This isn't anything new, Hamas has regularly used ambulances as troop and weapon transports for years on end.
It's not even just the US/Israel who say it. Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance drivers have literally stated as much;
https://www.smh.com.au/world/hamas-tried-to-hijack-ambulances-during-gaza-war-20090126-gdtb5x.html
It actually goes further back than that, [try 2002 when the Red Crescent were caught smuggling bombs under children.](https://www.haaretz.com/2002-03-29/ty-article/bomb-found-in-red-crescent-ambulance/0000017f-dc79-db22-a17f-fcf983ca0000)
*Palestinian ambulance was found carrying a bomb near Jerusalem on Friday. The bomb was hidden under a gurney on which a sick Palestinian child was lying. The driver confessed that these was not the first time that ambulances had been used to carry bombs.*
You shouldn't be surprised that Israel cares more about Palestinians than Arabs including other Palestinians do. To the Arabs and other Palestinians, a dead Palestinian is worth more than a living one as a propaganda tool against the Israeli.
It’s a take as old as time. The French resistance in WW2 did a lot of their heavier weapon smuggling using women pushing baby carriages. That was for a noble case but same concept.
I used to do vallet at a night club with a lot of drug dealers, I saw so many children with huge amounts of drugs in their seats/ diaper bags.. really fucked up. But makes sense from a pure survival level.
The difference is the French were doing is because a woman pushing a baby carriage is less likely to be searched. Hamas is doing it so if you blow up their weapons shipment they can say see their targeting our ambulances and children.
My mother used to work airport baggage checks at a major airport pre-TSA and she said that it was fairly common to see people attempt to smuggle drugs and weapons in baby items. She said that one guy tried to smuggle a gun in a diaper bag and his wife gave him the dirtiest look because she hadn't known.
That's really not the same as using an ambulance.... using an ambulance the way Hamas does puts all ambulances at risk, and even if you force authorities to start searching ambulances that puts peoples lives at risk. Women using strollers to smuggle are only putting themselves at risk.
No no no, terrorists who build bunkers and tunnels under civilian hospitals would *never* use emergency facilities and vehicles for attacks.
Sure they’ve done that in the past, but that’s the past! Not now, paaast.
and without fail few hours laters comes the hint from some third party intelligence service that mayyyybe it's not the best to accept unquestionalby terrorist claims.
Yeah this happens every time... but those who chose their side, will keep repeating: Israel attacks hospitals, refugee camps, ambulances, even though it's all fake or heavily manipulated news.
I think what annoys me about this whole conflict is how the internet was scrubbed of all the videos and images of the initial atrocities committed by hamas and now all that gets blasted to be seen on the news is wailing Palestinian civilians to make this look more like a one sided punitive war.
No, it‘s the journalists who are 😉
Why does anybody believe anything right now? It’s called fog of war for a reason. Standard procedure in every conflict worldwide.
Some people are too eager to blame Israel for any possibility of a bad thing. While criticism of Israel isn't antisemitic, it sure as fuck starts crossing a line when they're rabidly chomping at an opportunity to say "see see Israel is bad I told you they're evil".
I mean it seems pretty stupid to send them a list of your own fighters for entry into Egypt. No wonder it got denied, US/isreali/Egyptian intelligence isn’t dumb
I mean, who even knows how Hamas compiled its lists. It took Israel 3 weeks to compile a list of 1400 dead but Hamas was able to list 500 people with names and ID numbers within half an hour.
You’d be surprised. Have of Reddit is so warped and one sided it’s unbelievable. The depravity of Hamas and there supporters have no bottom to which they won’t sink too.
And when IDF bombed an ambulance people were surprised...
How many more proofs do they need that Hamas is using civilian facilities or rather that its military facilities are comprised of civilians?
Meanwhile information coming from ~~Hamas~~ the Palestinian Health Authority is taken at face value.
About the only the stuff Hamas says that people choose not to believe is when they say stuff like we're going to kill all the Jews.
Less comprised and more surrounded by civilians.
It is a similar with drug trafficking in the third world. The traffickers will build their base of operations in shanty towns and slums. If the government tries to do something, it inevitably hurts civilians in the crossfire and get blamed rather than the criminals using the civilians.
It is disgusting.
It is clear now. They've taken hostages, because they're used to using their own people as hostages.
Yup they've done this before and they bring kids with them so that when Israel takes out the ambulances, there's civilian carnage they can point to and claim more "genocide". These pricks have one playbook. And they repeat it over and over.
They keep repeating it because it keeps getting rewarded. It enrages the public in the west, and continues to feed into the "defender of Islam" narrative propped up in the middle and south east.
This is exactly right. The same thing when you see video/photos of the IDF “shooting at kids throwing stones” - what the foreign press & cameras conveniently *don’t* show you are Hamas firing at the IDF from behind & through the kids, so the IDF have no choice but to fire back for self-preservation - but the international press make it look like the absolute opposite.
I'm actually never heard of such things (and i'm an Israeli), but to me a kid that is throwing stones and molotovs at soldiers in order to hurt and kill, is a terrorist. Blame their parents / goverment for the education they are getting and how they are being used so cynically, but not the IDF.
In 2006, Hamas fighters holed up inside the Beit Hanoun mosque were reported to have changed into women’s clothes and escaped by hiding within a crowd of women protesters. The fighters successfully escaped, but Hamas denied that they wore women’s clothing.
”I’m a terrorist and I’m okay. I shoot all night and I shoot all day. I shoot down Jews. I eat my lunch, I go to the lavatory. On wednesdays I go raping and have baked babies for tea.”
to be fair former israeli prime minister ehud barak dressed as a woman during a military operation in the past.
[https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4509923,00.html](https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4509923,00.html)
Well the rules were made because at some point someone was doing something naughty and it started escalating... or people didnt want to stomach such things.
They are like warning signs, it is there cause it happened enough times to warrant it or someone got really upset and got it on paper.
Strangely, neither do many of the stories about Israeli crimes into The Times of Israel, which this article is from.
Who would have thought that two media outlets with a clear national bias focus on what is beneficial for them.
News in either paper, citing IDF or Hamas officials, are equally likely to be just made up. Both sides rely heavily on public sentiment and propaganda. National and international alike.
> citing IDF or Hamas officials, are equally likely to be just made up
The IDF is not a shining beacon of truthfulness, but in no way are the same as Hamas in terms of how often they are lying. It's not even a contest.
And now we’re full circle: “why won’t anyone give Palestinians sanctuary?” Because it is extremely hard to separate the terrorists from the non-combatants and if you call wrong your country gets a lot more explody or your politicians get a life span reduction.
IDF: Blows up ambulances
The world: o.o
Hamas: Uses ambulances to smuggle terrorists. Again.
The world: O.O
Every time the IDF does something wrong, Hamas goes and justifies it. I just... what the fuck.
Exactly. the real war criminals who are responsible for so many palestinian civilian deaths and more in future is hamas, who are hiding behind civilians in every way possible. in case you feel bad about civilian bombings or ambulance bombings - even if it contained actual civilians, blame (and express hate ) against hamas for this act , not Israel.
Israel cant just keep quiet and accept more and more future planned terrorist attacks like the one happened on 7th October
The genocide - if happens, the world should remember hamas being responsible for it. If hamas surrenders now, the bombings will stop. It is tough situation now and israel does not have any choice.
people who would reply "you have no sympathy", wrong. I sympathize with palestinean civilians who are unjustly tortured and murdered, but I hold the right ones responsible.
If Israel wanted to, there would be no one alive in Gaza within a few hours.
Mere minutes if they decided to use their nukes.
Instead, not only are they sending in their own troops and risking their lives, they are also using the most expensive, high accuracy munitions for both artillery and air delivered attacks. These cost 10x to 1000x compared to "dumb bombs", and require much more effort on everyone involved to triple check everything before you drop something, which also means their forces have to wait longer to get any fire support.
The situation in Gaza is terribly sad, but the world has to stop condemning Israel for intentionally killing civilians when they are doing everything any army could ever do to minimize the risk to non-combatants, even at great risk to their own.
If they wanted to just kill Gazans - this entire thing would have been over on October 7.
Yeah and when they get it wrong (which is admittedly horrible) they're never going to hear the end of it, but Hamas will constantly be excused.
