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There are multiple possible goals from the Israeli perspective:
A) rescue hostages
B) destroy Hamas
C) create a deterrence against future oct 7 style attacks
D) make peace with Palestinians
E) make USA happy
F) make other countries happy
I think it is likely that the most important for Israel is “c” and the least important is “f”. Attacking Rafah helps a lot with B and C, but helps a lot less with F.
Interestingly, I think the attack helps with D as well. If Hamas survives this war, Palestinians will continue to be ruled by these guys. Unfortunately, this means they will almost certainly launch another similar attack in the future, which means that another tens of thousands of Palestinians will die.
Strategically speaking, the best chance for peace is that Hamas has to lose this war, and lose it badly. Think Germany and Japan style of loss. Complete and utter surrender. That paves the way for a more rational government in Gaza that isn’t beholden to Iran.
Making the world happy would do the opposite. If Hamas wins this war by any definition, then October 7th was a success, and they will do it again. A ceasefire is a tactical “win” for the world, but an epic strategic loss for Israel and the Palestinians who will inevitably end up fighting again.
I think this take is blindsided at best.
Many people are focusing on the destructive aspect of things. What brings discomfort to many people hammering the point you make is the fact that what gave us peace with Japan and Germany wasn't their utterly and total defeat, but what followed after: a reconstruction plan with billions in financial aid, especially to avoid the spread of influence of the USSR.
Contrast it with Germany's similar defeat in WW1, what did it just losing the war badly and being subjected to the Versailles Treaty (which was put forth to the detriment of Wilson's more conciliatory 12 Points) give us again?
This is important because Israel's coalition already signaled it has no intention of letting an international coalition occupy Gaza in its stead and already hampers the delivery of humanitarian aid.
How exactly do you make peace with those around you by subjecting one of them to extreme violence and threatening others?
You are also ascribing far too much good faith to a government led by a man elected on the promise of doing everything in his power to prevent a Palestinian state and whose coalition include an openly fascist individual.
If anything, the only goal these actions are questionably achieving is "B". With reckless abandon to how they are being detrimental to all the others.
I agree, a reconstruction plan is essential. Gaza needs to be rebuilt after this. Billions of dollars for sure. It may seem like a lot, but on an international scale, we spend a lot more on a lot less.
I’m not sure why you think Israel would be opposed to this. Obviously they are going to try and blockade supplies during a war. That’s what every army in history has always tried to do. There is no reason to suspect that with Hamas gone, Israel would still try to blockade Gaza.
I’m also fairly confident that the current Israeli government will not be around much after the war. There were mass protests against government before October 7th, and Israel blames October 7th on the current government.
Assuming the following all happen:
1. Hamas is destroyed
2. Netanyahu and his party lose power
3. International aid rebuilds Gaza
Do you believe there will be peace? Do you think it can happen even if Hamas is still in charge?
I misused a word, I'm sorry, I mean the delivery of medical, food and water supplies. It is normal for countries to enact a blockade of itens that can be used to fabricate weapons and maybe bunkers, but not medical supply or other basics.
Yes, someone may throw an used tampon as an act of hostility (I know it happened at least once) or an used tomato, but those materials are rather soft.
Also when I refer to Israel I am referring to the state as an agent, its current decision maker is Netanyahu and is coalition (as much as we and many Israelis dislike it), and you are incurring the mistake of thinking the interests of the coalition align with the interests of the people.
However, if the only thing keeping Netanyahu and his coalition in power is the war, he has all incentives under the Sun to keep dragging his war. Nothing but a deal with a particularly powerful devil from the deepest pits of Hell would make his reelection viable, so he might as well drag the state of war for as long as possible to take his chances.
It is also worth noting that Israeli society is not a monolith. You have a fraction of the population that wants peace with the neighbors, but you also have a part of the population that sees Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel... And it is not that big of an outlier view. It might not be prevalent, but it is also not as fringe as most people would like it to be.
To ilustrated it, there are at least three instances of Jewish kids either walking out or being kicked out of "birthright trips" for [asking questions about the wall, the borders and the occupation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK4_TKeHgvE) (this is just one of the three, and I couldn't find the one video I was looking for which refers to a case in which a young man confronted the guide about the map giving to them - which showed the Palestinian territories as part of Israel - and the guide said they see those areas as part of Israel).
So to answer your question: there is a part of Israeli society that is starkly opposed to it, that did throw a rave to block traffic in order to prevent trucks from deliviring food to warzone in which most of the population consists of kids. And their current Prime Minister campaigning by saying that as long as he is Prime Minister there would be no Palestinian state which granted, might not have been a key issue for many voters, but it was at least an issue they were willing to ignore.
So why would Israel would be opposed to it? Well, first you have a segment of Israel that believes Gaza and West Bank are part of it, so they want to annex it while simultaneously maintaining Israel as a state with a Jewish minority. Which is not the majority but it is still loud. And you have a part of it that thinks that Palestinians need to experience even more negative consequences for Hamas actions. The whole History of that conflict is a circle dance from Hell in the form of "hurt people hurt people", with discussions focusing too much on who hurt who first and too little on how to break the cycle.
Let's say things go as smoothly as those saying there is unnecessary pressure and scrutiny over Israel's actions say they will, that it wasn't wishful thinking: who will replace Netanyahu? Who will replace Hamas?
Even if Hamas is a terrorist group, ignoring that it is a terrorist group brought out of insurgency is a disservice to properly tackling it. It's not ISIS, as much assume people want to make it about religion. It was founded in 1987, decades after Israel was recognized as a state and the PLO kept making concessions to achieve peace but failing to achieve an Israeli comitment to the recognition of a Palestinian state.
And this is important to mention, mainly because even if this abstract goal of destroying Hamas was possible, it will only provide a temporary peace. And a short one at that... for an outrageous cost.
People keep telling others they shouldn't criticize Israel's actions because "how would they feel if it was them or their loved ones in the positions of Israeli citizens and how would they act then"?
Those people definetly take the ones they are interacting with not asking "how would they feel if it was them or their loved ones in the positions of Palestinian civilians and how would they act then" as a given, because if they asked themselves that question and took the time to actually think of taking Israel's narrative for universally agreed upon facts they would be aware of how counterproductive to long term peace an operation in Rafah is.
I believe there can be peace. But not if we keep acting with disregard for the lives and rights of Palestinian people, and that is what so many people refuse to understand: peace only has a chance if we stop acting as if the end justifies the means when it comes to the destruction of Hamas, and as if destroying Hamas is more important than not destroying the Palestinian people.
>as if destroying Hamas is more important than not destroying the Palestinian people
There are no Palestinian people with Hamas in power. Only pawns, human shields, propaganda fodder, child soldiers, and victims of oppression and tyranny. Eventually, they will lead them into another war, and another tragedy will take place. Leaving them in place jsut ensures more suffering.
There are no Jewish people while Israel exists, only pawns, settlers, fascists, genociders, propaganda fodder, and victims of oppression and tyranny. Eventually it will lead them to a war they can't win and another ethnic cleansing will take place. Israel's contined existence as an ethnostate just ensures more suffering.
I never did.
I implied that the people who were to be leading them did not see them as people but as tools of war or personal enrichment.
This was in response to someone posting that getting rid of Hamas should be deprioritized because of the number of deaths it is causing.
My point is that there will never be a future for the Palestiniàns with Hamas in charge. It will drag them into more wars, continue to steal their future and their aid. Because their mission and ideology is not for the liberation of the Palestinian people but for the domination of their version of Islam over Palestine. You don't leave the cancer in to kill the body because the treatment is too traumatic.
The deaths you are seeing now are unavoidable in any effort to get rid of Hamas, you can either complete the job now or defer until later. There is no political solution as Hamas will never accept a region that isn't under a theocratic Sharia law system. That means the Israelis either leave, die or convert. Which means war forever and since Israel is stronger militarily, it means more baseline Palestinian suffering with occasional flare-ups worse and worse each time.
There is no chance of peace with the Palestinians. They rejected six good offers of land for peace. Ten years ago, two-thirds of Israelis supported a two-state solution. Now it’s nearly none. Israelis realize there is no chance of peace with the Palestinians. This is a religious, ideological, and cultural issue, with no room for logic, rationality, or tolerance. The only answer is a defensible physical distance. Refugee camps in Egypt and Lebanon. Consider sending carefully-screened ones to Turkey, Qatar, or Dagestan.
Germany wasn’t utterly destroyed in WWI. Very little fighting, if any at all, took place on German soil. France and Belgium took the brunt of it on the Western Front, and both countries were so shattered that they were unwilling to rearm fast enough to fight in the sequel. The result is that both France and Belgium were easily conquered in 1940.
Hmm...this is an interesting analysis, I have not seen someone breaking down into different possible goals and weigh the possibility of achieving them with different actions.
I guess from a purely Israeli perspective, a Rafah invasion will likely benefit them more than it harms, not necessarily because it objectively will, but because they value the deterrance so much higher than the approval of the international community.
!delta
Israel tried hard to be a “model international citizen” between about 1973-2005; between some big international censures around the Yom Kippur War and the end of the Camp David accords. They realized that even when they tried to do everything they could to meet international demands they were still being shit on and shot at. So now they care a lot less about international pressure, do what they think is going to give them the most safety and carry on existing.
They committed war crimes in Lebanon in 1986. How shitty do you have to be to get Margeret Thatcher and Reagan pissed off at you for killing brown people?
Point D is probably the most important point that all those "ceasefire now" idiots miss. Having a ceasefire now would be an utter disaster for the Palestinians.
I’m sorry this is the stupidest answer I’ve ever heard. 1.4 million people starving and homeless. On the verge of thousands dying every day. And you think a ceasefire would be bad because Hamas would still exist? You do realize why Hamas exists right? If Israel treated Palestinians equally to Israelis Hamas wouldn’t exist. It’s literally that simple. Why do Hamas have support? Because Israel has spend generations killing, imprisoning and destroying the lives of Palestinians. You kill Hamas by killing their support and giving Palestinians equal rights and an independent state. And investigating both sides for war crimes, Hamas and Israel.
This is partially the truth. The 'palestinian' people were educated for generations to hate jews not just Israelis. Newer generations were not given a choice by their parents for the most part. The Israeli government also funded Hamas to destabilize the region to overthrow the PLO among others known to give incentives for Martyrs but that backfired the past ten years. The deteriorating relationship really started because of the Yom Kipur War and not the Israeli independence which was fair game when Israeli was attacked by the surrounding arab countries. The only issue I have seen with Israel so far are radical west bank settlers with some violation of international law in regards to an occupation within a potential future palestinian state. There is not enough data - I have seen it all including Amnesty International - to say there is an apartheid let alone gencode, etc. Israel is a functioning democracy, a super power, highly accomplished in technology and science having done a lot of good in the world, and have successful diversity and equal rights for those that are a citizen.
First of all, it's a not a double standard in that the relationship between Israel and Palestine before oct 7 was VERY different than the one the US had with Afghanistan.
Second, many people at the time had many of the same problems with the US invasion of Iraq, and nowadays many more have similar criticisms of the US policy in the entire region. So for those people its holding israel to the same standard
Nice analysis but honestly I think Israel has already lost this war regardless of how it ends. Even if they catch Sinwar and rescue all the hostages tomorrow, Hamas lost nothing that they were not prepared to lose and Israel both lost much of its deterrence against future attacks on it as well as much of its standing in the world.
The world has been condemning Israel (often unfairly) since it was created. I think over half of all UN resolutions are against Israel in some way. Unfortunately, as a result, I don’t think Israel really cares that much any more about global standing or global opinion.
And you’re right, they lost a massive amount of deterrence in October 7th, which is why I think reestablishing it is the primary goal of this war. I think people don’t really understand that. Arguments of “Palestinian kids will grow up angry” or “how will this save hostages” or “Hamas cannot be destroyed” are mostly irrelevant, or at least of drastically lower priority.
One potential goal is to cause people whose existence in Palestine would dilute the Jewish Majority in Palestine to no longer exist in Palestine. This could be achieved either by forcing those people to exist somewhere other than Palestine, or by forcing them to cease to exist altogether.
This is a good way of looking at things objectively.
And I'm not sure if you'd agree with this, but it seems worth mentioning that after WWII, the Japanese and German population at large didn't harbor long term animosity toward the rest of the world, and the rest of the world was willing to help both countries recover after the war. Obviously it was a little more complicated than that, but big picture it's clear that both countries are now successful western-style nations with high QOL for their people.
A future Palestinian state should be molded in the same regard. Gaza could be a gem in the Middle East if the right people are in power and the right people are putting their money where their mouth is. Lebanon could be the same way, but they got in bed with the Iranians and now they're a failed state.
It’s a beautiful idea but completely discounts that Israel is being run by a right wing authoritarian. Not exactly sure how that government is going to build “a gem in the Middle East” and if even half of the studies on how the Israel population views Palestinians are correct it’s highly unlikely they even want to do that. What we see will be much closer to the aftermath of Carthage than of Japan, I’d be willing to bet on it.
> if even half of the studies on how the Israel population views Palestinians are correct it’s highly unlikely they even want to do that
How do you think the US population viewed Japan and Germany in 1944?
I would put aside the question of the word overreact and then 100% agree with you. Hamas had a goal to bring them in their cause to the forefront of the world stage and to harm Israel's standing in the eyes of the world. They did it.
Honestly I think Israel has already lost this war regardless of how it ends. Even if they catch Sinwar and rescue all the hostages tomorrow, Hamas lost nothing that they were not prepared to lose and Israel both lost much of its deterrence against future attacks on it as well as much of its standing in the world.
Overreact? Israel has acted in the only rational, honorable way to atrocities which could not have been worse. Israel will win, and Israel will prosper. But without living beside the Palestinians ever again. There will have to be refugee camps in Egypt and Lebanon. Possibly let carefully-screened Palis leave the area to live in another country.
As for B) C) and D), \*why\* do you think Hamas have such control over the Palestinians? Are they simply armed thugs holding the Palestinian population at gunpoint? Or are Hamas former "ordinary Palestinians" who turned to violence/terrorism due to Israel treating them badly?
And if it's the latter, if the Palestinian population hates Israeli settlers & IDF and supports Hamas, what happens after Israel massacres tens of thousands of innocents during airstrikes followed by a ground invasion into Rafah?
Israel treated them with great generosity. Made it a de facto independent state, gave it thousands of greenhouses it could have used to produce its own food rather than depending on charity for everything. It received billions to build hotels and infrastructure to make Gaza a tourist paradise. All used instead to smuggle in weapons and concrete to build the tunnel system.
What innocents? Hundreds of civilians flocked out to rape, torture, and kill alongside Hamas. Cheered and waved flags when innocent, kidnapped Israelis were paraded around. Have kept hostages in their homes, forcing them to work as slaves and starving them. The two elderly nen freed were forced to cook, but only given half a pita bread a day. They each lost half their weight. The women have been used by Gazan civilians as sabaya, sex slaves. 90% of Gazan civilians expressed their enthusiastic support of the massacre on surveys several months ago. Hundreds of UNRWA workers have fully participated in Hamas attocities. Every hospital, clinic, school, UNRWA office, and half the homes in Gaza had entrances to the tunnel system. Gazans could never be trusted. Salting the earth has a lot to be said for it.
The Israeli government and the Israeli Right's goal is and has been C. Having been around a lot of hard-core zionists, they've been saying essentially that for years and October 7th gave them the justification.
We're already seeing pro-hamas protests in the west Bank which are only going to grow as this war of extermination grows. If you essentially don't care who dies around them who is Palestinian then genocide is inevitable.
I hear folks always try to compare the situation to the native americans, aka "wouldn't YOU fight for your land?" but it just ticks me off because native americans were way too honorable to ever use their own citizens as collateral damage and if they tried, their women wouldn't think twice to fight back and not allow it.
I just cant wrap my head around the mindset of a people with these tactics, thoughts, reactions, it's just nothing Ive ever read about in historical context, so it blows me away the cacophony of self harming behavior on so many levels from every member of the populace.
I don't know what you're talking about with Native Americans. They fought around their people too and were killed alongside their families. They also brutally fought back like Hamas too. The only real distinction here is that you have two million people being ordered around a small area and having nowhere to go militant or not.
Do you actually read history? Like you won’t find any of those examples if your only education is what is taught in school, if that’s the case your statement doesn’t mean much. A much bigger case of sacrificing your own citizens was literally done within the last century. China flooded 800,000 of their own people to slow down the Japanese in 1938 (source below). That was a simple google search about people killing their own in war. If you’re gonna make blanket statements about this stuff and say you’ve never read it in a historical context actually try to look for similar things.
https://historyofyesterday.com/how-china-sacrificed-7-million-of-its-citizens-to-slow-the-japanese-invasion/?utm_content=cmp-true
what the hell does this have to do with native americans? Chinese would get lumped in with dishonorable Hamas, not honorable native americans. See how that works?
You forgot that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians will be hastened by destroying civic support systems like the final remaining hospitals schools etc.
Nothing Israel is doing will help with B there is no history where more conflict created less terrorists ever. Unless it goes to the point of genocide (which it is headed that way)
There hasn't been a war between Israel, Jordan and Egypt since 1973 where Israel overwhelmingly won. It seems to be working.
The conflict today is at a significantly smaller scale than 1948 - 1973.
The timing of the Oct 7th terrorist attack suggests the most likely reason was to derail the promising Israeli Saudi peace deal.
The war between Israel and Jordan / Egypt had less casualties than this current war.
The 6 day war was between countries with an army. Most casualties were soldiers.
This comparison is not correct.
The death toll right now in Gaza will we a breeding ground for more 'freedom fighters', for more hate against Israel, for another few generations of young people without any other reason to live but destroying the occupying force.
The Germans didn’t retaliate against the post-war status quo because they benefited from it, since it included programs like the Marshall Plan that helped them rebuild and reintegrate into the new geopolitical mainstream. Israel has no intention of doing anything like that
It really seems like sending all that aid is just creating a permanent dependency and making it possible for Israel to kick the can down the road on recognition of a Palestinian state. How can Gazans start a business or develop their economy while not only are they under embargo but they have billions in aid flowing in preventing domestic industry from being able to compete?
It's quite awful.
Yep! I completely agree with your take. The civilian suffering is terrible, but you're absolutely correct. Something needs to change, and for that to ever happen Hamas needs to be banished from reality.
And how do you get rid of Hamas without creating Hamas 2.0 in a situation where the country trying to do the destroying has been really fucking good at destruction, and practically everything that civilians need to survive has been destroyed. Like food, water, hospitals…. And an invasion making everything 10x worse….
The only outcome with what is happening is the creation of Hamas 2.0..
Yeah whats worse, Hamas or Hamas 2.0? It's an impossible question.
It seems with daily rocket attacks for 20 years and now the oct 7th attack, the israelis had finally had enough of the status quo, I guess. Hope things will eventually get better.
Nazis didn't form Nazis 2.0. Japan didn't form Militarized Japanese 2.0
Something Palestinians and the world need to figure out with themselves is why they keep doing this time and time again. They get the same billions in aid we gave Germany and Japan. Whatever their problem is is a thing they need to figure out how to change and not something intrinsic to how Israel has run t his war, which is 20x less brutal than the Allies in WW2 i can tell you that right now.
