Israel-Gaza war

[SnowLabrador]

This war is helping Russia in Ukraine by diverting attention. I hate this timeline!

[Hnv1]

This war is helping Russia in Ukraine by diverting attention. I hate this timeline!

Nonsense. Israel and Ukraine have different needs in terms of ordnance, and the stalemate in the front began long before 7/10.

[Hnv1]

IDF tanks around the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. i.e., Israel moved 2km East over the past 36 hours

[afleitch]

Quite an important read this.

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1724857866106949908

[pppolitics]

Quite an important read this.

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1724857866106949908

IDF already found a list containing the names of high ranking Hamas militants: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Again, these are the names of high ranking Hamas militants.

[afleitch]

Here's my concern.

What if there's nothing? This was supposed to be the central core of Hamas in Gaza. There needs to be transparency rather than a constant 'trust the intel' and the west trusting it second hand.

[pppolitics]

Here's my concern.

What if there's nothing? This was supposed to be the central core of Hamas in Gaza. There needs to be transparency rather than a constant 'trust the intel' and the west trusting it second hand.

Israel would just sweep it under the rug.

[afleitch]

Here's my concern.

What if there's nothing? This was supposed to be the central core of Hamas in Gaza. There needs to be transparency rather than a constant 'trust the intel' and the west trusting it second hand.

Israel would just sweep it under the rug.

I think Israel is quite taken aback by not being challenged on anything it's putting out there; not it's intel, it's rhetoric or it's 'clean up' operations on the ground.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Quite an important read this.

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1724857866106949908

IDF already found a list containing the names of high ranking Hamas militants: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Again, these are the names of high ranking Hamas militants.

BREAKING NEWS

The top minds of Israel, home of the world's most sophisticated multi billion dollar intelligence apparatus, have released new damning footage of a Hamas TERROR HOSPITAL:

https://twitter.com/Aldanmarki/status/1724905401425285458

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

https://fixuptwitter.com/manniefabian/status/1725230439307128995

The IDF says it has uncovered a Hamas tunnel in the Shifa Hospital complex. It publishes a video showing the entrance.
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian)

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

https://vxtwitter.com/Faytuks/status/1725243222660710829

Faytuks News Δ (@Faytuks)
BREAKING: The US and its European allies are pushing a plan to deploy an international UN peacekeeping force in the Gaza Strip after the war, according to people familiar with the matter - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-16/us-eu-back-un-force-in-postwar-gaza-adding-pressure-on-israel?srnd=premium-europe

[GeneralMacArthur]

If it does indeed turn out there was no complex under the hospital at all and Israel was just making it up then this will be their Iraq WMD moment.  Either a colossal failure of intelligence or outright lying.

What they have said so far makes little sense.  A massive underground tunnel network is not something you can just cover up, and should not be difficult to find even if Hamas militants had weeks to hide it.

The IDF also made these claims about other hospitals that they now control but have demonstrated zero evidence that they were used as operational bases, much less secret tunnel entrances.  The videos of "evidence" that they've released come off as juvenile and staged.  A single unopened case of diapers sitting in the hallway as evidence of babies being held as hostages, really?  Of course it doesn't help that the IDF and Israeli Twitter accounts have often been tweeting out wild claims, misleading statements and the occasional fabrication.

Now there's still plenty of reason to think they will end up finding the promised secret tunnel complex.  Other Western nations have made the same claims, hopefully based on more than just repetition of Israeli intelligence.  Independent actors have made the same claims.  We know without any ambiguity that the tunnel network exists, based on Hamas themselves providing video footage of it.  We also know that Hamas fighters just spent several days fighting a pitched battle to defend this hospital, just as Israeli fighters spent several days battling to take it, which doesn't make any sense if either side knows there's not actually anything to find there.  It also seems rather stupid and pointless for Israel to lie about such a specific thing.

The one thing I can think of that would make it all somewhat add up is that Hamas used the hospital as a fortress but not as the entrance to an underground command center, and Israel exaggerated so they could justify besieging the fighters holed up inside.  That doesn't really square with the past behavior of either party though.

At any rate, if there is a tunnel complex under the hospital, they need to prove it to the world quickly.  Otherwise it will be a massive blow to their credibility that will rightfully engender allied skepticism of any future operations.

[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.

[OSR stands with Israel]

https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20Opinion%20Poll%20-%20Gaza%20War%202023%20-%20Tables%20of%20Results.pdf

75% of Palestinians view Hamas in a positive manner and back the 10/7 attacks

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

If it does indeed turn out there was no complex under the hospital at all and Israel was just making it up then this will be their Iraq WMD moment.  Either a colossal failure of intelligence or outright lying.

What they have said so far makes little sense.  A massive underground tunnel network is not something you can just cover up, and should not be difficult to find even if Hamas militants had weeks to hide it.

