Supporters of Israel's actions in Gaza - why do you think the Geneva convention should not apply?
The Geneva convention was established to minimise atrocities in conflicts. Israeli settlements in Gaza are illegal and violate the Geneva convention. Legality of Israeli settlements Article 51 of the Geneva convention prohibits indiscriminate attacks on civilian population yet Israel attacked hospitals with children inside. Whether you agree or not that Hamas were present, children cannot be viewed as combatants.so when no care was taken to protect them, does this not constitute a violation? According to save the children, 1 in 50 children in Gaza had been killed or injured. This is a very high proportion and does not show care being taken to prevent such casualties and therefore constitutes a violation.
So my question is simply, do supporters of Israel no longer support our believe in the Geneva convention, did you never, or how do you reconcile Israeli breaches of the Geneva convention? For balance I should add "do you not believe such violations are occurring and if so how did you come to this position?"
Answers other than only "they have the right to go after Hamas " please. The issue is how they are going after Hamas, not whether they should or not.
EDIT: Title changed to remove ambiguity about supporting Israel vs supporting their actions
In the interest of moderation transparency, we've had a couple of reports about this post.
Here's my thinking about it:
Community purpose
Rule 1:
Rule 3:
On balance, I'm going to let the post remain up.
Thank you but if the discussion does start going toxic, please do take it down.
I'm an avid palestine supporter, but what's the point of this thread? You know there are no Israel supporters here save for trolls, and this isn't a question, it's a rant.
Fourpackets posted a complete thought that doesn't seem to be trolling
Edit who the fuck downvotes this
There are quite a few on Lemmy.
One is a mod on News on Lemmy.world
The Geneva Convention is clearly Hamas.
Everybody I don't like is clearly Hamas
The Geneva conventions are not monolithic documents, and they are not completely uncontroversial. I believe the article 51 you refer to is in a 1978 addon protocol that Israel has not ratified. For reference, there is a different article 51 in the original 1949 conventions, that talks about when an occupying army may conscript civilian labor.
Like any other international treaties, the conventions only apply to countries that have signed on and ratified the treaties. The United States and Israel have not ratified the additional protocol, so from their perspective they are not bound by the text.
The original 1949 conventions do have protections for civilians, but they are weaker protections. Ratiometric evidence of civilian casualties is heartbreaking, but unfortunately simply not relevant to the 1949 conventions. Under those rules, if a facility is used by your enemy to harm you, you can attack that facility. Period.
IDF is always careful to portray how they scrupulously follow the 1949 conventions when they speak to the media. Clear violations that become public are referred to investigation.
As in any war, some elements of IDF are almost certainly violating the conventions. But as a USian I don't think I'll get close to understanding the truth any time soon. I basically don't trust any news source coming out of that region any more.
Here's a devils advocate type answer. On balance, I err on the side of Israel rather than Hamas but am not a die hard supporter. I say that because comments below may appear to make me out as such, but I'm just trying to represent the coherent argument for the sake of discussion rather than the strength of my own views per se. For the record I regard the suffering of innocent people in Gaza as grotesque.
Settlements.
The justification for this behaviour is complicated but essentially amounts to the belief that the Geneva conventions were not drafted with Israel's particular dilemma in mind. The Geneva conventions were drafted by European powers for whom the annexing of territory was strategic and imperially motivated rather than existential. Israel does not believe it can have security if a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank. The justification for this being Arab/Egyptian aggression in '48, '56, '63, and '73. Not to mention more recent state sponsored actions by Hezbollah, Hamas et al. A Palestinian state on the West Bank could maintain a standing army on the Israeli border, could invite other Arab nations' armies to base themselves there. Echos of the previous conflicts listed above. This is unconscionable for Israel, one only needs to glance at the map to see how indefensible its position is if a foreign army was amassed on the West Bank. Ignoring settler activity or evicting Palestinians if a single member of their family commits any kind of act against Israel is just a convenient way to achieve the larger goal. The settlers of course are a lot more religiously / ethnically motivated. The government is too but I think realpolitik plays a larger role.
Gaza civilians
The capricious and deliberate targeting of civilians and children with no other goal is of course horrific. Israel of course will maintain that that's not what they're doing, that they are acting on intelligence against Hamas who are using people as human shields. Which is also horrific but is a different type of justification. Everyone of course will have decided in their own minds if they believe what Israel says about its intelligence or whether they believe what Hamas says about their lack of presence in an area.
If we assume for a moment that Israel is being honest about that particular aspect: that they are ok killing innocent people and children if Hamas die too. What's the justification for that? I think their view is that they're dealing with a problem that no Western country has to deal with. Britain has seen maybe a hundred deaths over 25 years from about 20 Islamic extremists. The US has seen 3000+ deaths from a similar number. In both cases the number of Islamic extremists are small enough that you could remember their individual names. Israel on the other hand has ~25,000 signed up members of Al Qassam terror brigades on their doorstep. That is a different level of threat all together, by three orders of magnitude. Hamas will not engage with the Israeli military in a standing battle because they would lose. So they are engaging in a guerrilla type strategy where shielding themselves behind civilians is an integral part so they can opportunistically strike out in suicidal attacks. It doesn't happen accidentally, but repeatedly, it's a core part of their strategy. A state needs to decide whether they're ok with Al Qassam brigades existing or killing the civilians they surround themselves with. It's a shitty choice, but it is a choice Israel sees as Hamas' when they choose their mode of fighting. Leaving Hamas free to plot their next maraudering attack on Israeli civilians is unconscionable, so the death of Hamas human shields has to be ok. There isn't another way.
