It leads to things like accepting the most heinous a horrible things by the worst types of people humanity can produce, who think themselves as some kind of demigod, stone age, chosen people psychopath supremacists who can slaughter you like bugs while you sleep in your home are are trying to get food for your starving children.
Using strict process and critical methodology is the only want to approximate truth.
> observable reality right before our own eyes.
We don't observe reality correctly with our eyes. We (including you and me) are naked monkeys. Petty, vindictive, and biased. Palestinians and Israeli Jews are just like us but live in a cesspool of religion, anger and violent history.
So now a person in position of power has deliberately obstructed this process.
Will you pretend that you have no data to act, or wake up and realise that you are dealing with a malicious entity and normal rules do not apppy?
Lastly the lower death count is the official health ministry number but the higher estimates are from others, e.g. The Lancet.
Also, military objectives according to the IDF. Which has been caught lying multiple times and is as reliable as Russia or Hamas I guess
They have also blockaded Gaza since before Hamas so again, that's an act of aggression by definition. You can't just blockade (to the point of attacking any ship trying to make it to gaza) another territory and claim that it is aggression when they attack you.
Israel has withdrawn from Gaza, including forcefully ejecting Israeli settlers, as a show of good will for future lasting peace negotiations, however shortly afterwards Hamas was elected and seized control, hence the blockade since it is a massive security problem for Israel.
Please educate yourself on the subject.
And yes that's my point. Gaza hasn't seen any more settlement since, because it has never stopped armed resistance. What has Israel done to the west bank when it stopped fighting and kicked out armed groups? Pushed for tens of thousands of settlements per year, in complete disregard of international law and with 0 consequences.
Regardless, Israel was actually discussing resuming settlement even in Gaza before the October attacks, as Netanyahu's voter base adores settlement. And I'm not sure why you'd think that not settling in Gaza somehow makes up for the constant territorial theft in the west bank. Again, Palestinians see themselves as one nation. It's like saying that Russia only stole territory from the Donbass, not from west Ukraine so somehow that's a show of good faith lol
And yes, Gaza and West Bank are separate entities with very different realities, both in terms of day to day life and political landscape.
Israel listened to the worlds advice by retreating voluntarily(!) from Gaza, and in return has only received more criticism, of course that fuels resentment inside of Israel, rightfully so I must add. And since October 7th we can throw out all of that out of the window, past reality no longer applies and Israel is no longer letting cowardly UN dictate its demise, plain and simple.
I don’t think West Bank settlements are a good idea, but I also don’t know a way out of it now, since everything that has been done in the past year is further prove to the Jews that they need Israel. I live in Europe, and I feel significantly less safe when traveling further west(thankfully we have negligible Muslim population here in Baltics).
Thankfully we have a negligible number of people who think like you do, where I live.
Sorry, I value safety of the overall community more than whims of imaginary gods, be it Islam or otherwise.
And the fact that throwback opinions like yours (on this matter) are broadly and deeply discouraged, I find quite enjoyable, also.
>since October 7th we can throw out all of that out of the window, past reality no longer applies and Israel is no longer letting cowardly UN dictate its demise, plain and simple.
Ha, that's funny because that's true but not for Israel. Israel has shown what it does to groups who try to stop fighting and engage in a dialogue(west bank militant groups). They get absolutely trashed, and have to watch as they see their land stolen by settlers and treated like vermin in the land they used to live in (because the settlers have complete IDF backing). That's why they won't make that mistake again, Israel has shown what it does to groups who stop fighting
>I don’t think West Bank settlements are a good idea, but I also don’t know a way out of it now, since everything that has been done in the past year is further prove to the Jews that they need Israel.
Extremely tired trope that is used to justify everything Israel does. The only issue with that is that Israel has had complete, full backing of every western nation materially, diplomatically, and strategically. On the other hand, Palestinians have had no real support from any country of importance, while their land has been slowly shrinking in full view because of Israel's illegal settlements. But yeah, it's truly Israel that's alone in the world lol.
There is no reason to doubt their numbers other than Israel says so. All reputable sources have found their numbers to be historically accurate.
For comparison, it's estimated that about 6% of deaths in Ukraine are women and children
"nearly 70% of verified deaths" straight from the horse's mouth
I've also seen Israeli officials openly dehumanizing and calling for the mass murder of Palestinians, and theft of their land. And I've seen the graphic results.
There's an undeniable reality here and sadly it doesn't align with your official government talking points.
Go read hamas’s charter yourself: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Hamas_charter
Otherwise, one has to reckon with the fact that Netanyahu's party's founding document doesn't look great, either, as it uses "from the river to the sea", which we're now told is a genocidal saying.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform...
"between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty"
Sure, as did the American South during segregation.
Half of Israeli Jews support removal of the Arab population. https://forward.com/israel/335292/48-of-israeli-jews-back-ex...
