142 points
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To be clear, staging militant attacks from a hospital is a war crime.
To make matters worse, it opens up the likelihood and justification of counter-attacks against that hospital and the people in it.

According to international humanitarian law (IHL), health establishments and units, including hospitals, should not be attacked. This protection extends to the wounded and sick as well as to medical staff and means of transport. The rule has few exceptions.

Specific protection of medical establishments and units (including hospitals) is the general rule under IHL. Therefore, specific protection to which hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used by a party to the conflict to commit, outside their humanitarian functions, an “act harmful to the enemy”.

Medical establishments and units enjoy protection because of their function of providing care for the wounded and sick. When they are used to interfere directly or indirectly in military operations, and thereby cause harm to the enemy, the rationale for their specific protection is removed. This would be the case for example if a hospital is used as a base from which to launch an attack; as an observation post to transmit information of military value; as a weapons depot; as a center for liaison with fighting troops; or as a shelter for able-bodied combatants.

Source: The International Committee of the Red Cross

Nobody should beat around the bush here. Hamas are using injured civilians as a human shield to stage attacks, and in doing so they are inviting retaliation and suffering under well-establish terms of international law. There’s not really any particular gray area here. It’s horrible, it’s unethical, it’s criminal, and it’s just plain wrong.

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38 points

This is the thing that pissed me off - the organization that has a humanitarian symbol so strong you can be legally held accountable for using it in a way that lessens its importance acknowledges that attacking a hospital being used as a military bases is a legal part of war. Meanwhile there are people whos education doesn’t pass high-school screaming that this isn’t legal, or its incorrect, or blaming the aggressor instead of those deliberately putting civilian lives at risk by blatantly ignoring intl rules of conflict.

If you want to throw in your argument against the red cross, spend your life and billions of dollars helping humanitarian issues world wide and then you might have some authority on the matter.

This is modern warfare. War is horrific, innocents get killed, people suffer. We put rules in place to lessen the effects on the innocent and those who circumvent those rules to try make the others look bad need to be removed in the quickest and most efficient way we can - as soon as one group gets away with ignoring the intl rules, everyone can.

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60 points
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I don’t think any intellectually honest person that supports Palestine thinks Hamas are the “good guys”, they are an evil created and grown directly and indirectly by Israel’s actions.

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-5 points

I doubt anyone thinks they are the good guys, but there are multiple trying to justify blatant war crimes and thinking they should be able to operate with immunity because they have civilians in the cross fire.

Im also doubting some “intellectually honest” people on both sides if the arguement. Well, with this CF all six sides of the arguement…

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29 points
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Hi there. How about an old soldier who actually had to know this stuff and use that knowledge in a war?

First off, a single incident isn’t enough. A sniper or even a squad doing stuff can be dealt with in other ways. In order to strike a hospital (or any protected target) with explosives you need evidence it’s a target of “military or strategic value”. This is why Israel isn’t just claiming a few sporadic attacks but instead that all of the hospitals are actually command centers.

Second, the protected target can only be hit by proportional force that accomplishes a specific goal. If there’s an artillery battery in the parking lot and I level the obstetrics wing with dumb bombs then I’ve committed a war crime. Smart bombs with very low yields absolutely exist. Another example is the eponymous claim of rooftop rockets. I can hit that with an airburst explosive to prevent structural damage to most concrete buildings. In the context of protected targets these things matter. You don’t get a green light to demolish it unless it’s basically been hollowed out for military use only.

Third, whoever fires on the protected target is responsible for providing the evidence it was required. And war crimes investigators take a very dim view of “they did it once a decade ago”, as a reason. Israel and it’s allies have yet to do anything that actually proves the existence of a military or strategic target in places like the UNRWA Gaza headquarters.

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9 points

Thank you for sharing

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3 points
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While proportionality is in LOAC, if there is ample intelligence that the hospital is being used to commit attacks, it doesn’t have to be used exclusively to commit attacks to be a legal target.

Rule 28. Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule28#:~:text=to medical units-,Rule 28.,and protected in all circumstances.

