Israel - Hamas War VII

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

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

I don’t think anyone here whose posted here fits any of those categories.

[kissdbyfire]

And some of those "boxes" won't be checked by anyone posting here. Just to make that clear, too.

[Relic]

24 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

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.

Get off of Twitter. Absolute cesspool.

[Varysblackfyre321]

2 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

And some of those "boxes" won't be checked by anyone posting here. Just to make that clear, too.

Well we may get an unironic nazi trying to weasel their way into the conversation to espouse legit anti-semitism and nazi apologia.

But that hasn’t happened here so far as I can tell.

[Kalbear]

46 minutes ago, Ran said:

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. 

As I mentioned previously this is, in fact, something many countries do regularly. The US did so in 1945 and actually flew combat missions over Japanese airspace to drop leaflets for the people there. The Iraq army did so in Fallujah when fighting ISIS. Israel can do it with a lot more precision, which is interesting - they can call or message specific phones in specific areas or even homes, and that's pretty technically marvelous. Gotta give them props for that. But communicating to civilians that they're going to be in danger is not actually that weird. 

 

5 minutes ago, Ran said:

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. 

I'd be curious to see that 'broadly in line' with other sieges. I compared it to Fallujah and it wasn't remotely close so far. Wert compared it to Beirut and it was much higher than that, over a much shorter period of time. It wasn't close to Sarajevo. The conflicts that it does fall in line with in terms of deaths per day are similar to Syria or Darfur, and both of those experienced genocidal attempts at wiping out the populations. Do you have other info that shows 8000 civilians killed in 25 days is broadly similar to something?

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

they can call or message specific phones in specific areas or even homes, and that's pretty technically marvelous.

It's the phone calls, yes, which is the most unusual part.

I think the "roof knocking" is also an innovation on their part.

Mmm, I was looking at some military or legal analyst who was discussing lessons from Aleppo or Mosul or some such. I'll have to  see if I can find it in my timeline.

ETA: This interesting piece. Mosul lost 0.6% of its civilian population, and that's with people having left in large numbers. 0.2% of the civilian population was killed in the three weeks of the first battle of Fallujah, to 0.3% in Gaza.

(Bear in mind that the only figure we get for Gaza is the Health Ministry, which calls all dead civilian. We may never really know how many Hamas fighters are among that number, though analysis of the death roll for any spikes of men of fighting age, as was the case in 2014, would be interesting.)

Edited November 1, 2023 by Ran

[Ran]

Speaking of phone calls, the IDF has released another intercept of a three-way conversation allegedly involving a Gazan civilian, a Hamas commander, and a head of the Indonesian Hospital regarding the hospital's fuel supplies being made available to Hamas.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

It's the phone calls, yes, which is the most unusual part.

I think the "roof knocking" is also an innovation on their part.

Per IDF sources they've basically stopped roof knocking now in favor of mass leaflets and general evacuation orders. Calls are sometimes going out, but without actual internet or phone services and power being spotty I think that's likely also basically stopped.

And, of course, there were no warnings on the attack on the refugee camp. 

Another way that this is remarkably different - more children have been reportedly killed in Gaza in the last month than all children in all conflicts in the last 3 years combined. 

[Tywin et al.]

52 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

- Israel is a sovereign & legitimate state

That is literally one of the main things being disputed. Not here, but in general. 

[kissdbyfire]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

That is literally one of the main things being disputed. Not here, but in general. 

Yeah, that is insane IMO, but I am aware of such claims. 

[Craving Peaches]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

Speaking of phone calls, the IDF has released another intercept of a three-way conversation allegedly involving a Gazan civilian, a Hamas commander, and a head of the Indonesian Hospital regarding the hospital's fuel supplies being made available to Hamas.

Given the suspect reliability of their last 'conversation' released, I am going to wait for a neutral party to verify this.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Another way that this is remarkably different - more children have been reportedly killed in Gaza in the last month than all children in all conflicts in the last 3 years combined. 

