Israel-Hamas War: To Evacuate or Not?
The choice is between competing disasters.
AP (“Palestinians flee northern Gaza after Israel orders 1 million to evacuate as ground attack looms“):
Palestinians began a mass exodus from northern Gaza Friday after Israel’s military told some 1 million people to evacuate toward the southern part of the besieged territory, an unprecedented order ahead of an expected ground invasion against the ruling Hamas militant group.
The U.N. warned that so many people fleeing en masse — almost half the Gaza population — would be calamitous, and it urged Israel to reverse the order. Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with blankets and possessions streamed down a main road out of Gaza City, the biggest city, even as Israeli strikes hammered neighborhoods in southern Gaza.
Hamas, which staged a shocking and brutal attack on Israel nearly a week ago and has fired thousands of rockets since, called on people to stay in their homes, saying the order was “psychological warfare” to break their solidarity.
Many hesitated to leave, mostly because safety was uncertain everywhere in the tiny territory under constant bombardment by Israeli airstrikes. Gaza is sealed off from food, water and medical supplies and under a virtual total power blackout.
“Forget about food, forget about electricity, forget about fuel. The only concern now is just if you’ll make it, if you’re going to live,” said Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza City, as she broke into heaving sobs.
Reuters (“Hamas tells Gaza residents to stay put as Israel ground offensive looms“):
Mosques broadcast messages telling Gaza Strip residents to stay put on Friday, in defiance of an Israeli military call for more than a million civilians to move south within 24 hours in the build-up to its expected ground offensive.
Leaders of the enclave’s governing militant group Hamas also urged Palestinians to ignore the call, and by Friday afternoon there were no signs of any mass exodus from the north of the enclave.
Any incursion into the densely populated territory would be a pivotal moment in Israel’s war with Hamas, which on Saturday launched the bloodiest attack on the country since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
Israel has already mounted the heaviest air strikes on Gaza ever, and has mobilised 300,000 reservists and amassed tanks near the border in response to the Hamas assault.
In Gaza, the threats of a ground invasion conjured up images of the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe that refers to the 1948 war of Israel’s creation that led to their mass dispossession.
Gaza analyst Talal Okal described the Israeli relocation order as an “attempt to push the Palestinian people of Gaza into Nakba”.
“Like they did in 1948 when they pushed people out of historical Palestine by dropping barrels of explosives on their heads, today Israel is repeating this before the eyes of the world and live cameras,” Okal told Reuters.
The Israeli military told the civilians of Gaza City to “evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields.”
In Gaza, mosques broadcast the message: “Hold on to your homes. Hold on to your land.”
In Gaza’s Shifa hospital, a man arrived to check on dozens of relatives and friends who have been brought from the site of a residential building Israel bombed in Beach refugee camp.“I survived, I don’t know why I survived. It is so that I tell the enemy, America, Europe and the world that this Palestinian people will not be defeated,” the man cried toward reporters.
“They think there will be another displacement, or that we may go Egypt. Nonsense,” he said before going into the morgue to try and identify dead relatives.
Well-Known Gaza Hamas cleric Wael Al-Zard was also killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza, Hamas said. His son was killed a few weeks ago during border protests along the fence.
On the one hand, there’s a strange asymmetry between the Israeli government warning Palestinian noncombatants to flee from danger and the Palestinian leadership ordering them to stay and be slaughtered. But it’s by no means obvious where a million Palestinians would flee to in short order.
Well, this clarifies the morality a bit, doesn’t it? Israelis: Save yourselves. Hamas: Die.
Better to sit on a sidewalk where the bombs aren’t falling than to lie in a bed where they are.
I don’t know where the end game is. In the meantime, there will be 1000s of deaths. The best outcome is that Hamas gets identified and killed sooner than later.
In the end, I think a Gandhi-like nonviolent movement is the only way forward for the Palestinians. Here’s a fantasy scenario. Rather than 1.1M fleeing south, Gazans all move north en masse to the border with hands in the air and surrender.
Anybody else have a fantasy scenario?
@Michael Reynolds:
Let’s be unequivocal here, both the Israelis and Hamas are telling the civilians of Gaza to die. Lets be entirely honest about what’s happening here.
@Michael Reynolds:
Not really? 24 hours for over a million people to flee is absurd, especially given that there has been a blockade on gas and power for most (if not all?) of this week. How are folks without power (thus internet/radio/TV) getting the message, exactly? And by what means are these same folks able to get out of Gaza? Where are they to go, exactly? This seems more like Israel wanting to get to say “but we told you to leave!” after killing a bunch of civilians. They’re covering their ass for the international community.
This is a very unserious way of saying “Save yourselves.”
@Beth: How exactly is Hamas telling the Gaza civilians to die?
@Michael Reynolds:
The moral high ground is a strategic asset as both parties are aware. Civilian casualties are a cost to the side that gets held responsible.
Israel has been offering to end the electricity/fuel/water blockade in exchange for return of the hostages. To me that looks like a pretty obvious non-starter, no chance in hell.
@Kazzy:
Seriously? For real? You have a different interpretation of “stay where you can be in the crossfire when the ordnance gets flying”?
@Kazzy:
First by launching this attack in the first place knowing full well that at a minimum the Israeli response would be ferocious and that civilians would bear the brunt of this.
Second, with this:
Stay and die, flee and die, does it really matter when the likelihood of dying is close to 100%?
Pray tell do the Palestinians flee to? It’s like Rumsfeld when asked where the WMD weren’t he could not answer the question. Israel needs to create an encampment inside the country and process the emigres, and yes it will take time; anything else is just a farce with fatal consequences which will consequently lead to another future attack.
@Raoul:
1. That would absolutely be ethnic cleansing. Are they also going to do that to the West Bank?
2. where are they going to go? I’m legitimately worried that the Israeli’s are going to force the population into Southern Gaza and where they will then be met with Egyptian machine guns to prevent them from entering. The Gaza-Egypt border isn’t very big, it would be very easy to turn it into a mass grave. I suspect the Egyptians would be fine with that.
Pretending there is no moral difference between Israel warning civilians to flee and Hamas demanding they stay and die, is absurd. It’s tortured logic motivated by a desire to find a way to blame Jews.
Where can Gazans flee? To the southern part of Gaza. It’s a one mile walk. I walk that far with my dogs every morning. So let’s cut the bullshit rhetorical questions. If we’d warned the people of Tokyo before we napalmed the shit out of it we’d be calling ourselves humanitarians.
As to how Gazans learned of Israel’s warning? The Israeli Air Force has been dropping leaflets. The usual prelude to genocide, right?
The encampment would be temporary but the point is the IDF will be entering Gaza and civilians should have access to safe spots. The whole Gaza Strip is a war zone and civilians will inevitably will be caught in the crossfire. What do you suggest, stay in place? In such scenario, which may well happen, the number of dead will probably reach five figures with the majority being civilians. Yeah, Egypt does not give a damn.
@Michael Reynolds:
You do realize that we did pretty much exactly that?
@Michael Reynolds:
The entire strip is 25 miles long. Still, things like cars and car pools and rides exist, so not a really big challenge.
@Michael Reynolds:
Speaking of bullshit lol
Why exactly would Netanyahu’s government be telling Gazans to walk one mile from where they are?
@DK:
Because the IDF is going into those places and they’re trying not to kill civilians. Duh.
