Kinda similar to the "human shields" argument. When I read comics growing up, when a villain takes a hostage the answer was never "kill the hostage" except for the edgiest of antiheroes, yet here we are with "human shields" being used as a justification to kill civilians. It's fucking wild.
This exactly is my main gripe with how Israel is conducting this war. They're completely unwilling to take any additional risk to preserve civilian life.
Even the US sent troops in to kill a scumbag like Uday Hussein instead of bombing with an airstrike.
This is just the Zionist creed of "unlimited Palestinian deaths don't make up for 1 Israeli."
It's not just in "this war", they weren't giving a shit about Palestinian civilians for decades.
Not like they care about any non Israelis in the area. Especially if they are press
I wonder if a lot of people's idea of war has been shaped by the recent American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which were wars of choice where at least in theory American soldiers were fighting largely for the benefit of the natives. Countries that believe they actually need to win and don't have the option of just giving up and going home fight wars in a very different way. Consider for example World War II, the proverbial "good versus evil" war fought by the generation that originally came up with the comic book characters you read about. The Allies certainly didn't hesitate to kill enormous numbers of Axis civilians in the course of destroying military targets. (IMO the Allies actually went way too far and a lot of the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan served no military purpose, but I suppose they were more worried about bombing too little than they were about bombing too much.)
The total war tactics of WW2 are unthinkable by modern standards, but it’s hard not to sympathize with an outgunned army fighting for their home. They fight because they’d rather die than lose.
Maybe instead of fighting people in that position, you talk to them and work out a peace deal. If they’re willing to be reasonable, end the violence.
If you kill hospitals, you kill a generation.
Because that's where the Palestinians are, and this is a genocide.
Because Israel is committing war crimes. Because Israel has stated, unequivocally, that Palestinians are animals and must be scourged off the face of the earth.
Because both sides are fighting are major assholes. Hamas does hide arms and fighters in and around hospitals. Israel doesn't hold back attacking the hospitals to get at that gear, because they care more about killing Hamas than saving Palestinians. The civilians in Gaza are surrounded by assholes.
This is true in general, but this time they're literally in Israel's crosshairs. These people are dying to sniper fire.
What a terrible headline. If APNews thinks it's a war crime, it has a duty to say so. You can't just write a headline like this without drawing the obvious inference.
Given most people aren't reading the article, the particularly relevant points:
International humanitarian law lends hospitals special protections during war. But hospitals can lose their protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. [...]
In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued a warning to combatants that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes. And the bar for evidence is very high.
“If there is a doubt that a civilian object has lost its protective status, the attacker must assume that it is protected,” Khan wrote. “The burden of demonstrating that this protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the missile, or the rocket in question.”
TL;DR: If Hamas is conducting military operations from hospitals, they can be legitimate targets in the eyes of international law, but precautions still need to be taken to avoid civilian casualties and the case for their military use should be overwhelming, not amorphous or tenuous.
Because Israel is trying to genocide.
They don't care about Hamas, they just want Palestine gone.
Netanyahu doesn't give a duck.
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