This level of destruction doesn’t appear to be consistent with strikes against military targets. If so then it’s a war crime.
Based upon the satellite images posted below the destruction seems way beyond what could be considered proportional harm to civilians in pursuit of a military objective. The level of bombing in North Gaza appears to be consistent with an objective to permanently depopulate the area - destroy everything and no one will live there.
This level of destruction doesn’t appear to be consistent with strikes against military targets. If so then it’s a war crime.
Based upon the satellite images posted below the destruction seems way beyond what could be considered proportional harm to civilians in pursuit of a military objective. The level of bombing in North Gaza appears to be consistent with an objective to permanently depopulate the area - destroy everything and no one will live there.
Western support for Israel's actions, and in particular Biden's conflation of the arms deliveries to Israel that facilitate this destruction with arms sent to Ukraine, is a massive PR win for Putin.
If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd wonder if he was partly responsible for prompting Hamas's atrocities via Iran. The hypocrisy of defending Israeli violence seriously damages the chances of getting political support from countries outside of Nato against Russia.
WHO remains unable to distribute fuel and essential, life-saving health supplies to major hospitals in northern Gaza due to lack of security guarantees. WHO calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire so health supplies and fuel can be delivered safely throughout the Gaza Strip.
Some of the facilities waiting for WHO supplies and fuel in northern Gaza include Al-Shifa hospital, where bed occupancy is already close to 150%. Last night, the Indonesian Hospital was forced to shut down some critical services due to lack of fuel, and is now running with limited functionality. The Turkish Friendship Hospital, the only oncology hospital in the Gaza Strip, remains partially functional due to lack of fuel, putting around 2000 cancer patients at risk.
In addition to the hospitals that have had to close due to damage and attacks, six hospitals across the Gaza Strip have already shut down due to lack of fuel. Unless vital fuel and additional health supplies are urgently delivered into Gaza, thousands of vulnerable patients risk death or medical complications as critical services shut down due to lack of power. These include 1000 patients dependent on dialysis, 130 premature babies who need a range of care, and patients in intensive care or requiring surgery who depend on a stable and uninterrupted supply of electricity to stay alive.
Yesterday, WHO, with support from UNRWA, delivered 34,000 liters of fuel to four major hospitals in southern Gaza and the Palestine Red Crescent Society to sustain its ambulance services. However, this is only enough to keep ambulances and critical hospital functions running for a little over 24 hours.
Some of WHO’s medicines and health supplies have already been delivered to four key hospitals in southern Gaza, as well as to the Palestine Red Crescent Society for distribution to two of its health facilities and ambulance crews. WHO teams delivering the supplies say health staff were so relieved to have replenishments, they took boxes of supplies off the trucks and straight into operating theatres, where doctors have been performing surgeries without anesthesia or other basic surgical supplies.
Concludes
For people in the Gaza Strip, the situation is desperate. It will become catastrophic without the safe and continuous passage of fuel and health supplies, and additional humanitarian assistance. WHO reiterates its calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire for the safe delivery of health supplies and fuel throughout the Gaza Strip.
Western support for Israel's actions, and in particular Biden's conflation of the arms deliveries to Israel that facilitate this destruction with arms sent to Ukraine, is a massive PR win for Putin.
If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd wonder if he was partly responsible for prompting Hamas's atrocities via Iran. The hypocrisy of defending Israeli violence seriously damages the chances of getting political support from countries outside of Nato against Russia.
I doubt very much that Russia was directly involved (to start with Hamas relied upon surprise and we know that the US has been closely monitoring the Russian government).
But yes, overall, this does benefit Putin. Israel is a staunch US ally, and it looks like it will be weakened. Especially in Africa and parts of Asia accusations of hypocrisy are widespread and will probably get worse in the very likely event of an Israeli ground operation in Gaza.
I’m finding this thread strange. The attacks in Israel were awful and sad, so is the response.
You lot are right the bbc etc should really not quote numbers of deaths if it’s clear any numbers could not yet have been gathered. I don’t really know what is standard practise in these things etc but it sounds bad. However I’m finding both the general tone in here weirdly selective / one-sided compared to what I am hearing from main stream centrist sources and that this discussion and outrage at the bbc irresponsibility sits poorly with the fact that in this thread we had someone posting unverified stories about babies being beheaded and no one raised any objection to the sharing of that kind of lurid / emotive detail (as I recall the fact that it was unverified was raised but no one really challenged it being shared).
