Except the bombing isn’t indiscriminate. The IDF/war cabinet have a pretty good idea how many civilians they’ll have to murder* in order to kill Hamas members hiding amongst the populace.
They’re leveraging AI to build ‘target packages’ using data from extensive drone and/or satellite footage. Locate a militant, track their movements, and the AI can roll back the footage and count how many people entered and left the building beforehand.
Targeted killings like we saw in Jenin during this summer/fall are ethically and legally tenuous, but at least a hit squad doesn’t level entire buildings…
*Yes, murder. If you know with strong confidence that your actions will kill someone/several someone’s, and do it anyway? That’s no longer ‘the fog of war caused an error’ it’s very deliberate act of violence aimed at the populace
Oh yeah? I bet you can’t even name one 20 year war on terror that never ended because you can’t fight an ideology while also enabling the spread of that ideology through civilian casualties. Wait.
But seriously, it’s like Israel looked at Afghanistan and decided the issue was there weren’t enough civilian casualties. Which, yeah, if there’s no civilians left then there’s nobody left to radicalize, but I think there’s a word for that and it rhymes with genocide.
Well, it’s certainly not a fun subject to talk about but there’s always a point where a threat of bullying, discrimination, violence, ethnic cleansing and eventually mass murder will eventually break a population. Take recent examples of Nagorno-Kharabag ending in a complete exodus with very few casualties, or Western Sahara where clear military superiority broke the resistance against annexation.
Regarding Afghanistan: one can certainly ask the question whether more violence or the threat of it could not have produced a better outcome. NATO tried to go cheap on manpower (compared to Germany and Japan for example), instead buying off warlords to compensate and mistakely thinking the more progressive forces in the country would become strong enough to take over at some point. Had they went in heavier with less regard for collateral damage, or have a soldier looking at every Pashtun all of thetime, the result could have been very different and, dare I say, better
In the days after after 10/7, we heard Israeli diplomats talk about how it was their 9/11. On the one hand, I get the comparison and how it explains the shock 10/7 has had on the Israeli phsyce. On the other hand, I get the 9/11 comparison and how it explains the emotional response of launching an impossible military canpaign that will result in a generation defining 20 year quagmire.
Seriously. Any time someone uses a 9/11 comparison to justify Israel’s response, the immediate followup should be “how did the American response work out”?
Yes they are aiming militants, never said they’re consciously targeting the populace, just appalled at their indifference towards civilian deaths as ‘acceptable’.
The IDF/war council is seemingly a-okay if they have to kill 10, 50, 200+ civilians to get at Hamas mid-level commanders - is that okay with you?
Well if you agree that it’s a question of how far you’re willing to move the slider, it’s a question of empathy. But when you say “aimed at the populace” that implies you believe they’re using Hamas as an excuse to kill innocent civilians.
Do you honestly believe Israel would not prefer Hamas to assemble somewhere in the desert away from any civilians so they can take all of them out with a single bomb? Do you believe the Israelis would be sad if Hamas surrendered?
Again, the displayed indifference towards civilian suffering is the core issue. Declaring the south as a ‘safe zone’ pre-ceasefire was a moral move (with disasterous humanitarian results), but now the safe areas are capricious defined and aren’t static,
Regarding the “one bomb in the desert” question? Any other year, yes I’m sure they’d prefer that. But Bibi was already in serious legal trouble before Oct.7 and is openly deferring that issue until after the Hamas war. Keeping the conflict open, progressing slowly, or unresolved buys him time to find a way to stay out of jail.
Is this an excuse for wanton murder of Gazans? You tell me? Certain elements of the coalition have openly made statements that at best call for displacement of Palestinians. Cutting off fuel, food, and water to a region under blockade, while those people are displaced and simultaneously refusing to allow aid in is ghoulish.
I’m so tired, so very tired of the theater of American politics using human lives as sacrificial pawns, all so that the song and dance can continue for time immortal. There’s no end in sight, is there?
How can the us president critisize indiscriminate bombing but veto an attempt to stop it?
Easy. Biden is simply posturing for purposes of damage control - the massive failure of the pro-Israeli propaganda machine has taken the US political establishment by complete surprise (it is probably also calculated to “distance” Biden from the predictable batshit pro-Israeli posturing GOP candidates are going to be oozing next year).
Israel used to have good propaganda to justify their war crimes. Recently they have dropped all pretense and now they just go
“Yeah we want to genocide all Palestinians and steal their land, and America will support us no matter what”.
They’re saying the quiet part out loud.
Also all the IDF propaganda such as the 40 beheaded babies and the hospital base instantly being debunked has started to show just how much israel is lying to justify their colonialism.
Probably cause he wants to please the republicans by helping Israel and also please the dems by telling the IDF to at least try and limit the civilian casualties. He really should just pick a lane here.
Lmao the cope. Biden is not trying to please any Republicans. Biden is 100% owned by AIPAC. He has for the last 50 years unconditionally supported israel no matter how bad their crimes. Genocide Joe is a foreign agent.
A few hundred dead Palestinian kids isn’t going to worry a wealthy neoliberal. Not their kids, not their country.
But “bombing targets going unbombed” fundamentally means “profits going unprofited” and that’s an idea that brings a neoliberal out in a cold sweat.
Ultimately, Biden’s statement is just his part in the pantomime. He’s doing the “left-wing neoliberal” thing where he does exactly the same horrific shit as the right-wing neoliberals, but he frowns while he does it.
If he doesn’t frown hard enough, he might lose the election, but it’s not going to stop the children being blown up or the neoliberals profiting from it.
Biden basically said “I will always support israel no matter how much genocide they do, but the Europeans are starting to stop their support and the rest of the world hates israel with a passion now”
There’s been lots of misleading headlines on this, but this is the first time they didn’t at least include the full quote in the article…
“We’ll continue to provide military assistance to Israel until they get rid of Hamas, but we have to be careful – they have to be careful,” Biden said. “The whole world’s public opinion can shift overnight, we can’t let that happen.”
He’s not criticizing Netanyahu, and he’s still saying he’ll support him no matter what.
But for literal decades now Biden has been saying that to Israels government, and they’ve literally never listened, and Biden has never stopped supporting them.
Why the fuck are people acting like either is going to suddenly happen now?
Supporting Israel is not the same as supporting Netanyahu.
Biden and Netanyahu have a decades-long relationship that has at times been strained. At the Monday evening reception, Biden said he once gifted Netanyahu a photo and wrote at the top: “I love you but I don’t agree with a damn thing you had to say.”
“It’s about the same today,” Biden said, adding he’d “had my differences with some Israeli leadership.”
I find this so infuriating. How do they think this strategy gets rid of Hamas? Israel indiscriminately bombing Palestine is the best recruitment tool Hamas ever had. Why do world leaders with the best advisors money can pay espouse such nonsense. Is there anyone who seriously believes this?
They don’t believe it. It’s just a talking point to cover for genocide. Nettanyahu, like all the right-wing authoritarian fucksticks before him, is about as attached to his excuses as the Navajo nation is to water polo (spoiler: they’re not). It’s just some bullshit to spout while you fucking murder people. If the excuse runs thin, fuck it, just make a new excuse, but this is the one they’ve spent decades cultivating by literally funding hamas.
Liberals are famously incapable of not understanding reality, just in a different way than straight up psychotic conservatives: Enlightened centrism.
Biden is a liberal Democrat, and quite literally believes things like the rule of law is unavoidable and will magically hold Trump to account regardless of what he or his AG do. They always think diplomacy with psychotic dictators will work. They never, ever understand that horrible people can wear a suit and are willing to do horrible things, too.
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