Israel Hamas War XI -- Foggier and Foggier

[Bael's Bastard]

The 30th MK on Likud's list with no power wasn't going to dictate what Israel does before the unity gov, let alone now, let alone when the gov inevitably falls and Bibi, Otzma, etc. are out.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

And they don't need anybody to go along with it, as we see what they have been doing all along for years ,and are doing now -- it hasn't been what other nations have endorsed, but they do it anyway, just starting with the decades' long theft and violence done to the Palestinians.

Kinda think setting up tent cities in Egypt is gonna not be something they can do 'anyway'. 

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

While I think the plan is still unlikely, I don't think it's impossible.  And as long as the military campaign pushes everyone towards Rafah, it will remain an option.

Apparently, Egypt is in a big financial hole, so potentially Israel could try offering a large financial package to Egypt for setting up a refugee camp in the Sinai.  Egypt would become a pariah in the Middle East if they agreed to this though, so I don't think it's likely.  That said, corruption is a big problem over there, so who knows.

That would be a really excellent way of having another leader assassinated in Egypt. 

43 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Does it matter whether it is newsworthy? And sure, the actual “plan” isn’t news. But perhaps the fact that this very troubling idea continues to be mentioned by several different politicians in Netanyahu’s circle should be. In fact, it should be in the MSM much more than it is. Equally troubling is the fact that, even though Netanyahu & his cronies have to know even the US probably won’t accept it, they just keep repeating it over and over again. 
Maybe they’re just playing for their hardcore base of voters, but it’s still troubling to keep reading about it.

It matters because it's being pushed here as some new, newsworthy bulletin instead of something that already was discussed. Also, I don't see how Netanyahu and his cronies are repeating it over and over again - that is sort of my point. They're not. We're just getting more details about it. Netanyahu has said precisely one thing about it, which is that it isn't the plan. 

I think it's very troubling that Netanyahu has gone on record just this last week and said that the Palestinian Authority will not be part of administering Gaza in any way and that they have no idea who will be. That's a big problem on a lot of levels, the biggest of which is that outside of the PA there are no other groups that represent any amount of Palestinians that are worth anything. I think it's ridiculous to keep comparing the response of Israel here to the response of the allies in World War 2 like Netanyahu did, especially if you're using that to justify killing so many people. But this? This is nothing right now.

[Mudguard]

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-11-20-23/index.html

Quote

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Monday that Israel had built bunkers "decades ago" underneath Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. 

“It’s already [been] known for many years that they have the bunkers that originally [were] built by Israeli constructors underneath Shifa [which] were used as a command post of Hamas. And, a kind of junction of several tunnels are part of this system,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview.  

This appears to be the basis for the certainty that the HQ is beneath Al-Shifa.  I've seen this repeated in multiple publications over a long period of time, and it's clear that many have assumed this was true, despite a lack of hard evidence.  But if this was true, the IDF should know exactly where these bunkers are located since Israeli's built them and they have the architectural plans.  It doesn't make sense that the HQ would be so hard to find, if they are in the bunkers that the Israeli's built.  The IDF must have already searched these "bunkers" by now, and based on the lack of findings by the PR department, it doesn't look like anything was found.  

It's possible that Hamas built something under the bunkers, which I assume is why the IDF continues to search, but the assumption that Hamas simply took over the bunkers (simply called a basement when they were first constructed) appears to be wrong.

[TrueMetis]

Which may be why they suddenly switched to "hostages were brought there for medical treatment, that makes it terrorist infrastructure!" even though, again, bringing people to be treated at a hospital is perfectly acceptable. It could have been literal Hamas members instead and it would have been okay for the hospital to treat them.

Though I admit I'm a little confused why they seem to care about about giving themselves cover since their bombing of a UN school and protected places show they're not gonna stop with or without actually proving their allegations. Guess they're just that desperate to be seen as the unequivocal good guys without holding themselves to the moral standard that would actually require. Unless their deliberately pandering to a new breed of cultish psychotics I've seen on twitter who are claiming that the UN, Red Cross, MSF, etc, are working with Hamas.

