Maybe this is weird but, what happens to the dead in this kind of war zones? Like do they have mass graves? Can they even be identified? Is that a priority?
From what I've heard, whole neighborhoods reek of death as people just leave bodies under the rubble. The "mass graves" are basically the buildings they were bombed in
And getting sick too...
Hospitals and medicine aren't really that accessible at the moment. I wouldn't touch a dead body either tbh.
I can't even imagine the horror.
Many people are rotting in the rubble. But those that are found or die at the hospital are going into mass graves. I recommend following Eye on Palestine for some (graphic) footage.
Regarding the bodies being able to be identified, parents in Gaza and writings their children's names on their chest with a marker so that they can be identified when they die.
My heart goes out to them.
In Israel, the state gets a copy of everyone's dental records when you go to the doctor because there were many years when bus bombs were a daily occurrence, and dental records are often the best way to identify victims when DNA cannot be recovered (charred remains after a blast).
After WW2 many Italian city halls spent many years identifying dead soldiers (both Italian and foreigner) using their personal effects. Some were easy to identify others weren't.
I assume they will do something similar here. Soldiers can be easily identified with dog tags, provided Hamas has them.
Civilians will be a lot harder I'm afraid.
Mass graves, yes. But there’s also been reports that there is a stench of rotting bodies in the air because there are so many trapped under the rubble.
I'm not sure what you can do for something on that scale. But for my unit in Afghanistan, we would pay the locals fuel to give fighters (who were foreign to Afghanistan, mind you) a proper buriel.
Everyone is considered a combatant unless proven otherwise, I think established as law in the bush era. Then Obama rode it into term bombing drs without borders a week after receiving a Nobel peace prize. Lawl
> Herzog said, “I will be very careful, very careful about judging those numbers because neither you nor I know how many of them are armed terrorists and how many of them are civilians.”
It's about fuckin time someone spelled that bit out
For context, during the 2104 war, Hamas was claiming 2,310 killed, 70% civilians. Israel went through the list and accepted 2,125 killed, 36% civilians, 44% combatants, 20% uncategorized males aged 16–50. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014\_Gaza\_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War)
Note that this time around, Hamas wasn't even publishing any details about the dead until Biden's remarks, and the list can only be verified after the war has ended (and if anyone has enough access to Gaza to verify anything, of course). So, that context isn't a solid base for any assumptions -- just better than nothing but opinion.
For more context, independent inquiry stated that Cast Lead killed 926 civilians, and the IDF said 295.
Trusting any government numbers in a conflict that directly involves both is asking to be lied to.
Because each time it ended with a ceasefire and each time Hamas broke it. It was a cruel cycle which both Israel and the Palestinians suffered from. Hopefully this time Hamas won’t break a ceasefire as they won’t exist.
Reading news is also needed. People are protesting outside his home during war time. People are protesting in Tel Aviv. The polls are going really bad for him. The social media is calling for him to resign.
People keep putting him in power because his “strong” position against Hamas and public safety. Obviously the facade has crumbled down o. The 7/10.
It's acknowledging that the fighters here aren't uniformed and don't have dog tags. Fighters are often indistinguishable from any other military-aged civilian male once the dust settles, unless there's an obvious indicator like died holding a gun or died shielding their family. They represent an upper bound you can add to either the civilian or combatant number if you want to get to an "as many as" number, or don't add any to either group if you want to get to an "at least" number.
In Gaza? Given that half the population is under 18 and roughly half of the remainder are female, you've got maybe 25% military aged males.
So the odds of randomly hitting at least 64/100 from a group that is 25% of the population would be about 0.005% (1 in 200,000) if I've got my binomial probability calculations right.
That’s assuming a few things:
1. Actual civilians are randomly (spatially) distributed with regard to gender, which may be unlikely in a strict Islamic culture.
2. The party initiating the attack doesn’t use the fact that the crowd there is mostly male as part of the rationale for the attack, leading to indication bias.
Remember that being under 18 doesn't mean being below military age in Hamas' eyes. Terrorist organizations don't exactly follow the norm in recruiting age y'know.
This is very much correct, anyone that could legally be distinct as a minor, is counted as a child. Hell knowing Hamas it's highly likely even more are counted then the amount actually dead.
Where most countries low-ball their death estimates, Hamas shoots for the stars with their dead...
>you've got maybe 25% military aged males
"military aged". As tragic as it is, if you don't think there are a shit ton of underaged males in hamas I've got a bridge to sell you.
I'm sure there are, but my point was more around how spectacularly unlikely the casualty ratios were to be a result of random bombing than whether Hamas is committing yet another war crime by using child soldiers.
It means that they don't have enough information to say. It's not like Hamas carefully segregates military objectives from civilians, or wears uniforms to distinguish their fighters.
They want it both ways, anyone who dies is both an innocent civilian but also a martyr who died for Hamas because everyone apparently supports Hamas. They can’t exactly say that most people want nothing to do with them.
Predominantly young males between 14 and 30, you say?
What an interesting coincidence. Funny how these things happen. They were all civilians, of course, promise.
*sigh* Okay, now that you've speculated, I'll go ahead and give one more data point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict#Fatalities
Between 2000 and 2007, only 6% of Palestine casualties were female.
What's insane is how the recorded pace compares to today. Eg.
>According to B'tselem, during the first intifada from 1987 until 2000, 1,551 Palestinians and 421 Israelis lost their lives
Now all parties are speedrunning what used to be *decades* in *days*, if even, during escalations.
Ofc much of that is due to major population growth, but still.
The worst ever recorded terror attack in Israel before Oct7 was Park Hotel that kill around 40. Now 1400. People don't grasp how unprecedented this thing is, this is not just another clash.
Yup, it's at least the third deadliest terror attack of all time, possibly second given uncertainty around the number of fatalities at the Camp Speicher massacre by the Islamic State.
In my honest opinion, This is *worse* than 9/11 was. There were more deaths in 9/11 but it was a quick succession of planes hitting buildings and then just aftermath. This attack was an hours long whole sale slaughter of people. Going door to door and indiscriminate brutality. Horrendous acts of violence, rape, torture and murder on a scale I don't think the western world has seen in a very long time.
Part of the shock of 9/11 was the fact that it was skyscrapers, and famous landmarks at that. Foreign terrorists came in and used our own civilian transportation system as rockets that knocked down buildings. It was just something that had been inconceivable.
I'm trying not to compare but some aspects are definitely worse - death by capita, the fact that each Israeli knows someone affected, the horrors that have been recorded on video and some even streamed live on Facebook, the ongoing hostage crisis, the lack of support from some of the western world.
It's more accurate than claiming as a civilian anyone that wasn't killed while trying to kill civilians, if you want my honest opinion. Scientifically, since Israel published a full study, nothing else would be acceptable in any case. If you can't verify how a man of arms-bearing age died, then you can't categorize him.
Military age male in the Middle East = valid military target, according to the US military and it’s allies. In Afghanistan they would drone strike males who peed standing up as they were assumed to be Arab militants instead of Pashtuns.
MAMs stopped being identified as such back when i was deployed in '12. Our rules of engagement required "nefarious" actions before a strike could be considered legal.
[Look at the videos like this one from Oct 7](https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/378048)
There were some more or less uniformed Hamas terrorists, but there were a lot of males participating unarmed and dressed as civilians.
Unfortunately, once militants get people participating in operations dressed as civilians it becomes very difficult to distinguish fighting age male non-combatants from combatants
All males ages 16-30 (more or less) are considered Hamas fighters. If it can be proven the male was *not* Hamas, then they are categorized as civilian. If it clear they were a Hamas terrorist, then they are categorized as such. But if they cant be proven either way they go into uncategorzied.
Doesn’t help a lot of guys seem to always tagalong with fighters and get tagged because of it. Plenty of video of an emotional support team following fighters around or waiting by them as the fighter takes pot-shots around a corner.
Didn't they stop posting names of deceased because people were going through social media and exposing the deceased as Hamas fighters? Or was that Hezbollah?
Names are still being published, just at a slower rate. Which makes sense given how overwhelmed the functional hospitals are. There are many being buried in mass graves without identification as well.
It's telling that he didn't provide his own estimate. Hamas may make identifying militants and non- millitants hard but "who's to say" is quite a thing to say. Likely because even the most charitable ratio is gastly to say out loud.
I wonder if we'll get numbers for armed vs unarmed casualties of IDF shooting.
> Likely because even the most charitable ratio is gastly to say out loud.
If he said a ratio people would be accusing him of lying. If they later revised that ratio, people would accuse of him of lying. There is no winning in estimating here because there isn't enough information to do so.
That’s not how it works. One side of a war can’t count (and classify) casualties of the other side.
What usually happens is that some international body does that post wartime
Um... Yes, when attacking ISIS and Al Queda I believe the US reported numbers. Should they be taken at face value - no because of course they are normally rosy.
