Israel's response to Oct 7th has been a major blackpill.
Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be. In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all -- they lashed out wildly and extremely destructively, without a clear picture of what the post-war Gaza Strip will look like.
Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Sadly I think you are mistaken to paint it as an irrational Israel lashing out - that's too generous.
I think it's quite the opposite - there has been a very clear, cold, calculated strategy - which is to use the conflict as an cover for doing what some in the government have always wanted to do ( and been quite open about it ) - which is to create a greater Israel - drive out all Palestinians from the river to the sea ( Gaza and West Bank ), as well as push to the river in the north into Lebanon and take more of Syria.
Those in government understand the potential reputation loss - but see that as temporary and something that can be managed under the protection of the US, while viewing the gain of territory as permanent.
This is spot on. This has been a recurring practice of the Israeli regime - to take advantage of a terrorist attack or some other pretext in order to take over additional territory and remove the local population. This modus operandi has been practiced since right after the partition resolution at the end of 1947 to conquer Palestinian villages, remove their inhabitants and rase the houses to the ground, and is still practiced today in the occupied territories and Gaza. Like you said, Israel's recent military campaigns in Lebanon and Syria are also examples of the same strategy.
This, for Israel it was a perfect pretext. Netanyahu financed Hamas through Qatar for years because he knew that Hamas is a destructive force for Palestinians and their struggle for nationhood. It was a cold, cynical decision. He exploited the anger and emotions of the people after October 7th to justify what he is doing now.
Here's a thought experiment to underline that, in case there's any confusion.
Q. How many times did any Countries hold islamic-only real-estate expos in Mosques for the former and future homes and territories of Jewish peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to fundamentalist islamic occupation? _Zero_
Q. How many times did any Countries held jewish-only real-estate expos in Synagogues for the former homes and territories of Muslim peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to zionist occupation? _Countless_
They're now at the point where they're paying their contractors $1,500 a house demolished, and constantly inciting violent engagement so as to get the IDF involved and sanitise the area - most notably near the supposed humanitarian relief distribution points they're so fond of double-tap bombing.
N.B. Israel is now concentrating on the remaining medical facilities, and has carried out at least 17 attacks on or in the vicinity of healthcare facilities in Gaza City since 16 September. (https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2078)
Three healthcare facilities—Al Quds Hospital, Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital, and the Medical Relief Health Centre—have all been directly hit, while further strikes were recorded in the vicinity of two more, Al Shifa Medical Complex and Al Ahli Hospital.
Currently, across the Gaza Strip, only 2000 hospital beds remain available, for a population of over 2 million people.
This is fantasy. Israel (or any country really) ability to expand is limited by its neighbors. Egypt, Jordan and the GCC are more powerful than the 60s and the recent UAE message of pulling of the Abraham accord is a clear signal that they have real weight in Washington. Israel cannot, in the current circumstances, expand.
So I agree with your parent. What Israel currently is doing is non-sense and plays in the hands of Hamas (who is not losing, as civilian lost lives do not count in Hamas counter).
Israel's main best option is to give Palestinians, at least those unambiguously born under Israel's control, the right to vote in Israeli federal elections.
A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.
(And if your ethnic group is denied voting rights, you have a basic duty to your fellow man to raise hell until you get those rights, because arbitrary starvation is always on the table for your children until you get them.)
International law forbids the occupying power to give voting rights to occupied regions.
Its also a bit unclear what you mean by "unambiguously under Israeli control" since Palestinians in occupied palestinian territories aren't unambigiously under Israeli control, they had little control over the inside of Gaza until recently, and have some power in the west bank that is shared with the PA. Neither is "unambiguous control". The only group unambigiously under their control are the Palestinians inside Israel proper who as far as i understand do have full voting rights.
If you think military presence should equal voting rights, than i think that would imply that Iraq should be able to vote in US presedential elections.
Without some strong general protection isn't that just 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner? Seems at least some basic guaranteed rights and freedoms is needed.
> A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.
100%
The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.
Yes, things look pretty bright for Netanyahu, and the others in the Israeli state who want to do ethnic cleansing or worse. And settlers who want to do ethnic cleansing (not everyone! a minority I presume), are happy too.
Not many mistakes made here, just others who are mistaken about the goals
A big question for me continues to be how much of Israel's behavior isn't really about best options for Israel as a state, but power politics for particular political factions internally.
but that's how every polity operates, you can't influence it more than people already try to influence it.
you can ask the same of Hamas, is theirs the policy the populace wants?
Israel does have a robust free speech democracy and you can easily learn what many of the different factions think, and like elections anywhere, you don't know till afterward how it plays out, and voters are always disappointed by the way power is exercised.
Some have described what we're seeing as an impassioned overreaction to Hamas' initial strike and kidnappings. However, Netanyahu's actions appear far more deliberate. Rhetoric from his own cabinet ministers is now impossible to ignore.
The IDF has taken a very slow and careful approach. There are typically under a hundred Palestinians killed at a time, but they are killed most days with a high degree of consistency. Headlines like "50 civilians killed in Gaza overnight" no longer make it to the front page. There has clearly been careful management to ensure that the numbers don't climb high enough in a single day to upset the new "normal". Israel has banned foreign journalists and the IDF has deliberately targeted those inside of Gaza to further minimize coverage. On top of that, the IDF has targeted healthcare infrastructure and workers while carefully controlling aid to bring about famine without provoking any significant foreign response.
The big concerns now should be how quickly an incipient famine in a region whose healthcare system has been largely eliminated could cause mass deaths, and how long the fog of war Netanyahu has carefully crafted over Gaza might hide it. The remaining window of time in which intervention might prevent tragedy is rapidly closing.
They're not losing the information war against Hamas, who they can easily kill if they can identify, they're losing it against those concerned with human rights in the free world. International law (in the absence of diplomatic enforcement) has nothing to do with it, and neither does the complex and detailed history that only serves as a way for people to avoid talking about the present...
Netanyahu's goal is endless war and conflict so that he'll never have to leave office and finally face criminal charges. I think Oct 7 is exactly what he wanted also.
> In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all
Since 2005, Israel has maintained a strategy for managing Gaza called "mowing the grass"[0][1] in which every few years they attack and conduct short, sharp military operations. This is in contrast to their strategy of (illegal) settlements in the West Bank. In fact, they removed 8,000 settlers in 2005 when they began this strategy.
Besides the major hostilities of 2008/9,[2] 2012,[3] 2014,[4] and 2021[5], Israel infamously tests new weapons and technology on Gaza, allowing their weapons to be labelled "battlefield tested". One of their largest export is surveillance technology (guess who's the largest customer of that), but they also test drones, air force tech, and even guns. In October 2020 an IDF sniper boasted to Israeli newspaper Haaretz about breaking the "kneecap record" after shooting 42 Palestinian kneecaps in a single day. The snipers purposefully target kneecaps to permanently disable protestors, especially younger ones and increase the burden of care for Gazan society. This is "peacetime" between Gaza and Israel.
Gaza has been called an "open air prison" and "laboratory"[6] for Israel's military industry. The point I'm making is that Israel has never stopped keeping its eye on Gaza. I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know, with extreme detail, what they were getting themselves into
In all this description, with which I agree to a large extent except in believing the "lashing out" to have been very much deliberate, except simply murderous and grossly inept, it's worth mentioning the specific name of that murderous war criminal Netanyahu who is responsible for the majority of the decision making and impetus.
> Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this
Israel probably came out ahead if all they lost is prestige.
They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power. Their weapons and military have been validated, which makes than a desirable trading partner in an increasingly-militarising world. And they're turning into a gas exporter.
Worst case, a generational shift occurs and Israel loses its military support from America. (I don't see us sanctioning Israel any time soon, so its economic primacy will remain intact. And we only pay for like 15% of their military budget, so not a disaster.) Do you really think China and India would even hesitate to partner with Tel Aviv on defense?
> They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power
How did they "neuter" Iran? Iran responded quickly and managed to heavily damage TelAviv and is now rushing to accelerate rebuilding their nuclear capabilities.
If anything, the previous operation was a disaster, it allowed to regime to entrench itself even further in IRAN and regime change that they were hoping for didn't happen.
I'm sure both Iran and Israel are gearing up for another round of heavy conflict later this year or early next year.
Iran being neutered is propaganda that is necessary for the (failed, for now) Israeli plan of regime change.
Iran maintains the ability to build ballistic missiles in large numbers, greatly depleted Israel-US BMD reserves, continues to build even more reinforced nuclear sites. Neutering those capabilities was the main goal of the 12 day war and by most accounts, that didn't work.
Israel did not manage air superiority over the large majority of Iran, instead the majority of strikes over Iran were done using standoff weapons and drones, many flown from within Iran as an act of sabotage.
If Israel truly managed to get air superiority over Iran, the Iranian regime would have suffered the same fate as Nasrallah. But that didn't happen, because while Israel was able to execute a number of deep strikes, the capability to do so was much closer to Russia's ability over Ukraine than, say, the way the US operated over Iraq. And Iran at the same time was able to execute dozens of deep strikes within Israel, but with much less precision - without a much deeper cut to the Iranian MIC it's only a matter of time before the newer, much more precise missiles are built in sufficient numbers to become a similar threat to the Israeli airforce.
There is no reason why China would ever want to partner with Israel on defense anymore. They tried do in the 2000s, and they found that Israel was so deeply and inextricably dependent on US technology and manufacturing for it's military technology that there was almost nothing worthwhile they could get that wasn't so dependent on the US that the US would veto it. Israel's military sophistication is not endogenous to the extent it would be competitive without the US - it's entirely dependent on an extremely privileged relationship with the MIC that allows Israel to stand on the shoulder of giants and produce weapons that are far more sophisticated than would be possible for any economy of its' size otherwise.
An article came out only today on Haaretz detailing how much of the footage and imagery from Israeli strikes were deepfakes or recycled footage. That's not something you do when you've managed to neuter your opponent.
They haven't "neutered" Iran, all they've proven is that they're actually quite ineffective against Iran and Yemen. They've also become the most hated country in all of the world. Their citizens have to hide their citizenship when they travel back to Europe. Israel won't last another 10 years.
You may not realize it but Israel is slowly becoming Rhodesia/Apartheid South Africa. And i don't mean the word 'apartheid' as a cudgel.
During the Rhodesian Bush War, their forces ran circles around the ZIPRA and ZANLA with multiple battles and encounters where they'd routinely record 500:1 KD ratios like Operation Dingo, etc. They had complete freedom of action to bomb any infrastructure obstructing them, reach deep into neighboring countries and slaughter guerillas copiously.
Hell, South Africa had a dozen nukes.
Once the sanctions came on, it unraveled everything they had.
Israel is in such a precarious situation right now. Their economy depends on technology exports to an extreme degree. Cutting off that source of FX would literally half the economy overnight because cash would stop sloshing around internally from its main sources.
If that happens, all the smart kids propping up the economy will move out while you're left with extremists who want war but won't fight in the army. In fact, it's ongoing right now with people leaving the country in the midst of a war they're 'winning.'
You might think sanctions are a far-off notion, but key Western powers are breaking with America on recognizing Palestine. That's a red line designed to signal to Israel that it's losing ground. People across the world are calling for sanctions and it won't be long before they materialize.
And America? Israel's main power base are American boomer evangelicals who're going the way of the dinosaur. Like I said in another comment, their kids are either not religious, don't like bombing kids, have been radicalized by the atrocities they've witnessed, or are aligned with people like Fuentes.
I hope they can smell the coffee; if anyone had told South Africa that a nuclear power could be disarmed without a gunshot, they'd never have believed it. But, look what eventually happened.
Thanks to the ongoing genocide, America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years, while the boomer evangelicals die off.
The article says on a low period they found people were eating 1400 calories a day at one point. If there was more than that they would have listed it. Israel targets a higher number but that is what it got to in the worst situation the article could find to list.
The United States Red Cross sets as a floor 1500 calories a day for people in distress. Is the Red Cross trying to starve Americans in distress?
The UN just cut food aid in Kenya for 800,000 refugees from the war in Sudan in half to 588 calories per day, yet the UN says it is willing and able to provide significantly higher amounts of food (and to not do so would be criminal) to the 2 million people of Gaza. Is the UN criminal/genocidal against Kenyan/Sudanese for offering starvation level assistance to one group but significantly more to another? The UN says they are ready and able to provide assistance to one group at the very same time the cut in half/say they can't provide aid that meets the level they say Gaza must receive when it is people in Kenya that need aid. Kenyan war refugees are receiving significantly less per person than that 1400 calorie at 588.
Agreeing with the other sibling comments. I think in part it was following the same vision that the current Israeli government had been following already before Oct. 7 - they had annexation of the West Bank listed as one of the official goals of their coalition since they were elected.
Another part stemmed from the extreme dehumanization of Palestinians that was already established in Israeli society long before (and to a lesser extent also in other western countries). The overton window had already been shifted so far that this kind of response was seen as mostly normal.
I found the standard justifications of "eh, war is always cruel" and "when their kids grow up, they will just become the next generation of terrorists" pretty telling.
Public opinion in the US has turned against Israel, yes. Trump doesn't care about public opinion. He'll be buddy-buddy to Netanyahu other than symbolic acts of distancing / reprimanding.
I think that's mostly accurate, but to be fair he did recently sign an executive order guaranteeing military defense of Qatar, which was clearly a message to Israel that they better not mess with them. It's far from a backpedal on his support for Israel, but it does show he won't let them do anything they want (at least if he is speaking honestly)
Of course he does. But he's currently most sensitive to Republican voters' opinions, and they're still at 64% net sympathy for Israel and 9% for Palestine. (55% of Trump voters say "Israel should continue its military campaign until Hamas is fully eliminated, even if it means the civilian casualties in Gaza might continue," while only 29% say "Israel should stop its military campaign in order to protect against civilian casualties, even if Hamas has not been fully eliminated" [1].)
As the midterms come closer, that 26% independent net support for Israel becomes more pertinent, as do the 67% of independents who want Israel to stop its campaign.
Trump is also "buddy-buddy" with a lot of the Gulf States, in fact, he probably likes them more because they have more money to give him. If Israel does something they don't like, such as bomb Qatar, Trump can swing against Israel.
Well Hamas did write they want to kill all Israel.
Hamas did slaughter , rape and torture 1200 civilians , children and babies. and take at least another 200? hostage Then paraded some of them thru Gaza. Exactly what response did Hamas expect. Also Trump has said 30,000 of the cira 60000 dead are Hamas fighters.
