Is it true that Israel would dynamite the family homes of suspected....

[Kingshakabobo]

........terrorists? My freeper co-worker brought it up in conversation regarding the alleged "10 to one building will be destroyed claim." I kind of remember hearing about dynamiting on the main-stream news but I couldn't find much on google. The first site that pops up is from David Duke so I'm a little skeptical of the claims.

If they DID use this practice, what was the reasoning/justification?

[JHB]

1. I think it was bulldozers more than dynamite...

It was a basic "keep 'em in line by holding the whole family responsible" tactic (though there might have been some fig leaf, like designating the house a "terrorist hide-out").

[Turbineguy]

2. That and bulldozing

It's a effective tool. It gets the newly homeless to show up at friends and relatives houses to live with them and show what assholes the Israelis are. Winning of Hearts and Minds. :sarcasm:

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Not suspected terrorists, but known suicide bombers.

They obviously could not punish the person who set off the bomb, so they made it policy to bulldoze the family home of the suicide bomber, giving the family sometimes as little as 40 minutes to gather they possessions and get out. It is, in effect, collective punishment. The thinking is, I suppose, that the families could stop them, and if they didn't that made them complicit.

That policy, btw, is what prompted Saddam to offer $20,000 to the families of suicide bombers - not to reward the terror, but to get a new home after the Israelis demolished their old one. That was the ONLY basis to the claim that Saddam supported terrorists, because he was buying the friendship of the Palestinians by offering charity to those dispossessed families.

[ThomCat]

4. Actually, the do this to families with influence

They do it to the families of doctors and anyone who looks to be gaining some influence among Palestinians. They do it to people who just happen to live in a place Israel wants. Of the thousands of homes they've demolished, very few of them are the homes of suicide bombers.

[Laotra]

10. Yeah

and homes of "suspected terrorists" (with families inside and bystanders outside) receive rockets and bombs, not dynamite. This common practice is usually referred to by "extra-judicial killing/assassination".

[acmejack]

5. They bulldoze homes for lots of other reasons too it seems!

Here is a story from April 29, 2004 that is informative, read this clip: "Israel is not only demolishing Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem. Between September 2000 and December last year 60,781 houses had been demolished or partly destroyed by Israeli forces in the West Bank and Gaza."

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/updates/israel_emptying_jerusalem_of_palestinians.htm

It is bad enough that there is a campaign to get Catepillar to stop selling bulldozers to Israel. Stop Caterpillar National Campaign

http://www.bootcat.org/WhyBootCAT.html

[slackmaster]

6. Purpose was to remove an incentive that was given to suicide bombers

Radical groups were offering cash incentives to be paid to the surviving family members of suicide bombers.

Israel too the position "You blow yourself up, we bulldoze your family's home."

It was a drastic response to a drastic problem.

[Kingshakabobo]

11. Hmm. Which came first? The bulldozing or the financial incentive?

Someone up-thread is saying the "bonus" was in response to the bulldozing.

My vague recollection was of the bulldozing/dynamiting taking place in the 80s? early 90s? IIRC, the financial incentives started in the late 90s?

I could be wrong.

[slackmaster]

13. I don't think it makes any real difference

Even if you could trace back to the first suicide bombing or the first bulldozing, there is always some other kind of attack that preceded and led to it.

[Kingshakabobo]

14. You are mixing two different issues.

Terrorist attacks versus state sanctioned retribution against Innocent civilians.

Not even close to being the same thing.

[Ian David]

7. Terrorist organizations and The Saudi Royal Family give $$ to the families

of the "martyrs."

Bulldozing the houses of their families is meant to remove that financial incentive without the loss of life associated with bombing them.

I'm not excusing it, just explaining it.

I think I heard that the going rate was $20,000 to the mother of a dead suicide bomber.

[Kingshakabobo]

12. see #11

[izzie]

8. They are not a Dem, in the same way Eng. or we are.

I can not tell you what site to go to but they are on this thing. There are sort of rights for some people and not for others. I would class it more a police state but then I am for a liberal dem. style gov. The Middle East seem to have all sort of different type dem.

[riverwalker]

9. It;s called "Collective Punishment"

forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention, but a tactic used extensively by Israel.
(Along with torturing teenagers and shooting rock throwing 7 year olds in the head)

[Kingshakabobo]

15. "Collective punishment." Nice.

Who else, in history, did that?

[theHandpuppet]

16. Here are some links

Plenty more where these came from.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/21/news/edwatz.php
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/990109/1999010942.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/rafah1.html
http://www.catdestroyshomes.org/article.php?id=485
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/updates/israel_emptying_jerusalem_of_palestinians.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7023.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0113-04.htm

And the U.S. adopts the same tactics in Iraq: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1244

[Kingshakabobo]

17. That's some sick shit.

F*cking pigs.