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Comment by dlubarov | Hacker News Reader

They somehow manage to find uniforms when they do parades. In any case, the principle of distinction merely requires combatants to wear distinguishing marks. Hypothetically if they ran out of uniforms, they could use something as simple as colored armbands.

It's a basic tenet of IHL which is essential for the protection of civilians in a war zone. If the pro-Palestinian community was genuinely focused on the well-being of Gazans, they would have extremely concerned about this particular war crime, and would have urgently tried to get Hamas to stop from disguising as civilians.

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So the 20 thousand children killed in Gaza should have been wearing what kind of uniform to avoid behind killed? Just so I understand correctly.

>>would have urgently tried to get Hamas to stop from disguising as civilians.

So if the international community somehow pressured Hamas to wear uniforms, IDF would kill fewer children? Or they would stop their policy on waiting until a suspected Hamas combatant returns home and then blowing them up along with their family?

I just feel like that's such a dishonest, morally bankrupt take. For every single Israeli killed in the October attack, Israel has killed 20 children. But hey, Hamas militants don't wear uniforms sometimes, damn I wish the world would talk more about this war crime too.

I'm just trying to think of when my own country was under German occupation and 2 millions of our citizens were killed by Nazis - if internet was around back then I'm sure someone would have said that it's really suspicious no one talks about how our resistance forces don't walk around the streets in their uniforms or you know "at least wear an armband". If only anyone really cared about our well being surely someone should have pointed it out, maybe UK could have sent some strongly worded letters to the underground leaders to just wear uniforms when outside, then(and only then) talking about the genocide would finally be fine.

Civilians don't have to wear distinguishing marks, combatants do if they care about the laws of war and protecting the civilian population.

Just blaming Israel for all civilian harm, when it's Hamas that started the war and disguises as civilians, isn't going to help. If you care about limiting civilian harm, you should be focused on ensuring Gaza has a government that doesn't keep starting wars, or at least put on uniforms before they attack Israel. Maybe even letting civilians shelter in bunkers, rather than reserving them for terrorist use only.

Can you name a single conflict in a comparable urban setting, against terrorists that dressed as civilians, that definitely had a better civilian casualty ratio? Or are you just holding Israel to an impossible standard that no military in the real world is capable of?

> For every single Israeli killed in the October attack, Israel has killed 20 children.

It doesn't make any sense to try to judge morality based on casualty ratios. By this logic, the Nazis were the good guys in WWII, and Israel would be the good guys if they'd just turn off all their pesky air defenses.

> By this logic, the Nazis were the good guys in WWII, and Israel would be the good guys if they'd just turn off all their pesky air defenses.

Can you elaborate on this? I thought that the Nazis were pretty obviously the "bad guys" due to committing genocide and mass casualties (combatant and civilian) while trying to expand their borders.

> It doesn't make any sense to try to judge morality based on casualty ratios.

Really, even the ratio of civilian casualties, or ratio of civilian casualties to combatant casualties? Those seem pretty relevant to morality in my book, but I might be misunderstanding.

I think we're mostly in agreement? I agree civilian casualty ratios can be meaningful signals about morality, provided that we account for context (e.g. whether civilians are trapped in a warzone or able to evacuate) and are careful to draw apples-to-apples comparisons.

But the parent wasn't really comparing these ratios; it was closer to a "total deaths on either side" sort of comparison. Usually the implied message is that in a conflict between two sides, the side that killed more must be less moral. That dubious logic would suggest e.g.

- The Nazis were morally superior to Western Allies, since the Western Allies killed more Germans than the reverse.

- The Coalition was extremely evil in the Gulf War, since Iraq suffered several orders of magnitude more casualties.

- Israel is bad partly because it goes to extreme lengths to protect its people (Iron Dome, bomb shelters everywhere, etc.). Letting more of its people get killed would "even out the scales" and suddenly make Israel's military operations more moral.

>>Usually the implied message is that in a conflict between two sides, the side that killed more must be less moral.

