Please do all you can to object to the genocide of Palestinians

[Finallyloggedin]

It’s just heartbreaking. I’ve seen videos on twitter that are beyond anything I can even begin to describe. Palestinians are being murdered in their thousands and the western media is largely pretending it’s not happening.

The average age of the people who have been killed in Gaza is FIVE years old.

The UK media are not showing how the Israeli government is openly talking about, and cheerleading genocide now. Israeli government speaks about Palestinians as if they are not humans. They are saying women are targets as they can have babies. I’ve just read how, since October 7th they have taken over 5,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and tortured them. They were already routinely arresting Palestinians and taking them away from their family with no reason and no but this is not being adequately reported.

Please, please visit sites such as 972 magazine and declassified uk. The BBC, etc, unfortunately aren’t reporting the extent to what is going on.

https://www.declassifieduk.org/israel-and-its-allies-are-repurposing-the-goals-and-lies-of-1948-in-gaza-in-2023/

There’s nowhere for either civilians or Hamas to go. So all this talk of being forced to kill children because Hamas is hiding behind them makes no sense.

Killing 11,000 children is either spectacularly incompetent or spectacularly immoral.

It never did make sense. I've never been able to fathom how the IDF expect to be taken seriously when they made that post saying the answer is always Hamas under scrutiny of why they were attacking buildings/areas with civilians trying to escape harm.
Fortunately most people seem to see through the excuses now, and it is heartening to see legal action being taken against the Israeli government - at the very least it sends a strong message. Hopefully one day soon, strong enough that they are stopped, but unfortunately I doubt it. There's already talk of settling in parts of Gaza, it's vile. Although many of us always knew that was always part of the motive.

The issue you seem to be missing, though, is that people are not trying to avoid civilian deaths.

There would be plenty of options for minimising civilian deaths. For example: safe evacuation corridors; letting people leave if they want to; not bombing densely populated 'safe zones' that people were told to stay in; not actively blocking the entry and distribution of aid; not destroying the healthcare system; actually using intelligence to target military interventions; not executing people trying to surrender; not using sniper fire to execute elderly women; etc.

There are also horrific things happening in the Occupied West Bank. Those aren't exactly just.

It is tiring repeating this but Israel are NOT deliberately killing civilians.
Gaza is 365 km2 with a population of 2.10 millions ( well before the 30000 reported dead). 6000 people per km2 with buildings packed together, which Israel is well aware of. Avoiding killing civilians is impossible, especially when they use the type of bombs they use, which are used deliberately. No ifs no buts.
Hamas DELIBERATELY put civilians in harm’s way.
Yes, they have previously. But ,as the territory consists mostly of an extremely dense urban environment, it is perhaps not surprising that Hamas operates in civilian areas.
International law also makes clear that even if an armed force is improperly using civilian objects to shield itself, its opponent is still required to protect civilians from disproportionate harm.
Any deaths of non-combatants is regrettable but the moral outrage needs to be reserved for Hamas.
You mean the deaths of babies, women and the old? Regrettable? I would say amoral and criminal. My moral outrage is reserved for Hamas and the Israeli government; the latter acting like the former but taking it to another level.
I will not engage with you again because it is tiring to explain over and over why you are defend the indefensible.

@JohnMytton you speak of justice in the military response.

Please explain where the justice is in the account I posted earlier?

Please explain the justice in crushing people to death with bulldozers and tanks?

Please explain the justice in shooting and killing unarmed men waving white flags and trying to surrender?

@JohnMytton I'm pretty confident I'm qualified to speak as to the mentality of certain political and terrorist groups, based on my work, humanitarian action, qualifications, lived experience and the eyewitness accounts I have been able to gather. What's your experience in the fields of humanitarian aid, combat/emergency medicine, living and working in the Middle East, etc?

I am quite familiar with the efforts made by the IDF and Israeli government to 'minimise' civilian casualties. My friends and colleagues have been counted amongst those civilian casualties since 2003.

Through my work, I have been well aware of the responsibilities on military forces in relation to minimising civilian casualties. There are many things that could be done, that this particular miltary force is not doing. There are many things that could be avoided, which are being done.

So, on what grounds do you consider your view to be the most likely to be accurate, @JohnMytton ?

It is reasonable to give weight to views based on academic and professional experience and qualifications, lived experience, etc. The "We've all had enough of experts" approach ends up with bad political decision-making. Disregarding lived experience leads to policies that do not address key issues and perpetuate problems.

