Discussion for the Israel-Hamas War: A thread in the Pit

[Babale]

@Banquet_Bear

I think it takes a level of sickness to post the sort of things you’ve been posting lately, to be honest.

I think it takes an enormous level of sickness to post something like this:

@Banquet_Bear

One would think that after nine months of war, holding the director of Al Shifa hospital in custody for six of those months, having raided and occupied almost all of the hospitals at least once, even destroying some of them, that Israel would have dossiers overflowing with evidence to support this assertion.

But they don’t.

You’ve got a handful of photos and video of empty tunnels. A few obviously staged video of finding weapons in baby incubators. And thats about it.

Hamas didn’t put their HQ under a hospital. And the siege, raids and desctruction of hospitals by the IDF are warcrimes.

You’re unhinged, deluded, and beyond all hope. It would be one thing if you just disagreed with Israel’s assessment that attacking the Hamas base was worth damaging the hospital; but you categorically deny that Hamas does anything of the sort.

Sick fucks like you are why Hamas does what it does. Because you gobble up the casualties their strategy create and turn all your blame against Israel.

[Banquet_Bear]

@Babale

Again, that has nothing to do with my objection here.

…I don’t care about your objection. I care about your conclusion. And I think that your conclusion is rubbish. I don’t think there was deliberate inflation of the numbers at all. And I think if there was any evidence of that the people that are pouring over the raw numbers would have said so by now.

@Babale

OK, bud. Sure it is.

We all know it. And now you agree.

@Babale

But it requires the military defeat of Hamas first.

What does this mean?

@Babale

The fact that you keep citing +972 magazine is hillarious.

The fact that this is the sum-total of your rebuttal, is indeed hillarious.

[Babale]

@Banquet_Bear

@Babale

OK, bud. Sure it is.

We all know it. And now you agree.

To be clear, that’s sarcasm, and if you think Israel is going to annex Gaza, you’re clearly not a serious person.

[Banquet_Bear]

@Babale

Israel’s assessment that attacking the Hamas base was worth damaging the hospital

…can you share with us Israel’s assessment of Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital? Why was it attacked? What was it occupied? Why was it irreparably damaged? How about Al Nassr Pediatric? Dar Essalam? Beit Hanoun? Balsam?

I’ve got much longer list. But this will do for starters.

[WalterBishop]

@Banquet_Bear

But secondly, and I know you are going to have trouble acknowledging this, but because Israel fucked up. There were intelligence failure. And communication failures. And strategic and tactical failures. Israel could easily leave Gaza right now, fix all of the things that went wrong on October the 7th, and never ever worry about another border incursion like the last one ever again, because they have total air, land and sea superiority over Gaza, they have complete control of the borders.

This is a very long thread with lots of contributors, so apologies if I’ve got this wrong, but isn’t this border superiority one of the things you’re objecting to on the grounds that it made Gaza an ‘open-air prison’ even before 10/7?

[MrDibble]

Border security on the Israel/Palestine borders =/= complete blockade of all Palestine’s borders.

[Banquet_Bear]

…from the latest flash updates:

• Patients and medical staff evacuated three hospitals in one week in fear of intensified military activities that could render the health facilities non-functional or inaccessible; only 13 out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are now partially functional.

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - occupied...

So it wasn’t just one hospital that evacuated. It was three. There is a chilling effect at play here. People know what will happen if a hospital gets raided. People get killed. People disappear. Equipment gets destroyed. People can’t afford to hang around any more. Its get out while you can.

On 7 and 8 July, the Israeli military instructed tens of thousands of people residing in 19 blocs in Gaza city to immediately evacuate.

…

The two directly affected areas encompass 13 health facilities that were recently functional, including two hospitals, two primary healthcare centres and nine medical points. In addition, four hospitals are located in close proximity to the evacuation zones. As of 8 July, two of the six hospitals were evacuated, namely, Al Ahli Baptist Hospital and the Patients Friends Association Hospital in fear of intensified military activities that would render them inaccessible or non-functional, and critical patients were transferred to the Indonesian and Kamal Adwan Hospitals in North Gaza governorate. Considering that the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis was hastily evacuated on 2 July following the issuance of an evacuation order for areas in eastern Khan Younis, three hospitals have become non-functional since early July, leaving only 13 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip partially functional at present; these include four in Gaza governorate, three in North Gaza, three in Khan Younis, and three in Deir al Balah.

• Between the afternoons of 4 and 8 July, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 182 Palestinians were killed and 458 were injured. Between 7 October 2023 and 8 July 2024, at least 38,193 Palestinians were killed and 87,903 were injured in Gaza, according to MoH in Gaza.

