For a great example of this, look at this pin https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZcMbdFcx87PrqoYNA
And here's a pin of where the farms were spared https://maps.app.goo.gl/iZbbTH4iH27FCz4s9
For a great example of this, look at this pin https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZcMbdFcx87PrqoYNA
And here's a pin of where the farms were spared https://maps.app.goo.gl/iZbbTH4iH27FCz4s9
Caterpillar even supplies the IDF with bulldozers just for this purpose, which then get up-armored and sent into Palestinian civilian areas to do this (including unmanned versions).
I suggest that you learn more about the Nakba, friend. [1]
The claim I was responding to was: "By the time the bulldozers are there civilians have long moved out of the area."
Rachel Corrie's case is a counterexample to that general claim: she was a civilian physically present in the area of an Israeli military bulldozer operation.
Saying that it happened 23 years ago, under a different government, doesn't make the counterexample cease to exist.
It only tells us that the example isn't evidence about every Israeli bulldozer operation today.
If you're arguing that civilians currently leave before demolition operations in Gaza, then make that case.
"That happened under a previous government" doesn't establish that.
I don't think anyone else "read" it like that.
> That's a crucial detail to omit
It really isn't. No international body decided on "phases" to delinate combat, and given that there is not yet apology or atonement or peace since, that "phase" never ended.
I was surprised and felt mislead.
I'm not sure what are you even arguing with me about. If it doesn't weaken your argument than it shouldn't matter to you that I've added factual context.
did someone else call their catastrophe a catastrophe too? guess it just goes to show how different cultures independently come up with similar names for similar things. ideally there are no catastrophes.
for what it's worth, over decades of being a jew, I've never once heard anyone refer to the holocaust as "Shoah". I did have a jewish friend named that, though. Interesting.
Been watching it for years. A great stain on history, with weapons paid for and built by Americans, not to mention a complicit media.
* surprise, it was in Rafah, the city formerly located in the wasteland from the article we're discussing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_paramedic_massacre
Let's be clear and honest: Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians and they routinely murder civilians as part of this.
In 2015, the Egyptian government announced a plan to demolish the entire Egyptian city of Rafah, in order to deter smuggling with the Gaza Strip. More than a decade on, most of it is gone. The residents were forcibly relocated to elsewhere in Egypt.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
Urban warfare is brutal, especially when one side systematically digs in and uses IEDs and booby traps in civilian buildings.
They wanted to level the city, they did. That's all. There was some fighting eventually with a few fighters holed in in Rafah, but nothing that would justify this. And Israelis continue leveling entire areas the whole year after so called "ceasefire" during which there were almost no attacks on them, yet they managed to murder more than a thousand of people.
Can you please remind me where they finally found Yahya Sinwar? And was that before or after they "level[ed] the city"? Do you think they would have found him if they left the city untouched? Why was he there in the first place?
> And Israelis continue leveling entire areas the whole year after so called "ceasefire" during which there were almost no attacks on them
Hamas isn't following a ceasefire; they've been militarily degraded.
There's a causal relationship here: If the IDF hadn't destroyed so many fighting positions and booby-trapped buildings, there would have been many, many more attacks and IDF soldiers KIA.
You say "there's no justification" but unwittingly go on to point out exactly why it's justified.
"Hamas's military force prior to October 7, 2023, was roughly 3 to 4.5 times larger than the United States military when measured as a percentage of their respective total populations."
Anyway, IDF as ≈170k active duty personnel and 465k reservists[1]. Literally a different order of magnitude. Add to it the vast different of resources, access to an air force and nuclear weapons and it become even more clearer that there is no comparison possible.
(And comparing personnel count to the USA is laughable as it is vastly different military type. Both a fighter jet pilot and a foot soldier count as one personnel, but it's neither the same force projection nor the same investment of civilians working for the war machine).
1: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/10/14/idf-explai...
Forced displacement is also considered a war crime and, considering what is happening in Gaza and at the West Bank, it would qualify as genocide as well.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
Please check Norman Finkelstein's latest book namely Gaza's Gravediggers on this matter [1].
He also has a very telling and chilling interview recently on Palestine and Gaza [2].
[1] Gaza's Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places [book].
[2] Norman Finkelstein Reveals Shocking Discoveries While Researching History of Israel’s Gaza Obsession [video]:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/uyqjn2/norman_fink...
At least that was my takeaway after watching his debate with Destiny (the streamer) and Benny Morris (the historian):
You be the judge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X_KdkoGxSs&list=PLrAXtmErZg...
Also Tucker Carlson? Seriously?
Doesn't mean that here the targeting couldn't have been done with the primary goal of displacing the population, but the buildings being destroyed doesn't prove the motive.
It does not.
