Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[NoHolyCows]

The problem is you continue to believe Hamas propaganda.

Then show me the lie. The bombed hospitals? The malnourished kids? The blocked aid? Those aren’t Hamas press releases—they’re documented by international observers. Dismissing it all as “propaganda” isn’t a rebuttal. It’s a refusal to look.

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

Then stop dodging: it’s not just Hamas making the claims. It’s UN agencies, doctors, journalists, and aid workers—many with no ties to Hamas. When every source but your own side is dismissed, you’re not seeking truth. You’re shielding power from scrutiny.

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

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

If Gaza is “small potatoes,” then you’ve already conceded the argument—because you’re not measuring morality, you’re minimizing it. Civilian suffering doesn’t shrink because you change the subject. It only disappears when you choose not to see it.

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.

That’s simply false. War crimes can be individual acts, but they are also defined by patterns—especially when those acts are systematic or widespread. That’s exactly how the Rome Statute and Geneva Conventions define crimes against humanity and grave breaches. You don’t get to bomb hospitals over and over and claim each strike is isolated. When the pattern is the policy, it is the crime.

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.

What you’ve described isn’t a rebuttal—it’s deflection. Blaming Tehran may be politically convenient, but it doesn’t erase Israel’s responsibility for how it wages war. Saying “I have no power to stop Iran” doesn’t justify what’s being done to civilians in Gaza, just like blaming “MAGA” doesn’t excuse trampling rights in response.

If your only defense is “someone else made this unavoidable,” then you’ve surrendered moral agency. And when entire neighborhoods are turned to rubble, when starvation spreads, when humanitarian aid is blocked—that’s not a trap. That’s a choice.

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.

Collapsed tunnels don’t explain everything. When entire residential blocks are reduced to rubble by repeated airstrikes—well beyond the scope of a single structural failure—that’s not just secondary damage. That’s deliberate, wide-area bombardment. You can’t blame the soil for what precision-guided munitions decide to hit.

And if a tunnel runs under a school, a clinic, or a crowded apartment building, that raises the burden of caution—not lowers it. The law doesn’t say “bomb deeper.” It says “protect civilians.” Collateral collapse is still collapse. Civilian death doesn’t become acceptable just because the blast came from underneath.

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.)

That’s the problem—what’s framed as a “valid target” ends up being a known shelter zone, packed with families, aid tents, or evacuees. Even if the bomb was aimed at a meeting, if it was surrounded by civilians—and if intelligence knew that—then it still fails the legal standard of precaution and proportionality.

You don’t get to say, “We meant to kill the commanders” and then shrug when the fireball kills women and children sleeping nearby. That’s not a tragic accident. That’s foreseeable harm, and when it keeps happening, the excuse wears thin.

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

If Hamas interferes with aid, that’s absolutely a violation—and should be condemned. But here’s the difference: when Israel controls the borders, coordinates the crossings, and bombs the routes, it’s not an assumption—it’s documented responsibility.

Humanitarian agencies, the UN, and even U.S. officials have confirmed Israeli restrictions on aid delivery. You don’t get to deflect by pointing at Hamas while ignoring who holds the keys. Both can be guilty—but only one controls the siege.

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.

Then let’s walk it back to basics.

You don’t need to accept every figure from Hamas. But if you reject all external verification—from OCHA, WHO, UNRWA, HRW, Amnesty, Doctors Without Borders, and independent media—then what’s left? You’ve built an echo chamber where only the party executing the strikes gets to define reality. That’s not critical thinking. That’s epistemic collapse.

If no civilian death toll is credible unless confirmed by the IDF, then you haven’t just questioned the data—you’ve made truth conditional on power.

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.)

Then we agree—combatants who pose an ongoing threat can be lawfully targeted. But that’s not what’s at issue here. What’s being challenged is not Israel targeting armed fighters—it’s the massive, repeated civilian death toll, including women, children, and people who never held a weapon or had a chance to surrender.

You keep shifting the conversation to what’s lawful against combatants. But the law you’re ignoring is the one that governs what happens when civilians are present. That’s not semantics—it’s the very core of the Geneva Conventions. And no, you don’t get to kill “endlessly” if civilians are dying in the process. That’s where legality ends and atrocity begins.

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

Then let’s drop the math for a moment and speak plainly: if your strategy predictably kills civilians by the thousands, destroys shelters, flattens neighborhoods, and leaves children starving, the problem isn’t the math—it’s the method.

No formula justifies that outcome. If the inputs are “target militants,” but the result is mass civilian death, then something is fundamentally wrong. And whether you call it a miscalculation or a tactic, international law still calls it what it is: unlawful.

NHC

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

You are making the opposite mistake--treating anything embedded in civilians as immune because no means of protecting the civilians is adequate.

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.

And you have never established they didn't do those things. Your entire argument comes down to the outcome isn't nice and pretty therefore Israel is bad.

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

That’s not what’s happening—and you know it.

That is what's happening even though you deny 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.

Hamas was taking most of the aid. It's their primary source of revenue.

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.

The thing is in a case like this the broad brush is determined. Change does not come about by proclaiming utopian solutions. Situations such as Gaza always involve major outside funding. And it's generally sufficient to create such situations. There are a few cases where the funding is from the export of something valuable (prime example, FARC/cocaine) rather than an outright gift, but it's always there. Every such situation has ended either with the victory of the evil side or the end of the funding of the evil side.

Why should Gaza be any different??

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.

Your continued assertions about punishment do not make it so.

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.

