Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Jimmy Higgins]

"Legitimate combat" is a moral figment of your imagination used to dehumanize one side and defend another side. Claiming that bombing noncombatants is "legitimate combat" makes the term meaningless.Geneva conventions

You really think that those who spent some much time and effort on drafting, implementing and maintaining these conventions were not interesting in legitimate combat? They were engaging in moral figmentation?

I think they spent much time and effort in making rules that 1) would keep their enemies hopefully in check, and 2) minimize blowback on themselves when they acted.

"Legitimate" is in the eye of the beholder or the maker of the rules.

Only the supporters of terrorism have a hard time distinguishing terrorism from valid targets.

Isn't there a distinction between a wider view on acceptable targets, verses support of a large scale slaughter?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Now the other side of the equation is what level of radicalization is being influenced by the Israeli military response.

None, because it's driven by the terror funding, not by Israeli actions.

The money that funds it is not driven by Israeli action. However, Israeli actions and spin on Israeli actions / inactions / non-actions / made up shit can and does.

Hamas always finds some pretext. Even when it's completely fake. (They have attacked Israel because a Gaza beachgoer hit a Hamas land mine.)

What is the Net gain? Your responses hinge on Israeli Response = Only Viable Response.

It will be longer before they hit Israel again.

Well, it was a while before the 10/7 attack. I'm not seeing that as being a relevant metric.

Consider the vast effort Hamas had to put into those tunnels--I've seen numbers of 10% of all construction material over a period of many years. Hamas obviously considers them very important. Israel likewise considers them very important. Should it not be obvious that their destruction will seriously limit Hamas for a long time to come?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They only want the destruction of Israel.

Your conclusion is inane There is no reason for Hamas to take hostages if all they care about is the destruction of Israel.

The last time they took a hostage they were able to trade him for some of the important people that were part of 10/7.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I usually start at the beginning of the 20th century. Things were quiet under Ottoman rule. Sure, there had been murderers, thieves, land swindlers, corrupt officials, bigoted assholes, organized crime, etc., but for four centuries the society was as peaceful as we human beings can usually manage. The millet system the Ottomans employed made their empire very egalitarian. The problems associated with it, namely that it fostered separatism, had been addressed by the reforms of the 19th century. All subjects of the Empire were equal in status, and all were equally protected. And since Palestine had been peaceful for centuries up to that point, I think it's sensible to start with the question "what changed?", and to seek the answer to the question " what can we learn from that time to help people living in Palestine find peace again?".

Start wherever you like. But if you find that the things you are discussing appear to have come out of nothing and nowhere, you are probably ignoring something important about the initial conditions.

Jim Crow as also basically peaceful.

What sources did you use to inform your opinion of Palestine under Ottoman rule?

Are you claiming that somehow Jews under the Ottomans had it much better than Jews on average?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Now the other side of the equation is what level of radicalization is being influenced by the Israeli military response.

None, because it's driven by the terror funding, not by Israeli actions.

The money that funds it is not driven by Israeli action. However, Israeli actions and spin on Israeli actions / inactions / non-actions / made up shit can and does.

Hamas always finds some pretext. Even when it's completely fake. (They have attacked Israel because a Gaza beachgoer hit a Hamas land mine.)

But we aren't talking Hamas, we are talking about Hamas being able to convince young males to kill themselves for the cause. Israeli actions do impact that part of the calculus. I'm not saying Israel is responsible for Hamas' desires, but that Israeli military actions make it easier for Hamas to get young people to do awful things.

What is the Net gain? Your responses hinge on Israeli Response = Only Viable Response.

It will be longer before they hit Israel again.

Well, it was a while before the 10/7 attack. I'm not seeing that as being a relevant metric.

Consider the vast effort Hamas had to put into those tunnels--I've seen numbers of 10% of all construction material over a period of many years. Hamas obviously considers them very important. Israel likewise considers them very important. Should it not be obvious that their destruction will seriously limit Hamas for a long time to come?

Your remark is ridiculous to the point of insulting. Obviously targeting tunnels would be a wise thing. I'm asking just how many tunnels are there. It has been four months. This is Gaza, not Texas!

Furthermore, my specific remark that you quoted was questioning how important the duration is between attacks, when the duration was decent before the October 7th atrocities. The magnitudes of the attacks matters quite a bit.

And finally, my questions have always been about the security of Israel and these attacks providing little towards it. Destroy some tunnels, kill a bunch of foot soldiers. What is the gain for Israeli security verses what is lost in the PR war that matters a lot more than you are willing to give credit? If you kill 20% of Hamas, but recruitment skyrockets, have you accomplished much of anything?