And you decided that this is an argument I'm making and decided to argue against that, instead of what I'm actually saying - which sure, would lead to the nonsensical logical conclusions that you wrote.

What makes Israel a state worthy of condemnation is the fact that they target civilians on purpose. That they shoot at medics, deny food supplies, shoot rockets at refugee camps, hospitals, schools, they shoot at little kids playing around, they torture their prisoners, they use AI to guess which person needs to be eliminated and they blow them up with their families to maximise casualties - and all of the above happens without any oversight or consequence for any people involved. The 20k children dead is a consequence of all of these decisions, the number itself isn't what makes Israel bad - it's how they got to it, through a culmination of decades of decisions on how they see Palestinians - as subhuman scum needs to die. There is no effort to protect civilian life, and IDF saying otherwise is just lying.

But I feel like you're keen to say that Israel is "defending" itself and Gaza is a narrow urban zone, so of course it can't be done any other way.

Let me maybe ask you this, just to satisfy my own curiosity more than anything - if Israel decided to kill everyone in Gaza, based on the assumption that since Hamas doesn't wear uniforms anyone can be a militant so this is justified, would you just go "yeah that's fair"? Or would you just make some argument about how no army in the world would do better.

> And you decided that this is an argument I'm making and decided to argue against that

Then what was the point of your numeric comparison? If you agree it's a very poor signal about morality, why bring it up?

> What makes Israel a state worthy of condemnation [...]

It seems like you're just listing every random accusation you've heard that paints Israel in a bad light. Should we try this game with another country, like say Palestine?

> the assumption that since Hamas doesn't wear uniforms anyone can be a militant so this is justified

No I certainly don't think that.

>>It seems like you're just listing every random accusation you've heard that paints Israel in a bad light

I really don't understand your train of thought. Are you saying these things didn't happen? Or they did happen but Palestine also is doing despicable things so they don't matter? Or they do matter but they aren't worth being upset about? Or it's worth being upset about them, but they shouldn't be discussed?

>>No I certainly don't think that.

Well what did you bring it up as the first point then? I said - hey I'm bothered by the fact that Israel killed 20k children in this conflict, and then you said hey I wish someone was talking more about the fact that hamas doesn't wear uniforms when fighting. Like, what is the conclusion here? That Israel is killing civilians because anyone can be a militant(since hamas militants don't wear uniforms), or.......what is the alternative?

>> If you agree it's a very poor signal about morality, why bring it up?

I don't agree with that - I just said it's a consequence of every other choice that Israel made up to this point.

I just don't see the point of engaging with a big laundry list of random accusations against Israel. Some are likely true. Urban wars aren't rainbows and butterflies, and no military is perfect. Ukraine has had a bunch of incidents with soldiers abusing and even executing POWs, should we sanction them too? US recently obliterated a girls' school, should we sanction ourselves for our mistake?

> what is the conclusion here?

Maybe something like "Israel's neighbors should probably stop attacking it", "Hamas should put on uniforms", or "countries that supposedly care about Gazans' well-being should accept war refugees"?

If your takeaway is that it's all Israel's fault, but you can't name any other military that does a better job of dealing with terrorists who embed themselves among civilians, that seems like the wrong takeaway.

>>Or are you just holding Israel to an impossible standard that no military in the real world is capable of?

I'm sure I can name a few militaries in the world that would manage to not shoot at a marked ambulance and kill the medics inside. And a few others that actually manage to successfully prosecute their soldiers raping and torturing captured enemies, not have the prosecutors let them free as heroes of the nation.

>>Just blaming Israel for all civilian harm, when it's Hamas that started the war and disguises as civilians, isn't going to help

And why is that? I think if we continue sanctioning Israel as much as we can that will help. If we keep putting pressure on Israel to let journalists in, that will help.

>>By this logic

I don't know what logic that is. The ratio alone doesn't make you good or bad.

> I'm sure I can name a few militaries [...]

Well, when are you planning to name them? If Israel is so evil, it must be very easy to name a few militaries that are much better at fighting terrorists, who dress as civilians and hide among them, without much collateral damage.

