Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday he doesn’t know that a ceasefire is possible in the Israel-Hamas war with “an organization like Hamas” involved.
“I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, (a) permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel,” Sanders told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday.
The question you’re asking implies a decrease during the ceasefire which is of course a near certainty however in the time scale of the total conflict it’s very possible that the total number of civilian casualties will increase.
Hamas will use the time to move troops, stock defences, replenish supplies and plant IEDs - this will prolong the war and make fighting more difficult resulting in more rockets and bombs and thus more potential civilian life loss.
Decisive victory can often be less brutal than lingering conflict, especially with logistical considerations like in Gaza.
What’s the better solution? Continuing to bomb refugee camps and hospitals in an incredibly densely populated area where 45% of the people are children and food, water, power, fuel, and movement have all been stopped doesn’t seem great to me.
Imagine a comic strip where the Joker is holding a kid hostage at gunpoint. With his other gun he repeatedly shoots random people on the street. Batman shows up but does nothing, for he doesn’t want the boy to die. Bam, another passerby dead. And another. Bam-bam, this time it’s a twofer. Then Superman shows up and eye-lasers the Joker cleanly in half along with the kid.
Whose action resulted in fewer deaths?
Pretty poor analogy when superman has propped up the Joker (Hamas) over the pacifist Harley Quinn (PLO) while being pretty open about wanting to genocide Arkham asylum (Palestine) - you think they might have done that to create a pretext for what’s currently playing out?, and has operated Arkham as a concentration camp, constantly killing its innocent residents and taking over more of it, blowing up refugee camps, hospitals, apartment blocks, you name it, while eye lasering 20-500x the number of bystanders the Joker is killing (depending on the stats you choose). Superman is also a nuclear power with a modern military and f35s - the Joker has small arms and a paraglider.
So far, Israel has killed over 11,000 people in a population that’s 45% kids - statistically, that points to them killing 55 Hamas members and 5,000 children (and plenty more adult civilians). Even if they’re 10x more effective than that, it’s still 10 dead kids for every dead Hamas member.
Who is the bad guy again? Feel free to look at the kill count over the past few decades of that helps.
Thanks for the non-dismissive reply and for the additional context. Just to clarify, I have only voiced my view on the “avoid killing innocents when others are in danger” situation - I admittedly lack the knowledge regarding the big picture to be able to pass judgement or offer solutions. But it seems the answer to your last question is pretty clear: everybody involved in this situation in any way is bad for some degree.
Which is fair enough, but given what we know about the situation, it’s incredibly frustrating that everyone is being called to condemn Hamas when Israel are unequivocally the aggressor here.
But yes - between a jihadi org and the Israeli government, there are no good guys, but I think we’re collectively failing to recognise the far greater evil here.
So just wait a few days for Hamas to dig in then do the same?
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How are Hamas going to dig in to a more meaningful extent with a few days’ respite from Israel’s attacks on Palestine? It’s not as though the IDF is making so much as a token effort to avoid killing Palestinian children and civilians.
B-but Hamas is a pretty poor excuse for killing thousands of children.