Lots of reasons but mainly that the high civilian death toll is easily explained by Hamas’s strategy of using human shields and Hamas’s criminal leadership decisions.
The most shocking and inflammatory “reports” are usually unverified and usually come from incredible or incompetent sources, and that this is readily apparent in virtually every article about the war if you can slow your emotions down and actually evaluate the reported facts. Article from credible journalists usually even say “these reports could not be independently verified.”
I also find the IDF to be generally credible, usually victims of lies and exaggeration, whereas I find Hamas to have zero credibility whatsoever. I also think it’s completely justified to continue bombing military targets until every member of Hamas is dead, and that if civilians in the area of a military target have been reasonably warned to evacuate, that’s all that morality or international law requires before launching a strike, especially in light of Hamas’s strategy of hiding among willing civilians while also failing to wear uniforms.
Also the death tolls are going down month over month, and the fact that only 30,000 people are dead in in such a densely populated area of 2.3m people, is a testament to the fact that the warnings mostly work, that the evacuations mostly worked, and that the targeting is mostly very precise. Otherwise, the death toll would be much higher.
I also view the conflict almost entirely in terms of the posture between Israel and Iran and trying to avoid a broader war that could kill 100,000,000 people, perhaps more. Like what are we talking about here? Human life, human rights? Try on 30,000,000 dead and see how sad that makes everyone.
Also, I don’t see how giving Hamas a country advances the cause of human rights? Extreme religious autocracies have never once secured human rights for anyone. In fact if you go to Gaza and start talking about securing human rights for people you might get murdered for being an infidel.
Finally, the handful of legit war crimes committed by Israelis don’t color the entire war for me. Israel actually has a history of prosecuting war criminals, unlike in Gaza where war criminals get a prize from Daddy Hamas.
You’re close, more or less, to how I see it but I think you know you’re being a bit cheeky. My views on this are too complex to put into bullet point as you’ve done, there’s too much nuance. It’s hard to even talk about in paragraphs, let alone bullet points. There’s a reason peace in the middle east has been so elusive and so polarizing; it comes down to very personal beliefs.
Targeting civilians is absolutely not okay. Targeting military assets after warning nearby civilians is absolutely fine, as far as prosecuting a war goes. It’s not that I’m just okay with such calamity, I’m just not surprised to see five figures death tolls of civilians when Hamas forces, tricks, or convinces Gazans to literally stand underneath bombs, so I don’t blame Israel for those excess deaths. They are clearly the result of Hamas’s strategy; and it’s their strategy that is the war crime, their strategy of literally using entire cities as human shields, their strategy of not wearing uniforms, their strategy of operating out of hospitals and schools, are the crime against humanity.
In law it’s called transferred intent. If you commit an armed bank robbery and a responding police officer shoots at you but hits and kills a family crossing the street, you are charged for their deaths since their deaths were within the range of probable consequences of committing armed robbery, and among the range of foreseeable risks that make the conduct illegal in the first place.
News reports can be verified, just not fast enough for either the 24-hour outrage news cycle or the coalition of propogandists who are trying to mobilize extremists against the western world order, you know, all these pan Islamists chanting “death to America and death to Israel,” as well as all these dark moneied MAGA loyalists in America trying to mobilize liberals against Joe Biden. I think the public got lied to in the early days of the war and every further lie they see just confirms their initial reaction.
So unfortunately in America the coverage of this war has been utterly one sided and people have a perception of it that doesn’t match reality. Again, monthly casualties have decreased every month since the start of the war. The famine that has been imminent for four months hanot happened. Shroedingers Gaza, somehow simultaneously starving with no aid and also literally has people dying because aid is failing on them from the sky.
Then, to add to that misperception, there are the bona fide war crimes that some Israeli soldiers obviously do commit, which as noted in the ICJ opinion, Israel has a credible record of prosecuting when it can. Events such as the flour massacre or this recent food aid workers’ vehicle.
The legit atrocities get mixed in with the unbelievable rage bait about IDF soldiers just doing sniper rifle turkey shoots of little kids, just scooping up women and kids and torturing them, based on third and fourth hand accounts of “reports” of literal Hamas accomplices, and they always have the same report about how none of the bombs ever hit any Hamas fighters, and never hit any tunnels and there were no warnings, only women, children, orphans, and puppies.
Then there is the echo chamber of media where we hear the same few quotes, day in, day out, such as, “entire families wiped out” and “famine is imminent.” Since November 3, 2023, famine has been imminent, at least according to an NGO in a fundraising press release. Since October 10, 2023, “families wiped out.” Generic info. Scant mention of causation or circumstances. Scant basic details such as identification of which families, or when, or where. Headlines like “strike on aid convoy” or “hospital bombed.” If you only read headlines, you have no idea that you’ve seen twenty-five headlines about the same one or two events, not twenty five separate events. And even if read the articles, you don’t fair much better because the details are just lacking. Obviously when Hamas uses cities, their own families and friends, as human shields, and war breaks out, entire families are going to be killed.
It seems very obvious to me that a mix of true and false “reports” falsely colored public opinion of the entire war, and continues to taint the basic facts. Before you know it, someone has their patriotism exploited and they go to Washington DC and self immolate trying to get their government to intervene on Hamas’s behalf. It’s called lawfare. It almost looks like it might be effective. It seems to have boiled down to Rafah. Will the lawfare provide enough cover for Hamas to survive the siege intact?
