Israel - Hamas War VI

[Fragile Bird]

And we continue.

[Werthead]

I have to say Rushdi Abualouf's reporting from Gaza for the BBC has been outstanding, especially given his personal safety has been in question (he's had several near-misses on-air) and his family are in the Strip, giving him a very personal stake in the story.

[Varysblackfyre321]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/with-new-speaker-us-house-passes-measure-backing-israel-in-barbaric-war-launched-by-hamas/
 

 

[Relic]

Al Jazeera said its bureau chief in Gaza, Wael Al Dahdouh, lost his wife, son, daughter, and grandson in what it said was an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday. The blast hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza where the family was taking shelter after being displaced, according to the news organization.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/25/middleeast/al-jazeera-journalists-family-killed-in-gaza-strike-says-al-jazeera/index.html

Disclaimer - CNN could not independently confirm that this was indeed an IDF air strike. 

 

 

[Zorral]

Why hasn’t Israel’s Gaza offensive started yet?

WaPo gift link:  https://wapo.st/3Q9RHAJ

Quote

 

In the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, some expected Israel to almost immediately launch a ground offensive against Gaza. Speaking to the nation shortly after that attack, which left 1,400 Israelis dead, according to official figures, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered “an extensive mobilization of the reserves to fight back on a scale and intensity that the enemy has so far not experienced.”

Yet despite a speedy mobilization of thousands of Israeli reservists and remarks that the mighty Israel Defense Forces are “ready,” no ground offensive has begun. As my colleague Steve Hendrix reports from Israel, there are growing questions about this apparent delay. “Both those who yearn for the ground war to begin and those who dread it are looking for clues,” he writes. ....

.... Israeli military planners are unlikely to be under any illusions about any of this. They know of all these problems and perhaps more, which is why there has been deliberation about the ground offensive within Israel leadership. “Thank God there are disagreements,” Yaakov Amidror, a former general and Netanyahu’s national security adviser from 2011 to 2013 said to be still consulting with the prime minister, told The Washington Post. “They should argue for hours, for days and nights.”

The biggest argument, of course, is whether Israel can actually achieve its goals in Gaza through a land invasion. Writing in the Financial Times, John Sawers, the former chief of British spy agency MI6, argued that “Israel’s security chiefs know the goal of destroying Hamas is probably beyond their reach” and that even if it were, the question of what comes after it is equally dangerous and requires planning now.

Israel has waited for years, even decades, to exact retribution. The most recent killing linked to Operation Wrath of God, the name given to the covert plot to kill the Palestinian militants who planned or aided the 1972 attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games, was in 1992. It took 20 years after the end of World War II for Herberts Cukurs, a Nazi collaborator dubbed the “Butcher of Latvia,” to be shot dead in Uruguay by Israeli agents.

Can Israel afford to wait this time? Given the public anguish in Israel itself, it may not be politically tenable. But there is much at stake, both in the short term and the long term. As Haaretz’s Amos Harel wrote Wednesday: “A failed offensive in Gaza could be one blow too much for Israeli morale.” 

 

 

[Ran]

5 hours ago, Relic said:

Disclaimer - CNN could not independently confirm that this was indeed an IDF air strike. 

IDF has responded, acknowledging it was a strike against Hamas infrastructure.

This is not the first strike at Nuseriat during this war, or indeed past flare-ups.

Just yesterday -- possibly even the same strike that killed members of Mr. Dahdoud's family, for all I know -- there was strike there that shortly after led to a big secondary explosion that was probably munitions or fuel depoted in tunnels beneath the target location.

[Relic]

5 minutes ago, Ran said:

IDF has responded, acknowledging it was a strike against Hamas infrastructure.

Ok, thanks for that information. You, or rather the IDF (not sure if you are just quoting), calls it "Hamas infrastructure" and I call it a "refugee camp". And despite what either of us call it, the results are the same. Dead sons, daughters, grandparents, parents, cousins, friends, neighbors. And maybe, MAYBE, some dead Hamas fighters and and some destroyed resources.  

Edited October 26, 2023 by Relic

[Ran]

Well, yes. Look up dual-use structures in the laws of war.

Hamas is actively commiting war crimes both against Israelis and its own populace in Gaza sadly.

ETA: Per the updated CNN article, "The IDF said that it was targeting “Hamas terrorist infrastructure.”"

Edited October 26, 2023 by Ran

[Craving Peaches]

Just because Hamas may be using a structure, doesn't mean Israel's obligations under international law just disappear... They don't just get a licence to indiscriminately bomb because Hamas might be storing weapons in a building. The reports that they bomb the very places they told people to evacuate to, or bomb people while evacuating, are troubling.

[Relic]

8 minutes ago, Ran said:

Well, yes. Look up dual-use structures in the laws of war.

 

Ok, so while they might be legally allowed to cause what the West loves to call collateral damage (weird how we are so quick to forgive ourselves for our sins), that doesn't make it any less morally reprehensible. In fact, I would liken it to a terrorist attack. 

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

They don't just get a licence to indiscriminately bomb because Hamas might be storing weapons in a building.

