I don't quite understand your argument here. In your first pin I'm struggling to find a single building that isn't leveled, or at least severely damaged. Even buildings far away from the city center in the boonies are leveled.
You can also see a lot of buildings demolished on the Egyptian side too.
In 2015, the Egyptian government announced a plan to demolish the entire Egyptian city of Rafah, in order to deter smuggling with the Gaza Strip. More than a decade on, most of it is gone. The residents were forcibly relocated to elsewhere in Egypt.
Yeah, this is not what happened here. You can look up Israeli articles from the time that described that nothing was going on for weeks on end other than demolitions. Basically no fighting. You get Israeli politicians repeating beforehand that Rafah will get leveled.
They wanted to level the city, they did. That's all. There was some fighting eventually with a few fighters holed in in Rafah, but nothing that would justify this. And Israelis continue leveling entire areas the whole year after so called "ceasefire" during which there were almost no attacks on them, yet they managed to murder more than a thousand of people.
> some fighting eventually with a few fighters holed in in Rafah
Can you please remind me where they finally found Yahya Sinwar? And was that before or after they "level[ed] the city"? Do you think they would have found him if they left the city untouched? Why was he there in the first place?
> And Israelis continue leveling entire areas the whole year after so called "ceasefire" during which there were almost no attacks on them
Hamas isn't following a ceasefire; they've been militarily degraded.
There's a causal relationship here: If the IDF hadn't destroyed so many fighting positions and booby-trapped buildings, there would have been many, many more attacks and IDF soldiers KIA.
You say "there's no justification" but unwittingly go on to point out exactly why it's justified.
Even if you take Israel at its word, Hamas only killed 1200 people. How many people did the Nazis or Imperial Japan kill before their cities were destroyed? And even that interpretation is completely neglecting the 78 years of terror and ethnic cleansing Israel has been inflicting on the Palestinians. 1,200 people is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of Palestinians murdered by Israel prior to Oct 7th.
Palestinian lives > zionist feelings. If you think 1,200 people is devastating, what do you think about the 75k+ Palestinians murdered by Israel? Again, 1,200 is far, far less than the number of Palestinians murdered by Israel prior to Oct 7th. History can no longer be denied.
The 75k deaths in Gaza should be blamed on the side that chose the conflict: Hamas. Human shield deaths are ugly, but the blame must go to the side that caused them to be human shields. The alternative is to create a situation where evil can prevail by hiding behind enough human shields.
The Zionists chose this conflict when they invaded Palestine and ethnically cleansed the indigenous Palestinians. That you call Palestinians murdered by Israel "human shields" is evil.
They are saying that this is genocidal destruction. In a war sometimes civilian infrastructure is hit as collateral. But here, all infrastructure is destroyed and it's clear this wasn't done by 1 or 2 errant bombs but rather because of direct targeting. It can't be argued to be an accident because in farmland you see no bombs which hit the farmland by mistake. In other-words, this is entirely purposeful.
A war requires at least two militaries. This is what happens when a well armed military engages a mostly unarmed civilian society unable to mount significant opposition.
"Before the October 7, 2023 attacks, the total size of Hamas’s military wing (the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades) was estimated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and intelligence agencies to be between 25,000 and 30,000 fighters, with some intelligence assessments placing the upper limit as high as 40,000.
This army was organized into five regional brigades and 24 battalions."
"Hamas's military force prior to October 7, 2023, was roughly 3 to 4.5 times larger than the United States military when measured as a percentage of their respective total populations."
That percentage comparison is fascinating. Say only 1 fighter remains in a tunnel when all the civilians have been finally bombed out and sniped off. By that measure that would mean Hamas is what, 50 times larger than the USA's military?
Anyway, IDF as ≈170k active duty personnel and 465k reservists[1].
Literally a different order of magnitude.
Add to it the vast different of resources, access to an air force and nuclear weapons and it become even more clearer that there is no comparison possible.
(And comparing personnel count to the USA is laughable as it is vastly different military type. Both a fighter jet pilot and a foot soldier count as one personnel, but it's neither the same force projection nor the same investment of civilians working for the war machine).
You don't need to compare the military forces. You can compare the casualties on both sides or, for a different perspective, you might count the civilians killed inside their own territories (you might count the West Bank if you really want accurate numbers).
Forced displacement is also considered a war crime and, considering what is happening in Gaza and at the West Bank, it would qualify as genocide as well.
