Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I recognize that not every Gazan had any say in the buildup or the attacks. I was out in the streets opposing the US invasion of Iraq, that doesn't change the reality "America invaded Iraq"!

So you'd be okay with Iraqi soldiers bombing US hospitals, killing US ambulance drivers, and starving US children because all Americans did it.

You realize every hospital in Gaza is a Hamas base?

That is very far-fetched.

You realize that Israel has repeatedly complained about the misuse of ambulances for military purposes and the Red Crescent (Muslim equivalent to the Red Cross) will not condemn that? In doing so they have forfeited the protections ambulances normally have.

That's like saying the NYSE never came out and made a statement that the US was involved in bad behaviors and toppling democracies so the WTC forfeited its protections against al Qaeda.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It is, of course, perfectly appropriate for me to call you an apologist for Israeli terrorism, since you have not condemned it, as I have condemned Hamas terrorism.

Do you consider Ukrainian defense "Ukrainian terrorism"? I don't. Because Ukraine is under attack from their neighbors and I'd be okay with almost anything they do to defend themselves.
Same with Israel. They've been under attack for centuries, from their Muslim neighbors for decades, and I find it quite reasonable for them to attack the current military strike capabilities with whatever means they find useful. I see no Israeli terrorism, only Muslim apologists trying to make moral parity between aggression and defense.
Tom

Wow, this is so twisted. You are revealing far more about yourself than you should care to find yourself doing. Let’s unpack the above.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is exactly the same as what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Your analogy is entirely backassward.

Gaza did not “invade” Israel. Some Hamas terrorists crossed the border and committed atrocities. In response, Israel is ravaging the entirety of Gaza, which is even worse than what Russia is doing in Ukraine,since most of Ukraine is intact and Russia has suffered huge casualties. Gazans have no such capacity to inflict casualties on the pople displacing and slaughtering them.

A military force crossing a border without permission is an invasion. The fact that it was a raid rather than permanent doesn't change this.

Israel has NOT been “under attack for centuries.” Israel only began to exist in 1948. Yes, Jewish presence in those lands dates back to antiquity, but so does the Palestinian presence. Vast numbers of Palestinians were driven off their lands and scattered abroad at the founding of modern Israel in 1948. That was the Nakbah.

The Jews there were under attack whether or not there was an "Israel".

And a very large number of those Palestinians left of their own free will at Arab behest. They were asked to get out of the way of the coming invasion, they did so. And when they wouldn't agree to be peaceful if they returned they were not allowed to return.

Gazans have no “military strike” abilities. Israel is not attacking military strike abilities. They are attacking innocent men, women, and children, and committing heinous war crimes.

Rockets are military strike capabilities.

A rule of thumb to use in looking at video of what's going on there: any Israeli strike that causes secondaries almost certainly hit something military. (This does not mean that a strike that doesn't cause secondaries isn't legitimate.) Civilians almost never have the sort of things that produce notable secondaries.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In any case, we say "Germany invaded Poland", not "NSDAP invaded Poland".

Yup. With government things that do not involve a lot of people we very well might refer to the capital city of a country to distinguish it from the country as a whole. But that does not apply to large scale actions. We would not say "Berlin invaded Poland".

And Hamas waddles and quacks as a government of a country.

That is especially true in this case as to the extent that Gaza has a capital it's "Gaza City". Nobody's going to refer to the government that way.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In any case, Gaza/Palestine must do something similar. Gaza, represented by Hamas, must unconditionally surrender and Palestinians in general must give up both the idea of conquering and destroying Israel, and also terrorism as a tactic.
Otherwise, this will not end. Even if there is a ceasefire soon, as long as Palestinians cling to their current goals and tactics, carnage will be repeated over and over again.

Tehran will not permit that.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Your obsession with comparing WWI - a world war between countries- with the conflict
In the Middle East is inane.

This is a war between countries.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How do you know that?

Even I knew about the tunnels Gazans were building years ago.
You didn't?
Tom

Clipping a portion of a response to change its meaning is disingenuous.

How is the meaning changed?

How do you know Gazan civilians dug the tunnels and, if they did, that they knew they were to be used for?

They don't have the great tunnel boring machines, those were dug by no more than light tools. That's an awful lot of manpower, of course Hamas didn't do it themselves! And you would have to be pretty clueless not to know what many of the tunnels were for.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Then explain why you think that Gazan attacks on Israel, last month, aren't yet more Muslim terrorists attacks. And why you think that Israeli defense against those attacks is a moral issue.

Because not everything can be reduced to a slogan like “Muslim terrorist attack.” That label isn’t about clarity—it’s about shutting down thought. You’re not asking a question, you’re issuing a verdict and daring anyone to challenge it. And when they do, you act as if it’s immoral to even raise the possibility that mass civilian death might be a moral issue.

Are you saying it's not Muslim, or not terrorist, or not an attack?

It is.

