Hamas attacking Israel

[Provost]

9 minutes ago, bishopshodan said:

 

Thats what I mean.

 

I felt a little like he was implying that all Palestinians have a bad moral culture so how can you live with them...not making a distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people. 

 

I also didn't like the throw away statement about lives of babies...'"I don't think Israelis would ever purposely kill babies. I think they have killed babies. That's collateral damage, which is another horrible thing, but that's part of war.'

 

I have disliked Bill Maher for a long time.  He is a dumb guy that thinks he is smart.

 

When he has had conversations with serious people and academics they tear him apart and make him look foolish.  His schtick was to have random D list celebrities on shows where he could be the smart one in the room.

 

The things that matters is intent and results.  In the Hamas terrorist attack, they intended on killing the Israeli settlers who they saw as occupiers on their land.  The results are that they killed Israeli settlers including women and children.

 

In every airstrike Israel has done for many years they intend to kill civilians including women and babies.  When they press that button they are aware that is what they are doing.  Their justification is that killing 100 babies is worth it to maybe kill one Hamas fighter or sympathizer.  They do the calculation and are ok with it.  They do the calculation that 100 dead babies is a reasonable revenge for the death of an Israeli soldier or even for firing a rocket that had no impact.  It is a purposeful strategy of disproportionate response.  “If they put one of ours in the hospital, we put a hundred of theirs into the morgue”.  
 

You can argue with the practical effectiveness of that strategy, but not the morality of it.  If you intend on killing a bunch of babies, and do it.  It just doesn’t matter if you say you feel bad about it.

 

Hamas would say that the deaths of the settlers they killed were also collateral damage.

[Boudrias]

6 hours ago, Canuck Surfer said:

 

 

Regarding why I mentioned? You had this to say as part of a rant;

 

Now imagine it it the 2000’s and you replace Warsaw with Gaza.  The ghetto is about to be obliterated and the world is cheering instead of mobilizing against it.  

 

That is 1940's borders as a comparison. It was your analogy. The exact quote i replied to.

 

I'll take a look at 1967 borders; implications history has to offer about that & the 6 day war.  Not that my opinion matters much.  I am trying to accumulate opinion, and facts that support positions. Thanks for the feedback.

 

 

I also call for an independent Palestine state. I would not call it a two state solution? This is a full regional issue, and its amongst the most densely populated, highly secular regions.

 

A fair concern is the rule of law? Which is an issue! You mentioned 4500 Palestinian hostages? I have already condemned noxious behaviour by Israel. I at least believe they have the capacity to police their people. Could be forced by the international community..

 

Who do you get to police Gaza? I personally believe more than a handful of those 4500 are the type that launch rockets & fly powered gliders with sub machine guns. They are not the ma & pa types.

 

I imagine Palestinians do not trust the UN?  

 

Saudi Arabia & Iran are already, effectively, in a vastly larger proxy war in Yemen. Iraq is a disaster, whom Iran was at war with, also Kuwait. Over support of Iraqis... Both have their mitts in Syria. Asaad dont GAF! Egypt has just come out of revolutionary activity in the last decade. I am not even going to look at Turkey, Libya, Tunisia, Azerbaijan & Afghanistan. I speculate among the reasons is bin Salman is looking at peace & recognizing Israel? It needs allies. 

 

Do you ask the UAE, Qatar?  Their happy to make some money in Oil. 

 

This region is full of genocidal, secular spats. They all make deals amongst each other, shoot each other if it suits them? ISIS, ISIL, PLO have all formed & fucked off, would have gladly killed Hamas as well. The PLO did not disappear because 'the people' did not want them. How you stop Hamas from climbing up buildings & launching missiles?      

 

 

A good summation of the ME status.

 

Ultimately I have to support the Jewish state as their due for the suffering they have endured for many centuries. Israel is their homeland and Palestinian claims cannot supersede that. What happened this past week and what will happen in the future is a continuation of the past. Israel has to have security and cannot trust the Palestinians to provide that. Israel cannot bend without fear of being annihilated. No Jew can truly trust the world. 

 

I can feel sorry for the Palestinians but cannot condone the forces within their ranks that want to destroy Israel. The Palestinian people have to rise up and choose leaders who pursue a peaceful solution. They do exist. The process will take decades. Each time terrorists attack Israel the timetable extends further out. Once again Palestinians have been sacrificed by political forces who want no peace in the ME. Israel's growing accord with most Sunni Arab governments is a direct threat to those who murdered Jews last week. Peace between these governments could generate a prosperity to Palestinians as well as all others in the ME. It threatens those like Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.  

