Netanyahu Under Fire After Calling Rafah Massacre a 'Tragic Mistake' [Brett Wilkins | May 27, 2024 | Common Dreams]
Netanyahu Under Fire After Calling Rafah Massacre a 'Tragic Mistake' [Brett Wilkins | May 27, 2024 | Common Dreams]
"This was intentional," said U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib. "You don't accidentally kill massive amounts of children and their families over and over again and get to say, 'It was a mistake.'"
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15904702
"This was intentional," said U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib. "You don't accidentally kill massive amounts of children and their families over and over again and get to say, 'It was a mistake.'"
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I find the hysteria over the the top. Like, they targeted and killed two Hamas commanders. So when the article quotes someone saying they targeted civilians in tents, that should be called out as a lie.
Seems like the airstrike caused some flammable materials to catch fire and it spread to the tents. The resultant fire was obviously not intentional.
Hey, maybe don't make camp with Hamas commanders? Maybe point them out on day one of the war so everyone can go back home? This should have been over in November.
Nonsense. Israel is claiming there were Hamas commanders responsible for recent West Bank attacks hiding under the tents. How is that possible when Gaza has been sealed and blockaded since 2007? And how are Hamas commanders allegedly in a land cleared by the IDF and in a “safe zone” the IDF told civilians to move to?
The IDF has a miserable track record of being proved to be lying by reporters over and over and over again, and even this claim strains credibility.
And how are Hamas commanders allegedly in a land cleared by the IDF and in a “safe zone” the IDF told civilians to move to?
I refer you to every guerrilla war ever.
I think Israeli and Western intelligence knows better than you, and more importantly, they have more credibility than Hamas and Hamas loyalists, whose job it is to exaggerate and lie. Want to talk about straining credibility? Let's talk about how nobody who died in air strikes is ever a Hamas members, there's hundreds of miles of tunnels in a tiny little area and Hamas loyalists pretend they don't know where they are, pretend they have no idea who is launching thousands of rockets day after day. Give me a break. The IDF on the other hand, actually has a track record of arresting and prosecuting war criminals within their own ranks. Hamas has a track record of giving them cash prizes.
Western Intelligence graded the Israeli claims as bullshit. The White House has been ignoring their own reports for months now.
lol, so Netanyahu isn’t an extremist who was caught lying multiple times about the existence of Hamas command centers under multiple buildings. You think it’s more likely he’s guided by intelligence reports over his actual ideology or his political and personal motivation to prolong a war to avoid jail time once he’s out of office for corruption?
Western Intelligence hasn’t backed up this claim so stop hiding behind them as if that absolves the crime.
Go ahead and show me IDF prosecuting war criminals in their ranks. I’ll wait. Despite the White House telling the Israeli government which specific divisions committed documented crimes this year alone, there hasn’t been any prosecutions. And I’m not talking about a single case but the hundreds of documented episodes on video of Israeli soldiers supporting pogroms in West Bank. Russia literally prosecuted more pogrom perpetrators than Israel has despite the video proof and more witnesses.
Go ahead and show me IDF prosecuting war criminals in their ranks.
You're absolutely brainwashed. They cite to this fact in the ICJ opinion on the preliminary application. It's widely reported.
Can you link me one?
Military courts don't publish their docket. Courts martial are secret at least through sentencing.
The Military Advocate General says they've opened 70 criminal cases since the start of the war based on findings from hundreds of complaints. The Israeli attorney general confirmed that report.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hyw6f0wv0
Here's an older article naming some individuals: https://en.idi.org.il/articles/12244
I'm not saying there are many, I agree they try to cover it up when they can get away with it. Way more than zero, though.
The preliminary ICJ opinion cited others too but I can't put my finger on it right now, or of the 80 or so pages.
Hamas still giving their war criminals cash prizes.
Your point? Hummus are terrorists, I expect them to do shitty things, not the “most moral army in the world”
Only in reference to your last line.
The rest I thank you for
Ah so you couldn’t show any. Got it.
Or do you mean when IDF sentenced an Israeli to 3 months of community service as punishment for murdering a Palestinian, you think that counts as sufficient prosecution?