International law is based on custom and tradition, and most of all the circumstances. Present circumstances are unprecedented because Hamas has the most extensive tunnel warfare (read: human shield) operation in world history and a well established local customs and traditions of martyrdom (read: letting Hamas build tunnels under your house), and terrorism (read: operating entirely outside of international law while demanding its protection, whilst having an actual genocidal intent).
It seems very obvious to me that people who say Israel is commiting genocide or is an apartheid state are anti semitic or bad faith actors applying a double standard to Israel in order to sway opinion to their self interests, they are themselves anti semites, or they are basing their assessment on the aforementioned falsely colored factual circumstances, on lies and exaggeration, mixed with unfortunate truths.
Like, give me a break, apartheid? Israel has a Palestinian Supreme Court justice. He’s a citizen of Israel. People in Gaza are not citizens of Israel, obviously they don’t have the same rights of travel and protected legal status as people who are born or naturalized Israeli citizens. And still, apartheid is more than not just one group not having equal rights, it is the legal and political subjugation of the majority by the minority, sort of the opposite of democracy. That is the characteristic about apartheid that make it a crime against humanity, rather than merely run of the mill discrimination. South Africa didn’t have any black Supreme Court Justice during Apartheid, and they were not only citizens of South Africa but the majority.
I understand the bullet points were brief (and a bit cheeky yeah) but I think it helps to focus if you want the conversation to be productive. Like we could argue for days about a single “full version” of one of the bullet points. I think I do understand what you’re saying, though.
But in international law, genocide has a specific definition (sure you have seen it but just to be clear):
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
When people say Israel is committing genocide they mean “they are doing this stuff.” Bearing in mind that any one is enough, the third act is clearly being done, for example. Israeli officials announced that they would purposefully be cutting off food and water to the civilians of Gaza. Having no food and water is clearly a condition that brings about destruction of life. The situation was created purposefully, announced beforehand and the consequences of this are being seen (yes people were talking about it sooner but, you know, we understand what happens if people don’t have food). Oh yeah and are you sick? Bad news, no hospitals.
There is no “unless a terrorist organisation is there” caveat to this, at least from my understanding. It is an act of genocide. We could do this for the first three or four pretty convincingly.
In law it’s called transferred intent. If you commit an armed bank robbery and a responding police officer shoots at you but hits and kills a family crossing the street, you are charged for their deaths since their deaths were within the range of probable consequences of committing armed robbery
I’m not sure this applies to genocide, but is “starving children to death” in the range of probable consequences of someone from the same place as you committing an atrocity? Is this an expected consequence? This is absurd, surely.
So from your explanations I’m still confused. Do you accept that Israel is committing acts of genocide, by this definition?
Then the only thing left is intent. But I feel like the amalek thing alone is pretty damning. Especially given IDF chanting it on the ground too. South Africa made a very convincing case for this overall.
Is your point that, “yes, these things would be genocide but some of the key foundations of the argument are false or misinformation”?
It seems very obvious to me that people who say Israel is commiting genocide or is an apartheid state are anti semitic or bad faith actors applying a double standard to Israel in order to sway opinion to their self interests, they are themselves anti semites, or they are basing their assessment on the aforementioned falsely colored factual circumstances, on lies and exaggeration, mixed with unfortunate truths.
I think by your estimation I would be using “falsely colored factual circumstances” etc? It seems a bit dangerous to assume bad faith when an international court has ruled that this is not an unreasonable accusation.
I’ve heard this argument before so many times now it’s weird. They (the person you are going back and forth with for example) 100% agree that Israel is taking all the actions. They are killing civilians, creating a situation in which food and aid are both dangerous and inconsistent, and use AI to specifically target family homes with large numbers of civilians.
The civilian casualties aren’t high because Hamas used human shields to make it high, it’s high because the IDF allowed for and made specific rules that targeting civilians was ok en masse, as collateral damage, using Lavender.
Hamas didn’t make Israel pursue this war in a way that was purposely destructive towards civilians. Israel chose to do this at every turn in reaction to Oct 6th. Israel has all the power in this situation to do things differently.
It’s not like I don’t get, I would want revenge too, but at some point they’re going to be forced to admit that the pain to the civilians is part of the point. And that their ACTUAL argument is that the civilians deserve it because of Hamas.
They (the person you are going back and forth with for example) 100% agree that Israel is taking all the actions
You would hope so but I’m not sure about that. He just blamed the famine on Hamas.
it’s high because the IDF allowed for and made specific rules that targeting civilians was ok en masse, as collateral damage, using Lavender
Yeah I read about this. Disgusting. Imagine putting that low a value on human life. Makes me sick to my stomach.
at some point they’re going to be forced to admit that the pain to the civilians is part of the point. And that their ACTUAL argument is that the civilians deserve it because of Hamas.
Exactly. But they’re all too cowardly to admit this.
