Israel - Hamas War X

[FalagarV2]

43 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Not true. Israel's greatest military successes all came as a young socialist country that the US gov was quite hostile towards. The US didn't jump on the bandwagon until after the Six Day War completely changed everything and especially after the peace deal with Egypt, as even during the YK War the US used its new position of "support" to delay weapons shipments to Israel. The US spent decades pressuring Israel any time invasions/wars against them turned in their favor.

It is true that the US did not supply weaponry in the early days (and in fact had an arms-embargo), although sales already began under Kennedy, and increased drastically throughout the 60s. However, Israel did receive both warplanes (Messerschmitts and Spitfires) and other weaponry from Chechoslovakia in the years immediately following 1945, which helped tip the scales in the first Arab-Israeli war, and from France in the 1950s - including, after 1955, planes, tanks, and heavy artillery, as well as aid with developing nuclear weapons (in which Norway was also involved, supplying heavy water). If not a 'great power', France was certainly a major player at the time.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Zorral said:

As I pointed out -- People with vast amounts of money and connections.

As was pointed out - this is factually inaccurate. It also wildly overstates their impact compared to the actual determination and ability that Israelis have shown ever since, and ignores the very similar support that the entire rest of the Middle East had up until that point.

The rothschild thing is getting into some real bullshit jewish space laser conspiracy theory garbage too. 

[Rippounet]

5 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Heads up, their hatred of Jews predates the establishment of Israel. The argument that the current hatred stems from that point is simply not accurate. 

Sorry, but I'll challenge you to prove this one adequately, because I don't buy it.

While hatred for Jews in the Muslim world does predate the establishment of Israel, that hatred didn't prevent peaceful coexistence in quite a few Muslim states - until very recently in some cases.
OTOH, anti-semitism as we know it (i.e. genocidal intent) can be directly linked to Israel's existence and Israel's numerous recorded war crimes (if you don't want to look at current events, think of the Sabra and Shatila massacre).

I'm highly skeptical of the idea that anti-semitism is absolutely not linked to Israeli actions. Of course some forms of anti-semitism have nothing to do with Israel (I've met an anti-semite or two who wouldn't have been able to locate Israel on a map), but a lot of what we're seeing today is at least in part a consequence of the treatment of Palestinians.

Would anti-semitism exist without Israel? Yes. Is Israel making it worse? Also, yes. Does this excuse anti-semitism? Of course not, but it also means that accusations of Israeli crimes cannot and should not be dismissed as mere expressions of anti-semitism. On some level anti-semitism is absolutely irrelevant to what Israel does - it's a complete non sequitur.
Do people watch Israeli actions with extra attention and tend to demand a very high moral standard of its military? Yes, but that's hardly anti-semitic in itself because i) Israel is largely viewed as a modern Western State (and/or supported by the West) and ii) because the Israeli military has in fact committed war crimes in the past.

Why is this something I see as important? Because the neo-nazis have turned into supporters of Israel. They have started to view Israel as an ally against Muslims in their global clash of civilizations. And I don't believe this view came out of nowhere.

[Kalbear]

I need to share this:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/13/cnn-inside-gaza-hospital-israel-defense-forces-hamas-robertson-pkg-src-vpx.cnn

This is an embedded CNN journalist going through one of the hospitals and showing some things.  Some thoughts here:

- the devastation is pretty insane

- the 'armory' for the hospital is kind of pathetic - 4 rusting AKs is not what I'd call amazing, and in the US that'd be just some guy's house

- there is a kitty at 6 minutes in and I love that in the middle of this a random cat is just chilling in the suspected Hamas terrorist armory

AND THE KITTY COMES BACK AT 8 minutes! 

Edited November 14, 2023 by Kalbear

[Altherion]

16 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Do people watch Israeli actions with extra attention and tend to demand a very high moral standard of its military? Yes, but that's hardly anti-semitic in itself because i) Israel is largely viewed as a modern Western State (and/or supported by the West) and ii) because the Israeli military has in fact committed war crimes in the past.

Ah, but do you really think that other modern Western States which have committed war crimes in the past are held to the same moral standard? I can think of at least one that definitely is not...

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

the 'armory' for the hospital is kind of pathetic - 4 rusting AKs

I would guess that they abandoned damaged or unusable weapons, and mostly cleared out anything actually serviceable well before the IDF got into the hospital.

That tunnel looked like some serious effort to build. 20 meters down? Sheesh.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

I would guess that they abandoned damaged or unusable weapons, and mostly cleared out anything actually serviceable well before the IDF got into the hospital.

That tunnel looked like some serious effort to build. 20 meters down? Sheesh.

Per the spokesperson for all the hospitals the tunnel 20 meters down is an electrical access point, not a Hamas engineered system, and was part of the plans for the hospital. Honestly not sure how true or not that is. Just pointing out that there's a pretty different narrative there that also makes sense. 

And sure, they could have carried things out - or it could be that some random Hamas folks holed up there and had some real shoddy equipment. My point is that that video evidence isn't very convincing to me as far as establishing it was an armory or any particularly important part of Hamas operations, and it really isn't giving me a lot of evidence that makes me think that Israel should bomb it - if that's the kind of thing they were going after. 

