naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
29363 thread views
Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Something I have found interesting about this is that there appears to be a substantial amount of people who are simply unaware of what actually happened here. I think there is such a saturation of "Israel punched Palestine! Palestine punched Israel!" that people have disconnected from it. What happened over the weekend is an evolution in terror attacks. To compare it to 9/11, for instance: 9/11 had the goal of killing as many Americans as possible, but whatever this is going to be called appears to have the intent of torturing as many Israelis as possible. If Hamas had blown up a building with 1000 Israelis in it, I don't think the response would be the same.
Hamas specifically targeted a music festival full of young people, especially women. They paraglided into this music festival and started mass raping the attendees, and killing the others. They then took some of the dead bodies of these women that they had raped back to Gaza, where they were paraded around to chants of "Allah Ackbar". They flooded into Sderot, and started going door to door executing people, and again raping and kidnapping others. There are videos that Hamas has posted online of them taunting (with the implication that they will eventually torture to death) a young boy about 8 years old.
There are reports (admittedly this is a terrible source) now that they kidnapped children and decapitated them.
I haven't seen anything like this (although I don't go seeking this stuff out. Maybe it's common and I don't know about it). I have heard stories about stuff like this on The Anti Humans, a podcast by Martyrmade about the horrors of WW2 (https://martyrmade.com/19-the-anti-humans/).
Raping people as a weapon, decapitating children, indiscriminately murdering kids at a music festival - this is all inhuman behavior. These are not people that are available for negotiation.
We should probably wait for third party inquiry and confirmation before blindly agreeing with sensational stories coming out of Israel right now. Lots of hidden intel officers among the Israeli public for this exact kind of scenario, and there’s a vested interest in presenting heinous but unverified information involving rapes.
The accusations of rape are entirely plausible, and if I were a betting person I'd bet at least some of the female hostages have probably been raped, quite possibly all of them and quite possibly a lot. On the other hand, it's possible none of them have been raped.
I've seen zero evidence that the attack on the music festival involved rape at all, much less mass rape. I've seen zero actual evidence that any of the hostages or other victims of the attack were raped. If this evidence actually exists, I'd like to see it, because while I'm not nearly so naïve to believe that tribal toxoplasma bullshit is something this community is resistant to, I'd certainly like fewer instances of it. In the limited amount of effort I've made looking into the claims based on the footage available Saturday and Sunday, it seems like the claims being made here are pure rumor and speculation.
The Ukraine experience should teach us to treat this kind of inflammatory unverified story as having more or less zero credibility -- I'm quite sure Israel is not lacking in the information warfare department.
The apparent true facts are bad enough -- the smell of propaganda is concerning as gestures in the direction of whipping up support for a very brutal response.
The Ukraine experience should teach us to treat this kind of inflammatory unverified story as having more or less zero credibility -- I'm quite sure Israel is not lacking in the information warfare department.
This seems odd, as the Ukrainian experience was that there was indeed quite a bit of well documented mass crimes, some visible from orbit. While there were certainly exaggerations, the number and degree of validated incidents would lead to far more than zero credibility.
Now, if you said the Russian experience in Ukraine, that might have the meaning you seem to mean, since the Russian atrocity propaganda before and early on were far more contrived in many high-profile cases, but that doesn't seem to be what you meant.
The apparent true facts are bad enough -- the smell of propaganda is concerning as gestures in the direction of whipping up support for a very brutal response.
Well, of course. That was the Hamas objective. You don't have a Daesh-style atrocity self-publicity campaign without wanting to escalate.
While there were certainly exaggerations, the number and degree of validated incidents would lead to far more than zero credibility.
I'm thinking not so much of the atrocity-porn (although much of that is not exactly certain either); more of the sorts of things reported breathlessly in Western media with minimal (or fabricated) evidence -- like those guys on the island, various twitter 'ghost of kiev'-y stuff, others that I can't think of at the moment. Those had a definite info-ops feel to me -- hard to say whether amateur or pro ofc. Some of the things I am hearing now have a similar feel, is all.
