Due to the severity of the situation and the fast flowing news cycle, we have decided to create a general megathread for discussion regarding the conflict.
Informal/Satirical news sources are not allowed on the main feed of the community but you are free to post them in this thread.
Please remember that all community and instance rules apply to this thread hence keep is civil.
Some facts about the Gaza Strip:
- Population: ~2.3 Million
- Area: 365 km² (141 sq mi)
- 41 km (25 mi) long, from 6 to 12 km (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide
- Population density: ~6300/km² 1
Gaza is very densely populated. In Gaza live as many people as in Houston. But Houston has an area of 1658.6 km² (640.4 sq mi). Thus Gaza has nearly five times the population density of Houston. New York City is the only city in the US with a population of more than a million and a higher population density than Gaza. 2 The tallest building in Palestine stands at 76.1 m (255 ft). 3
A little less than half of the population of Gaza is made up of children. 4
There are only three (“legal”) ways in and out of Gaza:
- Rafah Crossing into Egypt in the south
- Kerem Shalom Crossing into Israel in the south
- Erez Crossing into Israel in the north
Gaza has a very small port. It can only be used by small fisher boats. 5
Israel built a wall and fences around Gaza. 6
Water runs out at United Nations shelters in Gaza
Israel has cut off the flow of food, medicine, water and electricity to Gaza, pounded neighborhoods with airstrikes and told the estimated 1 million residents of the north to flee south ahead of Israel’s planned attack. The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 2,300 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting erupted last weekend.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that Israeli officials told him they had turned the water back on in southern Gaza. But the spokesman for Israel’s energy and water ministry, Adir Dahan, said it was only flowing at a single location in southern Gaza. Aid workers in Gaza said they had not yet seen evidence the water was back and a Gaza government spokesperson said it was not flowing.
Hmm! Why would the US spread Israeli misinformation? It’s a mystery! 🙃
About half a million Gaza residents have taken refuge in U.N. shelters across the territory and are running out of water, said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency, known by the acronym UNRWA. “Gaza is running dry,” she said, adding that U.N. teams have also begun to ration water.
Touma said a quarter of a million people in Gaza moved to shelters over the past 24 hours, the majority of which are U.N. schools where “clean water has actually run out,” said Inas Hamdan, another UNRWA spokeswoman.
Across Gaza, families rationed dwindling water supplies, with many forced to drink dirty or brackish water. Many resorted to going to dirty wells and the sea, increasing the risk of dehydration, water borne diseases and more deaths.
“I am very happy that I was able to brush my teeth today, can you imagine what lengths we have reached?” said Shaima al-Farra, in Khan Younis.
Settlers are sick.
Everyone knows that the UN is a Hamas front. Providing the UN with water is akin to providing Hamas with the heads of babies.
Might want to add a /s tag there or something, poe’s law
The fact that I have to is a condemnation of this community.
Yeah, we are trying to very actively crack down on it but you know how things are with the influx
I’m curious what disinformation you’re talking about given what you quoted? And you implied that it is known, but why do you think said disinformation would be spread?
Also, there are no settlers in Gaza. Haven’t been for around 18 years.
The misinformation is the Zionist lie that they turned the water back on, when actual people on the ground in Gaza are telling us they don’t have water.
Also, everyone living on stolen Palestinian land and benefiting from land theft and apartheid is a settler. From the river to the sea.
IDF misinformation from the start of the conflict until now:
1. Hamas beheaded forty babies
Context: the reports of Hamas beheading babies came from an interview by i24 News of an IDF commander. This quickly spread through Western media outlets such as CNN, NBC, MSNBC, FOX News, the Telegraph, Daily Mail, etc. I haven’t done a comprehensive sweep of who picked up the story and who didn’t (and of course now it’s much harder to do so because of retractions, edits, my lack of direct TV access, and SEO), but from what I can tell AP News and Al Jazeera have been relatively reliable.
Lack of evidence: 6 days ago, Anadolu (Turkish state-owned media) reported that: Israeli army says it does not have ‘confirmation’ about allegations that ‘Hamas beheaded babies’. This was later confirmed by other sources.
Misinformation: 5 days ago, Biden stated "I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed, pictures of terrorists beheading children,” said Biden, who described Saturday’s attack as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”. The White House later posted a retraction of this claim: "A White House spokesperson later clarified that US officials and the president have not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently,” The Post reported on Wednesday.
2. Shani Louk, claimed to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted
Context: images circulated online about a video purporting to show Shani Louk, a German national attending the Nova EDM festival, on the back of a truck, face-down. Claims that she appeared to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted circulated on the same media sources discussed above.
