You know how some days you come back home from a long hard day of work and you don’t want to do anything cause you’re tired so you order delivery. Yeah, imagine having little food, little water, being bombed constantly, being forced to move constantly, having the areas you move to be bombed, fearing for your life constantly and to top it all off the force that is doing this ask you to start a manhunt for some people. This is a sick joke.
Have they checked under the rubble of all the buildings they've destroyed? We already know they've killed their own before, and that the hostages themselves said that's something they feared was being killed by the IDFs bombs
This may be an effort to re-assert control over the narrative after a story was published in the Israeli publication Yedioth Ahronoth on January 12th: https://w.ynet.co.il/yediot/7-days/time-of-darkness (the publisher has not yet translated it to English).
At midday on 7 October Israel’s supreme military command ordered all units to prevent the capture of Israeli citizens “at any cost” – even by firing on them.
The military “instructed all its fighting units to perform the Hannibal Directive in practice, although it did so without stating that name explicitly,” Israeli journalists revealed last weekend.
Warning: This is emotionally disturbing content. It is well-sourced by Israeli civilians and military personnel. I think it may be a sign that the propaganda machine concealing the IDF's war crimes is starting to crack. Our understanding of what's happened over the last several months may be very different a year from now
Israeli forces have dropped leaflets in Gaza asking residents for help finding hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, as bombardment of the besieged strip continues.
The leaflets dropped in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza strip, on Saturday featured photos of 33 hostages with their names written in Arabic.
"They are asking people's help because they are unable to get to their hostages because of the resistance," Abu Ali, a north Gaza resident, told Reuters.
Meanwhile, more than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its aerial bombardment campaign and ground invasion, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its death toll but says around two-thirds of those killed were women and children, which is supported by United Nations estimates.
Several families camped outside one of Netanyahu's residences on Friday night to protest what they described as government inaction to free their captured relatives.
The original article contains 312 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Meanwhile, more than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its aerial bombardment campaign and ground invasion, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its death toll but says around two-thirds of those killed were women and children, which is supported by United Nations estimates.
For total count maybe, but they have never made a distinction between their own soldiers and civilians. They want the 25k number misinterpreted as a civilian death count, and have largely succeeded.
Most of the death toll is women and children (7k and 10k, respectively). Even if you assume all men killed are Hamas fighters, which is not true, that is very high when compared to the attack which triggered the war.
I agree the civilian death toll is outsized, but just to play Devil's advocate here: Hamas is the group putting out the women and children numbers, and given they don't make a civilian/soldier distinction they almost certainly are including all soldiers under 18 in the "children" numbers. They want you to picture 10k murdered 6-year-olds, but we don't actually have a break down by age or child-soldier status. Hopefully we can get some visibility there soon.
They're not just putting out numbers, they're putting out identifications too. Unless they're falsely claiming identified women and children are dead, they can't really manipulate the numbers.
Also, as another counter point, the numbers are just the people they've identified. Thousands more are missing and presumed buried under the rubble, likely dead or dying. The death toll is necessarily an under-count, and might be closer to 30,000 rather than 25,000. Also? There's around 10 children getting limbs amputated every day, as well as dozens more being severely lacerated and burned. Daily. The death toll isn't the whole story, but there's absolutely no way that you can spin this as Hamas just using the fog of war to create confusion.
Not disputing any of that except for your conclusion. Hamas lumping their military losses in with civilians is literally using the fog of war to create confusion.
The UN has been very clear about the rights of the child, and child soldiers are universally classified as victims regardless of whether they are armed or affiliated with a militant group. Israel isn't actually allowed to carpet bomb child soldiers under international law.
Stop trying to frame this as the health administration trying to create confusion. Children are classified as civilians, period.
Also, wanna know something extremely fucked up? Half of Gaza's population is under 18 and 70% of the population are under 30. The fact that Hamas uses child soldiers is shaped by the fact that Israel created conditions where boys can't expect to live long enough to even become men.
You do see how Hamas employing child soldiers and then lumping them in with dead civilian numbers to generate outrage is deceptive though, right? Because that was my point.
I just did a fairly deep dive on this because it would be a horrible thing to argue about without a full understanding. You're incorrect - a child soldier is a combatant under every relevant international law I could find, from the Geneva convention onwards. Further, there have been numerous horrific cases of soldiers having to shoot armed children, none of which has been labeled a war crime.
A particularly concise quote from the European journal of international law:
The starting points are articles 4(A) of the 1949 Third Geneva Convention and article 43 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I, which provides for the definitional elements of what a combatant is under international humanitarian law, albeit overtly in the context of an international armed conflict. If a child is enrolled in the armed forces of a party to an international armed conflict, there seems to be no apparent basis in current international humanitarian law to characterize that child as anything other than as a combatant.
I just did a fairly deep dive on this because it would be a horrible thing to argue about without a full understanding. You’re incorrect - a child soldier is a combatant under every relevant international law I could find, from the Geneva convention onwards.
I don't think 'child soldiers are regular combatants' is actually the open and shut case you present it to be. I think the following is a more accurate portrayal of things (2016) - https://rsc-src.ca/en/voices/targeting-child-soldiers:
Despite the numerous volume on child soldiers in legal literature over the last few decades, very little has been said on targeting child soldiers. It seems to be something international lawyers would rather not talk about. The fact that legal literature doesn’t say much about targeting child soldiers doesn’t mean that no such practice exists, or that soldiers haven’t discussed the matter.
Agreed, I went through that doc. It indicates that Canada is one of the few countries to affirm a "shoot first" policy. Most other countries don't explicitly have a policy given the subject. The assertion being made above was that child soldiers are never a legitimate target or combatant under international law. That person was incorrect.
