After the pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian, a decision was made that the first mission of the combat helicopters and the armed Zik drones was to stop the flow of terrorists and the murderous mob that poured into Israeli territory through the gaps in the fence. 28 combat helicopters fired over the course of a day The fighting all the ammunition in their stomachs, in rearming rounds. These are hundreds of 30 mm cannon shells (the effect of a spray grenade for each shell) as well as the Hellfire missiles. The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.
The Hamas army, it turns out, deliberately made it difficult for the helicopter pilots and the operators of the UAVs: in the investigation it became clear that the invading forces were asked in the last briefings to walk slowly into the settlements and outposts or within them, and under no circumstances to run, in order to make the pilots think they were Israelis. This deception worked for a considerable time , until the Apache pilots realized that they had to skip all the restrictions. It was only around 9:00 a.m. that some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors.
Now that's what I call a 𝓌𝒽𝑜𝑜𝓅𝓈𝒾𝑒.
the invading forces were asked in the last briefings to walk slowly into the settlements and outposts or within them, and under no circumstances to run, in order to make the pilots think they were Israelis
every day hamas puts on a stunning display of video game tactics
IDF soldiers and civilians took cover behind stacks of red barrels but Hamas began shooting these barrels which caused them to explode. Unfortunately the IDF had placed its golden minigun in a secret chamber beneath the barrels, enabling Hamas to kill any person or vehicle with one shot
This isn't even videogame tactics, it's schoolyard tactics. Like I literally used this technique in a rugby match in high school.
Unfortunately for Israeli civilians, Hamas hasn't been playing those games where the final boss tries to kill everyone just because.
hey it's easier to ask for forgiveness for murdering your countrymen than to ask for permission to murder your countrymen
You know you would think so, but then you hear about the Hannibal directive and how in practice it seems to play out by preferably killing hostages to ensure none are taken.
The Hamas army, it turns out, deliberately made it difficult for the helicopter pilots and the operators of the UAVs
hamas are cheating! that's not fair! ref, blow the whistle!
Death to America
good god. the more absolutely deranged and decoupled-from-reality the hasbara framing of the gazan genocide goes on, the more i think the israeli narrative of the inciting event can not possibly stand up to any independent scrutiny. we're already well beyond "those two dead prisoners in polish uniforms with disfigured faces crossed the german border, so that's why we had to flatten like 25% of Warsaw" level of bullshit.
the more i think the israeli narrative of the inciting event can not possibly stand up to any independent scrutiny.
If it could, the extremely online apartheid state wouldn't be posting ridiculous propaganda videos every single hour on twitter, the evidence would speak for itself.
we're increasingly going to find out that like 95% of people the resistance killed were soldiers, and that the remaining 5% was actually like 50 people they killed to get to the military targets
Oh yes the classic denial strategy of "yes we did bad thing but it's YOUR FAULT we HAD to do bad thing!"
Okay we all knew Israel was genuinely a fascist hellscape, but I honestly wouldn't have guessed they'd be open firing on their own civilians, such as at the kibbutz where survivors were talking about how the IDF just began a firefight with the hostages between them and Hamas.
I knew Israeli authorities were absolutely fine killing every last Palestinian if they thought it would get them even one Hamas guy, but I honestly thought they wouldn't risk their own people. I understood in theory that this is normal practice for fascists, but I never really expected it to play out this way in the modern day; I've said it before and I'll say it again (as it makes more and more sense): Israel is a snapshot of Europe circa 1930's. This is probably exactly what people are talking about when they say they want to make America great again.
Think of all the cop shooting cases in the US where they'll blame the dead robbers over the dead civilians down the road caught in a pray and spray barrage of police fire. Lots of those precincts are trained by Israeli instructors and bring in that mentality. That's my hypothesis.
"I solve crimes by shooting at people, and bam! I have a different crime to solve"
Source: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b111niukzt
Another source: https://www.mako.co.il/news-military/6361323ddea5a810/Article-02cfdbceafc4b81027.htm Edit: Archive link: https://archive.li/GMdBE
Relevant: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231030-report-7-october-testimonies-strikes-major-blow-to-israeli-narrative/
Many of the civilian deaths came from Israeli Apache pilots not knowing who was Hamas & who were civilians so they just fired a huge amount of munitions at everyone fleeing the Nova festival:
Israel’s two Apache helicopter squadrons had 8 choppers in the air, “and there was almost no intelligence to help make fateful decisions,” Mako reported. The squadrons did not reach full strength until noon. As the wave of infiltrations from Gaza drove chaos on the ground, discombobulated Israeli pilots unleashed a frenzy of missile and machine gun salvos: “The Apache pilots testify that they fired a huge amount of munitions, emptied the ‘belly of the helicopter’ in minutes, flew to re-arm and returned to the air, again and again. But it didn’t help and they understand it,” Mako reported. The Apache helicopters appear to have focused on vehicles streaming back into Gaza from the Nova electronic music festival and nearby kibbutzes, attacked cars with apparent knowledge that Israeli captives could be inside. They also fired on unarmed people exiting cars or walking on foot through the fields on the periphery of Gaza. One Apache pilot reflected on the tortuous dilemma of whether to shoot at people and cars returning to Gaza. He knew that many of those vehicles may have contained Israeli captives. But he chose to open fire anyway. “I choose targets like that,” the pilot reflected, “where I tell myself that the chance that I am shooting here on hostages as well is low.” However, he admitted that his judgment “was not 100%.” “I understand that we have to shoot here and quickly,” the commander of the Apache unit, Lt. Col. E., told Mako in a separate report. “Shooting at people in our territory – this is something I never thought I would do.” Lt. Col. A., a reserve pilot in the same unit, described a fog of confusion: “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them.” A report on the Apache squadrons by the Israeli outlet Yedioth Aharanoth noted that “the pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian… The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”
ACAB includes the IDF. Indiscriminately shooting up people because that's what do.