Look at the situation on October 7. 6000 armed terrorists swarmed across the border of gaza, commiting atrocities the like of which were not even thought to be possible in todays day and age among civilised people. I was never under any illusion of what hamas was and i was still shocked. The political climate in Israel up until that day was trying to help gazas economy and assuming hamas were pragmatic enough not to seek a war.
But it became clear that not only did they spend their main efforts in the previous few years planning this massacre, but they had embedded themselves as deeply as possible in every single part of gaza as possible. Their tunnel network is more extensive then the London underground. Their bases are in hospitals and schools. Undeniable facts except to the most cynical and dishonest people out there.
But what dismayed me the most was the response of the average palestinian on the street. Ecstatic celebration, i saw videos of crowds literally shrieking and crying for joy, at the single most shameful crime against humanity that was ever committed in their name.
No other country in the world would do anything different in Israels place. Most would go much further. You can express disgust at their actions from your place where you would never have to confront such barbarity. Hamas planned and created the entire situation you just described and left no other course of action for Israel to take. What else should they have done? Don't tell me some stupid idea like make peace with them and stop the settlements etc. Those are grievences entirely made up of anti israel people and does not address the reality of who hamas and far too many palestinians are.
War is horrible. I don't want it. No one wants it. This one is just and necessary. The world can sit and wait or they can help meaningfully.
If you want to argue explain to me how Israelis and any human being should view and respond to the scenes of joy and celebration they saw on and after Oct 7. Even today there is very little remorse or even regret.
Your metrics are yours alone. Ask Hamas if they won? If they stay in power in Gaza, trust me, they won. Same as if the Nazis were still in control of Germany, Stalin in charge of Russia, ISIS in charge of Iraq and Syria and the Khmer Rouge in charge of Cambodia…
Your suggestion that Israel stop fighting in contrast to Trump’s direct words stating that he will back Israel fully in defeating Hamas if Hamas does not accept his deal which involves them fully disarming, is essentially suggesting that Israel should accept defeat even when it has the backing of the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Now either you are ignorant or you are intentionally malevolent in your suggestion… take your pick
So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza? Wait until the next coordinated attack from Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza? Israel's enemies want it destroyed- that's what's at stake here. If Hamas had a chance it would keep going and murder all Israelis, not just the ones they managed to before they were repelled.
What sort of adaptation are you proposing?
I do agree Israel is taking a hit on the world stage. This is part of the war and Israel has a hard time defending itself against enemies with vast resources. Those enemies are also more than happy to distract and splinter the western nations with this topic. Russia has a better standing in the world with its war of aggression on Ukraine amongst many other problems. Most western countries who were/are happy to abandon Israel would (and have) respond with significantly more force to a similar attack on themselves.
It remains to be seen what are the longer term consequences here. Not just on Israel.
What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage. It's not that Israel's response has no problems - it has many problems. But the discourse on this is not rational and not fact based. The media and the various actors are pushing agenda and ideology. This isn't unique to Israel here, we see this on political issues, a discourse that is tribal, not rational but rather emotional, manipulated by the media (social and otherwise). CNN here is treating Israel basically as it treats Trump and the republicans. CNN is not in the news business, it is in the shaping political opinion business.
Would you say the west's response to ISIL/ISIS chopping the heads off a few westerners, a couple of random terrorist attacks in the west, and burning a Jordanian pilot alive would also be characterized as "extreme actions against a weak opponent"? How did CNN cover that conflict?
So criticism is hate? I'm Jewish does that mean I am hateful when I am critical of the actions of the Israeli government? Are you claiming none of the critism is legitimate and its all hate? Is criticism of Israel antisemetic? Because last I checked Israel is not a religion.
your entire narrative screams “I’m the victim here, please validate my aggressions, abuses and violence”.
the state of Israel has not been respectful since day one of it’s inception (violating the defined borders) neither truly wants a two state solution.
this outcome is the product of what escalated from that.
at least you understand the correlation between a figure like Trump and the state of Israel, that’s exactly on point.
it’s ok when one side violates borders and even settles on foreign land but when reactionary action (you’ve helped shape) takes place, you’re now the victim…
I would never be in Israel's position because I don't believe in genocide or land theft, thus would not have created this fake state in the first place.
> So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza?
What they're doing doesn't seem to be working, so maybe something else.
This is just armchair military philosophizing, but after the October attack, go ahead and do some big disproportionate response stuff for 30-90 days, then a ceasefire and prisoner exchange (this happened). But if the ceasefire doesn't work out, you can't go back to disproportionate response on the October attack; that doesn't look reasonable. Cat and mouse strikes on leadership until the hostages are released (edit: but not while leaders are gathered for peace negotiations!). You can still do proportionate response for any tit-for-tat kind of attacks in the occupied zone.
A war of occupation is a PR thing. You need to convince outside observers you're occupation is reasonable --- two years of disproportionate response doesn't do that. You also want to convince the occupied people not to support armed resistance; disproportionate response can work for that, but IMHO not over a long period of time; in the short term, it can get people to demand a stop to fighting, but after two years, again IMHO it just breeds more desire to fight.
You also need some sort of plan for after the hostilities end. How do you set the conditions so this is less likely to happen in the future. Really, the best way to have peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine as two states is for Israel and Palestine to both be prosperous; Israel needs to help make that happen, because it's in Israel's interests --- even if maybe it doesn't feel like it; a prosperous Palestine will be incentivized to be peaceful because prosperity is tenuous; a destitute Palestine has no need to be peaceful, because it has nothing to lose.
There's a lot of talk about ending Hamas; maybe that would do it, but if Hamas disbands today, you need something to replace the government services they provide. What's the plan for that? What would the interim system look like between now and that; can you enforce the interim system now as a way to push Hamas out?
Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.
Perhaps return the West Bank to Jordan ... maybe do the return of the West Bank first as a show of 'if y'all give us the hostages, we'll end the occupation' Returning the West Bank is hard, because you've got to figure out what to do with the settlers, which is probably a lot of tricky negotiations over which settlements can be kept with a land swap and which have to be abandoned, so it probably can't be done super fast.
"What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage."
This is exactly the blackpill. I live in a Muslim-majority country. Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history. Yes, there was some hate for Jews 20 years ago, but it has been gradually displaced into Zionist hate.
The recent analogy is Imperial Japan. The Japanese killed, raped, starved our people. But it was specifically the Imperial Japanese, not the citizens. Firebombing citizens didn't make anything better and it only slowed the process of post-war healing. We have great relationships with Germans and Japanese today despite their past. Moving on is an option.
Some of it is because we see the same pattern. Nationalist politics will always say, "Everyone hates you. We are the only ones who will protect you." For the former British territories, it was the playbook.
I do believe the only way to break from this cycle is to break this hold. Internally: don't keep genocidal leaders in power. Externally: avoid all this racist shit that gives fascists their power base.
> Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be.
After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks.
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
It turns out a disproportionate response is a rather effective strategy at deterring ones enemies from attacking, it worked quite well with Hezbollah which was considered by Israel to be a much more serious threat to Israel than Hamas was.
> Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
What other option did they have realistically? The middle east isn't a region where pacifism tends to work out well.
> Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
Keep in mind that statements politicians make publicly about Israel are often rather different from what they really think, politicians placating various activist groups for domestic political reasons doesn't often translate into meaningful adverse actions against Israel. The Israeli stock market is at all time highs right now despite everything that has happened.
I agree Israel has been way too slow at ending the war, their reluctance to take actions to finish off Hamas(or force their capitulation/surrender) and end the war is not helping either the Palestinian people or Israelis.
