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[smjjames]

Yeah, and if diliberate, then the whole IDF could be fucked up

[burningpet]

First of all, this is indeed tragic and whoever is in charge for this fiasco should be put behind bars.

Second, lets not forget that hamas is INTENTIONALLY targeting children on a daily basis. In this operation alone there were several rocket hits on kindergartens that were emptied just minutes / seconds before, saving lives of dozes of children.
The truth, undeniable truth is that hamas is targeting civilians, while israel actively tries to avoid hitting civilians.

If you wish to participate in this discussion, a minimum barrier of knowledge is to go read hamas charter otherwise this conversation is simply being handled from a serious gap of knowledge.

Third, Do you really think killing children was a deliberate action? if the thought that this was deliberate cross your mind for only even a second, your ability to have a conversation is severely limited from reasons that you should look inside yourself.
israel attempts to avoid hitting civilians and because the world is shifting to a delusional left fantasies, israel can only have international legitimacy (which it must have if it wish to do anything about this tyrants that are called Hamas) it must show "clean hands". those civilians are not only a moral tragic, its a tactical and strategical tragic because due to this error, israel won't be able to stop the real evil, the one that intentionally tries to kill our children and makes his own miserable.

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4545001,00.html
Mere hours before the cease fire was due to go live, hamas sent 13 operative to conduct a large scale civilian killing/soldier kidnapping in a kibbutz near the gazan border. if this operation was successful, it would have sent the cease fire initiative to the drain..

[Duuvian]

Well said BP. However to avoid such things in the future would you agree there needs to be better target confirmation before these types of things happen? It might go a long way to reducing these incidents. If the people on the beach are ducking and hiding, sure that's suspicious especially after those landings by Hamas but it seems it would be worthwhile to make sure they are carrying weapons first (and not cameras) much less not children. As you said the actions of a tiny part of the IDF in this instance has harmed Israel's interests, though in my opinion international legitimacy while important is not so much of a loss as driving more Palestinians into Hamas for revenge purposes with stories of children being exploded on beaches. It further weakens the moderate groups that need to exist on both sides for Israel to have their peace and the Palestinians their prosperity.

As for saying that the world is shifting to delusional left fantasies, Israel is asked to act with regard for human life the same as other countries. It is indeed unfair that Hamas doesn't feel the need to follow the same rules. Those who act unjustly towards others in our time will be judged for as long as humans keep history. One day it will likely be Hamas' downfall whether through the polls or the IDF. That doesn't mean individuals in IDF can't be blamed for their own actions; indeed it should be those individual's downfall in situations like the beach incident.

[Sinistar]

I don't think anyone is saying Hamas is not to be condemned. In this case, if that man in his 30s (or even that one around 21) was Hamas operative and he deliberately used children as a meat shield, then yes, this is definitely a crime. But we are talking about the consequences here - dead and wounded children. And how the second shot was allegedly fired to hit the fleeing people.

disclaimer: I do not live in Israel. Never been there in fact. I live in Europe. So what I'm about to write might be deemed illogical, naive or flat-out wrong by you. Still, I try to analyze this situation from information I have and by no means I try to intentionally insult you or anything. It might help you understand why some people outside of Israel have a negative look on current (or past) things concerning Israel, but of course, I'm just one voice of many.

There was a lot of talk recently here about why what Israel is doing is justified. And I'll grant you that - the situation you are in is definitely not an easy one. It IS frustrating to conduct military operations while trying to avoid civilian casualties as whole while on the other side you have an opponent that fires at you indiscriminately. But I don't think anything will change so long as the mentality stays the same.

First of all, this is indeed tragic and whoever is in charge for this fiasco should be put behind bars.

Second, lets not forget that hamas is INTENTIONALLY targeting children on a daily basis. In this operation alone there were several rocket hits on kindergartens that were emptied just minutes / seconds before, saving lives of dozes of children.
The truth, undeniable truth is that hamas is targeting civilians, while israel actively tries to avoid hitting civilians.

See, that's what I'm talking about. First, there's the thing about Hamas thinking every Israeli is a potential enemy soldier. And while we could argue that theoretically that's true, targeting children is just barbaric.

But the second thing is - the kindergarten was emptied before rockets hit, right? I'm guessing that's because of an advanced warning system you have?
The fact is, Israel is ways ahead in pretty much any district compared to Palestinians or, heck, most of the surrounding Arab countries. Most most of all, it's ahead in it's military. So there was talk few pages ago how people joining Hams are either those who do so involuntary, those who don't see any other choice or those who don't think Hamas is a terrorist organization. But what about those who think Hamas is not only not bad, but actually good? You have people surrounded by a technologically superior adversary and an internationally ostracized organization that fights it. All you have to do is one little mistake that could be interpreted as abuse of superior power (say, despite the superior technology not being able to tell the difference between a child and an enemy combatant) and suddenly this ostracized group becomes a romantic image of a rebellious fighters, fighting an unwinnable fight for your rights. And not the missiles they shot against the superior defense, but the subsequent retaliation by superior firepower is the moral victory they achieve, because it shows their little rebel group (which is, after all, fighting for your very existence!) is still something the enemy considers a threat.

