Reply With QuoteSounds familiar, like Europe in the 30s....
no need to say the word.
The world's most moral army can now cross book burnings off the list as its soldiers, among other things, take pictures of them setting fire to a university library:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/livebl...books-in-gaza/
Sounds familiar, like Europe in the 30s....
no need to say the word.
Well this one is definitely new:
https://abcnews.go.com/International...y?id=113754706
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle...es-2024-09-17/
1000s of pager-type devices hand bombs in them. These were used to send text messages because they feared phones were easier for Israel to track. Somebody clearly planted these bombs then set them off, and there wouldn't be many suspects other that Israeli intelligence who have both the motive and capability to plan something like this.BEIRUT, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Militant group Hezbollah promised to retaliate against Israel after accusing it of detonating pagers across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding nearly 3,000 others who included fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut.
Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary condemned the late afternoon detonation of the pagers - handheld devices that Hezbollah and others in Lebanon use to send messages - as an "Israeli aggression". Hezbollah said Israel would receive "its fair punishment" for the blasts.
However it doesn't seem like something that would de-escalate the conflict. Whoever did this wants a "shooting war" and to capture land. Possible done by far-right elements in Israel who overlap the government and security forces.
That's the real problem of Israel.Originally Posted by Cipheron
Oh I don't know, I think putting 2,000 terrorists out of action in one fell swoop is a pretty handy way of cooling things off.
Compared to indiscriminate bombing of schools and hospitals and other civilian infrastructure with no regard to civilian casualties, this is way less morally questionable and it's undoubtedly a tactical victory, putting a significant number of Hezbollah militants out of commission for days or even weeks, not to mention forcing them to completely overhaul their communications network and security protocols. Also, Netanyahu needs a prolonged conflict, so escalation is pretty much in his interest.
As for the pagers, if y'all want a deeper dive on this from a lawyers' perspective, well first on the military planning perspective, the tactical and strategic military logic make a surface sense. You put a lot of fighters out of commission and you make the remaining and future fighters paranoid to use tech for communication, disrupting their planning and coordination. I'm not really qualified about the military sense at a deeper level. There's a flavor of this taking a next step into device-based & cyber-attack-like physical attacks, or black op style attacks (using normal-looking devices as weapons) that might be problematic for the military to set as a precedence, but I'd rather listen to what a military expert has to say about the bigger implications than try to speculate. But I think a lot of militaries have been increasingly shying away from black op or hybrid (mixing civilian & military features) style attacks for good reasons, although cyber and information-based attacks is kind of the new frontier in warfare.
Under the laws of war, well if we put it in terms of if there was an actual war crimes trial, the operation on its face violates the principle of discrimination (military operations must distinguish military and civilian targets), since there's no way the Israeli military can know the situation of 100s to 1000s of separate devices at the same moment they push the button to detonate them. There's not even a defense there; the violation is on its face.
There's already cases well legally establishing that using normal-looking devices and hidden boobytraps as weapons (door traps, exploding cigars and pens, etc) violates the principle of discrimination. I think there are also already cases about phone detonated IEDs being indiscriminate (particularly when the caller isn’t directly watching the target); and you can’t really distinguish this from that line of jurisprudence; or it'd be a challenge for the defense lawyer to try to.
In the wilds of comment sections they’re trying to give the defenses that the lethal radius is so short only a wearer would be killed, and the wearers could only have been Hezbollah members. I don’t think those defenses could withstand scrutiny in an actual case. To begin with, again, the gov’t didn’t actually take any measure to discriminate the wearer, so that defense probably fails on its face, and the “blast radius” defense is a kind of wishful thinking you’ll in other similar cases that usually doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when the device actually gets tested, but I’ll grant that’s a question of fact that should go to a lab. The non-discriminating mechanism of targeting is sufficient for the legal charge though.
There are people trying to argue that indiscrimination leading to a risk of civilian deaths is justified in the circumstances (e.g., terrorist opponents that themselves use indiscriminate attacks, etc.). That’s mixing apples and oranges. They're effectively arguing that it's permissible that some civilians may be killed under proportionality analysis. A targeted strike on a military target may cause civilian casualties that don't make it illegal if they took all reasonable efforts to avoid civilian harm, the number is not disproportionate to the military value of the target, etc. But this case is a discrimination charge, not a disproportionality charge. I'm just saying that's not really a defense in this case.
