44 responses to “Israeli Strikes Kill Hamas Commander, Women, and Children”

1. 

   MarkedMan

   October 14, 2023 at 9:25 am

   This is what a war over territory looks like. Israeli policy is controlled by religious and ethnic fanatics who seek to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and then Gaza. Hamas is controlled by religious and ethnic fanatics who want to wipe Israel and Israelis off the map. No one on either side who is looking for compromise and peace has any power annd we are lying to ourselves and the world by pretending otherwise. More dangerously, our close alliance to Israeli will end with us at war in the Middle East yet again, as they see us as their assault force for their inevitable war with Iran.

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2. 

   OzarkHillbilly

   October 14, 2023 at 10:04 am

   Children among dead after Palestinian convoy hit while fleeing northern Gaza

   It’s all OK because something something Holocaust.

   Just ftr, I am not belittling the Holocaust or any of the many other injustices inflicted upon the Jews in the past or the present. I am belittling the idea that those deprivations make it OK for Israel to inflict the same upon other innocents.

   Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred.

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3. 

   MarkedMan

   October 14, 2023 at 10:15 am

   Atrocities suit both Hamas and Israel. Since both sides seek permanent control over all territories the greatest danger to their plans is that a compromise is reached. Eliminating the possibility of compromise is part of the plan.

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4. 

   JKB

   October 14, 2023 at 11:05 am

   AP’s Gaza reporter repeatedly ripped Israel on social media, said oppressive regime should be ‘overthrown.’

   Not to mention, years ago, AP admitted that they not only had offices in buildings with Hamas leaders, but would video children at hospitals but turn off their cameras when military age fighters were brought in.

   Plus, Hamas’ military headquarters is un the basement of a hospital. I presume it is the same hospital mentioned that Israel has told Palestinians to evacuate.

   The difference now is that a good number of people know that the AP, the BBC, the rest of the media are not news organizations but propaganda operations for the the approved Narrative of the day.

   On the other side, in the Left’s beloved “you have freedom of speech but not freedom from accountability” many CEOs have demanded the names of the Harvard students whose groups came out in favor of what Hamas did last Saturday. And those students are scrambling as they know their depravity will follow them as the seek Wall Street and big law jobs. One can only hope similar happens to media companies that slant in support of the rapist and murderers. After all, who wants to hire a Nazi

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5. 

   Modulo Myself

   October 14, 2023 at 11:06 am

   Israeli has always loved to disregard the carrot part of the carrot-and-stick. Protest peacefully and our snipers shoot you. Support Fatah and our soldiers protect settlers as they attack. Flee to safety and we bomb you. And that cuddly old IDF veteran with a twinkle still in his eye? He’s telling soldiers to erase women and children, but in a good way.

   Liberal Zionism is not going to survive the fallout of this, unless the extreme outlier happens and the IDF rebels after being bogged down and shoot Netanyahu and the rest in the head. I feel like that is one of the goals here by the right—to shatter the core of secular humanism and decency in Israelis and replace it with the positive spirit of old time genocide.

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6. 

   Michael Reynolds

   October 14, 2023 at 11:17 am

   @Modulo Myself:
   Stop with the ‘genocide.’ If you think this is genocide you need to learn some history. You do not begin a genocide by saying, ‘you have 24 hours to get out of the way.’ You do not use expensive precision weapons for genocide. If Israel wanted genocide they could sit outside Gaza and just pour artillery in indiscriminately.

   FFS, isn’t this tragedy tragic enough for you without hype?

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7. 

   Michael Reynolds

   October 14, 2023 at 11:35 am

   Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred.

   Why don’t ____ simply do ____ and make it all okay? The American reaction to every foreign policy issue: I don’t like sad pictures, kumbaya, simplistic solution, and next week I’ll forget all about it.

   For the non history buffs, sorry to be the bearer of nuanced tidings, but quite often violence begets victory and surrender and even peace. We violenced the Indians out of an entire continent, then we violenced the Mexicans out of the territory they’d violenced from their Indians. The Union violenced the hell out of the Confederacy. We violenced up the Germans and Italians and Japanese good and hard and they are now, friends of ours. South Korea exists because we were better at violence than the Chinese. We violenced the fuck out of Vietnam – and now they’re sucking up to us for protection from China.

   The reason people and nations resort to violence is that violence works great. That’s not an endorsement of violence. I hate violence. But it’s ahistorical to pretend that it doesn’t work. There’s a very long list of peoples and kingdoms and empires that stopped existing because Huns and Mongols and were super good at violence. It’d be a wonderful world if violence didn’t work, but that’s not this world.

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8. 

   Modulo Myself

   October 14, 2023 at 11:39 am

   @Michael Reynolds:

   The Serbs gave the Bosnians 24 hours to get out of Srebrenica and they committed genocide there, so maybe you should, I don’t know. learn some history. Right now, anything could happen. But it’s not hype to say there is 100% genocidal rhetoric coming from Israelis in power, and people in power who commit terrible deeds always point to worse deeds as justification.