“the protection of medical units ceases when they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy. This exception is provided for in the First and Fourth Geneva Conventions and in both Additional Protocols.[37] It is contained in numerous military manuals and military orders.[38] It is also supported by other practice.[39]”

“While the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols do not define “acts harmful to the enemy”, they do indicate several types of acts which do not constitute “acts harmful to the enemy”, for example, when the personnel of the unit is armed, when the unit is guarded, when small arms and ammunition taken from the wounded and sick are found in the unit and when wounded and sick combatants or civilians are inside the unit.[40] According to the Commentary on the First Geneva Convention, examples of acts harmful to the enemy include the use of medical units to shelter able-bodied combatants, to store arms or munitions, as a military observation post or as a shield for military action.”

And that’s before we get into the creative reinterpreting of LOAC for terrorists in non- international armed conflicts fought by non-state insurgent groups which were invented post 9-11.

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1 point

First off, a single incident isn’t enough.

This is not an isolated incident.

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1 point
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In that case, let’s talk soldier to sailor as I suspect I’ve been out much longer than you and can provide the perspectiveof what is being seen. You’re logically spoken, so I’m going to assume ~sgt rank and American.

During the US time in Afghanistan there was significant urban combat, with multiple civilians around, limited identification of combatants and a campaign to win over the local population so you had to be absolutely sure of your target and operations. This was not just the guy on the ground, but the operations planning at officer level, approval to senior command and in liason with local forces. Post patrol or fire fight the was debriefs, justification of actions, and improvement points to be discussed, remedied and distributed. This happens across theater, from rifleman to pilot to special ops. You likely sat in brief after brief, got frustrated at ops planning, and had to debrief and relive the worst day of your life in hopes lessons could be drawn to save lives down the track.

We civilians saw none of that. We saw videos of tomahawks being launched, helicopters flying, burnt out trucks. Civilians screaming, dead kids, burnt buildings. Coffins coming home, memorials, speeches.

What is happening in Israel is likely very similar. Im not Israeli intelligence so I don’t see the planning that went into the attack, didn’t sit in the ready room as the pilots got briefed, haven’t seen the after action reports - because this information doesn’t make it to the news and isn’t distributed. The best we have to go off is exactly the same as we had for America - there are laws around it, civilians will get harmed in virtually any conflict, but a person who is well aware of the damage they are about to inflict, where, and who else will be affected still has to press the button or pull the trigger knowing exactly where that round is going.

The flaw in your argument is not that you are incorrect - far from it. It’s the belief that because you were not directly involved to witness it it didn’t happen.

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-5 points

My friend, they celebrate an airstrike with multiple rocket enough to create a crater few meter wide, using it on a human target, inside a crowded refugee camp. They certainly will not listen to any reasoning.

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14 points
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It doesn’t give them the right to bomb the hospital point blank period, proportionality clauses kick in and it’s arguably reason to ground assault it but they cannot ignore the civilian cost of life when they’re are other ways to go about clearing the garrison.

Ed: Jesus Christ, 3 seconds on Google prior just can’t seem to do.

The principle of proportionality prohibits attacks against military objectives which are “expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”. In other words, the principle of proportionality seeks to limit damage caused by military operations by requiring that the effects of the means and methods of warfare used must not be disproportionate to the military advantage sought.

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7 points

Unfortunately as soon as they garrisoned it it became a legitimate military target and yes, they literally now have a right to bomb it. Level it, no, you are right on a proportional response and that would still be a war crime, but bombing what is now a legitimate military target prior to any invasion (like any other military target) can absolutely be justified.

Hamas knows this, and are deliberately trying to put the global blame on Israel when THEY GARRISONED A FUCKING HOSPITAL.

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8 points
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Sadly I think there’s just an overwhelming tendency for bias to make people think “everything my side does is right and everything the other side does is wrong”.

Random people on the internet, many of whom are mostly (if not entirely) detached from realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and may only just be learning about it for the first time from social media, have now formed ranks and picked a side that feels right in the moment. I’d ask people to resist the urge to do that, and instead take some time to read into the complete history of the region and the conflict, but I think it’s much easier to go along with what other people on the net/TV/radio/etc are shouting.

People should keep in mind that there’s a 3rd side to every conflict: the side of the innocent people who have found themselves caught in the middle of an armed conflict that they never wanted or asked for. The Israeli student who was shot to death at a festival, the old Palestinian woman whose family were buried alive in a knocked-down building, the young child who was taken hostage by Hamas scared and alone, and the Gaza teenager who has lost all possibility of the normal, peaceful life and education that so many of us take for granted. Their side is the only side that anyone should be on. And it’s those very innocent civilians who Hamas are knowingly putting in danger by treating them as human shields in a way that openly invites retaliation.

