Israel-Hamas war thread

[Bevo 13576]

Just now, Brian Fantana said:

I think we'd just like them not to obliterate them. Going in and killing a terrorist while leaving the hospital intact/usable seems like fair game to me. Seems like what happened here.

I seriously doubt it. Going into a hospital and targeting individuals while ignoring non-combatants works well in video games, though.

[Brian Fantana 6685]

6 minutes ago, Bevo said:

I seriously doubt it. Going into a hospital and targeting individuals while ignoring non-combatants works well in video games, though.

From what I'm reading it seems like a raid and a gunfight, nothing was bombed. They killed some Hamas combatants and this guy. I imagine the hospital is still usable after everything is cleaned up.

['stache 21813]

He was liquidated? Like dissolved in acid or something?

[InkaUtexas 25918]

15 minutes ago, 'stache said:

He was liquidated? Like dissolved in acid or something?

The Israelis were really mean. They used aggy tears.

[Bevo 13576]

16 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

From what I'm reading it seems like a raid and a gunfight, nothing was bombed. They killed some Hamas combatants and this guy. I imagine the hospital is still usable after everything is cleaned up.

It's possible when the majority of Hamas has been eliminated. However, those kind of operations are extremely dangerous - as in the enemy has many advantages so it is likely more of your forces are killed and injured than enemy forces. So expecting Israel to have operated in this manned from the beginning is asking more than what any other country would do. We generally would just leave those guys alone or target them later. Rarely and I can't think of an instance where we alone had to eliminate so many combatants in the middle of large groups of non-combatants. In Vietnam, we had issues with asymmetric warfare.

[tx 3 putt 76933]

Start taking out hamas leadership in qatar

then ill be impressed

Edited March 18 by tx 3 putt

[InkaUtexas 25918]

And Lebanon.

[Parliament 14258]

58 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Start taking out hamas leadership in qatar

then ill be impressed

Is that possible?

[InkaUtexas 25918]

5 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Is that possible?

Yes, but would cause some issues for sure. Mossad has done hits across the Middle East, not all successful. That is why I said Lebanon. Kill Hamas there and what? Piss of Hezbollah? Well they don't really like you.

A hit in Qatar would also piss off the US.

Also, notice Hamas is not in exile in Saudi Arabia and Egypt?

Edited March 18 by InkaUtexas

[Anastasis 23469]

8 hours ago, statsman said:

So, I just read a tech nerd discussion of the data, which argues there really is a reasonable daily variance in the data, if you assume a Poisson distribution rather than a normal distribution. 
 
There hasn’t been a rebuttal of Wyner’s noting lack of correlation in reported daily deaths of women and children (you would expect them to be highly correlated). The best explanation (other than the data being invented) is that there is a lag in the data being tabulated, and that Hamas Ministry of Health really shouldn’t try to provide daily totals. 

Yes, even in the cherry-picked data, I think the argument would be that they are over-dispersed for a poisson distribution. The actual distribution is probably far more complex, for many of the reasons that @Laxtonto alludes to. These are very complex things to model. 

But that gives Wyner far too easy of a pass.  From his write up:

This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less.

This is EXACTLY what you see if you only look only two or three days before the timeframe he selected, and in fact occurs on numerous other days both before and after. So a few explanations to things here. Either 1) Wyner did like absolutely no vetting of the available data on the subject (basic incompetence); 2) was unable to appreciate the implications of the time frame he selected from the dataset(basic statistical incompetence); 3) did not understand how to analyze the data (maybe more advanced statistical incompetence); or 4) there was purposive selection and a kicker of insulting the intelligence of his readership (malign intent and hubris). Maybe some combination of above. 

WRT to the daily breakdown by age/sex, there is lag and adjudication obvious in the raw data. I don't think that there is anything wrong with reporting the breakdowns as available and further updating as they are adjudicated. The problem is when someone that is either incompetent or has malign intent (or both!) tries to torture those data using a faulty analytical framework to generate talking points, and then those talking points are circulated by groups such as AIPAC and others to influence American perception and foreign policy. 

[JohnnyRage 1617]

News: U.S. State Department declares 100% of Gaza’s population is at risk of acute food level insecurity.

unfamiliar with the link, but wanted a source quote.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/blinken-says-all-of-gaza-facing-unprecedented-food-insecurity/
 

Quote

“According to the most respected measure of these things, 100 percent of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity. That’s the first time an entire population has been so classified,” Blinken told a press conference in the Philippines, where he is on an official visit.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 19 by JohnnyRage

[Brian Fantana 6685]

Famine. He means famine.

