8,805 Number of Palestinians killed in Gaza

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Of course. Like many provisions of international law governing warfare, belligerents are not allowed to deliberately inflict damage on civilian populations as a military target in wartime.

The reason it is “seemingly” simple, rather than actually simple, is because you are allowed to deprive enemy belligerents of food, supplies, and other resources in order to degrade their effectiveness. So when an enemy belligerent violates the laws of war by intentionally locating their forces intermixed within a civilian population, as Hamas has done, it presents a far more complicated question:

A second and more complex question is whether the prohibition is limited to situations where a belligerent deliberately starves civilians, or whether it also covers situations where, although not intended, the starvation of civilians is the foreseeable consequence of a particular course of action. If a besieged area holds fighters and civilians, would a besieging party that does not allow the entry of commodities because it wants to starve the fighters, knowing that this is also going to starve civilians, be violating the prohibition? Is what matters the intention underlying a course of action or its effects ?

One view, based on the wording of the prohibition in Article 54 AP I and, in particular, on its framing of the practice ‘as a method of warfare’, is that only the deliberate starvation of civilians is prohibited.39 A number of military manuals appear to support this interpretation.40 Additional support for this narrow interpretation comes from the wording of Article 54(2) AP I, which sets out an example of a violation of the prohibition of starvation, and refers to the destruction of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population ‘for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population’ (emphasis added).

There are arguments that such tactics are limited in these situations, of course, which are also laid out in that article (which predates the current attacks in Gaza, so was not written with any particular viewpoint on that specific siege). But not that such responses are completely prohibited - just that they are limited. Like bombardments in an area where there are known to be a lot of civilians, there is not a clear-cut rule.

Again, because Hamas has chosen to violate international law by embedding their forces and resources within the civilian population of Gaza, it is inevitable that civilians will be hurt and killed by any Israeli response to Hamas’ attacks. This does not mean that responses that are permitted under the laws of war to be taken against belligerents (like bombing and sieges) are prohibited to the Israelis because Hamas has done this. They don’t get immunity from military responses like sieges just because they are hiding among civilians.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2019/06/sieges-law-and-protecting-civilians-0/iii-rules-international-humanitarian-law-particularly

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A couple of days ago an airstrike in Jabaliya caused large “sinkholes” to suddenly appear, causing adjacent buildings to collapse.

That was followed by warnings about secondary explosions from the “sinkholes”.

DB2

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Well I learned something. There are 193 nations in the UN and roughly 57 of them are Muslim nations.

I am not a liar. Anyone can get a fact wrong. A bigger man maintains his mind in such discussions.

I just see poorer nations as trying to leverage the West when voting against Israel. It is not really some sort of major morality play.

Then there is the overlay of about 57 dictatorships who endlessly need to poke the West in the eye.

Here is a list of 45 such entities but it includes the Vatican. LOL The list is just a rough-up by a Quora user.

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Steve,

I am not defending liars. I am saying you have recourse. Did you publish to a newspaper editorial page?

I am saying the lies do not stand. Meaning eventually we all get wise. We change course as a society.

Flyerboys,

The real W story started with Clinton. They papered over a great depression in the cycle by allowing individual risk to soar. Individuals had the great depression. The rest of us just went on our merry way from 2000-2020.

Only now are we uplifting our country’s manufacturing might.

See the current productivity increase. Those are factories coming online.

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Wrong.

The UN found that the counts reported by the PLO were pretty accurate.

Hams took over in 2007. It is not the same thing as the PLO. I don’t (or didn’t) have any reason to second guess the PLO. I have a lot of reasons (some very recent) to question anything put out by Hamas. Any entity that beheads people, especially civilians, will never get the benefit of the doubt as to an accurate death count.

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Exactly. When an Israeli dies, it is a victory for Hamas, and, as certain posters here vividly demonstrate, when a Palestinian dies it is also a victory for Hamas.

Pete

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A UN official was on Amanpour last night. He was asked about the credibility of the Hamas body count. He said that, based on the 72 UN staff that have been killed, as a proportion of their total staff in Gaza, 9000 dead Pals, out of 2.3M, is certainly credible.

Steve

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This morning on NPR according to Palestinians sources 9000k plus “dead mostly children”.

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My old man’s jaundice eye towards votes against Israel in the general assembly. Where one state was not Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or communist. It turns out the majority of major votes are on that state. At some point it really does not matter…as in sixty years ago.

Like no one else ever has sinned.

