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Israeli strike hits Rafah area after Hamas barrage
(www.bbc.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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If it was proportional? If it didn't involve innocents? Yes.
Is there any war-ever in history- that didn't involve civilian casualties? Any?
Is there any war ever in history that all actions on either are morally justified?
In war, you are allowed to kill innocents if necessary to achieve a valid military objective.
In this war, the IDF's objective is to destroy Hamas.
"Allowed" by whom? "Necessary" by whose metric?
If their objective is to destroy Hamas and they determine that the only way to do that is wipe out the Palestinian people from the face of the Earth, you're saying that's justified because it's their necessary military objective?
Allowed by international law.
Necessary according to their military capabilities, which can be judged by observers.
Most observers don't think destroying Hamas requires wiping out all Palestinians, but at the same time it's impossible to destroy Hamas without civilian casualties.
Okay, well observers are saying Israel is committing genocide, so I'm not sure what your issue is.
Also, I'm not sure why you think what is legal is the same as what is moral.
Legal isn't the same as moral, but there is no consensus on the morality of war. Some people are pacifists and believe all war is immoral. Most people believe war is justified if it has a legitimate casus belli.
Whether or not Israel is committing genocide is a separate question from whether a military action is morally permissible, because genocide involves actions with no military purpose. In other words it's possible that strikes like these are morally permissible even if a government is also doing things that are illegal, like blocking aid delivery.
Once again- if Israel determines that wiping out every last Palestinian has a military purpose, that, according to you, is not genocide and is also justified.
You have a very strange idea about what is or is not justified in this world. You seem to think Dresden was justified and that killing thousands of children in Gaza is justified because things happen in war.
Please do contact the parents of dead Gazan children and let them know those deaths were justified. Let me know how it goes.
Again, by definition genocide has no military purpose.
Israel's military objective is to destroy Hamas. According to Western military doctrine (which Israel is capable of using), this objective does not require wiping out every last Palestinian. So it doesn't matter what Israel "determines", wiping out every last Palestinian is not permissible.
I think if war is justified, then killing children is justified because children are always killed in war. Personally I'm ambivalent about whether war can ever be justified, but I certainly recognize that most people think it can.
It isn't.
If you're a pacifist, I can respect that.
But I don't agree with those who believe that (say) the US invasion of Normandy can be justified, but this invasion cannot be justified. Both involved immense civilian suffering.
The invasion of Normandy was not what started the war. The war started when the Nazis invaded Poland.
And the storming of Normandy beach did not involve the deaths of civilians.
This war started when Hamas invaded Israel.
And the invasion of Normandy did not end on the beach.
Hamas did not invade Israel. What are you talking about? They didn't try to take over territory. They committed an act of terrorism, not an act of war.
Distinction without difference, it's a casus belli either way.
Of course there's a difference. An invasion is about seizing territory.
An attack is a casus belli even without seizing territory.
For example, if Putin launched missiles at Warsaw or DC, he would start a war. It makes no difference if any territory is taken.
I see, and that will justify killing countless Russian children in your opinion?
A missile strike is a legitimate casus belli. If you're not a pacifist, that means it justifies force to achieve a military objective, which necessarily justifies killing civilians.
Whether that's "countless" or a few depends on the objective.
Yes, I get that you think that as long as it fits the military goal, killing any amount of children is justified.
And I'm telling you that position is disgusting and abhorrent.
There is no military goal that justifies killing "any amount" of civilians. All of them have limits, which are based on military capabilities.
Okay, what is the limit of children the IDF should be able to kill before it is no longer justified? Give me a number.
In general, civilian-combatant casualty ratios range from 1:1 to 5:1. They tend to be higher in urban settings like Gaza. The Chechen wars were closer to 7-10:1
The US estimates 15,000 combatants have been killed in Gaza. If so, we would consider 15,000 to 75,000 civilian deaths to be normal at this point.
Anyone reading along in this thread should probably check the veracity of these claimed ratios. Wikipedia has an okay overview.
It's also worth noting that the Russian wars in Chechnya were particularly notable for their brutal war crimes.
@FlyingSquid
I'll save you the effort:
If there are 15,000 combatants among the 35,000 dead in Gaza, then this war stands at 1.3:1
Israel themselves said they would accept 15 dead civilians for low level Hamas staff and 100+ for higher ranking ones.
And they overshoot hard.
IDF count every male above 16 as Hamas by default. You're gonna get a lot of false positives that way
I asked about children.
I consider all civilians to be equal, so I'm not going to separate children for the same reason I'm not going to separate Palestinian Christians, mothers, teachers, or retirees.
Okay, let me put it this way- are you so firm in your conviction that all the child deaths in Gaza so far have been justified that you would be willing to say that to the parents of a dead child? Because I'm willing to find some so that you can tell them that yourself. I bet they'd even be willing to get on video chat with you so you can tell them, to their faces, that their child's death was justifiable.
So, are you willing to do that? Tell grieving parents that their child's death was justifiable because Israel is accomplishing its military objectives?
Believing something is true does not mean that you should tell someone, especially someone in grief.
If someone's husband just died, would you be willing to say, "You should know that he was cheating on you for years"?
If someone's mother just died, would you be willing to say, "I really think you should have spent more time with her in her final days"?
If someone's child commits suicide, would you be willing to say, "You could have prevented this if you had bothered to pay attention to the warning signs"?
Even if all these things are 100% true, I think it would be monstrous to blurt them out.
Sometimes compassion means respecting that people are not always ready to hear the truth.
Okay, so you would be willing to tell them that in a year, correct? You gave them time to grieve, so they would be ready to hear the truth.
Shall we make an appointment in one years' time for you to tell the parents of a dead Palestinian child that their child's death was justified so that Israel could meet their military objectives?
Some people will never be ready.
One year later, ten years later, a million years later: I would never say "You could have prevented your child's death".
Most people do not want to debate the circumstances of their child's death, ever. They often only want reassurance that it's part of god's plan. And if that's all they want, then that's all I will ever say about it (even though I'm not exactly religious).
Do you think any Palestinians will be willing to hear that the death of a Palestinian child was justified so that Israel could achieve its military goals?
Edit: Wait a second-
What are you even talking about? I thought this was about whether or not the death was justified, not whether or not it was preventable.
“You could have prevented your child’s death” is simply an example of something that may be true, but I will never say to anyone. Not next year, not in a hundred years. Not in Palestine, not in New York.
I don't think anyone, Palestinian or not, will be willing to debate whether the death of their child was justified.
I think plenty of people, including Palestinians, are willing to debate whether the death of other people's children is justified. For example, some Palestinians argued that the death of Israeli children on 10/7 was justified.
You didn't answer my question. I will ask it again:
You're not allowed to target civilians at all.
You can target military objectives like certain infrastructure to disable it, but you're not allowed to target civilians. The rules of war just says when civilian casualties aren't punishable. You have to take measures to ensure attacks are as precise as you can make them and with as little collateral damage as possible.
"eliminate every human because they might be an enemy" is not a valid military objective.
That's true, you cannot target civilians. But you can destroy a military objective even if you know it will kill civilians. Per ICC:
"Eliminate every human" is not a valid objective, but "eliminate Hamas" is.