Israel - Hamas War 2

[Craving Peaches]

13 minutes ago, Lord of Oop North said:

Do you actually read these articles? You are saying intentional, but even the article by Amnesty says allegedly. That article is also from 2014.

Yes, I did, it is there to show that such a thing has supposedly happened before... The fact that ambulances are apparently repeatedly targeted is not a good sign.

Obviously it will never be possible to verify 100%, but the fact that medics on the ground say it is happening is a strong indication for me that it is happening. The medic who experienced it says the first strike was almost immediately followed by a second...

Edited October 13, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[Craving Peaches]

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/the-rules-of-war-and-human-rights-in-the-israel-hamas-war

[Lord of Oop North]

8 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Yes, I did, it is there to show that such a thing has supposedly happened before... The fact that ambulances are apparently repeatedly targeted is not a good sign.

Obviously it will never be possible to verify 100%, but the fact that medics on the ground say it is happening is a strong indication for me that it is happening. The medic who experienced it says the first strike was almost immediately followed by a second...

Someone saying that something is intentional, does not make it so. The person on the ground in that situation is not in a good position to determine intent. They are in a very poor position to do so.

That being said, if there are intentional attacks on medical personnel, then obviously that is wrong, it should be investigated, and if true, the perpetrators punished.

[Craving Peaches]

3 minutes ago, Lord of Oop North said:

Someone saying that something is intentional, does not make it so. The person on the ground in that situation is not in a good position to determine intent. They are in a very poor position to do so.

That being said, if there are intentional attacks on medical personnel, then obviously that is wrong, it should be investigated, and if true, the perpetrators punished.

If you want it to be completely verified, the Israeli army would have to say whether they did it or not. But if they deliberately did it, they would most likely never admit it because it would be bad PR and it is a crime. They didn't admit they deliberately targeted Shireen Abu Akleh, even though they clearly did. First they claimed militants killed her, then they said she was 'accidentally' shot by their forces, and refused to undertake an investigation into the matter. So I don't have much hope this will be investigated.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Bael's Bastard said:

This gov is finished, but no Israeli gov would have stood for this attack without response. Hamas committed this act. They might have benefitted from a failure of Netanyahu's gov, but the murder is still on Hamas.

I do want Hamas to pay. I just don't need to see the bodies right this instant, at the expense of innocent lives, and any urgency from that government at the cost of Israeli reputation will only infuriate me more.

41 minutes ago, Jace, Extat said:

War. Shit happens. It's not a nice answer but it's the only one that's true.

It's not an actual war. Both Hamas and the Netanyahu government have an interest in presenting this as a war, but it's really not. Hamas is no proper military, but a terrorist organization with a wide recruitment base of fanaticized kids. They have mostly AK-47s, some Soviet machine guns, and a lot of makeshift rockets, but hardly any heavy or modern equipement.
If Hamas could wage a war, it probably would. But it can't, and it makes all the difference. It's why it targets civilians, it's why it hides in urbanized areas, and it's why trying to hit it always means civilian casualties, thus keeping the recruitment up through the glorification of martyrdom.
Its not an actual war, but it can become an actual genocide. And btw, genocide is defined by actions, not by intent.

[Padraig]

7 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

So I don't have much hope this will be investigated.

If this is the incident from 2014, I think that is fair to conclude.

But honestly, I don't think you are doing yourself any favours by insisting that Israel is the worst of the worst.   Or joint worst ever. 

However bad the attacks are on Gaza (and they are harsh), it is correct to say that Israel could do much worse.  You can say what they are doing is very bad or shocking without driving everything up to 11.  i know in modern society we can't help ourselves though.

Anyhow, thanks to those who showed the immediate polling.  We'll see what happens but that was interesting.  And I wasn't aware of the ethnicity of Egyptians.  I thought I knew stuff...

And finally.

Given what happened in Israel, it is depressing that the focus couldn't be on the victims there, and we aren't immediately onto the next set of victims.  One of the most shocking things I read was from the father of an Irish-Israeli woman who said (after his daughter was missing for a number of days) that it was a blessing to learn that his daughter was dead.  The only alternative being that she was kidnapped.

You couldn't get much more of a stomach punch.

So, I don't know.  We can only mourn the victims and await more to come.

[Werthead]

28 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It's not an actual war. Both Hamas and the Netanyahu government have an interest in presenting this as a war, but it's really not. Hamas is no proper military, but a terrorist organization with a wide recruitment base of fanaticized kids. They have mostly AK-47s, some Soviet machine guns, and a lot of makeshift rockets, but hardly any heavy or modern equipement.