The point I'm trying to make - there is no way military actions like that will bring stability to Gaza anytime soon. So long as groups like Hamas exist it will be just the case of "the more you hit them, the angrier they will be". Sure, the very point of hitting them is the eradication of Hamas, but you've said it yourself - Hamas uses civilian houses, civilian meat shields, civilian hospitals as base of operations. You simply can't bring such enemy down with air strikes or even ground invasion lest you simply bulldoze everything over.
But it really is a predicament you are in - the more aggressively you try to oppose Hamas, the louder the voices of opposition from the Arab and also other countries will be. And if you falter, you risk being marked as weak. And this whole mess is only making people on BOTH sides miserable and angry. That's why

Third, Do you really think killing children was a deliberate action? if the thought that this was deliberate cross your mind for only even a second, your ability to have a conversation is severely limited from reasons that you should look inside yourself.
israel attempts to avoid hitting civilians and because the world is shifting to a delusional left fantasies, israel can only have international legitimacy (which it must have if it wish to do anything about this tyrants that are called Hamas) it must show "clean hands". those civilians are not only a moral tragic, its a tactical and strategical tragic because due to this error, israel won't be able to stop the real evil, the one that intentionally tries to kill our children and makes his own miserable.

I wish it wasn't deliberate. But yes, I confess, the thought HAS crossed my mind. And let's be totally honest here - on every side of human conflict, there is bound to be shitty people. But even if theoretically some gunner (or spotter, dunno how it works) did target children intentionally, this doesn't mean I believe every person in IDF is as terrible as he/she.



I'm not sure what I'd suggest in this case. The second, "being weak" option seems better in some cases. I mean, I'd think if you'd perfect missile defense to the point of you being able to just ignore any missile strike Hamas does (wasn't Iron dome a thing a while ago?), I'd think those kind of strikes would slowly stop matter as a moral victory. Of course, such groups could then easily switch to things like kidnapping (which already is a thing for quite some time) or suicide bombing (kinda not popular these days, I guess Israeli security is top-notch here?) or the likes. Still, I think with current situation as it is any sort of military engagement will just be working against Israel in long term. But I could very possibly be wrong here.

[Helgoland]

Quick question: When people are being used as meat shields, should the military still avoid hitting them?

[Ukrainian Ranger]

In ideal world any army  should ignore meatshields and annihilate enemy. Should enemy know that meatshield don't work he'll stop using that tactic

Unfortunately meatshields work because many political ideologies start to cry and blame the army, not the ones who used meatshields

[Duuvian]

In ideal world any army  should ignore meatshields and annihilate enemy. Should enemy know that meatshield don't work he'll stop using that tactic

Was proven false in WW2 and more recently in Vietnam

[XXSockXX]

Well, meatshields or not, you cannot have a war without innocent civilian casualties, period. That's why war is shit. Even without human error, you can't build a precision rocket that only hits the enemy soldiers/structures but leaves the civilian next to them uninjured, even if some US media were almost pretending that might work back in the last Iraq war.
Of course we hold Israel (or the US for that matter) to a higher standard than a terrorist organisation like Hamas, because they're modern democracies with advanced technology. But the situation they're in is still a war, they can (and should) try to avoid as many civilian casualties as humanly possible, but they can't sit there doing nothing when Hamas is firing hundreds of rockets at them every day. Their rocket shield is pretty good, but not good enough to completely ignore that. Again, war is shit, but such is the nature of war, once you're in one, you can't just unilaterally stop and hope for the best.

[Leafsnail]

The "human shields" argument is completely disgusting to me.  If someone takes a hostage and your response is to immediately shoot that hostage you cannot claim moral superiority.  There may be an exception if that person is, like, about to blow up a hundred civilians, but considering that Hamas has killed a total of one person in this conflict I don't think that argument flies here.

I also find a lot of claims of "human shields" highly questionable as well.  Those children were playing on a beach.  Even if a Hamas operative happened to be near them (and I stress that this is highly unlikely, considering that they were in full view of a whole building full of journalists) that doesn't necessarily mean they were taking human shields - what if he was just playing with some kids he knew?  Are Hamas members expected to just huddle together in some open area (something that would be pretty hard to find in Gaza, in fact) with a big target painted on themselves, in case the IDF decides to kill them?  If an IDF soldier decided to, say, visit their family, would that mean they're using them as human shields, thus justifying a Hamas attack on them?

