Israel - Hamas War 2

[Padraig]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

I carry no water for either side but when you see a lot of experts hedging on something "possibly" being a war crime, it leaves one thinking that in fact the situation is very complicated. And it is, in fact, complicated.

Ran.  You saying something is very complicated, doesn't make it so.  A few days ago you admitted barely knowing anything about the border crossing to Egypt.  Today you are confidently adjudicating whether something is a war crime a not based on your knowledge of said crossing.

It should be noted that the ongoing talks about the border crossing involve the US.  I think it would be silly to believe that Israel's views are not taken into consideration.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

But as I think I've shown, Israel seems to have no duty to supply electricity or fuel to Gaza, and it can prevent food and other necessities to pass through its borders if it fears it will be redirected

You certainly have not shown anything positive.  Are you actually saying that Hamas is going to seize all the food and fuel that would be sent to Gaza?  Or do you think that because Hamas may grab a small percentage, that would be enough to eradicate any expectation of aid?

 

 

[GrimTuesday]

This is the leader of the former, supposed moderate, government that Bibi and his goons beat in the last election. It is not just Likud and it's far right allies, the rot runs deep in the Israeli government. They do not see the Palestinians as humans and we are backing them to the hilt.

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Egypt is urging countries to send supplies to a staging airport near the border.

But not allowing any inhabitants of Gaza to come in -- i.e. leave Gaza.  What did you say about Gaza not being landlocked?  There are reasons that for a long time Gaza has been called a concentration camp.  They cannot get out anywhere.

 

[Ran]

16 minutes ago, Padraig said:

You saying something is very complicated, doesn't make it so. 

Actual experts saying it's complicated makes it so to me. I know other experts say not, but there's a wide difference between human rights groups claiming something is "likely a war crime" and an actual war crime. If even they are hedging, well, that says it's complicated, no?

16 minutes ago, Padraig said:

You certainly have not shown anything positive.

If anyone can find anything in the Geneva convention about electricity or fuel, I'd be curious to see it. A former State Department lawyer was quoted in the Telegraph, and I looked at the actual Geneva convention since it's handily searchable, and there really is nothing about that. I find it hard to think of any conflict where one side was required by international law to provide electricity and fuel to the other side. Did Germany provide the UK oil during WWII? Did the US send diesel to North Vietnam? 

And while people are quoting Section IV of the Geneva convention, it both has provisions for why a Party can on its own decide whether allowing food is permitted if it fears certain scenarios  with no apparent outside group adjudicating it, and other parts of Section IV Israel is not in fact a signatory to. So, I don't know, if Hamas is going to take some food meant for children and pregnant women, I can see the argument for not providing that food as being lawful within the strictures of the convention. Which may say more about the weaknesses of the Geneva Convention, but that's what we have.

So, I don't know. I think it's a potential humanitarian disaster in the making if Hamas doesn't give back the hostages or Israel actually blocks aid via Egypt, but I don't know that it fits the definition of a war crime. 

Why are people wedded to it being a war crime? What is the magic power that is being ascribed to the phrase that makes it so vital?

 

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Ran

[Zorral]

8 minutes ago, Ran said:

Why are people wedded to it being a war crime?

Why are you wedded to it not being a war crime on legal paper?  

Call it the a crime against humanity no matter what paper says.  History is filled with those, and they are remembered.

This will be Bibi's legacy, even if he doesn't get hauled to the Hague, and can fly anywhere he wants (Kissinger can't, any longer . . . .)

Plus, this horrific thing he's doing is actually obscuring what the horrific things Hamas has done to Israel.  Is this what the world wants?

Edited October 12, 2023 by Zorral

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Why are you wedded to it not being a war crime on legal paper?  

Quote

William Roper : So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More : Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper : Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More : Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

 

So, yeah. I think the letter of the law matters. Everyone should have the benefit of it, even if you dislike them. It's doubly important to respect what treaties actually say and who is party to them, because they are fragile constructs but are extremely important to international relations. 

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Call it the a crime against humanity no matter what paper says. 

It may become that, yes, but I hope not.

