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DeadlyMuffin posted:You do realize that *you* posted the Israeli source, right? I genuinely wish you'd try to engage with what I am writing than try to own me with facts and logic. I don't think I've posted anything strange or contradictory here. Coming from my position of "no israeli source is trustworthy", which I think I've made very clear is my honestly held opinion, I still believe that -- even if everyone is lying! -- we can glean some pretty shocking information in the discrepancies between two figures coming from official sources. The difference between 15% and 33% doesn't refute my argument. That's still a huge number undercounted! My argument to Kagrenak is that I think it's naive to think that Harretz or the israeli health ministry is publishing accurate numbers because they'll catch just as much heat for the real numbers. I think few sources in israel have access to the real numbers and that multiple elements of the israeli state apparatus are denying, hiding, or slow-walking figures for propagandistic (domestic or external) ends, but outside of the actual government and IDF coordination is necessarily limited. That point isn't constrained because it's coming from israeli sources -- it depends on it! I am posting earnestly in this thread with my real and actual opinions and thoughts on the matter. I'm not trying to do some sort of weird troll thing to rile you up specifically. Even if I have commented on this thread elsewhere I promise you I am not posting in it (nor have I ever done so) to evoke reactions that I could quote in CSPAM or discord or wherever. I'm posting things I actually believe, and even though my first posts in this thread were sarcastic they were in service of points that I honestly believe. e: There's no moral point here, moths was wondering about IDF casualty numbers VVV Pentecoastal Elites fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 18:57
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Militaries routinely downplay casualties on their side. I really don't see what the scandal is all about. Is it "wrong?" Sure, yeah, I'd agree. But it's pretty par for the course.
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Dec 14, 2023 19:02
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ummel posted:Militaries routinely downplay casualties on their side. I really don't see what the scandal is all about. Is it "wrong?" Sure, yeah, I'd agree. But it's pretty par for the course. It's interesting to discuss considering how casualty adverse the IDF is. Casualty avoidance drives a lot of the military doctrine of the IDF. I.e. Airstrikes, driving around tanks without infantry screens, hanibal directive ect. The fact that they are all conscripts adds another dimension to the discussion. So for the purposes of discussing the Israeli military, casualty numbers and how accurately they are being reported are very important, because they matter a lot to the direction of the genocide that Israel is pursuing. To be clear, Modern Israel is used to short victorious wars where conscripts are not in individual danger. A quagmire with 1000 dead after months of urban combat (not suggesting that number has been hit, just conjecture) would greatly affect public perception within Israel and its ability to conduct wars in the future. National Parks fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 19:36
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ummel posted:Militaries routinely downplay casualties on their side. I really don't see what the scandal is all about. This seems to go way beyond "routine downplaying," given the massive discrepancy between what Hamas is showing/telling and what IDF is stating. Earlier this week Hamas claimed ten kills in one morning, which would be (by Israel's numbers) ~10% of total deaths ...before lunch. Even allowing Hamas some inflation and Israel some downplaying, you still get a picture that's considerably less rosy than Israel is claiming. My takeaway is that if the fraction they were willing to disclose was this incomplete and embarrassing, then the decision to not disclose 10/7 and the first three weeks is more telling than anything they directly announced.
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Dec 14, 2023 19:51
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It sure seems like the Israeli minister deliberately embarrassed the US NSA here https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1735366761740980724?s=46&t=BHs6Pl38GJXGN2Y4xeriNA
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Dec 14, 2023 20:03
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moths posted:This seems to go way beyond "routine downplaying," given the massive discrepancy between what Hamas is showing/telling and what IDF is stating. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/13/gaza-israel-soldiers-killed-hamas-ambush With that said it's true that Hamas tells a lot of absurd and desperate lies when it comes to killing IDF soldiers, probably because they need to keep their fighters motivated in spite of their very weak results. cf this no evidence claim of 60 kills in a single incident (that as far as I can tell never happened in any capacity whatsoever). Neurolimal posted:https://twitter.com/AJArabic/status/1731195838926303435https://twitter.com/AJArabic/status/1731211934031106188
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Dec 14, 2023 20:08
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Israel did actually take 9 fatalities in a single incident this week, so that may be a rare example of Hamas telling the truth. This is, again, a bizarre expression of implicit trust in israeli sources while discounting anything else. Hamas rarely tells the truth, they tell a lot of absurd and desperate lies, there's no evidence of claims -- where are the counterclaims coming from? israel? We've already demonstrated how israel lies constantly, about everything, including within their own propagandistic apparatus. Where are even the casualty discrepancies between the IDF and the israeli health ministry coming from? Surely they can't all be friendly fire incidents?
