Yawn....... Israel attacked by Hamas

themickey said:
I'm looking forward to Trump and the Republican Party being relected, then we'll see some more revenge in action and everything will truly turn to shit, you can then thank the Jewish lobbyists, the evangelicals and Biden for that.
Biden will be voted out because he's a proven political asshole.
Corruption breeds corruption.
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then you never really cared for what Israel does in Gaza if you think things would improve on his reelection. The conflict will likely have died off by then tho...
 
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Cuddles said:
for those keeping tabs:

hamas=hamas
reporters=hamas
civilians=hamas
women=hamas
children=hamas
palestinian=hamas
Israel protesters=hamas
Palestinian supporters=hamas
Harvard students=hamas
Harvard president=hamas
hospitals=hamas
schools=hamas
refugee camps=hamas
doctors w/o borders=hamas
UN workers=hamas

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South Africa=hamas:

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Cuddles said:
then you never really cared for what Israel does in Gaza if you think things would improve on his reelection. The conflict will likely have died off by then tho...
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Trump won't improve things, Biden won't improve things, the only thing that will is starve Israel from US taxpayer hand outs and discontinue the entitled attitude Israel has.
 
themickey said:
Trump won't improve things, Biden won't improve things, the only thing that will is starve Israel from US taxpayer hand outs and discontinue the entitled attitude Israel has.
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Don't forget these guys.
upload_2024-1-3_8-36-10.png

I guess you will need to add the Aussies to your "hate list" (Jews, Christians, Chinese, etc.). On second thought, you are already not too approving of the Australian government.

So nobody can say you discriminate -- you hate everybody!:D
 
gwb-trading said:
Bottom Line: The situation in Gaza is a tragedy --- a tragedy which Hamas is solely responsible for. Countries have the right to defend themselves against terrorists whose sole intent is to wipe a nation and its people off the face of the earth.

Israel is following the “principle of distinction” as per International Humanitarian Law (IHL) including following the three principles (distinction, precaution, proportionality) in its military actions.

The moral tragedy of Gaza - opinion
The loss of civilian life, their homes, and livelihoods is a tragedy, a disaster. It is even a crime – but one for which the liability must be laid solely at the doorstep of Hamas.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-780243

During World War II, far, far more German and Japanese civilians were killed than American and British civilians.

More than 300,000 German civilians and more than 200,000 Japanese civilians were killed by allied strategic bombing alone, leaving the starvation, disease, forced mass displacement, and general hellish suffering and deprivation that come with war.

The wisdom and morality of the allied bombing campaigns has been rightly questioned. Still, today, no one questions the basic rightness of the allied cause. And no one would be so foolish as to suggest that the higher Axis body count made them the victims in the war and the Allies the aggressors.

This is because, on an intuitive level, the moral mind understands that suffering per se is not a moral category. Suffering more does not make you a more ethical person – while suffering less does not make you an oppressor. It is true that often, throughout history, aggressors have profited from the oppression of suffering victims.

We need not look further than the era of colonialism or thousands of years of institutionalized slavery to see plentiful examples of such injustice. But sometimes, conversely, justice is done, and then it is the aggressor who ends up suffering more. The aggressor’s suffering does not indemnify them, and the victory of the defenders against aggression does not compromise the justness of their fight.

All this makes sense to most of the world most of the time.

What is Israel doing to the Palestinians?
It certainly should make sense to the horde of smug media commentators fighting relentlessly to keep the focus of the international community on the horrific humanitarian situation in Gaza. But now, of course, there are Jews involved, and when it comes to the Jews the rules change.

It is true, they say, that Hamas violated every rule of war and humanitarian norm imaginable on October 7, and it might be true that they continue to do so by fighting disguised as civilians and using hospitals and schools as military bases, but (always look after the “but”) that is not “the story.” The story is what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, because the Palestinians are suffering more.

