Israel-Gaza war

[Silent Hunter]

Frankly, it says a lot about the lack of restraint that you have to have for WW2 to be the only modern conflict you can draw any comparison with. It's already surpassed Grozny, are we going to call that an example of a humane military operation?

https://twitter.com/triofrancos/status/1732394578836390007

I had a look at that article. The accuracy of an unguided Mark 82 bomb is 50% of bombs within 94.5m. That's not a good deal more accurate than the 270m of a Norden bombsight equipped B-17. No wonder the Americans are so keen to provide JDAM kits.

[pppolitics]

The Hamas fighters deserve to be put down like the animals they are. Israel once again goes out of its way to respect the rules of war (something that none of their enemies have EVER done) but it’s still not enough for the antisemites.

I doubt that you even believe that.

[pppolitics]

Fundamentally, I think there are three (not all mutually exclusive) possibilities to explain why Biden isn't breaking harder from Israel than he actually is.

1. He thinks American aid to Israel gives the US vitally-needed leverage to moderate Israel's conduct, to force Netanyahu to a peace table eventually, or to force him out of the PM's seat entirely.

2. He would like to distance himself from Israel but thinks that it would be politically suicidal, whether in terms of opinion within the Democratic Party or the views of Americans in general.

3. He genuinely thinks supporting Israel is the right thing to do morally-he may oppose certain actions of theirs but in general will be behind Israel to the end. There's lots of evidence that points to this.

I don't know which of these is more prominent in his decision-making (I do think they're probably all there to some extent), but a Biden policy on Israel led more by the first of these would probably end up looking pretty different from one guided by the third one, which is closest to what we have now. A first option-led policy would look more like either Bernie or Fetterman.

He already jumped off the cliff for Israel.

[GeneralMacArthur]

If you compare this photo to Abu Ghraib then you are unworthy of respect and deserve to never have your posts taken seriously ever again.

I would also take that to mean you are probably a teenager who wasn't alive when Abu Ghraib happened, or at least you're too young to remember it.

The problem with Abu Ghraib was that people were being tortured for kicks, not that the prisoners had their shirts off.  Jesus Christ you absolute idiots.  In the most famous photo from Abu Ghraib the prisoner isn't even naked at all.

Also I couldn't care less if a "journalist" was among those captured.  Everyone except the willfully delusional is by now well aware how many of these "journalists" are Hamas propagandists who are embedded with Hamas, openly support Hamas, join Hamas fighters in their operations, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're even fighting alongside them when they're not writing propaganda for them.  Hamas and their allies in the west love to slap labels on things to try and declare them sacrosanct under international law -- or at least in the court of public opinion -- and therefore safe from Israeli retaliation.  Some of you stupid easy marks just keep falling for it over and over.

[Silent Hunter]

We can question Israel massively, but let's not pretend Hamas are good guys.

[Reactionary Libertarian]

Fundamentally, I think there are three (not all mutually exclusive) possibilities to explain why Biden isn't breaking harder from Israel than he actually is.

1. He thinks American aid to Israel gives the US vitally-needed leverage to moderate Israel's conduct, to force Netanyahu to a peace table eventually, or to force him out of the PM's seat entirely.

2. He would like to distance himself from Israel but thinks that it would be politically suicidal, whether in terms of opinion within the Democratic Party or the views of Americans in general.

3. He genuinely thinks supporting Israel is the right thing to do morally-he may oppose certain actions of theirs but in general will be behind Israel to the end. There's lots of evidence that points to this.

I don't know which of these is more prominent in his decision-making (I do think they're probably all there to some extent), but a Biden policy on Israel led more by the first of these would probably end up looking pretty different from one guided by the third one, which is closest to what we have now. A first option-led policy would look more like either Bernie or Fetterman.

Fetterman seems to be Option 3 to me.

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

We can question Israel massively, but let's not pretend Hamas are good guys.

I am not under the impression that anyone here even remotely thinks that.

[Comrade Funk]

The Hamas fighters deserve to be put down like the animals they are. Israel once again goes out of its way to respect the rules of war (something that none of their enemies have EVER done) but it’s still not enough for the antisemites.

Pointing out Israeli war crimes isn't antisemitic.

[jaichind]

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

If you compare this photo to Abu Ghraib then you are unworthy of respect and deserve to never have your posts taken seriously ever again.

It would be pretty crazy to just take a single photo of stripped prisoners and say that's just like Abu Ghraib.

