I'll tell the German Zeppelin bombing fleets that attacked London and much of England during WW I (The Great War) that they don't exist, and also the Boer War that they weren't really a war.

This did not start with the bombing of Japan. Japan started it in China and Korea, if we're using that war as a benchmark of Total War. Ever heard of Nanjing?

Charles, Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields is not merely an Israeli claim, and it has little (if anything) to do with the 20th Century and “total war.” Here’s NATO’s take on it, “Hamas’ use of human shields in Gaza,”https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf

“The use of human shields can be considered an example of ‘lawfare’ – i.e. the use of the legal system against an enemy by damaging or delegitimising them, tying up their time or winning a public relations victory.”

“Even if a targeted strike may be justifable from a legal perspective, first impressions frame the narrative. Public opinion tends to be influenced more by images depicting the suffering of innocent civilians than by well-thought-out legal arguments.”

“Hamas relies on the Israeli government’s aim to minimise collateral damage, and is also aware of the West‘s sensitivity towards civilian casualties. Hamas’ use of human shields is therefore likely aimed at minimising their own vulnerabilities by limiting the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) freedom of action. It is also aimed at gaining diplomatic and public opinion-related leverage, by presenting Israel and the IDF as an aggressor that indiscriminately strikes civilians.”

The Stranger has been putting on a clinic in Hamas’ successful use of these tactics.

The Stranger has even promoted "news" based on deepfake images in the Gaza conflict. It's sad. Try doing basic investigation before lighting the fires under young people in our region easily inflamed, who have not had proper training in how to identify such.

thank you
Charles.

but
yes:
ceasefire

even tho BiBi
calls 'ceasefire'
the laying down
of all Defenses what
he Really means is: 'Don't
come after ME when y'alls
come to your Senses. he's the
el trumopfster of the Middle East.

they
BOTH
gotta Go.

godspeed

Gaza since 10/7 is something short of Total War. If you take Hamas' figures at face value, they've only killed 0.35% of the population. Hamas is estimated at 1.5% of the 2.3 million Gazan population. The IDF could do much more damage & take many more lives.

Siege is also an appropriate term and has historic precedent. A siege makes the residents angry, miserable, sick, hungry, and kills them at a steady pace - until the rulers surrender.

@5: I don't think Charles is justifying. Contextualizing, yes.

To call
the genocide
of Gaza a war is absurd.

It is a mass slaughter
of children and their
families... a concen-
tration camp with
no army...under
siege...

--Karl Haynes

https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/how-to-stop-the-wars/comments#comment-42817355

and We're gonna
Fed Ex 'em

TWELVE
BILLION
DOLLAR$.

who 'needs'
Socialism? we
got Friends to Sup-
port.! damn Good ones!
lacking however any Moral Compass

itr's a damn Shame
we Don't
Export
those.

think about The Oil!
tnink about Democracy! Do NOT
think about Any* of those Slaughtered children!

*Hamas
is Lying!

7.
the
Terrorists
are Happy to
Wait-out an Entire
fucking Genocide. can WE?

@8, @9: You quote opinions, I’ll quote facts:

“Hamas relies on the Israeli government’s aim to minimise collateral damage, and is also aware of the West‘s sensitivity towards civilian casualties. Hamas’ use of human shields is therefore … aimed at gaining diplomatic and public opinion-related leverage, by presenting Israel and the IDF as an aggressor that indiscriminately strikes civilians.”

You just keep on quoting from that script Hamas keeps on feeding you. You’re one of those terrorists’ very best foreign volunteers right now. (And your price is SO right!)

Sherman's march is often cited as a definitive early example of the concept of total war.

Out of curiousity can someone cite a war that wasn’t “total war”? Every one I’ve read about inevitably impacted civilian populations.

@12: Charles, as usual, can’t be bothered to do even the most rudimentary research. Here, he couldn’t even read the entire first sentence of the Wikipedia entry to which he linked. That definition of “total war” requires: “… mobilises all of the resources of society to fight the war…”. Thus, the First and Second World Wars were this for their combatant nations, but the First and Second Gulf Wars were not this for the United States. (Unsurprisingly, Charles’ vast pretensions to understanding economics completely fail to provide him with any actual economic understanding of his chosen topic.)

For the Israeli action in Gaza to be “total war,” all of Israel’s economic resources would need to be devoted to it, and Israel would need a policy of attacking civilians. Neither is the case, although the Stranger keeps saying the second is true. (If it was true, the reported death toll in Gaza would be at least one or two orders of magnitude higher by now.)

The Stranger simply cannot deal with the important difference between Hamas and Israel. The former has a policy of intentionally causing civilian deaths, and the latter has a policy of avoiding harm to civilians. Unable to admit Hamas’ intentional killing of civilians is morally wrong, the Stranger simply attributes Hamas’ tactics to Israel.

nyt:
U.N.
human rights lawyer
retires, criticizes the agency and
calls the Israeli strikes in Gaza ‘genocide.’

The director of the New York office of the U.N.’s human rights agency has stepped down, accusing the U.N. in a sharply worded letter of abandoning its own principles and international law, and of failing to stop Israel’s deadly bombardment of Gaza, which he called a “genocide.”

The former director, Craig Mokhiber, a human rights lawyer, wrote in the letter dated Oct. 28: “I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of our colleagues.

Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it.”

In the letter, which was viewed by The New York Times and which the U.N. confirmed was authentic, he accused the U.S. and Britain governments and much of Europe of being “complicit.”

He described as “a textbook case of genocide” Israel’s offensive in Gaza and in the West Bank, which has killed at least 8,000 Palestinians, including more than 3,000 children, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza; and has damaged schools, medical facilities, mosques and residential buildings, including U.N. offices.

--Eileen Sullivan 10/31/23

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/31/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news/un-human-rights-lawyer-resigns-criticizes-the-agency-and-calls-the-israeli-strikes-in-gaza-genocide

‘a Textbook case
of Genocide.’

well
that’s
what I’ve
been Saying.

they finally Heard me

@16: He agrees with you because you’re both using the same source: Hamas, here euphemistically called, “the Ministry of Health in Gaza”.

Being a lawyer doesn’t automatically confer any immunity to propaganda.

Israeli\Nutnyahoo
apologists prefer Israel's
Propaganda to acknowledging
War Crimes Ethnic Cleansing and
Genocide are happening right in Front
of the World's eyes -- even tho Nutnyahoo
shuts off all communications - Except Israel's
in Gaza. Israel Will be held Accountable for their
actions -- or Would be in a Just World. we shall see

@18: Cite a single example of anyone here citing any Israeli government source. Now cite the Stranger, or any sympathetic commenter, citing anything but Hamas, or an opinion piece which repeats unverified claims from Hamas. Good luck with any of that.

If you care about civilian lives in the region, then demand Hamas free the hundreds of hostages they kidnapped out of Israel. As far as I can recall, you have yet to mention those civilians.