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Author Topic: Israel-Gaza/Palestine war thread  (Read 18354 times)

Strongpoint

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Re: Israel-Gaza/Palestine war thread
« Reply #480 on: March 18, 2024, 07:03:46 am »

at this point, isn't it...and I dont take this word lightly mind you, but isnt it genocide to starve (or even attempt to) an entire nation of people? No matter what side you are on or what the other side did, thats very wrong.

Look, I am merely annoyed that the problem is exaggerated in propaganda. There is no famine in Gaza.

As for Israel deliberately starving Gazan population... It is another propaganda exaggeration. The problem of Gaza is not the unavailability of food = more than enough trucks are going in. The problem is that Hamas and other armed groups taking the lion's share of the aid to themselves. Sure, this chaos is caused by Israel but it is what wars do.
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They ought to be pitied! They are already on a course for self-destruction! They do not need help from us. We need to redress our wounds, help our people, rebuild our cities!

Starver

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Re: Israel-Gaza/Palestine war thread
« Reply #481 on: March 18, 2024, 10:10:47 am »

at this point, isn't it...and I dont take this word lightly mind you, but isnt it genocide to starve (or even attempt to) an entire nation of people? No matter what side you are on or what the other side did, thats very wrong.

Look, I am merely annoyed that the problem is exaggerated in propaganda. There is no famine in Gaza.

As for Israel deliberately starving Gazan population... It is another propaganda exaggeration. The problem of Gaza is not the unavailability of food = more than enough trucks are going in. The problem is that Hamas and other armed groups taking the lion's share of the aid to themselves. Sure, this chaos is caused by Israel but it is what wars do.
There is always propoganda (every which way, as seen above). I acknowledged 'top-slicing' of aid (whoever by, to the detriment of the less able/connected).

There's also markedly less trucks going in, from what wasn't exactly an extravogant amount for the original population:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/aid-trucks-entering-gaza-must-double-meet-basic-needs-wfp-says-2024-03-06/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68551965
..."trucks into gaza" in your search engine gives plenty of results, that you can generally filter by . I didn't both with the Al Jazera link, or even the Grauniad, but you can find many such news items.

By population, Gaza was about two Odessas, or two thirds of a Kyiv, or four Atlanta GA's, or a little less than two times Birmingham (England), already a little short of non-aid supply lines, those lines now cut and the aid component generally considered to be cut back and required even more importantly[1].

Though if you do want 'balance', see the Jerusalem Post's take (problems with that are left as an exercise for the reader) that I had a lgod ook at. (Very annoying "before you leave..." back-page interception script, too, totally messing up my attempt to cross-compare things fully - until I realised what it was referencing.)


[1] You could make the claim that all those casualties has down-adjusted the population, of course. Every cloud has a silver lining, right?
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hector13

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Re: Israel-Gaza/Palestine war thread
« Reply #482 on: March 18, 2024, 11:40:00 am »

That genuinely is an unrealistically low level of variation in the context of combat deaths, and you are now arguing that self-described Jewish sources are inherently untrustworthy because of their presumptively compromised loyalties.

When it comes to criticizing numbers coming from a group dedicating itself to eliminating Jews, sure, and this particular source parroting the line from the Israeli government that Hamas are fluffing the numbers - without evidence - plus the repeated claim of the UNRWA being infested by Hamas fighters which have also not been independently verified.

I don’t like Al-Jazeera as a source on the conflict for similar reasons.

I felt the same way about the numbers coming out of Gaza, until learning it is medics who count the dead and the numbers are considered okay by the UN and WHO and there are NGOs that cross reference then when they can.

Independent sources are preferable, yo.

Anyway, the BBC article also provides something of a response to “unrealistic” combat deaths: the dead need to be taken to a hospital and identified before being officially counted by the medics, who are in an active warzone and presumably have patients to treat and counting the dead is secondary to that.

Supposition, sure, but real life is never as simple as statistics and statisticians try to make it out to be.
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bloop_bleep

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Strongpoint

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Re: Israel-Gaza/Palestine war thread
« Reply #484 on: Today at 01:53:27 am »

IMO, Lancet article is incredibly weak. Basically, their argument is "Ratio of UNRWA to non-UNRWA deaths is roughly consistent so that means that all numbers and reported causes of deaths are true"


Quote from: lancet
The Gaza MoH has historically reported accurate mortality data
I never got this argument. It boils down to - "In the past, when Gaza was full of journalists and officials who could easily check it, MoH didn't lie. It means that now, in the fog of war, being almost the only source of information, there is no way MoH started lying."




Plus the main complaint about the Gaza MoH numbers is that combatants seem to be immortal. If they reported 30K dead civilians and added "there is also a number of freedom fighters killed which we won't disclose to not help Israel" credibility would be much better.
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Starver

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Re: Israel-Gaza/Palestine war thread
« Reply #485 on: Today at 02:55:56 am »

What proportion of the population are/were combatants?

Probably unusually high (being under siege conditions, even before September), but we're still not talking a Klingon society here. Which causes problems for Israel as unless they are very accurate in their attacks, they're probably killing non-combatants (and certainly inconveniencing large numbers) far more than they're doing significant combatant 'neutralising'.

This is, by its very nature, an assymetric 'war'. Israel is in an unenviable[1] position in which having been clearly wronged by a terrorist attack[2] they then promptly lost most of the international sympathy they had gained from that event (and lost the opportunity to turn that into antipathy-reduction in other quarter) in a far shorter time than the War On Terror became a bit of a polluted cause.

I think I'm repeating myself in that I really don't know how it should have responded to the recently sparking act of incursion by Hamas, but 'not like this' seems clear enough. And the current operation isn't really being made on behalf of the nation (or the jews in the nation, or especially the worldwide jews as a while) but as a strongarm tactic by the particularly xenophobic leadership. (Phobic as either 'fear' or 'hate', but in both cases beyond reasonable and understandable rationality, even taking into account the provably equally judaophobic opponents.)

No, it should not be "turn the other cheek", but following Exodus 21:23-25 as just the starting point is equally unacceptable.


[1] Or should be, but I bet some are looking on in envy, wondering how they could do the same in their own sphere of territory.

[2] Albeit that it was the latest wrong in a string of pushing and shoving between the various viewpoints as to how many such wrongs could be deemed (eventually) to be 'right'.
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