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SmokeyBear1861

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3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Now tell us about the IDF and investigations and independent reporting in Gaza. The sad thing is that you know exactly what you are doing. You are versed and I assume have workplace experience in assessing propaganda operations and how they are used to justify atrocities. And here you are, tip of the spear in the message board exchange. But please, just keep muttering out "Putin talking points" to yourself in the corner and think that it will resonate with objective readers of this exchange. 

You’re undermining your point, which is that you posted this comparison and now you’re saying the figures can’t be known.  No shit, that’s exactly what I’ve pointed out— it’s a bull shit comparison untethered to facts.  It serves no point, because the things it’s comparing are not accurately counted on either side. 
 

The only important thing to you, like everywhere else, is to show that somehow Russia isn’t really that bad. That’s you MO. You don’t give a shit about kids, you never gave a shit about Arab kids getting bombed by Russia in Syria, or Ukrainian kids, or any kids. You actively obfuscated. You only give a shit about kids when Putin tells you to. 

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11 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Yea for genocide and ethnic cleansing I guess. "Decency" I think is the operative term.  

Hmmm.  

Hmmm. 

I don't think the European or Pacific theaters were either genocide or ethnic cleansing.  I think they were retaliation for Pearl Harbor and The Blitz and some other stuff.  Do I have that right?  

I've heard tell Pearl Harbor was payback for us cutting off Indonesian oil to Japan, so maybe Roosevelt had unclean hands?  Who knows.  War is Hell, and not all that decent.  Blood of traitors and patriots, old chum (not really -- I think you're Putin troll).

Edited by Bullneck
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Although I misspoke, you do kind of care:

- When Russian bombs fall on Syrian kids, you’re mad at Raytheon

- When Israeli bombs fall on Palestinian kids, you’re also mad at Raytheon

- When Hamas gunmen kill Israeli kids, you’re also mad at Raytheon

- When Russian missiles fall on Ukrainian kids, you’re also mad at Raytheon (and Toria Nuland)

It’s almost like you’ve got some pre-generated outrage here. 

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Oh good. Some full on unhinged shit to dismiss. But you got me on one thing. Yes, as an American I do actually care about the kids that are blown up by American(-supplied) weapons and the fucking obvious and predictable results of American foreign policy. I know that those lives are the easiest to discount in the calculus of your wordview. Tell us all about the modeling and equations you fucking ghoul. 

We are flying planes fulls of bombs into Israel that are being used to effect collective punishment at best, genocide at worst. And this motherfucker thinks that the people that think this shit is fucking sick are in bed with Putin. Because that is the only card he has to play. And propaganda has built a fertile field for it to land.  

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46 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Oh good. Some full on unhinged shit to dismiss. But you got me on one thing. Yes, as an American I do actually care about the kids that are blown up by American(-supplied) weapons and the fucking obvious and predictable results of American foreign policy. I know that those lives are the easiest to discount in the calculus of your wordview. Tell us all about the modeling and equations you fucking ghoul. 

We are flying planes fulls of bombs into Israel that are being used to effect collective punishment at best, genocide at worst. And this motherfucker thinks that the people that think this shit is fucking sick are in bed with Putin. Because that is the only card he has to play. And propaganda has built a fertile field for it to land.  

So Ana Banana has stumbled upon his own version of the Monte Hall problem:

Door #1

Spoiler

giphy.gif

Door #2

Spoiler

 

Door #3:

Quote

giphy.gif

 

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1 hour ago, Bullneck said:

I've heard tell Pearl Harbor was payback for us cutting off Indonesian oil to Japan, so maybe Roosevelt had unclean hands?  Who knows.  War is Hell, and not all that decent. 

They attacked us because we embargoed oil exports to Japan and they thought they had only enough oil to last until end of 1942 or early ‘43.

With this stuff, there is always a chain of events that somebody kicks off and where they could have stopped before things got too bad.  Japan had multiple points where they could have backed off and avoided the later consequences..

  • Japan invades China.
  • Japan invades Vietnam to cut supplies to China.  
  • We embargo oil exports to Japan.
  • Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
  • We eventually drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

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7 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Speaking of disingenuous shit, I see that Anastasis is on here promoting the ridiculous casualty figures that he pulled from anti-Zionist Twitter, which (in line with Anastasis) is mostly obsessed with proving that Israel is worse than Russia.  
 

What does the OHCR actually say about these figures:

image.thumb.jpeg.b5e15c40adbe1b8f17efeab5b89d453c.jpeg

 

Russia hasn’t allowed any investigations or reporting from Mariupol, Sieverodontesk, and all the other cities they leveled and continue to occupy. It’s a black fucking box and everyone knows the there’s mountains of corpses but there’s no Hamas run health ministry to report it.

He’s been a total pro-Putin simp for years and yet his bullshit on this thread gets lapped up. 

When faced with compelling information that counters a held narrative, one can either reflect and acknowledge the commonalities and obviously disproportionate situations --- or they can nitpick the dataset (but but but an asterisks wasn't carried over!!!) and then label the commenter an "other."

The Palestinian civilian population has a ton in common with the Ukrainian civilian population.  Both have been subjected to a grossly inappropriate level of carnage inflicted on them by the far-right.  One population has been subjected to it for a couple years - the other population subjected to if for a couple decades.  

There are also obvious commonalities between Bibi, the Likud Party, other far-right extremist elements currently in control of Israel when compared to other far-right powers around the world (Hamas, Modi, Orban, Putin, Trump, Erdogan) - mainly the disregard for democracy and use of populism driven by fear-based xenophobic propaganda that dehumanizes the others. 

Sadly, that dehumanization leads to bullshit like the October 7th attack by Hamas, the decades long occupation/blockades of parts of Palestine, the ongoing onslaught of Palestinian civilians, and the ongoing onslaught of Ukrainian civilians.  

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15 hours ago, statsman said:

Not at all. 
Let’s talk through it. 
The U.S. wants to see as few Palestinians killed as possible, while supporting Israel’s defense. 
Israel wants to kill as few Palestinians as possible (I believe, and their actions support this belief), while destroying Hamas. 
Iran is willing to spend every Palestinian life in support of its fight against Israel, and the U.S.