• Between 4 and 6 July, six journalists, including a female journalist, were reportedly killed in three incidents in Gaza city and Deir al Balah, some along with their family members. As of 6 July, the Government Media Office (GMO) reported that the number of journalists killed since the beginning of the war has increased to 158 journalists.

Between the afternoons of 5 and 8 July, one Israeli soldier was killed in Gaza, according to the Israeli military.

I reported 5 journalists in 12 hours the other day. It was 6 in 48. Six times as many Palestinian journalists were killed in that timeframe than IDF soldiers. Over 150 journalists in total compared to 324 IDF soldiers.

With nine out of every 10 people estimated to be displaced in Gaza, new waves of displacement are mostly affecting people who have already been displaced multiple times, only to find themselves forced to flee again under shelling.

9 out of 10. Nearly 2 million people. Almost the entire population. More reporting and context available here:

Almost entire population in Gaza now displaced amid fresh Israeli offensive |...

Hospitals that remain partially functional throughout the Strip are struggling to maintain vital operations amid chronic fuel shortages. On 7 July, the Head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hosam Abu Safia, reported that the lack of fuel has forced the hospital to suspend dialysis services, which has deprived 21 kidney patients of life-saving treatment, and is placing the lives of newborns in the neonatal department and critical patients in the intensive care unit at risk.

…

The MSF nurse activity manager described the situation as nearing breaking point, with patients in the corridors, lying on blankets and sitting on stairs, and health workers being forced to place nails on the walls to hang the intravenous fluid and medication bags that patients need. MSF also warned that the Nasser Medical Complex is the main site on which field hospitals rely to sterilize their equipment and, should the facility be left without electricity, several field hospitals would also cease functioning.

Everytime I think the situation in Gaza couldn’t get any more dire, I read another flash update and find out that everything is just incrementally worse.

[Czarcasm]

Four schools in the last four days, and dozens killed. “The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday it had struck a Hamas fighter who had taken part in the Oct. 7 attack using precise munition. It said it was looking into reports that civilians were harmed near the Al-Awda school, which it noted was “near the location of the strike.””
Way to underplay a slaughter.
Dozens killed as ‘4 schools in the last 4 days’ struck in Gaza (nbcnews.com)

[Banquet_Bear]

…the International Court of Justice report on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Comprehensive and damning.

186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf

From the Amnesty International summary:

“The international community, and in particular Israel’s allies, must now take unequivocal action to ensure Israel ends its unlawful occupation, starting with the immediate halting of the expansion of Israeli settlements and reversing the annexation of Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and dismantling its brutal system of apartheid against Palestinians. Ending the occupation is crucial in order to stop the recurrent pattern of human rights violations across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“Israel must withdraw its forces from all parts of the occupied territories, including the Gaza Strip and remove all settlers from the West Bank, including from the illegally annexed East Jerusalem. Israel must also relinquish control over all aspects of Palestinians’ lives, as well as ceding control of borders, natural resources, air space and territorial waters of the occupied territory. This means lifting the illegal blockade of Gaza and allowing Palestinians to travel freely between Gaza and the West Bank.”

ICJ opinion on Israeli occupation is vindication of Palestinians’ rights

Israel of course, will ignore this. What will be interesting though is how the international community will react.

[Banquet_Bear]

@politico

In the operating room, we examined Juri from head to toe. This beautiful, meek little girl was missing two inches of her left femur along with most of the muscle and skin on the back of her thigh. Both of her buttocks were flayed open, cutting so deeply through flesh that the lowest bones in her pelvis were exposed. As we swept our hands through this topography of cruelty, maggots fell in clumps onto the operating room table.

“Jesus Christ,” Feroze muttered as we washed the larvae into a bucket, “she’s just a fucking kid.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/19/gaza-hospitals-surgeons-00167697

…a quote from an article in Politico, from American surgeons who volunteered to work in Gaza. Some more:

Salah al-Din Road is the main north-south highway of the Gaza Strip. To cross it requires relying on a remarkably ineffective process called “deconfliction.” The fact that “deconfliction” is so unreliable explains why “Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world to be an aid worker,” according to the International Rescue Committee. It works something like this: COGAT — the office of Israel’s Defense Ministry that coordinates between the Israeli armed forces and humanitarian organizations — agrees it will not attack traffic on a specific route for a specified period.

This coordination is done through — what else? — a smartphone app. When the road turns green on the app you have 15 minutes to get on and off the specified route, and you can only request deconfliction of a particular route every three hours. After a 40-minute wait, we got the go-ahead and our drivers floored it, dodging foot and donkey traffic all along the road.

We first noticed the overcrowding: 1,500 people were admitted to a 220-bed hospital. Rooms meant to hold four patients typically had 10 to 12, and patients were housed in every possible space: the radiology department, the common areas, everywhere. Next, we noticed the 15,000 people sheltering on the hospital grounds and inside the hospital — lining and even blocking the hallways, throughout the wards, in the bathrooms and closets, on the stairs, even in the sterile processing and food preparation facilities and the operating rooms themselves. The hospital itself was a displaced persons camp.

