Category Archives: Ethics

NEW COLUMN: Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Barbaric Blitzkrieg Highlights US Marine’s Superiority

America, Constitution, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Middle East, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, War

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Dead in the ruins of Gaza is the Israeli collective conscience—together with thousands-upon-thousands of Gaza’s civilians; dead or displaced for decades to come ~ilana

NEW COLUMN IS “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Barbaric Blitzkrieg Highlights US Marine’s Superiority“. It is currently featured on The New American and at The Ron Paul Institute For Peace and Prosperity.”

“… American patriotism is owed amid the sorrow over Israel’s barbaric blitzkrieg. … Damning with faint praise though this may be, Americans, in the persons of our U.S. Marines in Fallujah — in the dubious theater of another unjust war — were righteous, compared to the monstrous Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.”

I do some simple math.

Excerpt:

“… Force-fed the fiction of the IDF as the most ethical fighting force in the universe; I set about to conduct a proportional, if limited, comparison. I compare like with like, albeit in limited but significant theatres of war: Israel’s offensive in Gaza against “Hamas,” in late 2023, to America’s onslaught in Fallujah against the Iraqi resistance, in 2004.

The battle in Fallujah is considered “the deadliest battle involving U.S. Marines since Vietnam.” “Eighty-two U.S. servicemembers died during the street-by-street, house-by-house effort to clear Al Qaeda from the city.” Officially, it is described as a “battle to retake the key city of Fallujah from a violent insurgency that was taking root across Iraq after the U.S. ousted Saddam Hussein.”

Before the American invasion of Iraq, Fallujah was a compact city of about 400,000 people. “Around 700 Iraqi civilians were killed over the course of the 2004 fight for Fallujah.”

Gaza’s population is about 2.4 million strong. The administrative chaos in war-time Gaza would hamper accurate records-keeping. That considered—and not counting individuals buried beneath the rubble—approximately 15,000 Gazans have been killed by Israel. (Haaretz, Israel News, Friday, December 2, 2023)

Let’s extrapolate:

Were Fallujah as populated as Gaza (2.4 million), the United States Marines would have killed approximately 4,200 Iraqi souls. This is a far cry from the Israel Defense Forces’ butcher’s bill of 15,000 civilians dead in Gaza—and climbing.

Were Gaza as small as Fallujah (400,000); the Israelis, befitting their butcher’s bill so far, would still have killed at least 2,500 souls to our Marines’ 700. Ceteris paribus, naturally.

Let that sink in.

On the numbers, I have been exceedingly charitable to the Israelis, given that their victims, buried beneath the rubble, are still mostly unaccounted for, and considering that the IDF resumed hostilities against civilians on December 1.

Both the Israeli and the U.S. militaries come in here for rough treatment. The fulminations of the Israel Firsters stateside aside, however, some American patriotism is owed amid the sorrow over Israel’s barbaric blitzkrieg.

Damning with faint praise though this may be, Americans, in the persons of our U.S. Marines in Fallujah—in the dubious theater of another unjust war—were righteous, compared to the monstrous Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. …

… THE REST is here: “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Barbaric Blitzkrieg Highlights US Marine’s Superiority“, on https://ronpaulinstitute.org/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-us-marines-superiority/

The complete column will be posted in a few days at IlanaMercer’s Weekly Column Archive.

* Screen pic of US Marines going house-by-house. Dying to try and spare innocent civilians.

GAZA CITY IS GONE: Yes, Ha’aretz; Americans See It. The World Sees It.

Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Middle East, Terrorism, The West, War

UPDATED (11/14): NEW COLUMN: Bibi Obliterates Memory Of Oct. 7 Martyrs; Creates New Martyrs In Gaza

Argument, Conservatism, Crime, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Morality, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Terrorism, War

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Murder with majority approval is still murder, whomever the perpetrator. Whether it is committed by actors within or without The State; by the designated ‘good guys’ or by the ‘bad guys’; murder of innocents is still murder ~ilana

The razing of Gaza by Benjmain Netanyahu, abetted by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices, in the course of which civilians are dying: This is murder with malice aforethought, a concept that includes ‘deaths resulting from actions that display a depraved indifference to life! ~ilana

UPDATED (11/9): STOP. WAKE THE FUCK UP. SAVE YOUR SOULS. The razing of Gaza and the ongoing murder and displacement of thousands of innocent civilians by the Israel Defense Forces, with US imprimatur—these are war crimes, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, sheer evil.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/11/bibi-obliterates-memory-october-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-gaza/

NEW COLUMN IS “Bibi Obliterates Memory Of Oct. 7 Martyrs; Creates New Martyrs In Gaza.” So far, three exceedingly courageous publications have published it: my home at The New American.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

And, The Mises Institute (“Bibi Netanyahu May Find Himself In the Dock, In The Hague.”)

https://mises.org/power-market/bibi-netanyahu-may-find-himself-dock-hague

Note that this is a column penned by a systematic rightist, hence , I offer facts about Palestinian voting patterns and agency. I do this in order to dispel the Disneyfied foreign-policy narrative of the West, and in order to make this clear:

Whatever we think of people, as a group; ethical human-beings can never-ever endorse their wholesale murder. I think these facts strengthen the rightist antiwar message, as they are made from a place of reality, not hippie naiveté.

I thank my editors at TNA for standing by The Truth.

https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity has always stood for the Truth.

That Truth is now visible from space.