[DDD Dad 14338]

20 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Yes, even in the cherry-picked data, I think the argument would be that they are over-dispersed for a poisson distribution. The actual distribution is probably far more complex, for many of the reasons that @Laxtonto alludes to. These are very complex things to model. 

But that gives Wyner far too easy of a pass.  From his write up:

This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less.

This is EXACTLY what you see if you only look only two or three days before the timeframe he selected, and in fact occurs on numerous other days both before and after. So a few explanations to things here. Either 1) Wyner did like absolutely no vetting of the available data on the subject (basic incompetence); 2) was unable to appreciate the implications of the time frame he selected from the dataset(basic statistical incompetence); 3) did not understand how to analyze the data (maybe more advanced statistical incompetence); or 4) there was purposive selection and a kicker of insulting the intelligence of his readership (malign intent and hubris). Maybe some combination of above. 

WRT to the daily breakdown by age/sex, there is lag and adjudication obvious in the raw data. I don't think that there is anything wrong with reporting the breakdowns as available and further updating as they are adjudicated. The problem is when someone that is either incompetent or has malign intent (or both!) tries to torture those data using a faulty analytical framework to generate talking points, and then those talking points are circulated by groups such as AIPAC and others to influence American perception and foreign policy. 

Explain this to me like I'm a lawyer.

[bolverk 29671]

1 minute ago, DDD Dad said:

Explain this to me like I'm a lawyer.

A statistician said that Hamas death toll figures couldn't possibly be real because the daily variation of the deaths should be more randomly distributed. 

Both Anastasis and I have pointed out that this statistician's analysis (published a week ago) cherrypicked a ten-day period from the end of October where the daily numbers appear fairly constant. Still, the guy's analysis completely ignored all data before the ten-day snapshot and every day since. Those other, longer periods indeed show fluctuations in daily deaths.

So, the argument is that this statistician is purposefully misrepresenting the numbers to make a case that Hamas is releasing bullshit death counts, thereby minimizing Palestinian fatalities.

All the data are out there and available to be analyzed. The analysis is recent, so no one knows why he's only using a tiny dataset to make a much larger argument. His statistical analysis is not all that sophisticated, so it wasn't like he was running numbers through a Supercomputer or anything. Also, the graphical representation that he chose to display his analysis was purposely selected to make it look like a straight data line when there should be fluctuations.

Also, this particular statistician is a Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of Business and should, therefore, know better than to publish this shit. I only took two semesters 25 years ago and could spot right away what he was doing, and I said so a few pages back when it was first brought up.

Statsman decided to bring it up again by saying that no one can criticize the guy without saying he's a conservative Jew, which is a lie because I said everything above in a previous post. But, as often happens, Statsman ignores, doesn't fully read, or can't retain information from other people's posts.

So, Anastasis came back to respond in a much more detailed way than I originally did by taking a deeper dive into the actual data. He came to the same conclusion but with more numbers.

In my previous post, I did also point out that this particular statistician was also recently called out for using bullshit stats in a wholly separate legal case that his side lost when they were trying to disprove increasingly warm temperatures related to climate change). I also pointed out that the publication in which the guy's article appeared had caused some waves within the Jewish community for some of its political stances, so I called into question why someone would choose to post an article using dubious statistics (one would think a poster named "Statsman" would've recognized the data flaws) from a politically biased publication in the Daily Texan "news" subforum.

That's all I can tell you for now, counselor.

 

 

 

[DDD Dad 14338]

14 minutes ago, bolverk said:

A statistician said that Hamas death toll figures couldn't possibly be real because the daily variation of the deaths should be more randomly distributed. 

Both Anastasis and I have pointed out that this statistician's analysis (published a week ago) cherrypicked a ten-day period from the end of October where the daily numbers appear fairly constant. Still, the guy's analysis completely ignored all data before the ten-day snapshot and every day since. Those other, longer periods indeed show fluctuations in daily deaths.

So, the argument is that this statistician is purposefully misrepresenting the numbers to make a case that Hamas is releasing bullshit death counts, thereby minimizing Palestinian fatalities.

All the data are out there and available to be analyzed. The analysis is recent, so no one knows why he's only using a tiny dataset to make a much larger argument. His statistical analysis is not all that sophisticated, so it wasn't like he was running numbers through a Supercomputer or anything. Also, the graphical representation that he chose to display his analysis was purposely selected to make it look like a straight data line when there should be fluctuations.

Also, this particular statistician is a Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of Business and should, therefore, know better than to publish this shit. I only took two semesters 25 years ago and could spot right away what he was doing, and I said so a few pages back when it was first brought up.