"Makeshift rockets" is a bit of a misnomer. Missiles launched from the Gaza Strip have a range of up to 160km (the Ukrainians would kill for more weapons with that kind of range), and can have fairly sizeable warheads, enough to level houses and damage apartments. The smuggling routes into Gaza allow the missiles' components to be shipped in separately from Iran and other hostile states and then assembled on-site, under cover. The growing sophistication and technical ability of Hamas missiles fired from Gaza has been a concern for Israel for some time, and their ability to both assemble and fire large numbers of missiles in short periods of time despite the current bombardment of the Gaza Strip is proof of the resilience of the pipeline.

[Craving Peaches]

8 minutes ago, Padraig said:

But honestly, I don't think you are doing yourself any favours by insisting that Israel is the worst of the worst.   Or joint worst ever.

I never said this.

I never said that Israel was the worst, or that it was as bad as Hamas, or anything like that. I said that a stray bomb would be different to targeting ambulances, and that based on what has happened in the past, I don't have high hopes of it being investigated by them.

11 minutes ago, Padraig said:

You can say what they are doing is very bad or shocking without driving everything up to 11

How am I doing this? I put sources in my posts to avoid any confusion or sensationalism. 

18 minutes ago, Padraig said:

One of the most shocking things I read was from the father of an Irish-Israeli woman who said (after his daughter was missing for a number of days) that it was a blessing to learn that his daughter was dead.  The only alternative being that she was kidnapped.

That's just awful. No parent should have to go through that.

[Lord of Oop North]

12 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

How am I doing this? I put sources in my posts to avoid any confusion or sensationalism. 

Let's think about this for a second.

Your last post literally had two sources, and then you said "Stray bombs are one thing, intentionally targeting ambulances is quite another."

However, those two sources are neither proof nor disproof of such a claim (and one in fact is a 9 year old article). Some might said that your comment is the literal definition of sensationalism, or "driving everything up to 11". Your comment is no different than a sensational headline.

Now, you may be right. Perhaps everything is intentional and Israel hates ambulances. But you also may be wrong, and yet you frame everything in an extremely one-sided way.

I am not saying you are wrong, but perhaps you should reflect on that possibility before making constant barrages of posts with such certainly about what has happened.

 

Edited October 14, 2023 by Lord of Oop North

[Craving Peaches]

2 minutes ago, Lord of Oop North said:

Your last post literally had two sources, and then you said "Stray bombs are one thing, intentionally targeting ambulances is quite another."

After your comment I edited that post to say 'would be quite another' because as you pointed out, it was implying the attacks were confirmed when they were not.

[Craving Peaches]

I fear for the hostages. I really do not think Hamas will release them. As others have said, it benefits them to have Gaza blockaded and bombed because it grants them more support. I worry that the hostages will die or are already dead, and because they are not released, the blockade of Gaza will continue and innocent people in there will also die. Hamas claims some of the hostages were killed in airstrikes.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[Kalbear]

Getting away for a bit and thinking made me understand a reason why I seem to care so much more about what's happening to Palestinians right now than I am talking about the evil Hamas did.

And that's because what Hamas did is in the past. There is nothing I can do to change that. Nothing anyone can. It's horrible, reprehensible, and an act of evil. My desire is to see the perpetrators punished severely and make sure this cannot happen again by them. 

What's happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza is happening right now. There are choices being made that are going to save or condemn hundreds of thousands of lives. Those, in some small way, I might be able to have some power to help. Simply giving food and water to the 1.1 MILLION people who are now fleeing however they can to southern Gaza will save thousands of lives. 

So yeah, that's something I'm going to talk about - and I'm going to talk more about what the Israeli government choices can do to make those better - because those choices are ongoing. What I really don't want to do is talk about punishing Netanyahu and his cabinet later for crimes against humanity. 

 

[Craving Peaches]

Just now, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

What's happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza is happening right now. There are choices being made that are going to save or condemn hundreds of thousands of lives. Those, in some small way, I might be able to have some power to help.

I admire your optimism. The whole situation makes me feel so helpless and useless. No way to help the victims of the Hamas attacks, and I don't think there is much I can do to help the innocents in Gaza as the person of highest authority in my country can't do much...

[karaddin]

9 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

How? Nobody ever actually has a doable answer for how Israel could have reacted to the Hamas attack differently. Not this time or any previous time. It is always some impossible "target Hamas only" or don't respond at all fantasy. 