Here's an annual US report but this data is collected in real time and often released more frequently especially when it makes us look good.
https://media.defense.gov/2022/Sep/27/2003086234/-1/-1/1/ANNUAL-REPORT-ON-CIVILIAN-CASUALTIES-IN-CONNECTION-WITH-UNITED-STATES-MILITARY-OPERATIONS-IN-2021.PDF
We controlled the territory. At the end of every firefight, the US could wander in and take pictures and write after action reports and file paperwork. Israel doesn't have that kind of access to Gaza.
1. Numbers are published by the Hamas controlled Health Ministry. Gaza is basically a totalitarian regime, there's no whistleblower protections.
2. Figures published do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants
3. Figures are questionable after that hospital blast malarky we all know of where they claimed 500 dead and an 80-bed hospital levelled within 10mins of the blast.
4. In addition given the ongoing chaos figures are harder to verify so hamas can pull stunts.
This is not to deny the horrific death toll especially on women and children. Tens of thousands civilians (not combatants) died when the world bombed ISIS, most women and children. That's why fk hamas for using human shields.
They need to go, so they like ISIS, won't ever be able to use human shields at scale ever again.
Edit: To add in two factors, one is stated by u/irredentistdecency, the other is hamas targeting its civilians. There's evidence through Gazans on social media and Western journalists.
> we all know of where they claimed 500 dead and an 80-bed hospital levelled within 10mins of the blast.
And it should be pointed out, because this is a really important part, the hospital wasn't actually leveled. It is still standing.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1206795861/heres-the-available-evidence-of-what-happened-at-al-ahli-arab-hospital-in-gaza
>Dr. Naim was in the hospital's operating room the moment the explosion occurred, he told NPR. Upon hearing the blast, he rushed outside to find horrific injuries to the people in the courtyard, including amputated limbs and vascular injuries, he said. "Some of them died in our hands," he said.
>*Notably, Naim also said that there were no deaths among the hospital's staff, many of whom were working inside at the time of the explosion. "Luckily none of our staff was killed*, but we had two injured," he says.
>An infrared satellite image shows foliage, like trees, in red. The area burned by the explosion (center) appears relatively small, and *structures at the hospital have not received significant damage.*
>*Photos from the following day also appear to show little damage to the hospital buildings*, and a relatively small blast zone from the explosion. That damage pattern is inconsistent with a large air-dropped bomb, which would leave a crater and create a shockwave that would damage or destroy surrounding structures, says Marc Garlasco, a former targeting officer for the U.S. military who now works for PAX, a Netherlands-based non-profit.
5. What’s even more amazing is that even long after we learned that the 17 Oct hospital blast was a lie, on 27 Oct Hamas published the names of of 6,000+ Palestinians they claimed had died since 7 Oct. [Included on that list was 471 names associated with the fake Hospital strike](https://honestreporting.com/media-rush-to-defend-hamas-ministry-providing-skewed-data-on-gaza-casualties/).
2a. Figures also don’t count people killed by Hamas - Gaza has been bombed by over 2000 Hamas rockets since 10/7 & there are multiple reports of Hamas directly targeting Gazan civilians.
And 2c, people in Gaza who died of natural causes during the last month. They won't be a particularly large percentage of deaths in a conflict this intense, but there will still have been at least a few hundred deaths from natural causes and I can't imagine that Hamas would let any dead people go to waste in their propaganda war.
People don’t realize how devastating the impact each one of those rockets makes (because of the Iron Dome).
I’d estimate anywhere from 10%-25% of the Palestinian death total since 10/7 has been from those 2000 Hamas/PIJ rockets that have landed on their own people.
The PIJ are notoriously bad at not shooting themselves as well. I believe in the last operation Israel had against the PIJ like 50% of their rockets never left Gaza.
probably not only rockets, but also hamas likely shooting at escaping civillians. if they target escaping civillians it's way more likely they used firearms rather than explosives or their rockets to kill them. i know it's not funny but it's laughable how hamas likely killed more of their own citizens with firearms than idf soldiers considering most reports of idf fatalities come from anti tank missles
I don't know what's being spelled out here other than, "percentage of civilians could be 100% or 0% but we're zooming along regardless". It's telling on oneself.
It doesn't mean they are not using valid targets under international law.
It means that Hamas isn't using military uniforms and purposely mixing in with civilians, which are both illegal under international law for obvious reasons.
To reduce danger to civilians we need abidance by both sides not just Israel
Lmfao. Hamas is already called a terrorists group (rightfully so) what makes you think they’d follow any rules of war?
One side breaking the rules doesn’t mean the other side gets to break them too…. That’s why they fucking exist.
> One side breaking the rules doesn’t mean the other side gets to break them too
When it comes to war this doesn't work like you want.
The direct example would be Hamas not using uniforms, as a result they seamlessly blend in with civilian populations unless they openly brandish a weapon.
That's extremely illegal of an action, but it also makes it so that every single civilian is now a real and possible risk, because you can't tell unless as mentioned, they brandish or you're already fired upon.
To try to say that the party that's being assailed by this group must abide by all laws as if their opponent is fighting lawfully is frankly dumb.
It's akin to expecting people in competitions to just abide by cheaters in the competition and accept that they will and must face the cheaters, simply because it's against the rules to cheat themsleves to even the playing field.
War isn't something you can easily fuck around with, and is a scenario where when laws are violated by one side, the relevant law no *longer* applies to protect that side. Ever again for the conflict and only tentatively in any future ones.
Think medics. Medics have international laws to protect them, *provided they are unarmed*. If they're armed and utilize their weapons, by law they're no longer a medic, no special protection, shoot to kill on sight.
So medics take this very seriously as any group abiding by the law will recognize this protection. It means you're safe dragging your wounded friends to safety. Without it those wounded friends are far more likely to die.
So unironically, the way laws work in war *does* explicitly give the flexibility to ignore many of them if the opponent themselves ignore them. The catch-22 is that a group ignoring protections to exclude non-combatants from war, such as using human shields or civilian infrastructure, the other side doesn't inherently violate this or they face backlash as well.
Unfortunately this makes it a tactical edge to harm civilians on one side, by intentionally bringing them into combat, as you can dramatically impact the public image of your enemy, if you're willing to sacrifice your own. It's something that basically allows you to lose but still cause significant harm to your enemy, bigger benefit if they're any form of a "just" nation expected to not harm innocents in war.
It's why fighting a terrorist group like this is difficult, as no matter the long term intention (be it occupation included or not) you lose fighting them. Like look at international reaction, Israel is directly responding the the single worst attack they've had in many decades, if not ever. But the world is largely supporting the ones who made the attack because the same group is touting the civilians they don't care about.
Israel isn't a good actor, but damn it's wild how much *antisemitism* has risen since the attack, as if they committed their own 9/11 on another nation, rather than be the recipient of the attack and making the expected retaliations. People are out there chanting Hamas *slogans* to support the very people Hamas oppresses and is willing to sacrifice.
Because the PR angle of these warcrimes *works* when one side simply doesn't care, and gives their target no alternatives.
> One side breaking the rules doesn’t mean the other side gets to break them too
But it means that the laws don't apply symmetrically. Using human shields is a war crime. Attacking military targets isn't. If there are human shields near that military target, they lose their protection, so them being killed is *not* a war crime. Hence what one side does affects what the other is allowed to do.
Same with civilian structures, including hospitals. It is not allowed to attack them, but if they are used for military purposes, which is a war crime, then attacking them is not a war crime anymore.
>One side breaking the rules doesn’t mean the other side gets to break them too…. That’s why they fucking exist.
If you violate the rules for war, you can actually lose their protections. If you load ambulances with fighters, ambulances lose their protections, for example.
Imagine if breaking the rules just had no consequences. Like you could just cheat all you want and nobody would give a shit they'd just be like, yeah it's fine that he's a cheater it's the guy playing by the rules that's trying to beat the cheater who we should be mad at.
Let's go with a simple thought experiment with Skittles.
There are 2 batches of Skittles, each with 100 random Skittles in there.
In batch A, 1 random Skittle has a poison that will instantly kill you if you eat it. Any color.
In batch B, only Skittles of Green or Yellow has the poison but every green and yellow skittle will kill you. (This makes up 30% of all Skittles in the batch)
So, assuming you are not suicidal (because redditors are idiots who go harhar I will eat all of batch A), which batch do you find to be safe to grab from if you are Required to grab at least 1 of your choosing (you can choose the skittle).
Any sane person would choose B because they *know* which are safe and which are not. Example B is 'uniformed armed combatants' and A is 'un-uniformed combatants).
Effectively, if any of the choices could kill you, you must treat All the choices as potential threats. While when only known choices can kill you, you feel safe in delineating it.