The IDF has killed not just a higher number but also a higher percentage of civilians, and a much higher percentage of children, than the October 7 attacks[0]. Even if collective punishment was considered not cruel but moral by the larger community, Israel has far surpassed it.
Yeah, there even is this old archaic rule from the bible/torah/quran, "eye for an eye" that is usually considered barbaric and outdated. But here they go by 35:1 ratio.
Hamas has launched 10s of thousands of rockets and mortars at Israel what is an appropriate response for them? Should they just sit there letting someone try to kill them or should they retaliate? How many casualties is an acceptable amount?
When did they murder an entire country? Last time I checked people still live in Palestine, in fact the population been steadily increasing over the past 40 or so years. Is your solution that the people of Israel should just die instead of fighting back?
Every Israeli prime minister has been European. Every one. The answer is to return to their homeland and let the remaining Palestinians return to theirs.
It is obvious, but it is also to be expected that a significant number of people here, as elsewhere, will rationalize genocide ... and the comment you responded to is particularly crude in its lack of humanity.
This is actually codified in international law IIRC - a nation that's subject to some kind of apartheid occupation has literally unlimited rights to resist its occupiers.
While Hamas does have a right of armed struggle against the occupation, the taking of hostages and the killing of civilians are not permissible forms of resistance.
That said, it is almost impossible to imagine that the Israeli response would have been something lesser than the current genocide attempt if Hamas had just taken POWs during the October 7 attack. Bibi would have arguably been even more humiliated if Hamas had been acting with restraint, so the impulse for revenge would be even greater.
This show how little you understand Israelis. First this isn't about Bibi, second ot wasn't humiliation but failure, third no atrocities on civilians would certainly changed the response - probably equivalent to a larger cast lead operation which also act as precedent of how Israel acted on the past.
It is almost impossible to imagine Israel would even look at the direction of Gaza had they just taken the statehood offers presented to them in 1947, 2000, 2001, or 2008, instead of repeatedly choosing terrorizing civilians over gasp compromising.
>It is almost impossible to imagine Israel would even look at the direction of Gaza had they just taken the statehood offers presented to them in 1947, 2000, 2001, or 2008
Hey another flat out lie by the same user...
"the Second Intifada began immediately after the collapse of major peace negotiations."
You seem to be mixing up the aggressor with the Aggressé, seemingly intentionally, multiple times in a row.
He also promotes transphobia. Chomsky was friends with Epstein and acquaintance of Steve Bannon. I don’t think that discredits his entire body of work, but I think we should stop promoting him when there are sources that are less problematic.
You are mixing Chomsky (the subreddit) up with Norm (the book author). Norm was friends with Chomsky but not Epstein or Bannon. I'm unaware of him having transphobic views.
Norman Finkelstein's treatment of sources is dubious at best , dishonest at worst, and he is not very good at defending his position when challenged on them
At least that was my takeaway after watching his debate with Destiny (the streamer) and Benny Morris (the historian):
I don't know what that means and I am not going to search for it. Have fun with your ingroup that uses words that only you all know what they mean to recognize each other from the outgroup.
I would caution against uncritical consumption of Finkelstein's work. He is a bit unhinged, and limited in what content he can analyse as he can't read Arabic or Hebrew.
Looks the same in Ukraine, and at least there it's most likely not primarily because Russians wanted flatten the city (I'm sure they'd have preferred taking it in one piece) but rather because fighting happens from buildings resulting in the buildings getting targeted.
Doesn't mean that here the targeting couldn't have been done with the primary goal of displacing the population, but the buildings being destroyed doesn't prove the motive.
> and at least there it's most likely not primarily because Russians wanted flatten the city (I'm sure they'd have preferred taking it in one piece) but rather because fighting happens from buildings resulting in the buildings getting targeted.
What happened on the Ukrainian frontlines is a war of position. Everything gets pounded, even forests and tree lines. It’s more like Verdun than anything that happened in Gaza.
The same thing happens in Ukraine in the urban front lines. Villages get erased with artillery and bombs, as basements are the best place to survive drones and fires from artillery and bombs.
Systematic destruction of urban areas is sadly what modern urban combat operations look like.
When an enemy digs in and choose to fight and die in an urban area, this is how war plays out.
> The same thing happens in Ukraine in the urban front lines. Villages get erased with artillery and bombs, as basements are the best place to survive drones and fires from artillery and bombs.
