JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling. “Listen,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Sada as fighting raged around Shifa Hospital.
Why are hospitals in Gaza under Israel’s crosshairs? Why? Is it truly that difficult to step back and think for a moment about why Israel would want to erase the current populace entirely?
Not sure why you’re being downvoted… Israel an ethnostate, and what we’re seeing here are the early stages of a genocide. Look at any other ethnic cleansing in history, and you’ll easily see the parallels.
Calling a state an Ethnostate doesn’t mean you’re saying the population is entirely of one ethnicity. It means one ethnicity is given a privileged status above all others.
Israel was founded when Zionists purged Palestinians from their homes and forced them into Gaza and the West Bank in order to create a Jewish majority state. That makes Israel an ethnostate by definition.
Ahh I see. So because Zionists haven’t been able to successfully cleanse all Palestinians from the region, Israel doesn’t count as an ethnostate. Don’t worry though because by God they’re still trying their damndest to make it happen no matter how many thousands of children they have to murder.
Well, I'm not sure early stages fits, that's calling for a group to removed and Israel has been bombing water wells, while monopolizing all water supplies and providing only dangerously! small amounts of unclean water. Without question, this has caused unneeded deaths. Simmiliarly for electricity and food supplies.
You know, I was trying to tread lightly, lest the Zionist apologists show up to try and redefine “genocide”.
But the reality is this:
Tens of thousands of civilians are being murdered (shot, bombed, starved, water supply poisoned) by Israel’s military.
Israel is an ethnostate which believes that their race makes them god’s chosen people.
One of the Israeli government cabinet members has declared that the Palestinians in Gaza must be eradicated, and that he would drop a nuclear bomb on Gaze if he could.
When you use the U.N.’s definition of genocide (“acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”), the picture is pretty clear.
Absolutely. I hope I didn't sound pedantic or talking down, my intent was just to have more details higher in the thread in case some of those zionist shit poster tolls take over the bottom. You're 100% right on every point and I wish you weren't.
War does not automatically equate to being a genocide just because people due. Otherwise, every war in history would.be genocide.
There are Arabs & Palestinians that serve in the IDF too and have killed Palestinians. There are other Arabs in Jordan and Syria who have also gone to war against Palestine.
You are using incindiary rhetoric to win an online argument, but your description doesn’t fit the facts.
Do you realize that the population of Gaza grows by over 50,000 people every year? Even if we accept the casualty figures provided by Hamas (and I don’t) then unless this war goes on at its current intensity for another four months (which it won’t) the population of Gaza will actually increase rather than decrease in the one-year period that includes the war.
The idea that the war in Gaza is “[erasing] the current populace entirely” is disconnected from reality.
*18. The blockade started in late 2005. Just clarifying because Israel likes to claim that the blockade started in response to the scary Hamas government launching rocket attacks.
That's a false dichotomy. They are killing them as fast as they think the international community will tolerate. They won't kill them fast enough to provoke any major entity into opposing them, they will just stay firmly in the "everyone will wag their fingers at us and argue about whether it's right" zone, which is where they sit currently.
They are killing them as fast as they think the international community will tolerate. They won't kill them fast enough to provoke any major entity into opposing them, they will just stay firmly in the "everyone will wag their fingers at us and argue about whether it's right" zone, which is where they sit currently.
So the fact that this leaves open the possibility that some people get to flee their homes in terror, knowing that their friends and loved ones who refuse to be chased out of their homes by Israel are likely to be killed by the IDF, is one of the things that you feel might convince me that Israel doesn't have genocidal intent?
And what will make you believe genocide isn’t the end goal?
But that’s impossible to argue. You can claim for any ratio that it’s a silent genocide as long as even a single citizen is killed. And we know a war without civilian casualties - even forgetting the situation of Hamas putting civilians forward as shields and even killing some themselves. Where do you draw the line?
Instead of examining the facts, you’re opting for an easy cop-out that requires no proof and cannot be disproved.
I didn't say no conditions anyone would accept, I said no conditions you are going to accept. You wouldn't be carrying water to this level if you would.