They don’t seem to see that they’ve lost the moral high ground and they will never regain it again. I for one won’t forget or stop speaking out about this bullshit until the day I die. When the court convicts them of genocide people like JustZ here will either have to re-evaluate and maybe grow as a person or stick their fingers in their ears and claim the court is just so antisemitic and Israel has been innocent all along. I think it’s clear which is more likely
The court’s ruling takes South Africa’s vague and repetitive allegations as true. It’s only in that circumstance that the allegations is plausible. South Africa’s allegations fall apart under scrutiny. The underlying allegations are unverified reports and bullshit straight from the mouth of literal Hamas members.
Starving children to death? Hamas started a siege war with a vastly superior force and they didn’t pack enough food to feed their people. How is that not on them? I agree generally with “you break it, you bought it” with countries, but Hamas broke Gaza. The famine has been imminent since November 3, 2023, and it hasn’t materialized. I understand there is food insecurity and some malnutrition. Aid is flowing though and increasing and Israel secured more territory. Death tolls have been going down month over month. The mass starvation and genocide hasn’t been borne out.
Hamas started a siege war with a vastly superior force and they didn’t pack enough food to feed their people. How is that not on them?
Because Israel is still responsible for it’s own actions and controls the border and flow of aid to Gaza? Is this not obvious? If you’re honestly making this argument I think we’re done here. You have apparently lost all humanity. I thought you could have been a reasonable person but apparently I was wrong.
Dude anyone defending Israel at this point is devoid of humanity. This guy literally shrugs off aide workers being murdered with precision strikes, let alone thousands of innocent deaths. They’ve demonstrated their belief that 1,500 Israeli lives are significantly more important than 32,000+ Palestinians. “They’re killing less every day” lie as if it’s a good thing, makes me sick. The amount of time they take to write out their long-winded comments excusing mass murder is fucking shocking, and I can’t believe people like them actually exist. Israel could nuke New York, say it was Hamas, and this brainwashed idiot would believe it even if their own family was killed in that strike.
I know dude I just wanted to give him a chance to not be a piece of shit. But here we are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The amount of time they take to write out their long-winded comments excusing mass murder is fucking shocking
Yeah seriously. I was trying to be concise and keep on the point and every response was an essay. That’s because somewhere in there he sees the issues with what he’s about to say and so has to package it with all of this bullshit so he doesn’t read it back and see what a monster he has become
Targeting civilians is absolutely not okay. Targeting military assets after warning nearby civilians is absolutely fine, as far as prosecuting a war goes.
Well, we do know by now that according to Lavender the death of 10-15 civilians for a low level Hamas fighter is tolerable, for high level commanders 100 civilian deaths are still just fine. Also, Lavender prefers hitting apartment blocks because the targeted people are easier to find when they’re with their families.
If Israel is not gullible, could you please ELI5 why are they not allowing journalists to enter Gaza?
Because if they do and you are right they will show the whole world what a moral army Israel has. Right? Do you see the paradox here?
Weren’t Israel also found guilty to provide adequate humanitarian aid, cut food, electricity, drinking water, telecommunications, found guilty of using dumb and extremely powerful bombs over densely populated areas. Destroyed completely the health facilities in Gaza, along with their infrastructure, people’s home, forced mass displacement of millions of Gazans who by the way up until now are not allowed to return to their homes and induced immense suffering of millions of civilians? Isn’t this collective punishment? What about the reciprocity rule in wars? Do you not find the suffering of regular Palestinians extreme?
So please use a bit of critical thinking next time before posting something.
Found guilty to provide adequate humanitarian aid? No, they were not found guilty of anything. The ICJ denied South Africa’s request for a preliminary injunction and instead told Israel to submit a report and to be sure to provide aid. It literally didn’t order Israel to do anything it wasn’t already doing. Not sure where you got the idea that Israel had been found guilty of something by anyone.
Israel does allow journalists into Gaza in groups. But their reasoning is not secret and not unreasonable.
Didn’t Israel just kill 7 humanitarian workers, making it 200 since the beginning of the war? They hit three clearly marked vehicles with three separate bombs.
There are multiple reports that they don’t have a proper deconfliction mechanism 6 months into the war.
Children are dying from malnutrition.
There are multiple reports that their COGAT agency doesn’t provide clear guidance on what items are prohibited and are artificially delaying admitting humanitarian aid.
They didn’t do anything when a bunch of demonstrators blocked the humanitarian aid with days in an already dire situation in Gaza.
They are currently trying to block UNRWA from functioning in Gaza, during a pre-famine. Shall I also remind you that all UNRWA employees are also going through a vetting process by Israel and all their employees are checked by Israel and now they complain about them being Hamas. So if this is true, Israel has done pretty sloppy job. Shall we also comment the fact that they created a story where they were claiming 12 UNRWA employees to be involved with Hamas, out of 30K. That’s less than 0.5%. not to mention that they didn’t even provide publicly a proof for their allegations.
Heck, even their closest allies, the US and UK have rebuked them and told them to do more.
The reality is that they can open more crossings and start delivering adequate amounts of humanitarian aid, but they deliberately chose not to. And I can provide you a lot of articles from the likes of Reuters, AP, etc . who should be the least opinionated sources.
And all this coming from the most “moral” army, right.
Maybe next time you should start using that head of yours for something more than sucking your state’s propaganda, and perhaps try to put yourself in the regular Gazan’s shoes, and tell me how you would feel.
