Israeli Strikes Kill Hamas Commander, Women, and Children
Ali Qadhi, who led the terrorist attack on Israel last week, has been killed by the IDF. So have fleeing civilians.
AP (“Palestinians scramble to flee south in Gaza as Israel urges a mass evacuation and conducts raids“):
Palestinians scrambled to flee northern Gaza on Saturday after the Israeli military ordered nearly half the population to evacuate south and carried out limited ground forays ahead of an expected land offensive a week after Hamas’ bloody, wide-ranging attack into Israel.
Israel renewed calls on social media and in leaflets dropped from the air for some 1 million Gaza residents to move south, while Hamas urged people to stay in their homes. The U.N. and aid groups have said such a rapid exodus would cause untold human suffering, with hospital patients and others unable to relocate.
Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with possessions crowded a main road heading away from Gaza City as Israeli airstrikes continued to hammer the 40-kilometer (25-mile) long territory, where supplies of food, fuel and drinking water were running low because of a complete Israeli siege.
Egyptian officials said the southern Rafah crossing would open later Saturday for the first time in days to allow foreigners out. Israel said Palestinians could travel within Gaza without being harmed along two main routes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time.
The Israeli military said “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians had already heeded the warning and headed south. But some live up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, and roads demolished by airstrikes and fuel shortage hindered their journeys.
Thousands of people crammed into a U.N.-run school-turned-shelter in Deir al-Balah, a farming town south of the evacuation zone. Many slept outside on the ground without mattresses, or in chairs pulled from classrooms.
BBC is live-blogging here. Alas, their reporting belies the notion that there are safe evacuation routes.
Children among dead after Palestinian convoy hit while fleeing northern Gaza
Reports first emerged yesterday evening of a strike on a convoy of vehicles heading towards southern Gaza. Videos showing the carnage at the scene emerged shortly afterwards.
BBC Verify has confirmed the strike occurred on Salah-al-Din street; one of two evacuation routes from north Gaza to the south.
The road was full of traffic all day yesterday as Gazans based in the north adhered to Israeli warnings to vacate the area.
At least 12 dead bodies are visible in the footage, which is too graphic for us to show.
They are mostly women and children – some of whom appear to be as young as two to five years old. The positioning of shadows in the video suggests it was filmed at around 17:30 local time.
Fleeing Palestinian convoy was struck on designated evacuation route
The strike on the convoy of civilians in Gaza that we’ve been telling you about comes as Gazans are being told by Israel to head south on designated routes.
The strike happened on one of those two routes.
More than a million Palestinians were told on Friday to relocate ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive. And today, Israel has said it is giving those civilians in northern Gaza another few hours to leave.
The evacuation area includes the whole of Gaza City and two major refugee camps, Jabalia and Beach Camp.
Taken together, this represents one of the most densely populated parts of the Gaza Strip – you can see a map of the area below.
Human rights organisations have said such a mass movement of people will inevitably prove chaotic and extremely hazardous – the UN called a movement of this many people in a short time frame “impossible”.
New deadline for Gaza hospital evacuation
Amid the ongoing evacuation from northern Gaza, the Palestine’s Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has received a revised deadline of 13:00 GMT (16:00 local time) to move patients and staff from their Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City.
In a statement, posted to X, the PRCS says an initial deadline of 03:00 GMT (06:00 local time) was given. This was then revised to midday, before finally being changed to this afternoon.
It adds, however, that they cannot evacuate the hospital and it is obliged under a humanitarian mandate to continue providing services to the sick and wounded.
Hamas commander who led attack on southern Israel killed – IDF
Israel’s air force has said it has killed Ali Qadhi, the Hamas commander who led the cross-border attack on Israeli settlements last Saturday.
The Israeli military said Ali Qadhi was killed in a drone strike following intelligence efforts by the Shin Bet security agency and Military Intelligence Directorate.
Dead Hamas commander was freed in 2011 prisoner swap
More on the death of Ali Qadhi, the Hamas commander who led the militant group’s attack on southern Israel a week ago.
The Israeli military said that “aircraft killed Ali Qadi, a company commander of the Hamas ‘Nukhba’ (elite) commando force”.
