Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says Palestinian civilians being killed en masse are simply “collateral damage”

The right-wing leader appeared on multiple cable news shows to speak on the current state Israel’s monthlong siege on Gaza, which human rights experts have warned amount to ethnic cleansing and war crimes.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, and said that the only solution to the violence is to end the Israeli occupation and allow Palestinians the right to self-determination.

Amends1782,

Really everything taken straight out of the US playbook, they learned from us after all.

FaulerFuffi,

The word “simply” is added by the journalist. Netanyahu did not say that.

leetnewb,

Is the title editorialized?

Original: Netanyahu Calls Palestinians ‘Collateral Damage’ As Israel Destroys Gaza Post title: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says Palestinian civilians being killed en masse are simply “collateral damage”

The revised title reads as Netanyahu using the world simply, which doesn’t appear to be the case in the article.

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

it’s quotes like these that result in a massive swing of support for a ceasefire despite a massively funded propaganda campaign in the media by israeli linked groups

danhakimi,
@danhakimi@kbin.social avatar

a one-sided ceasefire, or a two-sided ceasefire? Would you expect Hamas to keep its end of a ceasefire agreement?

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

It doesn’t matter what Hamas agrees to or doesn’t, up to this point the ratio of Palestinians killed to Israelis has been 25:1. The two groups are not comparable, it’sfallacious to talk about it as if it’s a “bothsides” scenario.

This is because Israel has all the power, money, land and all the security infrastructure. For decades the only thing Hamas was able to do was bounce rockets off the Iron Dome. The reason Hamas was able to carry out this recent attack was because of Israeli hubris that Palestinians had been sufficiently broken by the IDFs campaign of oppression. They couldn’t fathom that the subhumans could organize this kind of response to their oppression.

Egypt even warned Israel days before the attack that it was going to happen, Israel ignored it because, as we are witnessing, the far-right government wanted an excuse to go on a genocidal tear through Gaza.

It’s Israel’s responsibility, as an actual nation state with full control over Palestine and Gaza, to stop their genocide.

FaulerFuffi,

If Hamas wouldn’t have attacked, Israel would currently not be at war with them. Great that you think that you know the REAL reason for everything but it doesn’t change the fact that Hamas attacked Israel.

raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

Israel has been as much “at war” as they are now for the past forty years, because it’s never been a war in any meaningful sense of the word; it’s been a colonization whereby Israel has been violently oppressing Palestine and the Gaza strip and having to deal with groups that violently resist that colonization because they’ve been given literally no other path towards influence iver their own homeland.

Gaza is not a country, it’s an open air prison controlled entirely by Israel. You can’t cut off water, food and electricity to a region and then claim it’s some kind of independent nation whos condition is not your responsibility.

Israel’s war is about as meaningful a use of the word as the war on “terror”. It’s propaganda to make it seem like Israel hasn’t themselves been willfully seeding these conditions for decades.

danhakimi,
@danhakimi@kbin.social avatar

It doesn’t matter what Hamas agrees to or doesn’t,

So you don't want a ceasefire, you want Israel to stop unilaterally and then whatever happens to it next is fine by you, right?

Don't call it a ceasefire if you don't know what a ceasefire exist.

up to this point the ratio of Palestinians killed to Israelis has been 25:1.

Really? 1200 Israelis murdered on October 7th, you're really telling me that over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed?

You wanna maybe try that again?

raccoona_nongrata, (edited )
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

Really? 1200 Israelis murdered on October 7th, you’re really telling me that over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed?

Israel has killed over 10,000 civilians in last month or so. Most of whom have been children. More children alone than Israelis in total. So, massively disproportionate and unforgivably evil, but that’s not the ratio I was talking about.

I was referring to the comparative death tolls over the course of Israel’s decades long apartheid rule in Palestine and Gaza, illustrating the clear imbalance of power and how little power Gazans have had, even to resist violently. The pattern of Israel holding all the cards and being able to kill with impunity has held true for decades, they are the occupiers, they haven’t been sitting around minding their own business. They’ve been gassing mosques, blowing up news stations, killing kids and reporters, strangling the supply lines into Gaza.

It would be like the US government mercilessly bombing the Native American reservations here in the US, preventing snyone from leaving or supplies going in, destroying civilian centers and hospitals and calling it a “war”, acting as if they have no responsibility to not kill innocent civilians.

