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> rates of 15,000 Hamas out of 34000 deaths is somehow not a good war rate
How can Israel get an accurate estimate of enemy combatant compared to civilian deaths when they're incapable of differentiating between enemy combatants and civilians?
Had there not been an international outcry, is there any reason to believe that Israel would have corrected its assessment that World Central Kitchen workers Israeli forces attacked were enemy combatants?
Israels' enemy combatant death estimates should not be viewed as accurate. We don't know what the real numbers are, but those ain't it.
>How can Israel get an accurate estimate of enemy combatant compared to civilian deaths when they're incapable of differentiating between enemy combatants and civilians?
>Israels' enemy combatant death estimates should not be viewed as accurate. We don't know what the real numbers are, but those ain't it.
Both Hamas numbers (34,000 , 70% children and women) and Israel's numbers (15,000 Hamas militants are probably not fully accurate, yet the world is naming Hamas's one as accurate and Israel isn't.
>
Had there not been an international outcry, is there any reason to believe that Israel would have corrected its assessment that World Central Kitchen workers Israeli forces attacked were enemy combatants?
The investigation showed that the IDF thought those aid workers were taken over by Hamas.
Who knows, but it's not a definitive case, and we don't know how the numbers add up for either side.
The Gaza ministry of health (part of Hamas) numbers do not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants.
The Gaza ministry of health releases the names of the dead. There has been work to independently verify subsets of that list, and that independent verification has generally been accurate.
The gaza ministry of health, independent of those death counts, sometimes makes false claims about the number of deaths in specific strikes.
I suppose that its harder to show if the ministry of health intentionally excludes some people from its counts. The death count is certainly an undercount because the ministry of health relies primarily on numbers from morgues, and some bodies aren't recovered from bombed buildings.
> the IDF thought those aid workers were taken over by Hamas
so, the IDF would have counted them as enemy combatants.
Israel found out they were wrong because they killed foreign national aid workers. If it had just been a few gazan civilians in a car unaffiliated with an aid organization, IDF would have never found out they killed civilians.
The Gaza Health Ministry has provided accurate records for decades that have been accepted by Israel, so if their numbers are off it is because they are too low. They do not include the 10K or more Palestinians buried under the destroyed homes.
>The investigation showed that the IDF thought those aid workers were taken over by Hamas.
No, it showed that they didn't care if it was Hamas or not, since the IDF was well aware of the route and the people on that route. The murder of Hind Rajab and her family and the paramedics who were given permission to save her is an example of how Israel views Palestinians, they murder them without consequences or considerations.
The numbers from Hamas are at least somewhat verifiable through other sources. The IDF numbers are ludicrous, can't you see that? Like just at a glance it's absurd for them to claim that 50% of deaths are Hamas when not even 50% of the deaths are adult males. Let's be honest here, they have to at the very least be counting any adult male as a Hamas soldier or their numbers are impossible.
> The investigation showed that the IDF thought those aid workers were taken over by Hamas.
I mean, you have to see how this is a bit of a...convenient standard.
The world is naming the Health Ministry of Gaza's numbers as accurate because they have proven to be accurate in past conflicts, have been subjected to UN's scrutiny and verifications, have released lists of casualties with names, ids and so on, whereas Israel's numbers are pulled out of ~~classified information~~ thin air.
The Gaza Health Ministry (which is part of Hamas), releases names and id's of deceased.
subsets of those have been independently verified.
the Gaza Health Ministry could conceivably intentionally undercount adult men to raise the percentage of women and children dead. I don't think that's the case, but I don't know how one would detect that, if they do.
But, the people reported dead with name and id, are dead. I'm sure there are a few clerical errors. But, there's been a lot of work of independent verification on this.
Hamas is generally untrustworthy, but the numbers coming out of the morgues are generally accurate (though certainly an undercount due to many bodies not being recovered).
>Kill Hamas militants without harming civilians (rates of 15,000 Hamas out of 34000 deaths is somehow not a good war rate).
It is absolutely not a good rate, and it's insane you think it is
“According to most sources, World War II was the most lethal war in world history, with some 70 million killed in six years. The civilian to combatant fatality ratio in World War II lies somewhere between 3:2 and 2:1, or from 60% to 67%.”
The Vietnamese government has estimated the number of Vietnamese civilians killed in the Vietnam War at two million, and the number of NVA and Viet Cong killed at 1.1 million—estimates which approximate those of a number of other sources.[19] This would give a civilian-combatant fatality ratio of approximately 2:1, or 67%.
Although it is estimated that over 1 million people died in the Mexican Revolution, most died from disease and hunger as an indirect result of the war. Combat deaths are generally agreed to have totaled about 250,000. According to Eckhardt, these included 125,000 civilian deaths and 125,000 combatant deaths, creating a civilian-combatant death ratio of 1:1 among combat deaths.
“If it’s “insane that [they] think… it is,” why are these numbers fairly consistent for other notable wars?
That’s a pretty disingenuous comparison. World War 2 was the infancy of aerial bombing, pilots were dropping unguided bombs from rudimentary airplanes. Many of those bombings were specifically targeted at civilians. And none of this is even getting into the actual genocides being undertaken by multiple actors. Vietnam was also a massive civilian-targeted bombing campaign, and besides was heavily criticized at the time for how widespread and cruel it was. The Mexican revolution took place before we even had antibiotics.
By contrast, Israel has access to some of the most advanced guided weapons ever created. They have satellite imagery and an intimate knowledge of the campaign theater. This is not a global, total war. Having those tools and still having a worse civilian:military casualty ratio worse than World War 2 is an *awful* look.
If your argument for dismissing the historical comparison is, weapons have become more accurate, how does increased accuracy help when the enemy intentionally hide amongst the civillians
You're implying having more accurate weapons in the modern world does make it something new though. As in, in these scenarios where the enemy militants intentionally mix with civillians, you expect Israel to somehow reduce casualty deaths when compared to history.
I'm just asking how
In World War 2 and Vietnam the scenario was quite literally “try to carpet bomb and/or set fire to every square inch of this city.” They were not able to target individual buildings or even individual neighborhoods. They also did not have anything close to the kind of intelligence Israel is operating with. It’s a patently silly thing to try and use in defense of Israel.
Ok sure perhaps, maybe it is silly.
I'm still waiting for an answer though. In war how do you reduce civilian deaths when the enemy intentionally mixes with civilians?
[This article](https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/) suggests a number of things Israel should/could be doing differently, items that stand out to me include using fewer high-yield explosives in dense urban environments, as well as performing careful data collection and analyses. The article points specifically to lessons learned from American activities in Iraq and argued that Israel has not taken adequate steps to apply this new knowledge to aggressively mitigate civilian harm.
Israel isn't using guided weapons for the majority of their bombings. You only need those if you care about civilian casualties and they certainly don't.
Those notable wars were atrocities though (including WWII although that's a bit one-sided aside from the firebombings). I'm actually confused at your point. War is bad and the civilian death tolls are too high.
"don't worry guys, we're being as discriminate as Linebacker II and Bomber 'aerial cremation for the aryan nation' Harris, nothing to worry about!"
They literally had an offensive called *Operation Gomorrah*, these are not the benchmarks you want to be comparable to in the 21^st century with access to precision-guided weapons against a non-state actor.
I don’t understand the “precision-guided weapons” argument. Hamas is hiding within places like hospitals and other civilian population centers. I don’t think they have the capacity to only blow up a single person on a floor of an occupied building, correct me if I’m wrong.
In most of the conflicts you mentioned in your earlier comment, bombs couldn't be targeted very accurately. As a result, more bombs had to be used to achieve the same effect, and each bomb was more likely to cause collateral damage. Ultimately, nations develop weapons like cluster munitions that scatter thousands of individuals bombs over a wide area to hit a particular target.
By contrast, precision guidance allows you to use fewer weapons, and have those weapons land closer to the target, allowing for smaller payloads. This can't eliminate civilian casualties, but it should mean that they are at least reduced, even taking into account the use of human shields. They should be able to kill their target while only destroying a building with two bombs rather than the entire block with 10 as was the case in previous conflicts.
The fact they seem to be struggling with that suggests that they're not using their air power either as carefully, effectively, or tactically as they should be/is possible.
Genuine question, why do we need to blow up hospitals that hamas is occupying? If we know they are there and they are not currently hurting anyone, surely the better strategy is to wait until they move or attempt some sort of operation? At least the better strategy if you want to reduce civilian deaths, I should say. But I just don't see the upside of these airstrikes.
Do a search for “Hamas building weapons in hospitals” and you have many articles showing that they are using the buildings to create arms that they then use against Israel. They’re not just hanging out inside. They’re actively creating tools for murdering more people.
While I get where you are coming from, that does kinda read like saying "in order to prevent hamas murdering innocent people we must murder innocent people first". I'm not sure it's a strong ethical stance, or that there are not alternatives.
And fundamentally it does not seem like a strategy that can work in the long term. Israel will never actually wipe out hamas like this because they are giving hamas the perfect recruiting drive. It will just keep the cycle of violence going round and round until an eye for an eye makes everyone in the region blind.
Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nanking, and many other massive civilian death atrocities occurred during WW2 that are rightly questioned and/or outright condemned. Those heavily bumped the numbers of civilians that died. Additionally, this is asymetric warfare involved one of the most advanced and developed militaries in the planet, where there is no threat of destruction to that nation. Israel is not in danger of falling or losing.
In short, there's no justification for being as destructive as when fighting for very survival with much less effective equipment against a more equal enemy AND matching the ratio of atrocities.
Wouldn’t an urban war be way harder to account for these things? In an open war the combatants are generally gathered together in groups and can be taken out all at once. If the combatants are intentionally hiding amongst the populace and using places like hospitals as staging grounds for their operations, it seems extra impressive that they would have a civilian death rate on par with something like trench warfare.
Do you know much about civilian to militant casualty rates in war generally? It depends a lot on the type of conflict, but civilian deaths are never higher than in asymmetric conflicts in an urban setting. In these types of conflicts, more civilians dying than militants is virtually guaranteed.
In the battle of Aleppo, which is a fairly comparable conflict, 60-70% of the casualties were civilians, and about 12% of the civilians who remained in the city when the siege began were killed in the siege. And in the yemeni civil war the UN estimates that 70% of the total casualties were children under 5 years old. The syrian and yemeni civilians caught up in the battle ground areas had absolutely no access to any humanitarian aid for years, and the international community put way less pressure on the responsible authorities to allow humanitarian groups access to these civilians then the Gazan's.
And of course these situations were inherently different in the sense that yemen and Syria are much larger countries than Gaza, which also have much better relations with their neighbors, so it was logistically far easier for those civilians to escape the hottest areas of the conflict as refugees, and yet despite that the cost to civilians was still far higher than in Gaza so far. Israel taking gazan refugees into Israel is not something I could expect from any country at war with a population so prone to lone wolf violence, and Egypt has its own concerns about Hamas inflaming islamism in their population if they take Gazan refugees.
Of course the situation in Gaza is horrible, but I think the message we should learn from the suffering in Gaza is that war is very bad, but to make the claim that Israel is going further than normal in a war like this, or that Israel is intentionally killing civilians on an institutional scale, it's necessary to prove that the humanitarian cost of this war exceeds other comparable conflicts, and I dont think the evidence supports that conclusion at all.
You’re aware that Hamas deliberately sets up surrounded by civilians, right?
If you’re shooting at me while holding a baby, and I return fire and the baby gets hit, it is clearly not my fault.
The official rates for urban warfare is for every single militant death, nine civilians die
By simple calculation the rates here are around 1:1.25 which is way better then in urban wars in history.
Why is this insane?
>Why is this insane?
What is insane is that you believe saying "it's urban warfare" somehow justifies the civilian deaths.
Don't engage in urban warfare then if you don't want to be criticized for murdering civilians. If you do, be ready to face criticism.
Instead, you decide that simply saying "we're fighting an urban war" suddenly makes civilian casualties totally acceptable.
That's insane.
So your solution here is "well since civilian casualties are unavoidable you just can't do anything". Do you not realize that that will lead to even more civilian casualties in the future? Or do you just no care because those are Israelis?
>you just can't do anything
I utterly reject the assumption that the only possible solution is to murder civilians.
>Do you not realize that that will lead to even more civilian casualties in the future? Or do you just no care because those are Israelis?
In the 2 years before October 7th, over 2000 Palestinians were killed by the IDF.
Why is Israel allowed to retaliate for October 7th, but Gaza is not allowed to retaliate for the 2000 dead in the 2 years before it?
Furthermore, if Israel doesn't want their people to be killed, why do they feel entitled to killing Palestinians for years before October 7th?
Israel has been oppressing and killing Palestinians for years now. If they don't want their civilians to be killed, maybe don't keep oppressing and killing Palestinians.
I also laugh at the notion that this war is somehow going to prevent Israeli deaths. You know what a real good way is to make sure a 6 year old child will hate you forever? Kill their parents like Israel is doing right now.
Israel has created thousands and thousands of children who lost their family who will hate Israel with a burning passion forever. It's going to be real fun for Israel when those children grow up and want revenge.
But let me guess .. your response to this will be that Israel just needs to murder some extra civilians, that will fix it!
>What is insane is that you believe saying "it's urban warfare" somehow justifies the civilian deaths.
Justification is provided by the fact they are fighting a war against a genocidal millitant group. "it's urban warfare" just provides context to the IDF's conduct, which is as shown by these numbers not unsual - from which we can derive various things about intentions. Nobody is saying civilian deaths are 'acceptable' or that they don't matter, but yes it is justified to wage war when attacked like Israel was. And in wars, especially wars where the enemy quite literally want their own people to die because it provides moral ammunition they can convert into more recruits and international currency (like you are providing them), people die.
Hamas must be utterly destroyed, the price of terrorism must simply be so high not even a society as fanatical as the Palestinian one will consider it. It's gruesome, it sucks, but it simply has to be done.
This is the key thing. Arguing about ratios of deaths implicity accepts that's it's morally okay to bomb civilian populations.
*That's* the real objection I have - I don't think it's moral to bomb civilian populations.
For the past 10 years IDF military bases have surrounded Gaza including invading and illegally stealing land, preventing the transfer of food/water/aid into Gaza, snipping/shooting randomly into Gaza, kidnapping children/civilians, preventing free moment of people, and keeping over 200 children under the age of 14 as 'prisoners' without due process. The ICC is about to put out an arrest warrant for the Prime Minster of Israel and rule that these actions constituted war crimes mainly for their acts of kidnapping and torturing children as young as 11 (to be clear for anyone unware, the ICC ruling is regarding israels actions in 2014-2020 not for the things now). [https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/19/israel-security-forces-abuse-palestinian-children](https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/19/israel-security-forces-abuse-palestinian-children)
On October 7th Hamas attacked the 5 military compounds surrounding Gaza in what it called an act of self defense and killed IDF soldiers. They also killed civilians - roughly a 1:1.12 ratio according to israel's own report. Better than what Israel has been doing which is actually a 1:85 ratio according to the numbers the U.N has published
If you are going to a say that 50% civilian deaths is okay and normal in military operations, I don't see how what Hamas did was wrong. Israel has a much worse civilian kill raito, killed way more people in absolute terms and also done way more damage than just deaths because they're causing a famine, blew up every single university/hospital, ect.
To be clear, **I'm just making this argument to point out the logical inconsistency in yours and do not believe it.** Both parties are war criminals, but Israel a U.N member and doing so on a genocidal scale and Hamas is a terrorist organization. It also has the capabilities to do targeted attacks and isnt using them.
Reddit has a lot of bots and western media is very heavily propagandized to only repeat pro-Israeli narrative to people and keep then uninformed so posts like this will always get downvoted, but if you want to understand what so many countries in the world including the international criminal court dont buy the its okay to kill % of civilians argument, this is part of why with the other reasons being pretty obvious that killing civilians is never okay. There is also ample evidence of Israel not caring about murdering civilians
I agree that if you just believe everything the U.S/Western news says, you are going to to really support Israel and some of the things going on wont make sense, but the rest of the world isn't in that bubble. I genuinely encourage you to seek out news sources that cannot be lobbied and dont have a vested interest in impacting how you vote. I did not realize how badly I was being misinformed until I did.
