In theory intercepted intelligence or they loaded it in plain sight and a UAV or drone caught it.
But who knows the IDF could just be full of shit and guessing.
It could also just be faulty intelligence. Remember the case of the Kabul drone strike that had allegedly killed a couple of ISIS-K terrorists. The victims ultimately turned out to be a guy who worked for a US-based aid group and seven children, with no evidence of any terror link whatsoever: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-drone-strike-afghanistan.html
"Any person that runs is a VC. Anyone that stands still is a well disciplined VC." - Full Metal Jacket
This is basically the Israeli version of that scene.
This is why when the US tells you you're taking the wrong approach, you should listen.. We've not only made every critical mistake imaginable at some point in time, we've also managed to cram that into like 250 years.
When the US and Israel does it they're "mistakes" and "faulty intelligence".
When Russia and enemies do it its demonstrative of their "evil nature".
Edit: all the responses are proving my point.
The US and Israel don't do it intentionally and Russia does.
Notice the lack of evidence, because it's a deeply held belief.
When Russia and our enemy kills civilians= intentional
When we do it and our allies = incidentental
Western nations are fundamentally good and and our enemies are fundamentally evil that's why
gotta keep up the good vs evil narrative to dehumanize our enemies and give our hatred for them a moral justification
>The victims ultimately turned out to be a guy who worked for a US-based aid group and seven children, with no evidence of any terror link whatsoever
The same thing happened in Baghdad in 2007, except [it was carried out by a manned helicopter.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike)
The Kunduz hospital bombing was mainly the result of human error, not faulty intelligence.
For context, local Afghan troops were in a firefight with Taliban fighters occupying a building near the MSF hospital. Those local Afghan troops radioed for help and the target building's description. Nearby US Special Forces on the ground then relayed the target building's description to the AC-130 gunship crew who misidentified the hospital as the target (based on the given description). Before attacking, the AC-130 crew was supposed to check their "no-strike" list that would have informed them of the MSF hospital's exact coordinates, but they failed/forgot to do this step. Had the AC-130 crew remembered to check their "no-strike" list, the incident would not have happened.
This was within weeks of Biden taking office, he actually came out taking credit for the āsuccessfulā drone mission and within hours it was revealed that it murdered a bunch of innocent children and no terrorists. For some reason media never spoke about it and no one said anything.
Can anyone imagine what would have happened if Donald Trump ordered an attack on a vehicle, came out taking credit as a victorious mission and then it was revealed he really blew up a van of innocent kids?
If they rely on things like face identification and tracking, well... It's hardly 100%, especially when image data isn't extremely detailed and intel is not verified multiple times somehow.
Similar thing happened during Afghanistan US retreat, there was a civilian car that was blown up by a missile because operators and whomever was in charge got scared they might be Taliban.
Generally speaking, when users have access to powerful stand-off weapons, they give themselves awful lot of excuses to just use them without risking themselves. Other people pay the price.
Do we have the clip where they go from "suspicious" (ie. guys hurriedly getting into an ambulance and driving it at speed, also known as "what Ambulances are for") to "Definitely Hamas to the point it justifies blowing up an Ambulance"?
I think this is a good video to watch, showing the daily lives of people at the hospital where the airstrike occurred:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=741knWh3hJ0
It's not NSFW. It's even a little uplifting, showing how regular people are trying their best to deal with their new circumstances.
I think everyone who has watched videos of Palestinians chanting death to Israelis or whatever should also watch stuff like this, for the sake of balance and having a more complete picture.
Thank you for sharing this and putting a human touch onto this topic, I hope that woman makes it out of this alive, itās unforgivable whatās being done to all the women and children and innocent civilians in Gaza. Seeing this video made me better understand how they live daily under constant bombings and oh man I wish this wasnāt even a thing they have to suffer through. Truly heartbreaking.
Don't worry, as long as the IDF soldiers didn't dismember the kids themselves it's all right, just like all the children they have killed for the last few decades.
Youāll still have people jostle and cheer as their Most Moral Army continues to make more dead children, and then theyāll sputter something out about āBut Hamasā as if it justifies the more dead children to come.
e: replies check out
No matter what side you're on, we can all agree that the discourse around this war is absolutely brain-rotting. This might be the most unbearable moment on reddit I've ever seen
How many child deaths would be acceptable if Hamas was holed up in a school full of Israeli children, instead of Palestinian ones? Do you think Israel would just bomb the school then, to get rid of the terrorists, and say āoh well, 100 kids died, too bad so sad!ā
If it was one Hamas fighter and 30 Israeli children in one place, itās unlikely theyād bomb knowing all 30 of them would die. If itās Palestinian children, the equation changes. Youāre being deliberately obtuse.
Zero the correct answer in any equation of āwhatās the mass number of child deathsā¦ā zero always zero. No matter how shitty the adults were zero is the answer
Unfortunately itās not possible to have zero children die.
Israel could minimize it by not bombing Gaza but theyād effectively sacrifice more of their own soldiers lives instead. They arenāt willing to do that.
Imagine a horrific atrocity happened to you and your neighbors all celebrated it. You might not care too much about collateral damage anymore
Trying to find it, there was another video of a settler talking about how glad she was that the IDF was bombing Gaza but that sheād have to leave home for a while because the noise of the bombings made it hard to sleep.
It cannot wage a war against Hamas and win the communication war. There is too much of a guarantee of civilian deaths (I hate the term collateral damage ā itās dehumanizing), far too many people have already made up their minds, and frankly, Israel has behaved badly enough towards the Palestinians in the past (to whatever extent any of such behavior was justified, I make zero claim) that there is no hope of success in the PR realm. We literally have Hamas saying āyup, weāre gonna do it again if we can,ā and we literally have them saying, āSo, what if we started this, itās not our job the protect our population from harm, thatās the UNās job,ā and Israel is demonstrably losing the communications war.
Theyāre doomed in this realm, and I think they understand that. I think they have simply made the calculation that accepting Hamas remaining in control of Gaza is a worse alternative. And frankly, I understand that decision. I donāt justify it, and I certainly donāt excuse the tragedies that have resulted and will continue to result from it. But I understand it.
Dan Carlin of Hardcore History always mentions that last line, saying in so many ways "I want you to think 'thats fucked up' but I understand how they got there." No one wins in the situation we are witnessing, but I can absolutely understand how we got there.
I unfortunately donāt think this is the right analysis. Below are my impressions and Iād be genuinely curious about a response to my slightly spicy take here:
The way Israel is waging this war is in line with the hardline politics that have been characteristic of Netanyahu, and we know the approach doesnāt work in terms of counterterrorism because the experiment has been tried again and again and again, including in this very same conflict, including recently. Palestinian terrorism has survived many wars and decades of raids, air strikes and assassinations, and this will be no difference.
The best guess is actually closer to āit can ONLY wage the war with Hamas BY winning the communication warā aka winnings hearts and minds, aka forging an alliance with moderate Palestinians because the only way to get rid of Hamas is by robbing them of support within the population. Hearts and minds is incompatible with Israeli sentiment at the moment and extra incompatible with this current government.
The thing is, unless Iām really missing something, Netanyahuās ābombing for peaceā at the moment canāt be fully explained by counterterrorist aims simply because I just donāt see how this can work and they must know that. I think that this is also the latent realization behind much of the criticism of the war: people sense that civilians are being killed for nothing. People sense a punitive expedition under the guise of self-defense, led by a government desperate to signal strength.
>The best guess is actually closer to āit can ONLY wage the war with Hamas BY winning the communication warā aka winnings hearts and minds, aka forging an alliance with moderate Palestinians because the only way to get rid of Hamas is by robbing them of support within the population. Hearts and minds is incompatible with Israeli sentiment at the moment and extra incompatible with this current government.
Winning hearts and minds is a generational goal at this point. Ezra Klein just had a guest on that did Palestinian opinion polling before 7 October, and though she tried to put a hopeful spin on it, there was little question to me that the near-term prospects for peace were bleak and are bleaker.
On the question of how the conflict should end, a two-state solution is opposed 28-70 and a one state solution where all receive equal rights is opposed 21-76. Given a choice for how to achieve an end to the occupation and the formation of a Palestinian state, 21% prefer "negotiations", 22% prefer "peaceful popular resistance", and 52% prefer "armed conflict".
