They are working as a relief organisation, their job is to provide relief, sometimes insurgents take advantage, should that mean that the UN should just pull out and let everyone suffer instead? If they were 'as bad as Hamas', they'd be attacking Israel.
This whole 'X are as bad as Y' situation is getting ridiculous, it's like Godwins law all over again.
Look I'll say it again. Most the UN workers in Gaza are Palestinians from Gaza. They don't need a gun to be put to their head to help Hamas. (I'm not saying that because of their race I'm saying that because of what they have historically done and continue to do) The only people being taken advantage of are the upper UN management there who really DO want to help the people and the people themselves. You can find countless articles online about the Hamas using UN vehicles and buildings to hid in and use to attack the minimum the UN could do if they really had a problem with it and were being 'taken advantage of' is to try and get rid of them tell them to bugger off or to tell Israel that they are being used. (you might say they can't tell Israel they are being threatened by the hamas that are there) well then why not after the incident? at least tell the world that Hamas was using them and taking advantage instead of every single time saying "no there was no one here Israel just felt like killing more people they hadn't met their quota for today." As I said the only people being taken advantage of are the upper UN management
there who really DO want to help the people and the people themselves.
from
Forbes.com UNRWA employs more than 24,000 staffers...
At UNRWA, more than 99% of the staff are local Palestinians...
This past September, Democratic Rep. Steve Rothman, with a bipartisan group of five co-sponsors, submitted a concurrent resolution noting that "UNRWA has employed staffers affiliated with terrorism."
The resolution cited specific examples of UNRWA ambulance and schools having been used to abet terrorism and mentioned a number of figures, including Awad al-Qiq, headmaster of an UNRWA school in Gaza, "who also led Islamic Jihad's engineering unit that built bombs and Qassam rockets."...
I am a little confused, I thought you posted that video as a proof that Hamas fighters were in the UN school that was attacked, however, that video doesn't say it shows an UN school - so this video and the incident "everyone talked about" may be two completely different places. And probably are, given that the PR guy who posted that video would have labeled it specifically as UN school if it were one.
I found a second video at his channel, showing an attack from a specifically named UN school in October 2007, but nothing thats new.
Okay at first I was thinking you mean it didn't say it was a school. Yeah your right they don't say anywhere that it is a UN school. I just assumed because a few days ago when I posted it I was linked to it from a site that said UN school. That's my fault. Sorry. So I guess they haven't released a vid of the incident "everyone talked about". I really wish they would because when I first heard about the incident I was pretty mad I thought maybe the guy in the tank had gone trigger happy. Then I heard they were returning fire... well they always say that and they are usually right but that's not good enough for most people and also the 2 Palestinians who contacted the AP and said they saw the Mortar team at the UN school. But I still wanted to wait for the vid... I guess I am still waiting.
To answer the question directed at wanderer first, in my case I havent been in Israel, I have been in the military but not in actual combat, only manouvers.
I certainly know that war isnt pretty, but I also know a little about human nature. And this knowledge says, if someone is allowed to break the rules, many of those will use this allowance as much as possible - meaning as long as the government, the population, the one responsible for PR or whoever is not behind keeping out civilians, some military guys will quite certainly stop to care.
I can easily account the incidents you cite as "done because the PR guy wanted that to be done" - or, to be more friendly, that the army consists of people, and different people in this army have different believes about handling enemy civilians, and you only get the info about the guys who know to behave. But it should be the responsibility of the politicians to directly and the responsibility of the civilians to indirectly ensure that those who dont know to behave to be kept in line. Part of this is also harsh (and public) response to unnecessary civilian casualities caused by your own soldiers. However, the reaction is mostly not criticizing malfunctioning parts of the own military, but justifying it. Here is limited information very annoying, because it makes those justifications so much easier..