That was the Hamas objective. You don't have a Daesh-style atrocity self-publicity campaign without wanting to escalate.
Assuming the Israeli war-hawk objective is to turn Gaza into a parking lot, they share this objective with Hamas. (and I think have more professional propagandists on staff)
I'm thinking not so much of the atrocity-porn (although much of that is not exactly certain either); more of the sorts of things reported breathlessly in Western media with minimal (or fabricated) evidence -- like those guys on the island, various twitter 'ghost of kiev'-y stuff, others that I can't think of at the moment. Those had a definite info-ops feel to me -- hard to say whether amateur or pro ofc. Some of the things I am hearing now have a similar feel, is all.
Sure. And the proper response to that feeling is not to dismiss everything as having zero credibility.
That propaganda exists, and will exist in short or even immediate order in any context, doesn't mean that the counter-propaganda measure is to dismiss all things as zero-crediblity propaganda. That is the point of many propaganda strategies. Trying to get the audience to disengage, refuse to consider real facts, and be apathetic is not a failure state, it is the desired state for propaganda aimed at undermining resistance to emotionally objectionable things. Spreading around claims of other things with enough falses to trigger non-tailored doubt is a very easy way to do that.
That was the Hamas objective. You don't have a Daesh-style atrocity self-publicity campaign without wanting to escalate.
Assuming the Israeli war-hawk objective is to turn Gaza into a parking lot, they share this objective with Hamas. (and I think have more professional propagandists on staff)
If you tried to formulate this into an actual claim, it would implicitly require that the Israeli government was not, in fact, humiliated and caught off guard by one of the largest disasters in their history, but in fact knew about it well enough to have prepared entire sophisticated tailored IO campaigns in advance with the ability to launch within hours of attack... but not actually stopped the attack. The enemy was not successful while the government failed- the government was actually in control, but it's just evil!
While this will no doubt be a theory for some time, it's little more than 9-11 Trutherism with a tinge of zionism.
Spooks do spooky things, is that really a controversial statement?
Would it really be surprising that some Israeli spooks would have PR campaigns ready for the next Hamas attack?
Do you also believe that journalists were frantically scrambling to come up with their articles and biography, etc the day Elizabeth II passed?
Would it even be surprising that they would have a whole coordinated network of agents embedded within influential countries' media (and governments) ready to propagate that PR?
If the "I" in AIPAC stood for Italian we'd hear a lot more talk about the mafia.
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Something I have found interesting about this is that there appears to be a substantial amount of people who are simply unaware of what actually happened here. I think there is such a saturation of "Israel punched Palestine! Palestine punched Israel!" that people have disconnected from it. What happened over the weekend is an evolution in terror attacks. To compare it to 9/11, for instance: 9/11 had the goal of killing as many Americans as possible, but whatever this is going to be called appears to have the intent of torturing as many Israelis as possible. If Hamas had blown up a building with 1000 Israelis in it, I don't think the response would be the same.
Hamas specifically targeted a music festival full of young people, especially women. They paraglided into this music festival and started mass raping the attendees, and killing the others. They then took some of the dead bodies of these women that they had raped back to Gaza, where they were paraded around to chants of "Allah Ackbar". They flooded into Sderot, and started going door to door executing people, and again raping and kidnapping others. There are videos that Hamas has posted online of them taunting (with the implication that they will eventually torture to death) a young boy about 8 years old.
There are reports (admittedly this is a terrible source) now that they kidnapped children and decapitated them.
I haven't seen anything like this (although I don't go seeking this stuff out. Maybe it's common and I don't know about it). I have heard stories about stuff like this on The Anti Humans, a podcast by Martyrmade about the horrors of WW2 (https://martyrmade.com/19-the-anti-humans/).
Raping people as a weapon, decapitating children, indiscriminately murdering kids at a music festival - this is all inhuman behavior. These are not people that are available for negotiation.