@Jon:
True. I knew that, actually and forgot it.
@Michael Reynolds:
If there was somewhere for the roughly two million people to go and a way to get there, I would agree with you. In this case, you’re demanding that at least a million people walk though a war zone to another war zone. Gaza is roughly the length of Chicago, there are thousands of people who couldn’t walk that and would not be safe when the got there.
Again, please, tell me where the line is. I want to know.
@charontwo:
Please, let’s be real here. It’s not like the average Palestinian Civilian can just call up an Uber and have a quick jaunt south. This is going to be people walking through a war zone. Where’s the fuel for these supposed car pools. I think I get where you’re coming from, but this does not make you look good.
I’ll ask you too, where is the line. At what point do you say, “that was too much.”
@charontwo:
Doctors Without Borders: Israeli order to evacuate northern Gaza ‘outrageous’
I’m guessing humanitarian groups right there on the ground have a stronger handle on the challenges than privileged white Americans who love to think they know everything making ham-fisted declarations from 7,000 miles away.
@Beth:
Str8 white American privilege often resembles a mental disorder. Clueless!
I was taught that when I don’t know what I’m talking about I am obligated to do research, defer to those with expertise and/or experience, or just shut up. And the more I listen to people run their mouths the more grateful I am to have had tough, no nonsense Black parents.
@Beth:
You’re oversimplifying. If the Israelis are telling people to GTFO of the north, it’s not so they can bunch civilians together and kill them. That’s Hamas you’re thinking of. To use your Chicago reference point, the Israelis are telling a million people in Rogers Park to walk to Evanston. As I tried to explain above, better to sit on a sidewalk away from bombs than to sit in your living room where there are bombs.
I’m curious as to why you don’t seem to see a problem with Hamas warning people to stay put to be human shields? See, I would have thought that was more reprehensible than warning people to get out of the way of the tanks.
@Michael Reynolds:
Ha. The IDF didn’t have enough intel to save Israeli civilians within Israeli borders, I’m sure they’ve got a handle on what’s going on with civilians and hostages inside Gaza. Pfft!
@DK:
I never thought of you as stupid. What an asinine remark.
In war people have to do inconvenient things. Like flee from the battle. Has nothing to do with my sex or race. Seriously, WTF?
When the shooting starts, get out of the way. Pretending that a mile walk is the Bataan death march is absurd. If I was warned my condo building was going to be bombed, despite being 69, with a 67 year-old wife with a bad hip, guess what? I’d take the walk. But I guess you like Hamas’s idea better: stay and die. Is that the non straight, non-white solution?
@DK:
That is a non-sequitur.
You are out of your depth on this issue and saying embarrassingly dumb things.
There are no easy answers, and war does not provide for humane solutions. Any easier solutions and alternatives are in the past, and the present circumstances are not conducive to a repeat.
@Jon: Leaflets telling Japanese civilians to demand peace, which was beyond their power, isn’t the same as telling people to be out of Tokyo the night of the 9th or Hiroshima on the 6th.
Ah yes. Good to call out oversimplification. In this thread. By Michael.
@Michael Reynolds:
No, Rodgers Park borders Evanston. Under your analogy, there is no safety there. A much more accurate analogy would be to say walk from Rodgers Park to Bridgeport, which even in a car is a decent trip. What the Israeli’s are demanding is not a simple walk in the park, you see the scale of that right? A million people are expected to walk through a war zone, not clear easy streets, a war zone. And what happens when they get there? There’s no food. There’s no water. There’s no medical supplies. There’s just starvation and cholera. I also would say it’s safe to assume that Hamas has at least some portion of its hostages there. What then?
I have a huge problem with what Hamas is demanding. They are actively demanding the deaths of civilians. But with this, lets at least try and be honest about what the Israeli’s are demanding. It’s a complete indifference to what happens to about 2 million people. and then what.
I guess what I’m asking you for is to let your anger, and your grief, and your rage, and your powerlessness to flow through you. Spend a couple of minutes feeling every bit of that and then let go of it, if only briefly and then ask, 1. what is the line, and 2. what next.
@Michael Reynolds:
You accused Beth of “oversimplifying” after saying “It’s a one mile walk,” a staggering combo of stupidity and hypocrisy.
Because unlike you I know enough to know what I don’t know, I am repeating what is being said by the humanitarian groups there on the ground.
They know what they’re talking about.
You don’t. As much as you love to think you know it all. Nice try, tho.
@Neil Hudelson:
“It’s a one mile walk!”
Literally minutes later, “You’re oversimplifying!”
No one ever went broke underestimating the unearned ego of the mediocre American male.
@gVOR10: I mean we’re kinda getting off topic here, but we actually did tell them to evacuate their cities because we’re going to nuke them. I’ll grant you we didn’t supply a specific date, though.
@Michael Reynolds:
And then what? For how long?
There is no food, water, sanitation, or shelter there.
You literally claim that causing devastating humanitarian consequences is proof of moral superiority.
WTF is wrong with you?
@charontwo:
The UN: “devastating humanitarian consequences”
charontwo: “not a really big challenge”
Yeah sure.
@Michael Reynolds:
The non-straight, non-white solution is to *listen* to the humanitarian groups there on the ground, who have the expertise that comes from being there — working to save lives and bring decency, morality (apparently a dirty word to some), and humanity to the suffering. Expertise which you lack.
Asinine and absurd is you saying “It’s a one mile walk” while lecturing others about “oversimplifying” and telling others they’re out of their depth when you don’t have a clue and are incapable of admitting when you’re wrong.
You are clouded by emotions, which is understandable. So at this time, you’re not making sense. And, you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Clearly. Put the shovel down, sir.
@DK:
I had a friend in undergrad, this would have been 2001-2. Everyone in our Spanish class thought she was Colombian, even the Spanish teachers thought she was a slacker looking for an easy “A”. Turns out, not Colombian in the slightest. She was Jewish of Ukrainian descent. I very clearly remember having a discussion with her about how everyone in her family kept a suitcase packed in case they needed to flee. I never understood her. I though this is the U.S., why would you need to flee? And then I transitioned and had to have a discussion with my Partner about having to potentially flee. I don’t think I’m woke (in the actual Black sense), but I’m trying hard to get there.
I have mostly tried to stay away from this subject here. I don’t have any answers and my usual ways of talking aren’t suited to this subject. But I have an actual respect for @Michael Reynolds: and I can see how much pain he is in and I don’t like that. It hurts me and makes me sad. I’d much rather tell my partner I spent the day pleasantly harassing the kid-lit author guy on the weird website I hang out at and have her roll her eyes at me (double bonus) than watch his, very real, very understandable pain curdle into something malignant. There’s nothing I can do to help either the Israelis or the Palestinians. But I’d like to try and help at least one person look past their grief to the future. or at least break them away from some of the worst things they appear to be advocating for.
@DK: Who amongst us has not a pleasant stroll in the park with bombs falling, torsos flying and mine stepping anyways, though the latter certainly in a one mile walk. /s
It looks like, yes, the Israelis are trying to drive a wedge between the citizens of Gaza and Hamas. Hamas is responding to this as a political threat. Because they equate their own survival with the welfare of Gaza.
I dunno, it’s hard for me to see Hamas as doing what is best for its people, not on any level. The fact that there hasn’t been an election since the one they won in 2005, I think, fits with that.
