I agree it’s clever, but there are reports now of thousands wounded. Feels like a lot of collateral risk, if these people who were targeted were out and about (grocery shopping, bank, etc.)
I hate the idea of any innocent civilian being injured. But it might also be instructive to consider the alternative: if Israel wanted to achieve similar results via a conventional war against Hezbollah, it seems virtually guaranteed that far more innocent people would have been injured and killed—not to mention the Israeli civilians on the other side, whose lives also matter.
"It's OK that Israel causes excessive amounts of civilian casualties, because in the alternative scenario Israel would also cause excessive amounts of civilian casualties"
And even then: to judge whether casualties are excessive requires an understanding of the goal to be achieved, which is almost completely absent from this discussion.
That is: If your goal is to murder someone, and you accidentally kill an innocent bystander in committing that murder, the number of civilians killed is infinitely too high. The number of acceptable total deaths is 0.
I understand this is idealistic. But it's the judgement many will choose to make. For the record, no I don't only think it's bad when Israel murders people.
That being said, you might think that killing is never an appropriate means of achieving anything. If so, fair enough. But I think that’s a tough position to maintain when you are actively under attack.
I think Israel consists of quite different people with different goals.
Some of them have the goal, to own all of the land, because they believe it is their religious duty - and some of them are indeed part of the government.
And some of them just want to live in peace.
And on the other side it seems quite similar to me. Probably with a higher percentage of ruthless killers, but desperation tend to make people ruthless.
It really isn't a simple conflict that can be solved with more killing, unless we are talking about genocidal levels of killings.
Well, let me start with the necessary disclaimer: First, I'm not an expert on geopolitics or Israel or the ME. That's probably obvious. It could be that my coarse understanding is just completely wrong, but I think it's a broadly correct picture which is lacking lots of detail.
I also don't know much about the conflict with Hezbollah specifically, but what I see from Israel tells me that the prevention of rocket smay not be their top goal. I also believe that even if it is, killing is a means that I disagree with!
The rhetoric I hear about Hamas (not Hezbollah, so it may be different there, but I suspect it's not substantially so) from the Netanyahu administration is about murder. Protecting Israelis is a means to an end; the end goal is to kill every single member of Hamas (and, reading between the lines, the expulsion of all Palestinians). It's widely reported that many Israelis openly feel Netanyahu is not making meaningful efforts to recover hostages, and I've also understood that significant lapses in Israeli security were what made the Oct 7 attack last year possible. Meanwhile, some of the things Netanyahu says about Hamas and Palestine sounds genocidal, frankly.
Again, could be wrong about all that. Every word on the subject is biased in one way or another. Additionally, I know very little of the situation with Hezbollah, so I'm extrapolating: The prioritization of murder over safety that I see in the war with Hamas demonstrates to me that Israel is not making choices in the utmost interest of safety, generally, if the murder of its enemies is on the table.
Of course, I'll also reiterate that even if all of the above is wrong, their means are unacceptable to me: I don't believe one of the most powerful nations on the planet needs to murder its impoverished neighbors to keep itself safe. It's much easier than diplomatic and nonlethal approaches, yes; but I don't think it's necessary.
The first is that about 60,000 Israelis are currently displaced because they lived in a zone that Hezbollah is targeting with rocket attacks. (Which, FWIW, appear to intentionally target civilians.) Many of them have been living in hotels for nearly a year. Just yesterday, the Israeli cabinet updated its official war goals to include allowing residents to return to their homes in the north. What I hear is that this is now an issue roughly on par with returning the hostages from Gaza in terms of its salience within Israel.
The second is that Hezbollah is far more powerful than Hamas ever was. Unlike Hamas, I think Israel must recognize that elimination of Hezbollah is not a realistic aim.
The positions in this war are not equal.
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Israel is one of the most powerful nations on Earth, Hezbollah is not even close. I don't think genocide is an appropriate response to the hatred of a much, much weaker enemy.
They aren't a civilian force and they are a serious military threat, especially with the backing of Iran.
