in general, I recommend being skeptical about news reports where the only source is "here's a recording of a phone call between two unknown people, released by a third party who intercepted the...
He also confirmed that there is fuel in Gaza hospitals, sharing two recorded conversations by Gazans on the subject
in general, I recommend being skeptical about news reports where the only source is "here's a recording of a phone call between two unknown people, released by a third party who intercepted the call"
from a military intelligence perspective...you have the phone of some Hamas operative tapped, allowing you to monitor their communications. releasing the audio publicly gives away the existence of that phone tap to Hamas, which means they will release it's bugged and switch to a different communication channel (or use that channel to spread deliberate misinformation, or start speaking in code of some kind that obscures the meaning)
In one recorded conversation between two anonymous people, Speaker B asks: “Where are the main headquarters of Al-Qasam Brigades?” Speaker A responds: “Under the compound Al-Shifa. Yes, the leadership headquarters are under the Al-Shifa compound. Bathrooms, rooms headquarters.”
maybe this is just an artifact of the translation. but this conversation doesn't sound particularly believable to me.
it's like when you're reading the first chapter of a poorly-written novel and one character says to another "I haven't seen you in 5 years, since our father died in that mining accident". there's details in the conversation that are meant as exposition for the reader, but that don't match the way actual conversations happen.
Not sure I understand. You're saying we shouldn't believe recordings because they can be faked? That sounds like a pretty strong claim, I hope you have better proof to support this reasoning. Even...
Not sure I understand. You're saying we shouldn't believe recordings because they can be faked? That sounds like a pretty strong claim, I hope you have better proof to support this reasoning. Even that CNN report doesn't mention the recording being fake, and we have since learned from other sources that the content of that recording was pretty accurate.
As for military intelligence perspective, you would often sacrifice sources if it supports your goals.
I am disappointed to find these kind of arguments on tildes. Ask yourself - are you equally skeptical of casualty reports coming from Gaza?
it's not a claim, it's skepticism of a claim. I'm not saying it's definitely fake, I'm saying there isn't sufficient evidence to conclude that it's definitely real. the headline of this story you...
Exemplary
You're saying we shouldn't believe recordings because they can be faked? That sounds like a pretty strong claim
it's not a claim, it's skepticism of a claim. I'm not saying it's definitely fake, I'm saying there isn't sufficient evidence to conclude that it's definitely real.
the headline of this story you posted says it's "proof". I'm not the one making the strong claim here.
are you saying that audio recordings like this one should be immediately accepted at face-value?
Even that CNN report doesn't mention the recording being fake
right, they say they can't independently verify its authenticity.
I am disappointed to find these kind of arguments on tildes.
sigh. spare me this bullshit.
Ask yourself - are you equally skeptical of casualty reports coming from Gaza?
yes, I default to skepticism of all journalism that is based on "one side of a conflict put out a press release" and does not have other ways of verifying it.
Yet the Gaza-based Ministry of Health — an agency in the Hamas-controlled government — continues to tally casualty numbers. It released its first detailed report on the casualties Thursday, giving names, ID numbers, ages and gender for Palestinians it says have been killed. The total toll is 7,028 Palestinians, including 2,913 minors, according to the ministry.
The ministry is the only official source for Gaza casualties. Israel has sealed Gaza’s borders, barring foreign journalists and humanitarian workers. The AP is among a small number of international news organizations with teams in Gaza. While those journalists cannot do a comprehensive count, they’ve viewed large numbers of bodies at the sites of airstrikes, morgues and funerals.
we only have one source for the death toll in Gaza - because the Israeli government won't allow independent reporters in.
I think the Israeli military should lift its blockade of Gaza, not just for the obvious humanitarian reasons, but because it would allow journalists to do independent reporting of facts on the ground (including the death toll, but also many other factors).
do you agree with lifting the blockade? if not, what would you propose in order to get a trustworthy count of deaths and injuries?
we do have some independent reporting on subsets of the death toll. for example:
U.N. and other international agencies say there can be small discrepancies between the final casualty numbers and those reported by the Gaza health ministry straight after attacks, but that they broadly trust them.