I don't understand where this particular claim comes from. It flies completely in the face of the UN's reports:

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In 2022, children continued to be disproportionately affected by armed conflict, and the number of children verified as affected by grave violations increased compared with 2021. The United Nations verified 27,180 grave violations, of which 24,300 were committed in 2022 and 2,880 were committed earlier but verified only in 2022. Violations affected 18,890 children (13,469 boys, 4,638 girls, 783 sex unknown) in 24 situations and one regional monitoring arrangement. The highest numbers of violations were the killing (2,985) and maiming (5,655) of 8,631 children, followed by the recruitment and use of 7,622 children and the abduction of 3,985 children. 

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In 2021, children in armed conflict suffered a high number of grave violations. The United Nations verified 23,982 grave violations, of which 22,645 were committed in 2021 and 1,337 were committed earlier but verified only in 2021. Violations affected 19,165 children (13,633 boys, 5,242 girls, 290 sex unknown) in 21 situations and one regional monitoring arrangement. The highest numbers of violations were the killing (2,515) and maiming (5,555) of 8,070 children, followed by the recruitment and use of 6,310 children and 3,945 incidents of denial of humanitarian access.

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In 2020, the situation of children in armed conflict was marked by a sustained high number of grave violations. The United Nations verified 26,425 grave violations, of which 23,946 were committed in 2020 and 2,479 were committed earlier but verified only in 2020. Violations affected 19,379 children (14,097 boys, 4,993 girls, 289 sex unknown) in 21 situations. The highest numbers of violations were the recruitment and use of 8,521 children, followed by the killing (2,674) and maiming (5,748) of 8,422 children and 4,156 incidents of denial of humanitarian access.

[kissdbyfire]

The thing again with Netanyahu is that, from what I understand, he has a lot of support in the Knesset. And ideally you need elections and a whole lot of people like the woman at the mic being elected and a whole lot less of the far-right nasties.

 

[Kalbear]

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

Mmm, I was looking at some military or legal analyst who was discussing lessons from Aleppo or Mosul or some such. I'll have to  see if I can find it in my timeline.

ETA: This interesting piece. Mosul lost 0.6% of its civilian population, and that's with people having left in large numbers. 0.2% of the civilian population was killed in the three weeks of the first battle of Fallujah, to 0.3% in Gaza.

(Bear in mind that the only figure we get for Gaza is the Health Ministry, which calls all dead civilian. We may never really know how many Hamas fighters are among that number, though analysis of the death roll for any spikes of men of fighting age, as was the case in 2014, would be interesting.)

Thanks for going back and finding this.

For Aleppo the estimates are around 31k civilian deaths over a 4 year period. Aleppo had 2.5 million people, so this would be roughly 1% of the total population - again, over 4 years time. This was done by two very non-Western forces that had very little interest in civilian lives, massive accusations and evidence of war crimes, indiscriminate bombings, civilian reprisals - and even then fewer children were killed there than in all of Gaza so far. 

Mosul is interesting in that article for not the similarities but the contrasts:
 

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In Mosul, by contrast, the World Health Organisation was able to establish trauma stabilisation points to provide urgent medical attention within 10-15 minutes of the front line, with larger field hospitals another hour away. The Israel Defence Forces (idf) have a small number of “humanitarian affairs officers” embedded in its fighting units whose role it is to try and address the needs of the local population, but these are far from sufficient for dealing with the needs and scale of misery resulting from a ground offensive. Israeli politicians have said they will not send aid for civilians until all hostages are released, though officials acknowledge that may change as the offensive develops.

Or this:
 

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Mosul, again, provides a point of comparison. is used the city’s hospital as a stronghold. Commanders spent weeks deliberating whether it could be attacked, says General Jones, considering other options such as the use of snipers. “Slowly, over time, it became clear it was no longer a functional hospital.” Ultimately it was struck only with the approval of Iraq’s then prime minister. “I’ve never heard of any case where you have a few days to evacuate and dismantle an entire hospital,” says one veteran expert on wartime civilian harm, reflecting on the Gaza case. “It’s just not possible.”

Or this:

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A third difference is tactics. Israel’s armed forces say that they place considerable emphasis on civilian protection. Nonetheless, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has been intense by historical standards. It dropped 6,000 bombs on the territory in the first six days of the war, a rate of ordnance far exceeding American and Western counter-terrorism campaigns. In Mosul, for instance, the American-led coalition dropped 7,000 over two months in the most intense period of bombing. On October 30th a former deputy commander of the idf’s Gaza Division told the Financial Times: “When our soldiers are manoeuvring we are doing this with massive artillery, with 50 aeroplanes overhead destroying anything that moves.”

