| 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-... |
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.