IDF shoot hostages in Gaza after 'mistakenly identifying them as a threat'

[Struggggggling]

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/idf-kill-israeli-hostages-mistakenly-identifying-hamas-gaza/

Previous hostages warned this would happen, tragic events. There is no winner in this conflict only losers.

Do you think Israel will now change tactics or if any histage swaps will take priority?

It’s a fair point.

Yes so does my DH a retired, black, firearms trained police officer.

PS I thought the way you characterised me was quite unkind and unnecessary.

I am sorry you felt that, but it is very frustrating when people make the ‘both sides are just as bad’ fence sitting position, when this requires viewing deliberately torturing children as the same kind of crime as inadvertently harming children. Or that mild wariness of people from a different culture is on a par with wishing for their eradication by genocide.

I have been trying to make the distinction and the way you simplistically collapsed that down was disparaging and annoying.

That is quite some claim.

"Doing their job and made the wrong call."

I'm not sure you know much about the case.

Were the met behaving like terrorists? With the way he was shot it's debatable. Seven bullets to the head, hollow point ammunition which rendered him unrecognisable.

What is not debatable is that they were incompetent. He was identified by an undercover officer who was taking a piss and didn't send film or photographic evidence to Gold Command for confirmation he had the correct person. On that basis of that officers suspicion he was tailed by several undercover officers on two bus journeys before he got on the tube. The order to use "code red tactics" was given by officers who didn't even have eyes on Jean Charles de Menezes.

Had correct procedures been followed Jean Charles de Menezes would not have been shot and killed.

I don’t think that there’s a more ethical way to kill a child. However they are killed is horrific and it is not more moral to drop a bomb on them just because it’s not happening face to face. Your use of the word ‘harming’ is a massive euphemism for the killing, maiming and being burnt alive which is what is actually happening to these children when an explosive is dropped on them. The IDF are most certainly not ‘inadvertently harming’ children, they are consciously killing and maiming them for life.

And ‘mild wariness of someone from a different culture?’ That just sounds like another euphemism for racism to me.

I am sorry you felt that, but it is very frustrating when people make the ‘both sides are just as bad’ fence sitting position, when this requires viewing deliberately torturing children as the same kind of crime as inadvertently harming children. Or that mild wariness of people from a different culture is on a par with wishing for their eradication by genocide.

You know that the IDF have been killing and torturing children for years, right?

And you've heard the genocidal rhetoric proudly shared by any number of Israeli politicians?

The Israeli government/IDF are every bit as bad as Hamas.

So you think a fair skinned blonde was just as likely to be shot?

It was so terrible it is almost hard to believe what they did.

If Osman Hussein was fair-skinned and blonde, then yes.

I am using the words torture and genocide literally, not hyperbole.

Your moral reasoning is off.

You believe there is no moral difference between deliberately targeting children and inadvertently catching them when targeting someone or something else?

You think all racism is equally bad, from mild suspicion of people who seem unfamiliar to believing those people should be rounded up and exterminated from the face of the Earth?

This means that every pilot who ever launched a bomb in the history of modern warfare is morally on a par with men who rape children in your eyes.

Not hyperbole.

The first report is from 2001, notice the word "still" in the title.

https://www.omct.org/en/resources/urgent-interventions/israel-palestinian-children-still-being-tortured-in-israeli-prisons

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/dec/15/idf-exhibition-breaking-the-silence

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/12/18/it-is-clear-that-israel-is-committing-genocide-in-gaza-un-panel-concludes/

@Bagpussdreams
Look the IDF, like pretty much every force, can make mistakes, can do wrong. However, there is a huge difference between targeting and torturing children as a deliberate tactic, and children being unavoidably caught up in an air strike or other military offensive
There is no parity

That depend on if the deaths are avoidable or not, its my belief that the Israelis are not taking any care whatsoever over civilian casualties, their attitude was summed up by their defence secretary who said early in the war that "the destruction of Hamas is the aim and everything else are just details"

A child shot by a masked gunman is no more or less terrorised than a child finding his or ker leg/arm is missing or stomach hanging out of them etc and they are bleeding out, trapped under rubble or being operated on without analgesia, lying next to their dead mother.

The reports coming out of Gaza from WHO officials, are quite frankly shocking, it is something out of the horrors of World War 2.

Bear in mind, Israel has deliberately starved the Palestinians both of food and medicines, why have they done that?

When someone like Ben Wallace criticises Israel, we all know they ve gone too far.

I said right at the beginning of this “war” that the Israeli government would end up deliberately sacrificing hostages. In my opinion they negotiated the release of a few to look like they cared about them, but carrying on the genocide was more important.

I don’t think there is anything inadvertent about killing children in Israel’s behaviour - they are acceptable victims of its war, as Israel sees them as less important than “destroying Hamas,” even though it is not destroying Hamas, but is very successfully killing children (and hostages).

So you know he was targeted purely on the basis of how he looked? How is that not racist?

This is getting more and more like a comedy sketch 🤯🤣

They thought they were murdering a Palestinian.

@Bagpussdreams Both have behaved horrendously, and neither are absolved by the hideousness of the other.

I understand your frustration with the way I simplified things, but I did not need to get into the details that were already being discussed to state what I saw. Which was that you had resorted to characterising people who don’t agree with you.

I get what you are saying about the way things have been done, however I also believe that it is never OK to kill innocent people, however it is done.

You seem to have a lot of trust that certain groups are always acting in good faith. Why is that?

Have you missed something? Israel hasn't been "harming" children by mistake. It has historically tortured, abused, murdered, made homeless, orphaned, imprisoned and bribed children. They are definitely worse, as a state they are supposed to adhere to international laws and conventions. This standard is not expected of terrorist groups. Why on earth do posters keep paralleling them?

Your entire argument is based on that you believe that the IDF are inadvertently targeting children, when it is my opinion, evidenced by the many atrocities that they have committed, that there is nothing inadvertent about it at all.

Dropping bombs on a building or hospital you know contains children and babies is not inadvertent, neither is shooting a mother with her children at point blank range, or shooting a boy in the back of the head, or deliberately using bulldozers to crush Palestinians sheltering in makeshift tents. They just don’t value the lives of the Palestinians enough to care.

Changing the parameters of your argument does not bolster it; the comparison was between the face to face killing of children vs killing them from afar in this particular war.

And my moral compass is exactly where it should be; believing that the killing of any child is a crime, no matter which manner in which they are murdered.

So, according to you, shoot first, ask questions later.

You do know that Hamas terrorists are not soldiers, therefore do not wear a uniform? They are civilians.
Maybe the French resistants should have worn uniforms too and no, I don't believe Hamas terrorists are resistants.