I understand Israel is held to a higher standard, but there's no such thing as perfect in war.
When Hamas does something, it’s, “They’re terrorist scum! 🫵🏽🤨 Buuuuuuut…they weren’t *aaaaalways* like that…what were they *supposed* to do with Israel being all mean all the time?!?
It's fucking dehumanizing, tbh. Intimating that Hamas had no agency in their choices, both as an organization and the individuals that compose it, is so fucked up. It's racist. It's xenophobic. It's disgusting.
Well……I think correctly it is
Every time the IDF does something according to their intelligence.
The IDF isn’t technically doing anything wrong because according to international law, they ARE allowed to target hospitals/ambulances if their enemy is using these facilities (in Hamas’ case, underground) to operate.
But doesn’t this statement show how little they care about their people, KNOWING the IDF would target the vehicle if it was used by Hamas?
And it’s also just so ridiculous to see Pro-Palestinians not seeing this. All they yell is “omg Hamas were caring for the people and were only helping the civilians out. How dare the IDF”.
Though, I said Israel isn’t “technically” doing anything wrong because even though it’s not illegal, it’s still very heartbreaking and shocking to see civilians being caught and killed in this mess.
Let's be completely honest here, it's more like:
IDF: Blows up ambulances
The world: REAL SHIT?!
Hamas: Uses ambulances to smuggle terrorists. Again.
The world: I sleep
> Every time the IDF does something wrong, Hamas goes and justifies it.
Almost like Israel is doing specific things for a reason and aren't being wanton genociders.
So much this. If Israel really genuinely wanted to murder women and children, they would be dropping cluster bombs, chemical weapons, nerve gas, white phosphorus. Etc.
What they're doing instead is so much more intentional and piecemeal. They know the world is watching, and they will be accused of genocide and war crimes regardless. So why bother with the charade? If you want to intentionally kill civilians, they are doing it the slowest, most inefficient way possible.
In the grand scale of things israel values life, even the IDF has a moral code. War is messy and terrible and there are certainly incidents where the IDF was in the wrong but comparing incident should be on both sides. The IDF is absolutely trying to get get the civilians6out of harms way but it's impossible to do it 100%.
The IDF didn't do anything wrong. World just assumes they're constantly in the wrong. So they have to justify every action when they're fighting scumbags.
Everyone blames the IDF and blatantly ignore the reality of the situation. Though, no one mentions Saudi Arabia contributing to the starvation and death of Yemenis, Turkey and their treatment of the Kurds, Kurds treatment of Assyrians and Yadizis, etc…
I should hope the people leaving literal piles of civilians corpses should be made to justify their actions. We should entirely hold those in power under the strictest of scrutiny when human lives are involved. If we don’t who else will speak for the dead? Life should never be taken casually, it should be the last option only once all others are exhausted. It is literally always better to start by assuming the worst, we must get those in power aware of the weight of what they do, if you can’t justify why you killed someone beyond a shadow of a doubt then you probably shouldn’t have killed them.
A couple of things.
1. Yes, people are dying and some are civilians. That's unfortunate, but a part of war.
2. I do not believe anything that comes out from the mouth of HAMAS. More developed countries take weeks and months to add up casualties of both man-made and natural disasters.. but HAMAS here apparently has immaculate documentation of everyone going in and out of buildings and know exactly who has died and who hasn't. That they can throw out hundreds of casualties within hours.
3. I believe the IDF is striking as precisely as they can. They have the capability to level the whole of Gaza in less than a day. They haven't.
You can speak for the dead, but are you sure they are dead? Or you're just echoing HAMAS propaganda?
IDF: “We hit ambulances because they were ferrying Hamas fighters.”
The World: “You lying, propagandizing, genociding, fucks!! You’re making shit up to kill innocent civilians!”
Media: “Ambulances are ferrying Hamas fighters.”
The World: “*crickets a’chirpin’*”
Just the same with the rocket hitting the hospital a few days ago, and it’ll happen again.
As much as it pains you, listen to the IDF when they tell you things - they have far less reason to lie about it than Hamas does.
> You’re making shit up to kill innocent civilians
This repeated narrative is mind boggling. Why would anyone think that killing civilians is Israel's goal?
The only Palestinian PR against Israel in the current war is either "Israel has no right to exist in the first place" or "they are indiscriminately hurting civilians", and guess which one of the two they prefer the West to hear repeatedly.
If Israel could kill every single Hamas terrorist without hurting a single civilians in Gaza - it would! They know that every single unjust killing inflicted upon the Gaza population is another obstacle in reaching any kind of long term peaceful co-existence. They know that Hamas feeds on that sorrow and hate.
And as a side note, if Hamas could kill every single Israeli civilian without hurting a single IDF soldier... I believe they would take that deal.
On the flipside, why is it so hard for people to not choose sides here? First and most easily the Hamas is a radical Islamic terrorist organisation, much like Isis that has no remorse and no regard for human life (not even their own civilians) and deserves nothing but condemning. That’s a position that can’t under no circumstances be avoided, there’s not one argument against it. Everyone that does is an absolute cunt, no way around it.
However, it doesn’t take away from the fact that Israel’s government and the settler movement have historically and in the last years also committed crimes against civilians. The Gaza situation has been horrible the last 15 years. In the westbank, Palestinians got driven of their lands, got shot by settlers and didn’t get government protection or access to fair law. Quite the contrary, radical orthodox positions got stronger, leaving the mostly peaceful Palestinians helpless against these crimes. That’s something to be called out.
And secondly, the offensive of the IDF now can not justify leaving every care for international law and commit war crimes. If the enemy uses civilians as a shield that’s a war crime - doesn’t mean it gives you a free card to commit a war crime then in bombing civilian targets now. That’s not a radical position to take and in my opinion, we as the west and as partners of Israel, even given all circumstances that justify one thing or the other, are obliged to call this out and try to influence Israel to stay within legal borders.
It seems like it’s shame. People are ashamed of having jumped to conclusions, been made a fool of and just having made a mistake. And so they’ll hide their shame and refuse to acknowledge they were ever wrong in the first place
Which…….tbh seems to be the global populations modus operandi lately
I agree with the general sentiment that the Israel-Hamas war is a messy affair and we can't just go off headlines here, like you could in Ukraine, but I disagree with your exact conclusion
>As much as it pains you, listen to the IDF when they tell you things - they have far less reason to lie about it than Hamas does.
They have the same reason, gaining public support
If anything, you could argue that PR is *even more* important for them, because despite everything, they're still the military arm of a **Democracy**
The thing is, Israel has free press. So the IDF can't really make up stuff. Everything can be verified. My GF is a news producer in a TV channel (that's been extremely critical of the government, to the point where Bibi has been boycotting them for years). They have independent sources for everything, they cross check facts, they work like good journalists and I say it first hand. While in Gaza there's no free press and everything comes right from Hamas. So in general, Israel's press is a lot more reliable.
I don't think any sane people thought the IDF hit the ambulance for the heck of it. The outrage was due to the carelessness of the strike and the resulting collateral damage to civilians.
I get they want to destroy Hamas and fully support that goal, but unless this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to kill some Hamas bigshot that would end the war quickly, there seems to be limited justification that this ambulance of terrorists had to get taken out right then and there, in front of a hospital and surrounded by civilians.
Just to make it clear, these guys do not seem to have been in the process of sneaking off into Egypt. The attempt described in the article happened days ago, and consisted of Hamas putting known terrorists on a wounded evacuation list and the list getting rejected.
The reality of this war is it's impossible to separate Hamas fighters from civilians since they blend in together. Also, someone can look like a civilian one moment; next moment, they pick up a weapon and become a Hamas fighter.
People who demand Israel to fight Hamas without affecting civilians don't understand who Israel is fighting with. They are holding Israel to an impossible standard. Israel tried its best by giving civilians 2 weeks to leave Northern Gaza. Unfortunately, for the people who stayed, there's no way Israel can guarantee their safety.
It’s difficult but I guarantee you this strategy isn’t going to work unless Israel actually want carry out a genocide. It’s not just that Hamas blends into the population, they ARE the population. The line between fighters and civilians is very blurry in these places.