Okay this is actually something concrete to talk about. This is from the UN Human Rights Committee
The Committee takes note of the efforts made by the State party to prevent children from being used or recruited by illegal armed groups and to separate those who have been recruited from those groups and offer them assistance and protection. It is concerned, however, at reports of the continued use and recruitment of children by illegal armed groups, including, in particular, the use and recruitment of indigenous and Afro-Colombian children, and by illegal armed groups that formed in the wake of the demobilization of paramilitary organizations. The Committee takes note of the State party’s statement that, in accordance with the laws in force, security forces do not engage in intelligence activities or military civic acts that involve children. It is concerned, however, by reports of cases in which members of the security forces allegedly involved children in such activities during the reporting period (art. 24).
Has Israel made any efforts, at all, to prevent children from being used or recruited in this conflict? I don't think they have, aside from blowing them away once they have been recruited (if they are even differentiating between combatants and civilians - I doubt it).
The State party should continue and step up its efforts to prevent the use and recruitment of children by illegal armed groups; to ensure that, in accordance with the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, all children who have been used or recruited by such groups are treated as victims, regardless of which armed group they have been separated from; to ensure that all children separated from such groups receive protection and proper care with a view to their physical and psychological recovery and to the restoration of their rights; and to ensure that the responsible parties stand trial and are punished. The State party should also adopt effective measures to ensure that, in actual practice, children are not involved in intelligence work or in military civic activities.
Israel has certainly never made any efforts to separate children from Hamas and protect them from recruitment. Israel neither has ever made any efforts to rehabilitate or re-socialize child soldiers that it has captured, and it rarely bothers with capturing them alive.
It is unclear if children are to be considered victims before separation, so point to you. Under a strictly textualist interpretation, international law doesn't protect active child soldiers. That is not the only way to interpret law; I'd argue we should look at the purpose of the law i.e. to protect children from war, so every effort should be made to avoid killing children except when absolutely necessary.
But that's for the ICJ and ICC to decide, not lemmings. So! Point to you, child soldiers that die on the battle field could be counted as combatants. I disagree and don't think that's the end of it, but I can see that as a valid interpretation of humanitarian law.
But! Once they're dying in the hospital it's pretty clear to me that they have been separated from Hamas, at which point they must be considered victims. Victims that Israel is blockading from food, fuel, medicine, sanitation, habitation, and humanitarian assistance.
I'm also highly skeptical that Israel really is targeting militants and I'm done giving them the benefit of the doubt. You understand, right?
Hey that was an excellent response and I appreciate it - good faith arguments are few and far between here. To your points I disagree with one and agree with one.
I don't think Israel has any responsibility in preventing Hamas from recruiting child soldiers. If it was an internal terrorist group under Israel's jurisdiction, my opinion would flip. As an example, the US is responsible for preventing the Proud Boys from recruiting children, but are not responsible for Mexican cartels doing so.
To your second point, Israel absolutely is required to treat child soldiers as victims from the moment they are captured, surrender, or are meaningfully "separated" from Hamas. I haven't seen any evidence of this and personally doubt they are doing so. If we discover minors being interrogated in POW camps, that's going to be a huge problem.
. If it was an internal terrorist group under Israel’s jurisdiction, my opinion would flip.
Palestinians are not sovereign so I think that means they are under Israel's jurisdiction. Gaza is a ghetto under Israel's control and Israel doesn't even recognize Hamas as a government, so that goes doubly for them.
. If we discover minors being interrogated in POW camps, that’s going to be a huge problem.
Israel created conditions where boys can’t expect to live long enough?
That’s an insane take on Hamas preventing women from gainful employment or education and turning them into baby factories. The reason there’s so many children is because the population literally doubled in 24 years, and you only get population growth stats like those when you have uneducated women who can only have children and do no other function in society.
There is no need to "play devil's advocate" - if you believe something, argue for it. If you don't believe something but think I'm missing something, you can point it out and make a case for why it's important without being confusing about what you actually believe.
All evidence I have seen is that Hamas does not systematically use child soldiers. We can see the indiscriminate tactics of the IDF; we can put that together with the high death toll to make a reasonable conclusion that vast numbers of civilians have been killed. You're trying to cast doubt on this idea but the amount of doubt is akin to flicking water from your fingers onto a housefire.
The average age in Gaza is like 17. Do you truly believe Hamas is out checking birth certificates? Statistically, half their forces are minors. Combined with estimates of Hamas military losses, that might make fully half of the 10k dead children Hamas child soldiers. While still horrifying, that meaningfully changes how the reported casualty counts should be interpreted. My point is, and has always been, that interpreting casualty numbers that a militant group releases with clear propaganda intent in a light most favorable to them is at best stupid and at worst willfully ignorant.
interpreting casualty numbers that a militant group releases with clear propaganda intent in a light most favorable to them...
but just said this:
Statistically, half their forces are minors.
Pull the other one. If all you wanted was for people not to interpret casualty numbers "in a light most favourable to Hamas" you'd be acknowledging how high the death toll is while making your point instead of trying to distract from it.
they have never made a distinction between their own soldiers and civilians.
I don't see why you think that's a problem - Israel has certainly never made a distinction between Hamas soldiers and Palestinian civilians when they bomb them or slaughter them in the street or fire at them when aid is being given out.
The first casualty of war is truth. We can trust Hamas as much or more than we can trust Israel. I'm not an expert, but I'd imagine we could find 100 instances of misinformation from Israel for every 1 from Hamas just from how much each group puts out.
