boognish_bear said:Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) June 26, 2026
But violence will be met with violence. https://t.co/VWnBS1PWaV
J.R. said:Oldbear83 said:
JR: " where did I say I supported abortion?"
Your post at 9:04 PM on the 25th certainly implied it.
again , it is your opinion that it was implied. Hey dumbass, that is your interpretation, NOT FACTS. That's right you have a big habit in dealing without fact, bitter fella. Stick to fact. Chit, a govt cheese recipient bean counter should at least deal in facts. Remember Debits on the Right, Credits on the left!
Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
boognish_bear said:BREAKING: The US Pentagon delayed publicly announcing US strikes on Iran until after the US stock market had closed at 4 PM ET on Friday, per NBC News.
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) June 27, 2026
The timing of the announcement was reportedly intended to "reduce the immediate impact on financial markets."
Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
A "disproportionate response" does not mean deliberate killing of civilians. It can mean destruction of a military force that attacks and continues to attack you even if your casualties are, due to your superior defensive capabilities, proportionally lower than those of your enemy. War is not about having roughly proportionate losses.
List all of the militaries who have been fighting in an environment where their civilians have been regularly targeted with thousands of rockets that they need to stop, where those rockets have been home made and often malfunction killing local people, where there are tunnels dug under civilian infrastructure making taking them out impossible without a high level of physical destruction, where a significant percentage of the building and have been wired with explosives, where civilians are forced to remain in place so their bodies can provide political fodder when they are killed, where weapons are stored in civilian institutions, where the population density is about that of Manhattan, and where your enemy's stated goal is driving all of your civilian population into the sea.
At 4PM the $SPY and $ES had one of the largest 1 minute sell offs we’ve seen all year.
— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) June 26, 2026
BILLIONS of dollars dumped in seconds.
Later we learn the US performed another strike on Iran.
But it’s pretty clear the insiders knew at least an hour beforehand. https://t.co/cp9pEax69D pic.twitter.com/0T2z4M4zIU
Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
A "disproportionate response" does not mean deliberate killing of civilians. It can mean destruction of a military force that attacks and continues to attack you even if your casualties are, due to your superior defensive capabilities, proportionally lower than those of your enemy. War is not about having roughly proportionate losses.
List all of the militaries who have been fighting in an environment where their civilians have been regularly targeted with thousands of rockets that they need to stop, where those rockets have been home made and often malfunction killing local people, where there are tunnels dug under civilian infrastructure making taking them out impossible without a high level of physical destruction, where a significant percentage of the building and have been wired with explosives, where civilians are forced to remain in place so their bodies can provide political fodder when they are killed, where weapons are stored in civilian institutions, where the population density is about that of Manhattan, and where your enemy's stated goal is driving all of your civilian population into the sea.
I don't have time for a Gish gallop this morning, so I'll just summarize your post thusly: illegally occupying a densely populated area is dangerous and difficult. You're right. It is. It still doesn't justify the intentional -- and I'm going to keep emphasizing intentional since you keep glossing over it -- destruction of civilians and their cities.
D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
A "disproportionate response" does not mean deliberate killing of civilians. It can mean destruction of a military force that attacks and continues to attack you even if your casualties are, due to your superior defensive capabilities, proportionally lower than those of your enemy. War is not about having roughly proportionate losses.
List all of the militaries who have been fighting in an environment where their civilians have been regularly targeted with thousands of rockets that they need to stop, where those rockets have been home made and often malfunction killing local people, where there are tunnels dug under civilian infrastructure making taking them out impossible without a high level of physical destruction, where a significant percentage of the building and have been wired with explosives, where civilians are forced to remain in place so their bodies can provide political fodder when they are killed, where weapons are stored in civilian institutions, where the population density is about that of Manhattan, and where your enemy's stated goal is driving all of your civilian population into the sea.
I don't have time for a Gish gallop this morning, so I'll just summarize your post thusly: illegally occupying a densely populated area is dangerous and difficult. You're right. It is. It still doesn't justify the intentional -- and I'm going to keep emphasizing intentional since you keep glossing over it -- destruction of civilians and their cities.
