US secretary of state Antony Blinken says 'far too many' Palestinians have died
He said the US has proposed additional ideas to the Israelis, including longer “humanitarian pauses” and expanding the amount of assistance getting into Gaza. Israel’s efforts to formalise pauses in its military operations and the creation of a second safe corridor for them to use to escape harm are appreciated, he said.
The steps, he said “will save lives and will enable more assistance to get to Palestinians in need,” but at the same time, “much more needs to be done to protect civilians and to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches them.”
The US diplomat said “far too many Palestinians have been killed, far too many have suffered these past weeks” and that everything possible should be done to prevent them harm and maximise the assistance they need.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/nov/10/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-benjamin-netanyahu-gaza-fighting-pauses-un-palestine
= new reply since forum marked as read
So there's no electricity, no water but the telephones' s are all still working. I see. 
... let's imagine a bank robber takes hostages and demands free passage to freedom. Would it be reasonable for the police or other authorities to go in and kill 'em all, just to get the felon, and too bad about those hostages, wrong place, wrong time.
Yeah, the two cases are not strictly parallel. The bank robber is not threatening lives outside the bank. But the police also don't have high explosive munitions at their command, they'd have to put their bodies on the line to "get" the bank robber. And, of course, the bodies of the hostages.
There was a time, many years ago, when one of the missions of special forces was to attack and destroy hostage-holding terrorists while trying very hard to preserve innocent lives. But special forces operatives take a lot of time and money to train, and damn, if Yoni Netanyahu hadn't gone and gotten himself killed at Entebbe, maybe his brother would be less of a bastard. I doubt it, though, Bibi was Stern Gang before he was a politician. Whatever. It's so much easier to use high explosives, Hellfire missiles, and whatnot and just wipe out everybody in the place. Spec Ops guys have families, too, after all.
All bitterness and cynicism aside, though, governments play into the hands of terrorists when they commit indiscriminate terror themselves to fight them. They have become the monsters they fight, and the people on the ground remember. And what they remember is not that Ali took their mom hostage as a human shield (while putatively fighting for her "freedom"
, they remember that Mom was blown away by the bombs or shells of the State on the other side. So the cycle continues. Thing about terrorists, they don't care much about personal survival, or the survival of anyone, really. So killing them is no big victory, and serves as no deterrent, nor does it stop the organization from committing more terror. Killing a bunch of civilians just to score an empty kill on a few bastards seems not to be cost-effective, although of course the dead civilians aren't our civilians, so who really cares, anyway? Oops, there I go being bitter and cynical again.
-- Mal