> actually manage to successfully prosecute

There are countries that never let off suspected criminals due to insufficient evidence?

Also if we're just bringing up random stories to paint one side in a bad light, what happened to the Gazans who paraded their rape victims around the streets? They didn't seem at all worried about being arrested.

> if we continue sanctioning Israel as much as we can that will help

Sanctions can't convince a nuclear state to ignore the attacks against it and give up on its own defense. If we want Israel to stop fighting messy wars, the focus should be on its neighbors who keep attacking it.

Is there a reason why you cut off the second part of that first sentence when you quoted it? Or was it again because you wanted to argue against a point in your head instead of the one I actually made? Because I'm sure even you can name militaries that generally don't shoot at ambulances, or if they do the people responsible tend to go on trial and be prosecuted.

>>There are countries that never let off suspected criminals due to insufficient evidence?

Funny how Israel always finds insufficient evidence against all of its soldiers.But maybe that just doesn't bother you.

>>what happened to the Gazans who paraded their rape victims around the streets?

Oh wait, it's Gazans now? not Hamas? Or are they one and the same for you?

>>Sanctions can't convince a nuclear state to ignore the attacks against it and give up on its own defense

Of course they can't, and no one advocates anything of that sort. We do want Israel to stop killing Palestinian civialians in the numbers that they do. We want food and medical supplies to be restored. No one says Israel shouldn't defend itself - but this has crossed the line of defence long time ago. Maybe it hasn't for you, but that's your morality that you have to live with.

>> the focus should be on its neighbors who keep attacking it.

You do realize that both of these things can happen, right. We should be criticizing Israel for how it's leading this war, and we should focus on it's neighbours to stop the terrorists inside them. Do you feel Israel is being unfairly treated in this case?

It seems like you're unable to name any military that broadly deals with terrorists in a cleaner manner, so you've resorted to cherry picking specific alleged incidents that are more specific to Israel.

This is like saying that the US is the most evil country, because it's the only one that bombed the girls' school in Minab. Or Ukraine is the most evil country, because they're the only ones accused of who executed Russian POWs (in recent memory).

> Oh wait, it's Gazans now? not Hamas? Or are they one and the same for you?

I'm sure you know that Hamas fighters were not the only ones committing atrocities on Oct 7. The Gazans who were parading their rape victims didn't hold signs saying "I'm with Hamas", "I'm with PIJ", "I'm just a random Gazan", etc. Why should we make assumptions about their affiliation?

> We do want Israel to stop killing Palestinian civialians in the numbers that they do.

If you can't name any real-world military capable of dealing with terrorists disguised as civilians with less collateral damage, than just blaming Israel for the collateral damage is rather unproductive.

> You do realize that both of these things can happen, right.

That's a nice sentiment, but in reality those who are ostensibly pro-Palestinian are way more focused on trying to harm Israel than on actually helping Palestinians. Where were the protests for getting Hamas to put on uniforms? For getting other countries to accept war refugees? For pressuring Hamas to step down, ceding power to a government that will stop starting wars? There were none.

Israeli civilian death ratios are actually terrible, worse than Bosnia, Syria, or even WWII (including the Holocaust!). I assume it’s because Israel wants to kill as many civilians as possible, while still claiming the faintest hope of plausible deniability.

https://aoav.org.uk/2026/why-israeli-claims-of-low-civilian-...

Frost is using quite a long chain of creative assumptions to claim that fighting age male casualties (almost half of all casualties) were mostly civilian. His conclusions are contracted by Hamas' own admissions. Earlier in the war they acknowledged losing 6,000 fighters, when the claimed total was ~29k.

If we believe Hamas, and conservatively assume that everyone other than Hamas fighters were civilians, that's still a CCR around 3.85:1. If we believe Israel it's around 1.5:1.

> worse than Bosnia, Syria, or even WWII

As I said elsewhere in the thread, CCR comparisons need to be apples-to-apples. Gaza is tiny, civilians have nowhere to evacuate to (no state accepted significant numbers of war refugees), and Hamas disguises as civilians. Your examples are not comparable.

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