped twice.
“Excuse me,” he said, and reached down to silence it.
As he did so, about an ounce of explosives concealed within the pager detonated, sending shards of metal and fragments of its thick plastic casing out in all directions. The shrapnel tore deep wounds in the man’s abdomen, lodged in the ceiling of the clinic and lacerated the face of the baby as he lay on his back. Nour was thrown backward as the room filled with dust. She could not see through the smoke, but she could hear the woman’s voice shouting: “Aiman!”
The poster I replied to wasn’t ‘criticizing Israel’s tactics’ - they were questioning why ‘the West’ allowed Israel to attack Hezbollah.
No they weren’t. They asked why the West was letting Israel get away with so much. Then listed various examples of things that are causing widespread harm to civilians.
Then YOU asked if they think it’s bad that the West is letting Hezbollah get away with attacking civilians in Israel.
But your question begins from a false premise. Basically no government in the West provides aid or weapons to Hezbollah. They are considered a terrorist organization by the West. So the West is not letting Hezbollah get away with it.
Meanwhile the West continues to provide weapons to Israel, who is using those weapons to cause significant harm to civilian populations.
That’s the question. Why is the West letting Israel attack civilians without repercussion? There’s no reason in good faith to ask someone who asks this question about how they feel about Hezbollah attacking civilians. Because, ostensibly, they are opposed to violence against civilians. As, clearly, is the West when it’s not Israel (or, indeed, the West) perpetrating the violence.
(I think the obvious answer to the question is “because Israel is allied with the West and in realpolitik we let our allies do horrible things that we would not tolerate in our enemies.” That’s not an ethical answer, many of Israel’s actions lately have been horrific, but it’s the realistic one.)
Edit: grammatical fix
They asked why the West was letting Israel get away with so much. Then listed various examples of things that are causing widespread harm to civilians.
They didn’t really list anything but some superficial simplifications. ‘The West’ let Israel get away with ‘Palestine’. They let them get away with ‘terrorist tactics’ and ‘Lebanon’. Are these vague accusations ‘causing widespread harm to civilians’? I think they deserve more discussion than to just say they did ‘a Lebanon’ and call it an open and shut case Johnson…
So the West is not letting Hezbollah get away with it.
Meanwhile the West continues to provide weapons to Israel, who is using those weapons to cause significant harm to civilian populations.
Hezbollah (and Hamas) are being armed and supported by Iran. Now everyone knows that the zionists will not see the paradise they crave in the afterlife, but if you’re working towards a better world you can’t ignore the fact that Iran and the conservative extremist movement they are part of are even worse. ‘The West’ can ignore that and let the people of Israel get genocided by even worse people, or they can hope for a stalemate (which means they have to support Israel) or a win for Israel (which means they have to support Israel). In any case, not supporting Israel will result in the faction vying for things like legalised child rape (amongst other horrific shit) will win. That will result in a worse world by any measure.
That’s the question. Why is the West letting Israel attack civilians without repercussion? There’s no reason in good faith to ask someone who asks this question about how they feel about Hezbollah attacking civilians. Because, ostensibly, they are opposed to violence against civilians. As, clearly, is the West when it’s not Israel (or, indeed, the West) perpetrating the violence.
When fighting extremists that blend into a civilian population, it’s impossible to be effective without causing civilian deaths. In cases like Mosul or Raqqa, you reach a point where you have to turn the dial past the marker because you just can’t destroy them without hurting any civilians. When ‘the West’ fought the nazi’s, they broadly went over that line because not doing so would have just resulted in more suffering for more people.