I think your knowledge of this is superficial and you’re actually the one in the parallel reality. Like, just one example: Dozens of countries didn’t suspend funding to UNRWA over 12 workers, but 12 workers became the face of it. It’s the single largest employer in Gaza. It’s like Wal-Mart (or is it Amazon now, in America).
You really think only 12 of them are in Hamas? The actual report from Israeli intelligence suggested 12 people helped with October 7. It found that there were thousands, up to half of all UNRWA employees, with direct supportive ties to members of the local government (Hamas, very popular in Gaza), and likely hundreds to thousands of actual card-carrying members, in addition to the 12 known employees who used UNRWA resources to execute October 7.
UNRWA has long been accused of enabling Hamas and acting as an impediment to peace.
Israel can and should allow more aid. And it seems like its failure to do so is going to cost its leadership their jobs in the next election, not Hamas though, because their leadership is holed up in Rafah surrounded by hundreds of thousands of human shields and the first thing they did after being elected to power was cancel all future elections.
Ah yes, let’s trust now the Israelian state propaganda at face value without a drop of critical thinking, right? Where is the independently verified proof that those people are Hamas? Because according to my knowledge they didn’t provide any clear proof even in front of UNRWA that those employees were actually involved in the attack.
My brain tells me that when Israeli intelligence officers came to the US and laid out their case against UNRWA, they did not pull a fast one over on the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, the Gang of Eight, and President’s Chief of Staff. They took immediate action. Your brain is telling you that all of America’s foreign service and intelligence might was unable to corroborate the Israeli findings but acted on them anyway? You will never personally see the proof unless you have a security clearance and need to know. Have to go with what you can see. And you can see those public servants giving press briefings on what they saw and what they did.
Again though it’s basic math. UNRWA is the largest employer in Gaza and necessarily works with Hamas,. Hamas is extremely popular and each member has dozens of proud family and friends with like “❤️Proud Martyr Mom🎗️” bumper stickers on their donkey carts. It would be hard to believe if thousands of UNRWA employees were NOT rooting for Hamas and providing aid and support to known Hamas members.
In my view though, UNRWA is an obstacle to peace because it props up Hamas’s rule over Gaza. Without them, famine would have struck a decade ago and maybe Gaza would have liberated itself from Hamas abysmal leadership. You know, Gaza had two airports, one with international flights, and a seaport, until they came under Hamas’s charge and got turned into instrumentalities of international terrorism.
And here you are mixing your talking points. Gaza’s airport was destroyed in 2002, 5 years before Hamas took control of Gaza.
Just open any Wikipedia link about Gaza or any human rights organisation without known ties with Israel to read what they think about Israel’s treatment of Palestine.
Shall I also remind you of your own history that the country of Israel exists today thanks to the terrorist acts of Haganah (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah). Shall we also mention the systematic land grab, illegal settlements, various checkpoints, limiting basic human rights like freedom of movement, the economic, maritime blockade of Israel, etc.
Seriously tell me how you would have felt if you were born Palestinian. It is quite ironic and sad that you also turned like your past oppressors, dehumanizing the Palestinians. One would have expected for you of all people to be more sensible about this issue, but here we are. Starving almost 2 million people, turning them all into refugees and filming all this and proudly posting it on TikTok.
That’s not what I said. There were 12 known to have helped at the time funding was pulled. A few others have been discovered since. An Israeli hostages was rescued out of the attic of an UNRWA teacher, for example.
I said hundreds to thousands are members and close supporters. I’m seeing articles saying 30 helped and 450 employees are members. I cannot find right now in the sea of articles the details I am referring to, but they were in a 13 page report from Israel to the US Congress a week or so after funding was pulled. The report is classified but some folks talked about it. I think it was a gang of eight member who gave the details on how many UNRWA employees have a family member in Hamas. I want to say it was 4,000 to 6,000. I’ll poke around for the article. It may even have been a press briefing by a legislator. State Department I think had some details in a press conference as well, around the same time. I’ll find it when I get some time.
In January, Israel set out allegations that were seismic for the United Nations’ relief work in Gaza: staff working for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (Unrwa), it alleged, had taken part in the 7 October attacks by Hamas. Almost two months later, with funding for the agency paused by international donors including the UK and US, UN investigators are yet to receive evidence of Israel’s claims – and relations between the two sides are at an all-time low.
The evidence cited in Israel’s dossier included text messages, intercepted calls, and mobile phone data said to establish the 12 staffers’ movements during the attacks. In early February, Unrwa fired nine staffers accused of being involved in the attacks, saying that it had done so in advance of any investigation because “the ability of the entire agency to continue to operate and deliver critical humanitarian assistance was at stake”.
But as the weeks have passed, the reliability of Israel’s allegations has been called into question. “Unrwa say they’ve barely received any evidence, and that they have seen some confessions that appear to have been obtained under duress in Israeli detention,” Jason said.
Israel has refused to cooperate with the UN and has provided none of its evidence despite a fact-finding mission by investigators, the Daily Telegraph reported. And a US intelligence assessment reportedly found with “low confidence” that a handful of staff had participated in the attack but cast doubt on claims of wider collaboration between Hamas and Unrwa.
