Unfortunately many of the government presented eyewitness accounts have been thoroughly debunked. While I do not doubt that rape occurred, it looks like the Israeli government attempted to greatly exaggerate the events. This includes conflating civilian and military deaths; falsely claiming 40 babies were beheaded (only one was killed); falsely claiming children were staked together and burned alive; and more.
What’s really flabbergasting to me is the reality was bad enough. 900 civilians killed. Grenades thrown into shelters. Cases of burning individual people to death. Cases of rape and murder. Cases of torturing people before killing them.
They didn’t need to lie. But they did anyways and now it’s really hard to trust anything the Israeli government puts out.
Welcome to the ‘middle ground’ of this conflict, where the extremists on both sides demand you see and recognize only their dead, the atrocities they’ve suffered, but simultaneously ignore and downplay the people in the other end of the violence. Always pointing further into the past for justification of the most recent conflict
Like you said, on its own a surprise attack that focused its violence to wantonly kill civilians was horrific enough to bring nearly the entire world, Arab nations included, to solidarity with Israel on Oct 7-9. Nobody was talking about illegal settlements or the annexation of Jerusalem, or any of the other perennial issues. The Likud-coalition had a lot of untenable choices suddenly very possible, and they chose this
Unfortunately many of the government presented eyewitness accounts have been thoroughly debunked. While I do not doubt that rape occurred, it looks like the Israeli government attempted to greatly exaggerate the events. This includes conflating civilian and military deaths; falsely claiming 40 babies were beheaded (only one was killed); falsely claiming children were staked together and burned alive; and more.
What’s really flabbergasting to me is the reality was bad enough. 900 civilians killed. Grenades thrown into shelters. Cases of burning individual people to death. Cases of rape and murder. Cases of torturing people before killing them.
They didn’t need to lie. But they did anyways and now it’s really hard to trust anything the Israeli government puts out.
Welcome to the ‘middle ground’ of this conflict, where the extremists on both sides demand you see and recognize only their dead, the atrocities they’ve suffered, but simultaneously ignore and downplay the people in the other end of the violence. Always pointing further into the past for justification of the most recent conflict
Like you said, on its own a surprise attack that focused its violence to wantonly kill civilians was horrific enough to bring nearly the entire world, Arab nations included, to solidarity with Israel on Oct 7-9. Nobody was talking about illegal settlements or the annexation of Jerusalem, or any of the other perennial issues. The Likud-coalition had a lot of untenable choices suddenly very possible, and they chose this