2023 Israeli-Gazan War

[Monash]

You don't have to show the acts. Just the bodies lined up at the morgue is enough.

HAMAS has the footage all right. Too many eye witness accounts about phones out during such parades of near dead naked bodies. The Israelis may not be sharing the vids but HAMAS certainly is.

Even if Israeli's get their hands on it it can never be shown to the public. The best they might be able to do? Invite members of the international press corps to view the video in private (after sighing health wavers) and then have them report on what they observed. Even showing journalists the bodies and forensic reports won't change much, Hamas will just claim the video was faked. It's a no win situation for Israel.

[Officer of Engineers]

That's when you put a face to the crime! Get a list of the rapists! Put a reward on their heads and tell the world that the Israelis are coming for them come hell or high waters. Remind the world what crimes these fucks have done along with blurred pics of the victims just as we did with OBL.

[Monash]

That's when you put a face to the crime! Get a list of the rapists! Put a reward on their heads and tell the world that the Israelis are coming for them come hell or high waters. Remind the world what crimes these fucks have done along with blurred pics of the victims just as we did with OBL.

Simply not possible. Not in a million years! I've just finished watching a news report on the crimes. The sites where the crimes occurred are literally a battlefield. It took days for the Israeli's to secure the various crime scenes properly enough to let police and forensic teams in. Combined with the sheer volume of victims/crimes, the climate and the absence of eye witness testimony? There's not a chance in hell that more that handful of assailants will ever be properly identified. If that!

Face it. There's virtually no chance Israel could ever hold individual assailants to account. The best they could hope to do is forward the collective forensic evidence and statements etc they have obtained to the Hague. Which is virtually pointless because by default there's no overarching authority in Gaza that could hold Hamas to account, arrest their leadership and and transfer them to the court for trial. There's also no-one who would be prepared to take the job even it was offered! And even if Israel did forward the evidence and there was someone to enforce the International Courts jurisdiction? Hamas woudl just refer similar allegations video and statements (to the extent they had it) of Israel's alleged 'war crimes' to the court as well!

As I keep saying, nobody wins. The middle east: SNAFU

[Officer of Engineers]

Did we drag OBL in front of a judge? The point is not to bring the fucks to justice. The point is to keep reminding the world that it was Israel who was wronged. Justice will be served at the end of a 5.56mm ball.

[Amled]

Even if Israeli's get their hands on it it can never be shown to the public. The best they might be able to do? Invite members of the international press corps to view the video in private (after sighing health wavers) and then have them report on what they observed. Even showing journalists the bodies and forensic reports won't change much, Hamas will just claim the video was faked. It's a no win situation for Israel.

Horrific Footage of Hamas Atrocities Revealed by IDF Shakes Global Media

https://themedialine.org/top-stories...-global-media/

As you see they tried that!
As much as it horrified and shook the participants; the Danish correspondent at the showing said it was the most horrific pictures he’s ever seen. But it was a 24-48 hour sensation! Soon after it was back to pictures of bombed out Gaza, and fleeing Gazans!
The most chilling fact was that during the presentation, the participants were told repeatedly, that as horrific what they were viewing was; that there were even worse videos kept back!!!
Maybe that video is what should be made available to the media!!!

[Amled]

Regarding the safe zones, you have to wonder what will happen when rockets aimed at Israel are launched.
Hamas are already implying that they are a trap of Israel, with the aim of concentrating more people together, to make it easier for Israel target them!
For Israel again rock and hard place!

[Officer of Engineers]

The legal requirement is to tell the civies to get out. After that, they're collateral damage.

[Monash]

Did we drag OBL in front of a judge? The point is not to bring the fucks to justice. The point is to keep reminding the world that it was Israel who was wronged. Justice will be served at the end of a 5.56mm ball.

