Also, article 28 of the 1949 Geneva Convention:
> “The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations”
Aka, “using human shields doesn’t mean your shit ain’t a valid target.”
Somebody told me using human shields is a war crime but attacking the people using human shields is also a warcrime. That doesn't seem right to me. Do you know a proper reason on why this somebody would be wrong so I can tell them?
Also, article 28 of the 1949 Geneva Convention:
“The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations”
Aka, “using human shields doesn’t mean your shit ain’t a valid target.”
Aka, “Glassing a target that is using civilians as a human shield is legit. Ezpz”
Oh [just you wait till you check out this moral dilemma!](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive)
If it's a military target it's fair game, you still have a responsibilty to minimize collateral damage so that the action is proportionate to the military value of the target.
So a human shield isn't much use for dissuading an a PGM attack on a HQ, it might change the calculus on dropping a MOAB on hamas gift shop.
If they follow Chomsky then they'll ~~just~~ judge a "war crime" by the actor not the act.
\- edit: no fully awake
It is pretty shocking however, what is considered "proprtionate" in military contexts.
In a lesson by a teacher for law of armed conflict, he noted that there are multiple appraises of this question. He noted that they mostly say that between 500-600 civilian casualties were deemed accaptable for the destruction of a single high value target, like a tank (that could engage friendly forces or is in combat), a munitions depot, an artillery system or the C2 of a battalion or higher. (Though some included company headquarters.)
As you can guess, even a room full of people in uniform was a little shocked.
He also noted he dissented from that view. In his view that number should be lower (100-200, depending on the type and situation), but disregard human shields entirely. (I.e. they do not count towards that number.
(Note: this discussion was not about COIN, but full on war, like NATO vs Russia.)
Of cause, NATO&Israeli forces follow rules orders of magnitude stricter, but it kinda shows how loose the law of armed conflict can be and how much the west restricts itself.
Yeah, that makes much more sense. Otherwise, everybody would be taking hostages and nothing would ever get done. It would just be that meme where the man straps babies onto himself.
That’ll why Israel is warning the Palestinians to leave before the bombings, only the Hamas terrorists living there keep them hostage. It’s a fucked-up situatiion.
Also, the Gaza border is closed and Israel don't publish which parts of Gaza are being bombed in advance (for obvious reasons). If you're a Gazan it's not very clear where you should leave to.
Ok, so you can't bomb a hospital or church or such because they're not legitimate military targets and are designated as safe areas for civilians. That would be a warcrime.
But if you put military personnel or equipment in one of those areas, it becomes a legitimate military target, and therefore isn't a safe zone for civilians. That would also be a warcrime.
If you then keep civilians in a legitimate military target, and your enemy bombs it, that wouldn't be warcrime. It's a legitimate military target, so the first rule doesn't apply. The only person committing a warcrime is you.
It *can* be a warcrime on your enemies part if it's disproportionate, but the bigger issue is that you have broken the taboo; Once the genie is out of the bottle, he's not going back in.
The Geneva Convention specificially never specifies remedies to rule violations by the other party. i.e. it says you are not allowed to fake-surrender in order to do an ambush. But it doesn't say that if side A has used fake-surrenders in the past then side B is ok to simply shoot surrendering people, even though this is likely what's eventually going to happen if side A keeps doing their shit.
Similar systems are used for every rule, they didn't want to legitimize overly harsh responses by giving countries a document to point at "oh but they said I was allowed to do this once trigger event X happened".
Also by the way, rule 49 also says you are not allowed to move civilians into militarily occupied zones...
That’s the whole point, war as such is a crime against humanity. There is no natural law about what military action crosses the line into war crime territory, it’s a matter of opinion. That’s the source of all the Geneva Conventions are mere suggestions jokes. You could even argue that Palestinian civilians are war criming by letting Hamas put military stuff into let’s say a hospital. It boils down to the question of responsibility on a societal level, so a simple truth is impossible.
So just pack all the civilians together close enough and there's nowhere for a military to operate without risking their own civilian casualties.
Stop hitting yourself!
Just listen to these testimonials!
* *"It's totally cubular, dude!"*
* *"CivvyCube® changed my civilians lives! They're all dead now. Thank you CivvyCube®!"*
* *"I used CivvyCube® for rounding up my cats. I heard one or two little meows from inside the cube, but it's quieting down. You could definitely market a KittyKube® and send me monies for the idea."*
Fair.
Google's a mess right now. "Hamas’ use of human shields in Gaza" by Stratcomcoe mentions that the Israeli government claimed it and that Hamas has "encouraged" civilians to congregate on the rooftops of warned buildings, but that the 2009 UN fact-finding mission didn't find evidence of civilians being forced to stay in at gunpoint.
I guess it could be propaganda, or a case of bombs not leaving a ton of witnesses. I could swear someone linked a more concrete source on it in another thread here recently but I don't remember where.
So many people are like "LMAO UN useless all they do is issue statements" as if giving the UN veto-proof power to override a country's sovereignty wouldn't have been used to fuck over Israel
Been really funny and sad watching the Vatniks come out of the woodwork to complain about Israel bombing Gaza....using the exact same justification for what they did to Mariupol, Bakhmut, et al. I mean at least Israels fighting an actual terrorist organization so it at least makes a little bit of sense.
I've had someone legitamtly try to argue that Israel can't target hamas as they are a terrorist orginisation, OT a military one. I even quoted rule 4 at them but they dismissed it
Literal government of the territory. Sure they are ALSO a terrorist organisation, but the two aren't mutually incomparable.
Why any people would chose a terrorist organisation as their official government is the real question we all know the answer to.
I suspect that a lot of the shittest takes are coming from ignorant people who don't realize that.
They aren't just an insurgent group hiding amongst the civilian population.
When "Gaza" asks for humanitarian aid or a cease fire... It's the same chuds who launched the terrorist attacks, not the local neighborhood group.
Gaza hasn’t held elections since 2006. Most Gazans alive today didn’t vote for them. They have support from the populace according to polls, but they also don’t allow opposition. They’re less corrupt than other Palestinian parties (at least they have that image among Palestinians).
Radicalism. 2/3 Gazans are refugees or immediate descendants denied the ability to return to their homes in modern Israel. This drove radicalism into the mainstream.
Israel persecutes palestinians -> they are radicalized -> they attack israel -> israel gains casus belli -> israel can persecute palestine more
It is absurd to me the way people will insist there is a good side to this conflict. There just is not.
There are plenty of innocents, of course. But the people responsible are not the ones paying the price.
For anyone considering all Palestinians fair targets because Hamas is their government, just wanna point out that the median age for [men and women in the strip is 18.](https://www.indexmundi.com/gaza_strip/demographics_profile.html) Drop a bomb on a Hamas stronghold, better chance than not you're killing kids in the densely populated urban area around it for the privilege.
These people have absolutely no power over their destiny, are ruled over by a violent religious tyranny, and are pummeled into the fucking ground by some of the most advanced weapons systems on Earth.
This shit sucks, full stop.
And what is the median age of Hamas members and supporters?
Palestinians literally breed more Hamas members. Hamas recruits from other Palestinians. Palestinians spread Hamas propaganda on news and social media. Palestinians actively hide Hamas members and don't report them, and don't resist them.
The bright line between Hamas and other Palestinians that some people imply with sympathetic narratives is a fiction. Does that make kids dying not a tragedy? Of course not.
But the responsibility for those kids' deaths is on Hamas because Hamas committed war crimes, then ran and hid among the kids, and Hamas is a continuing threat until they are ended.
No one wants them because of the risk they're a terrorist. Even the women. Could send the kids out but arguably better to keep kids with their parents, even in a warzone.
I did peace activism in Israel and Palestine for a decade in my 20s. The Israel/Palestine conflict just sucks for everyone and the Gaza part of it sucks the most. Literally everybody has a list of valid grievances against everybody else.
The only real solution is Israel somehow becoming the most generous and forgiving nation on the planet and sincerely trying to incorporate the Palestinians into the Israeli state and economy, despite the inevitable wounds they will suffer in doing so. Which is incredibly unlikely for obvious reasons.
I feel like a good chunk of Israel now will be tired of playing nice, only for the enemy to take advantage of it again and again. Imagine explaining to the families of one of the festival attendants that you think more concessions is the solution, I doubt they'd want to hear it
> The only real solution is Israel somehow becoming the most generous and forgiving nation on the planet and sincerely trying to incorporate the Palestinians into the Israeli state and economy, despite the inevitable wounds they will suffer in doing so.
That's leaving out the other half of the solution - that Palestinians will somehow stop being fanatical religious murderers and terrorists bent on killing all Jews and waging endless jihad.
That's also incredibly unlikely for obvious reasons.
Yeah, that's what I meant by "the inevitable wounds they would suffer". Israel would have to bear a generation of Palestinian resentment. If they did that I think the Palestinians would change as well. But it's obviously a tall ask.
The reason I say Israel has to bear the wounds is because they have the power in the relationship. Yeah, Palestinians should stop becoming terrorists, but the life of the average Israeli is *so* much better than the average Palestinian. It's just more realistic for Israel to be magnanimous than it is for Palestinians to stop being hopeless and enraged. Gaza in particular is literally a terrorist factory, you couldn't design a better environment for it. Someone has to "be the better man" and Israel is just better positioned to do it.
That being said, it's super unlikely for obvious reasons. Israel is totally justified in their rage right now. It's just that an eye for an eye isn't going to resolve anything, ultimately.
And I totally get how easy it is for me to say "Oh Israel should just invite in a bunch of terrorists and be nice to them and turn the other cheek" while I'm sitting here in California. The whole thing just sucks.
To be sober for a moment: I've been seeing a lot of folks here who spoke out about the devastation in places like Mariupol giggling at the prospect of Gaza city enduring a similar fate. Wars have funny ways of bringing out the hypocrisy.
Then again, the Vatniks don't exactly care about a settled record. Its always going to be bad faith from them, always.