The IDF also made these claims about other hospitals that they now control but have demonstrated zero evidence that they were used as operational bases, much less secret tunnel entrances.  The videos of "evidence" that they've released come off as juvenile and staged.  A single unopened case of diapers sitting in the hallway as evidence of babies being held as hostages, really?  Of course it doesn't help that the IDF and Israeli Twitter accounts have often been tweeting out wild claims, misleading statements and the occasional fabrication.

Now there's still plenty of reason to think they will end up finding the promised secret tunnel complex.  Other Western nations have made the same claims, hopefully based on more than just repetition of Israeli intelligence.  Independent actors have made the same claims.  We know without any ambiguity that the tunnel network exists, based on Hamas themselves providing video footage of it.  We also know that Hamas fighters just spent several days fighting a pitched battle to defend this hospital, just as Israeli fighters spent several days battling to take it, which doesn't make any sense if either side knows there's not actually anything to find there.  It also seems rather stupid and pointless for Israel to lie about such a specific thing.

The one thing I can think of that would make it all somewhat add up is that Hamas used the hospital as a fortress but not as the entrance to an underground command center, and Israel exaggerated so they could justify besieging the fighters holed up inside.  That doesn't really square with the past behavior of either party though.

At any rate, if there is a tunnel complex under the hospital, they need to prove it to the world quickly.  Otherwise it will be a massive blow to their credibility that will rightfully engender allied skepticism of any future operations.

All 17 US intelligence agencies said there were Iraq WMD. They just copy what each other say.

To be clear, there was no dispute about whether Iraq once had WMD. We sold them to them. We tried to censor that part of the weapons report, because it'd be awkward for people to realize that Rumsfeld both involved with selling them and saying they shouldn't have them, but it was the 21st century, so Iraq just sent a CD with them to a reporter.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Well, the main way it's comparable to Iraq WMD is that it will cause a very long-lasting state of skepticism towards any Israeli intelligence, if not outright refusal to believe it and determination to believe the opposite of whatever Israel says.  I mean this is a very specific and impactful claim made as the sole justification for a highly-scrutinized military operation.

If it turns out there wasn't actually a base under the hospital then even in 2050, when virtually everyone involved in this is dead or retired, people are still gonna be trotting out "you're gonna believe Israel?  Remember Al-Shifa?" the same way they do with Iraq WMD now -- even as those same people get their information about what's going in the world from Russian and Iranian mouthpieces who lie on a near-daily basis.

That said, I still think it's more likely than not that there is a Hamas tunnel base underneath the hospital, and the IDF is just being knuckleheads about it.

[Red Velvet]

https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20Opinion%20Poll%20-%20Gaza%20War%202023%20-%20Tables%20of%20Results.pdf

75% of Palestinians view Hamas in a positive manner and back the 10/7 attacks

75% of Americans saw Bush in a positive manner and backed the Iraq War when it began.

Getting your buildings bombed to the ground and your people brutally murdered radicalizes citizens through nationalism, who would’ve thought! Shocking stuff that Netanyahu plus Israeli far-right feed Hamas and vice-versa!

[OSR stands with Israel]

https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20Opinion%20Poll%20-%20Gaza%20War%202023%20-%20Tables%20of%20Results.pdf

75% of Palestinians view Hamas in a positive manner and back the 10/7 attacks

75% of Americans saw Bush in a positive manner and backed the Iraq War when it began.

Getting your buildings bombed to the ground and your people brutally murdered radicalizes citizens through nationalism, who would’ve thought! Shocking stuff that Netanyahu plus Israeli far-right feed Hamas and vice-versa!

Lol you are truly unbelievable and all your defenses of radical Islamists are completely lol worthy . The fact is the PLO had genocidal goals for decades and completely sabotaged hopes for peace over and over again so it was the PLO. Now they back a group worse than the PLO because what they want is Israel to no longer exist and that’s always been their belief.

Anyway this poll is probably similar to what the German public thought about the Nazis from 43-45 and yeah Gaza just like Germany needs to be depropagandized

[Saint Milei]

https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20Opinion%20Poll%20-%20Gaza%20War%202023%20-%20Tables%20of%20Results.pdf

75% of Palestinians view Hamas in a positive manner and back the 10/7 attacks

75% of Americans saw Bush in a positive manner and backed the Iraq War when it began.

Getting your buildings bombed to the ground and your people brutally murdered radicalizes citizens through nationalism, who would’ve thought! Shocking stuff that Netanyahu plus Israeli far-right feed Hamas and vice-versa!

Lol you are truly unbelievable and all your defenses of radical Islamists are completely lol worthy . The fact is the PLO had genocidal goals for decades and completely sabotaged hopes for peace over and over again so it was the PLO. Now they back a group worse than the PLO because what they want is Israel to no longer exist and that’s always been their belief.