Edited October 12, 2023 by Ran

[Kalbear]

Interesting. I hadn't realized, @Ran, that your view of this is that Israel is at war with the entire Gaza region and believe Gaza to be effectively an independent state. 

As I said before that is not what almost anyone else views it as, but it does frame the viewpoint a bit better. 

[Ran]

16 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

that your view of this is that Israel is at war with the entire Gaza region and believe Gaza to be effectively an independent state. 

I'm not sure I would call it a state, in large part because much of the world does not recognize it as a state. But it's not Israel, either. It's an unoccupied Palestinian territory, as opposed to the West Bank, which is an occupied Palestinian territory.

Israel is at war with the government of Gaza, which happens to be Hamas.

 ETA: Someone mentioned Noah Smith the other day and I looked up his piece on Substack, and he makes the argument for a three-state solution (West Bank, Gaza, Israel). Seemed interesting, and to me the only way forward is for Israel to man up, fix itself to the pre-1967 borders, withdraw troops from the West Bank, and basically force statehood onto Gaza and the West Bank with no preconditions.

Then if hostilities resume, it can be a war between two states, properly governed by the laws of war, and not this morass of terrorism. But hopefully, with statehood, Gaza and the West Bank will prosper, and will be less interested in going to war with all the consequences that may bring on a state.

But alas, that's a dream that I don't think will ever come to pass, as much because of Israel's hawks and Ultra-Orthodox as because of Hamas and other Islamist parties.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Ran

[Padraig]

25 minutes ago, Ran said:

If even they are hedging, well, that says it's complicated, no?

Who exactly is hedging?

Propaganda 101 says you make claims, loudly and firmly.  The fact that you found people doing so tells me nothing except that the internet is working like usual.

25 minutes ago, Ran said:

If anyone can find anything in the Geneva convention about electricity or fuel, I'd be curious to see it.

You'll just saw that Israel didn't sign this, which somehow in your mind vindicates them but here...

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.34_AP-I-EN.pdf

In addition to the duties specified in Article 55 of the Fourth Convention concerning food and medical supplies, the Occupying Power shall, to the fullest extent of the means available to it and without any adverse distinction, also ensure the provision of clothing, bedding, means of shelter, other supplies essential to the survival of the civilian population of the occupied territory and objects necessary for religious worship.

And yes, it doesn't the words fuel or electricity.  Maybe in your mind they are not "essential to the survival of the civilian population", so vindication!

Edited to add: @GrimTuesday And yes, Bennett was never moderate.  His best quality was that he hated Netanyahu..

Edited October 13, 2023 by Padraig

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Occupying Power

Israel has not occupied Gaza since 2005, so ... what is the relevance? We were talking about the provision relevant to a siege of Gaza, not an occupation of Gaza. I 100% agree that if Israel resumes occupation of Gaza, the care of the people of Gaza will be their responsibility, including the provision of needful things like fuel and electricity.

As to who, the NYT piece I linked earlier is the source of the claim that human rights groups are saying it's "a likely war crime", which, again, is a curious hedge if it's so straightforward. I need to find it again to see which specific groups are being cited.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Ran

[karaddin]

The law often doesn't align with my personal moral code, and I find it bizarre to think that an actor can only commit war crimes if they're a signatory to a treaty banning that particular action. I don't base my assessment of something on whether they'll actually be convinced and punished for it.

Your interpretation of occupation and siege is similarly rigid to a very strict definition.

Hypothetical numbers below for making a point, not saying these are the actual numbers:

If there's technically a passage via which supplies could be brought in, but 25% of them happen to be deemed "suspect" by the group that has air domination and fire control of the passage who then use that to bomb the "suspect" supplies - would you say it's not under siege even though no one is willing to actually roll the dice because a 1 in 4 chance of being bombed is pretty risky?

The real world does not align to strict definitions every time. Israel may not have a permanently stationed occupation force in Gaza but it absolutely has military control of the area and the capacity to prevent supplies coming in and infrastructure development there. 

ETA: And to make it clear - this does not absolve Hamas of their failure to improve the situation as the winner of the last election there, nor of the fact that they're terrorists and very much committing war crimes as well. 