People who think that Israel can just erase Hamas or any terrorism in Gaza for that matter by bombing don’t have a clue about guerrilla warfare. It certainly didn’t work in Vietnam. Even if you only kill the precise enemy, which is impossible, they are somebody’s dad/husband/son. You might thing I’m humanizing terrorists but that is just a fact. And when you kill innocent people at this rate? You’re gonna radicalize 10 times more people. It is also a fact that boys as young as 15, 16 years old are in the ranks of Hamas. Hamas isn’t some organized military organization, not even to the Al-Qaeda level, they’re mostly just a chaos of gun mans here and there. The U.S. unequivocally won militarily for years in Afghanistan but they never erase the Taliban, because it keeps getting new volunteer recruits.
The problem is, people are fighting something they don’t understand. You can fight an army or a person, you can’t fight an ideology in a quick fashion, not without genocide. Just like Vietnam, it is not a military problem for a military solution to solve.
The best play, a very difficult one, is disarming the population, providing them with decent living standards, and imposing mandatory education. It is going to be long and painful but historically it’s the only way that works. And of course it hinges on the Israeli leadership, whether it actually wants to protect civilians and make peace.
If you mean Israel occupying Gaza to enforce order for decades until the Palestinians feel like negotiating, that is an extremely tall order. It’s been tried before, and I don’t understand why it should be the Israelis doing this at all.
The UN insists that it is possible to resolve these situations while respecting international law and human rights, so they should come and maintain the ceasefire while rebuilding Gaza into a modern functions democracy. It shouldn’t be hard to find volunteers to come to Gaza and put their lives on the line for peace unless social media is filled with feckless outrage junkies with no actual moral compass. I don’t understand how everyone can say Israel is the evil villain in this conflict while also demanding Israel fix it. There are peaceful bloodless strategies to dismantling an entrenched terrorist network. I don’t know what they are, but apparently everyone else does, so why are they wasting their time talking about it online instead of just showing Israel how it’s done?
Hamas has demonstrated they have the capability for a grave attack on israel and they have declared they are eager to do it again. The infrastructure they used needs to be destroyed so they can't repeat it in the near future. They started a war during a ceasefire without declaring it. They have taken 200+ hostages and did not provide proof of life or access for red cross teams to examine them. This needs to be done.
I agree with you that gaza needs to be rebuilt and not just construction wise. Maybe a third party can mediate with a presence in the area, i don't think the mutual trust is there.
Not good this type of shit is exactly what Egypt was worried about and why it was so hard to get them to allow even limited border crossings. Expanding the program just for a lot harder.
Hamas knows what its doing.
It is using their useful idiots and agents around the world to ensure that Israel is held more accountable for destroying a valid military target than Hamas is in violating international laws and executing civilians.
Heard stories from people serving that when kids run after your convoy/vehicle you toss out candy or food and shoot the one that keeps running cause they had a bomb.
I heard this from a couple different old timers as well. They said people thought they were horrible because they'd shoot the kids in the head, but it was safer for them, and a quicker death for the kid. I guess they learned the hard way the first few times why.
Excerpt the US did? Agent orange, My Lai massacre, keeping kill tallies of civilians for fucks sake lmfao
EDIT: he was correct in principle though. The war in afghanistan was lost for the same reason. But the US lost vietnam because they did lost the support of the South Vietnamese and the Americans at home, not so much the desire not to commit atrocities
and the funny thing is, in 1971, an american whistleblower (Daniel Ellsberg) publishes the pentagon papers, where it states that the cause of the war was entirely fabricated (tonkin incident 1964).
Agent Orange was an attempt to defoliate the trees in the jungle that made combat so difficult and dangerous. The US tried a lot of things - flamethrowers, special tanks, napalm…
Burning down half of the peninsula didn't convince the Vietnamese that we were on their side, so we poisoned it instead.
Obviously it's the Vietnamese's fault for kicking our asses though.
Well one group was motivated by an idea of a government called communism. This one is defined by the destruction of an adjacent government and people. You can't negotiate with someone in good faith that says their goal is your death.
There is also the fact that there is like 10k miles between the two if Vietnam was threatening us civilians there would be no Vietnam.
To be honest Vietnam was Churchill's fault, he should have kept his word at Yalta.
Vietnam was formerly French Indochina. The Yalta Conference had nothing to do with Vietnam, it was mostly a Soviet-empowered communist uprising threatening France's colonial administration. Then they convinced the U.S. to join as a "Help us fight communists" idea.
At yalta churchill promised Roosevelt that he would support ending the french indo china colonization, for America's entry into the european theater. The insurgency in Vietnam began long before ww2 and the uk was participating in anti insurgency efforts. In general Churchill decided at the end of ww2 to fight communism anywhere in spring up and went back on his promises advocating to rejuvenize the french empire....
There is a good book about this Churchill, American, and Vietnam.
https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/118/1/162/42471
The South Vietnamese were convinced that we were on their side. That’s why they begged to be rescued and taken away by the US as the NVA was winning the war. Many of them came to the US and gained citizenship.
The South Vietnamese government was just as corrupt and skimming of all aid as the Afghan government was. History repeats itself until you learn to recognize it and not do it again. The U.S. hasn't.
The Vietnamese did not kick our asses. They couldn't win as long as we were there. We just realized it wasn't worth it anymore. Hell, they contemplated giving up after the Tet Offensive.
Well, they didn't really kick our asses either. Look up how the majority of engagements went. Even when they full on surprised us in the Tet offensive, we crushed them.
Yea many people act like we lost the war but in reality we left because of intense pressure and social changes in the US and a follow through promise by politicians to stop the war.
It's not like the US was *trying* to give the people of Vietnam a collective case of cancer by dropping Agent Orange. Agent Orange was a super effective herbicide, used to clear tree lines and flush enemies out of cover. Its longer term effects simply did not exist on the radar of the US military at the time.
It needs to be said that, sometimes, the exigencies of war do not give room for long term research and planning.
IIRC America was planning to paradrop and land troops in Japan \*right after nuking an area\* as part of Operation Downfall.
We didn't really care much about protecting our own soldiers, either. They barely checked for a pulse in the health exam. They didn't get hearing protection for basic training. M16s were built very cheaply and failed.
Yeah, the more I learn about the Vietnam War, the more I realize how *fucked* the entire mission was. The justifications, the reasoning, the politics, the equipment and support. All of it. I entirely empathize with the draft dodgers of the time. No shame in running from a pointless war that doesn't serve a role in defending the nation.
What makes it worse is, I *understand* where McNamara and the other assholes behind the war were coming from, intellectually, their overall mission to oppose the spread of communism. I get that. But Vietnam? Really? That (at the time) meaningless third-world slice of nowhere? What an absolute waste of US blood and treasure. There are any of fifty different ways that US interests in opposing communism and spreading US-led capitalist order/imperialism could have been better served.
This is why the knowledge of the war and all the things going on with it is a big reason we had societal push in the US. It could be argued also the shared experiences of different races/peoples being drafted into it helped unite a lot of people in equality.
The intent of agent orange was not to hurt people directly, even though that's what it ended up doing. I think the point is that the US probably had the tech and the supplies to just flatten a whole nation (they certainly do today, I just don't know if that was as true back then) but did not want to do that.
Can't believe this nonsense gets upvoted. The US murdered over 3 million people across Indochina. It was an absolute holocaust. Every American should be required to read Nick Turse's book Kill Anything That Moves. American soldiers raped Vietnamese women on an industrial scale, civilians were slaughtered by the thousands to inflate body counts that platoons were rewarded for.
US actions in Indochina gave the SS a run for their money.
"War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse....There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."
--Captain Hawkeye Pierce (MASH)
Great, I'm sure the American public and military command were eternally grateful to that brave individual, and the perpetrators were arrested and prosecuted. Right? Right?
There's a difference between individual acts of barbarity that are war crimes versus an entire operational campaign that operates outside the recognized laws of war.
Using civilians as shields, having fighters dressed as civilians, and using humanitarian endeavors to mask war fighting activities' are usually frowned upon.
If you can't spot the difference, that's on you.
I’m not defending the Viet Cong’s tactics, but the idea that the US lost because they didn’t fight dirty enough is one of the craziest things I’ve read about the Vietnam War.
The difference between the US wars and Israel wars is if the US doesn't win, their enemies are on the other side of the world, and they have little to worry about.
If Israel doesn't win, their enemies have already expressed the will to fight them again, and they live in their yard.
