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naraburns  nihil supernum  6mo ago (text post)   29934 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.

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How are people still so naive about Islamic extremists? After ISIS, The Taliban, Al Qaeda, 9/11, all of the terrorist attacks in Europe, etc you still have people in the West who refuse to believe Islamic extremists (which includes Hamas) could commit atrocities and are bad faith actors in this conflict.

Take for example the 40 babies fiasco, where many people (especially on the Left) were talking about war propaganda and how dumb people were for believing that Hamas would do that. Islamic extremists absolutely would do that! These same people who on the same day shot up a whole music festival, murdered innocent children and took toddlers as hostages! But we are supposed to believe killing babies is too far? There is almost no amount of savagery by Islamic extremists that should shock anyone at this point, especially after ISIS, but here we are I guess.

Or take for another example this hospital explosion. It's looking like Israel didn't do it based on new intelligence, but maybe they did. At this point it still is unclear. But one thing I know for sure is that you should not take the word of Hamas seriously on who did it. This is an organization who has put weapons under hospitals and schools and is known to not give a shit if their actions led to Palestinian children's deaths. In fact, they often try to make that happen as a weapon in the information war against. So yes, they absolutely would blow up their own hospital to make Israel look bad, so you shouldn't take the word of Islamic extremists seriously on this issue. Yet you have journalists and politicians in the West taking them at their word on this atrocity. Ironically, these are often some of the same kinds of people who make fun of the Right for falling for fake news and Russian disinformation.

I'm truly at a loss for words here with this conflict. How is this possible? Is there anything that can wake people up to this issue after all these years or is this just something we have to live with?

False dichotomy, no?

There’s no ordinal scale of evil. A convicted murderer is not necessarily a rapist or even a jaywalker. Likewise, believing that Islamic terrorists are willing to commit atrocities in general does not imply that they committed any atrocity in particular.

Even if you are arguing from specificity, the offending parties were actively believing and spreading the (unlikely to be true) story that Israel just bombed a hospital full of innocents. Hamas being bad doesn't confirm they did the one bad thing. Hamas being bad does mean anyone of any respectability or intelligence would not spread Hamas propaganda without serious vetting of it. Yet, major left of center media outlets did.

You’re right; I overlooked the latter part of the comment.

Was there really no non-Hamas source providing firsthand reports on the hospital? If not…yeah, journalistic malpractice.

I still think “they absolutely would blow up their own hospital to make Israel look bad” is assuming the conclusion.

They killed babies and children and then took some young kids as hostages that same day. They just didn't behead 40 in a nursery or whatever it was, but they essentially did the same thing that exact same day.

Did they though? How do we know? I have only heard any of this from the same people who were telling me that they'd beheaded forty babies.

I know this is an old comment now, but I thought this link might contain some items of interest to you: https://themedialine.org/top-stories/evidence-on-display-at-israels-forensic-pathology-center-confirms-hamas-atrocities/

They released photos of dead babies (2 I believe). They went around a neighborhood door to door and killed anyone in the homes including children. They released photos of the hostages they took which included children.

They released photos of two burnt objects of some kind -- maybe they were babies, maybe not. The rest (other than the hostages) -- how do you know?

What happened that day according to you? Was anyone killed?

I've seen plenty of photos of people who look like they were shot, so probably, yeah.

The nature of the activities beyond that I actually have very little insight -- there's no reason to trust anything released by either party other than stuff that looks like it would be beyond their (respective) capability to easily fake, and very little of what I've seen comes from anything close to a disinterested bystander.

Okay Alex

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Photos were released. And saying all 40 were be headed was a misquote of the original Story.

What photos? I have seen zero photos of beheaded babies.

As far as I am aware, there is still no evidence they beheaded any babies.

I said the same thing on an earlier thread and someone likened me to Alex Jones, lol.

No? I think that a claim circulating earlier that Hamas beheaded 40 babies was dubious. You know it’s possible to think that Hamas does bad things without uncritically accepting every claim that’s made by Hamas’s foes, right?

No. You questioned whether any babies were killed. And then I called you Alex Jones.

No? Read the thread instead of making things up.

Et tu

@zeke5123, maybe you're thinking of your conversation with @jfk. (https://www.themotte.org/post/716/israelgaza-megathread-2/150623?context=8#context) in which @jfk kinda sorta questions whether anyone was killed, and you called him Alex Jones rather than your conversation with @Tomato where he brought up a news article (https://www.themotte.org/post/716/israelgaza-megathread-2/149971?context=8#context) and you said that it's Alex Jones-level denial.

It looks like that story wasn't true or exaggerated. But considering the litany of atrocities they committed that same day and were proud of, acting like they wouldn't is ridiculous. There was a hyper focus on whether or not the babies were beheaded or not. It's like fine, they didn't behead the babies, they just did all these other things we know are true that are just as bad. People wanted to focus on that to cast doubt on the other things they did that day, which is absurd because they broadcasted it to the world. Whether or not they did it, that is a debate. What isn't up for debate is if they would kill children because they literally did it that same day and Islamists have done so for decades. And this is true regardless of what Israel did, didn't do, or will do in the future.

Why make a doubtful unverified story the first example of atrocities you cite?

A soldier said on camera that many children had been killed and they even saw a beheaded child. The i24 (Israeli news channel) reporter repeated that, jumbled it up, others jumbled it up further, military didn’t comment until it had verified the situation. It now turns out that up to 40 kids were killed (expected given demographics of kibbutzim, high fertility rates among even modern orthodox Jewry, and total population), including babies, and that one young child was seemingly beheaded.

Far from some deliberate propaganda effort, that’s exactly how things are supposed to work, the military didn’t officially confirm until they had the information.