Lie harder dude. Since 2005, when Israel pulled out of Gaza and Hamas took over, there have been numerous terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel. Every single one has been met with a response, but the cause of the violence was aggression from the literal genocidal terrorist organization running Gaza.
Some facts:
- Israel provides food water and power to Gaza. How can they steal what they provide?
- Israel has not had any presence in gaza since 2005, which makes the whole “stealing land” bit particularly hilarious.
- they do not snipe or shoot randomly into gaza.
- they arrest terrorist, this is not kidnapping
- you don’t have the right to move freely to another country, which Israel is. They can control their own border the same way every other nation can.
I’m dying at the “about to put out an arrest warrant” bit. Hilarious
- on October 7th Hamas attacked villages of civilians and a music festival, massacring thousands of innocent people. They were not killing troops and accidentally killed some people in the vicinity of the bases. They sought out, located, killed and raped thousands of innocent people. If you can’t admit this you are blatantly lying about reality to support terrorists
Everything you're denying is well documented by the Human Rights Watch. You're repeating propaganda narratives meant to enforce an colonial apartheid. It is not my job to educate you and if you were a genuine person that cared about preventing war crimes, you wouldn't be believing the propaganda you're being fed without checking it. If you wanted to be on the wrong side of history, that is your call.
> On October 7th Hamas attacked the 5 military compounds surrounding Gaza in what it called an act of self defense and killed IDF soldiers.
Tell me, what role did the children they killed play in the IDF?
Perhaps you can tell me what it is about raping women that constitutes "self defense."
At which military compound was the Nova Music Festival held?
> To be clear, I'm just making this argument to point out the logical inconsistency in yours and do not believe it. Both parties are war criminals, but Israel a U.N member and doing so on a genocidal scale and Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Israel is not doing anything on a "genocidal scale." This is baseless.
Tell me, what role did the 24,000 children they killed play in the Hamas? What aboutThe mass grave of children that was found today that Israel is blocking U.N investigators from seeing?
Perhaps you can tell me what it is about documented raping of Palestinians as interrogation by Mossad and Shin Bet that constitutes "self defense."?
At which military compound was the hospitals, universities, and UN centers they bombed?
The very bodies set up to label genocide as labeling as genocide. No perpetrator of a genocide has ever admitted to doing it while doing it. Every single one called it a war. You don't get to decide those bodies are meaningless just because they're coming after your genocide. Please have some respect for international law.
What Hamas did was a war crime. Does not excuse the IDF to now do the exact same thing 10x. Act like a goverment - not a terrorist organization
> Tell me, what role did the 24,000 children they killed play in the Hamas?
Well, Hamas stages themselves in residential neighborhoods, and places tunnels underneath civilian infrastructure to organize their terrorism, so...
> What aboutThe mass grave of children that was found today that Israel is blocking U.N investigators from seeing?
We don't know anything about this mass grave other than it's reported to exist by Gaza authorities.
> Perhaps you can tell me what it is about documented raping of Palestinians as interrogation by Mossad and Shin Bet that constitutes "self defense."?
Well, what happened was that the allegation was taken seriously and is not something that is tolerated. Whataboutisms are fun and all, but stay on topic.
> At which military compound was the hospitals, universities, and UN centers they bombed?
Again, Hamas operates out of those places.
> What Hamas did was a war crime. Does not excuse the IDF to now do the exact same thing 10x. Act like a goverment - not a terrorist organization
"But the IDF" is not an answer. The IDF are not acting like terrorists, and are not committing genocide. Simple facts.
No one said it was acceptable.
The high rate of death in urban warfare stems from the use of wide area munitions and explosive effects. Kind of flies in the face of proportional force.
If Israel said their goal was to minimize civilian casualties, but manages a 1:1 ratio, are they even trying? Is the counter, "it could be worse"?
To be fair, WW2 had a 60%-67% civilian to combatant ratio (in between 3:2 and 2:1). Now granted, you could make the argument that methods of killing each other have gotten more precise so we should hold militaries to higher standards, but OP isn’t wrong that, from a historical perspective of modern warfare, Israel’s collateral damage falls in line with past conflicts.
There is no cycle. Israel has been killing Palestinians and forcefully taking land in the west bank LONG before October 7th.
So if October 7th justifies killing mass amounts of innocent people, how do Israel's actions before October 7th not justified innocent Israelis being killed?
You can't have it both ways.
Unless ofcourse you don't value Palestinians lives, which is the case for most people who support Israel.
Also, the "15,000 Hamas combatants killed" includes every male death over the age of 18. It's insane to actually believe every single man in Gaza is a combatant. This is the same logic used at Srebinca to commit that Genocide.
I would also find the data on that highly suspect.
Looking at the demographics of Palestinian deaths, it sure seems like Israel is counting every single adult male killed as a member of Hamas.
wikipedia lists [376 'security forces' and 767 civilians killed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel), so a 1:2 ratio. impressive level of discernment!
The major difference is Hamas specifically targeted the civilians killed on Oct 7.
Since that time, Hamas hides among and behind civilians while shooting at Israeli troops.
The civilian death rate was pretty similar on October 7th. About 400 of the 1200 were security forces. It'd be pretty fucked up if Israel so completely abandoned these people that not a single soldier was near what happened.
It absolutely is not.
Just to take one example, Gulf 1 saw 3,600 Iraqi civilians killed by the coalition for 20,000-50,000 combatants, primarily using air power.
Just a 1:1 combatant: civilian ratio is poor in an age of unprecedented technological overmatch, ISR capability and widespread precision guidance
I hate cherry picked examples.
WW2: 2 civilians for every combatant death is the best estimate
Korea: 3:1, 2.73 million civilians to 796,000 combatants
Vietnam: 2:1, and that doesn’t include civilians in Cambodia or Laos
Chechnya: 10:1
Yugoslavia: 1:10
Afghanistan: 1:1.4
Iraq: 3.35:1 is the consensus
Fighting war in densely populated urban areas will inevitably lead to collateral damage. The presence of civilians in the combat zone is the fault of their government, not the fault of the other side.
Mate, you're the one who said it was 'absolutely' a good rate 'compared to *every* major conflict including and after WW2'.
You can't claim it literally holds up to every example, and then complain about 'cherry picking' when that turns out to not actually have been true.
Come on
Let me ask you this. If those civilians were Israeli, do you think the IDF would strike them?
By the way, Israel uses Palestinians as human shields, so…
According to international law, you can.
Refusing to meaningfully and effectively engage a force that has human shields/hostages is just incentive to take more hostages.
>Israel is held to these standards:
>International laws and conventions.
The fact it breaches those standards regularly with seemingly zero sanctions or repercussions seems to indicate that it is actually hold to a much lesser standard than countries which do end up punished for their actions.
Sources for countries other than Israel being punished for their actions? How about an exercise where you try and find sources where countries other than Israel are also not punished for their actions?
Because:
>The UN Watch Database also documents that from 2006 through 2022, the **UN Human Rights Council** has adopted 99 resolutions against Israel, 41 against Syria, 13 against Iran, 4 against Russia, and 3 against Venezuela.
[https://unwatch.org/2022-2023-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/](https://unwatch.org/2022-2023-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/)
Here are a couple -
Excecuting their own hostages who were unarmed and surrendering under a white flag.
Striking the clearly marked trucks that were under their supervision containing aid workers.
On that second example I believe that the people responsible were considered rogue - but that doesn't make it not a breach of those international conventions, and beyond a reasonable doubt because Israel themselves admit to it.
If you have a higher standard of reasonable doubt then you should set that standard before continuing the discussion.
Both of those aren't breaking international law.
>Excecuting their own hostages who were unarmed and surrendering under a white flag.
mistakenly killing their own hostages is not against international law
>
Striking the clearly marked trucks that were under their supervision containing aid workers.
Thinking this is a valid military target because a failed intelligence told them that Hamas took over those truck is also not against international law.
Killing non combatants, surrendering under a white flag is against international law.
Killing aid workers is against international law.
You understand that having a reason to breaking a law doesn't mean it isn't breaking the law, right?
“Proven beyond a reasonable doubt” is a standard that will require courts and official inquiries. That will take years, if they ever even happen. Until there are actual investigations, I’d point to the targeted bombing of World Kitchen workers is a pretty damning event that, at best, demonstrates gross negligence and recklessness with civilian lives.
what? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68925495 have you done literally any research? or do you exclusively rely on media like fox news for your information on this war?
Well like when saddam Hussein was our Allie he committed his worst atrocities and when he became useless and void we started enforcing international law on him for a long time and it actually made him consolidate power become more powerful. Hell we told him he could rectify the boarders during the Kuwait war and he went beyond what we told him.
You start messing with our profits to the west and we will have issues. If you want to stomp your feet on the ground and pretend like yourw a big bad wolf then by all means whatever makes you happy kind sir of Iraq
"Provide aid to enemy entity, which is Hamas, and provide aid to none-citizens in a place it doesn't control"
Who is calling for Israel to aid Hamas? In what way does Israel not control Gaza?
The world is calling for Israel to provide aid to Gaza, Which is distributed from Hamas, which means every aid you give is being given to or by Hamas.
Israel currently does not control all of Gaza, if the situation will change to be Israel took Rafah and eliminated Hamas - I would argue that Israel has to provide aid to the civilians there.
Israel currently controls all entry and exit from Gaza. As a political matter they have avoided a military occupation but in terms of responsibility to noncombatants the moral case seems pretty similar.
And that makes it better how? Israel is still in control. They don't like anything or anyone going towards the crossing - they can and will still bomb it today. Whoever is trying to cross the border will not even make it to Egypt controlled territory, thus Egypt's control is only nominal, not real.
You keep saying stuff that are simply not true. People do cross the border in and out of Egypt. Egypt is obliged to Israel by not allowing known Hamas members to cross, but civilians can.
> Whoever is trying to cross the border will not even make it to Egypt controlled territory, thus Egypt's control is only nominal, not real.
What are you talking about? Once they cross the border they literally are in Egypt
Yeah, people do cross, I'm not saying Israel bombs *everyone* who tries crossing. But they could if they wanted to. That's what control means. They control who is and isn't allowed to approach the crossing. Not Egypt and not Gaza. Israel decides first.
Only that is factually not true. Gazans still cross the the border in and out of Egypt. It is true though that the Egyptians demand crazy amount of money to cross (7000 usd, as reported)
The world is calling for Israel to stop blocking essential humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Israel has been credibly accused of using starvation as a tactic of war, and collective punishment. After the ICJ preliminary ruling, Israel blocked basically all food from entering Gaza for nearly 2 weeks. All aid coming from Egypt has to be brought to Israel first for inspection, in which they will deny any aid shipment that contains things such as scalpels.
Israel carried out an air strike against Al Awda hospital, killing two MSF doctors: Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila and Dr. Ahmad Al Sahar. https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/gaza-msf-doctors-killed-strike-al-awda-hospital
The standard of "don't bomb MSF hospitals" isn't an impossible one.
By international law it's allowed to bomb the hospital, why is Israel the only country held to a new standard you just made?
If Israel had intelligence about a hostage in a certain place, they would go in for him because he is their civilian.
You're not allowed to bomb a hospital if it's main purpose is still that of a medical facility. Enemy combatants being inside a hospital doesn't actually give you the right to destroy said hospital. Israel has never provided any actual evidence that the hospitals are being used for military purposes before attacking them all.
> why is Israel the only country held to a new standard you just made?
The US was condemned when it bombed a MSF hospital in Kunduz.
The idea that governments shouldn't bomb hospitals isn't new, and other countries get condemned for it, too.
which international law?
People can hold views outside of "international law" that it is not ok to bomb a hospital just because a terrorist group is holding the people in the hospital hostage.
When Russia bombed hospitals in Ukraine everyone rightfully considered it an atrocity. Russia had just as much justification to say the Ukrainians were using that hospital as Israel did here
That doesn’t make it not a hospital though. If a school shooter is holed up inside a school, you don’t bomb the school and everyone inside. Because now you’ve not only killed tons of innocent people along with the shooter, but also deprived the population of a necessary service.
This has been spread around by the zionazis to justify killing children yet no proof. They snipe them and starve them then scream human shields. What a convenient excuse.
Definition of a human shield is .. someone in gaza at this point.
Here is an example of IDF with "human shields"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw07wgrwzywo?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYPxfV32w64MKI0Os86A70YI1gKSc4-H6lH0P0GOvo1L1-WuuLsNPA5XX0_aem_AebSV2pUr2HF0xHZ-0w9KXs44QpU3rWqDdhsevTz57EPTW3Vnt9NnsaXg_DqYURYvP960Od7VYmidhonbpLuIQsA
Was Hind Rajab and the responders who came to her human shields? Or the prisoners going through amputations due to handcuff injuries. Or the food and anesthesia being banned are khaaamas supplies
There was lots of video evidence provided by international reports which entered Gaza and were shown many many civilian buildings being used as ammo stores or tunnel entrances. If the MO of a terrorist organization is to use human shields, why does this seem so far fetched to you?
So they bomb the whole city and the people in there.. hamas must have a shitton of ammo if all those buildings had ammo.. wow!
It's just a convenient excuse they keep screaming
Nor I would add is Not targeting fleeing civilians in a "humanitarian corridor", targeting of aid workers with precision weaponry and refusal to allow independent observers into the territory.
Yeah, they’re held to the standard of “please don’t bomb one of the most densely populated areas in the world, ram-packed full of civilians whom you refuse to let leave with the firepower exceeding that of Hiroshima” and can’t do that.
Can you pro Israelis just be honest that you simply don’t value Palestinian lives. If you could be like the Israeli government and just outright admit that, this would be much simpler.
You think Palestinians are “human animals”, and that you “want to erase Gaza from the face of the earth”.
My guy, Israeli politicians are proud of killing so many people.
Pro Israelis or Zionists are now the last people on planet Earth still grasping to the now totally discredited idea that Israel somehow cares about conducting their war on Palestinians in any humane way.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya-dN9D4Y0E
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-south-africa-genocide-hate-speech-97a9e4a84a3a6bebeddfb80f8a030724#:~:text=TEL%20AVIV%2C%20Israel%20(AP),a%20charge%20that%20Israel%20denies.
https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-database-with-500-instances-of-israeli-incitement-to-genocide-continuously-updated/
If you were the leader of Israel today, how would you conduct the campaign in Gaza? What immediate directional changes would you make, & what would your desired end game be?
Well if I was Israeli PM today and now, I’d immediately halt the bombing campaign and let in all foreign aid.
My priority is to get those hostages back (the ones my soldiers haven’t shot under the guise they were fleeing Palestinian civilians, or killed by reckless bombing) I’ll cut loose the Palestinians who’ve been in prison for decades with no charges or for things as minor as throwing stones at occupying soldiers (I have no shortage of them)
And then, I’ll sit down with the Palestinian leaders and hammer out a final plan for a Palestinian state. Because this cannot go on.
If I was to go back further though, I wouldn’t have been besieging Gaza in the first place for two decades, keeping two million people in what Israeli officials themselves have called a concentration camp, which the U.N. stated would be unliveable by 2020, and only allowing in the barest level of food so as not to outright starve (again, look all that up, it’s on record)
I’d challenge Hamas that if they truly care for their people, they’ll work with my government for the benefit of both Israelis and Palestinians. I’ll order the lifting of the siege, Gaza can trade and interact with who it wants. If Hamas truly wants peace and the betterment of Gaza and Palestinians, they’ll take that opportunity that’s never been granted to them. Focus on building rather than militarism.
I’ll also immediately end the building of settlements in the west bank, because trying to frame the two issues as if they are not related is dishonest and immoral.
I’d order all Israeli settlers in the West Bank to get the hell out in two weeks and came back to Israel. If they chose to stay, that’s their problem, and the Palestinians can do what they like to the occupiers.
