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provoost | 1 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 This is where proportionality comes in. Military action has to be proportional to the goal.

Attacking a UN camera risks death and injury. Now consider two goals:

1. Prevent negative reports
2. Prevent the death of IDF soldiers from leaked operational information

(2) seems proportional, at least defendable. (1) absolutely not.

And that's where priors come in: if you believe the IDF is fundamentally unethical and just a tool for Netanyalu shenanigans, you might think (1) is the most plausible explanation. I don't think they are, so I find (2) more plausible. Until more information comes in.
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matt | 1 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Ah, I think the disagreement is more on fundamental analysis of the conflict. I’m not suggesting any kind of ethics analysis, but rather that PR is a *major* component in this war, in a way that it isn’t in most other conflicts. Again, a key goal of organizations which seek to destroy Israel is to reduce their standing in the western world, making it less likely they receive lethal aid in the coming decades (and giving these organizations a bigger fighting chance in a decade). This makes negative PR more than just something that looks bad and much more a key part of this fight, strengthening a proportionality argument for shooting towards UN positions (especially when trying to avoid UN personnel). The IDF absolutely understands this, or at least its leadership does, and academic military analysis has given this some treatment.

This is also why I maintain that Israel has been resoundingly losing its war with Hamas since day one, but that’s a very different discussion.
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provoost | 1 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 I agree with you that PR is unusually important in this war. For comparison, the Nazis exploited civilian casualties (in occupied territories) of allied bombing in their propaganda. But that didn't have much effect in the scheme of things. In this conflict you see it has an effect on arms deliveries, etc, though not as substantial as Iran might have hoped.

But even is preventing bad UN reports is a covert war goal, bombing UN facilities is predictably counterproductive - it draws more attention than the reports themselves. So I'm skeptical that the IDF would bother spending the (reconnaissance) resources.
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matt | 1 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 A short-term PR hit trying to force the UN to leave may or may not be worse for PR than the reports of actions in the field over the following months. One is very short-term and the other is very much not.

But really I guess that’s where we just agree to disagree on priors. Sadly, given the evidence of the last six months, I’m not very confident that the IDF is as conservative on decisions of proportionality or care as they were a decade (or two) ago. All evidence points to even close allies having very serious (non-public) questions on proportionality on a regular basis, and given the civilian leadership (who decide military leadership) for the last decade(ish) I don’t find that particularly surprising :(.