Civilian casualties aren’t the same thing as genocide.
genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
When a country with access to the full destructive power of a modern-day military (including nuclear weapons) fights a war in such a manner that at the end of the war there will be more enemy civilians than there were before the war, it is entirely unreasonable to claim that genocide or any attempt to commit genocide is taking place. You might as well call it cannibalism or pedophilia - those are also really bad things that Israel isn’t actually doing.
Keep telling yourself whatever you need to support your own narratives. I just wanna let you know that I think you are a cold-hearted person, and I hope that you, your family, or your people will never be thought of, as you are thinking and/or talking of the Palestinians right here.
They are deliberately bombing hospitals, schools and people fleeing. If you cannot open your eyes to see this, but rather argue about the technicalities of semantics to feel better, I wish you good luck in life.
Even if we accept the casualty figures provided by Hamas (and I don’t)
I don't know why you wouldn't, unless your justification is just your own bigotry.
One snippet out of a lengthy article.
Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements.
“Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “In the times in which we have done our own verification of numbers for particular strikes, I’m not aware of any time which there’s been some major discrepancy.”
Shakir said Human Rights Watch would not use figures provided by parties with “a propensity to misrepresent information.”
Throughout four wars and numerous bloody skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, U.N. agencies have cited the Health Ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the U.N. humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records.
In all cases the U.N.’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza Health Ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
— 2008 war: The ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 1,385.
— 2014 war: The ministry reported 2,310 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 2,251.
— 2021 war: The ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 256.
You do realise that the birth rates will slow down during the conflict, right? Who's going to be having a baby when the nearest hospital is being shelled? Assuming of course that both parents even survive.
That 50,000 per year won't hold for this duration and I won't be surprised if it shrinks to below 1,000 by the time Israel is finished.
I can’t imagine ever having such a cynical and apathetic worldview. All of this death is acceptable to you because more children will be born? Because they’ll be replaced?
Set a reminder on your calendar for March, and we’ll take a look at the news at that point. I have a sneaking suspicion that you may be surprised. While you’re at it set a reminder to get some therapy too, christ
Israel doesn't wanna wipe out Gazans; that's just unrealistic. However, a sizeable part of the Israeli government is very much fine with expelling them.
Yeah, I mean there are people in the Israeli Government calling all Palestinians (not just Hamas) “animals”, others who say that Palestinians won’t be allowed to get back to Northern Gaza and there’s even a member of that Government who seriously suggested Israel should nuke Gaza.
And then, of course, there is the long track record of Israel doing things like murdering journalists and killing Palestinian kids throwing rocks at their armored diggers, especially under governments with these same people in them.
People who have a track record of murdering journalists and children, bombing hospitals full of those they see as “animals” which they want to see dead or out of Gaza, and then providing to the World some unverifiable excuse that blames somebody else and doesn’t even pass the sniff test when it comes to proportionality in the use of force is hardly out of character, especially because History has various examples of people who think like that going full on mass-murderer in similar ways.
I don’t know why people insist on this narrative. Isn’t the truth horrible enough? Hamas is allegedly using hospitals as shields, which is horrible. Israel is willing to kill countless civilians to get at Hamas, which is also horrible.
Because it’s what Israeli politicians and government officials actually believe. They aren’t even quiet about it. It’s genuinely not hard to prove the genocidal intent of the Israeli government.
Unfortunately western media just tends to gloss over it all. I’m not sure if reporters can’t fathom the US supporting ethnic cleansing or if they just want to avoid the flack they’d receive by being honest. Either way, it’s unfortunate because well meaning liberals are left to assume Israel genuinely cares about stopping Hamas and aren’t using them as a pretext to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip.
Unfortunately western media just tends to gloss over it all. I’m not sure if reporters can’t fathom the US supporting ethnic cleansing or if they just want to avoid the flack they’d receive by being honest.
