Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Loren Pechtel]

You have a problem with facts. There are Israelis , including those in the current gov’t, who advocate for the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from the region. Recognizing reality is a sign of rationality and sanity, not antisemitism.

You’ve made it abundantly clear you have mo problem flinging baseless accusations of antisemitism. Those slanders supplement your bigoted anti-Arab tirades to give a more rounded picture of your position.

Except you're not demonstrating anything wrong with his facts….

You don’t think thete is anything wrong with expanding settlements in the West Bank, making Gaza more uninhabitable every day and killing civilians by the score is not evidence of ethnic cleansing?

Many times I've said I don't like the settlements. But note:

1) It's a red herring. The problems predate the settlements.

2) The reality is that removing the settlements would be seen as weakness and thus cause more attacks.

3) Look at the political reality: the average Israeli knows that stopping them provides no benefit to Israel. But tolerating them provides political support from the fundies.

4) This is presented as "expanding" but it's really just recognizing reality that already exists.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

Gremlins in your keyboard?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So it's okay the Gazans are slaughtered?

What does that have to do with ridiculing a group of people for being useful idiots for a terrorist organization that'd just as soon kill them as look at them?

As to your question: of course not! But Gaza started this war, and they have it in their power to end it.

Hamas (which is the de facto government of Gaza) and allied terror groups (Islamic Jihad, Popular Resistance Committees and such) should have capitulated unconditionally a year ago. Then much suffering would have been spared the Gazan people.

Gaza is being rendered into Dresden. How many more Gazans do you think need to die before Gazans overlook all the death and side with Israel... with Hamas guns to their heads of course.

The Gazans have no realistic choice the matter. They are victims. What you miss is that Iran is the oppressor.

I've literally said Iran is the primary source of the issue... many times.

But yet your answer doesn't address it at all.

This is another example of looking for your keys (peace) under the streetlight (Israel.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Military target, valid. The fact that it's built under civilians doesn't change that.

It does, according to international law.

Your opinion to the contrary is irrelevant, because you are a nobody; And monstrous, because you are calling for war crimes.

A bunch of you have a very unrealistic view of what Geneva says.

 

[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.

In other words, all you have is guesswork.

It's not guesswork to see that they simply don't have the manpower to have done it by themselves. And why in the world would they not have brought in others? Without sophisticated INS equipment the workers will have no idea of where they are most of the time and thus the workers only learn what is already known: there are tunnels. And we have seen pictures inside the tunnels--the tunnels wiggle a bit. That's what you get with competent manual labor, machines are too big to wiggle. Nor can the machines make anything but round tunnels.

(Note that by "manual" I'm talking about a human guiding the mining equivalent of a jackhammer (don't know what to call it, the standard jack hammer that you typically see road crews using is based on gravity and thus can't dig a flat tunnel), not pure muscle power.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

You're not addressing the point. This is a case of actions speaking louder than words.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

But you aren't providing any solution other than bowing down.

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.

I wouldn't trust the UN to tell me the sun was out. The medical "NGOs" are under Hamas control if not outright Hamas.

And if 1 in 5 children were acutely malnourished we would easily be able to tell from pictures.

And you speak of one incident where some protesters temporarily blocked some trucks. How about the hundreds of truckloads that simply sit there in Gaza? And who is restricting water? Hamas used pipe for rockets rather than water. Fuel? You think the gas company will continue to supply gas when you don't pay the bill? Food? Hamas seizes most of the aid and resells it at very high prices to fund their operations.

Yes, it's engineered deprivation--but you fail to see that it's Hamas doing the engineering.

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.

Hospitals--you still don't understand what Geneva says.

Aid convoys--Hamas "hijacks" (they show up, drive off with it, no resistance) a convoy, it becomes a valid target. They may call it "local security" but it's not.

Journalists--there is an amazing amount of overlap between the "journalists" and the Hamas propaganda people.

Doctors--nothing comes to mind at the moment. Note again, though, what I said about hospitals.

UN workers--strange how many have been revealed to be Hamas. Well above the population average.

Of course the numbers defy coincidence--because it's not coincidence. Basically everything that happens in Gaza is under Hamas control.

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.

No, you don't understand. You're focusing on the "civilian" part and ignoring the targeting.

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.

Last estimates I saw on it was the invasion killed about 100,000 and most of the fighting was in the desert so civilian deaths would be low. Compare that with 500,000 that Saddam killed to parade in front of the cameras. If Iran hadn't subverted the country the war would have been a net plus for the citizens.

