War between Hamas and Israel

[Frelga]

Nothing is going to persuade the Arabic states to admit that Israel didn't do it

[N.E. Brigand]

It doesn't help Israel's position that they've been caught lying before (as when an Israeli soldier killed a reporter last year).

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN reports that Israel has provided the U.S. with signals intelligence pertaining to hospital bombing. Earlier this evening, I saw a claim that Israel had recordings of Islamic Jihad concerning these events. Don't know if this is the same thing.

President Biden issued a statement mourning the loss of life and indicating that the U.S. was investigating.

[Frelga]

Photos and aerial footage emerged that show a parking lot with several burned out cars surrounded by buildings that appear to be mostly intact.

There is one part of the structure that is badly damaged, but does not appear consistent with the claims of hundreds of casualties. Nor is there a crater similar to those from other air strikes.

Since Twitter no longer shows threads if you are not logged in, here's an unroll of a Twitter thread trying to make sense of the situation. You can click through to the individual tweets for images, which are not graphic.

Whatever the reality is, it's bad enough. But possibly not as bad as initially claimed?

Eta: here's a video of the parking lot. Not graphic as far as I can see on the phone. Some burned out cars. People milling around. No emergency vehicles, no frantic search for survivors. Very different than the videos of Russian strikes on civilian structures in Ukraine and Syria.

I am still reserving judgement, but my initial suspicions seem more likely than not to be correct.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

As V said, dead is dead, but getting the attribution right is likely to matter a lot.

I partly agree with this, though I'm not sure that any evidence is going to convince those who want to believe what they want to believe.

It does seem like the weight of evidence is in favor of a failed rocket launch (whether from Hamas or Islamic Jihad). Is it possible that the evidence being put out is misinformation? I suppose so, though it seems unlikely to me.

[Frelga]

I haven't seen any other video from the scene that contradicts the one linked above.

There are reports that people were sleeping in the hospital parking lot, and they may have been some of the casualties. They should have been safe, sheltering near the hospital.

[N.E. Brigand]

As V said, dead is dead, but getting the attribution right is likely to matter a lot.

I partly agree with this, though I'm not sure that any evidence is going to convince those who want to believe what they want to believe.

It does seem like the weight of evidence is in favor of a failed rocket launch (whether from Hamas or Islamic Jihad). Is it possible that the evidence being put out is misinformation? I suppose so, though it seems unlikely to me.

It occurs to me that there might be a small paper that could be written about misinformation in Tolkien's works. Even in connection with identity theft.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Maybe not so small.

[N.E. Brigand]

Upon landing in Israel, President Biden said to Prime Minister Netanyahu, clearly intending for the press on hand to hear him, "Based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you. But there's a lot of people out there not sure."

[N.E. Brigand]

Wall Street Journal (via MSN): "U.S. Intelligence Shows Gaza Militants Behind Hospital Blast."

"'Our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza,' White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, adding that the U.S. continues to collect information on the incident."

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From the same article: "Arab leaders continued to assert that Israel was responsible for the explosion, which according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry killed nearly 471 people."

I find "nearly 471" to be a weird combination of specific and vague.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

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

[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.



I do want to note this list of reasons to be skeptical of reports that put the blame for what happened at the hospital on Palestinian rather than Israeli bad actors. However, while I'm citing that person's list, I'd like to note that he has yet to acknowledge today's reports that U.S. intelligence bolsters Israeli claims, so he may himself be showing a bias.

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Earlier today, President Biden announced the U.S. would provide $100 million in humanitarian relief funding for the people of Gaza. The money is available in an already existing general fund on which the White House can draw.

In response, Florida governor Ron DeSantis asked other Republicans to "Join me in opposing Biden's $100 million gift to Hamas."

Additionally, today the U.S. Treasury Department announced economic sanctions on ten individuals and entities connected with Hamas. Treasury says this is part on an ongoing effort to combat the Iranian government's support for terrorism that had already imposed sanctions on about 1,000 other people and business.

