Arete @ Arete @lemmy.world

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193

Joined

2 yr. ago

Do you have any evidence that Gaza's population is young because Israel is killing off the adult population? Just thinking about it, the numbers don't seem anywhere close to adding up. There's 2.3 million people, half of which are minors. To make that 1/3, Israel would have had to kill 1.1 million adults over the past generation.

My understanding of "Mowing the grass" is knocking out military and trade infrastructure, not genocide.

On the contrary, it looks like Gaza is so young because their population has doubled in the past 20 years. Gazans are just having shitloads of children. If my math and data are right, does this change your view on the reasonableness of using child soldiers?

Regarding Israel not being responsible for "unreasonable" actions by Hamas, do you have a position? Was recruiting child soldiers a reasonable course of action pre-invasion?

US intelligence, a somewhat less ridiculous source, estimates 100,000+ dead, 200,000+ wounded. But who's to say.

I can accept that as we move backwards from effect to cause we can aggregate some level of responsibility, but where does that end? Israel wouldn't exist without the British, so are they responsible? To what extent is Hitler responsible? Or the Moorish invasion of Spain? Ultimately I guess we end up back in Egypt and it's the Pharaoh's fault?

Ultimately Hamas (and the Palestinian people, separately) are making choices and actions that are either appropriate or inappropriate to their situation. I don't find the use of child soldiers (and historically, child suicide bombers) to be a reasonable response, and so I don't hold Israel responsible.

And just to show that I am in fact operating in good faith here, I think the great match of return was an appropriate response, and hold Israel responsible for the resulting deaths.

It sounds like you'd hold Israel responsible for anything Hamas does because you feel Hamas is reacting to Israel's actions. This implicitly justifies all of Hamas's actions as "rightful" resistance. I think this both infantilizes Hamas and provides cover for them to do literally anything. If they nuked Paris, is that also Israel's fault? Is there maybe a middle ground where a group can simultaneously be oppressed and responsible for their own actions?

I actually dispute a lot of that, but I think we can distill this down to a simple question: In your opinion, could Israel stop Hamas from recruiting children without a full-scale war? If not, I think that settles both the sovereignty and responsibility questions.

Just speaking to your first point, prior to the invasion Israel was not in control of or administering Gaza. They had withdrawn 20 years prior and Gaza was operating independently albeit subject to blockades and trade interference. That's why we call it an invasion - they're literally at war to gain control. I don't think it's fair to hold Israel responsible for policing Hamas's internal recruitment policies during that period.

The average age in Gaza is like 17. Do you truly believe Hamas is out checking birth certificates? Statistically, half their forces are minors. Combined with estimates of Hamas military losses, that might make fully half of the 10k dead children Hamas child soldiers. While still horrifying, that meaningfully changes how the reported casualty counts should be interpreted. My point is, and has always been, that interpreting casualty numbers that a militant group releases with clear propaganda intent in a light most favorable to them is at best stupid and at worst willfully ignorant.

"known pianist" is such a bizarre phrase...

Hey that was an excellent response and I appreciate it - good faith arguments are few and far between here. To your points I disagree with one and agree with one.

I don't think Israel has any responsibility in preventing Hamas from recruiting child soldiers. If it was an internal terrorist group under Israel's jurisdiction, my opinion would flip. As an example, the US is responsible for preventing the Proud Boys from recruiting children, but are not responsible for Mexican cartels doing so.

To your second point, Israel absolutely is required to treat child soldiers as victims from the moment they are captured, surrender, or are meaningfully "separated" from Hamas. I haven't seen any evidence of this and personally doubt they are doing so. If we discover minors being interrogated in POW camps, that's going to be a huge problem.

Agreed, I went through that doc. It indicates that Canada is one of the few countries to affirm a "shoot first" policy. Most other countries don't explicitly have a policy given the subject. The assertion being made above was that child soldiers are never a legitimate target or combatant under international law. That person was incorrect.

I just did a fairly deep dive on this because it would be a horrible thing to argue about without a full understanding. You're incorrect - a child soldier is a combatant under every relevant international law I could find, from the Geneva convention onwards. Further, there have been numerous horrific cases of soldiers having to shoot armed children, none of which has been labeled a war crime.

A particularly concise quote from the European journal of international law:

The starting points are articles 4(A) of the 1949 Third Geneva Convention and article 43 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I, which provides for the definitional elements of what a combatant is under international humanitarian law, albeit overtly in the context of an international armed conflict. If a child is enrolled in the armed forces of a party to an international armed conflict, there seems to be no apparent basis in current international humanitarian law to characterize that child as anything other than as a combatant.

Child soldiers are legitimate military targets the second they pose a military threat. That's awful, but how war works. Have a nice day.

That's an insane take and I think you know that. Let's end this discussion here.

You do see how Hamas employing child soldiers and then lumping them in with dead civilian numbers to generate outrage is deceptive though, right? Because that was my point.

Not disputing any of that except for your conclusion. Hamas lumping their military losses in with civilians is literally using the fog of war to create confusion.

Oh is Israel reporting 25k dead Hamas soldiers then?

Whataboutism aside, Israel estimates 8k dead Hamas soldiers, so they literally do make a distinction.

I agree the civilian death toll is outsized, but just to play Devil's advocate here: Hamas is the group putting out the women and children numbers, and given they don't make a civilian/soldier distinction they almost certainly are including all soldiers under 18 in the "children" numbers. They want you to picture 10k murdered 6-year-olds, but we don't actually have a break down by age or child-soldier status. Hopefully we can get some visibility there soon.

For total count maybe, but they have never made a distinction between their own soldiers and civilians. They want the 25k number misinterpreted as a civilian death count, and have largely succeeded.