[tsimionescu]

Please choose one international organization that has had people in Gaza and has declared it's not a genocide.

As for colective punishment, I did make a small mistake. This is "just" an explicit war crime, not a direct proof of genocide. Of course, it easily leads to genocide if you feel that an entire people are responsible for an attack perpetrated by a few dozens of terrorists. After all, if all Gazans are responsible for October 7th, doesn't it just make sense to kill or at least harm all of them, per this deranged logic?

Just like like if someone said "Israelis and all Jewish people deserve to die for the crimes committed by Israel's military against Palestine" would be a demented war criminal and instigator to genocide. This is exactly what Israel's leadership is saying, only it's about Palestinians as a people and Hamas as the army instead. And it is just as deranged and disturbing and frankly disgusting.

> Ultimately, Gazans are the culprit of Gazans' problems. They started this war.

Another historical misguided statement. Israel has been occupying Gaza and not allowing it to be recognized as a state, or to control its own borders, for decades. Every year, even before this war, for every Israeli killed by someone from Gaza, Israel has killed two, three, sometimes even ten Gazans (and the balance is sitting at 45-100:1 for the current invasion, not counting all of the mass rape and torture and other crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against detainees). The people of Gaza are not allowed to leave the country unless approved by Israel, not allowed to import or export anything unless approved by Israel, and not allowed to be recognized in any international organization. The same is true of the West Bank. Additionally, in the West Bank, Israel is taking more and more of the Palestinians' lands and settling colonists, who often attack nearby villages as well.

This "war" did not start on October 7th. It started decades ago, and Israel has been the aggressor throughout.

Edit: same person as simiones for personal reasons, not an attempt at dogpiling or anything like that

[underdeserver]

> "it easily leads to genocide if you feel that an entire people are responsible for an attack perpetrated by a few dozens of terrorists"

3,000 Gazans crossed into Israel on October 7th. Not dozens. Also not close to the entire population of 2.1 million.

Nobody is talking about killing or harming all 2.1 million. In fact nobody is talking about killing or harming any civilians at all. The only dial the Israelis can turn is how much effort they put into avoiding civilian casualties - and by effort, I mean sacrificing Israeli soldier lives instead of air force munitions and/or missing opportunities to target militants, which then leads to these militants attacking Israeli civilians.

Hamas consistently uses the Gazan population as human shields. Israel is already leads and bounds ahead of any other armed force with the lowest ratio of combatant to civilian death ever in an urban setting. What's happening in Gaza is a calamity, but I'm not sure any other nation would handle it better in Israel's place.

[underdeserver]

This war (no need for scare quotes) definitely started on October 7th. The conflict may not have, but wars have beginnings and ends, and this one was started, by Hamas, on October 7th.

> "Israel has been occupying Gaza"

Nope. Left in 2005.

> "not allowing it to be recognized as a state"

Not allowing how? All Israel asked was a declaration of willingness to live side-by-side with Israel, without hostilities. Are you saying that's too much for Israel to ask?

> "or to control its own borders, for decades"

There are two sides to every border. Israel controls the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border.

> "Every year, even before this war, for every Israeli killed by someone from Gaza, Israel has killed two, three, sometimes even ten Gazans (and the balance is sitting at 45-100:1 for the current invasion, not counting all of the mass rape and torture and other crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against detainees)."

This is not a game. You don't aim for equal numbers. Israel is going for dead or surrendered Hamas militants, and Hamas is going for dead Israeli civilians. The Israelis are better at it. That doesn't make them wrong.

> "not allowed to import or export anything unless approved by Israel"

Yes, because they kept trying to import arms, explosives, and rockets. Look up the Karine-A affair. Apparently, given what happened on October 7th, the control is likely not strict enough.

> "in the West Bank, Israel is taking more and more of the Palestinians' lands and settling colonists"

Sounds like the Palestinians' top interest should be to get a deal struck as soon as possible that forces Israel to remove the settlers. Like they did with the Oslo accords in 92', until Arafat was found to be straight-up lying to Clinton, negotiating with Clinton and Rabin in the morning and directing terrorist attacks in the evening.

--

Leaders of western nations are not generally allied with Israel because they particularly like Jews. They are allied with Israel because Israel is the historical homeland of the Jews, a full democracy with democratic values (...for now), and the most successful decolonization project in history; and it has from day one strived to make peace with any willing country, while successfully defending itself from numerous assaults by its neighboring countries, the Palestinians, and the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies.

[simiones]

> This war (no need for scare quotes) definitely started on October 7th.

This is not a war, it's a one-sided genocidal invasion, part of a decade-long war. There have been periods of ceasefire in this war, but it is the same conflict that has lasted for decades.

> Nope. Left in 2005.

