Now you’re raising the same nonsense arguments raised in defense of South Africa’s apartheid and against the boycott. No, we’re not talking about economic sanctions. We’re talking about bombing children and destroying the hospitals and inducing mass starvation and disease.
Do you care how Israel is perceived on the world stage? Are you OK with Israel being seen as committing crimes against civilians, as long as the world doesn’t do anything concrete about it?
If you’re fine with it, then the discussion in most of this thread is to no avail. If the point is “we’ll do what the hell we want, since no one’s going to stop us, and we don’t care what the world thinks of us”, what purpose is there to the discsussion in this thread?
I thought the more fruitful discussion is “how far can Israel go to defend itself, while still holding the moral higher ground” is a much more interesting discussion to be had. If your opinion is “I don’t care if Israel holds the moral high ground”, then there’s not much to talk about
I can’t speak for Israel, but if I were in their shoes I’d be more worried about winning the war and destroying Hamas than what American leftists thought of me.
The moral high ground is a pretty abstraction that doesn’t do much good when you’re faced with an enemy that wants you dead and doesn’t care about what the world thinks of them, and expecting the babyface to play by Queensbury Rules when the heel has barbed wire wrapped around his gloves is a fairly recent notion conceived by comfortable people who have had the luxury of never living through an existential conflict. By the standards being applied to Israel, the US didn’t even have the moral high ground in WWII because we allied ourselves with Stalin and dropped bombs on population centers, but the war would probably have been a lot longer and bloodier, and might not even have ended in a decisive victory, if we hadn’t done those things, seeing as our enemy wasn’t bothered by people shouting at them “Hey, you can’t do that! It’s ILLEGAL!”
I say that Israel holds the moral high ground because it respects individual liberty and seeks to providenfor the common good of its citizenry, and that that therefore justifies the use of force to protect itself against an enemy that does not.
…I said the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war, which is shorthand for customary international humanitarian law, the “body of unwritten rules of public international law which govern conduct during armed conflict.”
Don’t you think they mean something?
What Hamas did on October 7th: do those atrocities not matter? Why should Hamas worry about violating a code when Israel have been shooting at people holding white flags for decades? When Israel has been holding Palestinians in “administrative detention”, without trial, without having committed an offence, on the grounds of maybe they might commit a crime in the future? When almost every single Palestinian prisoner that is released tells how they were beaten, abused, tortured, and some even talk about being sexually abuse in custody?
Israel have been shown to have violated “the code” over and over again for decades. So by your argument, we should just shrug our shoulders at October 7th, right? Why should I care? Why should you care? Why do you care?
These laws are in place so we can call out countries when they cross the line. And what we are seeing right now is the failure of countries like the United States of America to call Israel out, so Israel no longer cares about crossing that line any more. Which is why we’ve seen an escalation in bombing since they have resumed after the pause. Why they aren’t even pretending any more and just putting hospitals out-of-action because they can. Why they lied about “the south being safe”, driven them down south where the bombings and attacks have intensified and now Rafah is the most densely populated place in Gaza right now.
The consequences of how Israel have conducted this war will have repercussions around the world. I think its going to lose Biden the election. I think it will herald a rise of violent fascists around the world, largely supported by the United States, who will see this as a green-light to stomp the marginalized into submission. I think we will see more use of drones surveillance systems and “AI Targeting” like the Gospel used much more not only on the battlefield, but also by increasingly militarised police forces.
This is a much bigger topic, probably worthy of another thread. But why should I care? Because both of the major political parties in the most powerful country in the world unconditionally have approved these tactics, and around the world we have seen moves both by governing bodies and independent bodies to shut down dissent. And we all should be worried about that.
I care because of stories of people like Dina Abu Mehsen. She was thirteen. Her father, mother and two of her siblings were killed when the house they were staying in a few weeks ago was shelled. Dina lost one of her legs that day.
And earlier today, while she was recuperating at the maternity building inside the Nasser Hospital, she was killed when it was hit by IDF shelling.
There are at least 7000 other stories just like Dina’s. At least 7000 children have been killed by IDF bombing since the start of the campaign. We don’t know how many are still lost in the rubble. We don’t know how many have succumbed to hunger, or to disease or to infection. But I’ve heard an escalation in stories in the last couple of weeks, especially from parents who have children with disabilities. They simply can’t get the care that they need.
