Discussion thread for the Hamas Attacks Israel thread, October 2023

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
5598

So your suggestion is that Israel should have smuggled aid to anti Hamas groups operating within the Strip?

That seems silly when Israel could just invade and fight Hamas. Obviously groups that wanted Soviet Jews to have Bibles weren’t capable of going toe to toe with the USSR, but the dynamics here are just a bit different.

Say hi to Hamas! They object to you giving money and food directly to their citizens and demand it go through them instead.

Most countries also don’t put their military facilities underneath civilian infrastructure to ensure that the highest possible number of them die in a war to make the other side look bad on the world stage, but Hamas does exactly that. Hamas is not most countries.

5599

No, my suggestion is that Qatar could probably have gotten aid to Gazans without giving it to Hamas. Would some have been funneled off? No doubt. Bribes might have been paid, … But i find it implausible that it couldn’t possibly have been done, especially early on, when Bibi is accused of intentionally choosing to strengthen Hamas to split up the Palestinians.

5600

…how? Hamas is the sole authority in Gaza since their takeover in 2007 (when Olmert was PM), and they managed all the aid distribution in Gaza, including controlling where and how the UNRWA operated.

How exactly do you propose Qatar could have gotten aid to Gazans without giving it to Hamas? Armed Qatari guards? You’ve seen what a headache distributing food without Hamas’ cooperation has been - that’s what the GHF has been doing. After a Qatari position is stormed and they either shoot all their attackers or get overrun, you think they’d continue distributing aid into Gaza without Hamas’ cooperation?

I’m sure Bibi did do what he could to split up the Palestinians further than they’d already split up themselves; that’s just basic good strategy. You always want your opponents divided. I support sowing division among MAGA, or among the Russian invaders of Ukraine, and so on. Right now, any division that can be created between Hamas and the PA, or between Hamas and the other militant groups in Gaza, is a good thing. Give me more division!

What he did not do was choose Hamas over another group. He never had a choice when it came to who was in charge of Gaza, because any choice but Hamas would have required exactly what we see now: a ground invasion.

Eta: also, this bit:

Is a misunderstanding of my point.

The problem isn’t that Hamas is corrupt and steals aid to enrich themselves (they do, their leadership is all millionaires (and some dead millionaires)), it’s not about stealing money, it’s about power.

The problem is that when Hamas controls aid distribution, even when the aid gets where it is going and when a group like UNRWA is allowed to handle the logistics of actual distribution, when the whole process is still controlled by Hamas, they draw legitimacy and consolidate control over the Strip by directing where the aid goes. And there’s no way to stop that short of taking over aid distribution from them; and there’s no way to do that short of coming in with guns, distributing aid, and shooting any Hamasnik who tried to stop you

And until October 7, there was no one - not Israel and certainly not Qatar - who was willing to do that.

5601

Seems like the Netanyahu defenders here are hyperfocusing on this issue of Qatari aid in order to obfuscate the broader picture, which is that Netanyahu has, in general, pursued a strategic policy of playing Hamas and the PA off against each other, as opposed to strongly supporting the PA’s claim to be the legitimate government of Palestine, giving them increasing amounts of autonomy in the West Bank and helping them re-establish control over Gaza. You may think that was a good or at least defensible choice, but it’s not the case that had no choice to make at all.

5602

Yes, you’ve killed thousands of innocent people while turning global public opinion decisively against you, even to the point of straining your relationship with your most reliable ally. I would agree that’s entirely unacceptable, and an entirely predictable result of the decision to invade Gaza.

The October 7 attacks were horrific atrocities, but the death toll was in the low four figures and they succeeded in holding a tiny sliver of Israeli territory for a few days. Hamas didn’t come close to demonstrating the potential ability to “destroy Israel”. This was not some new existential threat that gave Israel no possible option other than to do the obviously idiotic thing with predictably disastrous consequences, which was exactly what Hamas wanted them to do.

