Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[pood]

i

I never said that. The argument that Hamas is integral part of the Gazan society is to disabuse pood of his notion that saying "Gaza attacked Israel" is wrong. It is no more wrong than saying "Japan attacked US on 12/7/41".

The “Japan attacked the U.S.” analogy doesn’t hold—because Japan was a sovereign state with a centralized government, a uniformed army, and full control over its territory. Gaza is none of those things. It’s a blockaded enclave without statehood, without an army, and under conditions where half the population wasn’t even alive when Hamas took power. So no, saying “Gaza attacked Israel” is not the same.

Isn’t that sweet. Derec wants to “disabuse” me of some notiion or other.

I’ve read enough of his posts to understand exactly what he is doing: dehumanizing and assigning guilt by association to some two million people, including women and children. The analogy to Japan is entirely inapt as you so succinctly explain.

But even in the case of Japan, it would be better to say that the Japanese government and military attacked the U.S., not the people. But as noble as World War II supposedly was in defeating tyranny, the West predictably demonized all Japanese people as “Japs” — enemies all — and here in the U.S., Roosevelt put citizens of Japanese descent into concentration camps.

 

[NoHolyCows]

It is certainly evidence of most being fighters. It is not proof, but it is evidence. What do you think the bulge is due to?
Nobody said that civilians should not be protected as far as feasible. But that is difficult when your enemy sees the deaths of their own civilians as a propaganda coup.

No—it’s not “certainly” evidence that most of the dead were fighters. It’s a demographic assumption dressed up as analysis. A statistical bulge in military-aged males proves nothing about who was actively fighting. It could reflect population structure, survival differences during evacuations, or any number of social dynamics. Age and gender are not indicators of combatant status. Direct participation in hostilities is.

If your reasoning is that being a young man in Gaza makes you suspicious by default, then you’ve abandoned the principle of distinction. You’re replacing evidence with profiling. That’s not how lawful targeting works—that’s how war crimes are excused after the fact.

As for your point about Hamas exploiting civilian deaths—yes, they do. That’s precisely why the burden falls even more heavily on the side with power and precision to avoid civilian casualties. The law doesn’t say “protect civilians unless the enemy benefits from their deaths.” It says protect them in all circumstances. That’s not just a moral high ground—it’s a legal obligation.

You’re trying to turn Hamas’s cynicism into a license for Israel’s impunity. But you don’t get to say, “They treat their people as expendable, so we can too.” That’s not defense. That’s surrendering the very values you claim to be upholding.

If civilian life only matters when it’s politically convenient, then it was never really about law or morality. It was about narrative control. And that’s not justice—it’s justification.

War is hell. Its glory is all moonshine.
That's a reason not to start wars, of course. You can't invade a country, massacre 1200 people, many of them young people attending a music festival, abduct hundreds of others, and not expect that the victim not come at you like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew.

Yes—war is hell. And that’s exactly why the rules of war exist: to stop grief, anger, and trauma from becoming the rationale for indiscriminate destruction. You’re not wrong to be horrified by October 7. No decent person wasn’t. But the moment we say, “Of course we’re bombing civilians—look what they did,” we’re not talking about justice anymore. We’re talking about vengeance.

You say Gaza should have expected Israel to “come at them like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew.” That’s not a defense. That’s rage dressed up as strategy. And when rage becomes policy, war crimes follow. That’s why we have Geneva. That’s why we have proportionality, distinction, and the obligation to protect civilians—even in war.

Yes—Hamas started this war. But how you fight it defines whether you’re upholding law and morality or abandoning them. If one side commits atrocities and the other responds by flattening cities, starving families, and killing tens of thousands—you don’t get to say, “war is hell,” and wipe your hands clean.

That logic has a name: collective punishment. And history never looks kindly on those who justify it, no matter how righteous their anger felt at the time.

Hamas has no vested interest in undercounting women and minors. Quite the contrary. If anything is undercounted, it would be military aged males. I do not know where UN or WHO get their estimate. Do you?

Actually, the UN and WHO base their estimates on data provided by Gaza’s Ministry of Health, but they don’t take it at face value. They cross-reference it with hospital records, NGO reports, and independent observers in the field—especially organizations like OCHA (the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and UNICEF. That’s how the 70% figure for women and children was reached: not just by counting raw totals, but by analyzing reported names, ages, and sex of the deceased.

Now, you assume Hamas would have an interest in exaggerating civilian deaths—but here’s the thing: undercounting military-age males doesn’t mean overstating women and children. It just means fighters may be buried without official reporting, or not separated from civilian counts—intentionally or otherwise. In fact, several rights groups have pointed out that Hamas does not always distinguish between civilians and militants in its reporting, which blurs the numbers rather than inflating one side.

But more importantly, even if we set the exact numbers aside: tens of thousands of people have died, and an enormous proportion are clearly civilians. That’s not disputed by the UN, the WHO, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or virtually any reputable monitoring body. So the core issue isn’t whether the civilian toll is 55%, 70%, or 80%. The issue is: thousands of women and children are dead, and the scale alone demands accountability.

Fixating on whether it’s slightly lower than 70% doesn’t change the moral and legal weight of what’s happening. Civilian death doesn’t become acceptable at 60%.

Yes, urban warfare is more dangerous for civilians. And it is especially deadly because of Hamas tactics of operating from civilian areas. But that does not mean that hiding among civilians should render Hamas and other terror fighters immune from targeting.

You’re right—urban warfare is devastating for civilians. And yes, Hamas’s tactics of embedding in civilian areas are a clear violation of international law. But here’s what doesn’t follow: that those tactics give the other side license to disregard civilian protections.

No one is saying Hamas should be immune from targeting. What international law does say—unequivocally—is that you can only strike if the civilian harm is not excessive in relation to the concrete military advantage gained, and all feasible precautions must be taken to minimize harm. That’s not idealism. It’s the legal foundation of distinction and proportionality.

When you reduce this to a binary—either Hamas can’t be touched, or anything goes—you erase the very framework that’s supposed to make warfare less catastrophic for civilians. It’s not a choice between immunity and impunity. It’s about accountability: both for Hamas’s crimes and for how a vastly more powerful military chooses to respond.

If you knowingly strike in ways that cause massive civilian death because the enemy is nearby, that’s not targeting militants. That’s making civilians pay the price for your lack of strategic restraint.

So yes, Hamas hides among civilians. But that makes the duty to protect those civilians even more urgent—not less.

I am just saying that the numbers are comparable to other wars that are not called "genocides".
There is certainly no intent to commit genocide by Israel. If anything, that intent in on the Gazan side.
Effect? Germany started WWII. The effect of Allies fighting back is that >10% of German population died. Is that effect "genocidal"?

The death toll in itself isn’t what makes something a genocide—that’s true. But genocide is defined not by body count alone, but by intent and targeting. The key legal standard comes from the Genocide Convention: the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

So no—WWII wasn’t genocide because of the number of Germans who died. Those deaths occurred in the context of a total war launched by Germany, and were not part of a campaign to annihilate the German people as a group. In contrast, the Holocaust was genocide not because of six million deaths—but because those deaths were the result of a deliberate, systematic plan to exterminate Jews as a people.

The question with Gaza is not just how many have died—but how, who, and why. When you see:

• Statements by Israeli officials referring to Palestinians as “human animals”
• Repeated bombing of civilian zones, schools, hospitals, and refugee camps
• Destruction of water infrastructure and obstruction of aid
• Warnings that entire areas will be “flattened” until a political goal is achieved

Those raise serious questions about genocidal intent—not because critics want it to be true, but because international law requires us to ask those questions when the scale of civilian death and displacement is this extreme.

And here’s the bottom line: even if it isn’t genocide, it can still be a war crime. It can still be a crime against humanity. So comparing it to other wars where worse things happened—or where high death tolls weren’t labeled genocide—isn’t a defense. It’s a distraction from accountability.

Because in the end, the standard is simple: if you’re killing thousands of civilians, many of them children, you don’t get to point to history and say “others did worse.” You get to answer for what you’re doing now.

The intent is one of comparison with other wars. A lot more people died in Syria. Hell, there is a far more deadly civil war ongoing in Sudan with far less coverage. No Jews, no news.

Yes—more people have died in Syria. More are dying in Sudan. Both are catastrophic, underreported, and deserving of global outrage. But pointing to other tragedies doesn’t make this one acceptable. Suffering isn’t a competition, and mass civilian death doesn’t become excusable because someone else died in larger numbers.

That’s not moral clarity. That’s deflection.

As for your “no Jews, no news” line—let’s be honest. That’s not about journalism. That’s a crude, lazy insinuation that plays into antisemitic tropes. It’s also false. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict draws global attention not because of religion, but because of its deep ties to Western foreign policy, military aid, international law, and decades of unresolved occupation. If Israel were any other state receiving billions in U.S. weapons while conducting a campaign with 35,000+ civilian deaths, it would still be front-page news. And rightly so.

Your argument tries to sanitize the scale of destruction in Gaza by comparing it to other horrors—and then undermines your credibility by suggesting the outrage is somehow racially or religiously selective. But here’s the truth:

Every war crime demands attention. Every civilian death matters.

If you truly cared about Syria or Sudan, you’d call for justice there too—not use their tragedies to minimize this one. Because the only thing worse than ignoring one atrocity is using another as cover for it.

Again, Israel has the duty to minimize civilian casualties as much as feasible, but not to the extent that it makes waging war against Hamas and its allies impossible. Just because Mohammed Deif operated from a designated civilian area does not make it wrong to target him.

Targeting a high-value militant like Mohammed Deif is not inherently illegal. But how you target him—and at what cost to civilians—absolutely matters under international law.

You keep falling back on the phrase “as much as feasible,” but you’re treating it like a soft suggestion rather than what it actually is: a binding legal standard. “Feasible” doesn’t mean “if it’s easy” or “if it doesn’t make things too complicated.” It means all precautions that are practicable under the circumstances at the time, including methods of attack, weapon choice, timing, and potential civilian impact.

If the only way to kill one commander is to level an apartment block or strike a densely populated refugee camp—then the attack may be unlawful, regardless of his guilt. That’s not idealism. That’s the law of armed conflict.

And no, the duty to protect civilians doesn’t disappear because the enemy abuses them. That’s exactly why the Geneva Conventions exist: to prevent the strong from justifying civilian slaughter in the name of fighting evil. If the standard for proportionality collapses every time a militant hides among civilians, then there’s no limit left—just a narrative of inevitability used to shield atrocities.

So yes—Hamas hides among civilians. That’s a war crime. But responding in a way that knowingly kills those civilians anyway is also a war crime. One doesn’t cancel the other. They compound as I have said previous pages ago.

And if the argument is that the law should bend until military objectives are easily achieved—then you’re not defending justice. You’re defending convenience.

Military age men being disproportionally frequent among the dead shows that Gaza is not being targeted at random (as some claim) but that it is fighters who are targeted. It is sad when any civilians come to harm, but Gaza started this war, and is suffering the consequences.

No—it doesn’t show Gaza is being targeted precisely. It shows that in a war zone where half the population is under 18, you’re seeing a statistical bump in male deaths from ages 15–45 and calling that proof of military precision. But that’s not how legal targeting works. Demographic patterns aren’t evidence. Individual participation is. And unless those deaths are verified combatants engaged in hostilities, the assumption that they were all fighters is just that—an assumption.

And here’s the deeper issue: you’re calling thousands of civilian deaths “consequences” of Gaza starting the war. That’s not law. That’s punishment. And punishment of a population based on the actions of militants is collective punishment—explicitly banned under international law.

You keep saying it’s “sad” when civilians are killed. But when your next sentence is “they started it,” you’re not mourning them. You’re excusing their deaths. You’re turning war into retribution.

Even in war, there are rules. You can’t bomb entire neighborhoods and then point to an age range as evidence of moral high ground. You don’t get to claim you’re targeting fighters when your actions have killed thousands of women and children, bombed hospitals, and displaced over a million people.

This isn’t justice. It’s a narrative designed to make mass death sound reasonable.

It's not guilt by proximity. Nobody is saying that those killed as collateral damage are guilty. The guilty are those who endanger them by, for example, placing rocket launchers next to tents.

You’re trying to separate moral responsibility from military action. But you don’t get to kill civilians and then declare someone else guilty for their deaths. That’s not how international law—or moral responsibility—works.

Yes, Hamas bears responsibility for placing rocket launchers near civilians. That’s a war crime. But that doesn’t erase Israel’s obligation to avoid disproportionate harm. If you strike a known civilian area and cause mass casualties—even when targeting a militant—the responsibility for those deaths is shared. You knew the consequences and pulled the trigger anyway.

That’s the entire purpose of the Geneva Conventions: to ensure both sides are held to standards, even when one violates them. Saying, “the civilians were used as shields” doesn’t make the civilians expendable. It doesn’t turn foreseeable death into acceptable damage. You don’t lose your civilian status because of your zip code.

If you truly believe those civilians are not guilty, then the burden falls on the attacker to treat them as innocent—not just in words, but in how they fight. Otherwise, calling their deaths “collateral” is just a legal fig leaf over moral abandonment.

NHC

 

[pood]

When someone says, “Russia attacked Ukraine,” everyone understands that this is shorthand for the Russian government ordered its military to attack Ukraine. No one blames the Russian people as a whole, who had no say over the matter.

But when one says “Gaza attacked Israel,” one is playing a tendentious, nasty, propagandistic little game. Gaza is not a country. It is a territory that has always been blockaded and under siege by Israel. Hamas is not a government proper, but a terror group under which Gazans are as much victims as Israelis. To be deliberately inaccurate and to say that Gaza attacked, rather than the accurate Hamas attacked, is a sinister way of extending guilt to some 2 million innocent people for the actions of a handful over which they have no control.

 

[pood]

You say Gaza should have expected Israel to “come at them like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew.”

I’ve mostly stopped stopped reading Derec’s ridiculous posts. He actually said something that callous, witless and jejune? I was going to say it’s unbelievable, but, sadly, for him, it’s not.

But do carry on with your brilliant demolition of his inanities. I’m still going through your post here.

And as for that “spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew,” their leader has an international warrant out for his arrest, and he and the nation he leads is a disgrace in the eyes of civilized people everywhere.

