The article accuses Israel of potentially committing war crimes in its conflict with Hamas, focusing on a siege on Gaza, airstrikes harming civilians, and evacuation orders. It criticizes the U.S. for not condemning Israel’s actions and emphasizes the need for diplomatic solutions. The piece argues that Israel’s approach could backfire politically and suggests that there’s no military solution to the conflict. It calls for the U.S. to exercise influence to deter such actions, asserting it’s in the interests of both the U.S. and Israel to prevent further civilian casualties and maintain regional stability.
I mean… when has the US ever backed off from committing war crimes?
My Lai Massacre, Abu Ghraib Prison, Drone Strikes, Guantanamo Bay… list goes on.
Wasn’t there an article yesterday that the US asked for restrained actions even against the hamas?
Biden’s not gonna do shit, we all know that
I like him, but I’m also pretty biased because I’m ukranian.
Essentially, Biden is very much a ‘consensus’ leader. In other words, he tends not to make strong deviations from policy unless there is very broad support for them. Supporting Ukraine was pre-existing US policy and popular at the time of the 2022 invasion - so Biden intensifying it wasn’t out of character for him.
Opposing Israel, on the other hand, would be contrary to established US policy and something that is not widely supported in the US. So Biden is very unlikely to do anything substantial to restrain Israel, regardless of how horrific the situation gets.
Biden feels like a placeholder president
Aren’t President supposed to represent policy of their country though ? What’s the point of head of the state that goes against it’s policy ?
Typically a president must (and should) make a lot of decisions in ‘edge cases’ and in changing policy. Biden is essentially cautious on both. Not inherently bad, but often frustrating when long-standing policy is questionable or 30% of the country is insa.ne.
I see. IMHO Biden seem to have lost respect because his health seems not top notch so it makes people doubt his mental health. If he wasn’t falling or having trouble speaking occasionally, he would be less criticized.
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They asked. That’s not really much. Israel still has a carte blanche from the international community to commit warcrimes.
No they don’t.
I mean they’re committing warcrimes right this moment and instead of stopping them everyone is giving them weapons.
How are they committing wacrimes on purpose when they tell the civilians actually to fuck off and get out of the fire? As cruel as it’s sound those civilians are collateral damage, killed because the hamas is hiding between them and forcing them to stay in the warzone.
What should they do after this horrendous crimes against their people, then to move against the hamas? Did the US not act after 9/11? Did we as NATO not act when Serbians committed a genocide in Kosovo? High civilian casualties are a welcomed effect by terrorists like the Hamas, cause they are not a regular army.
I find it wrong what’s happens there but I also have no Idea what Israel could do different in order to save humans lives and also to defend themselves.
How are they committing wacrimes on purpose when they tell the civilians actually to fuck off and get out of the fire?
They then attack those civilians while they’re fucking off, or after they get to the location they told them to fuck off to. Not kidding they’ve done it five times by my count the past few days. They’re also attacking journalists, hospitals and the like. And don’t get me started on the white phosphorus.
So yeah, they’re committing warcrimes.
What should they do after this horrendous crimes against their people, then to move against the hamas?
Well, after pushing Hamas to the Gaza ousting Netenyahu and installing a PM who’s actually interesting in peace would be a good start. There’ll never be peace—and therefore violence is inevitable—as long as Netenyahu and his party are in charge. I’m not exaggerating.
You also can turn this around. As long as they are terrorists like the Hamas backed by the people around them there will be no peace because they have only one goal and that is to wipe the Jews out. I’m not exaggerating, they are actually founded on this, the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are part of their charter.
Like I said there is no easy solution and I’m not stupid enough to tell you there is one. All included parties have fucked up big time.
You also can turn this around.
No you can’t, because:
1-Netenyahu has been standing in the way of peace since the Oslo accords, aka the when the conflict was the closest to being fully resolved (literally Netenyahu just had to follow the deal his predecessor made with Arafat and that would be it).
2-Hamas and Israel signed two ceasefires before, one in 2008 and another in 2012. Both included that Israel had to lift the blockade. Well that didn’t happen so both fell through. Netenyahu also vehemently opposed the short-lived unified Palestinian government because it meant Palestinians would’ve been able to work towards peace again.
This is what I’m talking about. Hamas had (has?) some fucked up shit in their charter, but in the end they’re not so insane as to reject reality. Meanwhile Netenyahu just changes reality to keep himself in power.
Also speaking of which, Hamas changed their charter in 2017 to only demand the return to 1967 borders.
