They can take out nuclear scientists thousands of kilometers away by either planting bombs in their cars in traffic or firing accurate munitions through their windows when they sleep.
Thousands of kilometers away.
The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
I think the point is that if Israel can do pinpoint decapitation strikes anywhere in Iran they sure as hell can do so in Gaza, but they choose to bomb hospitals and flatten every single building in the Gaza Strip instead.
This. Israel demonstrably has the capability for precision warfare.
That they chose to level infrastructure across Gaza instead is indicative.
And it'd be real stretch to assume they did so even for military-economic reasons.
They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.
To wit, the elimination of anything resembling a Palestinian state: politically, economically, and demographically.
Which is cynical and evil as fuck, given they're smart enough to realize they eventually either have to (a) kill every Palestinian or (b) make a deal.
Instead, they decided killing 50,000+ Palestinians was worth improving their negotiation position and kicking the can down the road.
> They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.
That’s my read as well. I was strongly pro-Israel for decades and while I was never comfortable with the plight of Palestinians Hamas had a lot of the blame, too, but the last year really moved me over to thinking that the people who said most of the “accidents” over the years were intentional were correct. They can pull off these amazingly accurate strikes when they want to, it’s implausible that they suddenly have the precision of a drunken 18th century musketeer around aid workers and civilians. Their leadership clearly do not care and collective punishment is a war crime no matter who does it.
The term ”mowing the lawn”[1] has been used to describe their long term strategy, so I can ”excuse” someone for thinking that they can’t control the situation, but it’s been a tactic for a long time.
HN readers can recognize the tactic in other parts of our world too. It’s the strategy of people in power who believe they can control the chaos. When chaos in one group is a benefit to the other, chaos becomes a worthy status quo. When your military is infinitely more powerful, any uprising can eventually be exhausted, and you get automatic casus belli. The Cold War was full of this destabilizing politics, where superpowers tried their best to turn functioning socities into hellholes, in the hopes that it would spread in the enemy’s region. The same works for Israel. The less legitimacy Gaza and the West Bank Palestinians have, the longer they can keep building settlements. If they ever gain independence, it will cause another war, which has been planned for, because settlements have been overwhelmingly built on higher ground. Illegal settlers will not give up easily, and will likely gain military assistance.
To be fair, the Iranian state is a proper military. I’m not sure if there is a way to fight a guerilla force without massive civilian casualties. (Which is why one generally shouldn’t.)
A better analog might be Hezbollah. Surgically dispatched. Resolved with minimal follow-on nonsense from both sides.
No, it’s war. Targeted killing of a military scientist is war. Gunning down civilians trying to get food is a war crime. If we start labelling all war as criminal, the term loses all meaning.
How about killing a scientist that they claim is trying to make a bomb with 15 members of his family and several neighbors including children under age 10.
This claim is not proved. In Europe there is no capital punishment for mass murders but Israel can kill anyone they want with their family without trial or even conclusive evidence and no one can condemn it.
If you do it with a crude hand made bomb it is called terrorism but if you do it with F35 it is called self-defense.
> war crimes are just a label for anyone in opposition to Western domination
Eh, there is a broad consensus on what constitutes a war crime. But there is also broad precedent for these rules not applying to major powers. (China annexed Tibet in 1951.)
I’d also argue that recent history has almost rendered the term worthless, as activists label practically every civilian death as a war crime.
On the flip side, this is not as controversial (or even at all in western media) when done by the Ukraine military (not specifically nuclear scientists). This is not a justification, but I think some characteristics of conflict are less interesting/important to focus on when trying to formalise critique against an assailant. This would be more important if contrasted with for example a conflicting ideological narrative.
I‘m sorry, but you’re comparing apples to bedrooms. Israel vs. Iran is a war/conflict between two proper countries‘ militaries - which means that both belligerents stick to certain agreed upon rules and military traditions, such as trying to separate the civilian from the military world/infrastructure. In lack of another word (haven’t slept, please forgive me for the choice of word), there’s “honor“ and a notion of equality and respect (somewhat) between the foes, even if Iran has declared it wants to wipe Israel off the map.
All of this does not apply to the conflict with Hamas. With them muddling the lines, it’s extremely hard to fight a “clean“ war. You’re between a rock and a hard place - either you lose but with your head held high and your moral compass intact, or you stoop to their level thereby slowly losing your values but win in the end. If that win is worth it or not, is heavily debated in the rest of the world, but only debated in the fringes of Israeli society. But no military expert is able to suggest a real alternative of fighting Hamas without inflicting heavy losses on one’s own army.
I find the committed war crimes abhorrent and wish they’d be heavily prosecuted at least.
For as long as countries like Israel stand against giving Palestinians a legitimate state, militias and terror groups will continue to rise. The US showed that it was possible to fight an insurgency as an occupying force without resorting to literally levelling cities. It was not easy, it took more lives than they hoped, but they did it anyway, because they at least acted like war crimes out in the open was off limits.
Until corrective actions with criminal penalties occur incidents like these almost certainly continue with possible increases of frequency and severity. More importantly though when this becomes a matter of conduct and military discipline is that it will spread to other areas even outside Gaza.
This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable.
Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started!
Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
> The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable.
It's happened, many times. Usually this doesn't make front-page news, but soldiers that break the law are sometimes held accountable. Not nearly enough, and I think it should be far more publicized as a deterrent effect (the fact that it isn't is a pretty big indictment of the current government). But it's certainly not laughable.
Well, he is on trial. So he could be arrested. Prime Ministers have been arrested (and jailed!) before.
A part of what the Isareli opposition has been pushing for in the last few years has been removing Netanyahu from power and presumably jailing him because of the corruption charges.
For each of their "operations" on Gaza they usually had one or two soldiers in trouble for something like stealing and using a civilians credit card. When there were many more serious crimes like deliberately targeting the disabled.