Please watch a documentary that covers any of the previous foreign wars the US has been in, especially those that came about before the internet boom (or better yet, one before and one after). I personally like to recommend the Panama Deception because it’s free on youtube and pretty short and succinct (only 90 min). On top of that Panama is still currently dealing with the issues started and maintained during the “wars” discussed in that documentary (I don’t knowing if you’ve seen about the ongoing Canadian mining protests).
The documentary covers some of what happened obviously, but it also shows some of the news airing at the time from the biggest American news channels that were covering the wars and how they covered it. You’d be amazed at what was claimed at home vs what was happening overseas. The MSM may as well have been a third arm of the US government. As much as they like to pretend to be neutral on domestic affairs which the people watching would easily be able to criticize, it should really be no shock to anyone that they’d mostly be parroting US gov talking points when it comes to foreign affairs.
Kinda similar to the “human shields” argument. When I read comics growing up, when a villain takes a hostage the answer was never “kill the hostage” except for the edgiest of antiheroes, yet here we are with “human shields” being used as a justification to kill civilians. It’s fucking wild.
I wonder if a lot of people’s idea of war has been shaped by the recent American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which were wars of choice where at least in theory American soldiers were fighting largely for the benefit of the natives. Countries that believe they actually need to win and don’t have the option of just giving up and going home fight wars in a very different way. Consider for example World War II, the proverbial “good versus evil” war fought by the generation that originally came up with the comic book characters you read about. The Allies certainly didn’t hesitate to kill enormous numbers of Axis civilians in the course of destroying military targets. (IMO the Allies actually went way too far and a lot of the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan served no military purpose, but I suppose they were more worried about bombing too little than they were about bombing too much.)
So, in WW2, the vast vast vast majority of the fight against “evil” was done by the USSR, because the Third Reich had, as one of its pillars, the destruction of the workers’ movement and the enslavement of the Slavs. The USSR lost far more than any other party to the war because the Third Reich made the war of choice, dehumanized the Slavs, and engaged in genocidal mass murder as a choice. The USSR defeated 80% of the Third Reich’s forces.
On the flip side, the American and British government and business communities were pro-fascist. They funded the rise of the Third Reich, they funded domestic and international eugenics programs, they were deeply invested in apartheid states and women’s oppression. (By way of contrast, the Brits and Americans used women as prostitutes to support the war effort while the USSR had women all over their military as snipers, tank operators, pilots, machine gunners, etc.)
So given that context, let’s look at the end of the war and what happened after. At the end of the war, the US wanted to make sure that the USSR didn’t liberate the rest of Western Europe from the Third Reich because they were anti-communist. The USA led the Western allies to Germany to create a border with the USSR (also a member of the allies, remember). It was this insistence that divided Germany into East and West Germany. Berlin was in East Germany because the USSR was the predominant victor in the war.
But then what of Japan. Before the USA nuked Japan, the USA and Japan were negotiating terms of surrender. The USA had made a very strict and ultimately untenable set of terms. Japan replied that they needed some domestic face saving in order to prevent their country from descending into violent and bloody internal revolution immediately. The USA received that message, and then chose to nuke 2 civilian cities. There was no emergency. The US wasn’t fighting for survival. Everything had already been secured. The USA was in active negotiations and Japan was participating (albeit through third parties because of the political sensitivity). The USA made an active deliberate choice to nuke civilians unnecessarily.
Why? Because communism was their real enemy. It was the reason they got involved in the war, it was the driving force behind their strategic decisions. They got involved against communism, they went to Germany against communism, they partitioned Germany against communism. And they nuked Japan as a show of force, or to demonstrate how bat shit they were, to create conditions of fear and restraint.
But if that were true, then wouldn’t the USA have just launched a war against communism? They did. They launched wars of choice against Vietnam and Korea. They destroyed Cambodia. They bombed Laos. The most bombed countries in the world were bombed by the USA, with multiple countries having the USA drop more bombs on them than all bombs dropped by all parties in WW2 combined.
They continued their eugenics programs for 20 more years after WW2, they advanced their chemical weapons programs and deployed atrocity after atrocity in these wars of choice, mostly against civilians.