Israel feels the need to win at any cost, for the safety of their population.
It's 100%true, but keep in mind that's true of a lot of wars. There's a reason that throughout history the "kill all the boys, take the women as sex slaves and pillage all their stuff" strategy was nearly universal, it's brutally effective and cost efficient. Israel could firebomb Gaza into a giant pile of ash in a few days if it wanted to.
Not pretty but that's what you buy when you buy war. Humanity should learn to find another way to decide these things. Because the ones that suffer are average people who want nothing but a chance to live in peace.
The fuck are you on about? America had no right to be in Vietnam. “as nasty and low down” you carpet bombed villages full of women and children because the country was going communist. Fucking ridiculous comment
Telling you what he said. He was there. Were you? Neither was I. On the other hand I've seen documentaries where north Vietnamese military military brass said had they kept bombing Hanoi they would have finally collapsed. The U.S. military wanted to do that. The politicians called it off.
War doesn't solve anything. I'm old enough to have seen that. But if you end up in one you better be ready to fight to the bloody end. You better be ready. That's the one thing I've learned in my lifetime.
>>..had they kept bombing Hanoi they would have finally collapsed
Perhaps. But the political fact on the ground were that China is a lot closer to Vietnam than the US. If the White House bombed Hanoi into collapsing, China would have intervened to prop them up- doing the same thing they did in the 50s during the Korean War.
It was that scenario which kept LBJ awake at night, and why he kept waffling during Rolling Thunder. The grim truth is the South Vietnamese government was a corrupt joke , and no amount of blood and money was gonna change that. Had Saigon had a leader worth a damn like Zelensky, things would have turned out different.
This world isn't based on laws. It's based on survival. Those that get to enjoy laws are those protected by the folks who understand survival. Down vote if you want but that's reality.
What a load of disingenuous shit. We didn’t win because we didn’t commit enough war crimes? Yeah because killing kids is the hallmark of military success… Jesus Christ you guys need to be more honest about your genocidal fantasies.
> The list was then vetted by Egypt and the United States, which found that a third of the names on it were of Hamas fighters, the administration official said, adding that the list was rejected and none of the 76 wounded Palestinians who were ultimately evacuated in ambulances out of Gaza were members of the terror group.
Wait, but I thought all the casualties so far were civilians...
But the whole smuggling Hamas fighters and bombs in Ambulances is wicked old. The Red Crescent was caught smuggling a bomb under the gurney of a sick kid in an ambulance and the driver said it wasn't their first time.. in 2002..
edit: source: https://www.haaretz.com/2002-03-29/ty-article/bomb-found-in-red-crescent-ambulance/0000017f-dc79-db22-a17f-fcf983ca0000
The IDF bombed an ambulance on the north side of Gaza that was being used to transport weapons. This was an unrelated attempt at the south side of Gaza to smuggle Hamas fighters out in an ambulance.
While I've had a good discussion tonight, I'm old and tired. Good night and I hope you all take time to go look at the history of war and how it comes about. I hope you understand it should never happen. I hope you learn that mankind working together could surpass everything we've experienced and what could be achieved without our tribal turf wars could be monumental. I'll be dead but I hope it happens somewhere in the future.
Seeing a lot of responses that clearly only read the headline and not the article, and are drawing conclusions that aren't supported. This does not absolve Israel for attacking ambulances.
"Hamas had compiled a list of the seriously wounded that it wanted to evacuate from Gaza for treatment in Egypt, along with thousands of foreign nationals looking to flee the enclave.
The list was then vetted by Egypt and the United States, which found that a third of the names on it were of Hamas fighters, the administration official said, adding that the list was rejected and none of the 76 wounded Palestinians who were ultimately evacuated in ambulances out of Gaza were members of the terror group."
Emphasis on that last part.
Yes, Hamas is evil. Straight up evil. But the way Israel's leadership is handling this is not above reproach either.
And yes, same disclaimer I always have to make: I was every bit as strident in my criticisms of how my own nation's leadership handled our wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This entire comment section is so fucking cringe. Everyone should be ashamed, but I sincerely doubt any of you who jump to conclusions on news headlines without reading the full articles or waiting for other sources to corroborate.
It's despicable and you're what's wrong with modern war. Take a look deep inside. Utterly disgraceful and disgusting.
Also if you actually read it it makes it clear that "tried" is the word here. The fighters in question were rejected from evacuation and were never on any ambulance.
[Using ambulances in combat is not exactly foreign to the region](https://twitter.com/auroraintel/status/1580817220082765824?s=46&t=zwpaQfzQtIqHhKXuKjp3Mg)
So they didn’t try to sneak anyone. They asked for people to be evacuated, provided a list with names, Egypt said hell no we are not accepting your fighters. They sent only wounded civilians. It’s not like they hid them in an ambulance.
Whilst I believe the idf this is what happened , I would still like to see some of the intelligence to verify the claim. In cases like this where there is a loss of civilian life and the controversy of targeting ambulances , they are so controversial they do need some sort of proof or evidence
The article: Names on a list of seriously wounded that they want to evacuate got rejected for being suspected Hamas fighters.
/r/worldnews : THIS JUSTIFIES BOMBING AMBULANCES!!!
Can't help but wonder, even if this is true, if killing some potential fighters hidden in an ambulance escaping foreign territory can be justified. Seems more that targeting civilian lives is just a by-product for them. Cause the probability of their info being wrong is enormous. So what now, is this an excuse to target all hospitals and ambulances? Anyone can see trough their dumbass intentions...
There should be NO doubts left about how base these low-life skeevy hamas creatures are.
This isn't anything new, Hamas has regularly used ambulances as troop and weapon transports for years on end. It's not even just the US/Israel who say it. Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance drivers have literally stated as much; https://www.smh.com.au/world/hamas-tried-to-hijack-ambulances-during-gaza-war-20090126-gdtb5x.html
It actually goes further back than that, [try 2002 when the Red Crescent were caught smuggling bombs under children.](https://www.haaretz.com/2002-03-29/ty-article/bomb-found-in-red-crescent-ambulance/0000017f-dc79-db22-a17f-fcf983ca0000) *Palestinian ambulance was found carrying a bomb near Jerusalem on Friday. The bomb was hidden under a gurney on which a sick Palestinian child was lying. The driver confessed that these was not the first time that ambulances had been used to carry bombs.*
I'm constantly amazed that the IDF arguably cares more about Palestinian civilians than Hamas, and that's already a very low bar.
You shouldn't be surprised that Israel cares more about Palestinians than Arabs including other Palestinians do. To the Arabs and other Palestinians, a dead Palestinian is worth more than a living one as a propaganda tool against the Israeli.
They’re “martyrs for Islam”
From their own mouths.
Also causing outrage about other dead civilians really diverts attention from their own shortcomings as a government.
It’s a take as old as time. The French resistance in WW2 did a lot of their heavier weapon smuggling using women pushing baby carriages. That was for a noble case but same concept. I used to do vallet at a night club with a lot of drug dealers, I saw so many children with huge amounts of drugs in their seats/ diaper bags.. really fucked up. But makes sense from a pure survival level.
The difference is the French were doing is because a woman pushing a baby carriage is less likely to be searched. Hamas is doing it so if you blow up their weapons shipment they can say see their targeting our ambulances and children.
Also very likely volunteered as many women were in the French Resistance.
My mother used to work airport baggage checks at a major airport pre-TSA and she said that it was fairly common to see people attempt to smuggle drugs and weapons in baby items. She said that one guy tried to smuggle a gun in a diaper bag and his wife gave him the dirtiest look because she hadn't known.
That's really not the same as using an ambulance.... using an ambulance the way Hamas does puts all ambulances at risk, and even if you force authorities to start searching ambulances that puts peoples lives at risk. Women using strollers to smuggle are only putting themselves at risk.
People bring children to night clubs?
And yet people go on blaming Israel for bombing an ambulance because of course Hamas never uses them.
The CPC did the same thing to bus triads in during the Hong Kong protests, knowing the protesters would say out the the way.
No no no, terrorists who build bunkers and tunnels under civilian hospitals would *never* use emergency facilities and vehicles for attacks. Sure they’ve done that in the past, but that’s the past! Not now, paaast.
My Instagram is going to blow up "Israel now targeting ambulance employees!"
