A main courthouse in Gaza has been destroyed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), according to several Israel media outlets.

Footage, showing the demolition of the Palace of Justice, was published on 4 December by Israel media.

  • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I mean, I get it. I don’t support it, but I get it. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and Israel is trying to overthrow Hamas. This is a Hamas building that they use to exert power, which is Israel’s justification for destroying it.

    • Silverseren@kbin.socialOP
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      11 months ago

      The issue is then any and every building can be justified as being a “Hamas building” just because they were the group in charge.

        • evranch@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          Hamas is famous for brutal and public executions in the name of justice. I can definitely see the courthouse being a symbol of terror for the local population, and something you would tear down when attempting to remove a tyrannical government.

          • Womble@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            No its vandalism. The revolutionaries in France didn’t demolish the Bastille or the Versailles palace, they chopped the heads off the people who used those centres of power. The Bolsheviks didnt burn down the Kremlin. The buildings themselves are just containers, demolishing them does nothing but impoverish the area (which clearly is Israel’s goal here) .

            • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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              11 months ago

              Er, they absolutely did destroy the Bastille. The revolutionary leader Mirabeau started it himself.

              I mean we can disagree on the morality of things, but let’s at least keep the facts correct. You’ll find that you cannot visit the Bastille today. Because the Revolutionaries demolished it as a symbol of the monarchy.

                • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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                  11 months ago

                  On the contrary, it’s incredibly believable, because people generally care much more about their own personal emotional validation than anything annoying that might get in the way of that, like facts.

                  All while simultaneously circlejerking over how rational and logical we all are, as opposed to those idiot conservatives!

                  Snark aside, I’ve started to believed that, any time people get emotionally or socially attached to some issue - which includes their own identity as a “good person” - their brains simply shut off, and it takes a level of active work and elevation of truth over validation to overcome that on any platform like this.

                  • livus@kbin.social
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                    11 months ago

                    @BraveSirZaphod I think a lot of it’s just the human tendency to be lazy about sourcing.

                    Once at a dinner party I overheard someone confidently telling the people at the other end of the table something that I’d just told him about 20 minutes earlier. There’s no way he’d had time to verify it but he was already treating it as factual.

    • livus@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      @Stovetop it doesn’t make any sense.

      Buildings are inanimate parts of civil infrastructure. They don’t have allegience to whichever administration is currently using them.

        • livus@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          @BraveSirZaphod unlike the person above I don’t think that’s a very good comparison.

          When citizens affect a regime change of their society themselves, they are in a position to decide which amenities to keep for their future use and which they can do without.

          When a hostile outside force is affecting a regime change, destroying civil infrastructure so that whoever is left can’t use it after the war, is a form of salting the earth.

      • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Buildings are more than just the bricks they’re made of. They’re symbols which are associated with the regimes and social institutions that made them.

        For instance, the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 was not random choice, it was because the buildings stood for capitalistic greed and the way in which the United States wields capitalism as a weapon to exert dominance against other nations.

        I think it’s a waste, this whole war is an atrocity and Israel should have stopped at day 1, but it’s not like the destruction of this building is just a spite move against the common people. It’s a courthouse used to enforce laws from a regime that the invading force is trying to overthrow. It’s like the British burning down the White House in the War of 1812.

        • livus@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          @Stovetop which the British should not have done. But this is not an isolated incident; it’s in a wider context of civil architecture destruction:

          Among the buildings destroyed or partially destroyed are the main Palestinian court in Gaza, known as the Justice Palace, the Palestinian Legislative Council complex, 339 education facilities and 167 places of worship, while 26 of the territory’s 35 hospitals are not functioning.

          Hugh Lovatt, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, suggested Israel was “deliberately and methodically destroying the civil institutions and infrastructure that will be needed to govern and stabilise post-conflict Gaza”.