Think about the Syrian Civil War from the other side. You had Syria, backed by formidable allies in Russia and Iran (primarily through Hezbollah) who spent over a decade using every method you could think of to wipe out the Sunni Arab rebels, including terrorism, gassing, carpet bombing, you name it. This formidable alliance wasn’t the thing that actually fell to the rebels - the recent events were a sign of how weak Syria itself was without its powerful friends. But up until the point Israel decimated Hezbollah they were never able to completely defeat the rebels. The rebels were still there, not because a western superpower was arming them to the teeth, but because they’ve always had support from Al Qaeda who had enough resources and knew the playbook to fighting an asymmetric war and avoiding ever being stamped out entirely. (It’s also related to why western media is excited by Jolani as he’s realistically the most pragmatic leader you could hope for out of that situation).
Thanks to Iran-backed militants primarily. Fortunately in spite of general cynicism about the relatively moderate parties that have typically made up Iraq’s government, the extremists keep tripping over their own dicks when it comes to electoral politics. And for whatever reason Iran now seems to have fallen out with the Shia extremists in Iraq and prefers the stable options.
And by the way ISIS still exists in Iraq as an underground insurgency and terrorist group. They no longer actually control territory, but they aren’t gone.
Bringing this back because I think this is central to the disagreement. It appears you trust that it’s all but certain, or at least very likely, that the next government will both have and present a long term plan for occupation and rebuilding Gaza (and no ethnic cleansing), that this will be accepted by the public (by voting them in), and that the public will maintain the political will to keep it going for at long at it takes.
Is this accurate (as to your opinions)?
All of those seem less than likely to me, and all of them together seems profoundly unlikely to me. And that’s a huge part of why, IMO, continuing this war is so immoral - even if we presume that Gaza could be rebuilt and “reformed” to be a good neighbor with a long term Israeli lead occupation, the political will necessary can’t come close to being guaranteed, and in fact is likely to be very costly (in lives and money) and thus at great risk of political collapse in the future. Without that, this war is just vengeance and carnage, killing civilians and setting the stage for years or even decades of reprisals. And thus IMO it’s entirely morally unacceptable to engage in this level of carnage without near-certainty (factual, not aspirational, certainty) or in the political will, long term, to carry it through to a positive conclusion.
If this sounds like a sky-high bar to clear, then YES! There absolutely should be a sky-high bar to clear before engaging in war that kills tens of thousands of civilians!
That’s the biggest issue facing the Israeli electorate, so it will be the biggest issue in the upcoming elections, yes.
What other choice does Israel have? I get the Iraq trauma, but unlike America, we can’t fuck off across the ocean halfway through. Not every war is Iraq or Afghanistan.
Seriously? I genuinely want to know the thought process that leads to asking a question like that. Yes, of course you would know if babies were starving, especially thousands of babies. You’d “find out” the same way you find out whenever a journalist or a doctor is caught in crossfire or as collateral damage: you’ll hear about it on the news nonstop for weeks.
Israel shouldn’t have rushed in, guns blazing. They should have taken time to mourn and engaged the international community in a long-term, internationally supported, dismantling of Hamas (whose power and funding structure is largely outside of Gaza), reformation of Gaza (and the WB, for that matter), and internal fortification and robust investigation into what went wrong and how to secure Israel, long term.
One, this doesn’t really address anything I said. You’re talking about what Israel should have done to begin with in this post. In the post I was responding to, you were asking why I don’t think Israel will lose interest in stop the occupation early, like America did with Iraq. The answer is that unlike America in iraq, Israel is not half a planet away. It’s right next door. We don’t have anywhere to go. We don’t have a choice but to deal with Gaza. We are not going to be able dip out when we get bored like you guys did in iraq.
Two, the idea that Israel “rushed in, guns blazing” is pretty silly. Israel waited a week before beginning ground operations and twenty days before entering Gaza in full. They went slowly and methodically, evacuating civilians whenever possible, despite Hamas’ efforts to prevent this. The idea that this operation has been some kind of monumental failure is laughable.
You seem convinced that if only Israel had waited even longer, somehow it would have been possible to fight Hamas without causing this level of devastation. That is… What word did you use earlier?
Israel didn’t do anything I suggested. The government is still trying to absolve itself from any real investigation and blame. A few days, a few weeks, is nothing for something this monumental in scope (and this monumentally harmful to civilians). Israel didn’t make any real effort to engage the international community to dismantle Hamas.
It was doomed from the start because of bad leadership. Netanyahu and allies are incapable of decent moral leadership, and a war of this magnitude can’t be run with any sort of decency or morality without good moral leadership.
A couple of prominent ministers in the current Israeli government very much have spoken their plan: the complete and total elimination of any and all Palestinians from Gaza, after which properly Jewish Israeli citizens will occupy and take over that land and redevelop it.
I wish to emphasize that this is not ALL Israelis, but a minority. Albeit a minority that currently have access to a lot of power.
