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Comment by cess11 | Hacker News Reader

'Caught by surprise' is a weird description. Israeli press has repeatedly run stories about how frontline analysts sounding the alarm were ignored.

That could be due to things like sexism, ageism or discrimination against conscripts, or it could be due to the settler organisations having their people in government and a strong wish to resettle the Gaza strip.

Either way, the signals were there, they had been watching the preparations and exercises for a year or so. Even if the resistance groups had kept that secret even a mediocre officer in intelligence or the army should be able to conclude from 'first principles' and what they were doing that there would eventually be a violent response.

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I'm a fairly ignorant outside observer, but it seems that government disarray and massive internal dissension within Israeli society caused by Netanyahu's increasingly extreme political moves must have contributed to Israel's defense failure on October 7. Netanyahu had so split Israeli society that millions were out protesting every weekend for months leading up to 10/7 and reservists were even refusing duty in protest.

Perhaps if he were more focused on governing or stepping aside rather than keeping himself out of jail by any means necessary, there would have been fewer distractions at the national level. I'm not saying it's his fault but the chaos he caused can't have helped.

A violent response was expected. What was not expected was a competent violent response.

Anyone directly familiar with the IDF knows that there is a deep hubris engrained in the organization.

This is just a blaming the wrong tools.

The people running the Israeli government and army are tools. They fucked up, plain and simple. Whether through malice or just ineptitude and incompetence, they failed.

Or, they intentionally ignored the intelligence hoping for a casus belli and an excuse to wipe their hated enemies off the map.

> ... an excuse to wipe their hated enemies off the map

21% of Israel's population are arab-israeli muslims. How many jewish people are living in Iran? How many jewish people are living in the Gaza strip?

Who hates who here?

The composition of the population is less important to this calculus than the composition of Israel's political leadership. It was already known that Netanyahi/Likud allowed Hamas to grow stronger to prevent unification of Gaza and the West Bank. Allowing the Oct. 7 attack gave him every excuse to prosecute total war on the Gazans, while maintaining a great deal of moral and financial support, especially from the US and Britain. Allowing your enemy to take first blood in order to justify annihilating them is a ploy as old as time.

Note also that there is a distinction between Hamas and Gaza. Prior to the invasion, Hamas had weak support among Gazans - I think in part because they understood that their extremism was to blame for the blockade and ongoing hardships in the region. It may also be because Hamas systematically embedded its military infrastructure in civilian areas, and they knew what this would mean for them if war broke out. So its particularly evil that Netanyahu propped up a weak Hamas and then invaded with the intention of wiping it out. He prevented the Gazans from voting out the extremists and saving themselves the experience of this atrocity.

FWIW Netanyahu (or Israel, as a state) has never spoken once about wiping out "Arabs". Whereas Hamas' stated goal, as with Iran, is to wipe out Jews (and the West).

>FWIW Netanyahu (or Israel, as a state) has never spoken once about wiping out "Arabs".

He did tell people to "remember Amalek": https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netany... . Amalek refers to a verse in the Bible where God told the Jews to: "go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."

Not that I like that kind of talk, but he wasn't talking about Arabs in general. He was talking about Hamas or, at worse, about Palestinians in general. Certainly not all Arabs.

Why do you think that?

He's not talking about Hamas specifically, which is a political movement running a party and charity work. He's not even talking about Hamas and the al-Qassam brigades specifically.

How you can know? Because a splinter group from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, is the second largest political force in the Gaza strip and that's not a movement he intends to help by removing Hamas.

If you dig up some israeli television you'll find that pundits and other talking heads are quite clear with their genocidal feelings, and that's how they're using the Amalek terminology. Same goes for pop songs high on the charts in Israel.

They do speak about erasing specific towns (and after saying such things their supporters go and torch such towns while killing the inhabitants), forcibly expelling all Palestinians, and calling for a second Nakba though:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-nakba-israels-far-ri...

https://www.972mag.com/intelligence-ministry-gaza-population...

https://www.axios.com/2023/03/01/hawara-israeli-smotrich-wip...