No. It's just I don't let Tehran dictate my perception of the situation. You're swallowing their line completely and thus arriving at the conclusions they want.

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.

No. I judge them based on who they are aiming at. I see IDF videos of booms that cause secondaries. I see Hamas videos of brutality. That says loads.

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.

I look at the results. They are doing far better than anyone else. Why should I question the world's best at anything? (Admittedly, Google once said I was walking supersonic. Edge case, I reported the bug, AFIAK it was never fixed (and probably couldn't be fixed) and has become moot by now.)

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

I blame Tehran because they are the ones that set out to create devastation in Gaza.

 

[NoHolyCows]

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

Then your point fails—because if a 2,000-pound bomb collapses entire buildings above and kills civilians inside, it is too destructive for that environment. That’s exactly what proportionality addresses: not just what you aimed at, but what happened as a result. When the known risk is mass civilian death in a dense area, your intent doesn’t erase the outcome. The law judges consequences—not just targets.

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.

Then let’s be clear about what you’re defending. You’re saying once Hamas tunnels under civilian buildings, everything above becomes fair game—that their war crime cancels Israel’s legal obligation to protect civilians. That’s not how international law works. Civilians don’t lose their rights because of what’s beneath them. And if destroying a tunnel means knowingly collapsing homes, schools, or shelters, the strike must be reassessed—not rubber-stamped.

Israel may warn people, but a warning doesn’t cleanse a disproportionate attack. You don’t get legal immunity for telling civilians to leave, then dropping bombs that destroy entire blocks. That’s not “very good.” That’s legally and morally bankrupt.

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.

Then you’re missing what the law actually prohibits: foreseeable, excessive harm to civilians—even if that harm comes from structural collapse and not direct blast. The Geneva Conventions and customary international humanitarian law don’t just care how damage happens; they care that it happens, especially if it’s predictable.

If a tunnel strike predictably causes buildings full of civilians to collapse, that risk must be part of the proportionality assessment. Saying “the damage came from gravity, not explosives” doesn’t get you off the hook. If the result is mass civilian death, the legality of the target doesn’t erase the illegality of the method. That’s the line—one you’re rationalizing away.

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.

Even if we accepted your 1.5 ratio—which is itself based on disputed and incomplete data—that doesn’t automatically make the campaign proportional under international law. Proportionality isn’t about averages. It’s about each strike being weighed for the specific military gain versus the expected civilian harm. You don’t get to bomb a family shelter because the overall death ratio looks favorable.

And no, the burden is not on civilians to flee when they are trapped in a blockaded zone with nowhere safe to go. Geneva doesn’t say, “If you drop leaflets, you’re good.” It says all feasible precautions must be taken to protect civilians—and that includes not striking if the harm outweighs the gain. Warnings don’t legalize destruction. They don’t turn civilians into fair targets. And they don’t erase your responsibility just because you told people to run while bombing the exits.

I'm not ignoring them.

Then you should know that the Geneva Conventions don’t just regulate how war is fought—they limit what’s permissible, even against an enemy who violates them. If you’re not ignoring them, then you’d acknowledge that:

– Civilians must be protected in all circumstances

– Starvation as a method of warfare is explicitly prohibited

– Civilian objects don’t become military targets just because there may be enemy infrastructure nearby

– Warnings do not absolve you if the attack still causes excessive civilian harm

If you accept those principles, then the scale and pattern of what’s happening in Gaza isn’t morally defensible—it’s a breach. And if you’re not ignoring the Conventions, you should be calling it that.

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

Blockade can be legal under international law—but not when it becomes a form of collective punishment. That’s the distinction you’re avoiding.

A blockade that cuts off food, fuel, water, and medicine to a civilian population—especially one that cannot flee—is not just a military tactic. When it leads to mass deprivation, it violates Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions and constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute.

So yes, Israel calls it a blockade. But the consequences—the deliberate strangling of civilian life—cross into territory the law defines as unlawful siege warfare. And when you use a legal term to justify an illegal result, that’s not defending the law. That’s laundering war crimes through semantics.

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

Then let’s be precise.

Are hospitals not destroyed? Al-Shifa, Al-Ahli, Nasser—flattened or raided, with mass casualties and patients buried under rubble.

Are refugee camps not bombed? Jabalia, Rafah, Nuseirat—struck with full knowledge of civilian presence.

Are humanitarian convoys not attacked? Multiple aid workers from World Central Kitchen were killed in clearly marked vehicles, despite coordination.

Are tens of thousands not dead—over 70% women and children, according to WHO and UN reports?

You can disagree with interpretations. You cannot erase the documented events.

So if you say these actions “don’t exist,” your argument isn’t with me—it’s with nearly every credible humanitarian, medical, and legal organization monitoring the conflict. And if your only way to defend Israel is to deny observable, filmed, geolocated facts, then the problem isn’t misinformation. It’s willful blindness.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

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.

If your position is that every major human rights body, legal institution, and international court is too biased, too manipulated, or too incompetent to be trusted—then what exactly would you accept as valid evidence?

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have documented abuses by Hamas, by Syria, by Russia, by the U.S., and by Israel. When they publish findings, they include detailed field investigations, photographic evidence, satellite imagery, and eyewitness accounts. Dismissing their reports without engaging the content is not skepticism—it’s ideological filtering.

As for the ICJ, you say South Africa presented “nothing”—yet the Court accepted the case, issued provisional measures, and explicitly acknowledged that the risk of genocide is plausible. That doesn’t happen without review of submitted material. You may not like that process, but you can’t pretend it didn’t happen.

