I'm not seeing any shortage of pictures from the ground. I mean, I agree that targeting news agencies would be a step you would take if you wanted to prevent images from the ground but you would have to be far more sweeping in your approach. If the goal is to prevent news images from making their way out of Palestine this may be the most abject policy failure the world has ever witnessed.

The facts remain; Israel did bomb the offices of Al Jazeera and The Associated Press.

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.

> 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.

More like they bombed a building which has offices of Al Jazeera and the AP among other things.

> you would have to be far more sweeping in your approach

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.

> Would you or could it be seen as deterrence?

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.

Yes.

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.

IDF couldn't provide any evidence of Hamas' existence in that building, it was all over the media yesterday.

https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1394287848950427649

The postman was late. It doesn't mean there's no evidence

https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1394631387265777666

I'm thinking as democracies we should not rely on secret evidence. I'll buy it when it's public, until then the burden of proof remains on them. It's okay not to kmow.

IDF provided the evidence to US intelligence, and apparently that hasn’t made its way to the US state department yet.

That is absolutely ridiculous. The US state department is on top of things. There is no way they do not have this information if it exists.

More info was sent: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/SJA7sEZYd

"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"

I wouldn't say IDF couldn't provide. Classified evidence takes time to compile when being passed to foreign countries. If this was truly a Hamas operations office, it changes the whole picture.

I don't understand. AP claims to have been using the building for years, and they didn't know that there were Hamas operations with them?

Not only that, but what is your proof to call it the correct explanation?

Don‘t discount a conspiracy just because the conspirators are incompetent. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Your average conspiracy usually has multiple layers of incompetents. If a conspiracy looks flawless, it is usually because there is no conspiracy.

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.

And plausible deniability only goes so far - shallow thought, propaganda only goes so far until it meets adequate critical thinking; reminds me of Jordan Peterson in his last book Beyond Order - it's the intelligent ideologue that's the most dangerous.