The IOF's invasion of Gaza

[Ladios]

You have to be loving trolling at this point.

"These are the statistics the government has been using to inform their decisions"
"Ok"
"Why would they use these statistics if they are misleading"
"idk lol"

Do you think that the goverment is really that stupid that they would just trust misleading figures like this? OR is it more likely that by acknowledging these figures they are ackowledging the disproportionate response of Israel, which they do not want to do because t makes them complicit.

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[Soukuw]

You have to be loving trolling at this point.

"These are the statistics the government has been using to inform their decisions"
"Ok"
"Why would they use these statistics if they are misleading"
"idk lol"

Do you think that the goverment is really that stupid that they would just trust misleading figures like this? OR is it more likely that by acknowledging these figures they are ackowledging the disproportionate response of Israel, which they do not want to do because t makes them complicit.

Do you acknowledge that the death statistics that come from the Gaza Health Ministry include combatants?

[Ladios]

Of the 35000 Gazans killed it is estimated that 9-12k of them have been combatants according to the US's interpretation of the numbers. Hamas itself claims that they have only lost 6k combatants.
That is still 2-3 innocent civilians killed for every combatant if you are going by the higher US estimates.
And that doesn't even go into civilians who have been wounded and permanently disabled as a result of US-aided assaults on tent encampments.

These numbers are used to inform all sorts of policy decisions outside of just aid being given, including military expenditures like how many more bombs and ammo we are supplying, peace agreement proposals, and more. I had only focused on humanitarian aid aspect because I stupidly thought that you would care that innocent people will be receiving less support.
My mistake.

[Soukuw]

You sure do like to attack me personally as much as you can huh?

Can you acknowledge using a number that includes both civilians and combatants doesn't make much sense when figuring out the amount of aid to provide to civilians?

[Ladios]

You sure like to obsess over one part of a statement rather than take into account the broader picture because you think you have some sort of "gotcha".

I know you are trying to lead to a "yeah, of course including the number of combatants in the overall count means that we cannot use the information" but it is a really weird sentence to make, which requires us to assume that the governments using this information are too inept to make this assessment themselves. Are you assuming that those in charge of sending aid are too unintelligent to, say, subtract the unmodified number of reported dead by the amount of combatants they estimate have been killed, and adjust appropriately?

You seem to be missing the point, but you're right, maybe I shouldn't assume malice on your part. Maybe there is just a communication error. So, lets try out three premises.

1:
Gvmt has been using these numbers for years, without investigating their authenticity.
Protests against the Gvmt's complicity start.
Silmultaneously, the Gvmt realizes that these numbers arent accurate and spontaneously decide to not use them.

2:
Gvmt has been using these numbers for years, has investigated them and deemed them completely unreliable.
Still continue to use them anyways without taking into account the knowledge they are innacurate.
Protests against the Gvmt's complicity start.
Gvmt suddenly realizes that they shouldn't be using inaccurate numbers and there is no way to adjust based on other information they have.

3:
Gvmt has been using these numbers for years, has investigated them and deemed them reliable enough to inform policy decision.
Protests against the Gvmt's complicity start.
Gvmt realizes it is not a good look that they are continuing their actions while acknowledging the at least 23,000 innocent civillians killed after subtracting the maximum presumed combatants killed, 12k, from the total reported by the Gazan Health Ministry, 35k.


True, though, maybe our government is just that disorganized that this completely flew above everyone's heads, and the correct situation is 1 or 2?

[Soukuw]

forum sucks this is a test post
Just because somethings been done one way for a long time doesn't mean it's the correct way.

If I'm understanding correctly the bill is for things like childhood cancer and female genital mutilation and you're mad they're not allowed to cite deaths inflated by Hamas terrorists?

Prohibits funds appropriated by this act to be made available for the State Department to cite statistics obtained from the Gaza Health Ministry

I don't even think this blocks them from citing the GHM in other context.

Honestly though digging into bills/acts is a bit over my head.

Edit: I'd source the above quote but for some reason the forums HATES the link and the very start of the quote, it's the first .gov link on google if you search it

[Ladios]

If I'm understanding correctly the bill is for things like childhood cancer and female genital mutilation and you're mad they're not allowed to cite deaths inflated by Hamas terrorists?I don't even think this blocks them from citing the GHM in other context.
Honestly though digging into bills/acts is a bit over my head.

There's also the provisions on funding wildlife diversity programs, wanna link that too?

The way bills work is that one bill doesnt cover only one topic, it usually covers a bunch of things all clumped together. Part of this big chunk of funding is allocating relief to civillians due to a war we are complicit in. They are saying they want to ignore the numbers that indicate how much damage has been caused, even when they have full ability to account for any discrepancies in the numbers with the information they have. This will mean that they do not account for just how many people are being injured there if they are using the numbers Israel is putting out instead.
As another person brought up before, third party UN evaluators have found that the Gaza Health Ministries numbers are more accurate than those put forth by the US's allys.

The only two possible reasons for not using those numbers are either because we actually don't want to provide more relief, or because we don't want to acknowledge those numbers validity. Not acknowledging them doesn't make them not accurate.