 

[Derec]

NHC, you write really long posts. It took me forever just to get through the first one. And a lot of arguments are repetitive, so I will be doing quite a bit of trimming.

If a hostage-taker hides behind children, and the responding force opens fire knowing the children will die—that’s not “unfortunate collateral.” That’s an unacceptable decision that shares responsibility for their deaths. That’s what we’d say in any other context. That’s what we must say here.

I do not think this is a good comparison. A war should be compared to other similar wars.

You linked to Sinwar allegedly saying high civilian deaths are a necessary sacrifice. That’s monstrous—but it doesn’t absolve Israel of the obligation to not be monstrous in response. You don’t defeat extremism by mirroring its logic.

I did not say that Israel should be monstrous, but that Hamas' monstrosity provides a sufficient explanation for the number of casualties.

And here’s the hard truth: when entire families are wiped out, refugee camps are bombed, and 35,000+ civilians—mostly women and children—are dead, the claim of “collateral damage” collapses. These are not isolated accidents. They are the predictable result of a military campaign that treats population centers as battlefields.

Collateral damage is sadly a predictable consequence of urban warfare, especially against an enemy like Hamas.
Mostly women and children? First of all, it should be women and minors, as there is a difference. Again, ~55% are women and minors, compared to 75% in the population. That makes them hugely underrepresented among the dead.
I have seen this misuse of "mostly" in other contexts where the population distribution is not close to 50/50. It is a dishonest debate tactic.

One comment about so-called "refugee camps". Those started as refugee camps >70 years ago, but by now they had evolved into regular towns and cities. Jabalia the camp was not very different from Jabalia proper next door.

If you believe there’s a difference between terrorists and democracies, it has to show in how you respond to evil—not how much you can rationalize when fighting it.

I agree. IDF would not be justified randomly attacking Gazans. At the same time, if the rules are too restrictive, you are only aiding and abetting terrorists by insisting that civilized countries follow them.

Berlin in 1945 was the capital of a state that launched a world war, built death camps, and occupied half of Europe. Gaza is a walled-in, besieged enclave with no army, no air force, no statehood, and half its population under 18. If you’re comparing Gaza to Nazi Germany, you’ve already erased the moral distinction between an occupied people and an imperial war machine.

I choose Nazi Germany as a comparison for two reasons. One is the degree of damage. Photos of Berlin in 1945 are not dissimilar to photos of Gaza City in 2025. The second is that Hamas' islamofascist ideology is not that different than the Nazi ideology. Both are totalitarian, and both are antisemitic.
Of course there are differences. Nazi Germany was much more powerful at its peak, of course. But your objections do not hold water.
No army? De jure maybe not, but Hamas and other groups have armed forces organized in brigades, battalions etc. with combined strength of ~60k before the start of the war. If it quacks like a duck ...
No air force? Perhaps not, but they have thousands of rockets, as well as drones.
No statehood? Perhaps not de jure, but de facto Hamas has been ruling Gaza like a state since 2007.
Half its population below 18? I do not see the relevance, but what was the demographic breakdown of Germany in the 1940s?

And no—being born in Gaza should not be a death sentence. But when food is cut off, hospitals are bombed, entire families are wiped out, and 35,000+ civilians are killed with no escape route—what else would you call it? “Dangerous” doesn’t capture it. Systematically unlivable does.

Actions have consequences. Gaza started this war. Gazan fighters are hiding behind civilians.

You say “at least Nazi Germany surrendered.” That wasn’t because Germans were more rational. It was because they had a functioning state, an organized military, and terms for surrender. Who exactly is Gaza supposed to surrender to? Who negotiates when the political leadership is labeled untouchable, the civilian infrastructure is rubble, and even humanitarian zones are targeted?

That's where PA should be taking a leadership role.
But I reject the notion that Germany was not more rational. The whole process hinged on Germans accepting the defeat and not waging a guerilla campaign against the Allies. Gazans (and other Palestinians) must likewise accept that Israel is not going anywhere.

This isn’t about capitulation. It’s about annihilation by siege. And if you really believe this only ends when Gaza “surrenders,” but offer no pathway for what that looks like—you’re not describing a plan. You’re describing a war without end, with civilians as the cost of your vengeance.

The plan must include Hamas and other groups releasing all hostages and giving up weapons. The plan must also include some form of post-war governance for Gaza

History judged the firebombing of Dresden and Hiroshima as excesses. It didn’t say, “Well, they started it.” If you’re still using 1945 logic to justify 2024 actions, then you’re clinging to the language of victory—not justice.

Is it? I agree some people think that, but I do not think it's a consensus. Specifically about nuclear bombs - not using them might have led to more overall deaths because the war would have lasted longer.

Would you accept that logic if applied to Israelis? That rockets fired from Sderot or Jerusalem make every Israeli responsible for whatever comes next?

But that's just the distinction. IDF does not launch rockets from neighborhoods or from schools or from hospitals. Hamas does.

 

[pood]

Yes, for poor little Derec, Israel’s monstrous behavior is merely, you know, them acting “like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew.” How picturesque! Almost like a comic book!

I wish Derec were a Gazan.

 

[NoHolyCows]

International Law does not say that collateral damage is a war crime. And [citation needed] that it gives the burden to the "more powerful actor" rather than the one who is violating civilian areas by operating from them.

You’re right that collateral damage in itself isn’t automatically a war crime. But it becomes one when it’s disproportionate to the military advantage gained, when civilians are knowingly placed at excessive risk, or when feasible precautions aren’t taken to avoid or minimize that harm. That’s not subjective—that’s codified in international law.

Article 51(5)(b) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions defines as indiscriminate those attacks “which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life… excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”

As for the “burden on the more powerful actor”: while IHL doesn’t use that phrase explicitly, the ICRC Commentary and multiple judgments from international tribunals (e.g., ICTY, ICJ) recognize that parties with superior intelligence, precision capabilities, and control are expected to use them. The more capacity you have to distinguish and minimize harm, the greater your responsibility to do so.

In contrast, violations by one party (e.g., using human shields) do not cancel out the obligations of the other. That’s a core principle of IHL: no reciprocity. One side breaking the rules doesn’t allow the other to respond in kind.

So yes—Hamas operating from civilian areas is a war crime. But bombing those areas without meeting the legal thresholds of necessity, distinction, and proportionality is also a war crime. You don’t get to choose which laws apply based on your enemy’s behavior.

And if one side has drones, surveillance, precision-guided weapons, and real-time targeting capacity—and the other has none—then yes, the law expects more from the side that can afford to comply. That’s not bias. That’s the point: power comes with responsibility.

So basically, Hamas should be immune from attacks? That would make their tactics more powerful, and thus they will be used even more frequently. That is not realistic.

No—Hamas is not immune from attack. But the presence of civilians doesn’t erase Israel’s obligations under international law. The choice is not “let Hamas operate freely” or “bomb hospitals and neighborhoods.” That’s a false dilemma—and it’s exactly the kind of framing that gets civilians killed.

International law allows targeting militants even when they hide among civilians—but only if:

• The attack is proportionate (i.e. the civilian harm is not excessive in relation to the concrete military advantage),
• All feasible precautions are taken to avoid or minimize civilian harm,
• And the target is clearly identified as a legitimate military objective.

If striking a Hamas leader in a tunnel beneath a hospital means killing dozens of patients above him, then you’re not stopping Hamas—you’re violating the very laws that distinguish you from them.

And no—upholding that standard doesn’t make Hamas’s tactics “more powerful.” It forces Israel to fight smarter, not deadlier. Precision, intelligence, siege tactics, cyber warfare, special operations—all of those can be deployed without turning civilians into acceptable collateral.

You’re right that Hamas hides behind civilians. That’s the point of their strategy. But if you defeat that strategy by killing the civilians anyway, then you’re not outmaneuvering them—you’re doing their work for them.

The power of law isn’t that it makes war easy. It’s that it demands we fight—even when justified—without losing the humanity we claim to be defending.

If one side gets to break the rules, and that leads to a battlefield advantage (being immune from attack) then how do you defend yourself against them?

You defend yourself by following the law—not because it’s easy, but because abandoning it makes you indistinguishable from what you’re fighting.

The idea that international law gives Hamas “immunity” is a misreading. It doesn’t protect Hamas—it protects civilians. If Hamas embeds among civilians, then yes, it creates a horrible tactical problem. But the solution is not to bomb those civilians and say, “They made us do it.” That’s the logic of terrorism turned inside out.

The law doesn’t say “do nothing.” It says:

• Use intelligence and precision.
• Delay or alter strikes when civilian cost is too high.
• Exhaust non-lethal alternatives where possible.
• Treat civilians as civilians, even when the enemy does not.

If you respond to an enemy hiding among civilians by killing those civilians, you may degrade the enemy—but you also destroy your moral credibility and violate the rules meant to keep warfare within human bounds.

And if your position is that the rules themselves are a liability, then you’re not defending yourself—you’re declaring those rules optional, which means you no longer believe in any standard at all. That’s not justice. That’s vengeance with better branding.

So no—following the law doesn’t make your enemy immune. It makes you accountable. And that’s what separates defense from destruction.

You are ignoring that it is Hamas that collapsed that distinction.

No—I’m not ignoring that Hamas deliberately violates the laws of war. Embedding fighters in civilian areas, using human shields, operating from hospitals—those are all war crimes.

But what you’re ignoring is that their crimes do not erase your responsibility. That’s the entire point of international humanitarian law: it applies regardless of the enemy’s behavior. If Hamas collapses the distinction between civilians and combatants, your obligation is to preserve it—not mirror their violation.

Because once you say, “They collapsed the distinction, so we don’t have to maintain it,” you’ve accepted their rules. You’ve made civilian death a battlefield tactic instead of a line never to be crossed. That’s not moral clarity. That’s surrendering your values in the name of fighting evil.

So no, Hamas didn’t force anyone to bomb refugee camps, flatten neighborhoods, or starve children. Those are strategic choices—and they carry responsibility. If civilians are dying by the thousands, the distinction hasn’t just been collapsed by Hamas. It’s being erased by both sides. And pretending otherwise doesn’t absolve it—it sanitizes it.

It's just funny that somebody tangentially involved is condemned far more than the actual perpetrators.
Also, Lebanon was highly volatile at the time. The president of Lebnon had just been assasinated by the Syrians for example. And the S&S massacre itself was a response to an earlier Damour massacre, perpetrated by the PLO. Why are people so selective in their outrage and only ever mention things that Israel can be blamed for somehow?

Acknowledging the full context of a volatile war doesn’t absolve responsibility—it sharpens it. Yes, Lebanon in 1982 was chaotic. Yes, the PLO had committed atrocities, and the Damour massacre was horrific. But none of that changes the fact that Israel, a foreign occupying power, facilitated the entrance of a known violent militia into a civilian refugee camp it had surrounded and controlled. That’s not “tangential.” That’s operational complicity.

The Israeli Kahan Commission—hardly an anti-Israel body—found that Sharon and other officials bore indirect responsibility for enabling the massacre. Sharon was forced to resign as Defense Minister. That accountability didn’t happen in a vacuum—it happened because responsibility follows power, especially when you control the battlefield.

You ask why people “only ever mention things that Israel can be blamed for.” But that’s not the issue. The issue is holding to the same moral standard you claim to value. When Hamas commits atrocities, you demand total condemnation and accountability. Rightly so. But when Israel enables atrocities, you pivot to whataboutism: “Well, the PLO did worse.”

That’s not justice. That’s deflection.

You want universal standards? Then apply them universally. Because if your outrage depends on who pulled the trigger, not who enabled the massacre, then it’s not about morality—it’s about allegiance.

No, that is not my logic.

Then here’s the question: If that’s not your logic, why do you apply it to Gazans?

You’ve repeatedly argued that because Hamas governs Gaza, and some Gazans support or tolerate them, the entire population must bear the consequences. You’ve justified mass civilian suffering—displacement, bombing, starvation—as the “price” Gaza pays for October 7. That is assigning guilt by association.

But when the same logic is turned around—when we suggest that by your own standard, all Israelis would then bear responsibility for Sharon’s complicity at Sabra and Shatila—you immediately reject it.

So which is it? Do you reject collective blame, or do you only reject it when it applies to your side?

Because if your logic changes depending on who holds the power, who dropped the bomb, or whose civilians are suffering, then this isn’t a moral argument. It’s a tribal one.

And moral standards that only apply to your enemies aren’t moral standards at all.

Tell that to the people like Summer Lee and Cory Booker who are demanding racial reparations. But I digress.

You’re not digressing—you’re dodging.

This isn’t a debate about reparations. It’s about whether entire civilian populations deserve to suffer for the actions of a militant group they don’t control. And invoking a completely separate issue rooted in historic systemic injustice isn’t a rebuttal—it’s a distraction.

You keep avoiding the core point: when it’s your side, you reject collective guilt. But when it’s Palestinians, you rationalize it as strategy. That double standard is precisely what undermines any claim to moral clarity.

So let’s stay on topic: if collective punishment is wrong in principle, it’s wrong in practice—no matter who’s doing it or what justifications are wrapped around it. You don’t get to talk about law, ethics, or justice while defending one set of rules for yourself and another for everyone else.

Tell that to the guy who murdered two embassy staffers over Gaza. Tell that to another guy who tried to firebomb US embassy in Jerusalem.
For that matter, tell that to Houthis who keep shooting missiles at Israeli civilians.

The “we” is humanity. The international community. The people and governments who did not respond to the Sabra and Shatila massacre by declaring every Israeli a valid target or justifying indiscriminate violence in return. Because despite the horror of what happened, and Israel’s documented responsibility for allowing it to happen, collective guilt was not embraced. That’s the point.

No one’s pretending Sabra and Shatila existed in a vacuum. The PLO committed atrocities. Lebanon was a war-torn, factionalized state. But none of that erases the fact that Israel’s military surrounded the camps, controlled access, and allowed the Phalangist militia inside—knowing revenge was likely. The Kahan Commission, Israel’s own official inquiry, found that Israeli officials, including Ariel Sharon, bore indirect but serious responsibility.

So this isn’t about “hating Israel.” It’s about applying the same standard to all parties. You can condemn the PLO’s crimes and still recognize that Israel had a duty to prevent a massacre it enabled. That’s not anti-Israel. That’s called accountability.

And if your only response is to say, “Well, others did worse,” then you’re not defending morality—you’re defending impunity.

