Israel's war with Hamas (and other Iran proxies)

[irie]

If Hamas had not launched an attack from Gaza on Israeli citizens then Gaza would have been left untouched. However, Hamas did attack Israeli citizens and Israel retaliated.

Many would say the Israeli retaliation was disproportionate, but proportionality is in the eye of the protagonist.

[wheelnut]

Many would say the Israeli retaliation was disproportionate, but proportionality is in the eye of the protagonist.

Maybe worth a read before you make anymore of your glib pronunciations.

Gaza horrors must be a turning point, says British surgeon

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gaza ... -8bhc9tfxh

[irie]

Many would say the Israeli retaliation was disproportionate, but proportionality is in the eye of the protagonist.

Maybe worth a read before you make anymore of your glib pronunciations.

Gaza horrors must be a turning point, says British surgeon

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gaza ... -8bhc9tfxh

Behind a paywall.

"glib"?

glib
/ɡlɪb/
adjective
(of words or a speaker) fluent but insincere and shallow.

I am absolutely sincere in what I say. Because I do not share your partisanship you may regard it as 'shallow'.

"pronunciations"?

pronunciation
/prəˌnʌnsɪˈeɪʃn/
noun
the way in which a word is pronounced.
"spelling does not determine pronunciation"

[irie]

This looks likely to kick the war off to a new level. Question is, will Hezbollah respond by attacking Israel and if so, when?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog ... -on-beirut

Senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri has been killed in an Israeli drone strike on southern Beirut, Lebanon. Israel has not officially claimed responsibility.
Hezbollah says the attack, which killed at least six people, “will not pass without punishment”.

[Dodgy69]

Well...Israel did have full backing from the UK and US governments, so they probably thought they've got the green light to retaliate how they wish.

[KungFooBob]

If you were an Israeli living in Israel, would you think the response disproportionate?

If you were a Palestinian living in Gaza, did you support the original Hamas attack?

I don't know because I'm not either and I don't think there are enough of either on this forum to provide an accurate picture of the feelings on the ground from either party.

Just saying, like.

[weeksy]

If you we're an Israeli living in Israel, would you think the response disproportionate?

If you were a Palestinian living in Gaza, did you support the original Hamas attack?

I don't know because I'm not either and I don't think there enough of either on this forum to provide an accurate picture of the feelings on the ground from either party.

Just saying, like.

That's the rub isn't it... In this place we have a few chosen members who post with complete certainty that they're RIGHT... no debate, no discussion, they're just right. However as you say, they're only getting 2nd, 3rd, 4th hand information from news outlets, not real-world knowledge of who's in current situations.

Sadly, they're unable to 'debate' these things as maybe either they'll be educated or the opposing side will be educated...

I dream one day it'll happen...

But mostly people will still be wankers and not listen

[Dodgy69]

Always been a tricky one...retaliation.

[JackyJoll]

If you were an Israeli living in Israel, would you think the response disproportionate?

If you were a Palestinian living in Gaza, did you support the original Hamas attack?

I don't know because I'm not either and I don't think there are enough of either on this forum to provide an accurate picture of the feelings on the ground from either party.

Just saying, like.

Yes, but some generalisations are apt everywhere.

When you feel that you are in danger, your mood hardens greatly.

[wheelnut]

I am absolutely sincere in what I say. Because I do not share your partisanship you may regard it as 'shallow'.

Where did you get the idea that my views are partisan?

Do you not feel that it's possible to totally condemn Hamas' actions in October while feeling extremely uncomfortable at Israel's response?

[wheelnut]

Behind a paywall.

It has been nearly a month since Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah left Gaza and returned to his home in east London.

The British surgeon survived an explosion at al-Ahli hospital and spent 48 consecutive nights “drowning in a sea” of wounded patients across the Gaza Strip, but it is the memory of horribly wounded children that still makes him tremble.

“The gore doesn’t bother me,” he said. “There was a girl with half of her face missing, who had no one left, but it was only when I cleaned the layers of caked blood and mud that I began to see the child before the injury. Her elastic hair bands with plastic flowers, the nail polish on her toes before they were amputated.

