Israel-Hamas Thread II

[civilwarbuff]

But the role of Faiq Mabhouh, the only named target, was shrouded in conflicting claims.

The IDF said in a statement that the raid had “eliminated” Faiq Mabhouh, a senior official within Hamas’s internal security division who was responsible for coordinating the group’s militant activities across the Gaza Strip. The Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV network said that Mabhouh was a director of police operations who coordinated and protected aid deliveries. The Washington Post could not independently confirm his role.

He was the brother of former Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in Dubai in 2010, according to Michael Milshtein, a former head of the Palestinian division of Israeli military intelligence. Unlike his brother, Mabhouh had been an important figure in upholding law and order in the enclave, Milshtein said, and his death would have a limited impact on the “military capabilities of Hamas.”

In going after Mabhouh, Israel appeared to continue a pattern of attacks on members of Gaza’s police force. Civil servants under Hamas’s prewar government, police officers played a key role guarding international aid convoys until last month, when Israel began targeting them.

The subsequent withdrawal of police from the aid delivery process, according to humanitarian groups and U.S. officials, left convoys open to looting by desperate civilians and criminal gangs, and made it nearly impossible to get assistance to starving families in the north.
Israel asserts that all Hamas members are legitimate military targets.

Since I don't have a wapo account I will not waste my time reading your posting. Try something that we all have access to......

 

[DaisyDay]

Since I don't have a wapo account I will not waste my time reading your posting. Try something that we all have access to......

Here, free version. Comment away.

 

[JosephZ]

The entire population of the war-torn Gaza Strip — some 2.3 million people — is now living through "severe levels of acute food insecurity," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday.

"According to the most respected measure of these things, 100% of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity. That's the first time an entire population has been so classified... We also see — again, according to, in this case the United Nations, 100% — the totality of the population — is in need of humanitarian assistance. Compare that to Sudan; about 80% of the population there is in need of humanitarian assistance; Afghanistan, about 70%."

Blinken says all of Gaza facing "acute food insecurity" as U.S. pushes Netanyahu over his war plans

As Biden pushes Israel to adjust plans for a new offensive in the war on Hamas, Blinken warns that everyone in Gaza is facing starvation.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[DaisyDay]

The entire population of the war-torn Gaza Strip — some 2.3 million people — is now living through "severe levels of acute food insecurity," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday.

"According to the most respected measure of these things, 100% of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity. That's the first time an entire population has been so classified... We also see — again, according to, in this case the United Nations, 100% — the totality of the population — is in need of humanitarian assistance. Compare that to Sudan; about 80% of the population there is in need of humanitarian assistance; Afghanistan, about 70%."

Blinken says all of Gaza facing "acute food insecurity" as U.S. pushes Netanyahu over his war plans

As Biden pushes Israel to adjust plans for a new offensive in the war on Hamas, Blinken warns that everyone in Gaza is facing starvation.

www.cbsnews.com

This is truly horrific.

 

[Vanellus]

More doubts about some of the alleged atrocities by Hamas on October 7

Kibbutz Be’eri Rejects Story in New York Times October 7 Exposé: “They Were Not Sexually Abused”

TWO OF THE three victims specifically singled out by the New York Times in a marquee exposé published in December, which alleged that Hamas had deliberately weaponized sexual violence during the October 7 attacks, were not in fact victims of sexual assault, according to the spokesperson for the Kibbutz Be’eri, which the Times identified as the location of the attack.

Note this is evidence from the kibbutz that was attacked

This article describes how Israeli media "warfare" is conducted:
Hasbara: Oct. 7 and Israel's propaganda war

Chris Hedges: I want to talk about the tactic. For instance, the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh can go back to almost any incident that gets wide play internationally. They lie brazenly about what happened. They blamed the killing of this Al Jazeera journalist – A Palestinian-American journalist – On the Palestinians. They released video footage of gunmen that they said were firing towards her, then Al-Haq or B’Tselem, one of these human rights organizations, exposed that the video was taken at a place where she was not even present, etc.

