War between Hamas and Israel

[N.E. Brigand]

In The Atlantic: "Hamas’s Hostage-Taking Handbook Says to ‘Kill the Difficult Ones’ and Use Hostages as ‘Human Shields’." And it appears that the plan was not to bring hostages back to Gaza but to use them to hold onto Israeli territory for as long as possible. N.B. on provenance: the Atlantic obtained the document from the IDF.

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Meanwhile, one White House staffer has resigned over U.S. support for Israel, and a group of Congressional staffers is putting together a letter calling on members of Congress to demand a cease fire. I don't know whether or not a cease fire is the right step. I'm for whatever steps will secure the release of the hostages, bring peace and security to Israelis who live near Gaza, bring humanitarian support to the civilians in Gaza, and bring justice to the bloodthirsty murderers of Oct. 7th.

[N.E. Brigand]

Whatever the number was, it was a lot, based on eye-witness accounts from Doctors Without Borders.

I believe it. I was just struck by the weird "nearly 471" phrasing. That said, a Google News search for "Doctors Without Borders" brings up (for me) just one result in the past day ("Sudan: MSF suspends surgery in Khartoum hospital as supplies are blocked"), and Google News searches for "Médecins Sans Frontières" is only yielding reports like this one in which MSF condemns the bombing but says "hundreds of people have reportedly been killed." That report cites a doctor* who says, "We were operating in the hospital, there was a strong explosion, and the ceiling fell on the operating room," but he doesn't give a number of dead, and clearly people like himself survived. It's a war zone in a densely populated area, so I can't say for sure, but just the idea of there being 500 people in the hospital, much less several times that many (because if the building is intact, then most of the people inside must have lived), strikes me as unlikely. The largest hospital in Texas has 1,100 beds. The Palestinian Health Ministry, which is under Hamas control (and thus probably less reliable than the IDF) said yesterday that at least 500 people had been killed. Pictures of the damage today seem to show that the explosion, whatever its source, seems to have happened in a parking lot and that adjacent buildings though damaged are largely intact. Certainly if there were a large crowd in that lot, that could explain the number. But there have been no more photographs of these casualties than there were of the supposedly decapitated babies. I'm going to tentatively suggest that the number of dead may ultimately turn out to be more like 50-100. That's still a lot.

(Edited to note that I started this post about four hours ago, returning to it periodically with more information, but even now, a new CNN story only says this about the number of fatalities: "Hundreds are believed to have died in the attack, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza". Later that pieces says the Ministry reports the death toll as "over 400." So in 24 hours they've gone from more than 500 deaths, to nearly 471 deaths, to more than 400 deaths.)

(*Edited again to note that the doctor cited in the Doctors Without Borders press release, Ghassan Abu-Sitteh, said overnight that the hospital had been "directly hit," but the photos today don't appear to show that. Dr. Abu-Sitteh also appears to be one source for the claim that more than 500 were killed. And he says the attack was "the most advertised crime in history" and conducted by the Israeli government. In short, he's not entirely reliable.)

I think this just shows us the limits of what the media can report.

So it's way too early to be certain about any of this, but I may have overestimated the actual death toll at the hospital:



To be sure, even ten fatalities is ten too many.

[Frelga]

I've seen reports of them "knocking" on the apartment buildings yesterday.

The real issue is that mainstream media took Hamas at its word and reported that the hospital was destroyed and 500-900 people killed. NYT even ran a front page with that headline and a photo of an unrelated ruined building.

Meanwhile:

Israeli sources to i24NEWS Correspondent @GuyAZ: Israel was informed of the missiles launched by Iranian-backed Houthi militants around noon today, with at least one interception carried out by Saudi Arabia

15 drones were identified to have been launched from Yemen, with some of the interceptions conducted by electronic warfare

[N.E. Brigand]

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says that intelligence reports he's seen make it clear that the hospital bombing was not the result of an Israeli attack.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that he's not yet convinced who was responsible.

