IDF fails to confirm Gaza hostages' cause of death, mother claims poison

FuglyDuck , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

“The results of the investigation: Ron was indeed murdered,” she wrote. “Not by Hamas. Think more in the direction of Auschwitz and the showers but without Nazis and without Hamas as the cause. No accidental shooting, no report, premeditated murder, bombings with poisonous gases.”

According to her, the IDF filled the tunnel in which he was held with gas, and his son was poisoned to death.

“Ron was kidnapped because of the criminal negligence of all the senior officials of the army and the damned government who gave the order to eliminate him in order to settle a score with some terrorist from Jabalya.” The mother claimed that “they found that he also had several crushed fingers, apparently due to his desperate attempts to get out of the poison grave that the IDF buried in him when he tried to breathe air, but he only breathed IDF poison. There is no future for this country if this is what they did to you after they abandoned you that Saturday. What was the decision if Bibi’s son was there in the terrorist’s tunnel or Gallant’s grandson? Or the son of Hertzi Halevi? Would they also have been poisoned with gas bombs?”

-FTA, the mother’s statements.

civilian casualties will happen in war. there’s pretty much nothing that will stop that. Civilian casualties will always skyrocket though, when you use indiscriminate weapons… like gas attacks…

sirboozebum , 7 months ago

I wonder how many Palestinian civilians have been killed with poison gas.

According to the US and it’s Western allies:

Syrian army using gas is a war crime.

IDF using gas is perfectly fine.

FuglyDuck , 7 months ago

Idunno.

I’m going to preface this with saying I believe it’s a war crime and we should be sanctioning Israel every bit as much as we’ve sanctioned Russia.

But a critical distinction might be getting made in how the poison gas is getting used. Like with white phosphorus- use as a smoke screen away from civilians is okay, use as shelling over civilians… not so much.

It’d be a bullshit technicality that the tunnels are enclosed and they believe no civilians are in there… but it’s an argument I could see working to satisfy my stupid, super-pac-addicted president.

deegeese , 7 months ago

IDF killing hostages is nothing new, but using poison gas is a brand new war crime.

JustZ , 7 months ago

Using poison gas is nothing new too because there is no evidence that that’s what happened other than the wild speculation of a grieving mother. There are plenty of things that can cause poisonous gas to accumulate underground. How could she possibly know the source?

Doorbook , 7 months ago

Do you work for the IDF or are you an Israeli? You defending them like they cannot do war crimes or anything wrong… which statistically impossible, almost every army commit war crimes…

JustZ , 7 months ago

Nah read my posts. It’s a complex situation.

Linkerbaan , 7 months ago

A weapon banned by the Geneva convention because it indiscriminately murders everyone in the vicinity means that it’s effective right? - israel

JustZ , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

What weapon?

Cause of death is undetermined. Family says no gunshots so it must be gas. Probably. Doesn’t mean it was a weapon. All sorts of gases underground. Could have been a fire somewhere else in the tunnels. Could have been a generator running down there filling it up with carbon monoxide. Could have been the percussive blast of bombs falling nearby. This story is entirely speculation.

Linkerbaan , 7 months ago

Israeli army gassed my son ‘like Auschwitz,’ mother of slain Israeli soldier says

Israel has refused to divulge further information regarding the circumstances of the deaths, stating in a press release that “it cannot be denied nor confirmed that they were killed due to strangulation, suffocation, poisoning, or as the result of an IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] attack or Hamas operation.” But Sherman’s mother says all the evidence indicates the Israeli government deliberately killed her son.

mozz , 7 months ago

Interestingly enough I was assured by someone a couple days ago that Jerusalem Post was all pro-Israel propaganda, and I therefore couldn't trust a word out of its mouth. Apparently that person was grossly mistaken.

hannes3120 , 7 months ago

If they publish something you don’t like it’s always easier to attack the source than the article.

NoneOfUrBusiness , 7 months ago

They're not all pro-Israel propaganda, but they definitely have a significant pro-Israeli bent and need to be fact-checked.

mozz , 7 months ago

I mean, everybody does. Most things you read are going to be "only one side of the story" in one sense or another. I've just observed that a lot of Lemmy people jump very easily to "that source is biased I can reject everything in it completely" even when that source is publishing things like this that clearly do not have the bias they're claiming.

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

Most moral army in the world poisons hostages it claims to be trying to rescue

JustZ , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Close to where the bodies were found, the IDF attacked a tunnel in which the commander of the northern division of Gaza, Ahmad Al Ghandour… The investigation shows that at the time of the attack, the IDF did not know about the presence of hostages in the area. Also, the forces who found their bodies during searches in the tunnel did not have prior intelligence about their presence.

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

So one of their objectives is rescuing hostages, and they can’t check before they poison a bunch of people? At this point the IDF has killed more hostages than it has saved. I don’t think it’s just bad luck. They. Don’t. Care.

JustZ , 7 months ago

It’s not like they know their way around these tunnels. They were built to be hard to navigate and built to conceal people and contraband.

Bottom line bud, if there was a fire anywhere near a shaft, heavier-than-air gases will sink downward into tunnels. Have you ever heard stories about someone goes down even into a root cellar or something and then passes out, and three more people go down after them one a time and all succumb?

You’re attributing to malice what is easily explained by basic physics and coincidence.

Doorbook , 7 months ago

Yes these hostages who were killed waving the white flag can also be explained by coincidence.

JustZ , 7 months ago

Do you understand how these two events are and are not connected? They are independent events.

That one was a war crime. It’s very normal to be angry about that. Try not to let that inject logical fallacies into your thoughts process about unrelated events, though.

snek , 7 months ago

This would make more sense if the IDF didn’t have a track record of killing Palestinians on purpose and Israelis “by mistake”.