If Hamas targets civilians, it’s a crime. If Israel targets civilians—or knowingly bombs areas full of them—that’s also a crime. That’s not moral relativism. That’s moral consistency. The second you say one group’s violence is terrorism and the other’s is automatically justified “defense,” you’ve left morality behind and entered into raw tribal justification. That’s how every atrocity in history gets excused.

Nope. Hitting an area known to have civilians doesn't make it a crime.

You realize the average kills per bomb is less than one? Israel is going a very good job of getting the civilians off the targets before they are hit.

You keep demanding I see this as simple. But nothing about war crimes is simple. Nothing about bombing children, starving families, or flattening entire neighborhoods is morally uncomplicated. And the moment you act like it is, you’ve stopped defending values and started defending impunity.

But war crimes generally are simple. You did X you shouldn't have. If you have to resort to generalities to specify X it almost certainly isn't a war crime. (Now, explaining why something isn't a war crime might get complex....)

The reason this is a moral issue is because the overwhelming majority of the people dying aren’t fighters—they’re civilians. Children. Women. Families who never held a weapon. If your version of “defense” allows for that, then you’re not defending a people, you’re justifying a machine.

Last numbers I've seen are Hamas: 50k, gives no numbers for combatants. Israel: killed 20k combatants. Right there we can see that in all probability it's no more than 1.5 civilians per combatant. (Compare that to the typical 10:1) (And note there are some big problems with the Hamas data. They finally "fixed" some of the 4k records that were shown to be garbage--but didn't change the total despite deleting them.)

If you want to talk morality, start by applying it universally. If the same act horrifies you when “they” do it, but you find ways to justify it when “we” do it, you’re not on the side of justice. You’re on the side of power.

You're skipping a step here--you're not establishing that "we" did it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Whether or not the Gazan leadership is native Gazans isn't the point. Destroying the attacks means fighting in Gaza.

Pood can't even claim that the Hamas leadership is not "native Gazan".
 Ismail Hanniyeh - born in the Al Shati camp, Egyptian occupied Gaza Strip
 Yahya Sinwar - born in Khan Yunis, Egyptian occupied Gaza Strip
 Mohammed Deif - born in the Khan Yunis camp, Egyptian occupied Gaza Strip
 Mohammed Sinwar - born in the Khan Yunis camp, Israeli occupied Gaza Strip

Whom am I missing?

Huh??? That's the same Gaza Israel is in the process of destroying right now.

View attachment 50682

Are you perhaps getting confused by the fact that he's identifying the power that was in control of the territory when they were born?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Let’s start with the obvious: holding civilians responsible for the actions of armed factions is a war crime. That’s not an opinion—it’s international law, codified in the Fourth Geneva Convention. You don’t get to bomb hospitals or starve children and call it justice just because you’re angry at their leaders.

Look more carefully. Geneva does not protect things used for military purposes. Period.

But let’s test your logic: Did you bomb Tel Aviv when Netanyahu tried to dismantle Israel’s judiciary? Did you starve Texans because they voted for Trump? Did you level U.S. cities over the Iraq invasion, or hold all Israelis responsible for Sabra and Shatila? Of course not. Because when it’s your side, you believe in nuance. When it’s Arabs, suddenly they’re a monolith.

More like "do you starve Texas" when MAGA takes the food you're sending?

And here’s where your final point reveals itself: you accuse others of racism, but what you’re actually doing is racializing collective guilt. You’re not asking for accountability—you’re suggesting Palestinians are inherently violent, undeserving of rights, and incapable of moral agency unless they rise up against an armed government in a blockaded warzone.

The fact that a nation is not a democracy does not mean it's civilians do not suffer if it goes to war.

That’s not justice. That’s supremacist logic—repackaged as moral outrage.

If you truly believed in responsibility, you’d start by holding your own side accountable for the bombs, the siege, the deaths, and the system that made Gaza unlivable in the first place. But you don’t. Because your moral concern isn’t universal—it’s conditional on who you think deserves to be human.

NHC

Of course we don't.

Bombs: War. Hamas started it, blame Hamas.
Siege: Legal. Israel has bent over backwards compared to the Geneva requirements.
Deaths: Israel remains far and away the best at preventing civilian deaths. They are considerably better than we are.
Gaza unlivable: Blame Tehran and the other Muslim groups that have poured vast efforts into making it unlivable.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

After WW2 we blamed it all on Hitler. It's was a convenient lie. The blame for Germany's war crimes was shared by millions of Germans. We just decided to forgive and move on, for the sake of world peace. It's the same deal the Gaza. They share a lot of the guilt for Hamas' actions. But first, Hamas needs to go.

Disagree.

Since 1948 the Palestinians have never been in a position to effectively stand up to those who would use them as cannon fodder. Throw enough money behind terror, some will take it. Thus it is not proven that they are racist. (On the other hand, most everyone there has had a lifetime of indoctrination into Jew-hate. I would be surprised if this hadn't made most of them racist.)

 

[laughing dog]

How do you know that?

Even I knew about the tunnels Gazans were building years ago.
You didn't?
Tom

Clipping a portion of a response to change its meaning is disingenuous.

How is the meaning changed?