Statsman decided to bring it up again by saying that no one can criticize the guy without saying he's a conservative Jew, which is a lie because I said everything above in a previous post. But, as often happens, Statsman ignores, doesn't fully read, or can't retain information from other people's posts.

So, Anastasis came back to respond in a much more detailed way than I originally did by taking a deeper dive into the actual data. He came to the same conclusion but with more numbers.

In my previous post, I did also point out that this particular statistician was also recently called out for using bullshit stats in a wholly separate legal case that his side lost when they were trying to disprove increasingly warm temperatures related to climate change). I also pointed out that the publication in which the guy's article appeared had caused some waves within the Jewish community for some of its political stances, so I called into question why someone would choose to post an article using dubious statistics (one would think a poster named "Statsman" would've recognized the data flaws) from a politically biased publication in the Daily Texan "news" subforum.

That's all I can tell you for now, counselor.

 

 

 

Thank you. 

Now explain it to me like I’m Brisket. 
 

 

 

 

I kid, I kid. 
 

 

[Brisketexan 105123]

Thank you. 
Now explain it to me like I’m Brisket. 
 
 
 
 
I kid, I kid. 
 
 

Gonna be a lot of statistical comparisons between Sela Ward and Susanna Hoffs.

I’m here for it.

[Brian Fantana 6685]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

A statistician said that Hamas death toll figures couldn't possibly be real because the daily variation of the deaths should be more randomly distributed. 

Both Anastasis and I have pointed out that this statistician's analysis (published a week ago) cherrypicked a ten-day period from the end of October where the daily numbers appear fairly constant. Still, the guy's analysis completely ignored all data before the ten-day snapshot and every day since. Those other, longer periods indeed show fluctuations in daily deaths.

So, the argument is that this statistician is purposefully misrepresenting the numbers to make a case that Hamas is releasing bullshit death counts, thereby minimizing Palestinian fatalities.

All the data are out there and available to be analyzed. The analysis is recent, so no one knows why he's only using a tiny dataset to make a much larger argument. His statistical analysis is not all that sophisticated, so it wasn't like he was running numbers through a Supercomputer or anything. Also, the graphical representation that he chose to display his analysis was purposely selected to make it look like a straight data line when there should be fluctuations.

Also, this particular statistician is a Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of Business and should, therefore, know better than to publish this shit. I only took two semesters 25 years ago and could spot right away what he was doing, and I said so a few pages back when it was first brought up.

Statsman decided to bring it up again by saying that no one can criticize the guy without saying he's a conservative Jew, which is a lie because I said everything above in a previous post. But, as often happens, Statsman ignores, doesn't fully read, or can't retain information from other people's posts.

So, Anastasis came back to respond in a much more detailed way than I originally did by taking a deeper dive into the actual data. He came to the same conclusion but with more numbers.

In my previous post, I did also point out that this particular statistician was also recently called out for using bullshit stats in a wholly separate legal case that his side lost when they were trying to disprove increasingly warm temperatures related to climate change). I also pointed out that the publication in which the guy's article appeared had caused some waves within the Jewish community for some of its political stances, so I called into question why someone would choose to post an article using dubious statistics (one would think a poster named "Statsman" would've recognized the data flaws) from a politically biased publication in the Daily Texan "news" subforum.

That's all I can tell you for now, counselor.

 

 

 

This is why I have repeatedly called @statsman unserious on this topic. I have seen this pattern with him repeat itself like a dozen times on this topic alone.

He and so many posters on this board simply immediately take this kind of thing at face value, declare a win, and move on. After questions arise about the legitimacy of the information presented, they just go silent until the next piece of agitprop comes out they can glom onto.

A lot of the time it's posters that have shown good critical thinking ability with regard to other topics, as well, which only makes it that much more infuriating.

[Bevo 13576]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-90-hamas-gunmen-killed-160-suspects-nabbed-in-raid-at-gazas-shifa-hospital/

 

IDF: 90 Hamas gunmen killed, over 300 nabbed in raid at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday continued an operation against Hamas forces at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, with the military saying troops had killed more than 90 gunmen so far.

The operation, which began early Monday morning, was being carried out by the Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit, the 401st Armored Brigade, and other forces.

Troops raided the hospital, the largest medical center in the Gaza Strip, after Israeli intelligence indicated that Hamas operatives, including commanders, had returned to the complex to use it as a command center for planning attacks against Israel and troops in Gaza. It was previously raided by the military in November.

“Over the past day, the troops have eliminated terrorists and located weapons in the hospital area, while preventing harm to civilians, patients, medical teams and medical equipment,” the IDF said in a statement Wednesday morning.

