More than anything else, I meant politically. Israel had not been occupying Gaza per se, but they have a land-sea-air blockade. Is it Israel-controlled land? Is it sovereign and distinct? Does Israel govern Gaza? It would be difficult to argue Gaza controls its own future, its availability of resources, etc.
In my mind, whether they’d like it or not, Israel must view the citizens of Gaza as their wards, to some large extent. They deserve a certain level of protection, one the citizens of a “hostile nation” couldn’t typically expect, and much more than just complying with the conventions of traditional war.
It’d be hard for Israel to have a net export balance with the US when the US is giving them a $3.3 billion a year gift card to shop in the US defense industry. You are certainly correct that the countries you list have larger arms industries than Israel, but not by as much as one might expect. The defense budgets of the UK and France are only about two and three times as large as Israel’s respectively, and both of them have two very, very high price tag items on their defense budgets that Israel doesn’t: a strategic nuclear arsenal powerful enough and with range enough to effectively destroy any country on the planet, and the ability to globally project their military power.
" Enough is enough,” Sanders said in a statement. “Congress must reject that funding. The taxpayers of the United States must no longer be complicit in destroying the lives of innocent men, women, and children in Gaza.”
(From article…)
“The war has so far killed over 22,300 people in Gaza, according to local officials, and displaced 85% of the territory’s population.”
Bernie usually has a point. An idealistic point that on its face is hard to argue with.
What happend in Israel is disgusting.
So is what’s happening to the innocent people, the children in Gaza.
One of the released hostages, who feared that she would be raped and was held in a household of a “normal family”, said there were no innocent people in the Gaza strip.
…Israel are bombing apartment blocks, Mosques, churches, hospitals, refugee camps. They are the bombers that are killing innocent civilians. There is no need for an analogy here. There is more than enough evidence to indict.
I don’t recall anyone objecting to German children being killed in WWII.
Perhaps you would feel differently if your people were among the 1,200 raped and murdered.
They only other thing Israel can do is go home and wait for more rapes and murders.
…its kinda the reason why the Geneva conventions and the laws of war came about.
I’ve condemned Hamas multiple times in multiple threads, called what they did on October 7th an unmistakable act of evil, I’ve argued that Israel had every right to respond.
What I want them to do is actually target Hamas. The 90 day siege, the indiscriminate bombing campaign, shutting down hospitals, driving 1.9 million people out-of-their-homes, these are not tactics that have targeted Hamas. They have targeted the civilian population of Gaza, it has targeted the civilian infrastructure, it has targeted cultural institutions.
They are actions which are, as described in detail in the submission to the international court, are genocidal in character. And the US’s support of Israel’s campaign against Gaza makes them complicit.
What if instead of a lone baby beside him, he was hiding out in a movie theater containing 10-20 times the number people said klansman killed, and it was known that the detonation would destroy a city block of surrounding housing. Would that be a justifiable action?
The IDF gave Palestinians weeks to get civilians out of the way. How many other nations would warn their enemies of incoming attacks?
But Hamas forced them to stay. They fired on their own people trying to escape with their lives to prevent them reaching safety. And they have bomb proof bunkers under all of those hospitals, churches, etc. A war crime, by the way. Civilians are not allowed to shelter there.
They are literally forced to become human shields or else. All because Hamas thinks human lives are worthless and that maximizing civilian casualties will be good PR for them.
Israel didn’t do any of that. They’re targeting legitimate military targets and doing everything they can to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas is to blame for every civilian injury and death in Gaza. Both because the started the war to begin with, and because they encourage and force their civilians to die, for nothing more than a news highlight reel.
Hamas is not “hiding out” in a movie theater. They are proudly and publicly using the “movie theater”–and the entire city block-- as a military base,WITH THE FULL SUPPORT OF THE PEOPLE LIVING THERE.
The residents know full well that there is a missile launcher in the back yard of the building, where their children play. Please click on the link, and take a good look at the photo of the children… This is not new–it’s been going on for 2 decades, and everybody knows it. This link is from 10 years ago.
