I found this to be a good essay that gets a lot of the thoughts I'd been having down. It's very strange seeing what I half recall as a kid repeating itself. I just hope it isn't as catastrophic as Iraq.

31 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Well IDF using WP sooner than I had thought.  Sort of funny to see people fainting about the Russians using it in Avdiivka (the RF really likes incendiaries)

Yeah, I was holding off posting about it because there is just an astronomical amount of disinformation going around, even by the standards of social media. Thanks Elon.

But anyways, sadly it looks legit. Looks like white phosphorus was used on Lebanon as well as Gaza.

https://www.axios.com/2023/10/13/israel-gaza-hamas-evacuate-un-ground-operation

Well, not a practical warning.  But it will suit the rules based order.

37 minutes ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

But anyways, sadly it looks legit. Looks like white phosphorus was used on Lebanon as well as Gaza.

The use in Lebanon may well be legit. Use as a smoke screen etc is fine, and the Lebanese border isn't built up. In Gaza though, not so much. The still photo AP had up is pretty damning since WP's dual use that makes it 'legal' is smoke, and there really isn't a legit argument for a smokescreen in the middle of Gaza city.

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

Well IDF using WP sooner than I had thought.  Sort of funny to see people fainting about the Russians using it in Avdiivka (the RF really likes incendiaries)

The Russian 'WP' isn't White Phosphorus but is actually thermite. As always, since they don't actually have WP munitions. Its legitimate secondary use is that thermite will burn through metal and is therefore effective against armoured vehicles, cf if you want to 'spike' artillery nowadays to make it unusable thermite is often used to burn out the breech. While you wouldn't want to get hit by any its chemical effects on humans are considerably less than WP's.

Funny thing seeing people insist Israel isn't using WP because "it doesn't look the Russian WP". Yeah guys, there's a reason for that.

Easy way to tell the difference: thermite burns incredibly brightly and is extremely hot but does not smoke much (until it hits the ground). WP doesn't burn as bright but always smokes extensively since the phosphorus oxides are all extremely hygroscopic (water absorbing) and it and they react aggressively with that water- hence its use as a smokescreen. That hygroscopic property is also why it's banned in many military applications since it sticks to anything damp like, well, a person, and will eat its way straight through to the bone while releasing a lot of energy.

5 hours ago, Gorth said:

I'm fairly sure they knew something was coming. Maybe they didn't know how to respond or prepare for it. I'm sure someone will suggest it was deliberately ignored because it provided a convenient distraction from home affairs, but personally I lean towards the just not taking the warnings seriously option.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67082047

Israel was warned by Egypt of potential violence three days before Hamas' deadly cross-border raid, a US congressional panel chairman has said.

House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee head Michael McCaul told reporters of the alleged warning.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu described the reports as "absolutely false".

There is lots of people who assume Israel " must have known " or think  " how could one of  the worlds most advanced surveillance and  military states  not know " 

But I dont believe for a second that Israel knew because they would never have allowed the attack if they knew, they would never knowingly sacrifice Israeli lives. In 2011 Netanyahu was also  the PM and he authorised a prisoner swop with Hamas  of over 1000 Palestinian prisoners for a single Israeli soldier 

https://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/17/world/meast/israel-prisoner-swap-explainer/index.html

Does that sound like someone who would allow an attack on Israel if he knew about it?

And then the anger from Israelis towards the government security  failures  is also something that I doubt any sitting Israeli government would be prepared to risk. In latest polls 85% of Israelis say the surprise attack is the failure of leadership and 56% want Netanyahu to resign once the war is over 

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-767880

So for me its much simpler than what  many people think, the Israelis were caught by surprise and there was  both a security and intelligence gathering failure which has already been highlighted but more details of these failures will be revealed once the war is over and heads will roll. 

I also think Netanyahu's divisive,imprudent  and controversial attempts to change the Constitution and laws in Israel created a real distraction and weakened and divided Israeli society which meant less attention was focused on the normal things like intelligence gathering 

 

 

8 hours ago, ShadySands said:

This plus

Has certain folks in my family circles hitting the conspiracy sauce hard. 

 

Add to that the whole " but the Jews control the world " and " its the Deep state" so " of course they knew, how could they not have known " is the expected response of many people

And then the  conspiracy theory sauce  is not being sipped but quaffed 

 

 

https://news.yahoo.com/israeli-president-says-no-innocent-154330724.html?guccounter=1

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

Not a very productive thing to say in the current climate.