The real question remains: if collective guilt is wrong when applied to Israelis—and it is—why do you turn around and apply it to 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza?

Tell that to the guy who murdered two embassy staffers over Gaza. Tell that to another guy who tried to firebomb US embassy in Jerusalem.
For that matter, tell that to Houthis who keep shooting missiles at Israeli civilians.

You’re pointing to individual acts of violence and terrorism—yes, terrible and inexcusable. But those are individual crimes, and they should be prosecuted as such. They do not justify the collective punishment of 2.2 million people in Gaza, most of whom have never fired a missile, never committed an attack, and many of whom are children.

You can condemn those acts—and you should—without abandoning the basic principle that we don’t treat entire populations as guilty by association. The actions of the Houthi leadership don’t justify bombing Yemeni civilians. The actions of one arsonist don’t justify mass displacement in Gaza.

That’s exactly the point I’ve been making: the civilized world is supposed to reject tribal retribution. When extremists commit violence, we don’t carpet-bomb their cities. When Americans committed war crimes in Iraq, we didn’t say all of Texas should suffer. We distinguish. We hold individuals accountable. Or at least—we’re supposed to.

The fact that some people reject that principle doesn’t give anyone else the right to abandon it. In fact, it makes it more urgent to uphold. Because if the only response to extremism is more indiscriminate violence, then no side is defending justice. They’re just taking turns breaking it.

Again, there is a difference - moral, legal as well as practical - between targeting civilians and civilians tragically coming to harm during urban warfare against an enemy that doesn't give a flying fuck over the wellbeing of ostensibly their own people.

Yes—there is a legal and moral difference between intentionally targeting civilians and causing civilian casualties during attacks on military targets. But that difference doesn’t mean all civilian deaths in war are excusable. You’re treating “we didn’t mean to” as a shield against scrutiny, while thousands of women and children are dead. That’s not how the law—or morality—works.

International law doesn’t just prohibit intentional attacks on civilians. It also prohibits indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks—strikes where the expected civilian harm outweighs the military advantage, or where feasible precautions weren’t taken to avoid killing innocent people.

You say Hamas doesn’t care about its civilians. That’s true—and it’s why Israel has a greater responsibility to uphold the laws of war. The presence of an enemy who violates moral boundaries doesn’t permit you to erase your own.

If a strike knowingly kills 20 civilians to get one militant, that’s not just “collateral damage.” That’s a choice. A strategic choice to accept mass civilian death as operationally tolerable. And when that becomes the norm, the line between deliberate and reckless violence starts to blur.

So yes, intent matters. But so does outcome. And if thousands of civilians are dying and the response is always, “Hamas is to blame,” then that’s not a moral defense—it’s an abdication of responsibility.

If you can't tell the difference between massacring people at a concert or blowing up a pizza restaurant with a suicide bomber on one hand, and targeting a rocket launcher next to some text or Mohammed Sinwar in a tunnel on the other hand, then I really don't know how to explain it to you any more plainly.

I can tell the difference. What I reject is the idea that your side’s intent automatically makes the consequences acceptable. You’re comparing a suicide bombing to a strike on a tunnel or a rocket launcher—as if no further analysis is needed. But here’s the problem:

When those strikes kill dozens of civilians trapped above, when they level homes, flatten refugee camps, or hit humanitarian zones where families were told to shelter—then intent isn’t enough. You can’t call that justice simply because the target was legitimate. You have to ask whether the civilian cost was proportional, whether precautions were taken, whether it could have been avoided. That’s what the law demands. That’s what morality demands.

If a Palestinian kills civilians, it’s rightly called terrorism. But if Israel kills civilians in a way that’s foreseeably excessive or indiscriminate and you defend it by saying, “But there was a militant nearby”—you’re using the presence of a lawful target to excuse an unlawful outcome. That’s not moral clarity. That’s tribal logic.

So yes—there is a difference between a suicide bomber and a precision missile. But if both leave civilians dead in their homes and you only condemn one, then the difference isn’t in the act—it’s in your bias.

I never said that civilians are legitimate targets.

Then here’s the problem: you keep saying civilians aren’t targets—but you defend a strategy that kills them by the thousands, in strikes you call justified because Hamas was nearby. That disconnect is the issue.

You say they’re not legitimate targets, but when homes, hospitals, refugee camps, and aid convoys are bombed—and the response is always “Hamas was using them”—you’re not treating civilian life as protected. You’re treating it as expendable. That’s not precision. That’s permission.

If you truly believe civilians are not targets, then the burden isn’t just not to intend to kill them. It’s to avoid it—to restrain, to delay, to choose another method—even when it’s harder. That’s what distinguishes a military that follows the law from one that uses the law as cover.

Saying “we didn’t mean to kill them” isn’t a defense if the pattern is constant, foreseeable, and devastating. You can’t claim civilians matter while excusing what keeps happening to them. That contradiction is what the world sees—and what accountability demands we confront.

NHC

 

[Derec]

Your distinction between collective punishment and civilian harm during war doesn’t hold up.

There is very much a distinction between deliberate targeting of civilians for punishment and inadvertent harm that comes to civilians while fighting the enemy combatants.

The Geneva Conventions recognize that the use of human shields—whether intentional or as a consequence of an adversary embedding themselves among civilians—does not justify the targeting of those civilians. A military target placed in a civilian area doesn’t suddenly make that entire area fair game for indiscriminate attack. That’s where you’re veering into justification for collective punishment: civilians being punished because their government or an armed faction uses them as shields.

Nobody is justifying indiscriminate attacks. Note that 4th Geneva Convention, Art. 19, explicitly states that hospitals may lose protected status if used by the enemy for military purposes.

You’re essentially saying that the presence of a rocket launcher justifies the destruction of an entire area, even though you can’t distinguish between those launching rockets and those who are innocent bystanders.

Certainly not the entire area. That's where 2025 is far superior to 1945. We can target ordinance much better. Not that things are perfect, but still far superior to how things used to be. Of course, that is all undone when combatants deliberately hide among civilians.

This might seem like a morally simple “combatant vs. civilian” argument, but when you’re talking about Gaza, a place where two-thirds of the population are refugees—

That is based on the bullshit UNRWA definition of the term that only applies to Palestinians. It's bullshit.

most of whom have been living in squalid conditions for decades—the line between combatant and non-combatant is not so easily drawn.

Why do you think that?

This is where your reasoning fails: You’re not just accepting the inevitability of civilian harm during a war; you’re endorsing it as a strategic decision.

No, the strategic decision to endanger civilians unnecessarily is Hamas'.

Even if there are rocket launchers being hidden among civilians, the responsibility for that danger lies with the group that’s using civilians as shields, not with the civilians themselves. Attacking civilians to break the political will of a government, or in retaliation for military actions by a faction they can’t control, is exactly what collective punishment is.

There is a huge difference between targeting a rocket launcher and thereby endangering civilians, and attacking civilians. You keep conflating these two things. And of course the guilt lies with those placing military hardware there. Which is why Hamas must be destroyed.

And that’s what Israel is being accused of—not necessarily indiscriminate bombing, but a deliberate strategy that targets civilian infrastructure in hopes of weakening the support for Hamas.

Is it targeting civilian infrastructure qua civilian infrastructure or because it is being used for a militant purpose?

And as for the examples of propaganda in tweets or videos, framing it like this—suggesting that the moral issue is whether a rocket launcher was visible in the footage—misses the point.

It does not miss the point. It is the whole point. Anti-Israel propagandists claim that Israel was targeting tents, while ignoring the rocket launcher that they are actually targeting. The propagandists are lying to make Israel look bad.

The core question is whether deliberate targeting of civilians or civilian infrastructure can ever be justified by the military tactics of one side.

A rocket launcher is not civilian infrastructure.

Once you cross that line, you’re no longer talking about a conflict between two sides with rights and duties; you’re talking about a moral and legal system that loses its fundamental protections for civilians.

Are you really saying that rocket launchers and similar may not be targeted as long as they are placed close to civilian areas? Do you not realize how big an advantage this gives to Hamas et al? How such tactics would quickly be adopted by any enemies of civilized countries?

This is not about Hamas’ actions being excused.

It's a distinction without a difference, as it ends making these actions very successful.

Yes—Hamas is committing war crimes. No one is denying that. Using civilian areas to launch attacks, fighting out of uniform, taking hostages—those are all violations of the Geneva Conventions. But here’s what you keep avoiding:
Hamas violating international law doesn’t give Israel—or any state—the right to do the same.

What you keep avoiding is that your interpretation of international law would end up rewarding Hamas' war crimes by de facto making them immune from attack.

Imagine if this logic were universal: if every time one side broke the rules, the other side got to break them harder. That’s not how law works. It’s how atrocities get normalized.

That's how law of self defense works. Using deadly force against another is normally a serious felony. But it is not against the law to use deadly force when under threat of death or serious bodily injury.
In other words, laws generally recognize context. And it's not just self-defense. Two people can beat the shit out of each other in the octagon. Cutting somebody's throat is not lawful - except when performing emergency cricothyrotomy. Breaking somebody's ribs is generally frowned upon, but ... you get the point.

And you’re not just discussing this in the abstract. You’re applying this logic to justify the starvation of children, the bombing of safe zones, and the deaths of over 35,000 people—many of them women and children. That’s not a legal strategy. It’s a moral collapse.

I do not agree with not allowing supplies in for weeks. But at the same time, there needed to be a better distribution system than what had been in place since the beginning of the war.
As far as bombing safe zones, we already went over that. Safe zones being safe is contingent on them not being used by combatants.

So yes, call out Hamas. But if you can only see war crimes when the other side commits them, then you’re not defending justice. You’re defending impunity.

No, you are, by saying that IDF may not target Hamas fighters or hardware as long as they operate from civilian areas. Does this not give Hamas absolute impunity?

Yes, multiple factions took part in October 7, and yes, some Palestinians support those actions.

Replace "some" with "most".

But here’s where your argument collapses: support for an attack, or for a cause—even one that includes armed resistance—does not justify treating an entire population as complicit in war crimes or as expendable.

It is Hamas who treats their population as expendable.

Poll numbers don’t override international law. You can’t bomb civilians based on a survey.

Nobody is justifying deliberately bombing civilians. But if a civilian Hamas supporter dies accidentally because Hamas placed a rocket launcher next to his tent, I see it as karma of sorts. It's the same as the "leopards eating face party" jokes made about Trump voters suffering under his policies. Hamas supporters suffering because of what Hamas does is hardly different, except for the degree of suffering.

What you’re doing is dangerous: you’re using polling data to blur the legal boundary between combatants and civilians

I am not.

You keep saying “Gaza started this war” as if history began on October 7. It didn’t.

Nobody said it did.

Gaza has been under blockade since 2007—long before this war.

Two years earlier Israel removed all settlers and soldiers from Gaza. Gazans could have shown that they can be trusted with sovereignty, leading eventually to a Palestinian state. Instead, they decided to launch attacks at Israel from the territory. Then Hamas took over which led to what you call "blockade". But why should Israel allow free movement of goods and people with an entity that keeps attacking it, and which is governed by a terrorist organization intent on destroying it?

Its people have lived through four major Israeli assaults before this one, with thousands of civilians killed, long before October 7.

They kept attacking Israel. Actions have consequences.

They’ve had no free movement, no control of their borders, no functioning economy, and no vote since 2006. You can’t keep someone in a cage for 17 years and then claim they “started the fight” when they lash out.

Gaza has a border with Egypt, and a border crossing there. Also, there is generally no "free movement" across international borders. And why should Israel not control their borders and decide whom they allow to cross? Many Gazans have crossed into Israel through Erez Crossing. Before 10/7, Israel even expanded the program allowing some Gazans to work inside Israel.

And let’s be honest: what does “surrender” even mean in this context? There’s no Palestinian army to lay down arms. There’s no leadership Israel’s willing to negotiate with. Israel already considers both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority illegitimate. So who exactly is supposed to surrender? And to what?

The various armed groups need to surrender. They are separate entities, but they all coordinate their activities through the "Joint Operations Room". They can surrender to the IDF and lay down their arms, as well as release all hostages without conditions.
I think some form of international peacekeeping force should take over temporarily until a system of governance can be established.

You talk about peace, but frame it as something Gazans must first earn by submitting—not something built through mutual recognition, justice, or rights. That’s not peace. That’s domination with a PR filter.

Of course they must submit. Otherwise they will claim victory and rebuild their forces, itching to attack Israel again.

Here’s the truth: Palestinians have tried negotiations. Oslo. Camp David. The Arab Peace Initiative. What followed?

Arafat left the Camp David negotiations and Palestinians started the 2nd Intifada where they murdered many Israeli civilians.

Expanding settlements, home demolitions, and the fragmentation of their land. If peaceful coexistence was ever on offer, it was not offered in good faith.

Ehud Barak offered a lot to Arafat. Arafat refused.

So no—this war doesn’t end when Gaza “surrenders.” It ends when both sides are held to the same moral and legal standards. When Palestinian civilians aren’t treated as human shields by Hamas or target zones by Israel. When justice isn’t based on which flag you fly, or which weapons you can afford.

That is the end goal. But it must start with Gaza surrendering and giving up on the idea of conquering Israel.

 

[NoHolyCows]

NHC, you write really long posts. It took me forever just to get through the first one. And a lot of arguments are repetitive, so I will be doing quite a bit of trimming.

If a hostage-taker hides behind children, and the responding force opens fire knowing the children will die—that’s not “unfortunate collateral.” That’s an unacceptable decision that shares responsibility for their deaths. That’s what we’d say in any other context. That’s what we must say here.

I do not think this is a good comparison. A war should be compared to other similar wars.

You linked to Sinwar allegedly saying high civilian deaths are a necessary sacrifice. That’s monstrous—but it doesn’t absolve Israel of the obligation to not be monstrous in response. You don’t defeat extremism by mirroring its logic.

I did not say that Israel should be monstrous, but that Hamas' monstrosity provides a sufficient explanation for the number of casualties.

And here’s the hard truth: when entire families are wiped out, refugee camps are bombed, and 35,000+ civilians—mostly women and children—are dead, the claim of “collateral damage” collapses. These are not isolated accidents. They are the predictable result of a military campaign that treats population centers as battlefields.

