Israel-Gaza war

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Wow. Looks like the US is starting to tire of Israeli games. I haven't seen the US defy Israel at the security council since Obama was a lame duck.

https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/1724900144808947883?t=7ZxqOT6nBGkPGFhGxX5q...

The fact that this hasn't blown up into a huge US/Israel diplomatic row like that incident shows how utterly toothless the UN and even the US are right now. This isn't a minor flare-up. There is nothing that can stop Israel's war on Hamas barring a much larger war targeting it that could cost the world everything. As long as even one Jewish child is in Hamas' hands, the war will continue apace no matter which countries disagree.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

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.

[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.

[pppolitics]

US public support for Israel drops; majority backs a ceasefire, Reuters/Ipsos shows

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - U.S. public support for Israel's war against Hamas militants in Gaza is eroding and most Americans think Israel should call a ceasefire to a conflict that has ballooned into a humanitarian crisis, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Some 32% of respondents in the two-day opinion poll, which closed on Tuesday, said "the U.S. should support Israel" when asked what role the United States should take in the fighting. That was down from 41% who said the U.S. should back Israel in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Oct. 12-13.

The share saying "the U.S. should be a neutral mediator" rose to 39% in the new poll from 27% a month earlier. Four percent of respondents in the poll said the U.S. should support Palestinians and 15% said the U.S. shouldn't be involved at all, both similar readings to a month ago.

Israel has long counted on the U.S., its most powerful ally, for billions of dollars a year in military aid and international diplomatic support. An erosion of U.S. public support could be a worrisome sign for the Middle Eastern country, which faces not only Hamas militants in Gaza but the Hezbollah Islamist movement in Lebanon and has conducted a long-running “shadow war” with Iran, its regional arch-foe.

The drop in U.S. support, seen in the new poll among both Democrats and Republicans and especially among older respondents, follows weeks of heavy Israeli bombardment and ground combat against Hamas in Gaza in retaliation for an Oct. 7 rampage by the Islamist militants in southern Israel. About 1,200 people were killed and around 240 taken hostage.

[...]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-public-support-israel-drops-majority-backs-ceasefire-reutersipsos-2023-11-15/

[All Along The Watchtower]

My galaxy brain "advice": at some point Israel, in coordination with the US and the other members of the UN Security Council, should extend a public olive branch and offer to negotiate directly with Hamas.

When Hamas then rejects their offer (as they inevitably would) sympathy for Israel's campaign will increase internationally.

/shrug

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

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

I think a few AKs are not enough to indicate that Al Shifah was a significant base for Hamas, which was the rationale (or the pretext) for its bombardment. Cars, people and materiel can move, but tunnel entrances - not so much.

There are three possibilities which occur to me:
1. The tunnels exist and Israel isn’t showing them. Maybe they’ll clarify it in a day or two, but if not by that time, this one’s a bit of a stretch.
2. The tunnels which Israeli intelligence presumed to exist for years do not. This would be rank incompetence, but Hanlon’s razor applies. If true, it raises questions as to how much stock Israel (and other countries) should put in their intelligence.
3. The tunnels never existed and either Israel knew they didn’t exist or didn’t care whether they existed.

[Logical]

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

I think a few AKs are not enough to indicate that Al Shifah was a significant base for Hamas, which was the rationale (or the pretext) for its bombardment. Cars, people and materiel can move, but tunnel entrances - not so much.

There are three possibilities which occur to me:
1. The tunnels exist and Israel isn’t showing them. Maybe they’ll clarify it in a day or two, but if not by that time, this one’s a bit of a stretch.
2. The tunnels which Israeli intelligence presumed to exist for years do not. This would be rank incompetence, but Hanlon’s razor applies. If true, it raises questions as to how much stock Israel (and other countries) should put in their intelligence.
3. The tunnels never existed and either Israel knew they didn’t exist or didn’t care whether they existed.

I'd say that there is a fourth possibility.
The tunnels did exist but it was quickly covered up or destroyed by Hamas when their leadership fled south.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

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

I think a few AKs are not enough to indicate that Al Shifah was a significant base for Hamas, which was the rationale (or the pretext) for its bombardment. Cars, people and materiel can move, but tunnel entrances - not so much.