People are pointing to indiscriminate attacks by Hezbollah, mostly against the Druze kids killed by Hezbollah rockets. Of course that's not a defense to an indiscriminate attack by Israel either, although that is certainly a war crime on Hezbollah's part. There's a deeper layer there as well since the land of those Druze communities was occupied and annexed by Israel, which much of that population opposed, putting them in a similar position as Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza. That’s another aspect in the story of ultimately arbitrary discrimination of who gets to be “Israeli” that the government has a duty to protect among very similarly situated peoples, but that discussion has to be for another post. The punchline here is just that indiscriminate or illegal attacks from one’s opponents are no defense for your own indiscriminate or illegal attacks.
This is all just about, if there was a case, this is how the case would be rightfully decided, e.g., if you blanked out the names of the parties and looked at it as a law school exam question. The ICC is making some tepid effort to bring arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas officials that haven’t been going anywhere, and even if they were issued there are challenges to enforcing them. But outside of that it’s hard to see any actual legal process brought over this or other illegal attacks by Israel or Hamas (hard to imagine Israel would allow any legal process against Hamas without opening itself up to scrutiny), which is another type of problem in itself. And of course Hezbollah is a foreign force based in the territory of Lebanon that the Lebanese gov't has a duty to address, but there are well known barriers to that also; that's another layer of the problem. But even if there’s no process or sanction, that’s still not making any of these attacks legal (Hamas on Oct 10, Hezbollah's rockets, Israel's pager attack, and countless others).
Last edited by demagogue; 18th Sep 2024 at 12:01.
No one will care about war crimes trials unless Israel decides to tie up Netanyahu and hand him over to the Hague or something. But in any case, laws of war or Geneva Conventions are completely out the window in the Middle East. To put it simply, Israel's enemies do not follow the GC, so Israel has no obligation to follow the GC. It's a two-way street.
You need to put 200.000 terrorists out of service if you really want to give a blow. 2.000 will be suddenly replaced.
Iran's ambassador to Lebanon has lost an eye because he was carrying one of these pocket fireworks. So the question everyone should be asking is why does an Iranian government official have a Hezbollah-issued pager in the first place.
I note with amusement that the telephone pager was invented by the late Jewish-Canadian Al Gross. I am sure he could not have imagined it would have been used to defend his people in this manner.
Legally it's not.
Most war crimes and the big international crimes like genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, etc., are peremptory obligations, which means there's no justification or excuse under any circumstances, including violation by other parties.
For normal treaty obligations, if another treaty member violates a rule, other parties are justified in violating it or associated rules as a countermeasure to induce compliance if they meet certain conditions (but in no case can you ever violate someone's rights doing that; so that rule wouldn't apply here even if these were normal treaty rules). But that doesn't apply to these rules in int'l humanitarian law or the law of armed conflict because they're preemptory to begin with, so you can never violate them even if you found a way to do so without violating anybody's right to life or other important right (which you can't really). Not that I thought you were even trying to make a legal argument here.
Anyway, there's politics and there's law, and the job of civilization and good governance is to make the two meet so injustice and violations don't run rampant and impunity set in. If you want to focus only on the politics side, it's a meager, sad, mean, and fraught existence we don't have to accept.
To lawyers, who assume words on paper are reality, sure. But in the real world, in WWII for example we treated German prisoners of war well not to get goodboy points from some international body of lawyers, but because we were hoping to get good treatment for our own prisoners.you can never violate them even if you found a way to do so without violating anybody's right to life or other important right (which you can't really).
As for Israel, they know muslims are going to slaughter any jewish civilians they can find, anywhere at any time. So they have no incentive to avoid killing civilians themselves. Not to mention that they can't determine which muslims are fighters and which are civilians in the first place, since Hamas wears no uniforms and hides in civilian homes/buildings.
This is absolutely not the case, and is a gross distortion of the truth. Two million Muslims live happily in Israel, where they enjoy more civil rights than they would in any nation in the Arab world, serving in the army, judiciary, Knesset, and even captaining the national football team. It is only a minority of Muslims, chiefly those within the Iranian sphere of influence, who pose a threat to Jewish people.
And some of those folks "living happily" helped pass information to Hamas to execute the Oct 7th attacks, but sure, keep trusting them....
I have to respond to your comment, as it seems to get repeated here time and time again. Israel does not bomb indiscriminately, and in fact goes to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas launches their rockets from civilian sites, such as hospitals. Israel responds by firing back at those sites. It is Hamas' responsibility to protect their citizens. In every war, civilians die, and since Oct 7, Israel and Palestine are at war. What is your estimate or latest information as to how many Palestinian casualties there are, both militants and civilians, and what is your source?
EDIT: I found this interesting conversation related to the topic.
Last edited by Qooper; 24th Sep 2024 at 18:48.
