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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.

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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.

There's been some reports from survivors of women being raped. How reliable is an anonymous eyewitness account? Who knows.

But my baseline assumption is that if you're willing to break all the limbs of an innocent woman and parade her corpse through the street in her underwear, you're probably not drawing the line at rape.

Skimming that source, it is ridiculous and not reliable at all. In addition to being shady and biased it's also clearly trying to lie. It does not mostly say what you or its own headline claims to say.

You are also probably lying since an intelligent and honest person should know better and be aware of how disingenuous they are being.

How reliable is an anonymous eyewitness account?

In other words, not at all, obviously.

You are also probably lying since an intelligent and honest person should know better and be aware of how disingenuous they are being.

Adding the word "probably" is not enough justification to call someone a liar because they believe something you don't. It's fine to criticize the source and argue that it's not credible, but don't call people liars because they cite sources you find non-credible.