There is an alternate World Peace Force that just got started recently because I believe, as regimes change, the UN will audit what happened. The issue is there will now be another international body that will argue the other way. It’s not exactly 3d chess, but, it is chess. Purchase of US TikTok (chess moves).
Never heard (and couldn't find anything) about it. That "Board of Peace" you're most likely referring to is nothing more than your usual Trump grift - each country willing to join has to pay 1 billion $, and there have been 25 countries declaring their intent to join.
Make up the math yourself, even if there will be legitimate expenses for PMCs, reconstruction and god knows what else, even skimming off 5% of that sum will still be a lot of money for Trump. And it would not be the first time he launches a multi-billion grift / money laundering scheme, remember $TRUMP and $MELANIA and I've probably forgotten about the other coins?
It's a bit more complicated: the peace deal Trump got passed through the Security Council did create a board in charge of monitoring some aspects of the Gaza process (I'm not sure on the exact details) so there is a real UN body in the mix.
Then trump seems to have bolted on two or three entirely new and unrelated organisational levels "over" the UN affiliated board and declared himself king of all peacemaking.
There is much that is unclear about how things will work in practice, but the reality is there's a potentially important part of the Gaza deal being held hostage by this board of peace, and that's why the Arabs joined.
Hospitals may have been used for retaliation [0], but it is unclear how many & in what capacity (according to accepted conventions, using a hospital to treat wounded combatants wouldn't make it a valid military target, for example; but hiding weapons or personnel would).
A lot of that ambiguity would vanish if Israel did not have a habit of drastically overstating their case and quietly walking it back after they end up killing more journalists and toddlers than active combatants in hospital bombings. Also if reports didn't deliberately conflate 'armed man' with 'Hamas militant' and euphemize about the 'Hamas-run Interior Ministry' like that one does.
> Drastically overstating their case? Israel estimates tend to be pretty close to accurate. What's been walked back?
From the article we're discussing:
"The Israeli military was forced to change its story about the ambush several times, following the discovery of the bodies in a mass grave, along with their flattened vehicles, and the emergence of video and audio recordings taken by the aid workers. An internal military inquiry ultimately did not recommend any criminal action against the army units responsible for the incident."
> Israeli forces dressed in doctors’ scrubs and women’s clothes have killed three Palestinian militants in an undercover operation in a hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
You'll just only point out the Israeli war crimes?
I'm so tired of this conflict. Both sides can eff off. The Israelis under Netanyahu are basically ever bad stereotype of Jewish people made real, and the Palestinians are the "woe is me we are innocents" while being controlled by murderous thugs and just siphoning the aid they beg for.
Nobody actually wants peace, well, those that would be at the negotiating table don't. The Israelis want the Palestinians dead, the Palestinians want the Israelis dead.
Arafat has the last shot at peace. He allegedly walked away because of access to some religious shrines. That should tell you everything you need to know about this region. Just a bunch of religious nutheads going at it, and the rest of the world gets suckered into spending billions on it, which ultimately just goes to the religious nut heads.
And all of it only appears in headlines because of oil.
Not falling for an obvious distraction from the extremely blatant pattern of dehumanising Palestinians.
> In leaked recordings, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva — then head of Israeli military intelligence — stated that for every person killed on Oct. 7, “50 Palestinians must die,” adding that “it doesn’t matter now if they are children.” He described mass Palestinian deaths as “necessary” to send a deterrent message.
> Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s declaration of a “complete siege” on Gaza — cutting food, electricity, fuel, and water — was accompanied by explicitly dehumanizing language. Announcing the policy on Oct. 9, Gallant stated: “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s assertion that “an entire nation out there is responsible” further blurs the institutional line between civilian and combatant.
> Such statements do not determine individual targeting decisions, but they shape the environment in which those decisions are made: how civilian life is valued, how much civilian harm is expected to be scrutinized, and how much is implicitly excused.
Welcome to the Middle East. The Gulf War had 50x deaths on the other side. The repression of the IRGC against peaceful protesters had the same kind of imbalance. Its how governments assert dominance there.
Just look at the reaction of Iran's "leaders" to the USA's threat to attack them. They keep their narrative logic intact: we'll sink your ships, etc. These are fearless people who's power is derived from the appearance of power.
I find it incredible that these isolated comments, of which even the various UN-backed panels can only find a handful quoted without context, is the basis for an evidence for an intent of genocide.
Besides the fact that it's a very poor genocide that after the war has ended has 100,000 palestinians leave (mostly on medical or humanitarian grounds) out of 2M Gazans and when Israel is constantly accused of blocking them in.
Bear in mind that Israel is a democracy with proportional representation resulting in a coalition government so you are essentially accusing a the majority of the population of supporting genocidal intent based on a few out-of-context and unclear quotes from some individuals. For example Smotrich - a right wing nut IMO - party won only 5 seats out of 120 in the last election.
The PM, and the official statements overwhelmingly and repeatedly state that they were not targetting civilians, whilst also adding as has been proven that the entire strip was criss-crossed with tunnels (longer and more extensive than the London metro) with exits under schools and hospitals and that their attacks met the proportionaility test which is that the miltary advantage must be proportional to risk of civilians harmed. They said no strikes were indiscrimate, they were all against verified presence of hamas. You and I might find that ugly, vicious and can question if there was another way to fight Hamas, but illegal it aint.
Herzog's comments were taken widly out of context. It takes a very particular and pre-dermined POV to discount the actual Q&Q where there quote ignored the entire paragraph which gives it a different meaning and the very next question asked him to clarify the statement anout responsible and he immediately replied (all this within a couple of minutes of the same presser) his intent. As (e.g.) HuffPost reported: when a reporter asked Herzog to clarify whether he meant to say that since Gazans did not remove Hamas from power “that makes them, by implication, legitimate targets,” Herzog said, “No, I didn’t say that.”
Here's a transcipt of the presser:
Journalist: "You spoke very passionately about you saying that Israel was not retaliating but
targeting with regards to the operations in Gaza. But even President Biden, who spoke so personally
and passionately with regard to what was happening in Israel, spoke about the importance of the laws
of war. So, with that in mind, what can Israel do to alleviate the impact of this conflict on two
million civilians, many of whom have nothing to do with Hamas?"
President Isaac Herzog: "First of all, we have to understand there's a state, there's a state, in a
way, that has built a machine of evil right at our doorstep. It's an entire nation out there that is
responsible. It's not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved—it's absolutely not
true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza
in a coup d'état, murdering their family members who were in Fatah."
Journalist: "I am sincerely sorry for what is happening in Israel right now, but I have been listening
to your answers for the last few minutes and I am a little confused. On the one hand, you say that
Israel follows international law in the Gaza Strip and that civilians are protected; you say you are
very careful to prevent casualties. But at the same time, you seem to hold the people of Gaza
responsible for not trying to remove Hamas, and therefore by implication, that makes them legitimate
targets."
President Isaac Herzog: "No, I did not say that. I did not say that and I want to make it clear. A
question was raised about the separation of Hamas and civilians. I said that in their homes, there are
missiles shooting at us. If you have a missile in your kitchen and you want to launch it at me, don't
I have the right to defend myself? We have to defend ourselves; we have the full right to do so. Hamas
carries full responsibility and accountability for the well-being of the hostages and for the
situation they have brought upon Gaza."
