Hamas is hiding among civilians. I don’t want innocent people to be hurt, but their use of human shields is simply the standard playbook in this type of warfare. Hamas rationally wants Gazan civilians to be nearby and indistinguishable from combatants.

This is true but not the whole story. If Hamas were dug in under an Israeli school or hospital, would it similarly by okay to treat civilian deaths as 'just Hamas fault'? Obviously not. The problem here has that the situation is between a war and a policing situation. Gaza is not a state, but it is not a suburb of Israel either. So who is responsible for the safety of Palestinian civilians?

If Hamas were entrenched under an Israeli school or hospital, the civilians would vacate the area so the IDF could take care of it.

In Gaza, Hamas may be preventing civilians from leaving (but I’m not there to verify). It would help to have civilian corridors into the south and into Egypt, but again that’s not in the best interests of Hamas.

I’d like the IDF to do their best. They are indeed responsible for trying not to kill civilians. There’s only so much they can do, short of a so-called “ceasefire”.

> It would help to have civilian corridors into the south and into Egypt, but again that’s not in the best interests of Hamas.

Such a corridor is in nobodies interest but Israels, as they would happily expel the entire Gaza population and then forbid them from returning. It's not like high ranking Israeli officials haven't alluded or outright said this, and Israel has quite a history of illegal annexation in the West Bank.

Providing such a corridor would just be asssisting in ethnic cleansing.

Hamas rules Gaza, Israel doesn't (or at least didn't) have a military presence inside of Gaza. Israel withdrew all Israelis and all military forces from Gaza, as was often demanded of it ("End the Occupation"). I'm not sure what makes the situation unclear (for the specific things you talked about).

The way you have phrased your question invites discussion of legal definitions. Moral questions are not answered in this way. What is the moral difference between soldiers and police as regards civilians? Both have the same moral obligation not to harm civilians. The difference is that police have a monopoly on violence and soldiers do not, because there is another belligerent force. Hence, it is clear that under some circumstances, the moral obligations of soldiers would reduce to that of police (when the opposing beligerent force is nearly eliminated). The degree to which this is the case depends on the tactical state of play, which is unclear (and likely to remain so).

I have to say that it's also unclear to me personally whether the current rate of civilian deaths could be justified under any circumstances. Since Israel has not stated what it wants the end-goal of the war to be, we don't know how it could justify it either.

> Hence, it is clear that under some circumstances, the moral obligations of soldiers would reduce to that of police (when the opposing beligerent force is nearly eliminated). The degree to which this is the case depends on the tactical state of play, which is unclear (and likely to remain so).

This is clearly not the case - the IDF is still actively fighting Hamas militants, Hamas is still firing rockets at Israel, IDF soldiers are getting killed every day, etc. Not to mention, the population itself is not fully cooperating with the IDF, I believe.

For contrast, Israel has ordered many Israelis to leave areas for their own protection, I believe around 100-150k Israelis have evacuated their homes. No one is talking about them being "ethnically cleansed", and whil there is internal political pressure to help them, no one thinks it's immoral that they were asked to relocate. Clearly the situation in Gaza is different, because many people are outraged that Gazans were similarly asked to evacuate their cities for their own protection.

> I have to say that it's also unclear to me personally whether the current rate of civilian deaths could be justified under any circumstances. Since Israel has not stated what it wants the end-goal of the war to be, we don't know how it could justify it either.

Israel has stated it wants the hostages returned, and Hamas destroyed. Whether this is achievable, or what exactly counts as "Hamas being destroyed", are open questions, but not impossible to answer. (And frustrating as it is, it makes sense that Israel doesn't want to publicize its exact goals.)

Regarding the rate of civilian deaths - this if of course hard to exactly know, given the incentive of both sides to manipulate numbers. I trust the Israeli side far more, and I think everyone should given that the other side is Hamas, but I'm also obviously biased.

That said, the IDF has said it thinks it's killing 2 civilians per 1 Hamas fighter. This is a ratio that, as far as I know, is roughly in line with other conflicts by Western countries. The rate itself is fairly high but it's likely to be far shorter and lead to orders of magnitude less killed than in other conflicts.

I do want to mention that, while I talk about these numbers as statistics, every civilian death is a tragedy. Hell, every death is a tragedy - if Israel could manage to not kill any militants, it would be morally better, because every death is a tragedy.

> That said, the IDF has said it thinks it's killing 2 civilians per 1 Hamas fighter. This is a ratio that, as far as I know, is roughly in line with other conflicts by Western countries. The rate itself is fairly high but it's likely to be far shorter and lead to orders of magnitude less killed than in other conflicts.

The idea that this war is winnable seams incredibly naive. The idea that hitting hard now prevents future conflicts is an untested hypothesis at best.

