4 ms·

The biggest problem with this isn’t the horror of the actual war crime. The far more serious concern are the lengths the government will go to avoid holding any

The biggest problem with this isn’t the horror of the actual war crime. The far more serious concern are the lengths the government will go to avoid holding anyone accountable. That is so much worse because it unintentionally endorses future crimes and challenges the offenders to take ever more offensive actions without fear of consequences.

lucubratory 1y ago
I do not believe it is unintentional.
- austin-cheney 1y ago
  Until corrective actions with criminal penalties occur incidents like these almost certainly continue with possible increases of frequency and severity. More importantly though when this becomes a matter of conduct and military discipline is that it will spread to other areas even outside Gaza. This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
  - throw9032093 1y ago
    The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable. Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started! Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
    - edanm 1y ago
      > The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable. It's happened, many times. Usually this doesn't make front-page news, but soldiers that break the law are sometimes held accountable. Not nearly enough, and I think it should be far more publicized as a deterrent effect (the fact that it isn't is a pretty big indictment of the current government). But it's certainly not laughable.
      - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
        Who is gonna arrest Bibi?
        HappyPanacea 1y ago
        The same people who arrested Olmert
        edanm 1y ago
        Well, he is on trial. So he could be arrested. Prime Ministers have been arrested (and jailed!) before. A part of what the Isareli opposition has been pushing for in the last few years has been removing Netanyahu from power and presumably jailing him because of the corruption charges.
      - edanm 1y ago
        Btw, the literal sub-headline of the article includes this sentence: "prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes".
      - cma 1y ago
        For each of their "operations" on Gaza they usually had one or two soldiers in trouble for something like stealing and using a civilians credit card. When there were many more serious crimes like deliberately targeting the disabled.
- originalvichy 1y ago
  They can take out nuclear scientists thousands of kilometers away by either planting bombs in their cars in traffic or firing accurate munitions through their windows when they sleep. Thousands of kilometers away. The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
  - alkhatib 1y ago
    Those things you described are also war crimes. Calling it sophisticated does not change that fact.
    - andrepd 1y ago
      I think the point is that if Israel can do pinpoint decapitation strikes anywhere in Iran they sure as hell can do so in Gaza, but they choose to bomb hospitals and flatten every single building in the Gaza Strip instead.
      - ethbr1 1y ago
        This. Israel demonstrably has the capability for precision warfare. That they chose to level infrastructure across Gaza instead is indicative. And it'd be real stretch to assume they did so even for military-economic reasons. They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals. To wit, the elimination of anything resembling a Palestinian state: politically, economically, and demographically. Which is cynical and evil as fuck, given they're smart enough to realize they eventually either have to (a) kill every Palestinian or (b) make a deal. Instead, they decided killing 50,000+ Palestinians was worth improving their negotiation position and kicking the can down the road.
        acdha 1y ago
        > They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals. That’s my read as well. I was strongly pro-Israel for decades and while I was never comfortable with the plight of Palestinians Hamas had a lot of the blame, too, but the last year really moved me over to thinking that the people who said most of the “accidents” over the years were intentional were correct. They can pull off these amazingly accurate strikes when they want to, it’s implausible that they suddenly have the precision of a drunken 18th century musketeer around aid workers and civilians. Their leadership clearly do not care and collective punishment is a war crime no matter who does it.
FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
Why would the government hold someone accountable for its own actions? Let’s not pretend that this is just some random soldiers doing this, this is exactly what the Israeli government wants.
- fzeroracer 1y ago
  Well, there is actually a reasonable reason. Typically you'd want the government to hold people accountable so you could have the thin veneer of operating by the rules of warfare and not committing war crimes. That's usually been a popular strategy of the US for when someone goes a little too far (or gets caught). As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
- austin-cheney 1y ago
  Soldiers shooting at civilians is a war crime. It does not matter what the intentions of the soldiers are. It doesn’t even matter if the civilians are also armed up until the point they display violent intent according to a common person standard. Shooting at a crowd is a crime. That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime. If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes. As an example read about Slobodan Milošević https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87
  - roenxi 1y ago