If Israel seeks to minimise casualties, how then do you explain the massive civilian casualties, most of whom are women and children -- by default non-combatants? How do you explain the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, bakeries, archives, universities, etc? How do you explain Israel blocking food and medicine from reaching Gaza, to the extent there is starvation in Gaza and widespread outbreaks, including quite serious diseases such as polio? If the response to Hamas using civilian infrastructure (and that's assuming you take Israel's statements at face value) is to destroy nearly all infrastructure, how is that not indiscriminate? How is Israel using bombs that US has forbidden their forces to use in urban areas not indiscriminate? How is setting fire to libraries not indiscriminate? Exactly what military value does a library have?
Last edited by Starker; 24th Sep 2024 at 22:10.
Are they massive, in comparison to similar conflicts? My understanding is that the civilian:combatant ratio is, depending on who you listen to, either average, or on the low side.
Even according to Israel itself, the ratio is at least more than half: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle...ed-2024-07-25/
Also, compared to what similar conflicts? WW2? https://apnews.com/article/un-report...da5c6a25001e12
Last edited by Starker; 25th Sep 2024 at 02:29.
In most cases you can group women and children like you've done here, but not when it comes to islamic terrorist organizations. Hamas is training children in military camps and issuing them rifles, effectively making sure they will be among the casualties. Hamas knows they cannot win by force, so they fight by maximizing their own civilian casualties (launching rockets from amidst civilians, gathering children around the launch sites) in the hopes that Western support for Israel suffers. I'd say their morbid, deceitful strategy is effective. Palestine would rather sacrifice their own children than let Israel exist.
There are two things here you could be referring to, so I'll answer them both. First is the hospitals, universities etc. inside Gaza. For that, there is undeniable proof that Hamas uses such buildings for military purposes. Even though the events in the Al-Shifa Hospital remain unclear and controversial, there are Hamas tunnels connecting North and South Gaza running under the Turkish Hospital and Israa University.How do you explain the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, bakeries, archives, universities, etc?
The other thing you could be referring to is the "buffer zone", which is an approximately 1km deep border area that Israel is creating on Gaza's side by evacuating the civilians to safe zones and demolishing all buildings. The reason Israel is doing this is to prevent another Oct 7 attack coming from Gaza. It is terrible that the civilians are forced to relocate to safe zones, but it is preferable to being caught in the crossfire. It is not by any means an easy situation for Israel, as their enemy won't rest until Israel has been wiped off the face of the Earth. How do you deal with that?
Israel isn't preventing food and medicine from reaching the civilians in Gaza. They are directing it to the designated safe zones where they are urging civilians to go to.How do you explain Israel blocking food and medicine from reaching Gaza, to the extent there is starvation in Gaza and widespread outbreaks, including quite serious diseases such as polio?
https://youtu.be/wXcdHt73fM8?t=216 (And if you watch that entire video, there's more on the buffer zone I mentioned earlier.)
In fact Israel is vaccinating Palestinians against polio:
Israel isn't destroying nearly all infra. Like I mentioned before, there are the specific sites that Hamas is using that Israel is targeting, and then there's the buffer zone. Israel is putting a lot of effort into saving civilian lives, whereas Hamas is doing the exact opposite and is in fact butchering civilians, including children, up close and personal. That AP news article you linked had a reference to another AP news article with pictures of Hamas' methods, blood splattered in a child's room. There is a difference between civilians dying in a warzone and a terrorist coming after a child brutally taking their life. Israeli soldiers aren't raping women and children, Israelis aren't dragging dead bodies of civilians with cars as the crowd on the streets cheers, Israelis around the world aren't chanting "God is great!" when Palestinian civilians die.If the response to Hamas using civilian infrastructure (and that's assuming you take Israel's statements at face value) is to destroy nearly all infrastructure, how is that not indiscriminate?
Israel is running out of JDAMs and as such they're using non-guided bombs that are less accurate. I don't necessarily agree with that, but they're doing the best they can in a very difficult situation. I can understand you'd call it indiscriminate, but Israel's intention is not to kill civilians.How is Israel using bombs that US has forbidden their forces to use in urban areas not indiscriminate?
I don't condone setting fire to a library unnecessarily, and neither does the IDF. In every army there are individuals who go too far, break the rules and commit crimes, but what determines the character of an army force is whether or not they accept such misconduct and what they do about it.How is setting fire to libraries not indiscriminate?
That depends on whether or not it's used by militants. If I'm not mistaken, in this case it wasn't, and it didn't have any military value.Exactly what military value does a library have?