First of all, this is indeed tragic and whoever is in charge for this fiasco should be put behind bars.

How about the people who ordered the attack?  Do you think this incident of wanton slaughter sheds a different light on all the other war crimes that the IDF is currently trying to defend (such as the bombing of a hospital and a school for disabled children earlier in the week)?  Basically I believe the IDF has finally been caught completely red-handed, and I don't see why I should trust their vague "well Hamas totally forced us to do it somehow" justifications.

Second, lets not forget that hamas is INTENTIONALLY targeting children on a daily basis. In this operation alone there were several rocket hits on kindergartens that were emptied just minutes / seconds before, saving lives of dozes of children.

If true, then so what?  Firstly, western governments do not give diplomatic support to Hamas, nor do they trade with them.  They receive nothing but regular condemnation.  If Israel is engaging in the same behaviour, should they be treated in the same way?  Should they, like Hamas, be blockaded to try and prevent them from doing this in future?

Secondly I think that the armed forces of industrialised countries should be held to higher moral standards than a group of criminals operating in a heavily blockaded region.  This is because they have far more funding, a better command structure and (as alluded to above) represent what is supposed to be a functional member of the international community.  Quite simply, they actually have the infrastructure to carry out their intentions, unlike Hamas (who have killed a grand total of one person in this conflict, who interestingly was directly assisting the IDF at the time).  Do you not think this is true?

The truth, undeniable truth is that hamas is targeting civilians, while israel actively tries to avoid hitting civilians.

Except we now know this isn't true, don't we?  An Israeli war ship adjusted its aim and fired on fleeing children.  An Israeli air strike flattened a Palestinian hospital.  An Israeli bomb killed a group of disabled children for the crime of being in their disabled school.  It is becoming abundantly clear that, at the very least, the IDF has a complete and utter disregard for the lives of anyone living in Gaza (and the beach incident would actually suggest even worse).  The fact that they also claim that they don't target civilians is irrelevant - actions speak louder than words, and we've now seen their actions.

If you wish to participate in this discussion, a minimum barrier of knowledge is to go read hamas charter otherwise this conversation is simply being handled from a serious gap of knowledge.

Sure, Hamas is a terrible organization (which gets most of its members and support from the grieving families of air strike victims/people affected by the blockade, but let's not go into that now).  But that does not give the IDF the unlimited right to kill civilians and bomb hospitals.  Generally the best response to such groups is to take away their legitimate reasons for fighting through honest negotiations, not to continuously give them more members by killing children.  I'm sure there would still be some hardcore members of Hamas that would keep fighting even if the injustices against Palestinians stopped, but they would lose a huge portion of their members and would no longer be able to count on the support of the general population.

Third, Do you really think killing children was a deliberate action? if the thought that this was deliberate cross your mind for only even a second, your ability to have a conversation is severely limited from reasons that you should look inside yourself.

Why do you think it was impossible that the attack was deliberate?  You made the exact same claim about Hamas just a few paragraphs ago.  The overwhelming visual evidence strongly implies that the second shell on the children was either deliberate or incredibly negligent, to the degree where it may as well be deliberate (it's the distinction between "I deliberately shot a bunch of people in a crowd" and "I fired a gun into a crowd but it didn't occur to me that that would kill people, oops").

israel attempts to avoid hitting civilians and because the world is shifting to a delusional left fantasies, israel can only have international legitimacy (which it must have if it wish to do anything about this tyrants that are called Hamas) it must show "clean hands". those civilians are not only a moral tragic, its a tactical and strategical tragic because due to this error, israel won't be able to stop the real evil, the one that intentionally tries to kill our children and makes his own miserable.

Nobody from Hamas forced Israel to shell those children.  The blood is on IDF hands, and any international condemnation is entirely deserved.

But more generally I think the rhetoric surrounding Hamas is absurd.  Yeah, it's a violent separatist group.  Yeah, it targets civilians.  This is not a new thing.  Separatist groups in Europe such as the IRA and ETA have used similar tactics, and their actions were not used to justify the mass slaughter of civilians by the government in response (well ok that did happen in some cases, but that invariably made the situation worse).  Indeed, those groups ended up crumbling away to nothing after their legitimate complaints were addressed, too.

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4545001,00.html
Mere hours before the cease fire was due to go live, hamas sent 13 operative to conduct a large scale civilian killing/soldier kidnapping in a kibbutz near the gazan border. if this operation was successful, it would have sent the cease fire initiative to the drain..

The part about their intentions appears to be pure speculation?

In ideal world any army  should ignore meatshields and annihilate enemy. Should enemy know that meatshield don't work he'll stop using that tactic

Are you trying to make a moral argument, or merely to demonstrate that you do not care about civilian casualties at all?