Hamas is willing to use Palestinian civilians as human shields as it pursues its fight to kill Jews. 
 
Everyone is appealing to Israel and the U.S. for a ceasefire, and not Hamas and Iran, because everyone sees them as the best bet to stop fighting out of concern for loss of innocent life. Am I wrong?

Oh okay. So you are writing satire, just on accident. 

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19 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

It is not propaganda to talk about the things Hamas actually did, and filmed. You are confusing propaganda with “facts I don’t like.” 
 

Was it propaganda to publish what happened in Bucha? Or just anti-Russian propaganda. 

So, let's see. Say my brother were to break into a home and visit unspeakable brutality including rape and mutilation on an innocent family living within. Pictures of that would justify killing me and my family in a full military assault? 

Say I didn't even know the guy. The same pictures justify my home being bombed and everybody killed as you try to find the monster?

The pictures are facts, indeed. Propaganda may not be the right word for them being used to inflame public outrage in order to cloud judgment and confuse other facts. 

Fact: Hamas attack beyond horrible. Reading the above about the brutality to women victims provokes sickening outrage which is a valid emotional response. 

Fact: Israel has every right to pursue Hamas and, to a limited extent, err on the side of thoroughness.

Fact: Israel's use of high explosive bombs in thousands of airstrikes prior to the invasion killed thousands and wounded thousands more who had nothing to do with that attack.

Fact: Israel has cut off vital supplies to the people of Palestine resulting in deprivation and agony including the necessity for Palestinian physicians to operate on children with no anesthetic. That is an outrage.

Fact: Israel continues to carry out a bloody conventional ground assault with air support in an urban area leading to what may be tens of thousands of deaths and making the place uninhabitable.

What do I see? A cynical Israeli government using the righteous outrage over the Hamas attack to obliterate the West Bank Gaza. This is similar to the way the W Bush administration kept suggesting that Iraq was somehow involved in 9/11 and had the wherewithal to do even more horrible things.

Anger and fear are the basis of the justification of Israel's actions right now. Those actions are gruesomely and grossly out of proportion. Israel can only maintain this campaign so long as they fuel righteous emotions to justify wicked ends.

Written with neither rancor nor disrespect. I don't see much of anyone posting here as propagandists.

Edited by RomaVicta
Geographical incompetence.
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1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

So, let's see. Say my brother were to break into a home and visit unspeakable brutality including rape and mutilation on an innocent family living within. Pictures of that would justify killing me and my family in a full military assault? 

Say I didn't even know the guy. The same pictures justify my home being bombed and everybody killed as you try to find the monster?

The pictures are facts, indeed. Propaganda may not be the right word for them being used to inflame public outrage in order to cloud judgment and confuse other facts. 

Fact: Hamas attack beyond horrible. Reading the above about the brutality to women victims provokes sickening outrage which is a valid emotional response. 

Fact: Israel has every right to pursue Hamas and, to a limited extent, err on the side of thoroughness.

Fact: Israel's use of high explosive bombs in thousands of airstrikes prior to the invasion killed thousands and wounded thousands more who had nothing to do with that attack.

Fact: Israel has cut off vital supplies to the people of Palestine resulting in deprivation and agony including the necessity for Palestinian physicians to operate on children with no anesthetic. That is an outrage.

Fact: Israel continues to carry out a bloody conventional ground assault with air support in an urban area leading to what may be tens of thousands of deaths and making the place uninhabitable.

What do I see? A cynical Israeli government using the righteous outrage over the Hamas attack to obliterate the West Bank. This is similar to the way the W Bush administration kept suggesting that Iraq was somehow involved in 9/11 and had the wherewithal to do even more horrible things.

Anger and fear are the basis of the justification of Israel's actions right now. Those actions are gruesomely and grossly out of proportion. Israel can only maintain this campaign so long as they fuel righteous emotions to justify wicked ends.

Written with neither rancor nor disrespect. I don't see much of anyone posting here as propagandists.

Israel is obliterating the West Bank?  I missed that update. 

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1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

So, let's see. Say my brother were to break into a home and visit unspeakable brutality including rape and mutilation on an innocent family living within. Pictures of that would justify killing me and my family in a full military assault? 

Say I didn't even know the guy. The same pictures justify my home being bombed and everybody killed as you try to find the monster?

The pictures are facts, indeed. Propaganda may not be the right word for them being used to inflame public outrage in order to cloud judgment and confuse other facts. 

Fact: Hamas attack beyond horrible. Reading the above about the brutality to women victims provokes sickening outrage which is a valid emotional response. 

Fact: Israel has every right to pursue Hamas and, to a limited extent, err on the side of thoroughness.

Fact: Israel's use of high explosive bombs in thousands of airstrikes prior to the invasion killed thousands and wounded thousands more who had nothing to do with that attack.

Fact: Israel has cut off vital supplies to the people of Palestine resulting in deprivation and agony including the necessity for Palestinian physicians to operate on children with no anesthetic. That is an outrage.

Fact: Israel continues to carry out a bloody conventional ground assault with air support in an urban area leading to what may be tens of thousands of deaths and making the place uninhabitable.

What do I see? A cynical Israeli government using the righteous outrage over the Hamas attack to obliterate the West Bank. This is similar to the way the W Bush administration kept suggesting that Iraq was somehow involved in 9/11 and had the wherewithal to do even more horrible things.

Anger and fear are the basis of the justification of Israel's actions right now. Those actions are gruesomely and grossly out of proportion. Israel can only maintain this campaign so long as they fuel righteous emotions to justify wicked ends.

Written with neither rancor nor disrespect. I don't see much of anyone posting here as propagandists.

If your brother were to do that, there is an overarching civil authority in place to investigate, prosecute and try him. That is how we avoid clan feuds. 
 
That said, if your brother sheltered with you, and was deemed a continuing threat, the best option for you and your family is to get out or try to turn him in. If the police come in, and your family is hurt, where does the blame lie? The police or your brother? (Note- your analogy is severely flawed. To torture it to make it work here, the police have to be from another state). 

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2 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

Oh okay. So you are writing satire, just on accident. 

In 1945, the Japanese Empire was making plans to defend the main islands to the last man, woman and child. That is a matter of record. Okinawa was the trial run. 
 
