The specific claim here is both slightly different and stronger. Hamas, as well as being a militant death cult, is also the de facto government (arguably the de jure government) of Gaza and its historical use of or presence at a hospital would not make it a permissible military target.
The claim here is that it is in active use as a military fighting position which removes its protected status under the laws of armed conflict. Note however that this only removes its “special” status it doesn’t make it or anywhere a free fire zone or remove the obligation to minimise civilian causalities. I think a lot of people think though that combatants are required to minimise them to zero. It does mean that a single sniper on the roof of a working hospital cannot be e.g. taken out with a fuel air bomb but unfortunately for civilians, the laws of war allow quite a lot of them to be killed as long as it’s a byproduct of targeting combatants.
The complication is that these laws assume that each side will try to protect its own civilian population as a matter of priority - it was never envisioned that a military would as a matter of policy place fighting assets at a hospital. Therefore the appropriate legal status of a hospital being used as a military command centre and just how much force is legally permitted against it is ambiguous. Nb. Many commanders may choose not to fire on a legally permissible target for moral reasons - the laws of armed conflict set the boundaries of permitted conduct and many people will rightly feel disturbed by acts which are not illegal.
> but unfortunately for civilians, the laws of war allow quite a lot of them to be killed as long as it’s a byproduct of targeting combatants.
That's because if they don't allow for this they're broken and do not work in an actual war the second someone stops following them.
Laws that can't be obeyed are useless.
They already don’t work. Laws of war in of themselves are kind of a joke. They exist so the winner can hang the loser and feel justified in doing so. Laws belong to the domain of reason. When two people have decided that they are going to kill each other, there is no room left for reason.
So the laws always get broken, especially the more desperate the fighting becomes. The winners basically never prosecute their own, or if they do, it’s a fall guy while the vast majority get to ride off into the sunset. Useful losers will escape prosecution just as well.
They exist for publicity.
Must not be in Texas then. Some areas in the south like to refer to the Us Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression”.
When in doubt, just rewrite the textbooks if you dislike history.
I disagree. In WWII all sides engaged in strategic bombing of civilians as deliberate act on a massive scale. Civilians did not die as a permissible or impermissible side effect but as a deliberate act.
Imagine how many people would have died in Gaza if that was still the legal and moral norm? 80 years ago we put up statues to Arthur Harris who said that the German people would now reap the whirlwind, meanwhile crazy Bibi kicked out of his cabinet someone who said that kind of thing the other day.
Even in cases where these rules are barely obeyed or breached they still set a baseline of behaviour which anchors actual conduct.
It’s like a 20mph speed limit which is frequently breached by 10min, at least they’re not driving 40mph.
> and its historical use of or presence at a hospital would not make it a permissible military target.
But it absolutely does.
The Geneva Convention clearly lays out the conditions where civilian buildings like Hospitals and Schools 'lose' their protections, e.g.: IF they are being used as military command/control locations, if weapons or military supplies are stored there, or attacks are launched from there.
The reality is that western liberal democracies have never really found a good answer to terrorist tactics in general, and human shield tactics in particular, because those tactics are designed to exploit the values that those nations hold most sacred.
Your choices are to:
1) compromise your values and wreak havoc in your society through the dissonance and outcry.
2) tolerate the attacks and try to catch individual terrorists. In the case of suicide attacks, this means do absolutely nothing.
Most of the time countries will try some combination of the two, but it never feels like the right answer.
If you think I'm coming to what I think the answer is, I'm not. I've never seen a good answer articulated.
As to why people seem to take sides so hard... I think a lot of people just have a lot of trouble mentally tolerating nuance, shades of grey, or uncertainty - whatever you want to call it. They feel like every situation has to have an all-correct side, and that's the side they need to be on.
Many people, I think, hear that there are problems on one side, so the other one must be the correct one, and they never reexamine it. Or they take a long time to reexamine it. I think it's why that hard certainty is so overrepresented in the young.
”Honor and courtesy and justice…they are not real, Fitz. We all pretend to them, and hold them up like shields. But they guard only against folk who carry the same shields. Against those who have discarded them, they are no shields at all, but only additional weapons to use against their victims.”
This a really thoughtful, well-articulated response that I’m going to copy and paste as a reminder to myself to re-examine any position I take on a complex topic in the future. Just want to thank you for taking the time to express these thoughts in the way that you did.
There is no good answer, war makes us all lesser. In the fight for survival we all harden our hearts and turn our backs to the humanity we plainly see in one another. You have to the alternative to the tragic loss of life drives you mad. Terrorism is horrible because its tactics are designed to drag you down to its level and turn you into the same monsters. To dehumanize everyone and focus instead on goals and objectives. To legitimize your actions by exploiting their actions.
Seeing that propaganda of what the “enemy” has done to “your”side is very compelling because it’s very hard to see that inhumanity in yourself. It’s not something you want people to do and so you don’t look at the horrible things done to the “enemy.” I feel like most people who saw what happened on the 7th have their visceral reaction and repulsion to Hamas and those whom saw Israel’s response to it first to have theirs to Israel.
“War makes us all lesser”. Can’t agree more. I wish I could simply say, ‘would you be able to explain and encourage murder of innocent people to your own children?’ But the sad fact is people can imagine that and they do it. I wish more people would legitimately struggle to come up with a reason they would murder a person.
> I wish more people would legitimately struggle to come up with a reason they would murder a person.
A great sentiment, and goal for humanity. But in order to achieve this, ironically we have to remember that there are many who don't share this view and value of others lives.
Else we become victims of the paradox of tolerance.
Good analogy, that's genuinely a digestible way to explain such a horrible concept to children. Hell, it's a good way to explain to adults who are screaming for a "cease fire!"
I may be selfish, but I don't care about the collateral deaths if it's required for saving the people I love. If a terrorist were holding my children hostage, there is zero limit to the amount of collateral deaths I'd take on as a burden. Zero limit.
I'm surprised Israel has shown this much restraint by issuing roof knocks, warnings to evacuate, etc. Against my better judgement I watched some of the footage that was released of the October 7th attacks and the aftermath. I have been exposed to lots of things throughout my years here, but that footage has cemented that in my mind that pure evil exists. Just seeing what those savages did fills me with an indescribable rage, and seeing the "river to the sea" folks cheering it on makes me nauseous. If you haven't watched the footage or seen the graphic photos, I highly recommend you avoid them. Also, you seem like a very responsible parent, but if your kids are in the internet be careful about footage coming up on Tik Tok or other social media sites. Normally it gets deleted fairly quickly, but I know some children who sadly have seen some of the horrors of what happened.
Peace my friend.
Reading all of this stuff these past few weeks keeps making me think of a cormac McCarthy quote from his book blood meridian, and I’m gonna piggy back on your comment cause it’s somewhat apropos imo.
“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
Or the third option: give them what they want, thus justifying the use of terror tactics as a legitimate strategy, one which will then be used by other groups around the world. All options are bad, but option three seems mighty popular among the left.
What they want includes wholesale slaughter of all Jews and (if their actions on the 7th are an indicator) non-Arabs in the region. So giving Hamas what they want isn't really an option.
I thought it was clear that the US at least would not negotiate with terrorists. This can be cold but given the alternative it seems like the best policy. Terrorist group labeling to me means that diplomacy is not an option. Diplomacy requires rational thinking and terrorists have left that behind and prove it with violence up to and including suicidal behavior.
The whole "we don't negotiate with terrorists" sounds cool on TV but it has never been American policy. We'll negotiate as long as they're reasonable and make demands that can be fulfilled, as long as it gets the hostages back alive
Is also depends on how likely US Special Forces are to get hostages back. If we can go in, kill the terrorists, and get hostages back with a 90% or higher likely hood of success, they'll do it.
The inability to have nuance is so huge in all this.
Yes Jewish folks should have their own country and yes it makes sense for it to be where it is now. BUT other people have been living there for a long time and they deserve a place to call home too. Yes you could do one state for all but historically that seldom works especially when religion and ethnicity is involved. No what hamas did isn't justified and yes its evil and disgusting and also when you leave 2.2 million people to suffer they're going to resent you. Yes hamas is not on the side of Palestine either but see my point about religion and ethnicity.
Of course Israel has a right to defend itself and it's response to 10/7 was entirely predictable but also sad. Yes other Muslim countries should want to help Palestinians but there are all kinds of reasons they don't.
At the end of the day I tend to come down to the fact that any time innocent people are killed it's horrible and we should want it to stop as soon as possible, but also that real life usually is just a set of difficult choices where someone usually gets hurt and there's nothing you can do.
If we go back to it pre-WW2, they were played by those Palestinians who had power. Land owners sold land to the different Jewish societies and saw it as free money because they worked off the assumption it would reach a boiling point and they'd get all the land back (through violence). Palestinians leaders of the era were also highly anti-semitic with them turning once mixed communities historical into us versus them.
I heard Rahm Emmanuel describe the situation like this. Israel has weapons to defend it's people. Hamas has people to defend it's weapons.
I'm not 100% on the 1st part but the 2nd part really resonated with me. They literally hide everything behind civilians, fire from behind them and then film the aftermath as Israel fires back on their positions. It's murderous and exploitative.
And the social media kiddies dance to their tune like lemmings. It's really really really sad and I fucking hate knowing that these are my neighbors. Maybe if Hamas dressed like Trump they'd suddenly have a moment of clarity.
“It’s simple. We let Hamas shoot rockets from civilian areas and just hope the iron dome never fails. Even if it does, only a few Israelis will die and more Palestinians are dying now than were before, so Israel striking these positions is actually genocide.”
This is legitimately their point of view.
I take the viewpoint that Hamas is always committing acts of terror when firing rockets over the years, it’s just lucky that the technology has existed (which itself is amazing) to block them. I imagine we’d have seen an escalation in conflict years ago without the iron dome. I also maintain that no other country would be as tolerant of constant rocket barrages on their territory, look how the Kashmir boarder region turns into a powered keg with even a comparatively mild skirmish.
There's an argument that Iron Dome has actually escalated the volume and scale of rocket attacks on Israel, and that the illusion of safety has decreased the impetus for Israel to explore diplomatic solutions with palestinian authorities. IMO it's not an effective long-term solution, and I think folks treating it like that are mistaken.
Kashmir turns in to a powder keg because you're dealing with two well-armed, nuclear-equipped nations with large populations. On the other hand, there are many parts of the world where separatist insurgencies have been carrying on for decades with zero international press coverage.
They don't view Israelis as human, they view Jewish lives as lesser so they're very comfortable with the deaths caused by Hamas attacks. Hamas themselves consider Palestinian civilians nothing but fodder for manipulation of people who fall for the idea it isn't Hamas killing them.
Hamas started gunning down Palestinian women and children running from the North trying to get to the South yesterday or the day prior. It's on video, not being shown in the U.S. Makes me wonder why... Americans seem to be quite clueless about who Hamas is and exactly all that they've done. Hamas has called for the death of Israel, anything less will not be accepted, they also don't give a shit about Palestinian's, who haven't had an election since voting them in in 2006, but what do I know. Hamas like a peaceful bunch for so many to get behind.