Israel could stop this right now. They don’t have to stop fighting Hamas. But they could stop all of this needless death and destruction. Because they aren’t targeting Hamas. And we know this because Israel don’t even know how many Hamas soldiers they have killed.
Because I don’t think this is about “how Israel is perceived on the world stage” any more. There are lots of people like me, who before this conflict tended to side with Israel, gave Biden the benifit of the doubt. But any illusions that the “IDF are the most moral military in the world” or that America is a “beacon to the world” have been shattered by this conflict. And I don’t think the world comes back from that.
…this is Donya’s story. She spoke a couple of weeks ago to Al Jazeera. She wanted to be a doctor. Gone now.
Not particularly, no.
…more on this right now.
This is a link to the Twitter account of Layla Moran, she is the Lib Dem MP for Oxford West & Abingdon, and some of her family are in the Catholic Church in Gaza city.
Can anyone explain to me how this targets Hamas? What is the point of this? How is this in any way an acceptable way to run a war?
…for clarity: the deaths of over 1000 Israelis at the hands of Hamas don’t mean anything to you? Or are you saying something else?
I’m saying the Geneva Conventions don’t mean anything to me.
…that doesn’t address the question I asked.
But I’ll ask you another one. Are you okay with Hamas attacks on innocent Israeli civilians? The laws of war apparently don’t mean anything to you. So that applies to both the IDF and Hamas?
I am not.
…are you okay with IDF attacks on innocent Palestinian civilians?
If necessary.
…can you explain the difference here?
I’m not trying to trap you. But if you think collateral innocent Palestinian deaths are okay if necessary, then why aren’t collateral innocent Israeli civilians also okay if necessary? Or are collateral innocent Israeli civilians, by default, “not allowed?”
How do you determine what is and isn’t “necessary”? Isn’t that one of the things the laws of war help us to do?
Israel’s cause is just. Hamas’ is not.
…and this, in a nutshell, is why we need the laws of war. There is nothing just in the way Israel has been conducting this war. The siege has been in place for other 70 days, a collective punishments which will end up in famine. 21 hospitals have been deliberately targeted and shut down. Churches are under siege, it’s gone so far the Pope has called this terror. Thousands of innocent men, women, children, babies, dead. Thousands still buried under the rubble.
The laws of war don’t exist and can’t exist, because there is no such thing as the police of war.
…this isn’t helpful. The laws of war exist.
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/what-are-rules-of-war-geneva-conventions
Whatever your personal feelings on the matter are, (and you are allowed to have whatever feelings or vibes that you like) that doesn’t change the reality here.
Long term that’s a problem for Israel because they receive a lot of help from the US. Piss off the US enough that aid stops Israel will definitely have problems. And it’s not just “leftists” who are getting pissed at the current government of Israel. Despite attempts at suppression of contrary views to the current government and IDF there’s a substantial part of both Israeli citizens and the larger Jewish Diaspora who are getting fed up the current war and how it’s being conducted.
That’s the theory. In reality, anyone not Jewish is a second-class citizen. Violence against non-Jews is not treated the same as violence against Jews. Illegal settlements are made on land set aside for Palestinians and there are no consequences, indeed, some of those illegal settlers now occupy top positions in the Israeli government. That’s the broad strokes.
Are there worse places than Israel? Absolutely. But they’re not lily-pure paragons of virture. There’s plenty of rot and corruption in their government. And you have IDF soldiers who apparently think shirtless men with their hands up and waving a white flag are deadly threats to be exterminated.
NO ONE in this conflict holds a “moral high ground”.
…so many new things all coming in at once.
Firstly, this Human Rights Watch report on Starvation Used as a Weapon in this war:
More details at the link.
Breaking: Al-Awda Hospital in the north has been stormed after two weeks of siege. The medical personal interrogated for four hours, the hospital director is still detained. This, by my count, is the 22nd hospital taken out of action. Two in the last couple of days.
At Al-Shifa, where I shared a report yesterday about how they are trying to get it back up and operational, got shelled again, killing people at the entrance, reports say mostly children. I don’t think there is a hope-in-hell that it will be allowed to get back up and running.
In a separate incident, Dr Hani Al-Haitam, head of Al Shifa’s emergency department, was killed by IDF bombs in his home alongside his wife and five children.
Over at Jabalia, another air strike, another reported 90 people killed.
And still no update on the official count since December 14th.