The U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on civilian population centers. We absolutely killed over a hundred thousand innocent civilians. We did it because we absolutely wanted to end the empire and we didn’t want to have to invade those islands and fight man to man/woman/child. 
 
That display shocked the Japanese leadership to viewing things a new way. They believed they were harder than the Americans, more willing to accept the horrors and losses of war. The bombings showed them they were evaluating the equation with incorrect variables. The U.S. could visit horrors on them from afar, and not share in them. The Japanese leadership was ready to sacrifice their entire populace, and the bombings showed them that could happen and they would still not be able to visit any more harm on their enemy. They realized it was futile. 
 
This is an old debate, it will continue for decades, and never be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. I just want to revisit one facet of it: in the summer of 1945, which government cared more for the Japanese civilian population- the Japanese government or the U.S.’? I would argue that, although the U.S. government was only marginally concerned about Japanese civilians, the Imperial Japanese government was monstrously not concerned, viewing them as chattel in service to their credo of bushido  

Leading back to my original statement- I’d like to hear an argument that Hamas or Iran care more for the Gazan civilians than the U.S. or Israel (remember, Israel has tolerated a decades long barrage of rockets from Gaza). (I threw Fatah in the original statement in hopes of eliciting a real and substantive answer,  because I think an argument could be made there). 

Edited by statsman
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25 minutes ago, statsman said:

If your brother were to do that, there is an overarching civil authority in place to investigate, prosecute and try him. That is how we avoid clan feuds. 
 
That said, if your brother sheltered with you, and was deemed a continuing threat, the best option for you and your family is to get out or try to turn him in. If the police come in, and your family is hurt, where does the blame lie? The police or your brother? (Note- your analogy is severely flawed. To torture it to make it work here, the police have to be from another state). 

You'll be shocked to hear that I think you're the one reaching. You have to go outside of what I describe in some cases and in others you ignore what I wrote.

One might think you're closely guarding emotional imbalance regarding this subject.

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36 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

It's been in all the news. Here's one satellite image:

spacer.png

You can find many more on this google page.

Here's one more. Looks kind of obliterated to me. 

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Here's one of what appears to have been some sort of business district. Maybe apartments. Hard to tell, isn't it?

spacer.png

No worries. Just Palestinians. Who really gives a shit?

 

You said "West Bank", not "Gaza". DDD read your whole post, knew that it was an honest mistaken reference, but decided that that was the thing that he really wanted to call attention to. 

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1 hour ago, statsman said:

Leading back to my original statement- I’d like to hear an argument that Hamas or Iran care more for the Gazan civilians than the U.S. or Israel

That is an exercise in absurdity. Are we doing okay as long as we're not acting in the way of Iran or Hamas? Is that the standard?

None of the named entities seem to care much about the Gazan civilians. Look at all the people on this thread finding reasons to justify what's happening to them. 

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Just now, RomaVicta said:

Well, that's embarrassing.

Really more embarrassing for DDD, but he should be well acclimated to that by now. For those that are actually concerned about what is going on in the West Bank as well, this has been the deadliest year for WB palestinians in nearly 20 years.  

 

image.thumb.png.f9bfb4439a3bc921b51b034094761000.png

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29 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

That is an exercise in absurdity. Are we doing okay as long as we're not acting in the way of Iran or Hamas? Is that the standard?

None of the named entities seem to care much about the Gazan civilians. Look at all the people on this thread finding reasons to justify what's happening to them. 

Thats the point! 
 
This has been a world of states for thousands of years, replacing world of tribes. Hamas’ is the government of Gaza, heavily in Iran’s sphere. I won’t honor the fiction of Hamas as a “legitimate” or elected government; that ship sailed 15 years ago. It is an authoritarian government. 
 
There are lots of authoritarian governments in this world; uniformly it sucks for the governed. 
 
Israel says that the October 7 attack was by Hamas and they declared war on Hamas. They are being coy; there is no functional difference between warring on Hamas and warring on Gaza. Israel does not accept responsibility for Gazan civilians. It does not accept them as citizens.  
 

Things will suck horrifically for Gazan civilians until Hamas is gone. 
 
 

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Take out their leadership and Hamas does not go away. Bomb Gaza and Hamas does not go away.

Show the kind face. Behind every military unit there should be a humanitarian group. Don't build camps, build lives. Don't level blocks, take out terrorists. Do that and few would say a thing.

Dropping a 2000 lb bomb into a residential area just creates more BS.

 

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1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

None of the named entities seem to care much about the Gazan civilians. Look at all the people on this thread finding reasons to justify what's happening to them. 

37 minutes ago, statsman said:

Israel says that the October 7 attack was by Hamas and they declared war on Hamas. They are being coy; there is no functional difference between warring on Hamas and warring on Gaza. Israel does not accept responsibility for Gazan civilians. It does not accept them as citizens.  

Things will suck horrifically for Gazan civilians until Hamas is gone. 

I think some of us have the attitude of “ride with an outlaw, die with an outlaw”.  Whether that’s fair or not, Hamas came to power over 15 years ago on a platform of armed conflict/resistance to Israel and they’ve never hidden that.  Their identity is literally wrapped up in armed conflict with Israel and they are dragging Palestinians into it, but everybody knew exactly who they were back in 2007/2008 when they won power.

There’s 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, and a claimed 25,000 Hamas members. Whatever many of us may think, Israel most likely wishes the Palestinian people would boot Hamas out of power and expel them from the Gaza Strip without the need for the IDF to be involved  

If in the coming years, Hamas is still in power, a lot of us will have no sympathy for the plight of Palestinians.  It’s no different than the Russian people allowing Putin to remain in power and getting their sons and husbands killed.  Ride with an outlaw, die with an outlaw.

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Man, what the fuck do you think average Palestinians are supposed to do about Hamas, or average Russians are supposed to do about Putin?

You have spent countless hours talking here about how an attempted revolution by Trumpers could never succeed here, and they’re the most heavily harmed people on the fucking planet. What are moderate Palestinians supposed to do about Hamas?

And your “oh I’m sure Israel would prefer Palestinians overthrow Hamas” line is dumb as hell and has been debunked in this very thread already. Netanyahu and the Likud party have used the Israeli state to support Hamas as the sole fucking Palestinian power for years and weren’t even shy about admitting it.