Personally, doesn't sound like it. You're defending Palestine, though. Where nobody ever gets prosecuted for war crimes at all. Instead, they are paid cash.
I find the hysteria over the the top. Like, they targeted and killed two Hamas commanders. So when the article quotes someone saying they targeted civilians in tents, that should be called out as a lie.
It might not be big news for you, but once you see the same military speak and narrative over and over again, you start to question and become more criticial of what they say vs. what is closer to the truth.
Reminds me of some other wars, where we droned many civilians, 'but we were targeting terrorists" line is also used to a certain degree.
Which war and whistleblower released the info on the closer to real data of civilian death vs. military reported civilan deaths...Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, or Pakistan.
The Iraq War documents leak is the disclosure to WikiLeaks of 391,832 United States Army field reports, also called the Iraq War Logs, of the Iraq War from 2004 to 2009 and published on the Internet on 22 October 2010. The files record 66,081 civilian deaths out of 109,000 recorded deaths.
Seems like the airstrike caused some flammable materials to catch fire and it spread to the tents. The resultant fire was obviously not intentional.
That may be true, but when you see Israeli talking points in legacy media, they make sure to always bring up how much effort they put into keeping the civilan death count to the minimum. They do not release any of the data on this though, only on the 'Hamas' terrorist death count.
Hey, maybe don’t make camp with Hamas commanders? Maybe point them out on day one of the war so everyone can go back home? This should have been over in November.
Have you heard of Guerrilla warfare? Our gov't and military has a lot of experience with this type of warfare, but if you look at the data, it seems to only increase terrorists due to them spreading out and, due to civilian deaths, it tends to increase terrorism due to martyrs and revenge for family/friends.
Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians including recruited children, use ambushes, sabotage, terrorism, raids, petty warfare or hit-and-run tactics in a rebellion, in a violent conflict, in a war or in a civil war to fight against regular military, police or rival insurgent forces.
I hope this has helped you see a different point of view, I would suggest to read about the US wars we have been a part of for around a couple of decades.
You may read military and legacy media data on the wars, then look at the leaked information to contrast and compare the information.
Feel free to share that information [with] us as well!
Let us keep talking to people we do not agree with or think like we do!
Literally just excuses for the consequences of Palestine's own actions and choices. Nobody cares less about the people of Gaza than Hamas, except maybe Iran.
The difference between “ the most moral army in the world” and the rest of us is that they are willing to kill children.
Are you?
Would I bomb a proven terrorist who is known to be plotting the deaths of more children even if he's surrounded by his family? Yes, unfortunately.
This isn't a "who likes killing children" competition. It's a really shitty trolley dilemma where inaction means letting killers continue to plot their next campaign targeting women and children
If leaving them alone meant you didn't know if their next target was your kids school, or your wife's place of work, or your parents retirement village, would you press the button on them or not?
What if he was surrounded by your family? Would you still do it then?
That’s the price that you are asking others to pay for your war
You're right, I wouldn't. But you must realise trolley dilemmas are shit for exactly this reason. It exposes the fact that, at the end of the day, yes, we will prioritise our own children over someone else's. What people don't seem to acknowledge is that this is the choice presented to Israel. People act like the choice is "kill children or don't kill children" as if it's that black and white and crude. When it's really "kill Hamas now with collateral damage or wait for the next time they deliberately target women, children, babies". They're the actual two tracks to choose between. I don't blame Israel for killing Hamas wherever they find them and not accepting their cowardly attempt to use their relatives as shields.
I'm not willing to let terrorists dictate the terms of war because they are so deranged they let their own kids die, and be proud about it. So yes if there are, terrorists or tunnels there, all that's required is a reasonable attempt to warn. People want to take their kids with them that's up to them. I'm not willing to see another generation of Palestinians die hopeless under a theocratic dictatorship that only retains power by terror financing from Iran and the charity from the West, which prevents the Palestinian people from realizing how shitty their chosen leadership it.
So yes or no, you are ok with someone killing children to get what they want?
Have you heard of a thing called depth or nuance? Not everything is as simple as one sentence.