How do you know Gazan civilians dug the tunnels and, if they did, that they knew they were to be used for?

They don't have the great tunnel boring machines, those were dug by no more than light tools. That's an awful lot of manpower, of course Hamas didn't do it themselves! And you would have to be pretty clueless not to know what many of the tunnels were for.

In other words, all you have is guesswork.

 

[laughing dog]

Hamas, not “Gazans.” By now it is obvious you are deliberately eliding the distinction to bolster your crap apologetics.

By now it's obvious that Hamas is Gazans leadership. And that the attacks against Israel came from Gaza, so attacking the military strike capabilities that attacked Israel means attacking Gaza.

It's also obvious that you are desperate to blame Israel for the policies and decisions made by the Gazans Who Matter. That's your crap apologetics for violent Muslim terrorists.
Tom

Also, do NOT label me an apologist for violent Muslim terrorists. I have CONDEMNED the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. Furthermore, you should realize that condemning violent MUSLIM terrorists, instead of HAMAS terrorists, does not speak well of you. One billion Muslims did not attack Israel on Oct. 7, Yours is the typical Othering slur to indict an entire class of people for the sins of a tiny sliver of them.

It is, of course, perfectly appropriate for me to call you an apologist for Israeli terrorism, since you have not condemned it, as I have condemned Hamas terrorism.

You "condemn" Hamas terrorism but demand that no Gazan civilians be harmed in defending against it. Do you see why we don't believe your condemnation?

If you cannot produce evidence of support or excuses for violent Muslim terrorists, then you have no evidence that someone is an apologist for them.

 

[laughing dog]

[

By Hamas' own data there have only been 60 malnutrition deaths.

. “Only” 60 malnutrition deaths.

“Only” 60 malnutrition deaths.

“Only” 60 malnutrition deaths.

After all, to paraphrase the famous moral philosopher Jodi Ernst, “we all die”.

Hamas is holding over two million people hostage in a tiny warzone, and using them as human shields. They can only find sixty deaths that they can attribute to malnutrition.
I'm not minimizing the suffering. I'm pointing out the responsibility for the suffering.
Tom

You feel you ate, but you aren’t when you point to only one party.

What the hell?
Tom
ETA "You feel you ate, but you aren't" is what I responded to

oops, substitute “are” ffor “ ate”, (sorry for that tupi) but if you think about it, either works.

No it doesn't and never did.
Adding "when you point to only one party" changes the meaning a great deal, but that wasn't in the post I responded to.

Here's the thing. I'm not only pointing to one party. I'm pointing to the party which is overwhelmingly responsible for the current debacle amongst a batch of posters who mostly handwave the reason for the suffering in Gaza. It's Hamas and their supporters.
Tom

“Overwhelming”. fortifies my point.

In English, when one writes “ the responsibility “ , literate readers take that to mean a dingle source.

What the fuck is a "dingle source"?
Tom

Oops - single.

Oops, i did chew your food for you.

 

[Tigers!]

3) Hamas could end this. They don't want to.

Eight words condense this whole thread of 407 pages

 

[NoHolyCows]

That's unfortunately what war looks like. If you refuse to allow harm to the civilians of an aggressor you inherently say that we must bow down before any such aggressor.

No—what you’re describing isn’t war. It’s vengeance without restraint.

The laws of war exist precisely to prevent that logic: that harming civilians is the price of resistance. If your position is that civilian suffering is unavoidable and even necessary to avoid “bowing down,” then you’ve abandoned justice for dominance.

Protecting civilians—even of an aggressor—is not surrender. It’s the line between warfare and barbarism. Cross it, and you’re not defending your people. You’re forfeiting your moral claim to be better than those you fight.

Except you are not establishing mass starvation, nor deliberate targeting of civilians (although we have multiple examples of Hamas doing just that).

Mass starvation has been established—by UN agencies, humanitarian organizations, and medical NGOs operating on the ground. When 1 in 5 children under 5 in northern Gaza are acutely malnourished, when aid trucks are blocked, and when water, fuel, and food are deliberately restricted in a population that cannot flee, that’s not incidental. That’s engineered deprivation.

And as for deliberate targeting—what do you call it when hospitals, aid convoys, and clearly marked refugee zones are repeatedly hit after warnings are issued about their locations? What do you call it when journalists, doctors, and UN workers are killed in numbers that defy coincidence? Every strike may not be intentional—but the pattern is unmistakable.

So yes—Hamas commits war crimes. But that doesn’t absolve the state with vastly superior power and control from its own legal obligations. Civilians don’t lose their right to life because their leaders are criminals. And if you need to deny starvation and mass death to preserve your narrative, it’s not the facts you’re defending—it’s your comfort.

Terror is about attacking civilians. It is not about attacking military forces even if they are hiding amongst civilians. Thus Israel's actions are not terrorism.

As for Iraq: Do you realize that Saddam killed a lot more of his own people to parade in front of the cameras than both invasions did? Look at what happened with the oil for food deal: Saddam reexported food for money to buy weapons. And he never spent what was allowed, either. Thus all the shortages were on him.

