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Comment by mulcahey | Hacker News Reader

The war in Gaza is a moral gray area

To what extent is repeated mass-murder of civilians, total destruction of healthcare and education systems, etc. part of the "moral gray area"? That's just not a serious argument.

You can be pro-Israel without pretending to hold humanist values and so on.

If you have a military enemy that blatantly hides itself within civilian areas and builds its underground infrastructure underneath civilian infrastructure, and that military enemy kills 1200 of your citizens in an attack, that creates a fair bit of moral ambiguity.

Imagine the reaction to Palestinians blowing up a residential Israeli apartment building with hundreds of civilians inside and justifying it by saying they wanted to kill an IDF member inside.

If the IDF member is shooting at them from the apartment building, then it becomes a valid military target. This is very clearly spelled out in the Geneva conventions.

This is a tenuous hypothetical.

You would start by not sending them money. Unless of course you needed a justification for your political/expansionist goals.

https://archive.ph/2023.10.14-033824/https://www.haaretz.com...

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hamas-israels-own-creation/

Anyway, the idea of embedding military targets within civilian populations is also not exclusive to one side:

https://www.haaretz.com/2012-06-09/ty-article/.premium/does-...

Neither is the use of terror:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

https://web.archive.org/web/20121226235336/http://www.foreig...

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justifica...

https://www.thetorah.com/article/israels-incomplete-conquest...

sooo israel should use time travel? the situation right now is a fucked up war between two bloodthirsty groups. I dont think this is the right time to think of inventing time machines...

You can start by removing from power the government officials who funded Hamas. After that, yes time travel could help: https://xkcd.com/209/

How will removing Benjamin change anything?

That depends on who replaces him. Do you have a better idea?

yes, better airstrike policy as a first. Eliminating hamas is important, but instead of letting israel run wild, deploy a coalition so that you can chain israel while also eliminating hamas.

I think by the time you’ve worked your way through more dead children than the entirety of your civilian casualties, I think you’ve lost all pretence at the moral high ground.

> If you have a military enemy that blatantly hides itself within civilian areas

And if you don't just claim that you do anyway and keep bombing hospitals.

Do you know where the ministry of defense is located in Tel-Aviv? Right next to its biggest shopping mall, inside of which at any point you will find dozens of young soldiers wandering around in their military uniforms with automatic rifles hanging over the shoulders. I am saying this because I have been to this shopping mall many times. According to Israel's own doctrine that makes this shopping mall a legit military target, which, of course, is total bullshit. Just like the old and tired argument about "human shields" and "terrorists embedding themselves among civilians".

The argument isn't that Hamas put their HQ next to civilians. It's that they store their munitions and shoot rockets out of schools. Israel's military HQ (not the ministry of defense), which is indeed located in Tel Aviv - Yafo, is not where tanks will be rolling out of.

Nor does Israel build underground bunkers or areas to shoot rockets out of underneath civilian buildings.

Evidence-free allegations of "human shields" is not an excuse to repeatedly commit mass murder.

Israel has already executed a proportional response to Oct 7, at least 100 times over. The additional 99+ times represent indefensible war crimes.

Evidence-free allegations of "human shields" is not an excuse to repeatedly commit mass murder.

Israel has already executed a proportional response to Oct 7, at least 100 times over. The extra 99+ times represent unprovoked war crimes.

That... is not how wars work. Proportional response is not a requirement.

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