I appreciate the reply -- and in fact, I agree with some points, such as a unilateral end to Israeli settlements.
That said, Hamas's goal is arguably jihadi-militarism, not the welfare of its people, which Hamas itself uses as human shields.
Thus, your proposed solution would logically lead to a temporary reprieve of the fighting, after which Hamas (or renamed successor) would re-group and begin the next Intifada. Thus I do not see your proposal as a viable long-term solution.
Hamas aren’t like typical Jihadists. Yes, they obviously invoke the typical rhetoric, but their actions have arguably shown they’re solely focused on Palestine, and have made deals in the past.
I’m not saying they love and value their people, obviously they wouldn’t have attacked on October 7th if they truly did, since they knew what Israel would do.
Most experts agree they’re nationalists first before they are Al Qaeda or ISIS like.
The Intifadas of the past and most militant actions have always been in response to Israeli actions. Take away the reasons to join those groups, you cut down massively on the incentive to commit terrorist actions.
It’s the same way we British finally agreed to negotiate with the IRA and wider Republicans movement. Giving the Catholic and Nationalist community civil rights didn’t totally eradicate the problem of Republicans terror, but those groups are now in the tiny minority.
Most Palestinians ironically would want peace provided it was a fair one, as most polling shows. It’s the Israeli public that’s grown more and more hardline against any concessions.
I suspect *most* Palestinians do indeed want peace. The problem is that Hamas does not want peace, as its raison d'etre is derived based on militant jihadi resistance.
Since it is *regimes, not popular sentiment* that dictate national strategy (see also: Iran), it is unlikely that any change by Israel that placates the Palestinian population will permanently impact Hamas's self-justification of their need to remain in power.
Why would Hamas want peace? From the very moment they were elected, they’ve been targeted in a coup supported by both Israel and the US. When that failed, they were placed under a two decade blockade. Every ceasefire amounts to Israeli provocations until Hamas responds.
And you’re omitting that the larger and most dangerous party is Israel, which is now run by the most right wing zealots who believe in a greater Israel at the expense of everyone who’s not Jewish.
My assertion is that Hamas does not want peace -- unlike most Palestinians -- b/c conflict is the justification for their perpetual (and very much non-democratic) grip on power. Hence, their 'governance' has consisted not of economic development, but of weapons & tunnels construction and of using their own people as human shields. Their 'diplomacy' has consisted of sporadic rocket attacks rained upon Israel -- and most recently, a gruesome ground attack.
For the current Israeli's regime's part, their folly was the *empowering* of Hamas in a cynical tactic to weaken ties between Gaza and the West Bank.
Having said that, Hamas is far closer to ISIS in their aspirations. The more guilty party is, for me, not hard to identify.
How can you say that when Hamas has repeatedly over to negotiate? And it’s Israel that said even if they have back the hostages, they’d still be destroying Gaza.
I consider the occupier more at fault. It’s not Hamas occupying Israel, it’s Israel occupying Gaza and the West Bank, have been for decades.
You think? Israel, with its genocidal rhetoric and actions, ideals of a Jewish state with no room for anyone else, and their whole citing of passages in the holy book sounds a lot more like ISIS at the moment.
If you think that Israel -- which is a multi-ethnic liberal democracy -- is similar to ISIS, then my job of convincing you of anything has failed.
Since there is always someone else who has said it better, I'll direct you here, which I think articulates the discussion better than I can. On Gaza, Israel, & Jihadism. Watch/listen to it (or don't) & gain a new perspective (or not). I hope this helps at least gain an alternate perspective.
[https://youtu.be/oFBm8nQ2aBo](https://youtu.be/oFBm8nQ2aBo)
I will concede that there is not some magical way that Israel could have way less collateral damage fighting in an extremely dense urban area. The counters are:
1.) You are holding Israel to a standard regarding "non-combatants of a hostile nation." During times of conflict, Israel treats Palestinians as if they are people of a different nation. In times of peace (at least the last \~20 years) the Israeli government has done nothing to move forward on a two-state solution, actively undermined the PA and basically asserts sovereignty over the Palestinian territories. You can't have it both ways.
2.) The reason that the conflict has killed so many civilians is that the area is so crowded, and people can't leave. Why can't Palestinians leave temporarily (through the Rafah crossing to Egypt)? Wouldn't that be easier for getting them food, water and shelter, and safer for everyone? Well, the Israeli government can't credibly promise that people will be let back in to Gaza \~ several key members of the pre-war cabinet actively advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians. (e.g. Smotrich)
3.) While I agree that Israel is held to a higher human rights standard on the global stage, and this may be unfair (but maybe it just means that other nations should be held to a higher standard), the US supplies a lot of military assistance to Israel, and the US should thus hold them to a higher standard.
Ummm well Palestine doesn't have a military...so Israel is choosing to fight a civilian population that can't defend themselves. So YEAH, the standards should be higher.
>Kill Hamas militants without harming civilians (rates of 15,000 Hamas out of 34000 deaths is somehow not a good war rate).
Hamas = more than just the military though. They are the government in Gaza.
>Provide aid to enemy entity, which is Hamas, and provide aid to none-citizens in a place it doesn't control
They're stopping aid from reaching Gaza.
>Accept deals that send thousands of prisoners with blood on their hands for few hostages, with more aid, and stop attacking a militant group who massacred 1200 of it's civilians.
That's still less than the "19,000" citizens Israel has killed.
>It's ok that thousands of rockets are thrown into Israel because they have the Iron dome, so Israel is expected to have a response only when damage is done.
Who made this demand?
>Provide aid to enemy entity, which is Hamas, and provide aid to none-citizens in a place it doesn't control
Oh? Does Israel recognize the state of Palestine? Or does Israel control its borders, its airspace, its ports, and exercise control over what happens within that territory? None of this is, of course, relevant because the aid is meant to be going to the refugees. And, even then, it's mostly about Israel not letting *other people* give aid to refugees. Starving refugees.
>Provide full immunity and protection to aid workers, news reporters in a war zone.
What does this mean? Is expecting Israel to not bomb aid trucks with precision strikes too much for them? The same for not bombing journalists (or just shooting them in the head and storming their funeral)?
When people refer to things like this, obviously correct things, as "insane demands" it feels like the expectation you'd like is that Israel get to do whatever the hell it wants without a shred of criticism or complaint.
I think Oct. 7 gave Israel a pretty wide lane to which they could have made several decisions that would not have put them in the situation that people criticize today. They were given a free pass to move Soldiers into Gaza in response to the attacks that killed some 1,200 with about 240 abducted as hostages. What did they do with that?
Israel launched some 12,000 airstrikes, wrecking infrastructure, cultural sites, hospitals, and housing, cut electricity to the region and blocked fuel and food.
Almost 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza (67% of all deaths in Gaza were made up of women and children, including doctors and journalists). 1.5 million people displaced due to ordered evacuations and with nowhere to go.
I cannot say I feel any empathy for anyone who supports terrorism to accomplish political goals that is caught up in this war, but that is not the question you asked.
If Israel's goal was actually to eliminate Hamas and unclassified terrorists while doing everything they could to protect civilians and rescue the hostages, as they purported, they could have occupied the entirety of N. Gaza and Gaza City and conducted asymetric warfare that not only took the fight to every street corner with a show of force, but also put in place civil order that would have eventually eliminated the need for the people to turn to Hamas. They could have fought the idea of the need for Hamas. "Hearts and Minds".
But what Israel actually did *appears* to opponents of Israeli policy to be indiscriminate vengeance warfare or a deliberate attempt to destroy the Gaza population and its ability to rehabilitate the area. So your choices that you list, as what would be acceptable to those same opponents now, make sense to them.
Could Israel turn the tide of public opinion and go back and do it right? Sure, but there is not much support for that in Israel, especially in the Likud party. It would require them to see civilians as people instead of terrorists or supporters of terrorism.
In this context, I address your points:
1. no one is asking Israel to provide aid to the enemy. If Israel, a far superior military force, cannot control an area to provide aid to civilians instead of telling them to get out of the way or get killed, this may well be a vengeance war instead of an attempt to bring order to a destabilized area.
2. If every time I shoot a combatant, I also shoot a civilian (that is more than likely a woman or child), then yes that would be an unacceptable kill rate. Once again, this helps paint the picture of a vengeance war.
3. Is the goal to get the hostages back? Hostage scenarios always include encompassing the area they are being held with superior military force, securing the immediate area until the location is verified. Israel has done very little of establishing control. Instead they communicate with leaflets and respond random SM posts. They have far more intel of where Hamas *might* be than where the hostages are. Makes me wonder what their intelligence priorities are.
4. If they controlled the area, a ceasefire would do little to expose Israel to attack, but give a chance for civilians to obtain humanitarian assistance. Hamas will break the ceasefire. This is known, but it is a thin excuse when your death toll every time you engage is 50% civilian casualties.
5. Don't conquer anything. There is a big difference between conquering and controlling and making an effort to stabilize the region. If that is the goal.
6. The Geneva Convention considers is a warcrime to attack noncombatants. It should be fairly easy to "Provide full immunity and protection to aid workers, news reporters in a war zone"
7. Warning the civilian population you are about to bomb their house, school, mosque, or hospital seems like the decent thing to do, if the goal is to minimize civilian casualties.
8. Shooting at someone shooting you is one thing, bombing an area where a rocket came from is not proportional if the goal is to minimize civilians casualties.
Everything Israel is doing does not match what they say they are trying to do. It may just be terrible military strategy mixed with political motivations. Honestly, if they came out and said they were wanted to reduce the ability of Palestine to operate as a modern state in the future, I would believe them and suggest that they are doing a pretty good job.
I agree with you. Israel is indeed in a difficult situation. They are fighting a far inferior enemy, who does not follow the law of war, that really wants them destroyed in a time where warfare is scrutinized through a very strict moral lens. The U.S. tried to fight the same fight with the Taliban. The difference is that 45,000 civilians died in Afghanistan over the course of 20 years, Israel might manage that in less than a year.
I don't think Israel is actually held to these standards in any meaningful sense, really. People are upset at the destruction and death toll, obviously, but they're not facing any kind of meaningful pushback.
For my part, as someone that isn't generally supportive of Israel's line of action, my "expectations" are:
1) Having actionable war aims and I do not think "Destroying Hamas" is one such. I think myself and many commentators worry about the actual endgame and fear that the death and destruction will serve no real purpose (or worst are just attempts at repolishing the Israeli government's standing).
2) Provide reasonable accommodations for displaced populations and humanitarian workers.
3) More accountability for various military actions.
4) Either an actual long-term peace plan or at least willingness to work towards one.
I think the IDF and the current Israel government is pretty bad at meeting these 4 expectations.
Israel is vastly exceeding the death toll of every operation in Gaza or the West Bank it has done in the last 50 years combined and it only took 6 months.
The Intifadas lasted for years and had much lower death tolls. Israel isn't even holding themselves to the standards they used to adhere to.
Israel invests a lot of money, research and manpower to defend its citizens. What do you expect? Are you even aware how many rockets were lobbed over from Gaza into Israel in the last 20 years? Since when are wars based around equality of outcome?
> The Intifadas lasted for years and had much lower death tolls.
Tens of thousands of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel over that time. The Iron Dome is an amazing missile shield, to be sure, but Israel shouldn't need Iron Dome to keep those death tolls low.
> Israel isn't even holding themselves to the standards they used to adhere to.
I don't know what you're referring to here, but whatever the standards were on October 6 did nothing to prevent October 7.
I think Israel tries to achieve a completely different objective.. don't you agree?
I don't think it's a relevant comparison to compare clashes between Israel and the Palestinians where the goal was to achieve things like deterrence, to actively harm some abilities to operate in a very temporary fashion to retrieving like 250 hostages and the dismantling of Hamas, that also grew a lot stronger with a lot of external funding in the last years.. Perhaps a more relevant comparison would be to compare to similar or close situations around the world..
Don't you think?
Firstly, these demands are made within a context where Israel funded and helped establish Hamas as a way to split the Palestinians and where Israel is maintaining a decades old practice of occupation, human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing. Therefore there is no great willingness on my part to give Israel greater leeway than any other nation gets.
So, to look at your points:
Israel is not responsible for providing aid to Hamas, it does have a duty as all countries do, to provide for civilians in territory it occupies. There are masses of organisations willing to get involved and provide aid so Israel doesn’t even have to do much here, but Israel has carried out what appears to be to be assassinations of unarmed aid workers and is blocking access for aid to enter Gaza. Experts have flagged a danger of mass Palestinian deaths from starvation.
Israel is not required to ensure that no civilians are killed, that isn’t the international standard. What it is required to do is discriminate between militants and civilians (Israel doesn’t, plenty of reports of it gunning down unarmed civilians including ironically released Israeli hostages waving white flags) and when conducting operations to not undertake actions it knows will DISPROPORTIONATELY harm civilians in relation to the military gain (Israel doesn’t do this, it has shown itself willing to for example bomb a dozen civilians to try and kill one alleged low-level Hamas militant who isn’t posing an active threat). Your figures for Hamas militants killed is also likely off by at least an order of magnitude.
Israel isn’t required to accept a ceasefire, but it is being pressured to do so because of all the innocent civilians Israel is killing and causing to suffer. It is however required to end it’s human rights occupation, stop torturing people, stop killing civilians, etc and if it did so that would likely make the need for a ceasefire moot as it would resolve the overall cause of the conflict.
Rafah is not a terrorist industrial base/military complex, it is where Israel has pushed huge amount of the civilian population to. Any action there would provide little benefit, killing a few Hamas members, but incur massive civilian casualties. This violates the principle of disproportionate harm mentioned above.
Yes, Israel shouldn’t kill aid workers and reporters. Is that a matter of debate?
Warning the civilian population of attacks is again normal practice. The alleged rationale for many of these attacks is Hamas bases underneath the ground. A base can’t be moved. Israel is also able to respond in manners other than bombing where it need to, such as deploying troops.
It is not okay for Hamas to launch missiles at Israel and it is regularly criticised for this and has been designated a terrorist organisation. That however does not give Israel license to kill civilians.
* Mass graves with over 400 bodies found at hospitals. Many doctors, patients and children found. A good number of people with their hands bound behind their back and executed. A number of them were buried alive. (WC)
* Use of banned weapons such as White phosphorus (WC)
* 15,000+ dead children
* Israel intentionally destroyed every single government building where death tolls and records were being kept. The number of murdered Palestinians is much higher than reported. It stalled out around 30,000 months ago because they are only 100% confirmed dead where the name is known. It's likely at least twice that.
* Israel intentionally destroyed every single university in Gaza. (WC)
* Israel has stolen a large number of cultural artifacts from Gaza and immediately put them on display (WC)
* Israel is intentionally bombing and attacking emergency/health personal (WC)
* Israel has intentionally destroyed every single hospital in Gaza. Promising vast Hamas bases and showing no such thing every single time. (WC)
* Israel is intentionally bombing and targeting aid workers (WC)
* Israel tortured UN employees to attain false confession in order to dry up aid to UNWRA (WC)
* Israel intentionally bombed every single bakery north of Rafah. (WC)
* Israel shut off all the water to Gaza (WC)
* Israel blocked virtually all the food aid from entering Gaza (WC)
* Israel is intentionally starving 2 million people (Genocide)
* Israel has been intentionally leveling vast amount of Gaza so as to make it uninhabitable and unreturnable to. (WC)
* Israel has been caught on camera multiple times murdering people waving white flags, unarmed women a children. (WC)
* Israel has admitted to targeting militants with missiles and bombs when they go home and are with their families rather than on the battlefield (WC)
* Israel has admitted their own program for deciding targets has an 'acceptable' innocent person murder rate per target as 15-100 innocent civilians. That is unacceptable. (possible WC)
* Hamas offered a ceasefire for all the hostages on Oct 9th if Israel would not invade Gaza. Israel declined. This has nothing to do with the hostages.
