Discussion for the Israel-Hamas War: A thread in the Pit

The BBQ Pit
1041

Because then the Palestinians will be even more convinced than they already are that if they just keep fighting with Hamas tactics for just a little longer then one more UN resolution will finally come down to abolish the hated Zionist state.

This is not a “pro Palestinian” stance. To believe it is is absolutely fucking deluded. This is an attitude that will lead to Palestinians never accepting a two state solution without a full right of return to Israel proper - which means never accepting a deal that it is possible for Israel to accept.

And that means Israeli moderates working towards peace will be discredited; eventually it could even mean a Prime Minister like Ben Gvir, and then all the things that Hamas’ useful idiots have been squealing about - ethnic cleansing, starvation of Gazans, even genocide - could actually be on the table.

Now, regardless of what the West or the Palestinians do, there will always be plenty of left wing Israelis like myself, who resist that sort of nonsense. But if you make our goal - two independent, prosperous, peaceful states - completely impossible, by legitimizing Palestinian revanchism (“River to the Sea”) and delegitimazing the Zionist project (sEtTlEr CoLoNiAlIsM), then eventually, we will lose to people like Ben Gvir.

1042

What a grotesque twisting of the facts. Those aren’t Hamas’s civilians, they’re just people. And the bombs are dropped by IDF; Hamas’s atrocities and other shitty decisions in no way absolve IDF’s actions in committing these massacres. It’s horrific that you continue to let IDF off the hook for their killings.

1043

Since those things - starvation, ethnic cleansing, genocide (like those are separate things) are already “on the table” (because they’re happening right now), what the fuck do the Palestinians have to lose? I mean, seriously, what the hell do those poor starving, homeless people have to lose? “Eventually”? That’s their lived reality right now.

1044

I’m aware that many Israeli citizens are against your government’s war or the way it is conducted. If Israel lose international support, won’t the chances be better for a ceasefire?

1045

What the fuck are you talking about? Are you being intentionally obtuse? Because in no other discussion have I ever seen you act this fucking stupid.

The civilians are Gazans; Gaza’s government is Hamas; hence, they are “their own” civilians, unlike Israeli civilians or West Bank civilians, who are not Hamas’ “own” civilians, but are still civilians.

Correct, on legitimate military targets.

Funny, I think this attitude is pretty horrific:

1046

This is what war looks like when you’re 6 months past the point where a normal government would have offered unconditional surrender. It’s uncharted territory, really.

Does the side with overwhelming military advantage just walk away and let their enemy stay in control without so much as a single concession?

1047

I’m not being fucking stupid; I’m reminding you that the civilians aren’t a side in a goddamn chess game to be sacrificed. You continually treat them as though they are, and that’s where the horror comes from. This isn’t a shitty chess player who’s getting their own pawns captured. This is a war in which both sides are trampling on innocent people. In a chess game, the winning side can blame the losing side’s ineptitude and feel no guilt about their victories. In this war, IDF is absolutely responsible for their part in the massacres.

Thing is, either Hamas is like the most brilliant PR team in all history, or the rest of the world is increasingly seeing the thing that you’re preventing yourself from seeing.

1048

Gantz left because this Israeli government, and necessarily by extension, the IDF, are failing. Gantz wouldn’t have left if they were accomplishing the mission.

1049

That’s precisely what is being demanded of Israel, yes.

:yawning_face:

Your moralizing feels real fucking empty when we consider that it’s your position that would lead to Hamas remaining in power to go through all this again. If you actually gave a shit about solving this conflict, rathet than just getting it off TV, you’d support a path to removing Hamas, not entranching and rewarding them. Your position is the one that will get the most Palestinians killed, not mine.

Well, if you’re willing to get your kids killed for PR, that definitely helps.

Tankie college professors, idiot students, and countries with deep economic ties to Iran is not “the rest of the world”. Outside of the progressive bubble, the “rest of the world” is fully aware of what Hamas and their allies are doing, and they aren’t buying it. Even Saudi Arabia isn’t buying this bullshit.

