Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[TomC]

So these four female Israelis released after 476 days look to be in pretty good shape, smiling, waving. They all look like they're holding small goody bags from Hamas. I wonder what released Palestinian hostages look like coming from Israeli captivity.

Didn’t one of the women released in the first batch have two missing fingers?

Yes.

Considering that she just escaped from captivity, after 15 months in a war zone brought about by her captors, missing fingers,

Would it surprise any of you terrorist apologetists that she hates Gazans? Would go back to war to destroy the Gazan leadership and doesn't care about how many of their supporters suffer? Became a strong supporter of "End Hamas and their Gazan supporters by whatever means necessary"?

One of the irritating things about this conversation is the number of people who think that Israel's defending themselves from Islamic terrorists is causing Muslims to become more violent. But don't notice that the violence against Zionists caused Jews to want Israel and defend their only sanctuary to the death.

The hand waving of the reason for the current violence in Hamas controlled territory and blaming Zionist people for reacting to violence with more violence is irrational.
Tom

 

[TV and credit cards]

So these four female Israelis released after 476 days look to be in pretty good shape, smiling, waving. They all look like they're holding small goody bags from Hamas. I wonder what released Palestinian hostages look like coming from Israeli captivity.

Didn’t one of the women released in the first batch have two missing fingers?

Yes.

Considering that she just escaped from captivity, after 15 months in a war zone brought about by her captors, missing fingers,

Would it surprise any of you terrorist apologetists that she hates Gazans? Would go back to war to destroy the Gazan leadership and doesn't care about how many of their supporters suffer? Became a strong supporter of "End Hamas and their Gazan supporters by whatever means necessary"?

One of the irritating things about this conversation is the number of people who think that Israel's defending themselves from Islamic terrorists is causing Muslims to become more violent. But don't notice that the violence against Zionists caused Jews to want Israel and defend their only sanctuary to the death.

The hand waving of the reason for the current violence in Hamas controlled territory and blaming Zionist people for reacting to violence with more violence is irrational.
Tom

I would submit for your consideration the last paragraph of my post #6608. When you Zionist apologists can get the United Nations or our western allies on your side, I'll give you your due. Does it mean nothing to you that our allies routinely stand in opposition to our support of Israel or do you just wave it away?

 

[southernhybrid]

There were popular Jewish entertainers, authors, bridge players, etcetera.

a lot of those Jews also changed their last names to avoid antisemitism

Since we are so off topic, let me add an experience that my inlaws endured. They moved into a condo In Miami in the 80s, and just about everyone who lived there was Jewish. My in-laws were of Arabic descent but they could easily pass as Jewish, so nobody knew they were the new Arabs. They went to their first condo meeting and the Jewish members were very angry that an Arabic couple had moved in. They said the name of the Arabic couple and my in-laws stood up. Needless to say the Jewish residents were very embarrassed but in time, everyone learned to get along. Point being that all kinds of people make bigoted assumptions about other people.

I grew up in a small city in NJ during the 50s and 60s and a large percentage of of my high school peers were Jewish and about half were Italian, well more or less. I don't remember either side not getting along. The problem was that the college bound, aka "Surfers" and the so called "Rocks", not college bound, made fun of each other at times. Still, it was more of a joke than pure hatred.

One of the first boys I dated was Jewish and I regret only dating him a couple of times because my evangelical mother didn't like me dating someone who wasn't "saved". He was such a nice, handsome guy. Anyway, she eventually got over it when I marriried an atheist. In fact she and Mr. Sohy became very close. Still as I said, people often hate or judge each other due to ethnicity or religious beliefs. Stupid is as stupid does.

 

[laughing dog]

An estimated 150,000+ Gazans have died INDIRECTLY from the current War, eg due to lack of medicine or food. IOW the war has killed 8% of the population of Gaza.

The 150k figure is a guess, and I do not think it's a particularly realistic one. The ceasefire has been going on for a week now, and if there were 150k extra corpses lying around - a figure three times the official number for war fatalities from the Gaza Health Ministry - don't you think they would have turned up by now?

”Excess deaths” are deaths refer to actual deaths that are estimated to occurred due the effects of war on infrastructure and service delivery. These include deaths due to disease, lack of medical care, malnutrition etc..,.stemming from the war’s destructive effects on infrastructure and personnel.

BTW, the reported deaths do not include those who are under rubble or presumed dead.

 

[Derec]

Prisoners convicted by an Israeli court system condemned by the United Nations for unfair trials. Prisoners? Yes. They are in prison.

The UN will condemn Israel for pretty much anything. Are you denying that these prisoners are terrorists belonging to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terror groups? Are you really that naïve to think that they are innocent boy scouts?

