According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), 85 percent of Palestinians in Gaza — 1.9 million people — have been internally displaced by the war […] displaced Gazans are reportedly living in squalid, overcrowded winter conditions with little clean water for drinking and washing.
Conditions are considerably worse now with the near-complete lack of fuel and electricity to operate sewage treatment equipment and hundreds of tons of garbage piling up daily in southern Gaza.
“Without enough latrines, open-air defecation is prevalent, increasing concerns of further spread of disease, particularly during rains and related flooding,” said a December 22 update from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
According to OCHA, it is projected that by February, the entire population of Gaza (approximately 2.2 million people) will experience severe food insecurity. This, in combination with a lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene, could lead to a completely dire health situation, said the World Health Organization.
Davidovitch and Calderon-Margalit were among a group of public health physicians who condemned a provocative statement by former head of the Israeli National Security Council Giora Eiland in a November 21 interview with the Hebrew-language financial publication Globes. Eiland suggested that humanitarian aid should be denied to Gaza so that epidemics would spread and lead Hamas to surrender more quickly.
Add biological warfare to the growing list of crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist entity in just the past couple months.
Separately, a journalist from Italy who spoke to The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity recounted that in 2009, right after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead against Hamas, he visited Gaza’s hospitals looking to interview wounded members of Fatah — the rival Palestinian faction that Hamas violently ousted from the coastal enclave in 2007.
“Eventually, I realized that they were all at home — Fatah members were too afraid to stay in the hospital, even if they were wounded,” the journalist said.
“Shifa is a very large compound. I got lost inside it, and at some point I ended up on an underground floor, and I found myself in front of two armed Hamas men in military attire, who told me to get out.”
"Eventually, I realized that they were all at home — Fatah members were too afraid to stay in the hospital, even if they were wounded,” the journalist said.
What is the implication? They would have been killed by Hamas in the hospital?
Which doesn’t mean that hospitals are terrorist hot spots, just that they are not safe in a deadly gang war. Mobsters also don’t feel safe from rivals in a hospital room.
I did this kind of work for a bit. I really do think this was more of a 9/11 slash Pearl Harbor kind of thing. It has that feel all over it. I think it was an epic and world (or at least region) changing fuckup.
I do not doubt the current government of Israel has used Hamas as a cat’s paw. I think the constant low level violence cost them little and produced huge political returns for the most far-right government in the history of the country. But I think this was unanticipated in scale and scope, and that both the attack and the response were far beyond what anyone - Israel and Hamas included - would have intended.
There will always be the Monday morning quarterbacks who will quite rightly point out that the information was just there. Looking backwards, we can reverse-solve the problem and say that we could have (or even did) know about Pearl Harbor, 9/11, or Oct 6. The truth is that we know shitloads of things, all the time. We have a constant flow of information, from all corners of the world. We even have constant fire hoses of information from our allies and even our own citizens.
The paradox of the panopticon is that when you’re looking everywhere, you’re really looking nowhere. There’s not ten thousand people in a bunker in North Dakota watching monitors. There’s a few thousand people in cities like Langley around the world who commute to work and get there around 9, and read through what happened yesterday and overnight, and write up summaries that themselves get summarized. If they have too many sources of information, it’s all processed algorithmically first, but it’s still a process of sorting the wheat from the chaff.
We need to fix that. We cannot surveil everything, even with our best and brightest working on technical solutions. But at the end of the day, these are human in the loop systems, and sometimes people fuck up. Sometimes they fuck up royally, and they lose the playoffs or they start a war.
I think it’s done at this point. The system fucked yo, and now a lot of people are going to die, afraid and in pain, because that’s what we do and we just don’t have it in us to stop doing that kind of thing quite yet. I quit the business and know others that did, but at the end of the day there’s still people who think other people need to be killed, and a second group of people who buy the argument and are good with doing it.
I think that the conspiracy theories will continue to fly as they tend to do, but this really just smells like a colossal fuckup in which 20-30k civilians are going to die, and it’s just a train that doesn’t have the ability to stop at this point.
