Hamas Attacks, Israel Responds

Interestingly enough, if you asked any sane German or Japanese person today if things are better now BECAUSE their respective nation lost that war (which their respective nations started), I'm pretty sure they will be glad that their nation lost that war.

Which is NOT to say that that should be Israel's prime objective, because trying to win the peace 80 years down the road presupposes that the future is predictable and can be controlled for a variety of variables.

 

If every member of Hamas were to be dusted by a Thanos-type snap tomorrow, you'd probably have some extended period of peace. Eventually, though, some other terrorist organization would fill the void. Unless there was some way to occupy all of Gaza and restructure the society to fix the underlying issues, the problem isn't going away. But, I don't see the Israelis taking on that task, so it would need to be some third party.

 

Speaking for myself only, I expected there to be at least tens of thousands of casualties because that's how many estimated combatants for Hamas. I expected those combatants to be counted among the civilians and I also expected there to be combatants that were minors. The numbers alone did not surprise me. Those complications do not go away and they do not get easier ever. It is a factor of this war.

That doesn't mean that IDF gets a free ride. They must at least attempt good faith measures of proportional response. Now that I know that IDF estimates that very few of the casualties were combatants and that whistle-blowers are sounding out about how the targets were selected I now have to pivot and ask questions and accountability of IDF leadership.

I still think that Hamas needs to be fully disabled. However, IDF leadership has proven itself to be a bad actor. I don't think that the IDF rank and file are thoroughly corrupted or the Israeli society in general given that this was reported from Israeli sources and IDF members in a very early phase of the war.

 

I don't know if removing Hamas leadership and combatants is even really possible. The leader of Hamas is in exile and from the accounts of 10/1 some of the attackers were in jeans and flip-flops, taking pictures of burned bodies and calling back to their parents to gleefully relay how many people they had killed.

So who are the actual combatants? How do you overcome that kind of hatred?

 

The strategic goal of the IDF is to protect their people from the horrors of another 10/7.

I have no idea how that can be achieved and neither do you.

 

At this point, I don't see how Israel can proceed with this war while Bibi is in charge. He has been absolute crap and been the primary factor for getting thousands of Israelis and Palestinians killed.

At the same time, the region cannot survive an intact Hamas with this level of control over two millions.

Talk about a flustercluck.

 

This is the same argument that the allies insistence on punishment of Germany in the treaty of Versailles, particularly reparations, after the first world war played no part in creating the conditions for the second world war.

That argument is generally accepted as being false by most historians...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II

If the argument is that you need to blockade and siege people as otherwise, they might attack you you're pretty much guaranteeing a self fulfilling prophesy. if you also double-up on that thinking with the idea you need to steal someone's land to provide a 'buffer zone', again, you might just end up being proved right.

I'm not sure that's a particularly intelligent way of thinking about it though.

 

I agree. As Mao said, "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea." Hamas knows it'll get slaughtered in a stand up fight with the IDF, so its fighters are going to melt into the civilian population as much as possible and engage in asymetrical warfare.

The question that needs to be asked is, what is the endgame for Hamas here? I haven't seen anyone talk about that.

 

Haven't I already answered that question?

 

If they take glee in killing, a logical mind would conclude that Israel isn’t making them be terrorists because terrorist take glee in killing.

 

You’re on the right track but don’t quite get there. Absent from this rhetorical question is that how Hamas fights will affect that number. Israel can’t control how Hamas fights, they can only control themselves. So I think it’s a useless hypothetical, because it’s about a situation that doesn’t exist and can’t exist.

What I expect of Israel is to have reasonable military goals, which to me means getting Hamas out of power. Not removal. They should attempt to do this with the least amount of harm to civilians possible, but obviously, and ultimately, Hamas and Gazans have a hell of a lot more say so than the IDF on that.

Return volley: why doesn’t Hamas come out of the tunnels and fight the IDF directly? I have my answer, and it’s probably the same as yours. But the fact that I’m bringing up what is more or less a new question, after dozens of posts asking why the IDF is fighting the way it is, is telling.

 

The endgame for Hamas is their dream of dragging Israel into a regional conflict.

 

What does that have to do with the question if there is an unacceptable casualty limit for this operation?

 

The IDF is the military of a democracy, Hamas is a terrorist group. If they are judged by different standards it is perhaps because they should be?

 

You ask questions that have no answer.

I am sure the IDF would prefer not to kill innocents but Hamas makes that impossible.

You need to ask your question to Hamas leadership.

 

Ok, but…why doesn’t Hamas come out of the tunnels? You didn’t answer that.

 

Otherwise know as a double standard.

 

If the two things you are judging are a democratic nation's military and a terrorist group, then yes, different standards apply. The notion that this is at all controversial is kind of absurd.

 

You are right, I have no way of proving that opinion.

It is interesting that "the world" wouldn't be able to stomach the Israeli's defending themselves yet sits in silence in other conflicts that are equal to or worse.