"The main thrust targeted military installations"— of 1,139 confirmed dead, 828 were
civilians. That's 72%. They also massacred 364 people at a music festival, which
Hamas later described as a "coincidence" because they "may have thought" ravers were
soldiers "resting". That's the defence you're endorsing.
Nobody serious disputes that Gaza's suffering is real or that Israel's conduct warrants
scrutiny. But "genocide since Israel was created" is doing a lot of work for you; the
ICJ found Palestinian rights were "plausibly" at risk, not that 1948 was a genocide.
Words mean things. Overreaching doesn't help the people you're claiming to defend, it
just makes it easier for the other side to dismiss everything else you say.
So the best you can say about Israel’s conduct over the course of the past 2.5 years is that it “warrants scrutiny”?
And if you want to play the number of victims game, even pre Oct 7 one side has always had it significantly worse than the other. After all, one side is a sovereign state that has a technologically advanced military, an air force, a navy, and air defense systems.
Remarkable. You've managed to read a comment that cited the ICJ, called out Israel's
non-compliance with binding provisional measures, and explicitly said there's "plenty
to condemn"; and concluded the position is that Israeli conduct merely "warrants
scrutiny."
This isn't a conversation, it's not even engagement: that's just not reading.
On asymmetry: you've accidentally made the case for holding Israel to a higher
standard. A nuclear-capable state with F-35s, Iron Dome and a $3.8bn annual US
military subsidy [1] bears more responsibility for its choices than a militia in a
blockaded strip of land; not less. That's what asymmetry actually means.
What it doesn't mean is that a music festival full of civilians somehow doesn't count.
But nice try.
> On asymmetry: you've accidentally made the case for holding Israel to a higher standard.
Huh? Are you replying to someone else?
Israel has killed 10s of thousands of civilians, a large portion of which are children. This along with many other factors - in addition to the higher standard expected from a sovereign state fighting an occupied people - is the reason we call it a genocide.
No, I think you're accusing me of a position I don't really have because I don't like Hamas or Israel, but you think my condemnation of Hamas is support of Israel or that by pointing out Israeli suffering I am turning a blind eye to Palestinian suffering.
It's almost as if we genuinely believe that because there are more deaths on one side, that the other is deserving and should not be condemned despite innocence.
A reminder: Israel counts Hamas soldiers as military targets, even when they are out of uniform and in civilian life.
If we apply the civilized world's standards of war then yes, Israelis who are also off-duty soldiers or reservists don't count as military targets.
If we apply Israel's standards, however, they are.
Are Gazans not allowed to apply the same standards to their adversaries that their adversaries openly apply to them? Would you be this courteous, in their position?
Of the 378 people killed at and around Nova, 16 were off-duty soldiers attending the
rave and 4 were killed fighting [1]. That's 20 out of 378 ... so about 5%.
So even by the standard you're proposing, Hamas massacred around 358 people who
wouldn't qualify as military targets under anyone's rules of engagement. Including
theirs, apparently, since Hamas's own explanation was that they "may have thought"
the ravers were soldiers "resting"; i.e. they didn't know and killed them anyway.
The argument you've constructed requires Hamas to have been applying a targeting
framework. The evidence is that they found a large crowd of Israelis and opened fire.
Ah, so they'd only previously been members of the IDF?
Do you suppose Israel doesn't consider previous members of Hamas legitimate targets?
>The argument you've constructed requires Hamas to have been applying a targeting framework. The evidence is that they found a large crowd of Israelis and opened fire.
But that's effectively indistinguishable from the Israeli targeting framework where everyone connected to Hamas is a legitimate target.
This is settled in international humanitarian law. Per Human Rights Watch,
citing ICRC guidance: "reservists of national armed forces are considered
civilians except when they go on duty." [1] Off-duty at a music festival
unambiguously qualifies as not on duty.
The argument that prior military service permanently strips civilian status
has no basis in IHL. If it did, every Israeli who'd ever served (which is
nearly all of them, given conscription) would be a legitimate target forever.
So: not a targeting framework, more like a justification for killing the entire population.
On your second point: Israel's targeting decisions are also subject to IHL, and where they kill civilians unlawfully that's also a war crime. That's
not a defence of Hamas... it's the same standard applied consistently.
"They do it too" doesn't make either lawful.
For what it's worth, joining Hamas is a choice; IDF service is compulsory. The cases aren't analogous.
