There are several things that are more or less undisputed about the Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza:
- It happened around 11 pm.
- Three aid trucks were struck. All had World Central Kitchen logos on their roofs.
- The trucks were traveling on a coastal road approved for humanitarian missions.
- World Central Kitchen had properly coordinated their delivery route with Cogat, the Israeli military body responsible for coordinating aid missions.
- The trucks were struck sequentially and extremely precisely. According to a former counterterrorism official quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the complexity of the operation suggests it required multiple drones and two to three dozen operators and support staff. In other words, the aid trucks were very deliberately targeted and destroyed. It was no accident.
.
So the only remaining question is: Why? Did the Israeli military deliberately destroy an aid convoy? Or, despite everything, did they somehow misidentify the trucks as Hamas?
I can hardly bring myself to believe it was deliberate. That would be monstrous. On the other hand, Israel's ongoing efforts to starve the Gazan population have been pretty monstrous. What's more, their recent acquiescence to increasing aid shipments has been very much against their will. Deliberately destroying an aid convoy would certainly be a very effective way of continuing their starvation policy by the simple expedient of scaring off humanitarian organizations. Finally, in addition to all this, it's just very hard to believe that an operation so precisely calculated and carried out was due merely to sloppy intel or a careless fog-of-war mistake.
I still don't believe it was deliberate. I can't. But it sure is getting harder.
Might not have been deliberately ordered by the top brass, but nonetheless deliberately done by more junior officers.
Yes. But what the top brass DID deliberately do was tell junior officers and soldiers they could act with total impunity. Gallant himself publicly announced he was lifting "all restrictions" on them back in October. Now IDF snipers, according to doctors to whom dead or dying children are brought, even aim at the heads of 5 to 8 year olds. No accidents, those. Nor a story of bad apples. It's an out-of-control murderous rampage. Except that the out-of-control part is by design.
And in that rampage, the lowest soldier can set Israeli policy. The top brass encouraged WCK to take part of UNRWA's place? Some junior officer wrecked that. And the top brass, by allowing it and by letting him off the hook, is responsible for the added starvation that will ensue.
"CNN Political & Foreign Policy Analyst Barak Ravid joins Anderson to analyze what went wrong when an Israeli attack in Gaza killed seven aid workers, including foreign nationals, from Chef José Andrés non-profit, World Central Kitchen."
https://x.com/AC360/status/1775348260246360198?s=20
It's an army out of control. The brass are out of touch and you have captains and majors running their own shows. Which is possible when your enemy is unarmed civilians, but if they go up against trained professionals, you're looking at a collapse.
Absolutely no way that, if this was deliberate, it was just rogue junior officers going off the reservation. The order absolutely came from the top, very much up to and including, Bibi.
And, by the way, I, like Jose Andres, believe it was deliberate.
Update on my comment. Yours was the first comment I saw and I just refused to believe that something like this wouldn't have come from the top. Multiple commenters have provided links to sources I trust (Haaretz in this case) that concludes it was, in fact, likely lower level command decisions. But, also, as others have pointed out the incompetence might be intentional, and also regardless, the buck stops at the top.
The assumption that the attack was deliberate seems a better explanation than any alternative. U.S. policy needs to adjust accordingly.
When somebody shows you who they are...
Exactly. Saying you can’t believe Trump would lie, or that Putin would invade the Ukraine, or that Israel wouldn’t try to kill all the Palestinians, is to credit good faith to people who have none.
In his book the End of History, Francis Fukuyama, misguided soul, thought that once ideological conflicts were over, people would stop fighting. Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu show that people are fighting just because there are bad, greedy people in the world, and the end of ideology doesn’t end fighting.
Today's headline in the Washington Post is: U.S. approved more bombs to Israel on day of World Central Kitchen strikes
The simplest explanation for this is that the current Administration does not take into consideration the moral consequences of their actions. It also illustrates their disdain for world opinion and total support for whatever Israel decides their military objectives and means are.
It was deliberate. The IDF has its excuses lined up, but they intentionally destroyed three vehicles that they knew were carrying humanitarian aid workers.
What happened was that a local commander received intelligence that an armed man was seen entering the warehouse with the convoy. From that report, they assumed that the man must be a Hamas terrorist. They also assumed that, if this individual entered with the convoy, they would obviously also leave with it. The first assumption was flimsy. The second was straight up false.
Based upon this dumb thinking, the local commander ordered the strikes on the WCK vehicles. He decided that the possibility that a man that was possibly a Hamas terrorist justified killing an unknown, to him, number of civilian aid workers.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/idf-bombed-wck-aid-convoy-3-times-targeting-armed-hamas-member-who-wasnt-there/0000018e-9e75-d764-adff-9eff29360000
This involved three violations of the laws of war. The first is that, before ordering a strike that will kill civilians, the attacker must make a diligent effort to gain the correct information, and must continually update it prior to firing. Instead, the local commander made a lazy effort and didn't update at all.
Second, when attacking a civilian target, a military must use the method and weapons that will do the least harm to civilians to get the job done. This happened on a road that the Israelis claimed that they secured and was safe. Which means that the method that would have done the least harm to civilians would have been to set up a roadblock and then check for the suspected militant. Instead, the local commander opted for four missiles from a drone.
Third, when launching a strike that will harm civilians, that harm must be proportionate to the military value that the strike will produce. In this case, the death of a single, anonymous Hamas gunman, even had he actually been there and actually been a Hamas gunman, doesn't provide enough value to justify killing seven civilians. That killing these civilians in particular was highly likely to increase the famine in Gaza makes it worse. The local commander issued the order anyway.
I keep emphasizing that the decisions were made by a local, field grade officer not to exonerate the IDF high command, but to bury them. I keep hearing IDF spokesmen saying that the strike violated their guidelines. The problem with this argument is that the IDF hasn't issued centralized, uniform rules of engagement. Instead, they've left it up to local, field officers to set the rules for their units.
This has led to a patchwork of different rules across Gaza. Some officers scrupulously follow the law. Others . . . don't. Some units have declared that the area around their positions is an arbitrary, unmarked kill zone and shoot any Palestinian that enters. Once dead, they are declared to be terrorists based, not on who they were or what they were doing, just on where they were.
(This is one reason why no one should take Israeli claims as to how many Hamas militants they have killed in this operation. Those figures are based entirely upon what these local, field grade officers report up the chain of command, and they include lots of people who weren't Hamas militants.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-created-kill-zones-in-gaza-anyone-who-crosses-into-them-is-shot/0000018e-946c-d4de-afee-f46da9ee0000
The failure to provide uniform rules of engagement does not remove the high command's culpability for violations of the rules of war. In fact, it enhance it. They have a command responsibility to prevent their subordinates from committing illegal acts. By not issuing such orders, they have failed in that responsibility. This makes them guilty of crimes committed by their subordinates.
