|
Google Jeb Bush posted:Oh okay that's fair. To my knowledge they have not killed or injured anyone in the current blockade yeah. While I lean toward that being luck and don't really see how non-drone missiles could do much without being luck, I'm now (thanks Stringent) honestly curious about their drone doctrine. It's not really comparable. When you're firing at the the open ocean, you have to be very accurate or very lucky to kill anyone. When you're firing at a densely-populated urban area, you have to be very accurate or very lucky to not kill someone. If your aim's a couple hundred meters off in a major city, you're probably going to hit another building or drop a missile into the middle of the street. If your aim's a couple hundred meters off in the ocean, you're probably going to blow up a cargo container or drop a missile into the water. To put this into perspective, the aircraft carrier that came to Maersk Hangzhou's rescue was about the same length as Maersk Hangzhou, but a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier holds about 5000 crew, while a typical container ship holds 20-30 crew. Also, while the Houthis shot at least three missiles at the Maersk Hangzhou, two were shot down by US warships. The remaining missile, the one that hit, apparently didn't hit anything important: not only was no one killed, but the ship was able to continue at full speed under its own power, helping it to hold off the followup force of Houthi raiders until American reinforcements arrived to drive them off.
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2024 02:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 01:48 |
|
|
Hong XiuQuan posted:Man, thank you so much for posting this because you’re identifying exactly the problem. You're wrong about this in two ways. First, this isn't data from the Israeli government. Second, it's nowhere near being the complete bodycount. As the article puts it: quote:Partial data by Hebrew media covering the civilians — killed by thousands of invading terrorists and by some of the thousands of rockets fired that day at Israeli cities — reveals that they include two infants, 12 other children under the age of 10, 36 civilians aged 10-19, and 25 elderly people over the age of 80, accounting for 75 of the 764 civilians. quote:An unknown number of bodies — in mid-November the number was around 100 — are still awaiting identification at the Shura pathological center near Tel Aviv, with difficulties in the process arising because of the state of the remains. Some of the remains are believed to belong to Hamas terrorists. That said, given the highly damaged state of many of the bodies, as well as the chaotic and traumatic circumstances in which rescuers had to work, I wouldn't be shocked if some of the witnesses on the ground out there gathering the bodies misidentified dead children as younger than they actually were. By all accounts, it was not pleasant work.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2024 16:20
|
|
|
Speleothing posted:And of the remaining 750, at least half of them were killed by the IDF. Do you have a source for this? This claim goes well beyond anything I've seen from anyone remotely serious, and also seems to be extremely unlikely given the numerous eyewitness accounts of Hamas killing people as well as the length of time before the IDF was able to muster a significant response.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2024 16:55
|
|
|
Speleothing posted:https://new.thecradle.co/articles/israeli-army-ordered-mass-hannibal-directive-on-7-oct-media The math certainly is easy to do when you're making up whatever numbers you feel like. The 70 to 90 vehicles were vehicles crossing or approaching the Israel-Gaza border, from either direction. While at least a few of those vehicles may have been transporting hostages, there's no evidence to suggest that all or even most of them were. As for the militants dressed as police shooting people in Israel, all accounts suggest that those actually were Hamas militants. Both eyewitness accounts and camera footage support that there actually were Hamas militants dressing as Israeli soldiers and police on Oct 7th. And that wouldn't be the first time Hamas has done something like that - there's been past incidents of Palestinian militants wearing IDF uniforms while attempting to infiltrate into Israel, particularly this one which spooked the hell out of the IDF, when such a group was discovered only a couple hundred meters from a kibbutz and almost managed to deceive an actual IDF squad. The shelling of one home in a kibbutz is only confirmed to have killed one person. While it's certainly possible that the shell was also responsible for some or all of the 13 other dead civilians in that home, it's also quite possible that they were killed by the terrorists who were holding them hostage, using them as human shields, and openly threatening to shoot hostages if the IDF moved in. For some reason, people only remember the part of that situation where the tank fired, so let's refer back to the NYT article that broke that story (warning: this article contains some photos and videos that