Collateral damage is sadly a predictable consequence of urban warfare, especially against an enemy like Hamas.
Mostly women and children? First of all, it should be women and minors, as there is a difference. Again, ~55% are women and minors, compared to 75% in the population. That makes them hugely underrepresented among the dead.
I have seen this misuse of "mostly" in other contexts where the population distribution is not close to 50/50. It is a dishonest debate tactic.

One comment about so-called "refugee camps". Those started as refugee camps >70 years ago, but by now they had evolved into regular towns and cities. Jabalia the camp was not very different from Jabalia proper next door.

If you believe there’s a difference between terrorists and democracies, it has to show in how you respond to evil—not how much you can rationalize when fighting it.

I agree. IDF would not be justified randomly attacking Gazans. At the same time, if the rules are too restrictive, you are only aiding and abetting terrorists by insisting that civilized countries follow them.

Berlin in 1945 was the capital of a state that launched a world war, built death camps, and occupied half of Europe. Gaza is a walled-in, besieged enclave with no army, no air force, no statehood, and half its population under 18. If you’re comparing Gaza to Nazi Germany, you’ve already erased the moral distinction between an occupied people and an imperial war machine.

I choose Nazi Germany as a comparison for two reasons. One is the degree of damage. Photos of Berlin in 1945 are not dissimilar to photos of Gaza City in 2025. The second is that Hamas' islamofascist ideology is not that different than the Nazi ideology. Both are totalitarian, and both are antisemitic.
Of course there are differences. Nazi Germany was much more powerful at its peak, of course. But your objections do not hold water.
No army? De jure maybe not, but Hamas and other groups have armed forces organized in brigades, battalions etc. with combined strength of ~60k before the start of the war. If it quacks like a duck ...
No air force? Perhaps not, but they have thousands of rockets, as well as drones.
No statehood? Perhaps not de jure, but de facto Hamas has been ruling Gaza like a state since 2007.
Half its population below 18? I do not see the relevance, but what was the demographic breakdown of Germany in the 1940s?

And no—being born in Gaza should not be a death sentence. But when food is cut off, hospitals are bombed, entire families are wiped out, and 35,000+ civilians are killed with no escape route—what else would you call it? “Dangerous” doesn’t capture it. Systematically unlivable does.

Actions have consequences. Gaza started this war. Gazan fighters are hiding behind civilians.

You say “at least Nazi Germany surrendered.” That wasn’t because Germans were more rational. It was because they had a functioning state, an organized military, and terms for surrender. Who exactly is Gaza supposed to surrender to? Who negotiates when the political leadership is labeled untouchable, the civilian infrastructure is rubble, and even humanitarian zones are targeted?

That's where PA should be taking a leadership role.
But I reject the notion that Germany was not more rational. The whole process hinged on Germans accepting the defeat and not waging a guerilla campaign against the Allies. Gazans (and other Palestinians) must likewise accept that Israel is not going anywhere.

This isn’t about capitulation. It’s about annihilation by siege. And if you really believe this only ends when Gaza “surrenders,” but offer no pathway for what that looks like—you’re not describing a plan. You’re describing a war without end, with civilians as the cost of your vengeance.

The plan must include Hamas and other groups releasing all hostages and giving up weapons. The plan must also include some form of post-war governance for Gaza

History judged the firebombing of Dresden and Hiroshima as excesses. It didn’t say, “Well, they started it.” If you’re still using 1945 logic to justify 2024 actions, then you’re clinging to the language of victory—not justice.

Is it? I agree some people think that, but I do not think it's a consensus. Specifically about nuclear bombs - not using them might have led to more overall deaths because the war would have lasted longer.

Would you accept that logic if applied to Israelis? That rockets fired from Sderot or Jerusalem make every Israeli responsible for whatever comes next?

But that's just the distinction. IDF does not launch rockets from neighborhoods or from schools or from hospitals. Hamas does.

You’re trimming because the full picture is too uncomfortable. But this isn’t a formatting problem—it’s a moral one.

You say Gaza “started the war,” as if 2.2 million people collectively declared it. But the vast majority of them didn’t vote for Hamas, didn’t take part in October 7, and had no way to flee or surrender. So when you write off their deaths as a “predictable consequence,” what you’re really doing is normalizing mass civilian death—as long as it’s on the side you’ve decided deserves to suffer.

You argue “55% women and minors” is underrepresentation—as if that’s a win. That still means tens of thousands of women and children are dead. In any other context, we wouldn’t be quibbling over ratios—we’d be mourning mass graves.

You downplay refugee camps because they’ve “evolved into towns.” That doesn’t make bombing them less devastating. It just makes the language used to justify it more cynical.

You say Hamas governs “like a state,” so it should be treated like Nazi Germany. But Hamas isn’t a sovereign government waging world war. It’s an armed faction in a sealed-off strip with no navy, no air force, and half the population under 18. Comparing Gaza to Berlin in 1945 isn’t analysis—it’s rhetorical cover for indiscriminate force.

You say “actions have consequences”—but only apply that logic to Palestinians. Not to the Israeli siege, not to the bombing of humanitarian zones, not to decades of occupation and blockade. When it’s Gaza, you speak in absolutes. When it’s Israel, you speak in excuses.

And no—insisting that Israel follow the laws of war isn’t “aiding terrorists.” It’s what separates justice from vengeance. If your only standard is “the other side is worse,” then you’re not defending democracy. You’re justifying impunity.

So yes, if you still believe in moral clarity, apply it universally. Because if your ethics shift based on the flag flying over the bomb, then let’s be honest—you’re not defending civilization. You’re just choosing a side.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Your distinction between collective punishment and civilian harm during war doesn’t hold up.

There is very much a distinction between deliberate targeting of civilians for punishment and inadvertent harm that comes to civilians while fighting the enemy combatants.

The Geneva Conventions recognize that the use of human shields—whether intentional or as a consequence of an adversary embedding themselves among civilians—does not justify the targeting of those civilians. A military target placed in a civilian area doesn’t suddenly make that entire area fair game for indiscriminate attack. That’s where you’re veering into justification for collective punishment: civilians being punished because their government or an armed faction uses them as shields.

Nobody is justifying indiscriminate attacks. Note that 4th Geneva Convention, Art. 19, explicitly states that hospitals may lose protected status if used by the enemy for military purposes.

You’re essentially saying that the presence of a rocket launcher justifies the destruction of an entire area, even though you can’t distinguish between those launching rockets and those who are innocent bystanders.

Certainly not the entire area. That's where 2025 is far superior to 1945. We can target ordinance much better. Not that things are perfect, but still far superior to how things used to be. Of course, that is all undone when combatants deliberately hide among civilians.

This might seem like a morally simple “combatant vs. civilian” argument, but when you’re talking about Gaza, a place where two-thirds of the population are refugees—

That is based on the bullshit UNRWA definition of the term that only applies to Palestinians. It's bullshit.

most of whom have been living in squalid conditions for decades—the line between combatant and non-combatant is not so easily drawn.

Why do you think that?

This is where your reasoning fails: You’re not just accepting the inevitability of civilian harm during a war; you’re endorsing it as a strategic decision.

No, the strategic decision to endanger civilians unnecessarily is Hamas'.

Even if there are rocket launchers being hidden among civilians, the responsibility for that danger lies with the group that’s using civilians as shields, not with the civilians themselves. Attacking civilians to break the political will of a government, or in retaliation for military actions by a faction they can’t control, is exactly what collective punishment is.

There is a huge difference between targeting a rocket launcher and thereby endangering civilians, and attacking civilians. You keep conflating these two things. And of course the guilt lies with those placing military hardware there. Which is why Hamas must be destroyed.

And that’s what Israel is being accused of—not necessarily indiscriminate bombing, but a deliberate strategy that targets civilian infrastructure in hopes of weakening the support for Hamas.

Is it targeting civilian infrastructure qua civilian infrastructure or because it is being used for a militant purpose?

And as for the examples of propaganda in tweets or videos, framing it like this—suggesting that the moral issue is whether a rocket launcher was visible in the footage—misses the point.

It does not miss the point. It is the whole point. Anti-Israel propagandists claim that Israel was targeting tents, while ignoring the rocket launcher that they are actually targeting. The propagandists are lying to make Israel look bad.

The core question is whether deliberate targeting of civilians or civilian infrastructure can ever be justified by the military tactics of one side.

A rocket launcher is not civilian infrastructure.

Once you cross that line, you’re no longer talking about a conflict between two sides with rights and duties; you’re talking about a moral and legal system that loses its fundamental protections for civilians.

Are you really saying that rocket launchers and similar may not be targeted as long as they are placed close to civilian areas? Do you not realize how big an advantage this gives to Hamas et al? How such tactics would quickly be adopted by any enemies of civilized countries?

This is not about Hamas’ actions being excused.

It's a distinction without a difference, as it ends making these actions very successful.

Yes—Hamas is committing war crimes. No one is denying that. Using civilian areas to launch attacks, fighting out of uniform, taking hostages—those are all violations of the Geneva Conventions. But here’s what you keep avoiding:
Hamas violating international law doesn’t give Israel—or any state—the right to do the same.

What you keep avoiding is that your interpretation of international law would end up rewarding Hamas' war crimes by de facto making them immune from attack.

Imagine if this logic were universal: if every time one side broke the rules, the other side got to break them harder. That’s not how law works. It’s how atrocities get normalized.

That's how law of self defense works. Using deadly force against another is normally a serious felony. But it is not against the law to use deadly force when under threat of death or serious bodily injury.
In other words, laws generally recognize context. And it's not just self-defense. Two people can beat the shit out of each other in the octagon. Cutting somebody's throat is not lawful - except when performing emergency cricothyrotomy. Breaking somebody's ribs is generally frowned upon, but ... you get the point.

And you’re not just discussing this in the abstract. You’re applying this logic to justify the starvation of children, the bombing of safe zones, and the deaths of over 35,000 people—many of them women and children. That’s not a legal strategy. It’s a moral collapse.

I do not agree with not allowing supplies in for weeks. But at the same time, there needed to be a better distribution system than what had been in place since the beginning of the war.
As far as bombing safe zones, we already went over that. Safe zones being safe is contingent on them not being used by combatants.

So yes, call out Hamas. But if you can only see war crimes when the other side commits them, then you’re not defending justice. You’re defending impunity.

No, you are, by saying that IDF may not target Hamas fighters or hardware as long as they operate from civilian areas. Does this not give Hamas absolute impunity?

Yes, multiple factions took part in October 7, and yes, some Palestinians support those actions.

Replace "some" with "most".

But here’s where your argument collapses: support for an attack, or for a cause—even one that includes armed resistance—does not justify treating an entire population as complicit in war crimes or as expendable.

It is Hamas who treats their population as expendable.

Poll numbers don’t override international law. You can’t bomb civilians based on a survey.

Nobody is justifying deliberately bombing civilians. But if a civilian Hamas supporter dies accidentally because Hamas placed a rocket launcher next to his tent, I see it as karma of sorts. It's the same as the "leopards eating face party" jokes made about Trump voters suffering under his policies. Hamas supporters suffering because of what Hamas does is hardly different, except for the degree of suffering.

What you’re doing is dangerous: you’re using polling data to blur the legal boundary between combatants and civilians

I am not.

You keep saying “Gaza started this war” as if history began on October 7. It didn’t.

Nobody said it did.

Gaza has been under blockade since 2007—long before this war.

Two years earlier Israel removed all settlers and soldiers from Gaza. Gazans could have shown that they can be trusted with sovereignty, leading eventually to a Palestinian state. Instead, they decided to launch attacks at Israel from the territory. Then Hamas took over which led to what you call "blockade". But why should Israel allow free movement of goods and people with an entity that keeps attacking it, and which is governed by a terrorist organization intent on destroying it?

Its people have lived through four major Israeli assaults before this one, with thousands of civilians killed, long before October 7.

They kept attacking Israel. Actions have consequences.

They’ve had no free movement, no control of their borders, no functioning economy, and no vote since 2006. You can’t keep someone in a cage for 17 years and then claim they “started the fight” when they lash out.

Gaza has a border with Egypt, and a border crossing there. Also, there is generally no "free movement" across international borders. And why should Israel not control their borders and decide whom they allow to cross? Many Gazans have crossed into Israel through Erez Crossing. Before 10/7, Israel even expanded the program allowing some Gazans to work inside Israel.

And let’s be honest: what does “surrender” even mean in this context? There’s no Palestinian army to lay down arms. There’s no leadership Israel’s willing to negotiate with. Israel already considers both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority illegitimate. So who exactly is supposed to surrender? And to what?

The various armed groups need to surrender. They are separate entities, but they all coordinate their activities through the "Joint Operations Room". They can surrender to the IDF and lay down their arms, as well as release all hostages without conditions.
I think some form of international peacekeeping force should take over temporarily until a system of governance can be established.

You talk about peace, but frame it as something Gazans must first earn by submitting—not something built through mutual recognition, justice, or rights. That’s not peace. That’s domination with a PR filter.

Of course they must submit. Otherwise they will claim victory and rebuild their forces, itching to attack Israel again.

Here’s the truth: Palestinians have tried negotiations. Oslo. Camp David. The Arab Peace Initiative. What followed?

Arafat left the Camp David negotiations and Palestinians started the 2nd Intifada where they murdered many Israeli civilians.

Expanding settlements, home demolitions, and the fragmentation of their land. If peaceful coexistence was ever on offer, it was not offered in good faith.

Ehud Barak offered a lot to Arafat. Arafat refused.

So no—this war doesn’t end when Gaza “surrenders.” It ends when both sides are held to the same moral and legal standards. When Palestinian civilians aren’t treated as human shields by Hamas or target zones by Israel. When justice isn’t based on which flag you fly, or which weapons you can afford.

That is the end goal. But it must start with Gaza surrendering and giving up on the idea of conquering Israel.

You say you’re not justifying collective punishment—but every defense you give amounts to exactly that: civilians being killed, displaced, or starved not because of what they did, but because of where they live, who governs them, or what someone nearby may have done.

You invoke legal distinctions like Article 19 of the Geneva Convention to suggest that hospitals, safe zones, or civilian areas “lose” protection once Hamas operates near them. But that’s a distortion of the law. A protected site doesn’t become fair game just because a rocket was launched nearby. The law still demands proportionality, distinction, and feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. Precision munitions don’t excuse imprecise judgment.