There are three possibilities which occur to me:
1. The tunnels exist and Israel isn’t showing them. Maybe they’ll clarify it in a day or two, but if not by that time, this one’s a bit of a stretch.
2. The tunnels which Israeli intelligence presumed to exist for years do not. This would be rank incompetence, but Hanlon’s razor applies. If true, it raises questions as to how much stock Israel (and other countries) should put in their intelligence.
3. The tunnels never existed and either Israel knew they didn’t exist or didn’t care whether they existed.

I'd say that there is a fourth possibility.
The tunnels did exist but it was quickly covered up or destroyed by Hamas when the leadership fled south.

Seems like a subset of 1.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

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

I think a few AKs are not enough to indicate that Al Shifah was a significant base for Hamas, which was the rationale (or the pretext) for its bombardment. Cars, people and materiel can move, but tunnel entrances - not so much.

There are three possibilities which occur to me:
1. The tunnels exist and Israel isn’t showing them. Maybe they’ll clarify it in a day or two, but if not by that time, this one’s a bit of a stretch.
2. The tunnels which Israeli intelligence presumed to exist for years do not. This would be rank incompetence, but Hanlon’s razor applies. If true, it raises questions as to how much stock Israel (and other countries) should put in their intelligence.
3. The tunnels never existed and either Israel knew they didn’t exist or didn’t care whether they existed.

I'd say that there is a fourth possibility.
The tunnels did exist but it was quickly covered up or destroyed by Hamas when their leadership fled south.

The tunnels we've been told about for many years aren't going to be "quickly covered up or destroyed".

https://www.haaretz.com/2014-10-17/ty-article/.premium/idf-lacked-training-equipment-to-tackle-tunnels-in-gaza-war/0000017f-e0f7-d568-ad7f-f3ff0fbe0000

An engineering officer engaged in locating the tunnels told Haaretz that the exposure of the three tunnels “gave us the right proportions. In the past we had known of narrow smuggling and explosives tunnels, inside of which you had to walk bent over. But the tunnels we uncovered last year made clear to us that we were facing something entirely different: These were wide tunnels, with internal communication systems that had been dug deep beneath the surface and the sides were reinforced with layers of concrete. You could walk upright in them without any difficulty.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Wow. Looks like the US is starting to tire of Israeli games. I haven't seen the US defy Israel at the security council since Obama was a lame duck.

https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/1724900144808947883?t=7ZxqOT6nBGkPGFhGxX5q...

The vote was 12-0 with 3 abstentions. The abstentions were the U.S., the UK, and Russia.

[Dan the Roman]

My galaxy brain "advice": at some point Israel, in coordination with the US and the other members of the UN Security Council, should extend a public olive branch and offer to negotiate directly with Hamas.

When Hamas then rejects their offer (as they inevitably would) sympathy for Israel's campaign will increase internationally.

/shrug

Why would Hamas refuse? It gives Hamas what they want. Their immediate enemy is the Palestinian Authority. Direct talks means the US/Israel treat Hamas as an equal to the PA. 

[PSOL]

Clearly this is mostly the fault of Hezbollah and Iran.

Hezbollah for introducing the dumb nonsense that most Israelis would just melt and somehow have the cash to immediately evacuate and not helping when things are hot. How they learned nothing from the experiences of South Africa or any of the African countries is really mind boggling.

Iran for being reactionaries and being unwilling to die along with the Israelis.

Clearly it’s time for a new order in Lebanon and Iran for a more willing partner.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

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

Two plausible explanations.

The first is that Hamas fooled the IDF and intentionally baited them into a PR nightmare. The IDF is profoundly arrogant and has an incredibly low opinion of its adversaries, something Hamas exploited prior to October 7th to make Israeli intelligence think they were too weak and afraid to do anything. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Hamas intentionally led the Israelis to believe that they had a headquarters under Al-Shifa the exact same way they led the Israelis to believe that they weren't up to no good. Put up some token resistance to keep up appearances, feed Israeli arrogance about their military invincibility and pretty soon you've got yourself a huge propaganda win.