Journalist: "But my question is: Are civilians in Gaza held responsible for not destroying Hamas and
therefore become legitimate targets?"
President Isaac Herzog: "I repeat again: there is no excuse for murdering innocent civilians in any
way, in any context. And believe me, Israel will operate and always operates according to the
international rules."
Gallant was speaking less than 48 hours after Oct 7 when feelings were very high and it's clearly fighting talk which (a) was referring to Hamas as animals not Gazans (b) he didn't actually ever execute that quoted extent of the seige in full utilities ran low but never the extended cut off that's implied (c) Israel didn't actually provide 100% of the water and electricity that was internal desalination run on stockpiles of fuel so it was clear that cutting off supplies does not immediately harm civilians.
Even in Halavi's case, he might be a right-wing nutter and meant what was reported but the head of army intelligence does not decide policy. And when you look at the original I don't think it would pass court of law. Israeli Channel 12 added the square brackets intent to "it doesn't matter now [if they] are children" but actually the original in hebrew was only "זה לא משנה עכשיו ילדים" [1] which could mean instead "it doesn't matter [to this argument the mention of] children" which is equally plausable in idiomatic Hebrew. Either way, his comments in full don't tick the boxes of genocidal intent.
> Besides the fact that it's a very poor genocide that after the war has ended has 100,000 palestinians
You seem disappointed. Anywho...
A common misconception is that genocide must involve a very large number of deaths on the order of hundreds of thousands or millions. But this is false. The perpetrators of the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian War were found guilty of genocide despite the massacre’s death toll being less than 9,000. Hence the fact that “only” 70,000–100,000+ people have died in Gaza in no way refutes the charge of genocide.
> Gallant was speaking less than 48 hours after Oct 7 when feelings were very high
Genocidal feelings. Super normal.
> Even in Halavi's case, he might be a right-wing nutter
Nuts in highest military positions when warring with 4 or more states. Very normal, too.
> Bear in mind that Israel is a democracy with proportional representation resulting in a coalition government so you are essentially accusing a the majority of the population of supporting genocidal intent...
Perpetrating* a genocide, seems like.
Is the Gaza War a genocide? Two key features of the mortality data are consistent with that charge: first, unusually high mortality among women and children; second, the sudden and dramatic fall in life expectancy. In these respects, the war resembles the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides more closely than any other recent conflict involving the US or Israel.
> Is the Gaza War a genocide? Two key features of the mortality data are consistent with that charge: first, unusually high mortality among women and children; second, the sudden and dramatic fall in life expectancy.
To be fair, you'd also see this if your opponents were using human shields and hospitals for military operations, which Hamas has been documented as doing. This is not so clear cut.
That definition of 'human shield' is basically only used in this context by Israel and its advocates. If we adhere to it, the fact that Israel has military installations embedded in residential neighbourhoods ought to qualify, but it seemingly doesn't. And if one uses the most commonly accepted definition in IHL, Israel has a long history of participating in it. Is any of that fair?
Hamas is not a military since Palestine is not a state (courtesy of Israel itself), so what they're doing can't be classified as war crimes. If you want to accuse Hamas of war crimes, you first need to recognize Palestine as an independent state.
Palestine is recognized as a state by most of the world, including recent changes of mind in the UK, France, Australia, etc. I also take that position.
“These would be war crimes… if we were a state! Muahahahaha!” is not a position I’d be comfy espousing as a positive thing.
I am glad Hamas leadership saw consequences for their war crimes. I wish I could say the same for Netanyahu and his Cabinet.
> It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy… The following acts are examples of perfidy… The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status...
(Assassinating a paralyzed patient in a hospital is also not typically - ahem - kosher. Even if you're in uniform!)
If Israel wants to take that position, they’ll need to denounce the Nuremberg trials. “Crimes against humanity” were invented for them, as the Holocaust was legal under German law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip).
As the article indicates, prohibitions against perfidy and other war crimes predate the Conventions.
(And I’d note that, as occupying power, Israel is subject to other requirements.)
(And if this is truly your argument, “Hamas doesn’t have to follow the rules either” is the logical conclusion. Which makes whining about their uniforms a bit odd; there is no scenario where "Hamas has to follow the Conventions, but Israel does not" is a coherent position.)
Why was it decided that feigning of civilian, non-combatant status is bad? because it led to death of civilians who had no part in the fight; pretending to be your enemy's civilians bring no such issue. Although assassinating a patient is also not kosher it less relevant to the discussion about use of uniforms.
> Could you clarify where in the Geneva Conventions this very important exemption is stated?
The spirit of the law is more important then its letter. Also I think Israel never signed that part of the Geneva Conventions.
> Because people start shooting civilians thinking they're infiltrators, and even enemy civilians are protected persons.
When did that happened in the Israel-Arab conflict? (When did that happened elsewhere? It sounds like it should be very rare, people don't kill their own so easily?)
> Also I think Israel never signed that part of the Geneva Conventions.
You, earlier: "A lot of that ambiguity would vanish if Hamas did not have a habit of not putting uniforms in combat."
Now it's suddenly not a problem? I can't imagine Hamas signed the Geneva Conventions.
> It sounds like it should be very rare, people don't kill their own so easily?
German Jews in the 1930s/1940s would probably disagree.
> When did that happened elsewhere? It sounds like it should be very rare, people don't kill their own so easily?
I mean, the IDF killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza, while with their hands up and holding a white flag, because they thought they were infiltrators.
The spirit of the law is reducing the civilian cost of war. Its hard to argue that Israel's few incidents of wearing civilian clothes for special operations increased the odds of civilian costs compared to the same operation done in uniform. Meanwhile, Hamas's lack of uniforms has led to significantly increased civilian cost.
> Now it's suddenly not a problem? I can't imagine Hamas signed the Geneva Conventions.
As I already alluded to earlier, the principles and spirit are more important to me than the literal conventions and if somebody signed it. I will note that you brought up the Geneva Conventions not me.
> German Jews in the 1930s/1940s would probably disagree.
I'm confused to what you refer to and why you brought it up?
> I mean, the IDF killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza, while with their hands up and holding a white flag, because they thought they were infiltrators.
This is not an example to what I asked for, this wouldn't have happened if Hamas wore uniform, IDF wore uniforms, the held hostages civilians didn't but because they were in combat they mistook them for Hamas. What I want is Israeli citizens mistaken for an enemy combatant in Israel in a non-active-combat environment or Palestinians citizens mistaken for an IDF soldier in Palestine in a non-active-combat environment.
Me: "Because people start shooting civilians thinking they're infiltrators, and even enemy civilians are protected persons."
You: "When did that happened in the Israel-Arab conflict?"
This was in the Israel-Arab conflict, and as you acknowledge, "wouldn't have happened if Hamas wore uniform". It is a perfectly responsive example to your request, and clearly illustrates the potential harm to innocent civilians from violations of the rule.
Grossly asymmetric warfare promotes and "kinda" justifies guerilla tactics from one side. Necessity knows no law and all that.
