That's explicit in the Genocide Convention, which Israel signed.
The murder of ~700 Israeli civilians was an atrocity. That doesn't justify Israel's disproportionate, indiscriminate, and wholly illegal ongoing series of atrocities in response.
Israel is trying to destroy Hamas to remove this threat. Hamas has embedded itself in civilian population, Hamas is not coming out to fight man to man in an open field So, yes, as a result of the fact that Hamas is embedded in civilian areas, innocent people die in the fighting. But it's absurd to assign all the responsibility for this to Israel and zero to Hamas.
It's absurd to say Hamas committed an atrocity and Israel should do nothing to stop similar atrocities from happening in the future. And if you concede Israel has the right to defend itself, then how is it supposed to do that other than actually go after Hamas?
Are they though? Israel's Minister of Communication just spoke on national TV about the need to make the people of Gaza leave "voluntarily".
They want the land. That was always the goal, clearly. Because:
How does murdering 20,000 women and children remove the threat of Hamas?
How does leveling 75% of residential buildings remove the threat of Hamas?
How does salting the earth and destroying all the infrastructure necessary for life remove Hamas?
How does bombing historic mosques and churches, or universities and civic buildings remove Hamas?
How does blockading food, electricity, internet, essential medicine, and even water remove Hamas?
30,000 Palestinians have been murdered during those war crimes.
Israel are bombing and destroying refugee camps, UN shelters, UN schools, humanitarian corridors, and hospitals.
In all this, they haven't taken out one single senior Hamas leader in Gaza.
NOT ONE.
Israel hasn't rescued a single hostage. In fact, when they found three hostages - shirtless, waving white flags and calling out in Hebrew - they murdered them.
Can you imagine spending over ten billion dollars, and failing to take out one senior leader or rescue a single hostage? Even when allowed and encouraged by your leadership to kill as many civilians and destroy as much as you need to, to the point where ~90% of the population is now homeless?
Really - try, if you can, to imagine that level of failure. The world's fourth largest military, killing 10,000 babies in an effort to save a single hostage or kill a single senior Hamas leader. And failing.
And people think this will prevent terror? Absurd. Farcical.
I find it hard to believe that anyone is taken in by this - and in fact, most of the world isn't. Even a majority of Americans want a ceasefire, and they're Israel's closest ally.
> Hamas has embedded itself in civilian population, Hamas is not coming out to fight man to man in an open field
That doesn't excuse war crimes, or genocide. Neither did the atrocities of October 7th. The Genocide Convention, which Israel signed over 70 years ago, is very clear on that fact.
> how is it supposed to do that other than actually go after Hamas?
Consider - making sure 2.3 million people have nothing to lose is a profoundly stupid way to try and fight terrorism. Israel isn't defending itself - when you invade an occupied land, destroy everything, massacre refugees and kill 5 children every hour for a hundred days straight, that's not defense. It's ethnic cleansing. It's genocide.
And denying that makes you a genocide denier. Palestinians have provided HD footage of their suffering, their nightmare, their horror, for 100 days.
Israeli leadership have made little attempt to hide their intent - go to israelquotes.com and filter for the word "genocide". You can't claim ignorance any more.
there is no doubt they are trying to destroy Hamas, they have soldiers on the ground dying in combat battling Hamas
Your list consists of a number of absurd questions. The answer to all of them is they are happing during combat, as damage as a result of combat. Hamas can surrender any time and combat will cease
"In all this, they haven't taken out one single senior Hamas leader in Gaza. NOT ONE. " this is false, clearly, they have taken out multiple battalion commanders. Most Hamas most senior leaders are outside of Gaza and they have taken out some of those too
"Consider - making sure 2.3 million people have nothing to lose is a profoundly stupid way to try and fight terrorism"
There is no way to fight terrorism other than actually fight terrorism.
