[Drops flyers with warning message saying “we will attack soon; flee, those who can!”]
[Attacks the refugee camps, oh and also hospitals]
100% assholes. 👌 Equal to or worse than the Russians, I swear to freaking God.
I don’t think I remember hearing about Russians bombing Ukrainian refugee camps (though I could have missed it).
Seems like Putin sees civilians as an inconvenience that get in the way of his goals. For Netanyahu, it seems as though killing the civilians is the goal. I would say that the latter is objectively worse (though they are both pieces of shit).
Russia intentionally bombed a ton of civilian targets with zero military value. It’s weird that you don’t remember this. There’s even a lengthy Wikipedia article specifically about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_civilians_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
Yeah, I seem to remember a lot of cruise missiles hitting apartments and schools.
That’s exactly what came immediately to mind for me as well.
Now that you mention the apartments bombings, I do remember seeing footage of that. You guys are right
Yeah I wish Bill Clinton wouldn’t have done that
Not to mention eradicating close to the entirety of the military-aged male population in Donetsk and Luhansk by forced conscription.
I might grant Putin though that he’s only doing a cultural genocide, that is, the attacks on civilian infrastructure have the actual military goal of breaking resistance – which is known to generally not work, hence why it’s a war crime. He’s perfectly fine with people staying alive as long as they bend the knee and become Russian.
the attacks on civilian infrastructure have the actual military goal of breaking resistance – which is known to generally not work, hence why it’s a war crime.
I think it’d be a war crime even if it generally worked.
That’s the pacifist answer but no that’s not how war crimes work: The rules of war aren’t about avoiding bloodshed, they’re about avoiding pointless bloodshed, pointless from the point of winning an armed conflict, that is. If you can shorten a conflict and spare millions of lives by killing a couple thousands of civilians, well, a couple thousand is less than millions. War is erm dispassionate like that, a hard-nosed calculus.
Hence why you also get rules like the ban on hollow-point bullets: They’re more likely to kill than to disable. Killing combatants, however, is less effective at binding up enemy resources and thus not a sound military strategy, using them means that you care more about killing people than winning the engagement. If, OTOH, the enemy started killing all their wounded soldiers instead of expending medical resources that reasoning would cease to apply and you’d be justified using hollow points. (Which are btw in ample use by police forces because they ricochet much less, leading to less injured bystanders, but you generally don’t have bystanders on the battlefield. Similarly tear gas is allowed for police use but outlawed for war because it could get confused with a nasty chemical attack very easily, possibly leading to a very nasty escalation when the attacked force responds in kind. Also for the record there’s plenty of legitimate uses of white phosphorous, tracer rounds and smoke screens all use it, the banned use is as an incendiary weapon anywhere close to civilians but that’s not special to white phosphorous, that’s a general thing about incendiary weapons).
Russia is bombing no less indiscriminately than Israel, it’s just a much larger theater of war, their aiming capabilities suck and their shit gets shot down a lot before ever reaching anything.
They do the exact same thing day in day out. Taking out a cluster of civilians is probably worth an extra ration of vodka or even worse, a promotion, at this point.
Two wars of terror, if you want. Irony is stone cold dead at this point.
[citation needed]
Do you really need citations over russian war crimes in Ukraine?
Okay.
Wikipedia has a nice summary, feel free to browse the sources yourself.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
…and just because I’m nice, here’s a little something about the booze, which really was just me joking a bit, but sadly there’s some truth there too. From The Hill:
"…The British Ministry of Defense identified heavy drinking as “particularly detrimental to combat effectiveness” of Russian troops, significantly contributing to the high death rates.
The use of non-alcoholic drugs by combatants, such as opium, heroin, cannabis and amphetamine, has historically been equally widespread, and the Russian military today is no exception."
Putin sees civilians as an inconvenience that get in the way of his goals. For Netanyahu, it seems as though killing the civilians is the goal
Yes exactly, that was basically my point, that Israel is actively attacking civilians almost exclusively (it feels like to me anyway).
If that were actually true, deaths would be several orders of magnitude higher. They have the munitions and capability to kill significantly more people.
Bottom line is that anytime you conduct war in a dense urban area, or conduct a ground assault in a populated area, civilian casualties will be high.
Bombing refugee camps, hospitals, schools and just plain carpet bombing districts does not seem like the IDF gives a shit about trying to minimize civilian casualties.
