Kinnakeet
Well-Known Member
maybe bidens name was on there also thats why nothing was done
Middle East War Briefing
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
Heard on the radio yesterday the the IDF accidently killed three hostages that escaped from Hamas. That's not going to play well.
Hamas Admits to Shelling Israeli Hospital
So much for the “white flag” from Hamas. Last night the Times of Israel reported that rockets were fired from Gaza into Jerusalem and Hamas has admitted to the attack. One rocket struck near Ramallah hospital. Thankfully no deaths or serious injuries were reported and the Iron Dome intercepted several of the missiles. These were the first reported rockets launched across the border into Israel since October 16. This proves yet again that there is no “ceasefire” in place that Hamas would ever recognize and it also goes to show that more work remains in Israel’s effort to completely wipe Hamas off the map. Yahoo News laughably refers to the missile attack as being “rare.”
Does everyone remember how bent out of shape the media was after airing reports that Israel had supposedly shelled a hospital in Gaza, killing all manner of babies and doctors? Of course, that turned out to be yet more pure propaganda from Hamas. The parking lot of the hospital was the only thing that was hit and it was an errant terrorist missile fired from inside Gaza that did that damage.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for a similar level of outrage now that Hamas has fired on an Israeli hospital. In fact, I will not be all that surprised if another of these supposed “analysts” decides that Israel fired on its own hospital just to make Hamas look bad. We’ve seen them playing these games before.
Describing a Hamas missile attack on Israeli soil as “rare” is also completely laughable. The only reason that Hamas hasn’t been firing missiles since October 16 is that they’ve been a bit busy with Israel’s preparations for and eventual execution of the counteroffensive. They’ve been chased out of their holes and a lot of the potential rocketeers have been captured or killed. Now that the tunnels are being flooded, they may be running out of places to hide their missiles. In fact, it’s possible that they decided to fire this batch now just to avoid losing the rockets in the rising waters.
To Win This War, We Cannot Be Distracted by the New York Times
A recent New York Times article goes into detail about the financial machinations of Hamas over the last decade, and posits that the Israeli government and Benjamin Netanyahu not only knew about the hundreds of millions of dollars that were being funneled into Hamas, but allowed it to happen in the hope that financial success in Gaza would keep peace.
Written by Jo Becker, the article uses many sources, including ex-Mossad personnel. Becker is an investigative reporter for the Times, having won Pulitzer Prizes for exposing Dick Cheney’s hidden power in 2008, for a series of articles in 2017 about Vladimir Putin’s efforts to undermine the 2016 election, and for stories in 2018 about Russian influence on the Trump administration. She additionally wrote a book in 2014 about “marriage equality,” detailing the legal battle to get same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court. The book was endorsed by LGBT activist David Mixner for “capturing our struggle for freedom perfectly”.
What matters about this New York Times article is not whether it is totally accurate or not. The reality is that it is a distraction from what is important. The information in it doesn't matter: our response needs to be the same whether it is accurate or inaccurate. The information that she shares in the article must be ignored… for now.
We Can Either Go Medieval on Terrorists or Kiss Prosperity Goodbye
Those announcements came on the heels of similar decisions made over the weekend. On Saturday, two other major shipping firms — Mediterranean Shipping Company and CMA CGM — ceased Red Sea operations. "The CMA CGM Group is deeply concerned about the recent attacks on commercial vessels unfolding in the Red Sea Region. The situation is further deteriorating and concern of safety is increasing," one statement said. All of their ships currently in passage have been instructed to "reach safe areas and pause their journey in safe waters with immediate effect until further notice."
The BBC explained Monday that Houthis are "targeting ships traveling through the Bab al-Mandab Strait - also known as the Gate of Tears - which is a channel 20 miles (32km) wide, and known for being perilous to navigate."
One or two American guided missile destroyers — dispatched from a navy that is already stretched too thin — is not enough to shoot down every Houthi missile. Shipping firms understand this and are skedaddling accordingly.
For my isolationist-minded readers who are certain this is just "a quarrel in a faraway land between people of which we know nothing," nothing could be further from the truth. The Red Sea — and the Suez Canal that connects it to the Mediterranean — is one of the world's most vital sea lanes.
Oil prices are up — way up — on the news. That quarrel in a faraway land is about to make itself felt at your neighborhood gas pump, and that has nothing to do with a lack of production in this country. Oil is a global commodity, so a disruption anywhere leads to higher prices everywhere.
