IDF kill Red Cross workers in Gaza

[Vanellus]

Gaza: Red Cross outraged over killing of medics by Israeli forces

The Red Cross movement has expressed outrage that eight Palestinian medics were killed along with six Civil Defence first responders and a UN staff member by Israeli forces in southern Gaza.

 

[Unqualified]

What are they doin’ there.

 

[trophy33]

What are they doin’ there.

Really?

 

[BPPLEE]

Gaza is an amazing place. Every building is a school or a hospital and everyone there is an infant, child, or first responder

 

[Vanellus]

What are they doin’ there.

What were they doing there - they're all dead now courtesy of the IDF.

They were heading to the Hashashin area of Rafah to provide first aid to a number of people injured by Israeli shelling in the area i.e. their job.

 

[Vanellus]

Gaza is an amazing place. Every building is a school or a hospital and everyone there is an infant, child, or first responder

Complete nonsense.

 

[Unqualified]

You mean hamas and helping hamas

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

Quite funny how the Red Cross insists that providing first aid to the Palestinians in Gaza is "their job", but gaining access to those being held hostage in the very same strip is somehow not a concern to them. On the contrary, these "Red Cross workers" even participated on stage in the humiliation of Israeli hostages during their release.

 

[Vanellus]

Odd how practically every humanitarian organisation you can think of is allegedly anti Israel, at least according to unbiased sources such as the Jerusalem Post. Or could there be over 50,000 reasons to think that the common factor is not these organisations, but just one: the IDF.

Over the last year, the ICRC has:

• Continuously called for the hostages to be released
• Repeatedly demanded safe access to the people being held hostage
• Helped reunite hostages with their families, and facilitated the release of Palestinian detainees from Israel places of detention
• Met with families whose loved ones are being held hostage and set up a dedicated phone line for them
• Reminded authorities on all sides, and at the highest levels, of their obligations under international humanitarian law.

What the Red Cross is doing to help Israeli hostages in Gaza

Which I would think is more than what most people posting in this forum have done.

 

[Vanellus]

You mean hamas and helping hamas

No I don't.

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

 

[Reluctant Theologian]

Gaza: Red Cross outraged over killing of medics by Israeli forces

Let's de-escalate the reactions over this news item.

To recapture:
- IDF has admitted to attacking the ambulances as they were marked as suspicious
- Israel / IDF regrets any collateral casualties among civilians and medical personnel
- it is a fact Hamas has used ambulances to transfer combatants/Hamas operatives - that fact in itself causes the phenomenon a genuine medical operation is mistaken for a military operation, and consequently civilian/medical staff deaths
- Hamas has expressed their intention to target/maximise Israeli civilian deaths

Any civilian or medical staff casualty is a tragedy; personally I think even any combatant death is tragedy, but unfortunately a necessity.

Case closed IMHO.

Replies on this forum to any posting relating to the Israel/Palestinian conflict probably get more meaningful when posters disclose their position towards the existence of Israel as a home country for Jews. If a poster does not support that, any other debate/discourse over issues that depend on that become meaningless.

So .. I do. But of course that doesn't mean I overlook any mistakes or possible atrocities committed by the IDF if/when they occur.

 

[Unqualified]

At least the Red Cross knows they will be getting the bodies back.

 

[Vanellus]

At least the Red Cross knows they will be getting the bodies back.

Only after the Red Cross aided by the UN had recovered the bodies from a mass grave. They weren't returned by the IDF. The bodies have been named as Red Cross/Crescent workers.

 

[Unqualified]

And where are the Israeli hostages?

 

[trophy33]

Replies on this forum to any posting relating to the Israel/Palestinian conflict probably get more meaningful when posters disclose their position towards the existence of Israel as a home country for Jews. If a poster does not support that, any other debate/discourse over issues that depend on that become meaningless.

Do you need to proclaim that the USA is the greatest nation on Earth before discussing or judging some specific war crime of the US soldiers for example in Afghanistan?

Your requirement is strange.

 

[Reluctant Theologian]

Do you need to proclaim that the USA is the greatest nation on Earth before discussing or judging some specific war crime of the US soldiers for example in Afghanistan?