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Dec 14, 2023 21:04
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I'm also scratching my head at the implicit trust of Israel - if you needed to characterize their actions in a word, it'd be hard to pick between "deceitful" and "excessive." Which honestly makes sense for them - this entire exercise is, for them, more about managing perception than anything else. October 7th broke the idea that Israel was "safe" which is the whole point of Israel. This entire campaign is an attempt to reassert that illusionary safety. Israel needs to rebuild public trust or it cannot continue to exist. They're obviously trying very hard to do this, but they've only got one drum. It's loud, and they're banging it real hard, but it's never going to play the PR symphony they need. They're signaling that We'll try to get revenge for you. And that's a very different concept. They would say that they're making their citizens safe by eliminating Hamas, but what they're doing is collectively punishing the Palestinians for Hamas's success on 10/7. The idea is that this disproportionate reprisal will intimidate Hamas's leadership or undermine their popular support. Has an occupying force ever bombed its way into hearts and minds? The longer they flounder, the more obvious it is that they cannot achieve their stated goal of eliminating Hamas. Lying about it doesn't help, and actively hurts their existential goal of rebuilding the public trust. Consider the arrests of a bunch of dadbod civilians (in two takes,) driving different stripped randos to a mass grave, the Mexican-Israeli actress posed as a Palestinian ER nurse, the tunnel fiasco, the "invincible" iron dome, and now these impossibly rosy casualty numbers. None of this fools anyone. It only signals that Israel needs to be perceived as winning, and they probably aren't if their victories are obvious lies. moths fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 22:32
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If anything did hold up as truth in this war it's the effectiveness of Iron Dome. Hundreds if not thousands of rockets fired from Gaza and how many casualties in Israel from them? Sure, the rockets from Gaza aren't exactly cutting edge and this still disrupts Israeli society on a daily basis but Iron Dome as far as I can tell works as expected.
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Dec 14, 2023 22:57
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It has been known to work fine for a while now. At $60k per interception it really should.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:06
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Iron Dome is effective at a specific use-case (intercepting dumb rockets that travel fairly slowly), it does have the obvious issue of "they're exponentially more expensive than the rockets they're intercepting", which on an existential time & resource scale is a problem, but currently they have some stockpile of supplies for it. Will say that it's likely a combination of both the ID being good at its specific use-case, but also the rockets not being very powerful to begin with. IIRC they've tried to sell both Merkava's and Iron Dome's to other countries, but haven't had much luck finding buyers because of the obviously niche use-cases of both.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:13
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moths posted:Israel needs to rebuild public trust or it cannot continue to exist. It's genuinely amazing how they found a way to speedrun every hard lesson America learned in 20 years of Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:29
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I mean if another country was essentially funding your Iraq or Afghanistan, why would you stop?
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Dec 14, 2023 23:38
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:This is, again, a bizarre expression of implicit trust in israeli sources while discounting anything else. Hamas rarely tells the truth, they tell a lot of absurd and desperate lies, there's no evidence of claims -- where are the counterclaims coming from? israel? We've already demonstrated how israel lies constantly, about everything, including within their own propagandistic apparatus. Where are even the casualty discrepancies between the IDF and the israeli health ministry coming from? Surely they can't all be friendly fire incidents? Beyond that, note how the 9 Israeli deaths were announced by the IDF and were news in many major publications. If the 60 deaths (a much more notable story!) incident was true, why is there no trace of it anywhere other than that one Hamas announcement? Why is no-one writing articles about it, and why did Hamas provide no evidence? The fact that Israel (like basically all parties to any war that has ever happened) will lie cynically to advance its cause doesn't mean that we should automatically believe the equally absurd lies of their opponent, or imagine that they're able to coverup things that they have no way to hide. moths posted:I'm also scratching my head at the implicit trust of Israel - if you needed to characterize their actions in a word, it'd be hard to pick between "deceitful" and "excessive." They would do all these things regardless of how well or badly the war against Hamas was going (although if Hamas was successfully resisting you might think that Israel wouldn't be able to arrest and humiliate large numbers of men in the middle of cities Hamas supposedly controls with impunity).
