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On November 08 2023 07:23 JimmiC wrote: Would your values change if they were Nazi sympathizers? Because this is how Israel and Jews around the world view the Palestinians choosing to stay in the high danger areas. You have Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, Houthis and so on who have all openly stated their goals of killing every Jew in the world and have already effectively done so in areas where they hold the power. They also have no proved that it is not just rhetoric to after Israel but that they have the will and means to carry out effective horrific attacks.
I understand that some people think that Israel will be able to successfully defend themselves against future attacks. But is it realistic for them to be expected to do that forever? Will they be able too or eventually will they be overrun? These are the questions Israeli's are asking themselves and I do not know the answers, I'm not sure why some of you are so certain.
The idea that innocent people of one tribe have to be killed to ensure another tribe's continued existence is the foundation of ideologies like the one of the Nazis. It's also an idea that has been rejected by many democratic countries after WW2 revealed the actual truth: killing innocent people never leads to anything good.
It doesn't matter whether it is Hamas or the Israeli administration that uses this foundation. It's wrong either way.
This feels a bit too broad. This would mean the armies that fought the Nazis were also morally failing when they killed Nazis. Absolute pacifism is not reasonable or realistic. Are you saying Israel should adopt an entirely pacifist approach here?
The allied nations were morally failing indeed. They killed an unbelievable amount of innocent civilians with the explicit purpose of weakening the Axis powers. The bombing campaigns were designed not only to destroy civilian infrastructure, but also to kill civilians. They didn't even hide their intent. With hindsight it turned out that this was neither pragmatically nor morally the correct decision. The allied nations weren't "the good guys". It can be argued that they were significantly less evil. But good they were demonstrably not.
Israel is following that same doctrine at this moment.
So wait, just to be clear: Are you saying Israel should adopt a zero-violence protocol here? Are you saying all violence, regardless of the situational factors, is unethical?
I think the Israeli administration should give equal moral value to the Gazan population as it does to its own. If Gazans = Israelis, then there's only one obvious conclusion.
On November 08 2023 07:23 JimmiC wrote: Would your values change if they were Nazi sympathizers? Because this is how Israel and Jews around the world view the Palestinians choosing to stay in the high danger areas. You have Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, Houthis and so on who have all openly stated their goals of killing every Jew in the world and have already effectively done so in areas where they hold the power. They also have no proved that it is not just rhetoric to after Israel but that they have the will and means to carry out effective horrific attacks.
I understand that some people think that Israel will be able to successfully defend themselves against future attacks. But is it realistic for them to be expected to do that forever? Will they be able too or eventually will they be overrun? These are the questions Israeli's are asking themselves and I do not know the answers, I'm not sure why some of you are so certain.
The idea that innocent people of one tribe have to be killed to ensure another tribe's continued existence is the foundation of ideologies like the one of the Nazis. It's also an idea that has been rejected by many democratic countries after WW2 revealed the actual truth: killing innocent people never leads to anything good.
It doesn't matter whether it is Hamas or the Israeli administration that uses this foundation. It's wrong either way.
This feels a bit too broad. This would mean the armies that fought the Nazis were also morally failing when they killed Nazis. Absolute pacifism is not reasonable or realistic. Are you saying Israel should adopt an entirely pacifist approach here?
The allied nations were morally failing indeed. They killed an unbelievable amount of innocent civilians with the explicit purpose of weakening the Axis powers. The bombing campaigns were designed not only to destroy civilian infrastructure, but also to kill civilians. They didn't even hide their intent. With hindsight it turned out that this was neither pragmatically nor morally the correct decision. The allied nations weren't "the good guys". It can be argued that they were significantly less evil. But good they were demonstrably not.
Israel is following that same doctrine at this moment.
So wait, just to be clear: Are you saying Israel should adopt a zero-violence protocol here? Are you saying all violence, regardless of the situational factors, is unethical?
I think the Israeli administration should give equal moral value to the Gazan population as it does to its own. If Gazans = Israelis, then there's only one obvious conclusion.
Fair enough. I'll save you my speech about all soldiers being immoral by agreeing to conduct violence and just say I agree "in theory". I think this is the more morally correct approach, but in practice it requires universal participation to amount to anything more productive than agreeing to die.
