Like in 2005 when the solution to the occupation of Gaza was to stop the occupation of Gaza? That worked out brilliantly, didn’t it?
Necessary but not sufficient, remember? Leaving Gaza was necessary. Leaving the WB now is also necessary. Another obvious necessity is competently protect the borders, which the IDF obviously failed miserably to do. There are many other necessities – chief among them stop the settlements and other human rights violations (on both sides). All necessities, but not enough on its own.
Netanyahu and co are probably incapable of all of this, just like they’re incapable of waging a war that respects human rights, or incapable of leading a nation and military humanely and honorably. But that doesn’t remove the necessity of all these things.
…are you saying that if on October 7 Hamas launched their attack just as they did, but the IDF stopped them with minimal Israeli casualties, that would make the fact that the government of Gaza is a terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel acceptable? That Israel should have just shrugged in that scenario and said “Wow, that was close, let’s build up more defences and then leave Hamas in power”?
If the IDF protected the borders completely, Hamas would still have to go after their attack on October 7.
Not remotely. And Israel hasn’t done any of the other “necessary but not sufficient” things (obviously Hamas isn’t either). But peace between neighbors with bad blood requires competent defense, which Israel didn’t have.
Are you saying that if the Oct 7th attacks barely killed anyone, Israel still should have and would have destroyed Gaza and killed tens of thousands of children?
EDIT: I can’t figure out the quote tags – this is an answer to the “…are you saying” question.
Israel didn’t “destroy Gaza”. Gaza is still there as are the vast majority of Gazans, unlike the city of El Fahser which was actually destroyed in the same timeframe as this war, going from a population comparable to Gaza to fewer than 100,000 people who haven’t been able to escape.
But yes, if the IDF was able to stop the Hamas terrorists faster leading to less loss of Israeli life, the scale and intent of their attack would still mean that Hamas’ continued existence and rule of the Gaza strip is intolerable, and removing it would have required a war of this scale.
That’s crazy to me. Monstrous. With a competent IDF, hell, even without one, Hamas poses nothing close to an existential threat to Israel.
And another piece of info about our differing values on human rights.
Maybe if the IDF was a professional army capable of respecting human rights, with honorable and decent leaders, I wouldn’t be so horrified. But it’s proven that it’s not, and its leaders are not. This IDF is a monstrously broken organization, capable of nothing competently but mass murder and destruction. Nothing good can be accomplished outside its borders by such a broken institution.
Yes, if you believe every horrible story about the IDF, then I guess that’s the conclusion you’ve come to.
We’ve gone over quite a few of these stories now and we clearly see them differently, so there’s no point rehashing this any further.
I haven’t seen any convincing evidence of any of the stuff you say about the IDF. I’ll leave it at that.
Just to rehash:
–different views on the IDF (I accept the independent reporting consistent with the facts, eyewitness reports consistent with the facts, and IDF members’ reports consistent with the facts; you do not)
–different views on the mistreatment of civilians in the WB – unacceptable under any circumstances to me, and unacceptable under most but not all circumstances to you
–differing views on the acceptability of mass civilian casualties (IMO only when unavoidable to prevent existential threats to one’s country, in your opinion there is no limit as long as Hamas is eventually destroyed)
–differing views on the settlements (IMO disband them immediately as they are criminal, immoral, and represent ongoing human rights violations; in your opinion they are bad but should be retained until they can be traded for something valuable)
Did I miss anything, or misrepresent your position?
This is a serious misteprentation of my views.
This is straight up blood libel, hopefully accidental and soon to be retracted. Never once have I said that “there is no limit” to acceptable civilian casualties, and that’s a disgusting and false accusation.
This on the other hand is correct. The settlements suck, and we should end them. We should do it in exchange for Palestinians ending at least one of their much more heinous practices, like paying for the murder of Israeli civilians.
I distinctly remember you saying that there was no limit to casualties in order to destroy Hamas (maybe in different words), but I’ll retract it unless/until I find the quote.
