Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[laughing dog]

[

And your evidence that they aren't simply defending themselves from attacks is...

Reality.

The ratio of civilian to combatant kill ratios. The fact settlers go unpunished when they kill or attack Palestinians.

What data do we have on recent West Bank conflict?

And note that:

1) Because the Palestinians won't work with the Israeli police it's effectively impossible to prosecute unless they're caught in the act.

2) Again and again there are claims of settler actions that simply don't make sense. Pretty obviously they're being blamed for things they didn't do.

BS to both. While you are entitled to opinions and to conflate them with fact, no one is required to accept them as valid.

 

[laughing dog]

This is supposed to be about making Israel SAFER, not retribution.

It was always about retribution first - look at the initial rhetoric. The "safer" part is the cover and it allows for genocidal policies under the rubric "its not a war crime to kill 1,000 civilians if we are aiming at a terrorist". Hell, just look at the language used by the apologists for the IDF in this thread.

I wouldn’t call it retribution. Israel wants the more than 200 hostages returned! 13 of them are Americans.

Killing Gaza’s civilians is most effective method of rescuing hostages? How do you reconcile the Israeli gov’t’s vows to kill every member of Hamas with getting hostages back?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except, removing your country's civilians who shouldn't be building illegal settlements in the first place and putting your soldiers on barriers built on land that doesn't belong to your country so that you can fire at will at the civilians inside the giant prison you constructed isn't disengagement.

10/7 showed that the barriers they created with Gaza were inadequate.

Giving Gazans work permits inside Israel is a concession.

Okay, I'll accept that as a concession.

It's not much of a concession, but it's a start.

It's a pretty major concession. One that hurt Hamas because they can't have their people prosperous.

I have no idea where you get your information (mostly because you don't link to your sources) but if you actually believe Israel wants to foster prosperity in Gaza, you're drinking virtual Kool-Aid.

You have it backwards--I'm saying that Hamas most definitely does not want prosperity in Gaza.

I'm saying the work permits are a major concession because of the security risk. The workers got to do a lot of recon for 10/7.

The reality is much less rosy.

The problem is that the Second Intifada, like every big event they do, was clearly planned long before the incident that supposedly triggered it.

You and Derec should get together and discuss it. Maybe you could start a thread where you lay out the events that led up to the rioting that preceded the bombings. I'll supply the reliable sources of information and try to keep the bullshit to a minimum.

The thing is you don't do big things like that quickly. They have plans for what they're going to do and trot them out when they get a sufficient pretext (or even a supposed one--Palestinian beachgoers setting off a Hamas booby trap.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/...e_code=1.7kw.H95Y.CQC9jLrjCYC3&smid=url-share

Read the above article I'm sharing and then tell me why what Israel is doing aren't war crimes, not to mention cutting off water, food and electricity seems rather horrific. How would you feel if you were trapped in Gaza, watching children and family members die. Nothing good can come of the Israeli response to the horrific Hamas attack.

The Jabaliya neighborhood north of Gaza City was pummeled with Israeli airstrikes for a third consecutive day on Thursday, while doctors treating the victims described nightmarish scenes of operating without basic supplies or anesthesia.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia, director of the pediatric ward at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where many of the casualties from the Jabaliya strikes were taken, said the majority of the people arriving were children. Many were severely burned or were missing limbs.
On Tuesday, after the first strike in Jabaliya, the hospital received about 40 people who did not survive, and 250 others who were wounded, he said. The numbers were nearly the same on Wednesday, when another strike hit. On Thursday, a strike damaged a United Nations school being used as a shelter and sent in another wave of patients: 10 dead and 80 others wounded.
“I’ve never in my life seen injuries this bad,” Dr. Abu Safyia said on Thursday by phone, adding, “We saw children without heads.”
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which runs the school, said that the school had been among four of its shelters — housing nearly 20,000 people total — that had been damaged in the previous 24 hours. Twenty people were reported to have been killed at the Jabaliya shelter, the agency said, along with three people in other strikes at the Shati and Bureij camps.

Horrific, yes. Horrific doesn't make a war crime.

