And leave the hostages to be raped and tortured?
Look, Hamas attacked Israel. They choose to attack, commit horrible atrocities, rape, torture, and kidnap. They decapitated babies and laughed about it. Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Right.
Look, sure Hamas wont surrender, but they could release the hostages and stop the terrorism. Its likely too much to expect Hamas to quit stealing aid and making themselves wealthy while their people starve. But why not surrender the hostages?
…I’ll encourage you to once again read the submission to the ICJ, starting from page 59 titled " Expressions of Genocidal Intent against the Palestinian People by Israeli State Officials and Others".
This all starts at the top. When the President of Isreal says ": “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”
Or when the Minister of Defense says “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”, and the Minister of Heritage says ““The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes” and the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset says “we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth”…do you not believe them?
And why do you think that merely being a “nation of laws” would mean those that commit atrocities would go unpunished? Humanitarian agencies have been reporting the history of the IDF beating and humiliating and torturing detainees for decades. Being a “nation of laws” doesn’t prevent that.
Again, you are arguing from incredulity.
Here is a video with a list of names of all the children that have been killed so far in this war.
For the first 35 seconds of the video are all babies that died before their first birthday. Some of died even before their parents gave them a name. There are 11,500 names on that list. There are more that are still missing under the rubble.
Every day, we can add another hundred or so names to that list. Thats just from the bombing. Sickness, disease, starvation, famine, cancer, diabetes, all things that are almost impossible to treat right now because of a broken healthcare system, a siege at the borders, and a deliberate campaign to break international support for the only humanitarian agency still effectively operating at scope on the ground.
Everybody accepts that in war there can be collateral damage.
This isn’t collateral damage.
Not at this rate. Not at this scale.
I don’t know how many times I’ve had to repeat this: but under the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law, hospitals are not allowed to be targeted. They can’t be shot at. They can’t be bombed. They can’t be put under siege.
You can only attack a hospital under a very limited set of circumstances and not once has the evidence produced by the Israeli government ever met that threshold according to all the international lawyers that have looked at Israeli claims.
And even if they did: Israel are obliged under International Humanitarian Law to do as little damage as possible to the hospital, to do everything within their power to keep them operating once any threat had been eliminated.
Israel has not done that.
They did the opposite.
They deliberately damaged the infrastructure so that the hospitals would be unable to be bought back to full strength. They kicked out patients, they expelled medical staff, they disappeared doctors.
Doing this once would have been a war crime.
They’ve done this multiple times. To 23 different hospitals.
They have three under siege at the moment. They are going to do this all over again.
War crimes. Every single one of them.
And they’ve broken the healthcare system.
Once again, you are arguing from incredulity. “Basic morality and ethics” have been things that armies have ignored for centuries. Israel isn’t exceptional here. What matters is what they are doing.
If you live in America and wanted to vote for a party that wasn’t in lock-step with Israel, who would you vote for? You’ve got Biden, who many consider is aiding and abetting a genocide and giving Netanyahu a blank check, and you’ve got the Republican challenger, who is undoubtably going to be even worse.
In the UK you’ve got Sunak and Starmer who have practically identical policies, same with Canada. Same with most of the “Western democracies.”
You’ve seen large-scale attempts to shut down Palestinian protest and voices. People are losing their jobs. Laws are being changed. The media actively suppressing Palestinian voices.
Do you really believe these were the only two options on the table here?
Because I hate to break it to you, but the current Israeli strategy will not get any of the hostages released.
If Israel want the hostages released, it will happen the same way it happened the last time. During a ceasefire, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Look. Israel have been screwing over Palestinians for decades. They regularly detain Palestinians without trial, beat them, abuse them, torture them. They steal their land. They raid their hospitals.
Nobody here on these board have defended the Hamas atrocities that happened on October the 7th. I’ve condemned it over and over again. But lets not pretend that this started on that day. Israel had over 1000 Palestinians in administrative detention before October 7th. There was a blockade in place before October 7th. There were Israeli atrocities on Palestinians before October 7th. All have been well documented in this thread over and over again.
Because the problem isn’t “Hamas stealing aid.”
The problem is Israel not letting the aid get through. We know this. Every humanitarian agency on the ground is saying exactly the same thing. This isn’t a Hamas problem. It’s an Israel problem. Despite what any IDF spokespeople are saying, Isreal simply aren’t letting the aid in. Not in the amounts that are needed to prevent famine, disease and suffering.
And it’s a matter of complying with Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law. Which means the hostages are not to be used as bargaining chips by either side. Israel declaring that they “won’t let any food in until the hostages are released” is a war crime. It’s a collective punishment of Palestinians civilians in Gaza. That’s downright fucking evil. And it isn’t going to work.
