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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)
Yeah, this doesn't look good for the Israelis at all (assuming we don't get good evidence this was a Hamas self fuck up). They should have gone in boots on the ground earlier. Yes tons of Israelis would have died in direct combat, but one benefit of that is that this sort of stuff which stops people around the world from thinking that you are the "good guys" doesn't happen, and they need to win the international sentiment war if they want to eradicate Hamas. Letting that sore fester long term will be even worse for Israel than the short term cost of lancing the boil.
Does Israeli even have the numbers for a ground attack without significant initial strikes? Sure they have 500k soldiers but I’m guess that’s like their entire 20 something population. There are only 15 million Jews in the world.
How many would they lose if they just went in with small arms and didn’t take advantages of their long distinct fires? 100k? Then they still need an army for future needs?
Sure the west can do war without losing a lot of lives but that’s because we evacuate and use fires first.
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