Finally, after a few months, the Israeli authorities conceded that she may have been shot by an Israeli soldier by accident, but by then we’ve moved on to another story. They shape the narrative and they have quite an effective ability to do it at the beginning. We see it now in Gaza repeatedly, including the killing of people who were going to get food from trucks in Northern Gaza; The Israelis say that it was a stampede. It comes out later but by then it doesn’t have the same effect.

Ali Abunimah: The tactic is to play into the propensity of the US media, and this is what they teach in journalism schools. I’ve never been to a journalism school – Which I think is where you go to learn how not to do journalism – But they play into the propensity of US media to ‘both sides’ everything. US media takes the approach, particularly with the question of Palestine, that you never place your credibility or your authority as a journalist anywhere in terms of saying, the Israelis say this, the Palestinians say that, but the Palestinians are telling the truth because the evidence shows A, B, and C.

So when Shireen Abu Akleh is killed live on television, and when there are Palestinian and other eyewitnesses who give their accounts in the immediate aftermath live on television and say, we saw the Israeli soldiers over there firing at us, and then Shireen fell and then we were injured and the Israelis kept firing, that is never credible to the US media.

What the Israelis do is they immediately put out a counter-narrative; Even if it’s false, even if the Israelis know it’s false, and even if they know it will be found to be false in a day, in a week, in a month, in three months, it serves the immediate purpose of muddying the waters so that all the headlines will immediately be Palestinian journalist dies in disputed circumstances. Job done, as far as the Israelis are concerned. They don’t need to go further than that. We saw that so clearly in the context of this genocide in Gaza. If you remember early on when the al-Ahli Hospital was bombed, dozens of people were killed there, and hundreds of people were injured, the Israelis put out this narrative which was let’s say, never proven, to be generous. That it was an Islamic Jihad missile that fell and killed them even though investigators looked at the footage later and said it couldn’t have been that missile.

But the job was done. The Israelis had achieved what they wanted which was that the State Department spokesperson, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post could say it’s disputed. Who knows what happened? That hospital is disputed but what about the other two dozen hospitals that the Israelis didn’t even deny they attacked? So that’s the tactic again and again: To sow doubt where there is no doubt that journalists were doing their jobs. But again, it’s that they’re exploiting that propensity of the US media to refuse to investigate, to refuse to take a position on where the evidence leads, and that’s the greatest strength for the Israelis.

 

[essentialsaltes]

WaPo Gift Link: Drone footage raises questions about Israeli justification for deadly strike on Gaza journalists​

On Jan. 7, the Israeli military conducted a targeted missile strike on a car carrying four Palestinian journalists outside Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

Two members of an Al Jazeera crew — Hamza Dahdouh, 27, and drone operator Mustafa Thuraya, 30 — were killed, along with their driver. Two freelance journalists were seriously wounded.

They were returning from the scene of an earlier Israeli strike on a building, where they had used a drone to capture the aftermath. The drone — a consumer model available at Best Buy — would be central to the Israeli justification for the strike.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement the next day it had “identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF troops.” Two days later, the military announced that it had uncovered evidence that both men belonged to militant groups — Thuraya to Hamas and Dahdouh to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, its smaller rival in Gaza — and that the attack had been in response to an “immediate” threat.

The Post found no indications that either man was operating as anything other than a journalist that day. Both passed through Israeli checkpoints on their way to the south early in the war; Dahdouh had recently been approved to leave Gaza, a rare privilege unlikely to have been granted to a known militant.

The Washington Post obtained and reviewed the footage from Thuraya’s drone, which was stored in a memory card recovered at the scene and sent to a Palestinian production company in Turkey. No Israeli soldiers, aircraft or other military equipment are visible in the footage taken that day — which The Post is publishing in its entirety — raising critical questions about why the journalists were targeted.

--

The night of the attack, a battle over the narrative began. The IDF said in a statement that its aircraft had “identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF troops.”

The next day, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari appeared to backtrack: “Every journalist that dies, it’s unfortunate,” he told NBC, saying the drone had made them look like “terrorists.

