Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Derec]

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

The whole mission is a stunt anyway (which would be on brand for Greta Thunberg).

The amount of food and other supplies that a selfie boat like Madleen is minuscule, probably less than what's on a single truck. The problem with Gaza is distribution, not getting stuff into the Strip.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Add in the irony of the desperate and irrelevant comparison of Hamas to Nazis, and the meta-ironic complaint about Hamas’s expansionism from an supporter of an expansionist country (especially since Gaza was part of Egypt), and a picture of an intolerant and unthinking zealot emerges.

Irrelevant? They both seek the same thing: extermination of the Jews and other "undesirables", imposition of their way on the world. If anything Hamas is worse as they seek to torture, not just kill.

Nazis led a major industrial power with the means to achieve their ends, Hamas is none of that. BTW, the Nazis tortured quite a bit.

Hamas is backed by Iran, they have the power if not opposed.

And while the Nazis tortured it was a means to an end (information.) We have plenty of Hamas footage crowing about torturing Jews in contexts where there is nothing to be gained by torture.

 

[NoHolyCows]

And the fact that they have a much lower ratio of dead civilians than anyone else says to me they are honoring the requirement to take all feasible precautions.

A lower ratio doesn’t automatically prove compliance with international law—especially when the raw numbers are still staggering. You’re treating statistics like a moral shield, but the Geneva Conventions don’t grade on a curve. The test isn’t “did you do better than others.” It’s “did you take all feasible precautions to avoid or minimize civilian harm in each specific instance,” and “was each strike proportional to the military advantage gained.”

So let’s be clear: over 37,000 people dead, the majority women and children; entire neighborhoods leveled; hospitals, schools, and refugee camps hit multiple times—this isn’t just unfortunate collateral damage. This raises serious legal red flags, and no amount of statistical massaging can erase that.

If proportionality and precaution were truly observed, we wouldn’t be seeing some of the highest civilian death tolls per capita in modern warfare. So if you’re going to claim Israel is meeting its legal obligations, then the burden is on you to show, for each strike, how those principles were followed—not just point to ratios and declare the case closed. Because that’s not legal reasoning. That’s moral outsourcing.

It's not a loophole, it's not a violation. It's simply reality that you don't like.

No—it’s not about what I “like.” It’s about what the law requires.

International humanitarian law exists precisely because “reality” in war is brutal. That’s why the Geneva Conventions were written after the horrors of total war—to place legal and moral boundaries even when the enemy disregards them. You don’t get to violate those boundaries just because the other side does. That’s not realism. That’s moral surrender.

You say, “It’s simply reality.” But that’s the exact justification used in every atrocity ever committed: that the rules didn’t apply this time, because the enemy was worse. But the rules were written for exactly this time—for the moments when rage and retaliation are most tempting, and restraint is most essential.

So no, it’s not just “reality.” It’s a violation. And pretending otherwise doesn’t make you pragmatic. It just makes you complicit in erasing the very norms that protect us all.

The thing is when we get a look inside they're always military. Or look at the recent strike. "Hospital". But the bomb exploded underground in tunnels that "didn't exist" and caused secondaries of weapons that "didn't exist" inside tunnels that "didn't exist." And got a commander that certainly wasn't there. As with so many of these things there's no need for complete information to discern the truth. Hamas says "X". Israel says "Y". Look at the facts on the ground--do we know anything that contradicts either of these claims? If so, the other is probably the right one. The bomb hit something, not just dirt. Therefore the claim there was nothing there is false. Thus I'm going to accept the Israeli claim of what was there.

Then you’ve abandoned evidence-based reasoning for faith-based allegiance.

You’re not evaluating “facts on the ground”—you’re starting with the assumption that Israel must be right, and working backward from there. You’ve just admitted it: if something explodes, you treat that as proof of guilt, regardless of context, regardless of prior warnings, regardless of whether the site was known to shelter civilians. That’s not analysis. That’s confirmation bias disguised as logic.

By your standard, any bombed building is guilty because it was bombed. Any denial is false because it came from the wrong side. And any civilian death is acceptable because you believe—without independently verified proof—that a target must have been there.

That’s not how burden of proof works. It’s not how international law works. And it’s certainly not how moral judgment works. If you believe that tunnel systems justify bombing hospitals, then say it outright. But don’t pretend it’s objective analysis when your only standard is “trust the side I already agree with.”

You don’t get to invoke “facts on the ground” when the only facts you trust are the ones dropped from 10,000 feet.

You're the one cherry-picking. The words you cite are referring to the destruction of food in civilian hands--but where's there any evidence of that happening? Israel has struck hijacked aid--but that's no longer in civilian hands. You're trying to apply it to a situation that it doesn't address at all.

Then you’ve missed both the letter and the spirit of the law.

Article 54 prohibits “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Full stop. The clause I cited doesn’t limit that to food physically destroyed—it includes any action that may be expected to leave civilians without adequate food or water. That covers blockades, restrictions, delays of aid, and attacks on humanitarian infrastructure when the foreseeable consequence is mass deprivation. The law doesn’t require Israel to bomb food in a grandmother’s kitchen for it to be a war crime. It requires that military action not result in starvation, period.

You’re trying to draw a technical distinction—between who physically holds the aid—so you can skirt responsibility for the outcome. But that’s not how international law functions. The test isn’t whether food was hit in civilian hands. It’s whether civilians are left without it. Intent matters, but so does consequence. If the net result is that children starve, families boil weeds to survive, and humanitarian agencies declare famine conditions, you don’t get to hand-wave that away by saying, “Well, it was in a truck.”

Your defense boils down to a loophole so narrow it can’t even fit the bodies. That’s not law—it’s legalism in service of indifference.

It doesn't say what you want it to say. It makes no mention of the source of the shipments. And it specifically says they may be blocked if they are being diverted. Which is exactly what was happening.

And here’s where your interpretation collapses under its own weight.

You’re correct that Article 23 allows for restrictions if there is a risk of diversion. But it does not authorize a blanket denial of humanitarian aid to an entire population. The exact language makes clear: “Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians.” The caveat about diversion is conditional—not carte blanche. It exists to be weighed against the occupying power’s overriding obligations under Articles 55 and 56 of Geneva Convention IV, which require ensuring food and medical supplies for the population.

So yes, Israel can inspect, monitor, and even temporarily delay aid if there is credible evidence of misuse. But what it cannot do—legally or morally—is impose collective deprivation by throttling aid so tightly that humanitarian agencies withdraw, children starve, and hospitals run out of fuel. That’s not security. That’s siege warfare in slow motion.

The fact that some aid is diverted does not justify denying all aid. You don’t punish the entire civilian population because bad actors exist. That is the very definition of collective punishment, and it is explicitly outlawed under Article 33 of the same Convention.

So no—Article 23 doesn’t say what you want it to. It gives room for caution, not cruelty. And when entire families are starving while trucks sit idle or are bombed, your reliance on that clause isn’t legal rigor. It’s legal cover for humanitarian collapse.

Once again, it doesn't say what you think it says.

It does not permit starvation of civilians as a means of attack. If Hamas won't let them have the food that's the fault of Hamas, not Israel. I'm reminded of a tweet from earlier in the war, a response to "where's the fuel?" that was an IDF picture of a tank farm. In Gaza. (And, yes, you can remotely measure approximately how much is in a tank. The thermal response of the tank walls that are over contents will be different than the thermal response if there's air behind.)

Then let’s be exact—because the law does say what I said, and your attempt to sidestep it doesn’t hold.

The Rome Statute doesn’t require proving intent to starve civilians directly as the goal—only that starvation is used as a method of warfare. That includes depriving civilians of access to “objects indispensable to their survival”—food, water, fuel, and medical supplies—intentionally and as part of a military strategy. You don’t get to shift the blame to Hamas when the party controlling the borders, supply chains, airspace, and crossings is Israel. Hamas’s behavior is criminal, yes—but that does not absolve the occupying power of its legal obligations. That’s how international law works: responsibility is not exclusive to one actor.

You reference fuel stockpiles as if the existence of some reserves means starvation or deprivation isn’t happening. That’s not how this works. Possession of fuel somewhere in Gaza does not negate the effects of systemic restrictions on distribution and access. Fuel needed to power bakeries, hospitals, water purification, and aid convoys has repeatedly been blocked. Aid workers from organizations like WFP and UNRWA haven’t just been impeded—they’ve been targeted and killed. That, too, is documented.