Yet somehow every other nation on Earth manages to do it without killing 10,000 children, destroying 75% of residential buildings, blowing up infrastructure, bombing hospitals into rubble, bulldozing cemetaries, bulldozing injured refugees, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
It's a fact that oppressed people fight back. You can, in fact, stop oppressing them and things work out; like apartheid ending in SA, or like the GFA in Northern Ireland. In neither of those cases was "atrocity upon atrocity" the solution to anything.
Really, it's surreal to be having to explain this. It's truly self-evident.
"oppressed people fight back" is a red herring. Israel left Gaza in 2005, nobody prevented Gaza at that point from becoming paradise, instead of a terrorist haven. And now, with Hamas in charge and vowing to repeat October 7th again and again, Israel has no choice but to go in and eliminate Hamas.
> nobody prevented Gaza at that point from becoming paradise, instead of a terrorist haven
The colonies were removed, but Israel retained control of Gaza's air, land, sea and airwaves. "Preventive strikes" have killed many civilians. Peaceful protests have resulted in murder and maim.
There is wall to wall consensus within the international community that Gaza is occupied, including the normally reserved ICRC [0].
> The ICRC considers Gaza to remain occupied Palestinian territory on the basis that Israel still exercises key elements of authority over the strip, including over its borders (airspace, sea and land - at the exception of the border with Egypt). Even though Israel no longer maintains a permanent presence inside the Gaza Strip, it continues to be bound by certain obligations under the law of occupation that are commensurate with the degree to which it exercises control over it.
Pretty clear. If you don't like that, you can read the UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese view on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories [1]
> And now, with Hamas in charge and vowing to repeat October 7th again and again, Israel has no choice but to go in and eliminate Hamas
Again with this nonsense. They're not going after Hamas, they're trying to force Gazans out. You can see their own Minister of Communication, and others, saying this on national TV. [2]
> "oppressed people fight back" is a red herring.
No, no it isn't. It's a reality. People have a right to fight back against oppression. Calling them "terrorists" doesn't justify genocide - again, the Genocide Convention which you keep ignoring is very clear on that point.
I don't know what it would take to break you from this alternate reality that you are in, but I really hope you do.
0 - https://www.icrc.org/en/document/frequently-asked-questions-...
1 - https://www.jurist.org/features/2023/09/06/un-special-rappor...
2 - https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-uk-slam-inflammatory-call...
You are not engaging with the facts.
The fact is of course Israel is going after Hamas, they are literally losing soldiers daily in battles witn Hamas, it’s absurd to deny this
People have a right to fight against oppression is a red herring because you are unable to engage with actual facts
The actual fact is Israel left Gaza completely. At which point Gazans had a choice. And they chose Hamas which proceeded to continuously attack Israel and fire rockets at it, culminating in October 7th its impossible to deny this simple reality.
And this simple reality means Israel has no choice but to defeat Hamas militarily once and for all, which it’s now attempting to do
There is no Hamas in the West Bank? This is false, as anyone with a google account can verify. Hamas doesn’t fully control the West Bank, but of course it has a presence there along with other terrorist groups, especially in certain cities like Jenin
If you want to understand this conflict, you have to understand the facts first
> The fact is of course Israel is going after Hamas [..] because you are unable to engage with actual facts
https://acleddata.com/2023/12/14/the-resurgence-of-armed-gro...
It's true that Hamas and Islamic Jihad do not fully control the West Bank. But once someone says "there is no Hamas in the West Bank", that's a dead giveaway the person is talking either in bad faith or is simply clueless
Bad faith includes thing like refusing to engage with reality, and calling horrific lies that amount to genocide denial "actual facts", or calling a fact based argument "nonsense".
> The fact is of course Israel is going after Hamas, they are literally losing soldiers daily in battles witn Hamas, it’s absurd to deny this
I don't know how this point makes any logical sense to you, unless you're arguing in bad faith.
