THe reason these "international laws" are accepted by majority of modern nations is because they are somewhat reasonable and allow parties to military conflicts to wage military campaigns while attempting to minimize civilian casualties.
If the laws are rewritten to state "you are never allowed to attack a hospital or a school. No exception", then what will follow is one party to the war will put their military installation insides schools and hospitals and the other party to the war to the war will say "these geneva conventions are unreasonable and we wont follow it"
In other words, nobody would respect Geneva conventions if they are unreasonable
Regardless of any second-order effects, the truth on the ground is that many thousands of innocents are suffering, and I have a hard time seeing any societal configuration where civilians can be legally blown up or starved en masse as anything but immoral. If a terrorist government is embedded in your population centers, it should not be legal to raze those population centers in retribution.
How do you distinguish "retribution" from eliminating the threat posed by (in your words) a terrorist government?
What do you propose as an alternative? Simply allow the terrorist government to continue to operate unimpeded, which enables attacks on your own citizens?
There's no population on the planet that would accept that.
Israel is already doing that (for valid reasons IMO) and it hasn’t lost support; if anything, Israel’s position with other Arab countries has never been better. They too would like to see Hamas gone.
So the UN Security Council vote for resolutions against Israel with only 1 dissenting vote (USA) is not losing international support? Or the cavalcade of countries around the world coming out in support of ending the occupation at the ICJ with only 3 countries in support of Israel versus the nearly 60 countries against? Not sure where you get your news, but you may want to consider another source. Would love to hear your valid reasons... but please before giving them to me, how about reading about the Zionism movement (est 1897) the balfour declaration (1917) the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem (an ac of terrorism that killed 91 people - mostly british army officers) and the Nakba (1948) the Deir Yassin Masacre - and the many others... and maybe we can have an intelligent discourse.
Doesn't your argument boil down to "wars are not moral"?
When the Iraqis and the US were besieging and pounding Mosul, was there a lot of discussion about the suffering of the innocents? Did the US or anyone else air drop supplies to them or send aid trucks into Mosul? Maybe- but I don't recall.
Let's not forget that ISIS was thousands of miles from the US and the US was under no direct threat. Contrast that to an enemy much stronger in numbers and arms vs. ISIS 15 minutes from your cities.
This is just evidence to what is the "standard" in how wars are waged in similar situations.
Before the Geneva convention, and obviously after the Geneva convention, some countries/armies would just fire artillery into the besieged city and drop bombs and starve them until there's no more resistance. This would be the Russian or Syrian approach which they copy-pasted many times in the Syrian civil war and in Ukraine (by both sides). Israel is not doing that.
All that said, I think Israel should strive within reason to facilitate aid delivery to civilians. It is doing that but it can probably do more. There are some portions of the Israeli public that think that after Oct 7th the "enemy" should be brought to their knees by any tactic but I don't think that's the majority and I don't think that's what the decision makers are pursuing. There are challenges in getting aid to people in a war zone where random people pop up with RPGs and shoot things or steal the aid for military purposes. If something goes wrong, like it did the other day, and many people died, Israel takes flak (essentially for trying to get aid into those problematic places).
The Hamas, being the elected government of Gaza, and having hoarded provisions for their prolonged battle, is also responsible for the well being of their citizens. They don't give a damn but we shouldn't forget they're responsible (in many ways) for the current situation.
In terms of "razing" there is extensive use of bulldozers, bombs and demolition to neutralize mines, booby traps, tunnel shafts. Expose tunnels. Remove positions the enemy can utilize. This is why the IDF has managed to take over most of Gaza with relatively low casualties (still a lot but a lot less than was expected). I'm ok with this morality in this context, minimizing my casualties in a conflict that the other side insists on continuing. There is a fine line there and the line is international law (which generally allows these tactics).
Hamas was elected in 2006. Hamas was initially funded by Israel - yes they are an Israeli creation to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Let that sink in for a minute. Over 50% of Gaza's population was born after this election. Of the remaining, there was barely 40% turnout and Hamas barely won. But yet, you cling to the narrative fed to you that they are all guilty (which means you ascribe to collective punishment - a war crime).