You cannot keep pointing to what Hamas might have or what Israel thinks is being hidden as justification for a humanitarian breakdown that affects millions of civilians, most of whom had no say in Hamas’s actions and no ability to flee.

Your defense amounts to this: “Because Hamas exists, Israel is excused from every legal standard.”

That’s not how law works. That’s not how morality works. And if that’s the best argument left, it’s not an argument at all—it’s a rationalization for the indefensible.

1) It only is prohibited as a means of attack. That does not prohibit it as an incidental effect. WWII--we bombed the Japanese rail yards to deny them for military use. But it would have also meant the crops wouldn't get where they needed to be, the winter of 1945 would have been a horror. Not a war crime.

2) Hamas is the one limiting the food. You continue to blame Israel for atrocities committed by Hamas. And in doing so you encourage Hamas to commit more atrocities.

Let’s deal with your two claims clearly and decisively.

First, your invocation of WWII is not analogous—legally or morally. The Rome Statute was written after WWII precisely to address what had been undefined or excused during prior conflicts. Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) does not say starvation must be the sole purpose—it says “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” That includes situations where starvation is knowingly inflicted as part of the strategy, even if the stated military goal is something else. The legal threshold is not whether starvation is the direct aim—it’s whether it is a foreseeable, avoidable consequence that is inflicted knowingly and systematically. And Israel’s repeated denial of fuel, food, and aid into Gaza—despite knowing the civilian dependence on those goods—meets that threshold.

Second, you keep repeating that “Hamas is the one limiting the food.” But Israel controls the borders. Israel controls the crossings. Israel determines what enters and when. Aid groups including the UN, World Food Programme, and Human Rights Watch have all reported Israel systematically delaying, blocking, or bombing aid—long before Hamas even touches it. That’s not “blaming Israel for Hamas.” That’s assigning responsibility where international law does: to the power in control of access.

And here’s the core problem with your argument: you want to outsource all moral and legal responsibility to the enemy. But laws of war exist because enemies don’t play fair. You don’t get to abandon civilian protections the moment your opponent violates them. That’s not justice. That’s revenge.

So no—invoking WWII doesn’t save your argument, and repeating “Hamas” doesn’t erase the evidence of deliberate, avoidable civilian suffering. If anything, your logic invites atrocity: it says as long as your enemy is cruel, you get to be crueler. That’s not accountability. That’s surrendering the very standards you claim to defend.

None of them are capable of documenting this. All reports from the ground are either spontaneous (Israel often points out videos posted by people in Gaza) or by Hamas' will and thus meaningless. But once again we have two claims and a fact that contradicts one of them. Why does everyone in the photos from Gaza look like they are getting enough to eat?

Because hunger and famine aren’t staged theater for your visual satisfaction. Malnutrition doesn’t require every person in a photo to look emaciated to be real—it requires data, clinical metrics, and field documentation. And that’s exactly what organizations like WHO, UNICEF, and MSF have provided. They’re not relying on social media clips or Hamas press releases—they’re conducting medical assessments, weighing infants, measuring mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC), and reporting firsthand from hospitals overflowing with children suffering from wasting and dehydration.

You dismiss these reports as “Hamas propaganda,” but these are the same institutions the world trusts in every other war zone—Yemen, South Sudan, Ukraine. If their data is valid everywhere else, then your sudden skepticism here isn’t methodological. It’s ideological.

As for your claim that photos “don’t show hunger”—that’s not a fact. That’s confirmation bias. Starvation isn’t always visible on the faces you choose to notice. It’s found in morgues, in medical logs, in the nutrition clinics filled with children who haven’t eaten in days. If you need corpses on camera before you believe there’s a crisis, then your standard isn’t truth. It’s desensitization.

And if your position requires calling every medical expert, humanitarian, and international agency a liar just to preserve your narrative, then it’s not the truth you’re defending. It’s denial. And history will record it as such.

Look at the photos from the areas of actual starvation.

Then let’s talk about that.

In areas of declared famine—like Somalia in 2011 or South Sudan in 2017—international famine assessments weren’t based on how skinny people looked in photos. They were based on field data: rates of child wasting, mortality rates, caloric availability, and access to clean water. Gaza meets multiple thresholds used by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system—the gold standard for assessing food crises—including catastrophic hunger in the north.

And yes, there are photos. There are videos. There are hospitals overflowing with children dying from malnutrition and dehydration. The fact that you’ve ignored them—or refuse to accept their validity—doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It means your filter isn’t empirical. It’s political.

So when you say, “show me starving bodies,” realize what you’re demanding: not evidence, but spectacle. You’re asking to be emotionally convinced instead of intellectually honest. That’s not skepticism. That’s moral insulation.

You don’t need every pixel of suffering to be broadcast to accept what every credible agency has confirmed. And if you still refuse, then you’ve made it clear: no amount of evidence will ever matter unless it aligns with what you want to believe. That’s not a position grounded in truth. It’s denial, wrapped in a demand for proof you’ve already decided to ignore.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Who is hoarding the food.

Then let’s answer that too: the same party that controls what comes in.

Yes, Hamas hoards. That’s a fact. But here’s the difference: Hamas doesn’t control the flow of aid into Gaza. Israel does. Hamas doesn’t bomb the crossings. Israel does. Hamas doesn’t decide how many trucks are allowed in. Israel does. Hamas doesn’t control the buffer zones, the border surveillance, or the conditions under which humanitarian agencies operate. Israel does.

So even if Hamas hoards some aid—and they do—that does not absolve Israel of its legal and moral responsibility as the power controlling access to essential goods. Under international law, the obligation to ensure civilian survival doesn’t vanish because the enemy is corrupt. In fact, it becomes more urgent—because innocent people are caught between two forces, and the one with control has the duty not to use it as leverage for starvation.

So no—you don’t get to say “they’re hoarding” as a free pass to bomb bakeries, block fuel, or collapse hospitals. That’s not law. That’s not strategy. That’s just collective punishment, dressed up as moral arithmetic. And it fails the only test that matters: who suffers, and who had the power to prevent it.

The response is what we are seeing: Israel taking over direct distribution.

Then you’ve just confirmed the core problem.

If Israel can take over direct distribution now, that means it could have done so months ago—before malnutrition, disease, and hunger reached catastrophic levels. But it didn’t. Instead, it chose to restrict aid, bomb crossings, delay inspections, and block essentials under the excuse that Hamas might benefit. And only after mass suffering and global outrage did it attempt partial control of distribution—as damage control, not compassion.

So no, this isn’t a solution. It’s a belated attempt to manage optics after the consequences of siege policies became undeniable. If civilians were starving under Hamas control, and now they’re starving under Israeli control, that’s not progress. That’s a change in the administrator of deprivation—not a change in moral outcome.

You don’t get credit for fixing a crisis you helped create. Especially when the fix is incomplete, too late, and transparently aimed at shielding blame—not saving lives.

No, you're demanding a perfect plan. I'm saying none exist.

I don't like what's happening but Hamas started it with the intent of causing such devastation. They continue to fight. They are responsible for what is happening. The devastation is a Hamas weapon.

Then you’ve abandoned the most basic moral distinction between cause and conduct.

Yes, Hamas started the war. No one disputes that. But who started a conflict does not give the other side carte blanche to wage it without restraint. That’s why we have laws of war—to stop exactly this kind of logic, where every atrocity is blamed on the enemy’s existence and every civilian death is shrugged off as part of the cost.

You say Hamas uses devastation as a weapon. But the moment you accept that logic—when you say, “Hamas wanted this,” so the people suffering are just collateral to their evil—you’re not condemning war crimes. You’re just explaining them away.

Because what you’re defending isn’t self-defense. It’s a strategy of overwhelming force aimed at a civilian population under siege. And if your entire ethical framework collapses the minute your enemy breaks the rules, then you never believed in ethics to begin with—you just believed in winning.

Once again, trolley problem. Both paths are horrible, do you intervene to choose the less horrible?

Then stop pretending you’re making a moral argument—you’re making a utilitarian gamble with other people’s lives, from the safety of your screen. The “trolley problem” is a thought experiment, not a license to abandon ethics in the real world. Because the difference here is critical: in Gaza, the people tied to the tracks didn’t choose this. They didn’t start it. And they have no way to get off.

The question isn’t whether all options are bad. It’s whether we’re willing to uphold principles even when they’re inconvenient. If your “less horrible” path involves thousands of civilian deaths, blocked aid, and the destruction of basic infrastructure, then your trolley isn’t avoiding the worst—it’s just running over different people, and calling it strategy.