The IDF said that hundreds of terror suspects had so far been questioned at the hospital complex by field interrogators of the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 and the Shin Bet security agency.

In a video statement from the hospital on Wednesday, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said troops had detained between 250 and 300 terror operatives at the medical center during the ongoing operation.

He said another 300 suspects were also being questioned.

“We are talking about many [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] operatives, including battalion commanders, Hamas operatives, including political officials,” Hagari said.

“We will reach all the terrorists in this area. Our goal is to arrest the senior officials alive and bring them in for interrogation. Whoever fights against us will be killed,” he continued.

Photos circulating on social media on Wednesday showed IDF troops detaining suspected Hamas operatives at the hospital overnight.

Among those detained at Shifa and brought to Israel for further questioning was Mahmoud Qawasmeh, a senior Hamas operative involved in the planning of the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaer, and Naftali Fraenkel, the Shin Bet announced.

In a statement, the security agency said Qawasmeh was “one of the planners and financiers of the infrastructure that carried out the kidnapping and murder attack” in 2014.

From left to right: Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gil-ad Shaer, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, three Israeli teenagers who were seized and kiled by Palestinians on June 12, 2014 (photo credit: IDF/AP)

The Shin Bet said he had been exiled to the Gaza Strip as part of the 2011 Shalit deal, where he continued to advance attacks in the West Bank, including shooting attacks in recent years carried out by Hamas cells.

Hagari, in his statement, said the IDF was also providing food and water to the civilians sheltering at the hospital and brought in generators for Shifa’s ER.

He said the operation at Shifa would likely last several more days.

The IDF also released a video showing weapons recovered by troops at Shifa, and clips of the elite Duvdevan commando unit operating on the hospital’s premises.

Two Israeli soldiers have been killed in the operation at Shifa, and a senior Hamas commander was slain in an exchange of fire with troops seeking to detain him.

Israeli troops first entered the hospital early in the conflict, on November 5. The war was triggered on October 7 when some 3,000 terrorists stormed the border with Israel and unleashed an unprecedented attack on the country’s southern communities, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 253 hostages to Gaza, where more than half remain.

The IDF also said Wednesday it had struck a Hamas tunnel shaft in northern Gaza overnight. The site was identified after a rocket was fired toward the southern city of Sderot on Tuesday. It fell short and landed inside Gaza.

Also in northern Gaza, the IDF said it struck a six-man Hamas cell in the Jabaliya area.

In central Gaza, the Nahal Brigade continued to battle Hamas operatives over the past day, and in southern Gaza, the 98th Division was battling the terror group in the Khan Younis suburb of al-Qarara, the IDF said.

Also Wednesday, the IDF and Shin Bet announced that an airstrike in southern Gaza’s Rafah earlier in the week had killed senior officers in Hamas’s so-called Emergency Committee.

In the strike carried out by fighter jets on Monday, Sayyid Qutb Hashash, Osama Hamad Dhahir, and Hadi Abu al-Rous were killed, and Muhammad Awad al-Malalhi was apparently wounded, according to the IDF.

Hashash, Dhahir, and al-Malalhi were the heads of Hamas’s Emergency Committee in the north and east Rafah areas, and al-Rous was the operations officer of the Emergency Committee, the IDF said.

The committee is a Hamas body tasked with maintaining public order and civil control in the Strip’s municipalities.

The IDF said the officials were “responsible for organizing terror activity and communication with Hamas operatives on the ground” as well as aiding “the military wing of the terror organization to establish continued control.

“The senior officers were the emissaries of Hamas leadership in Rafah, concentrated Hamas’s activity in humanitarian zones and were responsible for coordination with Hamas operatives in the field,” it said.

The strike came after the IDF targeted Nidal al-Eid, the head of the Emergency Committee in Rafah last week, the military added.
An IDF handout from March 20, 2024, identifying senior Hamas operatives in in an airstrike in Rafah in the Gaza Strip (Israel Defense Forces)

More than a million Palestinians displaced by the five-month-old war between Israel and Hamas have been sheltering in Rafah, which abuts Gaza’s border with Egypt.

Israel says one-sixth of Hamas’s combat strength — four battalions of rifle- and rocket-wielding fighters — is in Rafah and must be crushed before the war can conclude. But the prospect of a spiraling civilian toll has raised alarm abroad.

With a new round of mediated talks underway in Qatar on a possible release of hostages, the White House said it would confer with Jerusalem before any troops or tanks move into Rafah.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said on Wednesday 104 Palestinians had been killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, bringing its official death toll since October 7 to 31,923.

These figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 13,000 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Agencies contributed to this report.

