Israel-Gaza war

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I'm sure Israel has some sophisticated (spy) satellites above them. I would imagine they could pin-point down to the almost (if not) the exact home/backyard/area, where these missiles are being launched from.

I don't understand why they don't retaliate against these targets immediately and strongly, at the very moment they are launching.

Because OODA loops/kill-chains are non-trivially hard, the IDF isn't particularly large (especially when it comes to trained and experienced personnel) and has an immense amount of responsibility, and Israeli PR has over-sold its competence. (I'm not saying that the IDF isn't good by the standard of a modern military, just that it gets presented like they're all hyper-competent, one step short of being superheroes, which isn't true of any military, ever.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/henrymance/status/1712811314299490353?s=20

Dangerous rhetoric on the precipice of invasion

He just said that everything Hamas did was justified. (He's wrong, and what he's describing is a war crime, no matter who carries it out or how much "warning" they have, but that's what he's saying.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

To all the posters that are being critical of Israel. What would you have done if you were Israel After the Hamas abducted/raped/decapitated a ton of israeli children ?


Death toll is terrible in Gaza but I genuinely don't see how Hamas shouldn't be entirely blamed for that.

I would not go in and genocide a group of people because of terrorists. Responding to Hamas by becoming Hamas isn't the answer.

What Israel is doing is not genocide

Technically correct, but "Israel is only committing war crimes and what looks like ethnic cleansing" still refelction a terrible set of decisions.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

NOVA GREEN BREAKING ALERT

*** 2nd US Carrier Fleet rolls in ***

The U.S. will deploy a second aircraft carrier strike group near Israel, further bolstering its military presence in the Mediterranean amid concerns of an escalating conflict with Iran and Hezbollah.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that "The increases to U.S. force posture signal the United States' ironclad commitment to Israel’s security and our resolve to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war."

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-14/ty-article-live/

I would imagine that the carrier forces are there simply to deter any other neighboring nation from attacking Israel. US air forces will not take place in, for example, bombing the city of Gaza or endangering any Palestinian civilians.

So the plan is, we'll just stand by and let it happen, like the Soviet Army in August 1944?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Worth reading that thread in full. Hamas have quite possibly destroyed the Palestinian cause with their actions.

However else I feel about the whole horrific conflict, both historically and presently, I suspect you're right about this. (With the possible exception that even worse are more excessive responses by Netanyahu's government may restore sympathy for the Palestinians.)

The other comment I've heard from more than one person is that while its true that the Palestinian cause has been doomed by Hamas' terror attacks, it doesn't matter because the cause was doomed anyway; that all Hamas has accomplished was to accelerate the inevitable.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

The West Bank appears to be starting to spiral:

https://www.wionews.com/world/is-israel-preparing-for-two-front-war-israeli-army-evacuates-near-lebanon-border-after-hezbollah-attack-647611

West Bank violence

According to the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry, at least 58 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,100 have been injured since Saturday (Oct 7) – after Hamas launched its deadly surprise attack on Israel – in clashes with Israeli troops, arrest raids and attacks by Jewish settlers.

Meanwhile, the IDF, on Monday (Oct 16) said its troops have arrested 360 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including 210 affiliated with Hamas, since the beginning of the war with the Palestinian militant group in Gaza.

The Israeli military claims that 20 Hamas members were arrested last night alone and seized weapons and military equipment from one of the detainees in the village of Kafr Qallil.

There have been multiple reports of clashes erupting between the Israeli army and Palestinians in the West Bank in recent days, particularly since the war between Hamas and Israel began. The United Nations has also called the past week the deadliest for West Bank Palestinians since at least 2005.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

As it turns out, the Israeli's had already bombed this hospital a few days previously. But of course they wouldn't do such a thing a second time.

https://www.anglicannews.org/news/2023/10/anglican-run-al-ahli-arab-hospital-in-gaza-damaged-by-israeli-rocket-fire-as-conflict-continues.aspx

Not a good day for the credibility of neoconservative propagandists and online intelligence assets spreading naked disinfo.

The horseshoe theory is real especially when it comes to foreign policy

Every time I see this term thrown around, it involves reactions to people expressing their empathy for mistreated, bombed or starving people (yes, even brown people — shocking!) and their opposition to the actors committing those crimes, so it probably says a lot more about the 'centrist' people using that term than it does about the term itself..