I agree. The IDF bombs with a deal of discrimination, and you've seen all the many reports of their warning people to evacuate specific areas and even buildings. We don't know the exact circumstances of the death of Mr. Dahdoud's family members, whether they were literally in a targetted building or somewhere adjacent to it, if a secondary explosion from Hamas munitions caused the deaths some distance away from the targetted site, etc. I expect the IDF to be questioned about it at their next briefing.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Relic said:

In fact, I would liken it to a terrorist attack. 

The purpose of terrorist attacks are to inflict terror on a populace. That's it. When Hamas shoots untargeted rockets and munitions towards Israeli cities, that's terrorism.  When Hamas fighters were sent out to slaughter innocent civilians, including infants, you showed appropriate disgust for such a terrorist attack. You also opined that it felt like it was very much like the lid blowing off a pressure cooker.

Well, whenever Hamas munition dumps go off in the middle of refugee camps after an Israeli airstrike, it may be a comfort to think that that, too, is not unlike the lid of a pressure cooker going off.

[fionwe1987]

I think if we stretch terms like "collateral damage" to cover situations like this, all we're doing is fitting legal language to actions that are morally indistinguishable from Hamas's.

It's especially troubling when international bodies that do call this out are dismissed. 

If Israel is under the impression that it's  decisions on what is and isn't a suitable target are going to be taken at face value, it is, bluntly, wrong. 

[Tywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Just because Hamas may be using a structure, doesn't mean Israel's obligations under international law just disappear... They don't just get a licence to indiscriminately bomb because Hamas might be storing weapons in a building. The reports that they bomb the very places they told people to evacuate to, or bomb people while evacuating, are troubling.

Just to add to what Ran said, this is why Israel is damned if they do and damned if they don't. They don't want to kill a ton of civilians (I mean, I'm sure some there do, but not most) but they're stuck in a tough spot. Almost any nation would retaliate the way they have if they suffered the single worst assault on their country and would probably use less discretion in the process. Israel doesn't have much of a choice. Hamas needs to be destroyed at this point if peace is ever possible. However they're intentionally hiding like cowards behind civilians. So what do you do? There are no clean answers. 

[Relic]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

Well, whenever Hamas munition dumps go off in the middle of refugee camps after an Israeli airstrike, it may be a comfort to think that that, too, is not unlike the lid of a pressure cooker going off.

You're really hung up on that, huh? But, no, it's no comfort. Especially since one side thinks its NOT a terrorist when it kills civilians. 

[Relic]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So what do you do? There are no clean answers. 

Start by valuing civilian life. You know, its beyond heart-breaking that I'm repeating the same shit i was saying exactly 20 years ago, when the USA was invading Iraq. I hold the USA and Israel to a higher standard than I hold, say, Putin and his regime. We can do better. And if we don't we'll be repeating this same debate in another 20 years. 

Edited October 26, 2023 by Relic

[Craving Peaches]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

However they're intentionally hiding like cowards behind civilians. So what do you do? There are no clean answers. 

This doesn't explain why fleeing people (evacuating on Israeli orders) were reportedly bombed though. Or the video(s) of ambulances that are a good distance away from buildings being bombed while treating the injured.

[Tywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, Relic said:

Start by valuing civilian life. You know, its beyond heart-breaking that I'm repeating the same shit i was saying exactly 20 years ago, when the USA was invading Iraq. I hold the USA and Israel to a higher standard than I hold, say, Putin and his regime. We can do better. And if we don't we'll be repeating this same debate in another 20 years. 

You can hold them to a higher standard, but how disproportionate it should be is debatable. 

Obviously you want to value civilian life. That's why Israel tries to give people in Gaza a heads up, unlike Hamas who doesn't, bombs anything they can and seeks to kill as many innocent people as possible, both in Israel and Gaza. Israel's counter attacking was never going to be perfect and they deserve a ton of blame when they royally fuck up, however, Hamas is still the main villain in this conflict. 

21 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

This doesn't explain why fleeing people (evacuating on Israeli orders) were reportedly bombed though. Or the video(s) of ambulances that are a good distance away from buildings being bombed while treating the injured.

If instances like this are found to be intentional they should be universally condemned. 

[Conflicting Thought]

if hamas is hiding behind civilians (and they are, and its kind of imposible for them not to given how dense gaza is) what is the logical conclution? they will bomb everyone and everything, why wouldnt they, and people will excuse them every time untill eveyone is dead, i guess the "collateral" in this case is all civilan population of gaza. like if they bombe refugee camps? sorry there where some hamas people, if they bomb fleeing people? sorry  military target, there where hamas people hiding between them. hospitals? same. where does it stop? 

[Zorral]

33 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

This doesn't explain why fleeing people (evacuating on Israeli orders) were reportedly bombed though. Or the video(s) of ambulances that are a good distance away from buildings being bombed while treating the injured.

Or why food, water, medical assistance and fuel are being held off, either -- or why the routes and access for this assistance is being bombed and blockaded. 

So here the world is again, with the additional global climate catastrophes as well --

The Second Coming 
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?