On May 19 2021 16:13 Broetchenholer wrote: Dear Magic Powers, did you just say that that the deliberate bombing of a non military target, maximised to kill the population and destroy the civilian infrastructure with no military value except for terror, like the bombing run on Dresden and others, is the fault of the Germans? Are you sure?
Not the fault of "the Germans", but the fault of "Germany", i.e. the German leadership, which is the Nazis, Hitler being the head of it.
So, your position is, if Israel would start blasting Gaza with speakers saying "As long as you keep firing rockets, this will continue!" and then proceeds to drop explosive bombs followed by incendiary bombs into one sector of Gaza. And then the next sector. And the next. And the next. Until there is either no Gaza left, or there are no rockets flying into Israel anymore.
There's context missing from your question. Depending on whether or not Hamas has sent rocket strikes prior to Israel "blasting Gaza" as you put it, and depending on what targets Israel would choose in retaliation to those strikes, the answer that I'd give would change depending on that information.
This would be the responsibility of Hamas for firing rockets into israel and no blame would go to the IDF? And if that is not okay, why do you think Dresden was okay? Would you allow for Dresden again?
Germany (not Germans, see my response to the first paragraph) had been waging an aggressive war against Britain and other countries, including the heavy bombardment of innocent and defenseless British towns that were not militarily relevant locations in order to kill and frustrate the population. Britain had no choice other than to retaliate with full force. What should else should Britain have done? Germany was committing war crime after war crime and conquering land after land, showing no regard for the lives of innocent people. Tell me what better options Britain had.
The better option to firebombing the civilian population of Dresden would be not firebombing the civilian population of Dresden. Not only would it save on fuel and reduce carbon emissions, it would also avoid a hundred thousand people dying in a firestorm.
I liked this guy more, what happened to him
I’m not saying we should fire bomb Dresden, certainly not a second time. I’m saying that the whole thing about total war is that there are no non participants.
If I said the whole point of hell is torture that’s not an endorsement of torture, just a description of hell.
On May 19 2021 16:13 Broetchenholer wrote: Dear Magic Powers, did you just say that that the deliberate bombing of a non military target, maximised to kill the population and destroy the civilian infrastructure with no military value except for terror, like the bombing run on Dresden and others, is the fault of the Germans? Are you sure?
Not the fault of "the Germans", but the fault of "Germany", i.e. the German leadership, which is the Nazis, Hitler being the head of it.
So, your position is, if Israel would start blasting Gaza with speakers saying "As long as you keep firing rockets, this will continue!" and then proceeds to drop explosive bombs followed by incendiary bombs into one sector of Gaza. And then the next sector. And the next. And the next. Until there is either no Gaza left, or there are no rockets flying into Israel anymore.
There's context missing from your question. Depending on whether or not Hamas has sent rocket strikes prior to Israel "blasting Gaza" as you put it, and depending on what targets Israel would choose in retaliation to those strikes, the answer that I'd give would change depending on that information.
This would be the responsibility of Hamas for firing rockets into israel and no blame would go to the IDF? And if that is not okay, why do you think Dresden was okay? Would you allow for Dresden again?
Germany (not Germans, see my response to the first paragraph) had been waging an aggressive war against Britain and other countries, including the heavy bombardment of innocent and defenseless British towns that were not militarily relevant locations in order to kill and frustrate the population. Britain had no choice other than to retaliate with full force. What should else should Britain have done? Germany was committing war crime after war crime and conquering land after land, showing no regard for the lives of innocent people. Tell me what better options Britain had.
The better option to firebombing the civilian population of Dresden would be not firebombing the civilian population of Dresden. Not only would it save on fuel and reduce carbon emissions, it would also avoid a hundred thousand people dying in a firestorm.
I liked this guy more, what happened to him
I’m not saying we should fire bomb Dresden, certainly not a second time. I’m saying that the whole thing about total war is that there are no non participants.
If I said the whole point of hell is torture that’s not an endorsement of torture, just a description of hell.
Fair enough, I misunderstood you given the context, I apologize.