We have tons of footage of Russians and Ukrainians engaging each other in battle. There’s no such footage from IDF, and whatever we got from Hamas looks like guerrilla fighters doing hit and run strikes on mostly armor. You know why? Because Israel is not engaged with “Palestine” in a war. Nor with Hamas. Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing in their own ethnostate.
You can say that - but seemingly also can’t explain why the death count isn’t stratospherically higher if that was their goal.
Asymmetric warfare always sucks for civilians. The whole point is knowing who a civilian and who’s a combatant is intentionally difficult.
Hamas doesn’t wear uniforms, because they’re terrorists and not a government or regular army.
death count isn’t stratospherically higher
You also can’t prove how much higher the death toll would actually be, because we’re all just speculating fools. You are using an argumentative fallacy, which is “you can’t explain why this hypothetical thing isn’t occurring” when it doesn’t really have to be occurring. Can’t remember which that is. Red herring? Straw man? Ah, I can’t remember.
Anyway, we’re going by what we’re seeing, which is the bombing of innocent civilians. Terrible, terrible state of the world right now.
I can’t say exactly how many people they could kill if they were targeting civilians, but I can with certainty say it would be significantly more than have currently died.
They could drop many more bombs and shell the entire strip for weeks. These aren’t hypotheticals - we know they have the armament to do that.
There are around 20,000 people dead - out of almost 800,000 in Gaza. If their goal was a maximizing death, they could have killed significantly more. They certainly have the ammunition and means to do it - and that’s not a hypothetical.
Your downvotes remind me of the Reddit hive mind. But you are obviously 100% correct and anyone over the age of about 25 knows it.
It has been almost 3 months since the Hamas terrorist attack. If Israel was trying to kill as many civilians as possible, as you said, the death toll would be orders of magnitude higher.
So many people commenting here have no sense of historical perspective at all. I see people using words like “astounding” and “world record” and “genocide” to describe the death toll in this conflict. It’s hard to know where to start with that level of historical ignorance.
They’re wildly different wars from a population density per square mile perspective.
So maybe 2,000 pound bombs weren’t the right weapon?
There are no good weapons for densely populated areas. Civilian casualties will always be high in populated urban areas unfortunately.
Especially when you’ve cornered that population in an open air prison before bombing them.
Egypt could open their gates if they wanted to.
So Israel can displace the whole population of Palestine? That’s genocide. You’re pro genocide.
There are better weapons though. Also, shooting people who are trying to evacuate through your lines is generally considered bad. Compressing the population into a smaller area that you’re using 2,000 pound bombs in is also bad.
Nobody is expecting zero civilian causalities, but this is obviously the most inept army or a professional army conducting a genocide.
But if it were a professional army conducting a genocide as you allege, wouldn’t they be much better at it? This is where I keep coming back to.
I would agree with “professional army that is ranking military value significantly higher than minimizing civilian casualties” but that isn’t genocide.
They don’t have to be doing it systematically to be doing it. And participation would still likely vary between units. It’s an extremely difficult thing to do psychologically. So some units are pulling all the military age men out to shoot and others are just shooting whoever they happen to see that’s not in an IDF uniform. Both are genocidal acts.
fr Israel is worse than Russia
so much worse tho
Israel casualty ratios make Russia look positively positive
They have provided proofs about the hospitals… and also the refugee camp is a big city. it’s just called that
Hamas should stop hiding in hospitals.
Even if that was the case, the IDF have no moral high ground when attacking the hospital. That just makes their job of killing Hamas harder. Hamas is an irregular force, a terrorist organization. They don’t follow the rules of war. But IDF is a regular army and should act like one lest we see them as a terrorist organization too.
If a dangerous criminal is found milling about in a crowd of people, even if some of of the people are sympathetic to him, the police don’t get to just mow the crowd down to get to him.
Exactly this. Hamas forces are shit for using hospitals and schools as shields, I’ll grant that. But the IDF is a proper first-world military force, and should act the part. Dislodging an occupying force from a command center or strongpoint that also happens to be full of civilians shouldn’t involve bombing the place flat with civilians inside, especially when it’s clearly marked as a noncombatant area (like a hospital or a school). The US Air Force did that, with camera and audio footage that showed the crew knew they weren’t in the right, in Afghanistan (the Kunduz hospital airstrike, 2015), and were roundly vilified for it - why should we not hold Israel to the same standard?
Extremely based. Makes perfect sense; no sarcasm. Well phrased. ❤️
Do you realize that a “regular army” would level the place entirely with airstrikes and artillery? --Because that’s what would be most expedient and cost the fewest Israeli lives and least money overall.