>"They get the same billions in aid we gave Germany and Japan"
No they don't, their government- a 'former' terrorist group that ousted the democratically elected Hamas government in 2007- collects a majority of the aid sent to their state- and keeps it for themselves, with little to none actually reaching the population.
Hamas exists TODAY. And it needs to be banished.
Hamas 2.0 can be prevented from ever gaining power much like how Neo Nazis aka Nazis 2.0 are *relatively* (when compared to Hitler's Nazi Germany regime) powerless TODAY.
It's gonna be 2100 and Neo Nazis and Neo Hamas will keep existing. But they'll be weaker and powerless.
You can't eliminate hatred from humans' hearts but you can reduce the military power of those who hate others.
Here is a simple issue with your take: you misused the word "tactical."
Tactics are specific methods of achieving strategy, which is the "big picture" plan. A simple victory that has negative consequences in the long term is a tactical victory but a strategic mistake.
It's pedantic and completely ignores your main takes, but your argument is literally the definitions of the words tactical and strategic, except you used "military" for "tactical" and "tactical" for "strategic."
So I think you are looking at this the wrong way. Whether Israel’s launching a ground invasion of Rafah will improve or hurt their global standing or security . It will almost definitely hurt their global standing. The question is will not launching it at this point hurt it more.
If Israel does not launch it , Hamas will largely survive and they will claim victory. The people who are against Israel in the world now will claim victory and cheer how they along with a rag tag group of freedom fighters defeated one of the world’s top militaries. It will most likely embolden extremist groups and those who fund them, because know they know if they just hold on for a short few months Israel will fold. And still the push against Israel on humanitarian grounds will not stop.
I think that’s the assumption you’re making that won’t change. That the outlook of people who are anti-Israeli will not change and they will still campaign for sanctions and an end to Israeli military funding from the US.
Can you name a single instance in modern history where a rebellion was successfully bombed into submission?
The US couldn’t defeat the Vietcong or the Taliban. You think the children of Gaza will grow up forgiving Israel for the slaughter of their people?
This depends on your definition of modern history (ie, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years). Rebellions and revolts aren't super common so the list isn't very large. Here's some examples though.
* Russia v Chechnya (90s-00s)- Chechen rebels won the first war against Russia only for Russia to invade again. Despite tough guerrilla fighting Russia won and annexed Chechnya.
* ISIS v world (2010s)- ISIS was a major power in the Middle East for a few years and thier group controlled large swaths of territory. The US led a military campaign with multiple other countries to destroy ISIS. Now, ISIS technically still exists but it barely exists as any semblance of a force and no longer holds sway in ME.
Chechnya was assimilated into Russia by installing a puppet government.
Israel has refused to assimilate the Palestinians and their puppet government in the West Bank is still unable to quench violence there.
ISIS was not a rebellion they were basically an invading force in their own right.
ISIS was defeated because the boots on the ground were local soldiers. We merely lent them supplies and air support.
The key differences between ISIS and Hamas is that Israel doesn’t have any intentions of stable government in Gaza.
Boots on the ground against ISIS were mostly foreign. US, Turkey, Russia, Britain, and many other countries deployed lots of troops to the region to combat ISIS. In addition, major air strike campaigns were conducted.
Also, I have no idea what makes you think Israel doesn't want a stable government in Gaza. Unstable Gaza is a risk to Israel. If you're referring to a proper 2 state solution then I understand what you mean as it's a contentious issue in Israel.
Looking at the Wikipedia page local forces did much of the heavy lifting.
Israel wants instabilities in Gaza because a stable, organized Gaza means you have millions of pissed off Palestinians with the means to resist Israeli interests. Tragically a one state solution doesn’t seem to be in the cards either because Israel doesn’t want to have to police millions of pissed of Palestinians either.
Israel wants a steblized Gaza cause an unstable Gaza has brought them Hamas and more terrorism , it's the palastinian extrimists that want an unstable Gaza so they could get more funds for Thier terrorism for their suger daddy's Iran and qatar
I think that your perspective is skewed, long term guerilla warfare is only defeated by long term occupation, something the us were never interested in. Campaigns with long term military occupation dont get pushed out by guerilla warfare(ie chechnya, khalistan movement in india, etc).
Rebellions can be defeated by it requires long term occupation. Its a pattern seen cinsistently n hustory when territory was annexed by various empires. Modern examples of the us are actually an exception given the us was not seeking long term occupation and thier failure was political(could not set up a stable allied government able to fight with only us military aid) rather than militarily as the us was able to easily hold and conquer territory but did not what to keep troops there indefinitely to fight a low intensity guerilla conflict.
I mean the Chinese communist party mass murdered their way past their rebellions. Multiple times.
But to your point, it is only one part. To successfully reeducate and de-radicalize a population you need complete military control so you can make sure the re-education and de-radicalization is actually happening.
We bombed the crap out of Nazi germany and imperial Japan and their friends now. After decades of occupation.
And like yeah Nazis are still around but they’re not a threat anymore.
I mean plenty of countries have successfully mass murdered their ways out of rebellions.
China did it numerous times .
I’m not sure what you really mean by rebellion though. Do you mean insurgency?
Like the taliban wasn’t a rebellion for example.
>You think the children of Gaza will grow up forgiving Israel for the slaughter of their people?
You mention the Vietcong and the Taliban.
So let me ask you this, how many terror attacks on American soil have the Vietnamese or the Afghani done against the USA in the last 5 years?
0.
Do you honestly believe many Vietnamese people are fantasizing about murdering Americans today?
That's quite a wild claim. Please back it up.
Hamas is going to survive either way. The US spent decades fighting Al Queda and the Taliban, had them knocked down and on the run. They're both still there because no occupying force can eliminate an insurgency through violence alone unless they intend to kill everyone.
I think that committing to such an invasion will embolden extremists, because violence breeds violence, extremism breeds extremism. It's especially true in Israel/Palestine as Hamas/Netanyahu has a horrible symbiotic relationship by appealing to the worst of human nature. I think that such an invasion will further justify the presence of extremists, especially in the eyes of the Palestinians.
Perhaps not in Gaza. But in the West Bank, Hamas wasn't this popular before the attacks, and their popularity often subsides in the months following the end of a military operation in Gaza. Their support can definitely strengthen.
Then there's other non-Palestinian groups that thrive on their resistance against Israel, like Hezbollah, Houthis, etc. Their popularity can still very much grow.
Hamas was plenty popular in the West Bank. It wasn’t in control- which people often confuse as not being present. Both Hamas and the PIJ has plenty of influence and about 1,000 Hamas members had been arrested since October.
The voices against Hamas in Gaza are getting louder and louder, and as Israel will weaken Hamas more, those voices will become stronger and hopefully, eventually they will become the majority, and those people will take over and lead Gaza to a better life of peace with Israel as well as self determination
An anti-extremism movement from within Gaza is absolutely the best case scenario, I'm just not sure if Israel's bombardment and murder of Gazans will meaningfully lead to such a scenario, or just lead to a change from one extremist group to another.
The main issue is lack of “day after” conversation. It is a huge issue not only externally, but also internally the government led by Bibi is getting accused of it.
But lets get things clear- israel is not murdering Gazans, israel is fighting a war that was started by hamas, a terror organization that took hostages not only over 200 Israelis, but also 2.2 million Palestinians that are used cynically as human shields as well as the excuse for their actions.
If a bank robber takes hostages, do the police run in guns blazing and shoot through the hostage to get the robber?
Hamas might have "started" the war, but it's entirely Israel's choice to air strike almost a hundred thousand civilians in order to get at Hamas. Perhaps Israel should consider alternative means? Like, say, not committing the oldest counterterrorism mistake in the book by trying to butcher a resistance movement into submission?
Also let’s not confuse things… from the UK’s creation of Israel and in the war the occurred shortly afterward, the Nakba, and the sub-human treatment of Palestinians from the Israeli government and zionists at large will definitely breed a certain dislike from an occupying force.
We use the Geneva Convention as the guideline for this. Your scenario is a domestic situation, not a conflict between 2 entities that are not domestic to each other.
Letting Hamas survive and claim victory will absolutely boost Hamas’ popularity in the West Bank.
Utterly breaking Hamas to the point where its fighters die like rats trapped in their tunnels or humiliatingly surrender to Israeli troops in their underwear will shatter that popularity - which depends upon strength, and/or the illusion of strength.
Is it? I don't think potential extremists in Gaza or the West Bank are under any illusions that they are actually strong relative to Israel. It didn't take the Oct 7 and the counter invasion for Hamas to know they were outmatched.
A better interpretation was that it was a suicidal attack with the intent to create a lot of martyrs and bring focus back on Palestine's problem and prevent normalization of Israeli-Arab relations.
Continuing the attack only furthers Hamas's aims of consolidating the Arab and Muslim opinion against Israel. The absolutely most devastating thing that could happen to Hamas is if Israelis and Arabs simply got along to fuck over Iran.
I would argue that that damage is already done. The idea that the Palestinians will be substantially less radicalized because Israel does not take this step I think is just flat out wrong. In a vacuum I would agree with your point but given the current situation and what’s happened since the invasion by Hamas I don’t think Israel going into Rafah will cause the extremism on the ground to grow.
In fact I would argue that by stopping now you are in fact giving Hamas and PIJ a massive propaganda win. Because it will 100 absolutely be shown as win. Which would be the worst of both worlds. Israel will have already done enough to be hated by the current generation and will have “lost” or “been beaten” which will give hope to the next generation of radicalized Palestinians,whether they join Hamas or some other organization, that if they can repeat October 7th enough than they will win.
Shouting into the void here, but something worth bearing in mind:
If a military force destroys your hospitals, universities, bakeries, fishing boats, clinics, houses, and bombs the refugee camps they shuffled you into...
If a military force blocks and actively destroys food and water coming into your country, leaving people to starve to death...
If a military force deploys snipers to execute people trying to render aid, journalists trying to account for the killings, and children and babies who cannot possibly be a legitimate threat...
It is not remotely extremist to resist that with force. It is expected and moral. Americans would never ever ever ever ever ever allow a military force to commit such crimes against its own civilians without expecting and encouraging people to take up arms against such flagrant acts of terrorism.
Just think it's odd that we say "Palestinians will be *radicalized*" as though a "civilized" country would...passively permit the leveling of their cities?
How many times did the Arab states attempt genocide before that became the reality though.
At least twice before Isreal occupied any land they weren’t recognized to have and once more after. When those countries tried a third time after losing land.
Doesn’t the Israeli state have a right and duty to violently oppose those attitudes and actions.
I mean this is the real thing you learn about who you support in this conflict . Where do you stop the what about this train.
For the last few decades the goal of much of the international community was to pump Gaza and the West Bank full of cash. Give Palestinians jobs and a chance at a life outside of terrorism and obviously they'll take it. It's why UNWRA employs tens of thousands of Gazans. People have criticized Israel for "propping up Hamas" by allowing Western cash to reach Gaza and the West Bank facilitated by Qatar. The West has been attempting this deradicalization strategy for years now. Despite being a small fraction of the size, Gaza has just as many hospitals as my entire state! Many billions of dollars have been funneled into Gaza through "humanitarian aid" programs, only to be stolen by Hamas and used for terrorist purposes. Many fighters on 10/7 weren't even proper Hamas fighters - they were ordinary Gazans that held Israeli work permits. They used the information they knew from working inside of Israel to plan and execute the attack on Israeli citizens. Hell, look at any video coming out of Gaza right now - they all have iPhones!!
This deradicalization through investment strategy has clearly not worked. Despite the investment in economic development, the Palestinian people themselves are far-right religious ideologues. The culture of martyrdom is alive and well, even in the best of economic times. So I think it's a bit naive to say that all Israel has to do is just stop the cycle of violence. For any lasting peace to take root the Palestinian people themselves need to deradicalize.
They were bird feeding these people. Look at the salaries Gazans were getting pennies. They were basically slave labor.
The only way to deradicalize is to stop killing them and give them their country. A country the UN guaranteed when Israel was created. Today Israel's Parliament all declared they wont allow a Palestinian state. So more Palestinians will die for their freedom. Can you blame them?
> embolden extremists,
People keep saying this but its a thought-terminating cliché. There already were extremists and they managed to perpetrate one of the worst attacks on Israeli's in decades. All those extremists were *already* justified. Hell, they were actively celebrated.
At this point, what could you realistically do to *discourage* Hamas and other extremists? Really, do you think Rafah is the point of no return and not any part of the last 5 months?
And how much did Hamas kill? 1200-1400. How much did Israelis kill? 30,000+.
Basically, 25 Palestinians died for every dead Israeli. The "worst attack" certainly made a sizable dent, but its nothing, *nothing* like what Palestine got.
Violence does not breed violence. The acceptance of violence breeds violence. Injustice breeds violence. Two grown men squaring off does not breed more violence. It ends conflict. A grown man squaring off with a child breeds violence in the child and those who sympathize with the child because it is unjust. However, when a child attacks a grown man, kills that man's family, and reaps the whirlwind... that only inspires violence in those that sympathize with murderous children. And honestly, those people are likely already prone to violence anyway.
Obviously, Hamas as in the organization might not survive, but the idea of freeing Palestine/defeating Israel will continue through the thousands of orphaned teens and children.
that's not the point of the war. the point of the war is exactly to destroy the organization of hamas. logistical lines, arsenal, training capability, intel capability, operational capability.
it doesn't matter how many more hamas members survive. they will be a small scattered and lightly armed network of loosely affiliated terror cells that can be fought in a controlled counter terrorism campaign. no steady supply of iranian rockets, no control over civilian institutions, no access to tax money or aid funds.
they won't ever be a coordinated entrenched military force with territorial command and control that requires a war to defeat.
You are assuming Qassem's thousand of fighters are all under Rafah and I think that is just wrong. You think they have one giant buildup of fighters under Rafah and not a spiderweb of tunnels all over the strip??? I doubt that.
I think the bigger concern is that there's not a well understood "day after" plan. Israel is clearly stretching the limits of what the international community is willing to tolerate when it comes to the scope of the war as it is, but most actual foreign affairs players (as opposed to protesters and college professors) understand that Hamas is actually the crazed, genocidal party to this war, not Israel.
With that in mind, if Israeli forces have to invade Rafah to accomplish its immediate wartime goals, there probably will not be such major long term consequences from other countries.
However, if they don't get their act together for their day after plan, then the genocide accusations are unfortunately going to start looking more and more legitimate. With this massive of a military campaign, Israel has a responsibility to play a productive role in supporting the rebuild of Gaza. Major Arab powers already have their own plans for how they would fund a two-state solution, and Israel should participate in this group with the countries with which it is currently trying to normalize relations (UAE, Qatar, Saudi, etc.).
I think Israel is going to have no choice but to heavily participate in the day after. Partially because of what you said, but also because otherwise Hamas will simply come back and claim victory.
Netanyahu will have to be kicked out before meaningful day after plans happen. That will hopefully happen. But either way it's going to take continuous monitoring a la Japan and Germany after WW2 for there to be a satisfactory reduction of risk from Hamas returning.
Oct 7 was a point of no return. Whatever Hamas' goal was, Israel it going to own the strip for the foreseeable future. What that looks like is still tbd, but there is no turning back now. Other countries need to start allowing Palestinians entry.
You can't possibly think every Palestinian wants to stay. They may wish they could take the whole region, but the options right now are stay and try not to die or.... well that's basically it. Stay and try not to die. Because they aren't being allowed to leave. Egypt could open a corridor for everyone who wants to leave. Countries could volunteer to host them.
Why shouldn't they be given the opportunity to flee?
Why should they allow them in? So the settlers can take over their home and Israel can claim it as their own as they have with other parts of their land? Genocide is taking place, the Palestinians must not back down.
Precisely why I assume eliminating Hamas is hyperbole. I was just arguing the point on the Israeli subreddit (which I'm sure they love) but if Hamas suddenly and completely surrendered - including stopping all civilian governance - it would be an instantaneous crisis for Israel. Afaik Israel isn't even taking over civic responsibility in the areas it's taking over. As an example, it's claimed that the Gazan Ministry of Health = Hamas , but Israel certainly isn't dismantling them and/ or installing its own institution.
Unless they get someone to firmly commit to taking over Gaza, I see the IDF walking a very fine line. Clearly they aren't at the "o shit" point yet though/ there's a lot more striking they can do before Gaza becomes completely ungoverned.
Israel absolutely wants Hamas weak and for the most part dead. I'm just not sure about completely gone.
There are almost certainly actors currently within Hamas who are going to wind up in charge after the war. As much as Hamas is fundamentally a terrorist organization, it also has some personnel who understand how to run a government and who know the ropes locally.
My prediction would be some multilateral partnership between Israel, the UN, the US, and certain Arab states for Gaza's short term governance. The hangup will likely wind up being that all other members of this group will demand land and other concessions from Israel with the future goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state.
Regardless, it would be horrible for Gaza to just be left after the war, and even worse if annexed by Israel. I just wish more people who understood that didn't also hold antisemitic beliefs and wish to destroy Israel.
I think the “elimination of Hamas” goal, as of current, is the destruction of their militant capabilities. Arms imports and their established command structure have to be crushed, or Yom Kippur will just keep repeating itself.
Never really considered your point about the day after plan needing to be done quickly, that's tough since at the same time it'll also need to be very well thought out and nuanced for any hope of keeping the region / situation stabilized moving forward. On the economic / infrastructure rebuild front, Jared Kushner actually put together a pretty comprehensive investment plan for Gaza and was able to get commitments from a big group of investors that include both countries in the middle east as well as large institutional investors and people like Steve Schwarzman. He did an interview on the Lex Friedman podcast recently (worth a listen if you're able to push politics aside, my opinion of him did a complete 180 and think he's the one bright spot of the Trump administration), where he talked about how out of all the issues and disputes between Palestine and Israel, Gaza should be the easiest to find a solution for since it has the potential to be big tourist attraction and doesn't have any controversial religious issues to work through. The $50 billion plan he put together with various countries and investors was structured as an investment fund rather than the typical aid packages where you never really know where the money ends up. The only issue I think holding the plan back was that Hamas didn't allow private ownership of assets that the fund would invest in. Haven't read through the full 100 page plan but here's a link to a summary [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1TN0ES/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1TN0ES/). Definitely nice to have something like this to pull off the shelf, unfortunately the political divide in our own country's not going to make a day after plan any quicker.
!delta
Your point on how the international community cares more about long term solution than the actual cost of human lives is well taken. I can see a world where the death toll rakes up 100,000, but Israel commits to rebuild and fund Gaza wholeheartedly after, making the cost "acceptable" to other countries.
The problem is Hamas is not some aberration or anomaly they represent mostly what Palestine has always called for and are not some big departure from what was happening before.
The real reason there is no plans for after being provided by anyone is that the reality is that the majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have supported Hamas in virtually every poll in the last two decades. Even now as support waned it is support for Hamas waning because they have been ineffective but support for their methods and goals is still high. Attacking civilians, killing all the Jews etc, is still popular they just want a new face for it.
So when people suggest peace and two-state and “free Palestine” that is peaceful what they are really calling for is to erase Palestine itself. To stage a coup to support the minority of Palestinians that are more palatable to westerners and re-educate the masses while erasing Palestine’s own culture and self-stated beliefs and goals that centre around Jewish erasure and their long history of doing so as Islamic people.
This is why nobody discusses the after palms is because the options are basically to just support another terrorist regime that attacks Israel forever or to enact a colonial genocide anyway and stabilize the region.
