Also if Israel were to back off, it would validate Hamas' tactics of embedding soldiers within the civilian population, leading to more widespread use of such tactics in the future. It seems like endgame there is that Western militaries can simply no longer conduct counterinsurgencies.
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies...
Despite that, Israel is not using this excuse.
Specifically international law protections do not apply to civilians, unless they stay away from both involvement in military clashes and stay away from the clashes themselves. This even goes for the even more protected classes like doctors or even the red cross.
The only real violations of international law apply to an army purposefully going, unprovoked, into a civilian area and starting to shoot everyone. Hamas does that, as they've proven on many occasions (including their own civilians), Israel doesn't. And no serious organization is even disputing that.
Israel has been shown to do this on multiple occasions. Take, for example, them doing exactly this to their own surrendering hostages, which they mistook for surviving, surrendering Palestinian civilians as they combed through the rubble of their bombings. Or maybe there was no mistake.
Given Israel's assault on the free press in Gaza (ranging from shutting off power and communications to literally shooting and bombing press workers), we may never know the true extent of these cleansings, especially when it really is "just" surviving, surrendering Palestinian civilians.
I’m also thinking about the massacres during the great march of return[2], where Israeli soldiers fired indiscriminately at unarmed protestors. In the protests, and the ensuing conflict, Israel killed 223 people, by far majority of whom were unarmed civilians. You can argue that mass demonstration is provocative, but the response of indiscriminately killing unarmed protestors is not a proportionate response.
And finally, I’m also thinking about the flour massacre[3], where the Israeli army purposefully went, unprovoked, into a civilian area and started to shoot everyone. At least 118 civilians were killed and 760 were wounded when the Israeli army shot at people trying to gather food after having been deliberately starved by Israel the months before.
The parent (who I’m trying not to engage with) is also just wrong when they claim no international law is broken by Israel. They currently have one ICJ case ruled against them, that of the illegal border (or apartheid) wall in the west bank, which the ICJ ruled illegal in 2004[4] and demanded they take down (which Israel hasn’t). The have several condemnations by a pletora of international humanitarian organizations. There are two ongoing ICJ cases against them, one for genocide, and their leaders stand recommended for indictments at the ICC.
There are many more examples than the three above of Israel blatantly violating international humanitarian law. Which is why the UN general assembly overwhelmingly voted to press charges at the ICJ to find out what the consequences of these gross violations should be[5].
1: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/30/middleeast/israel-undercover-...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_...
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_massacre
I know you are trying to hold onto the position that these events were taken out of context, and that the IDF has a different story, which somehow excuses these events. But just so you know, there is international consensus that the IDF versions don’t survive scrutiny. Israel has been under investigation for human rights violations for a long time. Multiple human rights organizations have come to the same conclusion that Israel is a serial human rights violator, and unlike Israel, these human rights, and international organizations, have evidence which support their claims, evidence which actually holds up to scrutiny.
You keep reminding us about international consensus, well both HRW and Amnesty have accused Hamas, and HRW also Fatah, of kidnapping, torturing and intimidating Journalists in Gaza. There is international consensus that both Hamas and Fatah have also murdered journalists. So your only source of information is more than a little biased. No mention of this. And, of course, no mention that this is the society that you're defending. AND, of course, no mention that this obviously means your information is wrong, and extremely biased towards Palestine, and no discussion of what that means for your claims.
One example is "Mohamed al-durrah". TLDR: Palestinians attacked and killed THOUSANDS of people because Israel shot a kid hiding behind his father. Of course, it was then proven that not only Israel didn't do that, but Hamas ACTUALLY SHOT AND KILLED THE KID AND THE FATHER in order to make that video. The people who attacked and murdered thousands with that as justification killed a father and child in order to CREATE that justification. The explicitly given reason for thousands of murders by Palestinians turned out to be a deliberate false flag attack. How many times has that happened in this conflict? How many of your complaints are similar? How many of these massacres were deliberately caused by Hamas? How many times did Hamas just outright massacre their own people just to blame Israel? Because it's not zero. How many times did they force children to attack? Because it's not zero. How many times did they use women and children as human shields and literally shoot at soldiers hiding behind children? Because it's THOUSANDS OF TIMES MINIMUM. How many UN buildings did they use as military depots? How many schools? How many hospitals? Because there's 3 extremely well documented cases for hospitals alone, and one about the UN headquarters in Gaza. How many hospitals turned out to be military hamas bases, with UN doctors helping Hamas build those military bases inside hospitals? Because there's at least 5 documented cases.