If a building is booby trapped with explosives, blowing it up is quite appropriate.
Israel did not "illegally" occupy Gaza in the recent conflict any more than we illegally occupied France in 1944 or Japan in 1945.
The leadership, the army, the logistics, armories, and intel networks are completely made up of civilians. Additionally, when fighting and operating they don't wear uniforms or identify their facilities or locations with military or official marks. It is literally indistinguishable from the civilian people and infrastructure. That is what is truly intentional. It's intentional in purpose of disguise and ambush, and it's intentional to garner sympathy and lawfare from the international community when they are struck.Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
A "disproportionate response" does not mean deliberate killing of civilians. It can mean destruction of a military force that attacks and continues to attack you even if your casualties are, due to your superior defensive capabilities, proportionally lower than those of your enemy. War is not about having roughly proportionate losses.
List all of the militaries who have been fighting in an environment where their civilians have been regularly targeted with thousands of rockets that they need to stop, where those rockets have been home made and often malfunction killing local people, where there are tunnels dug under civilian infrastructure making taking them out impossible without a high level of physical destruction, where a significant percentage of the building and have been wired with explosives, where civilians are forced to remain in place so their bodies can provide political fodder when they are killed, where weapons are stored in civilian institutions, where the population density is about that of Manhattan, and where your enemy's stated goal is driving all of your civilian population into the sea.
I don't have time for a Gish gallop this morning, so I'll just summarize your post thusly: illegally occupying a densely populated area is dangerous and difficult. You're right. It is. It still doesn't justify the intentional -- and I'm going to keep emphasizing intentional since you keep glossing over it -- destruction of civilians and their cities.
BREAKING: U.S. conducts new strikes against Iran, CENTCOM says
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 27, 2026
ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
A "disproportionate response" does not mean deliberate killing of civilians. It can mean destruction of a military force that attacks and continues to attack you even if your casualties are, due to your superior defensive capabilities, proportionally lower than those of your enemy. War is not about having roughly proportionate losses.
List all of the militaries who have been fighting in an environment where their civilians have been regularly targeted with thousands of rockets that they need to stop, where those rockets have been home made and often malfunction killing local people, where there are tunnels dug under civilian infrastructure making taking them out impossible without a high level of physical destruction, where a significant percentage of the building and have been wired with explosives, where civilians are forced to remain in place so their bodies can provide political fodder when they are killed, where weapons are stored in civilian institutions, where the population density is about that of Manhattan, and where your enemy's stated goal is driving all of your civilian population into the sea.
I don't have time for a Gish gallop this morning, so I'll just summarize your post thusly: illegally occupying a densely populated area is dangerous and difficult. You're right. It is. It still doesn't justify the intentional -- and I'm going to keep emphasizing intentional since you keep glossing over it -- destruction of civilians and their cities.
The leadership, the army, the logistics, armories, and intel networks are completely made up of civilians. Additionally, when fighting and operating they don't wear uniforms or identify their facilities or locations with military or official marks. It is literally indistinguishable from the civilian people and infrastructure. That is what is truly intentional. It's intentional in purpose of disguise and ambush, and it's intentional to garner sympathy and lawfare from the international community when they are struck.
You're making a traditional war argument which doesn't exist in this conflict, The Principle of Distinction is a fundamental requirement and Hamas has obliterated it. The nature of this conflict is almost impossible to apply humanitarian and warfare law, but at least Israel makes an attempt even if not comprehensive.Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
A "disproportionate response" does not mean deliberate killing of civilians. It can mean destruction of a military force that attacks and continues to attack you even if your casualties are, due to your superior defensive capabilities, proportionally lower than those of your enemy. War is not about having roughly proportionate losses.
List all of the militaries who have been fighting in an environment where their civilians have been regularly targeted with thousands of rockets that they need to stop, where those rockets have been home made and often malfunction killing local people, where there are tunnels dug under civilian infrastructure making taking them out impossible without a high level of physical destruction, where a significant percentage of the building and have been wired with explosives, where civilians are forced to remain in place so their bodies can provide political fodder when they are killed, where weapons are stored in civilian institutions, where the population density is about that of Manhattan, and where your enemy's stated goal is driving all of your civilian population into the sea.
