The phrases "he had ordered ‘complete siege’ of Gaza City”, and later said “we will eliminate everything” sure doesn’t make it sound like they are interested in limiting it to Hamas.
The siege is a war crime and most of the statements are straight genocidal. The Gallant quotes seem to have been from a poor translation by Bloomberg that spread everywhere – and used as evidence at the ICJ. They issued a correction a few days ago. He said “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything.” That entire middle sentence was missing originally. He also said, “We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza.”
When Bibi comes out and outright says “in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea” or alternatly “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River” it’s hard to argue any other intent.
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
That’s assuming that he was being 100% literal. Even if he was, Hamas uses civilian infrastructure thereby making non-military targets into legal military targets. In this context, “eliminating everything,” doesn’t necessarily mean destroying protected sites illegally.
More importantly, when it comes to operations and not merely statements, it’s very clear that Israel is quite selective about choosing targets, and they care if they are legal or not, they even built an AI for this purpose. They go to great lengths to try and minimize civilian deaths during their operations, taking far more precautions than I’m aware that any other country does. Info on how the IDF does this despite Hamas hiding among civilians can be found here.
The phrases "he had ordered ‘complete siege’ of Gaza City”, and later said “we will eliminate everything” sure doesn’t make it sound like they are interested in limiting it to Hamas.
The siege is a war crime and most of the statements are straight genocidal. The Gallant quotes seem to have been from a poor translation by Bloomberg that spread everywhere – and used as evidence at the ICJ. They issued a correction a few days ago. He said “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything.” That entire middle sentence was missing originally. He also said, “We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza.”
When Bibi comes out and outright says “in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea” or alternatly “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River” it’s hard to argue any other intent.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/netanyahu-from-river-sea-israel-control-1234949408/
Everything, not everyone. It sounds like he’s referring to destroying infrastructure, not people, but I’m not in his head so I could be wrong.
If your intent is to “eliminate everything”, that’s including non military targets, and would fall under Article II of the Genocide Convention:
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
How dare you bring facts?
That’s assuming that he was being 100% literal. Even if he was, Hamas uses civilian infrastructure thereby making non-military targets into legal military targets. In this context, “eliminating everything,” doesn’t necessarily mean destroying protected sites illegally.
More importantly, when it comes to operations and not merely statements, it’s very clear that Israel is quite selective about choosing targets, and they care if they are legal or not, they even built an AI for this purpose. They go to great lengths to try and minimize civilian deaths during their operations, taking far more precautions than I’m aware that any other country does. Info on how the IDF does this despite Hamas hiding among civilians can be found here.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Info on how the IDF does this despite Hamas hiding among civilians can be found here.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Are “human animals” things or ones?