[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.

[shkkmo]

> "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:

To be fair, I think the allies commited a bunch of war crimes they were never charged with during WWII, and firebombing is high up that list as is dropping nuclear bombs on cities.

That said, WWII was an actual war and Germany (and the axis in general) lost fewer people than their enemies.

This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas.

> 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?

These numbers are pretty much universally acknowledged as more likely to be too low than too high (including by Isreal.)

Here's a study not done by a Palestinian organization that says that the official Palestinian estimate is 40% too low.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v...

> 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.

I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault."

> 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.

Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll.

> 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.

Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.)

However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal.

At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.

[tome]

> This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas.

Right, so we come back to my original question, which I asked in order to determine whether we have a basis for a discussion: "Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't."

In any case, whilst we're looking at multipliers, what do you think of the Battle of Mosul?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%93...

By a variety of accounts the US, UK, France and Turkey participated in a battle that killed maybe 10 or 20 times as many of the opposing side than were killed on their side. According to some estimates they killed 40,000 civilians, more than 20x as many as the number of military that were killed on their side. Was that an "occupation and a slaughter"?

So I'm not sure we really have a basis for discussion. We simply differ on fundamental moral principles. However, I will respond to your points.

> I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault."

Themselves? I'm saying Hamas is killing civilians, be it directly, by deliberately putting them in harms way or by stealing aid, not that civilians are killing themselves. Unless you're saying that the civilians are Hamas, which I don't think you are. And I certainly believe that Israel has responsibility to minimize civilian casualties and the responsibility to ensure aid flows freely, but until the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the release of all hostages I believe that Hamas holds all the moral responsibility for what happens to its people.

> Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll.

This seems very unclear to me. If they had wanted to avoid risk to their soldiers they wouldn't have sent any in, they would have conducted only bombing operations. In fact, one reason to send soldiers in would be for the exact opposite reason: so they could minimize civilian harm.

Why do you think soldiers are on the ground at all, if they want to avoid risks to their soldiers?

> Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.)

It doesn't matter who recognises them. Before Oct 7th they had the monopoly on violence within Gaza. They are the de facto state. Civilian wellbeing is ultimately their responsibility, like German civilian wellbeing was the German government's responsibility in WW2.

Furthermore, normally in times of war, third countries allow civilians to flee to safety. Why won't Egypt? Why won't other countries take in refugees via Egypt? Why do they insist that civilians must stay in harm's way?

Above, in response to my claim that Hamas is responsible for Palestinian civilian deaths, you wrote sarcastically "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault." so it seems you do believe, to some degree, that they are Hamas's people.

> However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal.

You're in good company. It is very common to believe that "might makes wrong".

> At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.

Ah OK, so you're not basing claims of genocide on the legal standard, just a difference in death toll and wealth/power imbalance. You're welcome to do that, of course. You can use words however you want, but that doesn't match the legal standard within international law.

The death toll is appalling. Hamas should be receive the utmost pressure to unconditionally surrender and release the hostages. Egypt should receive the utmost pressure to allow civilians to flee so that Israel can finish off Hamas and destroy the terror infrastructure they have built in Gaza. And by the way, I don't know what's happening there because I'm not there. All I know is what I see in front of me: arguments that don't seem to hold water, and an alternative perspective which is barely seeing the light of day.