Israel

[pipbarber]

Everyone is so invested in the middle east, be it for religious, political or other reasons, I sometime wonder whether caring about it so much actually fuels the conflict. If it was seen only as a dispute between those people living on that land, rather than a proxy for religious and political aspirations of much of the rest of the world, would the conflict have been resolved by now? Are we making it worse by caring so much? I'm sure those better versed in the discipline of peace studies have delved into this question which popped into my undisciplined and sketchily educated brain.

I've not been to Israel, Jordan is the closest i've been in the region. But obviously i've seen lots of pictures and i've known people who've been there. It's a bit of a shithole environmentally. I mean, it's dry and rocky and not particularly fertile these days and before too long will be close to uninhabitable without really fucking top shelf air-conditioning. Extract religion from the equation and it would hardly be the most desirable chunk of earth, right? (Notwithstanding the connection people may develop for where they live etc).

The big debate really should be about water and climate change adaptation, but i guess a dominant thought is that one of the three monotheistic deity men will swoop down from heaven and settle matters, at some point.

[two dogs]

...
... one of the three monotheistic deity men will swoop down from heaven and settle matters, at some point.
...

Three? Aren't Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all Abrahamic religions that beleive in the same god?

[Irrev-Black]

...
... one of the three monotheistic deity men will swoop down from heaven and settle matters, at some point.
...

Three? Aren't Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all Abrahamic religions that beleive in the same god?

Even in xtianity, there's a tendency for groups to show they believe in the same god, harder, better, or more purely, by whacking the Other Guys.

[pipbarber]

...
... one of the three monotheistic deity men will swoop down from heaven and settle matters, at some point.
...

Three? Aren't Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all Abrahamic religions that beleive in the same god?

Well, yes, that's academically true. But practically speaking they may as well be different gods given that each religion seems to be quite sure that their god version will smite the others. At least for some followers, a minority, but the ones that tend to have the guns.

[joele]

...
... one of the three monotheistic deity men will swoop down from heaven and settle matters, at some point.
...

Three? Aren't Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all Abrahamic religions that beleive in the same god?

Depends which one you ask, I would hazard many Muslims would say yes, many Christians (I think) would say only Judaism and Christianity (but more likely to say yes than jews) and most Jews I have known would say the other two worship fundamentally different gods..

[Irrev-Black]

...
... one of the three monotheistic deity men will swoop down from heaven and settle matters, at some point.
...

Three? Aren't Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all Abrahamic religions that beleive in the same god?

Depends which one you ask, I would hazard many Muslims would say yes, many Christians (I think) would say only Judaism and Christianity (but more likely to say yes than jews) and most Jews I have known would say the other two worship fundamentally different gods..

Just don't mention Zoroaster!

[joele]

Three? Aren't Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all Abrahamic religions that beleive in the same god?

Depends which one you ask, I would hazard many Muslims would say yes, many Christians (I think) would say only Judaism and Christianity (but more likely to say yes than jews) and most Jews I have known would say the other two worship fundamentally different gods..

Just don't mention Zoroaster!

Shhhh, yes, one does not mention him or our lord Ahura Mazda..

[wadaye]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/ ... -explosion

No certainty about the cause of the impact but multiple blasts and multiple possibilities, including Israeli artillery.

What other holes are there in the Israeli narrative?
Israel has claimed that the Palestinian rocket that it says supposedly hit the hospital was fired from the southwest.

However, the conclusions of two analyses published on Friday express serious doubt in that narrative – and found that the projectile that hit the hospital was fired from the direction of Israel.

Forensic Architecture, a research group based at the University of London, analysed photos of the impact crater at the scene, saying that “patterns of radial fragmentation on the southwest side of the impact crater, as well as a shallow channel leading into the crater from the northeast” indicate the projectile likely came from the northeast – “the direction of the Israeli-controlled side of the Gaza perimeter”.

Chris Cobb-Smith, an investigator and explosives expert, also agreed the evidence indicated the projectile may have come from the opposite direction claimed by the Israeli military, according Forensic Architecture.

This lined up with the conclusions of a so-called “Doppler Effect analysis” by the Earshot audio investigation group, which looked at sound waves related to distance, and found that the missile likely approached from the northeast, east, or southeast, but not from the west as Israel’s military has claimed.

[joele]

So articles in Guardian and BBC saying it was a fuel explosion not a projectile that did the damage, BBC showing video footage sourced from al jazeera itself as evidence (documenting said failed rocket launch moment before the hospital explosion), now Al Jazerra implying it was a projectile that did the damage. Experts claiming in AJ that the projectile came from the direction of Israel, experts claiming in Guardian that the crater and pattern do not match IDF artillery. All very confusing and conflicting..

[stylofone]

So articles in Guardian and BBC saying it was a fuel explosion not a projectile that did the damage, BBC showing video footage sourced from al jazeera itself as evidence (documenting said failed rocket launch moment before the hospital explosion), now Al Jazerra implying it was a projectile that did the damage. Experts claiming in AJ that the projectile came from the direction of Israel, experts claiming in Guardian that the crater and pattern do not match IDF artillery. All very confusing and conflicting..

I'm reminded of the Bosnian war, and the mortar attack on a Sarajevo marketplace. The Bosnian Serbs immediately denied they were responsible, claiming the government was attacking its own people to generate sympathy. "They're killing themselves to make us look bad" was the extraordinary claim. To this day there has been no definitive finding as to exactly who was responsible.

I'd actually forgotten the subsequent history which I just read about: there was a second attack a year later, and investigations revealed the Serbs WERE responsible for that one, but there was a bit of a misinformation campaign suggesting that it too, was unsolved.

Comparing the circumstances with Gaza, I'd say the fog of war is much murkier there in 2023 than Sarajevo in 1994. So based on that precedent, we may never know what happened, although of course every attempt should be made to uncover the facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markale_massacres