https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-19-2024-81c2d362340b611a98e4b929b4b5d0a4
The ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on Monday that 107 bodies were brought to hospitals in the last 24 hours.
Regardless where you stand on the political spectrum, I think we can all agree that this is deserving of sanctions.
I don’t think anyone is interested in sanctioning their own proxy state.
So lots of places should sanction, but the USA will not.
The United States, Israel’s top ally, says it is still working with mediators Egypt and Qatar to try to broker another cease-fire and hostage release agreement. But those efforts appear to have stalled in recent days, and Netanyahu angered Qatar by calling on it to pressure Hamas and suggesting it funds the militant group.
israel doing everything in its power to keep the slaughter going and not get the hostages back safely.
I've been trying to wrap my head around the unconditional support that the US has shown to Israel during this crisis. I understand why we must stand with our friends and allies. I understand that Israel has immense strategic value as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the Middle East. I understand our desire to support democracies in the region. I understand that they have a right to defend their people. I understand that our support is necessary to keep things from cascading further out of hand. But what I don't understand is how we can provide all this support and still have no leverage to ease the suffering of innocent Palestinians. Are we even capable of applying diplomatic pressure on Israel, or has our support become something more akin to an entitlement?
Ask yourself - is it in the US interest to do something about this genocide? The answer is "nope" other than a tiny bit of unrest in the country (and by that I mean someone complaining at Biden on twitter). There is no point for them to do anything. Geopolitics is never about morality.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 men, women and children hostage.
The Israeli military released a video Monday showing what is believed to be the youngest hostage, his brother and mother being led through the streets of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis soon after their kidnapping on Oct. 7.
It said there were credible reports that at least two were raped, and others “subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault,” including being stripped naked and searched by male officers and being photographed “in degrading circumstances.”
On Sunday, Benny Gantz, a member of Netanyahu’s three-man War Cabinet, warned that the offensive would expand to Rafah if the hostages are not freed by the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, expected around March 10.
In a speech before American Jewish leaders on Sunday, he said pressure should be applied on Qatar, which played a key role in mediating last year’s cease-fire and hostage release deal.
Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, dismissed Netanyahu’s remarks as “a new attempt to stall and prolong the war for reasons that have become obvious to everyone,” alluding to the Israeli leader’s domestic political troubles.
The original article contains 1,206 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Adding to the other guy, it's usually used to mean "may Allah enact justice on this person".
But then can you answer me why aren't Israel letting independent investigators and journalists enter Gaza?
If you are so sure that Israel is doing everything possible to prevent civilian deaths and they respect all international laws why is Israel not signatory of the ICC? What are they afraid of?
For full context, Israel says 10,000 are Hamas soldiers. It's super disingenuous for the Gaza health ministry (Hamas) to lump military and civilian deaths together like they do. And I know, you're literally frothing at the mouth to inform me how all Israeli's are liars and all Palestinians are angels. I'm not going to read any responses.
For fuller context, Israel lies about everything.
I’m not going to read any responses.
Classic cult tactic.
For fuller context, Israel lies about everything
Lmao, what an answer, you haven't even came back with an answer
Also HAMAS admitted it have lost at least 6 000, while IDF talks about 12 000, and you know that HAMAS obviously wants everyone to think that their losses as a low as possible, so 10k seems realistic to me
Out of the 28,775 people killed it's reported that
12,300 are children, and
8,400 are women.
That leaves about 8,075 men
Hamas probably has exactly 0 women as soldiers, but how many children do they have as soldiers?
None.
If you watch footage from oct7 you see bearded adult men.
If you go to c/combatfootage the Hamas fighters in Gaza certainly don't look like teenage kids either.
The US led invasion of Iraq had approximately 655,000 civilian deaths according to the Lancet. The Chechen war had about 80,000. 10,000 in an area with a much higher density is relatively low.
Your comment sounds like it's justifying killing 2 civilians for everyone 1 soldier. Even assuming your number is correct, it doesn't really matter. It's just as bad.