 

[laughing dog]

And finally, my questions have always been about the security of Israel and these attacks providing little towards it. Destroy some tunnels, kill a bunch of foot soldiers. What is the gain for Israeli security verses what is lost in the PR war that matters a lot more than you are willing to give credit? If you kill 20% of Hamas, but recruitment skyrockets, have you accomplished much of anything?

The apparent subtext for a number of defenders is, the only good Palestinian is a dead one.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The choice is between reality and delusion.

How do you propose Israel disengage entirely? Rockets can still fly over. Paragliders can still fly over. Children can plant bombs against the barrier fence and blow holes in it for infantry.

The same way it disengaged from Jordan and Egypt. Not all at once, not blindly, and not without strengthening Israel's defenses.

Peace with Jordan and Egypt came about because of the bomb. They understood nuclear diplomacy 101: never push a nuclear power to the wall. Furthermore, there was no vast funding for continuing the war, and they are moderate Islamic countries, not radical.

Hamas, however, is radical Islam and is specifically funded for the purposes of war. Radical Islam is incapable of making a true peace and if they were to make peace their funding would dry up--and be directed to someone else who would take the path of war. Hamas is a symptom, not the disease.

The first step is for you to be sincere about wanting peace more than you want conquest, or revenge, or to exploit the situation for your own benefit. Then comes the negotiation, then the implementation of the negotiated deal. Then comes the hard part: upholding your end of the deal even if there's pressure to resume the war coming from the haters and exploiters.

The Oslo Accords fell apart when the haters in Israel murdered the Prime Minister backing the plan and the people who wanted the deal to go through stopped fighting for it. It's time to try again.

I'm not finding the more detailed rebuttal I found before but:

A legal overview of the Palestinians’ Oslo compliance - JNS.org

The international community must demand Palestinian accountability and call on the Palestinian leadership to abide by its commitments.

www.jns.org

Hamas will not accept the existence of Israel. Thus the war will exist so long as both Israel and Hamas exist.

"Let's find a way to work together" assumes both parties are interested in working together and has no relevance to the current situation.

Okay, I'm going to say this again, in color:

IMO Hamas must be defeated on the ground and at the ballot box. There are too many violent bigoted assholes in the organization for it to live up to the ideals expressed in its Charter.

The "violent assholes" are it's very leadership. And they aren't going to permit a ballot box.

I also think Likud and the faction Netanyahu leads must also be defeated or at least sidelined. There are too many violent bigoted assholes in his coalition for anyone to trust them to be sincere about honoring a negotiated peace. It's much more likely they'd be calling for the death of the Prime Minister who negotiated the deal, just like they did the last time.

The people of Gaza are not Hamas and the Palestinians are more than just the people of Gaza, in the same way that Israelis are not all Zionists living the West Bank settlements. Hamas and militant Zionists are a huge part of the problem, but not a huge part of the general public. They should not be allowed to destroy the peace that most people want just because they want land, or revenge, or power.

Yeah, everything is the fault of the Jews. Blaming Islam is blasphemy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Wikipedia lists some.

The problem is that direct sources are not likely to be online and not likely to be in English and thus are in the realm of historians, not Google.

Note that that article about Algeria treated it as if it were a normal thing--because that's how the world was back then. Jews got massacred now and then.

Wikipedia lists some what? Some pogroms that happened in different places at different times under different governing authorities? Which ones are relevant to this discussion? Remember, we're talking about Jews living under Ottoman rule in Palestine. If you think the pogroms carried out by Cossacks in Ukraine are relevant, you'll have to explain the relevance.

Also, if you don't have access to direct sources, what are you using as a source and what makes you think it's reliable? What informs your opinion of life for Jews under Ottoman rule?

Wikipedia lists some things in Palestine.

And it's more a case of the dog not barking. Read that report out of Algeria again--note the tone. Horrific, but not exactly abnormal. It reads about like we would expect to read of hurricane damage. And look at all the head-in-sand about the expulsion/extermination of Jews from Muslim lands. Doing bad things to Jews is the norm. Why should we believe that things were better under the Ottomans than they were elsewhere?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Reality check: Even Hamas admits 6,000 of it's people are dead. That's 20%. Are 20% of all Gazans dead? Even using Hamas numbers we are at about 1% of civilians dead. Last I saw Israel was saying 30% of Hamas was dead, but there do not seem to be decent reporting on the numbers anymore. In what world is 20% small relative to 1%??

