To wonder how anyone thought what was happening in Gaza was ok?

[march10th]

I see all these threads popping up about outrage about what's going on, especially now the UN and the US have started acknowledging the situation.
AIBU to wonder how people didn't see this from the beginning??

It's been months and thousands of people have been wiped out. As an Arab with close family links to Palestine, I think this is ethnic cleansing, similar to what Western countries have done to the indigenous people of Australia and America.

I also find it pretty grim and insulting to pull comparisons from a completely different conflict when people from that conflict are still suffering and grieving and peace remains fragile

So tell that to the person that did it. I replied to a post comparing it! Have a look rather than accusing me.

These threads are batshit.

You took me up wrong I quoted you as form of agreement and to add to what you said not to accuse you of anything

Well no, they don't vary.

Hamas say they had 40,000 fighters and 6,000 are dead. That's what Hamas themselves say.

So we're left with a situation, at best, where they're asking us to believe that despite there being an equal number of men and women in Gaza, that a man is hugely less likely to be killed.

So either:

Hamas are lying, because saying "Israel killed ALL these people mostly women and children" and actually its NOT mostly women and children😭

Or

There's some scientific phenomenon going on where men in Gaza are impervious to bullets and bombs

Or

The men have run off and left the women and children alone, or are otherwise deliberately doing something to put them in danger

IMHO the least likely of those is the second one.

The most parsimonious explanation is likely to be the IDF AI targeting low level Hamas fighters and Hamas-affiliated men once they return home usually bombing the house overnight

This means they are killed with their wives and children giving casualty numbers in line with the general population profile

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

No wonder peace negotiations don't go well. Mere comments on here are misinterpreted (often), minimised and attributed incorrectly or just changed. Is it a comprehension thing, or ignorance.

I suspect many want echo chambers rather than any comments at all. As others have said no wonder less people engage, its boring.

Will people be happy with just a few posters who ignore some parts of history or events and cherry pick and echo and agree with each other. None of this achieves anything at all. More important things to do than bother with this crap. Obviously I want this to end. Obviously I don't want innocents killed. Obviously I want a new government running Gaza that want peace not the raving mad hamas. Obviously I want both Palestinian people and Israeli people to live life without the fear of attack.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68387864

Here's a BBC article about some of the issues. It's from February so the numbers aren't the same, but the same issues are relevant. It's explanation of the 6,000 figure is that this was provided to Reuters by an official but that it has subsequently been denied. The veracity of that figure is difficult to confirm.

It will also be complicated by factors such as the age of individuals (eg a 15 year old boy could be classed as both child and combatant) and their sex.

Definitions of terms are important. If Hamas is indeed saying 6,000 of its fighters have been killed (which they're not publicly saying, it seems), what is their definition of fighter for that figure? If the IDF are saying they've killed more, what's their definition and how are they verifying that a) an individual is dead and b) that individual was a combatant? The IDF has previously labelled any form of affiliation as membership (realistically, that covers a substantial part of the working population as, as well as being terrorists, Hamas were the 'government', so that definition of membership would potentially cover everyone from a civil servant to a street cleaner).

I apologise for misunderstanding you and thank you for clarification. I was indeed replying to another post. I have been misinterpret many times and misquoted many times so I am more touchy.

The above 3 scenarios proposed also omit several other possibilities. Not least the extremely unpleasant one that is: the current military strategic approach not targeting combatants, resulting in a pattern of deaths which is more reflective of the make up of the general population.

Lists of names of those killed have been published.
Its very clear to see The PCR and Hamas are being very accurate

With all the constant lies that Israel has been throwing out with
‘no that wasn’t our bomb that was Hamas….oh maybe that was our bomb….oh yes it was but we told everyone to leave so it’s not our fault anyway…’ crap.
No we didn’t drive over those kids
no we don’t target ambulances and constantly do so
no we ll look after all the babies and then leave them to starve to death in hospitals and rot.

Why would anyone believe in the IDF and the Israeli Govn. Why would anyone believe in a country being investigated for war crimes. Crimes that we have all seen ourselves that they vehemently deny and constantly lie about like a spoilt arrogant child throwing their toys out.

So yes we believe the numbers
Put down comments referring to scientific phenomena or all the men have run away, when you can clearly see all the men in news articles trying to find food or dig people out of rubble. Well the few articles there are these days after Israel has banned or killed the journalists.

You’ll never change your operandi Snicket. I’ve read pages and pages and you really don’t care about the murderous rampage and total annihilation of the Palestinian people.
One that has been going on for many many years.

Netanyahu, his far right lackys and all his supporters won’t stop until an entire population has been wiped out and a country made uninhabitable
Shame on all of them
Shame on the lies they tell to justify the massacre of the innocent

Don’t people ever learn !

With an example of this given in @Efacsen 's post above.

