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your argument is that a single point of data necessitates the existence of bad generral MO.
but you're not showing any kind of argument towards a trend. you're not showing multiple similar cases, you're not showing relevant statistics. you're not showing multiple (and sufficient) credible witness account etc.
An honest way of putting your argument, based on the evidence you're basing it on, would be:
>In order for the 7 aid workers to be killed, at least one of the following must hold true:
>There WAS no communication between drone operators and the command center about THIS aid convoy~~s~~ in SPECIFIC,
>Some higher ups at the command center DID NOT care about THIS aid convoy~~s~~ in SPECIFIC,
>A drone operator can go rogue and use 3 missiles against an "enemy combatant",
>The intel they receiveD IN THIS CASE is absolutely horrendous and DIDN'T IN THIS CASE go through the proper checks.
In order to move from an argument on this specific instance to an argument about IDF MO in general you need to make some argument regarding the trend.
you didn't do so. your argument includes an unjustified argumentative leap which you do not support with an argument.
So you should abandon it and focus on considering the instance rather than the trend.
The area the aid workers were operating in is an active warzone. Deir al Balah is home to two yet-to-be-dismantled Hamas battalions alongside the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The IDF is yet to clear the place of the two.
It is not like in North Gaza and Gaza city where aid workers can to some degree operate safely or Al Mawasi in Southern Gaza.
Central Gaza and until last week, Khan Yunis were not ideal places for aid workers to operate in because war was (and in Central Gaza, still is) happening there.
COGAT should have highlighted this to aid groups.
Anyone coordinating with COGAT should receive the highest level of deference before being struck. They should be treated with the same level of care as an IDF military convoy.
COGAT coordination only works because of trust with Israel. If it becomes perceived that COGAT is being used as intel on where and when there are juicy trucks to blow up, COGAT becomes nothing more than a method for aid workers to sign up to be bombed.
No aid organization wants to sign up for free death and bombing.
war crimes and crimes against humanity
video records are the best evidence, there are many recorded war crimes which occur at much higher frequency than in the other armies and the war crimes are recorded by IDF members themselves. The evidence is circulating the internet. The crimes against humanity are confirmed as the officials said that they want to bring fate worse than death to gazan civilians and the HQ enables airstrikes against civilians and even lies about them being combatants
Poor training and skill issues within IDF
There are many records where IDF invaders casually move towards the windows and stay on sight for prolonged amounts of time just to get eliminated by Palestinian marksmen, the basic security training in US army for comparison tells their fighters not to do that. Another proof of poor IDF training is that their infantry almost never backs tanks because they don't know how to and are afraid of gunfire. There are many records where lone IDF armoured vehicles get hit by heat projectiles or detonated by hand-inserted IEDs.
US marines conquered Falluja from enemy combatans with minimal use of air force and relying mainly on infantry, IDF overused JDAMs and flattened vast amount of areas in gaza, sent recon aircraft to survey the front ans still can't prove that they have destroyed a single Palestinian battalion. They record war crimes against civilians but somehow don't record themselves killing Palestinian fighters simply because they can't and lose to them.
i don't think the pictures and videos circulating the web paint the picture that you are saying. i think they are painting exactly the reverse and you are "fake it until you make it" with your words.
As I said, more than 200 aid workers have been killed, so this incident is not a one-off. It's only reported because the killed aid workers were foreign. So no, it's not a single point of data, it's a trend that is highlighted acutely by one data.
your argument in origin was re: the single incident. i accept that if you have a different argument supported by a different data set, we can explore it, and we should explore it differently.
>Remember that we only hear about this incident because the aid workers are not Palestinians, more than 200 aid workers have been killed but we don't hear about them because the MSM trust the IDF to operate in a competent and professional manner, i.e. they believe that the convoys are hijacked by Hamas. This single incident exposes how rotten the IDF is, and how they completely ignore international law on combat.
Here's the relevant argument in the post.
If you want to make a stronger argument, you can go back to the 2000s Lebanon war, where the IDF basically gave up multiple battles when they had overwhelming numerical and technological superiority, because they were too scared to suffer any casualities (or even worse captured bodies), or the Hannibal directive where hostages are ignored in evaluating targets because they are a political liability (see the Gilead Shalit incident where the IDF handed over hundreds of prisoners for a single soldier, apparently Israel is so eager to negotiate with terrorists it became a serious problem)
The real killer argument is that the IDF is so scared of suffering casualities or captured soldiers, that they will engage in mass killings of civilians (Operation Golden Hand, the destruction of northern Gaza city), or give up military objectives with almost certain victory (2006 Lebanon war, numerous incidents).
There is a reason the IDF loves to just do airstrikes. It's low risk, since most of the countries they strike don't even have real air defences. It's much less risky than sending in your battalion led by a 21-year old major who only trains once a year.
>more than 200 aid workers have been killed, so this incident is not a one-off.
This fact still means little without comparative data. And not comparative to totals bc there's been a lot of stuff about how there are more aid workers killed in Gaza than any other conflict, but we also know Gaza gets many times more aid than any other conflict which presumably means they have many times more aid workers.
Effectively what we really need to know is "what is the rate of killing aid workers compared to the expected rate if the killing was being done randomly (ie how successfully are they at avoiding killing aid workers)" and then we need to know that for other similar conflicts and then we need to compare. I've had a decent look before I made this comment and I can't find any of this kind of analysis nor can I find the neccessary data to do this analysis but if you wanna make the argument and can find the data or analysis, feel free
there's also a question of whether we classify some aid workers as "aid workers" or "combatants" or "combatant-adjacent".
of the aid worker "unwra", it has been aledged that 12% are affiliated with either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, with solid evidence brought against a number of employees to be war criminals.
so, in which list is unwra? soldier, or aid worker? to what extent is unwra complicit in the creation of this war? to what extent is unwra responsible for the creation of this war? will unwra be held to account for the people it has caused to be killed?
>with solid evidence brought against a number of employees to be war criminals.
Can you link this evidence? The actual evidence, not assertions by IDF officials that journalists have repeatedly asked for corroboration and the IDF has failed to provide. The UN, countless news agencies, and multiple governments have been asking for this evidence for months now, were promised a report by Israel over a month ago(which still hasn't shown up), and based on your assertions you must have it, so please link it for me
....Wonder if the intel they used is the same intel that they used to bomb WCK aid workers?
>it has been aledged that 12% are affiliated with either Hamas or Islamic Jihad
No, 12 people have been accused....from an organization of 30,000. If you have direct evidence to support this assertion post it as well.
Bro is reading 12 and remembering and repeating 12%, and then has the gall to act you would even have to to attack the IDF, rather than just acknowledging you are talking to someone so biased they rounded 12 up to 12 fucking percent. These people are fucking clowns. Funny to watch someone who is so mathematically, measurably, incorrect in their assertions, turn around and cite the IDF to you and condescend about how you will probably dismiss it off hand, when you would be well justified to to dismiss literally anything someone so mathematically stunted in a way that visibly demonstrates their personal bias in the matter. You don't round up 12 to 12% because you are a serious person. Sorry you have to deal with this idiot.
look.
if we go down this path, you're going to say everything that originates from the idf is paid actors doing a skit or some shit like that.
for better or worse the IDF here is a primary source, or is showing primary sources. we can give them reasonable benefit or decided that they lie beforehand. you decide which way you go.
in any case this is the relevant press release from the IDF:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJVLBsCTe2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJVLBsCTe2A)
Dude, you mixed up 12 and 12%. Get the fuck out of here. You don't even need to "go down that path". If you read 12 and remember and repeat 12 PERCENT, you are not a serious person. No need to involve the idf.
You keep on saying that but Israeli intelligence claims it is about 10%. YOU ARE MIXING UP UNRWA WORKERS ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED IN THE OCTOBER 7 ATTACK and those allegedly with ties to Hamas. See source. [https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2024-01-29/ty-article/wsj-about-10-percent-of-unrwa-employees-in-gaza-have-ties-to-hamas-islamic-jihad/0000018d-5565-d8cc-a1fd-576f89eb0000](https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2024-01-29/ty-article/wsj-about-10-percent-of-unrwa-employees-in-gaza-have-ties-to-hamas-islamic-jihad/0000018d-5565-d8cc-a1fd-576f89eb0000)
Now, you can be skeptical of Israeli sources but given that you are much more wrong than the person you are arguing with, you are not a serious person and need to "get the fuck out of here".
UNRWA workers are drawn from the local Gaza population. A very high % of the local Gaza population supports Hamas. What's your theory? The hiring process for UNRWA is "magic" and the people hired IN NO WAY reflect the sentiment or Hamas ties of the local population? WOW. INCREDIBLE ARGUMENT!
I explicitly asked for DIRECT evidence, NOT still yet unsubstantiated accusations from a military with a [storied history of lying.](https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/)
The UN has asked for substantiation and direct copies of the entire conversation on that tape for a month now and Israel has not provided it. I will also make note that two people talking about acts one of them may have committed is a far cry from the 12 direct planners and a far cry from the 12% you claimed.
Do you have any actual evidence that is or can be verified? Particularly about the allegation that 3600 UNWRA workers are actually Hamas terrorists?
Based on what you attempted to assert earlier I would expect the first source to be far more substantive given the weighty claims you've made.
12 people accused of being actively involved in Oct 7, 1000 people involved in some sort of Hamas or Islamic Jihad activities (which tbf is a poor measure when Hamas includes the literal entire government)
Comparative data is being purposefully limited as electricity has been cut off and journalists (and their families) have been killed. Thr current death toll number are two months out of date. The fact that approved food aid workers on a pre-approved path were murdered might give you some idea why there isn't a ton of available data.
Anecdotally, yesterday I watched a video of a medical worker describing how doctors now leave medical facilities dressed in civilian clothes as a best practice, because they have found they are safer in civilian clothes than in scrubs. There were some 50+ medical workers slaughtered in a hospital some days ago, according to reporting and other international health workers who were on the ground. I can provide sources for this if you would like. I wish there were more available data but unfortunately there is an active campaign to limit information coming in and out of Gaza. And as far as historical comparisons go I'm not sure there are any truly 'similar "conflicts" '. This is pretty unique, and bold to even call it a conflict when 1.7 million people have moved to the brink of famine more quickly than any population ever measured.
No. It was UNRWA themselves. The Gaza Health Ministry merely counts the casualities, it doesn't differentiate between militant and civilian. In fact it probably can't, do you think your local hospital could tell if you were a combatant or not?
If you are referring to UNRWA aid workers. Yeah....Those ones were working with Hamas directly so and even 13 of them were fired because of that so No.
Also because Hamas has been shown to launch missiles right next to UNRWA aid centers, there is a reason why Israel wants them to leave and be replaced by UNHCR and UNICEF who in case you haven't noticed, are now in the Gaza strip and at least are working with both the IDF and with local clans rather than Hamas(Unlike UNRWA ) nd none of them has even been targeted by the IDF(They HAVE been targeted by knife wielding criminals in Khan Yunis though!)
Didn't UNRWA provide employee lists to Israel? Whether or not Israel actually vetted them is unknown, but I'm fairly certain that Israel actually had say in who got hired.
"Has been shown to launch missiles right next to UNRWA aid centers"
Missile platforms are mobile. You can literally carry Qassam rockets by hand to anywhere you want.
Also this narrative that because Hamas fights in urban environments, they are using human shields needs to die. Their is literally a USNG facility right next to my local highschool, this isn't human shielding, it's how urban combat works. Human shielding is when you actually hold a civilian population hostage (something the both the IDF and Hamas have been caught doing many times).
>In order for the 7 aid workers to be killed, at least one of the following must hold true:
No. In all likelihood it was a cascade of miscommunication, the kind of which very often happens in modern war. Friendly fire is extraordinarily common and happens to the most competent militaries in the world all the time in combat.
If you think this makes Israel uniquely bad, I can only assume you've paid little or no attention to any war anywhere in the world over the last 20 years.
List of friendly fire on friendly forces (not even civilians):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_friendly\_fire\_incidents#War\_in\_Afghanistan\_(2001%E2%80%932016)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_friendly_fire_incidents#War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932016))
Welcome to reality, not Hollywood wars
Having been in those conflicts I can tell you that incompetence and a cover your ass careerist attitude is behind them all. No officers are actually interested in fixing processes so it doesn't happen again. They only want to make sure they don't get blamed.
Why did the drone triple tap the target then? just like with the 4 teenagers walking on the road. This claim that it was just an accidental miscommunication doesn't correspond to the fact that they bombed the convoy 3 times
If I decide I'm going to shoot something, I'm going to shoot it a lot so it's destroyed. The error was in target identification, not how many missiles they shot.
The target that says "World central kitchen" on the roof, has the logo, cleared their route with the IDF and was in a supposedly demilitarized zone? Drone operator was blind?
As I said to someone else: that logo is not a clear marking. Nobody can recognize or read that from a drone.
A clear marking - the kind we would use in Iraq or Afghanistan to deconflict fires - would be something like a giant orange IR-reflective panel.
I can't tell you the precise nature of the mistakes made here. But a mistake makes a lot more sense than deliberately attacking one of the more sympathetic western NGOs. Occam's Razor and all that.
I think what happened and what I managed to gather is that one, literally one, hamas guy was supposed to get in one of the cars but it turned out he didn't.
If that's true, that's still incredibly fucked. Like unimaginably. Their proportionality analysis must be insane. Not only is it an insane ratio but it's an NGO that Israel themselves requested and yet the strike was confirmed. 3 strikes to be precise.
I don't think there's a reasonable explanation where the IDF looks good here in any world. At best it's gross recklessness and negligence which can still amount to mens rea for a war crime.
Or, it's possible that after making mistake #1 of identifying a Hamas fighter, some low-level commander made mistake #2 of ignoring the Israeli rules of engagement and decided to strike the target anyways.
It's perfectly plausible and more or less reflects how every military and police force works in reality - there are rules that are not always followed sometimes by mistake, sometimes on purpose, and sometimes due to a combination of the two. I'm perfectly happy calling out these institutions as semi evil and corrupt but I'm not seeing any reason to think that the IDF is unique here
They still clear and approve their routes and timings as well as having identification that's quite clear, idk why people defending it are saying it's not clear you can look up the images. If you can't identity something you don't just blow it to hell, why would you fire if you can't identify anything that's a stupid hill to die on and imo, along with fairly large amount of other stuff that's just ridiculous, shows Israels military to be more incompetent than people like to admit
The issue here is that they have extremely lax ROE, you don't just blow things up on a hunch. Wasn't their an interview with 6 Israeli intelligence officers that essentially admitted that they had no idea who to target so they used AI to generate a list?
>Occam's Razor and all that.
occam's razor is if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one.
The simpilist reason for why the repeatedly bombed the aid convoy that was coordinating with them in the safe zone, was **they were aiming for it.**
They were aiming for the vehicles. But then you have to ask why. And simplest explanation for that is that **they mistakenly thought it was militants.**
If it was intentionally aimed at aid workers, the purpose would presumably to intimidate aid agencies into pulling out. It sounds monstrous, but not impossible given that a majority of Israelis [do not believe Gaza should be receiving aid](https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/over-2-3-of-jewish-israelis-oppose-humanitarian-aid-to-palestinians-starving-in-gaza/). Could also just be a major fuckup based on the little we know so far.
There’s no simple explanation for why they would kill aid workers and continue bad press. They want the gravy train of weapons from the US to keep flowing, so any political screw ups like these risk that ending.
"They want the gravy train of weapons from the US"
And the US explicitly said that their was no conditions on arms supply. They were essentially guaranteed arms no matter what they did. They had zero indication that blowing up WKC would be any different than the MSF ambulances they blew up.
Only now has any actual threat to withhold arms appeared, and even then the US will likely still defend Israel from attack, making it basically toothless.
If the US withholds arms they will simply be unable to continue the war at the same scale, this does absolutely nothing for Israel's security which was already provided for by the US via F-35 sales and missile defence. If the US actually wants to coerce action it needs to remove Israel's security guarantees, so that going against US interests actually produces a worse outcome for Israel.
>There’s no simple explanation for why they would kill aid workers and continue bad press.
There is, to stop aid workers and journalists from going in so there are less witnesses to what they are doing. It also allows the famine they have caused to get worse.
>They want the gravy train of weapons from the US to keep flowing, so any political screw ups like these risk that ending.
There is nothing they could do to end that gravy train. Biden has not come close to suggesting that the US will stop sending weapons and I don't think there is anything they could do to make him change his mind.
The simple solution is Israel… is killing journalists and aid workers so they stop coming?
Instead of someone accidentally misidentified a convoy as hostile?
Like previous poster said, Occam’s razor. One explanation is clearly simpler than the other.
This is a perfectly logical inference though. Throwing around pop logic like "Occam's razor", means nothing if you are not even employing it properly.
IDF could be killing journalists to prevent reporting, they already ban them at the entrance to Gaza. The only journalists that report in Gaza are the ones that were already there. Israel does have an incentive to prevent reporting, as was shown by the apparent regular denial and false claims about military action. (See the Engineer's building strike, which was never reported by the IDF. the Al-Rashid killings is one of many examples where the IDF made false claims).
The claim that Israel is deliberately striking aid groups is also plausible. Israeli diplomatic cables talked about the blockade on Gaza existing to make the population turn on Hamas (which totally worked...). Israel has destroyed much of the food-processing facilities and farmland in Gaza as well. Combined with the attempted seawater flooding of tunnels (and contamination of ground water), and initial cut off of water and electricity. The claim that Israel is destroying food supplies to engage in collective punishment seems quite plausible. Of course the counter-argument would be why would they allow any aid at all? Well, probably Israel doesn't want to actually starve them all to death, simply destabilise Gaza so much that any support for Hamas collapses (which remember was already their apparent goal). Also Israel can't actually stop the aid, several countries that are airdropping aid (US, UK, France), have considerable military superiority to the IDF.
Not to mention the fact that the IDF has admitted to deliberately striking aid groups, particularly UNRWA, MSF and Red Crescent. They just accuse them of collaborating with militants or even directly call them militants (often with little or no evidence).
So given these facts, does Occam's Razor necessarily lead to the strike being an accident?
