naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
(text post)
29917 thread views
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 doesn’t look anything like the blast of a Palestinian missile. Israel gains the infliction of terror on a population seeking shelter that they want to displace as much and as fast as possible. Hamas has never shown an interest in bombing their own hospitals (in this scenario they want the population to stay in Gaza), but Israel has attacked hospitals before and recently attacked a border crossing.
The discourse coming out of Israel has been extremist lately, with Netanyahu calling this a battle between “the children of light and the children of darkness”.
So they fire 6-10,000 missiles and kill only 3-4000 Gazans in surgical strikes, many of whom may well be actual Hamas fighters. Then they decide to throw a missile at a hospital and kill 1500+ civilians at the same time, because? If the response is to hasten civilian departure / ethnic cleansing, then there’s a whole escalation hierarchy that doesn’t involve that level of bad press.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
2rafa 6mo ago
So they fire 6-10,000 missiles and kill only 3-4000 Gazans in surgical strikes, many of whom may well be actual Hamas fighters.
Considering the counterfactual...
Over 12,000 Hamas rockets have been fired in the past 15 years, killing a total of 33 Israelis. What are the chances that a single "malfunctioning" Hamas rocket killed 800+ people? It happened to fall on a weapons cache? What are the chances of that?
It seems more likely this is the case of a weapon working extremely effectively as it was engineered. That means the two most likely possibilities are a Hamas false flag or Israeli strike... Betting markets seem to buy into the Israeli story, I can't wrap my mind around the unlikelihood of a rocket with such a poor mortality track record malfunctioning and then hitting what was possibly the most vulnerable space in Northern Gaza...
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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)
It doesn’t look anything like the blast of a Palestinian missile. Israel gains the infliction of terror on a population seeking shelter that they want to displace as much and as fast as possible. Hamas has never shown an interest in bombing their own hospitals (in this scenario they want the population to stay in Gaza), but Israel has attacked hospitals before and recently attacked a border crossing.
The discourse coming out of Israel has been extremist lately, with Netanyahu calling this a battle between “the children of light and the children of darkness”.
So they fire 6-10,000 missiles and kill only 3-4000 Gazans in surgical strikes, many of whom may well be actual Hamas fighters. Then they decide to throw a missile at a hospital and kill 1500+ civilians at the same time, because? If the response is to hasten civilian departure / ethnic cleansing, then there’s a whole escalation hierarchy that doesn’t involve that level of bad press.
Considering the counterfactual...
Over 12,000 Hamas rockets have been fired in the past 15 years, killing a total of 33 Israelis. What are the chances that a single "malfunctioning" Hamas rocket killed 800+ people? It happened to fall on a weapons cache? What are the chances of that?
It seems more likely this is the case of a weapon working extremely effectively as it was engineered. That means the two most likely possibilities are a Hamas false flag or Israeli strike... Betting markets seem to buy into the Israeli story, I can't wrap my mind around the unlikelihood of a rocket with such a poor mortality track record malfunctioning and then hitting what was possibly the most vulnerable space in Northern Gaza...
Presumably a rocket just fired is still full of fuel. The aftermath pictures don't show much blast damage, instead it burned out.
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