The Israelis at least have a case for doing that. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but lots of Israelis think it is.
Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure that Netanyahu also equates his own survival with the good of Israel, or has at least convinced a large number of voters of that.
Authoritarianism (or is that narcissism? egocentrism?) is everywhere.
@drj:
Do you have a solution? Spoiler: No, you don’t. I’ll repeat what I said yesterday: It’s very American to imagine that there is a good solution. There isn’t. It is quite often the case in geopolitics that there is no good solution.
Hamas does not want a two-state solution. Hamas murders Palestinians who support a two-state solution. Hamas wants genocide. Do you see a reasonable compromise between, “All Jews must die,” and, “We’d rather not?”
The funny thing (well, not funny haha) is that the reason for this Hamas attack is the Abraham Peace Accords. Iran and Hamas no like peace between the UAE and eventually the KSA, and Israel. It was a stupid accord in that it just hand-waved the Palestinians away. Biden’s been trying to improve that deal. It is the mortal terror of a peace deal that is at least one of the underlying causes of this war.
This is the Middle East.
@DK:
Oh for fuck’s sake, try not to be a liberal simp. You’re not speaking truth to power, you’re fantasizing. Hamas murders Gazans who support a peace of any kind with Israel. It follows that there can be no peace deal with Hamas. In fact, it’s the threat of a peace deal deal between Arabs and Israelis that likely precipitated this attack. This is about the Abraham accords and Biden’s effort to extend them to the KSA.
@Beth:
It’s sweet that you think I’m in pain. I’m not in the least. I’m just analyzing what is rather than fantasizing or virtue signaling. That’s pretty much what I always do, or at least try to do.
@Michael Reynolds:
Shorter Michael Reynolds: “In the absence of any immediately obvious solution, I am in favor of mass murder. I am also morally superior. I am not a crank.”
Because having a million people out in the open, without food, water, or sanitation is mass murder.
What the fuck do you think will happen if you have a thousand people in a field without a single working toilet? Now multiply that by a thousand and take away the food and water, too.
And I haven’t even mentioned the sick and the wounded.
I know you’re not a stupid man. Why do you insist on pretending otherwise?
@Beth: “No, Rodgers Park borders Evanston”
Would you guys mind translating this argument into New York, LA or San Francisco distances? I don’t know Chicago nearly well enough to visualize what you’re talking about.
Thanks!
@wr: How about Berkeley to downtown SF: 14 miles. Walking. No BART.
@wr:
Michael is claiming Gazans have 24 hours to walk from The Grove to the LA Museum of Art when really they have 24 hours (well, now probably like 12) to walk from Van Nuys to Compton, with most of the journey through an active war zone.
@drj:
As I keep pointing out, there is a standing offer to restore the electric, fuel, water etc. in exchange for return of the hostages. Hamas would prefer they stay shut off, for reasons.
@wr:
I would love to, but I keep coming back to Chicago to understand this partly because I live here and partly because Chicago and Gaza are of a similar shape and size. Chicago is 50% bigger though, I think if I understand the math.
This might be helpful, if I can get it to work right: https://maps.app.goo.gl/CnEatjTBuQgSitnh6 if you zoom in on the north end, you’ll see that Evanston and Chicago share a border at Rodgers Park.
@Michael Reynolds:
I mean this in a respectful way, you’re not. You’re not even close. Like, there is a normal level of you being a grump and a crank and I adore you for that. I really do. Whatever it is you are feeling about this situation, you are not looking at it as a dispassionate analyst. I’m worried and keep asking you what the line is because it seems to me that you’re one or two steps away from advocating for genocide. I don’t know if you can see that. It scares me and I think it should worry you too.
@wr:
The exact distance is a red herring.
Even if I could make the trek in, let’s say, four hours, that doesn’t mean that one million people can. There is simply not enough room on the roads. It’s a physical impossibility.
@Jay L Gischer:
Of course you’re right. Is this up for dispute? Hamas does not care about the people within Gaza. They want to eradicate Israel and kill Jews.
I find all this talk about “What are Hamas’s stragetic objectives” very odd. The Hamas charter is not secret. Its goals seem clear: antisemitic genocide.
The question is how has Netanyahu managed to retain power despite his deliberate enabling of Hamas. The rationale for him was the protection of Israel and Jews. Well…
@charontwo:
You too. You’re advocating that some two million people should suffer and die, some horribly. What is the line. For you. When do you say, that’s too much.
At what point does this become collective punishment? Do a million Palestinians have to die if the hostages aren’t released? Are you suggesting that ever single Palestinian in Gaza is Hamas?
And then what. Is the end game to force all the Palestinians in to South Gaza, however that’s defined, and imprison them there? I mean, it’s a lot easier to control them if you wedge them all into a smaller spot.
Beth- Its too soon. It’s the internet so it was easy to agree that Hamas is evil, kill them all. Some civilian casualties? OK, justified. But anything much beyond that is too soon. Its the internet so the interesting part is how did this happen, why did it happen, what comes next, what’s the end game, who did what or didnt do what, but its too soon. Took me a bit to figure it out.
Steve
@Beth:
Whatever. MR strikes me as a lot more analytical and realistic than all the very concerned and very humanitarian and oh so caring people dominating these threads. I see a lot of people who don’t like their superior moral sense being questioned.
@charontwo:
You realize that those one million people are not Hamas, right?
Do you even realize that your reasoning (“Their government did a bad thing, therefore I am justified in killing them.”) justifies Hamas’s actions?
If a Palestinian child should suffer for the crimes of its government, why shouldn’t an Israeli child suffer likewise?
@Beth:
Are you having fun? Is pumping all that hyperbole fun for you?
@drj:
No shit Dick Tracy. That was exactly my point, Gazan distress is seen as useful by Hamas, an objective to be sought.
@Scott:
The Tom Clancy novel, The Sum of All Fears, had a scene where some Palestinians all sat down in protest.
@charontwo:
I see that you carefully avoided answering how that justifies Israel committing mass murder.
@charontwo:
Is attacking Beth with all that dismissive, nihilistic sarcasm fun for you?
@Scott:
This and somebody’s comment about Gandhi non-violence, reminds of a scene from Get Smart between Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) in disguise and Siegfried from Kaos.
Siegfried- I swear we have met met before. Was it Dunkirk?
86- Nein
Siegfried- Tobruk?
86- Nein
Siegfried- How about Berkeley?
Remember Kaos is a Delaware Corporation and Equal Opportunity Employer
@Beth: Your sense of decency, humanity, and morality are positives, not negatives. Prosocial beliefs and behaviors are not just morally right, but have pragmatic benefits. Antisocial behaviors are not just morally corrosive, but counterproductive.
As a member of groups targeted by violent homophobia and racism, don’t let bitter assholes drag you down into their depressive cycles. Stay up.
@charontwo:
That’s fine. You are avoiding answering the question. Where is the line. I’ll be honest with you, and I would like you to correct me by answering the question, but I assume that for you, there is no line. I don’t think that Reynolds is there, but I think you are. and that’s scary.
Now I will be serious.
The PLO was offered a sweetheart deal brokered by Bill Clinton in 2000. Arafat rejected it. Sometime afterwards I seem to recall Henry Kissinger saying the PLO and other Terrorist leadership didn’t want peace.