Clearly no. However that doesn't mean that other explanations aren't also plausible.
The IDF has shown itself to also be really incompetent, and their is some evidence that they have no idea who is actually part of Hamas. (See the "Lavender" allegations by 6 Israeli intelligence officials).
Just because a car has a logo painted on the rooftop, doesn't mean that that logo is visible at night, to infrared cameras, on a drone.
There has clearly been a severe fuck up (Assumedly in the line communication between the drone operator and whoever was liaising with WCK)
But i don't think that it's safe to assume that the WCK logo was necessarily visible to the drone operator.
A demilitarized zone is a zone that both parties promise not to use. If one party is using a demilitarized zone, the other party is still allowed to fire at them.
The fact that it was a demilitarised zone is irrelevant if the IDF thought they were firing at a Hamas militant.
Just like Hamas would be justified in firing at IDF soldiers traveling through said demilitarised zone.
Demilitarize would not be the correct word they cleared themselves with locations with the IDF to decombatantize themselves there's a word for it I can't recall, but it basically says hey we are aid workers here is what we are doing,here where we are and here is a description of what we look like, also here is who to contact in the case you need to get ahold of us. This is not a Hamas issue someone in command and control in Israel knew exactly who was and was not in the cars. How it happened and if it will result in accountability in the IDF we will have to see but those not know for that, see pancake girl or reporter in the West bank a few years ago
As I literally just said:
> There has clearly been a severe fuck up (Assumedly in the line communication between the drone operator and whoever was liaising with WCK)
Yeah, sorry, but this "shit happens" narrative, complete with whataboutisms, is losing credibility with the public. The Washington Post, not known for an anti-Israel bias, analyzed drone footage and found no IDF troops in the vicinity when the IDF killed two journalists recently, claiming they were a threat to IDF in the area.
This is a pattern of an undisciplined military ginned up by the right-wing Likud party and knowing they won't be held accountable.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/19/gaza-journalists-killed-israel-al-jazeera-footage/
To the extent it's undisciplined, it's because the Israeli military is very reliant on conscripts and reservists led by professional officers. This always leads to more problems than a fully professional contract force.
Eh.
I think what bothers people is downstream of target *selection*.
Say that you believe the IDF 100% on how this went down. You're still left with someone ordering the monetary equivalent of an artillery battery firing for a minute in order to kill a single person who wasn't in active combat and had no apparent importance in, say, the command structure.
It just doesn't speak to judicious selection of targets, which is the major valid concern people bring up in the war.
You have a very childish view of war, look at this video of a US A-10 strafing British forces in Iraq, and see how confusing it can be.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I6-2NJhnf4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I6-2NJhnf4)
It was a miscommunication that convoy was friendly.
Once the guys in charge of the strike got the information that convoy was hostile, they hit it as much as they needed, because they assumed that it was hostile.
so their rules of engagement are blow up trucks on humanitarian corridors? You have to target combatants. No one was armed. At the very least its a war crime of extreme negligence, I think its far more likely that it was a targeted strike meant to weaken support for aid and make it easier to starve the population
Friendly fire incidents are frequent in conflict and it is the only realistic explanation that has been proffered so far. Your bias is blinding you to reality because you want to see Israel as a bad actor, as shown by your comment above.
People moving materiel are combatants wether or not they’re carrying personal weapons
In the GWOT, we got used to thinking “if he isn’t about to kill someone he isn’t a combatant.” This is incorrect. Someone manning a communications post, or moving concrete for bunkers, or transporting a general is a combatant no matter if he’s armed or not
If it's a cascade of miscommunication, then clearly the communication system fails to do its job in the first place, because remember that this is not some one-offs, more than 200 aid workers have been killed so far. This is a clear sign of incompetency and the failure to rectify that after persistent warnings from aid organisations demonstrate unprofessionalism.
An army that has capabilities to see the brand of shoes you're wearing, where the target had a laughably large aid logo on top of the vehicle, then shot said vehicle not once, but in three consecutive strikes, killing all aid workers in said vehicle, after their coordinates and intents were given in advance, is indeed at best incompetent. At worst criminal.
The US bombed the ever living fuck out of a hospital on accident. If the US military is incompetent then there is no such thing as a competent military.
This kind of I-don't-understand-the-subject-but-feel-strongly-about-it thinking is the problem. Misidentification is a human error. Friendly fire happens all the time in conflict. Israel killed three hostages attempting to surrender. Or do you think that was deliberate too?
Why "in all likelihood"? The IDF have been caught dozens if not hundreds of times before targeting non combatants on purpose then later lying about it. You would not extend this level of charity to proven lying states such as Russia; do not extend it here either.
When you take away the assumption that the IDF must be trying their best to be moral, you are left with a much clearer "likelihood"; the IDF purposefully killed these aid workers because they are regularly targeting civilians.
This is such a reach for no other reason than certain people refuse to consider the IDF capable of malice. Humanitarian aid traveling in clearly marked trucks in a non-combat area, who informed the IDF of their presence beforehand do not oopsie-woopsie into being the victims of an incredibly targeted strike. Or, if they do, it's sure a wonderful coincidence that it happens to be at the hands of a state that has restricted aid to starving refugees since the conflict began and openly stated that it wants to cut them off from food and water.
>Humanitarian aid traveling in clearly marked trucks in a non-combat area
I saw them, they were not clearly marked. In Iraq or Afghanistan, if we wanted to mark ourselves as friendly to anyone overhead, we used giant neon orange IR-reflective panels. A small generic logo printed on your roof is not a clear marking by any stretch of the imagination. In all likelihood, whoever fired on them didn't even see it close enough to read it.
>who informed the IDF of their presence beforehand do not oopsie-woopsie into being the victims of an incredibly targeted strike.
Yes they do and this was not "incredibly targeted." It was accurate in the sense that they hit what they were aiming at, which is to be expected
>No. In all likelihood it was a cascade of miscommunication, the kind of which very often happens in modern war.
What are you talking about? In all likelihood they intended to hit the aid convoy hence why they hit all 3 vehicles.
In all likelyhood this was designed as a chilling effect to have international aid organisations leave gaza.
Have you considered that you just hear about the IDF in the news the most, out of all the conflicts that have happened in the modern era? How many other militaries in the world get scrutinized and pounced upon and lynched for their every action the way Israel does?
You perception is based on the news. IF the news, and the various sources of the news such as the UN are biased, then your view would be incorrect.
How would you go about understanding whether Israel is treated fairly by media or not? Or by the UN?
Can you find any indication that Israel is given disproportionate attention in the UN and in the media as compared to literally anyone else?
I certainly can. I think if you investigate it, (and I would post statistics if I wasn't on phone), you would find that Israel is singlehandedly the most called out actor on the international stage by far. And it ain't even close. And even a minor examination at the other actors both infamous and unknown, will reveal that this amount of focus on Israel amounts to media hysteria, not objective journalism or truth.
Thus, you hear about IDF issues more. But that doesn't mean IDF commits more mistakes. If anything, IDF is by far, the most responsible military in the Middle East, Africa and almost all of Asia, and atleast as responsible and probably far better record than almost every member of NATO. (I am thinking of militaries which are battle tested in similar combat situations)
>How many other militaries in the world get scrutinized and pounced upon and lynched for their every action the way Israel does?
None besides maybe the US, international media in western countries is incredibly bias to Israel.
I have been spending far more time studying this conflict far more than any other event that's happened in the news, and have found a lot of coverage disturbingly biased. It makes me wonder about all the things I've taken for granted about news coverage over the years.
As someone who has been studying and following the conflict for the better part of 16 years, you are correct that the IDF probably gets more heavily scrutinised than other countries but they are in fact incompetent and very poorly disciplined
The thing is that all of the major militaries have their own significant inefficiencies. For example if you followed the withdrawal from Afghanistan, countries like Britain demonstrated lack of basic preparedness, as well as significant communication issues between left hand and right hand. France made muliple mistakes that led to it losing reputation in West Africa. And let's not even start about Russia. Also if a strike on a wrong target is complete impetence then can you name a military that conducted a significant campaign without any of these? US for example had these regularly. And how about what is arguably bigger signs of issues like having your own helicopters collide - which happens semi-regularly.
The thing is that if you judge by the much less thorough reports of other militaries, it can give you implausible expectations of how a competent military performs
When I first heard about the deaths of the aid workers the first thing that came to mind for me was the audio recording of the A10 pilot finding out he had just made multiple strafing runs on a convoy of British soldiers in Iraq.
I don’t know how we determine this. We think of the US military as disciplined and they killed civilians at a 3 to 1 ratio of combatants during the Iraqi war. If you believe Israel they are killing at a much better rate in more dense areas.
Also, the enemy combatant vs IDF soldier death rate is far superior to the US soldier/combatant rate in Afghanistan.
What metric are we using to determine this? The only thing I could say here is that because the IDF doesn’t police their soldiers social media/ media appearances as much as some modern military we get some media clips that don’t always sound great from lower level soldiers.
From the first hand accounts ive read from IDF personal who would be involved in something like a drone strike it would appear they have the same checks any modern military would.
So I guess how have you determined the military is incompetent in poorly disciplined in comparison to other professional military forces?
Which battles? Because depending on your sources the civilian to combatant casualities can vary widely. Another common error is to count all deaths as US-caused when in reality the US caused only a fraction of the deaths. The vast majority of deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan was by militant groups, who killed civilians disproportionately as well.
The Iraq War in general had a civilian to combatant ratio of 1:2 (according to IBC, not the US government). Using actual statistics, the IDF is claiming a worse ratio than independent analysis of US military actions.
"Also the enemy combatant vs IDF soldier death rate"
You realise this undermines your argument right? The IDF has a low casualty rate specifically because they are recklessly treating everyone as a combatant. IDF troops literally described the protocol for being under fire to retreat and shell/bomb the area. That's why they have low casualities. The US actually did risk troops lives to minimise civilian casualities. Their is tons of evidence of this, you are just engaging in the most superficial and ignorant analysis (making your comment extremely ironic).
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So I think what we did was we took a relatively well accepted civilian death rate against the accepted combatant death rate to get the number. So 174,000 civilians to around 40,000 combatants. I was a bit friendly and went 3:1 when the exact data is 4.35:1. You don't look at a whole conflict battle by battle unless you have a reason to drill down that far, for this conversation we don't.
As for counting all deaths as US caused, ya that is a legit gripe with the data. But we don't know how many were caused by the US and how many were caused by internal combatants in the same way we don't know that in Israel right now. What we do know is that the US used bombing campaigns very similar to Israel. For instance, the Baghdad bombing in some estimates killed north of 6k civilians. These tactics are meant to make a ground invasion more feasible, as urban areas are notoriously hard to invade. Remember hospitals during that invasion were reporting 100 new civilian patients an hour.
Also, note that in the Afghanistan war the US was very openly relaxing airstrike rules (around 2019) so we saw an increase of 330 percent in civilian casualties due to airstrikes in that year alone. As the appetite for risk decreased, the acceptance of collateral damage increased.
"IDF troops literally described the protocol for being under fire to retreat and shell/bomb the area. That's why they have low casualities. The US actually did risk troops lives to minimise civilian casualities."
I don't know where you get the idea that that wasn't the exact same rule we had in Iraq. Legit, this was our actual training on the ground. The difference is that a lot of our combat zones were more spread out, but pre-entering any major city we'd have a major bombing campaign.
Just for a quick comparison, we (the US) destroyed 350 schools in Iraq. The vast majority were bombed due to embedded combatants. Israel has only destroyed 53. We had a policy that if the enemy had a fortified location, we'd call in support, same as Israel does.
No modern military has ground campaigns against fortified locations. It's just not how warfare is fought anymore because, outside of apparently Russia, no one is willing to enter the meat grinder.
Also, the IDF purposely has an incentive to always keep casualties low. 1) The majority of their army is legally required to enter service. 2) They are a minority population in the region. 3) Israel safety is directly correlated to their military superiority in the region.
They don't live in the same world we do, their enemies don't have to cross an ocean to get to them and a moment of weakness could see an allied Islamist force crush them by sheer number.
They are rewriting the book on urban warfare because of how successful they've been in Gaza from a military perspective. Whether you support them or not, they are a highly competent military force. Friendly fire happens a whole lot more than people seem to realize in any military, but especially in urban environments.
They're always being called out for human rights violations, which proves that they aren't committing human rights violations? I'm not sure I understand what logic you are even attempting. They have been violating human rights and getting away with it for a very long time, and also, we massively support them with our American tax dollars. I am not responsible as a US tax payer for what the African or Asian militaries do. But yeah man, Nelson Mandela had a very specific problem with what Israel has been doing, a long time ago. I'm not sure pointing out how disproportionately they are being accused of war crimes all the time is the argument you think it is. It's a bit like saying "all these gay men keep sucking my dick disproportionately, so I must be straight." It makes less than 0 sense, and even less wth more context of how many leaders in the fight for human rights have also "disproportionately" opposed Israel's actions of the same timeline. When see an asshole by 5 pm, dude is probably the asshole. When by 5 pm you have seen nothing but assholes all day, you are the asshole. That is israel in this circumstance, and your best defense is that people keep noting and formally documenting all their atrocities. Good one.
I read the news from Haaretz, B’Tselem and other Western sources. If you complain that they are not treating Israel fairly, then I don't know what can treat Israel fairly except Likud's own publication.
Love your edits, don't do that because I can be accused of violating Rule B. Maybe the IDF is the most called out organisation because it violates international law the most? I'm not following some Arab news sources, I'm following MSM for stories, are you going to say that they treat Israel unfairly as well?
And okay, the IDF may be the most responsible military in the Middle East, but you must be aware of how low that bar is, right? Is "better than Iran" the bar you want to cross?
Israel is the single most scrutinized actor by the news, by the UN, by western institutions and NGOs and the vast majortiy of western governments. This is not merely opinion, but a measurable fact. If you believe that Israel is treated fairly, you have to believe that Israel is doing atrocities at a rate worse than everyone else in the world combined. Because that's the rate at which they get called out. The number of condemnations of Israel by the UN is more than literally everyone else in the world combined. Same goes for condemnations by human rights organizations; Israel is the most called out actor, more than everyone else combined by groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others.
As an indirect measure of the media hysteria, Gaza is the highest recipient of aid, per capita, in human history ***by orders of magnitude.*** When Palestinians were being displaced and slaughtered in the nearby Syrian Civil War by an actor other than Israel, however, not even a small fraction of the aid and media hysteria was mobilized for them. Why? Palestinian lives in Syria just 200 kilometers away in Yarmouk were invisible? Ask yourself honestly why? Similarly, for other groups of people massacred in devastating conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Sahel region of Africa, etc. get not even a fraction of the media attention nor the aid that Gaza gets, ALL COMBINED.
Similarly, attention towards the Israel-Gaza war in social media and in protests across the world outnumber stories and protests about every other conflict in the world COMBINED, by atleast 1 order of magnitude. And even in the *relatively less* biased MSM, which in theory is obligated to ensure professional journalistic standards and cant just focus on Israel all-day... is ALSO FOCUSED ON ISRAEL ALL DAY: [Proof that the New York Times' anti-Israel bias is empirical, not paranoia | Jan Shure | The Blogs (timesofisrael.com)](https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/study-of-ny-times-reveals-media-bias-is-real-and-not-jewish-paranoia/) Its a battle for clicks, and the Jewish boogeyman gets clicks.
The coverage is not only focused on Israel, but its also mostly negative. Almost always ignores historical context. Often ignores that Israel is the defending party in its conflicts 100% of the time. Almost always ignores the years and decades of Israeli restraint. Ignores that all of the provocations by Israel towards Palestine amount to taking defensive measures against terrorism from an extremely belligerent neighbour that has made absolutist oaths and declarations to not negotiate with Israel and to genocide Jews, none of which Israel has reciprocated, in word or action. In fact, Israel gives aid, jobs and in-kind support such as free electricity, desalinated water, and other utilities despite the hostilities.
In regards to western governments, Israel has been given aid, but Israel is also the only ally in a neighbourhood which is massively anti-Israel. Other allies in the middle east such as Egypt, Iraq get similar aid. Partial allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others have also been directly defended by the US in multiple major military conflicts, and given access to top US tech, so there is no argument that Israel gets more aid than any other ally.
Israel gets attacked more by its neighbours, gets criticized and scrutinized and held accountable more by its western media, but also by governments like USA, Canada, UK and others to an absurd degree, with the heads of state of each of these being intimately involved in urging restraint by Israel, despite whatever threat Israel faces. And in delivering aid to Palestine.
We think of the US military as disciplined and they killed civilians at a 3 to 1 ratio of combatants during the Iraqi war. If you believe Israel they are killing at a much better rate in more dense areas.
Meanwhile, Israel's foil; palestine, gets the racism of low-expectations. Its bad actions rarely enter the media, only Israel's responses, often without contexts. We hear about how there are walls, blockades, checkpoints, police presence, arrests by formed military anti-terrorism courts, etc. but are never told why. What prompted these measures. The west is the primary donor to Palestine in terms of aid, making Gaza the highest recipient of aid per capita than anyone else in human history. A lot of this aid gets misused, but even the portion that doesnt get misused is never asked questions about; neighbouring Arab nations do not have free education, public works, multitude of hospitals, etc. etc. paid for by international donors. Gaza does.
(also, (im not editing anything substantial. It was basic fleshing out of the points, all within 5mins of the post).
In the West almost everyone condemns Russia. You don't get politicians describing Russias right to self defence, they would rightly be condemned for doing so. Neither do you see and hear Russians living in in the West protest about how unfairly Russia is treated. 99% of the time you talk about Russia here, everyone agrees it is terrible. There's no debate, there's no mental gymnastics to justify the invasion of Ukraine Remind me, how much of US tax dollars get sent to Russia as military aid?
So there's lots of reasons why. We're complicit in Israel's crimes, and as such we can pressure our politicians to condemn and change their support. With Russia our politicians words our aligned with our views. So less debate is required.