…Israel has provided no evidence of this. The list of all UNRWA staff are vetted yearly by Israel. The staff were sacked due to the seriousness of the accusations, not due to the evidence, because Israel haven’t as yet provided any evidence.
Repeating this bullshit lie isn’t going to make it any less of a lie.
I did not know this. Thanks.
Israel is a a diverse country with a lot of political factions. It has Arab citizens. It has Jewish citizens who hope for a peaceful and prosperous Palestine. It also has citizens who believe God has told the Jews to control all the lands “from the river to the sea” and that killing or driving out Palestinians is therefore what they need to do. All those citizens, and more, have representation in parliament, and in the IDF.
I believe that in the past, the factions that oppose genocide have held sway. As evidence by the lack of genocidal activities until October 7th, despite Israel’s material ability to commit genocide.
But their actions since then suggest that the massive pogrom of October 7th has swayed public opinion, or at least the power balance. The destruction of hospitals and the disproportionately large number of journalists who have been killed are what leads me to that conclusion. I don’t know how war is fought. I don’t know when it makes sense to shell buildings. But Israel has the military power to HOLD those hospitals it invaded. They didn’t need to destroy them. And this is hardly the first modern war. We can compare how many journalists tend to be killed in war zones. This is an unprecedented number. And some of them were killed in precisely targeted attacks.
No. There are still limits on what the pro-genocide faction can do. But driving the people out is good enough for most of them.
You might think so, but to pull a quote from above.
I’m not looking to turn this into a semantics debate, but there are people in this thread and other threads on this board who proclaim that Israel has no agency for their actions in Gaza. As if the attacks on October 7 unleashed some Dr. Stragelovian military response that is beyond anyone’s control, and any civilian deaths, while regrettable, could not have been prevented in any way. That position, as you note, is farcical, and it is also disrespectful to both those killed, and in a very different way to the IDF as it paints them as mindless automatons.
I think that a much more useful discussion can be had debating what steps the Israeli military and civilian leadership can take now in their execution of the war In Gaza, and how those actions could lead to a lasting peace of some sort instead of just claiming that “Israel is just doing what it has to do” as if there is absolutely no choice in what happens next. And yes, Hamas and the civilian population of Gaza also have agency in that future and should be included in our discussion.
The Israeli operation in Gaza is not war
War is like the US operation against Saipan, an area of similar size. The US killed 29,000 Japanese in ~4 weeks of bombardment and ground action, resulting in a clear US victory and Japanese defeat. During this operation the enemy shot back killing ~3000 American troops.
Today is the 4 month anniversary of the Oct 7 incident. Hamas has not lost it’s ability or will to resist. 28,000 Gazans have been killed. 200 Israelis have lost their lives. There is a remote similarity of numbers to Saipan but this is not war. There was no enemy. There is no victory. This is just the oppression of the Gaza Ghetto.
What Israel has done:
Destroyed the civilian infrastructure - health, shelter, food production, economy of Gaza
Cleared real estate (cemeteries) for future IDF security Presidios
Prepared Gaza for economic annexation
Created a major set back to the Israeli propaganda program
Your count doesn’t include the Israelis killed on October 7. That discredits your argument.
Oct 7 losses are not part of the Israeli operation in Gaza and are therefore not relevant. However my post should have been “200 IDF have lost their lives”
All I see is an IDF that is only competent to commit war crimes. The only thing that has gotten any hostages released was a cease-fire. The IDF has killed more hostages than they have rescued.
I have said already that I believe we, but also the Israeli public, knows that the IDF has sent a bunch of divisions into and around Gaza, but have little idea what the cannon fodder are up to once they are in there. With that many participants, though, there could still be a reasonable chance that some whistleblowers will appear.
I wonder who would be able to prosecute individual war criminals, though?
Now I understand how you reached your conclusion that the conflict is utterly one-sided.
There has been extensive news coverage of the Oct. 7 attack and the war, including stories on video footage from that day showing “Hamas gunmen cheering with apparent joy as they shot civilians on the road, and later stalking the pathways of kibbutzim and killing parents and children in their homes,” as BBC reported.
As we have written, Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine has been working to identify the remains of those killed on Oct. 7. Forensic pathologist Chen Kugel, the head of the center, said the ages of those killed ranged from 3 months to 80 or 90 years, according to The Media Line, an American news outlet that covers the Middle East.
Kugel also told the Los Angeles Times that initially most of the bodies could be identified through DNA. Now, the staff’s work involves “reassembling and reconnecting pieces” of remains found in the landscapes where the killings occurred.
