Israel - Hamas war XIII

[kissdbyfire]

Here we are. Still. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-netanyahu-vows-nothing-will-stop-us-rcna129682

U.S. official to meet with Netanyahu, who vows 'nothing will stop us'

 

[Zorral]

Images of stripped and humiliated Palestinians draw condemnation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/13/gaza-palestinian-detainee-photos-israel/

Quote

 

The images of the Palestinian men, stripped to their underwear, forced to kneel, some bound, some blindfolded in the custody of Israeli soldiers, were certain to provoke extreme emotions.

When they exploded on social media, similar language across multiple tweets suggested a campaign — organized or spontaneous — to get them to the public.

As photos and video spread on X, Facebook and other platforms last week, they were picked up by Israeli media. “Images circulate of dozens of Hamas terrorists surrendering in Gaza,” the Jerusalem Post trumpeted in a typical headline. Israel’s military, which censors the Israeli media, did not object to the characterization or prevent the images’ spread.

Many in Israel viewed the images as evidence of victory over the militants who rampaged through Israeli communities on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people. Or righteous vengeance.

Quickly, though, claims that the detainees were Hamas militants were challenged. Palestinians in Gaza identified relatives who they said were not fighters. Some of them were released. The images, rights activists say, began to convey something different, and darker: an attempt to humiliate and dehumanize Palestinians.

This week, the United States, Israel’s closest ally, called the images “deeply disturbing.” ....

.... 

The Israeli army has shown footage of deadly airstrikes and of tank formations moving freely in Gaza, images that are intended to display battlefield precision and dominance — with no sign of the suffering on the other side of the weapons.

Then there are the videos, apparently recorded by Israeli soldiers, aimed at an audience — in Israel and beyond — clamoring for a win.

These showed soldiers looting shops and homes, a building being blown up, an Israeli flag raised over the bomb-smashed remains of a Palestinian square. None of the images could be independently verified.

IDF spokesman Doron Spielman was asked this month about TikTok videos that a reporter said showed Stars of David spray-painted on the inside walls of Palestinian homes in Gaza and soldiers dancing on beaches in the enclave.

“If they walk around with a can of spray paint, they shouldn’t,” Spielman said. “And if they dance on the beach, you know, I’m not going to go after somebody who’s dancing in the beach.”

Images of one mass arrest were verified by Reuters and the social media verification organization Storyful, which confirmed that they came from Beit Lahia on Dec. 7.

Until recently, videos depicting mass detentions of Palestinian prisoners were rare, said Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. Israel “has been routinely detaining Palestinians for decades and often mistreating and torturing those in detention,” he said. The organization is investigating the videos.

If the images were published by the Israeli army, as they appeared to be, Shakir said, they could amount to a war crime under international law that prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity.” More videos showing mass arrests have appeared this week.

“How do the majority of Israelis look at it? They are happy about it because they want to humiliate them,” said Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the London-based International Communities Organization, which works to end conflict.

“Israel feels nationally humiliated about what happened on Oct. 7,” he said. “This is part of the whole revenge mentality.” ....

 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Zorral

[Zorral]

Eyewitness testimony reported Wednesday by Al Jazeera accused Israeli troops of massacring forcibly displaced women and children sheltering at a school in northern Gaza, an allegation that prompted a leading U.S. Muslim advocacy group to demand a response from President Joe Biden.

Quote

 

The reported massacre took place at the Shadia Abu Ghazala School in the al-Faluja area west of the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Video footage aired by the Qatar-based news network showed numerous covered bodies piled in one of the school's classrooms.

"The Israeli soldiers came in and opened fire on them," one unidentified witness said. "They took all men, then entered classrooms and opened fire on a woman and all the children with her," including "newborn children."

"The Israeli soldiers executed those innocent families point-blank," she added.

 

https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-school-attack

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

Eyewitness testimony reported Wednesday by Al Jazeera accused Israeli troops of massacring forcibly displaced women and children sheltering at a school in northern Gaza, an allegation that prompted a leading U.S. Muslim advocacy group to demand a response from President Joe Biden.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-school-attack

 

Why even ask Biden for a response?  He can't help himself from lying about seeing photos of beheaded babies even after his staff warns him not to, wtf do they think he's gonna do here?

[Craving Peaches]

MSF also tweeted that the IDF shot and killed an unarmed teenage boy in the grounds of a Jenin hospital.

