So on that basis I would say it only stops the Palestinians from getting imagery of the area.
Now considering the fact Palestine only has rockets and not missiles, I doubt that imagery is of much value to them.
Call me cynical, but I suspect the more important reason to keep these images blurred might be to stop the rest of the world from seeing what is going on.
We do know that Israel has launched 1000 to 1500 missiles up until 10 pm pacific time.
Netanyahu has been blatant over taking back "theiir" land lately.
Netanyahu is in a very close political race.
I won't say what I thinking though out of respect for the rules.
Are you actually suggesting that rocket fire is justified because of overly aggressive policing?
[0] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/43-times-us-has-used-veto...
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-2tEmqM1_E
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/report-nsa-sharing-u-s-citizens-data... It is hard to miss how the Israeli newspaper Haaretz is a lot more no-nonsense in tone and coverage than, say, the NYT.
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/world/middleeast/israel-g...
Not a conspiracy theory at all - but rather a very sensible inference based on how state actors behave in the modern age.
I am not even sure what you think Israel is hiding
Blurry images make it much harder to assess, and verify the extent of the "unintended" casualties and property damage the current IDF campaign is causing (the term is in quotes because that's the language they rather gallingly use, as if they expect you and I to take it face value).
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....
That action looks a lot like Israel targeting news agencies and the two news agencies involved have both raised their concerns about that unprecedented action by Israel.
They might be targeting those news agencies, but not for the purpose of suppressing images on the ground, which is what we were talking about. It's just implausible given the totality of evidence that that is the main concern. You can't just look at that one action to draw a conclusion when there is a massive amount of other contravening evidence.
Would you or could it be seen as deterrence?
> this may be the most abject policy failure the world has ever witnesse
I mean there are a lot of opeds in Hebrew (some lamenting this supposed failure) and Arabic press right now saying exactly that, so I wouldn't rule it out entirely.
Given we are still seeing plenty of images out of Palestine and Gaza, even from news orgs, the current approach is plainly and objectively insufficient to the purported goal.
Because no one there has a smart phone. Because they actually killed the journalist. /s
Of the course the obvious explanation is the correct one, the building housed military targets (Hamas operations etc) and it was destroyed.
"Blinken: U.S. received more info on Gaza tower bombing
American top diplomat says he cannot comment on further information received through intelligence channels on the destruction of the building that housed Associated Press, Al Jazeera offices"
Not only that, but what is your proof to call it the correct explanation?
Targetting a news organization might be a multi-purpose action, including to limit the amount of photos from the area. The fact that this action has resulted in even worse optics then the photos would have provided, and the fact that people on the ground are still a source of visual evidence for the destruction does not mean that there is no conspiracy, just that they are bad at it.
Given the absence of evidence of any Hamas activity in that tower, and given the clear motive improve the optics of IDF, I would say that both explanations hold at least the same ground.
No, not cynical. I will call it for what it is - baseless conspiracy.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_State_of_Palest...
A high resolution image would be very useful to anyone who is planning a terror attack with suicide bombers, for example.
You'd do well to remember there are two sides to any conflict (as my parents drilled into us whenever my brother and I would blame each other).
In my opinion you can see Israel exercising serious restraint, evacuating people from a target first when possible, firing warning shots before the real attack. Hamas on the other hand is indiscriminately firing over 3000 rockets at Israel civilians. That's like what the Nazis did to London with their V2 rockets. Now there is a big power imbalance here, and I feel for the Palestinians, but they're hardly the good guys here. That's terrorism, plain and simple. No country would tolerate that.
Do you need to write "the Palestinians"? Sounds as if everyone were to blame for the rockets, but less than 1% of the people in Gaza, are in Hamas military wing.
Would it be weird to write "Hamas" instead about those who fire rockets? Or "terrorists in Hamas". (but please don't blame everyone for what a few are doing)
And in the same way, I wouldn't say that the Israelis are taking land from Palestinians on the west bank -- instead I'd write "the state and the settlers" take land. And that's also a small percentage of everyone, .. hmm seems it's somewhere between 5 and 10%, so more than 90% never did that
Don't forget Hamas is the legitimate elected government in Gaza, you cannot just say they're a fringe group not supported by the people of Gaza.
Now Palestinians also encompass the West Bank where Hamas is not the government. But part of the reason for these rocket attacks is Hamas trying to demonstrate that they're the representatives of all Palestinians in a bid to rule both Gaza and the West Bank. Regardless of their actual chances of pulling that off, it does seem to be part of the calculus here.
What do you think is the background for that?
