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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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If someone was about to kill you, and they're hiding behind another person, and the only way you could stop them from killing you would be putting the third person at risk of being killed as well, do you have the right to defend yourself?
That's basically the point, on a macro level, that we are all arguing about.
if someone was about to kill you, you would know who they were. you wouldn’t be killing random bystanders.
No, the third party can be a stranger who just gets caught up in the middle of it, who becomes the shield against their will.
There is another question on a micro level. How many people who are not about to kill you can you kill in self-defence to save how many people?
While in theory, every human life is as important and valued as another we do often in practice allow some movement morally.
The third question is immediacy. Are you allowed to kill someone in self-defence if you know they will kill you tomorrow? Is it just current action, and how far current stretches.
But while those are simplified questions on the philosophy of ethics in these situations they don't entirely apply to Israel and Palestine. That is because they ignore the power imbalance.
Something already got wrong in your logic chain if you came up with something like "well maybe if I need to kill 1001 citizens the terrorist is hiding behind in order to save my 1000 citizens, maybe better not do anything and let him kill my citizens".
Immediacy is simple in this case. We all know that if Palestinians do not attack Israel then Israel will not attack Palestinians. And we all know that no matter what, Palestinians are going to continue their unprovoked attacks. This means whoever comes up with "let's attack first because otherwise we'll get attacked" must be Palestinian, and a lying one.
Why are your citizens somehow more valuable than any other citizens? I am not even saying do nothing. I am saying killing people indiscriminately is not OK.
Second, if these are unprovoked attacks I have no idea what in your world constitutes provoked. I don't think attacks being provoked makes them right but they didn't come out of nothing. Israel is not an innocent party here. Neither is Palestine.
It's not about being valuable or not. It's about accepting terrorism as weather and do nothing about providing an umbrella. While your stance suggests Israel to silently let Israeli die, hamas is actively using Palestinians in order to get away with their terrorism. This means hamas actively wants anyone interfering to kill Palestinians instead of hamas. They're making it unavoidable.
Unprovoked attacks are unprovoked. When you want to say "Palestinians were forced to storm the Israel territory in an attempt to kill as many citizens as possible because something happened in the past", you suggest a provoked attack. And if you say "but look, it didn't come out of nothing, there is a reason that is righteous", I'd ask you to consider how exactly it was even theoretically logical and effective. If you want to punish your attacker, you punish your attacker, not civilians. If you want to go war, you better have a plan on how to win from the very start. And if you know you can't win, you don't start because you value the lives of your people.
Are you seriously trying to argue that hamas is hiding behind 2 million civilians in Gaza, and that there were now thousands of valid military targets? Natalie Bennet couldn't even answer a simple question a BBC interviewer posed to him about their consideration of the lives of innocent babies. Couldn't even answer a simple question. This man is supposed to be one of the leaders of the nation.
Its been widly reported that the Palestinians are being used by Hamas as human shields.
No. I was just stating the problem, not offering a solution. Its a very real dilemma.
What do you do, when your enemy is behind an innocent person who is being used as a shield.
But this is that justification in that context. "Oh, they are using the civillian population as human shields. Looks like we are going to have to kill everyone." Like 2 million stand between the IDF and the hostages. So silly. I would hope the IDF leadership is a little more disciplined than that logic.
I'm asking it as a moral dilemma, a thought experiment, generally speaking, and not to this current situation.
Fundamentally, is it ethically/morally right to risk/kill an innocent person who is being used as a shield, when trying to kill someone who is trying to kill you?
They're not saying that, at least I haven't heard them say that, and I've been watching the coverage daily.
They're definately risking everyone in the area, but they've also warned everyone in the area to get out of the area, before they go in.
You have to be pretty naive about how Israeli govt. Leadership tables these kind of things, which you could be forgiven for if you don't follow these things. But most American Jews, myself included, know how messed up Likud's approach to this kind of stuff is.
People responding keep not answering the point I'm asking, instead of trying to turn it into me attacking Israel, for some reason.
Because it is extremely disingenuous to frame it like this. Even in this hypothetical scenario, you absolutely have the responsibility to try to save that innocent person's life as well as your own.
While we could imagine hypothetical scenario where killing civilians is justified, it is pretty clear that is not the scenario Israel is facing right now.
The hell it is, that's just an excuse for not wanting to answer the question.
My question gets down to the crux of the point, where the arguing from all of us comes from, and what should be done next comes from. And it needs answering.
It's not hypothetical, it's happening right now, in real time, in front of us.
So does that mean you attack or not attack the person trying to kill you? Who's life is more important, your own, or the person being used as a shield?
Well, Israel has to go into Gaza to destroy Hamas, and Hamas is using Palestinian citizens for shields, so that's exactly the scenario Israel is facing right now.
You can't hand-wave that away, because it's uncomfortable to deal with.
Yes, the carpet bombing campaign has been Israeli troops going into Gaza. Oh wait, no it hasn't they have been amassing reservists at the border.
This includes multiple of my relatives who are Israeli reservists. Obviously I do not want them to be put into harms way, but I fail to see how carpet bombing a place where 2 million people live does that. Perhaps you have some magical insight that my Jewish reservist relatives don't.