You say Israel’s military is more restrained than in 1945. That’s a bar so low it’s not even on the legal map. The standard isn’t “less destructive than Dresden.” The standard is modern international humanitarian law. And if 35,000 civilians are dead—many of them women and children—something has failed catastrophically. Pointing to how many more could have died isn’t a defense. It’s a confession that you’ve normalized mass death as acceptable so long as the “right” side is inflicting it.

You argue Hamas “started this war,” as if that wipes away everything that came before: the blockade, the occupation, the repeated assaults, the structural suffocation of a population that’s been walled in and controlled for over 15 years. You say “actions have consequences.” But whose actions? Are you holding every Israeli responsible for settler violence or for Netanyahu’s destruction of the Oslo process? No. But you apply that logic collectively to Gazans without hesitation.

You admit that if a Hamas supporter dies “accidentally,” it’s “karma.” That’s not law. That’s tribalism. A civilian who supports a bad government doesn’t become a legitimate military target. That’s exactly the logic of terrorism—guilt by affiliation, death by association.

You claim safe zones and humanitarian corridors only remain protected if Hamas stays out. But when Israel bombs those zones—after directing civilians into them—the question isn’t “was there a fighter nearby?” The question is, was the strike proportional, and were all precautions taken to protect those civilians? If not, it’s a war crime—no matter who the enemy is.

You keep asking whether this interpretation of law gives Hamas an advantage. But international law isn’t designed to make war easy for powerful armies. It exists precisely to protect civilians when one side has overwhelming force. If the law only applies when it’s convenient, it’s not law—it’s a talking point.

You say the war ends when Gaza “surrenders.” But to whom? Israel has declared Hamas illegitimate. It considers the Palestinian Authority irrelevant. It has no interest in a sovereign Palestinian state. So “surrender” becomes a euphemism for submission to permanent occupation—with no rights, no recognition, no political future.

You invoke Camp David and say Arafat walked away. You ignore that even top Israeli negotiators later admitted the offer left Palestinians with disconnected cantons and no sovereignty. You cite bad-faith moments from Palestinians while ignoring decades of creeping annexation, home demolitions, and diplomatic sabotage from Israeli governments. Selective history isn’t truth—it’s narrative warfare.

You say this is about fighting terrorism. Then the burden is higher—not lower—to follow the law, protect civilians, and uphold the standards that distinguish democracies from militias. If you fight Hamas by mirroring their disregard for civilian life, you’re not defeating them—you’re validating their worldview.

And finally, you insist you’re defending civilization. But if your version of civilization includes mass civilian death, bombing aid convoys, and starvation as leverage, then we need to ask: what exactly is being defended, and for whom?

Because justice doesn’t look like this. Accountability doesn’t sound like this. And history won’t remember the excuses—only the bodies.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Yes, it is an inexplicable constant. Following world war 2 huge populations all over the world had been displaced. Over time those pushed off their land (which includes a large minority of the Jews in Israel) settled into their new homes and made the best of it. The Palestinians in Gaza is the last of these post WW2 populations. I think a huge part of the blame is UNRWA. Creating a special UN organisation whose only job is to focused on Palestine creates incentives to keep the conflict going (in order for the UN officials to stay in power). First created out of genuine care. Then it just become a self perpetuating donations sucking engine. UNRWA needs to be disasembled and the care of the Palestinian refugees needs to be shifted to UNHCR, whose only incentive is to actually solve the problem.

But it's just one factor. Another I think is Muslim Brotherhood style Islamofascism. This creates extremely unhelpful narratives. As with any kind of fascism, nobody ever needs to work on themselves. It's all about blaming your problems on other people and groups.

The Palestinians in Gaza are stuck with the Jews. They've got to, (collectively) learn to accept that Jews in Palestine is a normal and natural thing and have just as much a right to live and prosper there as the Palestinians. And most importantly, that no group has more right to the land than any other. If they can do that, then the problem will go away. Just like it has done everywhere else people are stuck with eacother over a long time.

You’re saying Palestinian resistance is an “inexplicable constant,” but that’s not history—it’s erasure. What you’re calling a uniquely pathological grievance is in fact the only modern refugee population still denied the right to return, compensation, or even integration—because the occupying power has fought tooth and nail to keep them stateless and disenfranchised.

The comparison to post-WWII displacement fails for one simple reason: those other populations were not held under military occupation, denied citizenship, subjected to blockades, or repeatedly bombed across generations. They were absorbed—often by their own ethnic or political kin. Palestinians, on the other hand, have been deliberately kept in limbo—not just by Arab states, but by Israel itself, which controls movement, land, economy, borders, and even population registries.

You blame UNRWA for perpetuating the problem—but the issue isn’t that Palestinians have an agency helping them. The issue is why they still need it. UNHCR deals with refugees who either integrate, resettle, or return. Palestinians aren’t allowed to do any of those things—because Israel rejects all three. Blaming the agency for the political problem it was created to manage is shooting the medic and pretending the wound will heal on its own.

Then there’s your pivot to “Islamofascism” and the Muslim Brotherhood—as if ideology, not conditions, is the driver. But ideology doesn’t grow in a vacuum. Hamas didn’t invent the siege. It grew in response to it. Extremism thrives where rights are denied, futures are foreclosed, and civilian life is treated as expendable. If Palestinians had sovereignty, dignity, and freedom—Hamas would lose oxygen. But if all they see is occupation, apartheid, and military domination, Hamas gets to say, “See? Negotiation is a lie.”

You say they need to accept Jews living in Palestine. Many already do. What they don’t accept—and don’t have to—is being told that the price of Jewish safety is their permanent dispossession. The issue is not coexistence—it’s inequality. You say “no one has more right to the land than the other”—but one side has the land, the borders, the army, the checkpoints, the water, the airspace, and the veto power. The other side is told to be grateful they’re allowed to live.

You want Palestinians to “move on.” But you’re defending the very conditions that make moving on impossible. The occupation isn’t over. The blockade isn’t over. The displacement isn’t over. So why should the resistance be?

So you blame the Jews. I blame the Palestinians. We have different narratives.

This isn’t about blaming “the Jews.” That’s a cheap deflection and you know it. I’m holding a government—specifically, the state of Israel—accountable for its policies, just as I hold Hamas accountable for theirs. Reducing a political critique to an ethnic smear isn’t a counterargument—it’s a tactic to shut down uncomfortable facts.

You say we have “different narratives.” Fine. But only one of those narratives involves a population living under military occupation for over half a century, denied freedom of movement, statehood, equal rights, or recourse to justice. That’s not a story—it’s reality, backed by UN reports, human rights documentation, and decades of lived experience.

When Palestinians tried diplomacy, they got settlements. When they protested nonviolently, they got bullets. When they voted, the result was blockaded. When they armed themselves, they were bombed. You don’t get to ignore all that and then call their resistance “inexplicable.” That’s not a narrative gap. That’s a refusal to face cause and effect.

If you truly care about ending the cycle, stop treating injustice as narrative. Start treating it as something that can—and must—be addressed. Otherwise, you’re not on the side of peace. You’re on the side of permanent power.

I assume you're implying that the world Jewish conspiracy has derailed democracy in every Muslim majority country in the world?

No, I’m not implying a conspiracy—I’m pointing to well-documented policy decisions made by governments, not “the Jews.” You keep reaching for that accusation because it’s easier than addressing the facts.

The 2006 Palestinian elections were certified as fair and democratic by international observers. When Hamas won, Israel and the U.S.—not some global cabal, but two states—responded by isolating the elected government, cutting off aid, and backing internal rivals. That’s not a conspiracy. That’s foreign policy. You can disagree with it, but you don’t get to rewrite it.

More broadly, I never said Israel is responsible for democracy in “every Muslim-majority country.” That’s your straw man, not my argument. What I said—and what remains true—is that in the Palestinian context, Israeli policy has directly undermined Palestinian political unity and democratic development. That’s not theory. It’s observable history.

So if you want to talk about accountability, let’s talk. But if your only move is to slap “antisemitism” on any criticism of Israeli state actions, then you’re not defending truth—you’re using identity as a shield from it.

Yes. Which makes it even weirder that the Palestinians are so beligerent. It's never a good idea to start a fight when you're outgunned on every level. But lucky for the Palestinians that they have the best neighbours in the Middle-East. They're extremely lucky Israel has historically been so benevolent and nice to them. But Israel will fight back when attacked. I don't see that as a short coming. You clearly do. But Israel has a right to stand up for themselves. Why keep being nice if it's taken advantage of?

Calling Israel “benevolent” toward Palestinians is one of the most astonishing distortions in this entire conversation. We’re talking about a population that’s been bombed, blockaded, displaced, denied statehood, and controlled in nearly every aspect of life—and you’re calling that kindness.

That’s not benevolence. That’s domination dressed in moral self-congratulation.

You say Palestinians are “belligerent,” but what does that even mean when you’re describing a stateless people—many of them born in refugee camps, denied mobility, access to basic infrastructure, and the right to vote—reacting to the very system you claim is generous?

Let’s be real: when the occupied resist, it’s called belligerence. When the occupier bombs them in response, it’s called self-defense. That double standard doesn’t reflect justice. It reflects power masquerading as principle.

And your logic is backwards: you’re saying because Israel has overwhelming control and firepower, Palestinians should have known better than to resist. But if that’s your standard, then all colonized, blockaded, or oppressed people should just submit to the bigger army. You’re not defending peace—you’re defending quiet compliance.

If Israel were truly interested in peace, it would have ended the occupation, lifted the siege, dismantled the settlements, and offered a viable path to sovereignty. Instead, it did the opposite. And when people pushed back—whether through diplomacy, protest, or arms—it was labeled extremism.

So no, Israel’s not “too nice.” It’s just used to being able to flatten, isolate, and control without being called out for it. But what you call “fighting back” has killed tens of thousands, decimated infrastructure, and punished millions for the actions of a few. That’s not defense. That’s reprisal masquerading as moral clarity.

And the fact that you frame this as generosity being “taken advantage of” says more about your worldview than it does about reality. You’re angry that the colonized aren’t more grateful. That’s not righteousness. That’s entitlement.

Israel is just keeping on turning the thumb screws until Hamas stops fighting. They're still fighting. Are you going to blame the Jews for that to?

No—what I’m doing is holding a government accountable for its military actions, not a people for their identity. Criticizing state violence is not “blaming the Jews.” That’s a bad-faith dodge meant to shut down legitimate moral and legal scrutiny. You keep reaching for it because it’s easier than facing what this logic leads to.

You say Israel is “turning the thumb screws until Hamas stops.” But what that really means is: starving civilians, bombing aid workers, flattening homes, and killing tens of thousands—half of them women and children—until Hamas gives up. That’s not targeted warfare. That’s a siege on 2.2 million people.

And if you defend that strategy, then yes—you’re normalizing atrocity, not preventing terrorism. You’re not rooting out Hamas. You’re helping justify the collective punishment of a trapped population with no escape, no vote, and no path forward.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about standards. And if you only invoke ethics when it’s your side under fire—but excuse mass death when you’re the one pressing the trigger—then you’re not defending justice. You’re just protecting power.

Terrorists aren't powerless. As all the suicide bombs in Israel proves. As long as Palestinians keep going boom, Israel has a right to defend itself.

Terrorists aren’t powerless—but 2.2 million civilians in Gaza, most of them children, absolutely are. And the fact that some Palestinians commit violence doesn’t make every Palestinian a legitimate target.

Israel has a right to defend itself. What it doesn’t have is the right to do so by starving, displacing, and bombing civilians en masse—then calling it justice because someone else “went boom.”

If suicide bombings horrify you—and they should—then your response shouldn’t be to mirror their logic on a larger scale. Because when you treat all resistance as terrorism, and all punishment as self-defense, what you’re defending isn’t security. It’s impunity.

You don’t stop terrorism by dehumanizing the people around it. You fuel it.

Lol. Nice straw maning. I can also do that. I've just decided you are trying to push the Zombie Apocalypse agenda. How could you be so calous and evil?!?

Mockery isn’t a rebuttal. It’s just a shield for a position you’re not willing to defend seriously. I’m pointing to real suffering, real policies, and real consequences. If your only response is to laugh and pretend this is some cartoonish straw man debate, then you’re proving my point.

Because when entire neighborhoods are flattened, when children are starved, and when any call for accountability is met with jokes, it becomes clear this was never about moral clarity—it was about permission.

You can ridicule the conversation all you want. But history has a way of remembering who laughed—and who looked away—when justice was on the line.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

I don't think you understand just how evil and organisation Hamas is. The culture maintaining their grip on power in Gaza is also evil. Not by design. But we are where we are. A culture condoning suicide bombing is not a healthy one. Fun fact. Muslims also do this to eachother. It's a bigger problem in wars between Muslims than when Muslims fight non Muslims. Who is responsible for that?

Qutb style Islam (ie modern Islam) was an Islam evolved to be so beligerent and evil that it wouldn't be worth it for colonial powers to try to rule Muslims. It was a reaction to colonialism. Colonialism was also evil btw. So I get how this happened. But colonialism is over. While we can understand the cultural mechanic that gave rise to modern Islam, we have no reason to tolerate it. Israel is not a colonial power. They're indigenous

You just gave a perfect example of how dehumanization gets laundered through the language of “culture.” You call Hamas evil—and that’s fine. But then you go further: you extend that label to Gaza’s entire population, and even to “modern Islam” itself. You’ve stopped talking about an armed group, and started indicting entire societies as inherently diseased. That’s not analysis. That’s the ideological scaffolding of atrocity.

And ironically, you even admit where it came from: colonial violence. Qutbism didn’t spring from a vacuum—it was shaped by oppression, displacement, and western domination. You say you “get how this happened”—then immediately say we have “no reason to tolerate it.” But you don’t defeat a culture born of oppression by continuing the oppression. You just reinforce it.

And no, colonialism isn’t over. You can’t blockade 2.2 million people, control their borders, bomb their cities, and call that “indigenous coexistence.” The fact that many Jews have historic ties to the land doesn’t make modern military domination not colonial. Power still matters. Control still matters. And the people under that power—stateless, occupied, caged—don’t stop deserving rights just because you believe their “culture” is broken.

If you want to fight extremism, start by rejecting the logic that says entire populations are tainted by the ideologies of some. Because the moment you declare a people inherently incompatible with life, dignity, or peace—you’ve already stepped across the line history never forgets.

