Comment by barbazoo
2 years ago
Getting all these reports about atrocities, I wonder if the conflict in the area has grown more brutal over the decades or if this is just business as usual. I'm in my late 30s, growing up in the EU, the conflict in the region was always present. I don't remember hearing the kind of stories that come to light these days though, indiscriminate killings, food and water being targeted, aid workers being killed. I get that it's hard to know what's real and what's not and that we live in the age of information, but I'm curious how, on a high level, the conflict is developing. Does anyone got a good source that deals with that?
When the US dropped napalm indecriminately over the vietnamese jungle or absolutely leveled dresden in one bombing run or unleashed nuclear hellfire over japan, they probably killed a lot of journalists and doctors and food workers as well. Interestingly, western media did not beat itself into a frenzy over it at the time. Its easy to get cynical about it all seeing how easily narratives are manufactured and controlled to serve political ends.
> Interestingly, western media did not beat itself into a frenzy over it at the time
Western mainstream media has been very passive when covering the current situation in gaza, especially when you contrast it with how they covered the war in ukraine just 2 yrs ago. Its just that social media has allowed people to break through the canned media narratives.
> Western mainstream media has been very passive when covering the current situation in gaza
Just FYI, all the examples I mentioned I read on our public broadcaster's website.
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I believe the bombing of Dresden was controversial and elicited pushback in the media, though it's not surprising that reactions may have been muted given the apocalyptic nature of the war.
The use of napalm in Vietnam triggered widespread protests.
Media coverage of the Vietnam war was one of the decisive factors in the eventual US Withdrawal, and was a key part of the NVA's strategy.
WW2 was a considerably different war in scope, origin, and patterns of escalation.
> Interestingly, western media did not beat itself into a frenzy over it at the time
They did and the newspaper coverage is the main reason why the Vietnam war stopped.
Most of the mainstream media has historically glossed over the atrocities, but it is impossible to ignore them today because of what we see live on the scene thanks to smaller outlets having a broader reach and social media.
It's mostly business as usual. The technology makes the brutality more efficient, though:
Describing human personnel as a “bottleneck” that limits the army’s capacity during a military operation, the commander laments: “We [humans] cannot process so much information. It doesn’t matter how many people you have tasked to produce targets during the war — you still cannot produce enough targets per day.”
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By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where’s Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside.
“Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” A. said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”
Using Google search, you can search new articles in previous years. You'll find older articles about Israel killing aid workers, for example. This is from 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/24/i...
The interesting thing about how this conflict is developing is that this story is full of quotes from Israeli intelligence. Most plainly say what they're doing. Western outlets may put a positive spin on it (because our governments generally support Israel), but the Israeli military themselves are making their intentions clear: https://news.yahoo.com/israeli-minister-admits-military-carr...
The weaponisation of online media for manipulating the perception of global audiences about the conflict, has definitely ramped up recently. For example, the official Twitter account of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has posted videos of muslim preachers appearing to denounce lgbt culture during public service in Palestinian mosques. Hamas themselves are denying their involvement in the 2023 massacre and accusing Israel of staging the graphic footage that was disseminated. This greatly polarises the debates on social media and it’s much more common now to see people who are deeply invested emotionally in the narrative of either side.
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Who was beheaded? The "40 beheaded babies" turned out to be a lie. The people burnt alive on October 7th were likely from the IDF firing tank shells at homes. Many of them turned out to be Palestinian once forensics were done. Not one of the rape claims seems to be substantiated by any physical evidence and when an Israeli journalist called all the hospitals, morgues, and trauma hotlines they found the number of reported rape victims was zero. At least here in the US the media were happy to report these lies (you know, the kind of shocking and dehumanizing lies that are always used to ramp up a genocide) and then very muted in any kind of correction.
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The IDF literally killed three of those hostages without provocation. They don't give a shit about hostages except as a PR tool.
9/11 killed 3k people
I don't have the full context of the thread here, but it sounds to me like you're saying '9/11' was at scale x, and therefore a benchmark is established for acceptable 'repercussion cost.'
If that's what you're saying, I guess I'd flag that the 'repercussion cost' for 9/11 is still very much open to debate, and there is significant data to point towards almost every step the US took as a reaction to 9/11 being problematic, ranging from who was targeted, what the collateral impact was, and whether it actually solved any of the underlying problems.
3k out of 300 million, so 1 in 10000.
1k out of 8 million is 1 out of 8000.
Every person in Israel knows someone who knows a victim personally. Think how deep this trauma is to Israel.
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They've proven a lack of interest in the hostages. They've actively refused deals that involved the return of the hostages, and repeatedly carried out operations that put the hostages in danger.
Hamas will never return hostages on its own. It needs them to stay in power as insurance against destruction by Israel. Unfortunately, that means an offensive into central Gaza camps where some of the hostages are believed to be held and also Rafah ...
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