Hamas attack on Israel

[bob sterman]

The BBC reported they were targetting medical specialists and Arabic speakers.

No wonder so many people have such a skewed idea about things!

BBC have apologised - explaining that they meant to say the IDF brought medical teams and Arabic speakers (rather than targeted them).

Sorry for referring to this particular Youtube channel - but here's the apology...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq-wud0SSjo

In other news the BBC are reporting that police brought 20kg of cocaine on a drugs raid and targeted sniffer dogs. And that we can all look forward to a repeat of a classic episode of the Morecambe and Wise show this Christmas in which the duo target sunshine and laughter.

[monkey]

Reports both a weapons cache and evidence hostages were at one point held there found under the Rantisi Hospital in Gaza.

I got around to watching the IDF video. I believe that they found a bunker and tunnels and whatnot, because Hamas are c.nts who use human shields, and I assume that filming in a war zone is tricky or that there may be intelligence reasons for weird editing. But if I was going to make a video that's going to get the conspiracy cranks going it would look very much like that.

[bob sterman]

Reports both a weapons cache and evidence hostages were at one point held there found under the Rantisi Hospital in Gaza.

I got around to watching the IDF video. I believe that they found a bunker and tunnels and whatnot, because Hamas are c.nts who use human shields, and I assume that filming in a war zone is tricky or that there may be intelligence reasons for weird editing. But if I was going to make a video that's going to get the conspiracy cranks going it would look very much like that.

Not sure what particular video you mean. But there shouldn't be anything to get the conspiracy cranks going in this video of a set of rocket launchers in a Scout centre. Or maybe the Scouts logo is the wrong colour??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIjsuE-7a9Y

[EACLucifer]

The body of a hostage was found in the immediate vicinity of Al Shifa hospital. She'd been suffering from cancer, and was supposed to start chemo just a day or two after the 7th of October. Whether they deliberately murdered her, or killed her by depriving her of the complex medical care that she needed is not clear. It does rather suggest that the claim that hostages were at one point kept at or under the Al Shifa hospital has some weight to it, though.

[EACLucifer]

The body of a hostage was found in the immediate vicinity of Al Shifa hospital. She'd been suffering from cancer, and was supposed to start chemo just a day or two after the 7th of October. Whether they deliberately murdered her, or killed her by depriving her of the complex medical care that she needed is not clear. It does rather suggest that the claim that hostages were at one point kept at or under the Al Shifa hospital has some weight to it, though.

A second hostage's body has also been recovered from the same area.

[monkey]

The body of a hostage was found in the immediate vicinity of Al Shifa hospital. She'd been suffering from cancer, and was supposed to start chemo just a day or two after the 7th of October. Whether they deliberately murdered her, or killed her by depriving her of the complex medical care that she needed is not clear. It does rather suggest that the claim that hostages were at one point kept at or under the Al Shifa hospital has some weight to it, though.

It's also possible she was killed accidently during the fighting.

[Woodchopper]

Israel and Hamas are close to agreement on a U.S.-brokered deal that would free dozens of women and children held hostage in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting, say people familiar with the emerging terms.


The release, which could begin within the next several days — barring last-minute hitches — could lead to the first sustained pause in conflict in Gaza.


A detailed, six-page set of written terms would require all parties to the conflict to freeze combat operations for at least five days while an initial 50 or more hostages are released in smaller batches every 24 hours. It was not immediately clear how many of the 239 people believed to be in captivity in Gaza would be released under the deal. Overhead surveillance would monitor movement on the ground to police the pause.



The stop in fighting is also intended to allow a significant increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance, including fuel, to enter the besieged enclave from Egypt.
“We’ve made some progress recently and have been working hard to advance this, but it remains a volatile situation,” an administration official said Saturday on condition of anonymity. After this article was initially published, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson tweeted that there was “no deal yet but we continue to work hard to get a deal.”


The outline of a deal was put together during weeks of talks in Doha, Qatar, among Israel, the United States and Hamas, indirectly represented by Qatari mediators, according to Arab and other diplomats. But it remained unclear until now that Israel would agree to temporarily pause its offensive in Gaza, provided the conditions were right.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... -hostages/

[Woodchopper]

However

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was no deal yet to secure the release of some 240 hostages held by Hamas “as of now,” and dismissed “a lot of incorrect reports” in recent days about imminent agreements to free at least some of the hostages.

