Hospitals have special protection under the rules of war. Why are they in the crosshairs in Gaza?
Hospitals have special protection under the rules of war. Why are they in the crosshairs in Gaza?
Hospitals have been caught in the crossfire during the Israel-Hamas war — both literally and in the clashing narratives of the conflict.
JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling. “Listen,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Sada as fighting raged around Shifa Hospital.
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Why are hospitals in Gaza under Israel’s crosshairs? Why? Is it truly that difficult to step back and think for a moment about why Israel would want to erase the current populace entirely?
Amazing, what a mystery
Not sure why you’re being downvoted… Israel an ethnostate, and what we’re seeing here are the early stages of a genocide. Look at any other ethnic cleansing in history, and you’ll easily see the parallels.
Well, I'm not sure early stages fits, that's calling for a group to removed and Israel has been bombing water wells, while monopolizing all water supplies and providing only dangerously! small amounts of unclean water. Without question, this has caused unneeded deaths. Simmiliarly for electricity and food supplies.
It's tragically been a genocide for a long time.
You know, I was trying to tread lightly, lest the Zionist apologists show up to try and redefine “genocide”.
But the reality is this:
- Tens of thousands of civilians are being murdered (shot, bombed, starved, water supply poisoned) by Israel’s military.
- Israel is an ethnostate which believes that their race makes them god’s chosen people.
- One of the Israeli government cabinet members has declared that the Palestinians in Gaza must be eradicated, and that he would drop a nuclear bomb on Gaze if he could.
When you use the U.N.’s definition of genocide (“acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”), the picture is pretty clear.
Absolutely. I hope I didn't sound pedantic or talking down, my intent was just to have more details higher in the thread in case some of those zionist shit poster tolls take over the bottom. You're 100% right on every point and I wish you weren't.
I didn’t receive it as pedantic or talking down at all. I just totally agree with you as well!
Israel is definitely not an ethnostate. It has 20% Arabs. How many Jews does Palestine have?
Calling a state an Ethnostate doesn’t mean you’re saying the population is entirely of one ethnicity. It means one ethnicity is given a privileged status above all others.
Israel was founded when Zionists purged Palestinians from their homes and forced them into Gaza and the West Bank in order to create a Jewish majority state. That makes Israel an ethnostate by definition.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-arab-citizens-israel
That's not a ethnostate you dumb fuck
They get treated better than minorities in Russia, China and blacks in the US
Ahh I see. So because Zionists haven’t been able to successfully cleanse all Palestinians from the region, Israel doesn’t count as an ethnostate. Don’t worry though because by God they’re still trying their damndest to make it happen no matter how many thousands of children they have to murder.
Not necessarily. There are laws that explicitly and implicitly discriminate against Arab Israelis.
No they don't, many surviving people who suffered oppression under apartheid south Africa have stated that the Palestinians are treated worse.
They get treated better than minorities in Russia, China and blacks in the US
Israel has a law requiring Jewish people maintain demographic majority.
It is the definition of an ethno state.
Not only that, but it is a removed supremacist ethno state.
Look up how they treat the Beta Israelis.
They don't even allow Muslims to marry Jews dawg
War does not automatically equate to being a genocide just because people due. Otherwise, every war in history would.be genocide.
There are Arabs & Palestinians that serve in the IDF too and have killed Palestinians. There are other Arabs in Jordan and Syria who have also gone to war against Palestine.
You are using incindiary rhetoric to win an online argument, but your description doesn't fit the facts.
You're literally using the same arguments every genocidal government has used to justify their genocides in history.
I don't know why people insist on this narrative. Isn't the truth horrible enough? Hamas is allegedly using hospitals as shields, which is horrible. Israel is willing to kill countless civilians to get at Hamas, which is also horrible.
Because it’s what Israeli politicians and government officials actually believe. They aren’t even quiet about it. It’s genuinely not hard to prove the genocidal intent of the Israeli government.
Unfortunately western media just tends to gloss over it all. I’m not sure if reporters can’t fathom the US supporting ethnic cleansing or if they just want to avoid the flack they’d receive by being honest. Either way, it’s unfortunate because well meaning liberals are left to assume Israel genuinely cares about stopping Hamas and aren’t using them as a pretext to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip.
