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Ha, maybe you'd like to include the very next line from the wiki article: "UN observers noted that they observed bodies near doorways, and bullet marks on the doors of demolished houses, and later concluded that residents may have been forced to stay in their homes due to heavy fire.[10]" I get that Israel has their own narrative of events when it comes to Qibya, but if you would read the article, you'd see that it wasn't an isolated instance but the end result of several months of punitive raids by the IDF and civilians with the specific goal of targeting civillians. And yes those orders came from the top of the government: "Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon gave the order, in coordination with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion." The international consensus on what happened in Qibya is pretty clear. "Over the year leading up to the raid, Israeli forces and civilians had conducted many punitive expeditions, causing destruction of infrastructure and crops and many civilian casualties against Palestinian villages, with Latrun, Falameh, Rantis, Qalqiliya, Khirbet al-Deir, Khirbet Rasm Nofal, Khirbet Beit Emin, Qatanna, Wadi Fukin, Idhna, and Surif being the most notable examples" MEK and Israel can deny involvement all they want, and you're correct there's no way to prove what actually happened, but the US intelligence services seem pretty damn convinced: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/isr... And by they way, one of the scientists was gunned down while driving home with his wife and kid after picking them up from school. That doesn't seem like trying to minimize civilian casualties to me. MEK is funded by Israel with the sole goal of destroying Iran. Maybe if there was no threat to the existence of Iran they wouldn't have needed to pursue a nuclear program. You're right the NPT not violating it since they didn't sign it, doesn't mean that there's not a double standard in the way we treat Israel's nuclear program. It's pretty inarguable the Israel has specifically targeted innocent civilians and funded terrorist groups, both of which you gave as reasons as why Israel should be allowed to have a nuclear program without that same sort of scrutiny it's neighbours undergo. |
Punitive raids due to Palestinian raids, it's the chicken and the egg.
And to continue the next line from your quote "Meanwhile, Palestinian guerilla raids into Israel continued. Over a two-week period in late May and early June, four raids by Palestinian fedayeen killed 3 and wounded 6 people in Israel, at Beit Arif, Beit Nabala, Tirat Yehuda and Kfar Hess which, according to the UN, greatly concerned both the Israeli and Jordanian governments"
US intelligence services is known to leak misinformation, I don't know if Israel has involvement with MEK but it's pure speculation at this point. I don't remember Israel declaring the need and will to destroy another nation, have you seen the size of Israel and the size of Iran? I'd say the scale tips in their favor, so "threat to the existence of Iran" is BS. It's just fanatics wanting to remain in power by aligning the opposition with an enemy, age-old trick.
Minimizing civilian casualties doesn't mean zero casualties, that's called collateral damage, we don't know the operational decisions in regard to the assignation.
I'd argue that Israel is being held up to a much higher standard than the rest of the world, which arguably isn't fair considering the neighborhood and the people criticizing Israel.