However, when you combine it with Israel's long history of using torture against prisoners the comparison actually falls right into place.

The problem with Abu Ghraib was that people were being tortured for kicks, not that the prisoners had their shirts off.  Jesus Christ you absolute idiots.  In the most famous photo from Abu Ghraib the prisoner isn't even naked at all.

This take is hotter than the core of the sun. So the problem wasn't the torture, it was that the torturers were having too much fun? If the perpetrators had all worn serious expressions in the leaked images and claimed that dragging naked prisoners with dog collars was some highly sophisticated technique to extract essential information then that would have made it fine?

Also I couldn't care less if a "journalist" was among those captured.  Everyone except the willfully delusional is by now well aware how many of these "journalists" are Hamas propagandists who are embedded with Hamas, openly support Hamas, join Hamas fighters in their operations, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're even fighting alongside them when they're not writing propaganda for them.  Hamas and their allies in the west love to slap labels on things to try and declare them sacrosanct under international law -- or at least in the court of public opinion -- and therefore safe from Israeli retaliation.  Some of you stupid easy marks just keep falling for it over and over.

Yes, the stupid marks are the people who have a problem with the Israelis assassinating and kidnapping civilians, not the ones who have been convinced that

* Journalists
* Hospitals
* Ambulances
* Schools
* UN workers
* Refugee camps

are all legitimate targets because the IDF says so. But here in reality assassinating a journalist, even a "propagandist", is a war crime.

https://twitter.com/hrw/status/1733137198508114174

The Hamas fighters deserve to be put down like the animals they are. Israel once again goes out of its way to respect the rules of war (something that none of their enemies have EVER done) but it’s still not enough for the antisemites.

Israelis demonstrating their humanity and respect for the rules of war:

"They are not human...They are subhumans" - the political officials

"there are no uninvolved civilians" - the soldiers

"There are no innocent civilians in Gaza” - the President

Israel has solved the "rules of war" problem with one weird trick: just call everyone you kill a "Hamas terrorist" and you're good to go! There may be literal mass graves but rest assured, these are humanitarian mass graves filled with Hamas journalists, Hamas doctors, Hamas aid workers and Hamas babies in incubators who were all rightly punished for their crimes.

[pppolitics]

We can question Israel massively, but let's not pretend Hamas are good guys.

Name a few users who do that.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The problem with Abu Ghraib was that people were being tortured for kicks, not that the prisoners had their shirts off.  Jesus Christ you absolute idiots.  In the most famous photo from Abu Ghraib the prisoner isn't even naked at all.

This take is hotter than the core of the sun. So the problem wasn't the torture, it was that the torturers were having too much fun?

Maybe the most egregious willful misinterpretation of a post I've ever seen in the history of Atlas and that's really, really saying something since we all know how much Atlasians love to pretend they think someone is saying something different from what they know that person actually said.

Yes obviously the torture of the detainees was absolutely deplorable and the main reason why Abu Ghraib was a catastrophic moral and public relations failure for the Bush Administration that continues to haunt America decades later.

I know you know that I believe this.  I know you don't actually believe that I would be ok with torture under any circumstances.  But you are pretending to believe otherwise so you can try and score some cheap drive-by shot on an online blog.  What are you doing with your life?  Do you actually think you're some big hero in this situation?

That said, let's not pretend that the impact of Abu Ghraib wasn't doubled by the fact that these were detainees who were being tortured just for fun, degraded and killed for the sadistic pleasure of their captors, that the pictures of Charles Graner, Lynndie English and Sabrina whatever-her-name-was smiling and giving the thumbs up next to tortured and degraded prisoners weren't just as damaging as the torture itself.  The implication was that American soldiers were sadistic freaks who tortured detainees not for information, not to prevent attacks and save lives as the administration claimed, but for fun, or just because they hated muslims.  And even today, 20 years later, with torture outlawed for 15 of those years, that is how many people in the middle east see us.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Tell me when you guys stop doing the same to Ukraine.

[NOVA Green]

There was a failed Israeli hostage rescue attempt today with conflicting accounts from Israeli and Hamas sources.

Details are murky, but I would not be surprised to see Hamas adopt a tactic of deliberately telegraphing "hostage" locations to draw in IDF forces for potential ambushes.

Israeli troops conducted at least one targeted raid in the Gaza Strip on Friday in a failed attempt to rescue hostages held by Hamas, both sides said, making competing claims about deaths and injuries inflicted.