President Biden is also working with Senate Democrats to introduce a $100 billion package that will include military support of Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan as well as funding for the U.S.-Mexico border and for natural disaster relief.

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Matt Yglesias points out a factor in the Gaza situation that doesn't get enough attention:

If you imagine a generic situation where Country A is waging war on Country B, displacing civilians and endangering their lives, you would expect many residents of Country B to attempt to flee to nearby Country C.

And in almost every case, this would be a controversial situation in Country C -- large refugee influxes are always a big deal and often unwelcome. But one would also expect a fairly straightforward debate in which Country B's supporters urge Country C to be more generous, and Country C's refusal to let Country B's residents in is seen as a sign of hostility. It's important to recognize that, due to the politics of the right to return, this is not how Egypt's refusal to allow civilians to flee Gaza is seen.

I think Yglesias's article is quite good as a primer on the enormous problems underlying the whole situation.

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The Huffington Post reports that some members of the Biden administration, particularly those who are Muslim, are troubled by the president's vocal support for Israel and his "monstrous disregard for innocent Palestinian lives" and feel that they can't freely speak their minds as they could on other subjects. "The pride I felt serving in President Biden's administration has given way to deep shame. May God forgive us." For the most part, though, I don't see any specifics about what Biden has done wrong, while the article does describe some previously unreported work by the administration to support staff with Middle Eastern backgrounds. If the Americans currently held hostage by Hamas someday are freed, I rather wonder how these staffers would speak to them.

Biden himself seems to have a pretty clear idea of the risks of an agressive Israel response:



And I see that he'll be making a primetime address tomorrow (Thursday Oct. 19th).

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Sen. John Fetterman today issued a statement in which referred to Hamas's attack on Israel as the "largest loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust." Noting the lives lost at the hospital last night, he wrote that if "not for the horrific attacks by Hamas terrorists, thousands of innocent Israelis and Palestinians would still be alive today." (I am reminded of something Tolkien wrote about responsibility in wartime in one of his letters.) Fetterman also chided some of his Congressional colleagues for having taken Hamas's word about the bombing.

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Medhi Hassan argues that Joe Biden needs to be tougher on Israel in order to appeal to Palestian-American voters in the crucial swing state of Michigan, even though doing so would reduce Biden's support nationally. He could be right. Similarly, if Hillary Clinton had taken a few more populist positions in 2016, her national lead over Trump might have shrunk, but it might have put her over the top in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, writes:

"The Senate Intelligence Committee reviewed intelligence related to the attack on al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. Based on this information, we feel confident that the explosion was the result of a failed rocket launch by militant terrorists and not the result of an Israeli airstrike."

[N.E. Brigand]

Matt Yglesias points out a factor in the Gaza situation that doesn't get enough attention:

If you imagine a generic situation where Country A is waging war on Country B, displacing civilians and endangering their lives, you would expect many residents of Country B to attempt to flee to nearby Country C.

And in almost every case, this would be a controversial situation in Country C -- large refugee influxes are always a big deal and often unwelcome. But one would also expect a fairly straightforward debate in which Country B's supporters urge Country C to be more generous, and Country C's refusal to let Country B's residents in is seen as a sign of hostility. It's important to recognize that, due to the politics of the right to return, this is not how Egypt's refusal to allow civilians to flee Gaza is seen.

I think Yglesias's article is quite good as a primer on the enormous problems underlying the whole situation.

Further on this point, I was just reading some back and forth social media posts in which someone who is very critical of Israel and feels that Israel's treatment of Gaza justified what Hamas did eleven days ago pointed out that in the past ten years, "several human rights organizations have said that the blockade of Gaza is a crime against humanity (CAH), which is more serious than an illegal occupation. I'm not too keen on condemning people for whatever they do to resist a CAH."

