JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling. “Listen,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Sada as fighting raged around Shifa Hospital.
Kinda similar to the “human shields” argument. When I read comics growing up, when a villain takes a hostage the answer was never “kill the hostage” except for the edgiest of antiheroes, yet here we are with “human shields” being used as a justification to kill civilians. It’s fucking wild.
This exactly is my main gripe with how Israel is conducting this war. They’re completely unwilling to take any additional risk to preserve civilian life.
Even the US sent troops in to kill a scumbag like Uday Hussein instead of bombing with an airstrike.
This is just the Zionist creed of “unlimited Palestinian deaths don’t make up for 1 Israeli.”
It’s not just in “this war”, they weren’t giving a shit about Palestinian civilians for decades.
Not like they care about any non Israelis in the area. Especially if they are press
They don’t care about Israelis either! They’ve killed a bunch of the hostages, and there was a lot of friendly fire at the music festival.
That’s why concluded that the Israeli leadership at the moment are full-blown Fascists: their treatment of people who they see as “not us” as subhuman and the style and intensity of their propaganda entirelly anchored on blaming the victim and them providing a variety of unverifiable excuses for their own killings which are even inconsistent amongst each other (often the excuses for different bombings have inconsistent criteria, which means they’re to a large extent arbitrary or the excuses are being made up after the fact and hence false) are quite the throwback to quite a style of Fascism which is almost a century old and manage to exceed just about everybody since WWII.
Even Russia in its invasion of Ukraine did not get this close to the historical worse kinds of Fascism, probably because the Russians are nowhere as racist towards Ukranians as Israelis are towards Arabs, especially Palestinians.
this war
You mean “this genocide”. They don’t see civilians, they see targets for extermination.
Well, the US has shown that they couldn’t fight an insurgency with their level of protections for civilians.
Makes sense that Israel assesses that they have less resources than the US, and thus can’t fight the same way and have a hope of success.Of course they could have used that as a pretty good reason not to start this war in the first placez but alas, they didn’t.
What argument are you making here? Your first paragraph implies you believe that Isreal is justified in it’s approach based on the US’s failed conflicts with Guerilla warfare. But then your second paragraph implies that Isreal is not justified for exactly that reason, which is like… Yeah… That’s correct lol.
I feel like it shouldn’t be a controversial opinion to say that if you are unable to conduct a war without massive civilian casualties then you shouldn’t be conducting that war. If you do anyway you are, at the very best, a war criminal.
This is, actually, an absurd opinion. Massive civilian casualties are inseparable from war, and you will be hard pressed to find a war without them.
The laws of war are built around, and exist because of, this assumption. They exist to give a framework that sets forth principles by which the loss of life can be evaluated.
Otherwise, by your definition, every warring faction ever is a war criminal.
Wow, that is an insanely obtuse interpretation of what I said.
Of course there are always civilian casualties In war. Of course that is why war crimes exist in the first place.
“Massive” literally means “Large in comparison to what is typical”. So when I say massive civilian cassualties forgive me for assuming you’d understand I was using that word for it’s intended purpose.
Bombing a hospital full of civilians is absolutely a war crime.
Israel stated this war, at a minimum, 17 years ago. Blockades are an act of war.
Makes sense that Israel assesses that they have less resources than the US, and thus can’t fight the same way and have a hope of success.
Israel has one of the most powerful militaries in the region, with 500,000 troops, a $20 billion dollar budget, and shared tech with the US. They have no external bases to maintain. They’re terrorists who live at the border in 140 square miles with roads Israel designed to allow their tanks easy access.
In the first week of this genocide, Israel dropped more bombs than the US did during the entire Afghanistan war. On one of the most population dense regions in the world.
But further, Israel immediately cut power and water to Gaza. 2 million people went without water and electricity to attack how many Hamas terrorists?
And let’s be clear, this all happened because IDF forces were busy in the West Bank evicting Palestinians from their homes for settlers leaving the Gaza border unguarded.