Being generous to the IDF, maybe Hamas really did once have some sort of a base at, nearby or under the hospital. But by the IDF's own admission Hamas had tunnels that went 70m deep back in 2014, almost a full decade ago. That's a depth that even the beefiest bunker busters in America's arsenal can't reach, so logically Hamas is more likely to keep their high value targets, munitions and hostages there or even deeper rather than hoping that Israel doesn't bomb the human shield. The whole point of a tunnel network is that you don't have to rely on human shields and the goodwill of your enemy at all (I mean, short of dropping a nuke I guess)

The alternative explanation is that it was a pretense from the start and they simply didn't expect to be called out on their BS. Israeli claims have historically been basically taken at face value by the corporate press and have faced minimal scrutiny from Western governments thanks to the overwhelming influence of the Israel Lobby. Literally murdering an American journalist only attracted very lukewarm condemnation even after they repeatedly lied and tried to pass blame. So it isn't hard to imagine that some propagandists thought that they could just make an assertion and show a picture with a table covered in guns and everyone would go "You've convinced me, this must be Hamas HQ. Israel is so kind because if it were me I'd just blow it up!"

As to the IDF's goal, I don't think they're maximizing civilian casualties like some might say but Israeli leaders have said that they consider every Gazan to be a legitimate target and we should probably take them at their word. Rather than maximizing or minimizing casualties they're simply indifferent except inasmuch as it generates a PR hit internationally. The real goal is to avenge the humiliation they were dealt on October 7th and to prove that the IDF is still incomparably more powerful than the puny Palestinians. To this end they've rushed to the coast and taken a bunch of photoshoots at symbolic but militarily irrelevant places like the Gazan Parliament before dramatically blowing them up. Raising a flag over Al-Shifa has zero military value whatsoever but it demonstrates dominance over the locals and makes Israelis feel big and tough after a half week of feeling weak and afraid.

The ironic thing here is that Hamas every step of the way has relied on Israel responding to their actions in a predictable, violence escalating way. For a day or two the Israelis briefly had global sympathy just like America after 9/11 and could have completely undercut Hamas completely by acting with humanity, treating Palestinian lives like they have equal value to Israeli lives and thereby winning over public opinion in a way that would have never been possible otherwise. They could have secured Israeli independence and goodwill from its neighbours for generations. Then they could have crushed Hamas using regular counterinsurgency tactics and maybe even some support from within Gaza instead of blowing up every building that a militant might have walked past once. But instead they chose they chose violence and somehow managed to destroy their reputation even faster than Putin in Ukraine or Bush in Iraq just as Hamas hoped.

Speaking of,

https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1724985851669574131

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

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.

Which Russia also did for kind of opposite reasons.

[NOVA Green]

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

I think a few AKs are not enough to indicate that Al Shifah was a significant base for Hamas, which was the rationale (or the pretext) for its bombardment. Cars, people and materiel can move, but tunnel entrances - not so much.

There are three possibilities which occur to me:
1. The tunnels exist and Israel isn’t showing them. Maybe they’ll clarify it in a day or two, but if not by that time, this one’s a bit of a stretch.
2. The tunnels which Israeli intelligence presumed to exist for years do not. This would be rank incompetence, but Hanlon’s razor applies. If true, it raises questions as to how much stock Israel (and other countries) should put in their intelligence.
3. The tunnels never existed and either Israel knew they didn’t exist or didn’t care whether they existed.

I'd say that there is a fourth possibility.
The tunnels did exist but it was quickly covered up or destroyed by Hamas when the leadership fled south.

Seems like a subset of 1.

Regardless, the fact that the Israeli Government and military, and US Intel "Sources" has confirmed the existence of Hamas "Bunkers under Hospitals", but yet we have to see any evidence from hospitals in Gaza where the IDF has either partial or full control of medical facilities over the past couple days, to verifiably demonstrate this is the case, certainly appears to weakens the Israeli Governments argument for targeting medical facilities.