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Every Arab-American in the US needs to denounce and work to change the dictatorships they came from. The reason there is no peace in the ME is those crazy governments. Blaming the US, Israel and the rest of the West needs to stop. Being responsible starts with you. The only democratic monarchy in the ME is Jordan which is 65% Palestinian and lives in peace with Israel. The rest of those governments give us endless problems.

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Amanpour is not an unbiased reporter on this topic. She hosted the Queen of Jordan and let her present her propaganda without challenge. In fact, she agreed with the Queen on her position in her own editorial comments.

As it pertains to the UN person, I assume you are referring to Philippe Lazzarini. He has recently called for a cease fire that notably did not include any mention of the return of the hostages. If that is the person that was on Amanpour, then I am not surprised that he finds anything said by Hamas as credible. I doubt Amanpour would have brought him on if he felt differently.

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There are 48 Muslim nations in the UN. That is 25% of UN. You claimed that over 50% of UN nations were Muslim majority.

https://www.uscirf.gov/publications/did-you-knowmuslim-constitutions

Of the 46 countries in the world with majority Muslim populations, 23 declare Islam to be the state religion in their constitutions. The rest either proclaim the state to be secular or make no pronouncement concerning an official religion. The 23 countries where Islam is declared the state religion are: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

Under international standards, a state may declare an official religion, provided that basic rights – including the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief – are respected for all without discrimination. This means that the existence of a state religion cannot be a basis for discriminating against or impairing any rights of adherents of other religions or non-believers or their communities. Unfortunately, in practice many states with official state religions do not meet this test.

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The list of dictators was a much more appropriate list. Someone has to be to blame. Indoctrination is a great thing. Sarcasm.

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Half the population of Gaza is under 19, so it would be reasonable to expect half the body count to be “children”.

Steve

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That depends. The first building in the camp was mostly empty from the sounds of it.

The fighters are being targeted. So half is stretching it considerably.

Besides the 9000 is stretching it somewhat as well. We just do not know how much.

The biggest issue is cholera. The diseases will be the worst killers. It is early yet.

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9000 is on the low end of the death toll in Gaza because that is only the confirmed deaths. There are lots of missing people.

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When I was going to Whatsa Matta U, in the 70s, there were a lot of middle eastern students on campus, including a lot from Iran. from time to time, the Iranian students would demonstrate against the Shah’s regime. The demonstrators all wore face masks, in the expectation that CIA trained SAVAK agents were on campus, to report on their activities, so the regime could take reprisal against their families. Remember when the roof of the passenger terminal at the Tehran airport collapsed? The official story was “snow load”. An Iranian student, who had been in several of my classes over the years said to me “don’t believe it (the snow story). it was a bomb. there is a revolution coming”. That roof collapse was December 1974, four years before the Shah grabbed his Swiss bank book, and ran.

Steve

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I saw that interview. Amanpour asked why not let the Pals make new homes in Jordan. The queen mumbled some nonsense. The irony is, the Pals on the west bank were Jordanian citizens from 48 to 67, as the Jordanian army took that area in 48. Why Jordan doesn’t want them now, is a good question, which no-one seemingly wants to give a credible answer to.

In case you missed it, Jordan has recalled it’s ambassador to Israel.

Amanpour is not totally unbiased. No-one is. She might not be willing to totally lay down for whatever Israel dishes out, like most of the Shiny media. If you didn’t know, she was born in London, Iranian Muslim father and British, Catholic mother. Lived in Iran until she was 11, then went to boarding school in the UK. Family left Iran after the revolution.

Steve

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I mean, though, isn’t the answer rather obvious? It’s a combination of two things:

  1. The Palestinians don’t particularly want to move to Jordan; and
  2. There are about 3 million of them, compared to Jordan’s total population of ~11 million, so it’s really just not feasible for them to do it if they wanted to.

Jordan probably also doesn’t want to have an active hand in preventing the creation of a Palestinian state - which taking in the WB population certainly would.

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Jordan is a Palestinian state.

Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and Jordan are Greater Syrian states but the only solid country in the region is Israel. The Jordanians depend on Israeli protection or they’d have been overrun a long time ago. The Syrian tribesmen are decades away from forming modern country borders and institutions that work.

The only reason SA is not at war with Jordan is the lack of oil. Yemen has a lot of oil so SA bombs them and takes the oil which is under their mutual border.

The recent idea of an accord between SA, Israel and the US no one really wanted. Do we really want to put boots on the ground to defend SA against Iran? Do we really want to give SA civil nuclear projects? Do we really want to rearm the ME? Well, maybe that last one but it only plays well here in the US to the defense industry. No one really wants to add more arms into any ME country other than Israel.