...
Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the Geneva-based World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, said last week figures released by both sides "may not be perfectly accurate on a minute-to-minute basis, but they grossly reflect the level of death and injury on both sides of that conflict."
New York-based Human Rights Watch also says the casualty figures have generally been reliable, and that it has not found big discrepancies in its verification of past strikes on Gaza.
Why is it a hard claim to back up – audio recordings are much easier to take than many other media (such as video). The parent comment also states that the recordings seem super implausible.
Why is it a hard claim to back up – audio recordings are much easier to take than many other media (such as video). The parent comment also states that the recordings seem super implausible.
It kind of seems like you haven't read the comment that you originally replied to in full? Do you really believe that Hamas would discuss the locations of their headquarters over an unsecured...
Do you really believe that Hamas would discuss the locations of their headquarters over an unsecured line? If so, how do you explain the fact that they have run rings around the well-funded and resourced Israeli intelligence services?
Hamas are dangerous because they are the kind of terrorists who aren't so mentally ill (I mean that in a literal descriptive way – most terrorists are very angry and disturbed people who aren't great at long-term planning) that they can make plans and run a movement.
yep, pretty much. NPR, Oct 9th: Hamas' attack is a staggering failure for Israel's intelligence and security forces AP, Oct 9th: What went wrong? Questions emerge over Israel’s intelligence...
Do you really believe that Hamas would discuss the locations of their headquarters over an unsecured line? If so, how do you explain the fact that they have run rings around the well-funded and resourced Israeli intelligence services?
Schrodinger's Hamas - good enough opsec that they were able to pull off a devastating surprise attack against Israel on the 7th, but also careless enough that they're having conversations on cell phones about "hello my fellow Hamas member, remind me again the location of our secret terrorist base?"
This only sounds absurd if one considers Hamas to be a monolithic entity. In reality, it's composed of a lot of people organized into cells, and many people in the lower tier cells are just...
This only sounds absurd if one considers Hamas to be a monolithic entity. In reality, it's composed of a lot of people organized into cells, and many people in the lower tier cells are just regular, poorly trained guys with an axe to grind.
It's not dissimilar from the cell phone leaks that law enforcement keep using in drug cartel investigations. Even though they too should know better, and even issue encrypted phones to their people, we have seen how often they fail to use proper procedures in the BlueLeaks data dump -- there's the decrypted data, but also lots of just regular chatter including social media.
I chortled at schrodinger's hamas. This feels like absurdist propaganda. And all to justify the bombing of a hospital. Theres even an animation of an elaborate underground lair.
I chortled at schrodinger's hamas. This feels like absurdist propaganda. And all to justify the bombing of a hospital. Theres even an animation of an elaborate underground lair.
Is the implication that Israel faked that audio to pin the blame for the hospital blast on Hamas? If so, it's worth noting that the international consensus now seems to be that the hospital blast...
we have seen this same type of thing previously: IDF releases audio claiming to be Hamas operatives discussing hospital blast
Is the implication that Israel faked that audio to pin the blame for the hospital blast on Hamas? If so, it's worth noting that the international consensus now seems to be that the hospital blast was indeed caused by Hamas.
The Times’s finding does not answer what actually did cause the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital blast, or who is responsible. The contention by Israeli and American intelligence agencies that a failed Palestinian rocket launch is to blame remains plausible. But the Times analysis does cast doubt on one of the most publicized pieces of evidence that Israeli officials have used to make their case and complicates the straightforward narrative they have put forth.
...
Numerous media outlets have shown the video footage and several have cited it as evidence that a Palestinian rocket hit the hospital.
But The Times concluded that the missile in the video was never near the hospital. It was launched from Israel, not Gaza, and appears to have exploded above the Israeli-Gaza border, at least two miles away from the hospital.