Are people in the USA used to wars of choice? Yes, because in essence all USA wars have been wars of choice, even before the USA existed. Was it a necessity to invade The Phillipines? How about Grenada? Overthrow the Iranian government? Afghanistan in the 80s? Was it an existential necessity to genocide the indigenous peoples of the Americas, poisoning their water, destroying their ecosystems, destroying their agriculture and their sources of food?
The entire Western European project, which became the North Atlantic project, is about wars of choice - brutal wars of choice of genocide through war, through rape, through collective punishment, through environmental devastation, through eugenics, through slavery, through death camps, through occupation and extraction. The number of necessary wars the USA has been in is so vanishingly small that the very few exceptions prove the rule.
So, in WW2, the vast vast vast majority of the fight against “evil” was done by the USSR, because the Third Reich had, as one of its pillars, the destruction of the workers’ movement and the enslavement of the Slavs. The USSR lost far more than any other party to the war because the Third Reich made the war of choice, dehumanized the Slavs, and engaged in genocidal mass murder as a choice. The USSR defeated 80% of the Third Reich’s forces.
Ignores the fact Stalin sided with Hitler and invaded Poland. The Allies also had a substantial supply train back and forth between the UK and Russia to help fight the Germany army there.
On the flip side, the American and British government and business communities were pro-fascist. They funded the rise of the Third Reich, they funded domestic and international eugenics programs, they were deeply invested in apartheid states and women’s oppression. (By way of contrast, the Brits and Americans used women as prostitutes to support the war effort while the USSR had women all over their military as snipers, tank operators, pilots, machine gunners, etc.)
Governments were shits back then across the world. As for the Eugenics, that was how the world worked. You are using the current standards to demonise the past. We know the past was broken, that is why we have change. Eugenics is still a thing today. There will always be those who think they are better than everyone else. As for using women for prostitutes, just read on how the Russians treated the German women. Or more so what is happening in Ukraine right now.
Countries have been funding partisan groups and wars for time immemorial. The enemy of your enemy is my enemy etc. The west is funding Ukraine right now. Ukraine is funding partisan groups in Russia. Russia in turn has mercenaries from all over the world. The Wagner group is active in many areas.
But then what of Japan. Before the USA nuked Japan, the USA and Japan were negotiating terms of surrender.
No they were not. The emperor of Japan refused to surrender, the Allied forces did not see the need to offer good terms. There is a famous scene in the movie Oppenheimer, where Roosevelt gets the news of the successful test of the nuclear bomb at the Potsdam summit. Good terms are at the behest of the position you are in. Japan was not in a good place.
The USA made an active deliberate choice to nuke civilians unnecessarily.
Damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. The counter argument is that it has prevented the use of Nukes since then. Or rather anyone who commits to using one know exactly what they are doing. What is a certainty is that fewer died as a result of the bomb. Not the most palatable end justifies the means, I agree.
Why? Because communism was their real enemy. It was the reason they got involved in the war, it was the driving force behind their strategic decisions. They got involved against communism, they went to Germany against communism, they partitioned Germany against communism. And they nuked Japan as a show of force, or to demonstrate how bat shit they were, to create conditions of fear and restraint.
Japan was nuked in the fight against communism>? Stalin was making imperial demands. The land grab by the Russians was the beginnings of soured relations. Remember Russia was directly responsible for the UK and France entering the war when it invaded Poland.
As for the rest, no one could argue that governments have only just moved away from being shits. It is a recent thing, and not all governments are complying with the change in attitude. Judging the actions of the past by the standards of today is just a “better than thou ism”. It is easy to be pompous and pious in the current environment. Not so much when the whole world is working to different values. I am 100% certain that they will be shits again should the need arise. Looking in the direction of Israel on that one.
We need the whole world to agree to not invade each other. We do not need to justify the actions of today by the misdemeanours of those in the past.