In the meantime, the situation for Palestinians relying on Unrwa’s aid remains dire, with the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization warning this week that northern Gaza is now on the brink of famine, and only about a third of the 500 trucks of aid needed a day crossing into the territory. There have been 168 Unrwa employees killed since the conflict began, and Lazzarini said on Monday that he had been denied access to Gaza by the Israeli authorities, a claim Israel denies. Last week, a food distribution centre in Rafah run by Unrwa was hit by an Israeli airstrike.
I know it’s crazy you can find anything on the internet. Including some obviously false quotes in the Guardian article. Israel provided a confidential report to the ICJ on February 21, I think was the date.
Anyway you’re going with the theory that Israeli intelligence officers and diplomats came to America and lied to President’s face, along with Sec State and Sec Def, and not only that, but all of them fell for the lie. Give me a break. You were born yesterday I guess, not me though.
Lots of reasons but mainly that the high civilian death toll is easily explained by Hamas’s strategy of using human shields and Hamas’s criminal leadership decisions.
The most shocking and inflammatory “reports” are usually unverified and usually come from incredible or incompetent sources, and that this is readily apparent in virtually every article about the war if you can slow your emotions down and actually evaluate the reported facts. Article from credible journalists usually even say “these reports could not be independently verified.”
I also find the IDF to be generally credible, usually victims of lies and exaggeration, whereas I find Hamas to have zero credibility whatsoever. I also think it’s completely justified to continue bombing military targets until every member of Hamas is dead, and that if civilians in the area of a military target have been reasonably warned to evacuate, that’s all that morality or international law requires before launching a strike, especially in light of Hamas’s strategy of hiding among willing civilians while also failing to wear uniforms.
Also the death tolls are going down month over month, and the fact that only 30,000 people are dead in in such a densely populated area of 2.3m people, is a testament to the fact that the warnings mostly work, that the evacuations mostly worked, and that the targeting is mostly very precise. Otherwise, the death toll would be much higher.
I also view the conflict almost entirely in terms of the posture between Israel and Iran and trying to avoid a broader war that could kill 100,000,000 people, perhaps more. Like what are we talking about here? Human life, human rights? Try on 30,000,000 dead and see how sad that makes everyone.
Also, I don’t see how giving Hamas a country advances the cause of human rights? Extreme religious autocracies have never once secured human rights for anyone. In fact if you go to Gaza and start talking about securing human rights for people you might get murdered for being an infidel.
Finally, the handful of legit war crimes committed by Israelis don’t color the entire war for me. Israel actually has a history of prosecuting war criminals, unlike in Gaza where war criminals get a prize from Daddy Hamas.
So these are your grounds for saying that it isn’t a genocide?
But how does this relate to the genocide convention? Are you saying there is no intent?
We can talk about specific points after but I want to understand how this all connects
You’re close, more or less, to how I see it but I think you know you’re being a bit cheeky. My views on this are too complex to put into bullet point as you’ve done, there’s too much nuance. It’s hard to even talk about in paragraphs, let alone bullet points. There’s a reason peace in the middle east has been so elusive and so polarizing; it comes down to very personal beliefs.
Targeting civilians is absolutely not okay. Targeting military assets after warning nearby civilians is absolutely fine, as far as prosecuting a war goes. It’s not that I’m just okay with such calamity, I’m just not surprised to see five figures death tolls of civilians when Hamas forces, tricks, or convinces Gazans to literally stand underneath bombs, so I don’t blame Israel for those excess deaths. They are clearly the result of Hamas’s strategy; and it’s their strategy that is the war crime, their strategy of literally using entire cities as human shields, their strategy of not wearing uniforms, their strategy of operating out of hospitals and schools, are the crime against humanity.
In law it’s called transferred intent. If you commit an armed bank robbery and a responding police officer shoots at you but hits and kills a family crossing the street, you are charged for their deaths since their deaths were within the range of probable consequences of committing armed robbery, and among the range of foreseeable risks that make the conduct illegal in the first place.
News reports can be verified, just not fast enough for either the 24-hour outrage news cycle or the coalition of propogandists who are trying to mobilize extremists against the western world order, you know, all these pan Islamists chanting “death to America and death to Israel,” as well as all these dark moneied MAGA loyalists in America trying to mobilize liberals against Joe Biden. I think the public got lied to in the early days of the war and every further lie they see just confirms their initial reaction.
So unfortunately in America the coverage of this war has been utterly one sided and people have a perception of it that doesn’t match reality. Again, monthly casualties have decreased every month since the start of the war. The famine that has been imminent for four months hanot happened. Shroedingers Gaza, somehow simultaneously starving with no aid and also literally has people dying because aid is failing on them from the sky.
Then, to add to that misperception, there are the bona fide war crimes that some Israeli soldiers obviously do commit, which as noted in the ICJ opinion, Israel has a credible record of prosecuting when it can. Events such as the flour massacre or this recent food aid workers’ vehicle.
The legit atrocities get mixed in with the unbelievable rage bait about IDF soldiers just doing sniper rifle turkey shoots of little kids, just scooping up women and kids and torturing them, based on third and fourth hand accounts of “reports” of literal Hamas accomplices, and they always have the same report about how none of the bombs ever hit any Hamas fighters, and never hit any tunnels and there were no warnings, only women, children, orphans, and puppies.