Using the theoretical example of a hospital being on top of an enemy base, let's work that through.

If there is a confirmed base underneath a hospital...

How has the base been identified? What is happening at the base now and how much of an imminent threat does that pose and to whom?

Scenario plan. The methods of confirming the base and doing a threat assessment can guide options for intervention and threat containment. In all of these scenarios, a major consideration is expected to be the potential for civilian casualties. There are circumstances in which high casualty rates may be unavoidable but these are few and far between. Yes, even in urban combat against individuals or groups using human shields. The responsibility lies with the force carrying out a military intervention or initiating a combat encounter to ensure they can justify any civilian casualties.

Can you think of any potential scenarios in which an intervention could be carried out to successfully reduce or remove a threat without devastating civilian casualties?

Just off the top of my head... Targeted strike teams, drones, activation of intelligence agents, etc. All alternatives to dropping a bomb, bulldozing buildings and people, and shooting unarmed civilians.

And I would still be interested to learn more about your own qualifications and basis for your experience. Eg, have you worked in combat/emergency zones and seen how these things work? have you had experience in working with counter-terrorism or military agencies? genuinely interested - you seem to have very strong views and I'm interested to know how you've developed them. I'd also be interested in answers to my earlier questions.

Not Gaza, but in relation to the west bank. Times of Israel is reporting that the US have asked for explanations after reports that US weapons were used against Palestinians that violate human right laws in the occupied territories.
Not sure what the outcome will be if proven to be true
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-israel-responding-to-charges-that-us-weapons-were-used-in-west-bank-rights-violations/

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The argument of authority may be used legitimately if the authority has specific knowledge and expertise-for example “my dermatologist thinks that the mole is likely to be cancerous and says that it should be removed by full thickness biopsy with a wide margin” .

In this case we see that the pro Israeli lobby are no longer disputing the scale of deaths so we can probably agree that about 800 Israeli civilians have been killed and about 200 abducted but about 11,000 thousand Gaza’s children killed (just so we don’t have to waste time debating whether or not every adult male and female who hates Israel is a terrorist). So we can take these figures as hard evidence , I hope unless you’ll say that the figures are unreliable because the IDF haven’t done the counting.

We can weigh the scale of the numbers of deaths on both sides. No one believes that the use of in targeted missiles can avoid this scale of civilian casualties. We are in agreement with you here.
We are saying that Israel does not have the right to respond in such a way that as that they can reasonably expect to produce this level of civilian casualties.
Civilian deaths are unavoidable in this type of warfare
So if you, who have failed so far to produce any evidence of credible expertise and are just a simple mumsnetter, tell us that this scale of casualties,even in the absence of genocidal intent, are unavoidable, we may ultimately enjoy the small comfort of seeing Netantayu in jail for his war crimes.

Israel’s own allies have called for an alternative strategy . President Michael D Higgins of Ireland said yesterday that any further strikes on areas densely populated with refugees “would leave any respect for human rights law in tatters”

You re making the assumption that the IDF isn't deliberately killing Palestinians, at best, there seems to be a certain cavalier attitude to Gazan deaths and little done to even get their hostages out - flooding tunnels for example.

The problem is that this war will eventually end and what then? with around 2m Gazans still alive, thats a fertile breeding ground for more hatred towards Israel and hence a new Hamas mk2 and more October 7th type attacks.

@JohnMytton
No I am not making the assumption that the slaughtering of innocent children on this scale is the direct intent. I am making the point that that Israel must reasonably know that it’s actions will have genocidal consequences even if it’s claimed purpose is something else, thereby meeting the criteria for genocide

@JohnMytton
Israel’s closest ally, America says there is an alternative but Israel, claiming self defence has rejected any other approach.
Yet we see IDF go into a hospital and take out individual Hamas operatives as they lie in bed wounded.

@JohnMytton here you go.

In relation to your recent post, far from being an 'armchair general', my opinions on potential strategic options are based on a combination of professional opinions, the opinions of other professionals (including armed forces professionals), international humanitarian law and current literature/accepted strategic practice.

What's yours based on? Because if you genuinely can't see any alternative approaches in modern combat, I'd be concerned your information is incomplete.

Regardless of the ethical debates around that, it does indeed demonstrate that targeted actions are well within capabilities.

To answer your question, yes. There are multiple options available which could be used to achieve military objectives relating to the dismantling of a hostile force.

These options are not being used.