This AI targeting also has the added advantage of killing the 'children of Hamas' who now won't be around to found Hamas 2.0 or seek to avenge their father's deaths. Plus maybe less sympathy for 'children of Hamas' vs innocent children

Obviously some of the children survive and other family members are available tho' sometimes whole families/clans have been wiped out

How is it even possible to stop Hamas?
Exactly what's being done. Their fighters, commanders, terror infrastructure and support network which enabled this entire thing to become a web of terrorist tunnels, exploitation , corruption and devoted an entire population to war is being dismantled. That is the only way to stop them.

Israel is creating terrorist organisations for decades to come.
Wars happen, hardships happen, and terrorist organisations do not spring up in the vast majority of cases. Israel does not cause this. The cause is people being conditioned to believe violent "resistance" is the correct way forward for their life. Martyr's are glorified, and even paid a large wage if they kill Jews, Children are indoctrinated from a very young age, violence is normalised, antisemitism is normalised. The area is corrupt and people are deprived of the aid and support designed for their wellbeing. Aid agencies are infiltrated so they become part of the terror network. Dissenters are arrested or killed. This is what must be dismantled. My own family went through similar experiences and we were not raised, schooled or led to believe violence was the answer. We were taught to move forwards and live lives of peace.

Also, why is there no rebuke from you for the civilian deaths of Palestinians? of foreign aid workers?
I strongly rebuke all deaths, which is why I support the cause of it (Hamas) being dismantled. Had they been long ago, no one would be dead.

The targeting of the 3 aid vehicles was clearly deliberate, multiple drone strikes, carefully done to ensure no one survived, they even waited for the following (and clearly marked vehicles) vehicles to come in close before striking again and again.
I have not seen the results of the investigation, but it seems obvious to me this cannot have been an accident and something must have gone very wrong. I will, however, wait to find out what that is before I leap to any conclusions.

The IDF have a shot to kill policy in Gaza & aid organisations are seen as legitimate targets as they are "helping" the enemy.
I don't think any legitimate aid workers should be targets, obviously. However, I temper this with certain logical information. Firstly that many aid workers are killed in conflict every year in other conflicts. For example, 46 were killed last year in Sudan alone -and that is not a conflict with such complex parameters such as combatants disguising themselves or using aid vehicles and so on. So it does happen sadly. Secondly, I am aware that many "aid workers" are indeed linked to the terrorists or working with them - this is just a fact, I have seen the evidence. And thirdly, I believe Hamas deliberately exploit certain "untouchable" persons such as press, children, aid workers to put them in harms way and or even to disguise their operatives as being these things. They have no qualms about killing the innocent, they have no honour in warfare. So I do not see it as black and white and await the full information in due course.

If that indeed turns out to be the cause: ie: Hamas fighters are being killed with their women and children in the house and they happen to have a lot of wives and children , then that would possibly make sense. Thank you for providing the first plausible reason for this data.

However, if that is the case, then I think the responsibility for those deaths is on the terrorist who is using his wives and kids as human shields. Which is tragic. I assure you, were there an army hunting me for my actions, I would go out and fight and ensure my family and children was as far out of harms way as possible.

Sorry @Scirocco , I struggle with this.

I simply don't believe that the IDF have been fighting a war for 6 months and have been mostly killing children, women and Hamas' street cleaners.

I believe they have been using sophisticated intelligence and technology to hunt out Hamas and their operatives and that the figure of 6,000 is massively under-estimated.

Time will reveal the truth.

As I've said before: if people say things which are blatantly, factually incorrect like @Kindatired saying "The scale of Israel’s terrorist problem is similar to the troubles in Northern Ireland" then I will correct it with facts.

If you don't want something to be brought into the discussion then don't make up emotionally-manipulative lies about it.

However, if that is the case, then I think the responsibility for those deaths is on the terrorist who is using his wives and kids as human shields. Which is tragic. I assure you, were there an army hunting me for my actions, I would go out and fight and ensure my family and children was as far out of harms way as possible.

This beyond daft and not worth the time and effort of responding

@Minymile Do me a favour. Yes, I believe the Israeli (and any democratic nation's) government over a gang of terrorists. What a wild ride it must be to watch with your own eyes as a group of people ride into a music festival and murder, burn alive, rape, kidnap, torture and mutilate hundreds of innocent civilians and live stream themselves gleefully laughing and celebrating it and spitting in the corpses of innocent young people and to say "yes, these dudes seem trustworthy". Man alive.

The targeting of the 3 aid vehicles was clearly deliberate, multiple drone strikes, carefully done to ensure no one survived, they even waited for the following (and clearly marked vehicles) vehicles to come in close before striking again and again

I have not seen the results of the investigation, but it seems obvious to me this cannot have been an accident and something must have gone very wrong. I will, however, wait to find out what that is before I leap to any conclusions

The IDF say themselves that they believed a Hamas fighter was in one of the vehicles, this, for them, justifies killing other innocent people including foreign nationals, who they would have known were in the vehicles, they also killed 4 hostages trying to surrender, whether official policy or not, it appears that sections of the IDF operate a shoot to kill policy.

