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Comment by YZF

2 years ago

I think there's a difference in emphasis and intent. We're painting pictures here. So one picture we're painting is "kill as many civilians a possible with no other military objective" and the other picture we're painting is "go after military targets even at some cost to civilians (and the question of that cost)". The reality is that in every way, every military in the world, executes the second picture. The variable being what is a reasonable threshold for the given military objective. The accusations against Israel intentionally try to place it in the first picture.

If the critics were clear about their issue being how Israel measures proportionality with respect to every single target they go after, and they were able to support their case comparing to other similar military campaigns, and there was a very clear outcome of that comparison, I think that's very fair and I'd even be able to get behind it. But that's not what the critics are doing.

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YZF

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jakelazaroff  2 years ago

If you’re not going to be satisfied with anything short of Netanyahu on tape saying “our intent is to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible”verbatim, then we can just end this conversation now. Even the US would probably be forced to meaningfully withdraw support if Israel fully took the mask off (though as I’ve shown, many high ranking ministers and IDF members have come shockingly close).

What you hear instead are thinly-veiled justifications. Oh, we had to bomb those hospitals because there were tunnels there. So sorry about the civilian deaths at a refugee camp, but we just wanted to get that one commander.

Let’s be real here. Israel shut off food, water, medicine and electricity to Gaza. They’ve damaged over 2/3 of the buildings there [1]. As of a month ago, they’d dropped almost 2x the amount of explosives the US delivered to Hiroshima [2].

These are not the actions of a country “going after military targets even at some cost to civilians”. Israel is doing exactly what Hagari said: inflicting maximum damage.

[1] https://x.com/tksshawa/status/1732447886237974898

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/11/9/israel-att...

  • Natsu  2 years ago

    If they're planning to just kill everyone, why haven't they just leveled the place? Militarily speaking, they can do that right now and have been able to do that for a long time. So if that's their true goal, then what stops them from giving the order right now?

    Meanwhile, Palestine has shown no restraint at all in their 10/7 massacre and no Jews live in Palestine, whereas many Arabs live peacefully in Israel.

    • bluish29  2 years ago

      > Meanwhile, Palestine has shown no restraint at all in their 10/7 massacre and no Jews live in Palestine, whereas many Arabs live peacefully in Israel.

      Do you realize that isreal is the side who killed at least 10x the number that the other side kill. I can see that you describe hamas's action as horrible but there is no way of condition that justifies what isreal did and is still doing to Palestinian civilians (no matter how you think you can)

      5 replies →

  • kaba0  2 years ago

    If they “only” managed to kill this amount of people with that amount of (much more modern) explosives, isn’t that proof in itself that they don’t want to deal maximal casualties? Or otherwise they are very bad at it.

    With that said, any amount of civilian death is tragic - and we should absolutely mandate Israel to be as specific in their attacks as possible. But 0 civilian casualty is impossible to achieve. What we can know, even according to the biased hamas numbers, they are roughly in the 2 civilian to 1 military personnel ratio, which is absolutely realistic given the circumstances/other modern warfares, etc. Feel free to refute this statement of mine, if you do believe that they “want to kill as many civilians as possible”.

    • account42  2 years ago

      > But 0 civilian casualty is impossible to achieve.

      No it isn't. It might be impossible to achieve Israel's goals without any civilian casualties but those goals are not a given. Not doing anything would have caused less total suffering than Israel's current strategy.

  • YZF  2 years ago

    I'm honestly not sure how to engage in this discussion. Rather than asking me for what proof I would accept, what proof would you accept that Israel is not trying to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible?

    If that was the goal, wouldn't you think more Palestinians be dead by now? How does this goal benefit Israel in any way?

    But it's a fair question what would it take to convince me. I think you'd need to show me enough incidents of Israel intentionally targeting civilians with the clear goal of maximizing civilian deaths. e.g. carpet bombing of civilians in the south with casualties in the 10's of thousands from one bombing raid or indiscriminate artillery firing on the south like we see the Russians doing in Ukraine.

    Just a by the way, do you know what exactly "refugee camp" means in the context of this conflict? Can you describe what that is and why it's called a refugee camp. I'm asking because it seems many do not know (and if you don't, it's not actually what you think it is).

    Haven't you seen large numbers of civilians walking from the north part of Gaza to the south part of Gaza right by Israeli soldiers and tanks? I've seen IDF soldiers give them water as they're passing by. There were photos of civilians arrested yesterday (and treated poorly, doesn't look good) ... but alive.

    Israel does provide water now to Gaza. It did temporarily shut down its water supply to Gaza which is part of how Gazans get water (but not the sole source). How many people have died from lack of water? Food is restricted but is getting in. Probably not enough. How many people have died from starvation?. Medicine is coming in. Israel is not providing electricity. It's a war! Many, one might say too many, have died.

    Can you provide references to other major wars where one side was providing the other side with water, food, electricity, medicine? When siege was laid on Mosul did the US provide all those to the citizens of the city? Did the Russians to Mariupol? And sure, I understand Gaza's situations is a bit unique so it's hard to find parallels (and definitely don't want Israel to be compared to Russia).

