richardfeynman

This is the latest information on Gaza casualties. As you can see, there's a disproportionate number of fighting age male casualties. https://x.com/GabrielEpsteinX/status/2024527393226936441/pho...

Kiwi here. This is not a new phenomenon. Not sure why this is news.

Initial impression is that it looks cool. $100 / month is too pricey for hackers. I know the infra costs are high, but still.

Your information is false and out of date.

Actually a simple statement you can actually support would: Israel bombed this hospital building on this date using this munition. You can’t meet that simple standard because it never happened.

You are being bigoted (“evil, evil people”) and if you believe what you say you can just answer my question directly. You won’t because it hasn’t happened.

You're just linking me to lists from highly unreliable sources. I'm a simpleton, make a claim like this: "I think Israel bombed this hospital building on this date using this ordinance. Here's the evidence."

Well, just in the past two months, iran is thought to have killed more than 30,000 of its own citizens, while the whole civilian death toll in gaza is about 40k or less over more than two years (out of roughly 70k killed), so i'd say you just made that up.

nzrf wrote: "Do you really believe killing 175 children[0] will bring peace and prosperity to the Iranian people?"

The implication is that someone thought that it would. I am saying nobody in the US or Israel thought bombing a children's school would bring peace to the iranian people. In fact, both the USAF and IAF deny they hit a school. There is no evidence the IRGC has put forward to support its claim. Without such evidence, it doesn't make sense to believe it.

Also, you talk about mental gymnastics while defending IRGC propaganda and spewing nonsense like "Israel bombed hospitals." If you're so confident that Israel has bombed hospital buildings, can you tell me which they bombed, when they did this, and any OSINT details like the munition used?

Step 1. OP makes a positive claim, repeating an IRGC narrative.

Step 2. I point out there’s no good evidence supporting it.

Step 3. You reframe that as "you’re just demanding more evidence."

That’s backwards. If someone claims something extraordinary happened, the burden is on them to provide evidence. Showing that the current evidence doesn’t support the claim is a perfectly valid rebuttal.

Otherwise we could do this with anything:

kid: "There’s a ghost in my room." dad: "I don't hear a ghost. I don't see one. There’s no heat, sound, footprints..." kid: "That doesn’t mean there's no ghost. You’re just demanding more evidence.”

The main source in that Wikipedia article is "According to the IRGC." Trusting any belligerent in a war is silly, but given its history, trusting the IRGC during wartime is even sillier. No independent body like the Red Crescent (which is counting casualties in Iran) verified this. It's all "trust me, bro."

USCENTCOM and the IAF both rejected these assertions.

You should demand some evidence for the IRGC's claim. If the claim is that the US or Israel did it, why doesn't the IRGC show the munition used? Or any OSINT data, like where the munition was fired from, its trajectory, etc. The IRGC has been firing from the IRGC base where this school was located. It could just as easily have been a failed IRGC munition.

Also, was this "school" by an IRGC base actually a school, or did it serve a military purpose? Surely you can't know the answer to this, so it's tough for you to judge the military necessity of the strike.

Finally, what's the claim, really? That western powers intentionally struck a school and killed these kids to advance their war aims? Or that it was an accident? If the former, an explanation for "how" is required; and if the latter (and if it did indeed happen) it's the kind of collateral damage that occurs in all wars.

Exactly, a real moral calculus needs to be made, not a hysterical "But the IRGC said 175 children died." And a real moral calculus involves weighing the value of the deaths caused by removing the IRGC against the deaths caused by the IRGC.

My antagonist said I have no moral compass. Of course I care about the death of children. But that doesn't mean I swallow IRGC propaganda wholesale, as they apparently do. The IRGC lies constantly, it has provided no evidence that so many children died, and hasn't brought forth any evidence to indicate the destruction of the school was caused by western munitions as opposed to a failed launch of their own (which we've seen happen.

A falsifiable prediction. Thank you.

Perhaps the original comment, putting forth debunked IRGC propaganda, and presenting it as definitely true, was bait.

You are rewriting your own argument.

You opened with "Israeli massacres sparked the Second Intifada." Now the "massacre" is just the first day of the riots themselves, and when that gets challenged you pivot to Oslo (which you never mentioned in your original claim).

Mitchell's chronology is not "Israel opened fire on peaceful unarmed demonstrators." It describes a confrontation after Friday prayers where Palestinians began throwing at police near the Western Wall; police used rubber-coated bullets and live ammo; 4 Palestinians killed, about 200 injured; and 14 Israeli policemen injured. That is a violent riot plus (arguably) bad crowd-control, not a one-sided massacre. Same report: "no persuasive evidence that the Sharon visit was anything other than an internal political act" and "The Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada." https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/mitchell_plan.asp

Nobody is claiming Palestinians pre-planned Israeli live fire or used "mind control." The point is what happened next: Palestinian leaders chose to turn this into a sustained uprising. Barghouti said the explosion would have happened anyway and Sharon "provided a good excuse." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift

Also, a politician visiting a holy site under police protection is not violence. Throwing stones and turning it into a street war is.