According to the Israel Defense Force, the 37-year-old was one of around 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in 2011 in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas.
In 2005, Qadi was arrested for the kidnap and murder of an Israeli man who was reported to have worked for the Shin Bet internal security agency.
The forced evacuation of civilians, including hospital patients, is being almost universally condemned but it quite possibly the least bad option available. Israel can’t be expected to refrain from taking the war to Hamas simply because they’re ensconced among non-combatants. At the same time, establishing “safe” evacuation routes and offering a deadline should surely be an indication that travel along those routes will be safe from Israeli military attacks before that deadline.
The targeting of civilians was the main BBC story this morning, surpassing that of the killing of the man who led the raid on Israel. That’s surely not what the Netanyahu government or its allies, including the Biden administration, want.
I vividly remember the tail end of the Gulf War more than 30 years ago and the so-called “Highway of Death.” US military superiority was such that we were simply blowing up Iraqi military vehicles at will. The Bush Administration rightly feared that images of this would turn world public opinion against us and pressed for a speedy end to the fight. And this was legitimate military targets far away from the civilian population.
This is what a war over territory looks like. Israeli policy is controlled by religious and ethnic fanatics who seek to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and then Gaza. Hamas is controlled by religious and ethnic fanatics who want to wipe Israel and Israelis off the map. No one on either side who is looking for compromise and peace has any power annd we are lying to ourselves and the world by pretending otherwise. More dangerously, our close alliance to Israeli will end with us at war in the Middle East yet again, as they see us as their assault force for their inevitable war with Iran.
It’s all OK because something something Holocaust.
Just ftr, I am not belittling the Holocaust or any of the many other injustices inflicted upon the Jews in the past or the present. I am belittling the idea that those deprivations make it OK for Israel to inflict the same upon other innocents.
Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred.
Atrocities suit both Hamas and Israel. Since both sides seek permanent control over all territories the greatest danger to their plans is that a compromise is reached. Eliminating the possibility of compromise is part of the plan.
Not to mention, years ago, AP admitted that they not only had offices in buildings with Hamas leaders, but would video children at hospitals but turn off their cameras when military age fighters were brought in.
Plus, Hamas’ military headquarters is un the basement of a hospital. I presume it is the same hospital mentioned that Israel has told Palestinians to evacuate.
The difference now is that a good number of people know that the AP, the BBC, the rest of the media are not news organizations but propaganda operations for the the approved Narrative of the day.
On the other side, in the Left’s beloved “you have freedom of speech but not freedom from accountability” many CEOs have demanded the names of the Harvard students whose groups came out in favor of what Hamas did last Saturday. And those students are scrambling as they know their depravity will follow them as the seek Wall Street and big law jobs. One can only hope similar happens to media companies that slant in support of the rapist and murderers. After all, who wants to hire a Nazi
Israeli has always loved to disregard the carrot part of the carrot-and-stick. Protest peacefully and our snipers shoot you. Support Fatah and our soldiers protect settlers as they attack. Flee to safety and we bomb you. And that cuddly old IDF veteran with a twinkle still in his eye? He’s telling soldiers to erase women and children, but in a good way.
Liberal Zionism is not going to survive the fallout of this, unless the extreme outlier happens and the IDF rebels after being bogged down and shoot Netanyahu and the rest in the head. I feel like that is one of the goals here by the right—to shatter the core of secular humanism and decency in Israelis and replace it with the positive spirit of old time genocide.
@Modulo Myself:
Stop with the ‘genocide.’ If you think this is genocide you need to learn some history. You do not begin a genocide by saying, ‘you have 24 hours to get out of the way.’ You do not use expensive precision weapons for genocide. If Israel wanted genocide they could sit outside Gaza and just pour artillery in indiscriminately.
FFS, isn’t this tragedy tragic enough for you without hype?
Why don’t ____ simply do ____ and make it all okay? The American reaction to every foreign policy issue: I don’t like sad pictures, kumbaya, simplistic solution, and next week I’ll forget all about it.