What you’re defending isn’t a hard choice. It’s the normalization of atrocity disguised as realism. And if your answer to tragedy is to accept it as necessity, then history won’t call that wisdom. It’ll call it complicity.

I do not expect the bombing to end it sooner. I expect the bombing to make it longer until the next 10/7.

And I consider "breeding extremism" to be Hamas water-carrying. It's the money, not the actions.

Then you’ve just admitted it’s not about ending the violence—it’s about managing its timing. You’re not defending deterrence. You’re defending delay. You’re saying mass death is acceptable if it buys a few years of quiet. That’s not counterterrorism. That’s cyclical bloodshed dressed up as strategy.

And dismissing “breeding extremism” as “Hamas water-carrying” is a convenient way to ignore what every major counterterrorism agency has said for decades: that injustice, siege, and civilian suffering fuel recruitment far more effectively than ideology alone. RAND, MI5, the FBI—all have documented how grievance is the engine of radicalization. If you pretend it’s just “about the money,” you’re not being realistic. You’re being willfully blind.

You don’t defuse extremism by bombing the conditions that foster it. You fuel it. And if your plan is to keep repeating that mistake while blaming everyone else for the fire, then don’t talk about security. You’re just managing the next explosion.

You clearly did not understand. You are blinded by the horrors of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and are missing the fact that they saved a hell of a lot of lives. Despite the efforts of the revisionists the reality is that of the set <American soldiers, Chinese soldiers, Japanese soldiers, Chinese civilians, Japanese civilians>, every group ended up better off in the path where the bombs were dropped. The only groups that might have suffered net harm were <Hiroshima civilians, Nagasaki civilians>.

And, yes, I am considering the fantasyland scenario of simply stopping shooting. (Fantasy because it wouldn't have ended the Japanese atrocities in China.) Still worse than dropping the bombs.

Then let’s be precise—because what you’ve just done is lay out the exact moral trap I warned about: reducing catastrophe to calculus, as if the deliberate incineration of cities can be cleanly balanced against a theoretical body count.

Even if we accept your claim that the bombings “saved more lives”—a claim hotly contested by historians like Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Gar Alperovitz, and even some former U.S. military officials—what you’re arguing isn’t moral justification. It’s consequentialism without limits. You’re saying: if the end looks better on paper, then the means—no matter how horrific—are vindicated.

That logic doesn’t stop at Hiroshima. It justifies everything from firebombing Dresden to flattening Gaza. It’s how every mass killing becomes “strategic.” And it’s exactly why the Geneva Conventions were written: to put a legal and moral boundary where your cold math wants a blank check.

If your principle is that atrocity is acceptable when it’s efficient, then your worldview has no place for human rights—only for victors writing the cost-benefit analysis after the fact.

Yes, you have. Your approach ensures many repeats of 10/7. This isn't a game where you are guaranteed there's a good path.

Then let’s be clear: refusing to embrace total war is not the same as doing nothing. It means refusing to torch the rules of war in the name of winning. It means believing that how we fight still matters—even when the enemy violates every standard of decency.

You keep invoking 10/7 as if it justifies anything done in response. But if the only lesson you draw from that horror is that we must now become indifferent to civilian life, then you’ve let Hamas set your moral compass. That’s not strength. That’s surrender—surrender to the logic of terror, where brutality begets brutality and the cycle becomes endless.

There may not be a perfect path. But abandoning all restraint isn’t realism—it’s a choice. A choice to believe that justice and cruelty are compatible so long as your side delivers the blow. And history shows where that path leads: not peace, not security—just newer ruins built on top of older ones.

NHC

 

[Derec]

Hamas doesn’t bomb the crossings. Israel does.

Patently false.

Hamas Terrorists Attack Kerem Shalom Aid Crossing for Fourth Time in May

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Depends on the context. "They broke the ceasefire" certainly allows you to "break" it.

Only in the logic of vengeance, not in the framework of law.

Ceasefires aren’t playground pacts—they’re legal tools designed to protect civilians. If one side violates it, the other isn’t suddenly given free license to abandon all restraint. International law doesn’t say, “If they break the rules, you can too.” It says, “Distinction, proportionality, and civilian protection apply at all times.” Always.

One side breaks the ceasefire, there is no more ceasefire, the other side is free to resume shooting. You're misrepresenting the situation.

So no—“they broke it first” is not a moral green light. It’s an excuse to lower the bar—and once you do that, you’re not enforcing order. You’re just justifying chaos.

Where do we see that happening??

What we see is Hamas members in non-combat roles.

What we see is precisely the danger of blurred lines.

When Israeli strikes hit apartment buildings, schools, markets, and refugee camps—killing thousands of women and children—it’s not because every person in those places was a fighter. The justification often given is that someone affiliated with Hamas might have been nearby, or that infrastructure might have been used. That’s exactly how the logic stretches. The moment “non-combat roles” become fair game, or presence in Gaza becomes guilt by association, the distinction between combatant and civilian collapses.

You're not responding to what I said. Hamas has a group devoted to propaganda videos. Doesn't make them not Hamas.

Because up until now, you’ve justified the blockade, the bombing of civilian areas, and the widespread destruction of Gaza by pointing to Hamas’s presence—treating proximity, governance, and even economic dependence as if they erase the protections civilians are owed under international law.

If that’s not your position—if you truly believe civilians who are not actively fighting or directly aiding militants should be protected—then great, say that plainly. But if you continue to defend strikes that knowingly harm non-combatants because “Hamas is embedded there,” then you’re not applying law, you’re rationalizing collective punishment. And that’s not a misrepresentation. That’s a direct response to the logic you’ve laid out.

They should be protected to the extent feasible. Where I see you going wrong is you are taking it on faith that the high number of dead is proof they aren't taking due care. Hamas runs up the death toll specifically to make you think that.

We are saying a headband makes someone a combatant because they don't let people who are not Hamas wear them. Besides, anyone who walks around a war zone wearing combat attire but being a civilian is incredibly stupid. Realistically, any war zone, see an enemy uniform, you pull the trigger. Exactly what comprises the uniform doesn't matter.

So let’s be clear: your reply confirms the exact danger I described. You’re admitting that a symbol—not a weapon, not hostile action, not direct participation, but an article of clothing—is being treated as sufficient to justify lethal force. That is not how international humanitarian law works.

Yes. Same as in WWII the presence of a German uniform and the absence of signs of surrender was enough to warrant pulling the trigger. Besides, he used that in a symbolic fashion, putting on the <military> uniform. He wasn't actually referring to wearing a green band.

Under the Geneva Conventions, the distinction between civilians and combatants is not based on how “stupid” someone is for wearing something provocative. It’s based on whether the individual takes direct part in hostilities. Civilians do not lose their protections because of perceived affiliation or symbolic expression unless they cross that legal threshold. That standard exists precisely to stop the slide into extrajudicial targeting based on appearance, suspicion, or political messaging.

But Geneva doesn't require you to figure out if the person in an enemy uniform is actually an enemy. You walk down the street in Kiev in a Russian army uniform, you expect to live??

And this isn’t just a theoretical concern. It’s how war crimes happen—by normalizing the idea that “if it looks like the enemy, it’s fair game.” That logic collapses the line between fighters and civilians entirely. And once that happens, the laws of war become meaningless, and every atrocity becomes “understandable.”

No. It's "enemy uniform" = "enemy". Perfectly normal standard everywhere.

So if you’re defending the view that a headband is enough to shoot, then you are not upholding the rules of engagement. You are explicitly arguing for their erosion.

It's the marking of the enemy, that's all you need. Geneva requires soldiers to fight in readily distinguishable attire to prevent targeting mistakes, it says nothing about not shooting people in said attire. (It's not specifically uniforms, merely that they match. "Militia, we are expecting infiltrators. The uniform of the day is green over orange brassards.")

And we have examples of this?

Yes, we absolutely do have examples. And if you’re genuinely asking, not deflecting, I’ll give you one:

Al-Mawasi “safe zone,” January 2024 — Israel dropped leaflets telling civilians to evacuate to Al-Mawasi for safety. Thousands complied. Then, within that very zone, Israeli strikes killed dozens. Were they all Hamas? No evidence was provided—only the assertion that a militant presence was suspected. Civilians died in an area they were told to shelter in. That’s not careful distinction. That’s a pattern.

That's relevant how??