Then there is the echo chamber of media where we hear the same few quotes, day in, day out, such as, “entire families wiped out” and “famine is imminent.” Since November 3, 2023, famine has been imminent, at least according to an NGO in a fundraising press release. Since October 10, 2023, “families wiped out.” Generic info. Scant mention of causation or circumstances. Scant basic details such as identification of which families, or when, or where. Headlines like “strike on aid convoy” or “hospital bombed.” If you only read headlines, you have no idea that you’ve seen twenty-five headlines about the same one or two events, not twenty five separate events. And even if read the articles, you don’t fair much better because the details are just lacking. Obviously when Hamas uses cities, their own families and friends, as human shields, and war breaks out, entire families are going to be killed.
It seems very obvious to me that a mix of true and false “reports” falsely colored public opinion of the entire war, and continues to taint the basic facts. Before you know it, someone has their patriotism exploited and they go to Washington DC and self immolate trying to get their government to intervene on Hamas’s behalf. It’s called lawfare. It almost looks like it might be effective. It seems to have boiled down to Rafah. Will the lawfare provide enough cover for Hamas to survive the siege intact?
International law is based on custom and tradition, and most of all the circumstances. Present circumstances are unprecedented because Hamas has the most extensive tunnel warfare (read: human shield) operation in world history and a well established local customs and traditions of martyrdom (read: letting Hamas build tunnels under your house), and terrorism (read: operating entirely outside of international law while demanding its protection, whilst having an actual genocidal intent).
It seems very obvious to me that people who say Israel is commiting genocide or is an apartheid state are anti semitic or bad faith actors applying a double standard to Israel in order to sway opinion to their self interests, they are themselves anti semites, or they are basing their assessment on the aforementioned falsely colored factual circumstances, on lies and exaggeration, mixed with unfortunate truths.
Like, give me a break, apartheid? Israel has a Palestinian Supreme Court justice. He’s a citizen of Israel. People in Gaza are not citizens of Israel, obviously they don’t have the same rights of travel and protected legal status as people who are born or naturalized Israeli citizens. And still, apartheid is more than not just one group not having equal rights, it is the legal and political subjugation of the majority by the minority, sort of the opposite of democracy. That is the characteristic about apartheid that make it a crime against humanity, rather than merely run of the mill discrimination. South Africa didn’t have any black Supreme Court Justice during Apartheid, and they were not only citizens of South Africa but the majority.
I understand the bullet points were brief (and a bit cheeky yeah) but I think it helps to focus if you want the conversation to be productive. Like we could argue for days about a single “full version” of one of the bullet points. I think I do understand what you’re saying, though.
But in international law, genocide has a specific definition (sure you have seen it but just to be clear):
When people say Israel is committing genocide they mean “they are doing this stuff.” Bearing in mind that any one is enough, the third act is clearly being done, for example. Israeli officials announced that they would purposefully be cutting off food and water to the civilians of Gaza. Having no food and water is clearly a condition that brings about destruction of life. The situation was created purposefully, announced beforehand and the consequences of this are being seen (yes people were talking about it sooner but, you know, we understand what happens if people don’t have food). Oh yeah and are you sick? Bad news, no hospitals.
There is no “unless a terrorist organisation is there” caveat to this, at least from my understanding. It is an act of genocide. We could do this for the first three or four pretty convincingly.
I’m not sure this applies to genocide, but is “starving children to death” in the range of probable consequences of someone from the same place as you committing an atrocity? Is this an expected consequence? This is absurd, surely.
So from your explanations I’m still confused. Do you accept that Israel is committing acts of genocide, by this definition?
Then the only thing left is intent. But I feel like the amalek thing alone is pretty damning. Especially given IDF chanting it on the ground too. South Africa made a very convincing case for this overall.
Is your point that, “yes, these things would be genocide but some of the key foundations of the argument are false or misinformation”?
I think by your estimation I would be using “falsely colored factual circumstances” etc? It seems a bit dangerous to assume bad faith when an international court has ruled that this is not an unreasonable accusation.
I’ve heard this argument before so many times now it’s weird. They (the person you are going back and forth with for example) 100% agree that Israel is taking all the actions. They are killing civilians, creating a situation in which food and aid are both dangerous and inconsistent, and use AI to specifically target family homes with large numbers of civilians.
The civilian casualties aren’t high because Hamas used human shields to make it high, it’s high because the IDF allowed for and made specific rules that targeting civilians was ok en masse, as collateral damage, using Lavender.
Hamas didn’t make Israel pursue this war in a way that was purposely destructive towards civilians. Israel chose to do this at every turn in reaction to Oct 6th. Israel has all the power in this situation to do things differently.
It’s not like I don’t get, I would want revenge too, but at some point they’re going to be forced to admit that the pain to the civilians is part of the point. And that their ACTUAL argument is that the civilians deserve it because of Hamas.
You would hope so but I’m not sure about that. He just blamed the famine on Hamas.
Yeah I read about this. Disgusting. Imagine putting that low a value on human life. Makes me sick to my stomach.
Exactly. But they’re all too cowardly to admit this.
