• BlueBockser@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think you know what the word genocide means. There are many things to criticize Israel for, and their behavior towards Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the West Bank is definitely part of it.

      But they are not deliberately killing civilians in Gaza. A genocidal regime doesn’t give their victims the opportunity to flee, leave open humanitarian corridors, establish ceasefire hours or provide fuel to the opposing side’s hospitals. A genocidal regime would’ve just rolled into Gaza immediately and shelled everything to pieces while the civilian population is still there, as for example Assad has done in Syria.

        • BlueBockser@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          It is well established that Hamas is using civilian areas and infrastructure such as hospitals, schools and refugee camps as cover for military installations. In doing so, they make them legitimate military targets - that’s international law.

          Can you tell me why Hamas gets carte blanche but others such as Ukraine are criticized in similar circumstances?

          Oh and while we’re on the subject of deliberately killing civilians, I’m sure you will agree that the mass murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7th constitutes genocide as well, right?

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It is well established that Hamas is using civilian areas and infrastructure

            Established by whom?

            Can you tell me why Hamas gets carte blanche but others such as Ukraine are criticized in similar circumstances?

            On what planet has Hamas received carte blanche? Gaza is currently being carpet bombed. This is exactly what Russia did to Kyiv in the opening days of the war, and it seems clear that Israel and Russia are running identical playbooks. Mass murder of the population as a form of ethnic cleansing is now the standard military doctrine of encroaching powers.

          • Madison420@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Ukraine isn’t an open air concentration camp governed in large part by Israeli blockade and airstrike and has been for thirty fuckin years dudes. Not quite the same situation is it?

            • BlueBockser@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              So you’re saying it’s okay to use human shields when under blockade? You might want to read up on the Geneva conventions.

              Also, do you know what country Gaza shares its Souther border with? That’s right, Egypt. How on Earth can Israel establish an open air prison when Gaza shares a border with a friendly Arab nation? How do they get all their supplies into Gaza, civilian and military? How come more than 200k Gaza civilians had work visa in Israel before the October 7th attacks? That’s right, because it’s not an open air prison.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You mean aside from those times they said specifically they were attacking civilians to “get to” Hamas access that the civilians are “human shields”.

        Just an fyi I think in a few years your georing to feel really fuckin bad about your rhetoric.

        • BlueBockser@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          You literally just said that Hamas is using their own civilians as human shields, so maybe put the blame on Hamas, where it belongs?

          Israel has a right to self-defense and in doing so has no other choice but to hurt civilians. That doesn’t mean they’re deliberately targeting civilians like Hamas does, and international law agrees with that.

          • Madison420@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            No one is saying not to blame Hamas, they have responsibilities too, that doesn’t however give Israel an ok to bomb civilian targets and starve out a civilian population, it’s been a literal war crime since at least the 1400s.

            Sure, they can defend themselves. Striking civilian targets, in civilian, areas with civilian populations is still a goddamn war crime. You didn’t see England intentionally bombing civilian targets even when v2s were hitting every single goddamn day. The international community is literally telling them to stop striking civilian targets because they are in fact admitting to doing just that!

            • BlueBockser@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              that doesn’t however give Israel an ok to bomb civilian targets

              They’re bombing military targets and are causing civilian casualties in doing so, which is generally not forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. As long as civilian harm is not excessive in relation to the military objective to be achieved, an attack is valid and not a war crime.

              You didn’t see England intentionally bombing civilian targets even when v2s were hitting every single goddamn day.

              …what? Have you read any books on Allied strategic bombing of German cities in WW2? There were firestorms in Hamburg and cities like Bochum were basically flattened. Britain’s Air Marshal Arthur Harris even stated this:

              the aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive…should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany.

          • Therealgoodjanet@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You mean right to defend itself under Article 51 of the UN charter, right?

            That doesn’t apply if you’re an occupying force. And for anyone saying “Israel doesn’t occupy Gaza, there are no Israeli officials there” if you control movement, water, gas, power, food supplies, where civilians can and can’t travel to, and the territory is not allowed to exist independently, all of that “right to defend yourself” is null and void.

            • BlueBockser@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              Israel is as much an occupying force as Egypt is. Both share borders with Gaza, so your argument holds no water. If Egypt wanted to, they could relieve all pressure on Palestinian civilians by simply opening up their border with Gaza. Israel by itself cannot enforce a blockade of Gaza.

              • Therealgoodjanet@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                So because Egypt isn’t doing enough, Israel isn’t to blame? Right. Solid argument.

                What Egypt does or doesn’t do does not in any way negate the fact that Israel is completely out of line.

                What an argument “but look at them, they are also bad, which means the even badder guys must not be as bad”.

      • Therealgoodjanet@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        So, let’s look at the definition of genocide and see where Israel lands here.

        Definition

        Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

        Article II

        In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

        Killing members of the group;

        • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
        • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
        • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
        • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

        Source: the UN

        So; let’s have a quick look at these points:

        (1) Over 11,000 deaths, majority of civilians. And I’m just talking about deaths since Oct 7, I did not include any numbers from before that. Check.

        (2) Illegal occupation and cutting off food, water, electricity and free movement. Check.

        (3) Unknown to me.

        (4) Unknown to me.

        The head of the UN, Craig Mokhiber, just retired and called it unequivocally a genocide, here’s a source for that, but if you don’t like this source, you can just Google this and find plenty of other sources.

        So, please tell me. How does Israel not fit as a genocidal regime?

        • BlueBockser@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group

          Civilian deaths and cutting off resource supplies to your enemy happens in every war. It’s when the intent is the destruction of a people that it becomes a genocide, and you have yet to provide any proof of that.

            • BlueBockser@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group […]

              any of these as long as there’s intent to destroy. Without intent to destroy, it’s not a genocide. Quite simple, really, if you read the charter.

              None of the links prove or even hint at intent to destroy the Palestinian population. They hint at fears that Israel might occupy Gaza partiallly or fully and even displace Palestinian civilians permanently. While absolutely terrible, that isn’t genocide according to the Geneva Conventions you quoted above.

              Again, where’s your proof for intent to destroy the Palestinian people?

              • Therealgoodjanet@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                It seems you haven’t read any of the linked articles, so there is no need to talk about this any further until you do.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Surveillance cameras now cover the Damascus Gate, the main entrance into the old city of Jerusalem and one of the only public areas for Palestinians to gather socially and hold demonstrations.

    The Guardian first reported that Hikvision enabled police clients to set up alarms for when cameras detect any type of protest activity such as “gathering crowds to disrupt order in public places”, “unlawful assembly, procession, demonstration” and threats to “petition”.

    Amnesty investigators said the cameras are at high risk of being connected to Mabat 2000, an Israeli police-run facial-recognition surveillance network that spans the entire city of East Jerusalem.

    Ultimately, Palestinians “don’t need to see” that the cameras are employing facial recognition to “know that they are being watched at every turn”, said Matthew Mahmoudi, an Amnesty International researcher on AI and human rights.

    “Even their family life and the sort of very mundane everyday actions suddenly become acts of resistance in the face of this ubiquitous surveillance apparatus that underpins much of how apartheid is exacted on Palestinians,” Mahmoudi added.

    According to the report, Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps analyzed and verified the authenticity of 15 videos that showed Palestinians being detained “where surveillance technologies appeared to have been used for registration, identification or recording”.


    The original article contains 1,238 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • cyd@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was wondering how long it would take the media to frame the Israel-Palestine crisis as another “China bad” story.