Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

When it comes to international law, i think human rights groups are more like the "prosecuter" than a neutral party. They have an interest in this conflict that is not the same as Israel's.

When HRW says Israel is bad, i think its a bit like when a cop says the person they arrested is bad. It may very well be true, but i wouldn't put it as a sure thing until some sort of trial is done.

P.s. in regards to "porportionate" - keep in mind that has a special definition in international law that is different from how people use it in normal conversation.

You are aware of Human Rights Watch’s history with Israel, right? Here’s a taste:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/07/fu...

"Rule 28. Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy."

We've seen some evidence that hospitals are used outside their humanitarian function.

It's true that even if the hospital loses it's protection that does not mean that it's ok to just go ahead and level it because of the presence of a single combatant (and that hasn't happened, I'm pretty sure e.g. no hospital in Gaza suffered a direct bombing attack e.g. but it may be ok under certain circumstances to completely level a hospital that is used for military purposes if enough warning has been given), the proportionality principles still applies. Proportionate has a very specific meaning in terms of the Geneva convention which most people aren't familiar with. I agree that the IDFs actions must be proportionate in that sense. The IDF claims its actions are. The IDF has lawyers that evaluate actions against international law.

Human Rights Watch isn't necessarily an unbiased observer here. Naturally they would not have access to the IDF's intelligence and the IDF can be justified in not sharing its intelligence to protect its sources.

My basic take is why is it beneficial for the IDF to waste time and resources attacking hospitals that have no military use? It's bad PR, it's wasted efforts that could be directed somewhere else. Doesn't make sense. It's possible it could be "more careful" in avoiding those in certain situations. Is it the highest item in the priority list (e.g. above the security of IDF soldiers), probably not.

That's true but if the UK military intentionally embeds in all UK cities, in civilian clothes, and launches rockets at Russia from those cities, and the UK sends raids into Russia to kill Russians and then retreats and mixes with civilian population in the UK, what do you feel is a legitimate move or tactic by Russia to defend its citizens in this hypothetical situation?

That's absolutely not a reasonable comparison.

Southern Gaza, Israel considers a part of Southern Gaza an humanitarian zone and dropped fliers explaining that.

It's a dense urban area, it has civilians and children.

That bomb is large enough to level an apartment block, so ~100 casualties and they don't know where it will land. Who are they targeting with that type of bomb, 1 Hamas fighter hiding among population?

It's error margin is in hundreds of meters. You are not allowed to kill 100 innocent people in the hopes (not certainty!) of getting 1 enemy soldier. That's exactly what 'indiscriminate killing of civilians' means.

That is why United States has never used this size of bomb, let alone unguided, in it's recent wars in Urban areas. They were also fighting guerrilla fighters - Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc.

The act of using this weapon in Urban area is a war crime, just as it would be a war crime to use chemical weapons, etc.

Gaza civilians are not on the Hamas “side”.

Are there any other examples from history where the goal of combatants was (or at least appeared to be) to maximize the destruction of their own side?

Every false flag operation designed to rally support for a conflict.

THe reason these "international laws" are accepted by majority of modern nations is because they are somewhat reasonable and allow parties to military conflicts to wage military campaigns while attempting to minimize civilian casualties.

If the laws are rewritten to state "you are never allowed to attack a hospital or a school. No exception", then what will follow is one party to the war will put their military installation insides schools and hospitals and the other party to the war to the war will say "these geneva conventions are unreasonable and we wont follow it"

In other words, nobody would respect Geneva conventions if they are unreasonable

GP is wrong. There is the law of proportionality in the Geneva Conventions which requires "that the expected incidental harm is not excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage."

The word to pay attention to here is "military advantage" - i.e. "military value" of the target. Seeing a "hamas" go into a hospital or a rocket being fired from it doesn't give Israel the green light to bomb it. While there is no well-defined metric or number that defines proportionality - it is safe to say that Israelis don't meet the necessary criteria by any reasonable measure. Establishing the necessary proportionality to justify an attack on a hospital, refugee camp or shelter is needless to say, extraordinarily high.

Take the recent ICC arrest warrants as an example. The ICC just ruled that Russian targeting of Ukraine's power grid constituted a war crime.“During this timeframe, there was an alleged campaign of strikes against numerous electric power plants and sub-stations, which were carried out by the Russian armed forces in multiple locations in Ukraine,” the court said. "The ICC said the attacks led by Koblylash and Sokolov on Ukraine’s electrical grid caused civilian harm which was excessive when compared with any expected military advantage". This even though power infrastructure has clear military value.