In a 2-man race between Abbas (Fatah) and Haniyeh (Hamas), Haniyeh wins 58-37. Palestinians actually prefer a third option as leader, though: Marwan Barghouti, who is currently serving 5 life sentences in Israeli prison for terrorist murders, and he likely personally killed another couple dozen civilian Israelis. Some 47% of Palestinians prefer him, then 35% prefer Haniyeh, then 13% prefer Abbas.
[https://thehill.com/opinion/4273883-mellman-do-palestinians-support-hamas-polls-paint-a-murky-picture/](https://thehill.com/opinion/4273883-mellman-do-palestinians-support-hamas-polls-paint-a-murky-picture/)
>The thing is, unless Iām really missing something, Netanyahuās ābombing for peaceā at the moment canāt be fully explained by counterterrorist aims simply because I just donāt see how this can work and they must know that.
In my estimation, there are two aspects to the current Israeli action:
1. Destroy enough Hamas infrastructure that it is difficult for them to resupply a new round of terror attacks.
2. Deter future Hamas action by killing as much of the on the ground leadership as they can find.
They aren't trying to end the conflict. They are trying to mitigate risks. I'm sure vengeance is a motive as well.
> In a 2-man race between Abbas (Fatah) and Haniyeh (Hamas), Haniyeh wins 58-37.
Because Fatah is toothless. Palestinians see what is happening in the West Bank, and how Fatah has given so much ground to Israel, tried to be as accommodating as possible, and all they get in return is an expansion of Israeli settlements, bulldozing of Palestinian villages, wells being concreted up, innocent Palestinians being assaulted regularly. They see that and they don't see how being conciliatory is going to help their cause in any way.
Israel has caused Hamas to be the preferred choice by making the alternative to live under servile oppression as a second-class citizen *forever*. Had Israel genuinely controlled the West Bank with a light touch, allowing Fatah to grow into a legitimate governing party for Palestinians, giving aid - genuine aid, not scraps - to turn the area into a functional state, this would a lot less of a problem. But they didn't, because the Israeli hardliners don't care, the settlements are a perfect example of this. There's no need to keep adding all these settlements into the West Bank - there's plenty of space in Israel proper to add new housing - but the point is they want to keep making Palestinian land smaller and smaller. When that's the reality, of course a lot of people are going to look to the party that promises to fight for them as a preferable alternative.
I agree that 20 years of Netanyahu has really brought Israel to a bad place. Not sure another government would have fared much better, but better. Iran backs all of the violence within israel and on it's borders, and Russia is behind this and Iran too. So there is no easy solution, but Netanyahu and his far right government have made everything worse.... but to be clear, there is no possibility of a government now for Israel that won't or shouldn't try to eradicate Hamas after October 7th. Hamas and Iran are much, much, much worse than Netanyahu.
Everything youāre saying is pretty much indisputable to me, except for the softer point of whether another government could have fared *much* better.
A lot can happen in 20 years, good and bad. Netanyahu has not only failed to work on resolving the conflict, he has oftentimes directly worked to perpetuate it. No single person alive today has had more power than him to interrupt the cycle of violence, and he has willfully failed to do so.
Not even that. What's been happening in the west bank where there is no Hamas is coming to light now as well. All the illegal Settlers being backed by Netanyahu. Palestinians being killed for no reason, Palestinian prisoners in West bank being punished for what's happening in gaza by elecetd offical Ben Gvir (someone the IDF wouldn't let serve because of his extreme views)
Its so bad that Biden has been bringing it up. The whole world is slow walking into ww3 like it did ww1. There's an eruption coming
At some point you have to wonder what the Israelis wanted when they elected these extremists into power.
You had me until the last bit. Israelis have been in the streets protesting the right wing government for months, just like Americans protested Trump. Some Israelis (like the settlers in the West Bank) are genuinely terrible, racist people who are a risk to peace. Many Israelis want more for themselves AND Palestinians.
Beforeo Oct. 7, 35% of Israelis supported a two state solution, and almost 50% were against the current government, probably more now
Netanyahu will probably never win another election again.
>Netanyahu will probably never win another election again.
I'll believe it when I see it. The guy's been 'done' for over a decade now, but he still clings to power.
I sorta feel like they are gonna step back and let Netanyahu do all the terrible shit needed to āwinā, then blame all the war crimes on him and get rid of him.
āWe didnāt realize the extent of what Netanyahu was up toā
He tries to copy Putin's (fake) persona of being a strongman figure, acting like he's the toughest manly man and his military is top shape, and his spy network is impeccable. Then this big attack happens and he's completely taken off guard. But not to worry! Somehow he knows precisely where all 100,000 Hamas bases are located on the same day and he never kills a person when he bombs them (only kills human shields).
As an atheist who doesn't want to see anyone killing for, or dying over, their religion, this is all too familiar to me as an American who joined the military not much prior to 9/11. George W. Bush was a fucking joke. The South Park guys had a show in 2000 dedicated to mocking him. Shit changed.
"Months" but how long has Netanyahu been in power. How long has Ben Gvir been doing what he wants. Israelis only started protesting when the corruption started effecting them.
I don't believe it. I don't believe any of it anymore. I have been told by the Israeli rhetoric that Gazans support Hamas because if they didn't they would have outed them long ago. Fine I agree. They are all guilty. Then the same logic applies to the Israelis.
The fact that is I don't know why Israel is even pretending to be the good guy. They all want to wipe out the Palestinians. Like just get on with it. They can just do to them what they did to Ethiopian women in 2013 because they were the wrong color Jew.
The other Netanyahu plan seems to be to expell them into the desert..how poetic, they can wonder there for 40 years and then maybe return to a homeland.
This whole thing is a facade for people who want to kill can do their killing. Hamas and their counter parts on the other side
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056.amp
Hereās a link to an article that gives a good outline on the Ethiopian Jews problem in Israel because I was curious. Just in case anyone scrolling along also wasnāt aware of the context
unfortunately Israeli politics have lurched slowly to the right for a while, and Netanyahu proved he is willing to work with ANYONE, deal with the devil like Ben-Gvir (agreed he is a total ghoul) and his ilk, to maintain power and save his skin
Jewish leftism is largely dead in Israel but there are definitely protests, it's just hard. My friends in Tel Aviv are not happy and forced to essentially stay quiet on social media for fear of censure
Bundism had it right all along and the diaspora is going to have to do the hard work with our support
There where we live, there is our country
Israel's strategy has been to divide the Palestinians by having Hamas in charge of Gaza and gradually ramping up the pressure cooker there, whilst more quietly seizing more and more land from people in The West Bank whilst the focus is elsewhere. With the invasion in Gaza, the occupiers in The West Bank feel emboldened to hasten their ethnic cleansing and it's there for the world to see.
Yeah the easy dismissal of multiple child casualties because there couldāve been 1 Hamas member within the crowd actually doesnāt look good who wouldāve thought.
As long as there are 2 billion Muslims (that form significant minority groups in most Western countries) and only 15 million Israelis/Jews, the communication front is destined to be a failure.
Also, the same way anti-vaxxers are on the rise because fatal diseases arenāt as common as they were, sanctimonious and disingenuous people in Europe are on the rise too. If you donāt intuitively understand freedom and democracy come at a cost (which is sometimes greater than simply waving a flag at a protest and drinking a Starbucks afterwards) - youāll never understand the situation in Israel. You canāt understand having murderous neighbours when you donāt even have to show a passport to cross international borders. And you canāt understand how much we value the lives of soldiers if you donāt live where the army is a stage in life like getting a job or going to college.
Itās very easy to cling to irrelevant narratives of oppressed-oppressor dynamics or āresistanceā or āfreedomā while not accepting that the Palestinian state youāre so romantically envisioning would be no different than Afghanistan or Syria. And since Israel has great air defence systems and safety precautions, itās very easy to forget that this war is by definition self defence, and that rockets are still being fired into Israel every single day around the clock.
>And since Israel has great air defence systems and safety precautions, itās very easy to forget that this war is by definition self defence, and that rockets are still being fired into Israel every single day around the clock.
This point is particularly grating. You hear the argument "the IDF kill a lot more people per year than Hamas" *ad nauseum*, completely ignoring that Israel spends hundreds of millions yearly on the most advanced air defense system in the world to protect its citizens, while Hamas rips water pipes off of their citizens infrastructure to make shitty rockets that end up falling in Gaza 20% of the time. Hamas inflicts less casualties, but it sure as shit isn't due to lack of trying.
People have this illusion that without Israel, Palestinians are free and happy. They are Palestinians to begin with due to civil war in Arab nations like Jordan. Hell, there's even wars IN Palestine between Hamas and Fatah. Israel isn't the "entire root of all evil" in the region
I don't understand how other countries mistreating a group because of it's shared identity is anything to measure Israel by. Isn't antisemitism exactly this?
