Has this been explored quite extensively? I think there’s some been some (perhaps deliberate) confusion between a documented basement/bunker that was constructed by Israel many years ago, and what appears (to me) to be a newly constructed (definitely not to code) tunnel system leading to an apartment near the hospital.
No, it hasn’t; and further, I find the assertion that all the weapons found at the hospital are totally fine, dude to be absolutely laughable. But we’ve been round and round (and round and round and round and round) that carousel before…
You quoted one of two sentences from a post–the assertion, not the evidence–and declared it nonsense. I quoted the other sentence to show why it’s not nonsense, and you accuse me of selective quoting?
I admire your rhetorical chops, at least.
[Edit: I see you quoted two of the sentences. The first one was really short, and in my mind I conflated the two as a compound sentence. My bad. The point–that I wasn’t any more selective than you, and that’s absurd for you to make that accusation–stands.]
Well, let’s go to the last one first, the Russian-Ukranian War. I’m assuming you’re not trying to compare Israel to Russia in its moral rectitude, but set that aside–and let’s assume that you’re counting Ukranians killed by Russia only in 2022 and 2023. In about 20-22 months, Russia has killed fewer civilians than IDF has killed in 2 months.
The Bosnian War was three years long, and the war crimes were so prevalent that Wikipedia doesn’t have a separate article for them: they have separate articles for different subcategories of war crimes in that war:
And even so, the rate of civilian deaths in that conflict was much lower than the rate of civilian deaths in this one.
Congo War–are you serious? Your defense against accusations of war crimes perpetrated by IDF goes to the Congo War?
Please reread what I wrote:
Listing some wars with horrific war crimes in them doesn’t mean that modern warfare always includes civilian casualties on this side. Listing conflicts headed up by war criminals may not be making the case you think it’s making.
Maybe that’s because when the Ukranian army knows that it’s about to fight the Russians in a city reducing it to rubble, they evacuate the civilians first rather than forbidding them from leaving?
Multiple large cities (populations in the hundreds of thousands) on the Russian front have been utterly destroyed by the fighting. If the Ukranian army had been telling civilians “don’t you dare leave these cities! If you do the Russians will take over these places and never let you back in” - a very realistic threat considering Russian actions, I might add - then Ukranian civilian casualties would number in the hundreds of thousands or even millions.
But since the Ukranian government and army gives half a shit about the lives of its civilians, it has not acted this way - and thank God it hasn’t.
Mariupol (pre-war population of over 450,000) has had over 90% of its buildings destroyed. Can you imagine how many more civilians would have died if Ukrainian army units shot civilians trying to evacuate because it wanted to use them as human shields against the Russians?
If your point is that Hamas is fucking awful: granted. They’re the worst. They’re scum.
IDF knows that, and knows what they’ll do. IDF needs to incorporate that into their decisionmaking about how to act in cases where civilian lives are in danger.
My point is that Hamas makes it impossible for the IDF to engage Hamas forces eithout civilians getting in the way.
I think the difference is that, confronted with that reality, you think that IDF’s actions are acceptable. I think that, confronted with that reality, their actions are not.
You posted a meme recently from Shrek, of the awful prince saying, “Some of you will die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.” Consider how that applies to IDF’s actions in Gaza.
Are you posting this as a justification for the current IDF operation in Gaza. That is very weak.
Better to use the Brit policy of Air Marshall “Bomber” Harris (WW2) whose rigid policy was to kill as many German civilians as possible in order to create dissatisfaction with the Nazis. Dresden and Hamburg were deliberate strikes at the civilian population.
So, does that somehow justify the IDF in Gaza?
I am told that the inconsiderate buggers live there. Kind of like they do in Israel.
I agree that this is the reality that the Palestinian people face, but I think the prince in that situation is clearly the Gazan leadership, safe and snug in their Qatari hotel beds. They’re the people who launched this war knowing full well what it would mean.
Not destroying Hamas after its actions on Oct 7 is an invitation for the events of that day to repeat. I still haven’t seen any proposals on how to accomplish this other than war.
Do you have even a shred of evidence that this is Israel’s intent?
I listed a wide variety of conflicts. My case is clear, civilian casualties are an inherent part of modern warfare. The current Israel-Hamas war is not that unique in that respect.
The criticism is not of the civilians living in their homes, it’s of Hamas choosing to set up their operations in hospitals and residential buildings. Which I agree, is quite inconsiderate of them.
Come now, I don’t believe they killed 18000 people by accident.
I don’t really care what you believe - I care about what you have evidence for.
sorry will repost
You attempted to link a Yahoo Search results page; here’s the first link on that page:
I agree - even bombs that aren’t high tech self guided munitions can be used with precision, thank you for pointing this out.
Can I just point out the insidiousness of whatever source first peddled this claim that Crane is echoing? Someone wanted to make Israel look bad, so they took a statement that Israel uses 40-45% unguided munitions, and without bothering to compare this stat to what other countries do, or looking into whether this is actually going to cause a disproportionate number of civilian casualties.
In actual fact, this is a very high rate of guided munition use, which shows Israel’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties. But that’s not as easy of a clickbaity headline to write.
Actually Israel only claims ‘heightened’ accuracy for these weapons (you can find that with an easy google). Laser conversion kits for dumb bombs achieve a rate of 48% hitting within 28 feet of the intended target. Most land somewhere in the vicinity. That’s high quality laser conversion kits, not ‘heightened’ accuracy stuff.
One ton dumb bombs being used as anti-personnel weapons in urban areas is an act of desperation. As it was in WW2.
The tired trope that the enemy is using civilians as a shield is weak propaganda. Hamas knows that Israel is not deterred by the prospect of killing Palestinians.
That’s true, but they do know that they can use that to turn world opinion - and particularly American opinion - against Israel, which is the true goal of that tactic.