Now look at the siege and attack on Shifa hospital. If Shifa was a vital command-and-control hub where the head of Hamas operated from , or if it contained a major ammo depot - that may constitute sufficient military value to justify the incidental deaths caused by attacking a hospital. A calendar and a couple of AKs behind an MRI machine doesn't does not. Moreover the fact that Israelis had to go in and spend weeks on a fishing expedition to dig up (or make up) the sufficient evidence to justify the attack after-the-fact, proves that they didn't have the necessary justification to stage the attack in the first place. Thus the attack on the hospital violates the Geneva conventions and is a war crime. (But don't hold your breath for any action from the ICC - They are extremely biased and beholden to US and NATO interests).

At this point the mountain of evidence is simply undeniable. When we compare the intensity of atrocity committed by the Israelis, to those in other recent conflicts - Mosul, Homs, Mariupol, Grozny, Yemen- the israelis sails past them all with a healthy margin. Israelis killed more children in a few months than the syrians, russians did over many years. In terms of civillian/combatant ratio and the sheer intensity of civillian deaths in a short time-frame- I am not aware of any national force committing similar attrocity in the 21st century (Maybe the Ethiopian civil war, but I don't know, i am not versed on that conflict) If this was Russia or Iran we wouldn't be having this conversation.

This a common misunderstanding of the international laws of war, and international law in general.

In our personal lives the government can compel us to follow the law with the threat of overwhelming force; if I break the law I will be arrested, and regardless of how much I fight back I will not be able to stop it. Laws in our everyday lives are like commands from a parent to a child; the government, as the parent, can and will compel the child's obedience.

International law is different. If a state breaks international law, there is no entity willing or capable of using overwhelming force to compel obedience. States have armies and some have nuclear weapons; the amount of force required to compel a state to behave a certain way is huge, and generating that force is extremely costly. When states break international law there are consequences, but at the end of the day violence is generally not on the table.

Effective international law is a balancing act. An international standard of warfare that placed extremely strict standards on when it was permissible to kill civilians would make fighting a war significantly harder. No state would obey such a law because winning the war is the absolute highest priority, making the law worthless. Instead, laws of war try to outlaw actions that don't affect the ability of a country to win a war. No chemical or biological weapons (high explosives are more effective), humane treatment of prisoners (discourages the enemy fighting to the death), and no killing civilians unless in the pursuit of a military objective (if it's not in pursuit of a military objective, then it's a waste of resources). The goal of the laws of war is to prevent unnecessary violence, not prevent violence altogether. It's a case of "perfect is the enemy of good."

The very reason these laws are there is to protect civilians. A hospital can more or less safely operate in a war zone if both parties play by the rules and actually care for their people. If you exploit these very rules for military advantage, then why not just put red crosses on your attack helicopters as well? There aren’t too many laws to war, but this just fundamentally makes sense.

Hamas is free to hand out uniforms to its soldiers to prevent civilians getting killed. They’re also free to build barracks instead of tunnels underneath schools to house their fighters. Until they do so civilians will continue to suffer.

IDF cares for their civilians more, and to protect them they unfortunately have to accept Palestinian civilian casualties, there are no other way.

Much as I asked the other commenter, how many school shooters would need to be in the school before we believe it's valid?

Let's change the analogy: ISIS terrorists take over the MIT campus. Inside the university are 50 armed terrorists. Is it valid to now bomb the university? What if there are 100 terrorists?

There is no issue with scale here. No matter how much it scales, you won't reach a point where there is an ethical position that argues for the mass murder of people that we actually view as people. It only becomes ethical when we dehumanize the people affected.

Yes, there a lot more civilians killed in Gaza every day than you could fit into a school. What Israel does is much, much worse.

Oh, I thought they're used as human shields.

How many school shooters would need to be in a Florida High School before you think it's worthwhile to bomb it? Just a rough number

Well not like all others, this one has Jews in it, so it gets extra attention.

What's that supposed to mean?

When the IRA was periodically attacking UK institutions and killing civilians, did the UK feel entitled to level Belfast and say that the IRA is to blame?

This war in Palestine is much closer to a civil war than to any country-to-country combat, especially since Palestine is simply not an independent country. Since Israel is in control of the Gaza strip for 50+ years (explicit military control till the 2005, still in full control of their borders today), it is on them to treat this as authorities in any country are expected to treat insurgencies on territory they control, not as if they were attacked by a foreign country.