Then there were the odors: The intensive care units smelled like rot and death; the corridors stank like a kitchen filled with filth; the hospital grounds smelled of sewage and spent explosives. Only the operating rooms were relatively clean.

It’s what we imagine the first weeks of a zombie apocalypse would look — and smell — like.

While touring the hospital we walked through one of the ICUs and found multiple preteens admitted with gunshot wounds to the head. One might argue that a child could have been injured unintentionally in an explosion, or perhaps even forgotten when Israel invaded a children’s hospital and reportedly left infants to die in a pediatric intensive care unit.

Gunshot wounds to the head are an entirely different matter.

We started seeing a series of children, preteens mostly, who’d been shot in the head. They’d go on to slowly die, only to be replaced by new victims who’d also been shot in the head, and who would also go on to slowly die. Their families told us one of two stories: the children were playing inside when they were shot by Israeli forces, or they were playing in the street when they were shot by Israeli forces.

Many staff had no sense of urgency and often no empathy, even for children. We were initially taken aback by this, But we quickly learned that our Palestinian health care colleagues were among the most traumatized people in the Strip. Like all Palestinians in Gaza, they had lost family members and their homes. Indeed, almost all of them now lived in and around the hospital with their surviving family. Although they all continued working a full schedule, they had not been paid since October 7; health sector salaries are paid by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and are always cut off during Israeli attacks.

The whole article is worth a read. These snippets don’t really even touch the most disturbing stuff. But it needs to be said. Most of the people working in the hospitals in Gaza are not getting paid. Not only has the health sector been under constant attack. Not only are they working in the most harrowing conditions in the world. But they are doing it for free. But one last thing: a footnote:

On July 2 the Israel Defense Forces ordered Gaza European Hospital and the surrounding territory to be evacuated. European Hospital is now empty, and has been looted by desperate people trying to survive.

From the latest Gaza Flash update:

@Flash Update

At least three mass casualty events took place on 16 and 17 July, two of them in schools hosting internally displaced persons. In total, eight schools have been hit in the space of ten days, reports UNRWA.

…

Between the afternoons of 15 and 18 July, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 184 Palestinians were killed and 362 were injured. Between 7 October 2023 and 18 July 2024, at least 38,848 Palestinians were killed and 89,459 were injured, according to MoH in Gaza. Casualty figures covering the period until the afternoon of 19 July are not available as of the time of reporting.

…

Between the afternoons of 15 and 19 July, no Israeli soldiers were reported killed in Gaza, according to the Israeli military.

On 18 July, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stressed that repeated mass casualty events “have stretched to breaking point” the response capacity of the 60-bed Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah, which is nearly at full capacity.

…

Conditions are similarly critical at other health facilities in central Gaza. Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) reports that, so far in July, its teams at the MSF clinic and Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and at Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah have responded to four mass casualty incidents, most recently on 16 July. The pediatric emergency department at Nasser hospital, which is already overstretched and under-resourced, provided consultations to a daily average of more than 300 children between 29 June and 5 July, and children admitted for inpatient care are being forced to share beds, MSF added. Visiting Nasser recently, UNFPA reported seeing “babies, children, newborns and mothers on mattresses in the corridor” due to the lack of sufficient capacity. Pre-term deliveries and maternal complications, including eclampsia, haemorrhage and sepsis, have been rising, according to MSF, as pregnant women struggle to access health-care facilities, being forced to navigate unsafe routes to reach hospitals amid active conflict. After giving birth, they are rapidly discharged, returning to tents and shelters where they and their newborns face manifold health risks.

Much more at the link.

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - occupied...

And now, the latest threat to the people of Gaza: polio.

@The Guardian

The poliovirus has been found in sewage samples from Gaza putting thousands of people living in crowded displaced persons’ camps at risk of contracting the highly infectious disease that can cause deformities and paralysis.

The Gaza ministry said tests carried out with the UN children’s agency, Unicef, “showed the presence of poliovirus” in the territory that has endured a devastating Israeli military offensive since the 7 October Hamas attacks.

…

It highlighted “severe overcrowding” and “scarce water” that is becoming contaminated with sewage and the accumulation of rubbish. The ministry said Israel’s refusal to let hygiene supplies into Gaza “creates a suitable environment for the spread of different diseases”.

…

Authorities in the central Gaza town of Deir el-Balah said this week that wastewater treatment stations had been shut down because of a lack of fuel. They warned that roads “will be flooded by wastewater” and that 700,000 civilians, most of them displaced, would be put at risk of catching sewage-borne diseases.

