this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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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.
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.
Even the US sent troops in to kill a scumbag like Uday Hussein instead of bombing with an airstrike.
This is just the Zionist creed of "unlimited Palestinian deaths don't make up for 1 Israeli."
It's not just in "this war", they weren't giving a shit about Palestinian civilians for decades.
Not like they care about any non Israelis in the area. Especially if they are press
They don't care about Israelis either! They've killed a bunch of the hostages, and there was a lot of friendly fire at the music festival.
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.
You mean "this genocide". They don't see civilians, they see targets for extermination.
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.
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.
Israel stated this war, at a minimum, 17 years ago. Blockades are an act of war.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
they've shown time and time again, through actions and words, that they are not
Exactly. Netanyahu and his gang of corrupt zealots can't be reasoned with.
Do you think Israel will?
Yes.
Hamas attacked on October 7th. Not the other way around.
Didn't happen in a vacuum though, did it.
Do not confuse me saying that with sympathising with Hamas. It is possible to recognise that both sides have bloody hands, and have done for decades.
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.
If I keep poking you in the eye for decades, wouldn't you eventually get tired of it and punch me in the face?
What about when the Palestinians tried to overthrow the Jordanian government, and when they successfully did it to Lebanon?
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.
Israel attacked, at a minimum, 17 years ago.
Blockading a country is an act of war.
There is, but it'd require gasp giving up on their expansionist ambitions, and the only one willing to do that was Rabin, who got assassinated for it.
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.
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.
The Gazan economy used to mainly rely on cash crop exports, but we all know what happened there.
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.
If Israel continues to treat the Palestinians as they have historically done so, it's likely there will always be a Hamas or their equivalent.
If you kill hospitals, you kill a generation.
lol'd