US and Israel "reach the breaking point" as invasion of Rafah begins and Netanyahu rejects ceasefire

[Florida Man for Crime]

https://www.twitter.com/SkyNewsArabia_B/status/1787561816874209733

Netanyahu's office: Hamas's proposal is far from Israel's necessary requirements

https://www.twitter.com/SameralAtrush/status/1787562459638739125 (tweet from Middle East correspondent for the (British) Times):

Furry of alerts from Reuters citing a US official suggests we've reached the breaking point between Washington and Jerusalem: U.S. OFFICIAL FAMILIAR WITH TALKS SAYS NETANYAHU AND ISRAELI WAR CABINET HAVE NOT APPEARED TO NEGOTIATE WITH HAMAS "IN GOOD FAITH" IN LATEST ROUND

https://www.twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1787560300331356490

"The War Cabinet unanimously decided that Israel continues the operation in Rafah"

[Florida Man for Crime]

You can’t negotiate with Hamas in good faith and it’s insane to think otherwise. The only thing that can be done is to destroy them

I think Israel's objective is less about necessarily "destroying Hamas" as an organization (or some say an "idea") but rather is about achieving security for Israel in the sense of achieving military control over the land.

I think it is understandable why Israel does not want to leave Hamas a safe haven, because if they do leave Hamas a safe haven, it is entirely predictable that Hamas will just use it to conduct future attacks on Israel.

So Israel wants to establish control over the Gaza strip as a whole.

Maybe after that Hamas will reform somewhere else or something, or maybe future people will join Hamas or a Hamas-like organization as a result, but at least Hamas won't be able to fire rockets at Israel from Gaza or (worse) to plan and launch some other type of October 7 style attack 5-10 years down the line, without there either being Israeli troops or some other sort of non-Hamas security force there to stop them.

Hopefully the civilian casualties that result from doing this won't end up too high. It is certainly in Israel's interest to try to limit them, but a certain amount of civilian casualties are always inevitable in urban warfare, no matter what they do.

[Florida Man for Crime]

You can’t negotiate with Hamas in good faith and it’s insane to think otherwise. The only thing that can be done is to destroy them

That doesn't mean that everybody should turn a blind eye to Israel's war crimes.
Not everybody has lost his ability to be appalled like you obviously have.

I agree we should be appalled by war crimes, but can you be specific about what exactly you consider a "war crime"? How would you distinguish war crimes from just regular war? Obviously deliberately killing civilians should be considered a war crime, but how much effort is required to avoid unintended civilian casualties for a military action not to be a war crime?

To me it seems a lot more like a matter of gradations and shades of gray than a black and white distinction?

Simply the fact that some unintended civilian casualties occur can't turn a military action into a "war crime," or else pretty much all war would basically consist solely of war crimes, and the phrase "war crime" would lose all its meaning as distinct from the word "war."

[Florida Man for Crime]

That doesn't mean that everybody should turn a blind eye to Israel's war crimes.

Also, I don't think it is a bit careless to refer to "Israel's" war crimes unless you can establish that war crimes are a specific and deliberate policy of the Israeli government/military, i.e. that they are intentionally trying to kill civilians, in the same sort of way that it was the specific policy of Nazi Germany to intentionally try to kill civilians both in the holocaust and also generally in the "east" (a war of "annihilation"). There were specific orders from Hitler as well as other governmental/military figures ordering the deliberate killing of civilians in those cases, so it is fair in that sort of case to attribute the war crimes to the nation (or at least government) of Germany as a whole, because it was a matter of policy.

If you don't have that sort of order/policy, then I think you should attribute the war crimes to the individuals who committed them rather than to the nation as a whole.

Of course, the test of that is that if any cases of war crimes by individual Israeli soldiers or units are brought to light, which they committed without it being a matter of policy, then we should expect that Israel will prosecute them and hold them accountable. That is something that we can and should justly demand of them, and also that the Israeli public ought to demand.

[Florida Man for Crime]

But their indifference and lack of any precaution to protect them is a war crime in my eyes.

Not sure what you mean. If they were literally taking no precautions to prevent civilian casualties, do you not honestly think that civilian casualties would be a lot higher than 30k or so (the Hamas reported number which also includes military deaths)? They would just be constantly firing everything they have all over the place (it might hit some civilians, but if so, who cares). If they were truly indifferent to killing civilians, they have plenty of time in which they could have been constantly randomly firing artillery over the entirety of the Gaza strip (some may hit civilians, but that would not matter to them at all as long as it at least occasionally hit a Hamas fighter). But that is not what they are doing.

I think if you are honest and think carefully about it, I think you should rephrase your criticism to say that you judge them to be taking "insufficient" precaution to avoid unintentionally killing civilians.

And if you are willing to admit that, then you will have to admit that what exactly is "sufficient" is a gray line, the boundary for which is not really objective. And then you also will need to consider the difficulty of avoiding civilian casualties in an urban setting. It is a difficult thing to do, even if you are trying pretty hard, if an area is particularly densely populated (as Gaza is). War is not some super precise magical thing that is realistic to think can be done perfectly.

[Florida Man for Crime]

I'm genuinely confused whether you are capable of making a single argument that doesn't consist of "what about this other thing, therefore..."

This is not an intellectually strong or winning argument.

It is not whataboutism, it is comparing two similar cases.

Making numerical/mathematical comparisons between similar events is a fundamental aspect of human reasoning.

If you simply close your eyes and ignore analyses of civilian casualties in other wars in order to get some sense of what can be realistically achievable, then all you are accomplishing is blinding yourself and reveling in ignorance rather than seeking truth from facts.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Why do you think anyone is going to be convinced by some chart with a completely made up formula (one whose algebraic validity I have doubts about), that doesn't even show the numbers it puts into that made up formula, and accuses America of committing genocide in WW2, a position you don't even hold yourself?

You really should remove that post altogether, because it's more likely to push people away from you than to bring doubters over to your sode.

It is just the ratio of civilian casualties to military casualties, normalizing by the relative population sizes so that you don't get misleading results simply because one example is from a larger conflict than another (that is the parts dividing by populations).

It is an excellent post, because unlike other posts it at least attempts to make some sort of analysis referring to specific facts, rather than just vague generalizations.

If you disagree with it (or think you do), what you should do is dissect the numbers and explain why you think the ratio is not a useful numerical measure to look at. What you should no do is simply dismiss it but provide no alternative analysis of your own, especially if you admit that you don' even understand the (simple) formula it is showing.

In short, don't ignore data; instead use data to form rational fact-based opinions.