Israel - Hamas War VII

[kissdbyfire]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

One wonders, is it possible for Hamas to do something that would cause the people in here that defend or minimize Hamas crimes to condemn it?  Are they justified in everything they do? Is the answer always going to be… “it’s complicated” when we wre talking about thousands in of kids getting murdered [and kidnapped]? allot of people are showing their true colors because of this massacre and its so fucking depressing.

I may have missed a few posts, but I haven’t seen anyone here defend Hamas, same as I haven’t seen anyone defend Netanyahu.

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Any group deliberately targeting civilians is committing war crimes.

wholeheartedly agree.

[Daeron the Daring]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

One wonders, is it possible for Hamas to do something that would cause the people in here that defend or minimize Hamas crimes to condemn it?

You miss the point. Hamas is the ethanol here. You're better than them, you get the pass.

[Varysblackfyre321]

8 minutes ago, Ran said:

Palestinian conflict seems to be the order of the day.

Oh god no then.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I may have missed a few posts, but I haven’t seen anyone here defend Hamas, same as I haven’t seen anyone defend Netanyahu.

wholeheartedly agree.

Agreed.  I’m attempting to point out this can easily be flipped.  Further… not here… but in the wider world I’m seeing a disturbing amount of defense for Hamas and vitriol hurled not just at Israel… but at Jews generally.

 

Edited November 1, 2023 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Conflicting Thought]

15 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

One wonders, is it possible for Hamas to do something that would cause the people in here that defend or minimize Hamas crimes to condemn it?  Are they justified in everything they do? Is the answer always going to be… “its complicated” when we wre talking about thousands in of kids getting murdered [and kidnapped]? allot of people are showing their true colors because of this massacre and its so fucking depressing.

Any group deliberately targeting civilians is committing war crimes.

what? every thing hammas has done has been criticized, and rightfully so, so i dont think your change on what i said works at all

[Conflicting Thought]

37 minutes ago, Ran said:

Now, what things is it possible that Israel has already done that you're willing to praise and support?

well nothing comes to mind in the current conflict that i could praise israel for

[Ran]

Many thanks for the honesty, folks.

One super obvious one is the extensive efforts to warn people. Leaflets are dropping daily. Phone calls are being made. These are not things other countries do. 

But then again, if you believe Israel is an illegitimate state, or that it has no right to defend itself by attacking Hamas, or consider attacks against Hamas to be illegal or wrong, then of course their warning people is simply in furtherance of illegality/evil/injustice. Sure.

But you really have no fucking leg to stand on to keep trying to imply other people are being hypocrites, so please, stop.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

if you believe Israel is an illegitimate state, or that it has no right to defend itself by attacking Hamas, or consider attacks against Hamas to be illegal or wrong, then of course their warning people is simply in furtherance of illegality/evil/injustice. Sure.

But you really have no fucking leg to stand on to keep trying to imply other people are being hypocrites, so please, stop.

Who here has said Israel isn’t a legitimate state?

[Zorral]

19 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

in the wider world I’m seeing a disturbing amount of defense for Hamas and vitriol hurled not just at Israel… but at Jews generally.

 

Um, again, this isn't necessarily the case at all.  Quite a few Jewish rabbis, scholars, journalists, etc. led a discussion today in which it was constantly admitted by them and the rest of us that antisemitism is rife -- and the verbal and physical manifestations of them are -- as these are against every other Other on the globe, including women.

What they emphasized as well, over and over, that much of what is characterized as antisemitic which is anti these protests and demonstrations around the wholesale murder of women and children.  These are not to be lumped in with anti-Israel or anti-semitism OR PRO HAMAS.  As on our campuses, there have been individuals who have expressed the most vile of threats against "Jews" but the protests are not that or doing that.  As the thousands-strong Jewish protests going on right here, even in Grand Central Station, are not antisemitic.

How often must this be said, cited, linked etc.?

 

 

[Zorral]

34 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

people in here that defend or minimize Hamas crimes to condemn it?  

Come on Scott.  NOBODY here has done that.  For pete's sake.

[Mudguard]

9 hours ago, Ran said:

This is true for any military power even if they adhere to the LOAC precisely. The US is constantly questioned over pretty much anything it ever does.