I don't have a detailed 500 page action plan and I'm not going to pretend I'm a genius with all the answers, but I'd start with not giving Hamas the response they were trying to provoke. You're not going to end Hamas by bombing Gaza flat, you're going to push more people into their arms for the next few decades doing that.

You kill Hamas for good by choking off their recruitment, and the best way to do that is make people not want to join them in the first place. Killing them where possible can certainly form one component of that, I suspect that being able to actually prosecute some of them would be even better but I accept that's a tall order in the immediate aftermath - but using the justice system reframes it in a helpful way. It's not a war between two equal powers, it's a democratic nation doing it's best to protect it's people against a group of terrorists commiting crimes. Diminish them in the public (both Israel and Gaza) view so they aren't seen as an actual "alternative".

Demonstrate wherever possible that you value the lives of Palestinian civilians more than Hamas ever will. The blockade does the opposite of this and the whatever current military goals it serves do not outweigh the harm it does in this aspect. This isn't even getting into the moral component, it's my opinion this harms strategic objectives although the moral component is much larger for me personally. 

Do everything possible to provide medical care for civilians hurt as collateral damage in the strikes against Hamas targets you feel you have to make. Under the circumstances it's admittedly challenging to have the Palestinian civilians trust it, but perhaps set up dedicated facilities within Israel to provide this treatment - and don't make it a ghetto camp. To avoid the latter you probably need to do extensive screening but if you're working with the hospitals within Gaza you can do triage on which patients would be suitable to transfer to these.

Really put some effort into outreach to alternatives to Hamas and work to elevate their profile and also advocate against escalation of the conflict. Again I'm making this sound easier than it would be, as you risk making them be seen as a puppet if you do this in the wrong way - it's extremely hard and I'm not intending to paper over that.

I'll accept that you need to be making some strikes still, but be very discerning in when you choose to do it. There's minimal military value to bombing a building that Hamas were in if they're already gone by the time you hit it, some specific ones might have some value in denying their future use but that's going to be the exception not the rule. 

Essentially - attack the support base of Hamas primarily alongside engaging them wherever you can directly engage them. Now obviously this isn't going to happen with the current administration, but I think that would be a better response to this attack than what we're seeing.

[Zorral]

 

Homemade rockets and modified AK-47s: An annotated look at Hamas’ deadly arsenal

To Lyons, this is the conundrum when more sophisticated militaries leave equipment behind on the battlefield – it may eventually wind up in the hands of terrorist groups.

“This could have been filmed 40 years ago. This is the same equipment,” Lyons said. “They’re simply designed, and they’re designed to work in the most austere and worst conditions in the world.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/13/middleeast/hamas-weapons-invs/index.html

Quote

 

.... Spencer noted that modifications like these are often a sign of an unprofessional, yet still dangerous force.

“If it was all standardized, that would be a sign of professionalization,” he said. “You can make minor modifications to older equipment to make it just as effective or make it a little more effective or ergonomic.”

Some of the AK-47s, according to several experts, are also likely old Soviet weapons that were left behind during the federation’s invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Others may be old Chinese weapons funneled into the terrorists’ weapons network. Some may have come from Iraq, where Saddam Hussein bought AK-47s by the thousands. Also, a slew of small arms from Libya penetrated the black market in the 2010s, experts say.

To Lyons, this is the conundrum when more sophisticated militaries leave equipment behind on the battlefield – it may eventually wind up in the hands of terrorist groups.

“This could have been filmed 40 years ago. This is the same equipment,” Lyons said. “They’re simply designed, and they’re designed to work in the most austere and worst conditions in the world.” ....

 

 

Edited October 14, 2023 by Zorral

[Gorn]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

It's not an actual war. Both Hamas and the Netanyahu government have an interest in presenting this as a war, but it's really not. Hamas is no proper military, but a terrorist organization with a wide recruitment base of fanaticized kids. They have mostly AK-47s, some Soviet machine guns, and a lot of makeshift rockets, but hardly any heavy or modern equipement.

If Hamas could wage a war, it probably would. But it can't, and it makes all the difference. It's why it targets civilians, it's why it hides in urbanized areas, and it's why trying to hit it always means civilian casualties, thus keeping the recruitment up through the glorification of martyrdom.
Its not an actual war, but it can become an actual genocide. And btw, genocide is defined by actions, not by intent.

Of course it's war, by every possible definition of the word "war".

Quote

 

war /wôr/ noun

a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.