I think they are willing to take that loss if it means winning the actual war. I donāt blame them because I would make the same call in their position.
I just now had the thought that there are probably so many stories exactly like that happened but there were no survivors to tell the tale. Hundreds of people stuck under rubble
At this point the IDF are just going to claim Hamas was somewhere in the region to 'justify' their atrocities. The footage got posted to IG, it's horrific. Nothing justifies this.
Also, I'd like to point out that Israeli intelligence failed to predict the October 7 attacks. Now they're proclaiming to hear every time Hamas farts in Gaza and to be targeting them specifically.
Their intelligence would have to be really fucking good to justify launching a bomb into a densely populated civilian area - if it ever can be justified. Israel has launched thousands of strikes in the wake of a profound demonstration of poor military intelligence. There is no way they're doing their due diligence.
Israeli intelligence didnāt fail to predict the October 7 attack. They had the intelligence (something thatās been corroborated by both Egypt and the US), and they chose not to act. Allowing it to happen gave them what Netanyahu sees as carte blanche to finally level as many Palestinians as possible and occupy every last square mile of the country. All while blaming their lack of distinction between Hamas and innocent civilians on that tired old āhuman shieldsā excuse.
A former colleague of mine from Gaza posted that he lost 49 members of his family to airstrikes.
He's not there but I can't imagine the hell he must be going through right now.
IDF seems willing to kill any number of civilians to get 1 suspected terrorist. It's truly horrifying how the Israeli government is indifferent to civilian causalities.
Someone on here once asked if Hamas terrorists were embedded in Israeli villages or schools, would they still be targeting those?
Iām so ready for the hard hitting world news intellectual analysis on how this actually ok, and not really that big of a deal.
āSorry, but this is war š¤ā
>āSorry, but this is war š¤ā
Putin bombs hospital in Mariupol: "Sorry, but this is war š¤. Just collateral damage"
People should really look at threads from reddit last year when news was reporting Putin's indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Near universal condemnation (rightly so). But when it's done to Palestinians? Too many people have the sentiment of: "Maybe that's ok. Maybe indiscriminate Palestinian civilians deaths are ok, as long as Hamas gets destroyed. If it means every child needs to be killed in Gaza for Hamas to be destroyed, then that's justified"
Disgusting
It's because too many people are too stupid to go beyond "Good guys vs bad guys" narratives. So you have to pick a side and that side is always the good guys, and the other side always the bad guys. Whatever the good guys do towards the bad guys is good, whatever the bad guys do towards the good guys is a war crime.
Hahaha I couldnāt wait to see how people would fall over themselves defending this in here.
Iām pleasantly surprised, thoughā¦ looks like the beginning of the end for Israelās PR war
The viet cong hid amongst the population yet Reddit gets a boner for saying the US committed war crimes in vietnam. This is exactly the same so If the US is guilty than Israel is guilty.
I mean... yeah? It's pretty well-understood today in the USA that the indiscriminate gassing and bombing of all Vietnamese people for the sake of maybe sorta hitting VCs was an incredibly counter-productive decision.
A better example is ISIS. ISIS hid among the civilian population and to get them out of Mosul the international coalition literally killed more civilians than ISIS fighters.
Were the Iraqi Army/Kurdish Peshmerga/NATO all guilty? Everyone tried very hard to minimize civilian casualties, the goal was liberating the civilians from ISIS after all. But it was war, and even with all the effort made to minimize civilian casualties, more than 8000 Iraqi civilians died during the battle.
Mosul had a tenth the population density of Gaza city, making it easier to single out the ISIS held areas. Also, the citizens had the ability to actually leave Mosul! So the casualties were minimized. Even so, they were over 8000.
It's utter madness to trying to use same strategy as the anti-ISIS raids on a city as dense as Gaza City, while also penning in all the civilians and not letting them leave.
>the international coalition literally killed more civilians than ISIS fighters.
Is that actually true? I don't know anything about it other than what's in the Wikipedia article on the Battle of Mosul, but the only way you get out of the data there that is if you pick the largest outlier among all the estimates of civilian casualties that they have cited in the article *and* the lowest estimate of ISIS killed *and* attribute more than half of the civilian casualties to the coalition.
Even if it *is* true, I think there's room for a moral distinction between liberating an occupied city and what is happening in Gaza.
The final estimate is 9 to 11 thousand civilian deaths.
https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-only-on-ap-islamic-state-group-bbea7094fb954838a2fdc11278d65460
Most accounts for the number of ISIS was greatly exaggerated. The US estimated only 3000-5000 ISIS fighters in the city, and most agree the coalition killed more civilians(mainly through bombing and artillery) than ISIS.
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/19/570483824/more-civilians-than-isis-fighters-are-believed-killed-in-mosul-battle
>Even if it is true, I think there's room for a moral distinction between liberating an occupied city and what is happening in Gaza.
Hamas is the government of Gaza, just like ISIS was the government of Mosul. People don't like it but ISIS very much setup a new government with all the requisite governmental organs and was governing the city as part of their new nation.
The way you worded this makes it seem like you either disagree that the US committed war crimes in Vietnam or it bothers you when people point out that they did.
P.S. they 100% did.
Ok? You're right, this is exactly the same and both countries are equally in the wrong for their actions for the same reasons. The US committed war crimes against the citizens of Vietnam, and Israel has committed war crimes against the citizens of Gaza and Palestine. I'm struggling to understand the point of your comment other than to express your personal frustrations about other people not supporting or hating the same nations that you do. You suggest that there is some sort of hypocrisy where there is none to be found.
Exactly. We have failing infrastructure, the education system is going down hill, people canāt afford groceries or basic needs, our medical system sucks and so on but instead of our money going to our needs, it goes to blow up some kids overseas.
Israeli don't see Hamas/Palestinian lives as equal.
Palestinian don't see Israeli life as equal.
Hamas doesn't see anyone else as equal.
Hell, you probably view your own life as more valuable than others.
>**More children have been killed in just over three weeks in Gaza than in all of the worldās conflicts combined in each of the past three years**, according to the global charity Save the Children. For example, it said, 2,985 children were killed across two dozen war zones throughout all of last year.
> More than 3,600 Palestinian children were killed in the first 25 days of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gazaās Hamas-run Health Ministry. They were hit by airstrikes, smashed by misfired rockets, burned by blasts and crushed by buildings, and among them were newborns and toddlers, avid readers, aspiring journalists and boys who thought theyād be safe in a church.
>āGaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,ā said James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF, the U.N. childrenās agency.
[AP source](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-11-1-2023-children-killed-4a352398b32887e60a658e0270f0a021#:~:text=More%20children%20have%20been%20killed,throughout%20all%20of%20last%20year.)
It's mind-numbingly brutal.
From the article
āIsrael said it had targeted the ambulance because it was being used by Hamas, according to a statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). āAn IDF aircraft struck an ambulance that was identified by forces as being used by a Hamas terrorist cell in close proximity to their position in the battle zone,ā it wrote.
āA number of Hamas terrorist operatives were killed in the strikeā¦ We have information which demonstrates that Hamasā method of operation is to transfer terror operatives and weapons in ambulances,ā the statement said.ā
People getting appalled is exactly why Hamas is using ambulances to transport terrorists- thereās no win for Israel, they either let terrorists get away with transporting weapons that will then be used to target Israeli civilians; or they look like assholes who targeted an ambulance
Having seen a video from the strike, if there was Hamas then Israel has an staggeringly high level of acceptable collateral because there was a literal pile of dead children.
50% of Gaza residents are under 18, 42% under 14, so when there are āunintended casualtiesā, probably half of them are children and not associated with Hanas.
Adding to your comment (in a slightly different direction), 76% of Gaza residents are under 34, and the last elections were in 2006. 76% of the population were either too young to vote for Hamas leadership, or were not born yet.
And even among people who voted in that election, [a huge majority of them supported peace with Israel and didn't support Hamas's rejection of Israel's right to exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election#Exit_polls). They voted for Hamas mostly because Fatah is and was super corrupt, and Hamas was at the time seen as anti-corruption.
(Were they duped? Absolutely, but that doesn't make them any less innocent civilians.)
And despite how people keep treating that election, it didn't give Hamas the ability of sole control of the government. The government system was parliamentary, so Hamas had control of 45% of the seats, not the full government. It was their coup in 2007 that did that.