So yeah, I do appreciate that comparison - because it does appear that this is very much unlike other behaviors from Western nations or even from countries like Syria or Russia. 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't understand where this particular claim comes from. It flies completely in the face of the UN's reports:

It comes from that previous article:

Quote

On Sunday, the international humanitarian organization Save The Children said the number of children killed in Gaza in three weeks had surpassed the total number of children killed in all global conflict zones since 2019. To find a comparable death toll, one would have to go back to the Syrian civil war, which killed 27,126 children over a period of more than 10 years, or the ongoing Yemeni civil war, in which 3,774 children have died in seven years of fighting, according to the UN.

And sorry, I misquoted - it's number of children killed in conflict zones, not number of conflicts. 

[Ran]

I mean, the obvious difference is that Hamas has been entrenching in Gaza for about two decades. So people should not be too surprised that the bombing to defeat that advantage is going to be heavier, unfortunately.

Someone on Reddit pieced together the airstrike map with maps of alleged tunnel networks and it's true, most of the heaviest bombing has been due to the tunnel networks, apparently.

ETA: The language there is very strange. If they want to say "in any other conflict zone", that makes sense. But "all global conflict zones since 2019" suggests you're adding them all together which would be an incorrect claim.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Ran

[Kalbear]

Just now, Ran said:

I mean, the obvious difference is that Hamas has been entrenching in Gaza for about two decades. So people should not be too surprised that the bombing to defeat that advantage is going to be heavier.

...okay? But that wasn't the claim you made; you made the claim that this was roughly on par with other conflicts in urban areas in the 21st century, and that's only true if you consider an order of magnitude 'on par'. The point I was making is that this is very much different than other conflicts in behavior, tactics, and civilian casualty rate. It is not comparable to Mosul or Aleppo except as a way to say 'it is not like Mosul or Aleppo'. This is not the norm, nor it is solely exceptional because we are paying more attention. It is decidedly very different in the massive amounts of casualties caused. 

Is it understandable? I mean, you can probably rationalize it all sorts of different ways. Is it expected? Yes, if you as many bombs in a month as the entire coalition force dropped in 2 months on all of ISIS on an area a quarter the size of the London area that's an expected result, but that seems to me a very weird way of framing it; it's like saying that an expected outcome of nuking Hiroshima is the destruction of Hiroshima. 

I would also challenge the notion that this is to 'defeat that advantage'. Most of the bombings so far have not been against tunnel areas or other entrenched locations. Most (again, per IDF sources) have been against houses, forward observation posts, gathering spots and munitions groups. None of those are particularly entrenched; you can't make a 2-story apartment entrenched. Was this refugee camp one of those things? Maybe! But that isn't the norm for targeted attacks so far either. 

[Ran]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

and that's only true if you consider an order of magnitude 'on par'.

I cited death tolls. The 1st Battle of Fallujah killed nearly as many civilians as a percentage of the population as this conflict in about the same time frame. Mosul's heaviest bombing campaign period vs. this one is not an "order of magnitude" in difference, for that matter.

I don't know. This is the sort of result you would expect once it was decided that Hamas was going to be defeated and its grip on Gaza broken, such that another administration could move in, and that knowledge is in line with what you'd expect based on other 21st century battles when you consider the key differences and similarities of their contexts.

The only real differencesa I can see is the intense pace and the absurd urban density. Together, these things explain the differences.

I know the pace of the campaign has been questioned, but given all the reports suggesting Hamas has probably badly under-estimated the response, I suppose the pace is precisely for that reason: they are on the back foot, and the quicker Israel can get it over with the better for both international and domestic reasons. This isn't going to turn into the grind of Ukraine-Russia -- the IDF and Israel simply can't afford that.

 

Edited November 1, 2023 by Ran

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, Ran said:

I cited death tolls. The 1st Battle of Fallujah killed nearly as many civilians as a percentage of the population as this conflict in about the same time frame. Mosul's heaviest bombing campaign period vs. this one is not an "order of magnitude" in difference, for that matter.

Mosul never had anything close to this level of bombing. Neither did Fallujah. 