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9. 

   charontwo

   October 14, 2023 at 12:08 pm

   Opinions vary, there are widely different all over the net, even at supposedly sober, serious sites.

   This struck me as pretty plausible:

   https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/what-israel-didnt-understand-about-hamas.html

   Almost a week after Hamas killed at least 1,300 people — mostly civilians — Israel is wrestling with two central questions: How the country could have let such an elaborately planned assault happen, and how to respond. Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University, believes that the Israeli government’s fundamental misunderstanding of Hamas led to this moment. As Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition focused on a divisive judicial overhaul, it believed that economic incentives like work permits for Gazans had sufficiently pacified Hamas, a group that had made its violent intentions clear. I spoke with Milshtein about how and why Israel took its eye off the ball and why the government may not actually want to eradicate its sworn enemy.

   You told the AFP this week, “We totally misunderstood Hamas.” You continued, “The notion of economic incentives that would diminish their motivation for terror and even cause the public to go against it totally collapsed.” Why didn’t almost anyone in Israel take the group seriously enough in recent years?

   When you’re trying to analyze the deep, deep reason for not understanding Hamas — I spend a lot of time thinking about that. I now know that we do not really understand the cultural way of thinking of Hamas and actually of every Islamic ideological organization.

   We have our own western logic, and we’re enforcing our logic on the other side. Here in Israel, we believed that after 2007, when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, the organization would become less militant and more moderate — because they had to deal with not only jihad but also with hospitals and energy and education.

   Pragmatic.

   Yeah, exactly. The basic concept was that if you improved the economic and civil situation in Gaza, you would create achievements that Hamas could lose, and you would also deter Hamas from promoting escalation — and even create a situation where the public would protest against Hamas if they escalated. It was a very, I would call it, western-style way of thinking, that you could control this tiger and you could actually take him and create a poodle.

   On the 7th of October, at 6:30 in the morning, Hamas proved to us that this organization, when it needed to choose — it’s absolutely clear that their basic path is the jihad. They don’t really care about people, or that 18,000 Palestinians have now lost their jobs and salaries in Israel. It’s really amazing.

   In terms of motives — you said Israel was making conditions better in Gaza, but obviously they still weren’t great. And beyond that, you could say that with a deal between Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. looming, Palestinians may have felt they were being forgotten on the world stage.

   Although, Ben, you need to remember this offensive was planned a year ago. All talks about negotiations between us and the Saudis began only two, three months ago. It’s absolutely clear that the basic reasons for this brutal attack was not the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or the war in the West Bank, or the economic situation in Gaza, or the Saudi-Israeli negotiations. It was much deeper. It was a part of the long-term vision of Hamas to eradicate Israel.

   What I just said would be an example of western-style thinking, you’re saying?

   Absolutely. In order to understand Hamas, you have to know Arabic, and you have to read things in Arabic and listen to Hamas preachers and Hamas leaders when they speak to their own people. It’s absolutely different from the things that are translated to us in Hebrew or English. For two years, I read all those books, and articles, and interviews, and it was absolutely clear for me that Hamas is not ready at all to give up on the jihad for permits, for workers, or for any other economic gesture from Israel.

   So you were less surprised by what happened than some other people, perhaps?

   Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised at all. I write a lot of articles, and I give a lot of interviews on the radio and on television, and I am known very much as a critic of the former policy toward Gaza. I always said, during every round of escalation and during every crisis: “Listen, this policy doesn’t work. It’s full of gaps. There are so many bad signals.” And unfortunately, people, including high-ranking figures here, listened to the critics, but they did not accept those arguments. They said, “Okay, but this was the calmest year in Gaza since 2000. So you see? It’s okay. It works.”

   Moving forward to what happens now: You wrote in the Financial Times that an occupation of Gaza would be too costly and that, instead, Israel needs to prepare for a long campaign to marginalize Hamas.

   That’s right. When you read the announcement of Netanyahu from Saturday night, he said that his basic aim is to make Hamas weaker. He really wants to hurt Hamas’s military and regime capabilities, but he didn’t say he wanted the regime to collapse.

   Interesting. So the endgame is not to destroy the group altogether.

   No, no. Those are slogans, Ben. Those are slogans — to destroy them, to make them vanish.

   First, what does that mean? And second, what is the alternative? When we’re speaking about Hamas members, we’re not only talking about the military-wing members. That is, I assess 30,000 people. All the rest are members of the charity funds, the civil infrastructure, and the mosques. Okay, let’s say we kill 100,000 Hamas members and there are none left. There are two options then. The first one is that you, Israel, reoccupy the Gaza Strip and have to take care of 2.2 million people. And I think that would be exactly like Iraq after 2008.

   The alternative is that you ruin Hamas and get out of Gaza immediately. And that means that there will be a vacuum over there, where all kinds of crazy guys and crazy groups can get in. It will look like little Somalia or little Afghanistan over there, full of chaos.