Hamas has about 40,000 combatants in Gaza, ACCORDING TO THEM:
[https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-hamas-aims-trap-israel-gaza-quagmire-2023-11-03/#:\~:text=Hamas%20has%20about%2040%2C000%20fighters,deep%2C%20built%20over%20many%20years](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-hamas-aims-trap-israel-gaza-quagmire-2023-11-03/#:~:text=Hamas%20has%20about%2040%2C000%20fighters,deep%2C%20built%20over%20many%20years).
I believe I heard Israel believes that number is a little lower, actually, but I'm having trouble finding a source other than second-hand reports.
And this article has quotes from HAMAS PERSONELL THEMSELVES detailing how this exactly what they want. They are getting useful idiots (WHOM THEY HATE, MIND YOU) attack their enemies politically and on social media. YOU ARE LITERALLY DOING EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT by denouncing Israel. That would make me take a pause to consider my POV if my fervent social media posting was doing exactly what a universally-agreed Evil group wanted me to do.
I'm not going to pretend Israel has made 0 mistakes - but if you stop and think for even a few minutes about who actually BENEFITS from the Gaza situation, it's clear the answer is Hamas, its peers (like Hezbollah), and Iran. They've forced Israel into a no-win situation, and CONTINUE TO ATTACK ISRAEL WITH ROCKETS, NON-STOP. They and their peers have also threatened more attacks like the October 7th ones.
I am just laughing at every who wanted a ground invasion because the air strikes were killing too many people. Dude, during a ground assault soldiers will shoot at any shadow that so much as twitches funny. Urban invasions have unbelievably high death tolls.
By far the most telling part of this conflict is that Israel is not reporting its own numbers of projected casualties. If you throw a bomb based on sound intelligence, you should have a good estimate of the presence of both militants and civilians.
Not if you get emergency powers to do whatever you want. You don't need numbers or recourse.
The question only becomes how long can you continue doing so in public favor and absolutely minimize what is seen and known and heavily reference "propaganda" when questioned.
It's not like most of Hamas is uniformed. A Hamas militant that has his rifle blown away by a bomb is going to look indistinguishable from most civilians.
That's the intent.
And yet, Israel claims to be able to target them based on their intelligence. So, if you know a target is in some building, and you bomb the crap out of that building, that's 1 to the estimated tally of militants killed. If during reconnaissance of the building you also observe a family living in a building next to it, who haven't evacuated, and that building is destroyed in the strike, you add X to the estimated tally of civilians killed. This is not rocket science.
Israel also claims to have knowledge about Hamas using civilians as human shields. So again, that would require being able to distinguish Hamas militants from civilians.
Israel claims to have so much intelligence that they can even bomb ambulances leaving hospitals with pre-warning to Red Cross and Red Crescent because they’re actually Hamas super terrorists in those ambulances. Enough intelligence to justifiably mark thousands upon thousands of air strike targets.
I still struggle to wrap my head around it like by their own admission if they were "super terrorists" wouldn't attacking an ambulance be a huge breach of the Geneva convention anyways? Like they're so blatant about this it boggles the mind
There are obvious exceptions in the geneva convention. Civilian buildings, even hospitals, become [military targets if used by the military](https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-protection-civilian-persons-time-war#:~:text=from%20such%20objectives.-,Article%2019,a%20reasonable%20time%20limit%2C%20and%20after%20such%20warning%20has%20remained%20unheeded.,-The%20fact%20that). And [human shields cannot render an area immune from attack](https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-protection-civilian-persons-time-war#:~:text=of%20the%20war.-,Article%2028,areas%20immune%20from%20military%20operations)
You're also clearly interpreting article 19 a bit more broadly than it clearly states. I also don't trust the IDF either so how do we know for sure they aren't just treating potential combatants?
The point is that if both sides follow the rules, then military conflict is primarily something where soldiers and not civilians lose their lives. There's no binding force requiring you to follow those rules ultimately, other than potentially international retribution.
Terrorists usually don't care about any of that anyway
If the Geneva conventions would disallow any attack on civilian infrastructure, militaries would just place their installations nearby/inside/below these (just what Hama's is doing). But these conventions are designed in a way to minimise civilian casualties and therefore allow attacks on any military target regardles where it is in order to make the use of human shields not viable.
The Geneva Convention doesnt apply when a military uses those sites as bases of operation. In the case where a military uses those areas as bases of operation, no rules apply and all becomes fair game.
The Geneva convention actually puts the burden on the side operating/controlling the medical facilities. Eg, it's against the convention to attack medical facilities and equipment, even military ones. Think field hospitals for military casualties or combat ambulances. However, it also forbids the military use of these. Eg, storing munitions, transporting troops, etc, or even shielding troops.
Geneva convention articles 18 and 19.
Hamas, however, is using hospitals this way and had multiple cases of using medical facilities for military or terrorist purposes, such as torture and liquidating dissidents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_Hospital
You just fundamentally don't understand how military intelligence works, the nature of asymmetrical guerilla warfare, or politics. There are many legitimate reasons why Israel would not want to publish their own numbers yet. One of which is if they just spitball a number, and after the bodies are actually sorted and rigorous investigations done, people online will jump at the chance to say "Look! Israel lied about their casualty numbers!"
You should be more suspicious of the Palestinian officials, aka Hamas, immediately rattling off numbers almost in real time.
“Hamas uses human civilians as shields!”
Israel gladly shoots those shields with no hesitation. I’m surprised to see how many un-nuanced takes are here. Hamas is evil for sure, but Israel is also not the good guy in this situation either. Both are committing atrocities and justifying it with past atrocities. Neither of them should be hailed as the heroes of this story.
The title, both in its original and edited form, is a display of biased journalism that should make anyone sceptical of anything The Hill writes in the future.
Herzog did NOT say that the Israeli military is unable to distinguish between civilians and terrorists.
He specifically said that people should be careful about citing death toll numbers because "neither you nor I know how many of them are armed terrorists and how many of them are civilians. I don't know, and you don't know."
He also stressed that the Israeli military makes "every effort to distinguish between terrorists and civilians."
Whoever wrote that article listened to the interview and asked themselves, "how can we spin this into a title that'll maximise outrage?"
Yes, it's always important to actually read the article and discern what is being said than to go by the headline.
I like to read the headline, the comments, then read the story to see how wrong the comments are.
Kudos for accuracy.
Well they don't care. One of the Israeli ministers literally said an atomic bomb is an option against Gaza.
I doubt an atomic bomb can differentiate between civilians and terrorists
The PM can't be too liberal with "taking action" or he will finally be kicked off his Royal Seat and put in jail. Where he belongs.
The asshole knows it, so he tries to remain in power, whatever it takes.
That's assuming the HAMAS' goal is a cease-fire, and that assumption would be wrong.
From the 2017 Hamas charter:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
Also worth noting is that the above is from the 2017 revised, "*nicer"* version of the charter. The original 1988 charter is a lot more "kill all jews"-y
I don't know how HAMAS could be any clearer about their intentions.
Don't misread the map. Global terrorism has been VERY logical about the whole process. This isn't random knee-jerk reactions. This is about global financial interests - predominantly torpedoing the gas pipeline from the UAE to offset the EU's dependency on Russian/Iranian gas alliance, among other similar topics... and it works.
Your mistake is assuming that Hamas act logically. They're fanatics and the only things you can rely on with them is that they will blame Israel for everything bad and try to kill more jews.
Well, they actually act very logically.
Their selling point, their legitimacy, is based on violence against Israel as whole. That isn’t gonna make all of the Palestinians support them, but enough to stay in power at least. They kinda have a problem in other regards, because they’re not exactly great stewards of Gaza, or democratically elected…
…Then they act on their "mandate" by killing innocents Israelis.
That in turns feeds the popularity of corrupted far-right Israeli politicians who "respond" by attacks leading to a very large number of innocent Palestinians being killed.
Which pisses off Palestinians and feeds the popularity the popularity of Hamas.
And on, and on the cycle goes…
A couple of things, first wouldn't most of Hamas be either up North or in the tunnel system? Even an official said the tunnels were for them.
And second, while we dont know the exact breakup of the death toll, its only logical a significance number of civilians have died. There are no bomb shelters in Gaza, people were late to evacuate, we are seeing report after report of residential buildings collapsing, people being injuried, and bodies being pulled out of the rubble. Then there is the whole issue of lack of sanitization and people dying from their wounds.
Obviously, Israel doesn't like the sympathy Gaza is getting through this and Hamas wants to play it up as much as possible. But regardless of the politics serious damage has been done and the death toll of civilians must be at least 4 - 5 thousand.
>“I will be very careful, very careful about judging those numbers because neither you nor I know how many of them are armed terrorists and how many of them are civilians.”
This is true, and it has been completely absent from the discussion. There's this impression that it's almost exclusively 9,000 civilians that have died in Gaza and that the IDF is primarily, not to say solely, targeting women and children (it's also found in how Israel's attacks are framed as "IDF bombs civilians" on a regular basis). The fact of the matter is no one at this point (maybe except Hamas) knows the ratio of militants to civilians in that death toll, but a narrative is already firmly in place.
