mozz

mozz, 15 days ago

Hamas has exactly the same conflict of interest as Likud: Keeping the war going and creating suffering for "their" side helps drive support from their fellow countrymen who by and large don't like them otherwise, and kind of want to get rid of them.

I won't say that there's a direct similarity but they both have reasons to reject peace proposals and keep the slaughter going, to the detriment of "their side."

mozz, 16 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

I know the world doesn't work this way, for good reason. But it would be funny if someone signed up to be Trump's lawyer, didn't take pains to make sure they got paid up front, and then when Trump stiffed them on some billing in the middle of the trial, simply stood up in court and said to Trump, "No, I will not defend you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills. Your witness, sir; you're pro se now." And then packed up and left the courtroom.

mozz, 16 days ago

"May" amount to?

😢

mozz, 16 days ago

Israel: Can have all the hostages back, any time they agree to stop killing people

Also Israel: Decides instead to kill hundreds more people including 64 children to recover 4 hostages, leaving all other hostages still in danger of death and all kinds of other things, because they cannot bear the thought that they might have to agree to stop killing if they want to get them back without having to do even more killing

World: Hey maybe they shouldn’t do that

Israel: Why would antisemitism do this?

mozz, 17 days ago

And then, when the country is embroiled in a profit-conflagarating civil war, and they personally know people who died in the fighting and they have no idea what they're even going to do, and they have to flee the country and set up in someplace that's still stable, costing them astronomically more than it would have just to deal with the emissions regulations or whatever, it won't be their fault.

It never is. It'll be someone else who created the problem.

mozz, 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago)

Hello!

This article is a masterclass in slant. It's not attempting to cast any doubt on whether the report shows evidence that Hamas was and still is doing a bunch of sexual assault (to which the answer is pretty clearly yes.) Instead, it does some extensive hand-wringing over related but debatable questions, so as to create out of thin air an aura of controversy and flawed reporting where none exists.

Instead of asking:

• Did Hamas rape anybody?

They ask:

• Did this investigation find evidence that Hamas formally sanctioned sexual assault by its troops? (which is a separate question from, did it happen, but even whether the official sanction happened at all is pretty irrelevant as compared with whether the rape happened)
• Was the investigation a legal investigation? Or just a team of experts gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses as they visited the sites where assaults were alleged to have taken place and then presenting their findings?
• Did anyone find videos of Hamas raping people on the dark web?

It's a bunch of crap. The UN's press release summarizes the report that this article concerns pretty comprehensively, although the full report is also very accessible if you want to see some details or skip to some particular section of their conclusions and see exactly what they were and how they conducted their investigation and what they did and didn't find.

From the report:

"Based on the information gathered by the mission team from multiple and independent sources, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape, in at least three locations."

"With respect to hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing."

That's the important part. Creating an artificial debate couched in slanted language over, was this a legal investigation or some other type of investigation, or were we able to find a Hamas fighter who was willing to confirm to a UN investigative team that his commander said it was okay if he did some raping, is a bunch of crap.

(That's separate from the issue of this person I've never heard of, saying that making false claims of rape would cause the Israeli government to work harder to release the hostages. That doesn't make a ton of sense to me and the rest of the article is so explicitly propagandist that I'm highly skeptical.)

Hey @Linkerbaan - I asked you for some details on your argument that Hamas couldn't have been raping anybody because that one released hostage didn't look pregnant. Do you want to restart that conversation?

I'm also happy to cite the evidence for anything I'm saying here or anything you want to ask about; I got tired of doing it after the first three times, the last time you posted basically this same article, but this is a whole new thread, so if you want to try just claiming confidently again that some particular things aren't in the report, I'm happy to show you where they are in the report.

mozz, 17 days ago

I mean, sure. Modern international law defines it as a war crime if you're not preventing your troops from raping as any kind of common occurrence, which is obviously how it should be defined, but is actually pretty recent that it works that way.

But yes I agree, we could probably charge the commanders with more if we could prove that they were explicitly approving of it. Honestly, thinking of taking half the Israeli cabinet and all of the Hamas leadership to the Hague just makes me sad because of how unlikely it is to happen. But yes that would be a great if that could happen and is obviously the right answer if you look at what either of them have done (and are still doing.)