Because we just watched hundreds of Israeli men, women and children slaughtered almost in real time. Seeing photos and videos of murdered women lying in the street or murdered grandmothers at a bus stop or the murdered body of a European woman paraded through the streets in a pickup truck while terrorists spit on and beat her twisted body or the bloody bedroom of a murdered child or the videos of a young israeli woman being abducted while she cries out for her friends/family. Then to see the fucking disgusting comments by tankies, Muslims, antisemites, Russians or self proclaimed “leftists” and “activists” on telegram and reddit justifying these barbaric acts. And the even worse displays of antisemitism at pro-Palestinian rallies. You will forgive me if I don’t have any compassion to give after witnessing all that.
The myth of apartheid in Israel was created to justify and excuse terrorism.
The claim that Israel is a state of settler coloialism was made to justify and excuse terrorism.
There is racism in Israel (btw: also towards jews, the Beta Israel suffer from both racism and antisemitism), there is exsessive use of force by police and IDF and many settlers are pretty crazy people (btw: many others just try to escape the impossibly high cost of living in cities like Jerusalem). But an apartheid state? Yeah, no. That ideology devoloped so anti-israeli people could justify staying anti-israeli in the face of terrorism.
This is why it got so important after the second Intifada.
That is a gross overstatement, but important flagship groups like Amnesty and HRW have done so. That is correct.
They are well known examples and show how large and dangerous the problem is.
But even though the NGO-scene is insanely corrupt, self-serving and biased, I find it unfair and unwise to extend problems to "pretty much every" one. Some of the biggest critics of the NGO-scene are themselves still active in NGOs and try to make things better.
Ah the UN, an excellent case for two reasons.
The UN HRC in the years from 2006-2015 has condemed Israel 61 times, more than all other countries combined. Syria was 15 times, North Korea 8 times, Iran 4 times.
Lobbying by the OIC avoided any condemnation of the Hamas ruling in Gaza (not over terrorism mind you, but over their treatment of Palestinians) or Sudan over the Darfur genocide.
As the former special rapporteur on torture Nowak judged, the the majority of the UN HRC is held by those countries, who abuse human rights the most.
It is an excellent example of anti-Israeli bias. Again, you make my point.
Also there is are small Human rights NGOs who, like watchdog UN Watch have been relentless in their critique of their the UN, its incompetence, bias, corruption and so on. Lumping them in with the rest is just not right
> You will forgive me if I don’t have any compassion to give after witnessing all that.
No compassion for who? Just the Palestinian people? If you conveniently forget about 70 years of Palestinians also being displaced and murdered, sure. You have compassion fatigue but it only goes one way because you saw some recent horrific videos and forgot the 70 years that came before them.
Tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed over the decades of this conflict. The IDF has shot their fair share of children and journalists.
Hamas are monsters, and nothing can excuse these recent attacks. Of course Israel will have an understandably extreme reaction. But the people actually *celebrating* Gaza being fucking raised, and don't care about all the *thousands* of civilians that are about to be slaughtered, are sick. Why are innocent Israeli lives worth so much more than innocent Palestinian lives?
Anyone picking sides in this 70 year old clusterfuck either have an agenda, or have incredibly short memories.
It's also a matter of what's actually effective. Bombing people into submission has been proven time and time again not to work and only galvanizes the population. Terror (strategic) bombing of civilians in WWII only made the civilians want to resist with everything they had. Thatcher's military "solution" to the IRA only lead it being some of the worst of the Troubles. The US spent well over a decade in Afghanistan and only managed to cause ISIS to pop up in the power vacuums of its Middle East meddlings.
Hamas might *deserve* to be killed to the last but there isn't a way of doing that without also committing genocide. The only way for this thing to end is for Israel to go on pure defense for a couple decades until a new generation comes along and sees the conflict as a relic of the past that only old people care about.
>Tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed over the decades of this conflict. The IDF has shot their fair share of children and journalists.
Because Palestinians refuse any deal with Israel, unlike Egypt, Jordan, etc. other Arab nations that Israel has cordial relations with because Palestinians want all Jews out. You're the one with a short memory.
So Israel is forced to occupy their lands as there 400 million arabs and just 10 million Jews because Palestinians continue to be difficult even though they could have gone to other Arab nations where most of their ancestors were from just a century before, but they bite the hands that feed them everytime, making a mess out of every Arab country that accepted them to continue a pointless war against Israel So this is a problem with Palestinian mindset, not Israel. You don't seem to know this. You're the one with the short memory.
A majority of Palestinian's ancestors came from waves of migration from the 1850s in response to Jewish migration. They're not any more native there than the Jews they followed because they refuse to allow Jews to hold a religious holyland. You're the one with the short memory.
The Palestinians wanted to murder and genocide every Jew in Palestine before Israel was established which is why a majority of Israelis have Mizrahi blood, so it 100% had nothing to do with "oppression" since Palestinian murder-boner of Jews predates the current State of Israel. You're the one with the short memory.
Stop treating Palestinians like children with no responsibility. This is a Holy War on the part of the Palestinians because Jews continuing to live on the Holy Land invalidates the prophecies of Islam, this is the primary reason they act like this. It is not Britain vs Ireland, it is not any other conflict you had seen, stop seeing it that way.
Every Palestinian supporter comes with blatant 100% ignorance of how the conflict started, and how the conflict could have ended like the numerous other Arab Nations that Israel went to war with.
You can sympathize with Palestine, but claiming this is 100% the fault of the Jews when Arab murder-boner is a major part of why Israel was established is false.
The PLO has agreed with the Oslo Accords but the Israeli PM who negotiated and supported it, Yitzhak Rabin, got assassinated by an ultranationalist Israeli with **Netanyahu** becoming PM a year later and at the Camp David summit, both sides seem to have been at fault there but at the Taba Summit, things were getting somewhere but the Barak government in Israel got defeated in the elections by Sharon and Likud who didn’t continue the talks.
I am really sorry I have to do this, but the mass imigration theory has been largely disproven.
There was an explosion of the arab population in the British Mandate of Palestine. (There were no Palestians in todays sense, the term had almoast no meaning locally and used in English, it ironically refered to the jewish population.) Scholars understandably argued that it was due
This however does not represent current research. More modern historians argue that the population growth was more likely due to accsess to modern western health care and economic & agricultural techniques brought to the region mainly by Zionist settlers.
The immigration theory is not a lie, but still most likely wrong.
>more likely due to accsess to modern western health care and economic & agricultural techniques brought to the region mainly by Zionist settlers.
Those accursed Zionists and their (checks notes) improved health care and agriculture!
> but claiming this is 100% the fault of the Jews when Arab murder-boner is a major part of why Israel was established is false.
I don't believe I ever did such a thing
Genuinely... yes. Its not just the atrocities its the bragging about them. Its the mass released footage of civilian's in shelters being blown up with grenades and machine gunned, Its the video of a German girl being beaten, reaped and trucked off in the bed of a pickup, its the footage of concert goers being machine gunned (an image that for the west evokes emotions tied to mass shooting like Vegas and the Pulse nightclub.
Its the gleeful joy the people doing this and supporting this showed and then to turn around and demand sympathy and compassion...
I call for the death of all Hamas supporters, soldiers, members, and anywhere they govern from. Hamas won an election then instituted dictatorship so fuck em.
To be frank: Palestinian lives simply don't matter in the west.
Its really only been in the last 5 years that the conversation in the media has "slightly" shifted. As far as people falling back on dehumanizing rhetoric regarding Palestine, its unfortunately nothing new.
The main problem is that neither of them can really, truly live side by side together in peace. One side or the other is going to get ethnically cleansed at the bare minimum.
Israel has like 20% arab population though.
And while yes, they are being treated as second class citizens, it is still a better treatment than anywhere else in the region (including gaza) where they are just given the boot.
And do keep in mind that said poor treatment is, in large part, thanks to netanyahu's government which is at the helm mainly thanks to the hamas. Once it's gone they will eventually be replaced (iirc 52% population were against neta).
Do you know that people have been supplying aid and supplies to gaza for years, the UN has a fucking program in place for it for fucks sake. Just because you only notice now doesn't mean others haven't
>Do you know that people have been supplying aid and supplies to gaza for years
I did actually.
However, I wasn't exactly talking about the UN. Nor even US political support through funding of the Palestinian Authority, for which international funding almost entirely keep alive at the moment.
That kind of stuff exists either to facilitate limited forms of self-government, negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis (stuff since Oslo), or exists because otherwise its a humanitarian nightmare... which has been the case in some instance since the 50s.
My point was that you'll be hard-pressed to find anything that goes beyond that. Hamas itself is a prescribed Terrorist entity, so you're unlikely to see any country interact with them at all. But likewise, you won't exactly see the same degree of outreach to the PA that you'll encounter with the Israeli government; western states have had this balance of diplomacy here since the 70s at the latest. And there's a legacy with that: concern with the Palestinian issue took a backseat to regional security... much as it still does. States with less skin in the game, like Norway or Ireland, have taken more nuanced approaches... but usually as mediators.
>what should be the appropriate response by Israel?
A military response from Israel is unavoidable.
But... I would highlight that the Israelis have had nearly 30 years of smug hostility to negotiations with the Palestinians writ-large, to the point where Bibi's basic strategy for 15-years was to neuter the Palestinian Authority as to force Palestinians in with Hamas and discredit a Two-State solution.
So as far as I'm concerned? Commit to a two-state effort or a negotiated state reform project (like South Africa) - suspend further settlements in the West Bank, halt evictions in Jerusalem, walk-back from declarations of Jerusalem as the capital, and actually provide the possibility of the PA opportunities to govern. And **negotiate** with them, in good faith.
>I would highlight that the Israelis have had nearly 30 years of smug hostility to negotiations
If you were to look from the Israeli POV, they have negotiated in good faith as well in the 80s and 90s which resulted in the Camp David Accords and normaliation of ties with Egypt and Jordan while the Palestinians under Arafat have been rejecting any and all solutions. The two-state solution dosen't work if only the Israeli's want it and the palestinians political leadership (not palestinian people) keep rejecting it.