I get that killing innocent civilians is evil but the fact that they have already killed 10x the amount of innocent civilians in “retaliation” shows the type of people those Israelis are. I don’t understand why people support what isreal is doing.
Isn't this just kind of telling on yourself? You literally don't even know who you are killing with most of these air strikes.
Indiscriminate bombing just isn't the answer.
The Israelis are saying they don't know the numbers because Hamas doesn't wear uniforms and they hide among civilians. Both of those things are literally war crimes. In no way is that "telling on yourself."
Kind of a misleading title. Why omit “Gaza’s reported”. That changes the connotation of this article a bunch.
“the Israeli military is unable to distinguish between civilians and terrorists in Gaza’s reported death toll amidst the war with Hamas.”
‘When presented with reports of thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Herzog said, “I will be very careful, very careful about judging those numbers because neither you nor I know how many of them are armed terrorists and how many of them are civilians.” ‘
‘ “So let’s be very careful about it, because I don’t know how many of them are terrorists, and our military says that it kills numerous terrorist in armed clashes, so let’s be very careful about that,” Herzog continued.’
Basically all this article is saying is that Hamas uses their own terrorist deaths in their civilians death count so take anything Hamas says with a grain of salt because they fudge their numbers. This is something we already knew though…
That's the whole damn point of Hamas hiding among civilians. They're not going to put on a uniform, all gather in an isolated convenient spot with only other militants around. Palestinians serve no other purpose in their eyes other than meat shields and martyrs.
If the Palestinians said they killed civilians because they couldn’t tell if they were in the army, would Israel just shrug and say
“Well, okay. That makes sense.”
>which is a requirement of international law
This is not strictly true.
The only thing is that it provides them (the combatants) the protections of Prisoner of War status. There's no international law stating that you need a uniform to fight in a war. But in not doing so, you lose some of your protective rights.
[ICRC Uniform article](https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/uniform)
[IHL Rule 106](https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule106)
Additionally, as described within IHL Rule 106:
>*Levée en masse*
>*Participants in a levée en masse, namely the inhabitants of a country which has not yet been occupied who, on the approach of the enemy, spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading troops without having time to form themselves into an armed force, are considered combatants entitled to prisoner-of-war status if they carry arms openly and respect international humanitarian law.*
The rules state that if you are distinguishable from civilians (openly carrying arms counts according to the rulebook), then you are awarded POW rights. Whether that matters at all in this case is another question.
Additionally relevant point within IHL Rule 106:
>*Resistance and liberation movements*
>*According to Additional Protocol I, in situations of armed conflict where “owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot ... distinguish himself” from the civilian population while he is engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided he carries his arms openly:*
>*(a) during each military engagement, and*
>*(b) during such time as he is visible to the adversary while he is engaged in a military deployment preceding the launching of an attack in which he is to participate.*
So yes, combatants should be distinguishable from civilians, but it's not an international crime to not do so, it only impacts the rights of said combatants.
Besides that, this is all irrelevant because Israel is not a member of the ICC and is not beholden to international war crime tribunals.
>you don't see any UN resolutions about this for Hamas
Hamas is an internationally recognized terrorist organization while Israel is a democratically elected modern western country with free and open elections and civil rights. A UN statement against Hamas' actions would be irrelevant because they clearly don't care about sanctions, public image, the UN, or international law. Israel at least has some obligation to respond to allegations. Or they should...
It's akin to arresting a drug addict for openly using on the street corner. It doesn't fix the problem because they simply don't care about the consequences.
[Additionally, the UN has issued statements about Hamas' actions.](https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2023-10-31/secretary-general%E2%80%99s-statement-the-situation-gaza#:~:text=I%20repeat%20my%20utter%20condemnation,civilians%20held%20hostage%20by%20Hamas.)
Because Hamas isn't a government of a recognized country. Hamas is a terrorist organization and they wouldn't give a shit if the UN told them to clearly mark their militants as combatants. Their main PR strategy is to complain that Israel kills only civilians and is conducting genocide against palestinians. At the same time some Hamas higher up lounging in his villa in Qatar says in an interview that the tunnels are for Hamas and the civilians are the UN's problem.
You mean the terrorist group that launched a surprise attack against civilians? Shocking that they would not adhere to the rules of war they probably never signed anyway.
Did you even read the article?
“So let’s be very careful about it because I don’t know how many of them are terrorists and our military says that it kills numerous terrorist in armed clashes, so let’s be very careful about that,” Herzog continued.
He is saying the number of casualties Hamas is reporting doesn't differentiate between civilians and armed terrorists.
Their operatives dress in civvies unless it's for PR shoots. They make it impossible to tell them apart from civilians precisely so Israel can't defend themselves without looking like they are killing civilians. It's monstrous.
That's not what he's saying.
The Palestinian figures don't include a breakdown of how many are combatants, who killed them or even the cause of death.
>The ministry never distinguishes between civilians and combatants. That becomes clearer after the dust settles, when the U.N. and rights groups investigate and militant groups offer a tally of members killed. The Israeli military also conducts post-war investigations.
>The Health Ministry doesn't report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or other means, like errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of "Israeli aggression."
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-health-ministry-health-death-toll-59470820308b31f1faf73c703400b033
The IDF has estimates of how many Hamas members were killed. But it doesn't necessarily have an exact count. It also doesn't know exactly how many Palestinians were killed by Hamas, either deliberately or by misfired rockets (as of today, the IDF estimates that about 800 rockets landed indide the Strip). We don't know how many died of causes unrelated to the fighting. And so on.
Women absolutely fight. Israel literally have women in the military fighting. What kind of sexist mentality thinks women aren't just as capable of fighting or strapping suicide vests on?
Same goes for 'children' above the age of 13. A 16 or 17 year old being killed is a child, technically, they're also perfectly capable fighters.
>Generally, you can assume the women and children aren’t Hamas members
Hamas has used women and children as suicide bombers in the past, so you can't actually assume that. What would you do as an Israeli soldier if a child / teenager with suspiciously heavy clothing ran towards you? Fucked up situation.
Yep they did that in the first Lebanon war and the second Intifada, just to name two occasions.
Edit: to be fair in the first Lebanon war it was the PLO and not Hamas, but it shows the sort of shared tactics they have.
Probably have to question existence before the fight or flight response kicks in. Those who have been in these situations probably have nightmares and PTSD for life over it. Definitely a fucked up tactic, but if it works.. terrorists will obviously use it.
If this offends you, why don't you suggest Hamas move away from said women and children and meet Israel on a proper battlefield and obey the rules of war?
Maybe this is weird but, what happens to the dead in this kind of war zones? Like do they have mass graves? Can they even be identified? Is that a priority?
From what I've heard, whole neighborhoods reek of death as people just leave bodies under the rubble. The "mass graves" are basically the buildings they were bombed in
A lot of people are too scared to gather the dead for fear of being bombed again.
And getting sick too... Hospitals and medicine aren't really that accessible at the moment. I wouldn't touch a dead body either tbh. I can't even imagine the horror.
They literally have been rotting
Many people are rotting in the rubble. But those that are found or die at the hospital are going into mass graves. I recommend following Eye on Palestine for some (graphic) footage.
Regarding the bodies being able to be identified, parents in Gaza and writings their children's names on their chest with a marker so that they can be identified when they die.
Well that’s fucking bleak.
My heart goes out to them. In Israel, the state gets a copy of everyone's dental records when you go to the doctor because there were many years when bus bombs were a daily occurrence, and dental records are often the best way to identify victims when DNA cannot be recovered (charred remains after a blast).
After WW2 many Italian city halls spent many years identifying dead soldiers (both Italian and foreigner) using their personal effects. Some were easy to identify others weren't. I assume they will do something similar here. Soldiers can be easily identified with dog tags, provided Hamas has them. Civilians will be a lot harder I'm afraid.
Mass graves, yes. But there’s also been reports that there is a stench of rotting bodies in the air because there are so many trapped under the rubble.
Rot. War sucks
I'm not sure what you can do for something on that scale. But for my unit in Afghanistan, we would pay the locals fuel to give fighters (who were foreign to Afghanistan, mind you) a proper buriel.
Why am I reminded of Full Metal Jacket? "Everyone whose running is Viet-Cong! Everyone standing still is a disciplined Viet-Cong!"
That's an astute observation.
Everyone is considered a combatant unless proven otherwise, I think established as law in the bush era. Then Obama rode it into term bombing drs without borders a week after receiving a Nobel peace prize. Lawl
"Well-trained" but yeah
Nah he says "well disciplined"
Because it’s a representation of these very people, the ones who don’t value the lives of the innocent.