They don’t seem to see that they’ve lost the moral high ground and they will never regain it again. I for one won’t forget or stop speaking out about this bullshit until the day I die. When the court convicts them of genocide people like JustZ here will either have to re-evaluate and maybe grow as a person or stick their fingers in their ears and claim the court is just so antisemitic and Israel has been innocent all along. I think it’s clear which is more likely
The court’s ruling takes South Africa’s vague and repetitive allegations as true. It’s only in that circumstance that the allegations is plausible. South Africa’s allegations fall apart under scrutiny. The underlying allegations are unverified reports and bullshit straight from the mouth of literal Hamas members.
Starving children to death? Hamas started a siege war with a vastly superior force and they didn’t pack enough food to feed their people. How is that not on them? I agree generally with “you break it, you bought it” with countries, but Hamas broke Gaza. The famine has been imminent since November 3, 2023, and it hasn’t materialized. I understand there is food insecurity and some malnutrition. Aid is flowing though and increasing and Israel secured more territory. Death tolls have been going down month over month. The mass starvation and genocide hasn’t been borne out.
Yes.
Because Israel is still responsible for it’s own actions and controls the border and flow of aid to Gaza? Is this not obvious? If you’re honestly making this argument I think we’re done here. You have apparently lost all humanity. I thought you could have been a reasonable person but apparently I was wrong.
Dude anyone defending Israel at this point is devoid of humanity. This guy literally shrugs off aide workers being murdered with precision strikes, let alone thousands of innocent deaths. They’ve demonstrated their belief that 1,500 Israeli lives are significantly more important than 32,000+ Palestinians. “They’re killing less every day” lie as if it’s a good thing, makes me sick. The amount of time they take to write out their long-winded comments excusing mass murder is fucking shocking, and I can’t believe people like them actually exist. Israel could nuke New York, say it was Hamas, and this brainwashed idiot would believe it even if their own family was killed in that strike.
I know dude I just wanted to give him a chance to not be a piece of shit. But here we are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah seriously. I was trying to be concise and keep on the point and every response was an essay. That’s because somewhere in there he sees the issues with what he’s about to say and so has to package it with all of this bullshit so he doesn’t read it back and see what a monster he has become
I appreciate your effort and patience.
Well said.
Well, we do know by now that according to Lavender the death of 10-15 civilians for a low level Hamas fighter is tolerable, for high level commanders 100 civilian deaths are still just fine. Also, Lavender prefers hitting apartment blocks because the targeted people are easier to find when they’re with their families.
If Israel is not gullible, could you please ELI5 why are they not allowing journalists to enter Gaza?
Because if they do and you are right they will show the whole world what a moral army Israel has. Right? Do you see the paradox here?
Weren’t Israel also found guilty to provide adequate humanitarian aid, cut food, electricity, drinking water, telecommunications, found guilty of using dumb and extremely powerful bombs over densely populated areas. Destroyed completely the health facilities in Gaza, along with their infrastructure, people’s home, forced mass displacement of millions of Gazans who by the way up until now are not allowed to return to their homes and induced immense suffering of millions of civilians? Isn’t this collective punishment? What about the reciprocity rule in wars? Do you not find the suffering of regular Palestinians extreme?
So please use a bit of critical thinking next time before posting something.
Found guilty to provide adequate humanitarian aid? No, they were not found guilty of anything. The ICJ denied South Africa’s request for a preliminary injunction and instead told Israel to submit a report and to be sure to provide aid. It literally didn’t order Israel to do anything it wasn’t already doing. Not sure where you got the idea that Israel had been found guilty of something by anyone.
Israel does allow journalists into Gaza in groups. But their reasoning is not secret and not unreasonable.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/high-court-says-israel-can-keep-barring-foreign-reporters-from-gaza/
Oh man, aren’t you living in parallel reality?
Didn’t Israel just kill 7 humanitarian workers, making it 200 since the beginning of the war? They hit three clearly marked vehicles with three separate bombs.
There are multiple reports that they don’t have a proper deconfliction mechanism 6 months into the war.
Children are dying from malnutrition.
There are multiple reports that their COGAT agency doesn’t provide clear guidance on what items are prohibited and are artificially delaying admitting humanitarian aid.
They didn’t do anything when a bunch of demonstrators blocked the humanitarian aid with days in an already dire situation in Gaza.
They are currently trying to block UNRWA from functioning in Gaza, during a pre-famine. Shall I also remind you that all UNRWA employees are also going through a vetting process by Israel and all their employees are checked by Israel and now they complain about them being Hamas. So if this is true, Israel has done pretty sloppy job. Shall we also comment the fact that they created a story where they were claiming 12 UNRWA employees to be involved with Hamas, out of 30K. That’s less than 0.5%. not to mention that they didn’t even provide publicly a proof for their allegations.
Heck, even their closest allies, the US and UK have rebuked them and told them to do more.
The reality is that they can open more crossings and start delivering adequate amounts of humanitarian aid, but they deliberately chose not to. And I can provide you a lot of articles from the likes of Reuters, AP, etc . who should be the least opinionated sources.
Regarding the journalists: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68423995
https://www.ebu.ch/news/2024/03/call-to-allow-foreign-journalists-into-gaza
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4513542-foreign-media-is-banned-from-gaza-biden-should-press-israel-for-access/
And all this coming from the most “moral” army, right.
Maybe next time you should start using that head of yours for something more than sucking your state’s propaganda, and perhaps try to put yourself in the regular Gazan’s shoes, and tell me how you would feel.
