IDF shoot hostages in Gaza after 'mistakenly identifying them as a threat'

No, they have not made it safe for aid to be delivered throughout Gaza. In fact, they have stepped up attacks on medical aid by just yesterday destroying a PRC ambulance dispatch centre, all the ambulances and detaining dozens of Red Cross/Crescent workers. A few released and not taken out of Gaza for “further interrogation” have alleged beating and torture.

That was very informative thank you
Although I'm shocked that it's comparatively worse than what you replied to.

The war analysts say Gaza is not only a different colour from the sky but also looks a different texture

The campaign is being compared to the combined bombing of Germany during the war, yet we still have the posters saying its not as bad as it is made out to be

I read in the financial Times that there are some bombing campaigns in history which people refer to only by the name of the place ie Dresden and the bombing of Gaza will go down in history as that too.

😅🤣 You posted a photo of a B-52 doing a practice run with the usual complement of 45 M-117 750lb dumb bombs that are being dropped in the countryside as your example of true carpet bombing.

You are right, your photo doesn’t equate to at least 500 MK-84 2,000lb dumb bombs dropped on a very small, densely populated urban area (as identified from craters in satellite imagery) plus unknown hundreds to potentially thousands of smaller dumb bombs (same size and larger than the M117s in your photo) and artillery shells dropped on Gaza

Absolutely your photo of what you think is true carpet bombing doesn’t equate to Gaza, because it is far less of a carpet bomb because it’s with much fewer and vastly smaller dumb bombs.

So, if you look at your photo, you are right that single run over an urban area would be de facto carpet bombing, what has happened to Gaza already is much much worse. It is eleven of those photos only with dumb bombs each of which are four times more powerful than the dumb bombs in your photo.

So Israel have made it safe for aid to enter Gaza? I have to admit I've been very busy of late so haven't been keeping a close eye on things but last time I checked aid workers said it was Israel making it unsafe for aid to be delivered. Given the fact that Israel have killed scores of aid workers I don't think that that can be disputed unless Israel have changed tactics and now promising the safety of aid workers? More UN relief workers have been killed in this short conflict than in any other conflict in the history of the UN. Workers from the red crescent and save the children have also been killed by Israel. If you are telling me that Israel have changed tactics and aid workers are being given safe passage by Israel to deliver aid I will believe you though. If Israel are not promising safe passage then I'm afraid it can't be denied that Israel is preventing aid from reaching people thereby purposefully creating famine.

I don't think "the genocide I support isn't quite as bad as other famously heinous genocides" is the flex you think it is

They are saying that what is happening in Gaza is not a genocide, is the point. It is you calling it that.

I mean that’s not what I’m saying at all…

I’m trying to point out that given the relative logistical challenges, military disparity, that if Israel were bent on genocide it would look far, far worse. That judging by incidents actually declared genocides the rate of death is low. If you compare the 800-1,000k Tutsis murdered, in a similar time frame, in a land area some 5,000 times larger, with a relative parity of force, then if the IDF are being genocidal, they’re doing a pretty piss poor job. SO poor a job as to indicate either gross and total incompetence, or actually that this isn’t what they’re aiming for, and they have a different intent and strategy.

Have you, by chance, heard of the strawman fallacy?

yes I am fully aware of what a dumb bomb is, but the use of unguided munitions does not equate to this:

No what I’m saying is actually the Nazis, given the limitations they faced, did choose the most expeditious means of extermination. It’s just the population was far more disparate and presented much greater logistical challenges. Further, the problems of simply having soldiers shoot the Jews meant they had to devise complex industrial methods in order to preserve the psychological well being of their soldiers.

the IDF have far more expeditious methods available and aren’t using them. In fact historically they have been very restrained in their responses to Hamas aggression. This indicates that they are not genocidal. There is no concrete evidence of mental states as such, and so we must infer from the evidence at hand, but that’s what it appears to be.

Gaza does have a low death rate comparatively: as compared to the Tutsi genocide in 1994, some 1 million killed in 3 months, across a country some 5,000x the size of Gaza, with a population fantastically less dense. If we were to suggest that the 20,000 dead are all civilian (this could be disputed, I’ve read as high as 7,000 Hamas fighters killed but such numbers are very hard to verify), this still represents around 1% of the population in 3 months, as opposed to 16% killed in the same sort of time period, with none of the military advantages and none of the location advantages.

Even the Bosniak genocide was around 20% of the population over the course of 3-4 years, and this was resisted, again over a much greater area and not such a disparity of arms. The current death rate in Gaza is comparatively low

What do you think the right word would be for a country purposefully imposing famine on a population? I live in a country where this happened, an occupying power purposefully starved our population. We call what happened genocide. What do you think the right phrasing is?

But again, this is based on your views, your claims. The Israelis for instance are saying that they are allowing aid trucks in and the delays are not at their side at present. They are also pointing out that armed groups hijack the trucks and sell the goods on.
Again, I'm not claiming that I 100% believe everything the Israelis say 100% of the time, I'm just trying to add some balance to the prevailing view that they are 100% lying 100% of the time, which seems... unrealistic.

So assuming they are telling the truth in this case, they are not purposefully imposing famine and there is no need to find the right word.

It’s quite possible that people on here are like me, conflict avoidant in normal life, but feeling driven to comment. It’s interesting to compare notes on why we feel how we do.

What moves me to write is that I can’t bear to see Israel and the Jewish people being bullied. When 7 October happened I was busy moving countries, and didn’t venture onto MN until a while later. I was appalled to find that the dominant narrative here was: Well, they deserved it. Let’s just look at how bad Israel/the IDF are. In fact, let’s gloat over their tragic mistakes. Besides, they’re lying about what happened. It wasn’t as bad as all that. And if it was, they probably did most of the killing.

