16/10/2024 — The Canadian government has designated Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an international network that supports and advocates for
Dude. Indiscriminate murder of, and depraved indifference to the survival of, civilians is a bad look no matter what word you use for it. It’s pretty clear at this point that the current government of Israel would like to see all Palestinians dead, and is willing to act on that desire whenever they think they can get away with it. That’s what makes it (attempted) genocide. The fact that they’re currently not attacking the West Bank and not making sure they get 100% kill count in Gaza is not the point and has more to do with plausible deniability than anything.
You’re acting like you’ve never heard of war before. This kind of killing has happened thousands of times, from the current war to the war in Afghanistan, to the Korean war, to the world wars and beyond. They all involved the indiscriminate killing of civilians.
You may not like war, but both sides actively want to kill each other in this situation.
So your excuse is, “War crimes committed in the past in other places like Afghanistan and Korea were not called ‘genocide’ or properly prosecuted, so we should ignore these ones too and not call a spade a spade?” That’s . . . pretty sad. Some of us would actually like the international community to learn from mistakes made in other conflicts.
Many military experts have commented that Israel has done a very effective job at minimizing civilian casualties. If if were truly indiscriminate, the death toll would be much, much higher.
And you have absolutely no evidence for your claim that “the current government of Israel would like to see all Palestinians dead., and is willing to act on that desire whenever they think they can get away with it.” This is an ignorant statement with no basis in reality. If this were true, all Palestinians would be dead. It should be very obvious to you that Israel has the ability to do far more damage than they have done.
Many military experts have commented that Israel has done a very effective job at minimizing civilian casualties. If if were truly indiscriminate, the death toll would be much, much higher.
According to research in The Lancet, the number of total deaths is at ~186000. That’s everyone including those who died of preventable causes, e.g. hunger or prevetable disease, e.g. direct and indirect deaths.
Based on calculations of the demographic of the dead and the living (e.g. how much does the general population differ from the dead? Are there more dead men of fighting age than in the genral population, etc…), it appears that whilst Israel may target Hamas fighters, it takes next to no effort to avoid civilian casualties in the process. For example, the IDF often targets homes of suspected Hamas fighters, taking out entire families.
So I don’t know which “military experts” think Israel is doing a good job on this, because the ones I’m seeing seem to agree on the opposite.
We actually have no idea how many women and children have been killed because the numbers aren’t accurate. But again, the numbers killed don’t define whether the killing was indiscriminate or not. Even accepting the Hamas numbers, experts have concluded that the civilian-to-combatant ratio is among the lowest in the history of urban warfare. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/apr/18/israels-war-against-hamas-posts-lower-civilian-to-/. Plus, as you well know because you see the headlines, the IDF regularly instructs civilians to move from one area to another to avoid the fighting.
The Lancet article was not research, it was an opinion letter. And it was bullshit. They’re just estimating the number of indirect deaths that could occur some time in the future from all sorts of things that could be connected to the war. By the same token, we could estimate the death toll from the Hamas attack on 10/7 as much higher because of the deaths that will result in the future from stress, mental illness, PTSD, etc.
Could Israel have done a better job avoiding civilian casualties? Probably. But that also means they would have passed up on taking out key targets to bring the war to an end. What you also don’t know is how often decisions are made behind the scenes to NOT carry out a strike because it crosses the threshold of proportionality. You only see the strikes that were carried out.
Dude. Indiscriminate murder of, and depraved indifference to the survival of, civilians is a bad look no matter what word you use for it. It’s pretty clear at this point that the current government of Israel would like to see all Palestinians dead, and is willing to act on that desire whenever they think they can get away with it. That’s what makes it (attempted) genocide. The fact that they’re currently not attacking the West Bank and not making sure they get 100% kill count in Gaza is not the point and has more to do with plausible deniability than anything.
Dude. Use the right word.
You’re acting like you’ve never heard of war before. This kind of killing has happened thousands of times, from the current war to the war in Afghanistan, to the Korean war, to the world wars and beyond. They all involved the indiscriminate killing of civilians.
You may not like war, but both sides actively want to kill each other in this situation.
So your excuse is, “War crimes committed in the past in other places like Afghanistan and Korea were not called ‘genocide’ or properly prosecuted, so we should ignore these ones too and not call a spade a spade?” That’s . . . pretty sad. Some of us would actually like the international community to learn from mistakes made in other conflicts.
Learn from mistakes, ah, sure. We’ll prevent all wars entirely any day now.
Meanwhile Russia has invaded Ukraine, China is eyeing up Taiwan, and there are about a dozen other deadly conflicts going on around the world.
We can dream all we want about a peaceful world, but that’s not the way things work in reality. Humans are very good at hating each other.
Stop throwing around baseless accusations.
Many military experts have commented that Israel has done a very effective job at minimizing civilian casualties. If if were truly indiscriminate, the death toll would be much, much higher.
And you have absolutely no evidence for your claim that “the current government of Israel would like to see all Palestinians dead., and is willing to act on that desire whenever they think they can get away with it.” This is an ignorant statement with no basis in reality. If this were true, all Palestinians would be dead. It should be very obvious to you that Israel has the ability to do far more damage than they have done.
The IDF has killed more women and children in the past year than any other conflict in the past two decades: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-children-killed-gaza-israeli-military-any-other-recent-conflict
According to research in The Lancet, the number of total deaths is at ~186000. That’s everyone including those who died of preventable causes, e.g. hunger or prevetable disease, e.g. direct and indirect deaths.
According to professor Michael Spagat, the estimated percentage of civilians is around 80% (https://aoav.org.uk/2024/netanyahu-got-it-wrong-before-the-us-congress-idfs-clean-performance-in-gaza-is-a-lie/). Even conservative estimates put it at at least 61%, which is the worst for any modern conflict since WW2.
Based on calculations of the demographic of the dead and the living (e.g. how much does the general population differ from the dead? Are there more dead men of fighting age than in the genral population, etc…), it appears that whilst Israel may target Hamas fighters, it takes next to no effort to avoid civilian casualties in the process. For example, the IDF often targets homes of suspected Hamas fighters, taking out entire families.
So I don’t know which “military experts” think Israel is doing a good job on this, because the ones I’m seeing seem to agree on the opposite.
We actually have no idea how many women and children have been killed because the numbers aren’t accurate. But again, the numbers killed don’t define whether the killing was indiscriminate or not. Even accepting the Hamas numbers, experts have concluded that the civilian-to-combatant ratio is among the lowest in the history of urban warfare. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/apr/18/israels-war-against-hamas-posts-lower-civilian-to-/. Plus, as you well know because you see the headlines, the IDF regularly instructs civilians to move from one area to another to avoid the fighting.
The Lancet article was not research, it was an opinion letter. And it was bullshit. They’re just estimating the number of indirect deaths that could occur some time in the future from all sorts of things that could be connected to the war. By the same token, we could estimate the death toll from the Hamas attack on 10/7 as much higher because of the deaths that will result in the future from stress, mental illness, PTSD, etc.
Could Israel have done a better job avoiding civilian casualties? Probably. But that also means they would have passed up on taking out key targets to bring the war to an end. What you also don’t know is how often decisions are made behind the scenes to NOT carry out a strike because it crosses the threshold of proportionality. You only see the strikes that were carried out.