Israel will get shot at and not be allowed to shoot back.

The logic doesn't really follow

What shots exactly? the missiles? Attack the launch sites. They're pretty clear as they expose themselves. Israel has 24/7 surveillance it shouldn't be a challenge. Can you support your claim by showing evidence that a hospital was used to launch missiles?

You likely don't have evidence that Israel is targeting anything. It seems every street in the city was indiscriminately bombed, every hospital was distroyed, and tens of thousands of civilians were murdered. That's a massacre not a "response".

Essentially that implies Israel will get shot at and not be allowed to shoot back. I suspect most Israelis would find that unreasonable. Israeli civilians don't like being killed anymore than Palestinian civilians do.

We are talking about Gaza. The only Israelis being shot there are Israeli militari attacking the Gaza strip.

If you are talking missiles, well Israel should abandon the colonies and create a no man's land where no civilian, be it Israeli or Palestinian, can go, and only shoot those that trespass.

If you are talking missiles, Israel has air defense systems.

We actually have very clear examples from history of how to turn an enemy into a friend: the Marshall plan and the similar levels of aid that the USA poured into post-nazi Germany, post-fascist Italy, post-imperial Japan. That turned War-torn bitter enemies into some of the staunchest US allies today.

Given Israel's position of power, they can and should be doing this. However, Israeli politicians just don't want this. Netanyahu has publicly boasted numerous times that he has personally been actively fighting to prevent a two-state solution. A one-state solution is unthinkable to even the moderates in Israel (the Supreme Court has repeatedly iterated that the government MUST protect both the Jewish and the Democratic character of Israel, so integrating the populations of Gaza and the West Bank as full Israeli citizens like this would be unconstitutional, but integrating them as second class citizens would also be unconstitutional).

So what is Israel's solution? Destroying Hamas is a pipe dream - the famine, death, and destruction they are pereptrating in Gaza today will, inevitably, create a new wave of terrorism, whether it's called "Hamas" or something else, as it always has throughout all of history.

The only real solution is massive economic investments in Gaza and the West Bank, and relying on police-like peacekeeping to prevent attacks as much as possible. This is the obvious long-term solution, anything else will worsen, not improve, Israel's security.

What would be useful is a historic example where another approach has worked.

Sticking to quite recent examples: South Africa, Basque Country, Ireland.

> Well, so what is 'another method' ?

Another method would be the IDF accepting their responsibility for failing to protect the kibbutzim on 7 October, and making damn sure that this doesn't happen again on their watch. Stop killing the Arabs and start defending the jews.

And I don't mean that they should make sure there's no more Palestinians left to attack them, because that is a horror that the world must never see again (but still sees all too often).

What would be useful is a historic example where another approach has worked. I don't approve of Israel's methods. I'd prefer an egalitarian solution. But, I'm all out of ideas. Find me an instance of 2 co-habiting or neighboring groups that hate each other, have huge disputes and ended up in relative peace.

Northern Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_peace_process

They still hate one another, but are mostly at peace.

Arguably Israel does it with fairly low civilian: combatant death ratio

Fairly low compared to what? The USSR invasion of Afghanistan? Assad engaged in a civil war? WW2 carpet bombings?

No recent war has seen anywhere near the deplorable civilian:combatant death ratio that we see here.

And if you also take into account that the IDF basically defines adult male as combatant, so that a lot of the "combatants" killed were actually just adult male civilians, then the picture gets even grimmer.

Not to mention, we keep talking about direct casualties, but Israel is going beyond this - they are not allowing some kinds of critical aid into Gaza at all (water treatment pills are forbidden, for one egregious example), and they are generally only allowing a trickle of aid of any kind in - in effect starving the population.

Um, the things Israel has done to Palestinian citizens in Gaza over the past 15 years (e.g. [0] - [3]) have been pretty horrific, as are the things Hamas has done to Israeli citizens. This situation didn't randomly start on October 7, 2023.

[0] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2015/06/un-gaza-inqu...

[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/13/israel-apparent-war-crim...

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2009/10/un-fact-find...

[3] https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/03/25/rain-fire/israels-unla...

I think Egypt has room to take in Palestinian refugees. They simply refuse to do it. I have not gotten any good reason why they hate them. I guess the Lebanese hate their Palestinian enclave. It is clear the Arab world doesn't care about the Palestinians, and a common brotherhood of Islam doesn't carry weight.