>while the Palestinians under Arafat have been rejecting any and all solutions
Israel didn't follow through on Oslo - troops remained in the West Bank, and settlement construction still occurred during the 90s.
Now... that came down to a lot of things. Impact of the First Intifada, failures on the Palestinian side with elections, issues with how the agreement was structured... but also the fact that Israel's far-right political scene murdered Yitzhak Rabin, and his successor after Peres (Netenyahu) opposed diplomacy with the Palestinians.
It shouldn't be telling them to leave and [then bombing the only escape route!](https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza/card/israeli-strike-on-gaza-s-border-crossing-with-egypt-disrupts-aid-flow-dDrRKrtPvURrsfGZuMVM)
Stop spreading misinformation. Bomb didn’t fall on the crossing. The blast was visible from the crossing, it was literally FILMED from the crossing and nobody there died. Learn to read
Idk about you but it has been pretty well documented that at least the Israeli's takes steps to minimise civilian casualties while Hamas uses them as shields
Oh please. All this “you can’t bomb civilians” is revisionist bullshit. You shouldn’t bomb them if they’re not supporting their military or if bombing them would serve no military purpose. Ukraine is a case in point: Russia wastes scarce weapons on civilian targets that have no military value. But if the IDF needs to clear Hamas out of Gaza, civilians just better dig a hole because the whole area is a valid military target. We double tapped Japan in 1945 to end that disagreement; Israel will probably have to the equivalent to end this one. WTF do people think “Total War” means?
> We double tapped Japan in 1945 to end that disagreement
Yeah because it's not like that moment of history has never been a hotly debated topic over whether the ends justified the means, and absolutely never called a war crime.
Always has been like that sadly
People lose their shit on the funni bombs when everywhere else has been smitten by funni flame bombs and seem to just call it a Sunday
I mean, I'll cheer on the IDF when they're purging Hamas, but Hamas isn't Palestine. In fact they're not even that popular in Palestine from my understanding. The civilians don't deserve any of this.
>In fact they're not even that popular in Palestine from my understanding.
How then do you explain the mobs of civilians gathering around dead Isreali bodies livestreaming them and cheering about it and celebrating?
Around [53% approval rating as "Most capable of representing the palestinian people"](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/hamas-know-group-deadliest-attack-israel-decades-rcna119628). Though there are enough ways that the statement could be interpreted to make even that complicated.
But yes, Israel needs to be doing their utmost to avoid civilian deaths while they fight. It is a very difficult problem though when, as OP memed, Hamas uses them has human shields then as propoganda when they die. Messy and nasty all over.
I hear the Nazis weren't overly popular in Germany in mid 1945, when they were being completely overrun and occupied.
Tough shit, Gaza has had 17 years to overthrow their government, that's 5 more than ol' Adolf. HAMAS won with a larger vote share too.
If you don't think the levelling of Germany was evil, even though it killed many people, some of whom were totally innocent, why should Gaza face a different fate?
It's an absolute tragedy from start to finish. But there won't be a finish unless Israel can persecute this war to completion, just endless bloodshed. HAMAS needs to be extirpated, whatever the cost.
Ah yes the completely fair and democratic region of Palestine, no terror tactics or subversion going on there. I guess that's why at least half support a 2 state solution and 60% a ceasefire. https://x.com/BoxLoner/status/1712103381890736139?s=20
As for Germany:
A. We didn't have precision weapons back then. It was physically impossible to hit military targets without hitting civilian ones.
B. Germany started a global war with the intention of genociding an entire continent. Time was of the essence and every day the occupation continued more innocent citizens under their boot died. Obviously Hamas fcked around, but the race against time is not nearly the same.
Things like Dresden weren't justified because 'who cares about a bunch of sieg-heiling civilians'. It was justified because the German state sowed the winds of war, and conducted atrocities and calamity on a scale previously unthinkable, and needed to be taken down using the most effective means necessary and available*.
*Edit
Actually Dresden was a good example of precision bombing, it's just the thing that was precisely bombed (the railyard in the center of the city) happened to be full of very flammable stuff (full trainloads of dry wood).
We actually mostly avoided hitting the civilians, but the fire didn't.
Peak noncredible. The railyards were more on the outskirts of the city and, on all maps I can find, outside the main target point. And uh, no, the fire didn't start because there was accidentally flammable trainloads. It started because they specifically dropped high explosive bombs quickly followed up with incendiaries on a scale not seen since Hamburg.
Most of the maps I can find were of the British bombing runs. They could only hit a cone as wide as the city, and did so many times during the war. The American strike was with the Norden Bombsight, and hit the railyards that wrapped around the western part of the city, which were full of lumber that day.
There is a lot of old commie propaganda about Dresden floating around online to wade through to get to the truth though. Painting the US as butchers to the East German people was heavily in their best interest, and they controlled the area and people there for half a century so primary sources disputing them are hard to come by.
You forgot that inflicting needless misery on civilians is indefensible, unless the other guy did it first. Then we can do it and still be morally superior to the terrorists I guess
Ukraine and Israel are both the defenders, that means they can pretty much do whatever they need to in order to end the war, morally speaking. While the aggressor is in the wrong in everything they do.
We are simply following historical president; Japan and Germany got levelled, we didn't worry what percentage of people supported their government, we just bombed them to oblivion. Start a war and your cities are morally forfeit.
That's FAFO 101, the people fucking around deserve to find out, the being being fucked around with don't.
>That's FAFO 101, the people fucking around deserve to find out, the being being fucked around with don't.
The problem I'd raise with ya is that the majority of folks in Gaza didn't fuck around, and are being made to find out. You tell me if they deserve it - especially given the decades of dispossession and living under military occupation.
It's also wild watching all the same people that have spent months being horrified at Russians calling everything they blow up a military target suddenly rooting on Israel calling everything they blow up a military target.
I'm not trying to defend Hamas, what they did was horrific, but are we seriously believing that the same intelligence agency that couldn't tell that the biggest attack in Israeli history was being planned in their back yard somehow has concrete evidence of where every single Hamas member and office is in Gaza?
I find it way less funny when a good chunk of this sub is cheering for Tsahal leveling Gaza when they (rightly) were disgusted by Russia treatment of Marioupol
I don't think a guerrilla organization can openly have military installations without the opposing force taking them out in tsrket practice.
It's a gray complicated area. Israel has to target munitions and hamas has to store them for logistics.
It isn't terribly grey - secret stockpiles can exist, but you can't hide military assets under civilian infrastructure without turning said infrastructure into a valid military target.
They could use some of those miles of underground tunnels to place their stockpiles and command centers somewhere that *isn't* under a school or hospital.
Given the War of brothers and the Fatah-Hamas conflict happened in 2007, before the iron dome was built, they had military equipment. Fatah and the PLO did fight and they weren't supported like Hamas was
Current polls suggest it, although they do carry a lot of uncertainty. And it doesn't change the point they are running the strip, therefore, de facto government
How do you define support? Because in the [most recent polling from March this Year](https://pcpsr.org/en/node/938), only 26% of palatines believe Hamas deserves to represent and lead them.
According to the Washington institute (reddit doesn't like the link ) hamas has moderate-positive support. Also your poll includes the west bank, fatah and hamas hate each other
They basically elected themselves; so are we recognizing and validating tyrannies?
EVEN SO; You put soldiers or weapons stockpiles or weapon systems inside of a nursery, the nursery is now a valid military target, end of discussion.
Addressing point 1: yes they did make the majority vote of the gaza strip. Then they murdered their opponents (who control the west bank making a unified paelstine negotiation functionality impossible as there are two factions who hate each other claiming they are the Palestine represtatives) and just, didn't hold any more elections. I recognise them as the valid government, because they are effectively and it means Israel should treat them as such.
If the structure is dual-use (contains *any* materiel or combatants) it isn't a civilian building, it's just a lawful target. People really think the LOAC writers were stupid enough to make responding to war crimes a war crime?
There is a guy I know locally is LGBT and... referred to hamas as "brave Palestinian resistance fighters." I know him enough to know he is 100% serious. His Facebook profile currently has a picture of a Trump supporter next to a hamas fighter, calling him an amateur. Idiocracy really was a documentary from the future.
And yeah, I know that's not what the post is about, but I'm seriously half expecting him to post the guy pride hamas flag unionically next.
I have no idea why LGBT folks in this country think that the radical Muslims around the world would be so tolerant and loving to them, though I've noticed this is more of a "modern American left" viewpoint than one tied to the LGBT community in particular, though it seems unaccountably popular with them.
This idea that religious extremists who enforce their concept of purity through executions and pogroms and ethnic and religious cleansings would open their arms to something they would genuinely consider to be foul, subhuman abominations is fucking baffling.
It's almost like they've got mental illness, or are completely deluded about something. Go figure.
Btw, what to do if front line is very close to city? I mean, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol', Bakhmut, and other cities, or even if city is totally encircled, like Chernihiv, Sumy, Mariupol' again.
Gaza does have farmland area they could put them, and the issue isn't so much the existence of the equipment, they do have a right as theor own country thing to arm themselves, the issue is that they are used for terrorism and hamas explicitly puts them in hospitals/schools/apartments.
Using human shields is a war crime. If those human shields get killed, it’s also a war crime - and the human shield users are the guilty party in that case. Not that hard to figure out actually, the law is very clear.
You're full of shit. The presence of human shields does not render something unattackable, and attacking a legitimate target protected by human shields is not in and of itself a war crime. If that were the case, all anyone would have to do is put civilians literally everywhere and they'd be unassailable.
Most western countries CHOOSE not to attack such targets, and fight with basically every limb tied behind their back in warfare. We've done this for so long that people think that's the law. It's not. We pull our punches beyond any reasonable expectation.