Edited December 14, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[Mudguard]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Images of stripped and humiliated Palestinians draw condemnation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/13/gaza-palestinian-detainee-photos-israel/

 

The routine detainment, stripping and blindfolding of male Palestinian civilians has been going on for a long time.  I saw reports, including images, of this also being done in the West Bank to Palestinian workers.  The West Bank incidents were from early on in the war, and I assume that this has been going on for years.  This reminds me of the abuses/crimes that were done in Abu Ghraib by the US.

Although I can understand them doing a search in a warzone, there is no justification for not returning their clothes after the search is completed.  They obviously don't have any weapons or bombs on them at that point.  It is obviously to humiliate and dehumanize them.  That this widespread systematic abuse has been permitted shows how the IDF and Israeli government views and treats Palestinians.  We are supposed to believe that Israel and the IDF is doing everything they can to protect civilians from harm when it's obvious from these and other actions how they really feel.

[Mudguard]

Well, one of the arguments that people have been making to counter allegations that the IDF has been indiscriminately bombing Gaza is that they only use precision guided bombs to hit their targets.  Well, it turns out that about 40-45% of the 29,000 bombs dropped on Gaza have been unguided dumb bombs.  That's over 10,000 dumb bombs dropped in about 2 months.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/intelligence-assessment-dumb-bombs-israel-gaza/index.html

Quote

Nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in Gaza in its war with Hamas since October 7 have been unguided, otherwise known as “dumb bombs,” according to a new US intelligence assessment.

The assessment, compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and described to CNN by three sources who have seen it, says that about 40-45% of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions Israel has used have been unguided. The rest have been precision-guided munitions, the assessment says.

Unguided munitions are typically less precise and can pose a greater threat to civilians, especially in such a densely populated area like Gaza. The rate at which Israel is using the dumb bombs may be contributing to the soaring civilian death toll.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden said Israel has been engaged in “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza.

Asked for comment on the assessment, IDF spokesperson Nir Dinar told CNN, “We do not address the type of munitions used.”

I wonder if this information is what Biden was referring to when he called the bombing indiscriminate.  Of course, still just stern words from the US and no action.

[kissdbyfire]

17 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

wonder if this information is what Biden was referring to when he called the bombing indiscriminate. 

Biden said what he said and Netanyahu immediately said, for the umpteenth time, that "nothing will stop us". Perhaps a message?

17 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Of course, still just stern words from the US and no action.

Stern words, almost a condemnation, and yet X gazillion dollars went into funding more guns and ammo and who knows what else, w/o congressional approval/oversight. 

"Watch what they do, not what they say".

 

Edited December 14, 2023 by kissdbyfire

[Ran]

4 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

 

U.S. official to meet with Netanyahu, who vows 'nothing will stop us'

 

Nor should anything stop them from completing the task of defeating Hamas and removing their regime from power in Gaza. The US has no intention of doing that, either.

There were, I believe, 10 IDF killed in fighting just two days ago. Hamas is still around. There are over a hundred hostages, with more announced dead or bodies recovered of late. It's simply untenable for Hamas to continue, and truth be told there are increasingly more Gazans willing to call out Hamas for their brutality, their theft of supplies intended for civilians, their endangering civilians, etc. Does that matter? Maybe, maybe not, but it shows that this is a pretty complicated conflict.

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

That's over 10,000 dumb bombs dropped in about 2 months.

Really nothing wrong with "dumb bombs". They're still be using in targeted ways. It's not the "carpet bombing" that people kept going on about two months ago.

 

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

There were, I believe, 10 IDF killed in fighting just two days ago.

Something to note is that 20% of all IDF casualties have been due to friendly fire incidents. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

and truth be told there are increasingly more Gazans willing to call out Hamas for their brutality, their theft of supplies intended for civilians, their endangering civilians, etc.

Citation needed. AP polling indicates support for Hamas is growing, not being reduced. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Really nothing wrong with "dumb bombs". They're still be using in targeted ways. It's not the "carpet bombing" that people kept going on about two months ago.

There are a lot of problems with dumb bombs, but the biggest one is that you do not have the close targeting that urban areas need to avoid casualties. When you're talking about environments where 50m away is a hospital or school or shelter dropping a dumb bomb can easily cause mass casualties, even if it wasn't your intent. That's a lot harder with guided munitions. 

It's also worthwhile noting that many of their chosen targets are done via their Gospel AI targeting helper, which has been shown repeatedly to have really shitty training methodologies and is not remotely clear how accurate it was, much less how accurate it is right now. It's another layer of the 'indiscriminate' label - if humans aren't the primary ones making the decisions and the data used to make the decisions isn't reviewed, can it be considered discriminate?