This is a bad take. Egypt, and others, refuse to take "Palestinian refugees" because doing so would make them complicit in Israel's ethic cleansing. Why should Palestinians be forced off their own land?

Egypt has said that if people are displaced it will put the peace agreement with Israel at risk. It's understandable that they do want 2 million more people to feed and the problems will just move to Sinai as among those 2 millions many will also support Hamas.

Its also not true that Egyptians hate Palestines. In fact I would say its rather unison that they feel great sympathy with the Palestines in the occupied areas, and the boycott of companies that support Israel is strong. McDonald's and Burger Kings are mostly empty and there are Palestine flags at shops, stickers attached to products you buy and people are sad about the situation.

1. Onus doesn’t mean legal requirement. Civilized nations can be, should be, and generally are held to standards far exceeding legal statutes.

2. They DO have an actual legal obligation to protect journalists as well, try searching for “civilian.” If they are targeting journalists (read: civilians) that would obviously be illegal.

I think the US chose not to level Baghdad and if it had, it would’ve been at least as catastrophic as what’s going on in Gaza. So no it’s not merely a matter of a different situation, it’s a matter of different decisions.

I didn’t say you were. I am pointing out a more directly analogous war to demonstrate that similar militaries have waged similar wars against similar adversaries for far, far greater spans of time yielding far fewer journalist deaths.

I am also pointing out that “this war is extra hard to prosecute” is not actually justification for certain actions. The difficulty of fighting the war falls on the people fighting the war, including the difficulty of protecting civilians during that war. What else would any standards or laws mean if that weren’t the case? The whole premise of these standards is to set a ceiling on what sort of awful conditions can be allowed during warfare.

Setting aside the fact that these are numbers provided by Hamas, the same people who claimed 500 people died in a hospital Israel bombed but when it was revealed their own rocket bombed it the casualty numbers dropped 10-fold, war isn’t arithmetic.

The United States killed many more Japanese civilians than American civilians who died during the war, that doesn’t make them right. Hamas has miles of tunnels to provide cover for their rapists but doesn’t allow civilians to shelter, it’s tragic that Hamas is killing its own people this way but Israel should continue until Hamas is defeated like Germany was.

Is there a number of civilian casualties after which Israel is not allowed to keep fighting to eradicate Hamas?

Because that’s exactly the Hamas playbook: loss of Palestinian civilian lives are the lever they pull to stop an Israeli retaliation, time and time again. It’s the CNN doctrine. But it’s not working this time due to what happened in October 7th.

Well, there are things that cannot be bozt-sided:

Everything that violates human right for example. Or direct threats to democracy.

I agree with you. From my Southern European perspective, I don't find this site particularly "progressive" at all. I would describe most of the comments as liberal or centre-right.

And indeed, there is no solution here other than to be tolerant of other opinions, which may come from very different contexts than your own.

american foreign policy often becomes european union migration policy. just remember that, for example, when discussing international affairs.

Having said that, I have to say that HN is one of the communities that is better at dealing with different opinions, from different places. It's much harder on Reddit. On Metafilter, it is absolutely impossible: anything far from mainstream American liberalism is considered taboo.

That's a really important point which is unfortunately barely understood at all. I tried to write about it here one time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

The only thing I'd add to your point is that while HN is certainly global (or let's say highly international), the community is still overwhelmingly from Western countries. (Not all hold pro-Western views, of course, but that's different.) This means that users from non-Western countries who want to contribute views that go against what is commonly believed in the West, have a hard time. We do what we can to help, but unfortunately it's not much, because the forces of large numbers and group psychology are unstoppable, especially together.

I don't understand what you mean here:

strict scrutiny is applied to some positions but not others

Can you explain?

If you look at the links I listed in my GP comment, I've posted quite a few explanations of how and when we turn off the flags on an article. If there's a question I haven't answered there, I'd like to know what it is.

I'm sorry, but I don't follow your point here.

Keep in mind that I was commenting about the situation very early in the thread. My comment applies only to the very first comments that got posted, perhaps the first couple dozen–no later.

Especially since it only takes two accounts to flag a comment.

There are not multiple views on subjects, that part is subjective, per se. There is objective truth which this site is trying to prevent via flagging and other ways to limit discussions. The whole point around HN is about tech news etc. is BS, to me at least, as there is no way to disentangle anything from politics as we live in the world ruled and controlled by such interests.

We've also seen no credible evidence...

