Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Razgovory]

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10157277405491729

This has Corbyn's exact quote.

Is it so hard to say Hamas is bad?  I would have thought that this is a no brainer.  It's like asking if Nazis are bad.

[Threviel]

And from a Swedish perspective we have Greta.

Great impact on environmental stuff, invigorates the youth in a non-stupid way and despite her young years a sensible voice in the world.

Goes completely insane on this conflict which puts all her previous effort in doubt and instantly removes all her credibility.

[Threviel]

I have been thinking a bit about how a reasonable individual can argue against the war. There are probably lots of ways, but this is what I've been thinking.

The first thing to consider is a proper response to the October attack. One response might be that the attacks were a justified expression of the powerlessness of the Palestinians and the level of violence was a proportional response to decades of Israeli aggression. In that case Israel should not go to war and you are a supporter of Hamas.

I argue that the extreme violence, the meditated methods of it and the form it took removes all rights of the Hamas state to exist in its present form. They need to be removed at all reasonable cost.

Between those two are arguments that this should be resolved diplomatically. In real terms that means that Hamas rule will continue and that they will win a huge propaganda victory. In real terms any argument here means that you are a supporter of Hamas rule.

But hey, you're not, you want to see Hamas removed, but you don't want children to die.

So, let's look at the options there:

1. Hamas goes voluntarily after diplomatic moves.

Not going to happen, pure imaginary fantasies.

2. Popular revolution/democratic vote removes Hamas.

The Gazans are massively behind Hamas and support them. No popular revolution is coming.

3. An international coalition can go in as peace-keeper.

Not going to happen, no-one wants to touch this with a 100m pole. That would also probably mean foreign troops doing what the IDF is doing now.

That leaves us with two options. Hamas stays or IDF removes them.

Which more or less makes everyones choice a hell. Either you in practice support Hamas or you in practice support Israel. You might argue that you only want peace and love, and think of the poor children, but in practice that's a vote on Hamas as rulers of Gaza. And you might say bullshit and that nothing is black or white and I would almost always agree, but in this case it's rather more black and white than usual.

For myself I'm not overly fond of Israeli politics these last decades and would they kindly fuck off back to their own country and stop settling Palestinian lands. But there's just no way in hell I would support Hamas over them.

(You in this case addressed to no-one in particular)

[Admiral Yi]

The Gazans are not massively behind Hamas.  That Arab Barometer poll showed Gazan support for Hamas at 50% and West Bank support for Hamas at 75%.

[Sheilbh]

Not quite sure how the IDF can remove Hamas - and I think that's being borne out. I think The Economist's defence correspondent's summary sounds right - heavy, but not crippling damage to Hamas' combat capacity, modest damage to the leadership (none of the top three targets), some success on tunnels in the North. Nothing decisive and unlikely to be so by the year's end - all at a huge civilian cost.

If you take the war is politics by other means line and I agree with the goal of removing Hamas. I've still not seen anything from Israel that makes me think that the war, as being executed, is a way of achieving that political goal - and I'm not sure they have an idea of how to do that. The only route I can see for that is probably a very long term occupation and state building by Israel - the occupation would be difficult generally, state building is impossible for this government.

Obviously as a consequnce of the 7 October attacks there is a political need and demand for a military response. I'm not sure there is (that I've seen) a military campaign that can meet Israel's obectives as far as we know them. As I say I suspect the Israeli leadership want population transfer/force Palestinians out into Egypt or somewhere else but are constrained and that's what we're seeing.

[Jacob]

As far as here goes though it is weird that some otherwise rational folk seem to embrace an outright trump level black and white view on things. Israel can do no wrong. Hamas are evil thus those Palestinian children have it coming.

This the point where I have to decide whether to tell you to go fuck yourself or tune you out for the duration and hope you recover.

Would you like to retract this statement?

Is that because you think Josq is talking about you in this statement? Because if he did I can see why you'd be pissed off about it... but I don't think he means you.

[Admiral Yi]

Is that because you think Josq is talking about you in this statement? Because if he did I can see why you'd be pissed off about it... but I don't think he means you.

No.  Doesn't matter.  I've paid attention to this thread, read every post.  No other posters comments IMO can legitimately be characterized as "Israel can do no wrong" and "kill them all."  Saying so is a lie.  I can't abide lying.

[Jacob]

@Threviel - I think that other argument against Israel's response is that the tens of thousands of Palestinian children do not deserve to suffer in this conflict. That they are innocent and that no level of provocation justifies making children suffer.

