Along with the very real and violent war on the ground - there is also a fierce information war. Like Tuesday's explosion at the Gaza hospital which Hamas says killed hundreds of people. Israel says it was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, which they deny. Hamas says it was an Israeli airstrike,...
"Along with the very real and violent war on the ground – there is also a fierce information war. Like Tuesday’s explosion at the Gaza hospital which Hamas says killed hundreds of people.
Israel says it was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, which they deny. Hamas says it was an Israeli airstrike, which they deny.
But tonight Forensic Architecture, Earshot and the Ramallah based NGO Al Haq have shared new information with Channel 4 News they say casts doubt on some aspects of Israel’s account."
This still leaves two major questions unanswered; if it was Israel, why did they use so much smaller bomb than they usually do and why did they target the parking lot? I've only seen them drop JDAMs from planes and not use traditional artillery. Someone can correct me on this if I'm wrong.
I'm also wondering wether they considered the fact that as the videos seems to show a malfunctioning rocket falling back to Gaza, maybe the direction of the impact could be explained by that the rocket effectively turned around mid flight.
The only sensible explanation for this being Israeli rocket would be that it's a rogue anti-air missile from iron dome that was trying to intercept these rockets but failed and for some reason didn't self-destruct before hitting the ground.
Al Jazeera had been live streaming and live reporting the entire thing, and there are multiple angles and phone videos from them and other sources that show the entire incident, from the rocket barrage, to the booster failure, to the hospital explosion.
Alot of the videos in there were confirmed 8 hours after the incident, this is the first mainstream media outlet that put it all together.
The AP was one of the first to report what the Gaza Health Ministry said, "Israel strikes hospital, killing 500", then edited their article 3 times in 1 hour, with new titles and recharacterizing the report as "they said" to try and cover the increasing uncertainty of the situation. Along with the casualty number dropping. Now some might say "But any death at all is bad, 50 or 500!". That's true, it's still really tragic, but it's also a 90% error, which is a disaster for journalism.
The article covers the JDAM theories, the Israel warned them, the Hamas announcing their launching rockets a little after the incident. All things that would make the situation more murky.
I admit I do sound like I'm defending Israel with this. This particular event is a flashpoint for me personally since I'm heavily invested in the state of journalism in an age where the flood of information can overwhelm news and lead to innaccuracies.
The rocket turning around video is a different video from last year.
Unfortunately I got banned from World News on lemmy.ml because posting this was "War Crime Denial" apparently.
Got banned from there for the same reason. I more or less independently came to the same conclusion as most news outlets later on; while there still remains a lot of unanswered questions about this - nothing, however, seems to indicate it was a deliberate Israeli airstrike.
I agree, but you seemed to say there, that the practice of "knocking" before the actual strike is bullshit, which I found surprising and was asking clarification for.
Would it be better if they did what Hamas does instead and just strike without a warning?
I find it odd that you think warning before hand so that people can evacuate is bullshit. They didn't need to do that, but they still go thru the effort to minimize civilian casualties.
Because hitting something with a small munition isn't a warning. It's just bombing civilians. Just because it's a small vldevice doesn't make it good or civilised, it's just bombing civilians.
You don't seem very keen on answering the question.
Would it be better if they didn't knock, and instead just did what Hamas does, and bomb the civilians without a warning?
I think we've established here, that not dropping bombs onto civilian population in the first place would be optimal, but since both sides are going to do it anyways and aren't going to stop, then which way is likely to lead to less collateral damage; giving a warning before hand or not warning at all? What do you think it tells about Israel that they're willing to knock first? Do you think Hamas would do that if they had the capability?
My answer to the question is that knocking isn't a warning. It's just bombing civilians. They can claim that using smaller bombs is somehow nicer but at the end of the day they're still bombing people and then they're kind enough to follow that up with bigger bombs. I don't have to be pragmatic and accept that there's going to be some bombing of civilians or indeed any bombing or attacks on anyone from any side in any conflict. You don't have to tolerate the actions of bastards doing bastard things.
Why are you criticizing Israel for the one half decent thing they're doing which is letting people know before hand that this building is going to get bombed so you better get the hell out? That's such an odd thing to critizice them for.
How do you feel about Hamas attacking that music festival and murdering 250 civilians? I'm sure those people would've liked a warning too, don't you think?