For an example of this, look up the case of Yamashita Tomoyuki, the Japanese commander on Luzon when the Americans invaded in 1945. He was hanged for failure to exercise command responsibility over Japanese troops that massacred civilians in Manila.
https://www.internationalcrimesdatabase.org/Case/199#:~:text=A%20US%20military%20commission%20tried,sentenced%20to%20death%20by%20hanging.
This comment is already too long, so I won't go into why I think the verdict against Yamashita was unjust. But those reasons do not apply to the IDF commanders.
thank you
This seems like the likeliest answer based on what we know.
I think I land here:
It doesn't seem likely (to me anyway) that the top level IDF (or the Israeli government) directly ordered attacks on aid workers to scare them off and create a famine.
It does seems likely that a local commander would attack aid cars to get a lone possible "bad guy", and frankly it's even possible that he saw the chance to attack aid cars as a bonus.
It is possible (though views will differ) that the Israeli government and/or top level IDF are purposefully creating dangerous situations and giving local commanders too much authority with too little oversight specifically to try to kill/starve/chase off as many Palestinians as they can.
And it's almost certain that the Israeli government and IDF really don't give a damn about how many Palestinians they kill and are probably also fairly indifferent to aid workers, although I suspect at least some of the leadership would prefer to avoid stupid PR disasters.
+1
Thanks. I hope Haaretz is reaching a lot of Israelis with their reporting.
Yes. And that squares with the report that IDF says that 20 civilian deaths are acceptable if the attack kills 1 suspected Hamas operative. 7 dead aid workers is a lot, but perhaps attributable to an accident. 196? Pretty sure that number removes all doubt.
Agree that the case against IDF high command is stronger than that against Yamashita. For one, they have his case as precedent; for another, the infrastructure for command, control, communications and intelligence are vastly improved since WWII. But culpability extends upwards to the government. Netanyahu, by invoking Amelek; cabinet ministers’ inflammatory rhetoric, gave implicit permission for indiscriminate violence.
And yet another: What makes the actions of the IDF high command even worse is that this situation was very deliberately set up as a way to escape culpability and the consequences of their actions. This mess of accountablitly for 'accidents' has been ongoing for what? six months now?
Oh, I forgot to add the word 'obviously'. As in: What makes the actions of the IDF high command even worse is that this situation was very obviously set up as a way to escape culpability and the consequences of their actions. "You can't make me say I'm lying, I win!" is never a good look, be it a singular person or a major geopolitical polity.
Again, this blog need a simple thumbs up or up/down.
Thumbs up.
My thoughts exactly. I've been advocating for one for years(?) now.
Of course it was deliberate. There is literally no reason to believe otherwise. This isnt a new line they have crossed, deliberately killing innocent civilians and has been a cental part of the Israeli mission for a long time now. As Israel continues to show us who they are, we have to believe them.
Wasnt it just a few weeks ago that Israel gunned down dozens of Palestinians at a food dropoff location?
Genocide is genocide. You shouldnt get a pass because of what happened 80 years ago in the history books. Although to be fair, denying holocausts has a strong history in the US.
Of course it was deliberate.
Not only was it deliberate, it's been something they've been doing for a long, long time. Any fool who read up on the history of Israel would -- and should -- know this.
The salient fact is not that they are Jews trying to create and keep a safe haven. That, actually, is somewhat incidental. No, the most import fact is that the duly elected persons in charge of making decisions are first and foremost fundamentalists. Always Always I tell you Tooter: be wary of fundamentalists of any stripe or denomination. Apologies for mangling the quote.
Yup.
It's extraordinary that so many commentators continue to frame what's going on in Gaza as a "horrific war" in which Israel is trapped, so please cut it some slack as it does the best it can to defeat the enemy while trying to minimise civilian casualties.
Israel is waging a military operation of choice, which it could end tomorrow if it chose to without any implications for that old all-purpose standby "national security". There were other ways in which it could have responded to the Hamas attack last October, but it unilaterally decided to launch a punitive expedition with an ill-defined mission knowing full well it would involve massive civilian casualties. It's not as if it wasn't warned; the US and Israeli media published numerous "Israel is about to make a terrible mistake" warnings from respected pundits, but they were ignored.
There is no "war" - nothing but a systematic genocidal operation intended to punish Gaza Palestinians for October 7. Israel alone bears responsibility for the consequences.
It is antisemitic to argue that Israelis have agency over their own actions.
The objective of the Israeli military operation from the beginning has been to destroy Hamas, or failing that, severely cripple it. The Israelis have paid tremendously in blood, treasure, and reputation for this objective. It's a shame for everyone including the Gazans that it seems elusive.
To describe this as a systematic genocide is just ridiculous. First, this is not genocide because the Israeli objective is clearly not the elimination of the civilian population of Gaza --- if it was this operation would have gone very differently. And this is anything but "systematic". "Genocide" is an awful accusation that should be used very sparingly and not cheapened with hyperbolic and promiscuous use like this. You can object to Israeli actions using more accurate words.
And you raised an interesting point: "There were other ways in which it could have responded to the Hamas attack last October." Pray tell what those were!
At best the Israelis are extremely indifferent as to how many Palestinian civilians they kill.
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-created-kill-zones-in-gaza-anyone-who-crosses-into-them-is-shot/0000018e-946c-d4de-afee-f46da9ee0000
If their goal isn't to drive the Palestinians out of Gaza by killing lots of them, they're doing an outstanding job of making it look like it is.
How else could Israel have responded to 10/7?
Well, they could have brought troops back to the border of Gaza from the West Bank to bring it to full strength. That would have prevented another 10/7 by itself.
They could have not squandered the world's goodwill after the attack, and leveraged it to put themselves in a better position.
They could develop an actual strategy for conducting the conflict with the Palestinians, which they have lacked for 56 years, and not just lurched into a long term counterproductive exercise in making sure that the Palestinians are as hostile as possible.
There are lots of options they could have taken. But, as I said above, a lot of people seem to think that it's antisemitic to argue that Israelis have agency over their own actions. Apparently, they are automatons incapable of reacting in any way differently than they are programed to.
Nice thoughts about what they should not have done/should have done if they had a time machine. But you still have not presented a viable plan for what the Israelis could have done to respond to the attacks on October 8th.
Which, if you criticize the Israeli response as disproportionate or whatever, you kind of have an intellectual obligation to provide.
They could have tried to rescue the hostages. They could *still* try to do this.
Unfortunately, this would be an easily measurable objective. Either they would fail, or they would succeed. Either way, Netanyahu would be driven from office. To avoid *that*, he has dragged Israel (all too willingly in many cases) into this "Forever War" that won't end until every bad guy is gone.
+1
3 thoughts:
1- You do not know what Israels objectives are. You simply cannot know this.
2- To state that this cannot be 'Genocide' because you can imagine genocide as looking different is well.... rediculous. Genocide can take many forms, they don't have to follow your preferred script. You don't have to round people into camps and gas them. Starving them, shooting them, bombing them... these work too.
3- It is not up to others to plan and execute Israels response to the attacks by Hamas. Your 'pray tell' comment is absurdly stupid. Just like it wasnt up to liberals to plan and execute Bushs war of conquest in Iraq. Responsibility here lies entirely with Israel, they didn't have to choose this, but they did.