Your understanding of pretty much every single point you made is entirely ahistorical and inconsistent with actual records. However, it’s 100% consistent with Western liberal propaganda including schooling.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement was made, according to historical record, to give the USSR a better chance at surviving the coming onslaught. There were no illusions on Stalin’s part that the war was coming for the USSR as Hitler literally announced his intentions in Mein Kampf.
The idea that the USSR invaded Poland is a Western narrative reframing of the conflict between the USSR and the Third Reich.
The idea that allied supply lines are equivalent to millions of Soviet deaths is divorced from reality.
The idea that Stalin engaged in a land grab is equally a Western narrative reframing the post-war reality. The USSR marched all the way to Berlin. Every country they marched through had been destroyed by the war. The options were to leave them for the anti-communist to come through and attempt to destroy the USSR or stay behind and build self-governing Soviet republics. Unlike the land grabs of Japan, Germany, England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the USA, the USSR built democratic republics and gave them the right to secede from the union. The majority of people in the former republics have said, through polls, that dismantling the USSR did more harm to them than good.
In the years immediately following the war the USA built NATO, staffed it with Nazis, executed Operation Paperclip to distribute Nazis all over the Western hemisphere, and executed Operation Gladio to arm, train, fund, and organize fascist militias all over Europe so that if the USSR ever backed out of any place it would immediately be taken over by fascists. Then the USA went on a massive killing spree all over the world.
As for your incorrect understanding of the Japanese surrender, you need to actually read the historical record. The USA and Britain disagreed on the terms and the USA insisted in strongarming the negotiations. The Soviets were trying to negotiate with Japan, but the USA wanted the Soviets out of the Pacific. The Japanese were in active negotiations and after several back-and-forths the USA made the Potsdam Declaration. The Japanese, imagining they were negotiating with rational human beings, rejected the terms and asked for specific conditions about maintaining their social institutions around the monarchy. The USA nuked hundreds of thousands of civilians in response.
There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that it saved lives. Your entire framing is that the USA was allowed to just decide to do whatever it wanted because it won, up to and including nukes on civilians. This position is psychopathic.
Governments were shit back then
Mother fucker it was only 80 years ago. Are you that fucking daft? The USA got WORSE in those 80 years, not better.
Comparing Wagner group to the Mujahideen is ridiculous. Just pure brain rot.
As for this ridiculous idea that governments are better now… Isn’t it curious that it happened after you were born? Almost like now that you’re here, things are better. Of course they’d have to be, otherwise you would be living in an evil empire. And you aren’t are you? That would be terrible.
The reality is that the CIA still operates black sites where they torture people, the supreme Court protects them, the Congress protects them, the executive branch protects them. The US has invaded more countries after WW2 than before. In Libya, the country with the highest standard of living in all of Africa, the US bombed it to oblivion. After the president was lynched in the streets, Hillary Clinton, paragon of governments not being shits anymore, said “We came. We saw. He died.”
The amount of violent oppression the USA has delivered around the world since the end of world war 2 is unfathomable. The School of the Americas, alone, is responsible for so much bloodletting, and that’s just a fucking school.
Your entire world view is a collection of false narratives created by North Atlantic propagandists based on cherry picked facts that give them the veneer of authenticity. The reality is that the USA is the inheritor and current head of the 6 century North Atlantic project of global domination and nothing is off the table for them: nuking civilians, genocide, species extinction, child trafficking, systematized torture, overt military occupation, assassination, coups of democratically elected governments, medical experiments, apartheid, ghettoization, mass incarceration, slave labor.
Just because you’re here now doesn’t mean that suddenly governments are more rational.
The total war tactics of WW2 are unthinkable by modern standards, but it’s hard not to sympathize with an outgunned army fighting for their home. They fight because they’d rather die than lose.
Maybe instead of fighting people in that position, you talk to them and work out a peace deal. If they’re willing to be reasonable, end the violence.
Can you explain what you mean by “Didn’t happen in a vacuum”?
Best I can figure is that you disagree with the act itself, but agree with their motives or desires. But I really don’t want to assume, and would prefer to understand from you.