So are they basically admitting they fire indiscriminately at civilians on the off-chance they're Hamas?
machine translation
In the Air Force, they began to summarize the events of the surprise attack that opened the war in Gaza, and it turns out that the fog of war accompanied not only the fighters on the ground in the first hours of Black Saturday but also the aircrews that were scrambled to the skies of the western Negev.
The first pair of combat helicopters, which were on immediate standby for the Gaza division, reached the envelope about an hour or more after the start of the events, around 7:30-8:00, from Ramat David camp in the north. This was despite the fact that the home squadrons of the Apache helicopters are located at the closer Ramon camp to the Strip. In Ramon, they quickly understood that something extraordinary was unfolding and raised, with the commander of Squadron 190 himself, a combat helicopter that arrived at the envelope at 8:32.
After the pilots realized that there was immense difficulty distinguishing within the outposts and the settlements that were conquered, who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or a civilian, it was decided that the first task of the combat helicopters and the armed drones was to stop the flow of terrorists and the murderous mob that poured into Israeli territory through the breaches in the fence. Throughout the day of fighting, 28 combat helicopters fired all their ammunition, in rounds of rearming. This involves hundreds of 30mm cannon shells (each shell has a shrapnel effect) as well as Hellfire missiles. The initial firing rate against thousands of terrorists was tremendous, and only at a certain stage did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select their targets.
Hamas's army, it turns out, intentionally made it difficult for helicopter pilots and drone operators: in the investigation, it was revealed that the invading forces were asked in the last briefings to walk slowly into and within the settlements and outposts, and in no case to run, to make the pilots think they were Israelis. This deception worked for a significant amount of time until the Apache pilots understood that they had to disregard all the restrictions. Only around 9:00 did some of them, on their own initiative, start strafing the terrorists with the cannons, without approvals from higher-ups.
The air activity on the first day was not organized, but even in the sky, the pilots improvised solutions to the complex and unprecedented situation: much of the gunfire aiming and target acquisition from the forces fighting on the ground came to the pilots via phone calls or sending pictures on WhatsApp. Against the backdrop of the tremendous number of the slain and the abducted, the Air Force is convinced that without the fire support and the many attacks carried out by IDF combat helicopters on that day - the killing would have been much greater.
Another step that helped the Air Force commanders to understand the seriousness of the event occurred around 10:00 in the morning, after the commander of Squadron 190 descended from his helicopter in Ramon to rearm and refuel. He unloaded the full film strip recorded by the helicopter's camera and quickly broadcast it to the Air Force headquarters in the Kirya. Within less than 20 minutes, he was back in the air, and using the information obtained, he directed the rest of the air fighters to shoot at everything they saw in the fence area, and at some point, he also attacked an IDF outpost with trapped soldiers to help the commandos of Flotilla 13 to storm it and release it.
In one case, as part of taking upon himself the removal of restrictions, he fired at a range of only 20 meters from the houses of one of the kibbutzim to cover for the deputy commander of Division 80, who was parachuted from the Sinai sector and killed four terrorists in a tough battle. According to the Air Force, in the first four hours of the fighting, helicopters and fighter planes attacked about 300 targets, most of them in Israeli territory.
On the ninth day of the war (Sunday), the Air Force Command focused on eliminating senior Hamas figures in parallel with preparing a massive part for a ground invasion. The Air Force did not address the possible dilemma of attacking targets where the Hamas leadership - such as Mohammed Deif or Yahya Sinwar - is hiding when Israeli abductees are beside them as human shields.
The Air Force is working to create a new barrier between Israel and the Strip, up to three kilometers wide, and to encourage the Gazans to move southward towards the heavy disturbance that will be imposed on the city and the northern towns. The operational idea that the Air Force is now working on is "the destruction of military, mobility, and governance capabilities of terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip that threaten Israel". The pilots were instructed to act with composure and professionalism, with operational and intelligence logic behind each of the thousands of attacks carried out so far.
Now, as mentioned, the air effort is invested in Gaza, but with high readiness for the days of battle that are already underway in the north. In the IDF, it is explained that the Air Force is trained and equipped to deal with two fronts simultaneously, but the preference is to focus on one main front. For example, the Air Force does not automatically attack every Hezbollah rocket launcher that fires a missile towards Israeli drones.
Meanwhile, the IDF identifies a large effort by Iran to move advanced weaponry to Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to foreign publications, it was the Air Force that attacked the Syrian airports in Aleppo and Damascus in recent days, disabling them, as well as large weapon convoys on their way to Lebanon.
The Air Force commander, Major General Tomer Bar, referred to the events of the first day and said: "There are many stories of heroism of fighters on the ground. The pilots killed many terrorists and helicopters brought fighters to the battlefield while dealing with fire towards them. We are proud of them and of the reservists who prove the power of the IDF and the Air Force. We investigate every day, and improve every day."
Regarding a possible ground invasion, he said: "We are preparing the arena for as effective a maneuver as possible and removing as many threats from the ground and air as possible to give the fighters operational freedom of action. We are currently focusing on the southern front but are in high readiness for any development that may also be in the north."
There isn't any explicit admission of shooting civilians. So idk. I think its best to wait for more investigations because so far the only article saying Israel deliberately targeted their civilians is from the grayzone.
I’ll eat my hat if Israel cops to this explicitly in the next 6-12 months
God I hope not. Black Sabbath is an amazing band and I won't let them co-opt them.
Imagining Ozzy yelling “SHAROOONNNNN” but about a dead primeminster now instead
"But... But... The other ones made me do it!"
My kids use the same excuse when they do something they're not supposed to.
Don't be too hard on them. They're more likely to be right about it than Israel.