1. That is what the Israelis said they are doing and what their military actions appear aimed to accomplish. So while I do not KNOW for 100% certainty, I would say it's an extremely high probability.
2. To get the Israeli actions to meet the definition of genocide, you have to include a lot of deep plans and deceptions. And the point about genocide is the intention to kill all or most of them and that does not look like the case.
3. If you criticize something, you have an intellectual obligation to come up with a batter alternative or you are just a carping fool.
The (self-inflicted) stupidity, it burns. The 'liberals' _did_ have a plan, you fucking moron, namely not starting a war with a country that had little if any connection to the events of 9/11.
There is no obligation intellectual or otherwise to offer an alternative to bad or illegal behavior, though it can be helpful.
If a man in a family a few blocks away murders someone in the family of my neighbor, and my neighbor arms up and goes over to the offenders block to blow up every house on it, no one is "obligated" to tell this man and his accomplices they will be going to jail for the rest of their lives (and properly should be shot on sight if possible during the commission of this revenge crime), though intervening to save innocent bystanders would be the right and honorable thing to do (as we can't resurrect the already dead, only ensure justice and/or reparation served).
Israel likely suspects they can get away with wanton massacre of civilians because there is no "higher power" to stop them, no law enforcement, no UN, as long the USA keeps sending them arms and making ourselves accomplices to the crimes, because the USA is the only one who would clear the way for the UN to do this.
Rules for thee not rules for me and all that...no wonder more and more around the world not only don't believe what Israel says, but also what we (USA) say, which diminishes our honor, prestige and influence for what reasons exactly?
And we haven't even got to discussing near-inevitable blowback yet...an eye for eye for an eye for an eye and so on, the cycle of violence perpetuates itself which is brute savagery not civilization, foolishness not intelligence or wisdom, an emotional character failing in not being able to rationally project the consequences of one's actions into the future.
1- So you agree with me in that you have no idea what Israel's objectives are, you are merely repeating what they are saying publicly.
2- The UN defines genocide. Israel's actions appear to fit well within that description.
3 - That is a very stupid argument. I get that you are a deeply committed apologist, but this is a foolish thing to say. Obviously the alternative is to stop killing innocent people. But you know this....I have to assume you are arguing in bad faith....cant be this dense.
Why do you think he made my shit list? I'll repeat what I've said many times before, namely I wouldn't be nearly as vocal if Kevin set up either or both vote/ignore buttons.
1) You really should educate yourself on what the term genocide means. Google exists and it's really not that hard to use.
2) As Max Blumenhal has poitned out, Biden accused the Russians of genocide in Ukraine even though it took them 2 years to kill as many civilians as Israel did in one month. And Blinken accused China of committing genocide against the Uyghur without accusing them of any mass killing or forced population transfer.
Bottom line: Isreal supporters need to stop lying about what a genocide is. And accept/admit that they're okay with Israel committing one.
1) I did. It doe snot meet that definition. There is no discernable effort to completely kill the Gazans.
3) No, anti-Israel zealots need to stop changing the definition of the word in order to accuse the Israelis of committing Genocide. It is completely disgusting and repulsive to do so, an insult to the victims of actual genocides.
I agree what Israel is doing is not genocide, as the word does have a specific meaning, but it is clear they are engaging in ethnic cleansing. Loose-lipped members of the Israeli government have expressed that they hope conditions will be so awful in Gaza that a significant number will be forced to emigrate (where, they don't say) so that Israel can take control of Gaza. There is a similar, but more subtle, plan to do the same on the West Bank where there has been unchecked violence against Palestinians for the past two decades. With a substantially diminished Palestinian population, Israel can formally annex the West Bank and become the "Eretz Israel" diehard zionists have long yearned for, and it will retain its character as a uniquely Jewish states because Palestinians will be a distinct minority. If you ask for proof, open your own eyes.
One thing that bolsters the case for calling this genocide is that a lot of Israelis, including some in government, deny that there is any such thing as a Palestinian. They are simply Arabs, indistinguishable from Syrians, or Lebanese, or Jordanians. By trying to push them out of Gaza and the West Bank, they are trying to destroy the Palestinian people.
This is why the ICJ, in its provisional ruling, went to some length to say that "Palestinian" is a distinct culture that must be protected.
What the fuck?!?!?!?!
What's your next goalpost-changing maneuver going to be, I wonder. "No, it's not genocide since the Palestinions now living outside of Israel still exist. Not fair the ones ethnically cleansed with the ones who were killed outright."
It's bullshit like this that put you onto my shit list, dude. And a long time ago at that.
Oh I'm sorry, you mistook me for someone who gives a fuck what you think. See others might not remember what you wrote on one of Kevin's posts a few months ago. Calling Palestianians "vile, disgusting trash" or someone along those lines. So of course a bigot like you would support Israel's genocide.
He may very well have. But you may be misremebering this:
"The Palestinians are filth."
- CLD on December 9th
Yes people, my shit list is annotated. Wouldn't want to improperly accuse a known troll now, would we?
The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide stipulates that the following are genocidal actions:
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
if the actions are taken "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
Israel's actions in Gaza are clearly genocidal. It lamely attempts to evade the accusation by claiming Palestinians aren't "a national, ethnical, racial or religious group", just a bunch of Arabs, so the definition doesn't apply.
The tactics employed by the IDF make the objective clear: it is to make Gaza largely uninhabitable. The destruction of infrastructure and housing stock has nothing to do with the elimination of Hamas, it is intended to force the depopulation of the territory. The leadership chose not to engage in close urban warfare, which would have risked higher Israeli casualties but spared more civilians, in favor of more destructive and indiscriminate air strikes and tube and missile artillery fire.
The Israeli leadership isn’t stupid, they know that these tactics are creating the next generation of militant Palestinians; they are therefore trying to decimate and force the exile of as many of those as they can. That, and the despicable Netanyahu’s desperate wish to remain in office and out of prison as long as he can, is what is determining the conduct of this operation.
Once more, I deny that those of us who have opposed the Likud divide-and-rule policy for decades owe you any solution for the consequences of that failed, maliciously conceived policy. The Israelis made their bed, now they must lie in it.
You are correct in that Netanyahu is a piece of shit and I believe the world would be better off if he had a fatal heart attack right now.
I find it amusing the gymnastics that so many of you use to avoid positing an alternate Israeli course of action on October 8th. Like you can't think of a better option for them. I mean, I don't like this option very much either you know; death and destruction are bad and I don't think that they are degrading Hamas sufficiently. But I can't think of anything better other than variations where the Israelis are not quite as destructive and where they did not cut off the food supply. Hamas really put the Israelis in a very bad slot, with only a series of bad or worse options available.
Of the few folks who have even ventured there, I have seen:
- Take the hit and trade prisoners to get the hostages back.
- Not send in troops but stage a covert intelligence-based campaign to take out Hamas leaders and special missions to try to rescue hostages.