I appreciate your well thought response, but I think the comparisons with 9/11 and Pearl Harbor are weak.
For 9/11, the USA had no incentive to let 9/11 happen. And it was a very novel attack that nobody was predicting. Conspiracy theories on 9/11 have no credibility for those reasons.
Pearl harbor is a little bit different. The USA was definitely pushing Japan and could have expected them to respond. But US leadership thought the Japanese wouldn’t want to drag the USA into the war through an obvious act of war. History is clear that US leadership could have expected it, but gambled on Japanese leadership making a different choice.
This attack is different. The only surprise is the extent of the success.
Israeli leadership has been baiting and nurturing Palestinian terrorism for decades in order to have support for land grabs and ethnic cleansing.
This time they just got burned harder than they expected.
Yo we spent like 4 trillion dollars on war. What the fuck do you mean there was no incentive? The billionaires accumulated like half of the countries GDP for 2 decades.
There’s a few thousand people in cities like Langley around the world who commute to work and get there around 9, and read through what happened yesterday
You're speaking as if Palantir etc didn't exist. In a world where every 10 year old in the West can get Chat GPT to help with homework, why would we believe that govt level networked surveillance is like something straight out of an old John Le Carré novel?
If only because no way Bibi would actually bomb his political career forever, and go down in history as a failure, for this. This current government is finished, they will put the keys on the table. The majority of Israel already wanted them out of office, especially Bibi, now? They’re responsible for the worst event in Israel’s existence, to its existence…
There are warnings all the time. The intelligence failed, the protections failed, and we paid the price.
The actual procedure is actually calling the suspect to stop, first in Hebrew, then in Arabic, if the suspect does not stop then the soldier loads a round in the chamber, next a warning shot to the air, and then shooting at the suspect’s legs, all the while calling for the suspect to stop. IDF has a tendency to… Expedite this procedure.
It doesn’t help that the ultra-religious, which makes up 99% of settlers, hate the IDF almost as much as Palestinians. The fact they weren’t throwing rocks at the troops surprised me the most.
The IDF represent an armed faction of the secular Jews of Israel. They will make a distinction of Israelis and Israelites, with the Orthodox being the latter. Before the Romans, there were the states of Israel (Tel Aviv) and Judea (Jerusalem), so that separation continues in their mind.
If their kids were conscripted, they fear the secular influences upon them and it is a driving factor in their opposition to conscription.
Surprisingly, there are factions of Orthodox who don’t believe the state of Israel should exist, at least until the Messiah returns. So they oppose the armed faction of the illegitimate state.
There is so much I can’t even begin to explain, and I’m sure some Israelis would even have corrections from what I learned over there. The Orthodox live a decent lifestyle which is 100% paid for by the Secular community, so they can spend their days studying and causing trouble for others. When you hear about armed groups shooting at Palestinians and burning down homes, you’re making a safe bet if you assume they’re Orthodox.
90 percent of war crimes and abuses that I hear about tend to be idf related. Whenever I hear about settlers, it’s normally about them stealing a house or occupying.
They always have, and there is an Orthodox unit with special rules. The community doesn’t like it though. As for birth rate, that’s strictly for the Secular side. Orthodox women are, to put it bluntly, giving birth as a job. This is part of the issue between them and the Secular Jews that fund their lifestyle. Who the hell wants to pay high taxes so someone else’s family of 10 can live without working?
But if not for Israel and their insanely good battlefield record/nukes, these settlers would be dead within a few days for sure. There are lots of Muslims who are really pissed off at Jews generally and the settlers specifically in the region.
Some of you seem to have trouble staying on topic. This was a discussion on why the Orthodox don’t like the IDF. If you’d like to discuss other issues, make a new post and I’ll see you there.
Without opening a discussion about the conflict itself or justifying anything in the article, I will say that as someone who’s been on the receiving end of an adult throwing 5-10 pounds rocks at full strength at them, I truly think you’re underestimating the deadly damage it can cause.