In a lengthy evening press conference, Netanyahu said that if a deal emerges, the Israeli public will be updated.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-deal-y ... agreement/

So we’ll have to wait and see

[bob sterman]

Would appear that IDF have managed to pull CCTV footage from Al Shifa.

Shows Hamas bringing hostages into the hospital on Oct 7th. In one case they could plausibly be bringing them in to have an injury treated...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_ ... -on-oct-7/

However, for another that doesn't really look like what's going on...

https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/status/1 ... 6176103692

[EACLucifer]

Would appear that IDF have managed to pull CCTV footage from Al Shifa.

Shows Hamas bringing hostages into the hospital on Oct 7th. In one case they could plausibly be bringing them in to have an injury treated...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_ ... -on-oct-7/

However, for another that doesn't really look like what's going on...

https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/status/1 ... 6176103692

Yep. The hostage in the second link is on his feet and struggling against his captors, with uniformed hospitals staff simply going along with it.

Next time someone quotes one of these f.ckers, or one of the NGOs that work at a hospital whose purpose was violated by being used as a place to take hostages, remember this footage and treat both spokesperson and supine media with the contempt they deserve.

There's also reports that Noa Marciano was brought in lightly wounded and murdered within the hospital, though we haven't got confirmation of that yet.

It's also worth noting that even groups like Amnesty were highlighting Hamas's use of Al-Shifa for the torture and murder of Palestinian dissidents back in 2014.

There's been weapons found, tunnels found, and now this. The media seem to be setting up the idea of some sort of Doom Fortress, against which no real finds will measure, much as they did with Tora Bora. Tora Bora wasn't a Underground Doom Fortress either, but it was used by Al Qaeda. What we've seen so far is consistent with Al Shifa being used as a Hamas C2 position.

[monkey]

The media seem to be setting up the idea of some sort of Doom Fortress, against which no real finds will measure, much as they did with Tora Bora.

The media seemed to be getting that idea from Israeli politicians and spokespeople, as far as I could tell.

[EACLucifer]

The media seem to be setting up the idea of some sort of Doom Fortress, against which no real finds will measure, much as they did with Tora Bora.

The media seemed to be getting that idea from Israeli politicians and spokespeople, as far as I could tell.

Israelis reported tunnels under the hospital, and showed them. Weapons found in the hospital, and showed them. Hostages, including those that were apparently uninjured and struggling, taken to the hospital while doctors looked on*. And there's plenty of testimony over the years of doctors being told certain areas are categorically off limits, reports of Hamas using the place to torture dissidents. These are claims of misuse of a hospital, but not of a subterranean doom fortress with an entrance wide enough to drive a car in, hydroelectricity generated from mountain streams, valleys leading to the caves guarded by militiamen and Saddam Hussein tucked into a corner for good measure.



*And the injured ones would have been taken past multiple hospitals to get them to Al-Shifa.

[EACLucifer]

More details have been released about what Hamas did, this time relating to sexual violence. And the worst part is, to someone familiar with previous genocides, it's familiar. It's the same hatred, the same dehumanisation taken out on women and girls of a community the murderers believe to be subhuman to the point they symbolically target their ability to reproduce on top of just murdering them.

Anyone familiar with the details of the Armenian genocide knows that one way the Turks murdered Armenian women was by cutting their breasts off. There's testimony of multiple cases of this, including this being done to a woman as her husband and two small children were also mutilated.

Likewise mutilation of genitals, male and female, is a common feature of genocides. We've seen it in Ukraine, with Russians castrating Ukrainian men and injecting industrial sealant into the vaginas of Ukrainian women with the explicit intent of stopping them being able to bear children. In the Nanjing Massacre, Japanese soldiers forced bayonets and other sharp objects into the vaginas of Chinese women and children. A victim of the October 7th massacre was found with a knife forced into her vagina, and another, who had been pregnant, with her fetus cut out of her.

This is familiar to anyone who has studied the history of genocide, and yet it happened in 2023, and the perpetrators are making it clear to anyone who asks them that they want to do it again and again until no Jews remain in Israel.


