It's sad that so much of this conversation has devolved into technicalities of whether this is a genocide.
You can't look at this, at reports coming out of Gaza and the West Bank, at Israel's own government officials' statements, and not, at minimum, believe that brutal war crimes were committed on a massive basis here. Whether it's "Holocaust level" or "genocide" is a red herring. It needs universal condemnation, it needs to stop, and the people who did it need to be held accountable.
Eh. First, they made a mistake: the ICC cannot hold anyone accountable - it only will only determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel did, in fact, do a genocide. Despite finding it beyond a shadow of a doubt (which is why it's taking so long), they will be doubted anyway.
I've searched through the Haaretz investigation; nowhere does it claim that Israel shot all (or any, for that matter) hostages that were released by Hamas.
3 people were killed accidentally during IDFs attempts to free the hostages. That's not the same thing as "shot all of the hostages they did release". In fact it's the opposite. Because those people were not released, the IDF went in to try to get them.
Maybe you should try that too since chatgpt pretty clearly says you're wrong. 3 hostages were shot during a rescue attempt from friendly fire. That's a very different thing from what you said.
It’s not “terrorist propaganda”. It’s documented by Haaretz.
> obviously that would never have been acceptable for Israel as leaving the Hamas threat intact in Gaza was never going to happen.
Sounds like typical Zionist terrorism. Sacrifice and kill your own people just so you can kill even more Palestinians. Israel is a psychopathic killer entity.
Are you claiming there is a Haaretz article that states that Hamas was willing to unconditionally give up the civilian hostages after the Oct 7th attacks? I would like to see which article you are referring to as I have been unable to find any with a claim remotely along those lines.
> Sacrifice and kill your own people just so you can kill even more Palestinians.
Israel does not use their own civilians as human shields, they use their military to protect their civilians. You're probably thinking of Hamas here since they use their civilians to protect their military.
> Israel does not use their own civilians as human shields, they use their military to protect their civilians. You're probably thinking of Hamas here since they use their civilians to protect their military.
The article confirms what I suspected which is that Hamas did not unconditionally offer to give back the civilian hostages. The attached conditions would almost certainly have prevented Israel from dealing with the Hamas threat.
No one claimed “unconditional” hostage return. Of course there are conditions, Hamas is fighting 80+ years of Zionist ethnic cleansing, that’s the whole point. Israel decided committing genocide was more important than retrieving their settlers. That’s on them.
> I don't see how this is at all related to your claim that Israel uses human shields at all.
This is Israel’s policy of killing their own settlers. Human shields would be how the IDF is located in nearly every building in Israel.
> No one claimed “unconditional” hostage return. Of course there are conditions
You responded with that article in response to this question of mine "Are you claiming there is a Haaretz article that states that Hamas was willing to unconditionally give up the civilian hostages after the Oct 7th attacks? I would like to see which article you are referring to as I have been unable to find any with a claim remotely along those lines.".
As expected the article fully confirmed my understanding in regards to what Hamas offered. This was not a real offer to return the hostages but rather a demand for Israel to effectively surrender and leave Hamas in place to carry out future attacks.
> Hamas is fighting 80+ years of Zionist ethnic cleansing, that’s the whole point.
Israel ethnically cleansed Gaza of Jews in 2005.
> Israel decided committing genocide was more important than retrieving their settlers. That’s on them.
There were no settlers in Gaza on October 7th when Hamas launched their attack.
> This is Israel’s policy of killing their own settlers. Human shields would be how the IDF is located in nearly every building in Israel.
This is wrong for multiple reasons, first of all Hamas doesn't care if Israeli civilians get killed so such a tactic would be entirely ineffective, second of all Israel puts their military defenses in front of their civilians, not the other way around. Israeli soldiers simply aren't hiding behind Israeli civilians.
I don't think you read that article you linked to. The Hannibal Directive is a policy about using extreme force to prevent soldiers being taken hostages. Soldiers are by definition not civilians.
You can't look at this, at reports coming out of Gaza and the West Bank, at Israel's own government officials' statements, and not, at minimum, believe that brutal war crimes were committed on a massive basis here. Whether it's "Holocaust level" or "genocide" is a red herring. It needs universal condemnation, it needs to stop, and the people who did it need to be held accountable.