Nope, they are still controlling the border (see below) and periodically bombing Gaza, keeping records of every citizen of Gaza, rationing power and water, etc. That is an occupation, even if there aren't Israeli troops constantly on the border.

> All Israel asked was a declaration of willingness to live side-by-side with Israel, without hostilities.

This is completely facetious. Netanyahu has been very clear that there Israel will not allow a two-state solution, long before the October 7th attack. He even explicitly supported Hamas's stay in power [0]:

> For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

> The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Here is a quote from him directly [1] about his vision for a Palestinian state, where he is asking for infinitely more than a commitment to not attack Israel:

> “[A]ny final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians would have Israel controlling security – overriding security responsibility in the area west of the Jordan.

> [...] “And I said, you’re right. But – I don’t know what you’d call it, but it gives them the opportunity to control their lives, to elect their officials, to run their economy, to run their institutions, to have their flag and to have their parliament, but we have to have overriding security control.”

I think it's obvious this is not a serious proposal that any state would accept. It also happens to be almost exactly one of the things Putin was asking of Ukraine, widely viewed in Europe and the USA as an absurdity.

> Israel controls the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border.

Israel controls all sides of the Gaza border, including Gaza's border with the sea. Even the USA wasn't allowed to bring in medicine and food to Gaza over boat unless Israel approved it. The Gaza-Egypt border is nominally controlled by Egypt, but Egypt has long agreed to follow Israel's requests on who and what is allowed through there.

> Yes, because they kept trying to import arms, explosives, and rockets.

Which they should be allowed to do, if you are claiming they are not under occupation. Every free state in the world is allowed to import weapons.

> Sounds like the Palestinians' top interest should be to get a deal struck as soon as possible that forces Israel to remove the settlers.

The Palestinians shouldn't need to reach a "deal", since the settlements are fully illegal under international law, as recognized even by the USA.

> Like they did with the Oslo accords in 92', until Arafat was found to be straight-up lying to Clinton, negotiating with Clinton and Rabin in the morning and directing terrorist attacks in the evening.

The Oslo accords were a sham. There is nothing about a Palestinian state in the Oslo accords. Israel's leaders had no intention whatsoever to commit even to a vision that would eventually lead to a Palestinian state under numerous conditions. Arafat kept negotiating, but at some point this became apparent. Was he fully committed to the process? No. Was the process ever plausibly going to lead to any good solution for Palestinians even if he had been? Absolutely not. The Israelis were occupying Gaza at the time, and busy settling the West bank. They were adamantly opposed to any kind of third party monitoring or enforcement of any term that they would agree to: who would be foolish enough to sign something like this? Here is a good article on the overall process and how one-sided it was [2], written by one of the US negotiators who was present.

> They are allied with Israel because Israel is the historical homeland of the Jews

Most Jews that founded Israel had lived for hundreds of years, more than a thousand often, in various places in Europe. Israel is about as much their "historical homeland" as Rome is the "historical homeland" of the Spanish. Calling the most clear modern example of colonization a "decolonization" project is preposterous. There were hundreds of thousands of people who had been living in Palestine for generations, who were displaced to make room for the Zionist project. Initially, this was done mostly peacefully; only later, after the British took and then ceded control of the territory, did the forceful removal of Palestinian Arabs start, to make room for the new state of Israel. And then the colonization of this state by settlers from all over the world.

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/01/middleeast/netanyahu-pale...

[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/13/oslo-accords-1993-anniv...

[crabbone]

Collective punishment is not a war crime either. Why do you keep talking about something you have no clue about? I've given you an example of collective punishment that Israel did perform (unlike many idiotic claims made by people who just like to make stuff up). Israel canceled work permits for everyone from Gaza be those terrorists or not. How's canceling a work permit a war crime?

You just keep using the words, but you don't understand what they mean...

Now, were there war crimes committed by IDF during the Gaza war? -- Yes, and some were punished for that, while even more were claimed. This is a nature of any war. Were there more crimes than in any other war? How do you even measure and compare these things?

As I lived through several wars, I can tell that Israeli wars, at least from my perspective as a bystander, are very mild in terms of cruelty towards both combatants and non-combatants. This is not a unique Israeli virtue. In general, wars waged by well-to-do countries are less cruel to the opposing side simply because soldiers growing in well-to-do countries are not exposed to the everyday violence as much as their counterparts in poor countries. They are brought up in an environment where human life has intrinsic value, where critical thought is encouraged and so it's harder to brainwash a soldier into a mindlessly cruel machine.

Now, my childhood in Ukraine had seen this, for example, beside other multiple such incidents: on my way back home from school my mom pulled my hand hard in order to get me to walk faster. Before that, I've heard voices of some youth cursing and taunting someone. I also saw some guys kicking something in the mud, but it was too dark and too far to see what that was. Next morning there was a makeshift fence erected by the police around that place, and the school sprouted rumors that a bunch of alcoholics / homeless people were mauled to death at that place.