Have you read or listened to any of his statements? He did no such thing. He left because while the IDF is doing a good job taking apart Hamas, simply dismantling Hamas will not help without a plan for the day after, and Bibi is refusing to come up with such a plan.

1050

Nothing the IDF does will matter if the government continues as it is. And Gantz specifically said this government is incapable of achieving “true victory” over Hamas, which I agree with. And that the military campaign will last years. Years of fighting Hamas in Gaza is necessarily a failure.

1051

The idea that the strategy that’s killed 30,000+ Gazans is the one that gets the fewest Gazans killed, and that by calling for killing fewer I’m calling for killing more, is the most Orwellian fuckery I’ve heard in a long time. No, we don’t have to destroy the village in order to save it.

Your repeated use of “tankie” is demonstrative of the intellectual bankruptcy of your position: you’re just throwing all sorts of shit at the wall. “The rest of the world” is the rest of the world.

You are, on other issues, intelligent and humane. You are deeply twisted on this one issue. I’m clearly not the one to help you unfuck your thinking here, so I think I’m gonna bow out, at least for now.

1052

Did witnesses report an extended street battle? I recall reading something about bombing or shelling, which one hand would apparently serve as a distraction as well as to reduce resistance in an area (that you don’t mind, and in fact would rather, kill everyone there), but if you are fighting at point X to try to break out and get to the chopper wouldn’t calling in an airstrike on top of X cause some problems for you as well?

1053

Well I still haven’t heard a proposal other than “let Hamas stay in Gaza” or “remove Hamas by force but use magic to do so without civilian casualties”, so color me skeptical.

Well, either I know something you don’t about a situation I am intimately familiar with, or I’m just that thirsty for Palestinian children’s blood. I guess it’s up to you to decide which.

I’m clearly not the one to unfuck the American Left’s myopic obsession with an oppressor/oppressed lens, but I must be a masochist because I keep trying.

1054

There’s a middle ground, that you are so emotionally invested as to be myopic. It’s a pretty common problem for humans, honestly. It’s certainly affected me.

And just as Israel isn’t monolithic (there are elements that want a two state solution, and elements that want greater Israel from the river to the sea, for instance) i think it’s unlikely that Hamas is monolithic. There are unquestionably elements that want to destroy Israel and are willing to sacrifice as many innocent Palestinians as it takes to hurt Israel. (A faction which is doing really well right now, thanks to Israel’s actions.) But Hamas was the government. i bet there are elements within “Hamas” who want the hospitals to function and the roads to be safe to travel, and could negotiate a two state solution. Yes, possibly with some third-party oversight.

Did they let the pogram happen? Yes they did. And liberal Israelis allowed the massive bombing of a refuge camp we just saw, and allowed the hospitals to be destroyed, and food shipments to be impeded, and …

Sometimes it’s worth negotiating with bad people whose goals are different from yours, because you have enough overlapping goals to make it worthwhile.

1055

The proposal is to step back and reevaluate, since what they’re doing is really, really not working. Hamas can’t be defeated in Gaza alone, and Israel isn’t even trying to defeat them in any other arena than Gaza. Not diplomatically, not financially, not anything other than “let’s see if we can kill all the Hamas guys and destroy all their stuff”, without considering that the collateral damage could easily create two or even ten fanatical militants for every Hamas fighter killed.

Do you really think that none of the parents/children/siblings/etc. of the thousands and thousands of blameless Gazan civilians already killed by Israeli collateral damage are going to become anti Israel militants in the future? How convinced are you that Israel isn’t creating more fanatics then they’re killing? The US fucked this up majorly in the aughts in Iraq by leaping in militarily without long term planning or considerate leadership. It seems obvious to me that the Israeli government is just guaranteeing years and years more anti Israel violence with each Gazan civilian it kills, even if the international community totally ignored the conflict.

The current strategy isn’t only failing, I think it’s creating many more fanatics than it’s killing. It’s dooming Israel to decades more chaotic violence.