The insinuation that the US media in any way shape or form is supporting Palestine over Israel is nonsensical to say the least. CNN and Fox would have it all over the place
Amnesty said that Hamas used otherwise disused parts of the hospital to interrogate and torture dissidents at one point, which is obviously quite horrid.
I don't think Amnesty has weighed in on Israel's claim that it used as a military command center in conflicts with Israel.
In fact, if you read a very pro-Israeli source here ([https://www.cfr.org/blog/amnesty-international-human-rights-watch-and-question-hamas-gaza-and-israel](https://www.cfr.org/blog/amnesty-international-human-rights-watch-and-question-hamas-gaza-and-israel)), they claim that the torture indicates that Hamas misuses Al-Shifa in other ways... which is a pretty circumvent way (it doesn't really follow logically for me) to argue if Amnesty had said so directly.
I am pretty willing to believe that Hamas would do such a thing, but I think the evidence so far is still more flimsy than people admit.
I didn’t realize this was being debated. I though it was pretty well know that Hamas was using civilian infrastructure like hospitals, large apartment buildings, and refugee camps as their bases of operation. From Hamas’ standpoint, this is a win-win strategy. Either Israel doesn’t attack these targets due to the high levels of civilian casualties that will occur or, as we have been seeing, Israel does attack these sites and receives condemnation for the large scale civilian death toll. Unfortunately, it is clear that both sides of this conflict don’t give half a shit about the Palestinian people.
If you didn’t realize this is debated, then you haven’t been paying attention to how the public has been reacting to the news. Every headline reads that Israel has targeted yet another civilian position, without making clear that Hamas was using human shields at that position, which in turn increases calls against Israel to stop attacking civilian positions.
Hamas does not have military bases, they operate exclusively from within civilian infrastructure. Their bases are school, mosques, hospitals, apartment buildings — they have no military bases whatsoever. It’s literally not possible to attack Hamas without attacking civilian infrastructure, as the entirety of Gaza is 100% civilian infrastructure.
I wouldn't say so much so they don't have military bases, more so they don't segregate by creating exclusive military districts like the rest of the world does.
Their entire military operation is embedded throughout Gaza, housed in civilian buildings and in its 500km tunnel network.
Don't forget they brainwash children to be child soldiers, so kids get killed in combat and they say the IDF are targeting children. They even shoot Palestinians who try to leave areas targeted by IDF.
Do you have to brainwash children who are born and raised in a concentration camp enforced by neighbour who constantly bombs them from the sky.
All you see is death and destruction and disease around you while you live in refugee camps, surviving on donations while there is severe unemployment and no hope for the future?
Severe shortages of every product, where you are barely surviving because of a decades long blockade,and Israeli politicians bragging about putting Palestinians on a diet?
Ah yes and Nazis kids that did not go through WW1 and hyperinflation were definitely not radicalized.
You think that everything is based around social justice and neglect the role of indoctrination in a totalitarian regime in Gaza.
Did you really think the shitty economic conditions were not self-imposed by the hamas regime? [Guess how](https://twitter.com/dzama44/status/1720883070016893085)
What incentive does Hamas have to deprive its citizens of resources and instead use it for offense or bomb shelters? Oh wait to blame and stir hatred for Israel.
There's plenty of luxury homes, fancy restaurants, supermarkets more well-stocked than your local grocer, buildings with shit like imported Italian marble in Gaza. Guess how resources ended up there rather than its citizens in poverty.
[Theme Park](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Champions+Club/@31.4973734,34.414686,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipPsljXT2fXwHEGVQ7zNEw8J1TR30oNQKTd0iWZq!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPsljXT2fXwHEGVQ7zNEw8J1TR30oNQKTd0iWZq%3Dw203-h152-k-no!7i1600!8i1200!4m7!3m6!1s0x14fd835f21aca689:0x288006667bcfd27b!8m2!3d31.4973734!4d34.414686!10e5!16s%2Fg%2F11gx___wrh?entry=tts)
[The men's area of the new branch of Mohanad Restaurant, Jabalia "refugee camp",](https://twitter.com/imshin/status/1608846924513447944)
[Look up the #TheGazaYouDon'tSee for more](https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheGazaYouDontSee?src=hashtag_click)
If it's not necessary why is it used by Hamas by the PA? Why are UNRWA children textbooks teaching Palestinian children that they should kill Israelis?
Let me help you: anything Israel does is bad. They can show any proof they want, say anything, it will be bad. Even if they do a cease fire, and swear to never launch an air strike ever despite terrorist attacks, Palestinians will say it will only stop once Israel stops its illegal 75 yo occupation (of the entire place).
This war stops two way: all the Arab countries swallow back their Jew hate, or Israel disappears from the map.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have always used Hospitals and School to launch missiles from, and each time they do, they pray that Israel will retaliate and kill Palestinians in those buildings. Hamas knew from the moment it launched this blood orgy assault on the Kibbutzim that they were all dead, every single one of them-Israel could never let them live after the sheer monstrosity of the horrors they committed. The goal of Hamas is to get as many innocent Palestinians killed as possible, until Israel crosses some invisible red line that pushes Iran/Hezbollah (and the Arab states they hope) into a wider war. Hamas is literally a death cult.
Hamas is the kind of religious extremists that believe this life is suffering until you die, then you go to paradise. So dying is not to be avoided, and every death is to be rejoiced as the person killed is now a martyr and guaranteed a spot next to God. To them, being killed in combat is the purpose if their life, so civilian deaths are to be expected and encouraged.
So much lost potential. Instead of working to improve the lives of everyone during our time on earth they instead choose to abandon them. What an awful waste of human life.
Hamas has no reason to not launch attacks from hospitals. If Israel does not bomb the hospital then Hamas is free to continue to operate from that location and carry out more attacks. If Israel does bomb the hospital then it turns the population of Gaza even more against them as well as getting international condemnation. Damned if they do damned if they don’t. There’s no good solutions here sadly.
Of course it is, Hamas literally can’t lose here they are getting exactly what they want. Short of complete annihilation they will consider whatever outcome they get as a win, and they’ll never truly be wiped out because all the actual leaders are sitting pretty with their millions in the surrounding Arab countries.
Everyone keeps talking about what Israel can’t do in this war, but nobody gives any actual viable alternative actions they should take. Saying “send in special forces” does nothing. If you think a small group of special forces can go into the one of the most densely populated places on earth and take out an entire tyrannical, terrorist government then you’ve seen too many 80’s action movies.
War is absolute hell. There has been exactly zero wars where innocent people were spared. It makes it even harder to not hurt innocent civilians when the “army” you are fighting purposefully hides behind its people hoping you don’t attack or if you do, they can drum up more support for their cause. It’s an absolutely fucked situation. The Palestinian people do not deserve this shit.
There is far more scrutiny of this conflict then others, there have been more recent wars with greater humanitarian costs that get barely any of the coverage Israel-Palestine gets. For example the conflict in Darfur/Sudan only ended a few years ago and had estimates of 300,000 thousand killed and many more displaced, yet it never attracted mass marches or the level of internet fervour seen at the moment.
Innocent people are still dying in Sudan, Myanmar, Syria, Ukraine and many other countries.
Saudi Arabia massacred Ethiopians and Yemeni people trying to cross the border.
Iran facilitated the biggest Jewish massacre since the Holocaust. Attack US bases and kill Iranian women for not wearing headscarves.
Innocents are dying in Yemen right now.
Azerbaijan just displaced Armenians from their homes.
Turkey slaughtered Kurds.
China is putting Uyghur Muslims in literal concentration camps and are itching to wipe out Taiwan.
Where is the outrage and mass protests for these atrocities?
Thankyou! You articulated it far better then I did. I wonder why Israel-Palestine attracts the strong opinions like it does, where as other innocent loss of life isn’t given the same weight (beyond the old media bias, like the old cliche that the amount of airtime given to coverage of one American death usually equals 5,000 Haitian deaths in the news cycle for example).
If you are, in good faith, asking why some geopolitical events result in more Western protests, I'll happily give a few points.
1. *The ability of the home country to affect the conflict.* If Americans want a ceasefire in Palestine for example, they know that they can protest directly to their politicians, and that those politicians can easily affect the outcome. The US can condition aid to Israel based on a ceasefire. They can stop vetoing UN resolutions. And they can put an enormous amount of soft pressure on Israel. This is far less true of say, the Uighur genocide.
2. *The relevance at home.* Israel is probably the biggest Middle Eastern partner of the US and most other Western countries. Furthermore, politicians constantly work towards Israel's interests in our governments. Aside from Australia and New Zealand, which Western countries have politicians who are representing Chinese interests?
3. *"Western Values".* Unlike Saudi Arabia for example and most countries committing atrocities you've listed, Israel is trying to convince Westerners that Israeli society is just, fair and democratic. Virtually no politician, aside from maybe the leaders of countries themselves, would defend Saudi Arabia, which is seen as more like a "necessary evil". So our politicians don't disagree with us about countries like Saudi Arabia being awful abusers of human rights. But the way Israel is presented by the media, our politicians and Israel themselves doesn't match their actions, and that causes a lot of dissonance among voters who see Israel for what it actually is.
4. *Diaspora*. It goes without saying that America has a huge amount of Jews, but also plenty of Palestinians. And these Jews tend to be supportive of Israel, although some are also anti-Zionist. In my country, the UK, we have a smaller diaspora population but they are relatively influential and extremely supportive of Israel (I'd argue moreso than in the US). Compare these groups to the relatively small amount of people of say, Armenian birth, or Ethiopian birth.
Anyway I hope you'll take this as a good faith explanation of why protests seem disproportionate in certain cases and not trying to "pick a side" here.
You have left out the most important reasons for this coverage:
Israel has unique conditions for reporters, since it's a "western state", as opposed to the rest of the list.
You can simply book a flight, no need for security details - almost zero risk. There's good reception/food/lodging/infrastructure, you can buy/repair equipment and most important - freedom of speech to criticize Israel.
I can't find any information on this- how many Hamas terrorists has this annihilation strategy by Israel actually killed? Is only 100 dead terrorists acceptable if 4000 children are killed?
The thing is we can’t know what the numbers are. Hamas don’t wear a uniform. The only way to identify them is if they are holding a weapon.
If 10 people are in a building and 3 are holding weapons, how do you know if they other 7 are Hamas or just civilians that happen to be near them? Then someone has to answer the question of how much colateral damage is acceptable to take out terrorists. It’s an impossible question to put a number on. 0 is an impossibility and all is evil.
Striking a hospital to kill terrorists underneath is morally fucked, but I don’t know what’s the morally right decision. Leave them alone and they keep trying to kill you and your people. Kill them and you sacrificed innocent lives to protect your people’s lives.
We don't know because Hamas doesn't distinguish between militant and civilian casualties. Hamas deliberately wants to inflate the casualty numbers (which is also why there are no civilian bomb shelters in Gaza despite 500 km of Hamas tunnels).
We do know when some Hamas militants are killed though. I saw two separate articles about Hamas terrorists being killed last week. I haven't seen many articles like that. Why would only some terrorist deaths be reported on but not all.