Your requirement is strange.

Your rephrasing of my recommendation is exaggerated to the absurd - it's not about someone disclosing their view is that country <c> is the greatest nation on earth, but whether it's allowed to exist in the first place. E.g. if someone does not acknowledge the right for the USA to exist, then any critical posting of that person about the USA's actions become extremely biased, and therefore a balanced discussion is basically impossible/meaningless, as all reporting/interpretation is very likely to be selective/tilted.

To give an example - in the same week this seemingly terrible accident occurred Hamas also tortured and killed six Gazans who protested against Hamas in the previous week. But anti-Israel existence posters are very unlikely to report that here.

The original BBC (normally pro-Arab) article contained the following passage:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that during an operation in southern Gaza on 23 March "several vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights, or emergency signals, their movement was not co-ordinated in advance. Thus, IDF troops opened fire at the suspected vehicles."

"Following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had eliminated a Hamas military operative, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, along with eight other terrorists from Hamas and the PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]," it added.

It's clear this was an tragic accident at worst and a partial successful elimination attempt at best (depending again on whose side you are on).

So yes ... disclosing your position towards Israel's right to exist as a home for the Jewish people makes any further discussion much, much more meaningful. Do you?

 

[Vanellus]

UN ambassador Woodward has stated that her understanding is that Israel had stopped de-confliction re aid workers in Gaza at the time of the attack. I would think she knows more than we do about that. So I'm not sure what you mean by "marked as suspicious" - they were marked as ambulances. The bodies and vehicles were dumped in a mass grave and covered in sand: a literal cover up. Why was that done?

Do you know that aid vehicles have to drive with headlights and emergency lights on even in broad daylight? How were they driving "suspiciously": too quickly, too slowly, weaving across the road? I suggest that was pure invention by the IDF safe in the knowledge that all the Red Cross witnesses were dead.

Is there any hard evidence that Hamas has used Red Cross ambulances i.e. not dodgy intercepts or "evidence" from interrogation?

How can killing all the workers in a convoy of marked ambulances be just an accident? Rather it shows a casual disregard for human life.

The single death of a Israeli hostage is a tragedy (agreed) but the death of over 50,000 Gazans is just a statistic (definitely not agreed). Yet on the allegedly pro Arab BBC (which I probably watch more than you) we rarely hear the names of dead Palestinians and we are rarely told about the many ongoing Palestinian deaths in the West Bank.

I think it is better to focus on the people affected. Everyone killed in this slaughter is a human being with a name and a story of their life: a story that should have had a better ending. The hostage family members protesting against the Israeli government are not convinced about how much their government wants the hostages back. Do they know something we don't?

 

[trophy33]

if someone does not acknowledge the right for the USA to exist, then any critical posting of that person about the USA's actions become extremely biased

You want to divide the world into two sides. But that is not how it works. The majority of people is indifferent to something like that and will simply react to actions. That is actually the basis of justice - do you know why is justice depicted to be blind?

"The right to exist" - what does it even mean? It seems like taken from some propaganda piece. Nations exist because of their historical development, not because of some right. If you mean a country or a country's borders, then this goes to the UN, mostly, to be legally recognized.

I do not need to a priori side with Israel nor with Palestine. This would be bias. I can simply react to what they are doing. And the UN, ICC, ICJ... condemned the actions of both sides.

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

"The right to exist" - what does it even mean? It seems like taken from some propaganda piece. Nations exist because of their historical development, not because of some right. If you mean a country or a country's borders, then this goes to the UN, mostly, to be legally recognized.

Why do you act as if Israel's right to exist isn't questioned on a daily basis? This isn't "taken from some propaganda piece", this is the core of the Israeli-Palestinian debate. Both, Islamic countries who don't recognize the state of Israel (some of whom openly call for Israel's destruction) and the liberals who shout "from the river to the sea", are demanding that the Jewish state stops existing as such. The alleged "illegitimacy" of Israel is one of the favourite arguments of the "pro-Palestine" crowd, not some fringe conspiracy.

@Vanellus How many of those alleged 50,000 Gazans were civilians?