Compared to dumping white phosphorus over hospitals and refugee camps, killing 2 (?) children during an attack that targeted hundreds/thousands is many orders of magnitude more precise. I hate dead innocents as much as anyone, but you gotta admit the pagers were effective and included way less collateral damage than the methods Isreal has employed in recent history.
The point of the post isn’t to praise the pagers attack. It’s to point out that Isreal is capable of causing less collateral damage in Gaza but chooses not to.
It’s to point out that Isreal is capable of causing less collateral damage in Gaza but chooses not to.
That comes down to how often Hamas orders things that can reasonably have small bombs put inside them on a large scale and that Hamas are expected to have on their person’s most of the time, how secure their supply lines are, how paranoid they are about looking for that kind of thing, that sort of thing. It involves a lot more moving parts and rare opportunities than just dropping some bombs.
If my goal was to kill exclusively enemy combatants and leave all civilians alone, it would be pretty effective to round them up and gas them, yes. I’d rather do that than indiscriminate fire.
You do realise targets in Gaza and targets in Lebanon are not the same? On one hand you have fighters shielding themselves behind civilians and dont even know what a pager is and why they would use it, on the other hand you have political and operative leaders on these fighters that need these pagers to stay low profile and untaped…
The practice is said to be so routine that Israeli soldiers have a name for the human shields, who are referred to as shawish – informal slang for a low-ranking soldier – and the process was described by several witnesses.
Palestinian civilians, mostly young men, are picked up by Israeli soldiers, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, then sent into tunnels and damaged houses ahead of Israeli forces, soldiers told Haaretz and Breaking the Silence.
Their hands are tied together and a camera is attached to their bodies as they go in.
I’m confused why you were so outraged by the use of human shields at first and now when I send examples you all of a sudden don’t seem to care. You didn’t even mention the second example yet.
That’s not really true unless you believe IDF propaganda
Security
Israel does justify the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice. See: The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948, the Transfer Committee, and the JNF which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate, before the mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948: Plan Dalet, Declassified Massacres of 1948, and Details of Plan C (May 1946) and Plan D (March 1948) . Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967: Haaretz, Forward; while the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements (Oslo Accord Sources: MEE,NYT,Haaretz,AJ). The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.
State violence – official and otherwise – is part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, which aims to create a Jewish-only space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The regime treats land as a resource designed to serve the Jewish public, and accordingly uses it almost exclusively to develop and expand existing Jewish residential communities and to build new ones. At the same time, the regime fragments Palestinian space, dispossesses Palestinians of their land and relegates them to living in small, over-populated enclaves.
The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.
On the subject of Human Shields, there are some independent reports for past conflicts of Hamas jeopardizing the safety of civilians via Rocket fire in dense urban areas, two instances during Oct 7th, but no independent verification since then so far. None of which absolve Israel of the crime of targeting civilians under international law:
Intentionally utilizing the presence of civilians or other protected persons to render certain areas immune from military attack is prohibited under international law. Amnesty International was not able to establish whether or not the fighters’ presence in the camps was intended to shield themselves from military attacks. However, under international humanitarian law, even if one party uses “human shields”, or is otherwise unlawfully endangering civilians, this does not absolve the opposing party from complying with its obligations to distinguish between military objectives and civilians or civilian objects, to refrain from carrying out indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, and to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects.
Not all of Hezbollah are combatants, things are not that simple. Not all of Hezbollah are militants, there are many social workers and politicians. And even if they were, there are zero guarantees that all the pagers ended up in the hands of Hezbollah members. And even if that was the case, detonating them in public spaces is still a violation of international humanitarian law. By it’s nature this was a massive terrorism attack
Quote
Hezbollah organizes an extensive social development program and runs hospitals, news services, educational facilities, and encouragement of Nikah mut‘ah. Some of its established institutions are: Emdad committee for Islamic Charity, Hezbollah Central Press Office, Al Jarha Association, and Jihad Al Binaa Developmental Association. Jihad Al Binna’s Reconstruction Campaign is responsible for numerous economic and infrastructure development projects in Lebanon. Hezbollah has set up a Martyr’s Institute (Al-Shahid Social Association), which guarantees to provide living and education expenses for the families of fighters who die in battle.