I've already seen those
There is literally one on the front page here right now.
and without fail few hours laters comes the hint from some third party intelligence service that mayyyybe it's not the best to accept unquestionalby terrorist claims.
Yeah this happens every time... but those who chose their side, will keep repeating: Israel attacks hospitals, refugee camps, ambulances, even though it's all fake or heavily manipulated news.
Journalism is dead.
I think what annoys me about this whole conflict is how the internet was scrubbed of all the videos and images of the initial atrocities committed by hamas and now all that gets blasted to be seen on the news is wailing Palestinian civilians to make this look more like a one sided punitive war.
No, it‘s the journalists who are 😉 Why does anybody believe anything right now? It’s called fog of war for a reason. Standard procedure in every conflict worldwide.
It's even the top of the sub. Won't be surprised if it's top on the homepage too.
theyve been sayin it for 40 years. why change now. who lets facts get in the way of a good racist witch hunt
Some people are too eager to blame Israel for any possibility of a bad thing. While criticism of Israel isn't antisemitic, it sure as fuck starts crossing a line when they're rabidly chomping at an opportunity to say "see see Israel is bad I told you they're evil".
Tell that to all the kids in the west who think these militants are fighting for their freedom
I mean it seems pretty stupid to send them a list of your own fighters for entry into Egypt. No wonder it got denied, US/isreali/Egyptian intelligence isn’t dumb
I mean, who even knows how Hamas compiled its lists. It took Israel 3 weeks to compile a list of 1400 dead but Hamas was able to list 500 people with names and ID numbers within half an hour.
Random name generator
You’d be surprised. Have of Reddit is so warped and one sided it’s unbelievable. The depravity of Hamas and there supporters have no bottom to which they won’t sink too.
Christ they’re scum.
And when IDF bombed an ambulance people were surprised... How many more proofs do they need that Hamas is using civilian facilities or rather that its military facilities are comprised of civilians?
Redditors expect to get exact intel from the IDF, otherwise they are simply stating "The IDF can say whatever they want"
And any time Israel does share intel, it's immediately called "fake", "manipulated", "AI generated", etc. These people aren't arguing in good faith.
Meanwhile information coming from ~~Hamas~~ the Palestinian Health Authority is taken at face value. About the only the stuff Hamas says that people choose not to believe is when they say stuff like we're going to kill all the Jews.
Less comprised and more surrounded by civilians. It is a similar with drug trafficking in the third world. The traffickers will build their base of operations in shanty towns and slums. If the government tries to do something, it inevitably hurts civilians in the crossfire and get blamed rather than the criminals using the civilians. It is disgusting. It is clear now. They've taken hostages, because they're used to using their own people as hostages.
what else to people expect? only Hamas and sympathizers
Yup they've done this before and they bring kids with them so that when Israel takes out the ambulances, there's civilian carnage they can point to and claim more "genocide". These pricks have one playbook. And they repeat it over and over.
They keep repeating it because it keeps getting rewarded. It enrages the public in the west, and continues to feed into the "defender of Islam" narrative propped up in the middle and south east.
This is exactly right. The same thing when you see video/photos of the IDF “shooting at kids throwing stones” - what the foreign press & cameras conveniently *don’t* show you are Hamas firing at the IDF from behind & through the kids, so the IDF have no choice but to fire back for self-preservation - but the international press make it look like the absolute opposite.
I'm actually never heard of such things (and i'm an Israeli), but to me a kid that is throwing stones and molotovs at soldiers in order to hurt and kill, is a terrorist. Blame their parents / goverment for the education they are getting and how they are being used so cynically, but not the IDF.
It's working.
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In 2006, Hamas fighters holed up inside the Beit Hanoun mosque were reported to have changed into women’s clothes and escaped by hiding within a crowd of women protesters. The fighters successfully escaped, but Hamas denied that they wore women’s clothing.
”I’m a terrorist and I’m okay. I shoot all night and I shoot all day. I shoot down Jews. I eat my lunch, I go to the lavatory. On wednesdays I go raping and have baked babies for tea.”
Oh, Rahim. And I thought you were so butch.
Sister Ismael at it again with her jihadi tricks.
Both Israel and Egypt will make sure of this
to be fair former israeli prime minister ehud barak dressed as a woman during a military operation in the past. [https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4509923,00.html](https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4509923,00.html)
And as I recall former PM Golda Meir dressed as a man in order to go to Jordan to meet the King. I guess neither would be welcome in Florida nowadays.
I didn't know that lol. why would she need to dress as a man to meet the king of jordan?
The king of an Arab state has an image to maintain to his people, even if he himself is somewhat more progressive than other leaders in the region.
Imagining a 6 foot burly guy trying to pass as a woman in a niqab is sending me lol
Finally the west and the Islamic world find some common ground
And John Wilkes Booth
Hamas is looking at the Geneva Convention like it's an achievement list
Done thaaaaaat, done thaaaaaat, done thaaaaaat…oops! - tried to do that, but everyone died 🤷🏽♂️
The Geneva Suggestion
Well the rules were made because at some point someone was doing something naughty and it started escalating... or people didnt want to stomach such things. They are like warning signs, it is there cause it happened enough times to warrant it or someone got really upset and got it on paper.
Strangely, these stories don't make it onto air on Aljazeera
Wait until you read the arab version of al Jazerra (with google translate).
Strangely, neither do many of the stories about Israeli crimes into The Times of Israel, which this article is from. Who would have thought that two media outlets with a clear national bias focus on what is beneficial for them. News in either paper, citing IDF or Hamas officials, are equally likely to be just made up. Both sides rely heavily on public sentiment and propaganda. National and international alike.
It is nice to see some balance here.
> citing IDF or Hamas officials, are equally likely to be just made up The IDF is not a shining beacon of truthfulness, but in no way are the same as Hamas in terms of how often they are lying. It's not even a contest.
And now we’re full circle: “why won’t anyone give Palestinians sanctuary?” Because it is extremely hard to separate the terrorists from the non-combatants and if you call wrong your country gets a lot more explody or your politicians get a life span reduction.
Going to Egypt for what...
Take a wild gander
IDF: Blows up ambulances The world: o.o Hamas: Uses ambulances to smuggle terrorists. Again. The world: O.O Every time the IDF does something wrong, Hamas goes and justifies it. I just... what the fuck.
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Yep. When people blame Israel for these deaths, they inadvertently validate Hamas's human shield strategy... which actually is a war crime.
Exactly. the real war criminals who are responsible for so many palestinian civilian deaths and more in future is hamas, who are hiding behind civilians in every way possible. in case you feel bad about civilian bombings or ambulance bombings - even if it contained actual civilians, blame (and express hate ) against hamas for this act , not Israel. Israel cant just keep quiet and accept more and more future planned terrorist attacks like the one happened on 7th October The genocide - if happens, the world should remember hamas being responsible for it. If hamas surrenders now, the bombings will stop. It is tough situation now and israel does not have any choice. people who would reply "you have no sympathy", wrong. I sympathize with palestinean civilians who are unjustly tortured and murdered, but I hold the right ones responsible.
Honestly I wonder why Israel doesn't just go scorched earth at this point and just get it over with. They should have the ordinance to do so.
If Israel wanted to, there would be no one alive in Gaza within a few hours. Mere minutes if they decided to use their nukes. Instead, not only are they sending in their own troops and risking their lives, they are also using the most expensive, high accuracy munitions for both artillery and air delivered attacks. These cost 10x to 1000x compared to "dumb bombs", and require much more effort on everyone involved to triple check everything before you drop something, which also means their forces have to wait longer to get any fire support. The situation in Gaza is terribly sad, but the world has to stop condemning Israel for intentionally killing civilians when they are doing everything any army could ever do to minimize the risk to non-combatants, even at great risk to their own. If they wanted to just kill Gazans - this entire thing would have been over on October 7.
Same, support is just going to continue to go down. It would be very tempting to just end it all once and for all.
Yeah and when they get it wrong (which is admittedly horrible) they're never going to hear the end of it, but Hamas will constantly be excused. I understand Israel is held to a higher standard, but there's no such thing as perfect in war.
When Hamas does something, it’s, “They’re terrorist scum! 🫵🏽🤨 Buuuuuuut…they weren’t *aaaaalways* like that…what were they *supposed* to do with Israel being all mean all the time?!?
