If there is a rocket launcher set up next to civilians homes that is indiscriminately shooting towards civilians in Israel and there are civilians in that home (assuming that they stay in that home knowing that Hamas is about to launch rockets and know that Israel will stop it by destroying it), that an unfortunate loss of life will happen. It is terrible but to do nothing is just as terrible.
30,000 civilians have died in Gaza. Israeli military strategy prioritises damage over civilian safety. There are numerous accounts coming out of Gaza of the IDF indiscriminately firing at civilians, even surrendering hostages. At this stage, we can no longer simply shrug and say "this is an unfortunate consequence of military action" and we have to start accepting the reality that what the IDF is currently engaged in is simply harming too many civilians for it to be justified.
Not really. I’m sure that there may be cases that wrong has been done by Israel. The difference would be the exception vs the rule. If below is “justification for indiscrimitate shooting of thousands of rockets”… really?
I agree, it isn't. Which is why I condemn both what Hamas do and what Israel does.
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Big difference than indiscriminate murder that we saw in October
Gee, it's almost as if escalation is a bad thing. Kind of like how there's a world of difference between what we're seeing now and what happened on October 7th, at least in terms of sheer scale.
This one is hard. Could be true. If so… horrible. I say “could be” because we know that Al Jazeera, the news source, is a known to cooperate with false information.
Any actual evidence that this information is false?
Were there bodies? Yes. another source (which could also be doctored) said "Hamas has repeatedly used schools and hospitals, and grounds nearby, to launch attacks — both rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, and attacks against IDF forces in Gaza.” (Which is true) - and that the bodies were pilled up in the school. A lot of contradictory information so I don’t know other that “Could be and could be not"
Seems a lot of nuance you're willing to grant credit to Israel for.
Again, from your site:
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What’s true? Israel could be lying… as could Hamas.
that being said… Secondary explosions? Why is Hamas storing weapons at a mosque?
Boy, it sure is interesting how you carefully avoided acknowledging the HUNDREDS OF CIVILIANS THAT WERE IN THE MOSQUE AT THE TIME. Also, the independent investigation, which concluded:
"The report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (aka the Goldstone report) stated that the Israelis intentionally bombed the al-Maqadmah mosque on the outskirts of Jabilyah when between 200 and 300 men and women attended for their evening prayer, with fifteen people dying. The South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who led the fact-finding mission, said "Assuming that weapons were stored in the mosque, it would not be a war crime to bomb it at night... It would be a war crime to bomb it during the day when 350 people are praying".[13] Judge Goldstone referred to the incident as a case where there is no other possible interpretation for what could have occurred other than a deliberate targeting of civilians.[13] The report concluded that the al-Maqadma mosque was hit during evening prayers by an Israeli missile, killing at least 15 people and injuring 40 others. The report noted that there was no evidence that the mosque had been used to store weapons or that it was being used by Palestinian militants at the time.[5] The report further described response of the Israeli Government, alleging that the mosque was not attacked at all, as "unsatisfactory and demonstrably false".[14]"
Seems a pretty big omission by you, there.
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This doesn’t look like “indiscriminate shooting of innocent people” but rather a shootout
You think " 275 Palestinians were killed in a brutal house-to-house search for
fedayeen (while a further 111 were reportedly killed in Rafah)" sounds like a SHOOTOUT?
"Men suspected of having borne arms were executed on the spot, in their homes or places of employment, while all males from 15 years to 60 years of age were forced to muster. Two massacres of civilians then took place. The first occurred when citizens were machine-gunned down after being forced to line up against the wall of the Ottoman-era caravanserai in the city's central square.[13] Local residents claim that the number of Palestinians shot dead in this action amounted to 100, according to oral memories collected by Joe Sacco.[20] The other massacre took place in the Khan Yunis refugee camp.[13] Although Israel's purpose was to root out the fedayin from Gaza, the massacres were largely wrought on civilians."
