Well I suppose to some, an unguided rocket could be more similar to a shove than an bullet but I’m not in that camp.
But you keep saying things like “Israeli response has been to kill 100 people”. You’ve gone and mixed consequence with intent. The Israeli response has not been to kill civilians (Hamas’ is by the way) it has been to attack rocket launch sites deliberately placed amongst civilians and consequently some of those civilians have died.
It’s a reasonable assumption that having their crew and equipment constantly blown up (and the constant threat of same) has something to do with the fact that their success rate is very low.
It isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that (a) success in rocket attacks depends on experienced crew and careful ranging and other preparations and (b) the constant threat of being targeted and destroyed screws up careful preparations, and a high death rate among crew limits their overall level of experience.
These conclusions do not discount that all the factors you mention are also operating.
Again, these are all assumptions - we know (or at least, I know) very little about Hamas rocket crews. However, they are not, I think, unreasonable assumptions.
I do not think that this is a post hoc fallacy, as there is a reasonable mechanism of causation at work here. It isn’t like saying ‘the rooster crows and then the sun rises, so the rooster crowing causes the sun to rise’.
On the reasonable assumptions above - just taking them for granted for the moment, for the sake of argument - that Israeli airstrikes are causally connected to Hamas lack of success, then it makes no sense to take Hamas lack of success as proof of Israeli “brutality”.
Had black South Africans sworn to wipe out the whites? To drive them into the sea? Had there been a fifty-year history of black terrorism against whites? Great analogy.
I don’t know what you can do about Hamas but the other arab nations (including Mahmoud Abbas but not the representative from Hamas) have offered peace terms (Arab Peace Initiative - Wikipedia).
But what’s the point of making peace with guys who are not the guys you’re at war with?
For that price, why bother with any of these Arab nations? I’ll offer to make peace with the Israelis at far better terms.
Point is that making “peace” is only relevant if all the parties actually at war make peace. Otherwise you get nothing, and any concessions at all are pointless.
Do you feel the number of people killed makes no difference? If, say, China were to sink a South Korean merchant ship, would the same response be appropriate as would be if they nuked Seoul? (That’s a way more extreme example, but my point is just that not all attacks are equivalent, nor do they justify an equivalent response.)
No, I wouldn’t. I think Hamas’s actions here are morally wrong. As I’ve said, it does not necessarily follow from that that Israel’s response is either morally justified or in their own best interest, which are the questions I’d like to debate in this thread.
What do you think would be the consequences of doing nothing militarily?
Of course Israel would rather not be attacked at all, but still, some responses to an attack are more likely to serve their interests than others.
Again…no I wouldn’t.
All I know is that it seems pretty damn stupid to fire home-built unguided rockets at an enemy who has 21st century weaponry and little compunction about using it on you.
What I don’t quite understand is why the Israelis don’t just park some counter-battery radar and some 155 batteries around Gaza, and just do counter-battery fire when they pick up a missile coming their direction. Gaza’s so small, that they could probably nearly park a howitzer battery at the north end and hit the southern end.
Of course, if the rocket crews are firing from within population centers, that’ll get a bunch of civilians killed, which may be exactly what’s happening with the air-strikes.
Damuri Ajashi:
Hamas could break that impasse if it wanted to. Israel can’t afford to without Hamas’s willingness.
If done in a believable way, yes.
Responsibility for security would have to be part of the treaty arrangement.
It would be nice if this was one of those times, but it’s not.
I was scaling both the attack and response down. So the relevant question is, is the ratio (shooting one person)/(airstrikes that kill a hundred) more similar to the ratio (shoving someone)/(mostly ineffectual unguided rockets) or to the ratio (shooting someone)/(mostly ineffectual unguided rockets.)
I don’t mean to suggest that Israel wanted all those people dead, but only that they acted in a way that could have been reasonably expected to cause about that number of deaths, fair number of whom are innocent civilians. The fact that Israel would surely prefer to have weapons that could hit Hamas targets while avoiding all innocent civilians doesn’t necessarily mean they’re justified in using the weapons they do have.
Hamas, denied responsibility for the kidnapping while praising the action. Is Hamas usually shy about taking responsibility for these sort of things?
Israeli military arrested 350 and killed 5 in the West Bank.
The notion that anyone can say “well he started it” is almost laughable. This goes back 3 generations, noone and everyone started it.
Simpson’s reference, right?
To be clear, I’m not saying the fact that Hamas weren’t effective at killing people with their rockets makes the attempt in any way OK. But I do think the number of people killed, and the number of people likely to be killed by such an attack in the future, does factor in to what sort of response is appropriate.
My point is that you are never going to have peace there if the Israelis adopt your attitude. It will be continued conflict unless the Palestinians get the upper hand and then who knows. They might be like the blacks of South Africa and forgive their oppressors or they might be like the French Peasants during the revolution.
You said something about a survival instinct.
When you dismiss every possible avenue to a more permanent solution because it means you have to trust the other side, you will never have a more permanent solution. EVERY permanent solution I can think of requires trusting that the Palestinians aren’t just crazy bloodthirsty arabs.
Me too. I’d call it Jordan.
It touches on proportionality. If the rockets were killing thousands I think you could justify much more drastic measures than if the rockets were generally ineffective.
Its like throwing grenades and mortarfire at kids who are throwing rocks.
I don’t know if the attacks are proportional or not, my local news is spending all its time covering the world cup and tea party antics.
It’s hard to draw an exact line, but I think this is pretty far beyond where I would draw it. If Israel could dramatically reduce the chance of further rocket attacks by killing, say, 10 innocent people (and some number of Hamas members), I’d still feel pretty conflicted about it, given that the rocket attacks haven’t killed anyone. But somewhere around there, maybe I’d say “Yeah, that’s justified”. Killing 100 people while seemingly not having much effect on the attacks you wanted to stop doesn’t seem close to justified, all the more so because the Hamas attacks weren’t that effective anyway.
If the number you’d have to kill to end (or substantially curtail) the rocket attacks is way more than the number I could ever see being justified in response to a mostly ineffectual attack, then there really isn’t a middle ground of “the right amount of force”, and it becomes a case where responding with military force just isn’t a good option.
No, of course, you are right. There is nothing wrong with the way the Israelis are treating the Palestinians. They must be crazy to be upset about any of it.
It’s rhetoric because they know it ain’t gonna happen.
Do you think the South African whites treated the blacks better or worse or about the same as Israel is treating the Palestinians?
Which would be expanded to include the West Bank up to the Green Line (not up to the Wall).
And then the Gaza Strip can go to Egypt.
Agreed?
Or it might be that the Palestinians never get the upper hand. Or the entire dynamic could change in some unforseen way. Point is that just unilaterally caving in is just suicide. The other way, at least you have a shot.
OK, but I didn’t mean that they might cease to exist. Just that they wouldn’t want to be seriously harmed either.
In that case then there just are no permanent solutions.
The fact that you can’t think of a solution unless you make certain assumptions doesn’t make those assumptions any more likely to be true.
[Like a guy who can’t think of a solution to his terminal illness unless he assumes that Dr. Quack’s Miracle Cure is true. Doesn’t make it any more likely, and the fact that you “can’t think of another solution” is not part of the equation from a logical standpoint.]