We should probably wait for third party inquiry and confirmation before blindly agreeing with sensational stories coming out of Israel right now. Lots of hidden intel officers among the Israeli public for this exact kind of scenario, and there’s a vested interest in presenting heinous but unverified information involving rapes.
Hamas is publishing photos of kidnapped women with blood between their legs.
link?
The accusations of rape are entirely plausible, and if I were a betting person I'd bet at least some of the female hostages have probably been raped, quite possibly all of them and quite possibly a lot. On the other hand, it's possible none of them have been raped.
I've seen zero evidence that the attack on the music festival involved rape at all, much less mass rape. I've seen zero actual evidence that any of the hostages or other victims of the attack were raped. If this evidence actually exists, I'd like to see it, because while I'm not nearly so naïve to believe that tribal toxoplasma bullshit is something this community is resistant to, I'd certainly like fewer instances of it. In the limited amount of effort I've made looking into the claims based on the footage available Saturday and Sunday, it seems like the claims being made here are pure rumor and speculation.
The Ukraine experience should teach us to treat this kind of inflammatory unverified story as having more or less zero credibility -- I'm quite sure Israel is not lacking in the information warfare department.
The apparent true facts are bad enough -- the smell of propaganda is concerning as gestures in the direction of whipping up support for a very brutal response.
This seems odd, as the Ukrainian experience was that there was indeed quite a bit of well documented mass crimes, some visible from orbit. While there were certainly exaggerations, the number and degree of validated incidents would lead to far more than zero credibility.
Now, if you said the Russian experience in Ukraine, that might have the meaning you seem to mean, since the Russian atrocity propaganda before and early on were far more contrived in many high-profile cases, but that doesn't seem to be what you meant.
Well, of course. That was the Hamas objective. You don't have a Daesh-style atrocity self-publicity campaign without wanting to escalate.
I'm thinking not so much of the atrocity-porn (although much of that is not exactly certain either); more of the sorts of things reported breathlessly in Western media with minimal (or fabricated) evidence -- like those guys on the island, various twitter 'ghost of kiev'-y stuff, others that I can't think of at the moment. Those had a definite info-ops feel to me -- hard to say whether amateur or pro ofc. Some of the things I am hearing now have a similar feel, is all.
Assuming the Israeli war-hawk objective is to turn Gaza into a parking lot, they share this objective with Hamas. (and I think have more professional propagandists on staff)
Sure. And the proper response to that feeling is not to dismiss everything as having zero credibility.
That propaganda exists, and will exist in short or even immediate order in any context, doesn't mean that the counter-propaganda measure is to dismiss all things as zero-crediblity propaganda. That is the point of many propaganda strategies. Trying to get the audience to disengage, refuse to consider real facts, and be apathetic is not a failure state, it is the desired state for propaganda aimed at undermining resistance to emotionally objectionable things. Spreading around claims of other things with enough falses to trigger non-tailored doubt is a very easy way to do that.
If you tried to formulate this into an actual claim, it would implicitly require that the Israeli government was not, in fact, humiliated and caught off guard by one of the largest disasters in their history, but in fact knew about it well enough to have prepared entire sophisticated tailored IO campaigns in advance with the ability to launch within hours of attack... but not actually stopped the attack. The enemy was not successful while the government failed- the government was actually in control, but it's just evil!
While this will no doubt be a theory for some time, it's little more than 9-11 Trutherism with a tinge of zionism.
Spooks do spooky things, is that really a controversial statement? Would it really be surprising that some Israeli spooks would have PR campaigns ready for the next Hamas attack? Do you also believe that journalists were frantically scrambling to come up with their articles and biography, etc the day Elizabeth II passed?
Would it even be surprising that they would have a whole coordinated network of agents embedded within influential countries' media (and governments) ready to propagate that PR? If the "I" in AIPAC stood for Italian we'd hear a lot more talk about the mafia.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link