Your Oslo II claim is wrong on the text: interim jurisdiction explicitly excludes settlements, Jerusalem, borders, etc. The 18-month clause is phased redeployments, not "full withdrawal from Area C." https://www.peaceagreements.org/agreements/410/

You said al Shifa isn't operational. I proved it is. Now you're trying to redefine "operational" to mean "yes, you can get treatment at the hospital but it's not working well." That's a major switcheroo.

I stand by my claim that Israel has not bombed any hospital buildings. If you think this is false, find me a hospital building that Israel has bombed, tell me when it's been bombed, the munition used, etc.

Nice try, but you are rewriting your own claim.

You opened with: the Second Intifada was sparked by Israeli massacres. Now your alleged massacre is Sept 29, the first day of the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is not a prior massacre that precipitated anything, it is the opening confrontation itself, and you are laundering it with a loaded word.

On Oslo, you did not even mention it until your massacre story fell apart. And your Oslo summary is wrong on the text. Oslo II explicitly defers permanent-status issues (Jerusalem, settlements, borders, refugees, etc.) and excludes them from PA jurisdiction. The 18-month line is about phased interim jurisdiction, not a guaranteed state or full withdrawal. This was also obvious to everyone alive at the time and was widely reported. It's only now that people like you are attempting to rewrite history. https://www.peaceagreements.org/agreements/410/

Read the Mitchell Report you keep invoking.

- It describes Sept 29 as large demonstrations where Palestinians threw stones and Israeli police used rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition, killing 4 and injuring about 200. Calling that a massacre is absurd. It was an armed clash, premeditated and planned by the palestinians, so not only was there no massacre, but the Palestinians themselves say armed clash was premeditated and Sharon's visit was just a pretext.

- The Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

Source: https://www.palquest.org/en/historictext/13561/mitchell-repo...

Also, Sharon visiting a holy site under police protection is not violence. Mitchell even says holy places must be accessible to all believers. The choice to turn that into an uprising was a choice.

You are switching topics because the original claim does not survive contact with the record.

You said Israeli massacres sparked the Second Intifada. Your own timeline does not name any massacre that happened before it began. The first deaths were in the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is tragic, but it is not some prior massacre that supposedly set everything off.

The US-led Mitchell Report is explicit: Sharon’s Temple Mount visit did not cause the Intifada. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/mitchell_plan.asp

And Barghouti later said the eruption would have happened anyway and the visit was just a convenient excuse. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift

Also, your Oslo framing is backwards. Oslo did not promise a Palestinian state or rapid final withdrawal. It is an interim framework that explicitly defers permanent-status issues like borders, settlements, and Jerusalem to later negotiations. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/isrplo.asp

A politician visiting a holy site under police protection is not a massacre and not a justification for launching an intifada.

There are areas where Hamas was stronger and areas where it was weaker, as is true in any military comparison.

Hamas was no rag-tag militia. It was also a government organization which spent billions building a military tunnel system that was longer, better and more effective than any European power has today. They had tens of thousands of soldiers. They could reach into the deep pockets of Iran and Qatar, and diverted billions in international aid. They had tens of thousands of rockets, most inaccurate, but all with real explosives and predictable trajectories. They also developed a unique warring strategy where they put their own population at risk by firing rockets from schools, storing weapons in children's bedrooms, and so on. Hamas was a formidable army in 2023. Where we perhaps can agree is that now, after two years at the wrong end of the IDF's military capabilities, they've become a rag-tag militia.

Hospitals in Israel are generally guarded the same way hospitals in the US are: by police and security guards. As opposed to Hamas, the IDF doesn't use hospitals as bases. They don't build terror tunnels under hospitals. They don't take hostages to hospitals and kill them there. They don't shoot from hospitals. They don't store weapons in hospitals. Hamas does all of those things.

This mixes up the first 24 hours with who launched the Intifada as a sustained campaign.

Even if you think Sharon’s Temple Mount visit was provocative and Israeli police used excessive force on Sept 29, senior Palestinian figures later said the uprising was coming anyway and was planned, and Sharon was a convenient trigger.

1) Marwan Barghouti told The New Yorker: the explosion would have happened anyway; Sharon provided a good excuse. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift

2) PA communications minister Imad al Faluji: this intifada was planned in advance since Arafat returned from Camp David. https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/02/21/history-matters/

3) Suha Arafat said Arafat decided to start an intifada (MEMRI translation; CFR discusses it too). https://www.memri.org/tv/suha-arafat-widow-yasser-arafat-200... https://www.cfr.org/articles/arafat-and-second-intifada

Also, it is not just Israelis saying this. Mainstream sources record these admissions and describe the outbreak as Palestinian violence following the visit.

On Oslo: it was an interim framework with later permanent status talks, not a guaranteed rapid withdrawal and state. The PLO letter explicitly renounced terrorism and other violence. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-107hr3743ih/html/B...

