Israel-Gaza war

[afleitch]

Hash has cleared this thread once already.

I have woken up to 19 reported messages which I will process.

Do not say things or take positions that violate the ToS. Be aware of the words you are using, preferably before you use them, and the fact you are talking about human conflict and human lives.

Otherwise this thread will be shorn of anything opinion related.

Good?

Lovely.

[afleitch]

This doesn't appear to confirm that they were "directly targeted" as the Twitter post postulates.

Every nation should have basic awareness that the Red Cross/Crescent operate where there is dire humanitarian need and this is symbolic of both the long standing situation in Gaza, where they need to operate and of Israel's indiscriminate retaliation against civilian locales where they are based.

'Directly targeted' or not.

[afleitch]

https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1712497344376111346?t=N4vwfa5nP9qv0lHs...

Yes, we are well aware that Hamas is perfectly happy to see many Muslims die if it allows them to kill a few Jews.
Of course our resident jihad apologist is whatabouting the Hamas atrocities, committed by an organization whose express stated purpose is to kill every Jew.

BTW: ever heard of generators?

So...?

[afleitch]

I'm gonna be real, as someone who wholeheartedly supports Palestinian liberation, I find the constant arguments over the baby beheadings totally counterproductive and really emblematic of the failures of the pro-Palestinian left here. This is just me personally, but I suspect I am not in the minority when I say that I am mostly against baby killing in itself – the issue of whether the babies were beheaded is of comparatively minor importance. Therefore, when I see person 1 go "Hamas beheaded babies" and person 2 go "that's not true, they definitely killed babies, but there's no confirmation of beheadings" I instantly become less sympathetic to person 2. Anyone killing babies is bad and doesn't need to be defended.

I think it's symptomatic of issues much wider than this conflict. All claims, particularly war crimes, require to be substantied in order to ensure that they go to court as the truth, if a court is 'called' to address them. Victims are not served by lack of clarity. They are not served by 'trial by social media.'

[afleitch]

Scotland's First Minister Humza Youssef whose wife's parents are stuck in Gaza.


https://twitter.com/SCoJeC/status/1712806291859447977

[afleitch]

It can be the case that Israel will target known hospitals, is targeting hospitals, will cover up or obfuscate the targeting of hospitals but at the same time, didn't target the hospital yesterday.

[afleitch]

You'd make a great Hamas mouthpiece...

Are you on like a speedrun to become the most annoying user on this forum?

Has made over 40 posts in the span of a day, all in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not suspicious at all.

It's what I signed on here to argue about, after my football forum banned political arguments during the season.

I'm also against medicalizing children who believe they are trans, if that helps...

Hi.

Moderator here. This is a place for discussion over argument. Please also be mindful of the tone. I won't moderate pays like these right now.

Because it makes for bad press under the modern journalistic environment. This is very unfortunate because it incentivizes groups like Hamas (...or, in 2014, various Donbass paramilitaries) to militarize hospitals and schools and behave in ways that maximize civilian casualties. The solution must be to change the modern journalistic environment, so that they will not reflexively treat an organization more sympathetically if its enemies bomb hospitals and schools.

For what its worth, we bombed a **** ton of schools in Afghanistan.

The Taleban had taken over pretty much every girls' school in the country and were using them as bases.

Luckily, no female students were allowed at that time, so there were no civilian casualties to speak of...

We also rebuilt them all afterwards...

But I may.

[afleitch]

https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1715437877604049094

Again Channel 4 are a respected news source with a history of investigative journalism. It's vital that concerns over the version of events are investigated and addressed by the media.

[afleitch]

How do you negotiate with this?

You don't.

That doesn't mean you can't negotiate with Palestinians.

There's a concerted effort to combine the two in order to collectively punish a whole people.

[afleitch]

Israeli public relations has been, broadly, successful even with the ongoing bombardment of Gazans because it's victims are effectively 'named'. Their story, the hostage stories, interviews with family etc are rightly, out there and discussed.

What's painful is that Gazans are either in a literal blackout or their plight is seen as conditional. They are unseen.

Countless, nameless, thousands are dead and the best we can get are Western based Palestinians recounting frantic phone calls. Or no phone calls.

The problem for Israel, being a democracy, is that a ground war will have to allow for the expected media access that goes with such an operation. And independent access to war zones. And sites they have already bombed.