> I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor, but that isn't really an entirely new issue either.
Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.
If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
> After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks
Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
> Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor
> Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
The layman's understanding of war is less guided by international law and more around ideas like "tit for tat". Eg if Hamas kills 1000 Israeli civilians, Israel is entitled to kill 1000 Palestinian civilians, but should stop after that.
Is it the better response under international law? Not necessarily, but it would be better PR.
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response
Was Hamas' response proportionate to Israeli actions? What actions specifically.
Before you answer wildly, note that you're talking to someone who knows a dozen hostages and ex-hostages personally. Someone who knows two women whose babies were burned to death. Some whose daughter lost a close friend (that friend was slaughtered in his home along with both siblings and both parents, in their pajamas). Someone whose son's camp counselor was dragged to Gaza and murdered. I could go on. What was Hamas' actions a proportionate respond to?
>It’s been way too short a time to tell if this will work, but responding in a softer manner has proven to not. Might work is better than won’t work.
Absolutely! As R.A. Lafferty correctly posited[0]:
“When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your
attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem.
For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up
to him.”
― R.A. Lafferty
Yes. It's up to those dead Palestinians to now make peace. And the more dead Palestinians there are, there are more who are on the hook to do so. In fact, if we kill them all, they'll be in the perfect spot to make peace, amirite?
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response
Is it disproportionate? Why do we talk about proportions when it comes to Jewish people defending their security but don’t bring it up in other conflicts? There was no talk of proportionate response after 9/11, for example. Virtually all nations who participated in the global war on terror didn’t care.
Proportionality is also not relevant when you’re talking about terrorists who are hiding among civilians on purpose. Why should Israel have to sacrifice the security of its residents to limit collateral damage among the very people who voted for Hamas and still support Hamas, as polls show.
I've lived in the US since around 9/11; there was lots of discussion around the responses to Iraq, and Afghanistan. It went on to Yemen, and Libya. There was always criticism and utter disappointment with Obama in many circles over this. Many US soldiers came forward and condemned the Iraq war.
Also, the people who voted for Hamas over 20 years ago? Considering how young the population is, I doubt many were alive then. Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats back then. It's very dangerous rhetoric to say collateral damage should not be limited. Did the babies and the many women who were slaughtered in endless bombing campaigns vote for Hamas to deserve their very end? This rhetoric is exactly why the world has turned their back on Israel. In the US, huge majority of under 35s do not support the state, for example.
We can talk endlessly about strategy and long term implications (for example, the destruction of the Iranian "ring of fire" network of proxies, the permanent changes in Syria and Lebanon, etc), but consider something much more basic: Israelis around Gaza can finally live securely. There are no rockets coming from Gaza, no mortars, no chance of another October 7th or smaller incursions as long as the Israeli military is there. Israelis have peace. No Gazan rocket can disturb the life in Tel Aviv or Ashdod.
This couldn't and shouldn't have been a re-run of the countless previous clashes with Hamas. Israel needed to go all out to change the security situation, permanently.
I'm pretty sure people said the same thing after operation Cast Lead and other previous crackdowns. A country making itself into an international pariah while pursuing local security from an antagonist it nurtured in the first place is extremely myopic. As this conflict has dragged on, it has become more and more apparent that a great many Israelis (including in government) view their strategic situation through the lens of ancient historical conflicts from >2000 years ago and fantasize about resorting to the triumphant excesses of legend. Mass psychosis is not a good basis for long-term security.
Israel has seen more rockets and daily attacks than probably in its entire existance since they commenced the Gaza genocide what are you talking about.
“Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine.”
There's political opposition to this within Israel. Here's what happened to an elected member of the Knesset who spoke out against the cruelty in Gaza.[1] He was forcibly removed from the podium of the Knesset.
People sometimes forget how bitterly divided Israel was before October 7th, with hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets. The war put some of the infighting on hold for a while, but all the former problems still exist, and the stakes are higher.
The division is not about the starvation of Gaza. All Zionist parties in the Israeli parliament support the military campaign in Gaza. Apart from some lip-service from left-wing leaders, to my knowledge no Jewish leader has spoken against the starvation. Israeli media (except for Haaretz) have largely denied that there is a famine, and have called it a "propaganda campaign" by the Hamas.
> how bitterly divided Israel was before October 7th ... people protesting in the streets. The war put some of the infighting on hold ... the stakes are higher
What are the factors that transform a society that is generally decent, even if not free from flaws, into a society devoid of any moral restraints, into a multitude that wallows in the dubious pleasure of its cohesion and unity, indifferent to suffering, completely closed to others?
The victims of the Nazis' knowledge were indeed the Jews. Nazi anti-Semitism was indeed particularly destructive and murderous.
But the Nazis disregarded human life wherever it was. The extermination of hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war is just another example, but their attitude towards their own army, on the Stalingrad front for example, was also devoid of any human consideration.
Hitler did indeed lead these moves, but only here and there did anyone voice a complaint or reservation. With the outbreak of the war, the spirit of those who could truly resist was completely broken.
Is it really that easy to break the spirit? How does that happen? Few history books deal with this. Huffner tries to explain, and even if he is not always convincing and does not see everything, this experience of his, so close to the moment of truth in Europe on the eve of the outbreak of World War II, is unique and one of a kind. I believe that even in our time and even in our places, it is worthy of in-depth study.
- Shulamit Volkov (afterword to "The Story of a German" by Sebastian Huffner).
The man speaking is Ayman Odeh [1], an Arab Israeli MK and chairman of Hadash, a left-wing Arab Israeli party. Arab Israelis and their political leaders are marginalized in Israeli society. Arab Israeli parties are largely considered illegitimate by a majority of Jewish Israelis.
Political opposition to the starvation of Gaza is still marginal, especially in Jewish society. Protests in Arab cities against the starvation and the genocide are being curbed and prevented by the police. the Jewish majority is still largely silent on these issues, if not outright supportive of the government policy.
Israel is where we in the west get shown a mirror in front of our faces. A country led by religious fanatics, who don't respect other religions and for the most part feel no remorse when people of other faith suffer due to their actions or inaction. A genocidal military, that continues its deeds, seemingly aiming to reach ISIS level of despicability. But we have tons of people here, who don't want to see anything wrong with Israel and how it acts. That really shows us our double standards. Religious fanatics are OK for us, as long as they are not against us. Crimes against humanity are OK, as long as they are inflicted upon a group, that is not seen by the mainstream as "us".
We have really lost the plot when it comes to ethics. Not all of us, but many, and especially in our leaderships and governments.
Just to be fair, Israel itself is considered illegitimate by those parties. I doubt most democracies would let parties that are staunchly anti-state run, but Israel, for some reason, does.
There is simply no excuse for blocking the entry of food into a region wholesale. For that alone they should, at the very least, be an outcast in the international community. But here we are.
That they have the backing and blessing of the US government is the counter-argument to this. The US can almost unilaterally end this war if they want to.
The claim I've heard them make is that the food aid is making it in, but being stolen by Hamas so that it can be resold at markup. How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true (or is irrelevant)?
> How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true
It's not like the Gazans have any money to speak of.
> (or is irrelevant)?
If the way to prevent starvation is to flood the zone with food shipments, it's a moral imperative to do that. That it will also help keep the enemy fed is entirely beside the point, since causing starvation is not a legal or ethical form of warfare.
If that was true, wouldn’t the best course of action be to let as much aid as possible into Gaza to flood the market rather than restricting the flow (therefore increasing prices) like Israel has been doing?