The words you failed to quote: "because they live in Gaza, express political opinions, or wear a color associated with a group"

You are providing no evidence that they were targeted for any of these reasons. And you are providing no evidence one way or the other about those who were hit. Your argument simply amounts to "you didn't prove they were Hamas". You think Israel is going to reveal how it identifies people?! It's just their track record is very good--an awful lot of the "civilians" they kill later get Hamas funerals.

Or take the bombing of hospitals and schools. Israel has often claimed Hamas uses them, but again, no real-time verifiable evidence is offered before the strikes. And when entire families are pulled from the rubble, it’s chalked up to “unfortunate side effects.” That’s not accountability. That’s narrative control.

Of course no real time evidence is offered before the strike. What are you smoking to think that they would do that??

And you realize that when an entire family is pulled from the rubble that almost always one of their senior commanders was in said rubble? There are typically fewer civilians around when someone is at home than when they are out somewhere.

This is not about denying that Hamas violates the rules of war. They do. But when you start defending civilian deaths on the basis of assumed proximity or symbolism—rather than confirmed combatant activity—you are explicitly rejecting the foundational legal principle that protects civilians in war.

I expect them to do what they feasibly can. I do not expect them to do the impossible. And I see them consistently being the world's best at avoiding civilian casualties. I also see the stuff with Hezbollah--human shield tactics aren't used much there, and we see 85-90% of deaths being combatants. Look at the beeper bombs--one death that was certainly civilian, but immediate family of the target. The other "civilian" deaths we get no details--nope, they weren't civilians.

If you’re sincere about that principle, you should insist on evidence before the trigger is pulled—not retroactive justification. Because once the standard becomes “they looked like they could be,” you’ve abandoned law for profiling. And yes, we’ve seen it happen.

This is completely unrealistic.

No. Identification as a member of a group engaged in hostilities is enough.

That’s simply false under international law.

The legal standard is not “membership” or “identification” with a group—it is direct participation in hostilities. Article 51(3) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions makes this explicit: “Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.”

Wearing a headband, supporting a political group, or being a member of a non-uniformed organization does not meet that threshold unless there is direct and immediate involvement in military operations. Otherwise, you’re erasing the entire civilian/combatant distinction that international humanitarian law exists to protect.

Read it again. "Civilians". Not members of the group. Identifying group membership is enough to pull the trigger.

(And there's a reason we didn't ratify that part of Geneva. That piece you are referring to is protecting two of the 10/7 butchers because they simply joined the attack without being members of a terrorist organization. The words "and for such a time as" are an abomination that does not belong.)

And your position—“identification is enough”—has been rejected by legal scholars, the ICRC, and international tribunals. That standard would permit mass targeting based on association, not action, and it’s precisely how atrocities have been justified throughout history.

Where??

So no—your claim isn’t just incorrect. It’s legally and morally indefensible.

We don't have a lot of data points. Of the data points we have it's frequent enough that insisting it's rare isn't justified.

But that’s not how ethics—or law—works.

You don’t get to lower the standard of civilian protection just because your dataset is incomplete. The burden of proof is on the party using lethal force in civilian areas, not on civilians to prove their innocence by default. International law is explicit: unless someone is directly participating in hostilities, they are to be treated as a civilian. That protection doesn’t vanish because of suspicions based on anecdotal trends.

The issue was whether it's possible for a "civilian" to be a combatant. It's relevant in that establishing that someone is a "civilian" isn't proof they are not a combatant. Multiple hostages were rescued that were being held by "civilians".

If two out of a thousand cases show civilian complicity, that’s not justification for treating the rest as complicit. That’s exactly the logic behind every atrocity ever committed “just to be safe.” You’re not describing a strategy of precision. You’re describing preemptive suspicion at population scale—which is the definition of collective punishment. And it’s not “frequent enough” to override legal obligations. It never is.

It's not two out of a thousand. It's three out of four. (I'm looking at the situations where we have the most data--rescued hostages) And the point is simply about showing that "civilian" is not automatically "noncombatant".

What you are missing is the consistent pattern of misuse. And the fact that the government does nothing about it. Combine those and the symbol loses it's protective value.

No—what you’re proposing is the dismantling of the very principle that protects civilians in war.

The protective status of journalists, like that of medics or aid workers, isn’t dependent on whether some misuse the role or whether a government polices every abuse. It’s grounded in the legal obligation to treat people as civilians unless and until there is individual evidence of direct participation in hostilities.

Your argument flips that standard. You’re saying that because a few may have misused the role—and because you don’t trust the government—everyone wearing the symbol becomes a potential target. That’s not just legally wrong. That’s how hospitals get bombed, press vests become death sentences, and war crimes are retroactively justified.

If you’re serious about accountability, then you uphold standards despite bad actors. Because the second you decide protections are meaningless based on suspicion or pattern alone, you’ve not just removed a shield—you’ve created a license to kill.

NHC

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Any symbol of noncombatant status that is repeatedly misused ceases to be an indication of noncombatant status. And all of them have been widely misused in Gaza.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Israel vows to prevent an aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists from reaching Gaza

Israel’s government has vowed to prevent an aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists from reaching the Gaza Strip.

apnews.com

Well, duh!

Either they stop it or next time it's full of weapons.

 

[NoHolyCows]

And why do you insist 7 days is less than a week?

Because your analogy is just as dishonest. You’re pretending that when entire families are killed in their homes, refugee camps are bombed, and aid workers are incinerated in clearly marked convoys, it’s just some tragic arithmetic mistake—rather than the foreseeable result of tactics that treat densely populated areas as expendable.

You say I’m confusing civilians being hit with civilians being targeted. But when civilian death becomes routine, predictable, and accepted as the cost of military action, then the distinction collapses. Repeating “we didn’t mean to” doesn’t absolve you when the pattern shows otherwise. Intent isn’t a shield when the outcome screams negligence—or worse.

So no—I’m not confusing anything. I’m refusing to let you launder foreseeable carnage through euphemisms.

You keep saying "might be". Israel has an extremely good record at hitting the right thing.

And your repeated assertion that they aren't taking feasible precautions doesn't make it so.

If Israel truly had an “extremely good record,” we wouldn’t be looking at over 35,000 dead—most of them women and children, in a population where over half are children. That’s not a record of precision. That’s a record of devastation. And saying they’re “hitting the right thing” while hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and entire families are obliterated doesn’t prove accuracy—it proves how low the threshold for “acceptable collateral” has become.

“Feasible precautions” isn’t some vague suggestion—it’s a binding legal standard under Article 57 of Additional Protocol I. And that standard doesn’t vanish because a strike hits a target. If a strike is likely to kill dozens or hundreds of civilians in the process, and no serious effort is made to avoid or minimize that harm, then it fails the test—no matter how good the intel, or how real the threat.

So no, this isn’t just my assertion. It’s the judgment of international legal experts, former IDF officials who’ve spoken out, and UN bodies with access to the ground. You’re not defending caution. You’re defending a pattern of calculated devastation and calling it precision. But when every act of “defense” leaves dozens of civilians dead, what you’re really defending is impunity.

But you need to establish that there is a violation in the first place for this to be relevant.

Then let’s establish it.

When residential blocks, hospitals, schools, UN shelters, and refugee camps are bombed repeatedly—despite warnings from aid agencies, coordinates being shared in advance, and visible signs of civilian presence—you’re not looking at isolated accidents. You’re looking at a pattern. And in international law, patterns matter.

The Geneva Conventions and customary international humanitarian law are clear: proportionality is not about whether a strike hits a legitimate target. It’s about whether the civilian harm expected from that strike is excessive in relation to the direct military advantage anticipated. When entire families are buried under rubble for one suspected militant, or when humanitarian corridors and aid convoys are hit despite being clearly marked, the test fails.

So yes, Article 51(8) applies—because there have been violations. They’re not just claimed by adversaries, but documented by independent observers, legal scholars, and UN commissions. And brushing them aside as “unproven” isn’t skepticism. It’s moral insulation.

If your standard is that nothing is a violation unless the accused side admits it, then you’ve made justice impossible by definition. That’s not law. That’s loyalty masquerading as logic.

The presence of the camera (I'm not sure the second is deliberate) clearly shows that advance warning was given. If it wasn't effective it's because Hamas forced people to stay. (Yes, they have a track record of shooting people who try to escape when given warning.)

Then let’s be precise—because this is where law and rhetoric part ways.