You’re right, this situation JUST started with the attack at the festival. Literally nothing ever happened there before that day.
Give me a fucking break.
With which war against Israel you want to start? 1948? 1967? 1973?
The land was Palestine before 1948, the natives who had lived there for generations were Palestinians, and their land was simply taken from them. What the fuck do you mean they “started a war”?
Empty words.
never saw one, please share.
https://www.reuters.com/world/white-house-israels-call-move-gaza-civilians-is-tall-order-2023-10-13/
“These Palestinian people, they’re victims, too. They didn’t ask for this. They didn’t invite Hamas in and say, you know, ‘Go hit Israel.’” – Kirby
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The US likes to use anything but actual units of measurement…
To be fair, it is New York mag. So New York is to some degree, a frame of reference for the readers of it.
I guess we can be glad they didn’t say something like size of very big boulder this time.
I mean that basically what the us did after 9/11 sooooo it kinda makes sense.
Someone attacks and then the retaliation follows hurting more people. The circle of death one would say.
That’s the thing. You’d think America would have learned that you can’t bomb people into peace. But here they’re still supporting Israel which is doing the same thing.
Just out of curiosity what’s your suggestion?
It really has to be a question of what your end goal is. If the end goal is eliminating Hamas which is embedded in the civilian population, then the only thing you can do is to kill all 2 million people. I’m hoping that’s not a real option. Killing some will just give Hamas the ability to come back.
If your end goal is peace then you have to negotiate. Hamas has to release hostages and disband. In exchange the Palestinian Authority would rule over Gaza in a two state peace process. I think the only legitimate solution that both sides would accept is a two state solution at this point. Palestinians want their 1967 borders back and Israel refuses to do that…that’s the heart of this issue. Israel right now can forcefully take the entire region with the western world’s backing, so they see no reason to negotiate. The only way this could ever happen is if other countries twisted Israel’s arm and forced it to negotiate. I.e. sanctions or blockade until a peaceful solution is agreed upon. This is highly idealistic and will never happen though.
I don’t think America was looking for peace after 9/11
Does it make sense or is it justified?
There’s quite a difference
So deep 5/7
US Government. Most of us wants everyone to stop killing each other and our leaders to shut the fuck up and figure out our own problems.
Article:
Photo: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images
The legality of a war effort under international law hinges on two primary criteria. The first concerns a military campaign’s ends: States are generally forbidden from using force against those beyond their borders for any purpose except self-defense. The second criteria concerns the war effort’s means. States may not deliberately target civilians nor disproportionately harm them in service of their war aims.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas meets that first criterion. The conflict between the Palestinians of Gaza and the Israeli government is not truly one between distinct states. Israel exercises effective sovereignty over Gaza, controlling the movement of its people, barring them from a portion of its territory, and regulating its import and export of goods. Nevertheless, when a militant group murders more than a thousand of a state’s people, that state has cause for war against the militant group.
But Israel’s means of war against Hamas runs afoul of international law. Israel has imposed a complete siege on Gaza, denying its 2 million inhabitants access to electricity, food, water, and fuel. Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant justified these measures on the grounds that “we are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.”
Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the New York Times Thursday that “the imposition of sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
Tom Dannenbaum, an expert on siege law at Tufts University, affirmed this assessment, describing Israel’s policy as an abnormally clear-cut instance of starving civilians as a means of war, an unambiguous violation of human rights.
Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza also appears to flout international law’s prohibition of the disproportionate killing of civilians. The Israeli Air Force has dropped more than 6,000 bombs on a stretch of land roughly the size of Queens. Its targets have included hospitals and schools. By its own account, Israel has not been firing “warning strikes” to encourage civilians to exit a given building before incinerating it. As of this writing, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israel’s airstrikes have killed more than 1,799 people, including 583 children. According to the ministry, 60 percent of all the injured are women or children.
On Friday, Israel ordered 1 million Gazans to evacuate the northern part of the strip, in advance of an Israeli ground invasion set to begin at around 8 p.m. local time. The United Nations has said that it considers such an evacuation logistically impossible. The number of people is too large, the transport infrastructure too damaged, and, thanks to the Israeli siege, the resources necessary to care for 1 million uprooted people are too scarce. In this context, the order looks like a means of excusing the reckless endangerment of the lives of any civilians who remain in place.
For its part, the Israeli government is doing little to counter the impression that it has contempt for the civilians in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised retribution that will “reverberate for generations.” The Israeli general Ghassan Aliyan has declared, “You wanted hell — you will get hell.”
