Heartbreaking news report from Gaza - Dr receives bodies of her children

[Applenation]

Many of you will already have read about this. Paediatric specialist Dr Alaa al-Najjar was on duty when the bodies of nine of her 10 children were received by her in the hospital, after a strike in Khan Younis hit her home.

This report just stopped me in my tracks. I don't know what to say beyond this. I cannot stop thinking about this poor woman tonight.

er children killed by a strike in Khan Younis. Guardian link

That’s powerful evidence.

Not a conspiracy theory - honestly you can not just call anyone who disagrees with the murder of children anti semitic - with the large number of jewish voices worldwide opposed to the genocide you need a new insult. Hasbara was the name given to the social media campaign to defend Israel and the IDF, it is referenced many times by the Israeli media, government officials and also in many academic papers about how Israel utilise social media to take their fight online (great one by Oxford University). Given its wide use by Israeli media I am not sure why people calling it that offends you? Or are you just getting offended and resorting to calling people anti semitic to distract the conversation again from the thousands of children the IDF shot, dismembered, burned alive “by accident” or “because they were child soldiers” depending on what the day’s argument is!

Interesting article in the Washington Post -

“ “Social media is a terrain of warfare, not just for cyber troops, but also for citizen battalions armed with AI-enhanced bots and the ability to generate endless unique posts that evade current content moderation tools,” she said. “It is incumbent on tech companies to defend against such abuses.”
“This level of organization only exists on one side of the conflict,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a former cyber policy adviser to the Defense Department who studies disinformation and propaganda campaigns as a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “It exists for pro-Israel voices, and it exists because there are government ministries in Israel that support these tools and encourage their use.”

At least one of these apps is directly tied to Israel. The app, called Moovers, encourages users to “Advocate for Israel, One Click at a Time.” It pulls in allegedly pro-Palestinian content from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X in a never-ending feed, allowing users easily to take action on that content, reporting it for review or commenting on it. It also provides pre-written pro-Israel scripts to respond to such posts.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/24/gaza-israel-activism-online/

I will listen later today. But I have a question. Why? What would the motive be for the IDF to systematically and randomly murder children?

I've asked myself the same question. There's obviously no military benefit. But if you put it together with the extreme rhetoric of some in the Israeli government and things like the announcement of further (government sanctioned) settlements in the West Bank, you start to see how this is being allowed to play out. Coupled with the anger over October 7th, I don't think it's much different to what we've seen in certain other atrocities where there is simply a desire to obliterate the enemy - or the future enemy, as the case may be.

@RandomWordsThrownTogether
Thank you for the link
Here it is without paywall
https://archive.is/999Be

The article gives an account how these tools were used to counteract the claims by a Palestinian teenager that she was sexually assaulted in Israeli custody.

The article suggests that shaping of public opinion is particularly important. No wonder the ADL was worried about TikTok as they clearly couldn’t control the message people are meant to hear.

The difficulty is that the photos coming out of Gaza paint a very clear picture of what Israel’s government has sanctioned and what the IDF has done.

The international criminal court believes Israel ARE committing atrocities.

Ok. I can agree that Israel does social media campaigns and tries to influence opinion although I have no personal experience of it.

I looked up that moovers website and it has had two visits in the past month.

But regardless. Let's agree that there are other websites and apps which are being regularly used to set out the pro Israel narrative. My issue is that you then assume that people like me are following scripts. But the Palestinian movement and Hamas are also amazing at social media, and you assume that pro Palestinian posters are writing authentic heartfelt messages.

It comes back to assuming underlying malice and nefarious intent behind pro Israel posters, which is consistent with anti Semitic tropes that have existed for thousands of years.

Factually wrong.

If you take the view that Palestinian lives matter so little and the each potential Hamas soldier should be tracked down and killed, regardless of collateral loss of life- it’s not surprising that a disproportionate number of children are killed.

The manner in identifying targets also used AI tools that were not verified manually.

“Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants.”

“You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people – it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” one intelligence officer said. Another said the principal question they were faced with was whether the “collateral damage” to civilians allowed for an attack.
“Because we usually carried out the attacks with dumb bombs, and that meant literally dropping the whole house on its occupants.”

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

There was another tool supposedly called “Where’s Daddy” which tracked when men returned home before bombing their home and family.