Article 57 of Additional Protocol I does not say a warning absolves responsibility if civilians are still present. It says a warning must be effective and that all feasible precautions must still be taken to avoid civilian harm. Dropping leaflets or airing a message while bombing areas you know civilians cannot leave—whether due to closed borders, destroyed roads, or coercion—is not considered an effective warning under international law. Especially not when the result is the predictable death of families who had no real escape.

Even if Hamas prevents evacuation, the obligation doesn’t disappear. The law explicitly states that enemy violations—like using human shields—do not release the attacking party from its duty to distinguish and minimize harm. That’s Article 51(8) again: violations by one side do not cancel the obligations of the other.

So no—pointing to a camera or blaming Hamas does not transform foreseeable, mass civilian casualties into justified strikes. The legal standard is not: “Did you try something?” It’s: “Did you do everything feasible?” And when the answer is no, the law does not flinch. It calls that a violation

So Hamas can protect anything by parking enough civilians on it and not let them leave.

No—and that’s exactly the legal and moral failure in your reasoning.

The law does not say “you can never strike if civilians are nearby.” It says you must weigh whether the anticipated military advantage justifies the foreseeable civilian harm. That’s a test of proportionality, not paralysis. But proportionality is not just a math problem—it’s a moral constraint. You can’t say “we needed to kill one militant, so we flattened a school,” and expect the law to shrug.

So no, Hamas cannot make a military site untouchable just by being near civilians—but Israel cannot make civilian deaths excusable just by pointing to Hamas. The rule isn’t “if they break the law, we get to ignore it.” It’s: “even if they violate it, you still have legal duties.”

That’s why Article 51(8) exists. It anticipates exactly this argument—and rejects it. Enemy violations do not remove your obligations to protect civilians. That’s not loophole-proofing. That’s the very definition of civilized warfare. If you toss that aside, you’re not upholding the law. You’re reverting to vengeance dressed as strategy.

You have not established that there were any civilians on the target. All movement we see in the scene is far enough away that the blast poses little hazard.

Then you’ve just conceded my point—because you’re relying on not seeing civilians to justify the strike, which means even you accept that their presence would have made it legally and morally problematic.

But here’s the issue: the burden is not on the victims to prove they were there. It’s on the attacker to verify that they weren’t—especially when the target is in or near a known civilian zone, like a tent camp. The laws of war don’t say “assume safety until proven otherwise.” They say “take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm.”

If civilians were in tents just outside the frame—or too small to be visible—or prevented from fleeing—the legal and moral duty remains. Warnings only matter if people can act on them. And targeting only passes scrutiny if the expected civilian harm is not excessive.

If you admit the site is in or near a civilian area and you don’t have high-confidence visibility of noncombatant absence, then bombing anyway isn’t caution. It’s a gamble with human lives.

And under international law, gambling on civilian lives is not defense. It’s a violation.

<Thwack with a clue-by-4>
We are not saying the camera in any way alters the morality of the action! Rather, we are saying that the presence of the camera proves that advance warning was given--people don't point video cameras at static scenes unless they are expecting the scene not to remain static. It's proof that Israel followed the rules.

Then let’s talk about what “following the rules” actually means—because filming a bombing doesn’t prove legality. It proves expectation, not justification.

Under international humanitarian law, giving advance warning is only one part of the obligation. Article 57 of Additional Protocol I is very clear: even with a warning, you must cancel or suspend the attack if the anticipated civilian harm is excessive in relation to the military advantage. The presence of a camera shows foreknowledge—but it does not demonstrate that feasible precautions were taken, nor that proportionality was respected.

So let’s say Israel gave a warning and filmed it. If civilians were unable to flee—because they were trapped, coerced, or simply had nowhere safe to go—then the warning wasn’t “effective” as required by law. And if you still drop the bomb knowing civilians are likely to die in significant numbers, you’ve met the criteria for a war crime. A camera doesn’t change that. It documents it.

You want the footage to serve as exoneration. But under the law, it may serve as evidence of premeditated harm. Because if you knew civilians were present—or even couldn’t confirm their absence—and launched anyway, the law doesn’t bend to your certainty. It breaks you under it.

The point is not that Hamas wanted it but that Hamas engineered it. They seek the destruction as a weapon to pressure Israel with. Israel has no way of preventing this as failing to take action will just mean more atrocities until a government that will take action comes to power.

Then let’s be honest about what you’re defending: that Hamas engineered a trap, and Israel is walking into it anyway—knowing full well that the cost will be civilian lives. That’s not moral high ground. That’s strategic surrender disguised as strength.

You say Israel has “no way” to prevent it. But that’s false. Restraint is a choice. Precision is a choice. Holding to the laws of war even when the enemy doesn’t—that’s a choice. And when you forfeit those choices, you’re not defeating terrorism. You’re validating its playbook.

If Hamas’s aim is to provoke indiscriminate retaliation, then every child buried, every hospital leveled, every aid truck blocked is not just a tragedy—it’s a win for them. So ask yourself: if your response looks exactly like the outcome your enemy wants, are you stopping atrocities—or perpetuating them?

Because justice doesn’t mean doing whatever you want in the name of righteousness. It means refusing to become what you claim to oppose. And if that standard is too high, then the war isn’t just being lost on the ground. It’s being lost morally.

You still are fixated on punishment. No, this is about making it harder for Hamas to repeat 10/7.

Then stop pretending this isn’t punishment just because it’s wrapped in strategic language. You say it’s about “making it harder” for Hamas—but you’re doing it by destroying the very infrastructure civilians rely on to survive. You’re not just weakening Hamas’s ability to fight; you’re wrecking Gaza’s ability to live.

If Hamas controls much of the economy, that’s a failure of political and humanitarian policy—not a green light to dismantle the civilian population alongside it. If a mafia controls a city’s garbage trucks, you don’t bomb the city and call it law enforcement. You target with precision, you isolate power, and you uphold the distinction between civilians and combatants—even if it’s hard. That’s what separates a military operation from collective reprisal.

The measure of morality in war isn’t how just your cause is—it’s how you treat the people who have no power over it. And if “making it harder for Hamas” means making life unlivable for everyone else, then the goal isn’t just being pursued wrongly. It’s being corrupted entirely.

None of them are independently on the ground, if they say they are they're full of shit. Anyone reporting from Gaza says what Hamas tells them to say.

In the past we have had pretty "accurate" lists of all the dead and the circumstances. (I use quotes because while the identities appear accurate the circumstances are often deceptive, blaming Israel for explosions caused by rockets falling short, treating people as non-combatants when they were right next to a combatant that got hit etc.)

Then you’ve built a perfect shield against reality—one where no data counts unless it confirms your priors. You say every source inside Gaza is compromised by Hamas. Every international agency is “full of shit.” Every photo, every witness, every report—tainted. But here’s the problem: that’s not skepticism. That’s epistemic nihilism. If nothing can be trusted unless it vindicates one side, you’re not evaluating evidence—you’re filtering it for convenience.

Organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières, the ICRC, WHO, and UN OCHA don’t take marching orders from Hamas. They’ve condemned abuses on all sides, in conflicts from Syria to Sudan to Ukraine. They use multiple, corroborating methods: field hospitals, body counts, satellite imagery, and direct interviews—not blind deference to Hamas press offices. And when they say the civilian toll is catastrophic, it’s not because they’ve been duped. It’s because they’re documenting what no one else can—or will.

Your refusal to acknowledge any independent reporting from Gaza only proves one thing: you’ve decided in advance that all suffering on one side is either fake, deserved, or irrelevant. That’s not critical thinking. That’s tribal loyalty overriding basic human decency.

Sure they are high. You persist in using that as proof of wrongness. And proof that Israel did it--we have plenty of situations where Hamas is the primary suspect.

Then let’s clarify: acknowledging that civilian casualties are high is not the same as absolving the cause. When even the IDF admits large numbers of civilian deaths, the conversation shifts from “if” it’s happening to why—and whether it could have been avoided. That’s where accountability begins.

You say “Hamas is the primary suspect” in many cases. Fine—then show the evidence. Not assumption. Not political talking points. Evidence. Because if the burden of proof for Israeli strikes is always deflected onto Hamas, then you’ve built a system where no strike is ever unjustified, no child’s death ever counts against your side, and no amount of destruction ever warrants restraint. That’s not strategy. That’s moral impunity.

And let’s not pretend it’s just “Hamas propaganda.” The casualties are confirmed by satellite imagery, field reports from UN agencies, footage from war correspondents, and statements from Israeli officials themselves. Dismissing that as meaningless just signals one thing: you’re not looking for truth. You’re looking for a loophole.