Ever since 1948, the Palestinians have been used as pawns by much of the Arab world. The PLO leadership by their conduct aka attempting to destabilize governments in Jordan and Lebanon has caused great distrust of both them and their people with Arab leaders.
A majority of Palestinians I think want peace IMHO. Their leaders and representatives don’t.
@DK:
I don’t know if I am a decent or moral person. I don’t think I have a problem with Israel fucking shit up real good over there. I think some real hardcore shit is justified over there.
But that being said, there is a line. We are told to believe that Israel is a modern, Western, democracy. And yeah, that is somewhat myth making and the West has its own huge problems. But we have some ideals we at least pay lip service to. What I think scares me is that we’ve all kind of accepted that Israel is some version of 1970’s South Africa and that’s just the way it is. oops. I think the Israelis themselves have kind of accepted that too. I mean, they keep putting Netanyahu in power. They keep protecting the Settlers. It feels different this time. It feels like they’ve just decided to go all the way. And no one seems to know where the line is.
@Beth:
They have not. It’s just that Americans who claim to speak for Israelis but who don’t really know or interact much with Israelis think this is the case.
Israeli extremists who try to wrap themselves in the Israeli flag are no more representative of Israelis than Trumpers who try to wrap themselves in the US flag are representative of Americans. They just want the world to think they speak for all of us. It’s the same fake-patriotic amoral rightwing bullshit everywhere.
When you finally get to rave in Berlin with me and my Israeli police officer ex-boyfriend, we’ll tell you how I came to get a Star of David tattooed on my back.
@Michael Reynolds:
The asymmetry between the standard for Israli conduct and Hamas’ conduct is very revealing – Israel is held to an impossible standard where any killed civilians are immediately counted as war crimes and condemned. Hamas is held to no standard at all despite it being one long string of continuous and intentional war crimes and having an explicit goal is to murder Jews. Somehow that is spun as “resistance” when Hamas is largely indistinguishable from Nazi’s in terms of answering “The Jewish Question.”
And, for some strange reason, a bunch of other things fail to enter the discussion:
– Hamas’ continuous and intentional targeting of civilians with no warnings of any kind – because Hamas wants Jews and the Jewish-adjacent to die.
– Hamas’ attempts to raise the civilian casualty numbers from Israeli attacks by telling civilians to ignore Israeli warnings, and by intentionally using them as human shields. Hamas likes more martyrs and pounds of flesh for propaganda purposes, and it’s clearly fooling a lot of rubes.
And, of course, none of these critics have anything to offer in terms of what Israel should do instead – the standard these critics set for Israel essentially makes attacking Hamas with any degree of effectiveness impossible. Meanwhile, Hamas’ pogrom is “explained” by a laundry list of complaints about Israel that have varying degrees of legitimacy with a complete absence of any legitimate Israeli concerns – such as preventing the kind of pogroms that just occurred.
So yeah, I’m usually skeptical of racism as a motivation which is thrown around constantly, but I find it hard to see any other explanation for the vast difference in standards other than motivated reasoning to blame the Jews.
@Bill Jempty: The Arab world ceased being of any real relevance nor even playing real role after the fall of the Soviet Union. Americans rather boringly repeat the truisms of 1970s about the region. Pan Arabism has been dead for decades.
Of course perspectives – exploiting or allies (however rubbish or not) – is a judgement perhaps best left to the population in question, rather than opined by outsiders who don’t even know the languages in question and largely repeat the winners mythologisations.
In any case, for the evacuation notice, if one substitutes Russian for Israeli and Ukrainian for Palestinian (or even vice versa), one rather suspects the discourse would rather change. But the media game played is played well.
@Bill Jempty: The Arab world ceased being of any real relevance nor even playing real role after the fall of the Soviet Union. Americans rather boringly repeat the truisms of 1970s about the region. Pan Arabism has been dead for decades.
Of course perspectives – exploiting or allies (however rubbish or not) – is a judgement perhaps best left to the population in question, rather than opined by outsiders who don’t even know the languages in question and largely repeat the winners mythologisations.
In any case, for the evacuation notice, if one substitutes Russian for Israeli and Ukrainian for Palestinian (or even vice versa), one rather suspects the discourse would rather change. But the media game played is played well.
@Michael Reynolds:
Israel: it’s your fault if you die from our massive attack, or on the road in a war zone, or of cholera if you get there.
Hamas: stay and be human shields
There are differences, but I don’t see one as being even remotely good. The people who have any knowledge about refugee situations seem to think Israel’s demands will lead to a massive humanitarian disaster.
It’s pick your disaster. The difference is small.
Also, your 1 mile walk that is likely closer to 14*… imagine doing that through a tightly packed concert crowd, while bombs are going off. There’s no cease fire while over a million people are fleeing.
——
*: assuming the median person affected lives at the halfway point, that’s a 7 mile walk to the magical promised land of somewhat less Israeli assault. Now you have all the problems of boarding a bus, with everyone crowded at the front needing to move further back to let more people on. If the bus was a war zone.
@Beth:
Yes, not good. But Israel has complicated coalition governance. Over Netanyahu’s long tenure, he has only won over 50% of the vote once, in 1996, his first term back when was electing premiers directly. And he barely got over 50%. He was booted in the very next election, because he sucks.
Since his return to power in 2009, Netanyahu’s party has averaged roughly 1/5th to 1/4th of the vote. The survival of Bibi’s proto-dictatorship has depended on the disarray of his many enemies. I believe he would probably lose a straight up-and-down vote against one strong opponent –evidence that fracturing America’s much-maligned two-party system could generate even worse outcomes.
Netanyahu has survived yes, but he is on borrowed time. Israelis are not dumb. Many have tolerated Bibi on security grounds, but his overdue day of reckoning is coming.
@charontwo:
Are the civilians who are being ordered to flee before the massive assault and invasion in a position to hand over hostages?
No?
Then Israel is ordering them to march with no food and water.
You might find that justified, and so be it. There are only bad options. But don’t pretend that Israel is not knowing creating a humanitarian disaster.
@Bill Jempty:
Arafat has been quoted later as having known that was the best deal he could hope to ever get. He rejected it because he and his top aides and their families would all get murdered if he accepted it.
We have that sort of thing on a smaller scale in the U.S., with DJT constantly egging people on to be more violent. Politically motivated violence is becoming a bigger and bigger U.S. problem.
@Beth:
I am not in Israel, it is not my job to know what the “right” things to do are. But I do trust the people who are there, responsible for actually finding the “right” way to do stuff on that topic, way way more than I trust Beth or DK or etc. morally virtuous concerned beings to figure out what is “right.”
@DK:
I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong on that. It would make me so happy. But setting aside the the extremists, it seems to me that a whole lot of Israeli society has just accepted that there’s nothing to be done. They keep electing people that have been explicit about their goals. Like, we keep talking about how Arafat threw away a chance for peace, which is true. But since then, the settlements have only grown and the settlers grown more powerful. I dunno.
This sounds amazing. I’d love that.
@Lounsbury:
Reasoning by analogy is invariably at least somewhat flawed but sometimes reasonable. That analogy is so flawed as to be grotesque.
And being clear, assuming that Hamas is a militant death cult, which they are, if Palestinians do try to flee, they’re going to be killed by Hamas, who have no problems killing Palestinians. And if enough of them try to flee, and there are a million of them somewhere, Hamas is going to use them as human shields. They can use human shields wherever there are humans.