This is a situation so unfamiliar to the West that it is easy to see it as capricious and brutal, horrific and evil. And the death of innocent people are those things, but one has to see the trolley dilemma in full.
America actually has been in this type of situation, only once as far as I'm aware, and it provides a useful insight into how Western countries justify themselves when confronted with the same dilemma. On 9/11, United 93 was identified as under terrorist control and inbound to Washington DC. Fighter jets were dispatched to shoot it down. The deaths of the 40 innocent people on board would obviously be horrific, but one can see the logic that letting a terrorist controlled plane be flown into a densely populated city would be to cause the deaths of hundreds of even thousands.
Was the mission to shoot down United 93 the right one? Was it evil? What if those 40 civilians had been 40 orphans on their way to be placed with foster families? How completely horrific does the situation have to be before it's better to let the terrorists fly they plane into hundreds or thousands of people?
Israel sees itself caught in this kind of dilemma 24/7 with Hamas. Each signed up member has the proven intention to cross the border and maraude around killing grandparents, babies, children. So Israel calculates that, regrettably, it is necessary to kill them and the civilian shield they themselves have created. It is a shitty awful dilemma with evil on both sides, but Israel feels justified holding Hamas to blame for their human shields deaths the same way most of the American public would have blamed Al-Qaeda if the US Air force had managed to shoot down United 93. (The fact that in reality events meant they didn't have to doesn't take away from the logic of what they were prepared to do)
This is a loaded question. It pretends every supporter of Israel also supports the current government, the illegal occupation, the ongoing war, and throwing the Geneva convention out.
I support Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state and a homeland for the Jewish people.
But I support none of the above.
And no, I don't have a good solution for this age-old conflict either.
Weird way to call a stolen property lol
Everywhere has been stolen, not to excuse the bullshit happening on the West Bank but still
Yes but my tax money paid today didn't support other crimes. They do support Israel and indont like it.
It's not stolen. Brief history lesson:
The lands of Israel and Jordan used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans sided with the Nazis.
Brief aside: we know the Arabs believe that if you win a war, you win the land, and if you lose a war, you lose the land, because that's what they want to happen with Israel. So this principle applies to them as well.
When the Nazis lost, the Ottomans also lost, and that's where the British and French Mandates began. The land was no longer owned by the Arabs because, according to the principle they live by, they lost the war, therefore they lost the land.
The British Mandate for Palestine comprised an amount of previously Ottoman land, of which they allocated one third to the new country Israel (which includes Gaza and the West Bank), and two thirds to the new country Transjordan, later renamed Jordan. The land of Israel was not stolen by the Jews from the Arabs, it was lost by the Arabs in a war they lost. But they got two thirds of that land back, i.e. Jordan.
The Ottoman empire sided with the Nazis?
How has no one commented on this ahistorical nonsense.
The Ottoman empire dissolved in 1922.
After The Great War aka World War One, the British took over the area called Mandatory Palestine in 1920.
Everything about this post is insanely wrong.
Perhaps you could update the Wikipedia article with your knowledge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Powers
"It consisted of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria; this was also known as the Quadruple Alliance"
For the historical record:
https://lemm.ee/u/letsgo intentionally confusing the Central Powers with the Axis and deceptively editing a quote to try and sell the lie.
All in order to justify a genocide.
Maybe you could update it with yours:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine
Also, this is literally copied from your link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Powers
Jesus, the link you provided was FOR the great war.
Did you even read it? Of course you did, you bad faith liar, the text literally from before your quotes was the time period that you intentionally removed.
On the tiny miniscule chance you actually believed the nonsense you spouted, do you see that you were either taught completely erroneously, or outright lied too?
EDIT: To address the racism of the original post:
Do you think Ottomans are Arab? Do you think Persians are Arab?
The whole point of Lawrence of Arabia was the attempt to get the Arabic people to mutiny against the Ottoman empire.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt
Maybe you can read this and actually learn that Arab isn't a generic term for middle easterner.
Well, I'm not intentionally lying but I may have been misinformed. TIL, thanks.
I apologize for the accusations of lying and bad faith arguments.
If you actually want to learn about the history of the area, these are good starts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936%E2%80%931939_Arab_revolt_in_Palestine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
The long and short of it is that the British promised the Arab's self determination, and then broke the promise to give the land to Zionist immigrants mostly from Europe who absolutely stole the land from the indigenous people, with terrorism being one of the tools used. See the Irgun, Heganah, and Lehi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(militant_group)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah
Fun fact: The first Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, organized kidnapping operations for the Irgun before the establishment of Israel. He was also in charge during the massacre of Deir Yassin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin
It's remarkable how respectful you are of Arab views that you don't also hold but which happen to be convenient for you.
They also completely lied.
The Ottoman empire didn't exist after the Great War.
Hamas was using Al Shifa hospital as a base, tunnel entrance, and torture site.
Using human shields is war crime. Torture is a war crime. Killing your hostages is a war crime. Raping prisoners is a war crime.
It basically turns into "who is committing less serious war crimes" and attacking the place where they torture prisoners and use them as human shields, imo, is a valid military attack.