But that’s not what we see in Gaza. The parents specifically mentioned that only towns were leveled. The destroyed towns are not the only relevant aspect. The other one is that major damage happens only there. And of course it would, because the Israeli forces don’t want to sterilise the land; they want to take it. In contrast, Russia is happy to be king of the rubble as long as Ukrainians eat shells.
If your enemy is dug in in an urban area, you bomb the hell out of it before you send in infantry to clean up. If you don’t use artillery and bombs the defenders will mow down the assault units.
This is how urban war is played out between near peer armies.
Think about this, I’m in a concrete bunker with a machine gun, do you want to charge the bunker and get shot, or do you want to call in an airstrike to destroy the bunker with the machine gun position? I know what I’d do
Or, if you're the IDF, and the bunker is filled with neutral UN Observers monitoring for war crimes, you also send in a laser-guided bunker-busting airstrike. Then you insist it was an "accident" while refusing to cooperate with the subsequent investigations.
Of note, just days before the strike, one of the Observers sent an unencrypted email home to his wife noting that he was observing Israeli war crimes and would be reporting them.
> What happened on the Ukrainian frontlines is a war of position
If Gaza is a genocide then Ukraine almost certainly is too. The same messaging about exterminating a culture that doesn't "actually" exist from senior leadership. The same attacks on children. The same destruction and systematic razing of civilian settlements.
It can be (and is imho) true that both Russia and Israel have broadcasted genocidal intent with the consequences being war crimes and still not look identical
It seems like the state of Ukraine frontline cities is due to intense artillery fire and air bombingn whereas gaza cities states seem to be more of systematic bulldozing of entire areas which would erase the marks of actual bombings and make the scale harder to assess
"Russia is claiming it as theirs for the last four years and has largely rebuilt it" is not really counter-evidence to destruction during the fighting
Mariupol probably did see less destruction. But for the actively contested regions, the biggest difference between Russian destruction and Israeli destruction is that the Russians use artillery, which leaves shells of buildings standing, while Israel uses bulldozers that are a lot more thorough in leaving no stone on the other
Also the Palestinian buildings are practically made of cardboard because that's all the supplies they can get (because mysteriously supplies keep not arriving, oh well, no way to know why they don't)
No, Mariupol was just one (arguably not the best) example answer to the original question, "Does it look the same in the Ukraine? I haven’t seen any footage of entire cities leveled like this."
I think your distinction is a valid one, Israel has some war crimes going on whereas russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime festival but you are fighting an uphill battle because trying to make distinctions in levels of evil is generally frowned upon because to many people it looks like justification. The reason is because most people can't imagine any other value to making distinctions in evil. I personally can but each time you are going to do it, you should be prepared to defend why, in fact, making those distinctions is useful while being clear that the purpose is not justification of evil acts. It's a thin line to walk on.
Only children matter? But, fine. How many were kidnapped? At least IDF can claim that they didn't intentionally target children - with kidnapping, that's harder. And the discrepancy in numbers can also be caused by how much Ukraine vs Hamas care about said children / how much they are put in harm's way.
What do you call aiming a sniper rifle at a child, centering her in the scope, accounting for drop, and then pulling the trigger? Seems pretty intentional to me, but maybe the sniper's finger slipped and did all that by accident?
you believe those were sniper kills? :o Where did you get that from, the Hamas "x-rays" where bullets conveniently lodged inside a child cranium instead of shattering the surrounding bones?
There are enough Israeli videos, texts, interviews & testimonies about IDF soldiers intentionally targetting children & bragging about it. No need to depend on Hamas communications.
I don't know what you are referring to. I suppose yet another war crime from the israeli army but this conflict generates a lot of dis/misinformation and it's hard enough to assess the trustworthiness of a source. If you don't even care to provide any source, you are just venting
It's not because you are angry about the state of the world that it absolves you of the moral duty to engage usefully with others. I know I have changed my mind on some subjects but it was never with one lazy comment like this one.
Now why is what you are talking about worse than aiming deliberately a supermarket full of civilians with a missile or hunting a grandpa with a fpv drone ? I don't really understand why you would choose to draw a line there. We already have a internationally recognized line in the sand that is somewhat actionable: War crime. It's hard to argue for genocide, it's easier to denounce and investigate suspected war crimes.
I, for one, think all war crimes are bad and should be the line in the sand where international pressure should be at its maximum.
Gaza invasion is a counterinsurgency type of war in an tighlty urbanized environment where the invader has apparently quite limited care about human life. It is not really surprising that more children would be killed there. Those are two different wars with war crimes happening in both.
