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Stultus Maximus posted:Oh, don’t forget disease. Yeah I've got cholera on my bingo card. Along with Abbas staying out of the country for as long as he can manage.
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Oct 13, 2023 20:54
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psydude posted:Haven't seen it posted in here yet, but apparently Israel bombed the airports in Damascus and Aleppo to disrupt Iranian supplies to Hezbollah. Israel hit the Aleppo airport twice last week.
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Oct 15, 2023 13:59
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The first reports I saw said that the hospital courtyard was hit, where I guess a large number of people had been sheltering (probably because hospitals aren't supposed to be bombed). The hospital was mostly not running because everyone able inside the hospital went outside to help the huge number of injured. Haven't seen yet that the hospital itself was destroyed. Incidents like this will only get more common, even if Israel (and Hamas) are genuinely carefull. There's hundreds of thousands of people seeking shelter wherever they can as countless homes are destroyed. They'll congregate wherever they can find shelter, water, medical care etc. A bomb, even if we charitably believe it was accidentally dropped, will do enormous damage to crowds like this. Crowds which become more common the more infrastructure is destroyed.
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Oct 17, 2023 20:56
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Protests in Ramallah, West Bank against Abbas. I don't even think Abbas is in the country; he met Blinken in Jordan. I bet he fears being ousted by just such a crowd. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hundreds-protest-in-ramallah-against-pa-president-abbas/
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Oct 17, 2023 20:58
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Laughing Zealot posted:Does Hamas even possess rockets/weapons capable of leveling buildings like a hospital? This is a good question, though I think the hospital was only somewhat damaged, not levelled. The casualties come from the hospital courtyard where hundreds of people were sheltering.
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Oct 17, 2023 23:08
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Don't Ask posted:I'll be honest, I haven't been thinking straight since 07/10 so I may be missing a barb in your post, but basically yeah. I'd be very interested to hear anything you care to share. I've found this conflict particularly difficult to follow-- it's turned everything, everywhere into a never ending bad-faith argument. Actual experience would be a welcome change.
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Oct 19, 2023 13:49
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I'm generally strongly an advocate for people reading more al jazeera (both the English and Arabic versions) but in light of that will note that this issue is one of the handful of things that falls squarely within the institutional blind spots of their goals as qatari funded media. Still worth reading, just read it with that in mind. Hell probably more worth reading given how little earnestly pro-Palestinian reporting happens in specifically American media. I'll second this. I read AJ more than any other international news service aside from BBC. They're normally very good, but on this topic they do let their opinions shine through. I still read what they put out on this conflict but I know it isn't the whole story. On a similar line I'd recommend Haaretz. Maybe the best paper in the middle east. Their perspective is more leftist typically, though they're polarized as well this the around. You'll read articles about how awful Hamas is next to an article blaming Bibi for the whole debacle. Other Israeli papers like J Post are just garbage.
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Oct 19, 2023 17:56
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Farking Bastage posted:Only a matter of time before something steps on our giant naval dicks out there I don't worry too much about escalation myself. Hitting a carrier in the first place isn't an easy task. Iranian backed militias haven't hit a US military target since, when, the embassy bombings of the 80s? And things were a lot different then. If anything American is hit it will be a much softer target than a carrier group imo.
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Oct 20, 2023 00:43
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mrmcd posted:Israel will never be able to start the ground invasion because they'll have a constant backlog of all US state governors just cycling through the country a week at a time. I read that Biden's visit had this as one of its goals -- delaying the invasion. It's... kinda smart? The US is doing its usual unconditional support gig and trying to give tons of money to Israel. On the other hand a potential ground operation seems to be in limbo and there's mounting pressure to open up Rafah a bit. Maybe it's all accidental of course, the US hasn't really been known for its subtly lately.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:01
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Israel have kindly let a whole 20 trucks of aid through. It's a start, but christ that's a drop in the bucket Apparently it was enough water for ~20k people, for one day. It is a start though. That and the US negotiating (via Qatar) with Hamas. Israel came out with the attitude of no demands, no negotiation, we're going to kill of you (Hamas members). Seeing some weakening on these statements is encouraging to me.