OBL? Under normal circumstances they would have if they could have. But that was not 'normal'. A live OBL on trial would have attracted ongoing acts of terrorism like a turd attracts flies. Plus the rendition problem means he would never have got a convention trial under US law - just one of those closet deals conducted offshore. The US Public would have had a fit about that when they found out.

But I wasn't talking about 'justice' either. I was referring to the PR war. All the things I noted are directly pertinent to that. The video, medical reports, eye witness statements etc would all have to be available for media scrutiny upon request 24/7. Furthermore, as someone else noted above the impact would likely be temporary in the face of all the reporting on the ongoing assault in Gaza which still has what, two months to run according to Bibi? Israel would virtually have to pay for airtime on global media outlets showing looped evidence of the crimes to keep their impact alive in the minds of the public. In what world would that ever be possible.

[Officer of Engineers]

You mean a daily briefing? Never mind what the other side pumps out. Stay focus on YOUR message - that you're responding to an attack and making sure such an attack will never come again, at least not from this bunch and not from Gaza.

[Amled]

https://calgaryherald.com/news/braid...assault-centre

The pro-Hamas letter that got head of U of A Sexual Assault Centre fired

A bunch of wooly-headed Canadian academics have; despite insurmountable evidence, in their wisdom bought into Hamas’s claim that no sexual assaults had occurred Oct. 7, or after.
Assaults that the author of the article summed up with:
“This is evil in its purest form, and that evil must be defeated.”

[TopHatter]

How Israel Is Using Real-Time Battlefield Intelligence to Target Hamas


An Israeli tank operates near the border with the Gaza Strip in Israel, Nov. 1, 2023

TEL AVIV, Israel — Since the terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, Israel has recovered a trove of intelligence that its military has used to assess the extent of Hamas’ plans, as well as its battle tactics and abilities, information that Israeli officials say has helped shape the war in the Gaza Strip.

At the sites of attacks in Israel and battles in Gaza, the military has found items that detail the location of Hamas installations and tunnels, including how the armed group operates underground, according to documents and other information made available by the Israeli military for The New York Times to review. It also retrieved a laptop that appeared to show that Hamas wanted to seize a number of previously unknown areas on Oct. 7, including a military base south of Tel Aviv.

“This war, we are witnessing something we haven’t seen in previous wars: ground forces, including the armored corps, benefiting from the real-time, precise intelligence information directly transmitted to them,” said Brig. Gen. Hisham Ibrahim, the commander of the armored corps. “Information from intelligence units is swiftly transmitted to combat forces.”

The Israeli army launched a devastating counterattack after Hamas-led assailants killed about 1,200 people and took approximately 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. In an effort to eliminate Hamas, the military has bombarded and invaded the enclave, in a war that has killed more than 15,000 people in Gaza, according to health authorities there.

At a briefing Monday for journalists at a military base north of Tel Aviv, the Israeli military shared some of the materials collected over the course of the war from dead fighters and areas inside Gaza, which it says collectively includes maps, pamphlets, transmitters, phones, video cameras, walkie-talkies, notebooks and computers. The information is being analyzed by a new Israeli unit responsible for making sure the findings quickly get to the soldiers battling Hamas, officials said.

The military provided access to key intelligence documents on the agreement that reporters would not disclose granular details while making some of the information available for publication. The journalists had to use surgical gloves to handle materials, some of which were stained with dried blood.

Materials reviewed by the Times were consistent with other known documents and gear found in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, information made public by the Israeli military and found in Hamas videos. The Times has also reviewed photographs of dead Hamas members and their personal belongings with some of the same items shared by the military at the briefing.

Some of the documents described extensive information about Hamas tactics and military formations. One document viewed by the Times included the breakdown of a platoon, including the ages of the fighters in it; more than half were older than 25, indicating that this particular platoon was filled with seasoned members.

