Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
- 23
- 2
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Gaza gets more than enough aid to feed the people there. Of course, the distribution is challenging, with Hamas still being on the ground, still being very interested in presenting the picture of mass starvation, and also of course the whole process is grotesquely corrupt, with the aid which is supposed to be free being sold, etc. But even given that, there's no mass starvation is Gaza. There might be some nutritional imbalances and food quality issues, I mean living for an extended time on basic foods probably not a lot of fun, but that's a different picture.
But that's not what happens. I mean, "if" here is redundant - every single hospital in Gaza is used by Hamas as a base, it is a fact. There's absolutely no question about it, and the same of course is true for every school, mosque and other building with lower probability of IDF just blowing it out from the sky. But hospitals are not just destroyed with everybody in it. What is done about it is the hospital is surrounded, and then evacuated, and then it is searched (with multiple Hamas tunnels, weapons caches and often explosive traps inevitable discovered). Of course, this does not always goes smoothly - Hamas operatives sitting inside the hospital sometimes get ideas that shooting at IDF may be fun, and get the return fire, and so on. That stage is usually when civilians get hurt, but it doesn't usually take long to eliminate all active resistance. During the evacuation, of course Hamas operatives will pretend to be the sickest patients in urgent need to be in another hospital - e.g., in Kamal Adwan the first evacuating ambulance had 21 people inside, out of which 13 were completely healthy Hamas operatives (IDF has pretty good face recognition and by now very extensive lists of Hamas members, so it's not as easy as saying "I'm a sick civilian, please let me go"). The civilians that aren't identified as Hamas are provided with tents, generators, food and field medical facilities. Do civilians get hurt in the process? Yes, they do, but it's not like the whole thing is destroyed and everybody inside is instantly dead (though this is exactly the story that was told when Islamic Jihad hit another hospital with it's rocket and they tried to sell it as IDF attack - they counted 500 or so casualties within minutes, they're good like that, and nobody in the press cared to doubt it). Does replacing proper hospital facilities with whatever field medicine can be provided lead to some additional casualties? It probably does, but I don't think anyone has any accurate count of it.
More options
Context Copy link