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Probus

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Posts posted by Probus

  1. 1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

    Even in the movie Israel showed to journalists, where they combined all the worst footage from Oct. 7, there is not a single child killed, and none by beheading.

    I read the report and it wasn't the worst footage.  They left some out on purpose.  But the footage was pretty bad I'm told.  I've only seen a small fraction of it and those Hamas fighters acted like animals.

  2. 5 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

    Note the pictures lower in the article of the NON burned out vehicles with MSF in large red letters on the hoods and the MsF logo and name along the side. Plenty large enough to see. These are recognized worldwide, never change, and the burned out vehicles at the top are that way BECAUSE the IDF came back after the fact and destroyed them... at the clinic MsF runs, which is a known location. 

    So no. No passes. No excuses. Note also that MsF took 2 weeks to make sure their accusations were accurate.

    Dave

    I did see those vehicles lower down when I was reading. They look like they were the ones tore up by a bulldozer.

    That's horrible and an attempted cover up makes it worse.  I want to hear what the IDF has to say for itself.  War is bad but attacking doctors on purpose... That's just horrible. Why??? And I just don't see the motive.  What could possibly cause them to do that?  That makes Israel look like Hamas, the ones they are supposed to be fighting against.

  3. 20 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

    I'd be very surprised if anyone accused MsF of having any agenda, or harbouring any Hamas sympathizers. They do good work all over the world, often in danger to themselves, and they are CLEARLY recognizable. Everyone knows who they are without ambiguity. 

    I'm not giving the IDF a pass on these situations, but the vehicles just look like white vans/cars.  I don't see any markings on them that would indicate they are doctors.  Did the 'red crosses' get burned off the vehicles maybe?

  4. 4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

    To my point: if war is entirely random, then social and political discourse would have to be random too, and we know this is not the case.  We go through social cycles based on things like zeitgeist, culture and identity.  Physical shifts in the environment.  Technological impacts.  So to my mind war is not chaotic.  It has patterns.  They are just really hard to see and create reliable models from.  Like economics, war is driven by a host of non-linear and self-aware factors.

    I agree with you Capt.  I think what sometimes makes wars look cyclical is the fact that the previous war ended 'badly'.  Like the end of WWI setup the conditions for WWII.  The Gulf War 1991 end setup the 2003 war since Saddam was left in power with weird rules of engagement governing the forces over there after the war.  I'm sure there are more examples, but those are a couple that come to mind.

  5. @ALBY and I just played a really fun scenario he came up with that hones your skills at indirect fire and the use of spotters and drones in CMBS.  We each had mechanized forces (which included only 1 tank) and 7 drones each.  Reinforcements came in at each 5 minute mark that gave you more and more capability.  It would really make a good training or tournament game.

  6. 9 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

    What we can see is highly suspicious levels of destruction (eg If a Hamas fighter would have been in every single building the IDF would have wiped out Hamas twice over by now).

    Yes. I noticed that too.

    Well I tried to apply a metric to the invasion by the IDF.  I still believe the numbers are telling, but we may have to agree to disagree. At least I may do some more research into those kind of numbers. (BTW, 7 buildings were destroyed in the 9/11 attack)

     

    Here is a bit of combat footage that appears to show the IDF clearing a building:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/EeXFfGO4zb

    Dangerous work.

  7. 42 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

    I can no longer bring myself to regard al Jazeera as any more credible a news network than Newsmax or OAN. It's a state controlled news network operating out of a totalitarian Middle Eastern dictatorship, which among other thing recently has published articles seriously claiming that Swedish social services are scheming to kidnap children from Muslim families to give them to LGBT couples (yes, for real).

    Nothing published by a "news" network like that can be trusted.

    Yeah.  I agree with you 100% @Anthony P.. I was looking for numbers that most reflect what the Middle Eastern community claims.  Even if you flip the numbers from worst case to best case or somewhere in between, it still shows that civilian deaths per building destroyed is relatively low.

  8. 22 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

    The extensive destruction and refugee streams inside Gaza may be proof of wanton and uncalled for bombing, possibly with the ambition of causing (permanent) large scale migration out of Gaza.

    I believe, and this is wholey a guess, is that Israel wants to evacuate all of Northern Gaza to the South. Kill off Hamas in the North. Then evacuate all of the Gazans, through a strict filtering system, back into Northern Gaza. Rinse and repeat. Painful but may be effective with minimal IDF and civilian casualties in the long term.  Whether that is going to be considered a war crime or just the new way to deal with lawless genocidal terrorists, only time will tell.

    After doing the math (<2 civilian deaths per building destroyed), with Al Jazeera's own numbers mind you, I am having a hard time believing Israel is bombing Gaza as indiscriminately as the press would have you believe. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the numbers I'm seeing just don't lie. With the numbers @Holien supplied, it is only 1 civilian death per 5 buildings destroyed (18,000 civilian deaths divided by 96,000 destroyed or damaged buildings).  

    Even though that seems to be a huge number of buildings destroyed or damaged, just imagine how many civilians would have been killed if Gaza was just indiscriminately carpet bombed with 2000 lb bombs dropped by something like B-52s. At least an order of magnitude more deaths I would say.

    I just feel very sorry for the Palestinians.  They are the real losers in this conflict. But I guess that's true of all civilians in all wars.

  9. You are making my point for me @Holien. The more buildings destroyed, the less civilians killed per building. But @The_Capt makes a good point. How many civilians/building is a war crime and an arbitrary number. And Israel is just one bomb away from a disaterous result. 

    Now I don't think that before the end of WWII was quite the time to discuss how many billions of dollars the USA was going to spend rebuilding Germany and Japan.  That would have been a political death sentence. Same applies here. 