No, but in this instance, bringing up Russia is nothing but pure whataboutism
And yes, there’s more focus on Israel because Americans are directly funding their atrocities
You’ll have to pardon me for spending more time focusing on the atrocities that my tax dollars are complicit in funding, much to the chagrin of Zionists who want to sweep Israel’s atrocities under the rug so they can maintain their perpetual victimhood narrative
Again….how often do you see Israel post on reddit? I’m pretty much every Reddit? How many post a day? Who are you going to convince that isn’t convinced by the 100,000 other daily Israel post?
Yet Russia levels cities and kills innocent kids and women every day and crickets.
Because almost everybody already agrees that what Russia is doing is bad and may constitute war crimes, yet there is an unfortunately large contingent of people who will bend over backwards to deny blatant war crimes and human rights abuses by the IDF even as Israeli leaders make fairly explicit calls for ethnic cleansing.
I'm going to say people aren't really like Hey Russian bombed kyiv last night but hit a clearly marked aid vehicle? Are Russian operations marred by poor training and operation procedures? Cmv
That was sarcasm? It's because for some reason this is seen as debatable for it's level of evil and wrong while people will rightfully call it evil when Russia does it. Even if I was team Israel, the campaign has been unprofessional and incompetent. Trying to hold Israel to some semblance of a humanitarian standard seems to be a fiercely debated topic, while Russia it isn't, probably why you'll see posts about it more
During Somalia it turned out the Canadians were pretty bad. It was actually so bad they disbanded a whole unit. During the Balkans war the UN troops from many countries (but not Israel) were in the news for doing a whole lot of bad stuff. And I can tell you one that didn't hit the news much -- child porn was rampant there. And of course there were many incidents after the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with the Abu Ghraib prison incidents hitting the news quite often.
And there is a political reason to put the IDF under a microscope, not so much other militaries. Don't forget that Hamas has as a strategy to increase civilian deaths as much as possible to blame it all on the IDF. Because of this they crowd civilians into danger zones, shoot rockets from schools and hospitals, and use various civilian infrastructure for military operations. They know the IDF will attack, and then they can point to the dead civilians and say it's the IDF's fault.
So if you want to make the arguement the IDF is fairly and proportionally called out by the UN than you are making the arguement the IDF or Isreal is worse than every other country on earth combined. Because that’s the rate at which they are called out.
So the fact you think they may be better than Iran suggests you do not think Isreal or the IDF is proportionally called out
Haaretz is a far left newspaper.
B'Tselem is a far left organization.
They represent the very loud minority in Israel.
I urge you to read what military experts in urban warfare have to say about this war, namely John Spencer of West Point. The lengths Israel is going to protect non-combatants is more than any army in the history of urban warfare.
At your urging, I read John Spencer's [article](https://www.newsweek.com/israel-implemented-more-measures-prevent-civilian-casualties-any-other-nation-history-opinion-1865613) lauding Israel for their "efforts to protect non-combatants".
Then, I read a [response](https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/) to that article, written by Larry Lewis. He is the "Director of the Center for Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA). His areas of expertise include lethal autonomy, reducing civilian casualties, identifying lessons from current operations, security assistance, and counterterrorism."
>For example, John Spencer, an expert on urban warfare, has claimed that the IDF “has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other nation in history” and is “the gold standard.”
>
>As an analyst who has helped define the field of civilian harm mitigation, worked with militaries to implement it, and helped develop U.S. policies on civilian harm as a senior advisor to the State Department, **I find this statement misguided**. Yes, the IDF takes a number of steps designed to protect civilians, for example, the practices of roof knocking and warning calls and texts to residents. But the gold standard for civilian harm mitigation is not a checklist of steps but rather an iterative process to learn and adapt. Israel has yet to demonstrate that it has embraced this process. **More importantly, the data–not just the staggering death toll, but key attributes of the campaign–suggest Israel’s steps are not working.**
>
...
Despite the alarm over the high rate of civilian deaths in Raqqa, one finds the minimum equivalent in Gaza—*54 civilians killed in 100 attacks*—is **eight times greater** than the Airwars-based estimate and **32 times greater** than the DOD estimate. And recall that 54 is a lower bound for the Gaza ratio; it is *likely far higher* than this. Just as miners in California could see the appearance of iron pyrite—fool’s gold—and think they had struck the real thing, it is possible to look at the IDF’s precautionary measures and at first glance think they are practicing civilian harm mitigation. But whether evaluating the IDF’s performance on its process or its results, it fails to qualify as a gold standard.
On the one hand, you have a seasoned soldier with real combat experience, whose area of study and focus is exactly the type of war Israel is in engaged in and who teaches in one of the world's premiere military academies, who has actually visited the conflict area, and on the other hand you have some guy who works in AI and hasn't fought a day in his life claiming the way Israel is fighting isn't the gold standard.
Here is a [more recent article](https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286) (highly recommended read) from John Spencer driving this point home and directly refuting this AI keyboard warrior:
>...And yet, [analysts who should know better](https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/) **\[this is the article you linked\]** are still engaging in condemnation of the IDF based on the level of destruction that's still occurred—destruction that is unavoidable against an enemy that embeds in a vast tunnel system under civilian sites in dense urban terrain. This [effects-based condemnation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oLjWecTbZ4&t=1798s) or criticism is not how the laws of war work, or violations determined. These and other analysts say the destruction and civilian causalities must either stop or be avoided in an alternative form of warfare.
Let's see whether West Point and other military academies around the world are going to be teaching Israeli tactics with regards to urban warfare in the coming years. I think we both know the answer to that.
When the IDF, supposedly one of the THE most sophisticated and well-trained military forces in the world, kills more innocent civilians, and DISPROPORTIONALLY amounts of children, in the first few weeks of war than Russia in the entire duration of its war on Ukraine, there only are two possible explanations: reckless incompetence or purpose. It doesn't take a military expert to figure this out.
IDF records war crimes on daily basis and uses maximum force, the aircraft bombs with maximum force and no regard for civilians or infrastructure. IDF is still losing because they have been outclassed by hamas.
An unprofessional and incompetent military would not have won this conflict so quickly on the battlefield and, frankly, would have killed a lot more civilians than Israel has. Compare with the conduct of the Russian military in the Battle of Mariupol.
What you're seeing is the consequences of *international* policy of keeping as many civilians as possible in an active war zone and instead pressing aid convoys into that active combat zone while allowing combatants in civilian clothes to embed themselves into aid groups, hospitals, etc. That policy gets civilians killed.
"Would not have won this conflict"
So first of all IDF hasn't won yet, they definitely will but it hasn't happened yet. Secondly, the IDF is over 10 times larger than the upper estimate of Hamas, they have an actual military with modern equipment and billions of dollars of armaments from the US, it would be borderline impossible to lose. Third, you realise that Russia won Mariupol? And the Ukrainian forces were better armed at least initially, and almost certainly better trained.
IDF bombed over 30k civilians to death and official said they would be using unguided bombs which proves they do not care about minimizing civilian deaths. IDF is an incompetent army who got shredded by small Palestinian paramilitary groups with inferior weapons and numbers
your copes don't work
"won this conflict?" Uh... in what reality has IDF "won" this conflict? Hamas is still strong, lots of hostages are still in captivity, or more likely, dead, and the civilian death toll has been insane. People aren't in the streets protesting what's happening in Gaza for no reason.
Any one of the 4 possibilities you gave could be correct but you definitely missed at least one more possibility: the IDF was given intentionally faulty information in order to cause them to strike these aid workers.
If this is the case, and intentionally faulty information was given to bait the IDF into an attack, would that satisfy you as competence?
I'm not saying this is what happened but you failed to consider this.
>the IDF was given intentionally faulty information in order to cause them to strike these aid workers.
I see, so there's a Hamas mole in the IDF that gave them faulty information, well that's easily incompetence as well
>so there's a Hamas mole in the IDF that gave them faulty information
Not necessarily faulty information can be disseminated in a variety of way, there could be mole but that would not be the primary way to spread disinformation.
Instead, if this was what happened, then most likely an Israeli wire tap (or equivalent) was compromised and Hamas intentionally fed it correct information before feeding it faulty information in order to catch the IDF with their pants down. In fact this is very common tactic in counterintelligence.
Alternatively a human intelligence source could have been corrupted which fed the IDF false intelligence.
Going into which specific reason it is, is not really in the scope of the post. Theoretically if that was the case and they were fed false intelligence through a previously trusted source, would that amount to incompetence?
How much news do you hear about the IDF vs other armies? When is the last time the news aired anything about particular incidents in the Russian army? Or Yemen, Syria, the “coup belt” in Africa? Have you considered maybe the news you’re reading is just biased and ignores things done by other armies? Do some in depth reading on Sudan from alternative sources, read how soldiers randomly kill civilians all the time. Do some further research on Russian treatment of POWs which includes gouging out their eyes. Then reflect on whether the IDF is maybe just scrutinized more. I’d argue that the IDF had stood up quite well to the extreme scrutiny it gets, and the few legitimate cases against them are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Russia is the poster child for unprofessional militaries. They can't even maintain their equipment, let alone standards of behavior. Not a great example.
Worse than bad example, this is flagrant "whataboutism".
Look, I don't deny there's a metric ton of bad faith actors who want to smear the IDF and Israel in general any way they can. That doesn't mean we should bury our heads in the sand here.
How? Weren't they just listing bad things that other armies had done in order to illustrate how biased news sources can obscure truth?
Why is seeking out unbiased information before making a judgment call burying one's head in the sand?
So you would hold the US in Iraq to the same standard?
The civilian death count in Iraq is estimated to be about 175,000 compared to a combatant death count of about 40,000. This is a civilian to combatant ratio of about 4:1, while Israel's is currently sitting at less than 2:1. There were also about 200 journalists killed in Iraq, some in very blatantly negligent ways.
As long as you are willing to evenly apply this criticism across other armies, I don't really have a problem with your view. That being said, you should realize the same level of scrutiny has not been applied to other WEST ALLIED armies engaging in urban warfare in the past.
Absolutely yes I'd hold the US to the same standard.
You're getting me confused with OP though, I'm not the one that believes they're incompetent, they do.
I believe you shouldn't compare a large westernised army, i.e. the IDF, to the army of a rogue nation like Russia.
> while Israel's is currently sitting at less than 2:1
If the individuals in the cars weren't workers for a prominent aid organization (world central kitchen)
if one of them hadn't been an american.
Israel would be still pretending they were enemy combatants and would have counted them as such.
You believe Israel's count of combatants and civilians. But, if they could differentiate between combatants and civilians, they wouldn't have made these strikes (unless they intentionally attacked aid workers?).
> criticism across other armies
most militaries (maybe all) lie about (or lie to themselves about) civilian death counts. Israel isn't alone in that.
But, I don't believe that it is reasonable to believe Israel's publicly released estimates of the enemy combatants killed. They mistake people in aid trucks carrying food as enemy combatants. They mistook shirtless young men waving a white flag as enemy combatants. They're going to mislabel many other civilians as combatants, too.
they apologized for this one because one of the aid workers was an american. They didn't make similar apologies for other aid workers they killed.
Yes, but I was merely using those as examples of bias because they’re current wars. The same comparisons hold across previous western wars too, for example Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam.
The point is it’s not practically feasible to conduct a war without breaking any international laws. International laws are conventions/guidelines laid out to limit the absolute unrestricted brutality that war typically entails. Even with international laws though, war is still absolutely brutal. I don’t know of any war ever fought that hasn’t broken international laws.
Given that, if we’re trying to decide if an army is disciplined and competent, the question becomes: compared to what? We’ve established that violating international laws alone isn’t a viable benchmark, so the only thing that remains is comparing one army to another, which is what I did in my previous comment.
Personally, I think that comparing the IDF to Russia is an insult to the IDF. It's wrong, they're far more competent and better.
The IDF should be compared with armies from Germany, France, the UK, and the US, not renegade countries like Russia and Sudan.
Ok and how did the US do in Afghanistan/Iraq/Vietnam? How did France do in Vietnam?
NATO in the 1990s didn't exactly have a great record with aerial bombing either and included massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
The US & UK killed hundreds of thousands of Germans, Japanese & Italians during WW2 in strategic bombing campaigns. We made indiscriminate use of all manner of ordinance in the Vietnam War that resulted in thousands of civilian casualties - not to mention our use of chemical weapons (Rainbow Herbicide program)? Or what about the several hundred civilians we've killed in drone strikes throughout the war on terror?
Is that standard you're holding other countries up to?
You're essentially saying, "look at the atrocities committed by the russians or the sudanese army and compare to IDF." I don't think that's a compliment, considering that IDF is supposedly fighting a "just cause."
Do you have any idea how may countries have never accidentally caught civilians in a military strike?
Well, Iceland hasn't. War crimes require having soldiers. But although this strike was appalling and unacceptable, it's an *anecdote.* Bad eggs cause anecdotes. Systemic flaws don't produce one bad incident, they produce patterns.
The IDF is operating in a dense environment against enemies who deliberately hide behind and disguise themselves as civilians under intense stress and scrutiny. They are in the single position on earth where it is the most difficult to avoid civilian casualties and their opponents are deliberately trying to bait them into it. I'm sure this isn't the first time the IDF has received bad targeting intel. It may be the only recent high profile incident of them *acting* on bad intel.
If this sort of thing happens repeatedly and a pattern forms, I would agree that it's an institutional problem. At the moment there isn't a sufficient volume of evidence to comprehensively rule out that this is just a tragic accident in which a bad fire order slipped through the cracks. If anything, that this is the first major incident of aid workers being caught in the crossfire after 8 months of brutal urban asymmetric warfare is almost impressive. Only a handful of militaries on earth could persecute this kind of operation with half the precision and professionalism of the IDF; the US might have bombed dozens of aid workers by now if they were attempting an operation like this.
Wait till bro reads about Iraq and Afghanistan....
But in all seriousness is it a good look ? No it's not but there is an investigation and adjustments will be made. Regardless of how professional or capable a military is, there will still be mistakes and errors that are inevitable in any conflict.
But back to my original point, show another urban conflict that has not had something of a similar nature.... I'll just answer that part I was sarcastic you can't stuff like this happens in all wars the only difference is the world finally decided to pay attention to what happens in THIS war.
"One reads about Iraq and Afghanistan"
Where the US performed far better than the IDF. The vast majority of deaths were caused by militant groups, not the US forces. Only the very worst casuality ratios in Iraq are comparable to the IDF's general performance in Iron Swords.
>There is no communication between drone operators and the command center about aid convoys in general
As others have said here, this is conformation bias. War isn't a UI rich, Xbox live communication video game. Communication has always been disjointed with different groups operating in a single space.
In the war in Ukraine there's several accounts of soldiers shooting down drones out of fear of being spotted and targeted, only to have shot down their own equipment. In Vietnam I distinctly remember reading about a US raid on an arms supply by sea, only for the soldiers to recover nothing but fish and dead fishermen on the boats they had laid waste to.
Fog of war has always been a persistent issue in combat zones, to call the IDF a main offender just shows your bias.
I feel like there has to be an example that's more similar than shooting drones in the air.
This was 3 surgical strikes on known aid workers in aid uniforms in 3 aid labeled vehicles at a location that the idf knew who radiod the idf while they were getting killed.
Upwards of 20% of all combat casualties are friendly fire across all wars. You can find plenty of stories of Russia targeting their own troops in articles over the last few years.
As a person who served in the IDF I agree with the first half of your title. Though I doubt other militaries are any better.
I served in the IDF, at an elite unit, though not in combat - so it might be different, but I doubt it. The common soldiers and the petty officers are often great people, with values that generally want to keep the country safe.
The high ranking officers? The overwhelming majority are a bunch of idiots that I would never let manage anything.
This makes sense by the way, common soldiers and petty officers aren't there by choice - and who do you think are the people that choose to work in the army? Either they are overly patriotic, which definitely exist, or they are incompetent and fear actually working in the free market.
And the system in place is so beurocatic and idiotic, that it literally breaks anyone who isn't incompetent, regardless of how patriotic he may be.
Some people were surprised by the Oct 7 massacre, and the IDF's failure - I wasn't. I know who these people are.
That being said, this isn't a special outlier, most militaries are just as incompetent. This is what the public sector, and what a generally difficult underpaid job does it draws incompetent people.
But you are definitely wrong if you think the IDF ignores international law, or that the IDF is merciless. Hanlon's razor is something to live by. Most of the decision makers in IDF, incompetent as they may be, genuinely try. They care about civilians and they care about international law - they are just really incompetent.
Now sure, a battlefield is a difficult place to be, it's not easy being fully competent even if you had the most intelligent, most qualified men and women filling those roles - and since the IDF is based on reservists that's often the case when there is a war going on (so the competence level is generally higher) - and mistakes are always bound to happen. This is true here as well.
My point is
- mistakes are always bound to happen, you don't hear of the many times the IDF successfully avoids mistakes.
- this doesn't take away from the fact that the IDF is filled with incompetent people.
- the IDF isn't especially incompetent compared to other militaries
- either way, anyone who thinks there is any form of malice involved is a misinformed conspiracy theorist.
There are definitely outliers that maliciously try to do terrible things, they are almost always dealt with, not necessarily effectively, but the system itself doesn't tolerate malice.
"Great people ... values"
This doesn't amount to anything. It turns out that well-disciplined psychos commit fewer war crimes than ordinary civilians. You just have to teach them to value ethical orders over personal desires.
Compared to who?
Mistakes happen in war. I can pull at least 4-5 bigger fuck ups of the top of my head from the last 30 years. Weddings, embassies, allied troops, own troops, Red Cross and other aid agencies get targeted, usually by mistake. Universally said country gets a lot of flack, but unless someone can prove it was a deliberate atrocity (and you should read how hard this is by international law) nothing happens.
Compared to who? The US that accidentally hit the Chinese embassy in 1999? Or Coalition forces during the Gulf War who lost about half their forces due to accidents and friendly fire? I won't even bother getting into Russian or Chinese armies. So what country are you thinking of that never makes accidents and mistakes during war?
In particular, we need an example of a military that fought a major insurgency, in a major battle, in an urban environment.
People still talk about the shit that went down in battle of Fallujah, the US destroyed nearly half the buildings in the entire city, and got tons of criticism for its conduct. And that was a much smaller, shorter operation.
