Maybe to spark curious conversation, when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these? It does seem like UN is unable to really make a dent here.
The UN is really just meant to prevent World War 3 and nuclear war. It has succeeded in this for the last 70 years. The structure of the UN is basically unanimous consensus between the major world powers with each power getting a veto.
There is no unanimous consensus on this issue at all.
Did it? Because this was also always the argument for the "League of Nations" that came before it. If you read 1930s newspapers that's what they give as a reason for the organization's existence ...
Now after WW2, consensus is that the League of Nations may have outright caused WW2, and certainly contributed more than any other individual factor. The League of Nations was the embodiment of the treaty of Versailles. As if that wasn't bad enough, the League of Nations was also the league of nations that stopped most reactions against Hitler immediately before the war.
I'm not even going to bother drawing the obvious parallel with how the UN is treating nuclear powers, and people defending themselves against attacks by a nuclear (or trying-to-be-nuclear) power.
If the latest Gaza war taught us anything, is that UN is powerless. And, unfortunately, it is the highest entity that could apply leverage here, so... Not much we can do. In the long term I hope other nations realize they are very vulnerable and begin to invest more in defense, but that escalation can have other downsides.
Yes, the UN was directly responsible to stop the threat of Hezbollah attacking Israel. They got billions in funds, soldiers, and a quite literal license to kill to prevent it.
When Hamas started the Gaza war, the IDF barely defended against Hamas. They feared they were about to face land incursions straight through UN lines from Lebanon. That, despite the direct UN mission to use weapons to prevent it from just about everyone, the UNSC, the UNGA, UN resolutions, Lebanon's government, Hezbollah built up an army right under the noses of these soldiers.
The IDF was 100% correct in their assessment.
So now what do we do? Nobody sane will pretend that hamas or hezbollah's stated reasons for fighting against Israel are even remotely true. And Iran? Iran still quite literally screams on state television they will massacre Israel and then the US (they have "hardliners" making speeches, which are really more like screaming)
So another attack will come again, that's for sure. How do we prevent the same outcome we had now? Nobody, not even Iran, wants this (although for Iran I'd bet the Palestinian casualties aren't anywhere near high enough). But they won't change. So ...
What kind of answer are you expecting? The only “structure” that matters is power, and the only power that matters is the power to force and destroy. Everything else is derived from that, not the other way round.
> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these
If recent history is any indicator, UN isn't that structure; probably EU / G7 / BRICS & other such blocs are:
... we construct a new dataset covering all 43 very large mass atrocities perpetrated by governments or non-state actors since 1945 with at least 50,000 civilian fatalities.
This article introduces and summarizes these data, including an inductively generated typology of three major ending types: those in which (i) violence is carried out to its intended conclusion (37%); (ii) the perpetrator is driven out of power militarily (26%); or (iii) the perpetrator shifts to a different strategy no longer involving mass atrocities against civilians (37%).
We find that international actors play a range of important roles in endings, often involving encouragement and support for policy changes that reduce mass killings. Endings could be attributed principally to armed foreign interventions in only four cases, three of which involved regime change. Within the cases we study, no ending was attributable to a neutral peacekeeping mission.
Many countries have strict laws how to deal with genocide, genocide support, and genocide deniers! So just enforce local laws, report supporters of genocide to police.
This doesn't seem to even relate to the question. How am I suppose to out the Israeli government to my local police? Or the miriad entities that support it?
Indeed. It has to be a particular kind of recognized genocide, and then people just don't agree on what is and isn't a genocide. Turkey is the worst offender there, but it's quite a widespread problem.
And, of course, the problem is people don't agree. Turkey refuses to accept many of it's actions as genocidal (because that's how Turkey was created: when the last islamic state ("the Ottoman empire") got destroyed by Turks (who at that point were the ottoman army), they massacred a LOT of population groups, famously the Armenians but academics name more than a dozen separate genocides: Greeks, Kurds, Azeri, Jews, ...)
Oh and of course they kept doing it. Technically what Turkey did in Cyprus is also a genocide, and they have an active policy of replacing Kurd population groups but that's, if that's even possible, an even worse sore point.
