Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Valmy]

It seems kind of ridiculous to refuse to shake hands with random jocks because of shit their government does. There are probably ways to condemn Israel's actions without making it a personal beef with every single Israeli. That is where it seems antisemitic. If they were playing a team of Palestinian jocks I assume they wouldn't just assume every single player was a Hamas supporter.

But yes the fact they also went out and lost by 30 is kind of embarrassing.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, in is an interesting bind, Hamas presented a no win situation to even the best of Israeli leaders.  There was no good military option, including doing nothing.  But Netanyahu is far from the best of Israeli leaders and Hamas is getting a big PR win.

It is really hard to make yourself look like the nastier alternative to Hamas, but Netanyahu was not deterred and accomplished that for Israel.

I think that is a very good summary

[Valmy]

I think that is a very good summary

Yeah. Fuck that guy.

The bullshit and frustrating part of all this is is that he just barely won the last election by a hair. Just fucking fate putting him in charge in this critical moment. If God exists he hates Israel and Palestine.

Though, yes, obviously the Israeli voters had something to do with it as well. It just seemed hopeful just a short time ago that the political forces had finally turned against the Israeli right wing for a bit.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I find it confusing a lot of people seem to (with little actual thought) say Hamas isn't losing.

A simple review of the factual situation on the ground would show:

• Hamas has lost 20,000 of its prewar soldier count of 30,000
• Hamas has suffered the destruction of 17 of their 24 combat battalions
• 95% reduction in rocket capability
• With the fall of Khan Younis, Rafah is their last significant stronghold
• Their military leader Yahya Sinwar has been out of contact with the rest of Hamas for "weeks", meaning what who knows, but certainly nothing good for Hamas
• Hamas has essentially no prospect of resuming security control of Gaza, it will all but certainly be subject to long term IDF patrols, probably military bases etc
• Hamas has very little prospect for resuming administrative control of Gaza, with most of the organs of that control destroyed
• Hamas enjoyed a monopoly on force previously, the only non-Hamas armed groups allowed to operate in Gaza were willing to operate in fealty to Hamas. Now there are old Gazan familial clan groups arming up, criminal gangs taking over swathes of territory etc.

If one was to say Israel is just moving from one bad mess (Hamas controlling Gaza) to a different one (Gaza being an anarchic shit hole that Israel will largely be responsible for), yes--that is correct. But Hamas has quite literally had a new asshole torn into it, and has suffered such damage it really isn't likely they ever recover to what they were.

Hamas doesn't have options like ISIS or the Taliban to slink off into some remote area and rebuild, Gaza was the only territory they had. The umbrella group itself can continue to exist but not as an administrator of the Gaza Strip, which the source of most of its money and almost all of its relevance and power.

[crazy canuck]

That's a good analysis. If you think they are just a government. If you think they are a terrorist organization with very little if no concern about the inhabitants of Gazza, then your analysis is badly mistaken.

[Threviel]

They can be both simultaneously.

[Josquius]

Hamas obviously isn't losing.
Again look at things logically. Do you seriously think that they thought with their hostage taking murder raid they thought they would somehow conquer Israel?
The entire intent of the attack was always about trolling Israel into an over reaction and gaining the sympathy of the world, especially the Muslim world.

All this talk of Israel stronk.
Gaza crushed!
With Most of the world. Even the US president, telling Israel to chill out a bit.
... It certainly does look like mission accomplished for Hamas.

In the bigger picture the one thing Hamas really didn't want to see was a peaceful solution to the Palestine-Israel mess, which things were increasingly inching towards. They had to make sure any ultimate solution was on their terms.
Current polls certainly do suggest their popularity has gone up quite some. These aren't the most reliable of polls and of course will be showing a boost out of the situation. But still seem to suggest the situation has been a win for Hamas.

[Threviel]

I would think any realistic planning of the attack would at best hope for a few military hostages, since IDF apparently put unarmed video surveillance personel very close to the border, and some civilians killed and captured perhaps. Perhaps with luck they could cause a panic at the festival and get some videos of panicked youngsters fleeing. That kind of attack would humiliate Israel and get Hamas huge concessions for their hostages.

The hugely successful murder-rape-fest was probably, from what I would guess, a very surprising turn of events and from there everything spiralled.

[OttoVonBismarck]

That's a good analysis. If you think they are just a government. If you think they are a terrorist organization with very little if no concern about the inhabitants of Gazza, then your analysis is badly mistaken.

If you think the latter then you really haven't followed Hamas, their political leadership, the sort of diplomacy they ran through Qatar before the war and etc.