Beyond that I see complaints certain people don’t condemn hamas* but little sympathy for the Palestinians or comments suggesting Israel should show constraint from many people. Mostly just Ivan’s posts showing sympathy in that direction. I mean on a forum you are entitled to just focus on one aspect without it meaning you disregard or don’t care about others, but I think it’s a bit odd to be so one-sided while criticising the lack of empathy from others.
Just for contrast I have found the Rory Stewart / Alistair Campbell e.g. https://youtu.be/xAs5EOBUDcs?si=hiRyvutBPh28i0ov completely different. I think they are clearly centrists (albeit one Tory and one labour) and hardly Corbyn-like leftists, but to me the picture I get from them is worlds apart from what I get reading this thread.
*for the record, though it seems quite pompous for me to say so (as if me saying it carries any significance or matters for anything), I do condemn what Hamas did, it was awful and I am very sorry for the victims, their friends and their families.
A number of us raised objections/commented upon a certain style of posting in the early days of the Ukraine War thread. We were screamed at, told to f.ck off and most memorably, to "come back when we were mature enough to understand what wars were about" (or similar).
So, for myself, I now don't bother; I leave those who care to, to get on with it: it's just their way of doing things.
Yeah I understand. I can’t recall if I did post in there but certainly most of my memories were seeing as pretty gross and not having time to wade in. So I was mostly just silently appreciating backstep’s injections, at least the ones that weren’t too criptic or silly.
I see things are going well at the UN - clicky. (Israel are demanding Secretary General Guterres resigns and are not issuing visa to UN people. Pretty sure this is not good for diplomacy.)
Here is the speech that has caused the fuss in full (it's not that long) - clicky. Israel's response seems an overreaction to it to me, but am not surprised - Israel's representatives have been responding angrily to any criticism of their actions, as far as I can tell.
I see things are going well at the UN - clicky. (Israel are demanding Secretary General Guterres resigns and are not issuing visa to UN people. Pretty sure this is not good for diplomacy.)
Here is the speech that has caused the fuss in full (it's not that long) - clicky. Israel's response seems an overreaction to it to me, but am not surprised - Israel's representatives have been responding angrily to any criticism of their actions, as far as I can tell.
Israel actions in general are an over reaction. The speech seems quite reasonable to me. Mostly a restatement of established international law.
I see things are going well at the UN - clicky. (Israel are demanding Secretary General Guterres resigns and are not issuing visa to UN people. Pretty sure this is not good for diplomacy.)
Here is the speech that has caused the fuss in full (it's not that long) - clicky. Israel's response seems an overreaction to it to me, but am not surprised - Israel's representatives have been responding angrily to any criticism of their actions, as far as I can tell.
Israel actions in general are an over reaction. The speech seems quite reasonable to me. Mostly a restatement of established international law.
Yes, but If you isolate the '... did not not happen in a vacuum ... ' phrase, it can be made to sound like 'they had it coming' and use that to discredit the UN and its role of protecting non combatants and the wider civilian infrastructure.
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
Meta? I'd say so!
I see things are going well at the UN - clicky. (Israel are demanding Secretary General Guterres resigns and are not issuing visa to UN people. Pretty sure this is not good for diplomacy.)
Here is the speech that has caused the fuss in full (it's not that long) - clicky. Israel's response seems an overreaction to it to me, but am not surprised - Israel's representatives have been responding angrily to any criticism of their actions, as far as I can tell.
Israel actions in general are an over reaction. The speech seems quite reasonable to me. Mostly a restatement of established international law.
Yeah, the speech seems reasonable to me too. Awful people have been using the past to justify Hamas' crimes, but talking about it while stating that it provides no excuses for the October attacks is not doing that.
I’m finding this thread strange. The attacks in Israel were awful and sad, so is the response.
You lot are right the bbc etc should really not quote numbers of deaths if it’s clear any numbers could not yet have been gathered. I don’t really know what is standard practise in these things etc but it sounds bad.
They pushed Hamas's narrative almost entirely uncritically until the narrative was established. It's not just the numbers - the claim was that the hospital was levelled. It wasn't. NYT and AP used photos from different incidents to illustrate it, hell, AP used a photo of grieving relatives that ought to have been obviously unconnected as some of those mourning where wearing kippot. Since then we've had synagogues burned, mobs in the streets going after embassies. Overnight, I discovered a rabbi was stabbed, which may or may not be connected.
The single thing that most commonly caused pogroms was false claims about Jewish malfeasance. I saw was, but I think it is quite optimistic trying to confine that to the past tense.