[Provost]

10 hours ago, CBH1926 said:

Every time I ask someone “which country is the number 1 source of our  oil” I always get ME or KSA answer. If Canadian government was smart, they would build their own infrastructure for refining oil instead sending it down here. 
 

As a Canadian, that is the truth.  The US banned crude exports for decades to force oil companies to build refining capacity there and to give their industries an economic advantage by having access to artificially cheap energy.

 

Canada has bent over and is in a rush to export raw products of all types for pennies on the dollar.  It should be an economic and national security policy to build an east-west pipeline in Canada connecting up oil producing and refining capacity and to serve the domestic market.  You don’t need to export cheap oil to China or import oil from human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia.

 

Then the excess can be exported, or create a plastics manufacturing industry so you have the capability to tell China to go pound sand if they cause problems.

[RupertKBD]

11 hours ago, Ilunga said:

 

Man it's good to have you back brother.

Can't have enough well informed, intelligent members of this community.

 

...or Bills fans....

[RupertKBD]

11 hours ago, CBH1926 said:

Every time I ask someone “which country is the number 1 source of our  oil” I always get ME or KSA answer. If Canadian government was smart, they would build their own infrastructure for refining oil instead sending it down here.

 

Well, that's the problem right there....

 

And it gets worse....the guy who's likely taking over figures Bitcoin is the way to go....

[RomanPer]

13 hours ago, Elias Pettersson said:

“Rafah” crossing. Not sure how I got Farah.  My new iPhone automatically fills in words as I type. 
 

Seems like it was originally closed up until 2011. Since then there have been changes to the Egyptian government and the border crossing was opened up several times and closed several times. I believe it was only opened permanently a few years ago. But your right, it has been opened up for awhile. 

And it’s closed now tightly.

[RupertKBD]

1 hour ago, Bob Long said:

saw this last night. I do agree with him that the moral equivalency stuff can go too far, but then he used that valid (imo) argument to then go too far with it. 

 

Is Hamas what he describes? yep. Are all Palestinians? No.

 

1 hour ago, bishopshodan said:

Thats what I mean.

 

I felt a little like he was implying that all Palestinians have a bad moral culture so how can you live with them...not making a distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people. 

 

I also didn't like the throw away statement about lives of babies...'"I don't think Israelis would ever purposely kill babies. I think they have killed babies. That's collateral damage, which is another horrible thing, but that's part of war.'

 

I've been a regular watcher of Bill Maher for several years (although I missed last night's episode of Real Time)...He has two major blind spots, IMO....Islam and Covid.

 

From what I can tell his dislike of Islam stems from it's oftentimes restrictive rules for women. He's railed against denying girls schooling and dress codes for years and I think this influences everything he does and says about Islam. When you combine that with the fact that he is an almost militant Atheist, it's no surprise that he talks the way he does.

 

I certainly don't agree with everything he says, but I understand where he's coming from....

[Provost]

1 hour ago, Boudrias said:

Israel is their homeland and Palestinian claims cannot supersede that

That is the problem… aside from SOME interpretations of ONE group’s magic book.  There is no real world support for that position.

 

I am an atheist so a religious argument has no hold on me.  Same as I don’t hate gay people, have slaves, stone people to death, etc because a book of magical stories tells me to.

 

 

Edited October 14, 2023 by Provost

[bolt]

Hamas supposedly has a road block to prevent civilians from moving south.   

The Hamas savages could release the hostages THEY TOOK and services would be restored. 
But they don’t want that. 
They want death. For everyone.

Edited October 14, 2023 by bolt

[Optimist Prime]

3 hours ago, Provost said:

It is easy to understand how it happened.  
 

Hamas was the bogeyman that Israel has used to decades to scare their own population.  Savage animals will come and kill you in your sleep if you don’t vote us in to keep you safe.  That was literally Netenyahu’s platform as the safety and security party.  To protect against the monsters.

 

The reality, was that it was invented.  Hamas was a paper tiger that never had any real military capability to any way to threaten Israel in any meaningful way.  They didn’t even try.  They weren’t particularly violent in the context of the region, they didn’t use the tactics of Al Queda or ISIL who they literally fought against.

 

Hamas leadership was happy to buy in and support the narrative that they were a threat.  It gave them some standing and power.  When the vast bulk of their actual force is kids throwing rocks, the world believing they were a real organization with real capability.  It served their purposes to play the sham because the Israeli politicians are not the only ones needing to worry about public sentiment and domestic politics.

