Hospitals have special protection under the rules of war. Why are they in the crosshairs in Gaza?

https://lemmy.world/post/8141382

Hospitals have special protection under the rules of war. Why are they in the crosshairs in Gaza? - Lemmy.World

JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling. “Listen,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Sada as fighting raged around Shifa Hospital.

Why are hospitals in Gaza under Israel’s crosshairs? Why? Is it truly that difficult to step back and think for a moment about why Israel would want to erase the current populace entirely?

Amazing, what a mystery

erase the current populace entirely

Do you realize that the population of Gaza increases by over 50,000 every year? Even if we accept the casualty figures provided by Hamas (and I don’t - my bet is that they’re wildly exaggerated) then unless this war goes on at its current intensity for another four months (which it won’t), the population of Gaza will actually increase rather than decrease in the one-year period that includes the war.

The idea that the war in Gaza is “[erasing] the current populace entirely” is disconnected from reality.

Wow.

Are you literally saying it’s not a genocide because the population is growing faster than the IDF is killing?

I don’t know what happened to your brain, nor your heart, but I am sad whatever happened to you, happened.

Civilian casualties aren’t the same thing as genocide.

genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group

When a country with access to the full destructive power of a modern-day military (including nuclear weapons) fights a war in such a manner that at the end of the war there will be more enemy civilians than there were before the war, it is entirely unreasonable to claim that genocide or any attempt to commit genocide is taking place. You might as well call it cannibalism or pedophilia - those are also really bad things that aren’t happening there.

Keep telling yourself whatever you need to support your own narratives. I just wanna let you know that I think you are a cold-hearted person, and I hope that you, your family, or your people will never be thought of, as you are thinking and/or talking of the Palestinians right here.

They are deliberately bombing hospitals, schools and people fleeing. If you cannot open your eyes to see this, but rather argue about the technicalities of semantics to feel better, I wish you good luck in life.

When you’re arguing the definitions of words you’ve already lost.
When you are arguing that words have no meaning, you have already thrown away your own argument.
When you’re making contrite bullshit to reply you’re probably a tool bag.

Internally withholding food and water when you control all ingress is a war of extirpating a population without bombing and shooting them.

But so is dropping more explosive power than the two atomic bombs used in Japan into an area the size of Manhattan in a month.