Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, outside a morgue in Rafah, southern Gaza, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, outside a morgue in Rafah, southern Gaza, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
Blame Hamas. It is their strategy to take hostages, surround themselves with women and children to use as human shields, refuse to let them leave, and to engage and intentional martyrdom. They built the tunnels under their city, hid the shafts in schools and apartment buildings, hospitals, and did not evacuate when they were advised to. They used the tunnels, the construction of which was funded by Iran and North Korea, as an instrumentality of terrorism. Dropping bombs on every tunnel entrance–from which the October 7 attackers emerged and retreated into–is the literal definition of a proportionate response: a direct strike on the means of the aggression, on the enemy’s ability to repeat the attack.
I’m only saying what the result will be of Israel’s current strategy. Long term they are only creating more potential enemies. They may defeat Hamas, but they’re just creating the foundation for the next generation terror group, with record numbers of people willing to join their ranks. Strategically, it’s the worst possible approach for a stable and secure future for Israel - unless the goal is to annihilate anyone that has motive to hate Israel, which snowballs very quickly into every Palestinian as the more you murder, the more family members are left behind that resent Israel.
Do you want a real chance of peace in Israel? Truely work on a better and safer future for the Israeli people and create an undisputed Zionist state? Do whatever you can to create a livable situation for Palestinians, in which they don’t get treated like second rank citizens. Where they are free to work and travel as they desire. Where they can live like human beings like you and me, rather than being treated as prisoners, animals or worse. Where they have no need to feel like they must fight for their survival.
But Netanyahu doesn’t care, all he cares about is that the focus is off of him, his attempt at dictatorship and whatever lawsuits he’s trying to dodge. By the time the effects of his current policy come through, he’ll be dead of old age anyway.
I mean, the IDF have basically found the one “solution” to an entrenched guerilla populace. Mass ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The reason why the Taliban and all the other extremist groups could rely upon “kill one terrorist and you make five more” is because even the Soviet Union didn’t want to completely wipe out the populace of Afghanistan. The IDF has demonstrated they have zero qualms about that. You have family members full of resentment… until they get murdered too.
And it isn’t like neighboring countries will accept many Palestinian refugees that will become (yet another) force in the future. Palestine has pretty much always been supported only as far as it inconvenienced Israel with no nations actually caring about the people.
I wish peace were on the table. But the idea that the IDF can’t “win” is ignoring the reality of what they are doing.
There’s still a long way from the current 20-something thousand death to 2 million. Literally 100 times as many. That’s even ignoring the Palestinians in the West Bank. I sure as hell hope that Israel stops or is stopped long before they get to those numbers. Killing all Palestinians is literal holocaust levels of murder.
If genociding all Palestinians is the only way to “win” for the IDF, then I hope with all my heart that the IDF loses big time, and I sure as hell would assume any normal thinking human being agrees with me, as there is no way you can consider yourself moral person and at the same time be okay with the slaughtering of 2 million people.
Well they’re hoping to scare the rest away, essentially what the US did to the Native Americans. If they do a Trail of Tears, it’s still ethnic cleansing, but it’s easier to spin. Even though, I want to emphasize, it’s still ethnic cleansing to cleanse Palestine of all the Palestinians.
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Terrorist attacks are the only weapon they have. No one gives a shit about them so the angriest ones lash out. It’s not great, but it happens in bad places, especially occupied, colonized, or very poor ones. Otherwise you get the West Bank where they just slowly let themselves get killed off and lose their land and still no one does anything about it.
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Israel has never seriously offered 2 state solution. They’ve dangled terrible deals that no one would take, even them in the Palestinian position, or they’ve withdrawn at the first sign or excuse, whether it was related to ongoing deals or not. The only time they got close, their leader was assassinated by a a radical Zionist. They still haven’t followed the conditions of deals they have agreed to, like retreating to pre-1967 borders in the first UN accords, they continue to expand settlements and don’t grant autonomy like they said they would in the 1978 Camp David Accords or the Oslo Accords. Every time Israel tries to push off actually dealing with a Palestinian state, water rights, Palestinians being able to return to homes they were kicked out of, or expanding settlements for another 5 years. Even a US negotiator and Jimmy Carter during the Camp David negotiations said they wouldn’t have taken the deal Israel offered to the Palestinians.
Basically, Israel and the US always finds the line for Palestinians and tries to make a deal beyond that line, or pushes off the biggest issues of a sovereign state into the future. When Palestinians try to go back to an earlier deal, Israel and the US creates new terms that are beyond the line again. It shows a lack of good faith in actually wanting to make a deal. They dangle peace but don’t actually want it. What they want is all the land, no native Palestinians to deal with, and they want the international community to get off their back.
And no, I’d be very unhappy if a homeless man killed my family. But even I would realize that it’s way more likely to be a homeless man or gang member or someone like that who killed my whole family than a well rested, sheltered, mentally stable citizen. That wouldn’t mean I’d want to kill all homeless people, though. From an emotional standpoint, maybe I’d want to initially, but it’s the job of others to know that it wouldn’t help, that it would be better to solve the underlying conditions of homelessness. I’m not defending it, I’m explaining why it happens so we can stop it from keep happening.
