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.
I mean… I’m not going to say it’s impossible that it’s a fake. Getting some of the Arabic blokes in the office to VA your intelligence transcript seems like the kind of unforced error that could happen when you are scrambling to regain control of the narrative. Though it would be such a stupid mistake that I still wouldn’t think it likely.
But the people who are shouting that this is an ‘obvious fake’ are the same people who only yesterday were telling me that this couldn’t possibly have been a Palestinian missile because it whistled like a JDAM, or that there were no rockets in the Palestinian armoury that could have done this, or that Gazan Ministry of Health death tolls are historically very accurate. Every claim so far that supports the Palestinian narrative has been easily falsified or just outright nonsense. And now I’m being told that this is an obvious fake, and it’s all a big IDF coverup, but this time I can’t make my own judgements because I don’t speak the language. And so I guess I’m supposed to take it on trust that this really is an obvious fake?
Sorry, no. When it comes to this incident, the pro-Palestinian side have been throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give them a free win. So for now I’m going to wait and see how this shakes out, with a very high prior that this is all just the latest round of BS peddled by pro-Palestinian journos who mistake their shower thoughts for hard-hitting journalistic analysis.
So, I mostly agree with you - I wouldn't expect IDF to manufacture evidence, either (that's the sort of thing that plays right into their detractors' hands). But it's weird how on-the-nose the dialogue is. "Oh gosh, we're the ones that bombed the hospital, oh no." We can put aside that I wouldn't expect these people to even admit to themselves that it wasn't Israel's fault. I expect real intelligence in the real world to be noisy and full of irrelevancies and requiring expert analysis to even figure out its implications. Recording a straightforward admission like this would be hitting the covert-ops jackpot.
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Notes -
I mean… I’m not going to say it’s impossible that it’s a fake. Getting some of the Arabic blokes in the office to VA your intelligence transcript seems like the kind of unforced error that could happen when you are scrambling to regain control of the narrative. Though it would be such a stupid mistake that I still wouldn’t think it likely.
But the people who are shouting that this is an ‘obvious fake’ are the same people who only yesterday were telling me that this couldn’t possibly have been a Palestinian missile because it whistled like a JDAM, or that there were no rockets in the Palestinian armoury that could have done this, or that Gazan Ministry of Health death tolls are historically very accurate. Every claim so far that supports the Palestinian narrative has been easily falsified or just outright nonsense. And now I’m being told that this is an obvious fake, and it’s all a big IDF coverup, but this time I can’t make my own judgements because I don’t speak the language. And so I guess I’m supposed to take it on trust that this really is an obvious fake?
Sorry, no. When it comes to this incident, the pro-Palestinian side have been throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give them a free win. So for now I’m going to wait and see how this shakes out, with a very high prior that this is all just the latest round of BS peddled by pro-Palestinian journos who mistake their shower thoughts for hard-hitting journalistic analysis.
So, I mostly agree with you - I wouldn't expect IDF to manufacture evidence, either (that's the sort of thing that plays right into their detractors' hands). But it's weird how on-the-nose the dialogue is. "Oh gosh, we're the ones that bombed the hospital, oh no." We can put aside that I wouldn't expect these people to even admit to themselves that it wasn't Israel's fault. I expect real intelligence in the real world to be noisy and full of irrelevancies and requiring expert analysis to even figure out its implications. Recording a straightforward admission like this would be hitting the covert-ops jackpot.
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