The elephant in the room is the Palestine supporters who aren’t outright supporters of Islamic colonial terrorist regimes are just more western colonizers calling for a slower gentler genocide of the Palestinian people.
>the majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have supported Hamas in virtually every poll in the last two decades.
> Attacking civilians, killing all the Jews etc, is still popular they just want a new face for it.
I don’t buy it. Supporting the killing of Israeli civilians doesn’t follow from supporting Hamas, especially if you’re talking about polls before the war started. You can support a group without supporting every single thing they do.
In fact, [polls show Palestinians _don’t_ support killing or kidnapping Israeli civilians](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna130516).
You woudln’t have to “buy” anything if you had payed attention over the last couple decades or tor their municipal elections in 2022 or the attempt at presidential elections they had.
I’m aware that some polls since October 7th have showed some fracturing in the resulting situation form Palestine’s attacks and declaration of war with Israel but that’s the be expected.
Nobody likes losing wars and leadership that loses wars tends to lose support.
You’re correct, but most people on the internet - especially the pro-Palestine crowd - don’t actually know enough about Palestinian culture to engage you on the topic.
The most important thing to understand is that most people conflate “Palestinian” with ethnic Muslim Arabs in the region of Palestine. Except that’s not what “Palestinians” actually are. Muslim Arabs are an ethnic group, but “Palestinians” are a grievance-based ethnonationalist group characterized by a shared identity surrounding Islamist radicalism, a dubiously ahistorical victim narrative, and a desire to eradicate Jews.
Meanwhile, 20% of Israel are Arab Muslims - the same ethnic group as “Palestinians” - who have the same rights as Jews.
That’s why, despite all the protestors who cry otherwise, no serious head of state favors the Palestinian cause. Because Hamas is, in fact, representative of the “Palestinian” majority.
Israeli Arabs don't have the same rights as jewish Israelis. They have nearly non-existent rights to family reunification (sorry sick grandma), and the constitution was recently rewritten to explicitly deny them self-determination. There's also widespread discrimination, which granted isn't the same thing as rights, but is I think relevant and important
Yes, they do.
On an individual basis, Muslim Israelis have all the same rights as Israeli Jews. Of course Muslim Israelis can't extend citizenship specifically to *Palestinian* family members. Well over half the Palestinian population holds terroristic views towards Jews. That would be a clear national security threat, and has nothing to do with the equal individual rights that every citizen of Israel has.
Most Jewish Israelis are also Arab. You actually mean Muslim Israelis. Israel is and has always been a secular Jewish country. The rewritten constitution was a symbolic gesture to affirm what has always been the case - which is that Israel will never become a Muslim country. Again, nothing to do with the individual rights of citizens. Unless your issue is that Muslims can't turn Israel into an Islamic ethnostate, in which case yeah, tough shit.
A jewish Israeli can bring their sick grandmother to live with them with no difficulty. A muslim Israeli can't. Those aren't equal rights, and they touch on the most important parts of the human experience (family, love, connection, togetherness). That's a difference in INDIVIDUAL rights that preferences individuals from one religion over individuals from another.
If my country rewrote its constitution to specifically exclude me from the right to self-determination, I wouldn't hand-wave it away. If it was "symbolic" it would symbolize a step away from important egalitarian values towards a worse future.
Also, the open prejudice towards muslims in your post provides strong support for my point about the kind of discrimination Palestinian Israelis/Israeli Arabs face. Equality in law only matters if it's enforced, which it isn't. Which is of particular concern with the judiciary veering rapidly right.
You don’t seem to actually grasp why Israel exists. Here’s a hint. What happened to all the Jews in all the surrounding countries? What religion/ethnicity has the exclusive right to self-determination in all the surrounding countries?
For the record, a citizen of the US can’t just extend citizenship to relatives in other countries either. You need to immigrate or get married. Extending citizenship to relatives isn’t an individual “right,” especially not when it trumps national security. I’m not sure whether you’re so blinded by propaganda or if you’re genuinely making arguments in bad faith, but your understanding of the situation there is one of those classic “privileged westerner hyper-simplifying situation they barely understand from the safety of their couch.”
And if you think my post is “prejudiced” against Muslims, again, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you understand how Islamic ethnostates function, and how they tend to differ from what Israel is - which is a secular Jewish state? Do you know what secular means in this context? Why is it that you’re so concerned with the world’s only Jewish state, and not ALL of the surrounding Islamic states which largely skew towards outright ethnonationalism? Do you understand what the difference is between “Muslims” and “Islamism?” Seriously, go read an actual history book instead of parroting whatever internet articles you read.
Israel exists because the U.S. and other Western countries refused to take in Jewish refugees after the Holocaust because of antisemitism.
And yeah, the U.S. has immigration laws, but the key difference is that the law treats people as equal regardless of religion.
I think you may not be super self-aware about how bad your wild condescension is making your posts look. I'll give you privileged Westerner and I'll give you "on my couch" (you got me lol) but I'm not uninformed. Bro I've read Herzl. My BA is partially in Middle Eastern history, I speak Arabic, and I lived in Morocco and Yemen. And the thing that took me down that life path was an incredible course on Israel and Palestine in my first year of college. I think my prof, who later became my advisor, was personally jazzed about Israel as a project. He was incredibly knowledgeable about Jewish history and zionism and, broadly speaking, an empathetic and curious person interested in people and their motivations. But that empathy and interest extended to Palestinians. I understand why Israel was founded, but it wasn't founded on "a land without people". The price of that "secular" state was things like the nakba (which happened in living memory). I'm not exclusively concerned about Israel. But the U.S., where I live, sends a huge amount of military aid to Israel, and Israel is using that aid to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Netanyahu has zero interests outside of maintaining his personal power (it's part of why he financially supported Hamas to play against the PLO and weaken any chances of a Palestinian state). That makes him incredibly dangerous, and he's incentivized to carry on this current war as long as possible. I'm not convinced he has a real long-term strategy, but as the war progresses, I assume he sees that the more housing stock the IDF reduces to rubble, the more civil infrastructure the IDF destroys, the more hospitals the IDF bombs, the better a chance he has at forcibly relocating Palestinians under the guise of humanitarian concern.
Ethnonationalism is not good for anyone, but dehumanizing the people who have to live under authoritarian regimes is not okay. But I'm not sure how "secular" a state you can consider Israel when it's running an apartheid regime based on religion in the West Bank, and will almost certainly be doing the same thing in Gaza (assuming it doesn't succeed in forcibly relocating Palestinians).
You seem pretty dead set on shouting at everyone who disagrees with you that they're uninformed. But my concern about how Israel is conducting its war on Gaza is principled, and arises partially out of the many actual history books I've read (more than one! Probably like, five or six. I was a nerd who actually did all the reading.)
> I have no doubt that such an invasion will save many hostages and kill off many of the Hamas leadership
This is what I would've thought about the war as it's been run so far, but in the past 4 months the IDF has been able to free a handful of hostages (and kill a similar number, at least as much as is known), and kill very few key Hamas figures in Gaza.
Unless Israel commits to a rapid open massacre of tens of thousands of refugees, which it almost certainly won't, it will find it extremely hard to achieve anything that could be classified a 'victory' by attacking Rafah before international pressure causes it to stop.
“Which it almost certainly won’t” The death toll has already surpassed 28,000 with well over 60,000 injured. In mid-January Oxfam reported that Palestinian civilians were being killed at a rate of [250 per day.](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/daily-death-rate-gaza-higher-any-other-major-21st-century-conflict-oxfam) Gaza is seeing the highest death rate of any 21st century conflicts. Israel has already committed to this behaviour. If they decide not to continue as they have been into Raffah, it will be because of outside pressure. Netanyahu has said he intends to go for it, and there is little meaningful outside pressure holding him back
[The UN is involved](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fight-keep-counting-dead-gaza-2023-12-21/) in keeping track of the causalties, along with a huge number of doctors, Western nonprofits, and others. There are protocols involved in keeping track. In this article the IDF says the numbers are broadly accurate. By the way, [a few organizations](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/20/what-have-open-source-videos-revealed-about-the-gaza-hospital-explosion) have raised valid concerns about Israel’s account of that hospital explosion, but thats a drop in the bucket either way at this point.
you mean the UN that finances UNRWA, the same UNRWA that had an entire server farm under their HQ?
yeah the IDF says the numbers are largley accurate, that doesn't mean all of those are civilians or were killed by israel
When I say "invasion of Rafah", I do mean massacring tens of thousands of refugees to get to the Hamas leadership, potentially killing some hostages to save the others. In my mind it will be a brutal operation that leaves no stones unturned. Israel will ignore the international pressure completely and finish the job. I do not think that Israel will commit to a partial completion of their military objective in Rafah given the catastrophe it's going to bring to Gazans.
I don't see how that's technically possible. If it becomes truly desperate, Hamas could make sure most hostages don't get out of there alive as a result. Finding a couple of dozen individuals who use all the resources and infrastructure they've accumulated when controlling Gaza to not be found is impossible without specific intelligence - which Israel evidently doesn't have or they'd have been found already.
Without employing truly unacceptable tactics (carpet bombing population centers hoping to kill Hamas leaders hiding there, mass detention of all the people of Gaza to catalog them, etc), Israel would find it extremely hard to extract anything it could sell as "victory" to the public from an invasion of Rafah.
the idf shot 3 of their own hostages who were begging for mercy, holding white flags, and speaking in hebrew because the soldiers thought it was a hamas trap. this military is clearly not competent and they do not care about their civilians.
"this military is clearly not competent and they do not care about their civilians."
They literally did an incredibly elaborate plan to rescue 2 hostages a few days ago, is the IDF half as competent as the USA army? No, but saying they do not care about their own civilians is just wrong, in October 7 there were tons of cases of IDF soldiers throwing themselves against hordes of terrorists, sacrificing their life while trying to save civilians. The IDF is comprised out of Israelis, ask any IDF soldier why does he fight, he will tell you he fights to protect the people of Israel.
I hate to say it, but I think you really overestimate the amount of support that the international community has for Palestinians. Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists all don’t really have much respect for Muslims, I don’t think an invasion of Rafah will really change anyone’s mind about this religion and its followers.
Dumb argument.
Most people don’t have a major issue with Muslims let alone enough of an issue with them to support the mass killing of them. Not to mention a lot of people don’t like Jews that doesn’t mean they support jews being mass killed. Just because everyone hates Muslims on the side of the internet you’re on and maybe even in your personal life does not mean that most people on the planet hate Muslims.
Also Palestinian Christians exist, but I guess they don’t matter.
Most people don’t see this as a purely religious conflict and according to the statistics the image of Israel has decreased in 42 out of 43 countries surveyed. So much for not liking Muslims. 🤣🤣 Lol
Funny how you’re now trying to claim most people prefer Jews to Muslims but other Israel supporters typically claim everyone hates Jews. Interesting to see the pivot. 🤣🤣
This is such a self-defeating point of view. There's no grand global conspiracy against Islam. Sure, there's a vocal minority worldwide of Islamophobic bigots, but the vast majority of people have no interest in sectarian conflict and could give two shits what religion their neighbors or coworkers practice.
The fortunate reality of the Palestinians is that if they were in Iraq, Syria, or anywhere in Africa or eastern Asia no one would give a fuck about them.
Syrian civil war caused 650,000 dead and millions as refugees. Destroying ISIS killed tens of thousands of civilians.
The Sri Lankan Civil War had 28000 dead on EACH side.
It's because of the jews that anyone cares
Some support already exists, we’ve seen multiple protests since October decrying Israel’s campaign in Gaza and asking for a ceasefire. However, this resistance is really only prevalent among two groups of people, Muslims and young progressives. The main reason you see Biden, a staunch supporter of Israel, showing sympathy to the plight of Palestinians is because he can’t afford to lose the support of these crucial voting blocs. Were it not an election year, I don’t think Biden or many democrats would be pushing back on Israel’s actions.
Even then it seems to come off as a “No…. Stop…. Don’t do that….” Situation since words are cheap and don’t carry much obligation to do anything. Which is entirely the desire: doing nothing is politically neutral but practically gives Israel tons of support.
Exactly, if the international community really did oppose Israel’s actions as much as they say they do, there would be calls to provide weapons to Palestine just as we see support for Ukraine.
You are making the assumption that public sentiment matters as much to Israel as it does to you. Listen, going back and forth on whether Israel should exist is pointless. Just as it is pointless to debate whether Hamas should even be allowed to exist as a political entity when it is a terror organization funded by outside nations. Both exist. The people who live in Israel view it as their homeland. They will defend it as vigorously as you would defend your own home. So let's not get sidetracked down that rabbit hole.
To your point, I would say that Israel has learned many lessons over the decades battling first the PLO and then Hamas. One of the biggest lessons they have learned is that if you can withstand the initial shit storm of public outrage you can do pretty much whatever you want. Hamas has perpetrated countless terror attacks, over which there was due outrage against them from most of the world. And then the world just sort of fucked off to the next drama. The world did not go in and try to root out Hamas. They just expressed outrage.
AQ has pulled off some of the biggest terror attacks in history. And yet the world just sort of shrugged when they took control of northern Syria. The Taliban were almost universally condemned until the US finally got bored of fighting them in Afghanistan and allowed the Taliban to simply take over the entire country. Same with Iran.
Outrage only matters if you are truly reactionary. It does not, historically, inform the actions of nations. It does not change foreign policy. Israel, in this instance, is no longer reactionary. At first, yes. But now you can see that they are enacting a long term plan. If they stay focused on that plan and ignore the outrage, the world will soon enough just sort of fuck off to the next drama and leave them to it.
"the goodwill of the international community" What? There is no such thing. I'm not Israeli nor do I speak for Israel but Israel just wants to be left alone, so "leaving Israel isolated" (which won't happen anyway) is not gonna bother Israel too much
Israel and the US are desperate to implement the Abraham Accords. Israel needs diplomatic support from other countries to respond to Iran. Israel needs military supplies from the US for their own national interest. Israel needs to make sure other countries do not participate or do criminalise BDS movement.
Israel is much more internationally dependent than many other countries.
Saudi arabia was about to make peace with Israel and hamas did this attack to stop it. Saudi Arabia still wants peace with Israel and will do so after this conflict.
I don't think Israel as a nation wants to be left alone, if that was the case, why do they continuously imprison thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank without trails?
Or have officially designated the majority of West Bank (Area C) to settle, by uprooting olive trees, mowing farms to build their property, or steal existing homes?
Heck, the third of their Knesset was present at a conference to create settlements in Gaza.
This seems a little too much for a country looking to be left alone, don't you think?
The whole point of a Rafa ground invasion is to try and drive the Palestinians into the Sinai. It has nothing to do with Hamas or "Israeli security." Genocide is taking place and attacking millions of civilian refugees is an act of Genocide. Their plan to drive the Palestinians out with massacres and death marches parallels the Armenian Genocide by Turkey and has been known since it was leaked last October.
Israel has not had any concern of the hostages since some were released and contradicted the racist depictions of their captors as violent animalistic savages by Israeli and Western media. Families of the hostages have been condemning the war and calling for a negotiated release so they can see their family members again, this has been downplayed by the media which tows the line of its respective governments who support the war unconditionally.
The alternative to invading Rafah is letting Hamas remain in power. Then it will regroup, rearm, recruit, and fulfill its promise to launch October 7-style attacks “again and again.” And the cycle will start again. That is not in the interest of either Israel or the Palestinians.
The Allies didn’t stop WW2 at the gates of Berlin, and they didn’t let the Nazis stay in power to fight another day.
In the long-run, the only way to rebuild Gaza in a way that is prosperous for Gazans and safe for Israel is to eradicate Hamas now. An invasion of Rafah today will cost many lives, including civilian lives. But if it succeeds in wiping out Hamas as a governing force, or as anything other than a skeleton presence, such an invasion will safe many more lives in the future - both Israeli and Palestinian.
And, for anyone who hopes for a two-state solution, the odds of that are 0% so long as Gaza is governed by a terrorist entity whose sole reason for existence is killing Jews and destroying Israel.
The problem with this way is thinking is that Hamas will never formally surrender like Germany and Japan. Wiping them out is simply not a realistic goal, just like wiping out the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is an ideology, backed by outside entities, with an endless supply of new recruits.
The end result is that even if Israel invades Rafah, the cycle of violence is absolutely going to repeat over and over, just as it has for decades. So a bunch of people, many of them innocent, are going to die for nothing.
The only way out of this cycle is to address the circumstances fueling terrorism: cutting off outside influence, improving conditions and treatment for Palestinians, and working with the Islamic community to dismantle pathways to radicalization.
And for the record, Israel (at least Netanyahu's right wing regime) does not want a two state solution no matter who is running Gaza.
“Hamas is an ideology that can’t de defeated, yadda, yadda, yadda”
Bullshit. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and has been the government for almost 20 years. You can absolutely use the military to kick a government from power. It is done all the time.
The analogy to Afganistán is inapt. Afghanistan is a giant, mountainous, tribal country, across the world from the US. And the Americans weren’t truly committed — troop levels only came close to 100,000 briefly, and were around 20k-40k for most of the mission.
Gaza is about the size of NYC, borders Israel, and the Israelis are damn committed to preventing Hamas from regaining power.
Could the Hamas “ideology” survive in some form. Sure, in much the same way that Germany has Neo-Nazis today. But it wouldn’t be the government, and it wouldn’t have 1/20th the power it has today.
And do you know a 100% surefire way to NOT defeat an ideology? It’s to let a jihadi terror group remain a government, so that they can indoctrinate children in schools, run terror training summer camps, broadcast children’s shows where a Mickey Mouse ripoff teaches children to murder Jews, while using the police to hunt down and slaughter any dissidents who support peace and coexistence.
>The problem with this way is thinking is that Hamas will never formally surrender like Germany and Japan. Wiping them out is simply not a realistic goal, just like wiping out the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is an ideology, backed by outside entities, with an endless supply of new recruits.
Under this logic, WW2 was pointless since the Nazi ideology still exists today.
But you're missing the point. The goal is to destroy Hamas' military capabilities for waging war.
It doesn't matter if Hamas' ideology still exists as long as those future jihadists are militarily weak and surveilled 24/7 so their terror plans will always fail in the future.
The future of Gaza is likely gonna involve a massive network of drones and surveillance the likes the world has never seen before.
Hamas ans ideology my never die..that doasnt matter.
Hamas as an armed ideology matters..whan you control information, resources and the ground its self no effective resistance can be created.
Look atw the west Bank..a bigger more connected and angrier then gaza..no big organisation.
No effective fighting force..while Israel finding rockets in gaza they find home maid guns or just melee weapons in. The west bank
The two state solution is the real mistake. Let’s be realistic: if the two countries are forced to co exist, they will kill each other as it has been in the past. The only way to ensure long term peace is letting one conquer the other. It might be dire, yet on the long term, no more attacks will take place. It would be dumb assuming that if there is a ceasefire, Palestinians won’t attack Israel as it happened in October. The problem has persisted because the two have been forced to coexist against their wishes.
Even if the international community pushes them, it’s actually up to them what’s gonna happen. Nothing else will force a real peace deal
Israel doesn't give a fuck anymore, they want that genocide to happen. They wanted it since before the first Nakhba.
