At the risk of sounding like George Carlin I’ve always been intrigued by the term “war crimes”…..jumbo shrimp. Yes, you can go to war and torture and kill each other but there are rules…..wha? No shooting in the face, no stabbing in the back, yada, yada, yada. I know those aren’t the rules but they might as well be. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I just saw an article in the Washington Post titled-Israel investigates an elusive, horrific enemy: Rape as a weapon of war. Apparently there is video of women being sexually assaulted and witnesses in Gaza describing in graphic detail a gang rape at the start of the Hamas rampage. Someone investigating the crimes perpetrated against women and children in Gaza stated “the torture of women was weaponized to destroy communities, to destroy a people, to destroy a nation.” Ok, here’s where it gets bizarro. Hamas denies that its fighters use rape or assault against women as a weapon of war. A Hamas official said to do so would go against its founding Islamic principles and any sexual relationship or activity outside of marriage to be completely haram-forbidden by Islam. And he goes on to say “whoever does this kind of act is committing a major infraction and would be punished both legally and on Judgement Day. So our soldiers would not go close to this forbidden act.” Great principles to have but stating this on the heels of killing at least 1200 people and taking 240 hostages in their surprise attack seems a bit absurd. Just like in The Godfather when the five families were anxious to deal narcotics, well four were anxious but Don Corleone was resistant. However, drugs were so lucrative they needed to find a path so it was decided to go forward by only selling to people they didn’t like as verbalized by Don Giuseppe, to keep it away from schools and children, that’s an infamia. Just sell it to the coloreds…”they’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.” So prior to that it was ok to deal in prostitution, murder, gambling and extortion but drugs are caca. Picky, picky, picky. One of my favorite cockeyed moments was when Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan was up for parole and said if Mr. Kennedy was alive he’d let him go free. Oops S squared, one slight flaw to your logic…YOU KILLED HIM. A bit of a Catch-22. Back to Carlin….small crowd….taped live….soft rock….war crimes.
Gunga, galunga
Garry