And I got to wondering, because I'm not as well versed in these matters as I should be: if Israel is blockading Gaza, why don't the Gazans just get their goods via Egypt, with whom they share a border?

Wikipedia has the answer: the Blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has been in place since 2007, is enforced by both Israel and Egypt. And it has at times had the support of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

But I almost never see people complain about Egypt's treatment of Gaza.

[N.E. Brigand]

Better late than never. Credit to Rep. Ilhan Omar for the update:

[Frelga]

This much appears to be known:

The photos of the parking lot with burned out cars, surrounded by largely intact buildings, and of the pothole-sized crater in the pavement, are confirmed to be accurate.

The courtyard served as an overnight sleeping ground for people who probably counted on the hospital being a safe place during the bombings.

This is a bit circumstancial but:

The small crater and the extent of damage are more consistent with a misfired rocket than with the much more powerful Israeli bombs. This photo shows the comparison of impact craters. (this is based on what people I have found reliable in the past said. I am the opposite of an expert)

20231018_081700.jpg (377.92 KiB) Viewed 1806 times

The number of casualties is likely an order of magnitude smaller than claimed by the Palestinian sources. Not that there is any "acceptable" number of civilian casualties.

Palestinian rockets have a high rate of misfire, often landing in Gaza instead of Israel.

I would like to believe that Israel wouldn't bomb a hospital for moral reasons, but that's not admissible. I do, however, believe that Israel wouldn't deliberately do something so fucking stupid and damaging to their international support, when the President of the US was on the way.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Of all the possibilities, I certainly do not credit as a valid one the possibility that the IDF intentionally targeted the hospital. I suppose that there could be some scenario in which some misguided zealot concluded that Hamas fighters were hiding out amongst the civilians in the parking lot and decided to take them out and damn the consequences, but I just don't buy it. Beyond that, it does seem that the credible evidence points to a misfired rocket (probably from Islamic Jihad), but I don't fully trust the sources of the evidence (either the IDF or the Pentagon). I don't think it is likely that they are covering up that it was an Israeli bomb that went astray, but I don't completely discount the possibility either.

[N.E. Brigand]

I'm starting to see people claim elsewhere on the web that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack didn't happen.

Here's a valuable but graphic video compilation from the New York Times specifically about how the massacre unfolded in the town of Sderot. I just read a short account of some people whose bodies can be seen by a bus station in that video: "It was a group of pensioners on an organised trip to the Dead Sea. They were passing Sderot when the rockets began, dismounted, and ran for shelter - but one of those ISIS-style white Hamas Toyotas caught up, and machine-gunned them at close range. The driver of the minibus, a Bedouin Palestinian from Tel Sheva, survived because one of the murdered women fell on him and took the bullets. He lay there for hours among the dead, and now when he tries to lie down everything comes back; he can't sleep. 'They were such good people, how can you do that? How?'"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm starting to see people claim elsewhere on the web that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack didn't happen.

That is simply a form of Holocaust denial.

[N.E. Brigand]

I would like to believe that Israel wouldn't bomb a hospital for moral reasons, but that's not admissible. I do, however, believe that Israel wouldn't deliberately do something so fucking stupid and damaging to their international support, when the President of the US was on the way.

President Biden himself said while in Israel yesterday that he doesn't believe that anyone, not even Hamas (or the Islamic Jihad, presumably) bombed the hospital deliberately.

That said, it's not out of the realm of possibility for the IDF to intentionally bomb a hospital. And it could even be morally justifiable, if, for example, terrorists were in the building and using it as a site to launch rockets that were killing civilians in in Israel and there were no other way to dislodge the rocketeers short of bombing. (And even then, as a general practice, Israel has tended to "knock" on buildings with small explosives to warn occupants to leave in advance of the actual strike. But I'm not sure they have been doing so over the past twelve days.) But in this case, they don't seem to have bombed the hospital, or the adjacent parking lot either deliberately or accidentally.