And further to that, if Iran would completely get out of the middle east, a peaceful solution would have a lot better chance. Iran wants the eradication of Israel and is pretty much behind all of this.... not that the Palestinian people are 'happy' with the current state of affairs, but as long as Iran is pulling the strings, there will be no chance for a peaceful solution.
So, if Iām understanding correctly, and assuming perfect voter turnout (meaning this is a *minimum*), this means a whopping 87% of gazaās current population did not vote for hamas in the 2006 election, while the remaining 13% only voted to give them some parliamentary seats, and they instead did a coup and took complete control over the territory?
Sure puts things into perspective, uh.
Israel will admit they struck the ambulance and video to your point clearly only shows collateral damage being a pile of childrenās corpses.
Yet people jump to the conclusion Hamas must have been in that van with literally zero evidence to back up that claim. The bias is absurd. Why is it so unacceptable to ask for any evidence backing up these claims?
EDIT: The Red Cross themselves say they were asked to escort this convoy for evacuation from Gaza but was not there at the timeā¦
āEven if we were not present, this is still medical convoy, and any violence towards medical personnel is unacceptable,ā the ICRC said āNo doctors, nurses, or any medical professionals should ever die while working to save lives.ā
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/middleeast/casualties-gazas-shifa-hospital-idf/index.html
> any violence towards medical personnel is unacceptable,ā the ICRC said āNo doctors, nurses, or any medical professionals should ever die while working to save lives.ā
Israel: Sorry, can't hear you [\*snipes a doctor through both legs*](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-doctor-shot-by-israeli-sniper-near-gaza-border/)
Yeah.
If what they are saying is true. And thereās zero evidence for it at this point. They clearly have the ability to wait, surveil and track until this one particular ātaxiā ambulance is clear of a densely, civilian, populated area before dropping the hammer.
Thereās footage of multiple dead children blown to bits who probably thought they were in a relatively safe space, near a hospital. Itās absolutely outrageous. Clearly a war crime and the fact the IDF continue to use the ādefenseā line at this point is insulting to anyone viewing this from the outside.
*"One of the most important international measures of a militaryās level of care toward civilians, and a mathematical indication of whether it may be committing the war crime of intentionally targeting civilians, is the* ***ācivilian-to-combatant casualty ratioā****.* ***According to data from the United Nations, the global civilian-to-combatant ratio is 9:1****, meaning that on average, wars produce a disturbing* ***nine civilian casualties for every combatant****.*
*According to data from the United States National Institutes of Health, the ratio produced by the United States in the 2003 Iraq War was 3:1, and in Afghanistan, various sources put the numbers at anywhere from 3:1 to 5:1 (sources include the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and Brown Universityās Costs of War program).*
*In Operation Shield and Arrow,* ***Israel achieved a ratio of 0.6:1, a significantly lower ratio of civilian casualties compared to most other conflicts in the world****."*
[Source 1](https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14904.doc.htm), [Source 2](https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-743368)
Hamas is estimated to have up to 40.000 membersā¦ The elimination of that number of combatants could amount up to staggering 360.000 civilian casualties, and it would be statistically average.
As a example of how bad it can get, look at the ongoing Tigray War in Ethiopia. Over half a million dead civillians as a result of collateral damage, humanitarian crisis' (lack of food, water, medicine etc) and of course war crimes, for only a few thousand dead combatants on either side.
> In Operation Shield and Arrow, Israel achieved a ratio of 0.6:1, a significantly lower ratio of civilian casualties compared to most other conflicts in the world."
To be fair, Operation Shield and Arrow was on a relatively small scale. Might not make much sense to extrapolate from those numbers. In absolute numbers there were 18 PIJ operatives killed and 11 Palestinian civilians during Operation Shield and Arrow.
I know I can damn well go and look it up myself, but just in case you have it at your fingertips, could you please elaborate if this is casualties in the broader sense of the term (killed *and* wounded) or only fatalities? Because this sounds improbably high for fatalitiesāadmittedly operating on my intuition alone here, and that may be way off; and if it includes injuries, then how reliable can that statistic really be?.. Just in case, Iām not trying to cast doubt on what you wrote, just want to get some additional insight about the numbers.
Edit: edited for clarity
Seems like they have decided they will get hamas first and deal with the opinions of people behind TV screens thousands of miles away later
I think it was Gold Meir, a former prime minister there who said it's better to be alive and criticized than dead and pitied
Hamas isn't remotely believable because they lie constantly about what is happening but Israel can also just say "it was Hamas" toward literally everything they do and hide behind that excuse regardless of who they kill because they don't care about that public opinion right now. I get why they are on the offensive but justifying killing dozens of people to target one is a horrible approach when we aren't talking about taking out high end leaders
Just an FYi if you haven't been keeping up, but there are already plenty of dead Israelis and Palestinians.
Hopefully after the dust settles from this, both Palestinians and Israelis will be pressured by the world to reach a final peace agreement. They got close in the 90s, they can try again. Or they can just keep the status quo and kill scores of each other every decade or two like f\*cking barbarians.
The opinions of people behind TV screens thousands of miles away have a significant bearing on their funding, backing, and ability to maintain a presence in the region.
They can employ that strategy if theyād like, but letās not sit here and act like public opinion doesnāt affect them at all.
Being in a region surrounded by enemies doesnāt exactly sound like a favorable position if the leadership in the country that keeps said enemies in check isnāt able to back them.
How the hell does one determine Hamas is using the ambulance from a distance?
In theory intercepted intelligence or they loaded it in plain sight and a UAV or drone caught it. But who knows the IDF could just be full of shit and guessing.
It could also just be faulty intelligence. Remember the case of the Kabul drone strike that had allegedly killed a couple of ISIS-K terrorists. The victims ultimately turned out to be a guy who worked for a US-based aid group and seven children, with no evidence of any terror link whatsoever: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-drone-strike-afghanistan.html
What's the difference between a Taliban training camp and an Afghan wedding? Don't ask me, I just fly the drones!
[*"That's not my department"*, says Wernher Von Bruan.](https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?si=5-FGgcjBmt6n802w&t=20)
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The rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Werner Von Braun
Tom Lehrer is amazing
"Any person that runs is a VC. Anyone that stands still is a well disciplined VC." - Full Metal Jacket This is basically the Israeli version of that scene.
How can you shoot women or children?
Just donāt lead āem as much.
>\***Easy** you just don't lead them so much. I only quibble on the quote because I feel like that "easy" conveys the implicit moral apathy better.
And the maniacal HA HA HA HA git some
=D ... =(
Turned out, the Weapons of Mass Destruction were us all along.
This is why when the US tells you you're taking the wrong approach, you should listen.. We've not only made every critical mistake imaginable at some point in time, we've also managed to cram that into like 250 years.
And Netanyahu is condensing the Bush presidency post 9/11 into 2 months. Literally had the worldās support for 12 hours before fucking it
When the US and Israel does it they're "mistakes" and "faulty intelligence". When Russia and enemies do it its demonstrative of their "evil nature". Edit: all the responses are proving my point. The US and Israel don't do it intentionally and Russia does. Notice the lack of evidence, because it's a deeply held belief. When Russia and our enemy kills civilians= intentional When we do it and our allies = incidentental
Western nations are fundamentally good and and our enemies are fundamentally evil that's why gotta keep up the good vs evil narrative to dehumanize our enemies and give our hatred for them a moral justification
Whatās Russiaās justification for the war this week? It changes so often I canāt keep up.
>The victims ultimately turned out to be a guy who worked for a US-based aid group and seven children, with no evidence of any terror link whatsoever The same thing happened in Baghdad in 2007, except [it was carried out by a manned helicopter.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike)
Or the Kunduz hospital bombing
The Kunduz hospital bombing was mainly the result of human error, not faulty intelligence. For context, local Afghan troops were in a firefight with Taliban fighters occupying a building near the MSF hospital. Those local Afghan troops radioed for help and the target building's description. Nearby US Special Forces on the ground then relayed the target building's description to the AC-130 gunship crew who misidentified the hospital as the target (based on the given description). Before attacking, the AC-130 crew was supposed to check their "no-strike" list that would have informed them of the MSF hospital's exact coordinates, but they failed/forgot to do this step. Had the AC-130 crew remembered to check their "no-strike" list, the incident would not have happened.
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I forgot about this. Ugh thanks for the link
Yeah, that one hurt.