> The converse can not be said for Jews in a Palestinian state.
Certainly. In "Hitler, Mao, or Stalin", the only winning move is not to play.
* Who is reliable source in this war?
* How to obtain reliable information? Share exact steps and why is not currently done
Some of those deaths are going to be legal targets killed during combat, which is not evidence of a war crime. You have to split things out for the numbers to mean anything.
The most extreme instances of this are the deliberate withholding of aid, both in the "total siege" in the beginning of the war, as well as operations like now in the north.
You might hit a lot of legitimate targets with this, but it's also guaranteed you will impact all the civilians in the area.
Generally, in this entire war (and also long before), Israel is far too quick with the "Human shields"/"collateral damage" argument to my liking, and using it as an excuse to basically disregard considerations for civilians at all.
(It's also instructive to see how different the hostages and palestinian civilians are treated in IDF considerations, despite both groups technically being "human shields")
Yep. The complication is, the Strip is close to being totally dependent on Israel, and yet chose war. I doubt any other country ruled by right-wingers, with that much power over their already (diplomatically, economically, socially) cornered enemy, would have acted any differently. I guess, the sequence of events reeks of desperation & despair from all sides and has ended up exposing one & all.
Also that stuff is exactly what international humanitarian law is supposed to prevent. Obligations of the occupying power and all.
I think Israel has a lot to answer for, especially as you say with regards to the withholding of aid.
But you're ignoring a much bigger factor in why the "style of warfare" has a high collateral damage - it's not the way Israel is fighting, it's the way Hamas is fighting. They have spent years and millions of dollars to turn Gaza into a war zone - there are vast underground tunnels from which Hamas militants can go in and out and pretend to be civilians, then shoot at soldier. They can and do launch rocket attacks at civilians from within tunnels that run underneath hospitals and schools.
They've also stored weapons caches in many "civilian" buildings, have booby trapped many civilian buildings, and in general colocate all their arms and militants among civilians, on purpose.
Hamas members have said on multiple occasions that they don't care about the Gazan civilians and it's not their job to protect them. You don't have to think Israel is perfect (I certainly don't), but you're really ignoring the main driver of the terrible situation the Gazans are in, which is Hamas.
Further, none of these should come as surprises to Israeli commanders, who will have seen these tactics from Hamas in the past.
The bottom line is that any military can only control its own conduct as it represents its citizens in battle.
Some of those conditions are similar, some aren't. In most cases, the group doing guerilla warfare isn't actively trying to get their own citizens killed, or if you want to be generous, simply doesn't care if they get killed or not.
That said, you're partially right that these conditions have occurred before. That's why many military experts make comparisons to similar situations, like parts of the Iraq war or even closer, fighting against ISIS.
In most of these analyses I've seen, they claim that the IDF performs as well as the US army did in similar situations in terms of protection of civilians, civilian to combatant killed ratios, etc.
> Further, none of these should come as surprises to Israeli commanders, who will have seen these tactics from Hamas in the past.
I don't think anyone is surprised by how Hamas is acting, except much of the international community who simply refuses to accept how Hamas is acting.
> The bottom line is that any military can only control its own conduct as it represents its citizens in battle.
Yes, but if there are legitimate military goals to achieve - and there certainly were legitimate goals to achieve in the beginning of the war - then the military has to fight the battle its enemy is giving it. There simply isn't a way to fight Hamas without inflicting civilian casualties, because of the way it fights. You can choose not to fight it at all, but that wasn't really a choice that was available to Israel on October 7th. (Whether the war should've continued for so long is a different matter.)
I'm not sure that is true. Urban combat is notoriously bloody, and other conflicts of this nature have seen similar orders of magnitude deaths.
Additionally, civilian deaths are not neccesarily indicative of war crimes. Certain types of collateral damage are allowed where others are not (rules are complex and quite frankly oblivious), so you would also have to separate the legal collateral damage from the illegal collateral damage.
> The most extreme instances of this are the deliberate withholding of aid, both in the "total siege" in the beginning of the war, as well as operations like now in the north.
Well that allegation is the main basis for this warrant. However so far it seems like only a very small porportion of the deaths are attributable to that practise. To the point where so far the icc found that there wasnt enough evidence for a charge of extermination. I think about roughly 15 people have to die for it to be considered extermination. So it seems like so far there isn't evidence that a significant number of deaths in this conflict are related to that method of war. Of course new evidence can always come to light later. (Its important to note that siege warfare is still a warcrime even if nobody dies. The counter side is israel would probably try and argue (for the recent activity at least) that they gave civilians an opportunity to evacuate and thus it wasn't directed at civilians).
Too late to edit, but i meant to say ambigious not obvlivious.
ICC doesn't claim how many deaths are due to war crimes. GP is purposefully sowing misinformation
ICC never claimed only 41 deaths were confirmed