And of course, the big question: how will you prevent this in the future? Because if you can't, obviously shooting at those places is unavoidable (hell, Hamas started their reign in Gaza by committing a massacre in the emergency ward of Al-Shifa hospital. No protests. Nobody thinks there is any problem with what happened, in fact that got them extra support).
And I'd even say ... fine. Fine if they ONLY attack their own people. But asking Israel (or Lebanon, or Jordan, or Egypt, or ... because let's not pretend Palestinians are only attacking Israel) to just endure the attacks is not reasonable.
For the other half, fact is that Palestinians have, time and time again, made it clear: their ONLY goal is to eliminate Israel and it's people. You know, the thing Putin keeps assuring us that if even a single attack of that kind happens, if he even SUSPECTS a single such attack happens, he'll respond with nuclear weapons, not just on the attacking party, on everyone. Of course, zero protests from anyone, hell, I've seen a leftist demonstration SUPPORT this (before Putin, well, he was there, not yet president).
Iran is threatening nuclear attacks if Israel merely defends itself. Yet, again, I have to point out, zero protests on your side. Somehow there's never any complaints from you if Jewish lives are at stake. They just have to let themselves be killed.
And there is the racist one-sidedness of your argument. Palestinians are currently committing constant warcrimes. And you accuse Israel of ignoring the ICJ? Are you serious?
In case you don't know, UNLIKE Israel, Hamas and Palestinians have signed the Rome statute. They are not carrying out the demands of the ICJ (arrest Hamas leaders, stop attacking Israel, return the hostages (they added "alive and dead" this time they demanded it), stop the rockets, disarm). Same with Lebanon, Iran, Hezbollah, ... yet you keep screaming about Israeli violations. One side must follow the law, the other side gets to ignore it.
You "neglect" to mention Palestinians have, for over 20 years, committed constant warcrimes. I'd list the people they have committed warcrimes on, but it goes from LGBTQ people to Kuwaiti, so let's just summarize: "against EVERYONE". You not only don't complain about this, you don't even talk about preventing this going forward. The only warcrimes you complain about are (alleged) warcrimes by Israel, not even proven ones. Yet the constant Palestinian warcrimes, a lot of which are proven (and not disputed by Palestinians), you don't care about.
Then there are the obvious international law violations. Hamas, who are Palestinians, is hiding among civilians, and committing dozens and dozens of these warcrimes every day. You don't care. They keep getting accused of forcing civilians to stand before their fighters. They are holding, raping, torturing, starving and killing hostages. They constantly (in fact, almost exclusively) attack civilians, including their own. You don't care.
Same argument as before. You not only don't mention this, or the fact that the UN has failed (and by that I mean they do NOTHING) to prevent constant warcrimes by these people for 40 years ... you demand they be allowed to continue these warcrimes.
Well, here's my argument:
Obviously you don't care about people committing warcrimes. You've made that ABUNDANTLY clear. So stop complaining about what Israel does. I see your argument as demanding that people are allowed to constantly commit warcrimes, over DECADES. Well, I demand you stop being racist, and simply allow the same on both sides.
You complain about bombardment of civilians. At minimum three Palestinian terrorist organizations you demand they are allowed to bombard Israel, without consequences. Well, I ask for fairness: allow Israel the same, or PREVENT Palestinian warcrimes.
You complain about firing into civilians. Palestinians have fired into civilians on about 700 separate occasions in the last 20 years (in fact, if you count ... it's already more than 100 years), and you demand nothing be done about this. Well, I ask for fairness: allow Israel the same.
Frankly, you are making one huge pro-warcrime argument, and badly mask it by pointing to the obvious fact that warcrimes have victims.
And, lastly, there's the strategic argument. The VERY BASIS of international law is that borders aren't allowed to move. That is the central basic thing the UN, and the "international order" is founded on. Even if a country can conquer another, they aren't allowed to. Not even if they're bigger and they can do it. Not if a holy book "justifies it". Not if there's "historical justification" (as if such a thing even exists). Not even if they have economic reasons to do so. Not ... Never. Palestinians refuse to abide by this, and somehow you fail to see what will happen if that is allowed. Obviously, the result will be 1000 wars starting across the globe, as there are 1000 situations where one country feels justified conquering another.
> These allegations of Hamas violations of international humanitarian laws—even if true—does not devalue the lives of Palestinians, nor does it give Israel an excuse for further violations.
When I said that, I was referring to my parent’s allegations of Hamas’ use of human shields, hiding among civilian populations etc. But this also applies to your accusations of Hamas’ terrorist actions.