JustZ , 7 months ago

That’s not evidence of what happened on this occasion, it’s rote speculation and conjecture.

snek , 7 months ago

I agree that the mother may be speculating on what’s written between the lines in the report, but can you blame her since all IDF operations only brought a single hostage back alive?

If you look at each individual incident, you may be able to come up with some excuse that could seem very flimsy to some (like myself), but what about putting them all together? The big picture looks grim for Israel. Field executions, destroying infrastructure, starving the population… With a genocide case looming, I see why Israel sympathizers and Zionists would like to focus on the nitty gritty details of fake IDF reports (you don’t deem them fake of course), because it distracts from the extensively large tapestry of blood and ethnic cleansing that Israel been weaving for us to see day after day for the past 3 months on television, gore and all.

JustZ , 7 months ago

I can separate the right wing conservatives that are in Israel from the country and people of Israel. And because it’s a democracy, there’s a chance that in my lifetime the people there will throw these right wing pieces of shit perpetrating some of the war crimes you’ve described out of office or the military and into prison.

I can also see, and apparently I am the only one here, that it isn’t all of one thing or all of the other thing. There are some members of the IDF that have been radicalized by the intellectual rot of nationalism into being fine with some atrocities. That’s why there’s a video of an IDF tank mowing down a group of people with white flags that turned out to be hostages. One or even dozens of illegal acts in war does not make the war itself illegal.

snek , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

No, you’re right, it is not the few bad apples in the IDF spoiling the bunch and making it an illegal war or a war crime…

It’s actually all the other things the IDF did that makes it a genocide and war crime. Like turning the water off, making aid slow and kafkaesque, putting aid workers in danger so Palestinians can die of starvation, and destroying every university building (I think all seven have been destroyed).

It’s not Tamar or Ariel who killed a whole family in a summary execution that are the problem… It’s the entire platoon. They are not a “few dozen”.

I often wonder what kind of denial you are in given your comments because the rest of us wake up to a “few dozen” war crimes every day with no end in sight.

JustZ , 7 months ago

A few dozen every day? Maybe if all you do is watch TikTok videos and if you believe everything you read.

The media makes it sounds like thousands of civilians have been bombed on refugee camps or on humanitarian routes. As of last week there had been less than 100 deaths in such a circumstances. That’s not the story that people are hearing, though.

I had a comment deleted as false information because I said 99.996% of Palestinians were still alive. Mod “corrected” me and said “it’s actually 1% of the population.” Notwithstanding, it is absolutely correct that 99.996% of Palestinians are still alive (actual Palestinians killed is 0.004%).

See, even one of our mods got tricked here. Perhaps you’ve been tricked just enough times with regard to Israel and Hamas that your sympathies are with the side that actually bombs their neighbor indiscriminately and that actually targets women and children on purpose?

If the putative aggressor is three months in, going on four, of committing genocide, and only 0.004% of the people they’re allegedly trying to genocide have been killed, I don’t think anyone can reasonably call it genocide. At this rate of civilian deaths, if the actual true goal is genocide, as you suggest, it will take Israel another 6,250 years. Hmm weird, they certainly have the capability of wiping out every structure in Gaza and the West Bank within a matter of hours. Doesn’t that make you think, hey maybe I’ve been tricked?

snek , 7 months ago

I don’t watch Tiktok. My information is from respectable Journalists and human rights organization. Your information is from the IDF. Do you not recognize the issue here?

JustZ , 7 months ago

Most of my info on background is from public records of the State Department, White House, and CIA, as well as legal briefs and law reviews. I consider these primary sources on which I’ve formed my own opinions. I’m certainly not here regurgitating talking points. Happy to admit when I am wrong and learn from it, in this and any other aspect of life.

snek , 7 months ago

Wouldn’t it be wiser to diversify your sources? For example, why not B’Tselem? Why not HRW or the UN?

JustZ , 7 months ago

Sure, UN, too. I’ve read docs from HRW. I didn’t put NGOs on my list but certainly NGOs. Even think tanks sometimes are good for historical background, especially on histories or timelines or US relations with a particular foreign country. Wikipedia is a great aggregator for following a war, starting point for events or places that I’m unfamiliar with as I learn.

Hey, you seem very smart too and you’re asking intelligent questions. I suppose a younger me would have answered them much like you. October 7 significantly changed the calculus.

snek , 7 months ago

So when the UN says that Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza as a war weapon , is that showing both intent and action towards genocide? 🤔

HRW seem to think Biden supporting Israel with weapons is also illegal given the war crimes and genociding Israel does right and left. When I read the reports from HRW or the UN who themselves have lost over 100 of their employees in violent deaths in Gaza, I can’t help but think the IDF use flimsy excuses to cover their crimes or deny them or say woopsie.

For example the Al-Israa University building they demolished recently? Israel is now saying it’s investigating why it’s doing that (I think that was on ToI yesterday), but the brilliant journalist Matt Lee from AP makes a good point in this exchange with the US State Department Spokespam: if the it was safe enough to plant demolition explosives which takes lots of time and work, why was it dangerous enough to blow up?

Unless of course the goal of Israel currently is destroy so much infrastructure in Gaza to make it unlibeable to the point that would make people die of famine or force them to leave, ethnic cleansing either way.

You said you read reports from US officials and IDF. What have they said about this university? And what would it look like if the IDF was wrong to demolish it but the US wanted to cover their ass?

JustZ , 7 months ago

Re: Al-Isras. This only happened four days ago so info is limited. I agree that if it is proven that the University buildings were destroyed for no reason other than to destroy vital infrastructure, that is evidence of genocide.

Looking at the video, it looks absolutely nothing like a controlled demolition. I don’t know what Matt Lee is looking at; and the entirety of his questioning is based on that false premise (that since it was a controlled demolition, it look a lot of planning and set up and obviously it was safe to go inside to set the charges, “it looks like a building bekng imploded”).