Despite the evidence being entirely incompatible with Hamas's version of events, they were *much* more critical of the Israeli pushback, even though since then multiple nations investigations, along with OSINT, the AFP's visual verification team etc have all confirmed it was a rocket launched from Gaza, meant to kill Israeli civilians, that instead killed Palestinian ones, though thankfully likely less than a tenth as many as Hamas claimed.
BBC Hamas Stenographers 1.jpg
BBC Hamas Stenographers 2.jpg
Of course it took a little time for the truth to emerge, and in the meantime, the Hamas narrative, unencumbered by any need to conform to reality, spread like wildfire. If it was the first time the BBC had pulled sh.t like this - always assuming the Jewish source is untrustworthy compared to everything else - it might be something, but I have very distinct memories of them hearing a bit of Hebrew during a recording of an antisemitic attack on some f.cking schoolchildren and deciding it was really an anti-Muslim slur, while the attacker's motive got the "allegedly" treatment. Quite why they thought someone would throw a random anti-Muslim slur in English into the middle of a Hebrew sentence, when the words, when parsed as Hebrew, were a necessary part of the sentence I don't know.
Not just the BBC, of course. Papers like the NYT were just as complicit. Coincidentally - or perhaps not coincidenallly - they've just re-hired Soliman Hijjy, who is a big fan of Adolf Hitler.
Sure there is bad journalism and some of it might stem from serious bias. I haven’t looked deeply into the bbc stories to know really tbh, I know you think you have and I can see they and others got this one wrong. I have also read many complaints about various media orgs parroting the Israeli government or IDF line (I also haven’t looked deeply into these), but you only complain about things from one side. I take it you either think there is no such bias or that they are from much less mainstream significant sources? To me it seems highly implausible that you are really an unbiased assessor and things are the way you present them. I think you do have strong biases on this issue
I think you are right to be concerned about violence against Jewish people resulting from inflammatory stories and to remind us of the pogroms. However…
However I’m finding both the general tone in here weirdly selective / one-sided compared to what I am hearing from main stream centrist sources and that this discussion and outrage at the bbc irresponsibility sits poorly with the fact that in this thread we had someone posting unverified stories about babies being beheaded and no one raised any objection to the sharing of that kind of lurid / emotive detail (as I recall the fact that it was unverified was raised but no one really challenged it being shared).
Well we did discuss the degree to which it was verified. And more and more witnesses confirmed it. Despite this, the same far left f.cking vermin that lauded the attack as it happened still denied it, to the point photographs had to be released - not that many of them didn't fall for a 4-Chan level photoshop job to try and pretend that they weren't seeing the charred corpse of a child.
I don’t see how later information changes the fact that it was unverified when you brought it up.
Evidence. Be warned, there are photographs on there where your mental health will be better if you don't see them. Spoiler:
Yes, kids were decapitated, even infants. Women and girls raped until their pelvises broke. Family members tied together and burned alive - we know they were alive because of the soot in the respiratory system. Eyes were gouged out. Genitals cut off, as well as fingers and toes - including from children. A pregnant woman had had her stomach cut open, her unborn baby removed and stabbed.
I *really* don’t want to get into a debate about the detail of whether it happened as I agree with woodchopper’s point that the particular way they were killed is not really important, but I did just finish reading that whole article and what I saw there was the statement that they couldn’t be sure it happened before or after death. I haven’t looked for other evidence or followed this much outside of here, so I am not really trying to argue anything here other than that is what your link says and I expected something else based on your post.
I was going to say at least you put it in a spoiler but then I realised it was mod-chopper who did that. I think that is exactly the kind of emotive presentation of facts and details that can be dangerous. Although I don’t see them in your link (just saying because some might think these details were drawn from that based on your post) I don’t really doubt it’s truth and I don’t really know if it’s right or wrong to hold back on horrific details when they are facts or if it’s better to have them exposed. However a) you clearly put those things together to be as emotive as possible b) I don’t see you describing Palestinian suffering or injustices in an emotive or way or even mentioning them at all.
And again you did just call the bbc irresponsible for making incorrect claims about 500 dead and expressed understandable concerns about violence against Jewish people being the possible result, reminding us of pogroms. But the same can happen to muslims living as minorities in western countries (this is a deep concern of mine) and this kind of emotive thing can drive people to want to lash out so much that they do not consider innocent Palestinians and can lead to far greater numbers dying and a huge humanitarian crisis. I am afraid this is already happening . So I think if you recognise the need to be careful with spreading false information that could lead to harm for Jewish people, I think you should yourself have been more careful with spreading unverified reports.
