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There are no two sides here. It's the same side of two different coins. Netanyahu is a war criminal for genocide, and Hamas leaders are responsible for civilian deaths from their terror attack.
"Their terror attack" lol. My man, if the term terror attack was around in the 1940s, Hitler would have used it to describe the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And make no mistake- this is a ghetto uprising. If you don't want people to make a violent bid for freedom, don't spend decades torturing and murdering them in an open air concentration camp with no recourse. Simple.
Terrorist is buzzword that fascist states apply to people who stand up for themselves, who return even a fraction of the violence they are made to suffer every day. "Terrorist" is just "savage" with a fresh coat of paint. Every slave revolt and anti-colonial uprising in history has been tarred with the same brush.
There is no Hamas without Isreal.
I'm with you here. The violence is of Israel's own making, but no matter how "just" one believes their actions are, they are still against international humanitarian law. I apply the same standard to everyone, be it Hamas, Israel, Poland, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, China, United States, etc.
If you are willing to spill civilian blood, you also should be willing to take responsibility for those actions.
I must’ve missed the part where the 30k civilians murdered in this genocide killed anyone.
You probably at least missed the part where they cheered for hamas and spat on the disfigured and raped bodies of their victims.
Am I supposed to be more or less disgusted if that was before/after they murdered 30,000 mostly women and children.
It's what gave Israel its pretext to retaliate so you tell me.
I don’t converse or debate genocide apologists. The mere fact you call it a retaliation instead of a massacre of women and children shows your callousness to humanity. Have a nice day.
Your numbers are higher than even the hummus ones right now, unless you really believe that only 5k were soldiers
Agreed.
The last check I did sat right around 35000.
I don’t think any of us believe they have only gotten 5k soldiers.
The term "civilian" has been actively stripped of all meaning when people willfully occupying native land and displacing the population as those natives are slaughtered are included.
While I agree with your general point, it's still a war crime to take civilians as hostages.
Nah, it’s safe to apply the label terrorist to ANYONE who decides to hold children for ransom
I mean is there anything proving Hamas leaders intentionally planned any civilian deaths? They're definitely not doing enough to stop them, but I don't think I've seen anything specifically incriminating their top brass.
They launched a brutal assault on literal ravers and then commenced to invade civilian homes. The fuck did you think they were planning to do there? They clearly did not go for military targets. Playing terrorist apologist is a seriously weird take on that matter.
They are money holders, and it was a well financed and coordinated attack. And they are in direct control even now as they try to negotiate ceasefire and hostage release.
True enough, but there's only so much you can do once the soldiers are actual fighting if you're not on the field (especially when you don't particularly care either way). That said, I haven't seen anything since this "war" started that would serve as evidence to implicate, say, Sinwar in an international court of law. If he says "our plans didn't involve attacking civilians our soldiers didn't it out of their own accord" nobody can prove him wrong. Now I do think that's actually what happened (from a strategic perspective Hamas has too much to lose and too little to gain by killing civilians during a military attack), but even if that's not the case there's simply too little evidence to prove it.
Arrest warrant is not a sentence. If he's brought to the court, he will have a chance to prove the lack of evidence. But even by proxy, leaders are responsible for the actions of their subordinates. Same way we attribute authorization given by leaders sitting in their "war rooms" to launch drone attacks or giving "go" to tactical teams to them and not individual actors.
Up to a point. If he says "I never gave that order" I don't think anyone can prove otherwise, is what I'm trying to say.
Indirect evidence have the same weight as direct evidence in a court setting. But yes, if it turns out there is no evidence, then the case should be dismissed.
Then who orchestrated the attacks on only civilians? Hamas hurting civilians is nothing new. Both sides have been assholes long before this started. Everyone in the region would benefit from both parties being prosecuted.
They... didn't? That's exactly what I'm talking about. The attack had clear military objectives (taking hostages is morally grey but still not the kind of atrocity we're talking about). At least as far as I know everything you'll think of when you hear the words "Oct 7 Hamas atrocity" can be passed as, and probably is, spontaneous violence caused by the fact that Gazans hate Israelis' guts rather than any orders from the top brass. Now I'm not denying general Hamas terror; the shootings and suicide bombings definitely happen, but in a court of law everything we're saying right now about October 7th would be thrown out as speculation, because it is.
Not sure how hostages and deaths are speculative evidence. Also what were the military objectives you alluded to? I only heard about the terror attacks.
