Why aren't the UN troops keeping the peace? Did they let Hezbollah fire rockets into Israel unimpeded? What is the point of the troops being there?
Also, you don't get to shoot through human shields. It's still immoral to kill noncombatants, just as it's immoral to hide behind noncombatants. You don't gain moral high ground, you're just sinking to the level of the enemy.
It’s a messed-up calculus to have to make but I feel like there must be some middle ground.
Well actually, to give Israel some kind of credit, they have also done that, as hostages have indeed been killed in their attacks. In general they have shown a similar disregard of human life towards their own people who have been hostages, so there's that.
"The Israeli military has used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, soldier and former detainees say" [https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-h...]
"Over the years, the israeli military practiced an official policy of using Palestinians as human shields" [https://www.btselem.org/topic/human_shields]
"Israel has taken human shields to a whole new criminal level" [https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/10/20/israel-has-tak...]
Saying this is, frankly, ridiculous. There is massive, extensive documentation of the vast tunnel networks and terrorist infrastructure hiding beneath and as part of civilian areas in Gaza (and in Lebanon, now). There are hundreds if not thousands of examples of Hamas cynically using actions that are bound to hurt civilians.
You don't have to like Israel or how it's acting, and you disagree with the legitimacy of the war or how it is conducted, but you should at least be grounded in reality. If you're just wholesale denying the well-documented evidence of how Hamas acts, you're not really criticizing the IDF, because you're not connecting with reality. You're criticizing an imaginary IDF fighting an imaginary Hamas that acts completely differently to how it's acting, and that makes your criticisms meaningless.
(And for the record, the cases of the IDF using human shields in the manner you linked above are pretty well documented too, as far as I can say, and I personally think they should be condemned and the IDF has to answer for that. I do try to be centered in reality and see things as they really are.)
Correct, this is how guerrilla forces have always worked. Either their fighters get protection, or the colonial/occupying (from their perspective) power gets loads of bad PR.
I mean, when you look at the relative arms strength of the two forces, they'd be crazy not to do this.
Is this moral? 100% not. Is it understandable? Strategically, again 100%. yes.
If there are insurgents among civilians, they either have logistics and communication networks to conduct operations, or they're unable to operate effectively. Weapons do not materialize from nowhere, they must be smuggled into the country and distributed. Operations do not materialize from nowhere, they must be coordinated.
If they have logistics, we can leverage that against them. We saw this when Israel expected their pager attack. They've already proven that they can exercise their creativity to conduct effective attacks with great precision.
If they lack logistics and communication networks - then they can't conduct effective operations against us. There's little to fear and no reason to shoot through human shields.
This is some armchair strategy a nonexpert came up with on the spot. Consider that real military strategists and intelligence agencies are better at coming up with ways to find and kill their enemies than we are.
Do not accept that these people cannot solve these problems without bulldozing through human shields. Do not accept the notion that a powerful military and intelligence apparatus is helpless. They could prosecute this war differently. They have made a choice not to.
No, you're the one making imaginary false dichotomies. See your last paragraph:
> Do not accept that these people cannot solve these problems without bulldozing through human shields. Do not accept the notion that a powerful military and intelligence apparatus is helpless. They could prosecute this war differently. They have made a choice not to.
You're now making a false dichotomy - Israel can choose to prosecute the war differently, but it doesn't, implying that they are choosing to kill human shields on purpose.
The reality is that you're coming up on the spot with a dozen ways to defeat an insurgency, without taking into account that they are just as smart and just as motivated as you, and planned for years to make them impossible to hit without significant civilian casualties. This is incredibly well documented.
Sure, you can pretend there is always a secret third option - and there sometimes is. And there sometimes isn't. And the more you let militants using civilians as human shields deter you, the more the militants are incentivized to use human shields, so even in a best case scenario, you're kicking the can down the road.
None of this is to say that Israel's actions are perfect or even good - that's a separate argument. But imagining that Israel has a magic way to do what it wants to do and eliminate Hamas - which many people support it doing and agree it has a right to do - imagining there is some magic way this could get done without hurting civilians is, frankly, incorrect.
The way isn't "magic" or "secret". It's a combination of the following:
1. Restrict the types of ordnance used to prosecute air attacks on Gaza. Emphasize cannon fire and Hellfires from AH-64s attack helicopters, as well as UAVs. These are utilized to engage insurgents on the surface, in dynamically-tasked missions with timely and accurate observation of insurgent heavy armaments.
