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Imagine if you will someone going to start large scale bombing NYC. Or London. Or Rome.
The Hamas attack was unprecedented and horrific. I don’t know that it justifies declaring all out war on and entire city.
I can say that without being anti-Semitic.
In Gaza, Hamas may be preventing civilians from leaving (but I’m not there to verify). It would help to have civilian corridors into the south and into Egypt, but again that’s not in the best interests of Hamas.
I’d like the IDF to do their best. They are indeed responsible for trying not to kill civilians. There’s only so much they can do, short of a so-called “ceasefire”.
Such a corridor is in nobodies interest but Israels, as they would happily expel the entire Gaza population and then forbid them from returning. It's not like high ranking Israeli officials haven't alluded or outright said this, and Israel has quite a history of illegal annexation in the West Bank.
Providing such a corridor would just be asssisting in ethnic cleansing.
I have to say that it's also unclear to me personally whether the current rate of civilian deaths could be justified under any circumstances. Since Israel has not stated what it wants the end-goal of the war to be, we don't know how it could justify it either.
This is clearly not the case - the IDF is still actively fighting Hamas militants, Hamas is still firing rockets at Israel, IDF soldiers are getting killed every day, etc. Not to mention, the population itself is not fully cooperating with the IDF, I believe.
For contrast, Israel has ordered many Israelis to leave areas for their own protection, I believe around 100-150k Israelis have evacuated their homes. No one is talking about them being "ethnically cleansed", and whil there is internal political pressure to help them, no one thinks it's immoral that they were asked to relocate. Clearly the situation in Gaza is different, because many people are outraged that Gazans were similarly asked to evacuate their cities for their own protection.
> I have to say that it's also unclear to me personally whether the current rate of civilian deaths could be justified under any circumstances. Since Israel has not stated what it wants the end-goal of the war to be, we don't know how it could justify it either.
Israel has stated it wants the hostages returned, and Hamas destroyed. Whether this is achievable, or what exactly counts as "Hamas being destroyed", are open questions, but not impossible to answer. (And frustrating as it is, it makes sense that Israel doesn't want to publicize its exact goals.)
Regarding the rate of civilian deaths - this if of course hard to exactly know, given the incentive of both sides to manipulate numbers. I trust the Israeli side far more, and I think everyone should given that the other side is Hamas, but I'm also obviously biased.
That said, the IDF has said it thinks it's killing 2 civilians per 1 Hamas fighter. This is a ratio that, as far as I know, is roughly in line with other conflicts by Western countries. The rate itself is fairly high but it's likely to be far shorter and lead to orders of magnitude less killed than in other conflicts.
I do want to mention that, while I talk about these numbers as statistics, every civilian death is a tragedy. Hell, every death is a tragedy - if Israel could manage to not kill any militants, it would be morally better, because every death is a tragedy.
The idea that this war is winnable seams incredibly naive. The idea that hitting hard now prevents future conflicts is an untested hypothesis at best.
Are there any examples of a war where an entrenched gorilla group with broad civilian support have been successfully "defeated"?
I'm not sure you can call it an entrenched guerilla group given that it is effectively the government of Gaza.
And yes, there are many examples where wars ended when one side surrendered, just to state the obvious, Japan and Germany in WW2.
I don't think an organisation which is internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation are a government in any real sense of the word.
I'm not sure what distinction you're making here. More importantly, I'm not sure why you think that makes the war unwinnable. Presumably there is a scenario in which Hamas surrenders, and if not, that Hamas are slowly all taken out. This is a pretty awful scenario, and would probably involve Israel having to govern Gaza for a while, but it is something that can happen.
There's a chance it won't because Hamas doesn't really care about anyone, including its own populace.
The distinction is that militaries typically fight wars on battle fields, even the current Russia / Ukraine war looks like this with battle lines being pushed this way and that way as one side advances or retreats.
There is nothing like that in Gaza. The difference between a Hamas militant and a civilian is simply whether they are currently holding their AK-47.
The more civilians are killed the more angry young men are drawn to the cause. Short of flattening the whole area and killing everyone I don't see an end.
It is much more aptly compared to the battles against Al-Qaida, ISIS or the Vietcong than the Nazis.
Two points we disagree on:
> The difference between a Hamas militant and a civilian is simply whether they are currently holding their AK-47.
That's true in terms of what they seem like visually (which is maybe what you meant). Not true in the sense that most Gazans are not members of Hamas.
That does make it a lot harder to know who is Hamas and who isn't, but it's still possible (maybe) to effectively take out Hamas by capturing/killing all the known leaders, anyone who is actively holding hostages, anyone in tunnels, etc. I don't think Israel would need to kill literally every Hamas militant, nor should it.
> The more civilians are killed the more angry young men are drawn to the cause. Short of flattening the whole area and killing everyone I don't see an end.
I hope you're wrong, for everyone's sake.
But it really is true that the US killed a lot of Germans and Japanese, and now the Germans and Japanese are allies. It's not automatic that everyone will turn to violence. Also, if there is no organizational structure around it, then "angry young men that turned to violence" don't actually have anything to do with their anger.