So let me address the deaths first. You can use those (the ones that can conclusively proven to be intentionally inflicted by Hamas forces, because it's not all of them) to try foot soldiers and field commanders, people who were actually there. Not the guy at the very top who doesn't even live in Gaza.
About the hostages, they're the only way for Hamas to get even some of their demands. Which sounds bad until you realize those demands are things like lifting/loosening the blockade, toning down the surveillance (the surveilance Israel does in Gaza would make East Germany blush), not airstrike Gaza every five minutes, etc etc. It's not pretty, but the hostages are very much a case of blame the game, not the player. Now if the ICC decides to prosecute for those I guess they can be traced back to Sinwar.
So the military goals are:
1-Actually attacking Israeli forces. Hamas attacked at least one (I don't know the number) Israeli military base on October 7th.
2-Taking hostages yo Gaza can actually survive after the attack (and so they can hopefully get Israel to starve them less).
3-Delay Saudi Arabian naturalization. Or, in other words, prevent Saudi Arabia from selling out the Palestinian cause like everyone else did.
You're right that it is possible that Hamas didn't intend for the scale of civilian casualties that were seen on Oct. 7th, but even if that's true then they are still responsible for not keeping their people from commiting said spontaneous violence. As the leaders of a militant faction, like a regular military they are responsible for training their soldiers (or equivalent) and keeping them in line during operations.
I'm actually more on the Frantz fannon school of thought about the necessity of violence against oppressors to overthrow colonial regimes, so I'm more amenable to hamas' plight than most I think, but Oct. 7th is still pretty indefensible.
Having said all that, to make clear, I'm not defending Israel or their retributive genocide. Fuck them. But I don't think we should go easy on Hamas' war crimes either, so I don't think the ICC is really 'both-sides'-ing in this case.
Does that responsibility fall on the top leaders or field commanders though? I can definitely see the argument that Hamas leadership is too easy on atrocities in general having legal ground, but how far up the ladder can you take that? Not trying to defend them or saying we should go easy on them here, don't get me wrong, but at least from an international law context I think Sinwar's hands are pretty clean?
I'm no expert on international law, but from what I've seen for more isolated incidents generally it's those who commit the crime that would be held responsible. The scale and consistency of civilian death pretty much rule that out though, which leaves either intentional orders to kill civilians (more on this later), or institutional failures to properly reign in soldiers and train them to not kill civilians. either way, that puts the onus higher up the chain of command.
If we assume that civilian death wasn't intended by top brass, there is still a huge fuckup somewhere in the mix if somewhere near half of all those killed were non-targets of the operation. Again, with the scale of this massacre, I can't imagine it not being a categorical failure of command all the way up in allowing this to happen.
If we assume it was intentional, well then Hamas ordered the killing of hundreds of civilians. that's pretty cut and dry not cool in the ICC's books.
The real problem I think is one of perspective. I believe that from the perspective of Hamas, any and all Israelis are themselves combatants, as settler colonialists continuing the project of eradicating the land of Palestine. There is truth to this, but then from that perspective there are no civilians in Israel. Once you come to this conclusion, there isn't a lot that can't be justified.
From that perspective, the difference between killing Israeli soldiers and destroying military targets vs killing Israeli citizens and burning down whole city blocks isn't as significant as the ICC or (I assume) you or I deem it to be. It's more like targeting barracks than harming non-combatants; something like "Sure, maybe they aren't armed and attacking right now, but they are still the enemy and pose a threat. They chose to be part of this conflict by settling here".
Like I mentioned, there is some truth to this logic. Israeli settlers, especially near Gaza and in the west bank, are complicit in the acts of their government and are continuing the colonial project. Does this justify their indiscriminate murder? I don't believe it does.
So, in summary, I believe the massacres were planned, or at least allowed by hamas' strategy. Even if it wasn't intentional, that it was allowed to happen still incriminates most of not all of the decision-making and on-the-ground commanding portions of the organization. But that's just my 2 cents.
Edit: spelling
Even ignoring that these people are mandatorily required to serve in the IOF, there are very few settler-colonial civilians (children, others without agency, and anyways these civilians are only here by the will of the settlers). It's ridiculous to equate Palestinian civilians with "Israelis" not actively in the IOF when the latter chooses to occupy Palestinian land and displace the natives in the brutal practice that is settler-colonialism.