Israel-Hamas Thread II

[Pommer]

But are the fact checkers biased?

Careful, when this type of thinking goes on too long and it’s turtles all the way down, soon.

 

[Valletta]

Careful, when this type of thinking goes on too long and it’s turtles all the way down, soon.

It's naive to follow someone just because they call themselves a fact checker, or Honest John for that matter.

 

[wing2000]

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi made a rare admission of fault by Israel in the six-month-old war in the Gaza Strip, as he accepted responsibility for the deaths of the aid workers.

“It was a mistake that followed a misidentification, at night, during the war, in a very complex condition,” he said, adding, “It shouldn’t have happened.”

General Halevi’s mea culpa marked a change in tone from Israel’s military, which throughout the war has largely rejected criticism of its conduct by arguing that it was doing what was necessary to defeat Hamas. It came as many of Israel’s closest allies voiced indignation and demanded explanations for the attack.

Biden says he is ‘outraged’ by the attack on an aid convoy, after Israel’s military says it was a mistake.

In a sharply worded statement, Mr. Biden said that Israel had not done enough to protect civilians and noted that the deaths were not a “stand-alone incident.”

www.nytimes.com

 

[Desk trauma]

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi made a rare admission of fault by Israel in the six-month-old war in the Gaza Strip, as he accepted responsibility for the deaths of the aid workers.

“It was a mistake that followed a misidentification, at night, during the war, in a very complex condition,” he said, adding, “It shouldn’t have happened.”

General Halevi’s mea culpa marked a change in tone from Israel’s military, which throughout the war has largely rejected criticism of its conduct by arguing that it was doing what was necessary to defeat Hamas. It came as many of Israel’s closest allies voiced indignation and demanded explanations for the attack.

Biden says he is ‘outraged’ by the attack on an aid convoy, after Israel’s military says it was a mistake.

In a sharply worded statement, Mr. Biden said that Israel had not done enough to protect civilians and noted that the deaths were not a “stand-alone incident.”

www.nytimes.com

Clearly Hamas has infiltrated the IDF officer corps.

 

[Valletta]

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi made a rare admission of fault by Israel in the six-month-old war in the Gaza Strip, as he accepted responsibility for the deaths of the aid workers.

“It was a mistake that followed a misidentification, at night, during the war, in a very complex condition,” he said, adding, “It shouldn’t have happened.”

General Halevi’s mea culpa marked a change in tone from Israel’s military, which throughout the war has largely rejected criticism of its conduct by arguing that it was doing what was necessary to defeat Hamas. It came as many of Israel’s closest allies voiced indignation and demanded explanations for the attack.

Biden says he is ‘outraged’ by the attack on an aid convoy, after Israel’s military says it was a mistake.

In a sharply worded statement, Mr. Biden said that Israel had not done enough to protect civilians and noted that the deaths were not a “stand-alone incident.”

www.nytimes.com

A friendly fire incident with Gulf War pilot Scott Speicher was covered up, and the U.S. government wrote him off and left him in the desert to die. Israel here admits when a mistake was made.

 

[Vanellus]

Israel has gone down the usual victim blaming route - blaming "coordination" but an internal source has refuted this disgusting tactic.

 

[essentialsaltes]

In Israel’s war against Hamas rule, Gazans go hungry, aid groups retreat​

“Never before have we seen such rapid deterioration into widespread starvation,” Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said last month.

The enclave’s headlong descent into hunger has happened in tandem with Israel’s destruction of Hamas’s de facto state. Israel’s inability to institute an alternative system of civilian rule — as well as its attacks on local grass-roots initiatives — has resulted in the breakdown of Gaza’s typically tightknit society, making it virtually impossible for aid groups to safely carry out their work.

The breakdown in civil order accelerated in February after a series of Israeli strikes on Gaza’s police force. Officers stopped escorting aid convoys, leaving them open to attack by criminal gangs and increasingly desperate civilians.

Israel has sidelined, and is seeking to eliminate, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has decades of experience distributing food, medicine and basic services to Palestinians in Gaza.

The last time Israel approved an UNRWA aid delivery [to] northern Gaza was Jan. 29.

At least 196 relief workers have been killed since October, according to the United Nations, both in the field and in their homes. Israel has hit humanitarian convoys and warehouses.

