BF2S Forums The Press is a Threat to Israeli Tanks

ATG wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

ATG wrote:

When a person who wears a press badge is reporting  to the opposing side the movement of the tanks they become an enemy.

Hard world.
They know it's dangerous.

Reuters.

Anything to make the Jews look bad.

Israel, not the Jews.  Half my family are Jews and they didn't kill anybody.

Ataronchronon wrote:

Jibbles wrote:

TSI wrote:

Oh, so shooting a CLEARLY marked TV car is okay? Collateral damage? BS.

Clearly? The 2' X 1' sticker on the hood? Unless I'm missing something, that vehicle was not clearly marked, and looks as if it was behind a small hill and tree line. The tank commander probably got a bit worried when he saw a guy with a large black object on his shoulder standing in the back of a truck pointing said object directly at his tank. Wrong place, wrong time. Sucks. Welcome to a fucking warzone.

imortal wrote:

Also, if you voluntaraly go into a combat area, you forfeit any kind of protection.  Things like this happen.  Yeah, it sucks.

QFT. No one forced him to film downrange of a tank in an ACTIVE COMBAT AREA.

I gotta agree with this, it sucks, but who would expect anything else from war?

Still, incidents like these are what makes war suck more than anything else. I think its totally cool if people want to kill each other, as long as the feelings are mutual. However, when innocent bystanders die in the fighting, war isnt so pretty.

That would be fine if the innocent bystander wouldn't have been shot intentionally.  This isn't collateral damage, this is murdering a journalist.

Last edited by sergeriver (2008-04-17 04:12:10)

Spark wrote:

TBH, your source needs a big whack of the biasmeter.

While it isn't right that the tanks fired, the tone of the report makes it clear to me that all is not as it seems.

I watched this on BBC, but I couldn't find the video with the BBC logo.

Last edited by sergeriver (2008-04-17 04:17:24)

sergeriver wrote:

Ataronchronon wrote:

Jibbles wrote:

TSI wrote:

Oh, so shooting a CLEARLY marked TV car is okay? Collateral damage? BS.

Clearly? The 2' X 1' sticker on the hood? Unless I'm missing something, that vehicle was not clearly marked, and looks as if it was behind a small hill and tree line. The tank commander probably got a bit worried when he saw a guy with a large black object on his shoulder standing in the back of a truck pointing said object directly at his tank. Wrong place, wrong time. Sucks. Welcome to a fucking warzone.


QFT. No one forced him to film downrange of a tank in an ACTIVE COMBAT AREA.

I gotta agree with this, it sucks, but who would expect anything else from war?

Still, incidents like these are what makes war suck more than anything else. I think its totally cool if people want to kill each other, as long as the feelings are mutual. However, when innocent bystanders die in the fighting, war isnt so pretty.

That would be fine if the innocent bystander wouldn't have been shot intentionally.  This isn't collateral damage, this is murdering a journalist.

Does anyone else not find it a bit lop sided that when terrorists kill innocent civilians everyone is supposed to come out and condemn it (and rightly so) but when soldiers or security services kill innocent people we're supposed to shrug and go "oh well, that's war, it was collateral damage"...now I know a lot of people argue about the issue of intent but look at this clip, the guys in the tank saw the vehicle, shot at it and killed the guys in it.; whether or not the soldiers realised later that it was an accident is of no consequence to the dead civilians relatives.

A good example of how this dual standard is applied is the Omagh bombing (an atrocious act of violence that served as the final nail in the coffin of the Irish public's tolerance for paramilitary activity), many catholics were killed in that blast and hence some people postulate that the bomb was not intended to go off when it did and may have only been intended for structural damage (like previous IRA campaigns). So given that the people who planted that bomb possibly only set out to blow up property can the deaths of all the innocent civilians be deemed collateral damage? Why does the issue of intent only absolve the military and security services?

NOTE: I DO NOT condone or in any way attempt to divert blame from the terrorists who planted the Omagh explosives, I'm just using it as an example.

Your view inside a tank is not the very best, it could be that they missed the TV marks, and there was a guy standing in the back of the pickup with a camera.

what does a camera pointed at a tank look like to you from a distance? Yep that's right, an anti tank weapon. You're in a hostile area with your tanks hunting down people who want to hurt you and in that same zone is someone pointing at your tank with a black object in the back of a pickup.

You don't need to ask for clear permission to shoot when you think your tank is threatened by someone wanting to shoot it, that would take way too long.

What do you do? You shoot.

What happened? the car blew up and the guy is now dead. (I think it's weird that there is no damage to the road at all btw. A tank bullet is pretty damn strong.)

sergeriver wrote:

It's very clear that the tank shot the car intentionally.

Actually, that's not at all clear.

It's possible, but as I've said before...equal application of the "innocent until proven guilty" approach would be nice.

It's also possible that the car was obscured and all the tank crew saw was someone with a large black object on their shoulder pointed at them in the distance. Considering the proliferation of AT missiles, the concern and response would be understandable...if that is what happened.

This can be what if'd to death.

But since all we know is that a journalist got killed by Israelis while covering fighting between the Israelis and Palenstinians and absolutely nothing else regarding the circumstances...it's perfectly acceptable to say without further investigation Israel did it on purpose?

Dilbert_X wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Well at least the coverage is even-handed and doesn't automatically assume the Israelis saw the markings...oh wait.

As Braddock pointed out, its a civilian area, I wasn't aware civilian vehicles needed markings of some kind to be in a civilian area.
Does your car have some kind of markings which identifies it as civilian?

