ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire

Hi All, I am a combat soldier and commander in the IDF currently fighting in Gaza.

We are not committing any genocide. The give away for Genocide is that there are mass graves, which in Gaza there are not.

Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.

We risk ourselves and our soldiers to ensure that the fewest number of non-combatants get killed. We have lost many of our own soldiers because of this. It would be much easier for us to just bomb everything from the air but we dont, because it's less precise than going in on foot.

Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people, but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible, and we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza and attacking our civilians as they did on October 7th.

We will continue the fight with them until our military objectives are met, and we will also engage Hizbollah on the northern border for exactly the same reasons (Hamas actually stole their plan and used it on October 7th - Hezbollah had planned to do it in the north but much worse).

Israel is the canary in the coal mine. What happens to us today will happen to you tomorrow, so before you give your full throated support to Hamas, let me ask you, would you want October 7th to happen to your family and friends? If Hamas aren't stopped, that same attack will happen around the world.

Please support us and help rid the world of violent terrorism, and maybe one day, we can all live in peace.

Shabbat Shalom!

>> Yes there is collateral damage because Hamas uses civilians as human shields, so we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them.

I struggle to believe this is really a comment by a "commander in the IDF". Such a person should know that the use of civilians as human shields by one side does not absolve the other side from taking every precaution to minimise harm coming to those civilians.

Risk to civilians does not bar military action, but the principle of proportionality requires that precautions be taken to minimize the harm to these protected persons. This analysis includes considerations like whether circumstances permit the attacker to time a military action to minimize the presence of civilians at the location.[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_shield_(law)#Legal_doctr...

Specifically, saying the IDF doesn't target them, they're just in the way, is a cynical denial of that responsibility.

Further, a commander of the IDF would remember the proverb about throwing stones when living in a glass house: there is extensive documentation of the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields by the IDF. See for example the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead (2009):

  10. The use of Palestinian civilians as human shields

  55. The Mission investigated four incidents in which Israeli forces coerced Palestinian civilian
  men at gun point to take part in house searches during the military operations (Chapter XIV).
  The Palestinian men were blindfolded and handcuffed as they were forced to enter houses ahead
  of the Israeli soldiers. In one of the incidents, Israeli forces repeatedly forced a man to enter a
  house in which Palestinian combatants were hiding. Published testimonies of Israeli soldiers who
  took part in the military operations confirm the continued use of this practice, in spite of clear
  orders from Israel’s High Court to the armed forces to put an end to it and repeated public
  assurances from the armed forces that the practice had been discontinued. The Mission
  concludes that this practice amounts to the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and is
  therefore prohibited by international humanitarian law.

https://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/20... (page 19 of the pdf).

Despite Israel's claims Hamas does not use civilians in this way. Instead they fight from built-up areas and make it difficult to distinguish combatant from non-combatant. They "hide among civilians" but they don't "use them as shields".