Are there any examples of a war where an entrenched gorilla group with broad civilian support have been successfully "defeated"?

> Are there any examples of a war where an entrenched gorilla group with broad civilian support have been successfully "defeated"?

I'm not sure you can call it an entrenched guerilla group given that it is effectively the government of Gaza.

And yes, there are many examples where wars ended when one side surrendered, just to state the obvious, Japan and Germany in WW2.

You can't compare what was essentially conventional warfare between states of vastly similar military capabilities and a fight between a gorilla force and a conventional military.

I don't think an organisation which is internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation are a government in any real sense of the word.

I mean, I'm not sure why you think that. Gaza is governed by Hamas, though not very well, obviously. Israel left Gaza and doesn't (until now) didn't have forces in there, Hamas acted in all respects like a government.

I'm not sure what distinction you're making here. More importantly, I'm not sure why you think that makes the war unwinnable. Presumably there is a scenario in which Hamas surrenders, and if not, that Hamas are slowly all taken out. This is a pretty awful scenario, and would probably involve Israel having to govern Gaza for a while, but it is something that can happen.

There's a chance it won't because Hamas doesn't really care about anyone, including its own populace.

Because it has neither the means not the ability to act as a government. They are restricted in their ability to build structures, import or export goods, ability to import fuel, even taxes are collected by Israel on their behalf (and sometimes withheld, delayed or used to unilateral settle debts).

The distinction is that militaries typically fight wars on battle fields, even the current Russia / Ukraine war looks like this with battle lines being pushed this way and that way as one side advances or retreats.

There is nothing like that in Gaza. The difference between a Hamas militant and a civilian is simply whether they are currently holding their AK-47.

The more civilians are killed the more angry young men are drawn to the cause. Short of flattening the whole area and killing everyone I don't see an end.

It is much more aptly compared to the battles against Al-Qaida, ISIS or the Vietcong than the Nazis.

I think we mostly agree on this, and there's a reason the mantra "Hamas=ISIS" was so common.

Two points we disagree on:

> The difference between a Hamas militant and a civilian is simply whether they are currently holding their AK-47.

That's true in terms of what they seem like visually (which is maybe what you meant). Not true in the sense that most Gazans are not members of Hamas.

That does make it a lot harder to know who is Hamas and who isn't, but it's still possible (maybe) to effectively take out Hamas by capturing/killing all the known leaders, anyone who is actively holding hostages, anyone in tunnels, etc. I don't think Israel would need to kill literally every Hamas militant, nor should it.

> The more civilians are killed the more angry young men are drawn to the cause. Short of flattening the whole area and killing everyone I don't see an end.

I hope you're wrong, for everyone's sake.

But it really is true that the US killed a lot of Germans and Japanese, and now the Germans and Japanese are allies. It's not automatic that everyone will turn to violence. Also, if there is no organizational structure around it, then "angry young men that turned to violence" don't actually have anything to do with their anger.

> That's true in terms of what they seem like visually (which is maybe what you meant). Not true in the sense that most Gazans are not members of Hamas.

Yes, sorry I didn't mean to imply that everyone is Gaza is a member of Hamas. That's clearly not true. But visually they are indistinguishable, or could very easily become so.

That said, I do suspect that these organisations are much more fluid than the binary distinction we're prone to make in the west.

I was thinking about what the process was after the second world war by which people normalised relations with the German people. Unfortunately my amateur conclusion was that we just created new enemies to redirect the anger.

Would Israel allow Gaza to have a conventional standing army? With barracks, heavy weapons and maybe airbases?

Isn't it a bit silly to complain about their lack of adherence to conventional military practices?

No state will tolerate a hostile army near its borders. But if representatives of Gaza/West Bank recognized Israel and made a peace agreement with delineated borders - they would have their army like any other government.

Today it sounds highly hypothetical, but was definitely possible at many points in Israel's history.

I find it hard to imagine a future in which Israel allows a Palestinian state to have its own army of any reasonable capability. Almost as much as I find it improbable that such an army wouldn't be mobilised against Israel as soon as it was sufficiently established - regardless of any pretext of peace.

However, my point was based on the situation today. The import of building materials into Gaza is strictly controlled because those materials could be used to build and fortify military positions.

It is contradictory to prevent the creation of military positions and also complain about civilian structures being used for military purposes.

The IDF HQ is in a heavily populated part of Tel Aviv. If a country dropped an enormous bomb on it which flattened nearby civilian homes and populations, would it be okay because the IDF is "hiding" among civilians? The IDF also literally used human shields until 2005 when it was banned (and a bit more afterwards trying not to get caught), so is it okay to kill ~20000 Israeli civilians as a result of that?