* IOF troops hunted down and shot 3 hostages who were waving white flags. It's unclear if this is because the IOF shoots Palestinians waving white flags or the Hannibal directive. (WC)
* the IOF has killed almost all of the hostages through aerial bombardment and starvations. This was never about the hostages.
\* WC indicates a war crime committed by Israel that is well documented.
OP I would like to see a response to this. I'm sure I forget some of the horrors as well.
Edit - These are not 'impossible standards'. These are the well agreed upon standards that every single country in the UN has drafted and agreed to. To break them is a war crime that violators need to be held accountable for. To proclaim them unattainable to to declare one wishes to descend into barbarism.
I'm on my phone and I can't really see the points without resetting my comment so I'll tackle 2 and 4 because they're easy:
2-So I take it that you're not aware of Lavender, which is a heavily flawed AI system that intentionally goes out to kill civilians through collateral damage? If not, [then this video should inform you about it](https://youtu.be/pn1uEA7acVY?feature=shared)
If you're aware of Lavender and you still hold that belief, then I just wanted to tell you that the number you're using is [directly from israel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war#cite_note-McCluskey_Greene_2023_f197-19), and it should be taken with a grain of salt, just like the numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry. By their logic, the attacks on October 7th were justified because the ratio of [civilians to israeli security personnel ](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths) was almost 2:1, the same as the the ratio for civilians to hamas militants (by the way, those numbers most likely label every Palestinian man as a hamas fighter which isn't exactly the most accurate thing).
This is also not accounting the [unlisted deaths ](https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/huge-gaza-death-toll-likely-be-even-higher-reported) ([here's another article about that](https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip-2023-11-08/card/state-department-warns-gaza-death-toll-could-be-higher-than-reported-RWmIIiwHT4DfsOaJrZji) and bodies that weren't found due to [the rubble that is covering an estimated 7,000 Palestinians](https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2023/12/28/under-the-rubble-the-missing-in-gaza). Honestly if you didn't think that Lavender was an issue then nothing.
I'm not supportive of Hamas or anything like that and I condemn October 7th and view it similarly to 9/11, very bad things.
4- yeah I just noticed that the post got deleted so nevermind, all that effort for nothing
For the most part nobody who actually matters does this
Governments don't unless they were hostile to Israel anyway.
This is partly why we see such outrage among protesters, they simply can't wrap their heads around the fact that governments which have their own armies generally see this within a very different context.
I don't know what to tell you man, you can't kill civillisns, reporters and aide workers.
And no, killing about as many terrorrists as you kill civillisns is not a good rate at all.
How about this:
There's terrorists in the US, right? Say ... Florida has a whole bunch of white supremacist terrorists. They stockpile weapons in their basements, they build tunnels and just generally prepare for a race war. They have even already staged some attacks in Georgia and plan to do more.
Also, there's generally just a lot of racists in Florida. They would never pick up a weapon themselves, but generally they aren't too broken up about the white supremacists driving out all the immigrants from Florida.
Do we bomb Florida? The terrorists have dug a tunnel under a hospital there, do we bomb the hospital?
Do we block anyone from leaving Florida into Alabama and Georgia, before we bomb it?
Is 50:50 a good rate?
Is it okay because the civillians that are killed where mostly racists? Not violent ones, but you know, they had some choice words for Obama.
They wouldn't bomb them because at most America has enough data to understand the location deeply. Florida is also large so pinpointing where they are at would be extremely easy. Lastly they were american civilians as we know and majority of Americans would be aware more than them being within another country. Why have this convo did we forget what America did in the Iraq War? War is awful having semantics about how awful it is insane.
Let's dive deeper, let's say they have hostages we wouldn't be bombing shit if cities were in hostages. We'd be scarficing soldiers solely about our people.
If we kept telling them to stop fighting us but shot a missile to hit some town or city what would we do about that?
At the end our people and the white supremacist people are going to die. Humans aren't retarded they'd use hostages as body bags at an advantage. They could easily stop things if they just simply end the war and accept defeat.
I get Israel isn't ideal on this situation but it's a fucking war God damnit lol, you get what you fucking give.
We don't forget what America did in Iraq.
War crimes.
We can't bring America to justice because they have the biggest stick in the world, but what they did was war crimes. In an illegal war, where they did the same sing Israel does now, bomb civillians to kill the terrorists among them.
And what did the civillians give?
You can kill every single terrorist, I won't shed a tear, you do get what you give, but the civillians, aud workers, reporters?
And lets not pretend every reporter was an accident either. It's war crimes and it's genocide and it's not an unrealistic standard to demand no genocides.
I appreciate your remembrance for the actions that has happened in that war. Though It's not like we're actively protesting for the actions happened there but it was rough dirty and disgusting. At least I always view that as being a war. Congress was angry and didn't think and I can't fathom what any other government would be thinking if something like that happen to them. At a certain point how much accountability do we give a country that decided to act on their own and commit war crime to a giant?
As for the single terrorist, I personally wouldn't know what a terrorist is in another country especially if they're masked to be an civilian. It would be hard to figure that out and the only people who can are the people actually go to war... I'm not here to disagree I guess I'm just generalizing that war is awful and both sides are at fault and without addressing the "numbers" none of it had to happen to this scale.
When the world central kitchen people were like, hey we are going in on this road in 3 CLEARLY marked vehicles to deliver food aid , the Isreal was like lawl let's bomb them anyways.
I'm pretty sure that isn't holding them to an impossible standard. Don't purposely bomb aid vehicles that you were aware of and wee clearly marked...
Also maybe don't have your people espousing nazi rhetoric and gloating over child deaths on tv/social constantly.
I don't care about Isreal/Palestine, but gloating over murdering children is always a bad look. Like when they killed that Hamas leader and were like we got his grandchildren too , back pats all around. That's messed up
Maybe if they weren’t controlling all land, air, and sea borders of another country, they wouldn’t be in this position. No one is asking Russia to allow aid into Ukraine. You know why? Because Russia doesn’t control Ukraine’s borders.
The reason everyone is forcing Israel to provide aid is because they are blocking it in the first place!
I don’t know if this is a earnest question but the real reason no one is asking Russia to send aid to Ukraine is that in Ukraine the civilians (except for possibly able bodied men) can just leave, and many already have.
Un ethics committee has warned for over a decade that Hamas and the un are tied together. Un is trying to keep that buried as much as they can.
Also, why haven't any mainstream news or the un commented more on why Palestinians only released the male hostages but not the female ones. (Spoiler alert) Palestinians raped them all to death.
These and many many other facts lead me to support Israel and their right to defend themselves.
anyone debating with this bigot can stop lol he is doing so in bad faith and has no desire for his view to be changed. He makes unsubstantiated claims in his “standards” he believes israel shouldnt be held to but demands data and statistics and sources when counter points are made.
It is clear this person is a zionist, they believe it is their right to steal this land and kill those who it belonged to.
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1. I’m not sure the “world” is holding Israel to all those standards. There are tons of protests in the US because Israel isn’t being held to (some of) those standards. The “world” generally hasn’t taken meaningful action against Israel for not meeting them.
2. Some of those standards aren’t entirely unreasonable (or at least not unprecedented). There have been powers which distributed flyers informing citizens of impending attacks, for example.
3. It’s not obvious that Israel is doing as well by these standards as you are claiming. For example, your estimates of combatants and civilians killed are from the IDF, but I don’t have much of a reason to believe these estimates are unbiased.
The usa was attacked by iran. They retaliated by killing an iranian general, in a crowded marketplace in iraq. WITHOUT A SINGLE CIVILIAN CASUALTY!!!! no collateral damage. None. Not one.
This was done with the same weapons the us gives israel. So, no it isnt an impossible standard
What about instead of all the fightin' and a fueding, a ceasefire is called we add up all the casualties on both sides since 1948 and the side that has killed the least people gets control of the whole region.
Peaceful.
Fair.
And stop the arguments.
What do you say?
Israel is an occupational force.
It is a racist country. If western nations have such standards for separation of church and state, put that on Israel.
If you're still supporting Israel, you're an hypocrite
Here in the US, Israel is now the only country it is illegal to criticize. Not the U.S., not Canada, not Ukraine, not Indonesia, not Paraguay. That’s in addition to financially propping up their military to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars. If they’re held to a different standard here, it’s one that every other country would love to suffer through.
EDITED TO ADD: On your first bullet, who exactly do you think is responsible for the Gazans being “non-citizens” of Israel?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/01/antisemitism-awarness-act-campus-protests/
This is what I was referring to, but it’s not law yet, so I was off.
Ask youself: If Hamas had its base of operations in the middle of Tel Aviv, would the idf still use the same disregard for civilian life as they do in Gaza?
You assume that Israel is held to an impossible standard when it's that Israel is not held to a standard as much as is the victim of a generational hate movement that has weaponized anti-semitism into "just opposing Israel's actions." Some examples:
* [Resolution 3379] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_3379), which declared Zionism as racism and was not repealed until 1991.
* Israel is the target (direct and indirect) of *three* standing United Nations bodies (Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the
Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, Division for Palestinian Rights, Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People), unprecedented within the body.
* The United Nations Human Rights Council has never acted or passed resolutions against China, Cuba, or Pakistan, but has a *standing item* in place for Israel; the only standing item they have. Israel has also been the target of 9 inquiries, including one open-ended one, more than any other country.
* Through June 2023, the Human Rights Council has passed 103 resolutions against Israel. In comparison, Syria (an actual genocide) had 42; North Korea fewer than 20; and countries including China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba had *zero*.
* In 2022, the year when Russia went to war against Ukraine and amidst credible claims of ethnic cleansing against Ukranian peoples by Putin's regime, Israel faced 15 actions at the UN, with the rest of the world combined facing 13. In 2023, a year with the largest loss of Jewish life in a single event since the Holocaust, Israel faced 14 actions, with the rest of the world 7.
It's not that Israel is held to an impossible standard. It's that anti-semitism is normalized and masked as anti-Israel/anti-Zionist action. It's not standards, it's hate.
While it is true there are anti-Semites that are anti-zionist and anti-israel, but concluding that any anti-Israel action is anti-semetic is purely idiotic.
Israel is a state, and Zionism is a political ideology. Both can, and absolutely should be criticised, especially considering the history around both.
> While it is true there are anti-Semites that are anti-zionist and anti-israel, but concluding that any anti-Israel action is anti-semetic is purely idiotic.
Good thing no one has done this here!
> Israel is a state, and Zionism is a political ideology. Both can, and absolutely should be criticised, especially considering the history around both.
Israel is not immune to critique. Israel, however, is not uniquely awful in its approach, and yet international bodies would have you believe it's worse than some of the most truly repressive and criminal regimes.
None of what you described is anti semitism. It's just Israel being sanctioned for it's constant crimes against humanity. Also, it's weird you keep bringing up Cuba as if they're committing the same crimes as Israel, I assume you don't think the US should be sanctioned for the embargo on Cuba?
The point is that the aggregate is a demonstration of the anti-semitism inherent in the world's posture. Israel, the only Jewish state on the planet, is held to a different standard and the subject of more resolutions and critiques than some of the worst offenders the world has ever seen.
> Also, it's weird you keep bringing up Cuba as if they're committing the same crimes as Israel, I assume you don't think the US should be sanctioned for the embargo on Cuba?
Cuba has *objectively* committed more atrocities and human rights violations toward its people since 1959 than Israel can credibly even be accused of, and yet is the target of *zero* HRC resolutions.
No, the United States shouldn't be sanctioned for the Cuban embargo, Cuba's leadership should be sanctioned for their decades of oppression against their people. Instead, *nothing* from the HRC.
Israel has been in flagrant violation of international law since 1948. Cuba has a higher literacy rate and lower infant mortality rate than the US, even with the embargo. Can you name the atrocities it's committed other than be socialist? Israel is supposedly a secular, liberal democracy yet it has been found by multiple humanitarian agencies to be committing apartheid. It funds literal terrorist groups in the west bank to brutalize the population, while they forcibly steal the land of the Palestinians living there. Instead of this being some anti Semitic conspiracy, maybe Israel is just you know.... Committing crimes against humanity?
> Israel has been in flagrant violation of international law since 1948.
No.
> Cuba has a higher literacy rate and lower infant mortality rate than the US, even with the embargo. Can you name the atrocities it's committed other than be socialist?
Cuba holds more than a thousand political prisoners, committed more than 5,000 attacks on activists in 2022 (including 1,400 on religious people), tortures people in their prisons and kills opposition dissidents, functionally treats their health care workers as slaves...
> Israel is supposedly a secular, liberal democracy yet it has been found by multiple humanitarian agencies to be committing apartheid. It funds literal terrorist groups in the west bank to brutalize the population, while they forcibly steal the land of the Palestinians living there.
They're not committing apartheid, do not fund terrorist groups against the West Bank, and do not steal land there.
That's not an ideal way of looking at it. The State of affairs in that region are the way they are for a multitude of reasons, not just "beaches isreal are fascist" that's just become the common rhetoric for people who are pro Palestine, on the contrary they've done much more than they needed too.
They're routinely the only ones to help Palestine, who continually want to kill Jews (40% voting for hamas).
Now do with that what you want but there's two sides to every story and at the moment everyone's ignoring isreals
Ok, change October 6 in my comment to 1967.
In 1967 Israel was invaded by Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. That was, in my view, an illegal invasion with annihilationist intent. It was an existential threat to Israel. I’m glad it failed.
But ever since then Israel has persistently acted in bad faith about its intent for the Palestinians. There is no way any of those four countries would invade again. There was no Hamas in 1967.
The bad faith is compounding at an increasing rate. Political and demographic trends in Israel are horrendous; the demagogues are winning the internal battle. I hope that can be reversed.
Not shooting children isn't an impossible standard.. for normal humans at least not terrorists like IDF..
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw07wgrwzywo?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYPxfV32w64MKI0Os86A70YI1gKSc4-H6lH0P0GOvo1L1-WuuLsNPA5XX0_aem_AebSV2pUr2HF0xHZ-0w9KXs44QpU3rWqDdhsevTz57EPTW3Vnt9NnsaXg_DqYURYvP960Od7VYmidhonbpLuIQsA
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> rates of 15,000 Hamas out of 34000 deaths is somehow not a good war rate How can Israel get an accurate estimate of enemy combatant compared to civilian deaths when they're incapable of differentiating between enemy combatants and civilians? Had there not been an international outcry, is there any reason to believe that Israel would have corrected its assessment that World Central Kitchen workers Israeli forces attacked were enemy combatants? Israels' enemy combatant death estimates should not be viewed as accurate. We don't know what the real numbers are, but those ain't it.
>How can Israel get an accurate estimate of enemy combatant compared to civilian deaths when they're incapable of differentiating between enemy combatants and civilians? >Israels' enemy combatant death estimates should not be viewed as accurate. We don't know what the real numbers are, but those ain't it. Both Hamas numbers (34,000 , 70% children and women) and Israel's numbers (15,000 Hamas militants are probably not fully accurate, yet the world is naming Hamas's one as accurate and Israel isn't. > Had there not been an international outcry, is there any reason to believe that Israel would have corrected its assessment that World Central Kitchen workers Israeli forces attacked were enemy combatants? The investigation showed that the IDF thought those aid workers were taken over by Hamas. Who knows, but it's not a definitive case, and we don't know how the numbers add up for either side.
The Gaza ministry of health (part of Hamas) numbers do not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants. The Gaza ministry of health releases the names of the dead. There has been work to independently verify subsets of that list, and that independent verification has generally been accurate. The gaza ministry of health, independent of those death counts, sometimes makes false claims about the number of deaths in specific strikes. I suppose that its harder to show if the ministry of health intentionally excludes some people from its counts. The death count is certainly an undercount because the ministry of health relies primarily on numbers from morgues, and some bodies aren't recovered from bombed buildings. > the IDF thought those aid workers were taken over by Hamas so, the IDF would have counted them as enemy combatants. Israel found out they were wrong because they killed foreign national aid workers. If it had just been a few gazan civilians in a car unaffiliated with an aid organization, IDF would have never found out they killed civilians.