The top level problem here is Hamas, and I do tend to agree that there are no good answers. However, there are less bad ones, and you start by not doing what the enemy expects you to do. America did exactly what Bin Laden wanted us to after 9/11; if anything, we exceeded his expectations by invading both Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither of those invasions has turned out well.
@Bill Jempty:
I second all that.
Further, the Guardian has a concise timeline of the major events, though it’s missing more than a few details.
An even more concise gist is this: Until around 2005, one side was willing to make peace. Now neither is.
@Scott:
Historically non-violent protest works better. Paul Campos at LGM has some relevant history (I’m getting a bad link. I don’t know who he’s quoting),
@Andy:
I’ll be honest with you, as I’ve seen this argument pop up over the last couple of days I’ve had to wrestle with it. I’ll accept some level of this in my thinking. I haven’t quite figured out how to entirely disentangle, if even possible, racist strands from not. I agree with you that work has to be done. I would push back on you that Israeli does not necessarily equal Jew. Not all Israelis are Jews and not all Jews are Israelis. If we’re talking about examining racism, we should try our best to be as precise as possible.
I’ll ask you too, where is the line.
@charontwo:
Completely Orwellian to *explicitly* reject the warnings, pleas, and advice of the people there — Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, the UN and US diplomatic teams on the ground calling for restraint and humanitarian concern and corridors — with dismissive, sarcastic, amoral, nihilistic chest-beating, then claim you trust those people. Upside-down world.
@gVOR10: It’s an article from Defector, by Samer Kalaf, that seems to be pay-walled. Here’s an archived link.
@Beth:
You’ll often find that conflating Israel with Jews is supposed to be antisemitic…until it’s done by those who want to use charges of antisemitism to blunt critique of the Israeli government.
A lot of the people who claim to care about Israel, Israelis, and/or Jews really have other, self-interested motives. And I’m referring specifically to individuals inside of Netanyahu’s coalition, and to rightwing American Republicans.
@Andy:
This is why I don’t find the idea of war crimes to be a particularly useful tool for examining any of this.
Did Hamas commit war crimes in the attack on civilians? Absolutely.
Will Israel’s counter-attack kill far more civilians? Yup. Even if they manage to be perfectly within the laws of war, with their war lawyers (war-yers?) signing off on every bullet fired.
Has the blockade of Palestine killed more civilians over the past 20 years? Yup.
A more reasonable question, imho, is whether Israel’s response is proportionate to the attack and the ongoing security threat? Is this the minimal attack needed to achieve their own security?
I don’t think this will make Israel particularly more secure a year from now. Hamas executed a well coordinated, low tech, terrorist attack, using radicalized people. The Israeli counter-attack will disrupt communications for a short while, have little effect on the availability of low-tech weapons of war in Gaza, and radicalized people are not in short supply after 75 years of occupation and the last 20 or so of Gaza being an open air prison. Kill off Hamas, and a chapter of ISIS or something will pop up under these conditions.
Is there a smaller counter-attack that can do the same — get the required pound of flesh, and disrupt Hamas communications in the short term?
If I’m missing likely effective outcomes other than disrupting communications (presumably giving Israel time to bolster security along the border of Gaza), and a swap of which radicals will be attacking next time, let me know.
We’re not blameless ourselves. The US failed this after 9/11. We went so far as to attack a random country that had nothing to do with it. We had loftier goals in Afghanistan that might have made that worthwhile had we accomplished them — not sure that was ever possible, but certainly not while also in Iraq.
I imagine the sensible thing for Hamas fighters to do would be to wander South with everyone else and leave a bunch of booby traps. Sure, there will be a few determined to make a stand but the majority are probably not suicide troops (not that I have any idea how many fighters Hamas actually has).
@Beth There is obviously no line. What type of answer are you expecting?
If someone took my children, and wanted my people to die, you think I would tell you up front about some hypothetical line I’m not willing to cross to get them back?
I feel your pain for the civilians trapped in Gaza. But I also feel your comments in this thread are not helpful.
@Gustopher:
I guess those of us who criticize errors in the US response to 9/11 — those who question our warmongering, our policy mistakes before and after, our humanitarian failures — we must all just hate Americans or condone 9/11 or something. With us or against us and all that.
Thank you all for your geographic help!
The comparisons to Allied bombing in WWII are apt, for better or worse.
However horrific the bombings were, (and they were, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians) they did convince the Japanese and German civilians to settle for terms.
That is, they didn’t immediately start back up with a campaign of guerilla warfare against the Allies and most importantly accepted that genocide of other cultures was off the table.
Whatever criticisms one might have of the Israeli government and there are many, their goals are not the extermination of a people.
@Jon: Thank you. Worth reading.
@Andy: “So yeah, I’m usually skeptical of racism as a motivation which is thrown around constantly, but I find it hard to see any other explanation for the vast difference in standards other than motivated reasoning to blame the Jews.”
Seriously? You can’t see any reason other than racism why a democratic state is held to a different set of standards than a terrorist organization?
Is it racism that cops are held to a higher standard than murderers?
@DK: “Many have tolerated Bibi on security grounds, but his overdue day of reckoning is coming.”
Yeah, if your platform is essentially “sure you hate me and I’m a big crook, but I’m the one who can keep your safe,” once you’re not keeping them safe anymore there really isn’t anywhere to turn.
I don’t know if this link will work properly. But this WAPO article has a lot of information and a good map.
https://apple.news/At0lFCcgfQNiczRtEqzChSA
The article is titled “Evacuation order sets off chaotic scramble as Gazans run for their lives”
@Beth: Here’s a gift link directly to the article on WAPO.
@Michael Reynolds:
Walkable? Okay. Get to Southern Gaza by walking a mile? Depends. Maybe if you’re only a mile away to begin with.
My second question: So now I’m in Southern Gaza. Why am I safer here? Has Israel promised not to attack there (until Hamas relocates, of course)?
Now I’m willing to admit I don’t have any good answers–or even any bad ones. But hyperbole is suspect when making an argument, particularly one about ease of escape from a war zone.
@Chip Daniels:
Extermination is not the goal of Israel and Israelis per se. But of the religious extremists in Netanyahu’s government? If we’re to take some of them at their word, I’m not so sure.
@Andy:
The Free Palestine BDS movement has a lot of antisemites in it. Anything anti-Zionist is going to attract antisemites. They are reasonable goals that end up providing cover to terrible people.
(I’m not sure about the anti-Zionists, honestly, they might all be Nazis… you can’t spell anti-Zionist without an N, A, Z and I after all. And I generally oppose sanctions so I’m only 2/3rds of the way to BDS)
There’s also a very racist undertone to the “any attack on Palestinians is justified (because they are animals)” crowd.
It turns out that when two hated and feared groups are fighting, a lot of racists get involved in one side or another.
The Black vs.Korean riots and the Black vs. Jewish riots in NYC in the late-80s/early-90s brought out a lot of racists making excuses for one group or another (and led to Rudy Giuliani becoming mayor).
I know more Jews than Palestinians. My best friend has a nephew who is doing grad school there and will presumably be called up for the reserves if he returns (he was visiting the US when this happened). I do not want my friend’s nephew to be changed by this war, by justifying and participating in an amazingly cruel and disproportionate response while ignoring the suffering it causes — I don’t think that’s going to be a good thing for his character.