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Dec 14, 2023 23:46
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Yeah that is to say that Israel cannot make Israelis safe by pacifying Palestine with bombs; it Israel's foolish mistake to think that more bombs = weaker resistance.Irony Be My Shield posted:They would do all these things regardless of how well or badly the war against Hamas was going (although if Hamas was successfully resisting you might think that Israel wouldn't be able to arrest and humiliate large numbers of men in the middle of cities Hamas supposedly controls with impunity). No - if Israel were doing well they wouldn't need to present civilians as "captured Hamas fighters;" They would be presenting captured Hamas fighters instead. moths fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 00:53
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FlamingLiberal posted:I mean if another country was essentially funding your Iraq or Afghanistan, why would you stop? Only about 15% of Israel's military budget comes from the US. That is a hilariously large proportion, but they're still paying for most of it out of their own pocket.
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Dec 15, 2023 00:54
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moths posted:Yeah that is to say that Israel cannot make Israelis safe by pacifying Palestine with bombs; it Israel's foolish mistake to think that more bombs = weaker resistance. This does, of course, assume that Israel's objective is simply to eliminate Hamas rather than building a crude-but-adequate international excuse for genociding/ethnically cleansing the entire Gaza Strip. I think the former is a notion that's now long past its expiry date.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:58
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I don't think they woke up on 10/8 and decided to kill everybody, but Israeli leadership panicked. They have one tool and it's indiscriminate violence. Which they applied as hard as they could. Ironically, I think Washington shares my read that this is the shortest path to "no Israel." Nobody in the West has sympathy for Palestine - Biden's "suggested timeline" is about ensuring there's still an Israel to hand over to the next guy. (Who hopefully isn't a total fuckup.) kiminewt posted:If anything did hold up as truth in this war it's the effectiveness of Iron Dome. Hundreds if not thousands of rockets fired from Gaza and how many casualties in Israel from them? There's frustratingly sparse reporting on this, but I don't think the 10/7 rockets were ever intended to cause casualties - they were supposed to choke Israeli air defense and allow the paragliders through. I'd bet a dollar that the "5000 rockets" were substantially fewer and full of foil, but nobody who could confirm that would benefit from saying. In general, rocket attacks are designed to make Israel sound the sirens and flush $60k a pop. This keeps Israelis scared, which is something that benefits both Hamas and Israeli officials.
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Dec 15, 2023 04:36
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moths posted:I don't think they woke up on 10/8 and decided to kill everybody, but Israeli leadership panicked. They have one tool and it's indiscriminate violence. Which they applied as hard as they could. On that note, there's this: quote:Compared to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the current war (...) has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”). Source: https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/ Obviously it's completely backwards and could never work, but that's supposedly their internal justification.
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Dec 15, 2023 06:08
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enahs posted:Is there a term for the practice of people constantly (or at least partially) misinterpreting the other side's argument, expressing outrage/judgment at the misinterpreted argument they've imagined, and claiming ignorance of how the other side could misunderstand their own arguments? I feel like I've seen it several times in this thread and it is very tiresome to read, especially when it is the same argument that has been had before, just with different posters. I believe the first time I saw it was regarding reports of decapitated babies, then the Al-Shifa hospital bombing, and now sexual assault. It feels similar to whataboutism and gish galloping, but distinct from that. The specific practice of misrepresenting someone else's position or claims to attack them is related to a strawman fallacy. The overall function is bad faith or motivated reasoning; the individual decides, on some level, that they care more about the sense of victory, about being impervious to attack, than being correct about other elements of the discussion. As a result their grip on reality, as expressed by the facts under debate or the positions of the person they're debating, is secondary.
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Dec 15, 2023 06:42
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Even before Iron Dome existed rocket fire killed relatively few people - it was around 50 in the first decade. A single day of this bombardment kills more people than all the rocket fire over two decades plus combined has.
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Dec 15, 2023 14:30
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Groovelord Neato posted:Even before Iron Dome existed rocket fire killed relatively few people - it was around 50 in the first decade. A single day of this bombardment kills more people than all the rocket fire over two decades plus combined has. While true, there were a lot less rockets pre-Iron Dome. Especially longer-range rockets which didn't start reaching places like Tel-Aviv until like 2014 and even then it was like single digit stuff.
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Dec 15, 2023 17:47
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Looks like Qassams are hitting Jeruselam today. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-claims-responsibility-for-rockets-at-jerusalem-one-said-to-fall-near-ramallah-hospital/
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Dec 15, 2023 18:59
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IDF killed three hostages: https://x.com/idfonline/status/1735725778250170731?s=20 quote:IDF spokesperson: That's four they've killed by gunfire I think.