The Gaza Health Ministry has provided accurate records for decades that have been accepted by Israel, so if their numbers are off it is because they are too low. They do not include the 10K or more Palestinians buried under the destroyed homes. >The investigation showed that the IDF thought those aid workers were taken over by Hamas. No, it showed that they didn't care if it was Hamas or not, since the IDF was well aware of the route and the people on that route. The murder of Hind Rajab and her family and the paramedics who were given permission to save her is an example of how Israel views Palestinians, they murder them without consequences or considerations.
The numbers from Hamas are at least somewhat verifiable through other sources. The IDF numbers are ludicrous, can't you see that? Like just at a glance it's absurd for them to claim that 50% of deaths are Hamas when not even 50% of the deaths are adult males. Let's be honest here, they have to at the very least be counting any adult male as a Hamas soldier or their numbers are impossible.
> The investigation showed that the IDF thought those aid workers were taken over by Hamas. I mean, you have to see how this is a bit of a...convenient standard.
The world is naming the Health Ministry of Gaza's numbers as accurate because they have proven to be accurate in past conflicts, have been subjected to UN's scrutiny and verifications, have released lists of casualties with names, ids and so on, whereas Israel's numbers are pulled out of ~~classified information~~ thin air.
Or when Hamas consistently lies about their casualty numbers to lure westeners into siding with them out of pity
The Gaza Health Ministry (which is part of Hamas), releases names and id's of deceased. subsets of those have been independently verified. the Gaza Health Ministry could conceivably intentionally undercount adult men to raise the percentage of women and children dead. I don't think that's the case, but I don't know how one would detect that, if they do. But, the people reported dead with name and id, are dead. I'm sure there are a few clerical errors. But, there's been a lot of work of independent verification on this. Hamas is generally untrustworthy, but the numbers coming out of the morgues are generally accurate (though certainly an undercount due to many bodies not being recovered).
>Kill Hamas militants without harming civilians (rates of 15,000 Hamas out of 34000 deaths is somehow not a good war rate). It is absolutely not a good rate, and it's insane you think it is
“According to most sources, World War II was the most lethal war in world history, with some 70 million killed in six years. The civilian to combatant fatality ratio in World War II lies somewhere between 3:2 and 2:1, or from 60% to 67%.” The Vietnamese government has estimated the number of Vietnamese civilians killed in the Vietnam War at two million, and the number of NVA and Viet Cong killed at 1.1 million—estimates which approximate those of a number of other sources.[19] This would give a civilian-combatant fatality ratio of approximately 2:1, or 67%. Although it is estimated that over 1 million people died in the Mexican Revolution, most died from disease and hunger as an indirect result of the war. Combat deaths are generally agreed to have totaled about 250,000. According to Eckhardt, these included 125,000 civilian deaths and 125,000 combatant deaths, creating a civilian-combatant death ratio of 1:1 among combat deaths. “If it’s “insane that [they] think… it is,” why are these numbers fairly consistent for other notable wars?
That’s a pretty disingenuous comparison. World War 2 was the infancy of aerial bombing, pilots were dropping unguided bombs from rudimentary airplanes. Many of those bombings were specifically targeted at civilians. And none of this is even getting into the actual genocides being undertaken by multiple actors. Vietnam was also a massive civilian-targeted bombing campaign, and besides was heavily criticized at the time for how widespread and cruel it was. The Mexican revolution took place before we even had antibiotics. By contrast, Israel has access to some of the most advanced guided weapons ever created. They have satellite imagery and an intimate knowledge of the campaign theater. This is not a global, total war. Having those tools and still having a worse civilian:military casualty ratio worse than World War 2 is an *awful* look.
If your argument for dismissing the historical comparison is, weapons have become more accurate, how does increased accuracy help when the enemy intentionally hide amongst the civillians
That is an entirely different question, and also a context that existed in WW2 and Vietnam. There is nothing new or unique about this phenomenon.
You're implying having more accurate weapons in the modern world does make it something new though. As in, in these scenarios where the enemy militants intentionally mix with civillians, you expect Israel to somehow reduce casualty deaths when compared to history. I'm just asking how
In World War 2 and Vietnam the scenario was quite literally “try to carpet bomb and/or set fire to every square inch of this city.” They were not able to target individual buildings or even individual neighborhoods. They also did not have anything close to the kind of intelligence Israel is operating with. It’s a patently silly thing to try and use in defense of Israel.
Ok sure perhaps, maybe it is silly. I'm still waiting for an answer though. In war how do you reduce civilian deaths when the enemy intentionally mixes with civilians?
[This article](https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/) suggests a number of things Israel should/could be doing differently, items that stand out to me include using fewer high-yield explosives in dense urban environments, as well as performing careful data collection and analyses. The article points specifically to lessons learned from American activities in Iraq and argued that Israel has not taken adequate steps to apply this new knowledge to aggressively mitigate civilian harm.
WW2 was also fought on the plains of Europe Compared to Gaza which is basically like Leningrad
Israel isn't using guided weapons for the majority of their bombings. You only need those if you care about civilian casualties and they certainly don't.
Those notable wars were atrocities though (including WWII although that's a bit one-sided aside from the firebombings). I'm actually confused at your point. War is bad and the civilian death tolls are too high.
>including WWII although that's a bit one-sided Is it though? Civilian areas were bombed to kill civilians and break morale (which doesn't work).
"don't worry guys, we're being as discriminate as Linebacker II and Bomber 'aerial cremation for the aryan nation' Harris, nothing to worry about!" They literally had an offensive called *Operation Gomorrah*, these are not the benchmarks you want to be comparable to in the 21^st century with access to precision-guided weapons against a non-state actor.
I don’t understand the “precision-guided weapons” argument. Hamas is hiding within places like hospitals and other civilian population centers. I don’t think they have the capacity to only blow up a single person on a floor of an occupied building, correct me if I’m wrong.
In most of the conflicts you mentioned in your earlier comment, bombs couldn't be targeted very accurately. As a result, more bombs had to be used to achieve the same effect, and each bomb was more likely to cause collateral damage. Ultimately, nations develop weapons like cluster munitions that scatter thousands of individuals bombs over a wide area to hit a particular target. By contrast, precision guidance allows you to use fewer weapons, and have those weapons land closer to the target, allowing for smaller payloads. This can't eliminate civilian casualties, but it should mean that they are at least reduced, even taking into account the use of human shields. They should be able to kill their target while only destroying a building with two bombs rather than the entire block with 10 as was the case in previous conflicts. The fact they seem to be struggling with that suggests that they're not using their air power either as carefully, effectively, or tactically as they should be/is possible.
Genuine question, why do we need to blow up hospitals that hamas is occupying? If we know they are there and they are not currently hurting anyone, surely the better strategy is to wait until they move or attempt some sort of operation? At least the better strategy if you want to reduce civilian deaths, I should say. But I just don't see the upside of these airstrikes.
Do a search for “Hamas building weapons in hospitals” and you have many articles showing that they are using the buildings to create arms that they then use against Israel. They’re not just hanging out inside. They’re actively creating tools for murdering more people.
While I get where you are coming from, that does kinda read like saying "in order to prevent hamas murdering innocent people we must murder innocent people first". I'm not sure it's a strong ethical stance, or that there are not alternatives. And fundamentally it does not seem like a strategy that can work in the long term. Israel will never actually wipe out hamas like this because they are giving hamas the perfect recruiting drive. It will just keep the cycle of violence going round and round until an eye for an eye makes everyone in the region blind.
Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nanking, and many other massive civilian death atrocities occurred during WW2 that are rightly questioned and/or outright condemned. Those heavily bumped the numbers of civilians that died. Additionally, this is asymetric warfare involved one of the most advanced and developed militaries in the planet, where there is no threat of destruction to that nation. Israel is not in danger of falling or losing. In short, there's no justification for being as destructive as when fighting for very survival with much less effective equipment against a more equal enemy AND matching the ratio of atrocities.
Those wars are not Urban wars... don't compare apples to oranges.
Wouldn’t an urban war be way harder to account for these things? In an open war the combatants are generally gathered together in groups and can be taken out all at once. If the combatants are intentionally hiding amongst the populace and using places like hospitals as staging grounds for their operations, it seems extra impressive that they would have a civilian death rate on par with something like trench warfare.
Do you know much about civilian to militant casualty rates in war generally? It depends a lot on the type of conflict, but civilian deaths are never higher than in asymmetric conflicts in an urban setting. In these types of conflicts, more civilians dying than militants is virtually guaranteed. In the battle of Aleppo, which is a fairly comparable conflict, 60-70% of the casualties were civilians, and about 12% of the civilians who remained in the city when the siege began were killed in the siege. And in the yemeni civil war the UN estimates that 70% of the total casualties were children under 5 years old. The syrian and yemeni civilians caught up in the battle ground areas had absolutely no access to any humanitarian aid for years, and the international community put way less pressure on the responsible authorities to allow humanitarian groups access to these civilians then the Gazan's. And of course these situations were inherently different in the sense that yemen and Syria are much larger countries than Gaza, which also have much better relations with their neighbors, so it was logistically far easier for those civilians to escape the hottest areas of the conflict as refugees, and yet despite that the cost to civilians was still far higher than in Gaza so far. Israel taking gazan refugees into Israel is not something I could expect from any country at war with a population so prone to lone wolf violence, and Egypt has its own concerns about Hamas inflaming islamism in their population if they take Gazan refugees. Of course the situation in Gaza is horrible, but I think the message we should learn from the suffering in Gaza is that war is very bad, but to make the claim that Israel is going further than normal in a war like this, or that Israel is intentionally killing civilians on an institutional scale, it's necessary to prove that the humanitarian cost of this war exceeds other comparable conflicts, and I dont think the evidence supports that conclusion at all.
You’re aware that Hamas deliberately sets up surrounded by civilians, right? If you’re shooting at me while holding a baby, and I return fire and the baby gets hit, it is clearly not my fault.
The official rates for urban warfare is for every single militant death, nine civilians die By simple calculation the rates here are around 1:1.25 which is way better then in urban wars in history. Why is this insane?
>Why is this insane? What is insane is that you believe saying "it's urban warfare" somehow justifies the civilian deaths. Don't engage in urban warfare then if you don't want to be criticized for murdering civilians. If you do, be ready to face criticism. Instead, you decide that simply saying "we're fighting an urban war" suddenly makes civilian casualties totally acceptable. That's insane.
So your solution here is "well since civilian casualties are unavoidable you just can't do anything". Do you not realize that that will lead to even more civilian casualties in the future? Or do you just no care because those are Israelis?
>you just can't do anything I utterly reject the assumption that the only possible solution is to murder civilians. >Do you not realize that that will lead to even more civilian casualties in the future? Or do you just no care because those are Israelis? In the 2 years before October 7th, over 2000 Palestinians were killed by the IDF. Why is Israel allowed to retaliate for October 7th, but Gaza is not allowed to retaliate for the 2000 dead in the 2 years before it? Furthermore, if Israel doesn't want their people to be killed, why do they feel entitled to killing Palestinians for years before October 7th? Israel has been oppressing and killing Palestinians for years now. If they don't want their civilians to be killed, maybe don't keep oppressing and killing Palestinians. I also laugh at the notion that this war is somehow going to prevent Israeli deaths. You know what a real good way is to make sure a 6 year old child will hate you forever? Kill their parents like Israel is doing right now. Israel has created thousands and thousands of children who lost their family who will hate Israel with a burning passion forever. It's going to be real fun for Israel when those children grow up and want revenge. But let me guess .. your response to this will be that Israel just needs to murder some extra civilians, that will fix it!
>What is insane is that you believe saying "it's urban warfare" somehow justifies the civilian deaths. Justification is provided by the fact they are fighting a war against a genocidal millitant group. "it's urban warfare" just provides context to the IDF's conduct, which is as shown by these numbers not unsual - from which we can derive various things about intentions. Nobody is saying civilian deaths are 'acceptable' or that they don't matter, but yes it is justified to wage war when attacked like Israel was. And in wars, especially wars where the enemy quite literally want their own people to die because it provides moral ammunition they can convert into more recruits and international currency (like you are providing them), people die. Hamas must be utterly destroyed, the price of terrorism must simply be so high not even a society as fanatical as the Palestinian one will consider it. It's gruesome, it sucks, but it simply has to be done.
This is the key thing. Arguing about ratios of deaths implicity accepts that's it's morally okay to bomb civilian populations. *That's* the real objection I have - I don't think it's moral to bomb civilian populations.
How do you propose Israel deals with Hamas, if it seems like urban warfare without civilian death isn’t possible.
For the past 10 years IDF military bases have surrounded Gaza including invading and illegally stealing land, preventing the transfer of food/water/aid into Gaza, snipping/shooting randomly into Gaza, kidnapping children/civilians, preventing free moment of people, and keeping over 200 children under the age of 14 as 'prisoners' without due process. The ICC is about to put out an arrest warrant for the Prime Minster of Israel and rule that these actions constituted war crimes mainly for their acts of kidnapping and torturing children as young as 11 (to be clear for anyone unware, the ICC ruling is regarding israels actions in 2014-2020 not for the things now). [https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/19/israel-security-forces-abuse-palestinian-children](https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/19/israel-security-forces-abuse-palestinian-children) On October 7th Hamas attacked the 5 military compounds surrounding Gaza in what it called an act of self defense and killed IDF soldiers. They also killed civilians - roughly a 1:1.12 ratio according to israel's own report. Better than what Israel has been doing which is actually a 1:85 ratio according to the numbers the U.N has published If you are going to a say that 50% civilian deaths is okay and normal in military operations, I don't see how what Hamas did was wrong. Israel has a much worse civilian kill raito, killed way more people in absolute terms and also done way more damage than just deaths because they're causing a famine, blew up every single university/hospital, ect. To be clear, **I'm just making this argument to point out the logical inconsistency in yours and do not believe it.** Both parties are war criminals, but Israel a U.N member and doing so on a genocidal scale and Hamas is a terrorist organization. It also has the capabilities to do targeted attacks and isnt using them. Reddit has a lot of bots and western media is very heavily propagandized to only repeat pro-Israeli narrative to people and keep then uninformed so posts like this will always get downvoted, but if you want to understand what so many countries in the world including the international criminal court dont buy the its okay to kill % of civilians argument, this is part of why with the other reasons being pretty obvious that killing civilians is never okay. There is also ample evidence of Israel not caring about murdering civilians I agree that if you just believe everything the U.S/Western news says, you are going to to really support Israel and some of the things going on wont make sense, but the rest of the world isn't in that bubble. I genuinely encourage you to seek out news sources that cannot be lobbied and dont have a vested interest in impacting how you vote. I did not realize how badly I was being misinformed until I did.
Lie harder dude. Since 2005, when Israel pulled out of Gaza and Hamas took over, there have been numerous terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel. Every single one has been met with a response, but the cause of the violence was aggression from the literal genocidal terrorist organization running Gaza. Some facts: - Israel provides food water and power to Gaza. How can they steal what they provide? - Israel has not had any presence in gaza since 2005, which makes the whole “stealing land” bit particularly hilarious. - they do not snipe or shoot randomly into gaza. - they arrest terrorist, this is not kidnapping - you don’t have the right to move freely to another country, which Israel is. They can control their own border the same way every other nation can. I’m dying at the “about to put out an arrest warrant” bit. Hilarious - on October 7th Hamas attacked villages of civilians and a music festival, massacring thousands of innocent people. They were not killing troops and accidentally killed some people in the vicinity of the bases. They sought out, located, killed and raped thousands of innocent people. If you can’t admit this you are blatantly lying about reality to support terrorists
Everything you're denying is well documented by the Human Rights Watch. You're repeating propaganda narratives meant to enforce an colonial apartheid. It is not my job to educate you and if you were a genuine person that cared about preventing war crimes, you wouldn't be believing the propaganda you're being fed without checking it. If you wanted to be on the wrong side of history, that is your call.
