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Comment by sterlind | Hacker News Reader

Unifil has been there since the '70s, apparently. Their role was to monitor Israel's withdrawal and to assist the Lebanese government, to patrol the Blue Line and various humanitarian tasks. They're not a counterinsurgency force or an occupying army - as I understand it, they're a tripwire for treaty enforcement.

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.

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> Also, you don't get to shoot through human shields.

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.

Yes, that seems correct: "The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." - https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule97

What seems more relevant today is that UNIFIL was supposed to support the implementation of UNSC 1701, which was a complete failure, with Hezbollah ignoring it outright and the Lebanese army not doing much to stop them.

In war, you care more about losing/winning than a moral high ground - an imaginary prize for the “superior” nation who chooses to appear weak.

“You don’t get to shoot through human shields.” I don’t have a POV w.r.t. this conflict, but I’d like to understand what you mean by this statement generally. In the extreme it seems to imply, “if you have a human shield you are invincible.”

It’s a messed-up calculus to have to make but I feel like there must be some middle ground.

In extreme situations it might be acceptable to involve innocents, but that's a very far cry from what has been happening

Don't you just love how the brave soldiers of the IDF fight all their wars remotely. 2000lb bombs dropped from the skies, Lavender AI to remove accountability. The kids in the IDF go directly from video games at school to a real war turned into another virtual reality. Without their US-funded military superiority those IDF zombies wouldn't stand a chance in one-on-one combat with a Palestinian resistance fighter.

My view is the ethnicity of the human shields in question shouldn't factor into your decision making. You shouldn't shoot through an Egyptian aid worker or Lebanese child if you wouldn't have shot through an Israeli hostage in their place.

I suppose you're suggesting that one shouldn't value "us" over "them". Is a logical extension of this that you shouldn't shoot someone else if you wouldn't shoot yourself?

I'm suggesting we should value civilian casualties equally. You're free to shoot at soldiers.

I mean, you can also just value all human life equally, and not shoot at soldiers unless there's a really good reason to do so. You really shouldn't target civilians, almost ever, cause there's never a good reason to do so by definition.

> you wouldn't have shot through an Israeli hostage in their place

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 "human shields" narrative is pure hasbara and israeli projection anyway

"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...]

> the israeli "human shields" narrative is pure hasbara and israeli projection anyway

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.)

> There are hundreds if not thousands of examples of Hamas cynically using actions that are bound to hurt civilians.

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.

Take a step back and observe you've erected a mental block for yourself. We've got a false dichotomy here - either we shoot through human shields or we do nothing.

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.

> Take a step back and observe you've erected a mental block for yourself. We've got a false dichotomy here - either we shoot through human shields or we do nothing.

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.

>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.

I can't speak to the more military/combat aspects of this - I honestly know very little about it personally. I'm leaning on analyses done by people who do know, and have spoken about what Israel is doing.

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?)

> I can't speak to the more military/combat aspects of this - I honestly know very little about it personally. I'm leaning on analyses done by people who do know

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> “Also, you don't get to shoot through human shields.”

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.

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