Israel - Hamas War IX

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

Civilians are not lawful targets though.

The IDF does not deliberately target civilians. It targets military objectives or hostiles, and attempts to mitigate civilian harm as far as its practicable within the laws of war.

[Daeron the Daring]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

The IDF does not deliberately target civilians. It targets military objectives or hostiles, and attempts to mitigate civilian harm as far as its practicable within the laws of warfare.

How many civilians do you think died for every Hamas militant in the bombing campaign? 

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Daeron the Daring said:

How many civilians do you think died for every Hamas militant in the bombing campaign? 

As many civilians as Hamas can hide behind.

[Daeron the Daring]

15 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

As many civilians as Hamas can hide behind.

Ok, but you do find justification for it, no? You must have a metric that's the arbitrator, no? I have one too.

This argument and the idea of nuking Gaza are different in scale, but no really in proportionality. Why not nuke Gaza? Bombs and bombs. Different in scale, but you'd have no more of this Hamas shit. 

So hey, how many civilians are worth 1 Hamas member in the bombing campaign? What is the portion you'd think is not okay?

Edited November 11, 2023 by Daeron the Daring

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, Mudguard said:

Why not move it under another hospital or mosque or similar type structure?  If your location is blown, moving would make it harder to kill you.  That is common sense.  And they would still maintain their human shields.

I didn’t see the videos myself, but a friend who has been following the war very closely said there are videos on the internet released by the IDF showing rocket launch sites, as they have pushed  into Gaza, one at a what he thought was like a Boy Scout camp, rocket launchers behind a wall and on the other side the wall is painted with what he called scenes appealing to kids, and another at a mosque, where the rocket launcher/s were built into the foundation of the mosque.

I have seen detailed maps of tunnels, released by the IDF and which CNN was showing before the IDF’s entry into Gaza. 186 miles of tunnels. My friend is a civil engineer and explained to me that of course, with the tunnels being underground, there are air shafts bringing fresh air down into the tunnels. They’re easy to find because at night in the desert the temperature drops and the air coming up is warm, and can be easily found by infra red cameras. I have heard reports on CNN from the IDF reporting how many air shafts they’ve blown up. Apparently this is the same technique being used by the Ukrainians to find buried bombs, because the bombs are warmer than the ground. It’s quite easy to see nexus points on the tunnel map.

There are also spy satellites,, and apparently there are detailed images of the infrastructure built under the Indonesian Hospital, which Hamas built, where the support structure for the tunnels under the hospital can easily be seen. 

There’s an HBO documentary about small towns in the USA, and one town they covered was Sioux Falls. There’s a smalller town a few miles away where Telesat has their data storage centre, the single largest data storage centre of earth images in the US. They showed how their satellites circle the earth every 48 minutes, taking pictures, iirc, in overlapping bands 18 Km wide as they go around the planet. There are lots of other satellites taking images and I’m sure Israeli intelligence has a damn good idea where all the tunnels are.

I don’t think moving a tunnel hq is all that easy, they would have a great deal of infrastructure built into whatever the building above the nexus point is. Communication systems, for example. That’s stuff that’s expensive to build and difficult to move, and although Hamas is well funded I hardly think they have money to create complex hqs in dozens of locations.

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

So hey, how many civilians are worth 1 Hamas member in the bombing campaign? What is the portion you'd think is not okay?

There is no simple equation. It's always case by case. There are times when a militant's life is not worth risking a single civilian life, and there's time where a militant's life may be worth some number, such as if they were about to drive a VBIED into an IDF platoon and the only way to stop them was sure to hit civilians in the area.

The IDF would prefer to not have to make these calculations, hence all the efforts to evacuate people. Ranteesi hospital is apparently finally almost entirely evacuated, per the IDF to the BBC, with just some staff and twenty patients left, and hopefully the IDF will find some way to help transport them to safety. According to the IDF, per the BBC, they have not fired on Al-Shifa hospital, it is not (yet) under siege, and in fact civilians can easily go east as the IDF are not in that area; moreover, they're willing to coordinate with anyone who wants out to help open a way for them.

Again, it's what the IDF says. What the Gazans say is something else. But it needs to be emphasized that the IDF has every possible reason to want civilians out of there, because it will make it much easier for them to fight. The only people who wants civilains to stay at the hospital are Hamas.

 

[Craving Peaches]

13 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Why not nuke Gaza?

Supposedly the total tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza is equal to two of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

[Ran]

Just now, Craving Peaches said:

Supposedly the total tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza is equal to two of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

50,000 to 140,000 died at Hiroshima, depending on who is doing the counting.

A stark contrast and a testament to the precision of modern weaponry and the care with which the IDF has tried to use them within the framework of the laws of armed combat.

[Craving Peaches]

37 minutes ago, Ran said:

The IDF does not deliberately target civilians.

I think this is debatable.

37 minutes ago, Ran said:

attempts to mitigate civilian harm as far as its practicable within the laws of war.