I'm not vaguely asserting that "some enemy might have set foot in the hospital at some point." I'm accurately pointing out what is common knowledge: armed Hamas members were and are in hospitals, where they also took and killed Israeli hostages.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, Israel has not blown up any hospital buildings. This is a myth. If you think I'm wrong, point to which hospital building Israel blew up. Show me standard OSINT stuff: when it occurred, pictures of the rubble, the munitions used, who died.

People keep repeating that Al-Shifa is not operational. That claim does not match current primary sources.

1) UNICEF (Feb 5, 2026) reports restoration of pediatric intensive care services at Al-Shifa, including 7 PICU beds equipped with ventilators, monitors, and oxygen. https://www.unicef.org/sop/media/6131/file/Humanitarian%20Si...

2) OCHA (Dec 1, 2025) explicitly lists current service lines at Al-Shifa: 7-bed PICU, pediatric post-op inpatient care, hemodialysis, and emergency care. https://www.ochaopt.org/content/gaza-humanitarian-response-s...

3) WHO (UN Geneva briefing, Dec 12, 2025) states Al-Shifa was working again as a partially functional tertiary care hospital with many services functional. https://www.unognewsroom.org/story/en/2946/un-geneva-press-b...

4) ACAPS (Feb 5, 2026) says that by Jan 19 Al-Shifa was receiving around 500 patients daily. https://www.acaps.org/fileadmin/Data_Product/Main_media/2026...

Operational does not mean intact or well-supplied. It means treating patients and running services. The above sources show it is.

Look, I'm obviously not saying that Hamas is stronger than all European countries in every metric, and I already did mention their lack of an air force. All I'm trying to say is that by some standard ways to judge military force (e.g., number of active soldiers) Hamas surprisingly is ahead, which gives lie to the idea that it's a small force. Your position has some nuance, which I appreciate, but another commenter in this very thread wrote "This is such an insane statement that you instantly disqualify everything else you say."

It's obviously not an insane statement, given that we can debate things like the accuracy of their munitions and the lack of air power. the other commenter probably simply didn't know how many active soldiers Hamas had and how few some developed European countries have.

Calling the Second Intifada "sparked by Israeli massacres" reverses the basic chronology and ignores Palestinian leaders' own admissions.

1) Marwan Barghouti (Fatah leader of the uprising in the West Bank) told The New Yorker in Jan 2001: "The explosion would have happened anyway... But Sharon provided a good excuse." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift

2) UK Parliament Hansard (Apr 16, 2002) quotes the semi-official PA daily Al-Ayyam (Dec 6, 2000) reporting PA communications minister Imad al-Falouji: "the Palestinian authority had begun preparations for the outbreak of the current intifada... in accordance with instructions given by Chairman Arafat himself" and that it was not meant merely as a protest over Sharon's visit. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2002-04-16/debates/d69... (search within the page for "Al-Ayyam" or "Al-Falouji")

3) Arafat's widow Suha said Arafat decided to launch it ("Because I am going to start an Intifada") on Dubai TV, per MEMRI translation, quoted by CFR: https://www.cfr.org/articles/arafat-and-second-intifada https://www.memri.org/tv/suha-arafat-widow-yasser-arafat-200...

Also, this is not some uniquely Israeli talking point. Britannica describes the start as Palestinians erupting into violence after Sharon's Temple Mount visit: https://www.britannica.com/place/Israel/The-second-intifada

If Hamas had the tech, they'd surely blow up the whole of Israel, including military installations. But they don't (which I agree is good) and their history and words and actions all show a desire to target and kill civilians.

I do not keep comparing the Palestinians to Nazis. I made an analogy between Hamas and Nazis to illustrate a rhetorical point. I stand by that comparison.

It's hard to believe the earth is round, but it is.

As I mentioned above, Hamas's army was comparable to countries like Denmark (20k active soldiers), Finland, the Czech republic (27k active) and maybe even the Netherlands (40k active). Estimates of the size of Hamas's army pre October 7 range from 20k to 40k active combatants, with US intelligence estimates converging on 30k. This is looking just at fighters and excludes Hamas's political wing. They also had tens of thousands of rockets.

The whole point is that Hamas is an unconventional fighting force that does aim at civilian centers and doesn't particularly care for accuracy. You sneeringly ask me to look up CEP, as though Hamas tries to be accurate and target military installations rather than sewing terror. They know they can't go head to head against Israel militarily, and they do purposefully kill civilians (see: 10/7). I can see you laugh at kids being killed, which is horrifying!

You also scoff at the idea that Hamas had M-302s, but the reality is not only did they have them but they fired them, for example on July 9, 2014 towards Hadera. In March 2014 the IDF also siezed M-302s being smuggled into Gaza. I can go on. Your snarkiness is no substitute for research.

I wrote "people like to pretend hamas was a tiny force" and you say that's a "straight up lie." But people on this very thread have claimed that. Yes, their arsenal didn't match European countries in terms of accuracy, but in terms of raw firepower, they had lots, which is why Israel spent billions developing the iron dome.

"Probably wrong"? Who do you think has it?