Obviously you may watch the video for yourself, but it looks absolutely nothing like Mike Lee described. He is lying.

It is a single, massive explosion that send debris out in every direction. It’s not in any sense of the word is it an implosion or controlled. It very clearly appears to be an airstrike to me, or perhaps a single large satchel charge. I also note that before the explosion, the building already looks like it’s been bombed out and is partially collapsed. I wonder if there was fighting with Hamas there during the time Israel used the buildings as a command center?

I don’t see an official explanation from IDF or the US or anyone. But I expect one will come out and due course.

A related point here, that I’ve been making, is that the tunnel systems under Gaza and elsewhere in Palestinian territory, including some tunnels in the West bank, are just and moral targets for Israel to destroy. It is most unfortunate that Hamas decided to construct those tunnels under vital civilian infrastructure. When the tunnels are now being destroyed, it makes such infrastructure unstable and unsafe and virtually all of Gaza City is uninhabitable from a structural engineering standpoint because of the tunnels, and will remain so until it is paved over and rebuilt. Significantly, the people of Gaza have neither the ability nor capacity to rebuild.

snek , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

I agree with you, I watched it again and watched compilations of controlled explosions and it doesn’t look the same (likely due to the debris hiding anything from plain view). I wonder if anyone on lemmy would be more of an expert on this. Still, they had time to go in and plant explosives.

But the IDF itself said it was a controlled explosion.

A screenshot taken from the Times of Israel website. Title: IDF says it is probing demolition of campus in Gaza last week, after US voiced ire. Subtitle: Military says it is looking into approval process for controlled explosion at Israa University; initial findings say Hamas used grounds to conduct attacks on troops. Posted on January 21st

So now that we have established this…

Why would the IDF bomb a university campus, forcing Gazans to rebuild? I think the IDF destroyed . Why do that at all?

But of course your next explanation always comes to the rescue in such questions

wonder if there was fighting with Hamas there during the time Israel used the buildings as a command center?

Do you see how the whole “command center/hamas-did-it/human-shields” trope is what allows the IDF to bomb anyone and anything and kill any child, woman, or man without repercussions? You’re smart, surely you understand that you are here making speculations to excuse inexcusable IDF behavior?

Also somehow it’s okay for Israel to use the university as a command center, but not a resistance group fighting a colonialist power? I mean… you make anything okay for Israel, anything justified, no matter how ugly.

The IDF could kill your mother at this point and you would still go online and say “wonder if there was a Hamas tunnel in her house?”

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

Notwithstanding, it is absolutely correct that 99.996% of Palestinians are still alive (actual Palestinians killed is 0.004%).

Sorry I don’t understand this number at all. Can you explain your math?

(Over 23k killed ÷ 2.3 million in Gaza) × 100% = Over 1%, surely?

JustZ , 7 months ago

The Gaza Strip is a tiny little area over on the left. The whole of Gaza is the size of Vegas and Gaza City is similar in size and population to Newark, New Jersey.

The West Bank is over on the right (eastern Israel, on the western bank of the Jordan River).

Three out of Five Palestinians live in the west bank.

Hamas operates primarily out of Gaza City (Northern Gaza), but they also fight in the West Bank. There are tunnels in West Bank, but they are small and disconnected from one another, tunnels connecting handfuls of buildings, or just hidden underground rooms used for snuggling weapons and people. There’s been a handful of airstrikes on personnel and tunnels in the West Bank. The death tolls in the West Bank, wjere the majority of Palestinians reside, is less than 300.

The large majority of deaths have been in Gaza City. That’s why I find it credible that Israel really is striking the tunnels, and not just saying “oh there was a tunnel there” as a pretext to bomb civilians and civilian infrastructure.

In Gaza alone, 1% of the population is dead. If you include the West Bank, 0.004 0.4% of the population is dead. The claim is that Israel are bloodthirsty villains trying to rid the world of Palestinians. That claim doesn’t hold water in light of these facts.

The place with more Palestinians living in it has 1/100th of the deaths in than in the part of Palestine just includes the Gaza tunnels. I can ot reconcile this fact with claims of a Palestinian genocide. The strikes to me look very measured and proportionate.

So your math is wrong. The dividend should be 5,000,000, the total population of Palestinians, not 2,300,000 million, the total population of only the Gaza Strip.

Edit: My total for Palestinian deaths was not properly converted to percentage. It is 0.4% on 0.004%.

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

In Gaza alone, 1% of the population is dead.

You see this is what everyone else is talking about.

So your math is wrong. The dividend should be 5,000,000, the total population of Palestinians, not 2,300,000 million, the total population of only the Gaza Strip.

Maybe you should check your math. You didn’t multiply by 100 to make the percentage I guess.

But more importantly, including the West bank is these stats is misleading. If you’re going to do that why not also include all the diaspora around the world? The war is in Gaza. The numbers that make sense are those pertaining to Gaza.

JustZ , 7 months ago

Shit you’re right. I’ve shared this math maybe five or six times and the first time I said “hey there’s a chance my math isn’t right it’s not my strongest skill so please correct me if I’m wrong” and nobody has tried to correct me.

Well, I stand corrected and feel like a dumbass, it’s 0.4%.

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

Well thanks! I appreciate you admitting your mistake.

Next up, do you really think the right denominator is the whole Palestinian population? Shouldn’t it just be the population of Gaza? And if not, why shouldn’t we also include all the Palestinian diaspora from all over the world?

JustZ , 7 months ago

I would include Gaza and the West Bank but not the diaspora. The claim is that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. Palestinians include the West Bank.

I would not include the diaspora because the diaspora isn’t being killed and could not readily be killed by Israel. They are in other sovereign countries and protected by their militaries. Israel has neither the means nor opportunity to kill the Palestinian diaspora.