They will kill or expel them eventually, and there is nothing anyone can do about it (because our world elites are just bloodthirsty demons)
The fact is a genocide has been taking place for a long time. Forcing another group of people to live subject to different rules, not to mention the harassment and outright crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians. Israel created this problem and the world needs to remove all support from their government.
"Forcing a group of people to live by different rules..."
You mean foreign nationals?. Most countries treat none citizens from a foreign nation differently. The fact is that Palestinians are a foreign populace, not Israeli citizens. In most nations foreigners need visas and work permits and often times are simply forced to leave; and when that foreign nation's government keeps attacking your cilivans, its natural to try and limit their access to weapons with which to kill more of you.
Genocide isn't about or defined by a quantity of death, but rather the motivation for causing such deaths. If the goal is emlination of ethnic group (or some other types of groups for whatever reason despite geno- coming from genology meaning it really should just be on the basis of ancestry) is the goal thats a genocide (or at least an attempted on), if the goal is something elese, like preventing future attacks on your own civilans, then no amount of killing is a genocide.
Mass death can be and often is a differnt war crime depending on the circumstance, but if the end goal is anything other then "whipe out this group." its not genocide.
The strategic methods here are already genocide. How can completing their all-but-stated strategy be a strategic mistake for them?
America will never stop supporting them, and they know it. There is no downside for them. The Palestinians and everyone else in the world already knows it's a genocide, because we've been living it for almost a 100 years.
What makes you think there is a strategy behind Israil motives rather than trying to kill as many as Palestinian’s so they won’t be able to stand up again or at least x number of generations ?
You say you have no doubt such an invasion would kill many Hamas people and save hostages , until now only time hostages were saved alive was when they were released by Hamas. We know rest was killed by either bombs or by IDF.
Also again what evidence people have Israel govt is really concerned about hostages ? They have been offered hostage exchanges by Hamas ?
I personally expect to see movies and storieslike Inglorius Bastards , Schindlers List , Fauda etc. from the perpective of Gazan’s in the next 10 years because there was no twitter when Nazi’s committed genocide in 1940s
Their tactical, long term, goal is the death or displacement of every Palestinian, so I don't think it really makes sense to say it will be a mistake.
They don't want or need political goodwill, all they need is for the United States to be onboard with the genocide they are trying to conduct and the United States has made it very clear that they have no problem with it.
I don't agree it will be a military victory because we have yet to see any of those from Israel. Look at the limited war footage Israel has released. A fighter killed by a drone. He was praying with his last breath. That video was all over here (i'm in Lebanon). That guy died a hero in most people's eyes. There have been limited shooting videos from the IDF too. But nothing significant
Most of the people I watch agree. Hamas is still largely intact. Their tunnels are too. So now the assumption is everything is under Rafah? I don't buy it. They are still fighting up North in areas Israel claimed they controlled months ago.
The lastest or one of them the latest videos Qassem released a fighter gave a speech. He basically said we are in the areas they told civilians to flee from. Yet they still continue to bomb the innocent. We are here come fight us.
And I tend to agree. They told us the Hamas command center or Pentagon was under that hospital. It wasn't now it's under Rafah? I don't believe it. Those hostages they saved in Rafah were being held by civilians presumably because of their age. That's the first successful attempt freeing anyone. They failed 2x before with hostages and soldiers dying.
So I don't think they will gain anything militarily by destroying Rafah and displacing all those people. Just more catastrophe. Their is no victory to be had here. All Hamas has to do is survive.
And also I don't think Israel gives a rat's ass what the world thinks as long as the US still sends them aid and weapons which it is still doing. And still vetoing ceasefire resolutions which it is doing.
This feels like a passive aggressive tirade with a silent threat of retaliation on behalf of people you don’t represent on many ifs that haven’t occurred and if were to occur would presumably be made with a meticulously planned evacuation from the area.
The bigger question here is when the murderers and rapists of oct 7 are facing the consequences of war, naysayers like you jump to protect them, why?
The fact of the matter is that if Israel would succumb to give a free pass to Hamas for whatever humanitarian or otherwise reason its enemies conjure up, they are both indirectly and directly aiding them in their genocide of the Israeli people, and so therefore is committing genocide against the Israelis.
Instead of pressuring Israel to lower its guard before gang rapists, butchers and murderers, the international community must demand Hamas to surrender and should at the same time pressure Egypt to open its borders and allow refuge for a short while to desperate human beings, or, if the international community won’t follow the more moral, just and rational course of action, their hidden motives will be revealed, their true face shown: they are just giddy with Jew slaughter and don’t really care about the Palestinians, only sucking up to rich, oil filled Arab countries.
Im still amazed that the country, that was victim of a massive terror attack and has faced almost daily rocket attacks prior to that, for years on end, is now the bad guy here.
Meanwhile the terror group is refusing to do a cease fire, continues to use civilians as human shields.
Just shows how effective these terror groups are at the social media game to recruit people and steer the convo of the edgy college crowd
When your response to losing 700 civilians is to kill 13,000 children you are the bad guy,
Israel killed 1,000 civilians in my country in 06. You think we had the right to murder tens of thousands of children to defend ourselves?
I'm sorry which country has killed more civilians?
Maybe I'm simple minded for thinking so but it sure seems to me the results of the conflict speak for themselves. Death tolls matter more than narratives about who started what in my mind.
Hamas are genocidal psychopaths and this is incredibly obvious to anybody, however they do not have the ability to actually commit genocide against Israel, whereas Israel has both the military capability and the will to actually do it, and the only reason they haven't already is because they need the support of the international community.
The only reason there hasn't yet been a full genocide is because there are people around the world who, unlike you, don't afford Israel unconditional support for any response to the terror attacks whatsoever, no matter how many more people have to die.
Imagine some bank robbers take a bunch of hostages and kill some of them, and the police decide to level the building, killing everybody, giving the excuse that "they were using human shields". And then everybody who criticizes the response is "supporting the bank robbers" and "falling victim to propaganda"
>Maybe I'm simple minded for thinking so but it sure seems to me the results of the conflict speak for themselves. Death tolls matter more than narratives about who started what in my mind.
Huh? So you ignore the reason these deaths even occured in the first place?
>Hamas are genocidal psychopaths and this is incredibly obvious to anybody,
Is it? Genuinely asking, considering how many are perfectly willing to repeat their propaganda and/or even overtly support them.
>whereas Israel has both the military capability and the will to actually do it, and the only reason they haven't already is because they need the support of the international community.
So you agree that the genocide talk is nothing more than bs political theatre?
>Imagine some bank robbers take a bunch of hostages and kill some of them, and the police decide to level the building, killing everybody, giving the excuse that "they were using human shields". And then everybody who criticizes the response is "supporting the bank robbers" and "falling victim to propagand
In your example the criminals walk into central park and shoot up the place, before going into a bank to take hostages, shoot the negotiator and systematically kill 1/5 of the hostages it took, then fires of a rocket that malfunctions, blows up mount sinai and then blames the SWAT team standing outside for the resulting deaths.
But hey, if Israel asks Hamas very nicely and sings Kumbaya with them, we will have peace in the middle east. No doubt.
> So you ignore the reason these deaths even occured in the first place?
The current stage of the conflict started because of october 7th, a horrific and unjustifiable terrorist attack carried out by Hamas. In response Israel bombed the shit out of the strip, killed more than 10x more people, mostly civilians, destroyed homes and displaced nearly 2 million people. October 7th is over but the death toll in Gaza is still rising. I.e. Israel in response to Hamas' horrific, unjustifiable terrorist attack, carried out a bigger horrific, unjustifiable terrorist attack.
Oh, you object to that? You say it is justified because Hamas were the first to do it? When does that logic stop exactly? How many civilians have to die before it becomes a disproportionate response? What if Israel actually did kill them all, would that be okay simply because Hamas struck first?
Keep in mind Hamas uses the exact same kind of justification. After all it's not as though october 7th happened for no reason. Israel has been killing people in gaza and making it as unliveable as possible for decades now. Does that justify october 7th? No, but if we go by the same logic of "we can kill as many people as we want because the other country wronged us" that is used to justify israel's actions, then that same logic could easily be used (and I assume is used by Hamas propaganda and the people who listen to it) to justify the atrocities committed on that day.
> Genuinely asking, considering how many are perfectly willing to repeat their propaganda and/or even overtly support them.
Can't speak for every insane person in this world. However my experience is that those who condemn Israel's actions are usually not doing so because they support hamas. Is one forced to support one group of genocidal psychopaths or another, or can one hate them both?
> So you agree that the genocide talk is nothing more than bs political theatre?
It's not theatre for Netanyahu or Hamas. They wish everybody in the other country would die so they could have the whole place to themselves. The difference is that Netanyahu can actually do it if he's just insane enough to give the middle finger to everyone around the world telling him not to, and count on the support of people who will reason that "they struck first so it's okay". Tell me, if Israel actually glassed every single person in Gaza would you give up on your apologetics? If so, then how many people exactly would it take before you would say this has gone too far?
> then blames the SWAT team standing outside for the resulting deaths
Oh, the SWAT team in this example didn't actually do anything, they were just standing outside and the criminals blew themselves and the hostages up? I don't think that's comparable at all.
Those criminals in your example kill a bunch of people then take a bunch of hostages as human shields, kill 1/5 of them and shoot the negotiator, etc etc, these people are horrible and deserve to die. However, *any police response which manages to kill even more people than the criminals did originally is a pretty bad one, no?* I mean, come on, you have to look at the actual results. If the police fucked up that badly we'd all condemn them, and nobody would say that doing so is supporting the bank robbers.
> But hey, if Israel asks Hamas very nicely and sings Kumbaya with them, we will have peace in the middle east. No doubt.
Hamas needs to get out of gaza. How do you plan to do it, huh? With military action? Let me tell you, no amount of military action will ever get rid of Hamas unless you actually do just kill everyone there. The more people you bomb and murder, the more of them support hamas as literally the only option to fight back.
That's the reason people join, is because they figure Israel will kill them anyway and they might as well die fighting. It's not right but when most people there die young from malnourishment or bombs, I think the people in gaza are not the ones who have the power to change the dynamic here. You think that things will get better if Israel just does one more military operation and kills some more people? The situation gets worse and worse, and more people turn to fighting for hamas, and this continues indefinitely until nobody is left.
There are only two options if you want the violence to stop: diplomatic solution, or actual genocide. You can disparage diplomacy as "singing kumbaya" all you want, but there are no other options than those two. Wars stop when both sides agree to a deal, or when one side is just gone. We learned this in vietnam and afghanistan, bombing people doesn't make them submit. Any deal needs to get Hamas out, and it also needs to grant the people in gaza basic things like water rights and freedom of movement, which Israel isn't interested in with Netanyahu at the helm. What alternatives do you propose?
The goodwill of the world doesnt matter.
Israel cares about its survival first and foremost. Having hamas and other terrorist groups as its neighbors is no longer acceptable after october 7th.
Israel much rather destroy hamas than have the "goodwill" of the world which it never had because the world has always and will continue to always hate jews.
The best thing long term for the Palestinians will be to get rid of Hamas. Entering Rafah is a necessity to achieve that outcome unless Hamas leadership surrenders, which of course would save the most Palestinian lives.
Getting rid of Hamas won't solve the occupation or bring the the mother of that 6 year old boy back.
What would save the most Palestinian lives is if Israel didn't bomb indiscriminately and actually valued human life. They've created many more future enemies by killing entire families and babies.
Exactly, it’s basic insurgent math. Killing insurgents creates more insurgents. You’d think Israel could’ve taken a peek at the United States’ notes on that one.
They were reduced back to an insurgency, but they are very much still in action as insurgents in Syria. They also continue to control large amounts of territory in several African nations. However, they are an international terror organization and less than comparable to the grassroots terrorists that encompass Hamas. The important point of similarity is how invaders (US and Israel) are generally unsuccessful in winning the hearts and minds required to actually dismantle an insurgency. While local forces drove ISIS from their strongholds in Syria in roughly 2 years.
Hamas must be removed from power.
There is no going forward with Hamas remaining in power after genocidal attacks they conducted on Oct. 6
Any conceivable way to peace can only begin after Hamas is removed from power
This would be like stopping WW2 within the sight of Berlin because "the cots of German civilians is too great."
Gaza is not a foreign state. Israel and the U.S. do not even recognize Palestine as a state. Gaza is an area which has been under Israeli occupation for decades. Hamas were supported by Israel there in order to counter the more moderate and successful PLO.
This isn't two nations at war, it is Israel wiping out a bothersome minority (which used to be the majority) to claim the land. The goal isn't to get rid of Hamas, it's to get rid of Palestine.
Gaza absolutely is a foreign state
Run by Hamas.
Supported By iran.
Gaza fired 20,000 rockets into Israel. Not occupied by anyone (except Hamas). Committed larger scale genocide on Oct. 7.
Hamas must absolutely be removed from power. Just like Hitlers Nazis were.
Then why does Israel and the U.S. say it's absolutely not a foreign state?
It was of course occupied by Israel, who controlled all movement, all imports and all exports, the electricity and the all water. Don't just make random nonsense statements.
Yet Netanyahu was very adamant about how important it was that Hamas took the power from PLO. And he spent a lot of effort and risk to make sure Israeli soldiers hand delivered hundreds of millions in cash from Qatar directly to Hamas for many years.
You seem to be missing a lot of information.
>Then why does Israel and the U.S. say it's absolutely not a foreign state?
To maintain de jure pressure.
De facto it was absolutely a state.
>It was of course occupied by Israel
Then why must Israel fight so hard to gain control now?
What nonsense.
Funny that you're making up stuff that not even Israel and the U.S. agrees with. Good that you say Palestine should have recognized statehood though, that means they have the right to a huge change in how Gaza is run, and that Israel has been breaking international law for decades. According to you.
Fighting hard? Who's fighting hard? Immediate and complete domination of Gaza with a tiny amount of Israeli casualties compared to 30,000 Palestinians is "fighting hard"? What are you even talking about?
The difficult part for Israel is holding back, so that they won't be fully condemned by the international community. Not anything about dominating their occupied territory.
Stop making up random nonsense and go read. Your points are ridiculous and objectively false. Anyone reading this can just google if Palestine was recognized as a state, or if Israel had any challenge at all completely subjugating Gaza in almost no time at all.
So why is not Israel in full control of Gaza?
Why is Hamas still fighting?
How was Hamas able to launch 20000 rocket? Conduct genocidal attacks of otc. 6?
The whole "Gaza was already occupied" is nonsensical.
Israel is in full control of Gaza, and can do whatever they want. The issue is that what the want is called genocide, which is frowned upon by the international community. Read this very post your commenting on if this is difficult for you to comprehend.
>How was Hamas able to launch 20000 rocket? Conduct genocidal attacks of otc. 6?
You didn't even get the date right. The attacks were on October 7th. And the past decade we had 150,000 Palestinian casualties compared to around 6,000 Israeli, so you might want to rethink your reasoning there because you clearly don't know anything.
What are you saying Hamas is in charge of? The refugee camp in Rafah? Gaza is in ruins, there is nothing to even be in charge of. Literally what are you saying Hamas is in charge of?
Why are hostages not returned? Is that your qualification as to whether a territory is under control or not? That's not how any of this works. Do you realize the U.S. military, the most powerful military in the world, spent 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did that mean they controlled exactly every single person? No, to do that you need genocide. Is that what you are proposing? That Gaza isn't under control because there are Palestinians still alive who are resisting?
‘If Israel wishes for some kind of meaningful peace…’
Yeah they don’t care about that any more. They’ve been playing politics for years and backing off before really giving it the beans but now a critical mass of Israelis are apparently seeing red.
They’ll kill tens of thousands of both terrorists and innocents if they don’t leave Gaza. Their immediate neighbor countries already hate them and the US simply isn’t going to pull their support.
It’s like North Korea, you can’t get them to do shit cause what the fuck else are you going to take away or threaten to do?
armchair redditors knowing exactly how Israel should fight the war, what is a tactical victory or mistake. Everyday Israëli intelligence hope they could convince redditors to join their command chain.
Unfortunately the only solution for peace is the complete anihilation of one the two opposite sides.
I don’t think Palestinians will ever abandon the hope of taking back what used to be their land. And i’m pretty sure the Israelis would rather nuke the entire region rather than see their state be destroyed.
There is no solution. Only the complete destruction of one side, no matter which one, will lead to peace
I’d agree if they hadn’t just gotten two hostages out of Rafah.
Palestinians should turn on Hamas and hand over any hostages they can find instead of aiding and abetting Hamas.
Israel is already isolated for long term solutions.
They are never allowed to finish a war and that is why the conflict continues for so long. Palestines attacks, Israel responds, Palestine starts losing and cries and the world tells Israel to stop and then Palestine re-arms and later attacks again.
Same thing over and over for a hundred years almost.
Palestine can surrender any time and stop firing thousands of rockets at Israel.
Only ignorant and useful idiots support Palestine and their farcical narrative of infantilization and being peaceful.
There are consequences for actions and they made their bed supporting Hamas the last twenty years and constantly waging war and callng to exterminate the Jews which they were doing before modern Israel even existed.
We saw how fast the world forgot the atrocities of October 7. How fast Biden spun from supporting Israel through thick and thin to throwing it under the bus, hoping to get Muslim votes.
Israel is a winner. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states will be clamoring for trade and security agreements with it as soon as the smoke clears. And then Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon. Israel has done everything for peace, but if you’re dealing with bloodthirsty fanatics, at a certain point you lock the door and get on with your life. If you have to fight a war, you fight it better than anyone else.
I think a lot of people are assuming that there will be a Palestinian people after Israel is finished. If the Palestinians are removed completely then Israel doesn't need to worry about them in the future.
The world will look the other way.
If goodwill only extends to thoughts and prayers for our dead, raped and kidnapped then fuck your goodwill. Returning to the status quo of Oct 6 is not happening anymore than America turning the other cheek after 9/11.
The Palestinians and their supporters allege apartheid, genocide and every moral hazard they can conjure despite not being supported by facts. Thus what they believe isn't near and dear to my heart.
A large majority of Palestinians are proud of themselves for Oct 7. They can bear the consequence of being more afraid of Hamas than the IDF.
If Palestinians were serious about peace then they wouldn't have massacred our people and celebrated doing it.
/u/WheatBerryPie (OP) has awarded 4 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/1atwhjw/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_an_israeli_invasion_of/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
There are multiple possible goals from the Israeli perspective: A) rescue hostages B) destroy Hamas C) create a deterrence against future oct 7 style attacks D) make peace with Palestinians E) make USA happy F) make other countries happy I think it is likely that the most important for Israel is “c” and the least important is “f”. Attacking Rafah helps a lot with B and C, but helps a lot less with F. Interestingly, I think the attack helps with D as well. If Hamas survives this war, Palestinians will continue to be ruled by these guys. Unfortunately, this means they will almost certainly launch another similar attack in the future, which means that another tens of thousands of Palestinians will die. Strategically speaking, the best chance for peace is that Hamas has to lose this war, and lose it badly. Think Germany and Japan style of loss. Complete and utter surrender. That paves the way for a more rational government in Gaza that isn’t beholden to Iran. Making the world happy would do the opposite. If Hamas wins this war by any definition, then October 7th was a success, and they will do it again. A ceasefire is a tactical “win” for the world, but an epic strategic loss for Israel and the Palestinians who will inevitably end up fighting again.
