No, I’m just saying the graph is probably useless. Israel definitely is launching more and larger attacks, because that’s how you win a war.

How can the graph be useless if it shows a point you agree with, that Israel is launching more and larger attacks?

Is this a joke? Hezbollah usually attacks with unguided rockets. This demonstrates zero concern for civilian casualties. Less than zero, actually, because the intent of the attacks is to cause civilian casualties. Relatively few Israeli civilians have died because Israel is successfully defending them, not because Hezbollah’s policy regarding Israeli civilians is different from that of Hamas.

Not joking. Just confused. Do you have a source for this about unguided rockets targeting civilians from Hezbollah?

This article among many others don’t mention this. In fact, according to them they are targeting troops and intelligence bases.

Hezbollah also fired more rockets and missiles into Israel - attacks that Mr Afif said were “only the beginning” of its response to Israel’s attacks.

Sirens sounded several times in the border town of Metula, where Hezbollah said its fighters had targeted Israeli troops with artillery and rocket fire without mentioning any incursion.

The group also claimed it had fired missiles towards two Israeli intelligence bases in the central Tel Aviv area. Paramedics said two people were injured on a highway near Kafr Qasim.

Much like with the IDF’s claims, I am not eager to believe what they say. I would just like to see the evidence for these unguided attacks because the death tolls and overall number of attacks do not seem to support this conclusion at all.

Even if that is true (and it would only be true in the short term) then Israel would still be foolish to make major concessions to its persistent enemies when it has the military power necessary not to. Meanwhile Hezbollah would be more inclined to launch future attacks because it would see that they worked.

The point is they don’t have to be persistent enemies. There can be peace, and the start of that is an actual two state solution. Given that the country was founded on ethnic cleansing, I totally understand why people in the region would see Israel as the enemy until they actually take genuine steps to rectify the situation. Currently, instead of this they are doing a genocide. And when this started is when Hezbollah started attacking, at least most recently. Not only that, they explicitly said that was why they attacked.

I am a bit concerned that your argument seems to be “why do peace and diplomacy when we can kill people until we’re safe?” It is incredibly short sighted to think that war can solve this persistent conflict. When was Hezbollah formed again? Oh yeah after Israel invaded Lebanon. So why would more war “solve” this issue rather than create new ones?

It’s easy to chest thump and drop bombs. Maybe it even makes you feel good. But all it does is guarantee more civilian deaths and displacement in future, on both sides.

Don’t you want the killing to end?

Are you implying that Israel’s much greater number of attacks are because they are doing really tiny attacks or something? According to Wikipedia, 1642 Lebanese dead vs 52 Israelis. I.e. 31 times more Lebanese than Israeli deaths. So if anything Israel is killing more per strike, given that they only made 5 times more attacks (or 4 times more counting up until mid September). So it’s highly likely Israel is doing bigger strikes with less concern for civilian casualties. Notably, nobody is surprised about this given the horror we’ve all been watching for the past year.

Israeli victory would mean reducing the red bars to zero

Then good news. A cease fire in Gaza would achieve this. Shame Bibi doesn’t seem interested in that but he sure does love killing children so I guess it works out for him at least.

Ah I see. Usually I’m not in favour of the sarcasm tag (ruins the joke) but it would have really helped here, lol.

You don’t need to be on Russia’s payroll to spew pro-Putin talking points

You know, if criticizing killing is a “pro-Putin talking point,” then pro Putin talking points clearly aren’t always bad? Should I be in favour of murder to really show how much I hate Putin? Literally what the fuck are you talking about

I agree with Putin that the sky is blue too. I’m expecting my rubles in the mail any day now.

Putin is a cunt and Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine must be stopped.

If I was on Russia’s payroll that should be enough to get me arrested or at least fired.

So either I’m risking my safety OOOOORRRR not everyone opposed to Biden’s support for Israel is a Russian bot. Golly gosh I wonder which one it is

Biden:

God of the Dead from Hades!

So a low estimate of deaths (not counting people under the rubble for instance) and Israel’s claim on the number of Hamas dead.

Absolutely it will take years! So all claims about civilian to militant ratio in Gaza are unreliable and we should probably not make them

I’m confused why you were so outraged by the use of human shields at first and now when I send examples you all of a sudden don’t seem to care. You didn’t even mention the second example yet.

It’s generally not allowed under international law to target civilians. Civilians getting killed when military objectives are targeted are legal. Proportionally and necessity come into play here.

This is true but it’s only fine if you target “fighters” according to the blog. So it depends on the details of who these people exactly were, just being in Hezbollah is not enough. As you said it’s whether it’s truly proportional and necessary.

