{"id":31963,"date":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1969-12-31T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/israeli-bombing-of-syria-and-moral-relativism\/31963\/"},"modified":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1969-12-31T23:00:00","slug":"israeli-bombing-of-syria-and-moral-relativism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/israeli-bombing-of-syria-and-moral-relativism\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Bombing of Syria and Moral Relativism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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No universally applied principle justifies the Israeli attack on Damascus. Only self-flattering tribalism does that<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald<\/strong>
guardian.co.uk<\/a>
May 7, 2013<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Israel dropped massive bombs near Damascus, ones which the New York Times, quoting residents, originally reported<\/a> (then evidently deleted<\/a>) resulted in explosions \u201cmore massive than anything the residents of the city. . . have witnessed during more than two years of war.\u201d The Jerusalem Post this morning quoted<\/a> \u201ca senior Syrian military source\u201d as claiming that \u201cIsrael used depleted uranium shells\u201d, though that is not confirmed. The NYT cited<\/a> a \u201chigh-ranking Syrian military official\u201d who said the bombs \u201cstruck several critical military facilities in some of the country\u2019s most tightly secured and strategic areas\u201d and killed \u201cdozens of elite troops stationed near the presidential palace\u201d, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that<\/a> \u201cat least 42 soldiers were killed in the strikes, and another 100 who would usually be at the targeted sites remain unaccounted for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli defenders claim that its air attack targeted weapons provided by Iran that would have ended up in the hands of Hezbollah. Obama officials quickly told media outlets<\/a> that \u201cthe administration is fully supportive of Israel\u2019s airstrikes\u201d. Indeed, Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy noted<\/a>: \u201cKeep in mind the Israelis are using weapons supplied by us.\u201d There is, needless to say, virtually no condemnation of the Israeli assault in US media or political circles. At this point, the only question is how many minutes will elapse before Congress reflexively adopts a near-unanimous or unanimous resolution effusively praising Israel for the attack and unqualifiedly endorsing all past and future attacks as well.<\/p>\n

Because people who cheer for military action by their side like to pretend that they\u2019re something more than primitive \u201cmight-makes-right\u201d tribalists, the claim is being hauled out that Israel\u2019s actions are justified by the \u201cprinciple\u201d that it has the right to defend itself from foreign weapons in the hands of hostile forces. But is that really a \u201cprinciple\u201d that anyone would apply consistently, as opposed to a typically concocted ad hoc claim to justify whatever the US and Israel do? Let\u2019s apply this \u201cprinciple\u201d to other cases, as several commentators on Twitter have done over the last 24 hours, beginning with this:<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n

This article was posted: Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at 2:55 pm<\/p>\n

Tags: foreign affairs<\/a>, terrorism<\/a>, war<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/a> Print this page.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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This article originally appeared on : Infowars<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No universally applied principle justifies the Israeli attack on Damascus. Only self-flattering tribalism does that Glenn Greenwaldguardian.co.ukMay 7, 2013 On Sunday, Israel dropped massive bombs near Damascus, ones which the New York Times, quoting residents, originally reported (then evidently deleted) resulted in explosions \u201cmore massive than anything the residents of the city. . . have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-31963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}