So they’re effectively saying all Palestinians on Gaza are responsible. I get that there’s anger, but that is just completely insane.
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Isn’t that the general philosophy of every war that has ever happened? The whole civilians are not the target thing is just propaganda and always has been.
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The answer that emerged was deceptively simple: make the right choice where America made the wrong one. Israel should launch a targeted counterrorism operation aimed at Hamas leadership and the fighters directly involved in the October 7 attack, one that focuses on minimizing both civilian casualties and the scope of ground operations in Gaza. “Go in for a few weeks or less, trying to find Hamas leaders and destroying tunnels, weapons caches, etc…"
I thought we have been told that Hamas is intertwined with the civil population, that they have a tunnel network that goes everywhere throughout Gaza and that they keep weapons in schools and hospitals? Are they going to fight back when Israel walks in? Are there going to be grenades, snipers, etc? What are the Israeli police supposed to do when they spot a Hamas bad guy and he runs into a school with a AK-47? Weren’t thousands of Hamas/Palestinians involved in the raids? You only want to go after the leaders? The rest get a free pass? With if the leaders just get replaced?
It’s pretty clear that the world needs to choose among imperfect options when dealing with terrorism.
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If Israel wants to punish an entire population and identify with the tactics of the likes of Bashar al-Assad, it speaks volumes. Even worse than him, since the Palestinians are completely locked in.
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I don’t disagree. .
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When you read about some of the horror stories of torture and rape involved in the raids, you can appreciate why some Israelis might be against just killing the Hamas leaders and quickly moving towards setting up a Palestinian state.
Obviously, that’s understandable. It should be a red flag for people seeking policy solutions though.
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Because this always works so well, and especially there.
Or if you want, itcouldworkforus.gif
The only way to be sure to remove Hamas from Gaza is to remove all Palestinians. Even if you could remove Hamas with surgical precision, what remains would be fertile ground for the next Hamas-like organization to inevitably grow.
But to remove all Palestinians from Gaza is gross. But to not remove them subjects Israelis to a more fear-filled life.
It’s wrong to just clear out Gaza, but it’s not wrong for Israelis to feel like they want to clear out Gaza. The Israelis who feel that way are human, not evil. Think of Israel like a rape victim. Imagine being lectured publicly and repeatedly about how you are supposed to feel about this massive crime done against you, how maybe you brought this on yourself by the way you acted.
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That is a pretty bad analogy and I am a bit surprised it has a few likes. Rape victims have done nothing to their attackers. Same obviously cannot be said of Israel. Neither side is innocent here which is why it’s so intractable.
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Major cities in Germany and Japan were leveled in WWII with no real military targets in sight.
I’m not saying it was right. Just saying it’s been a pretty common tactic in war to level civilian infrastructure.
I think it’s a good analogy for the emotions that Israelis are feeling right now that has relevance for modeling how we expect them to behave in the future. I also don’t think we should assign some sort of collective guilt to the Israeli people any more than we should assign some sort of collective guilt to Palestinians for the existence of Hamas.
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Right, you could flip this logic and say Palestinians calling for the elimination of Israel are just human and not evil since the only way for them to be 100% safe from having their homes stolen or killed by settlers (at least in the West Bank) is for Israel not to exist.
Or apply this logic to the us after 9/11 and calling for the elimination of all Afghanis would not be evil since as we’ve seen just trying to remove the Talban didn’t work.
It was a common tactic. Total war is less likely now. The horrors of WW2 led to some shifting viewpoints on war and international law. The invention of the atomic bomb may have had something to do with it. If it is considered permissible to target civilians, then why not just drop a nuke?
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These are natural, human emotions. The struggle is to rise up above what comes naturally.
Sure they are natural, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t evil or that we shouldn’t lecture them about why they are wrong.
Edit - I think though the focus of our “lecturing” should not be on individual Israelis who may very well be 100% innocent, but on the Israeli government, as they are trying to use this as a shield to justify doing whatever they want and attacking anyone who criticizes them as anti-Semitic (see the recent beef with Greta Thurnberg).
I try to save my lecturing for non-Israelis right now. For any Israeli who has an opinion, I’d rather listen and try to ask questions.
Not that it matters or affects anything, by my main talking points in discussions with others outside of here are to try and get Americans to be as negative towards Netanyahu as Israelis are. To pro-Israel Democrats, my goal is to get them to remember how the American response to 9/11 was bad and to apply those lessons to now, but I’ve also gotten a new appreciation for why people went nuts back then and I feel like maybe I’ve been too harsh int he past on people who were initially for the so-called “war” on terror.
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