this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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Those conflicts all took place over years. The Israel war on Gaza is blowing through the roof the rate of civilian deaths, the level of indiscriminate targeting of civilians and infrastructure, and the amount of bombings of a small populated area. The conflicts you mention are largely Civil Wars and I am assuming total deaths of the conflict (as you do not share any sources). The War on Ukraine by Russia also has over the entire course of the conflict only had 10,000 civilian deaths according to the United Nations.
Yes, because this is a high-intensity conflict. Small area, lots of fighting and, unlike in most other conflicts, one side is doing everything to get the civilian death toll on "their side" as high as possible by hiding their military infrastructure behind civilians, stealing supplies and preventing people from leaving. Hamas didn't even build any bomb shelters for ordinary people even though they knew Israel would answer their massacres with bombings.
If they are targeting civilians, then why are they warning them?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67327079
Doesn't make any sense. If they were actually out to murder civilians, they'd certainly not be doing this and they'd also not need more than one bomb to kill a single Palestinian.
And yeah, of course infrastructure gets targeted in a war, because how else would you cripple the enemy's ability to sustain a fight, but that's not indiscriminate, because you can't indiscriminately target things. Either you target things, then it's not indiscriminate, or you are just lobbing bombs indiscriminately, but then you are not targeting things. Sorry to be all pedantic, but please at least try to use the most generic buzz words in this conflict in a reasonably logically consistent manner.
This isn't? If you support the whole "From the River to the Sea" nonsense, and it looks like you do, then this is one divided country in the midst of a civil war.
Mostly just this list from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts
That's only verified deaths. There were 10,000 fresh graves discovered in Mariupol alone:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-erasing-mariupol-499dceae43ed77f2ebfe750ea99b9ad9
The highest estimate for just that one city is 100,000 dead:
https://tsn.ua/en/ato/how-many-civilians-died-in-mariupol-a-city-council-deputy-revealed-a-terrible-figure-2390089.html
Probably/hopefully too high, but the truth is that nobody knows, except that the number of verified deaths are only a small fraction of the total in Ukraine. There are so many places in Ukraine that were simply wiped out - with no warnings for civilians, nor escape routes, unlike in Gaza.
Speaking of nobody knows, the fog of war in the Israeli-Hamas war is just as thick. The only numbers people are repeating all over, including most self-proclaimed experts and politicians, are those released by Hamas, who have every interest in the world to paint a picture as horrific as possible in order to put international pressure on Israel to end a war Hamas started so that Hamas can regroup and do the same thing all over again, as they have repeatedly announced.
https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-official-ghazi-hamad-we-will-repeat-october-7-attack-time-and-again-until-israel
Knowingly or unknowingly, you and so many other people are carrying water for this terror organization. What we should do is support Israel in the eradication of Hamas while also getting as much help to the civilians caught in the crossfire as possible and put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and surrender. The shorter this war is, the fewer people on both sides will suffer. For as flawed as Israel is, especially with the current government in charge, they are still the least flawed nation/group in the entire Middle East. Very low bar, I know, but that's as good as it gets. Have you ever thought how your country, no matter where you are from, would have reacted to an event like October 7? Even some bastion of democracy and freedom like Denmark would have probably done the same if not worse as Israel in response. This doesn't mean we shouldn't keep a watchful eye on this (hard not to, given the number of journalists per square meter over there) and influence Israel into fighting this war as humanely as possible, but again, let's not get hysterical.
aren't we like, three days removed from the IDF killing obviously surrendering Israeli civilians including a civilian they basically hunted down? the argument that Israel can't possibly be targeting Palestinian civilians because they "warn" those civilians seems to stand clearly at odds with even the simplest things such as "how they treat their own, surrendering citizens--much less the citizens of a state they don't want to exist"
...or we could actually solve the issue here by demanding Israel stop indiscriminately murdering civilians (the actual root of the problem and a thing that even Joe Biden kind of thinks they're doing now) in a misguided attempt to eradicate a terrorist group when the "shock and awe" strategy has never worked in contemporary warfare and has only guaranteed further resentment and conflict against the state doing the shock and awe!
We are a week removed from the IDF going forward and openly admitting to their soldiers having made a mistake and acting against both standard protocol and direct orders. As inexcusable as the conduct of the soldiers responsible for this is, the transparent and honest manner in which this incident was communicated to the public is exemplary. You are right that this does raise uncomfortable questions over how normal this kind of conduct of IDF soldiers is though.
The actual root of the problem is that the UN came up with a flawed two-state plan for Palestine in 1947, one that Israel agreed with and the Arab nations didn't, prompting them to fight a war over it. Which they lost, against a tiny isolated nation under a weapons embargo that literally had to salvage tanks from scrap yards as the attacking Arabs were using the latest gear. Then they tried a few times more, losing again every time and in between, various Palestinian groups have tried again and again to do their worst. Each time, they lose, each time, Palestinians lose territory and power as Israel gets stronger with each military victory, because that's how wars have always worked. Arab nations also occupied Palestinian territory for decades, oppressing Palestinians there worse than Israel ever did, but that tends to get glossed over these days.