Of course, that does mean the bigger side has to get dirty too, sometimes. Just not to the extent that Israel is, who clearly just want to cleanse the land in order to own it. I mean, this is Boer war territory, not (e.g.) Algerian war where torture was used but civilians were mostly left intact.
National Guard and HomeGuard in every allied country has a uniform.
The ones that don't are using what would be considered unlawful tactics these days.
You're an 'unlawful combatant' if you don't wear one: the Geneva Convention still technically applies to you, just not in any way you'd find comforting.
> The ones that don't are using what would be considered unlawful tactics these days.
The British Army was very upset that ragtag riflemen in the American colonies kept running into the woods and shooting from behind cover instead of standing in a Proper Formation and exchanging volleys of fire. No true gentlemen does that!
> the British military and government frequently accused American colonial soldiers of violating the established "rules of war" (or the "laws of nations") during the Revolutionary War, largely because they viewed the conflict not as a war between sovereign nations, but as a rebellion. The British often regarded the Americans as unlawful combatants, or rebels, who used irregular tactics that disregarded traditional 18th-century European military etiquette.
> The British Army was very upset that ragtag riflemen in the American colonies kept running into the woods and shooting from behind cover instead of standing in a Proper Formation
The European war tradition was open fields and men standing in lines firing volleys from 50-100m, roughly. Americans fought in the French/Indian wars alongside Native Americans and picked up their hit-and-run tactics. They were also using rifled barrel Kentucky Longrifles that could hit a man-sized target at 250m (roughly). The Americans also would directly target officers, which was seen as cowardly/ungentlemanly.
Why should they play by some foreign made up book just because it would suit the oppressor who massively overpowers you in every aspect? Come on, lets get real, if you defend your homeland from invader any tactic is good tactic. Thats not some higher moral ground just basic logic.
Geneva convention is just a piece of paper, sometimes adhered to by some parties, and thats about it. And thats something coming from a person living and working in Geneva lol. russians keep breaking those rules every day for years on ukraine and not much is happening, is it.
The Geneva Convention wasn't written by oppressors to protect oppressors; it was written largely because of what happens to civilians and prisoners when there are no rules. The protections run both ways: your wounded, your captured fighters, your civilian population all benefit from it. Tear it up and you're not sticking it to the powerful, you're just guaranteeing that nobody on either side has any protection at all.
And yes, Russia breaks the rules constantly in Ukraine. The response to that is not 'therefore rules are worthless,' it's 'therefore we need better enforcement.' A legal system with imperfect enforcement is not the same thing as no legal system; by that logic you'd abolish murder laws because people still get murdered.
'Any tactic is a good tactic' is also, incidentally, exactly what the oppressor says.
> Why should they play by some foreign made up book just because it would suit the oppressor who massively overpowers you in every aspect?
If they refuse to abide by the "foreign book" that dictate the rules of conflict, then I'm not sure how they could legitimately use the foreign book's classification of genocide. Those rules are what dictate how to classify a genocide.
Well they don’t have to agree with all of it. The Geneva convention is (primarily) an agreement between parties that “we’ll follow these rules so we don’t end up killing civilians and razing cities to the ground”. When the opposing side is doing that, what good does it do you to say “but under subsection 17 b of paragraph 11…”
many somewhat intellectual(1), but evil(2), people love to play make pretend of just "summarizing the rational", "playing devil advocate", "just pointing out facts" to endorse their word view while having "plausible deniability" if caught (as they tend to know many people think their ideas are evil).
Idk. if this is happening here but given how some threads devolved and other patterns common for such people emerged (red hearing arguments, false conclusions etc.) it looks quite a bit like it.
This kind people (the also tend to argue endlessly not based on common sense, understanding of the real world and empathy (in questions of ethic/moral) but based on nit picking stuff like as if the word ist just a game you find holes in the rules with to "cleverly win". Because for them the world often is just that.
But a lot of people find such behavior deeply deplorable. hence why if something looks like that it will get a lot of down votes even if it wasn't meant that way.
---
(1): Non intellectual people try that too. But they tend to lack the skill to pull it off. Hence why it tends to be pretty obvious why they are down voted or similar.
(2): Non evil people do that too, they just normally have the decency not to do so with topics like genocide. I also use evil here as a over-generalization but I have mostly seen that behavior with neo-nazis and other groups which are least fascist adjacent (and most times outright fascist).
I think we should avoid suggesting that other people on this forum are evil, even if you think their ideas and arguments are harmful.
I think sometimes people are so certain about their beliefs that they perceive any argument that challenges them to be evil, bad faith trickery. But I think the best way to respond to these arguments is simply to give compelling reasons why they are wrong (and not why the person giving them is bad).
Otherwise, some people will be mislead by these bad arguments and you will have done nothing to help but say “don’t listen to him he’s evil”, which is not very convincing really.
> intellectual(1), but evil(2), people love to play make pretend ... argue endlessly ... understanding of the real world and empathy (in questions of ethic/moral) but ... nit picking stuff like as if the word is just a game you find holes in the rules with to "cleverly win"
I get what you're trying to say, but ...
> playing devil advocate
One look at my comment history on this topic should help dispel the notion.
It's not at all an uncommon scenario to have to deal with in war, especially asymmetrical conflicts.
IMO, Israel stepped very clearly over the line, repeatedly, in how they handled it, but the parent post is a pretty reasonable summary of the considerations.
> Article 8 of the Rome statute, which established the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, defines a long list of war crimes including “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected”.
> But it makes an exception if the targets are “military objectives”. Philip-Gay said that “if a civilian hospital is used for acts harmful to the enemy, that is the legal term used”, the hospital can lose its protected status under international law and be considered a legitimate target. Nevertheless, if there is doubt as to whether a hospital is a military objective or being used for acts harmful to the enemy, the presumption, under international humanitarian law, is that it is not.
Again, I think Israel committed war crimes here and throughout Gaza. But the parent poster has a point that using a hospital for combat purposes risks its status.
(There are still rules to follow in that case, that weren't followed. Again, war crimes.)
> Truth: Mass-destroying a country's hospitals, murdering the doctors, nurses, workers & patients, mass-executing aid workers ... is Israeli. And only Israeli.
This is the same mistake many made about Nazi Germany; convincing themselves that the Germans were uniquely evil. It stops people from having to examine themselves.
> The rules aren't written by plucky revolutionaries, but the big powers. They, thus, fairly often favor people who fight like the big powers.
I think this is one of the ugliest things about this particular war. While the IDF unquestionably committed various war crimes over the course of the conflict anyway, the bulk of what people found objectionable very well might have been done in total accordance with international law. Despite many failures and excesses, the IDF at least paid lip service to trying to do that, as a policy.
It's just that, the reality is, the rules are based on entirely different assumptions about how war is carried out. If they might lead to something resembling a "humane" war (hah!) when fought between, say, a relatively evenly matched France and Germany, they're quite ineffective at preventing a humanitarian catastrophe when you have a modern force attempting to siege an ultra-dense, militarized enclave run by an organization with no real hope of a conventional victory or interest in the well-being of its civilians.