@Beth:
1) Nevertheless, Israel is a Jewish state. Their highest court has said it is lawful for the state to openly discriminate against non-Jews. Which has been done from time to time.
2) No one in this thread has mentioned that there’s a demographic time bomb tucked into all this. (Or perhaps it was mentioned and I just missed it.) If Israel were to simply annex Gaza and the entirety of the West Bank and give the Palestinians and other Arabs full citizenship, in about 25-30 years the Arabs would outnumber the Jews. Half of the two million people living in Gaza are age 17 and under.
3) I have long said I am so glad I am not a young Jewish politician or policy analyst living in Israel. As Michael Reynolds said up in one of the early comments, there are no good solutions. Lots of analysts besides me have said that in the long term Israel can only choose two of (a) be a Jewish state, (b) be a liberal Western democracy, and (c) not evict the Palestinians in some fashion.
@Chip Daniels:
Apt-ish. The history of the occupied territories is different enough from the history of Japan or Germany that an analogy might be more harmful than not.
Palestinians have been living under fairly strict terms for quite some time. A return to “normal” might not have the same appeal, for instance.
An alternate over-simplification: As of a few days ago, Israel had a war with Hamas. They are expanding it to a war with Gaza, and there’s every chance that the Palestinians in Gaza will go to war with Israel rather than quickly accept terms.
And if there is Hamas (or a Hamas equivalent) operating in the West Bank (there almost certainly is, just not in a government role), they are likely to try to widen the war further.
@Jon: Years ago, the various governments making up “greater Seattle” decided that they needed to figure out how to evacuate the area in the event of Mt. St. Helens erupting again with the wind blowing the ash toward Seattle rather than away from it. IIRC, the conclusion was that with two weeks notice they could successfully evacuate the area except that there were no areas close enough to absorb the numbers of evacuees involved.
Of course, that was Seattle. I’m confident that in this situation, it’ll be a cakewalk by comparison. Especially given that we didn’t even have Uber in the late 80s early 90s.
@Lounsbury:
Sometimes it’s better when you write impenetrable gibberish.
“Porcupine horticulture Bobo Intello Journo reified, buffalo,” is a more apt and intelligent analysis.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Gaza doesn’t have the hills, so it will be easy.
@Neil Hudelson:
I’m assuming that you chose those two particular locales completely randomly, right?
NBC:
Who’s up for a round of telling Jews how much they hate Jews?
@drj:
Alas, while it would be nice to, we can’t be certain that your statement is true/accurate. It’s sort of like saying “you realize that those 1 million Alabamans are not Republicans, right?”
Certainly not all of them are Hamas, but how many “not all” is represents guesswork. It’s why the argument doesn’t resonate for MR and charontwo.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Having evacuated from (way too many) hurricanes, and taking in to account that the greater New Orleans metro area population is a little over a million (so we’re comparing apples to apples if you squint real hard), I can pretty confidently say there is no way 24 hours is nearly enough time to get everybody out. Not even close.
Sticking close to where I live, from downtown Fort Collins, CO to downtown Loveland, CO. I didn’t walk it this past summer, but did bicycle it, at age almost-70. There must be a considerable amount of transportation between walking and cars in Gaza City.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I am putting in a lot of time reading a variety of sources trying to learn what’s really happening and what the implications are. The amount of stuff online is massive, it’s hard to select what to read, what to skip. Lot’s people here seem confident they know what I think, a lot more confident of that than I am.
Israel has a stated and obvious goal of destroying Hamas. Realistically, they can never identify or locate all the foot soldiers. So yeah, they will blend in and disappear, disperse. But Israel will eliminate most of the leadership and do what it can to neutralise physical infrastructure.
@Gustopher: Good point. I’m even more confident now.
@charontwo: Your comments strike me a fairly dogmatic for a person who lacks confidence in “what I think.” Maybe you should let some of that non-confidence show through more.
ETA: “But Israel will eliminate most of the leadership and do what it can to neutralise physical infrastructure.”
Color me skeptical (on both eliminate and neutralize). Saying “We can eliminate Hamas” strikes me as similar to “We can win the War on Drugs.”
I feel a lot of people are missing the point here.
Consider the American attitude to the Japanese in December 1941.
Now turn that up to 11 and exponentiate by a power of 10.
I’ll copy a post from a few days ago:
———
There is a bit of Israeli political geography at work here.
The kibbutzim along the Gaza border are, for historical reasons, largely socialist, and one of the last remaining strongholds of the Israeli peace movement. IIRC the music festival that was massacred was known a gathering for the young left.
Those kibbutzim have just been destroyed.
Just one item among many:
Much of the core of Israeli peace movement have been slaughtered by Hamas; many of those left are mourning family and friends.
Apparently the opposition leaderships two demands to joining a coalition were:
– the lunatic right gets sidelined (Ben-Gvir, Smotrich)
– Hamas is to be utterly wiped out, at all costs
There was little constituency left for peace in Israel after the terror campaign of the 2000’s; followed by the decision to leave Gaza leading to periodic rocket shoots.
There will now be almost none.
———-
On the second day after the Hamas attack, I spoke to UK military guy.
He had been reviewing information, including Israeli recon imagery and geo-verified Hamas recordings.
His words:
“You really don’t want to see this stuff. I wish I hadn’t. One of our team left the room and threw up. I’d kill anyone involved in this without a second thought.”
He did give me some indications, which were enough to make me feel sick.
Now, just imagine how the Israeli Army feels: Hamas butchered (literally butchered, and that was the fortunate) some of the most peace-inclined people in Israel.
That is part of why the opposition primary demand for coalition is “destroy Hamas”.
As I said on 7 October:
But the thing you need to remember about a significant number (not all) of Hamas is: they aren’t Palestinian nationalists at all. They are “apocalyptic” jihadis; with the difference between their “millenium” and the Christianist variety (for good reasons in the theodicy) is that theirs is based on an “imminent uprising of the oppressed Muslims” that will sweep away Israel and the Christians.
(Their attitudes to Iran and the Alawites, versus those of, say, ISIS, to be worked out over cups of tea and occasional bouts of ultra-violence, no doubt.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I suspect you may be underestimating how far the Israelis are prepared to go in this matter.
I think Andy (whom I have knocked heads with once or twice in the past) understood it some days ago.
Now imagine what the Israelis feel about the slaughter, and torture, of thousands of people, of whom a fair number were peacenik hippies.
I’ve criticized Israel’s policy in the past, still more Likud, still more Netanyahu, and said Israel needs to find a modus vivendi with the Palestinians, not least for it’s own good. (And even said that the Balfour Declaration was an arrogant British mistake in the first place, but that’s water long gone in the rear mirror, to mix a metaphor.)
But they are going to aim at obliterating Hamas now, whatever the cost to the people of Gaza.
The question may be, is the West inclined to stand in their way?
I think not.
Secondary question: will they IF Israeli responses lead to mass Muslim revolt in various countries. What then?
Macon is indicating that the French state has made it’s decision.
So has Sunak in the UK.
King Charles has made a declaration of British support for Israel; a Royal pronouncement of this nature is not routine, and will have been agreed on a cross-Party basis, and with Privy Council consensus.