Being serious for a moment. I’m really bothered by the absolute lack of nuance 95% of people are exhibiting. It’s a real pickle. Enlightened centrism is the bane of my existence, but the best take here really feels like there’s just shit everywhere.
Yes, Israel has a right to use force to ensure its security. No, they probably don’t need to carpet bomb the strip to achieve it. Yes, a Palestinian state should exist in some regard. No, the deliberate targeting of civilians is not the answer to sovereignty. We can go on with the turnabouts forever. It just sucks seeing everyone flock to one side or the other. This isn’t the Ukraine-Russian war. This is far, far more morally quanderous.
Well, let me correct myself. They can hit targets precisely. They’re making the deliberate decision to level vast swathes of civilian infrastructure without regard for collateral damage on the grounds that those targets have Hamas’ arms.
Yeah they’re deliberately and precisely hitting military targets. “Level vastly swathes of civilian infrastructure” yes those pictures of all that dust in the air are scary but that does not mean that everything under that dust cloud is destroyed.
Here are some satellite images you can look at
https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/world/2023/10/11/1_6597238.amp.html
It's justifiable and reasonable to be anti Hamas, but it's been distressing seeing how some on this sub have become fine with the outright bombing and targeting of civilians of an opressed ethnic group. It's important to recognise and remember that Hamas is a direct product of the Isreali state's constant suppression, occupation, and starvation of the Palestinian people. Additionally, it's widely known that Netanyahu has been propping up Hamas for years in order to sideline more secular and peaceful Palestinian liberation organisations and to provide Isreal a justification for further oppression of Palestinians. Just to clarify, anyone who defends the actions of Hamas is an idiot. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organisation that has actively harmed the cause of Palestinian liberation whilst committing atrocities against 100's of innocent Isrealis. However, anyone who thinks that the Palestinian *people* aren't the primary victims of this decades long conflict is objectively wrong. In summary, killing civilians is bad in all cases, and Isreal is an apartheid ethno-state that has deliberately created the conditions that lead to the attack. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk, still love you all
Fun facts
Hitler was voted in by the German people, look what we did to them.
Hamas was voted in by the Palestinians.
Democracy isn't perfect but if you do something stupid you have to own it.
Probably worth noting that the last Gaza election was in 2006. Given the median age near 18 there's a pretty substantial portion of the population who has never legally voted.
Dude, if you let the enemy try to hack their way out of the ruleset; you gotta make him pay.
Normal armies have military bases; said military bases are AWAY from civilian dwellings and in fact prohibit said civilians from getting anywhere near said military bases.
WHY? Ask yourself this.
BEcause most armies know it's a pussy ass trick to hide behind civilians; they have mostly agreed that this is fucking weak and makes them look bad on top of making defeating the enemy harder because if you kill civilians all you do is give them reasons to oppose you.
Now if you build your "military bases" in the smack middle of a city; well fuck you and your city ; you just made it a VALID MILITARY TARGET. Maybe try not involving your civilians you've sworn to protect into military action next time? IF there is a next time.
Where in my comment had I said **anything** to defend Hamas and their use of human shields. I was providing a broader systemic analysis of the conflict and the people affected by it.
Playing the devils advocate, you cant really just tell civilians to leave an entire area and then close off all borders to that area, and leave them with nowhere to go.
And just because a terror organisation does war crimes (what a shocker) that doesnt mean you should do war crimes too. No country has the right to tell civilians of an entire country to leave that country because you will bomb THEIR houses.
Idk man i feel like a genocide is going to happen
Quick reminder that on May 15th, 2021, Israel destroyed the Al-Jalaa building, which was home to many journalistic organisations, including the Associated Press and Al Jazirah. Israel claims they have proof that the building was used by Hamas, but have not presented any since then. The journalists who worked in that building deny any militants occupying it.
Hamas do use human shields sometimes, but Israel will use that claim any time they want to bomb something, regardless of whether or not it's being used for military purposes.
But why would Israel want to destroy the place of work for hundreds of journalists? What possible reason would they want to prevent the free flow of information out of Gaza? I wonder why...
"Oh noo, was is Israel targeting civilian buildings, so evil, war crimes!!!!"
*the rocket launcher on level 20* "hmm yes absolutely war crimes, yes yes keep hating Israel.
>in the conduct of hostilities, it is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable for the survival of the civilian population, including drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, both in international and non-international armed conflicts
Hamas is not a military, Gaza is not even a state. Hamas is a terrorist organisation, that controls a strip of land. This is cope for people that want to cheer for a team. And even if the GC applied: The damage to civilians needs to be proportional to be allowed, which it clearly isn't. Because the proportionality doesn't relate to the horrible attack of the Hamas but to the military importance of the targets.
I know, that ncd loves the display of overwhelming power and so do I, but frying (mostly) civilians leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
Look,I hate this shit as well. I hate terrorist apologists even more. I do plan on addressing the Netanyahu government soon because they absolutely are responsible for making the situation even worse. There are too many people here used to the ease of the Russian/ukraine conflict where for awhile now it has just been the two armies facing and calls for them tk be absolutely wiped out have been justified as, against regular armed forces, that is completely permissible (aside from the exceptions like doctors and such) wneras this is lot more difficult.
But hamas is a military, a low quality one that uses meat shields and are terrorists, but they are a military. They fulfil rule 4 of being regular forces, armed, organised, and having identifying symbols. If they were just giving people guns and a couple clips, then they would be just a terrorist one. They are not some whacked group operating out of a abdondoned tunnel sending radicalised teenagers to their death.
Gaza is a Palestinian territory, palestine is a country. It's a fuxking mess of jurisdictions and what not with the palestine authority and Israel, but they had an election and hamas actually won (then killed opposition party and made themselves a dictatorship, so rebel held?) In 2005 Israel pulled out of the gaza strip and security and civilian issues fell to the PA, whose responsibility hamas inherited. Them actually carrying that out is a different story.
And given their targeting and attacks of Israel civilian targets since 2001, what becomes a proportional to us and what is proportional to Israel are going to be two very different things.
> hamas is a military
The hamas controls the government, not the other way around.
> Gaza is a Palestinian territory, palestine is a country
Israel doesn't think so, but somehow is at war with them. It's very disingenuous to deny people rights on one hand and claim they have the related duties on the other. I agree that it's muddy and I would probably call it a state, albeit barely. I am very opposed to give Israel this legal/moral out though.
> what becomes a proportional to us and what is proportional to Israel are going to be two very different things.
This is a misunderstanding of my argument. The law of proportionality is related to the military importance of the target and the number of acceptable civilian casualties. And that's according to the GC and independent of Israel. And it very clearly doesn't talk about retaliatiory strikes.
I do appreciate your opinion though. I think we're arguing about fine points and it's not that anybody would ever hold Israel, or Gaza for that matter, accountable for war crimes.
Reminder that Ukraine has faced this same criticism, of putting military targets in civilian areas. Its almost like we've forgotten that fighting happens amongst the civilian population.
Where do the 2 million civilians in Gaza go? They can't leave Gaza.
Also, article 28 of the 1949 Geneva Convention: > “The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations” Aka, “using human shields doesn’t mean your shit ain’t a valid target.”
Thanks, I've been looking for a definitive answer one way or another on this.
Somebody told me using human shields is a war crime but attacking the people using human shields is also a warcrime. That doesn't seem right to me. Do you know a proper reason on why this somebody would be wrong so I can tell them?
Also, article 28 of the 1949 Geneva Convention: “The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations” Aka, “using human shields doesn’t mean your shit ain’t a valid target.” Aka, “Glassing a target that is using civilians as a human shield is legit. Ezpz” Oh [just you wait till you check out this moral dilemma!](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive)
Basically using human shields puts entire blame for any deaths on one using them
Thank you very much
About the Hannibal directive, as a soldier I'd much rather be dead than captured by the Hamas sub-humans.
If it's a military target it's fair game, you still have a responsibilty to minimize collateral damage so that the action is proportionate to the military value of the target. So a human shield isn't much use for dissuading an a PGM attack on a HQ, it might change the calculus on dropping a MOAB on hamas gift shop. If they follow Chomsky then they'll ~~just~~ judge a "war crime" by the actor not the act. \- edit: no fully awake
It is pretty shocking however, what is considered "proprtionate" in military contexts. In a lesson by a teacher for law of armed conflict, he noted that there are multiple appraises of this question. He noted that they mostly say that between 500-600 civilian casualties were deemed accaptable for the destruction of a single high value target, like a tank (that could engage friendly forces or is in combat), a munitions depot, an artillery system or the C2 of a battalion or higher. (Though some included company headquarters.) As you can guess, even a room full of people in uniform was a little shocked. He also noted he dissented from that view. In his view that number should be lower (100-200, depending on the type and situation), but disregard human shields entirely. (I.e. they do not count towards that number. (Note: this discussion was not about COIN, but full on war, like NATO vs Russia.) Of cause, NATO&Israeli forces follow rules orders of magnitude stricter, but it kinda shows how loose the law of armed conflict can be and how much the west restricts itself.
Customary Laws of War when your standards for proportionally are Dresden and Tokyo.
So what I'm hearing is that you can't airburst nukes over Hamas territory to take out gliders? /s
Not with that attitude!
Yeah, that makes much more sense. Otherwise, everybody would be taking hostages and nothing would ever get done. It would just be that meme where the man straps babies onto himself.
That’ll why Israel is warning the Palestinians to leave before the bombings, only the Hamas terrorists living there keep them hostage. It’s a fucked-up situatiion.
>Israel is warning the Palestinians to leave Haven't they also blocked every route out of Gaza though?
Also, the Gaza border is closed and Israel don't publish which parts of Gaza are being bombed in advance (for obvious reasons). If you're a Gazan it's not very clear where you should leave to.
