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The image was unforgettable. The bronze, rust-colored wall, towering over the families, like the boundary to a prison courtyard.
And there it stood, towering in the distance, but flattened in the center of the photo. Cars piled against one end of the wall, men and women scattered across the picture for miles, carrying belongings and freshly acquired food and fuel. Some walked on top of the wall, defiantly, beautifully. Who are these people and what were they doing?
On Jan. 23, Palestinians blew apart the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, where tens of thousands crossed into Egypt to purchase desperately needed food, fuel, and other basic supplies. The Israeli government, ostensibly acting in response to increased rocket attacks from the Palestinian territories, cut off the shipment of food, fuel, and other goods into the Gaza Strip for several days. Reported, but generally ignored in the West, was the fact that Israeli air strikes had injured and killed dozens of Palestinians over the same time period, many of them women and children.
The consequences of the blockade were substantial. The only operating power plant in the Gaza Strip ceased to operate for lack of energy. Hospitals ran on generators. Homes went without heat. After several days of this collective punishment, something had to give. No, it was not a new barrage of rockets into Israeli towns and settlements, but rather a barrage of citizens and explosives aimed at bringing down the wall that separates Egypt from Gaza.
The Washington Post reported, "gunmen destroyed vast sections of the seven mile-long barricade that divides the Gaza Strip and Egypt," in some places hundreds of meters of the wall were brought down, allowing "tens of thousands of Palestinians to stream across the border" and claim the necessary supplies. The Hamas movement, which currently governs the Gaza Strip, was responsible for 17 explosions that took down parts of the wall, turning their bombs to a constructive purpose. Sharuk Abou Juzur, a 12-year-old girl, was able to return to her home with a bagful of oranges, when she was quoted by The Washington Post as saying, "The siege is over! It was Hamas's people who freed us."
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Hmmm, blowing up a wall and practically invading Egypt... Can't say that sounds "nonviolent" to me.
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It's nonviolent if you buy into the ends-means argument Mr. Vick advances. By his logic, it seems, Hamas' assaults on Israel are well-founded because Israel doesn't 'belong' where it is, and so the 'occupation' is unjustified and illegal and the terror tactics are simply a necessity in order to allow Palestine to obtain what it is owed. Israel, on the other hand, does not act (according to the author's logic) legitimately when it attempts to defend itself vigorously from terror attacks, suicide bombings and the like. Hamas, in this instance (and many others), acted in an illegal manner which could be seen as an act of war. The fact that the purposes were noble doesn't mean that the action was any more legal.
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We all know Kyle Minor doesn't believe his argument considering his posts in other threads. For Kyle, it's more then acceptable for the US to invade Iraq since our intentions are supposedly "noble", even though international law clearly states that our countries actions have been, and continue to be illegal.
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I'm not quite sure to which international law you are appealing in your last statement. Really, I'm not quite so interested in justification. I'm interested more in argumentation, and the author of this column employs a sort of ends-means logic which I don't give a lot of credence.
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Kyle, i'm simply asking for you to maintain consistency in your arguments. You are arguing a double standard, as you are a staunch supporter of continued U.S. occupation of Iraq, which will continue to be illegal without a U.N. resolution.
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My support of the CURRENT mission in Iraq isn't really related to my ambivalence toward the ORIGINAL mission in Iraq. At this point, we are in a process of nation-building and are attempting to provide some semblance of stability to a currently unstable situation. The situation is, granted, unstable because of our own actions; at this point, I consider our status in Iraq to be 'cleaning up a mess that we made.' Further, I'm not sure why you consistently appeal to the United Nations - I have advocated long and hard for the US to take itself out of the UN and govern itself without letting other global powers (with a vested interest in our weakness) create edicts to manage our internal affairs. I personally don't lend any credence to any UN resolutions passed in the last handful of years anywa, and am certainly not surprised that it remains a body committed to inactivity and unresolve.
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The CURRENT mission in Iraq is not legitimate under current international law. As you have argued, the ends do not justify the means.
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As I have stated, the international law to which you are referring is ostensibly coming from the United Nations which has only limited credibility anyway. Nonetheless, please direct me to the appropriate UN resolution which specifically states that the war in Iraq is illegal.
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Kyle. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm It is also illegal if you have any understanding of the old Nuremberg trials. The ultimate war crime, is a war of aggression.
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I don't buy it. Kofi Annan had a particular reading of the UN Charter (which, for the record, is only 'internationally binding' to the member nations of the UN, a status the US holds when it clearly should not), and the fact of the matter is that Annan declaring something illegal has exactly as much weight as Bush declaring something illegal - neither one has the authority to do any more than speculate. The assertion that the Iraq war was a war of aggression is not a 'cut and dry' issue either - but that's really outside the scope of this argument. The point that I'm making is that irregardless of the initial justifications for our entry into Iraq, the fact remains that a complete withdrawal would likely result in a level of sectarian violence, oppression, and perhaps even genocide reminiscent of Hussein's own criminal actions.
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