When you stop to think for a minute about what’s really going on here, and when you’ve taken even the bare minimum amount of time to read up on the history of this conflict (one of the longest-running geopolitical conflicts in modern history), it’s not hard to understand that both sides really do have blood on their hands. There are no “good guys” other than the people who have managed to stay innocent, and as the conflict goes on and the desire for revenge burns in people’s hearts, eventually some of those people will become “bad guys” too.

And that’s just a very sad thing, because if nothing else it means that there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

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3 points

Sadly I think there’s just an overwhelming tendency for bias to make people think “everything my side does is right and everything the other side does is wrong”.

The good old “they” mentality strikes again. You are completely correct in everything you have said, and I think this is one of the first major global issues where social media has really come to the forefront - just like the TV for Vietnam everyone can see it, but now everyone can put in their own opinions and with the 5-15 sec clips you don’t get verifications, or balanced arguments, or anything that says this person is actually well informed and not coming in with an agenda.

I think what gets me the most is how would anyone else react if their country had a neighbor whos founding document screamed for the death of you. Who ripped up their infrastructure to send rockets against you and made you develop one of the best counter-missile battery in the world to protect your civilians. Who invaded across your boarder to shoot and abduct civilians and openly brags they wanted to get more.

I would argue that people do consider the innocents caught up in it, but the unfortunate fact is that these actions can’t be allowed to continue otherwise more will be affected in the long term. I support Israeli invasion, because dragging this out, allowing Hamas immunity because they have human shields, and keeping the blockade up means help can’t get to those that need it. Attacking civilian structures should be a last resort, but if they are being used to stage attacks its not something you have the luxury of shying away from.

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4 points

Meanwhile there are people whos education doesn’t pass high-school screaming that this isn’t legal, or its incorrect

So…Joe Biden and UN?

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-6 points

Biden graduated in 65 from uni of Delaware… c average but still passed

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4 points

The Palestinian Red Crescent (and by extension the International Red Cross and the Israeli Red Cross) defends itself by saying that Israeli tanks are making the hospital a target by parking next to the hospital. The video itself shows the Hamas soldier running along the street rather than shooting the tank from inside the hospital. This demonstrates that there is no reason to believe that Hamas is inside Al-Quds Hospital.

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3 points

There’s little doubt in my mind that Hamas is using hospitals as cover.

To me this video shows someone running down the street and then temporarily diverting into hospital territory, seemingly to get away from a tank, which is less than a half block from that hospital.

To confirm your point, if this is the best video they have to prove this, that actually makes me less confident in my belief, not more so.

But sure as hell this video is trying to sell that narrative, making sure everyone knows this guy is a terrorist.

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1 point

Ok, let’s send them to the Hague I guess? Why do you think this is an important point? Hamas isn’t actually a legitimate organization that signed on to international law and would ever care what “legitimate warfare” is. They just went into Israel and murdered a bunch of civilians. If these fighters are caught whether the UN thinks they were wrong is the least of their problems.

And none of that makes Israel attacking a hospital (or just the blatant collective punishment) justified.

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1 point
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Hamas are the legal representative government of palestine mate. For all intents and purposes according to law, this is two countries at war, not a fight against a terror group, but a hostile state

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5 points

50% of the people alive in Palestine today weren’t born when the last election was held and then elections were shut down.

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1 point

Nah the PLO is the official government of Palestine and is recognized as so by basically everyone, but they are stationed in the West Bank and Israel tries to keep them separated. Hamas has some control over Gaza and held an election decades ago before most of the people there could vote and hasn’t held another one since.

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0 points

Except it literally does justify attacking the hospital. Black on white, letter and spirit of the law.

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-6 points

No it doesn’t, and you’re a shitty person for thinking that.

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0 points

To be clear, no one here is defending Hamas or saying that it isn’t a war crime.

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-1 points

Proximity shielfing isn’t really the classic human shield idea. It’s like “human shields*” with an asterisk and six paragraphs of footnotes showing how countries like Israel use the idea of proximity shielding to commit human rights violations untouched.

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-9 points

How many war criminals from US, Russia have been charged and are rotting in jail? Bush, Obama, Trump? or does this law only apply when you want to use PR for your war contractors against brown people?

“According to international humanitarian law” my ass.