I don't think that's true. No western powers had to deal with any accusations of war crimes. The Dresden fire bombings killed 25 000 German civilans. They did it to disrupt the German rail network. Because there were military justifications, the allies got a free pass. So I think you are wrong. A beligerent has a responsiblity to not needlessly put civilians at risk. Hamas can't be given any credit for doing that.

This message is long enough. I'll stop here.

You’re not disproving my point—you’re illustrating exactly how atrocities get rationalized when powerful states decide the law is optional.

First, let’s be clear: the laws of war have evolved since Dresden. The Geneva Conventions were expanded because of WWII, not in spite of it. The Additional Protocols you’re dismissing weren’t in effect in 1945. They were drafted specifically to prevent a repeat of the “free passes” that firebombed cities and called it strategy.

Second, the fact that no one was prosecuted for Dresden doesn’t make it legal—it just means the victors wrote the rules after the fire. That’s not a legal precedent. That’s the absence of one. The Geneva Conventions now require distinction, proportionality, and precautions in all attacks. If you knowingly kill civilians in disproportionate numbers—even if there’s a military target nearby—it’s still a war crime.

You say Hamas can’t be “given credit” because they use human shields. That’s exactly why Israel is obligated to rise above them. The laws of war don’t vanish when the other side breaks them. That’s when they matter most. Otherwise, the entire framework collapses into tit-for-tat slaughter—and civilians always pay the price.

So no—there is no “free pass” to bomb hospitals, refugee camps, or neighborhoods just because your enemy is immoral. The moment you start using their crimes to excuse yours, you’re not defending civilization. You’re surrendering its values.

Either we respect countries sovereignty or not. Hamas is by almost every metric the legitimate government of Gaza. Considering the strategic situation in Gaza, the 7/10 was retarded.

Or rather... it was a calous calculation assuming that Israel wouldn't hit back because they didn't want to hurt the Palestinian human shields. Well fuck that shit. Israel is primarily responsible for Israeli lives. Hamas for Palestinian lives. If Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields, how is that Israel's problem

My main issue here is that any support, or even critique of Israel, is incentivising govornments from using civilians as human shields in the future. Please don't do that. It won't lead to a better world. We want to live in a world where civilians are respected. Can we please do that? Hamas can start by returning the CIVILIAN hostages.

You’re making two contradictory claims: first, that Hamas is the “legitimate government” of Gaza, and second, that civilians are no longer Israel’s problem because Hamas uses them as shields. But if Hamas is the government, then by your logic, those civilians are the very people it governs—and Israel’s war is a war against a civilian population. That’s not moral clarity. That’s a blueprint for collective punishment.

Yes, Hamas bears responsibility for using human shields. That is a war crime. But Israel’s responsibility doesn’t vanish in response. International law doesn’t say, “You’re free to kill civilians if the enemy breaks the rules first.” It says, “You must still protect them.” That’s not just moral—it’s black-letter law.

You say you’re worried that holding Israel accountable might “incentivize” human shield tactics. But let’s be honest: what actually incentivizes it is proving that using human shields works—because it forces powerful armies to either hold back or lose international support. If instead, the response is “we’ll kill everyone nearby to reach you,” then you’ve just told every rogue actor on Earth that shielding yourself with civilians is a license to get your enemies to commit atrocities. You don’t discourage war crimes by excusing them. You reinforce them.

And your outrage over civilian hostages rings hollow if you’re willing to justify bombing entire civilian areas to get at fighters. You can’t demand respect for civilians on one side while rationalizing their deaths on the other. That’s not defending life. That’s defending revenge in the language of “self-defense.”

If you truly want a world where civilians are respected, then the standard has to be universal. You don’t get to redraw the boundaries of human rights based on which flag is flying over the bomb.

NHC

 

[bilby]

A statistical bulge in military-aged males proves nothing about who was actively fighting. It could reflect population structure, survival differences during evacuations, or any number of social dynamics. Age and gender are not indicators of combatant status. Direct participation in hostilities is.

If your reasoning is that being a young man in Gaza makes you suspicious by default, then you’ve abandoned the principle of distinction. You’re replacing evidence with profiling. That’s not how lawful targeting works—that’s how war crimes are excused after the fact.

It also becomes a circular argument. If the IDF targets young men because they are overrepresented in the casualty figures, then young men will be overrepresented in the casualty figures, because the IDF is targetting them...

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't think you understand just how evil and organisation Hamas is. The culture maintaining their grip on power in Gaza is also evil. Not by design. But we are where we are. A culture condoning suicide bombing is not a healthy one. Fun fact. Muslims also do this to eachother. It's a bigger problem in wars between Muslims than when Muslims fight non Muslims. Who is responsible for that?

Qutb style Islam (ie modern Islam) was an Islam evolved to be so beligerent and evil that it wouldn't be worth it for colonial powers to try to rule Muslims. It was a reaction to colonialism. Colonialism was also evil btw. So I get how this happened. But colonialism is over. While we can understand the cultural mechanic that gave rise to modern Islam, we have no reason to tolerate it. Israel is not a colonial power. They're indigenous

You just gave a perfect example of how dehumanization gets laundered through the language of “culture.” You call Hamas evil—and that’s fine. But then you go further: you extend that label to Gaza’s entire population, and even to “modern Islam” itself. You’ve stopped talking about an armed group, and started indicting entire societies as inherently diseased. That’s not analysis. That’s the ideological scaffolding of atrocity.

So we're not allowed to analyse and talk about the behaviour of groups because we're afraid of dehumanising them? What crack are you smoking? You're not making any sense.

Groups of people do stuff. People respond to incentives. Cultures are dynamic systems where the different parts influence eachother. People just do stuff that works out for them personally. Somehow Muslims managed to create a "ideological scaffolding of atrocity" that led to the 7/10 attacks. We've got to be allowed to talk about that. If we don't, I'm pretty sure Islam will continue to build even more ideological scaffolding of atrocity. And I think that's a bad thing.

And ironically, you even admit where it came from: colonial violence. Qutbism didn’t spring from a vacuum—it was shaped by oppression, displacement, and western domination. You say you “get how this happened”—then immediately say we have “no reason to tolerate it.” But you don’t defeat a culture born of oppression by continuing the oppression. You just reinforce it.

Israel has historically been super nice to the Gazans. Super super nice. While the Gazans have only treated them like shit.... scratch that. Loads of Gazan Palestinians got with the program and decided to live in peace with the Jews. Which is why loads of Muslims are Israeli citizens and get on just fine within Israeli society. I'm talking about the other Palestinians. The one's for whatever reason cannot accept treating Jews as their equal. Those are the problem.

You framing extreme arrogance and beligerence as being oppressed.. is a fucking joke.

And no, colonialism isn’t over. You can’t blockade 2.2 million people, control their borders, bomb their cities, and call that “indigenous coexistence.” The fact that many Jews have historic ties to the land doesn’t make modern military domination not colonial. Power still matters. Control still matters. And the people under that power—stateless, occupied, caged—don’t stop deserving rights just because you believe their “culture” is broken.

I think this is jibberish. I think this is social studies academia words in a word salad to trigger strong (and misplaced) emotional reactions. This kind of emotional manipulation, in the guise of social justice, is where I think most evil comes from.

If you want to fight extremism, start by rejecting the logic that says entire populations are tainted by the ideologies of some. Because the moment you declare a people inherently incompatible with life, dignity, or peace—you’ve already stepped across the line history never forgets.

I guess it's lucky I didn't do that then.

I don't think that's true. No western powers had to deal with any accusations of war crimes. The Dresden fire bombings killed 25 000 German civilans. They did it to disrupt the German rail network. Because there were military justifications, the allies got a free pass. So I think you are wrong. A beligerent has a responsiblity to not needlessly put civilians at risk. Hamas can't be given any credit for doing that.

This message is long enough. I'll stop here.

You’re not disproving my point—you’re illustrating exactly how atrocities get rationalized when powerful states decide the law is optional.

First, let’s be clear: the laws of war have evolved since Dresden. The Geneva Conventions were expanded because of WWII, not in spite of it. The Additional Protocols you’re dismissing weren’t in effect in 1945. They were drafted specifically to prevent a repeat of the “free passes” that firebombed cities and called it strategy.

Second, the fact that no one was prosecuted for Dresden doesn’t make it legal—it just means the victors wrote the rules after the fire. That’s not a legal precedent. That’s the absence of one. The Geneva Conventions now require distinction, proportionality, and precautions in all attacks. If you knowingly kill civilians in disproportionate numbers—even if there’s a military target nearby—it’s still a war crime.

You say Hamas can’t be “given credit” because they use human shields. That’s exactly why Israel is obligated to rise above them. The laws of war don’t vanish when the other side breaks them. That’s when they matter most. Otherwise, the entire framework collapses into tit-for-tat slaughter—and civilians always pay the price.

So no—there is no “free pass” to bomb hospitals, refugee camps, or neighborhoods just because your enemy is immoral. The moment you start using their crimes to excuse yours, you’re not defending civilization. You’re surrendering its values.

First off I think you are wrong. I'm also very grateful you are wrong. Because... if true... that would truly have been a violent and dangerous world. We make the world peaceful by conquering dangerous players. Not by verbal hairsplitting and formulating nice sounding slogans.

I can't see you having come up with a better strategy to conquer Hamas than Israel is doing right now. Because I do assume you want Hamas removed from power? Let's hear your genius plan that won't hurt anyone?

Either we respect countries sovereignty or not. Hamas is by almost every metric the legitimate government of Gaza. Considering the strategic situation in Gaza, the 7/10 was retarded.

Or rather... it was a calous calculation assuming that Israel wouldn't hit back because they didn't want to hurt the Palestinian human shields. Well fuck that shit. Israel is primarily responsible for Israeli lives. Hamas for Palestinian lives. If Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields, how is that Israel's problem

My main issue here is that any support, or even critique of Israel, is incentivising govornments from using civilians as human shields in the future. Please don't do that. It won't lead to a better world. We want to live in a world where civilians are respected. Can we please do that? Hamas can start by returning the CIVILIAN hostages.

You’re making two contradictory claims: first, that Hamas is the “legitimate government” of Gaza, and second, that civilians are no longer Israel’s problem because Hamas uses them as shields. But if Hamas is the government, then by your logic, those civilians are the very people it governs—and Israel’s war is a war against a civilian population. That’s not moral clarity. That’s a blueprint for collective punishment.

I don't think that follows logically. It sounds to me like you're making excuses for Hamas. You're starting more and more to sound like a criminal mastermind who just wants the world to suffer.

Yes, Hamas bears responsibility for using human shields. That is a war crime. But Israel’s responsibility doesn’t vanish in response. International law doesn’t say, “You’re free to kill civilians if the enemy breaks the rules first.” It says, “You must still protect them.” That’s not just moral—it’s black-letter law.

You say you’re worried that holding Israel accountable might “incentivize” human shield tactics. But let’s be honest: what actually incentivizes it is proving that using human shields works—because it forces powerful armies to either hold back or lose international support. If instead, the response is “we’ll kill everyone nearby to reach you,” then you’ve just told every rogue actor on Earth that shielding yourself with civilians is a license to get your enemies to commit atrocities. You don’t discourage war crimes by excusing them. You reinforce them.

I think it works the exact opposite way. It's like we disagree on stuff as fundamental as basic logic.

And your outrage over civilian hostages rings hollow if you’re willing to justify bombing entire civilian areas to get at fighters. You can’t demand respect for civilians on one side while rationalizing their deaths on the other. That’s not defending life. That’s defending revenge in the language of “self-defense.”

If you truly want a world where civilians are respected, then the standard has to be universal. You don’t get to redraw the boundaries of human rights based on which flag is flying over the bomb.

NHC

It would have been "revenge" if Hamas released all the hostages and Israel attacked afterwards. As long as Hamas keeps holding the hostages it's not revenge. Then it's taking justified military actions to get reasonable results.

The main problem in this conflict is that Hamas does not value life. Any life. It's hard to fight an enemy like that. But Israel is trying. God bless them.

 

[pood]

I don't think you understand just how evil and organisation Hamas is. The culture maintaining their grip on power in Gaza is also evil. Not by design. But we are where we are. A culture condoning suicide bombing is not a healthy one. Fun fact. Muslims also do this to eachother. It's a bigger problem in wars between Muslims than when Muslims fight non Muslims. Who is responsible for that?

Qutb style Islam (ie modern Islam) was an Islam evolved to be so beligerent and evil that it wouldn't be worth it for colonial powers to try to rule Muslims. It was a reaction to colonialism. Colonialism was also evil btw. So I get how this happened. But colonialism is over. While we can understand the cultural mechanic that gave rise to modern Islam, we have no reason to tolerate it. Israel is not a colonial power. They're indigenous

You just gave a perfect example of how dehumanization gets laundered through the language of “culture.” You call Hamas evil—and that’s fine. But then you go further: you extend that label to Gaza’s entire population, and even to “modern Islam” itself. You’ve stopped talking about an armed group, and started indicting entire societies as inherently diseased. That’s not analysis. That’s the ideological scaffolding of atrocity.

So we're not allowed to analyse and talk about the behaviour of groups because we're afraid of dehumanising them? What crack are you smoking? You're not making any sense.

Groups of people do stuff. People respond to incentives. Cultures are dynamic systems where the different parts influence eachother. People just do stuff that works out for them personally. Somehow Muslims managed to create a "ideological scaffolding of atrocity" that led to the 7/10 attacks. We've got to be allowed to talk about that. If we don't, I'm pretty sure Islam will continue to build even more ideological scaffolding of atrocity. And I think that's a bad thing.

And you, as always, are clueless. The majority of Muslims leave peacefully with many concentrated in democracies, Indonesia and Pakistan. Of course to say that Muslims create an “ideological scaffolding of atrocity” is therefore to dehumanize Muslims — obviously.

The attacks against Israel were conducted by HAMAS, not all Gazans and not all Muslims. And, in return, it is the war criminal Netanyahu, who properly has an international warrant out for his arrest, who has erected an “ideological scaffolding of atrocity” in Gaza.

Of course, as I and others have pointed out, the conflict in the Middle East is not about Judaism or Islam per se, but obviously has clear roots in geopolitical Western imperialism.

