Gaza Health Ministry statistics are credible and used by everyone including the Israeli government and military. Athough the Israelis will publicly dispute the statistics, they use them internally as the numbers are good.
“On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head.”
How much of a shitty person do you have to be, to snipe little kids in the head?
the other option is to comply with the Houthi demands that the starvation of the people of Gaza be ended and supplies be allowed in accordance with the International Laws
‘apparent’. What they need confirmation from the IDF that it was an Israeli airstike? Is the IDF still admitting to war crimes now that there are going to be ICJ hearings on Monday?
No it was not a small attack. It was light infantry against a full miltary but not small. It was planned and they stockpiled weapons and material to last months.
What they were not expecting was to walk over the IDF military on the border (none of the videos released by the IDF show Hamas doing this). They were not expecting to get throught the defences so easily to get to the settlements. Remember most of the population of Gaza was ethnically cleansed from the land that these settlements are built on.
They are still fighting. The IDF is using tanks in urban warfare (this is a big tactical no no), so Hamas have the IDF where they want them. Even 2 months into the fighting we still see daily videos of IDF tanks (USD 3 million) being destroyed by rocket launchers (USD 200).
Strategically the Palestinians were being thrown under a bus by the rest of the Arabs so this attack put Hamas in control. It also destroyed the image of Israeli comptence which is a huge propaganda win.
If you look at the prisoner exchanges and the interviews afterwards you see the Israeli prisoners were treated well in captivity and the release was well managed and competent. This especially does not align with the story in the NY Times here.
The release of the Palestinian prisoners was chaotic (tear gas was used in some places) and the prsioners were tortured and released with broken bones in some cases.
Labour have kept changing policies all over the place so have been difficult to predict.