“The official said a soldier felt threatened and opened fire. Two of the hostages were killed immediately while the third was injured and ran back to a building, he said. A cry for help was heard in Hebrew and the battalion commander issued an order for troops to cease firing, but there was “another burst of fire,” and the third hostage was killed, he said.”
So, again, I can’t help but wonder how many people displaying white flags or engaged in similarly benign behavior have been killed by the IDF without comment, because they didn’t turn out to be hostages and so could plausibly be classified as “enemy combatants.”
Hey, if hostages don’t want to be killed by their own government, they should overthrow their current one. That’s how this works, right?
Lots and lots. That seems obvious just from the raw numbers. Hell, Israel reports that only one in three of the people they’ve killed was a combatant, and that’s not taking into account all the civilians dying of untreated medical issues (both ordinary ones like diabetes and cancer, and ones caused by the war, like diarrheal diseases) and malnutrition, etc.
No, the talking point is that this is only the fault of Hamas.
They are 100% responsible for starting this war. The people who put them in power are reaping what they sowed. Hamas is a terrorist group that uses infrastructure as a base of operations.
This is what war looks like. Buildings are destroyed. Innocent people die.
Response in kind:
You are correct. The Gazan Air Force, Army, Marines, and Coast Guard should get off of their dead assed and fight back. And those kids could climb out from under them rocks and whup up on them Israelis and establish their own state and throw out them Hamases. Sheesh, must be hard to find good help over there.
Oh yeah, was the world created on Oct 7?
I wasn’t aware they weren’t fighting. The war must be over and hostages are free. Otherwise Hamas is doing what it started out to do and that’s fighting a gorilla war using infrastructure as their base of operations.
…some background on the IDF and white flags, here is a 2009 report from Human Rights Watch on “White Flag Deaths” during Operation Cast Lead:
In a letter today from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem:
Another journalist, Al Jazeera’s Samer Abudaqa was killed a couple of days ago in a drone strike.
The IDF have destroyed graveyards. Apologies again for the Twitter link. Palestinian & British writer Ahmed Masoud shows the before-and-after of the graveyard where his father was buried.
The latest Flash Report says the MOH haven’t been able to update their figures since the 14th of December, so it stands at 18,787. There was an airstrike on a school in Khan Yunis, reportedly killing 12 Internally Displaced People. Rafah, on the border, has experiences a fourfold increase in population density, and is now “the most densely populated area within the Gaza Strip.”
The World Food Programme “reveals alarming trends in the food security situation in southern Gaza, with 44 per cent of assessed households facing very severe hunger”, an increase from 24% from their last assessment in November during the pause.
Since the 7th October, 278 Palestinians, including 70 children, have been killed on the West Bank. They have recorded 344 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians, and “at least 189 Palestinian households comprising 1,257 people, including 582 children, have been displaced amid settler violence and access restrictions.”
The full flash report is here:
And one last thing: Al Jazeera asked “10 people in Gaza to record moments of their day.” If you want an insight into what daily life is like in Gaza, this might be helpful. This was recorded in November.
…another journalist targeted:
Twitter link, spoiled because the video contains blood.
Palestinian journalist Mohammed Balousha, in a distinctive blue press vest, has been shot in the legs by IDF sniper. As I type this, he still hasn’t been rescued. The videos that are posted are of him regaining conciousness, him having to crawl to safety and wrap his own wounds. He can’t be rescued, as the medics say it is too dangerous to approach. Hopefully he makes it. The medics will try and rescue him in the morning.
The latest update on Al Shifa from Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization:
Video on the link to show how man patients are there right now.
The killing of the three escaped hostages puts lie to the assertion by Israel that they are trying their best to minimize civilian deaths, and that any deaths are due to Hamas using civilians as shields which have to be killed to get to Hamas.
These three poor souls were walking shirtless if I’m not mistaken, so no likelihood of them wearing explosive vests, and they were just walking towards their own country’s army, and were summarily shot.
No Hamas in sight, no human shields in sight, no civilian infrastructure used by Hamas in sight, just three shirtless men walking to get to safety.
So all the excuses about sad but necessary civilian deaths seem to be just that, at least to a degree.
I wrote this several days ago, and I’m wondering whether we are indeed seeing the IDF becoming monsters themselves in the process.
To quote Hume,
Seems on point.
Today’s SMBC might be on-point:
Specifically, the tagline:
If the primary concern with IDF’s misdeeds is that they’ll lead to further radicalization amongst Palestinians, I’d suggest that that shouldn’t be the primary concern.
Are you sure you want to make the argument that “the people who put them in power are reaping what they sowed”. Based on that logic, any dead Israeli civilians are merely the reapings of the current Israeli government policies, and any settler in the West Bank would be fair game.
Applying your logic I would be speaking German now because my parent’s generation stayed out of WW-II.
You’re argument fits the Germans who voted in the Nazi regime. They wouldn’t have been pounded to dust because of the war brought on by that regime. The Nazi’s were pure evil just as Hamas is now. Hamas needs to be defeated.
Hamas needs to be defeated. Netanyahu and his allies, who deliberately put into place policies that allowed Hamas to grow and thrive, also need to be defeated (politically). They own some of the blame for Hamas’s effectiveness.
No where did I say don’t fight back. And I fully understand and accept that civilian casualties have always been part of war. But you claimed that Palestinian civilians are getting what they deserve because of the actions of their government. If that is true, Israeli civilians must have also gotten what they deserved on October 7 for the hatred and destabilization sown by the Israeli government.
Or, you know, maybe there are a bunch of innocent civilians that are getting slaughtered because there are blood thirsty elements of both governments.
Ok! 
One Hamas trucking supply tunnel gone!!!
The guardian live feed
If vehicles can drive through it, it must have an extensive ventilation system.