I don't have time for a Gish gallop this morning, so I'll just summarize your post thusly: illegally occupying a densely populated area is dangerous and difficult. You're right. It is. It still doesn't justify the intentional -- and I'm going to keep emphasizing intentional since you keep glossing over it -- destruction of civilians and their cities.
The leadership, the army, the logistics, armories, and intel networks are completely made up of civilians. Additionally, when fighting and operating they don't wear uniforms or identify their facilities or locations with military or official marks. It is literally indistinguishable from the civilian people and infrastructure. That is what is truly intentional. It's intentional in purpose of disguise and ambush, and it's intentional to garner sympathy and lawfare from the international community when they are struck.
The army is by definition not civilian. Combatants who don't fight in uniform may lose certain legal protections, but that has nothing to do with the legality of targeting non-combatants.
ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
A "disproportionate response" does not mean deliberate killing of civilians. It can mean destruction of a military force that attacks and continues to attack you even if your casualties are, due to your superior defensive capabilities, proportionally lower than those of your enemy. War is not about having roughly proportionate losses.
List all of the militaries who have been fighting in an environment where their civilians have been regularly targeted with thousands of rockets that they need to stop, where those rockets have been home made and often malfunction killing local people, where there are tunnels dug under civilian infrastructure making taking them out impossible without a high level of physical destruction, where a significant percentage of the building and have been wired with explosives, where civilians are forced to remain in place so their bodies can provide political fodder when they are killed, where weapons are stored in civilian institutions, where the population density is about that of Manhattan, and where your enemy's stated goal is driving all of your civilian population into the sea.
I don't have time for a Gish gallop this morning, so I'll just summarize your post thusly: illegally occupying a densely populated area is dangerous and difficult. You're right. It is. It still doesn't justify the intentional -- and I'm going to keep emphasizing intentional since you keep glossing over it -- destruction of civilians and their cities.
The leadership, the army, the logistics, armories, and intel networks are completely made up of civilians. Additionally, when fighting and operating they don't wear uniforms or identify their facilities or locations with military or official marks. It is literally indistinguishable from the civilian people and infrastructure. That is what is truly intentional. It's intentional in purpose of disguise and ambush, and it's intentional to garner sympathy and lawfare from the international community when they are struck.
The army is by definition not civilian. Combatants who don't fight in uniform may lose certain legal protections, but that has nothing to do with the legality of targeting non-combatants.
You're making a traditional war argument which doesn't exist in this conflict, The Principle of Distinction is a fundamental requirement and Hamas has obliterated it. The nature of this conflict is almost impossible to apply humanitarian and warfare law, but at least Israel makes an attempt even if not comprehensive.
BREAKING:
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 28, 2026
Iran is attacking U.S. forces in Bahrain and Kuwait tonight with missiles and suicide drones pic.twitter.com/YaN3QewZVd
BREAKING: Trump says the U.S. may be forced to “complete the job” in Iran:
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) June 27, 2026
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!” pic.twitter.com/EIQZ8HoiUG
That's exactly how Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran want you to think. Meanwhile, they'll keep executing a war behind civilian cover and human shields to feed your blind righteous indignation.Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:EatMoreSalmon said:Sam Lowry said:D. C. Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:
You can like or not like the "truth" of collective guilt, but you can't have it both ways.
In a fight to the death, guilt never enters the equation.
I'm sure many of the perpetrators of 10/7 would agree.
As would most Gazans.
That I doubt. If anyone is cognizant of the law and its violation, it's the Gazans.
If that were the case, they'd have punted Hamas some time ago.
Hard to do with Bibi propping them up...but they are unpopular for sure.
The last time there was a vote, Hamas won. Hard to tell how "unpopular" they are or are not when Hamas has a tendency to murder those who don't like them.
Good point. That's another reason not to punish Gazans as a group.
Glad you don't consider yourself a military expert.