Eh, the army is pretty regular, and they still went house to house.
This wasn’t a hospital. They don’t a get a pass to bomb a refugee camp today because Hamas fighters hid in a hospital last week.
Hamas should stop hiding in refugee camps too…
Extend the logic, come on.
It is well known hamas hides among civilians. That is the main reason there is so much civilian collateral damage. Hamas themselves said it is their strategy ffs.
And Israeli officials (Netanyahu, Gvir, Smotrich, etc.) have stated that their goal is genocide. How do you feel about that?
No they havent lmao.
The worse netanyahu has said is that he prefers a one state solution and that hamas existing is useful in polarizing people towards that solution. That doesnt mean genociding arab muslims, because there are plenty in israel.
But no person in israel with any substantial support believes in genocide.
Is Hamas an army or a terrorist organization? Make up your damn mind
They are both. How is that hard to understand? It is a decentralized organization that fits both roles depending on the faction.
Stop making sense this is lemmy
You might as well have said “this” or “le bacon”
I see ads in TV that are pro Isreal now with Santa crying because of Hamas kidnapped people. I know it’s what about ism but not really moral high ground here when IDF literally wipes whole familes.
Its not what-about-ism.
Being accused of attacking civilians and saying the enemy is attacking civilians to divert attention is what-about-ism.
Crying that the enemy is attacking civilians while you are also attacking civilians is hypocrisy.
Calling out your own/allied government for attacking civilians and trying to hold them accountable even if the enemy attacks civilians as well is being a good person.
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i’ve heard only about 4% of israelis support bibi now. it’s like saying all americans are (whatever) because of trump. every religion feels like “the ones” and every hard right leader is horrible and deadly.
all Americans are nazis because they like trump 👍
Too many of your comments come across as anti-semitic, removing. Temporary ban.
Israel is trying to justify more murder
whataboutism is perfectly valid here
What Where are those ads Here we dont have anything similar and we would prolly wont even accept it
There’s a billboard in San Diego trying to convince commuters that Hamas is their problem too. Which is completely ridiculous.
They literally knew this was coming and attacked Israel anyway. They knew because the response was harsh and disproportionate last time and ten times prior to that. Blood is on both sides’ hands. Hamas hiding behind civilians is not helping either.
I also understand their desire to fight oppression, but it’s obvious they can’t and will never be able to win war of any kind. Their fight must be done through different means.
Bomb Hamas until you can see China through the crater, I really don’t care. But most people living in Gaza did not choose this and are just caught in the middle.
I imagine you would not be happy if your whole apartment building with your family inside was bombed because your neighbor assaulted an officer.
That’s my point, although not as cleanly stated. To me this whole thing is Hamas kicking hornets nest then running away and hiding while civilians get stung. And this repeats every few years. And no point has anyone sat down and thought: wait maybe this is a bad idea.
Yeah, they are terrorists. They don’t care about civilians. Big surprise.
The concerning thing is that Israel and US don’t seem to care about them either.
They are political party of Gaza. That’s why the recent ceasefire condition was for Hamas to leave Gaza
The thing with terrorism is the moment you show weakness they will keep exploiting that and repeating what works.
You don’t fight terrorism with bombs though. You fight it by humanizing their victims, using police raids by high level units capable of reducing collateral damage, and fulfilling the needs of the population that feels oppressed enough to create terrorists.
The thing with terrorism is the moment you show weakness they will keep exploiting that and repeating what works.
True, but how you show strength to counter that matters, especially to the civilians caught in the middle.
I get what you’re saying. And might even agree with elements. But it is easy to say it’s futile to fight when you aren’t in a position to need to. Doing nothing in this case means resigning not just yourself to being under their oppression, and not even just your friends and family. It is resigning your entire culture to a slow painful death by attrition. They are losing more and more land, rights, and any hope of progress. Like… if someone is strangling you, do you fight back, or just resign yourself to it? And that’s before we even get into the fact that those complying and not fighting are still being killed. Those not fighting and wanting to leave were lured to slaughter. Not fighting is an illusory choice.
Yes, quite a few resistance movements use the oppressor’s harsh tactics against them. India and Ireland come immediately to mind.