So yes, high civilian casualties are proof of something: not just harm, but avoidable harm. And the law, the world, and history all recognize the difference between tragic inevitability—and tragic indifference.

NHC

 

[laughing dog]

Repeating misinformation doesn't make it true.

Ironically well said.

 

[laughing dog]

They were setting up the Gazans for the current situation. By ignoring the military installations under and adjacent to civilian infrastructure, they knew that they were setting up Gazans for destruction when they attacked Israel. Which they did. Gazans using their own people for human shields is the humanitarian disaster going on here. That and rich Muslims funding the leadership doing it. And the international media and demonstrators blaming Israel instead of the Gazans Who Matter.
Tom

Look who’s blowing shit now with evidence- free conspiracy theory.

Evidence-free conspiracy??

You really think the fact that Iran is funding it is evidence free??

No.

Is it possible for you to base your response on the actual context of a discussion instead of a projected straw man?

Is it possible for you to not blame your opponent when left with no good response?

Shift the goal posts much?

TomC and I both blame outside funding, although he specified "rich Muslims" and I specified "Iran." The exact source isn't relevant to the point so this does not matter. You're calling that evidence free and somehow calling it a strawman.

Another straw man. I bold-faced the relevant part.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Palestinian kids are dying every day from malnutition.

You say that as though the reason is obvious. My guess is that they tend to be the children of Gazans that aren't important to Hamas, or worse. Disloyal to Hamas.

Agreed that they are children that are not important, but I see no reason to think disloyal. Rather, the specialty formulas are expensive, Hamas is going to get more exporting them than selling them to locals.

 

[NoHolyCows]

It's very relevant. You drop a bomb on an urban area and don't kill anyone, clearly they did a very good job of getting people away from the target.

Then let’s be honest about what that really means.

If you have to warn civilians to flee because you’re about to bomb their neighborhood, you’ve already admitted that the area is full of civilians. And if you bomb anyway—knowing the civilian density, the displacement, the lack of safe zones—then getting the average death count “under one per bomb” isn’t a triumph. It’s a grim math problem in a system where death is the baseline.

Precision bombing in a city doesn’t change the fact that entire neighborhoods are leveled, hospitals are hit, aid convoys are blocked, and children die in shelters. You can’t measure morality by body-count averages—especially when the weapons used are designed to destroy buildings, not isolate militants.

Surgical strikes don’t justify operating on a civilian population without anesthesia. Warning or not, when you choose to bomb where people live, and the outcome is mass displacement, hunger, and shattered infrastructure, you don’t get to claim moral credit for how efficiently it was done. You’re still burning the house down with people inside. You’re just calling it a controlled demolition.

And you continue to ignore the step of demonstrating that that wasn't followed.

And you continue to pretend that “feasible precautions” means anything short of absolute proof.

But here’s the legal and moral standard: it is not enough to say, “We aimed for a militant.” When you bomb areas known to be filled with civilians—schools, shelters, refugee camps—when over half the dead are women and children, when entire families are wiped out in strikes with no independently confirmed militant presence, and when this happens repeatedly, that’s not a gray area. That’s evidence of a systematic failure to uphold the obligations under Article 57.

International humanitarian law doesn’t require omniscience—it requires due diligence. If you knew the risk of civilian harm was high and you struck anyway, without verifying the military advantage outweighed it, you failed that standard.

The fact that you demand I prove Israel violated the law while dismissing mountains of documentation, satellite imagery, eyewitness testimony, and patterns of conduct only shows your bias—not the absence of proof.

And here’s the bottom line: if what Israel is doing doesn’t violate Article 51 or 57, then the Geneva Conventions are meaningless. You don’t get to call it “the most moral army” while denying the law even when the results are catastrophic.

Why should I think the line has been blurred? His data says nothing about who was a combatant, just that clearly many were.

Then you’ve just admitted the central flaw: you don’t know who was a combatant—you’re just assuming “clearly many were” based on age and gender patterns. That’s not evidence. That’s profiling.

International law doesn’t permit you to guess someone’s combatant status because they’re a teenage boy in a war zone. The Geneva Conventions draw a bright line: unless someone is directly participating in hostilities, they’re presumed to be a civilian. That’s not a loophole. That’s a safeguard—one created precisely to prevent the kind of demographic shortcuts you’re defending.

So if your standard is “they might have been fighters, based on statistics,” then what you’re really doing is making civilian death easier to rationalize—not harder to justify. And that’s not legal reasoning. That’s moral outsourcing.

His graph does not identify individuals, thus this is irrelevant.

Then your defense collapses entirely—because if the graph doesn’t identify individuals, it cannot tell you who was a combatant. Which means your entire moral argument is built on inference, not evidence.

You can’t simultaneously say “we don’t know who was killed individually” and then conclude that “clearly many were combatants.” That’s statistical storytelling, not legal justification.

And in war—especially one claiming to adhere to international law—you don’t get to downgrade civilian protections just because a chart suggests something about age trends. If the only data you have is ambiguous, the burden falls on those using force—not on the dead to retroactively prove their innocence.

So yes, this is relevant. Because when your whole argument rests on what a graph implies—without names, without context, without confirmation—you’re not arguing for justice. You’re arguing for plausible deniability.

If they aren't combatants why are they being selectively hit??

Because they aren’t being selectively hit. They’re being disproportionately killed because they’re in the highest-risk demographic—not of guilt, but of proximity.

Teen and young adult males are the ones out searching for food, helping families evacuate, moving supplies, and—yes—sometimes participating in resistance. But the assumption that their deaths mean they must all be combatants is a logical fallacy. It confuses correlation with intent.

If Israel bombs a building or area where young men happen to be concentrated—because they’re mobile, because they take more risks, or because they’re simply outside while others shelter—then of course that group will suffer higher mortality. But that doesn’t prove they were fighters. It proves only that they were exposed.

You can’t reverse-engineer legality from a death count. International law requires positive identification of a combatant before use of lethal force—not statistical profiling after the fact to justify what’s already been done.

So again: if they’re being hit more often, it might say something about patterns of movement, desperation, or exposure. But unless you can show who they were and what they were doing, then your “they must be fighters” defense isn’t a fact. It’s a narrative—and a dangerous one.

It's skepticism. We see repeated claims that if true would have resulted in a big pile of bodies. Yet the bodies didn't appear, therefore the claim must be false. And false, and false, and false. Why in the world should I think that this time around it's true?

Then you’ve confused skepticism with cynicism. Real skepticism tests claims against evidence—it doesn’t dismiss them because previous ones were exaggerated, imprecise, or politicized. “It didn’t happen before” is not a rebuttal to current documented conditions. It’s just intellectual laziness dressed up as pattern recognition.

If every credible humanitarian agency—UNICEF, WHO, WFP, Save the Children, MSF—reports rising infant mortality, acute malnutrition, and near-famine conditions, then waving that away because you’ve seen false alarms in the past isn’t critical thinking. It’s confirmation bias.

By your logic, if one fire alarm turns out to be a drill, we should ignore all future alarms—even when we smell smoke.

That’s not healthy doubt. It’s willful blindness.

How long can death be imminent without happening???

That question only sounds clever if you ignore how famine and malnutrition actually work.

“Imminent” doesn’t mean instant. A child on the brink of starvation can linger in critical condition for days or weeks—especially if aid is intermittent, inadequate, or blocked. A health system in collapse means even treatable conditions can spiral. And when warnings say “imminent risk of death,” they’re not predicting a timestamp—they’re raising the alarm before the bodies pile up, because by the time they do, it’s too late.

The point of those warnings isn’t to narrate a countdown. It’s to prevent what becomes inevitable if nothing changes.

So instead of mocking the alarm, ask why it keeps ringing—and why you’re still trying to silence it.

No, while truckloads of food sit on the Gaza side of the border because by not taking them to the warehouse they can pretend they weren't delivered.

Then ask yourself: Why would aid groups “pretend” food wasn’t delivered—knowing children are starving and global scrutiny is high? Why would the UN, WFP, and other organizations risk their credibility on what would be an easily disproven lie—especially when satellite imagery, convoy records, and border logs exist?

The reality is this: even when aid enters, it’s often trickled in slowly, bottlenecked at checkpoints, subjected to delays, or dropped without proper distribution infrastructure due to bombing, displacement, or lack of security guarantees. Israel’s own restrictions on entry, movement, and inspection have been documented by every major humanitarian organization.