“You see this beautiful little nine-year-old girl who once had a mother who braided her hair and suddenly you’re just punched in the gut.” He paused to sob. “And it takes a few moments for you to re-gather your strength and carry on.”

Abu-Sittah, 54, who is an honorary professor at both Imperial College London and King’s College London, is not unfamiliar with the brutality of war: he has offered reconstructive surgery in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and was the founding director at the conflict medicine programme at the American University of Beirut, before travelling to the Gaza Strip on October 9 with the Médicins sans Frontières charity.

“I anticipated the bloodshed of previous wars in Gaza, but now I know that is like comparing a flood to a tsunami,” he told The Times. “I could not have imagined what was to come.”

Since his return, Abu-Sittah has met officers from Scotland’s Yard’s war crimes unit, which is collaborating with the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas, to provide evidence from the two months he spent working in hospitals in Gaza.

He said he bore witness to injuries “not seen in previous wars” including “unmistakable” phosphorus burns, “guillotine-like amputations by Hellfire missiles” and “demonic quadcopters”, which he described as drones that have sniper guns “firing into the streets leading into the hospital”.

His hope in providing evidence is that international bodies will “re-establish the norms of war that emerged after the Second World War”, which he argues have been repeatedly broken in this “watershed” conflict, prompted by the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7.

On October 17 Abu-Sittah moved from the al-Shifa complex, the largest hospital in the south of Gaza City, to al-Ahli in the north to help overwhelmed staff. That evening an explosion in the hospital’s courtyard killed 471 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, although other sources put the figure at perhaps half that and some estimated the death toll could have been as low as 50. Abu-Sittah became a face of the medical community when he gave an international news conference surrounded by dozens of bloodied bodies.

“All that went through my head was I need to get in front of this news crew so my family at home can know I am alive,” he said. “It was just carnage. There were bodies everywhere. A child’s forearm on the ground where I was walking. We had to help put the amputated limbs of the kids in little boxes with their names on them so that they could get buried. By the end of that evening, we counted 480 bodies brought to al-Shifa.”

The Israel Defence Forces deny the explosion was the result of one of its airstrikes, saying it has proof it was caused by a misfired missile from Hamas, one of many aimed at Israeli civilians that have instead landed in Gaza. In October, a spokesman said: “According to the laws of armed conflict, we are not targeting civilians. Casualties in Gaza or civilian casualties are regrettable. They are not the aim of our operations.”

The surgeon spent the majority of his time at al-Shifa, which US intelligence officials have suggested was built above a Hamas control centre, served by sophisticated underground tunnels. Israel has long accused Hamas of using the Shifa hospital complex as a command and control centre as part of a wider strategy that seeks to hide its forces among the civilian population.

Abu-Sittah said he never encountered a military man while working there and believed that Hamas had in fact built a “secret healthcare system”. He said: “My brain now concludes that they must have a parallel military health system. I’ve worked in these environments before and I can always tell the fighting men apart. There’s a swagger about men with guns, even when they’re lower-ranked army people, you can tell who they are. They’re always trying to push in front of other people. They’re always surrounded by their lot. I’ve seen it in Yemen and Lebanon.

“So I started wondering, Where are these people? At no point did I see anybody who looked like the young fighting men that I have seen, and my feeling is that there is a parallel system that existed between the military corps and medical corps. But not in al-Shifa.”

He said he was “haunted” by the status of the healthcare system on the day he left. “There was just no operating room. I didn’t have any place to work. The wait was so long that we started seeing fly larvae growing in wounds. I have a sense of abandonment knowing the catastrophe is still unfolding.”

Since his return he says he has faced “venomous” attacks on his career and his family but “in comparison to what my colleagues in Gaza are facing it is embarrassing to complain. It’s comical: people accuse me of being a member of an Islamic fundamentalist religious organisation and also an atheist, Marxist-Leninist organisation simultaneously.”