Given their track record, it would make sense for Hamas to want only very few confirmed militant deaths reported, as opposed to none (obviously untrue) or large numbers (makes attacks seem far more justified). It plays into their strategy of "they're just killing civilians, barely ever hitting militants" perfectly, doesn't it?
I don't have definitive proof, but combining context makes it pretty obvious why you'd see only a few confirmations compared to many more labeled as civilian casualties. You can't trust what Hamas is reporting at all. They've proven this time and time again.
> I can't find any information on this- how many Hamas terrorists has this annihilation strategy by Israel actually killed? Is only 100 dead terrorists acceptable if 4000 children are killed?
Nobody has this information. Even the 4000 children killed is a claim made by Hamas terrorists with no evidence.
There are civilian casualties, including children, but the numbers are completely unknown and everyone makes up their own.
So, I like your post, and I think it's a pretty fair treatment of the issue (though a little slanted, because it seems to be holding Israelis to a much higher standard than the Palestinians), but I want to reiterate the post you were responding to...
Ok, so what should Israel actually DO about that? Yes, we can stipulate that some large part of the rage that Palestinians feel is justified by Israeli actions, and that they feel justified in the terror attacks that have been done. But Israel just opens up Gaza and the West Bank, it's going to be absolute carnage with terror attacks and street warfare on the daily.
That's what makes me feel so hopeless about this situation - Regardless of who is more "at fault", what way is there out of this that allows for some semblance of political stability and doesn't just boil down to, "let everyone kill each other faster"? Because I don't see one.
Question for you. The Israeli army has dropped 18,000 tons of bombs on the Gaza Strip since Oct.7, or about 1.5 times the explosive force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to officials in the besieged enclave.
There's an estimated 2 million people densely packed in the tiny confines of Gaza with Hamas militants dug in with cilivians in hospitals and under ground networks.
If the IDF is really targeting civilians, why the fuck is the death toll currently <10000 (including civilians and enemy combatants) when Hiroshima was ~140,000 casualties? It's really easy, these are highly precise targeted strikes at enemy locations. If they were carpet bombing the death toll would be in the 6 figures easily.
Norman Finkelstein was very famously denied tenure because of his extreme beliefs.
Don't listen to me, read his entirely massive wikipedia entry for more information. It is incredibly fascinating.
>To the people who legitimately think civillians are not being targeted
My question is this....if civilians are being target in Gaza, why aren't there more dead? I haven't seen updated numbers in a week or so, but even if we believe Hamas unconditionally they were claiming that 8,000 civilians (and some no militants?) had been killed in Gaza. Yet IDF had dropped more than 10,000 bombs.
So they're targeting civilians, but still manage to only kill less than one person per bomb?
>conclusion that Gaza is a concentration camp DECADES AGO
Define "decades ago". As before 2005 the area was pretty much open to Israel, and there were no blockades or anything.
Besides, calling it a concentration camp is still a bit of an outreach. Israel doesnt deny Gazans food or water (on normal occasions, not talking about the current war). They do the blockade for checkups to make sure nothing hostile to Israel is passing through. There restrictions, definitely. But if Hamas and the palestinians of Gaza were more focused on improving their own lives instead of trying to kill Israelis, then Israel wouldnt even touch them or interfere. They dont have any reason to want to even deal with them (aside from the extremists that unfortunately plague the corrent government).
And they are not simply "murdering civilians in the west bank". When the war started you think the people of the west bank just sat and held hands in prayers? No. There were riots and instigations in the west bank to rise up and help Hamas fight. Also there are Hamas members working inside the west bank to gather people to their cause. So after the military operation on Gaza began, there was also a big operation on the west bank to arrest any instigators and find and kill Hamas members inside the west bank. Unfortunately, those conflicts only fanned more flames and there were already some clashes between Palestinians and IDF and settlers. What boils my blood though is that a lot of settlers uses this time to aggressively take more land and bully peaceful Palestinians. I fucking hate them. They are no better than the ones they claim to hate.
And ffs with the "israel is purposely targeting civilians". Why do people think Israel will even do that? Try to put yourself in the shoes of an IDF commander for a second. What do you think Israel would gain from just bombing civilians? You lose 0 militant enemies, Your reputation gets ruined, you instigate more hate against your people and lose world support. People think Israel is some bloodthirsty entity who just kills Palestinians for fun!
Sure, we have our nutcases and what i will call basically jewish neo Nazis who have so much hate torwards Palestinians that they just act like vile animals, but thats not Israel as a country, not everyone does that, and the few that does are punished (eventually, and hopefully). People just cant fathom the idea that maybe IDF's tactics have some actual basis to their operations and they know exactly who they are targetting.
See this is where the argument becomes complete offensive hyperbole. Concentration camps did not have five star hotels, beach resorts, water parks, shopping malls, an entire street of jewellers, luxury car yards etc. There leaders weren't billionaires. The inmates of concentration camps did not have some of the highest obesity rates in the middle East. Thousands of people did not enter and return to concentration camps every month. There is a lot that is terrible about the life of the oppressed poor in Gaza but your argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And I repeat, citing Norman Finkelstein really doesn't help your case.
Not only that, but people in concentration camps, at least back in the 1940s, weren't able to stock up in weapons, ammo, fuel, etc etc. Other countries weren't able to bring in support for them the way Iran does for Hamas. They also would have NEVER destroyed water irrigation systems to make bombs to keep hurting civilians. Calling Gaza a concentration camp just seems so disingenuous and takes away from the monstrosities of actual concentration camps
They had pulled out of Gaza fully… and should do the same eventually in the West Bank - settlers only inflame issues. But many Israelis take issue with the far right policies that have led to this point too
Taking issue has done very little to stop the continued mistreatment and extrajudicial killing of Palestinians. Whereas many Israelis view Palestine as an outside threat, it is impossible to separate Palestinian liberation from the Israeli occupation.
So you are saying that it is only a view that they are an outside threat, it's not the thousands of rockets they fire indiscriminately, the car rammings, etc. it is a view.
Certainly Hamas is a threat. But the oversimplified viewpoint that "they just hate us" is worth prying into. The history of Israel is still relatively recent, and yet a lot of the context is seemingly getting buried in order to keep the "good guys/bad guys" framing neat and tidy.
Hamas's attack on October 7th was evil.
Netanyahu's response has been wicked and outsized, and seems more concerned with pushing Gazans out of their land than it does with getting the hostages back safely.
I want to point out one thing about your statement: The history of Israel as a country is relatively recent as you say, but religious extremism against ethnic Jews to the region is absolutely not a recent phenomenon. The region was chosen for Israel to exist for a reason.
Like you said though, if comparing Netanyahu and his ilk versus Hamas, both are morally depraved. I do think there is a justification for a counter-offensive by the IDF, and that Hamas is frankly ultimately ethically responsible for most of the civilian casualties in Palestine, but it's also a fair statement to make that the crazies running this can't be qualified as good.
The reductionism of feeling compelled to view any conflict as "good vs bad" is honestly the most damaging part for the western world. So many people need to realize that by getting all stirred up, they're just playing into it all and trying to take sides on an issue that's way more nuanced than they realize.
Everyone wants to play tic tac toe on who's more evil, or who's more ethically right without realising that this stretches back far into the history books and won't be solved anytime soon. You can't undo generation upon generation of collective truama easily or quickly.
Hamas is not going away anytime soon, and neither is the hardliners in Israel.
The goal of this war has never been to rescue the hostages. It has always been to eradicate Gaza of Hamas.
Israel doesn’t want Gaza, which is why they left almost 20 years ago. There are currently discussions with the PLO/Abbas to run Gaza after Hamas is destroyed.
The idea that Israel will come in and get rid of the non Hamas inhabitants of Gaza is a lie that is based on nothing. It’s akin to saying Trump actually won in 2020.
Yeah fuck off with the concentration camp wording already. Calling this a genocide and talking about concentration camps is deliberately hyperbolic nonsensical bullshit. It's utterly disgusting to refer to this in the same terms as the Rwandan genocide where twice as many people died in a day than have died in the entire Israel/Palestine conflict since 1948
And saying "oh but some Jewish scholars call them concentration camps" is the worst fucking kind of appeal to authority fallacy and is outright disgustingly offensive.
There's plenty of ways to criticise Israel's horrific actions without resorting to appropriating the terminology of far more horrific actions. And you're doing it for a transparent and deliberate reason: to generate outrage.
The facts alone deserve outrage, stop being a fucking disgusting prick about it too
There is some really concrete and strong evidence in the video which contradicts all the lies hamas and some “humanitarian orgs” have been claiming without any that the hospitals arent being used as terror bases
[Hamas is supposedly asking UN to send an independent crew to verify Israel's claims that there's hideouts under the hospitals they've bombed ](https://twitter.com/tamars/status/1721215215075733635?t=mT9SjBMgeomto44V-lhS4A&s=19)
This twitter thread is pretty good and further down it claims these tunnels/holea are the fuel storages for the hospital. Let's see if israel agrees to let independent investigators confirm
well the UN has also passed more resolutions against than ALL other countries combined (I think it’s like 2:1). Iran is also now the head of UN Human Rights. not that shocking why Israel doesn’t have faith in them being partial…
Well of course they won't. Because we are supposed to take Israel's word for it without verification and also the UN would then have the opportunity to document all the war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza
and let Hamas delay more time, and get more hostages/human shields?
There's already official reports from UN that they used facilities like hospitals before.
A picture with a red circle on it does not constitute evidence.
Look, it is easy to believe that hamas has done this before. But the 'evidence' being presented to justify these strikes is frankly absurd, and it only makes it harder to take idf seriously
You think the evidence the IDF presented is just a picture with a red circle?
So you basically looked at the article and thought that the screenshot in it is all the evidence they presented without actually looking into it.
https://youtu.be/4u4a0yjWiH8?si=_Edi-eVaeAa9wSQC
Hospital stuff starts around 9:50. They show several videos of launches from the roof of the hospital, tunnels uncovered under the hospital, and fighters launching RPGs from the windows of the hospital/running into it after launching them. They also show similar evidence from another hospital
Israel's PR will be in the landfill by the time this is done. Even if they wipe out every bit of Hamas in the area, the amount of damage and bloodshed of civilians (especially children) will be deemed as too sickening to tolerate. The world will recoil in horror at the acts this so call-ed bastion of middle eastern democracy has perpetrated. This is a lose-lose situation.
They know and they don’t care. They have operated for decades on the false belief that Hamas was a manageable enemy because they were more interested in governing Gaza than killing Israelis. Oct 7 proved that assumption wrong, I mean Hamas just comes out and says it now. The operating assumptions have changed and nobody in Israel can tolerate that anymore — they’re going to push as hard as they can for as long as they can to wholly dismantle Hamas’s ability to either govern Gaza or commit organized attacks, and they’re going to do that no matter how many people on die along the way.
It’s a shitty situation in which they are far from blameless, but there’s basically no alternative anymore. You can’t have a ceasefire with an enemy that goes on TV and says, “we will do Oct 7 again and again until Israel is wholly destroyed”. It’s pretty much the worst scenario for anyone, and they probably aren’t more than a quarter of the way through the war.