    NATO was conducting defensive operations against Yugoslavia around that time. It isn't clear that war crimes can be committed so easily by US allies. It'd be nice if they can be recognised though.
ajb 1y ago
Even ignoring primary crimes, under Israeli law, even incitement to genocide is punishable by death. But so many members of the political and media elite have made inciting statements, that the rubicon is crossed; the political class cannot allow any serious, independent consideration of war crimes to ever occur, because that would risk them all facing the firing squad. This in turn signals to individual soldiers that there will be no accountability, even in the absence of directives.
- roshin 1y ago
  Regarding the risk to Israelis facing the firing squad, you do know that Israel only executed Eichmann (and one other person in a field court) since the founding of the country? When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
  - ajb 1y ago
    Fair enough, but I don't think that makes the incentive much different. If you are convicted of a crime punishable by death, your actual punishment is not likely to be trivial.
  - throw9032093 1y ago
    Government and regime can always change. Post socialist countries convinced border guards, for shooting unarmed civilians, who were trying to escape across country borders. That was a crime even under socialist laws. If Israel had regime change, new regime and majority of voters would be pro Arab... New government could actually enforce existing laws!
  - ruined 1y ago
    israel executes plenty of people. maybe if it’s done by the military it doesnt count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes_in_the_Gaza_war#Summary_executions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes_in_the_Gaza... https://web.archive.org/web/20240104213949/https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231226-euro-med-submits-findings-on-israeli-army-executions-in-gaza-to-icc-un-calling-them-genocide/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240104213949/https://www.middl... https://web.archive.org/web/20240424005326/https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148876 https://web.archive.org/web/20240424005326/https://news.un.o... https://web.archive.org/web/20240409122432/https://thehill.com/policy/international/4477340-un-experts-reports-executions-sexual-assault-israeli-soldiers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240409122432/https://thehill.c... https://archive.is/UJb6g https://archive.is/UJb6g
basisword 1y ago
You mean the government whose leader is facing a corruption trial?
- eastbound 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 1y ago
    Can you please make your substantive points thoughtfully, without snark or flamebait? It's not hard if you choose to, and the site guidelines ask people to do so, regardless of how charged or divisive the topic is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - eastbound 1y ago
      Ok. The parent is the same kind of rhetorical question, whose counter-argument is so evident that it shouldn’t have existed, and it’s disappointing that one side gets the right of way on HN and the other is downvoted, one camp is making use of flaws in your rules to win without merit, aka bullying. But yes. I’ll speak without snarkiness.
      - dang 1y ago
        Yes, the parent was the same kind of question; in fact I almost included that observation in my reply to you. However, it's all a matter of degree, and your comment was significantly worse in the degree of snark and flamebait that you were posting. That's why I replied to you and not the other comment. It had nothing to do with which side either of you are on, although I understand how it ends up feeling that way. (I've posted quite a bit about that elsewhere in this thread, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947.)
        eastbound 1y ago
mrtksn 1y ago
It's even worse: Awful lot of people die for the careers of politicians and it's not limited to Israel. If someone needs political tension for weathering a scandal or economic turmoil, it can be created artificially by killing certain people and they do it all the time. I have distaste for Trump but something I appreciate about him is his abilities to stage a theatre with his "fake" bombings. The more mainstream politicians have much more sociopathic tendencies. If you think about it, %100 of modern wars are about who is going to be the administrator and doesn't feel like can win an election. We live in a world of abundance, there's no reason for a group of people to kill other group for their resources. If it wasn't for the careers of some people with huge egos all this can be sorted out through civil matters. After the wars it gets sorted out anyway, we don't see mass exterminations anymore.
deadbabe 1y ago
They were just following orders.
okdood64 1y ago
For anyone else, who for some reason, feels compelled to comment without reading the article: > Haaretz has learned that the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – a body tasked with reviewing incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war – to investigate suspected war crimes at these sites. Now what will come from this (a proper investigation, etc.), who knows.
mikrotikker 1y ago
Or maybe because this isn't happening at all could be the reason why because there is actually no one to hold accountable because this is just some hysterical anti semitic conspiracy theory.
- BrawnyBadger53 1y ago
  What is the conspiracy here? Who is the perpetrator? Haaretz is Israeli owned and operated. The sources are Israeli soldiers and officers. The war is definitely real and gazans definitely died while receiving food aid.