Try to get your facts straight for once.

 

[laughing dog]

Israel has historically been super nice to the Gazans. Super super nice

To quote someone in this thread "Have you been smoking crack?"..

The main problem in this conflict is that Hamas does not value life. Any life. It's hard to fight an enemy like that. But Israel is trying. God bless them.

That is the main problem, but it is not the only problem in this conflict.

 

[NoHolyCows]

So we're not allowed to analyse and talk about the behaviour of groups because we're afraid of dehumanising them? What crack are you smoking? You're not making any sense.

Groups of people do stuff. People respond to incentives. Cultures are dynamic systems where the different parts influence eachother. People just do stuff that works out for them personally. Somehow Muslims managed to create a "ideological scaffolding of atrocity" that led to the 7/10 attacks. We've got to be allowed to talk about that. If we don't, I'm pretty sure Islam will continue to build even more ideological scaffolding of atrocity. And I think that's a bad thing.

You’re right that we should be able to talk about cultures, incentives, and ideologies. But what you’re doing isn’t analysis—it’s essentialism. You didn’t isolate extremist ideologies or power structures. You painted “modern Islam” as a civilizational engine of violence and implied that 2.2 million Gazans are shaped by a culture so broken, it justifies siege and bombardment. That’s not critique. That’s dehumanization with academic window dressing.

There’s a difference between saying “some Muslims have adopted an ideology rooted in violence” and saying “Islam produces atrocity unless we do something about it.” The first is analysis. The second is justification for collective suspicion, fear, and punishment. You’re not diagnosing a problem. You’re building a moral case for abandoning empathy.

Yes, groups respond to incentives. But what are the incentives in Gaza? Decades of blockade, military occupation, economic suffocation, and international neglect. If you strip a population of rights, isolate them politically, bomb them periodically, and then demand they produce a liberal democracy or else—it’s not just dishonest. It’s rigged.

Hamas is a problem. So are ideologies that glorify martyrdom or civilian targeting. But if your takeaway is that Islam itself is the source of the violence—and that entire populations are incubators of atrocity—then you’ve crossed from critique into the very logic that has justified every ethnic cleansing campaign in history.

We can and should talk about violent ideologies. But we cannot—must not—allow that conversation to become cover for reducing whole peoples to threats, and their deaths to inevitabilities.

Israel has historically been super nice to the Gazans. Super super nice. While the Gazans have only treated them like shit.... scratch that. Loads of Gazan Palestinians got with the program and decided to live in peace with the Jews. Which is why loads of Muslims are Israeli citizens and get on just fine within Israeli society. I'm talking about the other Palestinians. The one's for whatever reason cannot accept treating Jews as their equal. Those are the problem.

You framing extreme arrogance and beligerence as being oppressed.. is a fucking joke.

Calling a decades-long blockade, military occupation, land seizures, and mass displacement “super nice” is not just dishonest—it’s delusional. You don’t get to cage a population, bomb them, control their air, borders, economy, and movement, and then call it generosity when they don’t disappear quietly.

Yes, many Palestinian citizens of Israel live peacefully within Israeli society. But they’re not the Gazans. You know that. Gaza is not part of Israel. It’s under siege. Its people have no vote in the government that controls their lives, no freedom of movement, and no citizenship rights. They are stateless, occupied, and controlled.

So when you say “the problem is the Palestinians who don’t treat Jews as equals,” flip it: who controls whose borders? Whose water? Whose freedom to leave, trade, or build? You can’t claim to want equality while maintaining domination.

As for “arrogance and belligerence”—you’re applying that label to a population that’s been systematically denied the tools of statehood, stripped of land, and bombarded repeatedly. You’re calling the response to decades of structural violence “a joke.” But nothing is more arrogant than demanding submission from the oppressed, then blaming them for resisting.

You say you want peace. But what you’re defending isn’t peace—it’s control, disguised as patience, wrapped in the language of superiority. And that’s not a roadmap to coexistence. It’s the moral license for indefinite punishment.

I think this is jibberish. I think this is social studies academia words in a word salad to trigger strong (and misplaced) emotional reactions. This kind of emotional manipulation, in the guise of social justice, is where I think most evil comes from.

Calling it “word salad” doesn’t make it untrue. It just shows you have no answer.

There’s nothing academic or abstract about a blockade, a military occupation, or a stateless people being denied movement, sovereignty, and basic human rights. That’s not “social studies lingo”—it’s reality, backed by UN reports, human rights documentation, and decades of lived experience. If describing that reality makes you uncomfortable, maybe it’s not because it’s manipulative. Maybe it’s because it’s accurate.

You say this kind of language is where “evil comes from.” But here’s the irony: the actual evil is not in naming oppression—it’s in justifying it. The real manipulation is pretending that domination is defense, that resistance is barbarism, and that criticizing power is somehow more dangerous than power itself.

What you’re rejecting isn’t emotional manipulation. You’re rejecting accountability—because you’re not ready to accept that the people suffering aren’t just symbols, but human beings who deserve justice too.

I guess it's lucky I didn't do that then.

You didn’t use those exact words—but that’s exactly what your logic does.

You’ve repeatedly framed Gaza’s population as shaped by a “culture of atrocity,” claimed that “modern Islam” produces terrorism, and called Palestinians “arrogant and belligerent” rather than oppressed. You’ve rationalized collective punishment as “consequences,” dismissed humanitarian suffering as “karma,” and defended policies that target entire civilian populations on the grounds that Hamas governs them.

You don’t have to spell it out explicitly. The implication is already baked into the way you justify what’s happening. And if you really don’t believe that an entire people is tainted, then the arguments you’ve made don’t hold. Because you’ve excused their suffering not on what they’ve done—but on what you’ve decided they are.

So no, you didn’t say it. You just built the scaffold for it.

First off I think you are wrong. I'm also very grateful you are wrong. Because... if true... that would truly have been a violent and dangerous world. We make the world peaceful by conquering dangerous players. Not by verbal hairsplitting and formulating nice sounding slogans.

I can't see you having come up with a better strategy to conquer Hamas than Israel is doing right now. Because I do assume you want Hamas removed from power? Let's hear your genius plan that won't hurt anyone?

You’re mistaking restraint for weakness and law for indecision. That’s how atrocities get normalized—when people start believing that principles are luxuries in the face of danger. But the laws of war weren’t written to protect terrorists. They were written to protect civilians from exactly the kind of logic you’re defending now: that “we must destroy them, no matter the cost.”

If the only strategy you can imagine is one that flattens cities and kills tens of thousands of civilians, then it’s not a strategy—it’s vengeance dressed up as necessity. And no, I’m not required to hand you a bulletproof plan to replace the one that’s clearly failing. Because what’s happening now isn’t removing Hamas. It’s strengthening their narrative, radicalizing a new generation, and isolating Israel diplomatically and morally.

You say you’re grateful I’m wrong—but look around. If this is the world you’re grateful for—one where the death of thousands is rationalized, hospitals are leveled, and starving civilians is a tactic—then you’re not defending peace. You’re defending domination.

And yes, I want Hamas out of power. But not at the price of erasing the distinction between civilians and combatants. Not by adopting the very logic Hamas thrives on. Because the moment we stop holding ourselves to higher standards, we’ve already conceded that justice is a luxury only the powerful can afford.

If you want to conquer extremism, you don’t do it by becoming indifferent to the lives caught in the middle. You do it by refusing to trade law for brute force—and by refusing to call that surrender.

I don't think that follows logically. It sounds to me like you're making excuses for Hamas. You're starting more and more to sound like a criminal mastermind who just wants the world to suffer.

Calling me a “criminal mastermind” because I insist on civilian protections isn’t a rebuttal—it’s deflection. It’s also a classic tactic: when someone can’t address the argument, they attack the person making it.

There’s nothing illogical about what I said. You claimed Hamas is the legitimate government of Gaza, which by definition means it governs civilians. So if you’re waging war on Hamas, and justify mass civilian casualties because Hamas uses human shields, then yes—you’re justifying a war on a governed population. That’s the textbook definition of collective punishment.

Pointing that out is not “making excuses for Hamas.” I’ve repeatedly condemned them. What I won’t do is excuse war crimes just because Hamas commits them too. That’s not moral equivalence. That’s moral consistency.

You want accountability for Hamas? Good. But if you’re unwilling to demand the same from a state with vastly more power, weapons, and international standing, then this isn’t about justice. It’s about permission.

And if what you hear in all of this is someone who “wants the world to suffer,” you might want to ask yourself: why does the defense of human rights sound threatening to you?

I think it works the exact opposite way. It's like we disagree on stuff as fundamental as basic logic.

It’s not about who “wins the logic.” It’s about what the logic leads to.

Your version says: if an enemy uses civilians as shields, the best deterrent is to kill the civilians anyway—to show the tactic won’t protect them. But that’s not deterrence. That’s collective punishment. And by that logic, every armed group in the world now knows: hide near civilians, and your enemy will either commit a war crime—or lose. That doesn’t discourage the tactic. It weaponizes it.

The law exists precisely because this kind of “basic logic” leads to atrocities. And if your principle requires murdering hostages to stop hostage-takers, you haven’t solved the problem—you’ve legitimized it.

So yes, we disagree—but only because I think protecting civilians is a non-negotiable principle, and you seem to think it’s a conditional courtesy. History—and law—will be clear about which side that puts us on.

It would have been "revenge" if Hamas released all the hostages and Israel attacked afterwards. As long as Hamas keeps holding the hostages it's not revenge. Then it's taking justified military actions to get reasonable results.

The main problem in this conflict is that Hamas does not value life. Any life. It's hard to fight an enemy like that. But Israel is trying. God bless them.

“Trying” isn’t a moral shield when tens of thousands of civilians are dead, entire neighborhoods are gone, and humanitarian aid is bombed or blocked. If that’s your standard of “trying,” then you’ve already accepted that civilian life is expendable as long as the objective sounds reasonable.

Let’s be clear: hostage rescue doesn’t justify indiscriminate or disproportionate violence. If fighters are hiding in civilian areas, that’s a war crime. But responding with overwhelming force that kills civilians anyway is also a war crime. The law doesn’t say, “As long as your motive is legitimate, anything goes.” It says you must distinguish, minimize harm, and act proportionally. Always.

You say this isn’t revenge because Hamas still holds hostages. But that’s not how moral reasoning—or law—works. The deliberate targeting of civilians or civilian infrastructure can’t be retroactively excused because you were angry or desperate. That’s not justice. That’s retribution in slow motion.

And as for your claim that “Hamas doesn’t value life”—that doesn’t absolve Israel of its responsibility to do better. The whole point of having higher values is that you don’t abandon them the moment your enemy doesn’t share them. If you mirror your enemy’s disregard for life, then you haven’t defeated them—you’ve validated their worldview.

So no, this isn’t a defense of Hamas. It’s a defense of the very principles we claim to stand for. And if “God bless them” is your closing line after justifying mass civilian casualties, then you’re not defending the sanctity of life—you’re sanctifying its destruction.

NHC

 

[Derec]

If your point is just to linguistically justify the phrase “Gaza attacked Israel,” then let’s be honest about what that framing does. Yes, Hamas is based in Gaza. But when you say “Gaza attacked Israel,” you’re not just stating geography—you’re collapsing an entire civilian population, including children, doctors, teachers, and the sick, into a single actor.

It does nothing different than saying "Germany invaded Poland". Do you object to that statement as well?
It is inaccurate to say "Hamas attacked Israel". While Hamas is running Gaza, and is the biggest terror group there, other terror groups, from fellow Islamists of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Communists of PFLP and DFLP, took part in the attack.

You’re using territorial shorthand to imply collective guilt. And that rhetorical move is not harmless—it’s how mass punishment gets softened into acceptable policy.

Wrong.

When “Gaza” becomes interchangeable with “Hamas,” you erase the distinction between militants and civilians, and suddenly the bombing of homes, hospitals, and refugee camps becomes just part of fighting “the enemy.” That’s how accountability dies—when language flattens entire populations into a single target.

Again, Hamas it was not just Hamas. And no, saying "Gaza attacked Israel" does not imply that there is no distinction between militants and civilians.

If you truly mean Hamas or PIJ or any specific faction—then say that.

I mean all of them. And they are all part of Gazan society.

But don’t pretend that calling it “Gaza” is neutral. It isn’t. It’s a framing that makes 2.2 million people complicit by association, and it’s how war crimes are excused in public discourse before they’re committed on the ground.

We use that language all the time when discussing war. Russia attacked Ukraine. That does not make 144 million people complicit by association.

So no—your point doesn’t just “debunk pood.” It reinforces the exact logic that’s already cost tens of thousands of innocent lives.

The "logic" that cost tens of thousands of innocent lives is the logic of attacking Israel and slaughtering people at a music festival and in their own homes.

Even if support is broader than “some”—even if many Gazans sympathize with Hamas, PIJ, or the PFLP—that still does not make them lawful military targets. Political belief, anger at occupation, or even support for armed resistance does not strip civilians of their protections under international law.

Political beliefs do not make civilians legitimate targets. But at the same time, if they support Hamas or PIJ and they end up being collateral damage (i.e. not targeted) because Hamas or PIJ were shooting rockets from next to them, then that's karma.
"Support for" what you euphemistically call "armed resistance" can also be active, and that's different. If they are actively supporting the war effort against Israel, that makes them involved and are thus no longer really civilians.
By the way, "armed resistance" is what Hamas et al call their terrorism. Why are you using terrorist nomenclature?

Because once you start defining civilians by their beliefs, you’re not talking about military action anymore—you’re talking about ideological cleansing.

I am not.

And as for the objective of “destroying Israel”: that belief is born out of decades of displacement, occupation, siege, and dehumanization.

No, it existed from the moment the State of Israel was first proclaimed.

It’s not defensible, but it is explainable—and if your answer to it is to punish the entire population until they believe differently, then you’re not defending Israel. You’re waging a war on thought—and calling it security.

That is not my answer. But population suffering is the natural outcome of starting a war. I do not think a Hamas or PIJ supporter who is a civilian is fair game for targeting. At the same time, I do not have much sympathy for them. They made their bed, now they are lying in it.

So yes, some Gazans support Hamas. Many don’t. Most are just trying to survive. But none of that changes the basic principle: civilians are civilians—even when you hate their politics.