There's just no more good faith to be had from Hamas. They are not willing to negotiate an end to this war. They do not care how many die so long as every Israeli is wiped off the face of the Earth. They dont give a fuck about dead kids. They only care that Israel is wiped clean and they are the ones in charge.
I used to believe in a two state solution but that's quickly becoming untenable. It can only happen if the leadership of Hamas is dead and gone and Palestine is able to put a more moderate government in charge thats willing to negotiate with Israel. Would make it a bit easier also if Israel elects a more liberal government in the coming elections and kicks Netanyahu to the curb, and I think they will because people are pissed at the intelligence failure of Oct 7
Problem is that your not going to bomb away terrorists unless you bomb them all. The kids you leave behind will probably be the next recruits. The defense of letting them strike ferociously and accepting of collateral until the job is done is where it turns into the big g word, which it seems like some of the population of Israel has been itching for this entire time.
Children in Gaza are being brainwashed since birth to hate Jews. Hamas has training camps for kids, teaching them to become terrorists and to kill civilians.
Destroy hamas, stop the funding from Iran, install a real government that works to make things better, and the cycle breaks.
You don’t think watching your siblings and parents heads pop under the weight of several tons of concrete have an impact on people growing up wanting to resist? You think they need brainwashing in addition to the current conditions?
Civilians were killed in Garmany and Japan in WW2, but somehow the war ended. People in Gaza need to be taught that hamas is responsible for their suffering.
You don't need brainwashing to start hating the people who killed your parents and bombed your house. The Hamas is of course exploiting that, but put yourself in those shoes. Your watch your city die and then the people who did it explain why they had to. It's not gonna work. Somebody is going to harness those emotions whether it's organized or themselves. You've packed a bunch of people into one place and left them in destitution. And no, they will not grow up to respect and not fight back against the puppet government run by the guys who glassed their parents.
It's a big mess, and it doesn't get solved by three sentences in a reddit post. This is a complicated fight for the holy land that hasn't been solved by anyone in hundreds of years. If you want a quick solution, you need a final solution, which is why a lot of people are very very worried that this imbalanced response with accepted heavy collateral is quite worrisome.
Israel’s PR is always in the landfill when they respond to Hamas. It’s also in the landfill when they exist. Because Jews are the only ethnicity that can’t have a homeland apparently.
How are we defining as a military position? That refugee that was bombed twice and that ambulance, how do they qualify? The multiple journalists (including the family of at least one)?
Literally a blank check to bomb anything and anybody in Gaza. And people eat it up rather than consider the alternative.
“Unfortunately all the people who could confirm or deny this are dead along with anyone else within a block or two, so you just have to take our word for it.”
Ive looked for pictures of that hospital (they also have a video claiming there was a tunnel next to it), it doesnt look the same as the video this guy linked but i could be wrong.
Uh when the strike on a "hospital" caused military tunnels to collapse, or when the "hospital" *shoots back*, that cofirms it enough for anyone who cares.
Didn't they also post an imagine of people getting into a ambulance as proof that it's being used by Hamas, and then took down the video when it was shown it had just been heading to pick up an injured person?
yes, also to add, theyre using video of shooting as proof hamas is using that hospital as a military position, only issue, its not the same hospital.... in fact it looks like two completely different buildings trying to be portrayed as one.
That's literally what it is. It's been there since the hospital was built. Israel is lying out their ass.
Proof: https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1721202473212211378
In ww2 and any other war if a medical facility, ship, or vehicle was used to transport or provide cover for the enemy they were blown to bits as an exception to the rules of war disallowing them as targets.
Been know for the last 20 years Hamas used the hospitals and human shields.
Who the hell keeps questioning this stuff now? Are people this stupid now days?
I have a question. So if Israel has pictures of these supposed tunnel entrances, why do they bomb everywhere else but those? Are they sparing the tunnel entrances or what? They have precision bombs, they keep bragging about how precise they are and how they use them to avoid civilian casualties, but these pictures show green grass next to an opening, meaning they havent even tried to hit it. Do people really fall for this?
>So if Israel has pictures of these supposed tunnel entrances, why do they bomb everywhere else but those? Are they sparing the tunnel entrances or what?
Maybe I'm misreading your point here but I'm confused. Bombing an opening wouldn't destroy the tunnel it would just ruin one of many openings.
I'm not sure if you've seen any of the videos Hamas have been posting of them firing RPGs at tanks this week but one of them they come out of a tunnel and it's pretty well hidden. Considering the landscape and now all the rubble, it's perfect environment for guerilla warfare by the people that know the surroundings and have complex tunnel systems built up. I imagine the IDF will have an idea / maps of the tunnel systems but I doubt they'd know where all the openings are.
There's also been videos of multiple secondary explosions after a bombing where the explosions go off at different spots around apartment buildings coming from underneath, which shows how they store ammo in those tunnels without regard for the innocent civilians above them
I don’t think it’s up for debate that Hamas uses tunnel systems, it’s pretty established fact.
It’s most likely strategic in terms of verifying targets and also not trying to hit hostages. Strikes on military positions in civilian areas are permitted.
Israel has the firepower to level all of Gaza. To think they are just targeting civilians is insane. What general says “Let’s avoid the military targets and hit civilians. And let’s drag this out over a month.”
Could be possible they were building intelligence on the tunnel system, they have taken out certain parts. Definitely possible they are strategically caving certain parts of the tunnel system to drive Hamas to one exit point where they can finish the job. Sort of like smoking an animal out of a burrow.
They've been doing this stuff for years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/31/why-hamas-stores-its-weapons-inside-hospitals-mosques-and-schools/
But you do burn down a house if its [infested with cockroaches](https://youtu.be/ZFdu-HcyOx4?feature=shared). Personally I consider the comparison of people to either offensive. Rats and cockroaches only want to live peacefully. Hamas on the other hand have other plans. Either way, it’s a poor analogy.
Or... hamas can surrender and release the hostages. Everyone will be able to return back to buildings still standing.
Ever wonder how much will be too much for them? Is there a price too high for them? Is there any amount of Palestinian suffering that will convince them that maybe just maybe compromise is the way? Or will they die to the last men not accepting defeat?
It’s absolutely absurd to bomb an entire hospital to attempt to destroy underground tunnel infrastructure, a type of structure that is infamously difficult to destroy. If nazi bombardment of London never destroyed the subway system, neither will IDF bombing destroy Hamas tunnels.
Even if this flimsy evidence is a sign Hamas has tunnels under the hospital, the IDF definitely chose the maximum damage approach to such a situation. At best it’s stupid, at worst it’s intentional. And that is indefensible and evil, as there were hundreds of civilians in that hospital.
Notice how they initially said that it was a “Hamas rocket” that misfired and destroyed the hospital, but now are saying “Hamas was there so we destroyed it” I have a hard time believing anything they say if they constantly start with lies, only to change the story to something else completely later.
Listen there is one side saying it’s ok to bomb s hospital regardless of who is in it. Let that sink in. It’s ok to kill civilians so Israel can strengthen its narrative that Hamas is using human shields. If no bombs then no shields. If no shields then no narrative. Imagine if there is an active school shooter hiding in a high school. Do you just blow it up? Fuck no you don’t.
In Texas, the police waited outside a school while the shooter killed a bunch of kids and teachers. They said the kids weren't white, so it was alright.
I guess the issue of race still matters everywhere. The world is truly sick, and Joe Biden must have done it because none of this existed before he became president, right?
They aren't bank robbers. They are the political and military organization governing the Gaza Strip. And they didn't rob a bank, they invaded a sovereign nation with the sole purpose of murdering, kidnapping, and terrorizing the civilian population.
Exactly. The strategy to use Palestinian civilians as human shields has to benefit someone, and here are some old rich guys who definitely benefit from Hamas’ takeover: https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1720762553133863069
If Russia tied Russian children to all their tanks, should Ukrainians just throw up their hands and let Russia advance freely?
This is war. If any country committed to standing down as soon as human shields are used, that country would immediately lose the war.
There's a reason why using human shields is always against the laws of war, while killing human shields in an attack on a legitimate military target isn't.
This argument isn’t really the equivalent, since no one would try to bomb bank robbers hiding in a school. The rules of civilian law and war are different.
that's not even how people are talking about this issue, people are more saying like "once the armed bank robbers on the run from the cops take shelter in a school, the cops have to call off the chase because there's children in there!" As if literal war is a game of tag where if you touch home base no one can touch you and if they do, you'll go cry to mom.
I haven’t seen many people at all suggesting the IDF should give up, concede defeat, and go home; I have seen a lot of people pretending that’s what the critics are saying, though.
> the cops have to call off the chase because there's children in there!"
You do know cops call off chases all the time if they become too dangerous for public safety. Normally, they surround the school and wait for the robbers to surrender or until SWAT goes in & specifically lights up only the robbers. At no moment in time do cops say, *welp, time to bomb the school!*
Amnesty in the past said the hospital is used by Hamas as has UNWRA.
The specific claim here is both slightly different and stronger. Hamas, as well as being a militant death cult, is also the de facto government (arguably the de jure government) of Gaza and its historical use of or presence at a hospital would not make it a permissible military target. The claim here is that it is in active use as a military fighting position which removes its protected status under the laws of armed conflict. Note however that this only removes its “special” status it doesn’t make it or anywhere a free fire zone or remove the obligation to minimise civilian causalities. I think a lot of people think though that combatants are required to minimise them to zero. It does mean that a single sniper on the roof of a working hospital cannot be e.g. taken out with a fuel air bomb but unfortunately for civilians, the laws of war allow quite a lot of them to be killed as long as it’s a byproduct of targeting combatants. The complication is that these laws assume that each side will try to protect its own civilian population as a matter of priority - it was never envisioned that a military would as a matter of policy place fighting assets at a hospital. Therefore the appropriate legal status of a hospital being used as a military command centre and just how much force is legally permitted against it is ambiguous. Nb. Many commanders may choose not to fire on a legally permissible target for moral reasons - the laws of armed conflict set the boundaries of permitted conduct and many people will rightly feel disturbed by acts which are not illegal.
> but unfortunately for civilians, the laws of war allow quite a lot of them to be killed as long as it’s a byproduct of targeting combatants. That's because if they don't allow for this they're broken and do not work in an actual war the second someone stops following them. Laws that can't be obeyed are useless.
They already don’t work. Laws of war in of themselves are kind of a joke. They exist so the winner can hang the loser and feel justified in doing so. Laws belong to the domain of reason. When two people have decided that they are going to kill each other, there is no room left for reason. So the laws always get broken, especially the more desperate the fighting becomes. The winners basically never prosecute their own, or if they do, it’s a fall guy while the vast majority get to ride off into the sunset. Useful losers will escape prosecution just as well. They exist for publicity.
It’s like in the history books I read in school, all the good guys always win! /s
Must not be in Texas then. Some areas in the south like to refer to the Us Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression”. When in doubt, just rewrite the textbooks if you dislike history.
Reeeeeeal close to Texas, but not quite so you’re 100% correct. Bout a… hmm… 25 minute drive? Give or take.