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6 points

Umm, sir, are you OK? You’re supposed to want them to all kill each other so we can claim their souls.

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4 points

Jokes on you. I’m a ginger so I’ve just been “tactically acquiring” them.

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41 points

Beyond these crazy and terrible events, I’m left wondering what the big picture end game was here? Was it to block Israel from normalizing relationships with neighbouring foes, or is it a part of a bigger play by foes of Israel to highlight the injustices from their point of view?

This sacrifice of the innocents on all sides is a terribly high price on humanity and how long an eye for an eye will take to play out in the generations to follow.

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49 points

That’s exactly it. Hamas has previously and continues to do all it can to destroy any hopes for peace and Israel’s far-right has been happy to leverage them for the same reason.

Palestinians and Israelis suffer and die while a few powerful men maintain or gain power from the situation.

Hamas can’t have peace otherwise a more legitimate government takes over and continues toward a two-state system (they had in the past made a wave of suicide bombings to derail the peace process). Israeli far-right doesn’t peace either (they’ve shot one of their PMs in the past over this) as that would put a stop to their ambition of power and colonizing more Palestinian land.

Israeli reporters have shown how the current Israeli PM and his party had passively allowed the financing of Hamas to come into Gaza (enemy of my enemy…) so they would keep destabilizing any peace talks and fight the more moderate Palestinian parties.

In short, Hamas is horrible and keeps provoking Israel and Israel keeps biting the bait and reacting exactly as Hamas expects them to do: doing their own round of horrible atrocities in a vicious cycle of suffering and death which breeds the next generation of extremists.

Anybody looking at this issue purely as a military problem is missing the big picture.

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4 points

deposing that far-right israeli leadership would be the first step toward fixing this whole mess. many israelis (around 75%) want netanyahu gone immediately after the war and it seems like their approval ratings have gone down as a result of this conflict, in contrast to the general trend of right-wing governments benefiting from war in most situations.

if the west can put pressure on israel (and that it can, without american weapons most of the surrounding muslim countries would love to genocide the hell out of israel), this is where that pressure needs to go. finish the war, get hamas out of at least the government of gaza (fully disbanding them will be a longer process, but at least don’t put them in control), and then execute a regime change in israel as well. get rid of both governing parties that caused this mess to begin with and then their successors can hopefully actually work towards peace.

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2 points

So much this. The Palestinian side has been more or less in stasis politically for what, a decade? Meanwhile Israel moves further and further to the right, constantly indulging their worst right flank including continued land theft. The Republicans in the US indulge Israel without question, while the Democrats question Israel without teeth.

Hamas and Netanyahu need to go as the baseline outcome of this debacle. I’m not sure how Hamas gets removed, or more importantly what takes its place.

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22 points

I don’t know if there is an endgame. Just dogs chasing cars. I do know a lot of people have died.

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11 points

Doubt there was any goal or forethought past ‘kill Israelis’

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8 points

No, there’s definitely an underlying tone of “hang onto power”.

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10 points

Was it to block Israel from normalizing relationships with neighbouring foes

This was the goal of the October attacks, yes. This goal has failed, thus far.

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3 points

The big picture is that in both countries groups/parties want to have the other people gone. Preferably with international support or the support of neighbouring countries.

Everytime they entangle themselves in a conflict, on both sides the number of radicals and extremists grows and with it the power of extremist parties.

For them peace is only when the others are gone. That is why it seems so unlikely that they are open for peace talks as long as these right-wing extremists are in power.

Many don’t want to hear this, but for Hamas their biggest chance in the war is that Israel loses international support. They have no issue with sacrificing Palestinians for this, quite the opposite.

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39 points
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Has it seriously not occurred to zionists that there’s a middle step between doing absolutely nothing and leveling the entire building? Send troops in there to liberate the hospital. A lot fewer innocents will die, and yea more IDF troops will die that way, but in what fucking universe is it preferable to murder civilians than to run a risky military operation? Even if Hamas kills a bunch of patients or doctors in retaliation there will surely be more survivors than if you just bomb the place. But nope, apparently Israeli lives are worth infinitely more than those of Palestinian civilians, so the best solution is to murder all Palestinians so they’re not a “threat” to Israel

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14 points
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No sane team lead would accept a mission like that. That’s just asking for massive friendly casualties.

Kicking in doors has an extremely high death toll, especially if it’s a known base, of course they’re going to level it instead of committing a team that’s definitely going to get blown up by ied’s and killed in ambushes.