For the non history buffs, sorry to be the bearer of nuanced tidings, but quite often violence begets victory and surrender and even peace. We violenced the Indians out of an entire continent, then we violenced the Mexicans out of the territory they’d violenced from their Indians. The Union violenced the hell out of the Confederacy. We violenced up the Germans and Italians and Japanese good and hard and they are now, friends of ours. South Korea exists because we were better at violence than the Chinese. We violenced the fuck out of Vietnam – and now they’re sucking up to us for protection from China.
The reason people and nations resort to violence is that violence works great. That’s not an endorsement of violence. I hate violence. But it’s ahistorical to pretend that it doesn’t work. There’s a very long list of peoples and kingdoms and empires that stopped existing because Huns and Mongols and were super good at violence. It’d be a wonderful world if violence didn’t work, but that’s not this world.
@Michael Reynolds:
The Serbs gave the Bosnians 24 hours to get out of Srebrenica and they committed genocide there, so maybe you should, I don’t know. learn some history. Right now, anything could happen. But it’s not hype to say there is 100% genocidal rhetoric coming from Israelis in power, and people in power who commit terrible deeds always point to worse deeds as justification.
Opinions vary, there are widely different all over the net, even at supposedly sober, serious sites.
This struck me as pretty plausible:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/what-israel-didnt-understand-about-hamas.html
How much of Hamas is evacuating among the civilians? Not Ali Qadhi, obviously but there’s no reason to expect that others are not with the refugees.
What’s the goal here? What goal justifies and requires the humanitarian crisis that they are creating?
There’s also no reason to turn off the water on a civilian population that is now being forced to move in the heat. The Israeli government is causing more deaths for funsies with that move.
@charontwo: Interesting interview. A detail that stuck out to me, because it’s been said so often, was, “it believed that economic incentives like work permits for Gazans had sufficiently pacified Hamas”. Eighteen thousand work permits? That was supposed to bring economic relief to two million Gazans and pacify Hamas?
Worf on ST TNG once said. “Cowards take hostages.”*
I think that also applies to those who use human shields.
*- The rest of the saying was ‘Klingons don’t’.
@charontwo: A sober, serious person claims:
The unemployment rate is over 50%. That’s twice the Great Depression’s unemployment rate.
I recognize that I might be committing the sin of stating “Neoliberalism cannot fail, it can only be failed”, but it looks like they didn’t seriously try. They certainly didn’t get to a spot where the people in Gaza had something that would make a militant Hamas less appealing.
In a population of 2M, 18,000 jobs is a drop in the bucket. It’s not enough to give a large number of people something to hang onto.
I’m not saying that Hamas weighed the economic consequences and decided that they were acceptable. I am saying that if the people of Gaza had more to lose then there is a good chance that they would have been less likely to let Hamas rule as a jihadist organization — either push out Hamas or force it to moderate.
That “good chance” was never tested in earnest.
“We let 18,000 labor for us” is a very different scenario than creating jobs in Gaza for instance.
@gVOR10:
I do not disagree. I have seen other articles on the cockamamie arbitrary rules imposed on agricultural exports, because Israeli farmers don’t like competition.
You are right, the whole situation is pretty verkakte.
@Modulo Myself:
MR has stated that if there are still about 2M Gazans after Israel’s actions that it cannot be genocide.
If we apply that to Bosnia, there are still lots of Bosnians left, so the Serbs cannot have committed genocide. It was just sparkling mass murder.
@Gustopher:
Seriously. They were attacked. Not to respond is like saying “Oh please, feel free to keep attacking us”.
How do you feel about police arresting muggers? Better to negotiate better behavior? Do you think that is a bogus analogy?
What is your idea for a plan? Do you have a better idea than tell them “Sorry for your loss?”
I’m going to get this off my chest then go do some profitable writing.
I find it hard to stomach lectures from Americans on what ‘they’ should do. We should start by understanding our position in the world. We are the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the human race. We have an ocean on either side, and land borders with weak, friendly countries. Never mind that one of those countries is weak because we simply stole all the best parts. We sit here on land we brutally expropriated, land enriched by one of the cruelest slave systems known to man, facing no existential threats, the most secure and defended people on Earth, and we pontificate on the moral failings of countries that live in the middle of on-going shitstorms.