We have seen plenty of credible evidence. Just, no evidence that you will accept.

"That is not at all what I said -"

You literally did say that. In response to:

> "who deliberately positions military hardware such as rocket launchers in and around civilians and civilian infrastructure"

You said:

"Gaza is a very dense, urban area, so it's kind of unavoidable."

But ok, if you really are commenting in good faith then also explain why Hamas puts military hardware inside of schools, mosques and hospitals.

Are you one of those people who insist that Israel must have everything signed in triplicate and verified by 20 credible sources while Hamas just has to gesture vaguely?

United Nations Report on Schools: A report from the United Nations confirmed that Hamas stored weapons in UNRWA schools during the conflict in Gaza. Notably, weapons were found in the UNRWA Jabalia Elementary “C” and Ayyobiya Boys School. The report highlighted that it was highly likely that Palestinian armed groups used these premises to hide weapons and, in some cases, to launch attacks. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned these actions as unacceptable, stating that such conduct put UN schools at risk

https://www.thetower.org/1955-un-report-confirms-hamas-store...

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Evidence: The IDF has released photos showing that terrorist groups placed rocket launchers next to schools in Gaza. This action aligns with long-standing charges against Hamas for using civilian infrastructure for military purposes

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-releases-photos-showing-te...

White House Intelligence on Al Shifa Hospital: The White House disclosed that it had intelligence indicating Hamas was using Gaza's largest hospital, Al Shifa, to run military operations and likely to store weapons. This information suggested that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were using some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al Shifa, to support their military operations and possibly to hold hostages. The actions at Al Shifa hospital were described as constituting a war crime

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/white-house-says-i...

Did you know that Israel tried to give Gaza back to Egypt and West Bank back to Jordan? They refused. Palestinians are endless trouble. This is known throughout the Arab world. It's hardly an "occupation". Israel doesn't want it.

Sure, a large number of civilian deaths, and massive destruction of property.

I have a problem though when the media just shows an endless stream of emotionally manipulative images and stories. I also have a problem with their selectivity, e.g. they don't chose to show us civilians being attacked in Donetsk or something. They also generally don't show us images of Israeli refugees from the north and the south or actually report on that at all. They totally ignore events like rockets being fired at Israeli cities (still happens though a lot less). The coverage of Hezbollah's attacks and massive scale property destruction in the north of Israel is also nonexistent.

Even at the height of the Russia-Ukraine war we weren't being flooded by the same level of images/stories. Yes, we did get some stories out of Mariupol but not nearly as much as we get out of Gaza. Ukraine claims 25,000 civilians were killed in Mariupol (out of 500,000 people!). I think the destruction of Mariupol easily eclipses the destruction in Gaza. The Russians weren't facing anything similar to what Israel is facing in Gaza, they just blitzed the heck out of the city. Who is painted as more "evil" in western media, Russia or Israel? Arguably Israel. Ofcourse Russia invaded Ukraine and for most of us is clearly the "bad guy" here.

EDIT: and by the way, if you consume Israel media, which is obviously very pro-Israeli. You'll still get the same facts about the conditions in Gaza. But if you consume anti-Israeli media you will get no other relevant facts. If you ask people in the west some very basic questions about the conflict you'll find total cluelessness which is a result of that. Ask a random American how far Tel-Aviv is from Gaza, or where is Palestine, or what is Hezbollah, or any number of basic knowledge questions about the conflict and see. Most know O(nothing), see images of suffering and destruction all day, and naturally will align themselves with the side they see suffering.

Israel certainly has agreements and treaties with Egypt that would make it difficult for Egypt not to do what the Israelis say regarding the border. Agreements and treaties made at a time and situation where Egypt didn't have much leverage.

Egypt is not free, for example, to allow aid in that Israel has not specifically approved.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that statement, but I guess you're somehow implying it's not US-backed Israel's fault that they prevents legitimate goods (such as crayons, seeds, fishing rods etc) from entering Gaza... because Egypt?

Whataboutism aside, it's well known that US-backed Israel is indeed largely in control of what Egypt does and does not do in regard to Gaza.

Is it plausible that Israel is so precise that all the adult men they've killed were Hamas fighters?

We know from some of their previous actions in the region that they could be, if they wanted to - we've seen them take out individual aparment units with missiles, for example.

But given how many unguided munitions Israel are using in Gaza... I mean, almost the whole of Gaza has been reduced to rubble - the idea that every military-age male is Hamas is just not credible.