I certainly have never said anything of the sort.
Somewhere between 1/3rd and 1/2 of Gazan casualties have been fighters, and this is consistent with urban warfare elsewhere in the world. If it was significantly worse than that, that would be a different story.
…especially considering how annoyed you get when you claim I “lie” about you, I expect a better retraction then “I distinctly remember you did this thing but I can’t prove it so I retract for now”. I never said such a disgusting thing.
I retract it. I’m not sure what I was thinking of, so I’ll ask this question:
If destroying Hamas required 10 more years of fighting at roughly the average intensity of the last two years, and 500K deaths of Gazan children, would that be “worth it”, or “not worth it”, in your opinion? If “worth it”, is there any limit of dead children in Gaza at which you would say “not worth it”? If “not worth it”, what is the limit?
I’m asking this because I’m presuming by your previous posts that, in fact, there is a limit (contrary to my recollection) – so I want to see what that limit is.
Thank you.
To avoid fighting the hypothetical, I’ll just say “no, not worth it” at the start.
And only then will I go into:
I don’t see how that would be possible, considering how much of Hamas’ fighting force and equipment has been destroyed, and considering how the fighting of the last two years was most intense at the start and at points where the IDF was entering new areas where it hasn’t done ground operations before, like when it first entered Rafah. Areas like that are limited now, and while Hamas has undoubtedly started digging back in jn the parts of Gaza the IDF doesn’t control after the ceasefire, that’s a very different situation than 20 years of prep.
If the fighting resumes, I’m sure there will be peaks to the intensity of the fighting, but there’s absolutely no way they will be as high or prolonged as the peaks at the start of the war.
Thank you. So 500K is too high. Presumably, the present # of 10-20K (I think) is below the limit. So what is your limit?
It depends on a shitload of other factors. Five would be too many if they’re being lined up and executed.
I think a better metric is the ratio of combatants to total casualties.
Let’s keep the ratio as is. Hamas is just stronger (or better at hiding) than you thought. What’s the limit (for dead Gazan kids)?
I don’t understand the question. Are you presenting a scenario where Hamas has significantly more than 40,000 or so fighters in total (including both fighters they had at the start of the war and forces they’ve raised since then)?
Any scenario. To pick one, let’s say there’s not that many more, but they’re really, really good at hiding, with a lot more hiding spots than previously assumed. What’s the limit?
Again, I don’t understand the question.
If there are truly 40,000 Hamas fighters, and they insist on fighting to the absolute last man, then I’d expect the total number of civilian casualties to be somewhere between 40,000 and 80,000, probably closer to 40,000 both because the ratio is closer to 1/2 than to 1/3 combatants now and because it should get easier to minimize civilian casualties the fewer Hamas fighters are left. If it was significantly higher than this, I’d think that’s really bad. (In b4 someone tried to cite the 17% figure that talks about fighters who were identified specifically by name by the IDF and tried to claim those are the only fighters and the other 83% are civilians even though 30 seconds and two neorons are enough to understand why this isn’t the case)
If by “they’re really good at hiding” you mean that Hamas is able to extract significantly higher civilian casualties for every Hamasnik killed by embedding themselves among civilians to an even greater extent, then I guess it would depend on exactly what they’re doing to achieve this and what strategies can be deployed to counteract this. I’m finding it hard to imagine what this would entail, short of handcuffing a child to every Hamasnik. You’d hope that whatever they could do to accomplish this would make them significantly less combat effective (like handcuffing a child to every fighter would) which is why they don’t do it already.
On the other hand if you’re positing that there are way more Hamas fighters in the Gazan population then yes obviously a war would be much bigger and involve more casualties, civilian and militant, than a war with fewer Hamas fighters. It would just be a bigger war. There would be a much larger number of civilian casualties in a war between China and India than a war between Luxembourg and Monaco because it would be a much larger war overall; likewise if there were twice as many Hamas fighters.