Collective punishment is not a war crime either. Why do you keep talking about something you have no clue about? I've given you an example of collective punishment that Israel did perform (unlike many idiotic claims made by people who just like to make stuff up). Israel canceled work permits for everyone from Gaza be those terrorists or not. How's canceling a work permit a war crime?
You just keep using the words, but you don't understand what they mean...
Now, were there war crimes committed by IDF during the Gaza war? -- Yes, and some were punished for that, while even more were claimed. This is a nature of any war. Were there more crimes than in any other war? How do you even measure and compare these things?
As I lived through several wars, I can tell that Israeli wars, at least from my perspective as a bystander, are very mild in terms of cruelty towards both combatants and non-combatants. This is not a unique Israeli virtue. In general, wars waged by well-to-do countries are less cruel to the opposing side simply because soldiers growing in well-to-do countries are not exposed to the everyday violence as much as their counterparts in poor countries. They are brought up in an environment where human life has intrinsic value, where critical thought is encouraged and so it's harder to brainwash a soldier into a mindlessly cruel machine.
Now, my childhood in Ukraine had seen this, for example, beside other multiple such incidents: on my way back home from school my mom pulled my hand hard in order to get me to walk faster. Before that, I've heard voices of some youth cursing and taunting someone. I also saw some guys kicking something in the mud, but it was too dark and too far to see what that was. Next morning there was a makeshift fence erected by the police around that place, and the school sprouted rumors that a bunch of alcoholics / homeless people were mauled to death at that place.
This was during peace time. And this would've been a typical fate for the homeless / drunks, unless hypothermia got them first. Very rarely would anyone get in jail for that. Imagine now people like that being drafted into the military. First Karabakh war, for example. Or Chechen wars. These were real torture fests. Both sides deliberately looked for more painful ways to kill the opponent. And they made little distinction between combatants and non-combatants. People who signed up for the military were driven by the idea that they will be allowed to kill and torture legally even more so than by money or status.
The horrors soldiers routinely commit in poor countries eclipse anything you could dream up in your wildest dreams living in the EU, US or another wealthy place. Does this mean that war crimes committed by IDF shouldn't be prosecuted? -- Of course not. But you shouldn't infer from there being war crimes any sort of intention on the state level, nor should this be any kind of supporting argument to claim genocide or any other such wide-reaching policy. Putting things in perspective and in proportion: if Gazans were instead fighting Russians, there wouldn't have been any Gazans left in about two months since the start of the war. And it's not unique to Russians. Bet you, that if they wanted the same kind of fight with Egypt, they'd be similarly dying in much larger numbers.
And this isn't even because of the calculus of achieving military objectives. Poorer armies are both more cruel and more crude, while valuing the lives of their own soldiers less. Poorer army would both need to expend more ordnance per target (accidentally missing / hitting unintended targets) and having more vicious soldiers abuse the population being invaded.
> Israel has been the aggressor throughout.
You couldn't be more delusional / ignorant about the subject.
It is you who have no idea of what you are talking about.
Here is article 33 [0] of the (Foruth) Geneva Convention (emphasis mine):
> ART. 33. — No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
> Pillage is prohibited.
> Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.
Here is a summary of more international humanitarian law on the matter [1]:
> Rule 103. Collective punishments are prohibited.
> Were there more crimes than in any other war? How do you even measure and compare these things?
> As I lived through several wars, I can tell that Israeli wars, at least from my perspective as a bystander, are very mild in terms of cruelty towards both combatants and non-combatants.
> Putting things in perspective and in proportion: if Gazans were instead fighting Russians, there wouldn't have been any Gazans left in about two months since the start of the war.
This is all entirely wrong. We can even compare directly, as there is currently a Russian invasion in Ukraine in parallel to the Israeli invasion in Gaza. After almost two years, there are approximately 11 500 civilians killed in Ukraine, of which ~650 are children [2]. There are ~43 000 total killed in Gaza, of which at least ~20 500 are civilians, including more than 13 000 children [3]. Note that the population of Gaza is about 19 times smaller than that of Ukraine (~2.1 millions in Gaza, ~38 million in Ukraine).