Kids always die in wars. Does that mean war is never moral? No. I'm not okay with kids getting bombed. Their parents and community should heed the warnings instead of supporting terrorists. 99.3% of Palestinians are managing not to get blown up while hanging out with Hamas commanders.
My point is, if you have decided to pull the trigger, knowing you’re gonna kill a kid, I hope you die a painful death and no longer care what you think.
It’s just tragic coincidence after tragic coincidence after tragic coincidence.
At what point do you stop believing these are accidents?
Sometimes they aren't. I have hope Israel, as a democracy, will sort its shit out at the ballot box. Same as I hope for my own country, and throughout the western world. We all have rightwing nutjobs we need to be excising from our politics.
I have zero hope that will happen for any Palestinian or really virtually anyone in the middle east outside of Israel. I have more hope for Iraq as a beacon of democratic ideals than I do for Gaza. Gaza is a lost cause and nobody is going to miss Hamas or remember a few score thousands of collateral deaths, attributable entirely to Hamas's leadership.
E: Not just me https://www.idea.int/gsod-2021/africa-middle-east
I will remember, and I will make sure to tell others if they begin to forget.
It’s not a whole beach, but you have to do it one starfish at a time
C'mon don't kid. This is a footnote in history and will be remembered as little more than a local police matter. A war with Iran on the other hand, is going to kill 35,000 people by the hour, by the minute perhaps. Imagine how sad that's going to be for you!
That's the starfish I'm thinking about. Not you though. You have the one right in front of you that you're talking about saving on the internet, not actually saving, and can't see there is actually a starfish steamroller coming down the beach and the starfish you are tying to save are the ones that invited the steamroller to come.
So, in your opinion, this is all okay because the alternative is war with Iran?
Why are you so sure that will happen if Palestine and Hamas survive? Are you concerned that it might be bias giving you so much confidence?
I have to say that it appears like you are just imagining a worse outcome (whether likely or not) and using it to justify a slightly less bad outcome.
Seems like shaky ground, no?
I suppose if you think of it as some far off thing that might happen, yeah pretty shaky. Being a long term state sponsor of anti Jewish terrorism shows their commitment to wiping out Israel. It's basically also all the talk about. They are true believers: they think they are ordained by God to control all Israeli land, that Jews should be removed from such lands by force, that when they find terrorism aimed at killing innocent Israeli people, that they are doing God's work. In short, the war is already happening. It's about keeping it contained.
I'm not even as concerned with the direct, hot war. Israel will wipe Iranian forced off the map within weeks, and they will certainly turn Tehran into a sheet of glass before they let Iranian troops march into Jerusalem.
I'm thinking about the 110,000,000 people that live in Iran and Israel, as well as the hundreds of millions of other people who live in surrounded states that are likely to collapse under the weight of the unprecedented refugee crisis which would result from another failed middle east state as large as Iran. And after Israel gets done defending itself, Iran will be a failed state.
Try to imagine one state after another throughout the Mediterranean Coast, throughout North Africa, down the eastern coast of Africa, South and central Asia. A lot of these countries are barely hanging on, how's it going to be when they're wave after wave of millions of refugees who all need food and water. 35,000 people could be dying every 8 minutes.
Yeah, maybe this a little bit speculative in the same way anything that hasn't happened yet is a little bit speculative.
I think we take a little bit of precaution to try and avoid this, and that means we bolster Israel's defensive posture as to Iran. And I don't see how anyone could really get upset about that. Israel does not need anyone to bolster their defensive posture as far as Gaza or the West Bank is concerned. Do they make their own weapons in Israel. They do not need one us-made weapon to level all of Gaza and all of the West Bank. And they could do it within a day. The fact that not only have they not done so, they have managed to only kill 0.7% of the people in these areas over the course of 8 months. That's why they have the right to claim they are the most moral Army in the world; any other country's military would have leveled the place after about the third suicide bombing.
Like I get it, 35,000 people, half of them kids, it is awful. No, it is not okay. Israel can and must do more to limit civilian casualties. But it's morally, practically, legally, emphatically less not okay than purposely weakening Israel's posture as to Iran, to invite that catastrophe, because we got really sad about wildly exaggerated reports about how Israel is handling a local border dispute with a group of outlaws and their loyal supporters. Again, I know not all Palestinians are loyal Hamas supporters. It's probably a hell of lot more than 0.7%, though.