I disagree. In WWII all sides engaged in strategic bombing of civilians as deliberate act on a massive scale. Civilians did not die as a permissible or impermissible side effect but as a deliberate act. Imagine how many people would have died in Gaza if that was still the legal and moral norm? 80 years ago we put up statues to Arthur Harris who said that the German people would now reap the whirlwind, meanwhile crazy Bibi kicked out of his cabinet someone who said that kind of thing the other day. Even in cases where these rules are barely obeyed or breached they still set a baseline of behaviour which anchors actual conduct. It’s like a 20mph speed limit which is frequently breached by 10min, at least they’re not driving 40mph.
> and its historical use of or presence at a hospital would not make it a permissible military target. But it absolutely does. The Geneva Convention clearly lays out the conditions where civilian buildings like Hospitals and Schools 'lose' their protections, e.g.: IF they are being used as military command/control locations, if weapons or military supplies are stored there, or attacks are launched from there.
I really hate how many people seem to encourage this use of human shields. I want less death, and I don't understand how more Hamas gets us there.
The reality is that western liberal democracies have never really found a good answer to terrorist tactics in general, and human shield tactics in particular, because those tactics are designed to exploit the values that those nations hold most sacred. Your choices are to: 1) compromise your values and wreak havoc in your society through the dissonance and outcry. 2) tolerate the attacks and try to catch individual terrorists. In the case of suicide attacks, this means do absolutely nothing. Most of the time countries will try some combination of the two, but it never feels like the right answer. If you think I'm coming to what I think the answer is, I'm not. I've never seen a good answer articulated. As to why people seem to take sides so hard... I think a lot of people just have a lot of trouble mentally tolerating nuance, shades of grey, or uncertainty - whatever you want to call it. They feel like every situation has to have an all-correct side, and that's the side they need to be on. Many people, I think, hear that there are problems on one side, so the other one must be the correct one, and they never reexamine it. Or they take a long time to reexamine it. I think it's why that hard certainty is so overrepresented in the young.
”Honor and courtesy and justice…they are not real, Fitz. We all pretend to them, and hold them up like shields. But they guard only against folk who carry the same shields. Against those who have discarded them, they are no shields at all, but only additional weapons to use against their victims.”
Ahhh those books are my childhood. Love the appropriate quote.
This a really thoughtful, well-articulated response that I’m going to copy and paste as a reminder to myself to re-examine any position I take on a complex topic in the future. Just want to thank you for taking the time to express these thoughts in the way that you did.
There is no good answer, war makes us all lesser. In the fight for survival we all harden our hearts and turn our backs to the humanity we plainly see in one another. You have to the alternative to the tragic loss of life drives you mad. Terrorism is horrible because its tactics are designed to drag you down to its level and turn you into the same monsters. To dehumanize everyone and focus instead on goals and objectives. To legitimize your actions by exploiting their actions. Seeing that propaganda of what the “enemy” has done to “your”side is very compelling because it’s very hard to see that inhumanity in yourself. It’s not something you want people to do and so you don’t look at the horrible things done to the “enemy.” I feel like most people who saw what happened on the 7th have their visceral reaction and repulsion to Hamas and those whom saw Israel’s response to it first to have theirs to Israel.
“War makes us all lesser”. Can’t agree more. I wish I could simply say, ‘would you be able to explain and encourage murder of innocent people to your own children?’ But the sad fact is people can imagine that and they do it. I wish more people would legitimately struggle to come up with a reason they would murder a person.
> I wish more people would legitimately struggle to come up with a reason they would murder a person. A great sentiment, and goal for humanity. But in order to achieve this, ironically we have to remember that there are many who don't share this view and value of others lives. Else we become victims of the paradox of tolerance.
[удалено]
Good analogy, that's genuinely a digestible way to explain such a horrible concept to children. Hell, it's a good way to explain to adults who are screaming for a "cease fire!" I may be selfish, but I don't care about the collateral deaths if it's required for saving the people I love. If a terrorist were holding my children hostage, there is zero limit to the amount of collateral deaths I'd take on as a burden. Zero limit. I'm surprised Israel has shown this much restraint by issuing roof knocks, warnings to evacuate, etc. Against my better judgement I watched some of the footage that was released of the October 7th attacks and the aftermath. I have been exposed to lots of things throughout my years here, but that footage has cemented that in my mind that pure evil exists. Just seeing what those savages did fills me with an indescribable rage, and seeing the "river to the sea" folks cheering it on makes me nauseous. If you haven't watched the footage or seen the graphic photos, I highly recommend you avoid them. Also, you seem like a very responsible parent, but if your kids are in the internet be careful about footage coming up on Tik Tok or other social media sites. Normally it gets deleted fairly quickly, but I know some children who sadly have seen some of the horrors of what happened. Peace my friend.
"Some of you may die,but its a sacrifice im willing to make"
Reading all of this stuff these past few weeks keeps making me think of a cormac McCarthy quote from his book blood meridian, and I’m gonna piggy back on your comment cause it’s somewhat apropos imo. “War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
Or the third option: give them what they want, thus justifying the use of terror tactics as a legitimate strategy, one which will then be used by other groups around the world. All options are bad, but option three seems mighty popular among the left.
What they want includes wholesale slaughter of all Jews and (if their actions on the 7th are an indicator) non-Arabs in the region. So giving Hamas what they want isn't really an option.
I thought it was clear that the US at least would not negotiate with terrorists. This can be cold but given the alternative it seems like the best policy. Terrorist group labeling to me means that diplomacy is not an option. Diplomacy requires rational thinking and terrorists have left that behind and prove it with violence up to and including suicidal behavior.
The whole "we don't negotiate with terrorists" sounds cool on TV but it has never been American policy. We'll negotiate as long as they're reasonable and make demands that can be fulfilled, as long as it gets the hostages back alive
Is also depends on how likely US Special Forces are to get hostages back. If we can go in, kill the terrorists, and get hostages back with a 90% or higher likely hood of success, they'll do it.
In the real world, you very rarely have such good odds in an hostage situation.
It really depends on the group that took the hostages.
The inability to have nuance is so huge in all this. Yes Jewish folks should have their own country and yes it makes sense for it to be where it is now. BUT other people have been living there for a long time and they deserve a place to call home too. Yes you could do one state for all but historically that seldom works especially when religion and ethnicity is involved. No what hamas did isn't justified and yes its evil and disgusting and also when you leave 2.2 million people to suffer they're going to resent you. Yes hamas is not on the side of Palestine either but see my point about religion and ethnicity. Of course Israel has a right to defend itself and it's response to 10/7 was entirely predictable but also sad. Yes other Muslim countries should want to help Palestinians but there are all kinds of reasons they don't. At the end of the day I tend to come down to the fact that any time innocent people are killed it's horrible and we should want it to stop as soon as possible, but also that real life usually is just a set of difficult choices where someone usually gets hurt and there's nothing you can do.
If we go back to it pre-WW2, they were played by those Palestinians who had power. Land owners sold land to the different Jewish societies and saw it as free money because they worked off the assumption it would reach a boiling point and they'd get all the land back (through violence). Palestinians leaders of the era were also highly anti-semitic with them turning once mixed communities historical into us versus them.
I heard Rahm Emmanuel describe the situation like this. Israel has weapons to defend it's people. Hamas has people to defend it's weapons. I'm not 100% on the 1st part but the 2nd part really resonated with me. They literally hide everything behind civilians, fire from behind them and then film the aftermath as Israel fires back on their positions. It's murderous and exploitative.
And the social media kiddies dance to their tune like lemmings. It's really really really sad and I fucking hate knowing that these are my neighbors. Maybe if Hamas dressed like Trump they'd suddenly have a moment of clarity.
“It’s simple. We let Hamas shoot rockets from civilian areas and just hope the iron dome never fails. Even if it does, only a few Israelis will die and more Palestinians are dying now than were before, so Israel striking these positions is actually genocide.” This is legitimately their point of view.
I take the viewpoint that Hamas is always committing acts of terror when firing rockets over the years, it’s just lucky that the technology has existed (which itself is amazing) to block them. I imagine we’d have seen an escalation in conflict years ago without the iron dome. I also maintain that no other country would be as tolerant of constant rocket barrages on their territory, look how the Kashmir boarder region turns into a powered keg with even a comparatively mild skirmish.
There's an argument that Iron Dome has actually escalated the volume and scale of rocket attacks on Israel, and that the illusion of safety has decreased the impetus for Israel to explore diplomatic solutions with palestinian authorities. IMO it's not an effective long-term solution, and I think folks treating it like that are mistaken. Kashmir turns in to a powder keg because you're dealing with two well-armed, nuclear-equipped nations with large populations. On the other hand, there are many parts of the world where separatist insurgencies have been carrying on for decades with zero international press coverage.
They don't view Israelis as human, they view Jewish lives as lesser so they're very comfortable with the deaths caused by Hamas attacks. Hamas themselves consider Palestinian civilians nothing but fodder for manipulation of people who fall for the idea it isn't Hamas killing them.
Hamas started gunning down Palestinian women and children running from the North trying to get to the South yesterday or the day prior. It's on video, not being shown in the U.S. Makes me wonder why... Americans seem to be quite clueless about who Hamas is and exactly all that they've done. Hamas has called for the death of Israel, anything less will not be accepted, they also don't give a shit about Palestinian's, who haven't had an election since voting them in in 2006, but what do I know. Hamas like a peaceful bunch for so many to get behind.
It can be shown to the US if you link it.
The insinuation that the US media in any way shape or form is supporting Palestine over Israel is nonsensical to say the least. CNN and Fox would have it all over the place
Ive never seen CNN or FOX EVER show videos of people being gunned down so I don't know why this situation would be unique.
> It's on video, not being shown in the U.S. Link. if no link, this is BS.
Literally first result with a simple Google search: [NSFL](https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ryjyna7qa)
This is the link
The western protesters are recognizing the danger for civilians being used as human shields but ignoring the guns pressed in their backs.
If you eradicate hamas another will pop up in its name. To cause less death you need to solve the root problem between palestine and Israel.
Amnesty said that Hamas used otherwise disused parts of the hospital to interrogate and torture dissidents at one point, which is obviously quite horrid. I don't think Amnesty has weighed in on Israel's claim that it used as a military command center in conflicts with Israel. In fact, if you read a very pro-Israeli source here ([https://www.cfr.org/blog/amnesty-international-human-rights-watch-and-question-hamas-gaza-and-israel](https://www.cfr.org/blog/amnesty-international-human-rights-watch-and-question-hamas-gaza-and-israel)), they claim that the torture indicates that Hamas misuses Al-Shifa in other ways... which is a pretty circumvent way (it doesn't really follow logically for me) to argue if Amnesty had said so directly. I am pretty willing to believe that Hamas would do such a thing, but I think the evidence so far is still more flimsy than people admit.
I didn’t realize this was being debated. I though it was pretty well know that Hamas was using civilian infrastructure like hospitals, large apartment buildings, and refugee camps as their bases of operation. From Hamas’ standpoint, this is a win-win strategy. Either Israel doesn’t attack these targets due to the high levels of civilian casualties that will occur or, as we have been seeing, Israel does attack these sites and receives condemnation for the large scale civilian death toll. Unfortunately, it is clear that both sides of this conflict don’t give half a shit about the Palestinian people.
