Israel - Hamas War IX

[Craving Peaches]

Also, Israeli officials have repeatedly denied that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is quite frankly ridiculous and insulting given what is going on.

[Ran]

16 minutes ago, Relic said:

Yes handwaving away inconvenient civilian deaths because they stand in the way of military victory is very easy to do when sitting at home, alone, in your underwear

Neither alone nor in my underwear. Also, still hate coffee.

And very easy to handwave reasonable remarks about the reality of the situation when you, too, are off somewhere far from the fighting. What is the point of it, besides revealing a hypocritical attitude? "I am righteous while I sit here at my home" may seem very persuasive to you, but it's failing to hit the mark.

[Craving Peaches]

2 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Have you considered telling that to Hamas officials in Doha?

Has Israel considered taking out that leadership rather than killing loads of civilians in Gaza (which is going to radicalise people into joining Hamas or Hamas 2.0 and so the operation is defeating its own aim)?

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I think a rather callous attitude is being displayed, and it would change if one were in the hospital. 

No, it just seems giving out bland empty statements in an obviously complicated situation is a bit too easy. What do you actually do when a murderous bunch of terrorists ( not freedom fighters as Grimtuesday seems to want to define them) decide to hole up in places like hospitals? Where is the blame for Hamas doing that?

 

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Has Israel considered taking out that leadership rather than killing loads of civilians in Gaza (which is going to radicalise people into joining Hamas or Hamas 2.0 and so the operation is defeating its own aim)?

The magic "take out leaders" button. The "Oh, this could all be special ops and Mossad".

People are living in movie fantasyland. Killing the political leadership does nothing to dismantle Hamas in Gaza. That can only be done by actually defeating Hamas militarily, destroying their operational capabilities, their defensive networks, their stores of munitions and arms, and yes, their fighters. Who hide among women and children and infants in incubators, and send doctors out to cry for a ceasefire and blame all things on the IDF and not the evil in their midst.

 

 

Edited November 11, 2023 by Ran

[Daeron the Daring]

3 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Has Israel considered taking out that leadership rather than killing loads of civilians in Gaza (which is going to radicalise people into joining Hamas or Hamas 2.0 and so the operation is defeating its own aim)?

It was a joke. Mainly because it's something some people said before in these threads to me, specifically, when I made the same argument.

I was trying to express how ridicoulous the opposing stance is.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Daeron the Daring

[Craving Peaches]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Where is the blame for Hamas doing that?

Hamas has already been blamed by multiple people including myself for doing this. 

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

Killing the political leadership does nothing to dismantle Hamas in Gaza.

Killing thousands of civilians does nothing to dismantle Hamas in Gaza, and Hamas won't disappear even if everyone in Gaza was killed if those leaders are still there and people are radicalised via the killing thousands of innocents.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Daeron the Daring said:

It was a joke. Mainly because it's something some people said before in these threads to me, specifically, when I made the same argument.

I was trying to express how ridicoulous the opposing stance is.

I know, I just wanted to point that out as well.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

Killing thousands of civilians does nothing to dismantle Hamas in Gaza

I mean, 11 outposts fallen, many militants dead, munitions dumps destroyed, networks of tunnels collapsing, arms captured, rocket launch sites obliterated, and on and on and on. Hamas will not be an operational force in Gaza when this war is over. Even Nathan Thrall (yes, listened to that whole interview) admitted that what the IDF was trying to do was possible -- hard, but possible -- and just about every other expert I've seen agrees.

It's not going to be easy, the "post-Hamas" period. But if you're just counting on everyone in Gaza being radicalized in favor of Hamas...

 

[Craving Peaches]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

But if you're just counting on everyone in Gaza being radicalized in favor of Hamas...

Why should I trust what the IDF are saying without it being verified by another source?