When I worry about these things leading to harm I alway get myself in a mental knot as to how much difference it makes if the reports are true as they risk the same harm, but maybe the truth does need to be exposed and certainly in contrast there is no excuse for spreading dangerously emotive falsehoods. However as above I think it should at least be consistent. If you want to write emotive details here about the awful things that have been done by hamas , then I think you can also write emotive details about Palestinian suffering when it is verified, and there are many such cases.
And also just to be clear in saying you should be consistent, I am not equating both sides and saying they are equal, or that you should always make them balanced. Just apply the same principles.
I *really* don’t want to get into a debate about the detail of whether it happened as I agree with woodchopper’s point that the particular way they were killed is not really important,
Well I would argue that the way in which they were killed is extremely important - not least because of the nature of the suffering they endured and the pain it causes the survivors. But in addition, because of the insights this provides into the minds of the perpetrators. In this respect even post-mortem abuse is important - because it tells you something about the intentions and desires of the people who carried out the acts - and the intentions and desires of the movement that sent them on the mission.
For an individual - it might make little difference if you are killed by someone who has simply showed callous disregard for your life in the pursuit of their objectives vs being killed by someone whose primary objective is to cause maximum suffering and massacre as many people like you as possible.
The nature of these killings suggests the latter - which should not be surprising given the Hamas charter - but does not bode well for the prospects of peace in the future.
Last edited by bob sterman on Wed Oct 25, 2023 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I *really* don’t want to get into a debate about the detail of whether it happened as I agree with woodchopper’s point that the particular way they were killed is not really important,
Well I would argue that the way in which they were killed is extremely important - not least because of the nature of the suffering they endured and the pain it causes the survivors. But in addition, because of the insights this provides into the minds of the perpetrators. In this respect even post-mortem abuse is important - because it tells you something about the intentions and desires of the people who carried out the acts - and the intentions and desires of the movement that sent them on the mission.
For an individual - it might make little difference if you are killed by someone who has simply showed callous disregard for your life in the pursuit of their objectives vs being killed by someone whose primary objective is it to cause maximum suffering and massacre as many people like you as possible.
The nature of these killings suggests the latter - which should not be surprising given the Hamas charter - but does not bode well for the prospects of peace in the future.
That would be a good point if the infants were the only victims. But we know from what happened to all the other victims that the aim was to cause as much suffering as possible to as many people as possible.
I *really* don’t want to get into a debate about the detail of whether it happened as I agree with woodchopper’s point that the particular way they were killed is not really important,
Well I would argue that the way in which they were killed is extremely important - not least because of the nature of the suffering they endured and the pain it causes the survivors. But in addition, because of the insights this provides into the minds of the perpetrators. In this respect even post-mortem abuse is important - because it tells you something about the intentions and desires of the people who carried out the acts - and the intentions and desires of the movement that sent them on the mission.
For an individual - it might make little difference if you are killed by someone who has simply showed callous disregard for your life in the pursuit of their objectives vs being killed by someone whose primary objective is it to cause maximum suffering and massacre as many people like you as possible.
The nature of these killings suggests the latter - which should not be surprising given the Hamas charter - but does not bode well for the prospects of peace in the future.
That would be a good point if the infants were the only victims. But we know from what happened to all the other victims that the aim was to cause as much suffering as possible to as many people as possible.
Sorry - don't understand how that is inconsistent with my point?
Well I would argue that the way in which they were killed is extremely important - not least because of the nature of the suffering they endured and the pain it causes the survivors. But in addition, because of the insights this provides into the minds of the perpetrators. In this respect even post-mortem abuse is important - because it tells you something about the intentions and desires of the people who carried out the acts - and the intentions and desires of the movement that sent them on the mission.
For an individual - it might make little difference if you are killed by someone who has simply showed callous disregard for your life in the pursuit of their objectives vs being killed by someone whose primary objective is it to cause maximum suffering and massacre as many people like you as possible.
The nature of these killings suggests the latter - which should not be surprising given the Hamas charter - but does not bode well for the prospects of peace in the future.
That would be a good point if the infants were the only victims. But we know from what happened to all the other victims that the aim was to cause as much suffering as possible to as many people as possible.
Sorry - don't understand how that is inconsistent with my point?
I mean that we don't need to know specifically about the infants' deaths. Their circumstances don't help us to reach a conclusion because we can already assume the motives of the attackers.
I mean that we don't need to know specifically about the infants' deaths. Their circumstances don't help us to reach a conclusion because we can already assume the motives of the attackers.