Hard line right wing Israelis started funding Hamas because towards the end of the leadership of Arafat, Palestine was much more willing to adopt a two state solution, and it would have been awkward for Israel to be asked “if these ‘terrorists’ are willing to compromise, why aren’t you?”

So they helped Hamas rise.

People like to point to “from the river (Jordan) to the (Red) sea” as “evidence” that Palestinians hate the Jewish people, but that ignores that that phrase was literally the election campaign for Likud (Netanyahu) in the 1970s and formed the back bone of the Israeli rights policy to this day.

Also, Hamas is less than 40,000 people in a country of 3 million, so generalizations aren’t helpful.

People also like to forget that Likud was itself born from a terrorist organization, Irgun, whose leader, a proscribed terrorist by several Western countries, was elected Prime Minister of Israel.

The Sons of Liberty were terrorists too. ;p

The important thing to me is those guys don't lead to Islamic theocracies.

Jewish theocracy with nukes is fine, but islamic theocracy without nukes is not?

Iran probably has nukes, or has the ability to get there.

The ability to get there is quite common. Not sure how that's relevant?

The jewish israeli mainstream hates palestinian israelis, regardless of whether they are muslims, christians, jews or atheists. Recently israeli troops shot a jewish convert israeli palestinian because they found a knife in his bag.

Israel has also transported jews to Israel from the entire region with fervour for decades, sometimes with dubious consensuality, similar to how immigrating ethiopian jews have been given contraceptives without making sure they really wanted it.

It's also a state claiming to be jewdom, period, and uses religious imagery in its warfare, so it's not surprising if people who aren't aware that many, maybe most, jews aren't zionists fall into antisemitic tropes and conspiracism.

I'm pretty sure your first paragraph is not true (personal experience- I used to live in Israel). Link to surveys? I'm not even sure what you're referring to specifically as "Jewish Israeli Mainstream". The Orthodox Jews?

Israel has rescued Jews from places they were persecuted- Yes.

Israel also doesn't "claim to be jewdom" whatever that means. I can't even parse it. The US or Canada or most of Europe are decidedly Christian. In Israel you find more diversity (partly because the other religious minorities are much larger).

A good resource for contemporary israeli discourse is the account @ireallyhateyou on Twitter.

I wouldn't reduce e.g. Operation Magic Carpet to rescue from persecution. The main zionist motivation was to expand the jewish population in Palestine.

Sure it does. It's The Jewish State. It's were jews belong, as famous zionist Joe Biden puts it, no jew would be safe unless it existed. Inbetween messages about 'death to arabs' the IDF puts up menorahs and paints the star of David when they're operating in the Gaza strip. In the Knesset they've tried to expel Ofer Cassif for defending international law over the religious fervour of the Likud and far-right settler parties.

Edit: As for surveys, take a look at those from Israel Democracy Institute.

Both things can be true at one time, saving from persecution and expanding the Jewish population.

Doesn't US money say "In God we trust"? Don't various Christian countries put up Christmas decorations and trees everywhere? Aren't there courthouses in the US with the "bible" statues in front of them? I think the US is more of a "Christian" state than Israel is a Jewish state.

Israel is primarily founded as democratic free secular society, not a Jewish State in the sense you're implying: "will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."

Anyways, in the sense that Israel is the country of the Jewish nation, like Japan is the country of the Japanese, and China is a country for Chinese, and India is a country for Indians, that's sort of true. But I don't think this is the point you're trying to make here?

I did a quick Google for surveys from the Israel Democracy Institute and I failed to find a survey saying Israelis hate Palestinians. Maybe point me to the specific survey(s) you had in mind?

I don't think Ofer Cassif was being expelled for "defending international law". Israel is abiding by international law. Anyways, if he wasn't that shows you democracy in action. How many senators e.g. in the US were "defending international law" by opposing their country internationally post 9/11 e.g.? Israel has a diversity of opinions (of which Ofer is on some extreme) and the freedom to voice them.