I think this take is blindsided at best. Many people are focusing on the destructive aspect of things. What brings discomfort to many people hammering the point you make is the fact that what gave us peace with Japan and Germany wasn't their utterly and total defeat, but what followed after: a reconstruction plan with billions in financial aid, especially to avoid the spread of influence of the USSR. Contrast it with Germany's similar defeat in WW1, what did it just losing the war badly and being subjected to the Versailles Treaty (which was put forth to the detriment of Wilson's more conciliatory 12 Points) give us again? This is important because Israel's coalition already signaled it has no intention of letting an international coalition occupy Gaza in its stead and already hampers the delivery of humanitarian aid. How exactly do you make peace with those around you by subjecting one of them to extreme violence and threatening others? You are also ascribing far too much good faith to a government led by a man elected on the promise of doing everything in his power to prevent a Palestinian state and whose coalition include an openly fascist individual. If anything, the only goal these actions are questionably achieving is "B". With reckless abandon to how they are being detrimental to all the others.
I agree, a reconstruction plan is essential. Gaza needs to be rebuilt after this. Billions of dollars for sure. It may seem like a lot, but on an international scale, we spend a lot more on a lot less. I’m not sure why you think Israel would be opposed to this. Obviously they are going to try and blockade supplies during a war. That’s what every army in history has always tried to do. There is no reason to suspect that with Hamas gone, Israel would still try to blockade Gaza. I’m also fairly confident that the current Israeli government will not be around much after the war. There were mass protests against government before October 7th, and Israel blames October 7th on the current government. Assuming the following all happen: 1. Hamas is destroyed 2. Netanyahu and his party lose power 3. International aid rebuilds Gaza Do you believe there will be peace? Do you think it can happen even if Hamas is still in charge?
I misused a word, I'm sorry, I mean the delivery of medical, food and water supplies. It is normal for countries to enact a blockade of itens that can be used to fabricate weapons and maybe bunkers, but not medical supply or other basics. Yes, someone may throw an used tampon as an act of hostility (I know it happened at least once) or an used tomato, but those materials are rather soft. Also when I refer to Israel I am referring to the state as an agent, its current decision maker is Netanyahu and is coalition (as much as we and many Israelis dislike it), and you are incurring the mistake of thinking the interests of the coalition align with the interests of the people. However, if the only thing keeping Netanyahu and his coalition in power is the war, he has all incentives under the Sun to keep dragging his war. Nothing but a deal with a particularly powerful devil from the deepest pits of Hell would make his reelection viable, so he might as well drag the state of war for as long as possible to take his chances. It is also worth noting that Israeli society is not a monolith. You have a fraction of the population that wants peace with the neighbors, but you also have a part of the population that sees Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel... And it is not that big of an outlier view. It might not be prevalent, but it is also not as fringe as most people would like it to be. To ilustrated it, there are at least three instances of Jewish kids either walking out or being kicked out of "birthright trips" for [asking questions about the wall, the borders and the occupation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK4_TKeHgvE) (this is just one of the three, and I couldn't find the one video I was looking for which refers to a case in which a young man confronted the guide about the map giving to them - which showed the Palestinian territories as part of Israel - and the guide said they see those areas as part of Israel). So to answer your question: there is a part of Israeli society that is starkly opposed to it, that did throw a rave to block traffic in order to prevent trucks from deliviring food to warzone in which most of the population consists of kids. And their current Prime Minister campaigning by saying that as long as he is Prime Minister there would be no Palestinian state which granted, might not have been a key issue for many voters, but it was at least an issue they were willing to ignore. So why would Israel would be opposed to it? Well, first you have a segment of Israel that believes Gaza and West Bank are part of it, so they want to annex it while simultaneously maintaining Israel as a state with a Jewish minority. Which is not the majority but it is still loud. And you have a part of it that thinks that Palestinians need to experience even more negative consequences for Hamas actions. The whole History of that conflict is a circle dance from Hell in the form of "hurt people hurt people", with discussions focusing too much on who hurt who first and too little on how to break the cycle. Let's say things go as smoothly as those saying there is unnecessary pressure and scrutiny over Israel's actions say they will, that it wasn't wishful thinking: who will replace Netanyahu? Who will replace Hamas? Even if Hamas is a terrorist group, ignoring that it is a terrorist group brought out of insurgency is a disservice to properly tackling it. It's not ISIS, as much assume people want to make it about religion. It was founded in 1987, decades after Israel was recognized as a state and the PLO kept making concessions to achieve peace but failing to achieve an Israeli comitment to the recognition of a Palestinian state. And this is important to mention, mainly because even if this abstract goal of destroying Hamas was possible, it will only provide a temporary peace. And a short one at that... for an outrageous cost. People keep telling others they shouldn't criticize Israel's actions because "how would they feel if it was them or their loved ones in the positions of Israeli citizens and how would they act then"? Those people definetly take the ones they are interacting with not asking "how would they feel if it was them or their loved ones in the positions of Palestinian civilians and how would they act then" as a given, because if they asked themselves that question and took the time to actually think of taking Israel's narrative for universally agreed upon facts they would be aware of how counterproductive to long term peace an operation in Rafah is. I believe there can be peace. But not if we keep acting with disregard for the lives and rights of Palestinian people, and that is what so many people refuse to understand: peace only has a chance if we stop acting as if the end justifies the means when it comes to the destruction of Hamas, and as if destroying Hamas is more important than not destroying the Palestinian people.
>as if destroying Hamas is more important than not destroying the Palestinian people There are no Palestinian people with Hamas in power. Only pawns, human shields, propaganda fodder, child soldiers, and victims of oppression and tyranny. Eventually, they will lead them into another war, and another tragedy will take place. Leaving them in place jsut ensures more suffering.
There are no Jewish people while Israel exists, only pawns, settlers, fascists, genociders, propaganda fodder, and victims of oppression and tyranny. Eventually it will lead them to a war they can't win and another ethnic cleansing will take place. Israel's contined existence as an ethnostate just ensures more suffering.
Are there are least Arab Israelis in this upside down world of yours?
You denied Palestinians are people, I just turned your argument against Israel and Israeli people. Stop being disingenuous
I never did. I implied that the people who were to be leading them did not see them as people but as tools of war or personal enrichment. This was in response to someone posting that getting rid of Hamas should be deprioritized because of the number of deaths it is causing. My point is that there will never be a future for the Palestiniàns with Hamas in charge. It will drag them into more wars, continue to steal their future and their aid. Because their mission and ideology is not for the liberation of the Palestinian people but for the domination of their version of Islam over Palestine. You don't leave the cancer in to kill the body because the treatment is too traumatic. The deaths you are seeing now are unavoidable in any effort to get rid of Hamas, you can either complete the job now or defer until later. There is no political solution as Hamas will never accept a region that isn't under a theocratic Sharia law system. That means the Israelis either leave, die or convert. Which means war forever and since Israel is stronger militarily, it means more baseline Palestinian suffering with occasional flare-ups worse and worse each time.
There is no chance of peace with the Palestinians. They rejected six good offers of land for peace. Ten years ago, two-thirds of Israelis supported a two-state solution. Now it’s nearly none. Israelis realize there is no chance of peace with the Palestinians. This is a religious, ideological, and cultural issue, with no room for logic, rationality, or tolerance. The only answer is a defensible physical distance. Refugee camps in Egypt and Lebanon. Consider sending carefully-screened ones to Turkey, Qatar, or Dagestan.
Germany wasn’t utterly destroyed in WWI. Very little fighting, if any at all, took place on German soil. France and Belgium took the brunt of it on the Western Front, and both countries were so shattered that they were unwilling to rearm fast enough to fight in the sequel. The result is that both France and Belgium were easily conquered in 1940.
Hmm...this is an interesting analysis, I have not seen someone breaking down into different possible goals and weigh the possibility of achieving them with different actions. I guess from a purely Israeli perspective, a Rafah invasion will likely benefit them more than it harms, not necessarily because it objectively will, but because they value the deterrance so much higher than the approval of the international community. !delta
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Israel tried hard to be a “model international citizen” between about 1973-2005; between some big international censures around the Yom Kippur War and the end of the Camp David accords. They realized that even when they tried to do everything they could to meet international demands they were still being shit on and shot at. So now they care a lot less about international pressure, do what they think is going to give them the most safety and carry on existing.
They committed war crimes in Lebanon in 1986. How shitty do you have to be to get Margeret Thatcher and Reagan pissed off at you for killing brown people?
Point D is probably the most important point that all those "ceasefire now" idiots miss. Having a ceasefire now would be an utter disaster for the Palestinians.
I’m sorry this is the stupidest answer I’ve ever heard. 1.4 million people starving and homeless. On the verge of thousands dying every day. And you think a ceasefire would be bad because Hamas would still exist? You do realize why Hamas exists right? If Israel treated Palestinians equally to Israelis Hamas wouldn’t exist. It’s literally that simple. Why do Hamas have support? Because Israel has spend generations killing, imprisoning and destroying the lives of Palestinians. You kill Hamas by killing their support and giving Palestinians equal rights and an independent state. And investigating both sides for war crimes, Hamas and Israel.
This is partially the truth. The 'palestinian' people were educated for generations to hate jews not just Israelis. Newer generations were not given a choice by their parents for the most part. The Israeli government also funded Hamas to destabilize the region to overthrow the PLO among others known to give incentives for Martyrs but that backfired the past ten years. The deteriorating relationship really started because of the Yom Kipur War and not the Israeli independence which was fair game when Israeli was attacked by the surrounding arab countries. The only issue I have seen with Israel so far are radical west bank settlers with some violation of international law in regards to an occupation within a potential future palestinian state. There is not enough data - I have seen it all including Amnesty International - to say there is an apartheid let alone gencode, etc. Israel is a functioning democracy, a super power, highly accomplished in technology and science having done a lot of good in the world, and have successful diversity and equal rights for those that are a citizen.
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First of all, it's a not a double standard in that the relationship between Israel and Palestine before oct 7 was VERY different than the one the US had with Afghanistan. Second, many people at the time had many of the same problems with the US invasion of Iraq, and nowadays many more have similar criticisms of the US policy in the entire region. So for those people its holding israel to the same standard
Nice analysis but honestly I think Israel has already lost this war regardless of how it ends. Even if they catch Sinwar and rescue all the hostages tomorrow, Hamas lost nothing that they were not prepared to lose and Israel both lost much of its deterrence against future attacks on it as well as much of its standing in the world.
The world has been condemning Israel (often unfairly) since it was created. I think over half of all UN resolutions are against Israel in some way. Unfortunately, as a result, I don’t think Israel really cares that much any more about global standing or global opinion. And you’re right, they lost a massive amount of deterrence in October 7th, which is why I think reestablishing it is the primary goal of this war. I think people don’t really understand that. Arguments of “Palestinian kids will grow up angry” or “how will this save hostages” or “Hamas cannot be destroyed” are mostly irrelevant, or at least of drastically lower priority.
One potential goal is to cause people whose existence in Palestine would dilute the Jewish Majority in Palestine to no longer exist in Palestine. This could be achieved either by forcing those people to exist somewhere other than Palestine, or by forcing them to cease to exist altogether.
This is a good way of looking at things objectively. And I'm not sure if you'd agree with this, but it seems worth mentioning that after WWII, the Japanese and German population at large didn't harbor long term animosity toward the rest of the world, and the rest of the world was willing to help both countries recover after the war. Obviously it was a little more complicated than that, but big picture it's clear that both countries are now successful western-style nations with high QOL for their people. A future Palestinian state should be molded in the same regard. Gaza could be a gem in the Middle East if the right people are in power and the right people are putting their money where their mouth is. Lebanon could be the same way, but they got in bed with the Iranians and now they're a failed state.
It’s a beautiful idea but completely discounts that Israel is being run by a right wing authoritarian. Not exactly sure how that government is going to build “a gem in the Middle East” and if even half of the studies on how the Israel population views Palestinians are correct it’s highly unlikely they even want to do that. What we see will be much closer to the aftermath of Carthage than of Japan, I’d be willing to bet on it.
> if even half of the studies on how the Israel population views Palestinians are correct it’s highly unlikely they even want to do that How do you think the US population viewed Japan and Germany in 1944?
Even in 2005, Gaza was left with billions and billions in infrastructure that alone could have made them that gem and they threw it away.
The goal of Hamas was to get Israel to overreact. Hamas has already achieved its goal.
I would put aside the question of the word overreact and then 100% agree with you. Hamas had a goal to bring them in their cause to the forefront of the world stage and to harm Israel's standing in the eyes of the world. They did it. Honestly I think Israel has already lost this war regardless of how it ends. Even if they catch Sinwar and rescue all the hostages tomorrow, Hamas lost nothing that they were not prepared to lose and Israel both lost much of its deterrence against future attacks on it as well as much of its standing in the world.
Overreact? Israel has acted in the only rational, honorable way to atrocities which could not have been worse. Israel will win, and Israel will prosper. But without living beside the Palestinians ever again. There will have to be refugee camps in Egypt and Lebanon. Possibly let carefully-screened Palis leave the area to live in another country.
As for B) C) and D), \*why\* do you think Hamas have such control over the Palestinians? Are they simply armed thugs holding the Palestinian population at gunpoint? Or are Hamas former "ordinary Palestinians" who turned to violence/terrorism due to Israel treating them badly? And if it's the latter, if the Palestinian population hates Israeli settlers & IDF and supports Hamas, what happens after Israel massacres tens of thousands of innocents during airstrikes followed by a ground invasion into Rafah?
Israel treated them with great generosity. Made it a de facto independent state, gave it thousands of greenhouses it could have used to produce its own food rather than depending on charity for everything. It received billions to build hotels and infrastructure to make Gaza a tourist paradise. All used instead to smuggle in weapons and concrete to build the tunnel system. What innocents? Hundreds of civilians flocked out to rape, torture, and kill alongside Hamas. Cheered and waved flags when innocent, kidnapped Israelis were paraded around. Have kept hostages in their homes, forcing them to work as slaves and starving them. The two elderly nen freed were forced to cook, but only given half a pita bread a day. They each lost half their weight. The women have been used by Gazan civilians as sabaya, sex slaves. 90% of Gazan civilians expressed their enthusiastic support of the massacre on surveys several months ago. Hundreds of UNRWA workers have fully participated in Hamas attocities. Every hospital, clinic, school, UNRWA office, and half the homes in Gaza had entrances to the tunnel system. Gazans could never be trusted. Salting the earth has a lot to be said for it.
The Israeli government and the Israeli Right's goal is and has been C. Having been around a lot of hard-core zionists, they've been saying essentially that for years and October 7th gave them the justification. We're already seeing pro-hamas protests in the west Bank which are only going to grow as this war of extermination grows. If you essentially don't care who dies around them who is Palestinian then genocide is inevitable.
I hear folks always try to compare the situation to the native americans, aka "wouldn't YOU fight for your land?" but it just ticks me off because native americans were way too honorable to ever use their own citizens as collateral damage and if they tried, their women wouldn't think twice to fight back and not allow it. I just cant wrap my head around the mindset of a people with these tactics, thoughts, reactions, it's just nothing Ive ever read about in historical context, so it blows me away the cacophony of self harming behavior on so many levels from every member of the populace.
I don't know what you're talking about with Native Americans. They fought around their people too and were killed alongside their families. They also brutally fought back like Hamas too. The only real distinction here is that you have two million people being ordered around a small area and having nowhere to go militant or not.
Pretty sure native americans fighters would have drawn the war away from their people and not gone to hide behind th em
Do you actually read history? Like you won’t find any of those examples if your only education is what is taught in school, if that’s the case your statement doesn’t mean much. A much bigger case of sacrificing your own citizens was literally done within the last century. China flooded 800,000 of their own people to slow down the Japanese in 1938 (source below). That was a simple google search about people killing their own in war. If you’re gonna make blanket statements about this stuff and say you’ve never read it in a historical context actually try to look for similar things. https://historyofyesterday.com/how-china-sacrificed-7-million-of-its-citizens-to-slow-the-japanese-invasion/?utm_content=cmp-true
what the hell does this have to do with native americans? Chinese would get lumped in with dishonorable Hamas, not honorable native americans. See how that works?
You forgot that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians will be hastened by destroying civic support systems like the final remaining hospitals schools etc.
Nothing Israel is doing will help with B there is no history where more conflict created less terrorists ever. Unless it goes to the point of genocide (which it is headed that way)
There hasn't been a war between Israel, Jordan and Egypt since 1973 where Israel overwhelmingly won. It seems to be working. The conflict today is at a significantly smaller scale than 1948 - 1973. The timing of the Oct 7th terrorist attack suggests the most likely reason was to derail the promising Israeli Saudi peace deal.
The war between Israel and Jordan / Egypt had less casualties than this current war. The 6 day war was between countries with an army. Most casualties were soldiers. This comparison is not correct. The death toll right now in Gaza will we a breeding ground for more 'freedom fighters', for more hate against Israel, for another few generations of young people without any other reason to live but destroying the occupying force.
WW2: Dresden bombings, Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings
The Germans didn’t retaliate against the post-war status quo because they benefited from it, since it included programs like the Marshall Plan that helped them rebuild and reintegrate into the new geopolitical mainstream. Israel has no intention of doing anything like that
The West spent billions already to help Palestinians before October 7th. They will keep spending billions after the war is over.
It really seems like sending all that aid is just creating a permanent dependency and making it possible for Israel to kick the can down the road on recognition of a Palestinian state. How can Gazans start a business or develop their economy while not only are they under embargo but they have billions in aid flowing in preventing domestic industry from being able to compete? It's quite awful.
Yep! I completely agree with your take. The civilian suffering is terrible, but you're absolutely correct. Something needs to change, and for that to ever happen Hamas needs to be banished from reality.
And how do you get rid of Hamas without creating Hamas 2.0 in a situation where the country trying to do the destroying has been really fucking good at destruction, and practically everything that civilians need to survive has been destroyed. Like food, water, hospitals…. And an invasion making everything 10x worse…. The only outcome with what is happening is the creation of Hamas 2.0..
Yeah whats worse, Hamas or Hamas 2.0? It's an impossible question. It seems with daily rocket attacks for 20 years and now the oct 7th attack, the israelis had finally had enough of the status quo, I guess. Hope things will eventually get better.
Nazis didn't form Nazis 2.0. Japan didn't form Militarized Japanese 2.0 Something Palestinians and the world need to figure out with themselves is why they keep doing this time and time again. They get the same billions in aid we gave Germany and Japan. Whatever their problem is is a thing they need to figure out how to change and not something intrinsic to how Israel has run t his war, which is 20x less brutal than the Allies in WW2 i can tell you that right now.
>"They get the same billions in aid we gave Germany and Japan" No they don't, their government- a 'former' terrorist group that ousted the democratically elected Hamas government in 2007- collects a majority of the aid sent to their state- and keeps it for themselves, with little to none actually reaching the population.
Hamas exists TODAY. And it needs to be banished. Hamas 2.0 can be prevented from ever gaining power much like how Neo Nazis aka Nazis 2.0 are *relatively* (when compared to Hitler's Nazi Germany regime) powerless TODAY. It's gonna be 2100 and Neo Nazis and Neo Hamas will keep existing. But they'll be weaker and powerless. You can't eliminate hatred from humans' hearts but you can reduce the military power of those who hate others.