You can see that - although surely not meant intentionally (you would hope)- the final result is the systemic killing of children. We known Palestinians have large families and may live in multi-generational households but no account appears to be made for this.

As for children being shot not once but twice by snipers - this may not be systemic- but seems that there is evidence that some of the IDF soldiers are possibly trigger happy when it comes to Palestinians kids.

@Biscuitsformeandyou
It comes back to assuming underlying malice and nefarious intent behind pro Israel posters, which is consistent with anti Semitic tropes that have existed for thousands of years.

It’s not the intent behind pro-Israel, it’s the intent behind pro-current policy and actions of the current Israeli government. They are without question deeply inhumane and genocidal. That and pro-Israel are not the same thing, and calling that out is not anti-Semitic, it’s anti- Netanyahu’s, government, its anti- far-right, its anti-genocide by killing of a specific population (Gaza) and destruction of their living habitat (West Bank).

@Biscuitsformeandyou

“It comes back to assuming underlying malice and nefarious intent behind pro Israel posters, which is consistent with anti Semitic tropes that have existed for thousands of years.”

I am not sure people meant to suggest underlying malice of pro-Israel posters- they have strong reason to support the state. It’s more of a criticism of a state that is using AI tools and bots to shape a message and of social media platforms that are unable to manage bots adequately. The situation is not unique to Israel- and has been used by other political entities to shape political discourse. We just need to wary of it.

I don't believe people are following scripts unless there's serious evidence of that. But for example the German Iranian woman's video a PP posted (sorry, I can't recall her name) - if you look through her other videos, she is also claiming that the attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg was actually committed by a secret radical Muslim using 'taqiyya' to pretend to be an atheist. So clearly there's a script being followed there somewhere, consciously or not, which is then amplified by other, and that goes for both sides of the conflict IMO.

What I do find disturbing is the metaphorical hands over the eyes and ears about the testimony of multiple medical personnel. Because apparently that is such a departure from the story as they're telling it that it must be ignored, denied, obfuscated.

This thread has wandered a bit. On the subject of social media manipulation though I read this on another thread... BBC Verify has seen at least two Facebook profiles purporting to be official GHF accounts, sharing inaccurate information about the status of the aid distribution centres.
One page with more than 4,000 followers posted inaccurate information, sometimes alongside AI-generated images, that aid had been suspended or that looting at GHF centres had been rampant.
A GHF spokesman confirmed to BBC Verify that both these Facebook accounts were fake. He also said that the foundation had launched an official Facebook channel.

I have my own opinions on who it best serves to discredit GHF. But whoever they are their first priority is not to ease the distribution of aid to Gazans.

Factually delusional.

Yes, I can see that could happen. About twenty five years ago, Israel found out about a meeting of the Hamas leadership. The intelligence services verified their presence in this apartment where there were also children and other innocent civilians. After some debate, they decide to use a small targeted bomb to avoid / minimise civilian casualties. The bomb was ineffective and the leadership survived.

After October 7th, people remembered this and I understand that these types of protocols have been significantly loosened. And I can see how that would result in the deaths of children, as you say.

This is a war and I guess soldiers can't just return to home for tea and expect to be suddenly not a target especially as there is such blurring between military and civilians. Children are being used as human shields and I guess Israel has called Hamas bluff with this. Unless a combatant is in a defined position on a battlefield e.g. in a trench it must be extremely difficult to target them but that does not mean they can't be engaged.

@Biscuitsformeandyou
It is one thing if you are going after senior leadership, where you might want to argue it’s a proportionate to also blow up and kill not only their and but also surrounding families. It’s quite another - which the Israeli informants have said- to use this same argument of proportionately towards their foot soldiers. And to do it because it’s cheaper?

And why wait till they return home?

And this is the attitude that allows for systemic killing of children to become acceptable.

Double post

Just wondering, how is this wrong? There is an warrant for war crimes for Netanyahu. Here it is and it lists the crimes:
https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu

Apologies for the double post; I forgot the quote.

It's not wrong. It's just relying on the fact that obviously there hasn't been a court case yet.
Presumably it would be 'factually wrong' to refer to any of the corruption charges he's facing in Israeli courts too.

So it's not factually wrong. Thank you. Court case or not the ICC believes he has committed crimes.

I wonder how this poor woman is holding up..

I made a mistake and thought you were referring to the ICJ rather than ICC

I think the main point was actually the war crimes.