After all, there would just be more homeless people made after I killed them all, because it’s a systemic issue. Same thing with Hamas. Killing them all isn’t a solution, it’s solving the underlying system of oppression that produces them. It’s the job of people with calmer minds or who went through this shit before or who study history, like us Americans who made similar mistakes after 9/11 or studied what happened to the Native Americans, to put a stop to it and implement actual solutions even if they’re not as satisfying as violence, to save others from the same fate in the future.
I agree completely. Still it’s Hamas that fucked things up in Gaza. The enemy of all peaceful people is nationalism and authoritarianism.
In my view Israel’s blockade and occupation of Gaza was illegal. But Gaza is now a failed state and it has neither the resources nor ability to make itself safe or to govern itself.
Israel, as its neighbor, has now a superior claim, by way of irredentism. Terrorists don’t get to have their own state. Failed states don’t get left to their own fate, neighbors have to help.
E: Wow, me and this other reply to your post both said nearly the same thing.
The thing is Israel has no intention to help the people of Gaza. They have literally said so. So if they will not help the people of Gaza, they will either do exactly what you say is not an option: leave Gaza to their own fate, or they will take the land without helping the people of Gaza, which amounts to ethnic cleansing.
To be in the right (and I say this lightly, as taking Gaza would definitely be nothing more than occupying a country through an invasion), Israel needs to either claim Gaza and make the Gazan people full citizens of Israel, including all the rights that come with that (which is, if other parts of Israel and the occupied areas of the West Bank are anything to go by, is not going to happen), or they need to leave Gaza alone, including the removal of any blockade or occupation, and give Gaza a realistic chance at being it’s own state.
Well, I will say, if they don’t fix Gaza as beneveolent irredentists would do, they’re going to have big problems doing anything on the world stage because if they’ve rooted out Hamas and destroyed its ability to carry out additional attacks and then afterward do fuck all for the civilians who just want to live and work in peace with their families because that would make liars and fools out of people like me, who believe any country with democratic ideals is a precious jewel among the absolute authoritarian shithole theocracies that surround it. If they don’t fix it, it’s called annexation, it would make Israel a Pariah. I sure hope you are wrong.
The Israeli people are going to need to throw Bibi out after this, too, for the same reason; it’s not disimilar from what Americans must do next election to maintain credibility as a democracy. This is part of separating the government of Israel from the people of Israel. There’s a popular mandate to destroy Hamas after October 7, in my opinion doing so is both moral and just, and derives the greater benefit to humanity. But the longer and more bloody, the less popular it will be and the political will for further violence will evaporate. That part of democracy, too; it won’t be too disimilar from the circumstances in America which ended the war in Vietnam and Lyndon Johnson’s political career.
Admittedly, Israel’s current plan for Gaza after the war is a bit hazy at best (as in, they still don’t appear to have one). However, early on, Israel claimed that “We shall demolish it and it will never be built again.” and that they “take no responsibility for life on the Gaza strip after the war” (source: https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2023/10/20/israel-to-take-no-responsibility-for-life-on-gaza-strip-after-war-says-defence-minster/?outputType=amp).
I sure hope they have changed their mind and will have an actual plan to help the Gazan people, but I am nowhere near as optimistic as you. I do not consider Israel an “absolute jewel” with democratic ideals. Israel is just as much a “shithole theocracy” as the countries surrounding it. The difference is that they have the money for an extensive (and I mean extensive) propaganda and lobbying machine. The amount of policies, organisations and projects of Israel to give it a positive name in the Western world is absolutely insane, and the fact that so many exist in the first place tells you enough about the true intentions of the country. A true democracy would not need to control public opinion nearly as much.
Access denied to your link.
It’s not a “true” democracy, it’s a “flawed” democracy. Same as America. Under political science standards. And because it’s a democracy it’s susceptible to factions, and a faction is in charge there right now that must be thrown out. Same as America recently was and may soon be again.
Hama’s isn’t helping anybody but there’s a reason they’ve appeared, I don’t agree with anything they do but Israel kinda created this. Zionism is as much of a problem as Islamic terrorism and when the entire MO is to claim a region that somebody already lives in you’re literally asking for a response.
Well, yeah. Zionism is idiotic, based on mysticism and superstition. Wish we had some kind of mind control space laser neurolizer or something that could free the middleeast from such hysterics. 99% of all of this is because these guys here don’t like the way these guys over here do a thing that does not affect them in any way, and also, they cannot agree on the hours of operation or whatever for various piles of rocks. Eventually, mankind will reject religion, unless religion drags us into nuclear winter first. Rocks are not life. I wish they’d understand that. I wonder what the alternate reality is like if humanity had not this ball and chain?
Shut the fuck up. You know why the tunnels exist? Because without them the blockade would starve out Gaza.
Oh really North Korea and Iran funded Hamas and Hezbollah to build those tunnels because they are so generous and caring and just wanted to feed the people Gaza?
Grow up.