And they're running low on supplies because Hamas wants them running low. Strangely the fuel has been almost exhausted for many days now.

And note that all news out of Gaza is what Hamas wants it to be. We have no idea of the truth other than from overhead imagery which will only expose the most obvious of lies (such as that blast at the hospital. Big fireball, lots of minor damage but almost no heavy damage--that's highly combustible material on the ground going up, not a bomb.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Gaza City - traditionally a Hamas stronghold - was surrounded, military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said. "The soldiers are advancing in battles, during which they are destroying terror infrastructure above ground and below ground and eliminating terrorists," he told a briefing.

Overnight they found large caches of weapons, protective gear, communication equipment and maps, he said.

I'd like to see some independent sources, but if they are as successful as they say, then that would be welcome. It's better than bombing civilians just because some Hamas goons might be among them.

There is a considerable correspondence between previously asserted locations of Hamas tunnels and the apparent location of Israeli strikes. That makes it very likely that what they're doing it blowing the tunnels.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And before you start with your usual bullshit, I'll just remind you that wanting Israel to be reformed is not the same thing as wanting it to be destroyed, and wanting Israel to be defeated is not the same thing as wanting genocide.

You can pretend it's not a call for genocide but it is. They know the end result of what you are asking for is every Jew in the area dead or fled. Both sides know it.

And yet, all of these hard line, far right-wing plans on how to deal with the threat of Hamas still led up to the atrocities of October 7th. You can't defeat terrorism and an insurgency with bombs and isolation. You defeat Hamas by reducing its ability to recruit. There is no utopian solution here, just one that reduces the damage Hamas can inflict.

No insurgency has been defeated by reducing it's ability to recruit. You defeat insurgencies by removing the funding. If you can't, you either give up (observe Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan) or you keep pounding them to keep them from building up too much. Since giving up is suicide Israel is going to take the path of pounding.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is supposed to be about making Israel SAFER, not retribution.

It was always about retribution first - look at the initial rhetoric. The "safer" part is the cover and it allows for genocidal policies under the rubric "its not a war crime to kill 1,000 civilians if we are aiming at a terrorist". Hell, just look at the language used by the apologists for the IDF in this thread.

They appear to be blowing the tunnels. Valid military target.

And the expectation is that you strike so as to minimize casualties, not that you eliminate them. The attacker is not responsible for the death of human shields. Israel even leaflet-bombed them to get the fuck away from the Hamas stuff, that's more than attackers usually do.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is supposed to be about making Israel SAFER, not retribution.

It was always about retribution first - look at the initial rhetoric. The "safer" part is the cover and it allows for genocidal policies under the rubric "its not a war crime to kill 1,000 civilians if we are aiming at a terrorist". Hell, just look at the language used by the apologists for the IDF in this thread.

I wouldn’t call it retribution. Israel wants the more than 200 hostages returned! 13 of them are Americans.

Killing Gaza’s civilians is most effective method of rescuing hostages? How do you reconcile the Israeli gov’t’s vows to kill every member of Hamas with getting hostages back?

They have no other method. Hamas isn't going to make a reasonable deal for them. Thus the only deal would be to stop bombing if the hostages are released.

 

[Arctish]

Except, removing your country's civilians who shouldn't be building illegal settlements in the first place and putting your soldiers on barriers built on land that doesn't belong to your country so that you can fire at will at the civilians inside the giant prison you constructed isn't disengagement.

10/7 showed that the barriers they created with Gaza were inadequate.

You are attempting to shift the goal posts again.

We are discussing what disengagement is and what it isn't, not how effective a particular strategy or method of engagement might be.

Giving Gazans work permits inside Israel is a concession.

Okay, I'll accept that as a concession.

It's not much of a concession, but it's a start.

It's a pretty major concession. One that hurt Hamas because they can't have their people prosperous.

I have no idea where you get your information (mostly because you don't link to your sources) but if you actually believe Israel wants to foster prosperity in Gaza, you're drinking virtual Kool-Aid.

You have it backwards--I'm saying that Hamas most definitely does not want prosperity in Gaza.