The US absolutely fought an insurgency. They just figured out they needed local support. They got it in Iraq, they didn’t get it in Afghanistan.
That’s Israel’s biggest problem here. They’ve spent the last several decades making Palestinians hate them. So there is no possible way for them to destroy Hamas.
I wonder if a lot of people’s idea of war has been shaped by the recent American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which were wars of choice where at least in theory American soldiers were fighting largely for the benefit of the natives. Countries that believe they actually need to win and don’t have the option of just giving up and going home fight wars in a very different way. Consider for example World War II, the proverbial “good versus evil” war fought by the generation that originally came up with the comic book characters you read about. The Allies certainly didn’t hesitate to kill enormous numbers of Axis civilians in the course of destroying military targets. (IMO the Allies actually went way too far and a lot of the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan served no military purpose, but I suppose they were more worried about bombing too little than they were about bombing too much.)
The total war tactics of WW2 are unthinkable by modern standards, but it’s hard not to sympathize with an outgunned army fighting for their home. They fight because they’d rather die than lose.
Maybe instead of fighting people in that position, you talk to them and work out a peace deal. If they’re willing to be reasonable, end the violence.
If they’re willing to be reasonable
they’ve shown time and time again, through actions and words, that they are not
Exactly. Netanyahu and his gang of corrupt zealots can’t be reasoned with.
Do you think that Hamas will negotiate a peace deal in good faith?
Do you think Israel will?
Yes.
Hamas attacked on October 7th. Not the other way around.
Didn’t happen in a vacuum though, did it.
Do not confuse me saying that with sympathising with Hamas. It is possible to recognise that both sides have bloody hands, and have done for decades.
Can you explain what you mean by “Didn’t happen in a vacuum”?
Best I can figure is that you disagree with the act itself, but agree with their motives or desires. But I really don’t want to assume, and would prefer to understand from you.
Israel attacked, at a minimum, 17 years ago.
Blockading a country is an act of war.
A total war is when you utalize all of a societies resources for war. That’s essentially what Hamas is doing, they have been syphoning the tiny economic capability the Gaza Strip had to arm themselves and are not hesitant to employ every available human being as a fighter or as a shield. Hamas also is in favour of Palestinian civilians dying,
The time to facilitate a peaceful solution was decades ago but the Israeli government missed that opportunity for selfish reasons. Now there is a conflict with no good solution available for Israel.
Now there is a conflict with no good solution available for Israel.
There is, but it’d require gasp giving up on their expansionist ambitions, and the only one willing to do that was Rabin, who got assassinated for it.
They should but that would only help with the west bank. As long Hamas is there, there is a security threat and Hamas can hide behind civilians. But even if Israel dismantles the current Hamas structures, in a few years they or something similar will be back.
There are 2 million people in Gaza and no perspective for any improvement of their situation. Gaza is economically viable on it’s own. But neither Egypt nor Israel wants to incorporate Gaza and it’s inhabitants into their states.
As long Hamas is there, there is a security threat and Hamas can hide behind civilians. But even if Israel dismantles the current Hamas structures, in a few years they or something similar will be back.
If the Israeli occupation of Palestine stops, Hamas will either disappear on its own, mellow out into a normal government or become just another terrorist organization like the IRA in Ireland. That’s usually how it goes.
How long will the mellowing out take and how many Israeli civilians will die during that? Half of the people in Gaza were born after Hamas came into power.
Ireland is a viable economy on it’s own. The average education level in Gaza is abysmal, there are no resources, little farmable land,… There is no perceivable way for Gaza to function as a independent part of Palestine independent of either Israel or Egypt. So what’s the plan here?
Egypt wants nothing to do with Gaza anymore. I don’t think anyone in Israel would support incorporating Gaza into Israel and grant citizenship to it’s inhabitants.
Just closing the border and largely keeping out there is what Israel did the last two decades and that is exactly what ended up in an unprecedented terror attack on Israeli civilians.
If Israel continues to treat the Palestinians as they have historically done so, it’s likely there will always be a Hamas or their equivalent.
