SuperJail Warden wrote:
But it is super tone deaf to lecture Israel about restraint after such a terrible attack.
Is it though? It seems to me the perfect time to call for some measure of restraint rather than reassure them that all along they haven't been violent
enough.Perhaps if USA hadn't been so thoroughly enabled after 9-11, the scope of military response would have been more focused, and we wouldn't have gotten a Bush war spanning like three generations of soldiers and ending in arguably ignominious withdrawal. There are apples and oranges with that analogy though, US vs. Taliban fighters way the heck oversees vs. neighboring belligerents.
Anyway, aren't the hostages imperiled by the bombing campaign?
Israel Readies for Ground War in Gaza
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/is … r-AA1hYq5i[…]
Since the 2007 closure Gaza has been in the grips of a deepening humanitarian crisis, with the blockade degrading the strip’s economy and restrictions on the transfer of basic goods eroding its water, electrical and other civilian infrastructure. In its series of wars with Hamas, Israeli bombs have hit the strip’s airport, power plant, and U.N. warehouses and schools.
In Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood, an upmarket area of shopping malls, broad boulevards, restaurants and apartment blocks, residents stepped over piles of broken concrete on Tuesday while the sound of explosions thudded in the distance. The Israeli military warned everyone in Rimal on Monday to leave the area and head toward the southern Gaza Strip.
“There were people trapped under one of the residential buildings but no one could reach them. They were actually texting for help and stating that they were suffocating,” said Mahmoud Shalabi, a program manager in Gaza for the London-based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. The trapped people were later rescued, he said.
“What’s happening right now, as it is, is worse than any other escalation that Gaza has ever seen, so I hope that there will be no ground invasion and that this cloud will pass, but we are really concerned about what’s to come,” Shalabi said.
Gaza residents say they are spending their nights in fear, with long power outages and the sound of explosions. “The bombing is around me all the time. The darkness in the night is a cruel monster,” said Rama Husain Abu Amra, a 21-year-old student studying translation. “I want to continue our normal life, going to work, going to my university.”
Israel’s response to Hamas’s attack has forced more than 200,000 Palestinians to flee their homes in Gaza, according to the U.N.’s Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory Lynn Hastings.
Four U.N. schools, six hospitals and the building housing the headquarters of the U.N.’s relief agency for Palestinian refugees have been damaged since the start of the Israeli military operation, the U.N. said.
The Israeli air force said on Tuesday morning that it had dropped hundreds of bombs and thousands of tons of munitions throughout Gaza including on Rimal, saying it was targeting Hamas intelligence infrastructure and the homes of Palestinian militants.
The air force said in a tweet that the Israeli military operation “continues to cause maximum damage.”
Hecht said Israel’s capacity for precision strikes is currently reduced because Israeli personnel are stretched, and that therefore strikes in Gaza wouldn’t be carried out with the same “level of fidelity” as before.
[…]
risk of expanding war:
An exchange of fire on Monday killed at least three members of the group and one Israeli military officer. Israel said it launched airstrikes and artillery fire into Lebanon after unknown suspects crossed the border into Israeli territory.
With Hezbollah’s large arsenal of missiles capable of firing deep into Israeli territory, the group would likely provoke a massive Israeli military response if it entered the war. All-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, which is considerably stronger militarily than Hamas, could be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon.
Israel urges Gaza civilians to flee – even though they have no exit route
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ge … r-AA1hZuIAIsrael’s military has urged civilians to flee the Gaza strip before it launches “very, very aggressive” operations against Hamas.
But an air strike near the sole operating border crossing with Egypt forced the checkpoint to close on Tuesday, leaving no legal exit route.
It came as the confirmed Israeli death toll climbed to 1,000 since Hamas launched an incursion into the south of the country and slaughtered hundreds of civilians on Saturday.
Israel has reportedly warned Egypt, which mediates between Israel and Hamas, that the ground offensive will be “months-long”.
In Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, authorities said 765 people had been killed by the air strike campaign launched by Israel in response.
“The scope of this is going to be bigger than before and more severe. It’s not going to be clean…We are going to go very, very aggressively against Hamas,” Lt-Col Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) told reporters on Tuesday morning. “We should all change the paradigm.”
Lt-Col Hecht said he would advise Palestinian refugees to “get out” through the Rafah border post into Egyptian Sinai. His office later clarified that it had been closed.
Egyptian authorities said they closed the Rafah crossing with Gaza indefinitely after the second air strike in 24 hours landed nearby.
“It was chaos at the border. Everyone wanted to get out. Then all of a sudden a warning missile hit the Palestinian side of the crossing,” a witness told The Telegraph.
“So everybody tried to run away because it was just right in front of us, very close and very near. The door of the gate on the Palestinian side was closed, so people started knocking on the door screaming ‘Let us inside’ because they wanted to take shelter.”
“Then the security men said you have to evacuate now, they are going to bomb the crossing. So everyone ran.”
A “warning missile” is a munition the Israeli military drops on or near buildings it has decided to strike to warn civilians to evacuate. Although not as powerful as a live missile, they produce a loud bang and can be lethal to anyone standing close by.
Israel has ordered a “total siege” of Gaza cutting off all food, electricity and fuel, a move that Oxfam has warned will be a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
Some Palestinians in Gaza said the Israeli bombardment was so intense it felt like they were living through their own “Nakba”, the Arabic word for catastrophe that refers to the 1948 war of Israel’s creation, which led to their mass dispossession.
“The situation is crazy – literally no place is safe. I’ve personally evacuated three times since yesterday,” said Plestia Alaqad, 22, who has been filming personal accounts of life under bombardment and posting them on her Instagram page.
[…]
Harrowing.
