Israel - Hamas war XIII

[AncalagonTheBlack]

 

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Seems deliberately inflammatory, and ignores that Israel itself considers women 18-45 as eligible for being called up and all women of that age have served in the military.

A majority of people who have served in the Israeli military last I read largely did administrative like roles. 

[karaddin]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Nor should anything stop them from completing the task of defeating Hamas and removing their regime from power in Gaza.

Nothing should stop them? Regardless of whether we think the current actions already meet the threshold, I would have liked to think we would all agree "oh wait, we're doing a genocide" should be a red line that would make the IDF stop once they crossed it - I thought we were just arguing about where that line is.

4 hours ago, Ran said:

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.

Civilians don't stop being civilians just because Hamas is using them as human shields. Entire residential blocks don't cease to be a sensitive area just because terrorist scum are hiding in them.

When this war began there was a discussion of just how many Gazans civilians people would be ok with being killed in this conflict and it really seems like for some people there is no upper limit. We're in the ball park of having killed 10x as many as Hamas killed in the Oct 7 attack so even if you're on board with the war crime of collective punishment where is the line for proportionality? If it requires 100k civilian deaths to "wipe out Hamas" is that ok? What about 1m? I guess there is an upper limit at around 2m since that's all of them.

And that doesn't get into the blatant destruction of Gazan infrastructure that's completely unjustified from a military perspective - if your troops are in control to be able to do controlled demolition of schools and hospitals they clearly aren't currently being occupied by Hamas are they*.

 

*Edited to add: This point wasn't meant to be saying they never were, just that they've clearly been pushed out at the point a controlled demolition can be done as that requires the IDF to be in control of the building. Destroying the building at that point is denying the civilian population that infrastructure in the future.

Edited December 14, 2023 by karaddin

[Kalbear]

16 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

A majority of people who have served in the Israeli military last I read largely did administrative like roles. 

Does that make them not soldiers? Again, this is what Israel considers them. They have literally all been in the IDF, they all have had military training with weapons, they all have to routinely retrain until they get to 45. It's weird to think that it's okay to treat them not as soldiers or trained military when they're women. 

Also note that other women have been released and no reports of gang rapes while imprisoned wrongly have come out at all. 

[kissdbyfire]

Special treat: last 4 mins interview w/ UNICEF's James Elder. For once I'm glad I'm already an insomniac. 

And according to this reporting and others, Israel says "several more months". 

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Does that make them not soldiers? Again, this is what Israel considers them. They have literally all been in the IDF, they all have had military training with weapons, they all have to routinely retrain until they get to 45. It's weird to think that it's okay to treat them not as soldiers or trained military when they're women. 

I think there's a clear difference between combat soldiers and office workers who are forced to be in the military. Who gives a shit if they had some training? They weren't trying to fight. That's a warped way to rationalize the situation. Besides, most of the hostages are kids, old women, people living in a kibbutz and people partying at a music festival. Not exactly like capturing Arnold's team from Predator, right? 

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Also note that other women have been released and no reports of gang rapes while imprisoned wrongly have come out at all. 

Huh? We've heard several stories of this happening. 

[kissdbyfire]

And by the way, John Kirby, go fuck yourself.

 

 

[Kalbear]

32 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think there's a clear difference between combat soldiers and office workers who are forced to be in the military. Who gives a shit if they had some training? They weren't trying to fight. That's a warped way to rationalize the situation. Besides, most of the hostages are kids, old women, people living in a kibbutz and people partying at a music festival. Not exactly like capturing Arnold's team from Predator, right? 

Most of the elderly and kids have been released. The argument was that Israel was not willing to release male Palestinians for women of combat age.

32 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Huh? We've heard several stories of this happening. 

Not of the hostages. Were you not implying mass rapes of the hostages while being held? If not, I don't think hamas cares especially much - other hostages taken that have been released have been witness to the sexual violence and there are plenty of other witnesses and evidence of that. Again, just seems randomly inflammatory and based on nonfactuql claims, like the 40 beheaded babies - deliberately designed to stoke outrage without evidence.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

And by the way, John Kirby, go fuck yourself.

Sure that made him tear up.

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

 

 

Looking further into it, a US official familiar with the ODNI assessment says that they're used in dive bombing, which the report notes gives heightened accuracy comparable to using guided munitions. This suggests that they have complete air superiority, that they aren't concerned about a plane being shot down, so they are dropping down quite low in the dives which reduces unintended spread. 

The CNN talking heads are being pretty dense, but typical for live news these days.

ETA: Apparently Western pilots are expected to be able to reliably hit something the size of a tank with unguided bombs when delivering them via dive bombing. US aircraft have two different HUD systems to support the technique. This feels like much ado about nothing by the same sort of people who believed the IDF was carpet bombing out of ignorance.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Ran

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

We've heard several stories of this happening.

