https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/30/israel-forces-...
Hmm.
> It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy… The following acts are examples of perfidy… The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status...
(Assassinating a paralyzed patient in a hospital is also not typically - ahem - kosher. Even if you're in uniform!)
Could you clarify where in the Geneva Conventions this very important exemption is stated?
> Why was it decided that feigning of civilian, non-combatant status is bad?
Because people start shooting civilians thinking they're infiltrators, and even enemy civilians are protected persons.
The spirit of the law is more important then its letter. Also I think Israel never signed that part of the Geneva Conventions.
> Because people start shooting civilians thinking they're infiltrators, and even enemy civilians are protected persons.
When did that happened in the Israel-Arab conflict? (When did that happened elsewhere? It sounds like it should be very rare, people don't kill their own so easily?)
You, earlier: "A lot of that ambiguity would vanish if Hamas did not have a habit of not putting uniforms in combat."
Now it's suddenly not a problem? I can't imagine Hamas signed the Geneva Conventions.
> It sounds like it should be very rare, people don't kill their own so easily?
German Jews in the 1930s/1940s would probably disagree.
> When did that happened elsewhere? It sounds like it should be very rare, people don't kill their own so easily?
I mean, the IDF killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza, while with their hands up and holding a white flag, because they thought they were infiltrators.
As I already alluded to earlier, the principles and spirit are more important to me than the literal conventions and if somebody signed it. I will note that you brought up the Geneva Conventions not me.
> German Jews in the 1930s/1940s would probably disagree.
I'm confused to what you refer to and why you brought it up?
> I mean, the IDF killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza, while with their hands up and holding a white flag, because they thought they were infiltrators.
This is not an example to what I asked for, this wouldn't have happened if Hamas wore uniform, IDF wore uniforms, the held hostages civilians didn't but because they were in combat they mistook them for Hamas. What I want is Israeli citizens mistaken for an enemy combatant in Israel in a non-active-combat environment or Palestinians citizens mistaken for an IDF soldier in Palestine in a non-active-combat environment.
Me: "Because people start shooting civilians thinking they're infiltrators, and even enemy civilians are protected persons."
You: "When did that happened in the Israel-Arab conflict?"
This was in the Israel-Arab conflict, and as you acknowledge, "wouldn't have happened if Hamas wore uniform". It is a perfectly responsive example to your request, and clearly illustrates the potential harm to innocent civilians from violations of the rule.
I will explain one last time I'm not looking for examples of people being harmed from "general" perfidy but those analogous for what happened - a stealth raid infiltrating among an enemy's population, "people start shooting civilians thinking they're infiltrators" as you said. The hostages weren't infiltrators, the context was that they were in enemy territory against their will and active combat. This is quite different from an hypothetical west bank combatant shooting his fellow men in non-active combat because he thought they were IDF.
P.S I'm still confused about the German Jews in the 1930s/1940s comment.
Is there another treaty which proscribes perfidy, which Israel has ratified?
As the article indicates, prohibitions against perfidy and other war crimes predate the Conventions.
(And I’d note that, as occupying power, Israel is subject to other requirements.)
(And if this is truly your argument, “Hamas doesn’t have to follow the rules either” is the logical conclusion. Which makes whining about their uniforms a bit odd; there is no scenario where "Hamas has to follow the Conventions, but Israel does not" is a coherent position.)
> In leaked recordings, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva — then head of Israeli military intelligence — stated that for every person killed on Oct. 7, “50 Palestinians must die,” adding that “it doesn’t matter now if they are children.” He described mass Palestinian deaths as “necessary” to send a deterrent message.
> Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s declaration of a “complete siege” on Gaza — cutting food, electricity, fuel, and water — was accompanied by explicitly dehumanizing language. Announcing the policy on Oct. 9, Gallant stated: “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s assertion that “an entire nation out there is responsible” further blurs the institutional line between civilian and combatant.
> Such statements do not determine individual targeting decisions, but they shape the environment in which those decisions are made: how civilian life is valued, how much civilian harm is expected to be scrutinized, and how much is implicitly excused.