The sad fact is that these genocides happened to gain territory. And, most of that territory, go look at Google Maps. This was mostly deep inland Turkey. And ... Turks obviously don't want it. There's no big cities there, and the more east you go, the less little towns, the less people, the less everything (except on the border). After the genocides what was a European landscape, a village every 5km or so is now empty. Hundreds of kilometers of nothing. Names on a map , with nothing or ruins below them. You don't really need a line to find the Armenian or Georgian border: where the farms begin, the rectangular fields, the villages, you've crossed the Turkish border. In other words: what repopulation the Turks did ... is a failure. And what little remains, mostly near the black sea, is losing young people at an astonishing rate. This is huge empty space, mostly ecologically destroyed land, not productive farmland. Not nature preserves. Nothing.
Also the reverse also doesn't apply. The UN may have trouble with Israeli actions, but where the UN took control to resolve the situation, where the UN took action, most famously southern Lebanon, it has not just failed but it systematically kept getting worse for 50+ years now. Whereas at least for Israel you can say: look at Tel Aviv. Look at Jerusalem. Look at Haifa. They really built something. Where the UN "helped" ... there's nothing.
If you try very hard, you can understand the reason for bombardment, at least from the BEGINNING. Surely, not the reason for killing these poor children.
But I never came to better conclusion about West Bank annexation that that it is pure imperialism. Basically what russians are trying in Ukraine. I'm still not quite sure what is the purpose, there is really not enough land or it's all just bs?
If you are genuinely interested in understanding why Israel feels the need to control the area of the West Bank, open up Google maps and look at Israel.
At central Israel, where Tel Aviv and the financial center is, Israel is 10 miles across without the WB. Turn on terrain mode, and you’ll see that the West Bank is elevated and overlooking the neck and hub of Israel. You can stand in the WB, and see all the way to the Mediterranean.
There’s no way any sane country would allow its enemy control of that vantage and attack point.
Now do yourself a favor and zoom out until you can see Israel’s neighbouring countries; all of Egypt and Iran, and the size of this contested area in the context of how much space there is in the Middle East, and how ridiculous the claim is that Israel’s occupation of this area in 1967 is because of imperialist or expansionist desires.
Not sure it's the same thing. Russians want political and territorial control in Ukraine, not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians". Israel wants to conquer the whole of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem) to replace the native population with its own. There is no possible equal integration of Palestinians or their descendants into a Jewish state, not in a thousand years, and by design.
Well russians over the history resettled the native population numerous times, even resettle russians there.
But the truth is they mostly want control for whatever reason they made up. Part of their propaganda is thet Ukrainians are basically confused russians so you got the point here.
But I wouldn't be sure about your claim regarding Israel. Even now there are millions of Palestinians with Israel citizenship. I understand the deeply rooted animosity with hamas but I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank. I suppose it have something to do with their extreme religious part of goverment?
You've had a point. Maybe it's more like Native Americans and colonizer type of situation.
> I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank
Besides the obvious religious/ ideological motivation, there's also a simple matter of territory: Israel is a small country and the West Bank and Gaza have a lot of value, both for the country as a whole (more space for more people, more natural resources, nobody to share with) as well as commercial value- think developments, real estate, industrial and agricultural areas, seafront properties, etc. Very hard to keep your hands off this bounty, for decades, when the rest of the world basically allows you everything.
> not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians"
The similarity might be stronger than you suspect. Russia abducts and transports Ukrainian children to controlled territories [0], and actively encourages its own citizens to relocate to captured Ukrainian areas through economic incentives, subsidized housing, and aggressive long-term repopulation strategies.
This is really sickening - if North Korea or any other less connected country did this, you would quickly see their national (tech) companies being sanctioned by the west. I never understood how a country like Israel, given the history of its own tribe, can themselves become so gruesome and have a hugely state-supported private spy-tech sector that supports the worst autocrates in the world as long as the money flows to them.
Many many countries got sanctioned into oblivion or color-revolutionized into US-loyalty for far far less (often just for not being aligned with the US).
It is even more sickening and outrageous if you view it through that lens.
Anybody surprised at this point? In any case, this is the same UN that has accepted israel, and israel lobbied US vetoes to Palestine entry into the UN again and again, even then a broad majority of the world have voted in favor of granting membership, does any of what they do or pretend to represent matters anymore?
At this point, leaders should create a new security council excluding the permanent SC members, set rules around voting on issues where every country has an equal voice, create enforcement frameworks and then invite the SC members with equal footing.
The proposed reforms led by the likes of Brazil, Germany and India are not getting a lot of traction. Maybe if they included everyone else they'd have a better chance.
The excuse will be that these are just casualties of war and we'll shrug it off and move on, whereas the imaginary beheaded babies from October 7 are unforgivable and excuse any action on Israel's behalf.
Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions. Use any legal means to stop funding this genocide and make Israel's leadership accountable. We all love our comfy white collar jobs and would rather not rock the boat, but not doing the little we can do (e.g. stop using Israeli suppliers and services) makes us supporters.
Nothing about Israel's prosecution of the war in Gaza was acceptable, but:
> Israeli forces continued to use high-payload munitions and weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas despite mounting child casualties ... this indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional ... [and therefore Israel was deliberately targeting children]
Is the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab, alongside six of her family members, and two paramedics who came to rescue her, also a reach? Please, help me draw the line.
Israel's targeting of neonatal and maternity care centres during its war on Gaza directly endangered Palestinians' reproductive future and the survival of newborns – driving a rise in miscarriages, birth defects, and lasting vulnerabilities.
Israel's aid blockade in Gaza last year also took a severe toll on Palestinian children, causing starvation-related deaths and a rise in disease as immunisation rates fell.
Palestinian children have been arrested and subjected to torture in Israeli prisons and other severe forms of mistreatment, including sexual abuse.
Israeli forces have destroyed orphanages and education facilities in the occupied West Bank, which has affected Palestinian children's cognitive, social and emotional care and development.
this is the same UN whose members pepetrated Oct 7th... just because it has the UN label doesn't mean they are credible. The writers of the report are de-facto Hamas.
> In October 2025, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion [wikidata] finding that Israel's claims that UNRWA had been infiltrated by Hamas were unsubstantiated. The advisory opinion also said that Israel's decision to end cooperation with UNRWA and restrict humanitarian aid to Gaza breached its obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter. It furthermore found that Israel's Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was not an adequate substitute, noting that more than 2,100 Palestinians had been killed near its distribution points and that conditions in Gaza had deteriorated to the point that international experts declared a famine in some areas in August. The ICJ further held that the mass transfer or deportation of civilians within occupied territory is prohibited, citing Israeli measures that forced large populations into overcrowded areas and severely restricted UN access. It also ruled that the two Knesset laws ending cooperation with UNRWA in the occupied territories were unlawful, noting that 360 UNRWA staff had been killed during the conflict. The court concluded that Israel, as an occupying power, had unlawfully impeded aid delivery, used starvation as a method of warfare, and failed to respect the immunities of UN personnel and premises.
"The International Court of Justice (ICJ; French: Cour internationale de justice, CIJ), or colloquially the World Court, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN)"
"The Court is composed of a panel of 15 judges elected by the UN General Assembly and Security Council for nine-year terms"
Literally, from the first few paragraphs of wikipedia.
People don't read these days.
If the UN general assembly (mostly anti israel) selects the judges how is it "structurally independent of the UN"?
It’s still pretty surprising that a country so armed to the teeth with ground troops and missile defense systems would have let Oct 7 happen for as long as it did, and with so many people dying. I agree that it was wrong of Israel to do that.
The USA won't do anything about it because the USA is also guilty of heinous war crimes, crimes against humanity and massive violations of human rights at scale - in fact, it is the worst criminal on the world stage when it comes to un-prosecuted war crimes... so Israel facing justice will only mean that the USA will face the same justice, and we all know that there is nothing more heinous in all the world to an American than to be embarrassed by their state facing justice at the hands of any other international entity.
But the terrible tragedy is that this situation is not going to resolve until these countries actually prosecute their war criminals, who have been getting away with it in the current context for 20+ years. Which means the only ones with any power to do anything about the USA/Israels' war criminals, are the citizens of those countries themselves - which is why the situation is just so dire.
Until there is a real appetite for prosecuting ones own war criminals instead of bleating like sheep for the blood of perceived enemies of other states, there will not be the moral stance/altitude required for Americans to do anything effective about the war crimes of any other nation.
Until Americans prosecute their own war criminals they can do nothing effective about Israels', Russias', Ukraines' war criminals, either ...
I didn't see anywhere that explains that a significant number of hamas fighters are teenagers or that hamas famously uses children as human shields, interesting.
6. Thousands of Child Combatants are Part of the 70,000 Total
There is no doubt that Hamas and other militant groups use child combatants, in some cases children as young as 12. Demographic analysis of the fatality lists already pointed to this reality, with roughly
2,000 excess deaths among male teens. That inference is now confirmed by direct evidence.
Numerous martyr posters, funeral notices, and social media posts identify underage fighters killed in combat. Most recently, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) publicly acknowledged that 9% of its announced fighters killed were minors, based on its own fighter death lists cross-referenced with Hamas’ fatality list. This shows that combat participation by minors was neither rare nor incidental.