In a new statement on Jan. 10, the IDF said the drone had posed an “immediate threat” to nearby soldiers, though the strike occurred approximately 15 minutes after Thuraya had stopped recording.

In response to multiple inquiries and detailed questions from The Post, the IDF said: “We have nothing further to add.”

 

[civilwarbuff]

Here, free version. Comment away.

Thank you.

From above article: Israel’s claims about the military significance of the operation at al-Shifa were swiftly contested by Palestinian officials, who identified the target of the raid as a police official. Civilians in the hospital said they were trapped by the fighting.

The first 2:12 is the relevant part:

This is a good one too from IDF:

 

[civilwarbuff]

This is truly horrific.

Too bad Hamas does not agree with you.....

 

[civilwarbuff]

More doubts about some of the alleged atrocities by Hamas on October 7

Kibbutz Be’eri Rejects Story in New York Times October 7 Exposé: “They Were Not Sexually Abused”

Note this is evidence from the kibbutz that was attacked

This article describes how Israeli media "warfare" is conducted:
Hasbara: Oct. 7 and Israel's propaganda war

‘Clear and convincing information’ that hostages held in Gaza subjected to sexual violence, says UN Special Representative

Following a 17-day visit to Israel, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict reported on Monday that she and a team of experts had found “clear and convincing information” of rape and sexualized torture being committed against hostages seized during the 7 October terror attacks.

news.un.org

 

[Vanellus]

‘Clear and convincing information’ that hostages held in Gaza subjected to sexual violence, says UN Special Representative

Following a 17-day visit to Israel, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict reported on Monday that she and a team of experts had found “clear and convincing information” of rape and sexualized torture being committed against hostages seized during the 7 October terror attacks.

news.un.org

The original article I linked referred to Kibbutz Be'eri. The UN report linked within your linked article confirmed what was said in my original link. From the UN report:

63. The mission team conducted a site visit to Be’eri and witnessed first-hand the magnitude of destruction within the kibbutz with rows of houses burnt, riddled with bullets and many reduced to rubble.

NB: It was Israel and not Hamas who had the means to reduce buildings to rubble on October 7.

64. The mission team examined several allegations of sexual violence. It must be noted that witnesses and sources with whom the mission team engaged adopted over time an increasingly cautious and circumspect approach regarding past accounts, including in some cases retracting statements made previously. Some also stated to the mission team that they no longer felt confident in their recollections of other assertions that had appeared in the media.

65. At least two of the allegations of sexual violence previously reported were determined by the mission team to be unfounded, due to either new superseding information or inconsistency in the information gathered, including first responder testimonies, photographic evidence and other information. These included the allegation of a pregnant woman whose womb had reportedly been ripped open before she was killed, with her fetus stabbed while still inside her. Another such account was the interpretation initially made of the body of a girl found separated from the rest of her family, naked from the waist down. It was determined by the mission team that the crime scene had been altered by a bomb squad and the bodies moved, explaining the separation of the body of the girl from the rest of her family. Allegations of objects found inserted in female genital organs also could not be verified by the mission team due in large part to the limited availability and low quality of imagery.

66. The mission team received credible information about bodies found naked and/or tied, and in one case gagged, in some of the kibbutz’ destroyed houses and their surroundings. While verification of sexual violence against these victims was not possible, circumstantial evidence – notably the pattern of female victims found undressed and bound – may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence. 67. Overall, the mission team was unable to establish whether sexual violence occurred in kibbutz Be’eri. Further investigation may determine whether incidents of sexual violence occurred

Consider the horrific allegation of the ripping open of the womb of a pregnant woman. Can you think of a reason why a false allegation of that horrific, headline grabbing nature might be made? To justify genocide maybe?

