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> All the hospitals are now rubble Hospitals may have been used for retaliation [0], but it is unclear how many & in what capacity (according to accepted conve

> All the hospitals are now rubble Hospitals may have been used for retaliation [0], but it is unclear how many & in what capacity (according to accepted conventions, using a hospital to treat wounded combatants wouldn't make it a valid military target, for example; but hiding weapons or personnel would). [0] One such recent report: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/msf-suspends-some-gaza-hospital-work-over-presence-gunmen-suspected-weapons-2026-02-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

weird_tentacles 8mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 8mo ago
  It's not at all an uncommon scenario to have to deal with in war, especially asymmetrical conflicts. IMO, Israel stepped very clearly over the line, repeatedly, in how they handled it, but the parent post is a pretty reasonable summary of the considerations.
  - weird_tentacles 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 8mo ago
      The rules aren't written by plucky revolutionaries, but the big powers. They, thus, fairly often favor people who fight like the big powers. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/can-hospitals-be-military-targets-international-law-israel-gaza-al-shifa https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/can-hospitals-... > Article 8 of the Rome statute, which established the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, defines a long list of war crimes including “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected”. > But it makes an exception if the targets are “military objectives”. Philip-Gay said that “if a civilian hospital is used for acts harmful to the enemy, that is the legal term used”, the hospital can lose its protected status under international law and be considered a legitimate target. Nevertheless, if there is doubt as to whether a hospital is a military objective or being used for acts harmful to the enemy, the presumption, under international humanitarian law, is that it is not. Again, I think Israel committed war crimes here and throughout Gaza. But the parent poster has a point that using a hospital for combat purposes risks its status. (There are still rules to follow in that case, that weren't followed. Again, war crimes.) > Truth: Mass-destroying a country's hospitals, murdering the doctors, nurses, workers & patients, mass-executing aid workers ... is Israeli. And only Israeli. This is the same mistake many made about Nazi Germany; convincing themselves that the Germans were uniquely evil. It stops people from having to examine themselves.
      - wk_end 8mo ago
        > The rules aren't written by plucky revolutionaries, but the big powers. They, thus, fairly often favor people who fight like the big powers. I think this is one of the ugliest things about this particular war. While the IDF unquestionably committed various war crimes over the course of the conflict anyway, the bulk of what people found objectionable very well might have been done in total accordance with international law. Despite many failures and excesses, the IDF at least paid lip service to trying to do that, as a policy. It's just that, the reality is, the rules are based on entirely different assumptions about how war is carried out. If they might lead to something resembling a "humane" war (hah!) when fought between, say, a relatively evenly matched France and Germany, they're quite ineffective at preventing a humanitarian catastrophe when you have a modern force attempting to siege an ultra-dense, militarized enclave run by an organization with no real hope of a conventional victory or interest in the well-being of its civilians. And so you end up with this absurd situation where the world witnessed, over and over again, unimaginably horrible things being inflicted on the population of Gaza, and the Israelis responding - if we're being charitable, not entirely unreasonably - "Why are you getting mad at us? We're following the rules!" It's just that, clearly, the rules are insufficient to match people's moral sentiments.
        eirini1 8mo ago
        > While the IDF unquestionably committed various war crimes over the course of the conflict anyway, the bulk of what people found objectionable very well might have been done in total accordance with international law. I think this is somewhat out of touch, the main reason this conflict has garnered so much attention is the amount of times Isreal commits war crimes.
        wk_end 8mo ago
        Let's suppose it could be demonstrated conclusively that every hospital in Gaza that Israel has bombed had Hamas militants operating out of them, as Israel has claimed. Do you think that'd silence Israel's critics about bombing hospitals? Do you think it should?
    - dang 8mo ago
      We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. You can't attack others like this here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ebbi 8mo ago
  [flagged]
glenstein 8mo ago
Not sure I understand the mass downvotes on this one. I didn't take it as endorsing the action but summarizing the rationale.
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  People have had good reasons for downvoting the above, but it's unclear how many and what those reasons might be.
  - richardfeynman 8mo ago
    [flagged]
- baq 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- dathinab 8mo ago
  many somewhat intellectual(1), but evil(2), people love to play make pretend of just "summarizing the rational", "playing devil advocate", "just pointing out facts" to endorse their word view while having "plausible deniability" if caught (as they tend to know many people think their ideas are evil). Idk. if this is happening here but given how some threads devolved and other patterns common for such people emerged (red hearing arguments, false conclusions etc.) it looks quite a bit like it. This kind people (the also tend to argue endlessly not based on common sense, understanding of the real world and empathy (in questions of ethic/moral) but based on nit picking stuff like as if the word ist just a game you find holes in the rules with to "cleverly win". Because for them the world often is just that. But a lot of people find such behavior deeply deplorable. hence why if something looks like that it will get a lot of down votes even if it wasn't meant that way. --- (1): Non intellectual people try that too. But they tend to lack the skill to pull it off. Hence why it tends to be pretty obvious why they are down voted or similar. (2): Non evil people do that too, they just normally have the decency not to do so with topics like genocide. I also use evil here as a over-generalization but I have mostly seen that behavior with neo-nazis and other groups which are least fascist adjacent (and most times outright fascist).
themafia 8mo ago
> according to accepted conventions Who accepted those? And did they have a right to do so on behalf of _all_ of humanity? The conventions are a guideline. To use them as a blanket moral justification for your actions after the fact is extremely disingenuous.
cholantesh 8mo ago
A lot of that ambiguity would vanish if Israel did not have a habit of drastically overstating their case and quietly walking it back after they end up killing more journalists and toddlers than active combatants in hospital bombings. Also if reports didn't deliberately conflate 'armed man' with 'Hamas militant' and euphemize about the 'Hamas-run Interior Ministry' like that one does.
- HappyPanacea 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 8mo ago
    > Israeli forces dressed in doctors’ scrubs and women’s clothes have killed three Palestinian militants in an undercover operation in a hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/30/israel-forces-disguised-women-medics-storm-hospital-jenin-west-bank https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/30/israel-forces-... Hmm.
    - HappyPanacea 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - ceejayoz 8mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy > It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy… The following acts are examples of perfidy… The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status... (Assassinating a paralyzed patient in a hospital is also not typically - ahem - kosher. Even if you're in uniform!)
        HappyPanacea 8mo ago
        Why was it decided that feigning of civilian, non-combatant status is bad? because it led to death of civilians who had no part in the fight; pretending to be your enemy's civilians bring no such issue. Although assassinating a patient is also not kosher it less relevant to the discussion about use of uniforms.

