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.

Or a one sided picture.
It won’t be all over until all the Palestinians are dead.

A poorly written right-libertarian (having initially arisen from the ashes of a rather far to the left publication) online 'magazine' with a history of publishing articles by non-existent journalists, misrepresenting photos with false and inflammatory claims, and of promoting vile conspiracy theories... Yeah, that's almost certainly a 'good story' about 'moral confusion'.

By the way, @CaterhamReconstituted were you trying to imply something the other day?

So many years of persecution of the Palestinians?

No. I do not see it that way at all. Two parties had reasonable rights to self determination on this land. Pretty much the whole world agreed with that. One side would not accept it, and has spent 76 years trying to murder the others so they could have it all.

They have started wars with the express intent of genocide and then cried when they didn't achieve that goal. They have committed deliberate and repeated acts of terror against innocent civilians, including children, thousands of times and gloated over the joy of it. They have fired missiles tens of thousands of times indiscriminately at their neighbouring state. They have been openly clear their intent and desire is genocide of Jewish people and they are proud of it. they make no bones about it - this is about killing Jews. And now they started a war yet again, by committing one of the worst acts I have ever seen happen by human beings and they have celebrated it, relished in the murders they committed and have told the world they want to do it again and again and again.

The Palestinians are persecuted by Hamas.

Hamas take their aid money and use it to build terror tunnels or live as billionaires in Qatar. Hamas murder anyone who seeks to stand up to their violent dictatorship. Hamas deprives them of pretty much the entire universal bill of human rights. Hamas denies them even the freedom to vote in elections when they don't like it. Hamas hijacks their aid workers, social workers and schools to fill their minds with racist violence. Hamas allows their members and killers to live in fancy houses with swimming pools and freedom to travel while everyone else lives locked up and poor. Hamas starts wars on their behalf and then runs off to hide somewhere unknown while civilians bear the brunt. Hamas goes on TV and encourages them to die and requests their martyrdom. Hamas have chosen violence and war every single time, and have taken away the futures of hundreds of thousands of children for whom they were elected to care.

I shall be very glad to see the back of them, and I feel very, very sad for anyone who claims to care about Palestinian people who provides cover for these absolute monsters who are responsible for the whole sorry mess. They knew exactly what they were doing when they planned and executed 7/10 and they absolutely did not care about who died or suffered as a result.

OK

Whilst I can't speak for anyone else, I certainly don't think the medical staff were Hamas, which I think is what you're asking.

The article does raise the same thing I have wondered about though. There were 2 weeks of intense fighting there. No one side - however evil you think they are - can have intense firefights for 2 weeks against only unarmed civilians. Large numbers of armed Hamas fighters must have also been there, engaging in these intense fire fights.

Israel's stated aim is to remove Hamas and their infrastructure. If Hamas weren't based in the hospital, then why did Hamas even go there and make that the site of the fighting? Why didn't they just let the IDF go through the hospital and leave?

Don't you blame Hamas for this at all?

They either
a) did have significant weapons and infrastructure hidden in the hospital to take advantage of it's protected status. Despicable.

b) were hiding there themselves, using medical teams and patients as a human shield. Despicable.

or c) didn't have any reason to fight at the hospital but chose to make a stand there anyway. Why? My suspicion - and Hamas have implied it in TV addresses- is that it's because the more suffering they cause to Palestinians, the more they drive a wedge between Israel and its supporters. And that's their only possible strategy to achieve any of their aims, since they can't possibly win a military victory. So they actually try to increase civilian suffering: their own people who they pretend to protect. Utterly despicable.

You don't have to answer @Scirocco - I just don't understand the thinking. I'm very sorry for the loss of your friends.

Sorry, been off MN for a bit and there’s been lots of posts. Can’t remember what it was in relation to. I wouldn’t “imply” anything that I wouldn’t straightforwardly say though. But happy to consider the question.

@statsfun thank you. I'm interested in what @CaterhamReconstituted meant by their post, so hopefully they can clarify.

I know what Hamas are. I have seen what they do. Like many others, I will shed no tears for them.

In relation to Al-Shifa, I have not seen evidence of it being used as a pre-conflict hub or base, nor have others such as Nick Maynard. Some of the 'evidence' from the previous raid was clearly not actually evidence, which means a loss of credibility for future claims. Edited footage, weapons being added, what multiple people recognised as a ventilation shaft being labelled as a tunnel for terrorists, curtains being used as evidence of videos being filmed in particular places, etc.

I don't know the full details of what happened in Al-Shifa. I do know that the bodies of brave people, healthcare professionals who went to Gaza to try to save lives, who never expressed any pro-terrorist views in all the time I knew them, were tied up and executed with gunshots. That is not a stray bullet in a fast-moving firefight. That's a fairly considered execution.

