What are you debating?
That it’s okay for Hamas to use civilian infrastracture as the base for their military operations?
That the IDF should refrain from attacking those targets because of the civilian casualties?
That the IDF is the same as the German Waffen-SS troops that massacred 642 men, women, and children before burning the village Oradour-sur-Glane to the ground? I assume you read the article you linked to.
Honestly based on your post I was not sure, so I went with the premise that you think it’s okay for Hamas to use civilian infrastructure because they’re basically french partisans.
Which I would argue they are not, because one (the partisans) were specifically targeting the invading force, while the other (Hamas) has a long history of specifically targeting civilians
I don’t think you’re as dense as you pretend to be. But for anyone deceived by straw-manning and performative confusion used as a rhetorical trick, let me be clear.
Using human shields has a specific an codified meaning; all humanitarian organizations who have investigated Hamas or any other Palestinian defense organization have found no evidence of this war crime. International law also makes clear that even if an armed force is improperly using civilian objects to shield itself, its opponent is still required to protect civilians from disproportionate harm.
Killing civilians is wrong. It is wrong when Hamas does it, it is therefore much more wrong when Israel, which has more resources and claims moral superiority, does it on a much larger scale, not just through retaliation bombings the last few weeks, but from before the seige of Gaza going back to the Nakba - massacring civilians, assisting their allies in massacring civilians, poisoning wells, using siege tactics to create an open-air prison and starvation conditions in Gaza, murdering activists, protesters, and journalists by the dozens. In their most obscene moments Israel has murdered children playing on a beach near a hotel populated by international journalists, and protected those murderers with their highest courts, but even more insidious is the culture of arbitrary detention and imprisonment of palestinian children. Not only does the IDF show complete disregard for Palestinian life when choosing their bombing targets, the inhabitants of Gaza rely on potable water and electricity from Israel – and now the Israeli authorities have them cut off. They have built an apartied system, and have engaged in collective punishment.
[Graph demonstrating the difference in scale of civilian deaths by the IDF and the lopsided human toll the Palestinian people have paid over the conflict]
As a commenter living in the west, my opinion has little influence on the tactics of Islamic authoritarians. Israel is much more sensitive to western public opinion. We are complicit with Israel’s crimes if we do not resist.
Hamas has little in common with the French Resistance. But the Palestinians are just as human as the people of Oradour-sur-Glane, and collective punishment is wrong whether it is done by Israel’s criminal leaders trying to distract attention from their political blunders, or Nazis. Apologia for collective punishment and disregard for human life is justification for fascism.
What you absolutely lose track of while arguing is not whether what the IDF is doing wrong - it is. It is the way you’re arguing.
This conflict won’t be resolved by blaming only one side while glorifying the other. And glorifying Hamas is what you are doing when you are equaling them to the French partisans.
I’m open to the actual argument, that being are they in fact using human shields, and what is the IDFs responsibility in protecting these civilians. And funnily enough I agree with you here. Killing civilians is wrong no matter who does it. As is collective punishment.
I’m not arguing or debating with you. That’s not what I’ve done, and I won’t do it. I’m talking past you.
while glorifying the other
I hope everyone who reads your words can recognize that you’re mischaracterizing my statements, and acting in bad faith. Anyone who encounters this exchange can use it as evidence that you are not worth serious engagement.