Israel losing soldiers doesn't mean anything about Israel "going after Hamas". They'd lose soldiers if their goal was total destruction and making Palestinian lives so miserable and unlivable that they move "voluntarily" as expressed by Israel's own Minister for Communications.
> If you want to understand this conflict, you have to understand the facts first
It's a genocide.
Lawyers for the top court in the world have made a profoundly well sourced and factual argument on this.
If you have any respect whatsoever for truth and reality, I urge you to watch or read the arguments presented before saying things like "you have to understand the facts".
Of course it makes sense. How can you argue that Israel is not going after Hamas if Israeli solders on the ground are battling Hamas and dying in those battles? That is literally going after Hamas. Why would they lose solders if their goal was total destruction? They could just nuke Gaza if that was their goal or simply continue to bomb it into smithereens. Why would they put their own soldiers in harm's way?
>Jt's a genocide
No, it is not. Lawyers for one side made an argument and lawyers for the other side made an argument but you are for some reason unable to engage with the substance of that argument
>If you have any respect whatsoever for truth and reality, I urge you to watch or read the arguments presented before saying things like "you have to understand the facts".
Yes, you have to understand facts. A very simple fact is that Israel left Gaza in 2005 and it's security worsened as a result it did not improve. Why? Because Hamas is an organization whose sole purpose is to destroy Israel and kill Israelis. That is why this war is going on right now, and you have to engage with this reality to have any hope of making any sense.
https://nypost.com/2023/11/01/news/hamas-official-vows-to-re...
Israels defense mostly revolves around lack of jurisdiction (which even the Brookings institution says is nonsense), that is the UN has no authority to rule over matters in Gaza, and that the atrocities committed by the IDF in GAZA—which they don’t deny—are justified (which they are demonstrably not).
So basically the only real question for the court is whether Israel has the intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group. You probably don’t think so, but I, OP, the South African legal team, the Governments of Bangladesh, Turkey, Jordan, Pakistan, Brazil, Colombia, etc. and several human rights, NPO, and activist organizations all think that Israel does in fact intent to destroy Palestinians of Gaza as a group.
But regardless of that, even if the court fails to prove that Israel has the intent to destroy Palestinians of Gaza as a group, then—as none of the atrocities are being denied—we are basically left with that there is some reasonable probability that these atrocities were committed by carelessness.
As a human being, you must see that that is not OK, and not a defensible behavior.
No, what is happening is the following: Hamas is a 30,000 strong organization that has support of Iran which has as its main purpose and reason for existence, destruction of Israel and murder of Israelis.
It has been firing thousands of rockets into Israel for 17 years and on October 7th they attacked, broke through border defenses and killed 1200 Israelis. And subsequently explicitly vowed to repeat this again and again. In this situation Israel simply has no choice but to fight this group to the death.
That is the backdrop in which civilian deaths are happening. You cant just deny this backdrop or analyze the situation as if it doesn't exist.
It's an actual war, a war between two parties. It's bizarre to say that in a war which involves two actors and which Israel did not start, that it bears 100% of responsiblity for civilian casualties. You can't ignore the fact that Hamas embeds itself in civilian population or that Hamas and Islamic Jihad fire rockets at Israel, a decent percentage of which misfire and subsequently fall on Palestinian civilians and injure or kill them.
War is absolutely a horrible thing but you have to at least be willing to assign some of the responsibility for this war to Hamas, which actually started it on October 7th
Genocide is by agreement not justifiable. Article III of the Genocide convention makes it clear that genocide (a), incitement to commit genocide (c), attempt to commit genocide (d) and complicity in genocide (e) are all punishable crimes. The convention offers no exemption for these crimes, and therefor no justification. So if intent is found, any crimes committed against Israel prior to these atrocities (sorry, I don’t know a better word, so I’ll keep using it), then it is demonstrably false that the October 7th attacks were a justification for them. Because legally, they aren’t.
If the court fails to find intent, then honestly you’ll just have to look at your humanity and see whether the same atrocities committed because of carelessness instead of intent, are then justifiable. Personally I think human lives are worth more.
