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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (99302)	5/28/2003 2:17:28 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

<These are shocking accusations against the Israeli army.> No, it's entirely predictable. This is what happens in every guerrila war, no matter who the opposing sides are, or where, or when. The way the Israeli army treats the Palestinians, is exactly the way the British treated the Boers a century ago, and exactly the Boers (once they got the "whip hand"), treated the Black South Africans. It's a predictable progression of events: 1. the anti-guerrila army takes casualties 2. they can't tell the difference between enemy fighters and everyone else. And, even when they can, the battleground has lots of civilians. 3. the soldiers in the field, no matter what the commanders tell them to do, gradually escalate, to the point of random disproportionate violence. 4. the soldiers are rarely punished, except sometimes for the most egregious offenses, and then only in the rare times when neutral observers witness it. 5. the soldiers end up seeing everyone as the enemy, and the de facto Rules Of Engagement become: do anything to stay alive. 6. since nobody likes to think of themselves as evil, the soldiers rationalize this by dehumanizing the entire enemy nation, treating them all as non-human. I don't blame the soldiers for this. They are in an impossible situation, they are getting killed, they are trapped in a cycle of death with no way out. It's the politicians who are to blame, for putting them there.