And so you end up with this absurd situation where the world witnessed, over and over again, unimaginably horrible things being inflicted on the population of Gaza, and the Israelis responding - if we're being charitable, not entirely unreasonably - "Why are you getting mad at us? We're following the rules!"
It's just that, clearly, the rules are insufficient to match people's moral sentiments.
> While the IDF unquestionably committed various war crimes over the course of the conflict anyway, the bulk of what people found objectionable very well might have been done in total accordance with international law.
I think this is somewhat out of touch, the main reason this conflict has garnered so much attention is the amount of times Isreal commits war crimes.
Let's suppose it could be demonstrated conclusively that every hospital in Gaza that Israel has bombed had Hamas militants operating out of them, as Israel has claimed. Do you think that'd silence Israel's critics about bombing hospitals? Do you think it should?
The only route Israel has to victory, now, is genocide. They need to stop and make peace before they earn a place with Pol Pot and Stalin as genociders
>before they earn a place with Pol Pot and Stalin as genociders
What makes you think Israel cares about a label more than conquest via genocide? Did the Nazis care about being called genocidal? If you want to stop IL you need to do it via force.
Why would the israelis prefer to deal with PIJ through some temporary disarmament?
Anyone who listens for a bit to israeli mass media will soon be convinced that anything but the extermination of the palestinians is not enough. This is why they bulldoze everything archeological that does not play into zionist myth making. This is also why apartheid is common in local politics in Israel, and why the zionist guerillas and later IDF systematically destroyed the homes and property of the people they displaced, long before the appearance of Hamas.
As I usually do, I'd also like to remind that the zionist movement is mainly a movement of christians.
It has been going on for a century or so. It is also a crime of occidental states. One could also argue that Palestine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen and more places are in interconnected violent processes, where the 'axis' of Israel, the US, UAE, UK and allies are perpetrating heinous crimes without any semblance of accountability.
For much of that time frame, the Soviets were also meddling in the Middle East. That the middle east conflicts were themselves part of the Cold War rather than something unrelated, is knowledge that has gone forgotten in the West, I think.
War is always terrible and a mess. The problem is that the intention is, very clearly, ethic cleansing. And that, is, not in accordance to international law. That's the reason they target humanitarian workers and journalist. And the reason they block things like baby formula from entering Gaza. Because the worst are the living conditions to the population, the better.
If you think that the main intention of Israel is other than push those million of people that bother them out (or kill them if they don't go), I have a bridge to sell you.
Hell, they even say that themselves. Go to listen to their politicians.
By the way, if you are an European Union citizen, there is request to the commission to stop the EU-Israel commercial agreement. You can sign it here:
Yup, the term ethnic cleansing became popular during the Yugoslavian civil war, so that UN states didn't have a legal obligation to intervene, as they would in the case of genocide.
Ethnic cleansing and genocide are obviously not the same. If Israel's intent were to kill virtually all Gazans, that would be genocide, but it seems very plausible that they would be entirely satisfied if all Gazans just left Gaza, which would be ethnic cleansing.
Look, I remember this being discussed at the time as a euphemism to avoid the necessity for intervention.
The wikipedia article suggests that I'm not alone in this belief:
"Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group,[6][7] or calling it a euphemism for genocide or cultural genocide.[8][9]"
> This is the same mistake many made about Nazi Germany; convincing themselves that the Germans were uniquely evil. It stops people from having to examine themselves.
You seriously need to educate yourself about history, what the nazis did, and what is going on in the middle east, because only a person who has absolutely no idea about either of these subjects could draw this terrible comparison. Unless, of course, you're just interested in spreading disinformation bordering on blood libel.
You're detracting. You made a comparison between Israel and the nazis, which is wrong, and is extremely far reached.
Answering with "all people have the capacity for evil" is once again a subtle misdirection which seems like a recurring theme in your comments. This wasn't what you implied.
Put simply, Israel and nazis are night and day, you are villifying a country and its people with extreme and factually wrong accusations.
Depends on who you ask. People are allowed to see similarities, like Lebensraum & Occupation, as two examples. They don't need anyone's certification or permission. And intimidation, I believe, has stopped working. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisons_between_Israel_and...
I mean, "Judeo-Nazi" was a term coined by an Israeli polymath Yeshayahu Leibowitz & has been part of the Revisionist discourse for quite some time; ex: Better a Living Judeo-Nazi Than a Dead Saint (1983), https://www.jstor.org/stable/2536162 / https://archive.vn/uX42N
You would be wrong. This happens to have been a propaganda campaign invented decades earlier in the Soviet Union. In fact, it is quite stunning how similar all this is to the modern propaganda Russia uses.
Well, looks like Leibowitz did not coin the term (much to his chagrin perhaps?), but I guess he was one of the more prominent Israelis to never apologize for using it.
May be Leibowitz spoke truth to power; may be he was a Soviet asset.
> quite stunning how similar all this is
Hm.
Michael S: Aren't you exaggerating when you use the term "Judeo- Nazi?" Do you truly believe that we are liable to decline to the level of the Nazis?
Yeshayahu L: When the nation (or in Nazi terminology, the race) and the power of its state become supreme values, human action is no longer inhibited. This mentality is also widespread among us. In the territories under our occupation in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Lebanon, we are already behaving as the Nazis behaved in the territories under their occupation in Czechoslovakia and the west.
I thought for a bit whether I should reply to this or not. But I noticed one point in here I felt obligated to correct.
If your idea of the Nazis is their occupation in the west, then you are missing most of the picture. Their atrocities in the east are far beyond anything that has ever taken place on this Earth before or since. There is no comparison whatsoever.
- Hamas is a terrorist organization that planned and executed a mass terror campaign, fully knowing and hoping for the reaction. And boasting about it continuously and repeatedly.
- Israel's response was hasty, unplanned, purely driven by emotion at the beginning, and it quickly grew beyond any reason in the next weeks.
Israel's response was very similar to the US's response to 9/11. 3,000 Americans were killed by terrorists (a smaller percentage of the population than Israelis killed on 10/7) and as a response the US started two wars killing at least 100 times as many Afghans and Iraqis (there are lots of debates about the total casualties there too just like Gaza). This is not a defense of Israel, just a fact that seemingly is never part of the conversation that I think can help people better understand why this is happening.
Today they still spit to the side when having to say the name George Bush or Tony Blair, among others.
You either weren't there, have a bad memory, are watching typically mainstream new sources, or are willfully ignoring the voices that are having that conversation today.
Many of the ills today can be traced back to powers grabbed at the time to assist that so-called "war on terror".
I genuinely don't know what distinction you're trying to make here. Do you think there aren't equivalent protests in Israel? There were minorities in both countries that opposed these responses from the beginning and those responses generally became more unpopular as time went on just like the men who spearheaded them, but a majority of both countries were initially supportive.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but your initial post reads as if Israel's genocide in Palestine is consistent with historical precedent such as the Iraq war when facing similar national traumas.
I'm suggesting that many of us are disgusted now by Israel's genocide, land theft, and murder ... just as millions of us were disgusted by the Iraq war.
>Perhaps I'm wrong, but your initial post reads as if Israel's genocide in Palestine is consistent with historical precedent such as the Iraq war when facing similar national traumas.