On November 08 2023 07:02 Liquid`Drone wrote: I'm not actually saying that people are claiming Palestinian civilians are worth less than Israeli civilians. I'm saying the support of attacking Gaza to oust Hamas on the grounds of saving civilian lives is inconsistent with the belief that both are worth equally much, because even accepting the inevitability of Hamas kililng Israeli civilians, there's nothing indicating that they would kill more Israeli civilians than what is being killed as consequence of the current retaliatory attack on Gaza. (Whether this is because Hamas uses civilians as human shields or because Israel is too careless with their attacks is irrelevant to this particular discussion - the civilians would not die if Israel did not attack).
I think it's entirely reasonable for Israel to value Israeli civilians more than they value Palestinian civilians (although I might disagree with the ratio), but I don't. I mean, I actually genuinely do not think Norwegians are inherently more valuable than people from Yemen, but I still got way more emotionally affected by July 22nd than I get by reading about the war in Yemen, even though the death toll is like 2000 times higher. So again, while I actually think a position of pacifism could have been a fantastic response to this, it wasn't one I expected, I understand that it wouldn't have been politically feasible, and I think you can argue that a military response was justified. But even accepting that, this doesn't mean 'all palestinian civilian deaths are inevitable and nothing Israel does can be subject to critique because ultimately their hand is forced by Hamas', I think that's genuinely an insane position to take. There's a reason why they were seemingly strong armed into at least allowing some food and water to flow into the Gaza strip, and why they didn't actually invade 24 hours after issuing the command to leave within 24 hours.
It's not inconsistent with the belief that Israeli and Palestinian lives are equal. As you correctly point out many more Palestinians than Israeli's die in these conflicts. Leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza will lead to other similar conflicts. Destroying Hamas' operational capabilities and removing them from governing Gaza stops that. Saving many more Palestinian than Israeli lives.
On November 07 2023 19:22 pmp10 wrote: New Gaza occupation plan is practically announced.
According to a senior adviser to Netanyahu it does not necessarily mean an occupation:
Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday that Israel's post-war plan is not an "ongoing occupation" of Gaza. ""I think you could expect something more fluid, something more flexible where we can move in and move out as need be to deal with the security situation," he said. "We're not talking about any sort of ongoing occupation of the Gaza strip.""
Asked about Netanyahu’s comments on ABC News on Monday that Israel will have the "overall security responsibility" in Gaza for an "indefinite period" after the war ends, Regev said: "We have to distinguish between a security presence and political control."
"When this is over and we have defeated Hamas, it is crucial that there won’t be a resurgent terrorist element, a resurgent Hamas. There is no point doing this and just going back to square one," Regev told CNN.
"There will have to be an Israeli security presence, but that doesn’t mean Israel is re-occupying Gaza, that doesn’t mean that Israel is there to govern the Gazans," he continued.
"On the contrary, we are interested in establishing new frameworks, where the Gazans can rule themselves, where there can be international support for the reconstruction of Gaza. Hopefully, we can bring in countries – Arab countries as well – for a reconstruction of a demilitarized, post-Hamas Gaza," he said
Considering they see Hamas around ever corner it will be an occupation and there will be constant fighting. The methods they are choosing to fight this war will only lead to more radicalization.
On November 08 2023 11:38 Gahlo wrote: Considering they see Hamas around ever corner it will be an occupation and there will be constant fighting. The methods they are choosing to fight this war will only lead to more radicalization.
I doubt they’ll go with full occupation just because it puts Israelis in harms way.
If you can just cut off supplies at will and bomb the place all you want with your huge military budget, and you’ve shown a pretty unhealthy disregard for Gazan life with little meaningful pushback why wouldn’t you just continue with your present course?
On November 08 2023 11:38 Gahlo wrote: Considering they see Hamas around ever corner it will be an occupation and there will be constant fighting. The methods they are choosing to fight this war will only lead to more radicalization.
I doubt they’ll go with full occupation just because it puts Israelis in harms way.
If you can just cut off supplies at will and bomb the place all you want with your huge military budget, and you’ve shown a pretty unhealthy disregard for Gazan life with little meaningful pushback why wouldn’t you just continue with your present course?
It puts Israelis more in harms way to do what they're doing now unless they actually follow through on the ethnic cleansing.
Gaza is a failed state that generates no meaningful revenues. Volunteering to police it against a population that could not be more hostile and are ready, armed, and willing to suicide bomb your forces is a very, very bad idea.