Misinformation: given the videos we have, we know with a decent amount of certainty that the video being shown is of Shani Louk. However:
A. She’s clearly not naked in the video and you can see that she is wearing black shorts as well as boots. A top is also visible (but she is face-down, so we can’t see much of it). Neither her shorts nor her boots appeared to have been removed. From what I can tell, she was initially wearing a long skirt that was likely lost in the chaos.
B. Her family claims that she is alive and receiving medical attention at a hospital in Gaza, which does explain why they would be transporting her. There is visible blood on the back of her head, but she does not seem to be bleeding profusely when the video was taken.
C. I will not comment on whether or not she was sexually assaulted.
3. 260 dead Israelis at EDM festival
Context: many news sources independently verified that 260 bodies were pulled from the EDM festival. Many sources reported that this was an act of terror with no strategic objective and a massacre of innocent civilians.
Lack of context: Nova was held in Kibbutz Re’im, mere minutes from Gaza, and also mere minutes from the IDF Gaza Division’s Re’im base. Tanks are clearly visible in videos leaving the festival, as are armed personnel. Hebrew-language interviews of released prisoners are providing more insight into these attacks, but I do not speak Hebrew so I will refrain from commenting on this further. Hamas has claimed that fighters were told to avoid harming or killing civilians.
Potential misinformation: Hamas claiming that fighters were told to avoid harming civilians does not mean that Hamas fighters did not harm civilians, obviously.
Potential misinformation: the reports indicate that 260 bodies were found, but their origin has not been confirmed. We know that armed personnel discharged their weapons against Hamas fighters (and vice-versa). How many of the dead are civilians, IDF, armed security, or Hamas?
Much of the media coverage on this conflict has been used to spread misinformation, even from traditionally “reliable” sources in the Western sphere. As a result, I would strongly recommend supplementing coverage of these events with those outside the Western sphere. The journalism being done is lazy.
The impression I had gotten from interviews (Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Haaretz) was that Israeli civilian police were there and exchanged fire with Hamas but that it was HOURS before they came across any IDF personnel. I’ve been focusing on this less as the time goes on and the catastrophic situation in Gaza gets worse and worse, so maybe further sources have come out regarding the Nova Festival.
Regardless I would like to see consequences to the people who authorized a festival so close to Gaza in the first place…
That’s the part that really doesn’t make sense to me.
There’s literally an active military base RIGHT THERE. It’s literally based in Re’im. There’s no way the IDF could be that incompetent. It’s not like forces had to be deployed from elsewhere in the country.
Supposedly, they had another location in mind but it fell through so they had to use Re’im with two days notice.
I don’t know how to confirm this myself but I have read and heard that before anything else, after it was known Hamas fighters were inside Israeli territory, the IDF first move militarily was to start bombing Gaza. No one can argue honestly that the IDF defends Israelis - its literally just the most reactionary of religious Zionists that they serve.
Secular Jewish Israelis? Nah they can fend for themselves for a few hours, we’ve gotta attack Palestinian civilians, says the IDF. And that’s not even bringing up that 20% of Israeli citizens ARE ARABS, some of whom were also attacked in their homes in Southern Israel 10 days ago, but of course the same people calling Hamas human animals will go after them next (not to suggest they aren’t already, only that Gazans face more immediate extermination).
That sounds pretty correct. From what I remember of the reporting at the time, we heard of the offensive, then immediately we had multiple reports, videos, and streams of the IDF bombarding Gaza.
here’s literally an active military base RIGHT THERE
Practically the complete IDF was in the West Bank at that time, when you have minimal staffing at a military base you really don’t want to leave it but hunker down as it getting captured would be even worse.
There’s no way the IDF could be that incompetent.
I’d say that’s a reasonable assessment. That Netanyahu and his goons are as competent, however, is a much more tenuous claim, or they wouldn’t have sent the IDF o the West Bank (to back up settlers harassing (and worse) Palestinians).
practically the complete IDF was in the West Bank at that time
anyone have sources or more info on this? to what extent is this true?
I had a frustrating conversation with one person around the “40 beheaded babies” claim. Snopes dug into the claim. The IDF never I think we’ll never be able to verify that particular claim. The flip side is that in the end, a dead baby is a dead baby regardless of how it got that way. My objection is that facts matter, particularly with claims of particular brutality or when the situation is a powder keg.
Hamas has claimed that fighters were told to avoid harming or killing civilians.
I don’t buy this for one minute. Not a minute. Palestinian civilian casualties are high because Hamas and other organizations operate from inside of neighborhoods as guerrilla forces. Israel has separate forces. You wouldn’t get massive civilian casualties from Hamas targeting the IDF’s bases. They can make all the claims they want, but it doesn’t fit with the facts.
I love when the US helps to deescalate a situation! I’m sure no US troops will be hit by any strikes to justify direct US intervention in this conflict.