If terror is “attacking civilians,” then you’ve just undermined your own defense—because civilians in Gaza have been killed in overwhelming numbers, including in clearly marked shelters, aid convoys, and hospitals. Saying “the militants were nearby” doesn’t erase the corpses of children. The legal standard is clear: even when fighting among civilians, precautions and proportionality are required. Ignoring that turns warfare into a license for collective punishment.

And as for Saddam—yes, he was a brutal dictator. No one’s disputing that. But that doesn’t retroactively justify a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, destabilized the region, and was based on false pretenses. Saying “Saddam did worse” isn’t a defense—it’s moral deflection. You don’t get to measure one atrocity against another and excuse both by comparison.

So if you opposed Iraq, prove it wasn’t just partisan theater. Because the same logic that led to Fallujah, to Abu Ghraib, to mass civilian death under the banner of “fighting evil”—is now being used again. And if you’re silent now, or worse, justifying it, then you never really opposed it. You just didn’t like who was doing it.

NHC

 

[Tigers!]

By Hamas' own data there have only been 60 malnutrition deaths.

. “Only” 60 malnutrition deaths.

“Only” 60 malnutrition deaths.

“Only” 60 malnutrition deaths.

After all, to paraphrase the famous moral philosopher Jodi Ernst, “we all die”.

"Only" 251 Jewish hostages
"Only" 251 Jweish hostages

 

[NoHolyCows]

Yes, he's drawing the fundamental boundary: between those who seek atrocity and those who seek to avoid atrocity.

Then explain this: how does flattening entire neighborhoods, bombing aid convoys, starving children, and blocking humanitarian relief constitute “seeking to avoid atrocity”? Because that’s not defense—that’s devastation. And no amount of moral framing can change the facts on the ground.

You’re not drawing a boundary between atrocity and restraint. You’re redrawing the moral map to excuse atrocity as long as it’s done by a state you support. That’s not justice. That’s tribalism.

If you really believe in a boundary between those who seek atrocity and those who avoid it, then you must judge actions—not affiliations. Because right now, your “defender” is presiding over one of the most documented humanitarian collapses in recent history. If you still think that’s the side avoiding atrocity, then the boundary you’ve drawn is not moral. It’s political. And it’s already covered in civilian blood.

Chanting "War Crimes!" does not make it so. We have a few cases of what appears to be mistreatment of captives. Any conflict on this scale results in some of that, what counts is how the government deals with it. (And note that the only reason it's even relevant is because they are granting combatant status to those who do not actually qualify. By Geneva they fall into the category of spies/saboteurs and get no protections at all.)

And the reality is that when war is fought on an urbanized territory the primary victims in that territory will be civilians. War is extremely ugly. Blame the aggressor: Tehran.

You say “chanting ‘War Crimes!’ doesn’t make it so.” But let’s be clear—it’s not chanting. It’s the conclusion of major human rights organizations, UN rapporteurs, legal scholars, and even former IDF officials. And they’re not referring to “a few cases of mistreatment.” They’re pointing to a sustained pattern: the leveling of civilian infrastructure, the starvation of an entire population, and the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid.

You say civilians always suffer in war. True. But international law exists because of that reality—to limit harm, to demand proportionality, to insist that civilian life is not expendable. You don’t get to bypass those laws by simply declaring the enemy unworthy of protection or by blaming “Tehran” while dropping bombs on Rafah.

Self-defense is not a license to dismantle an entire society. Civilians are not shields by default. And calling atrocity “inevitable” is not a justification—it’s an admission that you’ve accepted it.

The law doesn’t bend for vengeance. And war doesn’t excuse abandoning humanity. If you think it does, you’re not defending justice. You’re rationalizing atrocity.

Razing a neighborhood is not an automatic war crime. Look at those pictures of razed "neighborhoods" and you'll generally notice a pattern: the damage is focused on a line, not on a point. Why would you see a line of damage? Because the bomb exploded in a tunnel. Military target, valid. The fact that it's built under civilians doesn't change that.

Bombed refugee camps. I do not recall any examples of this, but I do recall cases where they dropped near a refugee camp and the camp got damaged by secondaries. Hint: very few civilian things make secondaries. Lots of military things do.

Blocked aid. The aid was being diverted, that makes it military and blocking it is permitted by Geneva. And note that despite dire claims their blocking didn't cause mass famine. But what it did do is put a severe crimp in Hamas operations because they couldn't hijack the aid and sell it for exorbitant prices--and that's where much of their operating funds were coming from.

Engineered famine. Nope, no famine except in the minds of those who want to blame Israel.

As for that 35,000.
1) Way out of date. Current claims are in the ballpark of 50k.
2) Neither the UN nor WHO is remotely credible on this. They're both just parroting Hamas.
3) I've already shown upthread where Hamas inadvertently leaked the truth a couple of times. Far more children have lost their father than their mother, and far more males have amputations than females.