The report states they are not bombing military targets, so you can't explain the numbers away just by saying Hamas may recruit children.
> Israeli forces continued to use high-payload munitions and weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas despite mounting child casualties, the commission said.
Ok, first: The author sits on the board of HonestReporting and writes for NGO Monitor, UN Watch, and the Henry Jackson Society. These are pro-Israel media-monitoring and advocacy organisations.
It paints Hamas's Ministry of Health as a propaganda machine incapable of an honest number (sure) while Israeli military estimates (the 25,000 combatant figure, al-Ahli) are accepted at face value -- seriously? The IDF has been proven to lie numerous times.
Also, the article still relies on the MoH's numbers when it's convenient to the point it's trying to make.
The Gaza Mortality Survey, published in The Lancet Global Health in early 2026, run by Michael Spagat who's a war-mortality specialist (Kosovo, Iraq), with a long record of debunking inflated war-death claims, estimated 75,200 violent deaths between Oct 7, 2023 and Jan 5, 2025, which is around 25,000 more than the official Gaza Ministry of Health figure for that period.
The Lancet survey found that women, children, and older people comprised 56.2% of violent deaths. An OHCHR analysis separately found that 70% of those killed in residential buildings were women and children.
Let's see, what else: A ratio of 1.5 civilians per combatant means roughly 40% of all deaths are fighters. If 56% of the dead are women, children, and elderly, then every adult male death would have to be a combatant to reach 40% — which is obviously false.
The combatants numbers: The 25k combatants figure is an estimate from IDF statements while it dismisses the 8.9k figure (militants the IDF actually identified) as absurd. "Let's make up a number and call the only real documented count" -- and whether it itself is real or not is debatable.
Then lies about natural deaths: Yes, there were about 6.3k deaths in Gaza before the genocide started, however it cherry-picks this subtraction while ignoring the corresponding addition. the same surveys that quantify baseline deathhs also find thousands of excess non-violent deaths caused by genocide. The lancet survey has 8.5k excess deaths. The 3.3k confirmed deaths the article cites are below the 6k baseline. Natural deaths are undercounted. Not inflating it.
Hamas kiling Gazans: Sure, but thousands? It's overblowing numbers for the al-Ahli hospital case and then extrapolating a bunch of bs as a result.
There is a genocide going on. We've seen the footage. We have the testimony about the horrors from both IDF soldiers and Palestinians. Why are we disputing numbers like holocaust deniers?
A few rebutals:
> Yes the author is pro-Israel. I would assume the author the Reuters article is anti-Israel. This doesn't automatically disqualify either account.
> The issue is with the MoH is the breakdown of the numbers, not the overall number. No contradiction.
> He provides an alternative to Lancet. His numbers do not follow Lancet, so mixing his calculations with Lancet's is disingenuous.
> Hamas said they had 40k trained fighters which was about 2% of the population. They also recruited heavily throughout the war. Israel has a standing army of 170,000. The area is an active war zone. These numbers are feasible.
> The 8900 is fighters identified by Israel by name. This is an extremely high standard you are applying to identify fighters overall. For example in Ukraine, this standard would identify most of the 200,00 Russians they have claimed to kill to be civilians.
> Your logic is inconsistent. According to you over a 2 year period Israel couldn't kill tens of thousands of fighters in a large active military all over Gaza but could kill tens of thousands of exposed and trapped civilians in the crossfire but Hamas couldn't have harmed a few thousand of those same civilians.
> No genocide.
> This is not disputing numbers. It's disputing the nature of the conflict.
Maybe to spark curious conversation, when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these? It does seem like UN is unable to really make a dent here.
The UN is really just meant to prevent World War 3 and nuclear war. It has succeeded in this for the last 70 years. The structure of the UN is basically unanimous consensus between the major world powers with each power getting a veto.
There is no unanimous consensus on this issue at all.
Did it? Because this was also always the argument for the "League of Nations" that came before it. If you read 1930s newspapers that's what they give as a reason for the organization's existence ...
Now after WW2, consensus is that the League of Nations may have outright caused WW2, and certainly contributed more than any other individual factor. The League of Nations was the embodiment of the treaty of Versailles. As if that wasn't bad enough, the League of Nations was also the league of nations that stopped most reactions against Hitler immediately before the war.
I'm not even going to bother drawing the obvious parallel with how the UN is treating nuclear powers, and people defending themselves against attacks by a nuclear (or trying-to-be-nuclear) power.