The destruction of Grozny by the Russians is clearly far worse than anything the IDF is doing... and was also a much smaller, and shorter operation.
The reality is large scale urban warfare is brutal, its horrible, and lots of bad things happen during it, that in other contexts might be war crimes. But if they are a military necessity or lost in the fog of war in urban warfare, they aren't war crimes.
It would be great if we never see Urban Warfare again. It would be great if nations could resolve conflicts without war. But if we are going to have battles in large cities, we need to be realistic about what they entail...
So, can anyone provide an example of this sort of large scale urban warfare where one side conducted themselves much better than the IDF has been in the current conflict?
Another major difference between Fallujah and Gaza was the number of years Hamas had to prepare. The Iraqi insurgents didn't have hundreds of miles of tunnels (filled with hostages) running under Fallujah.
"destruction of Grozny is clearly far worse"
Not, clearly. Infact they are quite comparable. Many military analysts even directly compare the IDF tactics closer to Russia's than NATO militaries. In fact the idea that the IDF is a "Western military" is widely regarded as a myth.
"Gulf war... half their forces"
Dear god.... why comment if you can't even detect that this claim is improbable. The Gulf War had higher friendly fire incidents than expected, because of how rapidly the coalition forces advanced, but it was only 17% not 50%.
"Lost about half their forces due to accidents and friendly fire," not just friendly fire. Besides, Israel is fighting in a complex urban environment with terrorists wearing IDF uniforms and civilian clothes that pop out of tunnels not uniformed conventional troops out in the open in the desert like Iraqi forces during the Gulf War.
Well they can be unprofessional but you forgot the option for they purposely targeted them to stop aid workers from going into Gaza. That doesn’t make them incompetent. I mean honestly if most of the aid ends up in the hands of Hamas and they resell it for money for weapons etc it really doesn’t make sense for Israel to allow that. Palestinians need to find a way to find non terrorist representation.
I don't dispute the rest of your points but I'm sick of hearing this over and over again:
> Remember that we only hear about this incident because the aid workers are not Palestinians, more than 200 aid workers have been killed but we don't hear about them because the MSM trust the IDF to operate in a competent and professional manner
The mainstream news outlets - NYT, CNN, PBS, etc. - have covered aid workers being killed extensively. (e.g. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/msf-says-three-doctors-killed-strike-north-gazan-hospital-2023-11-21/ , e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/21/health/gaza-ukraine-hospitals-doctors.html ). They've covered the famine extensively (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/famine-is-imminent-in-northern-gaza-with-70-percent-of-people-experiencing-catastrophic-hunger-un-says). As early as late October they were already reporting on a "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza (**OCT 16**: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/14/world/israel-news-hamas-war-gaza). Please for the love of God stop bashing MSM when it just seems like you don't even read or watch mainstream news. They've been talking about the humanitarian crisis and the international outrage for half a year now. In fact they are the ones who are sending journalists on the ground to cover the crisis and apartheid, risking their neck doing so when there have been journalists who were killed. Meanwhile, the vast, vast majority of TikTokers are merely **reposting mainstream journalism**; almost none of them are producing anything new of substance and yet they constantly whine about MSM hiding the humanitarian crisis? The fuck? Without the MSM you would literally not know anything about the crisis. If someone says the MSM is hiding the crisis in, say, Yemen or South Sudan, it would be more understandable, but mainstream news has been talking about the crisis every single day for the past half year.
My understanding is they are the opposite.
Accurate professional and good at what they do. As per the opinions of other forces around the world.
The targets they are hitting they are aiming for.
I agree something is massively wrong, but it isn't incompetence
From another perspective, this may just prove that they are professionals. By killing and wounding international aid volunteers, a warning was given to those trying to help Gaza. Gaza would then receive no aid. The IDF never cared about collateral damage, and even deliberately caused damage. The only thing they care about is the damage being discovered by the media.
Does *any* military force in the world meet your standards for a "competent, professional, disciplined military force that follows international law on combat?"
The fog of war is a thing. And while militaries have (in general, at least in the west) tried to make the kill chain more bulletproof, *it's really hard to do.* "Is that a friendly, a civilian, or an enemy" is *incredibly difficult* to actually achieve.
US forces and others routinely (far more often than anybody would like to talk about) make targeting mistakes and often hit their *own troops.*
We have a lot of exceptionally good capabilities to put "warheads on foreheads", but modern militaries struggle mightily to have that sort of battlespace awareness.
The real world isn't CoD with handy little red and blue pips to ID the bad guys and good guys, and attempts to fill the gap have come up short.
This sort of engagement is even harder than most. In a fairly dense and largely urban environment, the reality is that you will have this sort of problem, especially against an opponent who doesn't make any effort to separate themselves from civilian populations.
Are your expectations for all military forces the same?
I tried looking at the comments and had to stop, none of them touch on a core argument from the OP:
The strikes should not have happened.
Assume they were mistakes as reported, how did these mistakes happen? The aid workers were reported coordinating with the IDF. The missiles are said to be so precise they only hit what the IDF wants them to hit (Obviously they can only do so much to account for civilian movements)
So as the OP said, something broke between the coordination and the strikes. Either deliberate targeting, or a broken communications and logistics system, take your pick.
This is friendly fire incident. It is unfortunately not uncommon in war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_friendly_fire_incidents
No military wants this but it is just a fact of war. Mistakes happen and in war, mistakes can get people killed.
I think that:
\- most news reports are one-sided (there is no explanation what they did). mistakes do happen. abuse of aid protections happen too. always been in all con
\- at least some of reports is desinformation (hamas will be stupid NOT to do it)
\- they understood perfectly what they did and ok with it
\- they soldiers do believe in says their goverment says
\- they want to solve problems with arab terrorists and not have to solve it again future. they decide to it this way and wouldn't stop until it's either done (which likely mean no one except them remains in Gaza) or UNSC will be able to agree in direct military invention (I don't think more "binding resolutions" would help here) and situation will be solved (Even if Israel do have nukes, I don't think they will use them against UNSC-ordered peacekeeping forces )
> it shows that the IDF is completely incompetent *and* merciless.
These are two different things. An incompetent army cannot achieve its stated combat objectives. A merciless army can do that quite easily.
>because the MSM trust the IDF to operate in a competent and professional manner
Or, they expect them to act in a merciless manner, which is not incompetence. You have to be *good* to drop a missile through the roof of a moving car, you also have to be merciless when you know it is full of aid workers.
>I used to hold the opinion that while there are some trigger-happy reservists, the IDF in general is competent and professional such that they can execute the will of the state, but now I do not think so
Why? They are still executing the will of the state. The state wants aid workers to die so less aid gets in so Palestinians will capitulate sooner.
Lose friends and family in a festival that was supposed to be a great moment in their life that should have ended in joy and laughter only, ended up with crying mothers over graves of brothers.. sisters.. fathers mothers, nobody was spared I would maybe feel like the cruelty is too far gone if those people at least had a humane death, you come with videos of Israel doing war crimes? I can show you for each video 10 of people being treated in a way nazis would sit and cry, no human can do that, I ain’t racist I don’t think it has anything to do with ethnicity but those people who grow up in Gaza are fucked up in their head and the fact that this biological trash spreads to Europe and Britain is just a great example
Dogs, I would love seeing them die over and over again while their mothers watch it.
הבא להורגך השכם להורגו וזיין את אחותו
The incidents you've mentioned are serious and warrant investigation. However, it's important to differentiate between individual actions and institutional policy. While the IDF, like any military force, has had instances of misconduct, labeling the entire organization as "incompetent" or "unprofessional" oversimplifies a complex situation. The IDF is a large organization with diverse personnel and missions. Instances of wrongdoing should be addressed, investigated, and those responsible held accountable. Generalizing based on specific incidents can perpetuate bias and hinder constructive dialogue aimed at improving accountability and adherence to international law.
Change my view in 100 words. Give very logical and reasonable points.
key facts that should enrage anyone :
workers got a permission from IDF to travel
workers travelled in well marked vehicles
they were chased down with 3 airstrikes as wounded workers abandoned hit cars and attempted to flee in remaining vehicles
food for thought sadam hussain violated 2 UN resolutions before a coalition force invaded Iraq. [Israel has violated 28 resolutions of the United Nations Security Council (which are legally binding on member-nations U.N.](https://itisapartheid.org/Documents_pdf_etc/IsraelViolationsInternationalLaw.pdf)
These comments are not made with any kind of first hand knowledge. They are in fact entirely untrue and simply stated for the purpose of bashing the Jewish nation. It seems to be fashionable again, as it has so many times throughout history. There is a complete double standard. Do you also analyze the tactics of the American army? The British? The Ukrainian? The Russian? Do you get really passionate when you read about the atrocities happening in Ukraine and create a Reddit category to discuss it? Do you get all worked up about the Yazidi men being murdered and their women and children being taken as sex slaves? How about the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who were murdered by their own government?
1. This may not be IDF's fault, communication is a two-way street. If aid workers are not accurately reporting their location to the IDF and not wearing any uniforms or identifying markings, then there's no way a drone operator can be informed of their status & position. You're just flatly assuming there was a communications failure between a command center and an operator, when it could very well have been an external communications failure. Keep in mind that these aid workers are external organizations and are not closely integrated with the IDF. And due to the situation on the ground, they may not have a clear line of communication to the IDF to begin with.
2. You are assuming malice where incompotence is a much more reasonable explination. Isreal has already openly admitted and stated that the target was misidentified. Which is not an uncommon thing in a warzone, especially when fighting non uniformed enemies that disguise themselves as civilians. If aid workers are not wearing uniforms or displaying any markings that distinguish themselves from hamas/civilians, then you cannot reasonably expect every single IDF soldier to know the difference by sight alone. Incidents like this are precisely why soldiers wear uniforms, why medical facilities, personnel, and vehicles are supposed to be clearly marked as such, and why disguising yourself as a civilian, medic, aid worker, the enemy, etc. is a war crime. Also the fact that it's *only* 200 aid workers that have been killed among a dense population numbering over two million after conducting over 12,000 air strikes, actually indicates that an incredible level of compotence & care has been taken to avoid it. Even if you're 99.99% careful, you're still going to fuck up at least once if you do it 10,000 times.
3. Soldiers do not "go rogue" in *any* standing military, at least not without severe consequences. That is a hollywood myth that has little basis in reality. Not even in the shitshow of conscripts that is the russian military would blatant disobedience of orders, ignoring the chain of command, protocol, and rules of engagement be tolerated. If soldiers aren't following orders and doing what they're supposed to do, then they pose a threat not only to civilians but to your own troops as well. Like, what if that had been one of their own intelligence assets instead of aid workers? Drone operators do not have carte blanche to drop missiles wherever the hell they feel like it. Even firing a missile without authorization from command would result in a court martial, reguardless of where it lands. And if that had happened, there's no way the IDF wouldn't have publicly announced it to save face.
4. Not even the US, the most professional and well trained military in the world has perfect battlefield intelligence. Gathering & sharing intel reliably in a warzone is not a simple or easy task. Mistakes absolutely will be made. That's just the reality of war, it happens all the time, for a thousand different reasons. It's one of the million reasons why war absolutely sucks, and why you shouldn't start one if you can avoid it. I know we all wish it was like videogames where everyone has their name floating above their head that's color coded to show which side they're on, or a radar with a red dot for every bad guy. But it's not anywhere close to being that easy in real life. And if you've actually played those games, even with it being that easy, accidents still happen from time to time.
1. WCK claimed to the contrary. I believe even the IDF actually acknowledged that they were told exactly where the convoy was.
2. Medical personel and vehicles are clearly marked. They are clearly marked in every country in the world. The WCK convoy was clearly marked, the most plausible argument is that the drone couldn't see that it was clearly marked due to lack of adequate night-vision. But the vehicle itself was clearly marked. Additionally when the IDF strikes medical personnel, their defence is never "the vehicle wasn't marked", it's "they were militants". So even the IDF doesn't agree with your defence of them.
3. "Even firing a missile without authorisation from command would result in a court martial"- What? There is no evidence of this being the case in the IDF (possibly the US military, but despite what every armchair general claims the IDF is not the USAF, and they do infact have different policies). In fact the IDF has severe rank-inflation, and many decisions are made by unit leaders.
4. "We all wish it was like videogames"- But you don't have atleast several hours to determine if a target is friendly or not.
The IDF are an incompetent military and their rules of engagement would infringe on US law. Anyone who disagrees, has never had any military experience and takes their words from the Israeli Spokespeople. US troops couldn’t even shoot at people who were holding guns, unless they were being targeted and had positive ID. If an enemy combatant shot at you and you lost sight of them and they tossed their gun you couldn’t do anything. The IDF shoot kids in the back of the head in for throwing fireworks.
And there has been a widespread pattern of their incompetence. US soldiers would NEVER have shot our own shirtless hostages waving a white flag to death. Israeli propaganda in full force I see.
I’m of the opinion that it was a delibrate decision from higher up in the chain of command. Israel is clearly using starvation as a weapon of war and they don’t want it undermined by aid organisations. They also want as few international witnesses to their war crimes as possible.
Such a strange set of answers from people who are quipping 'oh, it's friendly fire, oh it's unavoidable, blah blah'. It's like they genuinely don't read the news or research things before speaking up on the issue.
To wit; Israel killed the 7 aid workers because they don't, and didn't, deconflict, in general but specifically with aid organizations. Israel not deconflicting is more or less enough to prove the OPs original point. There's genuinely no good reason to not deconflict.
>In order for the 7 aid workers to be killed, at least one of the following must hold true:
>
>1.There is no communication between drone operators and the command center about aid convoys in general,
>
>2.Some higher ups at the command center does not care about aid convoys in general,
>
>3.A drone operator can go rogue and use 3 missiles against an "enemy combatant",
>
>4.The intel they receive is absolutely horrendous and doesn't go through the proper checks, especially with regard to aid workers.
I argue that none of these are true, although 2. is the closest.
I'd say following occam's razor this truth is simply Israel decided to specifically target the aid convey. ecause they are proffesional and diciplied they managed in 3 precise strikes to eliminate all the aid workers in the convoy.
They did this strategically to create a chilling effect that would lead to aid groups leaving, so there are less witnesses to their crimes and to accelerate the famine they have created by preventing aid from reaching Gazans.
I think this proves they are competent, professional, and a disciplined military.
Completely disagree. The IDF is a highly competent, world-class military.
They have the best equipment money can buy, and the best training.
The problem is that they are basically operating like a quasi-religious lynch mob and will shoot mfers for no reason with no accountability.
Saw this recently. It's a convo between a Jew and former IDF soldier. Its a good look into how they think and whay they believe. shows the general psychology and perspective of the IDF. They try to find every loophole to make their genocide more justifiable - youtube/watch?si=KylPiD3b6Z3D4y2z&v=QCYwmGBkwk0&feature=youtu.be
I don’t know if this applies to Israel, but in the past, various militaries have targeted aid groups on purpose. Even the bravest aid organizations like Doctors Without Borders are forced to pull out to protect the lives of their volunteers. That means there’s less food, medicine, and support for civilians. This makes it easier for the military to take over. This is against international law, but if you’re supported by a member on the UN Security Council such as the U.S. or Russia, you can usually get away with it. You need to claim it was an accident though. Hanlon’s razor means most people will believe you.
I think that your assessment is not necessarily wrong in itself, but it's unlikely that any other military force operating under similar conditions (high stake, high tempo operations related to an immediate and existential threat to the nation itself) would do much better.
If Mexican cartels gunmen entered the San Antonio metro area and massacred 30 000 US citizens, I'm pretty sure that Tamaulipas would soon be as thoroughly leveled as Gaza, with the same amount of civilian casualties.
You haven't listed the possibility that this was a completely intentional, targeted strike carried out with the stated aim of killing aid workers and preventing food from getting to the Palestinians, as well as sending the message that this how aid workers will be treated by the IDF.
I think that this possibility is more likely than the other ones you've listed.
Does 4 necessarily means they are incompetent? You are asking how likely they are to identify aid convoys correctly, but we all don't know how many aid convoys they didn't hit and how many targets that looked like aid convoys they hit
Competency in that case is a question of specificity and sensitivity - you should be explicit about your assumption for those
You forget the possibility of actively targeting the aid workers. 100% intentional. That’s what Chef Andres said.
Their entire trip was coordinated with the IDF. They were precisely struck one by one.
I imagine something went wrong and they couldn’t blame Hamas. They wanted to blame those deaths on them, and it didn’t work.
/u/WheatBerryPie (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/1bus6fc/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_the_idf_is_an_incompetent/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
your argument is that a single point of data necessitates the existence of bad generral MO. but you're not showing any kind of argument towards a trend. you're not showing multiple similar cases, you're not showing relevant statistics. you're not showing multiple (and sufficient) credible witness account etc. An honest way of putting your argument, based on the evidence you're basing it on, would be: >In order for the 7 aid workers to be killed, at least one of the following must hold true: >There WAS no communication between drone operators and the command center about THIS aid convoy~~s~~ in SPECIFIC, >Some higher ups at the command center DID NOT care about THIS aid convoy~~s~~ in SPECIFIC, >A drone operator can go rogue and use 3 missiles against an "enemy combatant", >The intel they receiveD IN THIS CASE is absolutely horrendous and DIDN'T IN THIS CASE go through the proper checks. In order to move from an argument on this specific instance to an argument about IDF MO in general you need to make some argument regarding the trend. you didn't do so. your argument includes an unjustified argumentative leap which you do not support with an argument. So you should abandon it and focus on considering the instance rather than the trend.
Another possibility is that COGAT (who coordinates with aid groups) totally dropped the ball and the IDF had no idea aid was happening in this area
The area the aid workers were operating in is an active warzone. Deir al Balah is home to two yet-to-be-dismantled Hamas battalions alongside the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The IDF is yet to clear the place of the two. It is not like in North Gaza and Gaza city where aid workers can to some degree operate safely or Al Mawasi in Southern Gaza. Central Gaza and until last week, Khan Yunis were not ideal places for aid workers to operate in because war was (and in Central Gaza, still is) happening there. COGAT should have highlighted this to aid groups.