I disagree with this. The UN Secretary General says the civilian casualties are too high and I agree. More than 4000 children reported dead in just over a month is abnormal when compared to other conflicts. And the number of journalists dead is abnormal as well. Israel seems perfectly happy to kill dozens of civilians to get at one Hamas commander and possibly some fighters who may or may not be there, as can be seen from the strike on the Jabalyia camp and the recent strike on al-Buraq school. Still no proof that Hamas was in the bombed ambulance convoy either.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[Hmmm]

2 hours ago, Mudguard said:

Also, if it really was such an open secret that the HQ was there, and the IDF's assessment was right, wouldn't the Hamas leadership move the HQ location to make it harder for Israel to destroy it?  The reports go way back so they've had more than a decade to move it if they want.

They probably have done that by now, to some extent. I doubt Yahya Sinwar and his closest men are sitting in that führerbunker right now. But the reports indicate that this is Hamas' main- and largest underground base, with a range of different facilities. That is not something you just move whenever you want. And in the relatively limited style of warfare that characterized the Israel-Hamas conflict before October 7, Hamas could feel quite confident that the benefit of bombing this base did not outweigh the costs for Israel, given the huge civilian casualties and very bad international image it would result it. 

In fact, the hospital shield still seems to work quite well. Israel has not bombed the base yet, and it seems like they will attempt to storm it with infantry. 

Edited November 11, 2023 by Hmmm

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

The UN Secretary General says the civilian casualties are too high and I agree

He can have an opinion, but it is obviously completely divorced from a thorough analysis of and awareness of every single targeting and strike decision, and so means very little. 

2 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Israel seems perfectly happy to kill dozens of civilians to get at one Hamas commander who might be there.

I know of no case where one commander was killed in exchange for dozens of civilians.

 If you mean Jabalya camp, that was one senior terrorist commander actively coordinating the Hamas defense of Jabalya during intense ground combat to the immediate west, his command and control center, and dozens of militants besides.

[Daeron the Daring]

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

The IDF would prefer to not have to make these calculations

Finally, something we agree on.

[Ran]

Just now, Daeron the Daring said:

Finally, something we agree on.

By god, some of you seem to think quoting things out of context is the height of wit. Cringe, as you Twitch bros say.

[Daeron the Daring]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

By god, some of you seem to think quoting things out of context is the height of wit. Cringe, as you Twitch bros say.

I sincerely apologize for being uncapable of taking you seriously.

[Bael's Bastard]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

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.

Aside from the fact that killing Hamas' leaders abroad wouldn't dismantle Hamas' terror infrastructure in Gaza while creating an even greater diplomatic shitstorm than this war is, if Israel could/would kill Hamas' leaders abroad, the Hamas apologists masquerading as "just pro-Palestine" would just demonize Israel for assassination. In fact, when Israel tried to assassinate Meshaal in 1997, no less than the US and Jordan forced Israel to provide the anecdote to save his life and enable him to continue murdering Jews for another quarter of a century thus far. It is yet another example in a long line that has informed Israel and Jews that the world is mostly disingenuous and full of shit on this conflict.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Bael's Bastard

[Ran]

Just now, Daeron the Daring said:

I sincerely apologize for being uncapable of taking you seriously.

You lost me by linking to Hasan a long time ago, so very fair.

[Zorral]

“We cannot kill our way out of this endeavor.”

For starters, it’s imperative that Israel freeze settlements and rein in violent settlers, for they are a cancer on the region. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/opinion/biden-israel-gaza.html

Quote

 

.... Looking ahead, the next initiative must be a major push by Biden for an Israeli-Palestinian peace. A peace process is not possible now, even if the war weren’t underway, because both sides lack credible leaders to get there — but perhaps it’s feasible to create conditions that will encourage the emergence of decent leaders after the war is over.

For starters, it’s imperative that Israel freeze settlements and rein in violent settlers, for they are a cancer on the region. To his credit, Biden has condemned “extremist settlers” and said that their attacks on Palestinians must “stop, now.” But he isn’t getting through to Netanyahu, who seems to believe that Biden may fume but ultimately will bow to his intransigence.

Maybe there is nothing more that Biden can do, particularly at a time when Israel feels so shattered and threatened, to persuade Netanyahu to rein in settlers and reduce civilian deaths in Gaza. But it’s worth trying, which means applying firm pressure and sending signals such as reopening the American consulate in Jerusalem, which traditionally dealt with Palestinian issues, and reinstating the State Department legal opinion that settlements violate international law. The United States could also abstain at the United Nations Security Council on a resolution calling for humanitarian pauses, instead of vetoing it as happened last time. ....

 

 

[Daeron the Daring]

5 minutes ago, Ran said:

You lost me by linking to Hasan a long time ago, so very fair.

Well, at least my reasons aren't childish.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Daeron the Daring

[Ran]

The IDF notes they've spoken several times with the director of Al-Shifa hospital, saying they can coordinate safety for people wanting to leave. I don't think he's mentioned this, for some reason:

 

[Ran]

Kristof isn't wrong. In a similar vein, Yair Rosenberg has a piece at the The Atlantic about Israel after Netanyahu (*knocks on wood*) that shows some possible reasons for hope through, by example, the rising popularity of former general and left-wing politican Yair Golan who has become very popular after personally saving a bunch of people on October 7th.