Yes, and they will be accountable for the lies. It has not led to electoral accountability YET, because that’s not how it works - it’s not instantaneous.
Hamas on the other hand, will not be accountable for their lies, and it will in fact be very difficult to ascertain any truth behind what they say.
Do you see the difference between an elected government with a free press and an authoritarian dictatorial group of leaders?
The two news articles I linked to were from 2018, as was the killing of Rouzan al-Najjar.
And again … It is on a scale, we all acknowledge the IDF lies and has lied, we’re saying Hamas is far less trustworthy and far more horrible.
Sorry that politics are not a clean and clear cut as you would like. Trump stayed in power for 4 years as well.
I think it’s fair to say that IDF has lied about previous incidents of brutality, and Likud has remained in power. This is a real problem, and a lot of Israelis agree that it’s a real problem.
We can say that and still distinguish between IDF and Hamas, in much the same way as we can distinguish between the LAPD and the KGB.
What @Walken_After_Midnight may be alluding to is that there isn’t always a political will in Israel to actually meaningfully hold the IDF to account for certain actions. And that is definitely true to an extent. What I have been saying all along is that this problem - and it certainly has been a problem at times, I definitely wouldn’t deny that - does not and never has extended to the point that Israelis would tolerate the IDF engaging in wanton slaughter, like some have imagined when the 24 hour evacuation loomed large and we had people claiming that the IDF was about to completely flatten Gaza.
I was just replying to your post which said they would be held accountable because Israel has an elected government.
Obama won reelection despite the heavy use of drones abroad; that doesn’t mean he wasn’t held accountable for his actions. If Americans wanted to they could have judged Obama to be unfit for office based on his actions and voted him out after his first term. Compare that to, say, Kim Jung Un, who was not accountable for his actions because the people of North Korea have no mechanism by which to remove him.
The IDF is accountable to the Israeli people, whether they choose to exercise the option to rebuke it or not. This is why independent Israeli investigators find out when it has lied, and present this to the Israeli public.
This process simply does not exist on the Hamas side.
There is no civilian government with oversight over Hamas’ actions. There is no independent media telling the people of Gaza what Hamas is up to. And the people have no mechanism by which they can rebuke Hamas or remove individual members from leadership.
Yes, that’s fair enough. I do not imply that there are equal shades of grey here, just that things are not black and white.
Err, the ANC had weapons.
But Hamas’s actions are specifically for generating propaganda! The whole point to the original attack was to make it so horrific that Israel would react with great force, killing lots of people in Gaza, causing Israel more reputational damage and perhaps giving Hezbollah a cassus belli for attacking Israel in force.
Hamas’ main weapon IS propaganda. They dan’t defeat Israel militarily and they know it. They are fighting a twisted, brutal propaganda war. Therefore, EVERYTHING they say should be suspect until independently verified.
And bombing their own hospital is totally within that strategy. And whether it was IDF, Hamas, PIJ, or a complete accident, you can count on Hamas to A) blame Israel, and B) exaggerate the damage/casualties as much as they can. That’s the whole point of what tyey’ve been doing.
‘Both sides do it’ is a poor way to look at this. Sure, Israelis put out propaganda as well, as do combatants in every war, but for Hamas the war is all about propaganda, and it’s their main weapon. If Hamas says it’s a clear sunny day, look for an umbrella.
OK, man. Have a good one.
I think we all learned a tiny bit on OSINF over the past years … just enough to form an opinion and being able to establish a very basic lacmus test. Remember the RU claiming the UKR cruise-missile’d a place with UKR war prisoners (Stephen Segull looking around) …
That hospital scene is similar to the russians burning the UKR POW to death … not one from a heavy bomb being set off.
lots of burnt out cars, but none with substantial and numerous perforations from extremely high-energy shrapnel and ricochets - same is true for the buildings and asphalt/plaster … also, you all recall the craters in UKR that dwarf the odd soldier standing in it…
Pic from UKR-war:
97 posts were split to a new topic: IDF’s alleged recording of Islamic Jihad, and questions of journalistic integrity and trust
OK man, you too! Nifty that you looked only at that single sentence and not the entire rest of it, but only a little nifty.
I really don’t trust a statement from IDF at all. Not in the middle of a war. Loose lips sink ships. Propaganda is a tool. I trust Hamas even less. But I’m intrigued by
Nothing I have said is based on any prior assumption that the IDF is honest, but keep on beating that straw man to death.
We know IDF sources and Hamas sources are heavily biased. The concern here is the credibility of any “independent” source A claiming that it sounds fake or any “independent” source B claiming that it sounds genuine. I will remain skeptical of both A and B unless they are identified and I can judge their expertise and objectivity for myself.
There is video of it being a failed rocket fired from Gaza. That’s pretty compelling. Whether it was Hamas or Islamic Jihad is a minor detail compared to whether it was from Gaza or an air strike from Israel.
Honestly I don’t put much weight in the recording either way, mostly because it is the sort of evidence that I am completely incapable of assessing for myself. When reliable and reputable sources come to a concensus on it, I will make up my mind accordingly.
But the recording is pretty much irrelevant - did Israel airstrike the hosital? No? Then I don’t particularly care which group of terrorists shot this particular rocket.
For the 24 hours after the incident occurred, it was being reported across the world as an Israeli strike on a hospital. This precipitated huge protests across the Arab world and beyond, which could have pressured the governments of these countries to intervene in the conflict in some way. I don’t think it’s right to say that the incentive to potentially fake a recording would not be there.
I do not claim that the Arab journalists were correct in their assessment that the audio recording might be fake, just that they should not be instantly dismissed, as was happening in this thread, including on the grounds that the IDF were not capable of incompetence in attempting a cover-up, which is proveably false.