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33 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Take out their leadership and Hamas does not go away. Bomb Gaza and Hamas does not go away.

Show the kind face. Behind every military unit there should be a humanitarian group. Don't build camps, build lives. Don't level blocks, take out terrorists. Do that and few would say a thing.

Dropping a 2000 lb bomb into a residential area just creates more BS.

 

That is a sweet sentiment and I applaud it. Hearts and minds. 
 
Problems:

Hamas militants don’t wear uniforms. They have the tactic of feigning being civilians when it suits them, and breaking out the weapons when it suits them. 
Hamas imbeds military centers and stores in civilian population centers and social service (hospitals) centers. 
Hamas builds tunnels, for militant use, under civilian population centers. 
Hamas uses civilians as human shields. 
Hamas uses suicide bomb vests under civilian clothing. 
 
So, you see the difficulty of fighting Hamas. The arithmetic the Israeli government has to solve- Gazan civilian lives vs. IDF soldier lives. (In WWII, wrt Japan, the U.S. decided 100k innocent Japanese civilians vs. 0 Army Air Corps KIA was an equation Uncle Sam could live with). 
 
Folks are trying to imagine some kind of “third way” where Israel can navigate this mess without significant loss of civilian life. I don’t think it exists. I think, after October 7, Israel sees two options:

1. Say, “OK, Hamas, you got us good! We’ll just rebuild those walls  (maybe a little stronger), let less Gazans work here, inspect shipments more thoroughly and go on with our lives”. 
2. Eradicate Hamas, at any cost to civilian life, and then figure out how to deal with what’s next. 
 
The calls for cease fire (always on Israel, never on Hamas) are calls for option 1. 
 
Problem is, October 7 was so horrific, and Israel is a democracy, and they are galvanized for option 2. 

Edited by statsman
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14 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

 

And your “oh I’m sure Israel would prefer Palestinians overthrow Hamas” line is dumb as hell and has been debunked in this very thread already. 

I have seen another line in this thread, just as dumb. It goes like, “Why not allow the ‘right of return’? It doesn’t guarantee wiping out or expulsion of Jews in Israel. The nation can be a democracy, and allow multiple factions to co exist”. 
 
(The Palestinians and their supporters have, in fact, never in their entire history established a liberal democracy with protections for minority rights and establishment of the ‘rule of law’)

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9 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Man, what the fuck do you think average Palestinians are supposed to do about Hamas,

They can do nothing and see how that works out for them.  As it is, Abbas is 88 and when he kicks the bucket, if they allow Hamas to fully take his position/power, that will speak volumes about where they stand.  

As far as Netanyahu and others dealing with Hamas, if somebody other than Hamas takes power in 2007-2008, then that’s who Netanyahu and Co. would deal with.  Netanyahu is a real piece of shit, but he was always going to deal with whoever has control, including paying them off/bribing them.

9 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

or average Russians are supposed to do about Putin?

 

If you are an adult male in Russia, you have two choices.

  1. Do something and risk getting sent to Ukraine and coming back as a container full of meat goo.
  2. Do nothing and risk getting sent to Ukraine and coming back as a container full of meat goo.

They have elections in a couple of months.  The results are already known of course, but if they wanted to start shit, it would be a good time.

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1 hour ago, statsman said:

Thats the point! 
 
This has been a world of states for thousands of years, replacing world of tribes. Hamas’ is the government of Gaza, heavily in Iran’s sphere. I won’t honor the fiction of Hamas as a “legitimate” or elected government; that ship sailed 15 years ago. It is an authoritarian government. 
 
There are lots of authoritarian governments in this world; uniformly it sucks for the governed. 
 
Israel says that the October 7 attack was by Hamas and they declared war on Hamas. They are being coy; there is no functional difference between warring on Hamas and warring on Gaza. Israel does not accept responsibility for Gazan civilians. It does not accept them as citizens.  
 

Things will suck horrifically for Gazan civilians until Hamas is gone. 
 
 

 

26 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I think some of us have the attitude of “ride with an outlaw, die with an outlaw”.  Whether that’s fair or not, Hamas came to power over 15 years ago on a platform of armed conflict/resistance to Israel and they’ve never hidden that.  Their identity is literally wrapped up in armed conflict with Israel and they are dragging Palestinians into it, but everybody knew exactly who they were back in 2007/2008 when they won power.

There’s 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, and a claimed 25,000 Hamas members. Whatever many of us may think, Israel most likely wishes the Palestinian people would boot Hamas out of power and expel them from the Gaza Strip without the need for the IDF to be involved  

If in the coming years, Hamas is still in power, a lot of us will have no sympathy for the plight of Palestinians.  It’s no different than the Russian people allowing Putin to remain in power and getting their sons and husbands killed.  Ride with an outlaw, die with an outlaw.

 

There is that pesky matter of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which Israel is a signatory, that governs the rules of war and delineates what war crimes are. What was done during WW2 only matters in the sense that the Geneva Conventions were signed so that shit wouldn't happen again. 

And, yes, Hamas committed war crimes by indiscriminately murdering civilians on Oct. 7th and continues to do so by using civilians as human shields. Israel is also committing war crimes through indiscriminate bombings and forced displacement of civilians in Gaza, even when they're NOT being used as human shields.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/crimes-against-humanity.shtml

 

While "ethnic cleansing" has not yet been defined as a war crime, the Israeli government's conduct in both Gaza and the West Bank can be easily described as such.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/ethnic-cleansing.shtml

 

Fighting a determined enemy without causing civilian casualties in urban areas is hard, but the conduct of a modern, professional army requires them to limit them as much as possible. It's inevitable that collateral damage will occur. But, as has been mentioned up-thread, the willingness by the IDF to throw out almost any notion of "proportionality" is all out of whack.

Meanwhile (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-20415675😞

  • 1.9 million Gazans (85% of the population) have been displaced;
  • 50% of all housing units have been destroyed;
  • 100,000 buildings have been destroyed or damaged;
  • and over 20,000 human beings have been killed (not verified but most experts find the estimate credible).

image.png.a16663a4174422d99fd73559b750d360.png

 

Finally, the "safe areas" in the south where civilians were told to relocate to are coming under increasing attack along with aid from the UN and ICRC.