A people who's lands are regularly taken from them

First of all, it's "whose".
Second, it has not been taken away. In fact, Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005. It could have been a dress rehearsal for a future Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace, but Gazans had other ideas. They immediately started shooting rockets at Israel, and that even before Hamas took over in the Strip.

and have no due process in the courts (or media) for some 57 years by the UN's telling.

They have due process in courts. You can't go by "UN's telling".

57 years of being shit on.

Spare me! Those in prison have been there because they committed crimes, often murdering Israelis in furtherance of their terrorist goals.

You, your father, your father's father.

Can't imagine that's going to draw many recruits, huh?

Propaganda (often involving UNRWA schools) and hatred toward the very existence of Israel is what is driving recruitment into these terror groups.

And by the way, your comparison of Russian recruits to Hamas recruits is rather broad. You seem to be including in your definition everyone, from being dragged in off the street to everyone walking in off the street.

Also foreign fighters like the North Koreans. My point there was that the enemy recruiting more fighters - be it through conscription, propaganda or inducement (e.g. giving them food looted from aid trucks) is no reason to not continue fighting the enemy.

Seriously, when you consider the overall treatment of Palestine by Israel, I would more liken Hamas recruits to Ukrainian recruits.

Bullshit cubed! Ukraine did not attack Israel. Ukrainians do not have the goal to destroy Russia or to establish their capital in a renamed Moscow. They have not been blowing themselves up in Russian buses and cafés for decades. Zelensky did not shout how he wants to erase the border with Russia and rip Russians' hearts from their bodies before Ukraine invaded Russia and massacred thousands (population equivalent to 10/7 would be 180,000 dead Russians) and kidnapped others (again, equivalent of about 30,000 kidnapped Russians).

It was a mistake to release him (and ~1,000 others) in the Shalit deal in 2011. It is a mistake to release ~2,000 islamofascist terrorists now, for the first phase of this rotten ceasefire alone.

 

[Derec]

The hostage/prisoner exchange is only the most visible part of the deal. I'm certain there were a few backroom handshakes and hidden clauses as well, perhaps with Qatar, Jordan, and Iran. I doubt Netanyahu was pressured into a deal that would thwart his long term goals, even if he had to let some high profile terrorists return to Gaza or go into exile.

Any invisible parts of the deal are just speculation on your part.

 

[laughing dog]

So these four female Israelis released after 476 days look to be in pretty good shape, smiling, waving. They all look like they're holding small goody bags from Hamas. I wonder what released Palestinian hostages look like coming from Israeli captivity.

Didn’t one of the women released in the first batch have two missing fingers?

Yes.

Considering that she just escaped from captivity, after 15 months in a war zone brought about by her captors, missing fingers,...

You misunderstand. The person with missing fingers was a Palestinian released by the Israelis. It is not apologia to note mistreatment of any detainee (prisoner, hostage or other category). Which makes the rest of your rant seem rather misplaced.

 

[Derec]

You misunderstand. The person with missing fingers was a Palestinian released by the Israelis. It is not apologia to note mistreatment of any detainee (prisoner, hostage or other category). Which makes the rest of your rant seem rather misplaced.

As usual, you are wrong.
'I came back to life,' says freed British-Israeli hostage

 

[laughing dog]

You misunderstand. The person with missing fingers was a Palestinian released by the Israelis. It is not apologia to note mistreatment of any detainee (prisoner, hostage or other category). Which makes the rest of your rant seem rather misplaced.

As usual, you are wrong.
'I came back to life,' says freed British-Israeli hostage

I was. Thank you for the correction.

 

[Derec]

Sheeesh. I had to go all the way to Wikipedia for some cites. Even that was too hard for you?

I specifically asked for the specific guesstimate you were referring to. That is different than just googling estimates.
This paper's co-authors include Professor Martin McKee CBE (see below), Salim Yusuf (see below) and Rasha Khatib[/quote]
I saw that one before. It's complete guesswork and not a reseach paper, but a letter. Note also the bias since at least one of the authors is Palestinian and two are Muslim, and thus have a vested interest in portraying Israel in a bad light.
Their methodology is just to a) multiply direct deaths by a factor of 15 because they claim that this is consistent with recent conflicts and b) linearly extrapolate direct deaths. We do know that direct deaths, as reported by the Gaza Health Ministry, did not increase linearly.

and "Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza" by Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Grauniad? Really?

A polio outbreak seems inevitable given that the disease spreads through dirty water and rubbish, which surrounds those living in tents in camps.

We know that a polio outbreak did not occur due to a vaccination campaign. So much for it being "inevitable".

If deaths continue at this rate – about 23,000 a month – there would be an additional 149,500 deaths by the end of the year, some six and half months from the initial mid-June estimate. Using the method, the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total.