Oh yeah, totally sounds like a "shootout", that.
Literally, you just engaged in denying a mass murder.
I would say Israel had the most wrong on this one.
Right. Now the question is, do you think that would justify any kind of retaliatory violence that significantly harms the civilian population of Israel, yes or no?
I didn’t check this one out since it is from the civil was in 1947-49
The point is that it's misleading to point to air strikes from Gaza as if they, alone, are the moral failing of the Gazans for which the hammer fell. We're talking about the culmination of decades of animosity, and the lion's share of it is a direct consequence of Israeli occupation, foreign policy and war crimes.
Not at all. When Israel is wrong - it is wrong.
Unless you call it a "shootout", or ignore all independent investigation, or don't read far enough down a Wiki.
In today’s battle for the freedom for Palestinians and for themselves, they are not wrong in routing ot Hamas.
I agree. Routing out Hamas is not wrong. What matters, however, is how one CHOOSE TO DO THAT. And if your operation to "route out Hamas" takes a form that KILLS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS, I reserve the right to suggest that, at the absolute very least, you are showing a reckless disregard for the lives of those civilians and conducting operations in a way that is morally and logistically unjustifiable, or, at worst, perpetrating deliberate war crimes.
As noted, apples and oranges. Israel doesn’t indiscriminately enter into any area and kill every man, woman and child
They're doing that now. That's literally what's happening right now in Gaza.
Yes… there is wrong on both sides in history.
How kind of your to acknowledge it. The question now becomes, how do we fix it in a way that does the least amount of harm to innocent parties?
But they aren’t. They are targeting Hamas.
And either doing an incredibly, INCREDIBLY bad job of doing it, or else using that a pretext to do
something else.
??? Great statement… where did you get that from?
GENEVA (19 February 2024) – UN experts* today expressed alarm over credible allegations of egregious human rights violations to which Palestinian women and girls continue to be subjected in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
www.ohchr.org
So you literally believe you can justify enacting war crimes on civilians as a collective punishment against terrorist cells.
Cool.
Count the billions to make tunnels and buy and produce all those weapons that should have gone to the Palestinians.
And Israel's doing their best to make sure those same civilians also now have the added bonus of having no homes, no food, no power, no water, and no safe place to go. But, not to worry, they're being provided with flour - if they're able to run the gauntlet of IDF fire to get it.
Weird how you pay lip service to "both sides doing bad", but then pin literally all ills on Hamas, as if Israel had no choice other than to commit war crimes. Good stuff.
Can and will when it is wrong.
I've caught you in this very thread selectively quoting from my sources to misrepresent them, and calling hundreds people being pulled out of their homes and shot a "shootout".
You're clearly less willing to call out the wrongs done by Israel and the IDF than you are to call out the wrongs done by Hamas. You excuse Israeli war crimes because "Hamas are bad and did bad things", as if doing terrible things
is justified by having terrible things done to you. This is playground logic.
I stopped here. The bell rang and we went to our respective corners.
Let’s wash our faces, take a breath and come back with solutions.
How about “hamas, surrender, let the hostages go so that we can let the Palestinians live life again?"
Not likely to happen, considering Hamas are practically a death cult at this point. Relying on them to do the right thing is most likely to produce disappointment. But it's not a good enough excuse for what Israel are currently doing. If you want to put all the moral responsibility on Hamas doing the right thing, and in the meantime we excuse any and all activities by the IDF as excusable,
then you might as well be suggesting that the IDF just wipe out all of the people in Gaza.
We have to start with a very distinct and practical acknowledgement of the fundamental right of the people of Gaza to live free and safe lives. We have to begin with the IDF willing to make a show to demonstrate that they actually CARE about the lives of people in the region. I thought the 30-plus trucks of aid would at least go some way to doing that, but then the IDF gunned down hundreds more civilians seeking aid and provided conflicted accounts as to why they did it.
How about a ceasefire, to start?