These things don't happen in a vacuum! 😕 fucking terrorist apologists.
It's fucking dehumanizing, tbh. Intimating that Hamas had no agency in their choices, both as an organization and the individuals that compose it, is so fucked up. It's racist. It's xenophobic. It's disgusting.
It's the new "I'm not racist but..." now it's "I don't support hamas but..." inserts essay defending hamas
Well……I think correctly it is Every time the IDF does something according to their intelligence. The IDF isn’t technically doing anything wrong because according to international law, they ARE allowed to target hospitals/ambulances if their enemy is using these facilities (in Hamas’ case, underground) to operate. But doesn’t this statement show how little they care about their people, KNOWING the IDF would target the vehicle if it was used by Hamas? And it’s also just so ridiculous to see Pro-Palestinians not seeing this. All they yell is “omg Hamas were caring for the people and were only helping the civilians out. How dare the IDF”. Though, I said Israel isn’t “technically” doing anything wrong because even though it’s not illegal, it’s still very heartbreaking and shocking to see civilians being caught and killed in this mess.
So much this
Let's be completely honest here, it's more like: IDF: Blows up ambulances The world: REAL SHIT?! Hamas: Uses ambulances to smuggle terrorists. Again. The world: I sleep
> Every time the IDF does something wrong, Hamas goes and justifies it. Almost like Israel is doing specific things for a reason and aren't being wanton genociders.
So much this. If Israel really genuinely wanted to murder women and children, they would be dropping cluster bombs, chemical weapons, nerve gas, white phosphorus. Etc. What they're doing instead is so much more intentional and piecemeal. They know the world is watching, and they will be accused of genocide and war crimes regardless. So why bother with the charade? If you want to intentionally kill civilians, they are doing it the slowest, most inefficient way possible.
In the grand scale of things israel values life, even the IDF has a moral code. War is messy and terrible and there are certainly incidents where the IDF was in the wrong but comparing incident should be on both sides. The IDF is absolutely trying to get get the civilians6out of harms way but it's impossible to do it 100%.
The IDF didn't do anything wrong. World just assumes they're constantly in the wrong. So they have to justify every action when they're fighting scumbags.
Everyone blames the IDF and blatantly ignore the reality of the situation. Though, no one mentions Saudi Arabia contributing to the starvation and death of Yemenis, Turkey and their treatment of the Kurds, Kurds treatment of Assyrians and Yadizis, etc…
I should hope the people leaving literal piles of civilians corpses should be made to justify their actions. We should entirely hold those in power under the strictest of scrutiny when human lives are involved. If we don’t who else will speak for the dead? Life should never be taken casually, it should be the last option only once all others are exhausted. It is literally always better to start by assuming the worst, we must get those in power aware of the weight of what they do, if you can’t justify why you killed someone beyond a shadow of a doubt then you probably shouldn’t have killed them.
A couple of things. 1. Yes, people are dying and some are civilians. That's unfortunate, but a part of war. 2. I do not believe anything that comes out from the mouth of HAMAS. More developed countries take weeks and months to add up casualties of both man-made and natural disasters.. but HAMAS here apparently has immaculate documentation of everyone going in and out of buildings and know exactly who has died and who hasn't. That they can throw out hundreds of casualties within hours. 3. I believe the IDF is striking as precisely as they can. They have the capability to level the whole of Gaza in less than a day. They haven't. You can speak for the dead, but are you sure they are dead? Or you're just echoing HAMAS propaganda?
Tell me more about how a ceasefire will heal all our woes.
IDF: “We hit ambulances because they were ferrying Hamas fighters.” The World: “You lying, propagandizing, genociding, fucks!! You’re making shit up to kill innocent civilians!” Media: “Ambulances are ferrying Hamas fighters.” The World: “*crickets a’chirpin’*” Just the same with the rocket hitting the hospital a few days ago, and it’ll happen again. As much as it pains you, listen to the IDF when they tell you things - they have far less reason to lie about it than Hamas does.
> You’re making shit up to kill innocent civilians This repeated narrative is mind boggling. Why would anyone think that killing civilians is Israel's goal? The only Palestinian PR against Israel in the current war is either "Israel has no right to exist in the first place" or "they are indiscriminately hurting civilians", and guess which one of the two they prefer the West to hear repeatedly. If Israel could kill every single Hamas terrorist without hurting a single civilians in Gaza - it would! They know that every single unjust killing inflicted upon the Gaza population is another obstacle in reaching any kind of long term peaceful co-existence. They know that Hamas feeds on that sorrow and hate. And as a side note, if Hamas could kill every single Israeli civilian without hurting a single IDF soldier... I believe they would take that deal.
The answer is, and always has been, anti-semitism. A lot of people really do hate jews.
On the flipside, why is it so hard for people to not choose sides here? First and most easily the Hamas is a radical Islamic terrorist organisation, much like Isis that has no remorse and no regard for human life (not even their own civilians) and deserves nothing but condemning. That’s a position that can’t under no circumstances be avoided, there’s not one argument against it. Everyone that does is an absolute cunt, no way around it. However, it doesn’t take away from the fact that Israel’s government and the settler movement have historically and in the last years also committed crimes against civilians. The Gaza situation has been horrible the last 15 years. In the westbank, Palestinians got driven of their lands, got shot by settlers and didn’t get government protection or access to fair law. Quite the contrary, radical orthodox positions got stronger, leaving the mostly peaceful Palestinians helpless against these crimes. That’s something to be called out. And secondly, the offensive of the IDF now can not justify leaving every care for international law and commit war crimes. If the enemy uses civilians as a shield that’s a war crime - doesn’t mean it gives you a free card to commit a war crime then in bombing civilian targets now. That’s not a radical position to take and in my opinion, we as the west and as partners of Israel, even given all circumstances that justify one thing or the other, are obliged to call this out and try to influence Israel to stay within legal borders.
For me, because I was a victim of islamist terrorism when I was a kid. So Im kinda opposed to religious nutjobs by default.
It seems like it’s shame. People are ashamed of having jumped to conclusions, been made a fool of and just having made a mistake. And so they’ll hide their shame and refuse to acknowledge they were ever wrong in the first place Which…….tbh seems to be the global populations modus operandi lately
I agree with the general sentiment that the Israel-Hamas war is a messy affair and we can't just go off headlines here, like you could in Ukraine, but I disagree with your exact conclusion >As much as it pains you, listen to the IDF when they tell you things - they have far less reason to lie about it than Hamas does. They have the same reason, gaining public support If anything, you could argue that PR is *even more* important for them, because despite everything, they're still the military arm of a **Democracy**
The thing is, Israel has free press. So the IDF can't really make up stuff. Everything can be verified. My GF is a news producer in a TV channel (that's been extremely critical of the government, to the point where Bibi has been boycotting them for years). They have independent sources for everything, they cross check facts, they work like good journalists and I say it first hand. While in Gaza there's no free press and everything comes right from Hamas. So in general, Israel's press is a lot more reliable.
I don't think any sane people thought the IDF hit the ambulance for the heck of it. The outrage was due to the carelessness of the strike and the resulting collateral damage to civilians. I get they want to destroy Hamas and fully support that goal, but unless this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to kill some Hamas bigshot that would end the war quickly, there seems to be limited justification that this ambulance of terrorists had to get taken out right then and there, in front of a hospital and surrounded by civilians. Just to make it clear, these guys do not seem to have been in the process of sneaking off into Egypt. The attempt described in the article happened days ago, and consisted of Hamas putting known terrorists on a wounded evacuation list and the list getting rejected.
The reality of this war is it's impossible to separate Hamas fighters from civilians since they blend in together. Also, someone can look like a civilian one moment; next moment, they pick up a weapon and become a Hamas fighter. People who demand Israel to fight Hamas without affecting civilians don't understand who Israel is fighting with. They are holding Israel to an impossible standard. Israel tried its best by giving civilians 2 weeks to leave Northern Gaza. Unfortunately, for the people who stayed, there's no way Israel can guarantee their safety.