The US is going to push us straight into a world war with their mismanagement of this conflict.
The chance of a World War III happening is significantly higher by escalating the UA-RUS war than this. Palestine has no allies and they have been cornered for years. US just secures a clean genocide.
Ukraine isn’t NATO and the West has given every indication that they see it as a proxy war with Russia. Israel is already dragging in the US, and risks dragging in Iran, which would force the Arab World to choose sides.
How is Iran joining forcing the Arab world to choose sides? Iran is not well liked in the Arab world. Most of them would probably prefer if Iran goes down with Palestine and wouldn’t care much. At least not the Saudis, Iraq and Pakistan. Don’t think Egypt is too hot for Iran either.
Iran-Saudi talked for the first time in forever to align on this
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Yeah, clearly a propaganda account and not a very good one at that. The pre-typed, scripted lines and the emotionally charged language are kind of a dead give-away. I would be ashamed paying someone that does such a poor job, honestly lol
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There’s some speculation that they’re bringing in the big guns to open up the Syrian theatre again, with Russia.
A friend of mine is volunteering for this organization. We’re trying to help as IT guys but if you know anyone stranded in Israel or Gaza, or want to aid them indirectly, I thought I’d pass the link.
(They’ve helped in other crisis scenarios as well)
Can you elaborate on the helping as IT guys part?
Can you elaborate on how you’re helping as “IT guys” ?
I too am an “IT guy” and would be interested in learning how my skills could assist those in need.
There are a few Canadian citizens stuck in Gaza and very much in danger. I’m hoping that some solution can be found to help these people out.
Bro wtf. The millions of people in Gaza are in danger, how does their individual citizenships matter when there is non-descriminative bombing over the urban areas as well as exit routes? Israelis even bombed and killed prisoners from Israel in Gaza
As a Canadian, dude’s probably interested to see how the Canadian government will respond.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. Trudeau isn’t going to step out of line from American policy to save a few measly Canadians, and Biden won’t allow Americans to leave unless Egypt opens their borders to Palestinians (which definitely isn’t going to lead to ethnic cleansing, of course).
apologies for the off topic, but this thread shows as 11 hours old and I only see 7 top level comments. for a major event mega thread I expected much more and I’m wondering if I’m doing Lemmy wrong somehow?
lemmy.ca defederated from hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml, who are driving top-level comments on here. Since you can’t see the top-level comments, you also can’t see any discussion below.
I opposed lemmy.ca’s decision to defederated from hexbear based on the perceived behaviour of hexbear users on other instances for exactly this reason: I think an instance’s role is to police the actions of users posting to that instance, not to police their users’ exposure to other instances.
Lemmy version 0.19 can’t come soon enough - it’s going to bring more moderation tools, which should help mitigate defederation.
There’s also a lack of moderators as well, which causes either overreaching or insufficient actions a lot of the time.
It’s being extremely heavily moderated. (Not just the defederation.) You can gather the political stance by what comments remain.
Yeah, it’s not the easiest to read because most of the censorship is “user was banned from community”. Which seems to remove the comments as well.
The only comment text listed in the modlog are the truly vile ones.
Sometimes you remove comment and then ban the user and the comment removal hasn’t had time to propagate. But yeah, the vileness you see is the ballpark for what we remove.
Can you look at this one by @Pipoca 2 hours ago? I won’t paste the full text here for obvious reasons, but it seems pretty reasonable, mostly facts, and not vile at all. It just looks like a bad case of overmoderation.
mod Removed Comment - There’s a few things going on.
…
reason: Bothsidesing a genocide
If I recall correctly it described a genocide primarily through the lense of a two sided religious conflict. We remove that stuff as genocide apologia.
Oh. I thought that’s exactly what this was.
Mandatory watching for those interested in the history of the conflict: How Palestine became colonized.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-airstrikes-israel-1.6998419
So they’re airstriking the south after telling everybody in the north to head south.
Obviously. No civilians are in the North to strike anymore.
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Civilian meat grinder.
Isn’t salty water worse than no water because of the dehydrating effects of salt?
I read somewhere that you can survive on salty water as long as you don’t leave it until you are severely dehydrated. You need to let your body adapt.
It was from research on how to survive lost at sea.
Not drinking water at all is a definite death sentence.
Edit: Looking a bit more into this, sea water will also kill you as it does dehydrate because your kidneys will try to deposit excess salt into your urin, but is unable to create urin that is saltier than sea water. You simply start peeing more than you drink.
The question is which option kills you faster?
Is Egyptian/UN aid actually going to make it through the checkpoint? Egypt has had aid trucks parked outside for like days.
The trucks initially went in but initially backed out when Israel bombed the corridor again.