And note that it wasn't really false pretenses. Yes, we fucked up the intel and didn't realize we were chasing phantoms. But that's not why the war happened. Rather, Saddam kept taking things to the brink and only backing down when he was on the edge of getting clobbered. As soon as we backed down from being ready to strike immediately he would go right back to his troublemaking. Bush was tired of that and decided not to accept the pseudo-surrender at 11:59.

It went horribly wrong because the world has had a major case of blindness about Iran and didn't realize that you pretty much couldn't do a regime change in the area without Iran coming to power.

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

The problem is the choice is between fighting evil and surrendering to evil. Iran is playing the long game and once they have the bomb it's only going to get a lot worse.

 

[ZiprHead]

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”.

1) 60 is a drop in the bucket compared to areas that are actually facing starvation. And a drop in the bucket compared to what we would see if the dire warnings about the conditions in Gaza were true.

2) You still are sticking your head in the sand about the fact that they can have medical causes. Remember my post in this thread linking to a box and asking what someone is supposed to do if they are anaphylactic to some of the ingredients? (And pointing to the two that would likely be the problem.) You didn't address it. And even if there's no anaphylaxis issue the people in Gaza aren't going to be able to afford stuff like that. Nor is it likely they would even have access as Hamas would take it and resell it elsewhere. Do you not realize that people can die of malnutrition while the doctors watch helplessly in first world hospitals?

I think since you seem to feel starvation is not a problem in Gaza that you should tell us exactly where the food to feed 1.6 million refugees is coming from. Care to take a shot at it? Let's see what kind of fantasy you can come up with.

 

[NoHolyCows]

But you aren't providing any solution other than bowing down.

No, protecting civilians is not “bowing down.” It’s choosing law over vengeance, humanity over expedience. The false binary you’re creating—either bomb civilians or surrender—is precisely the mindset that leads to atrocities. It’s not a solution. It’s a moral collapse disguised as strategy.

A real solution is one that upholds both security and legality. That includes targeted operations, humanitarian corridors, ceasefire negotiations, and coordinated international pressure—all of which have precedent and all of which are erased the moment you normalize collective punishment.

If your standard for “victory” requires justifying mass suffering, the problem isn’t a lack of alternatives. It’s a refusal to accept that restraint is strength, not weakness. And if you still think only cruelty “works,” then maybe the goal isn’t peace—it’s domination.

I wouldn't trust the UN to tell me the sun was out. The medical "NGOs" are under Hamas control if not outright Hamas.

And if 1 in 5 children were acutely malnourished we would easily be able to tell from pictures.

And you speak of one incident where some protesters temporarily blocked some trucks. How about the hundreds of truckloads that simply sit there in Gaza? And who is restricting water? Hamas used pipe for rockets rather than water. Fuel? You think the gas company will continue to supply gas when you don't pay the bill? Food? Hamas seizes most of the aid and resells it at very high prices to fund their operations.

Yes, it's engineered deprivation--but you fail to see that it's Hamas doing the engineering.

No, this isn’t just about “some protesters” or a few aid trucks. The systematic denial and restriction of aid into Gaza has been verified not just by the UN—whom you dismiss out of hand without evidence—but also by the World Food Programme, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, and independent journalists with no affiliation to Hamas. These groups don’t rely on Hamas data—they gather their own, often at great personal risk.

As for photos: acute malnutrition does show up in images—and it has. But the fact that children aren’t all visibly skeletal doesn’t mean they aren’t starving. That’s not how clinical starvation works. Your argument is like saying, “We don’t see third-degree burns, so the house must not have been on fire.” It’s not serious.

And the claim that aid is just “sitting in Gaza” ignores reality. Much of it never even enters due to Israeli inspection delays, arbitrary denials, and repeated closures of key border crossings. Even U.S. officials have publicly called this out. As for Hamas, yes, they’ve seized aid—but that doesn’t absolve the primary actor controlling the borders, the airspace, and the delivery system.

If Hamas builds tunnels, it’s not an excuse to bomb hospitals. If Hamas misuses aid, it’s not an excuse to throttle an entire population. That’s not moral clarity—it’s scapegoating.

The Geneva Conventions don’t say “you may starve civilians if Hamas misbehaves.” They say civilians must be protected in all circumstances. That’s not optional. It’s the law.

Hospitals--you still don't understand what Geneva says.

