Official Israel vs Hamas thread

Trollminator wrote:

agip wrote:

trolli have you spelled out what you think Israel should do instead of their current actions? I'm not on the thread much so apologies if you already have done that.

Yes I have several times. Summarizing here:

1. Focus on the suffering of those Israeli families and maximize international support instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

2. Revenge - surgical air strikes on main Hamas facilities + special raids/assassinations of Hamas militants within Gaza to hit them with similar terror. Key here is to ensure you are mostly killing those responsible and not mostly killing civilians. And they really should have tried to get some of those hostages back. This is clearly not a priority. The current bombing campaign should have stopped or calmed after 1,400 dead.. so that the response was not disproportionate.

3. If you really want to end Hamas, you have to take down the ideology. We know from history that inflicting great suffering on civilians as part of the revenge package does nothing to weaken these ideologies - it actually reinforces them. IMO, the only way to take down an ideology is to prove to a majority of those people that the alternative will lead to a better life for them and their children. Israel should have a deliberate and targeted campaign to improve the lives of at least some Gazans as proof that life is better without Hamas. They have never tried this. Bibi's agenda has been to keep the people divided and bolster Hamas.

4. If you think it's pointless to try the above, then the better alternative is to just focus on learning lessons from the colossal security/intel failure. Killing Palestinians at this scale will absolutely not help to defeat Hamas. Israel is triggering a regional war here and it's putting it's people at much higher risk than before.

agip wrote:

Trollminator wrote:

Nobody said don't fight back. I for one absolutely expected surgical bombing and special force raids into Gaza and the West Bank... but definitely nothing of this scale of human destruction. I want anyone who thinks these actions are justifiable to answer this.

At how many Palestinian deaths should the IDF stop? It's not a gotcha question.. I'm asking what is a justifiable human toll to go after Hamas. To answer that question, you've got to think about what it will take to end Hamas. If you believe in the IDF, then you need to be morally ok with hundreds of thousands murdered by them.

Link:www.peoplesworld.org/article/nakba-aga...

you and I have no idea how many people have died in Gaza. I suspect Hamas elevates the number by at least 2x and possibly far more than that. We saw what they said after the phony hospital explosion. We shouldn't depend on terrorists for data but for some reason we do.

I can't answer what an acceptable civilian toll is. But I can say that no nation should be expected to not fight back hard after a sneak attack on thousands of civilians.

Israel is doing surgical strikes. That's exactly what they are doing. What exactly do you think they are doing? Why do you think these pictures show one block or one building knocked down? If Israel wanted to carpet bomb they would carpet bomb. They aren't doing that.

Basically it sounds like you just want Israel to roll over and take the pain.

Trollminator wrote:

agip wrote:

trolli have you spelled out what you think Israel should do instead of their current actions? I'm not on the thread much so apologies if you already have done that.

Yes I have several times. Summarizing here:

1. Focus on the suffering of those Israeli families and maximize international support instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

2. Revenge - surgical air strikes on main Hamas facilities + special raids/assassinations of Hamas militants within Gaza to hit them with similar terror. Key here is to ensure you are mostly killing those responsible and not mostly killing civilians. And they really should have tried to get some of those hostages back. This is clearly not a priority. The current bombing campaign should have stopped or calmed after 1,400 dead.. so that the response was not disproportionate.

3. If you really want to end Hamas, you have to take down the ideology. We know from history that inflicting great suffering on civilians as part of the revenge package does nothing to weaken these ideologies - it actually reinforces them. IMO, the only way to take down an ideology is to prove to a majority of those people that the alternative will lead to a better life for them and their children. Israel should have a deliberate and targeted campaign to improve the lives of at least some Gazans as proof that life is better without Hamas. They have never tried this. Bibi's agenda has been to keep the people divided and bolster Hamas.

4. If you think it's pointless to try the above, then the better alternative is to just focus on learning lessons from the colossal security/intel failure. Killing Palestinians at this scale will absolutely not help to defeat Hamas. Israel is triggering a regional war here and it's putting it's people at much higher risk than before.

agip wrote:

Trollminator wrote:

Yes I have several times. Summarizing here:

1. Focus on the suffering of those Israeli families and maximize international support instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

2. Revenge - surgical air strikes on main Hamas facilities + special raids/assassinations of Hamas militants within Gaza to hit them with similar terror. Key here is to ensure you are mostly killing those responsible and not mostly killing civilians. And they really should have tried to get some of those hostages back. This is clearly not a priority. The current bombing campaign should have stopped or calmed after 1,400 dead.. so that the response was not disproportionate.

3. If you really want to end Hamas, you have to take down the ideology. We know from history that inflicting great suffering on civilians as part of the revenge package does nothing to weaken these ideologies - it actually reinforces them. IMO, the only way to take down an ideology is to prove to a majority of those people that the alternative will lead to a better life for them and their children. Israel should have a deliberate and targeted campaign to improve the lives of at least some Gazans as proof that life is better without Hamas. They have never tried this. Bibi's agenda has been to keep the people divided and bolster Hamas.

4. If you think it's pointless to try the above, then the better alternative is to just focus on learning lessons from the colossal security/intel failure. Killing Palestinians at this scale will absolutely not help to defeat Hamas. Israel is triggering a regional war here and it's putting it's people at much higher risk than before.

ok good stuff.

I hear you but I think you are being naive.

Hamas isn't stupid - they deliberately hide under civilians. Doing what you say and hitting just hamas is impossible. It's a fantasy. It would be nice if possible, but it isn't.

You can't beat ideology like Hamas with good will and offering hope. That just doesn't work. That's why the allies insisted on unconditional surrender in japan and germany. Yes, via inflicting great pain. The allies knew you had to crush nazism and whatever Japan had. And the allies were right. Look at the great countries germany and japan became afterwards.