If you kill hospitals, you kill a generation.
except for the edgiest of antiheroes
lol’d
Because that’s where the Palestinians are, and this is a genocide.
Because both sides are fighting are major assholes. Hamas does hide arms and fighters in and around hospitals. Israel doesn’t hold back attacking the hospitals to get at that gear, because they care more about killing Hamas than saving Palestinians. The civilians in Gaza are surrounded by assholes.
This is true in general, but this time they’re literally in Israel’s crosshairs. These people are dying to sniper fire.
Source?
Ya, fair request. Not that the end result would be any worse than bombing, etc. But that would be the first report of sniper fire on civilians, afaik.
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Here you go
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8phw94
Rockets literally stored 1m from the doorstep of a class room
Because Israel is committing war crimes. Because Israel has stated, unequivocally, that Palestinians are animals and must be scourged off the face of the earth.
Placing the Blame soley on Israel is misinformed at best
Oh, Hamas is airstriking hospitals and refugee camps too? No? They’re not? Only Israel is doing that?
Why wouldn’t this genocide be blamed on the ones committing it? Use your head.
You clearly do not understand what a war crime is.
Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.
And before you bring up human shields, the only ones to do so were the Israelis in operation Cast Lead. Read up on it of you don’t know. If you do and still say this, then you’re a genocidaire and I don’t give a shit what you say.
I’m reading through the Wikipedia article and don’t see anything about the Israelis using human shields. Part of it mentions Hamas using human shields, hiding under hospitals, keeping weapons in houses or mosques, etc.
Can you help narrow it down for me which part you’re talking about?
https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/mde150152009en.pdf
Page 48.
Israel does a good job of making the world forget their actions.
According to testimonies, in several cases Israeli forces also forced unarmed Palestinian civilian males (mostly adults but in two cases also children) to serve as “human shields”, including making them walk in front of armed soldiers; go into buildings to check for booby traps or gunmen; and inspect suspicious objects for explosives. These practices are not new. Numerous such cases have been documented in recent years and the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that such practices contradict International law and prohibited them in October 2005.73
Thanks!
And also because Hamas is using Hospitals as base of operations because they will get sympathy for it and human shields. No side is right here
Can you please reread what you just said? You’re saying it’s okay to kill children and innocent people in order to kill someone else you actually want to kill?
Hamas must be completely eliminated, period. No cost is too great, for the good of the entire world and all its future children.
Please explain your strategy which accomplishes that goal while not harming the human shields they’re using, and collect your Nobel Peace Prize.
" Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Not yours. Israel isn’t doing a thing in Qatar.
You’re either a liar or you believe in obvious lies.
No cost is too great
Eat shit.
I think you need glasses or some mental help because that’s not what I said. I am saying Hamas is committing war crimes by using the hospital and forcing Israel into war crimes by attacking the hospital. There is no good guy here. If you reread that’s what I said
Hamas isn’t forcing Israel to commit war crimes.
According to international law they are. If they shoot from a school, Israel has to shoot back. Do they are forcing their hand
lol, Israel doesn’t “have to” do anything.
Could you cite that law for me? Because last I checked there is no such law forcing Isreal to shoot back, school or otherwise.
Intentionally bombing civilians is a war crime. I don’t care how many of your “intended targets” you think you’re getting. If you are bombing civilian centers, like, oh let’s say a hospital for instance, then you are a war criminal, Full stop. There is nothing forcing Isreal to do that.
So, if Hamas hid in a Israeli hospital would it be justifiable to bomb it?
Israel had to tear down one of its own police stations in Sderot becausesome Hamas terrorists were cooped up in there after attacking it on the 7th of October.
Yes, actually - it would.
I’m sure Israel would afford the same evacuation warnings and assistance as well.
“forcing”
Nobody is forcing Israel to do anything.
Operation Cast lead.
You really think using human shields is really a good excuse to bomb hospitals. “they’re using hostages! Quick teach those hostages a goddamn guided 2000lb lesson!”