> and at least there it's most likely not primarily because Russians wanted flatten the city (I'm sure they'd have preferred taking it in one piece) but rather because fighting happens from buildings resulting in the buildings getting targeted.
What happened on the Ukrainian frontlines is a war of position. Everything gets pounded, even forests and tree lines. It’s more like Verdun than anything that happened in Gaza.
Systematic destruction of urban areas is sadly what modern urban combat operations look like.
When an enemy digs in and choose to fight and die in an urban area, this is how war plays out.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/10/28/how-russias-invas...
WAR IS HELL
But that’s not what we see in Gaza. The parents specifically mentioned that only towns were leveled. The destroyed towns are not the only relevant aspect. The other one is that major damage happens only there. And of course it would, because the Israeli forces don’t want to sterilise the land; they want to take it. In contrast, Russia is happy to be king of the rubble as long as Ukrainians eat shells.
This is how urban war is played out between near peer armies.
Think about this, I’m in a concrete bunker with a machine gun, do you want to charge the bunker and get shot, or do you want to call in an airstrike to destroy the bunker with the machine gun position? I know what I’d do
https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2015/07/24/history-july-25th-2006-m...
Of note, just days before the strike, one of the Observers sent an unencrypted email home to his wife noting that he was observing Israeli war crimes and would be reporting them.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/un-officer-reported-is...
"When in doubt, send in an airstrike."
In absolutely does [1].
> What happened on the Ukrainian frontlines is a war of position
If Gaza is a genocide then Ukraine almost certainly is too. The same messaging about exterminating a culture that doesn't "actually" exist from senior leadership. The same attacks on children. The same destruction and systematic razing of civilian settlements.
It seems like the state of Ukraine frontline cities is due to intense artillery fire and air bombingn whereas gaza cities states seem to be more of systematic bulldozing of entire areas which would erase the marks of actual bombings and make the scale harder to assess
Both are the results of aggressive madmen, but both situations are different. And the genocide aspect is not what is discussed here.
Also, why do you think that “Russia is doing the same thing” is some kind of gotcha?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/5/24/satellite-...
And that just from the start of war.
Mariupol probably did see less destruction. But for the actively contested regions, the biggest difference between Russian destruction and Israeli destruction is that the Russians use artillery, which leaves shells of buildings standing, while Israel uses bulldozers that are a lot more thorough in leaving no stone on the other
You can find lots of videos of Russia firing thermobaric weapons into populated areas - you will find none fired by Israel into Gaza. And I don't think that's because IL doesn't have them.
It's exactly the same in Gaza! You basically justified Israel's actions here... Check the distance between Gaza City & Israel border, vs distance beetween Bakhmut & Russia's border. Tell me which one is farther away - I'll wait
Farmers were killed, even in different part of Palestine.
Killing farmers have nothing to do with the definition of genocide.
The tunnel entrances and exits are tremendously hard to find. Some of them were located in private residences.
But Israel has an oil & gas industry. They have equipment that can look underneath a quiet city. If tunnel elimination were truly the goal, temporarily displacing the population while clearing operations took place should have been sufficient. As it stands, simply bulldozing over the entrances probably doesn't actually destroy the tunnels. It just hides their entrances.
Like when packaged food gets potentially contaminated, you don't test each package for bacteria. You throw away the whole lot.
Not even egypt allows ghazans in- 10.000 euros for one passport is insane. And all those walls and checkpoints. And egypt is pretty islamist itself, so natural ally to hamas and the like.. but they know had that brush with the mb
https://original.antiwar.com/scott/2023/10/27/netanyahus-sup...
What is true is that Egypt doesn't want to take in 2 million poor, underfed, sick, homeless Gazans & have to care for them.
Or, if you are not a genocidal terror group, you actually go house-to-house and check. Difficult, dangerous, but not a war crime. That's why Mosul isn't a pile of rubble, even though ISIS was more than willing to use booby traps!
---
"We are demolishing more and more homes, they have nowhere to return. The only obvious result will be the desire of the Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip. Our main problem is in the receiving countries."
—Benjamin Netanyahu, 2025
If Hamas cared about Palestinians, they could just use military buildings for that.
You're comparing wiping out tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian people's lives... to disinfection.
Like yeah, there's plenty of examples of israel's current leaders calling the Palestinian race sub-human, vermin, animal, saying it should be wiped off the earth, etc, but I didn't expect it on HN, JFC.
Here's historical satellite imagery. Go to 2017-08. You can see Mosul airport and surrounding facilities leveled, immediately adjacent to a city that is obviously a city and not 1) flattened Mosul airport or 2) similar in any way to the Rafah imagery above.
If you are describing Mosul as "leveled" then what adjective do you use to describe Rafah? It cannot possibly be also "leveled" given that vast areas of Rafah are actually a flat pile of rubble and Mosul is clearly a city with a destroyed airport, even in late 2017.
https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=43.12003%2...