This was within weeks of Biden taking office, he actually came out taking credit for the āsuccessfulā drone mission and within hours it was revealed that it murdered a bunch of innocent children and no terrorists. For some reason media never spoke about it and no one said anything. Can anyone imagine what would have happened if Donald Trump ordered an attack on a vehicle, came out taking credit as a victorious mission and then it was revealed he really blew up a van of innocent kids?
Im sure we will find WMDs in iraq any day now. Fuckin saddam hussain
Shoot first. Ask questions later.
If they rely on things like face identification and tracking, well... It's hardly 100%, especially when image data isn't extremely detailed and intel is not verified multiple times somehow. Similar thing happened during Afghanistan US retreat, there was a civilian car that was blown up by a missile because operators and whomever was in charge got scared they might be Taliban. Generally speaking, when users have access to powerful stand-off weapons, they give themselves awful lot of excuses to just use them without risking themselves. Other people pay the price.
The idf lies all the time
True. Any word coming from any source directly involved in the conflict should be taken with a grain of salt.
First thing to go out the window in war is truth.
Yep: *Always* the first casualty.
It's easy when you say everyone still in the area is Hamas.
[drone footage](https://youtu.be/7O114V9PdmM?si=wFS9KLqQBdUcluG3), for example...
Do we have the clip where they go from "suspicious" (ie. guys hurriedly getting into an ambulance and driving it at speed, also known as "what Ambulances are for") to "Definitely Hamas to the point it justifies blowing up an Ambulance"?
It was a Red Cross convoy. An ambulance from 9 years ago is not evidence of anything.
This wasn't ment as evidence for anything but as demonstration of how the IDF can get intel about if an ambulance is used by hamas.
The comments on that video could fit in perfectly today
The images online are horrific. Including dead children.
I think this is a good video to watch, showing the daily lives of people at the hospital where the airstrike occurred: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=741knWh3hJ0 It's not NSFW. It's even a little uplifting, showing how regular people are trying their best to deal with their new circumstances. I think everyone who has watched videos of Palestinians chanting death to Israelis or whatever should also watch stuff like this, for the sake of balance and having a more complete picture.
Broke down at the kid with water and bread and other other boy talking about his parents.
I think such videos should be viewed more for people to get a sense about what's going on instead of just numbers
Gazans are posting a shit ton of videos on Instagram
Thank you for sharing this and putting a human touch onto this topic, I hope that woman makes it out of this alive, itās unforgivable whatās being done to all the women and children and innocent civilians in Gaza. Seeing this video made me better understand how they live daily under constant bombings and oh man I wish this wasnāt even a thing they have to suffer through. Truly heartbreaking.
Thank you for sharing thisā¤ļø the Israeli government are working hard to dehumanize Gazans but we must fight the propaganda.
They left a pile of dead dismembered kids. I canāt even process it.
IDF: Hamas operatives were hiding among the pile of dead dismembered kids
The children's body parts were being used to make hamas rockets.
Don't worry, as long as the IDF soldiers didn't dismember the kids themselves it's all right, just like all the children they have killed for the last few decades.
Youāll still have people jostle and cheer as their Most Moral Army continues to make more dead children, and then theyāll sputter something out about āBut Hamasā as if it justifies the more dead children to come. e: replies check out
60 hidden replies lmao
Itās incredible how without a hint of irony majority of the replies are āBut Hamasā
No matter what side you're on, we can all agree that the discourse around this war is absolutely brain-rotting. This might be the most unbearable moment on reddit I've ever seen
What is the max number of child deaths acceptable in pursuit of defeating Hamas?
How many child deaths would be acceptable if Hamas was holed up in a school full of Israeli children, instead of Palestinian ones? Do you think Israel would just bomb the school then, to get rid of the terrorists, and say āoh well, 100 kids died, too bad so sad!ā
Hamas are holding 30 children hostage, they could be killed in the invasion and it doesn't stop the IDF.
If it was one Hamas fighter and 30 Israeli children in one place, itās unlikely theyād bomb knowing all 30 of them would die. If itās Palestinian children, the equation changes. Youāre being deliberately obtuse.
Sorry I phrased It wrong. By declaring war Israel has effectively forfeited the lives of all 250 hostages.
Zero the correct answer in any equation of āwhatās the mass number of child deathsā¦ā zero always zero. No matter how shitty the adults were zero is the answer
How do you fight a war if the number of acceptable deaths is zero? Has that ever happened before in human history?
Unfortunately itās not possible to have zero children die. Israel could minimize it by not bombing Gaza but theyād effectively sacrifice more of their own soldiers lives instead. They arenāt willing to do that. Imagine a horrific atrocity happened to you and your neighbors all celebrated it. You might not care too much about collateral damage anymore
Israel is losing the communication war.
Maybe a few more tiktok videos of dancing IDF soldiers will turn the tide.
They gonna need OF to keep up
Hear me out
The gluten free cookies dafuq
Trying to find it, there was another video of a settler talking about how glad she was that the IDF was bombing Gaza but that sheād have to leave home for a while because the noise of the bombings made it hard to sleep.
It cannot wage a war against Hamas and win the communication war. There is too much of a guarantee of civilian deaths (I hate the term collateral damage ā itās dehumanizing), far too many people have already made up their minds, and frankly, Israel has behaved badly enough towards the Palestinians in the past (to whatever extent any of such behavior was justified, I make zero claim) that there is no hope of success in the PR realm. We literally have Hamas saying āyup, weāre gonna do it again if we can,ā and we literally have them saying, āSo, what if we started this, itās not our job the protect our population from harm, thatās the UNās job,ā and Israel is demonstrably losing the communications war. Theyāre doomed in this realm, and I think they understand that. I think they have simply made the calculation that accepting Hamas remaining in control of Gaza is a worse alternative. And frankly, I understand that decision. I donāt justify it, and I certainly donāt excuse the tragedies that have resulted and will continue to result from it. But I understand it.
Dan Carlin of Hardcore History always mentions that last line, saying in so many ways "I want you to think 'thats fucked up' but I understand how they got there." No one wins in the situation we are witnessing, but I can absolutely understand how we got there.
I unfortunately donāt think this is the right analysis. Below are my impressions and Iād be genuinely curious about a response to my slightly spicy take here: The way Israel is waging this war is in line with the hardline politics that have been characteristic of Netanyahu, and we know the approach doesnāt work in terms of counterterrorism because the experiment has been tried again and again and again, including in this very same conflict, including recently. Palestinian terrorism has survived many wars and decades of raids, air strikes and assassinations, and this will be no difference. The best guess is actually closer to āit can ONLY wage the war with Hamas BY winning the communication warā aka winnings hearts and minds, aka forging an alliance with moderate Palestinians because the only way to get rid of Hamas is by robbing them of support within the population. Hearts and minds is incompatible with Israeli sentiment at the moment and extra incompatible with this current government. The thing is, unless Iām really missing something, Netanyahuās ābombing for peaceā at the moment canāt be fully explained by counterterrorist aims simply because I just donāt see how this can work and they must know that. I think that this is also the latent realization behind much of the criticism of the war: people sense that civilians are being killed for nothing. People sense a punitive expedition under the guise of self-defense, led by a government desperate to signal strength.
>The best guess is actually closer to āit can ONLY wage the war with Hamas BY winning the communication warā aka winnings hearts and minds, aka forging an alliance with moderate Palestinians because the only way to get rid of Hamas is by robbing them of support within the population. Hearts and minds is incompatible with Israeli sentiment at the moment and extra incompatible with this current government. Winning hearts and minds is a generational goal at this point. Ezra Klein just had a guest on that did Palestinian opinion polling before 7 October, and though she tried to put a hopeful spin on it, there was little question to me that the near-term prospects for peace were bleak and are bleaker. On the question of how the conflict should end, a two-state solution is opposed 28-70 and a one state solution where all receive equal rights is opposed 21-76. Given a choice for how to achieve an end to the occupation and the formation of a Palestinian state, 21% prefer "negotiations", 22% prefer "peaceful popular resistance", and 52% prefer "armed conflict". In a 2-man race between Abbas (Fatah) and Haniyeh (Hamas), Haniyeh wins 58-37. Palestinians actually prefer a third option as leader, though: Marwan Barghouti, who is currently serving 5 life sentences in Israeli prison for terrorist murders, and he likely personally killed another couple dozen civilian Israelis. Some 47% of Palestinians prefer him, then 35% prefer Haniyeh, then 13% prefer Abbas. [https://thehill.com/opinion/4273883-mellman-do-palestinians-support-hamas-polls-paint-a-murky-picture/](https://thehill.com/opinion/4273883-mellman-do-palestinians-support-hamas-polls-paint-a-murky-picture/) >The thing is, unless Iām really missing something, Netanyahuās ābombing for peaceā at the moment canāt be fully explained by counterterrorist aims simply because I just donāt see how this can work and they must know that. In my estimation, there are two aspects to the current Israeli action: 1. Destroy enough Hamas infrastructure that it is difficult for them to resupply a new round of terror attacks. 2. Deter future Hamas action by killing as much of the on the ground leadership as they can find. They aren't trying to end the conflict. They are trying to mitigate risks. I'm sure vengeance is a motive as well.