> This is settled in international humanitarian law
Neither participant in the Israel-Hamas conflict subscribes to that.
And I'm not really sure how you could expect the small resistance group to follow international humanitarian law when the big state they're fighting doesn't either? That seems absurd.
A wonderful quote that demonstrates how Israel applies different standards to itself: even its active duty combatants are painted as helpless innocents!
Israel has to apply that standard because Hamas operates without uniforms unlike IDF. So yeah, Gazans shouldn't apply the same standard because unlike them Israeli military operates in uniforms so it's easy to distinguish between them and civilians. That Gazans do the opposite is on them.
Sure, if that happens then it needs to be investigated as a potential war crime.
It still doesn't change the fact that Israel is in no position to apply that standard because fighting Gazans don't use uniforms. Obviously they will not treat people shooting at them and launching rockets at them as civilians.
For onlookers: the final paragraph is in Swedish. It calls me a far-right
nationalist and racist. Draw your own conclusions about how that fits the
pattern of this exchange.
On substance: 72% of October 7th victims were civilians by Israel's own
social security data [1]. tovej's argument that this was primarily a military
operation depends on not counting them.
The Hannibal directive is a separate and legitimate concern. It has nothing
to do with whether Hamas targeted civilians — it addresses what Israel did
in response.
I'm going to call a racist a racist when I see it. I've had enough interactions with you on this site (and have given you many second chances to show good faith) to see a blatant pattern.
You're playing devils advocate any time a white supremacist, Israel, or racist bigot is under scrutiny.
And every time you deploy bad faith debate tactics. E.g. here you're strawmanning my argument to say I ignore the percentage of civilians dead. That's not true at all. My argument does not depend on not counting civilian victims. October 7th was a military operation, a guerilla warfare operation.
Most of the Supernova ravers Hamas killed on October 7th who died that day did not die at the rave, but at ad hoc checkpoints far away from the rave. Military checkpoints set up to intercept military re-inforcements.
The rave was not announced until the 6th of October, and Hamas was not aware of it. When people fled the rave, this triggered a massive flow of car traffic. And based on Hamas' limited intelligence, it is not unreasonable to assume that a sudden rush of car traffic could be related to the conflict.
The IDF also set up a road block near the rave, which led to a huge throng (3000 ravers) being caught near the site of the firefight.
In other words, the biggest tragedy of October 7th, the Supernova rave, was not a target, and the deaths in this tragedy seem to have been due to an unfortunate coincidence.
And the Hannibal directive absolutely plays a role. We don't actually know how many civilians died due to it. It could easily be hundreds. The only actor who could verify this is Israel, and they are not keen to do so.
Playing devil's advocate for consistency isn't racism. I'm not Israeli,
not Jewish, this isn't my nation. I object to the reasoning.
You're defending a position that doesn't actually care about Palestinian
lives. Iran has funded Hamas for decades not because it wants a Palestinian
state: it wants the end of Israel. Those aren't the same goal. You've
let a theocracy that hangs gay people and flogs women position itself as
the voice of Palestinian liberation and you haven't noticed.
I've seen the footage of Shani Louk. German tattoo artist, half-naked,
paraded on a truck while people celebrated. Then months of stories she
was alive in a Gazan hospital, used to extort money from her family. I saw a Thai farmer gruesomely beheaded by a shovel while the perpetrator screamed with joy on camera.
You want to call that resistance? Go ahead. I'll call it what it is.
Criticising Hamas doesn't mean supporting the IDF. Find one line in this
thread where I defended an Israeli war crime. One.
You called me far-right. The far-right wants ethnic cleansing. I want a
two-state settlement and both sides held to the same legal standard...
which is apparently a controversial position in this thread.
Palestinians are people. Israelis are people. The children dying in Gaza
are a catastrophe. So is raising children to believe their highest calling
is killing their neighbour. You can hold both of those thoughts unless
you've decided one side's dead children count and the other's don't.
Nobody serious disputes that Gaza's suffering is real or that Israel's conduct warrants scrutiny. But "genocide since Israel was created" is doing a lot of work for you; the ICJ found Palestinian rights were "plausibly" at risk, not that 1948 was a genocide.
Words mean things. Overreaching doesn't help the people you're claiming to defend, it just makes it easier for the other side to dismiss everything else you say.