Starving them out, cutting off water, power to hospitals... this isn't pre-emptively attacking terrorists using human shields, its cruel and unusual collective punishment, and even the govt. leaders of Israel don't bother to try to justify it when they are actually asked. Their response to these questions from journalists haven't been "these are human shields." The response has been "you didn't talk about dresden in WWII." Just disgusting.
You don't see the carpet bombing as a step one and step two, which is coming very soon, is Israel actually going into Gaza with force, with all those reservists they called up?
Yes, but I don't understand how carpet bombing protects them or helps them rescue hostages. They will still be in grave danger if they enter gaza, perhaps even more danger in this environment. It's hard to pick out any military doctrine that suggests otherwise. This has been a repeated criticism of this type of military activity, across campaigns all over the world and recent history. I supposed you could compare it to allied bombing of axis forces, but I would argue that those campaigns were carried out as part of a much more stringently determined military strategy, rather than as a per reactionary action.
The opposite, actually. There would be less places for Hamas to attack/sniper from, and easier to see the battlefield and all the participants in it.
Yes, I can acknowledge the tactical logic of it. But this strategy hasn't played out very well in just about every modern conflict ever.
All I was trying to do was get a conversation going on the ethics of attacking someone who's using third-party innocence as shields, and not literally pass judgment on what's going on on the ground today, just using it as an example for the overall ethical discussion.
There was a scifi book I read some decades ago they had the exact same scenario, and I was just trying to get input from today's Humanity to see if it jives with the solution that the author of the novel had come up with.
People are being too emotional and defensive to have these kind of conversations though it seems.
I was just trying to create content on Lemmy for us to read.
If you want to talk about ethics on Lemmy, go create an ethics discussion community or host your own server. Discussing "ethics" in the context of Israel's actions and policies is something that I have done over and over and over, unproductively. In less tense times, it is usually stuff like "should driving on highways be illegal on saturdays around the orthodox community?" and stuff like that.
If you come onto a thread that is specifically about what is going on Israel right now, and say "I'm just trying to have an ethical discussion," it comes off as extremely disingenuous. I'm sorry.
You're taking my words out of context of the whole conversation that's happening, and being intellectually dishonest.
I was speaking about that question, as a "jumping off point" to the larger discussion on what's happening in Gaza right now.
Again, no it's not disingenuous because it covers what's being discussed in the very same topic. It's real time and it's happening.
You cannot hand wave that away as much as you want to. Both can be true, and allowed.
You're just being emotional and defensive when you don't need to be, to protect your team.
I'm not attacking your team, I'm just trying to have a conversation.
De-railing a conversation is a very well recognized form of logical fallacy. De-railing a thread is considered very poor etiquette on internet forums. I'm sorry for assuming we were having a conversation about the topic of the thread.
One person's derailing is another person's continuing and/or expanding.
I accept your apology.
Could you support that claim? Because it is Israel that actually has a track record of using human shields.
Example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/un-report-accuses-israeli-forces-of-using-palestinian-children-as-human-shields-abusing-children-in-custody/
There are like a gazillion more reports like this so just say the words and I will personally DuckDuckGo them for you.
And no sorry, living in an area does not mean you are using people as human shields. Israel, for example, forces children to walk through a cross fire as a human shield or straps them on the front of an army truck.
Well, I didn't write down the dates and times down so I can prove them to you when you asked me, but I've been watching coverage every day all day on this and it was mentioned many times on multiple networks like CNN, BBC, NPR, Breaking Points (Intetnet), etc.
As with everything else about the Israeli-Palestinian issue, it always comes down to both sides having ample evidence of how the other side is bad and they are good.
Having said that, if you just look at what's going on in Gaza right now, you can see Hamas has bases/underground tunnels and the Palestinians are what are between Israel and Hamas.
I think almost all mentions of Hamas using human shields is a dumb technicality. Again, Israel staps Palestinian children on trucks and has been condemned by so many fucking human rights organizations that it made me lose hope in the world that they will ever be held accountable. Hamas on the other hand keeps its military bases where Israel can't find them on an extremely densely populated open prison.
It's entirely Israel's fault for bombing hospitals (yes it's done that in this operation too and in every single one before), whether Hamas (who are fucking picks too) puts bases underneath or not. You'd imagine if they were using human shields that Israel would kill less civilians. Instead Israel uses it as an excuse to kill Palestinians because they are less than human to the IDF.
You're not being intellectually honest.
What I mean to say is that when people say "human shields", they mean when civilians are forced into crossfire to protect the enemy troops. However, there exists the notion of "proximity shielding".
If you check the Wikipedia page for human shields:
There are several pieces that discuss this idea, but here are some.
In this analysis piece of proximity shielding, we read:
If you turn your eyes back to the wiki page I first linked under the section on Israel and Palestine:
Finally, this article discusses the politics surrounding the idea of human shields
I hope this makes my point clear but basically: Israel is using proximity shielding (aka accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields) to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and has itself had to outlaw the use of Palestinians as human shields because it was a normal part of Israeli military operations and totally allowed until all the human rights groups finally succeeded in outlawing it, and yet Israel still sometimes uses it.