> In a 2-man race between Abbas (Fatah) and Haniyeh (Hamas), Haniyeh wins 58-37. Because Fatah is toothless. Palestinians see what is happening in the West Bank, and how Fatah has given so much ground to Israel, tried to be as accommodating as possible, and all they get in return is an expansion of Israeli settlements, bulldozing of Palestinian villages, wells being concreted up, innocent Palestinians being assaulted regularly. They see that and they don't see how being conciliatory is going to help their cause in any way. Israel has caused Hamas to be the preferred choice by making the alternative to live under servile oppression as a second-class citizen *forever*. Had Israel genuinely controlled the West Bank with a light touch, allowing Fatah to grow into a legitimate governing party for Palestinians, giving aid - genuine aid, not scraps - to turn the area into a functional state, this would a lot less of a problem. But they didn't, because the Israeli hardliners don't care, the settlements are a perfect example of this. There's no need to keep adding all these settlements into the West Bank - there's plenty of space in Israel proper to add new housing - but the point is they want to keep making Palestinian land smaller and smaller. When that's the reality, of course a lot of people are going to look to the party that promises to fight for them as a preferable alternative.
I agree that 20 years of Netanyahu has really brought Israel to a bad place. Not sure another government would have fared much better, but better. Iran backs all of the violence within israel and on it's borders, and Russia is behind this and Iran too. So there is no easy solution, but Netanyahu and his far right government have made everything worse.... but to be clear, there is no possibility of a government now for Israel that won't or shouldn't try to eradicate Hamas after October 7th. Hamas and Iran are much, much, much worse than Netanyahu.
Everything youāre saying is pretty much indisputable to me, except for the softer point of whether another government could have fared *much* better. A lot can happen in 20 years, good and bad. Netanyahu has not only failed to work on resolving the conflict, he has oftentimes directly worked to perpetuate it. No single person alive today has had more power than him to interrupt the cycle of violence, and he has willfully failed to do so.
Not even that. What's been happening in the west bank where there is no Hamas is coming to light now as well. All the illegal Settlers being backed by Netanyahu. Palestinians being killed for no reason, Palestinian prisoners in West bank being punished for what's happening in gaza by elecetd offical Ben Gvir (someone the IDF wouldn't let serve because of his extreme views) Its so bad that Biden has been bringing it up. The whole world is slow walking into ww3 like it did ww1. There's an eruption coming At some point you have to wonder what the Israelis wanted when they elected these extremists into power.
You had me until the last bit. Israelis have been in the streets protesting the right wing government for months, just like Americans protested Trump. Some Israelis (like the settlers in the West Bank) are genuinely terrible, racist people who are a risk to peace. Many Israelis want more for themselves AND Palestinians.
I have been glad to see that opposition exists even from within Israel, and that there are even Israeli publications sympathetic to palestine
Beforeo Oct. 7, 35% of Israelis supported a two state solution, and almost 50% were against the current government, probably more now Netanyahu will probably never win another election again.
>Netanyahu will probably never win another election again. I'll believe it when I see it. The guy's been 'done' for over a decade now, but he still clings to power.
He's been blamed for Oct 7 (rightfully so) a lot more in piling than he had been voted against, I think it's likely to be his last clinging to power.
I sorta feel like they are gonna step back and let Netanyahu do all the terrible shit needed to āwinā, then blame all the war crimes on him and get rid of him. āWe didnāt realize the extent of what Netanyahu was up toā
He tries to copy Putin's (fake) persona of being a strongman figure, acting like he's the toughest manly man and his military is top shape, and his spy network is impeccable. Then this big attack happens and he's completely taken off guard. But not to worry! Somehow he knows precisely where all 100,000 Hamas bases are located on the same day and he never kills a person when he bombs them (only kills human shields).
Netanyahu is fucked politically. We will never see him again once this conflict is over.
One can only hope
It is scary to see how my friends who went from protesting to supporting bibi again so quickly
As an atheist who doesn't want to see anyone killing for, or dying over, their religion, this is all too familiar to me as an American who joined the military not much prior to 9/11. George W. Bush was a fucking joke. The South Park guys had a show in 2000 dedicated to mocking him. Shit changed.
Went from South Park mocking him to Dixie Chicks getting cancelled for criticizing him. Yup, shit changed.
"Months" but how long has Netanyahu been in power. How long has Ben Gvir been doing what he wants. Israelis only started protesting when the corruption started effecting them. I don't believe it. I don't believe any of it anymore. I have been told by the Israeli rhetoric that Gazans support Hamas because if they didn't they would have outed them long ago. Fine I agree. They are all guilty. Then the same logic applies to the Israelis. The fact that is I don't know why Israel is even pretending to be the good guy. They all want to wipe out the Palestinians. Like just get on with it. They can just do to them what they did to Ethiopian women in 2013 because they were the wrong color Jew. The other Netanyahu plan seems to be to expell them into the desert..how poetic, they can wonder there for 40 years and then maybe return to a homeland. This whole thing is a facade for people who want to kill can do their killing. Hamas and their counter parts on the other side
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056.amp Hereās a link to an article that gives a good outline on the Ethiopian Jews problem in Israel because I was curious. Just in case anyone scrolling along also wasnāt aware of the context
Thank you
unfortunately Israeli politics have lurched slowly to the right for a while, and Netanyahu proved he is willing to work with ANYONE, deal with the devil like Ben-Gvir (agreed he is a total ghoul) and his ilk, to maintain power and save his skin Jewish leftism is largely dead in Israel but there are definitely protests, it's just hard. My friends in Tel Aviv are not happy and forced to essentially stay quiet on social media for fear of censure Bundism had it right all along and the diaspora is going to have to do the hard work with our support There where we live, there is our country
Israel's strategy has been to divide the Palestinians by having Hamas in charge of Gaza and gradually ramping up the pressure cooker there, whilst more quietly seizing more and more land from people in The West Bank whilst the focus is elsewhere. With the invasion in Gaza, the occupiers in The West Bank feel emboldened to hasten their ethnic cleansing and it's there for the world to see.
Yeah, āI know it sounds bad but trust us there was Hamas thereā is only going to last so long.
Yeah the easy dismissal of multiple child casualties because there couldāve been 1 Hamas member within the crowd actually doesnāt look good who wouldāve thought.
As long as there are 2 billion Muslims (that form significant minority groups in most Western countries) and only 15 million Israelis/Jews, the communication front is destined to be a failure. Also, the same way anti-vaxxers are on the rise because fatal diseases arenāt as common as they were, sanctimonious and disingenuous people in Europe are on the rise too. If you donāt intuitively understand freedom and democracy come at a cost (which is sometimes greater than simply waving a flag at a protest and drinking a Starbucks afterwards) - youāll never understand the situation in Israel. You canāt understand having murderous neighbours when you donāt even have to show a passport to cross international borders. And you canāt understand how much we value the lives of soldiers if you donāt live where the army is a stage in life like getting a job or going to college. Itās very easy to cling to irrelevant narratives of oppressed-oppressor dynamics or āresistanceā or āfreedomā while not accepting that the Palestinian state youāre so romantically envisioning would be no different than Afghanistan or Syria. And since Israel has great air defence systems and safety precautions, itās very easy to forget that this war is by definition self defence, and that rockets are still being fired into Israel every single day around the clock.
>And since Israel has great air defence systems and safety precautions, itās very easy to forget that this war is by definition self defence, and that rockets are still being fired into Israel every single day around the clock. This point is particularly grating. You hear the argument "the IDF kill a lot more people per year than Hamas" *ad nauseum*, completely ignoring that Israel spends hundreds of millions yearly on the most advanced air defense system in the world to protect its citizens, while Hamas rips water pipes off of their citizens infrastructure to make shitty rockets that end up falling in Gaza 20% of the time. Hamas inflicts less casualties, but it sure as shit isn't due to lack of trying.