Am I a journalist covering fighting between two military forces?

If I were...you damn betcha.

But that's not the point of my post. The assumption is that the Israelis 1) saw the car to begin with and 2) intentionally targeted the "clearly" marked car. Neither of those assumptions is justified nor corroborated by the video provided.

FEOS wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

It's very clear that the tank shot the car intentionally.

Actually, that's not at all clear.

It's possible, but as I've said before...equal application of the "innocent until proven guilty" approach would be nice.

It's also possible that the car was obscured and all the tank crew saw was someone with a large black object on their shoulder pointed at them in the distance. Considering the proliferation of AT missiles, the concern and response would be understandable...if that is what happened.

This can be what if'd to death.

But since all we know is that a journalist got killed by Israelis while covering fighting between the Israelis and Palenstinians and absolutely nothing else regarding the circumstances...it's perfectly acceptable to say without further investigation Israel did it on purpose?

They killed an innocent cameraman.  Period.  And from Reuters: GAZA (Reuters) - A medical examination showed on Thursday that metal darts from an Israeli tank shell that explodes in the air caused the death of a Reuters cameraman killed a day earlier in the Gaza Strip, doctors said.

sergeriver wrote:

FEOS wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

It's very clear that the tank shot the car intentionally.

Actually, that's not at all clear.

It's possible, but as I've said before...equal application of the "innocent until proven guilty" approach would be nice.

It's also possible that the car was obscured and all the tank crew saw was someone with a large black object on their shoulder pointed at them in the distance. Considering the proliferation of AT missiles, the concern and response would be understandable...if that is what happened.

This can be what if'd to death.

But since all we know is that a journalist got killed by Israelis while covering fighting between the Israelis and Palenstinians and absolutely nothing else regarding the circumstances...it's perfectly acceptable to say without further investigation Israel did it on purpose?

They killed an innocent cameraman.  Period.  And from Reuters: GAZA (Reuters) - A medical examination showed on Thursday that metal darts from an Israeli tank shell that explodes in the air caused the death of a Reuters cameraman killed a day earlier in the Gaza Strip, doctors said.

Read the entire article you cited earlier regarding the cause of death.

An innocent cameraman died. While covering combat operations in a known combat area. Period. Until more is known about the circumstances surrounding what happened, it is premature to imply or state outright that it was intentional.

If he had been killed by a Palestinian rocket or bullet, would you be decrying it so vigorously?

I think not.

FEOS wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

It's very clear that the tank shot the car intentionally.

Actually, that's not at all clear.

It's possible, but as I've said before...equal application of the "innocent until proven guilty" approach would be nice.

It's also possible that the car was obscured and all the tank crew saw was someone with a large black object on their shoulder pointed at them in the distance. Considering the proliferation of AT missiles, the concern and response would be understandable...if that is what happened.

This can be what if'd to death.

But since all we know is that a journalist got killed by Israelis while covering fighting between the Israelis and Palenstinians and absolutely nothing else regarding the circumstances...it's perfectly acceptable to say without further investigation Israel did it on purpose?

To be fair it is pretty clear that the tank is firing in at least their general direction...a better argument in the Israeli's defence would have been that from the video we do not know what, if anything, was behind or in the vicinity of the camera crew.

You are correct on the issue of the cameraman's camera possibly looking suspicious to Israeli troops but I've always heard the argument on these forums that great steps are taken to avoid collateral damage and that military technology makes such incidents very rare...this video here would suggest basic human error can lead to pretty disastrous examples of collateral damage and if what Serge posted about the weaponry used in this incident is true it would suggest military technology is not making any improvements in the area of collateral damage.

No absolutes can be drawn from this video just yet, nobody knows all the facts but I don't think it matters one way or another as it is not like The Israelis pay any attention to any results found against them that are negative. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/889716.html

Last edited by Braddock (2008-04-17 04:48:39)

If he had been killed by a Palestinian rocket or bullet, would you be decrying it so vigorously?

Yes of course, they don't normally deliberately target press, doctors, children and aid workers however.
Israel kills way too many for it to be accidental overall.

sergeriver wrote:

Killing civilians is wrong whether it was intentionally or not.  Using that kind of ammunition in a civilian area is wrong.  I find it funny how many of you focus on trying to find something fishy in the video, and forget that innocent people have been killed one more time by Israeli forces.  I guess it's ok to kill civilians as long as you aren't a terrorist organization.  Nice approach you are having guys.

tank ammunition consists out of

High explosive rounds
HEAT (anti tank) - High Explosive Anti Tank
KE penetrator (also anti tank) Kinetic Energy penetrators
HESH - High Explosive Squash Head. used for buildings / other tanks aswell.
depleted uranium
that flachette exploding thing.
and much more.

Now don't tell me any of those rounds are humane. Bullets are supposed to kill someone hard and quickly. It's bad this guy died but he was in an extremely dangerous area doing stuff that was extremely dangerous.

the round they used was solely for anti infantry purposes and probably the most "humane" round they could have used.

Last edited by dayarath (2008-04-17 04:59:27)

sergeriver wrote:

FEOS wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

If you think I wouldn't condemn a terrorist organization you are wrong.  Terrorists are nutjobs and you expect them to commit these crimes.  Israel is a sovereign state and you expect them to protect innocent civilians.

I didn't realize you thought the Palestinian militants were terrorists...

I never said otherwise.  Anyone shooting rockets into civilian areas is a terrorist.

Same with the IRA, anyone who is not attacking military, security or infrastructural targets is a terrorist.