> And they are using that power to aggressively attack the weaker power in the conflict with little regard for civilian casualties (“collateral damage”) or proportionality of response.
It is certainly aggressively attacking Hamas, but that's because, despite Hamas being weaker, they've shown themselves capable of invading Israel and killing thousands of citizens.
You write "little regard for civilian casualties", but I don't think that's true - please, explain how you arrive at that conclusion.
And proportionality of response doesn't mean what many people think it means - is' not "Hamas kill X people so Israel should kill f(X) people". It's measured by how many civilians would die while achieving a valid military objective. Destroying Hamas is absolutely a valid military objective - the question is if Israel is managing to do it without a disproportianate number of civilians killed.
I think based on the best-known numbers we have - which place the civilian-to-combatant kill ration at 2:1, meaning 2 civilians killed per 1 militant - I think that this is valid and in-line with similar wars fought by Western countries in the past.
> the best-known numbers we have - which place the civilian-to-combatant kill ration at 2:1, meaning 2 civilians killed per 1 militant
Could you share any source for these numbers?
The majority of the reporting I have seen is that around 17-18,000 people have died in Gaza since October 7 and that the majority have been women and children. If we take that at face value, it seems that we would almost have to assume that the majority of men killed are being counted as Hamas militants. Given that there were assumed to be ~40,000 of these (as far as I can recall) in a total population of over 2 million, it seems unlikely.
- Gazan health authority figures are in the realms of reality given numbers reported compared with numbers confirmed in past conflicts (my inclination here is to assume they are possibly under-counting due to many still buried under rubble - though I could be wrong here and these are somehow already added to the tally)
- 50% are women and children (50% as a conservative convenience given that most reporting I have seen is over 60%)
- No women or children are being counted as enemy combatants (definitely not true - I have seen footage of female Hamas militants during hostage handovers - but again I assume for convenience that their numbers are not significant)
My calculation is that if 1/3 of Palestinian deaths have somehow been confirmed as militants/combatants then of a total of 18,000 that leaves 9,000 Palestinian men that have lost their lives. If the 2:1 ratio is correct then the number of combatants that have been killed must be 6,000. This seems unlikely to me because I cannot see why the 'collateral damage' suffered by the male population should be so different from the wider population when under 2% of a population of 2 million people are Hamas militants (by what I recall was the highest estimate of 40,000 given by the IDF at the outset).
In other words if the total ratio is around 2:1, I think it is highly unlikely that the ratio for the male population is around 1:2. What makes male Palestinians so special that they should suffer so much less collateral damage?
It is certainly aggressively attacking Hamas, but that's because, despite Hamas being weaker, they've shown themselves capable of invading Israel and killing thousands of citizens.
You write "little regard for civilian casualties", but I don't think that's true - please, explain how you arrive at that conclusion.
And proportionality of response doesn't mean what many people think it means - is' not "Hamas kill X people so Israel should kill f(X) people". It's measured by how many civilians would die while achieving a valid military objective. Destroying Hamas is absolutely a valid military objective - the question is if Israel is managing to do it without a disproportianate number of civilians killed.
I think based on the best-known numbers we have - which place the civilian-to-combatant kill ration at 2:1, meaning 2 civilians killed per 1 militant - I think that this is valid and in-line with similar wars fought by Western countries in the past.