The ones we've been hearing about here are the ones that took place on Oct. 7, which we hear about, see referred to every day. But have not heard of others committed on Israeli women.  One does see in the comments to those stories in which these Oct. 7 rapes are referred to that many of the readers in their outrage are assuming these are new, different ones.

But the Oct. 7 rapes are enough and horrible enough and the sort of thing that horribly always happens no matter where the war is.  Women are made the primary victims and humiliated, along with the collateral of children and elderly.  Because somehow that shows manly manly revenge has been done to their male enemies.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Most of the elderly and kids have been released. The argument was that Israel was not willing to release male Palestinians for women of combat age.

I've also seen reporting that Hamas wouldn't agree to release anyone else if they were what they deemed soldiers. Who knows what the truth is. 

Quote

Not of the hostages. Were you not implying mass rapes of the hostages while being held? If not, I don't think hamas cares especially much - other hostages taken that have been released have been witness to the sexual violence and there are plenty of other witnesses and evidence of that. Again, just seems randomly inflammatory and based on nonfactuql claims, like the 40 beheaded babies - deliberately designed to stoke outrage without evidence.

Hamas cares, I just don't know how much, but they do want to with an overall PR battle. That will hurt Israel more than anything they can do in the field. 

58 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The ones we've been hearing about here are the ones that took place on Oct. 7, which we hear about, see referred to every day. But have not heard of others committed on Israeli women.  One does see in the comments to those stories in which these Oct. 7 rapes are referred to that many of the readers in their outrage are assuming these are new, different ones.

But the Oct. 7 rapes are enough and horrible enough and the sort of thing that horribly always happens no matter where the war is.  Women are made the primary victims and humiliated, along with the collateral of children and elderly.  Because somehow that shows manly manly revenge has been done to their male enemies.

We have very little knowledge of what happened after Oct. 7th. I haven't heard many public comments from the hostages and again we're short on much proof of life info from the remaining ones. 

[Kalbear]

You're right, @Ran, now we are back to the original thesis of the idf either being exceptionally uncaring about civilian casualties and destruction of homes, or their method of determining targets is exceptionally flawed.

But they're accurately leveling whole city blocks with those dive bombs!

[Relic]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

You're right, @Ran, now we are back to the original thesis of the idf either being exceptionally uncaring about civilian casualties and destruction of homes, or their method of determining targets is exceptionally flawed.

But they're accurately leveling whole city blocks with those dive bombs!

Not much of a debate here. We know that the IDF doesnt give a single fuck about civilian life in Gaza. 

 

And then there are allegations such as this one, which if true, makes the current regime in Israel EVIL AS FUCK - 

Quote

The study confirms an investigation 10 days ago by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, which found Israel was deliberately targeting residential blocks to cause mass civilian casualties in the hope people would turn on their Hamas rulers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/09/civilian-toll-israeli-airstrikes-gaza-unprecedented-killing-study

 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Relic

[mormont]

9 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

We'll probably have a good idea once a sustained ceasefire happens.

No, we won't. 

At that point we'll have nothing new, only the same (probably uncounted) bodies under rubble, the same prisoners that the IDF says are Hamas, and the same reasons to believe that they are lying, because they cannot possibly say with any of these bodies or people that they can reliably determine how many are or are not Hamas, and they have a strong motivation to inflate the numbers. 

It's not a case of there being 'no better information' as Hmmm puts it: it's a case of there being no information that should be relied on at all, because no reliable information on this can exist in the circumstances. If you think, as Hmmm seems to, that we should rely on the IDF numbers because they're the best we have, that is not a rational choice but a political one, because the IDF numbers cannot possibly be reliable, any more than the Hamas ones can. 

We probably won't even get a remotely accurate estimate of total casualties, let alone a meaningful number of how many Hamas fighters were killed. 

[Ran]

38 minutes ago, Relic said:

We know that the IDF doesnt give a single fuck about civilian life in Gaza.

This continues to remain nonsense. That residential block Kalbear likes to talk about received multiple warnings so people could evacuate. If they didn't care, why would they bother? They're literally telling their enemies where they're going to attack in many cases. The ratio of civilian dead to militant dead would be on the order of 10:1, which it obviously is not.

39 minutes ago, Relic said:

hich found Israel was deliberately targeting residential blocks to cause mass civilian casualties in the hope people would turn on their Hamas rulers.

This does not confirm any such thing. If you read through the article and link through to it, it links to the IDF discussing "power targets", and they are all described as Hamas-owned or Hamas-controlled structures that are lawful targets. It says nothing about causing mass casualties, yet +972 (whoever they are) has some anonymous source claiming  this without providing any evidence.