[AncalagonTheBlack]

 

[Ran]

11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

armory

An "armory" is just a place where weapons are stored. They found weapons and explosives = armory. I didn't take it to mean that it had some special importance in the grand scheme of things, but obviously, the presence of weapons and explosives in a hospital which is supposed to have special protected status precisely because it's not supposed to have such things in it is not good.

I think I saw footage the IDF put out of their first entry into the hospital which they seem to have recorded to try and show that they found things as they say they found them, because inevitably people will say "well, they planted it." 

[Bael's Bastard]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

As I pointed out -- Some of them persons with vast amounts of money and connections.

So much so it even remains a constant of dramas on television, film and novels.  Even in Michener's The Source!

(((them)))

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

An "armory" is just a place where weapons are stored. They found weapons and explosives = armory. I didn't take it to mean that it had some special importance in the grand scheme of things, but obviously, the presence of weapons and explosives in a hospital which is supposed to have special protected status precisely because it's not supposed to have such things in it is not good.

I think I saw footage the IDF put out of their first entry into the hospital which they seem to have recorded to try and show that they found things as they say they found them, because inevitably people will say "well, they planted it." 

I guess that's fair, but it still does not strike the same rhetorical feeling that armory normally does. I'm not also claiming that they planted it (because honestly if you're going to plant something make it look at least a little bit more impressive!) but just pointing out that 4 rusty guns is not exactly a sign of any major thing - heck, it's not even really a big sign in Gaza that the hospital was knowingly being used for anything special. 

I guess I would have just called it at best a weapons cache. 

[Ran]

This, following on Kirby making it clear that the US had independent intelligence on this particular matter of the use of Shifa and other hospitals.

 

[Relic]

34 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

That tunnel looked like some serious effort to build. 20 meters down? Sheesh.

Imagine how much effort the hospital took to build. Sheesh!

[Altherion]

The US has said that hospitals in general and that hospital in particular serve as command and control centers, armories and possibly places where hostages are kept:

 

Quote

 

“Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, told reporters traveling with President Joe Biden.

He added, “Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, PIJ, members operate a command-and-control node from al-Shifa in Gaza City. They have stored weapons there and they are prepared to respond to an Israeli military operation against that facility.”

 

[Kalbear]

Unintentional double post

Edited November 15, 2023 by Kalbear

[Kalbear]

Just now, Altherion said:

The US has said that hospitals in general and that hospital in particular serve as command and control centers, armories and possibly places where hostages are kept:

 

Yep, but that's not what they were showing in the video above - they were showing scenes from the children's hospital and they were not nearly that impressive. Other than the calico cat which has joined the Israelis a

 

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

This, following on Kirby making it clear that the US had independent intelligence on this particular matter of the use of Shifa and other hospitals.

 

Again, note that they said nothing about this specific hospital in the video clip. Only 'other hospitals'. 

Not honestly sure if you were using this as a response to me or in general, but making sure that it's clear that I know about that, but it doesn't mean that that hospital in particular is being used that way; the only one they did name was al-Shifa. 

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Relic said:

Imagine how much effort the hospital took to build. Sheesh!

What Israel buildeth, it taketh away. Al-Rantisi Hospital began construction in 2003, before the disengagment. 

Fun fact: it's named for Abdel Aziz Ali Abdul Majid al-Rantisi, a pediatrician... who was also co-founder of Hamas, and was killed by the IDF in 2004 shortly after being appointed leader of Hamas in Gaza.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Sorry, but I'll challenge you to prove this one adequately, because I don't buy it.

I shouldn't even have to dignify this with a response, but just look at the history between WW1 and WW2 in the region. There's a long list of atrocities committed against Jews simply because they were Jewish, so yeah, obviously anti-Semitism long predates the establishment of Israel. And I'm not even making an argument over several centuries which would also be accurate.  

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Ah, but do you really think that other modern Western States which have committed war crimes in the past are held to the same moral standard? I can think of at least one that definitely is not...

I'm honestly scratching my head at this one. Are you trying to suggest that the US isn't held to the same standard as Israel when it comes to alleged war crimes? Because that's just daft talk. Journalists have spent entire careers exposing US war crimes. News organisations willingly publish exposes and opinion pieces on them. Parliamentarians across the world have spoken on them time after time. The one and only difference I can see is that nobody usually bothers to try to pass meaningless UN resolutions about them.

[Mudguard]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I need to share this:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/13/cnn-inside-gaza-hospital-israel-defense-forces-hamas-robertson-pkg-src-vpx.cnn

This is an embedded CNN journalist going through one of the hospitals and showing some things.  Some thoughts here:

- the devastation is pretty insane

- the 'armory' for the hospital is kind of pathetic - 4 rusting AKs is not what I'd call amazing, and in the US that'd be just some guy's house

- there is a kitty at 6 minutes in and I love that in the middle of this a random cat is just chilling in the suspected Hamas terrorist armory

AND THE KITTY COMES BACK AT 8 minutes! 

I saw some videos about this from the IDF.  Not the one with CNN.  My guess is that at least one of the hostages needed some medical treatment and was taken here.  It didn't seem like a command and control center to me.  If this qualifies as a command and control center, this would make anything used by Hamas a command and control center.