2. Employ proper usage of restrictive fire support coordination measures to protect sensitive sites such as aid distribution locations, hospitals, and places of worship. Bombing them is bad publicity. Reference No-Fire Areas and Restrictive Fire Areas, page B-7, here: https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCWP%203-25%2...
3. Establish a large number of checkpoints along the Gazan-Israeli border. Establish refugee areas INSIDE OF ISRAEL for the Gazan population. Distribute leaflets, social media messages, etc...welcoming the entire Gazan population into Israeli borders, provided they come to the checkpoints unarmed and only with the belongings they can personally carry.
4. After conditions are set (which needs to be determined, how much of the population Israel will allow to remain in place/not cooperate before it attacks)....then go into Gaza with a drastically larger (easy given Israel's ability to rapidly mobilize) but primarily light-infantry / dismounted force, slowly moving house-to-house with small arms in an incremental clear & hold approach. This is SIGNIFICANTLY less destructive on both the civilian population AND the urban infrastructure, but does incur much higher casualties for the attacking force.
This would probably cost thousands of additional Israeli (military) lives.....but save tens of thousands of Palestinian lives. And also save Israel's international reputation.
Regarding your point of putting refugees inside of Israel - I don't know if there's any practical way to do this. It is impossible to tell apart Hamas militants and normal civilians. Even if you somehow made a vast area inside of Israel to house the refugees, you're all but guaranteeing thousands of Hamas operatives getting into Israel as well.
Do you similarly support the idea of letting the refugees into Egyp in a similar manner? Cause that seems like the obvious solution to the problem from my perspective (and is the "usual" solution in urban war situations). Except Egypt absolutely refused to allow this, and almost no one pushed them on this, often claiming it was an attempt at more ethnic cleansing from Israel. (Apparently sacrificing Palestinian lives to prevent ethnic cleansing, without asking them, is somehow moral?)
While it's been over a decade since I've controlled live aircraft or built an Air Tasking Order, I've managed rather complex dynamic airspaces in exercises within the past few years. Points #1 & #2 are basic stuff that would be incorporated into how the USMC and Joint Services conduct air operations. I haven't worked with the IAF but I assume their approach to battlespace management is roughly analogous to a NATO nation.
The sheer amount of ordnance dropped in the first few weeks after October 7th was indicative of a completely permissive air campaign. In other words, it was conducted with NO concern for collateral damage, probably against a bunch of pre-planned targets from a Prioritized Target List that was refined over a period of years prior. And almost certainly with little or no terminal control (i.e. nobody looking at the targets on the ground minutes/seconds prior to ordnance release to ensure there were no civilians at the target, or to even verify that they destroyed what they meant to destroy).
> Even if you somehow made a vast area inside of Israel to house the refugees, you're all but guaranteeing thousands of Hamas operatives getting into Israel as well.
Yes, there are some risks involved. Saving lives is a hard decision. But even if Hamas operatives end up inside new Israeli camps, you are separating them from their military infrastructure, heavy ordnance, and logistics supply chains. You are also extending an olive branch in a very real and tangible way, which would make inroads in giving them a different perspective of Israel besides "these are the people who have killed my relatives/destroyed my home".
> Do you similarly support the idea of letting the refugees into Egypt in a similar manner? Cause that seems like the obvious solution to the problem from my perspective
No. Why should Egypt be forced to allocate resources to mitigate the consequences of a disaster that entirely derives from Israeli actions? The Palestinians were not driven out of homes in Egypt, they were driven out of homes in Haifa, Jaffa, Ashkelon, etc. Gaza is starving and without healthcare because the Israeli Air Force, not the Egyptian Air Force, has bombed the place back to the stone age.
Israel could at any moment decide "Hey you know what we're just gonna honor the 1967 borders and recognize a two-state solution too. From now on we expect to diplomatically deal with the Palestinian State via your capital in Eastern Jerusalem. Also we are lifting our maritime blockade so you can conduct international trade via ports in Gaza once you build them....and once you start exporting gas from your Gaza Marine 1/2 offshore gas fields....lemme know if you want to hire some Israeli engineers to help build all that though." You don't have to give them hand-outs, make them borrow money (probably from Qatar or Iran, but still...) to pay for Israeli services like any other trade deal...but normalize their economic opportunities. That would radically change the circumstances of the Palestinian people....regardless of Egypt's position on the matter.