NYT - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
and AP drone imagry https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2017/7/14/mosul-drone-footage-...
From your linked AP article:
"Nearly a third of the Old City [a specific neighborhood] was damaged or destroyed in the final three weeks of bombardment up to July 8, according to a survey by U.N. Habitat using satellite imagery"
From MSF re Rafah:
"Over 15 months of all-out war on Gaza have left 92 percent of housing units and about 70 percent of all structures destroyed or damaged."
So we have 1/3rd of a particularly hard-hit neighborhood destroyed in Mosul versus 70% of the entire city of Rafah.
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/destruction-hom...
This is very obviously a completely different scale and comprehensiveness of destruction.
That Israel kept looking for tunnels and destroying empty buildings for strategic reasons after the battle was over and Rafah was mostly abandoned is not relevant to evaluating the main battle.
That MSF statement is not specifically about Rafah in your link either. It's about the entire Gaza strip. And just like Rafah a lot of the destruction happened in evacuated areas for tactical reasons, searching for tunnels, preventing guerrilla attacks, dealing with booby traps etc. We can argue about the necessity and legality of those but they are a different kind of discussion vs. the main battle portion.
Mosul had 1.5 million people at the time of the battle and ~10-20k civilian casualties + ~10-20k combatants.
Hard to do direct comparisons and all the numbers are obviously squishy, but your claim that Israel's war results in significantly fewer casualties seems... dubious at best.
And in any case, we actually know for a fact that Israel's non-combatant casualty cut-off value (NCV) -- i.e. their accepted rate in decision-making -- is several multiples higher than the coalition forces were.
> Peter Gersten, former deputy commander of operations and intelligence for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, states that “[w]ith Osama Bin Laden, you’d have an NCV value of 30, but if you had a low-level commander, his NCV was typically zero. We ran zero for the longest time.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, when he was head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) during the war against ISIS, would personally be called to authorize an operation with a “high” NCV of 14 or 15.
Re the Jabalia Camp attack:
> Satellite visual analysis of the attack site shows at least five large craters, including two approximately 40 feet wide, consistent with the impact of 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions. The attack destroyed not just one residential apartment building, but a whole block.
> Even without specific further intelligence, on the basis of this information Israel’s CDE must have resulted in a very high estimate for civilian casualties. Given the location, population spread, and choice of weapons, the actual toll of hundreds of civilians killed or wounded would have been a reasonable expectation.
You can go look at Basra right here:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Basrah,+Basra+Governorate,...
Over a million people live here. The estimate was that "448 to 593 civilians were killed due to coalition military operations", orders of magnitude less than Israel has killed. Basra was not wiped off the map or seized and annexed by coalition forces while the population was herded into a concentration camp.
It is simply slander against the US military to suggest they have in the 21st century done anything like what the IDF has done in this genocide.
Robots. These things can be cleared. Particularly if the population isn't there.
Not if the trigger is based on detecting body heat. And you can't really clear more than the ground floor either, we don't have bipedal robots yet.
Yeah, but guns absolutely can. Iran is pretty good at supplying Hamas with everything they need to maintain control over the population - you might expect that after three years of absolutely brutal warfare Hamas would be beaten into submission, but clearly they are not.
My colleagues have seen these tunnels. At least ore 2023. Israel has denied them entry since then.
The babies and young children in Gaza are as innocent as they are everywhere else in the world. If you can’t see that, you should reexamine the lens you use to look at the world, it’s distorting things massively.
This is despicable, inhumane. It is generational trauma that started with the Nazis, now propagated to the poor souls around the new western colony of Israel.
Israel left Gaza back in 2005 after forcibly expelling all Jews and only later on only blockaded Gaza due to weapons being smuggled in, so they tried that and it clearly didn't work. It seems unilateral disengagement is simply not a strategy that can be succesful here.
It is clear that Israel is the source of violence. Which makes sense, as it is a new Western colony occupying (and constantly expanding) land where people lived for thousands of years, under the justification THAT IT'S IN THE BIBLE.
A religious fundamentalist colony, funded and armed by the west.
It is unjustifiable. It is vile.
The blockade only started after Hamas was elected into power, to reduce their access to more missiles and weapons. The money from Qatar was still allowed in for humanitarian reasons. But no matter what Israel does it is accused of being evil - both allowing the money through and blocking it would be considered wrong by the haters.
> a new Western colony occupying (and constantly expanding) land
The total land under control by Israel has shrunk by more than 50% over the past 50 years (with the return of Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace).
Millions of Arabs have migrated to the West, but only when Jews migrate East are they “vile colonizers”.
