dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
The first objective, in my opinion, is to encourage people to start to identify the propaganda when it is being presented to them and to start filtering out sources which are deeply flawed. One of the ways to do that is from the exaggerated allegations of "genocide". Those who are pushing this sort of rhetoric are misguided and likely uninformed. They are not good sources for information. They should be ignored.
Just as determining genocide based on body count is faulty, determining right/wrong military strategy based on body count is faulty.
In this case, there are two and only two choices, excluding actual indescriminate attacks against Gaza.
1) The current response: Gazans are warned and compelled to leave via threat of air raids and bombing.
2) A ground assault on Gaza: The Gazans are warned in advance, but they know it will not be starting with air raids only soldiers and tanks.
Among those two options, #1 produces far less casualites of the Gazan citizens with the same amount of collateral damage. This is because if the citizens know that a ground assault is coming they will stay and fight. When they do this, Israel will, rightfully, annihilate them. They will still use air strikes causing mass devastation of the region, but this time there will be many more palestinians slaughtered.
On the other hand, with option #1, the ones who choose to stay are in danger, but, they are not gauranteed to die. Israel will try to avoid them, but, they will not allow their presence to interfere with their objective to clear the area of people, munitions, and tunnels which are threatening Israel and eventually the surrounding nations.
The West Bank is, BTW under control of Fatah. If Hamas gets their way, Fatah, the West Bank is probably next on their agenda for hostile take-over. One of the reasons for the multi-national blockade preventing construction materials from going into Gaza is because Hamas viciously attacked the Fatah officials whom the Gazans elected in 2006 ( I think, maybe 2007 ). Yes, it's not just Israel who is blocking materials from entering Gaza. It's the international community.
There's a lot going on here, of which you seem to be unaware. Whatever sources you are using to develop your opinion, they are incomplete. It's similar to what you said about the ICC. You didn't know that the USA isn't a member of the ICC either. Whatever research you're doing, however you're forming your opinions, whatever sources you're using, you're missing half the story or more.
Ultimately, you do not seem to be a good person to judge miilitary strategy. I recall a thread about a month ago where Harel posted a very good article describing why body counts are not useful in judging right/wrong military decisions. In that thread, at that time, your posts indicated you had not read the article provided, and were operating under naive assumptions about what is or is not needed to win a war, what is or is not a proportional response. You were ignoring the information in front of you.
Based on what you have posted above, this has not changed.
If you want to have a discussion about what you think Israel should do instead of what they're doing now, I'm open to having that discussion. But, I think that what you'll find is that any other alternative leads towards more death and more suffering.
In response to the emotional argument " ... most of them are civilians ... half of those are children ... " It really doesn't matter. You don't actually know how many are civilians. If the parents did not evacuate their children, that is the parent's fault for putting them in harm's way. Hamas wants the innocent to be killed. That is part of their strategy. Blaming Hamas for the innocents who are killed makes good sense. And when it comes to the rare cases of infants who cannot leave, the sick and elderly who cannot leave and are caught in the crossfire, they too, would not be in harms's way if it were not for Hamas' actions.
If I'm being completely honest. I think your opposition against israel is not based on facts, but is based on a prejudice against anything labeled "right-wing".
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