When Israel does actually make concessions, like when they pulled all settlers out of Gaza, invited tens of thousands of Palestinians to work for several times the wages they would get in Palestinian territories, they get thanked with more violence in return, showing the Israeli public that extending the hand does nothing to calm this conflict down, so with each terrorist attack, they shift further to the right politically, electing politicians who promise strength and keeping Palestinians at bay instead of compromising. That's how you get injustices like indefinite detention of Palestinians. Cause and effect.
Do you even know that Israel was working on finalizing a deal for the Palestinians to get access to gas fields on the coast of Gaza, which would have given them energy independence and a huge influx in cash? Talks were ongoing until literally the day of the terrorist attack, but now it'll never happen.
i mean this is just cringe apologia for Israel, respectfully. "benevolently" stopping your settler colonialism in one part of the Palestinian state you don't want to exist and almost immediately transitioning into an ongoing permanent blockade of said part of that state after you do is not actual benevolence or a "concession" in any meaningful sense of the word--that should be the baseline expected of Israel. you're also completely ignoring, in saying this, the much more impactful apartheid under which Palestinians live and the encroachment of settlers in the West Bank that Israel aids, abets, and funds, and has for decades. in pretty much any other circumstance what Israel is doing to Palestine would be widely accepted as a casus belli for war. the implication underlying everything you're saying here is that the root of the conflict is all Palestinian, but that's demonstrably incorrect and actively revisionist to a point where i don't think you'd get most Zionists to agree to it.
I wonder what happened in between those two things. Have you ever looked up what the blockade was actually blocking?
If that's a casus belli, then so is October 7. Now what?
i think it is a moral imperative (or at least, unambiguously morally justifiable in all cases) to wage armed struggle against a country doing apartheid like Israel, so it's basically irrelevant for my purposes that Israel's justification for the blockade is "these people waged armed struggle against me"--the oxygen of that armed struggle as it currently exists is the apartheid. if anything it just demonstrates that Israel's government so devalues Palestinian life (as is also being demonstrated by their cavalier attitude toward murdering civilians) that it'd rather continue the oppression that's led many Palestinians to jihadism in the first place than ever reconsider whether that approach will lead to stability in the region and long-term peace
So unguided rockets vaguely aimed at cities, suicide bombers (including the use of children and mentally impaired people as suicide bombers), random stabbings, random shootings are "armed struggle" now? The mere fact that they are using children, old and handicapped people as suicide bombers, including in this current conflict, shows that if there's one side not valuing Palestinian life at all, it's Palestinian leadership.
Oh, and it's also statements like these:
https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-leader-ismail-haniyeh-we-need-blood-women-children-and-elderly-gaza-%E2%80%93-so-it-awakens
How on Earth do you deal with this kind of political leadership? It's not just Hamas, that's how all sorts of groups and Palestinian governments have fought for many decades. How do you achieve "long-term piece" in this kind of situation? Like I said, any kind of concession gets answered with violence and any past peace deal, including the last one that would have resulted in 95% of the West Bank in Palestinian hands, gets rejected by one side and one side only. The current settler problem wouldn't even exist had Arafat not walked away from the Camp David summit after saying no to every proposal. He lived out his days as a billionaire though, so I guess we know why he did it. I guess he feared for this power and wealth, just like Hamas' leadership with their billions. Gotta keep that conflict going so that aid comes in that they can then steal from the people right out in the open while delusional idealists - no offense - meander on about high-level concepts like apartheid and oppression, blind to the actual reality.
well yes, definitionally, that's how armed struggle is manifesting in Palestine currently. there's nothing you or i can do about that.
but that's a little besides the point, which is that i think you at most selectively take issue with morally depraved military actions. almost everything you're charging Hamas with has an established and equally immoral analogue in Israel's strategy toward Palestine to this point. it's conspicuous to me, for example, that you do not seem to comparably weigh Israel damaging or destroying 70% of Gaza City with Hamas's unguided rocket attacks--especially given that both have led to large numbers of civilian deaths? like, do you think that 70% of Gaza City harbored Hamas militants, or, alternatively that it was militarily necessary to do that sort of damage even though it was inevitable large numbers of civilians would be caught in the crossfire? that seems like the only way for this to not boil down to vibes of who's "good" and "bad"
and mind you, i have no issue with saying that Hamas is a depraved terrorist group who should never be in power and that it's very, very bad for the region that they are now the primary credible opposition to Israel in Palestine. if i had my way, they would be unilaterally eradicated in favor of Fatah who at least seem willing to work toward a peaceful resolution. but i don't have a magic wand, and Hamas does not exist in a vacuum. the Israeli state is directly complicit in making them that primary credible opposition, both through its military strategy and through selectively looking the other way when money and weapons are funneled through back-channels to the group. even Israeli outlets admit to this sort of arrangement under Netanyahu.
