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.
Will Al-Shifa be the turning point, one way or another? Or will nothing change? If the IDF takes the hospital, and there are tunnels there, will anyone change their tune, or will it be "Well, the IDF was telling the truth this one time, but they still shouldn't have killed babies"? If there are no tunnels, will Israel back off and end their campaign in shame (their own and the US intelligence community's), or will they try to brazen it out and assume no real net change in total hatred for them? If Hamas blows the tunnels and collapses the area to avoid giving Israel evidence, will anyone accept that it wasn't an Israeli bomb?
Or am I overestimating the importance of this one battle and the massive accompanying news coverage?
Whether they find a torture chamber/military base combo pack, or they turn the stone over and all it says is "Peace on Earth;" I predict that IDF will claim the former while Hamas will claim the latter, no one supporting either side will care regardless.
Israel has already been caught faking evidence on official channels, repeatedly and blatantly. No one who supported Israel beforehand cared, nor should they. IDF forces will claim there were military installations under the hospital, they will fake it as aggressively as they need to. The people who want to believe the IDF will believe the IDF; and if they are presented with clear and convincing evidence that the IDF is lying they will say it doesn't matter.
Hamas' track record of honesty is...are we even going to try to address that point? No one who feels that the deaths of [x] number of innocent civilians isn't worth it is going to change their mind, regardless of what they find under there. Nothing they find under there will justify the murder of babies to get it, so therefore they probably won't find it anyway. It's a kind of ethos argumentation: any group bloodthirsty enough to kill children to achieve their military objective is untrustworthy enough to lie about why they killed the children.
It's the law of merited impossibility all the way around. One side says: it's worth killing those kids to get at that military installation, so there must be a military installation there. The other says, it's not worth killing those kids to get at any military installation, so there can't be a military installation there.
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Notes -
Will Al-Shifa be the turning point, one way or another? Or will nothing change? If the IDF takes the hospital, and there are tunnels there, will anyone change their tune, or will it be "Well, the IDF was telling the truth this one time, but they still shouldn't have killed babies"? If there are no tunnels, will Israel back off and end their campaign in shame (their own and the US intelligence community's), or will they try to brazen it out and assume no real net change in total hatred for them? If Hamas blows the tunnels and collapses the area to avoid giving Israel evidence, will anyone accept that it wasn't an Israeli bomb?
Or am I overestimating the importance of this one battle and the massive accompanying news coverage?
Whether they find a torture chamber/military base combo pack, or they turn the stone over and all it says is "Peace on Earth;" I predict that IDF will claim the former while Hamas will claim the latter, no one supporting either side will care regardless.
Israel has already been caught faking evidence on official channels, repeatedly and blatantly. No one who supported Israel beforehand cared, nor should they. IDF forces will claim there were military installations under the hospital, they will fake it as aggressively as they need to. The people who want to believe the IDF will believe the IDF; and if they are presented with clear and convincing evidence that the IDF is lying they will say it doesn't matter.
Hamas' track record of honesty is...are we even going to try to address that point? No one who feels that the deaths of [x] number of innocent civilians isn't worth it is going to change their mind, regardless of what they find under there. Nothing they find under there will justify the murder of babies to get it, so therefore they probably won't find it anyway. It's a kind of ethos argumentation: any group bloodthirsty enough to kill children to achieve their military objective is untrustworthy enough to lie about why they killed the children.
It's the law of merited impossibility all the way around. One side says: it's worth killing those kids to get at that military installation, so there must be a military installation there. The other says, it's not worth killing those kids to get at any military installation, so there can't be a military installation there.
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