It certainly isn't unlikely as the group loses Gaza they become an underground terror group, but those are far less dangerous and less able to generate money or curry diplomatic attention. Underground groups also can't field 2 dozen organized regular military battalions like prewar Hamas. They won't be able to maintain hundreds of rocket manufacturing/ storage sites etc.

Israel's war goal is to end Hamas administration of the strip. There appears to be little chance that fails at this point.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Hamas obviously isn't losing.
Again look at things logically. Do you seriously think that they thought with their hostage taking murder raid they thought they would somehow conquer Israel?
The entire intent of the attack was always about trolling Israel into an over reaction and gaining the sympathy of the world, especially the Muslim world.

All this talk of Israel stronk.
Gaza crushed!
With Most of the world. Even the US president, telling Israel to chill out a bit.
... It certainly does look like mission accomplished for Hamas.

In the bigger picture the one thing Hamas really didn't want to see was a peaceful solution to the Palestine-Israel mess, which things were increasingly inching towards. They had to make sure any ultimate solution was on their terms.
Current polls certainly do suggest their popularity has gone up quite some. These aren't the most reliable of polls and of course will be showing a boost out of the situation. But still seem to suggest the situation has been a win for Hamas.

This still? Guys, Hamas has been running Gaza for 15 years. They absolutely did not plan to trade losing Gaza to "hurt Israel's regional PR." You guys are stuck incorrectly thinking Hamas is primarily an Islamic terror group whose only goal is to hide and do low tier terror attacks.

If that is the case why has some of their political leadership been working for years to try and cut a deal with Fatah to legitimize their rule of the strip?

Why did they train, build and maintain 24 regular military combat battalions? Why did they operate a domestic police force?

Why did a significant segment of their leadership want to be part of a two state solution?

You really just aren't talking about Hamas. You're confusing them for al Qaeda.

[Josquius]

Hamas obviously isn't losing.
Again look at things logically. Do you seriously think that they thought with their hostage taking murder raid they thought they would somehow conquer Israel?
The entire intent of the attack was always about trolling Israel into an over reaction and gaining the sympathy of the world, especially the Muslim world.

All this talk of Israel stronk.
Gaza crushed!
With Most of the world. Even the US president, telling Israel to chill out a bit.
... It certainly does look like mission accomplished for Hamas.

In the bigger picture the one thing Hamas really didn't want to see was a peaceful solution to the Palestine-Israel mess, which things were increasingly inching towards. They had to make sure any ultimate solution was on their terms.
Current polls certainly do suggest their popularity has gone up quite some. These aren't the most reliable of polls and of course will be showing a boost out of the situation. But still seem to suggest the situation has been a win for Hamas.

This still? Guys, Hamas has been running Gaza for 15 years. They absolutely did not plan to trade losing Gaza to "hurt Israel's regional PR." You guys are stuck incorrectly thinking Hamas is primarily an Islamic terror group whose only goal is to hide and do low tier terror attacks.

If that is the case why has some of their political leadership been working for years to try and cut a deal with Fatah to legitimize their rule of the strip?

Why did they train, build and maintain 24 regular military combat battalions? Why did they operate a domestic police force?

Why did a significant segment of their leadership want to be part of a two state solution?

You really just aren't talking about Hamas. You're confusing them for al Qaeda.

They aren't interested in ruling an Israeli ghetto forever.
They want the West Bank too and beyond that the whole of Palestine.

Note your statements here say some of their leadership. Not their overall policy. It's not abnormal for there to be those who think different to the company line.

Hurting "Israels PR" absolutely is their core aim. If not that what do you think they want to accomplish from attacking Israel?
Do you think they actually believed they could win a stand up fight?

Why do they have an army then? - again PR. Albeit internal.

[The Minsky Moment]

They can be both simultaneously.

Just so.  The entire right bloc grand strategy is in tatters, with the security policy exposed as a sham and the diplomatic efforts in limbo.  There is a way forward but only by moving towards recognition of Palestinian statehood as part of a regional and international process, which is anathema to the govenernment.

The degrading of Hamas offensive capacity, while a positive result, is ultimately less significant. That can be rebuilt and even if Hamas were to be effectively annihilated as an organization, another similar construct would soon step into its place.

[crazy canuck]

They can be both simultaneously.

They could, but they are not. The military wing of Hamas has been in control for a while now.  If the part of Hamas that was more concerned with governing Gaza had more power, then negotiations and all the other trappings that go along with state to state relationships would be more viable.  But that is not the reality on the ground, and part of why Hamas launched their terrorist attacks on Oct. 7.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Hurting "Israels PR" absolutely is their core aim. If not that what do you think they want to accomplish from attacking Israel?
Do you think they actually believed they could win a stand up fight?