You find the hysteria over the top? Over 30,000 innocent people have been slaughtered and your reaction is "but hamas" This is one of countless war crimes commited by this genoicidal state and reponding with "what about the other side" is quite frankly abhorent.
I think what is going on here is that this person would have to admit america has committed awful and repeated war crimes over the years, just like Israel is now.
You can tell because they use Americas past wars/incidents as a standard to compare against.
Their position is so unpopular here because most people here would never hold up America as a standard for international relations, unless to illustrate what NOT to do.
LMAO no. You don't bomb refugees to get an HVT. This is the use case for special forces. They exist for stuff like this in asymmetrical operations purely because we all agree to be bound by rules in war. That's why this is called a war crime, no matter who they were "targeting".
I suppose if your media diet consists of Qatari state media and fundraising solicitations, as yours does, you would think that. In reality, commanders and tunnels are fair and morally just military targets under uncontroversial rules of war. And, if there's a reasonable effort to notify civilians to leave the area, that's all international law requires. Period everything you suggest above and beyond that is just your wish, and also ignores the fact that the tunnel warfare in Gaza is unprecedented in world history. If people don't leave after the warnings, that's on them. 99.3% of all Palestinians managing to get along without being killed standing near tunnel shafts, standing next to Hamas members. That's the asymmetry I care about. That's why I find these reactions over the top and hysterical. Especially when your counterproposal is to let generations, millions more Palestinians, live and die without ever knowing hope, under the physical and mental shackles of Hamas/panislamist leadership. I'm not concerned about the 0.7% who can't seem to stay away from Hamas. The only thing they are victims of is radical pan-Islamist plot to use their deaths to weaken western military and political power in the region.
They think they're going to restore Islam to its "rightful place in the world," which is code for a theocratic Islamic dictatorship ruling over hundreds of millions of people as well as killing every Jew in israel. The only rightful place in the world for Islamic government is in the trash bin, and aside from that it's never going to happen as long as western governments remain generally committed to democratic ideals.
I understand the news is very sad. Maybe your efforts would be better spent convincing the Palestinian people to tell Hamas to wear uniforms.and stop hiding under hospitals and houses, if they're going to complain that 0.7% of them were indistinguishable, if they're going to cry victim and wield international custom of war as a shield. Nah, they won't do that, because they literally want their kids to be in harm's way; their greatest ambition, under Hamas, is to die in a way that makes you sad.
While I agree with what you say, you must realise it's not in Hamas' interest to advertise to people around them exactly who they are? They rely on people not fleeing. Some are family members, yes. But others? They probably have no idea a senior commander is two tents over from them.
That's true. I do understand that. In my view, it is willful blindness. You cannot stick your head in the sand and claim ignorance.
The truth of the matter is that the only reason a particular family might not know is because so many other Palestinians are providing cover and support for Hamas.
Every family in Gaza may not know a particular commander, they still know the Hamas people from their neighborhood, know where there's a tunnel shaft or two. With even slight cooperation, combined with Israeli intelligence, Hamas would already be gone and we'd be talking about a pretty tame reconstruction, instead we're talking about a fire in a refugee camp, and a reconstruction that will could take a decade. That's the moral hazard of starting a war, it has to end somehow.
For the IDF and the Israeli government, every Gazan is Hamas. There's no distinction.
They've used this argument that Hamas is hiding within civilians as an excuse to kill at many Palestinians as possible.
Finally, it doesn't matter if there was even one Hamas official in that camp. It was a humanitarian camp that was designated as a safe civilian zone. It shouldn't have been bombed. That's a clear violation of international law.
You know what would distinguish them? If Hamas and their loyalists wore uniforms. The failure to do so is a clear violation of international law. That strategy, combined with the tunnel system, the total disregard Hamas loyalists have for their own children's lives, and their Iranian and Qatari backed lawfare campaigns, makes this situation unprecedented.
