I paraphrased. It’s controlled by Hamas and their numbers cannot be taken at face value.
The second paragraph is your opinion and I don’t share it.
Israel under attack from Hamas
- Thread starter JamieDimonsBalls
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The second paragraph is your opinion and I don’t share it.
I didn't say take them at face value. I said they almost certainly aren't as inflated as you seem to think they are.
As for my second paragraph, yes, it's an opinion, but it's the correct one. There's no reasonably denying it.
That also assumes that the IDF’s responsibility is chiefly to protect Gazans and not their own soldiers.
I’m sure there are ways to carry out the dismantling of Hamas that would include less collateral damage but a lot more of their soldiers dying.
That's ridiculously dumb. Please try to limit your responses to what people actually say, instead of the idiot assumptions floating around your tiny brain.
Among the problems with your score keeping is determining who are civilians and who are fighters. Most Gazans are likely both, including kids. I don’t think they have an organized and separate military.
Some UN aid workers directly participated in the October 7 savagery. Were they civilians? .
Deception and lies are an integral part of Hamas governance. This ranges from building armed enclaves under schools and hospitals to lying about 500 deaths at a hospital. There is no reason to believe anything coming out of Gaza.
Gazan death toll #s have historically been thought of as accurate and usually end up pretty closely matching Israel's ultimate assessment after wars.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-h...h-death-toll-59470820308b31f1faf73c703400b033
does Hamas lie? for sure, but the pictures don't lie. Would take all the studios in Hollywood and Bollywood working overtime to fake the verified photos and videos we've seen.
Not at all. This was according to Israeli sources. Based on their assessment of who was a target and who was a civilian.
This is just a ridiculous assumption. You have absolutely no idea what operations have been on the table that they have either acted on or passed on based on civilian casualties. The only thing unreasonable here is you thinking you have enough information to say with certainty that they are not trying to avoid them.
Hand it to Israeli leadership, they weren't lying when they made these statements. they've been telling us for years they don't believe anyone in Gaza is innocent and are backing that up with disproportionate force once again.
"When I see Palestinian citizens escaping into Sinai, the way Lebanese citizens escape toward Beirut when there is a round of fire against Israel -- we will then know that the deterrence has been achieved." -- Israel Katz, Israel's Transport Minister, in 2016
"The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages, only then will Israel be calm for the next 40 years." -- Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, in 2012
“Gaza should be razed and Israel’s rule should be restored to the place. This is our country." -- Moshe Feiglin, the founder of Israel's right-wing Zehut Party and former Likud representative in Israel’s parliament, in 2023
"There are no innocents in Gaza, don't let any diplomats who want to look good in the world endanger your lives -- mow them down!" -- Michael Ben-Ari, member of the Knesset, in 2012
"We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn't stop with Hiroshima -- the Japanese weren't surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing." -- Gilad Sharon, son of the former Israeli Prime minister Ariel Sharon, in 2023
If the Zionest state is to survive going forward as an ethnostate, those who identify as jews must rally to their ethnostate, financially, materially and spiritually.
I always wondered where Biden, the media, and the Democrats got their talking points when they talk about Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans who reside in rural America. Now I know.
I have no idea what your response has to do with what I posted. The quotes by Israeli leadership re: Gaza have nothing to do with US politics unless you only view the world through the lense of US politics...
CO never misses a chance to force an insult to Democrats into a conversation. He'll bring transgender issues up next.
I've known quite a few old, conservative lawyers who ate a lot of acid when they were younger. could be the case here.
Well,
Just in the last couple of weeks . . .
DEI is exposed as a fraud by more people
The climate mantra of snow being a thing of the past has disappeared
And adolescent transgenderism is recognized as the fad it has always been.
Old conservatives are right about about all of it.
Just a reminder that you conservatives are continuing to gain your victories against imaginary opponents.
If you think so much being messed up is illusional, you are delusional.