On November 04 2023 08:46 Magic Powers wrote: I'm missing the part of the discussion that concludes that the terrorist organization of Hamas can be brought to its knees through military intervention. Where is that argument and why is it not being discussed? I strongly disagree with the idea and I've yet to see a compelling argument that the plan can realistically work, at least without a full and indefinite occupation of Gaza. Does anyone actually truly believe that Israel can destroy Hamas militarily or is that only political chest beating?
Can the terrorist organization ISIS be destroyed by military intervention? Because it effectively was. I mentioned this before, but terrorists in caves are a lot less powerful (i.e. dangerous) than terrorists governing cities.
You are correct that someone else with guns will have to govern there to prevent Hamas from just taking over again though, so if Hamas is taken out, that is what will happen. Which leads me to a question I've been meaning to ask here:
If Israel successfully removes Hamas as the governing power in Gaza, who do you think should be put in charge of Gaza temporarily to ensure the best long term peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians? Meaning, all of these come with an understanding of the power letting Gaza rule itself after some sort of de-radicalization Martial Plan type process. (All of these have issues, but I'll list them in the order I see as probably best to worst [if they would agree to do it].) 1. A coalition of Arab states (who have normalized relations with Israel) 2. Egypt 3. The PA 4. NATO 5. Israel 6. The UN 7. Immediate elections in Gaza
Edit: added the normalization parenthetical for the Arab coalition to exclude Syria and Qatar from intentionally ruining the de-radicalization process.
ISIS was and still is not primarily state funded. They couldn't afford to continue fighting a war with the US forever. Hamas' backers are mostly governments; those of Qatar and Iran are the biggest. Furthermore, today by the by Jihadis still exist to roughly the same extent as they existed during prime ISIS days. And how can I leave out the US' biggest failure to date: Afghanistan. The Taliban successfully persevered and the US withdrew. Afghanistan is yet again oppressed.
You can't compare Hamas to ISIS, they have completely different network and culture. They're tied to the Gazan people. And where ISIS had to hide from the US, Hamas really doesn't. They fight more or less out in the open because they have the support required for it.
The bloodshed of innocent lives that is required to destroy Hamas is unacceptable.
I agree with your point about funding from Iran and Qatar making de-radicalization of Gazans significantly more difficult. That would have to be addressed somehow for lasting peace to be achieved.
Your point about there being as many Jihadis now as during ISIS actually supports my point about defanging Hamas. That is, compare the number of atrocities committed by ISIS when it had territory to the number committed by a similar number of extremists without territory now. Having a state gives extremists a lot of power to enact their agenda and without it, they are more likely to just plot in caves.
I agree that it's worth investigating why Germany and Japan were successfully reformed, and even Iraq post ISIS was relatively successful, while Afghanistan was not. We'd want to identify the factors worth replicating in the former cases while avoiding mistakes of the latter.
You want Gaza to be reformed? Like Iran and Afghanistan were reformed? How did that work out?
So then what is left? Not able to militarily engage Hamas because of civilian casualties. Not able to reform Gaza.
It feels like a lot of folks are experiencing the mental process where it feels like nothing bad happens if a given situation is not responded to. The whole point is that something bad happens if nothing is done, so something needs to be done. So without some sort of action taken to change the Gaza/Hamas situation, it is reasonable to assume October 7 will be repeated. And I am hoping/assuming folks agree that is an unacceptable situation.
I feel like the minimum of "what comes next" needs to provide some non-zero reduction in the % chance October 7 is prevented. In the absence of giving Israel some form of assurance October 7 won't be repeated, the condition created is "October 7 will be repeated in the future". Its not that everything pauses until a solution is found. Its not that the tragedy/difficulty of the situation causes god to say "hold on, this is very bad, so I will now make it so that bad things regarding this situation do not happen for the next however long, because people need time to think of a better solution".
I'm not sure how to phrase/describe the natural instinct that kicks in for people regarding these situations. But it is essentially a form of paralysis, where people aren't able to conceptualize the only choices are all terrible and its only a matter of deciding which terrible one to choose. It is as if there is a mental process that kicks in that prevents someone from fully internalizing the inevitability of a bad outcome in the absence of prevention. I see a lot of people fall into this with the Gaza situation where every single solution is unacceptable and the natural conclusion ends up being "we should just let October 7 happen again". But it also feels like people are not recognizing this is the result of doing nothing.