Edited November 21, 2023 by TrueMetis

[Heartofice]

5 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

bringing people to be treated at a hospital is perfectly acceptable

Yeah it would be a pretty reasonable action by normal people, maybe not something someone who’d spent the last 24 hours butchering innocent civilians would be doing though. I’m sure after killing so many people they suddenly thought

’oh hey, I hope this Thai hostage pulls through, quick let’s get him to a hospital, no not the local hospital or the many hospitals on the way, his safety isn’t THAT important! No no, let’s drive all the way to the Al-Shifa hospital, that way he can get some really nice treatment, we definitely won’t be dragging him down into the tunnel complex so the IDF can’t get him.
 

Oooh and let’s stop off to buy some grapes and flowers on the way shall we?’

[Daeron the Daring]

16 hours ago, Kalbear said:

But it's not 'continually' floated. It's the same plan that was floated a few weeks ago. We just got more details about it. It is the same source, the same person, the same plan. 

It is casual excercise from media to have something put in people's ears continuously, mostly to have people get used to the given idea they 'promote'. 

Not saying that's the intent here, but it's a simple 'trick' to have people time to process the information they are told. If you introduce the idea of something only step by step, you won't have a reactionary force as strong as you would have if you were to suddenly air everything about a given plan of some sort.

Not only because disinterest grows on a daily basis, but also because you can get people feel accustomed to the idea of it. And this, of course, can work in positive and negative ways. Imagine if Russia told on Day 1 that they're straight up gonna annex parts of Ucraine they conquer, but also imagine if the idea of lockdown being introduced the day after it is announced. Both would've provoked a stronger reaction against said actions.

Also, why does provoke have a k, while provocation has a c? The latin origin of the word surely used a c.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Daeron the Daring

[Relic]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Yeah it would be a pretty reasonable action by normal people, maybe not something someone who’d spent the last 24 hours butchering innocent civilians would be doing though. I’m sure after killing so many people they suddenly thought

’oh hey, I hope this Thai hostage pulls through, quick let’s get him to a hospital, no not the local hospital or the many hospitals on the way, his safety isn’t THAT important! No no, let’s drive all the way to the Al-Shifa hospital, that way he can get some really nice treatment, we definitely won’t be dragging him down into the tunnel complex so the IDF can’t get him.
 

Oooh and let’s stop off to buy some grapes and flowers on the way shall we?’

We know, for a fact, that one of the objectives for some of the trained Hamas fighters/soldiers/terrorists (whatever you want to call them) was the capture and return of hostages. They were planning on using those hostages, and obviously wanted as many living hostages as possible. 

[Zorral]

That hospital!  It just won't get out of the reporting/news!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/21/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-palestine/#link-2MEC7TBHGVF7BGUKZBZNTOQVDQ

 

1 hour ago

Israel built bunkers under al-Shifa ‘decades ago,’ ex-Israeli leader says

 

Quote

 

Israeli constructors built bunkers under al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza “decades ago” to create more space for patients to be treated at the medical center, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak said during an interview on CNN.

Host Christiane Amanpour reacted with surprise, asking Barak to clarify that it was in fact Israeli engineers — not Hamas — who built the underground infrastructure. Israel has repeatedly asserted that Hamas has a command center below al-Shifa, accessed through secret entrances to underground tunnels.

Barak responded by saying that it was “probably five or four decades ago” that Israel helped “build these bunkers in order to enable more space for operation of the hospital within the very limited size of this compound.”

After scouring it last week, the Israel Defense Forces released photos and video of a rough cavity that it described as an “operational tunnel shaft” under al-Shifa. The Washington Post verified the location of the shaft inside the hospital complex but could not verify where the opening led or what its purpose might be.

The evidence for Israeli assertions that Hamas used al-Shifa Hospital as a base remains inconclusive, The Washington Post reported. Hamas and medical professionals have repeatedly denied that Hamas militants are using hospitals as shields for military operations.

 

 

Quote

 

52 min ago

Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said Tuesday that 700 people, including 259 wounded and sick, were still at al-Shifa Hospital. He accused Israeli forces of detaining the people, saying they were stuck inside without water, electricity or food. Israel’s military could not be immediately reached for comment.

