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I can also see Biden deciding to narrowly declassify intercepted communications and other supporting intelligence that covered the attack to pass on to the media.
Hamas has launched a major attack on Israel
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I can also see Biden deciding to narrowly declassify intercepted communications and other supporting intelligence that covered the attack to pass on to the media.
If Biden doesn’t do it, maybe Trump can.
KingOfPain
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Slightly off-topic. Unfortunately, stuff like this happend before, like when a US AC-130 shot at a hospital:
How tech fails led to Air Force strike on MSF’s Kunduz hospital
Sensor and network failures put crosshairs on the wrong target.
arstechnica.com
For the audience they are trying to convince, unfortunately yes.
yup and even if the Arab leaders know it wasn't Israel, they aren't going to spend political capital (even autocrats have to worry about that) convincing their population of it without the most absolute concrete unimpeachable proof available
Yes, if we have it, now is the time to use it. Biden's use of declassified intelligence pre-Ukraine war was brilliant.
Unfortunately I can also see the scenario that no matter what proof gets furnished Arab leaders won't come back to the table even though as @Roller already said the people who get hurt most by the lack of dialogue are the Palestinians in Gaza. They don't even want to be seen in the same room as someone, us, who is also talking to Israel separately, even though, again, the most direct beneficiaries of such talks would be the Palestinians.
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And that is far from the only time we fucked up. One of the worst, but sadly not the only one.Slightly off-topic. Unfortunately, stuff like this happend before, like when a US AC-130 shot at a hospital:
How tech fails led to Air Force strike on MSF’s Kunduz hospital
Sensor and network failures put crosshairs on the wrong target.
Just to put it out there: all kinds of "friendly fire" from hitting your own troops, to hitting allied troops, to hitting civilians (and to be clear I mean completely accidentally, not even collateral damage) is a lot more common than we like to admit. And that's with all our advanced weapons, sensors, communications, etc ...
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KingOfPain
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IIRC, in one of the Gulf wars more US soldiers were killed by friendly fire than by Iraqi troops.
Of course, attacking a hospital is always bad, even if it was unintentional.
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“And here’s my letter from Hummus, very smart guys. How long have you been in charge of salting the fries? Maybe when you’re done with your shift drop by my resort. We’re looking for a new head of security."
I was disappointed by Biden's comment that the blast was apparently caused "by the other team." While I know what he meant, the "team" metaphor made it seem more like a sporting contest than a war. Since then, he's said he's seen data, including from the U.S. Department of Defense, that terrorists in Gaza were responsible. I believe that, as I have since Israel first denied responsibility. Unfortunately, that's not enough.
Even though, as @dada_dave said, there's probably nothing that will bring the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, or the West Bank (PA) back to the table at this point because their own people won't stand for it, I think it's critical for Israel and the U.S. to release as much evidence as possible, including visual records, which the Israelis promised.
rdrr
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And then the conspiracy theorists will state that it's AI generated.
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All the more reason Biden needs to step up on that. The UK as well, being a Five Eyes member.
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Um, they did. They released visual records, radar tracking, electronic intercepts, etc. It’s all pretty compelling, and more than enough for anyone who actually cares about the truth. For those who do not, nothing will be enough.
Now where‘s the evidence that Israel had anything to do with it?
I’ll wait.
US claims it can independently verify that Israel did not launch the rocket and first 3rd party analysis I've seen agrees that it seems unlikely to be an errant airstrike or that the casualty count was as high as claimed:
Basically the damage is way too small to either be a typical Israeli airstrike or even to have killed the number of people claimed. I fear though that the diplomatic damage will be more permanent.
Better news on that front:
However, again, still no sign of a restart to the summit.
Basically the damage is way too small to either be a typical Israeli airstrike or even to have killed the number of people claimed. I fear though that the diplomatic damage will be more permanent.
Better news on that front:
However, again, still no sign of a restart to the summit.
