Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I understand it's an opinion piece but why is it ok to throw around accusation of genocide nilly-willy in a major newspaper, and to a lesser extent calling it war "on" Gaza?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/29/war-gaza-egyptians-palestine-israel-hamas-protest-marches

meh, in the meantime there's an actual genocide going on in Sudan. Those people aren't credible in other words.

[Tamas]

Meanwhile, more apartheidish oppressors fall thanks to their owm wicked methods:

Hamas says youngest hostage, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, has been killed along with two family members
The armed wing of Hamas said on Wednesday that 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, his four-year-old brother and their mother, who were being held hostage, were killed during the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

[The Minsky Moment]

"Killed while trying to escape"

[OttoVonBismarck]

OvB I just want to go on the record here as saying that I often find your sober analysis fairly compelling, but that your racist trolling is pretty tedious.

Agreed. It's a real shame.

Thirded.

You guys are smoking crack if you think it's "racist trolling" to point out the well documented, well reported issues right now with a growth of (primarily Muslim-fueled) antisemitism in Canada and Europe.

[Grey Fox]

That's not the same thing than accusing our governments and local authorities of having an anti-semite agenda.

Which you did.

[Josquius]

Interesting discussion on newsnight yesterday of how this whole situation is being presented as Hamas vs Israel when really it's Hamas at the head of a dozen different armed groups.
I do wonder whether the truth will ever come out of which behaved best and worst in the initial attacks - if indeed things are even split that way.
More pertinently it makes the current negotiations extra complex. The worse than Hamas groups won't be so keen on giving up their hostages.

[Iormlund]

Which group raped and murdered best and worst? 

[Savonarola]

Which group raped and murdered best and worst? 

They could have an awards show; it'll be bigger than the Oscars.  Susan Sarandon could MC, it looks like she'll be available for some time now.

[Admiral Yi]

I did read something early on (I think linked here) about some Palestinian dudes saying to an Israeli mother "we don't kill babies, we are from [random Islamist name]."

[Jacob]

I did read something early on (I think linked here) about some Palestinian dudes saying to an Israeli mother "we don't kill babies, we are from [random Islamist name]."

I hope what that Palestinian dude said was true.

The fact that there were multiple groups involved in the attack, operating under the Hamas umbrella is new to me. I would be pleased to learn that some (or even most) of them did not subscribe to principles that endorsed murdering infants and children.

I would be even more pleased to see Hamas take action against baby-killers within their own ranks.

[Josquius]

I did read something early on (I think linked here) about some Palestinian dudes saying to an Israeli mother "we don't kill babies, we are from [random Islamist name]."

Yeah, there was a huge array of behaviours amongst different attackers ranging from the "we don't just murder. We want to cause as much suffering as possible" through to those who seem to have behaved quite like decent professional soldiers and didn't harm civilians.

I recall reading something a while ago that Hamas' leadership was shocked at quite how fucked up some of the attackers had been- does make me wonder now whether this was referring to the guys they had radicalised themselves or other groups.


Here's an article on that story about the varied groups.
BBC News - How Hamas built a force to attack Israel on 7 October
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67480680

[Admiral Yi]

I would be even more pleased to see Hamas take action against baby-killers within their own ranks.

But not grannies?  Or teens?  Or pregnant mothers? 

You end up in a weird place when you start carving out special exceptions for slaughtering civilians.

[Jacob]

But not grannies?  Or teens?  Or pregnant mothers?

You're reading quiet a lot more into my statement there than I intended.

Presumably if the mother of the baby survived to report the guy saying "we are [group], we don't kill babies" she wasn't killed either, suggesting that that group in particular didn't have a police of murdering even some categories of adults.

You end up in a weird place when you start carving out special exceptions for slaughtering civilians.

For sure.

[Jacob]

Actually to elaborate...

As I understand it, Russian attackers in Ukraine murdered and raped Ukrainian civilians with what seemed to be impunity (and possible tacit encouragement). However, when that one psycho shared a video of him raping an infant, I believe the Russian authorities actually took action against him. To me, that indicated that Russia still has an established (if obviously low) bar to the kind of depravity they'll accept.

When it comes to the Hamas attack, my impression at first was that Hamas as a whole endorsed the murder and torture of even babies and children as a positive act in the war they are fighting. That puts the bar for depravity significantly lower than even Russia.

If - as it now seems - the willingness to hurt infants and children was limited to small groups within Hamas as opposed to the organization as a whole, that lifts the very low bar just a tiny bit higher.

Should Hamas as an organization crack down on those who perpetrated the worst atrocities - and yeah, on refelction I do somehow thing that murdering children is worse than murdering adults though I'm not really interested in creating a graduated scale for a multifaceted set of possible victims - than that raises the bar a bit further to the (still very low) bar set by Russia. As a positive, it may also discourage elements of Hamas or their successors from the very worst excesses next time (if there is a next time, but it seems likely that this conflict isn't going to be fully resolved this time around).

[Grey Fox]

Things change, I guess. Hamas leader, the one who lives in exile in Qatar, went to Iran and got told that he wasn't going to get any more help nor a wider war with that stunt. They had to reasses their position since that moment.