Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians
Surprised by Oct. 7 and fearful of another attack, Israel weakened safeguards meant to protect noncombatants, allowing officers to endanger up to 20 people in each airstrike. One of the deadliest bombardments of the 21st century followed.
Hasnain says:
Thought a lot before sharing this one. On one hand NYT I am glad the NYT is finally reporting truths others have reported and so many know to be evident.
On the other hand they still try to claim it's original reporting, and that this is previously unknown, even though... +972 reported on it months ago (April, IIRC). They can't even claim ignorance - they link to the same piece later on in this one!
a 20:1 ratio of civilian:military deaths being acceptable even for killing a lowly fighter is insane and not what I've seen any respectable modern military do. And there weren't penalties for going over.
On the balance though, given that at least a few more poeple will read this and understand what's going on, I figured I'd share and applaud the NYT reporting this.
"On a few occasions, senior commanders approved strikes on Hamas leaders that they knew would each endanger more than 100 noncombatants — crossing an extraordinary threshold for a contemporary Western military."
Posted on 2024-12-29T22:24:46+0000