If no international body is legitimate, no evidence is credible, and no criticism is allowed, then what remains isn’t analysis. It’s a blank check for impunity.

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

But that’s exactly what it does mean in legal terms.

For the ICJ to issue provisional measures, it must be satisfied that the applicant (in this case, South Africa) has presented a prima facie case—meaning enough evidence to make the risk plausible. This is not a casual statement. It’s a formal threshold in international law, and it requires submissions, documentation, and factual grounds.

They don’t issue legally binding orders because someone told a compelling story. They do it when there’s sufficient material evidence to justify intervention under the Genocide Convention.

So yes—“plausible” in this context does mean they’ve seen evidence. You may disagree with the conclusion, but denying that any evidence exists misrepresents the process entirely.

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

Ireland did not ask to redefine genocide. That claim misrepresents what actually happened. Ireland, like several other countries, has expressed concern over how the existing legal definition of genocide is applied—particularly the difficulty of proving specific intent in international courts. But they did not propose changing the definition itself. The definition of genocide, as established in the 1948 Genocide Convention, already includes more than just mass killing. It encompasses acts intended to destroy a group in whole or in part, such as creating life conditions that lead to destruction, causing serious harm, or preventing births. What Ireland has criticized is not the definition, but how international bodies often fail to act even when these criteria are met. Their position is about enforcement and political will—not about rewriting the law. So if you’re pointing to Ireland as evidence that genocide is being redefined, you’re not engaging with what they actually said. You’re echoing a deflection.

You're omitting the step where you prove mass atrocity.

Then let’s be clear: over 35,000 killed, the majority women and children. Entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. UN shelters, aid convoys, and hospitals repeatedly struck. Famine declared in the north. International humanitarian agencies, war crimes investigators, and legal experts across the globe have documented this—not based on hearsay, but on field reports, satellite imagery, casualty patterns, and intercepted communications.

You’re not waiting for proof. You’re refusing to accept it.

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.

Then call it what it is—a war without end, where one side controls the borders, the airspace, the economy, and the population registry of the other. That’s not two equal parties fighting. That’s a siege.

Yes, Israel says the blockade is to reduce rocket attacks. But let’s not pretend the effect is limited to weapons. It punishes the entire population—children, the sick, the displaced—decade after decade. That’s not just war. It’s containment without resolution, and it’s why the cycle never ends. Because when you treat an entire people as a permanent threat, you guarantee permanent resistance.

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.

Then call it what it is—a war without end, where one side controls the borders, the airspace, the economy, and the population registry of the other. That’s not two equal parties fighting. That’s a siege.

Yes, Israel says the blockade is to reduce rocket attacks. But let’s not pretend the effect is limited to weapons. It punishes the entire population—children, the sick, the displaced—decade after decade. That’s not just war. It’s containment without resolution, and it’s why the cycle never ends. Because when you treat an entire people as a permanent threat, you guarantee permanent resistance.

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.

Then ask yourself this: if it’s still the same war, why are half the people dying children who weren’t alive for any of it?

You say the war never ended—but that doesn’t give you license to wage it without distinction, without restraint, and without consequence. If your response to deep-rooted hatred is to mirror its logic—treating every Palestinian as if they’re part of a generational enemy—then you’ve abandoned defense and embraced vengeance. That’s not preserving peace. It’s ensuring permanent war.

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.

And that’s exactly the slippery slope international law exists to prevent.

The Geneva Conventions don’t guarantee zero civilian deaths. They require militaries to do everything feasible to avoid them—even when the enemy is breaking the rules. Saying “civilian deaths happen” isn’t a legal argument. It’s a moral shrug. And the moment you normalize it, you erase the very line that separates lawful warfare from atrocity.

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

But that’s the trap—pretending there’s no “victory” yet, so no responsibility applies.

If your campaign has already killed over 35,000 people, displaced nearly the entire population, and created famine conditions, then the failure has already begun. You don’t get to dodge accountability by saying “we haven’t won yet.” That’s how atrocities get dragged out under the illusion that salvation is just one more strike away.

And comparing 50,000 to 500,000 as if lower numbers make it acceptable? That’s not moral calculus. That’s just moral numbness.

Fundamentally, this is the trolley problem.

Then own it—because in the trolley problem, the whole point is that you know what you’re sacrificing. You don’t get to pull the lever, crush civilians under the wheels, and then claim it was the only option.

Invoking the trolley problem isn’t a defense. It’s an admission that you’ve reduced moral judgment to arithmetic—lives as numbers, not people. But in real life, the choices aren’t so neat. The rail isn’t fixed. The lever isn’t the only tool. And pretending this war is some tragic but necessary calculation ignores every other way that justice, restraint, and diplomacy could have been tried—and weren’t.

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

Then explain why extremism thrives most in places bombed, blockaded, and broken—not just bribed. If it were only about money, Gaza would be quiet, and ISIS never would’ve risen from the ashes of Iraq. But we’ve seen this pattern before: destroy the infrastructure, kill the families, leave a power vacuum—and then act surprised when rage fills it.

You say I’ve fallen for propaganda, but what you’re ignoring is history. When you reduce people to rubble and leave them nothing to live for, you don’t kill extremism. You feed it.

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

Then what exactly is the plan in Gaza—besides destruction?

If Iraq failed because it empowered a worse force, what do you think happens when Gaza is left in ruins, leaderless, starving, and traumatized? Who steps in? Who rebuilds? What fills the vacuum—moderates or militants?