   I wonder if you think the current unity government, which includes Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, is thinking strategically about all of this. This attack has a 9/11 feel to it, and the U.S. government made a lot of rash decisions in the aftermath of that.

   I personally know two prominent figures in the new government, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot; they were my commanders when I served in the IDF intelligence and, after that, in COGAT, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories. I know them, and their way of thinking is very strategic. There is no one who can say that he’s not shocked here in Israel from the events of Saturday. But they do understand that there’s nothing you can call good alternatives today in Gaza.

   I think the least bad alternative is that Hamas is very contained, very weak, with no major military capabilities until maybe there’s some internal change in Gaza. Maybe something like the Arab Spring — because Hamas is a dictatorship. They are a minority in Gaza. There’re not the majority of Gaza. And maybe after the current war, and a future blockade on Gaza, there will be internal protest, a popular protest against Hamas. But this is kind of wishful thinking.

   Given that we just saw a massive intelligence failure take place in Israel, do you have much confidence that the military would be able to target the people they want to hit with any kind of precision without causing mass civilian casualties?

   Absolutely. I know that the current attacks are not blind attacks, where you bomb everything and you don’t really know what the targets are.

   We really want to be focused on Hamas, but in the past we were focused mainly on the military wing. Today, we are trying to attack the whole scope — I mean prominent political, social, and economic figures in Hamas. For example, three prominent religious and political figures in Hamas were killed over the last 24 hours. I think that maybe they believed or thought to themselves that they’re not senior enough so they didn’t have to be in a shelter and that Israel is not trying to attack them. But I think Hamas now understands that this is not an operation like in the past. Maybe the head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, when he started this, thought that it would take a week or two weeks — that after that, Qatar and Egypt would resolve the conflict. And two days after that, there would be an understanding, and all the workers would go from Gaza to Israel again. But that belongs to history — the history before the 7th of October.

   I can’t imagine Hamas could be so surprised by this level of response, given the scale of their attack.

   After listening to all kinds of Hamas leaders, and reading all their newspapers and sites during the last five days, I assess — I do not know — but I assess that their success was too much. Let’s put it that way. I think that if you could ask Yahya Sinwar on October 6, I think that he would tell you, “We will get into one, two, three of the bases or of the villages around the border, and we will take five, ten, 20 soldiers.” He now finds himself with 130 hostages: soldiers, civilians, babies, women.

   Is that because Hamas wasn’t expecting the operation to be so easy?

   Unfortunately, yes. I think they thought that the fight against the IDF forces near the border would be tougher, and it was quite easy. That’s why they entered all the villages very quickly. They could enter all the kibbutzim and the moshavim in a very, very rapid manner.

   Hamas took one hostage, Gilad Shalit, in 2006, and he became a national preoccupation. Israel prioritized getting him back to the point that they released over a thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange. This situation is vastly different. I’m wondering how you think Israel is thinking about the trade-off between the hostages’ safety and the military objective of weakening Hamas?

   It’s very complicated. As you said, there’s never been an event when about 130 people, most of them civilians, were taken by a Palestinian terror organization — and we’re talking about babies, old women, and children.

   But because of the slaughter of 1,200 people, most of them civilians in Israel, I think that right now the main objective among the Israeli society is revenge and to carry out a tough, even bloody offensive against Hamas. I’m quite sure that the government and the IDF are taking the hostages into consideration, and I’m quite sure that if there are buildings where we know hostages are located, they won’t be attacked. But it is not a consideration that they will right now limit or change any strategic plan regarding Gaza. I do think that there’s some interesting reports right now. Have you heard about the report regarding negotiations for Palestinian women prisoners?

   No.

   There was a report — I think it’s an authentic one — about the idea of Qatar releasing 36 Palestinians, women prisoners, that are held in Israel. In return, Hamas would release all the old people, the women, and the children and the babies. I think almost a week after the offensive, Yahya Sinwar has started to understand that those prisoners are not such a positive achievement because they cause damage to Hamas’s image. The idea that Hamas is ISIS is very easy to explain when Hamas is taking babies.

   But now you’re making Hamas sound semi-reasonable, which you had said they weren’t.

   They are radical, but they’re reasonable. It’s like, for example, like Hitler, and like Khamenei. They’re so radical, but they are very reasonable. They’re even pragmatic.

   Okay. I guess Hitler was pragmatic.

   Yeah. He found a lot of ways to maneuver and to be flexible in all kinds of events. But, of course, his vision was extremely radical and he wanted to implement it. So they’re the same, I think.

   What is the view in Israel right now of how this affects Benjamin Netanyahu? This happened under his watch, and it totally ruins his whole vision of security and protecting the Israeli people. But at the same time, I know people tend to rally around the flag and unify around a leader even if they’ve made mistakes. Does this make him weaker, stronger, or too early to say?