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Oct 21, 2023 22:10
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Proud Christian Mom posted:The occupiers having a completely normal one I guess one way to get around citing sources is to just omit the image and tell people to use their imaginations.
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Oct 23, 2023 17:34
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pantslesswithwolves posted:I don't think Iran had a direct role in planning the attack, but I'm betting that Israel finds a way to hit people in Iran that it thinks may have been part of the Hamas training aspect. That's reasonable. A lot of people are talking about a wider war, and while that's possible, I don't think it's too likely. Assassinations, sabotage and other more discrete actions? Yeah that sounds pretty likely.
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Oct 26, 2023 14:04
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bulletsponge13 posted:https://www.axios.com/2023/10/25/tony-blinken-qatar-israel-hamas Someone asked for a source above and I'll copy that. What constitutes a suspicious number of non-violent activists? In Gaza I'm going to assume there's a relatively large number of activists, and they're currently getting bombed into the ground with thousands already killed. I assume most are civilians. Are all of these "targeted" strikes? How does one tell what is targeted and what is not?
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Oct 28, 2023 17:32
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Lum_ posted:Israel's already said they're being far looser with targeting this war. The reasons vary depending on who you ask (no time for planning adequate pinpoint bombing / hamas is embedded in civilian infrastructure anyway / they know what they did and we're going to flatten everything to the ground) but no one in Israel is seriously disputing that civilians are being hit. Their response is that the entirety of North Gaza has been declared a free-fire zone and if anyone's still there it's their fault (or Hamas' fault for not letting them leave). Well yes obviously civilians are being bombed in large numbers, yes that's a warcrime. What I was asking about was OPs implication that the journalist's family was targeted as some sort of intimidation tactic after AJ was pressured to change its reporting.
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Oct 28, 2023 17:43
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bulletsponge13 posted:OK, you can disregard the connection if you feel, but it appears pretty obvious to me that they killed his family after having tried to apply pressure not only through their people, but the US on AJ reporting. Maybe I'm a naysayer, but given the Israeli conduct and the suspicious timing, it seems clear to me. I don't think you're being dismissive or dickish. My issue is that it comes across as a conspiracy, which I see so much in right wing discourse as a 'just asking questions' sort of argument. Israel and the US apply pressure to try to get AJ to tone down their reporting. Ok. Shortly after an AJ's family is killed in an Israeli airstrike. Terrible. Is it connected? There's no evidence, but that would be hard to come by. Does it make sense? Well, does it make AJ likely to change their policy? I'd say no. If the goal is to silence AJ, then "accidentally" killing a bunch of their journalists would seem to be a better way of doing this-- the US found itself rather accident prone as it was invading Iraq in '03. And beyond that, it isn't at all unreasonable that this person's family was killed incidentally. Dozens of families are being killed every day by Israel. Everyone killed has connections to other people which could be construed as having some deeper meaning. Most of them however are simply casualties of war. It's my turn to apologize in advance for being a jerk, I'm not so much targeting you, as this style of argument. And you're at least being clear in the connection you're making instead of insisting it remain vague and hence impossible to argue against.
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Oct 28, 2023 20:48
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There were Israeli ads a couple weeks ago that ran during kids shows. They had a childish, colourful art with text saying they knew the kids couldn't read, but the parents could understand how terrorists are bad etc etc. Even if the kids can't read they're likely to ask their parents whats going on with this strange ad. Get 'em while they're young.
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Oct 31, 2023 01:19
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It's crazy that in this modern world getting into bayonet range is a valid tactic for fighting a tank
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Nov 3, 2023 12:47
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I remain confident that there is zero possible way that the biden administration hitching their foreign policy to netanyahu's judgement and the IDF's restraint could ever backfire spectacularly I don't think he's really doing that though. He's publicly supporting Israel in every way while quietly slowing the invasion, negotiating the return of hostages and now starting to talk a "pause". You might ask at what number of slaughtered innocents will the US do something concrete to stop it and yeah that could be a ways off. But I don't get the impression that the US will back Bibi through thick and thin, rather the opposite.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:23
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Alchenar posted:Okay well war-aims defined - Netanyahu plumbing for full re-occupation. He sure likes his props doesn't he.