Edited October 13, 2023 by karaddin

[Werthead]

The Israeli perspective is very much that they withdrew from Gaza, even dismantled their settlements there, and left Gaza to its own devices, within certain parameters (i.e. Israel controlling military access from their side of the border). They accepted workers from Gaza into Israel, with the idea that the Palestinian Authority could show what they could do with a territory they controlled without any Israeli military or settler presence.

The immediate result of this (within basically a year) was that half of the voting-age population voted in an extremist terrorist group with a maximalist aim of burning Israel from the face of the Earth and killing all Jews in the Middle East, who almost immediately instigated terror attacks against Israeli territory. They also failed to economically develop Gaza in any way, encouraged Palestinian couples in the Strip to have insanely huge families (Gaza's birth rate topped out at something like an average of eight babies per set of parents, which is inadvisable in a rich country, not one of the poorest regions on Earth), and blamed Israel for all the problems they themselves brought upon the territory.

So from Israeli's perspective, that is all extremely problematic in how they deal with the situation.

From other perspectives, Israel may have withdrawn from Gaza but still exerted military control and access to it, made travel back and forth so complicated that Fatah could not effectively govern both statelets simultaneously, and put enough economic restrictions on Gaza to make life fairly tough and make Hamas seem like an attractive option.

Another perspective in 2023 might be that Hamas might be in charge, but they have not contested an election in 17 years, less than a quarter of the current population of Gaza voted for them, and there's at least 50 and probably closer to 60 Palestinian civilians in Gaza for every 1 member of Hamas. So the arguments, such as they are, for collective punishment of the people of Gaza for their support of Hamas are extremely thin.

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

Israel has not occupied Gaza since 2005, so ... what is the relevance?

As to who, the NYT piece I linked earlier is the source of the claim that human rights groups are saying it's "likely a war crime", which, again, is a curious hedge if it's so straightforward. I need to find it again to see which specific groups are being cited.

Israel has not had boots on the ground inside the Gaza Strip. It has, however, exerted total fire control over the Gaza Strip, enacted a no-fly zone over it (Gaza's own airport was levelled by the Israelis in 2001), controls almost all supplies of food, fuel, medicine and water from their side of the border and works with Egypt to do the same from their side of it.

This is like saying the army totally besieging a castle takes no responsibility for the people starving inside it, shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Why don't they leave? Why don't they feed themselves? Not our problem." When it very much is their responsibility.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Werthead

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

I'm not sure I would call it a state, in large part because much of the world does not recognize it as a state. But it's not Israel, either. It's an unoccupied Palestinian territory, as opposed to the West Bank, which is an occupied Palestinian territory.

Israel is at war with the government of Gaza, which happens to be Hamas.

Both are occupied territories according to all experts other than israel itself. How Israel chooses to exercise its power is not what determines said occupation, and since Israel controls all territorial access to the country from air and sea by the Oslo accords they are the legal entity in charge of them.

And since the law is important to you it is not possible to be at war with a stateless government. Wars only can be legally declared against other recognized countries. 

[GrimTuesday]

15 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Edited to add: @GrimTuesday And yes, Bennett was never moderate.  His best quality was that he hated Netanyahu..

Oh, of course I know that, I was just trying to illustrate that even those that are sold as moderates are also supporting much the same policies as Netanyahu. Benny Gantz who was also sold as a moderate jumped right into bed with Netanyahu to form a war time unity government and will enthusiastically support this genocide. 

[Padraig]

52 minutes ago, Ran said:

Did Germany provide the UK oil during WWII? Did the US send diesel to North Vietnam? 

I have to say this.  Geneva Convention postdated WW2, so not sure what you mean by this.  Not that we could expect much from Germany anyhow in WW2???  And North Vietnam had other sources to fuel.

Morally, collective punishment is evil.  Expecting it to be a war crime is a sane reaction.  The idea that if Sweden committed something it would be a war crime (because it signed a document) and if Israel did the exact same thing it wouldn't be, is morally repugnant.