You can’t condemn Iraq for unleashing chaos and then cheer a strategy that repeats the same pattern. If your only vision for the future is “not Hamas,” without food, aid, governance, or hope, you’re not preventing the next oppressor. You’re building the conditions for them.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You are making the opposite mistake--treating anything embedded in civilians as immune because no means of protecting the civilians is adequate.

That’s not what I said—and it’s not what the law says either.

Military targets don’t become immune because they’re surrounded by civilians. But civilian presence doesn’t make every strike permissible either. The law doesn’t demand perfection—it demands that all feasible precautions be taken to avoid or minimize civilian harm. If the only way to strike a target is to knowingly kill scores of civilians, the strike is not lawful.

You’re flipping the burden. The obligation isn’t on civilians to disappear. It’s on the attacker to choose methods that protect them. That’s not idealism. That’s codified law.

And you have never established they didn't do those things. Your entire argument comes down to the outcome isn't nice and pretty therefore Israel is bad.

No—it comes down to legal standards, not “nice and pretty.” You don’t get to reverse-engineer legality from destruction.

When hospitals, schools, shelters, and aid convoys are repeatedly struck—and starvation conditions are well-documented by international agencies—the burden is on the actor causing that harm to show they complied with international law, not on civilians or observers to prove otherwise.

And if proportionality, precaution, and distinction are consistently violated in practice, then the pattern itself becomes the evidence. This isn’t about being anti-Israel. It’s about refusing to accept war crimes from any state, no matter the flag.

That is what's happening even though you deny it.

No—it’s not.

Starving Texas would mean cutting off food, fuel, and medicine to everyone because some extremists seized control. That’s collective punishment. And that’s exactly what’s happening in Gaza: 2.2 million people, most of them civilians, are being deprived of aid not because they stole it—but because someone might.

That’s not targeting. That’s siege warfare. And denying it by analogy doesn’t make it any less real.

Hamas was taking most of the aid. It's their primary source of revenue.

And if that were truly the concern, the solution would be to secure the aid—not to block it altogether.

Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly called for monitored delivery systems, third-party distribution, and protected corridors. Israel has rejected or obstructed many of those efforts. If the goal were really to keep aid from Hamas while protecting civilians, you’d see a plan to deliver more aid safely—not less.

Cutting off food and medicine to millions because some of it might be stolen is not a security measure. It’s the textbook definition of collective punishment.

The thing is in a case like this the broad brush is determined. Change does not come about by proclaiming utopian solutions. Situations such as Gaza always involve major outside funding. And it's generally sufficient to create such situations. There are a few cases where the funding is from the export of something valuable (prime example, FARC/cocaine) rather than an outright gift, but it's always there. Every such situation has ended either with the victory of the evil side or the end of the funding of the evil side.

Why should Gaza be any different??

Because what makes Gaza different is that the overwhelming majority of the people suffering are not the ones wielding the power—or the weapons.

You’re not talking about cutting off a cartel or dismantling a militia. You’re talking about punishing an entire population of civilians—half of them children—on the assumption that the only path to defeating “evil” is to make life unlivable for everyone under its shadow.

If every conflict were resolved by starving and bombing people until outside funding dried up, then every innocent life becomes a pawn. That’s not strategy. That’s surrendering to the logic of brutality. And once that’s your compass, the war’s already lost—morally, if not militarily.

Your continued assertions about punishment do not make it so.

No, but facts do.

When civilians are denied food, water, fuel, medicine, and the ability to flee a war zone—when aid is systematically blocked and infrastructure is bombed—those aren’t accidents. That’s not a tragic coincidence. That’s a pattern.

Call it “pressure,” “siege,” or “deterrence,” but when the suffering overwhelmingly falls on people who have no say, no vote, and no way out, that’s the definition of collective punishment. Denying it doesn’t erase the reality—it just shows you’ve decided it doesn’t matter.

No. It's just I don't let Tehran dictate my perception of the situation. You're swallowing their line completely and thus arriving at the conclusions they want.

Then let’s be clear: If your view is shaped only by opposition to Tehran, not by the evidence on the ground, then you’re not evaluating the facts—you’re filtering them through an enemy lens.

That’s not independent thinking. That’s reactionary logic. And it’s how entire populations get written off—not because of what they’ve done, but because of who they’re lumped in with. That’s not resisting propaganda. That’s becoming its mirror.

No. I judge them based on who they are aiming at. I see IDF videos of booms that cause secondaries. I see Hamas videos of brutality. That says loads.

Then what you’ve admitted is that intent overrides outcome for you. If the IDF aims at a militant and kills a dozen civilians, that’s fine. If Hamas aims at civilians and kills them, that’s barbaric. But the law doesn’t work that way—and neither does morality.

If you justify civilian death by saying, “We didn’t mean to, but it happened,” while condemning the other side for the same result, you’re not applying a principle. You’re applying a preference. That’s not justice. That’s just choosing sides.

look at the results. They are doing far better than anyone else. Why should I question the world's best at anything? (Admittedly, Google once said I was walking supersonic. Edge case, I reported the bug, AFIAK it was never fixed (and probably couldn't be fixed) and has become moot by now.)

So by that logic, any atrocity becomes acceptable as long as it’s relatively smaller than someone else’s? That’s not a standard. That’s moral outsourcing. “Better than average” is not a defense when the average is already indefensible.

If thousands of children dead, famine conditions, and entire neighborhoods leveled is what “the best” looks like, then your metric isn’t humanity—it’s efficiency in destruction. And the fact that you reach for a GPS bug as a comparison only underscores how casually you’re treating real-world suffering.