may be disturbing or  , including surveillance footage of people being shot at and detailed descriptions of people being killed) and refresh our memories about what exactly happened there:quote:The couple had thought they were safe after fleeing the massacre at the nearby music festival. Instead, they found a village under lockdown, facing a similar attack. So the Hamas militants had already killed one person in that house before the IDF forces even arrived. And when the IDF forces arrived, the militants directly threatened to shoot hostages, and then intentionally positioned a number of the hostages between themselves and the IDF soldiers. While the civilian eyewitnesses don't appear to know whose bullets were responsible for each death, other than the one killed by the tank, there should be no doubt that the Hamas militants who forcibly kidnapped those civilians as hostages and forced them at gunpoint to act as human shields for several hours while the militants fired behind them hold some responsibility regardless. Moreover, that NYT article isn't just about that one house. It describes a number of other incidents (sourced from eyewitness accounts and surveillance footage) in which people were badly hurt or killed by Hamas militants, often long before any IDF presence at all arrived. (warning: descriptions of people being killed by Hamas) Benayahu Bitton and his two friends, whose car was shot up by Hamas militants as it tried to enter a kibbutz, with the killing (including its perpetrators) caught on video. The Bachar family, where several members were wounded when militants fired through the door of their safe room and then tossed grenades through the windows. The village clinic, where an eyewitness describes at least four people being killed by Hamas gunfire, with one of them being a medic who was executed while begging for mercy.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2024 18:40
|
|
|
Hong XiuQuan posted:The data compiling the list of dead has been released by the Israeli social security agency Bituah Leuni which lists 695 Israeli civilian dead. Two are infants. You can argue whether or not this is what you think counts as a govt source but as far as I know that count is no longer challenged. Bituah Leuni themselves say that the list of 695 dead is not a complete one: https://www.btl.gov.il/English%20Homepage/About/News/Pages/NamesLaad.aspx quote:The National Insurance updloaded the names of 695 identified war casualties to the "Laad" website So they say that not all bodies had been identified at that point, and also that for various reasons they hadn't yet posted all the names that had been identified (and also that their English site is an afterthought with lovely translation, but it appears to line up with the Hebrew). Also, that announcement (and thus the count of 695) was posted on November 9th. So the list of 695 dead that France 24 reviewed is pretty out of date. And it's worth noting that body identification is still going on, and there's still a number of people whose status is unknown. For example, Ilan Weiss was only officially declared dead on Jan 1 based on unspecified info from forensic examiners, only for it to be discovered three days later that he was actually being held hostage in Gaza. While they've no doubt found most of the bodies by now, the "sifting bone chips out of the wreckage of burned-down houses" phase of casualty-hunting is likely going to drag on for a while longer. Professor Beetus posted:Why do these arguments about how many babies were decapitated keep coming up? The most horrific crimes committed by Hamas on Oct 7th wouldn't justify the Israeli response of, well, continuing and intensifying their ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. I mean Israeli snipers murdering Palestinian children and medics and whomever else is like a Tuesday for them. Trying to whatabout on behalf of an ongoing genocide is loving disgusting. Well, you can just click the previous page button and look at exactly who started talking about decapitated babies and what argument they were making. I know that's not as easy or as satisfying as making a blind assumption based on your preconceptions, but it's still worth doing. As far as I can tell, these were the people first who brought up the beheaded babies in this conversation: cat botherer posted:Accusations like this are obvious IDF propaganda, just like the 40 beheaded babies. I know CNN uncritically repeats these fabrications, but we shouldn’t. BARONS CYBER SKULL posted:the same kinds of people who think Oct 7th excuses Israels wholesale slaughter of Palestinians are the same ones who immediately fall for Israels obvious lies and propaganda and still tout lines that have not only been denied but literally proven not to be true even remotely Gosh, it sure doesn't look like they're trying to "whatabout on behalf of an ongoing genocide". Instead, it looks like they're bringing it up umprompted in order to argue against talking about other Hamas atrocities on Oct 7th. Why do Hamas atrocities on Oct 7th keep coming up at all? Probably because, regardless of whether they were morally justified or what they may have created moral justification for, they're unquestionably a major contributing factor to the current events, and one that cannot possibly be ignored in any response or resolution of these events. Also, sometimes denialist narratives get posted here and people argue about them because they're controversial.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2024 19:27