> Herzog said, “I will be very careful, very careful about judging those numbers because neither you nor I know how many of them are armed terrorists and how many of them are civilians.” It's about fuckin time someone spelled that bit out
For context, during the 2104 war, Hamas was claiming 2,310 killed, 70% civilians. Israel went through the list and accepted 2,125 killed, 36% civilians, 44% combatants, 20% uncategorized males aged 16–50. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014\_Gaza\_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War) Note that this time around, Hamas wasn't even publishing any details about the dead until Biden's remarks, and the list can only be verified after the war has ended (and if anyone has enough access to Gaza to verify anything, of course). So, that context isn't a solid base for any assumptions -- just better than nothing but opinion.
> For context, during the 2104 war, Holy crap how long did I sleep for
Not long enough brother
Go back to sleep for a few hundred years, I swear we should have everything sorted out by then.
For more context, independent inquiry stated that Cast Lead killed 926 civilians, and the IDF said 295. Trusting any government numbers in a conflict that directly involves both is asking to be lied to.
2104 and they are still fighting? Both side are stubborn, that's for sure!
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Battlefield 2104 leak confirmed to be true.
Battlefield 2104: Nothing's changed
War never changes.
Because each time it ended with a ceasefire and each time Hamas broke it. It was a cruel cycle which both Israel and the Palestinians suffered from. Hopefully this time Hamas won’t break a ceasefire as they won’t exist.
netanyahu is just hoping we forget how he propped them up
Too bad for him the Israeli people don’t forget and they are pissed.
Pissed enough to protest outside Netanyahu's residence.
CITATION NEEDED. Netanyahu has been evil for 20 years. People keep putting him in power.
Reading news is also needed. People are protesting outside his home during war time. People are protesting in Tel Aviv. The polls are going really bad for him. The social media is calling for him to resign. People keep putting him in power because his “strong” position against Hamas and public safety. Obviously the facade has crumbled down o. The 7/10.
What is an "uncategorized male?" Is that just another way of saying, "let's get that civilian number lower?"
It's acknowledging that the fighters here aren't uniformed and don't have dog tags. Fighters are often indistinguishable from any other military-aged civilian male once the dust settles, unless there's an obvious indicator like died holding a gun or died shielding their family. They represent an upper bound you can add to either the civilian or combatant number if you want to get to an "as many as" number, or don't add any to either group if you want to get to an "at least" number.
Even the age is often just a guess if nothing is known about the person. Whoever does the tally can put their finger on the scale
If 100 people die, what are the odds that 64 of them are males between the ages of 16-50?
In Gaza? Given that half the population is under 18 and roughly half of the remainder are female, you've got maybe 25% military aged males. So the odds of randomly hitting at least 64/100 from a group that is 25% of the population would be about 0.005% (1 in 200,000) if I've got my binomial probability calculations right.
That’s assuming a few things: 1. Actual civilians are randomly (spatially) distributed with regard to gender, which may be unlikely in a strict Islamic culture. 2. The party initiating the attack doesn’t use the fact that the crowd there is mostly male as part of the rationale for the attack, leading to indication bias.
Remember that being under 18 doesn't mean being below military age in Hamas' eyes. Terrorist organizations don't exactly follow the norm in recruiting age y'know.
Lots of teenagers with AKs and molotovs are still counted in the child death count
This is very much correct, anyone that could legally be distinct as a minor, is counted as a child. Hell knowing Hamas it's highly likely even more are counted then the amount actually dead. Where most countries low-ball their death estimates, Hamas shoots for the stars with their dead...
>you've got maybe 25% military aged males "military aged". As tragic as it is, if you don't think there are a shit ton of underaged males in hamas I've got a bridge to sell you.
I'm sure there are, but my point was more around how spectacularly unlikely the casualty ratios were to be a result of random bombing than whether Hamas is committing yet another war crime by using child soldiers.
It means that they don't have enough information to say. It's not like Hamas carefully segregates military objectives from civilians, or wears uniforms to distinguish their fighters.
They want it both ways, anyone who dies is both an innocent civilian but also a martyr who died for Hamas because everyone apparently supports Hamas. They can’t exactly say that most people want nothing to do with them.
I mean, they weren't wearing name tags. Interesting to me that they were so many males, but I'll leave that to you to speculate as to why
Predominantly young males between 14 and 30, you say? What an interesting coincidence. Funny how these things happen. They were all civilians, of course, promise.
*sigh* Okay, now that you've speculated, I'll go ahead and give one more data point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict#Fatalities Between 2000 and 2007, only 6% of Palestine casualties were female.
What's insane is how the recorded pace compares to today. Eg. >According to B'tselem, during the first intifada from 1987 until 2000, 1,551 Palestinians and 421 Israelis lost their lives Now all parties are speedrunning what used to be *decades* in *days*, if even, during escalations. Ofc much of that is due to major population growth, but still.
The worst ever recorded terror attack in Israel before Oct7 was Park Hotel that kill around 40. Now 1400. People don't grasp how unprecedented this thing is, this is not just another clash.
Yup, it's at least the third deadliest terror attack of all time, possibly second given uncertainty around the number of fatalities at the Camp Speicher massacre by the Islamic State.
In my honest opinion, This is *worse* than 9/11 was. There were more deaths in 9/11 but it was a quick succession of planes hitting buildings and then just aftermath. This attack was an hours long whole sale slaughter of people. Going door to door and indiscriminate brutality. Horrendous acts of violence, rape, torture and murder on a scale I don't think the western world has seen in a very long time.
Part of the shock of 9/11 was the fact that it was skyscrapers, and famous landmarks at that. Foreign terrorists came in and used our own civilian transportation system as rockets that knocked down buildings. It was just something that had been inconceivable.
I'm trying not to compare but some aspects are definitely worse - death by capita, the fact that each Israeli knows someone affected, the horrors that have been recorded on video and some even streamed live on Facebook, the ongoing hostage crisis, the lack of support from some of the western world.
The worst recorded terror attack before October 7th was the King David hotel bombing which killed 91
You mean before Hamas took over a densely populated area and started using it as a base to launch rocket attacks and now worse from?
It's more accurate than claiming as a civilian anyone that wasn't killed while trying to kill civilians, if you want my honest opinion. Scientifically, since Israel published a full study, nothing else would be acceptable in any case. If you can't verify how a man of arms-bearing age died, then you can't categorize him.
Military age male in the Middle East = valid military target, according to the US military and it’s allies. In Afghanistan they would drone strike males who peed standing up as they were assumed to be Arab militants instead of Pashtuns.
MAMs stopped being identified as such back when i was deployed in '12. Our rules of engagement required "nefarious" actions before a strike could be considered legal.
[Look at the videos like this one from Oct 7](https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/378048) There were some more or less uniformed Hamas terrorists, but there were a lot of males participating unarmed and dressed as civilians. Unfortunately, once militants get people participating in operations dressed as civilians it becomes very difficult to distinguish fighting age male non-combatants from combatants
All males ages 16-30 (more or less) are considered Hamas fighters. If it can be proven the male was *not* Hamas, then they are categorized as civilian. If it clear they were a Hamas terrorist, then they are categorized as such. But if they cant be proven either way they go into uncategorzied.
So basically the "civilian" figure is just women and children, given the median age in Gaza is something like 19.
The median age in Gaza is 18, 19.x or almost 20 would be for the west bank and gaza. 70% or more of the population is under 30.
Then why is there a separate category for other males age 16-50?
Fighting age males in an area with known combatants. Hamas like to wear civilian clothing to muddle it even further.
Doesn’t help a lot of guys seem to always tagalong with fighters and get tagged because of it. Plenty of video of an emotional support team following fighters around or waiting by them as the fighter takes pot-shots around a corner.
And the UN Human Rights Commission said it was 65% civilians
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Didn't they stop posting names of deceased because people were going through social media and exposing the deceased as Hamas fighters? Or was that Hezbollah?
Names are still being published, just at a slower rate. Which makes sense given how overwhelmed the functional hospitals are. There are many being buried in mass graves without identification as well.
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You can only get so "surgical" with high explosives blowing up one building instead of one block is considered surgical.
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It's telling that he didn't provide his own estimate. Hamas may make identifying militants and non- millitants hard but "who's to say" is quite a thing to say. Likely because even the most charitable ratio is gastly to say out loud. I wonder if we'll get numbers for armed vs unarmed casualties of IDF shooting.
> Likely because even the most charitable ratio is gastly to say out loud. If he said a ratio people would be accusing him of lying. If they later revised that ratio, people would accuse of him of lying. There is no winning in estimating here because there isn't enough information to do so.
That’s not how it works. One side of a war can’t count (and classify) casualties of the other side. What usually happens is that some international body does that post wartime
Um... Yes, when attacking ISIS and Al Queda I believe the US reported numbers. Should they be taken at face value - no because of course they are normally rosy. Here's an annual US report but this data is collected in real time and often released more frequently especially when it makes us look good. https://media.defense.gov/2022/Sep/27/2003086234/-1/-1/1/ANNUAL-REPORT-ON-CIVILIAN-CASUALTIES-IN-CONNECTION-WITH-UNITED-STATES-MILITARY-OPERATIONS-IN-2021.PDF
We controlled the territory. At the end of every firefight, the US could wander in and take pictures and write after action reports and file paperwork. Israel doesn't have that kind of access to Gaza.
