JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling. “Listen,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Sada as fighting raged around Shifa Hospital.
Kinda similar to the “human shields” argument. When I read comics growing up, when a villain takes a hostage the answer was never “kill the hostage” except for the edgiest of antiheroes, yet here we are with “human shields” being used as a justification to kill civilians. It’s fucking wild.
I wonder if a lot of people’s idea of war has been shaped by the recent American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which were wars of choice where at least in theory American soldiers were fighting largely for the benefit of the natives. Countries that believe they actually need to win and don’t have the option of just giving up and going home fight wars in a very different way. Consider for example World War II, the proverbial “good versus evil” war fought by the generation that originally came up with the comic book characters you read about. The Allies certainly didn’t hesitate to kill enormous numbers of Axis civilians in the course of destroying military targets. (IMO the Allies actually went way too far and a lot of the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan served no military purpose, but I suppose they were more worried about bombing too little than they were about bombing too much.)
The total war tactics of WW2 are unthinkable by modern standards, but it’s hard not to sympathize with an outgunned army fighting for their home. They fight because they’d rather die than lose.
Maybe instead of fighting people in that position, you talk to them and work out a peace deal. If they’re willing to be reasonable, end the violence.
If they’re willing to be reasonable
they’ve shown time and time again, through actions and words, that they are not
Exactly. Netanyahu and his gang of corrupt zealots can’t be reasoned with.
Do you think that Hamas will negotiate a peace deal in good faith?
Do you think Israel will?
Yes.
Hamas attacked on October 7th. Not the other way around.
Didn’t happen in a vacuum though, did it.
Do not confuse me saying that with sympathising with Hamas. It is possible to recognise that both sides have bloody hands, and have done for decades.
Can you explain what you mean by “Didn’t happen in a vacuum”?
Best I can figure is that you disagree with the act itself, but agree with their motives or desires. But I really don’t want to assume, and would prefer to understand from you.
Israel attacked, at a minimum, 17 years ago.
Blockading a country is an act of war.
So, in WW2, the vast vast vast majority of the fight against “evil” was done by the USSR, because the Third Reich had, as one of its pillars, the destruction of the workers’ movement and the enslavement of the Slavs. The USSR lost far more than any other party to the war because the Third Reich made the war of choice, dehumanized the Slavs, and engaged in genocidal mass murder as a choice. The USSR defeated 80% of the Third Reich’s forces.
On the flip side, the American and British government and business communities were pro-fascist. They funded the rise of the Third Reich, they funded domestic and international eugenics programs, they were deeply invested in apartheid states and women’s oppression. (By way of contrast, the Brits and Americans used women as prostitutes to support the war effort while the USSR had women all over their military as snipers, tank operators, pilots, machine gunners, etc.)
So given that context, let’s look at the end of the war and what happened after. At the end of the war, the US wanted to make sure that the USSR didn’t liberate the rest of Western Europe from the Third Reich because they were anti-communist. The USA led the Western allies to Germany to create a border with the USSR (also a member of the allies, remember). It was this insistence that divided Germany into East and West Germany. Berlin was in East Germany because the USSR was the predominant victor in the war.
But then what of Japan. Before the USA nuked Japan, the USA and Japan were negotiating terms of surrender. The USA had made a very strict and ultimately untenable set of terms. Japan replied that they needed some domestic face saving in order to prevent their country from descending into violent and bloody internal revolution immediately. The USA received that message, and then chose to nuke 2 civilian cities. There was no emergency. The US wasn’t fighting for survival. Everything had already been secured. The USA was in active negotiations and Japan was participating (albeit through third parties because of the political sensitivity). The USA made an active deliberate choice to nuke civilians unnecessarily.
Why? Because communism was their real enemy. It was the reason they got involved in the war, it was the driving force behind their strategic decisions. They got involved against communism, they went to Germany against communism, they partitioned Germany against communism. And they nuked Japan as a show of force, or to demonstrate how bat shit they were, to create conditions of fear and restraint.
But if that were true, then wouldn’t the USA have just launched a war against communism? They did. They launched wars of choice against Vietnam and Korea. They destroyed Cambodia. They bombed Laos. The most bombed countries in the world were bombed by the USA, with multiple countries having the USA drop more bombs on them than all bombs dropped by all parties in WW2 combined.