Proportional. That term does not mean what you think it means. In military terms "proportional" is measured in the ratio of military advantage to civilian harm. Ratio, not absolute units. So long as the enemy poses a realistic ability to inflict any harm (and note that simply possessing a weapon capable of reaching any of your units is normally considered to meet this threshold even if not currently in range) you are free to keep killing them. There is no bag limit.

Here’s the reality—your response isn’t a defense. It’s a distortion. And it unravels the moment we stop accepting euphemism as argument.

You say “razing a neighborhood” isn’t automatically a war crime. Correct—if it meets the legal thresholds of distinction, proportionality, and precaution. But reducing entire blocks to rubble because there’s a tunnel somewhere underneath is not precision warfare. It’s collective punishment with aerial justification. The Geneva Conventions don’t say, “If there’s a military asset nearby, flatten the area.” They require that all feasible precautions be taken to avoid civilian harm. That’s not a suggestion. It’s the law.

You say refugee camps weren’t targeted—just hit by “secondaries.” But the Jabalia, Nuseirat, and Rafah strikes weren’t glancing blows. They were massive, deliberate attacks in densely populated areas. And “secondaries” don’t absolve you when you choose to strike a zone full of displaced families. Blaming the explosion on what was in the building still doesn’t answer why the building was bombed in the first place.

As for famine: The IPC has confirmed catastrophic hunger in northern Gaza. Aid trucks have been blocked, looted, and shot at. Aid workers have been killed. UN warehouses bombed. Whether or not you want to label it “famine,” the conditions—mass food insecurity, children dying of malnutrition, no access to water or medicine—are real. The legal term is starvation as a method of warfare. And yes, that’s a war crime too.

Your dismissal of the 35,000+ dead as “parroting Hamas” doesn’t hold. Every major international monitoring body—including independent groups like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and OCHA—has affirmed that the toll is overwhelmingly civilian. When your argument depends on erasing the credibility of everyone except the party dropping bombs, it’s not skepticism—it’s denialism.

And your definition of “proportionality” is legally and morally upside down. You don’t get to kill endlessly just because the enemy might still pose a threat. Proportionality weighs concrete and direct military advantage against expected civilian harm. And when the overwhelming consequence of your campaign is dead civilians, obliterated hospitals, flattened schools, and famine—you’ve crossed that line. No ratio, no semantics, no tunnel map can undo that.

So let’s call this what it is: not a defense of Israel. A defense of impunity—by rewriting law, shifting blame, and redefining death as strategic necessity.

And history will see through it.

You can flatten anything military, anything else too close that gets hit, too bad. "Too close" has undergone considerable revision over the decades, the area bombing of WWII doesn't happen anymore because the weapons have gotten a lot more precise. And you are likewise expected to use the minimum boom that will accomplish the mission.

You talk of razed neighborhoods--but watch some of the video of Israel hitting the tunnels. You see the direct blast effect of the bomb and you see lines of damage radiating from it. Lines where the tunnel collapsed, typically extending far beyond the area directly hit by the blast. The military objective is collapsing the tunnels, the buildings destroyed by the blast are the undesired result. Area goes at the square of radius, if the tunnels are killed farther out than the buildings this strongly suggests the best option is to drop the biggest things available (the 2000# bombs.) (What's happening here is the bombs were fused to explode underground, the tunnels propagate the blast so it no longer dissipates at the square of distance like it does in air.) (Note that there are also the buildings that failed because their foundations were compromised by the tunnel caving in. Those were doomed by anything that collapsed the tunnel and thus shouldn't be counted in either direction.)

Your response relies on technical jargon and physics to bury a simple truth: if the foreseeable consequence of your strategy is widespread civilian death and destruction, it’s not an “undesired result”—it’s a violation of international law.

Yes, weapons have become more precise. And with that precision comes greater legal responsibility, not less. You cannot claim you’re using high-precision bombs and then dismiss civilian casualties as unfortunate side effects. If a weapon is too destructive for a given environment—like a 2,000-pound bomb in a dense urban zone—then using it is not justified by the presence of a tunnel. It’s prohibited by the principles of proportionality and precaution.

You say the damage is a “line,” implying surgical accuracy. But dead civilians don’t die in straight lines. They die in homes, schools, and shelters because those lines cut through real lives. Tunnels don’t negate the requirement to avoid civilian harm. And the presence of infrastructure beneath a building doesn’t make everything above it expendable.

International humanitarian law is clear: even when a legitimate military target is present, expected civilian harm must not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage gained. The size of the bomb, the location, the density of the population—these all matter. And if the only way to destroy a tunnel is to destroy everything above and around it, then you’re not allowed to strike.

What you’re defending isn’t legal. It’s tactical convenience elevated above civilian life. And no amount of blast radius math changes that.

When a military knowingly uses a method that consistently produces disproportionate civilian casualties, the burden isn’t on the civilians to get out of the way. It’s on the military to change the method—or stop.

That’s not fantasy. That’s the Geneva Conventions. And ignoring them doesn’t make you a realist. It just makes you complicit.

It waddles and quacks as a country. It's being held to the standards of a country.