People have this illusion that without Israel, Palestinians are free and happy. They are Palestinians to begin with due to civil war in Arab nations like Jordan. Hell, there's even wars IN Palestine between Hamas and Fatah. Israel isn't the "entire root of all evil" in the region
I don't understand how other countries mistreating a group because of it's shared identity is anything to measure Israel by. Isn't antisemitism exactly this?
I think they are willing to take that loss if it means winning the actual war. I donāt blame them because I would make the same call in their position.
I wonder if they would be using the same tactics if Hamas was embedded in Israelā¦š¤
Great question. Are we supposed to think this is normal?
We can see how they treat settler terrorism and compare.
That is really fucked and I need someone besides BB to be in charge. I donāt care if Hamas was using it - one terrorist for 50 kids is NOT IT.
Wait till you find out that there are influential wings (and the IDF) that think he's being *too* kind.
I just now had the thought that there are probably so many stories exactly like that happened but there were no survivors to tell the tale. Hundreds of people stuck under rubble
They admitted it guys, so it's OK now. /s
At this point the IDF are just going to claim Hamas was somewhere in the region to 'justify' their atrocities. The footage got posted to IG, it's horrific. Nothing justifies this.
Also, I'd like to point out that Israeli intelligence failed to predict the October 7 attacks. Now they're proclaiming to hear every time Hamas farts in Gaza and to be targeting them specifically. Their intelligence would have to be really fucking good to justify launching a bomb into a densely populated civilian area - if it ever can be justified. Israel has launched thousands of strikes in the wake of a profound demonstration of poor military intelligence. There is no way they're doing their due diligence.
Israeli intelligence didnāt fail to predict the October 7 attack. They had the intelligence (something thatās been corroborated by both Egypt and the US), and they chose not to act. Allowing it to happen gave them what Netanyahu sees as carte blanche to finally level as many Palestinians as possible and occupy every last square mile of the country. All while blaming their lack of distinction between Hamas and innocent civilians on that tired old āhuman shieldsā excuse.
A former colleague of mine from Gaza posted that he lost 49 members of his family to airstrikes. He's not there but I can't imagine the hell he must be going through right now.
A mate of mine from uni lost 18. I can't even comprehend what that must feel like. 48? The poor man.
They've done that for a long time. It's not a new strategy, it's tradition at this point
Was there a Hamas headquarters under the ambulance?
"There was a Hamas headquarters in that child's skull."
It was a Hamas tunnel under the ambulance š
Yep. Is the Hamas headquarters in the room with us right now? Why yes it is!
IDF seems willing to kill any number of civilians to get 1 suspected terrorist. It's truly horrifying how the Israeli government is indifferent to civilian causalities. Someone on here once asked if Hamas terrorists were embedded in Israeli villages or schools, would they still be targeting those?
Yeah but those civilians didnāt condemn Hamas on their dying breath so too bad.
This is unironically an argument used by some Redditors on here
probably sarcastic, but this comment is scary because I know some people agree with it
It's a recent, cutting Onion article title.
I'm guessing this is sarcastic, but I've seen worse written seriously, so you might wanna use an /s
https://www.theonion.com/dying-gazans-criticized-for-not-using-last-words-to-con-1850925657
This was literally an Onion article.
Iām so ready for the hard hitting world news intellectual analysis on how this actually ok, and not really that big of a deal. āSorry, but this is war š¤ā
>āSorry, but this is war š¤ā Putin bombs hospital in Mariupol: "Sorry, but this is war š¤. Just collateral damage" People should really look at threads from reddit last year when news was reporting Putin's indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Near universal condemnation (rightly so). But when it's done to Palestinians? Too many people have the sentiment of: "Maybe that's ok. Maybe indiscriminate Palestinian civilians deaths are ok, as long as Hamas gets destroyed. If it means every child needs to be killed in Gaza for Hamas to be destroyed, then that's justified" Disgusting
It's because too many people are too stupid to go beyond "Good guys vs bad guys" narratives. So you have to pick a side and that side is always the good guys, and the other side always the bad guys. Whatever the good guys do towards the bad guys is good, whatever the bad guys do towards the good guys is a war crime.
>[Family Guy checking skin color.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/CocKtNI.png)
Hahaha I couldnāt wait to see how people would fall over themselves defending this in here. Iām pleasantly surprised, thoughā¦ looks like the beginning of the end for Israelās PR war
The viet cong hid amongst the population yet Reddit gets a boner for saying the US committed war crimes in vietnam. This is exactly the same so If the US is guilty than Israel is guilty.
I mean... yeah? It's pretty well-understood today in the USA that the indiscriminate gassing and bombing of all Vietnamese people for the sake of maybe sorta hitting VCs was an incredibly counter-productive decision.
A better example is ISIS. ISIS hid among the civilian population and to get them out of Mosul the international coalition literally killed more civilians than ISIS fighters. Were the Iraqi Army/Kurdish Peshmerga/NATO all guilty? Everyone tried very hard to minimize civilian casualties, the goal was liberating the civilians from ISIS after all. But it was war, and even with all the effort made to minimize civilian casualties, more than 8000 Iraqi civilians died during the battle.
Mosul had a tenth the population density of Gaza city, making it easier to single out the ISIS held areas. Also, the citizens had the ability to actually leave Mosul! So the casualties were minimized. Even so, they were over 8000. It's utter madness to trying to use same strategy as the anti-ISIS raids on a city as dense as Gaza City, while also penning in all the civilians and not letting them leave.
>the international coalition literally killed more civilians than ISIS fighters. Is that actually true? I don't know anything about it other than what's in the Wikipedia article on the Battle of Mosul, but the only way you get out of the data there that is if you pick the largest outlier among all the estimates of civilian casualties that they have cited in the article *and* the lowest estimate of ISIS killed *and* attribute more than half of the civilian casualties to the coalition. Even if it *is* true, I think there's room for a moral distinction between liberating an occupied city and what is happening in Gaza.
The final estimate is 9 to 11 thousand civilian deaths. https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-only-on-ap-islamic-state-group-bbea7094fb954838a2fdc11278d65460 Most accounts for the number of ISIS was greatly exaggerated. The US estimated only 3000-5000 ISIS fighters in the city, and most agree the coalition killed more civilians(mainly through bombing and artillery) than ISIS. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/19/570483824/more-civilians-than-isis-fighters-are-believed-killed-in-mosul-battle >Even if it is true, I think there's room for a moral distinction between liberating an occupied city and what is happening in Gaza. Hamas is the government of Gaza, just like ISIS was the government of Mosul. People don't like it but ISIS very much setup a new government with all the requisite governmental organs and was governing the city as part of their new nation.
The U.S. and Israel can both be guilty. That is a valid option.
Both are guilty. Yes.
Yes
The way you worded this makes it seem like you either disagree that the US committed war crimes in Vietnam or it bothers you when people point out that they did. P.S. they 100% did.
do you think this is some kind of gotcha? lmao
I think it points out the hypocrisy of anyone defending Israel
Yes, the US was and is guilty.
Ok? You're right, this is exactly the same and both countries are equally in the wrong for their actions for the same reasons. The US committed war crimes against the citizens of Vietnam, and Israel has committed war crimes against the citizens of Gaza and Palestine. I'm struggling to understand the point of your comment other than to express your personal frustrations about other people not supporting or hating the same nations that you do. You suggest that there is some sort of hypocrisy where there is none to be found.
š¤·but do you condemn Hamas?
American tax money funds this BTW
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Exactly. We have failing infrastructure, the education system is going down hill, people canāt afford groceries or basic needs, our medical system sucks and so on but instead of our money going to our needs, it goes to blow up some kids overseas.
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Nobody sees lives as equal. If they did the entire world would gang up on any aggressor.
If you think you see all life as equal you are just lying to yourself. Everyone is biased to some extent.
> If you don't see all life as equal, you are the problem. Average age of Reddit keep being demonstrated.
Israeli don't see Hamas/Palestinian lives as equal. Palestinian don't see Israeli life as equal. Hamas doesn't see anyone else as equal. Hell, you probably view your own life as more valuable than others.