I'm saying the work permits are a major concession because of the security risk. The workers got to do a lot of recon for 10/7.

Letting slaves work inside the slavemaster's house is a security risk, but it isn't a concession to the slaves.

If Israel had allowed Gazans to seek employment in Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, the United States, Canada, and elsewhere and did not not interfere with their travels to and from their workplaces, that would have been a major concession. Trapping them in Gaza and only allowing them to go to low paying jobs inside Israel when Israeli political appointees and Israeli politicians feel like it, is oppression.

The reality is much less rosy.

The problem is that the Second Intifada, like every big event they do, was clearly planned long before the incident that supposedly triggered it.

You and Derec should get together and discuss it. Maybe you could start a thread where you lay out the events that led up to the rioting that preceded the bombings. I'll supply the reliable sources of information and try to keep the bullshit to a minimum.

The thing is you don't do big things like that quickly. They have plans for what they're going to do and trot them out when they get a sufficient pretext (or even a supposed one--Palestinian beachgoers setting off a Hamas booby trap.)

You are bullshitting.

Derec knows almost nothing about how the Second Intifada developed. Are you going to help him become more knowlegable by providing factual information or are you going to make shit up and hope he buys it?

 

[Copernicus]

This is supposed to be about making Israel SAFER, not retribution.

It was always about retribution first - look at the initial rhetoric. The "safer" part is the cover and it allows for genocidal policies under the rubric "its not a war crime to kill 1,000 civilians if we are aiming at a terrorist". Hell, just look at the language used by the apologists for the IDF in this thread.

They appear to be blowing the tunnels. Valid military target.

And the expectation is that you strike so as to minimize casualties, not that you eliminate them. The attacker is not responsible for the death of human shields. Israel even leaflet-bombed them to get the fuck away from the Hamas stuff, that's more than attackers usually do. Collective guilt.

No, the expectation is that the safety of civilians is paramount. It is impossible to avoid the deaths of civilians in a war, but the attacking forces are expected to refrain unless there is some unavoidable excuse. So we have lots of clear violations of that principle with Israel now--including the murderous attack on the densely populated Jabalya camp to kill just one Hamas official. You seem to think that human shields can be killed because they are being used to shield military targets, but what do you think they are always being used to shield? Picnics and weddings? The whole point of using them is to shield military targets. The fact that they are being used that way has never been an excuse to kill them.

Israel's "leaflet bombs" are a sick joke. A pretense to justify violating international law. There are no safe areas to evacuate to, and it is complete nonsense to think that people who don't evacuate are therefore disposable collateral damage. The whole point of the order for civilians to evacuate the north was a message to the IDF that they could attack all targets in the north, because it was the fault of those who failed to heed the warnings that they were there. The leaflets even warned that they could be mistaken for Hamas terrorists, if they did not flee south, which Israel is also bombarding daily. Israel has even targeted an ambulance, because it suspected the ambulance was being used by Hamas. What was the compelling reason to kill innocent civilians in the vicinity of that ambulance? Was it launching rockets into Israel? I've seen pictures of the blood-spattered ambulance. Even if it contained wounded Hamas combatants, they were not posing an immediate threat to Israel.

It is obvious to everyone, including many Israelis, that the whole point of the IDF campaign now is revenge for October 7. And the justification for it is the often-stated claim that Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip were aware of the impending attack and complicit in what Hamas did.

Israel admits airstrike on ambulance near hospital that witnesses say killed and wounded dozens​

 

[TomC]

It is impossible to avoid the deaths of civilians in a war, but the attacking forces are expected to refrain unless there is some unavoidable excuse.

Lemme know when someone important holds Palestinians to that standard. I'm not seeing it, ever.
Tom

 

[Arctish]

It is impossible to avoid the deaths of civilians in a war, but the attacking forces are expected to refrain unless there is some unavoidable excuse.

Lemme know when someone important holds Palestinians to that standard. I'm not seeing it, ever.
Tom

Tu quoque fallacy.

