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Israel’s decision to deprive Palestinian civilians living in Gaza of access to basic needs violates international law, former Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth said.

“In the realm of humanitarian necessities, the Israeli government has imposed a siege on all of Gaza,” Roth said in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Roth, who now teaches at Princeton University, added that the atrocities committed by the Hamas armed group against Israeli civilians do not justify the “revenge” and “collective punishment” against Palestinian civilians.

“A basic premise of international humanitarian law is that war crimes by one side never justify war crimes by the other. There’s an independent obligation by both sides to respect the laws of war.

“It increasingly does look like the Israel military is proceeding without adequate care to spare civilians. And that kind of indiscriminate and disproportionate attack … is in itself a war crime.”

  • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    There are still over a hundred hostages. Crank down on Gaza…no electricity, etc…and you’ll eventually get some intel on where they are at. It’s war, and they put themselves in this position.

    • livus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      they put themselves in this position.

      The civillians there did not. The last election in Gaza was held 17 years ago.

      The median age in Gaza is around 18 meaning the leadership was chosen when half the population hadn’t even been born yet, let alone able to vote.

      To put that in perspective it’s like if the US was still ruled by George Bush and no one had ever had a chance to vote him out.

        • livus@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          @Rapidcreek I suppose you probably blame the citizens of North Korea for “harbouring” Kim Jong Un, too. But that’s just not how life actually works.

          Collective punishment of civillians is always a war crime, but blaming people with no access to free and fair elections in order to justify it is particularly cynical, especially when nearly half of them are still children.

            • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              So it’s the fault of oppressed people for being oppressed?

              • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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                1 year ago

                You can take a walk through history and see oppressor and oppressed in every era. A common thread is when people are oppressed by internal forces they either revolt and take power or simply live with the oppression. Even the attempt to revolt is important.

                Gaza has a two fold problem. First they ruled by Hamas who don’t give a shit about them. Plenty of Palestinians hate Hamas, but not enough to make a difference. Secondly, they are oppressed by Israel due to Hamas.

                They can either live with this or revolt. They’ve chosen to live with it.

                • rgb3x3@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  Man, it’s a real sign of living the privileged, easy life when someone thinks this way.

                  Those people try to revolt and they die. They don’t revolt and still die. What kind of choice is that?

                • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  Palestinians literally protest this situation all the time, but are ignored, or shot for it.

                  “You didn’t violently rebel, so anything that happens to you (and your children) afterwards is your fault.” This is some straight evil shit.

                • prodigalsorcerer@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  So according to you, Hamas is oppressing Palestinians, and Israel is oppressing Hamas, but it’s only righteous for Palestinians to stand up to Hamas. Isn’t it also important for Hamas to stand up to their oppressors?

    • Unaware7013@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s war, and they put themselves in this position.

      Did they also put themselves in the inhumane conditions that sparked this war too? Or is decades of inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people immaterial to the situation?

      Because Israel is a good part of the reason Hamas is as powerful as they are, so I guess they put themselves in this position too?

        • Unaware7013@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Who knows why they harbor them

          Yeah, who could ever know why Palestine harbors the group that Israel funded to delegitimize the more moderate political parties? It’s not like the group Israel funded explicitly advocates for aggression against Israel in the name of freeing the Palestinians from the murderous boot of Israel and their decades long campaign of slowly exterminating the Palestinians and stealing all of their land.

          It’s a complete mystery…

  • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    At first I thought this was about a terrorist attack that killed more than a thousand denying their human right to live. Then I remembered those didn’t have the right to exist in the first place.

    • jet@hackertalks.com
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      1 year ago

      The whole point of human rights, is that they can’t be taken away from people. Both populations have the right to exist. To say otherwise simply invites unending religious war.

      • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        That’s funny, because Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist and have said that publicly. Which was the twist in my original comment.

        • jet@hackertalks.com
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          1 year ago

          There’s bad actors on both sides. The trouble is there’s a huge power asymmetry politically right now.

          We’re in a position where a fascist ideologue religious military group has entrenched itself in politics, that’s a terrible position to be in. But we’re not going to get out of this position by saying one population doesn’t deserve to live

            • jet@hackertalks.com
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              1 year ago

              I know right! Can you imagine populations of millions of people have different subgroups which behave differently? And you can’t condemn an entire ethnic group by the actions of some of them? World is so unfair, be easy if it was simple, we could just kill all the bad guys.

              But if one of the populations doesn’t deserve to live, who gets to decide which one dies?