I think your knowledge of this is superficial and you’re actually the one in the parallel reality. Like, just one example: Dozens of countries didn’t suspend funding to UNRWA over 12 workers, but 12 workers became the face of it. It’s the single largest employer in Gaza. It’s like Wal-Mart (or is it Amazon now, in America).
You really think only 12 of them are in Hamas? The actual report from Israeli intelligence suggested 12 people helped with October 7. It found that there were thousands, up to half of all UNRWA employees, with direct supportive ties to members of the local government (Hamas, very popular in Gaza), and likely hundreds to thousands of actual card-carrying members, in addition to the 12 known employees who used UNRWA resources to execute October 7.
UNRWA has long been accused of enabling Hamas and acting as an impediment to peace.
Israel can and should allow more aid. And it seems like its failure to do so is going to cost its leadership their jobs in the next election, not Hamas though, because their leadership is holed up in Rafah surrounded by hundreds of thousands of human shields and the first thing they did after being elected to power was cancel all future elections.
Ah yes, let’s trust now the Israelian state propaganda at face value without a drop of critical thinking, right? Where is the independently verified proof that those people are Hamas? Because according to my knowledge they didn’t provide any clear proof even in front of UNRWA that those employees were actually involved in the attack.
So again use your brain not your eyes.
Yes, my brain. Not my eyes.
My brain tells me that when Israeli intelligence officers came to the US and laid out their case against UNRWA, they did not pull a fast one over on the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, the Gang of Eight, and President’s Chief of Staff. They took immediate action. Your brain is telling you that all of America’s foreign service and intelligence might was unable to corroborate the Israeli findings but acted on them anyway? You will never personally see the proof unless you have a security clearance and need to know. Have to go with what you can see. And you can see those public servants giving press briefings on what they saw and what they did.
Again though it’s basic math. UNRWA is the largest employer in Gaza and necessarily works with Hamas,. Hamas is extremely popular and each member has dozens of proud family and friends with like “❤️Proud Martyr Mom🎗️” bumper stickers on their donkey carts. It would be hard to believe if thousands of UNRWA employees were NOT rooting for Hamas and providing aid and support to known Hamas members.
In my view though, UNRWA is an obstacle to peace because it props up Hamas’s rule over Gaza. Without them, famine would have struck a decade ago and maybe Gaza would have liberated itself from Hamas abysmal leadership. You know, Gaza had two airports, one with international flights, and a seaport, until they came under Hamas’s charge and got turned into instrumentalities of international terrorism.
And here you are mixing your talking points. Gaza’s airport was destroyed in 2002, 5 years before Hamas took control of Gaza.
Just open any Wikipedia link about Gaza or any human rights organisation without known ties with Israel to read what they think about Israel’s treatment of Palestine.
Shall I also remind you of your own history that the country of Israel exists today thanks to the terrorist acts of Haganah (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah). Shall we also mention the systematic land grab, illegal settlements, various checkpoints, limiting basic human rights like freedom of movement, the economic, maritime blockade of Israel, etc.
Seriously tell me how you would have felt if you were born Palestinian. It is quite ironic and sad that you also turned like your past oppressors, dehumanizing the Palestinians. One would have expected for you of all people to be more sensible about this issue, but here we are. Starving almost 2 million people, turning them all into refugees and filming all this and proudly posting it on TikTok.
And I will leave this here https://archive.is/uIZoj . And please try to justify this treatment or explain to me why Palestinians are held in administrative detention, without charge, etc. and why they are tried against military courts. Or tell me how many settlers have been given effective sentences for torturing Palestinians, destroying their properties etc. and how come 12 year old kids can be sued in Israel: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/new-israeli-law-allows-children-young-12-be-jailed
Also, I’m not Jewish or Israeli.
Hmm why did Jews in the Levant need a security force before 1920? So weird rite?
The airport was destroy in the Infitada after Hamas seized control of it.
Where is the proof that there are thousands of UNRWA employees that helped Oct 7th happen? I tried looking it up and couldn’t find anything.
That’s not what I said. There were 12 known to have helped at the time funding was pulled. A few others have been discovered since. An Israeli hostages was rescued out of the attic of an UNRWA teacher, for example.
I said hundreds to thousands are members and close supporters. I’m seeing articles saying 30 helped and 450 employees are members. I cannot find right now in the sea of articles the details I am referring to, but they were in a 13 page report from Israel to the US Congress a week or so after funding was pulled. The report is classified but some folks talked about it. I think it was a gang of eight member who gave the details on how many UNRWA employees have a family member in Hamas. I want to say it was 4,000 to 6,000. I’ll poke around for the article. It may even have been a press briefing by a legislator. State Department I think had some details in a press conference as well, around the same time. I’ll find it when I get some time.
Zero were ‘known to have helped’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/20/first-edition-israel-unrwa
I know it’s crazy you can find anything on the internet. Including some obviously false quotes in the Guardian article. Israel provided a confidential report to the ICJ on February 21, I think was the date.
Anyway you’re going with the theory that Israeli intelligence officers and diplomats came to America and lied to President’s face, along with Sec State and Sec Def, and not only that, but all of them fell for the lie. Give me a break. You were born yesterday I guess, not me though.