I think you are falling into a common error of thinking I have seen for years, you assume "super-competency" in the enemies of the west and how they are thinking. It is the same narrative that al-Qaeda "got what it wanted" out of 9/11. Al-Qaeda as it existed before 9/11 largely was destroyed, all of its significant leaders in power before 9/11 died, typically violently. The surviving organization splintered into tons of other groups, most of whom are arguably only speciously affiliated with the original AQ.

There was no great Holy War in the Middle East. The secular rulers of Middle Eastern countries who struck alliances with the United States continue to operate those alliances.

There is a common confusion, I think, in assuming that just because things go poorly for the West, means it is going as intended by the West's enemies. Or that the West's enemies are "winning."

Most would agree the overall Iraq war was a boondoggle for the United States. Only a very stupid person would say Saddam Hussein won that war, or that the U.S. "played into his hands." The dude was living in a spider hole within weeks of the U.S. invasion and was dead (by execution) within a few years--his adult male heirs he had spent a lifetime grooming were killed in battle. There is no narrative where he didn't lose the war. That doesn't mean America won, those are different questions.

Back to Hamas--you are plain wrong if you think Hamas wanted to lose control of the Gaza strip, or that Iran wanted them to lose control of the Gaza strip. The most obvious, and logical conclusions is simple: Hamas miscalculated on a number of fronts. Hamas has bifurcated leadership--a political leadership in exile that has largely been working towards some sort of agreement to be part of a two state solution, and a military leadership within the strip who believe there must be some sort of total war with Israel.

There is simply no chance that either of those branches wanted to lose control of the strip. The political leadership it is obvious.

I think the thinking of Yahya Sinwar (the head of the military in the strip) was probably one of two possibilities, or possibly both (with one as a "worst case" plan.)

1. Expected that the Israeli response would be similar to prior Israeli responses. A few weeks war, bombings, some military raids. But ultimately, the "CNN effect" would force them to quit, they would have to negotiate, and they would agree to the release of many thousands of Palestinian terrorists to get back a few hundred Israeli hostages. This would bolster both Hamas and Sinwar's positions.

2. Expected that if Israel went further than that, the "Axis of Resistance" would kick in, Hezbollah would start a general war in the North, maybe even more direct activity from the Houthis and Iran. Sinwar almost certainly expected Israel would not have penetrated that far into Gaza at the time. Now, did he think the Axis of Resistance would militarily defeat Israel? I don't know--I doubt it, unless he was really delusional. But he probably expected it would cause such a huge problem for Israel that they would have to desist or at least freeze their operation in Gaza. This would push the immediate conflict into a stalemate, and put Israel on its heels and (he assumed) the bad scenario would bring Israel to the negotiating table to give even greater concession.

While I mostly discount it, there is also a small chance he believed this would kick off some sort of apocalyptic war involving the Arab states as well and the ultimate purging of Israel from the region--but it is typically not the case that Hamas leadership has been that far divorced from reality, but who knows.

I see basically no possibility in which Sinwar thought, or would have found acceptable "well, we are going to lose all our military and our control of Gaza, including most of our top commanders being killed--maybe me myself, and the gain is that Israel will release a few hundred Palestinian terrorists, and will get a stern warning to behave from the ICJ, and some negative comments from the global left." Yeah, I think it is basically 0% chance the dude willingly threw away the lives of 30,000 of his men for such small gains, and I think it is supremely illogical, and delusional, that you think otherwise.

At this point Hamas would frankly have to fight a civil war to even re-assert itself in Gaza even if Israel fully withdrew today and agreed to not enter the strip again. I suspect you haven't been reading the reporting, but in the areas that have already been subjected to IDF "clearing operations", other non-Hamas armed groups have materialized. Former Hamas police men and other tribal groups have started arming themselves and taking over neighborhoods and forming new groups in the northern half of the strip. There is just no chance whatsoever, for such limited benefit, Yahya Sinwar wanted this outcome.

It is too easy, and maybe too "tempting" for an anti-Israeli as yourself, to believe that the enemies of Israel are hyper competent and perfect.

It is all but certain Israel has a long term mess on its hands in Gaza, and that, too--has nothing to say as to whether or not Hamas is "getting what it wanted", just like Saddam in Iraq--America got a bad outcome in Iraq, that doesn't mean Saddam got a good one or got what he wanted. More than one group can suffer a negative outcome from a war. They aren't binary.

They can be both simultaneously.

The degrading of Hamas offensive capacity, while a positive result, is ultimately less significant. That can be rebuilt and even if Hamas were to be effectively annihilated as an organization, another similar construct would soon step into its place.