I agree with most of what you said but you’re very much misunderstanding the point of resistance insurgencies if you think their aim is to “win” in the conventional sense, i.e. conquer and hold territory. Despite the propaganda, death and destruction, Hamas are fighting the IDF to a strategic standstill. Israel’s stated aim is the complete destruction of Hamas and they are nowhere near achieving it, which alone will be win enough in Hamas’ eyes and will strengthen them no doubt. One purported goal for Hamas was to inflict a situation so awful that there is no way the world could just return to normal after it, which I would argue will have happened by the time the dust blows over. They also aimed to stop Arab-Israeli diplomatic normalisation, which has been set back at least 20 years or so. Of the two belligerents, I would argue Hamas has actually been more successful in its aims.
If someone invaded your home, locked you in a cage, and then started casually murdering your loved ones while calling it “mowing the lawn”, you would also be doing anything you could to make it stop.
Yes, Hamas knew this would happen, but for most people in Gaza, choosing to die hiding or choosing to die fighting is the only choice they get in life.
So it’s not sad and shouldn’t be fought against?
it is sad. and a who city should not be levelled in response. that’s just common sense.
which is obviously why there is a concerted and expensive campaign of you tube adverts to create a counter narrative to around 10,000 kids being bombed and killed.
What’s your alternative?
Do you really not see any other alternatives to what is happening?
sounds like a lack of empathy and imagination. both make talking to you redundant.
I’m open for suggestions. What’s your suggestion?
You can only see genocide as a viable solution?
I’m open for suggestions. What’s your suggestion?
Move to Gaza
Well the Israelis did exactly that
Somehow, I get the impression that you aren’t about to argue that what has happened to the Palestinians is sad and that they should be fighting against the people who did it to them.
Somehow I noticed that no one here is giving any real arguments and just keeps going for personal attacks. Makes you wonder.
Guess you’ll have to take your wits all the way to the New York Times
And yet no actual argument given
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I can tell you without a doubt that as long as the US backs Israel this will not happen.
Yup. Two words: Vee, and toe.
US backing leaves Israel invulnerable tbh
Aw man. My original comment was removed for incivility. Apologies to the mods. Thanks for not banning me on the spot. That’s appreciated.
Gotta say it’s difficult to remain civil in the face of a genocide.
What my original comment said, without the incivility, was:
I hope Israel and it’s military end up at the international court at the Hague and go to jail for crimes against humanity and that the world finally tells Israel to back off and go back to the borders that were drawn in the 1967 UN Security Council resolution.
lmao mods here ban for anything nowadays
I wasn’t banned. My comment was deleted because I wasn’t very civil. Lots of f-bombs and stuff.
I think it’s alright to try to encourage a more civil discussion where we can argue by challenging each other’s arguments without using profanity.
You are referring to the return of the “land for peace” idea from '67; but, Israel engaging in that peace process and returning said land (that was won by conquest during a defensive war in '48) merely resulted in the '69 war and '73 invasion. Since then, Arab leaders have completed a 180° about-face from their stated position of “no recognition, no peace, and no negotiations.” By beginning to normalize with Israel, they have also begun to remove the need for a “land for peace” process, in large part because of the land Israel has already given back.
Ok well I might have gotten confused over what was signed over which year.
What I was basically trying to say is there was an agreement at some point over the land borders. I might have been the original ones or some other ones later. In any case Israel needs to revert what they’ve done and give the land back until they go back to that border that was agreed upon.
Although, I doubt that even that will bring peace to the region after what they’ve done.
fuck off and go back to the borders that were drawn in the 1967 UN Security Council resolution.
Yeah I ran across this awhile ago posted by Björk, and have been wondering if it’s factual. Paints a bit of a different picture of the motivations of Palestinians in general if true:
I’d be interested to see the 2023 version.
Fuck Israel, Fuck Hamas, and Fuck the U.S. for consistently supporting extreme collateral damage against civilians.
If I would have to put it in order of damage in this war i would just switch hamas and US
more bombs for everyone
- us, probably
At what point does this go from being a counter terrorist operation to a genocide?
A long time ago.
🔫 Always has been
When there is a deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians. Not just attacks done with little care for civilian casualties, but attacks where the civilian casualties are the entire point. We aren’t there yet, despite what armchair philosophers will say on this site. Israel is being reckless, callous, and is certainly commiting war crimes, but unless the Palestinians are being intentionally targeted for the sheer goal of killing as many Palestinians as possible, it doesnt fall into the definition of a genocide.
You don’t get these numbers without a complete disregard for civilian life, the rate they are killing average Gazans is astounding, they are only barely upholding a thin veil of plausible deniability.
