Major Y [an American who went to Israel to fight] and other people on the ground I have spoken with say that they estimate about one in every two or three [civilian] homes in Gaza they go into has military weaponry, including AK47s, grenades and rocket launchers. And they routinely find entrances to Hamas’s terror tunnels inside civilian houses. And not just anywhere, but most often in the children’s bedrooms and even under cots.
Which is still Hamas fault. If you place your military facilities in houses of civilians, refugee camps or even hospitals, these become legit targets. Which is why the term ‘genocide’ is completely missplaced. IF Israel would target civilian houses, that would be a war crime (even though still not a genocide), but since there have been countless proofs of Hamas using them for military purposes, they are legit targets.
So yes, Israel is allowed to bomb a children’s bedroom – because of Hamas.
Or children; because they cannot be part of Hamas, despite what your ridiculous logic says.
Israel doesn’t separate themselves because they have mandatory service for years after coming of age. Does that mean all Israelis 18 and above are lawful targets?
They might try to take out the hostage taker even if it meant a risk to the hostages, especially so if they were shooting civilians from behind said hostages.
This is Hamas hiding behind Palestinian children and civilians while shooting at Israelis. Some of them are going to get hurt until the threat is neutralized.
It's interesting how often I hear this cited, the implication being that women and children under 18 couldn't possibly be militants, which is not true. Also, that doesn't fundamentally change the situation, but it does play for sympathy in the media. Evidently having a penis and being fully grown makes one less worthy of sympathy.
Well no, the Netanyahu administration has been propping up Hamas to keep the Palestinian Authority weak and incapable of resisting illegal settlements. Illegal settlers are a big part of Netanyahu’s base.
There is no Palestinian genocide. If the Israeli government wanted to commit a genocide, they would be doing it a lot more effectively. After all, there are many ethnic Palestinians who are Israeli citizens; if there was a Palestinian genocide, those people would be getting killed, efficiently and systematically. They’re not.
Netanyahu is a traitor to the state of Israel for funding an antisemitic terrorist organization, Hamas.
It is unfortunate that Hamas likes to hide military operations in hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings. There’s a really good reason that international law forbids that sort of thing — because doing that makes hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings legitimate military targets.
There is no Palestinian genocide. If the Israeli government wanted to commit a genocide, they would be doing it a lot more effectively. After all, there are many ethnic Palestinians who are Israeli citizens; if there was a Palestinian genocide, those people would be getting killed, efficiently and systematically. They’re not.
Israel is committing genocide at a rate low enough to avoid too much criticism from their protector states. It’s a long-term strategy that will take decades to complete.
Israel has really upped their genocide game in the past few months and are finally feeling some push back.
Israel is patient, they have no need to hurry the genocide along. The long, slow process is just fine.
Maybe you need a refresher on what genocide is. Here’s an excerpt from the UN definition:
Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:
A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”; and
A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Israel simply intends to kill enough Palestinians to guarantee an ethnic majority in the region. Even if they don’t intended to eliminate every Palestinian, that still constitutes a genocide.
“Deputy Knesset speaker Nissim Vaturi from the ruling Likud party wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Israelis had one common goal, “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, from the far-right Jewish Power party, suggested that Israel drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza and said there were “no uninvolved civilians” in the territory.”
Also the list of genocidal acts, as per the UN Genocide Convention, stipulates that any one of those acts is genocide, not that all 5 must be done. Acts 1 to 3 are very clearly being used in Gaza, and with Knesset members establishing intent it’s clearly a genocide, but arguably even without those statements the actions Israel has undertaken still fit the definition.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I agree that the fact that the Israeli government is currently far-right is a problem, and it’s no making the war situation easier.
Both politicians you quoted, Nissim Vaturi and Eliyahu, are far-right in their vision and views, as a result they say such an extreme sayings.
However, they don’t have any military influence and cannot have because of their position.
The ones who do have military power, didn’t show intentions to do so.
Them being right wing is bad yes, but both politicians form members of the governing coalition, including Likud. One is the deputy Speaker. Israel is not a military dictatorship, the Knesset has control over them, and it’s made clear with the numerous expressions like this that the ruling parties have a genocidal intent.
In addition, Law for Palestine has compiled lists of what they believe to be evidence of genocidal intent, including from military leaders. Some of the statements included are a stretch, but it will undoubtedly be enlightening for you to read through it.
Turns out declaring unprovoked war on Israel, committing genocide against Jews in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and then losing the war has consequences, crazy right?
You do if you care about not killing innocent civilians. Hamas using human shields as a defence doesn’t give Israel a green flag to indiscriminately bomb those locations.
One side spends billions on weapons and military power used to oppress the other. One side has created an apartheid state that stomps on throats of millions of people. Both sides are not the same.
The Palestinian people exist in an awful state where nobody gives a shit for their well-being. Hamas is happy to use civilians as pawns in their attacks and a significant number of Israelis think it’d be awful convenient if all the civilians died while they’re trying to track down Hamas.
I just had a comment that was critical of Israel removed due to “misinformation.” Is anyone else getting that? Is that a mod decision or something automated?
This sounds good in theory, but moderation is an important part of keeping online communities, well, communities.
Each online community has a different Overton window, so it’s more a matter of finding a community that has an Overton window you can accept than anything else.
On this issue, lemmy.world is more American and rabidly pro-Israel and lemmy.ml is more international and rabidly pro-Palestine. Reddit might as well be an extremist platform calling for ethnic cleansing of all brown people.
The New York Post has been consistently promoting the ideas of innocent Israeli victimhood and malicious murdering Hamas since the war began. It is not a trustworthy unbiased source of information for this conflict. [It's also a shitrag paper in general.]
Very strictly speaking, I kinda agree. Western legacy media is the mouthpiece of the ultra-wealthy, and supports continued economic colonialism of the Middle East. That currently happens to coincide with Israel’s interests, so functionally they’re hard to tell apart.
However, I think saying they’re actually Israel’s mouthpiece comes dangerously close to some of the legitimately antisemitic deep-state conspiracy theories.
Maybe this is just semantics, but I do think the distinction is somewhat important.
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