Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Loren Pechtel]

But you automatically blame Israel and ignore what they are reacting to. And since it's not about blaming Israel we can be reasonably confident the images are true.

I question Israel's motivation for doing so. They have about as much business in Syria as Russia does in Ukraine.

As I said, you are automatically blaming Israel. The Druze are like the Jews, a persecuted minority. As such, they have been friendly with Israel.

I am not sure that is the whole story. The Israeli Druze are loyal to Israel, but the Druze in Syria and Lebanon tend not to be friendly of Israel. The inhabitants of the Golan Heights (mostly Druze) have largely rejected Israeli citizenship because they consider themselves to be Syrians.

They're Syrians, but that doesn't mean they aren't friendly towards Israel.

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say I’m reading the law wrong. No — I’m reading it as it was written: to restrain the very logic you keep defending. The Geneva Conventions weren’t drafted to legalize collective suffering. They were designed precisely to stop powerful actors from using “military necessity” as a blank check. You invoke the law like a shield, but you only respect it when it rubber-stamps destruction.

Apparently you do not realize that it's Hamas quite intentionally harming civilians for military purposes.

You argue the numbers don’t prove wrongdoing — only that Israel’s ratio is “better than anyone else.” But the laws of war don’t benchmark against the worst offender. They demand proportionality in each strike, restraint in each case, protection for civilians at every step. You want to turn that into a ledger sheet, as if the death toll is tolerable because someone else killed more. That’s not morality. That’s moral outsourcing.

I'm not benchmarking against the worst, I'm benchmarking against 2nd place.

You say you dismiss field reports because they’re anonymous and “disconnected.” No, Loren — you dismiss them because they come from Gaza. You’ve made location your disqualifier. If a doctor testifies from a bombed hospital, you reject it. If an NGO counts bodies, you call it fake. But if the IDF releases a PowerPoint, it’s gospel. Your skepticism isn’t about evidence. It’s about who’s holding the microphone.

I dismiss them because we have a huge number of false allegations. Thus I'm going to treat everything that doesn't have a shred of evidence with equal credibility--that is, none. If there really were investigators they would have no reason not to identify themselves in some fashion. Look at what we have in Ukraine--lots of detail, independent confirmations and even then some pretty big gaps in the counts. We have nothing like that in Gaza.

You ask where the dead are — but deny the systems built to find them. You say no one can function under Hamas, then claim that no one functioning proves the data’s false. That’s circular denial. You pretend the absence of perfect proof means the absence of crime, when in reality, it’s just the predictable silence of warzone chaos — a silence you then weaponize.

I deny the systems that produce huge amounts of bad data. Science involves incorporating new data as it's discovered--but we don't see that in Gaza.

You argue that flattening buildings is justified because “Hamas uses everything.” But if that’s true, then Gaza has no civilians by your logic — just 2 million combatants waiting to be targeted. That’s not warfare. That’s depopulation masquerading as military strategy. If every structure is a threat, then no protection remains — and you’ve just rewritten the rules of war to suit your comfort.

No. Gaza has a whole bunch of civilians sitting on top of military targets. The targets are still valid, you do the best you can to get the civilians off the X before the bombs fall, but there's no obligation not to drop.

You ask why Hamas can’t produce bodies of the starving — as if starvation only counts when it’s photogenic (we already went over this). You set standards of evidence no warzone could meet. Then you use that impossibility as your alibi. Food insecurity warnings from UNICEF, blockade reports from the UN, children wasting away in overburdened hospitals — you call it theater. Because anything less than a corpse on camera doesn’t fit your storyline.

Do you even know the meaning of the word "photogenic"?? I'm not demanding nice pictures. I'm demanding pictures (much preferably video, it's much harder to fake--consider a few months ago I applied for a credit card. Photo of ID followed by moving the camera around my face so it was clear it was looking at a 3D face, not a picture) that can be identified as real, unique individuals. This should not be hard to do if they have actual victims. We saw plenty of pictures with the first one--acknowledged medical case. Since then, AI garbage.

You say the bombing is Hamas’s fault because they chose to militarize everything. But that erases the role of the attacker. You ignore the choices of the side with the drones, the missiles, the intelligence, and the capacity to act differently. You’ve absolved the strongest actor of accountability by blaming the weakest one for being in the way.

Hamas is the attacker.

And when you say the license to kill persists “as long as hostages exist,” you’re proving the core problem. You’ve set no limits, no red lines, no moral ceiling. You say the cost doesn’t matter because someone else is worse. But justice isn’t defined by your enemies. It’s defined by what you refuse to become.

If you set a red line you set a price for killing a Jew. Think Iran wouldn't be happy to pay that price in cannon fodder? You think you are solving something when in reality you're perpetuating it.

You keep accusing me of misreading war, misreading law, misreading the world. But the truth is, I see it too clearly for your comfort. You need the law to bend. I need it to hold. You want war to justify anything. I want it constrained by something. And that’s where we part ways — not on facts, but on whether human dignity still means anything when the missiles start falling.

You think you see. But clearly you do not as I have to keep correcting your perceptions.

Hamas’s brutality isn’t the excuse for Israel to mirror it. Two wrongs don’t make a right. International law doesn’t say “your enemy killed first, now you can kill freely.” If anything, intentional civilian harm by one side heightens the obligation of the other to spare non-combatants. Your shrug—“they started it”—is moral surrender, not realism

Comparing yourself to a slightly better villain doesn’t cleanse your own crimes. Law demands absolute limits: each strike must be necessary, proportionate, and precautionary. “Better than Lebanon” doesn’t meet that standard. It just proves how low we’ve sunk when lowering the bar becomes the moral argument.

Demanding perfect, Western-style forensics in a besieged, bombed-out territory is a recipe for total silence—and that’s exactly what you want. When local NGOs risk their lives to document mass graves, you dismiss them as “anonymous.” When international observers can’t embed freely, you call that evidence of conspiracy. You’ve raised the bar so high that no truth can ever clear it.

The collapse of hospitals, power, and civil registries isn’t “bad data.” It’s a humanitarian catastrophe. You act as if every gap in casualty figures proves fabrication rather than destruction. In every warzone—from Mosul to Aleppo—data is messy. The question isn’t perfection; it’s whether multiple independent sources converge on the same tragic truth. They do.

You can’t erase “obligation” by saying it’s inconvenient. “Do your best” still requires real, verifiable warnings and safe corridors—more than a broadcasted text message. Flattening homes because Hamas tunnels run below them treats civilian lives as collateral immaterial. That isn’t necessity; it’s indifference.

You’re demanding livestreamed proof in a zone where phone networks fail under bombardment. When families bury their dead in backyards, not morgues, there’s no camera. UNICEF warnings and field surveys aren’t “fiction” just because you can’t scroll them on Instagram. Your “proof standard” is a denial device, not a path to truth.

They struck first—but that doesn’t erase Israel’s responsibility for every civilian hit thereafter. Retaliation doesn’t suspend law. By your logic, any massacre invites a bigger one in response. That’s not defense; it’s vendetta.

Setting red lines doesn’t put a price tag on human lives—it affirms that some things are beyond reach, no matter the provocation. Your fear that restraint invites more violence ignores history: unchecked brutality breeds endless cycles of revenge. Law isn’t about security calculus; it’s about preserving our shared humanity when the worst actors demand its erasure.

Perception isn’t the issue—it’s choice. You choose to see only what fits your narrative: the enemy’s evil justifies any means. My “errors” are your shield for indifference. At some point, refusing to look at the rubble is itself a choice—to ignore suffering because it’s inconvenient. That’s where our debate ends: you defend the right to bury civilians. I refuse to join you.

NHC

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.c...palestinians-and-use-of-aid-as-a-tool-of-war/

I guess Doctors Without Borders, which is primarily made up of volunteer doctors who sometimes risk their lives to help people in dire situations don't know what their talking about either. /s

Yet another wolf. Predictions of dire results--more than 4 months have passed and those dire results did not appear. You're actually proving my point here, bringing up one of those false predictions of doom I keep talking about. Why do you keep listening to the eternal screams of famine and starvation?

 

[NoHolyCows]

You keep repeating that Hamas is exploiting decency as a loophole — and yet somehow, your solution is to shut the door on decency altogether. That’s not closing a loophole. That’s abandoning the foundation. If empathy can be “weaponized,” then your logic demands the extinction of empathy itself. That’s not strategy. That’s surrender — not to Hamas, but to despair.

I'm not trying to shut the door on decency. I agree with the GHF approach, although I will be surprised if it doesn't end up collapsing under Hamas attack.

But when you allow Hamas to use "decency" as a weapon you help nothing, because whatever you do they'll just adjust so the people are still suffering so they can get more "decency"--producing an overall worse result. You are taking the path of appeasement.

You say civilians can be both victims and weapons. And that sounds clever until you realize how quickly it becomes license for anything. Because once you frame civilians as dual-use — not by action, but by proximity — you’ve rewritten the rules of war so every baby becomes a potential asset, every doctor a human shield, every neighborhood a valid target. At that point, you’re not describing a battlefield. You’re describing a free-fire zone. And calling it moral.

Becomes a Hamas weapon. And the more attention you pay to it the more power you give Hamas.

You wave away malnutrition warnings with “Hamas propaganda,” but here’s the issue: the data isn’t coming from Hamas. It’s coming from UNICEF, the WHO, UNRWA, Médecins Sans Frontières, and countless humanitarian workers with nothing to gain from lying. If your framework automatically filters out every source except the IDF’s PR desk, then you’re not evaluating facts. You’re quarantining them.

I've already shown that all of those guys are simply parroting Hamas. Anyone who didn't fix their data when Israel exposed the bad data doesn't care about the truth. And, unfortunately, that appears to be everyone. I am not surprised at the press, they've been thoroughly corrupted by the need for access. and I've been aware that HRW and AI have long since been corrupted. I did not realize the others had been.

You keep citing Iran as the hand behind everything, as if invoking a regional puppet-master absolves Israel of all independent agency. Iran’s influence is real, but not omnipotent — and even if it were, it wouldn’t erase the obligations of a military superpower wielding overwhelming force. You say Hamas removes the red lines. I say: red lines matter most when the enemy crosses them. Because that’s what separates law from vengeance. Civilization from spiral.

The problem is you keep blaming Israel for situations Iran caused to happen.

I’m not parroting Hamas. I’m demanding accountability from the side claiming moral high ground. If your principle collapses the moment the other side behaves monstrously, then it was never a principle — just a preference. Hamas’s brutality doesn’t permit you to mirror it. And if your only metric is who lies more persuasively, then congratulations: you’ve reduced war ethics to a competition of storytellers while the bodies stack up.

You are setting an impossible standard of accountability. I am looking at the results: they're doing better than anyone else has. Neither of us are competent to challenge the world champions, but you seem to think you are.

You say Hamas “pretends” atrocity and I “believe it.” But you don’t examine the facts — you disqualify them based on origin. You assume fraud when the evidence challenges your comfort. That’s not critical thinking. That’s ideological reflex. Every atrocity becomes suspect. Every testimony, compromised. Every death, too convenient. And in the end, the only version of reality you accept is the one that demands no accountability from your side at all.

I assume fraud when there are allegations without evidence that should exist.

They made that AI picture of a starving baby, clearly they are capable of taking a picture inside a hospital room and publishing it. But it's an AI baby, why don't they have a picture of a real one? Clearly because there aren't real ones to take pictures of.

If that’s your realism, keep it. I’ll stick with the kind that still recognizes the humanity buried beneath the rubble.

Your "reality" is to be led around by pictures of horror into creating even more horror.

Decency isn’t a bargaining chip you can surrender because your enemy exploits it. If you abandon empathy to outmaneuver Hamas’s narrative, you concede your own humanity. True strength refuses to let cruelty define the rules, even when the enemy weaponizes compassion.

Dismissing every child’s death as “just propaganda” doesn’t starve Hamas—it starves truth. Recognizing civilian suffering isn’t empowerment of terrorists; it’s a claim on our shared humanity that no amount of PR can erase.

Throwing out every independent witness because some errors slipped through is intellectual despair, not rigor. Médecins Sans Frontières doesn’t answer to Hamas, it answers to patients. When UN pediatricians warn of famine, they’re risking their lives to save kids—not chasing headlines.

Iran may light the fuse, but Israel chooses whether to drop the bomb. You can condemn Tehran’s meddling and still demand your own government respect civilian lives. Sovereign power carries sovereign responsibility.

“Better than the worst” isn’t justice—it’s a moving target designed to absolve. The test isn’t how low the bar can go, but whether any child’s death is worth it. If every military finds it “impossible” to avoid killing innocents, then perhaps the standard is the only thing keeping us human.

Demanding Hollywood-level proof in a warzone where cameras, power, and communications are targets is a recipe for silence—and that’s your goal. Field clinics, midwives, burial teams maintain logs and testimonies. Their absence on Instagram doesn’t erase their suffering; it only exposes your denial.

Not horror porn—evidence of lives destroyed. Ignoring it doesn’t protect civilians; it lets their deaths become acceptable collateral. Accountability isn’t the enemy of victory. It’s the prerequisite for any victory worth having.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You keep insisting I misunderstand you, but I think what bothers you is that I don’t. I quote your words, reflect their consequences, and you call it misrepresentation — not because I changed their meaning, but because I won’t soften it. The problem isn’t confusion. It’s exposure. You’ve built a framework where massive civilian death is regrettable but never disqualifying. That’s not misreading. That’s you saying the quiet part out loud.

Your keep thinking you are correcting the meaning but you are not. You're filtering everything through an Israel-is-always-wrong filter before you try to comprehend it. Again and again I get you to understand for a moment, but you immediately forget, going right back to the false version painted by Hamas.

You ask if monitored corridors or third-party truces “return the hostages.” No — but flattening cities hasn’t returned them either. Mass starvation hasn’t. Sealing aid hasn’t. So let’s be honest: the point of these tactics isn’t just rescue. It’s retribution and leverage — dressed in the language of necessity. If the goal were only hostages, then you wouldn’t keep dismissing every non-lethal proposal as fantasy.

Flattening cities has helped. Your answer is to not try. War is too brutal, give Hamas what it wants so it will stop. But it won't stop, they'll just be back for more. The thing is the supply of horror is not based on Israeli actions, but on Hamas actions. They'll keep supplying it so long as you lap it up.

And yes, I’ve looked at Lebanon. Monitors report violations. Some go ignored. That’s a critique of enforcement, not of the principle. When a speed limit is broken, you don’t abolish traffic law. You enforce it better. You don’t replace oversight with drone strikes. Unless, of course, what you really want isn’t order — but permission to escalate without interruption.

All go ignored, it's 100% sham that actually causes problems. And look at your comparison to traffic law: Look at the spots with lots of traffic violations--in all probability the right answer is to do something about the law. Something is wrong with the speed limit or the light timings or the like. Most drivers drive reasonably but the laws aren't always reasonable. Consider what used to exist northeast of town--often there was a major speed trap up there, more police involved than I would have thought even served the area. Airplane overhead doing speed readings, cops on the ground stopping just about everybody. Then one day the government solved the problem: Put the speed limit back to the 75 that the road had been engineered for. It had almost zero effect on how fast people went. That's not the only spot I've seen that sort of thing--and it's always because somehow the law doesn't line up with observed reality. Speed cameras, red light cameras--purely about revenue. They actually increase accidents (and, surprisingly, increase injuries also--but note that red light cameras tend to move accidents from the intersection itself to the approach, this can be presented as "reducing" when it doesn't) and they keep the real problems from being fixed.

You treat law as an abstraction, disconnected from the bodies it’s meant to protect. “I care about the dead,” you say — but only after deciding their deaths tell you nothing. That’s the sleight of hand. You separate cause from consequence so you can keep the tactics while pretending the outcomes are unfortunate flukes. But if civilian death is predictable and repeated, it’s no longer a bug. It’s policy. And pretending otherwise is moral negligence.

Hamas ensures it happens. I don't like it but I don't see that as a reason to keep Israel from defending herself.

You say I’m “rewarding genocide” by demanding restraint. That’s backwards logic. By your standard, the only moral response to terrorism is overwhelming force — even if it guarantees children die. That’s not accountability. That’s a suicide pact with morality: either the enemy fights clean, or we stop caring. You don’t just hold Hamas hostage with that standard — you hold the very idea of decency hostage too.

Nothing backwards about it. You get more of that which you incentivize. And you are incentivizing Hamas getting Gazan civilians killed.

The problem here is that reality is sufficiently horrific that you are not actually thinking about it, just reacting on emotion.

I don’t want Israel to ignore Hamas. I want it to refuse becoming Hamas. That’s the choice: not fight or don’t fight — but how you fight. And you keep pretending that if the enemy plays dirty, the only valid response is to outmatch them in cruelty. That’s how cycles persist. That’s how law dies — not with defiance, but with applause from those who believe their side is too righteous to need restraint.

First you need to demonstrate cruelty in Israeli actions before you blame them for it.

You say I never ask what’s right for Israel. That’s false. I ask: what kind of future does Israel want to live in — one where survival requires siege, starvation, impunity, and shrinking sympathy? Or one where power is constrained by principle, not just convenience? You keep saying “whatever it takes.” I keep asking: what does it take from you?

So Israel should commit suicide if faced with enough guns to the head of Gazan babies.

I’m not overlaying a filter—I’m insisting your own words speak for themselves. Every time you shrug at civilian deaths, you normalize them. Calling that “comprehension” won’t wash away the moral stain of treating mass suffering as a footnote.

If “flattening” really stopped the horror, we’d be in peace already. But instead we’re mired in ruin, hostages still captive, and violence still surges. Blaming Hamas for feeding the cycle doesn’t excuse your own decision to pour fuel on the fire.

When every rule is discarded because enforcement is imperfect, you end up with no rules at all. Fixing broken traffic lights means improving the system, not crashing cars to prove speed limits futile. Likewise, war crimes aren’t a reason to abolish the laws of war—they’re a reason to enforce them.

Defending yourself doesn’t require erasing civilian life. You can denounce Hamas’s cynicism and still insist your side not respond with the same brutality. Self-defense under international law has limits—limits you keep choosing to ignore.

By punishing children, you feed the very narrative that fuels extremism. If your aim is to weaken Hamas, starving and bombing civilians only hands them more recruits. Real pressure targets their support networks, not the innocent.

Cruelty isn’t a magic headline—it’s the thousands of charred homes, the hospitals turned to rubble, the parents who’ve lost everything. You demand graphic proof while allowing your side’s devastation to pass unremarked. That’s willful blindness, not innocence.

It’s not suicide to refuse collective slaughter; it’s sanity. Drawing a red line isn’t giving in—it’s preserving your own humanity. If the only alternative to “whatever it takes” is mass civilian death, then terror has already won. True defense holds to principle, not just power.

NHC

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So you blame only October 7th and wash your hands of every child buried in Gaza’s rubble. If pulling the trigger is the only act you hold accountable, then bombing schools and starving hospitals are suddenly innocent. Both bloods stain the same ground—one for who started it, the other for choosing to answer with siege and shelling.

The problem is "bombing schools" and "starving hospitals" are propaganda. Don't look at the building, look at what the building was doing. Off the top of my head I'm only coming up with one strike on a school--and in the end it looks like everyone hit was probably Hamas. You're picturing a school full of children, but reality was simply Hamas operating from a school building.

Your timeline split ignores that between 1948 and ’67 Gaza was under military rule with no citizenship, no passports, no future. Those camps swelled into crowded urban enclaves because no nation integrated them—because walls and policies locked them in. Calling them “cities” doesn’t grant rights or hope. Blaming Egypt and Jordan for that status paper-over every subsequent power—yours included—that keeps them in limbo.

You just shot yourself in the foot with a grenade launcher. A Russian one without a minimum arming distance.

Your description of what happened is correct, your understanding of the situation is not. I blamed Egypt and Jordan for a reason--in that time period Egypt was in control in Gaza and Jordan was in control in the West Bank. You are so deep into the deception that you didn't realize you were shooting at yourself.

So because the Red Crescent hesitated doesn’t mean hospitals and ambulances lose their protected status. Law protects the vulnerable when symbols are defiled—that’s why those emblems exist. You demand perfect purity of the shield before arguing the attacker must prove every strike, not the victim. That flips the burden of proof onto the innocent under wreckage.

They didn't "hesitate". They categorically refused.

Geneva’s whole point is that civilians retain rights regardless of their government or which side they’re on. It didn’t need specific clauses for “modern siege tactics”—the principle applies: starving a population and bombing its shelters violates humane treatment. Claiming the law offers no recourse against these policies is choosing cruelty over the very protections you pretend don’t exist.

What you don't understand is that Hamas is the one starving it's people.

If thousands of trucks sit idle at the border, not delivering because of bureaucratic choke-points or unpaid drivers, civilians starve. Aid agencies themselves warn of malnutrition and collapsed medical services. Denying that reality because Hamas also exploits deliveries isn’t criticism—it’s choosing to let people die rather than fix the pipeline.

It was 950 as of the last count I saw. But apparently you're not paying attention because they're sitting on the Gaza side of the border. Israel is not interfering, it's just the UN won't send people to pick it up.

When every bakery lies in ruins, every power plant dark, every grocery empty, the effect speaks louder than press releases. If a policy consistently crushes civilian life to pressure rulers, the purpose is written in the hunger of children. Claiming “we didn’t intend this” rings hollow when suffering is the only outcome.

When you baa the Hamas picture again and again that doesn't make it true.

Excusing your own actions because someone else is worse just hands Iran the victory you claim to deny it. Blaming Tehran for Gaza’s agony while endorsing a strategy that levels neighborhoods makes you a willing participant in collective suffering. No message to Iran can justify making children cannon fodder—morality doesn’t bow to proxy wars.

Paladin morality only works when the GM ensures there is a solution.

 

[ZiprHead]

Geneva doesn't protect civilians from their own nation.

Wrong.

The Geneva Conventions are adopted by recognized governments and, as such, are designed to govern the conduct of the armed forces of states and to protect civilians who are not combatants, including, thanks to Article III, people affected by the conduct of their own government. The Conventions specifically exclude from protection mercenaries and combatants who deliberately violate the rules covering a clear separation between combatants and noncombatants, thereby endangering civilians. This latter definition closely fits members of contemporary terrorist groups who do not wear uniforms and meld into the general population before and after carrying out attacks.

Geneva Conventions Convention I | Research Starters | EBSCO Research

<p>The Geneva Conventions Convention I, adopted on August 12, 1949, is a vital international treaty that outlines the humanitarian treatment of wounded and sick military personnel during armed conflicts. This convention is part of a broader framework known as the Geneva Conventions, which...

www.ebsco.com

 

[NoHolyCows]

You keep pointing to Hamas’s corruption of aid (“they’re siphoning funds to pay their cadres” ) as if it magically clears every barbed-wire blockade and airstrike you defend. Yes, Hamas diverts resources to cement its grip — the Washington Post lays out how its financial crisis forces it to seize more civilian assets. But international law doesn’t say “because the enemy is criminal, you can collectively starve their population.” It demands you still find some way to get food, medicine, and water to those who didn’t vote for Hamas. Starvation-by-blockade is collective punishment, pure and simple.

So you do understand yet support it anyway. This is very clearly diversion for military use. It's not Israel starving the people, it's Hamas.

And where is this demand that you still find some way to get the aid in? There's no such obligation.

You claim we can’t evaluate proportionality without perfect knowledge of military gain. But the law never required “Excel-grade precision,” only a good-faith estimate of advantage versus harm. Every air force in history has done post-strike assessments via satellite imagery, signal intercepts, and on-the-ground reports to judge whether a target was worth the civilian risk. Refusing to even try because one variable is unknown is moral abdication, not realism.

You're still playing magic words. Yes, assessments no doubt exist. Doesn't mean we have any access to the details.

And what you fail to understand is that even if you believe Hamas entirely (other than in not counting combatant casualties) you still end up with Israel doing a very good job at proportionality.

You show footage of a collapsed apartment and say “that doesn’t prove Hamas wasn’t there.” True – absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. But it is evidence that civilians died. And under international humanitarian law, civilian death requires proof of military necessity, not a presumption of guilt because “Hamas might have been there.” Every family wiped out under a home you could have avoided still counts as a civilian loss.

False--a collapsed apartment does not prove civilians died.

You argue two wrongs make a right: “Yes, Hamas shot people fleeing, so Israel’s hammerfall is justified.” No. Two wrongs never erase legal duties. Warnings before attacks are an obligation; mitigating civilian harm is an obligation; seeking alternatives is an obligation. Blaming Hamas for creating human shields doesn’t cancel Israel’s responsibility for turning those shields into coffins.

You seek, but if they don't exist they don't exist. You are coming at this from a position of faith, that there must be better answers. It's the same mistake just about all of you are making. That's what divides this debate--those of us who will face the horrors vs those who have faith that there must be a better answer. And you continue to fail to comprehend our blasphemy of your faith.

You assert, “Hamas does wrong, I blame Israel, therefore Hamas does more wrong.” That’s circular. Acknowledging one side’s atrocity isn’t an excuse to ignore the other’s. You can—and must—hold both accountable: Hamas for its terror, and Israel for its tactics that kill civilians en masse. Moral clarity demands both.

Yeah, it's circular--you're perpetuating the violence by rewarding it.

And how do you propose to hold Hamas accountable? We aren't looking for some mythical solution based on accountability, we are looking at what is actually happening.

You’ve “proven” Amnesty and HRW are incompetent because they missed some bad data. So every organization you don’t like is now disqualified? That’s selective skepticism. If one UN report errs on a registration field, must we discard every assessment of mass graves, displaced civilians, and famine warnings? No—accuracy isn’t perfection, it’s consistency across methods and sources.

It's not one field, it's thousands that were supposedly verified. And it's the refusal to fix the errors when they're pointed out.

You accuse me of “taking Hamas’s words as truth.” I don’t. I cross-check NGO reports, satellite imagery, IDF admissions, and independent journalists. True belief in nothing but Hamas would be easier. Instead, I’m wrestling with all the evidence, while you merely dismiss anything that upsets your narrative.

No, you don't cross-check. You trust those who have claimed to have cross-checked. But I'm pointing out that they failed to see obvious problems--they did not cross-check. And, even more damning, when shown the problems they didn't fix them.

Finally, you point to Hezbollah in Lebanon: 90% combatant casualties under Israeli fire versus Gaza’s higher civilian toll, and conclude that means 95% of Gaza’s deaths are Hamas’s fault. Statistical games don’t replace accountability. Every life lost in Gaza is still a life. You can’t wave away thousands of civilian deaths by blaming their very presence on Hamas’s tactics. Collateral damage is not an identity tag.

In other words, evidence doesn't matter. Israel is wrong regardless of the facts.

You blindly focus on bodies in Gaza and do not understand that that focus creates them.

Hamas’s theft of bread doesn’t absolve Israel of the duty to feed innocents. International law forbids collective starvation—Article 59 even says that if direct aid is blocked, the besieger must find alternate channels. Starvation-by-blockade is a crime, no matter who’s corrupting the convoys.

Good-faith judgments aren’t public spreadsheets—it’s about whether commanders take civilian risk seriously, not scorekeeping. Trusting IDF self-reports while dismissing every other source as “secret” is willful blindness. “Better than you thought” isn’t a license to ignore the law in each strike.

You don’t get to turn the attacker’s burden on its head. Civilian housing leveled under the guise of “possible fighters” is itself a violation without clear military necessity. The default law protects homes—and those inside—until proven otherwise.

Demanding proof of bodies you won’t allow your eyes to see is not realism—it’s moral abdication. Realists build corridors, safe zones, humanitarian pauses. Fatalists shrug and say “there’s no choice.” That’s the gulf between confronting horror and surrendering to it.

Holding Hamas to account doesn’t require starving refugees. Sanctions, targeted strikes on leadership, international prosecutions—all real tools. You choose collective suffering because it’s easier than wielding precision justice. That choice perpetuates the cycle, no “myth” needed.

Data corrections lag under bombardment—that’s not an argument to scrap the entire dataset. When mistakes emerge, credible organizations update their counts. IDF itself revises civilian figures months later. Dismissing every report because it isn’t instantly flawless is hypocrisy.

Cross-checking in an active warzone isn’t trivial—it takes time, resources, and safe access. You brand every delayed correction a cover-up, then turn around and accept instantaneous IDF press releases as gospel. That’s not scrutiny, it’s prejudice.

Pointing to civilian deaths doesn’t create them—bombing them does. You weaponize doubt to shield policies that shred neighborhoods. If data terrified you into stopping, perhaps we’d see fewer corpses. Your refusal to let evidence guide your conscience is the real tragedy here.

NHC

 

[laughing dog]

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.c...palestinians-and-use-of-aid-as-a-tool-of-war/

I guess Doctors Without Borders, which is primarily made up of volunteer doctors who sometimes risk their lives to help people in dire situations don't know what their talking about either. /s

Yet another wolf. Predictions of dire results--more than 4 months have passed and those dire results did not appear. You're actually proving my point here, bringing up one of those false predictions of doom I keep talking about. Why do you keep listening to the eternal screams of famine and starvation?

You didn’t read the link. There are no predictions of dire outcomes, just statements of observations of fact and opinions about international law.

At best, your characterization of the link is based on willful ignorance. It is why your responses cannot be taken seriously.

 

[NoHolyCows]

You treat Hamas’s hostage list as if it alone settles guilt—and that isn’t neutrality, it’s abdication. Guilt requires evidence, trial and due process, not a public relations demand from a terrorist organization.

You seem to have lost the context entirely. There's no proposed punishment, thus no reason for any false accusation.

You insist Israel never deliberately targets civilians, yet marked ambulances, schools and apartment blocks have been struck again and again without adequate warning or independent verification. International law doesn’t let an attacker presume every casualty was a combatant; it demands the attacker prove military necessity.

And we are back to you treating any hit of civilian nature as proof of being civilian.

Yes, Hamas cadres have siphoned off UN food convoys to fund their payroll. But criminal diversion by one party doesn’t give Israel license to seal bakeries and block all relief. Treating every aid truck as suspect and starving an entire population is siege warfare—collective punishment, not self-defense.

Read Geneva again.

Dismissal of Doctors Without Borders, UN relief teams and other NGOs as “just parroting Hamas” ignores how these organizations operate under neutrality mandates and field-verified mandates. Rejecting all humanitarian reports because a few errors slipped through is willful ignorance, not critical thinking.

They claim to, but they clearly do not.

Buying land under the British Mandate wasn’t akin to modern real-estate deals. It depended on colonial courts backed by armed enforcement and disenfranchised local owners. Foreclosure by armed sheriff isn’t neutral—it weaponizes the law against the vulnerable.

And you have some evidence of this? It wasn't local landowners in the first place. They were absentee landlords who were happy to sell.

If it were being forced why does Palestinian law make selling land to a Jew a life at hard labor offense?

Camp David and Taba offered fragmented cantons under Israeli veto, permanent settlements and no genuine border control. That wasn’t a viable basis for statehood but a gilded cage. Walking away from that phantom “state” was refusing to surrender, not evidence of sabotaging peace.

Israel is not going to relinquish border control until there has been a long demonstration of peaceful behavior.

Calling for the protection of civilians after hospitals, markets and refugee camps are struck isn’t sympathy for terrorists; it’s insisting that the laws of war apply even to the side with the bigger guns. Humanity doesn’t become a “Hamas talking point” simply because the other side would rather ignore it.

The civilians wouldn't need protecting if Hamas wasn't putting them in the way. How every hospital fight should have gone: IDF shows up, looks around, finds nothing Hamas and leaves. No restrictions beyond active operating rooms, MRI zone 4 (assuming the system is energized--something that's probably not the case) etc.

You argue Hamas lacks real agency and claim it’s all Iran’s proxy—but whether external actors fund or arm them, the decision to bomb, besiege and blockade remains Israel’s policy. Blaming someone else for your own choices surrenders both moral and political agency—and lets cruelty become the default.

These aren’t loopholes you can pick and choose; they’re guardrails meant to stop war from devouring its own justification. If every atrocity can be excused as “the enemy started it,” you’ve already lost the moral ground you claim to defend.

Your "guardrails" amount to submit to anyone sufficiently evil.

This isn’t about punishment, it’s about moral clarity. When you accept Hamas’s labels as proof, you dispense with investigation. Imagine if any finger-pointing group could dictate who’s innocent or guilty—due process vanishes, and every civilian becomes a suspect.

I’m not declaring guilt by default—I’m demanding accountability. When relief convoys, clearly painted hospitals, and UN shelters get hit despite coordinates shared in advance, the presumption of innocence flips: commanders must show why those strikes were unavoidable, not ask survivors to prove they weren’t fighters.

I have. Article 59 explicitly forbids using food as a weapon. If diversion is an issue, the Conventions require establishing alternative delivery routes or third-party monitors—even then, blanket starvation is illegal. Suspect one bakery, you don’t shut down the whole bakery district.

Doubting every neutral witness because some mistakes occur is a fast track to echo-chamber denial. MSF workers, UN relief staff and morgue teams risk their lives to document suffering—and yes, they correct errors when found. Accepting only one side’s version isn’t skepticism; it’s indoctrinated silence.

Absentee or not, Palestinian tenant farmers were evicted en masse under British orders when sales went through—witness diaries, British military reports, and Zionist militia patrol logs confirm forced removals. The later Palestinian laws you mention arose after that dispossession, not before it.

True statehood isn’t earned by obedience— it’s built on sovereignty. No country grants border control as a “reward” after decades. A permanent occupier with veto power isn’t a guarantor of peace—it’s an indefinite status quo of conflict.

Hospitals aren’t factories you pause at to clear combatants—they’re sanctuaries. The law requires warnings, safe corridors, and independent verification before any strike. “Look around” isn’t enough when your missiles can pulverize an entire ward.

Guardrails aren’t surrender—they’re constraints that prevent power from running wild. If terror removes all limits, then “anything goes” becomes the rule. Upholding red lines doesn’t cower before evil—it preserves the difference between civilization and barbarism.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say I’m throwing around “collective punishment” like a magic spell—but when bakeries collapse under tank fire and flour convoys sit at checkpoints without baby formula, that isn’t semantics. It’s a siege policy that starves infants to punish a government.

And you keep throwing your magic spells that don't work.

Do you not realize that the food is sitting on the Gaza side of the border? Israel isn't stopping it, the UN won't pay drivers to move it.

You dismiss claims of executions at Deir Yassin as “only one bad actor,” but even Israeli archives and survivor testimony confirm mass killings of women and children. Hiding behind “but they weren’t in uniform” ignores the fact that Geneva bans slaughtering noncombatants full stop.

Except they don't. You continue to look at the deception, not the reality.

You shrug off settlement expansion during talks as mere political theater. But building homes while negotiating sovereignty is annexation in motion, not bargaining. Saying “they weren’t serious” doesn’t erase the bulldozers rolling through occupied land.

You keep focusing on the propaganda.

Bulldozers were about the houses of those who did suicide missions against Israel.

You call documenting bodyguards as civilians “deliberate deception,” yet international investigators use cross-checked manifests and witness interviews—far more reliable than your gut instinct. Picking and choosing who counts as “civilian” to justify a bombing campaign isn’t truth-seeking. It’s moral cherry-picking.

You keep claiming investigations that do not exist. If they existed why didn't they catch the obvious fraud?

You insist kids fighting under arms aren’t children you need to protect. But the law treats every juvenile combatant as a special case—coerced or not—not as free fire. Ignoring that is profiling with a rifle, not defending your people.

Explain how Geneva specifies any different battlefield treatment of underage combatants.

You argue “no ID, no proof,” so let’s play that game: who benefits most from medics, journalists, and unarmed protesters being gunned down hundreds of feet from any fighting? Every credible human-rights group says the shooters weren’t Hamas. Dismissing them all because you can’t read the insignia is willful blindness.

We have no ID on the shooters. Therefore anyone who says they aren't Hamas is lying.

Yes, hostage releases have begun—but dozens remain. Your siege hasn’t ended the threat; it’s fortified the resolve on both sides. If starving civilians were a hostage rescue plan, it’s a catastrophic failure.

It hasn't ended it but it has reduced it.

You demand video proof of snipers hitting people with flags. If every death needed high-def footage, every war would go uninvestigated. Eyewitnesses, bullet casings, impact wounds—all of that constitutes evidence by every standard you claim to trust.

I want some proof of the identity of the shooters. We have none. No witnesses, no bullet casings, wounds mean nothing as many Hamas weapons use the same round as the IDF uses. Thus anyone claiming to have such evidence is making it up.

Finally, blaming Hamas for every civilian death lets you avoid accountability for the bombs you authorize. If your answer to horror is “but look who started it,” you’ve already surrendered the moral ground. I’m fighting for a standard that spares innocents even amid atrocity. You’re fighting to justify that sacrifice—and calling it realism.

NHC

Except you are trying to increase the death toll.

So you blame a logistical hiccup on humanitarian law rather than the siege itself. The fact that trucks pile up at the border under Israeli control doesn’t erase who refused safe passage or alternative routes. You’re hiding behind UN funding gaps to excuse a policy that by design turns relief convoys into bargaining chips.

Reality is documented in survivor testimonies, IDF logs, even archived broadcasts admitting civilian executions at Deir Yassin. You dismiss every record that shatters your tidy story and call it “deception.” That’s not scrutiny—that’s self-fulfilling denial.

Using one atrocity to justify another doesn’t restore rights—it escalates vengeance. Even if a handful of homes housed combatants, razing entire neighborhoods as “cleanup” isn’t military necessity; it’s collective erasure.

They exist in hundreds of pages from Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, UN fact-finding missions, and Israeli veterans’ testimonies—complete with corroborated satellite imagery, on-the-ground interviews, and chain-of-custody evidence. You ignore all of it until someone hands you a press release you like.

Protocol I and the Convention on the Rights of the Child treat anyone under 18 as entitled to “special respect and protection”—they may never be recruited or deliberately targeted. You’re free-fire justifies profiling boys as fighters; Geneva demands extra precautions, rescue, and rehabilitation.

Absence of a name tag doesn’t rewrite bullet trajectories or witness accounts. Forensics, angle of fire, type of ammunition, and multiple independent NGOs all point to uniformed IDF positions. You demand stamps on helmets but refuse to look at any other proof.

So starvation and bombardment are your success metrics. Meanwhile hostages still languish, more are abducted, and civilians keep dying. If your strategy “reduces” terror by inflicting mass suffering, you’re measuring victory in misery.

You demand lab-grade certainty in a warzone while accepting PR slides as fact. Yet field doctors, journalists, and medics testify under oath about sniper nests perfectly positioned for IDF overwatch—not random Hamas cells. You reject their credibility because you can’t brand it with a Hamas insignia.

My only aim is to refuse the normalization of civilian death. Pointing at corpses doesn’t create them—it calls out the choices that did. If you’d rather pretend they don’t exist, you’ll never change a policy that ensures they keep piling up.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You point to selective video drops and say, “They can post anything—so if there’s no famine footage, it must not exist.” But starving children aren’t a movie trailer. Journalists have been killed, cell networks cut, power blacked out—trauma doesn’t upload itself on demand. Demanding a pristine feed before you’ll believe a disaster isn’t rigor, it’s denial.

Just as easily, you're the one in denial, defending evidence that isn't real.

You chalk up thousands of duplicate IDs to “measurement error, not lies,” yet expect a calculus-level critique of every airstrike. Tiny margin-of-error in war is one thing; systemic anomalies screaming “unverified” are another. If the vetting process misses obvious fraud, who trusts its finer points?

What are you talking about?

1) It's not thousands of duplicate IDs. It's thousands of clearly fake IDs. That's not measurement error.

2) You are blaming Israel for Hamas fraud. That makes no sense.

Sure, Israeli figures wobble too—every military does. But when your “10× rule” becomes gospel for Hamas data, you’re inventing your own statistics to dodge the worst carnage. And then declaring every un-filmed death “imaginary”? That’s not evidence-based skepticism; it’s emotional anesthesia.

In the long run we usually figure out how many actually died. I'll wait for that.

You sneer that NGOs “just repeat Hamas,” yet swallow IDF press releases like sacraments. Médecins Sans Frontières, U.N. specialists and even Israeli veterans risk life and limb to document these horrors. Brushing them off because a few mistakes slipped through isn’t critical thinking—it’s selective blindfolding.

I trust those whose claims stand up over time.

Calling proportionality a “magic word” won’t erase its legal heft. It’s the test every army uses to plan strikes, weighing tunnel shafts against the lives trapped above. Mocking it as unmeasurable doesn’t invalidate the principle—it exposes your unwillingness to face the human cost you’ve declared irrelevant.

I call it a magic word because you keep calling on it on completely invalid grounds. You measure harm (and at that, Hamas claimed harm) but do not look at benefit. You can't figure a ratio without knowing both numbers.

Yes, Hamas booby-traps homes and stores explosives in civilian zones, but international law forbids using children as shields. You can’t justify leveling whole families by blaming the victim. Guilt by association is vengeance, not justice.

And now you're just babbling random terms from the war.

When you invoke Goebbels to smear anyone pointing out these truths, you reveal more about your tactics than mine. And blaming Hamas for every corpse doesn’t free Israel from accountability when it drops the bombs. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Both horrors matter, and refusing to hold both sides to the same standard is moral collapse, not “realism.”

NHC

I'm pointing out Hamas tactics. They keep peddling their lie, you keep falling for it even when I momentarily get you to realize the truth.

So you dismiss every witness, every morgue record, every satellite image as “not real” because it conflicts with your comfort zone. That isn’t critical thinking—it’s willful blindness. The evidence piles up beyond your filtering, yet you insist nothing exists unless it’s packaged the way you expect.

Forged IDs buried in rubble don’t sprout by accident—they point to a system that can’t verify its own dead. You leap from “fake paperwork” to “all bodies are fake,” denying every other source even half a chance. And yes, when you refuse to secure a credible registry under bombardment, you share in that chaos—you can’t absolve the occupier of responsibility for a registry they broke.

So you’ll wait for perfect accounting while children starve and hospitals burn. Meanwhile, families who can’t wait for postwar audits lie unburied under the rubble. That waiting room for truth is a mausoleum for real people—and you call it patience.

And yet you reject every NGO, every U.N. report, every Israeli veteran’s testimony the moment it challenges your echo chamber—only the bomb-maker’s ledger is sacrosanct. You’re not applying trust; you’re sheltering willful ignorance.

Proportionality isn’t a math quiz — it’s a moral test: was this strike the only way to achieve a concrete military aim without slaughtering innocents? You don’t need a spreadsheet for that, just the willingness to ask: did this target justify these deaths? Your refusal to even pose the question is the real magic trick.

“Babeling” terms you refuse to learn doesn’t make them meaningless. “Human shields,” “perfidy,” “collective punishment” — these are labels for real crimes whose victims you insist on ignoring. Calling them jargon won’t erase the children crushed beneath those words.

Pointing to one side’s crimes cannot erase the other’s. I refuse to trade moral clarity for your tunnel vision. You see every atrocity through a Hamas-shaped lens; I see them as warnings. If you can only see crimes when they suit your narrative, you’ve long since forgotten what justice looks like.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

I’m not trying to compare wars like sports teams—I’m saying pointing at other horrors doesn’t make this one any less real or any less in need of moral clarity. Every dead child, every flattened home, deserves its own reckoning.

The point is you are putting your effort behind what's fairly small in terms of ongoing horrors.

I’m not pretending for peace to arrive by magic—I’m insisting we actually try ceasefires, humanitarian corridors, third-party monitors, even imperfect talks. Rejecting every proposal as “naïve” isn’t realism, it’s giving up on every path that isn’t collective punishment.

Putting terms on your magic doesn't make it not magic.

If your only “realism” is a self-fulfilling prophecy of endless bloodshed, then you’ve already built the future you fear. The moment you close off every door to diplomacy or relief, you guarantee more suffering—and more 10/7-style horrors.

I'm not opposed to true diplomacy. But I have yet to see Iran at the table, let alone a sane peace proposal from them. I don't care about supposed "peace" with Hamas as they have no ability to offer it.

Clinging to siege, saturation bombing, and starvation fuels the cycle—it doesn’t break it. Real strategy isn’t counting on endless retribution; it’s finding ways to starve conflict of its fuel: despair, siege, and impunity.

The fuel is the Iranian money. You still haven't addressed the horror spots of the world. Why is there no major insurgency in Western Sahara? Do you even know where it is without a map, or who the oppressor is?

Large parts of the world are becoming much more hostile than they used to be. And the vast majority of that is due to Islam.

I’m not asking Israel to surrender its right to defend itself—I’m asking it to refuse the surrender of its humanity. Defining “realistic” as total impunity for mass suffering isn’t courage; it’s the cowardice of abandoning every principle you claim to fight for.

NHC

You are asking them to cave to human shield tactics--which is tantamount to surrender.

Every atrocity deserves attention, not just the loudest headlines. Dismissing Gaza as “small” amid other crises doesn’t lessen the children buried under its rubble—it just reveals which victims you’ve decided are unworthy of your outrage.

Mocking ceasefires and monitors as “magic” won’t change the fact that real corridors and oversight have saved lives in countless conflicts. Calling humanitarian efforts naive is a cop-out—doing nothing is not realism, it’s abdication.

You don’t need every hostile actor present to open a ceasefire or deliver medicine. Humanitarian pauses and local truces aren’t surrender speeches—they’re lifelines. Rejecting them because Tehran isn’t dialing in is just another excuse to let civilians starve.

Blaming an entire faith for geopolitical violence is bigotry, not insight. Western Sahara’s stagnation springs from colonial realpolitik, not religious doctrine. If you insist on painting every conflict with the broad brush of Islam, you’ll never grasp the real forces—occupation, resource grabs, power imbalances—that drive people to fight.

Refusing to protect civilians because your enemy abuses them is the true surrender. Upholding red lines against targeting the wounded and the unarmed isn’t weakness—it’s the only thing that stops this war from becoming indistinguishable from the terror you claim to oppose.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

So you blame only October 7th and wash your hands of every child buried in Gaza’s rubble. If pulling the trigger is the only act you hold accountable, then bombing schools and starving hospitals are suddenly innocent. Both bloods stain the same ground—one for who started it, the other for choosing to answer with siege and shelling.

The problem is "bombing schools" and "starving hospitals" are propaganda. Don't look at the building, look at what the building was doing. Off the top of my head I'm only coming up with one strike on a school--and in the end it looks like everyone hit was probably Hamas. You're picturing a school full of children, but reality was simply Hamas operating from a school building.

Your timeline split ignores that between 1948 and ’67 Gaza was under military rule with no citizenship, no passports, no future. Those camps swelled into crowded urban enclaves because no nation integrated them—because walls and policies locked them in. Calling them “cities” doesn’t grant rights or hope. Blaming Egypt and Jordan for that status paper-over every subsequent power—yours included—that keeps them in limbo.

You just shot yourself in the foot with a grenade launcher. A Russian one without a minimum arming distance.

Your description of what happened is correct, your understanding of the situation is not. I blamed Egypt and Jordan for a reason--in that time period Egypt was in control in Gaza and Jordan was in control in the West Bank. You are so deep into the deception that you didn't realize you were shooting at yourself.

So because the Red Crescent hesitated doesn’t mean hospitals and ambulances lose their protected status. Law protects the vulnerable when symbols are defiled—that’s why those emblems exist. You demand perfect purity of the shield before arguing the attacker must prove every strike, not the victim. That flips the burden of proof onto the innocent under wreckage.

They didn't "hesitate". They categorically refused.

Geneva’s whole point is that civilians retain rights regardless of their government or which side they’re on. It didn’t need specific clauses for “modern siege tactics”—the principle applies: starving a population and bombing its shelters violates humane treatment. Claiming the law offers no recourse against these policies is choosing cruelty over the very protections you pretend don’t exist.

What you don't understand is that Hamas is the one starving it's people.

If thousands of trucks sit idle at the border, not delivering because of bureaucratic choke-points or unpaid drivers, civilians starve. Aid agencies themselves warn of malnutrition and collapsed medical services. Denying that reality because Hamas also exploits deliveries isn’t criticism—it’s choosing to let people die rather than fix the pipeline.

It was 950 as of the last count I saw. But apparently you're not paying attention because they're sitting on the Gaza side of the border. Israel is not interfering, it's just the UN won't send people to pick it up.

When every bakery lies in ruins, every power plant dark, every grocery empty, the effect speaks louder than press releases. If a policy consistently crushes civilian life to pressure rulers, the purpose is written in the hunger of children. Claiming “we didn’t intend this” rings hollow when suffering is the only outcome.

When you baa the Hamas picture again and again that doesn't make it true.

Excusing your own actions because someone else is worse just hands Iran the victory you claim to deny it. Blaming Tehran for Gaza’s agony while endorsing a strategy that levels neighborhoods makes you a willing participant in collective suffering. No message to Iran can justify making children cannon fodder—morality doesn’t bow to proxy wars.

Paladin morality only works when the GM ensures there is a solution.

Even one school strike shows how low the bar’s set—fighters using a school once doesn’t grant blanket permission to turn every classroom into rubble. International law demands attackers verify military use, issue warnings, and take precautions before bombing. Your “probably Hamas” after-the-fact excuse isn’t a shield for flattening civilian infrastructure.

Pointing to who governed Gaza in decades past doesn’t absolve today’s siege or the settlements that followed—policies Israel chose. Shifting blame to Egypt and Jordan is distraction, not defense of starving and shelling millions. The real question is the power Israel wields now, and the choices it makes with it.

A refusal by the Red Crescent to call out misuse doesn’t strip hospitals and ambulances of their protected status. The law protects the vulnerable regardless of emblem politics. It’s on the attacker to prove military necessity, not on patients to prove innocence under wreckage.

Hamas’s exploitation deepens the crisis, but it doesn’t justify collective starvation. International law prohibits punishing civilians for their rulers’ crimes. If you choke off food and medicine to pressurize a faction, you’ve chosen a policy of mass punishment, not self-defense.

Trucks idling in Gaza mean nothing if border controls and payment disputes leave drivers stranded. The besieger who sets the terms carries the duty to unblock passage. Blaming UN wages for operational failure lets the blockade off the hook—when relief stalls at checkpoints, the policy, not the NGO, is responsible.

Pointing out Hamas propaganda isn’t the same as dismissing every field report. You weaponize one fake to discard hundreds of corroborated accounts—morgue logs, satellite imagery, NGO surveys—showing malnutrition and mass graves. Dismissing all evidence because some is manipulated is willful blindness.

This isn’t a tabletop game and there’s no all-powerful moderator to rescue hostages. Humanitarian pauses and truces aren’t fantasies—they’re tools that have saved lives in every conflict. Discarding them as magic tricks isn’t realism, it’s surrendering to the belief that only siege and bombardment are on the menu—and that you’re too afraid to ask for anything better.

NHC

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Geneva doesn't protect civilians from their own nation.

Wrong.

The Geneva Conventions are adopted by recognized governments and, as such, are designed to govern the conduct of the armed forces of states and to protect civilians who are not combatants, including, thanks to Article III, people affected by the conduct of their own government. The Conventions specifically exclude from protection mercenaries and combatants who deliberately violate the rules covering a clear separation between combatants and noncombatants, thereby endangering civilians. This latter definition closely fits members of contemporary terrorist groups who do not wear uniforms and meld into the general population before and after carrying out attacks.

Geneva Conventions Convention I | Research Starters | EBSCO Research

<p>The Geneva Conventions Convention I, adopted on August 12, 1949, is a vital international treaty that outlines the humanitarian treatment of wounded and sick military personnel during armed conflicts. This convention is part of a broader framework known as the Geneva Conventions, which...

www.ebsco.com

And where exactly does it say that??

The words "conduct of their own government" appears only in:

The Geneva Conventions are adopted by recognized governments and, as such, are designed to govern the conduct of the armed forces of states and to protect civilians who are not combatants, including, thanks to Article III, people affected by the conduct of their own government.

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions: (1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. (2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for. An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

In other words, Article III applies the Geneva standards to internal conflicts. But how does that impose any obligation on Israel to stop Hamas mistreatment of it's people??

 

[southernhybrid]

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.c...palestinians-and-use-of-aid-as-a-tool-of-war/

I guess Doctors Without Borders, which is primarily made up of volunteer doctors who sometimes risk their lives to help people in dire situations don't know what their talking about either. /s

Yet another wolf. Predictions of dire results--more than 4 months have passed and those dire results did not appear. You're actually proving my point here, bringing up one of those false predictions of doom I keep talking about. Why do you keep listening to the eternal screams of famine and starvation?

I'm not the one denying the truth, it's people like you who don't want to learn what Israel is really doing
So, I'll post one more article from one of the world's most trusted sources of news, one who has won more awards for excellent journalism compared to just about any other.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/...e_code=1.ZU8.uYRW.itDxSP_XlXiK&smid=url-share

No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say​

Israel has long restricted or completely blocked aid to Gaza on the argument that Hamas steals it to use as a weapon of control over the population.

For nearly two years, Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid provided by the United Nations and other international organizations. The government has used that claim as its main rationale for restricting food from entering Gaza.

But the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter.

In fact, the Israeli military officials said, the U.N. aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population.

Now, with hunger at crisis levels in the territory, Israel is coming under increased international pressure over its conduct of the war in Gaza and the humanitarian suffering it has brought. Doctors in the territory say that an increasing number of their patients are suffering from — and dying of — starvation.

More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups warned this past week of “mass starvation” and implored Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian assistance. The European Union and at least 28 governments, including Israeli allies like Britain, France and Canada, issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s “drip-feeding of aid” to Gaza’s two million Palestinian residents.

Israel has largely brushed off the criticism.

David Mencer, a government spokesman, said this week that there was “no famine caused by Israel.” Instead, he blamed Hamas and poor coordination by the United Nations for any food shortages.

Israel moved in May toward replacing the U.N.-led aid system that had been in place for most of the 21-month Gaza war, opting instead to back a private, American-run operation guarded by armed U.S. contractors in areas controlled by Israeli military forces. Some aid still comes into Gaza through the United Nations and other organizations.

Once again, some of the Israeli military are telling the truth, but the cruel, evil Bibi continues to lie. He so reminds me of Trump.



There is overwhelming evidence that starvation is facing a high percentage of the citizens of Gaza, due to the Israels targeting aide and even shooting at civilians when they attempt to get aide. This is even impacting the doctors and nurses who are trying to care for the victims. You keep denying the truth without providing a shred of evidence. And, when we criticize Israel, it has nothing to do with the Jewish people. There are plenty of Jewish folks as well as citizens of Israel who are speaking out against what their leaders are doing. I doubt that will convince those who don't want to know the truth but whenever I read an article like the one I just linked, I find it heartbreaking and also disgusting that some of you deny the obvious.

 

[ZiprHead]

Geneva doesn't protect civilians from their own nation.

Wrong.

The Geneva Conventions are adopted by recognized governments and, as such, are designed to govern the conduct of the armed forces of states and to protect civilians who are not combatants, including, thanks to Article III, people affected by the conduct of their own government. The Conventions specifically exclude from protection mercenaries and combatants who deliberately violate the rules covering a clear separation between combatants and noncombatants, thereby endangering civilians. This latter definition closely fits members of contemporary terrorist groups who do not wear uniforms and meld into the general population before and after carrying out attacks.

Geneva Conventions Convention I | Research Starters | EBSCO Research

<p>The Geneva Conventions Convention I, adopted on August 12, 1949, is a vital international treaty that outlines the humanitarian treatment of wounded and sick military personnel during armed conflicts. This convention is part of a broader framework known as the Geneva Conventions, which...

www.ebsco.com

And where exactly does it say that??

The words "conduct of their own government" appears only in:

The Geneva Conventions are adopted by recognized governments and, as such, are designed to govern the conduct of the armed forces of states and to protect civilians who are not combatants, including, thanks to Article III, people affected by the conduct of their own government.

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions: (1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. (2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for. An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

In other words, Article III applies the Geneva standards to internal conflicts. But how does that impose any obligation on Israel to stop Hamas mistreatment of it's people??

Willful blindness is not a good thing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hamas’s theft of bread doesn’t absolve Israel of the duty to feed innocents. International law forbids collective starvation—Article 59 even says that if direct aid is blocked, the besieger must find alternate channels. Starvation-by-blockade is a crime, no matter who’s corrupting the convoys.

And once again you have no idea what Geneva says.

Article 59 - Non-defended localities​

Articles 59 -- Non-defended localities

1. It is prohibited for the Parties to the conflict to attack, by any means whatsoever, non-defended localities.

2. The appropriate authorities of a Party to the conflict may declare as a non-defended locality any inhabited place near or in a zone where armed forces are in contact which is open for occupation by an adverse Party. Such a locality shall fulfil the following conditions:

(a) all combatants, as well as mobile weapons and mobile military equipment must have been evacuated;
(b) no hostile use shall be made of fixed military installations or establishments;
(c) no acts of hostility shall be committed by the authorities or by the population; and
(d) no activities in support of military operations shall be undertaken.

3. The presence, in this locality, of persons specially protected under the Conventions and this Protocol, and of police forces retained for the sole purpose of maintaining law and order, is not contrary to the conditions laid down in paragraph 2.

4. The declaration made under paragraph 2 shall be addressed to the adverse Party and shall define and describe, as precisely as possible, the limits of the non-defended locality. The Party to the conflict to which the declaration is addressed shall acknowledge its receipt and shall treat the locality as a non-defended locality unless the conditions laid down in paragraph 2 are not in fact fulfilled, in which event it shall immediately so inform the Party making the declaration. Even if the conditions laid down in paragraph 2 are not fulfilled, the locality shall continue to enjoy the protection provided by the other provisions of this Protocol and the other rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.

5. The Parties to the conflict may agree on the establishment of non-defended localities even if such localities do not fulfil the conditions laid down in paragraph 2. The agreement should define and describe, as precisely as possible, the limits of the non-defended locality; if necessary, it may lay down the methods of supervision.

6. The Party which is in control of a locality governed by such an agreement shall mark it, so far as possible, by such signs as may be agreed upon with the other Party, which shall be displayed where they are clearly visible, especially on its perimeter and limits and on highways.

7. A locality loses its status as a non-defended locality when it ceases to fulfil the conditions laid down in paragraph 2 or in the agreement referred to in paragraph 5. In such an eventuality, the locality shall continue to enjoy the protection provided by the other provisions of this Protocol and the other rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.

Good-faith judgments aren’t public spreadsheets—it’s about whether commanders take civilian risk seriously, not scorekeeping. Trusting IDF self-reports while dismissing every other source as “secret” is willful blindness. “Better than you thought” isn’t a license to ignore the law in each strike.

I'm not trusting their reports. I am comparing the observed outcome vs the civilian casualties and seeing that in the big picture they must be doing it right.

You don’t get to turn the attacker’s burden on its head. Civilian housing leveled under the guise of “possible fighters” is itself a violation without clear military necessity. The default law protects homes—and those inside—until proven otherwise.

If there are any inside it's because Hamas trapped them there.

And you are presenting complete fabrications. "guise of "possible fighters""--that's somebody making things up, not any Israeli claim.

Demanding proof of bodies you won’t allow your eyes to see is not realism—it’s moral abdication. Realists build corridors, safe zones, humanitarian pauses. Fatalists shrug and say “there’s no choice.” That’s the gulf between confronting horror and surrendering to it.

Magic words once again. Anything to keep Israel from hunting Hamas, nothing about getting back the hostages.

Holding Hamas to account doesn’t require starving refugees. Sanctions, targeted strikes on leadership, international prosecutions—all real tools. You choose collective suffering because it’s easier than wielding precision justice. That choice perpetuates the cycle, no “myth” needed.

Hamas is the one starving them.

"Sanctions"--useful against minor evil, magic words against major evil.

Targeted strikes on leadership--but when a human shield goes up with the leader you blame Israel.

"International prosecutions"--what are you smoking? How do you propose to get them before a court?

You're playing magic words again.

Data corrections lag under bombardment—that’s not an argument to scrap the entire dataset. When mistakes emerge, credible organizations update their counts. IDF itself revises civilian figures months later. Dismissing every report because it isn’t instantly flawless is hypocrisy.

It's been more than a year. All those "independent observers" are not under fire, there is no reason for it to take more than a day or two.

Cross-checking in an active warzone isn’t trivial—it takes time, resources, and safe access. You brand every delayed correction a cover-up, then turn around and accept instantaneous IDF press releases as gospel. That’s not scrutiny, it’s prejudice.

I'm not objecting to reasonable delays--I am objecting to taking a year to figure out that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, V, 五, ۵, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 doesn't mean there are 13 numbers between 1 and 10. (No need to puzzle with Google: the extra languages are Roman, Chinese, and Farsi.)

Pointing to civilian deaths doesn’t create them—bombing them does. You weaponize doubt to shield policies that shred neighborhoods. If data terrified you into stopping, perhaps we’d see fewer corpses. Your refusal to let evidence guide your conscience is the real tragedy here.

It's not the pointing that creates them, it's the focusing on them. Civilian deaths get you to hate Israel, so Hamas creates more civilian deaths to make you hate Israel more.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.c...palestinians-and-use-of-aid-as-a-tool-of-war/

I guess Doctors Without Borders, which is primarily made up of volunteer doctors who sometimes risk their lives to help people in dire situations don't know what their talking about either. /s

Yet another wolf. Predictions of dire results--more than 4 months have passed and those dire results did not appear. You're actually proving my point here, bringing up one of those false predictions of doom I keep talking about. Why do you keep listening to the eternal screams of famine and starvation?

You didn’t read the link. There are no predictions of dire outcomes, just statements of observations of fact and opinions about international law.

At best, your characterization of the link is based on willful ignorance. It is why your responses cannot be taken seriously.

“Israeli authorities are yet again normalizing the use of aid as a negotiation tool. This is outrageous. Humanitarian aid should never be used as a bargaining chip in war,” says Myriam Laaroussi, MSF emergency coordinator. “The blockade on all supplies is inevitably hurting hundreds of thousands of people and is having potentially deadly consequences.”

1) It's not being used as a bargaining chip. That propaganda piece contains very little in the way of facts.

2) "Inevitably hurting hundreds of thousands of people"--except history shows it didn't.

“Gaza is now left without fuel coming in,” says Laaroussi. “Our hands are tied and with no supply pipeline it makes it even more difficult to assist people in Gaza once our stocks run out. A ceasefire without scaling up humanitarian aid is contradictory.”

Stocks didn't run out.

 

[laughing dog]

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.c...palestinians-and-use-of-aid-as-a-tool-of-war/

I guess Doctors Without Borders, which is primarily made up of volunteer doctors who sometimes risk their lives to help people in dire situations don't know what their talking about either. /s

Yet another wolf. Predictions of dire results--more than 4 months have passed and those dire results did not appear. You're actually proving my point here, bringing up one of those false predictions of doom I keep talking about. Why do you keep listening to the eternal screams of famine and starvation?

You didn’t read the link. There are no predictions of dire outcomes, just statements of observations of fact and opinions about international law.

At best, your characterization of the link is based on willful ignorance. It is why your responses cannot be taken seriously.

“Israeli authorities are yet again normalizing the use of aid as a negotiation tool. This is outrageous. Humanitarian aid should never be used as a bargaining chip in war,” says Myriam Laaroussi, MSF emergency coordinator. “The blockade on all supplies is inevitably hurting hundreds of thousands of people and is having potentially deadly consequences.”

1) It's not being used as a bargaining chip. That propaganda piece contains very little in the way of facts.

The blockade’s purpose is to force Hamas to agree to Isrsel’s terms. So your comment is counterfactual.

2) "Inevitably hurting hundreds of thousands of people"--except history shows it didn't.

The statement of fact is unproven. So is your characterization about history.

“Gaza is now left without fuel coming in,” says Laaroussi. “Our hands are tied and with no supply pipeline it makes it even more difficult to assist people in Gaza once our stocks run out. A ceasefire without scaling up humanitarian aid is contradictory.”

Stocks didn't run out.

Read carefully. “Once stocks run out” is a warning not a statement of fact.