Both sides have been punching each other. There needs to be an independent party here, like a two state solution. Guess which side rejected that though?
Israel? I wrote a big-ass comment talking about this before so I'll just copy and paste from it.
Oslo accords: Negotiations were progressing until Rabin got fucking assassinated by a Zionist terrorist, at a time where the Israeli right was actively calling for his assassination. Netanyahu, who came in his place, called the whole thing off.
Camp David: The then-Israeli foreign affairs minister stated he wouldn't have accepted the offer if he were in Arafat's place. The Israeli offer was that bad, and they weren't willing to compromise.
The 2008 Olmert offer was mostly behind closed doors so nobody actually knows what was going on (both sides blame each others for not following up on negotiations), but from what we do know the offer included keeping an unacceptably large part of the West Bank (about 10% by the Palestinian calculation).
2014 offer: The American envoy stated that the blame for the failure of the negotiations (not an offer, since Israel didn't actually offer anything) lied squarely on Israel, and specifically Netenyahu. That's how uncooperative Israel was.
And that should be all peace negotiations with Israel since the Oslo accords. The idea that Palestinians rejected peace is pure Israeli propaganda.
Except in this case “poking you in the eye” is killing people, including old and young, journalists and doctors, poets and farmers, cutting off food, water, and electricity, displacing millions, invading homes, destroying farms and infrastructure, and restricting freedom of movement.
A total war is when you utalize all of a societies resources for war. That’s essentially what Hamas is doing, they have been syphoning the tiny economic capability the Gaza Strip had to arm themselves and are not hesitant to employ every available human being as a fighter or as a shield. Hamas also is in favour of Palestinian civilians dying,
The time to facilitate a peaceful solution was decades ago but the Israeli government missed that opportunity for selfish reasons. Now there is a conflict with no good solution available for Israel.
They should but that would only help with the west bank. As long Hamas is there, there is a security threat and Hamas can hide behind civilians. But even if Israel dismantles the current Hamas structures, in a few years they or something similar will be back.
There are 2 million people in Gaza and no perspective for any improvement of their situation. Gaza is economically viable on it’s own. But neither Egypt nor Israel wants to incorporate Gaza and it’s inhabitants into their states.
As long Hamas is there, there is a security threat and Hamas can hide behind civilians. But even if Israel dismantles the current Hamas structures, in a few years they or something similar will be back.
If the Israeli occupation of Palestine stops, Hamas will either disappear on its own, mellow out into a normal government or become just another terrorist organization like the IRA in Ireland. That's usually how it goes.
How long will the mellowing out take and how many Israeli civilians will die during that? Half of the people in Gaza were born after Hamas came into power.
Ireland is a viable economy on it’s own. The average education level in Gaza is abysmal, there are no resources, little farmable land,… There is no perceivable way for Gaza to function as a independent part of Palestine independent of either Israel or Egypt. So what’s the plan here?
Egypt wants nothing to do with Gaza anymore. I don’t think anyone in Israel would support incorporating Gaza into Israel and grant citizenship to it’s inhabitants.
Just closing the border and largely keeping out there is what Israel did the last two decades and that is exactly what ended up in an unprecedented terror attack on Israeli civilians.
How long will the mellowing out take and how many Israeli civilians will die during that?
I mean we can look at the Irish government for inspiration. When you sign a treaty to end a century conflict you tend to be pressured by your people to keep it.
There is no perceivable way for Gaza to function as a independent part of Palestine independent of either Israel or Egypt. So what’s the plan here?
The Gazan economy used to mainly rely on cash crop exports, but we all know what happened there.
Just closing the border and largely keeping out there is what Israel did the last two decades and that is exactly what ended up in an unprecedented terror attack on Israeli civilians.
Just closing the border? At this point I find it hard to believe you're discussing this in good faith, but anyway no, that's not what Israel is doing. Gaza is subject to a land, air and sea blockade that makes it so, in short, Gaza isn't allowed to have any contact with the outside world unless Israel approves it. That's not keeping out what is there, that's a military occupation.