This level of destruction doesn’t appear to be consistent with strikes against military targets. If so then it’s a war crime.
Based upon the satellite images posted below the destruction seems way beyond what could be considered proportional harm to civilians in pursuit of a military objective. The level of bombing in North Gaza appears to be consistent with an objective to permanently depopulate the area - destroy everything and no one will live there.
Israel's denial of responsibility for the hospital explosion is now looking questionable.
It looks like the earlier explanation needs to be reassessed.
But we can still be confident that what exploded in the hospital year isn't consistent with a bomb dropped by an Israeli aircraft. If it had been an Israeli bomb the damage would have been far worse and different to what was photographed.
Israel's denial of responsibility for the hospital explosion is now looking questionable.
It looks like the earlier explanation needs to be reassessed.
But we can still be confident that what exploded in the hospital year isn't consistent with a bomb dropped by an Israeli aircraft. If it had been an Israeli bomb the damage would have been far worse and different to what was photographed.
Yes it doesn't like a bomb, but it's further evidence that reporting Israeli claims at face value is no more sensible than doing the same for Hamas's claims. As others have noted above.
Israel's denial of responsibility for the hospital explosion is now looking questionable.
It looks like the earlier explanation needs to be reassessed.
But we can still be confident that what exploded in the hospital year isn't consistent with a bomb dropped by an Israeli aircraft. If it had been an Israeli bomb the damage would have been far worse and different to what was photographed.
Yes it doesn't like a bomb, but it's further evidence that reporting Israeli claims at face value is no more sensible than doing the same for Hamas's claims. As others have noted above.
The evidence, both the damage and the footage we have of the immediate aftermath of the impact, is compatible with a rocket impact and deflagation.
It is not compatible with a shell, nor with a bomb, nor with any large detonation.
It has been assessed by multiple intelligence agencies, all of whom came to the same conclusion. The same is true for serious OSINT analysts, including many that are normally very critical of Israel.
Nobody "repeated Israeli claims at face value", not even those who were happy to do that with Hamas claims. For example, there's the BBC headlines I posted above - the Israeli claim, which was correct, got a "we aren't able to verify this". The Hamas claim, which was f.cking fiction, did not.
Are we to ignore the UK, US and France initial verdicts?
Yes, it's very important to both sides this and treat a terrorist group with a call to genocide written into their founding charter and a democracy - albeit a flawed one with a very unpleasant government at present - as equivalent.
It's unbelievable how some people just repeat the lies of a terrorist group.
Yesterday Biden got asked about the Gaza death toll claimed by Hamas and said he has "no confidence on the numbers".
My twitter feed was full of people angry about this comment and calling Biden a genocide denier. And I don't even follow the worst Corbynite end of left wing commentators.
It's unbelievable how some people just repeat the lies of a terrorist group.
Yesterday Biden got asked about the Gaza death toll claimed by Hamas and said he has "no confidence on the numbers".
My twitter feed was full of people angry about this comment and calling Biden a genocide denier. And I don't even follow the worst Corbynite end of left wing commentators.
On this, the Guardian have just done a bit on the Gazan casualty numbers - clicky I have been wondering why Important People have been suggesting that the Health Ministry can't be trusted to count properly when I haven't noticed that happening in the past. It's mostly a guy from Human Rights Watch explaining why they trust the Health Ministry numbers. The TL/DR is that he says they've been accurate in the past.
Personally, I wouldn't take anything counted while bombs are still falling as gospel because of the bombs complicating things (which is also pointed out in the article). I wouldn't call anyone who questioned Hamas's trustworthiness a genocide denier, because there's good reason to do that too.
While Hamas are c.nts, there is also an incentive for Israel to make you unsure about how many civilians they are killing - which is going to be a number far greater than zero - as it is harder to complain or care about civilian deaths if you don't know how many there are.
On this, the Guardian have just done a bit on the Gazan casualty numbers - clicky
Nice how the Guardian edited Biden's remarks - to remove the intermediate sentence where he was telling Israel to avoid civilian casualties. Almost as if they want to make him seem like he doesn't care about civilian casualties?
Guardian
I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” the US president said. “But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.
... I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.
I think we should be incredibly careful. I think — well, not “we” — the Israelis should be incredibly careful to be sure that they’re focusing on going after the folks that are the pr- — propagating this war against Israel. And it’s against their interest when that doesn’t happen.
But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.
. So I think if you recognise the need to be careful with spreading false information that could lead to harm for Jewish people, I think you should yourself have been more careful with spreading unverified reports.