Then Israel severely limiting the amount of food is helping Hamas by artificially, and cruelly, limiting supply. People want to feed their families and will go to great lengths: sell their valuables, harm others, or wait in line at a Gaza Health Ministry site with the knowledge the IDF might fire into the crowd.
If they flooded Gaza with food then Hamas would benefit less from the supposed stealing/reselling.
> And this didn't start in 2023. Gaza has been under Israeli blockade for decades.
The blockade was also imposed by Egypt[0] and Hamas certainly provided no shortage of security related justifications for the blockade. Unfortunately those security concerns turned out to be accurate[1].
It’s not been under a “blockade” for even a year continuously. Literally earlier this year, hundreds of trucks carrying aid were allowed in per day. That was during the ceasefire that didn’t last. If you go back to the history of blockades of Gaza you’ll see it was very intermittent. And when things were tightened, it was in response to incidents like Hamas rocket attacks.
It's wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation. Weird that it needs to be said, but this is why war crimes are a thing. Just because it's an armed conflict, doesn't mean anything goes.
> wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation
The point is to distinguish this war from how others have been fought. A lot of accusations against the IDF's conduct have been baseless. Not wrong in that they're factually incorrect. Just wrong in that it's how everyone else fights wars when they go to war.
This is different. America didn't trigger a famine in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it's not like we fought those wars honorably. That is where it's worth answering the question, is this just war or is this worse.
The US-led sanctions regime against Iraq in the 90s did lead to high rates of malnutrition and excess deaths, with Madeleine Albright publicly insisting that half a million dead children would be 'worth it'.
Not really. Very very early on we knew (verifiable objective fact) that Israel used very different math on combatant:civilian casualty ratios than coalition forces in OEF and OIF.
This isn't "they're waging a more intense war and accidentally killing more people" -- it is that their actual decision framework was to authorize killings with several multiples higher ratios of civilian deaths than the US authorized in the Middle East.
No, a lot of the accusations were not baseless; you’re using a different definition.
The accusations of them deliberately shooting children in the head and targeting journalists have been proven unfortunately accurate time and time again.
We must be precise in our language when describing war crimes. No wiggle room.
The horror that starvation inflicts on the human mind is beyond comparison. My grandfather experienced this firsthand when he fled from the Japanese invasion, an occupation that stripped civilians of their food supply. He helplessly watched as his parents, relatives, and even his older brother succumbed one by one to hunger. Barely escaping the same fate, he fled the country just before starvation could claim his own life.
When I was eight years old, I asked him why he always kept a room filled with dried cassava root. His reply was simple but unforgettable: dying from starvation is the most terrifying experience imaginable, and he was determined never to endure it again.
Starvation may also cause epigenetic and metabolic changes, which persist and are even passed to next generations. In children tissue dystrophy is particular damaging, since their bodies are still developing. Starvation is a really fucking bad thing.
In many ways, the fear of hunger is deeply ingrained within us as human beings. Our instincts continually drive us to optimize for consumption and survival. Yet, how often do we pause to reflect on how much of our daily lives revolve around thoughts of food or the pursuit of security?
My grandfather had to join Nazi German military towards the end of the war at the age of 15. Fully indoctrinated of course, thinking, that he must serve his country. Got captured in Russia, survived prisoner camps there, by eating grass to avoid starvation. He told me stories about the conditions there. Hard work, and every morning someone would be dead from the cold or from starvation, or from suffocating in puddles of water. Later he was moved to an US managed prisoner camp, where food was plenty and good.
He also survived a head shot wound (visible on the side of his head) and doctors told him, that he should drink and smoke as much as he wants, because he wouldn't make it long anyway ... Well, he made it to old age and only dies a few years ago. (He did stop smoking, when my grandma also stopped. He smoked cigars and then from one day to the next, they both stopped doing that.)
However, I think it is in those Russian PoW camps, that he developed something we call "Hungerhast". I couldn't find a translation in 2 dictionaries, so I am not sure it is a proper term. Basically, body begins shaking, cannot stop hands from shaking, if he got hungry.
He didn't have higher education, but definitely had an engineer's mind. He built many things out of wood to sell them. For example he got into woodturning and also made traditional nutcrackers, which he also painted in various colors. Back in DDR this stuff was highly sought, because getting it from West Germany was not possible for everyone. He also had a writing side. Was able to come up with spoonerism (I just looked up that word. Not sure if correct. Some kind of phrase that rhymes.) and collected them.
In 1942, Jewish doctors conducted the Warsaw Ghetto Hunger Study used the man made famine to study the physiological and psychological effects of hunger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Hunger_Study
Not all scientific studies need to be replicated.
There are articles about Israel planning for Gazans to emigrate for months. The idea is they would 'voluntarily' emigrate to several African countries Israel made deals with. So I think that is more proof the starvation is deliberate. They can claim they aren't forcing anyone to migrate but if you stay you die. Not only is that evil but they are forcing some other country to deal with the problem.
Readit News
Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be. In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all -- they lashed out wildly and extremely destructively, without a clear picture of what the post-war Gaza Strip will look like.
Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
I think it's quite the opposite - there has been a very clear, cold, calculated strategy - which is to use the conflict as an cover for doing what some in the government have always wanted to do ( and been quite open about it ) - which is to create a greater Israel - drive out all Palestinians from the river to the sea ( Gaza and West Bank ), as well as push to the river in the north into Lebanon and take more of Syria.
Those in government understand the potential reputation loss - but see that as temporary and something that can be managed under the protection of the US, while viewing the gain of territory as permanent.
Q. How many times did any Countries hold islamic-only real-estate expos in Mosques for the former and future homes and territories of Jewish peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to fundamentalist islamic occupation? _Zero_
Q. How many times did any Countries held jewish-only real-estate expos in Synagogues for the former homes and territories of Muslim peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to zionist occupation? _Countless_
https://lapublicpress.org/2024/09/israeli-real-estate-fair-h...
https://halifax.citynews.ca/2024/03/07/palestine-is-not-for-...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-drawing-protests-in-othe...
https://www.laconverse.com/en/articles/les-coulisses-dun-sal...
They're now at the point where they're paying their contractors $1,500 a house demolished, and constantly inciting violent engagement so as to get the IDF involved and sanitise the area - most notably near the supposed humanitarian relief distribution points they're so fond of double-tap bombing.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250630-shocking-israeli-...
N.B. Israel is now concentrating on the remaining medical facilities, and has carried out at least 17 attacks on or in the vicinity of healthcare facilities in Gaza City since 16 September. (https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2078)
Three healthcare facilities—Al Quds Hospital, Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital, and the Medical Relief Health Centre—have all been directly hit, while further strikes were recorded in the vicinity of two more, Al Shifa Medical Complex and Al Ahli Hospital.
Currently, across the Gaza Strip, only 2000 hospital beds remain available, for a population of over 2 million people.
This is fantasy. Israel (or any country really) ability to expand is limited by its neighbors. Egypt, Jordan and the GCC are more powerful than the 60s and the recent UAE message of pulling of the Abraham accord is a clear signal that they have real weight in Washington. Israel cannot, in the current circumstances, expand.
So I agree with your parent. What Israel currently is doing is non-sense and plays in the hands of Hamas (who is not losing, as civilian lost lives do not count in Hamas counter).
A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.
