Hacker News Reader

Comment by miohtama | Hacker News Reader

I know HN is not a place for political commentary, but why Israel would do it now when everyone tries to make them de-escalate?

View on HN

Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel more or less continuously since October 7, and Israel has been firing back. I believe both countries have had to evacuate border areas, something like 100,000 Israelis living hear Lebanon are internally displaced.

In short, there's a war on. Neither side wants a full blown war but Israel doesn't want to let Hezbollah muster a larger assault, so they're doing what they can to cripple Hezbollah and disrupt their operations.

De-escalation is a goal that takes cooperation from both parties (or in this case, from Israel and the various Iranian proxies attacking them). Telling one party to "de-escalate" while the other party continues attacking is just farting in the wind.

Well, first, there's no de-escalation happening with Hezbollah. Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran are more or less openly at war. We don't talk about it much because the attack failed, but Iran launched a mass drone assault against Israel a few months back. Israel recently exploded Ismael Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, in Tehran. Hezbollah rocket attacks on Northern Israel, which killed half a youth soccer team, have more or less evacuated that whole region. Hezbollah is not Hamas: they are a military peer (a weaker one, but still) to Israel.

Second, the reporting I've seen (incl. "confirmation" from US intelligence sources) is that this was a use-it-or-lose-it situation: that Hezbollah operatives were on the verge of discovering it.

The Iran "retaliatory" attack was clearly not a serious effort, they mostly used old cheap rockets and drones. It was more to save face and they got a lot of information on Israel's defence systems out of it. And not to mention it cost the Israelis over a 1 billion dollars to thwart while Iran spend a few million.

To both you and the sibling comment, my only argument here is that these countries are openly at war.

> We don't talk about it much because the attack failed, but Iran launched a mass drone assault against Israel a few months back.

Note that this was a retaliatory strike, announced in advance, to Israel's illegal bombing of Iran's consulate in Damascus, Syria.

There really isn’t any de-escalation. Hezbollah continues to bomb Northern Israel and the IDF continues to strike back. There are still hundreds of thousands of displaced Israelis who can’t go back to their homes.

Because the current Israeli leadership are using external conflict to avoid facing criminal charges from internal political issues. Netanyahu was on the verge of being ousted before the 7 October attacks.

If the conflict stops, the current cabinet will be forced to face their own party, the opposition and the rest of their country.

Hezbollah has been firing missiles non-stop at Israel since 10/7. 60,000 Israelis had to relocate from the North. This is not an escalation.

This is the most relevant point, yet downvoted. Hezbollah decided to pile-on and attack Israel (at Iran's urging, to support their other proxy Hamas). Prior to that, there hadn't been serious conflict between the two states in years.

Israel has been pressing the escalation as hard as they can. They've had people in positions of power saying it's literally ok to rape Palestinians in prison.

There's zero interest in de escalation there.

De-escalation wouldn't solve the problem of an Islamic militia with the declared goal of destroying Israel and the military capabilities somewhere in the world top-20 armies sitting right on Israel's northern border. As far as Israel is concerned, Hezbollah needs to be removed and pushed back away. If this doesn't register with common sense alone, then this view is also backed by UN security council resolution 1701.

Israel is in their 9/11 moment and is not backing down due to international hand wringing. Ultimately it’s a test of the international institutions and US government support.

What you're saying is true. Israeli citizens have had enough and demand a military solution. The fighting doctrine of Israel's adversaries is attacking and then running for the cover of the international community, but post October 7th that doesn't really work anymore with Israel.

> Israeli citizens have had enough and demand a military solution.

Enthusiasts of Rhetoric or Logic may notice how interesting this sentence is, in that it is both true and false simultaneously.

They may also notice that is also true of a rather large percentage of discussion/cognition regarding these matters.

Gosh, how do people manage to understand what's going on if language is used this way???

At this point, I wonder if Israel isn't intentionally trying to provoke more 9/11 moments. If they lose the direct support of the US or the tolerance of the wider international community, they can't fulfill their goals.

Or the flip side. Hamas promised to continue slaughtering Israeli Arabs, Jews, and Christians until they are all dead. Hezbollah has launched rockets into northern Israel for a year…with 100k+ Israelis forced to relocate south.

What exactly other option does Israel had. Peace talks didn’t go anywhere for last few decades

Even if Hamas hadn't eliminated the anti-semitic language from their charter in 2007, that argument would require one to accept that preventatively mass murdering whole families and generations of children is a moral means of dealing with a political opponent.

Options? Israel (the people anyway) has always had the option of finally dropping the ethno-nationalism and apartheid of their foundational principles, and accepting that the Palestinians have a way more material right to Palestinian territory than an American or a European who Israel brought over on a birthright trip.

Hamas was anti-semitic?

My understanding was that the language in the charter included the term "jews" as a metonym for Israel.

They have the support of a state 30x their size. In a unique way few others do, almost in a parent child undying and asymmetrical way.

This is 9/11 but the US backed by an entire alien planet, unafraid to go in the direction of scorched earth even when totally surrounded because the aliens will bail them out.

The escalation is the point. Continuing war keeps Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet in power. It may also draw the US into the conflict, which would, among other side effects, hurt the Dems chances of winning the presidency in November. (Netanyahu and friends prefer Trump over Harris.)

If there is a pressure to have Israel de-escalate, this must be it.

Zero accountability, forever. This is as grim as it gets.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com