The US response was deadlier in both total number of people killed and in proportion to the inciting terrorist attacks. Both countries also committed clear war crimes along the way.
The primary distinguishing factor between the two is the label of "genocide" only consistently being applied to Israel's actions, but that is mostly due to practical reasons, namely the relative small size of Gaza in terms of both geography and population. If Afghanistan and Iraq had the population density of Gaza, not only would that have likely made the US response even more deadly due to the mechanics of warfare, but it certainly would have led to more people describing the US's actions as genocide.
Once again, this is not a defense of Israel. If this reads to you like I'm downplaying the actions of Israel, then you are underestimating the death and destruction caused by the US. Some estimates have the US responsible for as many as a million deaths.
I was alive at the time. While there were some protests, i dont recall them being all that significant, and many of the objecting voices seemed more concerned with the price tag rather than the human cost.
You might be referring to a different period, but I'll note that the anti-war protests in early 2003 (immediately before the invasion of Iraq) were quite literally record breaking.
This is pure misinformation. I have personally never seen such large crows as the anti war demonstrations of 2002-2003. There 100k people marching several times for several weeks in the European capitals I know.
Some estimate that these were even bigger than the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. These put the total number of people going out in demonstrations world wide at 30M+. This war was massively protested against, any which way you count.
You forgot eighty years of occupation, cultural , economical and ethnical cleansing of the local indigenous people called Palestinians with help of US and Western countries mainly.
While you have a valid point overall, I always hate this specific phrasing because it's either ignorant of history or implies there is a statute of limitations on being indigenous. And if it is the latter, you're actively being counterproductive to the cause because that is telling the Israelis that the land will be morally theirs if they can hold it for enough generations thereby encouraging continued occupation.
But surely, the different tribes in Australia also moved around and replaced each other? They might all come from the same people that came to Australia first, but that doesn’t mean they are native to the place they currently live in. If a tribe moved from southern Australia to the north and replaced another tribe, who gets the land now? And how do you settle that without some arbitrary statute of limitations?
Sorry for shifting the goalposts now, but we still need a method to determine what to do with the rest of the earth, right? Who gets to stay in the different parts of Europe for example?
"We" haven't settled anything .. neither of us is an expert or player in the domain of indigenuous land ownership.
Your "assertion" (weakly stated) was
> I’m pretty sure every tribe that’s considered indigenous now at any place has replaced some other group that lived there before them.
which is _false_.
A single counter example suffices, the Māori people of New Zealand are still in a shared treaty with European settlers and no prior humans were displaced by the Māori people when they first arrived circe 1320 or so.
Australia and that region offer up many many other examples.
> Who gets to stay in the different parts of Europe for example?
I cannot see how this is related to your global assertion nor can I see how I'm responsible to answer it.
The original problem is whether there is a "statute of limitations" for being indigenous.
Even when my original assertion that every single tribe replaced another tribe at some point is wrong, there still needs to be some mechanism do determine what to do with the rest of the world where my claim applies.
If you take the view of history that the ability to forcibly drive other people off their land grants the new inhabitants a valid claim to that land, then Israel's actions are only objectionable because they are happening now rather than in the history books. It's inherently a doctrine of might is right, and the Israelis are mightier than the Palestinians at this current moment in history.
Right, but at least historically, what alternative is there? You can’t really unroll thousands of years of human history and make everyone go back to where their ancestors came from (even just because people ended up mixing after colonizing other places), so you have to take some state as the correct one and then condemn every change after that (or just let everyone do whatever they want).
Otherwise, how would you decide who gets which part of the world?
Which is exactly why this area has been in conflict for millennia. Many different groups have valid claims to the area being their historic homeland. Dubbing one single group as "indigenous" is a refutation of all the other people's historical claims on that land and it means all the Israelis have to do is wait out this conflict until it becomes "history" and the Palestinians lose that "indigenous" label.
Obviously Palestinians were displaced and that needs to be addressed, but ethnic cleansing is a tough sell. Their population has multiplied by 20x since then.
Forced displacement due to the mass destruction of all facilities in an area consists exactly in ethnic cleansing.
Ethnic cleansing means : systemic removal of a group or person by another group of person in an area. And it's exactly what's happening.
It makes no sense to say it's neither a genocide nor ethnic cleansing if the population grows. Same as saying there were no genocide or ethnic cleansing in Rwanda or Bosnia since the population has grown.
Arabs are not indigenous to Palestine. Palestine was Roman when it was colonized by the Arabs. Before Palestine, Judea was a Jewish state which was colonized by the Romans.
> The Israel Defense Forces believes that the Hamas-run health ministry’s death toll from the war in the Gaza Strip has been largely accurate, a senior Israeli military official acknowledged on Thursday.
IDF claims 2/3 to 3/4 of killed are civilians. Now add in that around half of the population of Gaza is under 18 and also that half the population is female.
I know that I will not convince you, you are a person who thinks "lol" is adequate terminology when discussing the killing of humans, but you also don't get to lie about things on the internet that even the party you support does not lie about.
The correct answer is: because the Biden administration told them there were no red lines. Israel is completely dependent on the US, Reagan picked up the phone and got them to stop bombing Lebanon in 1982. As Israel continued to ramp up the atrocities, they discovered that nothing would cause them to lose patronage from the US.
Because of literally years of terrorist acts from Hamas? Because the action initially had overwhelming public support? Because, as any military action without proper planning, they promised a quick victory and had no plans beyond "bomb, bomb, bomb"? And had no plans for "what do we do if we don't succeed"?
For an exactly same "military action with no planning but a lot of bravado" scenario see Russia's invasion into Ukraine.
Hamas is a terror organisation funded, and quite possibly created, by far-right nationalist elements in the Israeli government to weaken the Palestinian authority and create a pretext for the occupation of Gaza.
Netanyahu is on the record funnelling money through Qatar. He said it was for "humanitarian aid" - which would be more credible if it wasn't such an extraordinary and unusual outbreak of concern for Palestinian wellbeing.
The occupation is straight out genocide, labelled as such by many Israeli scholars, as well as most of Rest of World.
This level of barbarism and entitlement has no place on a civilised planet.
We should stop using this term terror/terrorist, it's lost any meaning. If Hamas are terrorists because they're terrorizing Israeli population then so are Israelis' IDF or whatever force kills other country's population. And the list extends beyond that. To paint a resisting force/army as terrorists is just charged language to emotionally manipulate and pollute discourse. It would be more useful to put in balance what each side is fighting for.
Terrorism has a simple definition: using force against civilian life to further ones goals.
Target a music festival with no military value: terrorism.
Blow up a building because hamas has a tunnel under there: not terrorism. If the military value gained is disproportionate to the civilian cost, it is a war crime. But still not terrorism.
> Terrorism has a simple definition: using force against civilian life to further ones goals.
Not disagreeing with the definition but this is what both sides have been doing.
Look, blowing up aid workers, which is in question in this article, is also terrorism. Killing unarmed civilians, kids, etc is also terrorist. Also if you you use your definition for what Israel has been doing in the last 70-80 years it makes them terrorists as well, the word is simply meaningless at this point.