Obviously though, if this particular location was being used to harbor Hamas commanders, it's not a humanitarian camp or a safe zone. Everywhere Hamas goes, anyone near them is in harms way.
How many more generations of Palestinian will you condemn to die under the leadership of a far right panislamist dictatorship that has a track record of corrupting every public institution and turning them into instrumentalities of international terrorism, just because you're too sad about the news?
No thanks, Israeli democracy is redeemable, Gaza is not.
You don't get it. As I said in my previous comment, for the IDF, every Palestinian is part of Hamas in their eyes.
In fact the whole ideology behind Zionism is to colonize the entirety of Palestine land and claim it as the Jewish promised land of Israel, killing anyone who resists that ideology.
If you support that ideology that one set of people with a certain religious belief are the true people of God and are superior to everyone else and that anyone who opposes them in their crusade to remove or kill the native people of Palestine to claim it as their own Holy Land, then, you're nothing less than an apologist for judeo-fascism and genocide.
I don't support that ideology. Religion is idiotic and should have no role in government.
It has much less of a role in Israel's government and legal customs than in Palestine's. Israel has written law. Palestinian law is "whatever the terrorist leaders say," and some of them don't even live in Palestine, they live like kings in Qatari penthouses, off oil money, protected and financed by the Qatari monarchy, whose ideology is the literal opposite of Zionism, panislamism.
Israel is there and it isn't going anywhere. It has defeated its military and political adversaries. The remaining extremists should surrender if they cared about their kin, but they literally do not. That's the pan-Islamist ideology you're defending, the one that stones you to death if you suggest anyone should hold a national election to determine the leadership and law. Hamas has no future and if they want to take Gaza with them that's their choice. Their supporters seem perfectly happy, proud even, to ignore warnings and be buried with them. They don't kill anyone who resists Zionism. That's idiotic. There are millions of Israeli's who are not Zionist and who do not support Netanyahu.
Ok. Keep believing that if you want, but you're just a victim of Israel's propaganda.
You need to read about the history of Israel, the author of the idea of Zionism and the state of Israel and how they persecuted the Palestinians for over a hundred years to try to colonize that area and claim it as theirs.
Everything about Israel is wrong and it doesn't sit well with the vast majority of the world. The only reason some supports it is because of the industrial military complex and having a political and military partner in the middle East.
And you need to read the previous thousand years of his, see what the "Palestinians" were doing to the Jews.
Israel exists and it's not going anywhere now.
Maybe you think it should not exist? Okay, you're not going to do shit about that. The only only entity that might do anything about that, is Iran.
And how will the war between Iran and Israel end?
The answer that to that question is really the only concern I have as to near future middle east politics.
Because you see how sad everyone here is about 35,000 bodies?
Try to imagine how sad 100 times sadder is, if the resultant War kills 3.5 million people. Or a thousand times more sad, if it kills 35 million people, which is the likely outcome.
You could be seeing death tolls of 35,000 forget every 8 months, it could be every 8 minutes. It's only through delusion that you have built this situation up in your head into something so existential. It's not.
You're getting worked up about a local police matter and 35,000 people who had every opportunity to get out of the way and end this war.
If this were happening in my state, we would have already had all sorts of true crime crime bloggers, podcasters, and armchair detectives with local knowledge, mapping out all the tunnels and the hierarchy of Hamas. The war would have been over in a week. But no. Can't have that, locals have to support the terrorists even with the cost of their own lives. That's their choice.
Thanks for the clarification. I didn’t see this info in the 15-20 posts before for some strange reason. And yes this info matters a lot. It’s very different from the constant Israel is indiscriminately slaughtering Palestinian babies in camps as part of a genocide.
The details are right in the article, just buried between hysteria and wild speculation.
Yeah unfortunately when Hamas surrounds themselves with civilians, this stuff happens. It’s what they’ve been doing this entire war. They’re cowards
IDF’s headquarters is in a civilian neighborhood in Tel Aviv. Why does IDF surround itself with civilians? By Israel’s logic, is Tel Aviv now a valid target?
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Hell, by Israel's "logic", Palestine should be killing about 600,000 Israelies in return for the 35,000 dead Palestinians.
I would say yes, it is