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Dec 15, 2023 19:37
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Groovelord Neato posted:IDF killed three hostages: In defense of the IDF, they could easily have been mistaken for Gazan civilians.
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Dec 15, 2023 19:52
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punishedkissinger posted:In defense of the IDF, they could easily have been mistaken for Gazan civilians. Made the same crack in the other thread. This is a monumental gently caress up it has to be on video or something for them to admit it I can't imagine not blaming it on Hamas like they have everything else.
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Dec 15, 2023 20:03
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Groovelord Neato posted:Made the same crack in the other thread. This is a monumental gently caress up it has to be on video or something for them to admit it I can't imagine not blaming it on Hamas like they have everything else. Does it? Because it feels like they're just loving up actively and openly and not even trying to hide it. I hear about at least three or more new horrifying and deadly gently caress ups every day. At this point, them just outright saying, "Yeah, we killed the hostages we were trying to rescue. We shot them like a hundred times. They were unarmed." is incredibly on brand with every other thing they've done so far. https://www.axios.com/2023/12/15/gaza-kerem-shalom-humanitarian-aid More humanitarian aid is going to be allowed into Gaza. This makes me both extremely happy because it means thousands upon thousands of people won't starve to death, and overwhelmingly angry because the situation should have never been allowed to get this bad to begin with, and more people would be alive if the aid were allowed in sooner.
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Dec 15, 2023 22:18
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Groovelord Neato posted:IDF killed three hostages: Just a minor oopsie. It's not like the IDF has been indiscriminately slaughtering civilians or anything.
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Dec 15, 2023 22:19
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https://twitter.com/Lana_Tatour/status/1735747677521055794 Israel is screaming through a bull horn what their actual goal is, and we’re still supposed to go through the loving farce of pretending otherwise.
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Dec 15, 2023 23:39
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moths posted:They would say that they're making their citizens safe by eliminating Hamas, but what they're doing is collectively punishing the Palestinians for Hamas's success on 10/7. The idea is that this disproportionate reprisal will intimidate Hamas's leadership or undermine their popular support. Irony Be My Shield posted:I find this post confusing. You state - completely correctly in my view - that the goal of this campaign is revenge, and to enact collective punishment upon the citizens of Gaza. But then you go on to suggest Israel cares about winning the "hearts and minds" of the Palestinians. They don't! They are not trying to convince Gazans to support Israel. They are making them suffer as punishment for October 7th. They are trying to put them in such bad living conditions (dispersed among various Arab countries? Expelled into the desert? Living under occupation in a camp in the shattered ruins of Gaza?) that their ability to resist will be severely damaged. They are harming and humiliating them to make an example so that other actors such as Hezbollah do not for one moment imagine that attacking Israel is a good idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhhpCvtW1Y&t=980s moths posted:There's frustratingly sparse reporting on this, but I don't think the 10/7 rockets were ever intended to cause casualties - they were supposed to choke Israeli air defense and allow the paragliders through. To tie it all together, the "hearts and minds" logic applied to the U.S. war with Al Qaeda where it invaded Iraq from thousands of miles away and left a power vacuum that Al Qaeda exploited. But Hamas and Islamic Jihad and other groups attacked Israel with 2,500 guys from across the border in Gaza. Hamas also claimed around 30,000 members. Then there's Hezbollah that is stronger than any Palestinian group and has an alliance with Iran and there's a possibility of a second front, and so obviously, that reinforces a belief in Israel that they should smash Gaza at the expense of the Palestinian population there. Nasrallah also seems like a rational guy who has to factor what might happen in the event of a war in the north. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Dec 16, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 23:42
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https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-troops-filmed-brutally-beating-palestinian-photojournalist-in-east-jerusalem/ It shouldn't surprise me how naked and brazen the abuse is, but it still does. A friend of mine who visited Hebron and Jenin in the late oughts told me that he was there with friends and family and they had planned a trip to Jerusalem. At the checkpoint, they split the group into three smaller ones, because if the soldiers saw a party of friends, they'd always retain one of more people for hours or send them back, just to be shits and ruin everyone's trip. Obvious couples were also separated just as often, and everyone had a horror story of needing to take an elderly relative to another city for a medical exam or visit and then be told "Oh, your dad can go. You stay while we, um, check things." or vice versa. If you get pissed because this is happening for the 56th time and scream at a sargeant? Criminal charges.
