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It's my fault for picking this scab with you again in the first place, though.
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Firing a projectile at an individual combatant?
Projectiles hit the wrong target all the time. Especially when we get into artillery or air strikes where there's no line of sight to a uniformed soldier, commanders can't be sure if they're going to hit the intended target. That's why we have the principle of proportionality rather than an impossible standard of zero collateral damage.
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Let me say first of all: super chill response and I really appreciate that. On point (1), I've got reason to question the claims of genocidal intent that get bandied about in these kinds of conversations. Yair Rosenberg wrote a piece for The Atlantic debunking one of the most frequently cited "amalek" claims. It's easy to find people on either side of the conflict espousing genocidal views , but harder to map specifi…
This is the kind of discussion that I feel would be better to have in-person; I am not a great writer :) Re: Israel & the term genocide, if you closely look at the combination of: (1) the words that came/are coming out of the mouths of Israeli cabinet members, Knesset members, and the Israeli media (especially in Hebrew!) (2) the policies enacted on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank (3) the actions taken by the ID…
* I agree, Israel appears to me to be guilty of war crimes; quite a great many.
* We disagree about the black-letter genocidal intent Russia has exhibited in Ukraine. Organized mass kidnapping and coerced adoption of children is a per se genocidal action under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
* The US outclasses almost every armed service in the world to the same extent Israel outclassed Hamas (which no longer exists as a military force). That doesn't make US involvement in any given armed conflict genocidal or immoral.
* If your point was simply that Israel is capable of putting into practice genocidal intent, of course, I agree with that. They have a mechanical advantage in doing that, to the point where they shoulder additional burdens to avoid genocidal outcomes, and I preemptively agree they haven't satisfied those obligations. But flip it: Hamas has essentially no capability to successfully commit a genocide of Israelis. And yet their attack, under the Convention, was more clearly genocidal.
* I agree with you about the governance of Jordan! I think all the surrounding states share significant moral burden with regards to the Palestinian people,and launder it through Arab enmity towards Israel and Jewish ethnicity.
* I want to be very clear: I also believe the Palestinians have a moral claim to Gaza and the West Bank, and that there is no practical resolution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict that won't involve two states on land Israel now controls. When I bring up the Jordan thing, I'm making a broader claim about the sustainability of Palestinian ethnic identity, not the "Palestinians should be remigrated into Jordan" argument the neo-Kahanists make. Kahanism is vile.
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HN's rules don't change based on how right you are or feel you are, or how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
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HN's rules don't change based on how right you are or feel you are, or how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
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Projectiles hit the wrong target all the time. Especially when we get into artillery or air strikes where there's no line of sight to a uniformed soldier, commanders can't be sure if they're going to hit the intended target. That's why we have the principle of proportionality rather than an impossible standard of zero collateral damage.
But surely "the most targeted strike of all time" would be "a single-target strike on a visually confirmed intended individual", right? Or at least that would be more targeted than any strike without LoS?
(I think the claim is technically false if we include open field conflicts, but probably true if we narrow it to comparable environments.)
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I agree with you about the previous comment, which was unhelpful, but regarding Hezbollah, I'm afraid you're making claims about things you want to be true more than you are relating any actual research. It's my fault for picking this scab with you again in the first place, though.
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You also have been breaking the site guidelines badly by perpetuating this flamewar and by using HN primarily for political battle. That's not ok, and if you keep doing it we will have to ban your account. HN's rules don't change based on how right you are or feel you are, or how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules…
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All of the arguments I've seen supporting this attack focus on the idea that it's fine to kill and maim civilians including children as long as you will probably get some combatants. It's a little bit open to interpretation, I guess, and I'm not a legal expert so fine, ok. But booby trapping mundane daily objects accessible to non-combatants is a clear violation of international law. No real room for leeway or interp…
What would you prefer? Israeli tanks blowing their way through families and bombing beirut to rubble to get at the Hezbolla terrorists? War was inevitable, the amazing actions of the mossad mitigated hundreds if not thousands of civilian casualties. What is your complaint, that they booby trapped the communications devices used exclusively by Hezbolla and not, i don't know, their kalashnikovs? Don't hide behind techn…