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

But if the claim is about the Palestinians overall how could you not include them? “Palestinians” includes them too.

Despite all the ongoing killing in the West Bank, they don’t have a political cover to kill in the West Bank in the way they do in Gaza. So they can’t really do that either, because they are “protected” in the same way because there is zero justification for a bombing campaign in that case. America and others would certainly take issue. Maybe a security council vote would actually pass.

So I would say it’s much more reasonable to focus on the percentage of those actually at risk of large-scale killing.

JustZ , 7 months ago

I’m not making the claim. People here and such as the South Africa complaint are making the claim that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians that live in Israeli controlled territory. That doesn’t include the diaspora.

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

The claim is that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. I agree it shouldn’t include the diaspora, but I think the reason it shouldn’t include the West Bank is the same.

Also, worth noting from the definition of genocide:

genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group

Even if the claim was about Palestinians overall, the Palestinians in Gaza are “part” of Palestinians. There is no requirement that the entire group is involved.

JustZ , 7 months ago

I don’t think the claim is that it’s just committing genocide in Gaza. The claim is that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people because they are Palestinian.

It would be strange to ignore the much larger group of Palestinian people living within territory claimed by Israel in order to say that yes, israel is killing people solely for being Palestinian, but only in this specific little area, and not the other Palestinian people a little ways to the right.

In other words, if Israel is trying to kill people because they are Palestinian, why isn’t Israel bombing the West Bank with the save ferocity as it is Gaza City?

Well the answer is very obvious at least to me: Israel really is targeting the tunnels.

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

Sorry did you just ignore my entire comment?

JustZ , 7 months ago

No. Genocide means killing all or a part of a population because of their genes. I agree.

The civilians in Gaza were told to leave and virtually all of the civilian deaths have occured in and around Gaza City where there is 800 tunnel shafts and hundreds of miles of tunnels from which a militant enemy that regularly kills women and children is operating.

The tunnels and numbers of Hamas are just and valid military targets. That is why Gaza City is being bombed. Not because of anything to do with the genome of the people living there.

If Israel wanted to eliminate Palestinians, it could carpet bomb all of Gaza and all of the West Bank and kill every soul there within a matter of hours. But instead the numbers of civilian casualties are decreasing every day.

The New York times just published an article today called The Decline of Deaths in Gaza.

It makes several salient points:

• The daily death tolls out of Gaza have reduced by half and continue to fall as they have been for weeks;
• Israel said two weeks ago that it was shifting strategy to a more targeted approach;
• Hamas is still launching rocket barages on Israel from Gaza City;
• Many Hamas fighters fled South to another massive tunnel network under the second most populated area of Gaza, Khan Younis.

Some civilian deaths are likely to continue for a while to come as long as Hamas is still hiding underneath people’s homes and using women and children as human shields.

If Israel has genocidal intentions, shouldn’t the killing apparatus be getting more efficient?

At the current rate, it would take 50 years before there are no more Palestinians. That doesn’t sound very genocidal to me; not with the numbers dropping off as they have. Clearly Israel has changed it’s strategy.

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

No. Genocide means killing all or a part of a population because of their genes. I agree.

Then you can see that it is not relevant whether the people in the West Bank are also being genocided. The genocide in Gaza is still a genocide. The intent does not have to be to kill every single Palestinian in existence.

But I don’t understand how you say this and then a couple or paragraphs later say this…

If Israel wanted to eliminate Palestinians, it could carpet bomb all of Gaza and all of the West Bank and kill every soul there within a matter of hours.

You see how you’ve shifted back to “killing all Palestinians” being the only valid focus of a claim of genocide? It could do that but that is not the only way it could be a genocide. God even Hitler didn’t kill all of the Jews as quickly as possible.

It seems like you’re assuming Israel are stupid. Think about it. Imagine you did want to kill the Palestinians, in the modern world. Would you just drop some nukes and call it a day? Would you start making gas chambers?

Of course not! You would look evil. So you would have to do it with some kind of political cover. October 7th provided just that type of cover. That’s why they aren’t bombing the West Bank like they are Gaza, because they don’t have that justification. It would look too much like the gas chamber approach.

I’m not expecting you to agree that this is what is happening, but you must see that this “kill them all now” type of genocide is not the only “true” genocide? This is not a valid metric.

And then if we keep the “let’s not assume stupidity” approach for this point you made:

The New York times just published an article today called The Decline of Deaths in Gaza.

I think we can see why if you were being tactical, when you are literally on trial for genocide it might be a good idea to cool off a bit. Sooo many people are pissed at Israel, the justification is wearing thin (at best). If you’re being smart about it, you wouldn’t just carry on the tactics that got you into this mess.

You wouldn’t just drop the nuke.

JustZ , 7 months ago

I see your points and mostly agree. I’m not trying to be obtuse. But to be falling off by half within four months? Also, why text people and tell them to evacuate? Wouldn’t that provide the same subterfuge? The IDF still texts people before they bomb if they know there are civilians around, look it up.

But more importantly, they aren’t bombing indiscriminately. In my understanding: they are bombing legit targets, the tunnels and members of Hamas, and Hamas uses human shields and sympathy from high civilian casualties (martyrdom) as a weapon. Aren’t they the superceding cause of the civilian casualties? I agree, 30,000 dead is horrendous. Hamas members are honored to cram their entire extended family into an apartment right above their nearest tunnel shaft and have them all die as martyrs while their phones buzz with unread emergency broadcasts.

1.2 million people evacuated safely, a massive forced evacuation. That fact alone makes it reasonably suspect. I get where the allegations are coming from. On balance, I find Israel’s response to be proportionate (destroying the enemy’s attack capability (the tunnels)), and evacuations are necessary to achieve that purpose.

