Sadly, there are no magical munitions that don’t cause collateral damage, nor is Israel infallible. They still have a right to self-defense and to eliminate the threat against them.
Do Palestinians have a right to self defense or just Israelis? Because there’s a whole lot of settler attacks in the West Bank and mass graves full of kids in Gaza.
I’m not defending Hamas, who are just as shitty as the settler parties but you might logically expect violent resistance if you put a people under your boot for decades.
How exactly are they defending themselves by bombing areas full of children?
If your answer is “Hamas is there,” well they were somehow able to raid a hospital without killing everyone inside it and still get a whole bunch of Hamas people, so maybe they should do that instead of dropping bombs on children.
If your answer is “Hamas is there,” well they were somehow able to raid a hospital without killing everyone inside it and still get a whole bunch of Hamas people, so maybe they should do that instead of dropping bombs on children.
As you acknowledge, they are targeting Hamas, who often attacks them while hiding in areas full of children. Going in without air support into a well prepared guerilla fighter’s den is likely to cause a lot of casualties. Even though that is acceptable every now and then like in the hospital that does not imply that’s a viable strategy for all of Gaza.
Hamas counts on this “think of the children!” and the bad PR it causes, that’s why they do this. They also want Israel’s hands to be bound so they can do Oct 7 over and over again.
The right move is to minimize civilian casualties but not stop until the job is done, and that’s exactly what I believe Israel is doing.
According to a New York Times report, “Hamas has long been accused of using civilians as human shields and positioning underground bunkers, weapon depots and rocket launchers under or near schools, mosques and hospitals.”[63]
DW military analyst Frank Ledwidge has said that “it’s been described… as ‘common knowledge’ that many of the headquarters [of Hamas] are located under hospitals… [with] entries and exits in places like mosques or schools… [or even] UN facilities… that’s why we’ve seen… so many non-combatant casualties so far”.[64]
John Spencer has said that "[Hamas has] built many of their tunnel entrances and exits and passageway underneath protected sites like hospitals, schools, mosques, because it restricts the use of force that the IDF can take without going through the… laws of war calculation.[65]
According to Daphne Richemond-Barak, associate professor of counter-terrorism at Reichman University and author of the 2017 book Underground Warfare, Hamas militants operate under Al-Shifa Hospital gain “the highest level of protection available under the laws of war”, as well as a “unique opportunity to operate far from surveillance drones, GPS, and other intelligence-gathering technology”. She added that “in Gaza, tunnels are dug in civilian homes, pass under entire neighbourhoods, and lead into populated areas inside Israel… [which] enables Hamas to conceal entry and exit points, and facilitates undetected movement and activity.”[66]
Avi Issacharoff has said that Hamas militants are “under the houses and neighborhoods of Gaza City, hoping that Israel won’t attack them because they’re hiding underneath human shields, and that if Israel will attack those neighborhoods, it’ll kill many civilians, and the whole world is going to accuse Israel for war crimes”. “The sad thing about all this”, Issacharoff said, “is [that] Hamas doesn’t care about their own people” and aims “not only to kill Israelis but for as many Palestinian civilians [casualties as well]”.[67]
It’s almost like starting a war when most of your population is children, then hiding among civilians and under schools endangers them. But I guess that’s Israel’s fault. Why can’t they just send in soldiers without air support? They make easier targets that way.
If you’re going to claim that Israel is killing children because Hamas is hiding in schools and there aren’t schools, that’s a really silly claim.
And if there were schools, you’re claiming that Israel needs to bomb schools filled with children in self-defense. I don’t know that you’re going to find too many people sympathetic to that argument.
I sincerely hope you aren’t a parent if you feel children are so disposable.
Also, if you have to kill children in the name of self-defense, maybe you don’t have anything worth defending.
I’m saying using such despicable tactics is not a free genocide without reprisal card, nor should it confer a tactical advantage as that just means more of this in the future.
Collateral damage is not murder. I feel like a parrot having to refute all these same inaccurate characterizations over and over again. Calling it murder doesn’t make it so.
Good thing you’re not in charge of any defense forces. If your opponents strapped their own children to tanks I suppose you’d just let them roll in and take over.
Sadly, there are no magical munitions that don’t cause collateral damage, nor is Israel infallible. They still have a right to self-defense and to eliminate the threat against them.
Do Palestinians have a right to self defense or just Israelis? Because there’s a whole lot of settler attacks in the West Bank and mass graves full of kids in Gaza.
I’m not defending Hamas, who are just as shitty as the settler parties but you might logically expect violent resistance if you put a people under your boot for decades.
Of course they do - only thing is, doing that in war generally makes you a combat participant and voids whatever rights you had as a non-combatant.
How exactly are they defending themselves by bombing areas full of children?
If your answer is “Hamas is there,” well they were somehow able to raid a hospital without killing everyone inside it and still get a whole bunch of Hamas people, so maybe they should do that instead of dropping bombs on children.
You are justifying child murder.
As you acknowledge, they are targeting Hamas, who often attacks them while hiding in areas full of children. Going in without air support into a well prepared guerilla fighter’s den is likely to cause a lot of casualties. Even though that is acceptable every now and then like in the hospital that does not imply that’s a viable strategy for all of Gaza.
Hamas counts on this “think of the children!” and the bad PR it causes, that’s why they do this. They also want Israel’s hands to be bound so they can do Oct 7 over and over again.
The right move is to minimize civilian casualties but not stop until the job is done, and that’s exactly what I believe Israel is doing.
Please present evidence of this. Or is this just a guess on your part?
They don’t go in, they just bombs.
They are not killing the children.
More children were killed in Gaza by March than children in conflicts in the rest of the world over the past four years.
And you would have us believe that Israel’s hands are free of their blood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_human_shields_by_Hamas
It’s almost like starting a war when most of your population is children, then hiding among civilians and under schools endangers them. But I guess that’s Israel’s fault. Why can’t they just send in soldiers without air support? They make easier targets that way.
That information is way out of date. There are almost no schools left because Israel destroyed 90% of them.
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/education-under-attack-gaza-nearly-90-school-buildings-damaged-or-destroyed-and-no-university-left-standing
If you’re going to claim that Israel is killing children because Hamas is hiding in schools and there aren’t schools, that’s a really silly claim.
And if there were schools, you’re claiming that Israel needs to bomb schools filled with children in self-defense. I don’t know that you’re going to find too many people sympathetic to that argument.
I sincerely hope you aren’t a parent if you feel children are so disposable.
Also, if you have to kill children in the name of self-defense, maybe you don’t have anything worth defending.
I’m saying this is a strategy Hamas uses, and they haven’t stopped. They have been launching rockets from Rafah, hospitals and other civilian areas, they told civilians not to evacuate from war zones, and since half of Gaza is children that means yes, Hamas is attacking Israel from among children.
I’m saying using such despicable tactics is not a free genocide without reprisal card, nor should it confer a tactical advantage as that just means more of this in the future.
Yes. You have already made it clear that you think the murder of thousands of children is justified for the sake of Israel’s self-defense.
And I have made it clear that I think that if you have to kill thousands of children in the name of self-defense, you have nothing worth defending.
Suggesting that there is anything reason to justify killing thousands of children is pretty disturbing.
I would sacrifice my own life to save one child.
Collateral damage is not murder. I feel like a parrot having to refute all these same inaccurate characterizations over and over again. Calling it murder doesn’t make it so.
Good thing you’re not in charge of any defense forces. If your opponents strapped their own children to tanks I suppose you’d just let them roll in and take over.