Thread

Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah

943 points · 947 comments · slowin

bognition · 1790616426 · focus · HN ↗
Its really telling to see the destruction limited to where the structures used to be rather than to all of the surrounding green spaces. If the destruction of civilian dwellings was purely an accident you'd expect to see the destruction spread evenly over the area. Instead it looks much more like a prolonged set of surgical strikes to destroy the buildings while preserving as much of the surrounding areas as possible.
For a great example of this, look at this pin <a href="https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZcMbdFcx87PrqoYNA" rel="nofollow">https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZcMbdFcx87PrqoYNA
And here's a pin of where the farms were spared <a href="https://maps.app.goo.gl/iZbbTH4iH27FCz4s9" rel="nofollow">https://maps.app.goo.gl/iZbbTH4iH27FCz4s9
1. YZF · 1790663982 · focus · HN ↗
  The buildings were levelled with bulldozers for the most part after the civilians left during combat operations against the tunnel infrastructure and any remaining combatants. Not sure what the "surgical strikes" comment is about. Are you asking why weren't open spaces destroyed or attacked?
  1. a_paddy · 1790665596 · focus · HN ↗
    How does bulldozing a family home have any affect on a tunnel?
    JumpCrisscross · 1790673037 · focus · HN ↗
    > How does bulldozing a family home have any affect on a tunnel?
    The tunnel entrances and exits are tremendously hard to find. Some of them were located in private residences.
    But Israel has an oil & gas industry. They have equipment that can look underneath a quiet city. If tunnel elimination were truly the goal, temporarily displacing the population while clearing operations took place should have been sufficient. As it stands, simply bulldozing over the entrances probably doesn't actually destroy the tunnels. It just hides their entrances.
    21asdffdsa12 · 1790675542 · focus · HN ↗
    The problem is that the homes are booby trapped. US would not send soldiers into iraq towns too- one trap - one ambush, and its artillery o clock.
    estearum · 1790681135 · focus · HN ↗
    Can you link to any documented cases of the US leveling a city after encountering a trap or ambush?
    myth_drannon · 1790685681 · focus · HN ↗
    Battle of Mosul
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%932017)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%93...
    estearum · 1790694615 · focus · HN ↗
    Huh? The Battle of Mosul was notable for its extremely intense infantry combat.
    myth_drannon · 1790695085 · focus · HN ↗
    There were weeks of airstrikes by the coalition and then artillery barage("Down Barage"). Basically Mosul was leveled before a single soldier entered it.
    estearum · 1790696145 · focus · HN ↗
    Uhh... no.
    Here's historical satellite imagery. Go to 2017-08. You can see Mosul airport and surrounding facilities leveled, immediately adjacent to a city that is obviously a city and not 1) flattened Mosul airport or 2) similar in any way to the Rafah imagery above.
    <a href="https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=43.12003%2C36.32159%2C16&mode=explore&active=15084" rel="nofollow">https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=43.12003%2...
    myth_drannon · 1790696620 · focus · HN ↗
    here are better ones, with clear complete devastation of large parts of the city:
    NYT - <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middleeast/mosul-before-after.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
    and AP drone imagry <a href="https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2017/7/14/mosul-drone-footage-destruction" rel="nofollow">https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2017/7/14/mosul-drone-footage-...
    estearum · 1790697909 · focus · HN ↗
    This is a good rebuttal to the claim that no part of Mosul was struck hard or leveled. But nobody claimed that.
    From your linked AP article:
    "Nearly a third of the Old City [a specific neighborhood] was damaged or destroyed in the final three weeks of bombardment up to July 8, according to a survey by U.N. Habitat using satellite imagery"
    From MSF re Rafah:
    "Over 15 months of all-out war on Gaza have left 92 percent of housing units and about 70 percent of all structures destroyed or damaged."
    So we have 1/3rd of a particularly hard-hit neighborhood destroyed in Mosul versus 70% of the entire city of Rafah.
    <a href="https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/destruction-homes-leaves-palestinians-unable-safely-return-rafah" rel="nofollow">https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/destruction-hom...
    YZF · 1790713947 · focus · HN ↗
    You are comparing different things. You should be comparing the intensive part of the battle in both cases. Mosul vs. Rafah is a great comparison. The total number of civilians were similar. The number of combatants were similar. Rafah is a lot denser. Israel's war results in significantly less civilian casualties. The allies pounded Mosul with its civilian population with heavy bombardments. The criticism of Israel on this is orders of magnitude higher than any criticism levelled at the allies (well basically none). If you look at why did the allies go to war on ISIS there is nothing even borderline comparable to the Oct 7th attack on Israel from Gaza. Something to ponder.
    That Israel kept looking for tunnels and destroying empty buildings for strategic reasons after the battle was over and Rafah was mostly abandoned is not relevant to evaluating the main battle.
    That MSF statement is not specifically about Rafah in your link either. It's about the entire Gaza strip. And just like Rafah a lot of the destruction happened in evacuated areas for tactical reasons, searching for tunnels, preventing guerrilla attacks, dealing with booby traps etc. We can argue about the necessity and legality of those but they are a different kind of discussion vs. the main battle portion.
    estearum · 1790715357 · focus · HN ↗
    Gaza in total had a population of about 2 million people and about 70,000 casualties. Israel's own estimate in 2025 claimed 8,900 of those were combatants.
    Mosul had 1.5 million people at the time of the battle and ~10-20k civilian casualties + ~10-20k combatants.
    Hard to do direct comparisons and all the numbers are obviously squishy, but your claim that Israel's war results in significantly fewer casualties seems... dubious at best.
    And in any case, we actually know for a fact that Israel's non-combatant casualty cut-off value (NCV) -- i.e. their accepted rate in decision-making -- is several multiples higher than the coalition forces were.
    > Peter Gersten, former deputy commander of operations and intelligence for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, states that “[w]ith Osama Bin Laden, you’d have an NCV value of 30, but if you had a low-level commander, his NCV was typically zero. We ran zero for the longest time.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, when he was head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) during the war against ISIS, would personally be called to authorize an operation with a “high” NCV of 14 or 15.
    Re the Jabalia Camp attack:
    > Satellite visual analysis of the attack site shows at least five large craters, including two approximately 40 feet wide, consistent with the impact of 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions. The attack destroyed not just one residential apartment building, but a whole block.
    > Even without specific further intelligence, on the basis of this information Israel’s CDE must have resulted in a very high estimate for civilian casualties. Given the location, population spread, and choice of weapons, the actual toll of hundreds of civilians killed or wounded would have been a reasonable expectation.

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