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Israel raids Gaza's Al Shifa Hospital, urges Hamas to surrender
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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Its worth reading/watching into past high profile hostage situations. I have a few yellow flag concerns, but The Operations Room youtube channel is really good for this
The reality is: Once you get away from the movies, hostages die. It is about minimizing loss of life, not preventing it. And the US in particular has taken a very strong "we don't negotiate with terrorists... unless they are wihite" since the republicans sabotaged Carter.
So acknowledging that an ally will be doing an assault and that intelligence feels it would accomplish something is pretty normal.
Calling the shot? That is fairly atypical, but there is also no chance of stealth in this situation. Al Shifa is deep in Gaza and Hamas have sentries. This is WHY "we don't negotiate with terrorists" because bum rushing is really the only chance.
At which point, the optics of "We are going to rescue those hostages" in the face of "We are going to lob large bombs at any terrorist we can find, no matter how many babies they duct tape to their chest" is a choice.
I've generally assumed that the majority of the hostages taken on the initial attack are now dead and have been for some time. The offer of "70 hostages" by Hamas suggested to me that 150+ were already dead.
We'll see how the operation plays out.
Part of my surprise at the US statements is the high potential for the whole thing going to shit and catching the blowback. The Hamas spin team have already managed to get several headlines of "Hamas blames Biden/the US for what's happening at Al Shifa" because of those comments.
If there wasn't some kind of strategic win on the table that the US administration was attempting to connect itself to for credit after the fact, opening itself up to the potentially large political loss if the operation goes south seems plain stupid.
So my guess is still that there's a real goal of a politically beneficial outcome for the US at the end of the operation such that it motivated preemptive involvement.
Edit: As for "calling the shot" - that's literally part of the international law. For going into the hospital that's being used for military ops by an enemy not to be a war crime IDF needed to provide advance notice of an operation, give Hamas the opportunity to cease activities, show demonstrable proof it was continuing, and then go in while taking every effort to minimize civilian casualties.
I think the problem is just how effective the Hamas/(allegedly)Iran spin team has been.
Al Jazeera have been going REALLY hard on reminding people they are state funded media. Hard to tell because we are in a post truth society, but it also looks like they are actively cutting off people who attest to their being Hamas terrorists in said hospitals (which would be true even if it weren't a base since they are likely wounded). Just look at how fast the entire world decided Israel bombed that hospital a few weeks back (... as opposed to the hospitals they HAVE bombed before and after).
So push the narrative that the IDF care about the hostages and are trying to rescue them. Use allies to accomplish that. If it fails, it fails. It is no different than if they did nothing. But if even a few hostages are rescued (and have sob stories of their treatment by Hamas) then it is a major win.
At this point, the only political win for the US is to not put boots on the ground in yet another Middle Eastern country that has been destabilized.
It's not hard to successfully spin more child deaths than in combined world conflicts since 2019 occurring within a month in one very small area.
I think you may be trivializing the US commentary here. This was the first time since Oct 7th that the US intelligence has said anything about where hostages have been held.
I'm extremely skeptical, especially given the political pressures on Biden right now from both sides, that this was simply to play nice with the IDF.
Again, we'll likely find out more in the next 24 hours, but I think there's more going on with the comments than just being amorphous spin, and I don't see the US administration having made those comments without Nov 2024 in mind, which makes me wonder what the perceived prize is.
Respect for the dead is not just using them to conveniently push a narrative.
When the IDF murder civilians, and they do ti pretty regularly, that needs to be recognized. When others do it, that needs to be recognized too.
Yes, and there's a rather long history of independent investigations recognizing war crimes on both sides of this particular conflict over the last two decades.
But I'm sorry - the notion that different sides of the conflict will not use the dead or reports of abuses from the other side as spin fodder for their own political objectives is incredibly naive or idealistic.
Israel's government is using the dead of Oct 7th to try and spin justification for objectives they've had since well before it, much like the US used 9/11 to try and spin justification for enriching Haliburton and going after Saddam. And Hamas/Iran are using the dead in Palestine to try and spin their own longstanding objectives much like how ISIL or the Taliban used the loss of life and displacement under US invasion to justify their own propaganda.
Should the dead be used to further dystopian state objectives? No, of course not.
But it's been that way for thousands of years, and it's not going to change anytime soon.
Where did i once claim that Israel was not applying spin or using the dead to advance their own agenda?
Where did I claim you had?
Unless your argument is that it is justified for Islamic terrorists to attack a hospital and blame Israel, then there.
Regardless of the murderers, civilians deserve an investigation into their murders rather than a hand waving and blaming of the other team.
No, that has nothing to do with a 'sides' argument, and I'm still not really seeing how you think it is one. In fact, when I wrote that I wasn't entirely sure which side if any you were trying to represent with your comments, so the fact you thought it was a sided comment is hilarious.
My point is that it's naive to think that each side isn't going to propagandize their dead.
Mmmhmm. And how often do comprehensive independent investigations into war crimes occur during hostilities versus after?
Evidence is gathered during but the investigation and review of the evidence in its totality occurs after.
Your hand wringing would hold more weight if we hadn't already had multiple investigations into Israel-Palestine conflicts and war crimes by this point.
Got it. Because people didn't care about past civilian casualties, these civilians are more useful as tools to raise awareness.
Also: We literally had a comprehensive investigation by multiple countries and independent third parties for the atrocity we are discussing so... It is just that media outlets (some state funded...) jumped the gun to immediately use those civilian casualties to their advantage. Rather than wait a few hours for preliminary investigations.