This "additional 149,500 deaths" is the closest to your figure. But if these excess corpses are not there, then the estimates are wrong.
And if the estimates were made by comparing Gaza to other recent conflicts, then that must mean that there is less starvation and disease in Gaza than in other conflicts. Which means that the accusations made for the last 15 months against Israel, for allegedly starving the population and such, are just a modern blood libel.

Similarly, I made a crude estimate last winter by looking at other conflict situations and assessing how many fatalities there would be if fighting continued without international intervention. In December 2023, my estimate was about half a million deaths without a ceasefire. This roughly aligns with the Lancet estimates – they used a very conservative estimate, but allowed that the number could easily be much higher.

Half a million is the author's estimate. Again, lack of actual deaths means that the estimates were wrong and that Israel is protecting the civilian population more than other recent conflicts that were supposedly used to calculate these estimates.

[Brief bios of two of the three authors of the letter to Lancet]

I note that you omitted the third author, a Palestinian.

ETA: I realize that spending a minute to verify a fact at odds with your prejudices

Crude estimates are not "facts". What is the actual number of excess deaths in the last 15 months?
would detract from the hours you spend composing misogynistic rants.
What "misogynistic rants"?

Happy to lead your horse to water, I guess, though it's a safe bet you will not drink.

Same with you.

 

[bilby]

Israel responding less forcefully will mean the terrorists are able to respond more forcefully.

Able? Perhaps. Willing? Not so much.

You are making the error of thinking that ability is more important than desire as a driver of terrorism. It's not.

A person who has sufficient desire to commit terrorist atrocities, will do so. You can't stop them. No security measure is perfect, and hardening one target will just shift the attacks to another.

To stop terrorism, you need to make the terrorists less committed to attacking by any and all possible means. They need to not hate you enough to want to give their lives to make you suffer.

History is replete with commanders and leaders who believed that destroying the homes and workplaces of 'the enemy' would destroy his will to fight, and cause his people to clamour for surrender rather than face further attacks. This belief has been wrong. Every. Single. Time.

Churchill saw the Luftwaffe inspire the 'never surrender' Blitz Spirit in Londoners, and still he was convinced by Harris et al. that RAF bombing of German cities would have the opposite effect on Germans. Of course, he was wrong, Bomber Harris was wrong, and the 'dehousing of German workers' made surrender more difficult in 1945, and prolonged the war in Europe.

The only time in history where the destruction of cities and thekr civilliam populations was closely followed by capitulation was in Japan. It's hotly debated whether these events were even cause and effect; And undeniable that nuclear weapons are a special case, even if the link between their use and the Japanese surrender is not a Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy. Certainly the Emperor and his advisors did not surrender due to popular public demands for them to do so following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ordinary Japanese soldier did not suddenly lose his will to fight on.

You cannot bomb people into liking you.

 

[bilby]

“You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over,’” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday.

Sounds like DJT has a solution. A very final solution.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[ZiprHead]

And your solution is to permit the genocide of Israel?

You keep saying this. How exactly does that work?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Israel responding less forcefully will mean the terrorists are able to respond more forcefully.

Able? Perhaps. Willing? Not so much.

You are making the error of thinking that ability is more important than desire as a driver of terrorism. It's not.

You're making the mistake of thinking desire is the driver of terrorism. It's not.

Look at the world: can you point to a single substantial terrorist movement without substantial outside funding?

Look at the hellholes of the world: can you point to a single one with any substantial terrorism without substantial outside funding?

There is a 100% correspondence between funding and terror. And very little correspondence between the wrongs and the terror.

A person who has sufficient desire to commit terrorist atrocities, will do so. You can't stop them. No security measure is perfect, and hardening one target will just shift the attacks to another.

Yes, there will be lone wolf terrorists. McVeigh, for example. But there are very few.

To stop terrorism, you need to make the terrorists less committed to attacking by any and all possible means. They need to not hate you enough to want to give their lives to make you suffer.

Which has never worked other than when the terrorists seize power.

History is replete with commanders and leaders who believed that destroying the homes and workplaces of 'the enemy' would destroy his will to fight, and cause his people to clamour for surrender rather than face further attacks. This belief has been wrong. Every. Single. Time.

Churchill saw the Luftwaffe inspire the 'never surrender' Blitz Spirit in Londoners, and still he was convinced by Harris et al. that RAF bombing of German cities would have the opposite effect on Germans. Of course, he was wrong, Bomber Harris was wrong, and the 'dehousing of German workers' made surrender more difficult in 1945, and prolonged the war in Europe.

The only time in history where the destruction of cities and thekr civilliam populations was closely followed by capitulation was in Japan. It's hotly debated whether these events were even cause and effect; And undeniable that nuclear weapons are a special case, even if the link between their use and the Japanese surrender is not a Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy. Certainly the Emperor and his advisors did not surrender due to popular public demands for them to do so following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ordinary Japanese soldier did not suddenly lose his will to fight on.