Yes, sorry I didn't mean to imply that everyone is Gaza is a member of Hamas. That's clearly not true. But visually they are indistinguishable, or could very easily become so.
That said, I do suspect that these organisations are much more fluid than the binary distinction we're prone to make in the west.
I was thinking about what the process was after the second world war by which people normalised relations with the German people. Unfortunately my amateur conclusion was that we just created new enemies to redirect the anger.
Isn't it a bit silly to complain about their lack of adherence to conventional military practices?
Today it sounds highly hypothetical, but was definitely possible at many points in Israel's history.
However, my point was based on the situation today. The import of building materials into Gaza is strictly controlled because those materials could be used to build and fortify military positions.
It is contradictory to prevent the creation of military positions and also complain about civilian structures being used for military purposes.
I believe what OP is saying is that most other countries would have done the same. And for you to impart hatred on Israel for doing what most other countries would have done is anti-semitism.
Which is kind of what the article is talking about.
The response to Sep 11, 2001?
When Palestinians protested nonviolently at the gates of Gaza and were shot to death, was that an act of war?
When Israeli West Bank settlers burned a home in Duma with a family still inside and laughed about the small child who burned alive their and taunted onlookers, was that an act of war?
In that Israel bombed and destroyed Gaza's airport in 2001? Yes.
In that the Israeli Navy has blockaded the Port of Gaza since 2007? Yes.
But regardless, as more of the truth has been teased out it's become plain that what Israel said happened on October 7th was... well, absolutely riddled with lies. Beheaded babies, baked babies, babies hung up on washing lines, mass rapes - all of it debunked, but still being used by the Israeli propaganda machine. We've also learned that of those killed, civilians were in the minority - most were Israeli soldiers, then armed "settlers". And now we know that Israeli tanks and helicopters killed a lot of Israeli civilians that day. It's also been reported that Israeli intelligence was forewarned of the attack, a month before and the day before - and chose to do nothing except extend the Nova festival for an extra day.
As it looks so far (IMHO): Hamas militant freedom fightets broke out of Gaza with the aim of taking hostages to swap for Palestinian hostages held by Israel. They find the Nova festival still on, and the plan falls to shit - civilians are killed by both sides in the firefight, but militants manage to escape with some hostages before helicopters arrive on the scene and start shooting every fucking thing that moves. And then Israel pumps it up like a balloon, and many fall for it (I'm ashamed to admit I believed it all at the start) - it's used as the pretence for genocide (or at the very least, ethic cleaning) and a land grab, and the US is happy to supply the bombs because money,
Since then, the Israeli lobby and propaganda machines have been working overtime! While much Israeli propaganda is comically bad, the tactic of slandering any anti-genocidal comments as anti-semetic has been quite successful. The lobbying has been incredibly successful, managing to control celebrity messaging, buy US politicians and control mainstream media in a truly alarming way. Hell, Israeli politicians are even openly making calls for genocide and other war crimes, and what major US or UK papers/channels have even reported it?
From a tech standpoint, the genocide being carried out by Israel, with full support of the US and UK, has shown how powerful and important Twitter and Instagram are - without them, many of us (likely myself included) would have no idea what Israel is doing now, or indeed has been doing in the recent past. IMO channels like these are simply too important to be controlled by billionaires - and indeed we're now starting to see pro-Palestine content being censored on Twitter and Instagram (I'm not on Facebook, but I heard it's heavily censored?).
Also Israel critics also tend to be _much more likely_ to condemn the actions of other states (e.g. Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Indonensia in Papaua, etc). The issue is that the press is less interested in this and the general American public is much more interested in Israel than they are in Saudi Arabia.
FWIW, it's included in a definition from the last ~20 years that is favored by pro-Israel groups.
Possibly, it's just rhetorical and diversionary, putting critics on the defensive to carefully defend and establish all speech as non-anti-Jewish, which diverts time and attention.
I think those tactics work for Israel when the issues aren't so stark and prominent, and so few people see the critique of the critics (i.e., few see the accusation that the speech is antisemitic). With everyone watching closely, the apparent rhetorical tactics become noticeable.
If anything, Israel is given more slack in the west than any other nation. More civilians died in Gaza than in Ukraine yet clearly, only one nation has been condemned officially by western states and that's not Israel
Absolutely nothing, and if anything boycotting Israel is literally ground for getting fired in the USA.
Now that I think about it, no other country in the world has that privilege of being shielded from consequences like that either.
Again, Russia trying to annex Ukraine isn't just "not seen as acceptable". We saw very very clear and concrete actions from almost the entire west against that. What does Israel get when it colonizes its neighbors? Unwavering support that completely overlooks said colonies.
It isn't even a high standard, "don't commit genocide" has been the bare minimum requirement for any modern country, much less democracy, for nearly a century. It would be antisemitic to believe that Israel is uniquely incapable of meeting that minimum standard.