 

Their capacity was to build and fire makeshift crude rockets, which are largely ineffective.  They are mostly literally welded water pipes powered by sugar and nitrates.  They have often been described, even by Israeli military as a weapon to create psychological harm more than physical.  They would spend years building a stockpile, and during some flare up between the sides they would fire off a mass of them…. With maybe one in a few hundred hitting something and as likely to kill the person setting them off as anyone who happens to be standing where they randomly fall.

 

That was it, that was the pattern.  Of course the Israeli government was complacent and lacked imagination, because they knew that Hamas wasn’t really the grave threat that they used as justification for their domestic policies.

 

Israeli settlements and Kibbutz were built literally right up to the Gaza border and lived there for decades.  That doesn’t happen if there is a force of thousands of monstrous savage terrorists waiting to murder you and eat your babies.  They were literally having a music party rave within earshot of the border when the terrorist attack happened.

 

The plain and simple truth is that they weren’t really afraid of Hamas, and had little reason to be.  It was an impotent group that was virtually all bark and no bite.  Even Netenyahu in the past few months has been publicly talking about how the Palestinian movement is done and irrelevant. Just a check mark other Arab states had to do to symbolically complain about treatment of Palestinians, but didn’t really care about.

 

He was right, it was true.  No one cared about the future of Palestinians other than Palestinians.

 

What the Israeli government didn’t expect was for Hamas to actually become the bogeyman that the Israelis always pretended they were.  There was no reason to. They had never done anything like it in the decades of the conflict and shown no inclination to.  Hezbollah was the actual threat because they did actually have some military capability and weren’t already beaten.

 

Hamas managed to scrounge up enough resources to make an unheard of excursion into Israeli settlements near their border.  It was a makeshift attack with poor weaponry and little actual

capability in terms of force.  It was some motorbikes, jeeps, few paragliders, and an assortment of light weapons like AK47s.  Something a single Israeli military unit of cooks and transport drivers could swap away like a fly in actual combat.   An attack that could have been easily repelled by even to

token bit of Israeli preparation or military force.  That was the sum

total of force that Hamas could muster after lengthy preparations and planning.

 

It was wildly successful from terrorist  objectives because it was so unexpected.  Israelis weren’t scared of Hamas because there was no reason to be.  Civilian families could live for generations and music festivals could take place right up against the border wall because the threat from Hamas for decades was just largely invented and not real.

 

That is the failure of the Israeli government.  They were secure in the knowledge that their invented narrative and propaganda was made up.  It never occurred to them that Hamas had the capability or intention of actually becoming the invented bogeyman.

 

We will almost certainly find out in the coming days that an outside group was training Hamas fighters, and probably participated in the attack themselves to

support them.   It was so far out of the tactics or capability that Hamas has shown for decades that it is unlikely they could have pulled it off themselves.

It seems to me that this is a strange take. The "The murderous terrorists never were murderous terrorists, which is why they now are murderous terrorists" theory. 

9.5/10 for creativity.

[Boudrias]

2 minutes ago, Optimist Prime said:

It seems to me that this is a strange take. The "The murderous terrorists never were murderous terrorists, which is why they now are murderous terrorists" theory. 

9.5/10 for creativity.

Moral equivalency at its best. If Hamas actually cared for the Palestinian people they would not be oppressive or use them as human shields. They wouldn't educate their children to hate Jews from kindergarten. The PLO are trying a different course. We can only hope peace can work.  

[Provost]

22 minutes ago, bolt said:

Hamas supposedly has a road block to prevent civilians from moving south.   

The Hamas savages could release the hostages THEY TOOK and services would be restored. 
But they don’t want that. 
They want death. For everyone.

Provide any evidence of what you are saying.  It is silly to post a propaganda source to assert facts and that the "other" side was posting propaganda.

You could even take 30 seconds to actually go to the source tweet and find out the guy is even repeatedly denying what you are saying and reposted it again to clear out the comments like this.

He isn't any sort of expert and theorized that it is a gas cannister inside a van exploding and not definitely an air strike.  He has zero information or intelligence on the matter.

It is something you want to believe so you don't care to look at it critically.  The video also shows nothing as you generally can't pick up rockets at close range on camera.  They are moving too fast and would pass by that field of view in a fraction of a second.  You can only see them from a distance where they stay in frame for a while.