One point you made is that Israeli actions are apriori atrocities, not acts of legitimate warfare
The second point you made, perhaps without fully understanding it, is that human lives by your definition does not include Israeli lives.
Israel engaged in war with Hamas for a very specific reason, which is that Hamas is intending to continue murdering Israelis in unlimited numbers for all eternity.
This context is relevant. You can't sidestep it if you want to seriously engage with what is actually happening.
I made more points in my parent post (which you didn’t address) and you made more points in your reply (which I subsequently didn’t address). The intersection of these points was only one point (that I found), and is what I replied to.
But it was unnecessary for you to assume believes from me about which live matter. Please don’t do that.
Turning off water is not combat.
Rigging the supreme court with explosives after posing for selfies in it is not combat.
Destroying universities and mocking people in Gaza for having no education (when they're not singing that they're no schools in Gaza cuz there are no kids in Gaza) is not combat.
IDF soldiers singing about how "there are no innocent civilians" and bragging about how many residential houses they destroyed is not combat.
Sniping a 70 year old woman fleeing with a child isn't combat.
Shooting at youth, then running over their body with an army truck on camera and leaving them to bleed to death isn't combat.
Bombing the tents of refugee camps is not combat.
> Hamas can surrender any time and combat will cease
Right. So occupying land and blockading Gaza is fine. Supporting Hamas over moderates to get "legitimacy" as Smotrich called it, is fine. But NOW you draw a line, and simply make demands that must be met before we can stop hiding crimes against humanity under the cover of "combat".
No. Such arguments, no matter how often we have heard them repeated, are not even a bad attempt, and light of the gravity of the situation that's grave as well.
Is Israel obliged to provide water to an enemy entity? In what world does a country attacked by an enemy have an obligation to provide water. Why is Hamas, which is in control of Gaza, not obliged to provide water for its citizens? WHy is it the responsibility of Israel?
Nevertheless,they turned the water back on https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-says-it-is-restarting-w...
"Occupying land and blockading gaza is fine"
Israel left Gaza in 2005. The blockade of Gaza was in response to Hamas taking power and immediately engaging in attacks against Israel. WHy do you think Egypt also blockades Gaza?
"But NOW you draw a line" Please, engage with facts
Israel spent 17 years trying to manage Hamas without engaging in a full on war, despite Hamas repeated attacks against Israel. This strategy completely failed culminating in October 7th. Which showed that Hamas can't be managed, it must be destroyed. That is what is currently going on in Gaza. All this could have been different had Hamas made different choices. But they chose war and war they got.
https://nypost.com/2023/11/01/news/hamas-official-vows-to-re...
Using starvation, and denying water falls under that, as a means of warfare is a war crime EVEN if ONLY used against "the enemy".
And you are implying the often-heard "there are no civilians in Gaza", which is another atrocity on top of that.
https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/634kfc....
> Israel spent 17 years trying to manage Hamas
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
> The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
And Smotrich, more recently
"If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip." and "In the context of de-legitimization - Hamas is an asset and the Palestinian Authority is a liability"
One crime does not excuse the other. Blaming war crimes and crimes against humanity on Hamas because they're just so extremely evil and wiley, while people in Gaza get starved to death and Israeli soldiers make TikToks about blowing up whole villages with wired explosives, singing about how they'll move in, while journalists are targeted, refugee tents are bombed, while people repeat the same sophistry over and over, because a positive wall of politicians and hack fraud journalists repeating the most obvious of lies, gives them the idea they have license to.
"They chose war and war is what they got". Children screaming in agony as legs get amputated without anesthesia.
Unforgivable.
People who chose to justify atrocities with the flimsiest excuses got what they wanted, too. But you can't accept it, say I'm engaging with "actual" facts. You are wrong. The facts simply are very unflattering for what you are advocating is all.
https://www.quora.com/Is-cutting-off-water-to-an-enemy-city-....