The Palestinian refugee problem is entirely a creation of Israel; it is Israel's burden to bear. Under no circumstances should the neighboring countries reward Israel with what the far-right in the Likud Party want: to be the sole inhabitants and controllers of what was originally "Mandatory Palestine".
You may consider these actions a complete non-starter. At some point Israelis will need to come to terms with reality: their state in its current incarnation is dependent on maritime trade imports, even to keep their most pivotal military branch (the Air Force) supplied with munitions. That munitions supplier and principal political benefactor is also beginning a period of pretty severe imperial decline. You are surrounded by increasingly well-equipped adversaries who are refining their skills at modern protracted/attritional warfare....a style of warfare that Israel does not have the population to sustain. It is likely that continuing to "massacre your way to security" will no longer be a viable course of action. As the timeline extends further to the right....prognosis negative.
It's an interesting variation on the "iron triangle" problem: distinctly Jewish state, liberal democracy, multi-ethnic/multi-religious population. Pick two. I think Israelis would lean towards the first two....but that requires either killing or expelling almost the entire Palestinian population, which obviously the rest of the planet is no longer interested in tolerating.
Yes, this seems accurate. And this caused a large amount of the civilian deaths.
However, I think this is actually one of the most defensible actions Israel took. This started after an invasion of Israel in which thousands of militants roamed around inside the country and literally took over towns, a military base and a police station. It also happened while Israel was being daily bombarded with rockets multiple times a day.
Israel was literally shut down for a couple of weeks because of the massive rocket fire. The economy was completely shut down, schools were shut down, etc, as we ran into safe rooms 3-5 times a day.
And in the background, for the first three weeks, we waited to hear if Hezbollah would join in the action, which was clearly the goal of Hamas. Had they done so, we suspected it could lead to a massive war with huge losses. We've since seen that the situation was even worse than most of us suspected - if you're following along with what the IDF is uncovering in Southern Lebanon, Hezbollah apparently had stockpiles of weapons and massive tunnels primed to attack Israel, in a move that could've made October 7th look like a picnic.
This is a situation that no country in the world would countenance. You can't invade and shut down a country without a massive retaliatory strike. And it is entirely possible, and I would say likely, that only the massive Israel strike on Gaza prevented Hezbollah from joining in the war. Had they done so, I have little doubt the death toll in all countries would be much higher.
> Yes, there are some risks involved. Saving lives is a hard decision. But even if Hamas operatives end up inside new Israeli camps, you are separating them from their military infrastructure, heavy ordnance, and logistics supply chains. You are also extending an olive branch in a very real and tangible way, which would make inroads in giving them a different perspective of Israel besides "these are the people who have killed my relatives/destroyed my home".
I think there was no realistic way to do this inside of Israel logistically. We're talking about a massive population here - how in the world would you be able to secure this.
I think Israel should've done a lot of other things to earn good will among Gazans, like being the ones securing and giving out aid to the people ASAP, etc.
> Why should Egypt be forced to allocate resources to mitigate the consequences of a disaster that entirely derives from Israeli actions? The Palestinians were not driven out of homes in Egypt, they were driven out of homes in Haifa, Jaffa, Ashkelon, etc.
I was talking about a temporary solution that could save lives.
> Israel could at any moment decide "Hey you know what we're just gonna honor the 1967 borders and recognize a two-state solution too. From now on we expect to diplomatically deal with the Palestinian State via your capital in Eastern Jerusalem. Also we are lifting our maritime blockade so you can conduct international trade via ports in Gaza once you build them....and once you start exporting gas from your Gaza Marine 1/2 offshore gas fields....lemme know if you want to hire some Israeli engineers to help build all that though."
We've seen that this does not work. Israel tried the route of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - "honoring the '67 borders" - and they elected Hamas, which promptly started shooting rockets at Israel and spent the billions they receive in aid money building up attacks against Israel.
Had Israel done the equivalent of the Gaza withdrawal in the West Bank, deciding to unilaterally leave all Palestinians lands without any negotiation, without any agreements on what things would look like the day after... we'd have just had October 7th, but much worse.
There is no alternative to a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Unfortunately most Israelis believe that it can't happen, since the last time Israel sincerely made the effort to achieve peace, those efforts were met with terrorism (and in Gaza, the election of Hamas).
