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What we know
So if we are just to do some basic considerations. Occam's Razor.
If Israel did not hit the hospital then
a) out of all the rockets to misfire, of which we haven't heard of any significant misfires up until now, it had to be the rare and few powerful ones that Palestinians have. This is a low probability event. Much more likely that in a barrage of rockets, the small ones misfire because the overwhelmingly majority is small
b) out of all the places to land, it lands precisely on top of a hospital in precisely a way that kills as many people as possible. Another low probability event. Realistically, the vast majority of failed rockets would land in areas that are not strategically relevant or are not a humanitarian area.
c) this rocket just happens to land on the same exact hospital that Israel had attacked multiple times previously and had demanded evacuation of. another low probability event.
d) israel has been known on multiple occasions to outright lie about something when it looks like they are committing war crimes. during the killing of the journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh the playbook went like this..
Independent investigation show that the killing was likely deliberate and nobody was shooting at the Israelis at the time of her death. She was shot in cold blood, in what some people believe is a targeted killing. But at this point, both the US and Israel refuse any criminal investigation.
This playbook, coincidentally, looks very similar to the US's response to their airstrike on a hospital in Afghanistan. Deny, blame the Afghanis, eventually concede it was them and claim it was an accident. No criminal investigations.
Turns out countries that openly preach about their "humanitarian values" have a lot of incentive to lie when events like this get mass media coverage. So, is this a low probability event or a high probability? I don't know.
e) the digital spokesman for the israelis openly admitted to the bombing and then quickly deleted the tweet. is it because he was mistaken or because he was told to delete the tweet? high probability or low probability? I don't know.
Let's do a little formula. LPE = low probability event, UPE = unknown probability event
LPE x LPE x LPE x UPE x UPE
Let's try some different values to get a broad estimate.
LPE = 20% UPE = 50% 0.2 * 0.2 * 0.2 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.002 = 0.2%
LPE = 50% UPE = 80% 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.8 * 0.8 = 0.08 = 8%
LPE = 80% UPE = 90% 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.9 * 0.9 = .41 = 41%
So depending on how likely you believe the above events, you can estimate a different probability. For example, if you think that the chances of the Palestinians having their rocket misfire over virtually the worst possible spot it could have is 80%, you may reach a different conclusion than if you believe the chances are actually let's say 20%
The point of the exercise is to show that there's a lot of reason to believe Israel did it and there's a lot of reason to believe Israel is lying (including making up videos, like they've done in the past), and there's a lot of reason to believe the US is blindly backing up their lies (like they've done in the past)
Please don't mistake this for some sort of serious scientific attempt at proving the Israelis wrong. It's just a thought exercise to illustrate the point that for this to have been the Palestinians, there would have had to be a lot of little coincidences. Which CAN happen. Unlikely events happen all the time. But in situations like this, I think we have to be realistic and look at the simplest answer. I personally think it's very likely Israel did it. I don't know, and I don't think we'll ever know.
But maybe in some time we'll have an independent investigation and Israel will ultimately own up to it. Only time will tell.
didn't it land in a parking lot? in the pics of the npr article it was at least a building-length away from the hospital
here's a map of the area showing a rough radius of what the explosion damaged
we can see the center is somewhere around the parking lot. however, there is damage to the southern roofs of the buildings 45m away. so while perhaps the center radius of the explosion was on top of the parking lot, the reach of the bomb certainly touched the hospital
however, the reason it killed so many people (i think 500 is probably exaggerated for propaganda, real number probably closer to ~200) is because a lot of people were sheltering outside this hospital around that parking lot. for example west of the parking lot there were many people sleeping on blankets and such. people on the second story of the hospital also got killed.
it's really hard to get an objective view of the situation right now because the propaganda wings of both sides are out in full force.
here's a video by aljazeera- https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1714984258358391057
coincidentally the only news outlet that caught the whole thing live
Yeah and that's made significantly more challenging when you begin from a position of "blame Israel" and outright lie about multiple "facts"
There is no way you are both closely following the situation (as you imply) and also believe this to be true
Truth comes more readily when you stop lying to confirm your own biases
Are you denying that the blast hit the hospital? Here's a high resolution image the morning after the blast. The marks are mine. There's visible damage to the windows (you can see also here taken the night of the blast) and part of the outside structure of the hospital. Purple X is origin point of explosion. There was also damage to the roof of a building less than 30m away. Here's another image that shows shrapnel damage to the roof of the hospital.