(And if your ethnic group is denied voting rights, you have a basic duty to your fellow man to raise hell until you get those rights, because arbitrary starvation is always on the table for your children until you get them.)
Its also a bit unclear what you mean by "unambiguously under Israeli control" since Palestinians in occupied palestinian territories aren't unambigiously under Israeli control, they had little control over the inside of Gaza until recently, and have some power in the west bank that is shared with the PA. Neither is "unambiguous control". The only group unambigiously under their control are the Palestinians inside Israel proper who as far as i understand do have full voting rights.
If you think military presence should equal voting rights, than i think that would imply that Iraq should be able to vote in US presedential elections.
100%
The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.
Dead Comment
Benjamin Netanyahu is still in power, his trial for corruption continually delayed as a direct consequence of the war:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Benjamin_Netanyahu
Not many mistakes made here, just others who are mistaken about the goals
you can ask the same of Hamas, is theirs the policy the populace wants?
Israel does have a robust free speech democracy and you can easily learn what many of the different factions think, and like elections anywhere, you don't know till afterward how it plays out, and voters are always disappointed by the way power is exercised.
The IDF has taken a very slow and careful approach. There are typically under a hundred Palestinians killed at a time, but they are killed most days with a high degree of consistency. Headlines like "50 civilians killed in Gaza overnight" no longer make it to the front page. There has clearly been careful management to ensure that the numbers don't climb high enough in a single day to upset the new "normal". Israel has banned foreign journalists and the IDF has deliberately targeted those inside of Gaza to further minimize coverage. On top of that, the IDF has targeted healthcare infrastructure and workers while carefully controlling aid to bring about famine without provoking any significant foreign response.
The big concerns now should be how quickly an incipient famine in a region whose healthcare system has been largely eliminated could cause mass deaths, and how long the fog of war Netanyahu has carefully crafted over Gaza might hide it. The remaining window of time in which intervention might prevent tragedy is rapidly closing.
They have neutered Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, and effected the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.
I don’t think Israel cares about foreign civilian opinions. Western states are largely still aligned and dependent on Israeli geopolitical presence.
Palestine is not and never was the focal point of this conflict. It was always Iran.
Since 2005, Israel has maintained a strategy for managing Gaza called "mowing the grass"[0][1] in which every few years they attack and conduct short, sharp military operations. This is in contrast to their strategy of (illegal) settlements in the West Bank. In fact, they removed 8,000 settlers in 2005 when they began this strategy.
Besides the major hostilities of 2008/9,[2] 2012,[3] 2014,[4] and 2021[5], Israel infamously tests new weapons and technology on Gaza, allowing their weapons to be labelled "battlefield tested". One of their largest export is surveillance technology (guess who's the largest customer of that), but they also test drones, air force tech, and even guns. In October 2020 an IDF sniper boasted to Israeli newspaper Haaretz about breaking the "kneecap record" after shooting 42 Palestinian kneecaps in a single day. The snipers purposefully target kneecaps to permanently disable protestors, especially younger ones and increase the burden of care for Gazan society. This is "peacetime" between Gaza and Israel.
Gaza has been called an "open air prison" and "laboratory"[6] for Israel's military industry. The point I'm making is that Israel has never stopped keeping its eye on Gaza. I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know, with extreme detail, what they were getting themselves into
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowing_the_grass
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/14/israel-gaza-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War_(2008%E2%80%932009)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Gaza_War
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israel%E2%80%93Palestine_...
[6] https://www.versobooks.com/products/2684-the-palestine-labor...
I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know about the Oct 7 attack in the first place, and chose to use it as a reason.
Such as ?
Israel probably came out ahead if all they lost is prestige.
They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power. Their weapons and military have been validated, which makes than a desirable trading partner in an increasingly-militarising world. And they're turning into a gas exporter.
Worst case, a generational shift occurs and Israel loses its military support from America. (I don't see us sanctioning Israel any time soon, so its economic primacy will remain intact. And we only pay for like 15% of their military budget, so not a disaster.) Do you really think China and India would even hesitate to partner with Tel Aviv on defense?
How did they "neuter" Iran? Iran responded quickly and managed to heavily damage TelAviv and is now rushing to accelerate rebuilding their nuclear capabilities.
If anything, the previous operation was a disaster, it allowed to regime to entrench itself even further in IRAN and regime change that they were hoping for didn't happen.
I'm sure both Iran and Israel are gearing up for another round of heavy conflict later this year or early next year.
IRAN is still very much a threat to Israel.
Iran maintains the ability to build ballistic missiles in large numbers, greatly depleted Israel-US BMD reserves, continues to build even more reinforced nuclear sites. Neutering those capabilities was the main goal of the 12 day war and by most accounts, that didn't work.
Israel did not manage air superiority over the large majority of Iran, instead the majority of strikes over Iran were done using standoff weapons and drones, many flown from within Iran as an act of sabotage.
If Israel truly managed to get air superiority over Iran, the Iranian regime would have suffered the same fate as Nasrallah. But that didn't happen, because while Israel was able to execute a number of deep strikes, the capability to do so was much closer to Russia's ability over Ukraine than, say, the way the US operated over Iraq. And Iran at the same time was able to execute dozens of deep strikes within Israel, but with much less precision - without a much deeper cut to the Iranian MIC it's only a matter of time before the newer, much more precise missiles are built in sufficient numbers to become a similar threat to the Israeli airforce.
There is no reason why China would ever want to partner with Israel on defense anymore. They tried do in the 2000s, and they found that Israel was so deeply and inextricably dependent on US technology and manufacturing for it's military technology that there was almost nothing worthwhile they could get that wasn't so dependent on the US that the US would veto it. Israel's military sophistication is not endogenous to the extent it would be competitive without the US - it's entirely dependent on an extremely privileged relationship with the MIC that allows Israel to stand on the shoulder of giants and produce weapons that are far more sophisticated than would be possible for any economy of its' size otherwise.
An article came out only today on Haaretz detailing how much of the footage and imagery from Israeli strikes were deepfakes or recycled footage. That's not something you do when you've managed to neuter your opponent.
During the Rhodesian Bush War, their forces ran circles around the ZIPRA and ZANLA with multiple battles and encounters where they'd routinely record 500:1 KD ratios like Operation Dingo, etc. They had complete freedom of action to bomb any infrastructure obstructing them, reach deep into neighboring countries and slaughter guerillas copiously.
Hell, South Africa had a dozen nukes.
Once the sanctions came on, it unraveled everything they had.
Israel is in such a precarious situation right now. Their economy depends on technology exports to an extreme degree. Cutting off that source of FX would literally half the economy overnight because cash would stop sloshing around internally from its main sources.
If that happens, all the smart kids propping up the economy will move out while you're left with extremists who want war but won't fight in the army. In fact, it's ongoing right now with people leaving the country in the midst of a war they're 'winning.'
You might think sanctions are a far-off notion, but key Western powers are breaking with America on recognizing Palestine. That's a red line designed to signal to Israel that it's losing ground. People across the world are calling for sanctions and it won't be long before they materialize.
And America? Israel's main power base are American boomer evangelicals who're going the way of the dinosaur. Like I said in another comment, their kids are either not religious, don't like bombing kids, have been radicalized by the atrocities they've witnessed, or are aligned with people like Fuentes.
I hope they can smell the coffee; if anyone had told South Africa that a nuclear power could be disarmed without a gunshot, they'd never have believed it. But, look what eventually happened.
Thanks to the ongoing genocide, America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years, while the boomer evangelicals die off.