Also, "someone important" did hold Palestinians to that standard, which is why Fatah and the PA in the West Bank, led by Abbas, has forsworn terrorism in favor of seeking a diplomatic solution to the problems in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Let me know when someone important in Israel (or important to Israel) decides to support that effort instead of simply capitalizing on it.

 

[barbos]

No insurgency has been defeated by reducing it's ability to recruit. You defeat insurgencies by removing the funding.

Hamas is funded by Qatar. Also Hamas was fighting Assad and US government was fine with it.
So.....

 

[Copernicus]

It is impossible to avoid the deaths of civilians in a war, but the attacking forces are expected to refrain unless there is some unavoidable excuse.

Lemme know when someone important holds Palestinians to that standard. I'm not seeing it, ever.
Tom

Tu quoque fallacy.

Also, "someone important" did hold Palestinians to that standard, which is why Fatah and the PA in the West Bank, led by Abbas, has forsworn terrorism in favor of seeking a diplomatic solution to the problems in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Let me know when someone important in Israel (or important to Israel) decides to support that effort instead of simply capitalizing on it.

Exactly. It was the Netanyahu government that decided to support Hamas as a counterweight to the PA, thinking that it would be too weakened to bring about a Palestinian state. October 7 exposed the disastrous failure of that cynical policy, which arguably allowed Hamas to build itself up for October 7. Now Netanyahu wants bloody revenge to cover up for his failures.

For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces​

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.

Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm...

Additionally, since 2014, Netanyahu-led governments have practically turned a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip...

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state...

Bolstered by this policy, Hamas grew stronger and stronger until Saturday, Israel’s “Pearl Harbor,” the bloodiest day in its history — when terrorists crossed the border, slaughtered hundreds of Israelis and kidnapped an unknown number under the cover of thousands of rockets fired at towns throughout the country’s south and center...

 

[bilby]

10/7 showed that the barriers they created with Gaza were inadequate.

10/7 showed that all possible barriers they could create with Gaza would inevitably be inadequate.

Perhaps the solution is to stop building fucking barriers.

 

[TV and credit cards]

“It is striking and in some ways shocking that the brutality of the slaughter has receded so quickly in the memories of so many,” Blinken said.
What a deflection.
No Mr. Secretary we just know there are two sides to this story. We know Israel has been shitting on the Palestinian people for decades and as a result, Hamas was bound to happen.
Now you'll make pitiful, feeble attempts to get other Arab nations to take the Palestinians in... for life.

Now Biden is going to have to wear this or do a quick 180, either of which is not a good look. He'll try and politician his way around it by wagging a finger at Israel while Israel continues to have a complete disregard for the Palestinians trapped in Gaza. But there is a large portion of your voting bloc that will not buy it Joe. You fucked up, dude. See, Ukraine = Noble cause. Israel = Not noble cause. You don't get that because you suffer from what most politicians suffer from: loyalty. And what is loyalty after all? An eventual requirement to look the other way when a friend does something wrong.

Told you so.

 

[laughing dog]

This is supposed to be about making Israel SAFER, not retribution.

It was always about retribution first - look at the initial rhetoric. The "safer" part is the cover and it allows for genocidal policies under the rubric "its not a war crime to kill 1,000 civilians if we are aiming at a terrorist". Hell, just look at the language used by the apologists for the IDF in this thread.

They appear to be blowing the tunnels. Valid military target.

And the expectation is that you strike so as to minimize casualties, not that you eliminate them. The attacker is not responsible for the death of human shields. Israel even leaflet-bombed them to get the fuck away from the Hamas stuff, that's more than attackers usually do.

Gaza is densely populated. The IDF tells the civilians to go but they have no where to go that isn’t being bombed. Calling civilians who are just living their lives “ human shields “ in order to justify violence against them is morally disgusting.