He said his peers in British academia had offered him support. “The nicest thing happened in Gaza. I received a letter from Glasgow University saying, ‘We are proud that you’re an alumni’”.

On his mission to re-establish the rules of war, Abu-Sittah is resolute. “This is a horrendous moment in history. It’s a moment that needs to kind of make us all stop and ask, particularly those of us who have children: ‘Is this acceptable?’”

He has returned from back-to-back emergency trips to Jordan and Qatar with international humanitarian organisations who are planning “short-term steps to increase the capacity of the health system”.

He added: “The irony is that I had written a medical textbook on children’s war injuries in July and I’m now expected now to teach this to every physician around the globe. We have to either accept the idea as a world that in future wars, kids are going to die and be injured on new scales, or step back and figure out another consensus.”

[weeksy]

I am absolutely sincere in what I say. Because I do not share your partisanship you may regard it as 'shallow'.

Where did you get the idea that my views are partisan?

Do you not feel that it's possible to totally condemn Hamas' actions in October while feeling extremely uncomfortable at Israel's response?

and off the merry-go-round goes again

[Count Steer]

Always been a tricky one...retaliation.

Has anyone asked what Hamas expected to happen yet? The Israelis would shrug, say 'Oh dear, never mind'?* It's unlikely. It's possible Hamas expected things to kick off to such an extent that it would result in a regional conflict. So far, things are going to plan but not very quickly. Killing a Hamas leader in a Hezbollah stronghold (whoever did it) looks like an attempt to help that plan move a bit quicker. The Americans/UK are doing there bit with the Houthis. It's all looking a bit like a joint attempt to bring in/have a go at Iran.

It's put the skids under the embryonic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel though.

(I get the feeling from other posts that our resident keyboard warmongers would be happy with the current action in Gaza even if Hamas hadn't done what they did).

*There are credible reports that local Israeli intelligence/surveillance units reported up the chain of command that something was about to kick off, Hamas units had been observed training for it etc. They were ignored. Make of that what you will.

[Greenman]

With my skeptical head on as usual, who's to say that the original attacks on civilians in Israel were not orchestrated by Israel for an excuse to attack Palestine and take even more of their land?

[demographic]

[JackyJoll]

With my skeptical head on as usual, who's to say that the original attacks on civilians in Israel were not orchestrated by Israel for an excuse to attack Palestine and take even more of their land?

Is Israel keeping the Israeli hostages in Gaza?

[irie]

It's put the skids under the embryonic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel though.

That's a very good point. I see that event as the trigger to Hamas' attack on Israel.

A rapprochement between (Sunni) Saudi Arabia and Israel would contribute to cementing Saudi Arabia's ambition to be the key regional power in the Middle East, an ambition which (Shia) Iran also shares.

[Greenman]

With my skeptical head on as usual, who's to say that the original attacks on civilians in Israel were not orchestrated by Israel for an excuse to attack Palestine and take even more of their land?

Is Israel keeping the Israeli hostages in Gaza?

How do you know for fact that they are even being kept hostage by anyone?

How do any of us know for fact that any of this is true, it's just our own speculation, and my speculation is that Israel are just trying to gain the rest of the land they took from the Palestinians originally. I can't see that Hamas would of been stupid enough to poke a sleeping monster and that there is more into this than what the western media want us to believe.

[KungFooBob]

Have you been drinking with David Icke again?

[JackyJoll]

With my skeptical head on as usual, who's to say that the original attacks on civilians in Israel were not orchestrated by Israel for an excuse to attack Palestine and take even more of their land?

Is Israel keeping the Israeli hostages in Gaza?

How do you know for fact that they are even being kept hostage by anyone?

How do any of us know for fact that any of this is true, it's just our own speculation, and my speculation is that Israel are just trying to gain the rest of the land they took from the Palestinians originally. I can't see that Hamas would of been stupid enough to poke a sleeping monster and that there is more into this than what the western media want us to believe.

Do you hold a “view” on the Moon landings?