I blame Tehran because they are the ones that set out to create devastation in Gaza.

Then blame Tehran all you want—but it doesn’t erase what Israel chose to do in response.

Cause doesn’t equal justification. If Tehran wanted devastation and Israel delivered it, that’s not defeating the enemy—that’s playing their script. You don’t win a moral war by mimicking the enemy’s disregard for human life. You win it by refusing to become what they want you to be.

Justice means being accountable even when provoked. Otherwise, it’s not justice. It’s vengeance with a better press team.

NHC

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This warms my heart. I still have hope there's enough Palestinians who want peace to kick Hamas out

This is also pretty major. Hamas does not tolerate Palestinian dissent. There's no free speech in Gaza. They have pretty brutal internal repression.

You don't say. It is odd how you speak out of both sides of your mouth, condemned the Gazans for not overtaking Hamas... while at the same time admitting Hamas rule brutally.

*snip*

That was a lot of text to pretty much agree with what I said you are saying... all the while denying that you say it. Want to stop Hamas, stop the money. Iran is the primary target in stopping Hamas. Bombs won't do it.

The problem is they have absolutely no reason to stop. Diplomacy does not work, they just accept the overtures and keep on doing what they were doing.

Thus we are faced with limiting the damage.

Egypt and Jordan. Nuff said aabout the bullshit diplomacy doesn't work.

Neither were primary actors. And note that Egypt has to be to some degree complicit in arming Hamas. If they weren't profiting from the smuggling they wouldn't care so much about the Philadelphia Corridor.

 

[NoHolyCows]

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 your point is that radicalization is real and dangerous, I agree. But that’s exactly why we shouldn’t reduce the label to “Muslim terror attack.” Because radicalization isn’t an inevitable consequence of being Muslim—it’s a distortion fueled by politics, ideology, war, poverty, and sometimes foreign interference. Labeling it by religion blurs those causes and narrows the public imagination to a single, lazy conclusion: Islam equals violence.

That doesn’t help fight terrorism. It helps fuel it. It turns potential allies into suspects, communities into surveillance zones, and foreign policy into a self-fulfilling cycle of fear and reprisal. If your goal is to stop radicalization, you don’t do it by reinforcing the frame that terrorists themselves want: that they speak for all Muslims. They don’t. And the more we buy into that framing, the more power we hand them.

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.

What you’re describing is exactly the problem. When the attacker is Muslim, the religion gets top billing. But when the attacker is Christian, it’s qualified—“white nationalist,” “anti-abortion,” “lone wolf”—anything but “Christian terrorism.” That’s not objectivity. That’s selective framing.

You say Christian terrorists are better described by a subset. But so are Islamist ones—Salafist, jihadist, Wahhabi. Yet we don’t hear those labels dominate. Instead, we get “Muslim terror” as the headline, as if 1.9 billion people share a motive.

And saying “Christians are the majority, so it’s oppression not terrorism” just reinforces the double standard. Terrorism is defined by method and motive, not by the perpetrator’s demographic. If a white Christian man shoots up a mosque for ideological reasons, that’s terrorism—no less than if a Muslim man attacks a synagogue.

Radicalization matters. But religion isn’t the cause—it’s the canvas extremists paint on. Treating an entire faith as shorthand for threat only feeds the narrative that the West is at war with Islam—something both jihadists and bigots want the world to believe.

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

No—they’re not the same, and that difference is the heart of the law.

“Try their best” is subjective. It lowers the bar to intention—what someone meant to do. “All feasible precautions” is objective. It asks what could have been done, given the means and knowledge at the time. It doesn’t let you off the hook just because you claim you cared. It demands you act accordingly, even if that means not striking at all.

If a military knows civilians are likely to die in large numbers and proceeds anyway, that’s not taking feasible precautions. That’s weighing civilian lives against tactical gain and deciding they’re expendable. And under the Geneva Conventions, that’s not just tragic—it’s unlawful.

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 they do prove something—just not what you claim.

A low average kill-per-bomb stat only matters if it reflects lawful targeting and civilian protection. But when you drop thousands of bombs into one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, where civilians are trapped and infrastructure is collapsing, then even “low” ratios add up to mass civilian death. That’s not just numbers—it’s evidence of systemic harm.

And if your justification rests on aggregate statistics while hospitals, shelters, and aid workers keep getting hit, then you’re not showing “tremendous effort.” You’re showing selective math to excuse unacceptable outcomes. The law doesn’t care how efficient your bombing is—it cares whether it respected civilian life.

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.)

No—this isn’t about liking or disliking. It’s about misrepresenting the law.

War crimes are not just isolated acts like “someone pulled a trigger they shouldn’t have.” They include broader patterns: starvation as a method of warfare, disproportionate attacks, targeting civilian infrastructure, and collective punishment. These aren’t vague ideals—they’re codified in the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute, and decades of legal precedent.

Yes, war is brutal. That’s exactly why those laws exist—to limit how bad it gets. Saying “war is hell” isn’t a defense. It’s an excuse to stop asking whether that hell was inflicted lawfully.

Where are you getting your list?