To trace the object in the sky back to Israeli territory, The Times synchronized the Al Jazeera footage with five other videos filmed at the same time, including footage from an Israeli television station, Channel 12, and a CCTV camera in Tel Aviv. These different videos provided a view of the missile from north, south, east and west. Using satellite imagery to triangulate the launch point in those videos, The Times determined that the projectile was fired toward Gaza from near the Israeli town of Nahal Oz shortly before the deadly hospital blast. The findings match the conclusion reached by some online researchers.
Honestly, entirely credible in my mind. If Hamas was serious about their bullshit excuse, they're free to allow independent investigators on site and have them check for tunnel entrances. But I...
Honestly, entirely credible in my mind. If Hamas was serious about their bullshit excuse, they're free to allow independent investigators on site and have them check for tunnel entrances. But I doubt they'd allow that. Particularly since they're basically pointing at the other incident they shamelessly lied about as evidence, upholding their lie.
And before we go there, no that doesn't mean that I think the hospital is in serious need of some bunker busters. In an almost-ideal world the hospital is in need of a few truckloads of concrete in the lower floors. In an ideal world, we wouldn't even know this hospital exists. In the world we're in, I'm thoroughly lost what the best viable course of action is.
how do you propose "independent investigators" get to Gaza in the first place? A blockade has been imposed by Israel and Egypt on the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip...
If Hamas was serious about their bullshit excuse, they're free to allow independent investigators on site
how do you propose "independent investigators" get to Gaza in the first place?
Outside journalists have been unable to enter Gaza since the Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7.
the Israeli government and military has sole control over which journalists or investigators are allowed into Gaza at all, and has had those restrictions in place for almost 20 years.
if you want to point a finger at "oh if they're telling the truth why won't they allow neutral third parties to observe?" I would suggest starting there.
Please make sure in the future when you make a submission that you add some tags to it. I've got Israel and Palestine filtered out because I really don't enjoy thinking about it, but if there is...
Please make sure in the future when you make a submission that you add some tags to it.
I've got Israel and Palestine filtered out because I really don't enjoy thinking about it, but if there is no tags then there is no way for a topic to be caught in the filter.
in general, I recommend being skeptical about news reports where the only source is "here's a recording of a phone call between two unknown people, released by a third party who intercepted the call"
we have seen this same type of thing previously: IDF releases audio claiming to be Hamas operatives discussing hospital blast
from a military intelligence perspective...you have the phone of some Hamas operative tapped, allowing you to monitor their communications. releasing the audio publicly gives away the existence of that phone tap to Hamas, which means they will release it's bugged and switch to a different communication channel (or use that channel to spread deliberate misinformation, or start speaking in code of some kind that obscures the meaning)
maybe this is just an artifact of the translation. but this conversation doesn't sound particularly believable to me.
it's like when you're reading the first chapter of a poorly-written novel and one character says to another "I haven't seen you in 5 years, since our father died in that mining accident". there's details in the conversation that are meant as exposition for the reader, but that don't match the way actual conversations happen.
Not sure I understand. You're saying we shouldn't believe recordings because they can be faked? That sounds like a pretty strong claim, I hope you have better proof to support this reasoning. Even that CNN report doesn't mention the recording being fake, and we have since learned from other sources that the content of that recording was pretty accurate.
As for military intelligence perspective, you would often sacrifice sources if it supports your goals.
I am disappointed to find these kind of arguments on tildes. Ask yourself - are you equally skeptical of casualty reports coming from Gaza?
it's not a claim, it's skepticism of a claim. I'm not saying it's definitely fake, I'm saying there isn't sufficient evidence to conclude that it's definitely real.
the headline of this story you posted says it's "proof". I'm not the one making the strong claim here.
are you saying that audio recordings like this one should be immediately accepted at face-value?
right, they say they can't independently verify its authenticity.
sigh. spare me this bullshit.
yes, I default to skepticism of all journalism that is based on "one side of a conflict put out a press release" and does not have other ways of verifying it.
with casualty reports for example - What is Gaza’s Ministry of Health and how does it calculate the war’s death toll?
we only have one source for the death toll in Gaza - because the Israeli government won't allow independent reporters in.