Ok, let’s just let Hamas murder millions. They’re invincible because all they have to do is grab the nearest civilian.
Get the fuck outta here with that idiotic child logic…
Get the fuck out of here justifying genocide.
Never again was for everyone.
Look hamas killing “millions” is unlikely given they haven’t topped 5000.
Coolio. So lemme grab your kids take them hostage and you can tell me again that murdering me and your children is the only solution to hostage situation.
There is clear evidence that at least some hospitals were alleged to be Hamas operation centers but in fact were not. But even if they were operation centers, would you still think it’s justified? How many Hamas members are worth how many “accidental” deaths of hospital staff and patients? Who would even dream of making such a formula? It’s sick.
The issue at hand is about hospitals being destroyed, not about the Israel-Palestine conflict on the whole. Please save your “no side is right” language for an issue where that actually applies.
Would you say the same thing is the US was the one shelling hospitals?
Operation cast lead.
Every accusation is a confession.
What a terrible headline. If APNews thinks it’s a war crime, it has a duty to say so. You can’t just write a headline like this without drawing the obvious inference.
Does that headline not read war crime to you somehow?
Well it’s kind of open to interpretation, which may be why they didn’t want to directly say that, just imply it.
Article 19 of the Geneva convention:
The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.
Now are firing qassam rockets “harmful to the enemy”? Probably.
Has due warning been given? Maybe? It’s not well defined what that means. Does roof knocking count? Do you need to submit a form to their embassy?
I think the big problem is that the kind of warfare we are seeing here is unlike what they saw when they wrote those laws.
It is written in the passive. That’s intentional; it’s a classic approach that writers use to dodge the issue. It’s not OK and we shouldn’t excuse it.
Given most people aren’t reading the article, the particularly relevant points:
International humanitarian law lends hospitals special protections during war. But hospitals can lose their protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. […]
In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued a warning to combatants that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes. And the bar for evidence is very high.
“If there is a doubt that a civilian object has lost its protective status, the attacker must assume that it is protected,” Khan wrote. “The burden of demonstrating that this protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the missile, or the rocket in question.”
TL;DR: If Hamas is conducting military operations from hospitals, they can be legitimate targets in the eyes of international law, but precautions still need to be taken to avoid civilian casualties and the case for their military use should be overwhelming, not amorphous or tenuous.
So just shouting, “They’re coming right for us!” Isn’t enough?
I’m shocked.
Because Israel is trying to genocide.
They don’t care about Hamas, they just want Palestine gone.
That doesn’t explain why the rest of the world is ok with it.
We aren’t. But anyone that voices an opinion against Israel in my country is labeled an anti-Semite, so people stay quiet.
Also Putin is doing the same, global out rage, no one really stepped in due to politics
Because if you don’t support genocide you are an antisemite, and only one of those can destroy your political aspirations (hint, it isn’t supporting genocide).
Most civilians aren’t but they’ve found out in 3 weeks time that they live all live in pretend democracies and not real ones. Mask off we’re the Russia now.
Ever seen an oil tanker turn? That is the the way the world works with Israel slowly and not quick to judge. The rest of us though have had enough, fuck Israel and no funding of them whatsoever.
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Netanyahu doesn’t give a duck.
Because someone decided it was such a funny idea to use these places to launch missiles at their enemies.
Fucking godawful people Hamas are, ruining the lives of 2 million people and assuring untold suffering for probably generations. The sooner those fucks are gone, the better.
Oh, well if bad people did bad thing, that definitely justifies bombing civilians, which totally isn’t a war crime.
Crazy thought, why don’t we just not bomb hospitals? Anyone?
Or how to make people hate you more than Hamas, a book by the IDF.
And if rockets and other weapons really are being fired from hospitals? What do you do then?
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That’s up to them to figure out how to do it with the least amount of civilian casualty then. Moot point anyway considering nothing has come out with overwhelming proof of Hamas using the hospital as cover.
We already know Hamas is in that hospital and have fired at least one anti-tank rocket out of it.