I thank my podcast partner, David Vance, for sharing a moral commitment, and, well, having the proverbial male bits so few men have.

I am still hopeful there will be others.

Alas, little has changed since Iraq. This response to the razing of Gaza has elements of an Iraq redux, where you tell the unvarnished truth, https://www.ilanamercer.com/2004/11/liberation-has-a-body-count/, become persona non grata forever; and 15 years hence, you get to watch fools slowly feel their way to the truth as you and your ideological ilk had articulated, at the time it mattered, and against your own professional interests, https://www.ilanamercer.com/2015/05/iraq-liars-and-deniers-we-knew-then-what-we-know-now/ in dozens of essays, starting on September 19, 2002: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq .

Many are the good people who learn to trust you; the rest remain as dumb as fuck.

Excerpt from “BIBI OBLITERATES MEMORY OF OCT. 7 MARTYRS; CREATES NEW MARTYRS IN GAZA“:
https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

It’s simple: If you know in advance that your actions will cause the death of thousands of civilians; attached to your criminal actions (actus reus) is a guilty mind (mens rea), which means malice aforethought, also known as intent, in Western jurisprudence and judicial philosophy.

The razing of Gaza and the ongoing murder of thousands of civilians by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with western imprimatur, is a war crime. Strafing civilian populations and pulverizing entire neighborhoods to ostensibly “soften” the few embedded targets within—this violates natural law, international law, and Just War Theory.

It was true when Genghis Bush dropped daisy cutters and cluster bombs on Iraqi civilians, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of them; it was true when allied forces firebombed Dresden and Hamburg, and it was true when Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japanese civilians.

Not that it helped his victims, but Truman icily expressed some “regret” for “the [beastly] necessity of wiping out whole populations”: “I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare,” he told an ardent supporter, “but I can’t bring myself to believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in that same manner.”

We know ineluctably that Gaza is “a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare.” The sympathies expressed by Gazans toward their neighbors, victims of the October 7 slaughter, were meager and grudging, coerced by media, for the most. …

…. These uncomfortable facts notwithstanding, murder with majority approval is still murder, whomever the perpetrator. Whether it is committed by actors within or without the State; by the designated “good guys” or the “bad guys”; murder of innocents is still murder. …

…THE REST: “BIBI OBLITERATES MEMORY OF OCT. 7 MARTYRS; CREATES NEW MARTYRS IN GAZA” :
https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

* Gaza, Before and After, Screen Pic Courtesy Al Jazeera

UPDATED (10/21/023): Gaza And The Meaning Of Mens Rea, Malice Aforethought, Or Intent

Bush, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Israel, Just War, Justice, Middle East, Morality, Russia, War

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If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent ~ilana

From the Ukraine-Russia conflict’s inception; your columnist wrote many an essay (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/uncle-sam-still-king-invaders-ukraine-realpolitik-wests-failure/) motivating against the Neocons, Neolibs and NATO Inching Us Closer To Nuclear War With Russia, via the Ukraine proxy war.

The rejection by Joe and his Uniparty accomplices of diplomacy, framed by myself as realpolitik, was my focus. “It’s Biblical, Zelensky,” I urged. “A Leader Who Fails To Haggle For The Lives Of His People” is a failed leader.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/biblical-zelensky-leader-fails-haggle-lives-people-failed/

I vehemently now protest the greenlighting of the razing of Gaza by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices.

About “intent,” a bedrock of Western judicial philosophy and Jurisprudence, I said the following on the Hard Truth podcast last Tues (Oct. 10) (https://rumble.com/v3oicx4-hamas-israel-and-the-anatomy-of-state-treason.html):

If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.

Moreover, just pretend for the sake of argument that there is no way to kill the Hamas culprits other than via a ground invasion; why-oh-why would Israel throttle the supply of water, food and power to millions of Gazans, when Israel knows this will also kill thousands of civilians indirectly?

Israel has, sadly, squandered much of the goodwill generated by the heinous, diabolical, October 7 pogrom, executed by spawns of Satan.

BACKGROUND: “Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason”

* Screen capture credit here:
https://www.strategiccriminaldefence.com/faq/mens-rea-vs-actus-rea/

UPDATE (10/21/023): Yes, this is refreshing via Josh Paul (even though I don’t share his support for other incursions and foreign-policy “moral compromises”)—I didn’t know there were people in our bureaucracy who could speak English, much less write it and reason in it.

Paul, who worked for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, has resigned from this Biden-staffed bureau, because of its policy of transferring lethal weapons to be used, invariably, against civilians in Gaza. Paul recounted in interviews how he had been instrumental in drafting a cessation to arms transfers under Biden’s new Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which allegedly reconsidered “weapons sales to countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the civilian toll of the war in Yemen.”

It was the policy of Donald Trump, as this columnist’s warned, in 2018, through weapons supplies to the Saudis, to enable “our bosom buddies the Saudi’s” in their “barricading of Yemeni ports. No aid gets through her hermetically sealed ports. Yemenis are dying. Some Twitter followers twittered with joy at the sight of starving Yemeni babies, like this one. Oh well, Yemeni babies can be sinister.”

Whatever one’s political sympathies, as I wrote here above, “If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.”

The same obtains if you are a third party, aiding and abetting the carnage that is collective punishment. These are natural, immutable laws. They attached to George Bush’s actions in Iraq. (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq/ The Hague ought to have long since nabbed him. They apply to the razing of Gaza following Hamas’ monstrous mass murder on October 7.