So yes, Israel needs to control their genocidal right-wing government, the “ceasefire” means them stopping murdering children.

danhakimi,
@danhakimi@kbin.social avatar

I was referring to the comparative death tolls over the course of Israel’s decades long

alright I'm going to ignore the rest of your antisemitic bullshit and just focus on the ratio you picked, probably also out of made-up numbers (and I doubt you included all the Israeli soldiers killed in wars started by surrounding Muslim nations pretending to act on Palestinians' behalf), to frame the issue without ignoring what actually happened.

Over the past few decades, the Palestinians have started every damn war they could against Israel, including two intifadas, suicide bombings, rockets aimed vaguely at civilians (historically, roughly 1/3-1/4 of the rockets fired from Gaza since 2001 landed in Gaza). Hamas has built plenty of tunnels in Gaza, but no workers, because it prefers to see its civilians die because it makes the statistics more gruesome and keeps their control of the gaza strip going.

Meanwhile, Israelis invest billions into not only technology like the Iron Dome to defend Israeli civilians, but also in warning technology like roof knocking tech, medical tech that it used to save Palestinian lives, including that of Yahya Sinwar, and... Oh yeah, remember the thousands of greenhouses they left in Gaza in 2005 when they unilaterally withdrew? Gee, what ever happened to those?

So Palestinians:

  • Don't defend their own
  • Send their own into suicide missions—sometimes, in that history, literally
  • Literally kill their own (and count the numbers against Israel in their often made-up statistics, see the Al-Ahli hospital explosion)
raccoona_nongrata,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

Stopped reading after anti-semitic. Good bye.

Titan,

They became the Nazis

Kwakigra,
@Kwakigra@beehaw.org avatar

Zionists in Mandatory Palestine collaborated with the Nazis just prior to the Holocaust. “They” specifically meaning radical Zionists in Israel. As a side note, Holocaust victims who immigrated to Palestine/Israel were often met with derision because the belligerent Israeli Zionists considered their “weakness” an embarassment to them. I’ve been reading a lot about Zionism recently and the more I learn the further it seems to me from the kind of values I’m familiar with from Judaism. Hopefully the philosophy goes the way of “Manifest Destiny” in the dustbin of history or at least transforms into something that does not require the removal of all Palestinians from their land.

danhakimi,
@danhakimi@kbin.social avatar

What is more collaborative:

"They made an agreement where some Jews were allowed to flee the Holocaust"

or

this shit

fleeing versus encouraging and attempting to extend the holocaust, who were the real Nazi collaborators?

Kwakigra, (edited )
@Kwakigra@beehaw.org avatar

I read through the entire section you linked. Half of the section was also describing the Haavara agreement. The Palestinians resisting violence from the influx of European colonists also recieved some help, but to answer your question according to what you linked the Zionists clearly recieved more support for a longer period of time. In terms of the actual conflict taking place in Palestine at the time, the help the Zionists recieved from the Nazis was significantly more impactful than the help the Palestinians later recieved from the Nazis.

One thing I want to clarify is that it is completely fucked up that the Palestinian leaders speaking with the Nazis named their enemy as all Judaism rather than the actual sociopolitical force which was the true threat to their sovereignty. Anti-semetism was never and is never justified. I’m at least glad that a lot of anti-semetism has been scrubbed from official anti-zionist documentation although I have no doubt some continue to blame all Jewish people even though many of whom also oppose Zionism.

Edit: One more point on conflation. The German Jewish people fleeing for their lives were not the ones who made the Haavara agreement with the Nazis. Zionists made that agreement. The reason is that the Zionists and the Nazis agreed that Jewish people should be expelled from Europe.

bedrooms,

Where's Genova when we need it? Well, we always need it.

hh93,

Rule #6 of the international humanitarian law:

Parties to a conflict shall at all times distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. Attacks shall be directed solely against legitimate military targets.

If you look up the definition of military targets you will see

“In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”

You can ask pretty much every lawyer that Hamas actually made the hospitals into legitimate targets under the Geneva Conventions. The only party that clearly broke that law without a doubt is Hamas.

bedrooms,

I don't think I'll convince you, but...

what you quoted only makes the Hamas facility the target. Civilians inside that hospital are not valid targets.