Oh don't get me wrong. I know that there are people who really don't give a crap about the Palestinians. There are bad apples in every country and in every army. Forget about keeping them in line if the army can find them before they join they don't even let them in. You know what a surefire way of avoiding mandatory military service in Israel is (even a desk job)? Tell them you just want to shoot the Palestinians. I know someone who said that (not because he meant it but because he didn't want to serve) he regrets it to this day. They don't try and get these people it's really not good for anyone. What advantage could Israel have in letting it's soldiers kill civilians without consequences? Nothing. The IDF may be reacting to these people we just wouldn't know because there is "bigger news" than Israel punishing a couple of soldiers. I can tell you the civilian reaction to these incidents are usually sorry and frustration each one felt twice because Israelis a frustrated at the IDF for killing the civilians and frustrated that the IDF had to be put into the position where they killed civilians.
Well, in fact the reason given by Daniel Seaman, director of the Israeli press agency/mass media agency (dont know the right translation -.-), during a talk with the news agency AP was that Hamas could show Israel in a bad light with questionable reports.
source: http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/journalistengaza102.html ( I can translate the whole text or only the relevant paragraph if you wish)
I can't answer for him. You want my opinion? It's no secret probably 95% of the main European and US media groups are heavily oriented to the Left. In fact CNN shortly after the beginning of the 2001 intifada was found to be lying so much about what was going on in Israel they were taken of the satellite packages you got in Israel and had to be specially requested. BBC was close behind. I was too young then to follow much of that but needless to say Israel has a very bad history with Media groups and side from what I already said about not wanting troop movements and stuff revealed on public TV I can imagine some people are pretty happy about not having to listen to what they believe is constant media bias against them. But again I can't answer for him I don't know.
You really think this is out of the question or difficult to make? Heavens knows goverments or the military never tried to cover up stuff before 
Israel itself was partially founded by terrorist and covert activities itself, so I wouldn't put it past them to lie.
I don't know what to tell you... I can't argue with conspiracy theory because I would have to have first hand access to the evidence to disprove a theory right? And since I obviously don't I don't know what to tell you. Long live Zenu... the American government is hiding aliens in area 51... I know who killed JFK etc etc etc.
Actually, these days I'm totally not concerned what is "internationally indentified" and what is not.
Nor am I saying I trust the UN - God knows they f*** up in the war here, they were impotent, incapable and were flat out lying in several cases.
I find it ironic that for instance, General Gotovina is charged for war crimes because of "overshelling of Knin" (which the prosecution can't prove, their whole case is currently crumbling in Haague), while at the same time the shelling of Gaza is all fine and dandy.
What I'm saying is that if you want to have standard, them everyone should be equal in front of them.
I have never heard of this General or of Knin or of what happened there. Can I ask who charged him? The Government? The reason I ask is because it's these people that are setting the standard you want us all to be held accountable to. So unless it's an international rules of war people setting the standard how will that apply to any country except the one wherever this general did that thing.
I really think ti's tragic that you're using artillery to kill a guy, when snipers would do the job MUCH more precisely. Seriously, if anything Israel has the $$$ to equip half their military with high-precision sniper rifles. It would be a far better tactic than to level the whole town and then say "I'm sorry".
If a crook takes a hostage and the police officer uses the bazooka to blow them both to bits, you wouldn't be trying to justify the cop, now would you.
No I wouldn't justify the cop but that's a bad analogy. It doesn't take into account Distance, danger to the police man, danger to the people behind the police man, the people in between the police man and the crook besides the hostage, etc etc etc... however I like how it points out nicely how the Palestinians are hostages of the Hamas.
The only question I have left for Splinter is does he know why the Finnish peacekeeper died in bunker 2006? The only information I remember from that incident was that the UN peacekeepers had instructed IDF multiple times they were shelling the UN position and there were people inside. They had declared the area on the IDF before the campaign and confirmed it in the beginning of the campaign, and according to Finnish newspapers, IDF should have known that it was UN position.
Hadn't heard much about it before just that there was Hezbollah fire coming from there...
Here is what I found at just a glance... maybe I will search out a big more about it later right now, as you can see, I am replying to a horde of responses.
This is bull****. All of it. Wall-to-wall, far as the eye can see, complete and utter bull****. This is the same argument used to claim that only Jews can give Jews a fair trial, and only followers of Islam can understand Islam. To claim that only firsthand experience provides knowledge defies the foundations of human science and progress. It flies in the face of learning and langauge. This is a failure of logic so serious it renders anything further said suspect.
