If it turns out to be legit, which I would stress - since it was posted by the IDF soldiers themselves* - seems likely: would you not agree that this is likely a war crime?
*some edits to add.
From the Times of Israel article about it:
In the video, posted by a soldier to Instagram and later circulated on X, troops can be seen rigging up the water facility, known as Canada Well, with explosives.
Another clip shows the site being blown up.
The video was tagged with the caption: “Demolishing the water reservoir of Tel Sultan in honor of the Sabbath.”
Seems very unlikely an IDF soldier would post a video claiming to be destroying a facility, which we know exists, and the people who paid to build it would identify it was the same building, and it would turn out to not be in Gaza at all. It is almost certainly the plant discussed in these articles.
In fact, it is an act of genocide, since depriving the population of water is "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
Maybe the water system was supplying the tunnels, which would make it a legit target.
Isn't the main issue whether the facility was supplying the civilian population? What about proportionality?
it certainly flies in the face of other evidence like the fact that Israel lets new water infrastructure into Gaza all the time and new water desalinization plants have opened (and haven't been destroyed) even just since the war began.
Half of Gaza's water sites had been damaged or destroyed as of that report.
And here is the image of three specific examples again:
It certainly doesn't "fly in the face of other evidence," the evidence is all pointing in the same direction.
When we spoke about this previously, you speculated (based on "probability," in your words) that the facilities were maybe collateral damage during an attack on Hamas fighters. In this case, we have the video footage. No Hamas fighters. Charges specifically placed on water infrastructure. No attempt to access or destroy a tunnel. This is simply naked evidence of an intentional attack on the necessities of life for the civilian population.
I don't have evidence of this but I believe the owner/operator of the site is pro Israel and this bleeds through into the ratings, which are not produced in any objective or repeatable fashion. It says Times of Israel has not failed any fact checks, but it clearly doesn't investigate this in a systematic way. I personally reported one particularly egregious and obviously false headline some months back and never heard anything.
It lists the fact checks the Guardian failed (totally fair), but overall I would say most similar websites rank them highly for factual content and for good reason.
For stuff unrelated to Israel I think MBFC is pretty solid if a little unclear and opaque in it's approach.
Gaza has been polio-free for 25 years and 95% of the population was vaccinated against the disease as of 2022, according to the WHO, though Haj-Hassan, the pediatrician, said that many Gazans, including newborns, have gone without vaccines or boosters for the last nine months.
The WHO said that it's working with other U.N. agencies and health authorities in Gaza to assess how much the poliovirus has spread and determine what measures may be needed, including a "prompt" vaccination campaign.
Combatting any infectious diseases will present challenges for Gaza's public healthcare system, which has been embattled and largely destroyed by Israeli forces. Only 16 out of the enclave's 36 hospitals are even partially functional, and only 45 of the 105 primary health care facilities are operational, according to the WHO.
Some people would look you straight in the face and tell you that even though Israel did all this to the health care system, the enemy is Hamas and not the entire population of Gaza. As if they didn't know what destroying hospitals leads to.
Yeah I'm sure Putin's top priority is infiltrating the Linux nerds and Trekkies in their natural habitat. Facebook? Nah. Reddit? Nyet. We need to go where the real action is.
The original and a still large instance is Lemmy.ml. The ML meaning Marxist Leninist.
Yeah I know, I subscribe to some communities there.
They even preemptively ban accounts who post outside of their instance if you say truthful things like NATO is a defensive alliance, Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine, or China is being imperialist themselves in SE Asia.
I will test this then! Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine and Putin is a cunt. Stalin was a monster. I'll make similar comments over on ml at the next opportunity. (Edit let's see how it goes https://lemmy.world/comment/11002066)
Just to be clear. I don't doubt that there are normal people here who are pro Russia or are tankies. What I doubt is that real people are being paid money to "influence the conversation" on this relatively obscure platform. That's all
What do you mean by that? That people use "Russian" talking points or that there are literally bots/agitators directly from Russia trying to shape the narrative here?
This is just the "I won't vote for Biden because Israel refuses to sign a ceasefire" bullshit all over again.
This is incredibly disingenuous. More like "Because he is arming, supporting and diplomatically protecting a genocidal government." We know it's not his fault Israel are assholes, it's the stuff he is doing that is the problem.
They have no problem whatsoever with Trump's policies.
They have no problem whatsoever with project 2025.
My brother in christ why do you think we want Biden to actually be a good candidate?
Genocide supporting, doddering old Biden is a much better candidate than the unhinged far right felon that wouldn't know the truth if it pissed on his face, BUT HE NEEDS TO WIN THE ELECTION FIRST. If being not as bad as trump was enough Hilary would have won.
It is precisely because I hate trump so much that I want Biden to be better. If you are in a debate with Trump and most people watching think you lost, you fucked up big time. The pigeon you're playing chess with might have shit on the board and felt like he won, but you should have at least done enough so that the audience watching this didn't fucking agree with him.
But also due probability, I simply trust the IDF explanation about a million more times than I trust the explanation of anyone who supports Hamas's ideology.
So by "probability" you mean that you feel that the IDF is less likely to lie than Hamas?
Despite saying (correctly)
I'm very sure that Israel has some liars in charge right now.
The thing is, we don't need to trust Hamas. There is a good chance there are tunnels under any particular building (far under but let's put a pin in that for now). So when Israel bombs a water facility, there is probably a tunnel at least close by, about 10 m down or whatever.
But the question isn't whether there's a tunnel. The question is what Israel is targeting. The only people who can answer that are those in the Israeli government and military, which you acknowledge contains "some liars." We don't even need to see what Hamas says. So why do you trust their explanation?
If it turns out to be legit, which I would stress - since it was posted by the IDF soldiers themselves* - seems likely: would you not agree that this is likely a war crime?
*some edits to add.
From the Times of Israel article about it:
The Canadian government, who built the plant, also agrees that the video shows it being destroyed: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-calls-for-probe-into-demolished-canadian-water-treatment-plant-in-gaza-1.7281666
Seems very unlikely an IDF soldier would post a video claiming to be destroying a facility, which we know exists, and the people who paid to build it would identify it was the same building, and it would turn out to not be in Gaza at all. It is almost certainly the plant discussed in these articles.
In fact, it is an act of genocide, since depriving the population of water is "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
Isn't the main issue whether the facility was supplying the civilian population? What about proportionality?
We spoke about this before. Here is the link to the facts again: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68969239
Half of Gaza's water sites had been damaged or destroyed as of that report.
And here is the image of three specific examples again:
It certainly doesn't "fly in the face of other evidence," the evidence is all pointing in the same direction.
When we spoke about this previously, you speculated (based on "probability," in your words) that the facilities were maybe collateral damage during an attack on Hamas fighters. In this case, we have the video footage. No Hamas fighters. Charges specifically placed on water infrastructure. No attempt to access or destroy a tunnel. This is simply naked evidence of an intentional attack on the necessities of life for the civilian population.