I had a look at Wikipedia about Hamas, look how they grew more popular and became more violent:
> ... Jewish settler in military fatigues, massacred 29 Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron [year 1994] in the West Bank during the month of Ramadan. An additional 19 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the ensuing riots
> ... Hebron massacre had a profound effect on Hamas' militancy. For its first seven years, it attacked only what it saw as "legitimate military targets," Israeli soldiers and military installations.[77] But following the massacre, it felt that it no longer had to distinguish between military and civilian targets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Origins
Seems to me it's a spiral of dislike and violence, driven by a few violent people among both groups.
Then, about the elections: (same Wikipedia page)
> ... Hamas ran on a platform of clean government, a thorough overhaul of the corrupt administrative system, and the issue of rampant lawlessness.[190][191] The PA, notoriously riddled with corruption ...
Does it sound as if the voters voted for rocket attacks? Or did they vote for stopping corruption (and then, years later, turns out Hamas is equally (or more) corrupted and worse in so many other ways)
> Does it sound as if the voters voted for rocket attacks?
In 2007 not rockets, but they knew Hamas had a history of attacking civilian targets. I suppose they can't very well be blamed for what it became. I don't doubt s lot of the locals support Hamas, but many are likely caught between the two sides and want no part of it.
They're about as guilty as the Germans were for Hitler and the Nazis. They voted them in to begin with and didn't resist when they saw the monster they'd created. Seems like a very similar situation.
I didn't say that (and I don't think that).
Also, there's a difference between the people in Israel and the state. Most people don't do bad things; the government in Israel sometimes does. So just saying "Israel" is confusing, makes it seem as if you don't see a difference between the gov and the people. A government often does things that are bad for the voters.
Anyway I'm not sure it's helpful to compare "who is worst". It's not as if beating someone a bit, gets less bad, just because a different person beats another one even more.
> One side cares about preventing civilian casualties, the other does not. It's like comparing Isis and the US military. Very different approach and rules of engagement.
Agreed that Hamas doesn't care, instead, directly attacks civilians.
I think most, almost all, people in IDF do care -- that they don't want to hurt civilians.
At the same time, if you look back a few years, 2018, you'll notice that individuals in IDF shot a thousand people in Gaza, most of them unarmed. Killing about a hundered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_...
> an independent United Nations commission set the number of known militants killed at 29 out of the 183.[4] Other sources claim a higher figure, of at least 40
To me this shows that there are some people in IDF, who do enjoy killing Palestinians.
Maybe almost all of those in IDF don't want to hurt civilians, but those few who do want, get to do that quite a lot, sometimes, no consequences for them it seems.
> as guilty as the Germans were for Hitler and the Nazis
In the Israel-Palestine, there was an ongoing conflict when Hamas got the power -- and massacres had been done already by individuals from both sides. So it seems like a poor comparison, to me.
It's odd that you write about one side that it "cares about preventing civilian casualties" -- when individuals from that side, did what to me looks like a massacre a few years ago (2018), and now continues bombing although they know how many civilians get killed. And then you go on compare the other side with nazi voters.
It seems to me your world view is more black and white, than what you're aware about? And probably I'm not going to reply any further here.
I'd just like to say, to anyone in IDF reading this, that I think it's wrong by Hamas (or anyone else) to attack people in IDF. I don't think people are "legitimate targets" just because they're in the army -- they're still people, and most of them (although not exactly all) never did anything bad. I'd like to give a hug to you in IDF who didn't do anything bad personally (that's almost all of you), and to the civilians in Israel and Gaza.
What if the entire world was watching while you shaved your brothers head? Your lies would be pointless, because the entire world has seen what you were doing.
> In my opinion you can see Israel exercising serious restraint
Almost 200 dead in days. If you call that restraint, I think it's you who's gone off the deep end. Restraint would be doing nothing because barely anything has been done to you. Or shooting 10 Palestinian freedom fighters. That would be restraint. Firing missiles into a populated city isn't restraint.
> Hamas on the other hand is indiscriminately firing over 3000 rockets at Israel civilians.
Surely you jest. Those fireworks do almost nothing. A single Israeli missile is more deadly than 3000 Hamas rockets, so you have it backwards.
> Now there is a big power imbalance here, and I feel for the Palestinians
No you don't. Quit the propaganda.
> but they're hardly the good guys here. That's terrorism, plain and simple.
How is defending yourself terrorism? They're slowly been driven off the map. They should be firing 3000 rockets every day, and the world should be sending them more so they can fight for their families. Next you'll tell me that the Jews who fought back against Hitler were terrorists.
It's totally reasonable to attack your enemy with the intent of crippling their capabilities of harming you. Standard fare in any conflict. Doing that when the enemy is using their own population as a human shield and only having 200 casualties is an achievement of sorts.
> Surely you jest. Those fireworks do almost nothing. A single Israeli missile is more deadly than 3000 Hamas rockets, so you have it backwards.
