Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Threviel]

Israel does not have a strategic bomber force and I guess that they don't have very many firebombs for bombing civilians.

If they wanted to I guess they could target civilian crowds with artillery and aim for civilian gathering places.

A missile splinter from a Gaza missile hit a crowd at a hospital and killed lots of people. If it had been a dedicated splinter artillery shell or missile I expect that far more would have died.

In short, Israel is very much holding back their destructive power. Had they wanted to terror bomb or to do a genocide the deaths would have been at least an order of magnitude higher.

[grumbler]

Sorry I'm mixing things up.

I think when you're looking at - or planning - a military action you should have a goal, take what steps you can to avoid civilian casualties and then judge of that together whether that is proportionate to your military objective. In my view that's not necessarily about justice or morality, but about a restraint or fetter when the power of weapons is always increasing and (arguably) the basis for targeting civilians has also increased (less so now in the West) with conscription, with industrial production, with logistics etc.

I'm not saying that you necessarily need to be "restrained" in conducting a war. I think it can be right to have very aggressive objectives or goals, but that you still take those steps of minimising civilian casualties and making sure they are proportionate to those objectives. I don't think it's about judging whether those civilians are somehow culpable enough to not care.

I think that you are entirely correct.  "Disproportionate" might be a vague term, but a measure would be "if they were doing this to us, would I consider it proportionate?"  One of the tragedies of war is that the considerations of what is proportionate get more and more distorted as the decision-makers get more inured to the consequences of their actions.  "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic."

[Admiral Yi]

Maybe - it's always a risk. Although I'm not really a big believer in law or justice

I don't think justice is the right frame. For a start I think following your argument, civilians could be legitimate targets. I mean what would be the objetion to Russian barrel bombing in Syria, for example. It's an argument you could even use to defend Hamas' attack - Israel is a conscript society after all.

I don't think it's about justice or morality but just trying to place some restraint or some pause into executing a war.

The objection to barrel bombing Syrian shepherds is the same as exists already.  No purposeful targeting of civilians. 

Thinking back I may not have made my position clear.  I am not advocating putting every Palestinian who voted for Hamas against a wall and shooting them. 

What I am saying is targeting decisions will always involve a trade off between competing principles: vengence/deterence and protecting the innocent.  Justice for the dead Israeli ravers vs. justice for the helpless Palestinian pawns.  And that the extent to which those helpless pawns are not pawns factors in to the implicit moral algorithm about whether a particular strike is moral or immoral, civilized or savage.

[viper37]

Certainly many here have said that part of their objection to the deaths of Gaza civilians is they are living under coercion.  If these objections have standing then surely so do their obverses: that killing civilians who positively desire death and destruction are less objectionable victims of collateral damage.

1) can you insure that the elections would be fair for everyone
2) given that fair elections are usually anonymous, how do you discriminate Hamas supporters from non Hamas supporters with a fair election
3) assuming both preceding conditions are met, and you still undergo massive bombardment because 53% of voters decided to vote for Hams after a period of indiscriminate bombing and attacks toward civilians, how is that not collective punishment, something forbiddent by the Geneva conventions?
4) if collective punishment for the Israeli toward the Palestinians, should it be allowed for the Palestinians?
5) If #4 is justified, how does the cycle of violence end?

[Josquius]

Israel does not have a strategic bomber force and I guess that they don't have very many firebombs for bombing civilians.

If they wanted to I guess they could target civilian crowds with artillery and aim for civilian gathering places.

A missile splinter from a Gaza missile hit a crowd at a hospital and killed lots of people. If it had been a dedicated splinter artillery shell or missile I expect that far more would have died.

In short, Israel is very much holding back their destructive power. Had they wanted to terror bomb or to do a genocide the deaths would have been at least an order of magnitude higher.

"if israel really wanted to they could kill a lot more people" is a pretty shit defence of killing civilians.
Like. The US could wipe out the world if it wanted to. Does that mean it has a freebie of wiping out a country or two?

[viper37]

Justice for the dead Israeli ravers vs. justice for the helpless Palestinian pawns.

But justice implies you seek out the guilty party and you either bring them to justice (if at all possible) or you execute them.

Think of the Munich massacre of Olympian athletes.  Do you of anyone personally who wept for the terrorists who were executed following this massacre?
I wasn't born then, let alone reading the newspapers   but do you recall anyone asking Israel to be moderate in its retaliation?

Did Nixon called Golda Meir and told her to go easy on the Palestinians?  Talked her into a truce?

I can't find anything about that in Wikipedia, but sometimes, the records are incomplete...

Or maybe, a simpler explanation: back then, despite the hawkish nature of the government, they didn't uselessly bomb civilians and concentrated on real military targets.  The goals where to eliminate the terrorist organization, not scare the civilians.  The civilians that were killed were in close proximity to the military objectives.

[Admiral Yi]

1) can you insure that the elections would be fair for everyone
2) given that fair elections are usually anonymous, how do you discriminate Hamas supporters from non Hamas supporters with a fair election
3) assuming both preceding conditions are met, and you still undergo massive bombardment because 53% of voters decided to vote for Hams after a period of indiscriminate bombing and attacks toward civilians, how is that not collective punishment, something forbiddent by the Geneva conventions?
4) if collective punishment for the Israeli toward the Palestinians, should it be allowed for the Palestinians?
5) If #4 is justified, how does the cycle of violence end?

