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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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If they use some underpowered subsonic assassin setup, then it's possible it could be slow enough to just make a hole an embed in the skull at close range. Most of the bullets in the images look like 5.56 (?), and it's really not the tool for the job. It'd likely not work reliably in the IDF issued rifles (are they mostly using Tavor's still?) as this kind of ammo usually requires a special setup or tinkering beyond what infantryman has in the field.

If there's death squads going around giving Moscow neckties to Palestinian children, then they would probably choose something else. Mossad used to like those nifty .22's. They also probably wouldn't let the kids they just shot in the head get carted off to the hospital. On the other hand, if a child catches a strays, ricochet, or misidentification there's less reason to prevent them from going to the hospital.

Soldiers blasting kid's skulls for fun with their issued rifles on a regular basis seems unlikely given the details in the article if only for the fact there are so many kids going to the hospital after getting blasted in the skull with a rifle cartridge. "44 doctors, nurses and paramedics saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza" with a couple X-ray's doesn't sell me on death squad or even misconduct. It shows me kids have been shot in the head according to some doctors.

The lethal combination of what Human Rights Watch describes as indiscriminate military violence, what Oxfam calls the deliberate restriction of food and humanitarian aid, near-universal displacement of the population, and destruction of the health care system is having the calamitous effect that many Holocaust and genocide scholars warned of nearly a year ago.

I think this paragraph tells me enough about the journalist's sympathies and where her biases lay. Doesn't mean the IDF hasn't had misconduct or committed war crimes. I suspect they have just based on what I've seen make it online. Especially in the early months of the war. But, probably not to the degree, frequency, or relevancy (genocide) that this writer believes.