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Nov 7, 2023 14:44
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Lum_ posted:Pretty sure the goal is for the Palestinian Authority or a similar cut-out to have "governing responsibility" in Gaza while being disarmed and with Israel having the ability to go in and arrest whomever they want at will. That's been the situation in PA-run areas of the West Bank for the past 20 years. Technically not occupation since IDF troops aren't posted there full time, but far from anything approaching sovereignity. The West Bank *is* technically occupied. The PA has some authority but Israel enters the territory at will to exert its authority and the PA formally accepts that authority. It's Gaza that isn't technically occupied, though with the years of blockade it might as well be. I don't know that Israel will go back to occupying the West Bank. This was tried and abandoned before. I still kinda expect a mass expulsion of people. No idea how that would work as nobody wants a bunch of Palestinian refugees. But occupation has been tried, and blockade has been tried. I'm not sure what the other option is.
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Nov 7, 2023 18:15
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm trying to track it down, but not long after the start of the fighting there were some videos of Israeli settlers looting Palestinian farms(even to the extent of stripping the olive trees, what the gently caress) after the Palestinians had cleared out to not get caught in the fighting, and when they hadn't cleared out, shooting anyone who objected. Settlers making small raids like this into Palestinian farms is pretty normal in this conflict (as are Palestinian raids). This sort of thing is kinda par for the course when it comes to neighbors conflicting over land. By which I mean yes it is entirely plausible and I assume it's happening in the West Bank as well as we speak.
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Nov 7, 2023 20:37
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Jarmak posted:Piggy backing on this, some of y'all need to think back to just how much 9/11 broke brains and caused US politics to go insane for the better part of a decade. This attack was arguably much worse than 9/11 when it comes to psychological effect. The body count is not as high but the entire country has a population comparable to New York City. Also, the killings weren't from a single event but drawn out via direct personal violence, some of which carried shocking cruelty/brutality. To me this current conflict highlights that terrorism works. It's intended to be such an affront that it not only provokes a response, but *requires* a response. After 9/11 the US put its dick firmly in the bees nest of ME conflict. Which of course earned them huge and lasting ire from the people there as well as being a draining, unproductive conflict. With Israel it is the same. Israel's disproportionate counter attack was part of the intent. Now it's Israel that's sticking its dick back into a painful place that it pulled out of long ago. But it can't really do anything else. Israel will exert its might against Gaza and almost certainly be worse off for it after a few years of it. I'm not very emotionally invested in the conflict but the air of inevitably I do find depressing.
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Nov 9, 2023 19:12
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PurpleXVI posted:If you believe the Hamas statements, which you may disregard as their trying to get bombed less, when they knocked holes in the fences, apparently a bunch of minor groups and unaffiliated Palestinians just out for revenge made their move as well, which, if true, might've contributed to the "got out of hand"-situation. There's video of rando people milling about after the fence was breached. Surely some went in on their own accord, were taken along in an impromptu way etc. I also think the lack of Israeli resistance was a surprise. I doubt your average Hamas militant is all that disciplined in the first place, but take him and his unit and put him in the center of a kibbutz for a few hours and it isn't hard to see things getting very out of hand.
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Nov 10, 2023 01:39
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Alchenar posted:Everyone trying to claim that Israel or Hama's always wanted this is completely off the mark. This is a classic case study in uncontrolled escalation: Hamas had catastrophic success in their attack and public sentiment in Israel has shifted so much that the only course the government can take is one of overwhelming retaliation. I agree with this. Hamas launched a big surprise attack and counted on a big Israeli country attack. But their planners would have been totally insane to think their attack would succeed on the level it did. Likewise, nobody in Israel thought that they were so stupid as to allow Hamas to actually attack Israeli soil so they had no backup plans when militants hunkered down in Kibbutzes.
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Nov 10, 2023 20:45
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McNally posted:This argument only works if that was the norm in Palestine before Israel cut them off. Yeah. There's ways to mitigate cholera but a blasted war zone isn't really a great starting place. At least there are a lot of aid groups active there including a specific UN agency so there's a lot of people worrying about this already.