Maybe we will see more evidence in the days to come to support the "Intel", but I suspect that much of the Global Community might be skeptical without verifiable evidence, especially considering the whole Republican Bush Jr. decision to invade and occupy Iraq because "Intelligence Sources Showed Iraq Was Hiding Weapons of Mass Destruction".

Like in a Poker Game "Put Up or Shut Up"...

Tons of love and sympathy for Israel from throughout the world from the Hamas Terrorist murder of Israeli citizens, but still relatively wealthy political democracies are held to higher standards, regardless of the difficult decisions made when it comes to murdering innocent civilians as part of "targeted bombing campaigns".

I say this as a supporter and friend of Israel, who has long history from the early '90s of American Foreign Policy during the Gulf War opposing US Air Strikes against civilian population and infrastructures.

100,000- 200,000 Iraqi civilians died directly, during the Gulf War because of US targeted airstrikes which took out power supplies, dams, water treatment facilities and caused a massive humanitarian crisis.

Actual death toll might well have been much larger...

I am not even going to mention Iraq War 2.0, let alone how many Afghani Civilians were murdered during American Drone Strikes by folx working in Rear Bases basically running combat kills like a joystick computer game.

Still... I have been 100% consistent for over (30) years of my adult life regarding the integrity of human life when it comes to civilian non-combatants, and this particular conflict is no exception.

[NOVA Green]

Much of the current debate within Israel regarding abiding by international law in Gaza...

Might not be of particular interest to many Atlas posters and readers with "baked in" opinions, but reality is that these discussions are not happening in a vacuum, with many members of the Israeli Left (Including various Secular military and intelligence officers), much more likely to discuss these items "internally" versus taking it to the Netanyahu and "Far-Right" GVT leaders.

Needless to say, Israeli military doctrine has long focused on force protection and minimization of IDF casualties, which perhaps explains part of initial strategy of massive air and artillery bombardment for a couple weeks while meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Israeli Soldiers and Reservists are waiting orders before there is a massive "movement in force" into Gaza.

Still, regardless of some knee-jerk Atlas poster perspectives the Israeli "War Cabinet" does not have any secret plans of either "reoccupying or colonizing Gaza" to create Settler populations or bring back the 6,000 Israeli Settlers who left Gaza in '06 after years of Israeli Occupation after decades Egyptian Occupation of "The Strip" from decades before.


https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-15/ty-article-magazine/.premium/is-israel-abiding-by-international-law-in-gaza/0000018b-ce5e-d168-a3ef-dffe16ee0000

[Hnv1]

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.

[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.

[bilaps]

Full blown Israeli propaganda now on Morning Joe. The worst scum on Earth.

[CumbrianLefty]

Now being reported that a hostages deal (though not a full blown ceasefire) was formulated a few days ago - but after initially appearing favourable, Netanyahu got cold feet and vetoed it.

He really does want this war to go on forever doesn't he?

[DavidB.]

Now being reported that a hostages deal (though not a full blown ceasefire) was formulated a few days ago - but after initially appearing favourable, Netanyahu got cold feet and vetoed it.

He really does want this war to go on forever doesn't he?

Every instant of a ceasefire will allow Hamas to regroup and will cost additional Israeli soldiers' lives. Something like a three-day pause in exchange for 50 hostages could well cost more than 50 soldiers' lives. That's not an acceptable deal and it would incentivize terrorist groups taking hostages in the future too. In general Hamas shouldn't be negotiated with (that window closed on October 7) - it should be wiped out.

[CumbrianLefty]

As I said, a ceasefire was not part of these proposals.

Bibi wants this war to continue indefinitely so he can cling to power.

Get. Him. Out.

[DavidB.]

Bibi wants this war to continue indefinitely so he can cling to power.

I want Bibi out too, but I see no evidence for this whatsoever. The Israeli effort to wipe out Hamas from the face of the earth is supported by the vast majority of Israelis.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Companies Donating to Israel

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzP0pbhPeds/

Facebook and Instagram are not donating money, but putting a team together to moderate pro-Hamas posts and accounts.