Im at the expected point in this latest violence where Im fatigued by developments and its almost depressing. I knew this was going to happen and as usaul with violence in the Israeli vs Palestinian conflicts its because

 

• Hamas doesnt really care about the lives of Palestinians and they knew there would be a  severe response. They cant be negotiated with until they recognize Israel has a right to exist and they wont do that 
• Israel has a right to defend itself and to destroy Hamas but as usual they are doing things which  is heavy-handed and falls on the entire civilian population of Gaza which is unfair and cruel
• The response from Western countries is extreme and difficult to really justify , both the UK and US have moved battleships to the Mediterranean. Not sure why thats necessary considering how Israel is already getting additional military aid from US. In other words  as usual Israel doesnt need battleships to completely defeat Hamas . The US only needs to do this if Iran suddenly attacked Israel and even then it would be complicated. But the Israelis have won the last 4 Arab-Israeli wars without Western armies getting involved so Im confidant they would defeat Iran in a conventional war 

Im also glad I have no direct ethic or ideological connection to either side because the situation would be more depressing if I did 

I have always maintained that the 2 state solution is still the best way to achieve sustainable peace but that requires good faith negotiations from leadership on both sides and thats lacking. So the conflict will continue  interminably until that happens. Im glad I dont live in either region 

 

 

Edited October 14, 20232 yr by BruceVC

Maybe the battleships are only moved there to stop the people from fleeing via boats.

Edited October 14, 20232 yr by Lexx

3 hours ago, Malcador said:

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

Not a very productive thing to say in the current climate.

The main problem with that reasoning is that you can always apply it in reverse. If you're going to blame Gazan civilians and make it all their fault then you can also blame Israeli civilians and make it all their fault too- even more so since the Israelis voted in their religious whackjobs, repeatedly. Half of Gaza's population wasn't even alive last time they got a vote.

And of course it's completely irrelevant as a defence against war crimes. You can't remove protected status from civilians because they won't fight your war for you.

Edited October 14, 20232 yr by Zoraptor

22 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Maybe the battleships are only moved there to stop the people from fleeing via boats.

Lexx thats so cynical I had to laugh 

Another carrier group, Eisenhower's, going to support Israel. Guess Hezbollah rates that high.

 

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-says-israel-has-restored-water-supply-to-gaza/#:~:text=A senior Israeli official confirms,Hamas terror onslaught last Saturday.

Israel has restored water to Gaza and I would imagine this is  from US pressure. Its definitely the right move, you cant use this brutal strategy of collective punishment on the whole of Gaza. The perception of what Israel does matters if it wants continued international and regional support at the same level

 

https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-sin-of-moral-equivalence?utm_source=braze&utm_campaign=2023_w42_newContent_338

Here is a good read about  the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians and how we reflect on it  from both sides . Its got things that are controversial but it also has some truths 

I think @Zoraptor @xzar_monty  @Gorth  @Malcadorwill appreciate it 

 

 

Edited October 17, 20232 yr by BruceVC

Meh, that's complete garbage. Basically a long 'essay' designed to make Mr Harris feel good about how much better the Israelis are at killing civilians.

I particularly like the human shield accusations. Israeli soldiers regularly use Palestinian children as human shields, Mr Harris actually thinks that's morally superior because they aren't using... their own children. Yeah, such moral superiority.

(On the more general issue, I'm always amused by accusations of one side 'not fighting fair' by hiding among civilians. Well ok, and maybe Israel should destroy its planes, drones, missiles, tanks, helicopters etc in order to also fight fair? No? Well then. And I'm fairly sure the dead don't care that they are 'collateral damage' from precision weapons; the people who care about that distinction are people who want to feel good about themselves for supporting it. I'd be interested in Sam's view on the moral equivalence of cutting off water to 2.2 million people, I suspect it'd put Simone Biles to shame with its gymnastic dynamism)

My sense is that stylistically speaking, Sam Harris would do well to learn a trick or two from someone like Ernest Hemingway. I mean, after reading this: "But leaving all of that to one side, for the moment I’d like to make a very simple point, that really shouldn’t be at all controversial—because it doesn’t prejudge any of the questions that people might disagree about. You don’t have to agree with me about Islam, or about the role it plays in inspiring conflict. The point I’m making now..." I couldn't help but wonder whether he'd actually stop talking about his point and make it.

The editor in me would also like to comment that instead of writing "At this moment in history" like Harris does, you can just insert the word "now" in the appropriate spot.

Sorry, I have been working on high-quality prose, and this wasn't. No comment on the substance, as I didn't read it to the end. But thanks for the link!

Edited October 17, 20232 yr by xzar_monty

You'd think with over 2000 women and children bombed to smithereens they more than got their pound of flesh already.