Aid convoys--Hamas "hijacks" (they show up, drive off with it, no resistance) a convoy, it becomes a valid target. They may call it "local security" but it's not.

Journalists--there is an amazing amount of overlap between the "journalists" and the Hamas propaganda people.

Doctors--nothing comes to mind at the moment. Note again, though, what I said about hospitals.

UN workers--strange how many have been revealed to be Hamas. Well above the population average.

Of course the numbers defy coincidence--because it's not coincidence. Basically everything that happens in Gaza is under Hamas control.

You don’t get to redefine Geneva law to suit your conclusions. The Geneva Conventions do not say, “If Hamas is nearby, the hospital is fair game.” They say that civilian infrastructure retains protection unless actively and exclusively used for hostile acts—and even then, proportionality and distinction still apply. Simply claiming Hamas operates “near” a hospital or in “control” of an area does not nullify legal protections. That’s not interpretation. That’s erasure.

You dismiss aid convoys as valid targets once Hamas “shows up.” But unless those trucks are proven to be used for military purposes, targeting them violates international law. That’s not speculation—that’s black letter law. “They might be hijacked” is not a justification. It’s a rationalization after the fact.

And on journalists and UN workers: if your standard is that association, employment, or working in Gaza equals membership in Hamas, then you’re not making a legal case—you’re collapsing every civilian distinction into suspicion. That’s not security. It’s blanket criminalization.

You say nothing comes to mind about doctors, yet thousands of medical workers have been killed, and hospitals rendered nonfunctional. Are they guilty too? Or is their death only noted when it can be explained away?

You’re not applying law. You’re creating an environment where the assumption of guilt extends to anyone trying to survive in Gaza, serve others, or report what’s happening. And that’s precisely how the rules of war fall apart—when suspicion becomes a substitute for evidence, and entire categories of people lose their rights because they live in the wrong place.

No, you don't understand. You're focusing on the "civilian" part and ignoring the targeting.

But that’s precisely where international law steps in. The Geneva Conventions and customary law don’t just ask who you were aiming at—they ask what precautions you took to minimize civilian harm, and whether the expected civilian casualties were proportional to the military advantage. This isn’t just about “targeting.” It’s about responsibility for foreseeable consequences.

If a military knowingly strikes targets in civilian areas—especially densely populated ones like Gaza—without effective evacuation, without time for warnings to be heeded, or with full knowledge that children are sheltering nearby, that’s not just tragic. That’s unlawful. Intent isn’t a shield when the effects are systematic and foreseeable.

And even under your framing, you can’t treat the presence of militants as a magic eraser for every civilian death that follows. If civilians are consistently the ones dying in disproportionate numbers, and if protected sites like hospitals and refugee camps are hit again and again, that’s not just a question of “targeting.” That’s a failure—or refusal—to uphold the laws of war.

Last estimates I saw on it was the invasion killed about 100,000 and most of the fighting was in the desert so civilian deaths would be low. Compare that with 500,000 that Saddam killed to parade in front of the cameras. If Iran hadn't subverted the country the war would have been a net plus for the citizens.

And note that it wasn't really false pretenses. Yes, we fucked up the intel and didn't realize we were chasing phantoms. But that's not why the war happened. Rather, Saddam kept taking things to the brink and only backing down when he was on the edge of getting clobbered. As soon as we backed down from being ready to strike immediately he would go right back to his troublemaking. Bush was tired of that and decided not to accept the pseudo-surrender at 11:59.

It went horribly wrong because the world has had a major case of blindness about Iran and didn't realize that you pretty much couldn't do a regime change in the area without Iran coming to power.

But the core issue remains: the war was launched under a false justification—Weapons of Mass Destruction—that turned out to be nonexistent. That’s not a “phantom” we were chasing. That’s a fabricated threat that led to the deaths of over 100,000 people, possibly more, and plunged the region into chaos.

Saddam’s brutality isn’t in question—but international law doesn’t permit regime change wars just because a dictator is cruel. If it did, dozens of invasions would be “justified” right now. And citing Saddam’s crimes to excuse the mass civilian death, torture scandals, and years of insurgency we unleashed isn’t moral reasoning—it’s retroactive rationalization.

As for the “desert war” theory: Fallujah wasn’t a desert. Baghdad wasn’t. Mosul wasn’t. Entire cities were shelled and bombed. Civilian infrastructure was destroyed. Millions were displaced. That didn’t happen in a vacuum—it happened because a war of choice shattered a nation, empowered sectarian violence, and opened the door to Iran precisely because we dismantled the state with no viable plan.