There are no requirements for transparency, especially at the time of conflict, and you basically have to trust that they are adhering to the principles they have set out as being important or a matter of international law. I think for the most part, after reading and listening more about this from not just members of the IDF but scholars in the field of the laws of war, experts in urban combat, etc., that broadly speaking the IDF is in fact serious about its efforts to hit appropriate targets and to minimize collateral damage.

Well, I don't trust them, in part because they refuse to be transparent and provide us with factual support to justify what appear to be war crimes to many people.  I tried to fact check the little information we got by googling the name of the Hamas leader, Ibrahim Biari, and the Hamas group that he was leading, Central Jabaliya Battalion, and I got absolutely nothing on either that predates the press conference on that bombing.  As far as I can tell, no English language media ever mentioned his name or his group prior to the bombing.  I can't read Arabic or Hebrew, so I don't know if that is the same in Arabic or Hebrew media.  Maybe he really is a commander, but I can't find anything to support that assertion.  

Also, as I've mentioned before, I think it's reasonable to question the quality of Israeli intelligence in Gaza.  How good can their intelligence be if they totally missed the months of planning and thousands of terrorists involved in the Hamas massacre?  Only reasonable conclusion to me is that it is shit.  Since intelligence is critical for target selection, and their intelligence may be shit, I think they should be showing way more restraint when considering striking heavily populated areas that will result in hundreds of civilian casualties.

Regarding their efforts to minimize collateral damage, it's hard to take those comments seriously if you are aware of the massive scale of the devastation in Gaza.  Essentially blowing up a whole block to get one guy, causing hundreds of civilian casualties is doing their best to minimize civilian casualties?  Got it.  I see little evidence of any restraint.

Israel is on pace to kill about 0.5% of the population in Gaza in a month.  To me and many others, that's insane.  Proportion wise, for the USA that would be over 1.5 million people, and for Israel, that would be over 45,000.  This doesn't make you question whether things are going too far?

[kissdbyfire]

Not in dispute [as far as I can tell]

- Israel is a sovereign & legitimate state

- Hamas is a vile terrorist organisation

- Israel has the right and the obligation to defend its people and the country

- Hamas kicked off the current crisis by attacking innocent civilians in a vile, abhorrent & atrocious terrorist act

- Netanyahu & his far-right cronies are scum, and they will try to use this crisis to their own benefit

In dispute: 

the manner in which Israel has conducted itself and will continue to conduct itself 

[Craving Peaches]

42 minutes ago, Ran said:

Phone calls are being made.

That doesn't help much when communications across the whole strip are down (again). And no amount of inconsistent warning can help people who are unable to move, or those who morally feel they cannot, like doctors who don't want to leave patients. Plus, people get bombed while moving, bombed in the places they are told to evacuate to, are starving, thirsty, lack of medical supplies, suffering from malnourishment etc. All of Gaza is being bombed, most people cannot leave Gaza, so there is nowhere safe for them to go.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

24 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Come on Scott.  NOBODY here has done that.  For pete's sake.

Netanyahu (Likhud) and Hamas love each other.  They empower each other with their violent actions.

On twitter I’m absolutely seeing people attacking Jews generally/defending Hamas. Hell, I’ve had multiple people question whether the attack on a music festival by Hamas was justified because some of the attendees might have been Reserve IDF soldiers.

Hamas and Netanyahu (Likhud) love each other. They empower each other with their violent actions.

[TrueMetis]

4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

No, I did not say that because the refugee camp is old it makes attacking it more defensible. Words have meaning. When you’ve lived there for literally 75 years and it’s a city calling it a refugee camp is really loaded, isn’t it? My post was about the fact it’s a Hamas stronghold and has been since Hamas was founded, and that’s why the IDF attacked it. 

And isn’t every person living in Gaza a refugee? Isn’t everyone a refugee or a descendent if the refugees from the 1947 war? The whole area is a refugee camp.

Ex-fucking-actly. But that means something different to you than it does to me.

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Supply is not the issue. The US is a very large country with a population of over 330 million people and a professional army (i.e. an army composed entirely of people whose job it is to be soldiers). Israel is tiny and and while it has some professional soldiers, the bulk of its army is composed of people who have other jobs and are called up as needed. It cannot possibly maintain a multi-decade war the way the US can because most of its army needs to go back to work.

