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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

Despite all this, as a casual observer, my general impression is Israel has done terribly at making the case for war, and specifically the kind of war their military seems to be carrying out.

The most relevant comparison seems to be with the Russians. Russia has no credibility in the West and Israel is rapidly losing any they had, at least with younger people. My general impression is of a Russian-level intensity of destruction, too.

But perhaps these impressions are wrong. I would normally assume the Israelis aren’t complete idiots. I’d like to read a “steelman” case for this military campaign, if anyone knows of one. Why are these impressions misleading? What’s really going on?

(Yes, a major difference is that this is a counter-attack, but beyond that?)

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You will be made quite miserable if you find what you seek. The Israeli politicians basically see Gaza as a "problem" population which they cannot deal with and which is hampering their national goals. And it's shockingly and ironically similar to how Jewish people were looked at in another time and another place by another leader

I like how you put "problem" in quotes as if Palestine does not regularly shoot unguided missiles at Israel with the goal of killing civilians.

Maybe you need a quick history refresher but the Jews were not doing that in 1930s Germany.

Are you serious? They were attacked first and invaded, experiencing the equivalent of Pearl Harbor + 9/11 together in relative terms, or in absolute terms the 2nd worst terrorist attack EVER. Entire communities viciously wiped out, and hundreds of hostages taken, followed by a barrage of thousands of rockets on the cities of Israel.

I'm at a loss of words. What kind of explanation are you missing?

Yes, they were attacked first and that’s a traditional justification for war. If a government wants to go to war, this is the time to do it, while they have the support of the public.

However, as we saw after 9/11, that doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever war a government proposes is a good idea. A counter-attack could still be foolish or unnecessarily brutal (as it seems to be). It might still result in a strategic failure.

The kind of explanation I’d be interested in would be why the way Israel is prosecuting this war is something the US (and other countries) should support.

(Your comment is about what Hamas did, and that’s a different sort of thing than a justification for what the Israel military is doing.)

Do you think the NATO invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 was not a good idea? You are free to your opinion, and there are those idealists who believe such, but it would be counter to widespread consensus. The faults people have with the war on terror were/are (1) the two-decade-long occupation that followed, and (2) the completely unrelated war with Iraq.

But invading Afghanistan to capture/kill the al Qaeda organization, to prevent another 9/11? It is widely understood that the US was in the moral right and on the right side of international norms for its policy actions in 2001-2002.

If one accepts that, then how is what Israel is doing in Gaza any different?

I’m hoping for a utilitarian justification, not something in terms of moral rights. The problem with a moral right to war, while traditional, is that it seems to make whatever follows permissible? Sort of a get-out-of-jail free card for atrocities.

You do make a utilitarian justification with your claim that attacking al Qaeda helped to prevent another 9/11 attack. I haven’t studied it enough to know whether it did that. There have been similar terrorist movements since then. Perhaps increases in airline security did more against that particular attack?

Also, al Qaeda was hiding in the mountains, not under a city. The consequences for civilians are different enough that I don’t think it’s a fair analogy.

For historical background about changing attitudes towards civilian casualties, Bret Devereaux’s latest post [1] seems pretty good.

[1] https://acoup.blog/2023/12/08/fireside-friday-december-8-202...

Traditional utilitarian arguments are out of place here, unless you realistically apply game theory and only consider Nash equilibrium outcomes. Otherwise you end up comparing the present outcome you don't like to a fantasy outcome that could never be.

On October 7th Hamas killed or captured ~1400 Israelis in an indiscriminate and violent cross-border attack, then unleashed a barrage of rockets on Israeli cities. Many failed, and the iron dome intercepted most of those that got through, but not all, and at great cost.

This was an active state of war, started by Hamas, not Israel. Hamas uses the people of Gaza as disposable human shields. These militants will use every unfair trick to gain advantage and kill more Israelis. They have consistently violated cease fires in the past, and turned humanitarian aid into instruments of war (the rockets, for example, are built using water pipes provided by European countries for the Gazan people).

Evil regimes that treat their own people as disposable need to be gotten rid of, and are unwilling to negotiate in good faith for a settlement. War is really the only viable option here, and the IDF tactics have been chosen to make this war as quick as possible, for a variety of reasons including the safety of the populace.

This is all about what Hamas has done. I'm more interested in the choices available to the Israelis. Even if one concedes that war is necessary, there are many ways to fight a war and some are worse than others. It's not a binary choice between going to war and doing nothing. There's more to going to war than deciding to go to war.

The military goals aren't very clear. "Ending Hamas" is vague. It's not all that clear where Israel wants to end up after the war is over. What's supposed to happen to Gaza?

Also, what are the rules of engagement, and can they be justified? (A bare assertion that IDF tactics are justified is not enough to satisfy my curiosity about what's going on.)

Explaining all that would be more in-depth than I'd expect anyone to write in an Internet comment - it would take a longer article. But these are the things I'd expect if Israel were serious about justifying its actions to an open-minded but skeptical audience, and I haven't really seen it. Perhaps I've missed it, though?

(Although I don't think the invasion of Iraq was justifiable, it's notable that the Bush administration tried to justify it. For example, famously sending Colin Powell to the UN to make a speech about weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to be true. I also remember reading about serious planning for occupation after the war. That didn't go like they expected.)

Blowing up civilian infrastructure that they, as an occupier, actually have a duty to protect and restore to order and safety [1], after posing for selfies? [2] Calling people animals, rounding them up just because why not? [3] Talking about making Gaza "unlivable"? [4] The minister of defense handing out automatic weapons to settlers in the West Bank?

Meanwhile, half of the population of Gaza is under the age of 15, in one of the most densely populated areas of the world. It's unadulterated genocide in service of an expansionist, right-wing extremist government. Another difference is this media (and social web, down to HN) effort to silence and smear any and all criticism of it, to turn it into a dichotomy of who you're for (rather than what international law and basic fucking human decency would require), while Joe Biden talks about having seen photos of beheaded babies. Contrast to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_war_in_Af...

[1] https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/634kfc....

[2] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17330661183302657...

[3] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17328125940611608...

[4] https://twitter.com/NimerSultany/status/1731736295666282707

[5] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231024-security-minister...

You can't just do random shit and say "it's for X" and that makes it okay. I can't just take everything you own and say it's to achieve world peace, you know? Or nuke the world to prevent car theft since no more world means no more cars means no more car theft. That's the level of the argument you have; zilch, backed by brutality and nothing else.

There are arguments like this everywhere on the web, you can find them anywhere, and it's not really what I was asking about.

(I am looking for serious, well-written arguments for Israel and they seem hard to find?)

Why would you expect them to exist? This is an unexpected war fought defensively in response to a surprise attack.

When responding to the second largest terrorist attack ever, step 1 isn’t “sit down and write a long-form justification of your right to defend yourself, in English, for the benefit of skybrian’s curiosity.”

It’s not defense, though? Defense is what the Israeli military failed at on October 7. This war is a counter-attack. Since it’s on offense, the Israeli gets to choose the timing. (I admit that the hostages add some urgency, but this doesn’t look like a hostage rescue mission?)

The reason I’d expect Israel to justify the war to an international audience isn’t to satisfy me, but rather because Israel needs allies. PR is part of that.

You might have noticed that opinions on Israel among Americans are heavily skewed by age [1]. The old guard isn’t going to last forever. If they lose the US, what then? They need to be able to convince young people that what they’re doing is justified, and written articles are part of that.

So I’m somewhat surprised that there aren’t more things like that being shared in places where I’d see them.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/12/08/views-of-the...

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