Comment by GordonS
3 days ago
Civilian deaths are a violation if they are intentional - and Israel has repeatedly, deliberately targeted civilians, including children. There is an abundance of evidence, and yes you are right that they should be condemned - except Israel and their stooges always cry "antisemitism!", before going straight back to more war crimes and genocide.
Not to mention how Israel has destroyed nearly every (or every, now?) hospital in Gaza to prevent civilians from being treated. Or how Israel haa prevented aid from entering Gaza. Or how bulldozer drivers drive over hundreds of Palestinians, dead and alive. Or... gods, there is so much more, Israel is a deeply sick society.
> Civilian deaths are a violation if they are intentional
Well close, they are a violation if that is the intended goal of the attack, they are not necessarily a violation if they were done intentionally as part of an attack against a military target and the porportional military gain outweighs the expected civilian damage (this is a bit of an oversimplification)
> There is an abundance of evidence,
I think this overstates things. There is definite evidence that civilians have died. Whether there is evidence that those deaths were the illegal under the rules of war is much more ambigious. There is probably evidence for some isolated incidents, i'm not sure i agree there is strong (i.e. sufficient for a conviction) of widespread illegal civilian death. I'm not saying it for sure didn't happen, just that the publicly available evidence is mixed and often requires making unverified assumptions. (Truth is the first casualty of war)
Isolated incidents?! We've seen daily war crimes just on social media for the past year! The Hind Rajab foundation alone* has found clear evidence of war crimes committed by over one thousand individuals - that's just the ones that were stupid enough to post blatant war crimes on Facebook/Instagram and have been identified! The process to identify many, many more is ongoing.
Come on now, there is a wealth of evidence of institutionalised war crimes, and you know it.
* BTW, the Hind Rajab foundation was setup after Israel deliberately targeted and killed a 5-year old girl (along with family members, and even paramedics who tried to help).
For any cases where there is solid evidence, i hope the perpetrators face appropriate justice.
However the Hind Rajab foundation isn't exactly a neutral party here. There is nothing wrong with that, its important to have non-neutral parties to push justisce forward. However i would view them the same way i might view a persecutor in a normal court case - they are trying to prove the guy did it, but i'm not convinced until some sort of more neutral party weighs in (ideally a judge during a trial, but failing that even more neutral academics/civil society groups)
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> * BTW, the Hind Rajab foundation was setup after Israel deliberately targeted and killed a 5-year old girl (along with family members, and even paramedics who tried to help).
Forensic Architecture published a detailed report on this heartbreaking case: https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-killing-...
Unfortunately that was not an isolated case. It was systematic policy. The ICC staff has a lot of work in their hands.
Hamas makes no secret of using hospitals, schools and other civilian amenities as bases for weapons and terrorists.
It's part of their "bare chests" ideology that uses the Gazan population as human shields.
IDF soldiers, singing: "there are no schools in Gaza, because there are no kids in Gaza", posing with underwear of women they displaced, saturating TikTok with war crime videos, blowing up infrastructure with controlled demolition en masse.
"But Hamas"
Right, because in the absence of credible evidence, just saying a thing makes it true... at least for Israeli Hasbara...
Generally the burden of proof for a crime is to prove guilt not innocence. Innocence is presumed.
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