Even ignoring that, let's pretend all of the damage was strictly limited to the parking lot and the area around the parking lot (even though that's not true). When hundreds of people are using the grassy field next to the hospital parking lot as a temporary shelter and a bomb kills them, is it wrong to say the bomb "hit the hospital"?
Going further, is it wrong to say the probability of a misfiring rocket landing precisely the point where hundreds of people happening to be sheltering, right next to a hospital, is low?
Again, if we assume rocket failures are random then if we pick random points on a city to drop a rocket, the chances of it killing hundreds of people are very slim. What difference does it make, in the context of the premise of my original comment, if it landed on the hospital or on the parking lot next to the hospital? The probability is the same. The point was that is was an unlikely place for a rocket to fall. Not impossible. You flip a coin 5 times and sometimes you'll get heads 5 times. If you flipped a coin 25 times and it landed heads 25 times in a row, it's more probable that there is something wrong with the coin.
Please address other things. I don't believe you would have such a response to my comment if a semantics discussion on what constitutes as "hitting a hospital" was your main point of contention with my comment.
This is a far cry from "landed directly stop the hospital in such a way as to maximize civilian casualties"
You're just disingenuous at every point. Even in this post.
This is ignoring that
A) it's a public area and there are lots of people looking for shelter
B) there was likely a munitions dump near the hospital because Hamas and other militant groups readily do that
C) bigger, more dangerous, less commonly-used rockets are more likely to have incidents, for all of those very reasons in the descriptor.
D) Israeli attacks have been precision attacks thus far, full stop. The idea that they are indiscriminately bombing is absurd and does not match evidence of said bombings. If they wanted the hospital levelled to maximize civilian casualties, as you literally state, then the hospital would not be standing.
Oh and E) it's on fucking video happening and we have audio of IJ soldiers discussing it
I don't believe you're engaging in this topic in good faith at all.
I will repeat myself because now I realize you are not understanding. Read carefully.
If I pick a random point on a map, and decide to drop a bomb there - no matter the size - the chances of it causing hundreds of deaths is low. Even strong munitions. This "event" happened to cause hundreds of deaths. This is a rare occurrence. Go ahead and randomly throw a dart onto a map of a large city. Then kill everyone within 10 meters of that point. The vast majority of the time, you're not going to get hundreds of deaths.
That's the only claim I'm trying to make here. The probability of such an event happening is low. I don't see how that is a controversial statement.
I don't understand how this is relevant to the discussion at hand. Please elaborate.
It's still unusual. If big rockets fail at 5x the rate as small one, but you send out 9 big rockets and 1 big one, it's still more likely for a failure to be the small one. Realistically, I think it's the opposite though. The big ones are donated by Iran which has a much more advanced defense industry. The small ones are jerry rigged together by Hamas themselves.
Here you let slip your bias. Israel themselves announced 6 days into the war that they had dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza. It's been 12 days into the war, if we assume the same ratio that's 12,000 bombs. The same government that couldn't stop some terrorists from literally driving a bulldozer up to the border wall is now somehow capable of having a mountain of precise and accurate intelligence of over 10,000 targets?
As for the precision attacks... please see this video with a large stock of MK84 bombs. There are more videos of them loading it onto their planes. These aren't precision guided munitions. They are dumb bombs. read more about them here
I want to re-iterate the ridiculous amount of bombs they have dropped. In 2019 during the ENTIRE YEAR the United States dropped 7,500 bombs on Afghanistan. And 2019 was a particularly bad year, it was the most bombs in the past decade.
Consider the size of Afghanistan. Consider the size and population density of Gaza.
Come on man, think for yourself a little bit. Stop floating in the mayonnaise.
Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, I know. The people you think are good guys are actually brutally murdering thousands of people. Don't worry, just like we eventually realized as a society that the Iraq war was a crime, we will eventually realize that this destruction of Gaza is a crime. Of course, that doesn't help the thousands of dead children.
One can believe that the destruction of Gaza is a crime and also believe that this particular explosion was caused by some other group.
i agree absolutely.
i don't know what happened with the hospital. i don't know how many people died. i don't even know who stands to benefit, really. what has been the immediate after-effects of the attack?
the US and Israel are now isolated from the western world. Who would want that? Well, Hamas is the obvious one. Iran and Russia, too. But what about Israel? Now the US and Western Europe are further committed to this conflict, and they don't have to juggle the interests of the Arab countries.
so the typical question - cuo bono - doesn't even help here.
the only constant i have is the nagging feeling that we are being lied to. i think everything happened too fast and the probability of such an event too low for it to be an accident.
Lol the irony of
Maybe you do genuinely believe the shit you say but that's not exactly better lol