This war is unique, the tunnels are unprecedented in all of human history. The willingness to use human shields is not entirely unprecedented, but the tunnels, hiding military infrastructure under hospitals and schools, under apartment complexes, under colleges, makes it unprecedented in its atrocity. October 7 was the last straw. Hamas has to go. The tunnels have to go and the city rebuilt from scratch.

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago

I see your points and mostly agree. I’m not trying to be obtuse.

Ok great! I’m glad that you see that genocide doesn’t have to be so obvious/text book to count as a genocide.

I think I will end the conversation here but I will still respond to some points you made.

But to be falling off by half within four months?

Did you know that in the first month of the conflict Israel killed as many civilians as Russia had in the first 600 days of war? It’s easy to cut by half when it’s so high to start with. Half is still too much.

Also, why text people and tell them to evacuate? Wouldn’t that provide the same subterfuge?

Text them! Haven’t they cut off electricity and fuel to Gaza? What are they going to read it on it they can’t power their phone? In any case, this is the same as before: Israel is not stupid, they know it looks better politically if you give “warning” even if people could never see it and wouldn’t believe you anyway.

Hamas uses human shields

There is actually very little evidence of that. The tunnels are under all of Gaza, and Gaza is a tiny place nobody (apart from Hamas I guess?) can leave. Surely every building has a tunnel under or near it. So does that mean every building is fair game?

Imagine Al Shifa hospital actually did have the command centre under it. The tunnels can be over 10 m down or more. How many bombs do you have to drop on the hospital building and the actual solid concrete ground to reach 10 m down? Using that approach to get there is insane. Especially if it means killing the sick, injured, pregnant and god knows what inside the hospital. How can that be proportionate? Just send some elite soldiers into the tunnel.

Aren’t they the superceding cause of the civilian casualties?

I find it hard to blame anyone but the bomb droppers. If I held your mother in front of me as a shield would you really think it’s ok to kill her in order to kill me? What if it was two people’s mothers? Etc. Surely you see the issue here.

I agree, 30,000 dead is horrendous.

Well this is a good place to leave it. It is horrendous. I want it to stop before the number gets much higher, and especially before people start to starve to death. Israel defending this by saying “but Hamas…” doesn’t really cut it for me.

snek , 7 months ago

BTW the ICJ case is titled this:

“Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel)”

JustZ , 7 months ago

I’ve read a good chunk of it so far.

My initial takeaways confirm a lot of what you’ve heard me say.

There are some war crimes, no doubt, and no doubt that have been way over, reported such that people think it’s commonplace or part of an official policy. In SA’s complaint, for example, one apparent war crime was cited something like 19 different times in different sections of the complaint for different reasons. And many others had similar treatment. It’s laden with circular reasoning. Also, the most sensational claims, much like the most sensational claims in media, are often attributed to “reports.” In other words, the things that would make the best case for genocide are unattributed and therefore unlikely to be given ang weight bh the court (or by me).

snek , 7 months ago

Can you give an example of circular reasoning?

JustZ , 7 months ago

It meets the definition of genocide because countries A, B, C, D, E,…etc. said it meets the definition of genocide where the list of countries supporting South Africa’s position are Iran, all of its proxies, and half a dozen other authoritarian-rum shitholes. Makes me wonder what is going on in South Africa that they are listed along with scuba, Iraq, Syria, Honduras, Pakistan, Malaysia, Namibia. That stood out.

More circular is stuff like:

• It’s a genocide because…the Chief of the UN Security Counsel Said in December that nowhere was safe in Gaza and that the healthcare system was collapsing…total civilian casualties have increased since that statement…therefor the UN Security Council must agree that it is now genocide.
• It’s a genocide because… Israel’s true goal is to expel all Palestinians from their homes permanently…the Jordanian foreign minister said that he thinks this is Israel’s goal…therefore that is Israel’s goal.
• It’s a genocide because… Israel denies it meets the definition of genocide and says the war still has a ways to go…therefore it is genocide.
• It’s a genocide because… Israel ordered civilians to evacuate Gaza and head south, many people did, a few handfuls of such refugees were killed while heading south… Therefore it’s genocide.

These are a few that jumped out. I see how people can read these allegations and say “see that’s a genocide.” The conclusions of South Africa are all consistent with the scope of Israel’s legitimate self defense. I say that because in my view Israel has a just and moral right to destroy the tunnels and kill every last member of Hamas. The tunnels are under Gaza City and there are apparently still hundreds or thousands of Hamas soldiers holed up in the tunnels dug in for a a guerilla campaign. That’s my starting point.

I’ll be going through the doc a little more this week. I’ll try to supplement this when I do.

snek , 7 months ago

It’s a genocide because…the Chief of the UN Security Counsel Said in December that nowhere was safe in Gaza and that the healthcare system was collapsing…total civilian casualties have increased since that statement…therefor the UN Security Council must agree that it is now genocide.

Could you explain to me what’s circular about this? Nowhere is safe in Gaza, as witnessed by people in Gaza, humanitarian workers in Gaza, medical staff in Gaza, journalists in Gaza, and experts on Gaza either in Gaza or outside Gaza, with areal footage, videos, and a consistent feed of evidence of destruction showing Israel bombing areas it deemed safe..

Seems to me like you are saying that the reason it’s circular is that the Chief of the UN Security Council used words to describe what we have thousands of videos of. Or…? It’s not like you have to take their word for it… and they don’t want you to do that either… you have thousands of reports to inspect as proof that they have presented over and over again.

JustZ , 7 months ago

I think that argument is circular because it didn’t even attempt to argue grounds for genocide. It merely states facts that the humanitarian picture is grim and that the healthcare system was in the verge of collapse. It seems obvious to me that the arguments don’t lead to the conclusion. I’m not sure how to explain it differently. It begins with the premise and goes back around tk the same premise. Part of this is because the entire document does not consider Israel’s position or include Israel’s explanations for things.