The point on the fish hook most distant from “far left” is exactly where you find me 🤷🏽‍♂️

So you're bait. Duly noted.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant (Haaretz, October 9th)

Effectively, Netanyahu’s entire worldview collapsed over the course of a single day. He was convinced that he could make deals with corrupt Arab tyrants while ignoring the cornerstone of the Arab-Jewish conflict, the Palestinians. His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

WSJ reports that Israel agrees to delay Gaza ground offensive. 

They won't have as much suport for it later so perhaps its put off for good?

https://www.ft.com/content/75d27680-cdaa-46f7-b810-10b594bb0ad2

   “There is no plan for the ‘day after’. The [Israeli] system hasn’t decided yet,” said one person familiar with Israeli thinking. “The Americans went crazy when they realised there was no plan.”

That's some strong Bush Administration vibes there, plus the 10 year length estimates for the battle and you can see why it's been put off.

They might be realizing what many suspected, that Hamas wants them to invade Gaza and the attack was bait.

Even with their reserves, I would guess the IDF does not have enough trained troops to do it effectively.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-770606

"Turkey's Erdogan: Israel is an occupier, Hamas not a terrorist organization"

I am surprised that Erdogan is this open about his views.  I know this is how he feels but given his record of being a wheeler-dealer on the geopolitical stage, I am surprised he will paint himself into one camp like this.

My guess is that he expects both the ground invasion to happen, and to be long and terrible. By coming out as solidly anti-Israel before it really kicks off, he can make sure he's on the "right side" of Arab/Muslim geopolitics, which is going to react to this much as the US reacted to 9/11. (To be clear, I'm not suggesting Netanyahu and the IDF's impending invasion - terrible though it will be - is equivalent to 9/11 in any objective sense, but that I expect many in the Islamic world will react to it in ways similar to our reaction to 9/11.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Honestly, Hezbollah making serious military moves would be stupid. It's an empty threat or a bluff. They know that Israel war superior military, let alone with possible logistical assistance or air strikes by the US.

The "superior military" that just got blinded-sided so badly by Hamas that hundreds of terrorists went on a massive murderous rampage for the better part of a day?

There's telling everyone how good you are, telling yourself how good you are, and actually proving how good you are against someone else. The IDF is certainly good at the first two, but any evidence for the third is generations old now.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

So, the outlines are becoming clearer now. Despite the Palestinians winning the war in certain corners of social media and some protests, in the actual situation on the ground the Israelis are winning.

The Israelis are well-equipped, basically.competent, and very motivated. I have no doubt they can win in tactical and operational terms, any war with Hamas.

And then what?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/al-jazeera-reporter-cuts-off-gaza-hospital-interview-after-patient-says-hamas-is-hiding-among-wounded/ar-AA1jYpSS

A clip from an Al Jazeera broadcast is circulating online after the network's correspondent reporting from a Gaza hospital appears to abruptly end a live interview with an injured Palestinian man as he starts criticizing the presence of Hamas militants in the complex.

The Al Jazeera reporter was at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza, interviewing an elderly Palestinian man who said, according to a rough translation: "What's happening is criminal! Why is the resistance hiding among us? Why don't they go to hell and hide there? They are not resistance!"

In the clip, the reporter, whose identity is unclear, then turns away from his interview subject and appears to quickly change the subject. The man continues to talk and tries to follow the journalist, even as he's walking away from him.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

so you think the IDF did this just to be cruel and that Hamas didn't use the area for military uses?

I think a few AKs are not enough to indicate that Al Shifah was a significant base for Hamas, which was the rationale (or the pretext) for its bombardment. Cars, people and materiel can move, but tunnel entrances - not so much.

There are three possibilities which occur to me:
1. The tunnels exist and Israel isn’t showing them. Maybe they’ll clarify it in a day or two, but if not by that time, this one’s a bit of a stretch.
2. The tunnels which Israeli intelligence presumed to exist for years do not. This would be rank incompetence, but Hanlon’s razor applies. If true, it raises questions as to how much stock Israel (and other countries) should put in their intelligence.
3. The tunnels never existed and either Israel knew they didn’t exist or didn’t care whether they existed.

I'd say that there is a fourth possibility.
The tunnels did exist but it was quickly covered up or destroyed by Hamas when their leadership fled south.