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Dec 15, 2023 23:48
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punishedkissinger posted:It has been known to work fine for a while now. At $60k per interception it really should. 60k is, as far as I know, really cheap for missile interceptions. moths posted:Yeah that is to say that Israel cannot make Israelis safe by pacifying Palestine with bombs; it Israel's foolish mistake to think that more bombs = weaker resistance. It's likely to be the mirror of the 'all Israelites are Opposing Forces Colonizers' mindset, in that it doesn't matter if they're actual Hamas fighters or not. They exist in Gaza, so they are The Enemy, it doesn't matter who they are. So it's no sweat if they gun down a bunch of elderly and children, they're just as Hamas as anyone else.
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Dec 16, 2023 01:45
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https://x.com/OpiningChickpea/status/1735592025389498642?s=20 "Why can't you just protest peacefully? Wait, no, not like that."
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Dec 16, 2023 03:40
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:I'd add that I think another intended audience is Arab governments and Iran. Most debates center on Israel-Palestine in that binary logic, but within the mindset of Israeli leaders, they're trying to look tough to everybody else in the neighborhood. It's a cycle of vengeance and insecurity about appearing weak and overall they're simply not operating according to this mindset about winning hearts and minds. Joshua Landis gives an anecdote about Omani military officers he met and their reaction to the Oct. 7 attack. Interesting podcast/show, thanks for this. I didn't know about him.
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Dec 16, 2023 05:09
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DeadlyMuffin posted:He's also out of sync with his own party. I was pleasantly surprised to see more Democrats sympathizing with Palestinians than Israelis in this WSJ poll, but almost half sympathize with "both equally" which I find hard to understand. I don't think it's that hard to understand when you consider that both "Israelis" nor "Palestinians" are diverse groups consisting of a number of factions and movements with differing strategies, goals, and aims, along with a large number of civilians who aren't particularly affiliated with any movement and/or just want to live their lives without getting dragged into war and ethnic cleansing. If someone is inclined to do so, it's easy for them to find groups on both sides to sympathize with. Kagrenak posted:It's like their strategy for keeping any specific atrocity out of the news is to just commit the next inconceivably horrible act so fast you can't keep up Is it normal for ambulances to be taking discharged patients home in some countries? It's not the usual practice in the US - ambulances are for rapid response to immediate health emergencies, not for transporting healthy people around. moths posted:No - if Israel were doing well they wouldn't need to present civilians as "captured Hamas fighters;" They would be presenting captured Hamas fighters instead. Did they ever actually present civilians as "captured Hamas fighters"? Several Twitter accounts certainly accused them of doing so, but when I checked their claims, I didn't find any evidence of that. Official Israeli sources stated only that they had captured military-aged males in an area that was supposed to have been evacuated, and they would be investigating and interrogating the captured men to determine whether any of them were affiliated with Hamas. I was not able to find Israeli authorities claiming those captured civilians as confirmed Hamas members.
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Dec 16, 2023 06:23
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:https://x.com/OpiningChickpea/status/1735592025389498642?s=20 how the gently caress do they enforce this? Gonna arrest me for not buying israeli poo poo?
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Dec 16, 2023 06:28
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I liked this interview with a Shin Bet interrogator who met Yahya Sinwar.quote:While preparing for this interview, I read remarks by the interrogator Micha Kobi, who also questioned Sinwar at length. His description really sounds like it comes from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), definition of an antisocial disorder. He said Sinwar is emotionless, insensitive and cruel, shameless, lacks compassion. That he balks at nothing. That he seems to be pleased with the murders. 
BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Dec 16, 2023 |
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Dec 16, 2023 07:37
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Main Paineframe posted:
Much like with American or Russian government announcements the default mode is to assume the opposite of what they have claimed.
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Dec 16, 2023 11:34
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moths posted:, the Mexican-Israeli actress posed as a Palestinian ER nurse. You shouldn't blindly believe everything you read online. Nucleic Acids posted:https://twitter.com/Lana_Tatour/status/1735747677521055794
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Dec 16, 2023 11:42
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Main Paineframe posted:
We do this in the US for certain discharged patients, usually when transitioning to home health care, or transporting back to a nursing home, etc. Types of ambulances can vary wildly too, not every one is equipped to deal with emergency calls, some just move patients from place to place (and bill the gently caress out of insurance for it).
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Dec 16, 2023 12:05
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