Uday Rabie was taken last week by dozens of armed fighters with Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City, his brother Hassan Rabie told CNN on Tuesday." - https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/middleeast/uday-rabie-palesti...
And by the way, while they do have uniform, they don't wear them when they fight. Only for celebrations like their marching of civilian hostages. Gaza also has a higher proportion of structures used for military purposes (like all of them?) then Germany in WW2. There have been cities in Germany during WW-II that have been completely destroyed - we can pick that as a comparison. Picking entire Germany vs a tiny area is not reasonable.
The situation is completely different. One action is a defensive response and the other was an offensive initiative. There is no reality in which the Hamas attack can be framed as defensive or justifiable by any western values. The IDF response however is very much in line with what western nations have actually done, e.g. the US response to 9/11, the response to ISIS, WW-II or any other war you can think of.
The US went to the other side of the world to get the people it thought wanted to harm it. There wasn't even any real threat to its territory or people. It was simply about deterrence and getting even and it was significantly more heavy handed. Similarly other western powers that went after ISIS. Israel to contrast is facing an existential threat and parts of the country are/were unlivable because of the threat of attacks. It has no option other than the complete removal of Hamas from Gaza (and Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon which has largely been accomplished).
There's nothing defensive about embarking on a self-described colonial endeavour.
I don't know where you live, your nationality or heritage, but you're likely more of a colonizer than any Israeli. Since most are. I'll bet you think you have the right to defend yourself, your family, your nation.
EDIT: Also I should thank you for saying that. A lot of people try to pretend that if only Israel behaved differently then everyone would live happily ever after. Most do not even understand what "Palestine" is and what "Israel". Where's the West Bank and where's Gaza. But the Palestinians and the Arabs believe the Israelis are colonizers (of the entire region) and invaders and therefore they have the right to kill them, civilians or otherwise, until they repel them out of the region and Israelis do not have the right of self defense. This is of course absurd and would discourage many people from supporting their cause so they try their best to not say this outwardly. The truth is that if the Palestinians and the Arab countries recognized the Jewish people's legitimate rights in the region and were looking for peace we'd have peace a long time ago.
That's crazy because Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, definitely defined it as a colonial endeavour.
You should read his book: "The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question", it's quite enlightening on exactly where this movement began and its historical motivations, which is absolutely the same MO as modern Israel.
Also the notion that people who are over 1000 years removed from a piece of land coming to violently remove current residents from their homes and massacre and imprison them for over 70 years isn't colonialism is absolutely ludicrous. Please seriously think about this sentence again. Think about it hard, like, harder than you've ever thought before.
>Arab expansion in the middle east is a colonial endeavor.
It's clear after you typed these first two sentences that you're probably a genocidal maniac, like approximately 57 percent of the Israeli population who believe that the current amount of force used is still not enough.
>Arab countries recognized the Jewish people's legitimate rights in the region and were looking for peace we'd have peace a long time ago.
There is absolutely zero legitimacy to the Zionist regime.
Not a word.
>demonization
Yeah, they behave like demons
>double standards
Why is suggesting that the people who lived on the land for thousands of years have a right to not be genocided and ethnically cleansed a double standard? Why do the invaders have a right to the land they stole?
You, I have no more interest in talking to.
And delimitization is still not a word.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/03/israel-gaza-...
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-human...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israeli-soldier-palestinians-hu...
From the CNN article btw: "The soldier said that he and his comrades refused to carry on with the practice after two days and confronted their senior commander about it. Their commander, who first told them not to “think about international law,” saying that their own lives were “more important,” ultimately relented, releasing the two Palestinians, the soldier said. "
This goes to show you to what degree Israeli soldiers do consider the international law and these sort of moral questions. They would rather risk their own lives. But yes, over a long war of this kind the threshold is going to become lower. It's the Hamas choice to keep fighting the way it does (booby trap every civilians building e.g.).
Now find me the Hamas "soldier" who refused to carry out orders to murder civilians or refused to hold civilian hostages and got their commander to free them. Let's see where's the moral equivalence.
> “They dressed us in military uniforms, put a camera on us, and gave us a metal cutter,” he said. “They would ask us to do things like, ‘move this carpet,’ saying they were looking for tunnels. ‘Film under the stairs,’ they would say. If they found something, they would tell us to bring it outside. For example, they would ask us to remove belongings from the house, clean here, move the sofa, open the fridge, and open the cupboard.”
I know this is a tough one but the question is what are the norms. One anecdote (including one unit where this is practiced) doesn't answer the question. The anecdotes are just that. This practice could have happened 10 times out of 100K, could have happened 100 out of 100K, could have happened 1000 out of 100K.
I'm pretty sure this is not the norm. I.e. that all/most/many IDF units advance in Gaza by capturing Palestinians, putting them in IDF uniforms, and sending them in the front. Very very far from it.
I would rather we had zero stories like this one.
War crimes happen during wars. The French, the Americans, the British, The Australians etc. etc. have all committed war crimes in all their wars since WW-II (and before, that concept didn't exist). In terms of accountability in those militaries it's O(0). The IDF has on many occasions put soldiers on trial for violating rules of war. It's a core value in the IDF to fight morally. And yes, in today's Israel and today's war it's not the same as it has been but relative to western armies it's within the practiced norms. Relative to Hamas whose strategy and tactics are one big war crime there's no comparison.