I think the Israeli military should lift its blockade of Gaza, not just for the obvious humanitarian reasons, but because it would allow journalists to do independent reporting of facts on the ground (including the death toll, but also many other factors).
do you agree with lifting the blockade? if not, what would you propose in order to get a trustworthy count of deaths and injuries?
we do have some independent reporting on subsets of the death toll. for example:
also: Despite Biden's doubts, humanitarian agencies consider Gaza toll reliable
Why is it a hard claim to back up – audio recordings are much easier to take than many other media (such as video). The parent comment also states that the recordings seem super implausible.
Because the opinion that something is easily faked is not the same as proof it was faked. As for implausiblility - that is quite subjective.
It kind of seems like you haven't read the comment that you originally replied to in full?
Do you really believe that Hamas would discuss the locations of their headquarters over an unsecured line? If so, how do you explain the fact that they have run rings around the well-funded and resourced Israeli intelligence services?
Hamas are dangerous because they are the kind of terrorists who aren't so mentally ill (I mean that in a literal descriptive way – most terrorists are very angry and disturbed people who aren't great at long-term planning) that they can make plans and run a movement.
yep, pretty much.
NPR, Oct 9th: Hamas' attack is a staggering failure for Israel's intelligence and security forces
AP, Oct 9th: What went wrong? Questions emerge over Israel’s intelligence prowess after Hamas attack
NYT, Oct 10th: How Israel’s Feared Security Services Failed to Stop Hamas’s Attack
Schrodinger's Hamas - good enough opsec that they were able to pull off a devastating surprise attack against Israel on the 7th, but also careless enough that they're having conversations on cell phones about "hello my fellow Hamas member, remind me again the location of our secret terrorist base?"
This only sounds absurd if one considers Hamas to be a monolithic entity. In reality, it's composed of a lot of people organized into cells, and many people in the lower tier cells are just regular, poorly trained guys with an axe to grind.
It's not dissimilar from the cell phone leaks that law enforcement keep using in drug cartel investigations. Even though they too should know better, and even issue encrypted phones to their people, we have seen how often they fail to use proper procedures in the BlueLeaks data dump -- there's the decrypted data, but also lots of just regular chatter including social media.
I chortled at schrodinger's hamas. This feels like absurdist propaganda. And all to justify the bombing of a hospital. Theres even an animation of an elaborate underground lair.
Is the implication that Israel faked that audio to pin the blame for the hospital blast on Hamas? If so, it's worth noting that the international consensus now seems to be that the hospital blast was indeed caused by Hamas.
This is not true:
Honestly, entirely credible in my mind. If Hamas was serious about their bullshit excuse, they're free to allow independent investigators on site and have them check for tunnel entrances. But I doubt they'd allow that. Particularly since they're basically pointing at the other incident they shamelessly lied about as evidence, upholding their lie.
And before we go there, no that doesn't mean that I think the hospital is in serious need of some bunker busters. In an almost-ideal world the hospital is in need of a few truckloads of concrete in the lower floors. In an ideal world, we wouldn't even know this hospital exists. In the world we're in, I'm thoroughly lost what the best viable course of action is.
how do you propose "independent investigators" get to Gaza in the first place?
A blockade has been imposed by Israel and Egypt on the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip since 2005.
PBS NewsHour: Journalists in Gaza struggle with safety, survival while reporting on the ground
the Israeli government and military has sole control over which journalists or investigators are allowed into Gaza at all, and has had those restrictions in place for almost 20 years.
if you want to point a finger at "oh if they're telling the truth why won't they allow neutral third parties to observe?" I would suggest starting there.
Please make sure in the future when you make a submission that you add some tags to it.
I've got Israel and Palestine filtered out because I really don't enjoy thinking about it, but if there is no tags then there is no way for a topic to be caught in the filter.