This isn’t a toddler throwing pebbles, such a rock hitting a human will break bones on contact and can absolutely kill of it hits someone’s head
Civilians walking around or driving in cars? No they don’t.
Even for the army with gear on, it will generally save their lives when hit in the right spot, but the stones will still cause injuries wherever they hit.
Oh I know rocks CAN be deadly. But so can lots of things. From the info in the article they were throwing rocks at cars, not IDF forces who are undoubtedly armoured to the teeth for greater stopping power than rocks.
Just seems strange to shoot someone for not obeying when they aren’t directly threatening you, but the article is a bit light on actual details. Being the source that it is, I don’t think they would hesitate to highlight the IDF were defending themselves if they actually were.
Using a deadly weapon in a manner that can cause death is much worse than possessing a deadly weapon. You think people in cars haven’t died from stone throwers before?
I don’t understand this logic. IDF literally shooting someone is somehow less of a “use of a deadly weapon in a manner that can cause death” than throwing a stone at a car?
I get that they deemed the person dangerous, but shooting someone for throwing a stone is a slippery slope to all sorts of things, eg. Kettled protesters who start throwing stones at riot police. Should the police just mow them all down because rocks can be deadly?
Me move the goalposts? What are you talking about? I’ve been maintaining the whole time that it’s potentially over the top to shoot someone with a gun when they are throwing rocks at cars, while admitting we don’t have all the facts om how it went down.
You on the other hand, keep coming back to me about different rock related dangers and vaguely alluding that shooting someone throwing rocks is fine whatever the scenario because rocks can be hand wavy amounts of dangerous.
You asked me if I knew the stats on rock throwing deaths. I don’t, but I assumed you would enlighten me seeing as you brought it up. Instead you accuse me of moving the goalposts when I’m still taking about the case in point.
Not sure who you were listening to, but I seem to remember from the beginning that one of Israel’s stated goals was to remove Hamas from power. The hostages getting released was a condition for any pauses or ceasefires.
Their true goal is to erase Palestine period. Hamas could be removed tomorrow, hostages freed and that wouldn’t stop them. They would say the new regime is “backed by Hamas” or “contains remnants of Hamas” or is “influenced by Hamas” and they’ll continue. Until the international community condemns them completely for this, they will continue to their true goal.
Presumably you’re going to talk about additional aid sent since Oct 7th.
My counter-argument would be that there are more inexpensive ways to kill Palestinians than using expensive munitions, that are well within Israeli capability to attempt.
Regardless, the point of the article is Israel doesn’t need us, so we should start backing out now. Just don’t expect that to magically stop Netanyahu, who can just switch to lower-tech warfighting.
We should start backing out but israel most definitely needs us to continue. Almost all of their aerial related gear is American and a boatload of mortar and tank shells too.
You can bet that israel isn’t fending off those Iranian drone barrages anymore when America stops supplying interceptor missiles either. Hezbollah would gain the upper hand in the north too.
There was an intercept article detailing that meantioned a leaked estimate that israel would run out of ammo in around ~5 months were they not being resupplied by NA.
So, they would change tactics. They’re doing things the way they are because they can and it is advantageous for them to do so. It does not mean it is absolutely required for them to do it this way, and nothing else could possibly work. People are capable of adaptation.
There are multiple options for accomplishing goals in life, and Netanyahu’s situation is no different. He is choosing the one he finds most beneficial to him, but others do exist. It’s not like Israel cannot borrow money or raise taxes or reduce expensive expenditures. Missile barrages will kill people, sure, but not destroy the country or topple the government.
All that said, we should not be assisting what is happening over there, I think we have a moral obligation to cease, and to force him into other methods. This would not save the Gazans in the short term, Israel would not collapse nor would the food blockade lift. But it might save the Gazans in the long term by further mounting greater and greater pressure on Netanyahu and his nationalistic nut jobs.
