Likewise the problem of Gaza.

You adduce “thousand” as though it has significance. Israel did not set out to kill civilians, rather missile launches against hers. There is no law as to proportionality in these case because there is no model as to how to effectively but minimally address them. And the issue has never been invoked before except with regard to the one Jewish state in the world.

And I think Hamas inflated civilian casualties and the UN by and large swallowed the figures. Likwise Hizbullah.

As to Fallujah, well, the UN is certainly not taking the US to task for it. Anymore than it has Russia, Sri Lanka or Darfurian government.

Very severe indeed, that is.

Once again, FR, by your logic, 2000 years of Christian and Islamic anti-Judaism and antisemitism, never mind the Holocaust, could never, logically, have happened.

I’ve actually been ignoring this point, since it seems both to inflate criticism in the UN to some kind of rhetorical racist holocaust and tacitly imply that I’m denying it, thus making it quite the stupidest, nastiest and most hilariously overblown argument I’ve ever encountered on a website. Quite an achievement, all told.

Israel did the best she could. I doubt any state has performed a similar operation with more care, ever.

All I’ll say is that between Gaza and Lebanon, they managed to rub out well over a thousand civilians, bomb ports, airports, bakeries, petrol stations, water treatment plants, tower blocks and so on, without significantly degrading the capabilities of their terrorist foes. I for one am a little bit jaded with the Boo hoo, why is everyone being so nasty when we keep telling them how our massive military assaults are the nicest in the world. People have eyes and ears.

Frankly, the fact that this BS seems to be commonly accepted in public discourse on the Middle East makes me worry what kind of lunatic enterprises it’s going to be deployed over in future.

As for Security Council vetos, that doesn’t stop the General Assembly indicting Russia, the US, UK, Sri Lanka, the government of Darfur etc.

But they don’t, never have and, likely, never will.

Thou sayest “Lizards etc”, not I.

“their habit of blasting hell out of cities in high-profile wars of dubious military utility is laughable”

If you want to see that, I suggest you look at Grozny, or Falujah:

“Of the roughly 50,000 buildings in Fallujah, between 7,000 and 10,000 were estimated to have been destroyed in the offensive and from half to two-thirds of the remaining buildings had notable damage”

And check out the white phosphorous:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah#Aftermath

As to “dubious utility”, you be rained with 1000s of missiles, and you do better. Israel did the best she could. I doubt any state has performed a similar operation with more care, ever.

Well, you can if you don’t mind looking ridiculous, I suppose.

More boringly, think of it as the difference between something you read in The Sun or some other gutter tabloid, as opposed to being told a different version of the same thing by some pissed bloke you met in a pub.

Plus, there’s the point that Hamas may be murderous bastards, but they’re not mind-controlling space lizards from Saturn. The idea that Israel’s PR problems owe more to some globe-spanning Islamofascist brainwashing campaign rather than their habit of blasting hell out of cities in high-profile wars of dubious military utility is laughable. Ask the Americans.

*That should probably be “ideological beeves”, but hey ho.

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Flying Rodent appears to be able to maintain a completely oblivious posture toward this long established and well known horse trading relationship between these two official UNGA bodies and their lockstep voting on any resolutions concerning Israel. If he doesn’t know about that one, what else doesn’t he know?

Well, it is by no means uncommon that there are those

a) with an animus against the Jewish state,
b) those sufficiently indifferent to stand in their way and
c) those more interested in making friends than justice for Jews.

The killing or expelling of most European, North African and Asian Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries occurred because hostility or indifference towards Jews in Old World Christendom and Islam was widespread, even normative.

You talk as though that must have been impossible.

And/But OIC can veto anything against its members or friends, too. And nobody is interested in Sri Lanka or pretty much anywhere else.

Israel was more careful than pretty much any other state as sophisticated in a comparable urban environment faced with or responding to a comparable threat.

But those with an animus against the Jewish state misrepresent that as wanton and gratuitous killing and destruction. In short “a massacre”. Which is absurd.

And I think that constitutes a form of antisemitism.

At worst casualties were 2/3 civilians to 1/3 combatants, at best the converse. Either is hardly incomparable to the US, UK and NATO in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the numbers considerably smaller, and incomparably better than Russia or Sri Lanka.

Gaza is de facto enemy state, ruled by a government dedicated to eternal jihad until Israel’s ultimate extinction. What is Israel supposed to do? Allow free and open borders? Let Hamas import what it will to achieve that end?

What other state in the world would allow that, given the chance to not?

Israel does not have to be perfect. It does not have to inflict no civilian casualties: that would be to prevent Israel ever acting in its defence.

Israel was entitled to act against the launching of missiles, balancing preservation of its own personnel against unfortunate but inevitable consequences for Gazan civilians. Who else could have done it better? No one. And no one can advise how Israel could have done it better.

The whole point of the UN report and its endorsement to censure Israel for having done it all, to further tie her hand, or hands, behind her back when addressing her enemies (look at the great UN success in Lebanon).

I suggest that this may be a bit simplistic, and a tad self-serving. I think it’s possible that the whole “repeatedly bombarding heavily-populated cities with extremely powerful weaponry” thing might have at least something to do with it.

I also think it’s fairly likely that the lack of in-depth investigations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya may have something to do with the fact that the US, UK and Russia can veto anything they don’t like, and Israel – along with everyone else barring France and China – can’t. I throw it out there for consideration.