naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
There is a serious question of whether Hamas was ever using “human shields” during the air bombings in the current conflict, given that they have 300 miles of semi-sufficient infrastructure underground and it was not in their interest to scare the Gazan population from fleeing infrastructure. If the members are overwhelmingly underground, safe from bunker busters, then they were not at all using human shields, and Israel was just punishing the civilian population.
They will definitely be using “human shields” during the ground invasion which we have already seen, but this is no different than how various other rebellions have used human shields, like the Zionists against the British and the resistance against the Nazis.
Another question is whether Israel is actually targeting Hamas members with reasonable precision, when they can just claim an ambulance convoy was being used by Hamas and their supporters will simply believe them. There is almost never evidence provided to the public for these strikes.
The fact that out of a densely populated city of two million, using modern missiles, even the Hamas health ministry declares only 9000 people have died suggests an extreme degree of targeting. The allies killed 25,000 in a night in Dresden, which had a population of perhaps 800,000 at that time. The British lost 50,000 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, of whom 20,000 were killed.
If Israel wanted to, they could have killed hundreds of thousands by now. But even Hamas has alleged they have killed fewer than 10,000.
The ‘number of children’ argument is ridiculous because civilian casualty demographics depend on wider demographics. Civilian casualties in Niger will, as a proportion of the total, involve more children than civilian casualties in South Korea will.
Gaza has a very high total fertility rate (and it was still higher years ago), so of course child casualties will be high. Half the population is children, it is unsurprising that children will make up a substantial proportion of civilian casualties.
But Israel can’t get away with killing that many people. If they tried to “Tokyo Firebomb” Gaza they risk being Dresden’d by Hezbollah, not to mention further alienated by Arab countries.
The question is perhaps not whether Israel is targeting people, but whether those they are targeting are actually militants. Are they targeting the innocent families of journalists and Hamas members? There are claims they have intentionally targeted journalists. If you were a member of Hamas with 300 miles of semi-sufficient tunnels impervious to missiles, wouldn’t you hang out in the tunnels a couple weeks after launching your largest attack in 50 years? Isnt this pretty much a given?Remember, these tunnels are stocked with many months of supplies, and there have been 7000 strikes in Gaza and there are 25k Hamas combatants. It seems more probable to me that these combatants are in their tunnels, and that whoever Israel strikes is probably not a militant most of the time.
From what I can gather on population pyramids, Gaza is 47% under 18 and Israel is 33% under 18. But that Israel figure also includes Arabs so maybe the real value we’re looking for is much lower?
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Notes -
There is a serious question of whether Hamas was ever using “human shields” during the air bombings in the current conflict, given that they have 300 miles of semi-sufficient infrastructure underground and it was not in their interest to scare the Gazan population from fleeing infrastructure. If the members are overwhelmingly underground, safe from bunker busters, then they were not at all using human shields, and Israel was just punishing the civilian population.
They will definitely be using “human shields” during the ground invasion which we have already seen, but this is no different than how various other rebellions have used human shields, like the Zionists against the British and the resistance against the Nazis.
Another question is whether Israel is actually targeting Hamas members with reasonable precision, when they can just claim an ambulance convoy was being used by Hamas and their supporters will simply believe them. There is almost never evidence provided to the public for these strikes.
The fact that out of a densely populated city of two million, using modern missiles, even the Hamas health ministry declares only 9000 people have died suggests an extreme degree of targeting. The allies killed 25,000 in a night in Dresden, which had a population of perhaps 800,000 at that time. The British lost 50,000 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, of whom 20,000 were killed.
If Israel wanted to, they could have killed hundreds of thousands by now. But even Hamas has alleged they have killed fewer than 10,000.
The ‘number of children’ argument is ridiculous because civilian casualty demographics depend on wider demographics. Civilian casualties in Niger will, as a proportion of the total, involve more children than civilian casualties in South Korea will.
Gaza has a very high total fertility rate (and it was still higher years ago), so of course child casualties will be high. Half the population is children, it is unsurprising that children will make up a substantial proportion of civilian casualties.
But Israel can’t get away with killing that many people. If they tried to “Tokyo Firebomb” Gaza they risk being Dresden’d by Hezbollah, not to mention further alienated by Arab countries.
The question is perhaps not whether Israel is targeting people, but whether those they are targeting are actually militants. Are they targeting the innocent families of journalists and Hamas members? There are claims they have intentionally targeted journalists. If you were a member of Hamas with 300 miles of semi-sufficient tunnels impervious to missiles, wouldn’t you hang out in the tunnels a couple weeks after launching your largest attack in 50 years? Isnt this pretty much a given?Remember, these tunnels are stocked with many months of supplies, and there have been 7000 strikes in Gaza and there are 25k Hamas combatants. It seems more probable to me that these combatants are in their tunnels, and that whoever Israel strikes is probably not a militant most of the time.
From what I can gather on population pyramids, Gaza is 47% under 18 and Israel is 33% under 18. But that Israel figure also includes Arabs so maybe the real value we’re looking for is much lower?
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