Haaretz's own analysis enters with the false premise that the tactical and strategic objectives of this war are the same as past "mowing the grass" operations. They are not. Never before has the IDF gone in with the mandate to defeat Hamas, only to "prune" them back. They left stockpiles, tunnels, etc. untouched because they only needed to go after some percentage rather than all of them. Now, they're being told to go after all of them, as they should if the goal is to defeat Hamas and strip them of their ability control Gaza.

This is 100% the cause of the death toll -- it's a war to destroy Hamas, terrorists who have hidden themselves among the civilian population. Trying to draw conclusions from far more limited operations of the past is comparing apples and oranges.

Is it evil to want to destroy Hamas? Fuck no.

 

 

 

[Relic]

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

Is it evil to want to destroy Hamas? Fuck no.

Its evil to kill civilians and call it collateral damage. If the enemy is hiding inside a civilian population how about not dropping bombs on that position. If someone who wants to kill me is hiding behind you, and i kill you to kill them and protect myself, ive done something i would call evil. Anyway, we've been over this before, and failed to agree, so i see no reason to continue this line of discourse with you. 

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

This does not confirm any such thing.

Was quoting the article, and forgot to use a quote box. Not my words. Dunno if the article is correct, or not. The fact that Israel is opening themselves up to this sort of speculation should be enough to give it pause, and re-think their strategy.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Relic

[fionwe1987]

47 minutes ago, Ran said:

Is it evil to want to destroy Hamas? Fuck no.

To want to destroy them? No. But to proceed to try to do so while inflicting indiscriminate civilian loss and massive structural damage, and to literally poison the aquifer with salt water? Yes, yes that is evil. 

Not to mention absolutely stupid. All they're doing is making it incredibly easy for Hamas to draw more support, more troops, and yes, more justification for their next acts. 

If those acts are against Israeli civilians, I'll call them out as evil too, but they'd be no more evil than what this Israeli government is doing. 

Edited December 15, 2023 by fionwe1987

[GrimTuesday]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

We have very little knowledge of what happened after Oct. 7th. I haven't heard many public comments from the hostages and again we're short on much proof of life info from the remaining ones. 

Actually we do have a fair amount of information, some from a few hostages, but mostly from the families of the hostages who go on news programs to talk about their loved ones who were released and to advocate for those still being held, and it basically boils down to the hostage taking itself was violent and traumatic, but the actual time they were being held hostage was more or less humane given the conditions that Israel has imposed on Gaza. A few posts ago, you said that Hamas is running a PR campaign, and you're right. That is why the hostages that are coming out aren't reporting beatings or sexual assaults. For the most part the biggest complaints were they couldn't bathe and some got lice and other health issues associated with hygiene, the conditions were pretty spartan, they had to keep relatively quiet so as not to attract much attention, and towards the end, they weren't getting a ton of food. Oh, and of course the fear of being killed by their own government..

Really the main thing we hear from the government/the doctors the government has assigned to the hostages is that they are traumatized, which, no shit,they saw people they knew get horribly murdered and then were taken hostage and forced to live under the constant knowledge that their lives could end at any moment from a bomb dropped by their own government. If anything, I would say that the lack of reporting about significant mistreatment from the Israeli government sources is indicative of the treatment the hostages experienced

Now, I'm not saying no one had a rough time, nor am I saying this was some kind of fun adventure these people were on, they're being kept hostage in a war zone they're not at summer camp, and Hamas treating them humanely is not something that pro-Palestinian folks should trumpet as a win, civilians should have never been subjected to those conditions in the first place. However, if we're acknowledging Hamas has an interest in keeping the hostages as safe and well kept as possible so as to leverage them both as PR pieces as well as to extract some sort of concessions, then it becomes pretty plain that these accusations of sexual assault of hostages are premature and the reason they are so readily accepted is because of the unconscious Islamophobia that has become more or less baked into our culture.

Edited December 15, 2023 by GrimTuesday

[Craving Peaches]

Why are people still defending the IDF when they are making themselves look like psychopaths? I mean, there was a special channel where they film themselves torturing Palestinians, and they film themselves subjecting prisoners to inhuman treatment, film themselves smashing up people's houses, etc. And this treatment extends to the West Bank so you can't even use the 'we must end Hamas by any means necessary' excuse there. 

I would hope this isn't representative of the organisation as a whole, but whomever is in charge seems to have done little or nothing to curb this sort of depraved behaviour. People involved in such things in the past seem to get slap on the wrist punishments at best. The fact that this is even allowed to happen in the first place is a great cause for concern.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

Why are people still defending the IDF when they are making themselves look like psychopaths?

The IDF are not a monolith. The IDF removed from duty and reprimanded multiple soldiers who, for example, filmed themselves acting inappropriately in a mosque. 

Given that you are convinced that the IDF is evil, using your framing, they are simply the lesser of two evils. I'd rather they prevail in the conflict than Hamas, and you should too.