 

[Anastasis 23469]

Got 'em. Particularly graceful with the take of the last one.

 

[Anastasis 23469]

But you see, the correlation coefficient of the death ratios indicate....fucking ghouls. 

[Brian Fantana 6685]

Can't imagine why Palestinians might hate Israelis tbh

[Brian Fantana 6685]

Oh and in case anyone's confused, that's terrorism.

[totallynotabuttpirate 5398]

Got damnit you two, quit sucking each other off. 

[Anastasis 23469]

8 minutes ago, totallynotabuttpirate said:

Got damnit you two, quit sucking each other off. 

very normal response. 

[Thetexashammer 1062]

4 hours ago, Brian Fantana said:

Oh and in case anyone's confused, that's terrorism.

I can explain your multiple errors in drawing that conclusion. But I would like to give you a shot at figuring them out yourself.

[Frank Drebin 5668]

There is no way of knowing from the footage whether these are civilians or combatants (Hamas fighters do not wear uniforms).

[Anastasis 23469]

8 minutes ago, Frank Drebin said:

There is no way of knowing from the footage whether these are civilians or combatants (Hamas fighters do not wear uniforms).

It’s clear to anyone that watched the video that they are an immediate threat in need of droning. 

[Frank Drebin 5668]

1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

It’s clear to anyone that watched the video that they are an immediate threat in need of droning. 

None of us have any idea what they were doing immediately before the droning.  If they were combatants who had just engaged the IDF, would your opinion be different?

Also, what was the secondary explosion?

[Anastasis 23469]

Just now, Frank Drebin said:

None of us have any idea what they were doing immediately before the droning.

Sleep well. 

[Brian Fantana 6685]

3 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

I can explain your multiple errors in drawing that conclusion. But I would like to give you a shot at figuring them out yourself.

You want to just skip to the part where you get bodied and run away from the thread like you literally always do?

[Thetexashammer 1062]

19 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

You want to just skip to the part where you get bodied and run away from the thread like you literally always do?

There was discussion on earlier pages of this thread about how Hamas lies constantly. For example, the report where Israel supposedly bombed a hospital, but actually bombed a parking lot, and even then I don't think it ended being an Israeli bomb. The fake report was picked up by Reuters, NPR, NY Times, Washington Post etc. And of course it was all a lie. These are the same team of guys who save up women and chidren's bodies in the freezer, put them out of the street and then blow up a bomb and say Israel did it.

Now you post a video from them and say "See - TERRORISM". Do you not understand what you did wrong? 

We'll call this PROBLEM NUMBER ONE.

[JohnnyRage 1617]

United States proposes UN resolution for ceasefire, China and Russia put pee pee in our Coke.

[Anastasis 23469]

28 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

There was discussion on earlier pages of this thread about how Hamas lies constantly.

Replace Hamas with IDF and the statement is equally true. 

[Thetexashammer 1062]

16 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

You're an idiot. Just stop before you get embarrassed again. Or should I link to your CR posts on this subject again so you can run away sooner?

We have discussed, in this thread, examples of how civilians die in war. This an ordinary and normal part of war. It is expected. In ODS, half our casualties were friendly fire. I gave many examples of how the US targeted civilians, how schools were bombed, and there was no war crime, it was just war.

During war, bombs go astray. Soldiers might take a captive and decide to kill the unarmed captive because that guy killed his or her best friend. Controllers might receive incorrect coordinates. Intelligence can be wrong. There are a million reasons.

However, Israel is engaged in a moral and legal war of self defense. Our killing of civilians in WW2 didn't change the moral or legal argument. There is no conceivable way to frame this as terrorism. Terrorism is the opposite of a war of self defense.

We will call the PROBLEM NUMBER TWO.

My question is, do you even understand what I am saying?

[Anastasis 23469]

1 minute ago, Thetexashammer said:

During war, bombs go astray.

Smh. 

[Thetexashammer 1062]

1 hour ago, Brian Fantana said:

You want to just skip to the part where you get bodied and run away from the thread like you literally always do?

 

So no comment or disagreement on the substance of what I said. You posted a piece of Hamas propaganda and then described it in a completely inaccurate manner.

[Brian Fantana 6685]

24 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

We have discussed, in this thread, examples of how civilians die in war. This an ordinary and normal part of war. It is expected. In ODS, half our casualties were friendly fire. I gave many examples of how the US targeted civilians, how schools were bombed, and there was no war crime, it was just war.

During war, bombs go astray. Soldiers might take a captive and decide to kill the unarmed captive because that guy killed his or her best friend. Controllers might receive incorrect coordinates. Intelligence can be wrong. There are a million reasons.