Israel has denied restricting the flow of aid and has downplayed the hunger crisis. Elad Goren, head of the civil department for COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees the Palestinian territories, told reporters on March 14: “There is no starvation; there are challenges to accessibility.” He blamed food shortages on Hamas diverting aid and on sluggish humanitarian agencies.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Israel is using AI to target strikes more rapidly than humanly possible. Whistleblowers shed light on the process.
However a short statement on the IDF website claimed it was using an AI-based system called Habsora (the Gospel, in English) in the war against Hamas to “produce targets at a fast pace”.
A separate source told the publication the Gospel had allowed the IDF to run a “mass assassination factory” in which the “emphasis is on quantity and not on quality”. A human eye, they said, “will go over the targets before each attack, but it need not spend a lot of time on them”.

Israel is using artificial intelligence to help pick bombing targets in Gaza, report says​

The Israeli military has been using artificial intelligence to help identify bombing targets in Gaza, according to an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call, citing six Israeli intelligence officials involved in the alleged program – who also allege that human review of the suggested targets was cursory at best.

The officials, quoted in an extensive investigation by the online publication jointly run by Palestinians and Israelis, said that the AI-based tool was called “Lavender” and was known to have a 10% error rate.

The IDF said “analysts must conduct independent examinations, in which they verify that the identified targets meet the relevant definitions in accordance with international law and additional restrictions stipulated in the IDF directives.”

However, one official told +972 “that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions” and typically devoted only around 20 seconds to each target – ensuring they are male – before authorizing a bombing.

The magazine also reported that the Israeli army “systematically attacked” targets in their homes, usually at night when entire families were present.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Tehran vows response after strike blamed on Israel destroyed Iran’s Consulate in Syria and killed 12​

The U.S. National Security Council said the United States played no role in the strike in Damascus and did not know of it ahead of time.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Biden warns Netanyahu the situation in Gaza is ‘unacceptable’​

The president said U.S. policy will change if Israel does not immediately take ‘specific, concrete, and measurable’ steps to address the disaster​

The phone call between the two leaders came three days after seven workers from the José Andrés-run World Central Kitchen were killed by an Israeli strike on a clearly marked convoy, igniting outrage in the United States and abroad. The president held the call with Netanyahu specifically because of the deadly strike, Kirby said, adding that Biden was “shaken” by the attack.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the message in Brussels on Thursday.

[Washington’s blanket support for Israel will change if Israel doesn’t start listening to U.S. demands about protecting civilians in Gaza and allowing aid into the Palestinian enclave, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday. The top U.S. diplomat spoke to reporters following President Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.]

 

[Desk trauma]

Washington’s blanket support for Israel will change if…

No it won’t.

 

[Philip_B]

No it won’t.

To some extent, the US diplomatic position is somewhat compromised by its reliance on the military-industrial complex for economic stability. This leaves the options fairly nuanced, as a stronger economic outlook is good, especially in an election year, however, for the sake of decency and justice they need Israel to operate with more restraint and caution than Israel cares for. Israel may well be winning in the field, however, they may be losing in the back room where deals are done. Israel in Gaza may well end up looking like the US in Vietnam. Netanyahu does not like that option and sees the only option as a full-scale victory no matter how ugly and no matter what the cost.

 

[essentialsaltes]

‘Serious violation’ of rules led to strikes on WCK aid convoy, Israel says​

Israeli strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza earlier this week were “carried out in serious violation” of the military’s procedures and were a “grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification” of vehicles as carrying Hamas operatives, according to the findings of an Israeli military investigation released Friday.

Several procedural rules were broken, the IDF said in a briefing Thursday night. It said the biggest mistake was that the operators of the unmanned aerial vehicle tracking the convoy were not made aware of the aid convoy’s coordination plan.

The IDF said Thursday that it had tracked an armed suspect boarding a convoy carrying aid from a pier moving southbound and shooting from the roof, putting those tracking it on alert that this was a Hamas operative. The aid trucks the Israeli military was tracking then stopped at a hangar. A convoy of other vehicles then left the hangar and split up. One of the vehicles moved northward, while the other three continued farther south. Those three would end up hit by airstrikes.

