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There seem to be a few strands getting entangled here. If you look earlier in the thread you'll see I'm asking for justification of the claim of "collective pu

by tome 1y ago

There seem to be a few strands getting entangled here. If you look earlier in the thread you'll see I'm asking for justification of the claim of "collective punishment". So far I haven't seen any, and indeed I haven't seen any direct responses to that request at all. An observer following the thread (and maybe this applies to you too) might think "But what I am seeing as so egregious, why does it matter if it's technically 'collective punishment' or not? That's just nitpicking, splitting hairs, and a really awful thing to engage in when such suffering is occurring". Well then, if someone has such a strong argument that it easy for them to make it without leaving hairs that can be split, without leaving anything that could technically be nitpicked then let them make that argument. But so far I haven't found that argument. The arguments that I have found so far have loose ends, and when I pull on the loose ends I find invariably that the whole argument unravels. So, the number of fatalities is not really relevant to this particular thread of discussion, but if you want to have a discussion on that topic, maybe we can check up front whether we have a reasonable basis for such a discussion: Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't.

shkkmo 1y ago
I don't see any other reason to kill 17,000 kids like that except as collective punishment or genocide. You seem pretty clear that it was neither so I'll leave it up to you to provide another reasonable explanation for why Isreal would want to intentionally kill that many kids.
- tome 1y ago
  A few thoughts: 1. "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties Was that because the allies were "collectively punishing" or "committing genocide" on Germans? I don't think so, and I don't see any reason that civilian deaths in Gaza imply that either. 2. Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation? 3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise. 4. As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in. 5. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did.
  - shkkmo 1y ago
    > "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people: To be fair, I think the allies commited a bunch of war crimes they were never charged with during WWII, and firebombing is high up that list as is dropping nuclear bombs on cities. That said, WWII was an actual war and Germany (and the axis in general) lost fewer people than their enemies. This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas. > Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation? These numbers are pretty much universally acknowledged as more likely to be too low than too high (including by Isreal.) Here's a study not done by a Palestinian organization that says that the official Palestinian estimate is 40% too low. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v3.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v... > 3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise. I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault." > As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in. Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll. > Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did. Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.) However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal. At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.

by tome 1y ago

shkkmo 1y ago

I don't see any other reason to kill 17,000 kids like that except as collective punishment or genocide. You seem pretty clear that it was neither so I'll leave it up to you to provide another reasonable explanation for why Isreal would want to intentionally kill that many kids.

tome 1y ago
A few thoughts: 1. "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties Was that because the allies were "collectively punishing" or "committing genocide" on Germans? I don't think so, and I don't see any reason that civilian deaths in Gaza imply that either. 2. Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation? 3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise. 4. As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in. 5. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did.
- shkkmo 1y ago
  > "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people: To be fair, I think the allies commited a bunch of war crimes they were never charged with during WWII, and firebombing is high up that list as is dropping nuclear bombs on cities. That said, WWII was an actual war and Germany (and the axis in general) lost fewer people than their enemies. This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas. > Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation? These numbers are pretty much universally acknowledged as more likely to be too low than too high (including by Isreal.) Here's a study not done by a Palestinian organization that says that the official Palestinian estimate is 40% too low. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v3.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v... > 3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise. I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault." > As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in. Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll. > Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did. Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.) However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal. At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.