Hezbollah holds 14 of the 128 seats in the Parliament of Lebanon and is a member of the Resistance and Development Bloc. According to Daniel L. Byman, it is “the most powerful single political movement in Lebanon.” Hezbollah, along with the Amal Movement, represents most of Lebanese Shi’a.
No, it’s not. If you want to make a Nazi comparison, it would be a comparison with Israel. But that doesn’t justify the targeting of Israeli civilians anymore than the justification of targeting Nazi Germany civilians like the Dresden bombings, which was a war crime and not justified.
Einstein along with many others compared the fascist actions of Zionism to Nazi Germany back in 1948, in wake of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
It’s an Obama type technique. Sure, you might blow up a few innocents, but the rate of eliminated enemies vs killed innocents is better than in traditional warfare, so a numbers guy would always go for that one.
Leaked official documents show that that wasn’t really the case as the public was led to believe
Quotes
The White House and Pentagon boast that the targeted killing program is precise and that civilian deaths are minimal. However, documents detailing a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan, Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse.
The documents show that the military designated people it killed in targeted strikes as EKIA — “enemy killed in action” — even if they were not the intended targets of the strike. Unless evidence posthumously emerged to prove the males killed were not terrorists or “unlawful enemy combatants,” EKIA remained their designation, according to the source. That process, he said, “is insane. But we’ve made ourselves comfortable with that. The intelligence community, JSOC, the CIA, and everybody that helps support and prop up these programs, they’re comfortable with that idea.”
The source described official U.S. government statements minimizing the number of civilian casualties inflicted by drone strikes as “exaggerating at best, if not outright lies.”
Well they’re still blowing up kids with these things so idk if it’s the most brilliant targeting technique
Compared to dumping white phosphorus over hospitals and refugee camps, killing 2 (?) children during an attack that targeted hundreds/thousands is many orders of magnitude more precise. I hate dead innocents as much as anyone, but you gotta admit the pagers were effective and included way less collateral damage than the methods Isreal has employed in recent history.
The point of the post isn’t to praise the pagers attack. It’s to point out that Isreal is capable of causing less collateral damage in Gaza but chooses not to.
That comes down to how often Hamas orders things that can reasonably have small bombs put inside them on a large scale and that Hamas are expected to have on their person’s most of the time, how secure their supply lines are, how paranoid they are about looking for that kind of thing, that sort of thing. It involves a lot more moving parts and rare opportunities than just dropping some bombs.
Fucking weird comment.
Yeah. No I don’t.
you do not, under any circumstances, “gotta hand it to them”
Do you admit that mass gas chambers are an effective way to kill people ?
So much nuance, wow
Yes. A very large part of what made the holocaust so terrible was that it was very effective at killing people.
If my goal was to kill exclusively enemy combatants and leave all civilians alone, it would be pretty effective to round them up and gas them, yes. I’d rather do that than indiscriminate fire.
Removed by mod
…are you implying that mass gas chambers aren’t an effective way to kill people?
so is climate change???
You do realise targets in Gaza and targets in Lebanon are not the same? On one hand you have fighters shielding themselves behind civilians and dont even know what a pager is and why they would use it, on the other hand you have political and operative leaders on these fighters that need these pagers to stay low profile and untaped…
You’re right, this is disgusting…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/14/israeli-forces-in-gaza-use-civilians-as-human-shields-against-possible-booby-traps
And this is too. Do these people have no morals? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/23/human-shielding-in-action-israeli-forces-strap-palestinian-man-to-jeep
Holy fuck that’s disgusting
And Guess who put these booby traps?
Please give us a rundown of when human shields are okay and not okay. Let me guess, it depends who is using them, but in a roundabout way?
It’s pretty effective when your attacker doesn’t want to harm innocents at any cost, at least. But most organizations going to war don’t care enough.
Bruh… Hamas put these traps in the middle of their “citizens”, do you think IDF forced them to do this tactic?