This exactly is my main gripe with how Israel is conducting this war. They’re completely unwilling to take any additional risk to preserve civilian life.
That’s why concluded that the Israeli leadership at the moment are full-blown Fascists: their treatment of people who they see as “not us” as subhuman and the style and intensity of their propaganda entirelly anchored on blaming the victim and them providing a variety of unverifiable excuses for their own killings which are even inconsistent amongst each other (often the excuses for different bombings have inconsistent criteria, which means they’re to a large extent arbitrary or the excuses are being made up after the fact and hence false) are quite the throwback to quite a style of Fascism which is almost a century old and manage to exceed just about everybody since WWII.
Even Russia in its invasion of Ukraine did not get this close to the historical worse kinds of Fascism, probably because the Russians are nowhere as racist towards Ukranians as Israelis are towards Arabs, especially Palestinians.
Well, the US has shown that they couldn’t fight an insurgency with their level of protections for civilians.
Makes sense that Israel assesses that they have less resources than the US, and thus can’t fight the same way and have a hope of success.
Of course they could have used that as a pretty good reason not to start this war in the first placez but alas, they didn’t.
The US absolutely fought an insurgency. They just figured out they needed local support. They got it in Iraq, they didn’t get it in Afghanistan.
That’s Israel’s biggest problem here. They’ve spent the last several decades making Palestinians hate them. So there is no possible way for them to destroy Hamas.
What argument are you making here? Your first paragraph implies you believe that Isreal is justified in it’s approach based on the US’s failed conflicts with Guerilla warfare. But then your second paragraph implies that Isreal is not justified for exactly that reason, which is like… Yeah… That’s correct lol.
I feel like it shouldn’t be a controversial opinion to say that if you are unable to conduct a war without massive civilian casualties then you shouldn’t be conducting that war. If you do anyway you are, at the very best, a war criminal.
This is, actually, an absurd opinion. Massive civilian casualties are inseparable from war, and you will be hard pressed to find a war without them.
The laws of war are built around, and exist because of, this assumption. They exist to give a framework that sets forth principles by which the loss of life can be evaluated.
Otherwise, by your definition, every warring faction ever is a war criminal.
Wow, that is an insanely obtuse interpretation of what I said.
Of course there are always civilian casualties In war. Of course that is why war crimes exist in the first place.
“Massive” literally means “Large in comparison to what is typical”. So when I say massive civilian cassualties forgive me for assuming you’d understand I was using that word for it’s intended purpose.
Bombing a hospital full of civilians is absolutely a war crime.
Makes sense that Israel assesses that they have less resources than the US, and thus can’t fight the same way and have a hope of success.
Israel has one of the most powerful militaries in the region, with 500,000 troops, a $20 billion dollar budget, and shared tech with the US. They have no external bases to maintain. They’re terrorists who live at the border in 140 square miles with roads Israel designed to allow their tanks easy access.
In the first week of this genocide, Israel dropped more bombs than the US did during the entire Afghanistan war. On one of the most population dense regions in the world.
But further, Israel immediately cut power and water to Gaza. 2 million people went without water and electricity to attack how many Hamas terrorists?
And let’s be clear, this all happened because IDF forces were busy in the West Bank evicting Palestinians from their homes for settlers leaving the Gaza border unguarded.
Because both sides are fighting are major assholes. Hamas does hide arms and fighters in and around hospitals. Israel doesn’t hold back attacking the hospitals to get at that gear, because they care more about killing Hamas than saving Palestinians. The civilians in Gaza are surrounded by assholes.
There’s nothing in the article about that. Only interesting thing there
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that his country offered fuel to Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital Saturday night, but it was “refused.”
Given most people aren’t reading the article, the particularly relevant points:
International humanitarian law lends hospitals special protections during war. But hospitals can lose their protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. […]
In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued a warning to combatants that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes. And the bar for evidence is very high.
“If there is a doubt that a civilian object has lost its protective status, the attacker must assume that it is protected,” Khan wrote. “The burden of demonstrating that this protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the missile, or the rocket in question.”
