[awinograd]

The parent comment is discussing a different hospital, Al-Ahli on Oct 17th, vs Al-Shifa on Nov 10th which is the article you're linking to from NYT.

Civilians being injured in a hospital is clearly a tragedy. That's why hospitals normally have protected status during a war and targeting them would be a war crime. However, hospitals (and other protected sites like schools) lose their protected status when they're used for military purposes[1]. That doesn't make the situation less tragic for the civilians. But there's a difference between striking a random hospital because you want to kill civilians and killing civilians while striking hostile forces in the same vicinity that may be actively shooting at you.

[1] https://www.icrc.org/en/document/protection-hospitals-during...

[jacooper]

They were never used as Military centers, they is zero evidence Hamas was there.

And they just committed a new massacre in a school.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/12/13/israel-ha...

[awinograd]

Hamas bringing hostages on Oct 7th to Al Shifa: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-video-hamas-hostag...

There is clearly a Hamas presence at the hospital based on the video. Additionally, there are tunnel shafts in the complex that lead to dozens of meters of tunnels with wiring/electricity connected to the hospital. Granted, the electricity comment is impossible to verify, but the tunnel system is clearly there. I don't have any guesses of who besides hamas would have built/used a tunnel like that.

Person with an RPG next to steps of Al Quds hospital: https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/13/hospital-gaza-al...

Hard to tell if this person is affiliated with Hamas or some other group, but it's clearly a combatant at the hospital.

RE the school: It's kind of difficult to tell what has happened. Clearly the school was the site of fighting, but I don't see any evidence in that video showing point blank executions of anybody let alone civilians or infants as was described.

[jacooper]

> There is clearly a Hamas presence at the hospital based on the video. Additionally, there are tunnel shafts in the complex that lead to dozens of meters of tunnels with wiring/electricity connected to the hospital. Granted, the electricity comment is impossible to verify, but the tunnel system is clearly there. I don't have any guesses of who besides hamas would have built/used a tunnel like that.

The Israelis are the ones who built the hospital and the ones who built the tunnels, their ex minister said this.

They know everything in it.

https://x.com/AJArabic/status/1727029106288808273

Even their evidence of weapons inside the hospital has been manipulated, they have changed the weapons multiple times while news were reporting on their "evidence". Even so, they said it's Hamas's HQ, but its a far cry of what they claimed, and what an HQ of such a birgade should be. The goal was to just destroy the main hospital in Gaza.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/idf-evidence-s...

> RE the school: It's kind of difficult to tell what has happened. Clearly the school was the site of fighting, but I don't see any evidence in that video showing point blank executions of anybody let alone civilians or infants as was described.

How about these pictures? Don't they remind you of anything

https://x.com/celinekasem/status/1734856596679778558

They have killed more than 20,000 and 11000+ children in three months. This is the largest civilian life loss in this decade, there is nothing even close to this, Ukraine is not close in TWO YEARS.

Gaza in 30 days(outdated statistics) and Ukraine in 563 days.

https://x.com/CGTNOfficial/status/1721620032541556978

This isn't a war.

This was never about Hamas, they are not killing people in the west bank, where Hamas has no control, they just want to kill all Palestinians.

Heck, at the start of their latest bombing campaign, they said "we are fighting human animals", this was never directed at Hamas, this was directed at the entire population of Gaza, the civilians, the doctors and of course the children.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-defense-minister-human...

[awinograd]

> https://x.com/AJArabic/status/1727029106288808273

My understanding of this is that the IDF knows that israel built an underground basement level for hospital operations, not the connected tunnel system.

They did claim it was a headquarters. I agree their CGI infographic was over the top and not representative of what was actually there. I dont think we can expect that a hamas brigade HQ looks like a state of the art command facility like you'd expect from a well established military. It's impossible to know exactly what the tunnels were used for in terms of planning / coordination but you previously said there was zero hamas presence at the hospital and I dont think that's a realistic take.

> https://x.com/celinekasem/status/1734856596679778558

It looks like the photo on the left is the IDF detaining military aged men for processing in the current conflict and the right is the british army detaining german prisoners in WWII.

https://www.alamy.com/the-british-army-in-north-west-europe-...

That's at least what the source above says. I have no idea how accurate it is to be honest, but I dont think i'm following your/the original tweeter's argument on this one. If the intent was to say the picture on the right was germans rounding up jews to put them in concentration camps, I dont think that's an apt comparison as the detainees in gaza aren't about to be executed. I think I read about ~60% of the last batch (the one where the photos went viral) were released after determining who was a civilian and not.

> They have killed more than 20,000 and 11000+ children in three months. This is the largest civilian life loss in this decade, there is nothing even close to this, Ukraine is not close in TWO YEARS.

I agree the civilian death toll is high. I also am not saying the IDF's war plan is 100% in lock step with what I would have chosen but I'm also not in their shoes.

I do think it's worth trying to compare/contrast the two situtations a little more granularly though.

1. Here are stats by month that show much higher civilian casualties in the first months of the war. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1318455/ukraine-war-casu... 2. The ukrainian army isn't dressed in civilian clothing making it impossible to distinguish their casualties from civilian casualties. Best estimates I've seen is ~1/4 of the deaths reported in gaza are combatants. Still that leaves a large number of civilians, not arguing that. 3. The ukrainian army doesn't operate out of hospitals, schools, or in tunnels under the civilian population. Based on our previous back and forth, I dont think we'll fully agree on this point, but I think it's relevant here.

> they said "we are fighting human animals", this was never directed at Hamas

The huffpost article you cite says the comment was made in reference to hamas.

As I said above, I dont think my response would have been identical to what we're seeing from the IDF. I would have pushed to limit civilian deaths more (not sure exactly how) but I would still want to respond forcefully to hamas. You can't move the civilian population out of gaza b/c that's forced displacement. You can't move them fully out of the way in gaza because it's a relatively small piece of land. You can try to move the population to "safe zones" near UN buildings and then hamas fires rockets from 100m away.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/world/middleeast/here-is-...

I'm curious what your general course of action/goals would have been in response to Oct 7. What options do you have when a hostile force _intentionally_ targets ~1k civilians and additionally brings back 150+ civilians as hostages (my counts roughly excluding soldiers they killed/captured).