ETA: I know this is harrowing, but f.ck it, people need to know what Hamas are and why they cannot be left in power. I find even knowing about this sort of evil corrosive to the soul, and yet even more morally exhausting is engaging with people who feel entitled to an opinion but just don't know the first f.cking thing about what they are talking about - IvanV managing to depict Arab actions in the last month or so of 1947 onwards as a reaction to (proto)Israeli actions that hadn't even happened yet because he didn't know the most basic chronology and thought (proto)Israeli actions that didn't take place until April or so of 1948 took place in 1947 is an example from this forum but there are far, far worse examples from other parts of the internet. I see thousands and thousands of people agreeing with preposterous nonsense like claims there are Jews living peacefully in Gaza just that they are non-Zionist, or that Israel ethnically cleansed its "Brown" Jews into the West Bank and Gaza, or the prevailing and utterly fictional narratives that Palestinian Arabs welcomed and sheltered Jews from the Holocaust and then got betrayed, with the attendant antisemitic construct of the Perfidious Jew, and the narrative that there was a sovereign state of Palestine until in 1947 the Europeans felt very sorry for the Holocaust and so handed half that imaginary state to a bunch of Jews fresh of the boats from Poland and Brooklyn.

It is corrosive to the soul to know the history of hatred, but understanding it really ought to be a f.cking prerequisite to having an opinion on the subject.

[monkey]

The media seem to be setting up the idea of some sort of Doom Fortress, against which no real finds will measure, much as they did with Tora Bora.

The media seemed to be getting that idea from Israeli politicians and spokespeople, as far as I could tell.

Israelis reported tunnels under the hospital, and showed them. Weapons found in the hospital, and showed them. Hostages, including those that were apparently uninjured and struggling, taken to the hospital while doctors looked on*. And there's plenty of testimony over the years of doctors being told certain areas are categorically off limits, reports of Hamas using the place to torture dissidents. These are claims of misuse of a hospital, but not of a subterranean doom fortress with an entrance wide enough to drive a car in, hydroelectricity generated from mountain streams, valleys leading to the caves guarded by militiamen and Saddam Hussein tucked into a corner for good measure.



*And the injured ones would have been taken past multiple hospitals to get them to Al-Shifa.

I do not doubt Hamas abused the hospital. The only people who didn't seem to know this were Hamas and the people running it (who may or may not have been threatened into toeing the Hamas line). Because I wasn't questioning that I clipped out the rest of your quote.

I'm just saying that what the media reported was what the Israeli's were saying just a few days ago. They called it the base of operations. They made a cartoon of a large underground complex! The media don't seem to be exaggerating, at least not in the outlets that I read, anyway. And it is important to get that right, because Israel raided a hospital, justifying it with these claims.

[EACLucifer]

And it is important to get that right, because Israel raided a hospital, justifying it with these claims.

They attacked based on the fact that Hamas was using the place for military activities, which they were. They gave warning and took steps to mitigate harm - including bringing in Arabic speaking medical personnel - as required under international law.

Use of an otherwise protected place like a hospital or school for military activity leads to it losing its protected status. Hamas knew that when they chose to position tunnels under Al Shifa and station combatants there and use it to hold hostages.

[monkey]

And it is important to get that right, because Israel raided a hospital, justifying it with these claims.

They attacked based on the fact that Hamas was using the place for military activities, which they were. They gave warning and took steps to mitigate harm - including bringing in Arabic speaking medical personnel - as required under international law.

Use of an otherwise protected place like a hospital or school for military activity leads to it losing its protected status. Hamas knew that when they chose to position tunnels under Al Shifa and station combatants there and use it to hold hostages.

There is a difference of scale between claims made before the IDF entered the hospital and what we have been told they have found (so far). You put the blame on the media, I doubted that, that is all I have done.

I did so because it is obvious to me that the accuracy of Israeli intelligence, or what the Israeli's are telling us normies, is of importance when they are justifying their actions in this war - even if they are not war crimes - as Israeli munitions are killing innocents.

[bob sterman]

There is a difference of scale between claims made before the IDF entered the hospital and what we have been told they have found (so far). You put the blame on the media, I doubted that, that is all I have done.

So far there's evidence of at least 2 hostages being taken into the hospital - and is it 3 now found dead in the vicinity? Including 1 who was murdered in the hospital.

The CCTV timings show hostages being taken there within about 30 minutes of being kidnapped in Israel. So Hamas whisked them past numerous other hospitals rapidly after kidnapping them - to get them to al-Shifa. Clearly something special about the place.

Even the BBC report a Hamas style tunnel with a blast-proof door that the IDF have not yet breached...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-mid ... t-67478425

[discovolante]

What is Israel's longer term plan for this? By what metric would it consider Hamas defeated and what are its intentions once that's achieved, if it's achieved?