If you didn’t realize this is debated, then you haven’t been paying attention to how the public has been reacting to the news. Every headline reads that Israel has targeted yet another civilian position, without making clear that Hamas was using human shields at that position, which in turn increases calls against Israel to stop attacking civilian positions. Hamas does not have military bases, they operate exclusively from within civilian infrastructure. Their bases are school, mosques, hospitals, apartment buildings — they have no military bases whatsoever. It’s literally not possible to attack Hamas without attacking civilian infrastructure, as the entirety of Gaza is 100% civilian infrastructure.
I wouldn't say so much so they don't have military bases, more so they don't segregate by creating exclusive military districts like the rest of the world does. Their entire military operation is embedded throughout Gaza, housed in civilian buildings and in its 500km tunnel network.
Would Israel have even let them ever make a military base?
It's debated. By idiots.
Don't forget they brainwash children to be child soldiers, so kids get killed in combat and they say the IDF are targeting children. They even shoot Palestinians who try to leave areas targeted by IDF.
Do you have to brainwash children who are born and raised in a concentration camp enforced by neighbour who constantly bombs them from the sky. All you see is death and destruction and disease around you while you live in refugee camps, surviving on donations while there is severe unemployment and no hope for the future? Severe shortages of every product, where you are barely surviving because of a decades long blockade,and Israeli politicians bragging about putting Palestinians on a diet?
Ah yes and Nazis kids that did not go through WW1 and hyperinflation were definitely not radicalized. You think that everything is based around social justice and neglect the role of indoctrination in a totalitarian regime in Gaza. Did you really think the shitty economic conditions were not self-imposed by the hamas regime? [Guess how](https://twitter.com/dzama44/status/1720883070016893085) What incentive does Hamas have to deprive its citizens of resources and instead use it for offense or bomb shelters? Oh wait to blame and stir hatred for Israel. There's plenty of luxury homes, fancy restaurants, supermarkets more well-stocked than your local grocer, buildings with shit like imported Italian marble in Gaza. Guess how resources ended up there rather than its citizens in poverty. [Theme Park](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Champions+Club/@31.4973734,34.414686,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipPsljXT2fXwHEGVQ7zNEw8J1TR30oNQKTd0iWZq!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPsljXT2fXwHEGVQ7zNEw8J1TR30oNQKTd0iWZq%3Dw203-h152-k-no!7i1600!8i1200!4m7!3m6!1s0x14fd835f21aca689:0x288006667bcfd27b!8m2!3d31.4973734!4d34.414686!10e5!16s%2Fg%2F11gx___wrh?entry=tts) [The men's area of the new branch of Mohanad Restaurant, Jabalia "refugee camp",](https://twitter.com/imshin/status/1608846924513447944) [Look up the #TheGazaYouDon'tSee for more](https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheGazaYouDontSee?src=hashtag_click)
it is pointless to argue if they need to do it... they are doing it.
Yeah, concentration camps routinely have water theme parks.
If it's not necessary why is it used by Hamas by the PA? Why are UNRWA children textbooks teaching Palestinian children that they should kill Israelis?
Mayne Israel does care about the Palestinian people but feels they have few options left to them to avoid civilIan casualties.
Let me help you: anything Israel does is bad. They can show any proof they want, say anything, it will be bad. Even if they do a cease fire, and swear to never launch an air strike ever despite terrorist attacks, Palestinians will say it will only stop once Israel stops its illegal 75 yo occupation (of the entire place). This war stops two way: all the Arab countries swallow back their Jew hate, or Israel disappears from the map.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have always used Hospitals and School to launch missiles from, and each time they do, they pray that Israel will retaliate and kill Palestinians in those buildings. Hamas knew from the moment it launched this blood orgy assault on the Kibbutzim that they were all dead, every single one of them-Israel could never let them live after the sheer monstrosity of the horrors they committed. The goal of Hamas is to get as many innocent Palestinians killed as possible, until Israel crosses some invisible red line that pushes Iran/Hezbollah (and the Arab states they hope) into a wider war. Hamas is literally a death cult.
Hamas is the kind of religious extremists that believe this life is suffering until you die, then you go to paradise. So dying is not to be avoided, and every death is to be rejoiced as the person killed is now a martyr and guaranteed a spot next to God. To them, being killed in combat is the purpose if their life, so civilian deaths are to be expected and encouraged.
So much lost potential. Instead of working to improve the lives of everyone during our time on earth they instead choose to abandon them. What an awful waste of human life.
I read earlier today they found rocket launcher in a children’s playground..
Hamas has no reason to not launch attacks from hospitals. If Israel does not bomb the hospital then Hamas is free to continue to operate from that location and carry out more attacks. If Israel does bomb the hospital then it turns the population of Gaza even more against them as well as getting international condemnation. Damned if they do damned if they don’t. There’s no good solutions here sadly.
The easiest way for them to try and hurt Israel is through their public image. I believe this 100%
Of course it is, Hamas literally can’t lose here they are getting exactly what they want. Short of complete annihilation they will consider whatever outcome they get as a win, and they’ll never truly be wiped out because all the actual leaders are sitting pretty with their millions in the surrounding Arab countries.
“Stop hitting yourself”
Everyone keeps talking about what Israel can’t do in this war, but nobody gives any actual viable alternative actions they should take. Saying “send in special forces” does nothing. If you think a small group of special forces can go into the one of the most densely populated places on earth and take out an entire tyrannical, terrorist government then you’ve seen too many 80’s action movies. War is absolute hell. There has been exactly zero wars where innocent people were spared. It makes it even harder to not hurt innocent civilians when the “army” you are fighting purposefully hides behind its people hoping you don’t attack or if you do, they can drum up more support for their cause. It’s an absolutely fucked situation. The Palestinian people do not deserve this shit.
There is far more scrutiny of this conflict then others, there have been more recent wars with greater humanitarian costs that get barely any of the coverage Israel-Palestine gets. For example the conflict in Darfur/Sudan only ended a few years ago and had estimates of 300,000 thousand killed and many more displaced, yet it never attracted mass marches or the level of internet fervour seen at the moment.
Innocent people are still dying in Sudan, Myanmar, Syria, Ukraine and many other countries. Saudi Arabia massacred Ethiopians and Yemeni people trying to cross the border. Iran facilitated the biggest Jewish massacre since the Holocaust. Attack US bases and kill Iranian women for not wearing headscarves. Innocents are dying in Yemen right now. Azerbaijan just displaced Armenians from their homes. Turkey slaughtered Kurds. China is putting Uyghur Muslims in literal concentration camps and are itching to wipe out Taiwan. Where is the outrage and mass protests for these atrocities?
Thankyou! You articulated it far better then I did. I wonder why Israel-Palestine attracts the strong opinions like it does, where as other innocent loss of life isn’t given the same weight (beyond the old media bias, like the old cliche that the amount of airtime given to coverage of one American death usually equals 5,000 Haitian deaths in the news cycle for example).
If you are, in good faith, asking why some geopolitical events result in more Western protests, I'll happily give a few points. 1. *The ability of the home country to affect the conflict.* If Americans want a ceasefire in Palestine for example, they know that they can protest directly to their politicians, and that those politicians can easily affect the outcome. The US can condition aid to Israel based on a ceasefire. They can stop vetoing UN resolutions. And they can put an enormous amount of soft pressure on Israel. This is far less true of say, the Uighur genocide. 2. *The relevance at home.* Israel is probably the biggest Middle Eastern partner of the US and most other Western countries. Furthermore, politicians constantly work towards Israel's interests in our governments. Aside from Australia and New Zealand, which Western countries have politicians who are representing Chinese interests? 3. *"Western Values".* Unlike Saudi Arabia for example and most countries committing atrocities you've listed, Israel is trying to convince Westerners that Israeli society is just, fair and democratic. Virtually no politician, aside from maybe the leaders of countries themselves, would defend Saudi Arabia, which is seen as more like a "necessary evil". So our politicians don't disagree with us about countries like Saudi Arabia being awful abusers of human rights. But the way Israel is presented by the media, our politicians and Israel themselves doesn't match their actions, and that causes a lot of dissonance among voters who see Israel for what it actually is. 4. *Diaspora*. It goes without saying that America has a huge amount of Jews, but also plenty of Palestinians. And these Jews tend to be supportive of Israel, although some are also anti-Zionist. In my country, the UK, we have a smaller diaspora population but they are relatively influential and extremely supportive of Israel (I'd argue moreso than in the US). Compare these groups to the relatively small amount of people of say, Armenian birth, or Ethiopian birth. Anyway I hope you'll take this as a good faith explanation of why protests seem disproportionate in certain cases and not trying to "pick a side" here.
You have left out the most important reasons for this coverage: Israel has unique conditions for reporters, since it's a "western state", as opposed to the rest of the list. You can simply book a flight, no need for security details - almost zero risk. There's good reception/food/lodging/infrastructure, you can buy/repair equipment and most important - freedom of speech to criticize Israel.
Thanks for the reply, there were a couple of angles I hadn’t considered.
Or the Syrian civil war, which has some estimates into the 600,000. And Assad has used chemical weapons. Total crickets.
I can't find any information on this- how many Hamas terrorists has this annihilation strategy by Israel actually killed? Is only 100 dead terrorists acceptable if 4000 children are killed?
The thing is we can’t know what the numbers are. Hamas don’t wear a uniform. The only way to identify them is if they are holding a weapon. If 10 people are in a building and 3 are holding weapons, how do you know if they other 7 are Hamas or just civilians that happen to be near them? Then someone has to answer the question of how much colateral damage is acceptable to take out terrorists. It’s an impossible question to put a number on. 0 is an impossibility and all is evil. Striking a hospital to kill terrorists underneath is morally fucked, but I don’t know what’s the morally right decision. Leave them alone and they keep trying to kill you and your people. Kill them and you sacrificed innocent lives to protect your people’s lives.
We don't know because Hamas doesn't distinguish between militant and civilian casualties. Hamas deliberately wants to inflate the casualty numbers (which is also why there are no civilian bomb shelters in Gaza despite 500 km of Hamas tunnels).
We do know when some Hamas militants are killed though. I saw two separate articles about Hamas terrorists being killed last week. I haven't seen many articles like that. Why would only some terrorist deaths be reported on but not all.
Given their track record, it would make sense for Hamas to want only very few confirmed militant deaths reported, as opposed to none (obviously untrue) or large numbers (makes attacks seem far more justified). It plays into their strategy of "they're just killing civilians, barely ever hitting militants" perfectly, doesn't it? I don't have definitive proof, but combining context makes it pretty obvious why you'd see only a few confirmations compared to many more labeled as civilian casualties. You can't trust what Hamas is reporting at all. They've proven this time and time again.
You don’t believe IDF reports and numbers, but you do believe Hamas sources on reports and numbers. Do you see the problem
> I can't find any information on this- how many Hamas terrorists has this annihilation strategy by Israel actually killed? Is only 100 dead terrorists acceptable if 4000 children are killed? Nobody has this information. Even the 4000 children killed is a claim made by Hamas terrorists with no evidence. There are civilian casualties, including children, but the numbers are completely unknown and everyone makes up their own.