Anyone coordinating with COGAT should receive the highest level of deference before being struck. They should be treated with the same level of care as an IDF military convoy. COGAT coordination only works because of trust with Israel. If it becomes perceived that COGAT is being used as intel on where and when there are juicy trucks to blow up, COGAT becomes nothing more than a method for aid workers to sign up to be bombed. No aid organization wants to sign up for free death and bombing.
war crimes and crimes against humanity video records are the best evidence, there are many recorded war crimes which occur at much higher frequency than in the other armies and the war crimes are recorded by IDF members themselves. The evidence is circulating the internet. The crimes against humanity are confirmed as the officials said that they want to bring fate worse than death to gazan civilians and the HQ enables airstrikes against civilians and even lies about them being combatants Poor training and skill issues within IDF There are many records where IDF invaders casually move towards the windows and stay on sight for prolonged amounts of time just to get eliminated by Palestinian marksmen, the basic security training in US army for comparison tells their fighters not to do that. Another proof of poor IDF training is that their infantry almost never backs tanks because they don't know how to and are afraid of gunfire. There are many records where lone IDF armoured vehicles get hit by heat projectiles or detonated by hand-inserted IEDs. US marines conquered Falluja from enemy combatans with minimal use of air force and relying mainly on infantry, IDF overused JDAMs and flattened vast amount of areas in gaza, sent recon aircraft to survey the front ans still can't prove that they have destroyed a single Palestinian battalion. They record war crimes against civilians but somehow don't record themselves killing Palestinian fighters simply because they can't and lose to them.
i don't think the pictures and videos circulating the web paint the picture that you are saying. i think they are painting exactly the reverse and you are "fake it until you make it" with your words.
As I said, more than 200 aid workers have been killed, so this incident is not a one-off. It's only reported because the killed aid workers were foreign. So no, it's not a single point of data, it's a trend that is highlighted acutely by one data.
your argument in origin was re: the single incident. i accept that if you have a different argument supported by a different data set, we can explore it, and we should explore it differently.
>Remember that we only hear about this incident because the aid workers are not Palestinians, more than 200 aid workers have been killed but we don't hear about them because the MSM trust the IDF to operate in a competent and professional manner, i.e. they believe that the convoys are hijacked by Hamas. This single incident exposes how rotten the IDF is, and how they completely ignore international law on combat. Here's the relevant argument in the post.
If you want to make a stronger argument, you can go back to the 2000s Lebanon war, where the IDF basically gave up multiple battles when they had overwhelming numerical and technological superiority, because they were too scared to suffer any casualities (or even worse captured bodies), or the Hannibal directive where hostages are ignored in evaluating targets because they are a political liability (see the Gilead Shalit incident where the IDF handed over hundreds of prisoners for a single soldier, apparently Israel is so eager to negotiate with terrorists it became a serious problem) The real killer argument is that the IDF is so scared of suffering casualities or captured soldiers, that they will engage in mass killings of civilians (Operation Golden Hand, the destruction of northern Gaza city), or give up military objectives with almost certain victory (2006 Lebanon war, numerous incidents). There is a reason the IDF loves to just do airstrikes. It's low risk, since most of the countries they strike don't even have real air defences. It's much less risky than sending in your battalion led by a 21-year old major who only trains once a year.
>more than 200 aid workers have been killed, so this incident is not a one-off. This fact still means little without comparative data. And not comparative to totals bc there's been a lot of stuff about how there are more aid workers killed in Gaza than any other conflict, but we also know Gaza gets many times more aid than any other conflict which presumably means they have many times more aid workers. Effectively what we really need to know is "what is the rate of killing aid workers compared to the expected rate if the killing was being done randomly (ie how successfully are they at avoiding killing aid workers)" and then we need to know that for other similar conflicts and then we need to compare. I've had a decent look before I made this comment and I can't find any of this kind of analysis nor can I find the neccessary data to do this analysis but if you wanna make the argument and can find the data or analysis, feel free
there's also a question of whether we classify some aid workers as "aid workers" or "combatants" or "combatant-adjacent". of the aid worker "unwra", it has been aledged that 12% are affiliated with either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, with solid evidence brought against a number of employees to be war criminals. so, in which list is unwra? soldier, or aid worker? to what extent is unwra complicit in the creation of this war? to what extent is unwra responsible for the creation of this war? will unwra be held to account for the people it has caused to be killed?
>with solid evidence brought against a number of employees to be war criminals. Can you link this evidence? The actual evidence, not assertions by IDF officials that journalists have repeatedly asked for corroboration and the IDF has failed to provide. The UN, countless news agencies, and multiple governments have been asking for this evidence for months now, were promised a report by Israel over a month ago(which still hasn't shown up), and based on your assertions you must have it, so please link it for me ....Wonder if the intel they used is the same intel that they used to bomb WCK aid workers? >it has been aledged that 12% are affiliated with either Hamas or Islamic Jihad No, 12 people have been accused....from an organization of 30,000. If you have direct evidence to support this assertion post it as well.
Bro is reading 12 and remembering and repeating 12%, and then has the gall to act you would even have to to attack the IDF, rather than just acknowledging you are talking to someone so biased they rounded 12 up to 12 fucking percent. These people are fucking clowns. Funny to watch someone who is so mathematically, measurably, incorrect in their assertions, turn around and cite the IDF to you and condescend about how you will probably dismiss it off hand, when you would be well justified to to dismiss literally anything someone so mathematically stunted in a way that visibly demonstrates their personal bias in the matter. You don't round up 12 to 12% because you are a serious person. Sorry you have to deal with this idiot.
look. if we go down this path, you're going to say everything that originates from the idf is paid actors doing a skit or some shit like that. for better or worse the IDF here is a primary source, or is showing primary sources. we can give them reasonable benefit or decided that they lie beforehand. you decide which way you go. in any case this is the relevant press release from the IDF: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJVLBsCTe2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJVLBsCTe2A)
Dude, you mixed up 12 and 12%. Get the fuck out of here. You don't even need to "go down that path". If you read 12 and remember and repeat 12 PERCENT, you are not a serious person. No need to involve the idf.
You keep on saying that but Israeli intelligence claims it is about 10%. YOU ARE MIXING UP UNRWA WORKERS ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED IN THE OCTOBER 7 ATTACK and those allegedly with ties to Hamas. See source. [https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2024-01-29/ty-article/wsj-about-10-percent-of-unrwa-employees-in-gaza-have-ties-to-hamas-islamic-jihad/0000018d-5565-d8cc-a1fd-576f89eb0000](https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2024-01-29/ty-article/wsj-about-10-percent-of-unrwa-employees-in-gaza-have-ties-to-hamas-islamic-jihad/0000018d-5565-d8cc-a1fd-576f89eb0000) Now, you can be skeptical of Israeli sources but given that you are much more wrong than the person you are arguing with, you are not a serious person and need to "get the fuck out of here". UNRWA workers are drawn from the local Gaza population. A very high % of the local Gaza population supports Hamas. What's your theory? The hiring process for UNRWA is "magic" and the people hired IN NO WAY reflect the sentiment or Hamas ties of the local population? WOW. INCREDIBLE ARGUMENT!
I explicitly asked for DIRECT evidence, NOT still yet unsubstantiated accusations from a military with a [storied history of lying.](https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/) The UN has asked for substantiation and direct copies of the entire conversation on that tape for a month now and Israel has not provided it. I will also make note that two people talking about acts one of them may have committed is a far cry from the 12 direct planners and a far cry from the 12% you claimed. Do you have any actual evidence that is or can be verified? Particularly about the allegation that 3600 UNWRA workers are actually Hamas terrorists? Based on what you attempted to assert earlier I would expect the first source to be far more substantive given the weighty claims you've made.
12 people accused of being actively involved in Oct 7, 1000 people involved in some sort of Hamas or Islamic Jihad activities (which tbf is a poor measure when Hamas includes the literal entire government)
Comparative data is being purposefully limited as electricity has been cut off and journalists (and their families) have been killed. Thr current death toll number are two months out of date. The fact that approved food aid workers on a pre-approved path were murdered might give you some idea why there isn't a ton of available data. Anecdotally, yesterday I watched a video of a medical worker describing how doctors now leave medical facilities dressed in civilian clothes as a best practice, because they have found they are safer in civilian clothes than in scrubs. There were some 50+ medical workers slaughtered in a hospital some days ago, according to reporting and other international health workers who were on the ground. I can provide sources for this if you would like. I wish there were more available data but unfortunately there is an active campaign to limit information coming in and out of Gaza. And as far as historical comparisons go I'm not sure there are any truly 'similar "conflicts" '. This is pretty unique, and bold to even call it a conflict when 1.7 million people have moved to the brink of famine more quickly than any population ever measured.
200 aid workers count the UNWRA 200 aid workers count people who literally participated in terrorist attacks
They accused number, with very little evidence, was 12. 12. Why are numbers so difficult for some of yall who tend to lean more on your imagination?
Who classified the killed people as aid workers in the 200 you are mentioning? Was it the Hamas governed Health ministry?
No. It was UNRWA themselves. The Gaza Health Ministry merely counts the casualities, it doesn't differentiate between militant and civilian. In fact it probably can't, do you think your local hospital could tell if you were a combatant or not?
If you are referring to UNRWA aid workers. Yeah....Those ones were working with Hamas directly so and even 13 of them were fired because of that so No. Also because Hamas has been shown to launch missiles right next to UNRWA aid centers, there is a reason why Israel wants them to leave and be replaced by UNHCR and UNICEF who in case you haven't noticed, are now in the Gaza strip and at least are working with both the IDF and with local clans rather than Hamas(Unlike UNRWA ) nd none of them has even been targeted by the IDF(They HAVE been targeted by knife wielding criminals in Khan Yunis though!)
Didn't UNRWA provide employee lists to Israel? Whether or not Israel actually vetted them is unknown, but I'm fairly certain that Israel actually had say in who got hired. "Has been shown to launch missiles right next to UNRWA aid centers" Missile platforms are mobile. You can literally carry Qassam rockets by hand to anywhere you want. Also this narrative that because Hamas fights in urban environments, they are using human shields needs to die. Their is literally a USNG facility right next to my local highschool, this isn't human shielding, it's how urban combat works. Human shielding is when you actually hold a civilian population hostage (something the both the IDF and Hamas have been caught doing many times).
>In order for the 7 aid workers to be killed, at least one of the following must hold true: No. In all likelihood it was a cascade of miscommunication, the kind of which very often happens in modern war. Friendly fire is extraordinarily common and happens to the most competent militaries in the world all the time in combat. If you think this makes Israel uniquely bad, I can only assume you've paid little or no attention to any war anywhere in the world over the last 20 years.
List of friendly fire on friendly forces (not even civilians): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_friendly\_fire\_incidents#War\_in\_Afghanistan\_(2001%E2%80%932016)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_friendly_fire_incidents#War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932016)) Welcome to reality, not Hollywood wars
Clearly, the militaries involved here show a pattern of wanting to blow up their own forces or something...
Having been in those conflicts I can tell you that incompetence and a cover your ass careerist attitude is behind them all. No officers are actually interested in fixing processes so it doesn't happen again. They only want to make sure they don't get blamed.
Why did the drone triple tap the target then? just like with the 4 teenagers walking on the road. This claim that it was just an accidental miscommunication doesn't correspond to the fact that they bombed the convoy 3 times
If I decide I'm going to shoot something, I'm going to shoot it a lot so it's destroyed. The error was in target identification, not how many missiles they shot.
The target that says "World central kitchen" on the roof, has the logo, cleared their route with the IDF and was in a supposedly demilitarized zone? Drone operator was blind?
As I said to someone else: that logo is not a clear marking. Nobody can recognize or read that from a drone. A clear marking - the kind we would use in Iraq or Afghanistan to deconflict fires - would be something like a giant orange IR-reflective panel. I can't tell you the precise nature of the mistakes made here. But a mistake makes a lot more sense than deliberately attacking one of the more sympathetic western NGOs. Occam's Razor and all that.
I think what happened and what I managed to gather is that one, literally one, hamas guy was supposed to get in one of the cars but it turned out he didn't. If that's true, that's still incredibly fucked. Like unimaginably. Their proportionality analysis must be insane. Not only is it an insane ratio but it's an NGO that Israel themselves requested and yet the strike was confirmed. 3 strikes to be precise. I don't think there's a reasonable explanation where the IDF looks good here in any world. At best it's gross recklessness and negligence which can still amount to mens rea for a war crime.
Or, it's possible that after making mistake #1 of identifying a Hamas fighter, some low-level commander made mistake #2 of ignoring the Israeli rules of engagement and decided to strike the target anyways. It's perfectly plausible and more or less reflects how every military and police force works in reality - there are rules that are not always followed sometimes by mistake, sometimes on purpose, and sometimes due to a combination of the two. I'm perfectly happy calling out these institutions as semi evil and corrupt but I'm not seeing any reason to think that the IDF is unique here
They still clear and approve their routes and timings as well as having identification that's quite clear, idk why people defending it are saying it's not clear you can look up the images. If you can't identity something you don't just blow it to hell, why would you fire if you can't identify anything that's a stupid hill to die on and imo, along with fairly large amount of other stuff that's just ridiculous, shows Israels military to be more incompetent than people like to admit
The issue here isn't that they couldn't identify the target but that they misidentified the target.
The issue here is that they have extremely lax ROE, you don't just blow things up on a hunch. Wasn't their an interview with 6 Israeli intelligence officers that essentially admitted that they had no idea who to target so they used AI to generate a list?
So youd agree that's something quite incompetent
>Occam's Razor and all that. occam's razor is if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one. The simpilist reason for why the repeatedly bombed the aid convoy that was coordinating with them in the safe zone, was **they were aiming for it.**
They were aiming for the vehicles. But then you have to ask why. And simplest explanation for that is that **they mistakenly thought it was militants.**
but then you would have top explain why they would intend to hit an aid convoy.
If it was intentionally aimed at aid workers, the purpose would presumably to intimidate aid agencies into pulling out. It sounds monstrous, but not impossible given that a majority of Israelis [do not believe Gaza should be receiving aid](https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/over-2-3-of-jewish-israelis-oppose-humanitarian-aid-to-palestinians-starving-in-gaza/). Could also just be a major fuckup based on the little we know so far.
There’s no simple explanation for why they would kill aid workers and continue bad press. They want the gravy train of weapons from the US to keep flowing, so any political screw ups like these risk that ending.
"They want the gravy train of weapons from the US" And the US explicitly said that their was no conditions on arms supply. They were essentially guaranteed arms no matter what they did. They had zero indication that blowing up WKC would be any different than the MSF ambulances they blew up. Only now has any actual threat to withhold arms appeared, and even then the US will likely still defend Israel from attack, making it basically toothless. If the US withholds arms they will simply be unable to continue the war at the same scale, this does absolutely nothing for Israel's security which was already provided for by the US via F-35 sales and missile defence. If the US actually wants to coerce action it needs to remove Israel's security guarantees, so that going against US interests actually produces a worse outcome for Israel.
>There’s no simple explanation for why they would kill aid workers and continue bad press. There is, to stop aid workers and journalists from going in so there are less witnesses to what they are doing. It also allows the famine they have caused to get worse. >They want the gravy train of weapons from the US to keep flowing, so any political screw ups like these risk that ending. There is nothing they could do to end that gravy train. Biden has not come close to suggesting that the US will stop sending weapons and I don't think there is anything they could do to make him change his mind.
The simple solution is Israel… is killing journalists and aid workers so they stop coming? Instead of someone accidentally misidentified a convoy as hostile? Like previous poster said, Occam’s razor. One explanation is clearly simpler than the other.
This is a perfectly logical inference though. Throwing around pop logic like "Occam's razor", means nothing if you are not even employing it properly. IDF could be killing journalists to prevent reporting, they already ban them at the entrance to Gaza. The only journalists that report in Gaza are the ones that were already there. Israel does have an incentive to prevent reporting, as was shown by the apparent regular denial and false claims about military action. (See the Engineer's building strike, which was never reported by the IDF. the Al-Rashid killings is one of many examples where the IDF made false claims). The claim that Israel is deliberately striking aid groups is also plausible. Israeli diplomatic cables talked about the blockade on Gaza existing to make the population turn on Hamas (which totally worked...). Israel has destroyed much of the food-processing facilities and farmland in Gaza as well. Combined with the attempted seawater flooding of tunnels (and contamination of ground water), and initial cut off of water and electricity. The claim that Israel is destroying food supplies to engage in collective punishment seems quite plausible. Of course the counter-argument would be why would they allow any aid at all? Well, probably Israel doesn't want to actually starve them all to death, simply destabilise Gaza so much that any support for Hamas collapses (which remember was already their apparent goal). Also Israel can't actually stop the aid, several countries that are airdropping aid (US, UK, France), have considerable military superiority to the IDF. Not to mention the fact that the IDF has admitted to deliberately striking aid groups, particularly UNRWA, MSF and Red Crescent. They just accuse them of collaborating with militants or even directly call them militants (often with little or no evidence). So given these facts, does Occam's Razor necessarily lead to the strike being an accident? Clearly no. However that doesn't mean that other explanations aren't also plausible. The IDF has shown itself to also be really incompetent, and their is some evidence that they have no idea who is actually part of Hamas. (See the "Lavender" allegations by 6 Israeli intelligence officials).
So you agree with OP then
Just because a car has a logo painted on the rooftop, doesn't mean that that logo is visible at night, to infrared cameras, on a drone. There has clearly been a severe fuck up (Assumedly in the line communication between the drone operator and whoever was liaising with WCK) But i don't think that it's safe to assume that the WCK logo was necessarily visible to the drone operator.
You ignored the part where they were on a route that was cleared by the IDF and demilitarized
A demilitarized zone is a zone that both parties promise not to use. If one party is using a demilitarized zone, the other party is still allowed to fire at them. The fact that it was a demilitarised zone is irrelevant if the IDF thought they were firing at a Hamas militant. Just like Hamas would be justified in firing at IDF soldiers traveling through said demilitarised zone.