In order to effectively suppress and seize that hospital, you’re asking that at least 100-200 friendlies die during the operation to take a building that’s a known travel route to their tunnels which house thousands of hamas and related fighters and their kit. Given the level of failure of the intel community in Isreal right now, no one operations side is going to take their word that it’s safe to send a team into that hospital.

It’s a hospital when it’s in operation, right now it’s a terrorist base of operations SPECIFICALLY because it was a hospital.

See: https://ground.news/article/hamas-has-command-center-under-al-shifa-hospital-us-official-says

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10 points
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In otherwords you value the lives of 100-200 IDF soldiers over the lives of many more Palestinian civilians. Considering you probably think 12,000 Palestinian deaths is a proportionate response to 1,200 Israeli deaths that’s no surprise

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5 points
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That was best case scenario from a POV of someone who’s done the job. Regardless of your keyboard warrior virtue signaling, no one sane is going to sacrifice their people to save a known terrorist base.

I didn’t provide my personal opinion, I provided a description of why your view on the topic is insane.

Edit for clarification: The ELECTED officials of Palestine, HAMAS, their government, has taken their own people hostage and you expect the people who were offering a permanent peace agreement LITERALLY THE DAY BEFORE THE ATTACK, that had their peace party literally interrupted by an act of war by hamas, to sacrifice their own people to save potential attackers pretending to be victims?

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2 points

Why can’t any of the countries that are asking that israel don’t bomb the hospitals send their own special forces to rescue the hostages? They have hostages of many nationalities so for example macron could risk the life of french soldiers to minimize palestinian casualties. I don’t get why they have to sacrifice idf soldiers.

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-4 points

Ground News is missing the most important part. Nobody has seen the evidence to corroborate the statement. This is as credible as mobile chemical labs until that happens.

Second, this is what the Infantry exists for. No professional military is going bomb a functioning hospital without serious evidence of a large troop concentration there. Just saying you don’t want to take casualties is not an excuse in international law or military culture.

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4 points

Infantry are tasked to take the hill when it is strategically and operationally required, not when the enemy presents ‘hostages’ to which we cannot verify the identities of, nor confirm are not enemy combatants as the legal government, hamas, committed an act of war, Israel responded in kind, and in most full-war scenarios, the civilians are also considered hostile if they can be listed as ‘military age’.

The age of throwing soldiers into the hill with abandon is way over, you require intelligence and operational equipment and engagement now. (drones, munitions, local assets to guide the engagement/translate, vehicles, etc). Israel had a complete intelligence failure and to prevent mass casualties going in with infantry, they used the next best thing, artillery.

One of the leading causes of death in the Canadian and American militaries during the last two decades of engagements was due to IED or VBIED’s (vehicle born improvised explosive device), and every green military learned from this to do vastly more reconnaissance before wasting the LITERAL MILLIONS OF DOLLARS PER TROOP IN TRAINING throwing them uselessly at an enemy.

A fully qualified regular force of 11A(USA)/0010(CDN) is given around ~375k USD in training and development costs (per person) just to do their base job of firing a rifle, this does not include specialist training or anything beyond maybe how to effectively conduct a vehicle check point. All other skills require a vast amount of training as well as leadership courses, CQB courses, vehicle courses, medical check up, engineering courses, oreinteering courses, wilderness survival courses, etc.

Actions have consequences and where I would like the aggression to stop today, hamas still exists and their MANDATE of existence, their literal raison d’etre, if you will, is to eliminate all jewish people.

No one wants the killing of civilians, however the reality on the ground is the IDF using our weapons, uniforms, vehicles, and ammunition to gun down innocents and guilty alike, just like how we sell saudis weapons and how we sell weapons all over the world for abuse by various dictators.

This isn’t a situation where ‘stop, please stop’ is going to work for either hamas or the IDF and the US leadership is basically nonexistent with the current administration and if 45 wins again, the USA will probably crumble worse than Rome.

Everything will simply escalate from here, and with the continuing fall of governments across the African continent and economies failing in the EU, it’s not long before lines are drawn and an ‘axis’ is presented in the propaganda.

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-4 points

Hmmm should soldiers who already signed off their lived to save civilians die or should the civilians die?