 

Quote

35 min ago
By Hazem Balousha
Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry, told The Washington Post the agency is working on publishing updated casualty figures, though he said they would be estimates. More than 11,100 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed by Nov. 10, according to the ministry, but communication disruptions have prevented it from maintaining an official daily count since.

[Zorral]

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Mosab Abu Toha, lauded poet published by the New Yorker, arrested in Gaza
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award this year, the writer was attempting to evacuate to southern Gaza, colleagues say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2023/11/20/mosab-abu-toha-gaza-poet-detained/

Quote

 

Earlier this month, the New Yorker published a first-person account from the besieged Gaza Strip by Mosab Abu Toha, a rising young Palestinian poet who had recently returned home after completing graduate studies in the United States.

“I sit in my temporary house in the Jabalia camp, waiting for a ceasefire,” he wrote. “I feel like I am in a cage. I’m being killed every day with my people. The only two things I can do are panic and breathe. There is no hope here.”

Now, two weeks later, Abu Toha has reportedly been detained by Israeli forces, according to colleagues.

Diana Buttu, a lawyer and Palestinian activist who has been in touch with Abu Toha’s wife, told The Washington Post on Monday that he was attempting to evacuate to southern Gaza with his family when he was arrested by the Israeli military at a checkpoint, along with about 200 other people.

An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson told The Post that they were looking into the matter.

“It’s very scary,” said writer Laura Albast, another friend and colleague of Abu Toha. “We don’t know where he is.”

The New Yorker put out a statement in its daily newsletter calling for the writer’s safe return and highlighting some of his recent writing for the magazine. Earlier on Monday, the magazine’s web editor, Michael Luo, wrote on social media that top editor David Remnick sent a note to staff about the “worrisome news,” saying they “learned he was arrested in central Gaza.” The New Yorker did not respond to requests for comment.

The magazine’s response struck some of Abu Toha’s colleagues, including Albast, as tepid. She said the magazine was happy to “diversify their portfolio” with the writings of a Gazan, but didn’t name who had arrested him.

Late Monday, the New Yorker published a short statement that said “Israeli forces reportedly detain a New Yorker contributor.”

“One idea in particular haunts me, and I cannot push it away,” Abu Toha wrote in the magazine last month. “Will I, too, become a statistic on the news?”

Abu Toha, who is in his early 30s, has published in a number of journals, including Poetry magazine, Arrowsmith and the Nation, which on Thursday published his latest poem, “Gazan Family Letters, 2092.” He also wrote an essay for the New York Times last month. After a fellowship as a visiting poet at Harvard, he completed a graduate degree earlier this year at Syracuse University, where he was also a teaching assistant.

This year, he was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s poetry award, for his 2022 collection, “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza.”

 

 

[Craving Peaches]

Israel has reportedly ordered the evacuation of the Jordanian field hospital, but Jordan has said they will not evacuate it.

[Zorral]

Thirty years ago, a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed achievable. The story of how it fell apart reveals why the fight remains so intractable today.

Was Peace Ever Possible?
A discussion moderated by Emily Bazelon
Nov. 20, 2023

Gift Link:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/magazine/israel-gaza-oslo-accords.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AE0.1tYk.UqrjpzNPxbu8&smid=url-share

This is in the NYT Magazine, so, as such a discussion should be, it is lengthy.  It begins with the year before Israel became a fact.

This is the conclusion:

Quote

 

....Bazelon: The Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 have made peace seem more elusive than ever. Hamas invaded Israel to commit terrible violence and provoked a war in which Israel is inflicting mass civilian casualties in Gaza. Though I know it feels remote now, out of war can come peace. This happened in the 1970s between Israel and Egypt, and later Jordan, and it has happened with some of the world’s other most intractable conflicts, like Ireland and Bosnia. Could it happen again?

Margalit: Remembering Rabin’s worry when some Israelis evacuated from Tel Aviv in 1991 because of the Iraqi Scuds, I think it’s crucial to understand what is abetting the Gaza war now, from the Israeli point of view, namely evacuating and destroying a whole suite of land, within southern Israel, with towns and kibbutzim, and also people leaving the north because of airstrikes from Hezbollah in Lebanon. The evacuation of all these people is a crucial moment in Israeli history. Making a deserted strip of land in the north and south is in a way dismembering or dismantling not just the territorial integrity of Israel but really the whole Labor Zionist vision. Because this is all within the green line.