My point was, it's not like the lack of proof that it was approved by the leadership makes it this kind of "gotcha" like OP's article makes it out to be, by cleverly adjusting the language to slip phrases like "does not stand up to scrutiny" in there without technically lying and trying to say that Hamas didn't rape lots and lots and lots of people. That's why I say it's a skillfully deceptive article; it's honestly pretty impressive how it's put together, in a sick sort of rape-apologist type of way.

mozz, 17 days ago

Not a Zionist by any means, but happy to answer in case it's directed in my direction

Do you think that Israeli soldiers and leadership should be judged for the sexual assault of Palestinians with the same severity as Hamas members who committed, allowed or promoted sexual violence against their captured prisoners?

Yes. (Actually more severity for a couple of different reasons.)

This is the type of question that's super easy to answer. Yes, anyone on any side who is raping should be punished. That's, honestly, my whole point in getting all up in arms about "let's not worry about that rape because of which side is doing it" narratives like OP's.

Who should conduct the appropriate investigation and trial?

The ICC

mozz, 17 days ago

Some media did rush to claim sexual violence far before they had any evidence of it, especially soon after the 7th of October, which should be scrutinized.

The Israeli government made up some crazy imaginary shit that they had been victims of, because that's in their DNA at this point, and some people in the press believed them who should have known better. But also, there was a flood of victims of the attack who came back saying they had been raped. That infamous NYT story consists of a whole bunch of accurate information and then a couple made up stories from Israel's government, and for some reason everyone remembers it as all made up or a rush to judgement or whatever, when the main thrust of the article was true (as validated by the later in-depth UN investigation which found a shitload of evidence of systemic rape whether sanctioned or otherwise.)

There are differences between: A) Sexual violence committed by an individual or a few, B) That violence being tolerated by their superiors, and C) That violence being supported by their superiors. This distinction is important, since a very large organization having monsters in its ranks isn't statistically strange (and modern, well-run organizations make sure to punish those monsters and bringing them to one form of justice or another), but that organization not taking measures against those monsters or even promoting their behavior is far more serious.

I... more or less agree with this. I think you might be understating the scale of Hamas's sexual violence or the degree to which it's sanctioned by their leadership. But yes, Israel's in more of a position of power, and they're more organized about it; I agree. I honestly don't even want to compare the degree of cruelty involved on the two sides because what's the point; they're both horrible.

Personally, I had no doubt that there would be monsters in Hamas who would abuse the prisoners in their captivity, but the organization itself has an interest in making sure that the prisoners who make it out alive say that they were treated humanely (as we've seen with some of them). Attacking civilians and taking them hostage is already really terrible to start with, but noting what's being done out of logical political goals and what's being done out of sheer sadism is important.

I think you should read the UN report, if you have not. I'm not aware of any attempt at treating the prisoners, or deceased victims of the violence before they died, humanely. From the organization or the individuals. Do you have a source for this, like interviews with hostages where they said they were treated humanely, or something? What's in the UN report describes the exact opposite of that.

I wouldn't try to excuse Hamas just because their root cause is just. Israel specifically props up Hamas and funds them because they are the most violent and corrupt faction in Palestine, and they will do monstrous things which can then be used to "justify" Israel's crimes which it wanted to do anyway.

Although figuring out the most reasonable positions is far more important, in my view.

Honestly, like I say, to me it's not super complicated. Punish the guilty (which in large part means stop shielding Israel from prosecution for their crimes; certainly no one is making much of any attempt to shield Palestine from the consequences of Hamas's crimes.) How to do that and how to arrive at peace is complex, but "is this war crime that whatever people did, a war crime" is a lot simpler: The answer is yes.

mozz, 16 days ago

I just all of a sudden remembered why I had stopped talking with you about this. 🥲

Patten herself says it does not count as legal evidence. This post makes it very clear that the Patten report does not qualify as evidence

Like I said before, "Creating an artificial debate couched in slanted language over, was this a legal investigation or some other type of investigation" etc etc

You have dodged every question the last time around and you keep dodging the question.

