I agree with you, but I’m afraid that this is the last thing that most Arab nations want to do. Having the Palestinian people as perpetual victims is highly beneficial to them, and many are still locked into the thinking that Israel must be wiped off the map, full stop. For these folks, there is no upside to helping Gaza rebuild or making a better life for Palestinians. They would prefer to use the Palestinians as fundraising victims with a sprinkling of terrorists.
This is an extremely cynical take. On the one hand, Lily Tomlin said it best (at least when paraphrased): no matter how cynical you get, it’s imposible to keep up. On the other hand, other nations are made up of human beings, and it’s easy for us to Great Satan them, to Other them and treat them as monsters, and we gotta be on guard against that.
The King of Jordan had an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday (gift link):
While I’m not sure I agree with everything he says, and while I think Jordan could stand to step the hell up in material and humanitarian support, he seems to represent a reasonable partner in moving forward. The key quote to me from the op-ed:
Moderation update: there’s been a constructive discussion, but i want to wait a couple more hours to see if any other mods want to chime in. Yeah, i know it’s a “no news yet” update, but I wanted to say least give a time line
Thank you for that.
I just have to take issue with this. September 11 led directly to:
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Invading Afghanistan
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Invading Iraq
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A huge rise in anti-Islam and anti-Arab sentiment
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A massive shift in monetary policy, including what I would characterize as an unparalleled experiment in free money
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Significant curtailment of civil liberties, via things like the Patriot Act
And indirectly, through all those things, to the election of Donald Trump.
So, what did the IDF find under the hospital?
Jimmy Hoffa? Dust balls?
I’ve been waiting for the news to break. There’s no doubt they’d bring in journalists and show a captured command center. If it’s there.
CNN was brought in yesterday to see a armory with 4 rusty guns and a tunnel entrance.
Has anyone seen where Geraldo got to?
I’m watching ABC News. IDF spokesman showed reporters a bag of guns behind a MRI machine.
You can’t have metal anywhere near a MRI that’s on. It’s a giant magnet.
I guess Hamas temporarily stashed the guns during the power outage. It’s disgusting that Hamas was firing from the hospital. Putting the staff and patients in danger.
Moderating
Here’s the resolution:
The mods are in broad agreement that accusing another poster of “making a claim that is blood libel” is over the line. While I suppose technically you might say you are accusing a poster of making posts that are deliberately anti-Semitic lies, and not commenting directly about the poster… I hope you can see the problem with that. At the very best, this is too heated a statement for this forum.
@Babale, you are thread-banned for 2 days, starting from the time of the initial mod note on the topic. (Nov 14 at 11:40PM Eastern time, so it ends Nov 16 ET, or Nov 17 at 6:40AM in Israel)
Additionally, a couple of mods who read the whole thread felt that @Banquet_Bear was skating too close to the line for such a sensitive and contentious thread. Your posts are larded with withering innuendo as to the motives of others, which is unduly provocative. You are also thread banned until the same time.
Thank you both for bringing useful information to the thread. But when you return, you are both asked to make your points without characterizing the motives of others. Thanks.
Hamas had nearly a month to get their shit out, if they had anything significant there. The presence of any weapons at all in the hospital is pretty damning. Keep in mind it’s one building out of 14 in the hospital complex, and above-ground. Last I heard the IDF has begun excavating other areas of the hospital grounds, so we’ll soon see if anything else is uncovered.
On one of the body cams, a hamas guy is heard exclaiming over dead bodies, and praying to be a martyr. He becomes one. Are these guys under organized command, or are some of them operating independently, striving for martyrdom?
How do you know it was a Hamas guy? Was he wearing Hamas insignia?
The Hamas militant wing is organised into companies and battalions (at least they were).
Here’s a link.
I wonder if they are following a controlled plan, or some individuals acting on their own.
I wonder that about the Israeli military, too.
I’m no military scientist, but even squads and platoons can be formed into vees, wedges, lines, columns, etc. Why wouldn’t the Israeli military and/or Hamas use elementary tactical formations?
As I said elsewhere, I fully expected that by now IDF would have incontrovertible proof of IDF’s use of the tunnels beneath Shifa as HQ, given the immense suffering they were inflicting on the hospital’s staff and inhabitants. I’m willing to have my mind changed, and I hope you’re open to new evidence–or lack thereof–too.
Hamas has had time to get their shit out of there–but IDF knew that. The amount of suffering they inflicted was justified not by a claim that Hamas had previously used the site for headquarters, but by the claim that it’s currently in use as such. If it turns out that it hasn’t been used as such since the beginning of the Shifa siege, that’s pretty damning of IDF’s actions or intelligence.
Even if it wasn’t currently being used as Hama’s headquarters, they were clearly carrying out combat operations from there. The IDF weren’t shooting at paper targets when they arrived. In any case, I believe a press conference is scheduled for later today and they are expected to reveal additional evidence. I reiterate, even if that evidence amounts to “just” more guns and computers, aboveground or under, it’s still irrefutable evidence that Hamas was using the hospitals as a base of operations, which is a war crime and removes the hospital’s protections under the Geneva Convention.
It is a war crime to use a hospital as a base of military operations. But even so, that doesn’t automatically and completely remove the hospital’s protections. Any assault on a hospital being used for military purposes needs to be proportional to the military benefit gained. There is still an assumption that there are innocent people in the hospital, and that the hospital’s primary function is important and needs to be protected from excessive damage. It’s entirely possible that hospital is now the site of war crimes commited by both Israel and Hamas.
At least, that’s what I understand from listening to a couple of different experts on NPR a few days ago, when the assault began.
I don’t want to misrepresent you. Are you saying that it doesn’t matter to you, when determining the proportionality of IDF’s response, whether Shifa was, as IDF claimed, a Hamas headquarters?
BBC reporters were brought along to Al Shifa. The proof that the IDF showed them was… not convincing. They were shown about a dozen weapons that the IDF said they found at the hospital and several laptops that the IDF claimed contains pictures and videos of kidnapping victims. They were not allowed to look at the laptops. They were not shown any tunnels or command centres. They were not permitted to speak to doctors or patients in the hospital.
I’m willing to be convinced by new evidence, but was has been presented so far is seriously underwhelming.