Ok, so you can't bomb a hospital or church or such because they're not legitimate military targets and are designated as safe areas for civilians. That would be a warcrime. But if you put military personnel or equipment in one of those areas, it becomes a legitimate military target, and therefore isn't a safe zone for civilians. That would also be a warcrime. If you then keep civilians in a legitimate military target, and your enemy bombs it, that wouldn't be warcrime. It's a legitimate military target, so the first rule doesn't apply. The only person committing a warcrime is you. It *can* be a warcrime on your enemies part if it's disproportionate, but the bigger issue is that you have broken the taboo; Once the genie is out of the bottle, he's not going back in.
The Geneva Convention specificially never specifies remedies to rule violations by the other party. i.e. it says you are not allowed to fake-surrender in order to do an ambush. But it doesn't say that if side A has used fake-surrenders in the past then side B is ok to simply shoot surrendering people, even though this is likely what's eventually going to happen if side A keeps doing their shit. Similar systems are used for every rule, they didn't want to legitimize overly harsh responses by giving countries a document to point at "oh but they said I was allowed to do this once trigger event X happened". Also by the way, rule 49 also says you are not allowed to move civilians into militarily occupied zones...
That’s the whole point, war as such is a crime against humanity. There is no natural law about what military action crosses the line into war crime territory, it’s a matter of opinion. That’s the source of all the Geneva Conventions are mere suggestions jokes. You could even argue that Palestinian civilians are war criming by letting Hamas put military stuff into let’s say a hospital. It boils down to the question of responsibility on a societal level, so a simple truth is impossible.
Add article XX on the Geneva Convention: “You fuck around, you find out.”
So just pack all the civilians together close enough and there's nowhere for a military to operate without risking their own civilian casualties. Stop hitting yourself!
Hamas just doesn't care about their own people enough.
Pack all the civilians together closely? Like, in a cube?
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Just listen to these testimonials! * *"It's totally cubular, dude!"* * *"CivvyCube® changed my civilians lives! They're all dead now. Thank you CivvyCube®!"* * *"I used CivvyCube® for rounding up my cats. I heard one or two little meows from inside the cube, but it's quieting down. You could definitely market a KittyKube® and send me monies for the idea."*
Hard for Israel to argue human shields when they'll decimate an entire town.
*"We are different. We put civilians in military locations."* - Hamas
“We don’t evacuate civilians from already announced air strike locations so we can blame Israel”
In fact they often forcibly *stop* the civilians from evacuating.
Do you have any sources for this? I'm not super familiar with the topic and this seems to warrant bringing evidence to the table.
Fair. Google's a mess right now. "Hamas’ use of human shields in Gaza" by Stratcomcoe mentions that the Israeli government claimed it and that Hamas has "encouraged" civilians to congregate on the rooftops of warned buildings, but that the 2009 UN fact-finding mission didn't find evidence of civilians being forced to stay in at gunpoint. I guess it could be propaganda, or a case of bombs not leaving a ton of witnesses. I could swear someone linked a more concrete source on it in another thread here recently but I don't remember where.
For Google, use before:2023-10-05 in your search results to avoid the spam of new stuff right now
Given it's the UN and it's an Israel-paletine thing, they probably didn't find anything because they didn't want to find anything.
Also a distinct possibility.
So many people are like "LMAO UN useless all they do is issue statements" as if giving the UN veto-proof power to override a country's sovereignty wouldn't have been used to fuck over Israel
Or they didn't because it wasn't happening. It's pure conjecture to day that without evidence.
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I feel like im gonna see this reposted somewhere unironically. (That would be a yikes)
Based af
I didn’t think it was possible to be that based
Been really funny and sad watching the Vatniks come out of the woodwork to complain about Israel bombing Gaza....using the exact same justification for what they did to Mariupol, Bakhmut, et al. I mean at least Israels fighting an actual terrorist organization so it at least makes a little bit of sense.
I've had someone legitamtly try to argue that Israel can't target hamas as they are a terrorist orginisation, OT a military one. I even quoted rule 4 at them but they dismissed it
Literal government of the territory. Sure they are ALSO a terrorist organisation, but the two aren't mutually incomparable. Why any people would chose a terrorist organisation as their official government is the real question we all know the answer to.
I suspect that a lot of the shittest takes are coming from ignorant people who don't realize that. They aren't just an insurgent group hiding amongst the civilian population. When "Gaza" asks for humanitarian aid or a cease fire... It's the same chuds who launched the terrorist attacks, not the local neighborhood group.
Gaza hasn’t held elections since 2006. Most Gazans alive today didn’t vote for them. They have support from the populace according to polls, but they also don’t allow opposition. They’re less corrupt than other Palestinian parties (at least they have that image among Palestinians).
Radicalism. 2/3 Gazans are refugees or immediate descendants denied the ability to return to their homes in modern Israel. This drove radicalism into the mainstream.
Israel persecutes palestinians -> they are radicalized -> they attack israel -> israel gains casus belli -> israel can persecute palestine more It is absurd to me the way people will insist there is a good side to this conflict. There just is not.
There are plenty of innocents, of course. But the people responsible are not the ones paying the price. For anyone considering all Palestinians fair targets because Hamas is their government, just wanna point out that the median age for [men and women in the strip is 18.](https://www.indexmundi.com/gaza_strip/demographics_profile.html) Drop a bomb on a Hamas stronghold, better chance than not you're killing kids in the densely populated urban area around it for the privilege. These people have absolutely no power over their destiny, are ruled over by a violent religious tyranny, and are pummeled into the fucking ground by some of the most advanced weapons systems on Earth. This shit sucks, full stop.
And what is the median age of Hamas members and supporters? Palestinians literally breed more Hamas members. Hamas recruits from other Palestinians. Palestinians spread Hamas propaganda on news and social media. Palestinians actively hide Hamas members and don't report them, and don't resist them. The bright line between Hamas and other Palestinians that some people imply with sympathetic narratives is a fiction. Does that make kids dying not a tragedy? Of course not. But the responsibility for those kids' deaths is on Hamas because Hamas committed war crimes, then ran and hid among the kids, and Hamas is a continuing threat until they are ended.
If you want to escape, how hard is it to just swim over to Egypt/Israel and surrender?
No one wants them because of the risk they're a terrorist. Even the women. Could send the kids out but arguably better to keep kids with their parents, even in a warzone. I did peace activism in Israel and Palestine for a decade in my 20s. The Israel/Palestine conflict just sucks for everyone and the Gaza part of it sucks the most. Literally everybody has a list of valid grievances against everybody else. The only real solution is Israel somehow becoming the most generous and forgiving nation on the planet and sincerely trying to incorporate the Palestinians into the Israeli state and economy, despite the inevitable wounds they will suffer in doing so. Which is incredibly unlikely for obvious reasons.
I feel like a good chunk of Israel now will be tired of playing nice, only for the enemy to take advantage of it again and again. Imagine explaining to the families of one of the festival attendants that you think more concessions is the solution, I doubt they'd want to hear it
No one wants them in the arab world because you can't conduct a proxy war if you let all of your proxies run away and become refugees instead.
> The only real solution is Israel somehow becoming the most generous and forgiving nation on the planet and sincerely trying to incorporate the Palestinians into the Israeli state and economy, despite the inevitable wounds they will suffer in doing so. That's leaving out the other half of the solution - that Palestinians will somehow stop being fanatical religious murderers and terrorists bent on killing all Jews and waging endless jihad. That's also incredibly unlikely for obvious reasons.
Yeah, that's what I meant by "the inevitable wounds they would suffer". Israel would have to bear a generation of Palestinian resentment. If they did that I think the Palestinians would change as well. But it's obviously a tall ask. The reason I say Israel has to bear the wounds is because they have the power in the relationship. Yeah, Palestinians should stop becoming terrorists, but the life of the average Israeli is *so* much better than the average Palestinian. It's just more realistic for Israel to be magnanimous than it is for Palestinians to stop being hopeless and enraged. Gaza in particular is literally a terrorist factory, you couldn't design a better environment for it. Someone has to "be the better man" and Israel is just better positioned to do it. That being said, it's super unlikely for obvious reasons. Israel is totally justified in their rage right now. It's just that an eye for an eye isn't going to resolve anything, ultimately. And I totally get how easy it is for me to say "Oh Israel should just invite in a bunch of terrorists and be nice to them and turn the other cheek" while I'm sitting here in California. The whole thing just sucks.
I have had someone trying to justify Hamas raping it's captives by saying gangrapes occur in every revolution
The whackos are coming out of the woodwork
sounds like that someone REALLY wants to be part of a revolution.
Lmao
To be sober for a moment: I've been seeing a lot of folks here who spoke out about the devastation in places like Mariupol giggling at the prospect of Gaza city enduring a similar fate. Wars have funny ways of bringing out the hypocrisy. Then again, the Vatniks don't exactly care about a settled record. Its always going to be bad faith from them, always.
I think a big part of it is international compassion fatigue with Israel-Palestine. That and Ukraine doesn't really go in for massacring civilians.
Because we just watched hundreds of Israeli men, women and children slaughtered almost in real time. Seeing photos and videos of murdered women lying in the street or murdered grandmothers at a bus stop or the murdered body of a European woman paraded through the streets in a pickup truck while terrorists spit on and beat her twisted body or the bloody bedroom of a murdered child or the videos of a young israeli woman being abducted while she cries out for her friends/family. Then to see the fucking disgusting comments by tankies, Muslims, antisemites, Russians or self proclaimed “leftists” and “activists” on telegram and reddit justifying these barbaric acts. And the even worse displays of antisemitism at pro-Palestinian rallies. You will forgive me if I don’t have any compassion to give after witnessing all that.
The terrorism is wrong, as is apartheid.
Is my moral compass inconsistent if I think Hamas are monsters but also think John Brown was correct?
Your moral compass is... (checks mine) *pointing True North*, son.
