It’s definitive: the Gaza City hospital wasn’t hit by Israel, as I wrote yesterday in Newsweek.
https://www.newsweek.com/why-us-intel-says-israel-did-not-attack-gaza-hospital-1835897
Both secret intelligence and open source information and observations confirm this, even as the same-old same-old people whine “what about Iraq WMD?” or doggedly stick to their own personal narrative, baseless and biased as it is. But continuing to argue about (and report about) a now minor incident of an errant (Palestinian) weapon that landed in a parking lot just diverts attention from the larger tragedy of this and every other war.
These types of incidents (going back to the bombing of the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad in 1991), with their exaggerated reporting of civilian deaths, tend to come early in conflicts, almost serving as a human catharsis to cleanse the soul because modern-day remote warfare makes “seeing” the fighting and the suffering so difficult. Every recent war, including the Hamas war today, starts the same way, with pre-planned attacks and predetermined targets being attacked, followed by a more dynamic period, as militaries shift to situational fighting. In theory, that transition point can lead to larger numbers of civilians being killed, or at least that has been the tendency the past. Hospital “incidents” are almost expected.
The truth regarding hospital-type incidents is that they also tend to be magnified in importance because reporting on the humdrum of war is extremely difficult, that is, the day to day of what’s happening and most important, what’s being achieved. I talked about this — on and on — in a radio interview with Ian Masters yesterday, how it is that after 20 plus years of constant war we seem to be no better at understanding what happens in wars, the similarities, what is to be expected, what it means. The incidents tend to string together as the narrative, devoid of any perspective or big picture.
When the news media parachute into a new war zone (actually or virtually), there is also a tendency for everything to become about their personal experience and what they’re seeing. And somehow, in deference to the great war correspondents of the past, we tend to give their personal observations greater weight, and they drive the narrative. So we “see” bombs and human tragedies, and they become magnified, on the backdrop of a larger war that overall may or may not be getting anywhere. And the news media needs to report every five minutes, further magnifying incidents at the expense of the big picture.
When I look at a war, I search for what is anomalous, what hasn’t happened before, some voyage down some path that seem ominous. So far, nothing about what Israel (or Hamas) is doing in the first ten days is anomalous. Israel’s air campaign seems almost exactly like the 2006 Hizballah war in Lebanon. Hamas’ rocket barrages similarly mirror the same. And talking about the well-worn playbook of war, aircraft carriers an aircraft being moved closer to the war zone (as happened in Ukraine as well) is from the same playbook — visual and decisive without much effect on the ground.
And normal as well are the secret moves going on in the background: the U.S. sharing intelligence, the provision of arms, special operations and CIA noodling below the radar screen, fancy new capabilities (in space, cyber, kinetic and non-kinetic) being tested. I’m not arguing that there’s nothing to see here, that you should just move along. I’m trying to focus you on the bigger question to keep in mind as you endure the day-to-day, the roller-coaster of emotions and the information overload. Can Israel eradicate Hamas and improve its security? I don’t think so. Can Hamas do anything to improve the plight of the Palestinian people? I don’t think so. Every bomb, every rocket, every bullet should be measure against that.
“Occupied West Bank” this phrase defines the situation... owners of land do not describe themselves as occupying their own land. Either the land is owned outright by Israel or its not, this is not difficult. There is very little discussion about the derivation regarding ownership, we only focus on the current events while context becomes a casualty.
Both Arabs and those supporting Israel have created a conundrum in the Middle East. By not forcing the issue of ownership, the Arabs have sold out Palestinians and the Israelis, by occupying the West Bank, have provided a reason for Palestinians to revolt and for Israelis to protect themselves against revolting Palestinians.
Arab dominated countries use Palestinians as a pawn for their own advantage without doing anything about their plight. Saudi Arabia was just about to sign a treaty agreement with Israel, if Saudi Arabia actually cared about the Palestinians, they would have included something nominal regarding them within the treaty.
Instead we have the Scarecrow conducting jabberwocky while placing blame on no one and everybody at the same time.
This could be resolved if the powers wanted it to be resolved.