There’s also the time Islamic Jihadists fired missiles from right next to a different hospital.
Hamas has always used civilian infrastructure to attack from, it’s their MO. They want Palestinian civilians to get killed by Israel.
Rules apply only to peasants
Why are hospitals in Gaza under Israel’s crosshairs? Why? Is it truly that difficult to step back and think for a moment about why Israel would want to erase the current populace entirely?
Amazing, what a mystery
Not sure why you’re being downvoted… Israel an ethnostate, and what we’re seeing here are the early stages of a genocide. Look at any other ethnic cleansing in history, and you’ll easily see the parallels.
Well, I’m not sure early stages fits, that’s calling for a group to removed and Israel has been bombing water wells, while monopolizing all water supplies and providing only dangerously! small amounts of unclean water. Without question, this has caused unneeded deaths. Simmiliarly for electricity and food supplies.
It’s tragically been a genocide for a long time.
You know, I was trying to tread lightly, lest the Zionist apologists show up to try and redefine “genocide”.
But the reality is this:
- Tens of thousands of civilians are being murdered (shot, bombed, starved, water supply poisoned) by Israel’s military.
- Israel is an ethnostate which believes that their race makes them god’s chosen people.
- One of the Israeli government cabinet members has declared that the Palestinians in Gaza must be eradicated, and that he would drop a nuclear bomb on Gaze if he could.
When you use the U.N.’s definition of genocide (“acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”), the picture is pretty clear.
Absolutely. I hope I didn’t sound pedantic or talking down, my intent was just to have more details higher in the thread in case some of those zionist shit poster tolls take over the bottom. You’re 100% right on every point and I wish you weren’t.
I didn’t receive it as pedantic or talking down at all. I just totally agree with you as well!
Israel is definitely not an ethnostate. It has 20% Arabs. How many Jews does Palestine have?
Calling a state an Ethnostate doesn’t mean you’re saying the population is entirely of one ethnicity. It means one ethnicity is given a privileged status above all others.
Israel was founded when Zionists purged Palestinians from their homes and forced them into Gaza and the West Bank in order to create a Jewish majority state. That makes Israel an ethnostate by definition.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-arab-citizens-israel
That’s not a ethnostate you dumb fuck
They get treated better than minorities in Russia, China and blacks in the US
Ahh I see. So because Zionists haven’t been able to successfully cleanse all Palestinians from the region, Israel doesn’t count as an ethnostate. Don’t worry though because by God they’re still trying their damndest to make it happen no matter how many thousands of children they have to murder.
Not necessarily. There are laws that explicitly and implicitly discriminate against Arab Israelis.
No they don’t, many surviving people who suffered oppression under apartheid south Africa have stated that the Palestinians are treated worse.
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Israel has a law requiring Jewish people maintain demographic majority.
It is the definition of an ethno state.
Not only that, but it is a removed supremacist ethno state.
Look up how they treat the Beta Israelis.
They don’t even allow Muslims to marry Jews dawg
War does not automatically equate to being a genocide just because people due. Otherwise, every war in history would.be genocide.
There are Arabs & Palestinians that serve in the IDF too and have killed Palestinians. There are other Arabs in Jordan and Syria who have also gone to war against Palestine.
You are using incindiary rhetoric to win an online argument, but your description doesn’t fit the facts.
You’re literally using the same arguments every genocidal government has used to justify their genocides in history.
I don’t know why people insist on this narrative. Isn’t the truth horrible enough? Hamas is allegedly using hospitals as shields, which is horrible. Israel is willing to kill countless civilians to get at Hamas, which is also horrible.
Because it’s what Israeli politicians and government officials actually believe. They aren’t even quiet about it. It’s genuinely not hard to prove the genocidal intent of the Israeli government.
Unfortunately western media just tends to gloss over it all. I’m not sure if reporters can’t fathom the US supporting ethnic cleansing or if they just want to avoid the flack they’d receive by being honest. Either way, it’s unfortunate because well meaning liberals are left to assume Israel genuinely cares about stopping Hamas and aren’t using them as a pretext to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip.