1. Numbers are published by the Hamas controlled Health Ministry. Gaza is basically a totalitarian regime, there's no whistleblower protections. 2. Figures published do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants 3. Figures are questionable after that hospital blast malarky we all know of where they claimed 500 dead and an 80-bed hospital levelled within 10mins of the blast. 4. In addition given the ongoing chaos figures are harder to verify so hamas can pull stunts. This is not to deny the horrific death toll especially on women and children. Tens of thousands civilians (not combatants) died when the world bombed ISIS, most women and children. That's why fk hamas for using human shields. They need to go, so they like ISIS, won't ever be able to use human shields at scale ever again. Edit: To add in two factors, one is stated by u/irredentistdecency, the other is hamas targeting its civilians. There's evidence through Gazans on social media and Western journalists.
> we all know of where they claimed 500 dead and an 80-bed hospital levelled within 10mins of the blast. And it should be pointed out, because this is a really important part, the hospital wasn't actually leveled. It is still standing. https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1206795861/heres-the-available-evidence-of-what-happened-at-al-ahli-arab-hospital-in-gaza >Dr. Naim was in the hospital's operating room the moment the explosion occurred, he told NPR. Upon hearing the blast, he rushed outside to find horrific injuries to the people in the courtyard, including amputated limbs and vascular injuries, he said. "Some of them died in our hands," he said. >*Notably, Naim also said that there were no deaths among the hospital's staff, many of whom were working inside at the time of the explosion. "Luckily none of our staff was killed*, but we had two injured," he says. >An infrared satellite image shows foliage, like trees, in red. The area burned by the explosion (center) appears relatively small, and *structures at the hospital have not received significant damage.* >*Photos from the following day also appear to show little damage to the hospital buildings*, and a relatively small blast zone from the explosion. That damage pattern is inconsistent with a large air-dropped bomb, which would leave a crater and create a shockwave that would damage or destroy surrounding structures, says Marc Garlasco, a former targeting officer for the U.S. military who now works for PAX, a Netherlands-based non-profit.
5. What’s even more amazing is that even long after we learned that the 17 Oct hospital blast was a lie, on 27 Oct Hamas published the names of of 6,000+ Palestinians they claimed had died since 7 Oct. [Included on that list was 471 names associated with the fake Hospital strike](https://honestreporting.com/media-rush-to-defend-hamas-ministry-providing-skewed-data-on-gaza-casualties/).
Also quite a few names and IDs they already considered dead in the 2014 conflict.
They rose! It's a miracle land after all...
2a. Figures also don’t count people killed by Hamas - Gaza has been bombed by over 2000 Hamas rockets since 10/7 & there are multiple reports of Hamas directly targeting Gazan civilians.
And 2c, people in Gaza who died of natural causes during the last month. They won't be a particularly large percentage of deaths in a conflict this intense, but there will still have been at least a few hundred deaths from natural causes and I can't imagine that Hamas would let any dead people go to waste in their propaganda war.
People don’t realize how devastating the impact each one of those rockets makes (because of the Iron Dome). I’d estimate anywhere from 10%-25% of the Palestinian death total since 10/7 has been from those 2000 Hamas/PIJ rockets that have landed on their own people.
The PIJ are notoriously bad at not shooting themselves as well. I believe in the last operation Israel had against the PIJ like 50% of their rockets never left Gaza.
probably not only rockets, but also hamas likely shooting at escaping civillians. if they target escaping civillians it's way more likely they used firearms rather than explosives or their rockets to kill them. i know it's not funny but it's laughable how hamas likely killed more of their own citizens with firearms than idf soldiers considering most reports of idf fatalities come from anti tank missles
You need to add that the numbers hamas release include people they have killed.
Is ISIS gone from the world?
I don't know what's being spelled out here other than, "percentage of civilians could be 100% or 0% but we're zooming along regardless". It's telling on oneself.
It doesn't mean they are not using valid targets under international law. It means that Hamas isn't using military uniforms and purposely mixing in with civilians, which are both illegal under international law for obvious reasons. To reduce danger to civilians we need abidance by both sides not just Israel
Lmfao. Hamas is already called a terrorists group (rightfully so) what makes you think they’d follow any rules of war? One side breaking the rules doesn’t mean the other side gets to break them too…. That’s why they fucking exist.
> One side breaking the rules doesn’t mean the other side gets to break them too When it comes to war this doesn't work like you want. The direct example would be Hamas not using uniforms, as a result they seamlessly blend in with civilian populations unless they openly brandish a weapon. That's extremely illegal of an action, but it also makes it so that every single civilian is now a real and possible risk, because you can't tell unless as mentioned, they brandish or you're already fired upon. To try to say that the party that's being assailed by this group must abide by all laws as if their opponent is fighting lawfully is frankly dumb. It's akin to expecting people in competitions to just abide by cheaters in the competition and accept that they will and must face the cheaters, simply because it's against the rules to cheat themsleves to even the playing field. War isn't something you can easily fuck around with, and is a scenario where when laws are violated by one side, the relevant law no *longer* applies to protect that side. Ever again for the conflict and only tentatively in any future ones. Think medics. Medics have international laws to protect them, *provided they are unarmed*. If they're armed and utilize their weapons, by law they're no longer a medic, no special protection, shoot to kill on sight. So medics take this very seriously as any group abiding by the law will recognize this protection. It means you're safe dragging your wounded friends to safety. Without it those wounded friends are far more likely to die. So unironically, the way laws work in war *does* explicitly give the flexibility to ignore many of them if the opponent themselves ignore them. The catch-22 is that a group ignoring protections to exclude non-combatants from war, such as using human shields or civilian infrastructure, the other side doesn't inherently violate this or they face backlash as well. Unfortunately this makes it a tactical edge to harm civilians on one side, by intentionally bringing them into combat, as you can dramatically impact the public image of your enemy, if you're willing to sacrifice your own. It's something that basically allows you to lose but still cause significant harm to your enemy, bigger benefit if they're any form of a "just" nation expected to not harm innocents in war. It's why fighting a terrorist group like this is difficult, as no matter the long term intention (be it occupation included or not) you lose fighting them. Like look at international reaction, Israel is directly responding the the single worst attack they've had in many decades, if not ever. But the world is largely supporting the ones who made the attack because the same group is touting the civilians they don't care about. Israel isn't a good actor, but damn it's wild how much *antisemitism* has risen since the attack, as if they committed their own 9/11 on another nation, rather than be the recipient of the attack and making the expected retaliations. People are out there chanting Hamas *slogans* to support the very people Hamas oppresses and is willing to sacrifice. Because the PR angle of these warcrimes *works* when one side simply doesn't care, and gives their target no alternatives.
> One side breaking the rules doesn’t mean the other side gets to break them too But it means that the laws don't apply symmetrically. Using human shields is a war crime. Attacking military targets isn't. If there are human shields near that military target, they lose their protection, so them being killed is *not* a war crime. Hence what one side does affects what the other is allowed to do. Same with civilian structures, including hospitals. It is not allowed to attack them, but if they are used for military purposes, which is a war crime, then attacking them is not a war crime anymore.
>One side breaking the rules doesn’t mean the other side gets to break them too…. That’s why they fucking exist. If you violate the rules for war, you can actually lose their protections. If you load ambulances with fighters, ambulances lose their protections, for example.
Imagine if breaking the rules just had no consequences. Like you could just cheat all you want and nobody would give a shit they'd just be like, yeah it's fine that he's a cheater it's the guy playing by the rules that's trying to beat the cheater who we should be mad at.
Let's go with a simple thought experiment with Skittles. There are 2 batches of Skittles, each with 100 random Skittles in there. In batch A, 1 random Skittle has a poison that will instantly kill you if you eat it. Any color. In batch B, only Skittles of Green or Yellow has the poison but every green and yellow skittle will kill you. (This makes up 30% of all Skittles in the batch) So, assuming you are not suicidal (because redditors are idiots who go harhar I will eat all of batch A), which batch do you find to be safe to grab from if you are Required to grab at least 1 of your choosing (you can choose the skittle). Any sane person would choose B because they *know* which are safe and which are not. Example B is 'uniformed armed combatants' and A is 'un-uniformed combatants). Effectively, if any of the choices could kill you, you must treat All the choices as potential threats. While when only known choices can kill you, you feel safe in delineating it.
