> but I imagine the residents of kibbutz be'eri and the 100+ hostages still held in Gaza would disagree that Isreal is fighting for "basically no reason."
On the contrary, I think that those exact people would agree the most. Do you think that they do not wish that Israel did a hostage exchange instead of starving and bombing them together with their captors? To bring the "low hanging fruit" example, do you think that the three hostages who were waving white flags nearly entirely naked, and who were subsequently murdered by the IDF; do you think that they or their families prefer(preferred) this devastation that lead to their deaths instead of a simple hostage exchange?
What do you think would happen if IDF killed most of Hamas and had their last few forces cornered with no escape, and were getting close to them? Do you think the hostages would not be killed by either their captors or by IDF as collateral damage in such a scenario?
Claims that the systematic destruction of Gaza and genocide(-lite?) serves the goal of bringing back the hostages is such an obvious cover for bloodthirst that it is honestly intellectually-insulting to keep reading it over and over again.
The war has explicilty been about removing Hamas from power for a while now. To the degree there is opposition within Israel to the war, it's in the hostage-retrieval prerogative having been subsumed.
In 1999 Yugoslavia killed ~12 thousand Albanians and displaced ~85 thousand more. Bill Clintons secretary of defense had no problem calling that genocide: "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide.". This led NATO to drop bombs on Yugoslavia [0].
In this conflict Israel has killed ~31 thousand Palestinians and displaced ~2.3 million more [1]. For all its tough talk the Biden administration has responded by selling Israel jet planes [2].
I'm not saying bombing Yugoslavia was justified. But there is plenty of historical precedent to call this conflict genocide.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_invasion_of_the_Gaza_S...
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-administration...
Here we have a war. You cannot compare the two, not to mention the 31k number being unhinged from any credible source.
It was called the Kosovo war. Why can we not compare the two? They seem VERY comparable to me.
But if Wikipedia and Al Jazeera are not good enough for you then you will see the following orgs also posted these numbers: NPR [0], BBC [1], NYTimes [2]. And if your worried those numbers are inflated there is an article in the Lancet that shows if anything it is the opposite [3].
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6Ny8_QViY
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/world/middleeast/gaza-dea...
[3]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
I have, from the UK, seem zero presence of any war in 2024.
Seen plenty of what looks like vile and indescrimate killing of random civilians by Israel.
Is the war the one that's killing multiple aid volunteers, or something else?
It's not a war though.
Unfortunately every day in Gaza since has been as horrific, or more horrific.
Indescriminately killing and starving an entire population and destroying the surrounding infrastructure is not warfare.
The actions described in the linked article make this clear.
Certainly starving civilians are being killed by the IDF. I'd be shocked if some of the deaths aren't related to self-defence. Given there look to be credible reports of the IDF operating kill zones, and allowing on the ground soldiers to set their own rules of engagement, as well as making it generally clear it's little issue in collateral deaths it's difficult to have much empathy with those numbers.
A number will be attributable to friendly fire and accident too. It wouldn't surprise me if that's a significant proportion, potentially the majority given the level of sniping, significant munitions and general anarchy.
Finally, I'm sure some are as a direct result of actual engagement with Hamas.
Any reporting by the IDF is obviously security checked propoganda, filtered through multiple levels of approvals and inspection.
That figure was corrected a number of months back to 1.2k was it not. The most accurate figure I've seen stated is 11,600, although it doesn't seem to be in widespread use, although the 1,200 figure is often caveated.
The total isn't all civilians. No official figures have been released on the split is my understanding.
It's also not clear how many are attributable to Israel's response, but it's clearly non-zero and may well be a significant proportion.
You're twisting their words, I'll assume out of a misreading. Read the comment again. They clearly said that there's no good reason to bomb Gaza the way that they have been doing, resulting in the murder of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of civilians.
Unilateral withdrawal from Gaza led to the tripling of rocket attacks. Multiple peace offers have been rejected. Limited Israeli retaliation and extensive international aid has meant the Palestinian civilian population is sufficiently insulated from the violence that they have no incentive to demand peace from their leaders.
When Palestine was sending children as suicide bombers, Israel decided to play defense and built walls that dramatically lowered the efficacy of suicide bombings. So the Palestinians switched to rockets. So Israel again played defense and built the iron dome. So Hamas switched to Oct. 7th. Do you think they should play defense again?
Tell me: what peace offer do you think Israel could make the Palestinians that would lead to a lasting peace? Tell me: if Israel surrendered unconditionally to the Palestinians, would the Israelis live in peace?
You don't get to massacre tens of thousands of people because they fight back against brutal occupation and repeated massacres, then paint yourself as the victim.
The world's eyes are open. We've seen what happened to those WCK aid workers; to Hind Rajab, to Reem and Taleb, and all the others. We've seen the mosques, churches, hospitals destroyed, and the wilful, wanton disregard of international law and basic decency.
What Israel has done over the last six months hasn't made Israelis safer, nor Jews. These atrocities won't ever be forgotten.
You didn't answer my questions.
Hamas had the run of Gaza and could have built whatever society they wanted there. They used that chance to built up for explicitly slaughtering civilians instead.
To get hostages back? Hostage exchange.
To dismantling Hamas and armed resistance from Palestinians? Stop ethnically cleansing the West Bank and remove the boot from their necks so that people in Gaza see that there is a better way and that going down fighting is not the only choice.
Plenty of alternatives to death and destruction when those are not the actual goal itself. Of course those alternatives do not go hand in hand with the idea of an ethnically-cleansed Greater Israel, so here we are.
Jewish Voice for Peace giving a timeline of major violence against Palestinians for about a year before 2023-10-07: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2023/11/24/countdown-to-...
2023-09-18: "2023 marks deadliest year on record for children in the occupied West Bank" https://www.savethechildren.net/news/2023-marks-deadliest-ye...
HRW on the above: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/28/west-bank-spike-israeli-...
2023-01-13: "Last year Israeli forces killed at least 146 Palestinians, including 34 children, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem reported" https://apnews.com/article/politics-israel-government-palest...