Hamas is partly to blame for the following reasons:
They use human shield tactics
They haven't built bomb shelters (edit: for civilians)
They have no civilian evacuation plans
They appear to actively stop people from evacuating
Also, the population density in Gaza is one of the highest ones in the world. Which is really nobody's fault I guess, but makes the number of civilian deaths worse, especially given the above 4 points.
I should've written: "They haven't built bomb shelters for civilians"
Is it shocking to learn this? It seems so absurd that you cannot believe it?
I kinda agree.
How do you expect Hamas to build bomb shelters? Setting aside how Israel has bunker busters and has been using them in Gaza, because of Israel's blockade things that you'd normally need to make a bomb shelter (or any decent structure) are unavailable. It's to the point UNRWA is teaching Gazans how to build houses using mud.
How do you expect Hamas to build bomb shelters?
In the exact same way as they build bomb shelters for their soldiers? Probably not optimal for civilians, but better than nothing.
But can those shelters house the ridiculous amount of civilians in Gaza? I don't see how they could build these things at a large enough scale to house Gazan civilians, not to mention they'd be bombed first thing because they're "Hamas headquarters". At least Israel can't use bunker busters on hospitals and UN schools (hopefully).
Why it doesn't matter?
As a point of reference, according to the UN, civilians usually make up around 90 percent of casualties in war. That's a 1:9 ratio (one combatant for every nine civilians).
https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14904.doc.htm
It shows that it's low, and Israel does care about civilians, a shame that civilians die in the first place, but that what war is, especially considering HAMAS fighters a lot of times wear civilian clothing and don't follow the laws of war
@Fitik yikes, classic case of not reading your own link:
Conflict continued to cause widespread civilian death last year, notably in densely populated areas, where civilians accounted for 90 per cent of the casualties when explosive weapons were used, compared to 10 per cent in other areas.
The whole thing is a UN discussion where they talk about the need for greater Humanitarian access in war zones.
The part you are quoting is about how using explosives in densely populated areas causes 90% which is way higher than normal. Normal being 10%.
In other words, the people in your link are condemning exactly the kind of things Israel is doing now in Gaza i.e incendiaries in densely populated areas and hindering humanitarian access.
especially considering HAMAS fighters a lot of times wear civilian clothing and don't follow the laws of war
Sure, Hamas should paint giant targets on their backs and face the Israelis in an open field, mano-a-mano.
As long as Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as an independent state, I don't see why Palestinian freedom fighters, Hamas or otherwise, should behave like they're the official army of an independent state.
Is that… supposed to be numbers in Israel’s favor? That for every one militant they kill they only kill 1.9 women and children and noncombatants?
That’s just absolutely insane. And that’s with what I’m going to assume is an extremely favorable estimation on Israel’s part
That's literally one of the "best" ratios for urban warfare in modern conflicts tho? It's a shame that the war is even there, but the numbers are "in Israel favor", Gaza is densely populated, and this is a full scale war.
That’s simply not true. You might be basing your opinion on the widespread (but almost entirely made up) statistic that “90% of war casualties are civilians”.
Add in that this is no longer 1945 or whatever and you have to come to terms that the death toll is so high largely because the IDF is one of if not the most profoundly cowardly militaries on the planet
It's super disingenuous for the Gaza health ministry (Hamas) to lump military and civilian deaths together like they do
So you think it is disingenuous of Israel to have lumped the more than half military and police deaths, let alone the civilians they killed themselves, in the list of deaths on October 7th? At least those death were, according to international law, actually legal.
How do you count people who are active reservists? Are they considered civilian or combatants?
If those data were minimally credible, we would still be talking about 2/3 civilian casualties, about ~10k children killed instead of ~15k. Your context doesn't change the tone, it's still genocide, indiscriminate massacres, endless war crimes, etc.
And famously, once you kill enough terrorists and take enough land, the rest sort of say "OK fair dues" and there are no more terrorists ever
I’m not going to read any responses.
This is likely the wisest part of any comment that's going to be on this thread. 🤞hopefully I'm wrong.