If the latest Gaza war taught us anything, is that UN is powerless. And, unfortunately, it is the highest entity that could apply leverage here, so... Not much we can do. In the long term I hope other nations realize they are very vulnerable and begin to invest more in defense, but that escalation can have other downsides.
Yes, the UN was directly responsible to stop the threat of Hezbollah attacking Israel. They got billions in funds, soldiers, and a quite literal license to kill to prevent it.
When Hamas started the Gaza war, the IDF barely defended against Hamas. They feared they were about to face land incursions straight through UN lines from Lebanon. That, despite the direct UN mission to use weapons to prevent it from just about everyone, the UNSC, the UNGA, UN resolutions, Lebanon's government, Hezbollah built up an army right under the noses of these soldiers.
The IDF was 100% correct in their assessment.
So now what do we do? Nobody sane will pretend that hamas or hezbollah's stated reasons for fighting against Israel are even remotely true. And Iran? Iran still quite literally screams on state television they will massacre Israel and then the US (they have "hardliners" making speeches, which are really more like screaming)
So another attack will come again, that's for sure. How do we prevent the same outcome we had now? Nobody, not even Iran, wants this (although for Iran I'd bet the Palestinian casualties aren't anywhere near high enough). But they won't change. So ...
What now?
What kind of answer are you expecting? The only “structure” that matters is power, and the only power that matters is the power to force and destroy. Everything else is derived from that, not the other way round.
Perhaps it was a rhetorical question.
> when a world power seems to be supportive of actions that an international body considers negative, what structure can help resolve these
If recent history is any indicator, UN isn't that structure; probably EU / G7 / BRICS & other such blocs are:
How very massive atrocities end: A dataset and typology (2020), https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319900912Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions.
The UN is stuck in 1945. The UNSC needs to throw out the UK, France, and bring in Brazil, India, South Africa and Germany.
And this veto nonsense needs to go away.
And how do you suggest they do that?
Many countries have strict laws how to deal with genocide, genocide support, and genocide deniers! So just enforce local laws, report supporters of genocide to police.
This doesn't seem to even relate to the question. How am I suppose to out the Israeli government to my local police? Or the miriad entities that support it?
Pro-tip (observe what the UK does closely): Don't call it a genocide and then you don't need to do anything about it.
Indeed. It has to be a particular kind of recognized genocide, and then people just don't agree on what is and isn't a genocide. Turkey is the worst offender there, but it's quite a widespread problem.
And, of course, the problem is people don't agree. Turkey refuses to accept many of it's actions as genocidal (because that's how Turkey was created: when the last islamic state ("the Ottoman empire") got destroyed by Turks (who at that point were the ottoman army), they massacred a LOT of population groups, famously the Armenians but academics name more than a dozen separate genocides: Greeks, Kurds, Azeri, Jews, ...)
Oh and of course they kept doing it. Technically what Turkey did in Cyprus is also a genocide, and they have an active policy of replacing Kurd population groups but that's, if that's even possible, an even worse sore point.
The sad fact is that these genocides happened to gain territory. And, most of that territory, go look at Google Maps. This was mostly deep inland Turkey. And ... Turks obviously don't want it. There's no big cities there, and the more east you go, the less little towns, the less people, the less everything (except on the border). After the genocides what was a European landscape, a village every 5km or so is now empty. Hundreds of kilometers of nothing. Names on a map , with nothing or ruins below them. You don't really need a line to find the Armenian or Georgian border: where the farms begin, the rectangular fields, the villages, you've crossed the Turkish border. In other words: what repopulation the Turks did ... is a failure. And what little remains, mostly near the black sea, is losing young people at an astonishing rate. This is huge empty space, mostly ecologically destroyed land, not productive farmland. Not nature preserves. Nothing.
Also the reverse also doesn't apply. The UN may have trouble with Israeli actions, but where the UN took control to resolve the situation, where the UN took action, most famously southern Lebanon, it has not just failed but it systematically kept getting worse for 50+ years now. Whereas at least for Israel you can say: look at Tel Aviv. Look at Jerusalem. Look at Haifa. They really built something. Where the UN "helped" ... there's nothing.
If you try very hard, you can understand the reason for bombardment, at least from the BEGINNING. Surely, not the reason for killing these poor children.
But I never came to better conclusion about West Bank annexation that that it is pure imperialism. Basically what russians are trying in Ukraine. I'm still not quite sure what is the purpose, there is really not enough land or it's all just bs?
