froohmb
Even the stance that such claims must be valid because the reporters are Israeli, is itself derivative of the Jewish conspiracy trope. Is it more likely there is a large conspiracy afoot and Israeli officers are engaging in war crimes at large scale as many in this thread have concluded (even before this report), or that these are isolated and undesirable events playing out in the fog of war and representative of poor decision making in circumstances of which we have only partial knowledge?
My bias, if I have one, is to believe that the Israeli military, or really any competently run military anywhere, is interested in not committing war crimes when avoidable.
Not really. That ignores all the important nuance. Half of the current American right is America first and or ideologically libertarian, and are being pretty heavily vilified in the press and pundit circles because they want less aid to Israel and fewer forever wars. That’s it, I think they’re called woke-MAGA by detractors. Hillary even suggested Tulsi (who claimed Iran wasn’t building nukes) was a Russian asset.
Israel has a lot of soft power in the west, because our shared history (Jesus was a Jew) and because many of the greatest Americans have been Jewish. We love the Jews because they are great people, and siding with them when they are attacked is what people with western values will do when friends are attacked.
If the claims are accurate, and we don’t know they are yet, they are the direct result of the bad situation we’re all in, and that situation was precipitated by (though perhaps not entirely due to) October 7th. We can’t let that get lost in the noise of what could be legitimate criticism of, hopefully isolated, Israeli military tactics. An overreaction to October 7th is bad, but it’s still just a reaction. The first punch was thrown by hamas. The terrorists videotaped themselves and their atrocities that day, wild celebrations of their horrors broke out, followed within hours and days by, shockingly to those with any sense of human decency, massive anti-Israeli protests in the West. Images of all of that are seared into the hearts and minds of most Israeli’s who will literally never forget. Wars are evil, and once started they are sometimes impossible to stop.
But bottom line, these are particularly disturbing claims and should be investigated, and if they are true then immediate changes should be made, including the removal and punishment of those who may be responsible.