Smotrich has expressed further plans, such as stripping all but Orthodox Jews of Israeli citizenship and impose “Torah law” the way the Taliban impose Sharia law in their territory.
That strikes me as laughable, although I hasten to add I’d be totally OK if I was wrong and you were right about that.
It’s just mind boggling that anyone honestly believes that this time it’s different, this time the killing of thousands of civilians is necessary as collateral damage on the way to true peace and security.
And at the same time I suppose it’s entirely predictable - this is how it’s been done for decades, so why change now?
Describing Smotrich and Ben Gvir, ministers who very likely won’t even be ministers after the next election, as “prominent” reveals a grave misunderstanding of Israeli politics. (Or, when media outlets do it, intentional dishonesty).
It’s equivalent to claiming that America’s official stance on wildfires is that they’re caused by Jewish space lasers.
It’s mind boggling to me that Iraq made y’all fall this deep into the “violence never solves anything” rabbit hole. Holy crap! Violence does, in fact, solve many problems. It’s how the Nazis and Imperial Japanese were defeated - through overwhelming levels of violence, in those two cases - and it’s how Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and others were forced to accept the continued existence of Israel.
And violence did in fact end Saddam’s reign over Iraq, so even that is a shitty example.
Likewise, I absolutely believe someone like Smotrich when they say they want to commit geocide.
Oh, no - it is absolutely possible. How probable that is, is another matter but I have no doubt Israel could completely obliterate anyone and everyone currently in Gaza and take over. The question is whether or not the government is willing/can convince people to make the necessary sacrifices to do so and don’t give a damn how it makes them look internationally and don’t give a damn about the blowback on the 50% of Jews who don’t live in Israel and will in no way benefit from such a campaign, quite the contrary.
You do realize that there are non-zero number of governments who feel that no one should be occupying territory belonging to the Palestinians other than the Palestinians, yes?
Either that, or telling the potential recruits that if they don’t continue to resist the Israelis will slaughter all of them down to the last man, woman, and child. Which certainly looks like a plausible claim given the civilian toll in Gaza during this slaughter.
From where I sit there are no “good guys” here - just two parties locked into a vicious blood feud where both try to justify their slaughter of innocents and bystanders. One side is at least honest about their desire to genocide the other side (not that that makes evil in any way OK) and the other is arguing that a brutal occupation is somehow going to make their targets peacefully submit to whatever apartheid and oppression they decide to mete out. Would the Israelis peacefully submit to occupation and second class citizenship? No? Then why do you think the Palestinians would do so?
Starting an unnecessary war with outright lies and false pretenses leading to the deaths of over 200,000 civilians, most of whom probably had jack all to do with violence before someone blew them up or shot them.
Granted, Saddam was a bad, bad man and I don’t mourn his removal or his passing. Removing him from power wasn’t the mistake, it was the manner in which it was done. You can’t build a good foundation on lies and deceit, and why would the Iraqis trust or want us after they realized those lies and deceit?
WWII was not a war of choice. Neither were all the wars in which Israel defended against state actors large enough to threaten their existence. That’s the difference. Israel was attacked, but not even close to existentially. Hamas does not and did not threaten the existence of Israel. There was time to actually evaluate what happened, blame those responsible (including for the security lapses), engage the rest of the world, and come up with a real, long term plan.
Cool. Smotrich is a fucking nobody. He only exists because Netanyahu needed an extra vote for his coalition, and his party is projected to win 0 seats at the next election consistently in every poll since Oct 7.
No, it really isn’t possible. Even if Israel wanted to do that, they would not be able to accomplish it; and there is very little interest in Israel in spending Israeli lives to annex Gaza.
Are those governments going to provide Israel with security guarantees where they will stop militant groups within Palestine from attacking Israel? If not, why the fuck should I give a single solitary crap about their opinion?
Yeah, I understand. You think there was another way to fight Hamas. I think that’s delusional. Wait ten years and get every country on the planet on board; you still have to bomb Hamas eventually, and since they’re under civilian infrastructure, civilians will have died.
Anyways, we are once again going in circles. I’ve offered my thoughts. They haven’t changed since the war started, because nothing we’ve seen is in any way out of line with what I predicted and said should happen all the way back in October 2023. You don’t have to keep @ing me and then acting shocked when I haven’t changed my mind since the situation hasn’t really changed.
Telling me that Smotrich and Gvir are the Israeli equivalent of Marjorie Taylor Green does remarkably little to reassure me of either their relative unimportance, or the political stability of the Israeli society in general.
Well, to be fully equivalent, MTG couldn’t be the whackiest but somewhat minor member of the MAGA movement whose leader is the president of the United States - she’d have to be the only MAGA Republican, with the leader of the party being a more moderate Republican who panders to her because she’s a deciding vote.
I’m just saying, “You don’t have to worry about those guys any more than you have to worry about that politician from your country who you’re already massively worried about,” isn’t making me sleep any better.
Your responses have helped me better understand the support for the war within Israel, at least. And that’s what I’m going for, really; I recognize that minds are very unlikely to change here.