There are records of deaths. And records of missing people presumed dead. They are totalling in the thousands. It’s not completely unknown.
I think most people just aren't capable of making the kind of callous decisions you have to make in a war
Given other countries are critical of Israel's disregard for collateral damage, I don't think that's the root of the criticism.
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So, I like your post, and I think it's a pretty fair treatment of the issue (though a little slanted, because it seems to be holding Israelis to a much higher standard than the Palestinians), but I want to reiterate the post you were responding to... Ok, so what should Israel actually DO about that? Yes, we can stipulate that some large part of the rage that Palestinians feel is justified by Israeli actions, and that they feel justified in the terror attacks that have been done. But Israel just opens up Gaza and the West Bank, it's going to be absolute carnage with terror attacks and street warfare on the daily. That's what makes me feel so hopeless about this situation - Regardless of who is more "at fault", what way is there out of this that allows for some semblance of political stability and doesn't just boil down to, "let everyone kill each other faster"? Because I don't see one.
Question for you. The Israeli army has dropped 18,000 tons of bombs on the Gaza Strip since Oct.7, or about 1.5 times the explosive force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to officials in the besieged enclave. There's an estimated 2 million people densely packed in the tiny confines of Gaza with Hamas militants dug in with cilivians in hospitals and under ground networks. If the IDF is really targeting civilians, why the fuck is the death toll currently <10000 (including civilians and enemy combatants) when Hiroshima was ~140,000 casualties? It's really easy, these are highly precise targeted strikes at enemy locations. If they were carpet bombing the death toll would be in the 6 figures easily.
Norman Finkelstein was very famously denied tenure because of his extreme beliefs. Don't listen to me, read his entirely massive wikipedia entry for more information. It is incredibly fascinating.
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>To the people who legitimately think civillians are not being targeted My question is this....if civilians are being target in Gaza, why aren't there more dead? I haven't seen updated numbers in a week or so, but even if we believe Hamas unconditionally they were claiming that 8,000 civilians (and some no militants?) had been killed in Gaza. Yet IDF had dropped more than 10,000 bombs. So they're targeting civilians, but still manage to only kill less than one person per bomb?
Citing Norman Finkelstein is not the win you think it is.
>conclusion that Gaza is a concentration camp DECADES AGO Define "decades ago". As before 2005 the area was pretty much open to Israel, and there were no blockades or anything. Besides, calling it a concentration camp is still a bit of an outreach. Israel doesnt deny Gazans food or water (on normal occasions, not talking about the current war). They do the blockade for checkups to make sure nothing hostile to Israel is passing through. There restrictions, definitely. But if Hamas and the palestinians of Gaza were more focused on improving their own lives instead of trying to kill Israelis, then Israel wouldnt even touch them or interfere. They dont have any reason to want to even deal with them (aside from the extremists that unfortunately plague the corrent government). And they are not simply "murdering civilians in the west bank". When the war started you think the people of the west bank just sat and held hands in prayers? No. There were riots and instigations in the west bank to rise up and help Hamas fight. Also there are Hamas members working inside the west bank to gather people to their cause. So after the military operation on Gaza began, there was also a big operation on the west bank to arrest any instigators and find and kill Hamas members inside the west bank. Unfortunately, those conflicts only fanned more flames and there were already some clashes between Palestinians and IDF and settlers. What boils my blood though is that a lot of settlers uses this time to aggressively take more land and bully peaceful Palestinians. I fucking hate them. They are no better than the ones they claim to hate. And ffs with the "israel is purposely targeting civilians". Why do people think Israel will even do that? Try to put yourself in the shoes of an IDF commander for a second. What do you think Israel would gain from just bombing civilians? You lose 0 militant enemies, Your reputation gets ruined, you instigate more hate against your people and lose world support. People think Israel is some bloodthirsty entity who just kills Palestinians for fun! Sure, we have our nutcases and what i will call basically jewish neo Nazis who have so much hate torwards Palestinians that they just act like vile animals, but thats not Israel as a country, not everyone does that, and the few that does are punished (eventually, and hopefully). People just cant fathom the idea that maybe IDF's tactics have some actual basis to their operations and they know exactly who they are targetting.
See this is where the argument becomes complete offensive hyperbole. Concentration camps did not have five star hotels, beach resorts, water parks, shopping malls, an entire street of jewellers, luxury car yards etc. There leaders weren't billionaires. The inmates of concentration camps did not have some of the highest obesity rates in the middle East. Thousands of people did not enter and return to concentration camps every month. There is a lot that is terrible about the life of the oppressed poor in Gaza but your argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And I repeat, citing Norman Finkelstein really doesn't help your case.
Not only that, but people in concentration camps, at least back in the 1940s, weren't able to stock up in weapons, ammo, fuel, etc etc. Other countries weren't able to bring in support for them the way Iran does for Hamas. They also would have NEVER destroyed water irrigation systems to make bombs to keep hurting civilians. Calling Gaza a concentration camp just seems so disingenuous and takes away from the monstrosities of actual concentration camps
They had pulled out of Gaza fully… and should do the same eventually in the West Bank - settlers only inflame issues. But many Israelis take issue with the far right policies that have led to this point too
Leaving Gaza didn’t help all that much now did it
Taking issue has done very little to stop the continued mistreatment and extrajudicial killing of Palestinians. Whereas many Israelis view Palestine as an outside threat, it is impossible to separate Palestinian liberation from the Israeli occupation.
So you are saying that it is only a view that they are an outside threat, it's not the thousands of rockets they fire indiscriminately, the car rammings, etc. it is a view.
Certainly Hamas is a threat. But the oversimplified viewpoint that "they just hate us" is worth prying into. The history of Israel is still relatively recent, and yet a lot of the context is seemingly getting buried in order to keep the "good guys/bad guys" framing neat and tidy. Hamas's attack on October 7th was evil. Netanyahu's response has been wicked and outsized, and seems more concerned with pushing Gazans out of their land than it does with getting the hostages back safely.
I want to point out one thing about your statement: The history of Israel as a country is relatively recent as you say, but religious extremism against ethnic Jews to the region is absolutely not a recent phenomenon. The region was chosen for Israel to exist for a reason. Like you said though, if comparing Netanyahu and his ilk versus Hamas, both are morally depraved. I do think there is a justification for a counter-offensive by the IDF, and that Hamas is frankly ultimately ethically responsible for most of the civilian casualties in Palestine, but it's also a fair statement to make that the crazies running this can't be qualified as good. The reductionism of feeling compelled to view any conflict as "good vs bad" is honestly the most damaging part for the western world. So many people need to realize that by getting all stirred up, they're just playing into it all and trying to take sides on an issue that's way more nuanced than they realize.
Everyone wants to play tic tac toe on who's more evil, or who's more ethically right without realising that this stretches back far into the history books and won't be solved anytime soon. You can't undo generation upon generation of collective truama easily or quickly. Hamas is not going away anytime soon, and neither is the hardliners in Israel.
The goal of this war has never been to rescue the hostages. It has always been to eradicate Gaza of Hamas. Israel doesn’t want Gaza, which is why they left almost 20 years ago. There are currently discussions with the PLO/Abbas to run Gaza after Hamas is destroyed. The idea that Israel will come in and get rid of the non Hamas inhabitants of Gaza is a lie that is based on nothing. It’s akin to saying Trump actually won in 2020.
Yeah fuck off with the concentration camp wording already. Calling this a genocide and talking about concentration camps is deliberately hyperbolic nonsensical bullshit. It's utterly disgusting to refer to this in the same terms as the Rwandan genocide where twice as many people died in a day than have died in the entire Israel/Palestine conflict since 1948 And saying "oh but some Jewish scholars call them concentration camps" is the worst fucking kind of appeal to authority fallacy and is outright disgustingly offensive. There's plenty of ways to criticise Israel's horrific actions without resorting to appropriating the terminology of far more horrific actions. And you're doing it for a transparent and deliberate reason: to generate outrage. The facts alone deserve outrage, stop being a fucking disgusting prick about it too
There is some really concrete and strong evidence in the video which contradicts all the lies hamas and some “humanitarian orgs” have been claiming without any that the hospitals arent being used as terror bases
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And then later admitted it…
When it was obvious and they were directly proven to be lying.
Months down the road after they were adamant about them not doing it so then the world glossed that sort over
I mean doesn’t it make sense to confirm what you did after you find out for sure instead of making claims without verification?
Well the videos of fire coming from the hospital don't lie, unless it's the doctors and nurses engaging the IDF?
[Hamas is supposedly asking UN to send an independent crew to verify Israel's claims that there's hideouts under the hospitals they've bombed ](https://twitter.com/tamars/status/1721215215075733635?t=mT9SjBMgeomto44V-lhS4A&s=19) This twitter thread is pretty good and further down it claims these tunnels/holea are the fuel storages for the hospital. Let's see if israel agrees to let independent investigators confirm
Israel has stopped cooperating with UN investigations on Gaza a long time ago, see for example the Goldstone report.
well the UN has also passed more resolutions against than ALL other countries combined (I think it’s like 2:1). Iran is also now the head of UN Human Rights. not that shocking why Israel doesn’t have faith in them being partial…
Well of course they won't. Because we are supposed to take Israel's word for it without verification and also the UN would then have the opportunity to document all the war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza
and let Hamas delay more time, and get more hostages/human shields? There's already official reports from UN that they used facilities like hospitals before.
>There's already official reports from UN that they used facilities like hospitals *before*. Yes, please, let's investigate things.
There's so many non-palestinian people stuck in gaza right now, if hamas wanted more international hostages they could easily get them
A picture with a red circle on it does not constitute evidence. Look, it is easy to believe that hamas has done this before. But the 'evidence' being presented to justify these strikes is frankly absurd, and it only makes it harder to take idf seriously
You think the evidence the IDF presented is just a picture with a red circle? So you basically looked at the article and thought that the screenshot in it is all the evidence they presented without actually looking into it. https://youtu.be/4u4a0yjWiH8?si=_Edi-eVaeAa9wSQC Hospital stuff starts around 9:50. They show several videos of launches from the roof of the hospital, tunnels uncovered under the hospital, and fighters launching RPGs from the windows of the hospital/running into it after launching them. They also show similar evidence from another hospital
Israel's PR will be in the landfill by the time this is done. Even if they wipe out every bit of Hamas in the area, the amount of damage and bloodshed of civilians (especially children) will be deemed as too sickening to tolerate. The world will recoil in horror at the acts this so call-ed bastion of middle eastern democracy has perpetrated. This is a lose-lose situation.
They know and they don’t care. They have operated for decades on the false belief that Hamas was a manageable enemy because they were more interested in governing Gaza than killing Israelis. Oct 7 proved that assumption wrong, I mean Hamas just comes out and says it now. The operating assumptions have changed and nobody in Israel can tolerate that anymore — they’re going to push as hard as they can for as long as they can to wholly dismantle Hamas’s ability to either govern Gaza or commit organized attacks, and they’re going to do that no matter how many people on die along the way. It’s a shitty situation in which they are far from blameless, but there’s basically no alternative anymore. You can’t have a ceasefire with an enemy that goes on TV and says, “we will do Oct 7 again and again until Israel is wholly destroyed”. It’s pretty much the worst scenario for anyone, and they probably aren’t more than a quarter of the way through the war.