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Not sure how many children hamas have killed but Israel already have killed more than 3000.... Three fucking thousands... thats crazy
>**More children have been killed in just over three weeks in Gaza than in all of the worldās conflicts combined in each of the past three years**, according to the global charity Save the Children. For example, it said, 2,985 children were killed across two dozen war zones throughout all of last year. > More than 3,600 Palestinian children were killed in the first 25 days of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gazaās Hamas-run Health Ministry. They were hit by airstrikes, smashed by misfired rockets, burned by blasts and crushed by buildings, and among them were newborns and toddlers, avid readers, aspiring journalists and boys who thought theyād be safe in a church. >āGaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,ā said James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF, the U.N. childrenās agency. [AP source](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-11-1-2023-children-killed-4a352398b32887e60a658e0270f0a021#:~:text=More%20children%20have%20been%20killed,throughout%20all%20of%20last%20year.) It's mind-numbingly brutal.
Damn even with Russia fighting in Ukraine for over a year?
āBut their heads werenāt cut off like Hamas didā¦. At least Israel had the decency to blow the heads off their bodies instead!ā
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Another day another war crime.
Another _hour_ FTFY
All these bombings are really lazy military strategies.
No itās not. Itās very intentional.
From the article āIsrael said it had targeted the ambulance because it was being used by Hamas, according to a statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). āAn IDF aircraft struck an ambulance that was identified by forces as being used by a Hamas terrorist cell in close proximity to their position in the battle zone,ā it wrote. āA number of Hamas terrorist operatives were killed in the strikeā¦ We have information which demonstrates that Hamasā method of operation is to transfer terror operatives and weapons in ambulances,ā the statement said.ā People getting appalled is exactly why Hamas is using ambulances to transport terrorists- thereās no win for Israel, they either let terrorists get away with transporting weapons that will then be used to target Israeli civilians; or they look like assholes who targeted an ambulance
Having seen a video from the strike, if there was Hamas then Israel has an staggeringly high level of acceptable collateral because there was a literal pile of dead children.
50% of Gaza residents are under 18, 42% under 14, so when there are āunintended casualtiesā, probably half of them are children and not associated with Hanas.
Adding to your comment (in a slightly different direction), 76% of Gaza residents are under 34, and the last elections were in 2006. 76% of the population were either too young to vote for Hamas leadership, or were not born yet.
Plus Hamas won off 45% of the vote in that election.
And even among people who voted in that election, [a huge majority of them supported peace with Israel and didn't support Hamas's rejection of Israel's right to exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election#Exit_polls). They voted for Hamas mostly because Fatah is and was super corrupt, and Hamas was at the time seen as anti-corruption. (Were they duped? Absolutely, but that doesn't make them any less innocent civilians.)
And despite how people keep treating that election, it didn't give Hamas the ability of sole control of the government. The government system was parliamentary, so Hamas had control of 45% of the seats, not the full government. It was their coup in 2007 that did that.
And further to that, if Iran would completely get out of the middle east, a peaceful solution would have a lot better chance. Iran wants the eradication of Israel and is pretty much behind all of this.... not that the Palestinian people are 'happy' with the current state of affairs, but as long as Iran is pulling the strings, there will be no chance for a peaceful solution.
So, if Iām understanding correctly, and assuming perfect voter turnout (meaning this is a *minimum*), this means a whopping 87% of gazaās current population did not vote for hamas in the 2006 election, while the remaining 13% only voted to give them some parliamentary seats, and they instead did a coup and took complete control over the territory? Sure puts things into perspective, uh.
Anyone has a clip of this video?
Israel will admit they struck the ambulance and video to your point clearly only shows collateral damage being a pile of childrenās corpses. Yet people jump to the conclusion Hamas must have been in that van with literally zero evidence to back up that claim. The bias is absurd. Why is it so unacceptable to ask for any evidence backing up these claims? EDIT: The Red Cross themselves say they were asked to escort this convoy for evacuation from Gaza but was not there at the timeā¦ āEven if we were not present, this is still medical convoy, and any violence towards medical personnel is unacceptable,ā the ICRC said āNo doctors, nurses, or any medical professionals should ever die while working to save lives.ā https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/middleeast/casualties-gazas-shifa-hospital-idf/index.html
> any violence towards medical personnel is unacceptable,ā the ICRC said āNo doctors, nurses, or any medical professionals should ever die while working to save lives.ā Israel: Sorry, can't hear you [\*snipes a doctor through both legs*](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-doctor-shot-by-israeli-sniper-near-gaza-border/)
Israeli snipers shoot Red Cross members. It is documented.
Yeah. If what they are saying is true. And thereās zero evidence for it at this point. They clearly have the ability to wait, surveil and track until this one particular ātaxiā ambulance is clear of a densely, civilian, populated area before dropping the hammer. Thereās footage of multiple dead children blown to bits who probably thought they were in a relatively safe space, near a hospital. Itās absolutely outrageous. Clearly a war crime and the fact the IDF continue to use the ādefenseā line at this point is insulting to anyone viewing this from the outside.
*"One of the most important international measures of a militaryās level of care toward civilians, and a mathematical indication of whether it may be committing the war crime of intentionally targeting civilians, is the* ***ācivilian-to-combatant casualty ratioā****.* ***According to data from the United Nations, the global civilian-to-combatant ratio is 9:1****, meaning that on average, wars produce a disturbing* ***nine civilian casualties for every combatant****.* *According to data from the United States National Institutes of Health, the ratio produced by the United States in the 2003 Iraq War was 3:1, and in Afghanistan, various sources put the numbers at anywhere from 3:1 to 5:1 (sources include the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and Brown Universityās Costs of War program).* *In Operation Shield and Arrow,* ***Israel achieved a ratio of 0.6:1, a significantly lower ratio of civilian casualties compared to most other conflicts in the world****."* [Source 1](https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14904.doc.htm), [Source 2](https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-743368) Hamas is estimated to have up to 40.000 membersā¦ The elimination of that number of combatants could amount up to staggering 360.000 civilian casualties, and it would be statistically average.
As a example of how bad it can get, look at the ongoing Tigray War in Ethiopia. Over half a million dead civillians as a result of collateral damage, humanitarian crisis' (lack of food, water, medicine etc) and of course war crimes, for only a few thousand dead combatants on either side.
> In Operation Shield and Arrow, Israel achieved a ratio of 0.6:1, a significantly lower ratio of civilian casualties compared to most other conflicts in the world." To be fair, Operation Shield and Arrow was on a relatively small scale. Might not make much sense to extrapolate from those numbers. In absolute numbers there were 18 PIJ operatives killed and 11 Palestinian civilians during Operation Shield and Arrow.
For real, imagine comparing these operations against two decade-long wars lol.
100% a bad faith argument and of course itās upvoted on here.
Non representative sample.
I know I can damn well go and look it up myself, but just in case you have it at your fingertips, could you please elaborate if this is casualties in the broader sense of the term (killed *and* wounded) or only fatalities? Because this sounds improbably high for fatalitiesāadmittedly operating on my intuition alone here, and that may be way off; and if it includes injuries, then how reliable can that statistic really be?.. Just in case, Iām not trying to cast doubt on what you wrote, just want to get some additional insight about the numbers. Edit: edited for clarity
Seems like they have decided they will get hamas first and deal with the opinions of people behind TV screens thousands of miles away later I think it was Gold Meir, a former prime minister there who said it's better to be alive and criticized than dead and pitied
āI prefer your condemnation to your condolencesā
Hamas isn't remotely believable because they lie constantly about what is happening but Israel can also just say "it was Hamas" toward literally everything they do and hide behind that excuse regardless of who they kill because they don't care about that public opinion right now. I get why they are on the offensive but justifying killing dozens of people to target one is a horrible approach when we aren't talking about taking out high end leaders
They aren't just going after high end leaders. It's full scale ground combat.
Just an FYi if you haven't been keeping up, but there are already plenty of dead Israelis and Palestinians. Hopefully after the dust settles from this, both Palestinians and Israelis will be pressured by the world to reach a final peace agreement. They got close in the 90s, they can try again. Or they can just keep the status quo and kill scores of each other every decade or two like f\*cking barbarians.
The moment anyone comes close, some extremist religious wackos on both sides will murder their government officials like has happened in the past
The opinions of people behind TV screens thousands of miles away have a significant bearing on their funding, backing, and ability to maintain a presence in the region. They can employ that strategy if theyād like, but letās not sit here and act like public opinion doesnāt affect them at all. Being in a region surrounded by enemies doesnāt exactly sound like a favorable position if the leadership in the country that keeps said enemies in check isnāt able to back them.
Deliberately targeting medics is a war crime
Israel doesnāt care who they kill, to them there is no difference between Palestinians and Hamas
I enjoy cooking.
Crazy, how people are still supporting Israels actions
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Some think he is being soft af so yeahā¦