I wonder if this ends up Flagged.
If you are genuinely interested in understanding why Israel feels the need to control the area of the West Bank, open up Google maps and look at Israel.
At central Israel, where Tel Aviv and the financial center is, Israel is 10 miles across without the WB. Turn on terrain mode, and you’ll see that the West Bank is elevated and overlooking the neck and hub of Israel. You can stand in the WB, and see all the way to the Mediterranean.
There’s no way any sane country would allow its enemy control of that vantage and attack point.
Now do yourself a favor and zoom out until you can see Israel’s neighbouring countries; all of Egypt and Iran, and the size of this contested area in the context of how much space there is in the Middle East, and how ridiculous the claim is that Israel’s occupation of this area in 1967 is because of imperialist or expansionist desires.
> Basically what russians are trying in Ukraine.
Not sure it's the same thing. Russians want political and territorial control in Ukraine, not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians". Israel wants to conquer the whole of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem) to replace the native population with its own. There is no possible equal integration of Palestinians or their descendants into a Jewish state, not in a thousand years, and by design.
Well russians over the history resettled the native population numerous times, even resettle russians there. But the truth is they mostly want control for whatever reason they made up. Part of their propaganda is thet Ukrainians are basically confused russians so you got the point here.
But I wouldn't be sure about your claim regarding Israel. Even now there are millions of Palestinians with Israel citizenship. I understand the deeply rooted animosity with hamas but I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank. I suppose it have something to do with their extreme religious part of goverment?
You've had a point. Maybe it's more like Native Americans and colonizer type of situation.
Those Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are no longer allowed into Israel. That's my understanding after watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrmE-WiC4eA
You’ve either misunderstood or the youtuber is lying to you.
> I do not understand the whole point of this type of colonisation of west bank
Besides the obvious religious/ ideological motivation, there's also a simple matter of territory: Israel is a small country and the West Bank and Gaza have a lot of value, both for the country as a whole (more space for more people, more natural resources, nobody to share with) as well as commercial value- think developments, real estate, industrial and agricultural areas, seafront properties, etc. Very hard to keep your hands off this bounty, for decades, when the rest of the world basically allows you everything.
> not expelling Ukrainians to resettle the place with "ethnic Russians"
The similarity might be stronger than you suspect. Russia abducts and transports Ukrainian children to controlled territories [0], and actively encourages its own citizens to relocate to captured Ukrainian areas through economic incentives, subsidized housing, and aggressive long-term repopulation strategies.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7g5xnvl2eo
[1] https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russias...
[[ Edit - added references in response to flagging ]]
Flagging a serious topic like this indicates motive in a way that's unbecoming.
We need to build beach resorts, with casinos and golden statues!
This is rising fast. 61 points at this moment.
Doubled to 103 points in 6 minutes
And flagged 36 minutes after submission right around 104
Flagged and off the home page. Now at 106 points.
After another half hour it is at 134 points despite being flagged.
[retracted]
I'm not sure the rise was entirely organic. It doesn't require a whole state, just 100 individuals to vote to get it on the front page.
The timing was good too. 7am morning time in the US eastern.
Or it could be that the Reuters article just came out a few hours ago
That gives a team a few hours to prepare their non-technical, emotive, divisive post and prime all members
mods are still sleeping
This is really sickening - if North Korea or any other less connected country did this, you would quickly see their national (tech) companies being sanctioned by the west. I never understood how a country like Israel, given the history of its own tribe, can themselves become so gruesome and have a hugely state-supported private spy-tech sector that supports the worst autocrates in the world as long as the money flows to them.
Hopefully Israel will have lost American support in a generation or so, who cares what happens to them after that.
Israel has had a hand up each US politician’s ass since the 1980s. Israel owns all of them.
Many many countries got sanctioned into oblivion or color-revolutionized into US-loyalty for far far less (often just for not being aligned with the US).
It is even more sickening and outrageous if you view it through that lens.
Anybody surprised at this point? In any case, this is the same UN that has accepted israel, and israel lobbied US vetoes to Palestine entry into the UN again and again, even then a broad majority of the world have voted in favor of granting membership, does any of what they do or pretend to represent matters anymore?
At this point, leaders should create a new security council excluding the permanent SC members, set rules around voting on issues where every country has an equal voice, create enforcement frameworks and then invite the SC members with equal footing.
The proposed reforms led by the likes of Brazil, Germany and India are not getting a lot of traction. Maybe if they included everyone else they'd have a better chance.