weird_tentacles 8mo ago

[flagged]

ceejayoz 8mo ago
It's not at all an uncommon scenario to have to deal with in war, especially asymmetrical conflicts. IMO, Israel stepped very clearly over the line, repeatedly, in how they handled it, but the parent post is a pretty reasonable summary of the considerations.
- weird_tentacles 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 8mo ago
    The rules aren't written by plucky revolutionaries, but the big powers. They, thus, fairly often favor people who fight like the big powers. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/can-hospitals-be-military-targets-international-law-israel-gaza-al-shifa https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/can-hospitals-... > Article 8 of the Rome statute, which established the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, defines a long list of war crimes including “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected”. > But it makes an exception if the targets are “military objectives”. Philip-Gay said that “if a civilian hospital is used for acts harmful to the enemy, that is the legal term used”, the hospital can lose its protected status under international law and be considered a legitimate target. Nevertheless, if there is doubt as to whether a hospital is a military objective or being used for acts harmful to the enemy, the presumption, under international humanitarian law, is that it is not. Again, I think Israel committed war crimes here and throughout Gaza. But the parent poster has a point that using a hospital for combat purposes risks its status. (There are still rules to follow in that case, that weren't followed. Again, war crimes.) > Truth: Mass-destroying a country's hospitals, murdering the doctors, nurses, workers & patients, mass-executing aid workers ... is Israeli. And only Israeli. This is the same mistake many made about Nazi Germany; convincing themselves that the Germans were uniquely evil. It stops people from having to examine themselves.
    - wk_end 8mo ago
      > The rules aren't written by plucky revolutionaries, but the big powers. They, thus, fairly often favor people who fight like the big powers. I think this is one of the ugliest things about this particular war. While the IDF unquestionably committed various war crimes over the course of the conflict anyway, the bulk of what people found objectionable very well might have been done in total accordance with international law. Despite many failures and excesses, the IDF at least paid lip service to trying to do that, as a policy. It's just that, the reality is, the rules are based on entirely different assumptions about how war is carried out. If they might lead to something resembling a "humane" war (hah!) when fought between, say, a relatively evenly matched France and Germany, they're quite ineffective at preventing a humanitarian catastrophe when you have a modern force attempting to siege an ultra-dense, militarized enclave run by an organization with no real hope of a conventional victory or interest in the well-being of its civilians. And so you end up with this absurd situation where the world witnessed, over and over again, unimaginably horrible things being inflicted on the population of Gaza, and the Israelis responding - if we're being charitable, not entirely unreasonably - "Why are you getting mad at us? We're following the rules!" It's just that, clearly, the rules are insufficient to match people's moral sentiments.
      - eirini1 8mo ago
        > While the IDF unquestionably committed various war crimes over the course of the conflict anyway, the bulk of what people found objectionable very well might have been done in total accordance with international law. I think this is somewhat out of touch, the main reason this conflict has garnered so much attention is the amount of times Isreal commits war crimes.
        wk_end 8mo ago
        Let's suppose it could be demonstrated conclusively that every hospital in Gaza that Israel has bombed had Hamas militants operating out of them, as Israel has claimed. Do you think that'd silence Israel's critics about bombing hospitals? Do you think it should?
  - dang 8mo ago
    We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. You can't attack others like this here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ebbi 8mo ago
[flagged]