Of course the IDF is responsible for its actions. No one forces the IDF to bomb civilians. And the resulting dead and injured would be unharmed in the absence of the bombing. I suppose you are arguing that in your view of international law and morality, the IDF is not responsible. That represents your idiots opinion not reality.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Here is what I wrote back on Oct 12th:

It doesn't seem very practical either. Suppose they inadvertently bomb the hostages. If they are avoiding that, then wouldn't they be bombing non-military targets? Even if they don't bomb the hostages, what if Hamas starts killing them, showing photos? Hamas could say stop or claim Israel is bombing the hostages. It isn't clear to me that Israel wants to bomb Gaza into the Stone Age and following that send in massive ground troops and tanks for recovery of hostage remains, but that seems to be the direction.

Most recently this is what Loren Pechtel has advocated:

They appear to be blowing the tunnels. Valid military target.

In order to rescue the hostages, there has to be very good intelligence and precision. So far what we observe is more like trying to do heart surgery with a hammer. BUT for some reason, some people are okay with that.

 

[laughing dog]

Here is what I wrote back on Oct 12th:

It doesn't seem very practical either. Suppose they inadvertently bomb the hostages. If they are avoiding that, then wouldn't they be bombing non-military targets? Even if they don't bomb the hostages, what if Hamas starts killing them, showing photos? Hamas could say stop or claim Israel is bombing the hostages. It isn't clear to me that Israel wants to bomb Gaza into the Stone Age and following that send in massive ground troops and tanks for recovery of hostage remains, but that seems to be the direction.

Most recently this is what Loren Pechtel has advocated:

They appear to be blowing the tunnels. Valid military target.

In order to rescue the hostages, there has to be very good intelligence and precision. So far what we observe is more like trying to do heart surgery with a hammer. BUT for some reason, some people are okay with that.

Also, I think it is a bit of a stretch to claim one is trying rescue hostage by bombing their potential prisons.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except, removing your country's civilians who shouldn't be building illegal settlements in the first place and putting your soldiers on barriers built on land that doesn't belong to your country so that you can fire at will at the civilians inside the giant prison you constructed isn't disengagement.

10/7 showed that the barriers they created with Gaza were inadequate.

You are attempting to shift the goal posts again.

We are discussing what disengagement is and what it isn't, not how effective a particular strategy or method of engagement might be.

You are saying that border defenses are incompatible with disengagement.

"Disengagement" isn't some magical spell the powerful can use to defuse situations. You are falling for the fundamental fallacy that if the side with the power simply tries hard enough that they will succeed in reaching a peaceful resolution.

Giving Gazans work permits inside Israel is a concession.

Okay, I'll accept that as a concession.

It's not much of a concession, but it's a start.

It's a pretty major concession. One that hurt Hamas because they can't have their people prosperous.

I have no idea where you get your information (mostly because you don't link to your sources) but if you actually believe Israel wants to foster prosperity in Gaza, you're drinking virtual Kool-Aid.

You have it backwards--I'm saying that Hamas most definitely does not want prosperity in Gaza.

I'm saying the work permits are a major concession because of the security risk. The workers got to do a lot of recon for 10/7.

Letting slaves work inside the slavemaster's house is a security risk, but it isn't a concession to the slaves.

If Israel had allowed Gazans to seek employment in Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, the United States, Canada, and elsewhere and did not not interfere with their travels to and from their workplaces, that would have been a major concession. Trapping them in Gaza and only allowing them to go to low paying jobs inside Israel when Israeli political appointees and Israeli politicians feel like it, is oppression.

You think those other places would have let them in?! Certainly not Lebanon--the Palestinians are pretty much persona non grata there.

The reality is much less rosy.

The problem is that the Second Intifada, like every big event they do, was clearly planned long before the incident that supposedly triggered it.

You and Derec should get together and discuss it. Maybe you could start a thread where you lay out the events that led up to the rioting that preceded the bombings. I'll supply the reliable sources of information and try to keep the bullshit to a minimum.

The thing is you don't do big things like that quickly. They have plans for what they're going to do and trot them out when they get a sufficient pretext (or even a supposed one--Palestinian beachgoers setting off a Hamas booby trap.)

You are bullshitting.

Derec knows almost nothing about how the Second Intifada developed. Are you going to help him become more knowlegable by providing factual information or are you going to make shit up and hope he buys it?

We don't know how it developed. What we can say is that it was far too well organized to be a response to the supposed trigger.