I don't have a solution and I don't think anyone has one. October 7 will be repeated unless Israel occupies Gaza. Israel has had enough chances to make things right. Their administration chose to make things much worse. If they have a heart, they will understand that they have to take the high road: leave Gaza and enact a ceasefire. Realistically though I don't think the current Israeli government has a heart. At this point I don't understand what they have other than burning hatred.
It frustrates me that the US is so soft on them. Hamas attacked first, but that doesn't give them the right to commit atrocities against the civilian population of Gaza. Two wrongs don't make a right. They don't have the right to bombard them or invade them and the world needs to make this as clear to them as possible. That's why I'm praying for a withdrawal of all US military support.
What you seem to be preaching is pacifism. Pacifism does not stop bad actors. If the police in your city applied your principle of "two wrongs don't make a right" and didn't arrest suspects to try to imprison murderers, anarchy would ensue and people could murder whomever they pleased since there would be no fear of punishment.
This applies on a national level as well. If the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and the US was like, "well, two wrongs don't make a right, better just call a ceasefire." Imperial Japan would be ruling most of Asia to this day and would be emboldened to kill whomever they want, whenever they want.
The Allies actually did try your strategy with Nazi Germany for quite a while. It was called "Appeasement." It allowed the Germans to massively increase their territory before anyone serious finally realized that enough was enough. Because of this hesitance to act, the Nazi's had half of Europe and correspondingly massive industrial output by the time the real war started and were very difficult to stop.
As for the cost, the Allies killed over 8 million German civilians in WW2 (on top of military personnel) and bombed every German city to rubble. That was some 10% of the population of Germany at the time (for comparison, even if we accept Hamas casualty counts as not wildly inflated, we aren't even talking about half a percent of Gazans, and most of those are militants.)
Is that terrible? Yes, war always is. That's why starting a war like Hamas did on Oct 7 is so awful. But that doesn't mean Israel should just surrender to the aggressor of this war and appease them.
The conflict between Israel and Gaza didn't start on Oct 7th.
The ceasefire was violated by Hamas and the current war was started on Oct 7th though. You might be suggesting that the 1948 war never ended, but that would make all the peace deals, changes in belligerents, and terms like "the 1967 war" a bit odd.
Allies didn't kill 8 million civilians in WW2.
I retract my original figure. It seems that most sources estimate it closer to 2-3 million German civilians and 5-6 million German militants (still 10% of the total population). The point still stands, unless you think 2-3 million is an insignificant sum. Or perhaps, you'd just suggest that the people who stopped the Nazis were the bad guys.
Most of Gazans killed by Israeli strikes aren't militants.
It's notoriously hard to prove this one way or the other since Hamas regularly commits the war crime of having combatants in civilian attire and Hamas calls every casualty a civilian, so neither of us can reliably prove that point one way or the other.
Palestine isn't being 'appeased' by the West, if anything, Israel is, with their settlement expansion and incessant war crimes.
If someone suggested that we just let Hamas get away with Oct 7 and that we should all just move on and hope they don't do more, that would be appeasement. It's a pretty clear parallel to the Allies letting Germany conquer early countries without lifting a finger to stop them.
You shifting the frame to be about a wider Palestine and the West might be an interesting tangent to explore, but it does not debunk the point I was making.
And surely, bombing entire neighborhoods because a criminal might be hiding in one of the apartments would make for pretty poor law enforcement policy.
If one neighborhood was shooting rockets at the next neighborhood over and had armed gangs preventing law enforcement from arresting the perpetrators though, the police would hand the issue over to the army for sure. But we are getting a bit far from my analogy showing that pacifist law enforcement does not result in people following the law.
Other than that, though, good post!
Now that I've answered all your earlier issues, thanks!
On November 08 2023 05:20 Liquid`Drone wrote: So attacking Gaza is basically playing into Hamas' hands?
Possibly.
If Israel just ceases all operations now, they definitely just played right into Hamas' hands with little to show for it.