(i can't edit apparently): why the downvotes? Serious question I don't understand, is there anything I said above false? The parent comment is questioning whether RU cruelty in Ukraine is anything close to what IL did - and the answer is yes, it's actually much worse, especially when you factor in that it's completely unprovoked.
There is no way it’s worse. To be comparable the Russians would have to have flattened Kyiv and most other cities which is extremely far from reality. The cities being flattened are all in the frontline as there is no way to take a city by force without basically destroying every building.
> The cities being flattened are all in the frontline as there is no way to take a city by force without basically destroying every building.
It's exactly the same in Gaza! You basically justified Israel's actions here... Check the distance between Gaza City & Israel border, vs distance beetween Bakhmut & Russia's border. Tell me which one is farther away - I'll wait
That's exactly why Gaza took it far worse than anything Russia can do in Ukraine. Gaza is like shooting fish in a barrel and Israel fishes with dynamite and white phosphorus in that barrel. The Gaza war is about sterilizing that land of all its people, who I'm told aren't even considered people by their enemy. Even Russia didn't go that far.
If that was really the goal, I go back to my previous point - wouldn't thermobaric bombs be faster, more economic & more convenient? It just makes no logical sense. If you already declared them to be monsters, what exactly is holding them back?
You know how you don't convince a flat earther with evidence? You're not looking to be convinced, you just want to prove you're smarter than everyone else. You'll always have some silly vague argument that you can hang on to for dear life and pretend that invalidates the other person's case. I don't have time for pointless exercises you need as validation.
All I see is that you're likely just ashamed to show out how weak your so-called "evidence" is, and instead chose to go on "you wouldn't believe it anyway" route. Yeah, if I won't believe it then it's probably due to the fact you yourself already know it's flimsy.
I'm sorry, Ukraine war discussion was labeled political on HN, not allowed, actively moderated and shutdown. Please don't post it here. Only Gaza/Israel get's a special carveout for these sorts of discussions on HN.
Look at Google map of Gaza city, Rafah, Khan-Younes, Al Qarara, ... pretty much all building have been destroyed. You want to try to argue that every one of them was somehow hiding a tunnel ?
3) If we compare this to the Battle of Mosul. Which is a pretty good comparison. They are very similar. That battle had a much larger civilian casualty count. The allies there decided to not evacuate the population and the result of that was a much larger number of civilian deaths. Are you proposing that Israel should have done the same? I.e. not evacuate the population and have a significantly higher number of civilian casualties? Do you feel that if Israel did that it would enjoy a similar support as the allies had when they went after ISIS in Mosul?
Basically Israel did the right thing here. Provably better (judging by the number of civilian casualties) than the western armies that allied against ISIS did in Mosul. The ethnic cleansing allegation is not supported by evidence and really can't be proven until the war is over.
And the one major time (and probably many more unreported) that they did provide an evacuation site, they waited for the evacuation, then bombed the shit out of the evacuation site claiming "Hamas is here lol"
Well. Hamas was there. Those attacks targeted specific people and we know they were killed. Israel did not bomb the shit out of the evacuation site, the number of civilians killed in Al-Muasi was extremely low. A lot less than e.g. the allies killed in Mosul where they did not evacuate the population.
Mohammed Deif. The head of Hamas' military wing. Was killed in the humanitarian zone. Rafah Salameh. The head of the Khan Younis brigade. Was killed in the humanitarian zone.
These claims are repeated a lot. They are baseless. A critical mind and a bit of research will prove that to you.
It doesn't matter what Israel does. In Rafah Israel objectively and measurably did much better than western armies fighting against Mosul in terms of civilian casualties (and you can include those in the humanitarian zones, still better). But Israel is held to a higher standard.
EDIT: And more: Yassin Rabia, Khaled Nagar, Osama Tabesh, Ayman Mabhouh, Samer Ismail Khadr Aby Daqqa. Fact check me. Also Israel has documented rocket launching from humanitarian zones. Israel has also retrieved bodies of hostages (including Hersh Goldberg) from tunnels under humanitarian zones.
there are videos of bulldozer in the West Bank eradicating secular olive trees from Palestinian farmland. There is no Hamas in West Bank, no tunnels, no fighters.
Wouldn’t it actually be much more efficient to just destroy all the food infrastructure and just have everyone die from hunger instead of destroying all the houses?