Quote

 

Israeli strikes intensify in southern Gaza.

Israeli forces struck areas of central and southern Gaza on Friday, killing scores of people, according to Palestinian health officials, and sending thousands fleeing, in what an Israeli defense official described as an “essential” stage in its war to eliminate Hamas.

The Israeli military said that it had carried out a series of attacks over the past day in Khan Younis, the biggest city in the south, using airstrikes, sniper fire and tank rounds, and that “dozens of terrorists” had been killed.

Ground troops, the military said, were fighting in an area of southern Gaza known as Khuza’a, near the Israeli border, and Palestinians described homes being reduced to rubble as warplanes bombarded densely populated areas.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, called the intensified strikes an important part of Israel’s mission to destroy Hamas and its weapons caches.

“Our operations are essential to achieving the goals of the war. We see the results and the destruction of enemy forces,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled from northern Gaza to the south, often on instructions from the Israeli military. The latest campaign sent residents, some already displaced from other areas, seeking new cover.

At least 18 people were killed and dozens of others injured near the Kuwait Specialty Hospital, in southern Gaza, according to hospital staff members, who said the strike hit a house in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

The Israeli military confirmed on Friday that it had targeted whom it described as a former commander in the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad in a structure near the hospital.

About 85 percent of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million people have been displaced, and for those sheltering near the Kuwait hospital, there is hardly anywhere farther south to go. The hospital is less than a mile from Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Egypt is determined to keep closed.

The city’s border crossing with Egypt is also the main entry point for aid into the territory. Israel has continued bombing areas it has told people to move to.

 

 

Quote

 

The U.N. says Israeli forces fired on an aid convoy in central Gaza.

Israeli forces shot at a United Nations convoy of armored vehicles in central Gaza on Thursday evening as it was returning from delivering aid in the northern part of the territory, U.N. officials said.

No one in the convoy was injured, the officials said, but the episode highlighted the severe challenges facing humanitarian efforts to help Palestinians struggling to survive amid Israel’s nearly 12-week bombardment of the enclave.

“Israeli soldiers fired at an aid convoy as it returned from northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli Army,” Thomas White, the Gaza director for UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote on social media. He said that one vehicle in the convoy had been damaged, adding: “Aid workers should never be a target.”

The Israeli military did not immediately comment when asked about the episode.

The convoy, whose vehicles were marked with U.N. insignia, was returning from delivering aid, including flour. It was south of Gaza City when it came under fire, Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for UNRWA, said in an interview. Before setting out to deliver the aid, the convoy had coordinated its plans with the Israeli military and notified it of the routes it would take, she added.

Ms. Touma said that the Israeli military had told the convoy to take a different route, which it did. “They rerouted and then the shooting happened,” she said.

Aid workers and deliveries have come under fire before during Israel’s nearly 12-week military offensive in Gaza.

UNRWA says that 142 of its employees have been killed, among the more than 20,000 Palestinians that the Gazan Health Ministry says have been killed in the Israeli air and ground offensive. Israel began striking Gaza on Oct. 7 after Hamas, the armed group which controls Gaza, carried out an attack in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.

Most UNRWA staff members have been forced to flee their homes, and the severe restrictions on aid and fuel entering the territory, as well as road closures ordered by the Israeli military and extensive damage from its bombardment, have vastly limited the agency’s ability to work. The situation has remained dire despite the passage last week of a U.N. Security Council resolution that would allow more aid to reach Gazan civilians and that demanded “safe and unhindered humanitarian access.” The resolution stopped short of calling for a cease-fire.

“It’s very difficult to deliver assistance and humanitarian relief during a war zone when there is active conflict,” Ms. Touma said.

On Nov. 18, a Doctors Without Borders convoy attempting to evacuate people sheltering in a hospital came under fire in Gaza City, killing two people, the group said. It blamed Israel for what it said was a deliberate attack against vehicles emblazoned with the group’s logo.

Two days later, the group’s facilities in Gaza City came under attack when shots were fired while its employees were sheltering inside, the group said. Doctors Without Borders asked the Israeli authorities for a formal explanation and called for an independent investigation. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Nov. 7, a medical convoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross came under fire in Gaza City, lightly wounding a driver and damaging two trucks, the aid group said. It did not say who was to blame for the attack.

UNRWA says that up to 1.9 million people — more than 85 percent of Gaza’s population — have been displaced from their homes, and that nearly 1.4 million are sheltering in facilities operated by the agency.

As it struggles to deliver aid, agency officials say that desperate Gazans facing acute hunger are stopping U.N. aid trucks, taking food off them and devouring it on the spot.

“The very little supplies that continue to be allowed into Gaza have led to very high levels of desperation among the communities,” Ms. Touma said. “So it’s no surprise that people are coming to aid trucks and taking food and in many cases they are eating it then and there.”

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, statsman said:

That is a sweet sentiment and I applaud it. Hearts and minds. 
 
Problems:

Hamas militants don’t wear uniforms. They have the tactic of feigning being civilians when it suits them, and breaking out the weapons when it suits them. 
Hamas imbeds military centers and stores in civilian population centers and social service (hospitals) centers. 
Hamas builds tunnels, for militant use, under civilian population centers. 
Hamas uses civilians as human shields. 
Hamas uses suicide bomb vests under civilian clothing. 
 
So, you see the difficulty of fighting Hamas. The arithmetic the Israeli government has to solve- Gazan civilian lives vs. IDF soldier lives. (In WWII, wrt Japan, the U.S. decided 100k innocent Japanese civilians vs. 0 Army Air Corps KIA was an equation Uncle Sam could live with). 
 
Folks are trying to imagine some kind of “third way” where Israel can navigate this mess without significant loss of civilian life. I don’t think it exists. I think, after October 7, Israel sees two options:

1. Say, “OK, Hamas, you got us good! We’ll just rebuild those walls  (maybe a little stronger), let less Gazans work here, inspect shipments more thoroughly and go on with our lives”. 
2. Eradicate Hamas, at any cost to civilian life, and then figure out how to deal with what’s next. 
 
The calls for cease fire (always on Israel, never on Hamas) are calls for option 1. 
 
Problem is, October 7 was so horrific, and Israel is a democracy, and they are galvanized for option 2. 

