Hamas Attacks, Israel Responds

Unsurprising silence about this here. Too short a connection to Hamas being anti-Jew rather than the progressively-washed "politically motivated", so best to ignore it and talk about congress and south park.

 

Unfortunately NEITHER of these things are war, are they, so the expression, war is war' is meaningless in this context.

One is a terrorist atrocity. The other is a war crime.

 

Absolutely not, they’d be all over that too. I just don’t want to do all the work for the South Park writers!

 

For most of human history that’s EXACTLY what war was, or at least included; the “war crimes” distinction is a relatively recent invention. So when you have a group of religious fanatic barbarians it’s not surprising that they would resort to very old tactics of war, especially when you throw their extreme misogyny into the mix.

 

I posted something the other day about an Israeli woman who'd researched Israeli school books who claimed many of them had maps of Israel which showed ALL of the area from the river to the sea, (to coin a phrase), as being 'Israel'.

I don't know if that's right but, thinking about it, it would make sense seeing what we've seen over the past couple of decades.

 

I have no idea how many Gazans are going to die in this conflict. I'm in no way responsible for the position they're in, and have no ability to influence the final death toll.

I mean, you can care as hard as you want about dead people in Gaza, but caring hard and $6 will get you a latte at Starbuck.

 

Well, yeah, as has been pointed out, the idea of war crime a few hundred years ago was a nonsense. it would have meant precisely nothing.

The point is that modern democratic states are meant to hold themselves to a higher standard to terrorist organisations and, generally, they have.

 

I was aware of the concept. I was just a bit surprised to see it in kids books in modern times.

How many children get to use them, mind, I'm not sure.

Very few hopefully.

 

The Lefty youth may be woke regarding the suffering of the Palestinians, but at least they have not lost their traditional American stupidity regarding geography.

From which river to which sea? “Only 47% of the students who embrace the slogan were able to name the river & the sea. Some of the alternative answers were the Nile & the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) & the Atlantic…. There’s no shame in being… pic.twitter.com/sdfT0CYrHS

— Izabella Tabarovsky (@IzaTabaro) December 6, 2023

 

that and they have no military to speak of, they're sort of a rag tag, loosely organized group of kids who used to throw rocks at IDF, now they have RPGs and Kalashnikovs but no conventional military gear of any kind, no central command.

 

Let's just say the thread has 'drifted', somewhat.

 

That is true, but I’ll bet if you ask both Hamas and Israel whether the attacks were acts of war, they’ll say they were.

But regardless, as has been pointed out already Israel hasn’t yet sunk to that level. Sure they’re engaging in the kind of wanton impersonal destruction that’s the hallmark of modern warfare, but we’re not seeing the up-close-and-personal hatred and cruelty that was on display in the 10/7 attacks.

 

Yeah I guess in that situation gang rape and baby killing is about all you have left.

 

Quite honestly, considering the brutality of the 10/7 attack, I don't think it mattered who was in charge in Israel. Nor should it, IMO. Any country that is attacked in that manner and has it's citizens kidnapped would respond in similar fashion.

 

Which has been my point since the beginning.

 

I'm sure we agree that Hamas has to go. But, as Kamala Harris said the other day, how the IDF goes about eliminating Hamas matters. Laying waste to Gaza is a choice Israel is making. We shouldn't pretend that inflicting this level of cruelty on an entire population is the only way Israel can go after Hamas.

 

Yeah, that's probably true. Of course, terrorists say lots of things.

It's probably true to say the atrocity of the attack by hamas WAS to elicit a harsh response.

As to whether we've seen Israel respond in a similar way, I wouldn't mind betting some of the methods used to gather information from captured hamas fighters has been through torture. We just haven't seen it reported on the news.

There's also the point, of course, that troops from societies which haven't been brutalised in the same way people from Gaza have will find it hard to demonstrate THAT level of depravity.

That was something mentioned in a documentary I saw on the SS a few days back. The toll taken on the individuals themselves was considerable.

Israeli troops, some of which will be conscripts I believe, must be feeling a bit queasy anyway I'd think.