I'm not sure why you are wedded to it not being a war crime, in so far as you have deliberately gone out of your way to find evidence of such based on an extreme reading of the articles. 

Quote

Israel has not occupied Gaza since 2005, so ... what is the relevance?

You asked for something in the Geneva Conventions.  That's the relevance.  Now you add caveats!

Although, as Kalbear said, for all intents and purposes Israel is the occupying power in Gaza.  I'm sure there is "some expert" out there that says otherwise.

Most times you see experts say it is likely a war crime.  That's nothing unusual.  I think its the influence of the legal community.  Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Edited to add:

6 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Benny Gantz who was also sold as a moderate jumped right into bed with Netanyahu to form a war time unity government and will enthusiastically support this genocide. 

I do hope he can moderate things to some degree.   Not that I think we'll notice because it is going to be bad either way.

But it probably wouldn't be as bad as feared by some people.  Not that that is in any way reassuring.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Padraig

[Kalbear]

49 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

 Did Germany provide the UK oil during WWII? Did the US send diesel to North Vietnam? 

 

Also this was bugging for a bit and I want to bring it back up. Aside from what @Werthead said about obviously the besieged being responsible for the casualties that occur its important to note that experts consider both Germany in ww2 and the US in Vietnam as having committed several war crimes against the civilian populations. Maybe...if your goal is to convince that Israel is acting differently comparing them to nazi Germany and Henry kissinger and Bob macnamara is not the best choice?

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Both are occupied territories according to all experts other than israel itself

Since Egypt also has a say on blockade of Gaza, it seems strange to call Israel the occupier and not include Egypt.

To me, an occupier has to have boots on the ground. The army has to have authority over the territory. All the security for Gaza internally is provided by Hamas. All administration is Hamas. There haven't been soldiers stationed in Gaza in nearly two decades. It seems a perversion of any common understanding of "occupation" to pretend that Gaza is occupied. Even Hamas has said Gaza is not occupied, which makes it all the more baffling, but this is obviously some sort of diplomatic football.

Just now, Padraig said:

Now you add caveats!

Every article I cited was relevant to a siege, which is what I thought we were talking about. I do not believe Israel is at this time an occupier of Gaza, but may well become so if it gets into a ground offensive.

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

Since Egypt also has a say on blockade of Gaza, it seems strange to call Israel the occupier and not include Egypt.

Seems weird to include them since legally it was Egyptian territory that they ceded to Israel as part of the end of the war. 

I'm happy to include Egypt as being complicit in the problems here. I don't think that's the winning argument you think it is.

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

To me, an occupier has to have boots on the ground. The army has to have authority over the territory. All the security for Gaza internally is provided by Hamas. All administration is Hamas. There haven't been soldiers stationed in Gaza in nearly two decades. It seems a perversion of any common understanding of "occupation" to pretend that Gaza is occupied. Even Hamas has said Gaza is not occupied, which makes it all the more baffling, but this is obviously some sort of diplomatic football.

 

So...you cite experts when talking about war crimes but ignore experts when talking about the occupation. I mean, the very link you shared in the next sentence says the UN considers this occupied territory.

But let's back up. If a country or countries ensure no food, water or other supplies go to a place, who is responsible for the deaths that happen as a result? Not trying to litigate definitions - just want to be clear who is responsible there.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

58 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The immediate result of this (within basically a year) was that half of the voting-age population voted in an extremist terrorist group with a maximalist aim of burning Israel from the face of the Earth and killing all Jews in the Middle East, who almost immediately instigated terror attacks against Israeli territory.

This needs to be the statement beaten into everyone's head. Hamas openly says it wants to kill every Jew. Every. Single. One. And once they got power they set out to do such. So stop both sidings this shit. The Israeli government has done a lot of fucked up shit, but they're not comparable to Hamas and yet some people here seem to have more sympathy for a terrorist organization than the people they explicitly have stated they want to murder and just did. JFC. 

[Conflicting Thought]

you would never see this kind of disingenuous bullshit on the ukrain thread...denying genocidal practices is disgusting and you should feel ashamed of yourself