What political/ideological goal does attacking the aid workers move forward? It's a war crime, no doubt, but terrorism has a meaning that doesn't include all war crimes.
> Killing unarmed civilians, kids, etc is also terrorist.
The vast majority of lethal force actions in Gaza are targeting Hamas operations. Civilians getting killed by those strikes is NOT terrorism.
Israelis brag about inflicting casualties on Gaza civilians and when confronted about it say that this will stop when Hamas releases the hostages and lays down the arms. This is textbook terrorism.
Netanyahu is very clearly on the record supporting and defending a policy of allowing Qatari money into Hamas‑run Gaza, including publicly defending those payments to his own party as a way to keep Hamas and the PA separated.
There is real evidence that Israeli authorities helped the Islamist network that later became Hamas to grow and organize, but not good evidence that Israel secretly “founded” Hamas in the sense of designing or controlling the group. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Israel allowed and at times supported Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s Islamist charity Mujama al‑Islamiya in Gaza (the Muslim Brotherhood–linked precursor to Hamas), seeing it as a useful counterweight to the secular PLO. eg From 1967 to 1987, the number of mosques in Gaza reportedly tripled, with Mujama heavily involved and benefiting from Israeli recognition and Gulf funding; Israeli officials hoped Islamist forces would weaken leftist, PLO‑aligned groups.
Scholars and former officials describe this as “blowback”: Israel strengthened the Brotherhood‑type infrastructure, which then reorganized itself into Hamas and turned violently against Israel.
There is no credible evidence that Israeli intelligence drew up Hamas’s founding charter, appointed its leaders, or covertly directed its formation in 1987; the group was an initiative of Palestinian Islamists tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
To reiterate: Israel did not secretly found Hamas, but it surreptitiously facilitated the growth of its Islamist precursor networks and tolerated them for strategic reasons, and several former Israeli officials now openly say that this policy helped “create” Hamas in hindsight.
There was a second part to that which is "and surrender".
But there's definitely been a large reduction in violence since the hostages were returned. Most or all of it in response to violations of the ceasefire by Hamas.
To save the people they claim to protect. Just like in WW2, had the Germans and the Japanese surrendered earlier, the Allies wouldn't have had to kill so many of them.
Come on. Prompt it differently ("Have there been ceasefire violations in Gaza by the Israelis?") and you get this:
> As of February 24, 2026, there have been numerous and well-documented reports of ceasefire violations by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza. While a ceasefire framework has been in place since October 2025, it remains extremely fragile, with both sides frequently accusing the other of breaching the terms.
> Israel has been accused of failing to allow the agreed-upon volume of aid. Reports suggest only 43% of the 600 promised daily aid trucks and about 15% of the required fuel are entering the Strip.
> In December 2025, the US reportedly rebuked Israel for a missile strike that assassinated a high-level Hamas commander, deeming it a violation of the "Comprehensive Plan" framework.
> Don’t forget the “all they have to do is return the hostages” line
So there's zero link whatsoever between Hamas executing 1200 civilians on Oct 7th, taking 200 hostages, and the following war (and war crimes) of Israel?
Israel literally unilaterally began a war and committed war crimes without any act of aggression?
And from the moment 200 hostages had been taken, many of whom died in captivity, everything was carved in stone and no matter what Hamas did, Israel was going anyway to war and to commit war crimes?
Or did something happen on Oct 7th that triggered all this?
Actually a large number of those 1200 were killed by Israeli incendiary rounds fired from helicopters due to Operation Hannibal. It’s why the estimates kept getting rounded down from an initial 1500, because many of the bodies were too badly incinerated to be counted accurately.
> The Commission also verified information indicating that, in at least two other cases, ISF had likely applied the Hannibal Directive, resulting in the killing of up to 14 Israeli civilians. One woman was killed by ISF helicopter fire while being abducted from Nir Oz to Gaza by militants. In another case the Commission found that Israeli tank fire killed some or all of the 13 civilian hostages held in a house in Be’eri.
> The Commission found that Israeli authorities prioritised identifying victims, notifying families and allowing for burial rather than forensic investigation, leading to evidence of crimes, especially sexual crimes, not being collected and preserved. The Commission also notes the loss of potential evidence due to inadequately trained first responders.
(That I'm completely fine with. But it presents challenges for verifying incidents, which probably means it's an undercount.)
If they wanted to go after Hamas, why did they employ methods of combat that were guaranteed to affect civilians, like cutting off the entire strip from food supply?
Or the massacre that this thread is about for that matter?
It's really about motive and targeting. Were they trying to get the hostages back or just kill people randomly? Were they targeting Hamas or aid workers?
I don't know why you're using the past tense here, I was still trying to talk some sense into these people barely two days ago. It's hopeless at this point.
> I was still trying to talk some sense into these people barely two days ago. It's hopeless at this point.
I don't think "sense" is the issue.
1) Are you sure you were talking to actual people and not fake personas or even bots?
2) Keep in mind that there is A LOT of money to be made working for Israeli PR. Some people will take that money regardless of what they know is the actual truth. Some examples:
- Certain social media influencers being paid up to $7000 per post [1]
- Israel boosts propaganda funding by $150m to sway global opinion against genocide [2] [3]
- "[...] a firm called Bridges Partners LLC has been hired to manage an influencer network under a project code-named the “Esther Project.” " [4]
If you have 3 hours, there's a documentary you can watch, about a man who was sanctioned by the government to kill a lot of "communists" in 1960's Indonesia: The Act of Killing (available at e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q ).
It's sort of understandable why the defenders of the genocide have to keep defending it. Stopping doing so today would mean admitting that until yesterday you've been defending utter inhumanity.
A review:
> Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a challenging documentary. It is not only difficult to watch, but it also probes into one of the most grotesque aspects of human nature: the capacity for self-delusion in the face of horrific atrocities. This isn’t a film about history, facts, or statistics; it’s about the memories of the men who killed, the stories they tell themselves, and how they continue to live with the horrors they’ve inflicted on others. The film’s power lies in its ability to take the viewer beyond a surface-level understanding of evil and into the psychological abyss of those who have committed atrocities—and seemingly moved on with their lives.
> Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted military officials Thursday as saying, “We estimate that about 70,000 Gazans were killed in the war, not including the missing.” Kan 11, the country’s public broadcaster, attributed the information to the Coordinator of Government Affairs in the Territories (COGAT) and said there is now an effort to analyze how many of those killed were civilian or militant.
And the IDF ain't contesting it:
> “The IDF clarifies that the details published do not reflect official IDF data,” the spokesperson said. “Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels.” The spokesperson did not answer if the IDF held data about the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza or if such information would ever be released.
Where is the source? Show me the actual source. Showing me that one news agency is reporting that another news agency reported something, with no way to verify anything in that chain, does and proves nothing. It's a claim with no backing.
The official quote clearly states "the details do not reflect official data". If you see it as "no contest" we're gonna have to chalk it up to cultural differences in parsing language.
At the end of the day, you made a conscious choice to accept the claim that the IDF confirmed the death toll as truth, and to spread it online as such, despite not having any actual proof. That was Hamas strategy since 0day, long before Israel even managed to clear the last Hamas terrorist from its borders after the attack: just make anti-Israel claims. Just make them. Everybody will accept them, no questions asked.
