this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Sorry for the below rant, but this simplistic meme really rubbed me the wrong way. Feel free to ignore it if this unasked for, unedited and overlong stream of consciousness if you don't care about this conflict as much as I do.
One problem I've observed with people accusing Israel of war crimes in this conflict is that they are using a term with clear defined meanings for things that aren't. It's purely driven by emotions, not knowledge of international law. They shout "Geneva Conventions!" as if it was a magic spell (and have of course never read them before). They see or hear about dead civilians, which, as terrible as they are, aren't automatically the result of war crimes. They use the term to describe things that most definitely aren't, like (just recently) arresting POWs or stopping the delivery of free electricity and water to the enemy. The latter in particular (even though it's far from the only similarity) reminds me of how Russia tried and failed to create international outrage when Ukraine stopped delivering water to occupied Crimea. Nobody had an issue with that, but for some reason, with Gaza, there are new standards that only apply to this conflict and no other conflict before. It's baffling.
Just to list a few things, no it's not a war crime to attack hospitals, if they are being used for military purposes. Same with schools, kindergartens, residential buildings, etc. The Geneva Conventions explicitly permit this in order to discourage the use of human shields, which they define as a war crime, because if one side does this all the time - and Hamas have openly celebrated the use of human shields - then this might motivate the enemy to assume that behind every group of civilians, there might be fighters. When North Korean soldiers fired at US soldiers out of crowds of refugees during the Korean War, this led to US soldiers driving refugees away with their guns and even killing a number of them, fearing to be ambushed. Fighters not wearing uniforms puts every fighting age male in the combat area at a risk - and guess what, Hamas only wears uniforms during parades, not in combat. Hamas have used human shields successfully to prevent Israel from performing attacks on weapons depots, rocket launch sites, command centers, etc. They were under the impression that they could attack from these positions, from behind civilians with impunity. If the other side doesn't attack, that's a win, the terrorists get to live for another day and can continue what they are doing. If Israel does attack and civilians die, this particular cell might lose a few fighters and equipment, but they can use the innocent civilians they put into the crossfire for propaganda against Israel, both domestically in order to recruit new fighters and internationally to put pressure on Israel. What should Israel do in this situation? Just eat the rockets? The Iron Dome is far from perfect and every alert means people only have seconds to interrupt whatever they are doing and rush to shelter. That's no way to live. Meanwhile, in Gaza, there are no civilian bomb shelters, not even air raid sirens. Gaza is the only place since WW2 that attacked an enemy they know have air power, but provides no shelters nor warnings for civilians. Kind of odd, if you think about it.
You would assume that young left-leaning people in particular would side with the side that was attacked first in this conflict, the side that is the only democracy in the Middle East, the side that has equal rights and protections for women and LGBTQ+ people, the side that is a hub for cutting-edge research and has more startups than almost every other place in the world. All because of a shallow and simply wrong colonizer narrative or even a racial narrative (even though you wouldn't be able to differentiate most Israelis and Palestinians based on their skin color and other physical features). There is a lot of frustrating naivete here. What annoys me by far the most is that they only talk about things Israel shouldn't do, but don't offer any viable alternatives. How should you react to the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust? Is there even a correct way or only a large number of terrible options that some unlucky people have to pick the least worst option out, only to get berated by it from people who will never be in such a situation?
Israel can not not react to such an attack without force. Making concessions would tell terrorists that their tactics work and motivate them and others to try it again and again. That's what they did every single time in the past. When Israel pulled all of their settlers out of Gaza - by force, I might add - Hamas immediately thanked them by launching attacks. The blockade, the border fence that so many people call a grave injustice was the direct result of weekly stabbings, shootings and suicide bombings against Israeli civilians - and it worked, until Israel became complacent, thinking that further economic incentives and aid, that providing work to tens of thousands of Palestinians, free services and resources had placated Hamas and that they were happy with the power that they have over the strip, the billions of foreign aid they could siphon off for their own benefit.
Don't get me wrong, calling the current Israeli government under Netanyahu bastards would be putting it mildly. I have all sorts of issues with this right-wing administration. I detest the settlers in the West Bank with a passion and if it were up to me, they would be evicted in an instant. Their continued presence is the most grave issue I have with the modern Israeli state. There are others, like a discriminatory justice system, the continued democratic backsliding and even such aspects as the nation's poor energy policy, but the settlers are by far the gravest issues. Even in times of relative calm, they continuously inflame the conflict and during wartime in particular, they feel emboldened.