AI and HRW are water-carriers for the terrorists, both simply assume the underdogs are right. ICJ simply was accepting a case filed by a member country--note that no evidence was provided. And there was another filing involved that sought to redefine genocide because what's been happening in Gaza is not genocide.

Gaza is not a sovereign nation. It has no control over its borders, airspace, coastline, or even its population registry. Israel controls nearly every aspect of life in Gaza—from the fuel that powers its hospitals to the goods that cross its border. That’s not sovereignty. That’s occupation, and every major legal authority, from the UN to the Red Cross, recognizes it as such.

If you argue Gaza “acts like a country,” then you’re also bound to accept that Israel, as an actual state and military superpower in the region, must be held to the legal standards of one. That means observing international law, protecting civilians, and exercising proportionality. You can’t selectively invoke statehood just to justify massive military retaliation, then ignore the obligations that come with it.

Dismissing Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Court of Justice by calling them biased is a deflection—not a rebuttal. These are respected legal and humanitarian institutions that have criticized abuses on all sides. When they issue warnings about genocide, it isn’t because they “side with underdogs.” It’s because their job is to assess law, evidence, and precedent—and that evidence is overwhelming.

The ICJ didn’t merely accept a case. It issued a formal ruling that the risk of genocide in Gaza is plausible and required Israel to prevent genocidal acts. That is not a political statement. It’s a legal judgment, based on decades of international law and obligations.

And finally, genocide doesn’t mean replicating the Holocaust. It means the targeted destruction of a group in whole or in part—through mass killing, forced displacement, destruction of infrastructure, and deliberate blocking of food and aid. That’s not being redefined. That’s the actual legal standard. And right now, leading genocide scholars and legal experts say Israel’s actions in Gaza meet that threshold.

You’re not countering the evidence—you’re denying it. And denial in the face of documented mass atrocity isn’t skepticism. It’s complicity.

You conveniently forget that the fighting long predates that. This has been going on since they failed to destroy Israel back in 1948.

No one’s forgetting the history. What you’re doing is freezing it—trapping a whole population in the sins of the past and denying them any political evolution or human distinction.

Yes, the conflict predates 2007. But that doesn’t justify turning Gaza into an open-air prison or treating every Palestinian child as if they carry the intent of 1948. The blockade, the bombings, the displacement—those are not responses to an ongoing war. They are mechanisms of domination maintained over generations.

If you’re still punishing people for a war they didn’t fight, you’re not defending a nation. You’re perpetuating a narrative where an entire population is held guilty by birthright. That’s not history—it’s weaponized memory, used to rationalize collective punishment and erase the line between militants and civilians.

The past doesn’t justify the present. It warns against repeating it.

No. The death of human shields is on the side that made them into human shields.

That’s not how the law—or morality—works.

If a militant uses civilians as shields, that’s a war crime. But if you kill those civilians anyway, knowing they’re there, that’s your war crime too. The Geneva Conventions don’t say, “It’s fine to kill civilians if the other side put them there.” They say you must take every feasible precaution to protect them—even when the enemy violates the rules first.

This isn’t just legal technicality. It’s the core of why we have laws of war in the first place: to stop one side’s barbarity from becoming everyone’s excuse.

Blaming only the side that hides among civilians while exonerating the side that bombs them anyway isn’t justice. It’s moral outsourcing. You don’t get to shrug off your own obligations because the enemy ignored theirs.

The moment you say “their war crime justifies ours,” you’ve abandoned the rule of law for the rule of vengeance—and history has never been kind to those who made that trade.

I don't like what happened in 2003 but note that Saddam was hurting his people more than we did. Where we failed abysmally is that they failed to consider what would happen after victory. The reality is that the country fell to an Iranian-backed insurgency.

And that same “after victory” failure is happening now—only worse.

If your defense of this war is that maybe the occupier kills fewer people than the regime it replaced, that’s not a justification. It’s moral relativism with a body count. And invoking Saddam’s brutality doesn’t absolve the chaos, death, and radicalization that followed the invasion. That war destabilized a region, empowered Iran, and birthed ISIS. Sound familiar?

Because that’s exactly what’s happening in Gaza. If your strategy for removing Hamas involves mass civilian death, collapsed infrastructure, and no credible plan for governance, you’re not securing peace—you’re laying the groundwork for more extremism.

So if Iraq was a failure because it toppled a regime without a future, how is Gaza any different—except that here, you’re also denying food, aid, and shelter while calling it restraint? This isn’t self-defense. It’s a second draft of a disaster, with the same excuses and none of the lessons learned.

NHC

 

[Arctish]

And again, not one link was given that day.

If you want to be taken seriously, post links to your sources and stop making shit up.

Not one link was needed (although one was present) as I was showing that your link doesn't actually mean what you think it means.

Sources of information that support claims being made are always needed.

Links to those sources are always needed and should immediately be provided when other posters ask for them.

Back up your claims, Loren. Link to your sources.

Also, which link of mine "doesn't actually mean" what I think it means? Be specific.

Showing a problem with your link doesn't required adding a link.