If you take what happened in Israel and change the location to London, do you think UK would just shrug it off? I am in no way saying what is currently happening is okay, but the response was the response, replace Israel with most other military dominant countries and you would get a similar response, especially if you were the stronger party. Depending on who we talk about, it may actually have been way worse.

I believe what OP is saying is that most other countries would have done the same. And for you to impart hatred on Israel for doing what most other countries would have done is anti-semitism.

It is interesting to me how your narrative went from somewhat reasonable to talking about “imparting hatred” and concluding it is anti-Semitic.

Which is kind of what the article is talking about.

Please correct me if my interpretation of your statement is incorrect, I meant nothing by it purely trying to explain what I thought you meant.

Thanks. No, I don’t hate Jews or Israel. I am very critical of the Israeli government at the moment, which is hardly a unique view.

>Imagine if you will someone going to start large scale bombing NYC. Or London. Or Rome.

The response to Sep 11, 2001?

Which has widely been condemned by people who criticise Israel? And tends not to be talked about too much by the (right wing) pro-Israeli government (settlement program, bombing of Palestinians) crowd.

Imagine if a terrorist group murdered 2750 people in New York and in response the US said they would topple the government which supported them and occupy their country indefinitely.

US has toppled governments and occupied countries over far less... probably not the best example.

They did that. In fact, the US waited quite a long time to see if the Taliban would give up bin Laden, before invading.

And it was one of the biggest US political mistakes of all time

You don't think the Hamas attack was a declaration of war?

Isn't blockading people and food and goods and putting the entire population of Gaza on a "starvation plus" diet and constantly and blatantly violating int'l law to throw West Bank Palestinians off their land further and further while laughing about it publicly a declaration of war?

When Palestinians protested nonviolently at the gates of Gaza and were shot to death, was that an act of war?

When Israeli West Bank settlers burned a home in Duma with a family still inside and laughed about the small child who burned alive their and taunted onlookers, was that an act of war?

Was Palestine suicide bombing buses and launching rockets declarations of war? Do you think Israel controls Egypt's borders with Gaza, or do you think Israel should allow terrorists to rape, torture, and murder their citizens?

Zionist militias certainly had no qualms about doing it to the Palestinians even before 1948.

It's difficult to declare war in the middle of a siege.

Did you think Gaza was under siege?

They were freely trading, sailing their ships, moving around the country, leaving entering freely right?

In that its borders are entirely under Israel and Egypt's control? Yes.

In that Israel bombed and destroyed Gaza's airport in 2001? Yes.

In that the Israeli Navy has blockaded the Port of Gaza since 2007? Yes.

Gazans are an oppressed people, who under international law are permitted to fight for freedom by any means necessary.

But regardless, as more of the truth has been teased out it's become plain that what Israel said happened on October 7th was... well, absolutely riddled with lies. Beheaded babies, baked babies, babies hung up on washing lines, mass rapes - all of it debunked, but still being used by the Israeli propaganda machine. We've also learned that of those killed, civilians were in the minority - most were Israeli soldiers, then armed "settlers". And now we know that Israeli tanks and helicopters killed a lot of Israeli civilians that day. It's also been reported that Israeli intelligence was forewarned of the attack, a month before and the day before - and chose to do nothing except extend the Nova festival for an extra day.

As it looks so far (IMHO): Hamas militant freedom fightets broke out of Gaza with the aim of taking hostages to swap for Palestinian hostages held by Israel. They find the Nova festival still on, and the plan falls to shit - civilians are killed by both sides in the firefight, but militants manage to escape with some hostages before helicopters arrive on the scene and start shooting every fucking thing that moves. And then Israel pumps it up like a balloon, and many fall for it (I'm ashamed to admit I believed it all at the start) - it's used as the pretence for genocide (or at the very least, ethic cleaning) and a land grab, and the US is happy to supply the bombs because money,

Since then, the Israeli lobby and propaganda machines have been working overtime! While much Israeli propaganda is comically bad, the tactic of slandering any anti-genocidal comments as anti-semetic has been quite successful. The lobbying has been incredibly successful, managing to control celebrity messaging, buy US politicians and control mainstream media in a truly alarming way. Hell, Israeli politicians are even openly making calls for genocide and other war crimes, and what major US or UK papers/channels have even reported it?

From a tech standpoint, the genocide being carried out by Israel, with full support of the US and UK, has shown how powerful and important Twitter and Instagram are - without them, many of us (likely myself included) would have no idea what Israel is doing now, or indeed has been doing in the recent past. IMO channels like these are simply too important to be controlled by billionaires - and indeed we're now starting to see pro-Palestine content being censored on Twitter and Instagram (I'm not on Facebook, but I heard it's heavily censored?).

If repeated terrorist attacks from the government of another neighboring country are not a valid reason to declare war, what is?