Israel - Hamas War VII

[fionwe1987]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Which is the case. Israel is clearly being held to a much higher standard despite being the one that got attacked. 

You objected to it being held to those standards a few pages ago. And Israel certainly isn't clearing those standards. 

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Cops' jobs are to protect and serve their own civilians. Soldiers jobs in war are not that. If you can recognize that Idk what to tell you.

Soldiers jobs are not to minimize civilian deaths while achieving their goals? Then they're basically terrorists. 

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That ship has sailed. We're just waiting for it to come to port.

If you've given in to the cynicism and decided to join in sinking the ship, you can fucking stop pretending you hold a moral high ground. You can't have it both ways. 

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

If you're arguing Israel shouldn't respond by attacking either by air or ground you are advocating for something most governments would not accept.

My own government did, as have others. If you're going to make a claim like this, back it up with actual data?

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And many scholars think dropping the bombs ultimately saved lives. 

Many scholars such as?

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It depends. If the mission was deemed necessary, would you have preferred to send in ground troops? I do agree It's a stain on his presidency, but it probably would have been worse if the Administration used more conventional means. 

These are the only two options? Ground troops or drone bombs?

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I haven't closed it off, just pointed out how it will not achieve any of Israel's goals. Obviously you want to limit every civilian death you can, but that's not easy to do when Hamas is and has always been hiding behind civilians. There's no way to fight them without innocent people dying because they are cowards who do not value the lives of the people they're suppose to be governing. 

Israel is the coward for bombing a refugee camp to get one man. And you're an even bigger coward because you sit in comfort and justify it. 

[fionwe1987]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

No, I'm just seeing if your answer for every situation is pacifism, which seems to be the trend.

You could have saved yourself the trouble and asked. I am hardly trying to hide my views. 

It's almost like you think pacifism is some shameful view to hold.

[Mudguard]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We don't know what the intel reports said and why it was determined the risk was worth it. 

No, I'm just seeing if your answer for every situation is pacifism, which seems to be the trend.

If you watch the interview with Blitzer, the IDF guy made it clear that they believed the strike was justified because he was a Hamas commander, although I question really how senior he was, and they were going to go after each and every one of them.  Hundreds of casualties for 1 guy is apparently OK.

ETA: there was zero indication that there was any imminent threat involved.  

Edited November 1, 2023 by Mudguard

[karaddin]

Maybe this was naive of me, but I genuinely believed prior to waking up this morning that the majority of governments, even including the US, would have said "you don't bomb the refugee camp" when confronted with the decision of letting a terrorist commander potentially get away vs openly bombing a refugee camp.

I would have thought they might have tried to do it and spin it, but I'm genuinely shocked by the idea that the commonly accepted international response to the idea would be "welp, sucks about the refugees but you've got to bomb them".

It would seem at the very least I wasn't alone in that naivety.

[Mudguard]

Just now, karaddin said:

Maybe this was naive of me, but I genuinely believed prior to waking up this morning that the majority of governments, even including the US, would have said "you don't bomb the refugee camp" when confronted with the decision of letting a terrorist commander potentially get away vs openly bombing a refugee camp.

I would have thought they might have tried to do it and spin it, but I'm genuinely shocked by the idea that the commonly accepted international response to the idea would be "welp, sucks about the refugees but you've got to bomb them".

It would seem at the very least I wasn't alone in that naivety.

If you look at the satellite images of Gaza that have been posted in the last week or so, it's clear that they have been levelling large parts of northern Gaza.  You could clearly see that entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble like what we saw today.  And some of those areas were in refugee camps.  Also, that level of destruction was all over the place, not just in a few areas.  This level of destruction has actually been going on since the beginning of the war on Gaza.  

I'm not sure what it's going to take before the US says it's too much and cuts of the weapon supply to Israel.

[fionwe1987]

6 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Maybe this was naive of me, but I genuinely believed prior to waking up this morning that the majority of governments, even including the US, would have said "you don't bomb the refugee camp" when confronted with the decision of letting a terrorist commander potentially get away vs openly bombing a refugee camp.

I would have thought they might have tried to do it and spin it, but I'm genuinely shocked by the idea that the commonly accepted international response to the idea would be "welp, sucks about the refugees but you've got to bomb them".

It would seem at the very least I wasn't alone in that naivety.

