that frankly isn’t the situation that we’re dealing with. the idea that israel either has to let Hamas operate unchallenged or kill civilians is a vast oversimplification of how conflict works, and giving the IDF blanket permission to kill civilians if it also hurts Hamas is fucking monstrous. you suck.
I would argue a blanket statement of “killing civilians is always reprehensible” is a vast oversimplification of how conflict works.
Yeah, it sucks, war sucks, and it often turns out that the least bad option involves a decision where innocent people die. I know it feels like a hot take to say we shouldn’t give blanket permission to kill civilians, but it turns out no one is claiming that.
This thread makes it clear that lemmy commenters are not equipped to debate the vanilla trolly problem, let alone the Iranian/Palestinian conflict.
“killing civilians is always reprehensible” as a moral statement has nothing to do with the mechanics of conflict. i’m telling you what i believe. giving room for acceptable civilian casualties in a moral framework provides a ready made justification for bad actors, that so long as they present a situation as looking enough like the acceptable kind of civilian casualty then its fine that an innocent person was killed.
i am taking issue with the rhetoric of acceptable casualties. no. there are only casualties, and they are all horrific. rhetoric that is not an explicit condemnation of war can be used as a justification for it.
Anytime you are doing any kind of military or police action within a civilian area there is always the risk of unintended civilian harm.
If police and military forces took this doctorine that any amount of risk is too much then they simply would be unable to operate.
There has to be a certain amount of acceptable civilian risk and that should be proportional to the threat you are attempting to stop.
Just to clarify, I’m not advocating that Israel is taking acceptable risks. But I am advocating that those risks will always exist with ANY police or military action and the primary debate is over where the red line of acceptable/unacceptable is.
all civilian casualties are inadmissible. its not wrong, its a moral imperative, and one that the state of Israel is blatantly disregarding. the framing that “okay, these civilian causalities are okay” is fucking monstrous, and gives a ready made excuse for Israel to escalate violence in Gaza.
No one is saying “all these civilian casualties are ok”, stop oversimplifilying the situation.
I know it’s tempting to make blanket statements about moral imperatives from your armchair, religion has been doing that to us for centuries, but it turns out the real world is actually full of moral dilemmas, where there IS no outcome where no one dies, and all you can do is pick the least bad option.
“All civilian casualties are inadmissible” is the coldest of cold takes, right there next to, “well I don’t think anyone should have a war at all!” Like, great, thanks, why didn’t anyone think of that?
i don’t think anyone should have a war at all. there, are you happy? i’m frankly uninterested in litigating what hypothetical circumstances under which it might be okay to kill a civilian.
You’re right, the Israeli should just say “too bad guys, they have hostages, we can’t shoot in that direction, check mate” and let hamas slaughter them
the scenario you’re imagining doesn’t exist. this isn’t a rock paper scissors thing, where Israel either shoots through hostages to kill insurgents or dies themselves. if Hamas is hiding amongst civilians, they aren’t attacking Israel, they’re hiding. if they’re attacking Israel, they aren’t in a crowd of Palestinian civilians. the IDF does not need to have a shootout with civilians in the crossfire to protect its people. the IDF does not need to bomb civilian residences to wage war against an insurgency.
you are so willing to conflate the two, assume that Israel must kill or be killed themselves. that is a fucking falsehood. there is so fucking much a military force can do to defend against attack that doesn’t involve shelling apartment buildings, shooting into crowds, and otherwise being monsters.
for what it’s worth i think we’ve about exhausted what can be said on this topic past your own comment; i don’t think further responses between you and @khalic@beehaw.org will really go anywhere and i’ve already nuked a bunch of the discussion downthread because it devolved completely.
oh, sorry, did you not say killing crowds of civilians in the hopes that a hamas member was among them was a totally excusable act, and labelled as just unfortunate collateral damage in war?
I could have sworn you said that, but my lemmy app does bug out sometimes, maybe I clicked on the wrong comment.
So you dont think killing crowds of innocent people in the hope that there might have been a terrorist among them is excusable?
If you hide ammunition, fighters amongst civilians, to use the as meat shield or their deaths as propaganda, they become collateral damage.
Huh. Weird, that looks like your text copy and pasted right here, where you say that killing civilians under the claim of targeting “hidden fighters” among their ranks is excusable collateral damage of war.
