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>Well, if you support Hamas after they butchered civilians Numerically speaking the IDF have killed a lot more civilians than Hamas. As have the US for that ma

>Well, if you support Hamas after they butchered civilians Numerically speaking the IDF have killed a lot more civilians than Hamas. As have the US for that matter, literally hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq.

hef19898 3y ago
And pointing out the dire straights of Palestinians is different from supporting Hamas. The same way critizing Israel as a nation not the same thing as being anti-semitic. The whole Western media and political landscape somewhat fails to appreciate that small, but incredibly important difference lately. Heck, I am even getting Youtube propagan... I mean ads from the Israeli ministry of defence. But as the saying goes "One death is a tragedy, thousands are a statistic".
- Belopolye 3y ago
  In this situation he tweeted something about supporting any of the actions that Hamas makes. > But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Any action obviously goes to far. The situation is already bad enough as it is, a ground assault cpuld easily turn very, very ugly. And blow up thie whole powder cake that is the middle east. I just hope cooler heads prevail, but given the rather fragile political landscape in Israel, well we will see.
    - bdsa 3y ago
      Powder keg
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    IMO, in light of that comment, this is a non-story. Though what they did was stupid: acting like a fascist towards someone like this tends to undermine whatever position you're trying to establish simply by making you look like the bad/worse guys.
    - Belopolye 3y ago
      [flagged]
mardifoufs 3y ago
Well, some lives matter more than the others. No one in the west cares about Palestinians. And the way people try to do blatant war crime apologia is by saying that Israel wasn't targeting civilians specifically (as if they would admit it lol) so that's fine! Even Russia pretends that it isn't openly targeting civilians but again, Palestinian lives are basically worthless so it's just different :)
- bilvar 3y ago
  If even Palestinians (Hamas) do not care about Palestinians and are holding them hostages or using Palestinian children as human shields, why would anybody expect from the West to?
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    Well I guess if Hamas doesn't care, that justifies war crimes from Israel.
    - bilvar 3y ago
      No it doesn't justify war crimes from Israel. I'm just pointing out your delusion expecting anybody to care when they don't even care about themselves. You have to love yourself first, in order to be loved.
      - mardifoufs 3y ago
        What? What are you even talking about? I'm not saying anything about loving them, there's an insanely wide margin between loving them and not turning a blind eye on war crimes because it's your ally that is doing it. What the hell?
        bilvar 3y ago
        Dude, don't play semantics. Want to substitute the word love for care? Do it, the statement still holds.
bawolff 3y ago
> Numerically speaking the IDF have killed a lot more civilians than Hamas. As have the US for that matter, literally hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq. I don't know why "numerically" matters. There is a big difference morally between someone accidentally killed while persuing a legal military target, and intentionally gunning down a rave or children at a day care.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Civilian infrastructure and housing are decidedly no legitimate milotary targets. Never have been, and this makes air power such a bad choice when fighting insurgencies, it is to indiscriminate.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    Whether or not it is a legit legal military target depends on if it is being used for a military purposes and how "porportional" the military benefit of targeting it is relitive to the civilian damage targeting it would cause. The idea that if someone converts a house into an ammunition store depot it can never be targeted ever under international law is just straight up wrong. Of course how that translates to what is being done on the ground is very complex. Which is why numerically approaches are wrong - you have to put every incident in appropriate context to judge it
    - hef19898 3y ago
      You make the point about fighting insurgencies and guerilla opponents being so damn hard very well, I think. Not the least beimg, that said insurgents do not really count as an armed opponent. Regarding the house being an ammunition depot: Sure, legitimate target. Blowing up the whole highrise, debatable. Blowing up the neighbouring highrise, even more debatable. And airstrikes are nowhere precise enough for that kind of work.
      - xdennis 3y ago
        > that said insurgents do not really count as an armed opponent Insurgents are people who are fighting their own government (with guns) so they are armed, but they're not fighting Hamas, they're fighting Israel, so they're not insurgents. Many of them don't even wear military uniforms in combat, that makes them unlawful combatants under the Geneva Conventions and don't have rights. They almost always attack civilians, so they're terrorists.
enoch_r 3y ago
The numbers we have for IDF civilian deaths in Gaza come from the governmental authority in Gaza. That government authority happens to be Hamas. - Hamas falsely attributes civilian deaths to Israel (as you can see from the "hospital strike") - Hamas vastly inflates civilian casualty counts, somewhere between 2-5x as you can also see from the "hospital strike" which was immediately claimed by Hamas to have killed more than 500. US estimates have it between 100-300, and I think the photos of the damaged parking lot are extremely damning for Hamas's claims - yes, an explosion and fire in a crowded refugee camp could kill lots of people, but 500 is absurd. - Hamas tells civilians in Gaza to ignore text messages from the IDF telling them to evacuate because their residence may be bombed. - Hamas sets up road blocks to prevent civilians in Gaza from evacuating. - Hamas sets up military installations and ammunition caches next to or in civilian installations, including kindergartens and mosques. (You can find videos of bombings resulting in massive secondary explosions as ammunition caches pop off.) They hide in refugee camps (https://thehill.com/policy/international/4260111-israel-hamas-top-commander-killed-airstrike/ https://thehill.com/policy/international/4260111-israel-hama...). I think it's worth asking whether there is any way to wage a just war against a government like this, that is literally trying to maximize the number of its own civilians killed. And if not, what kinds of behavior does that incentivize?
- GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
  Half of Gaza's population _wasn't even born_ yet when Hamas was "elected" so this point is kind of moot
  - enoch_r 3y ago
    I'm not saying that Gazan civilians deserve to suffer because they voted for Hamas. I am saying that Hamas tries to inflate the death toll for Gazan civilians (both by lying about that toll, and by taking actions with the express purpose of increasing that toll). If you refuse to go to war with Hamas because of this fact, you incentivize that behavior. I can't really think of a more just case for war than "the government of a neighbor just brutally, intentionally slaughtered civilians in a surprise attack in our country." It doesn't matter whether the neighboring country is a dictatorship or a democracy. It very much sucks for the people of Palestine that Hamas chose to start a war with Israel and is using tactics that purposefully result in the death of Palestinians. I hope that they stop putting rocket launchers in and next to schools. I hope that they start allowing people to evacuate. I hope that they stop lying to their people about "psychological warfare" in an effort to get more of them killed. I wish that neighboring countries would allow Palestinians to escape the carnage, and adopt strategies that actually support the Palestinian people rather than the Palestinian cause. But the IDF and Israel do not control that. And I'm honestly not sure what people expect from them. If you can't fight an enemy that hides behind civilians, then hiding behind civilians is an obvious winning strategy. And personally, I don't want to live in a world where the government most willing to sacrifice their own people automatically wins any conflict.
mns 3y ago
Maybe if nations and groups of people would just stop trying to destroy Israel as a state and kill jewish people out of pure hatred, we wouldn't be in this situation.

