# Discussion thread for the Hamas Attacks Israel thread, October 2023 **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** israel-hamas-war\ **Created:** [October 9, 2023, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317 "2023-10-09T15:10:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 101
**Author:** ![DETXL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/detxl/32/19366_2.png) [@DETXL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DETXL)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2023, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317/101 "2023-10-12T09:51:41Z")
> [@Hamas attacks Israel, October 2023](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hamas-attacks-israel-october-2023/991234/382): > > As one news article mentioned, Hamas wouldn’t have launched an attack of this sort without anticipating that there would be a total Israeli ground offensive into Gaza in the weeks that would follow, and also extreme-prepping the entire Gaza region to Stalingrad it. It’s not “breaking news,” so asking it here, but I wonder if this will turn out to be true? Or if Hamas was counting on a general uprising, or upon more support from Arab states than they’ve actually turned out to be getting. That would be a pretty big miscalculation, but on the other hand, I’m not sure the attack itself wasn’t a miscalculation. At least, I’m not sure what the leadership was expecting from the west or their ability to weather a counteroffensive. Lots of people want “peace in the middle east.” Last week, some of them—definitely a decent chunk of the BDS crowd if nothing else, and a lot of my leftist friends—would’ve been so committed to that desire as to defend Hamas against charges of being a terrorist organization. I guess I haven’t checked to see what the Tulsi Gabbards or Glenn Greenwalds of the world are saying, but if you start off your campaign by massacring hundreds of civilians, _nobody is going to stand up for you_. Even the people with #FreePalestine and a flag emoji in their Twitter bios are going to sit that one out and let you get bombed. I’m not sure it even counts as a Pyrrhic victory if, to average westerners, the attack turns out to be for Hamas what learning about the gulags was to the Soviet Union—that they become so toxic that anyone defending the aim of Palestinian statehood loses credibility by proxy, the way Stalinism gutted the American communist movement. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discussion-thread-for-the-hamas-attacks-israel-thread-october-2023/991317)._