But I agree with you completely - a negotiated two state solution is the only viable way forward. I just have no idea if it can actually be done.
The most difficult and perhaps most important skill for a soldier is knowing when NOT to pull the trigger. Here's an interview with Delta operator Dale Comstock, when he had an opportunity to shoot a gunman but didn't because he knew he'd hit the civilian BEHIND him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iSUUWl8nes
"You have to make good decisions, because you have to live with them."
The problem isn't the "What" Israel is doing, it's the how. We know Israel has the tools at its disposal to conduct an air campaign differently. It has the aviation platforms, the munitions, the surveillance assets, the AI models to assist with information processing. All of that can combine to produce a Master Air Attack Plan and supporting Air Tasking Orders, managed by an Air Operations Center with a robust Fires Cell that should be capable of significantly suppressing Hamas's rocket artillery without rendering Gaza uninhabitable.
But that isn't what the IAF did. So they are either incompetent, or malevolent. Given that the IAF has a multi-decade reputation for being VERY competent, that kinda narrows it down.
> And it is entirely possible, and I would say likely, that only the massive Israel strike on Gaza prevented Hezbollah from joining in the war.
Israel's munitions stockpile is not large. It is quite possible that at the tail end of surged bombing missions against Hamas, the IAF would not have had enough ordnance to be decisive against Hezbollah. I think Iran is adroitly avoiding putting Israel into a situation where it feels existentially threatened until Iran has some sort of solution to the Samson Option. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
Hezbollah didn't initiate a massive cross-border invasion because Iran doesn't want Israel to panic and nuke the entire Middle East. The overwhelming violence unleashed against Gaza doesn't impact that decision space in Tehran.
>I was talking about a temporary solution that could save lives.
We've seen "temporary" displacement of Palestinians turn into permanent displacement often enough that no one is willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt on this again.
>We've seen that this does not work. Israel tried the route of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - "honoring the '67 borders" - and they elected Hamas, which promptly started shooting rockets at Israel and spent the billions they receive in aid money building up attacks against Israel.
Aid money != domestic economic independence. It's the difference between teaching a man to fish, and giving him fish. These two things are not the same, so it is fallacious to say that this has been tried already. Would Hamas have been pissed off enough to shoot rockets into Israel if they were instead enriching the population by collecting revenue from...say...the Gaza Airport Terminal, which was the pride of the Palestinian people? Gee, what ever happened to the Gaza Airport? Oh right, it was completely razed by the IDF. With no indications there was any military necessity to doing so.
>But I agree with you completely - a negotiated two state solution is the only viable way forward. I just have no idea if it can actually be done.
Perhaps a massive UN peacekeeping force needs to man DMZs between Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon, with large contributions from India and China (non-US, non-Muslim states interested in burnishing their global influence). Then implement a regional Armament Treaty for all involved parties/states. I would emphasize that all parties can maintain robust air-defense arsenals but are restricted on offensive strike systems: so the masses of Hezbollah rocket artillery needs to go away....but so does most of the IAF's fixed wing aircraft and large bombs. Israel needs to formally declare its nuclear arsenal and join the NPT. Basically make it so everyone doesn't really have the ability to do anything more than annoy each other. People will still die but we've got to get the violence back down to manageable levels so that economic development solutions can have an opportunity to bear fruit.
Even this is probably an unpalatable solution....I don't think Iran will tolerate a nuclear-armed Israel without having SOME means to make Israel think twice about using it. But it's a start.
I am not saying it’s morally correct but from a war crime standpoint, I think you actually do. As longs as it’s proportional, you can attack combatants hiding under civilians, even if you kill civilians by doing that. At least that’s my understanding.
When the human shields are serving willingly as human shields, I will say that yes, you get to shoot through them and keep your moral high ground.
Not only those UN troops have no reason to be there, but there are numerous reports that several of their members are working together and aiding Hezbolah.
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-built-bunker-shifa-hospital-...
To all appearances, it looks as if the US is allowing Israel to rewrite the rules of war. This is incredibly dangerous. Whether or not the US supports Israel's objectives should not be the deciding factor in supporting these kinds of justifications.
B) there is very credible evidence that rape did occur as part of the atrocities Hamas committed on Oct. 7th attack. https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-sexual-violence-...