I am not saying don't do anything. And yes, a ceasefire takes both sides. My point is for every house leveled there is 1 out of 10 who will fight back for the rest of their lives. You cannot eradicate the idea of Hamas. You can kill their leaders and foot soldiers, but there will be more. It is a rough neighborhood.

And I completely understand Hamas' approach. same as the AQ, the Taliban, hell even the Serbs. it is what weak fucks do. And eventually they wear down the democracy and get what they want. In a perfect world the moderate Arabs would go into Gaza and create a protectorate. Won't happen because they do not like Hamas, and in reality, the Palestinians.

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I can only speak for myself in that I have “Middle East Fatigue”. I am in my 50s and for as long as I can remember there has been shit going on with Israel and Palestine. No resolution ever sticks, no accord ever works, noise ramps up every US Presidential Election year etc etc. 

It never fucking stops and I just don’t see where either side really wants a peaceful resolution or maybe in the past 50 fucking years there would be one. 
 

Willing to bet when my grandkids (whenever one comes around) are my age it’ll still be the same shit. 

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I can only speak for myself in that I have “Middle East Fatigue”. I am in my 50s and for as long as I can remember there has been shit going on with Israel and Palestine. No resolution ever sticks, no accord ever works, noise ramps up every US Presidential Election year etc etc. 
It never fucking stops and I just don’t see where either side really wants a peaceful resolution or maybe in the past 50 fucking years there would be one. 
 
Willing to bet when my grandkids (whenever one comes around) are my age it’ll still be the same shit. 

There’s a fair amount of this.
Two sides, each of which has a sizable percentage of their population that wants to genocide the other.
You never, ever, ever solve that. Blame whoever you want. Bitch about who started it. Show me all the facts to make us sympathize with one side, then the other. It all comes back to the same result: when more than a handful of members of a society want to exterminate another people, and act on it, bad shit will happen and will continue to do so.
We could pull a Pontius Pilate and wash our hands of the whole affair….and they’d keep killing each other. Forever.
Am I supposed to sympathize with Israel because its civilians were murdered and raped…so in response it slaughters Palestinian civilians?
Am I supposed to sympathize with the Palestinians, who are being bombed by the thousands….when a sizable percentage of them were happy and supportive of Hamas’s murders and rapes of civilians, and they’d like to see more of it?
Nope. Everyone has sown seeds of genocide and death forever. The reaping is horrific, but they keep on sowing.
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Both peoples deserve to live in peace in their own homeland, but the Israeli and Palestinian extremists won't let that happen. And, so, as I said several pages ago, I'm about at the point of wishing a plague on both their houses (if it weren't for all the civilian casualties). I'm just tired of folks trying to justify indiscriminate death and destruction.

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1 hour ago, BrazilHorn said:

I can only speak for myself in that I have “Middle East Fatigue”. I am in my 50s and for as long as I can remember there has been shit going on with Israel and Palestine. No resolution ever sticks, no accord ever works, noise ramps up every US Presidential Election year etc etc. 

It never fucking stops and I just don’t see where either side really wants a peaceful resolution or maybe in the past 50 fucking years there would be one. 
 

Willing to bet when my grandkids (whenever one comes around) are my age it’ll still be the same shit. 

At what point should we re-evaluate and like really consider pulling the plug on dumping more and more and more arms into the region? I think we crossed that threshold decades ago, but the beat just keeps on and on.

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Case in point. The Biden administration sees an emergency situation in Gaza. The emergency is that there are not enough bombs to drop. Are you fucking kidding me?
 

https://www.axios.com/2023/12/30/blinken-biden-administration-emergency-israel-weapons-sale

Biden administration works around Congress in another Israel emergency weapons sale


 

 

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3 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

I think some of us have the attitude of “ride with an outlaw, die with an outlaw”.  Whether that’s fair or not, Hamas came to power over 15 years ago on a platform of armed conflict/resistance to Israel and they’ve never hidden that.  Their identity is literally wrapped up in armed conflict with Israel and they are dragging Palestinians into it, but everybody knew exactly who they were back in 2007/2008 when they won power.

There’s 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, and a claimed 25,000 Hamas members. Whatever many of us may think, Israel most likely wishes the Palestinian people would boot Hamas out of power and expel them from the Gaza Strip without the need for the IDF to be involved  

If in the coming years, Hamas is still in power, a lot of us will have no sympathy for the plight of Palestinians.  It’s no different than the Russian people allowing Putin to remain in power and getting their sons and husbands killed.  Ride with an outlaw, die with an outlaw.

Is Israel fighting a state army comprised of a cross section of Palestinian society? If Israel needs to level the place to get rid of Hamas, what exactly would a grass roots domestic campaign of civilians against Hamas look like?

It's my understanding that Hamas is not a popular government and its legitimacy, such as it is, relies on an election held 15 years ago where they were not elected based on antipathy towards Israel. Someone here posted a credible polling effort.

Palestinians are no more riding with Hamas than Americans are riding with the Mafia or Colombians are riding with whatever cartel is now established there. They have little say.

I keep seeing smart people using what appears to me to be rationalizations to support a visceral desire for this to be simply a matter of good guys versus bad guys. I don't believe that is the case in the MidEast at all.

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Is Israel fighting a state army comprised of a cross section of Palestinian society? If Israel needs to level the place to get rid of Hamas, what exactly would a grass roots domestic campaign of civilians against Hamas look like?
It's my understanding that Hamas is not a popular government and its legitimacy, such as it is, relies on an election held 15 years ago where they were not elected based on antipathy towards Israel. Someone here posted a credible polling effort.
Palestinians are no more riding with Hamas than Americans are riding with the Mafia or Colombians are riding with whatever cartel is now established there. They have little say.
I keep seeing smart people using what appears to me to be rationalizations to support a visceral desire for this to be simply a matter of good guys versus bad guys. I don't believe that is the case in the MidEast at all.

Recent polling (before this war) showed that a sizable plurality of Palestinians in Gaza supported Hamas and the destruction of Israel (those numbers shot up once the war started). The “but not a majority of them supported it” is t a good argument. I noted this before, comparing it to the hardcore anti-Jew Nazis, hardcore anti-Palestinian Israelis, and even our own MAGA movement - once you hit a critical mass of genocidal hatred, you’re fucked.