However, Israel is engaged in a moral and legal war of self defense. Our killing of civilians in WW2 didn't change the moral or legal argument. There is no conceivable way to frame this as terrorism. Terrorism is the opposite of a war of self defense.

We will call the PROBLEM NUMBER TWO.

My question is, do you even understand what I am saying?

10 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

 

So no comment or disagreement on the substance of what I said. You posted a piece of Hamas propaganda and then described it in a completely inaccurate manner.

I understand what you're saying. You're wrong. I don't give a fuck about engaging you further. Suck my dick.

[HendersonHorns 85]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/poll-over-70-palestinians-still-maintain-hamas-correct-to-commit-oct-7-atrocities/

 

of course this is a Times of Israel article, so take it as you will. 
 

there will never be peace. 2 state, one state, no state.

 

how do you defeat an idea?  Imperial Japan is the only people I can think that got their identity smoked out to be a different people completely. 
 

if the situation was reversed, or if it was me in the Palestinians situation, I would vote the same way I imagine. 
 

I don’t know. 

[Brian Fantana 6685]

On the actual news front, this is very interesting to say the least:

Israel's Netanyahu says he told Blinken we will go into Rafah alone if needed | Reuters

Quote

JERUSALEM, March 22 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel remained determined to send troops into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering, and would do so without U.S. backing if necessary.

Netanyahu said in a statement he had told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that there was no way to defeat the Islamist movement Hamas without going into Rafah. "And I told him that I hope we will do it with the support of the U.S., but if we have to - we will do it alone," he said.

In my opinion, this would likely be a huge mistake on Israel's part. 

[Anastasis 23469]

58 minutes ago, HendersonHorns said:

how do you defeat an idea?

Excuse me sir, have you had the opportunity to review the latest General Atomics pitch deck? We've got a next gen solution for the elimination of ideas that we can mount and deliver on target (no strays, sir) right from the MQ-9 platform. 

[Brisketexan 105123]

12 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Got 'em. Particularly graceful with the take of the last one.

 

Okay, this is a good example of the bullshit information war, and how it's not reasonable to trust such statements from either camp.

Israel could just as easily published that video with a summary of "The IDF takes out four Hamas fighters who had just launched mortars at IDF forces" or some summary like that.

Four dudes dressed in black.  Walking from point A to point B.  Are they civilians?  Are they Hamas fighters?  Other than "the guy who tweeted this says they are one (or the other)," what's the evidence that I, the information consumer, am to rely upon to determine what actually happened there?

I'm not calling the tweet poster a liar.  I'm also not calling him a truth-teller.  I'm saying that in this information ecosystem, I have no basis to conclude one way or the other.  So, what is the OBJECTIVE evidence to tell us the nature of who these four people were?

If there's footage of them stashing their mortar setup and some RPGs before they walk away, then I'd be more comfortable with a conclusion that they are combatants.  If there's footage of them stacking up some food and general supplies that they had just dug out of the rubble, and now they're going back to look for more, I'd be more comfortable with a conclusion that they are non-combatants.

Truth is the first casualty of war, etc. etc. ad nauseum.   This particular video just caught my attention, because other than what the tweet characterizes it as, I have no idea what it shows other than 4 dudes getting blown up.  Which may be a good kill, or may be a war crime.  Beats the hell outta me.

[Frank Drebin 5668]

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Okay, this is a good example of the bullshit information war, and how it's not reasonable to trust such statements from either camp.

Israel could just as easily published that video with a summary of "The IDF takes out four Hamas fighters who had just launched mortars at IDF forces" or some summary like that.

Four dudes dressed in black.  Walking from point A to point B.  Are they civilians?  Are they Hamas fighters?  Other than "the guy who tweeted this says they are one (or the other)," what's the evidence that I, the information consumer, am to rely upon to determine what actually happened there?

I'm not calling the tweet poster a liar.  I'm also not calling him a truth-teller.  I'm saying that in this information ecosystem, I have no basis to conclude one way or the other.  So, what is the OBJECTIVE evidence to tell us the nature of who these four people were?

If there's footage of them stashing their mortar setup and some RPGs before they walk away, then I'd be more comfortable with a conclusion that they are combatants.  If there's footage of them stacking up some food and general supplies that they had just dug out of the rubble, and now they're going back to look for more, I'd be more comfortable with a conclusion that they are non-combatants.

Truth is the first casualty of war, etc. etc. ad nauseum.   This particular video just caught my attention, because other than what the tweet characterizes it as, I have no idea what it shows other than 4 dudes getting blown up.  Which may be a good kill, or may be a war crime.  Beats the hell outta me.