I honestly don't know, but I can guess why they are doing it that way. I read one report that in one suburb of Gaza City, almost half of all buildings were rigged with explosives by Hamas. In another place, there were traps using speakers that played children's cries, in yet another location, Hamas used an old man as a suicide bomber. How do you fight in such an environment? Israel is choosing a cautious approach using air power and tanks, which limits the risk to their own soldiers - and successfully so, given the low death toll on their side we've seen. I totally get that they are prioritizing that over protecting civilians that have been taught from the crib to kill all Jews. Should they instead choose a riskier approach that might endanger their own people? I think every nation would prioritize their soldiers over civilians from the opposing side. It's still awful, there's no way around it, but seriously, what choice do they have? It's just terrible options and those in charge in Israel have to pick the least terrible one.
Fatah has a "martyr's fund" worth hundreds of millions that they use to pay out to the families of those who die in the fight against Israel, including members of Hamas. They paid millions to the families of terrorists who died during the October 7 attack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_Fund
Abbas literally has a PhD in Holocaust denial. Fatah are really no good options either and on top of that, they have zero credibility among Palestinians due to how ineffective and corrupt their government is.
They also did it, because they thought they could pacify the group, make them interested in governing and enriching themselves instead of waging war. It seemed to have worked for a long time, as evidenced by billions siphoned off into in off-shore accounts, but hindsight is 20/20. The thing is though, there was significant international pressure against Israel to allow these funds into Gaza, including from foreign governments and humanitarian groups, many of which are now using the fact that the Israeli government permitted the transfer of these funds against it or are even frequently distorting it into "Israel funded Hamas" or "Israel created Hamas".
Like I said, there are only terrible options. This seemed like the least terrible one at the time and since there are no magic wands, there are rarely ideal solutions.
respectfully: if you yourself have to begin an answer to these questions with "I honestly don’t know," and then go on to talk about how Israel might be prioritizing its own soldiers over civilian life because even the civilians "have been taught from the crib to kill all Jews," perhaps you can understand how some of us would conclude that Israel might not care very much about Palestinian civilians and consider them both acceptable collateral damage or actual military targets based on the sheer number of them they've killed to this point
I think we should all do that, including you.
I didn't make that part up:
https://unwatch.org/un-teachers-call-to-murder-jews-reveals-new-report/
Seriously read this, including the full report. It explains so much about this conflict.
They care less about Palestinian civilians than they do about their own soldiers, but they care enough about them to invest massive amounts of resources into warning them, into getting aid to them and into getting them out of the parts of the strip that are most dangerous to them. That's more than can be said about anyone else in this conflict. Is it perfect? Hell no, but nothing in this world is and nobody in their right mind would expect them to be perfect.
We don't even know how many have died. Seriously, we have zero clue, only made-up numbers from Hamas - who also don't differentiate between civilian and military deaths, by the way - and rough estimates from everyone else. All we know for certain is that thousands have died. That's it. It took Israel weeks to come up with the total death toll on their side after the October 7 massacres and that's in a much more controlled environment, yet everyone immediately accepts whatever the "Gaza Health Ministry" under full Hamas control pumps out. I've lost count of how many have sent me articles from BBC, Reuters, NYT and whoever saying that they reported on the numbers and I should take them seriously and yet every single time, these articles cite the same Hamas organization or someone who cites them.
Again, this is a terrible war and thousands have dying in it, but it's not just a war of bullets and bombs, but also one of information being used a weapon, including misinformation, like completely nonsensical comparisons that I debunked earlier. So many educated, well-meaning people appear to lose all sight of reason, anything resembling critical thinking skills in this and for what? Do any of these people really think that it actually helps Palestinians?
Do you not think that Israel has any responsibility for their targeting of civilians?
Israel is purposefully using dumb bombs (nearly half of all the thousands and thousands and thousands of explosives used on civilian population). They may be claiming to target some valid Hamas target, but the use of dumb munitions that can go hundreds of meters off course shows that is just not true. They are bombing indiscriminately with the explicit goal of the greatest destruction possible, impact on civilians, and genocide.
Warning them of what exactly? And to go where exactly?
Israel has admitted to regular bombing of safe zones. The UN is investigating over 50 instances of such tactics. They are certainly not giving civilians time enough to pack up their lives with their supposed warnings.
This is just pure evil.
This is the most unserious statement. Get real.
Even the Biden administration believes the Hamas figures are accurate. So does the UN, Amnesty International, WHO, and every other international aid organization. If anything, the count is low since Israel wiped out every hospital in the region and Palestinians are now just doing mass graves wherever they can.
__
Knowingly or unknowingly, you are supported a genocide.