Just look at the reaction of Iran's "leaders" to the USA's threat to attack them. They keep their narrative logic intact: we'll sink your ships, etc. These are fearless people who's power is derived from the appearance of power.
Besides the fact that it's a very poor genocide that after the war has ended has 100,000 palestinians leave (mostly on medical or humanitarian grounds) out of 2M Gazans and when Israel is constantly accused of blocking them in.
Bear in mind that Israel is a democracy with proportional representation resulting in a coalition government so you are essentially accusing a the majority of the population of supporting genocidal intent based on a few out-of-context and unclear quotes from some individuals. For example Smotrich - a right wing nut IMO - party won only 5 seats out of 120 in the last election.
The PM, and the official statements overwhelmingly and repeatedly state that they were not targetting civilians, whilst also adding as has been proven that the entire strip was criss-crossed with tunnels (longer and more extensive than the London metro) with exits under schools and hospitals and that their attacks met the proportionaility test which is that the miltary advantage must be proportional to risk of civilians harmed. They said no strikes were indiscrimate, they were all against verified presence of hamas. You and I might find that ugly, vicious and can question if there was another way to fight Hamas, but illegal it aint.
Herzog's comments were taken widly out of context. It takes a very particular and pre-dermined POV to discount the actual Q&Q where there quote ignored the entire paragraph which gives it a different meaning and the very next question asked him to clarify the statement anout responsible and he immediately replied (all this within a couple of minutes of the same presser) his intent. As (e.g.) HuffPost reported: when a reporter asked Herzog to clarify whether he meant to say that since Gazans did not remove Hamas from power “that makes them, by implication, legitimate targets,” Herzog said, “No, I didn’t say that.”
Here's a transcipt of the presser:
Journalist: "You spoke very passionately about you saying that Israel was not retaliating but
targeting with regards to the operations in Gaza. But even President Biden, who spoke so personally
and passionately with regard to what was happening in Israel, spoke about the importance of the laws
of war. So, with that in mind, what can Israel do to alleviate the impact of this conflict on two
million civilians, many of whom have nothing to do with Hamas?"
President Isaac Herzog: "First of all, we have to understand there's a state, there's a state, in a
way, that has built a machine of evil right at our doorstep. It's an entire nation out there that is
responsible. It's not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved—it's absolutely not
true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza
in a coup d'état, murdering their family members who were in Fatah."
Journalist: "I am sincerely sorry for what is happening in Israel right now, but I have been listening
to your answers for the last few minutes and I am a little confused. On the one hand, you say that
Israel follows international law in the Gaza Strip and that civilians are protected; you say you are
very careful to prevent casualties. But at the same time, you seem to hold the people of Gaza
responsible for not trying to remove Hamas, and therefore by implication, that makes them legitimate
targets."
President Isaac Herzog: "No, I did not say that. I did not say that and I want to make it clear. A
question was raised about the separation of Hamas and civilians. I said that in their homes, there are
missiles shooting at us. If you have a missile in your kitchen and you want to launch it at me, don't
I have the right to defend myself? We have to defend ourselves; we have the full right to do so. Hamas
carries full responsibility and accountability for the well-being of the hostages and for the
situation they have brought upon Gaza."
Journalist: "But my question is: Are civilians in Gaza held responsible for not destroying Hamas and
therefore become legitimate targets?"
President Isaac Herzog: "I repeat again: there is no excuse for murdering innocent civilians in any
way, in any context. And believe me, Israel will operate and always operates according to the
international rules."
Even in Halavi's case, he might be a right-wing nutter and meant what was reported but the head of army intelligence does not decide policy. And when you look at the original I don't think it would pass court of law. Israeli Channel 12 added the square brackets intent to "it doesn't matter now [if they] are children" but actually the original in hebrew was only "זה לא משנה עכשיו ילדים" [1] which could mean instead "it doesn't matter [to this argument the mention of] children" which is equally plausable in idiomatic Hebrew. Either way, his comments in full don't tick the boxes of genocidal intent.
