I would agree with LHoD here - the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan did not change its culture to be less warlike.
After the bombs had been dropped, and after the USSR’s attack on Japan on Sakhalin and the Asian mainland, the Japanese war cabinet still was deadlocked on the question of accepting the Potsdam declaration - while all wanted the war to end soon, three of the six wanted conditions that would be unacceptable to the Allies. In the event, the intervention of the Emperor swayed the cabinet to surrender on terms acceptable to the Allies.
After that surrender, elements of the Army attempted a coup to try to stop the Emperor’s order from being transmitted and to convince the Emperor to fight on. This was a pattern for Japan in the prewar period - junior officers could force the hand of their superiors, and in some cases assassinate (frequently with scant repercussions) those who they felt were insufficiently devoted to their nationalist ideals. In essence, Japan’s political system was set up to enable those elements who wanted war to get their way over the wishes of the larger group of Japanese people.
What changed Japan was less a cultural change and more the fact that the warlike elements of Japan’s politics and society were stopped from exercising power by the occupation. Those elements of the officer corps who caused the troubles were paid off and forced into retirement, and legal tools (such as the pacifist constitution) and institutions were created and strengthened to keep the nationalist nutcases (some of which are still around) from getting to the point of being able to start another war.
Over time (almost eighty years, now), Japan’s overall national culture has shifted to be more peaceful. But there was no sudden shock in August 1945 that, by itself, changed things around - rather, the continued occupation of Japan, marginalizing warlike elements and boosting those who saw peace as more desirable was what changed things around.
Which, to bring this back to the topic of the thread, means a pretty tough hill to climb for the IDF and Israel’s political system going forward. Ultimately, there’s a lot less trust between Israel and the various Palestinian people and factions, and I’m not sure that an occupation could be done as cheaply as the U.S. did so (by comparison) in Japan. I really hope that Babale’s side wins out and has enough political capital to see something like this through to the end, but that will be a very tall order.
The other thing that is different, I think, is that Japan’s cultural self-image (and here I’m writing with a tremendously broad brush) was of a powerful empire. When it became clear that their powerful military not only faced slow defeat, but also couldn’t even prevent a single bomb from landing wherever the enemy wanted it to land, their cultural self-image was shattered. The narrative of the Japanese empire became insupportable.
The self-image of Palestinians (again, broad brush) is not of a powerful empire: it’s of a people who’ve survived under intolerable conditions. Making those conditions even more intolerable won’t change that self-image. The narrative of the Palestinian suffering will continue.
Indeed. @Babale is much more persuaded than I am that IDF is doing the best they can by civilians (if I’m understanding correctly), but post-war, I definitely want folks like @Babale in charge on Israel’s side.
I think the emperor’s surrender is that sudden shock. It may have taken years of occupation for that to translate into a full societal attitude change, but obedience to an emperor they saw as divine was the motivator for many WW II Japanese soldiers.
Does Hamas have a headquarters under the hospital? As near as I can tell, IDF sincerely believes so.
Is IDF’s attacks on, and siege of, the hospital appropriate? As near as I can squint through the fog of war, it’s isn’t.
These things are simultaneously true.
The doctor isn’t obligated to prove the issue, of course–but his interview provides very weak evidence against an HQ there. Again, here’s what he said, only annotated:
We have never seen high-ranking Hamas people in Shifa…
The specification of “high-ranking” suggests that “low-ranking” Hamas people have been seen.
we’ve been able to roam freely all around.
That suggests that someone is there who could prevent them.
I’ve never seen anything, nor have my international colleagues.
This is so vague it doesn’t count as anything.
I think, by contrast, what I’d say if the military rolled up outside my school and said there was a terrorist HQ under it. I’d say something like, “What the hell? The only time I’ve seen anyone with a gun in my school is maybe once a month when a school resource officer wanders through. Nobody with any affiliation with that group has ever been in my school, certainly not with weapons. We’re a school, the only threats I hear are from third graders flipping their lids and threatening to smack somebody. And I’ve been in every room in this place, and there’s nowhere a terrorist headquarters could hide.”
If there’s not strong intelligence of a Hamas HQ under the hospital, I can’t explain IDF’s actions. I can, however, explain that doctor’s actions.
None of which justifies the IDF’s actions around Shifa or other hospitals.
Is there any Hamas leader that’s equivalent? My impression is that the Hamas faithful would see a formal surrender as treachery and would immediately disavow any leader who tried–but I could be wrong.
And yet, when confronted with evidence of the Emperor’s surrender, the coup plotters - of the class who considered themselves to be the best at interpreting and accomplishing the Emperor’s desires - did their best to keep his announcement from being broadcast, and wanted to detain him to convince him to change his mind.
Certainly the surrender of Japan was a shock to the culture. But as I see it, that shock had less of an effect than the changes to the Japanese political system that was the result of that surrender.
If that thesis is correct, then for Israel to accomplish a lasting “destruction of Hamas” they will need to be thinking in terms of what they need the first day after the military campaign will look lke - and what things they need to do now to help bring that about. Just the shock of wiping out Hamas in Gaza won’t do it - they’ll need to find the people who they can work with, who will recognize (even endorse) Israel’s right to exist but fight like hell for the interests of the Palestinian people, and they’ll need to ensure that they, not the next proto-Hamas, are who the Gazans look to for their future.
…this isn’t the first time these accusations have been made. In the nine years since the 2014 war, has anyone seen these bunkers? Did Israel ask international observers to go look?
Again: this is what the IDF are claiming is below the hospital:
Has everyone forgotten this?