It’s a war, a war in a tiny city where the enemy is dug into the city itself and using civilians as human shields with the goal of intentional martyrdom.

The arguments do not consider perfectly valid reasons why the humanitarian picture is so grim and why the healthcare system in Gaza is collapsing: because Hamas built its war infrastructure underneath people’s houses, schools, hospitals, electrical and water infrastructure, and then use those places to launch terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli, including intentionally targeting women and children as a matter of purposeful strategy, as opposed to discordant, occasional war crimes, for which the Israeli’s responsible should absolutely be held accountable.

I get it, is real shots of hostages here and there, the shot some civilians here and there. By and large though Israel really is targeting Hamas and the tunnels and Hamas have for years deployed a strategy of maximizing civilian casualties to paint as immoral.

Like if you drive up to my house and open fire on it from your car, if I shoot back, is it my fault that you have your kids and your family in your car with you while you’re out doing drive-bys?

I’ve read a lot of books and have seen a lot of movies where war comes to a city, and the warriors tell the women and children to get out, while they stay behind to fight. That’s not what Hamas does. Apparently 1.8 million people left their homes and went and signed in at refugee camps. That means something like 600,000 to 800,000 people did not heed the calls for evacuation. It’s pretty impressive that only 25,000 people have died in this situation, a war in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet.

Of course if you ask Hamas, they don’t have one single fighter working for them, in fact, they don’t even exist, and everyone killed in every airstrike and every explosion and every shooting ever are innocent Palestinian civilians. In my book the Palestinian authorities and Hamas and even the Palestinian people have very little credibility when it comes to saying what happened in this theater.

I think there has been war crimes on both sides and the people responsible should be dealt with most harshly.

snek , 7 months ago

Like if you drive up to my house and open fire on it from your car, if I shoot back, is it my fault that you have your kids and your family in your car with you while you’re out doing drive-bys?

No. It’s not your fault.

But does this describe what’s happening on the ground today?

Others might see it more like this:

“If you drive up to my house and open fire on it from your car, then I come to your neighborhood with all my friends with guns, and I kill your wife, and I kill your son and your daughter and your dog, and then I blow up your house and the library next to you, is it my fault if your son, daughter, wife, and dog are dead?”

OccamsTeapot , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Coincidence? Are you suggesting that poisonous gases were only coincidentally released into Gaza? Or that it’s just coincidental that there were hostages there? In the tunnels. Where even we know they would obviously be.

Edit. Just also want to share the quote from the mother of one of the people the IDF killed:

“The results of the investigation: Ron was indeed murdered,” she wrote. “Not by Hamas. Think more in the direction of Auschwitz and the showers but without Nazis and without Hamas as the cause. No accidental shooting, no report, premeditated murder, bombings with poisonous gases.”

JustZ , 7 months ago

Yes his presence. I saw the mother’s quote. The actual report said the cause of death could not be determined due to the condition of the body. This is the sole report I’ve heard from anyone in the course of war suggesting the use of poisonous gas as a weapon and for that reason it’s just not credible.

More likely, the woman misunderstood the report or, as many here have done, attributed to malice what is better explained by bad luck.

From context and reading between the lines, I could see the report stating that the man suffocated from smoke and fumes before being burned in a fire. That would be consistent with both the IDF and the mother’s statements.

snek , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

The IDF seems to always say “we can’t confirm” or “we had no activity in the area” or “we don’t know maybe a Palestinian shot this journalist in the head even though we extracted a standard IDF bullet from her head” every time they do something terrible.

I don’t think THAT’S a coincidence.

JustZ , 7 months ago

Sometimes they say that. Most of the time though they say “yeah we conducted an airstrike and killed X number of Hamas militants.”

And of course Hamas says every single time “nope those were innocent people just going about their day.”

Some of them have to be Hamas, right? So, in my view, they have less credibility. Denying their own existence is part of their strategy of martyrdom. If they admit Israel really did kill a bunch of Hamas soldiers, that doesn’t push the right narrative for Hamas and Iran.

snek , 7 months ago

I mean, when you kill 100 and like 48 are children, is that an acceptable price to pay to maybe 50/50 get a chance at killing a Hamas commander?

Is this acceptable to you as a person?

snek , 7 months ago

Some of them have to be Hamas, right?

Some of them might be innocent civilians, right?

It doesn’t bother you that Israel turned them into sacrificial lambs?

JustZ , 7 months ago

Hamas put those people in harm’s way. They were told to get out of Gaza City.

bigMouthCommie , 7 months ago

the harm came from Israeli weapons

snek , 7 months ago

I am not asking about Hamas. I am asking about YOU.

Would it be acceptable to YOU to kill countless neighbours and many members of your own family in an explosion because the IDF has determined that a Hamas tunnel runs under your house? Would it be acceptable to YOU personally to take your family out of the zones to a Safe Zone and get killed there anyway? Is there anything on this earth that is worth your daughter being blown to pieces and you having to carry the remains of her limbs in a plastic bag? Because that actually happened to one man.

Please answer.

JustZ , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

You’re asking like seven different questions. It bothers me very much that Hamas started a war from a military base it built under that man’s home and as a result the man’s daughter got killed. I’m sure the man had no idea. I mean it’s a city of 18 square miles with 800 tunnel shafts and millions of cubic yards of dirt having to be removed, dug with heavy equipment, tunnel shafts inside all kinds of public schools and apartment buildings and so forth. If it were me personally, I would have sent out a massive emergency broadcast warning people to get out before I destroyed the tunnels, and probably saying that I was coming for Hamas and anyone with them.