You seem disappointed. Anywho...
A common misconception is that genocide must involve a very large number of deaths on the order of hundreds of thousands or millions. But this is false. The perpetrators of the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian War were found guilty of genocide despite the massacre’s death toll being less than 9,000. Hence the fact that “only” 70,000–100,000+ people have died in Gaza in no way refutes the charge of genocide.
Genocidal feelings. Super normal.
> Even in Halavi's case, he might be a right-wing nutter
Nuts in highest military positions when warring with 4 or more states. Very normal, too.
> Bear in mind that Israel is a democracy with proportional representation resulting in a coalition government so you are essentially accusing a the majority of the population of supporting genocidal intent...
Perpetrating* a genocide, seems like.
Is the Gaza War a genocide? Two key features of the mortality data are consistent with that charge: first, unusually high mortality among women and children; second, the sudden and dramatic fall in life expectancy. In these respects, the war resembles the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides more closely than any other recent conflict involving the US or Israel.
To be fair, you'd also see this if your opponents were using human shields and hospitals for military operations, which Hamas has been documented as doing. This is not so clear cut.
It doesn't especially matter how different they are, since Israel's rather arbitrary definition includes both of those behaviours. Just like their definition of 'soldier', which, per their use of administrative detention, includes children as young as 12, and 'base', for which a dozen rifles spread out on a prayer mat often suffices.
“These would be war crimes… if we were a state! Muahahahaha!” is not a position I’d be comfy espousing as a positive thing.
I am glad Hamas leadership saw consequences for their war crimes. I wish I could say the same for Netanyahu and his Cabinet.
I'm so tired of this conflict. Both sides can eff off. The Israelis under Netanyahu are basically ever bad stereotype of Jewish people made real, and the Palestinians are the "woe is me we are innocents" while being controlled by murderous thugs and just siphoning the aid they beg for.
Nobody actually wants peace, well, those that would be at the negotiating table don't. The Israelis want the Palestinians dead, the Palestinians want the Israelis dead.
Arafat has the last shot at peace. He allegedly walked away because of access to some religious shrines. That should tell you everything you need to know about this region. Just a bunch of religious nutheads going at it, and the rest of the world gets suckered into spending billions on it, which ultimately just goes to the religious nut heads.
And all of it only appears in headlines because of oil.
Demonstrably not; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47151031.
The key perpetrators of Oct 7 are dead, as is appropriate punishment for their war crimes. I don't think Netanyahu will see consequences for his.
They should also pay reparations, and send their leaders to the Hague.
National Guard and HomeGuard in every allied country has a uniform.
The ones that don't are using what would be considered unlawful tactics these days.
You're an 'unlawful combatant' if you don't wear one: the Geneva Convention still technically applies to you, just not in any way you'd find comforting.
Geneva convention is just a piece of paper, sometimes adhered to by some parties, and thats about it. And thats something coming from a person living and working in Geneva lol. russians keep breaking those rules every day for years on ukraine and not much is happening, is it.
And yes, Russia breaks the rules constantly in Ukraine. The response to that is not 'therefore rules are worthless,' it's 'therefore we need better enforcement.' A legal system with imperfect enforcement is not the same thing as no legal system; by that logic you'd abolish murder laws because people still get murdered.
'Any tactic is a good tactic' is also, incidentally, exactly what the oppressor says.
If they refuse to abide by the "foreign book" that dictate the rules of conflict, then I'm not sure how they could legitimately use the foreign book's classification of genocide. Those rules are what dictate how to classify a genocide.
Why can't they just use their own? Seems silly. Not sure this makes sense.
Remaining the "good guys"?
The only difference is that Israel is capable of genocide militarily, and is levelling Palestinian cities.
There are no good guys here.
The British Army was very upset that ragtag riflemen in the American colonies kept running into the woods and shooting from behind cover instead of standing in a Proper Formation and exchanging volleys of fire. No true gentlemen does that!