I agree Hamas is to blame. But that doesn't mean we'll watch Israel bombard civilians and support Israel for that.

Bye.

danhakimi,
@danhakimi@kbin.social avatar

what you quoted only makes the Hamas facility the target. Civilians inside that hospital are not valid targets.

Right. So Israel targets the Hamas facility. Sometimes, civilians in the hospital die as a result of attacks targeting the Hamas facility and Hamas individuals. This is what is commonly known as "collateral damage." It is a tragedy that should be minimized.

Glad we're in agreement.

Devi,

Israeli civilians being killed is a war crime though? Double standards much?

goferking0,

Makes sense when they only think one side are actually human :(

sqgl,

Hamas & Likud think that way.

Ironically the party folks killed on Oct 7th would have been anti-Likud types.

anachronist,

Bibi reduced military protection in the south to punish the kibbutz dwellers, and to focus on war-criming the West Bank. Either he figured his trunks full of cash would keep Hamas in line, or he just really didn’t care what happened down there.

He also clearly gives zero shits about the hostages. Hamas wanted to negotiate for their release at the beginning of the conflict, but he decided he would rather war-crime Gaza instead.

sqgl,

What deal were Hamas offering at the start?

t3rmit3,

Exchanging them for Palestinian hostages that Israel is holding.

sqgl,

Israel could have gone along with this and still attacked Hamas but I suppose they knew there would be Palestinian civilians killed so they wanted the excuse of “But muh hostages!”.

I predict the swap will be done now that Israel needs no more excuse. Hamas leaders will be able to (or allowed to) flee, just like Arafat fled the Beirut siege, calling it a victory.

t3rmit3,

Netanyahu is going to bomb the hostages and then blame Hamas, saying they were used as human shields, just like he’s been doing with Palestinian civilians. 200 Israeli hostages “murdered by Hamas (using Israeli bombs)” is more useful politically to his war-machine than 200 live hostages.

sqgl,

I doubt it. He is fighting for political survival. He is probably a goner regardless but even he realises that to do what you suggest would be political suicide. He only cares about himself.

Are you by any chance in denial of the PIJ missile which misfired into the hospital carpark a couple of weeks back? The one which Hamas lied was a direct hit by Israeli bombs killing 500?

t3rmit3,

Are you by any chance in denial of the PIJ missile which misfired into the hospital carpark a couple of weeks back? The one which Hamas lied was a direct hit by Israeli bombs killing 500?

No, I think it is likely that it was a rocket that misfired. Israel has been responsible for all the intentional bombs hitting hospitals, schools, places of worship, etc though, so I’m not sure what significance you are attributing to what someone believes about the one unintentional one?

sqgl, (edited )

Sorry. I misjudged you. Been on Reddit too long. No room for nuance there.

The significance is that media is still often relaying Hamas claims as if fact and you might have been relying wholly on such reports.

That hospital incident was clearly Hamas bs from the outset - no photos, a video of the carpark leaked within 24 hours, Al Jazeera themselves unwittingly streamed live footage of the misfiring rocket.

anachronist,

Hamas’s leaders aren’t in Gaza, they’re in Qatar living off money funneled through the Israeli government.

telegraph.co.uk/…/how-benjamin-netanyahu-empowere…

anachronist,

According to three sources familiar with the talks, the original deal on the table involved freeing children, women and elderly and sick people in exchange for a five-day ceasefire, but the Israeli government turned this down and demonstrated its rejection with the launch of the ground offensive.

theguardian.com/…/netanyahu-rejected-ceasefire-fo…

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

makes sense since likud and bibi funded hamas

zerfuffle,

Everyone knows that Muslims aren’t human

  • Bibi, probably
danhakimi,
@danhakimi@kbin.social avatar

Targeting civilians is a war crime. Targeting enemy combatants while trying to evacuate civilians, trying to warn civilians so desperately that you warn the enemy combatants too, and killing civilians in attacks that target legitimate military targets and reflect a sufficient level of care to minimize risk to human life, is not a war crime, that's the definition of "collateral damage."

