War between Hamas and Israel

[Frelga]

I wish I thought it would be over soon, but I suspect you are right.

Someone on Twitter said, you know we are in WWIII, right? And I can't make a convincing argument that we are not.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's hard to argue with that.

If anyone has an objection to the title of the thread, let me know and I will try to adjust it.

[Dave_LF]

Someone on Twitter said, you know we are in WWIII, right? And I can't make a convincing argument that we are not.

WWII was called WWII because there was a direct line between it and the unfinished business of WWI, and because the the sides and players were largely the same. That isn't the case with whatever's going on now, except in the trivial sense that everything that happens builds on what happened before.

Probably not the type of counterargument you want, but it's the best I've got.

[Frelga]

We can quibble about the numbering. I think there is an argument to be made that everything is interconnected. WWII - nuclear bombs - Cold War vs. Nazi Germany turning on its Soviet friends causing USSR join the Allies, causing the West view USSR as more scary but post-USSR Russia as less scary than it really was/is. I admit that this line of argument needs more work.

My Twitter timeline did a thing.

Screenshot_20231012-121608.png (397.36 KiB) Viewed 2341 times

[N.E. Brigand]

President Biden criticizes former President Trump for saying that Prime Minister Netanyahu for "let us down"* and for saying that Hezbollah is "very smart".



*It's quite possible that Trump is upset for Netanyahu for having quickly recognized Biden's election in 2020 and for having praised Biden this week.

[N.E. Brigand]

"40 murdered babies"

(There is video at the link. It doesn't autoplay, and I haven't watched it.)

I started to watch the video. Watched the first 30 seconds. Nothing graphic shown to that point, but the description is worse than what I wrote.

CNN and CBS have now confirmed that reporting.

I was careful not to repeat the specific claim that babies had been beheaded. Despite the fact that President Biden himself repeated that claim a day later, that particular point is still not clear. Were infants shot in the head and their corpses burned? Yes. Were infants beheaded? Unsure.

[River]

You're being careful about claims and I'm still stuck at the babies... Again, what is Hamas's end game here? This looks like an organizational version of suicide-by-cop. And all these civilians are being taken along for the ride.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I would guess that Hamas's aim is to goad Israel into actions that will result in widespread condemnation. Which is exactly what is happening. How that will end up benefiting Hamas or the people that it pretends to represent, I could not say.

[Frelga]

My unsubstantiated suspicion is that the people supplying them with weapons (Iran, maybe Russia) promised them a lot more support than they ever intended to provide.

[N.E. Brigand]

NBC: "'Top secret' Hamas documents show that terrorists intentionally targeted elementary schools and a youth center."

[Sunsilver]

Just had to share this! Shared by a Jewish friend on FB:

So this just happened: there are Italians singing Hatikva at the Arch of Titus in Rome, which is lit up in the colors of the Israeli flag. For anyone who doesn’t understand the symbolism, the Arch of Titus is a 2,000 year old arch that the Romans built to commemorate the crushing of the Jewish revolt, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the beginning of the Jewish exile. I have chills.

[Frelga]

Shin Bet chief: We were unable to thwart Oct. 7 onslaught, responsibility is mine

The less charitable inference is that Netanyahu intentionally ignored the intelligence. Obviously, I don't know whether that is true, but I don't rule it out.

Several commenters pointed out that this take reflects US reaction post 9/11, when Americans rallied behind Bush and any accusations of incompetence were considered unpatriotic.

Israeli are furious with Netanyahu and he gets no allowances and all the blame for the nation being at war.

[N.E. Brigand]

Numerous posts on social media that claim to show Palestian victims of Israeli bombing in Gaza actually show Syrian victims of Syrian bombing from as long as ten years ago.

Mind you, Israeli has been heavily bombing Gaza, which has resulted in Palestinian deaths.

[N.E. Brigand]

Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza was struck by some sort of explosive munitions, reportedly killing 500 people. It's not yet clear whether this was an Israeli or Hamas attack -- presumably accidental in either case -- but if is of course an awful tragedy regardless of the cause.

[N.E. Brigand]

Numerous posts on social media that claim to show Palestian victims of Israeli bombing in Gaza actually show Syrian victims of Syrian bombing from as long as ten years ago.

Mind you, Israeli has been heavily bombing Gaza, which has resulted in Palestinian deaths.

One such false post was shared a few days ago by Representative Ilhan Omar (Democrat of Minnesota).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, there is some question as to whether an explosion that killed hundreds at a hospital in Gaza was the result of Israeli bombing, or a misfiring Hamas rocket.

Either way the dead and injured are just as dead and injured.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Israeli Defense Force claimed in a tweet that the hospital was struck by a filed rocket launched not by Hamas but by Islamic Jihad, which also operates in Gaza, but the video attached to the IDF tweet actually showed a rocket launch 40 minutes earlier than the explosion, so the IDF subsequently edited the tweet to remove the video. Other videos are circulating, but none of the sources have been properly verified.

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Meanwhile, Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is grossly attacking Nikki Haley, who apparently called for the U.S. to admit Palestinian refugees, by arguing that Haley doesn't understand that people in the Middle East don't want "to live in American style democracy and freedom."

[N.E. Brigand]

President Biden was scheduled to visit Israel tomorrow and then meet in Jordan with King Abdullah, President Sissi of Egypt, and President Abbas of the West Bank, but because of the hospital bombing, Jordan has just cancelled that meeting. I wonder if Biden will still go to Israel.

While I still think the bombing was mostly likely an accident by either the Israelis or Hamas, here we see a possible motivation for someone to have deliberately done this.

[Frelga]

Biden was supposed to be on his way. That seems like a bad idea.
It's a terrible loss of life.

Either side could have done it by accident, I suppose, and both sides have incentive to deny doing it. But only one side would benefit from doing it on purpose.

[N.E. Brigand]

The New York Times has been working to keep up with developing news (three versions of the same story as updated left to right):



As V said, dead is dead, but getting the attribution right is likely to matter a lot.