If you step back and try to take emotion out of your consideration, Israel’s actions don’t support that statement. Israel has enough military power to have completely erased Gaza months ago, without sending in a single ground troop, and there would have been absolutely nothing Hamas could do about it.
The situation as it stands right now is basically a textbook example of why the concept of war crimes exists. Taking hostages is a war crime, as is having your fighters not wear a distinct uniform. That second one is critical here, because when that law is broken, it turns civilians into targets.
Their true goal is to erase Palestine period. If you step back and try to take emotion out of your consideration, Israel’s actions don’t support that statement. Israel has enough military power to have completely erased Gaza months ago, without sending in a single ground troop, and there would have been absolutely nothing Hamas could do about it.
“An estimated 45,000 bombs were dropped during the first 89 days of conflict (Source: Gaza Media Office). It is 505 bombings a day, 21 bombings per hour.
Gaza is razed and emptied of its inhabitants by 5 months of relentless bombing. 85% of Gaza’s population – 1.7 million people – have been forced to flee bombing and shelling.
1.5 million have taken shelter in Rafah, South Gaza, that has normally a population of 250,000 inhabitants. “
^for a nice update, Israel is now murdering everyone in Rafa too.
It is crystal clear you don’t know what you are talking about, Israel has dropped a nearly unprecedented amount of bombs on a tiny area and for no other reason than to erase Palestinians from the landscape of their homes.
It takes a long time to murder an entire city, especially when the world is watching. Israel is doing it as absolutely fast as it can however.
At least 20 out of 22 hospitals identified by CNN in northern Gaza were damaged or destroyed in the first two months of Israel’s war against Hamas, from October 7 to December 7, according to a review of 45 satellite images and around 400 videos from the ground, as well as interviews with doctors, eyewitnesses and humanitarian organizations. Fourteen were directly hit, based on the evidence collected and verified by CNN and analyzed by experts.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on December 21 that no hospitals were functioning in northern Gaza and injured patients who were unable to be moved were “waiting to die.” According to the WHO, as of January 10, six hospitals in the north were partially functioning.
The International Eye Hospital, in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City, was damaged in early October. It was no longer standing by October 12, according to satellite imagery.
Balsam Hospital, in the west of Beit Hanoun, was reduced to rubble by November 3. Craters consistent with 2,000-pound bombs were visible near both medical facilities.
……
If you step back and try to take emotion out of your consideration
No I will not take my emotion out of my consideration, the difference between you and me is that my emotions are a warning light indicator for when my ideologies and beliefs are wrong and I have strayed too far off the course of love and empathy for others. My emotions connect me with the immense amount of suffering happening in the Palestinian genocide, even if it is just a little bit that connection categorically denies adopting a heinous lack of empathy or care for the Palestinians people as you have.
My emotions are what makes me a wholistic and intellectually consistent person and to be honest it kind of alarms me when people like you seem to have everything backwards like this and treat their emotions as superfluous entities to be discarded in favor of “cold hard rational analysis”.
Russia can end this war tomorrow. Any and all deaths are on them. Hell, if Russia would just stay out of their neighbours business, there would have been no civil war in the first place.
but then blame Palestinians for defending themselves - so kidnapping settlers is a war crime - but ethnically cleansing and bombing children isn’t?
so if I came into your house, squatted in your living room and locked you up in your closet - it’s your fault if you break out and attack me? most sane warcock guzzler ever…
nobody is cheering for the “good guys” - but when one side is actively displacing the other and your response is to just let it happen because of both sides being bad it loses the nuance of the conflict and the people just living there. especially when we’re on a thread about one side asking about a military ceasefire in exchange for the only leverage it has - while the other refuses and actively chooses to continue it’s current onslaught.
if you actually care about lives you wouldn’t argue pedantic points about which side commits war crimes but instead influence policy towards there being less war crimes in general. (maybe starting from the ones causing the most damage…)
because when that law is broken, it turns civilians into targets
Have you absolutely no shame? Or are you naïvely trying to sound authoritative? Unlawful combatants existing in an area, does not mean that civilians are greenlight for deliberate targeting.