   Nobody really knows. There is a lot of criticism against Netanyahu, not only because of the failure but also because people haven’t seen him. He has spoken in a very limited way. He doesn’t visit the South. Almost no minister from his government visits the South, and people are full of anger about it.

   I don’t understand that at all.

   I think I do understand it. Some of them are really afraid of criticism, mainly those who did not serve in the army, for example, all the Haredim in the government. I think that they’re quite concerned that a protest would take place if they visit places themselves.

   As for Netanyahu, I think he’s quite different from the Netanyahu of ten and 20 years ago. I do hope that people like Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot will, first of all, balance policy. They will improve the image of the government and will improve their strategy. Right now, I don’t know if there is an organized strategy or decision-making, and you are bringing two people, Gantz and Eizenkot, with so much experience. And I really hope that it will make our decision-making much better than today.

   This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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10. 

    Gustopher

    October 14, 2023 at 12:29 pm

    The forced evacuation of civilians, including hospital patients, is being almost universally condemned but it quite possibly the least bad option available. Israel can’t be expected to refrain from taking the war to Hamas simply because they’re ensconced among non-combatants.

    How much of Hamas is evacuating among the civilians? Not Ali Qadhi, obviously but there’s no reason to expect that others are not with the refugees.

    What’s the goal here? What goal justifies and requires the humanitarian crisis that they are creating?

    There’s also no reason to turn off the water on a civilian population that is now being forced to move in the heat. The Israeli government is causing more deaths for funsies with that move.

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11. 

    gVOR10

    October 14, 2023 at 12:49 pm

    @charontwo: Interesting interview. A detail that stuck out to me, because it’s been said so often, was, “it believed that economic incentives like work permits for Gazans had sufficiently pacified Hamas”. Eighteen thousand work permits? That was supposed to bring economic relief to two million Gazans and pacify Hamas?

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12. 

    Bill Jempty

    October 14, 2023 at 12:56 pm

    Worf on ST TNG once said. “Cowards take hostages.”*

    I think that also applies to those who use human shields.

    *- The rest of the saying was ‘Klingons don’t’.

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13. 

    Gustopher

    October 14, 2023 at 12:58 pm

    @charontwo: A sober, serious person claims:

    The basic concept was that if you improved the economic and civil situation in Gaza, you would create achievements that Hamas could lose, and you would also deter Hamas from promoting escalation

    The unemployment rate is over 50%. That’s twice the Great Depression’s unemployment rate.

    I recognize that I might be committing the sin of stating “Neoliberalism cannot fail, it can only be failed”, but it looks like they didn’t seriously try. They certainly didn’t get to a spot where the people in Gaza had something that would make a militant Hamas less appealing.

    Hamas proved to us that this organization, when it needed to choose — it’s absolutely clear that their basic path is the jihad. They don’t really care about people, or that 18,000 Palestinians have now lost their jobs and salaries in Israel. It’s really amazing.

    In a population of 2M, 18,000 jobs is a drop in the bucket. It’s not enough to give a large number of people something to hang onto.

    I’m not saying that Hamas weighed the economic consequences and decided that they were acceptable. I am saying that if the people of Gaza had more to lose then there is a good chance that they would have been less likely to let Hamas rule as a jihadist organization — either push out Hamas or force it to moderate.

    That “good chance” was never tested in earnest.

    “We let 18,000 labor for us” is a very different scenario than creating jobs in Gaza for instance.

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14. 

    charontwo

    October 14, 2023 at 12:59 pm

    @gVOR10:

    I do not disagree. I have seen other articles on the cockamamie arbitrary rules imposed on agricultural exports, because Israeli farmers don’t like competition.

    You are right, the whole situation is pretty verkakte.

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15. 

    Gustopher

    October 14, 2023 at 1:05 pm

    @Modulo Myself:

    The Serbs gave the Bosnians 24 hours to get out of Srebrenica and they committed genocide there, so maybe you should, I don’t know. learn some history.

    MR has stated that if there are still about 2M Gazans after Israel’s actions that it cannot be genocide.

    If we apply that to Bosnia, there are still lots of Bosnians left, so the Serbs cannot have committed genocide. It was just sparkling mass murder.

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16. 

    charontwo

    October 14, 2023 at 1:06 pm

    @Gustopher:

    What’s the goal here?

    Seriously. They were attacked. Not to respond is like saying “Oh please, feel free to keep attacking us”.

    How do you feel about police arresting muggers? Better to negotiate better behavior? Do you think that is a bogus analogy?

    What is your idea for a plan? Do you have a better idea than tell them “Sorry for your loss?”

    2
17. 

    Michael Reynolds

    October 14, 2023 at 1:32 pm

    I’m going to get this off my chest then go do some profitable writing.

