this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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We know Hamas fighters have been using the hospitals to stage rocket attacks, and fire out of. Whether there is an actual base of operations hidden in them is beyond the point, Hamas uses civilian infrastructure to fire at Israel from. They have said as much, they fight from among civilians to get Israel to kill civilians so Israel looks bad to the world. It's how Hamas operates.
where is your citation?
edit: even if there is, that does not justify the shelling of hospitals by the IDF
There was an article on the active page of Lemmy yesterday with confirmation of Hamas fighting from a major hospital.
So it should be easy for you to link it. That is, if it does prove your point and exists in the first place. Because right now your source is "trust me bro".
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1699881898-idf-releases-footage-of-hamas-firing-rpg-from-gaza-city-hospital
https://www.aol.com/news/israel-clashes-hamas-major-hospital-162417982.html
Of course it justifies it. Why wouldn't it?
Because of the geneva conventions about protections civilians.
What does the Geneva Convention say about using civilians as human shields? What does the Geneva Convention say about using hospitals, schools, places of worship as military headquarters or outposts? What does the Geneva Convention say about murdering civilians to prevent them from evacuating from an area that is under attack?
There are protected symbols such as the red cross and red crescent that you are not allowed to misuse. But it is also clear that everyone is responsible for not doing any war crimes. So even if your enemy does a war crime you are not allowed. Normally the only protected places along the ones you have listed are hospitals. All have to do their best to protect civilians, you are not allowed to engage an enemy if there are big risks of damaging no-combatants, e.g. if a small group of enemy combatants is traveling through an area filled with civilians, you are not allowed to target that area just because the few targets. Military targets have to travel is areas with civilians all the time. Targeting civilians is always a war crime. All actions have to be proportional. There is never an excuse to commit a war crime. Even if the enemy targets hospitals, like Russia, is accused of in Ukraine, that does not give Ukraine forces any permission to attack Russian hospitals. If Hamas shoots civilians, it doesn't excuse IDF to do the same. Even if IDF shoots civilians, Hamas is not allowed to do the same. In technical terms, you could discuss the theoretical coverage of the Geneva Convention as such for the Gaza strip. The amendments around it may or may not regulate how Israel and IDF are allowed to operate. It was written for regular wars between nations, if, when, how, and stuff get into civil wars. What happens then is a bit more unclear. There are regulations about occupied territories, that Gaza falls into.
Then I assume you're aware that the Geneva Convention make one exception where hospitals lose their protection: when they're used for a military purpose that is harmful to the enemy.
In other words: a warring faction cannot simply set up a military headquarter, a military outpost or a military attack position in a hospital and expect to enjoy the full protection granted to medical facilities while using it to attack the enemy.
You're aware of that, right?
I'll say losing its protection is an over-simplification. Yes, when a significant military target is misusing the protected signs they can be ignored. You still however are not allowed to break the first rules around minimising any civilian losses. So the civilian people in the area are still protected, they don't lose their protection. Injuries to civilians should always be kept minimal. If the hospital is cleared out and is only used for military operations (treating wonder soldiers is not a military operation here) then the symbols of the hospital don't have any protection. No, if you attach from within anything that is protected, you should expect to be attacked. At the same time, any attack on the enemy has to be proportional and should always strive to minimize civilian losses. Including civilian material losses. An example is a sniper hiding in a civilian building. It's probably a war crime to bomb the house. Even when there are no civilians in the house. If there is a full platoon using the same place for defense, and the terrain is hard, it is probably ok for the same bombing. If the building also has a few hundred civilians, well it is back in the probable war crimes to bomb it out and some other ways of taking the objective have to be considered. This even looks at the house without any special protection. Same with an ambulance, if there are enemy combatants in the ambulance attacking you, of course, you can take it out. If there are enemy combatants in the ambulance that are not attacking you, you can take them prisoner. But you can't shoot first to make sure there are no combatants in it. For me, if there has been a bombing of a hospital building with masses of patients inside, it's a clear war crime. Even if there were a few military in the same building.
We don't know that, that's just what Israel claims. Israel is known to lie about that stuff.
There is video of weapons fire coming from hospitals, so we do have that.
And Hamas is constantly lying too, yet everyone on this site seems to eat up everything they say.
Hamas has not lied as blatantly as Israel. The death tolls they have reported have typically been corroborated by later independent sources.
What does weapons fire actually imply in a territory subjected to constant bombing and siege warfare? It's not like hospitals are safe from bombings and other attacks, so being armed in a gaza hospital is simply the intelligent thing to do
Most independent sources I've seen reporting on numbers have been Palestinians. The UN is not reporting on casualties because it cannot verify any of the claimed numbers.
And Hamas lied about 500 Palestinians being killed in one attack on a hospital by Israel, except it turned out that attack was actually Islamic Jihadists misfiring, and nowhere near 500 people died.
Hamas verifiably made up that 5% of the casualties in this war, so no, you shouldn't believe the rest of their numbers.
And Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israeli territory since Oct. 7th, that goes beyond defending yourself in a hospital.
And the bombing and siege warfare started after Hamas invaded Israel, killed over a thousand civilians, and fired thousands of rockets at Israeli cities.
Pretty sure that attack was actually done by Israel, if we are talking about the same thing. Hamas fired thousands of rockets because Israel is genociding them, essentially via siege warfare. The media simply decided not to cover all of the preceding heinous shit Israel did to provoke it, because the capitalist class owns the media. You should really start verifying the truth of random news stories you read, because it sounds like you believe the myth being spread by Western media that Israel is the good guy. Israel is committing genocide, and so it really doesn't matter at all what Hamas or Palestine has done in response.
No, that attack was confirmed to be Islamic Jihadists, and it was confirmed Hamas lied.
And your forgetting all the heinous shit Palestine did to make Israel like it is today, like trying to wipe out all the Jews as soon as Israel was formed, launching another war against them in 1967, 30 years of having a government that wanted Israel wiped out as their second charter.
There are no good guys, but Hamas are terrorists and need to be wiped out.
Israel is the one actively colonizing palestine's land. Israel is the one holding a 30 year siege. Israel is targeting civilians, as shown by the civilian death tolls on each side. Israel is doing all they can to torture and kill Palestinians. Dead palestinians outnumber dead Israelis 10 to 1.
Palestine is good because they are killing genociders, just like the allies were good in WW2. Israel is evil. It's not complicated.
Jews are indigenous to that land as well, so no they aren't colonizing it, they are living in their homeland.
Hamas is targeting civilians, or are you forgetting the 1,400 Israeli civilians killed on Oct 7th, and hundreds taken hostages, not to mention the thousands of rockets fired before and since Oct. 7th at Israeli civilians.
The only reason more Palestinian civilians have died is not for lack of Hamas trying. Israel is just better at defending the own people than Hamas is.
Hamas is actively trying to genocide Israelis. Hamas is evil, it's not complicated.
No, you're wrong. Stating it again and again won't change that. They are in fact colonizing palestinian land, just look at their maps that claim it as theirs. At this point I have to assume you're either trolling me, or you're wildly misinformed. Either way, I suggest you go read some articles about this. Literally everything you've said is incorrect.
Palestine didn't exist as a state and never did until the same time as Israel. That land was part of the Ottoman empire, and then the British mandate. before that it was controlled by various empires throughout history. Both the Palestinians and Israelis are indigenous to that land, and if Palestine and other Arab nations hadn't tried to wipe out the Jews in 1948 the moment Israel was established, maybe Israel wouldn't be trying to take what's left of Palestine.
And no, I'm not trolling you, I think you're an idiot.