[N.E. Brigand]

Here's a hot take: "Every Arab-American I know has said there is no chance they are voting for Biden next year (myself included). Although the voting clout of Arab-Americans is much different than Palestinian citizens of Israel, it’s worth noting the parallels to 2001, when Ehud Barak lost the Arab vote completely for his role in the start of the Second Intifada. Of course that led to the election of Ariel Sharon, but sometimes you are too disgusted to vote for a guy even if the consequences are worse."

Meanwhile: "Trump says he would ban Gaza refugees from the US".

Sometimes you just have to cut off your nose to spite your face.

[N.E. Brigand]

In The Atlantic: "Hamas’s Hostage-Taking Handbook Says to ‘Kill the Difficult Ones’ and Use Hostages as ‘Human Shields’." And it appears that the plan was not to bring hostages back to Gaza but to use them to hold onto Israeli territory for as long as possible. N.B. on provenance: the Atlantic obtained the document from the IDF.

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Meanwhile, one White House staffer has resigned over U.S. support for Israel, and a group of Congressional staffers is putting together a letter calling on members of Congress to demand a cease fire. I don't know whether or not a cease fire is the right step. I'm for whatever steps will secure the release of the hostages, bring peace and security to Israelis who live near Gaza, bring humanitarian support to the civilians in Gaza, and bring justice to the bloodthirsty murderers of Oct. 7th.

The Huffington Post reports that 411 Congressional staffers, self-described as "Muslim, Jews, and allies," signed the letter mentioned above. (Why has there not been a similar letter from these staffers demanding a cease fire between Russia and Ukraine?) And the political director for Rep. Ro Khanna (Democrat of California), a staffer who's had that job for just two weeks, has resigned because Khanna declined to co-sponsor a bill from Rep. Rashida Tlaib (Democrat of Michigan) calling for a cease-fire. The ex-staffer, Adam Ramer, says he had to "stand against war and for Palestinian justice." Khanna says, "I have great respect for Adam’s conviction, and he is a passionate voice for human rights for Palestinians. I will continue to call for protecting civilian life, humanitarian aid, and living up to the standards of the Geneva convention."

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Meanwhile an employee in the Illinois state comptroller's office has been fired after making antisemitic comments online, among them: "Hitler should have eradicated all of you" (that's per the Chicago Tribune). What is wrong with people? I guess Jake and Ellwood knew:



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A new CBS poll finds that:
--44% of Americans think President Biden's stance regarding Israel and Gaza is correct.
--32% of Americans want Biden to be more supportive of Israel.
--24% of Americans want Biden to be less supportive of Israel.

[N.E. Brigand]

A new CBS poll finds that:
--44% of Americans think President Biden's stance regarding Israel and Gaza is correct.
--32% of Americans want Biden to be more supportive of Israel.
--24% of Americans want Biden to be less supportive of Israel.

From that same poll, given various options as to what the U.S. should do, the following percentage of Americans said they support:
76% -- "sending humanitarian aid to Israel"
72% -- "using diplomacy with countries in the reigon"
57% -- "sending humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza"
48% -- "sending weapons and supplies to Israel"

[N.E. Brigand]

Here is President Biden's primetime speech from earlier this evening:

[Frelga]

Here's a hot take: "Every Arab-American I know has said there is no chance they are voting for Biden next year (myself included).

Are they going to vote for Trump, whose first act in office was to enact the Muslim ban, and who vowed to expand Muslim ban and bar Gaza refugees if he wins presidency?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No, they probably will either just not vote, or vote for Cornell West (if he actually gets on the ballot in their state).

[Dave_LF]

Or, with a full year to cool off and react to the many additional black/gray swans that are sure to show up, these events will not be as much of a factor as it feels like right now.

For what it's worth, although I would not bet on this outcome, I think it's perfectly, non-negligibly likely that neither Trump NOR Biden will be on the ballot next fall.