After sending your troops to their death in a tunnel for the umpteenth time, you would definitely be singing a different song. Tunnel warfare with munitions, traps, gas, and defensive turns and twists has never been attacked by direct assault successfully. Entrances and exits inside buildings makes it even more dangerous. Hamas is counting on people like yourself to believe they didn't set up their people for destruction and death. For your viewpoint the only option the IDF had was to give up after one sided losses.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible, this back and forth would not be happening. It would have been an exponentially bigger bloodbath and there would be no back and forth like this. It really isn't hard to see except by those who chose deliberately to not see it. War is hell. Urban war is hell on steroids. It's remarkable the death toll was no more than it was.
It has been done with limited success. I don't think it would work in Gaza, but if they were trying to root out Hamas fighters in the way they claim, that's what it would involve.
We're all familiar with the argument that Israel could have killed more people faster. It's just one more attempt to redefine your way around the issue. Genocide doesn't depend on speed. There are political and other considerations involved. What we do know, contrary to your narrative, is that the civilian casualty rate has been astronomically high compared to other wars. It's deliberate self-deception to imagine that was an accident.
When Hamas uses strategies specifically designed to increase civilian casualties, there will be higher civilian casualties. One could argue that Israel should not have responded to Hamas attacks. Perhaps you would like to make that case.
In the absences of that, things like Hamas preventing civilians from evacuating, booby trapping homes with explosives, building tunnels under hospitals and homes, and storing weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques mean that this is a different kind of military environment. It is amazing to me how some of you want to blame the IDF for fighting circumstances that have been dictated by Hamas. Hamas benefits from dead civilians, and, while there are plenty of dead civilians, they also tend to classify some deaths of their fighters as civilian deaths.
Gaza is not by any stretch the first place where civilians and combatants have mingled. In no way does that justify the intentional targeting of civilians, which has been documented again and again. If you don't like the 2015 UN report, see the 2009 report, among many others.Quote:
"The Goldstone Report found that much of the devastation Israel inflicted during Cast Lead was premeditated. It also found that the operation was anchored in a military doctrine that 'views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals,' and that it was 'designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza'."
War has "dire consequences," and "disproportionate destruction" is entirely appropriate in a war.
However, Goldstone himself, when he learned more, did not believe that the IDF targeted civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy and publicly said exactly that.
More to the point, you have densely populated area and an enemy that benefits from dead civilians. You have a group that prevents civilians from leaving when told to evacuate an area because they believe that either the IDF will be more limited in its response if they use civilians as human shields or that the dead civilians that result will benefit them politically. You have a group that carries out attacks with rockets that regularly malfunction and kill local civilians instead of the civilians in Israel they actually target for death.
No military executes operations perfectly, and war is always destructive, including to civilians in combat zones. However, the IDF is not an outlier.
I can promise you that we would not tolerate a bunch of missiles from Quebec dropping on our heads and we would not be primarily concerned with Canadian civilians as we targeted the source of those rockets to protect our own civilians.
Goldstone himself was a minority of one. To deliberately inflict dire and disproportionate destruction on civilians is never appropriate. The IDF are not the only ones to operate in densely populated areas against enemies with clunky weapons who like to play up civilian casualties. What makes Israel an outlier is its brazenly genocidal rhetoric and corresponding actions.
A "disproportionate response" does not mean deliberate killing of civilians. It can mean destruction of a military force that attacks and continues to attack you even if your casualties are, due to your superior defensive capabilities, proportionally lower than those of your enemy. War is not about having roughly proportionate losses.
List all of the militaries who have been fighting in an environment where their civilians have been regularly targeted with thousands of rockets that they need to stop, where those rockets have been home made and often malfunction killing local people, where there are tunnels dug under civilian infrastructure making taking them out impossible without a high level of physical destruction, where a significant percentage of the building and have been wired with explosives, where civilians are forced to remain in place so their bodies can provide political fodder when they are killed, where weapons are stored in civilian institutions, where the population density is about that of Manhattan, and where your enemy's stated goal is driving all of your civilian population into the sea.
I don't have time for a Gish gallop this morning, so I'll just summarize your post thusly: illegally occupying a densely populated area is dangerous and difficult. You're right. It is. It still doesn't justify the intentional -- and I'm going to keep emphasizing intentional since you keep glossing over it -- destruction of civilians and their cities.