Yes it does.

Remember, "show, not tell".

Show the problem with the information contained in the link. Don't just bullshit about there being a problem.

And the repeated asking for links for what's already been linked doesn't warrant action.

You have never provided the links, which is precisely the reason why there are repeated requests for them.*

If you have sources you are relying on for information on the history and current events in the Middle East, share them. I suspect they are utter shit but I might be wrong.

If you don't have sources and are simply manufacturing bullshit on-the-fly, then you are doing a disservice to everyone here who is trying to find out what is going on and have a serious conversation about it.

* This is your opportunity to prove me wrong: show us where you provided links to information on how Palestinian Jews were treated by their Christian and Muslim neighbors under the Ottoman Empire, the biographical information on Abbas, information on the Lausanne Conference of 1949, Ehud Barak's offer to the Palestinians during the Camp David talks, the failure of the greenhouse project, and/or the many other instances in this thread where people have asked you to back up your claims.

 

[NoHolyCows]

Are you saying it's not Muslim, or not terrorist, or not an attack?

What I’m saying is that using “Muslim terrorist attack” as your framing isn’t just stating facts—it’s collapsing them into a narrative that bypasses understanding and assigns guilt by identity.

Yes, the attackers were Muslim. Yes, it was terrorism. Yes, it was an attack. But when you brand it that way—as if Islam itself explains it—you’re not analyzing events. You’re indicting a religion. You’re turning a political and ideological crime into a civilizational label. And once you do that, you stop asking why, you stop questioning context, and you start blaming entire populations for the acts of a few.

If someone said “Christian terrorist attack” every time an extremist killed in Christ’s name, you’d recognize the bias immediately. So why pretend it’s neutral here? Because the point isn’t the accuracy of the words—it’s how you’re using them to shut down nuance and turn faith into evidence of guilt.

That’s not clarity. That’s narrative warfare.

Nope. Hitting an area known to have civilians doesn't make it a crime.

You realize the average kills per bomb is less than one? Israel is going a very good job of getting the civilians off the targets before they are hit.

Then let’s follow your logic: if bombing an area knowing civilians are present isn’t a crime, then what exactly would be? Because under international law, the standard isn’t just “did they try their best”—it’s “did they take all feasible precautions to avoid or minimize civilian harm,” and were the attacks proportional to the military objective. Dropping a bomb where civilians are known to be—especially repeatedly and with mass casualties—is not absolved by warning leaflets or evacuation calls. If those measures fail to prevent the deaths of thousands of civilians, they are not proof of legality. They are evidence of intent amid failure.

And your “less than one kill per bomb” stat? That’s not exculpatory. That’s statistical sleight of hand. Thousands of bombs over a densely populated, walled-in territory—where civilians can’t flee—will still result in staggering civilian casualties, even if the average per bomb seems low. It doesn’t measure the legality or morality of any specific strike, and it doesn’t undo the fact that hospitals, refugee camps, and residential towers have been obliterated.

This isn’t moral clarity. It’s moral evasion. And if you only demand precision and restraint from one side, you’re not defending law. You’re defending power.

But war crimes generally are simple. You did X you shouldn't have. If you have to resort to generalities to specify X it almost certainly isn't a war crime. (Now, explaining why something isn't a war crime might get complex....)

That’s not how war crimes work—not legally, not morally.

War crimes are not just “you did X you shouldn’t have.” They are specific violations of international law codified in the Geneva Conventions and other treaties: targeting civilians, collective punishment, disproportionate attacks, destruction of essential infrastructure, use of starvation as a method of warfare, and more. These are not vague generalities—they’re precise legal categories, backed by decades of jurisprudence.

And yes, some war crimes are complex—especially when they involve urban warfare, human shields, or dual-use targets. But complexity doesn’t erase criminality. In fact, hiding behind complexity is often how states try to blur the lines of accountability.

The bottom line: saying “if it’s hard to explain, it’s probably not a war crime” is backwards. Many of the gravest crimes in history were cloaked in technicalities, strategy, and justification. That’s why the law exists—to pierce through that and hold power accountable.

So no, the problem isn’t that I’m resorting to generalities. The problem is you’re mistaking oversimplification for clarity—and using that as a shield for impunity.

Last numbers I've seen are Hamas: 50k, gives no numbers for combatants. Israel: killed 20k combatants. Right there we can see that in all probability it's no more than 1.5 civilians per combatant. (Compare that to the typical 10:1) (And note there are some big problems with the Hamas data. They finally "fixed" some of the 4k records that were shown to be garbage--but didn't change the total despite deleting them.)

Here’s the problem with your argument: you’re using unverified, adversarial numbers as moral justification for mass death—and even by your own metric, you’re still admitting to tens of thousands of civilian casualties.

Let’s take your math at face value. If Israel has killed 20,000 combatants and the ratio is 1.5 civilians per fighter, that still means 30,000 civilians dead. And if your takeaway is “that’s actually good compared to other wars,” then you’ve surrendered any claim to moral clarity. Civilian death is not more acceptable just because you can make a statistical comparison to worse horrors.

