To wonder how anyone thought what was happening in Gaza was ok?

[march10th]

I see all these threads popping up about outrage about what's going on, especially now the UN and the US have started acknowledging the situation.
AIBU to wonder how people didn't see this from the beginning??

It's been months and thousands of people have been wiped out. As an Arab with close family links to Palestine, I think this is ethnic cleansing, similar to what Western countries have done to the indigenous people of Australia and America.

I'm curious as to what leads you to consider the current casualty rates, infrastructure destruction and behaviours of military personnel as acceptable - most of my contacts in related fields (including frontline combat, military strategy, engineers, etc) share my view that the strategic approaches, weapons choices, conduct, etc are unacceptable?

That's not what you typed, but thank you for clarifying what you meant.

I wont rise to your deliberate lying.

Terrorist subject themselves to legal frameworks?? what fucking planet are you on???

Law applies to everybody. Terrorists might not accept them but that doesn’t matter. There aren’t special rules for terrorists.

Comparing Hamas to the Third Reich? thats a stretch, Hamas have zero chance of defeating Israel militarily let alone take out most of Western Europe.

This is why, despite when the IRA were killing, torturing and executing UK Government cabinet ministers, British soldiers and citizens, Thatcher did not order the indiscriminate bombing of West Belfast.

Israel could have chosen to flood areas of Gaza with troops, intel led special forces raids, targeted overseas operations against Hamas leaders, instead it went for the mass movement of 2m people, mass bombings and who cares about civilian casualties.

Have to disagree on that. The core of the problem is one side displacing people and stealing their land.

Please engage with what people are actually saying. I was not comparing Hamas with the Third Reich, I was pointing out that the logical consequence of pacifism (that particular poster was a pacifist) was enslavement, and if we were pacifists during the Second World War then we could not have resisted Nazism.

Ok, that one dealt with. The second part of your post is the more sensible bit. This gets into questions around strategy and tactics. Are Israel waging a textbook military campaign? No. Do individual soldiers behave badly? Yes. By the way, there is a lot of propaganda to wade through here too. I remember someone’s appalled righteousness about an Israeli soldier who shot dead an injured man while he was lying in hospital. It turned out that he was a member of Hamas, and do you know what, people still said Israel were in the wrong! International law, actually, gives Israel the right to utterly destroy Hamas.

Israel suffered their worst atrocity since the Holocaust on Oct 7th. And people were talking about the supposed barbarism of Israel on Oct 8th.

You justified IDF tactics and compared to WW2, where the allies faced an enemy with the capability to over run all of europe, Israel do not, in terms of Hamas, face that threat.

You re the only one defending Israel to the n th degree, even the Americans are fed up with their behaviours, its not a rogue soldier or even a group of them, its v clearly policy.

Yes executing an enemy combatant whilst they are incapacitated is against the rules of war, check UK soldiers being prosecuted for this in both NI and Afghan.

@CaterhamReconstituted
I remember someone’s appalled righteousness about an Israeli soldier who shot dead an injured man while he was lying in hospital. It turned out that he was a member of Hamas, and do you know what, people still said Israel were in the wrong! International law, actually, gives Israel the right to utterly destroy Hamas.

This incident was headline news throughout the whole world and the general concensus was not well done the IDF for murdering a paralysed patient in his bed quite the reverse

International law, actually, gives Israel the right to utterly destroy Hamas.

You're just making up any old nonsense now

@CaterhamReconstituted
Please do not portray this conflict in the terms of an existential threat to Israel.

From 2008 until 6 October 2023, 1245 Israelis died as a result of the conflict. During the same period , Israel killed more than 2300 Palestinian children

In 2022 there were 351 road deaths in Israel.

Road traffic accidents kill more Israelis than terrorists.

On 7 October 2023, there was a single violent pogram resulting in the deaths of approximately 1200 Israeli residents, many of whom but not all that were civilians. This occurred against a background of security failures at numerous levels, the majority of which were unlikely to recu.

Israel is not facing an existential threat from Hamas.

You are as entitled to your opinion as anyone but most of the world thinks that Israel is wrong in what it is doing.

I have already explained the Third Reich analogy was specifically about pacifism and its consequences, I wasn’t comparing Nazi capability with Hamas.

Im not defending Israel go the nth degree, I am arguing that the characterisation of Israeli military action as unacceptable, aggressive, war crimes as a matter of policy etc is not true. Of course there is misconduct in war, and that should be dealt with, but I’m talking about Israel’s right to defend itself against genocide.

On the final point, there are (rightly) rules about you treat prisoners of war. This is not the same as a military situation where a terrorist could be lying in a bed, in an hospital that his own side have deliberately chosen as an theatre of war, and still detonate a bomb.

The number of Hamas member the IDF claims to have killed is similar to the total number of men killed in Gaza. I don't think we can trust them when they say they have shot a member of Hamas.

Hard to know which murder in a hospital you are referring to as the IDF have committed so many.

Article 12 of the First Geneva Convention requires injured combatants to be provided with medical care whether they are friend or foe.

Shooting unarmed injured combatants is against international law regardless of the location.

The IDF shot three men in a hospital in Jenin in the West Bank, that hospital was not a theatre of war. The IDF commited murder.

Israel is committing genocide, not defending itself against one.

The threat IS existential. Have you read the Hamas charter? We saw on the 7 Oct what they are prepared to do if they get half the chance. The reason the Israeli body count isn’t higher is precisely because Israel recognise that threat is existential, so they have built a sophisticated Iron Dome defence system to keep missiles from killing more Jews. They can hardly be blamed for that.