Its not naivety. What's going on is a continued and insidious attempt to reverse humanitarian gains in the conduct of war. The nations of the world can shrug today, but if they think the people watching will swallow it, they've got another thing coming.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

You could have saved yourself the trouble and asked. I am hardly trying to hide my views. 

It's almost like you think pacifism is some shameful view to hold.

Taking a pacifistic approach in the wake of the worst attack in your country's history is not a realistic option. 

[fionwe1987]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Taking a pacifistic approach in the wake of the worst attack in your country's history is not a realistic option. 

Yes it is. Stop lying.

[karaddin]

I know this attack on Israel was an order of magnitude worse, but the Mumbai hotel attack was pretty damn shocking and large scale. I'm pretty sure it's what fionwe is pointing to as the case of his country opting to take a different approach in the face of a shocking attack and citing that story with the former Indian PM claiming that it was borne out to be the correct response.

What Fionwe is advocating for isn't completely devoid of historical precedent.

Edited November 1, 2023 by karaddin
Rewrote last sentence to actually make sense

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Just now, fionwe1987 said:

Yes it is. Stop lying.

No, it really isn't and this is getting absurd. If you think a state shouldn't respond to a horrific attack then Idk what to tell you. I'd never want to live in a place where the government just accepted a terrorist attack and tried to play nice with them in the aftermath. 

[fionwe1987]

You keep tossing up straw men to justify more murders. 

The absence of a violent response is not an absence of a response. That you lack the imagination to see anything but violence as an acceptable option is your problem, not mine. But do reach out to those Hamas folks. You'll definitely find a lot of compatriots there with similar views.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I know this attack on Israel was an order of magnitude worse, but the Mumbai hotel attack was pretty damn shocking and large scale. I'm pretty sure it's what fionwe is pointing to as the case of his country opting to take a different approach in the face of a shocking attack and citing that story with the former Indian PM claiming that it was borne out to be the correct response.

What Fionwe is advocating for isn't completely devoid of historical precedent.

Sigh. I understand the point you're making, but it just doesn't fit. As has been said several times this is the worst attack on Jews since The Holocaust. The fucking Holocaust. Expecting a dialed back response is just not realistic. That doesn't absolve Israel of all their actions because many have been absolutely shitty, but everyone knew they were going to take the gloves off and most countries in the same scenario would do the same. 

[Mudguard]

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Taking a pacifistic approach in the wake of the worst attack in your country's history is not a realistic option. 

I believe Israel has a right to defend themselves, which includes retaliating against Hamas, but I think the response should be proportional, and this is going way past any reasonable definition of proportional.  It's laughable when the IDF claims that they are doing everything possible to limit civilian casualties right after they dropped multiple bunker buster bombs to demolish dozens of building in the middle of an extremely crowded refugee camp, likely killing or injuring hundreds of civilians.  That was the IDF doing everything possible to prevent civilian casualties?

[karaddin]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sigh. I understand the point you're making, but it just doesn't fit. As has been said several times this is the worst attack on Jews since The Holocaust. The fucking Holocaust. Expecting a dialed back response is just not realistic. That doesn't absolve Israel of all their actions because many have been absolutely shitty, but everyone knew they were going to take the gloves off and most countries in the same scenario would do the same. 

As much as I'd love to be, I'm not a pacifist and have accepted that Israel was never going to take that route in responding to this. I still have major issues with the response taken and say there's a lot of room between this and pacifism, but you know my stance there.

My point was just trying to help you understand the argument Fionwe was making, it's not mine. I just didn't know if you'd made the connection to the earlier posted link about the Mumbai attack to realize that's what Fionwe was referring to.

[Varysblackfyre321]

41 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We don't know what the intel reports said

Unless it’s a thanos snap I can’t see the justification in bombing a refugee just to get him in particular I’m sorry.

 

42 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm just seeing if your answer for every situation is pacifism, which seems to be the trend.

Either we accept Israel’s war crimes whole cloth respectfully and silently or we’re all pacifists.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

35 minutes ago, karaddin said:

welp, sucks about the refugees but you've got to bomb them".

That hospital was caring for Wounded hamas fighter so it’s actually okay to level it outright. This doesn’t seem significantly different from what Israel is claiming justifies bombing the refugee camp.

 

Edited November 1, 2023 by Varysblackfyre321

[Ran]

I really think "refugee camp" evokes in people this idea of harmless, sad tent cities with people who are transient residents who'll return home.