(Though might get to be routine lately: similar was declared re. Ukraine)
@JohnSF:
This indicates to me that there is no line and we’re all about to watch 2 million people get slaughtered.
I’m also curious whenever you share my belief (concern?) that the Egyptians would prefer to machine gun the Palestinians at Rafa than take in more refugees.
@Beth:
I guarantee we will NOT see 2 million people killed. The resources just aren’t there, nor is the will.
@Beth:
I have no idea what the calculations in Cairo might be.
I’m pretty sure that evacuating the Strip NE of Gaza City is logistically impossible.
I’m also inclined to think that IDFGS is not that bothered, the War Cabinet not very bothered, and Netanyahu don’t give a shit.
As per previous, the indications are that the Israeli Left agreed to a war coalition on the basis that Hamas is to be obliterated.
I’m thinking of the likely reaction of the British in 1940 had the US demanded “restraint” about attacking Germany.
Not polite?.
@Kathy:
I very much hope you’re right. But I think the will is there.
https://news.yahoo.com/israeli-president-says-no-innocent-154330724.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANcEd3gpbHhRTD79SwmVjLhs2YPXbAYMyvJyOsaZOFMR84VXSbPpyZW9Ps-EgBDO3rASeJ4tovWgkAuCnbQREx9MsQq9KEAmSlwdk4TcpLqyy-gGtXMNsxbs0N-686upnuAl41j6v32ppEe7nTTLzdonPmg2ki05YZiah5b_yRaU
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/what-i-learned-from-watching-the-israeli-army?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Bulwark+ is usually paywalled but note at the bottom:
Note:
@JohnSF:
Thank you. I appreciate that. What’s “IDFGS”. Google returned a bunch of obviously incorrect items.
Polite or not, I don’t think I can stomach the coming carnage. I don’t think it’s going to solve any problem. I suspect that at some point very soon Israel’s very valid self defense is going to become something horrible.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Not randomly: I’m most familiar with van nuys, north ridge, and chats worth, and of those three I picked van nuys at random. I guessed at a neighborhood that appeared to be~ 20 miles away. It was too close so I kept moving the map marker until I hit Compton.
Sorry the happenstance of their distance was inconvenient. Feels like you are insinuating racism on my part but for the life of me I don’t know what in my history of commenting would make you think that.
@Beth:
Israel Defence Forces General Staff aka Matkal
@JohnSF:
Thank you. I figured it was something close to that, but wasn’t sure.
@Beth:
Israel Defence Forces General Staff aka Matkal
@Beth:
See also, as I said in the other topic, British attitudes to Germany post 1940.
US calls for “restraint” were likely to have got a very short response.
@Beth:
The Israeli president has a ceremonial position, like the VP. He doesn’t make policy.
I forget which admiral on the Pacific carrier fleet said upon seeing what had happened in Pearl harbor, “When this is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell.” Nukes and firebombings and all, this did not happen.
@JohnSF:
I’ve spent the better part of today chewing through this, I don’t have an answer. I do think some people here aren’t being honest about their comfort with genocide.
I don’t know if I would say I’m advocating for restraint per se. The Israelis should go into Gaza and kick some ass. That being said, they should not allow themselves to become the monsters they are fighting. I am concerned that kind of restraint is lacking. Certainly, a significant portion of the Israeli government is advocating for collective punishment and mass death.
And then what comes next? Is the plan to continue more of the same?
@JohnSF: Well certainly if they’re willing to kill every man woman and child in the Gaza Strip, that may solve their Hamas “problem” (assuming Hamas is a “problem” rather than a “tool”). So far though, everyone has been saying (or at least I’ve been hearing) that this is a military operation not an act of genocide. We’ll have to wait to see how it plays out, maybe.
@JohnSF:
He. Are you repeating this line because it’s supposed to be salient? Mmm.
Was Nazi Germany 150 square miles big?
Were German borders hermetically sealed then, leaving civilians effectively trapped?
Was half of Germany’s population in 1940 children?
Is Netanyahu a Churchill?
Had the British goverment spent the better part of twenty years funding and bolstering the Nazis?
What was the status of the British and American hostages being held in Germany?
Were there humanitarian groups embedded in Germany in 1940, due to a humanitarian crisis caused in part by British policy that at times violated international law and ignored US advisement, helping kill tens of thousands of Germans?
Historical omparisons are useful, but as you know, separate crises have their own considerations. I’m hope Roosevelt’s cabinet would not have co-signed a British policy of carpet bombing the very concentration camps we wanted to liberate. I hope Israel does not look at the US dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagaski — or our 20-year Afghan misadventure in response to the horrific images of 9/11 — as decisions worth emulating.
@Neil Hudelson: My apologies on racism. I did not foresee that particular interpretation on your part. It was just curious to me to see a city so associated with gang violence as the terminus. (It’s something that I would do deliberately though, so again, my apologies for transferring my racism on to your geography.)
ETA: I didn’t feel any inconvenience at all from that selection. Only some irony (and later in the thread, a few war on drugs images).
Then again, this is why Luddite keeps reminding everyone that we’ve not been allowed to socialize with the nice kids all that often. There are reasons, as you can now see.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I doubt they aim to kill everyone in Gaza; but I suspect they may be willing to kill as as many, up to a very large number, as may be required, to utterly eliminate Hamas.
And say it was necessary.
Just as the the Allies would, if put to it, have been willing to destroy the Germans to eliminate the Nazis.
TUBE ALLOYS was not pursued by the British for entertainment purposes.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well now you have my apologies for my misinterpretation.
Carry on.
@JohnSF: After Russia’s genocidal rape and torture in Bucha and elsewhere — not to mention the kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children — I guess the US, Britain, and the rest should be helping Ukraine bomb as many Russian cities as possible, no?
@DK:
No, it’s just a comparison, which seems reasonable to me, because nations under attack tend to react in certain ways.
The Hamas operation was really quite different.
After all, the Luftwaffe in 1940 we not beheading children, raping and sadistically torturing and then murdering teenage girls, etc.
As I’ve said before, I’m not inclined to think the policies of Likud, or even Israeli governments on the whole, wise, or equitable.
But Hamas have signed the death warrants of a large percentage of the population of the Gaza Strip.
This is almost as inevitable as night follows day.
There is almost no chance of stopping the IAF proceeding to assault Gaza.
You now need to be prepared to deal with the aftermath of that
I will filter this through the lens of my own experience – a disabled adult child and a 90-year-old mother-in-law. They both use walkers for short distances or a wheelchair for longer ones.
If I had to evacuate them without a reasonably reliable vehicle and a tank of gas as well as passable roads, we would just be screwed.
@Beth: War creates moral dilemmas that there is no solving. Did the A-bomb kill hundreds of thousands or did it save millions? Unresolvable.
In this case we will have over a million people scattered to the fields without food or water or sanitation. This will happen if the Israelis go “kicking Hamas ass” slow or fast, and it could be argued them going in with the speed of absolute mercilessness will allow humanitarian aid to get to those people sooner.
I reject the argument, if any would make it, that the civilians be encouraged to stay in the city while the IDF slowly and carefully moves through it attempting to tell friendlies and neutrals from foe. Right or wrong that’s not in the cards. The IDF has tried that before and it was a nightmare for them.