The infrastructure destruction has been going on for decades. Israel routinely destroys Palestinian homes prior to October 7th. Is that Hamas? when they do it in the West Bank where Hamas is not active, is that Hamas too? How about the Thousands of Palestinian Men, Women and Children arrested without charge or trial and help in inhuman detention camps, is that Hamas? or are you maybe just trying to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed United States political, financial and military support so that you can sleep better at night.... it was Hamas is getting old. At some point you need to wake up and understand that the real boogeyman is Israel. They are not your friend
Hamas was not "initially funded by Israel". References?
Support for violence and Hamas amongst Palestinians is not "my narrative". It's truth supported by numerous surveys. If you want to get some color go look for the YouTube channel that interviews Palestinians on the street on topical questions over the last decade or so.
Hamas enjoys broad support and would get re-elected, that's why we didn't see any elections after 2006, because the PA would have lost to Hamas. Also the attack of Hamas on Oct 7th has broad support and previous to Oct 7th support for the use of violence against Israel was similarly broad.
"The polls shows 57% of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank believe Hamas was correct in launching its October 7 onslaught, in which some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, were murdered and over 240 were taken hostage. A large majority believes Hamas’s claims that it acted to “defend” the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and win the release of Palestinian security prisoners. Only 10% say they believed Hamas has committed war crimes, with a large majority saying they did not see videos showing the terrorists committing atrocities."
"The poll found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,” while only 14% prefer Abbas’ secular Fatah party." (2021)
I can give you 100's of more surveys over the last decade. It might be true that Hamas' support today in Gaza is waning given the circumstances but probably rising in the west bank. Palestinians were celebrating Oct 7th.
Anyways we are talking about Gaza, how did this get to the West Bank? Your statements about the west bank are also wrong. Israel demolishes houses of terrorists that murder Israeli civilians. That's pretty much the only "routinely destroys homes" I can think of. Israel doesn't arrest children and put them in inhuman(e?) detention camps, where do you get that stuff?
Israel isn't perfect by any means, but the bad guys in this story are the Palestinians. There's no excuse for things like suicide bombers blowing up busses, malls, and restaurants. There's no excuse of Oct 7th. They chose indiscriminate violence as their way of settling the conflict and refused any peaceful attempts to settle it. You're the one that needs to wake up and at the very least learn the facts of this conflict before you make up your mind. EDIT: Also no excuse to firing 10's of thousands of rockets and mortars into Israeli population centers. All these things are war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel's actions as a whole are not.
Things are very simple in my eyes. If tens of thousands of innocents are dying without an end in sight, there is a bleed that needs to be stemmed immediately. It does not matter who started it or whether the crisis is being used as propaganda or leverage. The truth is on the ground.
It would be great to "defeat Hamas" as a solution, but I'm not sure how that's feasible at this point without razing Gaza.
Things are not simple, and a simplistic take of this matter is very prevalent, sadly. I mean, what are even the real numbers? Did you forget about the Hamas rocket hitting a hospital in Gaza, which they claimed was Israel's bombing that killed 500 civilians? Later they settled on 50, when it was widely accepted that it was their doing.
Fighting Hamas is hard, mostly because it uses civilian population and infrastructure to its benefit, but what are the alternatives? reward Hamas' actions by letting them off the hook? I haven't heard any other suggestion on how do deal with Hamas except for fighting them head on.
Are you sure that stopping it will actually minimize the number of deaths in the long run? Is it better to kill 20000 people in a short time to reach permanent peace, or to save some of those people and then repeat the whole ordeal each 2 years, with more and more bloodshed?
I don’t pretend to have an answer, but war brings up very hard to answer moral questions.
This a common misunderstanding of the international laws of war, and international law in general.
In our personal lives the government can compel us to follow the law with the threat of overwhelming force; if I break the law I will be arrested, and regardless of how much I fight back I will not be able to stop it. Laws in our everyday lives are like commands from a parent to a child; the government, as the parent, can and will compel the child's obedience.
International law is different. If a state breaks international law, there is no entity willing or capable of using overwhelming force to compel obedience. States have armies and some have nuclear weapons; the amount of force required to compel a state to behave a certain way is huge, and generating that force is extremely costly. When states break international law there are consequences, but at the end of the day violence is generally not on the table.