The IDF said that three procedural rules were violated: The official coordination plan was not communicated from the top to the ground; the airstrike targets were confirmed only by seeing an armed man, which it said was an insufficient standard; and the shooting continued from one vehicle to another after the operator saw people running from the first vehicle after it was shot.

The IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, ordered the dismissal of the brigade fire support commander (an officer with the rank of major) and the brigade chief of staff (an officer with the rank of colonel in reserve) as a result of the findings. Three other commanders will be formally reprimanded, the IDF said.

 

[Philip_B]

‘Serious violation’ of rules led to strikes on WCK aid convoy, Israel says​

Israeli strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza earlier this week were “carried out in serious violation” of the military’s procedures and were a “grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification” of vehicles as carrying Hamas operatives, according to the findings of an Israeli military investigation released Friday.

Several procedural rules were broken, the IDF said in a briefing Thursday night. It said the biggest mistake was that the operators of the unmanned aerial vehicle tracking the convoy were not made aware of the aid convoy’s coordination plan.

The IDF said Thursday that it had tracked an armed suspect boarding a convoy carrying aid from a pier moving southbound and shooting from the roof, putting those tracking it on alert that this was a Hamas operative. The aid trucks the Israeli military was tracking then stopped at a hangar. A convoy of other vehicles then left the hangar and split up. One of the vehicles moved northward, while the other three continued farther south. Those three would end up hit by airstrikes.

The IDF said that three procedural rules were violated: The official coordination plan was not communicated from the top to the ground; the airstrike targets were confirmed only by seeing an armed man, which it said was an insufficient standard; and the shooting continued from one vehicle to another after the operator saw people running from the first vehicle after it was shot.

The IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, ordered the dismissal of the brigade fire support commander (an officer with the rank of major) and the brigade chief of staff (an officer with the rank of colonel in reserve) as a result of the findings. Three other commanders will be formally reprimanded, the IDF said.

Thankyou for sharing this. Sadly like many I end up feeling that this may bemore about managing the Public Relations component, than any real remorse and commitment to change the culture.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Thankyou for sharing this. Sadly like many I end up feeling that this may bemore about managing the Public Relations component, than any real remorse and commitment to change the culture.

RIght, what are the odds that the very first negligent strike in Gaza just happened to kill multinational charity workers?

 

[essentialsaltes]

Tehran vows response after strike blamed on Israel destroyed Iran’s Consulate in Syria and killed 12​

The U.S. National Security Council said the United States played no role in the strike in Damascus and did not know of it ahead of time.

US actively preparing for significant regional attack by Iran that could come within the next week​

The US is on high alert and actively preparing for a “significant” attack within the next week by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to Monday’s Israeli strike in Damascus that killed top Iranian commanders, a senior administration official tells CNN.

Senior US officials currently believe that an attack by Iran is “inevitable” – a view shared by their Israeli counterparts, that official said.

 

[Landon Caeli]

US actively preparing for significant regional attack by Iran that could come within the next week​

The US is on high alert and actively preparing for a “significant” attack within the next week by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to Monday’s Israeli strike in Damascus that killed top Iranian commanders, a senior administration official tells CNN.

Senior US officials currently believe that an attack by Iran is “inevitable” – a view shared by their Israeli counterparts, that official said.

I can't imagine anything other than a routine, run of the mill "attack" that will be very unimpressive. Just to save face. Yawn...

 

[Valletta]

Thankyou for sharing this. Sadly like many I end up feeling that this may bemore about managing the Public Relations component, than any real remorse and commitment to change the culture.

I have seen nothing to indicate that. On the other hand, I do remember Joe looking at his watch during the ceremony for the Americans he got killed in Afghanistan. And what remorse had Joe shown for all of the deaths of aid workers and civilians that he has caused?

 

[Pommer]

I have seen nothing to indicate that. On the other hand, I do remember Joe looking at his watch during the ceremony for the Americans he got killed in Afghanistan. And what remorse had Joe shown for all of the deaths of aid workers and civilians that he has caused?

What!? He didn’t rend his clothes and sit in ashes!?
Pfft.

 

[Valletta]

What!? He didn’t rend his clothes and sit in ashes!?
Pfft.

He continues to put forth policies that result in violence, trafficking, and death.