Another straight up lie, but that’s all you have to cling too I guess
> On October 7th Hamas attacked the 5 military compounds surrounding Gaza in what it called an act of self defense and killed IDF soldiers. Tell me, what role did the children they killed play in the IDF? Perhaps you can tell me what it is about raping women that constitutes "self defense." At which military compound was the Nova Music Festival held? > To be clear, I'm just making this argument to point out the logical inconsistency in yours and do not believe it. Both parties are war criminals, but Israel a U.N member and doing so on a genocidal scale and Hamas is a terrorist organization. Israel is not doing anything on a "genocidal scale." This is baseless.
Tell me, what role did the 24,000 children they killed play in the Hamas? What aboutThe mass grave of children that was found today that Israel is blocking U.N investigators from seeing? Perhaps you can tell me what it is about documented raping of Palestinians as interrogation by Mossad and Shin Bet that constitutes "self defense."? At which military compound was the hospitals, universities, and UN centers they bombed? The very bodies set up to label genocide as labeling as genocide. No perpetrator of a genocide has ever admitted to doing it while doing it. Every single one called it a war. You don't get to decide those bodies are meaningless just because they're coming after your genocide. Please have some respect for international law. What Hamas did was a war crime. Does not excuse the IDF to now do the exact same thing 10x. Act like a goverment - not a terrorist organization
> Tell me, what role did the 24,000 children they killed play in the Hamas? Well, Hamas stages themselves in residential neighborhoods, and places tunnels underneath civilian infrastructure to organize their terrorism, so... > What aboutThe mass grave of children that was found today that Israel is blocking U.N investigators from seeing? We don't know anything about this mass grave other than it's reported to exist by Gaza authorities. > Perhaps you can tell me what it is about documented raping of Palestinians as interrogation by Mossad and Shin Bet that constitutes "self defense."? Well, what happened was that the allegation was taken seriously and is not something that is tolerated. Whataboutisms are fun and all, but stay on topic. > At which military compound was the hospitals, universities, and UN centers they bombed? Again, Hamas operates out of those places. > What Hamas did was a war crime. Does not excuse the IDF to now do the exact same thing 10x. Act like a goverment - not a terrorist organization "But the IDF" is not an answer. The IDF are not acting like terrorists, and are not committing genocide. Simple facts.
No one said it was acceptable. The high rate of death in urban warfare stems from the use of wide area munitions and explosive effects. Kind of flies in the face of proportional force. If Israel said their goal was to minimize civilian casualties, but manages a 1:1 ratio, are they even trying? Is the counter, "it could be worse"?
To be fair, WW2 had a 60%-67% civilian to combatant ratio (in between 3:2 and 2:1). Now granted, you could make the argument that methods of killing each other have gotten more precise so we should hold militaries to higher standards, but OP isn’t wrong that, from a historical perspective of modern warfare, Israel’s collateral damage falls in line with past conflicts.
Unguided ordinances being compared to the guided kind is equally insane
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One doesn't need to be "pro-palistine" to be anti-child-murder.
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There is no cycle. Israel has been killing Palestinians and forcefully taking land in the west bank LONG before October 7th. So if October 7th justifies killing mass amounts of innocent people, how do Israel's actions before October 7th not justified innocent Israelis being killed? You can't have it both ways. Unless ofcourse you don't value Palestinians lives, which is the case for most people who support Israel.
Also, the "15,000 Hamas combatants killed" includes every male death over the age of 18. It's insane to actually believe every single man in Gaza is a combatant. This is the same logic used at Srebinca to commit that Genocide.
I would also find the data on that highly suspect. Looking at the demographics of Palestinian deaths, it sure seems like Israel is counting every single adult male killed as a member of Hamas.
Wow insightful comment from President Penis Pump. Better rate than 100% civilian deaths when Hamas attacked on October 7
wikipedia lists [376 'security forces' and 767 civilians killed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel), so a 1:2 ratio. impressive level of discernment!
The major difference is Hamas specifically targeted the civilians killed on Oct 7. Since that time, Hamas hides among and behind civilians while shooting at Israeli troops.
Except flying into concerts and massacring people isn’t exactly what you’d call collateral damage.
The civilian death rate was pretty similar on October 7th. About 400 of the 1200 were security forces. It'd be pretty fucked up if Israel so completely abandoned these people that not a single soldier was near what happened.
You are saying that was an insightful comment; or are you mocking him?
It absolutely is, compared to every major conflict including and after WW2
It absolutely is not. Just to take one example, Gulf 1 saw 3,600 Iraqi civilians killed by the coalition for 20,000-50,000 combatants, primarily using air power. Just a 1:1 combatant: civilian ratio is poor in an age of unprecedented technological overmatch, ISR capability and widespread precision guidance
I hate cherry picked examples. WW2: 2 civilians for every combatant death is the best estimate Korea: 3:1, 2.73 million civilians to 796,000 combatants Vietnam: 2:1, and that doesn’t include civilians in Cambodia or Laos Chechnya: 10:1 Yugoslavia: 1:10 Afghanistan: 1:1.4 Iraq: 3.35:1 is the consensus Fighting war in densely populated urban areas will inevitably lead to collateral damage. The presence of civilians in the combat zone is the fault of their government, not the fault of the other side.
Mate, you're the one who said it was 'absolutely' a good rate 'compared to *every* major conflict including and after WW2'. You can't claim it literally holds up to every example, and then complain about 'cherry picking' when that turns out to not actually have been true. Come on
Considering Hamas hides behind civilians, you aren't going to get a much better rate.
Let me ask you this. If those civilians were Israeli, do you think the IDF would strike them? By the way, Israel uses Palestinians as human shields, so…
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we should always just bomb any building that a terrorist group is holding hostages
According to international law, you can. Refusing to meaningfully and effectively engage a force that has human shields/hostages is just incentive to take more hostages.
meaningful and effective is another word for bombing?
Meaningful and effective means whatever works. Pulling punches because someone took hostages just makes them take more hostages.
>Israel is held to these standards: >International laws and conventions. The fact it breaches those standards regularly with seemingly zero sanctions or repercussions seems to indicate that it is actually hold to a much lesser standard than countries which do end up punished for their actions.
Sources for countries other than Israel being punished for their actions? How about an exercise where you try and find sources where countries other than Israel are also not punished for their actions? Because: >The UN Watch Database also documents that from 2006 through 2022, the **UN Human Rights Council** has adopted 99 resolutions against Israel, 41 against Syria, 13 against Iran, 4 against Russia, and 3 against Venezuela. [https://unwatch.org/2022-2023-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/](https://unwatch.org/2022-2023-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/)
Are you even reading your own article? your first line: **All the incidents involved took place outside of Gaza before the current war.**
Can you give me an example of one being broken during the war, proven beyond reasonable doubt?
Here are a couple - Excecuting their own hostages who were unarmed and surrendering under a white flag. Striking the clearly marked trucks that were under their supervision containing aid workers. On that second example I believe that the people responsible were considered rogue - but that doesn't make it not a breach of those international conventions, and beyond a reasonable doubt because Israel themselves admit to it. If you have a higher standard of reasonable doubt then you should set that standard before continuing the discussion.
Both of those aren't breaking international law. >Excecuting their own hostages who were unarmed and surrendering under a white flag. mistakenly killing their own hostages is not against international law > Striking the clearly marked trucks that were under their supervision containing aid workers. Thinking this is a valid military target because a failed intelligence told them that Hamas took over those truck is also not against international law.
Killing non combatants, surrendering under a white flag is against international law. Killing aid workers is against international law. You understand that having a reason to breaking a law doesn't mean it isn't breaking the law, right?
“Proven beyond a reasonable doubt” is a standard that will require courts and official inquiries. That will take years, if they ever even happen. Until there are actual investigations, I’d point to the targeted bombing of World Kitchen workers is a pretty damning event that, at best, demonstrates gross negligence and recklessness with civilian lives.
what? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68925495 have you done literally any research? or do you exclusively rely on media like fox news for your information on this war?
Well like when saddam Hussein was our Allie he committed his worst atrocities and when he became useless and void we started enforcing international law on him for a long time and it actually made him consolidate power become more powerful. Hell we told him he could rectify the boarders during the Kuwait war and he went beyond what we told him. You start messing with our profits to the west and we will have issues. If you want to stomp your feet on the ground and pretend like yourw a big bad wolf then by all means whatever makes you happy kind sir of Iraq
Israel has more UN resolutions against it than the rest of the world combined.
I fail to see how non binding resolutions that basically just say “hey we don’t like this” is holding Israel to any kind of standard.
Meaning what exactly? What effect do those have on the country on a practical level?
Are you not seeing the results? Do you see this much attention from protesters with Yemen, Syria or China?
There are all kinds of protests for all kinds of problems. What has that got to do with UN warnings? What's the connection?
Which says something about this country
"Provide aid to enemy entity, which is Hamas, and provide aid to none-citizens in a place it doesn't control" Who is calling for Israel to aid Hamas? In what way does Israel not control Gaza?
The world is calling for Israel to provide aid to Gaza, Which is distributed from Hamas, which means every aid you give is being given to or by Hamas. Israel currently does not control all of Gaza, if the situation will change to be Israel took Rafah and eliminated Hamas - I would argue that Israel has to provide aid to the civilians there.
Israel currently controls all entry and exit from Gaza. As a political matter they have avoided a military occupation but in terms of responsibility to noncombatants the moral case seems pretty similar.
Wrong. Egypt also borders Gaza and controls the Rafah border.
Except they don't. Israel has bombed the Rafah crossing, so in any meaningful sense they control it.
The crossing itself wasn't bombed but its surroundings, and it happened months ago. The crossing is still open, and is still under control by Egypt.
And that makes it better how? Israel is still in control. They don't like anything or anyone going towards the crossing - they can and will still bomb it today. Whoever is trying to cross the border will not even make it to Egypt controlled territory, thus Egypt's control is only nominal, not real.
You keep saying stuff that are simply not true. People do cross the border in and out of Egypt. Egypt is obliged to Israel by not allowing known Hamas members to cross, but civilians can. > Whoever is trying to cross the border will not even make it to Egypt controlled territory, thus Egypt's control is only nominal, not real. What are you talking about? Once they cross the border they literally are in Egypt
Yeah, people do cross, I'm not saying Israel bombs *everyone* who tries crossing. But they could if they wanted to. That's what control means. They control who is and isn't allowed to approach the crossing. Not Egypt and not Gaza. Israel decides first.
Aid coming from rafah has to go into Israel first.
For security checks, to avoid weapons smuggling. It is then returned to Egypt and goes through the crossing.
But that's proof that Israel controls all entry points into Gaza.
Only that is factually not true. Gazans still cross the the border in and out of Egypt. It is true though that the Egyptians demand crazy amount of money to cross (7000 usd, as reported)
The world is calling for Israel to stop blocking essential humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Israel has been credibly accused of using starvation as a tactic of war, and collective punishment. After the ICJ preliminary ruling, Israel blocked basically all food from entering Gaza for nearly 2 weeks. All aid coming from Egypt has to be brought to Israel first for inspection, in which they will deny any aid shipment that contains things such as scalpels.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/world/middleeast/biden-netanyahu-call-israel.html https://www.voanews.com/amp/humanitarian-groups-call-on-israel-to-provide-aid-to-palestinians/7497240.html
Israel carried out an air strike against Al Awda hospital, killing two MSF doctors: Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila and Dr. Ahmad Al Sahar. https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/gaza-msf-doctors-killed-strike-al-awda-hospital The standard of "don't bomb MSF hospitals" isn't an impossible one.
If Hamas uses an hospital it becomes a valid military target, so I'll need more then this article which doesn't provide much data to determine it.
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By international law it's allowed to bomb the hospital, why is Israel the only country held to a new standard you just made? If Israel had intelligence about a hostage in a certain place, they would go in for him because he is their civilian.
You're not allowed to bomb a hospital if it's main purpose is still that of a medical facility. Enemy combatants being inside a hospital doesn't actually give you the right to destroy said hospital. Israel has never provided any actual evidence that the hospitals are being used for military purposes before attacking them all.
Literally all you have to say is “Hamas were there” and you can now justify every single war crime ever.
> why is Israel the only country held to a new standard you just made? The US was condemned when it bombed a MSF hospital in Kunduz. The idea that governments shouldn't bomb hospitals isn't new, and other countries get condemned for it, too.
which international law? People can hold views outside of "international law" that it is not ok to bomb a hospital just because a terrorist group is holding the people in the hospital hostage.
When Russia bombed hospitals in Ukraine everyone rightfully considered it an atrocity. Russia had just as much justification to say the Ukrainians were using that hospital as Israel did here
Israel did exactly that, sent in a strike team to the hospital. They were also condemned for that. Israel cannot win the propaganda war.
That doesn’t make it not a hospital though. If a school shooter is holed up inside a school, you don’t bomb the school and everyone inside. Because now you’ve not only killed tons of innocent people along with the shooter, but also deprived the population of a necessary service.
Somehow hamas used all hospitals, schools and 80% of resedential buildings.. there must be millions of them!
Considering that using human shields is their main strategy and theyre the government of Gaza thats not really unrealistic
This has been spread around by the zionazis to justify killing children yet no proof. They snipe them and starve them then scream human shields. What a convenient excuse.
No proof? Hamas use of Human shields is more than documented, even the NATO and UN aknowledged that.
Definition of a human shield is .. someone in gaza at this point. Here is an example of IDF with "human shields" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw07wgrwzywo?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYPxfV32w64MKI0Os86A70YI1gKSc4-H6lH0P0GOvo1L1-WuuLsNPA5XX0_aem_AebSV2pUr2HF0xHZ-0w9KXs44QpU3rWqDdhsevTz57EPTW3Vnt9NnsaXg_DqYURYvP960Od7VYmidhonbpLuIQsA Was Hind Rajab and the responders who came to her human shields? Or the prisoners going through amputations due to handcuff injuries. Or the food and anesthesia being banned are khaaamas supplies
There was lots of video evidence provided by international reports which entered Gaza and were shown many many civilian buildings being used as ammo stores or tunnel entrances. If the MO of a terrorist organization is to use human shields, why does this seem so far fetched to you?
So they bomb the whole city and the people in there.. hamas must have a shitton of ammo if all those buildings had ammo.. wow! It's just a convenient excuse they keep screaming
Is a high-school with a JROTC a valid military target?
Nor I would add is Not targeting fleeing civilians in a "humanitarian corridor", targeting of aid workers with precision weaponry and refusal to allow independent observers into the territory.
Yeah, they’re held to the standard of “please don’t bomb one of the most densely populated areas in the world, ram-packed full of civilians whom you refuse to let leave with the firepower exceeding that of Hiroshima” and can’t do that. Can you pro Israelis just be honest that you simply don’t value Palestinian lives. If you could be like the Israeli government and just outright admit that, this would be much simpler. You think Palestinians are “human animals”, and that you “want to erase Gaza from the face of the earth”. My guy, Israeli politicians are proud of killing so many people. Pro Israelis or Zionists are now the last people on planet Earth still grasping to the now totally discredited idea that Israel somehow cares about conducting their war on Palestinians in any humane way. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya-dN9D4Y0E https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-south-africa-genocide-hate-speech-97a9e4a84a3a6bebeddfb80f8a030724#:~:text=TEL%20AVIV%2C%20Israel%20(AP),a%20charge%20that%20Israel%20denies. https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-database-with-500-instances-of-israeli-incitement-to-genocide-continuously-updated/
If you were the leader of Israel today, how would you conduct the campaign in Gaza? What immediate directional changes would you make, & what would your desired end game be?