[Leafsnail]

Well, meatshields or not, you cannot have a war without innocent civilian casualties, period. That's why war is shit. Even without human error, you can't build a precision rocket that only hits the enemy soldiers/structures but leaves the civilian next to them uninjured, even if some US media were almost pretending that might work back in the last Iraq war.

I dunno, they appeared to hit that group of fleeing children pretty accurately.  Maybe the claims about the precision of their weapons are true.

[burningpet]

I don't think those kids were meat shields for hamas, no,  this was not the case here. the case here is a tragic mistake that whoever responsible for it should be thrown behind bars and contrary to popular believes, israel does throw soldiers to jail for errors such as this one.

Duuvian:
As i said before, i think that's a slightly naive opinion because it gives too much power to the gazan population. in a dictatorship such as hamas, its not easy for the population to do anything meaningful against their own government and since hamas is in charge of the economy and education, the gazan people are being brainwashed that they need to get rid of the jewis/zionist monster and liberate all of palestine (http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4393845,00.html, this is but one example of hamas summer camps) and while UNRA does provide a sane alternative, in recent years those alternative were eradicated by Hamas through violent means. because they don't comply with Hamas and Islam agendas. hamas has full control over the strip through terror, to the point that when israel called out to the population of some parts of gaza to evacuate because we were going to bomb it, hamas have forced them to stay.

Lets tackle this from another angle. obviously, the jews were innocent in WW2, right? i mean, we didn't do anything wrong to "drive the germans to the hands of the nazis", yet, the nazis were able to drag entire germany into fighting against most of the western world and slaughter millions of innocent people.

In light of this example and many other throughout the world, i think that expecting the population to have a say, in a regime of fear, hatred and total control, is naive. i also think that the gazan population support hamas regardless of what israel does or does not, and not because. and on that point, i am not even sure the gazan population actually support hamas. from the people i have talked to (i was stationed to secure the Erez crossing for a month or so), most of them actually knows damn well that life on the strip were far far better before hamas came into power but they can't say anything because hamas would simply blame them for cooperating with israel and murder them. search up the number of casualties BY hamas hands in times of relative peace and you will come to realize that hamas keeps it regime mostly through terror and strangle of the economy.

The only option the world has to give gazan their freedom and prosperity, is to unconditionally support the demilitarizing of the entire gazan strip and rid it of hamas/ISIS/Islamic Jihad influence. hamas have already declined to demilitarize even a single crossing, so that option is a probably just a pipe dream.

[LordSlowpoke]

don't

bring

the fucking holocaust

into this

you're disrespecting the victims

[burningpet]

Snip

The undeniable truth is that IDF goes out of its way to avoid hitting civilians while hamas goes out of its way to try and hitting them.

LordSlowpoke, thank for misunderstanding what i am saying, i see its a nice habit of yours
i was merely showing how population have little to nothing to say about its regime actions and the holocaust is the most extreme example that enforces all other examples.

greatorder:
its simply not true. if we hit civilians its by mistake, not by intention. and what should israel do? simply ignore hamas? you can't avoid hitting civilians completely, simply cant. its sad but its the truth. but israel sure does try to.

[Loud Whispers]

The undeniable truth is that IDF goes out of its way to avoid hitting civilians while hamas goes out of its way to try and hitting them.

[XXSockXX]

Well, meatshields or not, you cannot have a war without innocent civilian casualties, period. That's why war is shit. Even without human error, you can't build a precision rocket that only hits the enemy soldiers/structures but leaves the civilian next to them uninjured, even if some US media were almost pretending that might work back in the last Iraq war.

I dunno, they appeared to hit that group of fleeing children pretty accurately.  Maybe the claims about the precision of their weapons are true.

I don't know why you assume they would do that on purpose. There are things like human error, ask the German officer who ordered an air strike on a fuel truck that killed over a hundred (IIRC) innocent people in Afghanistan. Of course prolonged warfare breeds hatred, cruelty and war crimes, but I don't think we have to assume this is always the case, particularly here where the Israeli army is very aware that they can't look like they're targeting civilians on purpose.

But more generally I think the rhetoric surrounding Hamas is absurd.  Yeah, it's a violent separatist group.  Yeah, it targets civilians.  This is not a new thing.  Separatist groups in Europe such as the IRA and ETA have used similar tactics, and their actions were not used to justify the mass slaughter of civilians by the government in response (well ok that did happen in some cases, but that invariably made the situation worse).  Indeed, those groups ended up crumbling away to nothing after their legitimate complaints were addressed, too.

Hamas is not a separatist group. The situations don't compare. IRA and ETA didn't have a base they ruled, with civilians they could use as meatshields, and they didn't have the resources for a full out war. And as to legitimate claims, Hamas denies Israel's right to existence, it's not like they would be content with just an independent Palestine.
Maybe you could have a compromise solution with PLO, but not with Hamas.