This isn’t hindsight. These warnings were made at the time. They were ignored. And we’re still living with the consequences. That’s not the mark of a justified war. It’s the mark of a moral and strategic disaster.

The problem is the choice is between fighting evil and surrendering to evil. Iran is playing the long game and once they have the bomb it's only going to get a lot worse.

But that’s exactly the problem. When the choice is constantly framed as “fight evil or surrender to evil,” it becomes a blank check for any atrocity done in the name of preemption. That’s how Fallujah was justified. That’s how Gaza is being justified. And that’s how moral clarity gets sacrificed on the altar of endless war: not through explicit cruelty, but through narratives that convince people that anything less than overwhelming force is weakness.

If Iran is the concern, then address Iran. But bombing civilians in Gaza, starving children, and leveling homes does not stop nuclear proliferation in Tehran. That’s not strategy—it’s misdirected vengeance.

And if your logic is “things are going to get worse, so anything we do now is justified,” then you’ve already accepted the collapse of restraint. That’s not defending civilization. That’s abandoning it.

NHC

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

IDF ordered to stop Gaza-bound aid ship carrying Greta Thunberg

Alarm briefly sounds on vessel Madleen amid interception fears after Israeli defence minister tells military to ‘take all necessary measures’ to block humanitarian ship

www.theguardian.com

 

[TomC]

IDF ordered to stop Gaza-bound aid ship carrying Greta Thunberg

Alarm briefly sounds on vessel Madleen amid interception fears after Israeli defence minister tells military to ‘take all necessary measures’ to block humanitarian ship

www.theguardian.com

Israeli government refuses to allow Muslim terrorist supporters to enter the war zone created by previous Muslim terrorists to bring supplies.

Yeah, so?
Thunberg can swim back to Sweden when her yatch takes a hit in a war zone. Or not...
Tom

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

IDF ordered to stop Gaza-bound aid ship carrying Greta Thunberg

Alarm briefly sounds on vessel Madleen amid interception fears after Israeli defence minister tells military to ‘take all necessary measures’ to block humanitarian ship

www.theguardian.com

Israeli government refuses to allow Muslim terrorist supporters to enter the war zone created by previous Muslim terrorists to bring supplies.

Humanitarian aid...which is what is already being done, but not enough for the children.

Yeah, so?
Thunberg can swim back to Sweden when her yatch takes a hit in a war zone. Or not...

This callousness and downright evil just shows time and again that you people are not interested in saving the lives of innocent civilians. You just don't care.

 

[TomC]

Humanitarian aid...which is what is already being done, but not enough for the children.

Yes there is plenty for the children. That's not the same as the GWM allowing the kids to get any.

This callousness and downright evil just shows time and again that you people are not interested in saving the lives of innocent civilians. You just don't care.

And you people don't care about saving the lives of innocent civilians or you would be fighting for an international force to combat the Muslim terrorists who run Gaza.
Tom

 

[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.

You're not addressing the point. This is a case of actions speaking louder than words.

Which actions of pood are speaking louder than pood’s words? Be specific while recalling this is sn internet forum.

 

[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.

It's not guesswork to see that they simply don't have the manpower to have done it by themselves. And why in the world would they not have brought in others? Without sophisticated INS equipment the workers will have no idea of where they are most of the time and thus the workers only learn what is already known: there are tunnels. And we have seen pictures inside the tunnels--the tunnels wiggle a bit. That's what you get with competent manual labor, machines are too big to wiggle. Nor can the machines make anything but round tunnels.

(Note that by "manual" I'm talking about a human guiding the mining equivalent of a jackhammer (don't know what to call it, the standard jack hammer that you typically see road crews using is based on gravity and thus can't dig a flat tunnel), not pure muscle power.)

And you know that the every civilian digger was not coerced and knew exactly shat the tunnels were for because…..?

I ask, because this tangent started on the allegation that civilians knowingly snd voluntarily helped Hamas with the tunnels.

 

[laughing dog]

You have a problem with facts. There are Israelis , including those in the current gov’t, who advocate for the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from the region. Recognizing reality is a sign of rationality and sanity, not antisemitism.

You’ve made it abundantly clear you have mo problem flinging baseless accusations of antisemitism. Those slanders supplement your bigoted anti-Arab tirades to give a more rounded picture of your position.

Except you're not demonstrating anything wrong with his facts….

