Israel-Hamas War 2023

[crazy canuck]

It also highlights the degree to which you guys are going to look the other way when an atrocity is about to be committed because Israel is a special case.  The Israelis know that population has nowhere to go because it was Israel that created those conditions.  Now Israel gets a pass because it gives 24 hours for about a million people to leave and they have nowhere to go?

I predict that the next thing that will happen is Israel will claim that those who did not vacate can be considered as supporters of Hamas and therefore valid targets of war and you guys will simply say, "Yep, that Byers guy is smart and all, wrote the book, but doesn't really know how the real world works."
 

What is the "atrocity that is about to be committed"?  And how exactly would you propose Israel carry out the military operations that you concede are legitimate?  You do understand that Hamas militants don't walk around with flashing neon terrorists signs?  That there is no way to supply food and electricity to civilians in Gaza without Hamas requisitioning it for themselves?

Minority Report was a Hollywood movie, not a documentary.  You can't actually convict someone of precrime.

Not sure if serious.  The Israelis have given a non sensical warning to justify the slaughter of civilians.

[crazy canuck]

I predict that the next thing that will happen is Israel will claim that those who did not vacate can be considered as supporters of Hamas and therefore valid targets of war and you guys will simply say, "Yep, that Byers guy is smart and all, wrote the book, but doesn't really know how the real world works."

This won't happen.

I apologize, you would not do that.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, quick, someone find an outlier in the other direction that we can nullify that Byers dude with.

Byers is not an outlier.  He is the authority on the subject.

But I am sure you will find someone who will say the slaughter of civilians is ok.

[Tamas]

In one corner, there are people who displace others to take their land.

In the other corner, there are people who murder civilians indiscriminately. Neither are "good" but if one of these two sides must win I know which one I want to.

All the civilians in Gaza murdered civilians?  Israel is at war with Hamas.  I have no trouble with that.  If Israel destroys Hamas that is definitely a benefit to all, including the Palestinians. 

But as Professor Byers has clearly explained, there are limits Israel must observe in that war which includes not willfully killing civilians who are in Gaza.

Do we have proof that Israel is willfully killing civilians? If Hamas is not keeping to the same rules, i.e. they hide among civilians, then Israel has a binary choice: do not fight Hamas, or accept causing excessive civilian casualties. I don't see a third way.

[Threviel]

Yeah, quick, someone find an outlier in the other direction that we can nullify that Byers dude with.

Byers is not an outlier.  He is the authority on the subject.

But I am sure you will find someone who will say the slaughter of civilians is ok.

Are we talking about the Canadian legal scholar and left wing politician Michael Byers?


For sure he seems to be one of the brightest minds out of the University of Saskatchewan, but the global authority on international law?

He's a left-wing activist with a history of naive pacifist views on lots of stuff going by wikipedia.

I spent two minutes trying to find your post to see if that's the guy or if I'm missing something.

I mean, he seems like a dude worth listening to, but nowhere near the stature to stand head and shoulders above his peers.

[OttoVonBismarck]

CC is literally foaming at the mouth over a mass murder for which there is no indication Israel plans to commit and certainly no evidence they are in the process of committing.

[FunkMonk]

When I was a young man serving in Iraq, I deployed as part of an infantry battalion tasked with clearing out a notoriously bad neighborhood in the south of Baghdad. My duties often led me to be inside the battalion's Tactical Operations Center, and on many occasions I was there when some shit went down. This talk about minimizing civilian casualties reminds me of such an occasion.

One time I was present, we had live drone feed of an AQI mortar site manned by several men appearing to prepare it for firing, ammunition and all. They were taking their sweet time getting their weapon ready, which gave our mortar crews plenty of time to target them. As soon as our battalion commander gave the order, our mortars could fire and everyone there would become toothpaste.

Apparently, the drone operators/spotters also identified a woman and a child on site. This caused some hesitation from our battalion commander, but as soon as it appeared that the enemy mortar was going to fire, he gave the order for our mortars to destroy the mortar site. It was destroyed and I remember hearing that the drone spotter confirmed everyone killed.