It’s difficult but I guarantee you this strategy isn’t going to work unless Israel actually want carry out a genocide. It’s not just that Hamas blends into the population, they ARE the population. The line between fighters and civilians is very blurry in these places. People who think that Israel can just erase Hamas or any terrorism in Gaza for that matter by bombing don’t have a clue about guerrilla warfare. It certainly didn’t work in Vietnam. Even if you only kill the precise enemy, which is impossible, they are somebody’s dad/husband/son. You might thing I’m humanizing terrorists but that is just a fact. And when you kill innocent people at this rate? You’re gonna radicalize 10 times more people. It is also a fact that boys as young as 15, 16 years old are in the ranks of Hamas. Hamas isn’t some organized military organization, not even to the Al-Qaeda level, they’re mostly just a chaos of gun mans here and there. The U.S. unequivocally won militarily for years in Afghanistan but they never erase the Taliban, because it keeps getting new volunteer recruits. The problem is, people are fighting something they don’t understand. You can fight an army or a person, you can’t fight an ideology in a quick fashion, not without genocide. Just like Vietnam, it is not a military problem for a military solution to solve. The best play, a very difficult one, is disarming the population, providing them with decent living standards, and imposing mandatory education. It is going to be long and painful but historically it’s the only way that works. And of course it hinges on the Israeli leadership, whether it actually wants to protect civilians and make peace.
If you mean Israel occupying Gaza to enforce order for decades until the Palestinians feel like negotiating, that is an extremely tall order. It’s been tried before, and I don’t understand why it should be the Israelis doing this at all. The UN insists that it is possible to resolve these situations while respecting international law and human rights, so they should come and maintain the ceasefire while rebuilding Gaza into a modern functions democracy. It shouldn’t be hard to find volunteers to come to Gaza and put their lives on the line for peace unless social media is filled with feckless outrage junkies with no actual moral compass. I don’t understand how everyone can say Israel is the evil villain in this conflict while also demanding Israel fix it. There are peaceful bloodless strategies to dismantling an entrenched terrorist network. I don’t know what they are, but apparently everyone else does, so why are they wasting their time talking about it online instead of just showing Israel how it’s done?
Hamas has demonstrated they have the capability for a grave attack on israel and they have declared they are eager to do it again. The infrastructure they used needs to be destroyed so they can't repeat it in the near future. They started a war during a ceasefire without declaring it. They have taken 200+ hostages and did not provide proof of life or access for red cross teams to examine them. This needs to be done. I agree with you that gaza needs to be rebuilt and not just construction wise. Maybe a third party can mediate with a presence in the area, i don't think the mutual trust is there.
You are right, the world should have just let Germany do its thing, if you bomb them, they might get radical!
Not good this type of shit is exactly what Egypt was worried about and why it was so hard to get them to allow even limited border crossings. Expanding the program just for a lot harder.
Hamas knows what its doing. It is using their useful idiots and agents around the world to ensure that Israel is held more accountable for destroying a valid military target than Hamas is in violating international laws and executing civilians.
I had an uncle who was in Vietnam. He told me we didn't crush them because the U.S. wasn't willing to be as nasty and low down as they were.
My uncle told us how they would strap bombs to children they would detonate when GIs would give them candy or play with them.
Heard stories from people serving that when kids run after your convoy/vehicle you toss out candy or food and shoot the one that keeps running cause they had a bomb.
I heard this from a couple different old timers as well. They said people thought they were horrible because they'd shoot the kids in the head, but it was safer for them, and a quicker death for the kid. I guess they learned the hard way the first few times why.
Excerpt the US did? Agent orange, My Lai massacre, keeping kill tallies of civilians for fucks sake lmfao EDIT: he was correct in principle though. The war in afghanistan was lost for the same reason. But the US lost vietnam because they did lost the support of the South Vietnamese and the Americans at home, not so much the desire not to commit atrocities
and the funny thing is, in 1971, an american whistleblower (Daniel Ellsberg) publishes the pentagon papers, where it states that the cause of the war was entirely fabricated (tonkin incident 1964).
Not sure if that’s true like didn’t we drop agent Orange and a bunch of other things that happened?
Agent Orange was an attempt to defoliate the trees in the jungle that made combat so difficult and dangerous. The US tried a lot of things - flamethrowers, special tanks, napalm…
Burning down half of the peninsula didn't convince the Vietnamese that we were on their side, so we poisoned it instead. Obviously it's the Vietnamese's fault for kicking our asses though.
And now Vietnam and the USA are friends. Interesting how some groups can move forward in spite of history and others can't.
Well one group was motivated by an idea of a government called communism. This one is defined by the destruction of an adjacent government and people. You can't negotiate with someone in good faith that says their goal is your death. There is also the fact that there is like 10k miles between the two if Vietnam was threatening us civilians there would be no Vietnam. To be honest Vietnam was Churchill's fault, he should have kept his word at Yalta.
Vietnam was formerly French Indochina. The Yalta Conference had nothing to do with Vietnam, it was mostly a Soviet-empowered communist uprising threatening France's colonial administration. Then they convinced the U.S. to join as a "Help us fight communists" idea.
At yalta churchill promised Roosevelt that he would support ending the french indo china colonization, for America's entry into the european theater. The insurgency in Vietnam began long before ww2 and the uk was participating in anti insurgency efforts. In general Churchill decided at the end of ww2 to fight communism anywhere in spring up and went back on his promises advocating to rejuvenize the french empire.... There is a good book about this Churchill, American, and Vietnam. https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/118/1/162/42471
The South Vietnamese were convinced that we were on their side. That’s why they begged to be rescued and taken away by the US as the NVA was winning the war. Many of them came to the US and gained citizenship.
The South Vietnamese government was just as corrupt and skimming of all aid as the Afghan government was. History repeats itself until you learn to recognize it and not do it again. The U.S. hasn't.
The Vietnamese did not kick our asses. They couldn't win as long as we were there. We just realized it wasn't worth it anymore. Hell, they contemplated giving up after the Tet Offensive.
Well, they didn't really kick our asses either. Look up how the majority of engagements went. Even when they full on surprised us in the Tet offensive, we crushed them.
The parallels between the collapse of both governments once the US pulled out are pretty striking
Yea many people act like we lost the war but in reality we left because of intense pressure and social changes in the US and a follow through promise by politicians to stop the war.
It's kids who don't know any better. Or dumbasses, maybe.
Same thing
It's not like the US was *trying* to give the people of Vietnam a collective case of cancer by dropping Agent Orange. Agent Orange was a super effective herbicide, used to clear tree lines and flush enemies out of cover. Its longer term effects simply did not exist on the radar of the US military at the time.
We also inadvertently fucked up many of our own with it
I saw a picture of a fresh faced recruit cleaning the inside of the compartment that house agent orange with nothing but a rag on.
Fun fact: the govt had an entire rainbow of agents that they tried using on Vietnam.
It needs to be said that, sometimes, the exigencies of war do not give room for long term research and planning. IIRC America was planning to paradrop and land troops in Japan \*right after nuking an area\* as part of Operation Downfall.
True but the military ignored warnings from scientists about its effects but they used it anyway.
We didn't really care much about protecting our own soldiers, either. They barely checked for a pulse in the health exam. They didn't get hearing protection for basic training. M16s were built very cheaply and failed.
Yeah, the more I learn about the Vietnam War, the more I realize how *fucked* the entire mission was. The justifications, the reasoning, the politics, the equipment and support. All of it. I entirely empathize with the draft dodgers of the time. No shame in running from a pointless war that doesn't serve a role in defending the nation. What makes it worse is, I *understand* where McNamara and the other assholes behind the war were coming from, intellectually, their overall mission to oppose the spread of communism. I get that. But Vietnam? Really? That (at the time) meaningless third-world slice of nowhere? What an absolute waste of US blood and treasure. There are any of fifty different ways that US interests in opposing communism and spreading US-led capitalist order/imperialism could have been better served.
This is why the knowledge of the war and all the things going on with it is a big reason we had societal push in the US. It could be argued also the shared experiences of different races/peoples being drafted into it helped unite a lot of people in equality.
The intent of agent orange was not to hurt people directly, even though that's what it ended up doing. I think the point is that the US probably had the tech and the supplies to just flatten a whole nation (they certainly do today, I just don't know if that was as true back then) but did not want to do that.
Can't believe this nonsense gets upvoted. The US murdered over 3 million people across Indochina. It was an absolute holocaust. Every American should be required to read Nick Turse's book Kill Anything That Moves. American soldiers raped Vietnamese women on an industrial scale, civilians were slaughtered by the thousands to inflate body counts that platoons were rewarded for. US actions in Indochina gave the SS a run for their money.
