naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
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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)
There was a lot of videos floating around supposedly of the aftermath. Really makes it feel like this was an actual, coordinated effort to rile up the Muslim world, and that it worked. Damn.
It's rather amazing that the entire world was ultra eager to believe an unvalidated report from a Palestinian spokesperson that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza and 500+ people died.
With priors like these, Israel's at a significant disadvantage in the information war here.
Tentatively, I can maybe chalk it up to "If it bleeds, it leads." A hospital blowing up and killing 500 people is a hell of a story regardless of which side caused it, you get a lot of clicks/eyeballs publishing that.
And my priors are that Israel's weaponry is MUCH more likely to cause that sort of devastation than Palestine's.
In fact, I remember thinking "it's pretty freaking implausible that a rocket just happens to blow up a hospital and kill hundreds RIGHT when Hamas needs a massive PR win."
But I also couldn't imagine a Hamas rocket leveling a building even with a direct hit.
Turns out the simple explanation was the true one: It didn't.
But I also couldn't imagine a Hamas rocket leveling a building even with a direct hit.
Perhaps a result of my own ignorance with respect to explosives and my observation of 9/11, I find this surprising. I would have thought that it wouldn't take much to take down a building, even one as big as a hospital, as long as it hit the load-bearing parts, and I figured that hitting those load-bearing parts wasn't particularly unlikely in the crapshoot of battle. I suppose buildings, possibly especially in Gaza, must be hardier structures than I'd initially thought.
(Properly constructed) Buildings don't want to fall down; the bigger they are the less they want to fall.
It takes a truly stupendous explosion to actually level a building. The thing that really fucks up a structure is water or fire damaging the footings/weakening enough of the steel that it starts to get wobbly; then the buildings own weight.
That's why bursting/firebombing mix is the trad way to destroy a city: The bursting bombs blow open lots of shit and spread burnable material; the firebombs set everything off and start a firestorm that kills lots of people and makes buildings unsafe after the fact.
That's why houses get totalled by even medium fires, actually.
Structural steel is amazingly strong stuff. I’d expect skyscrapers like the WTC to be the upper end of vulnerability, if only because of the lower cross-section.
Oh yes, I remember being in grade school when that happened. I suppose 9/11 must have left a bigger impression on me (which is probably unsurprising), because I recall being impressed that the building was still standing and seemed mostly fine except for that 1/3 that was obliterated.
My priors are based on the fact that I've never heard of a rocket fired by Palestine doing any significant damage to a structure upon impact.
And the whole problem is that a rocket without a decent guidance system is probably not going to hit the loadbearing structural elements by chance.
I'm going to try to find a source on the lack of destruction from the rockets but uh, googling "Palestine Rocket" won't be helpful right now for obvious reasons.
Edit: Here's a source from 2009. Capabilities could have changed since then but I doubt it.
Hamas has done some development over the last decade, both with newer and heavier variants of the homemade Qassam, and with more imports with much larger payloads. I don't know enough on the matter to say whether the larger payloads of a Fajir5 or M302 could take down a building without being a golden bb, but they're large enough to start hitting the 'evacuate nearby barricaded structures' part of the ATF bingo card.
My priors are based on the fact that I've never heard of a rocket fired by Palestine doing any significant damage to a structure upon impact.
Thanks for the link, and this is also a very good point. If buildings were as fragile as I'd believed, I would expect to hear about buildings being leveled all the time both by terrorists and by armies. The fact that such events are notable rather than banal was a sign that I could have noticed.
The best way to level a building, short of a nuke, is to fill it with an explosive mixture and ignite it. But that's hard to do with a missile, a bit more practical for a terrorist, and eminently achievable for someone working on natural gas lines without knowing what they're f---ing doing (usually trying to steal gas).
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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)
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1714525590873575600
Photograph of the aftermath in the daytime.
Yeah this basically confirms the Israeli story.