And these are just direct deaths from the war. While Russia also has an appalling record of attacking and deliberately targeting healthcare facilities in Ukraine, Israel has destroyed every single hospital or clinic in Gaza. Russia has killed ~234 healthcare workers in Ukraine in two years of invasion [4]. Israel has killed ~765 healthcare workers killed in Gaza, in just one year of war [5].
> You couldn't be more delusional / ignorant about the subject.
Look just at the amount of people killed every year in Gaza vs Israel before this war. Please tell me how Gaza has been terrorizing Israel, when in every single year, Israel has been killing many times more people in Gaza then the terrorists have in Israel [6]. Several human rights organizations have called Gaza "an open air prison" before this war, including this UN special rapporteur [7]. In fact, I challenge you to find a single human rights organization that has done work in Gaza who doesn't consider what Israel is doing to be deeply oppressive.
I have no words. You really have no idea what those words you read mean, do you?
No, denying work permits is not a war crime. You took the quote out of context and have no clue what it refers to. No country owes it to another country to provide their citizens (or non-citizens in this case) with work permits. There's no crime in cancelling work permits. But it is a punishment. Similarly, when a country enacts a policy of tariffs on imported goods, visa restrictions etc. They apply indiscriminately to all the citizens of the country against which the measures are applied, yet these aren't even crimes, let alone war crimes!
To sum it up for you: not all punishments are crimes. Thus a collective punishment doesn't have to be a crime, let alone a war crime. Being collective rather than individual changes nothing about the nature of this relationship.
> Pillage is prohibited.
Pillage of what? Gaza is a downtrodden hellhole. Life there is destitute and miserable. Unlike you, I've been there. There's nothing Israelis want from that place. There's nothing Israelis could possibly use from that place. It's a huge ghetto dumpster, revolting in every respect.
I've been to Gaza because I worked for a grocery store in Ashqelon, and we used to deliver some produce from there. The cabbages and the cucumbers to be specific. They were awful. Nobody would buy that stuff. My understanding was though that this must've been some coverup for buying weed or similar. I was too low on the totem-pole for this info to be shared with me. But, even if it was weed, it wouldn't be coming from Gaza! Lol. It'd be coming from Sinai, transiting Gaza.
> Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.
What does this have to do with cancelling work permits? Nobody owes Gazans work permits to begin with. That was a humanitarian measure to try and get these people to see the light. No sane Israeli wants to employ Gazans, but the government tried to encourage this cross-border employment in hopes to sooth the tensions. Guess that didn't work well. In Hebrew, the expression "Arab work" is similar in spirit to "Chinese quality" in English. If your house is falling apart months after renovation because the workers stole concrete, painted over spots that should've been removed prior to painting, put the breaker room under the leaking sink -- that would be described as "Arab work" (even if not performed by Arabs).
This results from the almost ubiquitous attitude among Gazans employed in Israel, where they'd do as little and as bad of work as possible, just to stick it up to people who hired them. Kind of similar to how black slaves sabotaged their work for white masters in the US etc. Except Gazans aren't slaves. They were given these jobs as a means to help them accumulate wealth and possibly develop some better understanding of their neighbors...
> After almost two years, there are approximately 11 500 civilians killed in Ukraine,
Again, you are pulling your numbers out of your rear. Mariupol alone suffered close to 30K civilian casualties. But Ukrainian reporting is honest, unlike that from Gaza. Ukraine doesn't have the means to count their dead. And they don't disguise their projections, even though they might be very close to reality. Unless they can actually find the body and establish the cause of death, they don't report it as death.