Also, not just talking about people from Gaza being radicalised, but from across the world. Thousands of children have been killed. Hamas 2.0 is going to have many recruits. Even if one person joins for every dead child, that's 4500 members. Killing of innocents always leads to people joining groups like this.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Why should I trust what the IDF are saying without it being verified by another source?

No reason, just as you don't trust unsupported claims from Palestinians reported by Al-Jazeera and merely share them out of a spirit of sharing.

6 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Killing of innocents always leads to people joining groups like this.

They can die like other terrorists. It's a choice they make. No one compels them to follow the same failed path that tens of thousands have followed before them.

[Craving Peaches]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

Palestinians reported by Al-Jazeera

Which is why I always add a report from BBC or Reuters if I can. 

[Hmmm]

5 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

Whether you accept it or not, Haas sees themselves as being a liberatory movement seeking freedom for themselves and their countrymen, who have been brutalized, bombed, and robbed of all hope. They will never lay down their arms because to them, that is another step on the road to their extinction. You can talk about them being antisemitic or being Muslim fundamentalist all you want, but reality is that whatever crimes they have committed, the ones Israel is committing now are orders of magnitude worse and that is on top of living for the last the last 75 years under an apartheid in their own homeland which criminal in its own right. The fact that Israel maintains an apartheid state is provocation in and of itself, and while I wish they used different methods, Hamas is meeting violence with violence.

The lose of human life in any circumstance is awful, it doesn't matter on which side, but just putting the blame entirely on Hamas rather than the ones dropping bombs on what is overwhelmingly a civilian population is ghoulish. I said it once before, one day after all this is over, we will all say we were against this, and now I add to it that I hope the words you said here fester in your soul at the knowledge that you excused the murder of children and innocents.

Is it okay to be an actual terrorist supporter on these boards? I have followed these threads on and off since the October 7 attacks, and there is a pretty noticeable difference in rhetoric between this guy and pretty much everyone else who posts here.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Hmmm

[Ran]

Yeah, I missed that.

@GrimTuesday Hamas is a widely-recognized terrorist organization that has used suicide bombers and deliberately targeted civilians for decades now. It also murders and tortures Palestinians, flings gay men from rooftops, and other unsavory things.

It doesn't matter how  "they see themselves", and valorizing them calls into question your moral compass, at the very least. You can detest Israel and still not give Hamas a pass.

Hamas will be laying down its arms in the next months, I expect, by hook or by crook.

 

Edited November 11, 2023 by Ran

[Mudguard]

1 hour ago, Craving Peaches said:

Source: BBC

I wonder what Israel will say, if anything.

Yeah, I just read the live updates from BBC, which matches up with the Al Jazeera reporting.  Looks legitimate.  

[Ran]

What is legitimate? Here's the latest BBC update:

Quote

At Al-Shifa hospital:

A surgeon at Gaza's biggest hospital has told the BBC that the hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) has been struck and is damaged. Two patients who were on ventilators have now died, one of whom was a baby, he says
The hospital is out of fuel, food, and water, the surgeon said - adding that there is constant shooting and bombardment around the hospital
He also said people trying to leave the hospital had been shot at, and some had died
We cannot verify what caused any damage to the hospital. Hamas yesterday blamed Israel for an alleged strike on the hospital - but Israel says it does not target hospitals, and blamed a "misfired projectile launched by terrorist organizations inside the Gaza Strip"
When asked about the surgeon's claims this morning about the ICU and about shooting near the hospital, the IDF said it couldn't confirm "specific military activity currently under way", but acknowledged "ongoing intense fighting against Hamas in the vicinity of the area in question"

So "Someone has said", "someone says", "someone says", "Hamas said," "Israel said", "Israel says".

No one has questioned that people have said various things. But the keep bit is that the BBC isn't capable of verifying anything.

 

Edited November 11, 2023 by Ran

[GrimTuesday]

39 minutes ago, Ran said:

Yeah, I missed that.