Israel has been restricting Gaza's economic viability since the 90s, much before the official blockade. (source: UN, wikileaks about Gaza economic policy)
> The money from Qatar was still allowed in for humanitarian reasons
Is this a joke ? The humanitarian Israel that does not let international flotillas with aid reach Gaza ? Or the humanitarian Israel that kills children ?
> The total land under control by Israel has shrunk by more than 50% over the past 50 years
The spin of the century. They gave back uninhabitable desert, while continuing expansion all over Palestine.
> Millions of Arabs have migrated to the West, but only when Jews migrate East are they “vile colonizers”.
Firstly, it has nothing to do with religion. Secondly, migration is quite different than a formation of a military state that constantly occupies land and expands, attacking its neighbours that has been there for millennia.
You are spewing propaganda.
Israel is currently allowing in thousands of truckloads carrying 35,000 metric tons of aid per month, according to the UN: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/ocha-newsitem-7aug26/
What they blocked was a sailboat carrying a bag of oranges and anti-Israel activists trying to carry out a media stunt for attention and virtue-signalling.
You obviously have an agenda here and are being disingenuous. I will disengage and leave you spewing your lies.
You have to be very careful when looking at this sort of data, from my understanding UN data only tracks UN 2720 Mechanism aid deliveries. I think you need to look at COGAT data to see total aid deliveries as there are non-UN aid deliveries as well that won't show up in the UN data.
This is a genocide, and you are complicit through your online hasbara.
From my understanding no organization other than COGAT even has the ability to track the total aid deliveries, there is no evidence of mass starvation or that COGAT data is unreliable from what I've seen.
How noble and humanitarian of the state of Israel.
Please do disengage, you refuted none of my statements while continuing to spread propaganda from your 3 hour old account.
That's for UN 2720 Mechanism aid AFAIU, for totals I think you need to look at COGAT data which shows much higher numbers for total food aid.
Trusting their statements is like trusting the statements of the Nazis during the previous genocide.
That doesn't mean the data is unreliable.
> Trusting their statements is like trusting the statements of the Nazis during the previous genocide.
Comparing Israeli's to Nazi's is a common antisemitic trope.
No but it is like taking Russia's word for how many troops they lost.
> Comparing Israeli's to Nazi's is a common antisemitic trope.
How is comparing a state that is conducting a genocide to another group that did so too against the Jewish people ?
Russia mostly just doesn't publish those figures at all last I checked. OSINT researchers however following the Russia/Ukraine war will typically use data from Russian, Ukrainian and independent sources where available however so it also wouldn't be advisable to completely ignore the Russian data either. Even extremely biased/limited data can sometimes be used to identify trends, at least for cases where the bias factor tends to be consistent.
Israel also isn't a dictatorship and has what most would consider to be a relatively free press that is not afraid to criticize the government(i.e. Haaretz) so it would be rather difficult for Israel to deliberately publish outright fabricated data on a large scale without getting caught doing so.
I'm also not saying you should blindly trust any specific sources, however much of the COGAT data can also be corroborated via independent sources such as satellite imagery.
Keep in mind it's also not the case that the UN data meaningfully contradicts the COGAT data either, it's entirely possible for both to be reasonably accurate. In general I would say both COGAT and UN data are both likely reasonably accurate once factoring in the published limitations on that data.
The reason the numbers are different is simply because they are measuring different things. In the case of COGAT they generally measure total aid going through border crossings while the UN measures aid reaching only a subset of distributions points within Gaza.
So if you want to estimate per capita food aid going into Gaza you would want to use the COGAT figures since that data is collected at all border crossings and can be used to get a rough per capita figure on aid entering Gaza. On the other hand if you want to measure something like aid reaching UN system aid distribution points within Gaza then you would want to use the UN data.
Attempting to use UN data to calculate per capita food aid going into Gaza would clearly be wrong as the UN's own published data collection methodology clearly shows they are not measuring total aid entering Gaza.
The UN often seems to publish reports analyzing their own data while clearly failing factor in their own published data limitations into their calculations which results in inaccurate conclusions in their analysis. Usually these sort of analysis mistakes are very obvious as the UN generally publishes the math behind their calculations.
You shouldn't blindly discard data simply because you think the source might be biased in one direction, rather you should try to understand the limitations of the data and corroborate it against secondary sources where possibly while also trying to factor in bias where feasible.
Essentially it's not the raw data where there is disagreement, it's the various interpretations of what the data actually means.
> How is comparing a state that is conducting a genocide to another group that did so too against the Jewish people ?
A war is not the same thing as a genocide. The Jews did not start a war with the Nazi's. Hamas started a war with Israel with openly genocidal goals, Hamas simply did not have the military capability to accomplish their genocidal goals.
How many apartment buildings are left standing in Bakhmut?