Israeli strike hits Rafah area after Hamas barrage
Israeli strike hits Rafah area after Hamas barrage
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says dozens of people have been killed in a refugee camp.
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Is there any war ever in history that all actions on either are morally justified?
In war, you are allowed to kill innocents if necessary to achieve a valid military objective.
In this war, the IDF's objective is to destroy Hamas.
"Allowed" by whom? "Necessary" by whose metric?
If their objective is to destroy Hamas and they determine that the only way to do that is wipe out the Palestinian people from the face of the Earth, you're saying that's justified because it's their necessary military objective?
Allowed by international law.
Necessary according to their military capabilities, which can be judged by observers.
Most observers don't think destroying Hamas requires wiping out all Palestinians, but at the same time it's impossible to destroy Hamas without civilian casualties.
Okay, well observers are saying Israel is committing genocide, so I'm not sure what your issue is.
Also, I'm not sure why you think what is legal is the same as what is moral.
Legal isn't the same as moral, but there is no consensus on the morality of war. Some people are pacifists and believe all war is immoral. Most people believe war is justified if it has a legitimate casus belli.
Whether or not Israel is committing genocide is a separate question from whether a military action is morally permissible, because genocide involves actions with no military purpose. In other words it's possible that strikes like these are morally permissible even if a government is also doing things that are illegal, like blocking aid delivery.
Once again- if Israel determines that wiping out every last Palestinian has a military purpose, that, according to you, is not genocide and is also justified.
You have a very strange idea about what is or is not justified in this world. You seem to think Dresden was justified and that killing thousands of children in Gaza is justified because things happen in war.
Please do contact the parents of dead Gazan children and let them know those deaths were justified. Let me know how it goes.
Again, by definition genocide has no military purpose.
Israel's military objective is to destroy Hamas. According to Western military doctrine (which Israel is capable of using), this objective does not require wiping out every last Palestinian. So it doesn't matter what Israel "determines", wiping out every last Palestinian is not permissible.
I think if war is justified, then killing children is justified because children are always killed in war. Personally I'm ambivalent about whether war can ever be justified, but I certainly recognize that most people think it can.
I think if war is justified
It isn't.
If you're a pacifist, I can respect that.
But I don't agree with those who believe that (say) the US invasion of Normandy can be justified, but this invasion cannot be justified. Both involved immense civilian suffering.
Jeesus. You are unable to hold more than one parallel thought in your head at once. A thing can be genocidal or casualty of war or both. Thats all this dude was saying but you can't even engage with a simple thought like this because you have to rush quickly to grandstand.
Seems to me like all this dude was saying is that what Israel is doing is justified. What with him trying to justify it.
That's the problem. You are more eager to ascribe positions to interlocutors rather than engage with the points. It's really odd and unnecessarily combative. This dude was just providing context and a different perspective. At no point -nowhere- did they defend the IDF and claim the occupation is inherently justified. Read people's posts more carefully? I don't know. Lemmy has no interest other than hearing themselves
You're not allowed to target civilians at all.
You can target military objectives like certain infrastructure to disable it, but you're not allowed to target civilians. The rules of war just says when civilian casualties aren't punishable. You have to take measures to ensure attacks are as precise as you can make them and with as little collateral damage as possible.
"eliminate every human because they might be an enemy" is not a valid military objective.
Did you think others reading the thread wouldn’t notice you adding the word “target”?
That's true, you cannot target civilians. But you can destroy a military objective even if you know it will kill civilians. Per ICC:
Under international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute, the death of civilians during an armed conflict, no matter how grave and regrettable, does not in itself constitute a war crime. International humanitarian law and the Rome Statute permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks against military objectives, even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur.
"Eliminate every human" is not a valid objective, but "eliminate Hamas" is.
proportionate attacks
There's the problem
Possibly, but the civilian-combatant casualty ratios so far seem to be in keeping with proportionality.
Even if they somehow were accurate, these numbers only cover the direct deaths from attacks, the totals you cite include all deaths from starvation and disease and more. The attacks on the hospital system and infrastructure and access to food will cause the ratio to get much much worse. Famine is indiscriminate.
I can only assess the numbers I have. If in the future they drastically change for the worse, then I will reassess.
I can't find any source showing the context of the 30-35% claim from US Intel. I can't even find a reliable source of the US estimate of how many fighters they have. The last public numbers from US intel in January had much more detail and said 20% incapacitated, not 20% dead. A jump to +30% of Hamas fighters dead now seems beyond implausible. Especially because USA has also said they don't independently track deaths in the region, they rely on local numbers.
Different Hamas officials have made different claims about their losses, and all the sources seems vague. It's been reported as 6000 - 8000 either lost (could be casualties including injured survivors not able to fight) or dead. And some of them deny the numbers entirely.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/in-gaza-authorities-lose-count-of-the-dead-779ff694
It's absolutely not the 15K that IDF claims.
The last public numbers from US intel in January had much more detail and said 20% incapacitated, not 20% dead.
I don't think so, this is from your January link (my emphasis):
security forces have killed just 20-30 percent of the terror group’s terrorists in the Gaza Strip, US intelligence agencies are reportedly estimating.
The wounded are counted separately.
This article seems to have the clearest numbers
25-30K fighters, 20-30% killed, so at best ~10K down to ~5K, assuming their intel is correct. It's very strange that the estimate of killed fighters is in percent and injuries is in absolute numbers. Doesn't make me feel confident they got the context right of the numbers shared
Yet everyone except Israelites can see that it is a cover up excuse to exterminate the people who they have been trying to get rid off for more than half a century
