i'd say no, it doesn't feel the same as putting weapons stockpiles in a school.

holy crap, i just tried to look up "israeli soldier suicide bus", and found the link to the wikipedia article on palestinian suicide bombings. like half of them regard bus stations. At this point I'd say the biggest qualitative difference is that it seems like it didn't matter whether or not the soldiers were on the bus at all, because that didn't seem to be the target. but those are from a while back before the borders were closed.

please give me a link to what you're talking about. I can't find any recent incidents.

i'm in favor of israel, their story is more my liking, but my support is pretty inconsequential. From what i've read, there was a lot of reporting on israel destroying gaza's only power plant, but not much coverage over the fact that the power plant provided like... 30 % of the power in gaza, with israel providing like 50+ and egypt the rest... you know during non-troubled times. and that hamas knocked out the high-voltage lines bringing electricity in a couple weeks prior, accidentally. and that gaza owes the electric company something like 100-200 million USD in back power bills, with the PA owing the rest bringing the total to something like 500 million USD.

And that the palestinian death toll figures come from a hamas controlled organization, which is also the primary source for the UN figures. and that 20% of deaths are female and that 57% are males 18-35. yet 80% are civilian casualties.

I would not say that the media reports are pro-israel. death and destruction sells.

they've just found the 3rd weapons cache in a UN school. that's a pretty neutral party and, as far as i can tell, pretty much by definition using human shields. there's the whole documented "don't flee from israeli warnings" that people have pretty good documentation of.

the whole, documented proof that in the last conflict hamas revised their ratios of civilians to combatants in a politically favorable direction. they reported high ratios of civilian casualties during the conflict and later on reported lower ratios. That last one isn't definitive, but certainly looks suspect.

http://www.theaustralian.com.a...

i have no idea how reliable that is, but it's also incidental. everything else is damning enough.

the whole, "not even the rocks and trees will shelter you from our sight" vibe in the second part of the declaration is pretty bad though.

this deserves an upvote.

human shields are pretty effective. :) if these were two sides in more even conflict would you say the same? if hamas had tanks and were strapping women and children to the front of them, would you still consider it a warcrime for israel to shoot the tanks? it's hyperbole, but i'm pretty sure it's analagous in the right ways.

it does matter who started it... it not mattering who started the conflict is more naive than the other stance. It only "doesn't matter who started it" in the school yard because in an idealized world, it doesn't, and that's what we would like our children to believe before reality intrudes. in a dirty, muddy, complex world. motive matters, timing matters, past matters.

I'm not sure what your goal is, but considering you left out the contextual wrappings of that quoted passage. here it

The Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!

i'm fairly sure that's explicit declaration that they look forward to killing jews in the hopes of accelerating the end times :)

the quote itself does not explicitly incite genocide... unless you look forward to the end times. you make a distinction without a difference.

you're very cynical. fair is fair. and the olympics isn't about the money for a lot of these athletes... it's about being the best, and being their best. one single competitor with an unfair advantage is one competitor too many.

... that'd be criminal. unless it were gangrenous.

first off, any major surgery involves a great deal of risk. infection, and otherwise.
secondly, there's always hope. paralyzed limb, limited neural regrowth is probably not that far off. and throw it in a brace if it gets in the wa.

i'm pretty sure that is against the rules. and they'd probably get DQ if found out.

... i don't think you grasp how analogies work.

you just don't want it bad enough.

and i didn't know the drinking problem in russia was so bad that they implemented a ban of sale of alcohol at night to curb it. god i think i fell down the rabbit hole a little there. apparently they have this thing called zapoi, which is multi-day binge drinking. and this other thing synonymous to "the horrors" which is what the Irish call the withdrawal from prolonged zapoi.

yes it's a problem and yes those stereotypes nail the demographics.

:) you can't incite violence against others. you can't incite panic. you can't slander and you can't libel. all these are antithetical to free speech but they are also right. Free speech isn't the end goal, but simply a stepping stone to a better republic. that's the end goal, not free speech in isolation.

better people than us have made the evaluation that how freedom of expression should be limited is in cases where it brings an explicit and immediate harm. when it doesn't, the positives and negatives of restricting speech are unknown and a lighter touch is better.