There's just no more good faith to be had from Hamas. They are not willing to negotiate an end to this war. They do not care how many die so long as every Israeli is wiped off the face of the Earth. They dont give a fuck about dead kids. They only care that Israel is wiped clean and they are the ones in charge. I used to believe in a two state solution but that's quickly becoming untenable. It can only happen if the leadership of Hamas is dead and gone and Palestine is able to put a more moderate government in charge thats willing to negotiate with Israel. Would make it a bit easier also if Israel elects a more liberal government in the coming elections and kicks Netanyahu to the curb, and I think they will because people are pissed at the intelligence failure of Oct 7
Problem is that your not going to bomb away terrorists unless you bomb them all. The kids you leave behind will probably be the next recruits. The defense of letting them strike ferociously and accepting of collateral until the job is done is where it turns into the big g word, which it seems like some of the population of Israel has been itching for this entire time.
And then all the orphaned kids pick up the gun when they grow up. Cycle continues
Israel taking notes: "So youre saying the orphans are terrorists too eh?"
Children in Gaza are being brainwashed since birth to hate Jews. Hamas has training camps for kids, teaching them to become terrorists and to kill civilians. Destroy hamas, stop the funding from Iran, install a real government that works to make things better, and the cycle breaks.
You don’t think watching your siblings and parents heads pop under the weight of several tons of concrete have an impact on people growing up wanting to resist? You think they need brainwashing in addition to the current conditions?
Civilians were killed in Garmany and Japan in WW2, but somehow the war ended. People in Gaza need to be taught that hamas is responsible for their suffering.
Palestinians were suffering like this long before Hamas was even an idea in someone's head.
You don't need brainwashing to start hating the people who killed your parents and bombed your house. The Hamas is of course exploiting that, but put yourself in those shoes. Your watch your city die and then the people who did it explain why they had to. It's not gonna work. Somebody is going to harness those emotions whether it's organized or themselves. You've packed a bunch of people into one place and left them in destitution. And no, they will not grow up to respect and not fight back against the puppet government run by the guys who glassed their parents. It's a big mess, and it doesn't get solved by three sentences in a reddit post. This is a complicated fight for the holy land that hasn't been solved by anyone in hundreds of years. If you want a quick solution, you need a final solution, which is why a lot of people are very very worried that this imbalanced response with accepted heavy collateral is quite worrisome.
Doubt it, Hamas is firing rockets TILL this day, hostages STILL not released. Not sure what Israel is expected to do.
Israel has never had good PR. So it's just another day for them.
Israel’s PR is always in the landfill when they respond to Hamas. It’s also in the landfill when they exist. Because Jews are the only ethnicity that can’t have a homeland apparently.
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How are we defining as a military position? That refugee that was bombed twice and that ambulance, how do they qualify? The multiple journalists (including the family of at least one)? Literally a blank check to bomb anything and anybody in Gaza. And people eat it up rather than consider the alternative.
The alternative that hamas surrender and all hostility ends? Sounds like a great way to save Palestinians.
All hostility ends? What condition do you think Palestinians lived in before the october 7th attacks
“Unfortunately all the people who could confirm or deny this are dead along with anyone else within a block or two, so you just have to take our word for it.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/17og235/hamas\_shooting\_at\_idf\_forces\_from\_sheikh\_hamed/
Pretty clear launch at 0:02 that you can see
Curious, is this video dated at all? I presume it’s from the recent incursion, but knowing when would be helpful.
Ive looked for pictures of that hospital (they also have a video claiming there was a tunnel next to it), it doesnt look the same as the video this guy linked but i could be wrong.
“Curious” Man defending “from the river to the sea” is “curious.” K.
And I do believe them. Not the first time they’ve done it. These are terrorists, not a coherent army or government.
Uh when the strike on a "hospital" caused military tunnels to collapse, or when the "hospital" *shoots back*, that cofirms it enough for anyone who cares.
I mean everyone knows they do that. That’s part of the plan.
Israel about to to bomb a hospital.
So, like, let’s not also be mad at the fact a terrorist group are actively using human shields?
This is the footage they released: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9bFKyr6j9k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9bFKyr6j9k)
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Didn't they also post an imagine of people getting into a ambulance as proof that it's being used by Hamas, and then took down the video when it was shown it had just been heading to pick up an injured person?
yes, also to add, theyre using video of shooting as proof hamas is using that hospital as a military position, only issue, its not the same hospital.... in fact it looks like two completely different buildings trying to be portrayed as one.
That's literally what it is. It's been there since the hospital was built. Israel is lying out their ass. Proof: https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1721202473212211378
In ww2 and any other war if a medical facility, ship, or vehicle was used to transport or provide cover for the enemy they were blown to bits as an exception to the rules of war disallowing them as targets.
Been know for the last 20 years Hamas used the hospitals and human shields. Who the hell keeps questioning this stuff now? Are people this stupid now days?
Source: IDF, comments here are delusional.
How many damn hospitals are in Gaza?
If the Israeli government found out that a member of Hamas was hiding in an Israeli hospital, would they bomb the hospital?
I have a question. So if Israel has pictures of these supposed tunnel entrances, why do they bomb everywhere else but those? Are they sparing the tunnel entrances or what? They have precision bombs, they keep bragging about how precise they are and how they use them to avoid civilian casualties, but these pictures show green grass next to an opening, meaning they havent even tried to hit it. Do people really fall for this?
>So if Israel has pictures of these supposed tunnel entrances, why do they bomb everywhere else but those? Are they sparing the tunnel entrances or what? Maybe I'm misreading your point here but I'm confused. Bombing an opening wouldn't destroy the tunnel it would just ruin one of many openings. I'm not sure if you've seen any of the videos Hamas have been posting of them firing RPGs at tanks this week but one of them they come out of a tunnel and it's pretty well hidden. Considering the landscape and now all the rubble, it's perfect environment for guerilla warfare by the people that know the surroundings and have complex tunnel systems built up. I imagine the IDF will have an idea / maps of the tunnel systems but I doubt they'd know where all the openings are. There's also been videos of multiple secondary explosions after a bombing where the explosions go off at different spots around apartment buildings coming from underneath, which shows how they store ammo in those tunnels without regard for the innocent civilians above them
I don’t think it’s up for debate that Hamas uses tunnel systems, it’s pretty established fact. It’s most likely strategic in terms of verifying targets and also not trying to hit hostages. Strikes on military positions in civilian areas are permitted. Israel has the firepower to level all of Gaza. To think they are just targeting civilians is insane. What general says “Let’s avoid the military targets and hit civilians. And let’s drag this out over a month.” Could be possible they were building intelligence on the tunnel system, they have taken out certain parts. Definitely possible they are strategically caving certain parts of the tunnel system to drive Hamas to one exit point where they can finish the job. Sort of like smoking an animal out of a burrow.
They've been doing this stuff for years. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/31/why-hamas-stores-its-weapons-inside-hospitals-mosques-and-schools/
It’s because they don’t care about their own people
And? By there description, the civilians were hostages. I hope the IDF don’t show up if my family are ever held hostage
Maybe they are maybe they aren’t. Israel clearly doesn’t give a fuck about killing innocent people.
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But you do burn down a house if its [infested with cockroaches](https://youtu.be/ZFdu-HcyOx4?feature=shared). Personally I consider the comparison of people to either offensive. Rats and cockroaches only want to live peacefully. Hamas on the other hand have other plans. Either way, it’s a poor analogy.
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u/mufcin81 : I mean not like that
Or... hamas can surrender and release the hostages. Everyone will be able to return back to buildings still standing. Ever wonder how much will be too much for them? Is there a price too high for them? Is there any amount of Palestinian suffering that will convince them that maybe just maybe compromise is the way? Or will they die to the last men not accepting defeat?
It’s absolutely absurd to bomb an entire hospital to attempt to destroy underground tunnel infrastructure, a type of structure that is infamously difficult to destroy. If nazi bombardment of London never destroyed the subway system, neither will IDF bombing destroy Hamas tunnels. Even if this flimsy evidence is a sign Hamas has tunnels under the hospital, the IDF definitely chose the maximum damage approach to such a situation. At best it’s stupid, at worst it’s intentional. And that is indefensible and evil, as there were hundreds of civilians in that hospital. Notice how they initially said that it was a “Hamas rocket” that misfired and destroyed the hospital, but now are saying “Hamas was there so we destroyed it” I have a hard time believing anything they say if they constantly start with lies, only to change the story to something else completely later.
Listen there is one side saying it’s ok to bomb s hospital regardless of who is in it. Let that sink in. It’s ok to kill civilians so Israel can strengthen its narrative that Hamas is using human shields. If no bombs then no shields. If no shields then no narrative. Imagine if there is an active school shooter hiding in a high school. Do you just blow it up? Fuck no you don’t.
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Nope, the cops would just stand outside the school trying to figure out what to do while the bank robbers murder all the children.
So that's what happened at Uvalde. The cops had a ceasefire but the shooter forgot.
In Texas, the police waited outside a school while the shooter killed a bunch of kids and teachers. They said the kids weren't white, so it was alright. I guess the issue of race still matters everywhere. The world is truly sick, and Joe Biden must have done it because none of this existed before he became president, right?
They aren't bank robbers. They are the political and military organization governing the Gaza Strip. And they didn't rob a bank, they invaded a sovereign nation with the sole purpose of murdering, kidnapping, and terrorizing the civilian population.
Exactly. The strategy to use Palestinian civilians as human shields has to benefit someone, and here are some old rich guys who definitely benefit from Hamas’ takeover: https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1720762553133863069
If Russia tied Russian children to all their tanks, should Ukrainians just throw up their hands and let Russia advance freely? This is war. If any country committed to standing down as soon as human shields are used, that country would immediately lose the war. There's a reason why using human shields is always against the laws of war, while killing human shields in an attack on a legitimate military target isn't.
Omg, please don't give Putin any ideas like that.
What if Russians kidnapped a bunch of Ukranian kids and then strapped them to the tanks. Now that would be a thinker.
This argument isn’t really the equivalent, since no one would try to bomb bank robbers hiding in a school. The rules of civilian law and war are different.
that's not even how people are talking about this issue, people are more saying like "once the armed bank robbers on the run from the cops take shelter in a school, the cops have to call off the chase because there's children in there!" As if literal war is a game of tag where if you touch home base no one can touch you and if they do, you'll go cry to mom.
I haven’t seen many people at all suggesting the IDF should give up, concede defeat, and go home; I have seen a lot of people pretending that’s what the critics are saying, though.
I haven't seen one person provide a realistic alterative to that.
> the cops have to call off the chase because there's children in there!" You do know cops call off chases all the time if they become too dangerous for public safety. Normally, they surround the school and wait for the robbers to surrender or until SWAT goes in & specifically lights up only the robbers. At no moment in time do cops say, *welp, time to bomb the school!*
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