Last report I saw was over 28 thousand dead Gazans.

By Hamas: 29,000 dead Gazans. 6,000 dead Hamas. 29,000 - 6,000 = 23,000 civilians. That's slightly under 1% of the population.

If we project forward the previous pattern from when we had better casualty data we get 29,000 * 40% = 11,600 Hamas and thus 18,400 civilians, .8% of the population.

Also, a source that's clearly not friendly to Israel:

US estimate shows Hamas death toll much less than Israel's aims

The Palestinian group has lost only 20-30 percent of its fighters and is far from being eradicated, US intelligence agencies conclude

www.middleeasteye.net

20%-30% of Hamas killed. That's 6,000 to 9,000. That's a month old, the current numbers would be higher.

Nobody's coherent claims put the civilian death rate above 1%, nor put the Hamas death rate below 20%.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hamas leadership isn't in Gaza, they can't be destroyed

I think it would have been a far more effective response to have concentrated on finding them and destroying them.

How would IDF do that?
As has been pointed out, over and over, Gazans are radicalized. They're violent.

Killing Hamas leadership won't change that.

And how would IDF find and destroy Hamas without attacking Qatar? Might be better to attack Iran. Would you agree that bombing Iran is a good idea, from the standpoint of Israeli security?
Tom

Israel has often used targeted assassination, including in Iran.

Often?? They have had a few spectacular hits in Muslim territory.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There are more than two options.

1) Co-exist with the Gazans in a mutually beneficial partnership
This would be ideal. But for that, Gazans would have to want to live in peace next to Israel. Instead, they want to destroy Israel.

Hamas wants to destroy the "Zionist entity". The Palestinian Authority wants to have a Palestinian State, which may or may not be closely confederated with Israel but would definitely be dedicated to the welfare of the Palestinian people.

IMO, ordinary Palestinians want to mind their own business as they go about living peaceful, boring, ordinary lives.

Ordinary Palestinians want to liberate the "occupied territory": Israel.

3) Disengage entirely. Let the Gazans manage their own affairs and resources.

That was tried in 2005. The result was that Hamas took over and started shooting rockets into Israel, started digging tunnels into Israel etc. Culminating in the atrocities of 10/7. That attack was the result of letting "the Gazans manage their own affairs".

Looks like you and Sinwar have a lot in common.

No, disengagement wasn't tried.

Israel sent its ships to patrol Gazan waters and keep Gazan fishermen close to shore. It intercepted ships carrying aid to Gaza on the high seas. It blocked the development of Gazan natural gas deposits by Gazans and instead diverted the supply to Israel, I could go on giving instance after instance of Israel not letting Gazans manage their own affairs, but you already know Israel has a stranglehold on Gaza and Netanyahu and his faction have no intention of letting go.

It tried to prevent the smuggling of weapons.

Israel would have been entirely within it's rights to send that "aid" convoy to the bottom when they resisted inspection. What they actually did was far, far below that.

As for that gas--that's a border dispute, not simply stealing. I'm not having any luck finding the maps I saw years ago but it comes down to exactly where you project the economic rights boundary between Israel and Gaza. Gaza is using a slightly different projection angle such that the fields are in the Gazan area.

The choice isn't between Kill or Die.

It is when the other side is a bunch of fanatics who are trying to kill you.

Palestinian culture must change for peace to be a viable possibility.

'Let's find a way to work together' and MYOB are perfectly valid options, too.

Only when the other side finally stops trying to kill you.

That's what peace is for.

Peace happens when both sides want peace, or when one side is no longer capable of war.

Hamas does not want peace, Hamas continues to be funded/armed for war. Thus there will not be peace.

 

[TomC]

Often?? They have had a few spectacular hits in Muslim territory.

Clearly not often enough to prevent Hamas violence on October 7 last year.

Too bad other international bodies, like the UN can't bring the Gazan terrorists to account. At least well enough to prevent the destruction of Gaza.

It isn't like the UN didn't know about it. Their staff helped with it.
Tom

 

[TomC]

Hamas does not want peace, Hamas continues to be funded/armed for war. Thus there will not be peace.

Unfortunately, it's not just Hamas. If Israel killed every leader of Hamas, other people would take their place.
It's Islamic culture.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The choice is between reality and delusion.

How do you propose Israel disengage entirely? Rockets can still fly over. Paragliders can still fly over. Children can plant bombs against the barrier fence and blow holes in it for infantry.

