Around 9:30 p.m. in late February, a white Mazda pulled up near a game cafe in the Jenin refugee camp on the northern edge of the West Bank, where a crowd of boys and young men often gathered to socialize.
As the car stopped, a few people walked by on the narrow street. Two motorbikes weaved past in different directions. “Everything was fine at the time,” according to an eyewitness sitting nearby in the camp’s main square.
Then the car erupted in a ball of flame. Two missiles fired from an Israeli drone had hit the Mazda in quick succession, as shown in a video the Israeli Air Force posted that night.
According to the IAF, the strike killed Yasser Hanoun, described as “a wanted terrorist.”
But Hanoun was not the only fatality: 16-year old Said Raed Said Jaradat, who was near the vehicle when it was hit, sustained shrapnel wounds all over his body, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International-Palestine. He died from his injuries at 1 a.m. the next morning.
Jaradat is one of 24 children killed in Israel’s airstrikes on the West Bank since last summer, when the Israeli forces began deploying drones, planes, and helicopters to carry out attacks in the occupied territory for the first time in decades.
Do the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves? Or are we just going to call any retaliation “terrorism”?
Yeah, it worked great for US forces when they captured uniformed, trained, ranked military in countries we decided were state sponsored terrorists, so they weren’t military, just ‘enemy combatants’ being ‘extraordinarily renditioned’ to an ‘advanced interrogation’ in a ‘happy play time building’ or what ever insane bullshit we were saying when we were ‘liberating’ oil fields, poppy fields, and other private resources to be carefully maintained by a trusted and legitimate corporation rather than being LOOTED, by a dictator to do evil shit like… build schools and hospitals… but also chemical weapons he bought. And WE KNOW!!! because we sold them to him.
But yes…
They are clearly all terrorists. Particularly when they attack Israeli police or military.
Until you have your own air force, any violence is terrorism. Once you have an air force, nothing you do is terrorism.
He was suspected of involvement in a shooting at a kibbutz near the West Bank. There is no right to attack settlements with no military value.
You mean like a game cafe
The military value depends on who is inside.
90% of Israelis are military or reservists, making them non-civilians under International Law. So yeah, a kibbutz can be seen as a valid military target.
90% of Israelis are military or reservists, making them non-civilians under International Law.
Not true. Until they are activated for service, they are noncombatants under international law.
making them non-civilians
Was what I said not true?
They are noncombatants under international law. Noncombatants are not valid military targets.
Using that same logic, most of the Hamas members targeted by the Israelis are also civilians.
Remember, Hamas is a singular governmental organization that kept the militant wing separate from the civilian wing. i.e. Gazan Hospital Administator? Hamas.
That is a literal justification Israel has used to justify killing Gazan civilians, including police officers.
So, which is it? Are IDF reservists military, or are Gazan police and hospital administrators civilians?
You don’t get to have both.
Fascinating that “a bunch of civilians” doesn’t factor into that valuation
If there are only civilians inside, then it’s not a military target.
If there are any combatants inside, then it’s a military target.
Not according to Articles 51 and 54 of Protocol I of the Geneva Convention, but then again who cares about war crimes, right?
Article 51 and Article 54 do not have anything to do with this.
Article 51 bans pardons and article 54 discusses the use of the red cross emblem.
So they assassinated him instead of arresting him?
Sooo much legal.
They can’t arrest him, he doesn’t live in Israel. And killing enemy combatants is legal, for example Osama bin Laden.
I’m sorry I just spent that entire time laughing. The IDF and Israeli Police absolutely have the run of West Bank. It’s not called an occupation for nothing.
And when you kill someone without even trying to arrest them inside your civil jurisdiction, it’s called murder. At least it is in civilized countries.
Israel is not the civil authority of Gaza. Hamas is.
More important, the attack on the kibbutz occurred during a war between Israel and Hamas. That makes the attacker a combatant, not a criminal. In fact, you cannot legally prosecute combatants unless they commit war crimes.
Combatant immunity bars the prosecution of combatants for mere participation in hostilities. Thus, they are immune from prosecution for murder and destruction of property committed as part of an armed conflict, unless such acts constitute war crimes.
That’s all great. But this is in the West Bank. Not Gaza.
And you can absolutely be prosecuted for a war crime. Your own link says that.
Yes the link said that, and so did I.
Are you suggesting Yasser Hanoun committed a war crime?
Aren’t settlements military outposts?
No. And this wasn’t a settlement, it was a kibbutz within Israel.
Which kibbutz did he shoot at and was he convicted of anything or is a suspicion enough to kill Palestinians?
Settlers have no right to be in the settlements, either.
Also, suspected isn’t enough.