Israel, population 9.8 million, has a military composing of 169,000 regular duty personnel. That makes it 30th in terms of size. More importantly, Gaza has a population of 2.3 million and according to Israel's own numbers Hamas numbers about 30000. Kind of want people to stop pretending the IDF is some scrappy underdog rather than one of the largest most technologically advanced military's on earth.

[JoannaL]

21 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Um, again, this isn't necessarily the case at all.  Quite a few Jewish rabbis, scholars, journalists, etc. led a discussion today in which it was constantly admitted by them and the rest of us that antisemitism is rife -- and the verbal and physical manifestations of them are -- as these are against every other Other on the globe, including women.

What they emphasized as well, over and over, that much of what is characterized as antisemitic which is anti these protests and demonstrations around the wholesale murder of women and children.  These are not to be lumped in with anti-Israel or anti-semitism OR PRO HAMAS.  As on our campuses, there have been individuals who have expressed the most vile of threats against "Jews" but the protests are not that or doing that.  As the thousands-strong Jewish protests going on right here, even in Grand Central Station, are not antisemitic.

How often must this be said, cited, linked etc.?

 

 

I think we had the discussion yesterday... Obviously there is a  legitimate protest which you could call pro-palestinians. For example there is (at least in Germany )"Pray for Gaza" which is actually something almost everyone can agree on. but a lot of these demostrations  get overwhelmed by some "from the river to the sea" screamers. Which some (but not me ) still interpret as not being antisemitic. and then there are the lunatics which threaten  Jews everywhere. Obviously not everyone who is anti-Israel does this but significantlly more people than before the 7th October.

and these last group of people are getting more widespread. antisemitism is on the rise.

One article of today (there are a lot of articles about this everywhere at the moment) :

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/01/opinions/dagestan-antisemitism-rise-israel-ghitis/index.html

from the article:

"This moment in history has created a perfect storm for antisemitism. The events of the past few weeks have burst the restraints on the far right — where antisemitism is often naked — and on the far and sometimes not-so-far left, where it comes clothed in lofty rhetoric of defending the underdog and contorted historical analysis. "

and

"The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, dismantling the “decolonization narrative” that scholars use against Israel, noted bitterly, “I always wondered about the leftist intellectuals who supported Stalin, and those aristocratic sympathizers and peace activists who excused Hitler.” Now, he said, he sees the same pattern among Hamas apologists and atrocity deniers, who ignore overwhelming evidence of what Hamas is and what it did. "

[Ran]

32 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Who here has said Israel isn’t a legitimate state?

I'm just covering all the bases.

 

29 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

This doesn't make you question whether things are going too far?

If the Gaza Strip were a state, it'd be like the third densest state in the world. It is utterly unique as an urban warfare zone, far denser than anything comparable in recent history except maybe Aleppo, and in Aleppo at least half the population left the warzone, something that Egypt isn't allowing and which Israel won't allow for obvious reasons related to the roots of this whole conflict (still think they should take in women and children, IMO. Once they have a buffer in the north, set up camps and let women and children go there at least.)

So, no, I'm not surprised, and it doesn't make me question it because comparing proportionally doesn't really make sense when actually looking at a discrete campaign. It needs to be compared to other similar campaigns, and as some have noted, the numbers are broadly in line with some of the other urban sieges and battles of the 21st century once you factor the density and the deeply entrenched nature of the opponent who has made a practice of using human shields and has apparently deliberately prevented people from leaving the warzone to better protect themselves. 

It's terrible, but Hamas absolutely has to lose control of Gaza, and some of the fanciful talk of surgical strikes don't realize that you can't "surgically strike" tunnel complexes, they're too deep for a hellfire, you need very heavy bunker busters... or you send in people.

Or maybe you pump in seawater, I guess, like Egypt did years ago to Gazan smuggling tunnels, but that's quite bad for the environment and will likely undermine uncounted buildings.

 

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

Just now, Ran said:

I'm just covering all the bases.

Okay who here has proclaimed the other stuff about thinking Israel had no right to defend themselves?

[Varysblackfyre321]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's terrible, but Hamas absolutely has to lose control of Gaza,

I’m still trying to ascertain what’s the immediate existential threat they pose that justifies all the blood shed that’s already been spelt, will inevitably be spelt and may be spelt to annilate them or whatever.
 

Edited November 1, 2023 by Varysblackfyre321

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Okay who here has proclaimed the other stuff about thinking Israel had no right to defend themselves?

Also covering all the bases. People can check whichever applies to them.