Basically what I posted.

Ani going to tell you to sleep well.

[Brian Fantana 6685]

30 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Okay, this is a good example of the bullshit information war, and how it's not reasonable to trust such statements from either camp.

Israel could just as easily published that video with a summary of "The IDF takes out four Hamas fighters who had just launched mortars at IDF forces" or some summary like that.

Four dudes dressed in black.  Walking from point A to point B.  Are they civilians?  Are they Hamas fighters?  Other than "the guy who tweeted this says they are one (or the other)," what's the evidence that I, the information consumer, am to rely upon to determine what actually happened there?

I'm not calling the tweet poster a liar.  I'm also not calling him a truth-teller.  I'm saying that in this information ecosystem, I have no basis to conclude one way or the other.  So, what is the OBJECTIVE evidence to tell us the nature of who these four people were?

If there's footage of them stashing their mortar setup and some RPGs before they walk away, then I'd be more comfortable with a conclusion that they are combatants.  If there's footage of them stacking up some food and general supplies that they had just dug out of the rubble, and now they're going back to look for more, I'd be more comfortable with a conclusion that they are non-combatants.

Truth is the first casualty of war, etc. etc. ad nauseum.   This particular video just caught my attention, because other than what the tweet characterizes it as, I have no idea what it shows other than 4 dudes getting blown up.  Which may be a good kill, or may be a war crime.  Beats the hell outta me.

I'd like to know how Al Jazeera obtained the video. If it was leaked, that's pretty interesting to me.

Drone footage raises questions about Israeli justification for deadly strike on Gaza journalists - The Washington Post

Perhaps this is a better example until more is known about the previously discussed footage. Journalism being a direct enemy of fascism and all.

[Macklemore 2876]

3 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

We have discussed, in this thread, examples of how civilians die in war. This an ordinary and normal part of war. It is expected. In ODS, half our casualties were friendly fire. I gave many examples of how the US targeted civilians, how schools were bombed, and there was no war crime, it was just war.

During war, bombs go astray. Soldiers might take a captive and decide to kill the unarmed captive because that guy killed his or her best friend. Controllers might receive incorrect coordinates. Intelligence can be wrong. There are a million reasons.

However, Israel is engaged in a moral and legal war of self defense. Our killing of civilians in WW2 didn't change the moral or legal argument. There is no conceivable way to frame this as terrorism. Terrorism is the opposite of a war of self defense.

We will call the PROBLEM NUMBER TWO.

My question is, do you even understand what I am saying?

Israel is fighting a moral and legal war. Are you fucking kidding. 30,000 civilian deaths and starving kids is moral in your eyes. Israel is a pariah state in the eyes of most of the world and would be alone except for the corrupt politicians in the pocket of the Israel lobby. 

[Anastasis 23469]

29 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Okay, this is a good example of the bullshit information war, and how it's not reasonable to trust such statements from either camp.

Applied consistently, this is a reasonable posture.

Remember this one?

 

 

 

Turns out it was a guy with a bike and a bag of flour. 

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/12/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news?smid=url-share#the-israeli-military-acknowledges-mistaking-a-bike-for-a-weapon-in-a-strike-but-stands-by-the-attack

 

 

 

Quote

 

The Israeli military acknowledges mistaking a bike for a weapon in a strike, but stands by the attack.

A Times analysis of drone footage published by the Israeli military on March 3 shows that the target of a strike was wheeling a bicycle. This video contains graphic imagery.CreditCredit...The New York Times, Source: Israel Defense Forces

The drone footage shows two people walking down a road in Gaza, when they are suddenly blasted by an Israeli strike, their forms disappearing in the flash of an explosion.

Text appearing over the video, which was released by the Israeli military, described the scene as showing the “elimination of terrorists.” One person is labeled as holding a rocket-propelled grenade.

The person actually held a bicycle, the military acknowledged on Monday in response to questions from The New York Times, saying in a statement that it regretted the mistake in the video. The Israel Defense Forces still defended the strike, asserting that the two people were combatants, without providing its evidence.

“When the video was published, the bicycle carried by one of them was mistakenly marked as a rocket launcher,” the military said in a statement to The New York Times. “The I.D.F. regrets the marking error.”

The acknowledgment came after The Times asked the Israel Defense Forces about a Times analysis of the footage suggesting that one of the people was holding a bicycle instead of a weapon. The mistake had been first identified by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, an advocacy group that focuses on documenting and calling attention to potential human rights violations in Gaza.