    I find it hard to stomach lectures from Americans on what ‘they’ should do. We should start by understanding our position in the world. We are the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the human race. We have an ocean on either side, and land borders with weak, friendly countries. Never mind that one of those countries is weak because we simply stole all the best parts. We sit here on land we brutally expropriated, land enriched by one of the cruelest slave systems known to man, facing no existential threats, the most secure and defended people on Earth, and we pontificate on the moral failings of countries that live in the middle of on-going shitstorms.

    We’re a nation of Beverly Hills billionaires in Rolls-Royces driving past homeless encampments and tut-tutting that those people really should stop causing problems and ideally, disappear, so we don’t have the sads.

    In equivalent percentages of population, Israel has lost somewhere in the range of 50,000. Flip it and you see that on 9/11 we lost the equivalent of about 60 Israelis. And for that we invaded and occupied not one but two countries. 2400 Americans died at Pearl Harbor, and for that we killed low number a quarter million, high number 900,000 Japanese civilians.

    We’re not just a nation of the rich and privileged, we stole everything we have and massacred anyone who got in our way as we built this superpower. Now we sit atop our stolen land, safe and secure, with our fantastic trillion dollar military, and tut-tut at the Israelis who have faced existential threats since 1948, and tell them not to do what we did, and what we will do again. If Mexico started firing missiles into San Antonio and killed 50,000 Americans, after having kept up missile and terror attacks for decades, Mexico would be a smoking ruin.

    We are the most privileged people on earth, the most privileged people in all of human history, and we gained this privilege by committing horrors and atrocities we have no interest in undoing. We have refugee camps, we just call them Indian reservations, now, today, still. But hey, tiny, besieged Israel, why don’t you let your people be slaughtered so we don’t have to think about children dying?

    This is not to say we shouldn’t do our best to save children in Gaza. But maybe we could try that with a bit less sanctimony and hypocrisy and deliberate ignorance of our own history and our fantastic privilege.

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18. 

    steve

    October 14, 2023 at 1:34 pm

    ” It’s absolutely clear that the basic reasons for this brutal attack was not the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or the war in the West Bank, or the economic situation in Gaza, or the Saudi-Israeli negotiations. It was much deeper. It was a part of the long-term vision of Hamas to eradicate Israel.”

    Had to think about this but I think it’s correct. Hamas is a jihad group. They are devoted to destroying Israel regardless what happens. However, all of that other stuff clearly affects Palestinians. As he notes later even if they do destroy Hamas it just means another group like them springs up.

    Think he is being very politically correct about Netanyahu. The jihadis love anniversary dates. On the 50th anniversary of the last big surprise attack it was entirely predictable they would attack. It was very easy, as he notes, and spread further than he thought possible with the IDF all out on the West Bank. To be clear, this get tiresome, Hamas is still responsible for the brutal killings, but Netanyahu should be booted for leaving the place unguarded.

    Steve

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19. 

    drj

    October 14, 2023 at 1:57 pm

    @charontwo:

    Do you think that is a bogus analogy?

    Yes. Because it completely ignores the lawless and immoral behavior of successive Israeli governments over the preceding decades.

    Do you have a better idea than tell them “Sorry for your loss?”

    Maybe try a teeny bit of carrot instead of just stick? Clear the settlements in the West Bank and make the Gaza blockade a little bit less cartoonishly villainous? (What is the point of blocking the import of musical instruments and wheelchairs except for making people miserable?)

    Seriously, what is the upside for the Palestinians if they decide to go along with Israeli rule?

    In the West Bank, they live as a second-class people under military rule while gradually being displaced from their ancestral homes. The Gaza Strip is one big open-air prison.

    And then you come here wondering why 18,000 shitty, second-rate jobs won’t cut it. (After calling an evacuation plan that UN said would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe “no big deal,” remember?)

    You come up with nonsense so that you won’t have to feel bad about your callous disregard for human suffering.

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20. 

    James Joyner

    October 14, 2023 at 2:00 pm

    @Michael Reynolds: I’m very sympathetic with the Israeli dilemma. But the rules of the 1800s have been superseded. Atrocities committed by men on horseback under those rules are simply different from those committed by states with fighter jets and ballistic missiles in the era of the Geneva Conventions.

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21. 

    drj

    October 14, 2023 at 2:02 pm

    @Michael Reynolds:

    and we gained this privilege by committing horrors and atrocities we have no interest in undoing.

    By that logic we can never criticize anyone.

    Are you also willing to apply that logic to Russia? (“We did worse to the Native Americans than the Russians are doing now to the Ukrainians. It is not our place to criticize.”)

    No? I thought so.

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22. 

    charontwo

    October 14, 2023 at 2:08 pm

    @drj:

    You come up with nonsense so that you won’t have to feel bad about your callous disregard for human suffering.

    And, apart from helping you feel good, reasoning by ad hominem accomplishes what? C’mon, tell me.

    I won’t attempt to address your other points, apart from noting they are pretty facile.