But let’s step back and see what you are doing here. You are claiming that because of Hamas’ atrocities, International humanitarian laws does not apply to Israel. However, there is no such clause in International Humanitarian law. It applies to everybody, even if your enemy breaks them.
So basically what you are saying here is that Israel—a state actor—is as bad as Hamas—a terrorist organization. This argumentation does not look good for Israel. That said, Israel is a state actor and should not be held to the same standard as a terrorist organization. We can expect Hamas to continue committing as long as the Palestinian people are treated unjustly. Hamas is a resistance movement, and they will resist. Israel, however, is a state actor, and is bound to international treaties. In the ongoing conflict, they are the oppressors, giving unjust treatment of other peoples. They are fighting to keep oppressing, to prevent justice for Palestinians. And they are bound by international law to not do that.
See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanations of this point. As well as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html of course.
Regardless of which side you're on in a conflict, and regardless of how right you are or feel you are, you simply can't abuse this forum and break its rules this way.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Having said that, none if it justifies the crimes or racial discrimination I mentioned above. As I said: If all innocent civilians are equal, then it's not acceptable to kill 35,000 Palestinian ones to avenge <2,000 Israeli ones, or ——>even to prevent another <2,000 future Israeli casualties.<—— That math makes no sense from the outside perspective, unless one discriminates based on race, or otherwise believes Israel civilians are somehow more valuable than Palestinian civilians.
If you don't buy that though, it still seems reasonable enough for Israel to prioritize their own security. It may not be morally correct from a utilitarian perspective, but it's what pretty much any country would do, just as any parent would save their own child first in an emergency.
What we do have data to support is that bombing apartment blocks and hospitals and refugee camps and aid convoys and aid warehouses all full of innocent civilians is illegal, even if you shout "human shield!" first, even if you really want to achieve your political or military aims, even if you claim you're saving more innocent civilian lives by doing so, even if you really want to "prioritize security". It's all still illegal, hence the court cases.
Would Israel tolerate the IDF killing innocent Israeli civilians in as great a number as they have killed innocent Palestinian civilians, to achieve the same aims? Likely not, which would make the behavior discriminatory based on race, religion, and/or national origin, too.
> it still seems reasonable enough for Israel to prioritize their own security. It may not be morally correct from a utilitarian perspective, but it's what pretty much any country would do, just as any parent would save their own child first in an emergency.
This makes it sound like you recognize Palestine as a different country (and thus deserving of international recognition, freedom, independence, self-determination, safety, and security). If so, good on you :) If not, Israel is obliged to protect Palestinian civilians under its rule equally to Israeli civilians under its rule. I wish I could say "there's no 3rd option where Israel abuses Palestinians under their rule for decades while taking no responsibility for their well-being", but we've all seen the past decades.
Every country "discriminates" based on nationality; to expect otherwise would be unreasonable. If a country truly valued all human interests equally, there would be no reason for citizenship.
If Israel was governed by moral saints, they might reach a conclusion that any military response would lead to negative net utility, so it's better to allow Hamas and Hezbollah to attack with impunity until they eventually conquer Israel and cleanse it of Jews. Moral sainthood isn't a reasonable expectation, though, and it's certainly not a standard anyone applies to other countries.
> Every country "discriminates" based on nationality;
You've twisted my words: I said race, religion, or national origin, not nationality. Their national origin is Palestine. Their nationality is either Israeli or Palestinian. If Palestinian, that means Palestine is a different country (and thus deserving of international recognition, freedom, independence, self-determination, safety, and security). If Israeli, that means Israel is obliged to protect Palestinian civilians under its rule equally to Israeli civilians under its rule. Israel believes Palestine is not an independent country, therefore they are bound to the obligations of the latter, and cannot discriminate against their national subjects based on national origin.
Let's be clear here: Nobody expects Israel to admit any wrong here, or to do any good here, despite the international condemnation. This is just explaining that condemnation.
> it's better to allow Hamas and Hezbollah to attack with impunity until they eventually conquer Israel and cleanse it of Jews.
Please, we're being serious here. Hamas' latest attack, after years of planning, was their most successful in history, and it killed some 95% fewer than Israel has cleansed in the months since then, on a moment's notice. One cannot discuss this "threat" as anything other than a joke -- it's simply unrealistic given Hamas' means and history. Even so, as mentioned above, it's not an excuse for Israel's literal genocide of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians so far, with millions more in the crosshairs.
Even if you want to make the argument that Israel is occupying (Hamas-controlled parts of) Gaza, that wouldn't make Gazans Israeli citizens, and realistically every country prioritizes the safety of their citizens; it wouldn't be reasonable to expect otherwise.