1056

To the larger point, though it doesn’t matter what you call them they are what they are. We all agree that Hamas is scum. Hamas is guilty of a whole bunch of war crimes and if someone wants to add using Human shields to that list, as far as I am concerned they can go ahead and so so. The point is that while it would be nice if Hamas was considerate enough to find a little isolated spot in the desert and set up a large sign that said bomb here, that isn’t going to happen, and yelling that its unfair that they don’t do that isn’t going to change anything. The question is what is the IDF going to do the situation as it exists.

As it was when faced with the Trolley problem when on one side of the track was 4 Israeli hostages and on the other side was 86-274 Palestinians, they actively decided to turn the train to the Palestinian side. Of course its not quite that simple because it ignores the hundreds of Palestinians who were wounded but have no access to medical care, and assumes that if the operation wasn’t initiated the hostages would have necessarily died, and that it was also not unlikely that the rescue operation could have resulted in the death of the hostages. But even ignoring that its hard to find an ethical system in which what the IDF did was the right answer.

1057

How do you know this? Do you think Israel and any other parties they might be plotting with along these lines would go public with their plans? Do you really think they would make any successes or failures at such efforts public, possibly risking their current or future use?

Imo, it defies credibility to imagine Israel (and its allies) is not working full-time in other arenas to thwart Hamas and Palestinian ambitions. Less certain is their level of success.

Too soon for a judgment call on this, imo.

I think the Israeli right-wing wants more radicalized Palestinians because they know Israel has a vastly superior military force that can go in, fuck shit up and kill people – some of whom may have actually been targeted - at will. Their longer term goal is to drive Hamas and the Palestinians out of Gaza. From this perspective, the dumbfucks leading Hamas are playing right into their hands by accelerating the process (i.e., fewer Palestinians to deal with).

Any “victories” in the propaganda war are illusory as long as international organizations are limited to metaphorically wagging their fingers and proclaiming Israel is a very naughty country. The actual diplomatic losses Israel has so far incurred do not seem very significant, either. Not yet.

Hamas is depending on int’l pressure, specifically the U.S., to rein in Israel and force it to make concessions. It’s a “strategy” that hasn’t really worked in any of the four previous outbreaks of hostilities. Having upped the ante on 10/7 – and with the right-wing in control in Israel - Hamas has chosen a time that could potentially set itself up for a major fail (1), i.e., no ceasefire, no complete withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza, no released prisoners from Israeli jails and just as likely at some point, no hostages, alive or dead, to use for leverage. As long as Israel controls one side of the Rafah border, re-arming will be more challenging and time-consuming as well. All of which would be a tough sell as a “victory” to the Palestinians (2), but given the history, I have little confidence it would significantly alter their public or private positions on the quality of Hamas’ “leadership.”

(1) - This is not a prediction. Only one possibility.
(2) - I do think it’s likely Israel will end up releasing some number of imprisoned Palestinians, but no major Hamas figures.

1058

These two claims seem a bit contradictory:

So, it sounds as though you agree to some extent that there’s some credibility in the idea that at least some influential Israelis are not in fact committed to “thwarting” Hamas, at least not to the extent of really neutralizing or eliminating it (if that were possible).

They need Hamas active and posing credible threats to provide justification for repression, ethnic cleansing, etc., against Palestinians in general. Their goal of thwarting “Palestinian ambitions” for rights and statehood necessitates, as you note, encouraging Palestinian radicalization and violence to some degree, in order to maintain a supply of ostensible hostile targets as an excuse for “collaterally damaging” lots of other Palestinians.

1059

I see no contradiction. This war has been fought on multiple fronts going back decades (depending when you start counting). Anything that weakens Palestinian and especially Hamas’ positions - on the battlefield, in diplomatic circles, financially, etc. - is seen by right-wingers as being to Israel’s advantage in terms of their long-term goal of taking over Gaza (and eventually, the West Bank).

To clarify: I believe every influential Israeli is committed to thwarting Hamas, preferably to the extent of eliminating it (if that were possible). I do not believe every Israeli, influential or otherwise, believes it is possible to achieve that objective through the current conflict.

1060

Here is a button. If you press it, 30,000 Gazans will die.

If you do not press the button, the entire population of Gaza will die.

Do you press the button?