What is Israel doing to the Palestinians? To date, more than 1.5 million people have been displaced. (We might say “made refugees” but most were already – or at least saw themselves as such.) Sixty percent of built-up areas have been demolished, so most refugees will have no homes to return to. More than 20,000 people have been killed, if we are to believe the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not trouble itself to distinguish in these statistics between combatants and civilians – so let us put the number of civilian deaths at “many.”

The destitute masses of humanity crowded into UN schools and camps in southern Gaza have completely inadequate housing, food, and medical care. Some are starving; many are dying in agony of diseases that cannot be treated for want of medicine. All are cold. Can such a state of suffering and misery possibly be justified, under any circumstances?

Yes, as a matter of fact.

The principle of distinction makes demands on both sides
The laws of war mandate that all belligerent powers do their utmost to distance fighting from civilians in order to protect them. Noncombatants cannot be a target of hostilities. In International Humanitarian Law (IHL) this is called the “principle of distinction.” But the law also recognizes that if one side flouts these rules by fighting from civilian areas, that cannot tie the hands of the law-abiding side. To do so would be unjust. And so, if a hospital or school – which is a protected area under international law – is used to store weapons or fighters, it becomes a legitimate military target, provided two conditions are met.

First, the attack against the target must do its best to minimize civilian casualties, for example by using a smaller bomb to destroy only the room or apartment in question, or by dropping leaflets warning civilians to flee. (This is the “principle of precaution.”) Second, it must weigh the military advantage gained from the strike against the civilian loss of life that would ensue, to ensure that it is not, say, killing 100 innocent children just to get to one lone fighter. (This is the “principle of proportionality.”)

As long as the fighting force adheres to these three principles (distinction, precaution, proportionality), its attacks are lawful. And while the IDF makes mistakes, and while individual soldiers or commanders can make bad or even reprehensible decisions, the army as a whole devotes enormous resources – including large offices of military lawyers whose entire job is this – to ensure that its strikes follow these principles.

This is what makes the IDF a law-abiding, moral army, and that is what makes its strikes just, even when they inevitably kill Palestinian (or, for that matter, Israeli) civilians and destroy their property because terrorist armies cannot be allowed to make themselves invulnerable by hiding among noncombatants.

The loss of civilian life, their homes, and livelihoods is a tragedy, a disaster. It is even a crime – but one for which the liability must be laid solely at the doorstep of Hamas, the terrorist army that chooses to use its own people as human shields.

History will judge people's moral clarity- or lack thereof- on Gaza
THIS IS the moral lynchpin of the Gaza war and, more generally, all of Israel’s asymmetric conflicts with the Palestinians. One hundred years from now, when we have all moved on, the moral integrity of analysts and statesmen in assessing this conflict will be judged on this question: Did you understand that – to the extent that the IDF obeyed the laws of war – the inevitable horrific suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza was the fault of Hamas? If you are able to say this, you will be vindicated by history. If not, you will be damned.

All those whose moral judgment is not clouded by the fashionable sophisms of the modern West see that there is a right side and a wrong side to this war, a side that systematically follows humanitarian law and norms and a side that systematically breaks them.

Yes, that makes this a war between good and evil. We must not be afraid to say it: Those who target the innocent for murder, torture, and rape are evil. Their supporters are evil, their apologists are evil, and those who knowingly cooperate with their twisted propaganda war are evil. As for those on the sidelines who stubbornly refuse to see the simple truth that you are moral not when you suffer, but when you act morally – they are at the very least sorry rubes in a moral tragedy that is unfolding on a global scale.

World pressure continues to mount on the State of Israel to relent in its pursuit of Hamas, agreeing to a long-term ceasefire that leaves its murderous leadership in place to continue its unceasing total war against Israel. It goes without saying that to do so would be a double evil, accomplishing all this terrible hurt to Palestinian life without achieving safety and justice for the Israeli people. It would be a defeat not only for Israel, but for all that is decent and right.