I never said civilians should be targeted.

The solution is to work with international organizations—UNRWA, ICRC, WFP, and others—to deliver aid despite the complications, because civilians still have the right to eat, drink, and survive, even in war.

The real problem is that these groups are biased. Especially UNRWA, in whose schools hatred against Israel has been taught for decades.

Denying food and medical care to 2.2 million people because some portion might be diverted is not precaution—it’s collective punishment. And it’s illegal under Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits using starvation as a method of warfare—even indirectly.

And diverting aid is not "causing starvation - even indirectly"?

If you truly support aid to civilians, then you support unimpeded humanitarian access now, with monitoring and coordination—not theoretical support that evaporates in the face of complexity. Because what’s happening today isn’t just imperfect aid delivery—it’s blockade, obstruction, and engineered famine, according to the UN and major aid groups.

Israel is trying a new distribution system. It was kind of chaotic today, but hopefully that's just growing pains.

So yes, secure the aid. Monitor it. But don’t pretend that civilians must prove their innocence or logistical purity to deserve food and medicine. That’s not law. That’s cruelty rationalized.

It is not too much to expect that the groups distributing aid should not be biased in favor of one of the sides in the conflict.

No—that’s not what I’m saying, and framing it that way misses the actual standard. The issue isn’t whether Israel can strike Hamas. It’s how those strikes are carried out.

International humanitarian law doesn’t prohibit targeting militants in urban areas. What it prohibits is striking in ways that are indiscriminate, disproportionate, or that fail to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. That’s not an abstract principle—it’s the backbone of lawful warfare.

And Israel has not, to my knowledge, done that. Of course, we may disagree as to what is proportionate and what feasible precautions are. For example, if your target is a person (such as Mohammed Sinwar), then advance warnings would defeat the purpose of the strike, and are thus not feasible.

The reality in Gaza is this: **when you strike a tunnel, a home, or a suspected militant meeting, knowing it will collapse an apartment building, kill dozens of civilians, or destroy a hospital—**you may be targeting a militant, but you’re also violating the laws that define legitimate military action.

So all militants have to do is hide among, or under, a civilian target, and they are immune from attack?
I strongly disagree with that. In war, civilians often come to harm. That is horrible, and unfortunate, but it is the terrorists who put them in danger - first by starting this war, and second by operating from civilian areas.

What you’re defending here is not the right to strike Hamas—but the freedom to do so without limits, even when civilians die by the thousands. And if your view is that the only way to defeat Hamas is to make war indistinguishable from collective punishment, then what you’re advocating isn’t defense—it’s a war without restraint.

There are limits, but you are demanding limits that are too strict and that would put Hamas et al at a huge advantage.

So no—I’m not saying Hamas gets a free pass because they operate near civilians. I’m saying civilians don’t lose their right to life because Hamas abuses their proximity. That’s the moral and legal line you can’t cross—unless you’re prepared to admit you’ve already abandoned it.

In effect you are saying exactly that. That Israel may not strike terrorists if civilians may be killed in the process.

The “Japan attacked the U.S.” analogy doesn’t hold—because Japan was a sovereign state with a centralized government, a uniformed army, and full control over its territory. Gaza is none of those things.

Hamas is the de facto government of Gaza. More than just Hamas participated in the cowardly attack on 10/7, but the factions all coordinated with each other, which means that there was central control of the attack.
Yes, Gazans usually fight out of uniform. That is a war crime, but I do not see how it precludes saying that "Gaza attacked Israel".

It’s a blockaded enclave without statehood, without an army, and under conditions where half the population wasn’t even alive when Hamas took power. So no, saying “Gaza attacked Israel” is not the same.

I think it is. And Gaza has a de facto army. The fighters of the various armed groups are organized in military fashion into brigades and battalions. And they all worked together under common leadership though the Joint Operations Room. If it quacks like an army ...

You may not intend to treat all Gazans as guilty, but language matters—especially in war. When you say “Gaza attacked Israel,” you’re not just stating a geographic fact. You’re rhetorically collapsing 2.2 million people into a single hostile entity. That’s how civilians—children, journalists, aid workers—end up being viewed as acceptable collateral or presumed enemy assets.

Gaza is a hostile entity that started the war. Not unlike Germany, Japan or Russia. But that does not mean every Gazan is guilty.

If your point is just to defend shorthand, then you’re ignoring the very real consequences of that shorthand. Because when entire cities are reduced to “enemy territory,” the moral safeguards that protect civilians vanish in practice—even if we pay lip service to them in theory.

Independent of the guilt and innocence of individuals, how is Gaza not "enemy territory"?

So if what happened on October 7 was committed by Hamas and its allies, then say that. Say Hamas attacked Israel. But when you say “Gaza” did it, you’re not correcting language—you’re erasing distinction. And in war, that erasure is never academic. It’s lethal.

Hamas runs Gaza. And it was not just Hamas that attacked Israel. "Hamas attacked Israel" is not accurate.

If every military target is pursued no matter the civilian toll, if every strike is justified with “Hamas was nearby,” and if every civilian death is waved off as “regrettable but necessary,” then the legal principle you’re defending stops functioning as a safeguard. It becomes a fig leaf.

It is still a war crime to target civilians. If any IDF commanders ordered that, they should be brought up on war crimes charges.
Collateral damage is itself not prohibited in war. If you interpret international law as to deny a military the right to attack legitimate military targets just because civilians would come to harm, you make it impossible to follow that law and make it more likely that it will be abrogated entirely.

That’s the contradiction: you claim to uphold the law, while defending actions that have systematically violated its spirit and—according to many human rights bodies—its letter. The law doesn’t just care whether the target was military. It cares whether the force used was proportionate, whether feasible precautions were taken, and whether civilians were protected in all circumstances.

Define "proportionate". Define "feasible". I think we disagree as to what these words mean in practice.

Correct—international law doesn’t prohibit striking a legitimate military target near civilians. But it does prohibit doing so in a way that causes excessive civilian harm relative to the military advantage gained. That’s not a loophole. That’s the legal and moral line between self-defense and a war crime.

Define "excessive"? For example, was harm excessive when Mohammed Sinwar was targeted? I think not, since he was a high-value target.

So no, placing a rocket launcher next to a tent doesn’t make it invincible. But neither does it give a blank check to bomb the site if you know civilians will die and no precautions are taken. The obligation to protect civilians doesn’t vanish just because Hamas abuses them—it intensifies.

And yet Israel is attacked in social media and by ZiprHead over that strike, even though precautions were taken. Btw, precautions do not eliminate risk entirely. Even though there was adance warning, some civilians stayed in the vicinity, and could have been injured or killed.

The law exists precisely to prevent combatants from turning every neighborhood into a battlefield and calling the destruction “necessary.” If you’re defending the right to strike military targets, fine. But that right is not absolute. It’s constrained—for a reason.

If Hamas turns every neighborhood into a battlefield, then IDF must respond to that.
Israel tried to designate certain areas safe. But terrorists went there anyway. These areas losing that safe status is not on Israel. It's on Gazan terrorists.

Sure—fighters wear headbands. That’s not the issue. The issue is the logic underneath your earlier point: that affiliation, symbolism, or ideological sympathy can be used to morally blur the line between civilians and combatants.

I used "put on a green headband" as symbolic language for joining Al Qassam Brigades, which is the armed/terror wing of Hamas. That makes somebody a legitimate target.

Listing militant factions and their colors doesn’t change the core principle: unless someone is directly participating in hostilities, they are legally a civilian and must be protected. Full stop. That includes people who support resistance groups politically, wear symbolic colors, or live in areas controlled by those factions.

Participation can be more indirect. Like for example keeping hostages like that physician father and his journalist son in Nuseirat.

You’re not just describing headbands—you’re inching toward a framework where visible affiliation becomes evidence of combatant status.

That headband is closest Hamas comes to a uniform. It's no different than wearing SS insignia.

You want to fight armed groups? Fine. But if you’re defending a logic that reduces all Gazans to potential militants because of what group governs them, or what symbols circulate in the street, then yes—you’ve gone from fighting terrorism to applying its logic in reverse.

Are you really defending people joining Al Qassam brigades as just using "symbols [that] circulate in the street"? Really?

If you’re saying that a person can be killed for wearing a green headband, then you’re not talking about self-defense. You’re talking about political execution. That’s not lawful targeting—it’s a war crime dressed up as threat assessment.

Would it be unlawful targeting to strike an SS officer in uniform? Or do you consider the double lightning just a "symbol that circulates in the street"?

And your second point proves how dangerously far that logic goes. You cite a rare case where a doctor and a journalist were allegedly involved in holding hostages

How do you know that it is a rare case? This is one case where hostages were successfully rescued. They were held by two separate families - the physician/journalist team in one case and a not nearly described family in the other. We do not know how many other hostages have been held in similar ways throughout the war. We certainly cannot tell that it was "rare"/

and then use that anecdote to cast suspicion on over 200 other journalists who were killed. That’s not evidence. That’s collective guilt by profession.

It is not "guilt by profession", it is saying that just because they also worked as journalists does not mean that they were not also involved in hostilities. Label "journalist" should not be used as proof of non-combatant status. Another example:
Five Gaza journalists killed in Israeli strike targeting armed group
They were PIJ fighters using journalism as cover.

You’re not asking for proof that these individuals were fighters. You’re suggesting that their jobs don’t matter, because maybe they were moonlighting for Hamas. That’s exactly how civilian protections erode: by treating affiliation, geography, or profession as circumstantial justification for lethal force.

Exactly. Their jobs do not matter, as they do not prove that they were not also combatants.

If a journalist is actively fighting, they become a lawful target at the moment of participation. But unless you have clear, individualized evidence of that participation, they’re a civilian—and killing them is unlawful.

We as public rarely have access to such operational evidence and as such should not presume that non exists and that the strikes are unlawful.

You’re right—Hamas is not a normal political party. It’s an armed group that commits war crimes. But international law doesn’t say “civilians are protected—unless they support a terrorist organization.” That’s not how civilian status works. Civilian protections don’t depend on your beliefs. They depend on your actions.

Support often involves actions. Like operating rocket launchers or agreeing to keep hostages captive.

If someone is carrying a weapon or actively fighting, then yes—they’re a combatant. But if you’re targeting based on what someone is wearing, you’re no longer distinguishing between fighters and civilians. You’re just profiling, and justifying it after the fact.

Somebody does not have to carry a personal weapon to be a combatant. That in itself is not evidence of non-involvement.

Your point about Hamas exaggerating deaths actually works against you. If even Hamas’s figures show a majority of the dead are women and children, then the reality may be worse.

The question is not which is "majority", especially when you add up two different groups to get to a slight majority (55%). If two groups that together comprise 75% of the population, but only 55% of the dead, then they are significantly underrepresented among the dead.
I do not understand your point about Hamas numbers. If they have a vested interest in exaggerating civilian deaths, and downplaying combatant deaths, then in reality <55% of the dead are probably "women and children".

But either way, your graph doesn’t prove what you think it does. You’ve inferred combatant status from age and gender brackets, but that’s not how the law works. A 17-year-old male is not a lawful target unless he’s actively participating in hostilities. Anything else is profiling. And profiling people for death based on age or gender is not lawful war—its collective suspicion turned lethal.

I am not saying people should be profiled and targeted based on age and gender alone.
I am saying that if we look at fatality distribution, and IDF is targeting combatants, then we would expect to see disproportionally many fatalities belonging to demographic slices that combatants belong to. Most combatants are males between 15 and 45, and that's what we see in the data. Therefore, even Hamas data is consistent with the fact that IDF is targeting combatants rather than indiscriminately bombing neighborhoods.

And let’s be clear: you’re now not just defending the casualties—you’re starting to blame them. Saying that Hamas benefits from dead civilians and therefore we should discount the moral outrage is a grotesque inversion of responsibility. It implies that because one side may exploit civilian deaths, the other side bears no real responsibility for causing them. That’s not just cynical—it’s dangerous.

It is the Hamas et al that makee things more dangerous for civilians. Why should we not blame them for it?

And invoking fringe extremists like a museum shooter or an arsonist to discredit concern for civilian life? That’s not argument. That’s guilt by association at its ugliest. If you need to link humanitarian outrage to criminals to dismiss it, you’ve already run out of moral ground to stand on.

These criminals are targeting civilians. Like Hamas.

So let’s come back to clarity: civilian deaths in war are not always avoidable—but they are not excused just because the enemy is worse. The laws of war exist to restrain both sides. And the side that ignores that obligation—especially the side with overwhelming power—cannot claim the moral high ground by pointing to the other’s depravity.

Then show where IDF bombed indiscriminately and I will condemn it. But saying that many civilians came to harm without condemning Hamas et al for putting them in that danger is what's depraved.

 

[Derec]

I think the trope that Gazans are being starved is greatly exaggerated. I was looking at Al Jazeera and they had an update about the chaotic food distribution. Well, the people do not exactly look emaciated. Look at this guy, for example:

Nice muscle definition! He certainly wasn't lacking for protein in recent weeks!

 

[Derec]

Let’s be clear: hostage rescue doesn’t justify indiscriminate or disproportionate violence. If fighters are hiding in civilian areas, that’s a war crime. But responding with overwhelming force that kills civilians anyway is also a war crime. The law doesn’t say, “As long as your motive is legitimate, anything goes.” It says you must distinguish, minimize harm, and act proportionally. Always.

Since this was a reply to Dr. Zoidberg, I will just comment on this paragraph.
How do you define "disproportionate"?

When rescuing hostages, the goal is to get in and out with as little engagement with the enemy as possible. Unfortunately, things do not usually go as smoothly as hoped. After successfully rescuing the four hostages held in Nusereit, IDF commandos encountered the enemy. The high reported casualty count is the result of that engagement.
UN experts condemn outrageous disregard for Palestinian civilians during Israel’s military operation in Nuseirat
This article and its headline show the UN's anti-Israel bias. They condemn Israel for rescuing hostages, rather than condemning Hamas for holding hostages in a civilian neighborhood.

Anyway, they quote Hamas numbers, according to which there were 274 dad (IDF estimates this at closer to 100), including 57 women and 64 minors. That means that 55.8% of the reported dead are adult men, despite comprising 25% of the population. I.e. it shows that it was clearly not indiscriminate action. What do you think IDF could or should have done differently to make things more "proportional"?