You don’t think thete is anything wrong with expanding settlements in the West Bank, making Gaza more uninhabitable every day and killing civilians by the score is not evidence of ethnic cleansing?

Many times I've said I don't like the settlements. But note:

1) It's a red herring. The problems predate the settlements.

2) The reality is that removing the settlements would be seen as weakness and thus cause more attacks.

3) Look at the political reality: the average Israeli knows that stopping them provides no benefit to Israel. But tolerating them provides political support from the fundies.

4) This is presented as "expanding" but it's really just recognizing reality that already exists.

Whether or not the problems predate anything or there are politics involved do mot excuse ethnic cleansing via expansion of the settlements nor allowing settlers to engage in ethnic cleansing with violence.

 

[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”.

1) 60 is a drop in the bucket compared to areas that are actually facing starvation. And a drop in the bucket compared to what we would see if the dire warnings about the conditions in Gaza were true.

60 is 60 too many. It really is that simple.

And that ignores the longer run effects of malnutrition on the young.

2) You still are sticking your head in the sand about the fact that they can have medical causes. Remember my post in this thread linking to a box and asking what someone is supposed to do if they are anaphylactic to some of the ingredients? (And pointing to the two that would likely be the problem.) You didn't address it. And even if there's no anaphylaxis issue the people in Gaza aren't going to be able to afford stuff like that. Nor is it likely they would even have access as Hamas would take it and resell it elsewhere. Do you not realize that people can die of malnutrition while the doctors watch helplessly in first world hospitals?

There is nothing to address because the blockade included medical supplies. Add in the destruction of medical facilities and your excuses look more pathetic.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

The problem is you continue to believe Hamas propaganda.

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.

No, I'm not excusing atrocity. I'm recognizing that Hamas claiming atrocity doesn't make it so.

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.

"Most documented" because so much effort is directed at Jew-bashing.

Gaza is small potatoes compared to the real collapses going on now.

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.

Almost all of these wouldn't know a war crime if it jumped up and bit them. It's always referring to a supposed pattern of behavior--because there's nothing they can point to that's a war crime. A war crime is a specific act, not a general pattern.

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.

I accept that I have no power to stop Tehran from engineering the devastation in Gaza.

You're falling into a standard psychological manipulation trap:

1) Present horrible situation that has no easy answers.
2) Propose "solution". Every objection to the solution is "rebutted" by pointing to how horrible the situation is.

Just look at what has happened with MAGA and The Felon. He offered a false solution, people flocked to it. The same thing is happening with Israel, people are flocking to the "answer" of blaming Israel and demanding they don't defend themselves.

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 fail to understand. You claim razed neighborhoods. I see collapsed tunnels--when a tunnel collapses it generally takes out the foundation of anything above it, collapsing the building. Especially since most of the construction seems to be concrete and masonry--very strong against most forces from above, very vulnerable to most forces from below.

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.

The first two don't ring a bell, I do recall the last one. Israel dropped on a meeting of some commanders. Turns out there was a lot of boom in the building. Everyone's pretending they hit the camp, the reality is they hit a completely valid target nearby and got unexpected secondaries. (And when you watch the Israeli bombs it's often quite clear they were fused to explode underground--most of the blast goes up, little damage around.)

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.

Yeah, Hamas has blocked, looted and shot at aid trucks. Yet you assume it's Israel doing it.

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.

The list of every major international body monitoring the Gaza casualties is <None>. There is no independent confirmation whatsoever. There have been some things which have pretended to be independent. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of a study in The Lancet that used a capture/recapture approach to validating data--but capture/recapture absolutely requires that the recapture be independent and they based it on an attempt to count deaths not in the main database. Either they were as stupid as The Felon or they knew they were coming up with fake data.

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.

And here you get it completely wrong. You do get to endlessly kill combatants that have not surrendered. (And individual surrender is typically recognized by discarding all weapons and complying with all instructions. And, yes, in Gaza those instructions will normally involve a requirement to strip--necessary to ensure they aren't wearing a bomb.)

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.

Technical jargon?? I was using the minimum of math to make my point.

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.

My point was that a 2000# bomb in a tunnel was not too destructive for the environment it was used in.

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.

Read!!

I was not implying anything about surgical accuracy. I'm saying the damage was in a line because the damage followed the tunnel. The tunnel is a valid target, you don't get to say that the stuff that will fall into the void is not expendable. The decision that it was expendable was made by Hamas when they tunneled under it. And note that Israel did a very good job of getting people out of those buildings before blowing the tunnels.