When we go to conflict and disaster zones, as healthcare workers, we know that there are risks. We know we might die. But we go to try to save lives. We rely on certain things happening to manage those risks. One is that forces don't use hospitals as places from which to launch attacks - there are, I think, grounds to ask if Hamas have been doing that, but the evidence provided has not been conclusive. Another is that forces don't tie us up and shoot us in the head. Sometimes there are valid reasons to stop and search, even question. But there is no justification for the considered killing of obvious non-combatants who pose no imminent threat. There are, I think, grave concerns that healthcare workers in Gaza are being targeted - multiple accounts from multiple sources of detentions in which people experienced inhumane treatment, multiple executions, etc.

There were and are ways in which a removal of Hamas could have been achieved, which did not need this level of death and destruction.

Well, @CaterhamReconstituted , at 23:28 you made the claim that "Israel do not deliberately kill health workers".

When I pointed out that two of my friends and colleagues had just recently been executed at Al-Shifa, you responded at 00:10 with: "The same Al-Shifa where Hamas and Islamic Jihad are based?"

Putting aside the fact that multiple reports have been made of healthcare workers being deliberately killed by the IDF, I am interested to know what you intended by that response.

The population is 50/50 male to female

I see your point,and it is an interesting question, but it is difficult to know more without knowing how many Hamas combatants have been killed as opposed to men in general among whom not all are Hamas combatants ( leaving many more live Hamas combatants safely underground).

Also, 50/50 is not how the population breaks down really, as there are a lot of children to every family. (4.5 children to every woman who has children.)
So because there are more children they are more likely to be killed if their place of shelter is bombed, say.

Would the population break down into 1/6 men 1/6 women and 4/6 children perhaps?

Of those some of the men would be old, but in reality fewer in number than the number of old women.

70% of deaths are said to be of women and children. If there are 32500 deaths then that would mean 22,400 deaths of women and children.
(Say of that 22,400, if 1/5 are women, and 4/5 are children then there would be 4,500 deaths of women and 18000 deaths of children)

that leaves 10,000 who could be men, old and young, some combatants, others not.

IDF say they have killed 13000 Hamas fighters. If correct that is more than 10,000 meaning a discrepancy of 3000 in what I have hypothesised. But also the IDF may have miscalculated the number of terrorist deaths and some of those Hamas terrorists in their figures must be non-combatant men.

What if there were as many non-combatant dead men as there possibly are dead women, 4500 non combatant men, 4500 women?

That would mean the IDF has over estimated the number of actual terrorists they have killed (8500 not 13000),
and or/ the Hamas authority may have slightly overestimated the number of killed children meaning more of the number of dead are male combatants - this would only account for a discrepancy of 5000 out of 32500 and (76000 wounded)

This needs to be looked into by statisticians using population figures too.

This is a BBC Verify report regarding the question of verifying the breakdown of the dead in Gaza. It shows how problematic it is.

Excerpt:
“The Gaza authorities' last demographic breakdown from 29 February indicated more than 70% of those killed had been women and children.

So, with the figures suggesting less than 30% of those killed were men - some of whom are likely to be over fighting age - experts have raised questions about how Israel arrived at its claim of killing 10,000 fighters.

BBC Verify has repeatedly asked the IDF for the detail of its methodology for counting Hamas fighter deaths but they have not responded.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68387864

I sympathise with anyone who has lost friends. I obviously can’t comment on any specific individuals. But we know that Hamas use hospitals to wage war. They store weapons there, they launch missiles from there, they have their tunnels underneath there. Just take a moment to consider how despicable that is. This is designed to maximise civilian deaths. Hamas intend for the Palestinian people to be killed. They care more about killing Jews than about the lives of their own people. They welcome death as a route to an afterlife in paradise. They know that any civilian deaths can be used as a further weapon against Israel by edging them closer to pariah status with every image of a child’s body.

The IDF had a two-week firefight at Al-Shifa - it is implausible that they were simply there knowingly shooting innocent doctors and healthcare workers. We also know that Hamas have embedded themselves in all of Gaza’s social structures. Many senior people in hospitals are likely to be members or supporters of Hamas.

Innocent people will have died at the hands of the IDF - but that exactly the point. This is what Hamas intends to happen. Also think about how difficult it is for the IDF to avoid civilian deaths. You can’t take anything on trust. They don’t know if a person in a medical uniform is an innocent person.

Hamas are not a conventional enemy. Please wake up to the reality of these people.

@CaterhamReconstituted a few points.

Firstly, you say with certainty that you know Hamas use hospitals in the ways you've mentioned. How? What evidence have you seen that makes you so certain? What evidence do you have that supersedes accounts of people who have been in these buildings that they have seen no signs of this being an established modus operandi?

