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Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

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Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#311

Post by davidf18 »

pests wrote: post #272
brink wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? Use your basic reasoning. Hamas fights in civilian clothing, they hide in civilian buildings, they hide in hospitals. They use regular civilians as shields. This is not your average fight; Hamas hates their enemy more than they love their own country.

Maybe another method is needed then? If you can't tell innocent people from legit targets... rethink the approach? Here is my reasoning: they hide in civilian clothes, okay let's not shoot civilians. They hide in hospitals, okay let's not bomb hospitals. They use civilian buildings, okay let's not bomb civilian buildings. They use civilians as shields... let's not shoot the shields. How is that unreasonable?

Israel uses AI to detect targets with all of their intelligence gathering. It uses precision weaponry. It drops pamphlets (which the US did in Iraq), calls apartments before bombing, has 4 hours of quiet the same time each day for civilian evacuations -- these are Israeli innovations. Meanwhile Hamas hides in tunnels that are under hospitals, schools, mosques, residences making them military targets. They don't wear uniforms. They captured hostages.

Rooting terrorists out of tunnels is a very complicated task. Most cases of Urban combat such as Mosul don't involve tunnels, yet have much greater civilian to combatant ratio of casualties (3:1 in the case of Mosul).

Hamas never built bomb shelters for its civilians, unlike Israel. They had plenty of concrete to build tunnels for themselves.

The war would have been over by now except other nations have been slowing Israel down. These nations claim that they want the conflict to end but it won't unless Hamas surrenders or Israel finishes the job.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#312

Post by ars »

wolverine876 wrote: post #284
givemeethekeys wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Another possibility is that they also had a second job working for Hamas - so, on a list of "not really journalists". I think we need less baseless speculation in this discussion. Another commenter posted links to the Times of Israel, which of course is very imperfect, but it's a start.

If you notice many of them died on Oct 7. i.e. they knew about the massacre in advance and were being "journalists" covering it. Reuters even had to publish an article saying they did not know in advance that some of their freelancers were involved.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#313

Post by ars »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #219
hersko wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> peaceful "March of Return" How is trying to storm a sovereign border peaceful? Pretty sure if a mob stormed any normal government border they would be shot.

> How is trying to storm a sovereign border peaceful? It’s not. But it’s not grounds for lethal force. Audible warnings, warning shots and non-lethal rounds were the right moves.

Someone trying to invade your country to kill people is not grounds for lethal force?

You can't possibly be serious.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#314

Post by czl »

wolverine876 wrote: post #281
boringg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true but a couple things have changed since those very dated sample points. (1) Definition of journalist (2) quantity of journalists (3) willingness to be on the very front lines in order to get better stories (4) technology enabling journalists thus being able to be more dangerous spots. (5) speculation -> journalists who are using press credentials as cover I'm neither way on the conflict but want to co…

> (1) Definition of journalist (2) quantity of journalists (3) willingness to be on the very front lines in order to get better stories (4) technology enabling journalists thus being able to be more dangerous spots. How have these things changed, and how have the changes affected the number of journalists killed? The changes could reduce the number. My point is, we need much less speculation and possibilities, and mu…

Internet does not allow nearly all to be publishers? Does not foster many small online news sources? Has number of news sources not gone up with rise of the internet? Outsourcing of news collection by global news sources to (technology connected) hired locals has not gone up? Number doing (and claiming to be doing) journalism has not gone up?

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#315

Post by bawolff »

ethanbond wrote: post #126
ninininino wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The onus of protecting journalists (and medical workers) falls on the military regardless of how difficult the war they’re trying to prosecute is. No it doesn't? Just searched the International Criminal Court's English document on war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity for 'journalist' and found no results. https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Ele...

1. Onus doesn’t mean legal requirement. Civilized nations can be, should be, and generally are held to standards far exceeding legal statutes. 2. They DO have an actual legal obligation to protect journalists as well, try searching for “civilian.” If they are targeting journalists (read: civilians) that would obviously be illegal.

> Onus doesn’t mean legal requirement. Civilized nations can be, should be, and generally are held to standards far exceeding legal statutes.

