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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2

This is a refreshed 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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A Gazan hospital has been hit, allegedly by a missile, allegedly by an Israeli missile: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/least-500-victims-israeli-air-strike-hospital-gaza-health-ministry-2023-10-17/

Here is why this seems incredibly unlikely to me:

  • Israel gains nothing from this.

  • Israel loses a lot from this.

  • Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc. whatever amalgamation of actors here are opposing Israel have demonstrated that they are willing to strike their own people.

  • Hamas etc. gain a lot from this (politically).

The narrative around this is already forming and I suspect that we will never be free of knowing that Israel for sure bombed a hospital (maybe they did).

This will be a major inflection point in this war. Causalities are approaching 1000 people (started at 500, now at 800)

Edit: here’s also why I’m so suspicious of this. If it’s true that Israel bombed this hospital, it basically evaporates any amount of good will I had for them. The 10/7 Hamas attacks were terrible. This is just as bad. Pull our aircraft carriers back, no aid, nothing. Still send in some bad hombres to get our citizens out, but other than that Israel is on its own, and I don’t want to hear any ridiculous moralizing from any us politician ever again.

Edit2: There are allegedly demonstrations happening in several countries now. Extremely dynamic news environment. Nobody knows wtf is going on. Israel is starting to get their narrative together about the cause of this, but it's way too late for them to get ahold of it.

Edit3: allegedly a video of both the initial rocket launch, as well as the explosion: https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1714379242983846126

This matches up with the very first video of the rocket hitting the hospital, and answers why the guy filming was filming (because there were a bunch of rockets going overhead)

Whichever way this one swings, one thing I noted that almost as soon as info on this dropped on my TL, I also started seeing pro-Israelis going "Actually Hamas did it! No Israeli aircraft on the region!" which is, like, how the hell do you know this?

Whichever conflict, whichever atrocity, it will always pay for partisans of whichever side to go start going "actually it was the other guys who did it! It's been proven!" as soon as there's news of their side potentially committing an atrocity. Seen it plenty of times during Ukraine war, seen it in other contexts (I'm not sure I've seen many right-wing terrorist shootings in Europe or elsewhere where there weren't immediate chan posts going "The shooter was a Muslim and shouted Allahu Akbar, eyewitnesses saw it!" when there were news of it happening, for example), seen it in this war.

Whichever conflict, whichever atrocity, it will always pay for partisans of whichever side to go start going "actually it was the other guys who did it!

This conflict started with one side publically committing atrocities on social media, so forgive me for not treating the two sides as equally likely to commit atrocities.

This conflict started approximately a hundred years ago and the Zionists/Israel have commited multiple atrocities during the scope of this span.