Unfortunately western media just tends to gloss over it all. I’m not sure if reporters can’t fathom the US supporting ethnic cleansing or if they just want to avoid the flack they’d receive by being honest.
Please watch a documentary that covers any of the previous foreign wars the US has been in, especially those that came about before the internet boom (or better yet, one before and one after). I personally like to recommend the Panama Deception because it’s free on youtube and pretty short and succinct (only 90 min). On top of that Panama is still currently dealing with the issues started and maintained during the “wars” discussed in that documentary (I don’t knowing if you’ve seen about the ongoing Canadian mining protests).
The documentary covers some of what happened obviously, but it also shows some of the news airing at the time from the biggest American news channels that were covering the wars and how they covered it. You’d be amazed at what was claimed at home vs what was happening overseas. The MSM may as well have been a third arm of the US government. As much as they like to pretend to be neutral on domestic affairs which the people watching would easily be able to criticize, it should really be no shock to anyone that they’d mostly be parroting US gov talking points when it comes to foreign affairs.
Operation cast lead.
Humans shields was something the IOF engaged in.
Yeah, I mean there are people in the Israeli Government calling all Palestinians (not just Hamas) “animals”, others who say that Palestinians won’t be allowed to get back to Northern Gaza and there’s even a member of that Government who seriously suggested Israel should nuke Gaza.
And then, of course, there is the long track record of Israel doing things like murdering journalists and killing Palestinian kids throwing rocks at their armored diggers, especially under governments with these same people in them.
People who have a track record of murdering journalists and children, bombing hospitals full of those they see as “animals” which they want to see dead or out of Gaza, and then providing to the World some unverifiable excuse that blames somebody else and doesn’t even pass the sniff test when it comes to proportionality in the use of force is hardly out of character, especially because History has various examples of people who think like that going full on mass-murderer in similar ways.
erase the current populace entirely
Do you realize that the population of Gaza grows by over 50,000 people every year? Even if we accept the casualty figures provided by Hamas (and I don’t) then unless this war goes on at its current intensity for another four months (which it won’t) the population of Gaza will actually increase rather than decrease in the one-year period that includes the war.
The idea that the war in Gaza is “[erasing] the current populace entirely” is disconnected from reality.
Wow.
Are you literally saying it’s not a genocide because the population is growing faster than the IDF is killing?
I don’t know what happened to your brain, nor your heart, but I am sad whatever happened to you, happened.
You did use the term “erase.”. What about all the Palestinians living inside Israel.
Obviously it sucks that people are dying, but hamas started the war FFS. They 100% knew it would cause huge civilian losses.
If you think Hamas «started» anything, read up on the history. It’s a 75 year long illegal occupation.
Israel stated the war 17 years ago, minimum.
Blockades are acts of war.
This argument is the adult equivalent of grabbing someone’s hand and punching them in the face with it while saying “stop hitting yourself”
You should be embarrassed for even making this argument.
Israel stated the war 17 years ago, minimum.
*18. The blockade started in late 2005. Just clarifying because Israel likes to claim that the blockade started in response to the scary Hamas government launching rocket attacks.
Do you believe the IDF is incompetent at doing a genocide then?
That’s a false dichotomy. They are killing them as fast as they think the international community will tolerate. They won’t kill them fast enough to provoke any major entity into opposing them, they will just stay firmly in the “everyone will wag their fingers at us and argue about whether it’s right” zone, which is where they sit currently.
And what will make you believe genocide isn’t the end goal? The refugees leaving through Egypt don’t?
The refugees leaving through Egypt don’t?
How could they? Reiterating my prior point:
They are killing them as fast as they think the international community will tolerate. They won’t kill them fast enough to provoke any major entity into opposing them, they will just stay firmly in the “everyone will wag their fingers at us and argue about whether it’s right” zone, which is where they sit currently.
