If your suggested law of war isn't 'majority or ruthless minority, get to do everything they want because they have more causalties', than you need an alternative. The alternative is the current laws of war, which allow for strikes with collateral damage (what Israel says it's doing), but not for terrorist attacks aimed at civilians.
* Suicide bombers, Iranian mullahs sending kids with 'plastic keys to heaven' to dismantle minefields, or current refusal of Hamas to allow civilians to use its tunnels as shelters. We could fill the page with examples really.
** Funny, I don't recall opposition to America's post 9/11 response based on counts. Almost as if the same rules don't apply.
The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities: Israel’s argument is that they don’t have to follow the laws because Hamas is breaking them.
Very much on the margins if any. The overwhelming consensus ignored these considerations.
>The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities.
This is wrong. Medical facilities can be struck if they are used for war.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/08/504815234...
Moreover, this is not what happened in Gaza - there were raids but not dropping bombs from airplanes, the former being much less destructive.
“Collateral damage” is one of those bloodless wartime euphemisms for killing innocent men, women, and children. It’s a dirty, unavoidable reality. But I don’t believe for one second that Israel’s hands are so sufficiently constrained that the current degree of civilian death is necessary. I say that as a Jew, with family in Israel, who I worry about.
Not true.
I certainly wouldn’t refer to “the US did it” as a cite for “it’s not a war crime”, but that article appears to be saying they attacked a place not thought to be currently active as a civilian medical facility.
Just do a web search restricted from 2001 to 2007 for discussions of the civilian death toll.
That is neither what the laws of war say, nor what the Israeli argument is (or at least, it's a misrepresentation).
The laws of war say that if a medical facility (or any other civilian infrastructure) is used by militants as part of the war effort, then it loses its protected status. Israel's argument, whether you agree or not, is that this occurred, thereby making those targets legal.
It's not a just a euphemism, because there really is a difference. Justified or not, Dresden wasn't collateral damage - it was directly targeting and killing innocent civilians. Collateral damage really is something different.
> But I don’t believe for one second that Israel’s hands are so sufficiently constrained that the current degree of civilian death is necessary.
(For the record, I'm Israeli)
This is a hard question to answer. No one actually knows, because given fog of war and given the incentives of both sides, it's hard to get real numbers for what's going on. Not to mention that what even counts as "necessary"? Obviously zero civilian deaths is the only legitimate goal, but just as obviously this is impossible to achieve in practice. (I'd also add that zero deaths of militants is the goal, if possible - anyone that can be stopped by arresting them or causing them to surrender should be dealt with that way - though obviously this is even harder to achieve.)
Given all that, I think a few points I'll say, again speaking as an Israeli citizen with my own particular biases:
1. While I highly mistrust our current government (like many Israelis), I certainly don't think most of our government would condone killing civilians completely unnecessarily. At least not the ones in charge, mostly.
2. More importantly, I trust the IDF a lot (and this is probably a big difference between me and most non-Israelis). While I'm sure that not literally every civilian death is legitimate, I do trust that the IDF is only attacking valid targets given reasonable intelligence, and that it's not knowingly targeting civilians for the most part.
3. Most importantly - taking the outside view - the IDF estimates that it's killing roughly 2 civilians for 1 militant killed. If you believe that number - it's roughly in line with similar wars fought by Western countries.
Note: While I talk about civilian deaths here as a "statistic", every death is a horrible tragedy. In a good world, no one would ever have to die of violence, and good people should mourn the deaths of any person on any side of this horrible situation.
Some of us have direct memories of the time and it was very much true...
>I certainly wouldn’t refer..
They weren't even aware they weren't any patients. And it's not the only hospital attacked at Mosul. Most hospitals there were attacked:
https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/iraq-rebuilding-hospital-r...
If you want the legal brief, see Article 8.2.e.iv. with an explicit carveout ("provided they are not military objectives"):
https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf#page=...
1. I am not sure if you are saying that extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich are not in charge, but their rhetoric and speech has made it clear they do not care for Palestinian deaths, and rather would like to carry out more killings. If you didn't know about the people in charge of your government, I implore you to look into their history.