I'd challenge you to provide a reasonable argument that Israel is committing genocide in Lebanon.
[1] Videos show the explosions highly limited in their ability to cause injuries as bad as a bullet to anyone ever a foot or two away from the explosions, much less than I would expect from anything more conventional.
Hezbollah is of course not a country (though they're a proxy for Iran), but they occupy parts of Lebanon, so you can't attack them without attacking Lebanon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah
> According to Hezbollah's Deputy-General, Naim Qassem, the struggle against Israel is a core belief of Hezbollah and the central rationale of Hezbollah's existence.
I tend to believe their own statement on this matter. Where do you see wiggle room for another argument? Or even to find the argument "curious"? What is curious about it?
A mystery indeed.
If you were to consider the fact that Hezbollah has been shelling Israeli cities and civilians on a daily basis for the past 12 months (killing many, also children, and driving hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes), with the UN peacekeeping force failing to keep Hezbollah north of the Litani river - then perhaps you would understand that this is likely as close as you can get to a "precision strike" on an enemy you're at war with.
This may in-fact be the most precise military strike on an enemy paramilitary group in the history of modern warfare.
You either have a very unrealistic idea of what a war actually looks like (0% civilians casualties or injuries), or an agenda.
no war has ever been waged without collateral damage.
"Farmers attempted to herd the emus using trucks, but this proved ineffective; one truck even crashed after hitting an emu"
We all know what happened, on both sides, including deaths of tens of thousands of civilians including thousands of palestinian children who did fuck nothing to anybody, just were born at bad place at bad time.
What would be enough kill ratio israeli : palestinian civilian, or even better israeli civilian : palestinian kid/baby that would satiate Israeli government to stop the war? Very conservative estimates put deaths of direct US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to around 500k, meaning its 500:3 ratio and factual defeat of US army to withdraw and cut losses. So thats the threshold of civilized western world? Israel already surpassed that long time ago.
They can't and won't win with Hamas and they know it, its exactly same situation as Taliban, ISIS etc. Regroup, strike back, stronger, smarter, better equipped, more motivated. Spiral of death can go on and on till there is nobody standing on neither side.
If I had to choose where the next nuclear detonation happens it would be for me 50:50 Ukraine : Israel, and this is how you get there.
Israel has given Lebanon and Hezbollah enough ultimatums to stop the aggressions. This is what happens when diplomacy fails.
Or you were standing in line next to a guy holding one while waiting to buy groceries. It’s clearly indiscriminate to the collateral damage.
I'm not saying civilians weren't hurt by this. But I'm also saying that no war has 0% civilian casualties. Those two countries are at war with each other.
This war is about Hezbollah and Hamas shelling civilians in Israel. Like hundreds of rockets per night. If, to stop that, it may harm a few civilians who are waiting next to Hezbollah members,
…you would let people keep shelling civilians by hundreds and hundreds of rockets?
How do you choose your actions, do you always support the guys who cause the maximum deaths? How does it work, “indiscriminate damage” is as soon as a person is inconvenienced while they were holding Hezbollah’s grocery bags? Shouldn’t they … distance themselves?
Pun unintended. But it’s a very good question. Shouldn’t they distance themselves from active murderers?
Stoking the flames of death is all.
Beirut can end up just like Gaza, but Israel has been restraining itself. Not for much longer.
If this is what a restrained Israel looks like, the god help us all.
I said no such thing though do find it interesting that any questioning of the methods used by one party is interpreted as blanket acceptance of all methods used by the other.
> Pun unintended. But it’s a very good question. Shouldn’t they distance themselves from active murderers?
How could they possibly know? I’ve never been in line for a sandwich and thought to ask if the person in front of me might spontaneously explode.
The whole complex and contrived attack speaks of tying to minimize collateral damage.
Its disturbing as hell…but brilliant.
I have sympathy for this kind of reasoning because it's been mine for a long time. There is something important for the preservation of the self in refusing all kinds of wrong in the world. The problem is that by refusing to engage with the world, they can affect nothing (and probably accept that, everybody should just stop being immoral, that's easy in their mind)