1) I can't.
2) I don't.
3) I do that by proceeding under the same assumptions that have governed warfare in the West for centuries: once a polity makes a decision to engage in war, the repercussions of waging war fall on all inhabitants equally. 
I would judge Hamas on the same terms i judge Israel.  I would ask those who support Hamas, or those who think the magical formula of "kill Hamas good, kill a Palestinian civilian evil" (like those idiot Canadian politicians who signed that letter) to do the same.
4) Of course.
5) I don't know.  How does it end if collective punishment is forbidden?

[viper37]

Israel does not have a strategic bomber force and I guess that they don't have very many firebombs for bombing civilians.

If they wanted to I guess they could target civilian crowds with artillery and aim for civilian gathering places.

A missile splinter from a Gaza missile hit a crowd at a hospital and killed lots of people. If it had been a dedicated splinter artillery shell or missile I expect that far more would have died.

In short, Israel is very much holding back their destructive power. Had they wanted to terror bomb or to do a genocide the deaths would have been at least an order of magnitude higher.

Israel could use their nuclear arsenal on Iran too, since they have it.  Why don't they do it?
I don't think having capabilities is enough.
You're missing one or two steps.

[Admiral Yi]

Justice for the dead Israeli ravers vs. justice for the helpless Palestinian pawns.

But justice implies you seek out the guilty party and you either bring them to justice (if at all possible) or you execute them.

Think of the Munich massacre of Olympian athletes.  Do you of anyone personally who wept for the terrorists who were executed following this massacre?
I wasn't born then, let alone reading the newspapers   but do you recall anyone asking Israel to be moderate in its retaliation?

Did Nixon called Golda Meir and told her to go easy on the Palestinians?  Talked her into a truce?

I can't find anything about that in Wikipedia, but sometimes, the records are incomplete...

Or maybe, a simpler explanation: back then, despite the hawkish nature of the government, they didn't uselessly bomb civilians and concentrated on real military targets.  The goals where to eliminate the terrorist organization, not scare the civilians.  The civilians that were killed were in close proximity to the military objectives.

I can think of plenty of terrorist sympathizers who were outraged at the Israelis and who vowed vengeance.  I can think of one prominent British politician who thought showing up at a memorial for them was the right thing to do.

Or the explanation that is not as simple as your, but which I find consistent with the information available to me, is the Munich attackers didn't choose to shield themselves from retribution behind civilians.

[viper37]

Then how about when they reach the age of maturity, or when they reach the age to bear arms?  If children are special then everyone else is less special.

It's like the mafia.  You kill the children of your enemies so they don't grow up planning their vengeance.

It's good code for the IDF to have.

But not so good if they want to claim to be the most moral army of the world.
Though choice to make.

[Admiral Yi]

It's good code for the IDF to have.

It's not one I would support.  You have to make your own choices.

[Admiral Yi]

"if israel really wanted to they could kill a lot more people" is a pretty shit defence of killing civilians.
Like. The US could wipe out the world if it wanted to. Does that mean it has a freebie of wiping out a country or two?

That's not the charge Threviel is rebutting.  He is rebutting the charge that Israel is killing all the civilians it can.  I.e. the terror bombing charge.

[viper37]

It's good code for the IDF to have.

It's not one I would support.  You have to make your own choices.

But you just said the IDF should keep disregarding civilian life in Gaza if they vote for Hamas.

They've already begun to bomb them.  The results would be tainted.

It's kinda like asking the Germans if they would side with the NSDAP after the Russians have entered Berlin.

I'm not sure what would the results would be under such conditions, under such destruction, with a menacing enemy at their door.  They may have hated the Nazis at this point but felt they were the better option to protect them against the Russians?

Anyway.  There's zero chance of being able to organize elections in there right now.

[Sheilbh]

3) I do that by proceeding under the same assumptions that have governed warfare in the West for centuries: once a polity makes a decision to engage in war, the repercussions of waging war fall on all inhabitants equally. 

I have no idea what you mean by this. Obviously other traditions around the world have their own teaching on this. But modern ideas around the rules and limits of war are very strongly incluenced from Medieval thought, from theology.

I don't understand what you mean by this because it's the literal opposite of my understanding of centuries of Western thought on war (not least because I think the identification of people with polity is very modern).

I would judge Hamas on the same terms i judge Israel.  I would ask those who support Hamas, or those who think the magical formula of "kill Hamas good, kill a Palestinian civilian evil" (like those idiot Canadian politicians who signed that letter) to do the same.

Hamas are terrorists. You can't judge a military by the same standard as you do a terrorist organisation with a state. It's like judging a business by the standards of a cartel. They are different in nature - that's what defines them.

Of course if you don't think Hamas are terrorists - and I get there is argument about that (see the row over the BBC's language) - but I think they are and I think that's how they have to be understood.

[viper37]

"if israel really wanted to they could kill a lot more people" is a pretty shit defence of killing civilians.
Like. The US could wipe out the world if it wanted to. Does that mean it has a freebie of wiping out a country or two?

That's not the charge Threviel is rebutting.  He is rebutting the charge that Israel is killing all the civilians it can.  I.e. the terror bombing charge.

Terror bombing does not mean you kill all the civilians you can.  The allies did not want to kill all the civilians of Dresden.  The Americans did not want to kill all the civilians of Japan with their firebombing, nor those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the nukes.

You confuse terror bombing with genocide.