It might go better for civilians in Gaza if the Hamas terrorists would release the civilian hostages they kidnapped when they were in the middle of murdering 1400 other civilians, including children and the disabled?
I think that might be a good first step in helping out the people of Gaza.
Or do some here think that Hamas is fully justified in kidnapping and holding Israeli hostages?
Do the Hamas terrorists really care about the civilian population of Gaza? I don’t think they actually do. I think they view them as meat to be used in a propaganda war.
fwiw, I was fairly close to the WTC bombing. I had only recently moved out of NYC, where I had worked literally in its shadow. I knew a woman who was killed when a tower collapsed, and I knew a ton of people who got out, or were out of town that day, or hadn’t yet gotten to work. I spent most of 9/11 on-line tracking down friends who worked in the WTC. So I have some direct experience of being close to a major terrorist attack.
That was different in that it was perpetrated by a fairly small group of people. Hamas is many more people. Both many more in the direct attack, and many more directly supporting them. That makes it a lot harder to fight. Israel is in a horrible place.
But the US failed massively in its response to 9/11, and attacking too many people is part of our failure. I fear Israel is going down the same path.
No, I don’t think they give a shit about those people. In fact, it is good for them if those people are hurt in ways that look to come from Israel (even if it’s their own missiles gone astray).
That’s a really unhelpful argument. If I thought I had any chance of influencing Hamas terrorists, I’d do everything I could to do so. But that’s a dead end. How many times does someone have to post here that they don’t support the terrorists, the terrorists are completely in the wrong, hostages should be released, before you’ll stop taking this tack? We get it, we agree on that point. It’s not what we’re discussing.
The thing I can influence as someone in the Western world (as much as any one person has hope of influencing anything), is putting pressure on my government, who can put pressure on Israel, to take a greater interest in protecting innocent people. Yes, it sucks that this is the extent of what I can do. But the constant drumbeat of “Hamas is at fault” with the unstated implication that whatever Israel wants to do is justified, is tiresome. Hamas’s evil is an accepted fact in this thread at least, so let’s move past that.
Just a little pushback over the recent themes of “Hamas leaders might be visiting a sick friend in the hospital” or “Hamas leaders might be taking a day off having some R&R time in a refugee camp”.
I agree we can’t reason with the Hamas terrorists, and release of the hostages will be a long and difficult affair if it ever happens. Negotiating with hostage takers is not easy.
I also agree that Israel should take every precaution to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza, no matter how hard (logistically and politically) it is to do so. They are not doing a very good job with this IMO, and it’s going to eventually bite them in the ass internationally if they continue.
“Visiting a sick friend” was poorly written, but I think the point is, what could a Hamas soldier be doing in Gaza that wouldn’t be described as using human shields? There really is no where they can go where there are no civilians nearby, no matter what they’re doing.
This doesn’t mean they should be spared, it doesn’t mean nothing can be done. But it doesn’t absolve the IDF of responsibility to do what they can to minimize damage, and they don’t get to blame all collateral damage on “we didn’t have a choice.”
The other point here is that Hamas is, in many ways, fighting a traditional guerilla campaign. They’re vastly outgunned by IDF, and what people do when they’re outgunned, whether it’s American revolutionaries or French Resistance or Hamas, is they strike from hiding. When the territory in question is almost all urbanized, “strike from hiding” means “strike from civilian buildings.”
If Hamas fought in a traditional manner, i.e., from clearly-marked military buildings, they’d be wiped out in a matter of hours. Their guerilla campaign is at least as much a decision of necessity as IDF’s mass-bombing campaign is a decision of necessity.
That doesn’t stop it from being a war crime.
If your only way to continue a military campaign is to commit war crimes in the process, you gotta stop your military campaign.
Some might point out that no guerilla campaign in history has ever said, “Hey, y’all, we can’t continue striking from hiding like this, it’s leading to too many war crimes, we gotta stop.” I assume that anyone who’s mocked me for calling on IDF to stop their actions would have similar mockeries for anyone telling Hamas to stop their guerilla campaign.
As I said before: the hordes of hell and the hosts of heaven trample the peasant’s garden.
I take your point, but I believe (and may be wrong) that Hamas, particularly the leadership, goes beyond merely being with civilians as a matter of daily living. I think they very well may be very deliberately and with planning be putting themselves very close to the most vulnerable, as a technique for a) protecting themselves or b) making Israel look extra bad if they blow them up.