glenstein 8mo ago

Not sure I understand the mass downvotes on this one. I didn't take it as endorsing the action but summarizing the rationale.

mikkupikku 8mo ago
People have had good reasons for downvoting the above, but it's unclear how many and what those reasons might be.
- richardfeynman 8mo ago
  [flagged]
baq 8mo ago
[flagged]
dathinab 8mo ago
many somewhat intellectual(1), but evil(2), people love to play make pretend of just "summarizing the rational", "playing devil advocate", "just pointing out facts" to endorse their word view while having "plausible deniability" if caught (as they tend to know many people think their ideas are evil). Idk. if this is happening here but given how some threads devolved and other patterns common for such people emerged (red hearing arguments, false conclusions etc.) it looks quite a bit like it. This kind people (the also tend to argue endlessly not based on common sense, understanding of the real world and empathy (in questions of ethic/moral) but based on nit picking stuff like as if the word ist just a game you find holes in the rules with to "cleverly win". Because for them the world often is just that. But a lot of people find such behavior deeply deplorable. hence why if something looks like that it will get a lot of down votes even if it wasn't meant that way. --- (1): Non intellectual people try that too. But they tend to lack the skill to pull it off. Hence why it tends to be pretty obvious why they are down voted or similar. (2): Non evil people do that too, they just normally have the decency not to do so with topics like genocide. I also use evil here as a over-generalization but I have mostly seen that behavior with neo-nazis and other groups which are least fascist adjacent (and most times outright fascist).

themafia 8mo ago

> according to accepted conventions Who accepted those? And did they have a right to do so on behalf of _all_ of humanity? The conventions are a guideline. To use them as a blanket moral justification for your actions after the fact is extremely disingenuous.

cholantesh 8mo ago

A lot of that ambiguity would vanish if Israel did not have a habit of drastically overstating their case and quietly walking it back after they end up killing more journalists and toddlers than active combatants in hospital bombings. Also if reports didn't deliberately conflate 'armed man' with 'Hamas militant' and euphemize about the 'Hamas-run Interior Ministry' like that one does.

HappyPanacea 8mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 8mo ago
  > Israeli forces dressed in doctors’ scrubs and women’s clothes have killed three Palestinian militants in an undercover operation in a hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/30/israel-forces-disguised-women-medics-storm-hospital-jenin-west-bank https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/30/israel-forces-... Hmm.
  - HappyPanacea 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 8mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy > It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy… The following acts are examples of perfidy… The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status... (Assassinating a paralyzed patient in a hospital is also not typically - ahem - kosher. Even if you're in uniform!)
      - HappyPanacea 8mo ago
        Why was it decided that feigning of civilian, non-combatant status is bad? because it led to death of civilians who had no part in the fight; pretending to be your enemy's civilians bring no such issue. Although assassinating a patient is also not kosher it less relevant to the discussion about use of uniforms.