Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

[Gramsci]

Even by Israeli state spox standards, Mencer was a vile example of mercenary pyschopathy, so I took the trouble to look into his background to understand how someone might become that twisted.

Ex-Labour councillor in Barnet, agent to Gwyneth Dunwoody and Director of Labour Friends of Israel. Nice.

Just had a look and he left this country to go and live in Israel as the thought of Corbyn running the country was so appalling. Also left the Labour party due to Corbyn.

From seeing him on the C4 news clip just assumed he was part of the far right Zionists who are presently in power in Israel.

 

[brogdale]

Just had a look and he left this country to go and live in Israel as the thought of Corbyn running the country was so appalling. Also left the Labour party due to Corbyn.

From seeing him on the C4 news clip just assumed he was part of the far right Zionists who are presently in power in Israel.

Certainly came across as a particularly repugnant individual who wasn't even any good at what he was supposed to be doing; very LP.

 

[barlimo]

Local Labour Cllr suspended for voting locally for a ceasefire put this up.

This leading light in the Labour party having trouble answering straightforward question.

Answer is that Labour would sell arms to its ally.

Israel is an ally- what does UK get in return?

Not surprising as both Labour and Conservative parties are funded by Jews.

 

[brogdale]

Not surprising as both Labour and Conservative parties are funded by Jews.

The Jooos, eh?

 

[Nylock]

Not surprising as both Labour and Conservative parties are funded by Jews.

Riiiight....

 

[klang]

Not surprising as both Labour and Conservative parties are funded by Jews.

Been here for 10 years to come out with this?

 

[dylanredefined]

I think the aid convoy attack if not done deliberately. Will be cause someone saw something that looked like a target so attacked it. Armoured vehicles in a convoy not ours so must be bad guys. Its stupid and dumb but the mind convinces you to see what you want to.

 

[Mezzer]

I think the aid convoy attack if not done deliberately. Will be cause someone saw something that looked like a target so attacked it. Armoured vehicles in a convoy not ours so must be bad guys. Its stupid and dumb but the mind convinces you to see what you want to.

It's hard to imagine Hamas in armoured vehicles in a convoy in Gaza. Especially right now, surely?

 

[CH1]

It's hard to imagine Hamas in armoured vehicles in a convoy in Gaza. Especially right now, surely?

Could IDF personnel be in a drug-induced state of disperception?
This sort of thing been going on since Roimmel and Montygomery apparently Amphetamines and the Second World War: Stimulating Interest in Drugs and Warfare

 

[Serge Forward]

Not surprising as both Labour and Conservative parties are funded by Jews.

Fuck. Off.

 

[krtek a houby]

Not surprising as both Labour and Conservative parties are funded by Jews.

Jewish wife and relatives! So wonder what that cunt of a prime minister's excuse is.

The Holocausts is Israel's get out of jail card' they use it to justify just about any anything. I'm so sick of hearing about it that I have Holocaust fatigue. BTW 27 million Russians died in WW2 but I never hear them moaning about it.

What is this antisemitic wanker still doing here?

 

[editor]

Not surprising as both Labour and Conservative parties are funded by Jews.

Warning issued for this ant semitic crap.

 

[nino_savatte]

Are there Israeli friends of Labour?

Or even a Likud Friends of Labour?

 

[nino_savatte]

Just had a look and he left this country to go and live in Israel as the thought of Corbyn running the country was so appalling. Also left the Labour party due to Corbyn.

From seeing him on the C4 news clip just assumed he was part of the far right Zionists who are presently in power in Israel.

Zionists who come out with this bollocks about "being forced to leave the country because of Corbyn" genuinely believe they're persecuted, but the only people that I see being dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night and put onto planes are people of Caribbean origin. To hear the likes of Mencer talk, you'd think it was him and his fellow travellers being rounded up and deported. Yet, I bet not one of them have spoken up about the Hostile Environment and how it disproportionately affects Black people.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So we are now at the stage where backbench Tory MPs are providing more effective opposition than Labour.

UK government under pressure from Tories to stop arming Israel

It is of course appalling that 32,000 deaths can be ignored, but the deaths of a handful of Westerners prompt action. But at least it is likely to prompt action. I think Israel has badly miscalculated here.

 

[zahir]

‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.

www.972mag.com

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based.

 

[Cid]

I think the aid convoy attack if not done deliberately. Will be cause someone saw something that looked like a target so attacked it. Armoured vehicles in a convoy not ours so must be bad guys. Its stupid and dumb but the mind convinces you to see what you want to.

Misidentifying a convoy that has arranged with you to leave at a specific time on a specific route, from a warehouse designated for one of the most high-profile aid efforts in a while, in clearly marked vehicles, then accidentally attacking it again after they've asked you to please not attack them, then one last mistaken missile when the final vehicle is a mile down the road. That would take quite some cognitive dissonance.