The United States Red Cross sets as a floor 1500 calories a day for people in distress. Is the Red Cross trying to starve Americans in distress?
https://emergency.lacity.gov/sites/g/files/wph1791/files/202...
The UN just cut food aid in Kenya for 800,000 refugees from the war in Sudan in half to 588 calories per day, yet the UN says it is willing and able to provide significantly higher amounts of food (and to not do so would be criminal) to the 2 million people of Gaza. Is the UN criminal/genocidal against Kenyan/Sudanese for offering starvation level assistance to one group but significantly more to another? The UN says they are ready and able to provide assistance to one group at the very same time the cut in half/say they can't provide aid that meets the level they say Gaza must receive when it is people in Kenya that need aid. Kenyan war refugees are receiving significantly less per person than that 1400 calorie at 588.
https://allafrica.com/stories/202505230270.html
Another part stemmed from the extreme dehumanization of Palestinians that was already established in Israeli society long before (and to a lesser extent also in other western countries). The overton window had already been shifted so far that this kind of response was seen as mostly normal.
I found the standard justifications of "eh, war is always cruel" and "when their kids grow up, they will just become the next generation of terrorists" pretty telling.
Public opinion in the US has turned against Israel, yes. Trump doesn't care about public opinion. He'll be buddy-buddy to Netanyahu other than symbolic acts of distancing / reprimanding.
Of course he does. But he's currently most sensitive to Republican voters' opinions, and they're still at 64% net sympathy for Israel and 9% for Palestine. (55% of Trump voters say "Israel should continue its military campaign until Hamas is fully eliminated, even if it means the civilian casualties in Gaza might continue," while only 29% say "Israel should stop its military campaign in order to protect against civilian casualties, even if Hamas has not been fully eliminated" [1].)
As the midterms come closer, that 26% independent net support for Israel becomes more pertinent, as do the 67% of independents who want Israel to stop its campaign.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/02/polls/times-s...
But it became clear that not only did they spend their main efforts in the previous few years planning this massacre, but they had embedded themselves as deeply as possible in every single part of gaza as possible. Their tunnel network is more extensive then the London underground. Their bases are in hospitals and schools. Undeniable facts except to the most cynical and dishonest people out there.
But what dismayed me the most was the response of the average palestinian on the street. Ecstatic celebration, i saw videos of crowds literally shrieking and crying for joy, at the single most shameful crime against humanity that was ever committed in their name.
No other country in the world would do anything different in Israels place. Most would go much further. You can express disgust at their actions from your place where you would never have to confront such barbarity. Hamas planned and created the entire situation you just described and left no other course of action for Israel to take. What else should they have done? Don't tell me some stupid idea like make peace with them and stop the settlements etc. Those are grievences entirely made up of anti israel people and does not address the reality of who hamas and far too many palestinians are.
War is horrible. I don't want it. No one wants it. This one is just and necessary. The world can sit and wait or they can help meaningfully.
If you want to argue explain to me how Israelis and any human being should view and respond to the scenes of joy and celebration they saw on and after Oct 7. Even today there is very little remorse or even regret.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Your suggestion that Israel stop fighting in contrast to Trump’s direct words stating that he will back Israel fully in defeating Hamas if Hamas does not accept his deal which involves them fully disarming, is essentially suggesting that Israel should accept defeat even when it has the backing of the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Now either you are ignorant or you are intentionally malevolent in your suggestion… take your pick
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
What sort of adaptation are you proposing?
I do agree Israel is taking a hit on the world stage. This is part of the war and Israel has a hard time defending itself against enemies with vast resources. Those enemies are also more than happy to distract and splinter the western nations with this topic. Russia has a better standing in the world with its war of aggression on Ukraine amongst many other problems. Most western countries who were/are happy to abandon Israel would (and have) respond with significantly more force to a similar attack on themselves.
It remains to be seen what are the longer term consequences here. Not just on Israel.
What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage. It's not that Israel's response has no problems - it has many problems. But the discourse on this is not rational and not fact based. The media and the various actors are pushing agenda and ideology. This isn't unique to Israel here, we see this on political issues, a discourse that is tribal, not rational but rather emotional, manipulated by the media (social and otherwise). CNN here is treating Israel basically as it treats Trump and the republicans. CNN is not in the news business, it is in the shaping political opinion business.
Would you say the west's response to ISIL/ISIS chopping the heads off a few westerners, a couple of random terrorist attacks in the west, and burning a Jordanian pilot alive would also be characterized as "extreme actions against a weak opponent"? How did CNN cover that conflict?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State
- >83k militants killed.
- 10's of thousands civilians killed. (IMO vastly underestimated, one source claims 40k killed just in the battle for Mosul: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%93... )
- millions displaced.
Let in the food. Flood Gaza with food, actually, so it stops being a recruitment tool for militants.
the state of Israel has not been respectful since day one of it’s inception (violating the defined borders) neither truly wants a two state solution.
this outcome is the product of what escalated from that.
at least you understand the correlation between a figure like Trump and the state of Israel, that’s exactly on point.
it’s ok when one side violates borders and even settles on foreign land but when reactionary action (you’ve helped shape) takes place, you’re now the victim…
What they're doing doesn't seem to be working, so maybe something else.
This is just armchair military philosophizing, but after the October attack, go ahead and do some big disproportionate response stuff for 30-90 days, then a ceasefire and prisoner exchange (this happened). But if the ceasefire doesn't work out, you can't go back to disproportionate response on the October attack; that doesn't look reasonable. Cat and mouse strikes on leadership until the hostages are released (edit: but not while leaders are gathered for peace negotiations!). You can still do proportionate response for any tit-for-tat kind of attacks in the occupied zone.
A war of occupation is a PR thing. You need to convince outside observers you're occupation is reasonable --- two years of disproportionate response doesn't do that. You also want to convince the occupied people not to support armed resistance; disproportionate response can work for that, but IMHO not over a long period of time; in the short term, it can get people to demand a stop to fighting, but after two years, again IMHO it just breeds more desire to fight.
You also need some sort of plan for after the hostilities end. How do you set the conditions so this is less likely to happen in the future. Really, the best way to have peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine as two states is for Israel and Palestine to both be prosperous; Israel needs to help make that happen, because it's in Israel's interests --- even if maybe it doesn't feel like it; a prosperous Palestine will be incentivized to be peaceful because prosperity is tenuous; a destitute Palestine has no need to be peaceful, because it has nothing to lose.
There's a lot of talk about ending Hamas; maybe that would do it, but if Hamas disbands today, you need something to replace the government services they provide. What's the plan for that? What would the interim system look like between now and that; can you enforce the interim system now as a way to push Hamas out?
Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.
Perhaps return the West Bank to Jordan ... maybe do the return of the West Bank first as a show of 'if y'all give us the hostages, we'll end the occupation' Returning the West Bank is hard, because you've got to figure out what to do with the settlers, which is probably a lot of tricky negotiations over which settlements can be kept with a land swap and which have to be abandoned, so it probably can't be done super fast.
This is exactly the blackpill. I live in a Muslim-majority country. Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history. Yes, there was some hate for Jews 20 years ago, but it has been gradually displaced into Zionist hate.
The recent analogy is Imperial Japan. The Japanese killed, raped, starved our people. But it was specifically the Imperial Japanese, not the citizens. Firebombing citizens didn't make anything better and it only slowed the process of post-war healing. We have great relationships with Germans and Japanese today despite their past. Moving on is an option.
