Israel is deliberately mass.murdering civilians and flattening cities. They did the same thing during their war in Lebanon in 2006 - levelling urban areas like Dahiyeh to cause disproportionate damage as a deterrent. I’ve read that they’ve dropped the equivalents of 33 tons of explosives for every square kilometre of Gaza. To inflict this on one of the densest urban areas on earth on a civilian population is pure evil.
Was it evil also to bomb and flatten Berlin and the rest of Germany at the end of WW2?
If you are British or American, how do you feel about that?
Back then it wasn’t known that it’s not an effective strategy, Germany’s reaction to those bombings pretty much set the precedent for it becoming a war crime.
And from a German perspective: We started it. And did way worse, e.g. bombing Polish cities with the explicit goal to cause maximal casualties in predominantly Jewish quarters. The allies, meanwhile, did not try to maximise casualties or anything like that but tried to make as many people as possible homeless, in an attempt to lower economic output, gum up the system, etc. Generally speaking, it didn’t work. Have a Kraut video for a lot more context.
And no such thing could possibly be the goal in Gaza as Gaza already doesn’t have an economy. Other possible justifications, such as “have lower overall casualties” (see e.g. bombing Dresden vs. slogging through it like slogging through Budapest) don’t apply because Hamas is not going to surrender and are way more erm entunnelled. To get them out of there you have to get in there. Or maybe pour concrete in all exits you can find? That’d have my blessings.
Furthermore: As a German Zionist I’d rather Israel didn’t slide into complete inhumanity, and further into fascism, thank you. (Ben-Gvir is minister so they’re already half-way there, also, there doesn’t seem to be much opposition against collective punishment). It’s not exactly a thing you wish on a country: It’s pretty much the worst calamity that can befall a country.
What would be your preferred and effective strategy against someone who wants you dead and comes into your home and kills your children? Expect and accept apology?
Are you saying that all the Palestinians have to die to prevent a few Palestinians from committing crimes?
If the actions of a few can condemn an entire population… which seems to be the underlying argument here, then a few Israelis can commit crimes to condemn the entire country…
This is eye for an eye leaves the world blind territory. Collective punishments simply magnify overall violence, they don’t stop it.
You just described why every war is bad.
There is not a single war in the entire history of humankind were exclusively “the bad people” died.
So what you are actually saying is that specifically Israel is not allowed in partaking in war unless they somehow achieve what no one else ever achieved, which is a war without casualties.
With on top of it the added difficulty that Hamas is a terrorist group, so no “official” military targets.
Great, lets let the people who dont want to fight in this war leave… ohh, that’s right, they are all in prison and can’t leave the “combat zone” which is… literally their prison.
The reason this conflict is very polarizing, is you have 1 million children/adolescents, 500k women, and 500k adult men locked in a box, no way out… They can’t leave this conflict… they are trapped. If you were trapped in a room that was on fire, you would want to be let out…
In this case though, the analogy is only correct if I was also repeatedly setting my own rooms and the rooms beside me on fire. On purpose.
comes into your home and kills your children
Are you talking about the Deir Yassin massacre?
Eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, at some point people have to make up and let the past be the past. Currently Israel is going way beyond eye for an eye.
As to the current situation: How about at least having the fucking decency to build a couple of tent cities outside Gaza and let children, the elderly, and vetted people out of that killbox. If that’s too much, how about not bombing areas you previously told people to flee to. This is like the bare minimum to be able to claim you care a fucking iota about humanity.
People gobble up Hamas propaganda and repeat it. On social media a lot of things have become facts that aren’t proven or were shown to be false. For example the alleged bombing of the hospital or the alleged bombing of the escape route.
On the other hand, most people don’t even know that Israel is constantly bombarded from different sides and that there are ongoing attacks on their settlements etc.
People online don’t know because it is an ongoing info war which is very unequal. Hamas and other extremist islamic groups win by numbers alone because the majority of Muslims unquestioning stand behind Palestine.
About 79 % of Israelis are Jewish, there are 16 million Jews world wide.
99 % of people in Gaza and 85 % of people in West Bank are Muslim. 1.8 billion people are Muslim world wide!
Palestine, Hamas and activists invest into social media and propaganda a lot because that’s the war they will almost certainly win. And it comes with huge benefits people seldom acknowledge.
Just think about it: Hamas was able to conduct a mass killing and abduction of civilians and continues to do so and people are justifying it left and right. You don’t see the faces of Israeli victims or photos of the destroyed buildings on Israel’s side online.
You should definitely look up some less biased sources.
how is a protest march in a city, on an island, in a different continent going to do anything in Gaza?
Because Hamas tactics include an information war to win sympathies.