hef19898 3y ago

And pointing out the dire straights of Palestinians is different from supporting Hamas. The same way critizing Israel as a nation not the same thing as being anti-semitic. The whole Western media and political landscape somewhat fails to appreciate that small, but incredibly important difference lately. Heck, I am even getting Youtube propagan... I mean ads from the Israeli ministry of defence. But as the saying goes "One death is a tragedy, thousands are a statistic".

Belopolye 3y ago
In this situation he tweeted something about supporting any of the actions that Hamas makes. > But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Any action obviously goes to far. The situation is already bad enough as it is, a ground assault cpuld easily turn very, very ugly. And blow up thie whole powder cake that is the middle east. I just hope cooler heads prevail, but given the rather fragile political landscape in Israel, well we will see.
  - bdsa 3y ago
    Powder keg
- Tao3300 3y ago
  IMO, in light of that comment, this is a non-story. Though what they did was stupid: acting like a fascist towards someone like this tends to undermine whatever position you're trying to establish simply by making you look like the bad/worse guys.
  - Belopolye 3y ago
    [flagged]

mardifoufs 3y ago

Well, some lives matter more than the others. No one in the west cares about Palestinians. And the way people try to do blatant war crime apologia is by saying that Israel wasn't targeting civilians specifically (as if they would admit it lol) so that's fine! Even Russia pretends that it isn't openly targeting civilians but again, Palestinian lives are basically worthless so it's just different :)

bilvar 3y ago
If even Palestinians (Hamas) do not care about Palestinians and are holding them hostages or using Palestinian children as human shields, why would anybody expect from the West to?
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Well I guess if Hamas doesn't care, that justifies war crimes from Israel.
  - bilvar 3y ago
    No it doesn't justify war crimes from Israel. I'm just pointing out your delusion expecting anybody to care when they don't even care about themselves. You have to love yourself first, in order to be loved.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      What? What are you even talking about? I'm not saying anything about loving them, there's an insanely wide margin between loving them and not turning a blind eye on war crimes because it's your ally that is doing it. What the hell?
      - bilvar 3y ago
        Dude, don't play semantics. Want to substitute the word love for care? Do it, the statement still holds.

