This is getting some attention on MSNBC today.
Also, it may soon occur to the press that holding a major festival 4 miles from the Gaza border was not very swift.
…the news from the last couple of days from the people I’ve been following in Gaza is devastating. They sound like they’ve given up. The war has moved from the north to the south. Reports that roads to Khan Younis & Rafah have been bombed, Khan Younis surrounded by tanks. Apartment complexes destroyed. The “safe zone” was never really safe. But now it’s the frontline.
https://twitter.com/AlArabiya_Eng/status/1730965114759635203
The last update from Bisan Owda, a Palestinian youtuber:
From Motaz Azaiza, another journalist:
61 journalists dead. 14,800 Palestinians reported dead, 6000 of those estimated to be children, 36,000 wounded, 1.7 million displaced, many to the south, many of those having to move again, but they can’t because the roads have been bombed and they are surrounded.
Cindy McCain, director of the United Nations World Food Programme said a few days ago that Gaza was on the brink of famine. Disease, hunger, Covid, sickness, all piled on top of the devastation and havoc from the bombs and the soldiers.
Nowhere to run. if the bombs don’t get them, something else will.
They could surrender.
…a civilian population, especially one that is legally considered under occupation, is not required to surrender in order to get the protections of the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war.
“They” here being the civilian Palestinians - what would “surrender” look like, different from what they’re doing now? Lay down weapons they don’t have (being civilians)? Stop the fighting they’re not doing (being civilians)? Go where their occupying power tell them to go (as they did - you know, to the “safe” South Gaza)?
Their government can surrender.
Hamas is the government of the Gaza Strip. Why wouldn’t it be? It controls the land, and it claims that it is the sole legitimate government body in the land. How is that not a government? Is it because it wasn’t democratically elected? I hate to tell you this, but most governments throughout history haven’t been. According to this article, there are 52 dictatorships in the world today; I suspect that if we examined the governments of many so-called democratic countries, the actual number would be much higher. Are all of these countries exempt from war? Democracies are liable for the actions of their leaders, but non-democracies aren’t?
So yes, Israel is placing pressure on the population in order to force its government to surrender. It’s ugly, but that’s what war is. That’s what war has always been, and anyone who says otherwise is full of shit. You do what you have to to win.
Plus, as we all know, nobody would show Israeli civilians any mercy if the shoe was on the other foot. October 7 was a promise, a policy statement. It’s what Hamas will do to my entire country if we don’t stop them. So we’ll stop them, by whatever means necessary.
Last I heard the leaders of Hamas were living in Doha, Qatar, not the Gaza Strip. They are safe. Meanwhile, they’ve demonstrated they care not one whit for the lives of even their fellow Hamas, much less civilians. They’ll continue to the last drop of someone else’s blood.
Hamas has plenty of people willing to die rather than surrender. Meanwhile the civilian population of Gaza keeps dying. I have no doubt Israel could kill 80-90% of the 2 million people that were living there, but that might be a matter of winning the battle and losing the war. What the rest of the world thinks matters. You’re starting to lose sympathy even in the US, and if Israel loses the backing of the US you’re really in the crapper.
Bombing civilian Gaza to make Hamas surrender won’t work for the simple reason Hamas does not care about human life.
And you think Israel should leave these people in charge of the Gaza Strip?
Absolutely not.
But the current method being used to remove them is unlikely to be effective.
As I said - their leadership is in Doha, Qatar. What is Israeli doing about that?
Got any better ideas?
Negotiating with them to release hostages. Once they’re no longer needed for that, I hope we’ll kill them.
Not really. Targeted assassination, maybe? Israel has a reputation for that, after all. How about not telling people to evacuate to a “safe area” then bombing the shit out of that “safe area”? That would be a really good place to start.
The actions of the Israeli government and how they’re waging this war is losing the PR battle AND it’s making Jews in the wider world less safe than they were before. The results are anything but “winning”.
It’s almost like the [expletives deleted] fanatics in the Israeli government want to make the world at large unsafe for Jews so they’re all forced to move to Israel, disgusting half-breeds such as myself are eliminated to maintain the fairy-tale of “pure” Jews, and they gain power for themselves like Bronze-age warlords. Not to mention ruthlessly suppressing any dissent within Israel. Doesn’t matter how many Jews have to die to bring about their fantasy utopia. In that they mirror Hamas, who doesn’t care how many Palestinians have to die to bring about their utopia.