Maybe the total is only slightly inflated if that article is correct. What isn’t helpful is not knowing what percentage is Hamas terrorist fighters. Is it 50%? Is it more, or is it less? Is it four Hamas killed to one civilian woman or child or is it something else? The sympathy for 32,000 undefined people is at a much higher level for people and probably not nearly as high of a level as 30,000 Hamas and 2000 civilians would be. That was just an example though I would expect that the majority are Hamas because the IDF is deliberately targeting them, not women and children.
Did you read the articles I posted? One source said the IDF prefers bombing low-level targets at home, because they can use cheaper bombs, even though they know they are going to kill family members doing it that way. So what's it matter how many were actually civilians? Israel doesn't care; why should we?
They also said depending on the value of the target, they might consider 5 or even 20 civilians per terrorist an acceptable loss. By the Israelis' own reckoning, they are killing mostly civilians.
If they are sheltering a Hamas terrorist than they are a fair target as well. And likely they’re doing more than sheltering.
“Hey little Fatima, bring daddy his mortar stand, alluah akbar!”
Little Fatima is supporting the Hamas war effort and the IDF has every right to bomb her.
I read the AI article two different times. What do you think is new there? . Haven't war planners aways taken collateral damage and bystander casualties into account? The difference in Gaza seems to be a data driven analysis of the considerations. This is just as likely to save lives as to cost more. The Israelis might us data to pass on targets they might otherwise hit.
My issue is with people misrepresenting what's going on. Israel is, by their own reckoning, killing mostly civilians and saying that's fine. If you think Israel is doing the math right, great. If you think they are justified, great. But it's simply not honest to go back and try to retroactively claim they are not actually civilians, or that Israel is not actually doing what the Israelis say Israel is doing.
NFG makes a point worth debating: if the Hamas militant/terrorist is housing with his family, storing material there to make war on Israel, is the house in play? If the miltant's wife is a knowing accomplice, is she? If they have a child, is the child acceptable collateral damage? Does it matter how high up the target or how much he was complicit in Oct. 7th? Or how much future damage he might do to Israel?
I have no idea if this is what is going on. But they appear to be tough moral questions, and I'm not sure they can be answered in the aggregate. They might require individual determinations.
I'm ruling out using a rule to make the determinations, because that is exactly what Hamas is banking on and if you used a rule, I don't think Israel would be able to achieve its objective.
Killing civilians is awful. Hamas (and other terrorists) build military facilities and store weapons in and around schools and hospitals for a reason. They mingle with civilians for the same reason. That reason of course is obvious. The IDF papered Gaza with warnings about what was coming. The same Gaza individual might be a civilian in the morning and a terrorist in the evening. Around 70% of Gazans believe Hamas did the right thing with the October 7 slaughter. They might have been lied to about what happened, but is that a reason for Israel to allow Hamas to survive and reconstitute itself? It’s a tough problem. But I think the only way forward for the long term is destroy every thread of Hamas. Anything less is just ineffective short term pablum and is likely geared to the 2024 election.
They are tough choices, which is why I am not claiming to know better than Israel whether or not they are choosing correctly. I'm only disagreeing with people who refuse to face up to what the choice actually is.
Shouldn't a Hamas terrorist who cares about his family stay away from them? Many willingly sacrifice their own lives, maybe they're willingly sacrificing their own wives and children too.
Israel thinks they are killing 2 civilians for every 1 combatant killed, at least at the outset. They also estimated about 30k Hamas fighters were in Gaza when this started. assuming fighters have more access to safe areas than families, it's tough to say.
I also think of the so-called "terrorist math" during this. the US, from its own experiences, surely has this in mind when demanding more Israeli discretion.
"In 2009, General Stanley McChrystal pushed the conversation in that direction. He pointed to the counterintuitive aspects of terror recruiting. Calling it "COIN Mathematics," he laid out his argument. "Let us say that there are 10 [insurgents] in a certain area. Following a military operation, two are killed. How many insurgents are left? Traditional mathematics would say that eight would be left, but there may only be two, because six of the living eight may have said, 'This business of insurgency is becoming dangerous so I am going to do something else.' There are more likely to be as many as 20, because each one you killed has a brother, father, son and friends, who do not necessarily think that they were killed because they were doing something wrong. It does not matter you killed them. Suddenly, then, there may be 20, making the calculus of military operations very different."