TL;DR: If Hamas is conducting military operations from hospitals, they can be legitimate targets in the eyes of international law, but precautions still need to be taken to avoid civilian casualties and the case for their military use should be overwhelming, not amorphous or tenuous.
That’s up to them to figure out how to do it with the least amount of civilian casualty then. Moot point anyway considering nothing has come out with overwhelming proof of Hamas using the hospital as cover.
Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, by opposition activist groups, vary between 503,064 and about 613,407 as of March 2023
Ever seen an oil tanker turn? That is the the way the world works with Israel slowly and not quick to judge. The rest of us though have had enough, fuck Israel and no funding of them whatsoever.
Because if you don’t support genocide you are an antisemite, and only one of those can destroy your political aspirations (hint, it isn’t supporting genocide).
Most civilians aren’t but they’ve found out in 3 weeks time that they live all live in pretend democracies and not real ones. Mask off we’re the Russia now.
From the ISW report today: Israeli forces fought Palestinian militia fighters near the Square of the Unknown Soldier less than half a kilometer from the al Shifa Hospital complex.[1] A Palestinian journalist reported that the al Qassem Brigades—the military wing of Hamas—ambushed Israeli forces south of the Square of the Unknown Soldier on Shuhada Street.[2] Other Palestinian militia fighters fought Israeli forces on Omar Mukhtar Street, which bounds the square.[3]
If you build your defense in urban environment you are supposed to evacuate the civilians. This is standard for any half competent army.
It’s no accident Hamas keeps their HQ’s and ammunition depots near civilian population aswell as regularly shoots rockets from near mosks and hospitals. They know Israel is atleast trying to minimize civilian casualties so they’re probably not going to just level that building without a warning as they would if it was located in the desert.
If Hamas had the military capabilities that Israel does and Israel would put their military HQ in the basement of Israeli hospital hoping to use their own population as human shields Hamas could not care less. They would level that building in a heartbeat and collateral damage would just be a bonus.
Israel has the capability to level both Gaza and West bank in a week and kill every single person in there. They haven’t. What would Hamas do if they had this capability?
You seem to have a different understanding of capability than I do. They could do it, so they have the capability, but that says nothing about the consequences.
Israel killed at least 122 of the 1200 themselves. Most likely more
350 of the israelis killed were IDF
This mean the civilian casualty rate was around 70%. On Oct 7.
Hamas has a far better civilian casualty rate than America which goes around 80-90 while committing their supposed genocide attack. This is not an accident you can realize by blind firing into civilian areas.
Purely from these numbers we can conclude in ACTIONS not words that Hamas takes decent care to avoid civilian deaths even when attacking. Far better than israel which just bombs everything that moves.
Israel does a good job of making the world forget their actions.
According to testimonies, in several cases Israeli forces also forced unarmed Palestinian civilian males (mostly adults but in two cases also children) to serve as “human shields”, including making them walk in front of armed soldiers; go into buildings to check for booby traps or gunmen; and inspect suspicious objects for explosives. These practices are not new. Numerous such cases have been documented in recent years and the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that such practices contradict International law and prohibited them in October 2005.73
Because the Palestinian elected government which happens to be a globally recognized terrorist organization decided to build headquarters below hospitals in hope of exploiting the rule of war you mention.
Except: doing what they did negates that rule, and all they did was put that entire hospital of their own people in the crosshairs.
This blood is 100% on the hands of the Palestinian elected government.
A significant portion of the Palestinian population in the Gaza strip were not even born when this ‘goverment’ was elected. They came to power over a decade ago and grabbed it by force so it is more or less a forced millitary leadership at this point
Hey look, another person that would have shit on Nelson Mandela and the AFC in the 80’s for necklacing and being terrorists and not accepting the legitimacy of apartheid south Africa.
Because someone decided it was such a funny idea to use these places to launch missiles at their enemies.
Fucking godawful people Hamas are, ruining the lives of 2 million people and assuring untold suffering for probably generations. The sooner those fucks are gone, the better.
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