And so, it falls to us Israelis, in the face of such pressure, not to flinch, but to remain adamant.

A world in which murderers can massacre with impunity by hiding behind innocents is neither just nor safe. And the hypocrites who would have us, of all the peoples on Earth, sacrifice generations of our own children at the altar of their moral perversity will live in infamy forever.
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Attacking terrorists who are shooting at you while they use civilians as human shields is not a war crime. First only a fool would take the claims about civilian casualties from the Hamas Health Ministry at face value -- the majority of those casualties are militants. Second, under international law Israel has not committed war crimes. The simply presence of civilian casualties in a war zone is not evidence of war crimes unless there is proof that the civilians were targeted outside the scope of legitimate military operations. Are the civilian casualties sad? Yes. However Hamas is solely responsible for all of them.

The Casualties in Gaza Don’t Indicate War Crimes
https://themessenger.com/opinion/civilian-casualties-gaza-israel-hamas-war-crimes

A single death might be a tragedy and a million a statistic, as the saying goes, but there is no number of deaths that automatically constitutes a war crime.

Increasingly, Israel’s critics are using the number of Gazans killed to argue that Israel should cease its military campaign to destroy Hamas after the terrorist group’s barbaric Oct. 7 attack. “[F]ar too many Palestinians have been killed,” both Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have lamented.

The casualty numbers are likely inaccurate and include thousands of terrorists. As National Security Council coordinator John Kirby has stated, “We can’t take anything coming out of Hamas, including the so-called Ministry of Health, at face value.” More importantly, casualties do not determine the legality, or morality, of military action. There is no magic number below which soldiers are law-abiding but, which, once crossed, renders them war criminals. Legality and morality must be judged on the specific intent of each attack, not its outcome.

According to the principles of necessity and distinction, attacks must be directed only at known military targets and never deliberately at civilians only. But that does not mean civilian casualties automatically constitute a war crime.

All responsible and respected scholars and international organizations acknowledge that, unfortunately, civilians will be injured and killed in war. The law of armed conflict does not prohibit such harm but, instead, attempts to limit it.

Once a military target is selected, proportionality requires only that the commander anticipate that the attack’s military advantage will be greater than the potential for incidental harm to civilians. However, commanders must exercise constant care to mitigate that harm as much as is feasible.

Succinctly, the law of armed conflict tolerates civilian casualties, however tragic, if they are not deliberately inflicted; if they occur while attacking significant military objectives; and if attempts are made to mitigate them. This means that an attack that kills no civilians could violate the law of armed conflict while another, which results in civilian casualties, might not. How could this be?

Many legal experts believe that Hamas perpetrated war crimes by intentionally targeting civilians for murder, torture, rape, mutilation, and kidnapping. And Hamas likely commits a war crime with each of the roughly 12,000 rockets it has fired. Regardless of whether the rocket deliberately targets Israeli civilians or is haphazardly launched, regardless of whether it lands or is shot down, regardless of whether civilians die or not, Hamas’s desire to kill Israeli civilians — or even its complete disregard for whether its rockets hit a home, military base or a hospital — make its actions illegal because Hamas fails to distinguish between military and civilian targets.

When Israel targets an apartment building in which a Hamas commander is present or under which Hamas has hidden its rockets, even if civilian casualties ensue, it has likely acted legally. Civilian infrastructure, when used to hide terrorists or their weapons, is a legitimate military target. Israel intensely scrutinizes its targets to evaluate the possibility of civilian casualties and uses active notifications — making phone calls or dropping leaflets — to encourage civilians to flee targeted areas. If too many civilians nevertheless remain, Israel has called off strikes. But, when it judges that the risk to civilians does not outweigh the benefit of the strike, Israel attacks lawfully.

Because of the presence of terrorists or their weapons, because of the precautions Israel takes, because of the deliberate process of collateral damage estimation its professional military undertakes for each strike, Israel’s actions are legal — even when civilians tragically are killed.

