Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Admiral Yi]

Jake, isn't water a moot point?  I thought they turned it back on around D+2.  Makes more sense to focus on the fuel for generators.

[Tamas]

I just want to further voice my frustration as opposed to trying to convince anyone, I think everyone have made up their minds already on who the bad guys are in this conflict.

But to perhaps explain why I do no think it's the IDF, here is an example: so on the Hamas/Palestinian/world public opinion side we hear about the IDF indiscriminately bombing civilians for the hell of it (with usually Hamas as the news source), which the IDF denies - and of course I have no way of verifying whether they are just targeting Hamas personnel and installations despite Hamas putting these among civilians, or just shooting at whatever shows up in their crosshairs  .

What there does seem to be clear evidence of though is the extraordinary cruelty of Hamas militants against Israeli civilians: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67198270 (Danish journalist explaining what he saw: https://x.com/PiersUncensored/status/1716536352223732131?s=20)

So on one side there is clear evidence of Hamas barbarism. On the other side, there are conflicting claims done by the IDF and the aforementioned Hamas butchers regarding IDF barbarism. I cannot possibly look at these and conclude that the IDF is not the preferred side to emerge victorious from this clusterfuck.

[Tamas]

This is a pretty good channel on military tech and military stuff analysis, like Ukraine. Poor guy had to re-edit his latest piece on the Gaza tunnel network because Youtube is censoring videos with the word "Hamas" apparently. So he has to say "HMS" instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpA5SOEq15c

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSqgGtWeTSE

Looks like Israel heard you Jake.

[crazy canuck]

I guess it depends on whether you think getting the civilizing population to turn on the ruling class through suffering is a legitimate war tactic. Whether or not that ever really works.


Although if that was the goal, there are better methods to achieve that goal like oopsy doodling the water pipeline with missiles rather than turning off a valve, from a PR perspective.

No, collective punishment is illegal under international law.

Whether or not one agrees with Professor Byers' conclusion that shutting off the water is collective punishment and contrary to international law, one thing that is not controversial is that if it is collective punishment it is contrary to international law.

[crazy canuck]

It appears from reports that the only water entering Gaza is the bottled kind entering through the trucks entering the Southern border. 

That appears to be what the Israeli statements were about and of course that was delayed by the Israelis I any event.

But that small amount of water does not begin to meet the needs of the population.

As Professor Byers has said a strong case can be made that Israel is engaging in collective punishment.

[Tamas]

Or besieging an enemy-held city.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The main issue with arguments from dishonest people like Byers is they are largely trying to apply terms that have historically only ever been construed in practice as having very specific application, to have broad application, which if applied equally in all conflicts (not just ones where Jews are one of the belligerent parties), would actually criminalize every war fought in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Essentially it is an attempt to phrase any attack on legitimate infrastructural targets that has a military purpose, as "collective punishment" because it harms a lot of civilians who aren't combatants.

That is just not how the word collective punishment has been used previously--and for good reason. A baseline that people should accept is that international law / law of war cannot criminalize the basic operations of warfare. Why? Because attempting to criminalize war won't work, countries have reasons to go to war, if you broadly declare activities that are military in nature and intrinsically part of most wars, you are trying to criminalize the fighting of a war. That may sound neat to an evolved ball of light, but in the real world it just means you're making every war a crime. If every war is a crime, then the participants are going to generally less interested in following the laws of war.

This is why the actual, deliberate way the laws of war have been written have intended to criminalize things that agreeing parties view as immoral and outside the bounds of acceptable warfare.

Collective punishment has historically been confined to a scenario where an occupying power suffers some incident, be it crimes committed by an insurgent group or etc, and decides to punish a whole group of civilians because some portion of them were involved.

Trying to apply the term "collective punishment" to mean "a party attacked across its broadly recognized borders and suffering a large number of dead, deciding to respond with a military invasion into the enemy's territory is collective punishment since only a small portion of the target of the invasion was involved in the attack."

Carried to absurdity this concept of collective punishment would have made illegal the capture of almost every city that was captured in WW2--because basic siege warfare is intrinsic to capturing cities.

What should be even further noted is some of the people crying "collective punishment" aren't just referring to the blockade of supplies as CP, but Israel not freely giving its enemy in a declared war electricity and pumped water, again--this would suggest that the Soviets should have been shipping humanitarian supplies into Berlin during the final battle for Berlin at the end of WW2, or be seen guilty of committing a war crime.

It is predicated on a whole series of distortions of what is permitted in a siege and what it isn't, and how we generally use the term collective punishment.

It is pretty clearly the case Byers was engaging in aspirational advocacy, but certain parties who historically engage in dishonest discussion instead attempt to convert his argument to unassailable "expertise" which is not to be questioned.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Frankly, a not insignificant number of the critics of the IDF's operation seem to adhere to a view of "laws of war" in which wars can only be fought where civilians aren't, and where no civilians are harmed. DGuller mentioned maybe this is a fanciful view of war based on a misunderstanding that wars can be fought as a series of surgical SWAT style raids where almost no civilians are harmed, and anything else is a crime.

That is a nice and pleasant fiction--but we all know that isn't reality. And unlike a lot of international treaty law, the laws of war were largely written to operate at a more practical level--if they had been idealistic attempts to outlaw all warfare most major powers never would have agreed to them in the first place.

Under this theory of war any bad actor could just run around with each of their soldiers wearing a vest in which an infant is harnessed, and be protected from any martial action. That is obviously a silly hypothetical, but so is thinking the fighters with the baby-vests are given special protections, or the babies in those vests. The broad principals of war vis-a-vis civilians is they aren't to be deliberately targeted, and further that a power take efforts not to do things which don't have any (or no significant) military benefit which disproportionately harms civilians.

That latter part is a squishier concept, and if you extend it to criminalize all fighting or sieging of occupied cities, again--you're trying to criminalize almost every war since 1900.

I will note there are a number of direct comparisons to the 9 month long "Battle of Mosul" with coalition forces to dislodge ISIS from that city (larger in civilian population than all of the strip); and I cannot remember anyone making the argument that long, brutal, urban operation in which many thousands of civilians died as a form of "collective punishment." It was recognized as a terrible thing that killed lots of innocent people but was a necessity  to free Iraq from the scourge of ISIS/Daesh.

[crazy canuck]

Or besieging an enemy-held city.

The Israelis are in fact besieging a whole territory, which holds a number of settlements, including the south, where they told people to go to be safe. Palestinians are not safe in the south, and no small measure due to the fact that there is lack of water and food.

If the Israelis were only besieging a city as you assert then there might be a stronger case made against the notion that they are engaging in collective punishment.

[crazy canuck]

Lol, now professor Byers not only doesn't know what he's talking about, but according to Otto he is now "dishonest".

You got a wonder about the validity of your position if you have to resort to that kind of malicious attack against somebody who JR recognized at the beginning of this thread as a world leading authority on the topic.

[Josquius]

You'd think if shifting people to the south was Israel's aim they'd be sure to provide plentiful water and other resources to towns in the south.

[crazy canuck]

You'd think if shifting people to the south was Israel's aim they'd be sure to provide plentiful water and other resources to towns in the south.

And if their aim was collective punishment...

[OttoVonBismarck]

The entirety of the Gaza strip is roughly the size of Detroit, fwiw, to people trying to somehow act like it isn't a city-state.

[Savonarola]

The entirety of the Gaza strip is roughly the size of Detroit, fwiw, to people trying to somehow act like it isn't a city-state.

Further Detroit is an unusually large city (IIRC about the size of Manhattan, San Francisco and Boston combined.)