At the end of the day, I make the conscious choice to trust three different Israeli news outlets, CNN, the fact that the IDF isn't offering a different estimate, and satellite photos of the destruction in Gaza.
The IDF is most welcome to publish a claim and have it dissected. I would remind you we're on a thread where their "official data" fell apart because of direct video evidence of their war crimes obtained from their dead victims' phones.
yes, 70,000 Gazans, 50k of whom were males of fighting age, no other army managed to achieve such low civilian-to militants casualties ratio, under such extreme war conditions
> You can't blow up entire hospitals and kill patients just because someone's storing stuff in the basement
I believe hospitals lose much of their protection under international law when they’re dual used like this. (There is still proportionality and morality.)
I don't know how much weight the legalist argument holds here, seeing how the IDF has been acting extra-legally for a long while now, but anyway, I seriously doubt that each destroyed hospital and each destroyed school held terrorists. We've seen the IDF target civilians, aid workers and journalists too many times to believe them so easily.
This is a common excuse, but The Truth is Israel doesn't care they're housing anything in the basement, they'll bomb it anyway. The ethnic cleansing agenda is plainly obvious at this point. In fact they seem to prefer having Hamas in predictable places, easier to take out and a convenient excuse to cull a few hundred of a superfluous population -- the Palestinian birth rate is way above that of Israelis. The operational reality is that Hamas is simply the best advertisement for the political hacks in charge of Israel, the system perpetuates itself because the current situation provides leverage for both ruling parties. And it turns out when you have two antagonistic death cults, people die. Solution: don't get born a Palestinian in Israel? Depressing.
I don’t like it but it was a war. October 7 was a declaration of war. I heard almost no one complain about the “war on terror” and I’m sure similar collateral occurred.
For some reason people forget the pearl harbour event that happened before it all kicked off ?
Not trying to say it’s fine to bomb a hospital, but it doesn’t seem fair to single out the IDF. Do you whine about Hiroshima ?
It's been awhile since I've been in high school, but even back then standard public education was to discuss the topic very respectfully and to question the mainstream narrative that "more lives were saved because of it". It's not uncommon for US High Schools recommend Barefoot Gen as a supplemental reading on the subject. Americans largely feel complicated about Hiroshima and absolutely do not view strong critique of it as "whining".
In the PNW there is also plenty of discussion in public school about the shame of Japanese internment camps in the US.
As others have pointed out "The War on Terror" has been nearly constantly criticized by Americans since it's inception. Mocking it on the Daily Show was a fairly common theme even 20 years ago.
The war on terror, it might have been criticized in hindsight, but let's not pretend it was unpopular at the beginning...
It's been awhile since I've been in high school, but even back then standard public education was to discuss the topic very respectfully and to question the mainstream narrative that "more lives were saved because of it". It's not uncommon for US High Schools recommend Barefoot Gen as a supplemental reading on the subject. Americans largely feel complicated about Hiroshima and absolutely do not view strong critique of it as "whining".
So yeah, I'm sure many people in Israel have a complicated view of the events that happened post October 7 too. Yet people will mostly ignore all of that and go completely out of their way to criticize basically everything Israel has done.
I'm quite partial to it all, I just hate the hypocrisy.
If we did it today, with F-35s and precision weaponry and drones available to us? Absolutely.
I saw Israel using very precision weapons too. Warning people to leave areas etc. I even saw "live leak" style videos where people in Gaza were filming buildings because they knew precisely when they'd be demolished.
None of that was good enough though, clearly...war sucks, best to avoid starting one in the first place if you care about the welfare of others...people can say the IDF did all the wrong things, and you could also say it was stupidly reckless of Hamas.
For those people who are really unhappy with the IDF, also need to be eqaually unhappy with Hamas, else nothing will improve for the innocent people of the region.
As a person living on the border between New Mexico and Colorado on land that borders reservations and who drives past the site of a residential school pretty regularly, I completely agree.
There are modern European states refounded after the Allies pursued a deliberate and calculated policy of ethnic cleansing to ensure Germans would never be a problem again - in some cases going from 25% of the population prewar to 1% afterwards, with mass violence and rape included. Ethnic cleansing is only really frowned upon when you lose, or when you win so hard it's a convenient virtue signal and disapproval doesn't threaten the status quo.
Yes, it's definitely true the USSR engaged in forced population transfers and genocides, but I'm talking about the Allied (not just USSR) policy for Germans outside of the then-newly-defined German borders, since the USSR on its own is generally considered a 'bad' guy. The US and UK supported and endorsed what happened in this case.
Can we not politicize historical events? This is not historically controversial. The Czechoslovak President literally called it the "final solution" to their German problem. Or do you just want more examples? There are plenty.
If Serbs wanted their own ethnostate they should have spent the last century subverting the structures of power and media of the West. They didn't do that and the civilians of Beograd paid the price.
This must be the definition of pedantry. The point is *Israel deliberately destroyed an unconscionable number of hospitals, killing enormous amounts of real-life civilian people, actual humans like you and I. People with daughters, husbands, friends, people who were just as valuable as anyone else.
Pictures of a basically untouched hospital. The destruction is way overstated.
And let's look at the numbers. Hamas numbers are fantasy but let's pretend they're accurate. ~70k. I have not seen anyone contesting the Israeli database being combatants. ~9k. Note that even granting the most extreme claims this is still better than what western powers typically do--and it's in an unevacuated urban environment which is the worst case.
"Even then, humanitarian considerations relating to the welfare of the wounded and sick being cared for in the facility may not be disregarded. They must be spared and, as far as possible, active measures for their safety taken."
"Notably, an attacking party remains bound by the principle of proportionality. The military advantage likely to be gained from attacking medical establishments or units that have lost their protected status should be carefully weighed against the humanitarian consequences likely to result from the damage or destruction caused to those facilities: such an attack may have significant incidental second- and third-order effects on the delivery of health care in the short, middle and long-term."
> All the Geneva protections apply only to truly civilian things, not to things pretending to be civilian.
"The First Geneva Convention addresses the treatment of sick and wounded field soldiers, the Second Geneva Convention addresses the treatment of sick and wounded sailors, the Third Geneva Convention addresses the treatment of prisoners of war, and the Fourth Geneva Convention addresses the treatment of civilians during armed conflict"
> Your video is paywalled but also irrelevant as it shows emergency symbols
That is precisely why it is relevant. Israel's initial claim was that they didn't have any.
From the article we're discussing:
"After footage from Radwan’s phone was first published by the New York Times a few days later, the Israeli military backtracked on its claims that the vehicles did not have emergency signals on when Israeli troops opened fire, saying the statement was inaccurate."
"The Israeli military then announced on April 20 that an internal inquiry into the incident had found the killings were caused by “several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident.”"
It was "reported that", doesn't make it so. And note that one of the reasons noted was "lack of fuel". Gaza never ran out of fuel, it was an artificial shortage caused by Hamas.
Why do you say it's a lie that they lose their protected status? Read what Geneva actually says.