> One cannot discuss this "threat" as anything other than a joke
You're ignoring the role of asymmetric warfare and human shield tactics. The IDF is struggling to make progress as is, despite obvious military superiority. If they caved to demands to e.g. stay out of Rafah, then Hamas terrorists would essentially be untouchable, an noone can fight an untouchable enemy.
Israel treating their Palestinian-born subjects as stateless would be illegal, so a decision must be made by Israel between the two options I described, with the respective consequences I described. By effectively exerting rule over Palestinians (especially in the West Bank), they have chosen the route that doesn't recognize Palestine as a country, and thus are obliged to treat Palestinian-born subjects equally to any other subjects under their rule. The fact that Israel denies citizenship to the millions of Palestinian-born subjects under their rule, is particularly gross.
> You're ignoring the role of asymmetric warfare and human shield tactics. The IDF is struggling to make progress as is, despite obvious military superiority. If they caved to demands to e.g. stay out of Rafah, then Hamas terrorists would essentially be untouchable, an noone can fight an untouchable enemy.
That, in turn, ignores that Israel's actions are still illegal. Put simply, the defense you cite isn't good enough to justify Israel's actions. They tried that defense, it did not succeed, here we are. The reason is that the laws were made with the possibility of "human shields" in mind, and they still made the actions illegal. It's not some novel occurrence excepted from the rules.
It does sucks to be IDF right now, but their lives aren't worth more than civilian Palestinian lives, and thus it is immoral for them to take many civilian lives to reduce their own risk of loss, and illegal for them to do so to the extent they have, even if it means they get to kill a terrorist in the process.
Here's the most important metric (superceding any Israeli desire): Fewer civilians will die if Israel withdraws and simply secures the border than will die if Israel invades. You don't have to trust me: An independent court actually evaluated both sides here and came to the same judgement, as described in the article we're discussing. Israel will either accept that they can't do whatever they want, up to and including genocide, just because they want to, or continue to parallel Russia's and North Korea's international pariah journey while angrily feigning ignorance and righteously pointing fingers at everyone but themselves. Probably the latter.
I was never commenting on legality. It seems unreasonable to expect a country to essentially give up on its own defense, whether or not such defense is deemed illegal and/or leads to more deaths overall.
> Hamas' aggression has unfortunately made that impossible for now.
On the contrary: as the world has expressed on multiple occasions in multiple ways, Israel's genocide of Palestinians is what has made that unfortunately impossible for now. After all, the world sees how Israel abused Palestinians for decades before October 7th. Israel can't say the world didn't warn them as they spiral into the same pariah status as Russia and North Korea.
> It seems unreasonable to expect a country to essentially give up on its own defense
The "abiding by international law means essentially giving up our defense" claim was put forth by Israel and judged not to be the case. It was expected, both when the law was drafted, and when the case was brought against Israel, given their frequent repetition of the now-debunked claim. It just wasn't credible: neither the court nor most countries or people actually believe Hamas is going to somehow conquer the state of Israel. Indeed, it's inconceivable that over their entire remaining existence Hamas will ever deal out even a small fraction of the damage Israel has dealt to innocent Palestinian civilians over the course of less than 1 year.
If, however, one isn't interested in discussing the legality of Israel's behavior (in an HN post about precisely that), and the topic is reduced to whether Israel will say "whatever, I do what I want" a la Putin or Cartman, then I will submit a bet that they will, and leave it at that.
Are you saying that as an independent country, Gaza's sovereignty can't be violated? This isn't absolute; there are exceptions like self-defense, whether we're look at this from a legal perspective (UN article 51) or an ethical one.
Indeed my point was never about law; this thread began with your argument which seemed to be about utilitarian ethics. So the ICJ order isn't related to my point, unless we consider the ICJ an arbiter of morality.
Not Gaza, Palestine. That includes Gaza and the West Bank, which has been under Israeli apartheid for a long time. There is rarely an unrestrained right to self-defense of a country engaging in apartheid and genocide, against those upon whom they are perpetrating it. Does Israel grant Palestinian-born subjects in the West Bank (a territory Israel dominates) freedom, self-determination, safety? Does it treat them equally to Israeli-born subjects? No, and that's illegal (and apartheid).
The "self defense exception" was cited by Israel, and the court judged that their illegal actions go beyond legal self defense. If we take a moral perspective rather than a legal one, it would be immoral to substitute Israel's judgement for that of the ICJ, a less biased and more informed body. From a utilitarian objective standpoint, we arrive at the same conclusion: It's unlikely Israel has some magical higher understanding that all other countries lack. Plus, legitimizing claims by defendants like Putin, Bibi, Sinwar, Kony, Gallant, or Haniyeh et. al, that they somehow know better than the court, would kinda defeat the purpose of the court.