COIN is the toughest kind of war. We were successful in the Philippines and not successful in Vietnam or Afghanistan. Iraq remains a mixed bag. They are still officially a partner nation, and we still train and equip Iraqis. I've been to our embassy there and at the time it was the largest US Embassy in any country, and it was very nice.
The taxpayers built you a nice embassy big boy?
Very nice. I never received my thank you.
Iraq is nice living. When’s the last time they fired missiles into a U.S. military installation? Was it 5 seconds ago?
We built us a nice embassy, yes. There have been a few missile attacks over the years, but not as many as you might think. My visit was in 2011, while still on active duty, and only for three weeks to train Iraqi officers during the day and US officers in the evening. The embassy is still there and doing well.
wow, must have been heady times for you. how was it working with the Iraqis?
you've seen some stuff, man. thanks for sharing!
The Israelis had in the past developed a method to "knock" on a building to warn civilians that the building was going to be destroyed. I think seeing all the "civilians" dragging a dead girl through the street and joining Hamas members in murdering people in their homes and in kidnapping women and children was just the last straw. At a certain point you realize that there is no negotiating with people and the time for talking is over. The cancer is so deep and so malignant that it has to be killed and the only way to kill it is going to be to kill some percentage of innocents with it. And so you do that.
The Gulf War was an impressive war and the way that Western militaries have been able to prosecute wars the past 30 some odd years has really been something, but I think it has convinced generations of people that you can just pinpoint Mr. Badguy all the time. You can't. This is war and people die. When your military embeds itself into the local population and has the support of the local population, the local population is going to die alongside them.
Palestinian children were on tape harassing and beating on an Israeli toddler on Oct. 7. It is their parents fault they are that way but it is a malignant culture. They've been "talking" most of my life. That season ended because of the Palestinians.
I retired in 2012 and my last assignment was as an instructor at a DoD school that taught Security Cooperation (SC) to US civilians, military, industry and partner nation military and civilians. SC is basically anything military to military we do with other countries, which is many things from joint exercises to Foreign Military Sales. At the time we went to Iraq and Afghanistan every year to teach about the appropriate SC programs for each country so I volunteered to be a part of the team for both. As a Navy Officer I’d only been off the coast of Iraq, and Afghanistan doesn’t have a coast, and I got to step on land in both for three weeks each in 2011 before I retired. Fortunately I was in my last shore duty assignment doing something that gave me the opportunity.
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To put an exclamation point on it:
I would kill everyone I had to kill in Palestine so that this could never happen again if I were the Israelis.
Is every single adult woman killed a civilian? Are the adult women who are knowingly hiding, housing, and supporting Hamas civilians?
Does the Geneva Convention cover any of this?
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Remember that Israel waited weeks to begin military operations and Bibi was roundly criticized for that delay by the 10/7 survivors and others. Israel did what it could to save lives. I have a lot of doubt about any news about the war in Gaza including doubts about The Guardian article.
heres the problem. Gaza has misused humanitarian aid for years in order to build fortifications, weapons depots, command and control facilities, rocket firing facilities in, under, and around schools, hospitals, and other civilian areas. The so-called civilians, non-combatants, or whatever obviously knew what was going on. 70%+ of all Gazans suppirt the October 7 savagery. UN humanitarian aid workers directly participated. I don’t think the fighter/ civilian distinction m Gaza makes much sense. Sure there are some obvious civilians. But there is no way to find out who they are.
Remember that Israel waited weeks to begin military operations and Bibi was roundly criticized for that delay by the 10/7 survivors and others. Israel did what it could to save lives. I have a lot of doubt about any news about the war in Gaza including doubts about The Guardian article.
Technically both sides have to adopt the conventions. With war these days being about undisciplined fanatics, no.