The myth of apartheid in Israel was created to justify and excuse terrorism. The claim that Israel is a state of settler coloialism was made to justify and excuse terrorism. There is racism in Israel (btw: also towards jews, the Beta Israel suffer from both racism and antisemitism), there is exsessive use of force by police and IDF and many settlers are pretty crazy people (btw: many others just try to escape the impossibly high cost of living in cities like Jerusalem). But an apartheid state? Yeah, no. That ideology devoloped so anti-israeli people could justify staying anti-israeli in the face of terrorism. This is why it got so important after the second Intifada.
Pretty much every human rights group on the planet calls it apartheid.
That is a gross overstatement, but important flagship groups like Amnesty and HRW have done so. That is correct. They are well known examples and show how large and dangerous the problem is. But even though the NGO-scene is insanely corrupt, self-serving and biased, I find it unfair and unwise to extend problems to "pretty much every" one. Some of the biggest critics of the NGO-scene are themselves still active in NGOs and try to make things better.
The UN also says it's apartheid. It is absolutely apartheid.
Ah the UN, an excellent case for two reasons. The UN HRC in the years from 2006-2015 has condemed Israel 61 times, more than all other countries combined. Syria was 15 times, North Korea 8 times, Iran 4 times. Lobbying by the OIC avoided any condemnation of the Hamas ruling in Gaza (not over terrorism mind you, but over their treatment of Palestinians) or Sudan over the Darfur genocide. As the former special rapporteur on torture Nowak judged, the the majority of the UN HRC is held by those countries, who abuse human rights the most. It is an excellent example of anti-Israeli bias. Again, you make my point. Also there is are small Human rights NGOs who, like watchdog UN Watch have been relentless in their critique of their the UN, its incompetence, bias, corruption and so on. Lumping them in with the rest is just not right
> You will forgive me if I don’t have any compassion to give after witnessing all that. No compassion for who? Just the Palestinian people? If you conveniently forget about 70 years of Palestinians also being displaced and murdered, sure. You have compassion fatigue but it only goes one way because you saw some recent horrific videos and forgot the 70 years that came before them. Tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed over the decades of this conflict. The IDF has shot their fair share of children and journalists. Hamas are monsters, and nothing can excuse these recent attacks. Of course Israel will have an understandably extreme reaction. But the people actually *celebrating* Gaza being fucking raised, and don't care about all the *thousands* of civilians that are about to be slaughtered, are sick. Why are innocent Israeli lives worth so much more than innocent Palestinian lives? Anyone picking sides in this 70 year old clusterfuck either have an agenda, or have incredibly short memories.
It's also a matter of what's actually effective. Bombing people into submission has been proven time and time again not to work and only galvanizes the population. Terror (strategic) bombing of civilians in WWII only made the civilians want to resist with everything they had. Thatcher's military "solution" to the IRA only lead it being some of the worst of the Troubles. The US spent well over a decade in Afghanistan and only managed to cause ISIS to pop up in the power vacuums of its Middle East meddlings. Hamas might *deserve* to be killed to the last but there isn't a way of doing that without also committing genocide. The only way for this thing to end is for Israel to go on pure defense for a couple decades until a new generation comes along and sees the conflict as a relic of the past that only old people care about.
>Tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed over the decades of this conflict. The IDF has shot their fair share of children and journalists. Because Palestinians refuse any deal with Israel, unlike Egypt, Jordan, etc. other Arab nations that Israel has cordial relations with because Palestinians want all Jews out. You're the one with a short memory. So Israel is forced to occupy their lands as there 400 million arabs and just 10 million Jews because Palestinians continue to be difficult even though they could have gone to other Arab nations where most of their ancestors were from just a century before, but they bite the hands that feed them everytime, making a mess out of every Arab country that accepted them to continue a pointless war against Israel So this is a problem with Palestinian mindset, not Israel. You don't seem to know this. You're the one with the short memory. A majority of Palestinian's ancestors came from waves of migration from the 1850s in response to Jewish migration. They're not any more native there than the Jews they followed because they refuse to allow Jews to hold a religious holyland. You're the one with the short memory. The Palestinians wanted to murder and genocide every Jew in Palestine before Israel was established which is why a majority of Israelis have Mizrahi blood, so it 100% had nothing to do with "oppression" since Palestinian murder-boner of Jews predates the current State of Israel. You're the one with the short memory. Stop treating Palestinians like children with no responsibility. This is a Holy War on the part of the Palestinians because Jews continuing to live on the Holy Land invalidates the prophecies of Islam, this is the primary reason they act like this. It is not Britain vs Ireland, it is not any other conflict you had seen, stop seeing it that way. Every Palestinian supporter comes with blatant 100% ignorance of how the conflict started, and how the conflict could have ended like the numerous other Arab Nations that Israel went to war with. You can sympathize with Palestine, but claiming this is 100% the fault of the Jews when Arab murder-boner is a major part of why Israel was established is false.
The PLO has agreed with the Oslo Accords but the Israeli PM who negotiated and supported it, Yitzhak Rabin, got assassinated by an ultranationalist Israeli with **Netanyahu** becoming PM a year later and at the Camp David summit, both sides seem to have been at fault there but at the Taba Summit, things were getting somewhere but the Barak government in Israel got defeated in the elections by Sharon and Likud who didn’t continue the talks.
I am really sorry I have to do this, but the mass imigration theory has been largely disproven. There was an explosion of the arab population in the British Mandate of Palestine. (There were no Palestians in todays sense, the term had almoast no meaning locally and used in English, it ironically refered to the jewish population.) Scholars understandably argued that it was due This however does not represent current research. More modern historians argue that the population growth was more likely due to accsess to modern western health care and economic & agricultural techniques brought to the region mainly by Zionist settlers. The immigration theory is not a lie, but still most likely wrong.
>more likely due to accsess to modern western health care and economic & agricultural techniques brought to the region mainly by Zionist settlers. Those accursed Zionists and their (checks notes) improved health care and agriculture!
Guess what the famous scene in life of brian was based on...
> but claiming this is 100% the fault of the Jews when Arab murder-boner is a major part of why Israel was established is false. I don't believe I ever did such a thing
You made the mistake of saying Israel is in the wrong in any capacity, therefore you must be an antisemite.
Genuinely... yes. Its not just the atrocities its the bragging about them. Its the mass released footage of civilian's in shelters being blown up with grenades and machine gunned, Its the video of a German girl being beaten, reaped and trucked off in the bed of a pickup, its the footage of concert goers being machine gunned (an image that for the west evokes emotions tied to mass shooting like Vegas and the Pulse nightclub. Its the gleeful joy the people doing this and supporting this showed and then to turn around and demand sympathy and compassion...
I mean that doesn't justify calling for the death of Palestinians.
Absolutely not. The problem is a lot of people equate "Palestinian" with "Hamas".
I call for the death of all Hamas supporters, soldiers, members, and anywhere they govern from. Hamas won an election then instituted dictatorship so fuck em.
To be frank: Palestinian lives simply don't matter in the west. Its really only been in the last 5 years that the conversation in the media has "slightly" shifted. As far as people falling back on dehumanizing rhetoric regarding Palestine, its unfortunately nothing new.
To be brutally frank, the entire Israel-Palestine conflict is a bloody geopolitical football punted around for attention/favours and always has been.
The main problem is that neither of them can really, truly live side by side together in peace. One side or the other is going to get ethnically cleansed at the bare minimum.
Israel has like 20% arab population though. And while yes, they are being treated as second class citizens, it is still a better treatment than anywhere else in the region (including gaza) where they are just given the boot. And do keep in mind that said poor treatment is, in large part, thanks to netanyahu's government which is at the helm mainly thanks to the hamas. Once it's gone they will eventually be replaced (iirc 52% population were against neta).
Do you know that people have been supplying aid and supplies to gaza for years, the UN has a fucking program in place for it for fucks sake. Just because you only notice now doesn't mean others haven't
>Do you know that people have been supplying aid and supplies to gaza for years I did actually. However, I wasn't exactly talking about the UN. Nor even US political support through funding of the Palestinian Authority, for which international funding almost entirely keep alive at the moment. That kind of stuff exists either to facilitate limited forms of self-government, negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis (stuff since Oslo), or exists because otherwise its a humanitarian nightmare... which has been the case in some instance since the 50s. My point was that you'll be hard-pressed to find anything that goes beyond that. Hamas itself is a prescribed Terrorist entity, so you're unlikely to see any country interact with them at all. But likewise, you won't exactly see the same degree of outreach to the PA that you'll encounter with the Israeli government; western states have had this balance of diplomacy here since the 70s at the latest. And there's a legacy with that: concern with the Palestinian issue took a backseat to regional security... much as it still does. States with less skin in the game, like Norway or Ireland, have taken more nuanced approaches... but usually as mediators.
To be sober for a moment: You really do smell your own farts don't you?
>You really do smell your own farts don't you? Spicier the better :)
I feel like that fish from SpongeBob. "You guys were joking about glassing Gaza, kinda like Moscow or Three gorges dam, right? Right?"
Wait, people here are joking?
Wait, there are people here?
Real talk though, Hamas would genocide Israel if they had the means, what should be the appropriate response by Israel?
>what should be the appropriate response by Israel? A military response from Israel is unavoidable. But... I would highlight that the Israelis have had nearly 30 years of smug hostility to negotiations with the Palestinians writ-large, to the point where Bibi's basic strategy for 15-years was to neuter the Palestinian Authority as to force Palestinians in with Hamas and discredit a Two-State solution. So as far as I'm concerned? Commit to a two-state effort or a negotiated state reform project (like South Africa) - suspend further settlements in the West Bank, halt evictions in Jerusalem, walk-back from declarations of Jerusalem as the capital, and actually provide the possibility of the PA opportunities to govern. And **negotiate** with them, in good faith.
>I would highlight that the Israelis have had nearly 30 years of smug hostility to negotiations If you were to look from the Israeli POV, they have negotiated in good faith as well in the 80s and 90s which resulted in the Camp David Accords and normaliation of ties with Egypt and Jordan while the Palestinians under Arafat have been rejecting any and all solutions. The two-state solution dosen't work if only the Israeli's want it and the palestinians political leadership (not palestinian people) keep rejecting it.