~1700, officially. Always 'funny' when civilised 'surgical precision strikes' manage to kill at a far greater rate than 'indiscriminate and deliberate' targeting of civilians. Yep, Israel is killing civilians at more than 4 times the rate Russia is. And that's as conservative an estimate as possible: using Ukrainian government figures for civilian deaths rather than OHRCR (use them and it's close to a full order of magnitude) and Obama'ing it by assuming that not one single man killed by Israel was a civilian.

Also, not including the dead from the hospital blown up today. At least those 500 (if confirmed) can take comfort knowing they were killed precisely, I guess.

7 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Sorry, I have been working on high-quality prose, and this wasn't. No comment on the substance, as I didn't read it to the end. But thanks for the link!

To be fair to Mr Harris it is a transcription of a podcast, and what works when said doesn't always work well when transcribed.

No proof yet though either way

No proof, but Israel's made an utter mess of the response. Can't decide on who launched the supposed failed rocket (IDF says PIJ, Regev says Hamas, Netanyahu apparently blamed ISIS(!)) and the video of the missile shown by Israel's official state twitter account is from nearly an hour after the hospital was struck. Plus most of the Hasbara got stuck saying it was a legitimate hit and casualties were all due to secondary explosions from stored munitions for the first two hours- when the hospital was run by US Episcopalians and British Anglicans, so not exactly Hamas. All the telltale signs of scrambling to find a narrative that works.

The explosion shown could have been from a palestinian rocket but it's... very marginal. It looks too large by far (albeit in the dark, which always makes explosions look larger) and would be like 1.5 M31 HiMARS rockets destroying a decent sized building containing high hundreds of people; it might just be possible, but it's not at all likely. Far more likely it was at least in the multiple hundreds of kgs range so was a GBU/ JDAM (or marginally, rocket like a Popeye), and that means Israel.

Pretty embarrassing for Biden. His meetings in Jordan are just 'postponed' according to the US, but the other parties (King Abdullah, Abbas) say they're cancelled. So it will just be going and shaking hands with Netanyahu, which isn't going to get his meetings uncancelled any time soon.

Edited October 17, 20232 yr by Zoraptor

Double post, but it's looking very likely that it was a JDAM. Pretty close to an exact match on sound and explosion size- and none of the scenarios thrown up by Israel or others (errant missile, disintegrating missile) come close to a similar match.

and from Gaza ('missile strike' is [sic] if it's JDAM)

 

9 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

To be fair to Mr Harris it is a transcription of a podcast, and what works when said doesn't always work well when transcribed.

OK, I didn't know that. It's a a valid point. In fact, it is often useful to be a bit wordier when speaking, as this allows for better understanding of the content: tightly-packed information makes for hard listening.

Feel it was a fallen rocket, either short or intercepted.  It is funny to see calls for cool heads and waiting to see in this case, though. 

Death toll of 300 or so do seem plausible, people trying to put an upper limit on it from calculation but I think that's just this OSINT fetish for doing things by math.

But regardless true or not, raised temperature everywhere.

Edited October 18, 20232 yr by Malcador

Lots of evidence now that is was Islamic Jihad responsible for the hospital tragedy  with a misfired missile. What I did find difficult to believe was how quickly Hamas was saying " Israel did it " and also how quickly so many people and the  general media believed it was Israel 

And yet this  allegation was coming from a terrorist group that has a history of being cavalier with the truth 

gonna once again state what should be obvious: there is no internet prizes for being first.

the curious drive to immediate share ignorance when history shows time and time again that cautious reflection is the superior course is as predictable as it is unfortunate. whether is a crimean bridge explosion, an anticipated ground assault or even a police shooting in wisconsin, folks will rush to share their confident evaluations in spite o' being proved wrong after the fact over and over and over again.

btw, is nothing wrong with guessing and being wrong, but all too often the speaking-out-their-kiester pundits mix their guesses with pontification. 

wait. best advice when info is new, conflicting, and/or unclear is to wait. nobody looks like a fool 'cause they waited. a couple days or weeks to start proselytizing 'bout the evils of ________ does not suffer 'cause an individual waited for more accurate info before sharing their outrage or scorn.

am not knowing who was responsible for the carnage at the gaza hospital. am sure as hell not gonna be convinced by fellow boardies and their educated guesses, particular given how cruel history has treated vocal resident experts.

HA! Good Fun!

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

Lots of evidence now that is was Islamic Jihad responsible for the hospital tragedy  with a misfired missile. What I did find difficult to believe was how quickly Hamas was saying " Israel did it " and also how quickly so many people and the  general media believed it was Israel 

And yet this  allegation was coming from a terrorist group that has a history of being cavalier with the truth 

You find it difficult to believe Hamas would want to blame Israel immediately for a lot of civilians dying ?