Do you believe there’s a time and place when the opposite of your recommended approach would’ve worked?
Moderating:
This is inflammatory rhetoric, nothing more. Rather than make accusations that imply a poster is being disingenuous, refute what they say with cites and evidence.
These sorts of comments serve only to arouse passions and create disharmony in the discussion. Don’t do this again.
You mean a time and place to commit ethnic cleansing? If so, no.
Sure, got a cite right here:
There ya go. Now all you need to do in future is direct it to the person whose views you dispute, not to a moderator.
"Hamas admits 72% of combat-aged fatalities are men, quietly reduces civilian death toll "
Newsflash…War is hell. There will be collateral damage.
Maybe it’s a good idea not to start one.
And lets not forget who started this by proudly murdering civilians in their bedrooms at 6 am on October 7. That was not collatteral damage.
This attitude appears to say that any criticism of Israeli conduct is wrong, just because of Oct 7th. That even if Israel kills women and children for no reason, or unarmed paramedics in an aid convoy, that is it’s okay. Is that really what you mean?
the fact that you can use these 3 words disturbs me. The Israeli army does not shoot “for no reason”.
There is, unfortunately, a perfectly good reason for killing people, when those people are the Hamas barbarians who started this war . And if the barbarians hide among their own women and children, then there will be collateral damage.-i.e. innocent children blown up alongside their fathers. The kids, of course, don’t know that daddy is a barbarian murderer.. but daddy knows he is endangering his own children. Mommy knows it too. But in Islamic society women have no power over men. So even if the mother loves her children enough that she honestly tries to argue with her husband not to launch missiles at Israel from the family home, she won’t succeed.
And yes, mistakes happen–like the horrible case last week when 16 medics were shot. But in a war where the barbarians don’t wear uniforms, and don’t hesitate to dress like medics, it’s hard to know if a medic is really a medic*. In that specific case, it looks to me like a truly massive fuck up by the Israeli army.. Nowhere near as bad as Lieutenant Calley at MyLai in Vietnam, but definitely deserving of a court martial and a public investigation.
*Personal disclaimer: two decades ago, when Israel still occupied Gaza, I was there, serving in the Israeli army on routine patrols during a relatively quiet time. One day, we got a warning call on the squad radio in our patrol jeep, saying that an ambulance had been stolen from a hospital in central Gaza., Three hours later, that ambulance drove up to the Israeli border gate, packed with explosives , and blew up..
War is hell.
So don’t start one.
I’m not saying it’s been done, I’m saying the words you have used, taken literally, sound suspiciously like “it doesn’t matter what Israel does, it’s always wrong to criticize how they’ve handled this war, and any casualties, even if result of mistakes or even evil acts by IDF members, are the fault of Hamas and Israel should not and cannot be criticized”.
Otherwise, why bring up Oct 7th in response to specific policy and incident-related criticisms of the Israeli government and the IDF?
If Israel goes ahead with what’s been reported regarding depopulating northern Gaza, that is ethnic cleansing, and there is no justification or rationalization for ethnic cleansing. If you’re okay with that, that means you’re okay with ethnic cleansing.
Was it ethnic cleansing when Israel previously evacuated civilians from the area and then let them back in after the fighting stopped?
Time will tell. If they come back and eventually have peace, security, and self determination, then no.
I don’t trust this current Israeli government, and I don’t know why any other decent person would.
Mmmm, who to trust, the Beeb, or some Israeli propaganda arm masquerading as an NGO…
Also, both 70% of the dead being women and children and 70% of ‘combat-aged’ dead being men can both be true - especially when the dead contain a high proportion of children and aged. But it certainly still renders the idea that Israel avoids civilian deaths as so much empty propaganda. Israel will happily kill the civilians around a military target. There are no “extreme lengths” there. They admit it’s what they do - even if “regretfully” so
While I utterly condemn Hamas (or anybody else’s) attacks on civilians, it’s disingenuous to pretend that there was no valid cause of conflict until Hamas “started this” a year and a half ago.
For decades, Israel has been denying rights and sovereignty to Palestinians in the region that’s their own homeland as least as much as it is Israelis’. Israel has been continually taking over more and more Palestinian land as well. Nonviolent opposition by and on behalf of Palestinians, including protests, boycotts, divestment and sanctions efforts, have had zero effect in getting Israel to stop its territorial expansion and recognize Palestinian sovereignty and/or equal citizenship.
I repeat, Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians are indefensible. But so is Israel’s ongoing oppression and dispossession of Palestinians in general. None of this “started” on October 7 2023.
“It’s our fault because we made them hate us” is at best going to be a hard sell.
Straw adversary: nobody is claiming that only Israelis are at “fault” in this situation. There’s plenty of “fault” to go around.
But pretending that Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland, over many decades, isn’t one of the significant blameworthy factors in this situation is just willful obliviousness.
Yes, you’re right that an honest recognition of all the various facts is indeed a “hard sell” to people strongly committed to willful obliviousness regarding a crucial subset of those facts. But that doesn’t make it wrong.
This is the better take.
There’s no particular reason to give the number of dead of “combat age”, unless you are trying to avoid talking about the total number of dead.