2. I would ask you to look more critically at the IDF, after all that B'Tselem has shown them to have committed. I would look to what the IDF did during the peaceful 2018 Great March to Return where they shot and killed hundreds of unarmed civilians, including women and children, and severely injured thousands of others. Only one Israeli soldier was slightly wounded in the whole conflict. They have also been killing children indiscriminately in the West Bank, what would justify that? There are dozens to hundreds of other cases where the IDF has been incriminated for unjustified violence but I am not able to collate them for you at the current time. If that is not enough evidence to change your stance on the IDF, that nobody can help to change your mind.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/28/west-bank-spike-israeli-...
Yes, I was saying that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are not the ones in charge now, luckily for everyone. They are horrible people, and I believe that if they were in charge, they would commit crimes as bad as any that Hamas has committed. It's shameful that they are part of our government and as far as I'm concerned they should be barred from office in any decent country.
But no, they are not currently in charge, the majority of the government is not in line with their extremist views, and neither is the majority of the country. (Though views have certainly gotten more extreme after October 7th, predictably.) Their power in the current government is inflated because all decent politicians (the entire center and left) refuse to form a coalition with Netanyahu. And the populace have been protesting this government, with the backdrop of the judicial reform, in the largest protests in Israel's history, for the last year.
2. I do look critically at the majority of things the IDF does. It's not all perfect, there are many moral failures, like in any army. I think B'Tselem and the world in general look far more critically and without context at Israel and the IDF, compared to other armies.
Note, like most secular Israeli men, I served in the army (though not in any kind of combat way - I was a programmer). I also know many, many reservists serving today, as does literally every Israeli. There are a lot of Israelis with views I vehemently disagree with, but very few that would target civilians for no reason. (Though obviously take this with a grain of salt - my view of the IDF is still, at the end, anecdotal to me - my circle of acquaintences don't represent a true random sample of the army.)
I can't speak to The Great March of Return, I don't have any inside info here, I'll just note that the situation with the border is very complicated. Look at what happened when the border wasn't defended strongly, thousands of militants were able to storm in and slaughter thousands of Israelis, and drag all of us (Israel and Gaza) into a terrible war. Does this mean everything that happened there was justified? Of course not. But life's complicated.
I'll take specific note of something you said:
> They have also been killing children indiscriminately in the West Bank, what would justify that?
Nothing would justify that, but I don't believe that's happening. I don't think there are real, verified cases of the IDF targeting children, only of children dying as collateral damage.
> There are dozens to hundreds of other cases where the IDF has been incriminated for unjustified violence but I am not able to collate them for you at the current time. If that is not enough evidence to change your stance on the IDF, that nobody can help to change your mind.
I'll reframe this as a question, because I think it's a very good one. What would make me change my mind? Let's be specific, what would make me change my mind that the majority of operations the IDF is currently undertaking are "unjustified"?
1. Firstly, if I get convinced that the current aim of getting back the hostages or destroying Hamas is itself an incorrect/immoral goal, I'd be convinced current actions are unjustified. This is almost impossible to change my mind on - Hamas has invaded Israel and slaughtered civilians, and claim they will do it again and again. I don't see a way for Israel to avoid trying to seek Hamas's destruction. That said:
2. If I am convinced that the current war isn't the best way (or one of the best ways) of achieving the goal of Hamas's destruction, or of retrieving the hostages, then I'll consider Israel's actions unjustified. If we could pause the fighting, go back to the previous status quo, and stop Hamas by targeted assassinations or whatever over the next year, then it's not justified to risk so many civilians. I don't think this (or other ways) are practical, but I could be convinced otherwise.
3. If I see evidence that the IDF systematically targeted civilians without any justified reasoning, I'll consider the way Israel's waging this war unjustified. Note that I say systematic - I'm sure many individual horrible cases have happened (and anyone doing this knowingly should be arrested, though I doubt they will be), but on the whole targeting is aimed at legitimate targets.
4. If I see evidence that the IDF is knocking down civilian infrastructure without any legitimate military reasoning, but rather only in order to cause damage in Gaza, I'll consider this illegitimate, though a lesser crime than other accusations. (It would probably be considered ethnic cleansing if the goal is to e.g. make Gaza uninhabitable.)
I think those are all situations where, were I to change my mind on what is actually happening in reality, would make me change my mind on the legitimacy of the current war.
I think it would be a good idea for you to do the same as me - what would make you change your mind about the current situation?
Make an argument, not just a contradiction. The fact is that public opinion on the Iraq war was far higher (47-60% in favor) initially than it is now (61% say we should have stayed out).
wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq#
That is absurd. Israel bombs “facilities used by Hamas”, civilians going in Hamas tunnels will be a direct target for IDF.