|
|
|
Professor Beetus posted:Well I retract that part of my statement but I think it's a losing game to debate the exact number of babies killed when Israeli has the deaths of vastly more Palestinian children on its hands. Oh, I completely agree. I think it would be nice if we could focus on the actual things going on right now in Gaza that we have tons of clear evidence about. I think it would be nice to agree that regardless of how many unarmed civilians Hamas murdered on Oct 7th or how brutally they did it, the Israelis have done far worse in the months since. But it seems to me that for some people, that's not enough - they also need to whitewash the crimes Hamas committed, so that they can have a morally spotless hero to pit against the Israeli villains. When people start specifically claiming that the IDF was responsible for more Israeli civilian deaths than Hamas was, it is absolutely reasonable to challenge that rather substantial claim, at least until we get much better evidence than "the numbers aren't released, obviously, but the math is easy to do". Esran posted:If everyone agrees that the crimes of Hamas can't justify a genocide, and everyone agrees that Israel is doing one, then what possible reasons could there be for this topic to become the focus repeatedly? Because whether or not Hamas' actions morally justify a genocide, Hamas' actions aren't something that can just be ignored either. They have a significant political and diplomatic impact, which affects both Israeli domestic politics and world diplomatic relationships with the various Palestinian factions. Any resolution to the conflict is inevitably going to need to consider both the impact of Israel's actions on Gaza and the impact of Hamas' actions on Israel. And yeah, the latter is probably going to weigh disproportionately heavily, because Israel has most of the power here and because most of the countries likely to have any say in the result already hated Hamas and are going to inherently sympathize with the Westernized modern military against the Islamic guerilla terrorists.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2024 21:24
|
|
|
ELTON JOHN posted:how do you know they were hamas and not one of the dozen or so militant groups operating in gaza Sorry, you're right. They were Palestinian militants pretending to be Israeli soldiers, not Hamas militants pretending to be Israeli soldiers. The fact remains that they were not Israeli soldiers shooting people and then making up fake Palestinian militants to blame it on, as the poster I was responding to appeared to be suggesting. I suspect we'd spend a lot less time talking about Oct 7th if people weren't insisting on bringing up increasingly bizarre theories like that with the apparent intention of absolving Palestinian militants of responsibility for the killings on Oct 7th.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2024 22:55
|
|
|
PE, in order to respond to this post, I'm really going to have to break it up into two separate pieces.Pentecoastal Elites posted:I think this illustrates the big disconnect between people frustrated that this thread is often fixated on 10/7 and not the ongoing genocide, and people frustrated that 10/7 is getting dismissed, ignored, or explained away. First things first, "Israel" is not a monolith. The information we have about Oct 7th is coming not just from the Israeli government, but also from numerous private Israeli organizations and individuals. There's plenty of eyewitness testimonials from people who saw these attacks with their own eyes. There are people who were injured in these attacks and have a pretty good idea of who shot them. One of Haa'retz's sources of information in making an early list of casualties was just having a staff member who'd lived in one of the kibbutzes attacked, so every time he heard from one of his neighbors that one of their friends was dead, he'd add them to the list. If the IDF was just mowing down civilians in the kibbutzes by the hundreds, it would have come out by now, and no amount of military censorship would have been able to stop it. Now, you've touched on a very important principle: we are never going to know exactly what happened five thousand miles away with complete reliability and accuracy. We're not seeing this poo poo firsthand, we're hearing it from other people who are always going to introduce inaccuracies, whether intentional or unintentional (even direct eyewitnesses often do not perfectly understand and remember what they saw). That goes for both Israel and Gaza. We're hearing everything from local sources who are often attempting to reconstruct what happened from scattered evidence, and who always have their own political positions that influence things. This isn't unique to Israel or to