Nagasaki is an example of futile cruelty. It had no impact on the war at all. Certainly not relevant to the current discussion.
Put aside, for a moment, how you expected Israel to respond then. My question is: how do you now expect them to respond? If they were hit with another 10/7 style attack, what would you reasonably expect?
Maybe stop killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure? Allow aid into Gaza supervised by a third party rather than the current corrupt/incompetent/malevolent organization?
Investigate the total failure of the IDF to prevent a breakout and riot by a population under siege.
Moderating:
(Edited to correct a mistake) This is not the pit. This is a MPSIMS discussion thread. These statements are completely inappropriate.
This is a warning for insulting posters outside of the pit.
…before October 7th Israel regularly conducted attacks that killed rather a lot of Palestinian civilians in both Gaza and the West Bank. They’ve been doing it for decades.
It didn’t prevent October 7th. It’s a strategy that will always eventually fail. Because if you commit atrocities by default, you are the bad guy. That doesn’t mean Hamas gets a pass. They are also the bad guy. But you don’t get to do atrocities and get all of the glory.
What do you mean “hit with another 10/7 style attack?”
Are you arguing that Israel are so fundamentally incompetent and so bad at war that after systematically destroying a country, forcing the population into concentrated areas, closing the borders so completely that not even baby formula is getting in, that somehow they would still be at risk from another October 7th?
Because there were multiple intelligence, tactical and strategic failings that lead to how devastating the Hamas attacks were on the day. Is it your argument that Israel learned nothing from that, and would just do the same thing all over again?
I thought you actually had more respect for the IDF than this. Turns out, you think they are incapable of securing their borders.
My apologies for screwing up and mistaking this location for the Pit. As penance I voluntarily withdraw from this thread.
@puzzlegal, this is a discussion thread, not a breaking news thread, right?
Sorry, my mistake. It is a discussion thread. I will go edit my mod note. It doesn’t matter for the warning, but it certainly matters for other discussion.
More reporting that Israel plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza, this time with the US’s help:
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/18/israel-send-palestinians-gaza-indonesia-ethiopia
I think the real war crime is that Axios apparently wants you to subscribe to read their 3 bullet points per article.
But yeah IDK how to deny that it’s ethnic cleansing at this point.
…testimony from Professor Nick Maynard, surgeon currently working in Gaza:
I can’t find the BBC 4 link, but a version was uploaded to Twitter, you can listen to him say it here:
I was going to challenge anyone in this thread to defend this. But after the last time…I won’t make that mistake again.
The people I’m following either in Gaza or are covering Gaza are posting increasingly distressed. As bad as everything has been up until now, people are reporting we are on the verge of a human-created catastrophe of an unimaginable scale.
The levels of starvation are hitting a critical point. Mothers can’t breastfeed their children. There is no formula. There are places in the north that haven’t had food or water for weeks. Only the very strong can make it through the gauntlet to the 4 “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” distribution points, and they risk getting killed before or after they get there.
Doctors are fainting during surgery. They report maybe getting only one rice meal a day if they are lucky. People collapsing in the streets. We are close to reaching the point of no return. Where for many people, even if the food does start to flow into Gaza again, it’s going to be too late.
And why this isn’t just a tragedy, but an atrocity of a scale we haven’t seen in a long time, is because its being conducted by one of the “good guys”, and it has the near full backing of the most powerful countries in the world. Everybody knows this is happening. And they continue to support it. They continue to fund it. They continue to invite war criminals and snap photos with them. Yes: I’m looking at all of the Democrats in this photo.
The food is right there. The UN has enough food for three months staged right outside Gaza ready to flood the country as soon as they are allowed in. It isn’t a problem of logistics. This isn’t a natural disaster. This is a deliberate, calculated decision to starve the people of Gaza.
32 more Palestinians killed by the IDF near aid sites. Want some food aid? Here are some bullets too!
No loss of Israeli troops according to the IDF page.
…there is an extended debate in the Roger Waters thread that has taken it off-topic, so I thought I’d bring it here.
I’ll summarise because directly quoting from the pit, especially considering what was said, isn’t appropriate. But please feel free to correct me if you feel my summary isn’t accurate.
Babale says that " I’d dispute that torture camps exist." I provided the following citations:
So my question here is: do you dispute the testimony that released Palestinians and whistleblowers are giving, do you have any evidence that suggests the contrary, and do the International Red Cross have access to Israeli detention centres to check on prisoner well-being? And if not the Red Cross, what oversight is there?
Babale suggests that my assertion that IDF drones are targeting children was a “conspiracy theory.” (for clarity they did not those exact words, the actual words were tad more colourful, but perhaps not appropriate for this forum. )
I provided the following citations.
My question to Babale is: do you dispute the testimony here? Do you have any experts that support your assertion that “simple geometry” shows that this isn’t actually happening?
Thirdly, Babale disputes my characterisation of a cite I provided from the New York Times and I have to admit that was a tad sloppy on my part. The citation still supports my overall point. That IDF snipers are deliberately targeting children. But because the NYT is paywalled I incorrectly linked to the defence of the evidence editorial, which I had assumed would have been enough to indicate I was referring to the totality of evidence, including the original article. But that was what I intended.
Secondly: because the original article was behind a paywall I can’t verify my assertion that it was specifically drones that were doing some of the killing. However, I’ve provided more than enough citations from reputable sources that show that yes, the IDF have sniper drones, and secondly, testimonials from reputable people that claim children are being deliberately targeted by sniper drones.
So my question to Babale is, do you concede that these sniper drones (as NPR calls them) exist?
…the World Central Kitchen have run out of food to cook.
I heard this first earlier today because the people working in the hospitals were reliant on World Central Kitchen to provide the meagre meals they were getting.
But there were no meals today.
Reports from the Gaza Ministry of Health that 71 children have died from malnutrition. It was 32 a month ago since the start of the “war”. So we are seeing a doubling of the toll in just a month, and that’s only from the areas with reliable reporting. As I mentioned in earlier posts they’ve stopped being able to record the casualty numbers from the north because the hospitals have been shut down. So we don’t really even know what is happening up there.
Reports of another “flour” massacre in the north right now. Rescuers struggling to get access and get people south to the hospitals. Footage is horrifying.
Gaza is on track for a humanitarian catastrophe. It’s only going to ramp up from here.
‘Never again’ doesn’t apply to Guernica.
Dozens more reported killed while trying to get aid:
Distributing aid in a war zone isn’t this hard. It takes incompetence, or malevolence, to make it this deadly. Probably a combination. And it’s clear this Israeli government, and this IDF, is absolutely fine with killing a bunch of Gazan civilians every day.
But also - the US and UK governments are fine with it too.
Definitely.