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[Strongpoint]

It hasn't. No one likes Hamas. The issue at concern as I read it is whether a ground invasion is going to result in massive casualties or result in displacement as both of these would be a disaster that puts at risk what could be an alliance, and in addition would incur massive political penalties at a time when Donald Trump looks to be the candidate if he's not in jail. Weird parallels huh

Israel is almost certainly to get funding (I think $10B was requested; it should be linked with Ukraine funding from what I've read and some other junk if they don't completely screw up), has two big nasty aircraft carriers nearby and even a couple thousand US marines IIRC in a support role.

I look at how the Western public reacts to the war, including media, NGOs and influencers. From what I can see - it is a disaster for Israel.

Decisions of governments is a rather different issue. Also, the US is far more pro-Israel than "the West" on average

[Maximum Spin]

The Voice referendum, as tabled, was an incredibly misbegotten terrible idea that would do nothing to support indigenous communities (which is why many opposed it). It didn't really have much of a chance.

Well, I actually just went to look and it appeared to be this only:

    Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

    129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice

    In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

        There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
        The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
        The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.

That's the misbegotten terrible idea: there's absolutely no plan. The government asked the people to authorize some hypothetical future arrangement TBD. This is exactly the problem indigenous communities had with it: they don't, quite reasonably in my opinion, trust the government to actually constitute this body which has no binding limitations whatsoever in a way to actually represent their interests, and not, say... form a panel of pale-looking bureaucrats to brownwash the government's already-planned agenda through a mirage of support from "aboriginal voices", like they already do with white academics trading on a supposed indigenous great-grandmother.

It's almost a mocking affront to the whole concept of a referendum. "Do you agree with the statement that we should have at least one law?" - and if voters choose yes, the government decides for itself what law to implement.

The entire rest of your post is totally irrelevant to this. Yes, some people said crazy things, like happens every time any law with any media coverage passes anywhere. You have zero evidence that any of this actually affected a single vote. (Although that one near the end was especially funny to me... "she didn't say that voters were racist and stupid, just that they have opinions based in racism and stupidity! Totally different!")

ETA: I mean... think of it like this. If the proposal did not include the name, and just said that there shall be a body that may make representations to Parliament, to be constituted by the Parliament... would you support this? It's like an exploratory committee to consider the formation of further committees. There's no indication whatsoever that it has any purpose. Supporters are just getting duped by the name, which implies a purpose... but has no legal meaning. Anything that has an actual practical effect is just TBD. Why would anyone vote for that?

[hector13]

It is astonishing how Israel already lost the informational war in the West. I assumed it was impossible after 1000+ Israeli civilians were brutally murdered on the first day but nope.

Israel doesn’t make it easy on themselves. Cutting off 2.3 million people from everything they need to survive, giving half of them 24 hours to move into the other half without said supplies while dropping bombs around them, meaning people may not have electricity to receive the messages electronically and don’t want to go outside to see the pamphlets they air-dropped, then dropping a bomb on one of their designated safe routes - intentionally or otherwise - never mind where are they going to go to find shelter or find alread dwindling supplies they would have and to abandon to actually evacuate, as well as forcing Egypt to close their border crossing by dropping bombs near it - intentionally or otherwise - and killing almost twice as many people as Hamas did - intentionally or otherwise - including children…

There’s not really a good way to spin any of that, particularly since it all stemmed from a massive intelligence failure (and Egypt claims to have warned them of “something big” in the works) from one of, if not the biggest intelligence agency in the region. It’s a shit show all the way down.

Edit: and an Israeli bomb hit a school where 4,000 people were sheltering.

There must come a point when even the most ardent supporter of Israel will come to the conclusion that the folk in charge don’t even care where their bombs fall.

[Maximum Spin]

Edit: and an Israeli bomb hit a school where 4,000 people were sheltering.

There must come a point when even the most ardent supporter of Israel will come to the conclusion that the folk in charge don’t even care where their bombs fall.

That strikes me as a somewhat naive takeaway. For example, Ukrainian bombs have been confirmed to have (on occasion) hit schools, children, and worse; is it because leadership don't care where their bombs fall?