This was during peace time. And this would've been a typical fate for the homeless / drunks, unless hypothermia got them first. Very rarely would anyone get in jail for that. Imagine now people like that being drafted into the military. First Karabakh war, for example. Or Chechen wars. These were real torture fests. Both sides deliberately looked for more painful ways to kill the opponent. And they made little distinction between combatants and non-combatants. People who signed up for the military were driven by the idea that they will be allowed to kill and torture legally even more so than by money or status.

The horrors soldiers routinely commit in poor countries eclipse anything you could dream up in your wildest dreams living in the EU, US or another wealthy place. Does this mean that war crimes committed by IDF shouldn't be prosecuted? -- Of course not. But you shouldn't infer from there being war crimes any sort of intention on the state level, nor should this be any kind of supporting argument to claim genocide or any other such wide-reaching policy. Putting things in perspective and in proportion: if Gazans were instead fighting Russians, there wouldn't have been any Gazans left in about two months since the start of the war. And it's not unique to Russians. Bet you, that if they wanted the same kind of fight with Egypt, they'd be similarly dying in much larger numbers.

And this isn't even because of the calculus of achieving military objectives. Poorer armies are both more cruel and more crude, while valuing the lives of their own soldiers less. Poorer army would both need to expend more ordnance per target (accidentally missing / hitting unintended targets) and having more vicious soldiers abuse the population being invaded.

> Israel has been the aggressor throughout.

You couldn't be more delusional / ignorant about the subject.

[ignoramous]

You speak in the language of the aggressor and yet deny or downplay or invert reality. Incredible mental gymnastics.

[simiones]

It is you who have no idea of what you are talking about.

Here is article 33 [0] of the (Foruth) Geneva Convention (emphasis mine):

> ART. 33. — No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

> Pillage is prohibited.

> Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Here is a summary of more international humanitarian law on the matter [1]:

> Rule 103. Collective punishments are prohibited.

> Were there more crimes than in any other war? How do you even measure and compare these things?

> As I lived through several wars, I can tell that Israeli wars, at least from my perspective as a bystander, are very mild in terms of cruelty towards both combatants and non-combatants.

> Putting things in perspective and in proportion: if Gazans were instead fighting Russians, there wouldn't have been any Gazans left in about two months since the start of the war.

This is all entirely wrong. We can even compare directly, as there is currently a Russian invasion in Ukraine in parallel to the Israeli invasion in Gaza. After almost two years, there are approximately 11 500 civilians killed in Ukraine, of which ~650 are children [2]. There are ~43 000 total killed in Gaza, of which at least ~20 500 are civilians, including more than 13 000 children [3]. Note that the population of Gaza is about 19 times smaller than that of Ukraine (~2.1 millions in Gaza, ~38 million in Ukraine).

And these are just direct deaths from the war. While Russia also has an appalling record of attacking and deliberately targeting healthcare facilities in Ukraine, Israel has destroyed every single hospital or clinic in Gaza. Russia has killed ~234 healthcare workers in Ukraine in two years of invasion [4]. Israel has killed ~765 healthcare workers killed in Gaza, in just one year of war [5].

> You couldn't be more delusional / ignorant about the subject.

Look just at the amount of people killed every year in Gaza vs Israel before this war. Please tell me how Gaza has been terrorizing Israel, when in every single year, Israel has been killing many times more people in Gaza then the terrorists have in Israel [6]. Several human rights organizations have called Gaza "an open air prison" before this war, including this UN special rapporteur [7]. In fact, I challenge you to find a single human rights organization that has done work in Gaza who doesn't consider what Israel is doing to be deeply oppressive.

[0] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...

[1] https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule103#F...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293492/ukraine-war-casu...

[3] https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaz...

[4] https://www.attacksonhealthukraine.org/

[5] https://media.un.org/unifeed/en/asset/d326/d3268585

[6] https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties

[7] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-occupation-...

[crabbone]

I have no words. You really have no idea what those words you read mean, do you?

No, denying work permits is not a war crime. You took the quote out of context and have no clue what it refers to. No country owes it to another country to provide their citizens (or non-citizens in this case) with work permits. There's no crime in cancelling work permits. But it is a punishment. Similarly, when a country enacts a policy of tariffs on imported goods, visa restrictions etc. They apply indiscriminately to all the citizens of the country against which the measures are applied, yet these aren't even crimes, let alone war crimes!

To sum it up for you: not all punishments are crimes. Thus a collective punishment doesn't have to be a crime, let alone a war crime. Being collective rather than individual changes nothing about the nature of this relationship.

> Pillage is prohibited.