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4 points

I mean, they signed off to protect Israelis. If Palestine were Israeli citizens then maybe they’d have some obligation to risk their lives to minimise damage to them but otherwise why should they? Soldiers aren’t expected to sacrifice themselves for foreign citizens. Hell some are just brutally sadistic towards them with legal impunity because the citizens of one government have next to no rights in the other aside from whats deemed diplomatically useful and even that is beyond the purview of the average soldier. Theres a reason America switched to using drone strikes on enemy infrastructure instead of sending their soldiers. That has the exact same trade off as well which is more civilian casualties and less soldier casualties. The bad thing here is israel is actively targetting civilian infrastructure and hamas is known to hide in such infrastructure, both things raising the innocent casualty rate immensely.

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-7 points

It’s not the IDF’s responsibility to protect Palestinians, it’s HAMAS’, the legally elected government of Palestine… You know, the country which just launched an attack against Israel to which Israel responded with violence and then hamas hid behind civilians in a hospital.

Can’t have missed it, it’s been all over the news.

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14 points

When your

best solution is to murder all Palestinians

…bombing hospitals, refugee camps, schools, and endless civilians is a good thing… and explains Israel’s behaviour and rhetoric in a pretty straightforward way.

…of course, killing all those kids makes the question “why are Hamas bad” a bit awkward… I know! Saying it’s bad to murder children is anti-semitic now - that’s not an obvious, massive self-report!

I don’t personally care to judge whether Israel or Hamas are worse - they’re both monstrous, genocidal murderers, killing innocent civilians… But only one of them has the ability to actually deliver on their genocidal intentions, and they’re making headway.

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4 points

A lot fewer innocents will die, and yea more IDF troops will die that way, but in what fucking universe is it preferable to murder civilians than to run a risky military operation?

A lot fewer innocent palestinians. Why do you expect the Israeli government to prioritise the lives of Palestinian over their own citizens when trying to smack out a terrorist threat? I agree wholeheartedly that the attacks must stop and a ceasefire should be declared but comments like this which just present a simple solution and outright ignore the obvious reason that is not happening just distract from conversations we should be having.

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4 points

Why do you expect the Israeli government to prioritise the lives of Palestinian over their own citizens when trying to smack out a terrorist threat?

Because they were instrumental in creating that terrorist threat in the first place, not only by perpetrating ethnic cleansing but by directly funding Hamas in the 70s and 80s as a counterbalance against the secular PLO.

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-7 points
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I mean America funded and trained what became al qaeda as well. If your only justification here is Israel was aligned with another government 40 years ago and that means their personally responsible for all the people under that government jurisdiction while in hostilities with it then you’re talking crazy. The Palestinians are hamass responsibility as their representative. It sucks hamas doesn’t care about them and most Palestinians would reject them if able but i don’t get why that then means Israel is meant to care instead. Theirs a case for moral compassion from Israel but that flies out the window when hamas is actively attacking them from Palestinian territories. I’d be more inclined to support your viewpoint if hamas was only attacking Palestinians and Israel let them do it because they supported their rise to power in the past.

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1 point

Has it seriously not occurred to zionists that there’s a middle step between doing absolutely nothing and leveling the entire building?

But where’s the genocide in that?

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-3 points
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Shouldn’t your reasoning mean that we should only sacrifice German, US and British soldiers there?

It is their fault Israel exists like it does now. Every Israeli or Palestinian who dies is an innocent and only US Americans, Germans and Brits should be killed by Hamas.

But what about the reasons for the world wars? So it’s actually Italians who should go and die there! Since it was the Romans actions that lead to the situations which evolved into the first world war!

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-8 points

do you have any footage of hospitals-in-service being bombed?

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11 points
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Since when did video evidence matter to zionists? Since you asked for it though, here’s a recent hospital bombing, plus a strike on a refugee camp bc why not? Idk how much live footage there is of those, but they definitely happened https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/gaza-un-experts-decry-bombing-hospitals-and-schools-crimes-against-humanity https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/13/israel-hamas-war-live-gazas-two-largest-hospitals-shut-amid-nonstop-raids Of course I’m sure these won’t count because reasons, but there you go

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-14 points

The only people who have bombed hospitals so far are hamas.

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7 points

Source: it came to an IDF soldier in a dream

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38 points

funny how when Palestine makes a claim, Lemmy just eats it all up.

but when Israel releases footage and coordinates to support their claims, everyone is suddenly questioning.

