From Rick Congress’s discussion of Goldstone’s statement:
We have to address the vital strategic matter of terrorist chickens. One of the seemingly bizarre acts of the IDF in Gaza was the killing of 31,000 chickens. These chickens were being raised commercially for eggs and food. Such businesses along with others, a cement factory, fishing boats,etc. and civil facilities such as power plants, public schools and water purification plants were destroyed by the IDF. These sorts of acts (targeting civilian infrastructure) are known to be violations of the Geneva Convention, UN resolutions, and are rightfully condemned world-wide. Condemned as what? As punishing the civilian population — collectively, and intentionally.
One line of reasoning in Israel’s defense would be that these chickens provide nutrition for Gazans, and that the more Gazan children have to eat, the more likely they are to survive and grow up to become if not actual terrorists then “demographic terrorists,” who by their very existence and tendency to reproduce, threaten the future of the Jewish state by staying alive in sufficient numbers to give credibility to the idea that Palestinians actually exist (another terrorist threat to Israel’s existence) and might need a place to live, besides Jordan or Lebanon.
So now we can classify these actions of the IDF as combating terrorism, not of targeting civilian infrastructure.