The brief video clip, which the military released on March 3, shows two people walking in southern Gaza City, one with the bicycle and the other with what appears to be a white sack of flour. An annotation on the video incorrectly identifies the bicycle as an “RPG” or rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The date of the strike is unknown.

The Times analysis found that the dimensions of the object in the video were consistent with a bicycle and, at one point, the front wheel of the bike can be seen slightly turning. The handlebars of the bike are also visible. Additionally, underneath the bicycle the ground is disturbed as its tires roll forward, an effect that would not have happened had the object been a shoulder-mounted weapon.

Despite the error in identifying the bicycle as a weapon, the I.D.F. stood by its claim that the people targeted were combatants.

“During the several days leading up to the documented strike, armed terrorists used the route shown in the video in order to transfer ammunition and attack I.D.F. forces,” the statement said. “The strike took place after real-time identification of the people as armed terrorists, based on information gathered ahead of the strike.”

The statement said that the decision-making process behind the strike would be referred to military investigators who examine possible cases of misconduct by Israeli forces. Some human rights groups say that the Israeli military lacks the capacity for independent accountability and rarely penalizes soldiers for harming Palestinians. Israeli officials have defended the military’s efforts to limit harm to civilians and have opened investigations into some cases.

Mohammed Qreiqea, a researcher for Euro-Med, told The Times that, according to witnesses he spoke with, the people were returning from collecting aid. One of the people in the strike died, while the other suffered a lung puncture but survived, he said. Their families did not immediately respond to phone calls, and the Israeli military did not describe the condition of the two people targeted.

The strike was conducted on a road just a block away from Salah al-Din street, the main north-south highway in the Gaza Strip.

As of Tuesday evening in Israel, the video with the incorrect annotation remained on the Israeli military’s website and social media accounts.

Aaron Byrd contributed video production.

— Aric Toler, Haley Willis and Neil Collier

 

NYT contributor that did the visual analysis.

 

 

 

[Brisketexan 105123]

NYT contributor that did the visual analysis.
[/url]  
 
 

I don’t recall seeing that particular video/story, but yeah, it’s a good example. Hell, it’s actually a good example of the other issue: the right intention, but mistaken target identification. Which happens in every significant armed conflict. We see more about the ones that the military misidentifies as combatants, but there are also cases where they ID them as non-combatants…which is a mistake that gets someone killed when those guys deploy a weapon.
War is a tough test…made more brutal by the fact that the grades given (life vs death) are final.

[Thetexashammer 1062]

59 minutes ago, Macklemore said:

Israel is fighting a moral and legal war. Are you fucking kidding. 30,000 civilian deaths and starving kids is moral in your eyes. Israel is a pariah state in the eyes of most of the world and would be alone except for the corrupt politicians in the pocket of the Israel lobby. 

So in your mind, Israel has the option to engage in a war of self defense, killing all the Hamas members, without killing the human shield Hamas interposed between their fighters and Israel's. 

Please share these tactics that nobody else has been able to identify. You will win a Nobel Peace Prize and I will be your biggest supporter.

Arrogance and ignorance go hand in hand.

Edited March 22 by Thetexashammer

[Macklemore 2876]

1 minute ago, Thetexashammer said:

So in your mind, Israel has the option to engage in a war of self defense, killing all the Hamas members, without killing the human shield Hamas interposed between their fighters and Israel's. 

Please share these tactics that nobody else has been able to identify. You will win a Nobel Peace Prize and I will be your biggest supporter.

Their genocidal campaign is completely disproportionate to the losses they suffered on October 7. Intentionally starving civilians is in no way legitimate and it’s sick that you think Israel is in the right. Israel has horribly overplayed their hand. The young generation revile Israel and that’s why you see all this bullshit recently trying to stifle dissent with this new censorship bill in South Dakota and the moves against TikTok.

[Anastasis 23469]

37 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I don’t recall seeing that particular video/story, but yeah, it’s a good example.

How about this one, from 2022? It was talked about quite a bit on the CR thread at the time. 

 

 

But an investigation by CNN offers new evidence — including two videos of the scene of the shooting — that there was no active combat, nor any Palestinian militants, near Abu Akleh in the moments leading up to her death. Videos obtained by CNN, corroborated by testimony from eight eyewitnesses, an audio forensic analyst and an explosive weapons expert, suggest that Abu Akleh was shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces.

 

 

 

Quote

 

Hell, it’s actually a good example of the other issue: the right intention, but mistaken target

 

 

I am not sure that we should make any assumption regarding the intention and its virtue, given both the stated and alluded to objectives of Israeli leadership. 

 

Edited March 22 by Anastasis

[Skipper 6135]

Did I make my over to the Cloak Room?  No?  Just checking.