We’re a nation of Beverly Hills billionaires in Rolls-Royces driving past homeless encampments and tut-tutting that those people really should stop causing problems and ideally, disappear, so we don’t have the sads.
In equivalent percentages of population, Israel has lost somewhere in the range of 50,000. Flip it and you see that on 9/11 we lost the equivalent of about 60 Israelis. And for that we invaded and occupied not one but two countries. 2400 Americans died at Pearl Harbor, and for that we killed low number a quarter million, high number 900,000 Japanese civilians.
We’re not just a nation of the rich and privileged, we stole everything we have and massacred anyone who got in our way as we built this superpower. Now we sit atop our stolen land, safe and secure, with our fantastic trillion dollar military, and tut-tut at the Israelis who have faced existential threats since 1948, and tell them not to do what we did, and what we will do again. If Mexico started firing missiles into San Antonio and killed 50,000 Americans, after having kept up missile and terror attacks for decades, Mexico would be a smoking ruin.
We are the most privileged people on earth, the most privileged people in all of human history, and we gained this privilege by committing horrors and atrocities we have no interest in undoing. We have refugee camps, we just call them Indian reservations, now, today, still. But hey, tiny, besieged Israel, why don’t you let your people be slaughtered so we don’t have to think about children dying?
This is not to say we shouldn’t do our best to save children in Gaza. But maybe we could try that with a bit less sanctimony and hypocrisy and deliberate ignorance of our own history and our fantastic privilege.
” It’s absolutely clear that the basic reasons for this brutal attack was not the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or the war in the West Bank, or the economic situation in Gaza, or the Saudi-Israeli negotiations. It was much deeper. It was a part of the long-term vision of Hamas to eradicate Israel.”
Had to think about this but I think it’s correct. Hamas is a jihad group. They are devoted to destroying Israel regardless what happens. However, all of that other stuff clearly affects Palestinians. As he notes later even if they do destroy Hamas it just means another group like them springs up.
Think he is being very politically correct about Netanyahu. The jihadis love anniversary dates. On the 50th anniversary of the last big surprise attack it was entirely predictable they would attack. It was very easy, as he notes, and spread further than he thought possible with the IDF all out on the West Bank. To be clear, this get tiresome, Hamas is still responsible for the brutal killings, but Netanyahu should be booted for leaving the place unguarded.
Steve
@charontwo:
Yes. Because it completely ignores the lawless and immoral behavior of successive Israeli governments over the preceding decades.
Maybe try a teeny bit of carrot instead of just stick? Clear the settlements in the West Bank and make the Gaza blockade a little bit less cartoonishly villainous? (What is the point of blocking the import of musical instruments and wheelchairs except for making people miserable?)
Seriously, what is the upside for the Palestinians if they decide to go along with Israeli rule?
In the West Bank, they live as a second-class people under military rule while gradually being displaced from their ancestral homes. The Gaza Strip is one big open-air prison.
And then you come here wondering why 18,000 shitty, second-rate jobs won’t cut it. (After calling an evacuation plan that UN said would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe “no big deal,” remember?)
You come up with nonsense so that you won’t have to feel bad about your callous disregard for human suffering.
@Michael Reynolds: I’m very sympathetic with the Israeli dilemma. But the rules of the 1800s have been superseded. Atrocities committed by men on horseback under those rules are simply different from those committed by states with fighter jets and ballistic missiles in the era of the Geneva Conventions.
@Michael Reynolds:
By that logic we can never criticize anyone.
Are you also willing to apply that logic to Russia? (“We did worse to the Native Americans than the Russians are doing now to the Ukrainians. It is not our place to criticize.”)
No? I thought so.
@drj:
And, apart from helping you feel good, reasoning by ad hominem accomplishes what? C’mon, tell me.
I won’t attempt to address your other points, apart from noting they are pretty facile.
@James Joyner:
The reasoning here is basically whataboutism. My view of whataboutism, such as MR’s frequent use of it, is the user gets to feel good, but whataboutism does not really accomplish much by way of persuading anyone.