Israelis. How do you handle it? First off, one source being unreliable doesn't mean that all sources contradicting it are automatically reliable, nor does it mean that any narrative contradicting that source's narrative is automatically true. Other than that, I'd say to focus less on specific details and more on the big-picture that's harder to fake. For example, the specific details of a specific killing are often open to considerable interpretation or futzing, but a large pile of dead bodies generally can't be faked or covered up. Instead of quibbling over how much torture may have been done in the killing of several hundred dead civilians, consider the fact that several hundred dead civilians is bad enough on its own that you don't really need to bust out a magnifying glass and scrutinize them individually. Instead of quibbling over how many people may have been killed by one hospital bombing and who may have launched the explosive, consider the fact that Israel admits to having dropped tens of thousands of bombs on Gaza, including several attacks on other hospitals. I don't know who dropped the bomb on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, but what I do know is that there were so many attacks on healthcare facilities by both sides that there's a dedicated Wikipedia article for them, so I'm fine ignoring the one attack we don't know the perpetrator of and instead focusing on the numerous other attacks on healthcare facilities, almost all of which have not been denied by those accused of carrying them out. We don't even have to look at all the other attacks, pull out a calculator, and try to predict the perpetrator and pretend it's anything more than a wild guess. Sometimes "we don't know and do not have the information to know" means that we should in fact settle on "we don't know" instead of trying to fill in the gaps in our knowledge with guesswork. Pentecoastal Elites posted:If we take it as understood that we can't really trust anything coming from israel except the broad strokes (Hamas breached the walls, attacked several sites, took or tried to take hostages, and engaged in various firefights, many people died), the narratives coming out of israel don't really align with Hamas as they've acted historically, but the israeli messaging does align with what we understand israel's interests to be. Even if you hate them, Hamas is a fairly disciplined organization, and their supposed savagery on 10/7 doesn't comport to how Hamas has acted in the past and how they're acting now (eg. in their treatment of their hostages). I'm utterly baffled by what you're even getting at here, because I don't believe Hamas has ever shown any particular aversion to torturing or killing civilians. While I'm not aware of any instances of Hamas engaging in gratuitous torture against Israeli civilians, that's presumably due to lack of opportunity rather than lack of will. After all, they've shown no moral compunctions about torturing and murdering civilians in Gaza. That doesn't just come from Israel or Fatah, either - human rights NGOs which routinely criticize Israel, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have complained for decades that both Hamas and the PA are prone to carrying out arbitrary arrests, brutal torture, and extrajudicial executions against Palestinian civilians under their control. Being disciplined doesn't mean not brutally killing people. It just rarely comes up because there aren't really any political positions that benefit from criticizing human rights abuses by both Hamas and the PA against the Palestinian people, and it generally affects fewer people than the inter-factional conflicts between Israel, the PA, and Hamas. Also, the stakes are not a genocide of the captive population. That genocide started decades ago, and will continue even if Israel stops dropping bombs. A ceasefire will just let Western liberals pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves as the slaughter rate drops to a level that's easier to comfortably ignore.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2024 01:59
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 01:48 |
|
|
Uncle Boogeyman posted:To you it may be "just semantics," but to me it reeks of the weaponization of the passive voice that seeks to absolve the United States and others of their share of the responsibility for the massacres that Israel is committing. The United States is not simply allowing this to happen. It is, in large part, making it happen. The US is not out there forcing Israel to commit genocide. Nor is it playing some absolutely vital role here where the genocide would be impossible without their help (unlike, say, Egypt, whose active cooperation in blockading Gaza's southern border has been crucial to Israel's starvation policies). The US is accountable for supporting Israel despite its genocidal policies, but Israel was perfectly capable of genocide long before the US government started aiding it (and, indeed, was successfully carrying out this genocide for decades before the US government started giving it significant aid).
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2024 15:59
|
|