Same argument used to defend the atomic bombing of hiroshima, another well known war crime. The city had a well established military headquarters and arms depot, tucked away in the center of civilian housing and business, after all. Just more collateral damage, right?
Oh so you say the Israeli should not shoot at the rocket launchers and shooters in the crowd? They should just die because “check mate” you can’t kill civilians? You just want to see more jews dead… (/s)
Good now we both have said choking stuff that’s not precise nor in good faith. Where do we go from here?
I’ve made my point clear, what I’m engaging with is your reductio ad absurdum you’re using since your first reply.
Let’s do it anyway: no, bombing a crowd because there may be someone hostile inside is not ok. If there someone shooting rockets at you from that crowd, in a war, yes, you should try to kill that guy even if it hits civilians. Otherwise YOU WILL DIE… that’s warfare… it’s horrible.
Now there is a mountain of nuance that i didn’t address because it’s a post on lemmy, and picking one of those nuanced scenarios and trying to make it my whole argument is fallacious and dishonest.
No, see, cause Im not some sadistic loser, I understand you can address threats in a crowd without killing the crowd.
There are plenty of non lethal incapacitation weapons that are specifically designed for hostiles surrounded by civilians. There are plenty of options for not killing innocent people that arent “guess I gotta die!”
You arent being argued against in bad faith, youre just being argued against by decent human beings. I know, shocking for you, but normal folk arent excited to kill palestinians.
What is it with beehaw users and being super eager to kill kids?
Youre the 5th Ive seen who is just so damn excited to excuse killing civilians. You understand thats not a normal thing for rational adults to want, yes?
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !news@beehaw.org
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
Where possible, post the original source of information.
If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
What do you propose? Let them shoot from there and not retaliate? That’s how you get killed you genious.
They even do roof knocking to evacuate people ffs…
that frankly isn’t the situation that we’re dealing with. the idea that israel either has to let Hamas operate unchallenged or kill civilians is a vast oversimplification of how conflict works, and giving the IDF blanket permission to kill civilians if it also hurts Hamas is fucking monstrous. you suck.
I would argue a blanket statement of “killing civilians is always reprehensible” is a vast oversimplification of how conflict works.
Yeah, it sucks, war sucks, and it often turns out that the least bad option involves a decision where innocent people die. I know it feels like a hot take to say we shouldn’t give blanket permission to kill civilians, but it turns out no one is claiming that.
This thread makes it clear that lemmy commenters are not equipped to debate the vanilla trolly problem, let alone the Iranian/Palestinian conflict.
“killing civilians is always reprehensible” as a moral statement has nothing to do with the mechanics of conflict. i’m telling you what i believe. giving room for acceptable civilian casualties in a moral framework provides a ready made justification for bad actors, that so long as they present a situation as looking enough like the acceptable kind of civilian casualty then its fine that an innocent person was killed.
i am taking issue with the rhetoric of acceptable casualties. no. there are only casualties, and they are all horrific. rhetoric that is not an explicit condemnation of war can be used as a justification for it.
Anytime you are doing any kind of military or police action within a civilian area there is always the risk of unintended civilian harm.
If police and military forces took this doctorine that any amount of risk is too much then they simply would be unable to operate.
There has to be a certain amount of acceptable civilian risk and that should be proportional to the threat you are attempting to stop.
Just to clarify, I’m not advocating that Israel is taking acceptable risks. But I am advocating that those risks will always exist with ANY police or military action and the primary debate is over where the red line of acceptable/unacceptable is.
That’s not what I said. There needs to be heavy pressure on them from the world. I’m putting pressure on my political representative exactly for that.
But a blanket statement like: “all civilian casualties are inadmissible” is just wrong.
all civilian casualties are inadmissible. its not wrong, its a moral imperative, and one that the state of Israel is blatantly disregarding. the framing that “okay, these civilian causalities are okay” is fucking monstrous, and gives a ready made excuse for Israel to escalate violence in Gaza.
No one is saying “all these civilian casualties are ok”, stop oversimplifilying the situation.
I know it’s tempting to make blanket statements about moral imperatives from your armchair, religion has been doing that to us for centuries, but it turns out the real world is actually full of moral dilemmas, where there IS no outcome where no one dies, and all you can do is pick the least bad option.
