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Hospitals have special protection under the rules of war. Why are they in the crosshairs in Gaza? (apnews.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling. “Listen,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Sada as fighting raged around Shifa Hospital.

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[–] 59 points 2 years ago (4 children)

This exactly is my main gripe with how Israel is conducting this war. They're completely unwilling to take any additional risk to preserve civilian life.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It's not just in "this war", they weren't giving a shit about Palestinian civilians for decades.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    That's why concluded that the Israeli leadership at the moment are full-blown Fascists: their treatment of people who they see as "not us" as subhuman and the style and intensity of their propaganda entirelly anchored on blaming the victim and them providing a variety of unverifiable excuses for their own killings which are even inconsistent amongst each other (often the excuses for different bombings have inconsistent criteria, which means they're to a large extent arbitrary or the excuses are being made up after the fact and hence false) are quite the throwback to quite a style of Fascism which is almost a century old and manage to exceed just about everybody since WWII.

    Even Russia in its invasion of Ukraine did not get this close to the historical worse kinds of Fascism, probably because the Russians are nowhere as racist towards Ukranians as Israelis are towards Arabs, especially Palestinians.

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  • [+] -21 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Well, the US has shown that they couldn't fight an insurgency with their level of protections for civilians.
    Makes sense that Israel assesses that they have less resources than the US, and thus can't fight the same way and have a hope of success.

    Of course they could have used that as a pretty good reason not to start this war in the first placez but alas, they didn't.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What argument are you making here? Your first paragraph implies you believe that Isreal is justified in it's approach based on the US's failed conflicts with Guerilla warfare. But then your second paragraph implies that Isreal is not justified for exactly that reason, which is like.. Yeah.. That's correct lol.

    I feel like it shouldn't be a controversial opinion to say that if you are unable to conduct a war without massive civilian casualties then you shouldn't be conducting that war. If you do anyway you are, at the very best, a war criminal.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    This is, actually, an absurd opinion. Massive civilian casualties are inseparable from war, and you will be hard pressed to find a war without them.

    The laws of war are built around, and exist because of, this assumption. They exist to give a framework that sets forth principles by which the loss of life can be evaluated.

    Otherwise, by your definition, every warring faction ever is a war criminal.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    Wow, that is an insanely obtuse interpretation of what I said.

    Of course there are always civilian casualties In war. Of course that is why war crimes exist in the first place.

    "Massive" literally means "Large in comparison to what is typical". So when I say massive civilian cassualties forgive me for assuming you'd understand I was using that word for it's intended purpose.

    Bombing a hospital full of civilians is absolutely a war crime.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Makes sense that Israel assesses that they have less resources than the US, and thus can't fight the same way and have a hope of success.

    Israel has one of the most powerful militaries in the region, with 500,000 troops, a $20 billion dollar budget, and shared tech with the US. They have no external bases to maintain. They're terrorists who live at the border in 140 square miles with roads Israel designed to allow their tanks easy access.

    In the first week of this genocide, Israel dropped more bombs than the US did during the entire Afghanistan war. On one of the most population dense regions in the world.

    But further, Israel immediately cut power and water to Gaza. 2 million people went without water and electricity to attack how many Hamas terrorists?

    And let's be clear, this all happened because IDF forces were busy in the West Bank evicting Palestinians from their homes for settlers leaving the Gaza border unguarded.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    The US absolutely fought an insurgency. They just figured out they needed local support. They got it in Iraq, they didn't get it in Afghanistan.

    That's Israel's biggest problem here. They've spent the last several decades making Palestinians hate them. So there is no possible way for them to destroy Hamas.

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