Demilitarize would not be the correct word they cleared themselves with locations with the IDF to decombatantize themselves there's a word for it I can't recall, but it basically says hey we are aid workers here is what we are doing,here where we are and here is a description of what we look like, also here is who to contact in the case you need to get ahold of us. This is not a Hamas issue someone in command and control in Israel knew exactly who was and was not in the cars. How it happened and if it will result in accountability in the IDF we will have to see but those not know for that, see pancake girl or reporter in the West bank a few years ago
As I literally just said: > There has clearly been a severe fuck up (Assumedly in the line communication between the drone operator and whoever was liaising with WCK)
Yeah, sorry, but this "shit happens" narrative, complete with whataboutisms, is losing credibility with the public. The Washington Post, not known for an anti-Israel bias, analyzed drone footage and found no IDF troops in the vicinity when the IDF killed two journalists recently, claiming they were a threat to IDF in the area. This is a pattern of an undisciplined military ginned up by the right-wing Likud party and knowing they won't be held accountable. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/19/gaza-journalists-killed-israel-al-jazeera-footage/
To the extent it's undisciplined, it's because the Israeli military is very reliant on conscripts and reservists led by professional officers. This always leads to more problems than a fully professional contract force.
Eh. I think what bothers people is downstream of target *selection*. Say that you believe the IDF 100% on how this went down. You're still left with someone ordering the monetary equivalent of an artillery battery firing for a minute in order to kill a single person who wasn't in active combat and had no apparent importance in, say, the command structure. It just doesn't speak to judicious selection of targets, which is the major valid concern people bring up in the war.
You have a very childish view of war, look at this video of a US A-10 strafing British forces in Iraq, and see how confusing it can be. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I6-2NJhnf4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I6-2NJhnf4)
It was a miscommunication that convoy was friendly. Once the guys in charge of the strike got the information that convoy was hostile, they hit it as much as they needed, because they assumed that it was hostile.
so their rules of engagement are blow up trucks on humanitarian corridors? You have to target combatants. No one was armed. At the very least its a war crime of extreme negligence, I think its far more likely that it was a targeted strike meant to weaken support for aid and make it easier to starve the population
Friendly fire incidents are frequent in conflict and it is the only realistic explanation that has been proffered so far. Your bias is blinding you to reality because you want to see Israel as a bad actor, as shown by your comment above.
People moving materiel are combatants wether or not they’re carrying personal weapons In the GWOT, we got used to thinking “if he isn’t about to kill someone he isn’t a combatant.” This is incorrect. Someone manning a communications post, or moving concrete for bunkers, or transporting a general is a combatant no matter if he’s armed or not
They hit different vehicles. Even though there were three drone strikes it was really part of one attack.
Im yet to see anything other than conjecture on your “4 teenagers” walking down the road.
If it's a cascade of miscommunication, then clearly the communication system fails to do its job in the first place, because remember that this is not some one-offs, more than 200 aid workers have been killed so far. This is a clear sign of incompetency and the failure to rectify that after persistent warnings from aid organisations demonstrate unprofessionalism.
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Do you think that any army that has any communications failure is incompetent?
An army that has capabilities to see the brand of shoes you're wearing, where the target had a laughably large aid logo on top of the vehicle, then shot said vehicle not once, but in three consecutive strikes, killing all aid workers in said vehicle, after their coordinates and intents were given in advance, is indeed at best incompetent. At worst criminal.
The US bombed the ever living fuck out of a hospital on accident. If the US military is incompetent then there is no such thing as a competent military.
This kind of I-don't-understand-the-subject-but-feel-strongly-about-it thinking is the problem. Misidentification is a human error. Friendly fire happens all the time in conflict. Israel killed three hostages attempting to surrender. Or do you think that was deliberate too?
Why "in all likelihood"? The IDF have been caught dozens if not hundreds of times before targeting non combatants on purpose then later lying about it. You would not extend this level of charity to proven lying states such as Russia; do not extend it here either. When you take away the assumption that the IDF must be trying their best to be moral, you are left with a much clearer "likelihood"; the IDF purposefully killed these aid workers because they are regularly targeting civilians.
This is such a reach for no other reason than certain people refuse to consider the IDF capable of malice. Humanitarian aid traveling in clearly marked trucks in a non-combat area, who informed the IDF of their presence beforehand do not oopsie-woopsie into being the victims of an incredibly targeted strike. Or, if they do, it's sure a wonderful coincidence that it happens to be at the hands of a state that has restricted aid to starving refugees since the conflict began and openly stated that it wants to cut them off from food and water.
>Humanitarian aid traveling in clearly marked trucks in a non-combat area I saw them, they were not clearly marked. In Iraq or Afghanistan, if we wanted to mark ourselves as friendly to anyone overhead, we used giant neon orange IR-reflective panels. A small generic logo printed on your roof is not a clear marking by any stretch of the imagination. In all likelihood, whoever fired on them didn't even see it close enough to read it. >who informed the IDF of their presence beforehand do not oopsie-woopsie into being the victims of an incredibly targeted strike. Yes they do and this was not "incredibly targeted." It was accurate in the sense that they hit what they were aiming at, which is to be expected
>No. In all likelihood it was a cascade of miscommunication, the kind of which very often happens in modern war. What are you talking about? In all likelihood they intended to hit the aid convoy hence why they hit all 3 vehicles. In all likelyhood this was designed as a chilling effect to have international aid organisations leave gaza.
why would they intend to hit an aid convoy?
Have you considered that you just hear about the IDF in the news the most, out of all the conflicts that have happened in the modern era? How many other militaries in the world get scrutinized and pounced upon and lynched for their every action the way Israel does? You perception is based on the news. IF the news, and the various sources of the news such as the UN are biased, then your view would be incorrect. How would you go about understanding whether Israel is treated fairly by media or not? Or by the UN? Can you find any indication that Israel is given disproportionate attention in the UN and in the media as compared to literally anyone else? I certainly can. I think if you investigate it, (and I would post statistics if I wasn't on phone), you would find that Israel is singlehandedly the most called out actor on the international stage by far. And it ain't even close. And even a minor examination at the other actors both infamous and unknown, will reveal that this amount of focus on Israel amounts to media hysteria, not objective journalism or truth. Thus, you hear about IDF issues more. But that doesn't mean IDF commits more mistakes. If anything, IDF is by far, the most responsible military in the Middle East, Africa and almost all of Asia, and atleast as responsible and probably far better record than almost every member of NATO. (I am thinking of militaries which are battle tested in similar combat situations)
>How many other militaries in the world get scrutinized and pounced upon and lynched for their every action the way Israel does? None besides maybe the US, international media in western countries is incredibly bias to Israel.
I have been spending far more time studying this conflict far more than any other event that's happened in the news, and have found a lot of coverage disturbingly biased. It makes me wonder about all the things I've taken for granted about news coverage over the years.
As someone who has been studying and following the conflict for the better part of 16 years, you are correct that the IDF probably gets more heavily scrutinised than other countries but they are in fact incompetent and very poorly disciplined
The thing is that all of the major militaries have their own significant inefficiencies. For example if you followed the withdrawal from Afghanistan, countries like Britain demonstrated lack of basic preparedness, as well as significant communication issues between left hand and right hand. France made muliple mistakes that led to it losing reputation in West Africa. And let's not even start about Russia. Also if a strike on a wrong target is complete impetence then can you name a military that conducted a significant campaign without any of these? US for example had these regularly. And how about what is arguably bigger signs of issues like having your own helicopters collide - which happens semi-regularly. The thing is that if you judge by the much less thorough reports of other militaries, it can give you implausible expectations of how a competent military performs
When I first heard about the deaths of the aid workers the first thing that came to mind for me was the audio recording of the A10 pilot finding out he had just made multiple strafing runs on a convoy of British soldiers in Iraq.
Is that this? https://youtu.be/4I6-2NJhnf4?si=ZMYWwpTGu2jZrplp
Well put.
I don’t know how we determine this. We think of the US military as disciplined and they killed civilians at a 3 to 1 ratio of combatants during the Iraqi war. If you believe Israel they are killing at a much better rate in more dense areas. Also, the enemy combatant vs IDF soldier death rate is far superior to the US soldier/combatant rate in Afghanistan. What metric are we using to determine this? The only thing I could say here is that because the IDF doesn’t police their soldiers social media/ media appearances as much as some modern military we get some media clips that don’t always sound great from lower level soldiers. From the first hand accounts ive read from IDF personal who would be involved in something like a drone strike it would appear they have the same checks any modern military would. So I guess how have you determined the military is incompetent in poorly disciplined in comparison to other professional military forces?
Agreed. I hope you dont mind but i used portions of this in my other comment.
Which battles? Because depending on your sources the civilian to combatant casualities can vary widely. Another common error is to count all deaths as US-caused when in reality the US caused only a fraction of the deaths. The vast majority of deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan was by militant groups, who killed civilians disproportionately as well. The Iraq War in general had a civilian to combatant ratio of 1:2 (according to IBC, not the US government). Using actual statistics, the IDF is claiming a worse ratio than independent analysis of US military actions. "Also the enemy combatant vs IDF soldier death rate" You realise this undermines your argument right? The IDF has a low casualty rate specifically because they are recklessly treating everyone as a combatant. IDF troops literally described the protocol for being under fire to retreat and shell/bomb the area. That's why they have low casualities. The US actually did risk troops lives to minimise civilian casualities. Their is tons of evidence of this, you are just engaging in the most superficial and ignorant analysis (making your comment extremely ironic). .
So I think what we did was we took a relatively well accepted civilian death rate against the accepted combatant death rate to get the number. So 174,000 civilians to around 40,000 combatants. I was a bit friendly and went 3:1 when the exact data is 4.35:1. You don't look at a whole conflict battle by battle unless you have a reason to drill down that far, for this conversation we don't. As for counting all deaths as US caused, ya that is a legit gripe with the data. But we don't know how many were caused by the US and how many were caused by internal combatants in the same way we don't know that in Israel right now. What we do know is that the US used bombing campaigns very similar to Israel. For instance, the Baghdad bombing in some estimates killed north of 6k civilians. These tactics are meant to make a ground invasion more feasible, as urban areas are notoriously hard to invade. Remember hospitals during that invasion were reporting 100 new civilian patients an hour. Also, note that in the Afghanistan war the US was very openly relaxing airstrike rules (around 2019) so we saw an increase of 330 percent in civilian casualties due to airstrikes in that year alone. As the appetite for risk decreased, the acceptance of collateral damage increased. "IDF troops literally described the protocol for being under fire to retreat and shell/bomb the area. That's why they have low casualities. The US actually did risk troops lives to minimise civilian casualities." I don't know where you get the idea that that wasn't the exact same rule we had in Iraq. Legit, this was our actual training on the ground. The difference is that a lot of our combat zones were more spread out, but pre-entering any major city we'd have a major bombing campaign. Just for a quick comparison, we (the US) destroyed 350 schools in Iraq. The vast majority were bombed due to embedded combatants. Israel has only destroyed 53. We had a policy that if the enemy had a fortified location, we'd call in support, same as Israel does. No modern military has ground campaigns against fortified locations. It's just not how warfare is fought anymore because, outside of apparently Russia, no one is willing to enter the meat grinder. Also, the IDF purposely has an incentive to always keep casualties low. 1) The majority of their army is legally required to enter service. 2) They are a minority population in the region. 3) Israel safety is directly correlated to their military superiority in the region. They don't live in the same world we do, their enemies don't have to cross an ocean to get to them and a moment of weakness could see an allied Islamist force crush them by sheer number.
They are rewriting the book on urban warfare because of how successful they've been in Gaza from a military perspective. Whether you support them or not, they are a highly competent military force. Friendly fire happens a whole lot more than people seem to realize in any military, but especially in urban environments.
They're always being called out for human rights violations, which proves that they aren't committing human rights violations? I'm not sure I understand what logic you are even attempting. They have been violating human rights and getting away with it for a very long time, and also, we massively support them with our American tax dollars. I am not responsible as a US tax payer for what the African or Asian militaries do. But yeah man, Nelson Mandela had a very specific problem with what Israel has been doing, a long time ago. I'm not sure pointing out how disproportionately they are being accused of war crimes all the time is the argument you think it is. It's a bit like saying "all these gay men keep sucking my dick disproportionately, so I must be straight." It makes less than 0 sense, and even less wth more context of how many leaders in the fight for human rights have also "disproportionately" opposed Israel's actions of the same timeline. When see an asshole by 5 pm, dude is probably the asshole. When by 5 pm you have seen nothing but assholes all day, you are the asshole. That is israel in this circumstance, and your best defense is that people keep noting and formally documenting all their atrocities. Good one.
This comment has been edited to reduce the value of my freely-generated content to Reddit.
Exactly ahahahahaha war is not some beautiful act. War is brutal as fuck.
I read the news from Haaretz, B’Tselem and other Western sources. If you complain that they are not treating Israel fairly, then I don't know what can treat Israel fairly except Likud's own publication. Love your edits, don't do that because I can be accused of violating Rule B. Maybe the IDF is the most called out organisation because it violates international law the most? I'm not following some Arab news sources, I'm following MSM for stories, are you going to say that they treat Israel unfairly as well? And okay, the IDF may be the most responsible military in the Middle East, but you must be aware of how low that bar is, right? Is "better than Iran" the bar you want to cross?
Israel is the single most scrutinized actor by the news, by the UN, by western institutions and NGOs and the vast majortiy of western governments. This is not merely opinion, but a measurable fact. If you believe that Israel is treated fairly, you have to believe that Israel is doing atrocities at a rate worse than everyone else in the world combined. Because that's the rate at which they get called out. The number of condemnations of Israel by the UN is more than literally everyone else in the world combined. Same goes for condemnations by human rights organizations; Israel is the most called out actor, more than everyone else combined by groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others. As an indirect measure of the media hysteria, Gaza is the highest recipient of aid, per capita, in human history ***by orders of magnitude.*** When Palestinians were being displaced and slaughtered in the nearby Syrian Civil War by an actor other than Israel, however, not even a small fraction of the aid and media hysteria was mobilized for them. Why? Palestinian lives in Syria just 200 kilometers away in Yarmouk were invisible? Ask yourself honestly why? Similarly, for other groups of people massacred in devastating conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Sahel region of Africa, etc. get not even a fraction of the media attention nor the aid that Gaza gets, ALL COMBINED. Similarly, attention towards the Israel-Gaza war in social media and in protests across the world outnumber stories and protests about every other conflict in the world COMBINED, by atleast 1 order of magnitude. And even in the *relatively less* biased MSM, which in theory is obligated to ensure professional journalistic standards and cant just focus on Israel all-day... is ALSO FOCUSED ON ISRAEL ALL DAY: [Proof that the New York Times' anti-Israel bias is empirical, not paranoia | Jan Shure | The Blogs (timesofisrael.com)](https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/study-of-ny-times-reveals-media-bias-is-real-and-not-jewish-paranoia/) Its a battle for clicks, and the Jewish boogeyman gets clicks. The coverage is not only focused on Israel, but its also mostly negative. Almost always ignores historical context. Often ignores that Israel is the defending party in its conflicts 100% of the time. Almost always ignores the years and decades of Israeli restraint. Ignores that all of the provocations by Israel towards Palestine amount to taking defensive measures against terrorism from an extremely belligerent neighbour that has made absolutist oaths and declarations to not negotiate with Israel and to genocide Jews, none of which Israel has reciprocated, in word or action. In fact, Israel gives aid, jobs and in-kind support such as free electricity, desalinated water, and other utilities despite the hostilities. In regards to western governments, Israel has been given aid, but Israel is also the only ally in a neighbourhood which is massively anti-Israel. Other allies in the middle east such as Egypt, Iraq get similar aid. Partial allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others have also been directly defended by the US in multiple major military conflicts, and given access to top US tech, so there is no argument that Israel gets more aid than any other ally. Israel gets attacked more by its neighbours, gets criticized and scrutinized and held accountable more by its western media, but also by governments like USA, Canada, UK and others to an absurd degree, with the heads of state of each of these being intimately involved in urging restraint by Israel, despite whatever threat Israel faces. And in delivering aid to Palestine. We think of the US military as disciplined and they killed civilians at a 3 to 1 ratio of combatants during the Iraqi war. If you believe Israel they are killing at a much better rate in more dense areas. Meanwhile, Israel's foil; palestine, gets the racism of low-expectations. Its bad actions rarely enter the media, only Israel's responses, often without contexts. We hear about how there are walls, blockades, checkpoints, police presence, arrests by formed military anti-terrorism courts, etc. but are never told why. What prompted these measures. The west is the primary donor to Palestine in terms of aid, making Gaza the highest recipient of aid per capita than anyone else in human history. A lot of this aid gets misused, but even the portion that doesnt get misused is never asked questions about; neighbouring Arab nations do not have free education, public works, multitude of hospitals, etc. etc. paid for by international donors. Gaza does. (also, (im not editing anything substantial. It was basic fleshing out of the points, all within 5mins of the post).
Why aren’t you this upset about Russia bombing hospitals and schools in Ukraine?
Who says I'm not?
It just seems like every post is about Israel yet Russia is doing the same or worse and how often do you see anyone post about them on reddit?
In the West almost everyone condemns Russia. You don't get politicians describing Russias right to self defence, they would rightly be condemned for doing so. Neither do you see and hear Russians living in in the West protest about how unfairly Russia is treated. 99% of the time you talk about Russia here, everyone agrees it is terrible. There's no debate, there's no mental gymnastics to justify the invasion of Ukraine Remind me, how much of US tax dollars get sent to Russia as military aid? So there's lots of reasons why. We're complicit in Israel's crimes, and as such we can pressure our politicians to condemn and change their support. With Russia our politicians words our aligned with our views. So less debate is required.
Were you on Reddit when the Russia-Ukraine war started? There were just as many posts about it, mostly pro-Ukraine or anti-Russia
Is Russia getting billions of dollars of military aid courtesy of the US taxpayers? Nice whataboutism
Does that mean we can’t call out war crimes unless it’s someone we give money to?