Nor does it excuse the atrocious and callous 1:10,1:20,1:100 ‘acceptable collateral damage’ Hamas:Civilian ratio the IDF has self assigned and modified up and down based on international outcry.
for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians… in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander
I’m talking about what actually happens, not what is “right” or “allowable”. In a warzone, if your enemy looks like civilians, then civilians start looking like the enemy. That’s the reason why not wearing uniforms became a war crime in the first place. It drives up civilian casualties.
Yes, because in a war, you totally have plenty of time to stop and do a thorough investigation into which one of the five guys within sight just shot at you. Everyone will just pause everything while you figure out who you are supposed to shoot back at.
It was a metaphor to continue a conversation about why having your combatants looking like and mixed in with the civilian population is bad. We’re talking in the abstract, not literal. Keep up.
Or maybe, here’s a thought: You stop reacting capriciously, and asses the situation to make an informed decision for shoot/no-shoot. Retreat to safety and investigate. Israel likes to flout their ‘world class’ ISR and HUMINT capabilities and superior and accurate weapons, but then keeps making “tragic mistakes” that kill civilians, reporters, and aid workers. Hamas et al are definitely not respecting the laws of war, but that’s not license to turn neighborhoods into free-fire zones.
Of course that requires the forces involved respecting civilian life and showing restraint.
Statistics for civilian to combatant death are like 9-1 and 7-1, there’s having no choice and then there’s committing warcrimes out of convenience. Bibi says its juuust 2-1, so according to him the majority of Hamas combatants are women and children right?
You know, we’d have better and more accurate statistics about casualties on the ground if the IDF weren’t actively trying to keep a journalist/aid worker kill high score too. You don’t have to support Hamas or the Palestinians but please don’t try to justify the IDF’s actions.
I’m not justifying anything. I’m saying “Hamas is commiting war crimes and that is bad.” That is all I’m saying. There’s been no justifiable actions on either side for decades now.
Israel actions do support that. What else would happen if Israel completely erased Palestine in a few months? Do you think a single government would support them? The US would break ties overnight .
Genocide doesn’t mean instant or even quick eradication. It can by systematic and slow. Calculated, walking a fine line so they can call it something else. It can even be eugenics, stopping future generations.
There are people in Israel who want to iradicate Palestine, and are very open about it. Some Israeli gov officials are saying similar things. Anyone in the government with half a brain isn’t going to openly state they want to bomb a country out of existence. But we can look at the evidence and see that thie goal is to take that land for themselves and drive out the native population.
Yep. Reading up on the history of Hamas is interesting.
Apparently, they didn’t start targeting civilians until Israel did it first, lol. This is all pretty well documented for those who are willing to look.
I, personally, am ashamed at how little I knew about the affairs of the region until recently.
I always thought it should be kinda obvious, but the sheer racism against muslims makes people think of Hamas that way, no way their actions are justified, but almost all these radical extremist organizations are the direct consequence of years of brutal oppression from some other party
Kinda Similar to 9/11, the US is always painted as the good guys, but they were the only ones digging their own grave, again, it was terrible, but the US should have been held equally accountable, rather they actually doubled down
I want a ceasefire, Hamas wants a ceasefire, civilians on both sides want a ceasefire, civilians not involved want a ceasefire…
The only ones that don’t is Netanyahu and his far right Zionists…
They also love to start the clock on 10/7 and ignore Israel’s behavior for the last 70 years they’ve been around or that their country was formed by kicking people out of their ancestral home using violence.
Netanyahu wants total surrender, that’s not a ceasefire.
Technically Hamas is the government of Palestine, albeit no election for many years, what defines soldier vs terrorist if the terrorists are working for the government?
Israel doesn’t operate the Egypt side and Egypt wants to not be an active participant beyond maintaining the crossing. They especially don’t want to run a PoW camp.