Quoting from my second article linked in #3345

But really from October 7 onwards, this story started to develop of mass rape, of brutal rape. And remember, this was in the context of other atrocity propaganda – The beheaded babies that never happened. The baby who was put in an oven that never happened. The pregnant woman whose belly was cut open and then the fetus was stabbed, that never happened. The stories of children tied together and burned, that never happened. And so on and so on. All of these stories were systematically debunked, sometimes by witnesses who were there, sometimes by the Israeli media, and sometimes even by the Israeli army in some of these cases, they said, no, that didn’t happen. Lies that were too big even for the Israeli army. And it was in that context that the rape stories were going.

Once Israel began its genocide in Gaza in earnest, and the wave of sympathy in the official West and the official Western media started to wane, the Israelis realized, we needed to revive the sympathy that we had right at the beginning in the shock of October 7. And this rape story was perfect for that in their mind because if you are appealing to a Western progressive audience, it’s ideal. It’s the ideal narrative for let’s say the Hillary Clinton voter because the polls were showing that in the West, in the aggressive West or the liberal West, the base of the Democratic Party, and across Europe, there was utter revulsion about what Israel was doing.

So you need a narrative that justifies or distracts from the propaganda and paints Palestinians as utter beasts, worse than ISIS. That’s what Israel said, Hamas equals ISIS. So you need a narrative that fills that role and the rape story was perfect for that because also it meshes in with a couple of ideas. One is the latent racism that has been drummed into people that Arab men, Brown men, Black men, and Muslim men are violent, sexual, uncontrollable racists, which is a very old trope that goes back to Jim Crow days in the US. It was the idea that the justification or the pretext for many lynchings, for example, the idea that a Black man is a danger to a white woman or a settler woman and that women need to be protected from these brutes, is a very old idea in the history of American settler-colonialism and racism.

 

[wing2000]

In the recent raid against the Al-Sharif hospital, the Israeli military is stating:

It says troops have killed hundreds of fighters in the operation and also detained over 500 suspects, including 358 members of the Islamist militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the largest number captured at the same time since the beginning of the war nearly six months ago.

The article goes on to note Israeli special forces used deception tactics to fool Hamass and captured 3 senior Islamic Jihad military leaders.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-says-troops-captured-hundreds-fighters-gaza-hospital-2024-03-22/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Daily-Briefing&utm_term=032224&user_email=bd8837a5345dc6cbc3787e7804ee34e28984e0d06cd3f36b82b5b743d0d6b4e2

 

[Vanellus]

James Elder of UNICEF:“The depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it,” said James Elder, a spokesperson with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

Israel-Gaza war: US condemns ‘cynical’ Russia and China veto of ceasefire deal; Israel to go into Rafah ‘with or without US support’ – as it happened

“As soon as you drive through the north, you get that universal gesture of hunger of people putting their hands to their mouths. A lot of children, women with very gaunt faces. In [the city of] Khan Younis, there is utter annihilation.

“I’ve not seen that level of devastation in 20 years with the UN. People’s coping capacity in the north has been smashed and in the south it is hanging by a thread,” Elder said in an interview on Friday.

Elder said that he saw a dozen “skeletal” children at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza.

“We are seeing severe malnutrition cases … Children who are on the brink of death, just skin and bones … and these are the ones who have managed to get to hospital. There is a real fear for those that can’t,” Elder said. “This is man-made and preventable.”

Medical staff at the hospital worked 36-hour shifts and then joined their families to search for clean water, food or shelter, Elder said.

 

[Valletta]

Such as gunning down surrendering hostages?

Unfortunately, it is now Israel that is doing the murdering.

Hamas did provoke retaliation, but genocide of all Gazans and a bunch of West Bankers is not a good or acceptable answer.

"Even as international pressure mounts, Netanyahu has insisted Israel’s path to “total victory” must go through Rafah, which is considered the hub of Hamas’ terrorist activity. To relieve some of the pressure, the Israeli leader agreed to send a delegation to Washington in order to present the plans and get American feedback."

Israel cannot win Hamas war without Rafah, warfare expert claims

Israel contemplates a pivotal operation in Rafah, Gaza, amid international pressure and humanitarian concerns, as Netanyahu seeks a path to victory and Blinken discusses peace

www.jpost.com

Hamas will continue to murder as many citizens as they can in order to claim Israel is the villain. Rafah must be taken, other countries of the world should help in all ways.