There's no double standard there, that's the whole issue.

anachronist,

I agree. Why doesn’t Israel start acting like that? It’s minimum behavior for a civilized nation.

danhakimi,
@danhakimi@kbin.social avatar

It is. When your enemy is embedded in hospitals and mosques and everywhere else civilians try to go for safety, it gets hard. But I'm sure your alternative is just for Israel to just agree to a one-sided ceasefire and wait for Hamas to shore up its weapons, move the hostages, and repeat its 10/7 attack, huh?

tryptaminev,

ahh yes. Because the Israeli army has literally no options between “relentless bombing of Gaza, denying access to food, water and medicine, sniping civillians trying to flee according to your demand on the safe routes you designated and bombing ambulances trying to move patients in the same way” and “doing nothing and watch Hamas regroup.”

Israel could have led an infantry assault into Gaza withou pounding everything first. That would have meant higher casualties though and here shows the true nature of Israels government and army.

They do not care for any palestinian life. So far for every Israeli soldier that got killed, more than 200 palestinian civillians were killed.

In world war 2 the axis powers killed about 6 civillians for every axis soldier and the allies killed about 1 civillian for every 4 ally soldiers. So the war that was about total destruction and genocide still had more than a magnitude less civillians killed relative to combatants killed.

t3rmit3,

“Yeah, but if there’s one Hamas guy inside a densely-populated refugee camp, what possible other choice do we have than to bomb literally tens of buildings in there? He could have been in any of them! We gave those civilians ample warning that they are subject to murder at any time, anyways! How can you say we’re not merciful and restrained!?”

danhakimi,
@danhakimi@kbin.social avatar

ahh yes. Because the Israeli army has literally no options between “relentless bombing of Gaza, denying access to food, water and medicine,

the IDF turned off its supply of 7% of gazan water for a few days, and is still getting shit for it. Hamas never bothered to maintain the power plant or desalination plant, stole fuel from the power plant that could have been used to keep running the hospitals and desalination plant, and openly dug up water pipes to fashion into rockets. They didn't even hide that, they were proud of that.

sniping civillians trying to flee according to your demand on the safe routes you designated

You know that bridge was Hamas snipers, right? Israel didn't have a real presence in that area yet, the closest thing they had was a ship that did not fire small bullets. People initially blamed all the bullet-ridden bloody bodies on the bridge on an Israeli airstrike, and then realized that there was no sign of any explosion anywhere on the bridge, and had to change their story. =/

and bombing ambulances trying to move patients in the same way”

Hamas said that there were no patients in those ambulances, but the IDF had intelligence that there were, in fact, terrorists in them. This is in keeping with a long-standing pattern going back a good 20 years, Hamas loves shuttling terrorists around in ambulances.

Israel could have led an infantry assault into Gaza withou pounding everything first. That would have meant higher casualties though and here shows the true nature of Israels government and army.

I love how, now, people are saying "they should have invaded by land!" when, before the ground invasion began, everybody was protesting the concept of a land invasion and surrounding nations had threatened to declare war if Israel invaded.

They do not care for any palestinian life. So far for every Israeli soldier that got killed, more than 200 palestinian civillians were killed.

You know how I know you made that number up? Nobody anywhere has published any number of palestinian civilians that were killed in this war.

In world war 2 the axis powers killed about 6 civillians for every axis soldier and the allies killed about 1 civillian for every 4 ally soldiers. So the war that was about total destruction and genocide still had more than a magnitude less civillians killed relative to combatants killed.

Please, feel free to cite Hamas statistics here, I'd love to see if they've finally claimed a number of civilians vs combatants.

t3rmit3, (edited )

Hamas wouldn’t have done 10/7 if not for Israel’s colonialism and genocide, and Israel has never had a true “ceasefire” in Palestine. They for years have done bombing campaigns that they euphemize as “mowing the grass”, against Gaza. You can’t divorce the current conflict from the history that led to it.

Turns out that desperation breeds extremism, and Israel is the one who made Palestinians desperate.

People don’t denounce slaves who revolt as being too brutal, but continually murdering and starving peoples’ children apparently is not bad enough to justify revolt when it’s only Palestinians being murdered.

Devi,

They have bombed a neonatal unit! You can’t murder premature babies and be like “Whoopsy!”. Absolutely disgusting. As for ‘evacuating civilians’ they’ve blocked the borders. Workers who worked outside Gaza have been forcibly returned.

This is genocide.

danhakimi,
@danhakimi@kbin.social avatar

They have bombed a neonatal unit!

Source for this?

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