It’s amusing/depressing you went for the latter part of my post.
Ah so using human shields is OK all of a sudden? What about the second example? Don’t worry, I can find more if you like
Bruh… Hamas put these traps in the middle of their “citizens”, do you think IDF forced them to do this tactic?
I’m confused why you were so outraged by the use of human shields at first and now when I send examples you all of a sudden don’t seem to care. You didn’t even mention the second example yet.
Not my fault if you are confusing yourself…
That’s not really true unless you believe IDF propaganda
Security
Israel does justify the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice. See: The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948, the Transfer Committee, and the JNF which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate, before the mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948: Plan Dalet, Declassified Massacres of 1948, and Details of Plan C (May 1946) and Plan D (March 1948) . Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967: Haaretz, Forward; while the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements (Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ). The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
Civilian Deaths and Human Shields:
Israel does deliberately targets civilian areas. From in general with the Dahiya Doctrine to multiple systems deployed in Gaza to do so: ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza, Lavender, and Where’s Daddy. When it comes to Israeli Soldiers and Civilians, there is also the use of the Hannibal Directive, which was also used on Oct 7th.
Hundreds of Genocide Scholars have described this ethnic cleansing campaign as genocide because of the deliberate targeting of children/civilians and expressed intent by Israeli officials: “A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza, 800+ Legal Scholars Say Israel May Be Perpetrating ‘Crime of Genocide’ in Gaza , Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide – Continuously Updated.
On the subject of Human Shields, there are some independent reports for past conflicts of Hamas jeopardizing the safety of civilians via Rocket fire in dense urban areas, two instances during Oct 7th, but no independent verification since then so far. None of which absolve Israel of the crime of targeting civilians under international law:
HRW on Laws-of-War Violations 2009
Agency Demands Full Respect for the Sanctity of Its Premises in Gaza - July 2014
HRW - Palestinian Armed Groups’ October 7 Assault on Israel
Israel/OPT: Israeli attacks targeting Hamas and other armed group fighters that killed scores of displaced civilians in Rafah should be investigated as war crimes
HRW - Gaza: Unlawful Israeli Hospital Strikes Worsen Health Crisis
Additionally, there is extensive independent verification of Israel using Palestinians as Human Shields: IDF uses Human Shields, including Children (2013 Report), and in the latest war Israel “Systematically” Uses Gaza Children as Human Shields, Rights Group Finds
What does any of this relate to pagers strike?
Also, your sources… Lol…
Not all of Hezbollah are combatants, things are not that simple. Not all of Hezbollah are militants, there are many social workers and politicians. And even if they were, there are zero guarantees that all the pagers ended up in the hands of Hezbollah members. And even if that was the case, detonating them in public spaces is still a violation of international humanitarian law. By it’s nature this was a massive terrorism attack
Quote
Lol its like saying all nazis were not bad guys 🤡
No, it’s not. If you want to make a Nazi comparison, it would be a comparison with Israel. But that doesn’t justify the targeting of Israeli civilians anymore than the justification of targeting Nazi Germany civilians like the Dresden bombings, which was a war crime and not justified.
Einstein along with many others compared the fascist actions of Zionism to Nazi Germany back in 1948, in wake of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948
In the Shadow of the Holocaust by Masha Gessen, the situation in Gaza is compared to the Warsaw Ghettos. The comparison was also made by a Palestinian poet who was later killed by an Israeli airstrike. Adi Callai, an Israeli, has also written on the parallels in his article The Gaza Ghetto Uprising and expanded upon in his corresponding video
It’s an Obama type technique. Sure, you might blow up a few innocents, but the rate of eliminated enemies vs killed innocents is better than in traditional warfare, so a numbers guy would always go for that one.
Leaked official documents show that that wasn’t really the case as the public was led to believe
Quotes
When your goal is genocide, a kill is a kill
Its accepting Israeli propaganda to say that this was a precision strike. This is like using cluster munitions.
Whenever Israel comes up with an idea for an assassination they do it because they can. Its a force of habit for them.