More importantly, none of this addresses the fact that civilian status is not forfeited because someone lives near a fighter, in a tunnel zone, or in a densely packed enclave where they have no means to leave. Civilian protections aren’t conditional. That’s what international law requires. That’s what any decent moral framework demands.

And even if Hamas manipulates numbers—so what? If your justification for bombing families is “we think the data is flawed,” you’re not defending civilians. You’re rationalizing killing them.

So no, this isn’t about numbers. It’s about the fact that you’ve started treating those numbers as proof of restraint, instead of as the warning sign they are.

You're skipping a step here--you're not establishing that "we" did it.

But I did establish it—and so have countless investigations by international agencies, journalists, satellite data, and eyewitness reports. Entire neighborhoods flattened. Hospitals bombed. Refugee camps hit multiple times. Border crossings sealed while aid trucks are denied. These aren’t claims pulled from thin air—they’re documented, corroborated, and happening in real time.

You want to skip straight to doubt, as if the burden of proof lies with the victims. But the burden lies with power. When a military drops tens of thousands of bombs on a densely populated area and the civilian death toll skyrockets, you don’t get to wave it away with, “prove it was us.”

So let’s not pretend this is an unresolved mystery. If you’re going to demand moral clarity, then have the integrity to accept it when it implicates your side too.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Look more carefully. Geneva does not protect things used for military purposes. Period.

You’re right that the Geneva Conventions allow military targets to be attacked—even if they’re embedded in civilian infrastructure. But that’s not a blank check. The law is crystal clear: if civilians are present, you must distinguish, you must minimize harm, and you must not treat civilian life as expendable.

Even if a hospital is used for military purposes, you can’t just bomb it without warning, without proportionality, and without exhausting other options. And you certainly can’t starve an entire population to weaken your enemy. That’s collective punishment—and it’s explicitly forbidden under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

So no, invoking “military use” doesn’t erase the law—it intensifies the responsibility. If you flatten civilian zones because Hamas might be nearby, you’re not executing lawful precision strikes. You’re erasing the distinction between combatant and noncombatant—and that is a war crime, by the very standards you claim to defend.

More like "do you starve Texas" when MAGA takes the food you're sending?

That’s not what’s happening—and you know it.
This isn’t about withholding food from a corrupt faction. It’s about choking off aid to an entire population: children, the elderly, the sick—people who have no power over Hamas, no vote, and no escape. You’re not punishing a group for hijacking aid. You’re justifying the deprivation of millions on the assumption that guilt is collective.

If MAGA seized food shipments in Texas, would your response be to bomb hospitals, block insulin, and destroy every road leading in and out? Of course not. Because when it’s your community, you understand the difference between people and their rulers. But when it’s Gaza, that distinction disappears. That’s not logic—it’s tribalism masquerading as policy.

So no—this isn’t “like starving Texas.” It’s like watching millions suffer, knowing most of them are innocent, and calling it strategy.

The fact that a nation is not a democracy does not mean it's civilians do not suffer if it goes to war.

Exactly—and that’s the point you keep missing.

Civilians do suffer in war, especially under authoritarian regimes. But the existence of suffering doesn’t justify inflicting more of it on people who have no say in their government, no mobility, and no protection. You don’t get to bomb trapped civilians and then say, “Well, war is hard.”

That’s not justice. That’s fatalism with a moral mask.

So if you admit civilians suffer when they lack democratic power, then you’ve already conceded why collective punishment is indefensible. Because it punishes the powerless—not the perpetrators. And if that’s what you’re defending, then you’ve abandoned the very moral distinction you claim to uphold.

Of course we don't.

Bombs: War. Hamas started it, blame Hamas.
Siege: Legal. Israel has bent over backwards compared to the Geneva requirements.
Deaths: Israel remains far and away the best at preventing civilian deaths. They are considerably better than we are.
Gaza unlivable: Blame Tehran and the other Muslim groups that have poured vast efforts into making it unlivable.

Then you’ve admitted it—your sense of justice is tribal, not moral.

You don’t judge actions by their consequences. You judge them by who commits them. When Hamas kills, it’s barbarism. When Israel kills, it’s unfortunate but justified. When Gaza is bombed into rubble, it’s Iran’s fault. When food is blocked, it’s “legal.” When children die, it’s a PR problem, not a moral one.

That’s not accountability. That’s absolution wrapped in legalese.

Israel “bent over backwards”? By dropping more tonnage of explosives than any modern army in such a densely populated civilian zone? By starving families and blocking aid? By bombing hospitals, schools, and refugee camps with full knowledge of who was inside?

If that’s your standard for “best at preventing civilian deaths,” then you’ve redefined morality so thoroughly around impunity that nothing short of annihilation would trouble your conscience—so long as your side did it.

And blaming Tehran for what Israel does is exactly what moral evasion looks like. The moment your argument becomes “they made us do it,” you’ve left the realm of justice. Because if your principles only apply when convenient, they’re not principles. They’re camouflage.

NHC