I suppose that man picking up his daughter’s body parts is exactly what Hamas wanted to happen so, it could continue pretending to be a victims engaged in self defense, rather than terrorists who put the lives of everyone around them at risk. This is a war. All war is awful. Sonetines war is just, awfulness included, in light of the much, much larger humanitarian picture.

My views on this subject in general reflect greater concern for the lives of tens of millions of people than the lives of mere tens of thousands. One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic, yet the latter must guide our policy.

snek , 7 months ago

I think they are all one question but I can rephrase it into a single one. Could you please answer it?

Is it acceptable to YOU as a human being to have YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY KILLED because the IDF says Hamas terrorists are under your house? Is this an acceptable trade off for you?

It’s a yes or no question, no need for long essays.

Thanks.

JustZ , 7 months ago

False dichotomy aside, I’ll humor you for the sake of the Socratic argument and hope that you arrive at a fair point: No it would obviously be unacceptable to me.

snek , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

The lack of a false dichotomy aside,

Thanks for answering, so now why would it make it acceptable for Palestinians?

JustZ , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

It’s not acceptable. Nobody would choose this, certainly not me. I didn’t put the family there, didn’t drop the bomb, didn’t build the tunnels under their house, didn’t refuse to evacuate. I also suspect that the man, sticking around in Gaza City, knew what he signed himself and his daughter up for. How could they not?

But I understand the choices western policymakers have to make, and the guy and his daughter are just not a significant factor in the decision tree. 25,000 guys and daughters like that are not significant factors in the decision tree.

The decision tree rather involves tens of millions of people, including that guy and his daughter.

snek , 7 months ago

I would agree with you if Israel had not bombed areas it deemed ‘Safe Zones’ several times killing twice and thrice displaced Palestinians who are shocked, starving, dehydrated, and incapable of getting medical treatment or even fuel for their car to leave.

The argument of the safe zones or Gaza city all falls apart once you read the facts.

You seem like a smart person. How do you feel about the IDF bombing areas they told people to move to? And how do you feel about the IDF forcing people to evacuate areas in which the refugee camps are already full, meaning there would never be enough space or food for them?

JustZ , 7 months ago

As I understand, less than 100 civilians were killed in strikes on refugee camps and on humanitarian corridors. War is hectic and so was the evacuation. This is again one of the examples of something tragic that happened once or twice, and people reporting on it as of it was the only thing happening.

If there were indiscriminate bombings on such locations, that would be evidence of war crimes. They seem very discriminate to me. IDF claims in one such attack, they got 40 Hamas members or something having a meeting in a mosque, of course they barred the doors and had a bunch of women and children in there with them to be used as human shields. Their deaths therefore are on Hamas, they locked them in there because they knew what could happen and they get sympathy when they do, instead of being held responsible for all the innocent lives.

snek , 7 months ago

Sorry, do you mean 100 civilians OVERALL since October 8th?

JustZ , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Yes in air strikes on refugee camps and the humanitarian corridors. Although I believe that figure is a couple of weeks old.

snek , 7 months ago

Could you source that claim? It sounds grossly inaccurate.

JustZ , 7 months ago

There is no place I know of trying to keep this tally but this is where I got the number from. I see looking at this now that it appears out of date despite recent edits and includes only the humanitarian route airstrikes, not refugee camps; there are less than 100 dead in strikes on the humanitarian corridors, according this:

…wikipedia.org/…/Attacks_on_Palestinians_evacuati…

Indeed though, my original claim here was not completely accurate so thanks for making me flesh it out. The number of people killed at refugee camps is much higher last I checked this page, and seems to be in the range of like 500 to 600:

…wikipedia.org/…/Refugee_camp_airstrikes_in_the_I…

One such strike killed 50 civilians that were packed into a mosque and forced to stay there by Hamas, as apparently 40-odd members of Hamas held some sort of command meeting in an underground bunker. The airstrike killed a Hamas commander responsible for multiple terror attacks back to 2004, numerous rocket attacks, and the October 7 attack.

IDF says it used a bunker buster to target the underground bunker and that subsequently the bunker and connecting tunnels collapsed along with the adjacent apartment building. IDF says that minutes before the air strike, residents of the buildings near the site were warned to leave the area.

www.ynetnews.com/article/b1enracf6

twitter.com/IDF/status/1719469821207752998?lang=e…

reuters.com/…/hamas-says-it-fires-israeli-troops-…

This strike has been widely reported as being part of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign against civilians. Palestinian Health authority, which is very credible with death reporting, says 50 civilians were killed. Hamas, which has zero credibility, says 400 civilians were killed.

This is one of the allegations in South Africa’s complaint that is repeated approximately a dozen times times in different sections for different reasons. For example, it is cited as an example of Israel telling people of Gaza to evacuate southward and then bombing a target in the south. If it was true that Israel was simply bombing refugees as they evacuated, that would obviously be a war crime. It is cited as evidence that the IDF is targeting civilian homes. If it was true that Israel was simply bombing homes in order to destroy the places where people live, that would obviously also be evidence of a war crime.

However, if it is true that: Israel was targeting an active Hamas leadership operation and part of Hamas’s massive underground military base, the strike killed a veteran Hamas commander, killed 40 other Hamas militants, people in the nearby buildings were warned before the bombs fell, and that Israel used ordinance designed to limit surface destruction while taking out underground military targets, than it literally cannot be called “indiscriminate.” Seems like it was very well planned and executed, narrowly tailored, and launched in a way to minimize civilian casualties. Again, Hamas put the civilians in the buildings, put the tunnel under the building, conducted terrorist operations from under the buildings, and then when Israel justifiably destroyed the tunnels and killed the terrorists occupying them, the structure above collapsed.