So no—the problem isn’t a theatrical pile-up of aid trucks. It’s a deliberate collapse of the systems that move food from border to table. And while you blame optics, people are still starving. The facts haven’t changed—just your willingness to face them.

Recognition of unpleasant reality isn't cynical. Every so often someone actually comes out and says the reality of what's happening. It's always from small sources because telling the truth ensures you can never go back there so no large news organization will do it.

Then let’s test that “unpleasant reality.”

If every aid agency is controlled by Hamas, then how do you explain the consistency of reporting across dozens of unrelated organizations—UNICEF, WHO, WFP, MSF, Save the Children, and the ICRC? Are they all Hamas mouthpieces? Are the satellite images of leveled cities, collapsed hospitals, and burning aid convoys faked too? Is every Israeli human rights group—B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence—also taking orders from Hamas?

You’re not describing reality. You’re describing a conspiracy theory that conveniently invalidates any evidence you don’t like.

The truth is this: aid workers do face pressure from armed groups. That happens in every war zone. But that’s precisely why agencies triangulate data, cross-verify reports, and issue findings only when supported by multiple sources. If you dismiss all of it by default, what you’re saying is: no fact is valid unless it serves my side. And that’s not recognition of reality. That’s propaganda masquerading as skepticism.

"Documented"?? By what?? So far every "scientific" report I've seen on the situation is garbage.

Then name one. Show me a “scientific” report you’ve actually read and can refute with evidence—not with vague dismissals or hand-waving about bias, but with specific data, counter-sources, and a demonstrated understanding of how the report was conducted.

Because unless you can do that, your response isn’t about the quality of the evidence. It’s about rejecting any evidence that threatens your position.

You don’t get to call everything “garbage” without showing why. UNICEF reports use nutrition surveys, field interviews, and cross-referenced hospital data. The World Food Programme uses geotagged distribution records and caloric intake modeling. WHO tracks mortality and disease trends across multiple clinics, comparing them against international baselines for famine and malnutrition.

If you’re going to accuse those efforts of being invalid, then prove it. Show your work. Otherwise, your rejection says nothing about the evidence—and everything about your refusal to face it.

Delayed--of course it happens. No way to ensure everything operates smoothly in a war zone.
Denied--where? Something to keep in mind here: there are repeated attempts to send things in in a fashion where Israel can't inspect them. Those are of course denied. Doesn't mean the shipment is prohibited, just that the method is.
Destroyed--when they have been taken by Hamas they are no longer aid, but military tools.

Your argument tries to reframe obstruction as logistics, denial as due diligence, and destruction as justified retaliation—but that doesn’t make it true under international law or humanitarian standards.

“Delayed” doesn’t mean the occasional checkpoint holdup. It means days or weeks of aid trucks backed up at borders while people starve—documented by the UN, Red Crescent, and even by statements from U.S. officials who have called the situation “unacceptable.” That’s not a routine hiccup. That’s deliberate throttling of relief.

“Denied” doesn’t just mean improper paperwork. It includes critical supplies like fuel, generators, and water purification systems being held up or rejected entirely—again, not based on some hidden Hamas use, but on blanket restrictions that affect entire populations. Even top U.S. officials have pressed Israel to ease these restrictions and expedite humanitarian access.

And “destroyed” doesn’t magically become acceptable the moment Hamas is nearby. If aid convoys are targeted because they’re believed to be “compromised,” the burden of proof is on the attacker—and that burden is extraordinarily high. You don’t get to bomb humanitarian convoys preemptively and claim they were repurposed unless you can prove it, not just speculate. And the fact that aid workers are being killed, including from organizations like World Central Kitchen, shows the margin of error isn’t just theoretical—it’s deadly.

So no, this isn’t just about method or efficiency. It’s about the consistent undermining of humanitarian access—and it is being called out not just by Gaza-based sources, but by Israel’s own allies. If even they are saying this is a crisis of Israel’s making, maybe it’s time to stop pretending this is all just Hamas’s fault.

Which doesn't address the fact that everything in Gaza is compromised.

Then let’s be clear: your argument is totalizing—and that’s the problem.

If “everything in Gaza is compromised,” then by your logic, no source, no data, no testimony from inside Gaza can ever be trusted, no matter how rigorously verified, no matter who reports it—not the UN, not Doctors Without Borders, not U.S. officials, not even satellite-confirmed damage reports. That’s not skepticism. That’s a built-in excuse to ignore anything that challenges your narrative.

This isn’t about addressing “a fact.” It’s about recognizing what you’re doing with it: you’re using the claim of compromise to dismiss all accountability. If every child’s death can be waved off as propaganda, if every aid delay is excused as security, if every bombed school is blamed on invisible militants, then nothing counts except what you already believe.

You're looking at one facet. Even if the US didn't fire another shot the outcome would be worse.

And what about the China front? I'm not aware of a timeline breakdown on that, but it was averaging at least 4k civilians/day. Or do you not care because it was the Japanese doing the killing, not us?

Then let’s answer that clearly: of course I care. That’s the entire point—human suffering doesn’t become acceptable depending on who causes it.

If your defense of Hiroshima is that it spared Chinese civilians from further Japanese atrocities, you’re still arguing from a framework of tragic calculus: kill many to save more. But that’s not a moral blank check. Because once you normalize that logic—once you say mass civilian death is acceptable if the “end justifies the means”—you’ve built a system where any atrocity can be rationalized.

And no, I’m not ignoring what Japan did in China. The Rape of Nanking, the use of civilians for bayonet practice, forced labor, Unit 731—those are war crimes. But what makes us different—what’s supposed to make justice possible—is refusing to adopt the same logic of collective suffering.

So no, I’m not just “looking at one facet.” I’m rejecting the idea that we should ever treat civilian lives as negotiable chips in a strategic bargain. Because if we go down that road, we’re not winning wars—we’re just trading horrors.

NHC

 

[Loren Pechtel]

"carrying pilgrims". Big yellow flag right there, I was already expecting deception when I played the video.

Doing something like putting that bus there is a standard ambush technique, clipping the corner of the bus instead of allowing it to stop them and bunch them up is pretty standard in hostile territory. US forces would have done the same thing in Iraq.

The west bank is hostile territory now???

Against ambushes, certainly.

There was plenty of room to drive around the bus. The bus could not have stopped those vehicles. There was another vehicle stopped directly in front of it.

You'll do anything to defend the indefensible.

Where is this mythical extra space? There's a black car there. The back of the bus was sticking out into the next lane, sloppy driving...or ambush setup?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

They are importing about the same amount of food as they did before the hostilities began.

 

[NoHolyCows]

Hamas doesn’t bomb the crossings. Israel does.

Patently false.

Hamas Terrorists Attack Kerem Shalom Aid Crossing for Fourth Time in May

If your source is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, let’s be honest about what it is: a hawkish, pro-Israel think tank—not an impartial outlet. But even setting that aside, attacks on the Kerem Shalom crossing don’t erase the far larger reality: Israel controls every crossing, every convoy, every inspection, and has repeatedly closed or bombed them—including during aid deliveries. The World Food Programme, UNRWA, and OCHA have all documented Israeli airstrikes hitting aid convoys, UN shelters, and supply routes—not once or twice, but repeatedly.

Yes, Hamas has also attacked crossings. That’s part of the chaos they thrive in. But if you’re trying to argue that Hamas attacking a crossing somehow justifies Israel bombing aid trucks, blocking convoys, or shutting gates for days or weeks, then you’re doing exactly what you accuse others of: excusing the suffering of civilians for military optics.

Let’s be clear: both sides have acted recklessly. But only one side controls when food enters, how much, and whether it gets bombed en route. If you want to cite one incident, I’ll raise you a hundred documented by humanitarian agencies. That’s the real ratio.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

One side breaks the ceasefire, there is no more ceasefire, the other side is free to resume shooting. You're misrepresenting the situation.

Then let’s clarify it directly. If one side breaks a ceasefire, the other side is no longer legally obligated to maintain the ceasefire terms—but that doesn’t mean they’re free to wage war without rules. The end of a ceasefire is not the end of legal or moral restraint. International humanitarian law still applies in full. That includes the obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants, to ensure that attacks are proportionate, and to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. These are not suspended just because the ceasefire is over.

