The Geneva convention was established to minimise atrocities in conflicts. Israeli settlements in Gaza are illegal and violate the Geneva convention. Legality of Israeli settlements Article 51 of the Geneva convention prohibits indiscriminate attacks on civilian population yet Israel attacked hospitals with children inside. Whether you agree or not that Hamas were present, children cannot be viewed as combatants.so when no care was taken to protect them, does this not constitute a violation? According to save the children, 1 in 50 children in Gaza had been killed or injured. This is a very high proportion and does not show care being taken to prevent such casualties and therefore constitutes a violation.

So my question is simply, do supporters of Israel no longer support our believe in the Geneva convention, did you never, or how do you reconcile Israeli breaches of the Geneva convention? For balance I should add “do you not believe such violations are occurring and if so how did you come to this position?”

Answers other than only "they have the right to go after Hamas " please. The issue is how they are going after Hamas, not whether they should or not.

EDIT: Title changed to remove ambiguity about supporting Israel vs supporting their actions

  • @lennybirdEnglish
    2•3 months ago

    (Comment 2 of 2)

    1. Just as to whether the scale of the Israeli response was unjustified — No.

    2. Yes. There is a shared responsibility between the hostage taker and the person willing to shoot the hostage(s) alongside the hostage-taker. To me it speaks more of the “good guy,” who is so willing to level the hostages than it even does the terrorist for whom we already know lacks moral values. To me it (a) makes zero logical sense in stifling radicalization in the long-term, and (b) it undermines a fundamental western philosophy that actually underscores our entire judicial philosophy: That “it is better that 10 guilty persons go free than 1 innocent person be imprisoned.” It’s the same reason the US negotiated with Russia to free innocent people in exchange for giving them back scum. The value of our innocent people is greater than their scum. Naturally, I would respect Israel more if they actually cared about civilians of all types a little bit more as opposed to justifying what is, on paper, far worse than the original attack.

    3. I’m not sure a ratio, but I’ll say up to but not exceeding 1,200 total or whatever the official toll of October 7th was. As Robert McNamara once said, “Proportionality should be a guideline to war.”

    4. Ideally, none.

    5. There is no real government of Gaza; and there is no national identity. There is a gang and that gang like a pimp offers protection to the Goliath next door who is equally no friend but rather a right-wing nationalist state with an obvious interest in creeping territorial annexation that can be tracked going back decades. Both sides of shown an unwillingness to compromise ultimately, which again dates back to the assassination of Israel’s former prime minister. My direct answer: Studying how radicalization occurs; why some humans radicalize and others do not. The answer isn’t all that difficult in my view.

    6. I’m not sure I buy the premise; there were countless times where IDF has murdered and yes, even raped in between truces; established blockades and invoked clear provocations in their own right.

    7. To make this analogy work, you need to move these people across the border and into the streets of Israel. For that to happen, they need to get through a heavily-defended border, and yes, if that’s going to happen, then sure. But I’ll tell you what’s really happening: You’re leaving your home and deciding to wander into an adjacent city of people holed up in their own homes with babies on them and deciding, “Okay we’ll just blow you up where you are even though you are not clear and present danger to the civilians of OUR city — nor ever would be if we actually took adequate measures to secure the bridge to our city properly.And in fact, we don’t even fully know for sure IF there is a target in this area but we’re just going to level it on a lead anyway.” Quite a bit different, no? I’m going to also take a wild guess and say that Hamas isn’t going so far as to do that and is simply hiding wherever they possibly can because Gaza isn’t even that big, and that if they were strapping babies to themselves then they probably would face quite a bit of backlash even from those whom they try to oppress.

    8. Russia basically is doing this with their mobilization and obvious attempts to purge ethnic minorities and other undesireables inside Russia. Unfortunately Ukraine has no choice given the the threat. But again, notice the difference in that Ukraine is legitimately playing defense.

    I’ll conclude with a reiteration of my original point: that in being Pro-Civilian, I cannot in good conscience believe that Israel is making a concerted effort to reduce civilian casualties; nor can I see how this will ever prevent further radicalization in the future without invoking genocide itself. The amount of civilian murders by Israel in their calculations to kill Hamas is on a scale that Hamas could not achieve for 50 or even 100 years. And within that time frame, I’m certain we could’ve figured out a better solution.

    • @the_toast_is_gone
      2•3 months ago
      1. I’m glad we agree on October 7th not being justified.
      2. In this example, not only is Hamas holding their own people hostage, they’re doing so while lobbing rockets and mortars at Israel, even during “ceasefires.” Comparing war to a criminal trial, the court is not being actively shot at and bombed by the people it is putting on trial. To get people to the situation where they can be put on trial, law enforcement has to take certain risks to ensure the suspects can be brought to court as safely as possible. In the vast majority of cases where the suspect is an active gunman popping off shots at the police, this isn’t possible.
      3. and 4. Then it seems we both agree that it isn’t easy or even possible to calculate out exactly what ratio of civilians are acceptable losses. I respect your proportionality argument, but as long as Hamas is armed and in power, they will continue to threaten Israel. As I’ve already explained, if Israel’s defenses such as the Iron Dome failed, then Hamas’s rocket attacks would suddenly become a far more dire threat.
      4. It seems as though the ideal solution is to remove the elements of both Hamas’s and Israel’s government that want nothing more than to kill indiscriminately so the remainders and replacements can come to peaceful terms. That’s something I can agree with, but until that’s done, there’s going to be a devastating war.
      5. Does Hamas have mechanisms in place to punish people who wrongly kill or rape Israeli civilians? And how easy is it to delineate which single provocation started which flare-up in this decades-long ethnic and religious conflict?
      6. I’ve addressed this in a previous comment, but this is more or less what Hamas is doing. Rather than establishing military bases within Gaza with minimal civilian contacts, they’re holing up soldiers and materiel inside schools and hospitals. Then the international community holds Israel responsible for Hamas’s decision to sacrifice their own people.
      7. Yes, they are fighting defensively, just like Israel is. As long as Hamas puts missile sites on hospitals and fires at Israel, some civilian deaths are inevitable. If Hamas doesn’t want this to happen, they should establish proper military bases.

      I forgot to address this from your other comment. If there truly are pointless killings of civilians being carried out by the IDF, those responsible should be punished. I’d be more than happy to see a third-party investigation into Israel’s war effort performed by a neutral, disinterested party. If such a thing were to happen and, for example, certain people made it their goal to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible, then those people need to be dealt with because they compromise the entire integrity of the IDF while wasting human life. Just like Hamas.

      One-off intelligence failures, such as the one time I could find that Israeli hostages were accidentally killed, do not an illegitimate state nor genocide make.

      We can do de-radicalization when Hamas decides that watching over 200 of its people die every day isn’t worth however many Jews were killed since October 7th. They started this war, and they should have understood the consequences of breaching the border of a highly militarized society before they did so. Now, instead of paying the price, they’re deflecting all blame to their sworn enemy and basking in neutral-if-not-positive press. If Hamas is truly incapable of coming to such a conclusion, they have no right to exist; not only should there be pressure on Israel and Gaza to declare a truce, but Hamas must be dissolved for the sake of the people of Gaza.