Thank God they only have rockets and not the military power of the IDF. I'm pretty sure they'd use those nukes if they had them. As I said there's a big power imbalance here. But it's not the effectiveness of the attacks that determine their morality.
> No you don't. Quit the propaganda.
I don't appreciate you calling my feelings propaganda or claiming to understand my state of mind better than me. Both ridiculous claims.
> How is defending yourself terrorism?
The IDF only attacked them after they fired 500 rockets at Israeli cities, an act of terror in every sense of the definition. That's not defending yourself. What the Israelis are doing, that is defending yourself.
> Next you'll tell me that the Jews who fought back against Hitler were terrorists.
If they were attacking civilian targets with the intent of causing innocent casualties - sure, that'd be terrorism. I'm unaware of any instances of that happening, but I don't claim to know everything.
I think we'll need a reference for that.
As far as I can tell, warning civilians to evacuate buildings is QUITE the opposite of wholesale slaughter.
These images would provide fairly strong evidence of Israel's capabilities, hell Israel has spent years trying to claim satellite images of Iran prove they have a nuclear program.
"The Russian-made Kornet anti-tank guided missile, often called ATGM as an acronym, is accurate and effective. It has a range of around 5.5 kilometers and has been used by Hamas and other terrorist groups for years. In 2015, Hezbollah fired several ATGMs against Israeli Humvees on the border."
https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/what-do-hamas-an...
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/why-anti-tank-missiles-pos...
ATGM are missiles, but they are close range and used to attack vehicles (armored usually) - they are not useful for attacking long range or building/bases.
The vast majority of satellites aren't made for this kind of mapping as far as I know. Of the ones that are most aren't private commercial projects. Wikipedia lists 6 such projects and i doubt their time is cheap enough to make it worthwile for Palestinian resistance. Israel is another matter but they'd probably just knock on the US door for those.
I am a bit surprised however that there would not be more satellites that is commercial operated. I keep hearing about old weather satellites that gone past their period of commercial operation in favor of newer ones, and the old ones still having decent cameras and other sensors to provide maps of buildings and structures. With about 6000 satellites currently operating around the earth there should a pretty steady stream of old ones being replaced, and I would think many of them do get reused for new purposes.
I don't think Israel has to spend much if any. I think the blurring happens based on their request and i'm sure they still have access to unblurred satellite imagery. The only ones that could be hampered by this are the palestinians
> "As a result of recent changes to US regulations, the imagery of Israel and Gaza is being provided at 40cm resolution," Maxar said in a statement.
> But please continue the breathless hot takes.
This part of your comment doesn't belong on HN.
But to your point, indeed the IDF are not going to be planning their air strikes via google maps. The violent actors on the Palestinian side are more likely to “benefit” from publicly available high-resolution satellite imagery of Israel than vice versa. However as others have noted below, US law (kyl-bingaman amendment) apparently requires blurring of high-res imagery of Israel, so Israel was going to be blurred no matter what.
Which ironically brings us back to the question, why is Gaza blurred as well? Google doesn’t have to do that.
My initial assumption is laziness backed by armchair altruism. It’s easier to just apply a blanket blur policy to the entire Israel-Palestine region to comply with aforementioned KB amendment given the dynamic nature of the borders. Given that blurring is, at least at face value, considered a good thing for security, I could see the people in the room thinking “it’s easier for us and it increases the security of the entire region. We get ahead of any possible claim that google maps is enabling attacks on Palestine while protecting Israel. Problem solved.”.. without thinking through the potential negative externalities.
But as you’ve raised, blurring Palestine doesn’t meaningfully prevent planned attacks on Palestine, except if they’re carried out by rogue Israeli actors without state resources. In my understanding those are not as common. So then it raises the legitimate question, “does the negative externality of ‘preventing the world from easily accessing satellite imagery of Palestine and thus understanding the extent of urban destruction’ outweigh the positive benefit to general Palestinian security”? From an objective perspective, possibly, but from Google’s perspective, not blurring would be a much more politically charged move requiring nuanced explanation, so they’re not going to risk it.
In the end it’s very “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” much like every other aspect of the broader conflict.
As mentioned in the article, Israel specifically is protected -- "U.S. law mandates U.S. government censorship of American commercial satellite images of no country in the world besides that of Israel.":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment....
My fault - it was a hasty decision to correct what was (perceived) as an error (based on what was perhaps a faulty, because hasty, reading of the title earlier). There's a lot going on in that region at the moment, and a lot of news to catch up on - that's where the haste came from.
The clear answer is to prevent actors on both sides from using Google’s satellite imagery to plan attacks against one another.
I somehow doubt that the motive is as clear as you suppose - but that's an entirely different matter.