The Israeli government says a drone has been launched at Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu’s house.
In Gaza, more than 50 people have been killed in several Israeli strikes, including children, in less than 24 hours, according to hospital officials
I have the same question. The best I can think of might be that it just happened to be next to or somehow in the way of (along the path to) an actual military target. But then (now responding to the other commenter),
That is a degree of lax that seems to be almost nonsensical. The soldiers couldn’t hold their focus on the actual military targets and took down an entirely unrelated target instead. That’s like bombing in the wrong city or something, but a gazillion times worse.
Plausible and will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that’s right, but would appreciate a citation or reference.
I was, in fact.
Why don’t you agree?
I’m glad you can see why myself and others would see things that way.
Fair point. I’ll give this - hostages can be returned unharmed, or failing that they can at least be returned alive. So it’s a horrible choice but I’ll give brownie points for the “civilians get to stay alive” one.
Gotcha. In that case, I retract my previous statement on the basis of new evidence. (Again, would appreciate a link to said article or a similar one, if you can find it.)
Most things I’m saying can be found in the Wikipedia page on the attack and the festival massacre (which, as Wikipedia generally does, leans Zionist so I’d recommend you read critically). If you want citations for something specific let me know.
That was, in fact, the case. They were going to the city of Nevitot and the festival site was next to Re’im, which had the IDF Gaza division’s headquarters. On an operational level it was a good opportunity to take hostages, but for multiple reason, including the aforementioned laxness, it quickly devolved into what we now know as the Nova music festival massacre.
The idea was to take hostages before heading to the intended operation site, but by the time they could get out of their (they engaged with the IDF in the festival site, as you probably know) the IDF was already headed their way so they retreated. Still fucked up, but from what I understand it seemed like they could do it without compromising their initial objective at the time.
We don’t have their plans either way, so this is just my general read of the information that was reported on during the early months of the war. The nature of the kibbutz on or near the border makes them natural spots for IDF sites. Go through the engagements table in the main article and you’ll find a lot of instances of X kibbutz and right after X outpost/military base/etc. Note that it appears that there are places they entered exclusively to take hostages, and I wasn’t counting those when I said targets as the hostages were meant to be tools for the negotiations after the attack and not themselves the targets of the attack.
I consider it a “don’t blame the player, blame the game” situation. Israel created a situation where taking hostages is one of the few ways Hamas can do literally anything, including in this case (as far as the drawing board went) taking back Palestinian detainees and not get bombed to oblivion. To put it another way, Israel takes hostages (also known as detainees) all the time and you can’t free them without something to trade. and that something was hostages in this case. I view it as a realpolitik military/political decision that nonetheless doesn’t give them an excuse to not treat them with respect and at least try to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. You might say that the hostages didn’t really help (other than free a few detainees), and in hindsight you’d be right but nobody could predict the perfect storm of Netanyahu’s desperation for a forever war to keep him in power and the until-then-unknown insanity of Biden’s Zionism.
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/19/netanyahu-house-hit-hezbollah-drone
Note that this is the only article that explicitly states that the drone both hit and was fired by Hezbollah, so it could be a mistake on their part but I personally don’t think so.
Thanks! There actually a couple of pages in this area for each so if you have specific Wikipedia articles to link to, that would help a bit. Otherwise I’ll make do, no worries either way.
Thanks for the reference! Very helpful.
Yeah they haven’t updated it after a couple of days, so it seems legit.
Ok, that seems fair then. It wasn’t part of the plan.
Again, fair.
Yep, fair.
Hostage taking is wrong either way. Once found to be a genuine and innocent civilian who had nothing to do with the matter, that person should be released by the IDF. (It’s different matter when enemy combatants are captured, but even then we have Geneva conventions and such to follow.)
Something is deeply sickening about this. The idea that innocent civilians can just be taken and used as cards to trade. (Doesn’t matter who or which side, the idea is sick no matter who is behind it, IDF or Hamas.)
Neither side should stoop that low. But if one side does stoop that low, that doesn’t give the other wise a free pass to do the same thing.
I see why realpolitik is so deeply disliked.
Yup.
I’ll give credit here. Hamas really screwed up as it seems like things were on the verge of a grand bargain of peace here with Saudi Arabia helping to ensure an independent State of Palestine - see https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/israel-gaza-war-biden-netanyahu-peace-negotiations/679581/
And then it all broke down in the aftermath.
Eh, the same article shows Biden really didn’t want this, though he also feared publicly breaking with Netanyahu.
Even now he’s still (feebly and ineffectively) pushing for Israel to stop, as per the headline “Biden tells Netanyahu it’s time to end Gaza war after Sinwar’s elimination” : https://www.axios.com/2024/10/17/biden-netanyahu-sinwar-gaza-war
I mean it’s easy to say that when you don’t have family or friends being detained and tortured in Israeli prisons.
I know about that naturalization deal, and so did everyone that mattered at the time. It’s widely theorized that one of the purposes of the deal was to prevent naturalization with Saudi Arabia from happening, specifically because it wouldn’t contribute anything to Palestinian statehood. You’ll find the details if you look, or I can grab them from somewhere, but either way don’t take what The Atlantic says too seriously. Naturalization was widely viewed as a betrayal by Saudi Arabia of the Palestinian cause, and not at all a grand deal that would free them from Israeli oppression.
Biden cares more about Zionism than about US democracy and his career, or at least that’s what it would seem from his actions. That’s why I said his Zionist insanity. Literally no other US administration except Trump would support Israel’s genocide to the extent Biden is. He’s not even clearing the bar Reagan set.
Also, it’s easy to say that when you don’t have family or friends being detained as hostages by Hamas in who knows where.
In case it wasn’t clear, I’m on the side of the innocent folks who are being detained (doesn’t matter by who).
If you could, I tried looking but haven’t gotten a better or more nuanced look than what was on the Atlantic. As usual, your references are super helpful!
Hmm, right now all I can do is to quote the Atlantic article when it says,
But of course, just because these details were being hashed out in secret doesn’t mean the folks who scuttled the deal (Hamas) knew about it, so both could be true at the same time. (One disturbing alternative is that Hamas was aware of this detail but decided to scuttle it anyways, as they didn’t agree with the two-state solution that was being built and supported by Israel, the US, Saudi Arabia, and presumably the Palestine Authority.)
I guess this is why MBS said,
Yeah, that’s fair - if you look only at the actions it’s easy to see it this way.
Yeah, again that’s quite a bit disturbing.