The kibbutz was in Israel, and Israelis have the right to be in Israel.
And as an armed member of Hamas, he was a military target even if he wasn’t involved in the kibbutz shooting.
It’s a war, they’re both allowed to attack each other. Palestinians are going to lose though, the two sides are not equal.
All this peacefire talk is just a nice way of framing the Palestinian surrender. The only question is how long Hamas will keep fighting before they are forced to give in.
It’s a war, they’re both allowed to attack each other
Ehhh not exactly. We describe it as a war when Israel is doing the killing (37k civilians dead) but we describe it as a terrorist attack when Hamas does the killing (<1000 civilians dead).
the two sides are not equal
You’re not wrong
Why do you count all those dead as ‘civilians’?
Because they are. Unless you have proof they were not.
If you’re suggesting that no Hamas fighters were killed in this conflict… Yeah not gonna waste my time on that
Were they in the refugee camps?
Was who in which refugee camp?
Wow, You actually don’t realize that Hamas is not a political organization in the West Bank. So, it isn’t even a war.
You’re literally justifying the murder of children here because they are Palestinian. You don’t even have the fig leaf of saying that it is a population that voted for Hamas.
You’re literally justifying the unjustifiable murder of children.
Almost all of the deaths are happening in Gaza, there’s very little fighting going on in the west bank right now.
Can you read for me the title of this post, please?
I’m not certain, but I may be hallucinating words and need to verify that you’re not just changing a goal post to justify the slaughter of innocent children that literally have nothing to do with Israels war against Gaza.
RTFA
Hamas isn’t in the west bank. This is straight up butchery and terror by the Israeli government.
Oh, but I’ve been told that Gazans voted for Hamas, so they’re getting what they deserve. Awfully young voting age they have in Gaza…
Just to be clear, this is the West Bank, so it isn’t even Hamas.
Okay, Hezbollah then.
That’s Southern Lebanon.
The political organization for the West Bank is the Palestinian Authority. It is viewed as completely subservient to the Israel government to the point of allowing the IDF to take Palestinian children hostages (Technically the IDF calls it an arrest, but there are no charges, and often times no trials. It is functionally equivalent to kidnapping.)
Regardless, you’ve made it clear you have literally no idea what you’re talking about and you are doing so in defense of the slaughter of innocent children.
Let’s be real here.
Israelis just like killing Palestinians.
Any claim otherwise is probably made in bad faith.
Considering Hamas ended all voting when they came into power, it seems unlikely these children did. Also because there children.
Hasbara is quite active on Lemmy recently
United States of Israel
The median age in gaza is 19.6
So almost half the population are children, and this includes a large number of Hamas fighters. They don’t wait until they’re adults to recruit. There are verified reports of them using kids down to age 12.
That’s a lot of mental gymnastics to justify killing thousands of children
They aren’t killing children. They’re killing Hamas militants /s
Oh, right, child soldiers are mental gymnastics.
When you dehumanize and demonize your opponent to the extent you are right now, you have lost the moral high ground.
There’s no moral high ground, It’s a multi-thousand year civil/religious war.
I have one simple question.
Let’s say that Palestine is given statehood, with established fixed borders. Do you really think they’d stop attacking Israel at that point?
This is literally the same argument bigots have always made. Lemme ask you a question: if we let women vote do you really think they would make the right choices?
If we let black people use the same bathrooms as white people do you really think they’d behave?
If we let those refugees in do you really think they’ll contribute to society?
If we dismantle apartheid do you really think they can govern themselves?
If we free the slaves do you really think they can do anything but menial labor?
What I think is whenever someone asks me if I really think we should stop discriminating against a group of people because they’re not worthy of respect, dignity, and basic right to life, I think that person fucking sucks
What the fuck? No it isn’t. You’ve got that shit backwards.
Women were making perfectly intelligent choices BEFORE they got the vote, they didn’t need the vote to change the way they thought.
Black people behaved just fine BEFORE they got to use the same restrooms, segregation had nothing to do with behavior.
Refugees were contributing to their own society BEFORE they left their home country.
etc. etc. etc.
There is an entire army in Gaza actively attacking Israel, with quite high support from the population, funding from foreign governments, and illegally smuggled weapons.
Palestinians are not behaving like they want to get along. They need to do that BEFORE the attacks stop.
Again, same tired arguments. You are claiming the same thing bigots have claimed for time immemorial.
When women were fighting for the vote the argument made against them was that they would make poor choices. You arguing differently about women now doesn’t matter - you are making the same type of argument against Palestinians that were made against discriminated against groups at every turn.
White enslavers argued that black slave revolts justified continued enslavement, and this is precisely the argument you’re making.