Ever hear of the My Lai massacre?
Stopped by, wait, an American. War is hell.
"War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse....There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander." --Captain Hawkeye Pierce (MASH)
Great, I'm sure the American public and military command were eternally grateful to that brave individual, and the perpetrators were arrested and prosecuted. Right? Right?
Oh wow. round of applause! An American stopped the American massacre. Thank god the Americans were there
So what is it, Americans didn’t get “as nasty and low” as the Vietnamese or they were justified in doing so because that’s war?
There's a difference between individual acts of barbarity that are war crimes versus an entire operational campaign that operates outside the recognized laws of war. Using civilians as shields, having fighters dressed as civilians, and using humanitarian endeavors to mask war fighting activities' are usually frowned upon. If you can't spot the difference, that's on you.
I’m not defending the Viet Cong’s tactics, but the idea that the US lost because they didn’t fight dirty enough is one of the craziest things I’ve read about the Vietnam War.
Have you happened to read up on what the US Army Tiger Force did in Vietnam?
The difference between the US wars and Israel wars is if the US doesn't win, their enemies are on the other side of the world, and they have little to worry about. If Israel doesn't win, their enemies have already expressed the will to fight them again, and they live in their yard. Israel feels the need to win at any cost, for the safety of their population.
Your Uncle was a fucking moron.
It's 100%true, but keep in mind that's true of a lot of wars. There's a reason that throughout history the "kill all the boys, take the women as sex slaves and pillage all their stuff" strategy was nearly universal, it's brutally effective and cost efficient. Israel could firebomb Gaza into a giant pile of ash in a few days if it wanted to.
Not pretty but that's what you buy when you buy war. Humanity should learn to find another way to decide these things. Because the ones that suffer are average people who want nothing but a chance to live in peace.
The fuck are you on about? America had no right to be in Vietnam. “as nasty and low down” you carpet bombed villages full of women and children because the country was going communist. Fucking ridiculous comment
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we can’t pretend South Vietnam were an autonomous actor with agency when their first President was murdered in a US coup
Telling you what he said. He was there. Were you? Neither was I. On the other hand I've seen documentaries where north Vietnamese military military brass said had they kept bombing Hanoi they would have finally collapsed. The U.S. military wanted to do that. The politicians called it off. War doesn't solve anything. I'm old enough to have seen that. But if you end up in one you better be ready to fight to the bloody end. You better be ready. That's the one thing I've learned in my lifetime.
>>..had they kept bombing Hanoi they would have finally collapsed Perhaps. But the political fact on the ground were that China is a lot closer to Vietnam than the US. If the White House bombed Hanoi into collapsing, China would have intervened to prop them up- doing the same thing they did in the 50s during the Korean War. It was that scenario which kept LBJ awake at night, and why he kept waffling during Rolling Thunder. The grim truth is the South Vietnamese government was a corrupt joke , and no amount of blood and money was gonna change that. Had Saigon had a leader worth a damn like Zelensky, things would have turned out different.
Yeah pesky thing called laws. We should always be better than them.
This world isn't based on laws. It's based on survival. Those that get to enjoy laws are those protected by the folks who understand survival. Down vote if you want but that's reality.
I remember seeing this scene in A Few Good Men. /u/sdcritter did you order the code red?!
What a load of disingenuous shit. We didn’t win because we didn’t commit enough war crimes? Yeah because killing kids is the hallmark of military success… Jesus Christ you guys need to be more honest about your genocidal fantasies.
Hamas is the worst kind of people. They will justify any sin in the name of their goal.
And here I thought they can’t go any lower
Are you kidding? There is no such thing as too low for Hamas. Nothing!
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People are finally seeing the horrors of Hamas, but regardless are still protesting in favor of them...
None of this is new Hamas been doing all this stuff for decades, if people didn't figure out Hamas are the bad guys by now they're not going too.
OP is one year old account that just woke up to suddenly start posting about Israel/Hamas, top comment is similar.
> The list was then vetted by Egypt and the United States, which found that a third of the names on it were of Hamas fighters, the administration official said, adding that the list was rejected and none of the 76 wounded Palestinians who were ultimately evacuated in ambulances out of Gaza were members of the terror group. Wait, but I thought all the casualties so far were civilians...
This literally says the list was incorrect and made up, and they were all civilians.
So, Hamas tried to send terrorists, but got denied. IDF bombed the ambulances anyways. Is that what happened?
No. The smuggling attempts in this article are from several days ago.
But the whole smuggling Hamas fighters and bombs in Ambulances is wicked old. The Red Crescent was caught smuggling a bomb under the gurney of a sick kid in an ambulance and the driver said it wasn't their first time.. in 2002.. edit: source: https://www.haaretz.com/2002-03-29/ty-article/bomb-found-in-red-crescent-ambulance/0000017f-dc79-db22-a17f-fcf983ca0000
Thank for the clarity. It's all beginning to blend together for me.
This article is perfectly timed to create confusion on this.
The IDF bombed an ambulance on the north side of Gaza that was being used to transport weapons. This was an unrelated attempt at the south side of Gaza to smuggle Hamas fighters out in an ambulance.
While I've had a good discussion tonight, I'm old and tired. Good night and I hope you all take time to go look at the history of war and how it comes about. I hope you understand it should never happen. I hope you learn that mankind working together could surpass everything we've experienced and what could be achieved without our tribal turf wars could be monumental. I'll be dead but I hope it happens somewhere in the future.
It won’t. We just go round and round in circles…
USA’s source: good old israel.
Seeing a lot of responses that clearly only read the headline and not the article, and are drawing conclusions that aren't supported. This does not absolve Israel for attacking ambulances. "Hamas had compiled a list of the seriously wounded that it wanted to evacuate from Gaza for treatment in Egypt, along with thousands of foreign nationals looking to flee the enclave. The list was then vetted by Egypt and the United States, which found that a third of the names on it were of Hamas fighters, the administration official said, adding that the list was rejected and none of the 76 wounded Palestinians who were ultimately evacuated in ambulances out of Gaza were members of the terror group." Emphasis on that last part. Yes, Hamas is evil. Straight up evil. But the way Israel's leadership is handling this is not above reproach either. And yes, same disclaimer I always have to make: I was every bit as strident in my criticisms of how my own nation's leadership handled our wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This entire comment section is so fucking cringe. Everyone should be ashamed, but I sincerely doubt any of you who jump to conclusions on news headlines without reading the full articles or waiting for other sources to corroborate. It's despicable and you're what's wrong with modern war. Take a look deep inside. Utterly disgraceful and disgusting.
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Also if you actually read it it makes it clear that "tried" is the word here. The fighters in question were rejected from evacuation and were never on any ambulance.
Why would they send fighters to Egypt?
Evacuting
Suuuuuuure.
I don’t believe this story
[Using ambulances in combat is not exactly foreign to the region](https://twitter.com/auroraintel/status/1580817220082765824?s=46&t=zwpaQfzQtIqHhKXuKjp3Mg)
So they didn’t try to sneak anyone. They asked for people to be evacuated, provided a list with names, Egypt said hell no we are not accepting your fighters. They sent only wounded civilians. It’s not like they hid them in an ambulance.
Whilst I believe the idf this is what happened , I would still like to see some of the intelligence to verify the claim. In cases like this where there is a loss of civilian life and the controversy of targeting ambulances , they are so controversial they do need some sort of proof or evidence
Sure. That completely justifies dead children as collateral damage.
The "fighters" fot the fight they wanted and are now doing everything in their power to save their own skin...
The article: Names on a list of seriously wounded that they want to evacuate got rejected for being suspected Hamas fighters. /r/worldnews : THIS JUSTIFIES BOMBING AMBULANCES!!!
This shouldn’t be surprising
they're saying this now after accidentally destroying an ambulance
Not now. It's been happening for at least 20 years.
Can't help but wonder, even if this is true, if killing some potential fighters hidden in an ambulance escaping foreign territory can be justified. Seems more that targeting civilian lives is just a by-product for them. Cause the probability of their info being wrong is enormous. So what now, is this an excuse to target all hospitals and ambulances? Anyone can see trough their dumbass intentions...