The leadership, the army, the logistics, armories, and intel networks are completely made up of civilians. Additionally, when fighting and operating they don't wear uniforms or identify their facilities or locations with military or official marks. It is literally indistinguishable from the civilian people and infrastructure. That is what is truly intentional. It's intentional in purpose of disguise and ambush, and it's intentional to garner sympathy and lawfare from the international community when they are struck.
The army is by definition not civilian. Combatants who don't fight in uniform may lose certain legal protections, but that has nothing to do with the legality of targeting non-combatants.
You're making a traditional war argument which doesn't exist in this conflict, The Principle of Distinction is a fundamental requirement and Hamas has obliterated it. The nature of this conflict is almost impossible to apply humanitarian and warfare law, but at least Israel makes an attempt even if not comprehensive.
Special pleading is the war criminal's first and favorite resort. However, there is no category of conflict or combatant to which the rules of war don't apply in some form. Israel makes no attempt to do anything but test how much and how often it can violate them.
Sam Lowry said:
Ever checked the location of military facilities in downtown Tel Aviv and other populated areas? Both sides are accused of this, and they both whine about it.
The issue remains the intentional targeting of civilians.
BREAKING: Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi appears to have launched a coup d'état against elements within the Iraqi government in an effort to purge and arrest government officials with ties to the Islamic regime of Iran. Iraqi news media are claiming that the U.S. government is… pic.twitter.com/NFEDMs4f1s
— Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch (@BabakTaghvaee1) June 28, 2026
whiterock said:Sam Lowry said:
Ever checked the location of military facilities in downtown Tel Aviv and other populated areas? Both sides are accused of this, and they both whine about it.
The issue remains the intentional targeting of civilians.
which isn't happening, and you know it.
Sam Lowry said:whiterock said:Sam Lowry said:
Ever checked the location of military facilities in downtown Tel Aviv and other populated areas? Both sides are accused of this, and they both whine about it.
The issue remains the intentional targeting of civilians.
which isn't happening, and you know it.
You know very well that it is.
NOBLES: If the US is still bombing Iran 120 days into this conflict, how can the Trump administration credibly say the war is over?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 28, 2026
SEN. ROGER MARSHALL: The major war is over. Think of this as almost just a mop up operation. Let's root for the Trump team for once rather than… pic.twitter.com/dFGlyDw136
GCC Secretary General Jasem Al Budaiwi on the rumored $300 billion Iran reconstruction package:
— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 28, 2026
For the 300, I have not seen anything. It was not introduced to me, nor to other GCC countries.
We don't know anything about it.
⁰Interviewer: Didn't you ask him?⁰
Al Budaiwi:… pic.twitter.com/xGXFdKWGFA
UPDATE: President Trump says Iran will no longer Exist if it continues to violate the CeaseFire.
— Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial (@TruthTrumpPost) June 28, 2026
FLBear5630 said:
Yawn. You guys actually believe him?
We have been at war since March, it never stopped. All the crap is for Trump to avoid War Powers. Congress needs to get off its ass, but it won't...
FLBear5630 said:
Yawn. You guys actually believe him?
We have been at war since March, it never stopped. All the crap is for Trump to avoid War Powers. Congress needs to get off its ass, but it won't...
BREAKING: The US and Iran have agreed to stop attacking each other and plan to meet on Tuesday in Doha to work out their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz. - Axios
— Faytuks Network (@FaytuksNetwork) June 28, 2026
boognish_bear said:
Maybe they will add a ceasefire to the ceasefire on TuesdayBREAKING: The US and Iran have agreed to stop attacking each other and plan to meet on Tuesday in Doha to work out their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz. - Axios
— Faytuks Network (@FaytuksNetwork) June 28, 2026
boognish_bear said:
Maybe they will add a ceasefire to the ceasefire on TuesdayBREAKING: The US and Iran have agreed to stop attacking each other and plan to meet on Tuesday in Doha to work out their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz. - Axios
— Faytuks Network (@FaytuksNetwork) June 28, 2026