The "refugee camps" started that way, and then became permanent parts of the city, neighborhoods. They are multi-level apartment blocs, they have shops, marketplaces, etc. There is nothing to distinguish the Gazan refugee camps from the rest of Gaza.

There are are people living there who are great-grandchildren of refugees, who have never been anywhere but in Gaza, whose parents have never been anywhere but in Gaza, whose grandparents have never been anywhere but in Gaza. Their "refugee" status is a strange accident of well-meaning early UN decision-making (explicitly giving refugee status to all patrilineal descendants in perpetuity, so rather than a few hundred thousand refugees we now have 5 million) combined with the tragedy of being turned away by all of their neighbors and the repeated failure at making peace by both sides of the conflict.

But like "genocide", "refugee camp" is an emotion-laden word that depends on ignorance of what you are actually talking about when you say it. The IDF also shared satellite and aerial footage showing numerous tunnel openings riddling the whole place. You can Google and find reports from years ago (I found two from 2016 last night) about Hamas "martyrs" being announced because tunnels collapsed there while they were inside.

As to Lashkar-e-Taiba, they were hiding in and protected by a nuclear-armed state who saw them as a proxy in its conflict with India, their membership was far smaller, their acts far less egregious. India basically had nothing useful it could actually do beyond use diplomacy and outcry, and so that's what they did. Yeah, I guess they could have launched a cross-border strike against a training camp or something, but see above about nuclear-armed neighbor who was basically sheltering the terrorists to begin with.

You have to contextualize things. No amount of international outrage and diplomacy was going to get some other actor to go after Hamas. Qatar wasn't going to expel the leadership into the hands of Israel, Saudi wasn't going to send troops to take over administration of Gaza, Iran wasn't going to offer peace talks.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Ran

[karaddin]

Have any of the posters objecting to this bombing based that objection on a disbelief that the Hamas commander was there? Mine certainly isn't, it's the his presence doesn't justify killing those civilians. No amount of possible tunnels under the area is going to change that view.

And if the IDF don't see the description of the area being full of refugees, why was their spokesman nodding along in agreement with that characterisation of the area and insisting that one Hamas commander justified bombing all these accepted civilians and refugees.

The clear answer to this last is the because they do see this as justified on that basis, and it's an assessment you and others in this thread share, while myself and still others in this thread emphatically do not. 

So why not just accept that like that IDF spokesman did and at least honestly and openly articulate our positions? Instead of trying to make it sound all shady like these people don't matter because they're just refugees on a technicality.

Edited November 1, 2023 by karaddin

[Mudguard]

The presence of tunnels alone isn't enough to justify an attack.  If it does in your mind, it means that you can essentially level the entirety of northern Gaza.  

ETA: there are likely extensive tunnels in the south too, so that would mean leveling the rest of Gaza is OK.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Mudguard

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

I believe Israel has a right to defend themselves, which includes retaliating against Hamas, but I think the response should be proportional, and this is going way past any reasonable definition of proportional.  It's laughable when the IDF claims that they are doing everything possible to limit civilian casualties right after they dropped multiple bunker buster bombs to demolish dozens of building in the middle of an extremely crowded refugee camp, likely killing or injuring hundreds of civilians.  That was the IDF doing everything possible to prevent civilian casualties?

Honestly I wouldn't listen to the IDF just like I wouldn't listen to Hamas. Neither side has much moral currency and are engaged in a propaganda war as much as an actual one. 

Proportionality is a trickier subject. Most states would not willingly respond with one hand tied behind their back and it's more complicated because if the board was flipped no one would expect Hamas to do the same (many would call for it and Hamas would just laugh at the idea). 

12 minutes ago, karaddin said:

As much as I'd love to be, I'm not a pacifist and have accepted that Israel was never going to take that route in responding to this. I still have major issues with the response taken and say there's a lot of room between this and pacifism, but you know my stance there.

And I agree. Just for starters, cutting off the utilities is fucked up. I get maybe doing it for a day to see if that caused Hamas to get spooked and release hostages, but doing it for a prolonged period is flatly wrong. There's more nuance when it comes to gas, however, the hospitals that are way past max capacity and running low badly need it. Idk if you could get a total ceasefire, but a pause to at least address basic humanitarian needs would be a start.