See that’s the difference though. A genocide isn’t a complete disregard for civilian life. Genocide pretty specifically regards civilian life because the civilians themselves are the targets. Callous indifference isn’t the same a genocide. You can say I’m being pedantic, but words matter. Calling it genocide when it doesn’t fit the definition not only cheapens the word, it also cheapens your message.
It’s been a genocide since the Nakba. The US just refuses to call it that because we’re funding the damn thing.
Israel is going to remove Hamas
about a month and half ago
At what point is a people who’ve been violently relocated into an open air prison (more densely populated thank Tokyo) responding to their attackers with violence in kind terrorism ?
I mean the bit where they killed their own hostages because they were so horny for killing civilians made it pretty obvious if you weren’t already convinced
A lot of comments are saying that hamas hides behind civilians but from what I see and read hamas and civilians are a melting pot that is interwined due to the extreme oppression in gaza strip. Any palestinian civilian could understand and help or even just not condemn totally hamas due to their conditions and prolly Israel gladly label as hamas any slightly suspect palestinian top
If you know that your enemy is hiding behind civilians and still kill the civilians, you’re the bad guy.
It’s a piss poor excuse for murder.
Yes is basically what i said in the last sentence. Sometimes u just can’t untie civilians and fighters, especially when you are actively radicalizing civilians daily
Sometimes u just can’t untie civilians and fighters,
Then you figure out another way of getting to your enemy. There are rules to War.
You don’t get a ‘get out of jail free card’ excuse to murder civilians.
especially when you are actively radicalizing civilians daily
Bombing them in refugee camps will do the same thing. That is, if they survive the bombing.
Wait maybe I am expressing myself wrong, I agree with you 100% and all the words i was writing were to confirm your pov :)
Wait maybe I am expressing myself wrong, I agree with you 100% and all the words i was writing were to confirm your pov :)
Astroturfers will use debating tactics like seeming to be positive about a point while actually wording it so that it comes off as slightly negative, etc., especially so if they’re expecting a lot of pushback.
I wasn’t sure if you were doing that or not, but the ‘attitude’ of my reply was based on your original comment…
A lot of comments are saying that hamas hides behind civilians but from what I see and read hamas and civilians are a melting pot that is interwined due to the extreme oppression in gaza strip. Any palestinian civilian could understand and help or even just not condemn totally hamas due to their conditions and prolly Israel gladly label as hamas any slightly suspect palestinian top
In your original comment you didn’t specify your own opinion of why that was right/wrong, you just stated it as fact, and left us to assume either way.
So my suggestion would be next time to elaborate more with a second paragraph, either agreeing or disagreeing with what you stated in the first paragraph.
In their defense, it was pretty clear to me what they meant from the get-go and your replies seemed unnecessarily hostile.
In their defense, it was pretty clear to me what they meant from the get-go and your replies seemed unnecessarily hostile.
I truly don’t think I was being unnecessarily hostile, as I did assume they were astroturfing in a stealthy sort of way (as I described). For that matter, the fact that you’re defending them makes me suspect that you too are astroturfing to protect them.
The onus is on the speaker/commentor to speak fully, if they want to be understood fully, so that assumptions are not made, and misunderstanding do not happen. Trust me, I learned about that recently myself here on Lemmy lol.
I stand by what I said.
Though You’re mostly right, it’s missing a key part: the Israeli government has actively worked to make it this way, sponsoring Hamas with money and help because they wanted this. If you have an extremist organization so intertwined in the civil population, you can just go and murder them all.
Hamas is evil, but the Israeli government is arguably worse
Thanks for the add! Now is perfect
if everyone is Hamas Israel can justify killing everyone
thats what i see everyday
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Hamas is literally the government of Gaza so
An army should go around civilians to get to their enemy, not through them.
yes but then that won’t achieve Israeli goals
I was speaking about any army from any country.
And they were speaking about how Israel would prefer to kill as many Palestinians as possible, and that Hamas is just their excuse for doing so.
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That’s pretty fucked up
The only world record you do not want to achieve without looking like a complete monster. And yet Israel managed to do just that.
That is not even close to the world record. Killing 250 people in a day isn’t good, obviously, but it is not even a rounding error compared to real warfare.
Just considering conventional weapons, the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9–10 March, 1945 killed approximately 100,000 people.
Rip
Citing… Wikipedia?
Wonderful.
and israel is Beautiful in usa!