 

[Pickman's model]

So we are now at the stage where backbench Tory MPs are providing more effective opposition than Labour.

UK government under pressure from Tories to stop arming Israel

It is of course appalling that 32,000 deaths can be ignored, but the deaths of a handful of Westerners prompt action. But at least it is likely to prompt action. I think Israel has badly miscalculated here.

do you? they have, i submit, succeeded in stopping people who want to hand out food from handing out food. thus imo achieving their aim of the palestinians not having much food. prompt action? there's little noise about 'this will mean palestinians starve to death' and much about 'tell us wtf happened'. what actual action do you think will come of it? a slap on the wrist for netanyahu? if the zionists can drag this out a week or ten days more you'll be seeing many thousands of palestinians dying from hunger, and i suspect they have the wherewithal to do that. plus iran's at some point going to do something to the zionists and you can bet that if they do this unhappy incident will be pushed down the news agenda. frankly i think the only reason it's so big here is because the zionists made the mistake of killing three ex-forces people.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I agree with you that this was intentional and that the aim was as you describe. It's too early to say whether this is a tipping point or not, but it may be.

It is surely in Iran's interests not to retaliate just yet. We'll see what happens, but working on the principle that it is rude to interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake, I would think Iran will be at least considering holding fire for now.

 

[andysays]

So we are now at the stage where backbench Tory MPs are providing more effective opposition than Labour.

UK government under pressure from Tories to stop arming Israel

It is of course appalling that 32,000 deaths can be ignored, but the deaths of a handful of Westerners prompt action. But at least it is likely to prompt action. I think Israel has badly miscalculated here.

Not sure this really counts as action, rather than just another excusing/delaying tactic.

The prime minister says the UK has a "very careful" arms licensing regime. He called for an independent investigation into the Israeli strike, but stopped short of saying arms sales should end. He added that the UK had been "consistently clear" with Israel that it must follow international humanitarian law. Describing the deaths as "an awful tragedy," he said the UK wanted to see "a dramatic increase in the amount of aid getting into Gaza".

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Not sure this really counts as action, rather than just another excusing/delaying tactic.

No, it doesn't. But there is now pressure from the backbenches to suspend arms deals with Israel. There is also an as-yet unpublished internal govt report that has supposedly been leaked (according to a pundit on World Service) and says that the UK is now breaking the law by selling arms to Israel.

 

[dylanredefined]

Misidentifying a convoy that has arranged with you to leave at a specific time on a specific route, from a warehouse designated for one of the most high-profile aid efforts in a while, in clearly marked vehicles, then accidentally attacking it again after they've asked you to please not attack them, then one last mistaken missile when the final vehicle is a mile down the road. That would take quite some cognitive dissonance.

As I said all it takes is one dumb trigger puller. It may well have been deliberate. Or a series of seemingly idiotic decisions.
Numerous friendly fire incidents have had the planes come back for multiple attacks. Or they might just blame a rogue element.

 

[Gramsci]

Not surprising as both Labour and Conservative parties are funded by Jews.

The post of mine you quoted had twitter post by local Cllr whose just been given indefinite suspension from Lambeth Labour group for voting for Ceasefire motion put by Lambeth green Cllrs. Indefinite suspension means he's unlikely to be reselected for seat. He's the one Jewish Cllr in Lambeth. Lambeth group is run by right of party.

I don't know what to say to your reply to my post. It's blatantly anti Semitic

Cllr Abrams is a socialist - that's why the right of party who run Lambeth wanted him out. And his stance on Gaza gave them opportunity.

 

[dylanredefined]

It's hard to imagine Hamas in armoured vehicles in a convoy in Gaza. Especially right now, surely?

All it takes is some one to plant an idea in someone's mind. You want that convoy destroyed Obviously no one going to justify you launching an attack.
So you lie to the operators Hamas has seized the vehicles or their working with hamas or whatever you think will get them to attack. Ops our intelligence was flawed.
Or someone's just been staring at a screen for hours looking for something to shoot.
Stupidity can have the same effect as evil and is a lot more common.

 

[agricola]

‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.

www.972mag.com

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, and with the very big caveat that that report (and others based on the same source that has come out today) could well be deliberate misinformation to talk up an ability that they may not actually possess, if the Israeli government really does have that level of information existing in a usable form for targeting those people - ie: who they are, why they are likely to be Hamas / PIJ (or more likely what role they play in Gazan society), where they are, at what time are they there, who else is there etc - with an AI overseeing that it makes their official theory of them having no inkling of what was about to happen on October 7th wildly implausible.

