*d* said:
Its odd that Hamas did not mention its call for the destruction of Israel in its electoral manifesto in 2006.
Not mentioning something is not rescinding it, and they have in their public statements reconfirmed their desire to see the destruction of Israel and push all the Jews "into the sea".
And the idea that Israel is under the threat of a real genocide from Hamas is laughable, charter or not. Because its the superiority of the IDF that has inflicted many more disproportionate causalties on Gaza compared to what Hamas could ever do to Israel.
Counting up the numbers on each side is irrelevant, and implies you believe in an eye-for-an-eye, which in my view is a morally bankrupt way to view it. Much more appropriate is to ask whehter Israel has used the minimum force necessary and whether the action was justified.
From what I can see the answers are yes, and yes.
What a heartless statement that is. Isn't 600 civilians in 3 weeks big enough to make a fuss??
It certainly sucks, on the other hand, it is a very small number for a conflict of that scale, so the Israeli army deserves kudos for plainly having done their utmost to keep civilian casualties low.
I'd have guessed 10x that many casualties. They did a great job of targetting Hamas as precisely as they could.
Its even reasonable? Like I said before, "What planet are you from?" If Hamas had killed that many, Israel would most likely flatten Gaza. Your statement simply shows you put different values on different civilian lives.
I don't think Israel would flatten Gaza in that case. I think Israel would identify what the minimum force necessary was and use just that force to bring an end to the attacks.
IDF appears to be operating at a higher level of moral reasoning than you. They are pragmatically using the minimum force necessary to achieve their goals, while you count up the numbers on each side and think in ethically primitive eye-for-an-eye terms.
And as per many human rights groups worldwide including within Israel, both Hamas and Israel have committed war crimes and therefore Israel most take some responsibility for those civilian causalties.
They're as shrill as you are. I've read their statements and they break down into two categories:
(1) The more reputable agencies simply want incidents in which civilians were killed to be investigated to see whether or not any war crime was committed. This is reasonable and proper and the investigations should be done as a matter of course, just as the police always investigate any incident in which a civilian is killed.
(2) The less reputable ones are making wildly unsupported claims that there are war cimes purely on the basis that some civilians were killed, but without having enough information to know whether any war crime was committed.
Let's say a hospital is bombed (as one was). Is that a war crime? No. In and of itself it is not. For it to be a war crime it had to have been an intentional attack on civilians and if it turns out it was a targetting error or if it turns out that there was enemy fire coming from that location then it is not a war crime. Of course there should be an investigation to see what happened there--but I'd go with the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" and wait to see what the investigation reveals.
I'd especially go with the innocent until proven guilty notion because given the low number of civilian deaths any reasonable person would have to conclude that IDF was trying to minimize them.