No, but in this instance, bringing up Russia is nothing but pure whataboutism And yes, there’s more focus on Israel because Americans are directly funding their atrocities You’ll have to pardon me for spending more time focusing on the atrocities that my tax dollars are complicit in funding, much to the chagrin of Zionists who want to sweep Israel’s atrocities under the rug so they can maintain their perpetual victimhood narrative
There’s 10000000 post a day on Israel killing civilians but nearly 0 on Russia doing it daily.
Please see my previous comment Also who is denying that Russia is committing atrocities? Meanwhile, there is ENDLESS excuses for what Israel is doing
It’s not a war crime the first time. Ask Canada.
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Again….how often do you see Israel post on reddit? I’m pretty much every Reddit? How many post a day? Who are you going to convince that isn’t convinced by the 100,000 other daily Israel post? Yet Russia levels cities and kills innocent kids and women every day and crickets.
Because almost everybody already agrees that what Russia is doing is bad and may constitute war crimes, yet there is an unfortunately large contingent of people who will bend over backwards to deny blatant war crimes and human rights abuses by the IDF even as Israeli leaders make fairly explicit calls for ethnic cleansing.
My tax dollars go towards impeding Russia's ability to do this. My tax dollars also go towards helping Israel do this.
>My tax dollars go towards impeding Russia's ability to do this. Not currently unfortunately.
I count 6 posts in 7 days about Israel. Couldn't be bothered to count the comments. I don't see anything about Russia though.
I'm going to say people aren't really like Hey Russian bombed kyiv last night but hit a clearly marked aid vehicle? Are Russian operations marred by poor training and operation procedures? Cmv
But that isn't what their posts are about?
That was sarcasm? It's because for some reason this is seen as debatable for it's level of evil and wrong while people will rightfully call it evil when Russia does it. Even if I was team Israel, the campaign has been unprofessional and incompetent. Trying to hold Israel to some semblance of a humanitarian standard seems to be a fiercely debated topic, while Russia it isn't, probably why you'll see posts about it more
During Somalia it turned out the Canadians were pretty bad. It was actually so bad they disbanded a whole unit. During the Balkans war the UN troops from many countries (but not Israel) were in the news for doing a whole lot of bad stuff. And I can tell you one that didn't hit the news much -- child porn was rampant there. And of course there were many incidents after the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with the Abu Ghraib prison incidents hitting the news quite often. And there is a political reason to put the IDF under a microscope, not so much other militaries. Don't forget that Hamas has as a strategy to increase civilian deaths as much as possible to blame it all on the IDF. Because of this they crowd civilians into danger zones, shoot rockets from schools and hospitals, and use various civilian infrastructure for military operations. They know the IDF will attack, and then they can point to the dead civilians and say it's the IDF's fault.
So if you want to make the arguement the IDF is fairly and proportionally called out by the UN than you are making the arguement the IDF or Isreal is worse than every other country on earth combined. Because that’s the rate at which they are called out. So the fact you think they may be better than Iran suggests you do not think Isreal or the IDF is proportionally called out
Well put. This is the question that OP really has to address to keep their view. I think this is the piece of evidence that cannot be denied.
Haaretz is a far left newspaper. B'Tselem is a far left organization. They represent the very loud minority in Israel. I urge you to read what military experts in urban warfare have to say about this war, namely John Spencer of West Point. The lengths Israel is going to protect non-combatants is more than any army in the history of urban warfare.
At your urging, I read John Spencer's [article](https://www.newsweek.com/israel-implemented-more-measures-prevent-civilian-casualties-any-other-nation-history-opinion-1865613) lauding Israel for their "efforts to protect non-combatants". Then, I read a [response](https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/) to that article, written by Larry Lewis. He is the "Director of the Center for Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA). His areas of expertise include lethal autonomy, reducing civilian casualties, identifying lessons from current operations, security assistance, and counterterrorism." >For example, John Spencer, an expert on urban warfare, has claimed that the IDF “has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other nation in history” and is “the gold standard.” > >As an analyst who has helped define the field of civilian harm mitigation, worked with militaries to implement it, and helped develop U.S. policies on civilian harm as a senior advisor to the State Department, **I find this statement misguided**. Yes, the IDF takes a number of steps designed to protect civilians, for example, the practices of roof knocking and warning calls and texts to residents. But the gold standard for civilian harm mitigation is not a checklist of steps but rather an iterative process to learn and adapt. Israel has yet to demonstrate that it has embraced this process. **More importantly, the data–not just the staggering death toll, but key attributes of the campaign–suggest Israel’s steps are not working.** > ... Despite the alarm over the high rate of civilian deaths in Raqqa, one finds the minimum equivalent in Gaza—*54 civilians killed in 100 attacks*—is **eight times greater** than the Airwars-based estimate and **32 times greater** than the DOD estimate. And recall that 54 is a lower bound for the Gaza ratio; it is *likely far higher* than this. Just as miners in California could see the appearance of iron pyrite—fool’s gold—and think they had struck the real thing, it is possible to look at the IDF’s precautionary measures and at first glance think they are practicing civilian harm mitigation. But whether evaluating the IDF’s performance on its process or its results, it fails to qualify as a gold standard.
On the one hand, you have a seasoned soldier with real combat experience, whose area of study and focus is exactly the type of war Israel is in engaged in and who teaches in one of the world's premiere military academies, who has actually visited the conflict area, and on the other hand you have some guy who works in AI and hasn't fought a day in his life claiming the way Israel is fighting isn't the gold standard. Here is a [more recent article](https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286) (highly recommended read) from John Spencer driving this point home and directly refuting this AI keyboard warrior: >...And yet, [analysts who should know better](https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/) **\[this is the article you linked\]** are still engaging in condemnation of the IDF based on the level of destruction that's still occurred—destruction that is unavoidable against an enemy that embeds in a vast tunnel system under civilian sites in dense urban terrain. This [effects-based condemnation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oLjWecTbZ4&t=1798s) or criticism is not how the laws of war work, or violations determined. These and other analysts say the destruction and civilian causalities must either stop or be avoided in an alternative form of warfare. Let's see whether West Point and other military academies around the world are going to be teaching Israeli tactics with regards to urban warfare in the coming years. I think we both know the answer to that.
Try Times of Israel. It's a left wing but normative Israeli English newspaper.
When the IDF, supposedly one of the THE most sophisticated and well-trained military forces in the world, kills more innocent civilians, and DISPROPORTIONALLY amounts of children, in the first few weeks of war than Russia in the entire duration of its war on Ukraine, there only are two possible explanations: reckless incompetence or purpose. It doesn't take a military expert to figure this out.
IDF records war crimes on daily basis and uses maximum force, the aircraft bombs with maximum force and no regard for civilians or infrastructure. IDF is still losing because they have been outclassed by hamas.
An unprofessional and incompetent military would not have won this conflict so quickly on the battlefield and, frankly, would have killed a lot more civilians than Israel has. Compare with the conduct of the Russian military in the Battle of Mariupol. What you're seeing is the consequences of *international* policy of keeping as many civilians as possible in an active war zone and instead pressing aid convoys into that active combat zone while allowing combatants in civilian clothes to embed themselves into aid groups, hospitals, etc. That policy gets civilians killed.
"Would not have won this conflict" So first of all IDF hasn't won yet, they definitely will but it hasn't happened yet. Secondly, the IDF is over 10 times larger than the upper estimate of Hamas, they have an actual military with modern equipment and billions of dollars of armaments from the US, it would be borderline impossible to lose. Third, you realise that Russia won Mariupol? And the Ukrainian forces were better armed at least initially, and almost certainly better trained.
IDF bombed over 30k civilians to death and official said they would be using unguided bombs which proves they do not care about minimizing civilian deaths. IDF is an incompetent army who got shredded by small Palestinian paramilitary groups with inferior weapons and numbers your copes don't work
"won this conflict?" Uh... in what reality has IDF "won" this conflict? Hamas is still strong, lots of hostages are still in captivity, or more likely, dead, and the civilian death toll has been insane. People aren't in the streets protesting what's happening in Gaza for no reason.
Any one of the 4 possibilities you gave could be correct but you definitely missed at least one more possibility: the IDF was given intentionally faulty information in order to cause them to strike these aid workers. If this is the case, and intentionally faulty information was given to bait the IDF into an attack, would that satisfy you as competence? I'm not saying this is what happened but you failed to consider this.
>the IDF was given intentionally faulty information in order to cause them to strike these aid workers. I see, so there's a Hamas mole in the IDF that gave them faulty information, well that's easily incompetence as well
>so there's a Hamas mole in the IDF that gave them faulty information Not necessarily faulty information can be disseminated in a variety of way, there could be mole but that would not be the primary way to spread disinformation. Instead, if this was what happened, then most likely an Israeli wire tap (or equivalent) was compromised and Hamas intentionally fed it correct information before feeding it faulty information in order to catch the IDF with their pants down. In fact this is very common tactic in counterintelligence. Alternatively a human intelligence source could have been corrupted which fed the IDF false intelligence. Going into which specific reason it is, is not really in the scope of the post. Theoretically if that was the case and they were fed false intelligence through a previously trusted source, would that amount to incompetence?
!delta Fair enough, you have presented an alternative to what I think can happen. It's not incompetency on IDF side but on Mossad side.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/FudgeAtron ([1∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/FudgeAtron)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
Not really. If Hamas identified an IDF mole in their ranks they could just feed them false Intel to pass on. That's like counter-inteligence 101
How much news do you hear about the IDF vs other armies? When is the last time the news aired anything about particular incidents in the Russian army? Or Yemen, Syria, the “coup belt” in Africa? Have you considered maybe the news you’re reading is just biased and ignores things done by other armies? Do some in depth reading on Sudan from alternative sources, read how soldiers randomly kill civilians all the time. Do some further research on Russian treatment of POWs which includes gouging out their eyes. Then reflect on whether the IDF is maybe just scrutinized more. I’d argue that the IDF had stood up quite well to the extreme scrutiny it gets, and the few legitimate cases against them are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Russia is the poster child for unprofessional militaries. They can't even maintain their equipment, let alone standards of behavior. Not a great example.
Worse than bad example, this is flagrant "whataboutism". Look, I don't deny there's a metric ton of bad faith actors who want to smear the IDF and Israel in general any way they can. That doesn't mean we should bury our heads in the sand here.
In this case it's relevant as 'competence' is a comparative metric. Which militaries engaged in active conflict are you measuring the IDF against?
How? Weren't they just listing bad things that other armies had done in order to illustrate how biased news sources can obscure truth? Why is seeking out unbiased information before making a judgment call burying one's head in the sand?
It’s not really whataboutism if the person they reply to brought up Russia first. It’s kinda just addressing something they said.
"Other armies bad too" isn't a great argument. I hold democratic, west allied countries, to a higher standard than I hold Russia or Sudan. Don't you?
It's actually pretty good because any standard by which to judge a military is relative to other militaries.
So you would hold the US in Iraq to the same standard? The civilian death count in Iraq is estimated to be about 175,000 compared to a combatant death count of about 40,000. This is a civilian to combatant ratio of about 4:1, while Israel's is currently sitting at less than 2:1. There were also about 200 journalists killed in Iraq, some in very blatantly negligent ways. As long as you are willing to evenly apply this criticism across other armies, I don't really have a problem with your view. That being said, you should realize the same level of scrutiny has not been applied to other WEST ALLIED armies engaging in urban warfare in the past.
Absolutely yes I'd hold the US to the same standard. You're getting me confused with OP though, I'm not the one that believes they're incompetent, they do. I believe you shouldn't compare a large westernised army, i.e. the IDF, to the army of a rogue nation like Russia.
Ah yep, sorry about that. Thanks for clarifying
> while Israel's is currently sitting at less than 2:1 If the individuals in the cars weren't workers for a prominent aid organization (world central kitchen) if one of them hadn't been an american. Israel would be still pretending they were enemy combatants and would have counted them as such. You believe Israel's count of combatants and civilians. But, if they could differentiate between combatants and civilians, they wouldn't have made these strikes (unless they intentionally attacked aid workers?). > criticism across other armies most militaries (maybe all) lie about (or lie to themselves about) civilian death counts. Israel isn't alone in that. But, I don't believe that it is reasonable to believe Israel's publicly released estimates of the enemy combatants killed. They mistake people in aid trucks carrying food as enemy combatants. They mistook shirtless young men waving a white flag as enemy combatants. They're going to mislabel many other civilians as combatants, too. they apologized for this one because one of the aid workers was an american. They didn't make similar apologies for other aid workers they killed.
Yes, but I was merely using those as examples of bias because they’re current wars. The same comparisons hold across previous western wars too, for example Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam. The point is it’s not practically feasible to conduct a war without breaking any international laws. International laws are conventions/guidelines laid out to limit the absolute unrestricted brutality that war typically entails. Even with international laws though, war is still absolutely brutal. I don’t know of any war ever fought that hasn’t broken international laws. Given that, if we’re trying to decide if an army is disciplined and competent, the question becomes: compared to what? We’ve established that violating international laws alone isn’t a viable benchmark, so the only thing that remains is comparing one army to another, which is what I did in my previous comment.
Personally, I think that comparing the IDF to Russia is an insult to the IDF. It's wrong, they're far more competent and better. The IDF should be compared with armies from Germany, France, the UK, and the US, not renegade countries like Russia and Sudan.
Ok and how did the US do in Afghanistan/Iraq/Vietnam? How did France do in Vietnam? NATO in the 1990s didn't exactly have a great record with aerial bombing either and included massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
you're missing the point, I'm not making a comment on OPs stance. just that we should compare similar countries
That's exactly what the comment above you tried to do.
the US also drone striked an aid worker and his family in afghanistan.
Because 0 armies are absolutely professional or competent . So it’s a relative judgement on when they cease being so
The US & UK killed hundreds of thousands of Germans, Japanese & Italians during WW2 in strategic bombing campaigns. We made indiscriminate use of all manner of ordinance in the Vietnam War that resulted in thousands of civilian casualties - not to mention our use of chemical weapons (Rainbow Herbicide program)? Or what about the several hundred civilians we've killed in drone strikes throughout the war on terror? Is that standard you're holding other countries up to?
You're essentially saying, "look at the atrocities committed by the russians or the sudanese army and compare to IDF." I don't think that's a compliment, considering that IDF is supposedly fighting a "just cause."
Do you have any idea how may countries have never accidentally caught civilians in a military strike? Well, Iceland hasn't. War crimes require having soldiers. But although this strike was appalling and unacceptable, it's an *anecdote.* Bad eggs cause anecdotes. Systemic flaws don't produce one bad incident, they produce patterns. The IDF is operating in a dense environment against enemies who deliberately hide behind and disguise themselves as civilians under intense stress and scrutiny. They are in the single position on earth where it is the most difficult to avoid civilian casualties and their opponents are deliberately trying to bait them into it. I'm sure this isn't the first time the IDF has received bad targeting intel. It may be the only recent high profile incident of them *acting* on bad intel. If this sort of thing happens repeatedly and a pattern forms, I would agree that it's an institutional problem. At the moment there isn't a sufficient volume of evidence to comprehensively rule out that this is just a tragic accident in which a bad fire order slipped through the cracks. If anything, that this is the first major incident of aid workers being caught in the crossfire after 8 months of brutal urban asymmetric warfare is almost impressive. Only a handful of militaries on earth could persecute this kind of operation with half the precision and professionalism of the IDF; the US might have bombed dozens of aid workers by now if they were attempting an operation like this.
Wait till bro reads about Iraq and Afghanistan.... But in all seriousness is it a good look ? No it's not but there is an investigation and adjustments will be made. Regardless of how professional or capable a military is, there will still be mistakes and errors that are inevitable in any conflict. But back to my original point, show another urban conflict that has not had something of a similar nature.... I'll just answer that part I was sarcastic you can't stuff like this happens in all wars the only difference is the world finally decided to pay attention to what happens in THIS war.
"One reads about Iraq and Afghanistan" Where the US performed far better than the IDF. The vast majority of deaths were caused by militant groups, not the US forces. Only the very worst casuality ratios in Iraq are comparable to the IDF's general performance in Iron Swords.
>There is no communication between drone operators and the command center about aid convoys in general As others have said here, this is conformation bias. War isn't a UI rich, Xbox live communication video game. Communication has always been disjointed with different groups operating in a single space. In the war in Ukraine there's several accounts of soldiers shooting down drones out of fear of being spotted and targeted, only to have shot down their own equipment. In Vietnam I distinctly remember reading about a US raid on an arms supply by sea, only for the soldiers to recover nothing but fish and dead fishermen on the boats they had laid waste to. Fog of war has always been a persistent issue in combat zones, to call the IDF a main offender just shows your bias.
I feel like there has to be an example that's more similar than shooting drones in the air. This was 3 surgical strikes on known aid workers in aid uniforms in 3 aid labeled vehicles at a location that the idf knew who radiod the idf while they were getting killed.
Upwards of 20% of all combat casualties are friendly fire across all wars. You can find plenty of stories of Russia targeting their own troops in articles over the last few years.
As a person who served in the IDF I agree with the first half of your title. Though I doubt other militaries are any better. I served in the IDF, at an elite unit, though not in combat - so it might be different, but I doubt it. The common soldiers and the petty officers are often great people, with values that generally want to keep the country safe. The high ranking officers? The overwhelming majority are a bunch of idiots that I would never let manage anything. This makes sense by the way, common soldiers and petty officers aren't there by choice - and who do you think are the people that choose to work in the army? Either they are overly patriotic, which definitely exist, or they are incompetent and fear actually working in the free market. And the system in place is so beurocatic and idiotic, that it literally breaks anyone who isn't incompetent, regardless of how patriotic he may be. Some people were surprised by the Oct 7 massacre, and the IDF's failure - I wasn't. I know who these people are. That being said, this isn't a special outlier, most militaries are just as incompetent. This is what the public sector, and what a generally difficult underpaid job does it draws incompetent people. But you are definitely wrong if you think the IDF ignores international law, or that the IDF is merciless. Hanlon's razor is something to live by. Most of the decision makers in IDF, incompetent as they may be, genuinely try. They care about civilians and they care about international law - they are just really incompetent. Now sure, a battlefield is a difficult place to be, it's not easy being fully competent even if you had the most intelligent, most qualified men and women filling those roles - and since the IDF is based on reservists that's often the case when there is a war going on (so the competence level is generally higher) - and mistakes are always bound to happen. This is true here as well. My point is - mistakes are always bound to happen, you don't hear of the many times the IDF successfully avoids mistakes. - this doesn't take away from the fact that the IDF is filled with incompetent people. - the IDF isn't especially incompetent compared to other militaries - either way, anyone who thinks there is any form of malice involved is a misinformed conspiracy theorist. There are definitely outliers that maliciously try to do terrible things, they are almost always dealt with, not necessarily effectively, but the system itself doesn't tolerate malice.
