Are either Israelis or Gazans more secure than when this war began? What has either side achieved?
During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong.
So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed.
The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
So whatever it has done, it cannot possibly be worse than pre-war
Also, how does that compare with Israeli schoolchildren singing about destroying Gaza?
https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/11/20/israeli-children-sing...
What sort of military solutions and violence, if any, should be employed to root out that sort of extremism?
> Nassur and Saraa have a disagreement about what the "expulsion" of the "Jews or Zionists" means. Saraa adopts the argument that they should be "chased away" and that "we don't want to do anything to them, just expel them from our land." Nassur, on the other hand, endorses the view that they should be "erased" and that "we want to slaughter them so they will be expelled from our land." Saraa eventually concedes, and the two compromised that "we will expel them from our land using all means, and if they don't want to go peacefully, by words or talking, we'll have to do it by slaughter."
No, it's not problematic at all.
And what of similar problematic propaganda on the Israeli side?
“Terrorist” groups Irgun, Haganah, Lehi all became part of Israeli government and army post 1948. Israel has mandatory military service for its citizens.
Irgun and Lehi were both offshoots which can be categorized as terror organizations, however they were very small, with a few hundred members and never reached the size or level of support of any Palestinian organization
While the Haganah formed most of the IDF leadership, the new country civilian leadership was based on the Jewish Agency which predated the Haganah and had completely civilian leadership.
There are many other differences between Hamas and these organizations, but in general this is an invalid comparison
All three groups at times participated in violent activities targeting the British, Arabs, and even at times other Jews.
Haganah was proscribed by the British mandate and was an unlawful, underground militia. Lehi had 100s of members but Irgun had 4000-8000.
You yourself admit that Lehi and Irgun could be categorized as "terrorist" and Haganah engaged in what you describe as "something in between guerilla warfare and terror attacks".
The British certainly thought of all three as "terrorist" groups, which is why they targeted them with military and police action - https://israeled.org/british-round-up-resistance-fighters/
Hamas would also not describe themselves as "terrorist", they also describe themselves as a "resistance" movement.
Haganah both planned and executed the "Plan Dalet", which killed and forcibly expelled the vast majority of non-Jews from their lands - they actually did what people accuse Hamas of wanting to do.
Regarding Plan Dalet, saying that most of the non-jews were killed or forcibly expelled is simply not true, not chronologically or factually.
Fact is that most of the Palestinians in 1948 fled on their own accords, while forced expulsions happened they were rare and were done for military reasons, mostly preparing for the imminent attack of five regular armies, as happened by the other side as well (e.g. kfar etzion)
While Israel proper has a sizable Palestinian population that is larger than the population of the Gaza strip
> Regarding Plan Dalet, saying that most of the non-jews were killed or forcibly expelled is simply not true, not chronologically or factually.
Right wing Israeli historian Benny Morris writes:
> the bulk of the Palestinian refugees—some 250,000 to 300,000- went into exile during those weeks between early April and mid-June 1948, with the major precipitant being Jewish (Haganah/1ZL/IDF) military attacks or the fear of such attacks
> In conformity with Tochnit Dalet (Plan D), the Haganah master plan, formulated in early March 1948, for securing the Jewish state areas in preparation for the expected declaration of statehood and the prospective Arab invasion, the Haganah cleared various areas completely of Arab villages
In his paper “A new historiography”.
His estimates of expulsions are on the low end compared to other Israeli New Historians. And of course much lower than Arab historians are estimates as well, but I have a sinking feeling that citing Arab historians wouldn’t be productive in this particular exchange.
Reading his seminal work 1948 puts your quote as somewhat out of context:
Plan D has given rise over the decades to a minor historiographic controversy, with Palestinian and pro-Palestinian historians charging that it was the Haganah’s master plan for the expulsion of the country’s Arabs. But a cursory examination of the actual text leads to a different conclusion
If you are interested in Benny Morris, you will probably be interested to read in the same book about the Palestinian and Arab armies expulsion of Jewish settlements as early as 1929, and in multiple places in the war (Etzion Bloc, Yad Mordechai, Nitzanim, Masada, etc), where they cleansed the Jewish population from the future Arab state. This followed multiple declarations of intent by the Grand Mufti and other Arab leaders of cleansing the Jewish state.
Furthermore, you might be interested in the forced expulsion of around 700,000 Jews from Arab countries following the war, a similar number to the number of Palestinian refugees created by the war. These were settled in Israel, while the Palestinians were kept in city-sized refugee camps as non-civilians in Arab states for 70+ years.
Generally, based on some information you have omitted or seemed to misunderstand, I have the feeling that most of your knowledge on this subject is based on reading post-digested sources in Wikipedia, which is nowadays an extremely biased source on this subject, and very much deviates from even basic facts.
It feels like almost ever day that I see a video of a Palestinian's home in the West Bank being demolished or a Palestinian family being harassed by armed settlers
There are certainly many angry Palestinians before and after but this is foreign meddling through and through. Hamas would not exist in this form and have done the things that it did otherwise.
I'm not comparing Israel or Palestine to Nazi, it's just a bitter fact that war always create anger and hate. Something had to be done though?
Will we (and/or Israel) do the same for Gaza? What about Lebanon and Syria?