From a moral perspective, it seems like you're saying the ICJ would be a better arbiter of morality than Israel, but my point didn't involve an appeal to any authority; that just doesn't seem necessary when discussing morality.
> [consensus] just doesn't seem necessary when discussing morality.
That would not be an entirely unexpected claim from any given person who doesn't like the humanitarian consensus, Just like it was not entirely unexpected to see Israel claim that international laws don't seem necessary when violating international laws they don't like.
I think we're both smart enough to realize what would happen if each person on earth decided that they were the true arbiter of law and morality, and had the right to do whatever they wanted, regardless of the law or what anybody or almost everybody else thought. So it is good that the consensus is that consensus is indeed necessary when writing and enforcing and judging the laws we wrote, around such moral standards as "don't genocide people".
By rejecting the concept of this consensus, which you call an "appeal to authority", it seems this topic is indeed being reduced to whether Bibi will say "whatever, I do what I want" like Putin or Cartman or Kony or Sinwar, while his country continues to spiral into international pariah status. So, I will submit a bet that he will, and leave it at that.
For example, parts of international law come from UN security council resolutions, which are passed based on 9/15 security council votes, and no vetos from the 5 permanent members. The permanent members include Russia and China, and non-permanent members often include other authoritarian states, like UAE until recently. Trump may soon have authority over US votes. Do you trust these political entities as bastions of morality?
I understand Israel disagrees with this consensus. I understand you may disagree with this consensus. I accept that if global consensus hasn't already changed your minds, I might not, either. That is okay. Consensus doesn't require buy-in from any single particular person or country. But as a general rule of thumb, if a great majority say you're in the wrong, and you say they're all in the wrong for saying you're in the wrong, that means you're probably in the wrong, so it's worth seriously considering the possibility.
Your latter observation doesn't seem to apply here, as it seems the ICC and ICJ based their findings and rulings on laws and ethics, not politics or bias, and it doesn't seem like the laws themselves are biased against Israel in particular, either.
There's no evidence the opposition is driven by antisemitism. The large amount of jewish people who oppose the Israeli genocide of Palestinians should give a clue that judaism isn't the issue here. Russia is trying to do the same thing to Ukraine as Israel is trying to do with Palestine, and receiving equal condemnation worldwide. Only they exclaim "russophobia!" when criticized, rather than "antisemitism!"
So, food for thought: a lower ratio of civilians to military and security personnel was killed on October 7th (according to Israeli published figures) than tends to be killed in even precision bombings.
Note: I can only fairly say "tends to be killed" because it can be difficult to truly get accurate data on military bombing casualties -- but one can absolutely find many individual cases of dozens of civilians being considered valid collateral for 1-3 military targets.
Source on deaths: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social... > 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces
If we use sources like Times of Israel, which ignores police and other emergency personnel, claims become https://www.timesofisrael.com/14-kids-under-10-25-people-ove... > 859 civilians 274 soldiers
So notice that these figures are looking between 1.86 and 3.13 civilians per soldier dead.
That means an essentially random massacre which deliberately TRIED to target civilians, but which was primarily performed by individual soldiers, couldn't even cause nearly as many deaths as precision bombings do.
And note that, from what I could gather, those figures on Israeli deaths don't include government workers as being valid combatants, when I doubt any Hamas pencil pushers that may exist would get the "luxury" of not being counted as non combatants.
The can of worms opened up here only gets messier still if you then start going more philosophical issues like how they seem to have spent the last few decades uncertain if Palestine is basically a mini case of Escape From NY, under outright Israeli military occupation, or an entirely independent country. I'd want to ask the Israeli government if this is a war or a policing action.
A minor counterpoint to something you wrote though: I don't think this is often something in terms of their civilians being less valuable, at least not publicly due to the obvious bad optics. I rather think it's a case presented more like a need for some civilians to die now to prevent more from dying later or being "oppressed under illegitimate government" type concerns, etc.
If all innocent civilians are equal, then it's not acceptable to kill 35,000 Palestinian ones to avenge <2,000 Israeli ones, or even to prevent another <2,000 future Israeli casualties. That math makes no sense from the outside perspective, unless one discriminates based on race, or otherwise believes Israel civilians are somehow more valuable than Palestinian civilians.
As for "sympathizers": someone disagreeing with you doesn't justify exploding them, either.