Some days later, our mortar crewmen responsible for destroying that mortar site and killing everyone present were ordered to see the battalion chaplain. The chaplain asked everyone there if they had any regret whatsoever. No one said they did.

I think about that period of my life often, and current events and this discussion brought this specific episode to mind so I felt like sharing. There are no easy answers to this. I suspect many of today's people on the ground in Israel and Gaza, be they combatants or not, may come to develop similar memories as mine.

[DGuller]

I think over time, as Western military superiority became more and more pronounced, some people developed an expectation that a military should approach the firefight the same way a SWAT team should approach a hostage situation.  Obviously that expectation only applies to the Western force, the other side has no agency and all its actions are forced.

[Legbiter]

Berlin and Paris have basically banned all pro-Hamas/Palestine rallies.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Sometimes Europe's lack of free speech is for the best.

[Legbiter]

I think about that period of my life often, and current events and this discussion brought this specific episode to mind so I felt like sharing. There are no easy answers to this. I suspect many of today's people on the ground in Israel and Gaza, be they combatants or not, may come to develop similar memories as mine.

Thanks FunkMonk.

[OttoVonBismarck]

When I was a young man serving in Iraq, I deployed as part of an infantry battalion tasked with clearing out a notoriously bad neighborhood in the south of Baghdad. My duties often led me to be inside the battalion's Tactical Operations Center, and on many occasions I was there when some shit went down. This talk about minimizing civilian casualties reminds me of such an occasion.

One time I was present, we had live drone feed of an AQI mortar site manned by several men appearing to prepare it for firing, ammunition and all. They were taking their sweet time getting their weapon ready, which gave our mortar crews plenty of time to target them. As soon as our battalion commander gave the order, our mortars could fire and everyone there would become toothpaste.

Apparently, the drone operators/spotters also identified a woman and a child on site. This caused some hesitation from our battalion commander, but as soon as it appeared that the enemy mortar was going to fire, he gave the order for our mortars to destroy the mortar site. It was destroyed and I remember hearing that the drone spotter confirmed everyone killed.

Some days later, our mortar crewmen responsible for destroying that mortar site and killing everyone present were ordered to see the battalion chaplain. The chaplain asked everyone there if they had any regret whatsoever. No one said they did.

I think about that period of my life often, and current events and this discussion brought this specific episode to mind so I felt like sharing. There are no easy answers to this. I suspect many of today's people on the ground in Israel and Gaza, be they combatants or not, may come to develop similar memories as mine.

You have to wonder how they feel 20 years on, soldiers are really good at doing what is necessary to keep going in the field, but memories after can be rough.

There were a bunch of interviews conducted some years ago with B-29 crewman, most from Washington State, about their experiences participating in the firebombing raids on Japanese cities. Based on my own personal discussions over the years when more of them were alive, I had always seen most WW2 veterans as pretty stoic and unconflicted about their actions in war. But I think a lot of that was an outer shell that obscured the truth a bit, and a lot of these guys when they got really old were more willing to talk openly.

FWIW all the B-29 guys they interviewed said they had grave misgivings about what they did, and that it had haunted them for their entire lives. All of the B-29 crews were officers, and in the WW2 military that almost universally meant they were from a more educated pool of men than the enlisted ranks. These guys were flying at 5000' which is incredibly low altitude, and they all knew those bombs weren't hitting the Imperial Japanese Army, they knew what those incendiary devices were doing and who they were doing it to, and many reported that when they would come in behind a long line of B-29s that had laid down prior incendiary bombs you could smell the odor of cooking flesh as you passed over--multiple of these guys made that same comment.

[Grey Fox]

I think over time, as Western military superiority became more and more pronounced, some people developed an expectation that a military should approach the firefight the same way a SWAT team should approach a hostage situation.  Obviously that expectation only applies to the Western force, the other side has no agency and all its actions are forced.

A return to February 2022 and the conundrum of war of choice/necessity.

[Sheilbh]

Berlin and Paris have basically banned all pro-Hamas/Palestine rallies.

All Jewish schools in Amsterdam closed too which is particularly grim.

[Legbiter]

Jesus.