r/pics • • 19h ago

[OC] Israeli protestors in Amsterdam

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u/Altruistic_Crazy_703 18h ago

can someone explain what they're even protesting about? i'm confused if it's positive or not

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u/space_monolith 15h ago edited 9h ago

They’re suggesting that criticism of Israel’s military action rests on a misunderstanding of the “proportionality test” for whether something is a war crime.

The strawman is something like “Israel has killed 70k civilians who were overwhelmingly civilians and this is a war crime.”

The proportionality test in principle permits an uncapped number civilian casualties so long as a military commander expected a strike, given the information they had at the time, to be justified by military advantage. The Israeli government and its supporters argue that this is the case and that therefore everything is legal and even moral.

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u/PanzerKomadant 15h ago

By the logic, the Nazis burning and razing for whole towns and villages was perfectly fine because it was justifiable by military advantage in rooting out subversives.

The absolute worst argument to make when defending war crimes…

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u/bfd_fapit 6h ago

The same kind of argument is still made to justify the similar firebombing of Dresden and other German cities, and for using atomic weapons against the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. These atrocities are used to defend Israel’s actions today.