According to that Reuters article, in August the Palestinian health authorities said the death toll was at more than 40000. In May Israel said that 14000 militants and 16000 civilians had been killed in the war. Like you said, a little more than one civilian per every militant. But that is still much less than in the history of urban warfare, and certainly less than Hamas' ratio.Even according to Israel itself, the ratio is at least more than half
Last edited by Qooper; 26th Sep 2024 at 13:36. Reason: Added a link to a CNN video
Hamas is a terrorist organisation. Killing civilians is their MO. Israel, however, as a state that's ostensibly bound by laws and rules of conduct in war, has directly killed tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children. More children have died in Palestine than in the entire Ukraine war. Israel is actually more indiscriminate in waging war against Gaza than Russia is against Ukraine. Moreover, these are children of all ages, from newborn infants to prepubescent teenagers. Casting these victims as future terrorists is an irresponsible line of attack you should frankly be ashamed of. Not to mention that the teenage and adult men who have died in these attacks are hardly all Hamas fighters either.
There is no disputing that there is an extraordinarily high number and ratio of civilian deaths, even by Israel's numbers, but independent sources, such as Uppsala Conflict Data Program, place it far higher: https://aoav.org.uk/2024/netanyahu-g...gaza-is-a-lie/. And that's just people who have been identified or reported, not accounting for people who have simply gone missing or died without anyone being there to report their deaths, such as whole families being wiped out. Entire family names have now gone extinct. And this is not even considering all the indirect deaths, for example by disease and starvation, which are higher still. This is not a war, this is a massacre.
Also, among the civilian casualties, an extraordinary high number of aid workers and journalists have died. In fact, more journalists have died in this war than in any previous war in history. The Committee to Protect Journalists has furthermore determined several cases where journalists have been directly targeted despite being clearly identifiable, including even direct killings by snipers.
One case of Shireen Abu Alekh in particular is notable where she was killed by a sniper and people attempting to help her were also shot at, to ensure she would have no chance of survival. At her funeral, her pallbearers were attacked by Israeli police with batons and stun grenades, so they nearly dropped the casket. Also, the police attacked the hospital from where the funeral procession took place, wounding medical staff and patients. Oh, and I should mention that this took place before the Hamas attack. This was done by what Israel claims to be the "world's most moral military" and, presumably, the "world's most moral police" even before the full-scale invasion of Gaza.
Gaza is a city. There are no military facilities in Gaza. Hence, any building Hamas uses is by default a civilian building. Even then, places like hospitals have an especially high bar of justification for attack according to laws of war, even if members of Hamas would be present or treated there. Israel has shown no such justification. Rather the presence of Hamas has become a convenient justification for any attack that claims a high number of civilian lives. Especially convenient as there is no requirement for proof whether someone is or isn't affiliated with Hamas.
Also, a large number of houses have been damaged or destroyed completely. Hundreds of thousands of houses have received some damage, with more than half the homes being either partially or completely destroyed. Nearly 1.9 million people have been displaced from their homes. This corresponds to the stated goal of Israel of turning Gaza into a tent city. In addition to homes, hundreds of schools, museums, libraries, and religious buildings such as mosques and churches have been systematically destroyed in what can only be described as cultural genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destru...the_Gaza_Strip
Israel has repeatedly prevented food and medicine from reaching Gaza. 83% of food aid required does not reach Gaza, meaning most people only have a maximum of one meal per day, below the 1000-2000 calories required (depending on the age). Tens of thousands of children require urgent treatment for malnutrition: https://www.nrc.no/news/2024/septemb...-data-reveals/
Last edited by Starker; 26th Sep 2024 at 14:05.
That is a ridiculous claim and you know it. russia isn't warning any of Ukraine's civilians before a strike, and russia brutally tortures Ukrainian civilians in torture basements just like Hamas does. But if you really are serious, then I'd like to see your evidence for your claim.
Starker, you ran out of straw, building that one, didn't you? Sounded more like an emotional reflex outburst than the collected response by an educated, civilized individual such as yourself. I did not cast these victims as future terrorists, and I launched no attack. Please re-read that first paragraph of mine. I have argued in good faith with you, and I except the same from you. There are only two possibilities: either you made an honest mistake (and that's alright, we all make such mistakes sometimes), or you did this on purpose.Moreover, these are children of all ages, from newborn infants to prepubescent teenagers. Casting these victims as future terrorists is an irresponsible line of attack you should frankly be ashamed of.
Last edited by Qooper; 26th Sep 2024 at 15:05.
Is Israel warning all of the civilians before it drops highly destructive bombs on them? Sometimes it bombs even areas where it directs people to flee to, though I would assume this is due to incompetence rather than malice. And, warning or not, if you kill the civilians after warning them, the end result is still the mass killing of civilians.