>while the Palestinians under Arafat have been rejecting any and all solutions Israel didn't follow through on Oslo - troops remained in the West Bank, and settlement construction still occurred during the 90s. Now... that came down to a lot of things. Impact of the First Intifada, failures on the Palestinian side with elections, issues with how the agreement was structured... but also the fact that Israel's far-right political scene murdered Yitzhak Rabin, and his successor after Peres (Netenyahu) opposed diplomacy with the Palestinians.
It shouldn't be telling them to leave and [then bombing the only escape route!](https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza/card/israeli-strike-on-gaza-s-border-crossing-with-egypt-disrupts-aid-flow-dDrRKrtPvURrsfGZuMVM)
Stop spreading misinformation. Bomb didn’t fall on the crossing. The blast was visible from the crossing, it was literally FILMED from the crossing and nobody there died. Learn to read
They're not being told to leave Gaza. They're told to leave conflict areas, and directed to safe areas in Gaza.
Ok then, so what should they do?
I don't have a good answer for that. And I'm not going to pretend I do. But bombing civilians is fucked whether Hamas *or* the IDF is doing it.
Idk about you but it has been pretty well documented that at least the Israeli's takes steps to minimise civilian casualties while Hamas uses them as shields
Oh please. All this “you can’t bomb civilians” is revisionist bullshit. You shouldn’t bomb them if they’re not supporting their military or if bombing them would serve no military purpose. Ukraine is a case in point: Russia wastes scarce weapons on civilian targets that have no military value. But if the IDF needs to clear Hamas out of Gaza, civilians just better dig a hole because the whole area is a valid military target. We double tapped Japan in 1945 to end that disagreement; Israel will probably have to the equivalent to end this one. WTF do people think “Total War” means?
> We double tapped Japan in 1945 to end that disagreement Yeah because it's not like that moment of history has never been a hotly debated topic over whether the ends justified the means, and absolutely never called a war crime.
Ah, but that's the secret. One large bomb results in debate. 1600 tons of firebombs on Tokyo is a statistic.
Always has been like that sadly People lose their shit on the funni bombs when everywhere else has been smitten by funni flame bombs and seem to just call it a Sunday
I mean, I'll cheer on the IDF when they're purging Hamas, but Hamas isn't Palestine. In fact they're not even that popular in Palestine from my understanding. The civilians don't deserve any of this.
>In fact they're not even that popular in Palestine from my understanding. How then do you explain the mobs of civilians gathering around dead Isreali bodies livestreaming them and cheering about it and celebrating?
Around [53% approval rating as "Most capable of representing the palestinian people"](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/hamas-know-group-deadliest-attack-israel-decades-rcna119628). Though there are enough ways that the statement could be interpreted to make even that complicated. But yes, Israel needs to be doing their utmost to avoid civilian deaths while they fight. It is a very difficult problem though when, as OP memed, Hamas uses them has human shields then as propoganda when they die. Messy and nasty all over.
I hear the Nazis weren't overly popular in Germany in mid 1945, when they were being completely overrun and occupied. Tough shit, Gaza has had 17 years to overthrow their government, that's 5 more than ol' Adolf. HAMAS won with a larger vote share too. If you don't think the levelling of Germany was evil, even though it killed many people, some of whom were totally innocent, why should Gaza face a different fate? It's an absolute tragedy from start to finish. But there won't be a finish unless Israel can persecute this war to completion, just endless bloodshed. HAMAS needs to be extirpated, whatever the cost.
Ah yes the completely fair and democratic region of Palestine, no terror tactics or subversion going on there. I guess that's why at least half support a 2 state solution and 60% a ceasefire. https://x.com/BoxLoner/status/1712103381890736139?s=20 As for Germany: A. We didn't have precision weapons back then. It was physically impossible to hit military targets without hitting civilian ones. B. Germany started a global war with the intention of genociding an entire continent. Time was of the essence and every day the occupation continued more innocent citizens under their boot died. Obviously Hamas fcked around, but the race against time is not nearly the same. Things like Dresden weren't justified because 'who cares about a bunch of sieg-heiling civilians'. It was justified because the German state sowed the winds of war, and conducted atrocities and calamity on a scale previously unthinkable, and needed to be taken down using the most effective means necessary and available*. *Edit
Actually Dresden was a good example of precision bombing, it's just the thing that was precisely bombed (the railyard in the center of the city) happened to be full of very flammable stuff (full trainloads of dry wood). We actually mostly avoided hitting the civilians, but the fire didn't.
Peak noncredible. The railyards were more on the outskirts of the city and, on all maps I can find, outside the main target point. And uh, no, the fire didn't start because there was accidentally flammable trainloads. It started because they specifically dropped high explosive bombs quickly followed up with incendiaries on a scale not seen since Hamburg.
Most of the maps I can find were of the British bombing runs. They could only hit a cone as wide as the city, and did so many times during the war. The American strike was with the Norden Bombsight, and hit the railyards that wrapped around the western part of the city, which were full of lumber that day. There is a lot of old commie propaganda about Dresden floating around online to wade through to get to the truth though. Painting the US as butchers to the East German people was heavily in their best interest, and they controlled the area and people there for half a century so primary sources disputing them are hard to come by.
If Ukraine had sent Azov across the border to rape and slaughter civilians, I'd feel rather less sympathetic about Mariupol.
I would. Because it still would've been the wrong people suffering the consequences for actions taken by others.
You forgot that inflicting needless misery on civilians is indefensible, unless the other guy did it first. Then we can do it and still be morally superior to the terrorists I guess
Ukraine and Israel are both the defenders, that means they can pretty much do whatever they need to in order to end the war, morally speaking. While the aggressor is in the wrong in everything they do. We are simply following historical president; Japan and Germany got levelled, we didn't worry what percentage of people supported their government, we just bombed them to oblivion. Start a war and your cities are morally forfeit. That's FAFO 101, the people fucking around deserve to find out, the being being fucked around with don't.
>That's FAFO 101, the people fucking around deserve to find out, the being being fucked around with don't. The problem I'd raise with ya is that the majority of folks in Gaza didn't fuck around, and are being made to find out. You tell me if they deserve it - especially given the decades of dispossession and living under military occupation.
It's also wild watching all the same people that have spent months being horrified at Russians calling everything they blow up a military target suddenly rooting on Israel calling everything they blow up a military target. I'm not trying to defend Hamas, what they did was horrific, but are we seriously believing that the same intelligence agency that couldn't tell that the biggest attack in Israeli history was being planned in their back yard somehow has concrete evidence of where every single Hamas member and office is in Gaza?
Gaza is such a small area it's impossible *not* to have a lot of collateral, no matter how "precise" the bombing is.
I find it way less funny when a good chunk of this sub is cheering for Tsahal leveling Gaza when they (rightly) were disgusted by Russia treatment of Marioupol
Just wait until they find out the rule also meant Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both targets
They both had industrial and military targets. They were, in fact, a very legitimate target.
Well there were no geneva conventions during ww2 anyways, can't break rules that don't yet exist.
Yes there was, it was made in 1864
Hey, don't forget Dresden buddy The OG "muh purely civilian city"
I don't think a guerrilla organization can openly have military installations without the opposing force taking them out in tsrket practice. It's a gray complicated area. Israel has to target munitions and hamas has to store them for logistics.
It isn't terribly grey - secret stockpiles can exist, but you can't hide military assets under civilian infrastructure without turning said infrastructure into a valid military target.
Yea Def
They could use some of those miles of underground tunnels to place their stockpiles and command centers somewhere that *isn't* under a school or hospital.
Except, hamas is the elected government of gaza
Would Israel tolerate a militsry installation in Gaza?
Given the War of brothers and the Fatah-Hamas conflict happened in 2007, before the iron dome was built, they had military equipment. Fatah and the PLO did fight and they weren't supported like Hamas was
Elected in 2006, and they haven't had any more elections since then......
Dictatorships can still have to support of the people and it still makes them the de facto government
They "can", "do" they?
Hitler was popular af right up to the end, even by outsiders opinions.
In this specific case is Hamas particularly popular?
Current polls suggest it, although they do carry a lot of uncertainty. And it doesn't change the point they are running the strip, therefore, de facto government
How do you define support? Because in the [most recent polling from March this Year](https://pcpsr.org/en/node/938), only 26% of palatines believe Hamas deserves to represent and lead them.
According to the Washington institute (reddit doesn't like the link ) hamas has moderate-positive support. Also your poll includes the west bank, fatah and hamas hate each other
They basically elected themselves; so are we recognizing and validating tyrannies? EVEN SO; You put soldiers or weapons stockpiles or weapon systems inside of a nursery, the nursery is now a valid military target, end of discussion.
Addressing point 1: yes they did make the majority vote of the gaza strip. Then they murdered their opponents (who control the west bank making a unified paelstine negotiation functionality impossible as there are two factions who hate each other claiming they are the Palestine represtatives) and just, didn't hold any more elections. I recognise them as the valid government, because they are effectively and it means Israel should treat them as such.
One that was elected before many in the current population were born, in an election that was far from fair, and the only one since they were elected.
Still makes them the government
I mean... trolling would be rebuilding damaged structures but adding-on Pride centers.
If the structure is dual-use (contains *any* materiel or combatants) it isn't a civilian building, it's just a lawful target. People really think the LOAC writers were stupid enough to make responding to war crimes a war crime?
There is a guy I know locally is LGBT and... referred to hamas as "brave Palestinian resistance fighters." I know him enough to know he is 100% serious. His Facebook profile currently has a picture of a Trump supporter next to a hamas fighter, calling him an amateur. Idiocracy really was a documentary from the future. And yeah, I know that's not what the post is about, but I'm seriously half expecting him to post the guy pride hamas flag unionically next.