If you're suggesting I don't care about the truth, you are way off base. I've never believed Israel would intentionally target a hospital, but horrible mistakes happen in war. You even said "Israel says they are trying to find out if it was them, and that the hospital was definitely not on the target list. Apparently there was a barrage of rockets launched from the area at the time, and it’s not clear if a Hamas rocket went astray, if an Israeli bomb went astray, or what."
Now that I've seen the evidence Israel has provided, I'm 100% confident this was the terrorists' fault.
But neither you nor I are the ones who need convincing. Nothing will sway the demonstrators in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, or any other countries in the Middle East — their minds are probably irretrievably poisoned against Israel. But their leaders need to know this wasn't Israel's fault. They also need to understand that delaying or cancelling diplomatic efforts, including meeting with Biden, will harm the Gaza Palestinians who desperately need humanitarian aid. I suspect these conversations are going on behind the scenes.
mac_in_tosh
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I have no direct knowledge of these things, but an Israeli spokesperson said that Israel only controls about 10% of the water supply in Gaza.
mac_in_tosh
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If undeniable proof is shown that Israel was not responsible for the incident but it was in fact a Palestinian rocket, will the outrage in Moslem lands continue or will it suddenly dissipate? I think we know the answer.
Eric
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Yeah, they were too quick to jump the gun on this one and will have to eat crow when they backtrack. It would've been nice to see Israel come out with a full throated response from the gate, because that delay seemed to cost them some credibility. At the same time I'm guessing they wanted to have proof in hand when they finally refuted it.
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The delay is exactly what should have gained them credibility. They honestly didn’t know what happened. They said they knew they didn’t target the hospital, but they would have to investigate to find out if one of their weapons went astray.
If they were liars, they would have immediately claimed to know the answer.
It’s amazing despite the evidence - including the daylight photographs that anyone should be able to determine are not consistent with hundreds of pounds of explosives from an Israeli bomb or missile nor suggestive of leveling a hospital- some media sources continue to speak as if the Israeli’s perpetrated an attack on the hospital (or blame Israel for the current war that allowed such an accident to occur). And the NYT should be ashamed of reporting the story with the picture of a leveled building that was in fact not the hospital but another building from another part of Gaza.
And if you think for a second what advantage Israel gains by bombing a hospital to target civilians, there is zero.
It goes without saying in any conflict one must scrutinize news released by either side (I was hesitant to believe rumors of decapitated babies from the Israeli side just because it seemed unfathomable). This is especially true when dealing with Hamas who is well established as using deception and outright lies.
This dishonesty derailed talks with countries like Jordan and has only made a regional or even global conflict all the more likely. People and especially journalists need to be aware of their information sources before they go about stating things as fact.
And frankly, for those concerned about potential war crimes by Israel, it becomes a lot harder to make credible complaints when outright lies are perpetrated and then debunked.
oh boy ... really terrible behavior here ... so wading through the "reasoning" here is basically a list of all the times where the IDF acted as @Cmaier suggested they would if they had actually done it - i.e. immediately blamed a Palestinian misfire or Palestinian friendly fire and later had to walk back when it became clear that it was in fact the IDF who was responsible. As previously stated, that they didn't do that in this case, that their first instinct was to investigate rather than blame, makes it more credible.
Absolutely. Unfortunately as you can see above there is a lot of that going around. IDF denials, despite US corroboration and the evidence put forward, are used as evidence that it actually happened because previous IDF denials were debunked. They are in fact going so far as to claim Israel manufactured the evidenced that the Palestinians had a failed rocket launch and hit the hospital parking lot.
To be clear: beyond the evidence released by Israel and the US, every credible OSINT and third party analysis conducted since this morning agrees that was very unlikely to be an Israeli air attack or that the casualties could be anywhere near what they were claimed. Those clinging on to the "Israel did it" narrative are increasingly relying on past incidents rather than the facts of what actually happened and when challenged on those facts adopt mutually exclusive positions - e.g. that it was a "small" Israeli missile rather than the claimed 500lb JDAM, which explains the small crater and limited damage, but that of course wouldn't have caused mass casualties that they also claim happened. That sort of thing.
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