On what basis do you make such a specious claim? If it was so easy to build up a Hamas-tier military force under Israeli occupation, the various (and there are dozens of them) Palestinian militant groups that operate underground in the West Bank would have done so. Instead, all of them combined don't and have never represented even a sliver of Hamas's pre-war power.

[Josquius]

I think you are falling into a common error of thinking I have seen for years, you assume "super-competency" in the enemies of the west and how they are thinking. It is the same narrative that al-Qaeda "got what it wanted" out of 9/11. Al-Qaeda as it existed before 9/11 largely was destroyed, all of its significant leaders in power before 9/11 died, typically violently. The surviving organization splintered into tons of other groups, most of whom are arguably only speciously affiliated with the original AQ.

I'd say its more many assuming they're super incompetent than anyone assuming they're super competent. The super competent thing to do would have been not to attack in the first place.

Al-Quaida getting what it wanted out of 11/9 is an interesting one. As it sort of did. Massive boost in Islamophobia, America destroying itself in futile adventures in the middle east, and so on.
The outcome of this however was not what they expected. We didn't see a mass uprising of moderate muslims and an epic apocalyptic war of civilizations, the coming of the messiah, and all that stuff.
Its like if libertarians got what they wanted and the government effectively disbanded- they think this will lead to a utopia, most people expect it will instead lead to Somalia.

Back to Hamas--you are plain wrong if you think Hamas wanted to lose control of the Gaza strip, or that Iran wanted them to lose control of the Gaza strip. The most obvious, and logical conclusions is simple: Hamas miscalculated on a number of fronts. Hamas has bifurcated leadership--a political leadership in exile that has largely been working towards some sort of agreement to be part of a two state solution, and a military leadership within the strip who believe there must be some sort of total war with Israel.

There is simply no chance that either of those branches wanted to lose control of the strip. The political leadership it is obvious.

Of course they don't WANT to lose Gaza.
However it is a sacrifice they're willing to make for control of the greater prize of the West Bank and ultimately they believe the whole of Palestine.

I think the thinking of Yahya Sinwar (the head of the military in the strip) was probably one of two possibilities, or possibly both (with one as a "worst case" plan.)

1. Expected that the Israeli response would be similar to prior Israeli responses. A few weeks war, bombings, some military raids. But ultimately, the "CNN effect" would force them to quit, they would have to negotiate, and they would agree to the release of many thousands of Palestinian terrorists to get back a few hundred Israeli hostages. This would bolster both Hamas and Sinwar's positions.

2. Expected that if Israel went further than that, the "Axis of Resistance" would kick in, Hezbollah would start a general war in the North, maybe even more direct activity from the Houthis and Iran. Sinwar almost certainly expected Israel would not have penetrated that far into Gaza at the time. Now, did he think the Axis of Resistance would militarily defeat Israel? I don't know--I doubt it, unless he was really delusional. But he probably expected it would cause such a huge problem for Israel that they would have to desist or at least freeze their operation in Gaza. This would push the immediate conflict into a stalemate, and put Israel on its heels and (he assumed) the bad scenario would bring Israel to the negotiating table to give even greater concession.

While I mostly discount it, there is also a small chance he believed this would kick off some sort of apocalyptic war involving the Arab states as well and the ultimate purging of Israel from the region--but it is typically not the case that Hamas leadership has been that far divorced from reality, but who knows.

I do think they expected a lot more Arab support.
This is where  the talk of Hamas being shocked at the brutality really comes into play- I don't think the leadership planned for baby murder, rape, and all of those horrors. As no matter what they thought about Israelis and how much they might have been fine with babies being killed, they would know thats terrible PR.
But due to the nature of the attacking force, a bunch of radicalised young men effectively just released from prison, with a completely splintered command structure... things just went way out of their control.

I wouldn't go so far as they realistically thought this was it and the final war against Israel would suddenly come overnight. But stopping the moves towards Arab-Israeli reconciliation was their core aim and one they were willing to burn Gaza for.

It is too easy, and maybe too "tempting" for an anti-Israeli as yourself, to believe that the enemies of Israel are hyper competent and perfect.

Not blindly supporting Israel whatever it wants to do != anti-Israeli.

It is all but certain Israel has a long term mess on its hands in Gaza, and that, too--has nothing to say as to whether or not Hamas is "getting what it wanted", just like Saddam in Iraq--America got a bad outcome in Iraq, that doesn't mean Saddam got a good one or got what he wanted. More than one group can suffer a negative outcome from a war. They aren't binary.

Saddam didn't get what he wanted out of Iraq at all. But then he didn't want the war and made no attempts to start it.
Islamic Extremists didn't get their entire shopping list but they certainly got a lot.