The security failure is massive yes. I do hope this does in Bibi forever. He really messed up, in unforgivable ways.

Trollminator wrote:

agip wrote:

you and I have no idea how many people have died in Gaza. I suspect Hamas elevates the number by at least 2x and possibly far more than that. We saw what they said after the phony hospital explosion. We shouldn't depend on terrorists for data but for some reason we do.

I can't answer what an acceptable civilian toll is. But I can say that no nation should be expected to not fight back hard after a sneak attack on thousands of civilians.

Israel is doing surgical strikes. That's exactly what they are doing. What exactly do you think they are doing? Why do you think these pictures show one block or one building knocked down? If Israel wanted to carpet bomb they would carpet bomb. They aren't doing that.

Basically it sounds like you just want Israel to roll over and take the pain.

You can't honestly believe that it's not at least 4,000-5,000 dead at this point. 2.3 million people in a small area with nowhere to go, no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, no extra medical supplies, and bombs raining down on them. They are doing surgical strikes, but at this point given the volume of bombings I no longer believe it's all based on well supported intel. There is no way they are sure that all those targets have Hamas members. There is some level of indiscriminate killing here which IMO has more than crossed the moral line.

I agree about fighting back - but I disagree that it's justifiable to kill civilians at this rate. A 1:1 rate would not be acceptable to me. I say this because THIS WILL NOT DEFEAT HAMAS.

Why isn't Israel allowing reporters into Gaza? Why the need to inflict this much suffering on the people?

As to your last point... rolling over and taking the pain may turn out to have been a better option than triggering a regional war with a much higher number of Israelis dying later. I think this is a giant L for Israel and for Jews everywhere.

TheAdultInTheRoom wrote:

Trollminator wrote:

Yes I have several times. Summarizing here:

1. Focus on the suffering of those Israeli families and maximize international support instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

2. Revenge - surgical air strikes on main Hamas facilities + special raids/assassinations of Hamas militants within Gaza to hit them with similar terror. Key here is to ensure you are mostly killing those responsible and not mostly killing civilians. And they really should have tried to get some of those hostages back. This is clearly not a priority. The current bombing campaign should have stopped or calmed after 1,400 dead.. so that the response was not disproportionate.

3. If you really want to end Hamas, you have to take down the ideology. We know from history that inflicting great suffering on civilians as part of the revenge package does nothing to weaken these ideologies - it actually reinforces them. IMO, the only way to take down an ideology is to prove to a majority of those people that the alternative will lead to a better life for them and their children. Israel should have a deliberate and targeted campaign to improve the lives of at least some Gazans as proof that life is better without Hamas. They have never tried this. Bibi's agenda has been to keep the people divided and bolster Hamas.

4. If you think it's pointless to try the above, then the better alternative is to just focus on learning lessons from the colossal security/intel failure. Killing Palestinians at this scale will absolutely not help to defeat Hamas. Israel is triggering a regional war here and it's putting it's people at much higher risk than before.

There's no such thing as a "surgical airstrike".

agip wrote:

Trollminator wrote:

You can't honestly believe that it's not at least 4,000-5,000 dead at this point. 2.3 million people in a small area with nowhere to go, no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, no extra medical supplies, and bombs raining down on them. They are doing surgical strikes, but at this point given the volume of bombings I no longer believe it's all based on well supported intel. There is no way they are sure that all those targets have Hamas members. There is some level of indiscriminate killing here which IMO has more than crossed the moral line.

I agree about fighting back - but I disagree that it's justifiable to kill civilians at this rate. A 1:1 rate would not be acceptable to me. I say this because THIS WILL NOT DEFEAT HAMAS.

Why isn't Israel allowing reporters into Gaza? Why the need to inflict this much suffering on the people?

As to your last point... rolling over and taking the pain may turn out to have been a better option than triggering a regional war with a much higher number of Israelis dying later. I think this is a giant L for Israel and for Jews everywhere.

almost every one of your sentences is exaggeration or guesswork.

Ok got to go but I hear you. This is all a tragedy and fair question that Israel should be thinking the long game and not just what feels good in 2023.

PS: "Proportionality" doesn't mean 'eye for an eye.' it doesn't mean 'they killed 1000 of us so we will kill 1000 of them.'

It means 'no more violence than needed to achieve a military objective.' We didn't fight japan to kill the same number of japanese sailors as americans who died at Pearl Harbor. We went to war with the military objective to stop Japan from doing Pearl Harbor again. We had to scale our fighting to that objective and not, say, killing every japanese man woman and child on Earth. That kind of violence was not necessary to achieve the military objective so it would have been disproportionate.

Trollminator wrote:

agip wrote:

ok good stuff.

I hear you but I think you are being naive.

Hamas isn't stupid - they deliberately hide under civilians. Doing what you say and hitting just hamas is impossible. It's a fantasy. It would be nice if possible, but it isn't.

You can't beat ideology like Hamas with good will and offering hope. That just doesn't work. That's why the allies insisted on unconditional surrender in japan and germany. Yes, via inflicting great pain. The allies knew you had to crush nazism and whatever Japan had. And the allies were right. Look at the great countries germany and japan became afterwards.

The security failure is massive yes. I do hope this does in Bibi forever. He really messed up, in unforgivable ways.

Here's my main issue with your analogy... Palestine did not declare war on Israel and they do not have a military with tanks, aircraft etc.. Hamas are terrorists who don't care about their people. Did we beat the terrorists by invading Iraq and Afghanistan? That's the better analogy. What did we and the world get in return for hundreds of thousands dead, civil wars, lost generations, and humanitarian crisis?