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Something to note is that 20% of all IDF casualties have been due to friendly fire incidents. 

Yes. It's a shame, but it happens. Still doesn't change my point.

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

There are a lot of problems with dumb bombs, but the biggest one is that you do not have the close targeting that urban areas need to avoid casualties. When you're talking about environments where 50m away is a hospital or school or shelter dropping a dumb bomb can easily cause mass casualties, even if it wasn't your intent. That's a lot harder with guided munitions. 

No one says that unguided munitions are being dropped in the sensitive areas. I'm guessing they're being used on large complexes determined to be Hamas resources, and on larger tunnel complexes.

The US has in the past used 60% guided vs. 40% unguided in operations, even in urban zones -- I believe that was the mix across the entirety of the Afghanistan war. It's the duty of the people developing the attack plans to figure out which are the right bombs to use for a given target.

 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

No one says that unguided munitions are being dropped in the sensitive areas. I'm guessing they're being used on large complexes determined to be Hamas resources, and on larger tunnel complexes.

There have been many reports of unguided munitions landing on sensitive areas. That's really not up for debate. Including the IDF, which has said that they've had accidents on hitting things. For example, here's a case where a whole city block was blown up:

Quote

 

In the main southern city Khan Younis, where advancing Israeli forces reached the centre this week, a whole city block had been bombed overnight to dust. Though most people had fled after Israeli warnings, neighbours digging with a hand shovel believed four people were inside. One body had been recovered.

"May God take revenge on them," said Nesmah al-Byouk, returning to the ruins of the home she had fled three days ago. "We came and saw everything destroyed, the house, the factory, our neighbours and house are all gone. Where we can we go to now?"

 

And large complexes determined to be Hamas resources and larger tunnel complexes are, by all accounts, precisely in the sensitive areas. 

1 minute ago, Ran said:

The US has in the past used 60% guided vs. 40% unguided in operations, even in urban zones -- I believe that was the mix across the entirety of the Afghanistan war. It's the duty of the people developing the attack plans to figure out which are the right bombs to use for a given target.

Using that level of bombs in Afghanistan is not equivalent to Gaza because almost none of it was used in actual urban areas. Very little bombing happened in Kabul and that's probably the only place you can call urbanized in all of Afghanistan. Using unguided munitions on a bunker out on a mountainside is one thing; can you point to where those exist in Gaza? 

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

There have been many reports of unguided munitions landing on sensitive areas. That's really not up for debate. Including the IDF, which has said that they've had accidents on hitting things. For example, here's a case where a whole city block was blown up:

Is that a "sensitive" area, or a residential block controlled by and extensively used by Hamas? No idea. When you read about what "power targets" are, they're dual-use facilities, owned or controlled by Hamas. This could in fact include residential blocks.

In any case, that's definitely a targeted attack, not an accident, and was presumably premised on a determination that it was a lawful target according to Israel's interpretation of the laws of armed conflict.

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Using that level of bombs in Afghanistan is not equivalent to Gaza because almost none of it was used in actual urban areas.

Unguided munitions were used in Mosul, as well, and other cities. Lets no pretend they are never used. They aren't carpet bombing and just letting them fall where they may, they have targeting solutions that are pretty good at calculating about where they'll fall. Not as good as a precision guided munition, true, but not just "well, whatever".

There are appropriate targets for these bombs and inappropriate ones. The one accidental strike I recall from the IDF was the one that damaged that building next to an old church, the target was like 20 feet further away than where the bomb dropped, and that was, IIRC, a guided munition that went a bit astray. That's an appropriate usage of guided munitions. But there are going to be places where the target is large and you have broad margins of areas that have been evacuated or are Hamas complexes.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

In any case, that's definitely a targeted attack, not an accident, and was presumably premised on a determination that it was a lawful target according to Israel's interpretation of the laws of armed conflict.

A whole city block is not what most people consider a targeted attack unless your goal is to destroy a whole city block. This gets back to the idea that you could drop a nuke as a targeted attack. If your only criteria is that the bomb has a designated target and actually hits said target and therefore it's okay - I'm not really interested in having that semantic debate when you're talking about city blocks. 

Though you're right - several war crimes likely occurred with entirely guided munitions too, including use of JDAMs that almost certainly didn't go off 'target'. And as I said before when you're using AI to generate your targets making the distinction that something is 'targeted' is not the salve you think it might be. 