Are they? USA literally has a law on the books that authorizes bombing the netherlands if any of their troops are ever held responsible. Trump pardoned 4 people who masacared civilians (including 2 children) in Iraq

The west doesn't just not go beyond the legal requirements, it flouts the legal requirements when convinent.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#316

Post by ClumsyPilot »

hmcq6 wrote: post #43
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10% would be considered an extremely high death rate for soldiers involved in the fighting. Even 2.5% for healthcare workers is ridiculously high. Hamas based their operations where conventional rules of war prohibit fire. That makes comparing casualty rates incredibly difficult. (To my knowledge, nobody else has done this so comprehensively. Though given its success, I expect it to be emulated. Which unfortunately…

This is unfounded. I'm still waiting on a single shred of evidence to drop about the AP building from 2-3 years ago https://apnews.com/article/israel-middle-east-business-israe... > Which unfortunately means prohibitions on bombing hospitals, schools and places of worship are now obsolete. Even if Hamas was fighting from hospitals and schools that is not how this works. Israel would be required to give those schools…

> why are they hitting the refuge camps with 2000lb dumb bombs? Why not guided bombs?

In my eyes, this is cast-iron proof that there is little concern on IDF side for civilian deaths. I do not see a plausible counter-argument

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#317

Post by wolverine876 »

ars wrote: post #312
wolverine876 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another possibility is that they also had a second job working for Hamas - so, on a list of "not really journalists". I think we need less baseless speculation in this discussion. Another commenter posted links to the Times of Israel, which of course is very imperfect, but it's a start.

If you notice many of them died on Oct 7. i.e. they knew about the massacre in advance and were being "journalists" covering it. Reuters even had to publish an article saying they did not know in advance that some of their freelancers were involved.

> If you notice many of them died on Oct 7. i.e. they knew about the massacre in advance and were being "journalists" covering it. Reuters even had to publish an article saying they did not know in advance that some of their freelancers were involved.

Great, something moving us forward. Do you happen to have some substantive basis for those claims?

I realize questions like that are a PITA and we're just talking on an Internet forum, not in a court or in the NY Times, but there is so much mis/disinfo out there on this war that I think it's really needed. Not your fault if you don't happen to have it.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#318

Post by erokar »

ars wrote: post #290
erokar wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare it to the Russia/Ukraine war. Not even close. In any case Israel is not conducting a war, they are conducting a massacre.

[flagged]

> Well not like all others, this one has Jews in it, so it gets extra attention.

What's that supposed to mean?

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#319

Post by shprd »

bawolff wrote: post #297
pests wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe another method is needed then? If you can't tell innocent people from legit targets... rethink the approach? Here is my reasoning: they hide in civilian clothes, okay let's not shoot civilians. They hide in hospitals, okay let's not bomb hospitals. They use civilian buildings, okay let's not bomb civilian buildings. They use civilians as shields... let's not shoot the shields. How is that unreasonable?

Essentially that implies Israel will get shot at and not be allowed to shoot back. I suspect most Israelis would find that unreasonable. Israeli civilians don't like being killed anymore than Palestinian civilians do. The thing that usually prevents war is that both sides lose in the end. If only one side is allowed to shoot, why would the side being allowed to shoot ever stop? They would be getting all the benefits…

> Israel will get shot at and not be allowed to shoot back.

The logic doesn't really follow

What shots exactly? the missiles? Attack the launch sites. They're pretty clear as they expose themselves. Israel has 24/7 surveillance it shouldn't be a challenge. Can you support your claim by showing evidence that a hospital was used to launch missiles?

You likely don't have evidence that Israel is targeting anything. It seems every street in the city was indiscriminately bombed, every hospital was distroyed, and tens of thousands of civilians were murdered. That's a massacre not a "response".

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#320

Post by mschuster91 »

eropple wrote: post #282
mschuster91 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The framing of Gazans as a whole as "Hamas's people" is at best problematic; Hamas is an accelerationist and revolutionary movement that believes that dead Gazans advance their aims . Israel seems pretty happy to help Hamas out with proving out their theory right now, but it's important to note that a Gazan could've been born and raised literally to the age of majority without getting a chance to vote on whether they…

> The framing of Gazans as a whole as "Hamas's people" is at best problematic

I fully agree with you on everything you said. Doesn't change the fact though that the blame for all the Palestinian casualties cannot be laid on Israel, not even by international law - as Hamas, the (more or less) legitimate government of Gaza, abused civilian infrastructure, they stripped it from the legal protection against military action.

I mean... what's the alternative? Let Hamas continue to exist, only to have them regroup and announce the next intifada in a few years? There's no way Israel can (or will) accept that - even if the USA and EU completely withdraw any support, for any Israeli government the first priority is the survival of the nation.

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