- Send in troops but refrain from bombardment as much a possible and be willing to accept very high Israeli casualties.
- Invent a time machine and undo mistakes made in the past.
- Emigrate and leave the land to the Palestinians.
I don't think any of them are any better/politically feasible for any Israeli leader.
I mean, you got anything better? You are right, you do not HAVE to come up with an alternative. But by not doing so, you are identifying yourself as someone more interested in stroking your own moral ego with displays of righteous outrage rather than actually being someone serious.
Your initial claim was that anyone who criticizes Israel's actions without providing an alternate plan was very weak sauce. So what do you do when you saw those alternative plans? Yes. That's right. You moved the goalposts again. _And_ (also as per usual at this point in the conversation) you appointed yourself the sole arbiter of which plans are bad.
You don't know how much I want you to just fucking go away.
Agreed. I'm pretty sure you saw (like I did) Tango's comment from several months ago where he called Palestinains "vile, disgusting trash" or something along those lines.
I've got a list 😉 It's rather long, but then again, I started it in the 90's to keep track of USENET trolls.
1) Not that I remember, @emh. You may have thought that I said that because you might ascribe those thoughts to me, but I did not say that. That's not how I talk. Now, I may have said something like that about Hamas, because they are a loathsome, evil bunch...
2) I generally don't bother responding to @Scent because he is an asshole. If you do not believe me, just read his comments. They are abusive and rarely offer anything that contributes to a discussion --- just vitriol. And he is now turning kind of stalkerish. I would honestly not be surprised if he got drunk before posting stuff here. Or has no life other than going around to various sites and yelling at strangers. Does he have a family or a job or anything?
3) I espouse generally normie liberal perspectives. For this, @Violet attacks me with Jacobin-level stuff like I am some sort of deviant and frequently mentions that I should go away or stop posting. The dude (I am guessing) is a gaslighting bully trying to shout down people who hold different opinions.
No, it means I am not going to play by your stupid rules. You want us to play this hypothetical, ‘what would you have done if you had been the Israeli PM on October 8?’ Well, the person who actually was PM on October 8 was PM for 17 of the last 28 years, and had many opportunities to make different policy choices in that time. But he didn’t. So, if your question is, ‘if you had pursued the stupid Likud policies of the last couple of decades, and then the Hamas terrorists you clandestinely supported perpetrated the horror of October 7, what would you have done?’, well, I would resign, because clearly I had screwed up royally. But I’m not Bibi, who will never own up to his misdeeds.
Poppycock.
Israel is fighting a "war" against a very lightly armed adversary; it's slaughter, not warfare.
It's genocide, genocide, genocide.
And there is another obvious way that Israel could have responded to the October 7 attack: it could have called upon its international supporters to police the Gaza Strip in order to hunt down and arrest those responsible for October 7.
You know, like we expect civilized people to have the police respond to even -- maybe especially -- the most hideous crimes against them, rather than calling up all of their friends and cousins and hunting down anyone they thought might be responsible, along with their families.
And such an international police force in Gaza would not have been targeted by Hamas or anyone else, or if they were, it would be at the cost of Hamas' reputation and support.
Interesting option, but I don't think any country in their right mind would send their people into Gaza, because they know that they would get sucked into some sort of horrid urban guerilla warfare campaign against Hamas.
I mean, what reputation does Hamas have other than Unrelenting resistance and Islamism? And would Iran for instance reduce their support if they killed a bunch of Polish troops in Gaza City?
If you look at the reasons there have never been any sort of peacekeeping forces in the illegally occupied territories, I think you'll find that the Palestinians welcomed it but Israel refused to accept it.
You seem to have an extremely biased perspective on Hamas. We are constantly fed the line that Hamas is nothing but a terrorist organization, but I think among Palestinians they are mainly recognized for sponsoring schools and hospitals and preforming charity works.
And I think many countries would be willing to man peacekeeping forces. Remember that there have been peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, Haiti, Kosovo, etc.
Do you have any record at all of countries saying they wouldn't be willing to man peacekeeping forces in Gaza? I seriously doubt that you do.
No, I do not have any record of countries saying that they would not be willing to send peacekeepers into Gaza because I strongly suspect that any such discussions are held privately among countries. So a very difficult ask.
That said though, anecdotally I do recall discussions about "what comes after" in Gaza and one of the points suggested was some sort of international, heavily Arab, peacekeeping force. The impression I got from reading well-plugged-in folks like David Ignatius in the Washington Post was that the Arab Governments wanted no part of it. And if you recall the fear among folks in the US about the pier in Gaza and how do we protect it without getting sucked in... I am pretty sure the US administration wans no part of this either. So my bet is that you would have a hard time persuading anyone to do it.
And yes, I am aware that Hamas has gained some good will among Palestinians for doing charitable works and generally being less loathsome than the Palestinian Authority. But I don't think that attacking foreigners who were there to what, go after the perpetrators of Oct 7th, would hurt their brand at all.
And are you talking about peacekeeper types in Gaza or the West Bank (your wording had me confused)? Because the West Bank is a different kettle of fish. Frikkin' Israeli settlers need to go back home and give the Palestinians their own state like every people deserves, even if the PA is a bunch of geriatric kleptocrats who would screw it up... You just might be able to get some UNIFIL types like Samoa or Sri Lanka or something to serve as border separators there.
I pretty much agree with TheMelancholyDonkey above. This war has been prosecuted with deliberate incompetence, allowing local commanders to commit atrocious war crimes with impunity. There's no excuse for that.
But the other way in which the Israeli government has failed is in rescuing over 100 hostages that Hamas continues to hold. (Which are also ongoing war crimes.)
It sounds like you're suggesting Israel should just go home and abandon the hostages. Or perhaps that you've just forgotten that Hamas holds and continues to hold hostages...who are not accessible to the Red Cross, in contravention of international law.
In other words, what Israel is doing is abominable. It's also not that different from what any nation might do if similarly attacked. More than 150,000 civilians died in our response to 9/11. That was just in Afghanistan, forget about the debacle in Iraq.
Remember the Iran hostages? It lasted 444 days. I'm glad we did not adopt a 'let's bomb Tehran and just keep bombing until something happens' strategy.
It wouldn't have worked, and widespread bombing of cities is wrong.
Same here. It isn't working and bombing apartment blocks is wrong.
Noting that a policy isn't working and is also wrong is not suggesting abandonment.
Finally, Palestinians are governed in the West Bank under Israeli martial law and can be detained indefinitely without charges. This is a larger group than the hostages held by Hamas. And based on releases, many are were innocent and detained for a long time nonetheless.
These aren't hostages, but if you are a Palestinian in indefinite detention and few legal rights that distinction might seem academic.
IDF has rescued three hostages, and shot three to death, who had escaped captivity. Not a great record. One hundred five were released in a negotiated exchange, and four released unconditionally. Negotiation FTW.
One of the Haaretz articles I've linked to explains how those three hostages got shot. In trying to escape, they wandered into a unit's 'kill zone', in which the rules of engagement are that anyone who isn't IDF that enters should be shot and killed.