1 minute ago, Ran said:

Unguided munitions were used in Mosul, as well, and other cities. Lets no pretend they are never used. They aren't carpet bombing and just letting them fall where they may, they have targeting solutions that are pretty good at calculating about where they'll fall. Not as good as a precision guided munition, true, but not just "well, whatever".

I'm not pretending that they're never used, but the vast majority of areas in Afghanistan were not urban or even urban-adjacent. Last I checked Mosul was not in Afghanistan either, and the use of unguided vs guided munitions in Iraq was much better - 29000 total bombs, only 9k unguided. Per after-action reports about Mosul the munitions used were almost entirely guided which caused a lot of damage and probably would have been better with more ground forces instead. Where non-precision munitions were used they were used to destroy specific strategic targets like bridges; pretty sure that's not applicable in Gaza. 

1 minute ago, Ran said:

 But there are going to be places where the target is large and you have broad margins of areas that have been evacuated or are Hamas complexes.

Citation needed in Gaza. 

[Ran]

19 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

A whole city block is not what most people consider a targeted attack unless your goal is to destroy a whole city block.

They obviously meant to obliterate that block, and as the IDF says that its targeting complies with the laws of armed combat, there's not much more to be said unless more information comes out.

20 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Citation needed in Gaza.

Is all of Gaza uniformly dense? No, it isn't, which I think is reason enough to not make pessimistic assumptions.

We don't know when or where they use unguided munitions, but there's no reason to suppose that the IDF is using them in any way differently than the US or other Western-aligned nations would. 

[Zorral]

Yes, all of Gaza is densely populated. Where do you get the idea otherwise?

Maps showing it:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/11/middleeast/maps-population-density-gaza-israel-dg/index.html#:~:text=Across the Middle East%2C Gaza,from an annual Demographia report.

Quote

Across the Middle East, Gaza is among the smallest and most densely-packed cities. The urban area around Gaza City is home to nearly 2 million people living in an 88-square-mile expanse, which is about 21,000 people per square mile, according to data from an annual Demographia report.Oct 11, 2023.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-population-density-of-the-gaza-strip

Quote

The Gaza Strip is frequently referred to as one of the most densely populated areas in the world. According to the CIA, it has a population of 2,098,389 in an area of 139 square miles (slightly more than twice the size of Washington, D.C.), which would be a density of 15,096 people per square mile, which is less than the density of the city of Tel Aviv (21,793/sq. mi.). If you compare Gaza to a country, then it would rank fifth but is not even close to the top two ­­– Macau (56,247) and Monaco (51,167).

Quote

Gaza City is the 63rd most densely populated urban area in the world at 42,059 per square mile. This is far below Bnei Brak in Israel (76,000 per square mile). A more apt comparison is Manhattan, which is 23 square miles compared to Gaza City’s 17. Its population density is more than 70,000 per square mile

And on and on.
 

[Ran]

Just now, Zorral said:

Maps showing it:

That map shows that in fact not all of Gaza is uniformly densely populated.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

We don't know when or where they use unguided munitions, but there's no reason to suppose that the IDF is using them in any way differently than the US or other Western-aligned nations would. 

There is quite a ton of reason to think that they are using them differently. Two things come to mind - that the current President of said US calls what Israel is doing indiscriminate bombing, and the US has repeatedly told Israel both publicly and privately that they are not doing a good enough job of using their weapons in a way that minimizes loss of life. 

And that's the US, which errs on the side of civilian deaths. Other western countries are looking at this and choosing to stop working with Israel as closely or at all. 

[Hmmm]

Early this week Israeli military officials claimed that Hamas and its allied militants groups had suffered about 20 000 casualties since the war began. 6000-7000 of which are killed. If those numbers are anywhere near accurate the intensity of this war should start winding down pretty soon. I have seen estimates that Hamas and allies might have had around 50 000 militants in total at the onset of the conflict. But military organizations usually collapse long before casualties approach 100 percent.

There is also the increasingly relevant question of how much ammunition Hamas has left. Their own production and what they can smuggle in from Egypt is probably miniscule at this point. And conventional warfare consumes enormous quantities of all types of ammunition. For example, an infantry battalion in high intensity combat (and that does not conserve ammunition) can burn through hundreds of thousands of small arms rounds in a single day. How large were Hamas' stockpiles before the conflict began? And how many of those stockpiles have already been destroyed by aerial bombardment or been seized by advancing Israeli troops? 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Hmmm

[kissdbyfire]