Hey fun! I have some questions which you didn't answer last time around. This is sort of bordering on senseless bickering which helps no one, but sure, I'm happy to repeat the questions you avoided answering in the last thread:

• Where in the report did you find information about how the hostages were treated? You claimed to have read the UN report, and then made specific claims about what it said -- where in the report did you find the information you were claiming?
• You made an assertion is that one woman rescued from captivity who doesn't look "very pregnant" has some bearing on whether her or any other women are being raped in custody. Can you tell me more about the logic, why this would follow? I mean I follow the basic premise that "pregnant hostage = rape", I'm just having trouble accepting the contrapositive. Can you explain more?

I actually just asked you that second one, but you dodged it. Want to address it?

(Oh, actually -- third question: "ignore the parts of the report that debunk the entire report." What parts of the report are there that debunk the entire report? Can you explain what you mean here? Like cite the part of the report that you're saying debunks the entire report, and what it says that would debunk the entire report?)

And, like I said, I'm happy to address any question you wanna ask. I thought about citing some times before when I did it with citations and all multiple times, and then you ignored the answers and continued insisting counterfactual things about the report, but maybe that's just getting into the weeds. And likewise, citing the times I asked you a question over and over again and you didn't want to answer it. I think just, ask your question, and I'm happy to answer without dodging.

mozz, 16 days ago

Hamas is not doing it.

We should send a team of expert investigators to assess forensic evidence, conduct interviews all around, and also visit with Palestinian representatives to see what they have to say about it, so that we can assess whether this is objectively true

Oh wait

mozz, 16 days ago

“They are all religious guys; most of them are ultra-religious. They never saw a woman except their wife,” Sulitzeanu says. “So to see all these bodies, how did they deal with that?”

From the report, II(b):

"The mission team was led by the SRSG-SVC with the support of a technical team comprised of nine staff members with relevant expertise drawn from the United Nations system. The technical team included a principal human rights officer that acted as its head; a police expert in criminal investigation; a judicial affairs officer; two sexual and gender-based violence investigators skilled in the safe and ethical interviewing of survivors/victims and witnesses of sexual violence crimes; a forensic pathologist; a digital and open-source information analyst; and two political affairs officers. For certain segments of the visit, the mission team was accompanied by a public information officer. Logistical and security support for the mission was provided by the UN Country Team based in Jerusalem."

Actually, part of the report dealt with debunking not only Israeli government lies which I already talked about, but also some conclusions which were drawn potentially in perfectly good faith by earlier investigators who weren't experts. Maybe some of those people were ultra-religious guys who had never seen anyone but their wives naked, or maybe not, but it doesn't really have bearing on "debunking" the report. As far as I know.

mozz, 16 days ago

Israel hosted the UN investigation, both presenting to them their evidence and letting them travel around in Israel to the impacted areas, and letting them go around on their own including visiting the West Bank and meeting with Palestinian representatives.

They did make some effort, apparently, to dictate what the parameters of the investigation and report needed to be, which the report authors rejected which made the Israelis mad. Then they did the investigation and wrote their report anyway.

I honestly don't know what you mean by "blocking the UN investigation," but I suspect that it has to do with the Israeli government's non-cooperation with the investigative team at times, and rejection of a more thorough investigation, which I suspect was caused by them wanting to be able to lie without anyone investigating their lies. To me, that's a positive thing about the report and investigation, not a negative thing. If it's attempting to be objective in a way which angers Israel, including debunking some Israeli lies, then good.

mozz, 16 days ago

I'll give it a look later. You linked it in this thread, correct?

Yeah. This is their press release with the quick summary, and this is the full report.

From her words, it looked like the conditions were terrible, but they made efforts to try and minimize the harm. It's likely that the treatment they gave the hostages varied wildly.

Yeah, agreed. I'd imagine there's a lot of variability.

