naraburns nihil supernum
1yr 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)
Okay yeah, I believe the IDF now. I wouldn’t put it past them to hit a hospital if they thought it was an important target, but I don’t think they’d bomb a parking lot full of civilians.
Also looks small, as others have noticed. This looks like an explosion that killed 20 people, not 200.
Fires and especially fuel fires can be more deadly than they look at first glance, particularly in crowded areas or if people were sleeping in the cars, or if people were trampled trying to escape.
But yeah, even if I'd put higher than twenty in the realm of the possible -- if people were actively sheltering in the cars, I could see mid-fifties at the higher end of the plausible -- there's no way this was anywhere near the sort of humanitarian disaster that was getting publicized the previous night. Still bad, but duplex-fire rather than Grenfell. I'd expect Hamas to exaggerate casualty counts, but this isn't even the sort of thing you could squint at and pretend it sounds legit.
This is... actually less ground impact than I expected just given the videos of the initial impact. More evidence in favor of a rocket breakup, I guess, along with either a 'golden bb' hitting some fuel storage (though it's not in the impact crater?) or a lot of unused rocket fuel being left.
Whatever the casualty count was (and it could still be pretty bad - the parking lot was reportedly packed), the initial claim from Hamas was very obviously bullshit simply from how quickly it came out.
Yeah, and Hamas has a tendency to make pretty dubious claims for casualty counts even when they've had enough time to count bodies.
(along with a tendency to conflate military, combatant, and noncombatant injuries and fatalities)
This is bizarrely blatant even compared to the typical stuff, though. Similar in scale to the Jenin "massacre" (West Bank, rather than Gaza), but Jenin took some effort to disprove and a lot of the formal structure for reporting didn't have any way to check. Some media groups are going to provide cover anyway, I guess?
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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.
Okay yeah, I believe the IDF now. I wouldn’t put it past them to hit a hospital if they thought it was an important target, but I don’t think they’d bomb a parking lot full of civilians.
Also looks small, as others have noticed. This looks like an explosion that killed 20 people, not 200.
Fires and especially fuel fires can be more deadly than they look at first glance, particularly in crowded areas or if people were sleeping in the cars, or if people were trampled trying to escape.
But yeah, even if I'd put higher than twenty in the realm of the possible -- if people were actively sheltering in the cars, I could see mid-fifties at the higher end of the plausible -- there's no way this was anywhere near the sort of humanitarian disaster that was getting publicized the previous night. Still bad, but duplex-fire rather than Grenfell. I'd expect Hamas to exaggerate casualty counts, but this isn't even the sort of thing you could squint at and pretend it sounds legit.
This is... actually less ground impact than I expected just given the videos of the initial impact. More evidence in favor of a rocket breakup, I guess, along with either a 'golden bb' hitting some fuel storage (though it's not in the impact crater?) or a lot of unused rocket fuel being left.
Whatever the casualty count was (and it could still be pretty bad - the parking lot was reportedly packed), the initial claim from Hamas was very obviously bullshit simply from how quickly it came out.
Yeah, and Hamas has a tendency to make pretty dubious claims for casualty counts even when they've had enough time to count bodies.
(along with a tendency to conflate military, combatant, and noncombatant injuries and fatalities)
This is bizarrely blatant even compared to the typical stuff, though. Similar in scale to the Jenin "massacre" (West Bank, rather than Gaza), but Jenin took some effort to disprove and a lot of the formal structure for reporting didn't have any way to check. Some media groups are going to provide cover anyway, I guess?
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