IMO, the military could have immediately "debunked" the 40 beheaded babies story, but let it run wild for awhile anyways for obvious reasons.

Me or the Israelis? Because from what I saw that wasn't reported by the IDF but instead by some random Israeli and the news picked up on it uncritically.

The people I've seen focusing most on the beheaded babies are the ones claiming that there were beheaded babies. I think it's fair to point out that we don't actually know that they actually beheaded babies.

Indeed. Credibility matters. You don't get to push fake nonsense and expect people to believe you afterwards.

It makes me think of some US political spat I can barely remember. I think some congressman made an incondiary claim that was proven false, then responded by saying something like "yeah but they would if they could". Like, no dude, you don't get credit here. You lied.

No released photographic evidence, but officials have told us they have seen the photos.

I assume out of respect for the dead they're not being released. If my child were beheaded I wouldn't want those photos out on the Internet, either. I wouldn't really care if it assuaged conspiracy theorists, people would just say they're AI-generated anyway.

To be clear, what happened was: “interested party A claims their enemies committed particularly heinous act, source: trust me bro” and now you’re calling people who would like better evidence conspiracy theorists? Weird inversion of burden of proof particularly on a site like this.

Photos of the babies have been released. But as far as I know, none was beheaded.

I've seen a photo of two babies burned black. But no beheaded ones.

Yeah, I can't tell for sure (because of censorship/fire damage) but it doesn't look like it. And I doubt they have a secret stash of even more shocking images.

Then why did they release photos of other dead babies on Twitter?

I thought Biden said he saw them and then later "clarified" that he didn't.

"Would do it" doesn't equal "did do it". For example, Saddam's soldiers did all kinds of messed up stuff, but Nayrah's testimony about babies taken from incubators was still made up.

Of course. But many of these same people also instantly believed that Israel bombed the hospital and took Hamas's word for it. But what annoys me is that they act like Hamas would never do such a thing, which is of course ridiculous (at least in my opinion) based on their track record on the same day based on videos that they uploaded.

"took Hamas's word for it"

Come on, if a particular building is bombed in Gaza nowadays I wouldn't need anyone's word to think it 99% likely that Israel did it, because Israel is definitely bombing other buildings there in retalion for the Hamas attacks.

I wouldn't need anyone's word to think it 99% likely that Israel did it

Roughly one third of Palestinian casualties in any given Israel-Hamas conflict are caused by rockets fired from the Gaza strip that fail in some way such as misfiring, crashing, prematurely detonating, coming apart in midair, and so on and so forth. Might be time to update those priors.

intercepted by the Iron Dome

is Iron Dome actually intercepting rockets over Gaza? Your source does not mention Iron Dome (what makes Israel even less involved)

You are correct, I was mistaken. The Iron Dome appears to only intercept rockets on terminal approach to a populated area in Israel, it does not intercept rockets over Gaza.

And a lot of the same people saying Israel didn't do it were saying that Israel would be 100% justified in doing so the day before.

There's nothing contradictory in those two arguments. A lot of people generally think Israel is excessively soft in how it handles Hamas.

if a particular building is bombed in Gaza nowadays I wouldn't need anyone's word to think it 99% likely that Israel did it

Even if the Bayesian statistics bear this out (I'm not quite as confident as you, but it is probably more likely than not), the better question is whether or not it's sufficient confidence to run "Israel bombs hospital, killing 500" headlines. In this case, it seems like it probably shouldn't have been.

Why not?

The US was way less trigger happy then the IDF during the war on terror and we Kandahar'd the hell out of some hospitals.

It was sensational as hell though; can't argue with that.

A particular building, yes. That particular building, no. This is a group who has put bombs under schools and hospitals in the past. Everything they say should be taken with a massive grain of salt. Israel too, but these people are already skeptical of Israel but believe something said by a literal Islamist organization that is undoubtedly a terrorist group.

Yes, because journalists and politicians did that immediately when it happened! Where do you think the casualty numbers and this news came from?

Who said they're naive?

Replace this with any other culture war issue (and,for Americans, that's what it is) IQ, crime,gender medicine.

Let's say people are utterly credulous about the evidence from their side (including from non credible sources), then suddenly have isolated demands for rigor for any contradictory evidence, stake out absolute stances ("that never happens") and only partly walk them back after allowing the misinformation to fester as long as possible.

What conclusion would you draw?

I make an exception for Trudeau. There the explanation is that he just is a deeply unwise person who makes premature and dangerous comments to virtual signal (see the mass graves thing) A fool more than a self serving partisan for whom truth is secondary or is in such a bubble and compromised epistemic position that it functionally is.

Despite how ghastly the behavior of the underdog, people are eager to side with them because they believe that they are only the underdog because they are oppressed, and the oppressor is ultimately the one that's morally culpable for their behavior. If they were not oppressed, their natural state would be peaceful and humane.

This leads to a confabulation of sorts. The underdog is both given the benefit of the doubt about potential bad behavior and they are also absolved of responsibility when their behavior is undeniably bad.

This situation is also tailor-made for the sort of bad faith I'm describing because there's already a belief on the pro-"underdog" side (driven by an assumption that words determine reality) that "validating narratives" directly leads to harm. This is often strange and self-serving in US contexts (accepting the "detransitioner narrative" will in no way lead to trans "genocide", no matter what partisans say), but if there's any time it's likely to be true it's here.

When you have people like Nikki Haley saying "finish them" about an operation that must kill or displace a bunch of unarmed Palestinians to have any efficacy I can see why people utterly opposed to that want to run as much interference as possible.

"X never happens" when you know all you're doing is forcing your opponent to go do research is asinine in a domestic context but, insofar as you believe no one should die, you actually have an incentive to muddy the waters and blunt sympathy for Israel. The US is its benefactor after all and so it may really matter this time.

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