Hacker News Reader

Comment by transformi | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Suppose I am a country at war with the United States. Do I have the right to kill every American journalist? Also, it is not clear what "working in Hamas" means since they formed the government of the Gaza strip, so people "working in Hamas" would include all public officials, civil servants, etc. Does Israel have the right to kill all the sanitation workers of the Gaza strip since they also "work in Hamas"?

The journalists were recording things that would have hindered controlling the narrative.

>Suppose I am a country at war with the United States. Do I have the right to kill every American journalist?

This something people say from 5000 miles from the conflict. "Rules" go out the window when you're the one holding the gun and being shot at. The people on the ground are just trying to survive.

So you are suggesting that international law vis a vis war does not apply during war?

The rules of war are completely out the door when one side routinely pretends to be civilian, which is a war crime.

Which is not to say it’s just to go committing whichever crimes you want, but discussing legal rights is largely pointless because it is immediately a lawless war.

It is not the first war in which the "good guys" as posthumously determined by us, were disguising themselves as civilians, out of necessity. Multiple resistance groups in WWII to draw inspiration from. I don't know of anyone who would look at the SS/Wehrmacht retaliatory punishment of the nearby civilian population and think, "oh well, that's totally justified due to those pesky resistance groups".

There’s no good guys here. But the broader contextual framing is Iran vs the west imo.

Hiding among civilians may be a necessity to their military objectives. But it does mean that many civilians will be killed. And the reality is that most of this is driven by offensive Iranian geopolitical aims.

No, one side of a conflict cannot ignore the rules simply because the other side does.

It also seems an especially poor argument when one side is a nuclear-armed, highly modern military power and the other a lighltly armed militia.

Not ignore, no. But the bar for holding one accountable for collateral damage changes. Considering, for example, the staggering scale of tunnels that have been built to funnel military supplies through civilians areas; clearing operations to destroy these areas entirely feels defensible. When a hospital is used as an arms hub, it is incredibly complex and costly to try and seize it by encirclement and small arms siege versus just blowing it up. This is a very difficult situation.

> the staggering scale of tunnels that have been built to funnel military supplies through civilians areas; clearing operations to destroy these areas entirely feels defensible

"clearing operations" for tunnels involves heavy bombing above ground, which will kill civilians and destroy civilian homes and infrastructure - there is nothing "defensible" about that. Also, many tunnels are supposedly used for civilian smuggling of foods, medicines, luxuries etc - and only exist because of Israel's blockade.

> When a hospital is used as an arms hub, it is incredibly complex and costly to try and seize it by encirclement and small arms siege versus just blowing it up

Right, but that's a strawman argument, as there has been no evidence of Hamas using hospitals as an "arms hub".

> Also, many tunnels are supposedly used for civilian smuggling of foods, medicines, luxuries etc - and only exist because of Israel's blockade

I wanted to add a bit more about this, to illustrate how punitive Israel's blockade is. Israel inspects everything entering Gaza, prohibiting much of it. Some of the things Israel has banned from entering Gaza include:

  - Crayons
  - Books
  - Candles
  - Chocolate
  - Newspapers
  - Vinegar
  - Potato chips (crisps)
  - Sewing machines
  - Fishing rods
  - Sheets
  - Blankets
  - Wedding dresses
  - Jam
  - Coriander
  - Seeds (so Gazans can't grow food)

This helps to illustrate the level of control and punitive authoritaranism that Israel has exerted over Gaza, prior to Oct 7th - it's all about collective punishment of Gazans, with the aim of forcing them to leave.

Clearing operations have largely been bulldozers, not leveling an area with bombs. Yes, it does suck for the civilians. Yes there is immense collateral damage. What would you do differently when you know terrorists funded by a hostile third party have an extensive tunnel network though? I’m sorry but you cannot allow it to exist. You have to destroy it.

There exact purposes of the hospital lairs used by Hamas are unclear but they’re indisputably there and indisputably connected to these tunnels.

> What would you do differently

Not knowingly massacre civilians? If they supposedly have 10 million miles of tunnels (or whatever the IDF claims), then the very idea of taking out tunnels is pointless anyway.

Hamas aren't some random terrorists, they are a resistance to occupation with a clear goal - if I was Israel, I would respect international law, remove myself from occupied territories, and recognise an independant Palestinian state. Alongside, I'd be figuring out how to deradicalise my population.

> There exact purposes of the hospital lairs used by Hamas are unclear but they’re indisputably there

No, there is much to dispute! For starters, I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that Hamas have "hospital lairs". Except of course for the preposterous IDF 3D rendering of Al Shifa.