If 2% of your population thinks people X should be exterminated, you’ve got some real assholes, and you should probably treat them as such. But they will not exert any meaningful influence or control in your society. They are a fringe outlier. If that number hits 20%? 30%? Then you have a serious fucking problem. Because in any split society (that is…ALL societies), that percentage is enough to take control/have outsize influence of a whole political party or movement, and that party/movement in turn has a chance of controlling some/much/all of your government.

So I disagree with you. The Palestinians have, by material plurality, chosen to ride with a genocidal death cult. And the Israelis, by similar plurality, have done the same. Unless and until the death cults are relegated to fringe status, we will have this war, forever and ever and ever.

TLDR; if 2% of the people are Nazis, you have some Nazi assholes…if 30% of the people are Nazis, there’s a very good chance you live in a Nazi state.
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Don’t think there are any “just bad” guys here? I disagree. Iran is bad. They are funding Hamas and supplying weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah (and are allied with Syria and are supporting the Houthis). They are supporting bad actors all over the region and world (including the Americas). 
 
Iran is bad. Their removal from the scene would create room for all sorts of productive activity 

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5 minutes ago, statsman said:

Don’t think there are any “just bad” guys here? I disagree. Iran is bad. They are funding Hamas and supplying weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah (and are allied with Syria and are supporting the Houthis). They are supporting bad actors all over the region and world (including the Americas). 
 
Iran is bad. Their removal from the scene would create room for all sorts of productive activity 

With whom are you disagreeing? I don't think I've seen anyone say anything in support of Iran.

What I do see, however, are people saying something akin to one of two primary arguments du jour:

  1. There are no "good guys" among the combatants, including Israel.
  2. Israel is justified in destroying Gaza on the grounds that Hamas are "bad guys".

Among other discussions and claims over the past couple of months that I've seen are also:

  • Palestinians/Arabs are anti-semitic and support the destruction of Israel; therefore, Israel can't live in peace.
  • Israel has been oppressing Palestinians in the West Bank/Gaza through occupation or blockade (apartheid/open-air prison).
  • The Palestinians/Arabs attacked Israel 50+ years ago and lost; therefore, Israel has a right to the land they won.
  • The U.S. shouldn't be supplying Israelis with more weapons when they clearly have a military advantage.
  • Islam is inherently opposed to democracy/the modern world.
  • Israel is a small country that needs to occupy land in order to have a militarily defensible position.

If you can find a post where someone is saying that Iran isn't a bad actor in all this, I'd appreciate it. Because that is one hot take I have not seen, and I'd like to laugh at that poster.

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:


Recent polling (before this war) showed that a sizable plurality of Palestinians in Gaza supported Hamas and the destruction of Israel (those numbers shot up once the war started). The “but not a majority of them supported it” is t a good argument. I noted this before, comparing it to the hardcore anti-Jew Nazis, hardcore anti-Palestinian Israelis, and even our own MAGA movement - once you hit a critical mass of genocidal hatred, you’re fucked.

If 2% of your population thinks people X should be exterminated, you’ve got some real assholes, and you should probably treat them as such. But they will not exert any meaningful influence or control in your society. They are a fringe outlier. If that number hits 20%? 30%? Then you have a serious fucking problem. Because in any split society (that is…ALL societies), that percentage is enough to take control/have outsize influence of a whole political party or movement, and that party/movement in turn has a chance of controlling some/much/all of your government.

So I disagree with you. The Palestinians have, by material plurality, chosen to ride with a genocidal death cult. And the Israelis, by similar plurality, have done the same. Unless and until the death cults are relegated to fringe status, we will have this war, forever and ever and ever.

TLDR; if 2% of the people are Nazis, you have some Nazi assholes…if 30% of the people are Nazis, there’s a very good chance you live in a Nazi state.

THIS.

I've read a lot about the total isolation between Hamas and everyone else in Gaza but I'm not buying it.  No elections since 2005, Hamas kills you if you argue back. Yes, I believe all that, but . . .

Can anyone tell me the Hamas platform leading up to their election?  I'm guessing they pretty much delivered on what they promised.  

I'd also wager there was widespread joy (even before reading what Brisket posted above) and that the general population was euphoric about killing Jews on October 7th.  It wasn't until later they got their "we awakened a sleeping giant" moment.  No they are pushing the "feel sorry for us" narrative.

I do feel sorry for them, but there's some "mess with the bull, get the horns" vibe present.

I'm reading a lot of moralizing by a few people on this thread, about what is right and what is wrong, etc. but no answers (I'm looking at you Fantana) to my question about what Isreal should do.  Please answer.  

 

 

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7 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Really more embarrassing for DDD, but he should be well acclimated to that by now. For those that are actually concerned about what is going on in the West Bank as well, this has been the deadliest year for WB palestinians in nearly 20 years.  

 

image.thumb.png.f9bfb4439a3bc921b51b034094761000.png

 

IMG_9652.webp

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9 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

Can anyone tell me the Hamas platform leading up to their election?  I'm guessing they pretty much delivered on what they promised.  

If you haven't watched the John Oliver segment on this mess, you should do yourself a favor and watch it. From what I recall, he goes into this and says that Hamas was downplaying all the Death to Israel stuff. Instead, they campaigned on Fatah's corruption and incompetence. Of course, they later changed their tune.

 

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2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

At what point should we re-evaluate and like really consider pulling the plug on dumping more and more and more arms into the region? I think we crossed that threshold decades ago, but the beat just keeps on and on.

Never will happen.  Republican Christians have injected their theories about what an over 2,000 year-old book written by multiple authors over several centuries has to say on the matter. And a bunch of Republicans may hate the Jews these days, but they claim to love Jesus and his homeland.  And we have several million Jewish people in the US as well.  We are ride or die with Israel.

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2 hours ago, statsman said:

Don’t think there are any “just bad” guys here? I disagree. Iran is bad. They are funding Hamas and supplying weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah (and are allied with Syria and are supporting the Houthis). They are supporting bad actors all over the region and world (including the Americas). 
 
Iran is bad. Their removal from the scene would create room for all sorts of productive activity 

You're getting tiresome if you're addressing what I wrote. In fact, you can't break out of the mindset that I decry. 