[N.E. Brigand]

Justin Amash, as a Republican from Michigan, was the first Palestinian-American to be elected to Congress, where served from 2011 to 2021. He became a Libertarian in 2020 and in 2019 had been the first Republican to call for Donald Trump's impeachment.

[N.E. Brigand]

Brian Beutler says something I said here (but he does it more thoughtfully) about what he rightly calls Hamas's "pogrom" on Oct. 7th: "The geopolitical goal is apparently to scuttle Israeli-Saudi diplomacy. The audacity and ghoulishness of the operation actually reflect cynicism more than the base hatreds that make humans capable of killing strangers. It was undertaken in order to provoke a violent response (to egg Israel into atrocities of its own) as a bankshot means of tipping public sentiment in the Gulf region. Specifically it's a hope that Israel would kill a bunch of innocent people in response; it's not anger over Palestinians who have already been killed, injured, or displaced."

I like this too: "The rote mantra 'Israel has a right to defend itself' (everyone has a right to defend themselves) loses no force with the caveat that war crimes are a defense to nothing, even other war crimes."

[N.E. Brigand]

Matt Yglesias asks young Americans now chanting "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" to understand that for many people, that phrase is understood to be a call for the genocide of the Jews in Israel.

[N.E. Brigand]

As noted by CNN, yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously (97-0) passed a resolution "affirming support for Israel, its right to self-defense, and condemning Hamas's attack on civilians." The resolution was co-sponsored by 99 of the 100 U.S. senators (the only exception being Rand Paul).

[Frelga]

Possibly the most detailed open source analysis of the avaliable OSINT on the hospital explosion.

Has a car bomb been ruled out?

[N.E. Brigand]

Here's a useful if depressing thread about Israel's ability to destroy Hamas. Short version: they can't: victory is defeat (but defeat is also defeat). Or slightly more hopefully in Josh Marshall's words: "Without a viable political solution not only in Gaza but a global settlement for all the occupied territories a military victory over Hamas will be squandered and eventually revert to some version of the Oct 6 status quo ante."

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Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani said that the Biden administration has been infiltrated by Iranian spies and that's why Biden is helping Hamas.

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Some 50 hostages held by Hamas who have dual citizenship are being released to the Red Cross.

Will this result in Hamas holding only hostages unlucky enough not to have a second passport?

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The New York Times now says its initial report on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital bombing "relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified ... The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was."

The Wall Street Journal offers this video analysis which finds that it was a rocket fired from Gaza, had an engine failure, went off course, and then broke apart entirely.

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Speaking of the reliability of information from Hamas, see also here. Two other points there jumped out at me: 1. Hamas had been preparing for the Oct. 7th attack for a year, so why didn't they stock their hospitals for the Palestinian casaulaties that they knew must follow? 2. It's probably a war crime for Hamas to launch rocket attacks from civilian areas.

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Israel's opposition leader, Benny Gantz, the former defense minister whose party has temporarily joined Benjamin Netanyahu's wartime government, yesterday met with the families of Israeli Arabs killed by Hamas on Oct. 7th.

Mind you, Netanyahu himself appears to have lost popularity in Israel, with polls estimating that an election now would result in his party holding only 35% of the Knesset. Yair Rosenberg noted yesterday that Netanyahu's explicit promise to the Israeli people was that he wouldn't be caught unawares by a terrorist attack. Big fail, Bibi! One Israeli satire site headline reads "Netanyahu Promises Full Inquiry Into Gaza Failure Once He Retires."

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The Times of Israel reports that the IDF yesterday screened about 45 minutes of footage for a couple hundred foreign journalists showing atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7th. The video was "collected from call recordings, security cameras, Hamas terrorists’ body cameras, victim dashboard cameras, Hamas and victims’ social media accounts, and cellphone videos taken by terrorists, victims and first responders." The journalists were not permitted to record the briefing but could take notes. The Israeli government "said it had decided to show journalists part of its collected documentation in order to dispel what a spokesperson characterized as 'a Holocaust-denial-like phenomenon happening in real-time,' as doubts have been raised around the world about some of the most horrific of Hamas’s atrocities."