This approach follows the reasoning of the Old Testament and New Testament, our own criminal codes, and basic morality: intention determines criminality. Unintended deaths might be overlooked. Deliberate murder brings harsher penalties than manslaughter; hate crimes — murder committed with racial, ethnic or religious malice — harsher still.

How could it be otherwise?

To outlaw any civilian casualties in war would be to grant impunity to terrorists willing to illegally hide among civilians, as Hamas does. Setting some numerical threshold of deaths above which war crimes are deemed to have occurred would only incentivize terrorists to expose their human shields to as much danger as possible.

This already is Hamas’s strategy. Counting on the international community to heap opprobrium on Israel, it deliberately puts Gazans in harm’s way. By blocking civilians from evacuating, allegedly shooting at them if they attempt to flee, and killing others with its own misfired rockets, Hamas feeds and weaponizes concerns for the well-being of Palestinians.

Raw numbers are meaningless, at least when it comes to judging the legality or morality of Israel’s and Hamas’s conduct. Indignation over casualty figures only rewards Hamas’s illegal and flagrant disregard for civilian lives, leading to more deaths.

Retired Rear Adm. Steven B. Kantrowitz served in the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
 
gwb-trading said:
Attacking terrorists who are shooting at you while they use civilians as human shields is not a war crime. First only a fool would take the claims about civilian casualties from the Hamas Health Ministry at face value -- the majority of those casualties are militants. Second, under international law Israel has not committed war crimes. The simply presence of civilian casualties in a war zone is not evidence of war crimes unless there is proof that the civilians were targeted outside the scope of legitimate military operations. Are the civilian casualties sad? Yes. However Hamas is solely responsible for all of them.
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riiiight....because taking the IDF claim that every male casualty of fighting age is a terrorist is totally not foolish....Israeli numbers that put the civilian death toll still in the 15k as of a few weeks ago.

"hey guise, guise, imma shoot these missiles at random in this general area because there's probably terrorists underground that the bombs will do nothing about. I don't mean to target civvies, I'm not a war criminal, I pinky promise."

You need to take more clown courses GWB
 
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ph1l said:
Don't forget these guys.
View attachment 330963
I guess you will need to add the Aussies to your "hate list" (Jews, Christians, Chinese, etc.). On second thought, you are already not too approving of the Australian government.
So nobody can say you discriminate -- you hate everybody!:D
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The global arms trade is possibly one of the biggests 'global sinners'.
What it all seems to do is fuel more violence.
Americans love their guns for 'protection', (fear) and that inspires a gun industry which grows bigger by the year.
This inspires more countries to self protect, so more guns, bombs, missiles produced.
South Korea now wants nuclears arms.
I suppose one day the whole shebang will blow up in our face, I can't see an alternative, every year we want more weapons, sending them into space now, add robotic weapons.....

As for christians and Jews (don't wanna forget them) all the praying under the sun won't save them.
Lets build bomb shelters and live underground, yah great idea, living a cockroach life is the way to go for our future.
 
gwb-trading said:
Claims of genocide in Gaza are absurd... as outlined by the U.S. government. Hamas needs to stop using civilians as human shields.

US 'not seeing acts of genocide' in Gaza, State Dept says
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-not-seeing-acts-genocide-gaza-state-dept-says-2024-01-03/
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your own conclusions do not compute:

gwb-trading said:
Netanyahu and his right-wing government has no plan to create a two state solution. Instead they are casting about trying to find a country that will take in the Palestinian residents of Gaza. This "voluntary resettlement" would effectively be ethnic cleansing.

Israel in Secret Talks to ‘Resettle’ Palestinians in Congo, Report Says
https://www.thedailybeast.com/israel-in-secret-talks-to-resettle-palestinians-in-congo-report-says
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per UN:
Why do you think Israel insists on "Palestinians" not being a thing or a people/group?

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