Australian Atheists Forum

stylofone wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 7:25 pm

Irrev-Black wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 4:54 pm Mod Voice = ON.

It would be unwise to fall into the trap of comparing religious books or foundational documents as any basis for the current war, as it becomes painfully clear that many of the deeds making news (and hurting people with no power over any of those doing the deeds) bear only a very tenuous relationship to those books or credos.

i have hopes that this forum might continue to show clear thinking.

We can do it.

Actually on this subject I personally find myself mostly unable to express the result of what I perceive for a moment to be clear thinking in my brain. Several times I've started writing comments on this thread and decided I've potentially implied things I don't intend to, so I just delete it and move on. The world doesn't need my half-formed opinions even though I've enjoyed spewing them out at other times in my life when they were hopefully more than 51% formed.

According to Tuval Escapa, the security coordinator at Kibbutz Be’eri who set up a hotline between residents and the army,

Israeli commanders made “difficult decisions” including “shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages

This was confirmed by Israeli civilian, Yasmin Porat, who survived a hostage standoff in Be’eri. She stated that, during intense clashes, Israeli Special Forces “undoubtedly” killed all remaining hostages, along with two surrendering Hamas militants using tank shells and frenzied gunfire.

Porat recalled how Hamas militants had treated hostages “very humanely”, aiming only to take them back to Gaza, before Israeli forces stormed the building. She witnessed her partner still alive on the ground before he was gunned down, along with other hostages in the chaotic shooting. Other videos from inside kibbutzes are said to show corpses covered in rubble, likely from tank shells fired directly into homes by the Israeli army.

Gaza: Israel destroyed, damaged scores of mosques, churches, schools

More evidence comes from witness Danielle Rachiel, who described nearly being killed after escaping from the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival. As she drove to safety, Israeli security forces shot directly at her vehicle until she shouted in Hebrew to identify herself as Israeli.

The Israeli news outlet, Yedioth Aharanoth, is reported saying that “the pilots realised that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian … The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first and, only at a certain point, did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”

wadaye wrote: ↑Sat Nov 11, 2023 8:42 am We have been conned and fooled. The Hannibal Doctrine has been in place from the first moment of the attack on 7th October 2023. It continues now, as operation no living thing:

SNIP

wadaye wrote: ↑Sat Nov 11, 2023 8:52 am A useful test to ask oneself is Dostoyevsky's test. Would you torture a small girl child to death for your peace and security? Biden and Netanyahu and Albanese too by sending Australian weapons and citizens to participate in the IDF slaughter, have answered that question by bombing children including in the Al Shifa children's hospital. Not in the name of happiness or peace or security but in the name of revenge, actually in the name of the bible so claimed by them.

Irrev-Black wrote: ↑Sat Nov 11, 2023 8:52 am

wadaye wrote: ↑Sat Nov 11, 2023 8:42 am We have been conned and fooled. The Hannibal Doctrine has been in place from the first moment of the attack on 7th October 2023. It continues now, as operation no living thing:

SNIP

First mention of the Hannibal Doctrine. Is it assumed that everybody else has read/heard everything you have?

There are ways to facilitate discussion, and a major one is to establish common ground.

It was introduced in 1986, after a number of abductions of IDF soldiers in Lebanon and subsequent controversial prisoner exchanges. The full text of the directive was not published, and until 2003, Israeli military censorship forbade any discussion of the subject in the press. The directive has been changed several times. At one time, the formulation was that "the kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces."[4]

Two versions of the Hannibal Directive may have existed simultaneously at times: a written version, accessible only to the upper echelon of the IDF, and an "oral law" version for division commanders and lower levels. In the latter version, "by all means" was often interpreted literally, as in "an IDF soldier was 'better dead than abducted'". In 2011, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz stated the directive does not permit killing IDF soldiers to prevent abduction.[5]

Among the 11 Israelis involved in the seven reported Hannibal incidents, only one soldier (Gilad Shalit) survived. In his case, invocation of the Hannibal Directive occurred too late to have any influence on the course of events. There is only one case for which Israeli forces have been officially confirmed to be directly responsible for an Israeli death.