> the British military and government frequently accused American colonial soldiers of violating the established "rules of war" (or the "laws of nations") during the Revolutionary War, largely because they viewed the conflict not as a war between sovereign nations, but as a rebellion. The British often regarded the Americans as unlawful combatants, or rebels, who used irregular tactics that disregarded traditional 18th-century European military etiquette.
didn't skirmishers always do that though?
The European war tradition was open fields and men standing in lines firing volleys from 50-100m, roughly. Americans fought in the French/Indian wars alongside Native Americans and picked up their hit-and-run tactics. They were also using rifled barrel Kentucky Longrifles that could hit a man-sized target at 250m (roughly). The Americans also would directly target officers, which was seen as cowardly/ungentlemanly.
Of course, that does mean the bigger side has to get dirty too, sometimes. Just not to the extent that Israel is, who clearly just want to cleanse the land in order to own it. I mean, this is Boer war territory, not (e.g.) Algerian war where torture was used but civilians were mostly left intact.
And how do you even know how many active combatants have been hit? Hamas does not release such numbers, just pretends everyone is a civilian. The closest we have to a list of dead combatants is the Israeli list that leaked--but that's inherently quite an undercount as it's a list of those both identified as dead and identified as members of a terrorist group.
And note that "journalist" and "Hamas" are not exclusive. The majority of the "journalists" have been identified as members of terrorist organizations. They call their propaganda people "journalists". And how about that Al Jazzera reporter discovered holding one of the hostages?
And reports basically conflate "armed man" and "Hamas" as they are pretty much one in the same. (Other than "Hamas" actually includes allied terror organizations.) Think Hamas tolerates opposition in Gaza??
And "Hamas-run Interior Ministry" is accurate. It's admitting the figures are basically enemy propaganda.
From the article we're discussing:
"The Israeli military was forced to change its story about the ambush several times, following the discovery of the bodies in a mass grave, along with their flattened vehicles, and the emergence of video and audio recordings taken by the aid workers. An internal military inquiry ultimately did not recommend any criminal action against the army units responsible for the incident."
I would describe that as a walk-back.
I guess we're in agreement that Reuters isn't engaging with the topic neutrally.
Idk. if this is happening here but given how some threads devolved and other patterns common for such people emerged (red hearing arguments, false conclusions etc.) it looks quite a bit like it.
This kind people (the also tend to argue endlessly not based on common sense, understanding of the real world and empathy (in questions of ethic/moral) but based on nit picking stuff like as if the word ist just a game you find holes in the rules with to "cleverly win". Because for them the world often is just that.
But a lot of people find such behavior deeply deplorable. hence why if something looks like that it will get a lot of down votes even if it wasn't meant that way.
---
(1): Non intellectual people try that too. But they tend to lack the skill to pull it off. Hence why it tends to be pretty obvious why they are down voted or similar.
(2): Non evil people do that too, they just normally have the decency not to do so with topics like genocide. I also use evil here as a over-generalization but I have mostly seen that behavior with neo-nazis and other groups which are least fascist adjacent (and most times outright fascist).
I get what you're trying to say, but ...
> playing devil advocate
One look at my comment history on this topic should help dispel the notion.
I think sometimes people are so certain about their beliefs that they perceive any argument that challenges them to be evil, bad faith trickery. But I think the best way to respond to these arguments is simply to give compelling reasons why they are wrong (and not why the person giving them is bad).
Otherwise, some people will be mislead by these bad arguments and you will have done nothing to help but say “don’t listen to him he’s evil”, which is not very convincing really.
IMO, Israel stepped very clearly over the line, repeatedly, in how they handled it, but the parent post is a pretty reasonable summary of the considerations.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/can-hospitals-...
> Article 8 of the Rome statute, which established the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, defines a long list of war crimes including “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected”.
> But it makes an exception if the targets are “military objectives”. Philip-Gay said that “if a civilian hospital is used for acts harmful to the enemy, that is the legal term used”, the hospital can lose its protected status under international law and be considered a legitimate target. Nevertheless, if there is doubt as to whether a hospital is a military objective or being used for acts harmful to the enemy, the presumption, under international humanitarian law, is that it is not.
