So correspondences from Sinwar are being leaked out. And they confirm what is already obvious. Is that from the beginning he expected lots of Palestinians civilians would die to achieve Hamas's political goals, and he was perfectly ok with this. And if anything, the levels of Palestinians dying is much lower than his desire.

What I think is the interesting question is "why" the correspondences are being leaked out now. It may indicate an indication that Qatar and the other Sunni states have hit their limit with his intransigence, and are making him the fall guy.

One year after the Battle of Mosul, Iraqi authorities still didn't have very good estimates for civilian casualties. And these authorities actually controlled Mosul, and weren't forced to hide in tunnels most of the time.

The idea that Hamas has precise estimates basically in real time is completely ludicrous. And of course it says a lot that progressives and Muslims that challenge every single thing Israel claims (because they ostensibly think the truth is so important) are so willing to just uncritically accept everything Hamas says. It really is all just level 1 tribalism.

The progressives in this thread are on team Hamas. It really is that simple.

He calls the civilians deaths "necessary sacrifices", clear admission that they died because of Hamas choices

No boats were used Trolly. The place you can most safely land a chopper anywhere near Nuseirat is on the beach (once the flight path is safely along the water in particular). The beach is one kilometer in a straight line from there. They went to the most obvious place to land choppers on the SAND

From the beach you know there's nobody that can shoot from behind you, the sea delimits your 6 oclock. They weren't going to extract in spot where they had 360 degrees of rpgs to contend with.

It really is absurd that Gaza declared war on Israel on 10/7, are fighting said war with no desire to stop, and it is completely Israel's obligation to provide for people they are fighting; and Gaza's own government is actively trying to get its own civilians killed and is completely absolved by the world of any responsibility.

Not by the world: by leftists, neonazis, and enemies of the west. Ie by enemies of our countries foreign and domestic.

How many of them do you think there are that deserve to be killed?

Tbh i didn't think the corruption in the west reached that scale. I wasn't operating under the assumption that western based associations employed actual hostage takers in a full capacity. So i can't answer now, this is a new horrific development for me

Btw Nuseirat was one of several places the IDF never really went into before this past weekend. So they knew their people were being hidden in densely populated civilians areas they largely can't get to. Held in civilian homes to create the second and third human shield layers.

We can at least put to rest this seemingly debated question of using humans as shields for the Hamas war effort. That's the model. It's always been the model. Maybe today we can at least discuss the conflict in this context and have some honest discussions about how many civilians die because of this model.

That was the model in my mind, now we have elements to believe the shields are actually volunteers more often than we assumed.

I think we now need to reason with the "it takes a town to hide a hostage for months" model. Maybe in hindsight it's obvious since they don't have tunnels anymore.

The "human shields!" nonsense has been crock of **** from day 1, now it's made clear the IDF has zero problem shamelessly appropriating civilian infrastructure when it's convenient. It's all just excuse after excuse to continue the warcrimes against civilian population centers.

It's so obviously nonsensical that now Lucio needs to come up with more excuses, now we're told that the civilians are responsible for hiding Hamas and therefore it's okay to slaughter them en masse.

Another reminder of what people ittt think is a good strategy.

That's the nature of this kind of irregular warfare. Hamas are civilians, operating as a paramilitary rather than a military force, and this is the only way they can gain an advantage over the IDF, by complicating IDF decision-making and limiting the scope for the IDF's superior firepower. They're bound to do that kind of thing, out of elementary self-interest. There may be an issue as to how far the IDF are obliging Hamas, in terms of the information war, by proceeding heavy-footed and killing too many people for little strategic gain. It's not as if Hamas is about to go away, or as if Israel is anywhere within sight of that objective.

The US-backed UN-approved ceasefire proposal faces a few hurdles. Hamas claim they accept it, because it requires their approval and therefore leaves them in place and in power after Israel's withdrawal, which is exactly what the Israelis won't stand for, but the Israelis have no plan for what should happen after Hamas, even if they were able to destroy Hamas, which, again, they don't so far look like doing. It's all pretty depressing.