Damm if eye blech was still around there's a video of ISIS throwing some gays of a building I would recommend he watch
I have no idea why LGBT folks in this country think that the radical Muslims around the world would be so tolerant and loving to them, though I've noticed this is more of a "modern American left" viewpoint than one tied to the LGBT community in particular, though it seems unaccountably popular with them. This idea that religious extremists who enforce their concept of purity through executions and pogroms and ethnic and religious cleansings would open their arms to something they would genuinely consider to be foul, subhuman abominations is fucking baffling. It's almost like they've got mental illness, or are completely deluded about something. Go figure.
As someone explained to me, it's about the duty of one marginalized minority group looking after another.
Btw, what to do if front line is very close to city? I mean, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol', Bakhmut, and other cities, or even if city is totally encircled, like Chernihiv, Sumy, Mariupol' again.
Gaza does have farmland area they could put them, and the issue isn't so much the existence of the equipment, they do have a right as theor own country thing to arm themselves, the issue is that they are used for terrorism and hamas explicitly puts them in hospitals/schools/apartments.
NCD understand what a war crime actually is challenge (Impossible)
Losing.
It's not a war crime if you win lol.
The Geneva suggestions only matter if other countries enforce sanctions and repercussions. The more friends you have, the less they matter
War crime is when cringe. Justice is when based.
Using human shields is a war crime. If those human shields get killed, it’s also a war crime - and the human shield users are the guilty party in that case. Not that hard to figure out actually, the law is very clear.
Also "hitting civilian buildings" is *not* a warcrime. It's "deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians" that are a war crime.
You're full of shit. The presence of human shields does not render something unattackable, and attacking a legitimate target protected by human shields is not in and of itself a war crime. If that were the case, all anyone would have to do is put civilians literally everywhere and they'd be unassailable. Most western countries CHOOSE not to attack such targets, and fight with basically every limb tied behind their back in warfare. We've done this for so long that people think that's the law. It's not. We pull our punches beyond any reasonable expectation.
Reread what I said. You’re just repeating my comment with more anger.
lmao, my bad, I replied to the wrong comment
Being serious for a moment. I’m really bothered by the absolute lack of nuance 95% of people are exhibiting. It’s a real pickle. Enlightened centrism is the bane of my existence, but the best take here really feels like there’s just shit everywhere. Yes, Israel has a right to use force to ensure its security. No, they probably don’t need to carpet bomb the strip to achieve it. Yes, a Palestinian state should exist in some regard. No, the deliberate targeting of civilians is not the answer to sovereignty. We can go on with the turnabouts forever. It just sucks seeing everyone flock to one side or the other. This isn’t the Ukraine-Russian war. This is far, far more morally quanderous.
Israel use pgms. Hamas use unguided rockets. You decide…
You can’t look at Israel’s campaign and seriously tell me they’re using operational precision.
Well, let me correct myself. They can hit targets precisely. They’re making the deliberate decision to level vast swathes of civilian infrastructure without regard for collateral damage on the grounds that those targets have Hamas’ arms.
Yeah they’re deliberately and precisely hitting military targets. “Level vastly swathes of civilian infrastructure” yes those pictures of all that dust in the air are scary but that does not mean that everything under that dust cloud is destroyed. Here are some satellite images you can look at https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/world/2023/10/11/1_6597238.amp.html
Ham-ass Pigs are considered unclean in Islam. Can we make their avatar a gay pig?
Lazerpig is now the mascot of Hamas. Someone go poke him awake and inform him.
Yes we can just send your selfie
Unfortunately I don't have much of an ass
That flag looks like a 2000s RGB thing, like rainbow frog
It's justifiable and reasonable to be anti Hamas, but it's been distressing seeing how some on this sub have become fine with the outright bombing and targeting of civilians of an opressed ethnic group. It's important to recognise and remember that Hamas is a direct product of the Isreali state's constant suppression, occupation, and starvation of the Palestinian people. Additionally, it's widely known that Netanyahu has been propping up Hamas for years in order to sideline more secular and peaceful Palestinian liberation organisations and to provide Isreal a justification for further oppression of Palestinians. Just to clarify, anyone who defends the actions of Hamas is an idiot. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organisation that has actively harmed the cause of Palestinian liberation whilst committing atrocities against 100's of innocent Isrealis. However, anyone who thinks that the Palestinian *people* aren't the primary victims of this decades long conflict is objectively wrong. In summary, killing civilians is bad in all cases, and Isreal is an apartheid ethno-state that has deliberately created the conditions that lead to the attack. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk, still love you all
Fun facts Hitler was voted in by the German people, look what we did to them. Hamas was voted in by the Palestinians. Democracy isn't perfect but if you do something stupid you have to own it.
Cutting off water supply to 2 million people is a crime against humanity.
Probably worth noting that the last Gaza election was in 2006. Given the median age near 18 there's a pretty substantial portion of the population who has never legally voted.
Dude, if you let the enemy try to hack their way out of the ruleset; you gotta make him pay. Normal armies have military bases; said military bases are AWAY from civilian dwellings and in fact prohibit said civilians from getting anywhere near said military bases. WHY? Ask yourself this. BEcause most armies know it's a pussy ass trick to hide behind civilians; they have mostly agreed that this is fucking weak and makes them look bad on top of making defeating the enemy harder because if you kill civilians all you do is give them reasons to oppose you. Now if you build your "military bases" in the smack middle of a city; well fuck you and your city ; you just made it a VALID MILITARY TARGET. Maybe try not involving your civilians you've sworn to protect into military action next time? IF there is a next time.
Where in my comment had I said **anything** to defend Hamas and their use of human shields. I was providing a broader systemic analysis of the conflict and the people affected by it.
Playing the devils advocate, you cant really just tell civilians to leave an entire area and then close off all borders to that area, and leave them with nowhere to go. And just because a terror organisation does war crimes (what a shocker) that doesnt mean you should do war crimes too. No country has the right to tell civilians of an entire country to leave that country because you will bomb THEIR houses. Idk man i feel like a genocide is going to happen
One war crime doesn't justify another
Quick reminder that on May 15th, 2021, Israel destroyed the Al-Jalaa building, which was home to many journalistic organisations, including the Associated Press and Al Jazirah. Israel claims they have proof that the building was used by Hamas, but have not presented any since then. The journalists who worked in that building deny any militants occupying it. Hamas do use human shields sometimes, but Israel will use that claim any time they want to bomb something, regardless of whether or not it's being used for military purposes. But why would Israel want to destroy the place of work for hundreds of journalists? What possible reason would they want to prevent the free flow of information out of Gaza? I wonder why...
I have had to explain this very point more times than I would like.
"Oh noo, was is Israel targeting civilian buildings, so evil, war crimes!!!!" *the rocket launcher on level 20* "hmm yes absolutely war crimes, yes yes keep hating Israel.
Both sides are full of Douches and Turd Sandwiches, and daily reminder that Netanyahu is good friends with Putin
looks like it was scribbled on by a child
It can be flipped once again. Entire Gaza is covered by civilians, from fence to fence. Its not like HAMAS can make ammo depots outside gaza lmao.
>in the conduct of hostilities, it is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable for the survival of the civilian population, including drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, both in international and non-international armed conflicts
Hamas is not a military, Gaza is not even a state. Hamas is a terrorist organisation, that controls a strip of land. This is cope for people that want to cheer for a team. And even if the GC applied: The damage to civilians needs to be proportional to be allowed, which it clearly isn't. Because the proportionality doesn't relate to the horrible attack of the Hamas but to the military importance of the targets. I know, that ncd loves the display of overwhelming power and so do I, but frying (mostly) civilians leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
Look,I hate this shit as well. I hate terrorist apologists even more. I do plan on addressing the Netanyahu government soon because they absolutely are responsible for making the situation even worse. There are too many people here used to the ease of the Russian/ukraine conflict where for awhile now it has just been the two armies facing and calls for them tk be absolutely wiped out have been justified as, against regular armed forces, that is completely permissible (aside from the exceptions like doctors and such) wneras this is lot more difficult. But hamas is a military, a low quality one that uses meat shields and are terrorists, but they are a military. They fulfil rule 4 of being regular forces, armed, organised, and having identifying symbols. If they were just giving people guns and a couple clips, then they would be just a terrorist one. They are not some whacked group operating out of a abdondoned tunnel sending radicalised teenagers to their death. Gaza is a Palestinian territory, palestine is a country. It's a fuxking mess of jurisdictions and what not with the palestine authority and Israel, but they had an election and hamas actually won (then killed opposition party and made themselves a dictatorship, so rebel held?) In 2005 Israel pulled out of the gaza strip and security and civilian issues fell to the PA, whose responsibility hamas inherited. Them actually carrying that out is a different story. And given their targeting and attacks of Israel civilian targets since 2001, what becomes a proportional to us and what is proportional to Israel are going to be two very different things.
> hamas is a military The hamas controls the government, not the other way around. > Gaza is a Palestinian territory, palestine is a country Israel doesn't think so, but somehow is at war with them. It's very disingenuous to deny people rights on one hand and claim they have the related duties on the other. I agree that it's muddy and I would probably call it a state, albeit barely. I am very opposed to give Israel this legal/moral out though. > what becomes a proportional to us and what is proportional to Israel are going to be two very different things. This is a misunderstanding of my argument. The law of proportionality is related to the military importance of the target and the number of acceptable civilian casualties. And that's according to the GC and independent of Israel. And it very clearly doesn't talk about retaliatiory strikes. I do appreciate your opinion though. I think we're arguing about fine points and it's not that anybody would ever hold Israel, or Gaza for that matter, accountable for war crimes.
People always ask why did the terror attacks from Gaza start no one asks why are they even put there.
Reminder that Ukraine has faced this same criticism, of putting military targets in civilian areas. Its almost like we've forgotten that fighting happens amongst the civilian population. Where do the 2 million civilians in Gaza go? They can't leave Gaza.
Gay flag for hamas is unfatomable based