lucubratory 1y ago

I do not believe it is unintentional.

austin-cheney 1y ago
Until corrective actions with criminal penalties occur incidents like these almost certainly continue with possible increases of frequency and severity. More importantly though when this becomes a matter of conduct and military discipline is that it will spread to other areas even outside Gaza. This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
- throw9032093 1y ago
  The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable. Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started! Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
  - edanm 1y ago
    > The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable. It's happened, many times. Usually this doesn't make front-page news, but soldiers that break the law are sometimes held accountable. Not nearly enough, and I think it should be far more publicized as a deterrent effect (the fact that it isn't is a pretty big indictment of the current government). But it's certainly not laughable.
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      Who is gonna arrest Bibi?
      - HappyPanacea 1y ago
        The same people who arrested Olmert
      - edanm 1y ago
        Well, he is on trial. So he could be arrested. Prime Ministers have been arrested (and jailed!) before. A part of what the Isareli opposition has been pushing for in the last few years has been removing Netanyahu from power and presumably jailing him because of the corruption charges.
    - edanm 1y ago
      Btw, the literal sub-headline of the article includes this sentence: "prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes".
    - cma 1y ago
      For each of their "operations" on Gaza they usually had one or two soldiers in trouble for something like stealing and using a civilians credit card. When there were many more serious crimes like deliberately targeting the disabled.
originalvichy 1y ago
They can take out nuclear scientists thousands of kilometers away by either planting bombs in their cars in traffic or firing accurate munitions through their windows when they sleep. Thousands of kilometers away. The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
- alkhatib 1y ago
  Those things you described are also war crimes. Calling it sophisticated does not change that fact.
  - andrepd 1y ago
    I think the point is that if Israel can do pinpoint decapitation strikes anywhere in Iran they sure as hell can do so in Gaza, but they choose to bomb hospitals and flatten every single building in the Gaza Strip instead.
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      This. Israel demonstrably has the capability for precision warfare. That they chose to level infrastructure across Gaza instead is indicative. And it'd be real stretch to assume they did so even for military-economic reasons. They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals. To wit, the elimination of anything resembling a Palestinian state: politically, economically, and demographically. Which is cynical and evil as fuck, given they're smart enough to realize they eventually either have to (a) kill every Palestinian or (b) make a deal. Instead, they decided killing 50,000+ Palestinians was worth improving their negotiation position and kicking the can down the road.
      - acdha 1y ago
        > They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals. That’s my read as well. I was strongly pro-Israel for decades and while I was never comfortable with the plight of Palestinians Hamas had a lot of the blame, too, but the last year really moved me over to thinking that the people who said most of the “accidents” over the years were intentional were correct. They can pull off these amazingly accurate strikes when they want to, it’s implausible that they suddenly have the precision of a drunken 18th century musketeer around aid workers and civilians. Their leadership clearly do not care and collective punishment is a war crime no matter who does it.

FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago

Why would the government hold someone accountable for its own actions? Let’s not pretend that this is just some random soldiers doing this, this is exactly what the Israeli government wants.

fzeroracer 1y ago
Well, there is actually a reasonable reason. Typically you'd want the government to hold people accountable so you could have the thin veneer of operating by the rules of warfare and not committing war crimes. That's usually been a popular strategy of the US for when someone goes a little too far (or gets caught). As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
austin-cheney 1y ago
Soldiers shooting at civilians is a war crime. It does not matter what the intentions of the soldiers are. It doesn’t even matter if the civilians are also armed up until the point they display violent intent according to a common person standard. Shooting at a crowd is a crime. That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime. If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes. As an example read about Slobodan Milošević https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87
- roenxi 1y ago
  NATO was conducting defensive operations against Yugoslavia around that time. It isn't clear that war crimes can be committed so easily by US allies. It'd be nice if they can be recognised though.