If your state finds that it needs to murder children in its defense then it is a failed state and should be refactored by its citizenry, immediately.
Because that which war criminals bring to their victims, they will also - ALWAYS - bring back to their own state.
Prosecute your war criminals. Now!
The excuse will be that these are just casualties of war and we'll shrug it off and move on, whereas the imaginary beheaded babies from October 7 are unforgivable and excuse any action on Israel's behalf.
Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions. Use any legal means to stop funding this genocide and make Israel's leadership accountable. We all love our comfy white collar jobs and would rather not rock the boat, but not doing the little we can do (e.g. stop using Israeli suppliers and services) makes us supporters.
Nothing about Israel's prosecution of the war in Gaza was acceptable, but:
> Israeli forces continued to use high-payload munitions and weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas despite mounting child casualties ... this indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional ... [and therefore Israel was deliberately targeting children]
is a reach.
Is the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab, alongside six of her family members, and two paramedics who came to rescue her, also a reach? Please, help me draw the line.
> is a reach
I mean, if you are sure there are children and there is a quite a lot of children there, it's deliberate.
It's actually one of the places in the Middle East with a higher birth rate than Israel itself, and a very high population density.
If you are shooting into the crowd which includes children, you are shooting at children even when you are not pointing at them precisely.
this is the same UN whose members pepetrated Oct 7th... just because it has the UN label doesn't mean they are credible. The writers of the report are de-facto Hamas.
> In October 2025, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion [wikidata] finding that Israel's claims that UNRWA had been infiltrated by Hamas were unsubstantiated. The advisory opinion also said that Israel's decision to end cooperation with UNRWA and restrict humanitarian aid to Gaza breached its obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter. It furthermore found that Israel's Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was not an adequate substitute, noting that more than 2,100 Palestinians had been killed near its distribution points and that conditions in Gaza had deteriorated to the point that international experts declared a famine in some areas in August. The ICJ further held that the mass transfer or deportation of civilians within occupied territory is prohibited, citing Israeli measures that forced large populations into overcrowded areas and severely restricted UN access. It also ruled that the two Knesset laws ending cooperation with UNRWA in the occupied territories were unlawful, noting that 360 UNRWA staff had been killed during the conflict. The court concluded that Israel, as an occupying power, had unlawfully impeded aid delivery, used starvation as a method of warfare, and failed to respect the immunities of UN personnel and premises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA_and_Israel#International...
the UN claimed that the UN agency was just fine... no s**.
The ICJ is legally and structurally independent of the UN. What specifically do you disagree with about the advisory opinion?
"The International Court of Justice (ICJ; French: Cour internationale de justice, CIJ), or colloquially the World Court, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN)"
"The Court is composed of a panel of 15 judges elected by the UN General Assembly and Security Council for nine-year terms"
Literally, from the first few paragraphs of wikipedia. People don't read these days.
If the UN general assembly (mostly anti israel) selects the judges how is it "structurally independent of the UN"?
It’s still pretty surprising that a country so armed to the teeth with ground troops and missile defense systems would have let Oct 7 happen for as long as it did, and with so many people dying. I agree that it was wrong of Israel to do that.
The USA, the most powerful nation the world has ever see, is powerless to do anything about it.
If the US can't do anything about it, what hope is there for the underfunded UN?
The USA won't do anything about it because the USA is also guilty of heinous war crimes, crimes against humanity and massive violations of human rights at scale - in fact, it is the worst criminal on the world stage when it comes to un-prosecuted war crimes... so Israel facing justice will only mean that the USA will face the same justice, and we all know that there is nothing more heinous in all the world to an American than to be embarrassed by their state facing justice at the hands of any other international entity.
But the terrible tragedy is that this situation is not going to resolve until these countries actually prosecute their war criminals, who have been getting away with it in the current context for 20+ years. Which means the only ones with any power to do anything about the USA/Israels' war criminals, are the citizens of those countries themselves - which is why the situation is just so dire.
Until there is a real appetite for prosecuting ones own war criminals instead of bleating like sheep for the blood of perceived enemies of other states, there will not be the moral stance/altitude required for Americans to do anything effective about the war crimes of any other nation.
Until Americans prosecute their own war criminals they can do nothing effective about Israels', Russias', Ukraines' war criminals, either ...
I didn't see anywhere that explains that a significant number of hamas fighters are teenagers or that hamas famously uses children as human shields, interesting.