Continued below.
Part 2:
Having said that, the IDF - a conscription army that is a pretty accurate reflection of the diverse Israeli population, most of which share no love for their current government - is not Netanyahu and their conduct in this war has been exemplary. No other army in the world does more to warn civilians and get them out of harms way. The civilian evacuation corridor they established for example has been a stroke of genius and while a large number of civilians have been killed by them, there is zero proof that any of their deaths have been intentional. Even if we take Hamas' death counts for granted, far fewer than one person dies for each large bomb dropped by Israel. This could only happen if Israel was picking targets carefully and warning civilians. They are not perfect though and I would never claim otherwise. The problem is that they are still humans, humans who make mistakes. There is no doubt that there is an average number of assholes and idiots among the IDF, some of which will abuse their power as soldiers, just like even UN blue helm soldiers do during humanitarian missions. These are in the end, the good ones and the bad ones, just humans who are fighting against the horrific Islamofascist Hamas, an organization that does everything in their power to get the civilian death toll up, even to the point of bombing and shooting their own people. How does one fight such an enemy? We are not yet in the age of scary perfect drones that can only kill terrorists with absolutely no civilians getting harmed.
I've studied this conflict for over 20 years. The more I read about it, the less I understand what's going on. I don't think this current war will solve the conflict or come even close to that. All it will do once it's over is protect Israel from another attack like October 7 for at least a few decades, if not longer. That's the immediate goal of the IDF, nothing more, nothing less. It won't solve the issue of Palestinian statehood, it won't solve the issue with the settlers, it won't solve the issue of decades of indoctrination Palestinian Arabs received, which keeps the conflict alive with generation upon generation even in the face of concessions. When you see a little girl with pigtails going to a UN school talk about how she wants to stab every Jew when she grows up - how does one solve this? Not even the denazification of Germany had to undo this type of indoctrination. At the same time, I don't see the Israeli state take back such injustices as indefinite detention of suspects, with gets almost exclusively applied to Arabs. Every single attack on Israel means the Israeli society scoots further to the right, across the entire political spectrum, which in turn means that compromise and dialogue with the Arab side become less likely.
I think what's frightening to Hamas and Fatah leaders is that they are falling behind and losing in relevance at a rapid pace. They have unguided fertilizer rockets that are only good for mass terror bombings while the other side is widely deploying combat robots - and every day, the gap widens. They will discover (and I suspect they know all too well) that once this current war is over in at most two or three months time, the world will almost immediately forget about them again beyond the occasional declaration of solidarity for civilians. Most of Israel's former enemies have long since made peace with the only Jewish nation in the world, after several costly wars they launched and lost against it. Despite Hamas' frantic calls, nobody came for their aid, except for two Iranian-backed terror groups that can do little more than poke at the Hornets' nest. Russia, China, Syria, North Korea, Hezbollah, Hamas - that is one unholy alliance of awfulness that has nothing to offer to this world other than trying to divide it. The only battlefield where they are shockingly successful is social media, where they flood everything with their divisive dreck in the hope of weakening the West and thereby strengthening their position. It works with GenZ, which worries me a lot, but GenZ don't vote, so for now at least, this doesn't change a thing.
I just hope that this uncaring universe will end this stupid war as soon as possible, for the sake of every innocent caught in it.
P.S.
I apologize once again to anyone who felt like they had to read this unfiltered expression of frustration, sleep-deprivation, self-importance, depression and who knows what else. You could probably write a whole dissertation on my broken mind using this text only. Feel free to discuss any of the points I made with me, but be warned that I might drown you in a similarly long response if you do. Do it at your own risk.
If this is how you really think, you need to study the conflict more. There's plenty of evidence of Israel intentionally targeting civilians in this "war" (genocide is a more appropriate term) alone. And don't get me started how you condemned October 7th as a terrorist attack even though it's perfectly legal to take a military action against a foreign occupier.
And about the Gaza disengagement: The rocket attacks started after the blockade, which BTW started in 2005, not 2007.
You need to take a look at the conflict again, and examine your biases if you actually care about the truth.
Edit: What it feels like reading this is that you're creating nuance where none exists. Not saying there's no nuance in the conflict, but it's generally pretty clear-cut with a clear cause and effect chain dating back to the Nakba, or if we take it further to the Balfour declaration.