naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
(text post)
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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.
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.
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)
It's interesting reading A.Vorobey (old rationalist blogger, Soviet-Israeli Google SWE, epistemic minor league, math, poetry, puns, very much the same Jewish Rationalist stock our community ultimately descends from, except with biological children) these days because he's very squeamish, very eloquent, and fully wed to Israeli culture and currently writes about the horrors of Hamas, how nice are all the people helping tourists, Middle Eastern Castalia blah blah we are fully justified (he's not very connected to its more virile, younger side). Here he is from October 13, independently making the comparison to Dresden:
In a nutshell, for those who really want to understand, I don't have time for arguments or careful framing with all the references:
The Israeli army has dropped 6000 bombs since the start of the war, and a report from the army says it's about 4000 tons. I first estimated from at 1000 tons, using a typical 500 lb bomb size I saw somewhere, but I may have been wrong about that. The argument works with both the 1000 ton estimate and the 4000 ton estimate.
According to Wikipedia about 4000 tons were dropped on Dresden Feb 13-15, 1945 and casualties are estimated at 25,000 to 100,000. I believe that the fact that Gaza has less than 2000 casualties shows - in this comparison - that Israel bombs selectively, on buildings and targets known to be Hamas-related. Surely sometimes mistakes and innocent casualties happen. The Dresden development was apparently (can be verified) much less crowded than Gaza.
Further, I have come across the following convincing evidence that we are nevertheless trying to avoid civilian casualties: 1) a general warning at the beginning of the war telling residents of different neighborhoods in Gaza which areas to move to for safety; 2) although we announced that we were eliminating the need to practice "knock on the roof", in some cases it has been documented in recent days, the army seems to be using it according to circumstances; 3) there have been examples of calls/texts to residents of a particular high-rise before a missile 4) we have not just sent a warning to residents of northern Gaza to temporarily move to southern Gaza, but are expending considerable effort to make them aware of it, including thousands of fliers in Arabic printed and dropped from airplanes.
People who find a moral equivalence between thugs entering a peaceful village and killing everyone in the streets and in their homes, women, the elderly and children, and the army bombing terrorist targets in dense urban environment and, despite considerable efforts to avoid it, killing civilians in the process, are scum.
I suppose that with all those qualifiers about density and scum all it will be no great shame indeed if a hospital or two is vaporized. Or, indeed, if any other necessary price is paid. After all,
Shylock may have his pound of flesh but only if he doesn't spill a drop of blood.
Israel may defend itself, but only if no civilian is harmed.
In other words:
Shylock does not get his bond.
Israel may not defend itself.
Only abstract rights for Jews, and no "Christian" love.
People who find a moral equivalence between thugs entering a peaceful village and killing everyone in the streets and in their homes, women, the elderly and children, and the army bombing terrorist targets in dense urban environment and, despite considerable efforts to avoid it, killing civilians in the process, are scum
Israelis totally did do massacres of civilians and terrorism way back when, did they moraly improve or do they just no longer need such crude desperate measures? Who knows.
We did it a bit, Deir Yassin is the most famous incident. But: 1) we stopped back in the 50s; 2) it was on the level of "dozens of men in the same village captured by our soldiers during active war", not hundreds or thousands including women and children; 3) people who did it hid it from their superiors and the public, they didn't boast of it proudly. The modality of "go around a village or a town and just indiscriminately murder everyone, sometimes gruesomely" is something different altogether, and I don't think we did it at all after Biblical times.
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Notes -
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)
Israel's ambassador to UK just invoked firebombing of Dresden as a justification, that makes me think they would absolutely blow up a hospital.
It's interesting reading A.Vorobey (old rationalist blogger, Soviet-Israeli Google SWE, epistemic minor league, math, poetry, puns, very much the same Jewish Rationalist stock our community ultimately descends from, except with biological children) these days because he's very squeamish, very eloquent, and fully wed to Israeli culture and currently writes about the horrors of Hamas, how nice are all the people helping tourists, Middle Eastern Castalia blah blah we are fully justified (he's not very connected to its more virile, younger side). Here he is from October 13, independently making the comparison to Dresden:
I suppose that with all those qualifiers about density and scum all it will be no great shame indeed if a hospital or two is vaporized. Or, indeed, if any other necessary price is paid. After all,
We can't have that, can we?
Israelis totally did do massacres of civilians and terrorism way back when, did they moraly improve or do they just no longer need such crude desperate measures? Who knows.
We did it a bit, Deir Yassin is the most famous incident. But: 1) we stopped back in the 50s; 2) it was on the level of "dozens of men in the same village captured by our soldiers during active war", not hundreds or thousands including women and children; 3) people who did it hid it from their superiors and the public, they didn't boast of it proudly. The modality of "go around a village or a town and just indiscriminately murder everyone, sometimes gruesomely" is something different altogether, and I don't think we did it at all after Biblical times.
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