    1
23. 

    charontwo

    October 14, 2023 at 2:12 pm

    @James Joyner:

    The reasoning here is basically whataboutism. My view of whataboutism, such as MR’s frequent use of it, is the user gets to feel good, but whataboutism does not really accomplish much by way of persuading anyone.

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24. 

    Gustopher

    October 14, 2023 at 2:15 pm

    @charontwo: Do the police ever tell everyone above 80th street in Manhattan to get below 80th street, so they can clear the muggers, drug dealers, etc.?

    Your analogy does not work. It explains nothing.

    Hamas isn’t bright green with yellow polka dots — they can blend into a population that is being moved about. March everyone South through a war zone without food or water — how does that help?

    What specific goals in the fight against Hamas does this forced displacement achieve that are significant enough to justify (even poorly justify) the humanitarian disasters that it creates?

    “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore it must be done.” is not a compelling argument.

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25. 

    charontwo

    October 14, 2023 at 2:15 pm

    @drj:

    Yes. Because it completely ignores the lawless and immoral behavior of successive Israeli governments over the preceding decades.

    Demonstrating that MR is not the only big whataboutism person here. (While you ignore the abundantly demonstrated nature and goals of Hamas).

    I am going to repost something I posted in yesterday’s thread, but late when the thread was nearly dead. Apart from that, it’s time for me to bail out the considering the turn this discussion has taken.

    3
26. 

    charontwo

    October 14, 2023 at 2:32 pm

    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.

    Note:

    Mark Phillip Hertling is a former United States Army officer. From March 2011 to November 2012, he served as the Commanding General of United States Army Europe and the Seventh Army.

    https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/what-i-learned-from-watching-the-israeli-army

    The Israeli strategic position is almost incomprehensible to an American. When we think of fighting big wars, we think of shipping huge numbers of people and mountains of supplies overseas. We have commands set up for every part of the world—European Command, IndoPacific Command, Southern Command, etc. In Israel, they fight wars on their borders. Imagine if the United States had to fight a war with Canada or Mexico. So they have units named after local geography, like the Gaza Division and the Golani Brigade. With no geographical margin for error, the IDF relies on world-class intelligence capabilities so they know when threats are coming.

    The IDF also expects to fight every war outnumbered, so they conscript women as well as men, and they are fiercely defensive of the lives of their personnel. The tanker in me appreciates that the Israeli tank, the Merkava, has an unusual, inefficient layout: In most tanks, the engine is behind the crew compartment, but in the Merkava, the engine is in the front, so that it can help protect the crew from a direct hit. The Merkava may be slower, but it’s safer.

    On another occasion, I observed several new Israeli officers taking their oath at the top of Masada, the mountain fortress in the Judean Desert where a group of Jews had endured a siege during the First Judeo-Roman War in the year 73. As the Romans prepared to breach the fortress by means of a massive ramp, the rebels committed mass suicide. That mountaintop, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a deeply moving testimony to the constant testing, sacrifice, and survival of the Jewish nation. Hearing a group of young Israeli lieutenants vow that “Masada shall not fall again” will always be a treasured memory. My observations from every engagement were recorded and passed to senior U.S. military and governmental leaders, but I remember being emotional when I typed up this specific report.

    American officers take an oath to the Constitution. British officers take an oath to the king. Israeli officers take an oath to the government, but in promising that “Masada shall not fall again,” they also take a pledge to a people. It’s not hard to see why a military formed for the Jewish state in the aftermath of the Holocaust sees itself as a bulwark against genocide

    In all my visits to Israel before I retired in 2013, I was impressed by the dedication and operational savvy of the Israeli generals and senior leaders. They were all extremely blunt but unfailingly polite. They always got their message across, and I wished those from other armies I engaged with would follow their lead in candid communication. It’s no wonder an organization that so values speaking the plain truth has an impressive record of self-criticism and fast adaptation.

    We make articles like this free because we believe it’s important that as many people read them as possible. Help us keep going.

    As promised, for this thread I am now out of here.

    2
27. 

    DK

    October 14, 2023 at 2:37 pm

    @JKB:

    After all, who wants to hire a Nazi

    The Trump campaign. Steve Bannon worked for him already.

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28. 

    DK

    October 14, 2023 at 2:49 pm

    Son of missing Israeli peace activist: “Vengeance is not a strategy”

    Yonatan Zeigen’s mother, Vivian Silver, is likely among those kidnapped by Hamas from her Kibbutz. A lifelong peace activist, Silver would help civilian cancer patients in Gaza cross the border to get treatment in Israel. Ali Velshi spoke with Zeigen, who believes his mother would continue to advocate for peace. He says, “Vengeance is not a strategy.”

    How dare Mr. Zeigen be so privileged and sanctimonious. He’s holding Israel to a double-standard. The only plausible explanation is that Mr. Zeigen and his family hate Jews or something.

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29. 