And for the targeting thing I think the main issue is whether it was possible in this case to control or even minimize the collateral damage. Since you don’t really know the situation you’re setting a bomb off in:

The targeting law concern will be more likely to centre on whether adequate consideration was given to the incidental injury and damage to be expected from these explosions, given, as is assumed to be the case, that those planning and conducting the operation cannot have known the circumstances that would pertain where each of the large number of explosions took place.

As you said, don’t confuse targeting with who gets hurt at the end. It didn’t come out too bad (by Israel’s standards at least) but that doesn’t mean they exercised the due care in how they did it, legally.

Compare that go Gaza, which has about 2 to 3 civilians per combatant killed.

Would be interested to see where you got those numbers

Very informative! Basically if I understand correctly: exploding pagers are illegal weapons anyway. But putting that to one side, if all of the targets were “fighters” (and not just Hezbollah in some other political/organizational/whatever capacity) then it might be ok, depending on the details of the targeting law the blog doesn’t cover much. But it seems they also weren’t all fighters sooo…

Even the targeting thing is debatable because they clearly couldn’t really predict the exact situation at the time, so how could they take the care to avoid civilian casualties?

Ah so using human shields is OK all of a sudden? What about the second example? Don’t worry, I can find more if you like

On one hand you have fighters shielding themselves behind civilians

You’re right, this is disgusting…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/14/israeli-forces-in-gaza-use-civilians-as-human-shields-against-possible-booby-traps

And this is too. Do these people have no morals? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/23/human-shielding-in-action-israeli-forces-strap-palestinian-man-to-jeep

Interesting how Hamas not releasing the hostages means that a whole fucking shitload of people who are not in Hamas are purposefully starved. It’s like they’re being… collectively punished.

I remember the big floppy disks that were actually floppy. But the standard floppy disks were way more common and even they were on their way out

This plus a large network of amateur and professional astronomers who would almost certainly see any kind of craft coming towards the Earth and especially into the atmosphere. It could be that aliens came back before this was common and kind of … hung around? Undetected. I don’t buy it.

They almost certainly exist. But they are not here.

I think you could just ask something like “what are some of your favourite world cuisines excluding the obvious ones?” and then explain what you mean.

Apologies though, I guess this is just because it’s not your first language, what you said makes sense it’s more the connotations of the phrase. I think someone also posted a gif making a similar joke. Probably the best straight up alternative without the connotations would be “world food/cuisine.”

North Korean! Would love to try it but I guess similar to South Korean food?

I don’t want to go through all but some of the more interesting ones:

Ethiopian - delicious stew/curry type food with this fermented flatbread stuff that almost smells a bit like beer. Way better than this makes it sound, lol

Vietnamese - if you like Chinese food you will love it. It’s somewhere between Thai and Chinese. They have an awesome beef noodle soup called pho

Jamaican - my family is partially from here so bias but jerk chicken is worth a mention alone. Very well spiced and usually super juicy chicken. Meat and rice type of stuff. But ackee and saltfish is interesting too, very salted cod mixed with this subtle flavoured fruit that looks a bit like eggs? Again better than it sounds.

Moroccan - If you’re interested in Egyptian food (I also have no idea what that would be, lol) Morrocan is probably a good recommendation. They have a dish called tajine which is a well spiced chicken stew, they cook it in a special pot I think

Mexican! - I know it’s obvious but in Europe Mexican restaurants are very basic. Tacos, burritos etc. But there are so many amazing dishes like mole (chocolate and chilli sauce, fucking delicious) that always get missed. There’s one called queso relleño (?) That is basically like a very rich Bolognese wrapped in cheese and FRIED. Probably best not to eat too often. But maybe you guys in the US get more authentic Mexican food anyway

Also, saying “ethnic foods” comes across a little odd. Makes you sound like a 50 year old white guy who’s never left his home town and isn’t so sure about all this weird food these strange brown people eat. Nothing wrong with being white or culturally insulated of course, but probably not the look you were going for. Might explain the downvotes.

Did you read the article? Among many other points:

Around 70% of all water and sanitation facilities in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, the WASH Cluster, a United Nations-led group that coordinates humanitarian efforts for water, sanitation and hygiene, said on July 24, citing satellite analysis from the UN Satellite Centre.

And look at the headline. If there was “more than enough” generally, why would anyone do that?

The situation there is shitty, but to the blame of all the suffering on Israel alone is just plain wrong.

I didn’t do that. It’s just mainly their fault

What happens when you systematically deprive millions of people of food again? Either Israel doesn’t know the answer to this question or it’s a blatant GENOCIDAL ACT. There is literally no other option.