So the fact that this leaves open the possibility that some people get to flee their homes in terror, knowing that their friends and loved ones who refuse to be chased out of their homes by Israel are likely to be killed by the IDF, is one of the things that you feel might convince me that Israel doesn’t have genocidal intent?
And what will make you believe genocide isn’t the end goal?
Clearly nothing that you’re going to accept.
But that’s impossible to argue. You can claim for any ratio that it’s a silent genocide as long as even a single citizen is killed. And we know a war without civilian casualties - even forgetting the situation of Hamas putting civilians forward as shields and even killing some themselves. Where do you draw the line?
Instead of examining the facts, you’re opting for an easy cop-out that requires no proof and cannot be disproved.
Yes.
Nothing is more corrosive to an armies fighting capabilities then an occupation.
Civilian casualties aren’t the same thing as genocide.
genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
When a country with access to the full destructive power of a modern-day military (including nuclear weapons) fights a war in such a manner that at the end of the war there will be more enemy civilians than there were before the war, it is entirely unreasonable to claim that genocide or any attempt to commit genocide is taking place. You might as well call it cannibalism or pedophilia - those are also really bad things that Israel isn’t actually doing.
Keep telling yourself whatever you need to support your own narratives. I just wanna let you know that I think you are a cold-hearted person, and I hope that you, your family, or your people will never be thought of, as you are thinking and/or talking of the Palestinians right here.
They are deliberately bombing hospitals, schools and people fleeing. If you cannot open your eyes to see this, but rather argue about the technicalities of semantics to feel better, I wish you good luck in life.
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When you are arguing that words have no meaning, you have already thrown away your own argument.
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Intentionally withholding food and water when you control all ingress is a way of extirpating a population without bombing and shooting them.
But so is dropping more explosive power than the two atomic bombs used in Japan into an area the size of Manhattan in a month.
Sorry, what? Newborn babies can’t shoot a gun and can’t take care of themselves if their homes are bombed and their parents die. Not to mention that half of Gaza is already under 18 and probably won’t be having babies any time soon, given that hospitals are being targeted. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Even if we accept the casualty figures provided by Hamas (and I don’t)
I don’t know why you wouldn’t, unless your justification is just your own bigotry.
One snippet out of a lengthy article.
Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements.
“Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “In the times in which we have done our own verification of numbers for particular strikes, I’m not aware of any time which there’s been some major discrepancy.”
Shakir said Human Rights Watch would not use figures provided by parties with “a propensity to misrepresent information.”
Why news outlets and the U.N. rely on Gaza’s Health Ministry for death tolls
And another:
Throughout four wars and numerous bloody skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, U.N. agencies have cited the Health Ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the U.N. humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records.
In all cases the U.N.’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza Health Ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
— 2008 war: The ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 1,385.
— 2014 war: The ministry reported 2,310 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 2,251.
— 2021 war: The ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 256.
What is Gaza’s Ministry of Health and how does it calculate the war’s death toll?
I can’t imagine ever having such a cynical and apathetic worldview. All of this death is acceptable to you because more children will be born? Because they’ll be replaced?
Set a reminder on your calendar for March, and we’ll take a look at the news at that point. I have a sneaking suspicion that you may be surprised. While you’re at it set a reminder to get some therapy too, christ
Israel doesn’t wanna wipe out Gazans; that’s just unrealistic. However, a sizeable part of the Israeli government is very much fine with expelling them.
You do realise that the birth rates will slow down during the conflict, right? Who’s going to be having a baby when the nearest hospital is being shelled? Assuming of course that both parents even survive.
That 50,000 per year won’t hold for this duration and I won’t be surprised if it shrinks to below 1,000 by the time Israel is finished.
This is literally the same language used for every genocide to justify it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling.
“It was the thing we somehow told ourselves wouldn’t happen,” he said, speaking by phone from the central city of Deir al-Balah, where he arrived by foot Friday after escaping what he said were strikes on the hospital with tens of thousands of others.