 

Gaza has been defacto independent since 2005, and Hamas is the defacto government and military of Gaza. On October 7th, state of Gaza invaded the state of Israel. The fact that it was an insane (and evil) thing to do doesn't make it less of an act of war.

Hamas and Gaza are not completely separate entities any more than France and French government are. In terms of geopolitics, Hamas and Gaza are one and the same. The fact that it is militarily weaker than Israel doesn't remove its agency or responsibility for its actions.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Gorn

[Bael's Bastard]

For those who find Netanyahu's allowance of billions in Qatari funding to Gaza through Hamas questionable, you might want to be a bit more skeptical about relying so uncritically on Qatari state media Al Jazeera as an unbiased source of information on the conflict.

[Rippounet]

Maybe it would be best if this was a fake account (?). 6000 seems a lot to me.

https://twitter.com/IAFsite/status/1712484101763342772

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

"Makeshift rockets" is a bit of a misnomer. Missiles launched from the Gaza Strip have a range of up to 160km (the Ukrainians would kill for more weapons with that kind of range), and can have fairly sizeable warheads, enough to level houses and damage apartments. The smuggling routes into Gaza allow the missiles' components to be shipped in separately from Iran and other hostile states and then assembled on-site, under cover.

I've always heard and read Qassam rockets were made in the Gaza strip, rather than being re-assembled missiles from Iran.
Iran did help make them quite efficient by training engineers, but I don't believe they have reached the point were they can be used efficiently against military targets, have they? From what I gather, they can overwhelm the iron dome through sheer numbers, but never had actual military value. The latest attacks didn't disprove my impression - but perhaps you have a source?

4 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Of course it's war, by every possible definition of the word "war".

If you want to be litteral, sure. Not sure it's much of a war if the overwhelming majority of casualties on both sides is civilian, and only one side has true military equipment though. I doubt Hamas has any ability to inflict more harm on Israel at this point.
If the objective was to limit such ability on the future, I second the notion that focusing on its ability to recruit was paramount.
A measured response would really have helped in so many ways... But the sheer destruction inflicted in less than a week seems objectively unconscionable to me. I don't see a "war," I don't see military objectives, just the deliberate infliction of tragedy in retaliation, a brutal reminder that for some time now Israel's driving policy has been to inflict more pain than it takes.
I've always wanted to support Israel, always hoped it could find a way to be a project that could be respected and defended rather than feared. I'm heartbroken, because I don't see how it can ever be that, which means there is nothing left to believe in, and decades of conflict and countless deaths have been in vain. As far as I'm concerned, Hamas has achieved crushing victory.

[Varysblackfyre321]

8 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

A measured response would really have helped in so many ways... But the sheer destruction inflicted in less than a week seems objectively unconscionable to me.

Yeah. I’ll be honest in the past I’ve been more sympathetic to the force Israel used in Gaza against Hamas. Hamas is a terror org and they do employ civilians as shields in the midst of trying to kill Israelis/bomb Israel making some of the calls to bomb a place a bit more nuanced sometimes, not to say every hospital  bombings can be lumped off as justified or unavoidable, or a necessary risk to reduce harm, 

But the response Hamas hasn’t been proportionate. It’s been near or about genocidal and past a certain amount of dead kids and babies being caused by the hospitals losing their power and water being deprived I honestly just grow annoyed with the blather on how Hamas did bad and is bad especially when no one in a conversation is saying it’s good and is just calling on Israel not to do war crimes.

I mean for goodness sake can the president of Israel whose supposed to be a mascot of Israel not say shit like this?

https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-13/israeli-president-says-gazans-could-have-risen-up-to-fight-hamas

Quote

"It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It's not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It's absolutely not true. 

"They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup 'd état

2 hours ago, karaddin said:

I'll accept that you need to be making some strikes still, but be very discerning in when you choose to do it.

yeah it’s silly to frame it as Israel has basic carblace to do anything and everything or nothing. 

[horangi]

OK, I am hesitant to even step into this discussion.  That said, today, October 13, Ukraine claims to have inflicted 1030 casualties on the forces of Russia plus over 120 vehicles and 44 artillery pieces destroyed.  Granted, Ukraine has an incentive to exaggerate successes, and we have to assume Ukraine losses were a significant percent of the losses to Russia.  Why are the vast majority of posts dealing with the horrors in the Levant vs what is happening in Ukraine?  Literally the horrors lashed out by either side which have spawned multiple threads here have been just the norm for whats happening to their North-East.

 

Edited October 14, 2023 by horangi