That is detailed and continually updated information on hundreds of thousands of people, possibly up to a million. If they've got that it implies organized surveillance, using a wide variety of means, on a massive scale - and you could not start that in the chaos after October 7th, where most of the population has left their homes, workplaces, roles in society etc, so it must have existed beforehand. It is really hard to see how such a system, if it does actually exist, would not have picked up things.

 

[Idris2002]

Have any of our squaddie colleagues had any dealings with the Royal United Services Institute? Sound chaps, or a system of outdoor relief for Lieutenant Tim Nice-but-dim?

"We could tell you, but the we'd have to kill you". I ask because of this link:

Israel’s Targeting AI: How Capable is It?

The ‘Habsora’ AI system used by the Israeli military is said to use intelligence data to generate targets for attack, including reports on the likely number of civilian casualties. But the odds of even the Israel Defense Forces using an AI with such a degree of sophistication and autonomy are low.

www.rusi.org

I think it partially answers the question posed by agricola in the post above - does Israel have a devilishly fiendish AI that guides its hand? No, but the human heads that control the hand may get some help from AI - and that's all. We're not in "open the pod bay doors, Hal" territory yet.

Note the concluding paragraphs:

"However, the absence of explicit AI targeting does not mean that Israel’s aerial war on Gaza is imprecise, or that it is unable to avoid civilian casualties in its strikes. Despite its extensive use of ‘dumb’ munitions, Israel has access to massive quantities of precision munitions. These precision munitions are available with a variety of warheads and capabilities, allowing the IDF to limit or expand the level of destruction at will, and indicating that the majority of civilian collateral damage from air strikes is intentional and accounted for.

The IDF has maintained an extraordinarily dense surveillance network over Gaza for many years, and retains absolute supremacy in electronic, communications, geospatial, and measurement and signature intelligence. Every decision to strike is made with near-comprehensive knowledge of conditions in the target location and anticipated effects of the strike, including anticipated casualties. Israel also has a rigorous legal core within its military, whose lawyers must sign off on every target – human- or AI-generated – even if there are hundreds in a single day. When Israeli air strikes kill or injure tens of thousands of civilians, it seems beyond any reasonable doubt that every single target is generated, approved, ordered and struck with the full knowledge and consent of human IDF operators."

 

[agricola]

All it takes is some one to plant an idea in someone's mind. You want that convoy destroyed Obviously no one going to justify you launching an attack.
So you lie to the operators Hamas has seized the vehicles or their working with hamas or whatever you think will get them to attack. Ops our intelligence was flawed.
Or someone's just been staring at a screen for hours looking for something to shoot.
Stupidity can have the same effect as evil and is a lot more common.

These poor people phoned the unit that had launched the attack though to tell them they were being attacked; it really is inconceivable to think that they would have continued to attack by mistake at that point. It is barely believable to think they didn't know who they were before the first attack, given that they were the ones who they had arranged things with.

 

[Idris2002]

I'm trying to find out if the Sri Lankan government used hunger, and targetting of food aid workers, during its suppression of the Tamil Tigers in 2009.

The Tamil Tigers are now mainly remembered for the embarassment one of their t-shirts caused Jamie Oliver, but looking it up now, I see that they Sri Lankans were accused of killing 20,000 Tamil civilians in the course of dealing with the TT (IDF: hold our beers). But did this involved the deliberate creation of food insecurity, hunger and famine? Enquiring minds want to know.

 

[belboid]

I'm trying to find out if the Sri Lankan government used hunger, and targetting of food aid workers, during its suppression of the Tamil Tigers in 2009.

The Tamil Tigers are now mainly remembered for the embarassment one of their t-shirts caused Jamie Oliver, but looking it up now, I see that they Sri Lankans were accused of killing 20,000 Tamil civilians in the course of dealing with the TT (IDF: hold our beers). But did this involved the deliberate creation of food insecurity, hunger and famine? Enquiring minds want to know.

Yes.

The Sri Lankan military shelled the UN hub, food distribution lines and Red Cross ships coming to rescue the wounded and their relatives. It did this despite having intelligence as well as notifications by the UN, Red Cross and others. The Intergovernmental report after the war found the government systematically deprived those in war zones of food water and medicine. The Permanent Peoples Tribunal (held in Dublin) found likewise and that food was being 'used as a weapon of war'

 

[CH1]

I'm trying to find out if the Sri Lankan government used hunger, and targetting of food aid workers, during its suppression of the Tamil Tigers in 2009.

The Tamil Tigers are now mainly remembered for the embarassment one of their t-shirts caused Jamie Oliver, but looking it up now, I see that they Sri Lankans were accused of killing 20,000 Tamil civilians in the course of dealing with the TT (IDF: hold our beers). But did this involved the deliberate creation of food insecurity, hunger and famine? Enquiring minds want to know.

Look's like you could do your research - though I don't think I'll watch this until I've had my tea

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/sri-lankas-killing-fields/on-demand/51949-001