Again, I think Israel committed war crimes here and throughout Gaza. But the parent poster has a point that using a hospital for combat purposes risks its status.
(There are still rules to follow in that case, that weren't followed. Again, war crimes.)
> Truth: Mass-destroying a country's hospitals, murdering the doctors, nurses, workers & patients, mass-executing aid workers ... is Israeli. And only Israeli.
This is the same mistake many made about Nazi Germany; convincing themselves that the Germans were uniquely evil. It stops people from having to examine themselves.
I think this is one of the ugliest things about this particular war. While the IDF unquestionably committed various war crimes over the course of the conflict anyway, the bulk of what people found objectionable very well might have been done in total accordance with international law. Despite many failures and excesses, the IDF at least paid lip service to trying to do that, as a policy.
It's just that, the reality is, the rules are based on entirely different assumptions about how war is carried out. If they might lead to something resembling a "humane" war (hah!) when fought between, say, a relatively evenly matched France and Germany, they're quite ineffective at preventing a humanitarian catastrophe when you have a modern force attempting to siege an ultra-dense, militarized enclave run by an organization with no real hope of a conventional victory or interest in the well-being of its civilians.
And so you end up with this absurd situation where the world witnessed, over and over again, unimaginably horrible things being inflicted on the population of Gaza, and the Israelis responding - if we're being charitable, not entirely unreasonably - "Why are you getting mad at us? We're following the rules!"
It's just that, clearly, the rules are insufficient to match people's moral sentiments.
I think this is somewhat out of touch, the main reason this conflict has garnered so much attention is the amount of times Isreal commits war crimes.
No.
This is asymmetrical warfare
The only route Israel has to victory, now, is genocide. They need to stop and make peace before they earn a place with Pol Pot and Stalin as genociders
What makes you think Israel cares about a label more than conquest via genocide? Did the Nazis care about being called genocidal? If you want to stop IL you need to do it via force.
Anyone who listens for a bit to israeli mass media will soon be convinced that anything but the extermination of the palestinians is not enough. This is why they bulldoze everything archeological that does not play into zionist myth making. This is also why apartheid is common in local politics in Israel, and why the zionist guerillas and later IDF systematically destroyed the homes and property of the people they displaced, long before the appearance of Hamas.
As I usually do, I'd also like to remind that the zionist movement is mainly a movement of christians.
Certainly no one's donating Patriot batteries and F-16s to Gaza.
(I'm also not sure I'd consider the Russia/Ukraine war to be… undercovered in the press.)
https://www.ajc.org/news/what-every-american-should-know-abo...
Will those decolonial movements then accept complicity, even if reluctantly, for all the peoples the Soviets oppressed and even genocided?
The Soviets starved millions of people to death, in order to secure their control. All that help was then built on the backs and blood of those victims. At least let's be honest about that much.
Just because you haven't heard of Russia colonizing doesn't mean it didn't happen just as much. It just wasn't where the other imperial empires were. How else would one city come to a rule a continent-sized territory? A big difference is, they didn't keep records of such things. People picture Siberia as an empty wilderness and have no idea that rich societies once lived there.
If you think that the main intention of Israel is other than push those million of people that bother them out (or kill them if they don't go), I have a bridge to sell you.
Hell, they even say that themselves. Go to listen to their politicians.
By the way, if you are an European Union citizen, there is request to the commission to stop the EU-Israel commercial agreement. You can sign it here:
Yes. But.
Those are weasel words. The correct, honest word, is genocide
The wikipedia article suggests that I'm not alone in this belief: "Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group,[6][7] or calling it a euphemism for genocide or cultural genocide.[8][9]"
You seriously need to educate yourself about history, what the nazis did, and what is going on in the middle east, because only a person who has absolutely no idea about either of these subjects could draw this terrible comparison. Unless, of course, you're just interested in spreading disinformation bordering on blood libel.
The Nazis were evil. But all people have the capacity for it.
