Why is Israel attacking south Gaza after telling people to go there | Hacker News Reader

Why is Israel attacking south Gaza after telling people to go there

reuters.com

26 pointsteleforce30 comments

Assume that the honest / nice / peaceful people are not calling the shots right now - on either side.

(It is pretty darn interesting to see coverage like this in Reuters.)

By and large, the Palestinian civilians being murdered by the Israeli bombings are not Hamas supporters, they were just like you and me - trying to live a peaceful civilian life during a tumultuous time.

In hindsight this looks like Israel was waiting for any excuse to perform genocide against the Palestinians.

Now the murder rate has accelerated to 3,000 Gaza strip occupants per week.

Then they are really inept at genocide, if over 20 days they managed to kill only four time as many as Hamas managed in a day. It will take centuries and trillions of dollars in this tempo. But sure let’s pretend there is genocide and killings civilians is the goal.

If you look at statements made in the past by those in power, killing civilians has always been a goal because the intention is to take the entirety of the land.

It is a fine line to walk, of course. Being extremely egregious would spark far too much international opposition and outrage.

Therefore, mowing the lawn is the approach taken. Load shedding and all that jazz.

What statements have said killing civilians is the goal?

As someone firmly on the Palestinians side, I don't think Israel has the goal of killing civilians. It does have- partly officially, partly unofficially- the long term goal of conquering all of Palestine without its Palestinian population.

Constant low grade violence with some flare-ups in which thousands (not millions) are killed is considered an acceptable means to that end.

This view seems to go against the reality of Israel withdrawing and forcefully removing all of its citizens from Gaza in 2005.

In October 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weissglass, explained the meaning of Sharon's statement further:

"The significance of the disengagement plan [from Gaza] is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. That is exactly what happened. You know, the term 'peace process' is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen.... what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did."

https://www.haaretz.com/2004-10-06/ty-article/top-pm-aide-ga...

Not really. Neither is Israel committing genocide, a completely unfounded accusation, nor is it trying to kill civilians.

There are extremists in Israel and their number is rising. But false accusation like this don't help anyone.

Well, they’re certainly not stopping yet, so we’ll see how high the death toll gets. The rate doesn’t seem like it’s going to drop anytime soon.

A high death toll is not the definition of genocide.

There are 200+ hostages still held in Gaza be Hamas, a terrorist group that also governs Gaza. Tens if not hundreds of rockets are being fired daily. Israel has made it clear that they are going to war against Hamas and will not stop until they are eliminated; that is going to lead to civilian deaths. The civilian death are tragic. The war may be a mistake and it may backfire. But collateral damage in war is not a genocide just because the numbers are high.

They're quite good, you have to compare with somthing similar, like Nazi bombing raids on London. With modern guided weapons, they can use a few hundred bombs per night to kill hundreds of people instead of having to use hundred planes with tens of thousands of bombs per raid like Nazis did over Britain with similar or lower average results per raid.

Also a lot of victims will be unreported. There's not enough heavy machinery to investigate every destroyed multi-storey building properly.

And there are a lots of those https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/25/middleeast/satellite-imag...

They already have their reason, and the USA is going to fund it.

I have no opinion on either side.

At Nuremberg trial, the commander of Einsatzgruppen Otto Ohlendorf in his defence has told that allied forces bombing of Dresden and Berlin killed many times more civilians, children, women. And a pilot with a press of the button did worse war crimes than a death squad soldier that followed commands and executed Jews. In law it's called "Dresden defence" and it wasn't admissible in the trial.

He was hanged in 1951.

>By and large, the Palestinian civilians being murdered by the Israeli bombings are not Hamas supporters, they were just like you and me - trying to live a peaceful civilian life during a tumultuous time.

How could you even pretend to know that?

Well, however careful Israel is, civilian deaths from bombing a city sounds like a great way to recruit the affected into Hamas.

Its not like there's a precedent for that in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Afganistan (again) and countless other wars...

It’s a senseless cycle.

They don’t have to look that far. There’s decades of precedent in the Gaza Strip.

Don't forget Iraq. 6000 civilian dead in the first 2 months of shock and awe.

Compare the rates of civilian death too

at a higher level, ISIS was largely made up of former high-ranking Iraqi intelligence officials

There will be new terrorists anyway as even UN institutions teach kids to repeat the cycle. Otherwise an attack like this has to net a response, if only to destroy infrastructure so future attacks are mitigated.

It won't end the terror of course.

Simple answer, because they can get away with it.

Another question: "Why is Israel bombing West Bank, where no Hamas exists?"

because hamas exists there. israel been conducting there operations for past few months, taking down hamas cells and a bunch of "new-age" groups .

bombing was first one in last 20 years or so. bomb was dropped (i think) in order to take out underground bunker below mosque with weapons/etc. idf published a bunch of photos and i think ground penetrating radar scans or something

It's obviously "accidental", just as the attack on the USS Liberty was.

israel gave specific areas in south gaza to go to. not in general south gaza.

I doubt that news spread properly in environment without electricity, where is chaos

it was during first week. this information was distributed via phone calls, texts, dropped flyers. Israel even hacked into hamas tv to play this message

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