[Soukuw]

I'm not disputing the numbers accuracy I'm disputing what it is deceptively pushed as, it sounds like civilians but also includes combatants. It is not relevant for the things this act funds from what I can tell.

Also sorry about the million edits on my loving post, forum sucks is wonderful and perfect and I love it very much.

[Ladios]

Where, then, should congress get information on how many wounded Gazans need medical care, starving Gazans, need food, sick Gazans need medicine? Who else has the information that can help them make an decision besides the actual medical professionals currently doing their best to take care of this populace?

[edit]Sorry for the edit, but this thought just occured to me. This whole argument about death toll is loving irrelevant. You were right. The information that 23-29 thousand non-combatants out of 35 thousand people killed make no difference to the amount of aid provided. What this bill does do, is deprive us of our primary resource on how many people are still alive and need help, and what kind of help they need.

[Soukuw]

Where, then, should congress get information on how many wounded Gazans need medical care, starving Gazans, need food, sick Gazans need medicine? Who else has the information that can help them make an decision besides the actual medical professionals currently doing their best to take care of this populace?

That is probably why we've used GHM's numbers for so long, there isn't really an alternative.

[edit]Sorry for the edit, but this thought just occured to me. This whole argument about death toll is loving irrelevant. You were right. The information that 23 thousand non-combatants out of 35 thousand people killed make no difference to the amount of aid provided. What this bill does do, is deprive us of our primary resource on how many people are still alive and need help, and what kind of help they need.

For the record pretty sure we're talking about an Amendment to the bill H.R. 8771, I do not believe this bill has been enacted nor does this amendment affect any other bills/acts if the bill is enacted.

The bill is 300 pages long and I would like to play video games so I CTRL+F'ed for Gaza and Palestine from what I skimmed over it doesn't seem like the GHM's death toll would be relevant in this bill.

[Ladios]

So after Israel rejected 10 ceasefire deals, they are finally coming to the table to discuss an exchange of prisoners on each side.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-weighs-hamas-response-gaza-ceasefire-proposal-2024-07-04/

Many of Netanyahu's senior staff have threatened to quit the government, however, if this current invasion ends without all of Hamas eradicated.
This does put Netanyahu in a tough position as he is at this point only supported by the far-right, and without his supporters, this will likely be his last term in office, especially as Israeli elections draw close, and more and more Israeli civillians wish to see an end to hostilities and attempts to rebuild relations with their Palestinian neighbors.
Like I've said before, this war is completely unnecessary, and its main supporters are politicians who are trying to use it to hold onto their positions.

I guess we'll see if Netanyahu has finally grown tired of this charade and will actually do something effective to bring the hostages home.

[ultimamax]

he is probably going to jail for corruption as soon as the "war" ends, and he knows it, so i'm not expecting anything

[BubbaGum]

I can't believe we're having intelligent and thoughtful conversations about real life issues on this God forsaken hellhole of a forum, it almost warms my heart in a way.

[Ladios]

Considering that I am a whole legal adult older than I was when I joined the forums, I hope most of my posts these days aren't stuffpost fish spamming.

[Ladios]

I apologize that this post ended up being edited, I had to troubleshoot the forget out of this to figure out why it wasn't letting me post, and I guess it had something to do with certain words possibly using alternate characters but when I retyped them it fixed them? Idfk


So Israeli media agency, Haaretz, recently disclosed that during the attacks on October 7th, Israel's military was ordered to follow the "Hannibal Directive".

The directive was created by the Israeli military in the 1980s as an operating procedure designed to prevent the kidnap of soldiers by whatever means necessary, even if that comes at the expense of the lives of civilian hostages.

It has previously been blamed for possible war crimes, encouraging excessive or indiscriminate fire, and was formally discontinued in 2016.

A southern command source told the paper: "Everyone knew by then that such vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers ... Everyone knew what it meant to not let any vehicles return to Gaza."

In what was initially reported as Friendly Fire Incidents, which is usually used to explain accidental self-inflicted casualties, are now confirmed to be the direct orders of the Israeli military to fire on vehicles that they knew contained civilian and military hostages.

A couple more links in case you don't want to sign up for a Haaretz account:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-hamas-attack-hannibal-haaretz-b2575744.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/07/israel-idf-hannibal-protocol-hamas-attack-haaretz

Imagine if in the US we had someone holding people hostage in a bank or something and the police response was to just to blow the whole thing up to make sure we killed the kidnappers.

I don't know what else to say. I don't really have any comments to attach to this, its not really something worthy of debate as much as it is just a stuffty thing that has happened.


Meanwhile, Israel refuses to end fighting until all their war goals are met. Now of course i'm not a politician myself, but "We will only accept a treaty after we have killed everyone on the other side." isn't really how ceasefire negotiations are supposed to go iirc.
Hamas has even dropped their demand that the ceasefire be permanent, which was one of the previous key sticking points that Israel wouldn't accept, and are accepting a six-week hold while further negotiations are underway. I guess we'll have to see if Israel will accept the deal now that they are given permission to resume their attacks after the six weeks.