The report talks about what they found interviewing returned hostages on page 18:

71. The mission team reviewed incidents of alleged sexual violence related to hostages in Gaza. Based on the first-hand accounts of released hostages, the mission team received clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children during their time in captivity and has reasonable grounds to believe that this violence may be ongoing.
72. Based on first-hand accounts of released hostages there are reasonable grounds to believe that female hostages were also subjected to other forms of sexual violence.

mozz, 16 days ago

The only thing Patten concludes is

that "there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape, in at least three locations" and that "With respect to hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing"

mozz, 16 days ago

Dude I don't want to just feed into the Gish Gallop indefinitely 🥲

I am curious, what exactly do you mean by Israel blocking the UN investigation? I know what the report says in section II(A) which sort of matches that description; I know they gave some resistance to the idea of investigating, but I am curious exactly what behavior you're talking about, so I can deal with what you're claiming a little more directly if I feel like investing the time into it.

mozz, 16 days ago

Yeah I had this sort of sudden moment of clarity just now like dude WTF am I thinking investing this level of time and energy into this person

I think a certain amount of debunking was productive but I think the back and forth is sufficient to speak for itself and I've had a chance to quote enough sections of the report to show what's going on, at this point.

mozz, 16 days ago

I had a feeling you wouldn't want to answer my questions. All good.

I don't think it's a good use of my time to just keep dealing with you indefinitely for any amount of Gish Galloping you feel like doing -- I did offer to answer your questions without dodging, though, so:

You keep failing to answer why israel is blocking the official UN investigation.

Two answers:

• I talked about this here, giving one level of answer, and asking you for some details which could inform a little more complete answer depending on what you're even claiming had happened
• UN investigators already concluded in Patten's report that there was quite a bit of rape during the October 7th attack and of hostages, notwithstanding your pretense that it didn't conclude that, or wasn't a "legal" investigation and that invalidates it, or that it contained no new information, or other wildly counterfactual things.

Honestly, dude, don't you feel bad about this? A whole bunch of innocent people got raped and are continuing to be raped, and you're over here standing up for the people who did it, trying to spread propaganda implying that it didn't happen, by twisting language around to say well the report that concluded that it happened wasn't a legal investigation, or some other weird little constructions, to obfuscate the very clear evidence which we've already talked about.

My question is, why? Why are you taking that stance? Aren't you against rape, whether or not the investigation that concluded that it happened was a legal investigation or not? I would think that's a pretty easy moral test to pass.

mozz, 16 days ago

Thread here

mozz, 16 days ago

Thread here

mozz, 16 days ago

I forgot what conversation I was in 🥲

I've answered the question of why I think Israel has given resistance to the investigation in general. "I suspect was caused by them wanting to be able to lie without anyone investigating their lies" was what I said. (And, actually, I would add to that just a general hostility to the UN based on the fact that the UN keeps pointing out that they're doing war crimes and wanting to investigate IDF sexual violence and similar things the Israelis don't want.) I've asked for more details about exactly what you mean, if you want a more specific answer pertaining to some more specific behavior on Israel's part.

If you want to provide those details, I'm happy to provide that more detailed answer, and if not, I'm not sure what else I could do. I'm aware that this whole conversation is an attempt by you to pivot away from the question "did Hamas rape a bunch of people?", so I'm a little reluctant to give it any energy at all, but I did say I would answer anything you wanted to ask, so there's the answer.

mozz, 16 days ago

Thread here

I had a feeling you would not be eager to engage with the question of why you are working so vigorously to defend rape

mozz, 16 days ago

Yeah. I'm honestly a little bit just curious about how their brain works, at this point.

mozz, 16 days ago

I don't think it's team sports. I think it's one of two things:

1. Sometimes people just have a kind of pathology where they like to argue on the internet, because it's satisfying, and they have to "win" or present as a winner in every conversation, and so facts and reality (even demonstrable reality like what the other person said or what the primary sources say) sort of have to bend to what would let them "win" by making some claim or accusation.
2. I looked over Linkerbaan's user a little bit and it has a little bit of a singular focus on Democrats and Biden ("Democrats are just Republicans these days" "Biden is actively violating Leahy law" "Trump isn't much different than any generic Republican"). Aside from picking crazypants arguments about Hamas not raping anybody, the only other real trend to their comments is domestic politics with a don't-vote-for-Democrats-fellow-leftists flavor that seems oddly familiar.

I initially thought they were way too committed and energetic about this stance they're taking about the UN report, to be any kind of shill, but now I'm less sure. They're certainly posting with a level of energy and aggressiveness that makes a lot more sense if it's their job, and usually people who have come by their counterfactual opinions organically have some kind of structure built up in their head for why it makes sense to them (Like they would say the UN report is crazy and biased and can't be trusted for some reason -- they wouldn't just insist for 2 days that it says a huge variety of very specific things that it doesn't say, and then just not address it on any level when someone points out the contradiction while continuing to go HAM on arguing about it. The second one sounds more like disinformation poster behavior to me.)

