Palestinian parents who encourage their children to throw stones at Israeli troops and become “martyrs.”

I don’t remember him saying it was an intentional result of official israeli policy. It could as easily have been a game developed by a few bored guards, or even an accident where they didn’t realise the results of their behavior.

How could you miss the statement from Palestinian Water Commissioner Nabil A-Sharif who says that Hedges’ charges about Israel piping water from Gaza to Israel are false?

The general rebuttal to Hedges’ claims about “shooting children for sport” is that although Hedges was there, he acknowledges not seeing the child shot, nor seeing the shot fired, nor interviewing Palestinian or Israeli officials to learn more details. He has acknowledged that he wasn’t using standard reporting techniques:

“The article was written… in first person, present tense; it was done on purpose. Had I written for The New York Times I would have requested a comment, but I wrote journal-style… nothing other than what I saw. I did not interview officials of the [Palestinian] Authority or of Israel.”

Is Hedges’ testimony more credible than that of the Israeli military spokesperson who said “soldiers had been under attack with stones and bottles” when they opened fire on “a crowd trying to tear down surrounding Jewish settlements in Gush Katif.” I don’t see why, given Hedges’ admittedly limited viewpoint, and his numerous demonstrable errors in the same article.

In one case, he quoted an arab mayor saying that israelis used 1/3 his water supply even though they had far fewer numbers. The rebuttal said that israelis took half the water. There was big dispute about how many wells the israelis used to do that.

He said the israelis prevented members of that community from digging their own wells. The rebuttal said that israelis had no legal authority to stop well digging. It did not deny that they did in practice prevent well digging.

For the particular case of israelis “killing palestinian children for sport” there was no rebuttal. Instead the claim was that palestinian children threw stones, and the israeli soldiers were under stress, etc. Hedges had reported that. The central point of the rebuttal came at the beginning. “First, the sheer malice of this comment speaks for itself”. He must be antisemitic to report the incident. And then they argue that if it was true, then why was it that on one particular day only one child was killed?

To believe these rebuttals you have to start out believing that the israeli government would never lie or misrepresent what they do.

So if you want to establish how many wells there are at a particular israeli settlement, you don’t ask the water advisor to the israeli defense minister, you count the wells. And if you want to know whether the water is pumped into gaza or out of gaza, you look at the pumping logs.

Etc. These rebuttals are utterly unconvincing to people who look at them with an open mind. Hedges may be wrong on many or most details, but there is no credible evidence here that he is. Unless we assume the israeli government always tells the truth.

Stable neoliberal order is a contradiction in terms, of course. The real question is for how much longer the contradictions can be contained…

As close, I suppose, as documented fact is to libel.

For a person who (assuming you’re an American) is paying for chainsaws used to cut throats to 17-year-old girls and for rifles used to shoot children for sport you, Slocum, have a lot of nerve being so self-righteous. It’s sorta comical, really.

Corroboration for this implausible, inflammatory accusation can be found … where? Confirmation that it is Israeli government or military policy to kill Palestinian children for sport can be found … where? (And are you unaware of how close this accusation is to the ‘blood libel’)?

Given that China, itself, is non-democratic and has a very poor record with respect to human rights, it is not a good candidate for humanitarian interventions. But even at that, there is a country where China really should intervene—North Korea.

In general, I would prefer to see more rather than fewer interventions. It is simply appalling that people continue to live as prisoners in countries with brutal, murderous, unelected regimes. Democracy and human rights are fundamental rights.

But given the political divisions between and within liberal democracies (as one can see in microcosm on CT), I see very little prospect of humanitarian interventions in the foreseeable future. “Never again” is B.S.

“If you can answer that question and come up with a way for the ‘IC’ to effectively replace tyrants with rule of law and respect for human rights, I guarantee you that you will no longer have to concern yourself with ‘constraints of international law on American foreign policy.’”

Steve – You’ve knocked the ball out of the park!
Great question, and point well taken.

You’re joking, right? Putting aside the invasion and occupation of Iraq, purely a war of choice, what’s “stabilizing” about the fight we’re now picking with Iran?

And what’s Russia doing that’s a tenth as destabilizing?

Chris Hedges, (…foreign correspondent for nearly 20 years, working as the bureau chief in the Middle East and the Balkans, as well as in other assignments, for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005. He previously worked for The Dallas Morning News, National Public Radio and The Christian Science Monitor. He has reported from over fifty countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.) writes in his Gaza Diary:

…Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered – death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo – but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

Now, in 1999 Tom Friedman wrote: “Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you.” Explain to me why China and France shouldn’t bomb Israel into the stone age right now. Or, for that matter, to intervene in the US for what it’s done in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq.

Here’s something from Colombia:

Around 400 paramilitaries took part in this “caravan of death” against civilians accused of supporting leftist guerrillas, Cifuentes said in his Bogota office.

“The remains of a woman were exhumed. Her abdomen was cut open with a chainsaw. A 17-year-old girl had her throat cut and both hands also amputated,” said the ombudsman, providing details of “the cruelty and extreme abuse of the paramilitaries.”

“They carried a list of names around. The would kill many for insignificant reasons, like not explaining where they got their cellular phone,” he said.

[...]Some 200,000 people have been killed since 1964 in Colombia’s civil war.