What comes next? The Israelis may go for permanent occupation, all but certainly inviting the settlers back in to conduct the same slo-mo ethnic cleansing of the West Bank in Gaza. However this would mean the people who have in the past funded the construction, the Egyptians and assorted Gulf states, will not be funding it. Perhaps the US will, there’s no telling but I think it unlikely this Congress will allow it. It will be like the Syrian/Jordanian camps of Iraqi War 2/ISIS war refugees, a festering sore in national PR and a drain on resources. I would put it as 50-50 they flatten the place and leave, even though that might allow Hamas to spring again from the ashes.
@JohnSF:
It seems to me that Hamas is a symptom, not the disease. I fear that something as bad, or even worse will replace it.
@ James & Steven – I’m finding OTB to be pretty much unusable with a Ventura 13.1 / Safari 16.2 combination.
I keep getting this error: Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.
Not having this problem with any other website…
@DK:
Perhaps; but Germany, Italy and Japan had carried out similar atrocities and aggression during the 1930’s and got away with it.
See the Nanking Atrocities 1937.
If Russia lacked nuclear weapons there would likely have been direct intervention.
The essential difference is, Israel has been attacked by an enemy to whom atrocity is not merely a tactic but a strategy.
And given their miscalculation, both the tactics, and the underpinning strategic stupidity, are likely to reap their predictable consequences.
@JohnSF:
I am prepared, I’m going to be just fine. Will Israel? Are Israelis prepared for what comes next l? For it’s their decision-making over the past two decades, or more, that keeps not working. They have to live over there in and near the messes Netanyahu has helped create, I don’t. (That’s why my beautiful Israeli police officer is an ex. He has to be there to care for his Holocaust-survivor grandmother. I like him a lot, but no thanks.)
My country for all its many maddening flaws, and for all the justified and unjustified America-hatred in the world, is generally secure and gets along with its neighbors (for now, we’ll see if American voters re-empower our Netanyahu-like morons who want to invade Mexico). And, with ongoing hiccups, the US goverment has generally managed to integrate and placate most descendants of the people it displaced, genocided, enslaved, apartheided, and subjugated.
I’m descended from an oppressed people who sidelined terrorism and chose the pragmatic benefits of the moralism folks here sneer at. Under a government that chose to “bolster” and “fund” Martin Luther King — not violent black separatists.
So if I ran Israel, I might consider listening to US advice. For once. Rather than beating my chest and sneering at people who dare to have morals.
They can count on US support for now. But Boomers will not be in charge forever, and in the information age young Americans seem disnclined to be bullied into silence with, “If you criticize Israel, you hate Jews.”
@anjin-san:
True enough.
But the Israeli attitude is likely going to be: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
Numerous wars have been fought without much caring if the defeated had a strop thereafter
@DK:
Are you?
If a total Middle East hydrocarbon shut-off sent inflation through the roof?
If Iran and Israel engage in a regional nuclear war?
If…
As I have said before, I regard Netanyahu and the Likudniks (cool band; iffy second album), let alone Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and the ludicrous ultra-Orthodox, as a pack of idiots.
The problem is, who can any replacements negotiate with, and on what terms?
Who the hell is going to rule Gaza constructively, when a plurality of the people of Gaza as insane as the MAGA?
@JohnSF:
You told me to prepare for the aftermath of potential genocide in Gaza.
Are you prepared for it? Is there some special form of preparation I should be doing? A nuclear fallout shelter or some such? When did you start building yours?
@anjin-san:
I have had luck with opening OTB in a private window, but have sometimes had to resort to Firefox
If you start with 2 million Gazans and in the end you still have something like 2 million Gazans, it’s not genocide. This will not be genocide. I very much dislike trivializing this word. After the Holocaust there were six million fewer Jews. That’s genocide. See also: Armenians. Native Americans. Aztecs and Incas. Everyone the Mongols ran into.
This is a tragedy. I realize the American mind can’t accept that notion because surely something can be done. But no one here has proposed anything remotely like a solution. The offer seems to be: the Israelis should take it. You know, to prove their superior moral standing.
An atrocity has been committed, more is coming. This is what I wrote on Twitter to followers.
What’s happened is sickening. What’s coming will be sickening. Moral posturing by Americans is beside the point – we actually did commit genocide and the homes we have are our ongoing reward. Golda Meir is supposed to have said, Maybe these terrorists will not let us live in peace, but I promise you that Israel will chop off the hands of those who will cut short the lives of our children.. Hamas’s hands will be chopped off. A lot of Gazans Hamas chose to consign to death, will be killed. That’s why we call it a tragedy and not a comedy.
@anjin-san: I was having trouble getting OTB to load on my iPad about 2 years ago. I forget what the error message was. Other websites no problems. On my desktop PC I had no trouble accessing OTB. Someone here told me to go to settings, safari and hit “clear history and website data”. Worked for me.
@Michael Reynolds:
I keep coming back to this. The very pleasant patch of land I live on was stolen from the Tatcan People (a Miwok Tribe) long ago. There’s a Miwok Park in my hometown, but no Miwok people. I did not even know about the California genocide until recently (hat tip to Rebecca Solnit) and I’m a reasonably educated guy who thinks reading history books is fun.
@Scott O:
I’m not having any problems in Chrome, will just stick with it.
@Michael Reynolds:
Simplification. You have not mentioned that Hamas is and always has been an apocalyptic cult of religious cranks. That is significant.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/hamas-covenant-israel-attack-war-genocide/675602/
@Michael Reynolds:
Hamas seems to have planned this operation secretly, without the knowledge of Iran, Russia and some of the various other patrons. Perhaps some of the financial supporters knew. The operation is for Hamas’ own agenda, on its own initiative.
Israel is responding to an attack in its usual way. Israel has allies, these are likely to preserve their reputations for reliability.
I published a link to Mark Hertling’s Bulwark+ piece, it is not paywalled, a good read for where Israel is coming from. Should read the whole thing, I’ll excerpt a few paragraphs.
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/what-i-learned-from-watching-the-israeli-army
I hope it’s still free, it asked me to sign in when I just opened it.
Anyone – let me know if you can’t open it. I may have a workaround.
@Gustopher: Boring. Both the comment and the cliqishness of your fraction of the Left here.
@Michael Reynolds: Now this is clear minded, and yes atrocities will be exchanged for atrocities. Hamas set this off, Israel responds and as well plays the framing better, the media game.
@anjin-san: Hmm. I mostly use Chrome but I’m not having issues on Safari on my MacBook (Sonoma 14.0 but I’ve used previous iterations for going on a year), iPad (iPadOS 17.0.3), or iPhone (iOS 17.1). I suspect it’s a caching issue. I found some suggestions here: LINK
@anjin-san: FWIW, I am using almost the same config (but my Safari is 16.4) and I am not experiencing those issues.
@Michael Reynolds:
That does not mean that the proper course of action is the creation of vast humanitarian crisis.
Creating refugees with no where to go is not going to end well. And it will help inspire the net generation o whatever replaces Hamas (although that cycle may be inevitable).
Understand, I believe Hamas to be a terrorist organization that Israel has to deal with. And, further, I do not know what the best method to deal with it is. I have sincere doubts about what is going on in Gaza.
The problem with your position is that you are, as is often the case, certain of it without adequate evidence and reasoning to back that certainty. A little tinge of humility might cause less pushback, FWIW.
@Steven L. Taylor @ James:
Removing the OTB cookie seems to have done the trick…