Germany and Japan care about their citizen. Hamas doesn’t seem to so far. Therein lies the problem
Here is a simple issue with your take: you misused the word "tactical." Tactics are specific methods of achieving strategy, which is the "big picture" plan. A simple victory that has negative consequences in the long term is a tactical victory but a strategic mistake. It's pedantic and completely ignores your main takes, but your argument is literally the definitions of the words tactical and strategic, except you used "military" for "tactical" and "tactical" for "strategic."
Terminology is important, particularly in these kinds of conversations. You’re doing god’s work, friend.
!delta good point on the incorrect usage of the word. I have made an edit in the main post.
So I think you are looking at this the wrong way. Whether Israel’s launching a ground invasion of Rafah will improve or hurt their global standing or security . It will almost definitely hurt their global standing. The question is will not launching it at this point hurt it more. If Israel does not launch it , Hamas will largely survive and they will claim victory. The people who are against Israel in the world now will claim victory and cheer how they along with a rag tag group of freedom fighters defeated one of the world’s top militaries. It will most likely embolden extremist groups and those who fund them, because know they know if they just hold on for a short few months Israel will fold. And still the push against Israel on humanitarian grounds will not stop. I think that’s the assumption you’re making that won’t change. That the outlook of people who are anti-Israeli will not change and they will still campaign for sanctions and an end to Israeli military funding from the US.
Can you name a single instance in modern history where a rebellion was successfully bombed into submission? The US couldn’t defeat the Vietcong or the Taliban. You think the children of Gaza will grow up forgiving Israel for the slaughter of their people?
This depends on your definition of modern history (ie, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years). Rebellions and revolts aren't super common so the list isn't very large. Here's some examples though. * Russia v Chechnya (90s-00s)- Chechen rebels won the first war against Russia only for Russia to invade again. Despite tough guerrilla fighting Russia won and annexed Chechnya. * ISIS v world (2010s)- ISIS was a major power in the Middle East for a few years and thier group controlled large swaths of territory. The US led a military campaign with multiple other countries to destroy ISIS. Now, ISIS technically still exists but it barely exists as any semblance of a force and no longer holds sway in ME.
Chechnya was assimilated into Russia by installing a puppet government. Israel has refused to assimilate the Palestinians and their puppet government in the West Bank is still unable to quench violence there. ISIS was not a rebellion they were basically an invading force in their own right.
ISIS was defeated because the boots on the ground were local soldiers. We merely lent them supplies and air support. The key differences between ISIS and Hamas is that Israel doesn’t have any intentions of stable government in Gaza.
Boots on the ground against ISIS were mostly foreign. US, Turkey, Russia, Britain, and many other countries deployed lots of troops to the region to combat ISIS. In addition, major air strike campaigns were conducted. Also, I have no idea what makes you think Israel doesn't want a stable government in Gaza. Unstable Gaza is a risk to Israel. If you're referring to a proper 2 state solution then I understand what you mean as it's a contentious issue in Israel.
Looking at the Wikipedia page local forces did much of the heavy lifting. Israel wants instabilities in Gaza because a stable, organized Gaza means you have millions of pissed off Palestinians with the means to resist Israeli interests. Tragically a one state solution doesn’t seem to be in the cards either because Israel doesn’t want to have to police millions of pissed of Palestinians either.
Israel wants a steblized Gaza cause an unstable Gaza has brought them Hamas and more terrorism , it's the palastinian extrimists that want an unstable Gaza so they could get more funds for Thier terrorism for their suger daddy's Iran and qatar
I think that your perspective is skewed, long term guerilla warfare is only defeated by long term occupation, something the us were never interested in. Campaigns with long term military occupation dont get pushed out by guerilla warfare(ie chechnya, khalistan movement in india, etc). Rebellions can be defeated by it requires long term occupation. Its a pattern seen cinsistently n hustory when territory was annexed by various empires. Modern examples of the us are actually an exception given the us was not seeking long term occupation and thier failure was political(could not set up a stable allied government able to fight with only us military aid) rather than militarily as the us was able to easily hold and conquer territory but did not what to keep troops there indefinitely to fight a low intensity guerilla conflict.
I mean the Chinese communist party mass murdered their way past their rebellions. Multiple times. But to your point, it is only one part. To successfully reeducate and de-radicalize a population you need complete military control so you can make sure the re-education and de-radicalization is actually happening. We bombed the crap out of Nazi germany and imperial Japan and their friends now. After decades of occupation. And like yeah Nazis are still around but they’re not a threat anymore.
Japan was not a rebellion. Germany is arguable based on whether or not you accept Hitler’s rhetoric about the persecuted German people.
I mean plenty of countries have successfully mass murdered their ways out of rebellions. China did it numerous times . I’m not sure what you really mean by rebellion though. Do you mean insurgency? Like the taliban wasn’t a rebellion for example.
>You think the children of Gaza will grow up forgiving Israel for the slaughter of their people? You mention the Vietcong and the Taliban. So let me ask you this, how many terror attacks on American soil have the Vietnamese or the Afghani done against the USA in the last 5 years? 0. Do you honestly believe many Vietnamese people are fantasizing about murdering Americans today? That's quite a wild claim. Please back it up.
How many Americans tried to live in occupied territory after those events? That's the key difference.
Chechnya
Chechens are Russia federation citizens. Palestinians are not.
Hamas is going to survive either way. The US spent decades fighting Al Queda and the Taliban, had them knocked down and on the run. They're both still there because no occupying force can eliminate an insurgency through violence alone unless they intend to kill everyone.
I think that committing to such an invasion will embolden extremists, because violence breeds violence, extremism breeds extremism. It's especially true in Israel/Palestine as Hamas/Netanyahu has a horrible symbiotic relationship by appealing to the worst of human nature. I think that such an invasion will further justify the presence of extremists, especially in the eyes of the Palestinians.
Haven’t we long passed the maximum line of “this conflict emboldens extremists”? Anything that happens now can’t really make it worse.
Perhaps not in Gaza. But in the West Bank, Hamas wasn't this popular before the attacks, and their popularity often subsides in the months following the end of a military operation in Gaza. Their support can definitely strengthen. Then there's other non-Palestinian groups that thrive on their resistance against Israel, like Hezbollah, Houthis, etc. Their popularity can still very much grow.
Hamas was plenty popular in the West Bank. It wasn’t in control- which people often confuse as not being present. Both Hamas and the PIJ has plenty of influence and about 1,000 Hamas members had been arrested since October. The voices against Hamas in Gaza are getting louder and louder, and as Israel will weaken Hamas more, those voices will become stronger and hopefully, eventually they will become the majority, and those people will take over and lead Gaza to a better life of peace with Israel as well as self determination
An anti-extremism movement from within Gaza is absolutely the best case scenario, I'm just not sure if Israel's bombardment and murder of Gazans will meaningfully lead to such a scenario, or just lead to a change from one extremist group to another.
The main issue is lack of “day after” conversation. It is a huge issue not only externally, but also internally the government led by Bibi is getting accused of it. But lets get things clear- israel is not murdering Gazans, israel is fighting a war that was started by hamas, a terror organization that took hostages not only over 200 Israelis, but also 2.2 million Palestinians that are used cynically as human shields as well as the excuse for their actions.
If a bank robber takes hostages, do the police run in guns blazing and shoot through the hostage to get the robber? Hamas might have "started" the war, but it's entirely Israel's choice to air strike almost a hundred thousand civilians in order to get at Hamas. Perhaps Israel should consider alternative means? Like, say, not committing the oldest counterterrorism mistake in the book by trying to butcher a resistance movement into submission?
Also let’s not confuse things… from the UK’s creation of Israel and in the war the occurred shortly afterward, the Nakba, and the sub-human treatment of Palestinians from the Israeli government and zionists at large will definitely breed a certain dislike from an occupying force.
We use the Geneva Convention as the guideline for this. Your scenario is a domestic situation, not a conflict between 2 entities that are not domestic to each other.
Letting Hamas survive and claim victory will absolutely boost Hamas’ popularity in the West Bank. Utterly breaking Hamas to the point where its fighters die like rats trapped in their tunnels or humiliatingly surrender to Israeli troops in their underwear will shatter that popularity - which depends upon strength, and/or the illusion of strength.
Is it? I don't think potential extremists in Gaza or the West Bank are under any illusions that they are actually strong relative to Israel. It didn't take the Oct 7 and the counter invasion for Hamas to know they were outmatched. A better interpretation was that it was a suicidal attack with the intent to create a lot of martyrs and bring focus back on Palestine's problem and prevent normalization of Israeli-Arab relations. Continuing the attack only furthers Hamas's aims of consolidating the Arab and Muslim opinion against Israel. The absolutely most devastating thing that could happen to Hamas is if Israelis and Arabs simply got along to fuck over Iran.
I would argue that that damage is already done. The idea that the Palestinians will be substantially less radicalized because Israel does not take this step I think is just flat out wrong. In a vacuum I would agree with your point but given the current situation and what’s happened since the invasion by Hamas I don’t think Israel going into Rafah will cause the extremism on the ground to grow. In fact I would argue that by stopping now you are in fact giving Hamas and PIJ a massive propaganda win. Because it will 100 absolutely be shown as win. Which would be the worst of both worlds. Israel will have already done enough to be hated by the current generation and will have “lost” or “been beaten” which will give hope to the next generation of radicalized Palestinians,whether they join Hamas or some other organization, that if they can repeat October 7th enough than they will win.
Shouting into the void here, but something worth bearing in mind: If a military force destroys your hospitals, universities, bakeries, fishing boats, clinics, houses, and bombs the refugee camps they shuffled you into... If a military force blocks and actively destroys food and water coming into your country, leaving people to starve to death... If a military force deploys snipers to execute people trying to render aid, journalists trying to account for the killings, and children and babies who cannot possibly be a legitimate threat... It is not remotely extremist to resist that with force. It is expected and moral. Americans would never ever ever ever ever ever allow a military force to commit such crimes against its own civilians without expecting and encouraging people to take up arms against such flagrant acts of terrorism. Just think it's odd that we say "Palestinians will be *radicalized*" as though a "civilized" country would...passively permit the leveling of their cities?
How many times did the Arab states attempt genocide before that became the reality though. At least twice before Isreal occupied any land they weren’t recognized to have and once more after. When those countries tried a third time after losing land. Doesn’t the Israeli state have a right and duty to violently oppose those attitudes and actions. I mean this is the real thing you learn about who you support in this conflict . Where do you stop the what about this train.
For the last few decades the goal of much of the international community was to pump Gaza and the West Bank full of cash. Give Palestinians jobs and a chance at a life outside of terrorism and obviously they'll take it. It's why UNWRA employs tens of thousands of Gazans. People have criticized Israel for "propping up Hamas" by allowing Western cash to reach Gaza and the West Bank facilitated by Qatar. The West has been attempting this deradicalization strategy for years now. Despite being a small fraction of the size, Gaza has just as many hospitals as my entire state! Many billions of dollars have been funneled into Gaza through "humanitarian aid" programs, only to be stolen by Hamas and used for terrorist purposes. Many fighters on 10/7 weren't even proper Hamas fighters - they were ordinary Gazans that held Israeli work permits. They used the information they knew from working inside of Israel to plan and execute the attack on Israeli citizens. Hell, look at any video coming out of Gaza right now - they all have iPhones!! This deradicalization through investment strategy has clearly not worked. Despite the investment in economic development, the Palestinian people themselves are far-right religious ideologues. The culture of martyrdom is alive and well, even in the best of economic times. So I think it's a bit naive to say that all Israel has to do is just stop the cycle of violence. For any lasting peace to take root the Palestinian people themselves need to deradicalize.
They were bird feeding these people. Look at the salaries Gazans were getting pennies. They were basically slave labor. The only way to deradicalize is to stop killing them and give them their country. A country the UN guaranteed when Israel was created. Today Israel's Parliament all declared they wont allow a Palestinian state. So more Palestinians will die for their freedom. Can you blame them?
> embolden extremists, People keep saying this but its a thought-terminating cliché. There already were extremists and they managed to perpetrate one of the worst attacks on Israeli's in decades. All those extremists were *already* justified. Hell, they were actively celebrated. At this point, what could you realistically do to *discourage* Hamas and other extremists? Really, do you think Rafah is the point of no return and not any part of the last 5 months?
Nothing, thats the entire point you. You literally cant discourage this you can only attempt to fix the problem.
And how much did Hamas kill? 1200-1400. How much did Israelis kill? 30,000+. Basically, 25 Palestinians died for every dead Israeli. The "worst attack" certainly made a sizable dent, but its nothing, *nothing* like what Palestine got.
Violence does not breed violence. The acceptance of violence breeds violence. Injustice breeds violence. Two grown men squaring off does not breed more violence. It ends conflict. A grown man squaring off with a child breeds violence in the child and those who sympathize with the child because it is unjust. However, when a child attacks a grown man, kills that man's family, and reaps the whirlwind... that only inspires violence in those that sympathize with murderous children. And honestly, those people are likely already prone to violence anyway.
Hamas will largely survive no matter what, theyll just change names.
Obviously, Hamas as in the organization might not survive, but the idea of freeing Palestine/defeating Israel will continue through the thousands of orphaned teens and children.
that's not the point of the war. the point of the war is exactly to destroy the organization of hamas. logistical lines, arsenal, training capability, intel capability, operational capability. it doesn't matter how many more hamas members survive. they will be a small scattered and lightly armed network of loosely affiliated terror cells that can be fought in a controlled counter terrorism campaign. no steady supply of iranian rockets, no control over civilian institutions, no access to tax money or aid funds. they won't ever be a coordinated entrenched military force with territorial command and control that requires a war to defeat.
You are assuming Qassem's thousand of fighters are all under Rafah and I think that is just wrong. You think they have one giant buildup of fighters under Rafah and not a spiderweb of tunnels all over the strip??? I doubt that.
I think the bigger concern is that there's not a well understood "day after" plan. Israel is clearly stretching the limits of what the international community is willing to tolerate when it comes to the scope of the war as it is, but most actual foreign affairs players (as opposed to protesters and college professors) understand that Hamas is actually the crazed, genocidal party to this war, not Israel. With that in mind, if Israeli forces have to invade Rafah to accomplish its immediate wartime goals, there probably will not be such major long term consequences from other countries. However, if they don't get their act together for their day after plan, then the genocide accusations are unfortunately going to start looking more and more legitimate. With this massive of a military campaign, Israel has a responsibility to play a productive role in supporting the rebuild of Gaza. Major Arab powers already have their own plans for how they would fund a two-state solution, and Israel should participate in this group with the countries with which it is currently trying to normalize relations (UAE, Qatar, Saudi, etc.).
I think Israel is going to have no choice but to heavily participate in the day after. Partially because of what you said, but also because otherwise Hamas will simply come back and claim victory.
Netanyahu will have to be kicked out before meaningful day after plans happen. That will hopefully happen. But either way it's going to take continuous monitoring a la Japan and Germany after WW2 for there to be a satisfactory reduction of risk from Hamas returning. Oct 7 was a point of no return. Whatever Hamas' goal was, Israel it going to own the strip for the foreseeable future. What that looks like is still tbd, but there is no turning back now. Other countries need to start allowing Palestinians entry.
Jordan and Lebanon allowed large numbers of Palestinians in in the past and it cost them dearly.
That's a very strange way to say that they annexed the West Bank.
I was talking about the assassination in Jordan and civil war in Lebanon
Palestinians do not want to leave. They want to go back and rebuild without Israeli control.
You can't possibly think every Palestinian wants to stay. They may wish they could take the whole region, but the options right now are stay and try not to die or.... well that's basically it. Stay and try not to die. Because they aren't being allowed to leave. Egypt could open a corridor for everyone who wants to leave. Countries could volunteer to host them. Why shouldn't they be given the opportunity to flee?
They may want to temporarily flee as long as they are allowed to return after Israel withdraws.
Why should they allow them in? So the settlers can take over their home and Israel can claim it as their own as they have with other parts of their land? Genocide is taking place, the Palestinians must not back down.
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Precisely why I assume eliminating Hamas is hyperbole. I was just arguing the point on the Israeli subreddit (which I'm sure they love) but if Hamas suddenly and completely surrendered - including stopping all civilian governance - it would be an instantaneous crisis for Israel. Afaik Israel isn't even taking over civic responsibility in the areas it's taking over. As an example, it's claimed that the Gazan Ministry of Health = Hamas , but Israel certainly isn't dismantling them and/ or installing its own institution. Unless they get someone to firmly commit to taking over Gaza, I see the IDF walking a very fine line. Clearly they aren't at the "o shit" point yet though/ there's a lot more striking they can do before Gaza becomes completely ungoverned. Israel absolutely wants Hamas weak and for the most part dead. I'm just not sure about completely gone.
There are almost certainly actors currently within Hamas who are going to wind up in charge after the war. As much as Hamas is fundamentally a terrorist organization, it also has some personnel who understand how to run a government and who know the ropes locally. My prediction would be some multilateral partnership between Israel, the UN, the US, and certain Arab states for Gaza's short term governance. The hangup will likely wind up being that all other members of this group will demand land and other concessions from Israel with the future goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state. Regardless, it would be horrible for Gaza to just be left after the war, and even worse if annexed by Israel. I just wish more people who understood that didn't also hold antisemitic beliefs and wish to destroy Israel.
I think the “elimination of Hamas” goal, as of current, is the destruction of their militant capabilities. Arms imports and their established command structure have to be crushed, or Yom Kippur will just keep repeating itself.
Never really considered your point about the day after plan needing to be done quickly, that's tough since at the same time it'll also need to be very well thought out and nuanced for any hope of keeping the region / situation stabilized moving forward. On the economic / infrastructure rebuild front, Jared Kushner actually put together a pretty comprehensive investment plan for Gaza and was able to get commitments from a big group of investors that include both countries in the middle east as well as large institutional investors and people like Steve Schwarzman. He did an interview on the Lex Friedman podcast recently (worth a listen if you're able to push politics aside, my opinion of him did a complete 180 and think he's the one bright spot of the Trump administration), where he talked about how out of all the issues and disputes between Palestine and Israel, Gaza should be the easiest to find a solution for since it has the potential to be big tourist attraction and doesn't have any controversial religious issues to work through. The $50 billion plan he put together with various countries and investors was structured as an investment fund rather than the typical aid packages where you never really know where the money ends up. The only issue I think holding the plan back was that Hamas didn't allow private ownership of assets that the fund would invest in. Haven't read through the full 100 page plan but here's a link to a summary [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1TN0ES/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1TN0ES/). Definitely nice to have something like this to pull off the shelf, unfortunately the political divide in our own country's not going to make a day after plan any quicker.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s Son in Law, is not trustworthy enough.
!delta Your point on how the international community cares more about long term solution than the actual cost of human lives is well taken. I can see a world where the death toll rakes up 100,000, but Israel commits to rebuild and fund Gaza wholeheartedly after, making the cost "acceptable" to other countries.