Also...
What do you call dropping a bomb on a refugee camp if not indiscriminate?https://apnews.com/article/israel-ga...ea22458472a796
The JDAM bombs include precision-guided 1,000- and 2,000-pound (450-kilogram and 900-kilogram) “bunker-busters.”
“It turns earth to liquid,” said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon defense official and a war crimes investigator for the U.N. “It pancakes entire buildings.”
He said the explosion of a 2,000-pound bomb in the open means “instant death” for anyone within about 30 meters (100 feet). Lethal fragmentation can extend for up to 365 meters (1,200 feet).
In an Oct. 31 strike on the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya, experts say a 2,000-pound bomb killed over 100 civilians.
You said I cannot point to women and children among the civilian casualties because Hamas trains them as terrorists. How many women and children do you see among Hamas fighters? I'm perfectly calm, but making such a statement and furthermore demanding an apology after saying something that offensive goes well beyond a civil discussion.
Last edited by Starker; 26th Sep 2024 at 15:10.
I never said you couldn't point to women and children, I specifically referred to grouping them together. I don't understand how you read my paragraph that way. There are many children among the casualties because the ones that have been trained to be Hamas fighters are among the militants that Israel is targeting. There is nothing offensive about stating that fact. Hamas is training school-aged children. I didn't say that the children that aren't Hamas fighters are somehow future terrorists, you added that one in as if it was something I said.
I edited my reply because I realized I got a bit emotional myself.I'm perfectly calm, but making such a statement and furthermore demanding an apology after saying something that offensive goes well beyond a civil discussion.
EDIT: I don't know if I'm making my point clear, so I'll try once more. There are many Hamas child fighters. If you group women and children under a single statistic, you get a number that is inflated by militant casualties. There is nothing offensive or uncivil about stating this.
Last edited by Qooper; 26th Sep 2024 at 15:23.
Okay, then. Give me an estimate. Among the thousands of children, how many would you say were Hamas fighters taking part in combat operations, assuming that Hamas would be so stupid to accept such a liability when there is no shortage of recruits? 10%? 50%? 90%? Exactly how many child soldiers do you think Hamas has?
Even if more than 50% of the children killed were Hamas operatives, then Israel has still killed more innocent children in Gaza than Russia has in Ukraine.
Also, do you think torture does not happen in Israel's prisons? Do you think Palestinian detainees and prisoners are treated fairly and according to international law?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ar...li-prison-hell
Ashraf al-Muhtaseb is a musician who described leaving Israel’s jails with no hearing in his left ear, four fractured ribs and a broken hand, so ill and weak from hunger he could no longer walk.
Dropped at an Israeli checkpoint on his own, he says he began crawling towards his home in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron, until a passerby picked him up.
Muhtaseb’s wife fainted when she saw him, and his son asked: “Who are you, and where is my dad?” Picked up on 8 October 2023, he was not charged before his release on 7 April this year.
In those six months, the 53-year-old said, he passed through three Israeli prisons, enduring a marathon of torture, abuse and humiliation detailed in an interview, backed up by medical records and photos that show the impact of multiple beatings and of losing 30kg (66lbs) of body weight.
He said his hearing was destroyed during an attack in his cell in Ketziot prison in November. “I was beaten and kicked in my back, my chest and my head. I had one side of my head against the wall and was getting blows on the other,” he told the Guardian. “The next day I couldn’t hear.”
The abuse, starvation and humiliation he said endured was part of a pattern described repeatedly in eight other interviews carried out by the Guardian, and dozens more done by the human rights group B’Tselem. They described abuse so widespread and systemic that it must now be considered state policy, said the group’s executive director, Yuli Novak. Israeli jails had become “torture camps” in which at least 60 Palestinian prisoners have died in detention since 7 October 2023, she added.
Prisoners said they were subjected to regular severe, arbitrary violence, including sexual assault. None of the prisoners interviewed by the Guardian left detention without experiencing or witnessing some form of attack. Other abuse and humiliation was constant, from starvation rations to denial of access to basic hygiene supplies including sanitary pads for women, soap, towels, clothes and clean water for drinking and showers.
B’Tselem’s descriptions of systemic abuse echo those raised in private by an unlikely ally: the domestic intelligence service. In June the Shin Bet head, Ronen Bar, warned prison officials of a “crisis” that threatened national security. In a leaked letter he says Israel is vulnerable in international courts to “well-founded” claims of committing the war crime of inhumane treatment and violating the convention against torture.
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