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Indeed. Then what is the blood being spilled for and how much more will need to be spilled to accomplish that goal - and do you think that is an acceptable amou

by hnbad 3y ago

Indeed. Then what is the blood being spilled for and how much more will need to be spilled to accomplish that goal - and do you think that is an acceptable amount? Does the idea of the cure being worse than the disease mean anything to you? If you value the lives of Palestinians and Israelis equally, the IDF killing 16 times as many Palestinians as Hamas killed Israelis should concern you. And that for years the IDF has each year killed an order of magnitude more Palestinians than the Hamas killed Israelis should also concern you. The corpses don't care if they were murdered by terrorists or legally killed as collateral damage by an organized military.

tptacek 3y ago
The IDF has a stated goal of eradicating Hamas, and, failing that, of disabling them militarily. Hamas has a stated goal of maximizing Gazan fatalities, because they believe they're playing a long game that will, in the course of decades or centuries, end with a new caliphate in the Levant; they are a theocratic e/acc movement that places zero value on human life and that has embedded itself deeply into a densely populated area that affords civilians minimal freedom of motion. It may well be the case that Netanyahu's fascist-fringe coalition has a subtextual goal of vindicating October 7th with a disproportionate retaliatory civilian casualties. But a subtext is all that is. Any Israeli leader pursuing the IDF's current stated military goal, even in a hypothetical Labor coalition, would be incurring the same "disproportionate" casualties, simply because of how the conflict is structured. You can't simply add casualties up, death for death. If you did that, every one of the retaliatory casualties would be immoral as well. The question isn't what the comparative numbers are, but rather whether legitimate military objectives outweighed the civilian toll in each strike. That's how international war crimes law sees it, and it's I think the only sane way to look at the situation. (None of this is to say that the IDF's campaign in Gaza is wholly defensible; I have no idea if it is, and it sure looks to me like it isn't).

by hnbad 3y ago

tptacek 3y ago

The IDF has a stated goal of eradicating Hamas, and, failing that, of disabling them militarily. Hamas has a stated goal of maximizing Gazan fatalities, because they believe they're playing a long game that will, in the course of decades or centuries, end with a new caliphate in the Levant; they are a theocratic e/acc movement that places zero value on human life and that has embedded itself deeply into a densely populated area that affords civilians minimal freedom of motion. It may well be the case that Netanyahu's fascist-fringe coalition has a subtextual goal of vindicating October 7th with a disproportionate retaliatory civilian casualties. But a subtext is all that is. Any Israeli leader pursuing the IDF's current stated military goal, even in a hypothetical Labor coalition, would be incurring the same "disproportionate" casualties, simply because of how the conflict is structured. You can't simply add casualties up, death for death. If you did that, every one of the retaliatory casualties would be immoral as well. The question isn't what the comparative numbers are, but rather whether legitimate military objectives outweighed the civilian toll in each strike. That's how international war crimes law sees it, and it's I think the only sane way to look at the situation. (None of this is to say that the IDF's campaign in Gaza is wholly defensible; I have no idea if it is, and it sure looks to me like it isn't).