[Strongpoint]

Edit: and an Israeli bomb hit a school where 4,000 people were sheltering.

There must come a point when even the most ardent supporter of Israel will come to the conclusion that the folk in charge don’t even care where their bombs fall.

That strikes me as a somewhat naive takeaway. For example, Ukrainian bombs have been confirmed to have (on occasion) hit schools, children, and worse; is it because leadership don't care where their bombs fall?

Collateral damage is unavoidable at war. The question is how much of it happens and what effort is taken to prevent it. And Israel does not do enough or, at the very least, creates such an impression. No, if you compare them with Russians... but it is not an achievement to be better than Russians.


PS. I find it utterly absurd that Israel is condemned for refusing to supply key resources like electricity and fuel directly to the enemy. I also find it very strange that HAMAS claims on the number of civilians killed is taken for granted.

[Maximum Spin]

Collateral damage is unavoidable at war. The question is how much of it happens and what effort is taken to prevent it. And Israel does not do enough or, at the very least, creates such an impression.

This may be fair, but it's worth considering that Hamas takes an active strategy of maximizing collateral damage to make its enemy look bad, and has a friendly media empire more than willing to go along with it. Under such circumstances, is it possible to prosecute a war successfully and not create such an impression?

[hector13]

Edit: and an Israeli bomb hit a school where 4,000 people were sheltering.

There must come a point when even the most ardent supporter of Israel will come to the conclusion that the folk in charge don’t even care where their bombs fall.

That strikes me as a somewhat naive takeaway. For example, Ukrainian bombs have been confirmed to have (on occasion) hit schools, children, and worse; is it because leadership don't care where their bombs fall?

Ukraine has at the very least given the appearance they try to hit military targets.

Israel has, in the 10 days since the Gaza-Israel war started, made what was already a considered humanitarian crisis even worse. See previous post for things that were off the top of my head.

The things that make me question in Israel’s case that they don’t care where their bombs land are things like a bomb falling on a safe route that Israel designated (PPE: though presently unconfirmed it was an Israeli bomb afaia), and hitting the UN school/shelter, which the UN agency in charge of claims to have told “relevant parties” of the location’s coordinates.

This pales in comparison to them refusing to allow supplies through their border to 2.3 million people, and giving half of them a day to move to where the other half are, which would be an infeasible task if all of them had received the message with the full 24 hours and had fully-fueled cars ready and loaded to get moving. They’re also still dropping bombs in Southern Gaza, where they’ve told the folk in the top half to go.

PPE: Israel isn’t being condemned for refusing to supply Hamas. Israel is being condemned for making life worse for the millions of Palestinian civilians which wasn’t exactly paradise before they blockaded them. This implies they consider civilian deaths to be an acceptable consequence of targeting Hamas.

I don’t know what they do to confirm the numbers, but the BBC at least doesn’t just take the numbers from things like the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, though they do report the numbers they say - such as 500 killed as a result of school bombing - but that they also claim to independently verify such claims.

[Maximum Spin]

You certainly don't have to quote to me every unrelated bad thing Israel does - I don't support them. I do, though, think that the leadership do care where their bombs fall, at least as far as trying not to make enough of a public scandal to lose western support entirely; if they didn't care where their bombs fell, I think there would not, indeed, be a Gaza strip left. I guess it's ultimately a disagreement of scale. To me, it seems like the scale of actually not caring would be well beyond what we see.

[Strongpoint]

Collateral damage is unavoidable at war. The question is how much of it happens and what effort is taken to prevent it. And Israel does not do enough or, at the very least, creates such an impression.

This may be fair, but it's worth considering that Hamas takes an active strategy of maximizing collateral damage to make its enemy look bad, and has a friendly media empire more than willing to go along with it. Under such circumstances, is it possible to prosecute a war successfully and not create such an impression?

Yeah. This is the part of the problem. Whatever Israel does "neutral" NGOs like Amnesty International will name it a criminal. AI never cared to condemn HAMAS for the 7th October limiting itself to calls to "both sides" "to limit civilian casualties". After 8th AI does nothing but demonize Israel completely forgetting that the other side even exists. The most vile thing they did was hysteria with "white phosphorus" implying barbaric use of incendiary munition while those are for smoke.