Answering with "all people have the capacity for evil" is once again a subtle misdirection which seems like a recurring theme in your comments. This wasn't what you implied.
Put simply, Israel and nazis are night and day, you are villifying a country and its people with extreme and factually wrong accusations.
Depends on who you ask. People are allowed to see similarities, like Lebensraum & Occupation, as two examples. They don't need anyone's certification or permission. And intimidation, I believe, has stopped working. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisons_between_Israel_and...
I mean, "Judeo-Nazi" was a term coined by an Israeli polymath Yeshayahu Leibowitz & has been part of the Revisionist discourse for quite some time; ex: Better a Living Judeo-Nazi Than a Dead Saint (1983), https://www.jstor.org/stable/2536162 / https://archive.vn/uX42N
Well, looks like Leibowitz did not coin the term (much to his chagrin perhaps?), but I guess he was one of the more prominent Israelis to never apologize for using it.
May be Leibowitz spoke truth to power; may be he was a Soviet asset.
> quite stunning how similar all this is
Hm.
Michael S: Aren't you exaggerating when you use the term "Judeo- Nazi?" Do you truly believe that we are liable to decline to the level of the Nazis?
Yeshayahu L: When the nation (or in Nazi terminology, the race) and the power of its state become supreme values, human action is no longer inhibited. This mentality is also widespread among us. In the territories under our occupation in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Lebanon, we are already behaving as the Nazis behaved in the territories under their occupation in Czechoslovakia and the west.
If your idea of the Nazis is their occupation in the west, then you are missing most of the picture. Their atrocities in the east are far beyond anything that has ever taken place on this Earth before or since. There is no comparison whatsoever.
You'd be correcting Mr. Leibowitz, not me.
> no comparison whatsoever
It is not up for debate that there isn't any comparison to be made. That said, we can choose to live in our bubbles, yeah; but on the flip side, interactions with the outside world might come as a rude shock.
Something is very wrong with education on WW2 if anyone thinks this is a reasonable thing to say. A bubble, I suppose.
Pretty sure Leibowitz knew his WW2.
But this isn't about Leibowitz, who isn't here to try to explain himself. This is about the idea that a falsity is "not up for debate".
Your assertion that there's "no comparison whatsoever" is of course not, when there's ample.
> who isn't here to try to explain himself
Lets just say that social norms & experiences drive much of what people believe in. One of Leibowitz's student goes:
"I hated the notion of occupation since the very beginning. My first memories from after the 67 war are traveling with my children in the occupied territories. There were awnings over groceries stores with Hebrew lettering advertising Osem noodles. I couldn't bear it. I thought that was dreadful because I remembered German lettering in France. I have very strong feelings about Israel as an occupier."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/18/daniel-kahnema...
I think you really need to learn more about the eastern front, if you're going to keep making or supporting comparisons based on incomplete knowledge. There is no comparison between the experiences in France and the experiences in Ukraine during WW2. There is a reason why historian Timothy Snyder titled one of his books "Bloodlands".
Gaza is no Leningrad or Stalingrad.
Comparisons needn't be limited to one event or one atrocity.
> Russia calls all the West "Nazis", should we just listen to them?
All? I doubt that. Even then, unfortunately for you, like Leibowitz, Kahneman (perhaps world's foremost & finest thinker) isn't alive either to explain himself.
You can't openly call a group Nazis and then claim you only meant in terms of their behavior on the western front. It misses the whole point, not to mention it makes people forget what the Nazis did.
> All? I doubt that.
Yes, at times all.
Me? As before, in this context, your argument is with Kanheman & Leibowitz. And possibly other prominent Israelis (present or past) who may hold such views.
Who accepted those? And did they have a right to do so on behalf of _all_ of humanity?
The conventions are a guideline. To use them as a blanket moral justification for your actions after the fact is extremely disingenuous.
Hospitals may have been used for retaliation [0], but it is unclear how many & in what capacity (according to accepted conventions, using a hospital to treat wounded combatants wouldn't make it a valid military target, for example; but hiding weapons or personnel would).
[0] One such recent report: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...