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Comment by Natsu

2 years ago

Only if you want to claim that words are more revealing of intentions than actions, which would discredit you.

The hospital they bombed had the parking lot damaged by a failed Hamas rocket. The "refugee camp" has been there for many years, not as huddled fleeing masses, but permanent structures from people who fled there long ago, the tunnel network is well known and there's video evidence, the aid was being supplied by Israel to begin with (including the water) and they were using the pipes to make weapons, etc.

So I'm not surprised to find that none of your other points make sense either.

13 comments

Natsu

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jakelazaroff  2 years ago

Sure, let’s look at their actions:

- Killed almost 18,000 people

- Displaced 1.9 million people

- Cut off food, water, medicine, fuel, electricity and Internet access

- Limited press access except for footage reviewed by the IDF

- Dropped ~2x as much explosive as the US dropped in Hiroshima

- Damaged over 2/3 of buildings

- Bombed basically every hospital

- Bombed an ambulance

- Told people to move south and then bombed Rafah crossing, on the border with Egypt

- Kidnapped thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank

- Tortured Palestinian abductees

- Handed out weapons to West Bank settlers

- Stripped civilians and paraded them through the streets

This is all after October 7th — before that, Israeli settlers were responsible for pogroms and dozens of murders in the West Bank.

  • skinkestek  2 years ago

    If anything - from a military perspective it is impressive if they have managed to drop twice as much explosives on as we did on Hiroshima on such a small piece of land and only a few thousand civilians got killed.

    I won't engage much with your other points but I think they are a combination of leaving out critical facts (hospitals and ambulances were used by militants), misrepresentation ("Stripped civilians and paraded them through the streets" - they weren't paraded, quite on the contrary it was the people on Gaza who did this) and lies (at least last time sometime argued "Tortured Palestinian abductees" the only thing they showed for it was images of POWs with minor battle scars).

  • YZF  2 years ago

    I would like to nitpick your list if that's ok. I think being very precise is really important here. If there are uncertainties then those should be spelled out as well. Once we know the facts we can have a better discussion (not just the facts related to this list but the complete picture).

    - Israel did displace a lot of people. Partly for their own safety while Israel attacks the area they live in. I think your number are correct.

    - We already covered the "cut off" in another thread so I (edit: didn't want to but I guess I did anyways) want revisit it. Water was off, and then on, food and medicine are allowed in but maybe not enough, Internet access is on most of the time in this war zone, electricity is mostly cut off (partly because the power station ran out of fuel I think, not strictly because Israel cut it off). This is a snarky comment but I'm pretty sure the tunnel vents still have power. Northern Gaza and Southern Gaza are also different (with more restrictions on Northern Gaza). I would call this statement misleading.

    - Israel did drop a lot of bomb tonnage on Gaza but we can't really compare this to the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima. There were 60-80 thousand dead in Hiroshima which was much less populated/dense than Gaza (total population was about 350,000). As a piece of trivia, between 241,000 and 900,000 people died in Japan in the bombing campaigns of WW2. I would fact check this statement as misleading.

    - There is plenty of press access from the Palestinian side. I think we're getting more footage from the war zone compared to many other war zones. Israel does review footage of press that embeds with the IDF in Gaza for operational-security reasons. I think that's pretty normal. I don't recall large complaints from the media about this, but they do note it in their reports. So correct but misleading.

    - Do you have a reference for "dozens of murders by settlers prior to Oct 7th"? Are you going all the way back to Baruch Goldstein? Even with that "dozens" seems incorrect to me. There's no room for any violence by settlers but let's get the facts right. My very quick research has failed to substantiate this claim.

    - Reference for "paraded them through the streets"? Also do we know they're all civilians? Israel strips people they arrest (to their underwear) to make sure they're not suicide bombers. I have seen those photos/videos as well. I agree it's pretty humiliating (and) the pictures didn't look good. I hope the people that are uninvolved will be released quickly. I know you're going to take issue with what I say here, but this was in Northern Gaza where civilians have been asked to evacuate and Hamas combatants operate in civilian clothing. Hamas has a lot of history with suicide bombers so it's not unreasonable to expect this tactic. I would call this partly misleading.

    - I also take issue with "kidnapped" and "tortured". I would say arrested Islamic Jihad and Hamas activists. Torture is illegal in Israel (maybe allowed if there's a "ticking bomb", I don't recall) and while it's possible there have been cases I don't think it's systemic, any evidence to the contrary?

    - You're technically correct about the move south and bomb the south but I think it's important to note there was significantly less bombing in the south than the north and Israel has said specifically they will still bomb the south if they have clear targets. Israel never said it won't bomb the south. It just said it's safer. And if you check the statistics you'll see that's true. This is where "technically right" can be misleading.

    - West bank settlers have had weapons forever pretty much. Most of the handing of weapons these days is to people in Israel proper.

    - I think there was a single incident with an ambulance where Israel claimed it was being used for a military purpose. There is a long discussion about the status and usage of ambulances here: https://lieber.westpoint.edu/attacks-misuse-ambulances-durin...

    - I'm pretty sure "bombed every hospital" is false. Reference? We had the possible Islamic Jihad rocket falling in a hospital parking lot, we had some bombings close to hospitals, we had fake news from other conflicts presented as Israel bombing hospitals, but "bombed every hospital" is new to me. I think "did not bomb any hospitals" is closer to the truth. How many people were killed by Israel's bombing of hospitals?

    - I've seen different accounts for the percentage of buildings damaged. 2/3 seems on the high side. References?