 

[Valletta]

Unfortunately, the course Netanyahu and the IDF have taken is creating more terrorists than it's killing, and it will lead to even more violence and terror against Israel for at least a generation. Until Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian territories and allows Palestinians the right to self-determination through the creation of a Palestinian state, there will be no peace.

The truth is that unless Hamas is eliminated more and more terrorists will be created. This is what history shows.

 

[JosephZ]

The truth is that unless Hamas is eliminated more and more terrorists will be created. This is what history shows.

Unfortunately, Israel's actions in Gaza since October 7th can't be undone, and even if Hamas were to be eliminated, which really isn't much of a possibility at this point, another terrorist group would quickly replace them. The hard truth is that the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinians will be a rallying cry for terrorist groups and their sympathizers for many years to come.

 

[Valletta]

Unfortunately, Israel's actions in Gaza since October 7th can't be undone, and even if Hamas were to be eliminated, which really isn't much of a possibility at this point, another terrorist group would quickly replace them. The hard truth is that the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinians will be a rallying cry for terrorist groups and their sympathizers for many years to come.

The truth is there are many terrorists sponsored by Iran, and due to the Biden administration they have billions of dollars in funding. They don't need any rallying cry to kill more Jews and Christians, they need money to supply weapons and propagandists to try and demonize Jews and Christians. No group replaces another, that's like claiming that if you put a violent criminal in jail another will take his place. Jihadist will continue to spill innocent blood, and a cease fire will give them time to re-group and strike again.

 

[Valletta]

Battles rage around Gaza's Al Shifa hospital, Israel says 170 gunmen dead​

The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said their fighters were engaged in battles with the Israeli forces outside and around the vicinity of Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Hamas denies any presence inside the facility.

Battles rage around Gaza's Al Shifa hospital, Israel says 170 gunmen dead

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -Fighting raged on Saturday around Gaza's main hospital where Israel says it has so far killed more than 170 gunmen in an extensive raid, which the Palestinian Health Ministry says has also resulted in the deaths of five patients. The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic...

www.yahoo.com

If they really were never in the hospital, isn't it foolish for them to hang around the hospital? Doesn't that set them up for being blamed for occupying the hospital?

 

[DaisyDay]

"Even as international pressure mounts, Netanyahu has insisted Israel’s path to “total victory” must go through Rafah, which is considered the hub of Hamas’ terrorist activity. To relieve some of the pressure, the Israeli leader agreed to send a delegation to Washington in order to present the plans and get American feedback."

Israel cannot win Hamas war without Rafah, warfare expert claims

Israel contemplates a pivotal operation in Rafah, Gaza, amid international pressure and humanitarian concerns, as Netanyahu seeks a path to victory and Blinken discusses peace

www.jpost.com

Hamas will continue to murder as many citizens as they can in order to claim Israel is the villain. Rafah must be taken, other countries of the world should help in all ways.

Israel is the villain when they starve tens of thousands of civilians, including infants and children. That is a war crime.

 

[Valletta]

Over 70 Percent of Palestinians Support Hamas’s October 7 Terror Attack: Poll​

Over 70 Percent of Palestinians Support Hamas’s October 7 Terror Attack: Poll | National Review

Ninety-one percent of Palestinians say Hamas has not committed war crimes and 75 percent are satisfied with Hamas’s current role ruling the Gaza Strip.

www.nationalreview.com

People need to understand the minds of the Palestinians.

 

[Valletta]

Israel is the villain when they starve tens of thousands of civilians, including infants and children. That is a war crime.

Hamas’ Gaza death toll stats are pure fiction — yet world media and leaders like Joe Biden still use them to smear Israel​

Hamas’ Gaza death toll stats are pure fiction — yet world media and leaders like Joe Biden still use them to smear Israel

Basic statistical analysis shows the Hamas-run Gaza healthy ministry is simply making up its death-toll numbers, yet world media and politicians like Joe Biden still rely on the stats.

nypost.com