They have degraded a few Hamas units. However, Hamas is definitely not “destroyed”, not yet, anyway. The Institute for the Study of War put it:
Israeli forces are transitioning to the third phase of their operations in the northern Gaza Strip, which will very likely enable Hamas to reconstitute itself militarily. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it withdrew five brigades from the northern Gaza Strip on December 31.[1] This reduction in forces is part of what the IDF has described as its third phase in the strip, which also involves ending major combat operations, releasing reservists, transitioning to “targeted raids,” and establishing a security buffer zone within the Gaza Strip.[2] Israeli forces have degraded several Hamas units and rendered others combat ineffective, particularly in the northern Gaza strip, since the beginning of the clearing operations.[3] But Hamas’ military forces are neither defeated nor destroyed at this time. Decreased Israeli pressure would, in fact, allow Hamas to rebuild its military capabilities and infrastructure. Hamas maintains a conventional military structure, meaning that it should be able to quickly replace commanders who have died in the war.[4] Several recently killed Hamas battalion and brigade commanders had led their units for many years, suggesting that they had the ability and time to develop successors to take their place.[5] Such reconstitution is inconsistent with the stated Israeli war aims, which are to destroy Hamas militarily and politically.[6]
also
[23] Palestinian militias continued to operate in the northern Gaza Strip and have targeted Israeli forces in areas where Israel has degraded the local Hamas units.[24] Israel likely faces continued attacks in these areas in part because it is fighting several Palestinian militias, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the al Aqsa Martyrs‘ Brigades, rather than just Hamas.
Just to make this as clear as possible: 1.9 million out of 2.3 million civilians have tried to get out of the way.
1.9 million people have been displaced. 1.9 million people are no longer in their homes. Many of those people have had their homes destroyed. Many have nothing to go back too. Many have only what they can carry on their backs.
But it gets worse.
Rafah, the southernmost point of Gaza, right up against the border with Egypt, now houses over one million of the 1.9 million people that have been displaced.
And here’s the kicker: the IDF regularly bomb places that they tell people to evacuate to.
Irrelevant. These “warnings” don’t always happen, are inconsistent, vague, often put people in harms way, sometimes rely on checking the IDF website to see if the grid your house is in has changed colour in a place where the internet is more often than not, is not working.
There were a scattering of limited, unconfirmed, anecdotal reports of this happening in the very early days of the war. But 1.9 million people have managed to not get shot by Hamas as they abandoned their homes. 1 million people managed to not get shot by Hamas as they made their way down to Rafah.
I’ve been tracking the status of the hospitals very closely in the original discussion thread. I’ve provided multiple citations to back up everything I’m about to say, and you can find them in the original thread. However, if there is anything specific that you doubt, I’ll happily dig up the relevant citation and post it here on request.
But only one party have committed war-crimes in regards to hospitals in Gaza, and that party is Israel.
Hospitals have protected status in war. They are not allowed to be targeted unless:
An important caveat here is:
The bar that allows you to target a hospital in international law is set extremely high. Every international legal in this area that has spoken out about this have said that in the case of Gaza and all of the hospitals that have been targeted so far, that bar has not been met.
But even if it was, there are even more caveats:
The TLDR version:
hospitals need to be demonstrably used outside their humanitarian functions in acts harmful to the enemy in order to lose their protected status
attacks on this hospital will be interrupted if the hospital is no longer acting in ways harmful to the enemy
After the attack, the attacker must work to restore healthcare services
Heres the current status of hospitals in Gaza:
Only 13 out of 36 hospitals are still functional, and the 4 hospitals in the north that are still functional can only provide very limited, emergency and hospice care.
What happened to the other 23?
Some in the north were completely destroyed, along with everything else in their neighbourhood.
Others, most notably Al Shifa, were all taken down in what has become a very familiar pattern.