[jimbob]

And now some of the survivors tell how their warnings 9f such an attack were ignored before October 7th.

They're (plausiblely) saying they were ignored because of sexism

Haaretz article

https://us18.campaign-archive.com/?e=df ... c6d8ed591d

[Chris Preston]

What is Israel's longer term plan for this? By what metric would it consider Hamas defeated and what are its intentions once that's achieved, if it's achieved?

This I see as the big question. We saw how badly things went for the US in Afghanistan where they attempted an analogous action. Armies rarely win guerrilla wars. The best they can hope for is a negotiated outcome.

Defeating Hamas does not solve the underlying issues. A new group will simply arise unless these are dealt with. Israel can't leave a power vacuum in Gaza, so what is their plan for government of Gaza if they do defeat Hamas? It strikes me that Israeli occupation of at least part of Gaza will be one outcome. The other outcome will be Israel leaving Gaza and Hamas and other groups moving back to where they were.

[IvanV]

What is Israel's longer term plan for this? By what metric would it consider Hamas defeated and what are its intentions once that's achieved, if it's achieved?

This I see as the big question. We saw how badly things went for the US in Afghanistan where they attempted an analogous action. Armies rarely win guerrilla wars. The best they can hope for is a negotiated outcome.

Defeating Hamas does not solve the underlying issues. A new group will simply arise unless these are dealt with. Israel can't leave a power vacuum in Gaza, so what is their plan for government of Gaza if they do defeat Hamas? It strikes me that Israeli occupation of at least part of Gaza will be one outcome. The other outcome will be Israel leaving Gaza and Hamas and other groups moving back to where they were.

The lack of a coherent long term plan to resolve the issue after this action is something, in pot-and-kettle fashion, the Americans have been complaining about to Netanyahu. But Netanyahu doesn't even believe in the existence of a long term resolution, so why would he have a plan for it? Netanyahu has even found it convenient not to have a bone fide Palestinian interlocutor, so that he doesn't have to talk about something he doesn't believe exists.

For Netanyahu and his ilk, rinse and repeat has been their actual strategy. It means that they are forever looking over their shoulders for the next inevitable eruption, and it makes the situation still more intractable. But many of them think they are doing OK out of rinse and repeat, despite those drawbacks.

So, I suspect, many Israelis say to themselves, including those in power there at the moment, that even if their current actions present no long term resolution out of this, at least it is consistent with rinse and repeat.

[bolo]

What is Israel's longer term plan for this? By what metric would it consider Hamas defeated and what are its intentions once that's achieved, if it's achieved?

I doubt that Israel has a long term plan. It's far from clear that anyone, on either side or on the outside looking in, has a realistic long term plan. I certainly can't think of one.

Israel's plan is (1) get the hostages back, (2) "teach the bad guys a lesson", and (3) when those are done, think about what comes next. Which is a sh.t plan in the long term, but understandable and predictable and probably politically unavoidable in the real world.

[EACLucifer]

While that dickhead Waghorn at Sky News takes Yahya Sinwar at his word and claims hostages weren't mistreated, and various Western news agencies disgrace themselves by describing released hostages as soldiers (that's a Hamas lie, all hostages released so far are elderly women or children) or prisoners released in return as civilians (they've all been convicted of crimes, mostly stuff like attempted murder), testimony is emerging that child hostages were physically and psychologically tortured, including being beaten, threatened with guns for crying, and forced to watch footage of Hamas atrocities.

Removed libel and abuse which was in breach of Rules 1 and 2 - EPD

[monkey]

<Removed due to libel - mods>

I just watched his video because I saw people were complaining about it. I did not get that impression from it, so I think this is a sh.tty take on it.

However, I did get the impression he was out of his depth as a on this, which would not be the first time with Jones.

[EACLucifer]

<Removed due to libel - mods>

I just watched his video because I saw people were complaining about it. I did not get that impression from it, so I think this is a sh.tty take on it.

However, I did get the impression he was out of his depth as a on this, which would not be the first time with Jones.

He's not innocently out of his depth, he's defended antisemites and antisemitism from his side for the entirety of his political career to the point those of us who challenged Corbyn and his supporters' antisemitism nicknamed him Squealer. He's deliberately casting doubt on very well attested atrocities and he either knows what he is doing or is entirely high on his own supply. Either way he deserves every ounce of scorn he'll get and more, and anyone who chooses to employ him at this point is making an exceptionally poor decision.