> Note, like most secular Israeli men, I served in the army (though not in any kind of combat way - I was a programmer). I also know many, many reservists serving today, as does literally every Israeli. There are a lot of Israelis with views I vehemently disagree with, but very few that would target civilians for no reason. (Though obviously take this with a grain of salt - my view of the IDF is still, at the end, anecdotal to me - my circle of acquaintences don't represent a true random sample of the army.)
I'm sure that there are bad eggs in the IDF, but by and large the IDF as an organization completely rejects the idea of deliberately hurting civilians. And every single cog in that machine that I've met has upheld that standard.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/civilians-are-israel-un...
How do you know? hamas overstates death, has had ‘journalists’ with weapons, ‘children’ than are 15-16 year old fighters, lied about the hospital being destroyed, has videos of people crying over dolls, and MrFAFO, the Johnny Sins of Hamasniks.
Note: 'killing children indiscriminately' usually means 'not taking adequate precautions to avoid killing children' - which means that children as collateral damage is part of the problem. On the extremes I believe it's easy to agree on this: nuking Hiroshima hit some military targets but also killed unconscionable numbers of children and civilians as collateral damage.
To continue: What counts as evidence? Do these stories from Amnesty International of bombed civilian residential buildings with no warnings to the inhabitants fit your section 3? Or do they not meet the bar of being systematic, because it's possible they are e.g. hitting the wrong target, or being targeted based on incorrect information?
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evide...
Yes, I maybe should've phrased it as "Hamas militants" or the "Hamas organization", though I'm not sure to the extent everything is tied together. Is it possible to destroy Hamas militarily but keep the government part in charge? Idk enough to know the answer or what that means.
As for whether point 2 is true - whether the current war is the best way to destroy Hamas and prevent another October 7th from happening - my problem is that many people who think the answer to that is "no" also have no better idea.
Not that it's impossible to criticize something without having a better idea yourself, I think it's fair to do that. But if you're calling for a ceasefire, but offering no alternative to stop the people who say they will continue killing thousands of your citizens over and over - I don't really see how you can be sure that the current war is wrong in that circumstance. It really is a situation where, as many Israelis say, "Israel isn't allowed to defend itself".
> Note: 'killing children indiscriminately' usually means 'not taking adequate precautions to avoid killing children' - which means that children as collateral damage is part of the problem.
Ok, that's fair. Though note that, at least according to the IDF (and which I'm confident is true), we have another layer here - it's not just "kill civilians on purpose" vs "don't care about killing civilians" vs "try to avoid killing civilians". Here, we have an enemy that actively sends civilians into harm's way to use them as human shields. This is meant literally - Hamas will send rockets from within civilian buildings in order to either stop themselves from being killed, or to at least have civilian casualties on the way to make the strike look bad.
There's no country in the world that has figured out how to handle this situation, as far as I know. You can't just say "well, if they use human shields, we just won't attack", because all you are doing is making human shields be a thing that works, so that they'll use them more.
> To continue: What counts as evidence? Do these stories from Amnesty International of bombed civilian residential buildings with no warnings to the inhabitants fit your section 3?
That's a hard question. Evidence needs to come from a source that I trust, which is different for different people. It's hard for me to trust a source that is clearly starting with the conclusion in mind.
Also, while I only skimmed the article, the only actual documented "wrong thing" done there is that the people said they weren't warned beforehand. Which isn't by itself a war crime or even necessarily wrong, without knowing why that building was bombed.
Amnesty International says: "According to Amnesty International’s findings there were no military objectives in the house or its immediate vicinity, this indicates that this may be a direct attack on civilians or on a civilian object which is prohibited and a war crime."
While that's true, them not finding a military justification for that bombing doesn't mean that the IDF didn't have a justification. We have "no idea" which of these is true:
1. There was a real threat, valid military intelligence and justification, and the IDF did nothing wrong.
2. There was no real threat, wrong but valid military intelligence and justification, so while the IDF got the intelligence wrong, it didn't do anything wrong.
3. There was no real threat, there was some military intelligence, but the bar for whether or not that intelligence is enough is so low that it makes the action immoral/illegal. So the IDF is, while not bombing indiscrimanately, is not showing the appropriate care for civilian life.
