Hamas Attacks, Israel Responds

I honestly think they do not know. But as I said above, one of the reasons to minimize it is to have more reasons to continue with Southern Gaza operation. If they claim they killed 1/2 or 2/3 of Hamas fighters, there's less reason to continue to expand the operation beyond Northern half. All that said, I do not think they know and the 2k number might be some concrete count of those they know to be "official" Hamas fighters.

 

Thanks for the explanation.

The urban nature of this war, and the fact that Hamas is both an insurgency AND a government likely exacerbates matters.

I do think the Israels made a mistake going in with a goal of totally destroying/degrading Hamas; how do they back down from that if they come to realize that Hamas has deeper roots/is harder to completely destroy than they hoped?

 

Real-time war casualty numbers are really hard to get right. When the Bosnian War--which was heavily covered--ended in 1995, it was widely agreed that over 200,000 people had been killed during the war. In the end, it turned out to be roughly half that.

 

You don't accept his contention that he was replying in kind to what he saw as an absurd hypothetical? Every other post he's written is in line with that.

I don't agree with him fully on the rightness or wrongness of how the IDF is fighting this war, but I don't see him seriously giving a potential genocide the stamp of approval.

 

Unless it was prior to Friday night, you will not find the post since it does not exist. As moderators we are able to see and read all deleted content. Since Friday this thread had four deleted posts. Two were deleted by the posters themselves, one by a moderator as it was in the wrong thread and the fourth was again by a moderator for a personal attack.

@luftmensch clarified what actually was posted. Definitely not what the accusation stated it was

 

I guess you missed the part of my post at the very beginning where it said “unless it was prior to Friday”. I guess you got your reading comprehension wrong.

 

I never said I didn’t like it did I? I liked his comment, not the make believe version you thought you read.

 

He didn’t say that though

 

Rationalising stuff because we firebombed 'the nazis' is where we have got to

 

Biden will get zero credit for this ceasefire, despite everyone on the left demanding one

 

Memphis Belle wasn't a documentary?

 

The idea that genocide in Gaza is hypothetical is certainly false. The following Time magazine article delves into the difficulties. It seems acts of genocide may have been committed in this war. it is also clear some members of Israeli leadership harbour the idea to drive all Gazans out which might spell the end of the Palestinian nation

Many experts TIME spoke to noted that they were answering based on whether they believed that the actions against Palestinians would be considered genocide under a court of law.

Verdeja says Israel's actions in Gaza are moving toward a “genocidal campaign.” While he notes that it is clear Israeli forces intend to destroy Hamas, “the response when you have a security crisis…can be one of ceasefire, negotiation, or it can be genocide.”

David Simon, director of the genocide studies program at Yale University, says that Israel has only explicitly said they want to exterminate Hamas, and has not directly stated intent to “destroy a religious, ethnic or racial group.” Simon says it's possible a court could conclude that either Hamas or some elements of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) could be found guilty of committing an act of genocide, but “it's certainly not textbook in that connecting the intent to destroy ethnic group as such is difficult.”

All scholars who spoke to TIME say that it is much more likely that both Hamas and some Israeli officials could be found guilty of crimes against humanity. Kiernan notes that the groups were more likely to be found guilty of extermination, which “does not require proof of a perpetrator's conscious desire to destroy a group ‘as such.’”

https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-experts/​