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Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. But it may be on the way there | Opinion
(www.haaretz.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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Amalek refers to an old enemy of the Jewish people from biblical times. The word has been reused again over time to refer to various enemies.
If a soldier refers to Hamas or all Palestinians, when chanting Amalek is unclear. Amalek chants can be interpreted as incitement because of this ambiguity, I guess.
Of course the IDF also has soldiers among their ranks with extreme views, who are more likely to commit warcrimes, or be flexible with rules of engagement. However even they need at least a plausible pretext before they can take action. Otherwise they can and are disciplined or prosecuted. The IDF has a well functioning internal investigation unit Military Advocate General. It even publishes investigations and their state on their website.
IDF soldiers can get away with excessive violence, but they always need at least a plausible military objective. Gaza had been converted into a fortress for two decades, so finding a military objective isn’t difficult. If a house has been used by a Hamas sniper, has a tunnel entrance, weapons were found in it, blocks a line of sight, it can be destroyed as a military objective.
Yeah I know what it means!
I bolded some for a hopefully obvious reason. Clearly the Amalekites were genocided. Worse they even killed the fucking animals.
So Netanyahu, not some random person with no importance, saying this is a sign of intent.
And it being repeated by soldiers on the ground means the message was received and embraced by the people with the weapons.
And all of this is ignoring a probably bigger point: intent is not usually stated openly. Even if they hadn't said it, the intent is clear in the nature of the attacks: choosing to kill supposed Hamas operatives in their homes along with their families rather than during military operations, destroying hospitals, holding up aid, shooting the people bringing the aid, shooting people collecting aid, damaging or destroying vital water facilities. Need I go on?
You don't need a signed affidavit to prove what is happening or to prove intent. Everyone knows what happens if you deprive people of the essentials of life on purpose.
Come on now.
All of this is just a bit weird. I can tell that you trust the IDF, yes, but aren't we talking about intent to commit genocide?
The fact that you can pick a "plausible target" is not exactly proof this isn't intentional genocide is it? I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you but if you're committing a genocide it's probably a fair bet you will also lie about it. The tunnels etc are the perfect wishy washy defence for which no evidence is presented.
Read the Guardian article linked above. The choice to kill innocents is INTENTIONAL. It was done for the sake of ease.
Sure Netanyahu is a bad guy. He intentionally uses this statement to leave room for interpretation. The context for this is Netanyahu repeatedly stressing that the war is against Hamas, not the Palestinian people
Intent for genocide is always stated very openly and publicly in historic cases. Check out Rwanda, where the radio called people to butcher their neighbors.
Paper trails exist for historic genocides. The Holocaust is probably the best to show this. The documentation by the perpetrators was minute.
Israel doesn’t know where every Palestinian combatant is at every moment. Palestinian militants are very aware of Israeli surveillance and have lots of techniques to evade it. For example fighters walk around in civilian clothes and without weapons. Weapons depots have been propositioned in houses all over the place. Using civilian infrastructure like schools, mosques, hospitals as cover for military operations is standard and well documented.
When they move underground in tunnels and pop out a minute for an attack, they are hard to hit. Attacking them while on the move has a high risk of collateral damage and errors during targeting. Killing them in their homes is often a way to minimize risk to uninvolved civilians. It also destroys any weapons, information, and other terrorist equipment stored in their home. Militants know going to their houses risks their families lives. Use of human shields is a war crime and does not protect a military objective from attack.
Hospitals are well documented to have been used as military bases by Hamas and other groups. It’s part of the pattern how they use civilian infrastructure for military purposes. This makes them valid military objectives. For all attacks on hospitals, there have been evacuation calls and periods beforehand. Hospitals etc. could have just been handed over without a fight to minimize damage.
The biggest obstacle to aid delivery is internal distribution inside Gaza. International aid organizations had reduced their activities in northern Gaza because of repeated highjacking of their convoys by armed groups. So you had aid piling up behind the Israeli checkpoints inside Gaza.
There’s lots of other misleading reporting about this. For example trucks, who were blocked from entering because of contraband items. These simply drove to the back of the queue, unloaded, remove some items, reloaded, and then waited for the next inspection. This lead to delays, but almost everything got in in the end. Yes, some of the soldiers involved in this were abusing their power for this.
The overall delivery of aid was pretty good compared to other war zones. Of course there was widespread suffering and aid delivery could have been better.
There are a handful of incidents you might refer to here. Some of them were crowds rushing soldiers, others were known terrorist gunmen hired as security or guides by aid NGOs.
That said, the IDF has been much less restrained in this war compared to previous ones. There are numerous cases of excessive violence and war crimes.
There are many things that make this war different from other wars. Usually people flee war zones. This wasn’t really possible for Gazans that much. The border to Egypt and Israel was closed expect small numbers. Hamas also hindered civilians from leaving their homes at times. Hamas whole strategy for this war was to embed as deeply into the civilian infrastructure as possible and use the civilian population as shield. The Hamas administration has an outright disregard for dead Palestinians. They even celebrate them as martyrs and use them as tools in the media war. The more dead Palestinians, the more sympathy they can get. It’s a perverse incentive. However it tracks with Hamas strategy to focus on making Gaza a fortress by building the biggest bunker and tunnel system in the history of warfare.
That means Gazans are fucked by both the disregard of their own government as well the enemy armed forces.
Killing innocents is legal under international humanitarian law, if a military objective is present and proportionality is respected. Hiding among civilians does not protect combatants from attack. It happens in every war. Proportionality assessment is difficult and in wartime information is usually incomplete and decisions need to be made quickly.
Hamas itself has shown plenty of video footage of both the construction and the use of tunnels for military operations and weapons storage. Check out the martyred Hamas fighters from previous wars. They very often have tunnel builder on their résumés.
Can’t prove a negative. Israel has been accused of genocide for decades. You show the same way of thinking, where the judgment is already passed before seeing the evidence.
If Israel was trying to kill as many Palestinians as possible, the numbers of dead would be much higher. Palestinians with small arms were able kill more than 1000 Israelis in two days on October 7th.
The numbers of dead reported by Hamas (including missing) Gazans is now at 62,000. The IDF claims 15,000 killed militants. If you believe both numbers that comes out as a ratio of civilians to militants of around 1:3. For warfare in a dense urban environment 1:10 is more typical.
Now, the war is terrible and has caused extreme suffering. Warcrimes definitely happened, possibly crimes against humanity as well. It‘s not a genocide though.