The tunnels we've been told about for many years aren't going to be "quickly covered up or destroyed".

https://www.haaretz.com/2014-10-17/ty-article/.premium/idf-lacked-training-equipment-to-tackle-tunnels-in-gaza-war/0000017f-e0f7-d568-ad7f-f3ff0fbe0000

An engineering officer engaged in locating the tunnels told Haaretz that the exposure of the three tunnels “gave us the right proportions. In the past we had known of narrow smuggling and explosives tunnels, inside of which you had to walk bent over. But the tunnels we uncovered last year made clear to us that we were facing something entirely different: These were wide tunnels, with internal communication systems that had been dug deep beneath the surface and the sides were reinforced with layers of concrete. You could walk upright in them without any difficulty.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I am not following stuff on the dead-birdsite and most MSM reporting is trash, which definitely makes it challenging to keep up with what's actually happening.

However, I seem to be noticing a very clear shift in reporting on the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza (I presuming originating from the IDF and Israeli government), where a few days ago it was "Hamas is operating in the hospital" or "Hamas has tunnels under the hospital", but now I'm seeing "there's a Hamas tunnel entrance near the hospital" or "Hamas had a tunnel entrance on the hospital complex".

So, as someone who is watching this whole progress of terrible events from October 7th onward, it seems that the IDF/Netanyahu government claims have gone from

Prior to the capture of the hospital: "Hamas has some sort of operational hub in or under this hospital", to now,

After the capture of the hospital: "Hamas had a tunnel entrance near the hospital."

These would seem to be fine but very significant distinctions. Am I misreading this? Are others seeing this same shift in narrative?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

The opinions of cozy westerners is immaterial at best and more commonly actively harmful as we see in this thread. I'm still baffled that people seem to think there's any methodology that they can somehow shoe-horn a justification for Israel' brutality through.

I don't give one f!ck about a "poll" showing sympathy for Hamas. I wouldn't even outside this conflict, but I especially don't care about it, and consider it useless, during said period of heightened tension and Israel actively perpetrating war crimes. Terrorized and traumatized people aren't rational actors? Wow, I'm so surprised!

The glaring omission of any mention of the Hamas terrorist organization - which has controlled the government of Gaza Strip for the entire time frame depicted - is so painfully disingenuous as to destroy any other impact this might have had.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Undercover Israeli troops dressed as medical staff kill three militants in West Bank hospital raid, officials say

Israeli special forces, dressed as civilians and medical staff, infiltrated the Ibn Sina hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday and killed three Palestinian men, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.

Hamas said the men were Jenin Brigades fighters, an umbrella group of armed Palestinian factions in the West Bank city. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they were terrorists linked to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and an Israeli government minister praised the operation.

The disguised special forces “infiltrated the hospital individually, headed to the third floor, and assassinated the young men,” Palestinian state news agency WAFA reported, citing sources from inside the hospital.

The IDF said it targeted Hamas fighter Mohammed Jalamneh who “had recently been involved in promoting significant terrorist activity and was hiding in the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/30/middleeast/israel-undercover-raid-jenin-west-bank-hamas-intl/index.html

I don't see anything wrong with this. It's targeted and only hits Hamas, no civilians, exactly what Israel should be doing.

It's a violation of international humanitarian law, specifically perfidy.

This is a long-standing rule of customary international law already recognized in the Lieber Code, the Brussels Declaration and the Oxford Manual, and codified in the Hague Regulations.[1] It is also set forth in Additional Protocol I.[2] Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “killing or wounding treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts

Given that the definition of perfidy provides that the confidence of an adversary be based on a situation which requires protection under international humanitarian law, the following acts are considered perfidious if committed with the intent to betray the confidence of the adversary:

•simulation of protected status by using the red cross or red crescent emblem because medical and religious personnel, units and transports displaying the distinctive emblems must be respected and protected (see Chapter 7);

•simulation of civilian status because civilians not taking a direct part in hostilities must be respected and may not be the object of attack (see Rules 1 and 6);

If Hamas is hiding in civilian areas while engaging in combat, any resulting civilian casualties are their legal responsibility, not Israel's. If Palestinian civilians die as a result of Israeli military operations against Hamas, so long as the casualties are proportionate, and the targeting of civilians is not deliberate, Israel has not violated international law. I realize those last two are highly contentious, but they are not easily determined (even if some casual observers may think otherwise). But this is an open and shut case of perfidy. Israel needs to arrest these soldiers and charge them (or turn them over to the ICJ or some equivalent body), or it has de jure descended to the same level as Hamas.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Let Israel destroy Hamas first.  Only then can we seriously talk about a cease fire. 