About one in six container ships travels through the Suez Canal, carrying everything from crude oil to consumer goods. Supply chain expert Chris Rogers told CNN today, "Consumer goods will face the largest impact, though current disruptions are occurring during the off-peak shipping season."
American prosperity has been built on international trade since before the Revolutionary War and it almost certainly always will be. The same goes for the rest of the West, including our non-Western (but friendly) commercial cousins in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Maybe even China has a role to play here. But the world's wealthy trading nations can either get as Medieval on terrorists and pirates as they are on us, or we can kiss our prosperity goodbye.
Biden Finally Does Bare Minimum To Address Houthi Attacks In Red Sea
Biden has repeatedly refused to launch strikes against the Houthis, even though some of their attacks appear to have targeted U.S. destroyers operating in the area. Biden’s lack of action has frustrated many of his top military officials who say that he has done nothing to establish deterrence as he does not want to risk upsetting Iran.
The Associated Press reported that the attacks have upended global commerce as some of the world’s largest shipping companies and oil producers have had to reroute their ships, taking significantly longer routes that can delay shipments by weeks and drive up costs for consumers.
The most recent terrorist attacks in the Red Sea happened on Monday, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command.
“The chemical/oil tanker motor vessel SWAN ATLANTIC was attacked by a one-way attack drone and an anti-ship ballistic missile launched from a Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen,” the statement said. “The Cayman Islands flagged SWAN ATLANTIC reported impact on the vessel and requested assistance, the USS CARNEY (CCG 64), the closest U.S. warship, responded to assess damage.”
“At approximately the same time, the bulk cargo ship M/V CLARA reported an explosion in the water near their location,” the statement continued. “This attack is separate from the attack on the M/V SWAN ATLANTIC. There was no request for support or report of damage.”
How Should ‘Rules Of War’ Be Applied To The Israel-Hamas Conflict?
During the Vietnam War, communist and Third World countries urged that the U.N. condemn what were depicted as U.S. war crimes. Western states, seeking to avoid the confrontational political atmosphere at the U.N., persuaded the Red Cross to convene a new drafting conference in Geneva. But all the members of the General Assembly participated in the deliberations, along with “observers” from the Palestine Liberation Organization and the African National Congress (then a terrorist organization fighting the apartheid government of South Africa).
The resulting treaty — Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (1977) — provided new protections for guerilla forces. The traditional understanding, codified in the Hague Convention of 1899, protected civilians by requiring soldiers to identify themselves with uniforms and insignia and carry arms openly, so enemy forces could limit their attacks to actual combatants. AP I treated guerilla fighters as lawful combatants so long as they showed their weapons just before they attacked, allowing them to disguise themselves as civilians and hide among innocent populations to confuse the regular troops fighting them.
AP I further sought to constrain advanced military forces by limiting legitimate targets. It declared that attacks even on legitimate military targets must not cause incidental harm to civilians that would be “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated” from the attack. The same provision (Art. 51) cautions that belligerents “shall not direct the movement of the civilian population … in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attack …” (Par. 7) But AP I immediately follows this caution with the admonition that violations of this prohibition do not “release the parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population ….” — thereby assuring that the ostensibly prohibited tactic of hiding behind civilian shields will still work. AP I declares that states have a duty to punish “grave breaches” of the convention, among which it lists attacks that yield excessive harm to civilians — but not maneuvers to deploy civilians as human shields.
Britain and France declined to ratify AP I for more than two decades — that is, until well after the end of the Cold War. The United States, Israel, and a number of other countries still have not ratified. But language from AP I was adapted for the criminal tribunal established by the U.N. to restrain combatants in the conflicts arising from the break-up of Yugoslavia (ICTY, 1991) and then again in the more ambitious International Criminal Court (ICC, 1998).
The ICC embraces the same priorities as AP I: The ICC can prosecute states that incur “excessive” civilian casualties in their attacks but cannot punish the deployment of weapons or fighters behind human shields. It does, on the other hand, include, among “war crimes” that can be prosecuted, “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies … ” — to allow the ICC to prosecute Israeli officials for allowing their citizens to build homes in disputed territory in East Jerusalem or elsewhere in the West Bank (or at the time, in Gaza).
Both the United States and Israel insist that their armies are bound by restraints recognized in the “customary law” of armed conflict, which overlaps with provisions in AP I and earlier treaties. But this still leaves much room for disagreement.
