upvote
> Imagine the "enemy" in that sentence was not "Hamas", but "The Jews" - that would be a very antisemitic narrative,

Your substitution turns a true statement into a false statement; this mechanism is at best meaningless. Yes, making false claims about Jews is antisemitic, but that has no bearing on statements that aren't false.

reply
> Yes, making false claims about Jews is antisemitic

No. Making false claims about Jews is just lying about Jews.

Antisemitism deals in lies, but the defining characteristic of antisemitism is not the lie itself, it's the use of the lie to cast out the Jewish people from the circle of humans to make them into an outsider and threat to humanity itself. The lie is just a tool and it depends on the kind of lie.

> that has no bearing on statements that aren't false.

your assertion here is that the statement in question

> [Hamas] does everything they can to get their own people killed to make you look bad

is true and not false.

What you are claiming it that Hamas is breaking a very fundamental rule of being human, in that they not only don't care about their own being killed but that they "do everything they can to get their own people killed."

Which is a standard propaganda tactic to assigning to you enemy the most depraved characteristics to convince your side that the enemy is not even really fully human.

It's a transparent and stupid tactic, and it begets hatred.

reply
Which does not deny the fact that Hamas deliberately gets people killed.

I recall some time ago an Israeli strike--they hit with a roof knocker, Hamas responded by ordering the neighbors to rush to the roof. Too slow, the house was packed with people when the bomb fell. And somehow that's Israel's fault?!

And in past conflicts 20-25% of the Palestinian deaths are from Hamas munitions that fall short. It's unlikely to be that high in this case, but we have things like that first "Israeli" hospital "strike" with "500 dead"--come daylight it's obviously a rocket that blew up at or very soon after ignition. And we have an Al Jazzera "report" "showing" that it was an Israeli weapon--never mind that it didn't actually show the incident at all and that Iron Dome is completely incapable of shooting down a rocket that's taking off. Missiles take time to get there, you can't hit a rocket that has been in the air less than the flight time of a missile reaching it.

reply
> I recall some time ago an Israeli strike--they hit with a roof knocker, Hamas responded by ordering the neighbors to rush to the roof. Too slow, the house was packed with people when the bomb fell. And somehow that's Israel's fault?!

I don't even understand what you are trying to tell me here. You are constructing a sourceless story that after the Israeli Army dropped a small bomb on a house ( "roof knocker" is a euphemism) Hamas ordered some civilians to go on top of the roof.

Hamas did this, in your telling, because they knew that the first small bomb, was the precursor to a large second bomb designed to explode the whole building.

What would be the military objective here? Hamas knows that human shields do not stop the Israeli army. So it was not to stop the Israeli army from blowing up the building.

Even worse, your logic is not even that Hamas ordered the civilians to go up on the roof not because they thought it would prevent the Israeli army from blowing up the house, you write

> Hamas deliberately gets people killed.

that means you think that Hamas sent these people on the roof to let the Israeli army execute them, not even to use them as a human shield.

That is such a confused story.

Can you explain what you are talking about ?

What probably really happened is that Israel did a double tap: attack once, wait for people to rush back to tend to the injured, attack them again.

While atrocious, there is at least a military tactic behind this.

Your story about Hamas sending people on a roof in order for them to be killed has no sense to it and it seems it's only purpose is to dehumanize Palestinians.

But maybe I am off here. Please explain what you were trying to tell me again.

reply
> the Israeli Army dropped a small bomb on a house

Roof knocking is using non explosive ordinance. It is, by definition, not a bomb. Attacking its use is wild, its a tactic that saves civilian lives, even if you disagree with the validity of the target.

> that means you think that Hamas sent these people on the roof to let the Israeli army execute them, not even to use them as a human shield.

Yes. That is what human shielding is. The unfortunate reality is that it is irresponsible to completely stop attacks when human shielding is used, as it encourages further use of the practice. Just like blaming Israel for all of those death is also encouraging Hamas to further use the tactic.

> What would be the military objective here?

Hamas has been very clear that deaths of their civilians further the Palestinian cause by causing the world to turn on Israel. The objective here is clear.

Now I turn it back to you: what is the military purpose of roof knocking?

No double tapping doesn't make sense here. You wouldn't use a non-explosive ordinance if the goal was "double tapping"

reply
I was going to write a whole different comment, but then I thought

> What if, yosamino, your knowledge of the euphemism of knocking on a roof is outdated and this km3r is right? you should probably double check so that in case they are right, you are not having a stupid argument but one backed by facts.

And then I found this hilarious quote:

> As women and children lived in the house, a Hellfire missile was initially shot at the roof as a warning.

referring to American slaughter in Mosul, but still relevant.

The more relevant description is in this article

> The US has adopted a controversial air strike technique known as "roof-knocking", which is best known for its use by Israeli forces during conflicts in Gaza.

> The tactic involves detonating a small explosive above the roof a target as a way of signalling to nearby civilians to get out of range.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/27/us-adopts-contro...

Which tracks a lot better with the descriptions of the practice I have heard from people who experienced it.

So while this is from 2016 and by that metric is 10 years old, you'd have to please show me some information about the army of the state of Israel downgrading their tactics from sending as small bomb to sending a ... what are you claiming they are dropping? a rock ?

reply
“Roof knocking” is when the IAF targets a building with a loud but non-lethal bomb that warns civilians that they are in the vicinity of a weapons cache or other target.

https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/hamas/how-is-the-idf-minimi...

Non lethal not non explosive, I stand corrected. Now can you answer the question.

You even admit it's a smaller bomb than then say its double tapping? Those are two opposing things.

reply
You know, quoting from the idf website about their humane way of bombing, is a little bit like praising the IRA for calling in a bomb threat before exploding a bomb in a crowded place.

A double tap is the practice of bombing a location, waiting for people to help the humans who were injured and then kill those people as well.

Dropping a "loud but non-lethal bomb" and when humans gather on the location where you did that, responding by dropping a "loud but very lethal" bomb to kill all those humans is only on a technicality different from a "double tap" as explained above.

If your plan of (euphemism) "knocking" was to minimize human casualties, but when it turns out it increases human casulties and your only response to this is to shrug and say "at least I tried" - how sincere was your attempt at minimizing human casualties really in the first place ?

> Those are two opposing things.

I think you are stretching the definition of "oppising" furtherthan it can be stretched

reply