ajb 1y ago

Even ignoring primary crimes, under Israeli law, even incitement to genocide is punishable by death. But so many members of the political and media elite have made inciting statements, that the rubicon is crossed; the political class cannot allow any serious, independent consideration of war crimes to ever occur, because that would risk them all facing the firing squad. This in turn signals to individual soldiers that there will be no accountability, even in the absence of directives.

roshin 1y ago
Regarding the risk to Israelis facing the firing squad, you do know that Israel only executed Eichmann (and one other person in a field court) since the founding of the country? When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
- ajb 1y ago
  Fair enough, but I don't think that makes the incentive much different. If you are convicted of a crime punishable by death, your actual punishment is not likely to be trivial.
- throw9032093 1y ago
  Government and regime can always change. Post socialist countries convinced border guards, for shooting unarmed civilians, who were trying to escape across country borders. That was a crime even under socialist laws. If Israel had regime change, new regime and majority of voters would be pro Arab... New government could actually enforce existing laws!
- ruined 1y ago
  israel executes plenty of people. maybe if it’s done by the military it doesnt count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes_in_the_Gaza_war#Summary_executions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes_in_the_Gaza... https://web.archive.org/web/20240104213949/https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231226-euro-med-submits-findings-on-israeli-army-executions-in-gaza-to-icc-un-calling-them-genocide/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240104213949/https://www.middl... https://web.archive.org/web/20240424005326/https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148876 https://web.archive.org/web/20240424005326/https://news.un.o... https://web.archive.org/web/20240409122432/https://thehill.com/policy/international/4477340-un-experts-reports-executions-sexual-assault-israeli-soldiers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240409122432/https://thehill.c... https://archive.is/UJb6g https://archive.is/UJb6g

basisword 1y ago

You mean the government whose leader is facing a corruption trial?

eastbound 1y ago
[flagged]
- dang 1y ago
  Can you please make your substantive points thoughtfully, without snark or flamebait? It's not hard if you choose to, and the site guidelines ask people to do so, regardless of how charged or divisive the topic is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - eastbound 1y ago
    Ok. The parent is the same kind of rhetorical question, whose counter-argument is so evident that it shouldn’t have existed, and it’s disappointing that one side gets the right of way on HN and the other is downvoted, one camp is making use of flaws in your rules to win without merit, aka bullying. But yes. I’ll speak without snarkiness.
    - dang 1y ago
      Yes, the parent was the same kind of question; in fact I almost included that observation in my reply to you. However, it's all a matter of degree, and your comment was significantly worse in the degree of snark and flamebait that you were posting. That's why I replied to you and not the other comment. It had nothing to do with which side either of you are on, although I understand how it ends up feeling that way. (I've posted quite a bit about that elsewhere in this thread, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947.)
      - eastbound 1y ago

mrtksn 1y ago

It's even worse: Awful lot of people die for the careers of politicians and it's not limited to Israel. If someone needs political tension for weathering a scandal or economic turmoil, it can be created artificially by killing certain people and they do it all the time. I have distaste for Trump but something I appreciate about him is his abilities to stage a theatre with his "fake" bombings. The more mainstream politicians have much more sociopathic tendencies. If you think about it, %100 of modern wars are about who is going to be the administrator and doesn't feel like can win an election. We live in a world of abundance, there's no reason for a group of people to kill other group for their resources. If it wasn't for the careers of some people with huge egos all this can be sorted out through civil matters. After the wars it gets sorted out anyway, we don't see mass exterminations anymore.

deadbabe 1y ago

They were just following orders.

okdood64 1y ago

For anyone else, who for some reason, feels compelled to comment without reading the article: > Haaretz has learned that the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – a body tasked with reviewing incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war – to investigate suspected war crimes at these sites. Now what will come from this (a proper investigation, etc.), who knows.

mikrotikker 1y ago

Or maybe because this isn't happening at all could be the reason why because there is actually no one to hold accountable because this is just some hysterical anti semitic conspiracy theory.

BrawnyBadger53 1y ago
What is the conspiracy here? Who is the perpetrator? Haaretz is Israeli owned and operated. The sources are Israeli soldiers and officers. The war is definitely real and gazans definitely died while receiving food aid.