That would probably be a war crime - and I mean a legit war crime, not the “genocide is any time when a civilian dies in an urban battle” kind of war crime I’ve seen people breathlessly shouting about on Twitter for the last several weeks.
Hostages already released have stated being held and moved around in the tunnels underneath Gaza.
There are hundreds of miles of tunnels.There must be hundreds of entrances, and thousands of ventilation shafts
Why?
If your enemy has dug trenches, you attack the trenches. (see World War 1, the current Ukraine war, and probably every war in history)
The tunnels are just deep and well covered trenches, well stocked with ammunition, and used as cover for attacking…
If Hamas is locking prisoners and hostages inside their attack tunnels, then that is a war crime.
…maybe? But that is a naval commando unit. One would rather think combat engineering and other ground-based special forces units would be more directly involved.
In Vietnam, the Americans certainly tried things like bombing tunnels, collapsing tunnels, flooding tunnels, suffocating everybody inside with tear gas, etc., but even back then there were countermeasures to those tactics.
Using thermobaric weapons in tunnels would probably be on the table.
I think you have it exactly backwards. Plenty of the tactics that have killed civilians have been–according to folks like the UN, WHO, Red Cross, etc.–violations of international treaties. But sealing off tunnels? Not sure which specific Geneva article it violates.
If there’s a worry, though, set up a 3" diameter pipe at each sealed-off tunnel, with a crook halfway down (to prevent line of sight/shot) and a sound-activated speakerphone at the outside. Folks who want to surrender can come to the pipe and receive further instructions for surrender.
The idea of Turkey’s President joining forces with Hamas is most unsettling.
couldnt you just inhabilitate a 100s of 1000s of dollars crawler bot with a horizontal lock bar in a tunnel???
like in the letter “H” ???
That’s an understatement, If Turkey comes to the military aid of Hamas, that will likely put them in direct conflict with the US at some point. How does NATO handle that?
What if Israel retaliated against Turkey and Turkey invokes article 5? I don’t see NATO turning against Israel, let alone the US. If Turkey gets involved in a shooting war with Israel, it will either be very contained or it will likely cause a crisis in NATO. Turkey could wind up expelled or something, which would drive them into the arms of the Russians/Chinese/Iranians. That would be a bad result.
Article 5 can not be invoked if the NATO member is the one that starts the fight.
The Crawler bots are more like Boston Dynamics’ Spot, a four legged robot. And Israel’s are armed with Light Antitank Weapons (LAWs rockets):
Apparently Israel ordered 25,000 LAWS rockets a couple of years ago.
it still seems fairly easy to entangle with a couple of bars/nylon nets/ropes in a very reduced space like a tunnel that would be easy for any person to cross but not for those dogs/goats …
I guess we shall know more in a few weeks if those become relevant … in case they are that would be the first time for a “Terminator” scenario (that is not airborne).
boy, that scenario and the whole AI … I feel we moved extremely swiftly towards the Terminator world - something that was completely ficticious 10 years ago, might today quite well be a reality.
It has sailed, been assaulted, burned, destroyed, sunk, rotted, and designated as a future OceanGate tourist expedition.
Not in this century.
Sorry- what? Turkey has made noises about aiding Hamas? Can someone shed some light on this? A quick search found some stuff about Erdogan praising Hamas, but I haven’t seen anything more than that… ?
I can’t believe people are taking Erdogan’s bloviating that seriously.
Brett Devereux had a great column about why Hezbollah and others in the region might send mixed messages about this whole thing. Erdogan is no Hezbollah, but he does pander to the religious conservatives, including having Muslim Brotherhood ties.
Now, that’s not to say that this move has had no effect. Erdogan only recently normalized diplomatic relations with Israel and his comments about Hamas will certainly disrupt this.
But it doesn’t mean Turkey actually wants to join this war.
That 56% of Israelis wanted a second passport in addition to their Israeli one. Who wouldn’t want a second passport? I can’t believe that 56% wasn’t much higher. I already possess one of the most coveted passports in the world (USA) and yet I’d be overjoyed to have a second passport to the EU, UK, Canada, Oz, NZ, Scandinavia, Japan and probably much of South America and Asia, too.
So I’m not sure I see the significance of that poll result.
I suspect you’re right but it’s still disturbing. Israel needs to remember There’s a billion Muslims who hate them on a good day. They need a tangible, short term goal that creates a long term restructuring of Gaza into a productive peaceful society. Otherwise it’s Germany after WWI.
A Nevada man has been arrested for making death threats against Sen. Jacky Rosen, who is Jewish and identifies as pro-Israel, citing the war as his justification.
They might as well ask for a pony while they’re at it.