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Comment by The_Colonel | Hacker News Reader

Israeli invasion killed alread > 1% of total population of Gaza, further 2-3% have been iniured.

According to you, did Israel get a blank check? Are they justified to do literally anything? Whst if the killed percentage will go to 5, 10 %. Still fine?

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Out of curiosity I looked for a relevant reference, apparently in WWII, civilian casualties to allied air raids were 0.6% of the total population and twice that for wounded, so around half the numbers you cite for Gaza (though IIUC you are including both civilian and militant deaths in your counts so not perfectly comparable). Given that Hamas seeks to maximize their civilian deaths I'm not sure how to take that comparison.

Looking at WWI is a bit more confusing, similar numbers of dead Germans due to malnutrition and disease (excluding the pandemic), but overall 1.1% civilian deaths due to military action for the Central Powers.

While personally I feel that the ideal number of civilian deaths is obviously 0 (on both sides), I do feel like counting the dead is not a particularly convincing metric when considering who (if any) is doing right since the relevant information is in the rightness of concrete actions taken rather than the results. Bombing a hospital is bad even if there are almost no civilian casualties. Bombing a military HQ is right even if it unintentionally involved civilian casualties (assuming you did act to minimize them). Bombing a military HQ that is directly under a hospital - ask me later please, but I don't think I'd judge solely on who is dead at the end.

I'm obviously a bit biased here, but just reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violen... I can't see how Israel can stop the war as long as Hamas has any form of influence in the area. For now, except for Netanyahu which should be rotting in a jail cell, I'm reserving my judgement until we can see the final results.

What do you expect them to do? Throw up their arms and let Hamas continue to lob bombs into Israel for the next 500 years? I think they are trying to balance casualty minimization vs the troops dying on the ground. I know which one that any country will likely do. The Gazans could speed up the demise of Hamas by helping the Israel troops root out the terrorists but at least 75% still continue to support Hamas being Hamas.

What is your suggestion? Terrorists get a rape and murder free-pass because they hide behind civilians?

War is shit. It's even shittier when you fight terrorists with no regards to human lives.

My first suggestion would be to not sponsor those terrorists by the Israeli government currently in power. [1] That would be a good start.

I have some other ideas, like stopping the apartheid regime in West Bank and blockade of Gaza. Maybe even acknowledging that Palestinians want, and deserve, their own state.

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

so, stopping the "apartheid regime" would stop the rocket fire from Gaza you believe? was there also "apartheid" in gaza before October 7?

like, literally, now, while hostages are in the tunnels and they launched 10k rockets into Israel, they should be stopping the apartheid regime? AND blockade of Gaza, so Iran, Turkey, Russia etc. can bring in weapons unchecked, right? That’s what’s gonna make everyone safe, and bring in the democratic process the that the world believes will resolve the conflict?

You believe that?

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