Essentially it is allowing Hamas' blackmail from hiding behind civilians be effective. The argument is that Hamas' atrocities do not justify harming children even if Hamas hides behind them.

[Jacob]

No.  Doesn't matter.  I've paid attention to this thread, read every post.  No other posters comments IMO can legitimately be characterized as "Israel can do no wrong" and "kill them all."  Saying so is a lie.  I can't abide lying.

Ok. Thanks for clarifying.

[Admiral Yi]

The Israelis dropped leaflets at the beginning of the assault warning Gazans to evacuate south of wadi al whatever.  Later on they said they would use a grid system and warn Gazans to evacuate certain grids on certain days.

What I have not seen any reporting on, and would very much like to see, is to what extent Gazans have taken those warnings to heart and evacuated those areas.

[Threviel]

@Threviel - I think that other argument against Israel's response is that the tens of thousands of Palestinian children do not deserve to suffer in this conflict. That they are innocent and that no level of provocation justifies making children suffer.

Essentially it is allowing Hamas' blackmail from hiding behind civilians be effective. The argument is that Hamas' atrocities do not justify harming children even if Hamas hides behind them.

No they don't and it's not an easy conflict to support a side in. Both sides do awful shit, but if we want less children to die then the killing has to stop and for the killing to stop Hamas has to go. Otherwise we'll have this conflict again and again until Israel loses and we have millions of dead or Israel goes fundamentalist and "remove" the Palestinian problem again resulting in potentially millions dead or it will simmer forever resulting in at least hundreds of thousands dead over time.

The first step has to be the removal of Hamas and their replacement by something that's not as rabid.

[Sheilbh]

The Israelis dropped leaflets at the beginning of the assault warning Gazans to evacuate south of wadi al whatever.  Later on they said they would use a grid system and warn Gazans to evacuate certain grids on certain days.

What I have not seen any reporting on, and would very much like to see, is to what extent Gazans have taken those warnings to heart and evacuated those areas.

There's been reporting on the evacuation routes and particular subsequent attacks on the evacuation area, which I imagine impacts take-up.. For example CNN (one of the only Western media to have managed to get reporters into Gaza):
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/16/middleeast/israel-palestinian-evacuation-orders-invs/index.html

I believe the latest estimates in Gaza are that around 80-90% of the population are displaced. I'm not clear if the grid system is plausible in that context (especially when the grid numbers change regularly).

[Admiral Yi]

There's been reporting on the evacuation routes and particular subsequent attacks on the evacuation area, which I imagine impacts take-up.. For example CNN (one of the only Western media to have managed to get reporters into Gaza):
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/16/middleeast/israel-palestinian-evacuation-orders-invs/index.html

I believe the latest estimates in Gaza are that around 80-90% of the population are displaced. I'm not clear if the grid system is plausible in that context (especially when the grid numbers change regularly).

I would still like to see some reporting on the extent to which Gazans evacuated.

[Sheilbh]

Reporting on Gaza is really difficult. Western media are really struggling to get permission from Israel or Egypt to get people in - CNN are one of the only who have people on the ground. And the casualties for reporters is very high for a conflict (about 30 a month) which makes reporting very difficult.

We know they're displaced, we know there's been multiple reports of Israeli attacks on evacuation corridors or evacuation grids. Beyond that we don't have much a lot of what I've seen from, say the NYT, is sort of analysis of satellite images. We can get a bit of info from the UN who are on the ground.

I think there's a tension here. It's really, really difficult to get reporting from Gaza for various reasons - primarily getting in and the risk to journalists and the main reporters in there are Palestinian working Arab press agencies which are open to doubt; at the same time we want detailed information to assess the "real" impact on civilians or if they're doing all they could but that means the information will come from Hamas run ministries at worst or the UN at best, which means it is open to doubt. And in the absence of some "independently verifiable" truth, people's biases will prevail.

[Razgovory]

@Threviel - I think that other argument against Israel's response is that the tens of thousands of Palestinian children do not deserve to suffer in this conflict. That they are innocent and that no level of provocation justifies making children suffer.

Essentially it is allowing Hamas' blackmail from hiding behind civilians be effective. The argument is that Hamas' atrocities do not justify harming children even if Hamas hides behind them.

Children never deserve to suffer yet children always suffer in conflict (well almost every conflict).  It sounds harsh, but children suffering is not enough of a reason to stop conflicts.  If it was ISIS would still be a state, Iraq would still rule Kuwait, the Germans would still rule France and Confederacy would still be whipping slaves.