Hamas’s Qassam Brigades has threatened to execute Israeli captives if Israel continues to bombard and kill civilians in Gaza.
“Any targeting of innocent civilians without warning will be met regretfully by executing one of the captives in our custody, and we will be forced to broadcast this execution,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades.
“We regret this decision but we hold the Zionist enemy and their leadership the responsibility for this,” he said.
Rest assured, I understand the mess fairly well. I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Middle East and know several Palestinians and Israelis.
There’s quite a lot that I’d strongly criticize Israel for, but intentional murder and rape of civilians is something that can never be justified, no matter how much critical theory you read.
And in that I agree (even if young soldiers with guns and permission to do whatever they want tend to commit large amounts of sexual violence against civilian populations…)
But you specifically brought up
You can MAYBE argue against the livestreaming, but it isn’t like news agencies around the world aren’t regularly doing stories on the human rights violations and apartheid in Gaza (and, to a much lesser extent, the West Bank).
1 are you arguing that young Israeli soldiers would be raping away in the same manner?
2 maybe argue against livestreaming killing hostages?
I am not aware of any “on the record” incidents of IDF soldiers raping Palestinians. However, a bit of research shows a pretty horrific series of articles about IDF commanders allowing Hamas prisoners to rape IDF soldiers but…
Similarly, there are documented accusations of rape by Israeli soldiers during past wars.
But, beyond that: it is pretty much “known” that soldiers will use sexual violence as a weapon during war. It is one of the horrors of war that shows up pretty much no matter what army is involved.
So… while I am not going to accuse Israeli soldiers of rape (and actively didn’t), that is not the line in the sand I would use to argue why one set of violent thugs are better than others.
And I already addressed the distinction without difference of executing Palestinian civilians in an open air prison being held hostage to try to encourage other Palestinians to “behave” in front of news cameras versus on twitter.