If, on the other hand, they are successful at removing Hamas as the governing organization of Gaza, Hamas will have lost. Hamas doesn't want this and are counting on people pressuring Israel to back out to avoid this. Whether Israel "wins" and makes Gaza into a better safer place is still a question, but at least there is hope without Hamas guns killing any peaceful voices. That is why Israel keeps saying that they will continue until Hamas is destroyed as a government organization. It's the only scenario where Hamas doesn't win (and thus encourage Hamas, Hezbollah, etc to keep doing this type of thing).
Meanwhile, assassinating the top leaders wouldn't achieve anywhere near the same results. Hamas is a large organization, and those guys would just be replaced. Like if someone assassinated the president/prime minister of a country, the country would keep going just fine. The vice president/senior minister of the same party would just replace them with pretty similar values.
On the other hand, if the power structure of Hamas in Gaza is removed, those leaders in hiding will become impotent and basically irrelevant.
On November 08 2023 05:20 Liquid`Drone wrote: So attacking Gaza is basically playing into Hamas' hands?
Possibly.
If Israel just ceases all operations now, they definitely just played right into Hamas' hands with little to show for it.
If, on the other hand, they are successful at removing Hamas as the governing organization of Gaza, Hamas will have lost. Hamas doesn't want this and are counting on people pressuring Israel to back out to avoid this. Whether Israel "wins" and makes Gaza into a better safer place is still a question, but at least there is hope without Hamas guns killing any peaceful voices. That is why Israel keeps saying that they will continue until Hamas is destroyed as a government organization. It's the only scenario where Hamas doesn't win (and thus encourage Hamas, Hezbollah, etc to keep doing this type of thing).
Meanwhile, assassinating the top leaders wouldn't achieve anywhere near the same results. Hamas is a large organization, and those guys would just be replaced. Like if someone assassinated the president/prime minister of a country, the country would keep going just fine. The vice president/senior minister of the same party would just replace them with pretty similar values.
On the other hand, if the power structure of Hamas in Gaza is removed, those leaders in hiding will become impotent and basically irrelevant.
I can't help but be curious how long you think this would take Israel? I'm most curious about the top end of whatever range you're imagining.
On November 08 2023 07:23 JimmiC wrote: Would your values change if they were Nazi sympathizers? Because this is how Israel and Jews around the world view the Palestinians choosing to stay in the high danger areas. You have Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, Houthis and so on who have all openly stated their goals of killing every Jew in the world and have already effectively done so in areas where they hold the power. They also have no proved that it is not just rhetoric to after Israel but that they have the will and means to carry out effective horrific attacks.
I understand that some people think that Israel will be able to successfully defend themselves against future attacks. But is it realistic for them to be expected to do that forever? Will they be able too or eventually will they be overrun? These are the questions Israeli's are asking themselves and I do not know the answers, I'm not sure why some of you are so certain.
There are two things I imagine would change my values. 1: If Hamas' capabilities matched their intentions. If I actually believed they were in a position of possibly eradicating Israel, I'd be much more supportive of a much harsher response. I think in WW2 the case for ignoring German and Japanese civilian casualties if it improved the chance of ultimately winning the war was a very strong one because these were genocidal regimes with the power to back it up. Hamas on the other hand generally kills a small double digit number of Israelis every year. I understand that October 7th changes the equation, but I reject the idea that new October 7th are inevitably going to happen every year if Hamas isn't killed.
2: If I believed that Muslim opposition to Israel was entirely static and independent of Israel's actions. I don't. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly muslims who are fundamentally opposed to Israel existing where it does, but my experience from talking to muslims is that most are pragmatically opposed to Israel: Their opposition is grounded in Israel oppressing other muslims. My experience talking to Norwegians who have visited the west bank (my mother being one of them), or reading interviews with South Africans who experienced apartheid, is that apartheid is an appropriate term to use when describing the Palestinian experience - that is, the West Bank experience. The one in Gaza is significantly worse. So, I also believe it would be possible for Israel, through altering its policies, especially regarding settlers/settlements, to receive less opposition in the muslim world than they do, and that it is possible to eventually find some degree of lasting peace.
What I do not believe, is that the 16 million jews of the world are in a position where they want an increasingly antagonistic relationship with the 1.8 billion muslims. Even if Israel itself is so militarily powerful that it can hold its own, that's not a promising long term prospect. And I think the actions currently taken to weaken/oust Hamas are building resentment that will ultimately be more harmful to Israel than what Hamas itself is capable of being.
