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Meet Tarek Loubani, the Canadian Doctor Shot by Israeli Forces Monday While Treating Gaza's Wounded (Transcript)
As Palestinians vow to continue protesting against the Israeli occupation of Gaza, we speak to a Canadian doctor who was shot by Israeli forces in both legs Monday [May 14] while he was helping injured Palestinians. Israeli forces shot dead at least 61 unarmed Palestinian protesters taking part in the Great March of Return Monday, including one doctor. Canada, Britain, Germany, Ireland, and Belgium have called for an investigation into the killings. The United Nations Human Rights Council has announced that it will hold a special session Friday to discuss escalating violence in Gaza. We speak with Dr. Tarek Loubani, an emergency room medical doctor, one of 19 medical personnel shot in Gaza on Monday.
Audio and video links at the top of the page.
Pacifica Radio KPFK has a partial audio file, available till mid-July, ~7MB for the story. (KPFK is in fund drive mode.)
Gaza coverage begins at 13:25. The doctor's story is from 15:15 - 31:30.
He notes that the doctor who treated him was subsequently shot, resulting in his death--this, while he was wearing high-visibility clothing to denote his first-responder status.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday May 18 2018, @03:51PM (8 children)
Your idea would not work in practice, because Israel has Nuclear weapons, and would most likely retaliate if anyone tried Nuking their holy land.
As a result, your idea would probably result in the extermination of life on earth in the subsequent nuclear exchange. Then, if there are any survivors by some miracle, someone would claim the ruins as "holy ruins" and the cycle starts again, this time most likely with rocks and spears.
But yes, basically wiping out that land mass and saying "neither of you will get it" would work, in theory at least.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @06:14PM (2 children)
Isn't that the idea behind the Christian support of Zionism, though? Get the Tribes of Israel back to the Promise Land, slaughter the infidels, and then Third Impact starts.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:26PM (1 child)
I think you refer to the rapture, then the 7 years of Satan rule of earth, and then the 1000 year reign of Christ. Or something like that. And, I have no desire to live to see that 1000 year reign.
Imagine: You_are_the_son_of_God. You permitted the savages to kill you once. But, now it's time for payback. You're going to rule with an iron fist, and absolutely_no_one is going to get away with any sin. Teenage boy giving the wistful eye to a pretty little girl - BAM! You just think about it, and shrivel his little dick off, along with his testicles. An accountant is thinking hard about how to embezzle enough to pay off his mortgage - BAM! Massive coronary, and you banish his ass directly to Hell. Some politician comes to lobby you for some stupid shit, telling you that his constituents will benefit from blah blah blah - BAM! His brain aneurysm let's go, and you banish his ass to Hell - do not pass "Go", do not collect $200.
I suspect that Christ's rule would make any of us wish that we could choose Sharia Law, as harsh as that is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 20 2018, @01:31AM
So five more years of Trump then?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday May 18 2018, @07:53PM (4 children)
You have an inflated idea of the effectiveness of nuclear weapons. If you set them all off, you could wipe out technological civilization more advanced than probably early nineteenth century*, and kill billions of people in the resulting collapse but you would not exterminate humans, let alone all life on Earth.
*There would still be widespread use of higher tech, but it would be scavenged/repaired/repurposed. There would be very little new manufacturing for a long time.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday May 18 2018, @08:58PM (3 children)
I don't know, the fact is nobody truly knows what the effect would be of hundreds of nuclear explosions going off around the world.
Israel is not part of the NPT, so nobody knows exactly how many weapons they have, but the general agreed is estimate is around 200 warheads. If they were to launch those 200 warheads, there is no guarantee other nuclear states may not launch in retaliation. If the USA then retaliates against those who launched at Israel, the other big nuclear powers may launch as well. We could well see a thousand or more warheads launched in a short space of time.
It means at a minimum there would be 200 nuclear detonations in a short space of time, possibly a magnitude more. That depends on the escalation and cycle of violence that is triggered (but looking at human behavior in general, I am not optimistic). Depending on the type of weapon (amount of fallout generated), yield and wind direction, there could be a lot more secondary deaths from the fallout than the initial extermination.
Then there is also the possibility of a nuclear winter setting in ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Mechanism [wikipedia.org] ). Coupled with a broken civilisation, a failure of global logistics, much land possibly irradiated, and mass death from the initial exchange (including leading experts in science/tech/engineering fields, as they tend to congregate in urban centers), It doesn't bode well for the medium to long term (even if you can survive short term by scavenging).
Now yes, the above is close to a "worst case" scenario, and it may be better. It may also be worse, humans may survive in some form in some enclaves in certain areas, however I (and most people) don't think it is worth finding out over that small spit of land.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @09:57PM
Do you think, once Israel is pretty much destroyed, the US would still give a shit?
Let the Jews move to Russia, see if they like it there better.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday May 19 2018, @01:40AM
Lets do some maths.
There are at most about 20,000 nuclear warheads on this planet. If they all could devastate everything within 5 miles (they can't, most are much smaller) that would be about 80 square miles each.
Assume they all work perfectly and land in the optimal pattern with no overlap.
Total area of devastation 1,600,000 square miles.
This is a big planet. Total area 196,900,000 square miles.
Area of destruction is less than 1%.
But what about the oceans?
Ok, Assume they all fall on land and ignore Antarctica.
Total land area 52,000,000 square miles.
Area of destruction about 3%
Most of that would be cities and temperate crop-growing, so it would have a much bigger effect of the human species than 3%, but it is nowhere near annihilation.
Nuclear Winter?
Well that should fix that global warming problem. But seriously, the talk of nuclear winter has been quietly dropped. Australian bushfires (Black Saturday was equivalent to 17 Little Boy bombs (15Kt each)) and Saddam setting fire to all those oil wells (GW1) showed that the particulates/smoke from fires would not rise as far as the theory needed, and would wash out of the atmosphere much faster than it expected. Nobody talks about it much because the worse the result, the more effective the MAD doctrine is.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Saturday May 19 2018, @02:21AM
Nobody knows what will happen the next time you pick your nose. Don't do it. Just don't do it.