This is a perverse measure. By successfully protecting its population, the IDF makes Hamas and Hezbollah seem less evil. By purposefully endangering their own populations, Hamas and Hezbollah make the IDF seem more evil. If this is your measure, then you are in practice rewarding evil even though you think you're against it.
That makes no sense.
If you’re going to blame Hamas and Hezb for “endangering their population” by “hiding” alongside the people, and on those terms justifying the huge collateral damage that IDF has wreaked: then by that same token Bibi is endangering the Israeli population by having his offices in the main city as opposed to some godforsaken desert somewhere, he’s endangering his own people by living with them and near to them, and IDF personnel are clearly endangering Israeli civilians by living and working and moving around along with civilians within Israel, as opposed to living isolated lives in some desert somewhere completely removed from civilians.
You do carefully put in the “successfully”, which prevents the above from devolving into complete nonsense. But in that form your argument is no more than a simple might-is-right argument. There’s nothing remotely moral or ethical about it.
Pardon the inevitable Godwinning, but by your logic the Nazis’ failing was not their psychopathy in losing touch with basic human empathy, but their failure to win the war. That I find, I’m sorry but I find that incoherent in moral and ethical terms. It is, like I said, no more than a might-is-right argument, that does not even seek to be moral.
If you’d like to argue on those terms, then sure, I do agree with your conclusion, given those premises(that I don’t agree with, in moral terms). In as much as Israel has better been able to protect its citizens than has either Hamas or Hezb, to that extent Israel has been more …successful, I guess, sure. If that’s the only thing that counts for you, well then, that’s up to you. Except, that’s not making a moral argument, that’s effectively rejecting the moral argument altogether.
This metric doesn't reward evil. It is, therefore, a far better metric. And by your own admission, they are leagues apart. So why do you ignore this metric?
Because it doesn't produce the outcome you want. Which is a way to blame Israel.
That makes even less sense, I’m afraid.
I expressly brought in this metric, and clearly spelled out that by this metric Israel does much better than Hamas or Hezb. I clearly spelled out that by this metric it is Hamas and Hezb that out-evil Israel-under-Bibi. How on earth is that “ignoring” this metric? How on earth is that blaming Israel? What on earth are you even talking about here?
Unprecedented? My dear boy, if you think any of this is unprecedented in warfare, then you are woefully ignorant of history.
And we don't even have to go that far back or that far away to see much worse. The Syrian civil war has taken more than an order of magnitude more lives. And the world just shrugs. Same with the civil war in Yemen. You have around 85,000 children who starved to death, plus the hundreds of thousands directly killed. And again, global indifference.
Nothing about the conflict in Gaza is actually special on a global scale, except that Jews are involved.
It is certainly unprecedented in that geography, and in the present timeframe within that geography. And no, don’t you try to pull that “Jews are involved” misdirection on me. I mean, is it that some people are left unmoved by the carnage because Muslims are being killed and rendered homeless? (I’m not actually accusing you, or anyone else, of racism or Islamophobia or any such nonsense; but merely pointing out that you’re implicitly trying to pull a fast one here, by trying to throw that Jew thing on me --- and no, it isn’t going to work.)
Whataboutism is an old trick. …I mean, by that token you could just as well, in the Ukraine threads, excuse Putin of every atrocity he’s committed, and give the whole of Ukraine war a pass, on grounds that that is not the first time some country has attacked some other country. Again, that’s not making a moral argument, that’s effectively rejecting the moral argument altogether.
What’s special about Gaza, as opposed to other carnages elsewhere, is that that is what we’re talking about here. (And also, I suppose, that it is US taxpayer money that has to a significant degree funded this carnage, and blind US support that has emboldened Netanyahu to take his murderous designs to this irresponsible extent; but mainly what makes it special here and now is that that is what is the subject of discussion at this time.)