They continued their eugenics programs for 20 more years after WW2, they advanced their chemical weapons programs and deployed atrocity after atrocity in these wars of choice, mostly against civilians.
Are people in the USA used to wars of choice? Yes, because in essence all USA wars have been wars of choice, even before the USA existed. Was it a necessity to invade The Phillipines? How about Grenada? Overthrow the Iranian government? Afghanistan in the 80s? Was it an existential necessity to genocide the indigenous peoples of the Americas, poisoning their water, destroying their ecosystems, destroying their agriculture and their sources of food?
The entire Western European project, which became the North Atlantic project, is about wars of choice - brutal wars of choice of genocide through war, through rape, through collective punishment, through environmental devastation, through eugenics, through slavery, through death camps, through occupation and extraction. The number of necessary wars the USA has been in is so vanishingly small that the very few exceptions prove the rule.
If you kill hospitals, you kill a generation.
except for the edgiest of antiheroes
lol’d
Because Israel is committing war crimes. Because Israel has stated, unequivocally, that Palestinians are animals and must be scourged off the face of the earth.
And also because Hamas is using Hospitals as base of operations because they will get sympathy for it and human shields. No side is right here
There is clear evidence that at least some hospitals were alleged to be Hamas operation centers but in fact were not. But even if they were operation centers, would you still think it’s justified? How many Hamas members are worth how many “accidental” deaths of hospital staff and patients? Who would even dream of making such a formula? It’s sick.
The issue at hand is about hospitals being destroyed, not about the Israel-Palestine conflict on the whole. Please save your “no side is right” language for an issue where that actually applies.
Can you please reread what you just said? You’re saying it’s okay to kill children and innocent people in order to kill someone else you actually want to kill?
Hamas must be completely eliminated, period. No cost is too great, for the good of the entire world and all its future children.
Please explain your strategy which accomplishes that goal while not harming the human shields they’re using, and collect your Nobel Peace Prize.
No cost is too great
Eat shit.
" Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Not yours. Israel isn’t doing a thing in Qatar.
You’re either a liar or you believe in obvious lies.
I think you need glasses or some mental help because that’s not what I said. I am saying Hamas is committing war crimes by using the hospital and forcing Israel into war crimes by attacking the hospital. There is no good guy here. If you reread that’s what I said
So, if Hamas hid in a Israeli hospital would it be justifiable to bomb it?
Yes, actually - it would.
I’m sure Israel would afford the same evacuation warnings and assistance as well.
Israel had to tear down one of its own police stations in Sderot becausesome Hamas terrorists were cooped up in there after attacking it on the 7th of October.
“forcing”
Nobody is forcing Israel to do anything.
Hamas isn’t forcing Israel to commit war crimes.
According to international law they are. If they shoot from a school, Israel has to shoot back. Do they are forcing their hand
lol, Israel doesn’t “have to” do anything.
Could you cite that law for me? Because last I checked there is no such law forcing Isreal to shoot back, school or otherwise.
Intentionally bombing civilians is a war crime. I don’t care how many of your “intended targets” you think you’re getting. If you are bombing civilian centers, like, oh let’s say a hospital for instance, then you are a war criminal, Full stop. There is nothing forcing Isreal to do that.
Operation Cast lead.
Would you say the same thing is the US was the one shelling hospitals?
You really think using human shields is really a good excuse to bomb hospitals. “they’re using hostages! Quick teach those hostages a goddamn guided 2000lb lesson!”
Ok, let’s just let Hamas murder millions. They’re invincible because all they have to do is grab the nearest civilian.
Get the fuck outta here with that idiotic child logic…
Get the fuck out of here justifying genocide.
Never again was for everyone.
Look hamas killing “millions” is unlikely given they haven’t topped 5000.
Coolio. So lemme grab your kids take them hostage and you can tell me again that murdering me and your children is the only solution to hostage situation.
Operation cast lead.
Every accusation is a confession.
You clearly do not understand what a war crime is.
Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.
And before you bring up human shields, the only ones to do so were the Israelis in operation Cast Lead. Read up on it of you don’t know. If you do and still say this, then you’re a genocidaire and I don’t give a shit what you say.
Placing the Blame soley on Israel is misinformed at best
Oh, Hamas is airstriking hospitals and refugee camps too? No? They’re not? Only Israel is doing that?
Why wouldn’t this genocide be blamed on the ones committing it? Use your head.
