Israel-Gaza war

[Silent Hunter]

Can we at least not do the "no good Palestinians" myth. Gaza has been in effect a totalitarian state for years, and people should realise well enough what that means by now.

The regime is supported or partially condoned by much of the population. Any active resistance will be a tiny minority.

[Silent Hunter]

I hope I don't either. I am not denying the existence of "good Palestinians" and apologise for giving that erroneous impression.

[Silent Hunter]

What a charming woman. /s

[Silent Hunter]

Oh hey, what's up?  Did I miss anything?

One opinion I'd like to throw out there is that it's absolute military malpractice that Israel isn't releasing the following video:

Two soldiers are standing next to each other at the entrance to a tunnel.  One enters the tunnel while the other starts walking straight forward.  They walk at the same pace, one guy following the tunnel, the other walking above ground.  Maybe you even have them both display GPS coordinates to show that they are in the same geographic location (guy 1 is just several dozen feet underground below guy 2).

GPS doesn't really work below ground. It requires line of sight to the satellites.

[Silent Hunter]

He's actually Sir Tony Blair now. With the Order of the Garter no less, which is at the sole discretion of the monarch.

[Silent Hunter]

If the Israelis have that hospital and show any tunnels to the world's press, that would probably be a big blow to what is left of Hamas' reputation.

[Silent Hunter]

Anyway, looking the actual text of the resolution, Ravid isn't being exactly accurate here. It's a resolution calling for periodic pauses for humanitarian corridors, which is very much in line with what the US has been asking for and is currently trying to negotiate for. Israel likely views it as neither a betrayal nor really relevant to its current path.

They also abstained, rather than voted for it.

[Silent Hunter]

so you think the IDF did this just to be cruel and that Hamas didn't use the area for military uses?

The number of AKs in any given hospital should be zero.

[Silent Hunter]

There's also the possibility that the complex will be located deeper and it will require some penetrating move to find the entry points. That's pretty much what's happening now as engineers are at the bottom of the Hospital's basement trying to find the entry point, they can detect the space beneath using GPR, but the chutes themselves are a bit trickier.

You might want to wait 48 hours before you decide that it was a massive hoax.

They would also need to remove booby traps.

[Silent Hunter]

There's plenty of big underground facilities in London and its surrounding areas that you wouldn't know were there unless someone told you, mind.

[Silent Hunter]

Hamas have had ample opportunity to remove small items etc. Not to mention collapsing some of the tunnels. You'd need ground penetrating radar to find some of those now.

The US did ultimately find some chemical shells in Iraq, but they were completely unusable as actual weapons.

[Silent Hunter]

There's a difference between knowing where facilities are and where an attack will come from.

[Silent Hunter]

CNN analysis of video suggests IDF might have rearranged weaponry at Al-Shifa hospital prior to international news crew visits

Putting all your seized items together in a single room for the photos is a standard practice for police the world over.

But you need to photograph them in situ first.

[Silent Hunter]

Just because they didn't plan to attack a music festival doesn't change the fact they attacked a music festival.

[Silent Hunter]

Mind you that every time a hostage deal is said to be "close", it is Netanyahu who got the cold feet, not Hamas.

A five-day truce gives Hamas time to regroup and destroy evidence of any tunnels.

[Silent Hunter]

The Houthis just took control of a British owned ship coming from Turkey going to India through the Red Sea which was carrying cars with no Israelis on board. If you wanted to get the Saudis and Egypt pissed, that would be how.

Not to mention all those people in India waiting for their new cars.

[Silent Hunter]

Israel's Minister of Communications suggesting to cut off the foreskins of Hamas fighters is incredible content, really. They should also burn all images of Allah in Gaza while they're at it. That will be a proper revenge.

I thought male Muslims were circumcised anyway, so yeah.

[Silent Hunter]

A report on their treatment:

https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/gaza-news/article-775480

[Silent Hunter]

I doubt Hamas will surrender unconditionally (though they may; Imperial Japan did), but I think their total defeat is clearly possible. You don't hear much about the PFLP these days.

Nor the LTTE/Tamil Tigers. ETA are gone, the Red Army Faction are gone, the IRA are mostly drug dealers now.

[Silent Hunter]

No, any conclusion in which Hamas does not surrender unconditionally, and agree to implement the directives of the Israeli government, is unacceptable.

How many times post-World War II has one side agreed to surrender unconditionally? That's not how war works anymore.

How many times prior to WW2 did one side agree to surrender unconditionally

The Armistice of 1918 wasn't unconditional surrender, but it was a surrender in name.

[Silent Hunter]

Wow, I didn't know that DR Congo was on the right side of history. I'm sticking with the "white" side though.

DR Congo is a country long exploited by Western powers going right the way back to King Leopold II of Belgium. The fact that the people of DR Congo's economic indicators got worse during "Zaire" is something some would blame on the lack of training of locals by the West.

[Silent Hunter]

What worries me is Nakba 2.0 happening. What happens if fighting gets so intense in southern Gaza that Egypt allows people to flee? 45% of all homes in the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, mostly in the North. If if the same happens in the south, we could be looking at 2.5 million homeless people. It would be the greatest humantarian crisis in 100 years.

Sadly, not. 100 years covers the Second World War, Cambodia and Syria. Among many others.

A mass displacement into Egypt might be the lesser of two evils at this point; better that than staying in the ruins of Gaza.

[Silent Hunter]

What worries me is Nakba 2.0 happening. What happens if fighting gets so intense in southern Gaza that Egypt allows people to flee? 45% of all homes in the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, mostly in the North. If if the same happens in the south, we could be looking at 2.5 million homeless people. It would be the greatest humantarian crisis in 100 years.

Sadly, not. 100 years covers the Second World War, Cambodia and Syria. Among many others.

A mass displacement into Egypt might be the lesser of two evils at this point; better that than staying in the ruins of Gaza.

No. The international community can rebuild Gaza like it did after 2014. That would be faster and more humane than mass tent cities in the Sini Desert without water. Why folks keep arguing for this solution is crazy to me.

All it does it allows Israel to bulldoze cities in the Gaza Strip and build luxury beach homes and illegal settlements.

Not tent cities. Getting them somewhere safer. Gaza is in a lot worse state than in 2014. It's going to need demolishing and rebuilding anyway.

[Silent Hunter]

Stripping prisoners to ensure they're not hiding weapons is acceptable. Exposing them like this without at least blurring their faces is arguably a violation of Article 13 and Article 14 of the Third Geneva Convention.

[Silent Hunter]

Frankly, it says a lot about the lack of restraint that you have to have for WW2 to be the only modern conflict you can draw any comparison with. It's already surpassed Grozny, are we going to call that an example of a humane military operation?

https://twitter.com/triofrancos/status/1732394578836390007

I had a look at that article. The accuracy of an unguided Mark 82 bomb is 50% of bombs within 94.5m. That's not a good deal more accurate than the 270m of a Norden bombsight equipped B-17. No wonder the Americans are so keen to provide JDAM kits.