Effective international law is a balancing act. An international standard of warfare that placed extremely strict standards on when it was permissible to kill civilians would make fighting a war significantly harder. No state would obey such a law because winning the war is the absolute highest priority, making the law worthless. Instead, laws of war try to outlaw actions that don't affect the ability of a country to win a war. No chemical or biological weapons (high explosives are more effective), humane treatment of prisoners (discourages the enemy fighting to the death), and no killing civilians unless in the pursuit of a military objective (if it's not in pursuit of a military objective, then it's a waste of resources). The goal of the laws of war is to prevent unnecessary violence, not prevent violence altogether. It's a case of "perfect is the enemy of good."
Hamas is free to hand out uniforms to its soldiers to prevent civilians getting killed. They’re also free to build barracks instead of tunnels underneath schools to house their fighters. Until they do so civilians will continue to suffer.
The very reason these laws are there is to protect civilians. A hospital can more or less safely operate in a war zone if both parties play by the rules and actually care for their people. If you exploit these very rules for military advantage, then why not just put red crosses on your attack helicopters as well? There aren’t too many laws to war, but this just fundamentally makes sense.
GP is wrong. There is the law of proportionality in the Geneva Conventions which requires "that the expected incidental harm is not excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage."
>The word to pay attention to here is "military advantage" - i.e. "military value" of the target.
Seeing a "hamas" go into a hospital or a rocket being fired from it doesn't give Israel the green light to bomb it. While there is no well-defined metric or number that defines proportionality - it is safe to say that Israelis don't meet the necessary criteria by any reasonable measure. Establishing the necessary proportionality to justify an attack on a hospital, refugee camp or shelter is needless to say, extraordinarily high.
Take the recent ICC arrest warrants as an example. The ICC just ruled that Russian targeting of Ukraine's power grid constituted a war crime.“During this timeframe, there was an alleged campaign of strikes against numerous electric power plants and sub-stations, which were carried out by the Russian armed forces in multiple locations in Ukraine,” the court said. "The ICC said the attacks led by Koblylash and Sokolov on Ukraine’s electrical grid caused civilian harm which was excessive when compared with any expected military advantage". This even though power infrastructure has clear military value.
Now look at the siege and attack on Shifa hospital. If Shifa was a vital command-and-control hub where the head of Hamas operated from , or if it contained a major ammo depot - that may constitute sufficient military value to justify the incidental deaths caused by attacking a hospital. A calendar and a couple of AKs behind an MRI machine doesn't does not. Moreover the fact that Israelis had to go in and spend weeks on a fishing expedition to dig up (or make up) the sufficient evidence to justify the attack after-the-fact, proves that they didn't have the necessary justification to stage the attack in the first place. Thus the attack on the hospital violates the Geneva conventions and is a war crime. (But don't hold your breath for any action from the ICC - They are extremely biased and beholden to US and NATO interests).
At this point the mountain of evidence is simply undeniable. When we compare the intensity of atrocity committed by the Israelis, to those in other recent conflicts - Mosul, Homs, Mariupol, Grozny, Yemen- the israelis sails past them all with a healthy margin. Israelis killed more children in a few months than the syrians, russians did over many years. In terms of civillian/combatant ratio and the sheer intensity of civillian deaths in a short time-frame- I am not aware of any national force committing similar attrocity in the 21st century (Maybe the Ethiopian civil war, but I don't know, i am not versed on that conflict) If this was Russia or Iran we wouldn't be having this conversation.
*>When we compare the intensity of atrocity committed by the Israelis, to those in other recent conflicts - Mosul, Homs, Mariupol, Grozny, Yemen- the israelis sails past them all with a healthy margin.
According to Ukrainian sources, at least 25,000 people died in the siege of Mariupol over the course of less than three months. The current conflict in Gaza is grave, but it is not incomparable or unprecedented.
I remember 10k being the more frequently quoted number. But maybe that needs to be revisited - I was more naive about the degree of underreporting on ukrainian casualties. Maybe the truth is closer to 25k - which would make it comparable to Gaza. It will be difficult/impossible to know the real number given the reported cremations, the fact that the city is under Russian control, and that lot of the missing include residents who fled/were-transferred to Russia. The Gaza numbers are likely higher than official report given all the missing who are still under the rubble.