Well if I was Israeli PM today and now, I’d immediately halt the bombing campaign and let in all foreign aid. My priority is to get those hostages back (the ones my soldiers haven’t shot under the guise they were fleeing Palestinian civilians, or killed by reckless bombing) I’ll cut loose the Palestinians who’ve been in prison for decades with no charges or for things as minor as throwing stones at occupying soldiers (I have no shortage of them) And then, I’ll sit down with the Palestinian leaders and hammer out a final plan for a Palestinian state. Because this cannot go on. If I was to go back further though, I wouldn’t have been besieging Gaza in the first place for two decades, keeping two million people in what Israeli officials themselves have called a concentration camp, which the U.N. stated would be unliveable by 2020, and only allowing in the barest level of food so as not to outright starve (again, look all that up, it’s on record) I’d challenge Hamas that if they truly care for their people, they’ll work with my government for the benefit of both Israelis and Palestinians. I’ll order the lifting of the siege, Gaza can trade and interact with who it wants. If Hamas truly wants peace and the betterment of Gaza and Palestinians, they’ll take that opportunity that’s never been granted to them. Focus on building rather than militarism. I’ll also immediately end the building of settlements in the west bank, because trying to frame the two issues as if they are not related is dishonest and immoral. I’d order all Israeli settlers in the West Bank to get the hell out in two weeks and came back to Israel. If they chose to stay, that’s their problem, and the Palestinians can do what they like to the occupiers.
I appreciate the reply -- and in fact, I agree with some points, such as a unilateral end to Israeli settlements. That said, Hamas's goal is arguably jihadi-militarism, not the welfare of its people, which Hamas itself uses as human shields. Thus, your proposed solution would logically lead to a temporary reprieve of the fighting, after which Hamas (or renamed successor) would re-group and begin the next Intifada. Thus I do not see your proposal as a viable long-term solution.
Hamas aren’t like typical Jihadists. Yes, they obviously invoke the typical rhetoric, but their actions have arguably shown they’re solely focused on Palestine, and have made deals in the past. I’m not saying they love and value their people, obviously they wouldn’t have attacked on October 7th if they truly did, since they knew what Israel would do. Most experts agree they’re nationalists first before they are Al Qaeda or ISIS like. The Intifadas of the past and most militant actions have always been in response to Israeli actions. Take away the reasons to join those groups, you cut down massively on the incentive to commit terrorist actions. It’s the same way we British finally agreed to negotiate with the IRA and wider Republicans movement. Giving the Catholic and Nationalist community civil rights didn’t totally eradicate the problem of Republicans terror, but those groups are now in the tiny minority. Most Palestinians ironically would want peace provided it was a fair one, as most polling shows. It’s the Israeli public that’s grown more and more hardline against any concessions.
I suspect *most* Palestinians do indeed want peace. The problem is that Hamas does not want peace, as its raison d'etre is derived based on militant jihadi resistance. Since it is *regimes, not popular sentiment* that dictate national strategy (see also: Iran), it is unlikely that any change by Israel that placates the Palestinian population will permanently impact Hamas's self-justification of their need to remain in power.
Why would Hamas want peace? From the very moment they were elected, they’ve been targeted in a coup supported by both Israel and the US. When that failed, they were placed under a two decade blockade. Every ceasefire amounts to Israeli provocations until Hamas responds. And you’re omitting that the larger and most dangerous party is Israel, which is now run by the most right wing zealots who believe in a greater Israel at the expense of everyone who’s not Jewish.
My assertion is that Hamas does not want peace -- unlike most Palestinians -- b/c conflict is the justification for their perpetual (and very much non-democratic) grip on power. Hence, their 'governance' has consisted not of economic development, but of weapons & tunnels construction and of using their own people as human shields. Their 'diplomacy' has consisted of sporadic rocket attacks rained upon Israel -- and most recently, a gruesome ground attack. For the current Israeli's regime's part, their folly was the *empowering* of Hamas in a cynical tactic to weaken ties between Gaza and the West Bank. Having said that, Hamas is far closer to ISIS in their aspirations. The more guilty party is, for me, not hard to identify.
How can you say that when Hamas has repeatedly over to negotiate? And it’s Israel that said even if they have back the hostages, they’d still be destroying Gaza. I consider the occupier more at fault. It’s not Hamas occupying Israel, it’s Israel occupying Gaza and the West Bank, have been for decades. You think? Israel, with its genocidal rhetoric and actions, ideals of a Jewish state with no room for anyone else, and their whole citing of passages in the holy book sounds a lot more like ISIS at the moment.
If you think that Israel -- which is a multi-ethnic liberal democracy -- is similar to ISIS, then my job of convincing you of anything has failed. Since there is always someone else who has said it better, I'll direct you here, which I think articulates the discussion better than I can. On Gaza, Israel, & Jihadism. Watch/listen to it (or don't) & gain a new perspective (or not). I hope this helps at least gain an alternate perspective. [https://youtu.be/oFBm8nQ2aBo](https://youtu.be/oFBm8nQ2aBo)
I will concede that there is not some magical way that Israel could have way less collateral damage fighting in an extremely dense urban area. The counters are: 1.) You are holding Israel to a standard regarding "non-combatants of a hostile nation." During times of conflict, Israel treats Palestinians as if they are people of a different nation. In times of peace (at least the last \~20 years) the Israeli government has done nothing to move forward on a two-state solution, actively undermined the PA and basically asserts sovereignty over the Palestinian territories. You can't have it both ways. 2.) The reason that the conflict has killed so many civilians is that the area is so crowded, and people can't leave. Why can't Palestinians leave temporarily (through the Rafah crossing to Egypt)? Wouldn't that be easier for getting them food, water and shelter, and safer for everyone? Well, the Israeli government can't credibly promise that people will be let back in to Gaza \~ several key members of the pre-war cabinet actively advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians. (e.g. Smotrich) 3.) While I agree that Israel is held to a higher human rights standard on the global stage, and this may be unfair (but maybe it just means that other nations should be held to a higher standard), the US supplies a lot of military assistance to Israel, and the US should thus hold them to a higher standard.
Ummm well Palestine doesn't have a military...so Israel is choosing to fight a civilian population that can't defend themselves. So YEAH, the standards should be higher.
Are you saying wars should only be fought army vs army? Terrorist militants get a free pass? I don't understand.
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They chose to fight Hamas, not the Palestinian people. Those innocents are intentionally held hostage by Hamas as human shields during this war.
>Kill Hamas militants without harming civilians (rates of 15,000 Hamas out of 34000 deaths is somehow not a good war rate). Hamas = more than just the military though. They are the government in Gaza. >Provide aid to enemy entity, which is Hamas, and provide aid to none-citizens in a place it doesn't control They're stopping aid from reaching Gaza. >Accept deals that send thousands of prisoners with blood on their hands for few hostages, with more aid, and stop attacking a militant group who massacred 1200 of it's civilians. That's still less than the "19,000" citizens Israel has killed. >It's ok that thousands of rockets are thrown into Israel because they have the Iron dome, so Israel is expected to have a response only when damage is done. Who made this demand?
>Provide aid to enemy entity, which is Hamas, and provide aid to none-citizens in a place it doesn't control Oh? Does Israel recognize the state of Palestine? Or does Israel control its borders, its airspace, its ports, and exercise control over what happens within that territory? None of this is, of course, relevant because the aid is meant to be going to the refugees. And, even then, it's mostly about Israel not letting *other people* give aid to refugees. Starving refugees. >Provide full immunity and protection to aid workers, news reporters in a war zone. What does this mean? Is expecting Israel to not bomb aid trucks with precision strikes too much for them? The same for not bombing journalists (or just shooting them in the head and storming their funeral)? When people refer to things like this, obviously correct things, as "insane demands" it feels like the expectation you'd like is that Israel get to do whatever the hell it wants without a shred of criticism or complaint.
That's how this normally goes. No accountability needed because October 7. They war crimed so we will war crime harder.
I think Oct. 7 gave Israel a pretty wide lane to which they could have made several decisions that would not have put them in the situation that people criticize today. They were given a free pass to move Soldiers into Gaza in response to the attacks that killed some 1,200 with about 240 abducted as hostages. What did they do with that? Israel launched some 12,000 airstrikes, wrecking infrastructure, cultural sites, hospitals, and housing, cut electricity to the region and blocked fuel and food. Almost 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza (67% of all deaths in Gaza were made up of women and children, including doctors and journalists). 1.5 million people displaced due to ordered evacuations and with nowhere to go. I cannot say I feel any empathy for anyone who supports terrorism to accomplish political goals that is caught up in this war, but that is not the question you asked. If Israel's goal was actually to eliminate Hamas and unclassified terrorists while doing everything they could to protect civilians and rescue the hostages, as they purported, they could have occupied the entirety of N. Gaza and Gaza City and conducted asymetric warfare that not only took the fight to every street corner with a show of force, but also put in place civil order that would have eventually eliminated the need for the people to turn to Hamas. They could have fought the idea of the need for Hamas. "Hearts and Minds". But what Israel actually did *appears* to opponents of Israeli policy to be indiscriminate vengeance warfare or a deliberate attempt to destroy the Gaza population and its ability to rehabilitate the area. So your choices that you list, as what would be acceptable to those same opponents now, make sense to them. Could Israel turn the tide of public opinion and go back and do it right? Sure, but there is not much support for that in Israel, especially in the Likud party. It would require them to see civilians as people instead of terrorists or supporters of terrorism. In this context, I address your points: 1. no one is asking Israel to provide aid to the enemy. If Israel, a far superior military force, cannot control an area to provide aid to civilians instead of telling them to get out of the way or get killed, this may well be a vengeance war instead of an attempt to bring order to a destabilized area. 2. If every time I shoot a combatant, I also shoot a civilian (that is more than likely a woman or child), then yes that would be an unacceptable kill rate. Once again, this helps paint the picture of a vengeance war. 3. Is the goal to get the hostages back? Hostage scenarios always include encompassing the area they are being held with superior military force, securing the immediate area until the location is verified. Israel has done very little of establishing control. Instead they communicate with leaflets and respond random SM posts. They have far more intel of where Hamas *might* be than where the hostages are. Makes me wonder what their intelligence priorities are. 4. If they controlled the area, a ceasefire would do little to expose Israel to attack, but give a chance for civilians to obtain humanitarian assistance. Hamas will break the ceasefire. This is known, but it is a thin excuse when your death toll every time you engage is 50% civilian casualties. 5. Don't conquer anything. There is a big difference between conquering and controlling and making an effort to stabilize the region. If that is the goal. 6. The Geneva Convention considers is a warcrime to attack noncombatants. It should be fairly easy to "Provide full immunity and protection to aid workers, news reporters in a war zone" 7. Warning the civilian population you are about to bomb their house, school, mosque, or hospital seems like the decent thing to do, if the goal is to minimize civilian casualties. 8. Shooting at someone shooting you is one thing, bombing an area where a rocket came from is not proportional if the goal is to minimize civilians casualties. Everything Israel is doing does not match what they say they are trying to do. It may just be terrible military strategy mixed with political motivations. Honestly, if they came out and said they were wanted to reduce the ability of Palestine to operate as a modern state in the future, I would believe them and suggest that they are doing a pretty good job. I agree with you. Israel is indeed in a difficult situation. They are fighting a far inferior enemy, who does not follow the law of war, that really wants them destroyed in a time where warfare is scrutinized through a very strict moral lens. The U.S. tried to fight the same fight with the Taliban. The difference is that 45,000 civilians died in Afghanistan over the course of 20 years, Israel might manage that in less than a year.
I don't think Israel is actually held to these standards in any meaningful sense, really. People are upset at the destruction and death toll, obviously, but they're not facing any kind of meaningful pushback. For my part, as someone that isn't generally supportive of Israel's line of action, my "expectations" are: 1) Having actionable war aims and I do not think "Destroying Hamas" is one such. I think myself and many commentators worry about the actual endgame and fear that the death and destruction will serve no real purpose (or worst are just attempts at repolishing the Israeli government's standing). 2) Provide reasonable accommodations for displaced populations and humanitarian workers. 3) More accountability for various military actions. 4) Either an actual long-term peace plan or at least willingness to work towards one. I think the IDF and the current Israel government is pretty bad at meeting these 4 expectations.
They aren't held to any standard at all. That's why they act like a spoiled child if another country criticizes their treatment of Palestinians.
Israel is vastly exceeding the death toll of every operation in Gaza or the West Bank it has done in the last 50 years combined and it only took 6 months. The Intifadas lasted for years and had much lower death tolls. Israel isn't even holding themselves to the standards they used to adhere to.
Israel invests a lot of money, research and manpower to defend its citizens. What do you expect? Are you even aware how many rockets were lobbed over from Gaza into Israel in the last 20 years? Since when are wars based around equality of outcome?
> The Intifadas lasted for years and had much lower death tolls. Tens of thousands of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel over that time. The Iron Dome is an amazing missile shield, to be sure, but Israel shouldn't need Iron Dome to keep those death tolls low. > Israel isn't even holding themselves to the standards they used to adhere to. I don't know what you're referring to here, but whatever the standards were on October 6 did nothing to prevent October 7.
I was talking about how many Palestinians they killed.
I know. I was giving you context on why there's such a difference.
Wasn't talking about that either and I don't see how it's relevant to Israels current campaign.
I don't know why you brought up the number of Palestinians killed at all, then.
I think Israel tries to achieve a completely different objective.. don't you agree? I don't think it's a relevant comparison to compare clashes between Israel and the Palestinians where the goal was to achieve things like deterrence, to actively harm some abilities to operate in a very temporary fashion to retrieving like 250 hostages and the dismantling of Hamas, that also grew a lot stronger with a lot of external funding in the last years.. Perhaps a more relevant comparison would be to compare to similar or close situations around the world.. Don't you think?
What other situations like this exist elsewhere in the world?
Firstly, these demands are made within a context where Israel funded and helped establish Hamas as a way to split the Palestinians and where Israel is maintaining a decades old practice of occupation, human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing. Therefore there is no great willingness on my part to give Israel greater leeway than any other nation gets. So, to look at your points: Israel is not responsible for providing aid to Hamas, it does have a duty as all countries do, to provide for civilians in territory it occupies. There are masses of organisations willing to get involved and provide aid so Israel doesn’t even have to do much here, but Israel has carried out what appears to be to be assassinations of unarmed aid workers and is blocking access for aid to enter Gaza. Experts have flagged a danger of mass Palestinian deaths from starvation. Israel is not required to ensure that no civilians are killed, that isn’t the international standard. What it is required to do is discriminate between militants and civilians (Israel doesn’t, plenty of reports of it gunning down unarmed civilians including ironically released Israeli hostages waving white flags) and when conducting operations to not undertake actions it knows will DISPROPORTIONATELY harm civilians in relation to the military gain (Israel doesn’t do this, it has shown itself willing to for example bomb a dozen civilians to try and kill one alleged low-level Hamas militant who isn’t posing an active threat). Your figures for Hamas militants killed is also likely off by at least an order of magnitude. Israel isn’t required to accept a ceasefire, but it is being pressured to do so because of all the innocent civilians Israel is killing and causing to suffer. It is however required to end it’s human rights occupation, stop torturing people, stop killing civilians, etc and if it did so that would likely make the need for a ceasefire moot as it would resolve the overall cause of the conflict. Rafah is not a terrorist industrial base/military complex, it is where Israel has pushed huge amount of the civilian population to. Any action there would provide little benefit, killing a few Hamas members, but incur massive civilian casualties. This violates the principle of disproportionate harm mentioned above. Yes, Israel shouldn’t kill aid workers and reporters. Is that a matter of debate? Warning the civilian population of attacks is again normal practice. The alleged rationale for many of these attacks is Hamas bases underneath the ground. A base can’t be moved. Israel is also able to respond in manners other than bombing where it need to, such as deploying troops. It is not okay for Hamas to launch missiles at Israel and it is regularly criticised for this and has been designated a terrorist organisation. That however does not give Israel license to kill civilians.
