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)
I don't trust aljazeera.com to truthfully show only relevant photos. I don't usually just flatly disbelieve like this, but for them, evidence and statements are worthless. Maybe those are kids injured in this rocket crash, maybe those are unrelated photos deceitfuly added to an article to mislead us.
As someone mostly ignorant of media from the Middle East, I had had the impression that Al Jazeera was a fairly dependable news organization, but certainly the past few days have severely changed this view.
One was seeing a commentator state as fact that Joe Biden uncritically announced after he was fooled into believing that an AI-manipulated photo of a puppy was actually a photo of a baby burnt by Hamas on 10/7. This is obviously false if you've seen the pictures in question, as there is no credibility to the idea that the picture showing the puppy was the original photograph - both the context clues and the actual image quality make it clear that there is no way that the real location had a real puppy in that spot. If Biden was deceived into falsely believing horrors committed by Hamas, it wasn't through this particular claimed manipulation. Yet this claim was stated as fact and unchallenged.
Another was seeing a video title of theirs about this incident, where they made unqualified statements that an Israeli strike hit a hospital and killed 500 people. Even before I did any investigation, I was skeptical just from 500 people being killed in one shot that's like 1/5 of the total number of Palestinians killed from the counterstrikes by this point, and merely finding and counting that many bodies seems likely to take some time. Then, every additional piece of evidence threw doubt on the cause of the attack, and so every news organization would at least have the responsibility to put qualifications, like "sources from Palestine/Gaza/Hamas/Israel/etc. say" or "possibility of" or the like, but there was nothing like that.
Good news is, I wasn't getting much of my news from Al Jazeera anyway, so I won't have to change my news consumption practices much, but it's disappointing, because I was hoping for a good news source with a heavy anti-Israel bend.
I had had the impression that Al Jazeera was a fairly dependable news organization
It is on topic not concerning Israel etc. For example it is likely to be fairly trustworthy or at least not blatantly biased when reporting on some Poland vs Germany spat.
But they will happily lie to run propaganda against Israel or in support of their funders.
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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)
I don't trust aljazeera.com to truthfully show only relevant photos. I don't usually just flatly disbelieve like this, but for them, evidence and statements are worthless. Maybe those are kids injured in this rocket crash, maybe those are unrelated photos deceitfuly added to an article to mislead us.
As someone mostly ignorant of media from the Middle East, I had had the impression that Al Jazeera was a fairly dependable news organization, but certainly the past few days have severely changed this view.
One was seeing a commentator state as fact that Joe Biden uncritically announced after he was fooled into believing that an AI-manipulated photo of a puppy was actually a photo of a baby burnt by Hamas on 10/7. This is obviously false if you've seen the pictures in question, as there is no credibility to the idea that the picture showing the puppy was the original photograph - both the context clues and the actual image quality make it clear that there is no way that the real location had a real puppy in that spot. If Biden was deceived into falsely believing horrors committed by Hamas, it wasn't through this particular claimed manipulation. Yet this claim was stated as fact and unchallenged.
Another was seeing a video title of theirs about this incident, where they made unqualified statements that an Israeli strike hit a hospital and killed 500 people. Even before I did any investigation, I was skeptical just from 500 people being killed in one shot that's like 1/5 of the total number of Palestinians killed from the counterstrikes by this point, and merely finding and counting that many bodies seems likely to take some time. Then, every additional piece of evidence threw doubt on the cause of the attack, and so every news organization would at least have the responsibility to put qualifications, like "sources from Palestine/Gaza/Hamas/Israel/etc. say" or "possibility of" or the like, but there was nothing like that.
Good news is, I wasn't getting much of my news from Al Jazeera anyway, so I won't have to change my news consumption practices much, but it's disappointing, because I was hoping for a good news source with a heavy anti-Israel bend.
It is on topic not concerning Israel etc. For example it is likely to be fairly trustworthy or at least not blatantly biased when reporting on some Poland vs Germany spat.
But they will happily lie to run propaganda against Israel or in support of their funders.
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