And I note yet another reference to "proportionality" as if it's some magic spell. Such usages imply the actions are not proportionate--but that is never actually addressed. Underwear gnome logic.
Citing chapters in Geneva is not a rebuttal. "Geneva" is yet another magic spell. I'm reminded of the repeated denials by Hamas of bunkers under the main hospital. And Israel came out and said there's no question they exist as we built them. Israel is very big on civil defense.
Night, not illuminated. And note that your summary of Israel's conclusions does not say whether the people actually were non-combatants.
You cannot quote Wikipedia on any topic (Wikipedia policy - cite the source, not Wikipedia) but especially matters to do with Hamas/Israel war. Even Jimmy Wales has noted severe issues with bias.
In general Muslims are not out to exterminate Jews. Jews are "people of the book". They are followers of Moses who is one of the most revered prophets in Islam. Jews are brothers and sisters and it is even permitted to marry them.
The issue is Israel state is far removed from the teachings of Moses and out to exterminate Muslims in the middle east. So naturally you can expect violent resistance.
There's no sleight of hand, just a horrifying reality. It's not just Hamas and Hezbollah. Civilians from Gaza participated in October 7 and poll after poll shows broad palestinian support for the destruction of Israel.
Support for Hamas itself is waning in Gaza due to their brutality, but Hamas began the war with broad support for their genocidal aims.
That is kind of a dishonnest take. You make sure to avoid mentionning that hamas is not only a terrorist organization. It is also an administrative body which has been bringing employment and services to a significant portion of the palestinian population while they have been constantly under strict embargoes, restriction and aggressions for decades.
You can't really criticize people to support the only org that pretend to care about them while the whole world seem to be against their own existence. Most palestinians would just want to live a peaceful normal life but have been expropriated and forced to live in a ghetto. How convenient to feign surprise and indignation that same people would have resentment against those that have been making their life difficult and at risk. Israel created Hamas.
You can draw a parallel to say, part of the colombian population that was supporting Pablo Escobar when the Medellin cartel was providing services that the government was failing to provide to the poorest classes.
You wrote:
"You make sure to avoid mentionning that hamas is not only a terrorist organization. It is also an administrative body which has been bringing employment and services to a significant portion of the palestinian population while they have been constantly under strict embargoes, restriction and aggressions for decades."
This sounds like:
"You make sure to avoid mentioning that the Nazis are not just a genocidal army of aggression, intent on genociding Jews and taking over Europe. They are also an administrative body that bla bla bla"
I wasn't simply saying that there was broad support for Hamas among gazan civilians, I was saying there was broad support for the destruction of Israel and the crimes against humanity that Hamas, along with a broad contingent of Gazan civilians, perpetrated on civilians on October 7.
My cousin was a Holocaust survivor, and he was utterly disgusted with what Israel was doing to Gaza - all the way back in 2014, before Israel completely leveled it and killed more than 20,000 children.
You keep comparing the Palestinians to the Nazis, which is utterly shameless, especially given that you support the side that has committed mass murder of tens of thousands of defenseless civilians and that holds millions of people under an apartheid regime.
Nobody is justifying Palestinian deaths, whatever that means. You don't know my position on the war, since I haven't articulated it here.
I'm simply refuting your earlier claim that only Hamas and Hezbollah is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, while regular Palestinians are fine with it. Hopefully you have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge your earlier claim was wrong, and there was and is indeed broad support for destroying Israel and its civilian population among Palestinian civilians. And not just intellectual support, but concrete actions. Are you familiar with the "pay for slay" program?
> I’m not sure why the Palestinians and allies are complaining. Their stated aim is the genocide of Jews and the destruction of Israel. That’s Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Yemen. And they’ve tried but are too incompetent to succeed.
It's not like the other side is peaceful and wants to make love and fight war. Israel has been violently kicking out Palestinians from their lands for the past 70-80 years. Before that, among 'Palestinians' there were Muslims, Jews, Christians and other religions coexisting just fine. The ambition to create an ethnic state of Jews only gave rise to misery for everyone and only grew the the intrareligious hate. They could have taken a different path and give us all, the rest of the world a break.
I feel like there were a few one sided wars we’re forgetting about… This is also a strange advocacy for British or Ottoman rule. Maybe you’re right, if the Israelies acted like their colonial forebears there would be less violence.
I think they could have done better but their interest is to drag it on and slowly take over the hole area (at whatever cost because somebody else pays) . Revisit who Yitzak Rabin was, who killed him and why. I'm so sick of financing this garbage through our taxes. I want our tax dollars to help out my nation not waste it on wars and enrich some psychopaths. If there was peace there we would be no need to create an Epstein though I admit I may be too naive in believing that.
Hamas and friends understand this and rely on western morality to protect them from complete annihilation. They may have miscalculated how often you could kick the dog before it bit back.
This is an important distinction. Anti-Israeli propaganda keeps echoing the false narrative of all hospitals having been totally destroyed.
The truth is that out of the 36 hospitals operating before the conflict 19 are still operational. That's a pretty far cry from 95%. There used to be 3000 hospital beds available and now there are 2000. There are also an additional 13 field hospitals.
That's a very different story (keeping in mind that Israel has taken control of large areas and any hospital that used to be there wouldn't be in use either).
Given the scale of the war and the documented use of hospitals for military purposes we have to expect there will be some impact:
Hamas has weaponized every hospital in Gaza. By contrast, Israel has not dropped an aerial bomb on any hospital building in Gaza.
What has happened is Israel has attacked hospitals with Hamas presence using ground forces, and they have dropped bombs on hospital grounds, but not in hospitals themselves.
Yes, it's specific. It's also a fact that is in direct contradistinction to the OP's claim.
Israel has also not fired any missiles at hospitals, with one exception (a small diameter bomb aimed specifically at Hamas that caused minimal damage).
...What an odd and dishonest framing of the problem. Do you define "hospital not destroyed" as "some walls are still standing"? Because an easy counterpoint to your claim is the Al-Shifa Hospital, which you will certainly agree cannot be operational in this state and thus can be defined as "destroyed":
Israel is an oppressive, genocidal, apartheid illegally occupying force. You can't compare the two sides.
Palestinians have been under this assault by Israel and Zionists in general for nearly a century. Defending anything Israel does at this point is indefensible. Their context has ALWAYS been wrong and they've been caught lying so many times it's more accurate to believe exactly the opposite of anything the IDF says.
This is wildly one-sided and basically incorrect. The Palestinians initiated multiple conflicts against the Jews, even before the foundation of Israel. The Jewish people beat them back every time, and this same pattern continued after the Israel's founding. What happened throughout history when someone beat back a hostile enemy that attacked them? The loser lost territory, resources, and freedoms.
Which isn't to say that Israel hasn't done some seriously unethical things, but this notion that the Palestinians are poor innocent victims that have never hurt a soul and carry no blame for their situation going back a century is absurd and ahistorical.
All the hospitals are now rubble, and the IDF quietly let it slip that the death toll is legit recently. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2026-01-29/ty-article/.p...
There's damning video of this specific incident, recovered from the dead. I suspect subsequent massacres made a policy of finding and destroying all the phones. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-isr...