In one pair of videos that were screened, Hamas terrorists are seen dressed in IDF uniforms, flagging down passing cars and then shooting their occupants.

Dead bodies are dragged out of vehicles and left in the middle of the road after terrorists rifle through their belongings and in some cases steal the blood-soaked, bullet-ridden cars.

In another video, first responders are seen pouring bottled water over still-smoldering bodies, hoping to snuff out the remaining embers.

In another, a man writhes on the ground, bleeding from his stomach, as a terrorist tries repeatedly to decapitate him with farming equipment. The man appears to be southeast Asian, possibly one of Israel’s foreign agricultural workers.

In another clip, from after the assault, an Israeli woman is seen trying to work out if a partially burned woman’s corpse, with a mutilated head, is that of a family member. The dead woman’s dress is pulled up to her waist and her underpants have been removed.

Major Gen. Mickey Edelstein, who briefed reporters after the viewing, said that “we have evidence” of rape but “we cannot share it,” declining to elaborate further.

In a two-part video segment recorded in two Israeli communities near the Gaza border, a home security camera shows a father scooping up his two young sons to run to their outdoor bomb shelter, the three of them just roused from their beds and all still in underwear.

Moments after they enter presumed safety, a hand appears onscreen, tossing a grenade in after the family. The father dies, and the boys exit, covered in his blood.

“Dad’s dead, it wasn’t a prank,” one says after they run back into their home. “I know, I saw it,” responds his brother, later screaming, “Why am I alive?”

In the second segment, captured through a call recording application on a victim’s phone, a different son reaches out to a different father. “Dad, I killed 10 with my bare hands,” the terrorist excitedly tells his father in Gaza. “Their blood is on my hands, let me speak to Mom.”

“Please be proud of me, Dad,” he adds.

Identified by his father as Mahmoud, the terrorist says he is calling his family from the phone of a Jewish woman he’s just murdered, and implores them to check his WhatsApp messages for further documentation.

There's more like that in the article, which includes just one minute of footage approved for release. That footage shows the same incident from three angles: the dashcam of an Israeli shot dead in his car and two videos recorded by the Hamas terrorists themselves in the course of shooting that car.

Of course, none of this makes it any easier if you're the parent of one of the many hundreds of children killed by an Israeli bomb in Hamas over the past two weeks.

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Axios reports that a United States Marine Corps general has been dispatched to advise Israeli forces.

[Sunsilver]

Horrible, N.E., just horrible.

Given how complex the politics of the area are, I have zero faith that a U.S.M.C. general is going to be of any use whatsoever.

[N.E. Brigand]

Megan McArdle argues that initial reports (especially headlines) about the hospital bombing were wrong not because of anti-Israeli bias but because of search optimization:

It turns out that amusing, vaguely intriguing or epigrammatic headlines don't perform well on the web. What performs well is the most boringly literal headline possible, one that tells you the most important information in the article.
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In a newspaper, you could use a reasonable English sentence, like "Hamas claims Israeli Airstrike on Hospital" followed by a subhead like "five hundred dead, according to Gaza Health Ministry". Doesn't work on the web.
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You have to put the claim first so people skimming a long page will see it. Hence "500 Dead in Israeli Strike on Hospital, Palestinians Say", etc. It's a bad sentence but a good headline.
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Moreover, many outlets A/B test headlines, writing a bunch of alternate headlines and seeing which one drives the most engagement. Obviously, this process selects for the things readers find the most outrageous, like, say, Israel attacking a hospital filled with civilians.

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Matt Yglesais opines that the "Israel-Palestine conflict really is borderline unsolvable, but that's because the forces of liberalism are weak in Israel and weaker in Palestine — liberals on both sides could easily make a good peace deal!"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I had considered writing up some of my thoughts about this intractable situation, but I think I'll just say "what he said":

Thoughts on Israel and Gaza