Some of it is because we see the same pattern. Nationalist politics will always say, "Everyone hates you. We are the only ones who will protect you." For the former British territories, it was the playbook.
I do believe the only way to break from this cycle is to break this hold. Internally: don't keep genocidal leaders in power. Externally: avoid all this racist shit that gives fascists their power base.
After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks.
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
It turns out a disproportionate response is a rather effective strategy at deterring ones enemies from attacking, it worked quite well with Hezbollah which was considered by Israel to be a much more serious threat to Israel than Hamas was.
> Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
What other option did they have realistically? The middle east isn't a region where pacifism tends to work out well.
> Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
Keep in mind that statements politicians make publicly about Israel are often rather different from what they really think, politicians placating various activist groups for domestic political reasons doesn't often translate into meaningful adverse actions against Israel. The Israeli stock market is at all time highs right now despite everything that has happened.
I agree Israel has been way too slow at ending the war, their reluctance to take actions to finish off Hamas(or force their capitulation/surrender) and end the war is not helping either the Palestinian people or Israelis.
> I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor, but that isn't really an entirely new issue either.
Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
> Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor
Not relevant to America.
Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
Article says 400 people died.
My understanding is their civilian vs combatant ratio is lower than comparable urban conflicts. So it’s hard to respond “softer”.
Population adjusted, 10/7 was 10x+ worse than 9/11. Challenging to expect zero response.
So what else is there?
Is it the better response under international law? Not necessarily, but it would be better PR.
Deleted Comment
Was Hamas' response proportionate to Israeli actions? What actions specifically.
Before you answer wildly, note that you're talking to someone who knows a dozen hostages and ex-hostages personally. Someone who knows two women whose babies were burned to death. Some whose daughter lost a close friend (that friend was slaughtered in his home along with both siblings and both parents, in their pajamas). Someone whose son's camp counselor was dragged to Gaza and murdered. I could go on. What was Hamas' actions a proportionate respond to?
It’s been way too short a time to tell if this will work, but responding in a softer manner has proven to not. Might work is better than won’t work.
Absolutely! As R.A. Lafferty correctly posited[0]:
Yes. It's up to those dead Palestinians to now make peace. And the more dead Palestinians there are, there are more who are on the hook to do so. In fact, if we kill them all, they'll be in the perfect spot to make peace, amirite?[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11072354-when-you-have-shot...
Is it disproportionate? Why do we talk about proportions when it comes to Jewish people defending their security but don’t bring it up in other conflicts? There was no talk of proportionate response after 9/11, for example. Virtually all nations who participated in the global war on terror didn’t care.
Proportionality is also not relevant when you’re talking about terrorists who are hiding among civilians on purpose. Why should Israel have to sacrifice the security of its residents to limit collateral damage among the very people who voted for Hamas and still support Hamas, as polls show.
I guess it depends on where you were, but for me in Australia at the time, yes - there was plenty.
Also, the people who voted for Hamas over 20 years ago? Considering how young the population is, I doubt many were alive then. Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats back then. It's very dangerous rhetoric to say collateral damage should not be limited. Did the babies and the many women who were slaughtered in endless bombing campaigns vote for Hamas to deserve their very end? This rhetoric is exactly why the world has turned their back on Israel. In the US, huge majority of under 35s do not support the state, for example.
Dead Comment
This couldn't and shouldn't have been a re-run of the countless previous clashes with Hamas. Israel needed to go all out to change the security situation, permanently.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
There's political opposition to this within Israel. Here's what happened to an elected member of the Knesset who spoke out against the cruelty in Gaza.[1] He was forcibly removed from the podium of the Knesset.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzDxV7jnAos
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Seriously, you can't apply western standards to middle eastern coumtry, even more so, single out one ME country to apply them to.
Political opposition to the starvation of Gaza is still marginal, especially in Jewish society. Protests in Arab cities against the starvation and the genocide are being curbed and prevented by the police. the Jewish majority is still largely silent on these issues, if not outright supportive of the government policy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_Odeh
We have really lost the plot when it comes to ethics. Not all of us, but many, and especially in our leaderships and governments.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Almost but not quite.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...
It's not like the Gazans have any money to speak of.
> (or is irrelevant)?
If the way to prevent starvation is to flood the zone with food shipments, it's a moral imperative to do that. That it will also help keep the enemy fed is entirely beside the point, since causing starvation is not a legal or ethical form of warfare.
And/or the Israel-backed ISIS groups[1][2].
[1]: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sytu2q1mel
[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-armi...
If they flooded Gaza with food then Hamas would benefit less from the supposed stealing/reselling.
Seems to me, if the claim is true, Israel is trying to give Hamas more power, not less.
Deleted Comment
The blockade was also imposed by Egypt[0] and Hamas certainly provided no shortage of security related justifications for the blockade. Unfortunately those security concerns turned out to be accurate[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks
Not to mention that the blockade was enforced by Egypt as well.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
The point is to distinguish this war from how others have been fought. A lot of accusations against the IDF's conduct have been baseless. Not wrong in that they're factually incorrect. Just wrong in that it's how everyone else fights wars when they go to war.
This is different. America didn't trigger a famine in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it's not like we fought those wars honorably. That is where it's worth answering the question, is this just war or is this worse.
This isn't "they're waging a more intense war and accidentally killing more people" -- it is that their actual decision framework was to authorize killings with several multiples higher ratios of civilian deaths than the US authorized in the Middle East.
The accusations of them deliberately shooting children in the head and targeting journalists have been proven unfortunately accurate time and time again.
We must be precise in our language when describing war crimes. No wiggle room.
Keep in mind that there is a lot of money to be made by defending Israel. Some people will take that money. Just a few citations below:
- Certain social media influencers being paid up to $7000 per post [1]
- Israel boosts propaganda funding by $150m to sway global opinion against genocide [2] [3]
- "[...] a firm called Bridges Partners LLC has been hired to manage an influencer network under a project code-named the “Esther Project.” " [4]
[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-influencers-netanya...
[2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/isr...
[3] https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/israel-has-spent-m...
[4] https://www.jta.org/2025/09/30/united-states/israels-secret-...
Dead Comment
There is an editorial voice reserved purely for blunting reporting on American and Israeli state crimes that drives me nuts.
Deleted Comment
When I was eight years old, I asked him why he always kept a room filled with dried cassava root. His reply was simple but unforgettable: dying from starvation is the most terrifying experience imaginable, and he was determined never to endure it again.
He also survived a head shot wound (visible on the side of his head) and doctors told him, that he should drink and smoke as much as he wants, because he wouldn't make it long anyway ... Well, he made it to old age and only dies a few years ago. (He did stop smoking, when my grandma also stopped. He smoked cigars and then from one day to the next, they both stopped doing that.)
However, I think it is in those Russian PoW camps, that he developed something we call "Hungerhast". I couldn't find a translation in 2 dictionaries, so I am not sure it is a proper term. Basically, body begins shaking, cannot stop hands from shaking, if he got hungry.
He didn't have higher education, but definitely had an engineer's mind. He built many things out of wood to sell them. For example he got into woodturning and also made traditional nutcrackers, which he also painted in various colors. Back in DDR this stuff was highly sought, because getting it from West Germany was not possible for everyone. He also had a writing side. Was able to come up with spoonerism (I just looked up that word. Not sure if correct. Some kind of phrase that rhymes.) and collected them.