You failed to address the point in any meaningful way. Indeed, in the end, you seem to be agreeing with Wanderer in your closing statements instead of refuting him!
Ah saving the best for last. You come across as a very pleasant person you know?
Who said only Jews can give Jews a fair trial and only Muslims understand Islam? What do trials have to do with this anyway? And understanding Islam? go visit a Muslim country or neighborhood and study the Koran then you have first hand knowledge. You don't have to be a Muslim for that. Understanding a race or a religion is not that different from understanding a situation. To understand a race you can study them in books and online but to really get to know them you would go visit them and talk to them yourselves. To understand a religion you can study books about it but again to really get to know them you would go visit their place of worship and read their teachings. But you don't have to BE one. Just like a situation to understand it you have to go to where it is occurring. I'm sorry you think ideas that don't match yours are rubbish.
I call bull****. Again. Trash raised legitimate points, shocking as that might be, which you have utterly failed to answer. Nobody even insuinated that the video is fake, or even made by Israelis, but your persecution complex abruptly assumed both were intended. If I were more cynical than I actually am, I would accuse you of having a guilty conscience. As it stands, I'm going to accuse you of the Chewbacca Defense and attempting to hide the (lack of) evidence, because who made the video and anything else is moot compared to the fact that for all that can be deduced from it it was made in 1962 somewhere in South Vietnam. It's utterly useless as evidence for anything.
Your persecution complex is interesting though, and worthy of addressing at more length then I really feel like doing so when I just finished showering. Perhaps another time.
Let's break this down step by step to see where you missunderstood. Trash indicated that from the video he could not make out what was really going on or even where it was taken. You accuse me of not responding to his questions by not... what? using my high tech hacking skills to hack the IDF network steal the original video and then refine the quality so we can all see the missile? Of course I know Trash is smarter than to think I could do that which means his remarks were intended to indicate that there was no proof the video wasn't a fake. Which is exactly what you continued to indicate in your post as well (marked in bold). Making my response perfectly acceptable. But thanks for your concern.
As for a persecution complex and chewbacca If every person here defending their view is going to be labeled having a "persecution complex" then I accept... otherwise you just talking out your rear...
ewok... bantha... jar jar... yoda...Again with the first-hand fallacy. But more to the point, if you're going to leave the damn petard standing around unused don't be surprised if I hoist you by it. When was the last time you were in UN service in the Gaza Strip, so that you have the right to judge them by your own broken standards?
Why UN service? Why not IDF service? or Hamas service? or Palestinian civilian in the area? or Israeli civilian in the area? All would have first hand access to information.
No, actually you haven't shown anything, you've just made unsupported statements and cited suspect, and out-of-date, sources, against your own specifc efforts to enforce a "you can't judge, you haven't walked a mile in their shoes" thing.
Aside from quoting the UN and others and showing videos what more was I supposed to do? Download my memories of the things I saw into a video and show you? the best I could do is tell you I saw this and heard this and read this. And why would you believe me? You don't even believe me when I give you videos of gunmen driving off in a UN ambulance. Which is why I told you you don't have to take my word for it come over and get your own information. It's funny how I am arguing what you have read I usually know something to the opposite effect but I can't just type it up and say well this is what happened. You will ask where I know that from. Well I know it because I am here but you need proof. So I go look for the articles about whatever it is and post those instead. But you don't believe those either. Why? Because at the end of the day they are written by man, and man lies (except if he is agreeing with you right?). Which just brings us back full circle you need to be and to see for yourself. I have been in the middle of the whole situation here for 20 years straight I have some first hand experience as a civilian, as a soldier, as a civilian dealing with Palestinians, as a soldier dealing with Palestinians, with Lebanese, with the UN, with war, and with peace, with rockets overhead, and with clear skies. So maybe I was privy to some information you were not but instead of coming off like an arrogant prick know it all and just stating what I saw as fact and expect you to believe me I try to find the sources online to back it up. Well now I have just repeated myself. hah...
Holy crap this was a long post...