Unfortunately western media just tends to gloss over it all. I’m not sure if reporters can’t fathom the US supporting ethnic cleansing or if they just want to avoid the flack they’d receive by being honest.
Please watch a documentary that covers any of the previous foreign wars the US has been in, especially those that came about before the internet boom (or better yet, one before and one after). I personally like to recommend the Panama Deception because it's free on youtube and pretty short and succinct (only 90 min). On top of that Panama is still currently dealing with the issues started and maintained during the "wars" discussed in that documentary (I don't knowing if you've seen about the ongoing Canadian mining protests).
The documentary covers some of what happened obviously, but it also shows some of the news airing at the time from the biggest American news channels that were covering the wars and how they covered it. You'd be amazed at what was claimed at home vs what was happening overseas. The MSM may as well have been a third arm of the US government. As much as they like to pretend to be neutral on domestic affairs which the people watching would easily be able to criticize, it should really be no shock to anyone that they'd mostly be parroting US gov talking points when it comes to foreign affairs.
Operation cast lead.
Humans shields was something the IOF engaged in.
Yeah, I mean there are people in the Israeli Government calling all Palestinians (not just Hamas) "animals", others who say that Palestinians won't be allowed to get back to Northern Gaza and there's even a member of that Government who seriously suggested Israel should nuke Gaza.
And then, of course, there is the long track record of Israel doing things like murdering journalists and killing Palestinian kids throwing rocks at their armored diggers, especially under governments with these same people in them.
People who have a track record of murdering journalists and children, bombing hospitals full of those they see as "animals" which they want to see dead or out of Gaza, and then providing to the World some unverifiable excuse that blames somebody else and doesn't even pass the sniff test when it comes to proportionality in the use of force is hardly out of character, especially because History has various examples of people who think like that going full on mass-murderer in similar ways.
erase the current populace entirely
Do you realize that the population of Gaza grows by over 50,000 people every year? Even if we accept the casualty figures provided by Hamas (and I don't) then unless this war goes on at its current intensity for another four months (which it won't) the population of Gaza will actually increase rather than decrease in the one-year period that includes the war.
The idea that the war in Gaza is "[erasing] the current populace entirely" is disconnected from reality.
Wow.
Are you literally saying it’s not a genocide because the population is growing faster than the IDF is killing?
I don’t know what happened to your brain, nor your heart, but I am sad whatever happened to you, happened.
You did use the term "erase.". What about all the Palestinians living inside Israel.
Obviously it sucks that people are dying, but hamas started the war FFS. They 100% knew it would cause huge civilian losses.
If you think Hamas «started» anything, read up on the history. It’s a 75 year long illegal occupation.
Israel stated the war 17 years ago, minimum.
Blockades are acts of war.
This argument is the adult equivalent of grabbing someone's hand and punching them in the face with it while saying "stop hitting yourself"
You should be embarrassed for even making this argument.
Israel stated the war 17 years ago, minimum.
*18. The blockade started in late 2005. Just clarifying because Israel likes to claim that the blockade started in response to the scary Hamas government launching rocket attacks.
Do you believe the IDF is incompetent at doing a genocide then?
That's a false dichotomy. They are killing them as fast as they think the international community will tolerate. They won't kill them fast enough to provoke any major entity into opposing them, they will just stay firmly in the "everyone will wag their fingers at us and argue about whether it's right" zone, which is where they sit currently.
And what will make you believe genocide isn't the end goal? The refugees leaving through Egypt don't?
The refugees leaving through Egypt don’t?
How could they? Reiterating my prior point:
They are killing them as fast as they think the international community will tolerate. They won't kill them fast enough to provoke any major entity into opposing them, they will just stay firmly in the "everyone will wag their fingers at us and argue about whether it's right" zone, which is where they sit currently.
So the fact that this leaves open the possibility that some people get to flee their homes in terror, knowing that their friends and loved ones who refuse to be chased out of their homes by Israel are likely to be killed by the IDF, is one of the things that you feel might convince me that Israel doesn't have genocidal intent?