Secondly, on what basis are you essentially accusing healthcare professionals of being Hamas members or supporters? Given that many professionals working in those hospitals are actually citizens of countries in which Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation, that's a very serious allegation. If you don't have actual evidence of membership, you might want to consider the harm that false allegations can cause.

Thirdly, let's assume there is a situation in which someone is concerned that a healthcare professional or even just someone who's saying they're a healthcare professional might be affiliated in some capacity or might present a risk. I don't know about you, but in my experience, what tends to happen in most conflicts is a stop-search-check process or brief detention to verify details. That tends not to involve tying someone's hands behind their backs and executing them.

Fourthly, healthcare professionals are telling the world that they and their colleagues are being targeted and executed. This isn't something coming from a propaganda outlet. These are professionals who would stand to lose decades-long careers if they made this up. What is it that means you think they're/we're lying?

Finally, you make a lot of very confident claims about what Hamas does, what the IDF don't do, and so on. You're now suggesting that I "wake up" to the reality of this situation. So, I ask you - How many conflict zones, disaster relief operations and major incidents have you worked in? How many hospitals in Gaza have you personally visited and walked round? How much personal knowledge do you have of working in that setting?

So, what did you mean by your question previously?

There is room for reasonable disagreement on many things, but there really is no doubt that Al-Shifa is a Hamas base. This is widely reported and accepted. There have been photographs published showing extensive tunnels under the hospital. No doubt you will say that anything the sneaky Jews produce as evidence is false, but many other publications have verified this as well. Years ago Amnesty reported the torture chambers under the hospital where Hamas’s political rivals were detained and tortured. But maybe it’s only true if the victims are Palestinians eh?

Secondly, Hamas are a terrorist group but they are a terrorist group who run the state. It is inconceivable that a hospital that is used as a military base is unknown by the hospital authorities. Not every hospital worker or medical professional of course. But as an example, how about Ahmed Kahlot, director of Kamal Adwan hospital and a Hamas commander?

Hospital workers have said they are a “target” for the IDF. That’s not evidence that the IDF are deliberately killing hospital workers they know to be innocent. Hospital staff are operating in a climate of fear in which Hamas will use hospital workers and uniforms as cover for their terrorism, so of course anyone with a medical uniform is potentially a target. It’s unspeakable. And can you really stop-and-check people during a firefight?

But there really is no doubt that Al-Shifa is a Hamas base
It hasn't been independently verified one way or the other yet, so yes there is doubt.

a hospital that is used as a military base
I have asked this question a few times. If the IDF were confident the hospital was being used as a military base why did they not secure it back in November? Why did they leave it to be re-occupied by Hamas? I have no idea why the military would do that, it makes no sense whatsoever

I'm guessing that Caterham is using what happened in the 2014 war to try to imply that the complex has been used since then by Hamas. During the 2014 war, large parts of the complex were abandoned and subsequently used as de facto bases of operations by Hamas. There was also a report that was published by Amnesty International in relation to torture and murder by Hamas during that time. Bodies were brought (and removed) from the morgue.

There is a large basement sublevel. Which was initially built by Israelis in the 1990s.

Multiple healthcare professionals have confirmed that, with unrestricted access to the hospital, they have not come across any evidence of a pre-7/10 Hamas base. But, you know, clearly people who would potentially face professional ruin for making false accusations are just making it up to be mean.

As for "can you stop and check during a firefight?", it's probably a bit more boring to stop, detain and check than it is to stop, tie up and execute, but it probably takes about the same amount of time.

There is an absolute plethora of evidence that Hamas uses human shields in various ways. We have all seen with our own eyes terrorists attacking and then jumping into ambulances to get a ride away in safety, we have all seen "doctors" in hospital shown clearly in other videos with weapons in Hamas uniforms, we have all seen rocket launchers poking out of windows in schools, we have all seen it @Scirocco

It is also widely reported on by Amnesty, NATO, HRW, and global press. Most of whom are no friends of Israel. The wikipedia entry on this cites dozens of sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_human_shields_by_Hamas#cite_note-:03-3

Nothing you've said there is evidence of established bases of operations in hospitals pre-7/10. Nor of widespread complicity of healthcare professionals (now, I've not experienced it personally, but if an armed man got into a vehicle I was driving and told me to drive, I'd probably drive rather than refuse and get shot) justifying disproportionate targeting of them. Nor of why it would be acceptable to tie people up and then shoot them.

Suicide as martyrdom is absolutely not in the Western tradition luckily; nor did any of the WW11 children, orphans or otherwise, from England, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Japan etc find themselves in a fight against each other after the war. Germany was supported not persecuted and was no longer the enemy.