And yeah, HAMAS is doing everything it can to increase collateral damage among its own population and the very same "neutral" NGOs and media are mostly silent about this absolutely vile strategy. I won't be even surprised if it is HAMAS who bombed the evacuation route or the just recently exploded hospital.  Or it could be an accident with an unsuccessful rocket strike from the roof of the said hospital.



ninja'd: Yes, if Israel wouldn't care at all, Gaza would look like Bakhmut already, Israel has the means to do so. In fact, if Israel didn't care about civilians they wouldn't even consider a land invasion that will cost the lives of many Israeli soldiers. Instead, it would be blockade and pounding by artillery 24/7

[hector13]

@MaxSpin: I was providing context for my view, but I’m distracted by things happening in my immediate surroundings so it was, and is, proving difficult to recall what it is I wanted to say and how much of it I’d already said. Same shit happens when I play mafia :|

[Strongpoint]

The current situation with the hospital is such a bright illustration of how Israel is losing the informational war.

It seems like nearly everyone accepts claims that

1) there are 500 dead
2) It is a result of Israeli airstrike

as facts despite the only source of both statements is HAMAS.

[Maximum Spin]

@MaxSpin: I was providing context for my view, but I’m distracted by things happening in my immediate surroundings so it was, and is, proving difficult to recall what it is I wanted to say and how much of it I’d already said. Same shit happens when I play mafia :|

Oh, no, I think I understood what you meant, I'm just saying, yeah, I get that Israel has done some shit and it's not unreasonable to expect them to continue. Just trying to clearly establish that my own view, which I could summarize as that their relative shittiness is overstated, also takes place in the same context. I doubt there's ultimately much distance between any of our positions here.

[hector13]

The current situation with the hospital is such a bright illustration of how Israel is losing the informational war.

It seems like nearly everyone accepts claims that

1) there are 500 dead
2) It is a result of Israeli airstrike

as facts despite the only source of both statements is HAMAS.

I erroneously attributed that to the school strike, meant to say that in the last post. I don’t think people are just accepting it though. The BBC are reporting what Hamas said (hospital was attacked, hundreds of casualties, Israel are responsible) because that’s what news demands now. If you’re not the first to report something, you’re the last. The BBC have their live updates going. And that was where they said they would work to independently verify what’s going on (one of the updates mentioned them speaking to an “unnamed doctor” who reported some other things, like the hospital being 80% shut down and other things I can’t recall right now).

As for Israel caring about civilian casualties, I think their restraint in making Gaza a smoking crater is more to do with them caring about world governments’ opinion of them. They suffered a terrorist attack which buys them a whole lot of leeway, but that doesn’t grant them carte blanche to bomb them back to the Stone Age.

[martinuzz]

We don't know yet who and what hit the hospital.
So far, the official reaction from the Israeli army spokesperson was 'we are awaiting further information before coming with an official statement. There have been a lot of failed missile attacks and a lot of fake news from Hamas'.

[Starver]

PS. I find it utterly absurd that Israel is condemned for refusing to supply key resources like electricity and fuel directly to the enemy.

There are plenty of Gazans who are not actually the enemy[1] but who are also not getting key resources. I actually imagine that those who are actually Hamas probably get first dibs on whatever resources are stockpiled/dribbled through, actually, but that probably makes things worse for those who are civilians[2].

Don't ask me how to square this circle, though. I pretty much blame the Hamas attacks for the Israeli retaliations, which obviously should include some attempt to starve the resources of the enemy 'military macbine'. But have to also suggest that many of the Hamas attacks are themselves fuelled (by funding, willing foot-soldiers, etc) by prior Israeli actions, etc. With the roots going deep: everyone being technically justified in being agrieved, even if I think that every 'justified' response has just made the net perceived unfairness increase.

Bad actors on both sides, of course. Even whilst a lot of others were drawn into the contention, despite neutral (or even altruistic) attitudes of their own.


[1] Or at least aren't at the moment. Or who weren't until <insert prior event here>.
[2] Of course, local Hamas bigwigs, simultaneously to ensuring that their own generators are still operational, will spin it as entirely Israel to blame for everything going to pot. And so the cycle continues.