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Sunday, January 15, 2006

Department of Corrections

In his post last week about the JIBs, Jesus General made a general point about which I agreed, but some of his examples were sloppy.
[The] Mugata [sic] tells hitchiking tales:
Besides its pikuach nefesh to pick up a unarmed teenager by say tzomat eli at 11 at night. Because i have spent the night there... not to mention there are wild pigs there (the animals and the arabs)
This quote is from the Muquata's comment thread, not the blog itself. Though I object to blogs that deliberately make themselves a home to the very worst sort of rascists, Jameel doesn't run that sort of website. He isn't responsible for the odd bit of idiocy that might appear on his threads and (to the best of my knowledge) it doesn't reflect his views.
In a post titled "Donating organs to the enemy," Soccer Dad responds to the news that a the family of a brown child killed by Israeli troops donated his organs to Israelis:
And in what circumstances did those minors die? Ahmed, was carrying a toy rifle in a place where the Israeli army was operating. Hardly a wise decision. And even if Israel apologizes, was it wrong for the Israeli soldiers to shoot first and ask questions later?
Though it is not perfectly clear from the context of his post, SoccerDad was not defending the right of IDF soldiers to shoot people indiscriminately. What he was doing was reminding his audiences that teenagers with guns -in both Israel and America- are not benign, and that sometimes soldiers (and police officers) make mistakes that are justified errors.

PS: Thanks to all the commenters and letter writers who told me that you understand that criticizing Likud policies does not, by that very fact, make you an "enemy of Israel." I wish there were more of you.