    DK

    October 14, 2023 at 2:50 pm

    @Michael Reynolds:
    Gotta love we who’ve spent the last year and half boldly and loudly running our mouths about what Russia and Ukraine should and shouldn’t do suddenly pull the “But America” card to try to silence critique of another nation, all while accusing others of hypocrisy.

    Wild.

    When Netanyahu’s government pledges to refuse further US aid on top of the $300 billion already received, then and only then should Americans be quiet about Israel should and shouldn’t do. As long as Israel and Ukraine and everybody else is taking American money and weapons, and lobbying our electeds, and making decisions that could require American blood to be spilled, then hell yeah, we should give our opinion. They don’t want American input? Give us back our money. There’s a whole lot we could do with $300 billion right here at home.

    ‘We’ll take your American billions and your American weapons, but you don’t get to give your American opinion.’

    Hahahaha hell no.

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30. 

    drj

    October 14, 2023 at 2:52 pm

    @charontwo:

    Demonstrating that MR is not the only big whataboutism person here. (While you ignore the abundantly demonstrated nature and goals of Hamas).

    Oh, for fuck’s sake.

    This isn’t a matter of good police and bad robbers. The “police” in your analogy created the conditions that allowed the “robbers” to thrive.

    First, by directly supporting Hamas in order to prevent the Palestinian Authority from becoming a plausible negotiating partner.

    Second, by creating such hopelessness among the wider population that Hamas was able to maintain and expand its support. Israel not only deliberately cratered the Gaza Strip’s economy, it also facilitated the transfer of cash to Hamas so that it could pay its fighters!

    The first lesson of fighting an insurgency is that you don’t create more fighters. How is indiscriminate bombing, collective punishment, and enforced apartheid – something that Israel has been doing for decades – going to help?

    Pointing this out isn’t whataboutism. And you know it.

    And, apart from helping you feel good, reasoning by ad hominem accomplishes what? C’mon, tell me.

    Over the course of the last couple of days, you were repeatedly caught spreading easily disproved falsehoods. For instance on the severity of Gaza’s blockade and the feasibility of evacuating one million people from the northern half of the Gaza Strip.

    Assuming you’re not stupid, perhaps you should interrogate your motivations for coming up with such transparent bullshit.

    10
31. 

    Michael Reynolds

    October 14, 2023 at 3:26 pm

    @drj:
    Not saying we can’t or shouldn’t criticize, or work to make the world a better place. It’s the high-handed moralizing and virtue-signaling hype (genocide!) that bother me. And the hypocrisy. Like I said, imagine thousands of Mexican missiles landing in Texas or California, or terrorist slaughters perpetrated by Canadians on Americans in Albany.

    Not that long ago it was US policy to respond to a nuclear attack by condemning the entire human race to extermination. The USSR tried to move missiles into Cuba and we responded by threatening to annihilate the USSR and if a billion or so people died, well, better dead than red, amiright? We’re very good at telling others to turn the other cheek. The country that perpetrated the Trail of Tears is upset that Gazans have to walk south to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

    I wonder sometimes how the rest of the world doesn’t laugh or throw up when we climb atop our high horses.

    8
32. 

    Gustopher

    October 14, 2023 at 3:29 pm

    @JKB:

    On the other side, in the Left’s beloved “you have freedom of speech but not freedom from accountability” many CEOs have demanded the names of the Harvard students whose groups came out in favor of what Hamas did last Saturday.

    Which CEOs?

    5
33. 

    Gustopher

    October 14, 2023 at 3:42 pm

    @Michael Reynolds:

    The country that perpetrated the Trail of Tears is upset that Gazans have to walk south to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

    Do you think the Trail of Tears was a good thing? Did it make us a better nation and a better people?

    If you don’t embrace the Trail of Tears (and I doubt you do), I question why you embrace similar atrocities, while minimizing them to a walk with a million of their closest friends (through a war zone, with no water) rather than the humanitarian disaster that the U.N. characterizes it as.

    And if it is just a gentle stroll on a sunny day, why would Hamas not just take the same stroll and remain embedded in the population?

    6
34. 

    DK

    October 14, 2023 at 3:48 pm

    NYTimes: I’m Going to War for Israel. Palestinians Are Not My Enemy.

    By Nir Avishai Cohen, a major in the reserves of the Israel Defense Forces

    My duty first and foremost is to join the fight against those who unleashed a massacre on my people. I boarded the first flight I found out of Austin to head home to join the I.D.F. reserves, where I serve as a brigade operations command officer.

    …Hundreds of Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,200 people, including women, children and older people. About 150 citizens and soldiers have been taken captive. There’s nothing in the world that can justify the murder of hundreds of innocent people.

    But I’d like to say one thing clearly, before I go to battle: There’s no such thing as “unavoidable.” This war could have been avoided, and no one did enough to prevent it. Israel did not do enough to make peace; we just conquered the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, expanded the illegal settlements and imposed a long-term siege on the Gaza Strip.