Im not defending Israel go the nth degree, I am arguing that the characterisation of Israeli military action as unacceptable, aggressive, war crimes as a matter of policy etc is not true. Of course there is misconduct in war, and that should be dealt with, but I’m talking about Israel’s right to defend itself against genocide

You really are....

Israel is NOT defending its self against genocide as Hamas do not possess the means to do this to Israel

On the final point, there are (rightly) rules about you treat prisoners of war. This is not the same as a military situation where a terrorist could be lying in a bed, in an hospital that his own side have deliberately chosen as an theatre of war, and still detonate a bomb

Well, based on that assumption, Israel should kill anyone it sees... as it appears to be doing.
Women with kids in house "Kill, kids could have bombs in their toys"
Patient in hospital bed "Kill, could have a bomb"
Family moving south in a car as told to by IDF "Kill, suicide car bomber"
3 men stripped to the waist, holding white flag... "Kill em all..."

You get the picture.... You are once again, defending the indefensible.

We’ve probably completed the circle we’ve just gone around in. Let’s agree to disagree.

You assume that there are no pacifists in Israel. Can you, please, provide facts supporting this?

So how much time needs to elapse before raping, torturing, murdering and mutilating stops being an acceptable response to “one side displacing people and stealing their land” considering there are none alive today on either side that were directly involved in or directly affected by the creation of Israel or any of the conflicts preceding that.

In the absence of a time machine, I’m not sure how much can be done about what you consider to be the core problem, anyway. So when is enough, enough? What solution do you propose that solves the problem of “one side displacing people and stealing their land” that goes back generations, to before WW2.

I mean, the peoples of Europe in WW2 endured unimaginable loss on an unprecedented scale - loss of life, loss of family, loss of property, loss of wealth, loss of land etc. The number of people displaced is estimated at around 65 million in Europe alone. If any group in Europe were raping, torturing, murdering and mutilating another group in 2024 due to the events preceding and of WW2, I don’t think there would be much tolerance for it. I don’t think there would be much sympathy for it.

If the core of the problem is “one side displacing people and stealing their land” why aren’t we seeing the same issues at play in Europe over displacement, loss of land and the insurmountable other losses people endured and for which there was no justice to be had. That’s unless, jihadism isn’t as small a problem in this situation as you seem to think it is.

The core problem in this conflict stopped being “one side displacing people and stealing their land” a long time ago.

Er, I’m not saying that.

Terrorists are also subject to legal frameworks.
What do you mean? I am really confused because terrorism is, by definition, illegal and a criminal offense.
Terrorists don't sign up to the Geneva convention ( Israel did) or are part of the UN/WHO ( again, Israel has been since 1949 for the former).
Terrorists do not operate within a legal framework ( see my first point) but Israel signed up to one ( see my second point).

@NotSoBigCrocodile land theft and occupation are current issues, not simply historical. The Occupied Territories are referred to as such due to occupation. 'Settlers' are taking and planning to take land owned by Palestinians. The Israeli government has just recently approved plans for more 'settlements' in the Occupied Territories.

Life as a Palestinian in the West Bank, pre-7/10, included occupying forces making threats, controlling most aspects of life, and presenting a real risk to life. Imagine living in the land internationally stated as your homeland, and being threatened at gunpoint to leave your home, told which streets you can and can't walk down because of your race, prevented from using certain shops, etc. Imagine, every time your child leaves the house to play or go to school, there's real chance of them being shot dead by an occupying military force, or even just a random 'settler', with no repercussions for the perpetrators. Imagine having to watch your spouse be beaten, and be unable to intervene because if you do, you'd get shot.

Life in Gaza, for a Palestinian, pre-7/10, was life under blockade. Everything and everyone coming in to Gaza was controlled. Children couldn't have basic educational toys, hospitals couldn't have essential equipment to provide certain services (meaning people who needed those services had to wait and hope for approval to leave Gaza for their appointments and treatment - approval would often not come, or come too late, meaning that many people simply couldn't get the treatment they needed and died). Over 2 million people, in a small area of land, with nowhere to go and insufficient land and resources to meet their needs... They were dependent upon aid coming in. Food supplies coming in were calorie-counted, to ensure that there wasn't enough for people to actually thrive - to live in Gaza pre-7/10 was to constantly feel hungry.

This was happening on 6/10. This isn't the distant past.

I would be interested in your take on the bombing of 'safe zones', @CaterhamReconstituted - is that acceptable?

No it’s not. But Israel do not do this. UNWRA claimed this but they are compromised having collaborated with Hamas.

Even the idea of a safe zone is seen as illegitimate, as ‘forced transfer’. So bombing is wrong, but asking people to leave an area before it is bombed is also wrong! Israel is always demonised.

I don't need a time machine thanks because Israel is literally still doing this today. If you were one of those kicked off your land recently you'd probably consider it a pretty relevant issue in the conflict. And I would understand if your descendents weren't thrilled about it in years to come, even if it made life handier for those who stole their land if everyone just forgot about it.

As someone living in an occupied territory I can assure you that you never forget the wrong that was done.

@CaterhamReconstituted I'm interested as to whether you think there is a point at which actions undertaken by the IDF to defeat Hamas would be disproportionate. Do you think the current military campaign should continue regardless of the number of casualties until every major Hamas figure is dead and their infrastructure destroyed? Or do you think there is a point at which the campaign would have caused too many deaths and should stop?

In relation to your first point, I have seen with my own eyes that they do.

A friend's family were ordered by the IDF to evacuate, and given instructions on where to go, to a 'safe zone'.

While they were in the 'safe zone', it was bombed by the IDF. I highly doubt that my friend's family faked having to remove shrapnel from their child's face - from a toddler's face.