We certainly failed at this in Iraq and Afghanistan, did we learn any lessons? Will the incoming US Administration fumble this opportunity?
As Stephen Kotkin likes to say "You can win the war and lose the peace. You can also lose the war and win the peace"
What comes after the war is as important, maybe more so, than the war itself
Israel would have created multiple generations of emboldened anger and hate against themselves if they failed to respond to the massacre and mass kidnapping.
Hamas is not a rational actor. Their stated goal is to destroy Israel and kill every Jew. That's it. There is no scenario in which they are going to stop hating Israel. They don't care if every Palestinian also gets killed, if they get to destroy Israel it's worth it to them.
The right way to fight an independence movement is to either do so from within/in a more targeted fashion, or barring that, meet their demands in some shape or form. Escalating the violence to the point where you’re destroying and displacing a people might settle things down in the short term, but the movement will not die, and will more than likely grow.
Well, Israel started and has been funding Hamas (I'm assuming, but who knows, that it stopped with this war) since the PLO/Arafat days to the tune of (at times tens of) millions a month.
And we've yet to see whether this is a good thing.
Gaddafi was seen as one of the most oppressive figures in the world during his lifetime. A few countries made it their goal to take him down and liberate the people of Libya.
Gaddafi was killed, Libya was free, and the media celebrated. Just like with Syria, media coverage was down to basically zero about a month after that happened and everyone was left thinking it was a job well done. Turns out Libya has been worse than it ever was under Gaddafi. Having an oppressive albeit relatively secular leader who maintained a stable hold on the country turned out to be better than an oppressive non-secular mess.
There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.
There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF.
Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.
As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
This take is incredibly callous. Suppose 8% of everyone you gets killed. This is a shockingly brutal thing to happen to a population. Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so people don't say "there's still Jews left so technically the Holocaust wasn't a genocide". The holocaust was a genocide, and this is a genocide (yes, "is", they're still dropping bombs on a population half of which is under 18). There's a reason the relevant cases haven't been thrown out of the ICJ and ICC.
But put yourself in the shoes of a hypothetical evil genocidal person. Assume 8% of Gaza was killed (though this figure is wrong). Having Gaza at it's 2020 population is negligible to them. They were hoping to murder everyone and reclaim their holy land or something and instead (purely from a population standpoint) they're basically just back to the status quo after the truce. Even most Nazis would say they ultimately failed in their genocidal ambitions and they killed two thirds of the Jews in Europe and 90% in Poland.
Second, 8% of Gaza hasn't been killed. By the Gaza health ministry's estimate, about 2% have been killed. Your source arrived at 8% literally by just quadrupling the number without any basis in data from Gaza. This is out of line with all the estimates from Gaza.
> Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so...
I'm aware and I didn't say anything factually wrong. Killing just part of a people doesn't legally exempt it from being genocide. But killing part of a people also doesn't imply genocide. Every war has killed part of a people. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars each killed far more people than the Gaza war, but neither is considered genocide.
If Israel were acting like the Nazis, there wouldn't be any Palestinians left in Gaza. They'd all be carpet bombed, shot on sight, or sent to forced labor camps. There's a world of difference between the two.
This is literally the "if the holocaust were a genocide, how come there's still jews" take. Please go and get a grip.
To qualify Israel's actions as a genocide, lawyers don't have to show that Israel killed every Palestinian in Gaza, but they will have to prove they intended to. The ICC is not going to rule this a genocide.
As should be obvious, the "in part" wording of "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group" does not mean killing any part of a ethnic group can be genocide (e.g. killing 7 people of an ethnicity in an airstrike is not a genocide). The part must be an identifiable subgroup. For example, intent to kill all Palestinians in Gaza, rather than all Palestinians everywhere, would qualify as genocidal intent. There has to be intent to physical eradicate an identifiable group. Forcing people to leave is also not genocide (it's an ethnic cleansing). Other war crimes do not qualify as genocide.
1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared.
2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses.
3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.
For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)
Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it.
Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
Do you have a source for that?
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster. Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
It happened for a reason and unless that reason has changed then one should expect the same outcome.
This was a proxy war with Iran
There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.
The UN and ICC have both shown they're absolutely powerless and useless.
I would propose this "war" was relatively cheap in Israeli civilian lives lost for what was gained.
Demonstrably increasing the reach of Israel action without external repercussions, makes it a security win for Israel. None of the international community will put troops in front of Israel to benefit Palestine. That's worth something to know (converting an unknown to a known).
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/453701.pdf
Google's Ngram viewer isn't working for the term "Ben Gurion Canal" for some reason, but it would show approximately when renewed interest started getting traction since the proposal was declassified in 1996.
I wouldn't be surprised if the 2021 Evergreen fiasco was contributory to this renewed interest but this is pure speculation on my part.
In case you are not aware, the exact opposite happened.
To be clear, we very much do want Gaza. We had homes there. and we have Jewish roots there going back long before the time of today’s Palestinian colonists.
Above all of that though, is that we want peace. And so if we have to be patient for a time when we can peacefully live in Gaza again, we will be patient.
In the meantime, the most important thing is the safe return of loved ones who were taken hostage on October 7th (and before!) and safety for those living in rocket’s range of Gaza.