It is worth remembering that this war is exactly what Hamas intended to provoke with the attacks on Oct 7. They knew that Netanyahu would react to their provocation (and, let's be real, horrible crime) like Pawlow's dog. Hamas was willing to sacrifice their civilians to notch a (in the end meaningless) victory. And Netanyahu played right along. So much for competence!
+1
"I still don't believe it was deliberate"
There isn't a worse blind person than the one who willing refuses to see.
After the past several months it should be very clear for anyone that there is no level of depravity or monstrosity that Israel won't sink to in their quest to rid Gaza of Palestinians.
This particular action was likely not deliberate. But the loose discipline that brought it about most likely was.
This action absolutely was deliberate on the part of the local commander who ordered the strike.
Barbarism is what they do. Both Hamas and Israel. The Russians do stuff like this all the time and few even notice.
“Russian drones hit residences early on Thursday in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing five, including three rescue workers in a repeat strike, the mayor and the regional governor said. Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said four people died at the scene of one attack, at least three of them rescue workers killed after they had arrived at the scene and a new strike occurred.”
Mr. Drum just doesn’t want to believe and yet it’s right there. It Happens every damn day.
Could it have happened due to over-reliance on algorithms for choosing bombing targets?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes
No, at least not by the AI reported on by +972, which is where The Guardian picked this up. That AI, Lavender, is used to identify specific individuals that have the characteristics that it has been trained to associate with being a Hamas operative. Those names are then passed on to another AI, Where's Daddy?, to establish when that person has entered their home. At some point, minutes to hours later, the IDF drops a bomb on them.
As I explained in a very long comment above, this isn't what happened in the WCK strike. The officers who ordered that attack did not have a specific individual, just an unidentified person that they thought might be a Hamas militant.
It's possible, of course, that a different AI system, that has not yet been identified and reported on, was involved, but that's pure speculation at this point.
Glad to see your reference to 972mag.com; it's one of those which i have recommended to others, along with other additional media sites that aren't state-sponsored, like so many others reporting on the middle east.
israeli military policy - Dahiya or Dahya - has been one of deliberate disproportionate, or "asymetric," warfare, for years. This isn't new, & combined with the strategy of "defensible borders," is guaranteed to maximize destruction of civilian infrastructure & civilians alike.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine#:~:text=The%20Dahiya%20doctrine%2C%20or%20Dahya,enemy)%20to%20secure%20that%20end.
Tired of webmail messages to Biden & Harris. plus letters to Michael Herzog. Checked the White House comment line today, just to see if it's blocked, & discovered more limited availability than I remembered from previous administrations- only from 11 AM to 3 PM & only from Tuesday through Thursday.
Snail-mail is now useless, thanks to Louis DeJoy & WH security/irradiation delays.
“Israel's ongoing efforts to starve the Gazan population have been pretty monstrous.”
Starvation as a tactic of war is a war crime, and among the worst of them as it is a horrible way to die, targets the weak, and cripples children for life.
Kevin, something is waaaaay off kilter with your thinking. “Pretty monstrous”? Really?
Even if you believe the current Israeli government is completely evil ( I don’t hold that perspective ) , you would also have to believe they are really stupid to deliberately target, very high profile, foreigners. If Isreal wanted to stop World Central Kitchen, a far politically safer play would be to ) hold the trucks for extended inspection.) find issues with particular volunteers etc.
My rational actor model of the world leads me to speculate, these deaths were a horrible accident.
Oh you sweet summer child.
Wake the fuck up.
Same thought I had. Darn, we have a lot of ignorant people. It invokes the "thoughts and prayers" morons elicit to justify weapons.
I was being kind. This person is displaying motivated reasoning because they don't want to acknowledge that they're biased against brown folk or that precious little underdog Israel is (and has been for decades) committing genocide and war crimes. Their comments here reveal the worst kind of centrism that gives cover to right wing atrocities.
See above. This was deliberate in the sense that a field grade officer in that part of Gaza authorized a strike that he knew would kill the WCK workers.
It does not appear that the people in charge of the IDF authorized this specific attack. However, they are still culpable, because they have failed to exercise their command responsibilities to issue orders to their subordinates not to conduct strikes like this.
Agree with this. Not an accident.
Yeah, I agree. I guess it depends how you define "accident". And I think the flaw in the rational actor model is that there's not a single actor here (nor in most situations.)
Your "rational actor model" is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth because it's missing the middle part.
The whole truth is that we all act rationally all the time and in every context, but only and always in service of a context-specific interest. What is within that interest are subjects who are relevant. What is beyond that interest are irrelevant objects unless they happen to be opportunities to be exploited and/or threats to be neutralized.
Clearly, to Netanyahu, the people of Gaza are objects, and not subjects. The answer is clearly not to be the inverse of Netanyahu. The world is a better place with each individual that follows God's simple law, which is to recognize that every human being is a child of God. How can it be otherwise?
And, if you're not religious, then follow the first scientific principle, which uses different words to say the same thing.
Ref: first sentence of second paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
"Clearly, to Netanyahu, the people of Gaza are objects, and not subjects. "
Rule of War #1: First you have to "other" the enemy. It makes it easier for the conscripts to pull the trigger on children.
Maybe get your model checked.
It was multiple strikes, over a stretch of road, until everyone was dead
their movements were in full compliance with israeli authorities
That you are ok with this is between you and your maker, but just admit to that position and don't cop out with some "rational actor" nonsense.
The Netanyahu administration IS evil.
I think it was pretty clear, prior to the October attack, that Hamas was a terrorist organization dedicated to attacking Israel. The Israeli government concluded otherwise, presumably because maintaining the defenses along the border with Gaza was expensive. So, while I don’t think the Israeli government is composed of unintelligent people, I do think it is does things which make sense to someone engaged in a lot of wishful thinking, but not to anyone grounded in reality.
They've been doing the hold up the trucks thing at the Egyptian border crossing. A small number of Israeli protesters blocks the road, and Israeli guards refuse to remove them using physical force because that's not the done thing against fellow Jews. The attack on the WCK convoy has apparently made any aid organisation reluctant to agree to distribute food from the port the US is about the open. I've no idea if that was the intention or not, but it certainly served Israeli strategic goals.
The most logical explanation is that Israeli military operatives mis-identified the convoy as something that it was not and destroyed it thinking that. People uneducated in military history tremendously underestimate the fog of war and how confusing war can be and act like every move by every individual is calculated and coordinated; it is most definitely not.
Especially since the alternative, that the Israelis were deliberately targeting aid officials would require assumptions including:
- The Israelis want Gazans to starve more. Their actions in this war and in history suggest that AT WORST they are indifferent to that.
- The Israelis do not care at all about their public image and about alienating the West by killing aid workers who are nationals of countries in the West.
I know that there are many commentators here who are perfectly willing to accept such assumptions and far worse, but odds are that some mid-level guy in the Israeli military made a very bad call.
The most logical explanation is that Israeli military operatives mis-identified the convoy as something that it was not and destroyed it thinking that.