Anyway this poll is probably similar to what the German public thought about the Nazis from 43-45 and yeah Gaza just like Germany needs to be depropagandized

It's always ironic you say this because you would have backed the Iraq war lmao

[GeneralMacArthur]

Please do not compare the Iraq War to the Holocaust or the 10/7 Hamas killing spree.  These are not comparable things.

Also please do not be that person who tries to reach edgelord nirvana by replying to this with some variation of "yes, the Iraq War was more evil"

[Meclazine for Israel]

PBS News Hour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqHXAX6yUGg

The "Crisis Actors" have left Al-Shifa Hospital. I have not figured out why Hamas had automatic machine guns behind the MRI machine. That would make for a tense scan. I get claustrophobic going in for an MRI scan normally. Imagine getting a cancer diagnosis and then getting an MRI and there is a guy in a black balaclava standing there with a green headband with a machine gun.

This Is The End

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpN54k93ugM

BBC News still pumping some dross from an unverified journalist who claims to be inside the Hospital.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67442045

A journalist trapped inside the hospital, Khader, told the BBC's Rushdi Abu Alouf by phone that Israeli troops were "everywhere, shooting in all directions".

The BBC has not been able to independently verify either of the reports.

I wonder why?

It looks like the IDF took over the Hospital, not just to hunt for underground bunkers with hostages, but rather to close down what its being termed "Pallywood", the media production capacity of Hamas which gets the WEstern media to publish daily stories with the terms "Hospital, Missiles, Not Our Gaza Missiles, Babies, Hospitals, Babies, Hospitals., Car Parks, Missiles, IDF, Hospitals".

It is widely recognised that Hamas needs these media stories published in UK and US media for sympathy in their struggle in this war. It is a key weapon of their arsenal as seen from the Hospital Car Park Gaza missile story.

The IDF has simply stopped this daily barrage of media reports from Al-Shifa in it's tracks.

The tattered remnants of this style of media production is showing links to BBC and New York Times. The headlines are still there, but the stories are now clearly vacant of facts and simply not plausible given the number of IDF troops with video cameras in the area.

I hope the patients in the Hospital are looked after or, preferably, moved out of the war zone as they should have been 3 weeks ago.

And of course, I hope we see some Israeli hostages released soon.

Nearby, an Israeli Hostage was found dead today near Al-Shifa Hospital.

Mother of Five Children - Yehudit Weiss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFionhy3IEA

R.I.P.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/jewish-settlers-stole-my-house-its-not-my-fault-theyre-jewish/
Anti-Israeli government policies piece written by an East Jerusalem Palestinian published on an anti-Zionist Jewish publication.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yeah I'm not a fan of the "Pallywood" thing at all either.  Israel blew up an entire apartment building in an airstrike, obviously there are going to be civilians wounded or killed from that and a lot of their friends and relatives will be screaming in anguish and sorrow, which can be caught on camera.  Even if Hamas was fabricating some of these videos, obviously some are real, so unless Israel is trying to claim no civilians are being hurt or killed it doesn't even seem to be a point worth belaboring.  Furthermore their credibility has been severely undermined on this topic as their social media accounts have reposted film sets, or videos not from Palestine, as "Pallywood" evidence.

Again that doesn't mean Israel is in the wrong here, or that their operation is wrong.  That apartment building was allegedly infested with Hamas fighters and battle infrastructure, making it a legitimate military target whose demolition probably saved the lives of many Israeli soldiers.  I think civilian casualties are inevitable in any military operation and that a reasonable number of dead civilians is a fair price to pay for the elimination of Hamas, which is absolutely evil.  I also think most of these civilian deaths are Hamas's responsibility since they have chosen to put civilians in harms way by operating, in violation of the laws of war, from civilian population centers.  You don't have to try to convince me that the civilians aren't really dying.  I know they're dying and I'm ok with that up to a certain point as long as I feel like the deaths are mostly unavoidable in the service of fulfilling Israel's military objective of eliminating Hamas.

What it does mean though is that Israel's PR operation is an absolute disaster and Bibi, who is ultimately responsible for this, remains a national disgrace.  I would wager the general who ordered that airstrike, and the pilots who carried it out, are well aware that civilians were killed and probably aren't down with Bibi taking those videos and images of the civilians and saying they're "crisis actors" in a "Pallywood production."  I know none of my military friends would be down with that if it was them.

[NOVA Green]

If it does indeed turn out there was no complex under the hospital at all and Israel was just making it up then this will be their Iraq WMD moment.  Either a colossal failure of intelligence or outright lying.