And what will make you believe genocide isn’t the end goal?
Clearly nothing that you're going to accept.
But that's impossible to argue. You can claim for any ratio that it's a silent genocide as long as even a single citizen is killed. And we know a war without civilian casualties - even forgetting the situation of Hamas putting civilians forward as shields and even killing some themselves. Where do you draw the line?
Instead of examining the facts, you're opting for an easy cop-out that requires no proof and cannot be disproved.
I didn't say no conditions anyone would accept, I said no conditions you are going to accept. You wouldn't be carrying water to this level if you would.
But let's hear them, why "hide" it?
But let’s hear them, why “hide” it?
LOL ok you sure got me there. Here's your chance to prove me wrong.
Stop now. Say "hey, we got our pound of flesh (and about 2000 more pounds too), let's stop and figure out a path forward."
And since Kbin doesn't seem to want to let me upload inline images today:
Yes.
Nothing is more corrosive to an armies fighting capabilities then an occupation.
Civilian casualties aren't the same thing as genocide.
genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
When a country with access to the full destructive power of a modern-day military (including nuclear weapons) fights a war in such a manner that at the end of the war there will be more enemy civilians than there were before the war, it is entirely unreasonable to claim that genocide or any attempt to commit genocide is taking place. You might as well call it cannibalism or pedophilia - those are also really bad things that Israel isn't actually doing.
Keep telling yourself whatever you need to support your own narratives. I just wanna let you know that I think you are a cold-hearted person, and I hope that you, your family, or your people will never be thought of, as you are thinking and/or talking of the Palestinians right here.
They are deliberately bombing hospitals, schools and people fleeing. If you cannot open your eyes to see this, but rather argue about the technicalities of semantics to feel better, I wish you good luck in life.
When you're arguing the definitions of words you've already lost.
When you are arguing that words have no meaning, you have already thrown away your own argument.
When you're making contrite bullshit to reply you're probably a tool bag.
Intentionally withholding food and water when you control all ingress is a way of extirpating a population without bombing and shooting them.
But so is dropping more explosive power than the two atomic bombs used in Japan into an area the size of Manhattan in a month.
Sorry, what? Newborn babies can't shoot a gun and can't take care of themselves if their homes are bombed and their parents die. Not to mention that half of Gaza is already under 18 and probably won't be having babies any time soon, given that hospitals are being targeted. What the fuck is wrong with you?
I can’t imagine ever having such a cynical and apathetic worldview. All of this death is acceptable to you because more children will be born? Because they’ll be replaced?
Set a reminder on your calendar for March, and we’ll take a look at the news at that point. I have a sneaking suspicion that you may be surprised. While you’re at it set a reminder to get some therapy too, christ
Even if we accept the casualty figures provided by Hamas (and I don’t)
I don't know why you wouldn't, unless your justification is just your own bigotry.
One snippet out of a lengthy article.
Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements.
“Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “In the times in which we have done our own verification of numbers for particular strikes, I’m not aware of any time which there’s been some major discrepancy.”
Shakir said Human Rights Watch would not use figures provided by parties with “a propensity to misrepresent information.”
Why news outlets and the U.N. rely on Gaza’s Health Ministry for death tolls
And another:
Throughout four wars and numerous bloody skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, U.N. agencies have cited the Health Ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the U.N. humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records.
In all cases the U.N.’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza Health Ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
— 2008 war: The ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 1,385.
— 2014 war: The ministry reported 2,310 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 2,251.
— 2021 war: The ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 256.
What is Gaza’s Ministry of Health and how does it calculate the war’s death toll?
You do realise that the birth rates will slow down during the conflict, right? Who's going to be having a baby when the nearest hospital is being shelled? Assuming of course that both parents even survive.
That 50,000 per year won't hold for this duration and I won't be surprised if it shrinks to below 1,000 by the time Israel is finished.
Israel doesn't wanna wipe out Gazans; that's just unrealistic. However, a sizeable part of the Israeli government is very much fine with expelling them.
Complete displacement of a peoples is a genocide
Yeah not saying otherwise. Just countering the point that Gazans aren't being wiped out so it's fine.
This is literally the same language used for every genocide to justify it.