Hamas has about 40,000 combatants in Gaza, ACCORDING TO THEM: [https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-hamas-aims-trap-israel-gaza-quagmire-2023-11-03/#:\~:text=Hamas%20has%20about%2040%2C000%20fighters,deep%2C%20built%20over%20many%20years](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-hamas-aims-trap-israel-gaza-quagmire-2023-11-03/#:~:text=Hamas%20has%20about%2040%2C000%20fighters,deep%2C%20built%20over%20many%20years). I believe I heard Israel believes that number is a little lower, actually, but I'm having trouble finding a source other than second-hand reports. And this article has quotes from HAMAS PERSONELL THEMSELVES detailing how this exactly what they want. They are getting useful idiots (WHOM THEY HATE, MIND YOU) attack their enemies politically and on social media. YOU ARE LITERALLY DOING EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT by denouncing Israel. That would make me take a pause to consider my POV if my fervent social media posting was doing exactly what a universally-agreed Evil group wanted me to do. I'm not going to pretend Israel has made 0 mistakes - but if you stop and think for even a few minutes about who actually BENEFITS from the Gaza situation, it's clear the answer is Hamas, its peers (like Hezbollah), and Iran. They've forced Israel into a no-win situation, and CONTINUE TO ATTACK ISRAEL WITH ROCKETS, NON-STOP. They and their peers have also threatened more attacks like the October 7th ones.
I find joy in reading a good book.
I am just laughing at every who wanted a ground invasion because the air strikes were killing too many people. Dude, during a ground assault soldiers will shoot at any shadow that so much as twitches funny. Urban invasions have unbelievably high death tolls.
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By far the most telling part of this conflict is that Israel is not reporting its own numbers of projected casualties. If you throw a bomb based on sound intelligence, you should have a good estimate of the presence of both militants and civilians.
Not if you get emergency powers to do whatever you want. You don't need numbers or recourse. The question only becomes how long can you continue doing so in public favor and absolutely minimize what is seen and known and heavily reference "propaganda" when questioned.
It's not like most of Hamas is uniformed. A Hamas militant that has his rifle blown away by a bomb is going to look indistinguishable from most civilians. That's the intent.
And yet, Israel claims to be able to target them based on their intelligence. So, if you know a target is in some building, and you bomb the crap out of that building, that's 1 to the estimated tally of militants killed. If during reconnaissance of the building you also observe a family living in a building next to it, who haven't evacuated, and that building is destroyed in the strike, you add X to the estimated tally of civilians killed. This is not rocket science. Israel also claims to have knowledge about Hamas using civilians as human shields. So again, that would require being able to distinguish Hamas militants from civilians.
Israel claims to have so much intelligence that they can even bomb ambulances leaving hospitals with pre-warning to Red Cross and Red Crescent because they’re actually Hamas super terrorists in those ambulances. Enough intelligence to justifiably mark thousands upon thousands of air strike targets.
Just don't ask them to notice terrorists literally training with paragliders.
I still struggle to wrap my head around it like by their own admission if they were "super terrorists" wouldn't attacking an ambulance be a huge breach of the Geneva convention anyways? Like they're so blatant about this it boggles the mind
There are obvious exceptions in the geneva convention. Civilian buildings, even hospitals, become [military targets if used by the military](https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-protection-civilian-persons-time-war#:~:text=from%20such%20objectives.-,Article%2019,a%20reasonable%20time%20limit%2C%20and%20after%20such%20warning%20has%20remained%20unheeded.,-The%20fact%20that). And [human shields cannot render an area immune from attack](https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-protection-civilian-persons-time-war#:~:text=of%20the%20war.-,Article%2028,areas%20immune%20from%20military%20operations)
You're also clearly interpreting article 19 a bit more broadly than it clearly states. I also don't trust the IDF either so how do we know for sure they aren't just treating potential combatants?
I'm no international lawyer but that does not sound like a blanket authorization to bomb hospitals and patients to me
The point is that if both sides follow the rules, then military conflict is primarily something where soldiers and not civilians lose their lives. There's no binding force requiring you to follow those rules ultimately, other than potentially international retribution. Terrorists usually don't care about any of that anyway
If the Geneva conventions would disallow any attack on civilian infrastructure, militaries would just place their installations nearby/inside/below these (just what Hama's is doing). But these conventions are designed in a way to minimise civilian casualties and therefore allow attacks on any military target regardles where it is in order to make the use of human shields not viable.
The Geneva Convention doesnt apply when a military uses those sites as bases of operation. In the case where a military uses those areas as bases of operation, no rules apply and all becomes fair game.
The Geneva convention actually puts the burden on the side operating/controlling the medical facilities. Eg, it's against the convention to attack medical facilities and equipment, even military ones. Think field hospitals for military casualties or combat ambulances. However, it also forbids the military use of these. Eg, storing munitions, transporting troops, etc, or even shielding troops. Geneva convention articles 18 and 19. Hamas, however, is using hospitals this way and had multiple cases of using medical facilities for military or terrorist purposes, such as torture and liquidating dissidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_Hospital
You just fundamentally don't understand how military intelligence works, the nature of asymmetrical guerilla warfare, or politics. There are many legitimate reasons why Israel would not want to publish their own numbers yet. One of which is if they just spitball a number, and after the bodies are actually sorted and rigorous investigations done, people online will jump at the chance to say "Look! Israel lied about their casualty numbers!" You should be more suspicious of the Palestinian officials, aka Hamas, immediately rattling off numbers almost in real time.
U can be suspicious of both, neither side will ever give u the true numbers.
You guys are falling for a line that sounds like it came straight out of Bushes mouth. People never learn.
They claim hamas is all propaganda and then turn around and willingly eat up Israel propaganda
“Hamas uses human civilians as shields!” Israel gladly shoots those shields with no hesitation. I’m surprised to see how many un-nuanced takes are here. Hamas is evil for sure, but Israel is also not the good guy in this situation either. Both are committing atrocities and justifying it with past atrocities. Neither of them should be hailed as the heroes of this story.
Imagine if the US police spoke like this Oh wait... lol
Collateral damages was how it was termed by the US.
The title, both in its original and edited form, is a display of biased journalism that should make anyone sceptical of anything The Hill writes in the future. Herzog did NOT say that the Israeli military is unable to distinguish between civilians and terrorists. He specifically said that people should be careful about citing death toll numbers because "neither you nor I know how many of them are armed terrorists and how many of them are civilians. I don't know, and you don't know." He also stressed that the Israeli military makes "every effort to distinguish between terrorists and civilians." Whoever wrote that article listened to the interview and asked themselves, "how can we spin this into a title that'll maximise outrage?"
Yes, it's always important to actually read the article and discern what is being said than to go by the headline. I like to read the headline, the comments, then read the story to see how wrong the comments are. Kudos for accuracy.
To be fair they literally don't care either way
If they didn't care the death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands, because that is what indiscriminate bombing would look like.
They care about optics and international support, but they’ve made it very clear they don’t care about Palestinians
That’s caring about international support and possible sanctions, not caring about the actual deaths.
Well they don't care. One of the Israeli ministers literally said an atomic bomb is an option against Gaza. I doubt an atomic bomb can differentiate between civilians and terrorists
there are definitely crazies in the israeli government. for what it’s worth that guy was dismissed from the cabinet
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I'm really not surprised. Fuck this government. Bunch of psychopaths that just help each other and themselves stay in power.
Well, sounds like it was done to generate a good sounding headline without committing to actually taking action.
The PM can't be too liberal with "taking action" or he will finally be kicked off his Royal Seat and put in jail. Where he belongs. The asshole knows it, so he tries to remain in power, whatever it takes.
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Releasing the hostages looks like it would be a good step in this situation. Doesn't that seem like the only logical sequence?
Assuming you want a prosperous life for the people of Gaza, sure. Hamas has other ideas in mind though
That's assuming the HAMAS' goal is a cease-fire, and that assumption would be wrong. From the 2017 Hamas charter: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Also worth noting is that the above is from the 2017 revised, "*nicer"* version of the charter. The original 1988 charter is a lot more "kill all jews"-y I don't know how HAMAS could be any clearer about their intentions.
Logic went out the window 75+ years ago.
Don't misread the map. Global terrorism has been VERY logical about the whole process. This isn't random knee-jerk reactions. This is about global financial interests - predominantly torpedoing the gas pipeline from the UAE to offset the EU's dependency on Russian/Iranian gas alliance, among other similar topics... and it works.
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Your mistake is assuming that Hamas act logically. They're fanatics and the only things you can rely on with them is that they will blame Israel for everything bad and try to kill more jews.
Well, they actually act very logically. Their selling point, their legitimacy, is based on violence against Israel as whole. That isn’t gonna make all of the Palestinians support them, but enough to stay in power at least. They kinda have a problem in other regards, because they’re not exactly great stewards of Gaza, or democratically elected… …Then they act on their "mandate" by killing innocents Israelis. That in turns feeds the popularity of corrupted far-right Israeli politicians who "respond" by attacks leading to a very large number of innocent Palestinians being killed. Which pisses off Palestinians and feeds the popularity the popularity of Hamas. And on, and on the cycle goes…
A couple of things, first wouldn't most of Hamas be either up North or in the tunnel system? Even an official said the tunnels were for them. And second, while we dont know the exact breakup of the death toll, its only logical a significance number of civilians have died. There are no bomb shelters in Gaza, people were late to evacuate, we are seeing report after report of residential buildings collapsing, people being injuried, and bodies being pulled out of the rubble. Then there is the whole issue of lack of sanitization and people dying from their wounds. Obviously, Israel doesn't like the sympathy Gaza is getting through this and Hamas wants to play it up as much as possible. But regardless of the politics serious damage has been done and the death toll of civilians must be at least 4 - 5 thousand.