Secondly, Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization that Israel thought was moderating over time and one that could be managed. That assessment was proven spectacularly wrong
And now there is an actual war happening as a result, in which civilians are dying, which is terrible
But it’s completely absurd to place 100% of responsibility for this on Israel. Hamas is an actor in this war, not a passive observer
Did you know, for example, that when Hamas and Islamic Jihad fire rockets at Israel, a significant percentage misfires and falls right on top of civilians, right in Gaza, injuring and killing civilians?
Hamas embeds itself among civilian population
These are all choices, choices about starting a war and a manner in which it’s conducted
It’s absurd to discuss all this as if Israel is the only party with agency here.
Israel has no choice but to try and wipe out Hamas because Hamas has explicitly vowed to repeat October 7th again. That leaves Israel with no real options. But Hamas doesn’t have to embed itself in civilian population to fight Israel, that’s a choice they made knowing it would lead to high civilian casualties.
https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/96544/what-services-...
You are not supposed to destroy existing water resources of the population of the entity you are at war with, but you are under no obligation to provide them with water out of your own resources.
Regardless, this whole convo is a red herring because Israel turned water back on
This is besides the point. Israel did not stop Hamas, which is the governing authority in Gaza, from investing in water infrastructure. Hamas chose to invest in underground tunnels instead. That is tragic, but it's not the responsibility of Israel. Israel did not control what happened inside Gaza and blockade did not prevent Hamas from importing cement and other materials for tunnel building, this is because civilian imports were allowed, but Hamas used imports earmarked for civilian use to build tunnels and rockets.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/us/politics/israel-gaza-t...
Regarding the "governing" status of Hamas, I would observe that the overwhelming majority of Gazans are too young to have ever voted, and that Hamas seized and maintains power coercively, so we should be careful attributing ideas like rightful governing status to Hamas. Among the organizations that care less about the lives of Palestinians than Israel, one must clearly number Hamas.
Hamas is the de facto governing authority of Gaza, or was as of October 7th It could have chosen to build water infrastructure, desalination plants, etc. Instead it chose to build tunnels and rockets.
As the de facto governing authority, it has the obligation to provide water, not Israel, if we are talking about strictly legal aspect of this situation.
"Regarding the "governing" status of Hamas, I would observe that the overwhelming majority of Gazans are too young to have ever voted, and that Hamas seized and maintains power coercively, so we should be careful attributing ideas like rightful governing status to Hamas"
I agree, but I did not attribute "rightful" status to Hamas. It's just a factual observation that Hamas had de-facto governing control of the Gaza strip. Elections are not a pre-condition to control
Given that it had control of the Gaza strip, Hamas, as the controlling authority, has responsibility for civilians under its control, not Israel, at least legally
if you want to argue that regardless of legal responsibilites, Israel is still responsible for those civilians, despite Hamas control, that's a separate line of reasoning that leads to its own implications
> It’s absurd to discuss all this as if Israel is the only party with agency here.
And each party is responsible for their own actions. It's not like some kind of car with two steering wheels. Each person has responsibility for what they do.
> Israel has no choice but to try and wipe out Hamas
Oh, so Israel has no agency. No choice but to turn off water, just lay waste to infrastructure to make Gaza unlivable, and of course no choice to sing about how there are "no civilians in Gaza", as shown during the hearing of the ICJ trial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G15NyemgYDM&t=4548s
Which is just one of so many clips the IDF soldiers are proudly making. They all talk about colonization very openly, and the dehumanizing rhetoric is just astonishing.
https://www.nad.ps/en/media-room/latest-israeli-incitement-r...
> But Hamas doesn’t have to embed itself in civilian population to fight Israel, that’s a choice they made knowing it would lead to high civilian casualties.