@GrimTuesday Hamas is a widely-recognized terrorist organization that has used suicide bombers and deliberately targeted civilians for decades now. It also murders and tortures Palestinians, flings gay men from rooftops, and other unsavory things.

Yeah, no shit they are a terrorist organization, basically every single struggle for liberation has involved some level of violent resistance. As I said, I strongly disapprove of their methods and as a leftist, I am certainly opposed to the fact that they are right wing fundamentalists, but I recognize that the Palestinians have basically been backed into a corner where their only path forward is either violence or extinction. This is in no small part because Israel has set the conditions to ensure that Hamas is seen as the only avatar of Palestinian liberation.

Quote

It doesn't matter "how they seem themselves", and valorizing them calls into question your moral compass, at the very least. You can detest Israel and still not give Hamas a pass.

Actually, it does matter how they see themselves. It matters because that is how you assess what their goals are and what it will take to deal with them. For example, ISIS was not a liberatory movement, they were religious fundamentalists who were seeking to create a global caliphate. Hamas on the other hand has more in common with the IRA, and the ANC were or the PKK are now, in so far as their aim is to create a state for a ethnic group who are currently occupied by a more powerful, oppressive state actor that is able to enact violence upon them with impunity. The only way to defeat a liberatory movement is through negotiation (it has to be good faith, which has almost never been the case here) and by addressing the oppression that they are resisting. Of course, the solution addressing their grievances cannot in any way mean that harm comes to Israelis including dispossession or expulsion much less violent ethnic cleansing as Hamas called for in their original charter,  and any solution must ensure a better future for both sides of this conflict.

My acknowledging of this does not in any way "give Hamas a pass". I was disgusted by their actions on October 7th, it was horrific and the brutality visited upon Israelis was inhuman. The loss of life on both sides is horrific and frankly, in fact I think every Hamas fighter should be imprisoned for the rest of their lives, and we should certainly take a good hard look at those who have overseen the Israeli operation and some of them should probably join the Hamas folks behind bars. While violent resistance is, according to the UN itself, permissible, that does not mean that those who perpetrate it should be immune from punishment after the fact.

Worry about your own moral compass, mine points true north.

[Mudguard]

5 minutes ago, Ran said:

What is legitimate? Here's the latest BBC update:

So "Someone has said", "someone says", "someone says", "Hamas said," "Israel said", "Israel says".

No one has questioned that people have said various things. But the keep bit is that the BBC isn't capable of verifying anything.

 

The BBC has talked to multiple people at the hospital who have provided first hand accounts of what they have seen.  These people are named and not anonymous sources like so much of the evidence provided during IDF press briefings where they cite anonymous phone calls.  Unlike the anonymous phone calls which are unverifiable, news organization can talk to other contacts they have within the hospital, and see if these other people can confirm or refute what the other people are saying. There's also videos from the hospital that can potentially be used to verify parts of what people are saying. So far, everyone that has been interviewed at the hospital has provided consistent statements.  You are free to disbelieve all this reporting if you want, and just claim that nothing that is happening in Gaza in verifiable or knowable.

I will also note that the BBC reporting is also way more reliable than the reports claiming Hamas snipers are shooting into crowds around the hospital based on tweets from some random guy trying to make money on Twitter by posting bullshit clickbait.

[mormont]

7 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Worry about your own moral compass, mine points true north.

None of us can make this claim.

[Ran]

Just now, Mudguard said:

There's also videos from the hospital that can potentially be used to verify parts of what people are saying.

I'd like to see the videos they claim show people being killed by drones or attacked outside the hospital grounds. 

The key bit remains that the BBC is not vouching for the statements -- they are passing it on, but are unable to verify them. "Oh, well, they have multiple statements," doesn't mean much. What does it matter if someone puts their name to it? It's not like we're going to shun them as liars, their concerns are purely localized.

5 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

It matters because that is how you assess what their goals are and what it will take to deal with them.

Their goal is the destruction of Israel.