These are quite extraordinary claims here. And the amount of evidence to support those claims are virtually zero. A couple of fancy infographics. A “cool” video. The doctors who work at the hospital have said they’ve seen no sign of these bunkers. Neither has anyone else.
This has been at the forefront of the IDF propaganda campaign. And it astonishes me, so many years after the lies about “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, how readily we just accept this kind of propaganda as truth. We should demand better than this. Especially when one party has removed the protective status of the hospitals, laid siege to them for four days. These are blatant violations of international law.
Are you expecting they will find a bunker complex like the one in the IDF video?
Because what I would expect they would find is something much closer to this:
As they take over the hospital probably today, I fully expect to see breathless videos of make-shift toilets and calendars that show nothing more than the “days of the week” and tunnel shafts that are actually “electrical wire assembly points” like they do here. But it won’t be anything like the fancy video the IDF presented.
I don’t think the “IDF sincerely believes” there is a headquarters under the hospital. They’ve got it surrounded. They’ve got drones. They are controlling everything getting in and out. They’ve had decades to gather evidence. They’ve had over a month to present that evidence to the world. Anything they present now will simply be post hoc rationalization.
Only 14 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are still operational. And by operational, I mean barely functional. 32 journalists and their families have been killed. They are driving people from the North and then bombing them in the South.
The Palestinians are calling this the second Nakba. And if you are confused by the IDF tactics here, I would suggest you look at it from a Palestinian lens. Because for me: that would explain the IDF’s actions quite clearly. You are assuming the IDF are acting in good faith here. And I think that’s the problem here. I see no reason at all why we should do that.
It wasn’t a “peace” platitude, it’s a statement about revenge. At some point you have to leave off with taking revenge or everything will be destroyed.
For those unclear on what @Banquet_Bear is insinuating here by using the term Nakba, he is accusing the IDF of intentionally bombing civilians and hospitals in order to drive Palestinian civilians out of Gaza at which point he believes Israel will annex it. In other words, ethnic cleansing at a scale just short of gas chambers.
If that’s not what he meant, he should apologize and learn what words mean before repeating them. But I think that’s exactly his insinuation.
…for those that are unclear here, yes, this is exactly what many Palestinians believe. Many have had their homes destroyed. They have been forced to move to the south. The siege hasn’t been lifted. There is no humanitarian aid at the other side. None of them think they will ever be able to return home.
Yes. This is what it looks like through the Palestinian lens. You can pretend that this isn’t how they see it. But it is.
That’s absolutely how many Palestinians see it, because Hamas raised them (through their control of UNRWA funded schools) to believe that this is what the Jews did in 1948 by refusing to to jump into the sea, and because Hamas has been screaning that this is what Israel intends to do on their propaganda channels, and yes, even because fanatic messianic suicidal assholes from the Israeli far right have gone on television and threatened this.
I am well aware of this fact. What I want to know is why you decide to echo and amplify that false and toxic narrative.
It’s a very interesting question in the abstract, because if the local police came in here and told me that there was, say, a white-supremacist domestic terror group headquartered under the large suburban community hospital at which I’ve worked for the past 21 years, I would admittedly be surprised, but not necessarily incredulous.
Because there are plenty of places in this building that I’ve never been, or have only a very passing familiarity with. There are multiple entrances besides the main visitor doors and the emergency room; there are at least 2 large loading docks that open into the basement, most of which is unknown territory to me aside from a few conference rooms, the security office, and a bathroom. There could easily be a hidden door at the back of the laundry or in the floor of the old morgue, as far as I know. Not to mention the possibility of access to an underground space from elsewhere, such as the parking structure across the street, so suspicious-looking characters wouldn’t even have to enter the hospital itself.
Now it may be that I’m unusually oblivious to my surroundings, but in my experience, physicians at work in a hospital are a pretty goal-oriented bunch for the most part. I can only speak for myself, of course, but most of the time it’s all I can do in a day to keep my own department running and get my cases signed out; I can’t say I’ve ever had the time or inclination to explore the dark corners and recesses of the building. And all kinds of people come into the hospital, so unless our putative terrorists are wearing easily-recognizable uniforms or insignia, I doubt I would give them a second thought if I passed them in the hallway.
All this to say that I agree that the doctor’s statement doesn’t at all exclude the possibility of a Hamas headquarters under Shifa. Not that I necessarily agree with the IDF’s actions regarding Shifa either.
All you have done here is lay out all the steps between dropping the bombs and the cultural change in Japan. It is a ridiculous straw man to imply that I’m saying that bombing alone would have produced the change. Of course what you do after you win is everything, as the history of the 20th century shows.
Occupation followed surrender, and surrender only happened because the bombs were dropped. And Japan would not otherwise have surrendered without invasion, costing far more lives on both sides.
The first step is to win, and that is non-negotiable. There may sometimes be more ethical ways to win that dropping bombs, but one way or another you first have to win. And there is no evidence that the inevitable innocent civilian casualties of a war, even the extreme case of the horrific bombing of Japan, lead to a population that becomes still more violent and filled with more hatred. That part depends on what you do after you win.
I don’t expect the Palestinian people to have warm and fuzzy feelings toward Israel, but they are capable of figuring out that the terroristic violence of Hamas is what brought this down upon them, and out of self interest to reject that violence - unless they are offered no better option after the war, and have nothing to lose. But the idea that destroying Hamas inevitably recruits the next generation of death cult terrorists is nonsense.
…what happened in 1948 is a matter of public record.
The people of Gaza don’t need to listen to what “Israel intends to do on their propaganda channels.”
They are living it.
They’ve had their homes destroyed. Friends and family killed. Been forced to move with only what they can carry on their backs, knowing full well they will probably never ever get to return.