You might think that this is the most logical explanation, but it has the unfortunate property of not being true. The strike was ordered by a local commander who knew perfectly well that it was a convoy of aid workers. He thought, through an extremely flawed process, that there was also a Hamas militant with them, but he was wrong.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/idf-bombed-wck-aid-convoy-3-times-targeting-armed-hamas-member-who-wasnt-there/0000018e-9e75-d764-adff-9eff29360000
The background to all of this is that the IDF has not issued overall rules of engagement, leaving that and targeting decisions up to field grade officers. This leads to easily predictable problems.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-created-kill-zones-in-gaza-anyone-who-crosses-into-them-is-shot/0000018e-946c-d4de-afee-f46da9ee0000
That is combined with the fact that the IDF has allowed for a culture to grow that is extremely indifferent to collateral damage.
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
"The most logical explanation is that Israeli military operatives mis-identified the convoy as something that it was not and destroyed it thinking that. "
Your "logic" is unencumbered by observable facts.
Up until yesterday, I was more or less where you're at. That 972 piece that TMD links here was the end for me, though. Let me highlight the killer quote from that piece:
"In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any “collateral damage” during assassinations of low-ranking militants."
Urban combat is rough on civilians, even when the combatants are trying to avoid hurting them. I've gotten the idea that modern professional armies in close urban fighting can achieve around a 4:1 ratio of civilians to enemy combatants killed if they're trying to behave like civilized people. They're trying for 0:1, and the best they can do is 4:1 given modern equipment and tactics and the realities of modern war.
There's a lot that could be written about the ratio and what it means for strategy and foreign policy, but let's put that to the side because it's not directly relevant to the point here.
What we've learned form the 972 piece is that the IDF is willing to aim for a 20:1 ratio of civilian to enemy combatant deaths. Presumably their actual results are significantly worse than that planning number.
That ratio, as a goal, is monstrous. I've been very reluctant to join the crowd of Israel's critics. There are some monsters in that crowd with evil motives of their own, and no small number of useful idiots. But those critics don't get to write the IDF's rules of engagement. And those ROE tell a story that doesn't in any way rest on the credibility of Israel's often-vile critics.
They're currently closing in on 30 to 1, and show no signs of being satisfied yet. I guess the lure of beachfront property!! is just too strong. Possibly Javanka has even made an offer.
I stated above that the IDF has relied heavily on air strikes and artillery, relative to close combat, infantry operations. Here is data on the consequences of that choice: when the Trump Administration relaxed the ROE for air strikes in Afghanistan, civilian casualties from strikes increased 330%
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan
"People uneducated in military history tremendously underestimate the fog of war and how confusing war can be . . ."
And your point is that the IDF is uneducated in military history, unfamiliar with the fog of war and how confusing war can be? Your precious concerns are noted.
Feh.
One of the first Israeli responses to the Hamas attack was to cut off all food, water and fuel supplies to Gaza City. That was modified after international protests, but starving the Palestinians into submission is clearly a strategy favored by the Israeli government.
Israel has established that it has total impunity. Nothing it does will stop the military re-supplies from the United States. So it does everything it can to make life in Gaza impossible. You are aware how all the infrastructure: hospitals, schools, infrastructures, water treatment, sewage treatment, electricity, internet, apartment buildings, homes, farms ... you name it, Israel has reduced it to rubble.
And they're keeping food, water, and medical supplies away, deliberately, from the desperate population. Who they have herded from city to city, attacking them on their "safe" routes, then attacking again in the new "safe" zone, until they're nearly all corraled in Raffah.
Yeah, why wouldn't they bomb an aid convoy? And I presume they destroyed the 100 tons of food, too, right? I predict they'll sink the US's great "floating pier" thingy as soon as it's built. "An accident! Tough luck! War, ya know!"
"Israel has established that it has total impunity. Nothing it does will stop the military re-supplies from the United States. "
Well, in an election year at least.
I don’t know whether it was deliberate or not, but it happened and Israel has to acknowledge beyond saying they are investigating. It was a terrible error but in Gaza it simply meant that more innocents died on top of thousands of others. We need to do more than chastise.
My grandparents came to the U.S. in the early 20th century fleeing from what was then Russia and the periodic pogroms… see “Fiddler on the Roof” for an introduction. They were not particularly welcome in Russia.
In thinking about the Israeli Palestinian war and the history of the last 80 years, it is, in a tragic ironic sense, comparable to those earlier anti-Jewish persecutions except now the roles are reversed.
Both sides wish the other would disappear (river to the sea). There is a power disparity. There was and is continuous friction with settler incursions, seizures of land, destructions of Arab villages (shtetl’s) and the creation of a ghetto. There are questions about the other sides right to literally exist and be there. And there is senseless violence and now the destruction of the ghetto.
It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s close enough to consider Israel’s dominance and persecution (which is accompanied by an immense amount of propaganda for both sides) as a pogrom. Sad but true.
A long time ago, someone I know stole something, got caught, and did a short time in the local jail. He did give a very convincing "I made a mistake, feel terrible and won't let it happen again" speech, asking for mitigation. He later told me he wasn't lying, that he did make a mistake - he got caught, and intended to never get caught again.
We know the operators had orders to target this convoy - nobody is claiming they went rogue. Who issued those orders, and what were _their_ orders? Start paying attention when they stop speaking in an active voice.
"Start paying attention when they stop speaking in an active voice."
Bingo! donnie uses that technique and people still fall for it.
"Mistakes were made."
See, Reagan, St. Ronnie
Start paying attention when they stop speaking in an active voice.
Nice! I'm going to use this one.
After all that we saw the US military do in Iraq, Kevin is shocked shocked! to think that the IDF might have deliberately targeted people they regard as helping their enemies.
Iraq? Try Vietnam.
The rules of engagement in Iraq were uniform orders from the top, and they were much stricter than those the Israelis are using. The IDF considers acceptable a level of civilian death that is much higher than the US Army does.
So, as bad as what we did in Iraq was, the IDF's approach is worse.
I strongly support Israel, but Netanyahu is as bad, if not worse, than Trump. Under his leadership, and especially during this unnecessarily brutal offensive, Israel has been piling straws on the camel's back at an increasing rate. For me, this one broke it. Israel will not get back more than a handful, if any, of additional hostages alive, and Israel knows this. So this campaign isn't about that. Maybe this isn't technically genocide, but it's clear to me now that Netanyahu wants to reduce Gaza to rubble so that there simply is no more "there" there and all the Palestinians remaining alive there will have no choice but to leave.
Exactly! and, thank you.
"Netanyahu wants to reduce Gaza to rubble so that there simply is no more "there" there and all the Palestinians remaining alive there will have no choice but to leave."
Where have I seen this before? Oh, yeah:
Hitler wants to reduce the western USSR to rubble so that there simply is no more "there" there and all the Slavs remaining alive there will have no choice but to leave.
It's all about lebensraum.