Ok great, so you’re going to roll over while Iran increases military pressure into your borders and you’re just asking the same question from a weaker position a few years later.

You cannot frame this conflict merely Israel and poor Palestine. Because look, I agree, Israel’s treatment of Palestine is dogshit. But you cannot achieve a peaceful outcome while Iran is right there as a militaristic hostile nation that condones funding terrorism.

The rules state that they can.

By that same logic, fighting crime should not be bound by any laws. After all, criminals break the law by definition so it's perfectly ok to not respect the law when you're fighting them, right?

Fighting crime is not bound by the rules of war, no. There are other rules for that.

And it should also then be pointed out that under international law an occupier must treat those of their occupied state to a higher degree of care.

This actually varies on the control of the situation. If it’s an active battleground due to ongoing hostilities this does not apply and it is considered invaded rather than occupied with different standards.

Ongoing hostilities by which party..

The game of propaganda - the side with the best funded and most sophisticated and networked censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus - manufactures consent for what people believe, from what scope and narrowed context and angle they're perceive a situation at; and when the truth is becoming too clear the clarity is fogged with emotion and outrage.

It takes two to tango.

> when one side routinely pretends to be civilian

Israel actively promotes illegal, violent settlements that kill Palestinians under IDF protection. [1] / [2]

---

Israel has on a number of occasions provoked border disputes and then claimed that IDF soldiers killed in those disputes were civilians.

[2]

> On that very day, however, a high-level decision was taken by the IDF to send a patrol of soldiers dressed up as policemen to al-Hamma at the farthest end of the southern DMZ. The patrol was intended to show the flag in an area that was under complete Syrian domination. The Syrian army responded violently, by shooting and killing seven members of the patrol and hampering the evacuation of the rest.

> [...]

> The cabinet met on 5 April and, in the absence of the foreign minister, accepted the prime minister’s recommendations to destroy three Arab villages inside the DMZ, bomb from the air the Syrian post and police station in al-Hamma, boycott the MAC, and lodge a complaint with the UN Security Council on the murder of the seven “policemen.”

[2]

> To achieve the first aim, Israel purchased land from the Arab villagers, developed Jewish settlements, established new agricultural settlements, built fortifications around them, and introduced soldiers disguised as civilians or policemen. To achieve the second aim, Israel seized an opportunity in March 1951 to move forcibly several hundred Bedouins who refused to accept Israeli identity cards from the central DMZ to Arab villages in northern Israel. In pursuit of the third aim, Israel refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the UN over civilian activities and even placed roadblocks to stop the UN men from entering the DMZs. Both Syria and the UN observers felt deceived and were disturbed by the direction of Israeli policy.

[2]

> Dayan did not like the compromise with the UN and pressed for extending Israel’s control over the DMZ through the introduction of additional soldiers masquerading as farmers. Ben-Gurion was persuaded to ask the cabinet to authorize the construction of two new “civilian” settlements in the DMZ.

---

Israel executed disabled noncombatants inside of a hospital while disguised as civilians. [3]

---

[1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/third-intifada-israeli...

[2] Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall

[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/this-is-moment-israeli-command...

No, that's not how war crimes work.

Even if this was true, it would not make them a legitimate target unless they were directly engaged in fighting. Journalists are even protected when engaging in explicit propaganda for example.

https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/protection-journalists

i've not seen evidence of this happening outside of the times of israel repeating IDF accusations

Journalists aren't typified as soldiers in any conflict by any civilized society or international law. They are civils, and the deliberate serial assasination of civils is an war crime. Period. No amount of critical thinking or creative word twisting can change this.

Bombing civil homes, refugee camps and hospitals are also war crimes

Killing children by famine by deliberately blocking the access to food is just a new level of rotten. We had seen the same pallid walking skeletons in the recent past of Europe. Everybody promised to learn and not to repeat this

But... here we go again, walking the same path, learning from the same manuals, and basically expressing that maybe the historical crimes that packs of seriously insane people commit, weren't so bad after all. No sane Jewish with a minimum sense of pride should accept to be linked with that people, or identified as a sprout of the poisoned tree.

So what the hell were they thinking?

From an European point of view to see Israel commit or tolerate this crimes for months is not only concerning, but also extremely disappointing.

Israel have lied and continue to do so time and time again.

Israel's 40 beheaded babies claim was later renounced after the damage was successfully done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0el9wiOBmmM

Reply on news.ycombinator.com