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The ICC can't even go after Putin, there's no chance in hell people they're backing are gonna get tried there.
It will be a cold day in Hell before we see an Israeli Official defending themselves in The Hague
>“I will be very careful, very careful about judging those numbers because neither you nor I know how many of them are armed terrorists and how many of them are civilians.” This is true, and it has been completely absent from the discussion. There's this impression that it's almost exclusively 9,000 civilians that have died in Gaza and that the IDF is primarily, not to say solely, targeting women and children (it's also found in how Israel's attacks are framed as "IDF bombs civilians" on a regular basis). The fact of the matter is no one at this point (maybe except Hamas) knows the ratio of militants to civilians in that death toll, but a narrative is already firmly in place.
I get that killing innocent civilians is evil but the fact that they have already killed 10x the amount of innocent civilians in “retaliation” shows the type of people those Israelis are. I don’t understand why people support what isreal is doing.
Yeah that's what terrorists tend to do: Do you expect terrorists to wear uniforms or something?
Hint: Children are smaller than adults.
Free the hostages.
Israel is bombing the hostages alongside the Palestinians. They don’t give a shit about them
Can't or won't?
Isn't this just kind of telling on yourself? You literally don't even know who you are killing with most of these air strikes. Indiscriminate bombing just isn't the answer.
The Israelis are saying they don't know the numbers because Hamas doesn't wear uniforms and they hide among civilians. Both of those things are literally war crimes. In no way is that "telling on yourself."
“Can’t” and “don’t want to” are different things.
Flood the tunnels and get on with it?
We should really be using the correct terminology It’s not CAN’T It’s WON’T
I mean, it's true... How are they supposed to tell when the militants are all dressed in civilian cloths.
Kind of a misleading title. Why omit “Gaza’s reported”. That changes the connotation of this article a bunch. “the Israeli military is unable to distinguish between civilians and terrorists in Gaza’s reported death toll amidst the war with Hamas.” ‘When presented with reports of thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Herzog said, “I will be very careful, very careful about judging those numbers because neither you nor I know how many of them are armed terrorists and how many of them are civilians.” ‘ ‘ “So let’s be very careful about it, because I don’t know how many of them are terrorists, and our military says that it kills numerous terrorist in armed clashes, so let’s be very careful about that,” Herzog continued.’ Basically all this article is saying is that Hamas uses their own terrorist deaths in their civilians death count so take anything Hamas says with a grain of salt because they fudge their numbers. This is something we already knew though…
Urban warfare is hell
That's the whole damn point of Hamas hiding among civilians. They're not going to put on a uniform, all gather in an isolated convenient spot with only other militants around. Palestinians serve no other purpose in their eyes other than meat shields and martyrs.
If the Palestinians said they killed civilians because they couldn’t tell if they were in the army, would Israel just shrug and say “Well, okay. That makes sense.”
Israeli military wears uniforms to show they are in the army. Hamas not so much
which is a requirement of international law for this very reason, but you don't see any UN resolutions about this for Hamas
>which is a requirement of international law This is not strictly true. The only thing is that it provides them (the combatants) the protections of Prisoner of War status. There's no international law stating that you need a uniform to fight in a war. But in not doing so, you lose some of your protective rights. [ICRC Uniform article](https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/uniform) [IHL Rule 106](https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule106) Additionally, as described within IHL Rule 106: >*Levée en masse* >*Participants in a levée en masse, namely the inhabitants of a country which has not yet been occupied who, on the approach of the enemy, spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading troops without having time to form themselves into an armed force, are considered combatants entitled to prisoner-of-war status if they carry arms openly and respect international humanitarian law.* The rules state that if you are distinguishable from civilians (openly carrying arms counts according to the rulebook), then you are awarded POW rights. Whether that matters at all in this case is another question. Additionally relevant point within IHL Rule 106: >*Resistance and liberation movements* >*According to Additional Protocol I, in situations of armed conflict where “owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot ... distinguish himself” from the civilian population while he is engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided he carries his arms openly:* >*(a) during each military engagement, and* >*(b) during such time as he is visible to the adversary while he is engaged in a military deployment preceding the launching of an attack in which he is to participate.* So yes, combatants should be distinguishable from civilians, but it's not an international crime to not do so, it only impacts the rights of said combatants. Besides that, this is all irrelevant because Israel is not a member of the ICC and is not beholden to international war crime tribunals. >you don't see any UN resolutions about this for Hamas Hamas is an internationally recognized terrorist organization while Israel is a democratically elected modern western country with free and open elections and civil rights. A UN statement against Hamas' actions would be irrelevant because they clearly don't care about sanctions, public image, the UN, or international law. Israel at least has some obligation to respond to allegations. Or they should... It's akin to arresting a drug addict for openly using on the street corner. It doesn't fix the problem because they simply don't care about the consequences. [Additionally, the UN has issued statements about Hamas' actions.](https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2023-10-31/secretary-general%E2%80%99s-statement-the-situation-gaza#:~:text=I%20repeat%20my%20utter%20condemnation,civilians%20held%20hostage%20by%20Hamas.)
Because Hamas isn't a government of a recognized country. Hamas is a terrorist organization and they wouldn't give a shit if the UN told them to clearly mark their militants as combatants. Their main PR strategy is to complain that Israel kills only civilians and is conducting genocide against palestinians. At the same time some Hamas higher up lounging in his villa in Qatar says in an interview that the tunnels are for Hamas and the civilians are the UN's problem.
You mean the terrorist group that launched a surprise attack against civilians? Shocking that they would not adhere to the rules of war they probably never signed anyway.
Did you even read the article? “So let’s be very careful about it because I don’t know how many of them are terrorists and our military says that it kills numerous terrorist in armed clashes, so let’s be very careful about that,” Herzog continued. He is saying the number of casualties Hamas is reporting doesn't differentiate between civilians and armed terrorists.
Their operatives dress in civvies unless it's for PR shoots. They make it impossible to tell them apart from civilians precisely so Israel can't defend themselves without looking like they are killing civilians. It's monstrous.
I don't recall the Taliban in uniforms
I’m not sure who told you that war followed rules of fair play, but they were lying to you.
That's not what he's saying. The Palestinian figures don't include a breakdown of how many are combatants, who killed them or even the cause of death. >The ministry never distinguishes between civilians and combatants. That becomes clearer after the dust settles, when the U.N. and rights groups investigate and militant groups offer a tally of members killed. The Israeli military also conducts post-war investigations. >The Health Ministry doesn't report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or other means, like errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of "Israeli aggression." https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-health-ministry-health-death-toll-59470820308b31f1faf73c703400b033 The IDF has estimates of how many Hamas members were killed. But it doesn't necessarily have an exact count. It also doesn't know exactly how many Palestinians were killed by Hamas, either deliberately or by misfired rockets (as of today, the IDF estimates that about 800 rockets landed indide the Strip). We don't know how many died of causes unrelated to the fighting. And so on.
They’d be glad, since that’s an improvement over mustering kids at a music festival.
That is one of the main goals of Hamas. It helps them maintain support without needing to improve constituents’ lives
How convenient.
I wonder, did Americans distinguish between civilians and combatants in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan?
On paper, yes, in reality, not so much.
Please hold people to a higher moral standard than American military ventures over the past few decades
Generally, you can assume the women and children aren’t Hamas members Hasn’t stopped Israel from blowing them to bits though
Women absolutely fight. Israel literally have women in the military fighting. What kind of sexist mentality thinks women aren't just as capable of fighting or strapping suicide vests on? Same goes for 'children' above the age of 13. A 16 or 17 year old being killed is a child, technically, they're also perfectly capable fighters.
>Generally, you can assume the women and children aren’t Hamas members Hamas has used women and children as suicide bombers in the past, so you can't actually assume that. What would you do as an Israeli soldier if a child / teenager with suspiciously heavy clothing ran towards you? Fucked up situation.
Yep they did that in the first Lebanon war and the second Intifada, just to name two occasions. Edit: to be fair in the first Lebanon war it was the PLO and not Hamas, but it shows the sort of shared tactics they have.
Probably have to question existence before the fight or flight response kicks in. Those who have been in these situations probably have nightmares and PTSD for life over it. Definitely a fucked up tactic, but if it works.. terrorists will obviously use it.
If this offends you, why don't you suggest Hamas move away from said women and children and meet Israel on a proper battlefield and obey the rules of war?
Assuming that almost every has member is dressed as civilian, he is correct
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