5603

Right exactly. He’s been in power for a long time. Undoubtedly there were several decisions he could have made, including just what to say publicly, that would end up helping or hurting Hamas, the PA, and other Palestinian organizations. Based on reporting and actual events, it’s more than reasonable to believe that he has deliberately favored Hamas, and subtly assisted Hamas, and done the opposite for their less extreme rivals, because he thought that was best to avoid two states.

5604

I’m not defending Netanyahu, I’m debunking the conspiracy theory that he or Israel is behind the rise of Hamas.

There’s plenty you can criticize him for. Plenty that he belongs in jail for but he is not responsible for Gazans deciding to put Hamas in charge of Gaza.

5605

They demonstrated the ability to do October 7th scale attacks on us. You may think we should suck it up and learn to live with that kind of threat; I strenuously disagree.

You talk to me about “global opinion”. How many lives did Global Opinion save on October 7th? How many hostages were released thanks to Global Opinion?

5606

How many future terrorists has Israel created over the last 2 years?

To stave off the obvious question (which has been answered again and again, but here it is again): what should Israel have done? Find a way to fight Hamas without killing tens of thousands of children, fight without committing atrocities, and fight without deliberately withholding aid to starving people.

5607

While an absurdly simplified analysis of the situation might boil down to “you kill people and then their relatives become terrorists”, reality is far more nuanced than that. People take political actions when they can see those actions achieving their end goal. Right now, Gazans support Hamas because they believe that Hamas’ strategy is likely to secure their end goal, namely, a single Palestinian state from the river to the sea.

The fighting will end when Palestinians by and large accept that this goal is impossible. That’s it.

Palestinians, like all human beings, are generally rational actors. Given the parameters and beliefs they start with, their current actions against Israel are rational. The only way to end terrorism is to change the equation.

Israel didn’t make peace with Egypt and Jordan by making Egyptians and Jordanians (or even the leaders of Egypt and Jordan) love us. We did it by making it very clear to both the Jordanian monarchists and the Egyptian nationalists that their pan Arab ambitions were impossible to achieve, at which point they modified their goals and made peace.

Settlers don’t become settlers because a Palestinian terrorist killed their uncle, and Palestinians don’t become terrorists for such superficial reasons either.

Great, can you propose such a way that would actually work? Of course you can’t, because this is what urban warfare against an entranched terrorist regime like Hamas looks like.

5608

Considering all the reporting, notably including from IDF members themselves, I don’t believe you.

5609

:+1: OK

What you do or don’t believe doesn’t change reality, and I’ve wasted enough time in this mode:

5610

The difference between us is that I’m not ignoring independent evidence, like reports from IDF members themselves, just because it disrupts my own preferred narrative. I would prefer to trust the IDF and the Israeli government, but independent reporting has made that impossible.

5611

The fact that I reviewed the information and came to a different conclusion than you did doesn’t mean that I am “ignoring” anything.

5612

Your conclusion, from all the evidence, is literally that the Israeli government, and the IDF, have made zero significant mistakes since Oct 7th with regards to Gaza and Hamas?

5613

No, and I’ve certainly never said anything like that.

5614

So what are you disagreeing with? You disagree that the reports of IDF members, a US merc, and many individual Gazans, indicate a high likelihood some atrocities have been conducted by Israeli forces? You disagree that the GHF was entirely incompetent, and likely purposefully incompetent, in distributing aid (according to the reports of pretty much every international aid expert out there)? You disagree that IDF bombs and bullets have killed tens of thousands of children?

5615

That Israel is intentionally going in and committing massacres.

If by “atrocity” you mean an intentional killing of civilians rather than attempts to engage enemy forces that lead to civilian deaths, then yes, I disagree that credible reports indicate a high likehood of that being the case.

Yep. And I think it’s hardly surprising that people whose job depends on the GHF not working out are critical of it. It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

I disagree with the claim that any of those deaths were caused by intentional strikes against targets that were not valid military targets.

5616

That’s the difference in the opinions, then. That you trust the GHF is absolutely nuts, considering it was staffed by Netanyahu and Trump cronies, not actual aid experts.

5617

I’ve seen what the “aid experts” have done over the last 20 years. They were thoroughly compromised by Hamasniks. It’s such a pathetically low bar can clear, even Netanyahu cronies are better.