Because that’s where the Palestinians are, and this is a genocide.
Given most people aren’t reading the article, the particularly relevant points:
International humanitarian law lends hospitals special protections during war. But hospitals can lose their protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. […]
In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued a warning to combatants that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes. And the bar for evidence is very high.
“If there is a doubt that a civilian object has lost its protective status, the attacker must assume that it is protected,” Khan wrote. “The burden of demonstrating that this protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the missile, or the rocket in question.”
TL;DR: If Hamas is conducting military operations from hospitals, they can be legitimate targets in the eyes of international law, but precautions still need to be taken to avoid civilian casualties and the case for their military use should be overwhelming, not amorphous or tenuous.
So just shouting, “They’re coming right for us!” Isn’t enough?
I’m shocked.
Because both sides are fighting are major assholes. Hamas does hide arms and fighters in and around hospitals. Israel doesn’t hold back attacking the hospitals to get at that gear, because they care more about killing Hamas than saving Palestinians. The civilians in Gaza are surrounded by assholes.
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Here you go
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8phw94
Rockets literally stored 1m from the doorstep of a class room
What a terrible headline. If APNews thinks it’s a war crime, it has a duty to say so. You can’t just write a headline like this without drawing the obvious inference.
Does that headline not read war crime to you somehow?
It is written in the passive. That’s intentional; it’s a classic approach that writers use to dodge the issue. It’s not OK and we shouldn’t excuse it.
Well it’s kind of open to interpretation, which may be why they didn’t want to directly say that, just imply it.
Article 19 of the Geneva convention:
The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.
Now are firing qassam rockets “harmful to the enemy”? Probably.
Has due warning been given? Maybe? It’s not well defined what that means. Does roof knocking count? Do you need to submit a form to their embassy?
I think the big problem is that the kind of warfare we are seeing here is unlike what they saw when they wrote those laws.
Netanyahu doesn’t give a duck.
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Because Hamas is using them as headquarters and hiding in them
You mean that “Hamas tunnel” that turned out to be a water reservoir? www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/11/8/investigation-disproves-israel-claim-of-hamas-tunnel-under-gaza-hospital
Why are hospitals in Gaza under Israel’s crosshairs? Why? Is it truly that difficult to step back and think for a moment about why Israel would want to erase the current populace entirely?
Amazing, what a mystery
Not sure why you’re being downvoted… Israel an ethnostate, and what we’re seeing here are the early stages of a genocide. Look at any other ethnic cleansing in history, and you’ll easily see the parallels.
Israel is definitely not an ethnostate. It has 20% Arabs. How many Jews does Palestine have?
Calling a state an Ethnostate doesn’t mean you’re saying the population is entirely of one ethnicity. It means one ethnicity is given a privileged status above all others.
Israel was founded when Zionists purged Palestinians from their homes and forced them into Gaza and the West Bank in order to create a Jewish majority state. That makes Israel an ethnostate by definition.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-arab-citizens-israel
That’s not a ethnostate you dumb fuck
They get treated better than minorities in Russia, China and blacks in the US
Ahh I see. So because Zionists haven’t been able to successfully cleanse all Palestinians from the region, Israel doesn’t count as an ethnostate. Don’t worry though because by God they’re still trying their damndest to make it happen no matter how many thousands of children they have to murder.
No they don’t, many surviving people who suffered oppression under apartheid south Africa have stated that the Palestinians are treated worse.
Israel has a law requiring Jewish people maintain demographic majority.
It is the definition of an ethno state.
Not only that, but it is a removed supremacist ethno state.
Look up how they treat the Beta Israelis.
They don’t even allow Muslims to marry Jews dawg
War does not automatically equate to being a genocide just because people due. Otherwise, every war in history would.be genocide.
There are Arabs & Palestinians that serve in the IDF too and have killed Palestinians. There are other Arabs in Jordan and Syria who have also gone to war against Palestine.
You are using incindiary rhetoric to win an online argument, but your description doesn’t fit the facts.
You’re literally using the same arguments every genocidal government has used to justify their genocides in history.
I don’t know why people insist on this narrative. Isn’t the truth horrible enough? Hamas is allegedly using hospitals as shields, which is horrible. Israel is willing to kill countless civilians to get at Hamas, which is also horrible.