bawolff 3y ago

> Numerically speaking the IDF have killed a lot more civilians than Hamas. As have the US for that matter, literally hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq. I don't know why "numerically" matters. There is a big difference morally between someone accidentally killed while persuing a legal military target, and intentionally gunning down a rave or children at a day care.

hef19898 3y ago
Civilian infrastructure and housing are decidedly no legitimate milotary targets. Never have been, and this makes air power such a bad choice when fighting insurgencies, it is to indiscriminate.
- bawolff 3y ago
  Whether or not it is a legit legal military target depends on if it is being used for a military purposes and how "porportional" the military benefit of targeting it is relitive to the civilian damage targeting it would cause. The idea that if someone converts a house into an ammunition store depot it can never be targeted ever under international law is just straight up wrong. Of course how that translates to what is being done on the ground is very complex. Which is why numerically approaches are wrong - you have to put every incident in appropriate context to judge it
  - hef19898 3y ago
    You make the point about fighting insurgencies and guerilla opponents being so damn hard very well, I think. Not the least beimg, that said insurgents do not really count as an armed opponent. Regarding the house being an ammunition depot: Sure, legitimate target. Blowing up the whole highrise, debatable. Blowing up the neighbouring highrise, even more debatable. And airstrikes are nowhere precise enough for that kind of work.
    - xdennis 3y ago
      > that said insurgents do not really count as an armed opponent Insurgents are people who are fighting their own government (with guns) so they are armed, but they're not fighting Hamas, they're fighting Israel, so they're not insurgents. Many of them don't even wear military uniforms in combat, that makes them unlawful combatants under the Geneva Conventions and don't have rights. They almost always attack civilians, so they're terrorists.

enoch_r 3y ago

The numbers we have for IDF civilian deaths in Gaza come from the governmental authority in Gaza. That government authority happens to be Hamas. - Hamas falsely attributes civilian deaths to Israel (as you can see from the "hospital strike") - Hamas vastly inflates civilian casualty counts, somewhere between 2-5x as you can also see from the "hospital strike" which was immediately claimed by Hamas to have killed more than 500. US estimates have it between 100-300, and I think the photos of the damaged parking lot are extremely damning for Hamas's claims - yes, an explosion and fire in a crowded refugee camp could kill lots of people, but 500 is absurd. - Hamas tells civilians in Gaza to ignore text messages from the IDF telling them to evacuate because their residence may be bombed. - Hamas sets up road blocks to prevent civilians in Gaza from evacuating. - Hamas sets up military installations and ammunition caches next to or in civilian installations, including kindergartens and mosques. (You can find videos of bombings resulting in massive secondary explosions as ammunition caches pop off.) They hide in refugee camps (https://thehill.com/policy/international/4260111-israel-hamas-top-commander-killed-airstrike/ https://thehill.com/policy/international/4260111-israel-hama...). I think it's worth asking whether there is any way to wage a just war against a government like this, that is literally trying to maximize the number of its own civilians killed. And if not, what kinds of behavior does that incentivize?

GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
Half of Gaza's population _wasn't even born_ yet when Hamas was "elected" so this point is kind of moot
- enoch_r 3y ago
  I'm not saying that Gazan civilians deserve to suffer because they voted for Hamas. I am saying that Hamas tries to inflate the death toll for Gazan civilians (both by lying about that toll, and by taking actions with the express purpose of increasing that toll). If you refuse to go to war with Hamas because of this fact, you incentivize that behavior. I can't really think of a more just case for war than "the government of a neighbor just brutally, intentionally slaughtered civilians in a surprise attack in our country." It doesn't matter whether the neighboring country is a dictatorship or a democracy. It very much sucks for the people of Palestine that Hamas chose to start a war with Israel and is using tactics that purposefully result in the death of Palestinians. I hope that they stop putting rocket launchers in and next to schools. I hope that they start allowing people to evacuate. I hope that they stop lying to their people about "psychological warfare" in an effort to get more of them killed. I wish that neighboring countries would allow Palestinians to escape the carnage, and adopt strategies that actually support the Palestinian people rather than the Palestinian cause. But the IDF and Israel do not control that. And I'm honestly not sure what people expect from them. If you can't fight an enemy that hides behind civilians, then hiding behind civilians is an obvious winning strategy. And personally, I don't want to live in a world where the government most willing to sacrifice their own people automatically wins any conflict.

mns 3y ago

Maybe if nations and groups of people would just stop trying to destroy Israel as a state and kill jewish people out of pure hatred, we wouldn't be in this situation.