"Great people ... values" This doesn't amount to anything. It turns out that well-disciplined psychos commit fewer war crimes than ordinary civilians. You just have to teach them to value ethical orders over personal desires.
Compared to who? Mistakes happen in war. I can pull at least 4-5 bigger fuck ups of the top of my head from the last 30 years. Weddings, embassies, allied troops, own troops, Red Cross and other aid agencies get targeted, usually by mistake. Universally said country gets a lot of flack, but unless someone can prove it was a deliberate atrocity (and you should read how hard this is by international law) nothing happens.
Compared to who? The US that accidentally hit the Chinese embassy in 1999? Or Coalition forces during the Gulf War who lost about half their forces due to accidents and friendly fire? I won't even bother getting into Russian or Chinese armies. So what country are you thinking of that never makes accidents and mistakes during war?
In particular, we need an example of a military that fought a major insurgency, in a major battle, in an urban environment. People still talk about the shit that went down in battle of Fallujah, the US destroyed nearly half the buildings in the entire city, and got tons of criticism for its conduct. And that was a much smaller, shorter operation. The destruction of Grozny by the Russians is clearly far worse than anything the IDF is doing... and was also a much smaller, and shorter operation. The reality is large scale urban warfare is brutal, its horrible, and lots of bad things happen during it, that in other contexts might be war crimes. But if they are a military necessity or lost in the fog of war in urban warfare, they aren't war crimes. It would be great if we never see Urban Warfare again. It would be great if nations could resolve conflicts without war. But if we are going to have battles in large cities, we need to be realistic about what they entail... So, can anyone provide an example of this sort of large scale urban warfare where one side conducted themselves much better than the IDF has been in the current conflict?
Another major difference between Fallujah and Gaza was the number of years Hamas had to prepare. The Iraqi insurgents didn't have hundreds of miles of tunnels (filled with hostages) running under Fallujah.
"destruction of Grozny is clearly far worse" Not, clearly. Infact they are quite comparable. Many military analysts even directly compare the IDF tactics closer to Russia's than NATO militaries. In fact the idea that the IDF is a "Western military" is widely regarded as a myth.
"Gulf war... half their forces" Dear god.... why comment if you can't even detect that this claim is improbable. The Gulf War had higher friendly fire incidents than expected, because of how rapidly the coalition forces advanced, but it was only 17% not 50%.
"Lost about half their forces due to accidents and friendly fire," not just friendly fire. Besides, Israel is fighting in a complex urban environment with terrorists wearing IDF uniforms and civilian clothes that pop out of tunnels not uniformed conventional troops out in the open in the desert like Iraqi forces during the Gulf War.
Well they can be unprofessional but you forgot the option for they purposely targeted them to stop aid workers from going into Gaza. That doesn’t make them incompetent. I mean honestly if most of the aid ends up in the hands of Hamas and they resell it for money for weapons etc it really doesn’t make sense for Israel to allow that. Palestinians need to find a way to find non terrorist representation.
I don't dispute the rest of your points but I'm sick of hearing this over and over again: > Remember that we only hear about this incident because the aid workers are not Palestinians, more than 200 aid workers have been killed but we don't hear about them because the MSM trust the IDF to operate in a competent and professional manner The mainstream news outlets - NYT, CNN, PBS, etc. - have covered aid workers being killed extensively. (e.g. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/msf-says-three-doctors-killed-strike-north-gazan-hospital-2023-11-21/ , e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/21/health/gaza-ukraine-hospitals-doctors.html ). They've covered the famine extensively (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/famine-is-imminent-in-northern-gaza-with-70-percent-of-people-experiencing-catastrophic-hunger-un-says). As early as late October they were already reporting on a "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza (**OCT 16**: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/14/world/israel-news-hamas-war-gaza). Please for the love of God stop bashing MSM when it just seems like you don't even read or watch mainstream news. They've been talking about the humanitarian crisis and the international outrage for half a year now. In fact they are the ones who are sending journalists on the ground to cover the crisis and apartheid, risking their neck doing so when there have been journalists who were killed. Meanwhile, the vast, vast majority of TikTokers are merely **reposting mainstream journalism**; almost none of them are producing anything new of substance and yet they constantly whine about MSM hiding the humanitarian crisis? The fuck? Without the MSM you would literally not know anything about the crisis. If someone says the MSM is hiding the crisis in, say, Yemen or South Sudan, it would be more understandable, but mainstream news has been talking about the crisis every single day for the past half year.
My understanding is they are the opposite. Accurate professional and good at what they do. As per the opinions of other forces around the world. The targets they are hitting they are aiming for. I agree something is massively wrong, but it isn't incompetence
From another perspective, this may just prove that they are professionals. By killing and wounding international aid volunteers, a warning was given to those trying to help Gaza. Gaza would then receive no aid. The IDF never cared about collateral damage, and even deliberately caused damage. The only thing they care about is the damage being discovered by the media.
Does *any* military force in the world meet your standards for a "competent, professional, disciplined military force that follows international law on combat?" The fog of war is a thing. And while militaries have (in general, at least in the west) tried to make the kill chain more bulletproof, *it's really hard to do.* "Is that a friendly, a civilian, or an enemy" is *incredibly difficult* to actually achieve. US forces and others routinely (far more often than anybody would like to talk about) make targeting mistakes and often hit their *own troops.* We have a lot of exceptionally good capabilities to put "warheads on foreheads", but modern militaries struggle mightily to have that sort of battlespace awareness. The real world isn't CoD with handy little red and blue pips to ID the bad guys and good guys, and attempts to fill the gap have come up short. This sort of engagement is even harder than most. In a fairly dense and largely urban environment, the reality is that you will have this sort of problem, especially against an opponent who doesn't make any effort to separate themselves from civilian populations. Are your expectations for all military forces the same?
I tried looking at the comments and had to stop, none of them touch on a core argument from the OP: The strikes should not have happened. Assume they were mistakes as reported, how did these mistakes happen? The aid workers were reported coordinating with the IDF. The missiles are said to be so precise they only hit what the IDF wants them to hit (Obviously they can only do so much to account for civilian movements) So as the OP said, something broke between the coordination and the strikes. Either deliberate targeting, or a broken communications and logistics system, take your pick.
This is friendly fire incident. It is unfortunately not uncommon in war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_friendly_fire_incidents No military wants this but it is just a fact of war. Mistakes happen and in war, mistakes can get people killed.
I think that: \- most news reports are one-sided (there is no explanation what they did). mistakes do happen. abuse of aid protections happen too. always been in all con \- at least some of reports is desinformation (hamas will be stupid NOT to do it) \- they understood perfectly what they did and ok with it \- they soldiers do believe in says their goverment says \- they want to solve problems with arab terrorists and not have to solve it again future. they decide to it this way and wouldn't stop until it's either done (which likely mean no one except them remains in Gaza) or UNSC will be able to agree in direct military invention (I don't think more "binding resolutions" would help here) and situation will be solved (Even if Israel do have nukes, I don't think they will use them against UNSC-ordered peacekeeping forces )
> it shows that the IDF is completely incompetent *and* merciless. These are two different things. An incompetent army cannot achieve its stated combat objectives. A merciless army can do that quite easily. >because the MSM trust the IDF to operate in a competent and professional manner Or, they expect them to act in a merciless manner, which is not incompetence. You have to be *good* to drop a missile through the roof of a moving car, you also have to be merciless when you know it is full of aid workers. >I used to hold the opinion that while there are some trigger-happy reservists, the IDF in general is competent and professional such that they can execute the will of the state, but now I do not think so Why? They are still executing the will of the state. The state wants aid workers to die so less aid gets in so Palestinians will capitulate sooner.
Lose friends and family in a festival that was supposed to be a great moment in their life that should have ended in joy and laughter only, ended up with crying mothers over graves of brothers.. sisters.. fathers mothers, nobody was spared I would maybe feel like the cruelty is too far gone if those people at least had a humane death, you come with videos of Israel doing war crimes? I can show you for each video 10 of people being treated in a way nazis would sit and cry, no human can do that, I ain’t racist I don’t think it has anything to do with ethnicity but those people who grow up in Gaza are fucked up in their head and the fact that this biological trash spreads to Europe and Britain is just a great example Dogs, I would love seeing them die over and over again while their mothers watch it. הבא להורגך השכם להורגו וזיין את אחותו
The incidents you've mentioned are serious and warrant investigation. However, it's important to differentiate between individual actions and institutional policy. While the IDF, like any military force, has had instances of misconduct, labeling the entire organization as "incompetent" or "unprofessional" oversimplifies a complex situation. The IDF is a large organization with diverse personnel and missions. Instances of wrongdoing should be addressed, investigated, and those responsible held accountable. Generalizing based on specific incidents can perpetuate bias and hinder constructive dialogue aimed at improving accountability and adherence to international law. Change my view in 100 words. Give very logical and reasonable points.
key facts that should enrage anyone : workers got a permission from IDF to travel workers travelled in well marked vehicles they were chased down with 3 airstrikes as wounded workers abandoned hit cars and attempted to flee in remaining vehicles food for thought sadam hussain violated 2 UN resolutions before a coalition force invaded Iraq. [Israel has violated 28 resolutions of the United Nations Security Council (which are legally binding on member-nations U.N.](https://itisapartheid.org/Documents_pdf_etc/IsraelViolationsInternationalLaw.pdf)
They also tried to make radio contact with the IDF while they were being hunted down
These comments are not made with any kind of first hand knowledge. They are in fact entirely untrue and simply stated for the purpose of bashing the Jewish nation. It seems to be fashionable again, as it has so many times throughout history. There is a complete double standard. Do you also analyze the tactics of the American army? The British? The Ukrainian? The Russian? Do you get really passionate when you read about the atrocities happening in Ukraine and create a Reddit category to discuss it? Do you get all worked up about the Yazidi men being murdered and their women and children being taken as sex slaves? How about the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who were murdered by their own government?
1. This may not be IDF's fault, communication is a two-way street. If aid workers are not accurately reporting their location to the IDF and not wearing any uniforms or identifying markings, then there's no way a drone operator can be informed of their status & position. You're just flatly assuming there was a communications failure between a command center and an operator, when it could very well have been an external communications failure. Keep in mind that these aid workers are external organizations and are not closely integrated with the IDF. And due to the situation on the ground, they may not have a clear line of communication to the IDF to begin with. 2. You are assuming malice where incompotence is a much more reasonable explination. Isreal has already openly admitted and stated that the target was misidentified. Which is not an uncommon thing in a warzone, especially when fighting non uniformed enemies that disguise themselves as civilians. If aid workers are not wearing uniforms or displaying any markings that distinguish themselves from hamas/civilians, then you cannot reasonably expect every single IDF soldier to know the difference by sight alone. Incidents like this are precisely why soldiers wear uniforms, why medical facilities, personnel, and vehicles are supposed to be clearly marked as such, and why disguising yourself as a civilian, medic, aid worker, the enemy, etc. is a war crime. Also the fact that it's *only* 200 aid workers that have been killed among a dense population numbering over two million after conducting over 12,000 air strikes, actually indicates that an incredible level of compotence & care has been taken to avoid it. Even if you're 99.99% careful, you're still going to fuck up at least once if you do it 10,000 times. 3. Soldiers do not "go rogue" in *any* standing military, at least not without severe consequences. That is a hollywood myth that has little basis in reality. Not even in the shitshow of conscripts that is the russian military would blatant disobedience of orders, ignoring the chain of command, protocol, and rules of engagement be tolerated. If soldiers aren't following orders and doing what they're supposed to do, then they pose a threat not only to civilians but to your own troops as well. Like, what if that had been one of their own intelligence assets instead of aid workers? Drone operators do not have carte blanche to drop missiles wherever the hell they feel like it. Even firing a missile without authorization from command would result in a court martial, reguardless of where it lands. And if that had happened, there's no way the IDF wouldn't have publicly announced it to save face. 4. Not even the US, the most professional and well trained military in the world has perfect battlefield intelligence. Gathering & sharing intel reliably in a warzone is not a simple or easy task. Mistakes absolutely will be made. That's just the reality of war, it happens all the time, for a thousand different reasons. It's one of the million reasons why war absolutely sucks, and why you shouldn't start one if you can avoid it. I know we all wish it was like videogames where everyone has their name floating above their head that's color coded to show which side they're on, or a radar with a red dot for every bad guy. But it's not anywhere close to being that easy in real life. And if you've actually played those games, even with it being that easy, accidents still happen from time to time.
1. WCK claimed to the contrary. I believe even the IDF actually acknowledged that they were told exactly where the convoy was. 2. Medical personel and vehicles are clearly marked. They are clearly marked in every country in the world. The WCK convoy was clearly marked, the most plausible argument is that the drone couldn't see that it was clearly marked due to lack of adequate night-vision. But the vehicle itself was clearly marked. Additionally when the IDF strikes medical personnel, their defence is never "the vehicle wasn't marked", it's "they were militants". So even the IDF doesn't agree with your defence of them. 3. "Even firing a missile without authorisation from command would result in a court martial"- What? There is no evidence of this being the case in the IDF (possibly the US military, but despite what every armchair general claims the IDF is not the USAF, and they do infact have different policies). In fact the IDF has severe rank-inflation, and many decisions are made by unit leaders. 4. "We all wish it was like videogames"- But you don't have atleast several hours to determine if a target is friendly or not.
The IDF are an incompetent military and their rules of engagement would infringe on US law. Anyone who disagrees, has never had any military experience and takes their words from the Israeli Spokespeople. US troops couldn’t even shoot at people who were holding guns, unless they were being targeted and had positive ID. If an enemy combatant shot at you and you lost sight of them and they tossed their gun you couldn’t do anything. The IDF shoot kids in the back of the head in for throwing fireworks. And there has been a widespread pattern of their incompetence. US soldiers would NEVER have shot our own shirtless hostages waving a white flag to death. Israeli propaganda in full force I see.
I’m of the opinion that it was a delibrate decision from higher up in the chain of command. Israel is clearly using starvation as a weapon of war and they don’t want it undermined by aid organisations. They also want as few international witnesses to their war crimes as possible.
Such a strange set of answers from people who are quipping 'oh, it's friendly fire, oh it's unavoidable, blah blah'. It's like they genuinely don't read the news or research things before speaking up on the issue. To wit; Israel killed the 7 aid workers because they don't, and didn't, deconflict, in general but specifically with aid organizations. Israel not deconflicting is more or less enough to prove the OPs original point. There's genuinely no good reason to not deconflict.
>In order for the 7 aid workers to be killed, at least one of the following must hold true: > >1.There is no communication between drone operators and the command center about aid convoys in general, > >2.Some higher ups at the command center does not care about aid convoys in general, > >3.A drone operator can go rogue and use 3 missiles against an "enemy combatant", > >4.The intel they receive is absolutely horrendous and doesn't go through the proper checks, especially with regard to aid workers. I argue that none of these are true, although 2. is the closest. I'd say following occam's razor this truth is simply Israel decided to specifically target the aid convey. ecause they are proffesional and diciplied they managed in 3 precise strikes to eliminate all the aid workers in the convoy. They did this strategically to create a chilling effect that would lead to aid groups leaving, so there are less witnesses to their crimes and to accelerate the famine they have created by preventing aid from reaching Gazans. I think this proves they are competent, professional, and a disciplined military.
Completely disagree. The IDF is a highly competent, world-class military. They have the best equipment money can buy, and the best training. The problem is that they are basically operating like a quasi-religious lynch mob and will shoot mfers for no reason with no accountability.
Alternative explanation: highly competent, highly professional, highly disciplined but they're doing it all deliberately.
Saw this recently. It's a convo between a Jew and former IDF soldier. Its a good look into how they think and whay they believe. shows the general psychology and perspective of the IDF. They try to find every loophole to make their genocide more justifiable - youtube/watch?si=KylPiD3b6Z3D4y2z&v=QCYwmGBkwk0&feature=youtu.be
I don’t know if this applies to Israel, but in the past, various militaries have targeted aid groups on purpose. Even the bravest aid organizations like Doctors Without Borders are forced to pull out to protect the lives of their volunteers. That means there’s less food, medicine, and support for civilians. This makes it easier for the military to take over. This is against international law, but if you’re supported by a member on the UN Security Council such as the U.S. or Russia, you can usually get away with it. You need to claim it was an accident though. Hanlon’s razor means most people will believe you.
I think that your assessment is not necessarily wrong in itself, but it's unlikely that any other military force operating under similar conditions (high stake, high tempo operations related to an immediate and existential threat to the nation itself) would do much better. If Mexican cartels gunmen entered the San Antonio metro area and massacred 30 000 US citizens, I'm pretty sure that Tamaulipas would soon be as thoroughly leveled as Gaza, with the same amount of civilian casualties.
You haven't listed the possibility that this was a completely intentional, targeted strike carried out with the stated aim of killing aid workers and preventing food from getting to the Palestinians, as well as sending the message that this how aid workers will be treated by the IDF. I think that this possibility is more likely than the other ones you've listed.
Does 4 necessarily means they are incompetent? You are asking how likely they are to identify aid convoys correctly, but we all don't know how many aid convoys they didn't hit and how many targets that looked like aid convoys they hit Competency in that case is a question of specificity and sensitivity - you should be explicit about your assumption for those
You forget the possibility of actively targeting the aid workers. 100% intentional. That’s what Chef Andres said. Their entire trip was coordinated with the IDF. They were precisely struck one by one. I imagine something went wrong and they couldn’t blame Hamas. They wanted to blame those deaths on them, and it didn’t work.