Israeli president Isaac Herzog, while allowing that Gazan civilians weren’t legitimate military targets, nevertheless suggested that they bear responsibility for Hamas’s actions, saying, “They could have risen up, they could have fought against the evil regime, which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
The Israeli Air Force, meanwhile, proudly advertised its decimation of entire city blocks.
The U.S. government has done little to deter Israel from committing war crimes. It has declined to reject Israel’s evacuation order. “We’re going to be careful not to get into armchair-quarterbacking the tactics on the ground” of the Israel Defense Forces, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday. “What I can tell you is we understand what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to move civilians out of harm’s way and giving them fair warning.”
Meanwhile, the administration has forbidden State Department officials from releasing statements that call for “de-escalation/ceasefire,” an “end to violence/bloodshed,” or “restoring calm.” A White House spokesperson decried congressional progressives’ advocacy for a ceasefire as “repugnant” and “disgraceful.”
Late Friday, Fox News reported that the White House has encouraged Israel to delay its ground invasion until safe passage for Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza can be secured. This is better than nothing. But it leaves Israel’s reckless siege and aerial bombardment campaign unchallenged.
This is a patent failure of moral leadership. The U.S. has the power to exert some influence over Israeli strategy. The primary cost of its acquiescence to Israeli war crimes will be the deaths of a grotesque number of innocent Gazans. A secondary cost will be a decline in America’s standing in the world in general and the Middle East in particular. It is not in America’s national interest to abet the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
Indeed, it is not in Israel’s best interests for the United States to do so. As Hussein Ibish notes in The Atlantic, Hamas quite likely intended to provoke Israel into mounting a response that would earn it international condemnation and make it impossible for Saudi Arabia to pursue the normalization of relations.
Israel may prize the complete destruction of Hamas over its international reputation. But the idea that one can eliminate support for terrorist resistance within a community by incinerating thousands of its civilians is ludicrous. There is no military solution to Israel’s security problem short of ethnic cleansing or genocide. It may impair Hamas’s operative capacities through the targeted assassination of its leaders or by scaling back its illegal settlement project in the West Bank so as to free up soldiers to guard its border with Gaza. But Israel cannot extinguish the problem of Palestinian resistance through the commission of atrocities.
It is therefore not only a humanitarian imperative for Israel to exercise greater restraint, but also a geostrategic one. As Ibish writes,
Outrageous overreach by terrorists typically aims to provoke overreach. Washington and other friends of Israel who are now seized with sympathy should immediately caution Israel not to make this blunder. If Israel instead exercises restraint, however difficult doing so might be both politically and emotionally, it can thwart the goals of Hamas and its Iranian sponsors. Restraint would go a long way toward ensuring that the diplomatic opening with Saudi Arabia continues to move forward, dealing a major blow to local revisionist powers, such as Iran, and global ones, such as China and Russia, that wish to supplant a rules-based order with one based on “Might makes right.”The United States has the power to deter the worst excesses of Israel’s present campaign. Exercising that power would be in the best interests of not only Gazans, but the U.S. and Israel. It was cycles of retributive violence that birthed our current nightmare. If we help Israel to perpetuate those cycles, then the arc of the region’s history will bend back toward hell. The U.S. Is Giving Israel Permission for War Crimes
the whole west world is giving permission.
if only palestinian victims had instagram or facebook pages, we could put a name on these dead bodies and make youtube ads.
no instagram, you don’t exist.
I hate my country and many of my countrymen.
This is another reason having a 2 party system is horrendous, when one of the parties is batshit crazy.
I think Biden should put pressure on Israel to calm down, but I’m not going to risk wasting political capital on this issue, because if we lose the next election we’ll get the insane Republicans, in which case the whole world is fucked, not just Gaza.
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Right after he releases his amazing healthcare plan! Any minute now!
The concept of “war crimes” is almost meaningless if the perpetrator has nukes.
No real punishment will be forthcoming. It’s not like anybody else will intervene.
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It’s a worldwide relentless cycle, isn’t it?
These were right on top of each other on my feed. Probably some spin on both.
U.S. officials privately warn Israel to show restraint in retaliating against Hamas - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/us-officials-privately-warn-israel-restraint-hamas-retaliation-biden-rcna120286
“Don’t murder the children too hard uwu”
“US CONDEMNS ISRAEL”
What is Israel supposed to do? They got proof that Palestinians will never live with them in peace. In fact, they got that proof for centuries, but only now it’s plain as day. Is Israel supposed to lose this war? Are they seriously the only country in this world which isn’t allowed to defend itself? They owe nothing to Palestinians. They owe everything to the kidnapped who are still to this second held captive under savages who rape women and parade distorted bodies.