The military has also collected photographs and videos of Hamas military leaders, information that could be used for targeting purposes. On Tuesday, the Israeli military released a picture of what it said were senior Hamas military leaders in northern Gaza enjoying food inside a tunnel, claiming that five of the men had been killed. The military said an Israeli intelligence unit had analyzed the picture after it was seized in Gaza in a tunnel near the Indonesian Hospital.

The military wing of Hamas, Al Qassam Brigades, had previously confirmed that at least three of men in the picture had been killed.

In addition, the Israeli military said it had retrieved journals that Hamas assailants had been carrying, along with other personal items.

Relying on such information, Ibrahim said he had made “small adjustments to the fighting strategy” since the war started.

From a makeshift military camp in southern Israel, Ibrahim oversees aspects of tank warfare, which is taking place in a densely populated area. The 46-year-old general is one of the highest-ranking officers from Israel’s Druse community, an Arabic-speaking religious minority.

Since the cease-fire ended last week, Israeli soldiers have been engaged in heavy fighting in southern Gaza near the city of Khan Younis, as well as the northern residential neighborhoods of Jabalia and Shajaiyeh. Israeli tanks have played a key role in the battles. More than a dozen Israeli soldiers have been killed since the fighting has resumed.

He is intensely focused on protecting soldiers and tanks, and outwitting Hamas. Ibrahim said he has six small teams on the ground in Gaza to gain insights from different units, the type of materials shared with the Times. He said “learning bulletins” are sent out to forces every few days.

He says he has also gleaned lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine, particularly how Russian tanks in Ukraine at times became easy targets. To adapt to the threat of Hamas drones, he said Israel rushed to make sure that tanks were outfitted with canopies over turrets.

Known as pergolas, Ibrahim said they had already proved to be effective deterrents, explaining that Hamas drones appear to avoid tanks with the canopies since they provide protection against warheads. The general described the pergola as a low-tech measure used to defend against drones, while adding that the military has high-tech advantages, including a defense system known as Trophy.

The materials highlight other challenges for Ibrahim and his team. Hamas booklets, viewed by the Times, show the weak spots of Israel’s Merkava tanks operating inside Gaza, with their huge 120 mm cannons, as well as Israeli armored personnel carriers. Hamas fighters also have instructions on which type of warhead to use against Israeli armor. He said the Hamas fighters have mostly relied on rocket-propelled grenade launchers in attacks on armor.

Hamas fighters, the general said, will regroup after suffering bad losses and return to fight in destroyed areas — seemingly lost ground. The military has adapted to avoid Hamas improvised explosive devices. Similar devices were used to deadly effect in Iraq by militias against U.S. forces.

Whether it is recovering hostages or targeting senior Hamas leaders in the vast tunnel network under Gaza, acting quickly on new intelligence recovered from the battlefield is essential for a successful mission, current and former U.S. military and intelligence officials said.

“Going after hostages or leadership targets are very intelligence-driven events,” said Mick Mulroy, a retired CIA officer and a former top Middle East policy official at the Pentagon. Ideally, Mulroy said, highly trained special operations units are embedded with conventional forces conducting ground operations or on alert nearby to respond quickly to such time-sensitive information.

As Israeli ground forces clear areas of southern Gaza, Mulroy said soldiers would most likely use encrypted messaging apps to alert one another to new tactics, techniques or procedures Hamas is using.

“Lessons learned can be disseminated very quickly,” he said.

Ibrahim has said that the Israeli military has relied heavily on what is known as combined arms fighting: the use of tanks, infantry and combat engineering under the cover of heavy airstrikes.

“It’s a force multiplier, and has been very effective in Gaza,” he said.

While Israeli strategy has helped keep the army’s casualties down, thousands of civilians in Gaza have been killed. The rising death toll has intensified international pressure to negotiate another cease-fire.

The U.S. government has also asked the Israelis to fight more surgically as they drive deeper in southern Gaza in places such as Khan Younis. While the Israeli military believes that is where parts of Hamas leadership are thought to be hiding, it is also packed with civilians, many of them displaced several times already with few places to go and confusion about where is safe.