Pillage of what? Gaza is a downtrodden hellhole. Life there is destitute and miserable. Unlike you, I've been there. There's nothing Israelis want from that place. There's nothing Israelis could possibly use from that place. It's a huge ghetto dumpster, revolting in every respect.

I've been to Gaza because I worked for a grocery store in Ashqelon, and we used to deliver some produce from there. The cabbages and the cucumbers to be specific. They were awful. Nobody would buy that stuff. My understanding was though that this must've been some coverup for buying weed or similar. I was too low on the totem-pole for this info to be shared with me. But, even if it was weed, it wouldn't be coming from Gaza! Lol. It'd be coming from Sinai, transiting Gaza.

> Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

What does this have to do with cancelling work permits? Nobody owes Gazans work permits to begin with. That was a humanitarian measure to try and get these people to see the light. No sane Israeli wants to employ Gazans, but the government tried to encourage this cross-border employment in hopes to sooth the tensions. Guess that didn't work well. In Hebrew, the expression "Arab work" is similar in spirit to "Chinese quality" in English. If your house is falling apart months after renovation because the workers stole concrete, painted over spots that should've been removed prior to painting, put the breaker room under the leaking sink -- that would be described as "Arab work" (even if not performed by Arabs).

This results from the almost ubiquitous attitude among Gazans employed in Israel, where they'd do as little and as bad of work as possible, just to stick it up to people who hired them. Kind of similar to how black slaves sabotaged their work for white masters in the US etc. Except Gazans aren't slaves. They were given these jobs as a means to help them accumulate wealth and possibly develop some better understanding of their neighbors...

> After almost two years, there are approximately 11 500 civilians killed in Ukraine,

Again, you are pulling your numbers out of your rear. Mariupol alone suffered close to 30K civilian casualties. But Ukrainian reporting is honest, unlike that from Gaza. Ukraine doesn't have the means to count their dead. And they don't disguise their projections, even though they might be very close to reality. Unless they can actually find the body and establish the cause of death, they don't report it as death.

Also, Ukraine can fight and it protects its own citizens. And it has a very good reason: Russians will not hesitate to torture and abuse its population. Gazans cannot fight. Their strategy is to bleed on the enemy, and they go cry to the international community about how bad their enemy had beaten them. Also, Israelis don't torture the enemy, at least not systematically the way Russians do. And I say this because I served half a year in Israeli military prison in Tzrifin. It's not a five-star hotel, but if I were in a fight against Israel, and my situation looked dire, I'd go to the prison again. It sucks, but it's livable. Also, in my first month in Tzrifin I was in the "alef" division (that's the place for the soldiers who want to return to service and generally obey the orders etc.). Alef would be sometimes sent on the guard duty to Makhaneh 16, which is the military prison for the terrorists. At least was at the time. And, yes, it's a prison, it sucks, but it's nothing like Russian prisons...

In a similar situation, but against Russia: I wouldn't hesitate to shoot myself. The depravity and torture performed systematically by Russians is on a completely different level.

[simiones]

I have provided links for every single claim I made, including the numbers of dead in Ukraine and the articles of the Geneva convention that I quoted verbatim and in its entirety.

I didn't say that refusing work permits constitutes collective punishment. The mass destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including, again, all hospitals, high schools, university, most schools, kindergarten etc. constitute collective punishment in a form that is a clear crime under the Geneva conventions. See the ICJ finding of plausible genocide if you want to see this from actual international law judges, not some rando on HN.

Thanks for the lesson in anti-Arab racism among common Israelis though. And for confirming that Gaza was already a miserable ghetto that no one would want to live in under the "benevolent" Israeli occupation.

[crabbone]

Your links are worthless because you don't understand what they say...

Anyways, here's another example, which was in the news right now. Dutch Muslims attacked Israeli soccer fans. This is an example of collective punishment because people who probably have nothing to do with what's going on in Gaza have been beaten, ran over by cars etc. in a fit of collective punishment.

And while this is definitely a crime, it's not a war crime, because it wasn't committed by soldiers and the Netherlands and Israel aren't at war.

[simiones]

The level of sophistry here is amazing. The Dutch are neither at war with Israel, nor occupying them. The actions of some Dutch civilians against some Israeli tourists can not constitute war crimes, because these are not combatants. They are crimes, make no mistake: the penal system of the Netherlands will hopefully see to that.

In contrast, Israel is at war with Gaza, and all of the actions I am discussing are official military and government actions. Cutting off the supply of power and water, cutting off food and medicine, deliberately bombing civilian infrastructure: these are all explicit actions taken by Israel as retaliation against the civilians of Gaza in a form of collective punishment, as their leaders gleefully proclaim internally. And they constitute undeniable war crimes because of this.

Hopefully in time the ICJ will receive enough support from the EU to actually prosecute this obvious violation, though my hopes are slim: the pressure from the USA to shield Israel from international law is immense.