It's not at all an uncommon scenario to have to deal with in war, especially asymmetrical conflicts.
IMO, Israel stepped very clearly over the line, repeatedly, in how they handled it, but the parent post is a pretty reasonable summary of the considerations.
[flagged]
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. You can't attack others like this here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The rules aren't written by plucky revolutionaries, but the big powers. They, thus, fairly often favor people who fight like the big powers.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/can-hospitals-...
> Article 8 of the Rome statute, which established the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, defines a long list of war crimes including “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected”.
> But it makes an exception if the targets are “military objectives”. Philip-Gay said that “if a civilian hospital is used for acts harmful to the enemy, that is the legal term used”, the hospital can lose its protected status under international law and be considered a legitimate target. Nevertheless, if there is doubt as to whether a hospital is a military objective or being used for acts harmful to the enemy, the presumption, under international humanitarian law, is that it is not.
Again, I think Israel committed war crimes here and throughout Gaza. But the parent poster has a point that using a hospital for combat purposes risks its status.
(There are still rules to follow in that case, that weren't followed. Again, war crimes.)
> Truth: Mass-destroying a country's hospitals, murdering the doctors, nurses, workers & patients, mass-executing aid workers ... is Israeli. And only Israeli.
This is the same mistake many made about Nazi Germany; convincing themselves that the Germans were uniquely evil. It stops people from having to examine themselves.
> The rules aren't written by plucky revolutionaries, but the big powers. They, thus, fairly often favor people who fight like the big powers.
I think this is one of the ugliest things about this particular war. While the IDF unquestionably committed various war crimes over the course of the conflict anyway, the bulk of what people found objectionable very well might have been done in total accordance with international law. Despite many failures and excesses, the IDF at least paid lip service to trying to do that, as a policy.
It's just that, the reality is, the rules are based on entirely different assumptions about how war is carried out. If they might lead to something resembling a "humane" war (hah!) when fought between, say, a relatively evenly matched France and Germany, they're quite ineffective at preventing a humanitarian catastrophe when you have a modern force attempting to siege an ultra-dense, militarized enclave run by an organization with no real hope of a conventional victory or interest in the well-being of its civilians.
And so you end up with this absurd situation where the world witnessed, over and over again, unimaginably horrible things being inflicted on the population of Gaza, and the Israelis responding - if we're being charitable, not entirely unreasonably - "Why are you getting mad at us? We're following the rules!"
It's just that, clearly, the rules are insufficient to match people's moral sentiments.
War is always terrible and a mess. The problem is that the intention is, very clearly, ethic cleansing. And that, is, not in accordance to international law. That's the reason they target humanitarian workers and journalist. And the reason they block things like baby formula from entering Gaza. Because the worst are the living conditions to the population, the better.
If you think that the main intention of Israel is other than push those million of people that bother them out (or kill them if they don't go), I have a bridge to sell you.
Hell, they even say that themselves. Go to listen to their politicians.
By the way, if you are an European Union citizen, there is request to the commission to stop the EU-Israel commercial agreement. You can sign it here:
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/055/public/#/screen/home
> While the IDF unquestionably committed various war crimes over the course of the conflict anyway, the bulk of what people found objectionable very well might have been done in total accordance with international law.
I think this is somewhat out of touch, the main reason this conflict has garnered so much attention is the amount of times Isreal commits war crimes.
Let's suppose it could be demonstrated conclusively that every hospital in Gaza that Israel has bombed had Hamas militants operating out of them, as Israel has claimed. Do you think that'd silence Israel's critics about bombing hospitals? Do you think it should?
If that was true, then why does it seem this conflict has gotten much more attention than the Russia-Ukraine war, which is on a much larger scale?
The power imbalance probably plays a role.
Certainly no one's donating Patriot batteries and F-16s to Gaza.
(I'm also not sure I'd consider the Russia/Ukraine war to be… undercovered in the press.)
The only country out of the four mentioned who was given a donation of arms is Ukraine.
> This is the same mistake many made about Nazi Germany; convincing themselves that the Germans were uniquely evil. It stops people from having to examine themselves.
You seriously need to educate yourself about history, what the nazis did, and what is going on in the middle east, because only a person who has absolutely no idea about either of these subjects could draw this terrible comparison. Unless, of course, you're just interested in spreading disinformation bordering on blood libel.