Seriously, enough. This is off-topic. Drop it now please.
I agree that it’s possible. People are the same the world over, nobody is born a violent extremist. Fundamentally, people want the chance to make a living, to live a decent life, and the defining innate characteristic of the human species is cooperation, not conflict. A prerequisite is that Hamas must be eradicated to break the feedback loop. Nothing will change when people are indoctrinated with poisonous hatred by violent fanatics.
Remember Toby Ziegler’s famous rant - They’ll like us when we win. Too glib of course, winning is just the beginning. But he’s right that appeasement doesn’t work if it leaves extremists in place to indoctrinate the next generation.
Then, of course, there are the dangerous extremists within Israel. But within Israel there is at least the possibility of marginalizing them within the democratic process.
Almost certainly you are deliberately referencing this, but on the remote chance that you’re not…
Yes, I was.
I disagree. I mean, Hamas certainly needs to be eradicated but if the underlying problems you mentioned (mainly a good life) are not solved then some other group will pop-up in place of Hamas and we are back at it again.
Young men (women too but less so) with no prospects are very easy to recruit into violent groups. It happens in the US too. Until that is solved (not sure how) groups like Hamas will flourish.
I posted this in the breaking news thread, but I think normalizing relations with Arab powers will be key to breaking the cycle. Someone who the Palestinians don’t automatically distrust would be an extremely helpful go-between in the peace process.
That’s why the long term solution is to ensure everyone has prospects for a decent life and future.
And part of the challenge is several generations growing up being taught that what stands between them and prospects for a decent life and future is the very existence of “those others”.
Vicious anti-Semitism existed long before the creation of Israel.
I’m not sure what you imagine you’re disagreeing with when I said eradicating Hamas was a “prerequisite” and that “winning is just the beginning”.
I imagine that “winning is just the beginning” is very vague.
And as I said, getting rid of Hamas is kind of useless unless the underlying problems you mentioned are solved. If Hamas is gone it will be some other group causing trouble in short order. They probably already exist.
I agree with you Hamas needs to go. I just do not think it is a solution to the crisis in the Middle East.
[my bold]
It’s vague, yet I mentioned exactly the problems that subsequently need to be solved? Good grief, I’m done with this.
Of course it’s not an overall solution, but Hamas still needs to be dismantled.
It’s very hard to see how to get the Palestinian people into a world of prosperity and civility that tamps down the murderous rage. The Palestinians have been getting billions of dollars in annual aid from various parts of the world, and it seems to wind up being used to buy weapons when it isn’t stolen by corrupt leaders. There is little industry and little infrastructure for it, and their farms are low productivity. And after this conflict, we can assume that what little industry they had will be gone.
In the meantime, a lot of people in the region are willing to shell out lots of momey to the people who are willing to keep fighting Israel.
Well, the world now has the period while Israel exterminates Hamas to figure out what to do afterwards to give everyone else in the region a future worth living for.
I think they did consider it, and in fact wanted a huge Israeli response and their own civilian deaths so they could paint themselves as victims. Already, many are forget that Hamas attacked a music festival. A fucking Music Festival. What brave warriors!
Trouble is, there is a significant group that Does Not Want this. They want Israel to be destroyed and the Jewish people eradicated. You can’t have a long term solution when people like this are involved. They don’t want peace where everyone benefits. They want extermination
But this is always the case, always has been and always will be, for extended ethnic/religious conflicts like this. There’s a way out, just like there was for Ireland and many others. Not that it’s easy, and not that I have the path… but it is possible.
Not really the topic of this thread but I feel many people misread the outcome of the Tet Offensive. They feel that the government of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong rebel movement were essentially the same thing. I don’t feel this is true.
North Vietnam intended to establish itself as the government of South Vietnam. When it did so, a rebel movement already established in South Vietnam and organized to fight against the government would have been a strong potential rival to the Hanoi government.
What Hanoi did in 1968 was convince the Viet Cong to launch open attacks against their joint enemies, the South Vietnamese government and the American military. This caused some damage to those two entities but it effectively eliminated the Viet Cong. But the North Vietnamese government didn’t see the elimination of the Viet Cong as a defeat. For North Vietnam it was a bonus on top of the damage to South Vietnam and America.
I’m curious what people here think will happen next?
Israel likely has intelligence on some Hamas agents and places they congregate and they will get a lot of them.
But, most Hamas people will fade back into the population. This is terrorist-101. Nothing new.
Then what? What comes next? How does Israel resolve this?