Netanyahu tells Israel ‘We are at war’ after Hamas launches an unprecedented attack, killing at leas

I actually just read the documentary novel Babi Yar. Why aren't they comparable? Dropping bombs on people is different from more personal executions, but both Israel and Hamas have dehumanized the other to justify virtually anything in their mind, bombing hospitals, torture, kidnapping, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, whatever. Those are all different things of course, but is there some kind of hierarchy of war crimes and atrocities that are justifiable? This Israeli government seems very capable of genocidal acts if given enough rope, they've already gone down the road of settlements and ethnic cleansing, TBH. What is the endgame here?

 

There is a difference between intentionally murdering civilians and the deaths of civilians resulting from collateral damage when bombing legitimate military targets. You can always make the legitimate argument that when there is a high probability of collateral damage in which civilians may be killed maybe the targets shouldn't be attacked from the air although even then the situations are nowhere near equivalent.

 

Dude if you drop thousands of bombs on civilian areas, that is 'intentional,' sorry. You know you are going to kill people, its part of the strategy. Gaza is a small place, and the people most likely to be above ground in any building arent Hamas fighters. They dropped more ordinance than we've used in entire wars and more than Russia has in Ukraine. There is no precision here. Whether a slip of the tongue or not Biden called it "indiscriminent." That's why they concoct this "human shields" nonsense. Just like we dropped the a-bomb on targets that had little military value, we invented a justification for that too. That's what happens. Might makes right, so who was going to stop us?

 

It is intentional, that is intentionally targeting legitimate military targets. Once again you can always make the argument that it would have more prudent not to attack those targets from the air based on the probability of civilian deaths it's still not the same as intentionally targeting civilians.

 

They bomb bakeries, they've bombed refugee camps to kill one guy, how is that a military target? A military target is an arms factory or something. Leveling an apartment building because you think some bad guys are in it, isnt precision bombing, its just cowardice or deciding civilians dying in large numbers are an acceptable outcome, probably because you dont regard them as people who should live anyways.

 

I don't know if there's a legal hierarchy. I personally feel like some acts are morally worse than others (for example, rape). Some countries have prosecuted their own soldiers for war crimes, and I was wondering the other day if groups like ISIS or Hamas ever punish their own?

 

I dont think you can be an effective fighting force without disciplining your own, so I'm sure they do. Now what they consider disciplinable probably varies, and there are PR considerations I'm sure. I think a lot of armies have tolerated rape in initial conquests as a way to "let off steam", but then crackdown on it when they are positioned as occupying forces and are trying to "win hearts and minds" or just keep the civilian population pacified.

 

Like I've said, anyone who can't tell the difference between what Hamas did and what Israel is doing is either an idiot or an anti-Semite(or both I guess). It really is that simple.

 

Depends. It’s quite a difference if they are using human shields in a ground battle vs. if they are just residing in a civilian space and Israel hits a building with a missile or a guided bomb.

Israel has 100% discretion as far as dropping a bomb on a building. The question then is how “valuable” is that target vs. how many civilian casualties are “acceptable”. I’d say if you are hitting a militant (and not some command center or a group of higher up leaders), it’s always going to be dubious to intentionally bomb a building where you know there will be civilian casualties. There’s no way around that, and Hamas knows this too, that’s literally what they want. With the tunnels and whatnot, makes you wonder how confident they can be they even hit their target in those scenarios.

 

The US will accept collateral damage when bombing known terrorists. Perhaps not quite as much. It is a matter of degree. Israel has decided that killing large number of civilians is an acceptable outcome in the process of defending themselves. Whether that is right or wrong is an opinion and a matter of degree. The US in prior wars has killed tens / hundreds of thousands in pursuing its national security objectives.

At one level I’d prefer they go about it more deliberately to minimize casualties, but ultimately I have a hard time second guessing them, in that they have to destroy Hamas, and at some level the population is complicit in Hamas’ existence and actions.

 

I suspect that lots of campus “ceasefire radical” are BLM/Antifa/Climate Crazies looking to attach themselves to the latest cause, whatever the cause. How else to explain “Queers for Hamas” ?

 

Hamas Will Be Anywhere That Israel Wants It To Be | Defector

 

If this is about self-defense, why cant Hamas and Palestinians decide what is legitimate to defend themselves from Israeli oppression? Why does only Israel have that right? Is it simply might makes right? Have the US on your side as a client state and you can do anything you want? You can justify almost anything by invoking self-defense, we see it all the time in other matters where people get killed senselessly.

 

"The photo op was reminiscent of every time an American police department spaces out all the bags of dirt weed on a table after an underwhelming drug bust."

 

Because we have different values and the values are incompatible. We feel it is acceptable to “unintentionally” kill innocents in an effort to defend ourselves. We do not think it is acceptable to do so intentionally, torture the victims, including women annd children and celebrate the act of doing so. Those are just our values. Islamists on the other hand think that is OK and even admirable. There is no way to reconcile the incompatible value systems.

 

We've done all those things, and have certainly given aid and support to people who do because they support our interests. Trump pardoned war criminals, and 'celebrated' what they did, because they killed people we dont like (Muslims). They can say the same about Americans as we say about them. Everyone always thinks their enemy is worse or somehow different and that they are the moral ones.

 

And yet you never respond to the faces showing that Hamas is using those civilian targets for their terror operations. You are even critical of sending troops into a hospital complex where hostages weee held, weapons stored, etc. Based on your reasoning, those operations are immune from any response because civilians where there. Which makes you an advocate for those terror operation directed at Jews.

 

"Terror operations" is extremely vague, isn't Israel responding to operations that happened outside Gaza? Would a response to that be to better security? We invaded Afghanistan because some Saudis blew up an office building NYC. It makes about as much sense. And excuse me if a dont think hostages are a concern for the bombing advocates who refuse to consider a ceasefire. Looks like extreme reciprocity to most of the world, as Israel has now killed far more people than were killed 10/7.