Civilians In War

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By David Kirtley

Tue, 31 Oct 2023
  • 535 reads
5 comments
 

20/10/23

 Of course civilians should be allowed to have the necessities, and the wounded and injured. Those are supposed to be the modern rules of war. The lack of this means war crimes are being committed. In reality war does affect civilians ,as it did even in the middle ages. All sides should try to be humane towards civilians. In WWII and plenty of other conflicts civilians have inevitably been caught up in bombing and shortages. In WWII Hitler directed his airforce to begin to target the civilians of London, and in occupied countries people were very much affected by the occupiers, to the extent of purposeful mass murder inflicted particularly on the Jews, but also on other categories of people such as the disabled and gypsies, and of course political prisoners. War dehumanises us all. By the end of the War Britain and America were blanket bombing German cities, and creating firestorms, and of course the nuclear bombs on Japan.

In Palestine/Israel it is a great shame that war has broken out again. Hamas tactics were not nice, and will have lost them a great deal of sympathy, but neither is the destruction of so many buildings by Israeli missiles, with people inside and underneath them. I heard by today there are estimated to be 4,000 Palestinian casualties, large numbers being 'civilian'. All of this should, and probably could have been avoided if the Israel governments had respected the UN principles of Partition, the best solution for a workable peace which could have been had, after many years of de facto population stability. Unfortunately they didn't respect that in recent years, so no one has a workable peace solution to work towards, and we are left with bitterness, desperation, injustices, and now war and massive civilian casualties and destruction. Doubtless some Palestinian and Arab groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah would not have accepted the Partition, but if it had been preserved I am sure most Palestinians would have accepted it as a workable peace which would have allowed them to move forward, away from negativity and war.

 

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Comments

Submitted by David Kirtley on

Current events in Palestine/Israel lead me to consider the question of civilian involvement in wars, and ,in particular, civilian casualties and 'war crimes'!

Submitted by marandina on

Some interesting historical comparisons and interesting that these may be your own thoughts rather than rogue reporter - Alfred Muggins. Civilians are inevitably the innocent victims of war. We continue to hope for common sense to prevail.

 

Submitted by David Kirtley on

Thanks Marandina. Alfred and I are often on the same wavelength, although Alfred sometimes allows himself to be ruled by emotions and gets a bit overexcited or over sympathetic, and can get rather emotional. I thought I would dispassionately explore some of the history of Civilian victimization in war without descending into angry verbiage and emotional distraction! Alfred,who has of course written some pieces connected with this, would probably have wrote this one differently,and probably longer!

While we both continue to hope for common sense to prevail, neither of us actually think it will. Having read the history books a bit we actually think this is going to end badly for all concerned. While opinions of ordinary people coalesce towards fairer judgements about what has gone wrong,we see no real sign that western and Arab nations are going to do anything very useful to stop this. Netanyahu seems to have Biden and even so called 'wise' European leaders wrapped around his little finger! And there are no spare armies in the area to keep the peace and deter the Israelis from killing even more civilians, or stop them taking the West Bank off the Palestinians in front of our noses!

Submitted by Di_Hard on

I am not understanding at all why this is being allowed

 

Submitted by David Kirtley on

It does seem strange that our Western leaderships seem to have given the green light to Netanyahu and the Israeli Defence (Attack?) Force to do what they want without proper protection for civilians. Biden is even giving them high tech weapons as far as I understand! I thought the USA was supposed to act as a sensible arbiter between Israelis and Arabs, to resolve conflicts, not to make the situation,and the number of deaths far worse! Obviously they seem to agree that it would not be a bad idea to 'get rid' of Hamas,or reduce its power, although what will arise in its place remains a speculation. Perhaps the successor of Hamas, will be Hamas 2,or the Sons and Grandsons of Hamas? or maybe a more polite and well behaved version of the PLO? 

The other questions are :- Will there be any Palestinians left alive in Gaza, or the West Bank by the time the Israeli military have finished?