Because it’s what Israeli politicians and government officials actually believe. They aren’t even quiet about it. It’s genuinely not hard to prove the genocidal intent of the Israeli government.
Unfortunately western media just tends to gloss over it all. I’m not sure if reporters can’t fathom the US supporting ethnic cleansing or if they just want to avoid the flack they’d receive by being honest. Either way, it’s unfortunate because well meaning liberals are left to assume Israel genuinely cares about stopping Hamas and aren’t using them as a pretext to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip.
Unfortunately western media just tends to gloss over it all. I’m not sure if reporters can’t fathom the US supporting ethnic cleansing or if they just want to avoid the flack they’d receive by being honest.
Please watch a documentary that covers any of the previous foreign wars the US has been in, especially those that came about before the internet boom (or better yet, one before and one after). I personally like to recommend the Panama Deception because it’s free on youtube and pretty short and succinct (only 90 min). On top of that Panama is still currently dealing with the issues started and maintained during the “wars” discussed in that documentary (I don’t knowing if you’ve seen about the ongoing Canadian mining protests).
The documentary covers some of what happened obviously, but it also shows some of the news airing at the time from the biggest American news channels that were covering the wars and how they covered it. You’d be amazed at what was claimed at home vs what was happening overseas. The MSM may as well have been a third arm of the US government. As much as they like to pretend to be neutral on domestic affairs which the people watching would easily be able to criticize, it should really be no shock to anyone that they’d mostly be parroting US gov talking points when it comes to foreign affairs.
Operation cast lead.
Humans shields was something the IOF engaged in.
erase the current populace entirely
Do you realize that the population of Gaza grows by over 50,000 people every year? Even if we accept the casualty figures provided by Hamas (and I don’t) then unless this war goes on at its current intensity for another four months (which it won’t) the population of Gaza will actually increase rather than decrease in the one-year period that includes the war.
The idea that the war in Gaza is “[erasing] the current populace entirely” is disconnected from reality.
I can’t imagine ever having such a cynical and apathetic worldview. All of this death is acceptable to you because more children will be born? Because they’ll be replaced?
Set a reminder on your calendar for March, and we’ll take a look at the news at that point. I have a sneaking suspicion that you may be surprised. While you’re at it set a reminder to get some therapy too, christ
Wow.
Are you literally saying it’s not a genocide because the population is growing faster than the IDF is killing?
I don’t know what happened to your brain, nor your heart, but I am sad whatever happened to you, happened.
You did use the term “erase.”. What about all the Palestinians living inside Israel.
Obviously it sucks that people are dying, but hamas started the war FFS. They 100% knew it would cause huge civilian losses.
If you think Hamas «started» anything, read up on the history. It’s a 75 year long illegal occupation.
Israel stated the war 17 years ago, minimum.
Blockades are acts of war.
This argument is the adult equivalent of grabbing someone’s hand and punching them in the face with it while saying “stop hitting yourself”
You should be embarrassed for even making this argument.
Civilian casualties aren’t the same thing as genocide.
genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
When a country with access to the full destructive power of a modern-day military (including nuclear weapons) fights a war in such a manner that at the end of the war there will be more enemy civilians than there were before the war, it is entirely unreasonable to claim that genocide or any attempt to commit genocide is taking place. You might as well call it cannibalism or pedophilia - those are also really bad things that Israel isn’t actually doing.
Keep telling yourself whatever you need to support your own narratives. I just wanna let you know that I think you are a cold-hearted person, and I hope that you, your family, or your people will never be thought of, as you are thinking and/or talking of the Palestinians right here.
They are deliberately bombing hospitals, schools and people fleeing. If you cannot open your eyes to see this, but rather argue about the technicalities of semantics to feel better, I wish you good luck in life.
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When you are arguing that words have no meaning, you have already thrown away your own argument.
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Intentionally withholding food and water when you control all ingress is a way of extirpating a population without bombing and shooting them.
But so is dropping more explosive power than the two atomic bombs used in Japan into an area the size of Manhattan in a month.
Do you believe the IDF is incompetent at doing a genocide then?
Yes.
Nothing is more corrosive to an armies fighting capabilities then an occupation.
This is literally the same language used for every genocide to justify it.
Yeah, I mean there are people in the Israeli Government calling all Palestinians (not just Hamas) “animals”, others who say that Palestinians won’t be allowed to get back to Northern Gaza and there’s even a member of that Government who seriously suggested Israel should nuke Gaza.