  10. Being an engineer, something just doesn't settle right with me.  As of yesterday Al Jazeera says that 18,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/12/12/know-their-names-palestinians-killed-by-israel-in-the-occupied-west-bank-2)

    @The_Capt, you mentioned that "My concern at this point is that is IDF appears to be taking out around 10-20 building per hour."  If that's the case, that means that in the last 46 days of fighting, 11,000 to 22,000 buildings have been destroyed.  That puts the number of civilians per building at somewhere between 0.8 to 1.6 per building.  Unless I did the math wrong (which is very possible since I'm a government engineer :) ) that hardly seems to be war crime levels of destruction.

  11. 27 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

    We either apply the law universally or throw it out and we can go all Genghis.  But I am pretty sure no one is going to like that answer either

    @The_Capt you are much, much more knowledgeable about the legalities of war than I am, but does the Geneva Convention even apply to this conflict?  According to what I'm hearing, it's ok for Hamas to use any methods available to them but for the IDF, it's a warcrime to:

    • Flood Hamas' tunnels.
    • Bomb buildings with Hamas fighters.
    • Level a city that produces vicious terrorists by the 1000s.
    • Attack sites launching rockets into Israel.
    • On and on...

    If you were the IDF general in charge of combat operations in Gaza what would you do? Risk warcrime accusations after the war or throw up your hands and say "I give up! - Cease fire"?

    I don't think you can't put UN observers in there. That is just dangerous and counter productive.  Hamas, for one, would just kill or take them hostage whenever the situation presents itself.  And would the IDF have to ask UN permission each time they shoot?

    I have no problem with folks disagreeing with some of the IDF's methods, it's a war, but they have to give alternative options for the IDF or it's all just pie in the sky.  Wouldn't you agree or am I completely off base?

  12. 2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

    This looks a lot more like - "take a few shots from a building = level the building with a JDAMs" but all the evidence is being held by Israel and the US at the moment.

    The IDF is trying its best to reduce IDF casualties.  If there is a sniper(s) in a building shooting at them, should they run in there and try to kill the sniper?  That could mean dozens of casualties for the IDF.  The Israelis are sick and tired of taking casualties.  Calling in an airstrike is the obvious thing to do.  Especially since it is a proven fact that Hamas is using tunnels.  Hamas doesn't care about civilian casualties.  The more the better as this will continue to sway world opinion against Israel.  And since when do you ever want to make combat in war a fair fight?  In WWII they didn't hesitate to flatten a building if it had German soldiers putting up a strong defense.  I doubt anyone even asked if there were civilians in the building. 

    At least Israel is trying to persuade the Palestinians to evacuate N. Gaza until they can clear out Hamas.  I wouldn't be surprised if they then ask the Palestinians in S. Gaza to move back to the North (or maybe to the West Bank) so they can clear out Hamas in the South.  They will have to provide refugee camps at that point because there won't be much left standing in N. Gaza.  Hopefully this will provide construction jobs to the Palestinian refugees that will allow them to rebuild and bring back some prosperity to the region.  Something like Germany or Japan. But I'm prolly just dreaming here.

    On a side note, some of these liberal colleges that have been having pro-Hamas rallies are starting to get a taste of what it is they are supporting:

    https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/6/chabad-screening-oct-7-hamas-attacks/

    or this one:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181

    The world shouldn't forget what Hamas did to start all of this violence.  I think the IDF believe that using extreme force in the short term will save lives (Israeli and Palestinian) in the long run.

    Anyways, Is there a way in SF2 to simulate civilians in a building with rebels, where you get points for not destroying the building?

  13. 3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

    Who on earth is claiming what Hamas did was not a terrorist action?!  It absolutely was, meeting just about every version of the definition out there. 

    I stand corrected.  It sounded like Israel was being blamed for war crimes in a situation that does not lend itself to the Geneva Conventions.  I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir but, when you have combatants hiding behind and under civilians, it makes it hard to fight them and not kill civilians.  High civilian Palestinian death tolls seem to have been part of Hamas' plan all along.

    3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

    As to "What could Israel do strategically?"  Good lord that is a loaded question.  I am not even going to touch the political (2 state) options.

    I couldn't agree with you more.  But truly, what options does Israel have left to them now?  You know that one of the reasons the attacks on Israel were so bad is that they were trying to make life better for the Palestinians in hopes that it would ease tensions.  Opening doors that had been closed to the Palestinians.  Hamas couldn't allow that.  That's one of the reasons Hamas attacked.

    3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

    Do not put yourself in a position where the only way to re-establish security of Israel is dependent upon the removal of all Palestinians.  It puts you in dilemma spaces from hell, and carries a very real risk of Israel being accused of genocide - and we all see the absolute tragic irony.

    Removal of Palestinians - no.  Removal of Hamas - must be a yes.  

    You really are very eloquent @The_Capt.  I can't disagree with anything you said. 

    I need to go back to quasi-lurking with my tail between my legs. :) I just hope Elvis doesn't shut us down for getting too political and not discussing how this war translates into a wargame simulation.

  14. 22 hours ago, The_Capt said:

    It has happened before but it is rare - Hamas/Gaza may have just done a suicide-state action.

    Watch out guys.  You may be starting to echo chamber yourselves into saying that the Oct 7 attacks were not terrorism when CLEARLY, CLEARLY they were.

    If what Israel is doing now is considered a War Crime, just as Hamas knew it would be. Then I ask you this:

    What, in your opinion should Israel do strategically to fix the situation in Gaza after being brutally attacked?

     

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