Israel vs Hamas (3 Viewers)

MT15 said:

I see what you are saying. But truth should matter, it needs to matter.

Click to expand...

yea, i think it matters, because we need to know who to blame.

I just meant in the political situiation, it's not going to matter. It has removed the ability of any Arab leaders to work with the US and Israel. At least in the short term.

I also think Joe should cancel his visit. I was already worried that him being there was too big of a risk. Iran or their surrogates could unleash a massive missile attack from Syria targeting him in revenge for Soleimani. They could overwhelm the Iron dome.

The blowback from the hospital attack only makes it more dangerous for the President of the US to be there.

I think this trip is more dangerous than his visit to Ukraine. Russia had more to lose. There are too many wildcards in that area that don't mind losing their life.

It doesn't look to me like whoever hit the hospital did so on purpose. Israel says that Islamic Jihad's rockets notoriously fall short. And if it was an IDF bomb or missile of some sort it wouldn't have been on purpose either. Tragic, telling of the horribleness of the conflict, but not on purpose.

Further analysis. Seems to confirm it was a Hamas/Islamic Jihad missile that broke apart in midair, with the larger piece tragically falling on the hospital.

Just saw the Jordanian rep to the UN speak, and he has blamed Israel for the hospital attack, and basically said that it should be treated as a war crime.

I don't think there is anyone in the region who is even trying to stay neutral at this point. Iran/Hezbollah has never had more room to try something than they do now.

Biden should not be heading over there right now.

samiam5211 said:

Just saw the Jordanian rep to the UN speak, and he has blamed Israel for the hospital attack, and basically said that it should be treated as a war crime.

I don't think there is anyone in the region who is even trying to stay neutral at this point. Iran/Hezbollah has never had more room to try something than they do now.

Biden should not be heading over there right now.

Click to expand...

Egypt was, and is the only country that matters. Jordan is already dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis.

J-DONK said:

Egypt was, and is the only country that matters. Jordan is already dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis.

Click to expand...

I know, but Jordan was our most loyal ally by far in the area. They were going to host the summit. It's a bad sign. Egypt isn't going to play ball if Jordan is out.

Full post:

Even if you have committed to a side – Israel's or the Palestinians' – you can and should stand back, every now and then, to look at the bigger picture.

There are reasons the West is continuously waging wars, or fuelling them. Think of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza – all of them just in the last two decades.

One is because there is *lots* of money to be made from war – or there is if you belong to the ruling class. There's money in the weapons and technology that make the fighting possible; money in the resources, largely hidden from view, that are being quietly fought over; and money in persuading you and me that we must tighten our belts to support the war effort.

But there's another reason.

If we weren't at war, if a new war wasn't always dominating the headlines and our passions, making us either outraged or fearful for the future, we would have the mental space and energy to think about other things.

Such as how badly our societies are run, how the wealth gap just keeps growing, how incompetent our leaders seem, and how little is being done to solve the biggest problems facing us, like ecological collapse.

If we weren't so convinced that we are the good guys, if we weren't so eager to cheerlead another war, we might start to understand that we are all the same, that we share one planet, that our future hangs on cooperation not conflagration.

Which is precisely why we will always be at war.

Good reference in regards to the beheaded babies story.

Hezbolla is calling for a day of rage tomorrow in response to Biden's visit.

It's irresponsible for Biden to be going there. It isn't possible to make it safe enough for the benefit to justify the risk.

We don't even have a speaker of the House.

samiam5211 said:

Hezbolla is calling for a day of rage tomorrow in response to Biden's visit.

It's irresponsible for Biden to be going there. It isn't possible to make it safe enough for the benefit to justify the risk.

We don't even have a speaker of the House.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I would at the very least delay the trip a few days and let this blow over before going there.

samiam5211 said:

Hezbolla is calling for a day of rage tomorrow in response to Biden's visit.

It's irresponsible for Biden to be going there. It isn't possible to make it safe enough for the benefit to justify the risk.

We don't even have a speaker of the House.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I think he should cancel this trip.

He’s already on the way. Hope everything goes okay.

samiam5211 said:

I wasn't saying something that was crazy or hard to believe.

I just included numbers that had been reported multiple times by almost every media organization.

I am not going to provide sources for things that should be common knowledge to anyone remotely keeping up with this topic.

Anyone who didn't know the numbers being reported of Palestinian dead should be questioning their sources of information.

There is a difference between questioning a source and denying a fact.

Click to expand...

I have no reason to doubt the numbers except for a healthy skepticism for what is being reported. I mean, the "40 beheaded babies" was reported and re-reported by a LOT of news outlets, even ones that are supposed to be really good. I'm extremely skeptical of that just due to my own internal "dubious" meter. 1000 babies killed in Gaza also sets that off, although 1000 "children" (being teenagers or less) doesn't because to me it is plausible if not probable.

But people are digging in their rhetorical heels on these issues -- again, many are taking the attitude "if you don't demonstrably agree with me 100%, then you're just as bad as the worst of the people I'm pissed off at" which is just ludicrous.

Sample of the idiocy I'm referring to:

MT15 said:

He’s already on the way. Hope everything goes okay.

Click to expand...

"The irreducible problem is that neither the Hamas-run alternative Palestinian health ministry nor the IDF has an unimpeachable record of honesty, and weighing their claims against one another is a pretty futile exercise without some reliable, independent corroboration..."

Amen

BullSheetBuddha said:

"The irreducible problem is that neither the Hamas-run alternative Palestinian health ministry nor the IDF has an unimpeachable record of honesty, and weighing their claims against one another is a pretty futile exercise without some reliable, independent corroboration..."

Amen

Click to expand...

Indeed.

MT15 said:

Further analysis. Seems to confirm it was a Hamas/Islamic Jihad missile that broke apart in midair, with the larger piece tragically falling on the hospital.

Click to expand...

So, based on the daylight photos coming out, two things are clear. One, the impact crater appears to line up with the idea that the rocket in the video did indeed break apart and landed outside the hospital. The impact crater is really small and a JDAM would have thrown all those cars 100+ feet and the crater would be far, far larger. For reference, the pic below is a JDAM strike crater.



Second, looking at the damage, their claim of 500 deaths is incredibly dubious. There would have to be a thousand people crammed in that small space in a hospital parking lot in the middle of the night, and you'd see a lot of blood everywhere.

Overall, this just feels like an accident that got turned into a false flag attack, likely to try and distract from the President's visit to Israel. I guess the question now is whether Palestinians and others in the region accept that revised assessment.

I think the hospital was just a spark, the fire is lit now.

I doubt there is going to be any calming the people down, because they aren't really just mad about the hospital, it was just the thing that sent them into the streets.

samiam5211 said:

I think the hospital was just a spark, the fire is lit now.

I doubt there is going to be any calming the people down, because they aren't really just mad about the hospital, it was just the thing that sent them into the streets.

Click to expand...

It was, but when the outside world realizes the thing that drove them was a false flag attack, they're (Hamas and supporters) gonna lose any sort of support they would have had otherwise.