The same way it disengaged from Jordan and Egypt. Not all at once, not blindly, and not without strengthening Israel's defenses.

Peace with Jordan and Egypt came about because of the bomb. They understood nuclear diplomacy 101: never push a nuclear power to the wall. Furthermore, there was no vast funding for continuing the war, and they are moderate Islamic countries, not radical.

Hamas, however, is radical Islam and is specifically funded for the purposes of war. Radical Islam is incapable of making a true peace and if they were to make peace their funding would dry up--and be directed to someone else who would take the path of war. Hamas is a symptom, not the disease.

The first step is for you to be sincere about wanting peace more than you want conquest, or revenge, or to exploit the situation for your own benefit. Then comes the negotiation, then the implementation of the negotiated deal. Then comes the hard part: upholding your end of the deal even if there's pressure to resume the war coming from the haters and exploiters.

The Oslo Accords fell apart when the haters in Israel murdered the Prime Minister backing the plan and the people who wanted the deal to go through stopped fighting for it. It's time to try again.

I'm not finding the more detailed rebuttal I found before but:

A legal overview of the Palestinians’ Oslo compliance - JNS.org

The international community must demand Palestinian accountability and call on the Palestinian leadership to abide by its commitments.

www.jns.org

Isn't it hard to really gage any particular success with Oslo accords after Netanyahu et al. fanned the flames that got Rabin assassinated... and shortly after, Netanyahu took control? Any chance Oslo had (and who knows if there ever was one) died with Rabin and Netanyahu's succession to power.

I also think Likud and the faction Netanyahu leads must also be defeated or at least sidelined. There are too many violent bigoted assholes in his coalition for anyone to trust them to be sincere about honoring a negotiated peace. It's much more likely they'd be calling for the death of the Prime Minister who negotiated the deal, just like they did the last time.

The people of Gaza are not Hamas and the Palestinians are more than just the people of Gaza, in the same way that Israelis are not all Zionists living the West Bank settlements. Hamas and militant Zionists are a huge part of the problem, but not a huge part of the general public. They should not be allowed to destroy the peace that most people want just because they want land, or revenge, or power.

Yeah, everything is the fault of the Jews. Blaming Islam is blasphemy.

How in the fuck did you scrape that from Arctish's text?

 

[laughing dog]

Nobody's coherent claims put the civilian death rate above 1%, nor put the Hamas death rate below 20%.

If there are 28,000 dead and 9,000 are Hamas, then 19,000 are noncombatants. Hamas killed less than 2000 noncombatants. So ratio of Gazan to Israeli civilian death rate is more than 9 to 1.

 

[laughing dog]

Hamas does not want peace, Hamas continues to be funded/armed for war. Thus there will not be peace.

Unfortunately, it's not just Hamas. If Israel killed every leader of Hamas, other people would take their place.
It's Islamic culture.

Do you mean it is extremism in Islam culture? Otherwise, your observation is hogwash.

 

[TomC]

If there are 28,000 dead and 9,000 are Hamas, then 19,000 are noncombatants. Hamas killed less than 2000 noncombatants. So ratio of Gazan to Israeli civilian death rate is more than 9 to 1.

Hamas started a battle that has, so far, cost 30,000 lives.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If you go back to May, that was when there was an exchange of fire between Israel and Gaza. The Israelis claimed to have assassinated a couple of people they claimed were militants,

"They claimed were militants"? You are seriously doubting that?

Did you see any evidence that supported the claim? I suppose Israel had reasons to kill those men but I have no idea if they were militants, couriers, smugglers, money launderers, or had some other business in Gaza that the Israelis did not what them to successfully conclude.

Israel is going to set up an assassination of anyone they don't consider an important combatant. It obviously is possible that they were mistaken but history shows they are normally right--although sometimes their targets escape into the tunnels when an incoming attack is spotted.

Also, militant is too neutral itself. The Islamic Jihad functionaries who were sent to their 72 virgins were terrorists. Let's call spade a spade and dispense with euphemisms like "militants" even though you do not want to concede even that much.
Also, the assassination was the result of Islamic Jihad shooting >100 missiles into Israel. You failed to mention that. I wonder why.

Are you talking about the exchange of fire in May? I did note that responses to responses to historical responses are part of the pattern of violence in Israel and Palestine. I did not exclude any of those acts of violence from consideration.