Under what conditions will people be willing to go back to these places? That will be the endpoint of the war, I think.

I’ve thought that only a catastrophe can bring about a solution. I think this moment has the potential to be this kind of catastrophe. Not only because of the momentous events both in Gaza and in Israel but also because it’s the first time, in this war, that Israel depends on a United States military presence in the Mediterranean Sea in a big way to deter Hezbollah and Iran. This is a real change, a dramatic change in terms of the dependence of Israel on the United States. It’s time for the United States to pursue a version of what Dan said, which to me is sheer common sense.

Inbar: I was lecturing on the conflict in Athens at a think tank, and somebody told me: Listen, you fight for so long. Enough is enough. So I asked him, How many years did you fight the Turks? And I believe his answer was about 250 years. And I thought, you know, if this is the frame of reference, then we have a young conflict.

It’s an ethno-national conflict, and we see that both sides have tremendous energy. Both sides are ready to fight to spill their own blood. It’s very important to get tired. Without getting tired of the conflict, we’ll continue to fight each other. And I do not believe an imposed solution will be useful.

On how the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza will influence the conflict, I disagree with Avishai and Limor. Because for Israel, this is a war to restore deterrence. Israel has to show deterrence in order to survive in the Middle East. In the Middle East if you are not strong, you invite aggression. I think this is true of how Middle Easterners, in various capitals, view interstate relations in this region.

El Kurd: For any kind of future agreement, if there is to be one, there has to be clarity that the Palestinian public does not just want self-governance. Palestinians want self-determination, and they want sovereignty.

Dajani: I think that really did disappear from view during Oslo. And at this juncture we are talking about parity. There are roughly seven million Palestinians and seven million Jews living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. And so what we have to figure out is how we live together in this space. There’s really not an alternative.

At present, the frame for how we live together is that some five million people in that space just don’t have political rights and also have deeply constrained civil rights and very limited access to social and economic rights, including health. That is an unsustainable frame.

I realize from Oslo and Camp David how incredibly difficult it is for international actors to intervene constructively to design a mission that could work, but in view of how far apart these parties are, I can’t imagine how we make any progress without such a step.

Margalit: There is a sense that if you think that you have a solution, it means that you don’t understand the problem and you are naïve.

But then there is the biblical question: Shall the sword devour forever? And I think that the answer should be no. I don’t think that we must wait for 250 years.

 

 

[kissdbyfire]

Nice touches: calling it The Friendship Song and using kids.

It's like Do They Know It's Christmas? in dystopialand. 

 

[Craving Peaches]

14 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Nice touches: calling it The Friendship Song and using kids.

It's like Do They Know It's Christmas? in dystopialand. 

 

I saw that and I almost couldn't believe it. It is very disturbing. 

[horangi]

31 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Nice touches: calling it The Friendship Song and using kids.

It's like Do They Know It's Christmas? in dystopialand. 

 

I'd suggest caution on this one and have someone who can understand Hebrew to check the translation.  Those lyrics seem over the top even for someone that had the intent to commit the crimes mentioned in the sub titles.

Edited November 21, 2023 by horangi

[kissdbyfire]

12 minutes ago, horangi said:

I'd suggest caution on this one and have someone who can understand Hebrew to check the translation.  Those lyrics seem over the top even for someone that had the intent to commit the crimes mentioned in the sub titles.

Yeah, that’s a very good point actually.

@horangi, editing to add that I did find a bit more on Jewish Press about this song; they even have their own translation and an explanation about the origin of the song and how the lyrics were changed. 
Here’s their own translation, w/ a couple of tweaks in a few words (pretty/handsome visage, that sort of thing) but equally horrific.

Quote

On the Gaza beach the autumn night is descending.
Planes are bombing, ruin follows ruin.
See the IDF crossing the borderline
To annihilate the Swastika carriers.
In one more year
There won’t be anything left there,
And we’ll return safely to our home.
In one more year
We’ll eliminate them all and go back to plowing our fields.