@charontwo: Do the police ever tell everyone above 80th street in Manhattan to get below 80th street, so they can clear the muggers, drug dealers, etc.?
Your analogy does not work. It explains nothing.
Hamas isn’t bright green with yellow polka dots — they can blend into a population that is being moved about. March everyone South through a war zone without food or water — how does that help?
What specific goals in the fight against Hamas does this forced displacement achieve that are significant enough to justify (even poorly justify) the humanitarian disasters that it creates?
“Something must be done. This is something. Therefore it must be done.” is not a compelling argument.
@drj:
Demonstrating that MR is not the only big whataboutism person here. (While you ignore the abundantly demonstrated nature and goals of Hamas).
I am going to repost something I posted in yesterday’s thread, but late when the thread was nearly dead. Apart from that, it’s time for me to bail out the considering the turn this discussion has taken.
I published a link to Mark Hertling’s Bulwark+ piece, it is not paywalled, a good read for where Israel is coming from. Should read the whole thing, I’ll excerpt a few paragraphs.
Note:
Mark Phillip Hertling is a former United States Army officer. From March 2011 to November 2012, he served as the Commanding General of United States Army Europe and the Seventh Army.
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/what-i-learned-from-watching-the-israeli-army
As promised, for this thread I am now out of here.
@JKB:
The Trump campaign. Steve Bannon worked for him already.
Son of missing Israeli peace activist: “Vengeance is not a strategy”
How dare Mr. Zeigen be so privileged and sanctimonious. He’s holding Israel to a double-standard. The only plausible explanation is that Mr. Zeigen and his family hate Jews or something.
@Michael Reynolds:
Gotta love we who’ve spent the last year and half boldly and loudly running our mouths about what Russia and Ukraine should and shouldn’t do suddenly pull the “But America” card to try to silence critique of another nation, all while accusing others of hypocrisy.
Wild.
When Netanyahu’s government pledges to refuse further US aid on top of the $300 billion already received, then and only then should Americans be quiet about Israel should and shouldn’t do. As long as Israel and Ukraine and everybody else is taking American money and weapons, and lobbying our electeds, and making decisions that could require American blood to be spilled, then hell yeah, we should give our opinion. They don’t want American input? Give us back our money. There’s a whole lot we could do with $300 billion right here at home.
‘We’ll take your American billions and your American weapons, but you don’t get to give your American opinion.’
Hahahaha hell no.
@charontwo:
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
This isn’t a matter of good police and bad robbers. The “police” in your analogy created the conditions that allowed the “robbers” to thrive.
First, by directly supporting Hamas in order to prevent the Palestinian Authority from becoming a plausible negotiating partner.
Second, by creating such hopelessness among the wider population that Hamas was able to maintain and expand its support. Israel not only deliberately cratered the Gaza Strip’s economy, it also facilitated the transfer of cash to Hamas so that it could pay its fighters!
The first lesson of fighting an insurgency is that you don’t create more fighters. How is indiscriminate bombing, collective punishment, and enforced apartheid – something that Israel has been doing for decades – going to help?
Pointing this out isn’t whataboutism. And you know it.
Over the course of the last couple of days, you were repeatedly caught spreading easily disproved falsehoods. For instance on the severity of Gaza’s blockade and the feasibility of evacuating one million people from the northern half of the Gaza Strip.
Assuming you’re not stupid, perhaps you should interrogate your motivations for coming up with such transparent bullshit.
@drj:
Not saying we can’t or shouldn’t criticize, or work to make the world a better place. It’s the high-handed moralizing and virtue-signaling hype (genocide!) that bother me. And the hypocrisy. Like I said, imagine thousands of Mexican missiles landing in Texas or California, or terrorist slaughters perpetrated by Canadians on Americans in Albany.
Not that long ago it was US policy to respond to a nuclear attack by condemning the entire human race to extermination. The USSR tried to move missiles into Cuba and we responded by threatening to annihilate the USSR and if a billion or so people died, well, better dead than red, amiright? We’re very good at telling others to turn the other cheek. The country that perpetrated the Trail of Tears is upset that Gazans have to walk south to avoid being caught in the crossfire.