I realize you’re going to disagree with all of that and probably get offended, but that’s how it looks from the outside looking in. Your government’s war is threatening my safety here in my home, halfway around the world. Your government has officials that have stated conditions that would make me a non-Jew. I’m not at all happy with either of those two facts. You have stated that Israel is supposed to be the safe haven and refuge of Jews but your government’s actions have made me less safe and the likes of ben-Gvir and Smotrich would deny me refuge so pardon me if I give that “promise” no weight whatsoever.
…Israel got more hostages released during the ceasefire than when they were dropping bombs. So perhaps start there.
The siege: the intentional stopping of most food, water, medical supplies, electricity to the civilian population, is a war crime. And Israel has had Gaza under siege for 57 days. Taking out of action all of the hospitals in the north, when Israel has produced almost no evidence that any of those hospitals had ceased their normal purposes and were being used to conduct acts harmful to the enemy, is a war crime. Forcing the doctors and medical team to abandon Al-Nasr and then just letting those babies die is a war crime.
Indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations to put pressure on the government, that aren’t directed at a specific military objective, that strikes military objectives and civilians and or civilian objects are war crimes.
What has been suggested here, and what the IDF are currently doing, are war crimes. If that wasn’t obvious at the start of the campaign, it is brutally obvious now.
Their government =/= civilian Palestinians. You have to know your post wasn’t actually answering the question I asked them.
And ‘place pressure on their government’, how, exactly?
Well, killing civilians will make Hamas feel bad, or something. Because it’s exceedingly obvious Hamas cares for every single Palestinian. /s
It’s revenge disguised as war. Vengeance as defense. By whatever means necessary, Hamas will be stopped, even if tens or hundreds of thousands of innocents die. They’re just Palestinians, human animals following the law of the jungle. There are no non-combatants in Gaza.
I used to lurk around here back in the Diogenes the Cynic days but never made an account. Made one a few days ago but kept thinking twice about wading in, but I want to clarify your response… are you saying you’d support Mossad carrying out extrajudicial assassination of Hamas leadership in Qatar?
Meant to edit my previous post but ran out of time. To add context to my question, the reason I ask is that in my reading of this thread as well as many Reddit posts, I see a lot of posters saying “Israel shouldn’t do X”. I don’t see many concrete ideas of what Israel should do (in the context of addressing its security issues w.r.t. Hamas; I certainly see a lot of broader suggestions to disband the West Bank settlements, which I support, and disband the state entirely, which I do not).
The options now, as I understand them, are
A) do nothing in Gaza
B) perform artillery and air strikes on Gaza followed by ground invasion resulting in high Gazan casualties and low Israeli casualties
C) ground invasion without artillery or air support, resulting in high Gazan and Israeli casualties
D) targeted assassination of Hamas leadership.
Assuming you don’t consider option A to be tenable, you don’t seem to support option B, which implies you wouldn’t support option C for the same reason, that leaves option D. But that seems to be the strategy Israel has used to date, and it’s regarded derisively by most commenters as an ugly policy of “mowing the lawn” (not to mention that a good chunk of leadership is living abroad). Is that your preferred policy anyway? Or is there an option E that I’m missing?
…are you seeing a lot of people saying Israel shouldn’t be doing war crimes?
Because, yes, thats my position. Stop targeting hospitals and schools and Mosques and churches and universities and refugee camps and apartment complexes. End the siege.
Is that something you disagree with?
It would be interesting if someone leaked, or there were an investigation of, the real strategic and operational warfighting directives of the IDF. For the Americans in Vietnam, it was “kill anything that moves”
point being that war crimes were systematic and nobody got in any real trouble for it.
ISTM that this overall strategy is little different than the to same tit for tat of the last few decades. ISTM that a radical change in strategy is needed. I don’t know what that kind of radical change looks like. Hamas certainly ought to be destroyed. But from an outsider perspective, thousands and thousands of civilians are dying, and many more suffering, with nothing being accomplished. Hamas doesn’t appear to be getting weaker.
…some investigative reporting from the last few days.