All kinds of people are popping up who confidently declare war crimes and indiscriminate bombing, without any of us having access to any real information about what is actually going on behind the scenes (even if we had the military expertise to analyse it usefully).

The survivors of 7 October talk about withholding details of what happened, out of respect for the families and loved ones of those who were slaughtered or kidnapped. Still, little snippets of the horror are gradually leaking out, and just those little glimpses are quite literally beyond my worst nightmares.

Yet I’ve seen threads here saying that these acts of obscene sadism are just Israeli propaganda. There was even a long-running thread literally saying that 7 October just gave Israel the “excuse” it needed, as though it’s all just been a false-flag exercise.

Just saying that Israel has a right, in fact a responsibility, to protect itself from further Hamas attacks is met with “So how many babies do you want to see die?” and “Is a Palestinian life worth less than an Israeli one, because look how many more have died?” – as though I’m sitting here gloating over the casualties and applauding the war.

Not since COVID have I seen such adversarial hostility on MN, but at least then the only possible harm was to ourselves and our own families. In this conflict, the stakes are much higher. Hamas are playing the social media game and apparently winning, if MN is anything to go by.

I don't think "the genocide I support isn't quite as bad as other famously heinous genocides" is the flex you think it is

They are saying that what is happening in Gaza is not a genocide, is the point. It is you calling it that.

I don't think "the genocide I support isn't quite as bad as other famously heinous genocides" is the flex you think it is

They are saying that what is happening in Gaza is not a genocide, is the point. It is you calling it that.

I mean that’s not what I’m saying at all…

I’m trying to point out that given the relative logistical challenges, military disparity, that if Israel were bent on genocide it would look far, far worse. That judging by incidents actually declared genocides the rate of death is low. If you compare the 800-1,000k Tutsis murdered, in a similar time frame, in a land area some 5,000 times larger, with a relative parity of force, then if the IDF are being genocidal, they’re doing a pretty piss poor job. SO poor a job as to indicate either gross and total incompetence, or actually that this isn’t what they’re aiming for, and they have a different intent and strategy.

Have you, by chance, heard of the strawman fallacy?

I don't think "the genocide I support isn't quite as bad as other famously heinous genocides" is the flex you think it is.

Sometimes I can't actually believe what I read on this website. I can't believe people are still justifying this.

No what I’m saying is actually the Nazis, given the limitations they faced, did choose the most expeditious means of extermination. It’s just the population was far more disparate and presented much greater logistical challenges. Further, the problems of simply having soldiers shoot the Jews meant they had to devise complex industrial methods in order to preserve the psychological well being of their soldiers.

the IDF have far more expeditious methods available and aren’t using them. In fact historically they have been very restrained in their responses to Hamas aggression. This indicates that they are not genocidal. There is no concrete evidence of mental states as such, and so we must infer from the evidence at hand, but that’s what it appears to be.

Gaza does have a low death rate comparatively: as compared to the Tutsi genocide in 1994, some 1 million killed in 3 months, across a country some 5,000x the size of Gaza, with a population fantastically less dense. If we were to suggest that the 20,000 dead are all civilian (this could be disputed, I’ve read as high as 7,000 Hamas fighters killed but such numbers are very hard to verify), this still represents around 1% of the population in 3 months, as opposed to 16% killed in the same sort of time period, with none of the military advantages and none of the location advantages.

Even the Bosniak genocide was around 20% of the population over the course of 3-4 years, and this was resisted, again over a much greater area and not such a disparity of arms. The current death rate in Gaza is comparatively low

“ACTUAL carpet bombing (not the hyperbole people are referring to when they complain about the use of “dumb” bombs) would do the job.”

I don’t know why you are referring to dumb bombs as hyperbole, can it be you do not know what a dumb bomb is? A dumb bomb is a bomb that has no guidance, it is by modern definition not precision bombing when you use a dumb bomb but indiscriminate bombing- which is the technical term for what is colloquially called “carpet bombing”.

Here are a few bits and bobs from a CNN report which being US would be more likely to be biased towards Israel, so you can depend on the things listed as facts to be facts.

“CNN
—
In the first month of its war in Gaza, Israel dropped hundreds of massive bombs, many of them capable of killing or wounding people more than 1,000 feet away, analysis by CNN and artificial intelligence company Synthetaic suggests.

Satellite imagery from those early days of the war reveals more than 500 impact craters over 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter, consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs. Those are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States dropped on ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, during the war against the extremist group there.

But 2,000-pound bombs are normally used sparingly by Western militaries, experts say, because of their potential impact on densely populated areas like Gaza. International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate bombing….

The heavy munitions, mostly manufactured by the US, can cause high casualty events and can have a lethal fragmentation radius – an area of exposure to injury or death around the target – of up to 365 meters (about 1,198 feet), or the equivalent of 58 soccer fields in area.

Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy weaponry, such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll. According to authorities in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, about* *20,000 people have been killed since October 7….

The US dropped a 2,000-pound bomb only once during its fight against ISIS – the most recent Western war on a militant group in the Middle East.

Last week, US intelligence sources told CNN that 40-45% of the 29,000 air-to-surface munitions dropped on Gaza by then were so-called dumb bombs, unguided munitions that can pose a greater threat to civilians, especially in densely populated territories like Gaza.

Some of these are likely to be the 2,000-pound bombs detected in the satellite imaging of the craters. Israel has a large arsenal of the big bombs, known as MK-84s. When a GPS-guided kit is attached to the MK-84, the bomb becomes known as a GBU-31.

According to two people familiar with the matter, the US has provided Israel with more than 5,400 MK-84s since October 7.”
https://edition.cnn.com/gaza-israel-big-bombs/index.html