In darker moments, I doubt that Netanyahu wants the hostages to return alive. Their stories will underline how unprepared the government and IDF were for the Hamas attack, and how disorganized the response was. Further, people will raise more questions about Likud’s stupid policy of punishing the Palestinians who were moderating among the Palestinian Authority, while ignoring the rejectionist Hamas.
Israel was given warnings in advance of the Hamas attack and ignored them.
The Guardian published an article on this over 4 months ago. CNN reported that US intelligence also warned Israel about the potential for a violent attack.
As much as I loathe Netanyahu and his coalition, all they've really done is to make explicit what Israel's policies have been since 1967.
Earlier than that if you're a student of history.
IDF real estate operation?
The West Bank colonists are making inroads.
I'm sorry, Kevin, but you need to try harder.
Local commanders have been given carte blanche in an attempt to achieve (im)plausible deniability.
Even if orders did not come down from on high it is still damning because it is obvious that structures and processes that need to be in place have not been put in place by command.
I'm not sure to what extent the policy is intended to provide plausible deniability. Another aspect is that the IDF's self-image doesn't match what it actually is.
Israelis think of their military as elite and professional. This would be the sort of army in which pushing decision making as far down the chain of command and relying upon the initiative of junior officers and senior NCOs makes sense. They think of themselves as the Prussian/German army that existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
But this isn't what the IDF actually is. It's overwhelmingly made up of a combination of part time reservists and raw conscripts. The class of long serving, professional NCOs that characterize most NATO armies doesn't exist. IDF units, both in this campaign and in previous ones, lacks creative problem solving and its record of discipline among both individuals and small units has been terrible. There isn't any army that should be turned loose without generalized rules of engagement, but the IDF is particularly dangerous when this is attempted.
This is a case when one should be wary of ascribing problems to malice when there is plenty of evidence of incompetence.
Many Germans could not believe their government was deliberately mass murdering Jews, too.
Of course it was deliberate.
It is the height of naivete to think otherwise
The point by the IDF was to force WCK to suspend aid in Gaza so more Palestinians would starve.
and WCK halted operations in response. so IDF got what they wanted.
First, look at TheMelancholyDonkey's long post summarizing reporting on this attack.
I'd also like to see the conversation focus on people and decisions, not on sweeping statements about "Israel." Israel is no more a single, unified entity than "America" is, and discussing something like the Jan 6th attack on the Capitol as "America attacking itself" isn't just inaccurate, it's dangerously so. ("Israel" sometimes acts as a substitution for "The Jews" in that inaccurate sort of way, too.)
Assuming TheMelancholyDonkey's post is fairly accurate, this attack happened not because the high ups (either Netanyahu or IDF leadership) ordered it, but because they haven't put strict policies in place to prevent it. I know less about IDF leadership than Netanyahu; I suspect they may have deep disagreements over policy and are finding it expedient to leave things unclear, which is wrong but which suggests some might support this attack and others might have opposed it. I don't imagine the political leadership would want to have responsibility for an attack like this, though I do imagine some of them are indifferent or perhaps even secretly happy it took place.
Netanyahu is a known quantity. I don't believe he cares about the Palestinians, or Hamas, or the hostages, beyond wanting to hold onto power for as long as possible. Right now, that means maintaining his alliances with the ultra-right in Israel and maintaining this conflict for as long as possible in order to delay elections he's likely to lose. In his selfish calculations, doing anything to prevent these sorts of atrocities risks losing that ultra-right support, but openly setting a policy of bombing Gaza until no one is left alive would also doom him politically. I think it likely he's unhappy this happened but very happy that there's nobody closely tied to him who signed off on it: that means maintaining the current disorganized system where local commanders have full discretion is best for him politically and he'll do it. He'll also try to gain as much as possible among people who are happy about the attack.
It's also clear that if he has to risk losing Biden's support, he'll take that over losing local support. He likely calculates that Trump will be a good friend to his regime if he's elected, and that Biden is hamstrung over Israel policy: if Biden does nothing, he loses enough of the left that Trump wins, but if he takes strong measures, he loses enough moderates and Jewish voters that Trump wins. If Trump wins, it's good for Netanyahu and Trump won't care how many civilians the IDF kills; in the meantime, Biden can't do anything really damaging without high political risk, and if he takes that risk his policies get reversed by Trump in 2025.
Maybe those calculations are wrong. It's clear Biden would like Netanyahu gone, but there's not much he can do publicly to make that happen and if he acts behind the scenes, nobody critical of his Israel policies will ever give him credit for it. If Biden were Trump, he could "play hardball" with Israel, but that might backfire and provide Netanyahu enough cover to actually wipe out all the Gazan citizens. Without US vetoes, the UN could vote to condemn Israel, but how does that stop these attacks? If the US cuts off all support, what leverage do we have left? Israel has enough to get by until President-for-Life Trump gets into office, and being "abandoned" by America will likely strengthen Netanyahu, not eject him from office. Making the crisis worse helps him, that's for sure, so long as he can blame others for it.
As with the underlying Israel/Palestine problem, if there were any easy solutions, they'd have been tried. I'm not aware of any American commander convicted of a war crime after authorizing a drone strike that killed civilians; I doubt we'll see that happen here. The best we're likely to see is Biden putting more pressure on Netanyahu's government with half-measures, and perhaps the ambassador having conversations with Netanyahu's political opponents, but no public measure is likely to be effective and that means any public action Biden takes will lose him votes and make for no real change. Instead, he'll do what he can to push for elections in Israel (Benny Gantz is calling for them in September) and the atrocities will continue in the meantime, because stopping them now probably guarantees Netanyahu and Trump can resume them in 2025.
This is a depressing yet convincing set of scenarios. Will no one care about the Palestinians? I wonder if I'll live long enough to see "Nakhba" museums built in every city, analogous to the "Holocaust" museums that spring up nearly every week. Will "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama" become as big as Anne Franke's little diary? Will people wring their hands and ask "Why did no one notice?"
“If the US cuts off all support, what leverage do we have left?”
I wrote to the White House that I favor cutting off all shipments of offensive weaponry to Israel; but would be okay with sending missile-defense systems and components, to defend Israeli civilians from rockets fired by Hamas, Hezbollah, or PIJ. That would leave some leverage, as would non-military aid to rebuild Israeli villages and kibbutzim damaged by the October terrorists.
It's exactly the political consequences a. Biden has to do everything in his power to ensure Trump is not re-relected and that's the damning part: Sacrifricing a few hundreds of thousands innocents to save the lives of potentially billions of people. Yes, Trump is just that dangerous, IMHO.
Good 'Ol Joe has a _lot_ on his shoulders and for no money in the world would I ever want his job.
Yeah. I think about this a lot. It fucking sucks.
Netanyahu is an asshole and has been for a long time. His plan seems to be siege warfare until Hamas surrenders and the US is once again kicking Lucy's football. give it up Charlie Brown I say.