I don't really know. They don't act like most shills (or who I believe to be shills) that I have encountered. Like if you just looked at their comments arguing about Hamas, you probably wouldn't predict that their other singular area of focus in comments would be Biden and the Democrats. But the more that I look back over the conversation + take a look over their user, the more it makes sense to me as an explanation.

(Oooh... I just looked a little further; they also use the phrase "blue MAGA," and if you look back past the current conversation there's a lot more of a focus on Biden and Democrats and quite a concerted effort to link Israel's policies to Biden. The plot thickens.)

mozz, 16 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

Yeah. For me the really notable factor is the weirdness of the disconnect. Like if you look at the person's claims and study the flow of the conversation back and forth, it starts to become really obvious that they don't actually have factual belief in the things they are saying. But they still want to continue the conversation and invest a bunch of energy into it. Like, a lot, over a long period of time.

So... why? There aren't too many plausible explanations for those two things in combination, and then coming alongside "blue MAGA" and Democrats this and Biden that, it all of a sudden clicks into focus and it all makes sense. Now that I'm looking at it more, I'm pretty sold on shilling being the explanation.

mozz, 16 days ago

Cool! I love the "Never Play Defense" game, and would be happy to bring some other random assertion into the mix to counterbalance your random new assertion. But, I have exhausted the amount of effort I want to expend on this right now. Another day, sure; feel free to reach out any time.

mozz, 16 days ago

If you are really hankering that badly to continue the pointless back-and-forth, I should be able to provide you with something, just not right now. I will get back to you though. I have an idea that I think can keep you busy for more or less as much time as you want to spend on it.

mozz, 15 days ago

If only those fools from the UN team had spent their money on that, instead of a team of experts in sexual assault who then toured the affected areas and interviewed all those people and reviewed forensic evidence. The answers were on the dark web the whole time. Everyone knows the first thing you learn in Hamas is how to use Tor Browser. Now that you say it that way, it’s completely obvious.

mozz, 15 days ago

Why would I need to tell you? You've read the report, you said, so you would know what is and isn't in it.

A sarcastic response occurred to me, so I let it out, but I'm not interested in continuing the lengthy dishonest exchange where you cosplay as someone who's "winning" (for reasons I still don't really understand.) The interaction is done from my side.

mozz, 15 days ago

Yeah. It was virtually unknown on Lemmy up until around May 20th, when return2ozma and a few other accounts all started using it at the same time. It's sort of dropped off since then; I think their effort to make it catch on failed. But there are a few accounts that still like to drop it into conversation in perfectly natural fashion every now and again.

I think like a lot of propaganda, it's not meant to have any wild level of success on its own; it's more just one little piece that's designed to combine with a hundred other little pieces to create a sizable overall impact.

mozz, 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago)

I get what you're saying, but:

1. It matches the content of the article exactly
2. People are either familiar with the sabaya controversy, in which case it's instantly obvious what is meant, or else they are unfamiliar, in which case it would be impossible to communicate any level of approximation of the full situation in 250 characters (and I think the headline is about as good as anything at communicating the rough sketch). A big whole point of the article is, the situation's more complex than can be communicated with quick phrases.
3. The article itself is a pretty deeply factual and nuanced take on an active controversy in the news, i.e. not just a waste of time oversold by the headline
4. I am forbidden by the sub rules from changing the title
5. It's not selling you fucking printer ink, it is news in a news sub
6. I would be pretty surprised if the phrasing of the headline is why they are downvoting -- I think it's being interpreted as some kind of Zionism or excuse for Israel's crimes, which is a pretty sensible assumption TBF, but in this case is wrong

mozz, 17 days ago

One of those rebuttals to "the" translation is contained within the article.

I.e. part of what they explain, alongside a lot of other context, is why the IDF's (which is I assume what you mean by "the") translation was wrong.

mozz, 17 days ago

You haven't read the article, have you

I thought my message was short enough that it wouldn't have been missed, but this is one of the articles which disagree with what you're calling the official translation (along with providing a lot of other information.)

mozz, 17 days ago

The syntax they're constructing is working the opposite of how you said

You don't have to agree with them (and as they point out, one random solider saying one random thing doesn't mean anything "official" about Hamas as a whole), but they are saying that it is relevant that some individual in Hamas is talking about its female captives in explicitly sexual-slavery terms.