The thing about capabilities is that they are not static, especially with human ingenuity to devise new strategies. Israel built up a large enough army to repel conventional attacks from Arab armies, but then the Intifadas hit and caught them off guard. Border fences and security checkpoints effectively stopped the threat of intifada, but then there were rockets. The Iron Dome minimizes damage from rockets, but then flaws were found, like firing enough rockets at once to overwhelm the system or that handgliders are ignored by the system and can fly in to shoot people at festivals. For any defense that is designed, a dedicated foe will eventually find an offense that circumvents it. Hamas may be prevented from performing Oct 7th the same way again, but that they will uncover another way to kill lots of Israelis in the future if they remain in power is a certainty only limited by time.
Of course, this means that the only true permanent solution is finding a way to make peace. But Hamas is pretty hellbent on showing that peace will never be an option for them, so someone else has to be put in charge so peace (I mean real peace, not just a ceasefire) can get a spot at the table again.
On November 08 2023 07:02 Liquid`Drone wrote: I'm not actually saying that people are claiming Palestinian civilians are worth less than Israeli civilians. I'm saying the support of attacking Gaza to oust Hamas on the grounds of saving civilian lives is inconsistent with the belief that both are worth equally much, because even accepting the inevitability of Hamas kililng Israeli civilians, there's nothing indicating that they would kill more Israeli civilians than what is being killed as consequence of the current retaliatory attack on Gaza. (Whether this is because Hamas uses civilians as human shields or because Israel is too careless with their attacks is irrelevant to this particular discussion - the civilians would not die if Israel did not attack).
I think it's entirely reasonable for Israel to value Israeli civilians more than they value Palestinian civilians (although I might disagree with the ratio), but I don't. I mean, I actually genuinely do not think Norwegians are inherently more valuable than people from Yemen, but I still got way more emotionally affected by July 22nd than I get by reading about the war in Yemen, even though the death toll is like 2000 times higher. So again, while I actually think a position of pacifism could have been a fantastic response to this, it wasn't one I expected, I understand that it wouldn't have been politically feasible, and I think you can argue that a military response was justified. But even accepting that, this doesn't mean 'all palestinian civilian deaths are inevitable and nothing Israel does can be subject to critique because ultimately their hand is forced by Hamas', I think that's genuinely an insane position to take. There's a reason why they were seemingly strong armed into at least allowing some food and water to flow into the Gaza strip, and why they didn't actually invade 24 hours after issuing the command to leave within 24 hours.
It's not inconsistent with the belief that Israeli and Palestinian lives are equal. As you correctly point out many more Palestinians than Israeli's die in these conflicts. Leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza will lead to other similar conflicts. Destroying Hamas' operational capabilities and removing them from governing Gaza stops that. Saving many more Palestinian than Israeli lives.
This feels like a bizarre circular logic, like hey we’re just killing loads of you now but it’s actually a good thing as it’ll prevent us doing so later.
My main problem with this period, is it’s just ‘destroy Hamas’, with some rather alarming rhetoric coming from prominent figures in the Israeli state.
There is zero carrot accompanying a rather large and painful looking stick.
I’m still not exactly in favour of the massive amounts of collateral damage, but putting that aside, then what?
It’s not as if we’re hearing much in the vein of ‘we shall destroy Hamas and then work to build relations with the Palestinians freed from their shackle’, even rhetorically never mind any kind of anything in terms of policy. If anything Israel is doubling down on things like settlements so what is any post-Hamas scenario going to look like if not just as bleak for Gazans?
And yes there is the realpolitik that even if such thing was considered a good idea in terms of a longer term plan, now is not exactly a good time to propose it when a good chunk of your population is baying for blood.
I don't understand why people keep trying to attempt nonexistent parallels to WW2 (rockets and terrorism, compared to a world war...). Yeah, reform, whatever, you are talking about a top industrial power being reformed and countries investing the necessary resources to do so. That won't happen for Palestina, and nothing indicates you can assume it will, but on the contrary.
And this whole "to defeat Hamas", what's the endgame? Just that?