The list I referenced isn’t a rhetorical invention—it comes directly from binding international law. The Geneva Conventions, their Additional Protocols, and the Rome Statute all define war crimes with specific language and legal thresholds. For example, targeting civilians is prohibited under Geneva Convention IV and Additional Protocol I, which clearly state that civilians cannot be the object of attack. Collective punishment is explicitly outlawed in Article 33 of Geneva IV, making it illegal to penalize people for acts they did not commit. Disproportionate attacks—where expected civilian harm outweighs the direct military gain—are banned under Additional Protocol I. The destruction of infrastructure essential to civilian survival, like food and water supplies, is forbidden unless absolutely required by military necessity. And starvation as a method of warfare is not a vague accusation; it is codified as a war crime in both Additional Protocol I and the Rome Statute. These aren’t emotional appeals or theoretical ideals. They are specific legal prohibitions agreed upon by the international community. If you believe they don’t apply in this context, then make that case. But don’t deny that the legal standards exist—or pretend that citing them is just moral posturing.

Examples??

Examples? Sure. Let’s start with Nuremberg. The Nazis didn’t say, “We’re committing war crimes.” They said they were defending their nation, restoring order, and acting under law. They invoked national security, enemy sabotage, and collective threats. But the tribunal cut through those justifications and established that even in war, some acts—like targeting civilians or using starvation as policy—are criminal.

Take My Lai in Vietnam. U.S. soldiers massacred over 500 civilians, many of them women and children. The initial reports were buried, sanitized as “a firefight,” and those involved claimed they were following orders or couldn’t tell civilians from enemies. None of that changed the facts on the ground—and when exposed, it was prosecuted as a war crime.

Or Srebrenica. Serbian forces claimed they were responding to enemy provocations and conducting evacuations. What they actually did was murder over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. Again, layered in military rationale, but the legal system recognized it as genocide.

These weren’t crimes because they were simple. They were crimes because, beneath the strategy and language, they violated the basic protections international law was built to preserve. That’s what the law is for—not to rubber-stamp the actions of the powerful, but to hold them to account even when they hide behind complexity.

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??

If the “world’s best” record still means tens of thousands of civilians dead, then maybe the world’s standard is broken. The point isn’t perfection—it’s responsibility. If a country claims moral and technological superiority, then it must be judged by that standard, not by the worst wars in history. Saying, “no one’s offered a better method” isn’t a defense. It’s an admission that we’ve normalized the mass death of civilians as acceptable collateral. And once that’s the bar, “best” stops meaning good—it just means least horrific.

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

That’s not how the burden of proof works. You don’t get to assume a civilian is a combatant just because the data might be flawed. If you claim more fighters than civilians were killed, prove it with independent, verifiable evidence—not speculation from the party doing the bombing. Civilian protections exist because war zones are chaotic and truth is contested. You can’t erase those protections by guessing at a ratio. That’s not law. That’s convenient math wrapped in moral evasion.

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

That’s not how the burden of proof works. You don’t get to assume a civilian is a combatant just because the data might be flawed. If you claim more fighters than civilians were killed, prove it with independent, verifiable evidence—not speculation from the party doing the bombing. Civilian protections exist because war zones are chaotic and truth is contested. You can’t erase those protections by guessing at a ratio. That’s not law. That’s convenient math wrapped in moral evasion.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

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

What you’re calling a “flawed idea of war” is actually the legal and moral framework the world agreed upon because of what war entails. Flattened neighborhoods and mass civilian death aren’t just unfortunate byproducts—they’re the very reasons international law exists: to restrain power when war becomes the norm.

If you’re saying that’s just how war works, then you’ve surrendered the whole basis for moral judgment. Because if the standard is simply “war is ugly,” then nothing—no act, no atrocity—is off-limits. That’s not realism. That’s nihilism in uniform.

War is brutal. That’s exactly why rules matter. And when a military systematically breaks those rules, the answer isn’t to redefine war to fit the damage—it’s to demand accountability.

NHC

 

[DrZoidberg]

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 your point is that radicalization is real and dangerous, I agree. But that’s exactly why we shouldn’t reduce the label to “Muslim terror attack.” Because radicalization isn’t an inevitable consequence of being Muslim—it’s a distortion fueled by politics, ideology, war, poverty, and sometimes foreign interference. Labeling it by religion blurs those causes and narrows the public imagination to a single, lazy conclusion: Islam equals violence.

That doesn’t help fight terrorism. It helps fuel it. It turns potential allies into suspects, communities into surveillance zones, and foreign policy into a self-fulfilling cycle of fear and reprisal. If your goal is to stop radicalization, you don’t do it by reinforcing the frame that terrorists themselves want: that they speak for all Muslims. They don’t. And the more we buy into that framing, the more power we hand them.

You talk so much shit. What are you basing any of this on? Where's your evidence any of this is true?

You seem to have an ideology shaped box you are trying to shoehorn reality into. But its a very bad fit.

 

[Tigers!]

You "assign" guilt but say nothing should be done.

No—I say something must be done, but not anything. Justice without restraint is just vengeance in uniform. If your solution to guilt is mass death, then you’re not pursuing accountability. You’re pursuing annihilation dressed up as moral clarity.

The difference between us isn’t whether Hamas should be stopped. It’s whether stopping them means abandoning every principle we claim to stand for. You’ve chosen to make atrocity negotiable. I haven’t.

We await your detailing what Israel should have done (IYHO) after 7th Oct to get justice for those Jews killed and the hostages taken.
Oh and also prevent Hamas from doing it again.
I have asked that question a few times about Israel could/should have done after 7th Oct. No responses so far. Perhaps you will be the first?

NHC

 

[Tigers!]