I wonder sometimes how the rest of the world doesn’t laugh or throw up when we climb atop our high horses.
@JKB:
Which CEOs?
@Michael Reynolds:
Do you think the Trail of Tears was a good thing? Did it make us a better nation and a better people?
If you don’t embrace the Trail of Tears (and I doubt you do), I question why you embrace similar atrocities, while minimizing them to a walk with a million of their closest friends (through a war zone, with no water) rather than the humanitarian disaster that the U.N. characterizes it as.
And if it is just a gentle stroll on a sunny day, why would Hamas not just take the same stroll and remain embedded in the population?
NYTimes: I’m Going to War for Israel. Palestinians Are Not My Enemy.
By Nir Avishai Cohen, a major in the reserves of the Israel Defense Forces
Blaming Israel? Refusing to say Hamas is more cruel? Asserting that bothsidesism is warranted here and root causes inclusive of continued Israeli violation of international law and humanitarian demands are, in fact, relevant?
Obviously Major Cohen is sanctimonious moralistic, and hates Jews.
@Michael Reynolds:
Imagine Texas and California helping to kill tens of thousands of Mexican children with a ruthless blockade, with the American goverment walling in Mexico and essentially controlling who and what goes in out of Mexico.
Imagine the American miltary pushing Canadians out of their homes, so Americans settle there despite international law and the pleas of our allies.
Imagine a President Trump sidelining moderate Mexicans seeking peace to instead fund and bolster those Mexican terrorists.
Imagine the US receiving $300 billion in Israeli aid when all this is going on.
Imagine telling Israelis who then urged to the US to stop fueling terrorism and minimize civilian casualties in our response that they’re just sanctimonious moralists who hate Americans and need to just shut up and keep sending money and weapons.
Yeah, right. Puh-lease.
@Gustopher:
Verdict’s still out on that one.
@Michael Reynolds:
Because they’d look like hypocritical phonies doing so while sitting happily upon the piles of American money and weapons they keep begging us for.
Are Israel, Europe, Taiwan, Japan, S. Korea, Saudi Arabia and all the rest going to take full responsibility for their own defense, take ownership of the outcomes of their decisions, and stop requesting Americans to empty our bank accounts and/or send our children to die — to save their asses when the crap hits the fan?
Oh.
Shorter Michael Reynolds:
“I’m sick and tired of Americans who think they know what to do, now let me tell you what to do.”
Look I definitely appreciate historical perspectives that are presented, but when it come to the I/P conflict, I’m ok with listening to all sides since that’s all we are going to do.
The next time Trump or Republicans or Putin (or Hamas or China) does or says something inhumane and indecent, I can’t wait for the usual suspects to forget how they’re oh-so against sanctimony and morals as they leap to criticize them.
Last week when Hamas was chopping up children and murdering civilians, American condemnation was required. Nobody dared tell anybody to shut up about that.
This week, if Americans condemn Israel bombing children and civilians, well now all of a sudden Americans should stay off the high horse and shut up, Because Trail of Tears.
Make it make sense.
Israel could rack up some serious Brownie points by allowing refugees into Israel.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think you are grossly misrepresenting what people are saying.
Why do that? You are smart and articulate enough to actually argue with what people are saying.
@Michael Reynolds:
I would note that in our reaction to 9/11, including our need for vengeance and our belief that we can violence our way to a useful outcome we ended up fighting a multi-decade war that didn’t solve all that much in Afghanistan and launched a tragically unnecessary one in Iraq.
A lot of human beings suffered because of all of that and it isn’t at all clear to me, ex-post, that it was worth it at all.
So, what’s you point?
BTW, is this MR the same MR who says that “the left” talks too much about our past (like slavery, the treatment of natives, and so forth) and that is why Dems lose elections and why Trump is so successful?
But now, it is time to talk about that past to stop any possible moralizing over what appears to be unfolding in Gaza?
I am confused.
And for the record: Israel has every right to want to destroy Hamas. That is not my point, in case anyone is confused.