Now if Israel is correct that lobbing missiles into apartment buildings is based on accurate intel, and is an appropriate response, a partial ground invasion shouldn't be an issue for them. It would justify current and past tactics and journalistic and independent verification would support them.

But that means allowing the world to be embedded in Gaza with them.

[afleitch]

Quite a significant UN intervention

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1716825618728603907

[afleitch]

Israeli Ambassador to the UN having a normal one.

https://twitter.com/giladerdan1/status/1716837646813614354

[afleitch]

Shopping centre struck.

https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1716808351542075465

[afleitch]

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1717015483843576248

[afleitch]

OK then.

Still literally zero evidence that it was caused by "an Israeli airstrike that killed 500 people".

And if not that, then what?

He considers that -

'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.'

Which is the issue. A key piece of evidence being provided by Israel, to the media that show it was a Gaza launched misfire doesn't show that. The 'audio conversation' provided by Israel has also been debunked.

A democracy shouldn't be fabricating evidence to show what it wants to show when it doesn't. When in reality it could have said nothing and given nothing and the 'on balance' conclusion it was a misfire could have still prevailed.

[afleitch]

Gaza War Protests in London.

Policeman Punched By Palestinians

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cy9yTvHuwcL/

Disrespectful.

Given there were 100000 marchers, there were very few incidents.

[afleitch]

https://twitter.com/BazziNYU/status/1718710406883983831

[afleitch]

https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1718912363041071109

[afleitch]

Utterly heartbreaking

https://twitter.com/save_children/status/1718623774440849643

[afleitch]

Responding to the 'embedding' of military supplies and munitions (if that is indeed the case) amongst civilians by bombarding civilians does not suggest either restraint or care for the civilian life. It is not proportionate.

Israel is a democratic state. That is the basis of its constitution and the basis of other democratic states' engagement with Israel. The international rules of law are unfair because they must place a greater burden on democratic states to show restraint and follow the law regardless of the emotional impact of an attack on its own people, when the emotional impact is the same amongst the people regardless of who is in power. Both governed halves of Palestine are not democratic states nor are they even functioning 'states'. What they do, or rather what is done to them in terms of aggression or acts of claimed self-defence cannot even be met with an ‘in-kind’ response from a democratic state because that itself is disproportionate.

Israels military response has been undemocratic. It's diplomatic response effectively non existant other than to shame it's reputation in the United Nations. There's no need to obfuscate what it is doing to civilians in Gaza. It's movements against the West Bank, completely unjustifiable.

[afleitch]

The international rules of law place an equal burden on all internationally recognized countries, and demand that citizens not be targeted deliberately, that civilian casualties not be maximized nor that strikes be carried out against invalid military targets. Israel has not merely met this standard but has exceeded it in every conflict it has carried out over the past several decades.

Is a missile strike on a refugee camp potentially killing hundreds of people in order to 'take out' a single Hamas commander, not maximising civilian casualties? Is a missile strike a proportionate response to take out an individual as opposed to other means of extraction.

Its military response has been led by its democratically elected government; its diplomatic response has obtained the support of most of the large democratic nations on Earth (the US, India, and western Europe); Latin America has been more equivocal, I guess. (This includes your country, which makes it strange that you are saying this; I sort of understand where Red Velvet is coming from, as a Brazilian, but "the world stands against Israel" feels much stranger coming from a Scotsman.) I don't know if you're expecting unanimity, but you shouldn't be.

'Standing against Israel' is not my sentiment when my criticism of Israel is rooted in an appeal against democratic backsliding. That was the case prior to October 7th.

I do empathise with the Palestinian victims of Israel's response and the dismissiveness of their plight as nothing more than collateral damage, rather than as victims of human suffering and humanitarian crisis. Which was also the case before October 7th.

[afleitch]

[
I genuinely don't understand what the Israelis are going for with this.

The question is whether this Israeli government is legitimized to use that symbol in this context, or rather it's banalizing the memory of Holocaust in order to justify its present actions

The second one.

[afleitch]

Meanwhile, on Western News fed by the Hamas media machine.

I'm giving a pass to your 'news aggregation' posts. But if you do so, share without comment. Because comments like the above are conspiratorial.

[afleitch]

Do not, under any circumstances, accuse posters of being terrorist sympathisers without any justification.

[afleitch]

Absolutely bizarre.

https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1721947956247511262