[tome]

It's not "faux". I mean it genuinely. It's one thing to claim that Israel should ensure food security (that's my point of view). It's quite another to claim "collective punishment", and that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

By the way, there are hundreds of trucks on the Gaza side of the border, the opposite of blocked, let through by Israel, but the UN refuses to collect them and distribute them: https://x.com/Ostrov_A/article/1950577195153580306

It's impressive how thoroughly Hamas has won the information war when they have made it so heart-wrenchingly emotive that presenting any alternative view point is "bad taste" (at best, it can also be much worse).

[shkkmo]

> It's quite another to claim "collective punishment", and that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

17,000 kids killed directly by Isreal.

> the UN refuses to collect them and distribute them

A blatant lie.

Actual news coverage of that border crossing:

https://apnews.com/article/aid-gaza-hunger-united-nations-e7...

[bawolff]

> 17,000 kids killed directly by Isreal.

The appropriate question is does this meet the intent requirements for collective punishment?

All these international crimes do have various requirements. Collective punishment in particular has more intent requirements than many other war crimes. Death and destruction in and of itself is not sufficient.

[shkkmo]

> The appropriate question is does this meet the intent requirements for collective punishment?

Let's put Netanyahu in front of the ICC and let the lawyers figure it out.

Edit: That isn't tongue in cheek, I think it is one of the few ways to difuse the cauldron of violence that keeps brewing hotter and hotter. A broad international coalition to hold the leadership on both sides responsible for their war crimes.

[bawolff]

The ICC lacks juridsiction over the war crime of collective punishment, so that would be an easy win for Netanyahu. To charge him with collective punishment either the united nations security council would have to create an ad-hoc tribunal, a domestic israeli court could charge him, or some other national court under the principle of universal juridsiction could bring charges. The ICC cannot.

More generally though I agree. I'm a big supporter of the ICC and generally believe it to be a fair court. I'd like to see those accused stand trial, present their defense, and let justice be done no matter which way it leads.

[tome]

I'm still not sure what you mean. Are you saying that when children are unintentionally killed in war that is "punishment"? Were the children killed by NATO troops in Afghanistan "punished"? For that matter, do you think Oct 7 was Palestine "punishing" Israel?

> A blatant lie.

Interesting. How are you so sure that the article I linked is a blatant lie and the one you linked isn't?

[shkkmo]

> when children are unintentionally killed

Oops, I killed 17,000 kids, totally an accident, my bad, so I'm just gonna keep doing the same thing, but I said it was an accident so that's totally cool right?

You realize that's more than a order of magnitude more than the total number of people killed on October 7th? If October 7th was justification for this war, what Isreal has done in response justifies so much more. (To be clear, I don't believe in collective punishment so neither is justified.)

> How are you so sure that the article I linked is a blatant lie and the one you linked isn't?

I start by looking at the sources reputations, then look at the amount of context that they include that contradicts their implicit or explicit view point. From there the process gets more complicated if necessary.

In this case you have blog source that clearly elides relevant context against a news article that presents the position of both sides coming from one of the more trustworthy news organizations. I don't necessarily trust the AP to be unbiased or not spread propaganda but in comparison to that blog, it is pretty easy to guess which is more reliable.

[tome]

There seem to be a few strands getting entangled here. If you look earlier in the thread you'll see I'm asking for justification of the claim of "collective punishment". So far I haven't seen any, and indeed I haven't seen any direct responses to that request at all.

An observer following the thread (and maybe this applies to you too) might think "But what I am seeing as so egregious, why does it matter if it's technically 'collective punishment' or not? That's just nitpicking, splitting hairs, and a really awful thing to engage in when such suffering is occurring". Well then, if someone has such a strong argument that it easy for them to make it without leaving hairs that can be split, without leaving anything that could technically be nitpicked then let them make that argument. But so far I haven't found that argument. The arguments that I have found so far have loose ends, and when I pull on the loose ends I find invariably that the whole argument unravels.

So, the number of fatalities is not really relevant to this particular thread of discussion, but if you want to have a discussion on that topic, maybe we can check up front whether we have a reasonable basis for such a discussion: Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't.

[shkkmo]

I don't see any other reason to kill 17,000 kids like that except as collective punishment or genocide. You seem pretty clear that it was neither so I'll leave it up to you to provide another reasonable explanation for why Isreal would want to intentionally kill that many kids.

[tome]

A few thoughts:

1. "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

Was that because the allies were "collectively punishing" or "committing genocide" on Germans? I don't think so, and I don't see any reason that civilian deaths in Gaza imply that either.

2. Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation?

3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise.

4. As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in.

5. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did.