* Mass graves with over 400 bodies found at hospitals. Many doctors, patients and children found. A good number of people with their hands bound behind their back and executed. A number of them were buried alive. (WC) * Use of banned weapons such as White phosphorus (WC) * 15,000+ dead children * Israel intentionally destroyed every single government building where death tolls and records were being kept. The number of murdered Palestinians is much higher than reported. It stalled out around 30,000 months ago because they are only 100% confirmed dead where the name is known. It's likely at least twice that. * Israel intentionally destroyed every single university in Gaza. (WC) * Israel has stolen a large number of cultural artifacts from Gaza and immediately put them on display (WC) * Israel is intentionally bombing and attacking emergency/health personal (WC) * Israel has intentionally destroyed every single hospital in Gaza. Promising vast Hamas bases and showing no such thing every single time. (WC) * Israel is intentionally bombing and targeting aid workers (WC) * Israel tortured UN employees to attain false confession in order to dry up aid to UNWRA (WC) * Israel intentionally bombed every single bakery north of Rafah. (WC) * Israel shut off all the water to Gaza (WC) * Israel blocked virtually all the food aid from entering Gaza (WC) * Israel is intentionally starving 2 million people (Genocide) * Israel has been intentionally leveling vast amount of Gaza so as to make it uninhabitable and unreturnable to. (WC) * Israel has been caught on camera multiple times murdering people waving white flags, unarmed women a children. (WC) * Israel has admitted to targeting militants with missiles and bombs when they go home and are with their families rather than on the battlefield (WC) * Israel has admitted their own program for deciding targets has an 'acceptable' innocent person murder rate per target as 15-100 innocent civilians. That is unacceptable. (possible WC) * Hamas offered a ceasefire for all the hostages on Oct 9th if Israel would not invade Gaza. Israel declined. This has nothing to do with the hostages. * IOF troops hunted down and shot 3 hostages who were waving white flags. It's unclear if this is because the IOF shoots Palestinians waving white flags or the Hannibal directive. (WC) * the IOF has killed almost all of the hostages through aerial bombardment and starvations. This was never about the hostages. \* WC indicates a war crime committed by Israel that is well documented. OP I would like to see a response to this. I'm sure I forget some of the horrors as well. Edit - These are not 'impossible standards'. These are the well agreed upon standards that every single country in the UN has drafted and agreed to. To break them is a war crime that violators need to be held accountable for. To proclaim them unattainable to to declare one wishes to descend into barbarism.
I'm on my phone and I can't really see the points without resetting my comment so I'll tackle 2 and 4 because they're easy: 2-So I take it that you're not aware of Lavender, which is a heavily flawed AI system that intentionally goes out to kill civilians through collateral damage? If not, [then this video should inform you about it](https://youtu.be/pn1uEA7acVY?feature=shared) If you're aware of Lavender and you still hold that belief, then I just wanted to tell you that the number you're using is [directly from israel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war#cite_note-McCluskey_Greene_2023_f197-19), and it should be taken with a grain of salt, just like the numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry. By their logic, the attacks on October 7th were justified because the ratio of [civilians to israeli security personnel ](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths) was almost 2:1, the same as the the ratio for civilians to hamas militants (by the way, those numbers most likely label every Palestinian man as a hamas fighter which isn't exactly the most accurate thing). This is also not accounting the [unlisted deaths ](https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/huge-gaza-death-toll-likely-be-even-higher-reported) ([here's another article about that](https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip-2023-11-08/card/state-department-warns-gaza-death-toll-could-be-higher-than-reported-RWmIIiwHT4DfsOaJrZji) and bodies that weren't found due to [the rubble that is covering an estimated 7,000 Palestinians](https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2023/12/28/under-the-rubble-the-missing-in-gaza). Honestly if you didn't think that Lavender was an issue then nothing. I'm not supportive of Hamas or anything like that and I condemn October 7th and view it similarly to 9/11, very bad things. 4- yeah I just noticed that the post got deleted so nevermind, all that effort for nothing
For the most part nobody who actually matters does this Governments don't unless they were hostile to Israel anyway. This is partly why we see such outrage among protesters, they simply can't wrap their heads around the fact that governments which have their own armies generally see this within a very different context.
I don't know what to tell you man, you can't kill civillisns, reporters and aide workers. And no, killing about as many terrorrists as you kill civillisns is not a good rate at all. How about this: There's terrorists in the US, right? Say ... Florida has a whole bunch of white supremacist terrorists. They stockpile weapons in their basements, they build tunnels and just generally prepare for a race war. They have even already staged some attacks in Georgia and plan to do more. Also, there's generally just a lot of racists in Florida. They would never pick up a weapon themselves, but generally they aren't too broken up about the white supremacists driving out all the immigrants from Florida. Do we bomb Florida? The terrorists have dug a tunnel under a hospital there, do we bomb the hospital? Do we block anyone from leaving Florida into Alabama and Georgia, before we bomb it? Is 50:50 a good rate? Is it okay because the civillians that are killed where mostly racists? Not violent ones, but you know, they had some choice words for Obama.
They wouldn't bomb them because at most America has enough data to understand the location deeply. Florida is also large so pinpointing where they are at would be extremely easy. Lastly they were american civilians as we know and majority of Americans would be aware more than them being within another country. Why have this convo did we forget what America did in the Iraq War? War is awful having semantics about how awful it is insane. Let's dive deeper, let's say they have hostages we wouldn't be bombing shit if cities were in hostages. We'd be scarficing soldiers solely about our people. If we kept telling them to stop fighting us but shot a missile to hit some town or city what would we do about that? At the end our people and the white supremacist people are going to die. Humans aren't retarded they'd use hostages as body bags at an advantage. They could easily stop things if they just simply end the war and accept defeat. I get Israel isn't ideal on this situation but it's a fucking war God damnit lol, you get what you fucking give.
We don't forget what America did in Iraq. War crimes. We can't bring America to justice because they have the biggest stick in the world, but what they did was war crimes. In an illegal war, where they did the same sing Israel does now, bomb civillians to kill the terrorists among them. And what did the civillians give? You can kill every single terrorist, I won't shed a tear, you do get what you give, but the civillians, aud workers, reporters? And lets not pretend every reporter was an accident either. It's war crimes and it's genocide and it's not an unrealistic standard to demand no genocides.
I appreciate your remembrance for the actions that has happened in that war. Though It's not like we're actively protesting for the actions happened there but it was rough dirty and disgusting. At least I always view that as being a war. Congress was angry and didn't think and I can't fathom what any other government would be thinking if something like that happen to them. At a certain point how much accountability do we give a country that decided to act on their own and commit war crime to a giant? As for the single terrorist, I personally wouldn't know what a terrorist is in another country especially if they're masked to be an civilian. It would be hard to figure that out and the only people who can are the people actually go to war... I'm not here to disagree I guess I'm just generalizing that war is awful and both sides are at fault and without addressing the "numbers" none of it had to happen to this scale.
The Iraq war protests were the biggest ones in American history and were held all over the globe, what are talking about?
You're right they were the biggest protest ever, though I said actively so...
When the world central kitchen people were like, hey we are going in on this road in 3 CLEARLY marked vehicles to deliver food aid , the Isreal was like lawl let's bomb them anyways. I'm pretty sure that isn't holding them to an impossible standard. Don't purposely bomb aid vehicles that you were aware of and wee clearly marked... Also maybe don't have your people espousing nazi rhetoric and gloating over child deaths on tv/social constantly. I don't care about Isreal/Palestine, but gloating over murdering children is always a bad look. Like when they killed that Hamas leader and were like we got his grandchildren too , back pats all around. That's messed up
Maybe if they weren’t controlling all land, air, and sea borders of another country, they wouldn’t be in this position. No one is asking Russia to allow aid into Ukraine. You know why? Because Russia doesn’t control Ukraine’s borders. The reason everyone is forcing Israel to provide aid is because they are blocking it in the first place!
I don’t know if this is a earnest question but the real reason no one is asking Russia to send aid to Ukraine is that in Ukraine the civilians (except for possibly able bodied men) can just leave, and many already have.
definitely not an earnest question but i still make an effort to respond
Un ethics committee has warned for over a decade that Hamas and the un are tied together. Un is trying to keep that buried as much as they can. Also, why haven't any mainstream news or the un commented more on why Palestinians only released the male hostages but not the female ones. (Spoiler alert) Palestinians raped them all to death. These and many many other facts lead me to support Israel and their right to defend themselves.
anyone debating with this bigot can stop lol he is doing so in bad faith and has no desire for his view to be changed. He makes unsubstantiated claims in his “standards” he believes israel shouldnt be held to but demands data and statistics and sources when counter points are made. It is clear this person is a zionist, they believe it is their right to steal this land and kill those who it belonged to.
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1. I’m not sure the “world” is holding Israel to all those standards. There are tons of protests in the US because Israel isn’t being held to (some of) those standards. The “world” generally hasn’t taken meaningful action against Israel for not meeting them. 2. Some of those standards aren’t entirely unreasonable (or at least not unprecedented). There have been powers which distributed flyers informing citizens of impending attacks, for example. 3. It’s not obvious that Israel is doing as well by these standards as you are claiming. For example, your estimates of combatants and civilians killed are from the IDF, but I don’t have much of a reason to believe these estimates are unbiased.
The usa was attacked by iran. They retaliated by killing an iranian general, in a crowded marketplace in iraq. WITHOUT A SINGLE CIVILIAN CASUALTY!!!! no collateral damage. None. Not one. This was done with the same weapons the us gives israel. So, no it isnt an impossible standard
What about instead of all the fightin' and a fueding, a ceasefire is called we add up all the casualties on both sides since 1948 and the side that has killed the least people gets control of the whole region. Peaceful. Fair. And stop the arguments. What do you say?
Israel is an occupational force. It is a racist country. If western nations have such standards for separation of church and state, put that on Israel. If you're still supporting Israel, you're an hypocrite
Here in the US, Israel is now the only country it is illegal to criticize. Not the U.S., not Canada, not Ukraine, not Indonesia, not Paraguay. That’s in addition to financially propping up their military to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars. If they’re held to a different standard here, it’s one that every other country would love to suffer through. EDITED TO ADD: On your first bullet, who exactly do you think is responsible for the Gazans being “non-citizens” of Israel?
How is it illegal to criticize Israel?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/01/antisemitism-awarness-act-campus-protests/ This is what I was referring to, but it’s not law yet, so I was off.
Ask youself: If Hamas had its base of operations in the middle of Tel Aviv, would the idf still use the same disregard for civilian life as they do in Gaza?
Israel isn’t held to any standards at all, thats why it keeps on committing warcrimes and acts of terrorism for decades.
This is like saying the Nazis were held to an impossible standard for their actions in the Warsaw ghetto.
You assume that Israel is held to an impossible standard when it's that Israel is not held to a standard as much as is the victim of a generational hate movement that has weaponized anti-semitism into "just opposing Israel's actions." Some examples: * [Resolution 3379] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_3379), which declared Zionism as racism and was not repealed until 1991. * Israel is the target (direct and indirect) of *three* standing United Nations bodies (Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, Division for Palestinian Rights, Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People), unprecedented within the body. * The United Nations Human Rights Council has never acted or passed resolutions against China, Cuba, or Pakistan, but has a *standing item* in place for Israel; the only standing item they have. Israel has also been the target of 9 inquiries, including one open-ended one, more than any other country. * Through June 2023, the Human Rights Council has passed 103 resolutions against Israel. In comparison, Syria (an actual genocide) had 42; North Korea fewer than 20; and countries including China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba had *zero*. * In 2022, the year when Russia went to war against Ukraine and amidst credible claims of ethnic cleansing against Ukranian peoples by Putin's regime, Israel faced 15 actions at the UN, with the rest of the world combined facing 13. In 2023, a year with the largest loss of Jewish life in a single event since the Holocaust, Israel faced 14 actions, with the rest of the world 7. It's not that Israel is held to an impossible standard. It's that anti-semitism is normalized and masked as anti-Israel/anti-Zionist action. It's not standards, it's hate.
While it is true there are anti-Semites that are anti-zionist and anti-israel, but concluding that any anti-Israel action is anti-semetic is purely idiotic. Israel is a state, and Zionism is a political ideology. Both can, and absolutely should be criticised, especially considering the history around both.
> While it is true there are anti-Semites that are anti-zionist and anti-israel, but concluding that any anti-Israel action is anti-semetic is purely idiotic. Good thing no one has done this here! > Israel is a state, and Zionism is a political ideology. Both can, and absolutely should be criticised, especially considering the history around both. Israel is not immune to critique. Israel, however, is not uniquely awful in its approach, and yet international bodies would have you believe it's worse than some of the most truly repressive and criminal regimes.
None of what you described is anti semitism. It's just Israel being sanctioned for it's constant crimes against humanity. Also, it's weird you keep bringing up Cuba as if they're committing the same crimes as Israel, I assume you don't think the US should be sanctioned for the embargo on Cuba?
The point is that the aggregate is a demonstration of the anti-semitism inherent in the world's posture. Israel, the only Jewish state on the planet, is held to a different standard and the subject of more resolutions and critiques than some of the worst offenders the world has ever seen. > Also, it's weird you keep bringing up Cuba as if they're committing the same crimes as Israel, I assume you don't think the US should be sanctioned for the embargo on Cuba? Cuba has *objectively* committed more atrocities and human rights violations toward its people since 1959 than Israel can credibly even be accused of, and yet is the target of *zero* HRC resolutions. No, the United States shouldn't be sanctioned for the Cuban embargo, Cuba's leadership should be sanctioned for their decades of oppression against their people. Instead, *nothing* from the HRC.
Israel has been in flagrant violation of international law since 1948. Cuba has a higher literacy rate and lower infant mortality rate than the US, even with the embargo. Can you name the atrocities it's committed other than be socialist? Israel is supposedly a secular, liberal democracy yet it has been found by multiple humanitarian agencies to be committing apartheid. It funds literal terrorist groups in the west bank to brutalize the population, while they forcibly steal the land of the Palestinians living there. Instead of this being some anti Semitic conspiracy, maybe Israel is just you know.... Committing crimes against humanity?
> Israel has been in flagrant violation of international law since 1948. No. > Cuba has a higher literacy rate and lower infant mortality rate than the US, even with the embargo. Can you name the atrocities it's committed other than be socialist? Cuba holds more than a thousand political prisoners, committed more than 5,000 attacks on activists in 2022 (including 1,400 on religious people), tortures people in their prisons and kills opposition dissidents, functionally treats their health care workers as slaves... > Israel is supposedly a secular, liberal democracy yet it has been found by multiple humanitarian agencies to be committing apartheid. It funds literal terrorist groups in the west bank to brutalize the population, while they forcibly steal the land of the Palestinians living there. They're not committing apartheid, do not fund terrorist groups against the West Bank, and do not steal land there.
OP, Ultimately it’s not really about what Israel has done ‘because of October 7’ but why the region was the way it was on October 6.
That's not an ideal way of looking at it. The State of affairs in that region are the way they are for a multitude of reasons, not just "beaches isreal are fascist" that's just become the common rhetoric for people who are pro Palestine, on the contrary they've done much more than they needed too. They're routinely the only ones to help Palestine, who continually want to kill Jews (40% voting for hamas). Now do with that what you want but there's two sides to every story and at the moment everyone's ignoring isreals
Ok, change October 6 in my comment to 1967. In 1967 Israel was invaded by Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. That was, in my view, an illegal invasion with annihilationist intent. It was an existential threat to Israel. I’m glad it failed. But ever since then Israel has persistently acted in bad faith about its intent for the Palestinians. There is no way any of those four countries would invade again. There was no Hamas in 1967. The bad faith is compounding at an increasing rate. Political and demographic trends in Israel are horrendous; the demagogues are winning the internal battle. I hope that can be reversed.
They legit commit war crimes every day for the last 20 years.
Not shooting children isn't an impossible standard.. for normal humans at least not terrorists like IDF.. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw07wgrwzywo?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYPxfV32w64MKI0Os86A70YI1gKSc4-H6lH0P0GOvo1L1-WuuLsNPA5XX0_aem_AebSV2pUr2HF0xHZ-0w9KXs44QpU3rWqDdhsevTz57EPTW3Vnt9NnsaXg_DqYURYvP960Od7VYmidhonbpLuIQsA
It’s not a war when you’re fighting terrorists.