Asked about staggering numbers of civilian deaths, Ibrahim defended the Israeli military. He said Israel had tried to clear the battlefield of civilians, giving them time to leave, dropping flyers, broadcasting on speakers and calling their cellphones to leave the area.

“It’s almost impossible to have no civilian casualties in a military operation like this,” Mulroy said. “Their objective is to degrade Hamas’ military capability to the point where it doesn’t pose an immediate threat to Israel. ”

The United States has designated Hamas a terrorist organization, and U.S. officials have encouraged the Israelis to model their ground campaign on an approach employed by Stanley McChrystal when he commanded U.S. Special Operations forces in a targeted-killing campaign against al-Qaida in Iraq.

That campaign, which killed the group’s leader in 2006, demonstrated to U.S. military theorists that the use of small teams of commandos, combined with precision strikes from drones and manned aircraft and acting quickly on new information about the enemy seized on the battlefield, can be effective at flushing out and targeting key leaders, and weakening their organizations.

Ibrahim said that the fighting — both above and below ground — would be tough in southern Gaza but that “we will still win.” He added, “We are fighting Hamas, not the people of Gaza. ”Israeli security officials are continuing to try to piece together where Hamas obtained some of its equipment and sensitive details about Israeli locations. Among the items found in Israel after the attacks and displayed were Motorola radios used in Hamas vehicles to maintain contact with commanders in Gaza. The radios were similar to the ones used in Israeli taxis.

There were also detailed maps of at least one kibbutz with seemingly every building marked.

And on the computer taken from a Hamas commander’s truck was also a schematic of the military base south of Tel Aviv, showing many of the buildings. It is not clear how much of the detailed map of the base was available publicly.
________

[667medic]

What exactly is the solution for this conflict. We have a big problem even defining what a map of Palestine should look like.
It is pretty obvious what the Palestinians are thinking, from the river to the sea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry6kpYFHnxs

The Arab countries are a bit more reasonable, Pre 67 border. The Iranians and their cronies will side with the Pals on this.

Seems like the Israelis understand tthe intensions of the Pals very well....

[Monash]

What exactly is the solution for this conflict. We have a big problem even defining what a map of Palestine should look like.
It is pretty obvious what the Palestinians are thinking, from the river to the sea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry6kpYFHnxs

The Arab countries are a bit more reasonable, Pre 67 border. The Iranians and their cronies will side with the Pals on this.

Seems like the Israelis understand tthe intensions of the Pals very well....

At this point in time? There is no solution, no compromise, no 'win,win'. Its just more of the same, over and over and over again. So best just tune out, grab a beer and worry about situations where you might actually be able to do something that makes a difference or changes things. Because sure as hell the Israel/Palestine dispute isn't one of them.

[Amled]

I happened to catch the last part of the speech that a Palestinian was giving at UN. It didn’t hold my interest long, jut the usual anti-Israeli drivel,
No what was interesting was the name plate in front of him saying that he was a representative of: The State of Palestine?
Making it clear that the UN has chosen to accredit statehood to a state that doesn’t that doesn’t exist!!!

[Monash]

I happened to catch the last part of the speech that a Palestinian was giving at UN. It didn’t hold my interest long, jut the usual anti-Israeli drivel,
No what was interesting was the name plate in front of him saying that he was a representative of: The State of Palestine?
Making it clear that the UN has chosen to accredit statehood to a state that doesn’t that doesn’t exist!!!

As far as the UN is concerned it does. The Palestinian Authority, lead by the PLO in the West bank officially represents a Palestinian 'State' (consisting of the West Bank and Gaza Strip) in the UN despite the fact Gaza (well Hamas) doesn't recognize the authority of the West Bank Government. Adding to this both parties are more or less generally detested by the majority of the Palestinian civilian population who never have any real say in who leads them. So once again SNAFU.