Lester Golden
3 min readNov 23, 2023

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Your use of the word "massacre" is inaccurate. Massacre implies intentionality. Unlike Hamas, the IDF kills no civilian intentionally. The Geneva Convention underlines the key role of intentionality in defining war crimes:

"War crimes contain two main elements:

A contextual element: “the conduct took place in the context of and was associated with an international/non-international armed conflict”;

A mental element: intent and knowledge both with regards to the individual act and the contextual element."

Also, body count doesn't determine who's in the right. Germany lost 15x the number of civilians as Britain in WWII bombings. Who was right? Japan lost more than 100x as many civilians in conventional bombings as the US did at Pearl Harbor (military and civilian). Who was right?

Every Israeli air force unit has an embedded legal advisor with the power to veto targeting decisions by the military based on this clause of the Geneva Convention, which Israel signed in 1950:

"Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;"

Hamas, on the other hand has violated these clauses of the Geneva Convention:

"For the purpose of this Statute, ‘war crimes’ means: Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, namely, any of the following acts against persons or property protected under the provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention:

i. Wilful killing

ii. Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;

iii Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health;

iv. Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;

vi. Wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;

vii. Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement;

viii. Taking of hostages.

i. Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;

ii. Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives;

v. Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;

vi. Killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;

x. Subjecting persons who are in the power of an adverse party to physical mutilation....

xii. Declaring that no quarter will be given;

xvi. Pillaging a town or place, even when taken by assault;

xxi. Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;

xxii. Committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, as defined in article 7, paragraph 2 (f), enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence also constituting a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions;

xxiii. Utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations;

xxvi. Conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities.

C. ii. Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;

iii. Taking of hostages;

This will end when the West Bank and Gazan Arabs learn to love their children more than they love killing Jews. If you watch how they indoctrinate their children in schools and on children's TV into becoming child soldiers because they believe the lie that their misery is the Jews' fault, you'll see that Gazan society isn't so innocent: https://palwatch.org/.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/oct/22/gazans-arent-innocent-they-are-swamp-hamas-swims-i/

The wealth, success and power of Israel startup nation vs Arab poverty, corruption and misgovernment is a continuing affront to their sense of self as the people who were given the Koran, God's final revelation. Israel is a continual challenge to their identity as the recipients of this truth. Jews' refusal to return to dhimmitude offends their identification with what they see as this truth. Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong? shows how this has been going on for more than three centuries.

That you still write about this conflict and ignore Syria (1/2m Muslim on Muslim deaths), Darfur (300k Muslim on Muslim deaths), Yemen (uncountable, but far larger than Israel-Hamas), Kurdistans (Turkiye, Iraq, Iran, Syria), Chechnya (uncountable and far larger than Israel-Hamas), Burma's ethnic cleansing and genocide of its Muslim Rohingyas....tells me that you single out Jews for condemnation over others. Here's the cure for this: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/youre-an-anti-semite-if-you-3d0b022ffa05

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Lester Golden
Lester Golden

Written by Lester Golden

From Latvia & Porto I write to share learning from an academic&business life in 8 languages in 5 countries & seeing fascism die in Portugal&Spain in1974 & 1976.

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