Well, look at history. Hamas (yeah, they may claim to be IJ, but there's no way IJ would shoot without Hamas permission) pokes and pokes, eventually Israel goes stomp. When there's no poking there's no stomping. The cycle is very easy to break: quit poking the porcupine. Note that the news rarely reports the pokes because they're too common.

along with more than a dozen civilians. Apparently there were reasons the Israelis decided to commit multiple murders in a place outside Israel's borders. Obviously that sort of thing, and the deaths of ordinary people going about their everyday lives, fuels the fighting.

Killing terrorists is not "murder". It is not when US does it; it is not when Israel does it either.

The question of where to begin a discussion of the conflict is going to heavily influence why we think it is happening, which will in turn affect how we think it might be resolved.

We can go far back indeed. That does not change the culpability of Hamas and the wider Gazan society in the 10/7 massacre. It cannot be justified with things like Israel taking out Islamic Jihad commanders in May in response to rocket fire by that terrorist group.

Then the path to peace leads through Israel having defensible borders and NOT continuing to put its people in harm's way in those illegal settlements.

If you look at the map, the 1967 borders are not very defensible. Israel proper is very narrow between Caesarea and Tel Aviv. Disengaging from Judea and Samaria would risk it being taken over by Hamas and it becoming Gaza-like, only much bigger and closer to major Israeli population centers.

If the goal is security, then ffs Israel needs to keep its civilians inside the boundaries the Palestinians and Israelis agreed were the borders of the State of Israel, and get onboard with a Two State solution.

The Two State Solution is a worthy goal. But Palestinians are nowhere near ready to have a state. Gaza has proven that conclusively.

What arrogance. The Palestinian Authority has just as much ability to run a State as the Jewish Agency for Palestine had in May of 1948, if not more. And a lower body count with less ethnic cleansing to it's (dis)credit.

The Palestinians have engaged in complete ethnic cleansing of every area that has been under their control. I find it hard to believe that Israel can do more than 100%. Most Muslim nations have engaged in 99%+ ethnic cleansing.

From the 1948 war:

(Caution: Reddit will probably try to hijack this URL.)

https://i.redd.it/a552ezga279c1.jpeg

And the Arab lands in general:

Jewish exodus from the Muslim world - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And for those who think Wikipedia is unbiased:

List of ethnic cleansing campaigns - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Jewish exodus from Muslim countries, the flight of over 1 million Jews of the Islamic world, mainly Mizrahi and Sephardic. Many Arab governments, such as Gaddafi's Libya, Nasserist Egypt, and Hafez al-Assad's Syria, confiscated Jewish bank accounts and property of Jews who had departed, in addition to placing laws restricting Jewish business. The episode is sometimes labelled one of ethnic cleansing.

Talk about downplaying it!

The worst thing possible is to push for a premature Palestinian state in the aftermath of this war. Not only are conditions not ripe for one, a creation of a state would be seen facto a reward for the 10/7 massacre. Hamas is enjoying more than enough popularity as is.

If you want peace, don't let the extremists and the assholes control the agenda.

But that's exactly who controls the agenda on the Palestinian side.

In Gaza, yes. In the West Bank, not at the moment, although that could change if Abbas and Fatah can't improve lives for the people living there. Assholes and extremists are in charge on the Israeli side but it appears Netanyahu is losing support so there's hope for better statesmen and genuine peacemakers in the future.

Abbas and Fatah do not want to improve the lives for the people living there! They are terrorists with a veneer of respectability because they are no longer the most aggressive and thus don't receive anything like the funding.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Nobody's coherent claims put the civilian death rate above 1%, nor put the Hamas death rate below 20%.

If there are 28,000 dead and 9,000 are Hamas, then 19,000 are noncombatants. Hamas killed less than 2000 noncombatants. So ratio of Gazan to Israeli civilian death rate is more than 9 to 1.

I'd rather not get too lost in the numbers. We can be satisfied that more non-combatant Gazans have been killed than Israelis murdered on the October 7th attacks. It isn't apples to apples, and it really isn't as important to the question "What advantages does Israel have security relative to the cost of the IDF response?" And that cost includes those in the IDF that have been lost as well!

 

[TomC]

Hamas does not want peace, Hamas continues to be funded/armed for war. Thus there will not be peace.

Unfortunately, it's not just Hamas. If Israel killed every leader of Hamas, other people would take their place.
It's Islamic culture.

Do you mean it is extremism in Islam culture? Otherwise, your observation is hogwash.

Yes.
But as I've pointed out before
The problem isn't the quiet folks just trying to get through the day.
It's the violent ideologues. Which currently dominate Muslim culture and particularly Palestinian culture.
Tom