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Nov 12, 2023 21:48
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I wonder how much under-reporting is going on in those graphs. I find it unlikely the toll is really that low for those other wars. If some kid ate a stray bullet in 2004 Afghanistan is it really making it into these numbers?
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Nov 13, 2023 22:01
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mlmp08 posted:UN has the estimate at around 308,000 civilians dead as a result of conflict in Syria as of 2022. 12k deaths would be around 4% of that total. Which does seem too low. Like Gaza, Syria (indeed, most of the middle east) has a very young population. I'm not sure what the definition of child is but if it's under 18 it would include a sizable number of fighters which would also push that number up.
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Nov 13, 2023 23:16
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Jarmak posted:Um, that doesn't say it's bullshit, did you read the second half of it? Yes. Poster said there was a video of it. Other poster shows convincingly there isn't. As far as what is claimed I'd say who cares. The point of this discussion is that people are claiming all sorts of stuff. It's foolish to accept any of it without strong evidence.
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Nov 17, 2023 01:37
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I don't see why Hamas would have a centralized HQ at all. They're effectively rebels fighting an occupation-- sitting still for any length of time is a recipe for getting killed.
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Nov 17, 2023 17:56
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RoyKeen posted:I'm not sure what the point is of these videos that are edited to show nothing. It looks cool, I guess, but I've never seen a real result of these moves. Maybe someone places something on an APV? It shows poor tactics for the Israelis but in the end it's just some Tik ToK propaganda. Maybe it's just a sticker. They put it on the APC to show they *could* have killed it if they'd wanted to. Like counting coup.
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Nov 22, 2023 20:20
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Not exactly the same thing, but during the Syrian civil war the US was providing ATGMs to al Nusra, I think. But they only sent replacement missiles if the rebels could provide video of them hitting a target with the first one. The videos of course went straight to YouTube.
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Nov 23, 2023 00:25
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What am I looking at in that photo
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Nov 23, 2023 15:57
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Qatar occupies an interesting diplomatic niche. Along with the relations listed above they are also fairly friendly with Iran, despite current Saudi Arabia. And we all remember what happened when the Saudis disagreed with this policy, right? MBS attempted to blockade Qatar. This was surely one of history's least effective blockades; was it Turkey that made a show of sending a bunch of cows in support? The Saudis dropped the blockade after some months and quietly improved ties since.
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Nov 26, 2023 22:20
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It was really that long eh? I guess it was just KSA closing its land border with Qatar, so no great expense required to maintain the blockade. Costs from lack of trade excepted, of course.
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Nov 26, 2023 23:15
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bulletsponge13 posted:There is no way gunships going all Running Man didn't inflict most [...] How can you be sure of this? Not that it especially matters if one number is higher than another. But what, you watched a video and now know the casualty breakdown of a few hundred people?
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Nov 27, 2023 01:48
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Platystemon posted:Are we even sure that that’s where the cars were parked the night of the festival or is it possible that they were moved with heavy equipment? This is a great example as to why forensically analyzing an event with a few internet photos and 15 minutes of free time can be dangerous. bulletsponge13 posted:Y'all can definitely blame me for this recent debate. It's all good dude, this topic gets people worked up and debating minutiae more than almost anything else. I'm a newcomer to this thread and have been very impressed by how civil it is. Thanks all. Count Roland fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 16:59
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Al-Saqr posted:Hey guys remember that IDF doofus who pointed at the normal calendar with days of the week written on it and said that's a list of terrorist operatives? I don't remember, have a link? It sounds pretty funny.
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Nov 28, 2023 14:33
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:People talk about the theoretical reason for it, but that can be rather abstract or academic compared to real-life relationships between people in governments, in intelligence, in the respective militaries, and then also business and military industry business. M_Gargantua posted:Fundraising and institutional inertia mostly.
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Nov 28, 2023 20:22
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Grip it and rip it posted:
Not to be overly glib, but this is what I took inertia to mean. Much of the US/Israel relationship exists now because it existed yesterday and it would be difficult to change. So it stays in place, despite the many contradictions. Which is fine; there's plenty of geopolitical situations like that.
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Nov 28, 2023 20:43
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That's a fake, yes?
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Nov 29, 2023 22:01
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