I condemn the terrorist that stands behind a hostage; I condemn the sniper that takes the shot anyway.
The human shields narrative has long been debunked.
Counter argument here: https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/2021964578528104807
Relevant paragraphs:
6. Thousands of Child Combatants are Part of the 70,000 Total
There is no doubt that Hamas and other militant groups use child combatants, in some cases children as young as 12. Demographic analysis of the fatality lists already pointed to this reality, with roughly 2,000 excess deaths among male teens. That inference is now confirmed by direct evidence.
Numerous martyr posters, funeral notices, and social media posts identify underage fighters killed in combat. Most recently, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) publicly acknowledged that 9% of its announced fighters killed were minors, based on its own fighter death lists cross-referenced with Hamas’ fatality list. This shows that combat participation by minors was neither rare nor incidental.
The report states they are not bombing military targets, so you can't explain the numbers away just by saying Hamas may recruit children.
> Israeli forces continued to use high-payload munitions and weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas despite mounting child casualties, the commission said.
Ok, first: The author sits on the board of HonestReporting and writes for NGO Monitor, UN Watch, and the Henry Jackson Society. These are pro-Israel media-monitoring and advocacy organisations.
It paints Hamas's Ministry of Health as a propaganda machine incapable of an honest number (sure) while Israeli military estimates (the 25,000 combatant figure, al-Ahli) are accepted at face value -- seriously? The IDF has been proven to lie numerous times.
Also, the article still relies on the MoH's numbers when it's convenient to the point it's trying to make.
The Gaza Mortality Survey, published in The Lancet Global Health in early 2026, run by Michael Spagat who's a war-mortality specialist (Kosovo, Iraq), with a long record of debunking inflated war-death claims, estimated 75,200 violent deaths between Oct 7, 2023 and Jan 5, 2025, which is around 25,000 more than the official Gaza Ministry of Health figure for that period.
The Lancet survey found that women, children, and older people comprised 56.2% of violent deaths. An OHCHR analysis separately found that 70% of those killed in residential buildings were women and children.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
Let's see, what else: A ratio of 1.5 civilians per combatant means roughly 40% of all deaths are fighters. If 56% of the dead are women, children, and elderly, then every adult male death would have to be a combatant to reach 40% — which is obviously false.
The Washington Institute concluded that the available data cannot yield a civilian-combatant ratio because the MoH doesn't classify combatant status. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/gaza-fat...
The combatants numbers: The 25k combatants figure is an estimate from IDF statements while it dismisses the 8.9k figure (militants the IDF actually identified) as absurd. "Let's make up a number and call the only real documented count" -- and whether it itself is real or not is debatable.
Then lies about natural deaths: Yes, there were about 6.3k deaths in Gaza before the genocide started, however it cherry-picks this subtraction while ignoring the corresponding addition. the same surveys that quantify baseline deathhs also find thousands of excess non-violent deaths caused by genocide. The lancet survey has 8.5k excess deaths. The 3.3k confirmed deaths the article cites are below the 6k baseline. Natural deaths are undercounted. Not inflating it.
Hamas kiling Gazans: Sure, but thousands? It's overblowing numbers for the al-Ahli hospital case and then extrapolating a bunch of bs as a result.
There is a genocide going on. We've seen the footage. We have the testimony about the horrors from both IDF soldiers and Palestinians. Why are we disputing numbers like holocaust deniers?
Ok, at least you are engaging.
A few rebutals: > Yes the author is pro-Israel. I would assume the author the Reuters article is anti-Israel. This doesn't automatically disqualify either account.
> The issue is with the MoH is the breakdown of the numbers, not the overall number. No contradiction.
> He provides an alternative to Lancet. His numbers do not follow Lancet, so mixing his calculations with Lancet's is disingenuous.
> Hamas said they had 40k trained fighters which was about 2% of the population. They also recruited heavily throughout the war. Israel has a standing army of 170,000. The area is an active war zone. These numbers are feasible.
> The 8900 is fighters identified by Israel by name. This is an extremely high standard you are applying to identify fighters overall. For example in Ukraine, this standard would identify most of the 200,00 Russians they have claimed to kill to be civilians.
> Your logic is inconsistent. According to you over a 2 year period Israel couldn't kill tens of thousands of fighters in a large active military all over Gaza but could kill tens of thousands of exposed and trapped civilians in the crossfire but Hamas couldn't have harmed a few thousand of those same civilians.
> No genocide.
> This is not disputing numbers. It's disputing the nature of the conflict.