Well I guess if you kill hundreds of thousands some of them will end up being in Hamas, right? Israel has already lost the war. They've created a new generation of Hamas and their international standing has dropped to the lowest it's ever been. They had a window of opportunity and they destroyed it. They're lucky the president is an old guard Israel hack because that's not gonna fly in a Democratic primary anymore. It's a partisan issue now and Israel has only themselves to blame. But ofc they'll just blame it on antisemitism or bias.

But yeah. "Destroying Hamas" is just as nebulous as the "War on Terror" and "destroying the Taliban." Amazing how some Biden hacks are just as accepting of this crap as Vosem.

I suspect it is not "nebulous" for Netanyahu's government, it's just much bleaker than they're willing to say publicly. As you've just indirectly pointed out, this is their one chance to utterly destroy the Gaza Strip. Looked at very coldly, Israel has already paid the lion's share of the price for doing so. If they do invade Rafah and push the majority of the Palestinians there either into the West Bank or into some diaspora, is the international response going to be measurably worse than it already (quite understandably) is? Can the Palestinians be driven to any more despair or anger at Israel than they already (again, understandably) possess?

What's the benefit to Netanyahu and the people who agree with him, to stopping now, instead of after they've rendered Gaza uninhabitable? What is the cost to them of fighting to the last Palestinian?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Iran is launching drones against Israel 😒
https://twitter.com/barakravid/status/1779232234542641600?s=12

I hope Israel's military will be able to shot them down, every single one.

To all Israeli posters (and literally any Israeli): Please stay safe.

Not quite every single one was shot down, but close.

With some help from Israel's friends. Who they should now listen to.

That appears to be the Israel/US spin, which in turn will serve to give Israel a face-saving reason not to escalate, which in turn is a good thing. But I don't think that "everything was shot down" narrative will survive into the medium term (by which time 99.9% of the public will no longer be paying attention).

From what I can tell, the important takeaways from this are:

-the Iranians only targeted military installations (Israeli airbases & air defense)

-the Israelis had advance warning of the strike, and/or it was extremely precise
(no secondary explosions at either airbase implies that either the IDF got everything explosive into bunkers, and/or that the Iranians intentionally hit nothing that would cause a secondary explosion)

-Israeli long-range interceptor launchers ran out of missiles before the Iranians finished shooting

-Israel (and the US) probably spent about ten times more failing to completely stop the attack than Iran did launching it

-the Iranian military demonstrated that it possesses the knowledge and ability to overwhelm US/Israeli air defense and precisely strike targets of choice within Israel (or elsewhere within range)

This appears very much like the sort of thing the United States might do, if a hostile nation hit one of our embassies with an airstrike.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1786418458768634164

There's a deal on the table that would avoid this.

It should never have reached this point. Israel could have quickly seized the Gaza Strip early in the conflict, like it did in 2009. Netanyahu has greatly prolonged the conflict to stay in power.

While that is certainly one factor, it is hard to avoid seeing any decision to prolong the conflict as collective punishment of the residents of Gaza... which is a war crime (or arguably, several of them).

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/sahouraxo/status/1788696871449272750
Belgian television. Unimaginable in USA (and honestly, anywhere else outside Europe but for very different reasons).

Laki should be very proud. Europeans (people, not the government) in general have been the most overwhelmingly Pro-Palestinian voices in how much invested they are in supporting it. Seriously, looking online at people around my age it’s always some Western European who feels the most emotionally moved by the Palestinian cause.

In USA you see this in parts of the youth as well but the Israel institutional support and from older people is much bigger than anywhere else as well. So it’s much more of a 50/50 dispute where strong passion lies in both sides and if even protests against Israel are being criminalized, no way in hell something like that would appear on their TVs as some specific political speech is actively repressed within USA.

From outside the West, people have their positions/opinions on the matter but I wouldn’t say they’re as passionate about it as Westerners are, regardless of side. Which is why something like that would also never appear on TV while interrupting their usual programming, not out of repression or anything, people just don’t care as much to do that kind of stuff I think. Global South societies tend to be much more insular as the effect of globalization is not as strong to the levels of the West IMO.

This is an Union Strike.

We Condemn the Human Rights Violations committed by the State of Israel.

Additionally, Israel is actively suppressing Press Freedom.

Therefore we are Temporarily Interrupting our Broadcast.

#CeasefireNow
#StopGenocide

Saying it’s a genocide is literally Islamist propaganda and it’s beyond disgusting that Belgium is doing this

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Approved and proposed for signature and ratification or accession by General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of 9 December 1948 Entry into force: 12 January 1951, in accordance with article XIII

Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.