Many, many Israeli politicians have vowed to ethnically cleans if not outright murder Palestinians, for their Greater Israel thing. While they're doing it, no less. Right now, it's hundreds of thousands people set to starve, and that is justified with mere "aims" of Hamas. Nobody had to do or justify that, either.
edit: this just in:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/over-one-hun...
> “It is unprecedented to make an entire civilian population go hungry this completely and quickly. Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people.”
> Israel is destroying and blocking access to farmland and the sea. Recent reports allege that since Israeli military's ground offensive started on 27 October, approximately 22% of agricultural land, including orchards, greenhouses, and farmland in northern Gaza, has been razed by Israeli forces. Israel has reportedly destroyed approximately 70% of Gaza’s fishing fleet.
[..]
> Israel has also destroyed more than 60% of Palestinian homes in Gaza, directly affecting the ability to cook any food, and causing domicide through the mass destruction of dwellings, making the territory uninhabitable. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has estimated that nearly 85% of Gaza's population — representing 1.9 million people — is internally displaced, including many who have been displaced multiple times, as families are forced to move repeatedly in search of safety.
> “We have raised the alarm of the risk of genocide several times reminding all governments they have a duty to prevent genocide. Not only is Israel killing and causing irreparable harm against Palestinian civilians with its indiscriminate bombardments, it is also knowingly and intentionally imposing a high rate of disease, prolonged malnutrition, dehydration, and starvation by destroying civilian infrastructure,” said the experts. “Aid needs to be delivered to Gazans immediately and without any hindrance to prevent starvation.”
> “Our alarm for the unfolding genocide does not only refer to the ongoing bombardment of Gaza but also concerns the slow suffering and death caused by Israel’s long-standing occupation, blockade and current civic destruction, since genocide advances through an ongoing process and is not a singular event.”
Now, the point is, Hamas does want to fight Israel, it's their whole reason for existing as an entity. But certainly they can choose not to embed themselves in civilian population, digging tunnels under childrens' bedrooms, etc
Yes, war is absolutely horrible. And it could end instantaneously, if Hamas surrendered.
Wow, IDF soldiers made a clip? Yes, there are idiots in every army, this is not really relevant for analyzing the broader situation, or at best tangentially relevant.
"Many, many Israeli politicians have vowed to ethnically cleans if not outright murder Palestinians, for their Greater Israel thing"
And many many Palestinian actors have vowed the same. There are extremists literally in every single country. The difference is whether the extremists are actually running the policy of the government. Israeli Government spokespeople are out there every day explaining the policy and it's clearly not to ethnically cleanse, etc
You can't pick out what one idiot said in one instance and then completely ignore what others said in other instances.
Again, you have to engage with a very simple fact, if you want to analyze this situation objectively. Hamas has vowed to kill as many Israelis as they can for all eternity in the future basically. No sovereign country can allow this to happen to its citizens. Therefore, the only thing Israel can do is fight Hamas and try to destroy its capabilities to attack Israel
War is horrible, but you have to also acknowledge that Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel on and off for 17 years. All other options to stop this have been exhausted.
Nobody claimed that. If you're implying not having unlimited choices meant being forced to dehuamnize Palestinians and to call for their extermination and commit war crimes, that'd of course be false.
> And many many Palestinian actors have vowed the same.
What? Name one. What Palestinians actors have talked bout how there are no innocent Israelis?
And why are you comparing "actors" with people like President, Prime Minister, generals and soldiers in the field? And actions that match it, more importantly?
> Israeli Government spokespeople are out there every day explaining the policy and it's clearly not to ethnically cleanse, etc
No, they're not, they're just repeating their "but Hamas" stuff and it's hilarious to see how even the people who interview them sometimes run out of patience with that. One can't "explain" that the deeds that are already on record for having been committed haven't been committed. One can just kick up sand and lie about it.
> Hamas has vowed to kill as many Israelis as they can for all eternity in the future basically.
Or, as you said elsewhere, they want to "continue to keep killing infinite Israelis". Which is such an absurd attempt to justify the crimes Israel is committing.