 

[Playoff Beered]

Hamas received millions of dollars through cryptocurrency exchange with office in Moscow City - The Wall Street Journal

The Palestinian Jihad group allegedly received more than $93 million dollars through digital wallets on the eve of its attack on Israel. Hamas also used a similar funding scheme. WSJ, citing data from the analytical company Elliptic, states that the attack on Israel was partially financed through the popular crypto exchange Garantex, registered in Moscow.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Playoff Beered

[Optimist Prime]

Just now, Provost said:

Provide any evidence of what you are saying.  It is silly to post a propaganda source to assert facts and that the "other" side was posting propaganda.

You could even take 30 seconds to actually go to the source tweet and find out the guy is even repeatedly denying what you are saying and reposted it again to clear out the comments like this.

He isn't any sort of expert and theorized that it is a gas cannister inside a van exploding and not definitely an air strike.  He has zero information or intelligence on the matter.

It is something you want to believe so you don't care to look at it critically.  The video also shows nothing as you generally can't pick up rockets at close range on camera.  They are moving too fast and would pass by that field of view in a fraction of a second.  You can only see them from a distance where they stay in frame for a while.

 

The balance of probability would say that it is more in Hamas interests to stop any Palestinians in Gaza from trying to get south of the Wadi (river bed) there in the center of gaza. The same concept says that it is overwhelmingly in Israel's interests to move the civilian population out of the north before the ground offensive begins. 

Therefore, as an analyst (retired) I would say that the most likely thing is that Hamas blew up those who were going against Hamas orders and trying to move south. This acts as the dual strike in that they instill fear among their people forcing them back north to remain as human shields, AND they can try to blame Israel for bombing the citizens who are fleeing as instructed. 

Sorry I have no proof, as I live in North America, as do you, and we are all just relying on unverified sources of info on the interwebs.

[Provost]

7 minutes ago, Optimist Prime said:

It seems to me that this is a strange take. The "The murderous terrorists never were murderous terrorists, which is why they now are murderous terrorists" theory. 

9.5/10 for creativity.

Well, one I didn't say that, and two... you could go back and look at the entire history of the conflict and post all the previous attacks like this that Hamas done in the past decades.

I will wait.

What I said was that they have never had any real capability as a military force of any note.  They are a small, badly armed, largely untrained group of "fighters" and supporters.  Israel has massively pumped up their threat far beyond any that they have ever posed. 

This is exactly the same playbook the US used when they went into the Gulf to attack Iraq the first time.  As it turned out, there was no "there" there.  The biggest problem faced in that war was that the Iraqi soldiers were surrendering so fast it strained our logistics to take them in and care for them.  Even when getting to the "elite" revolutionary guards, they were just nothing compared with any professional western military force of even a fraction of the size.

Hamas has for decades attacked to the level of its capabilities, which is virtually non existent.  To suggest otherwise is also going against your "they are murderous terrorists" narrative.  You are suggesting that they did have capability to undertake attacks like this all the time and just chose not to?  You can't have both arguments at the same time.  They can't have had the capability and also chosen not to use it and also be murderous mindless savages bent on the destruction of every Jew within reach.

There is a reason why Israelis have for decades felt comfortable living literally within the shadow of the walls around Gaza... they had little to fear.

If Hamas had the capability and/or inclination to undertake these sorts of attacks they would have done them and not waited decades.  What changed in your mind?  

[Playoff Beered]

11 minutes ago, Provost said:

Provide any evidence of what you are saying.  It is silly to post a propaganda source to assert facts and that the "other" side was posting propaganda.

You could even take 30 seconds to actually go to the source tweet and find out the guy is even repeatedly denying what you are saying and reposted it again to clear out the comments like this.

He isn't any sort of expert and theorized that it is a gas cannister inside a van exploding and not definitely an air strike.  He has zero information or intelligence on the matter.

It is something you want to believe so you don't care to look at it critically.  The video also shows nothing as you generally can't pick up rockets at close range on camera.  They are moving too fast and would pass by that field of view in a fraction of a second.  You can only see them from a distance where they stay in frame for a while.

 

Here is the same incident being reported by an Islamic source...

 

[Provost]

39 minutes ago, Optimist Prime said:

The balance of probability would say that it is more in Hamas interests to stop any Palestinians in Gaza from trying to get south of the Wadi (river bed) there in the center of gaza. The same concept says that it is overwhelmingly in Israel's interests to move the civilian population out of the north before the ground offensive begins. 

Therefore, as an analyst (retired) I would say that the most likely thing is that Hamas blew up those who were going against Hamas orders and trying to move south. This acts as the dual strike in that they instill fear among their people forcing them back north to remain as human shields, AND they can try to blame Israel for bombing the citizens who are fleeing as instructed. 

