Comment by enoch_r | Hacker News Reader

Comment by enoch_r | Hacker News Reader

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The numbers we have for IDF civilian deaths in Gaza come from the governmental authority in Gaza. That government authority happens to be Hamas.

- Hamas falsely attributes civilian deaths to Israel (as you can see from the "hospital strike")

- Hamas vastly inflates civilian casualty counts, somewhere between 2-5x as you can also see from the "hospital strike" which was immediately claimed by Hamas to have killed more than 500. US estimates have it between 100-300, and I think the photos of the damaged parking lot are extremely damning for Hamas's claims - yes, an explosion and fire in a crowded refugee camp could kill lots of people, but 500 is absurd.

- Hamas tells civilians in Gaza to ignore text messages from the IDF telling them to evacuate because their residence may be bombed.

- Hamas sets up road blocks to prevent civilians in Gaza from evacuating.

- Hamas sets up military installations and ammunition caches next to or in civilian installations, including kindergartens and mosques. (You can find videos of bombings resulting in massive secondary explosions as ammunition caches pop off.) They hide in refugee camps (https://thehill.com/policy/international/4260111-israel-hama...).

I think it's worth asking whether there is any way to wage a just war against a government like this, that is literally trying to maximize the number of its own civilians killed. And if not, what kinds of behavior does that incentivize?

Half of Gaza's population _wasn't even born_ yet when Hamas was "elected" so this point is kind of moot

I'm not saying that Gazan civilians deserve to suffer because they voted for Hamas. I am saying that Hamas tries to inflate the death toll for Gazan civilians (both by lying about that toll, and by taking actions with the express purpose of increasing that toll).

If you refuse to go to war with Hamas because of this fact, you incentivize that behavior.

I can't really think of a more just case for war than "the government of a neighbor just brutally, intentionally slaughtered civilians in a surprise attack in our country." It doesn't matter whether the neighboring country is a dictatorship or a democracy.

It very much sucks for the people of Palestine that Hamas chose to start a war with Israel and is using tactics that purposefully result in the death of Palestinians. I hope that they stop putting rocket launchers in and next to schools. I hope that they start allowing people to evacuate. I hope that they stop lying to their people about "psychological warfare" in an effort to get more of them killed. I wish that neighboring countries would allow Palestinians to escape the carnage, and adopt strategies that actually support the Palestinian people rather than the Palestinian cause.

But the IDF and Israel do not control that. And I'm honestly not sure what people expect from them. If you can't fight an enemy that hides behind civilians, then hiding behind civilians is an obvious winning strategy. And personally, I don't want to live in a world where the government most willing to sacrifice their own people automatically wins any conflict.

They could just give back all the stolen land and homes and stop oppressing the Palestinians. If there weren't so many people living in such a tiny strip of land, the number of Palestinian children who become collateral damage would be greatly reduced, and people would be a lot less likely to join a terrorist organization if they can lead normal lives and don't have an oppressor throwing bombs on their friends and family.

Hmm. Even in reasonably functional democracies people vastly overestimate the ability of franchisees to affect any kind of meaningful change.

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