"It took thirty-four minutes for Israeli ambulances to arrive at the crash site, even though they were just a couple of minutes away. There was a military checkpoint near the crash, but none of the soldiers did anything to help, even when bystanders pleaded with them."
These rules (the roadblocks, the instructions not to leave your post to help at an accident) were put in place for a reason. Muslims have a track record of tugging on humanitarian heartstrings and then detonating explosives to kill the Israeli responders.
"It would just take a normal amount of compassion."
Perhaps. But when facing an enemy that will blow himself (or his wife and child) up just to hurt you, compassion gets you killed. Your example of the marriage proposal is instructive here: honor is more important than even life, and what's more honorable than martyrdom?
This is war. The fact that one side uses suicide bombers and the other uses F-16's doesn't change that. Trying to apply our Western, peacetime moral compass to total war will always fail.
That said, thanks for the book recommendation. I will read it in the vein of Sun Tzu's injunction.
Here's an answer I gave in another forum (where my blog is cross posted):
I considered the idea that part of the reluctance of the soldiers to intervene and the ambulances to arrive in a timely manner was some fear of being lured into an ambush. And as a general matter, I'm sure that is a worry, and maybe it's such a worry as a general matter, that it applies regardless of the specifics, but in the incident described in the book it shouldn't have been a worry for a few reasons:
1- The road was under complete Israeli control, it wasn't like they were driving into Gaza or Palestinian controlled West Bank.
2- There were soldiers within walking distance who could have helped, secured the area, the ambulance could have checked in with them first, etc.
3- The book (which admittedly had some biases) put it down to the fact that the whole area, while under Israeli control, is a mess of segregated road systems, overlapping jurisdictions, multiple checkpoints, etc. The Israeli emergency services appear to not have put much effort into figuring out how to navigate the Palestinian portions of this road system.
So my basic point was that there is room for improvement in logistics, which seems like something that should be possible.
But yeah, I understand this objection and I should have spoken to it directly.
"It took thirty-four minutes for Israeli ambulances to arrive at the crash site, even though they were just a couple of minutes away. There was a military checkpoint near the crash, but none of the soldiers did anything to help, even when bystanders pleaded with them."
These rules (the roadblocks, the instructions not to leave your post to help at an accident) were put in place for a reason. Muslims have a track record of tugging on humanitarian heartstrings and then detonating explosives to kill the Israeli responders.
"It would just take a normal amount of compassion."
Perhaps. But when facing an enemy that will blow himself (or his wife and child) up just to hurt you, compassion gets you killed. Your example of the marriage proposal is instructive here: honor is more important than even life, and what's more honorable than martyrdom?
This is war. The fact that one side uses suicide bombers and the other uses F-16's doesn't change that. Trying to apply our Western, peacetime moral compass to total war will always fail.
That said, thanks for the book recommendation. I will read it in the vein of Sun Tzu's injunction.
Here's an answer I gave in another forum (where my blog is cross posted):
I considered the idea that part of the reluctance of the soldiers to intervene and the ambulances to arrive in a timely manner was some fear of being lured into an ambush. And as a general matter, I'm sure that is a worry, and maybe it's such a worry as a general matter, that it applies regardless of the specifics, but in the incident described in the book it shouldn't have been a worry for a few reasons:
1- The road was under complete Israeli control, it wasn't like they were driving into Gaza or Palestinian controlled West Bank.
2- There were soldiers within walking distance who could have helped, secured the area, the ambulance could have checked in with them first, etc.
3- The book (which admittedly had some biases) put it down to the fact that the whole area, while under Israeli control, is a mess of segregated road systems, overlapping jurisdictions, multiple checkpoints, etc. The Israeli emergency services appear to not have put much effort into figuring out how to navigate the Palestinian portions of this road system.
So my basic point was that there is room for improvement in logistics, which seems like something that should be possible.
But yeah, I understand this objection and I should have spoken to it directly.