naraburns nihil supernum
6mo 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.
More on the hospital blast. NYTimes Visual Investigations is now issuing a debunk on the supposed “lynchpin evidence” in the American and Israeli intelligence finding. A thread from NYT’s Aric Toler (previously Bellingcat) —
Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials believe that a projectile captured on videos shortly before the Ahli Arab Hospital explosion was a Palestinian rocket. nytimes Visual Investigations found that this object was launched from Israel, and likely unrelated to the deadly blast.
An IDF spokesperson went on CNN and the BBC with a printed-out screenshot from an Al Jazeera livestream showing this projectile, claiming it was the rocket that hit the hospital. We also believe that American officials are incorrectly assessing this to be a Palestinian rocket
this projectile launch from the north, south, east and west. By drawing lines of perspective, three of which can be seen here, we assessed that this project was launched from near the Israeli city of Nahal Oz.
Three days before the blast, a 155mm illumination shell, commonly used by the Israeli military and not in use by Palestinian militias, was fired into the Al-Ahli Hospital. Hospital administrators said that they had received warnings from the IDF telling them to evacuate.
Our analysis does not answer what actually did cause the blast or who was responsible, but it does undercut one of the most-publicized pieces of evidence used by both American and Israeli officials.
I hope we will eventually find out what caused the blast. This NYTimes article might wind up confirming my bias that we shouldn’t trust the immediate Israeli/American intel.* Interestingly, the NYTimes conclusion is based on a relatively obscure twitter thread by some random researcher on the 19th. So a +1 for twitter, I guess.
[edit + wording change*] small update, Le Monde agrees with the NYT assessment of the projectile.
On an off-topic note, the mention of Visual Investigations brings back memories to me. I remember finding that series on the NYT's Youtube channel a couple of years ago, and later watching a bunch of parts. I thought they were generally good, and the responses on YT were also generally favorable. But whenever they released a video on subjects deeply triggering to the Blue Tribe audience, like the Capitol "insurrection" and the Rittenhouse incident, it always ended up being obviously biased, and the responses on YT were accordingly dismissive and negative in usual.
The last part I've seen was the one on the Bucha Massacre, and while it seemed convincing and high-quality overall, I found it strange that 1. they identified an airborne unit as the perpetrators even though the overall mainstream consensus had been for months that a completely different unit was responsible 2. the entire argument of the video hinged on using one piece of supposedly captured Russian army document as evidence, which seemed suspect 3. they presented drone and CCTV footage as newly available sensational evidence, even though it was obvious that all that footage have been available to the Ukrainian authorities for almost a year at that point.
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Notes -
More on the hospital blast. NYTimes Visual Investigations is now issuing a debunk on the supposed “lynchpin evidence” in the American and Israeli intelligence finding. A thread from NYT’s Aric Toler (previously Bellingcat) —
The NYTimes article is archived here: https://archive.ph/ngGpq
I hope we will eventually find out what caused the blast. This NYTimes article might wind up confirming my bias that we shouldn’t trust the immediate Israeli/American intel.* Interestingly, the NYTimes conclusion is based on a relatively obscure twitter thread by some random researcher on the 19th. So a +1 for twitter, I guess.
[edit + wording change*] small update, Le Monde agrees with the NYT assessment of the projectile.
On an off-topic note, the mention of Visual Investigations brings back memories to me. I remember finding that series on the NYT's Youtube channel a couple of years ago, and later watching a bunch of parts. I thought they were generally good, and the responses on YT were also generally favorable. But whenever they released a video on subjects deeply triggering to the Blue Tribe audience, like the Capitol "insurrection" and the Rittenhouse incident, it always ended up being obviously biased, and the responses on YT were accordingly dismissive and negative in usual.
The last part I've seen was the one on the Bucha Massacre, and while it seemed convincing and high-quality overall, I found it strange that 1. they identified an airborne unit as the perpetrators even though the overall mainstream consensus had been for months that a completely different unit was responsible 2. the entire argument of the video hinged on using one piece of supposedly captured Russian army document as evidence, which seemed suspect 3. they presented drone and CCTV footage as newly available sensational evidence, even though it was obvious that all that footage have been available to the Ukrainian authorities for almost a year at that point.
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