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28 points

I guess it has to do with the enormous social media machine Israel has. I take both sides with a grain of salt tho

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2 points

enormous compared to what? because I’m seeing so many hamas defenders in lemmy and they never concede basic facts. it looks like it’s tiny and ineffectual compared with the hamas propagandists.

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0 points

Man, what? Where do you hang out? My comments have a pro Israel slant to them and I get consistently downvoted.

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-9 points

I don’t think any instance should have downvotes anyhow. A bit too much like Reddit.

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-7 points

Oh, social media machine? You mean the same that Qatar and Iran operate? The same that Elon Musk, you know, CEO of Twitter, met with Qatari media mongrels months before the attack. The same Qatar that houses Hamas leadership.

It’s so powerful that I even need to include that, yes, Israel also has one. But it’s doing a pretty shit job evidently.

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9 points

People have hard time trusting a genocidal country with an incentive for its citizen to propagate its propaganda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act.IL

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9 points

And you have easy time believing Hamas, the other side of this conflict? Seems a little naive if that’s the case

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6 points

Lemmy is a hive-mind as much as Reddit is/was. Anyone who claims its somehow better here is either lurking or part of the hivemind (just find the downvoted comments in this thread and think about how you would vote)

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1 point

Meh, I take all the news and developments with large lumps of salt for this topic especially.

I believe both that Hamas is operating behind human shields to curry favour against humanitarian law, and that the IDF is more or less indiscriminately harming civilians, refugees and militants of Palestine all in the same brushstroke to excuse extermination as merely retaliation (also against humanitarian law in case that’s not clear to anyone)

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1 point
*

“Israel bombed a hospital. 500 killed, 300 injured”

“Eh, actually, it was a self inflicted failed launch”.

“Oh right. So as i was saying, it was just a parking lot near a hospital. About 30 killed”.

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33 points
*

Counter attacking with troops and killing the terrorist is a reasonable response.

Leveling the entire hospital and surrounding neighborhood with missiles is NOT.

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13 points
*

Well it’s a good thing they didn’t do that, then. Israeli troops will be entering the hospital to get at the Hamas base within it

Edit: they entered last night

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9 points

And then you look at reporting from doctors without borders about doctors being murdered by snipers indiscriminately

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0 points

Weird that the IDF didn’t indiscriminately kill civilians while raiding said hospital last night, then.

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-1 points

No, but they did do that to every other building in Gaza under the same pretense.

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4 points

Distinguishing between civilians and combatants is anti Semitic

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2 points

Apparently not because Israel is getting torn apart in the information space for that approach.

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0 points

It’s less a hospital at this point and more an arms stockpile with some sick people left around as fodder/bad PR for anyone that would attack it.

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-16 points

Hamas is literally in this video firing missiles. The people on this site including yourself have your heads in the sand.

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11 points

Are you claiming killing hostages is good?

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2 points

When someone says “Being a governing leader is really hard” they don’t talk about parties or meetings, they talk about these decisions.

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-2 points

What possible line of logic would lead to that conclusion?

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11 points
*

Hamas is literally in this video firing missiles.

Yes they are. So kill them then without leveling the entire neighborhood, as I already said.

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-3 points

Go for it. If it is so easy you are welcome to go put yourself in harm’s way. Don’t criticize when you have not been faced with the decisions and a lack of full awareness. Hamas is not sitting out in the middle of a field waiting to be struck.

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-9 points

Okay genius, how do you kill them when they are in tunnels under neighborhoods? You cannot get into them without an explosion, even if present in person and they won’t just sit there either. This is not a war crime and I’m really questioning everyone’s collective intelligence and ability to think through problems instead of reacting to stimulus.

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0 points

No one on this site is pro-Hamas, other than if you go over to the tankie instances.

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-3 points

You are spreading their propaganda and disinformation.

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-1 points

I checked the Arabic news scene for “AI” and whatever they call Israel thanks to Google AI and Yandex translate. They label every single “negative” photo,video,audio AI as things created by Israel. Their heads aren’t in the sand, they are indoctrinated which makes the situation truly horrible. There were teenagers getting medals in Hitler’s last days. As a side-note I guess they are trying to bury your opinion like they do in the evil site not knowing this place was founded by FOSS ideals which they don’t have a clue about.

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2 points

I don’t think there are media controls on Lemmy but it also opens it up to automated propaganda and manipulation.

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