The International Committee of the Red Cross published a commentary in the mid-1980s that insists that AP I leaves no “justification for attacks which cause extensive civilian losses and damages. Incidental losses and damages should never be extensive.” By contrast, the Law of War Manual issued by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2015 holds that “a very significant military advantage would be necessary to justify the collateral death or injury to thousands of civilians.” Still, it regards this sad outcome as potentially quite lawful: Determination of compensating “military advantage,” it cautions, is “a highly open-ended legal inquiry and the answer may be subjective and imprecise.” The manual explains that “military advantage” need not be “immediate” and must be judged in the context of an entire campaign “rather than only from isolated or particular parts of the attack.”
Military Advantage vs. Incidental Civilian Damage
There are so many uncertainties packed into the AP I formula that no international tribunal (neither the ICC nor its predecessor criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia) has ever attempted a prosecution for violating “excessive” harm in relation to “the military advantage anticipated.” The formula is particularly hard to apply here, when casualty reports are based on notoriously unreliable claims by the Hamas-controlled public health authorities in Gaza, which had falsely claimed that Israel had bombed the Al Shifra hospital in the opening days of the war. Those who do not fight wars cannot reliably judge, after the fact, the balancing of military advantage against incidental civilian damage that Israeli commanders on the ground had to act on in the heat of battle.Demands that Israel, and, by extension, the United States, obey impractical rules of warfare constitute a form of politico-legal attack on the West. Such standards would invite terrorists — and hostile nations like Russia, China, and Iran — to fight by targeting civilians while handicapping the ability of Western nations to respond effectively.
Consider Hamas, which succeeds by blatantly violating the rules of war. Its fighters neither wear clear uniforms nor operate in open, clear military formations. Hamas instead hides its personnel and assets among and behind civilians. It broke the fundamental principle of the laws of war by attacking a large music festival and undefended villages on Oct. 7. Hamas succeeds precisely by blurring the line between combatants and non-combatants, both on its own part and that of its victims. Extending legal protections to Hamas only multiplies its incentive to continue violating the basic principles of humane combat.
Hamas’ conduct makes its threats to civilized warfare especially dangerous. Not only does it target the innocent and use civilians as shields, but it deliberately invites attacks on its own population. Hamas sought to prevent Gazans from complying with the Israeli warnings to evacuate north Gaza. Video of civilian deaths raises Hamas’ standing within the Arab world and increases the political pressure on the United States to restrain Israel. Humane limitations on the conduct of war cannot apply perfectly to wars with an irregular enemy that deliberately uses its own civilian population as a human shield. To restrain Israel from succeeding in its war means incentivizing terrorists to adopt the same practice in future conflicts.
Harm to Palestinians is tragic, but it is a tragedy authored by Hamas in violation of the civilized rules of war. Leaving Hamas in power may open the door to greater tragedies — and not only in Gaza.
Gaza hospital 'safe place' for Hamas terrorists, hospital chief admits during interrogation
The high-ranking Hamas member said that the group used the hospital to house 100 terrorists
The head of a Gaza hospital has admitted to Israeli forces that the terror organization used his hospital to advance its military operations since the hospital is a "safe place."
Ahmad Kahlot, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, admitted in a bombshell interrogation with Israeli forces that Hamas used his hospital to hide high-ranking military activists.
"Because for them the hospital is a safe place," Kahlot said when asked why they hide in the hospital. "They won't be targeted when they are in the hospital."
Kahlot, who joined Hamas in 2010 and holds a rank equivalent to a brigadier general, explained that he knew 16 hospital staffers, including doctors, nurses, paramedics and clerks, were also members of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
The hospital manager's interrogation comes after Israeli forces breached the Kamal Adwan Hospital on Dec. 12.
Since then, forces have captured 90 suspected Hamas terrorists from inside the medical facility and seized piles of weapons.
www.foxnews.com
The high-ranking Hamas member said that the group used the hospital to house 100 terrorists
The head of a Gaza hospital has admitted to Israeli forces that the terror organization used his hospital to advance its military operations since the hospital is a "safe place."
Ahmad Kahlot, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, admitted in a bombshell interrogation with Israeli forces that Hamas used his hospital to hide high-ranking military activists.
"Because for them the hospital is a safe place," Kahlot said when asked why they hide in the hospital. "They won't be targeted when they are in the hospital."
Kahlot, who joined Hamas in 2010 and holds a rank equivalent to a brigadier general, explained that he knew 16 hospital staffers, including doctors, nurses, paramedics and clerks, were also members of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
The hospital manager's interrogation comes after Israeli forces breached the Kamal Adwan Hospital on Dec. 12.