It's too late to edit my post but I wanted to share some information on the views of the Gazan people before the terror attack in October 2023:

A pre-October 7 survey of West Bank and Gaza residents suggests most Palestinians didn’t trust Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

The factions that carried out the October 7 terror attack did not have widespread support. The support they did have might have come from different places on the secular-sectarian axis of the political spectrum, but that doesn't mean broad support among Gazans or Palestinians in general.

Despite the lack of broad support amongst Gazans or Palestninans in general Oct. 7th still happened. Nobody warned Israel or the Red Cross/Crescent or any one else. Shame that broad lack of support was not enough to prevent the start of the current tragedy.
There did seem to be wide spread rejoicing in Gaza on 8th Oct though. What were they rejoicing? They supported what had happened on the 7th. This alleged broad lack of support did not prevent so many Gazans from sharing a vicarious joy of the events of the 7th.

 

[Arctish]

It's too late to edit my post but I wanted to share some information on the views of the Gazan people before the terror attack in October 2023:

A pre-October 7 survey of West Bank and Gaza residents suggests most Palestinians didn’t trust Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

The factions that carried out the October 7 terror attack did not have widespread support. The support they did have might have come from different places on the secular-sectarian axis of the political spectrum, but that doesn't mean broad support among Gazans or Palestinians in general.

Despite the lack of broad support amongst Gazans or Palestninans in general Oct. 7th still happened. Nobody warned Israel or the Red Cross/Crescent or any one else. Shame that broad lack of support was not enough to prevent the start of the current tragedy.
There did seem to be wide spread rejoicing in Gaza on 8th Oct though. What were they rejoicing? They supported what had happened on the 7th. This alleged broad lack of support did not prevent so many Gazans from sharing a vicarious joy of the events of the 7th.

I don't remember any news reports of rejoicing on October 8th. I do recall reports that most Gazans didn't find out about the October 7th attack until days later and many of them did not believe the initial reports.

I'll look through the thread and see if I can find those old links for you. And would you please find the report of "wide spread rejoicing" and link it here? That might be the same video Derec posted a while ago that proved to be a deliberate deception - video of Palestinians reacting to a different event (Iranian rockets iirc) was claimed to be of Gazans celebrating mass murder. If that's what you saw, it's pretty despicable propaganda and I hope you never trust that source again.

 

[NoHolyCows]

You talk so much shit. What are you basing any of this on? Where's your evidence any of this is true?

You seem to have an ideology shaped box you are trying to shoehorn reality into. But its a very bad fit.

You’re not asking for evidence. You’re asking for permission to stay ignorant.

Everything I said is backed by counterterrorism data, intelligence analysis, and decades of research from organizations far more credible than your knee-jerk assumptions. The FBI, MI5, RAND, and DHS have all said the same thing: reducing terrorism to “Muslim violence” doesn’t stop radicalization—it fuels it. It alienates allies, validates extremist propaganda, and replaces strategy with tribal reflex. That’s not just ineffective—it’s reckless.

But you don’t want nuance. You want scapegoats. You want to flatten 1.9 billion people into a single category so you don’t have to think critically about cause, context, or consequence. That’s not realism—it’s intellectual cowardice dressed up as moral clarity.

You say I’m forcing reality into an ideological box. No. I’m prying reality out of yours—the one where “Muslim” is a synonym for “terrorist,” where bombing civilians is just “defense,” and where your side’s atrocities are always justified because the other side started it.

Here’s the truth: you’ve built a worldview that needs Islam to be the problem. Not because it’s accurate, but because it’s easy. Because it lets you turn every civilian death into a statistic, every war crime into a footnote, and every brown body into a threat. That’s not analysis. That’s bigotry with a mask on.

And if the best you can do in response is sputter “you talk shit,” then maybe it’s because you know—deep down—you’ve got no argument left.

NHC

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Greta Thunberg says she has been kidnapped by Israeli forces-What we know

In a pre-recorded video released by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition Thunberg said: "If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped."

www.newsweek.com

Some people were calling for drowning her. So, this could have gone worse.

 

[laughing dog]

You "assign" guilt but say nothing should be done.

No—I say something must be done, but not anything. Justice without restraint is just vengeance in uniform. If your solution to guilt is mass death, then you’re not pursuing accountability. You’re pursuing annihilation dressed up as moral clarity.

The difference between us isn’t whether Hamas should be stopped. It’s whether stopping them means abandoning every principle we claim to stand for. You’ve chosen to make atrocity negotiable. I haven’t.

We await your detailing what Israel should have done (IYHO) after 7th Oct to get justice for those Jews killed and the hostages taken.
Oh and also prevent Hamas from doing it again.
I have asked that question a few times about Israel could/should have done after 7th Oct. No responses so far. Perhaps you will be the first?

Posters have answered your question. Perhaps you should pay more attention.


Withholding food and medical supplies to civilians is not “getting justice” but revenge. Death and destruction is revenge, not justice. Just to be clear, the above is not an answer to your question.

 

[DrZoidberg]

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

That’s not how the burden of proof works. You don’t get to assume a civilian is a combatant just because the data might be flawed. If you claim more fighters than civilians were killed, prove it with independent, verifiable evidence—not speculation from the party doing the bombing. Civilian protections exist because war zones are chaotic and truth is contested. You can’t erase those protections by guessing at a ratio. That’s not law. That’s convenient math wrapped in moral evasion.

Since Hamas fighters are dressed as civilians, I'd say that gives the IDF a moral free pass to shoot any male and adult civilians. They're not. They're being extremely cautious. But I don’t think they have any moral obligation to.