The Israeli military and the military wing of Hamas gave differing accounts, leaving it unclear whether they were describing the same rescue attempt or two separate events.

Two Israeli soldiers were seriously wounded in a rescue mission that did not recover any hostages, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the military, told reporters.

“The forces raided a Hamas site and eliminated terrorists who had taken part in the abduction and captivity of hostages,” he said.

In a statement, Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, described discovering an Israeli team trying to make its way undetected to free an Israeli soldier. In the resulting battle, the statement said, “many soldiers were wounded,” the hostage was killed, and an Israeli rifle and radio were recovered.

“As a result, Israeli warplanes targeted the whole area with heavy airstrikes in order to let the special force find a way out,” the statement said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/world/middleeast/israel-hostage-rescue-hamas.html

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

The problem with Abu Ghraib was that people were being tortured for kicks, not that the prisoners had their shirts off.  Jesus Christ you absolute idiots.  In the most famous photo from Abu Ghraib the prisoner isn't even naked at all.

This take is hotter than the core of the sun. So the problem wasn't the torture, it was that the torturers were having too much fun?

Maybe the most egregious willful misinterpretation of a post I've ever seen in the history of Atlas and that's really, really saying something since we all know how much Atlasians love to pretend they think someone is saying something different from what they know that person actually said.

Yes obviously the torture of the detainees was absolutely deplorable and the main reason why Abu Ghraib was a catastrophic moral and public relations failure for the Bush Administration that continues to haunt America decades later.

I know you know that I believe this.  I know you don't actually believe that I would be ok with torture under any circumstances.  But you are pretending to believe otherwise so you can try and score some cheap drive-by shot on an online blog.  What are you doing with your life?  Do you actually think you're some big hero in this situation?

You aren't ok with torture under any circumstances but you were just defending the verified torture-users abducting civilians and stripping them under the premise that the journalists and UN aid workers were actually secret Hamas terrorists who totally deserve what they get and that we're suckers for not automatically trusting the torturers. You'll have to forgive me for making such a terrible mistake. Does that mean you denounce Israel's use of torture?

That said, let's not pretend that the impact of Abu Ghraib wasn't doubled by the fact that these were detainees who were being tortured just for fun, degraded and killed for the sadistic pleasure of their captors, that the pictures of Charles Graner, Lynndie English and Sabrina whatever-her-name-was smiling and giving the thumbs up next to tortured and degraded prisoners weren't just as damaging as the torture itself.  The implication was that American soldiers were sadistic freaks who tortured detainees not for information, not to prevent attacks and save lives as the administration claimed, but for fun, or just because they hated muslims.  And even today, 20 years later, with torture outlawed for 15 of those years, that is how many people in the middle east see us.

See, here's my problem with you (and half the Israel defenders ITT for that matter): when people talk about verified, objective war crimes committed by Israeli security services the topic somehow always shifts to the unproveable mental state of the perpetrators. There's no disputing that Israel has used torture for decades against prisoners, even against children, so instead the discussion shifts to whether the torturers had evil in their hearts and took joy in the act of torture as if that's the core of the issue.

It's not even like there isn't evidence of Israeli torturers taking joy in their work. There was video from about a month ago floating around where they laughed as they forced a naked prisoner to piss himself and plenty of other blatant examples of sadism. Israeli officials have openly referred to Palestinians as subhuman, that there are no civilians and have acted accordingly. We don't need pictures of the torturers grinning, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence is already damning.

Tell me when you guys stop doing the same to Ukraine.

I've always denounced Putin as a war criminal.

Yet strangely people who were so brave when it came to denouncing Russian war crimes are mysteriously absent when the Israelis commit the exact same crimes. Whether it's deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, assassinating civilians, torturing prisoners or putting out genocidal rhetoric, so many of the people who were so quick to demand Putin be put in front of the ICC for genocide have nothing to say when the IDF kills 20x more kids in two months than the Russian Army killed in two years.

Russians who denounced Putin from the start are expected to bear the full cost of sanctions while the idea of imposing comparable sanctions on Israel is totally unthinkable. The comparison between Ukraine and Gaza only exposes that the standard of international law applied to most of the world is never applied consistently to American allies.