You cannot bomb people into liking you.

Which is irrelevant. It's not bombing them into liking you, it's bombing them to keep them from shooting at you.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And your solution is to permit the genocide of Israel?

You keep saying this. How exactly does that work?

By making any defense unacceptable. I still have not seen a meaningful reply to that cartoon with the Hamas fighter with a baby in his plate carrier.

Meanwhile, Hamas slipped up and told a bit of the truth:

(This is Turkey, not remotely Israel-friendly.)

https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/over-38000-palestinian-children-orphaned-by-israels-brutal-war-on-gaza-18257111

The Palestinian official explained that some 32,151 children lost their fathers, 4,417 lost their mothers, and 1,918 lost both parents.

Do the math: What's the male:female ratio of those killed? How does it remotely compare to the approximate parity that Hamas has claimed?

And, for the summer children that think peace talks would work:

Video shows Hamas executing several alleged ‘collaborators’ in Gaza

* * *

www.timesofisrael.com

Spoiler: Video (very NSFW)

Hamas openly executing those who were seen as not being hostile enough to Israel.

Where are the peaceful ones in Gaza???

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's not about bringing peace to their souls. It's about avoiding having more of them in the future.

If that were your concern, you'd be more worried than you are about the utter failure of your favored strategy. There's no indication whatsoever that this bloodbath is easing tension in Palestine. There will be thousands more dead children, "Muslim" and "Jew" alike.

Of course it's not. That's being driven by Tehran. What we just saw was reducing their ability to act.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This war produced about a 20:1 casualty ratio. Iran won't mind that and would be happy to do it again.

Nitpick: The 25:1 ratio in deaths due to traumatic injury (closer to 30:1 when Israeli killings in West Bank and Syria are included) tells only part of the story. An estimated 150,000+ Gazans have died INDIRECTLY from the current War, e.g. due to lack of medicine or food. IOW the war has killed 8% of the population of Gaza.

I hope you "need a cite" for the 150,000+ figure. It will demonstrate your utter ignorance about this inhumane war.

I'm not going to ask for the 150,000 because Hamas is only claiming about a quarter of that and I very much doubt there is any substantial undercount. The thing is reality isn't bad enough for the Israel-bashers and they have resorted to various flawed measures of supposed dead. And look at the main thread--Hamas just slipped up and indirectly showed most of the "dead" women don't exist.

 

[Politesse]

It's not about bringing peace to their souls. It's about avoiding having more of them in the future.

If that were your concern, you'd be more worried than you are about the utter failure of your favored strategy. There's no indication whatsoever that this bloodbath is easing tension in Palestine. There will be thousands more dead children, "Muslim" and "Jew" alike.

Of course it's not. That's being driven by Tehran. What we just saw was reducing their ability to act.

Slaughtering civilians in another country doesn't limit their ability to act in any way, it's printing free propaganda for their regime.

 

[Shadowy Man]

“You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over,’” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday.

Sounds like DJT has a solution. A very final solution.

What could possibly go wrong?

I’m sure it’s nothing a weekend fox and friends host couldn’t figure out how to execute smoothly, right?

Maybe about 2000 flights of a military cargo plane?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

An estimated 150,000+ Gazans have died INDIRECTLY from the current War, eg due to lack of medicine or food. IOW the war has killed 8% of the population of Gaza.

The 150k figure is a guess, and I do not think it's a particularly realistic one. The ceasefire has been going on for a week now, and if there were 150k extra corpses lying around - a figure three times the official number for war fatalities from the Gaza Health Ministry - don't you think they would have turned up by now?

I hope you "need a cite" for the 150,000+ figure. It will demonstrate your utter ignorance about this inhumane war.

Yeah, I think I will need that citation. Not because it would confirm the figure, but just to see who is making that particular guess.

Sheeesh. I had to go all the way to Wikipedia for some cites. Even that was too hard for you?
This paper's co-authors include Professor Martin McKee CBE (see below), Salim Yusuf (see below) and Rasha Khatib
and "Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza" by Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Wikipedia. On this issue presume major bias. And it's not hard to find:

Consequently, the Gaza Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35 091 deaths were unidentified.
Some officials and news agencies have used this development, designed to improve data quality, to undermine the veracity of the data. However, the number of reported deaths is likely an underestimate. The non-governmental organisation Airwars undertakes detailed assessments of incidents in the Gaza Strip and often finds that not all names of identifiable victims are included in the Ministry's list. Furthermore, the UN estimates that, by Feb 29, 2024, 35% of buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed, so the number of bodies still buried in the rubble is likely substantial, with estimates of more than 10 000.

There have been "10,000" bodies in the rubble for a long time. Strange how this number has never changed.

And strange how the ministry that can enumerate every identified dead apparently has no ability to enumerate the missing.