Netanyahu = The Iron Wall
Whether orders come from the top or are just a consequence of Israel's lifting of all restrictions on its soldiers, as defense minister Gallant announced in October, all Gazans and persons trying to save Gazan lives are in mortal danger. That's NOT by accident. It's what "no restrictions" means. No restrictions on killing foreigners either and many aid agencies have had to suspend operations which will make the already horrendous starvation worse. It's not enough to coordinate with IDF, as the Red Crescent already found, certainly after their ambulance was struck as it followed all IDF procedures to save a 6-year-old girl named Hind.
But although it is the norm in Western media and politics, I am amazed, Kevin, that you should practically plead with the Israeli government to come up with an excuse you can with some effort believe in. You even suggest one, though it's too laughable to be used: "did they somehow misidentify the trucks as Hamas?" By now there are so many atrocities, and so much deliberate misinformation coming from Israel (starting with the beheaded babies fabrication), no lame excuses in one particular situation will cut it. Even if you're let off the hook for murdering your neighbor by saying "I mistook him for Hitler, sorry", you can't do it a thousand times. And even if you're Israel not forty thousand times.
Deliberate? Not deliberate? Who cares? It's a distinction without a difference. More blood on Israeli hands.
I'd like to add another prong to what have been some very cogent points. And that is dispute resolution mechanism otherwise known as prediction. I distinctly recall predicting what's happening right now within a week of 2023.10.07 (As did several other people; I'm hardly a genius. But I can and do remember history.) I also distinctly recall telling both tango and middleoftheroadem that this was how events would play out (again, so did many other people.) At the time, they both scoffed and said that what's happening now wasn't going to happen (they are by no means unique in this regard, BTW, but right now I'm just too tired to say who's on my shit list, and why.)
So what's happening with those two worthies now. I don't know precisely what to call what they're doing now, but one thing it ain't is admitting they were wrong. Very, very obviously wrong. That won't cop to it says that at best they're not worth listening to and at worst, well, what do you call this most recent atrocity or what is considered an acceptable kill ratio by the IDF?
The power of prediction, folks. It's one way to sort out the bad eggs from the good 'uns, and that's a disturbing thing. Because there are so many, many bad'uns to sort. One more thing: this is why I keep a shit list. These people should either be ignored or taken very, very seriously.
+10
The rules of engagement have been obvious since the very beginning: kill anyone/anywhere on sight. If this weren't clear in the first month then it became patently obvious when the IDF chased down those 3 hostages after their escape and executed them. This was 4 months ago, in case anyone's memory fails them.
And if all of this wasn't bad enough, Netanyahu's decisions (I mean, he is sort of the commander in chief unless someone else is) on this are as ultimately as counter productive as Bush invading Iraq.
There is zero chance that a new generation of Hamas terrorists won't continue the violence. Hamas is fine with martyrdom, if Hamas had some sort of a Western "army to army" view of this the conflict would be playing out in a completely different way.
The natural instinct of some significant portion of the Israeli population, maybe even a clear majority, was that some multiple of 1,000 civilian deaths was not only fine, but necessary.
Its at times like that a leader with true intelligence and character either emerges, or does not.
Scent is correct, and was correct. We already knew who Israel's leader was, so this entire saga was totally predictable.
What is a bit less predictable is, to my mind, the similarly naive assumption that all of this is one Biden phone call away from stopping. I saw an article on Eisenhower's response to the aftermath of the Suez crisis, which, if true, shows the value of US clout. However, one can't assume 1950's Eisenhower and 2024 Biden have the exact same levers.
Golly gee wumpers! Your prediction turned out to be true! What strange necromancy do you practice that you can so accurately foretell the future?
I thought I'd repost this separately to emphasize that I did not predict this outcome. The truth is, a great many people, I among them, predicted this outcome and not just on this tiny blog.
Kinda reminds me of that time shrub declared war on Iraq despite the fact they had zip to do with 9/11, there was absolutely no evidence they were refining uranium, etc. And of course, you bet your ass that the same people who pretended to believe the evidence was solid enough to go to war then are pretending to believe Israel's excuses for its conduct now. 'Ttwas always thus and always thus will be.
based on the information i've seen so far, it was almost certainly deliberate. i can't even come up with a plausible scenario for it being accidental.
Decades ago when I formally studied the Middle East, I was taught that the two most respected militaries in the area were Turkiye's and Israel's, although for broadly opposite reasons: Turkiye's army was known for tight discipline up and down the ranks; and the IDF was known for allowing local commanders and even individual soldiers to improvise as they saw fit.
Israel today is -- sorry, Zionists -- a pretty sick state. Its Jewish children are brought up on propaganda that would do the Third Reich proud: most of the world -- and especially the Arabs and most especially the Palestinians -- conspires against the Jewish People and seeks their destruction. Jews must do whatever it takes to defend themselves against this evil.
And fill in the blanks of history with falsehoods that portray the Zionists as the most well-meaning people in the world, who were viciously attacked when they tried to reclaim their territory of origin, in part to protect themselves against the destruction so much of the rest of the world intended for them.
Then add onto that the blatantly genocidal language of a lot of Israel's political and cultural leaders, arm a bunch of kids to the teeth and tell them the survival of the Jewish People depends upon them, and -- surprise! -- you get not a few soldiers and local commanders willing to commit atrocities.
Only out of dire necessity, of course.
And the leaders of Israel surely know this, and are content with it.
Else they could have made very forceful statements -- as opposed to their actual lukewarm responses -- condemning any event even suggesting war crimes.
Do you have a source on educational propaganda within Israel?
Seconded. I don't doubt you for a second, mind. But I'd like to read it for myself. Put that way, it does sound kind of sick, doesn't it? People slowing down to see a horrific car crash up close and personal.
Let's see if this works: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/gideon-levy-robert-fisk-haaretz-israel-palestine-gaza-a8557691.html
Thanks! And thanks for taking the time and trouble to link to your source instead of citing it.
Google "Israel-Hamas War: Journalist Gideon Levy's old speech on Israel's occupation of Palestine goes viral"
Apparently can't do links in comments.
You can do links in comments, but it can't be the very first thing. You need to preface it with something first.
Jewish children brought up on propaganda -- rest of the world demonizes Jews -- do whatever it takes -- Wow! This sounds very much like what the Zionists (aka "Israelis") constantly accuse "the Arabs" of doing.
Do "both sides" teach their children to demonize the others? Or is this just standard right wing projection, which we see so much of in the US Republican Party?
Also, actual confirmation that this is the case, as it's what I have suspected, and that makes it suspect.
Standard right-wing projection.
Oops is all you'll get out of Israel. Of course now that particular aid agency will be suspending further aid. Another one gone, on to the next.
Perhaps they assume their contrition is enough of a price to pay to further cut into the effective aid, which is their ultimate goal.
Another riff on prediction. Remeber "A land without a people for a people without a land"? In hindsight that pithy little epigram should have told us -- let me be honest, should have told me -- who the Zionists really were. Y'all know the quote I'm going to pull, right 😉
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
- Maya Angelou
So is it okay for Russia now to reduce to rubble the home country of wherever those responsible for the recent heinous terrorist attack come from?