Just wanted to point that out, because regardless of the moral standing of either side, I think the facts do matter if there is ever going to be a resolution. Obviously the actions committed by Hamas do not absolve Israel from following ethical rules of war, and there are plenty of issues with how Israel is waging war in the current conflict as well; for example using machine learning algorithms to track targets with what appears to be a reckless disregard for non-combatants: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
As far as I am aware, not a single Western media rag has issued an apology for this. In many of our eyes, never again will they be able to claim credibility or professionalism in their reporting.
In addition, Western rags took Israeli statements as gospel, platformed way more guests from the Israeli side, and intensively questioned all pro-Palestine guests on their position on Oct 7 (while treating Israeli guests with more respect than necessary for a media interview).
It’s better now - but that’s easy to do after a year of atrocities and 100k+ deaths. In the US at least, there still is a clear bias against inviting Palestinians on primetime slots, or allowing Palestinians to operate freely within news organizations.
Unfortunately, it is hard to discern legitimate interest vs. someone wanting to engage in a debate for the sake of it. And I am not interested in wasting my time figuring out which is the case.
Your comment strongly implied that you think that Israel overreacted to Oct 7. So I am curious what you think their response should have been.
> Unfortunately, it is hard to discern legitimate interest vs. someone wanting to engage in a debate for the sake of it. And I am not interested in wasting my time figuring out which is the case.
Is curiosity "legitimate interest"?
a) adhere to international law (which we now know is a complete farce thanks UNSC veto)
b) not involve ethnic cleansing/forced displacement of Palestinians for a 3rd time in the last 75 years - the only reason it didn’t work this time is because the Egyptians strongly pushed back
c) not involve the deliberate targeting of civilians, the mass punishment of a civilian population, and the denial of access to aid to a civilian population (under occupation no less)
d) not result in the highest proportion of children fatalities and injuries of any modern war - and not involve redefining or rewriting the meaning of the word “child” to give themselves some wiggle room
e) not involve the deliberate targeting of journalists, academics, aid workers, and hospital staff - even if the Israelis claim to have “proof” of them being Hamas members (imagine immediately defunding a UN organization because the Israelis claim a few dozen employees were Hamas members)
f) adhere to Israel’s responsibilities under IHL as an occupying force
Fighting a war against guerillas in an urban context is challenging. Mass & targeted bombing of a densely populated occupied territory containing an enemy with no air force and no air defenses is not only genocidal, but also outright cowardly behavior.
This policy is an effective deterrent against enemies, but it should be obvious that with such a policy it will never be possible to end any conflict unless absolutely all enemies and all their relatives or friends are killed.
There have been times when the relations between the parties in this conflict had improved a lot and there was some hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Nevertheless on both sides, but especially in Israel, there are people who benefit a lot from the existence of the conflict, so any opponents have been removed by any means possible, including assassination, until the mutual relationships have become as bad as today, when no hope for any kind of peace remains.
Most people in Israel are quite nice, but they are deeply scared by the thought that that at any time someone coming from the neighbors of Israel could come and cut their throats, so they work continuously very hard at their jobs, believing that they must provide thus their individual contributions so that Israel will maintain its military and economic dominance over their enemies, in order to ensure their safety. The workers of Israel have worked all the time since WWII pretty much as hard as those of USA during its short participation to WWII.
Workers from other countries would be very unlikely to work willingly so hard as those of Israel. This is very profitable for the upper class of Israel, for whom an end of the conflict would have caused serious losses, when the workers could not have been motivated any more by patriotic slogans.
Why do you consider this an effective strategy, when the same strategy has been used for decades yet the violence keeps getting worse?
The interesting thing is that Hamas seems to share Israel's view that Israelis are more valuable than Palestinians. Whenever there is a prisoner exchange Hamas tends to demand an order of magnitude or more Palestinians be released for each Israeli released.
For example in 2011 Hamas got over 1000 in exchange for a single Israeli.
How about a reaction that wouldn't lead the ICC issuing arrest warrants for the government officials leading the response for crimes against humanity ?
I'm not sure what people act so daft, pretending the Israeli response of the last year was just a totally normal and standard military operation and not a clinical live streamed genocide.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-m...
Hamas had enough weapons to kill 1200 Israelis in one day so it's not some helpless entity. It was armed to its teeth. It's only after almost 800 additional dead Israeli soldiers and a very bloody war that Hamas lost most of its power.