No Hamas terrorist was in any vehicle.

Israel is creating terrorist organisations for decades to come

Wars happen, hardships happen, and terrorist organisations do not spring up in the vast majority of cases. Israel does not cause this. The cause is people being conditioned to believe violent "resistance" is the correct way forward for their life. Martyr's are glorified, and even paid a large wage if they kill Jews, Children are indoctrinated from a very young age, violence is normalised, antisemitism is normalised. The area is corrupt and people are deprived of the aid and support designed for their wellbeing. Aid agencies are infiltrated so they become part of the terror network. Dissenters are arrested or killed. This is what must be dismantled. My own family went through similar experiences and we were not raised, schooled or led to believe violence was the answer. We were taught to move forwards and live lives of peace

Well, the history and reality of the area is that violence begets violence, that cannot be ignored, countries like Iran/Syria are not going away.
We ve seen this in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq plus of course in Israel itself.

So all Israel is doing is baking in terrorism for many more years, regardless of the numbers they kill & if your figures on the numbers of Hamas fighters and the number killed is correct, they have a very long way to go, so we could well be looking at 100,000 direct civilian deaths and many more via disease and subsequent injury.

Just came across a good piece that explains the moral confusion about Al-Shifa hospital, for anyone who is interested
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/04/03/al-shifa-hospital-and-the-crisis-of-the-west/

Why did you then? 🤔

I can understand why it's hard. Part of me wouldn't want to believe it either.

Generalised rather than precise attacks are, however, entirely consistent with what has been reported as IDF tactics in the past, though. Snipers being instructed to target children is not new, either. Many of the reported actions of the IDF (reported from multiple sources) are entirely consistent with an approach which does not precisely target identified confirmed combatants.

Sadly, the Israeli government's claims in relation to casualties and strategic approaches have lost and are continuing to lose a lot of legitimacy due to the repeated inconsistencies in those claims, as well as reports of acts which are so seriously outside the bounds of standard conduct that there are investigations into war crimes and genocide.

The IDF say themselves that they believed a Hamas fighter was in one of the vehicles, this, for them, justifies killing other innocent people including foreign nationals, who they would have known were in the vehicles, they also killed 4 hostages trying to surrender, whether official policy or not, it appears that sections of the IDF operate a shoot to kill policy.

No offence of any kind intended, but I have not heard this because I was busy on Mumsnet all day yesterday. If that is the actual case, I hope whoever is responsible is tried for murder to the fullest extent of the law. However, I heard them state a full investigation was being carried out, and I will await to hear complete clarity before judging my opinion fully because I have never in my lifetime comes across a situation more mired with disinformation and distorted truth than this one.

No Hamas terrorist was in any vehicle.
Whether there was or was not, I do not believe you can or should ever fire on an aid vehicle. Whilst I am aware Hamas use such moral absolutes to their advantage and manipulate things, I believe nevertheless that you simply cannot shoot at an aid vehicle in a combat zone.

Well, the history and reality of the area is that violence begets violence, that cannot be ignored, countries like Iran/Syria are not going away.
We ve seen this in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq plus of course in Israel itself.
I don't think this is accurate because this area was dominated for millennia in a way where people were persecuted to the extreme and did not become violent as a result. I think this area has a specific problem with violence and terrorism because of an uptake in political nationalism mixing with religious nationalism which created resulting violent jihadi ideology. Governments of countries like the UAE or Saudi agree with this assessment and as such operate a complete zero tolerance policy on this sort of religious nationalism.

So all Israel is doing is baking in terrorism for many more years
This infantilises terrorists. It's their choice to become terrorists. No one bakes them aside from those organisations who indoctrinate them to terrorism and violence. Blame shifting this onto their victims is appalling. Israel is a victim over 2306 Palestinian terrorism attacks. They are not required to just endure that indefinitely for the rest of time. They are not required to just capitulate to the terrorists and hand over their country. They are not required to open up their borders and welcome their murderers in for coffee. They are entitled to defend their country, and if people choose to keep trying to kill them then that is entirely their choice.

We could well be looking at 100,000 direct civilian deaths and many more via disease and subsequent injury.
Or, they could give back the hostages and surrender and it would be over tomorrow. Which is what the world should be calling for every single day. Sadly not though!

What a shame after so many many years and years of persecution of the Palestinians you don’t see it for what it is.
Propaganda is still thriving I see for so many to support the Israeli campaign of hate and destruction

Luckily more and more people around the world and indeed
in Israel
as well are actually seeing through the hate, the lies and the propaganda and standing in support of the Palestinians.

Some of us can even rise above the demeaning ‘do me a favour’ type comments as well!!

Moving over to reality and truth here.

Let's agree to disagree.

When it's all over there will be a full picture.