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 missing is that an awful lot of the damage is from stuff falling into the void, not blast damage. And Geneva most certainly does not prohibit hitting such a target.

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.

As I've said before, even a pessimistic estimate of the death toll is 1.5 civilians per combatant. That is way, way below military norm. Thus your allegation of disproportionate civilian casualties is false. And when civilians are on a military target the burden most certainly is on them to get away. The Israeli notifications are far, far beyond what Geneva demands.

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

I'm not ignoring them.

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.

It's blockade, not occupation. And I agree it's blockaded. Blockade is a perfectly legal act of war.

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.

The problem is you are alleging Israeli actions that don't exist.

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.

AI and HRW don't even try to assess the evidence. They consider it impossible to verify and don't even try. And while the intent behind them is good they've allowed themselves to be manipulated into lending their credentials to anyone who wants to frame someone.

And you fail to understand what I was saying about the ICJ. They have nothing at all, the ICJ "case" is simply South Africa alleging wrongdoing without presenting any evidence. And, yes, I don't like the ICJ--it's far too capable of being politically manipulated. That's why the US wouldn't sign on.

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.

Saying it's plausible doesn't mean they have any evidence.

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.

Then why did Ireland? file with the ICJ asking to redefine genocide?

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're omitting the step where you prove mass atrocity.

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.

They are a means of reducing the ability of Gaza to throw weapons at Israel. Without that the situation would be much, much worse. And it doesn't matter that the war has been going on for 80 years, that doesn't make it not a war.

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.

It's still the same war. There have been those funding it since 1948 because the existence of Israel is a horrendous insult to Islam. They really hate that conquered land escaped.

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.

It's not that it's fine to kill civilians. It's that the death of human shields in war happens. You have a very unrealistic picture of the protections given by Geneva.

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.

No. We have no victory to be after. And 50k is far less than 500k.

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?

Fundamentally, this is the trolley problem.

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.

Once again, you have fallen for the propaganda. Extremism follows the money, not the actions.

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.

Iraq was a failure because there was an even worse oppressor waiting in the wings.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

The thing is there are a lot of forces out there radicalizing Muslims. "Muslim terror attack" does provide the relevant information. We don't know the exact identity of the radicalizers, we don't know exactly how the radicalizers manipulated them, but unless that information permitted effective action to be taken against the radicalizers it adds nothing. (And if the government has actionable information they'll be keeping it a secret as it would be of little value if the bad guys knew we knew.)

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.

It's not merely when they kill in <insert group>'s name, but when they are radicalized by the group. As for Christian terrorism--I'm not coming up with any examples of "Christian" that are not better described by a subset. White nationalist terrorists. Abortion clinic terrorists. The thing is the Christians are in the majority, what you see is oppression, not terrorism.

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.

"try their best" and "take all feasible precautions" are the same thing. And that's all that's expected of them.

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.

It's not sleight of hand. It's demonstrating a tremendous effort to get people off the X.

You continue to act as if the numbers somehow prove something. They don't.

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.

The fact that you don't like it doesn't make it wrong. You have a very idealized notion of how war goes. (Not surprising, most people don't realize how bad it is.)

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.

Where are you getting your list?

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.

Examples??

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.

The problem is that you are demanding the impossible. I've never been in the military, I can't evaluate all the details. But I can look at what happens: Israel has by far the best record. And I have a very hard time with the notion that the world's best is an abysmal failure. Especially since nobody is making any realistic proposals of how to do better. There are plenty of countries with skilled people who don't like Israel, if they can't see something why do you think there is something??

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.

The point is the data is sufficiently flawed as to probably mean combatants exceed civilians.

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

None of what you discuss proves your point. You have a flawed idea of what war entails.

 

[ZiprHead]

Israeli Forces Board Gaza Aid Flotilla and Detain 12 Crew Members

Zeteo contributor Greta Thunberg was on board the ship.

zeteo.com

Israeli forces boarded the Gaza Aid Flotilla ship, the “Madleen,” early Monday morning local time and detained the 12 passengers on board, according to several reports.

The humanitarians on the ship, including globally-known humanitarian and Zeteo contributor Greta Thunberg, European Union Member of Parliament Rima Hassan, and several other volunteers, sought to deliver aid to Gaza.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition says it has lost connection with the vessel, which was carrying medical supplies, diapers, baby formula, children’s prosthetics, and other desperately needed aid in Gaza.