No, Israel is not democratic. It's an apartheid state, established through colonial displacement and ethnic cleansing. It is currently engaged in genocidal practices against neighbouring indigenous populations, which I don't believe is compatible with democracy.

I don't think it's a jewish state because I believe zionism and judaism to be fundamentally incompatible, but it's the mainstream zionist position that it is.

You can look at pretty much any survey they've done during al-Aqsa Flood. You can also, you know, just look at israeli television? Listen to some politicians and pundits?

No, even the ICJ has concluded that Israel is plausibly committing genocide. What do you mean by "extreme"? Are you seriously claiming that he is free to voice his opinions, even though he is routinely harassed by the state for trying to do so? To my knowledge the arab parties in the Knesset has been allowed one, maybe two if the managed one in november, demonstrations. Look at photos from the israeli anti-government protests and count the palestinians, you'll find that they are very, very absent.

Or, you know, listen to some popular israeli pop songs, like Shager or Harbu Darbu? Look at some IDF TikTok:s where they say the genocidal stuff out loud while looting some dead or displaced peoples home?

You said something that's not true. No reference to support you. And you're doubling down with more lies. Not really worth a response.

The number of times people trot out 20% to excuse a very long and detailed history of overt and explicit Israeli cruelty to the Palestinians makes me think Israel only allowed these people to be citizens to blunt any criticism.

The conflict isn't about who hates who. It's about how to deal with millions of stateless people living in an occupied, blockaded, besieged territory where they can't control how much of any kind of import or export they do with the outside world because their integration into their occupiers legal system would upend its ethno-nationalism.

This speculation reminds me of early speculation about Covid-19's lab origin. They are both horrible ideas, but there is also too much evidence for both for them to be dismissed as mere bad-faith fear-mongering. That's the problem with conspiracies: some of them are real.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say? If a theory has too much evidence to dismiss it, how can it be a terrible idea? Are they terrible because they don't fit your ideology, or because of their implications about other people, or what is the issue?

Horrible in the moral sense. For example, that some people really want in their heart of hearts to kill entire other groups of people. Or that political or military leaders might willingly sacrifice hundreds of men, women and children to advance their goals. Horrible in the Machiavellian sense of pursuing power without moral constraint.

This is a fairly unrealistic idea. Unfortunately, mistakes and incompetence really are the answer, partially brought about because Netanyahu has spent years appointing people based on loyalty rather than credentials, partly because Hamas is smart and "played" Israel, partly because humans sometimes make mistakes.

If there truly was this kind of conspiracy, far too many people would have known about it, and this would've been leaked. Even if Netanyahu wouldn't mind the death of a thousand of his citizens (and personally I don't think anything is beneath him), there is no one else who would be so stupid or evil.

Also, Netanyahu almost certainly lost most of his public support because of this. Even if he truly was cynical anything to do something like this for his own personal gain, almost no one thinks that this has gained him anything. He will almost certainly go down in history as the worst Israeli leader of all time.

Also also, Israel isn't wiping anyone off the map. If this was all a ploy to do that, why wouldn't it just do it? I'm fairly certain that three days after Hamas's invasion of Israel, Israel had far more leeway from the world to do what it wanted.

Bombing a million people to death gets different international response than bombing their infrastructure and then opps they starved to death, what a tragedy.

1200 dead. 250 kidnapped. Every politician and senior officer expected to resign after the war ends. No, this was incompetence, or at least systematic failure, not malice.

Why so quick to write off malicious incompetence?

Observing that the man will be forced to retire at age 76 after a decade longadder climbing career is hardly a resounding proof of incompetence

This reads like "9/11 was an inside job" or "Trump is still president". A conspiracy theory. Something usually not true but some people want to be true for various reasons.

EDIT: I don't think on Oct 6th, 2023 (e.g.) many Israelis were concerned about wiping Gaza off the map. As long as it was quiet nobody cared (which was sort of the problem here).

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