I think the issue is not whether anyone thinks that Hamas are anything but evil. The issue is that framing the problem as though Israel is the only party with any agency here leads to a deeply flawed perspective. Things will not be okay if Israel just stops.
The fact that Hamas cannot be reasoned with and that nobody expects them to behave in a remotely civilized way just underlines how non-negotiable the objective of removing Hamas from power in Gaza must be. It’s far from clear that most people recognize that the greatest threat to the long term well being of the Palestinian people is Hamas and its ilk, not Israel.
The fact that most of Gaza is densely populated does not absolve them from responsibility for the consequences for their own civilians when they choose to attack Israel from bases in Gaza.
I think we’re talking in circles, so I’ll try to close it.
I agree with you, Hamas bears responsibility for the attack. They have responsibility for the impact to civilians, and the population density of Gaza does not excuse them from this responsibility.
I think you agree that Israel also has responsibility for the safety of Palestinian civilians, and a moral duty to not kill them if there is another way to obtain their goals.
I really hope we don’t disagree on any of that, and our disagreement is around how much hardship and death to civilians can be justified.
Yes. The difficult question here is what short term harm is justified in achieving an objective that is a long term good - or indeed if the harm is so great that the objective must be abandoned altogether, that can certainly be argued.
But what I find utterly useless is this kind of thing, stating (with an air of moral superiority) ideals that literally everyone other than psychopaths agrees with while explicitly refusing to engage with the real and extremely difficult problem.
Where is your evidence that the IDF doesn’t do exactly that? That’s why you and others are asked to provide an alternative.
In fact, minimizing civilian casualties is a major goal of the IDF, while maximizing civilian casualties is a goal of Hamas. Hamas weaponizes their own dead civilians, which is why they set up shop under hospitals and apartment buildings.
So when you and others go, “Israel doesn’t care about Palestinian lives - look how many Palestinians died!”, I call you out for swallowing Hamas propaganda. Palestinians die because Hamas sets up the field of engagement to put them in harm’s way. That’s on them.
If you want to give me some theoretical justification under which you believe it’s appropriate to bomb a refugee camp to kill one soldier, it would help. I simply don’t see what unknown intelligence could come to light that would make me think that was an acceptable approach.
So when you say it’s OK because Israel did it and they wouldn’t do anything bad, I could call you out for Israeli propaganda. Palestinians die because Israel bombed them. But that’s an overly simplistic way to discuss the matter, isn’t it?
I’m having some sort of software glitch with this specific page; and much of the time I don’t appear able to quote anybody, or even to get a clear reply box, or most of the time a functional reply link. So after this I’m probably going to quit trying. I intended to reply to a particular reply @MrDibble made to me, but every time I try to get to it the page screws up. – giving it one more try here:
– ah, that worked. Let’s see if it keeps working long enough to let me post.
I disagree with you about that. I think that “containing military headquarters, military personnel quarters, and/or significant military supplies” is indeed the same thing as “used for military purposes”. It doesn’t only count if actual firing is taking place from the structure.
Neither of us, of course, is an international court with jurisdiction in this matter.
Some areas are more heavily populated than others. They could engage in military operations primarily in and/or under buildings located at least some small distance from civilian buildings; and they could certainly stay out of hospitals, schools, etc.
If the leaders of Hamas consider that whatever they’re trying to accomplish is worth deliberately murdering civilian children, then certainly it ought to be worth their foregoing visiting sick friends in the hospital. If one’s presence is clearly endangering anybody in the same room, then one ought to be careful what rooms one spends time in – and not ‘careful’ in the sense of being careful to spend time in rooms full of or close to civilians.
This. Exactly. Things will not be okay if Israel just stops.
Agreed.
The question is exactly whether Israel has any other way to remove Hamas as an effective force. Their generals and military strategists are saying that they don’t. They may in the case of one or more specific actions be wrong. I am not in a position to be able to say precisely which such actions, short of, say, nuking the place, could have been avoided without allowing Hamas to remain in control; and I don’t believe anybody else posting in this thread is either.
There should certainly be thorough investigations done when it is possible to do them; and ongoing investigations and checks during the process, by those who are in a position to do those. I hope those are ongoing; but Israel can’t very well tell the world the details of exactly what their strategy is while they’re in the middle of the war.