    There is definitely wide scale destruction to structures. I've seen the figure 1/3 today. It's all one big combat zones, when tanks fire inside cities and airplanes drop bombs, and artillery shells targets there is widespread damage. Very much like major scale war in other urban areas around the world, Bahkmut, Mariupol, are two examples from the other active conflict. I don't take it as proof of targeting civilians. It is a tactic to avoid urban warfare, booby traps, remove cover that the enemy can use etc. I agree it's a pretty brutal tactic but not one specifically disallowed in the rules of war.

    Have you ever been to Israel? I'm just curious. Do you know many Israelis?

    • jakelazaroff  2 years ago

      I don't think there's proof you can provide me, because we seem to have fundamentally different ideas of what it means to target civilians. Like, I would use that for this description in your literal words:

      > Israel does provide water now to Gaza. It did temporarily shut down its water supply to Gaza which is part of how Gazans get water (but not the sole source). How many people have died from lack of water? Food is restricted but is getting in. Probably not enough. How many people have died from starvation?. Medicine is coming in. Israel is not providing electricity. It's a war! Many, one might say too many, have died.

      Shutting off these things is targeting civilians! You may think it's justified or that there's precedent, but that doesn't change the fact that the goal of the attack is to harm every human being there.

      > Can you provide references to other major wars where one side was providing the other side with water, food, electricity, medicine? When siege was laid on Mosul did the US provide all those to the citizens of the city? Did the Russians to Mariupol? And sure, I understand Gaza's situations is a bit unique so it's hard to find parallels (and definitely don't want Israel to be compared to Russia).

      I opposed the US conquering Iraq, I oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine and I oppose Israel's bombing in Gaza (and, as you alluded to, Gaza's situation is unique among those examples in that they are more or less blockaded by and dependent on Israel). I don't really find "but what about other wars" a compelling argument — war is bad!

      As to your last question, although I don't know why it's relevant: I'm a diaspora Jew who has not been to Israel from a fairly large Jewish community in the US. Not sure what counts as "many" but yes, I know some Israelis.

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    • yodsanklai  2 years ago

      > It's a war!

      It looks more as a civilian massacre than a war. Yes, it's pretty obvious that they don't try to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible. But they clearly show no consideration for civilian lives. What we're witnessing is extremely disturbing to say the least, and we should make Israel stop because nothing can justify what they do. They are entitled to live safely, not to kill thousands of innocents because it suits them.

      > Have you ever been to Israel? I'm just curious. Do you know many Israelis?

      How is that relevant to the discussion? having Israeli friends should make us accept these horrors? I don't think so.

      14 replies →

didibus  2 years ago

> go after military targets even at some cost to civilians (and the question of that cost)

I feel the "question of that cost" is where the differences in opinion lie.

For example, if Israel considered the civilians of Gaza as Israel citizens of equal importance to all other Israeli citizens, you'd expect them to consider that cost to be much higher, and it would force them to maneuver much more carefully in their military operations in order to minimize it. Yes, it would make it a lot harder for them to fight and make headway against Hamas as well if they did.

Some people hold the belief that this is how Israel should treat civilians, no lesser than they'd treat their own.

I think another contentious issue, is around the outcome of the war, and what it means for those civilians as well. Is the idea to force the One-State solution, but not as a binational state with equal rights for all citizens, irrespective of ethnicity or religion, but instead as a state with dominant Jewish identity? The impression to this question can change your opinion of the civilian casualties, are they an unfortunate price to pay towards their liberation from Hamas, and their incorporation into a more just, equal, fair, democracy, where they can live a better life? Or is it actually towards their further oppression by Israel?

Or if it is to force a Two-State solution, again, what would it mean of those civilians, would the Palestinian state be forced to harsh conditions as part of treaties if they lose the war, which would hurt those civilians further, etc.

It's complicated, but I do think most of it is about this "cost of civilian casualties", and what worth you attribute to it, and what worth you attribute to the end in order to justify the means.

  • YZF  2 years ago

    I don't think it's reasonable to expect Israel to consider Palestinians civilians in Gaza as of equal value to Israeli civilians in Israel during war time. Israel's duty as a country is to provide security for its people. I don't think this is a standard adhered to in any other war. That said, consider Israel is bombing tunnels and infrastructure where there is a real possibility that Israeli hostages would get killed.

    The question of the outcome of the war is a reasonable one. That said the primary goal of the war is to ensure the security of Israel. The longer term outcome would depend on political processes in Israel and in the Palestinian side and likely all the other parties that are have been meddling in this conflict forever.

    • didibus  2 years ago

      What's "reasonable" is not a trivial matter to answer, and different people will differ in their opinion here. What goes into someone's determination for what is reasonable I think is very complex and deep, including their own moral values, emotional attachment, repercussions to themselves, perceived righteousness, strategic analysis, etc.

      I don't personally know what's reasonable or not here to be honest, but I do know the differing opinion on it is a major contributor to the discourse and the disagreements around it.

      I wanted to point that out, because you and another commenter were not able to convince each other, and this is why in my opinion.

bluish29  2 years ago

Things are much clearer, you are just cherry picking what to respond and defend. Then you build your case against isreal critics. One example of things you ignored replying to the GP comment is this. This is a plain war crime

> Israeli defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "I have ordered a complete siege on Gaza: no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly."