the west had a different opinion on russia doing the same in ukraine

The hell are you talking about? The predominant talking point of western commentators in the early phases of the war was the complete lunacy of Russia invading a place, and then using local cellphone networks to communicate, leaving in place a massive highly connected civilian population which didn't like them.

Because Russia's invasion is clearly illegal and immoral. Every act they do in furtherance of that goal is a crime. Every bullet fired, every cell phone tower and every power transformer destroyed.

Israel is clearly defending themselves against a genocidal adversary who just killed more Jews in one day than any day since the Holocaust. They have every right to invade Gaza to eliminate that threat.

>Israel is clearly defending themselves against a genocidal adversary who just killed more Jews in one day than any day since the Holocaust

And Israel had previously killed way more Palestinian civilians than that. Why is a Jewish life worth more than a Palestinian life?

The ground invasion hasn't even begun, they have already killed 6 times more people than Hamas did. [1]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-re...

You're getting downvoted for telling the truth. Crazy how even here people are straight up parroting Hamas propaganda about how Israel is actually bad for defending themselves.

At best, you are straw manning the other side's arguments here. But for the most part, you are alleging comments and language that don't seem to appear in this thread.

So the thousands of children killed in Gaza are guilty?

The idea that Israel is killing "thousands of children" comes directly from Hamas, no other countries have verified that.

Considering a week ago Hamas dropped a rocket on their own hospital and then claimed "Israel killed 500 people", I don't believe a single number coming from them.

This is not just 'an idea':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_Israeli%E2%80%...

I will agree with you for a second. We don't trust hamas. What about a truce to help civilians and deliver aid and send UN verification team? Wouldn't that be great for people and for morals of the great Isreali people?

Oh, I forgot that US veto every attempt for a ceasefire or truce and isreal said it will not respect it anyway.

Normally ceasefires only happen when its beneficial to both sides. One side doesn't get to call a time-out in a war just because they suddenly started losing. That's not the way war works and wouldn't happen in any other conflict either.

"The West" doesn't have a single opinion. If there's one topic where opinions are sharply divided then it's this. Any attempt to pigeonhole what "The West" thinks on this topic is nonsense.

tell yourself whatever gets you to sleep at night, but the hegemonic consensus decides where the big bombs drop

Could you link to what you are referring to? I don't recall anyone claiming russia attempting to disrupt communications was immoral or a violation of norms, but perhaps i missed it.

Cutting communication with outside world is a standard step in genocide and committing war crimes too.

Israel could just in minutes kill everyone in gaza. They have choosen not to do so in the past and are choosing now to not do so. Does civilians die in war? Yes, just like russian civilians have died when ukraine attacked military targets.

So should we thank them for not nuking a 2.3 million people? how nice of them!!

That wasn’t his point. You threw out an accusation of genocide and he refuted it.

Ask yourself, if Hamas had the a-bomb, would they hesitate to use it?

One can argue that they might but this is a hypothetical scenario that we all know that it is never going to happen.

But I think the reality that the only time it was used, it was used against civilian targets not military targets. And of course there is a justification here, it was for the greater good!

The other reality is isreal killed thousands of people before Oct 7th and did and will do. But of course there is a justification too, self-defense ..etc.

No, it can easily be argued that the reason is nuclear fallout that will affect isreal itself and other states will lead to regional war and disaster for isreal. This does no refute anything.

Just so everyone understands the scale - Russia killed 550 Ukrainian children in 2.5 yrs of war.

In less than 3 weeks, Israel has killed 3000. [1]

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/un-official-warns-hell-is-....

Edit: Could someone please explain why this comment has been flagged?

Not true. You are comparing independently verified deaths from external sources with Hamas own propaganda. Only in Mauripol russia is believed to have killed around 70 000 civilians.

One clip, from a home security system, shows a father rushing two of his young sons — it’s early in the morning, and they’re all in their underwear — from their living room into a bomb shelter, really a concrete shed, in their backyard. The video then cuts to the backyard. A Hamas gunman, apparently off-screen, throws something into the shelter. There’s an explosion, a body slumps over into the doorway, and two terrorists appear on screen. They enter the shelter, pulling the boys out by the arm. Later, back in the house, one of the terrorists offers the boys water that he pulled from the family’s fridge. One responds: “I want my mom, mom.” A subsequent clip shows a middle-aged woman approaching the shelter with two armed Israelis wearing helmets but not IDF uniforms; upon seeing the dead father, she slumps over, apparently in despair, and they pull her away, as the Hamas attack was still occurring.