Working with the IDF directly to transfer prisoners to them would probably start shit in Egypt Sisi doesn’t want to start as it would be seen as entering the war I guess. Iran backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are already doing War Crimes on Egyptian hospitals for their current stance.
Also allowing a war crime (using ambulances to transport fighters and/or arms) and defending it like this emboldens them to continue doing it to the detriment of civilians since they won’t face consequences.
I wonder where all the people from yesterday are now…for them it was damn sure Israel and if you made the mistake to publish this second opinion or made the suggestion to wait for other sources your were downvoted into oblivion…
But also with this new source I would wait until it is verified independently. I really like this approach from our german news station Tagesschau, where all news get a label until they are verified by different, independent sources. Makes fake news a lot less common.
damn those people for not reading your comment on a thread from yesterday that is now deleted, what are they even doing? they need to answer for themselves.
LOL and then everyone downvotes you, proving your point further. You’re right though, last night was a shitshow of people taking sides with almost no data and then downvoting anyone on the other team.
Not saying that there are vile people that are just rooting for their football team no matter what happens, but I did fine here offering the opinion that both statements were - at the time - equally not backed by evidence. I did mention, that the Guardian did mention that the size of explosion is more than usual for the weapons of the militants, but even that didn't necessearily mean that it was Israel.
If we're looking at this we should look at all neews criticial, especially if one supports a side over the other. It's too easy to fall for hopeful rumours and fantasies anyways. Seen too many people who just go on any unbacked claim by either side "aha! I knew it". It's a volatile and chaotic situation and a lot of bad actors just try to score points.
just to be very clear here: Even if this cruel and should be absolutely prevented, when the space around or the medical facility itself is used by the enemy forces to launch attacks or store ammunition or other equipment, it makes it a valid, military target. Attacking a hospital is not automatically a war crime as it is declared by many here…
I would go as far to say that using a hospital or civilian building as a base of operations to launch missiles from is the war crime in this scenario. If innocent people die from retaliation for that, the blood is on the hands of the people who chose to use civilians as meat shields and make them a target in the first place.
Edit: To be clear this isn’t a pro-Israel comment. Fuck them. I was just saying that if Hamas actually used hospitals as launch sites or military bases they would be the ones who are responsible. I don’t know for certain if they did or didn’t at this time.
Also quick reminder that Hamas rockets can't cause the scale of destruction that happened to the hospital. This is much more believable from an IDF airstrike.
At the very least, you should look at all evidence given to us before making a judgement.
Alone that you are saying "Hamas" rockets shows that you have not really dove into the topic. Because not even Israel claimed it was Hamas, but Islamic Jihad, which is a distinct group. Furthermore, they also had an argument regarding the increased damage.
I suggest you look at what we know first, before you make a judgement like "99.9%". This disinformation shit happens on both sides and it must be stopped. The situation doesn't get any clearer by people doing this.
Because not even Israel claimed it was Hamas, but Islamic Jihad, which is a distinct group.
Yeah, fair enough. Palestinian rockets in general don't have that kind of explosive capability, but I said Hamas because saying "Palestinians" incriminates too many people, which was probably not a smart decision now that I think about it.
Yeah, thanks for your insight. I don't fault you for being angry at Israel, I am too. But all the more reason to stick to the facts and don't criticize Israel on loose grounds. There are enough crimes we know they did, and it's less than productive to make something we don't know for sure is their fault into their fault only to have facts blown up in our faces.
Sticking as close a possible to the facts, consider information of all kinds, even if we don't like the people, it's important in this disinformation war raging on the topic. We can be better than the people who still repeat the false 40 beheaded babies.
I addressed this mysterious deleted tweet above, but TL;DR the guy is an influencer and that should tell you all you need to know about believing anything he says.
They don’t care that they were wrong. The next time Hamas claims Israel did something bad they will believe it instantly and only question whatever IDF says. It’s not about the truth but what they wished the truth was.
I’m skeptical of both claims, but so far the evidence leans far more on it being Israeli strike. Especially with their continuously changing narrativem
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