Put it this way, if a US prison guard or an IDF person were talking about female prisoners in an analogous way, it would abso fuckin lutely be some news.

mozz, 17 days ago

Honestly, I posted it because (a) it was news to me; it was a detailed explanation of a news event which enhanced my understanding (b) I felt it was needed perspective to add the "IDF translation was wrong and so nothing to see here" narrative which as we are learning is pretty popular (c) I checked and it was within the 30 day window according to the sub rules

I suspect that the hostility is because people are interpreting it as anti-Palestinian and pro-Zionist. Which is a fair conclusion, I get it, but not why I posted it. Israel's crimes are objectively 10 times worse than anything Hamas has been doing, but I don't see a need to proceed from there to "and therefore anything Hamas does is okay and any attempt to criticize them is probably a lie and I need to support them."

Not that I'm saying you're doing that, but like I say, I suspect some of the hostility to this story lies somewhere on a continuum which does include that at one end.

mozz, 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago)

I would say that the reception it's getting indicates that a lot of people at least here have a lot of trouble classifying Hamas as bad people. If I were simply posting a two-week-old story about the IDF desert detention camp, or a US policeman from last November who shot somebody when they shouldn't have, I don't think it would be receiving this level of anguished scrutiny about timeliness and relevance and headline.

I get it. I think because Israel are objectively the bad guys, there's a tendency to interpret any story like this as supportive of them, and so start trashing it out of defense for the Palestinians. I won't say that's a crazy thing to do, but I don't think it should be all that difficult to accept Hamas as bad people. I meant the Israeli government has been giving them funding and support against their domestic opposition, specifically because they can be relied upon to be violent and corrupt in a way that tears down legitimacy for the Palestinian cause. Someone on Lemmy who's standing up in defense of Hamas in any particular war-criminal action they're doing is not making the bold stand for Palestinian people that I think they may believe that they are making.

mozz, 17 days ago

it's already been rebutted

What do you mean by "it," here? The IDF translation?

Israel is not at war with Hamas. Not really. They're at war with all of Gaza. They don't care whether you're a member of Hamas or not. They don't care if you're a baby or you're 99 years old.

100% agreed. I usually put "war" in quotes because it's much more accurate to describe it as a large-scale terrorist attack by the IDF (killing and threatening a helpless civilian population to influence their behavior) than anything remotely resembling a normal state-level conflict between armed combatants.

mozz, 17 days ago

Because sometimes there is more relevant information to be learned about the world and situations in it, aside from "who good guy" and "who bad guy"

mozz, 17 days ago

Hm

That's actually a pretty good point. I added a body which explained what's in the article and why I think it's relevant.

I'm a little doubtful that that will lead to it being any more well-received, since as I say I think the issue is people interpreting it as anti-Palestinian and reflexively going on the attack, but yeah there's no reason for it to be cryptic for no reason, so I fixed it.

mozz, 17 days ago

Buddy buddy. I'm on your side. If I need to say it, I think that the war crimes Israel is committing are at least 10 times worse than anything Hamas has done. That doesn't mean that all of a sudden a story about Hamas doing crimes becomes a non issue or a thing to react to with hostility. In my opinion.

I didn't say anyone here was supporting Hamas. I was saying that it seems like people are clearly reacting negatively to this story because it makes Hamas look bad, when they would be completely fine with a story that made the IDF look bad, even if it contained some of these issues which they are claiming are what they're so aggrieved about about this story.

Again, I get why there's a value judgement that the IDF is the bad guys. I agree with that judgement. I'm just saying you don't have to demand that your news coverage obey the same judgements.

To me, stories about the world have value beyond the conclusion being "Hamas good" or "Hamas bad," and can be important even if the conclusion along that axis is "Hamas bad" which we knew already. It seems weird that people are saying that because the conclusion is that Hamas is bad, the story is irrelevant, and also are pretending for some reason that the anti-Palestinian-looking viewpoint is not the entire reason they don't like it.

mozz, 17 days ago

Haha I had exactly the same result. I tried kaizo Mario and couldn't make it past the first 10-15 seconds.