The video also hints at the use of rape by Hamas attackers. Early indications of this were shrugged off or batted away by some of the terrorist group’s sympathizers in the West, who said that a widely circulated video of a girl being pulled out of a jeep in Gaza with blood-soaked pants was not enough proof.

The Israeli government says there is evidence, however. During a segment of the video centered on the carnage at the now-notorious music festival at Re’im, first responders look at the corpse of a young woman, her skirt pulled up above her waist. At this point, Israeli military attaché Guy Barak provided context to reporters from the first responders: “She was raped, then burned.” The video also apparently shows her friends trying to identify her by her tattoo. Barak later mentioned “evidence that the women were raped and the legs had been broken.” This had occurred “systematically,” he added. When asked by journalists during a briefing that followed the screening if he believes that Israel is losing the PR war, Major General Mickey Edelstein answered by saying that he’s “amazed that some have tried to minimize what happened in Israel” by equating Hamas’s acts to Israel’s strikes in Gaza. He added: “We’re acting by different values.”

I mean, war crimes take place in the context of war, so anything standard during a war would also be pretty common during a war crime. I don't think you can really draw any conclusions from that.

it's also a standard step in shutting down terrorist organizations who need to communicate with the outside world to get their orders (from Iran)

When it happened in Iran the US opposed it: https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-internet-shutdowns-...

Right now you can not call ambulances or firetrucks or anything. Not all 2M Palestinians in Gaza are combatants, but I think that some people consider them to be.

> When it happened in Iran the US opposed it: https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-internet-shutdowns-...

That's not comparable because that is not a military operation and there was no military advantage to the action.

> Right now you can not call ambulances or firetrucks or anything. Not all 2M Palestinians in Gaza are combatants, but I think that some people consider them to be.

I don't know what people think happens in a war, but generally innocents always pay the price. That's true in this conflict and it is true in literally every other conflict that has happened ever.

If only the guilty died in wars, we wouldn't say war is hell.

Generally from an international law perspective, the obligation is to ensure that civilian damage is porportional to military advantage. There is no obligation under the geneva convention to never do anything that could harm civilians, it just has to have enough of a military advantage to justify it (this is a gross over simplification)

bawolff wrote:

> Generally from an international law perspective, the obligation is to ensure that civilian damage is porportional to military advantage.

This new report from HRW details both Hamas and Israeli war crimes:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/27/how-does-international-h...

On the Israeli side (but you can read about Hamas in the report above):

"Israel has also engaged in the collective punishment of Gaza’s population through cutting off food, water, electricity, and fuel. This is a war crime, as is willfully blocking humanitarian relief from reaching civilians in need."

"There’s also concern about Israel ordering the displacement of much of Gaza’s civilian population, which is permitted only if required for the civilians’ security or imperative military reasons. The civilian population needs to be able to return as soon as possible - permanent displacement is a crime."

"In addition, the Israeli occupying authorities have committed and continue to commit other international crimes, including with West Bank settlements. If the occupying power transfers any of its civilian population into the occupied territory, either directly or indirectly, it is a war crime."

I'm not claiming israel is a saint here, only that disrupting telecomms during wae is not in itself a war crime.

I fully agree the west bank is fucked up (i do not think that justifies oct 7, which on the scale of atrocities seems much worse)

As far as the blockade goes, i don't know - it seems like there might be a grey area between blocking humanitarian aid vs being required to provide it. At least personally i think blocking the water was too far, but blocking fuel seems reasonable to me, but ianal and this doesn't seem clear cut to me so id like to wait for more analysis.

> There’s also concern about Israel ordering the displacement of much of Gaza’s civilian population, which is permitted only if required for the civilians’ security or imperative military reasons. The civilian population needs to be able to return as soon as possible - permanent displacement is a crime."

Given there is a ground invasion there starting right now, in a dense urban environment "civilians’ security or imperative military reasons" criteria seems met imo. I agree its imperative they be let back when fighting is over.

In the context of this conflict, it should be noted that the Palestinian side has commited a crazy amount of war crimes over a very long time (both by hamas but also past groups). That doesn't excuse israel's misdeeds, but when only one side is held to account, it delegitamizes the whole project of international law.