What happens after you had killed a good portion of the Palestinian population to accomplish your objective... What do you expect from them? What do you think is going to happen with the settlements?
The people who are arguing in favor of the invasion and occupation of Gaza don't understand the political ramifications. They have a childish view similar to that of people supporting Putin/Russia in the other war that's currently going on. The Gazan people may not fully support Hamas, but neither do they support Israel. If Israel occupies the land for any period and aims towards elections, those elections could very easily go wrong for Israel and they'd have to withdraw their troops regardless, with a more angry and more powerful Gaza than before. That outcome would render the whole invasion and occupation futile. This means Israel has to force a pro-Israel outcome, which is that Gazans cannot be allowed to maintain an anti-Israel stance under any circumstances. And that's why the occupation will be indefinite and no free and fair elections will be held. Perhaps unfree and unfair.
The reason why Israel has such a tough task is because many Palestinians rightfully oppose Israel over the fact that they're being oppressed both in the West bank and in Gaza, and now Israel is making it even worse with the bombardment of Gaza. The following occupation will not make Gazans any happier. It's tough being occupied by any force, even a benevolent one, but it's worse when that force is your sworn enemy. It can't result in better relations unless Israel plans to install a puppet government in Gaza.
I think this video is a must watch for people who want to understand the situation on the ground with the Gazan people and why a simplistic approach such as "invade and occupy" promises no predictive value regarding future tensions.
Popularity of Hamas and other groups/figures among Gazans is the main question being asked in the video.
Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday that Israel's post-war plan is not an "ongoing occupation" of Gaza. ""I think you could expect something more fluid, something more flexible where we can move in and move out as need be to deal with the security situation," he said. "We're not talking about any sort of ongoing occupation of the Gaza strip.""
Asked about Netanyahu’s comments on ABC News on Monday that Israel will have the "overall security responsibility" in Gaza for an "indefinite period" after the war ends, Regev said: "We have to distinguish between a security presence and political control."
"When this is over and we have defeated Hamas, it is crucial that there won’t be a resurgent terrorist element, a resurgent Hamas. There is no point doing this and just going back to square one," Regev told CNN.
"There will have to be an Israeli security presence, but that doesn’t mean Israel is re-occupying Gaza, that doesn’t mean that Israel is there to govern the Gazans," he continued.
"On the contrary, we are interested in establishing new frameworks, where the Gazans can rule themselves, where there can be international support for the reconstruction of Gaza. Hopefully, we can bring in countries – Arab countries as well – for a reconstruction of a demilitarized, post-Hamas Gaza," he said
Obviously it's not their dream scenario. Nobody wants to own, what they are about to break. The problem is that they will never agree to serious autonomy (that's what keeping security responsibility means) and so they will have a very hard time finding anyone else to step-in.
On November 08 2023 18:51 Magic Powers wrote: The people who are arguing in favor of the invasion and occupation of Gaza don't understand the political ramifications. They have a childish view similar to that of people supporting Putin/Russia in the other war that's currently going on. The Gazan people may not fully support Hamas, but neither do they support Israel. If Israel occupies the land for any period and aims towards elections, those elections could very easily go wrong for Israel and they'd have to withdraw their troops regardless, with a more angry and more powerful Gaza than before. That outcome would render the whole invasion and occupation futile. This means Israel has to force a pro-Israel outcome, which is that Gazans cannot be allowed to maintain an anti-Israel stance under any circumstances. And that's why the occupation will be indefinite and no free and fair elections will be held. Perhaps unfree and unfair.
The reason why Israel has such a tough task is because many Palestinians rightfully oppose Israel over the fact that they're being oppressed both in the West bank and in Gaza, and now Israel is making it even worse with the bombardment of Gaza. The following occupation will not make Gazans any happier. It's tough being occupied by any force, even a benevolent one, but it's worse when that force is your sworn enemy. It can't result in better relations unless Israel plans to install a puppet government in Gaza.
It stands to reason that the goal of the occupation of Gaza would be the same as the goal of the occupation of the West Bank, which means, ethnic cleansing, settlements, kill a few Palestinians from time to time as long as you don't make headlines so that it can be described as a breach of ceasefire when they fight back.
In the context of such a project an occupation makes a ton of sense.
EPT