Sorry I have no proof, as I live in North America, as do you, and we are all just relying on unverified sources of info on the interwebs.

Well, as a former analyst you are missing the vastly most likely scenario on the balance of probabilities which is neither of the things you mentioned

Out of tens of thousands of people quickly packing and fleeing bombardment... a vehicle had a container (probably makeshift) of spare fuel in their car to make the long drive into the unknown and it exploded.

You know, just like this and many other instances in the news you can find of similar explosions.
https://www.today.com/video/video-car-explodes-due-to-vapors-from-a-gas-can-sending-man-to-the-hospital-706658371632

Regardless, the entire point is that it was someone accusing a side of propaganda (not even with evidence that Hamas was making the original claim) that was just spreading alternative propaganda.

That is just bias, not any actual proof.,,, which is was presented as.

 

As an analyst, the answer is “no actionable intelligence at this time”… or simply, we don’t know.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Provost

[Provost]

4 minutes ago, Playoff Beered said:

 

Here is the same incident being reported by an Islamic source...

 

These are just random people, this guy has clearly never seen a battlefield... an IED goes off randomly after hundreds of cars have driven over it and picks one car?  Is there video evidence of someone on the side throwing it onto the road after the car in front of it drove over that stretch?

He is just some dude on twitter that is inventing stuff.  No one knows or has any evidence of anything, but keep spreading the same bits of media and each coming to their own different conclusions.

[Hammertime]

This thread including it's title seems very biased pro Israel now I'm not pro Hamas by any means but 2 wrongs don't make a right. 

 

The whole thing was a ticking time bomb created post ww2.

[RomanPer]

38 minutes ago, Optimist Prime said:

It seems to me that this is a strange take. The "The murderous terrorists never were murderous terrorists, which is why they now are murderous terrorists" theory. 

9.5/10 for creativity.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, even though some of the posters are on my ignore list, I can still see their takes quoted by the others. And in most cases it just strengthens my original decision to ignore them. This the perfect example. No matter what the atrocity is, these people will always find a way to turn it into Israel’s fault. What is it if not a blatant antisemitism?

[Optimist Prime]

18 minutes ago, Provost said:

Well, as a former analyst you are missing the vastly most likely scenario on the balance of probabilities which is neither of the things you mentioned

Out of tens of thousands of people quickly packing and fleeing bombardment... a vehicle had a container (probably makeshift) of spare fuel in their car to make the long drive into the unknown and it exploded.

Didn't miss it at all: the most likely trigger of that explosion was Hamas. Period. 

It isn't 100% proven, nor likely can it be ever, but on the balance of probabilities, Hamas moved to stem the flow of their people to the south as they require them to remain in place to shield Hamas from answering for their murderous terror strike last Saturday.

[Hammertime]

2 minutes ago, RomanPer said:

Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, even though some of the posters are on my ignore list, I can still see their takes quoted by the others. And in most cases it just strengthens my original decision to ignore them. This the perfect example. No matter what the atrocity is, these people will always find a way to turn it into Israel’s fault. What is it if not a blatant antisemitism?

There is more than enough xenophobia to go around 

[Playoff Beered]

20 minutes ago, Provost said:

These are just random people, this guy has clearly never seen a battlefield... an IED goes off randomly after hundreds of cars have driven over it and picks one car?  Is there video evidence of someone on the side throwing it onto the road after the car in front of it drove over that stretch?

He is just some dude on twitter that is inventing stuff.  No one knows or has any evidence of anything, but keep spreading the same bits of media and each coming to their own different conclusions.

 

Here is a thread by OSINTtechnical, they are pretty good at this...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2023 by Playoff Beered

[Alflives]

5 minutes ago, Optimist Prime said:

Didn't miss it at all: the most likely trigger of that explosion was Hamas. Period. 

It isn't 100% proven, nor likely can it be ever, but on the balance of probabilities, Hamas moved to stem the flow of their people to the south as they require them to remain in place to shield Hamas from answering for their murderous terror strike last Saturday.

Yup. HAMAS fighters have behaved cowardly. Of course they want to keep their human shields in place. Even their government media was telling people to stay. So when people do try to escape HAMAS stops them. 
HAMAS fights against the weak and those who can’t fight back. IMHAO they’re not fighting guerrilla warfare but fighting like terrorists.

 

[Optimist Prime]

21 minutes ago, Hammertime said:

This thread including it's title seems very biased

I would suggest that Saturdays attack by Hamas on Israel is the reason this thread exists. What bias is there in naming a thread for the attack that led to its creation?