Right now, you're saying Isreali is justified in its actions, which is leading to killing and starvation of civilians en masse, at rates we haven't seen before, because Hamas must be defeated and this is the only way. Since Hamas cannot be defeated in this way, it stands to reason that what you also are proposing is killing infinite Palestinians, unless they ethnically cleanse themselves, or stop having children. Same goes if you replace "freeing the hostages" with "destroying Hamas". The only way these actions achieve is the humanitarian catastrophe outlined above, which didn't even make you skip a beat.
And while Netanyahu is paying some lip service to not settling Gaza (and some Israelis are talking about how Ben Gvir should take over because that weakness is unforgivable), IDF soldiers are making their TikToks. Like this one addressing "Bibi", naming his unit (hence, no shame, this isn't something that will harm their career) and saying they will stick to it until they finished their task, which is, and I quote, "Occupation, Expulsion, Settlement"
"Since Hamas cannot be defeated in this way, it stands to reason" It can and it doesn't. Of course Hamas can be militarily defeated, its military infrastructure dismantled.
"No, they're not, they're just repeating their "but Hamas" stuff" Yes, they are
"What? Name one. What Palestinians actors have talked bout how there are no innocent Israelis?"
https://nypost.com/2023/11/01/news/hamas-official-vows-to-re...
"Right now, you're saying Isreali is justified in its actions, which is leading to killing and starvation of civilians en masse"
This is a war, you can't say Israeli actions are leading to killing of civilians, because this war has two sides, two players. At a minimum, the actions of Hamas have effects on civlians. At the very minimum, misfired rockets that they fire at Israel are known to fall on the heads of civilians injuring and killing them. The war could end if Hamas decicded to end it, not just Israel
"IDF soldiers are making their TikToks."
IDF has hundreds of thousands of soldiers, so 5 of them made a tiktok, so what? it's irrelevant.
By destroying civilian infrastructure, targeting journalists, using starvation? No, that can kill all civilians in Gaza, and then there still will be Hamas in a tunnel somewhere.
And that Hamas dude is not an actor? I thought you meant movie actors.
But okay, the only people who say the kind of stuff that is normalized in Israeli society and repeated from highest ranks to lowest soldier, the only equivalent to it, is Hamas. (and probably Antisemites and all sorts of terrible people, but nobody that is remotely considered respectable by anyone in the West). You kind of made that point for me.
> IDF has hundreds of thousands of soldiers, so 5 of them made a tiktok, so what? it's irrelevant.
And when many, many, many of public Israeli figures call all people in Gaza animals and call for extermination, then that's irrelevant because Hamas the terrorist organization is saying terrorist things ^^
At any rate it's not 5, and the fact that they make these genocidal statements while destroying civilian infrastructure, including usually naming their unit, often even the name of the person who leads it, makes it clear that it's not fringe, it's not something hidden, it's not a video that was stolen of a flash card, it's what they upload on social media and get celebrated for at home. And that rhetoric seems to matches the actions on the ground way better than all that stuff about this being "war" and aimed primarily at Hamas.
they are not using starvation, humanitarian aid is going into Gaza, multiple trucks are going on, hundreds a day. they are not targeting journalists, they are targeting Hamas. There are plenty of examples of Hamas affiliated "journalists" there.
"At any rate, it's not 5". It doesn't matter if it's 5 or 10. There are literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers. You are holding Israel to a bizarre standard that no country can fulfill while somehow completely letting Palestinians off the hook. Thousands of civilians took part in the October 7th massacre. If you are going to compare soldiers making tiktoks
Israel has fringe figures, bad people that say bad things or do bad things like any other country. This is not relevant to the analysis of the situation in which two sides are at war. In war civilians die, civlian infrastructure gets destroyed and that is horrible. But it;s extremely bizarre to place full responsibility on one side of the war, the side that did not start the war. Hamas started the war and Hamas made clear that Israel doesnt have too many options.