Why genocide is so hard to prove It's complicated

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

[elleng]

1. because INTENT is always difficult to prove.

[Think. Again.]

2. Yep,...

...as long as netanyahu keeps pretending to be aiming for hamas operatives, he's free and clear of the official "Genocide" charge (unless there's a tape out there or somethng...).

[unblock]

6. Because reality is far more complicated than most people care to acknowledge

Say the idf hits a building that hamas claims only has civilians.

Who gave the order?
Was it a war crime by a single soldier?
a unit that didn't follow procedures?
Bad intel?
Accident?
Planted false intel?
Did hamas just fire from that location and idf was returning fire?
Are any of the civilians actually part of hamas, just didn't have a weapon on them at the time?
What are idf procedures to minimize civilian casualties?
Was this action within those procedures or not?
Are those procedures reasonable?
Did Hamas otherwise use civilians as shields?
Was it on specific orders from higher up, or general encouragement to attack in a way that is insufficiently careful regarding civilians?

Etc.

Also keep in mind that there's a shit ton of propaganda going on. Everyone is lying, Hamas is obviously fighting a propaganda war (they have to, they can't win on the battlefield), Israel is surely lying as well, reporters are practically guaranteed to be only getting one side of the story at best, and at least a dozen countries are meddling in this and adding to the propaganda. U.s., Russia, china, Saudi Arabia, etc., all with competing motivations and goals and most of them hoping to keep the war going and also to ruin Israel's image.

"Fog of war" doesn't begin to explain all that we do not know about what is going on.

I wish people would not feel so confident in extreme statements, we are quite likely to learn that the truth differs from the headlines. It's *always* that way in war, and in the Middle East, even more so.

[Think. Again.]

7. Here's an extreme statement for ya...

What netanyahu is doing is the literal definition of overkill.

[unblock]

8. Ok, but then spell out what he should be doing.

First, I've never been a fan of Netanyahu and I'm certainly not going to start now. And I'll buy that there are too many civilian deaths. Zero civilian deaths would be the ideal, of course, but in practice, some civilians die in any war.

So given that hamas likes to keep their weapons near civilians, hide among civilians, launch attacks from civilian buildings, and their main tactic is to lure Israel into attacking civilians because they're more vested in the propaganda war that they can win as opposed to the military war that they can't, how exactly should Israel proceed?

Israel could certainly help their own image by making a public order to the idf to be much more diligent about trying to avoid civilian casualties, though it's not clear how much, if any, that would help actually reduce civilian casualties.

This shit is complicated and there are no easy answers.

[Think. Again.]

9. I wouldn't pretend to know anything about military strategy...

....but I know enough to see that;

1. Waaaaay too many civilians are dying.

2. Gaza is now structurally unfunctional.

3. Not enough hamas operatives have been stopped to justify continuing the current approach.

At the risk of getting completely bashed, I'll throw out a possibility that those points suggest, and that some people have been discussing; IS rightwing netanyahu intentionally trying to completely eliminate Palestine as a culture?

I'll just leave that question there.

[unblock]

10. Not sure he really has a strategy beyond hoping the idf gives him some kind of "victory" to save his career

Because he's toast without that. Polling around 20%. Not sure he cares much beyond that at this point.

Surely he realizes that he can't destroy all of Palestinian culture by leveling some buildings and killing maybe 1% of the population. So far at of what he's accomplishing is turning international opinion against Israel, and raising the next generation of Palestinian terrorists.

Whatever they are doing right wrong or otherwise on the ground, they are losing the propaganda war big time.

[Tetrachloride]

3. let me guess: lawyers

[elleng]

4. Oh right, we're evil, seeking to ascertain intention of actors.

[Tetrachloride]

5. i wonder if lawyers are trying