And then, of course, there is the long track record of Israel doing things like murdering journalists and killing Palestinian kids throwing rocks at their armored diggers, especially under governments with these same people in them.
People who have a track record of murdering journalists and children, bombing hospitals full of those they see as “animals” which they want to see dead or out of Gaza, and then providing to the World some unverifiable excuse that blames somebody else and doesn’t even pass the sniff test when it comes to proportionality in the use of force is hardly out of character, especially because History has various examples of people who think like that going full on mass-murderer in similar ways.
The way I see it, Israel is doing its best to free the hospital from Hamas with as minimum innocents getting hurt as it can.
If that were true, then they would be sending in troops on the ground instead of indiscriminate bombings.
There are troops on the ground and the bombings are not indiscriminate, but on legitimate military targets.
What does the civilian:soldier death ratio need to be in order for it to be considered a ‘legitimate military target’?
That not how that works the us tried that a few times in Afghanistan and the risk to their own people was too large compared to the lives saved which were next to none because of the hostage taking I know Israel is a shithole and Palestine is too but war isn’t as simple as just send people
So it’s better these children die than the soldiers killing them put their lives at risk?
From an outside perspective of course it isn’t but when you are a part of the military and you have the responsibility over your comrades lives you will do anything to protect them including killing people who you don’t know
Including commiting genocide and various war crimes?
I mean you have a point from a judicial standpoint and I’m not saying theyr behavior is ethical but I understand why they do what they do and i dprobablty do the same if it means my friends wouldn’t have to risk their life
Anything? Like punishing soldiers who kill innocent civilians including children and journalists during times of relative “peace”? Because that would surely have gone a long way to reducing the deaths of your “comrades”. Instead we have an Israeli sniper kill journalists and then the government says “they were armed with a camera”.
No. They are not doing everything they can to protect their soldiers. They are not seeking peace. They are seeking silence and subjugation.
No, they decided after a while that Afghani civilians were not worth the equivalent of an American soldier. And that was several years after the invasion which took literally less than a month.
Then they switched to bombing via drone, and Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize for convincing us that significant civilian collateral is a totally acceptable practice and definitely not some form of negligence for human life.
Even then, it was during the post invasion state. After the Taliban had been mostly destroyed and left in a dismantled state.
Israel just started its slow Gaza ground invasion. Bum IDF just barely stepped into the Urban zone earlier this week, yet they’ve been bombing civilians for the past month.
Obviously I don’t expect them to actually care about civilians or even the hostages, but I really wish they’d stop acting like they can’t actually engage in a proper ground battle.
Although with the tank kills Hamas has somehow been achieving, maybe the IDF really does suck at ground battles.
Right because they are responsible for keeping their soldiers safe
Because the Palestinian elected government which happens to be a globally recognized terrorist organization decided to build headquarters below hospitals in hope of exploiting the rule of war you mention.
Except: doing what they did negates that rule, and all they did was put that entire hospital of their own people in the crosshairs.
This blood is 100% on the hands of the Palestinian elected government.
Hey look, another person that would have shit on Nelson Mandela and the AFC in the 80’s for necklacing and being terrorists and not accepting the legitimacy of apartheid south Africa.
Because Zionism is a genocidal ideology.
Let this be a symbol of how much Hamas actually cares about the Palestinians. They prefer their own citizens to suffer than for them to be helped.
Go fuck yourself.
Fuck me for pointing out that Hamas are also the bad guys? Fuck you if you defend them you terrorist sympathizer
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You would have called the ANC and Nelson Mandela the bad guys in the 80’s if you were alive then.
No no, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t say fuck you. I said “go fuck yourself”.
Just to be clear, you are telling me to go fuck myself because I’m pointing out how shitty Hamas is? I’m not defending Israel. You are really taking the mask off there buddy. I would tell you to go fuck yourself, but I have a feeling you already do that anyway
No one cares about brown indigenous peoples bombed by white colonialists.
Even less care given when brown indigenous peoples bombed by other brown indigenous people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_civil_war
Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, by opposition activist groups, vary between 503,064 and about 613,407 as of March 2023
A lot of Arabs and Muslims have volunteered to fight Assad, and many foreign countries got involved in Syria
As bad is it was, it is nowhere near as bad as war on Gaza