There was a lot of videos floating around supposedly of the aftermath. Really makes it feel like this was an actual, coordinated effort to rile up the Muslim world, and that it worked. Damn.
It's rather amazing that the entire world was ultra eager to believe an unvalidated report from a Palestinian spokesperson that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza and 500+ people died.
With priors like these, Israel's at a significant disadvantage in the information war here.
American media organizations shamed themselves uncritically repeating an unverified claim as fact. Which is indeed bad news for Israel.
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Tentatively, I can maybe chalk it up to "If it bleeds, it leads." A hospital blowing up and killing 500 people is a hell of a story regardless of which side caused it, you get a lot of clicks/eyeballs publishing that.
And my priors are that Israel's weaponry is MUCH more likely to cause that sort of devastation than Palestine's.
In fact, I remember thinking "it's pretty freaking implausible that a rocket just happens to blow up a hospital and kill hundreds RIGHT when Hamas needs a massive PR win."
But I also couldn't imagine a Hamas rocket leveling a building even with a direct hit.
Turns out the simple explanation was the true one: It didn't.
Perhaps a result of my own ignorance with respect to explosives and my observation of 9/11, I find this surprising. I would have thought that it wouldn't take much to take down a building, even one as big as a hospital, as long as it hit the load-bearing parts, and I figured that hitting those load-bearing parts wasn't particularly unlikely in the crapshoot of battle. I suppose buildings, possibly especially in Gaza, must be hardier structures than I'd initially thought.
(Properly constructed) Buildings don't want to fall down; the bigger they are the less they want to fall.
It takes a truly stupendous explosion to actually level a building. The thing that really fucks up a structure is water or fire damaging the footings/weakening enough of the steel that it starts to get wobbly; then the buildings own weight.
That's why bursting/firebombing mix is the trad way to destroy a city: The bursting bombs blow open lots of shit and spread burnable material; the firebombs set everything off and start a firestorm that kills lots of people and makes buildings unsafe after the fact.
That's why houses get totalled by even medium fires, actually.
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Another comparison. >2500 lbs of explosives basically scooped 1/3 of the building away, but the rest stayed up.
Structural steel is amazingly strong stuff. I’d expect skyscrapers like the WTC to be the upper end of vulnerability, if only because of the lower cross-section.
Oh yes, I remember being in grade school when that happened. I suppose 9/11 must have left a bigger impression on me (which is probably unsurprising), because I recall being impressed that the building was still standing and seemed mostly fine except for that 1/3 that was obliterated.
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IIRC the 9/11 impacts would not have brought down the towers without the subsequent fires (from lots of aviation fuel) weakening the building frame.
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My priors are based on the fact that I've never heard of a rocket fired by Palestine doing any significant damage to a structure upon impact.
And the whole problem is that a rocket without a decent guidance system is probably not going to hit the loadbearing structural elements by chance.
I'm going to try to find a source on the lack of destruction from the rockets but uh, googling "Palestine Rocket" won't be helpful right now for obvious reasons.
Edit: Here's a source from 2009. Capabilities could have changed since then but I doubt it.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/06/rockets-gaza/harm-civilians-palestinian-armed-groups-rocket-attacks
Hamas has done some development over the last decade, both with newer and heavier variants of the homemade Qassam, and with more imports with much larger payloads. I don't know enough on the matter to say whether the larger payloads of a Fajir5 or M302 could take down a building without being a golden bb, but they're large enough to start hitting the 'evacuate nearby barricaded structures' part of the ATF bingo card.
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Thanks for the link, and this is also a very good point. If buildings were as fragile as I'd believed, I would expect to hear about buildings being leveled all the time both by terrorists and by armies. The fact that such events are notable rather than banal was a sign that I could have noticed.
The best way to level a building, short of a nuke, is to fill it with an explosive mixture and ignite it. But that's hard to do with a missile, a bit more practical for a terrorist, and eminently achievable for someone working on natural gas lines without knowing what they're f---ing doing (usually trying to steal gas).
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