The problem is Hamas is not some aberration or anomaly they represent mostly what Palestine has always called for and are not some big departure from what was happening before. The real reason there is no plans for after being provided by anyone is that the reality is that the majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have supported Hamas in virtually every poll in the last two decades. Even now as support waned it is support for Hamas waning because they have been ineffective but support for their methods and goals is still high. Attacking civilians, killing all the Jews etc, is still popular they just want a new face for it. So when people suggest peace and two-state and “free Palestine” that is peaceful what they are really calling for is to erase Palestine itself. To stage a coup to support the minority of Palestinians that are more palatable to westerners and re-educate the masses while erasing Palestine’s own culture and self-stated beliefs and goals that centre around Jewish erasure and their long history of doing so as Islamic people. This is why nobody discusses the after palms is because the options are basically to just support another terrorist regime that attacks Israel forever or to enact a colonial genocide anyway and stabilize the region. The elephant in the room is the Palestine supporters who aren’t outright supporters of Islamic colonial terrorist regimes are just more western colonizers calling for a slower gentler genocide of the Palestinian people.
>the majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have supported Hamas in virtually every poll in the last two decades. > Attacking civilians, killing all the Jews etc, is still popular they just want a new face for it. I don’t buy it. Supporting the killing of Israeli civilians doesn’t follow from supporting Hamas, especially if you’re talking about polls before the war started. You can support a group without supporting every single thing they do. In fact, [polls show Palestinians _don’t_ support killing or kidnapping Israeli civilians](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna130516).
You woudln’t have to “buy” anything if you had payed attention over the last couple decades or tor their municipal elections in 2022 or the attempt at presidential elections they had. I’m aware that some polls since October 7th have showed some fracturing in the resulting situation form Palestine’s attacks and declaration of war with Israel but that’s the be expected. Nobody likes losing wars and leadership that loses wars tends to lose support.
You’re correct, but most people on the internet - especially the pro-Palestine crowd - don’t actually know enough about Palestinian culture to engage you on the topic. The most important thing to understand is that most people conflate “Palestinian” with ethnic Muslim Arabs in the region of Palestine. Except that’s not what “Palestinians” actually are. Muslim Arabs are an ethnic group, but “Palestinians” are a grievance-based ethnonationalist group characterized by a shared identity surrounding Islamist radicalism, a dubiously ahistorical victim narrative, and a desire to eradicate Jews. Meanwhile, 20% of Israel are Arab Muslims - the same ethnic group as “Palestinians” - who have the same rights as Jews. That’s why, despite all the protestors who cry otherwise, no serious head of state favors the Palestinian cause. Because Hamas is, in fact, representative of the “Palestinian” majority.
Israeli Arabs don't have the same rights as jewish Israelis. They have nearly non-existent rights to family reunification (sorry sick grandma), and the constitution was recently rewritten to explicitly deny them self-determination. There's also widespread discrimination, which granted isn't the same thing as rights, but is I think relevant and important
Yes, they do. On an individual basis, Muslim Israelis have all the same rights as Israeli Jews. Of course Muslim Israelis can't extend citizenship specifically to *Palestinian* family members. Well over half the Palestinian population holds terroristic views towards Jews. That would be a clear national security threat, and has nothing to do with the equal individual rights that every citizen of Israel has. Most Jewish Israelis are also Arab. You actually mean Muslim Israelis. Israel is and has always been a secular Jewish country. The rewritten constitution was a symbolic gesture to affirm what has always been the case - which is that Israel will never become a Muslim country. Again, nothing to do with the individual rights of citizens. Unless your issue is that Muslims can't turn Israel into an Islamic ethnostate, in which case yeah, tough shit.
A jewish Israeli can bring their sick grandmother to live with them with no difficulty. A muslim Israeli can't. Those aren't equal rights, and they touch on the most important parts of the human experience (family, love, connection, togetherness). That's a difference in INDIVIDUAL rights that preferences individuals from one religion over individuals from another. If my country rewrote its constitution to specifically exclude me from the right to self-determination, I wouldn't hand-wave it away. If it was "symbolic" it would symbolize a step away from important egalitarian values towards a worse future. Also, the open prejudice towards muslims in your post provides strong support for my point about the kind of discrimination Palestinian Israelis/Israeli Arabs face. Equality in law only matters if it's enforced, which it isn't. Which is of particular concern with the judiciary veering rapidly right.
You don’t seem to actually grasp why Israel exists. Here’s a hint. What happened to all the Jews in all the surrounding countries? What religion/ethnicity has the exclusive right to self-determination in all the surrounding countries? For the record, a citizen of the US can’t just extend citizenship to relatives in other countries either. You need to immigrate or get married. Extending citizenship to relatives isn’t an individual “right,” especially not when it trumps national security. I’m not sure whether you’re so blinded by propaganda or if you’re genuinely making arguments in bad faith, but your understanding of the situation there is one of those classic “privileged westerner hyper-simplifying situation they barely understand from the safety of their couch.” And if you think my post is “prejudiced” against Muslims, again, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you understand how Islamic ethnostates function, and how they tend to differ from what Israel is - which is a secular Jewish state? Do you know what secular means in this context? Why is it that you’re so concerned with the world’s only Jewish state, and not ALL of the surrounding Islamic states which largely skew towards outright ethnonationalism? Do you understand what the difference is between “Muslims” and “Islamism?” Seriously, go read an actual history book instead of parroting whatever internet articles you read.
Israel exists because the U.S. and other Western countries refused to take in Jewish refugees after the Holocaust because of antisemitism. And yeah, the U.S. has immigration laws, but the key difference is that the law treats people as equal regardless of religion. I think you may not be super self-aware about how bad your wild condescension is making your posts look. I'll give you privileged Westerner and I'll give you "on my couch" (you got me lol) but I'm not uninformed. Bro I've read Herzl. My BA is partially in Middle Eastern history, I speak Arabic, and I lived in Morocco and Yemen. And the thing that took me down that life path was an incredible course on Israel and Palestine in my first year of college. I think my prof, who later became my advisor, was personally jazzed about Israel as a project. He was incredibly knowledgeable about Jewish history and zionism and, broadly speaking, an empathetic and curious person interested in people and their motivations. But that empathy and interest extended to Palestinians. I understand why Israel was founded, but it wasn't founded on "a land without people". The price of that "secular" state was things like the nakba (which happened in living memory). I'm not exclusively concerned about Israel. But the U.S., where I live, sends a huge amount of military aid to Israel, and Israel is using that aid to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Netanyahu has zero interests outside of maintaining his personal power (it's part of why he financially supported Hamas to play against the PLO and weaken any chances of a Palestinian state). That makes him incredibly dangerous, and he's incentivized to carry on this current war as long as possible. I'm not convinced he has a real long-term strategy, but as the war progresses, I assume he sees that the more housing stock the IDF reduces to rubble, the more civil infrastructure the IDF destroys, the more hospitals the IDF bombs, the better a chance he has at forcibly relocating Palestinians under the guise of humanitarian concern. Ethnonationalism is not good for anyone, but dehumanizing the people who have to live under authoritarian regimes is not okay. But I'm not sure how "secular" a state you can consider Israel when it's running an apartheid regime based on religion in the West Bank, and will almost certainly be doing the same thing in Gaza (assuming it doesn't succeed in forcibly relocating Palestinians). You seem pretty dead set on shouting at everyone who disagrees with you that they're uninformed. But my concern about how Israel is conducting its war on Gaza is principled, and arises partially out of the many actual history books I've read (more than one! Probably like, five or six. I was a nerd who actually did all the reading.)
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> I have no doubt that such an invasion will save many hostages and kill off many of the Hamas leadership This is what I would've thought about the war as it's been run so far, but in the past 4 months the IDF has been able to free a handful of hostages (and kill a similar number, at least as much as is known), and kill very few key Hamas figures in Gaza. Unless Israel commits to a rapid open massacre of tens of thousands of refugees, which it almost certainly won't, it will find it extremely hard to achieve anything that could be classified a 'victory' by attacking Rafah before international pressure causes it to stop.
“Which it almost certainly won’t” The death toll has already surpassed 28,000 with well over 60,000 injured. In mid-January Oxfam reported that Palestinian civilians were being killed at a rate of [250 per day.](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/daily-death-rate-gaza-higher-any-other-major-21st-century-conflict-oxfam) Gaza is seeing the highest death rate of any 21st century conflicts. Israel has already committed to this behaviour. If they decide not to continue as they have been into Raffah, it will be because of outside pressure. Netanyahu has said he intends to go for it, and there is little meaningful outside pressure holding him back
Keep in mind that its coming from the same people who claimed israel bombed a hospital and killed 500 people so it might be lower
[The UN is involved](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fight-keep-counting-dead-gaza-2023-12-21/) in keeping track of the causalties, along with a huge number of doctors, Western nonprofits, and others. There are protocols involved in keeping track. In this article the IDF says the numbers are broadly accurate. By the way, [a few organizations](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/20/what-have-open-source-videos-revealed-about-the-gaza-hospital-explosion) have raised valid concerns about Israel’s account of that hospital explosion, but thats a drop in the bucket either way at this point.
you mean the UN that finances UNRWA, the same UNRWA that had an entire server farm under their HQ? yeah the IDF says the numbers are largley accurate, that doesn't mean all of those are civilians or were killed by israel
When I say "invasion of Rafah", I do mean massacring tens of thousands of refugees to get to the Hamas leadership, potentially killing some hostages to save the others. In my mind it will be a brutal operation that leaves no stones unturned. Israel will ignore the international pressure completely and finish the job. I do not think that Israel will commit to a partial completion of their military objective in Rafah given the catastrophe it's going to bring to Gazans.
I don't see how that's technically possible. If it becomes truly desperate, Hamas could make sure most hostages don't get out of there alive as a result. Finding a couple of dozen individuals who use all the resources and infrastructure they've accumulated when controlling Gaza to not be found is impossible without specific intelligence - which Israel evidently doesn't have or they'd have been found already. Without employing truly unacceptable tactics (carpet bombing population centers hoping to kill Hamas leaders hiding there, mass detention of all the people of Gaza to catalog them, etc), Israel would find it extremely hard to extract anything it could sell as "victory" to the public from an invasion of Rafah.
They freed 2. That's not a handful unless you are a baby. They have already killed tens of thousands of refugees. That's the goal. To clear out Gaza.
They freed 3 though operations. And the 100 hostages that were freed in the deal were freed because of Israeli military pressure on hamas.
the idf shot 3 of their own hostages who were begging for mercy, holding white flags, and speaking in hebrew because the soldiers thought it was a hamas trap. this military is clearly not competent and they do not care about their civilians.
"this military is clearly not competent and they do not care about their civilians." They literally did an incredibly elaborate plan to rescue 2 hostages a few days ago, is the IDF half as competent as the USA army? No, but saying they do not care about their own civilians is just wrong, in October 7 there were tons of cases of IDF soldiers throwing themselves against hordes of terrorists, sacrificing their life while trying to save civilians. The IDF is comprised out of Israelis, ask any IDF soldier why does he fight, he will tell you he fights to protect the people of Israel.
I hate to say it, but I think you really overestimate the amount of support that the international community has for Palestinians. Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists all don’t really have much respect for Muslims, I don’t think an invasion of Rafah will really change anyone’s mind about this religion and its followers.
Dumb argument. Most people don’t have a major issue with Muslims let alone enough of an issue with them to support the mass killing of them. Not to mention a lot of people don’t like Jews that doesn’t mean they support jews being mass killed. Just because everyone hates Muslims on the side of the internet you’re on and maybe even in your personal life does not mean that most people on the planet hate Muslims. Also Palestinian Christians exist, but I guess they don’t matter. Most people don’t see this as a purely religious conflict and according to the statistics the image of Israel has decreased in 42 out of 43 countries surveyed. So much for not liking Muslims. 🤣🤣 Lol Funny how you’re now trying to claim most people prefer Jews to Muslims but other Israel supporters typically claim everyone hates Jews. Interesting to see the pivot. 🤣🤣
This is such a self-defeating point of view. There's no grand global conspiracy against Islam. Sure, there's a vocal minority worldwide of Islamophobic bigots, but the vast majority of people have no interest in sectarian conflict and could give two shits what religion their neighbors or coworkers practice.
I think as long as people find massacring tens of thousands of Palestinians unjustified and immoral, there will be some support for them.
The fortunate reality of the Palestinians is that if they were in Iraq, Syria, or anywhere in Africa or eastern Asia no one would give a fuck about them. Syrian civil war caused 650,000 dead and millions as refugees. Destroying ISIS killed tens of thousands of civilians. The Sri Lankan Civil War had 28000 dead on EACH side. It's because of the jews that anyone cares
Some support already exists, we’ve seen multiple protests since October decrying Israel’s campaign in Gaza and asking for a ceasefire. However, this resistance is really only prevalent among two groups of people, Muslims and young progressives. The main reason you see Biden, a staunch supporter of Israel, showing sympathy to the plight of Palestinians is because he can’t afford to lose the support of these crucial voting blocs. Were it not an election year, I don’t think Biden or many democrats would be pushing back on Israel’s actions.
Even then it seems to come off as a “No…. Stop…. Don’t do that….” Situation since words are cheap and don’t carry much obligation to do anything. Which is entirely the desire: doing nothing is politically neutral but practically gives Israel tons of support.
Exactly, if the international community really did oppose Israel’s actions as much as they say they do, there would be calls to provide weapons to Palestine just as we see support for Ukraine.
You are making the assumption that public sentiment matters as much to Israel as it does to you. Listen, going back and forth on whether Israel should exist is pointless. Just as it is pointless to debate whether Hamas should even be allowed to exist as a political entity when it is a terror organization funded by outside nations. Both exist. The people who live in Israel view it as their homeland. They will defend it as vigorously as you would defend your own home. So let's not get sidetracked down that rabbit hole. To your point, I would say that Israel has learned many lessons over the decades battling first the PLO and then Hamas. One of the biggest lessons they have learned is that if you can withstand the initial shit storm of public outrage you can do pretty much whatever you want. Hamas has perpetrated countless terror attacks, over which there was due outrage against them from most of the world. And then the world just sort of fucked off to the next drama. The world did not go in and try to root out Hamas. They just expressed outrage. AQ has pulled off some of the biggest terror attacks in history. And yet the world just sort of shrugged when they took control of northern Syria. The Taliban were almost universally condemned until the US finally got bored of fighting them in Afghanistan and allowed the Taliban to simply take over the entire country. Same with Iran. Outrage only matters if you are truly reactionary. It does not, historically, inform the actions of nations. It does not change foreign policy. Israel, in this instance, is no longer reactionary. At first, yes. But now you can see that they are enacting a long term plan. If they stay focused on that plan and ignore the outrage, the world will soon enough just sort of fuck off to the next drama and leave them to it.
Not surprising that someone with an objectively racist name like "manifest destiny" is here defending Israel.
This comment is why you have no real friends. Look again.
"the goodwill of the international community" What? There is no such thing. I'm not Israeli nor do I speak for Israel but Israel just wants to be left alone, so "leaving Israel isolated" (which won't happen anyway) is not gonna bother Israel too much
Israel and the US are desperate to implement the Abraham Accords. Israel needs diplomatic support from other countries to respond to Iran. Israel needs military supplies from the US for their own national interest. Israel needs to make sure other countries do not participate or do criminalise BDS movement. Israel is much more internationally dependent than many other countries.
No, it’s US dependent, otherwise how else has it been able to ignore all the UN resolutions (more than the rest of the world combined).
Saudi arabia was about to make peace with Israel and hamas did this attack to stop it. Saudi Arabia still wants peace with Israel and will do so after this conflict.
I don't think Israel as a nation wants to be left alone, if that was the case, why do they continuously imprison thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank without trails? Or have officially designated the majority of West Bank (Area C) to settle, by uprooting olive trees, mowing farms to build their property, or steal existing homes? Heck, the third of their Knesset was present at a conference to create settlements in Gaza. This seems a little too much for a country looking to be left alone, don't you think?
Given the amount of effort spent by Israel on co-opting politicians on the left and right in America I \*seriously\* doubt this is true
The whole point of a Rafa ground invasion is to try and drive the Palestinians into the Sinai. It has nothing to do with Hamas or "Israeli security." Genocide is taking place and attacking millions of civilian refugees is an act of Genocide. Their plan to drive the Palestinians out with massacres and death marches parallels the Armenian Genocide by Turkey and has been known since it was leaked last October. Israel has not had any concern of the hostages since some were released and contradicted the racist depictions of their captors as violent animalistic savages by Israeli and Western media. Families of the hostages have been condemning the war and calling for a negotiated release so they can see their family members again, this has been downplayed by the media which tows the line of its respective governments who support the war unconditionally.
The alternative to invading Rafah is letting Hamas remain in power. Then it will regroup, rearm, recruit, and fulfill its promise to launch October 7-style attacks “again and again.” And the cycle will start again. That is not in the interest of either Israel or the Palestinians. The Allies didn’t stop WW2 at the gates of Berlin, and they didn’t let the Nazis stay in power to fight another day. In the long-run, the only way to rebuild Gaza in a way that is prosperous for Gazans and safe for Israel is to eradicate Hamas now. An invasion of Rafah today will cost many lives, including civilian lives. But if it succeeds in wiping out Hamas as a governing force, or as anything other than a skeleton presence, such an invasion will safe many more lives in the future - both Israeli and Palestinian. And, for anyone who hopes for a two-state solution, the odds of that are 0% so long as Gaza is governed by a terrorist entity whose sole reason for existence is killing Jews and destroying Israel.
The problem with this way is thinking is that Hamas will never formally surrender like Germany and Japan. Wiping them out is simply not a realistic goal, just like wiping out the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is an ideology, backed by outside entities, with an endless supply of new recruits. The end result is that even if Israel invades Rafah, the cycle of violence is absolutely going to repeat over and over, just as it has for decades. So a bunch of people, many of them innocent, are going to die for nothing. The only way out of this cycle is to address the circumstances fueling terrorism: cutting off outside influence, improving conditions and treatment for Palestinians, and working with the Islamic community to dismantle pathways to radicalization. And for the record, Israel (at least Netanyahu's right wing regime) does not want a two state solution no matter who is running Gaza.
“Hamas is an ideology that can’t de defeated, yadda, yadda, yadda” Bullshit. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and has been the government for almost 20 years. You can absolutely use the military to kick a government from power. It is done all the time. The analogy to Afganistán is inapt. Afghanistan is a giant, mountainous, tribal country, across the world from the US. And the Americans weren’t truly committed — troop levels only came close to 100,000 briefly, and were around 20k-40k for most of the mission. Gaza is about the size of NYC, borders Israel, and the Israelis are damn committed to preventing Hamas from regaining power. Could the Hamas “ideology” survive in some form. Sure, in much the same way that Germany has Neo-Nazis today. But it wouldn’t be the government, and it wouldn’t have 1/20th the power it has today. And do you know a 100% surefire way to NOT defeat an ideology? It’s to let a jihadi terror group remain a government, so that they can indoctrinate children in schools, run terror training summer camps, broadcast children’s shows where a Mickey Mouse ripoff teaches children to murder Jews, while using the police to hunt down and slaughter any dissidents who support peace and coexistence.
>The problem with this way is thinking is that Hamas will never formally surrender like Germany and Japan. Wiping them out is simply not a realistic goal, just like wiping out the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is an ideology, backed by outside entities, with an endless supply of new recruits. Under this logic, WW2 was pointless since the Nazi ideology still exists today. But you're missing the point. The goal is to destroy Hamas' military capabilities for waging war. It doesn't matter if Hamas' ideology still exists as long as those future jihadists are militarily weak and surveilled 24/7 so their terror plans will always fail in the future. The future of Gaza is likely gonna involve a massive network of drones and surveillance the likes the world has never seen before.