Since then, forces have captured 90 suspected Hamas terrorists from inside the medical facility and seized piles of weapons.
Gaza hospital 'safe place' for Hamas terrorists, hospital chief admits during interrogation
The director of one of the biggest hospitals in Gaza admitted that he is a senior Hamas terrorist and that the terror organization was using the hospital as a base.
Hijinx
Well-Known Member
It's a little hard to picture Doctors, nurses, and paramedics as killer terrorists, but then that's because I am not a terrorist, and I suppose that while they have no objection to murder, rape, beheadings of babies , and kidnapping of Israeli's they want to give aid to their fellow animals.
Why Israel’s Allies Are Pretending To Be Impatient
What is happening here? The answer is that it’s like a movie scene where the protagonist notices he’s being followed but doesn’t want to break his cover and run, so he walks more briskly, which only makes his pursuer walk faster, until the two of them seem to be locked in a powerwalking contest. President Biden is being pursued, but not quite chased, by fellow Democrats who don’t want to crack open a public fight with the president.
“We are deeply concerned by PM Netanyahu’s current military strategy in Gaza,” a stable of national-security-focused congressional Democrats wrote to Biden yesterday. “The mounting civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis are unacceptable and not in line with American interests; nor do they advance the cause of security for our ally Israel… We urge you to continue to use all our leverage to achieve an immediate and significant shift of military strategy and tactics in Gaza.”
Notable among the signatories is Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin, former CIA analyst who is running for the Senate and who has been at great pains to be seen complaining about Biden lately. Democrats are nervous about their party’s younger voters increasingly promoting Hamas propaganda and pushing their elected representatives to do the same. They’re afraid that these useless idiots won’t vote for Slotkin for Senate. Biden is aware that in 13 days we will officially be in an election year, so he can’t simply dismiss these concerns out of hand.
In other words, Biden’s policy stance hasn’t changed and his personal opinion hasn’t changed, but he needs to appear to be listening when Democrats like Elissa Slotkin worry that his support for Israel is going to cost her a Senate seat.
The domestic-politics angle of this becomes clearer when you look abroad. This week, the foreign ministers of Britain and Germany wrote a joint article calling for… well that part’s unclear.
We need to have ATF raid this illegal gunsmith operations.
Top Hamas Terrorist Reveals They Use Hospitals For Extensive Terror Activities: ‘They Are Cowards’
He said that Hamas illegally uses hospitals because they are “a safe place” that “won’t be targeted” by Israeli airstrikes.
“There was a time where inside the hospital, there were tens, close to a hundred” terrorists inside, he said. He added that the hospital does have legitimate medical personnel, but they make up only a small portion of the people inside and all those personnel also have “different positions in the al-Qassam” brigades.
He said that the hospital was a legitimate military target for Israel because it would be considered under international law to be a military post.
He named top Hamas officials who have private offices and landlines inside the hospital, including Majdi abu Amsha and Mushir al-Masri.
He confirmed that Hamas illegally uses ambulances to conduct terrorist activities and that they are specially designated so that the terrorists know which ones are for their use. He said that the ambulances that the terrorists use are painted differently, do not have license plates, and that the ambulances are not used for transporting injured people.
Antony Blinken Asks Why World Isn’t Demanding Hamas Surrender
Blinken was answering questions from reporters in a year-end press conference when he delivered this response on the Gaza war:
glhs837
Power with Control
As hard as it is to picture a parent sending their little boy to throw rocks at tanks, or a little girl to attack armed soldiers? Or telling your 15 year old son that strapping a bomb to his chest will get him an express ticket to heaven?
It’s laughable. First, the phrasing: the article says “recent history” because the Lebanese Civil War was by far more destructive and deadly than this operation in the Gaza Strip. Second, “by some measures,” this war outpaced Allied bombings of Nazi Germany. In other words, it’s nowhere close. It’s an offensive cherry-picking manufactured narrative to rope the IDF into some mythical war crime tale. The Israeli invasion of Gaza isn’t as destructive as anything in World War II. Also, what about our invasion of Iraq? What about the Iran-Iraq War? All were more deadly than the IDF’s operation to eradicate Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
jrt_ms1995
Well-Known Member
Well, I don't know about that. Did they do something seriously wrong like improperly fill out a form?
Hamas... "Forms! We don't need no stinking forms!"