    For 56 years Israel has been subjecting Palestinians to oppressive military rule…

    I am now going to defend my country against enemies who want to kill my people. Our enemies are the deadly terrorist organizations that are being controlled by Islamic extremists.

    Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are not our enemy. Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians alike have been in the grip of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group have dragged us into violence. It doesn’t matter who is more cruel or more ruthless.

    Blaming Israel? Refusing to say Hamas is more cruel? Asserting that bothsidesism is warranted here and root causes inclusive of continued Israeli violation of international law and humanitarian demands are, in fact, relevant?

    Obviously Major Cohen is sanctimonious moralistic, and hates Jews.

    9
35. 

    DK

    October 14, 2023 at 4:00 pm

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Like I said, imagine thousands of Mexican missiles landing in Texas or California, or terrorist slaughters perpetrated by Canadians on Americans in Albany.

    Imagine Texas and California helping to kill tens of thousands of Mexican children with a ruthless blockade, with the American goverment walling in Mexico and essentially controlling who and what goes in out of Mexico.

    Imagine the American miltary pushing Canadians out of their homes, so Americans settle there despite international law and the pleas of our allies.

    Imagine a President Trump sidelining moderate Mexicans seeking peace to instead fund and bolster those Mexican terrorists.

    Imagine the US receiving $300 billion in Israeli aid when all this is going on.

    Imagine telling Israelis who then urged to the US to stop fueling terrorism and minimize civilian casualties in our response that they’re just sanctimonious moralists who hate Americans and need to just shut up and keep sending money and weapons.

    Yeah, right. Puh-lease.

    11
36. 

    DK

    October 14, 2023 at 4:02 pm

    @Gustopher:

    If you don’t embrace the Trail of Tears (and I doubt you do)

    Verdict’s still out on that one.

    2
37. 

    DK

    October 14, 2023 at 4:03 pm

    @Michael Reynolds:

    I wonder sometimes how the rest of the world doesn’t laugh or throw up when we climb atop our high horses.

    Because they’d look like hypocritical phonies doing so while sitting happily upon the piles of American money and weapons they keep begging us for.

    Are Israel, Europe, Taiwan, Japan, S. Korea, Saudi Arabia and all the rest going to take full responsibility for their own defense, take ownership of the outcomes of their decisions, and stop requesting Americans to empty our bank accounts and/or send our children to die — to save their asses when the crap hits the fan?

    Oh.

    6
38. 

    Raoul

    October 14, 2023 at 4:50 pm

    Shorter Michael Reynolds:
    “I’m sick and tired of Americans who think they know what to do, now let me tell you what to do.”
    Look I definitely appreciate historical perspectives that are presented, but when it come to the I/P conflict, I’m ok with listening to all sides since that’s all we are going to do.

    9
39. 

    DK

    October 14, 2023 at 5:27 pm

    The next time Trump or Republicans or Putin (or Hamas or China) does or says something inhumane and indecent, I can’t wait for the usual suspects to forget how they’re oh-so against sanctimony and morals as they leap to criticize them.

    Last week when Hamas was chopping up children and murdering civilians, American condemnation was required. Nobody dared tell anybody to shut up about that.

    This week, if Americans condemn Israel bombing children and civilians, well now all of a sudden Americans should stay off the high horse and shut up, Because Trail of Tears.

    Make it make sense.

    10
40. 

    dazedandconfused

    October 14, 2023 at 9:01 pm

    Israel could rack up some serious Brownie points by allowing refugees into Israel.

    3
41. 

    Steven L. Taylor

    October 14, 2023 at 9:38 pm

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Why don’t ____ simply do ____ and make it all okay? The American reaction to every foreign policy issue: I don’t like sad pictures, kumbaya, simplistic solution, and next week I’ll forget all about it.

    I think you are grossly misrepresenting what people are saying.

    Why do that? You are smart and articulate enough to actually argue with what people are saying.

    6
42. 

    Steven L. Taylor

    October 14, 2023 at 9:42 pm

    @Michael Reynolds:

    that on 9/11

    I would note that in our reaction to 9/11, including our need for vengeance and our belief that we can violence our way to a useful outcome we ended up fighting a multi-decade war that didn’t solve all that much in Afghanistan and launched a tragically unnecessary one in Iraq.

    A lot of human beings suffered because of all of that and it isn’t at all clear to me, ex-post, that it was worth it at all.

    So, what’s you point?

    7
43. 

    Steven L. Taylor

    October 14, 2023 at 9:51 pm

    BTW, is this MR the same MR who says that “the left” talks too much about our past (like slavery, the treatment of natives, and so forth) and that is why Dems lose elections and why Trump is so successful?

    But now, it is time to talk about that past to stop any possible moralizing over what appears to be unfolding in Gaza?

    I am confused.

    5
44. 

    Steven L. Taylor

    October 14, 2023 at 9:52 pm

    And for the record: Israel has every right to want to destroy Hamas. That is not my point, in case anyone is confused.

    6