And we’ll remember all of them
With their handsome visage and forelocks,
Because friendship such as this will never
Permit our hearts to forget.
Love sanctified with blood
will once more bloom among us.

Now there are no more words
And our soul continues to scream,
For our soul is not only yearning,
For our soul is also fighting today.
One nation,
The eternal nation will never end.
And we’ll keep guarding our home,
We won’t be quiet and we’ll show the world
How today we destroy our enemies.

And we’ll remember all of them
With their handsome visage and forelocks,
Because friendship such as this will never
Permit our hearts to forget.
Love sanctified with blood
will once more bloom among us.

 

 

Edited November 21, 2023 by kissdbyfire

[Relic]

Over 12.700 Palestinian people reportedly killed in Gaza since Israel began bombing the densely populated region.

Over 5,300 of them are children. Many more civilians missing, and unaccounted for. An unknown number of them held by Israeli forces...somewhere. 

56 journalists have been killed. 

Absolutely grotesque response to the grotesque attack on Oct 7th.

[TrueMetis]

12 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Yeah it would be a pretty reasonable action by normal people, maybe not something someone who’d spent the last 24 hours butchering innocent civilians would be doing though. I’m sure after killing so many people they suddenly thought

’oh hey, I hope this Thai hostage pulls through, quick let’s get him to a hospital, no not the local hospital or the many hospitals on the way, his safety isn’t THAT important! No no, let’s drive all the way to the Al-Shifa hospital, that way he can get some really nice treatment, we definitely won’t be dragging him down into the tunnel complex so the IDF can’t get him.
 

Oooh and let’s stop off to buy some grapes and flowers on the way shall we?’

What does this have to do with the fact that the hospital did everything right? That the tweet calling it "terrorist infrastructure" was clearly about trying to revoke the protections hospitals are given. I'm sorry you need to be reminded Hamas bad every five minutes, but this constantly disingenuous framing is getting tiresome.

[Ran]

Two points:

1) Again, the fact that multiple stolen Israeli/IDF vehicles and at least two hostages, are caught on camera converging at Al-Shifa despite multiple other hospitals being present and closer to the border breaches through which they passed, provides further evidence that Al-Shifa is (as has long been accused to be the case, from 2008 and on) was a Hamas headquarters and that it was part of the plans to take hostages there because of that status. 

2) Again, many doctors and NGOs who have been at Shifa hospital have denied ever seeing Hamas or hostages at the hospital, a fact that we know to be a lie in most cases, and journalists should probably make note of the fact the next time they speak with these doctors or organizations. The fact is that they are not able to talk freely when in Gaza (and even when not in Gaza), and it's understandable that they are concerned for their own lives and the lives of colleagues if they speak the truth. But again, news organizations have a responsibility to make sure their viewers are aware of these facts rather than presenting these doctors and NGOs as being capable of being truly candid.

The only reason the IDF is making the point of this, over and over, is the fact that coping denialists try to wave away every jot of evidence because they are biased either against the IDF or, alternatively, are in favor of Hamas, or some mixture of both.

In other news, a group of suicide bombers were filmed by other Hamas members running into Rantisi hospital and blowing themselves up.

So much for the sacred protections given to hospitals in Gaza by Hamas.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Ran

[Ran]

Oh, someone found part of the 2007 PBS documentary showing fighters all over the place and how they treated Shifa and its doctors:

Would love to see the full thing but doesn't seem to be up anywhere. Note that this was filmed in 2006, around the time that Hamas and Fatah were in a very tense situation following the elections that split power between them.

[Kalbear]

17 minutes ago, Ran said:

Oh, someone found part of the 2007 PBS documentary showing fighters all over the place and how they treated Shifa and its doctors:

Would love to see the full thing but doesn't seem to be up anywhere. Note that this was filmed in 2006, around the time that Hamas and Fatah were in a very tense situation following the elections that split power between them.

Heh. Causing the Hamas/Fatah civil war a 'very tense situation' is right up there with calling the Irish rebellion the 'troubles'.