Also, Ukraine can fight and it protects its own citizens. And it has a very good reason: Russians will not hesitate to torture and abuse its population. Gazans cannot fight. Their strategy is to bleed on the enemy, and they go cry to the international community about how bad their enemy had beaten them. Also, Israelis don't torture the enemy, at least not systematically the way Russians do. And I say this because I served half a year in Israeli military prison in Tzrifin. It's not a five-star hotel, but if I were in a fight against Israel, and my situation looked dire, I'd go to the prison again. It sucks, but it's livable. Also, in my first month in Tzrifin I was in the "alef" division (that's the place for the soldiers who want to return to service and generally obey the orders etc.). Alef would be sometimes sent on the guard duty to Makhaneh 16, which is the military prison for the terrorists. At least was at the time. And, yes, it's a prison, it sucks, but it's nothing like Russian prisons...
In a similar situation, but against Russia: I wouldn't hesitate to shoot myself. The depravity and torture performed systematically by Russians is on a completely different level.
I have provided links for every single claim I made, including the numbers of dead in Ukraine and the articles of the Geneva convention that I quoted verbatim and in its entirety.
I didn't say that refusing work permits constitutes collective punishment. The mass destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including, again, all hospitals, high schools, university, most schools, kindergarten etc. constitute collective punishment in a form that is a clear crime under the Geneva conventions. See the ICJ finding of plausible genocide if you want to see this from actual international law judges, not some rando on HN.
Thanks for the lesson in anti-Arab racism among common Israelis though. And for confirming that Gaza was already a miserable ghetto that no one would want to live in under the "benevolent" Israeli occupation.
Your links are worthless because you don't understand what they say...
Anyways, here's another example, which was in the news right now. Dutch Muslims attacked Israeli soccer fans. This is an example of collective punishment because people who probably have nothing to do with what's going on in Gaza have been beaten, ran over by cars etc. in a fit of collective punishment.
And while this is definitely a crime, it's not a war crime, because it wasn't committed by soldiers and the Netherlands and Israel aren't at war.
The level of sophistry here is amazing. The Dutch are neither at war with Israel, nor occupying them. The actions of some Dutch civilians against some Israeli tourists can not constitute war crimes, because these are not combatants. They are crimes, make no mistake: the penal system of the Netherlands will hopefully see to that.
In contrast, Israel is at war with Gaza, and all of the actions I am discussing are official military and government actions. Cutting off the supply of power and water, cutting off food and medicine, deliberately bombing civilian infrastructure: these are all explicit actions taken by Israel as retaliation against the civilians of Gaza in a form of collective punishment, as their leaders gleefully proclaim internally. And they constitute undeniable war crimes because of this.
Hopefully in time the ICJ will receive enough support from the EU to actually prosecute this obvious violation, though my hopes are slim: the pressure from the USA to shield Israel from international law is immense.
You just repeated what I wrote, but tried to make it a counter-argument? That makes zero sense...
But later you demonstrate that you have no effing clue, not even the basic outline of what can possibly qualify to be a war crime. And this was the whole point: you don't understand what the words you are so eager to use mean.
Now, while people at ICJ aren't impartial in this case, they aren't as dumb. So, this is why, for example, they only charged Netanyahu and Gallant with war crimes. Even though, for example, Smotrich would be a lot more fitting their obviously politically-motivated narrative. And the reason for this? -- A technicality! Only a military person can commit a war crime. Netanyahu and Gallant are military, and that's why they are on the file, while Smotrich or any other minister isn't (and couldn't possibly be, because that'd be just too much to laugh at).
So, you saying "government actions [...] constitute undeniable war crimes". Is just an example of brain rot. You literally don't understand what a war crime is. A civilian, no matter how ruthless, no matter the extent of their actions, cannot technically commit a war crime. It's impossible by definition, in the same way how triangular squares aren't possible. War crimes have "war" in the names specifically to separate them from other kinds of crimes based on the criteria that they are committed by military. That's the whole point of the term.