“All civilian casualties are inadmissible” is the coldest of cold takes, right there next to, “well I don’t think anyone should have a war at all!” Like, great, thanks, why didn’t anyone think of that?
i don’t think anyone should have a war at all. there, are you happy? i’m frankly uninterested in litigating what hypothetical circumstances under which it might be okay to kill a civilian.
No one was asking you to.
You’re right, the Israeli should just say “too bad guys, they have hostages, we can’t shoot in that direction, check mate” and let hamas slaughter them
the scenario you’re imagining doesn’t exist. this isn’t a rock paper scissors thing, where Israel either shoots through hostages to kill insurgents or dies themselves. if Hamas is hiding amongst civilians, they aren’t attacking Israel, they’re hiding. if they’re attacking Israel, they aren’t in a crowd of Palestinian civilians. the IDF does not need to have a shootout with civilians in the crossfire to protect its people. the IDF does not need to bomb civilian residences to wage war against an insurgency.
you are so willing to conflate the two, assume that Israel must kill or be killed themselves. that is a fucking falsehood. there is so fucking much a military force can do to defend against attack that doesn’t involve shelling apartment buildings, shooting into crowds, and otherwise being monsters.
for what it’s worth i think we’ve about exhausted what can be said on this topic past your own comment; i don’t think further responses between you and @khalic@beehaw.org will really go anywhere and i’ve already nuked a bunch of the discussion downthread because it devolved completely.
This is the mentality of the people who get excited by war because their stocks will go up.
Youre fucked in the head mate, killing civilians isnt justified because you think there might be a hamas member in the crowd.
You’re misquoting me on purpose… very convincing…
oh, sorry, did you not say killing crowds of civilians in the hopes that a hamas member was among them was a totally excusable act, and labelled as just unfortunate collateral damage in war?
I could have sworn you said that, but my lemmy app does bug out sometimes, maybe I clicked on the wrong comment.
So you dont think killing crowds of innocent people in the hope that there might have been a terrorist among them is excusable?
My words are available to you. They speak for themselves. Mischaracterize them all you want.
Mischaracterize? Im practically quoting you.
Huh. Weird, that looks like your text copy and pasted right here, where you say that killing civilians under the claim of targeting “hidden fighters” among their ranks is excusable collateral damage of war.
Same argument used to defend the atomic bombing of hiroshima, another well known war crime. The city had a well established military headquarters and arms depot, tucked away in the center of civilian housing and business, after all. Just more collateral damage, right?
Again, arguing in bad faith. Let me do the same:
Oh so you say the Israeli should not shoot at the rocket launchers and shooters in the crowd? They should just die because “check mate” you can’t kill civilians? You just want to see more jews dead… (/s)
Good now we both have said choking stuff that’s not precise nor in good faith. Where do we go from here?
You can’t just accuse other people of bad faith arguing when you won’t even back your own point up.
I’ve made my point clear, what I’m engaging with is your reductio ad absurdum you’re using since your first reply.
Let’s do it anyway: no, bombing a crowd because there may be someone hostile inside is not ok. If there someone shooting rockets at you from that crowd, in a war, yes, you should try to kill that guy even if it hits civilians. Otherwise YOU WILL DIE… that’s warfare… it’s horrible.
Now there is a mountain of nuance that i didn’t address because it’s a post on lemmy, and picking one of those nuanced scenarios and trying to make it my whole argument is fallacious and dishonest.
No, see, cause Im not some sadistic loser, I understand you can address threats in a crowd without killing the crowd.
There are plenty of non lethal incapacitation weapons that are specifically designed for hostiles surrounded by civilians. There are plenty of options for not killing innocent people that arent “guess I gotta die!”
You arent being argued against in bad faith, youre just being argued against by decent human beings. I know, shocking for you, but normal folk arent excited to kill palestinians.
Again with the personal attacks while I’m trying to explain war.
Non lethal incapacitation… yeah keep watching movies…
Oh then, every one should take a baby when going to war. I’m sure this would work.
It’s a warzone, not a Bobo dream like in your head
What is it with beehaw users and being super eager to kill kids?
Youre the 5th Ive seen who is just so damn excited to excuse killing civilians. You understand thats not a normal thing for rational adults to want, yes?
He originally posted from his kbin account and then switched to a beehaw account. Either way what he is advocating for is horrific.