This GDC talk about the level design for Celeste is a pretty fascinating look at how were the nuts and bolts of making it come out so polished + good

mozz, 17 days ago

Since you abandoned this line of conversation, I posted the article (in a non paywalled version) if you're interested in resurrecting it.

I am somewhat anticipating that me posting it will be interpreted as Zionism, so you may be in good company if you want to head over to the comments and start yelling at me that I am a bad person for being opposed to this particular type of rape, because of who the victims are.

mozz, 17 days ago

Yeah, sure, my lack of posting documents with detailed explanations of what the evidence was, and pointing to where within those documents you can find that information -- that's the problem here. How could I not have seen it 🙂. I can only hope to do better in the future.

(Pages 8-11 cover the standards of proof and methodology employed in general, and of course each subsection discusses briefly what specific evidence was employed in reaching the conclusions of that section.)

Here's the link to the report. I sent it to you already, but maybe it was eaten by a bear in transit.

Hey, quick question -- you seemed to say that the report covered only the festival itself, as part of an argument where it would be impossible for rape to even have occurred because apparently attacking the festival was an active firefight and not a terrorist attack on a helpless and terrified civilian population. What are the five subsections of III(c)1 that come after the first one (festival and surroundings), please? I am testing your reading comprehension and ability to follow links to evidence, since you seem to be having a great deal of difficulty in doing so.

mozz, 17 days ago

Hey, quick question -- you seemed to say that the report covered only the festival itself, as part of an argument where it would be impossible for rape to even have occurred because apparently attacking the festival was an active firefight and not a terrorist attack on a helpless and terrified civilian population. What are the five subsections of III(c)1 that come after the first one (festival and surroundings), please? I am testing your reading comprehension and ability to follow links to evidence, since you seem to be having a great deal of difficulty in doing so.

mozz, 17 days ago

Actually, I got curious and read a bit of your link, and I have some comments:

II(7) claims that the team was purely guided and fed information by the Israeli government, and didn't offer "any dissent, even a peep, from the official 'narrative'". This is verifiably false; Patten debunked some of the Israeli government's more outlandish claims by analyzing evidence, and also among other things visited the West Bank and called for a corresponding investigation into IDF and settler sexual violence (section IV(81) in the UN report.)

III(10) wildly mischaracterizes the scale of the abuse that the UN report alleges; adding up various selected numbers from the report to arrive at a lower bound of 5 on the number of instances of sexual abuse, which is so wildly out of line with what the report actually says that it only be explained by someone who read the UN report, but cherry-picked some things out of it and presented them with the assumption that people would read the dishonest summary and not compare it to the original report.

I stopped reading at that point. As with a lot of these things, it's not possible for me to verify anything directly about what actually happened on the ground in Israel or Gaza. I can only read reports. But, I can definitely say that when one report is being grossly dishonest in its summary of what is contained in a different report, which I can also obtain and read for myself, then that first report is clearly lying.

mozz, 17 days ago

Hey, quick question -- you seemed to say that the UN report covered only the festival itself, as part of an argument where it would be impossible for rape to even have occurred because apparently attacking the festival was an active firefight and not a terrorist attack on a helpless and terrified civilian population. What are the five subsections of III(c)1 that come after the first one (festival and surroundings), please? I am testing your reading comprehension and ability to follow links to evidence.

mozz, 17 days ago

Yeah, yeah, you meant something totally different when you said "There were some stragglers playing hide and seek but the operation was mostly over the second the IDF copters shows up which was within 24 hours. The 'witness allegations' which turned out to be untrue were during the main raid including the festival. The UN report allegations also pertain to the festival. These were the earliest hours." That whole line of argument was something totally different than what it clearly was.

Be that as it may. Let's dive a little bit into "If Hamas would be raping people it would be the kidnapped hostages. Yet that rescued hostage from yesterday did not look very pregnant."

Your assertion is that one woman rescued from captivity who doesn't look very pregnant has some bearing on whether her or any other women are being raped in custody? I mean I follow the basic premise, I just wanna hear a little bit more about the logic and the evidentiary standard here.