4. There was no threat and no intelligence that there was a threat - the IDF targeted civilians on purpose.
Each of these levels has different moral and legal implications for what the IDF is doing. This single case doesn't prove anything, because it doesn't differntiate which of those happened, and doesn't prove whether whichever it is is systemic. Amnesty International has no access to the internal IDF decision-making here so also can't make the call (though the article right away leaps to assuming it's number 4 here - hence me calling it biased).
What would qualify as evidence to me? A bunch of things, like large scale external audits/reports by people in the know, like Israel itself conducting an inquiry of its actions (obviouisly most people wouldn't rely on this too much), and possibly most importantly - seeing casualty numbers that make it seem like the IDF is truly targeting civilians, and/or multiple confirmed non-biased cases of targeting civilians (and/or reports from soldiers within the IDF that say there were such orders/etc).
Hamas is an actual movement, not a cult around one leader. Moreover, it controls local media and education in Gaza. We can't cut off the radicalization pipeline when they control the local media. Dealing with that requires controlling the ground. Also, there's no amount of assassination which can dislodge a real movement, and it makes very little sense when the big leaders live underground in deep tunnels.
There are two ways to deal with the deep tunnels: Flood them with something, or lob 1t bombs from the air on every deep tunnel one can detect, when the deep tunnels are often under residential blocks. The first requires invasion and ground control. The second has a lot of collateral damage (There was a recent example in Jabalia where the houses above collapsed with a bad result after dealing the 1t bomb), to the point a serious assassination campaign may not even be ensuring less civilian deaths.
About 1: I don't know well enough the political landscape in Israel, but what is publicly visible, is there are many worrying statement made (some openly genocidal). I think this is factual. I read that polled opinion overall to this day in Israel, is supporting the level of Violence ongoing in Gaza. even having a majority asking for more. So from those 2 points (which I believe are true fact), i can understand the rational one would have to say, Neither Politician, nor Israeli Population is currently empathetic to Palestinian Civilians casualties.
About 2: Things I think we can agree on: - IDF do mitigate collateral damage to Civilian. By several factual means. - There is a lot of CODAM (Volume of it). - IDF knows, on most strikes expectable CODAM level. (there has been 10.000 + Bombs, Guided or Not, those Bomb were aimed at a target. each Target had to be CODAM evaluated)
What I don't know. is What is consider acceptable CODAM policy. I don't think anyone serious says that IDF is exterminating Civilian. What many people are saying is that, mitigation of collateral damage is not effective, and that it doesn't seem that the force used is proportionate to the threat. What I have a strong opinion about, is that, no, not everything possible is done to protect Palestinian Civilian to become CODAM.
About 3: If the ratio is 2:1, considering the level of firepower and engagement, it could be a lot worst, I agree. (=> doesn't mean it can't be critized and that if there are war crimes, they remain war crimes)
But here we have to trust the ratio of IDF, which are really on the "boarder" of credible data. For 2 Reasons in my opinion: - R1/ If figures from IDF of 5000+ Hamas militants killed is true ===> that would means a hell lot of militants are disabled. In urban combat, we should expect a 1 to 5 Killed vs Wounded ratio. that means already the complete Expected Military force of Hamas is KIA or WIA.
- R2/ That the amount of overall casualties reported, and stated credible by US / UN of 16.000+. ===> I personally think, these is an absolute minimum: and even if Cease Fire Occurs Now, that full "Humanitarian" help is put in place to treat the injured Civilians. The civilian deathcount will keep going up for Weeks.
=> So i am really doubting on that ratio of 2:1. BUT, I would accept, that when this conflict End / Pause, deathtoll is properly documented and true. if 2:1 ratio in CODAM that would be "reasonable" in the overall context. (even if all agree, that best would be prison for all criminals and a free life for innocent)
But, if it is 3:1, or 4:1 (which i think where it currently sits). Then in order to accept 4:1. I would have to face that on OCT 7th, Hamas ratio of 4:1 was a barbaric civilian indiscriminated attack. But that IDF vs Hamas 4:1 is "state of the art; taking all measure necessary to protect Civilian". I mean, my brain can't process that contradiction.
To end, where you finished on a relatively factual point. Dresden wasn't collateral damage - it was directly targeting and killing innocent civilian. True
Fact: In Dresden : 60% of the city / building were destroyed. how much of North Gaza / city is Destroyed already ? Satellite image reports already states 60%.
I hope for peace, tolerance, truth.