So when you say the other side is “free to resume shooting,” that’s only true in the narrow sense that hostilities can lawfully resume. But how they resume—and what methods are used—are still bound by law. You don’t get a license to target civilians or to abandon proportionality just because the other side acted first. That’s not how the Geneva Conventions work, and it’s not how justice works either. If your standard is “they broke it first, so now anything goes,” you’re not describing lawful response—you’re describing reprisal without accountability.

You're not responding to what I said. Hamas has a group devoted to propaganda videos. Doesn't make them not Hamas.

And no one said otherwise. But what you’re doing is something very different: using the fact that someone may be affiliated with Hamas, or involved in propaganda, or even just present in Gaza, to justify strikes that kill dozens—sometimes hundreds—of civilians at once. That’s not accountability. That’s associative guilt turned into a targeting policy.

A propaganda video team is not the same as an armed combatant force. Under international law, only those directly participating in hostilities can be targeted. Producing a video, writing a statement, or being ideologically aligned isn’t enough. Otherwise, every political or media actor becomes fair game—which is exactly the legal and moral slope you’re sliding down.

So yes, Hamas has propaganda units. But unless they’re taking direct part in combat, blowing up the building they’re in—especially when it’s surrounded by civilians—isn’t lawful targeting. It’s a euphemism for collective punishment, and law doesn’t make exceptions for convenient enemies.

They should be protected to the extent feasible. Where I see you going wrong is you are taking it on faith that the high number of dead is proof they aren't taking due care. Hamas runs up the death toll specifically to make you think that.

Then let’s be clear: “feasible” doesn’t mean “whatever the attacker decides is good enough.” Under international law, it means all practicable precautions must be taken to avoid civilian harm—including cancelling or suspending an attack if the risk is excessive. That’s not aspirational—it’s binding law, grounded in Articles 51 and 57 of Additional Protocol I.

And the issue isn’t blind faith in numbers. The issue is patterns. Repeated strikes on densely populated areas. Thousands of civilians killed, over half of them women and children. Entire neighborhoods flattened. Aid workers, journalists, and medical staff among the dead. You can’t dismiss that as Hamas manipulation without dismissing the independent corroboration from UN agencies, humanitarian groups, satellite data, and even Israel’s own internal reviews.

This isn’t about doubting every claim from Hamas—it’s about recognizing that a massive, repeated civilian toll requires more than “Hamas made us do it.” It demands accountability, not just intent. Because if high civilian death is always blamed on the enemy, and never on the bombs that fall, then civilian protection becomes a meaningless clause. And that’s exactly what the law was written to prevent.

Yes. Same as in WWII the presence of a German uniform and the absence of signs of surrender was enough to warrant pulling the trigger. Besides, he used that in a symbolic fashion, putting on the <military> uniform. He wasn't actually referring to wearing a green band.

Then you’ve just made my point more clearly than I could have.

Because equating Hamas insignia with a WWII uniform isn’t just a false analogy—it exposes the heart of the problem. In WWII, combatants were part of a declared state, identifiable under the Geneva Conventions, and covered by rules of war. But Gaza isn’t a battlefield of uniformed armies. It’s a densely populated civilian enclave, where symbols, clothing, and even buildings get conflated with military targets. That’s exactly why international humanitarian law demands more than assumption or symbolism before authorizing lethal force.

Under the Geneva Conventions, a person must be directly participating in hostilities to lose civilian protections—not merely affiliated, sympathetic, or dressed a certain way. Using “he wore the wrong symbol” as justification for killing isn’t warfare. It’s profiling. And when you treat symbolism as sufficient grounds for execution in a war zone crowded with civilians, you erase the line between combatant and non-combatant entirely.

So yes—thank you for confirming the danger. Because once you treat implication as evidence and attire as guilt, you haven’t just bent the law. You’ve abandoned it.

But Geneva doesn't require you to figure out if the person in an enemy uniform is actually an enemy. You walk down the street in Kiev in a Russian army uniform, you expect to live??

Then you’re misapplying a battlefield rule to an occupied civilian population—two entirely different legal and ethical contexts.

In an active theater of war between two uniformed armies, yes, combatant status is often presumed based on uniform. But Gaza is not that. Gaza is not a battlefield filled with regular soldiers; it’s a civilian territory under siege, with no formal army, where the lines between governance, resistance, and survival are already dangerously blurred. And that’s exactly why international humanitarian law does require careful distinction.

Wearing a green band, a T-shirt, or walking in the wrong place doesn’t make someone a lawful target. The Geneva Conventions require that civilians be presumed innocent unless they are actively participating in hostilities. That’s not a loophole. That’s the core safeguard that prevents war from collapsing into indiscriminate killing.

So no, you don’t get to apply battlefield logic to occupied territory full of civilians—most of whom are children—and pretend that’s legal, let alone moral. If you don’t see the difference between a Russian soldier in Kyiv and a Palestinian teenager in Rafah, you’re not arguing law. You’re just rationalizing bloodshed.

NHC

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

It's what you demand.

Nothing is good enough, therefore defense is impossible and they simply have to wait to be killed.

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.

A real solution does not exist. Yeah, I know, that's blasphemy to the left. Before I would have said taking down Iran would likely do it, but given how they have gotten into bed with Russia I no longer consider that a possibility.

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.

You seem to think alternatives must exist.

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.

Yes, I dismiss out of hand all of those who kept proclaiming imminent disaster that never materialized.

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.

You don't have to be skeletal to look underweight. To have a few starving children in a society that looks like it has enough to eat either means they can't eat or they aren't being permitted food.

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.

Cite?

Why would an inspection delay keep it from entering Gaza?

And what's being denied? I think you're mixing it up with events of long ago, there was a period where Israel was not permitting Hamas to import anything. The result was "arbitrary" denials to a lot of Hamas puppets.

Border crossings? Yeah, it happens. Hamas shells a border crossing, Israel closes it for a while. Quit shelling it, end of problem. Same as they shelled that stupid pier we tried to build.

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.

No. There is no requirement of exclusively. And remember Israel has actually taken some hospitals--and found weapons all over the place. And that's only the stuff the defenders didn't manage to get out.

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.

It's not "they might be hijacked". It's "they have been taken".

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.

I'm not saying that.

I'm saying that if you function in Gaza you have to do what Hamas tells you to. Not that that means membership in Hamas. (Although there's quite an overlap between UN and Hamas.) There are no independent journalists there. Journalists either are actually Hamas, or are reporting what Hamas tells them to report. Not obeying is liable to get you killed.

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?

Thousands??

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.

I'm saying duress, not guilt.

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.

And you have still not established that they failed in those precautions.

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.

You were critical of my pointing out that it's less than one dead per bomb, yet that makes it very clear that warning and evacuation was happening.

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.

And if my aunt had balls she would be my uncle.

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.

It was fabricated--by Saddam's people, not by us. There was some stuff we managed to capture early on and beyond that we had report after report after report from commanders who managed to keep the stuff away from the inspectors. We didn't realize the stuff had never existed in the first place other than on paper.

And that doesn't change the fact that had Iran not been able to subvert the country the end result of our invasion would be better for the people overall after only a year.

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.

Part of the requirement of the cease fire of the first round of the turkey shoot would be that he would hand over all WMD. Failure to comply with the terms of a cease fire means the shooting can resume. And Saddam sure waddled and quacked non-compliance--because he believed he still had WMD. Threaten a cop with an empty gun and see how it goes.

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.

Yeah, the no viable plan was a horrendous fuck-up.

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.

But you are not presenting an alternative beyond handwaving.

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.

It's a proxy war. And proxy wars are horrible for the country they are being fought in. But that doesn't mean there's a magic answer to solve it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

No possible amount of aid will be enough because Hamas wants starving children. That's why Israel is taking it over directly. And why Hamas is attacking the Israeli distribution system.

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.

She is knowingly trying to run a military blockade. Just because they haven't taken up arms doesn't make them not combatants.

Remember what happened last time? All but one ship complied when ordered to submit to boarding. One ship fought. And, no surprise, all the people on that ship that fought had made martyrdom videos. And the ship was found to contain a useless pile of junk. Some of it might possibly have been of use had it been handled properly, but it was all just tossed in a pile. And oceangoing ships encounter waves. A heap of stuff will soon become a heap of broken stuff.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

I already spelled it out. You're guilty of the same thing.

Demand impossible standards and then blame them when they fail to meet those impossible standards. That's exactly what Hamas wants you to do and exactly why Hamas is killing so many people.

 

[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.)

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.

And once again you derail.

I said nothing about whether they were coerced. The issue was whether they knew.