Highly infectious poliovirus found in Gaza sewage samples

[Czarcasm]

If you target the doctors and nurses, along with the hospitals themselves, it is twice as efficient! Pure genius!

Israeli military is destroying hospitals and targeting medical staff in Gaza,...

[MrDibble]

Or just racially profile doctors before they can help:

Israel is blocking physicians with Palestinian heritage from entering Gaza | CNN

[Babale]

Hamas defenders on this site: “the protestors don’t hate Jews, they’re just opposed to Israel’s colonialist policies. These charges of blood libel are ridiculous!”

Meanwhile, the protestors:

That is a grotesque, horned () Netantyahu, his mouth stained with the blood of Palestinian children he apparently drinks ( ).

They did a pretty good job hitting on all of your classic antisemitic tropes. Maybe they could have given him a bag overflowing with money to really knock it out of the park. Horns on Jews are a bit medieval, so that fits right in with the ideology these morons support.

Thankfully, while progressive spaces have unfortunately found no shortage of braindead idiots ready to defend this sort of thing, our new presidential candidate is a voice for sanity, and Kamala wasted no time in calling out these disgusting fuckers.

Yesterday, at Union Station in Washington, D.C. we saw despicable acts by unpatriotic protestors and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric.

I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews. Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation.

I condemn the burning of the American flag. That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way.

I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: Antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.

I expect the Chinese and Russian provocateurs 100% genuine Americansky youths to start blasting her on Tik Tok for her ‘genocide support’ at any moment.

[puzzlegal]

There are a lot of protestors. Yes, some hate Jews. Others ARE Jews. I got an email from ARZA today, saying (in part)

Yesterday, I was proud to represent ARZA and the URJ alongside a group of Israelis, hostage families, and American Jews to raise our voices in protest over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s repeated failure to bring about a hostage deal and his insistence on an amorphous slogan of “total victory.”
…
We came because time is of the essence and the hostages might not be able to survive much longer. We came because Netanyahu has prioritized his political survival and the preservation of his coalition over the release of the hostages, and he has capitulated to the ultra-Orthodox and the messianic fanatics who are bent on advancing their sectoral agenda – which many Israelis feel is driving the country into a downward spiral.
…
There’s no question that Hamas is the guilty party. They perpetrated a massacre. They committed mass acts of sexual violence. They kidnapped babies and grandmothers. But as Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Some are guilty, and all are responsible.” And the Prime Minister bears responsibility for what happens next.

The author was protesting Netanyahu’s address to Congress.

[puzzlegal]

I have friends who supported the pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses. (Supported as in, spent time in them before the university tried to shut them down, and then brought food to the protestors willing to risk being thrown out of school.) They aren’t slavering anti-semites. They are good people who see massive violence against the innocent, violence that is supported by their government and their school, and are moved to protest that violence.

[Babale]

@puzzlegal

There are a lot of protestors. Yes, some hate Jews. Others ARE Jews.

So some of the protestors are ‘bad apples’.

How’d we put it when it came to cops? “One bad apple spoils the batch”, yeah?

I’m sure your Jewish friends weren’t flying Hamas flags nor holding up the Horned Jew effigy.

[puzzlegal]

That’s true. They weren’t holding Hamas flags. And i haven’t seen anyone in the US holding up antisemitic effigies. (I’m not claiming it hasn’t happened, but it’s not a common element of the protests here, and I’ve seen a lot of protests and haven’t seen that.) My non-Jewish friends who are pro-Palestinian weren’t doing that stuff, either.

(To clarify, I’m not really sure why I’m on ARZA’s mailing list. But i don’t personally know anyone active in ARZA.)

[puzzlegal]

Actually, if i had to guess, I’d guess my rabbi is active in ARZA. (And possibly other people i know.) But he’s not why I’m on their mailing list. I get a lot of random emails. I probably clicked something years ago.

[Babale]

@puzzlegal

And i haven’t seen anyone in the US holding up antisemitic effigies. (I’m not claiming it hasn’t happened, but it’s not a common element of the protests here, and I’ve seen a lot of protests and haven’t seen that.)

I did post a picture above - here it is again:

That’s from the Union Station protests the other day.

There were at least two other effigies I’ve seen pictures of at that protest, and at least one of those was set on fire; but if it’s just an effigy of Netanyahu, that’s one thing. You hate the guy, maybe you’re even calling for violence against him personally - whatever. I don’t care. But when you bring in the horns and the blood drinking etc, your Jew Hatred is showing.

[Chisquirrel]

Holy shit, you found an antisemite! That totally excuses Israel’s actions and everyone that disagrees just hates Jews!

Fuck off.

@Babale

So some of the protestors are ‘bad apples’.

How’d we put it when it came to cops? “One bad apple spoils the batch”, yeah?

We could say the same about Israelis, yeah?