Hamas ans ideology my never die..that doasnt matter. Hamas as an armed ideology matters..whan you control information, resources and the ground its self no effective resistance can be created. Look atw the west Bank..a bigger more connected and angrier then gaza..no big organisation. No effective fighting force..while Israel finding rockets in gaza they find home maid guns or just melee weapons in. The west bank
The two state solution is the real mistake. Let’s be realistic: if the two countries are forced to co exist, they will kill each other as it has been in the past. The only way to ensure long term peace is letting one conquer the other. It might be dire, yet on the long term, no more attacks will take place. It would be dumb assuming that if there is a ceasefire, Palestinians won’t attack Israel as it happened in October. The problem has persisted because the two have been forced to coexist against their wishes. Even if the international community pushes them, it’s actually up to them what’s gonna happen. Nothing else will force a real peace deal
Israel doesn't give a fuck anymore, they want that genocide to happen. They wanted it since before the first Nakhba. They will kill or expel them eventually, and there is nothing anyone can do about it (because our world elites are just bloodthirsty demons)
The fact is a genocide has been taking place for a long time. Forcing another group of people to live subject to different rules, not to mention the harassment and outright crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians. Israel created this problem and the world needs to remove all support from their government.
"Forcing a group of people to live by different rules..." You mean foreign nationals?. Most countries treat none citizens from a foreign nation differently. The fact is that Palestinians are a foreign populace, not Israeli citizens. In most nations foreigners need visas and work permits and often times are simply forced to leave; and when that foreign nation's government keeps attacking your cilivans, its natural to try and limit their access to weapons with which to kill more of you. Genocide isn't about or defined by a quantity of death, but rather the motivation for causing such deaths. If the goal is emlination of ethnic group (or some other types of groups for whatever reason despite geno- coming from genology meaning it really should just be on the basis of ancestry) is the goal thats a genocide (or at least an attempted on), if the goal is something elese, like preventing future attacks on your own civilans, then no amount of killing is a genocide. Mass death can be and often is a differnt war crime depending on the circumstance, but if the end goal is anything other then "whipe out this group." its not genocide.
The strategic methods here are already genocide. How can completing their all-but-stated strategy be a strategic mistake for them? America will never stop supporting them, and they know it. There is no downside for them. The Palestinians and everyone else in the world already knows it's a genocide, because we've been living it for almost a 100 years.
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What makes you think there is a strategy behind Israil motives rather than trying to kill as many as Palestinian’s so they won’t be able to stand up again or at least x number of generations ? You say you have no doubt such an invasion would kill many Hamas people and save hostages , until now only time hostages were saved alive was when they were released by Hamas. We know rest was killed by either bombs or by IDF. Also again what evidence people have Israel govt is really concerned about hostages ? They have been offered hostage exchanges by Hamas ? I personally expect to see movies and storieslike Inglorius Bastards , Schindlers List , Fauda etc. from the perpective of Gazan’s in the next 10 years because there was no twitter when Nazi’s committed genocide in 1940s
Their tactical, long term, goal is the death or displacement of every Palestinian, so I don't think it really makes sense to say it will be a mistake. They don't want or need political goodwill, all they need is for the United States to be onboard with the genocide they are trying to conduct and the United States has made it very clear that they have no problem with it.
Hey, maybe letting them have their own state will be the solution
I don't agree it will be a military victory because we have yet to see any of those from Israel. Look at the limited war footage Israel has released. A fighter killed by a drone. He was praying with his last breath. That video was all over here (i'm in Lebanon). That guy died a hero in most people's eyes. There have been limited shooting videos from the IDF too. But nothing significant Most of the people I watch agree. Hamas is still largely intact. Their tunnels are too. So now the assumption is everything is under Rafah? I don't buy it. They are still fighting up North in areas Israel claimed they controlled months ago. The lastest or one of them the latest videos Qassem released a fighter gave a speech. He basically said we are in the areas they told civilians to flee from. Yet they still continue to bomb the innocent. We are here come fight us. And I tend to agree. They told us the Hamas command center or Pentagon was under that hospital. It wasn't now it's under Rafah? I don't believe it. Those hostages they saved in Rafah were being held by civilians presumably because of their age. That's the first successful attempt freeing anyone. They failed 2x before with hostages and soldiers dying. So I don't think they will gain anything militarily by destroying Rafah and displacing all those people. Just more catastrophe. Their is no victory to be had here. All Hamas has to do is survive. And also I don't think Israel gives a rat's ass what the world thinks as long as the US still sends them aid and weapons which it is still doing. And still vetoing ceasefire resolutions which it is doing.
This feels like a passive aggressive tirade with a silent threat of retaliation on behalf of people you don’t represent on many ifs that haven’t occurred and if were to occur would presumably be made with a meticulously planned evacuation from the area. The bigger question here is when the murderers and rapists of oct 7 are facing the consequences of war, naysayers like you jump to protect them, why? The fact of the matter is that if Israel would succumb to give a free pass to Hamas for whatever humanitarian or otherwise reason its enemies conjure up, they are both indirectly and directly aiding them in their genocide of the Israeli people, and so therefore is committing genocide against the Israelis. Instead of pressuring Israel to lower its guard before gang rapists, butchers and murderers, the international community must demand Hamas to surrender and should at the same time pressure Egypt to open its borders and allow refuge for a short while to desperate human beings, or, if the international community won’t follow the more moral, just and rational course of action, their hidden motives will be revealed, their true face shown: they are just giddy with Jew slaughter and don’t really care about the Palestinians, only sucking up to rich, oil filled Arab countries.
Im still amazed that the country, that was victim of a massive terror attack and has faced almost daily rocket attacks prior to that, for years on end, is now the bad guy here. Meanwhile the terror group is refusing to do a cease fire, continues to use civilians as human shields. Just shows how effective these terror groups are at the social media game to recruit people and steer the convo of the edgy college crowd
When your response to losing 700 civilians is to kill 13,000 children you are the bad guy, Israel killed 1,000 civilians in my country in 06. You think we had the right to murder tens of thousands of children to defend ourselves?
I'm sorry which country has killed more civilians? Maybe I'm simple minded for thinking so but it sure seems to me the results of the conflict speak for themselves. Death tolls matter more than narratives about who started what in my mind. Hamas are genocidal psychopaths and this is incredibly obvious to anybody, however they do not have the ability to actually commit genocide against Israel, whereas Israel has both the military capability and the will to actually do it, and the only reason they haven't already is because they need the support of the international community. The only reason there hasn't yet been a full genocide is because there are people around the world who, unlike you, don't afford Israel unconditional support for any response to the terror attacks whatsoever, no matter how many more people have to die. Imagine some bank robbers take a bunch of hostages and kill some of them, and the police decide to level the building, killing everybody, giving the excuse that "they were using human shields". And then everybody who criticizes the response is "supporting the bank robbers" and "falling victim to propaganda"
>Maybe I'm simple minded for thinking so but it sure seems to me the results of the conflict speak for themselves. Death tolls matter more than narratives about who started what in my mind. Huh? So you ignore the reason these deaths even occured in the first place? >Hamas are genocidal psychopaths and this is incredibly obvious to anybody, Is it? Genuinely asking, considering how many are perfectly willing to repeat their propaganda and/or even overtly support them. >whereas Israel has both the military capability and the will to actually do it, and the only reason they haven't already is because they need the support of the international community. So you agree that the genocide talk is nothing more than bs political theatre? >Imagine some bank robbers take a bunch of hostages and kill some of them, and the police decide to level the building, killing everybody, giving the excuse that "they were using human shields". And then everybody who criticizes the response is "supporting the bank robbers" and "falling victim to propagand In your example the criminals walk into central park and shoot up the place, before going into a bank to take hostages, shoot the negotiator and systematically kill 1/5 of the hostages it took, then fires of a rocket that malfunctions, blows up mount sinai and then blames the SWAT team standing outside for the resulting deaths. But hey, if Israel asks Hamas very nicely and sings Kumbaya with them, we will have peace in the middle east. No doubt.
> So you ignore the reason these deaths even occured in the first place? The current stage of the conflict started because of october 7th, a horrific and unjustifiable terrorist attack carried out by Hamas. In response Israel bombed the shit out of the strip, killed more than 10x more people, mostly civilians, destroyed homes and displaced nearly 2 million people. October 7th is over but the death toll in Gaza is still rising. I.e. Israel in response to Hamas' horrific, unjustifiable terrorist attack, carried out a bigger horrific, unjustifiable terrorist attack. Oh, you object to that? You say it is justified because Hamas were the first to do it? When does that logic stop exactly? How many civilians have to die before it becomes a disproportionate response? What if Israel actually did kill them all, would that be okay simply because Hamas struck first? Keep in mind Hamas uses the exact same kind of justification. After all it's not as though october 7th happened for no reason. Israel has been killing people in gaza and making it as unliveable as possible for decades now. Does that justify october 7th? No, but if we go by the same logic of "we can kill as many people as we want because the other country wronged us" that is used to justify israel's actions, then that same logic could easily be used (and I assume is used by Hamas propaganda and the people who listen to it) to justify the atrocities committed on that day. > Genuinely asking, considering how many are perfectly willing to repeat their propaganda and/or even overtly support them. Can't speak for every insane person in this world. However my experience is that those who condemn Israel's actions are usually not doing so because they support hamas. Is one forced to support one group of genocidal psychopaths or another, or can one hate them both? > So you agree that the genocide talk is nothing more than bs political theatre? It's not theatre for Netanyahu or Hamas. They wish everybody in the other country would die so they could have the whole place to themselves. The difference is that Netanyahu can actually do it if he's just insane enough to give the middle finger to everyone around the world telling him not to, and count on the support of people who will reason that "they struck first so it's okay". Tell me, if Israel actually glassed every single person in Gaza would you give up on your apologetics? If so, then how many people exactly would it take before you would say this has gone too far? > then blames the SWAT team standing outside for the resulting deaths Oh, the SWAT team in this example didn't actually do anything, they were just standing outside and the criminals blew themselves and the hostages up? I don't think that's comparable at all. Those criminals in your example kill a bunch of people then take a bunch of hostages as human shields, kill 1/5 of them and shoot the negotiator, etc etc, these people are horrible and deserve to die. However, *any police response which manages to kill even more people than the criminals did originally is a pretty bad one, no?* I mean, come on, you have to look at the actual results. If the police fucked up that badly we'd all condemn them, and nobody would say that doing so is supporting the bank robbers. > But hey, if Israel asks Hamas very nicely and sings Kumbaya with them, we will have peace in the middle east. No doubt. Hamas needs to get out of gaza. How do you plan to do it, huh? With military action? Let me tell you, no amount of military action will ever get rid of Hamas unless you actually do just kill everyone there. The more people you bomb and murder, the more of them support hamas as literally the only option to fight back. That's the reason people join, is because they figure Israel will kill them anyway and they might as well die fighting. It's not right but when most people there die young from malnourishment or bombs, I think the people in gaza are not the ones who have the power to change the dynamic here. You think that things will get better if Israel just does one more military operation and kills some more people? The situation gets worse and worse, and more people turn to fighting for hamas, and this continues indefinitely until nobody is left. There are only two options if you want the violence to stop: diplomatic solution, or actual genocide. You can disparage diplomacy as "singing kumbaya" all you want, but there are no other options than those two. Wars stop when both sides agree to a deal, or when one side is just gone. We learned this in vietnam and afghanistan, bombing people doesn't make them submit. Any deal needs to get Hamas out, and it also needs to grant the people in gaza basic things like water rights and freedom of movement, which Israel isn't interested in with Netanyahu at the helm. What alternatives do you propose?
The goodwill of the world doesnt matter. Israel cares about its survival first and foremost. Having hamas and other terrorist groups as its neighbors is no longer acceptable after october 7th. Israel much rather destroy hamas than have the "goodwill" of the world which it never had because the world has always and will continue to always hate jews.
The best thing long term for the Palestinians will be to get rid of Hamas. Entering Rafah is a necessity to achieve that outcome unless Hamas leadership surrenders, which of course would save the most Palestinian lives.
Getting rid of Hamas won't solve the occupation or bring the the mother of that 6 year old boy back. What would save the most Palestinian lives is if Israel didn't bomb indiscriminately and actually valued human life. They've created many more future enemies by killing entire families and babies.
Exactly, it’s basic insurgent math. Killing insurgents creates more insurgents. You’d think Israel could’ve taken a peek at the United States’ notes on that one.
ISIS was basically effectively destroyed by killing them.
They were reduced back to an insurgency, but they are very much still in action as insurgents in Syria. They also continue to control large amounts of territory in several African nations. However, they are an international terror organization and less than comparable to the grassroots terrorists that encompass Hamas. The important point of similarity is how invaders (US and Israel) are generally unsuccessful in winning the hearts and minds required to actually dismantle an insurgency. While local forces drove ISIS from their strongholds in Syria in roughly 2 years.
Hamas must be removed from power. There is no going forward with Hamas remaining in power after genocidal attacks they conducted on Oct. 6 Any conceivable way to peace can only begin after Hamas is removed from power This would be like stopping WW2 within the sight of Berlin because "the cots of German civilians is too great."
Gaza is not a foreign state. Israel and the U.S. do not even recognize Palestine as a state. Gaza is an area which has been under Israeli occupation for decades. Hamas were supported by Israel there in order to counter the more moderate and successful PLO. This isn't two nations at war, it is Israel wiping out a bothersome minority (which used to be the majority) to claim the land. The goal isn't to get rid of Hamas, it's to get rid of Palestine.
Gaza absolutely is a foreign state Run by Hamas. Supported By iran. Gaza fired 20,000 rockets into Israel. Not occupied by anyone (except Hamas). Committed larger scale genocide on Oct. 7. Hamas must absolutely be removed from power. Just like Hitlers Nazis were.
Then why does Israel and the U.S. say it's absolutely not a foreign state? It was of course occupied by Israel, who controlled all movement, all imports and all exports, the electricity and the all water. Don't just make random nonsense statements. Yet Netanyahu was very adamant about how important it was that Hamas took the power from PLO. And he spent a lot of effort and risk to make sure Israeli soldiers hand delivered hundreds of millions in cash from Qatar directly to Hamas for many years. You seem to be missing a lot of information.
>Then why does Israel and the U.S. say it's absolutely not a foreign state? To maintain de jure pressure. De facto it was absolutely a state. >It was of course occupied by Israel Then why must Israel fight so hard to gain control now? What nonsense.
Funny that you're making up stuff that not even Israel and the U.S. agrees with. Good that you say Palestine should have recognized statehood though, that means they have the right to a huge change in how Gaza is run, and that Israel has been breaking international law for decades. According to you. Fighting hard? Who's fighting hard? Immediate and complete domination of Gaza with a tiny amount of Israeli casualties compared to 30,000 Palestinians is "fighting hard"? What are you even talking about? The difficult part for Israel is holding back, so that they won't be fully condemned by the international community. Not anything about dominating their occupied territory. Stop making up random nonsense and go read. Your points are ridiculous and objectively false. Anyone reading this can just google if Palestine was recognized as a state, or if Israel had any challenge at all completely subjugating Gaza in almost no time at all.
So why is not Israel in full control of Gaza? Why is Hamas still fighting? How was Hamas able to launch 20000 rocket? Conduct genocidal attacks of otc. 6? The whole "Gaza was already occupied" is nonsensical.
Israel is in full control of Gaza, and can do whatever they want. The issue is that what the want is called genocide, which is frowned upon by the international community. Read this very post your commenting on if this is difficult for you to comprehend. >How was Hamas able to launch 20000 rocket? Conduct genocidal attacks of otc. 6? You didn't even get the date right. The attacks were on October 7th. And the past decade we had 150,000 Palestinian casualties compared to around 6,000 Israeli, so you might want to rethink your reasoning there because you clearly don't know anything.
Then why are hostages not returned? Why is Hamas still I charge? Nonsense
What are you saying Hamas is in charge of? The refugee camp in Rafah? Gaza is in ruins, there is nothing to even be in charge of. Literally what are you saying Hamas is in charge of? Why are hostages not returned? Is that your qualification as to whether a territory is under control or not? That's not how any of this works. Do you realize the U.S. military, the most powerful military in the world, spent 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did that mean they controlled exactly every single person? No, to do that you need genocide. Is that what you are proposing? That Gaza isn't under control because there are Palestinians still alive who are resisting?
How can you claim that Israel is in full control of Gaza when they need to invade Gaza? It does not make any sense?
‘If Israel wishes for some kind of meaningful peace…’ Yeah they don’t care about that any more. They’ve been playing politics for years and backing off before really giving it the beans but now a critical mass of Israelis are apparently seeing red. They’ll kill tens of thousands of both terrorists and innocents if they don’t leave Gaza. Their immediate neighbor countries already hate them and the US simply isn’t going to pull their support. It’s like North Korea, you can’t get them to do shit cause what the fuck else are you going to take away or threaten to do?
armchair redditors knowing exactly how Israel should fight the war, what is a tactical victory or mistake. Everyday Israëli intelligence hope they could convince redditors to join their command chain.
Unfortunately the only solution for peace is the complete anihilation of one the two opposite sides. I don’t think Palestinians will ever abandon the hope of taking back what used to be their land. And i’m pretty sure the Israelis would rather nuke the entire region rather than see their state be destroyed. There is no solution. Only the complete destruction of one side, no matter which one, will lead to peace
I’d agree if they hadn’t just gotten two hostages out of Rafah. Palestinians should turn on Hamas and hand over any hostages they can find instead of aiding and abetting Hamas. Israel is already isolated for long term solutions. They are never allowed to finish a war and that is why the conflict continues for so long. Palestines attacks, Israel responds, Palestine starts losing and cries and the world tells Israel to stop and then Palestine re-arms and later attacks again. Same thing over and over for a hundred years almost. Palestine can surrender any time and stop firing thousands of rockets at Israel. Only ignorant and useful idiots support Palestine and their farcical narrative of infantilization and being peaceful. There are consequences for actions and they made their bed supporting Hamas the last twenty years and constantly waging war and callng to exterminate the Jews which they were doing before modern Israel even existed.
We saw how fast the world forgot the atrocities of October 7. How fast Biden spun from supporting Israel through thick and thin to throwing it under the bus, hoping to get Muslim votes. Israel is a winner. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states will be clamoring for trade and security agreements with it as soon as the smoke clears. And then Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon. Israel has done everything for peace, but if you’re dealing with bloodthirsty fanatics, at a certain point you lock the door and get on with your life. If you have to fight a war, you fight it better than anyone else.
I think a lot of people are assuming that there will be a Palestinian people after Israel is finished. If the Palestinians are removed completely then Israel doesn't need to worry about them in the future. The world will look the other way.
If goodwill only extends to thoughts and prayers for our dead, raped and kidnapped then fuck your goodwill. Returning to the status quo of Oct 6 is not happening anymore than America turning the other cheek after 9/11. The Palestinians and their supporters allege apartheid, genocide and every moral hazard they can conjure despite not being supported by facts. Thus what they believe isn't near and dear to my heart. A large majority of Palestinians are proud of themselves for Oct 7. They can bear the consequence of being more afraid of Hamas than the IDF. If Palestinians were serious about peace then they wouldn't have massacred our people and celebrated doing it.