Here's a crazy idea: how about we all denounce torture, ethnic cleansing and other war crimes, and we do it consistently instead of only when the regime in question is anti-American

[Meclazine for Israel]

Israel says IDF needs two months to complete stage 1 of its war in Gaza.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-needs-about-2-more-months-in-gaza-to-wrap-up-1st-stage-of-war-israel-believes/


Troops of the 98th Division operate in southern Gaza's Khan Younis, in a handout photo released December 6, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

The Israeli military needs another three to four weeks to complete its current offensive in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis and a similar amount of time after that to wrap up the first stage of the war against Hamas, according to a senior Israeli defense official.


Troops of the Nahal Brigade are seen operating in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya, December 6, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

[CumbrianLefty]

I doubt if the US or other allies will be happy with a blank cheque for two more months.

Indeed, there is surely going to be pressure for a pause over the Christmas period?

[Silent Hunter]

We seem to have so far avoided any mass starvation or disease outbreaks. Hopefully that remains the same, it's bad enough without them.

Edit: Spoke too soon on that front - WFP is warning that half the population is starving now.

[Hnv1]

I doubt if the US or other allies will be happy with a blank cheque for two more months.

Indeed, there is surely going to be pressure for a pause over the Christmas period?

As I see it, Israel will be "coerced" into another pause with a new hostage release deal after it finishes off both Gaza City and KY. Israel will agree behind the scenes. During this pause, the Americans backed the Saudis and Egyptians will lay out some plan for a more prolonged cease-fire. At this point Bibi publicly refuses and calls for a general elections

[Angel of Death]

At this point Bibi publicly refuses and calls for a general elections

Am I missing something here? Why in all that is holy would he finally decide to give up his power voluntarily after desperately clinging on to it for so long?

[Hnv1]

At this point Bibi publicly refuses and calls for a general elections

Am I missing something here? Why in all that is holy would he finally decide to give up his power voluntarily after desperately clinging on to it for so long?

A/ he has no choice. There will be a wide call to go for elections, once the war ends his coalition will dissolve.
B/ Given (A), the best he can hope for is a campaign where he presents Gantz as the person who will create a Palestinian state and himself as the only person who can stop it.

[Blue3]

You know they're mostly Hamas... how?

And you justify them sitting naked and blindfolded in the desert, after being searched... because?

They're not naked. Look closely and you can see their skivvies.

And they're mostly Hamas because that's...who Israel is fighting in Gaza. Are you under the impression that they're going around Gaza and taking random prisoners for giggles? That seems like a spectacularly bad waste of resources during an ongoing war.

Naked refers to people in underwear too... they're not protected by the elements.

And some in Israel have defined every male about the age of 14 as Hamas. They said all who remain in orders they told to evacuate would be treated as enemies... despite all the logistical and humanitarian issues with that. Come on, you know there's no chance all of these are Hamas. We've been watching how Israel is conducting themselves. You seem divorced from the reality.

[Vosem]

I doubt if the US or other allies will be happy with a blank cheque for two more months.

Indeed, there is surely going to be pressure for a pause over the Christmas period?

Again, the specter of Congress reaching a budget agreement which gives Israel zillions in military aid while the State Department is trying to pressure them to fight differently rears its head, and remains darkly funny.

https://twitter.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/1733547745518977355

Good; there is no reason that the war should remain confined to Gaza. In a just world Qatar would be the primary focus rather than North Yemen, but striking Qatar -- whose regime could in principle try to retaliate by taking American servicemen hostage -- is something that will probably actually have to wait for a Republican Administration. Trump was in favor of it as far back as 2017; in fact this issue is the reason that Rex Tillerson was replaced by Mike Pompeo. Trump and MBS being who they are this didn't end up happening, but presumably there'll be much more pressure and momentum for it after this happened.

A war against Qatar would also result in the destruction of organizations funded by the Qatari government, including many "human rights organizations" that spread noxious ideologies in the West. I don't think bringing down the House of Thani would be a panacea for this stuff by any means, but it would certainly help.

[🇺🇦 Purple 🦄 Unicorn 🇮🇱]

The Hamas fighters deserve to be put down like the animals they are. Israel once again goes out of its way to respect the rules of war (something that none of their enemies have EVER done) but it’s still not enough for the antisemites.

👏👏👏

[Meclazine for Israel]

Hamas beating up Palestinians and taking their aid.

IDF Drone Footage

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0pRuWqtGCr/

The video above is purported to show the moment Hamas intercept a Palestinian with international aid relief.