I described a disposition where one wants to believe that a fight is between good guys and bad guys. You inferring that I mean to say there are no bad actors on the anti-Israel side is absurd. I've made it clear on this page that the acts of Hamas were unspeakably horrific. If Israel caught those guys and skinned them alive, I wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

I'll make my position even clearer: I don't know what the solution is in this conflict. It's complicated and inherent issues such as described by Brisket above may indeed make it impossible to solve through negotiation. I don't know. 

I don't want the US to have any hand in the slaughter going on in GAZA. Even speaking in terms of being "friends" with Israel or any other nation is a silly notion cooked up for the morons watching at home. We have been allies. Our obligations are lined out by agreements and treaties. If those pieces of paper and that relationship no longer serve the interests of the US, then they must be altered.

Our name is tarnished by supporting the corrupt and bloodthirsty Israeli government's slaughter of innocent Palestinians. We should only be offering humanitarian aid. We should never have rolled a carrier up off the coast and stood in that way with Israel.

@Brisketexan I appreciate the tone and intelligence of your post about genocide. I think I've described my position for the most part, so maybe we come to foundational point of our disagreement. 

I will only add that in your description of the two nations, consider the the relative capabilities of carrying out genocide. Israel is an actual nation state with a relatively huge military capablility. Cutting that capability lose to do whatever it may is akin to the US firing nukes after 9/11. Bye, Afghanistan. We can use tactical nukes instead of Hellfire missiles fired from drones. 

I wouldn't support that level of retaliation. I would be shocked if you would support such a thing. That's what I see going on in Gaza.

Edited by RomaVicta
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3 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

It's my understanding that Hamas is not a popular government and its legitimacy, such as it is,

The fact that Hamas has so few actual card-carrying members (25,000) in such a large population (2 million Palestinians in Gaza) speaks volumes about their lack of popularity and more about Iran’s reach and how the Palestinians felt about Israel in 2007/2008   Of course, there are plenty of Palestinians that love the idea of Hamas, but don’t want the baggage associated with it - we saw them show themselves on October 7th.

The Palestinians are going to have to decide how much pain they can tolerate in allowing Hamas to remain in power - whether folks agree or disagree with Israel and their actions after Oct. 7th, Hamas is exactly who they have always been, and it was inevitable that they on their own, or with Iran’s prodding, were going to do something big if given the chance.

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42 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

I will only add that in your description of the two nations, consider the the relative capabilities of carrying out genocide. Israel is an actual nation state with a relatively huge military capablility. Cutting that capability lose to do whatever it may is akin to the US firing nukes after 9/11. Bye, Afghanistan. We can use tactical nukes instead of Hellfire missiles fired from drones. 

I wouldn't support that level of retaliation. I would be shocked if you would support such a thing. That's what I see going on in Gaza.

Most of us don’t understand or support such a thing, because we’ve never been faced with an existential threat that manifested on our territory in our lifetimes, and that includes 9/11 and the Cold War.  The closest we faced happened a few years ago on January 6th with Trump and MAGA, but that resolved itself later in the day, and if you didn’t follow the news for 6-8 hours, you might have even missed the worst of it (and I’d argue that most Americans have no idea how close the Republicans came to fucking up our nation).

 Israel, from the 1940s (after the Holocaust) through the 1970s, faced multiple external existential threats  and since then, the existential threat comes from within, and it manifested itself on October 7th. I have friends from Israel that I went to school with back in the 80s, they have done their military service, and so have their kids (including a few now), and in talking to them or reading what they’ve said on social media, they were shaken to their core over October 7th.

9/11 for most of us generated anger and a thirst for revenge. October 7th for a lot of Israelis is about fear, and fear makes people/countries do even more drastic things than anger.  The Palestinians are going to suffer for that Israeli fear of Hamas, especially seeing that Hamas sees the Palestinians as human shields and propaganda pieces. It doesn’t help that Israel has very little room for error, literally and figuratively.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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20 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Most of us don’t understand or support such a thing, because we’ve never been faced with an existential threat that manifested on our territory in our lifetimes, and that includes 9/11 and the Cold War.  The closest we faced happened a few years ago on January 6th with Trump and MAGA, but that resolved itself later in the day, and if you didn’t follow the news for 6-8 hours, you might have even missed the worst of it (and I’d argue that most Americans have no idea how close the Republicans came to fucking up our nation).

 Israel, from the 1940s (after the Holocaust) through the 1970s, faced multiple external existential threats  and since then, the existential threat comes from within, and it manifested itself on October 7th. I have friends from Israel that I went to school with back in the 80s, they have done their military service, and so have their kids (including a few now), and in talking to them or reading what they’ve said on social media, they were shaken to their core over October 7th.

9/11 for most of us generated anger and a thirst for revenge. October 7th for a lot of Israelis is about fear, and fear makes people/countries do even more drastic things than anger.  The Palestinians are going to suffer for that Israeli fear of Hamas, especially seeing that Hamas sees the Palestinians as human shields and propaganda pieces. It doesn’t help that Israel has very little room for error, literally and figuratively.

You're absolutely correct that it's a perspective that we Americans can't really understand, and I hope to never come closer than when we did that day as a few thousand dumbasses stormed the Capitol. I can only imagine the angst that Israelis felt on 10/7, especially given their history.

But I also ask you to apply that same level of empathy to the 2+ million Palestinian civilians living in the Gaza Strip, who I'm sure right now feel like they're facing quite an existential crisis knowing that there's nowhere for them to retreat to. 

I just went on the old MAPfrappe site to redraw a rough outline of the Gaza Strip and superimposed it over Austin. It's a very small territory that's getting smaller and smaller as the internally displaced population is getting crammed into an increasingly tight corner of the strip. Imagine the fear those people are facing as bombs keep dropping while they have insufficient food and disease is spreading due to unsanitary living conditions.

image.thumb.png.aefd230f805cb762e25a677b1f73ced4.png

https://mapfrappe.com/?show=1029

 

Reposting the damage map from above to visualize the destruction, as well as the extent of the "humanitarian zone" that 2+ million people are gradually getting pushed into.

image.png.5da0ef5dd43407da1c23ecd027fdb7e0.png

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