They were surrounded by the IDF, then placed under siege. No food, water, fuel or medical supplies were allowed to get in. Multiple reports of people getting shot whilst trying to get in and out.
After days, sometimes weeks of siege, the hospitals were raided by the IDF. Then medical staff, patients, and people taking shelter in the hospitals were either detained or forcibly expelled. Some of those detained have just disappeared, family have been unable to find out what happened to them after they were taken into custody.
Then the IDF destroyed crucial hospital infrastructure that made bringing the hospital back into service next-to-impossible.
Then they abandoned the hospitals.
These are the war crimes that happened at the hospitals. The alleged existence of bomb-proof bunkers under some of the hospitals isn’t enough to make them a target. But even if these bunkers were enough of a justification, the sieges, expelling the hospital staff and patients, then destroying the ability of the hospitals to resume effectively caring for patients are undeniably against the Geneva conventions and the laws of war. These were war crimes.
As for churches and Mosques, Israel has so far destroyed 318 Muslim and Christian religious sites, yet produced practically zero evidence that any of them had bomb-proof bunkers under them.
Nonsense.
Show me some examples of this in this war. With the emphasis on the word forced.
At last count, 70 Palestinian journalists have been killed during this campaign. And they have died trying to bring the story of what is happening to them to the international community. This isn’t “PR.” It isn’t “public relations for Hamas”. Its the reality of what they are facing. Over 90 days of siege that has bought Gaza to the bring of famine. Well over 20,000 dead, most of them women and children. Thousands of orphans. Thousands of child amputees. Thousands still trapped under the rubble.
Prove it.
Isreal is using an AI-driven system called the Gospel to help select targets in Gaza. From its first “activation” back in 2021, they went from on average 50 targets a year to 100 targets a day.
From the South African submission to the International Court:
The amount of evidence that Isreal is not just targeting “legimate military targets” and are not doing everything they can to avoid civilian casualties is overwhelming.
That isn’t how things work.
The Isreali government have decided how they will conduct this war. The IDF are choosing what targets. You don’t get to deflect responsiblity here. Isreal are responsible for the bombs they have dropped, for the strategy they have adopted, for the tactics they are using. Isreal are to blame for the civlian casualties they have caused.
They could have chosen to conduct this war differently. But this is the path they are on.
This didn’t start on October the 7th. And we can see from the escalation of hostilites in the West Bank that this really isn’t just about Hamas.
Its odd that you argue this, but the only evidence to support it…
Is from ten years ago. If you have anything more recent, please feel free to share it with the rest of us in this thread. In particular, the whole “military base” thing.
And even if every single civilian that lived in the proximity of these alleged “military bases” gave those bases their “full support”, this still wouldn’t make them legitimate targets. You don’t become a legitimate target in war because you fly a US flag outside your house. You don’t become a legitimate target because you live next door to Edwards Air Force Base.
I think that — if this war has proven nothing else — Israel has now demonstrated that, if Hamas launches an attack to rape and murder hundreds of Israeli civilians, Israel is decidedly willing to kill tens of thousands of Palestinians in an effort to strike at Hamas. And I think that was already known to Hamas before October the 7th.
I think that — on October the 6th — the following had been made clear to Hamas: hey, Hamas, see how things are now, with us pointedly not killing tens of thousands of Palestinians? If you launch some kind of rape-murder attack, we’ll unhesitatingly kill tens of thousands of Palestinians to get at you. So, what’s it going to be? Keep things the way they are now, or launch an attack that we’ll respond to in the manner I just mentioned? It’s a life-and-death question for tens of thousands of Palestinians: which way are you going to go on October the 7th?
And the reply from Hamas was, apparently, we understand completely — and we thank you for the information! — and we’ve decided to opt for the rapes and the murders, like you were saying.
Because this is the basis of the case for genocide that South Africa will be presenting to the International Court. The deliberate targeting of tens of thousands of Palestinians that aren’t Hamas.
You are describing a war crime. Undeniably. Unquestionably.