Again, this is Hamas’s strategy. They turned the foundation of the an entire city into Swiss cheese and then launched a war from it. As the tunnels get destroyed, the entire area becomes unstable. This is one reason why in my country you must obtain a building permit and structural engineering report before digging tunnels. Hamas’s strategy is to maximize civilian casualties in order to gain sympathy. Nevermind that on October 7 Hamas militants literally went to a concert, restaurants, and public streets and just fired indiscriminately on women and children and families as they drove to dinner or listened to a show.

I agree there must be a balancing between likely civilian casualties and military advantage. If the circumstances of this attack are as I’ve described them, do you agree that Israel’s strike was morally justified? I do.

snek , 7 months ago

No, I don’t agree. In the Jabalia refugee camp massacre alone, 195+ people died and they have many missing under the rubble. That one is on Wikipedia. A large chunk was children.

…wikipedia.org/…/31_October_2023_Jabalia_refugee_…

I didn’t even need to Google that one, it was still fresh in my memory and I knew more than 100 alone died just there sheltering.

Here is a Guardian report about it:

The 22,835 dead represent about one in a hundred of Gaza’s total population. They have been killed at a rate of just under 250 a day (an average that has come down a bit in the last few weeks). It is not known exactly how many of those killed were combatants, but Israel’s own ratio would suggest that on average, more than 160 civilians have died each day.

That is a much faster rate than in other broadly comparable recent conflicts. The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Raqqa killed 20 civilians a day during a four-month offensive, the BBC reported, while the nine-month battle for Mosul between US-backed Iraqi forces and IS killed fewer than 40 civilians a day. theguardian.com/…/the-numbers-that-reveal-the-ext…

Of course this number is now too small. They are 25k+ as of yesterday.

Even with Israel’s generous estimate to pretend to make it proportional, they are still killing more people than anyone else has done in modern history per day.

The number of dead people will likely skyrocket soon as many experts warn due to the 7k+ under the rubble (who are likely dead since a long time) and tens of thousands more will be dying to preventable diseases and famine.

Even the appointment of safe zones impossible and dangerous to get to with no fuel or busses or transportation is in itself a war crime. Just look at what MSF are saying:

Despite Israeli announcements suggesting that there are safe areas for the population trapped in the Gaza Strip, they are in fact exposed to bombardment throughout all the territory, including in the south, where tens of thousands of people have fled following the ultimatum.

msf.org/msf-calls-israeli-authorities-show-humani…

Here is one of the many many reports showing that the idea of safe zones in Gaza was a cruel lie: …france24.com/…/20231220-how-the-israeli-military…

snek , 7 months ago

Nevermind that this was in Jabalia where the IDF wrecked havoc and committed unspeakable crimes.

But yeah sure I’m sure it’s just an accident as described by you. That totally makes more sense /s

That totally makes all IDF actions justified /s

• Murder? Mistake
• Dead journalist? Oops mistake
• Dead children? Ohh they’re human shields so it was okay to end their lives in a violent and painful way under tonnes of rubble
• An entire dead family? Sorry that’s just the price we pay for peace 😢
• University building demolished? totally tunnels under there even though we had time to put explosives in specific places and worked for hours around the building which would mean it was secure but we blew it up anyway, destroying vital KHAMAS infrastructure
• Bombing every UN shelter? omg why are you holding Israel to another standard??!! 🤯😲😭

Dude doesn’t this kind of stuff make you feel suspicious of them?

Doorbook , 7 months ago

I like how you believe a proven lying military…

snek , 7 months ago

I think so too… This person has some reasonableness to him/her, they even said they would accept the ICJ decision in another thread. That’s good.

What I find amazing is how much trust they have in the IDF, as though some kind of blind loyalty. Otherwise, how would one be able to excuse such heinous crimes? Just say they were all accidents or trust the IDF statements “because they make more sense” (their words, not mine)… That’s how you distance your own brain from the bloodshed and massacres. Hide everything under the giant blanket of “IT’S JUST A WAR AND ALL WARS ARE BAD”.

Such statements make it sound like it’s okay to kill and maim as long as you put the war label on it… Totally forgetting that this war is literally tearing people limb from limb every single day, not providing any security to Israelis, and literally repeating the holocaust in some aspects.

My guess is: years of indoctrination, denial, fear of accepting the crimes committed by a country you support or identify with.

Doorbook , 7 months ago

I am glad I have the ability to tag users around here. It is the same accounts that keep saying the same things. I have one tagged “blame it on Iran” and a few with “IDF supporter”

I hope at least they get paid by the IDF otherwise it is sad.

snek , 7 months ago

Yeah, I was actually considering gathering a list of all of them and blocking them all at once for my own mental health and sanity, even though that might sound counter productive for debate. I would never shadow ban them from any community for simply being Zionists but I totally would in my personal sphere.

LostWon , 7 months ago

From what I’ve read, it seems Israeli citizens fear the Hannibal Directive (originally about killing their own soldiers rather than letting them be taken hostage) is secretly being applied to civilian hostages. It was supposed to have been retired several years ago, but there are accusations from within Israel it was implemented on Oct 7th (for the portion of people killed by the IDF), and possibly for all the Israeli hostages that have been killed so far by the IDF in separate incidents.

Doorbook , 7 months ago

You know the pictures of cars an burning bodies in October 7th?

Along with the “hamas plans” pictures they published.

The paper if you read it in arabic suggest the goal is to kidnap as much people as possible and attack check points.

What I believe happens is that hamas were attempting to stopping cars with people to kidnap them by driving back to Gaza. Those who refused to stop the car get shot at. Then the IDF response was to not allow any car to return to Gaza and killing there own civilians.

sirboozebum , 7 months ago

There were interviews in Israeli media with the pilots of the Apache helicopters.

They had no idea who were in the cars but blew them up anyway thinking they could be Hamas fighters.

maness300 , 7 months ago

You can’t just Zionists just like you can’t trust Nazis.