Dreadful though they were, there were not as many Palestinian child suicide bombers as there were orphans. Bur no doubt many joined Hamas and many more will follow in their footsteps now.

At least 17,000 children, or one per cent of Gaza's overall displaced population of 1.7 million, are thought to be orphaned in the Gaza Strip, according to an estimate from Unicef 7 Feb 2024
www.telegraph.co.uk › gaz...

'They've lost everything': What now for Gaza's 17000 orphans?

@statsfun
The 7/10 attacks happened against a backdrop of security failures on many levels. It is not likely that this type of attack will ever succeed again for Hamas.

According to OOCHA, from 2008-23 , there were 329 Israeli fatalities which included 185 civilians (94 of whom were settlers ) and 134 Israeli forces.

So about 1600 fatalities in this time period and the number that Hamas wants to kill is 6 million.

This is really bad but it’s not an existential threat for Israel.

Germany was supported not persecuted and was no longer the enemy.

Can I ask, where did you get that information from. Because that is absolutely not true. It’s been a long time since I’ve read about post war Europe, but a quick Google search tells me that:

• Germany had to surrender, unconditionally.

• Germany was decentralised and demilitarised. It had to accept democracy.

• It’s heavy industry economy was forced to become a combination of agriculture and light domestic industry.

• Germany was split up into 4 zones after the war, and occupied.

• Germany lost territory, was reduced in size and its eastern border was shifted west, falling under Polish control. About 15 million ethnic Germans living in this territory were forced to leave, suffering terrible conditions during their expulsion. Many froze or starved to death on over-crowded trains, while others were subject to forced labor camps by the Allies.

• The Nuremberg trials were held.

• They were assessed to pay reparations of $3 billion.

I could really go on. They weren’t supported. Less so those that happened to be on the Eastern side of the Wall.

The reason that the fighting didn’t go on after the war, wasn’t because Germany was “supported” (which it wasn’t), nor was it supported after WW1, it was because they were forced to surrender - surrender or die. And if they hadn’t surrendered, the Allies would have kept killing them until they did. That did happen. But they eventually surrendered.

In Germany alone 20 million people were homeless. The country was reduced to rubble. There were millions of displaced persons wandering around the countryside. Families were wiped out. The destruction is really hard to comprehend. The Germans had rebuild their lives before - after WW1 and the Great Depression that ravaged it after that - and they did so again. And so did all of Europe, not because anyone was “supported”, but because enough blood had been spilled. Enough damage had been done. Enough horrors had taken place. No one wanted to fight anymore, people just wanted to live. In peace. And they did. And it has been a gift to the future generations of Europe.

Thank you for making that all clear, and I don’t disagree. I was thinking of the Marshall Plan though.

I was saying that I don’t think the orphans of the new way of life that developed in Germany after the war were likely to want to become suicide bombers to avenge themselves against the allies, in the same way that subjugated Palestinian orphans might, (even if the German youth did culturally believe in martyrdom and suicide through bombing an enemy, which they wouldn’t). This was in reply to something another poster had said.

“On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948. It became known as the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe”
www.archives.gov › marsha...
Marshall Plan (1948) | National Archives

Only 2500 Israelis killed since 2000. Oh and the 1200 more killed on October 7th. But let's not worry about them, eh?

And the tens of thousands of missiles launched at Israel.

And the large scale evacuations from areas of the country suffering bombing campaigns (100,000 currently displaced from the north. It's all the same war).

And the safe room every Israeli has in their house. And regular bomb drills in schools. And regular air raid sirens when their defence system is destroying an incoming bomb over their cities, when everyone runs for shelter.

And the constant risk of a random person coming up and stabbing you or shooting you in your car - because every civilian is a target, all the time.

The huge cost both financial and human which is how Israel have kept indiscriminate terrorist murders of their citizens down to only a few hundred a year.

And the 6 full scale wars prior to that.

Just stop minimizing @Kindatired. You're being ridiculous.

@LemonyTicket Numerous Western Doctors, include some eminent British consultants have worked at Al Shifa and have all said they have never seen any terrorist involvement at the Hospital.

So far Israel has not produced any evidence that Al Shifa is a main Hamas HQ, just a few ak47s and hand grenades.

I've no doubt Hamas will use any facility to try and hide from the IDF but is the cost to ordinary Gazans worth the destruction? as ultimately, Hamas isn't going away, no amount of bombing or death will "destroy" Hamas, with a 2 million population, mainly young, Hamas have an inexhaustible supply of new recruits.

I just don't get what Israel's strategic aims are, they wont destroy Hamas, all they are doing atm is turning their Western backers against them and more importantly, making this campaign a recruiting sergeant for Palestinians to turn against Israel.