“It’s to say, ‘Not only will we kill and wound you, we will ensure you have nowhere to go to be treated,’” said Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British Palestinian surgeon working for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza City.
Nonetheless, there must be plenty of warning before attacks to allow for the safe evacuation of patients and medical workers, ICRC legal officer Cordula Droege said.
Even if Israel succeeds in proving Shifa conceals a Hamas command center, the tenets of international law remain in place, said Jessica Wolfendale, expert in military ethics at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued a warning to combatants that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes.
The original article contains 1,155 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
From the ISW report today: Israeli forces fought Palestinian militia fighters near the Square of the Unknown Soldier less than half a kilometer from the al Shifa Hospital complex.[1] A Palestinian journalist reported that the al Qassem Brigades—the military wing of Hamas—ambushed Israeli forces south of the Square of the Unknown Soldier on Shuhada Street.[2] Other Palestinian militia fighters fought Israeli forces on Omar Mukhtar Street, which bounds the square.[3]
If you build your defense in urban environment you are supposed to evacuate the civilians. This is standard for any half competent army.
If you build your defense in urban environment you are supposed to evacuate the civilians. This is standard for any half competent army.
To where? Gaza is small enough as is, and the whole strip is being bombed by Israel.
Also, Hamas isn’t an army; they’re a resistance force. Gaza doesn’t have a proper army, which is why they have to resort to asymmetrical warfare.
Away from Gaza City were they currently focus their defensive efforts.
They have a structure and recognition marks, they fall under the Geneva convention as lawful combatants.
Asymmetrical warfare does not allow you to use perfidy and abuse of a protected status.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places in Earth.
There’s two kinds of people; ones that use human shields and ones that are deterred by them. Atleast to a point.
Israel uses human shields. Operation Cast lead is what human shields looks like.
Stop justifying war crime in defense of an apartheid ethno state trying to commit genocide.
That was 15 years ago, and I see absolutely no mention of Israeli human shields anywhere regarding Cast Lead.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/mde150152009en.pdf
Page 48.
Israel does a good job of making the world forget their actions.
According to testimonies, in several cases Israeli forces also forced unarmed Palestinian civilian males (mostly adults but in two cases also children) to serve as “human shields”, including making them walk in front of armed soldiers; go into buildings to check for booby traps or gunmen; and inspect suspicious objects for explosives. These practices are not new. Numerous such cases have been documented in recent years and the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that such practices contradict International law and prohibited them in October 2005.73
explain
It’s no accident Hamas keeps their HQ’s and ammunition depots near civilian population aswell as regularly shoots rockets from near mosks and hospitals. They know Israel is atleast trying to minimize civilian casualties so they’re probably not going to just level that building without a warning as they would if it was located in the desert.
If Hamas had the military capabilities that Israel does and Israel would put their military HQ in the basement of Israeli hospital hoping to use their own population as human shields Hamas could not care less. They would level that building in a heartbeat and collateral damage would just be a bonus.
I do not think 10,000+ dead is “trying to minimize civilian casualties”
Israel has the capability to level both Gaza and West bank in a week and kill every single person in there. They haven’t. What would Hamas do if they had this capability?
If they actually did that the entirety of West Asia and North Africa would attack them and all their allies would abandon them.
So actually, no, Israel doesn’t have that capability.
You seem to have a different understanding of capability than I do. They could do it, so they have the capability, but that says nothing about the consequences.
No, they would be dogpiled as they did it. They wouldn’t be able to finish the job before the whole world ate them alive.
Hamas killed around 1100 israelis on Oct 7.
Israel killed at least 122 of the 1200 themselves. Most likely more
350 of the israelis killed were IDF
This mean the civilian casualty rate was around 70%. On Oct 7.
Hamas has a far better civilian casualty rate than America which goes around 80-90 while committing their supposed genocide attack. This is not an accident you can realize by blind firing into civilian areas.
Purely from these numbers we can conclude in ACTIONS not words that Hamas takes decent care to avoid civilian deaths even when attacking. Far better than israel which just bombs everything that moves.