An important thing to consider as well is that a whole lot of the civilian deaths in Fallujah were caused by the insurgent forces directly (IE, through actual bombs). Also noteworthy is that the US got a LOT of flak for the 300 deaths they caused and...did a ceasefire! And let humanitarian aid in! And dropped something like 50 total bombs the entire time! Also noteworthy was that the US also did inform civilians to protect them in that battle, too. 

Again, it's interesting to compare and contrast because what Israel is doing is very much not the norm for this by a Western fighting force in urban areas. 

11 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't know. This is the sort of result you would expect once it was decided that Hamas was going to be defeated and its grip on Gaza broken, such that another administration could move in, and that knowledge is in line with what you'd expect based on other 21st century battles when you consider the key differences and similarities of their contexts.

The only real differencesa I can see is the intense pace and the absurd urban density. Together, these things explain the differences.

Again, the amount of bombs is very, very different than most other campaigns. 

And I guess I disagree - because we have seen other results and they have been remarkably different. Ultimately I don't think it matters, because the perception is that Israel is significantly going harder, further, and being more brutal than other conflicts. That they have also done very questionable things like not allowing ceasefires or pauses for humanitarian aid, cutting off all borders, cutting food and water does them no favors in reversing this trend. Especially since the perception is that Israel is doing this not because it's the right thing to do but because its allies are stepping in and curbing their enthusiasm. That's good, ish, for US diplomacy, but it doesn't do anything for Israel's rep. 

11 minutes ago, Ran said:

I know the pace of the campaign has been questioned, but given all the reports suggesting Hamas has probably badly under-estimated the response, I suppose the pace is precisely for that reason: they are on the back foot, and the quicker Israel can get it over with the better for both international and domestic reasons. This isn't going to turn into the grind of Ukraine-Russia -- the IDF and Israel simply can't afford that.

The grind of the Ukraine war is a very different thing with wildly different fighting capabilities on the two sides; I don't think that's comparable at all. 

Your argument would make more sense if Israel itself wasn't saying that this is going to take a really long time and prepping people for a war lasting months if not years. If Israel is trying to get it over with quickly their messaging discipline is very poor. That does not excuse the siege behaviors or other humanitarian failures either. My viewpoint is that Israel's strategy is largely aligned with what their leaders have said publicly - that they are not going to hold back, that they are going to focus on causing damage to their enemies first and foremost, that they are going to prioritize the lives and safety of Israelis over all other issues, and that they are willing to deal with other consequences if they need to. Again, you do not bomb a refugee camp and have people ready to go on Wolf Blitzer with talking points if you think this is the normal thing to do or you're doing it as a surprise; you do it because this is part of your regular campaign and your priority is first to kill Hamas or damage Hamas or be able to justify attacks on Hamas, and after you do that you'll just try and justify it.

Quote

and the quicker Israel can get it over with the better for both international and domestic reasons

I want to specifically call this point out because I think it's an incredibly short-sighted viewpoint. Israel has said repeatedly that they are not going to think about or plan on what comes after they beat Hamas (if they manage to beat them) - they're only focused on winning the war. This is precisely the wrong thing to do if you want to get it over with more quickly or have less consequences down the road. You need to be planning what you're going to do now. You need to figure out which allies you need, what resources you need, who is going to administer things, how things are going to be run, how the economy and security are going to be set up, how much aid you'll need for how long, how much direct control you're going to exert. If you don't do that you're just mowing the grass with extra steps. Or, worse, you're alienating the allies and resources you need to make things okay and will have to deal with compromises that will change nothing. 

If the war takes longer but it means Saudi Arabia and Jordan administer Gaza - or even better, the Palestinian Authority - that will be a massive win for Israel. Right now I don't even think the US would do it. 

[Ran]

Found this from a researcher, a Hamas-made video compiling some attacks on the IDF. Nothing gruesome, and the first attack actually looks like the TROPHY defensive system stopped it... but the main thing that caught my eye is how utterly innocuously dressed one of the perpetrators is: Adidas track pants, t-shirt, sneakers. No apparent bandoliers, headbands, etc. that might mark them out as a militant.

Once he dumps that rocket launcher and pops out of a tunnel in Gaza again, he's just one of the crowd:

 

Edited November 1, 2023 by Ran