> FIRST ACCOUNT PANTS PULLED DOWN
>But it turns out that what Otmazgin thought had occurred in the home at the kibbutz hadn’t happened.
> SECOND ACCOUNT: EVERYTHING WAS CHARRED
> Yossi Landau, a longtime ZAKA volunteer, was also working in Be’eri when he entered a home that would produce the second debunked story
I urge people to read the article rather than take the parents claim that it presents evidence of rape on October 7th at face value. It presents no evidence for such a claim through the entire article. It covers debunked claims of sexual violence on October 7th, it does contain a reference to one hostage who was sexually assaulted during her kidnapping who was since thankfully successfully released
“The United Nations and other organizations have presented credible evidence that Hamas militants committed sexual assault during their rampage. The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said Monday he had reason to believe that three key Hamas leaders bore responsibility for “rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity.”
I’m not going to dig up and post links to videos showing Hamas parading female captives with blood on their pants, or partially disrobed bodies. Videos which were filmed by Hamas members themselves I might add. Here is an article instead from BBC with testimony from survivors: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181.amp
I don’t want to assume that you are arguing in bad faith, but there are numerous reputable sources showing that other atrocities occurred beyond the murder of civilians. It’s bad enough that Hamas directly targeted and killed over 700 civilians.
From the UN report [1]:
>In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified.
>The mission team examined several allegations of sexual violence. It must be noted that witnesses and sources with whom the mission team engaged adopted over time an increasingly cautious and circumspect approach regarding past accounts, including in some cases retracting statements made previously. Some also stated to the mission team that they no longer felt confident in their recollections of other assertions that had appeared in the media.
>It was determined by the mission team that the crime scene had been altered by a bomb squad and the bodies moved, explaining the separation of the body of the girl from the rest of her family. Allegations of objects found inserted in female genital organs also could not be verified by the mission team due in large part to the limited availability and low quality of imagery.
How does any of this information from the report lead you to believe that the allegations of mass rape are 'very credible'?
See this interview from Pramila Patten who is the special representative that wrote this report [2]
>“May I just ask, why not put the responsibility and blame the atrocities quite simply on the perpetrators and say, ‘it was Hamas who did it?’” the host demanded.
>Patten replied that the mission of her visit to Israel was “only for the purpose of gathering and analyzing information,” not for attributing alleged crimes to any perpetrator.
>“It is pretty clear who did it, after talking to survivors who returned – it wasn’t the Belgians who did it,” chortled the host.
>“I think it’s up to your government to give access, and that was one of my first recommendations,” Patten responded.
I would suggest you stop peddling these baseless allegations as these lies are being used to justify civilian massacres to this day.
The conclusion of the report itself reads: “Overall, based on the totality of information gathered from multiple and independent sources at the different locations, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred at several locations across the Gaza periphery, including in the form of rape and gang rape, during the 7 October 2023 attacks. Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, was also gathered.”
At this point I don’t see any further point in discussing this subject. I’m only replying in case someone reads these comments, and doesn’t dig deeper into the report. I find it concerning that you glossed over those sections and the conclusion of the report, while only presenting text that supports your viewpoint. It’s bad enough that ~700-800 civilians were murdered in the first place, and it’s horrible that civilians continue to die in Gaza through the present. Please have a good day.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-human...
https://www.btselem.org/topic/human_shields
Even the NYT took time away from repeating Israel's lies to report on it! https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/world/middleeast/israel-g...
They're basically observers when there are any other armed troops present. They have small arms, everybody else has rockets, missiles, or tanks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Interim_Force_i...
The most credible reason for Israel wanting Unfil to vacate is less impartial observers.
That trick is harder to pull when the witnesses are external UN observers.
> Imagine if every political party had an army.
Well, the People's Liberation Army is not technically the army of the nation of China....it is actually the armed wing of the Communist Party of China. Just the PRC is a de-facto one-party state.
Israel's current presence might technically also be illegal under UNSC 1701, but Israel has a very strong casus belli from self-defense, having been bombarded for the past year.
Israel is being openly threatening UNIFIL, and they aren't retailating in any way. I am 100% sure the white hats have never had any capacity to do anything beside being witness. Hezbollah was ok with that, Israel is not ok with that.
They were attacked from Lebanon, they retaliate. It’s quite simple.
Let's assume they are completely useless at peacekeeping - does this justify them being attacked?
They’re outnumbered by 10:1.
Come on..!?