The moment Hamas fighters dressed as civilians they get 100% of the blame for Palestinian civilians accidentally getting killed by IDF

You really are grasping at straws in this discussion

 

[DrZoidberg]

You talk so much shit. What are you basing any of this on? Where's your evidence any of this is true?

You seem to have an ideology shaped box you are trying to shoehorn reality into. But its a very bad fit.

You’re not asking for evidence. You’re asking for permission to stay ignorant.

If what you have learned is the above twaddle, I think you've done the wrong research.

Everything I said is backed by counterterrorism data, intelligence analysis, and decades of research from organizations far more credible than your knee-jerk assumptions. The FBI, MI5, RAND, and DHS have all said the same thing: reducing terrorism to “Muslim violence” doesn’t stop radicalization—it fuels it. It alienates allies, validates extremist propaganda, and replaces strategy with tribal reflex. That’s not just ineffective—it’s reckless.

You are so arrogant. What makes you think I am not well read?

I think your analysis of counter terrorism data is faulty.

What you seem to miss is that different cultures have different values. You're talking as if Arab culture is the same as western culture. That’s as arrogant as ignorant.

But you don’t want nuance. You want scapegoats. You want to flatten 1.9 billion people into a single category so you don’t have to think critically about cause, context, or consequence. That’s not realism—it’s intellectual cowardice dressed up as moral clarity.

Here you go again with your straw men.

I think you are the one incapable of nuance. I think you are the intellectual coward.

Your theories obviously doesn't match reality. Instead of taking a step back to try to see where you fucked up, you are doubling down

You say I’m forcing reality into an ideological box. No. I’m prying reality out of yours—the one where “Muslim” is a synonym for “terrorist,” where bombing civilians is just “defense,” and where your side’s atrocities are always justified because the other side started it.

Just stop with the straw men

Here’s the truth: you’ve built a worldview that needs Islam to be the problem. Not because it’s accurate, but because it’s easy. Because it lets you turn every civilian death into a statistic, every war crime into a footnote, and every brown body into a threat. That’s not analysis. That’s bigotry with a mask on.

And if the best you can do in response is sputter “you talk shit,” then maybe it’s because you know—deep down—you’ve got no argument left.

NHC

Lol. You’re clearly not paying attention to what I am writing. Nor, I think, any of us who support Israel in this thread.

The world isn't as black and white as you seem to think it is

 

[NoHolyCows]

You "assign" guilt but say nothing should be done.

No—I say something must be done, but not anything. Justice without restraint is just vengeance in uniform. If your solution to guilt is mass death, then you’re not pursuing accountability. You’re pursuing annihilation dressed up as moral clarity.

The difference between us isn’t whether Hamas should be stopped. It’s whether stopping them means abandoning every principle we claim to stand for. You’ve chosen to make atrocity negotiable. I haven’t.

We await your detailing what Israel should have done (IYHO) after 7th Oct to get justice for those Jews killed and the hostages taken.
Oh and also prevent Hamas from doing it again.
I have asked that question a few times about Israel could/should have done after 7th Oct. No responses so far. Perhaps you will be the first?

NHC

You want specifics? Fine.

After October 7th, Israel had every right—and legal justification—to use military force to neutralize the threat. But the how matters. The who matters. The scale matters. Precision targeting of actual combatants. Prioritized hostage recovery. Coordination with international allies to pressure Qatar and Egypt to leverage Hamas leadership. Immediate humanitarian corridors for civilians. Conditional lifting of the siege to decouple Hamas from civilian dependency. Focused intelligence work instead of city-level obliteration. That’s not utopian. That’s strategic warfare within the framework of international law.

Instead, what did Israel choose? Aerial carpet bombing in one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Siege warfare that blocks food, fuel, and water to civilians. Repeated strikes on hospitals, aid convoys, refugee camps. A kill ratio so grotesque that even the IDF now admits most of the dead may be civilians. And now you’re here asking what else they could have done—as if nothing short of razing Gaza was an option?

Let’s be clear: the question isn’t whether Israel had the right to respond. It’s whether the response honored any distinction between justice and revenge. You keep asking for an answer, but the truth is, you don’t want one. You want validation. You want someone to tell you that vengeance scaled to civilian obliteration is the only path to security.

But it’s not. And if you can’t imagine a form of justice that doesn’t involve mass graves, then the problem isn’t my imagination. It’s your morality.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Since Hamas fighters are dressed as civilians, I'd say that gives the IDF a moral free pass to shoot any male and adult civilians. They're not. They're being extremely cautious. But I don’t think they have any moral obligation to.

The moment Hamas fighters dressed as civilians they get 100% of the blame for Palestinian civilians accidentally getting killed by IDF

You really are grasping at straws in this discussion

Then you’ve just thrown out the entire foundation of the laws of war. If you think dressing like a civilian voids all protections for civilians, then you’re not making a moral argument—you’re just giving the green light to collective punishment. And that’s not just immoral. It’s illegal.

The Geneva Conventions are explicit: even when combatants violate the rules by disguising themselves, it does not erase the obligation of the opposing force to distinguish between civilians and fighters. Saying “they brought it on themselves” is the logic of reprisal, not of justice.

By your standard, any army could declare all civilians fair game so long as some fighters hid among them. That’s not caution. That’s license to kill—and it’s the exact mindset those laws were written to prevent.

You’re not defending restraint. You’re defending a war where civilian identity becomes a death sentence. And history already has a name for that.

NHC

 

[pood]

People in Gaza starving, sick and dying as blockade continues