What they have said so far makes little sense.  A massive underground tunnel network is not something you can just cover up, and should not be difficult to find even if Hamas militants had weeks to hide it.

The IDF also made these claims about other hospitals that they now control but have demonstrated zero evidence that they were used as operational bases, much less secret tunnel entrances.  The videos of "evidence" that they've released come off as juvenile and staged.  A single unopened case of diapers sitting in the hallway as evidence of babies being held as hostages, really?  Of course it doesn't help that the IDF and Israeli Twitter accounts have often been tweeting out wild claims, misleading statements and the occasional fabrication.

Now there's still plenty of reason to think they will end up finding the promised secret tunnel complex.  Other Western nations have made the same claims, hopefully based on more than just repetition of Israeli intelligence.  Independent actors have made the same claims.  We know without any ambiguity that the tunnel network exists, based on Hamas themselves providing video footage of it.  We also know that Hamas fighters just spent several days fighting a pitched battle to defend this hospital, just as Israeli fighters spent several days battling to take it, which doesn't make any sense if either side knows there's not actually anything to find there.  It also seems rather stupid and pointless for Israel to lie about such a specific thing.

The one thing I can think of that would make it all somewhat add up is that Hamas used the hospital as a fortress but not as the entrance to an underground command center, and Israel exaggerated so they could justify besieging the fighters holed up inside.  That doesn't really square with the past behavior of either party though.

At any rate, if there is a tunnel complex under the hospital, they need to prove it to the world quickly.  Otherwise it will be a massive blow to their credibility that will rightfully engender allied skepticism of any future operations.

Well, as others have stated, the process of finding the location of the "secret underground bunker locations underneath the hospital complex" may simply be taking longer than anticipated for multiple reasons... we shall see.

As I posted over a month ago on this very thread, the original concept of an underground Hamas command bunker beneath the ground of Al Shifa Hospital, appears to have originated from when Israel constructed the facility in 1983.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=566181.msg9243689#msg9243689

Although we have yet to see any evidence of a significant Hamas military modern day military presence on hospital grounds, that does not preclude that such evidence might materialize over the coming days, since there are still ongoing sporadic clashes around hospital grounds.

A day after it took control of the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital, the Israeli military on Thursday afternoon was still searching the site that Israel has said concealed a secret Hamas base, and to bolster its case offered video of more weapons it said it had found there and what it described as a tunnel entrance.

The images presented by Israel from the hospital, Al-Shifa, in Gaza City, could not be independently verified, and still have not proven the existence of the sprawling Hamas operation that it said the hospital concealed.

One of the videos released on Thursday by the Israeli military showed a white pickup truck on the hospital grounds and, laid out on the ground near it, the arsenal the narrator said had been its contents: automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition magazines, hand grenades and other gear.

Another video shows excavated earth and a doorway into an underground passage, which The New York Times has confirmed is at the northern perimeter of the sprawling hospital complex. Israeli forces appear to have destroyed a small structure and dug up an extensive area to uncover the opening, an analysis of satellite imagery and video shows.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/16/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war-news

One thing I suspect is becoming increasingly obvious, is that Israeli's much vaunted HUMINT capabilities appear to be not nearly as capable (At least within the Gaza Strip), as traditionally was imagined.

It also appears that other aspects of Israeli Intel, including SIGINT, where pretty much all electronic communications entering and leaving Gaza flow through Israel, including Data Centers where Palestinian Cell Phone providers are "renting server space" with theoretical data privacy and connectivity for customers, was also extremely lacking in terms of preventing the original 10/7/23 Hamas attack.

One other item of interest is that Israel likely ran out of the overwhelming majority of their known "hard targets" within the first five days of the "War", and increasingly had to shift to more "targets of opportunity".

Needless to say these are targets which are much more likely to cause significant number of civilian deaths.

[Yellowhammer]

https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20Opinion%20Poll%20-%20Gaza%20War%202023%20-%20Tables%20of%20Results.pdf

75% of Palestinians view Hamas in a positive manner and back the 10/7 attacks

75% of Americans saw Bush in a positive manner and backed the Iraq War when it began.

Getting your buildings bombed to the ground and your people brutally murdered radicalizes citizens through nationalism, who would’ve thought! Shocking stuff that Netanyahu plus Israeli far-right feed Hamas and vice-versa!

Lol you are truly unbelievable and all your defenses of radical Islamists are completely lol worthy . The fact is the PLO had genocidal goals for decades and completely sabotaged hopes for peace over and over again so it was the PLO. Now they back a group worse than the PLO because what they want is Israel to no longer exist and that’s always been their belief.

Anyway this poll is probably similar to what the German public thought about the Nazis from 43-45 and yeah Gaza just like Germany needs to be depropagandized

Translation: we need to give them the kind of propaganda that I like.