And, similarly to how you have no clue about the language you use, you have no clue as to what happens on the ground in Gaza, who's responsible for what kind of bad stuff, the extent of it etc. You are just regurgitating the talking points you've learnt from people who you feel politically aligned with, but you have no practical way and no motivation to figure out the true state of events. And, you'll continue to believe whatever makes you feel more comfortable with the group of people you want to be associated with, no matter what anyone from outside that group would tell you. So, convincing you is pointless. You need to at least be ready to try to figure out why people might disagree with you, but you are still miles away from there.
"The government" is an entity controlling the military. You can split hairs and discuss which specific people in the government are actually liable and which are not, but the general point I was making was more broad: Israeli leadership is clearly committing war crimes in Gaza, and it is very easy to argue that they are beyond that, that they are carrying out a genocide. Even you admit that the prime minister and minister of defense could be liable for war crimes, so saying "the government" is not some huge generalization. Especially when the rest of the government is very much aligned (or even more extreme) than those two.
And in relation to who is biased or basing their views on some obscure and highly biased sources: it's probably the side of the conversation who is denying what, again, every single international organization who has sent people in Gaza is saying. There is absolutely no debate from any credible source that what is happening in Gaza is wanton destruction on Israel's part.
You just keep using the words, but you don't understand what they mean...
Now, were there war crimes committed by IDF during the Gaza war? -- Yes, and some were punished for that, while even more were claimed. This is a nature of any war. Were there more crimes than in any other war? How do you even measure and compare these things?
As I lived through several wars, I can tell that Israeli wars, at least from my perspective as a bystander, are very mild in terms of cruelty towards both combatants and non-combatants. This is not a unique Israeli virtue. In general, wars waged by well-to-do countries are less cruel to the opposing side simply because soldiers growing in well-to-do countries are not exposed to the everyday violence as much as their counterparts in poor countries. They are brought up in an environment where human life has intrinsic value, where critical thought is encouraged and so it's harder to brainwash a soldier into a mindlessly cruel machine.
Now, my childhood in Ukraine had seen this, for example, beside other multiple such incidents: on my way back home from school my mom pulled my hand hard in order to get me to walk faster. Before that, I've heard voices of some youth cursing and taunting someone. I also saw some guys kicking something in the mud, but it was too dark and too far to see what that was. Next morning there was a makeshift fence erected by the police around that place, and the school sprouted rumors that a bunch of alcoholics / homeless people were mauled to death at that place.
This was during peace time. And this would've been a typical fate for the homeless / drunks, unless hypothermia got them first. Very rarely would anyone get in jail for that. Imagine now people like that being drafted into the military. First Karabakh war, for example. Or Chechen wars. These were real torture fests. Both sides deliberately looked for more painful ways to kill the opponent. And they made little distinction between combatants and non-combatants. People who signed up for the military were driven by the idea that they will be allowed to kill and torture legally even more so than by money or status.
The horrors soldiers routinely commit in poor countries eclipse anything you could dream up in your wildest dreams living in the EU, US or another wealthy place. Does this mean that war crimes committed by IDF shouldn't be prosecuted? -- Of course not. But you shouldn't infer from there being war crimes any sort of intention on the state level, nor should this be any kind of supporting argument to claim genocide or any other such wide-reaching policy. Putting things in perspective and in proportion: if Gazans were instead fighting Russians, there wouldn't have been any Gazans left in about two months since the start of the war. And it's not unique to Russians. Bet you, that if they wanted the same kind of fight with Egypt, they'd be similarly dying in much larger numbers.
And this isn't even because of the calculus of achieving military objectives. Poorer armies are both more cruel and more crude, while valuing the lives of their own soldiers less. Poorer army would both need to expend more ordnance per target (accidentally missing / hitting unintended targets) and having more vicious soldiers abuse the population being invaded.
> Israel has been the aggressor throughout.
You couldn't be more delusional / ignorant about the subject.