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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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The most recent story I've seen about the war is US doctors talking about how many Palestinian children have been shot in the head by sniper fire, and the parents of those children say they were shot when playing, outside or inside. The story before that was the killing of Mohammad Bhar, where an intellectually disabled man was attacked by an Israeli military dog before they kicked his family out and made sure he died without receiving medical treatment (which the family discovered when they were finally allowed back to their house to see his maggot-ridden corpse).

Anecdotes that I am sure some of which happened (although one must be clear that "US doctor in Palestine" is an entirely self-selected group of pro-Hamas partisans). But that is not data.

Most people I know in real life consider those stories and the countless others like them barbaric and disgusting - we think members of our own armed forces who do those things deserve to go to prison for the rest of their life and lose all their honours and awards in the process.

I'd hope not if they are isolated incidents caused by fog of war and genuine mistakes, as I suspect is the case.

If that's what qualifies as meek and timid from your POV, I'd hate to see what it would take for you to actually criticise them.

Given the urban nature of the conflict and known Hamas tactics of hiding their military targets in civilian areas, we'd expect a lot of objective carnage, in the numbers. PLO numbers (almost certainly inflated) have total casualties at 39k. That is 20x less than what we'd expect if Israel was conducting the conflict with a "genocidal level of brutality". 39k is the total casualty number from a particularly bad year for the Army of South Vietnam, a theater where most of the conflict was not conducted in cities.

Even if Israel was acting without genocidal intent, but merely a casual disregard for civilian casualties total death would be far FAR higher. There aren't many places in Gaza that aren't legitimate military targets (on account of Hamas storing all their munitions in hospitals, schools, and apartments), if Israel just dropped dumb bombs on every building that they had good intel had weapons or Hamas agents in, there wouldn't be any buildings over 2 stories tall left in Gaza.

I don't think Israel is guilty of genocide, but casual disregard for human life seems to fit the bill. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

That is not what I get from the article at all (despite its author's obvious bias). What we have here is a military equivalent of comstat + incorporation of tracking of specific individuals. The very act of doing this is the opposite of casual disregard for human life, because by making targets, they are necessarily excluding targets, which in this sort of conflict is a demonstration of judiciousness. There is a good case for, instead, simply engaging in creeping artillery fire and leveling every building that is a possible Hamas fortification. And that is simply a military case. Far before you would be engaged in intentional targeting of civilians.