Israel military says 2 civilians killed for every Hamas militant is a 'tremendously positive' ratio given combat challen

[Lonestarblue]

2. So if Israel says that there are half a million Hamas fighters in Gaza, that gives them the right to kill

a million innocent Palestinians. This is disgusting, and I suspect the true number is closer to a few hundred Hamas fighters killed among the 15,000+ civilians killed.

Israel has always pursued a policy of disproportionate force, and it is doing so in Gaza with the aim of destroying the whole economy so that no one can live there.

“Despite massive Israeli attacks backed by a near-unlimited supply of bombs and missiles and intelligence support from the United States, Hamas continues to fire rockets. Moreover, it retains a substantial paramilitary ability with 18 of the original 24 active paramilitary battalions intact, including all 10 in southern Gaza.

. . .

The doctrine [of disproportionate force] has been used in Gaza during the four previous wars since 2008, especially the 2014 war. In those four wars, the IDF killed about 5,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, for the loss of 350 of their own soldiers and about 30 civilians. In the 2014 war, Gaza’s main power station was damaged in an IDF attack and half of Gaza’s then population of 1.8 million people were affected by water shortages, hundreds of thousands lacked power and raw sewage flooded on to streets.

Even earlier, after the 2008-9 war in Gaza, the UN published a fact-finding report that concluded that the Israeli strategy had been “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population”.”


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/05/israel-disproportionate-force-tactic-infrastructure-economy-civilian-casualties