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It’s the only artificial country in the world, created by the US and his friends, on land with previous owners. They routinely keep pushing the limits of their land, with or without armed conflicts/excuses. They kick people from their houses, common people, civilians. If they don’t comply, they are executed in plain daylight, in the street. They shield themselves behind persecution propaganda, calling everyone antisemitic for pointing the obvious, when this is not about them being jews, they are systematically exterminating people.
You see, Israel existing as a country, is not only against jewish tradition (read about that), but it’s also against common sense. How a conflict like this can be solved, when Israel keeps killing civilians every year, since it’s foundation. It’s like having a 9/11 every three months, sure as hell that radicalizes every sane person. Since it’s inception, Israel only has taken land, and killed people. What would you do in the shoes of a common Palestinian? Think about that.
I’m not pro Hamas, don’t get me wrong. I’m just pro common sense, Israel existing as a country was a fucking mistake. Supporting them military and financially was another mistake. Giving them green card to fucking exterminate and steal land from other people for more that 70 fucking years it’s just evil. Decades of systemic genocide, what in the fucking hell did you expect to happen? Decades of calling for help, exposing human rights violations, fighting with whatever resources you have, lead to this savage nightmare attitude. This people are giving back some of what they have received for almost a century.
Would you just tolerate that if Native Americans did that on your country? They were here first, so they have every right to kick you out of your house, or kill you if you resist? The fuck you are, you are grabbing a fucking rifle and fighting back. C’mon, even Putin is trying to do the same thing in Ukraine and we are against him because common sense, why it’s failing that reasoning for us here?
You blame every Palestinian death on Israel? Seriously? Maybe condem them for the war of 48, but that was 80 years ago, and it was started by Palestinians (and other arab nations who were just racist towards jews) but people in Palestine don’t live miserable lives purely because of israel. They have sky high poverty, dysfunctional leadership, an education system focused on murdering your neighbours. What will come out of a people wanting to just rebel against everyone? They rebelled in Jordan, they rebelled in Egypt, they rebelled in Lebanon, and they rebel in Israel. What this people need is a country to take them in, not trying to build another failed country in the middle east (whilst killing/exiling 7 million people in the process, as they oh so desire). Israel would never think of kicking out Palestinians from gaza/west bank if they developed themselves instead of focusing on death. They don’t want this headache of terrorist neighbours. Two states isn’t and wasn’t EVER an option in the eyes of Palestinians. But the jews DO need a state. They’re prosecuted all over the world, and without a country to defend them, things like the Holocaust happen. The situation got to this degree because of both parties involved. Palestinians who are head against the wall only wanting death, and Israel who focuses solely on defending themselves, with little regard on how civillians on the other side are living. Of course that with conditions as bad as those terrorists will spawn, but that’s not on Israel to blame - that’s on the palestinian leadership. Israel faulted with not trying to give Palestinians proper leadership that’ll advance them out of poverty and terror. And I failed to understand your native Americans comparison. The natives are Palestinians, so yeah Israel grabs a gun and fight back. It’s their home for 80 years, of course they’ll fight for it. It’s common sense. They’re not invaders from outside, every Israeli fighting now was born there.
What is Israel supposed to do? They got proof that Palestinians will never live with them in peace.
ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION: 50 YEARS OF DISPOSSESSION.
This Amnesty International article from 2017 discusses the challenges faced by Palestinians in the West Bank due to Israeli military closures and restrictions. These include checkpoints, roadblocks, and settler-only roads that make daily tasks like commuting to work or school difficult. The construction of a 700-km fence/wall, ostensibly for security reasons, has disrupted Palestinian communities, separated families, and hindered access to essential services and resources. The article also addresses issues of water allocation, highlighting the disparity between Israeli and Palestinian water consumption. The international community is called upon to recognize and rectify these injustices and restrictions in the occupied territories.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/
Yeah… citing this shitrag of NYMagazine. Al Jazeera is the better outlet compared to this.
But keep on with your circlejerk.
Do you like a napkin for your crocodile tears?
Everyone outside your little peer bubble of terrorism-fans sees your agenda. But keep virtue signaling for your peers that you are a good little sycophant.
Everyone outside your little peer bubble of terrorism-fans sees your agenda. But keep virtue signaling for your peers that you are a good little sycophant.
all these words to tell me how scared you are Israel is finally being exposed for its crimes, this time around, it’s going to count.
terrorism-fans
Just absolutely zero interest in good faith discussion.
