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Saturday, September 17, 2011

Bombings Gone Wild

Recently, tensions between Israel and the Palestinian community have risen due to mutual use of civilian targets. Palestine's many militant groups abandoned the tentative peace that had been developed with the Israelis. On August 18th, the Israeli military allegedly bombed a home in which 6 members of the Popular Resistance Committees where apparently staying at and killed them as well as one of the members young son. Since then, the Palestinian militant groups have bombed Israel indiscriminately in retaliation. Responses to these attacks have only been more attacks on Palestinian areas. There has been almost an entire breakdown in any positive relations between the two sides of this argument.
These attacks explicitly violate the right to life set down under Human Rights. Bombing anything but a military target is against the human rights of civilians who are not an active part of any attack. Civilians are not typically willing members of conflict and often are targeted to drop morale. Both sides of this issue are at fault in some sense and there should be more peace talks or forced action to try and stop the hostility. If that does not happen then it is likely that more civilians will be killed for no good reason other than this endless fight for revenge against each other.
It seems unfair that civilians get just as much blame as the extremists among them. But this happens in every culture and with every group that has extremists. All we can do to stop it is to admit to ourselves that every culture and nation is full of people who carry beliefs of varying degrees that can span the widest ocean. Can we do that? Will Israel and Palestine ever live together in harmony? Can peace be reached when two nations lay claim to the same territory?

1 comment:

  1. The fact that the Israeli military "allegedly" bombed a home consisting of 6 members of the Popular Resistance Committees AND killed one of the members young son is proff in itself that murder is usually never actually committed for only whom intended. So many people are killed innocently just because of being connected to the wrong people or by being at the wronng place at the wrong time. Although cliche, murder is not the answer. The rate of murders in america, despite the types of motives, are ridiculously high, especially among the youth. With the amount of murder issues we already have, I could not imagine being in a place like Israel where anyone AND THEIR FAMILIES can be killed at the drop of the hat "for a greater cause". Whether that cause is due to religious, racial, or any other motivations, murder is not the answer. The right to life should be a part of human moralities and daily living for every culture out there. Doing so would just make life actually, well, liveable.

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