For example, what initially appeared to be a piece of charcoal was examined through a CT scan, Kugel said. The scan revealed, “These were people who were hugging one another and burned while they were tied together. It might be a parent and a child.”
Kfar Aza (Israel) (AFP) – A senior Israeli army officer said Friday that he had found the body of a decapitated baby in one of the kibbutz communities attacked by Hamas on October 7.…When I pulled it over I saw a decapitated baby. I took it up with my hands and I carried it, and I put it in the body bag. I personally did it," he said while on a media tour of another kibbutz organised by the military.
You would think that Hamas would hand over the hostages and stop resisting if their people are being killed like that.
and you seem to forget-
The October 7 attack was the deadliest terrorist attack against Israel since the state’s establishment in 1948, and the scale of the death toll was unprecedented in Israeli history. The Israeli government’s most recent fatality estimate of 1,200 people killed in the October attack is more than 31 times as large as the number of people killed in the next most fatal attack
Col. Golan Vach, known liar. The Israeli data itself shows him to be a liar:
Believe the lies if you want to, but there’s enough evidence out there now that shows it’s just propaganda.
Also, you said “they decapitated babies” plural. And … “laughed about it”? Cite?
The network has received criticism for failing to meet accepted journalism ethics and standards for independence and objectivity, with some commentators especially in the West calling it a mouthpiece or propaganda arm of the Erdoğan administration… More recently as of March 2020 with the Evros border crisis, TRT World and other Turkish media have in a way, accelerated on producing fake news as alleged by the Greek government, as was also mentioned by Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis in a CNN interview twice,[18] stating that the reports all come from Turkish media and other unknown sources aiming to discredit the Hellenic Coast Guard and Hellenic Armed Forces efforts with propaganda videos.
You prefer Politifact? How about France24?
Also, cite your Wiki links please, don’t expect me to dig around in the footnotes to find which original page you cropped things from.
Oh, and selectively cropped out the part that countered the argument made, I might add (my emphasis):
the reports all come from Turkish media and other unknown sources aiming to discredit the Hellenic Coast Guard and Hellenic Armed Forces efforts with propaganda videos. TRT World claimed that Greece sent back refugee vessels to Turkish waters, which was denied by Greece.[19] Conversely, there have been reports by other sources of Greek coastal authorities forcing the refugee vessels back to Turkish side, in a military strategy dubbed “push back”.[20]
So I can see why you wouldn’t link to the original Wiki page, now.
Oh, and of course, Western media sources are completely apolitical and free of bias…
oh, wait:
I think in this case the semantic debate is very important. Consider a statement like “Obviously Israel was going to retaliate against Gaza militarily, they had no choice”. (Not a specific direct quote, but I think similar to many.)
Now, on the one hand, it does kind of sound like that’s trying to absolve Israel of any agency or responsibility… as if they were being puppetmastered by some unseen force, and therefore no blame should accrue to them for any actions they took. Clearly a reasonable direct parsing of the language.
But “they had no choice” often has a less literal meaning, which is “there was no possible practical way they were ever going to make any other choice, neither would anyone else”. Israel was attacked with violence and responded with violence, in a way that has (sadly) been completely standard for humanity since the dawn of time. Had the Israeli government chosen not to respond with violence, they would have been thrown out of office immediately and replaced by one that would respond with violence… and the overwhelming consensus of the world community would have been that that was a reasonable response.
None of which absolves them of responsibility for the decision they made. The Israeli government is responsible for the decision to attack, and responsible (if nothing else, in a buck-stops-here sense) for tactical decisions about how the war is prosecuted. Those decisions directly and predictably led to massive suffering, much of it affecting civilians.
Everyone expected them to respond with violence. That is an extremely broad term. They could have replied with less violence than they did.
Even in the case of “they had no choice” being taken in its less literal meaning, I still say that there were possible practical ways that Israel could have responded by making different choices. Following the Hamas attacks of 10/7, Israel had a menu of response options to choose from, ranging from the ridiculous “surrender to Hamas” to the also ridiculous “confirm once and for all Isael’s nuclear capability.”
Getting back to more reasonable responses, Israel could have (just throwing this together) launched 10 days of air strikes against very selective high value Hamas targets, and had Mossad slip a poisoned pickle into the shawarma stand outside of Hamas HQ in Qatar. Then followed with a demand to release the hostages in 72 hours or more bombs and poisoned pickles would be deployed.
Would that have worked - damned if I know, but at least now there is a discussion going on about the proper level of response to a terrorist attack instead of just saying “they had no choice.”
And again, not directed at you Max, the real need is for Palestinian and Israeli leaders and citizens to realize that there are options and decisions to be made, and not to continue the generational cycle of violence because they have no choice to do otherwise.