Israel - Palestine Discussion | Post Respectfully | Discuss more, tweet less

It's not as if Joe Biden has covered himself in any glory over this issue. Au contraire.
 
2cents said:
Israel Is Losing this War
Despite the violence it has unleashed on Palestinians, Israel is failing to achieve its political goals.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-gaza-war/
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I really don't get articles like this.

As they note at the start, Vietnam was an expeditionary force of the US. The war was popular, and was more popular when it was a bombing campaign rather than ground invasion, but it was never close to as unanimously popular the destruction of Gaza is.

Also, the disparity is bigger - not just in the number of soldiers and guerillas, in which communists were close to the combined US + South Vietnamese forces, but also the type - the USSR and China were providing anti-aircraft guns and missiles, and fighters, which meant that the terror bombing and salting of the earth came at a noticeable price. Hamas and associates can't even touch the drones that buzz Gaza 24/7 in peacetime, let alone the jets bombing them for months.
Even if Hamas' goal is political not military, being able to make more than a scratch matters. Right now, on a good day, they can kill 5-10 soldiers from an army of half a million, while losing more than 50 each day from their 30,000. Vietnamese numbers were lopsided but never this bad (when adding Southern casualties).

To the main argument, about Israel losing the political war - yes, it is delaying normalisation, but if Israel achieves a military victory, does anyone doubt that the Saudis will go ahead? There have been leaks suggesting this for a while. I also think it's a bit of a fantasy that the global south governments as a whole are rallying - can't imagine any govt that cares about this outside some Latin American leftists who don't really matter. Arab govts famously do not align with their populations on this issue*. China, Russia, and India all have military or political (or both) ties with Israel.

The one convincing argument in that article is about economic drain, but once the US taps re-open, that will be less of an issue.

And the elephant in the room that is never mentioned is how far Israel and the US are willing to go for victory. This isn't Vietnam, this is Warsaw (or Stalingrad without the reinforcements that enveloped the city and trapped the Germans inside).

*At least based on online, this might be changing the in the Gulf and Saudi, where some young nationalists and MBS fans take pride in their indifference to Palestine.
 
Well, they don't care whether they adhere to the laws of war. They never did and never will.

It has also been their war as much as it's Israel's no matter how much they try to pretend otherwise.
 
Half of Gazans are starving according to the world food programme. What "other" excuses can israel and the whole world give for such abominal situation?! Surely that has little to do with "Hamas using Gazans as human shields"!!
I'm ashamed of my country that it can't force more food and water through Rafah crossing. Allowing much more food in is something that this pathetic world can at least agree upon.....No?

Meanwhile:

 
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Idxomer said:
Well, they don't care whether they adhere to the laws of war. They never did and never will.

It has also been their war as much as it's Israel's no matter how much they try to pretend otherwise.
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No they do not. They know very well, they can do whatever they want and get away with murder. Yesterday the US deputy ambassador to the UN talking to the security council
Said " The worst attacks on our people". He literally called Israel (us). It is already difficult.

But also Israel underestimated Hamas and thought by going via the back door and normalising with the Saudis would make them steal more land with no backlash, they were wrong, the voices of two state solutions with the right for the Palestinians for self determination is stronger than what it has been in the past two decades.
 
Giggsyking said:
No they do not. They know very well, they can do whatever they want and get away with murder. Yesterday the US deputy ambassador to the UN talking to the security council
Said " The worst attacks on our people". He literally called Israel (us). It is already difficult.

But also Israel underestimated Hamas and thought by going via the back door and normalising with the Saudis would make them steal more land with no backlash, they were wrong, the voices of two state solutions with the right for the Palestinians for self determination is stronger than what it has been in the past two decades.
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I did miss this one, that guy was shameful on so many levels.
 


This guy is a Palestinian.
He is an open racist and is accepted in polite circles, with book deals and visiting professorships. The only practical solution to the conflict is having him tied up in Jerusalem, and letting any Israeli man woman and child do anything they want to him and eventually his corpse.
 
Doctors don't understand how these injuries were made, apparently the kid was shot twice by a sniper but for some reason his skin is peeling off. Perhaps experimental rounds? Any military caftards have an opinion?
 
Raoul said:
I do when they say they want to remove Hamas from Gaza, as that is a very rational and predictable reaction to the 10.7 attacks that any country would’ve pursued. The alternative would be that they didn’t take any action against Hamas and simply did a hostage swap, which was obviously pure fantasy that drove the Hamas’ fatal miscalculation in the first place.
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Did they miscalculate though?

There's an argument to be made that they knew exactly what the response to those atacks would have been. What Israel are doing in Gaza is ultimately strenghtening Hamas in the long run as they'll have no shortage of volunteers now.
 
Haaretz reporting that of the hundreds of Palestinian men we've seen tied up and stripped to their underwear, some 10-15% are believed by the IDF to be Hamas or even identified with Hamas.

For me, it's reached a point where I've gone from perceiving the IDF as practically omniscient and well positioned for urban combat, to seeing it as having remarkably poor intelligence and feeling that it really doesn't have a clue how to conduct modern urban warfare. Was the political self-harm really worth the photos of men stripped to their underwear and exhibited like animals for such limited returns? Already many remaining facets of its carefully curated reputation as a 'moral' army have been irreversibly shattered, but photos like those we have seen mark a different layer of brutality, and now with the admission that this brutality is accompanied by incompetence.

At the very beginning of this, I was dreading that the mistakes of the post 9/11 haste and appetite for revenge would be repeated and cause excessive suffering for Palestinians. This has undeniably happened. But I didn't anticipate that the IDF would tank its own reputation for competence, it has made countless missteps in this war.
 
jadaba said:
Haaretz reporting that of the hundreds of Palestinian men we've seen tied up and stripped to their underwear, some 10-15% are believed by the IDF to be Hamas or even identified with Hamas.

For me, it's reached a point where I've gone from perceiving the IDF as practically omniscient and well positioned for urban combat, to seeing it as having remarkably poor intelligence and feeling that it really doesn't have a clue how to conduct modern urban warfare. Was the political self-harm really worth the photos of men stripped to their underwear and exhibited like animals for such limited returns? Already many remaining facets of its carefully curated reputation as a 'moral' army have been irreversibly shattered, but photos like those we have seen mark a different layer of brutality, and now with the admission that this brutality is accompanied by incompetence.

At the very beginning of this, I was dreading that the mistakes of the post 9/11 haste and appetite for revenge would be repeated and cause excessive suffering for Palestinians. This has undeniably happened. But I didn't anticipate that the IDF would tank its own reputation for competence, it has made countless missteps in this war.
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The photos were for an internal audience and I'm sure they were well received. When you have a leadership using extreme language and demonstrating hatred its almost impossible that these things don't happen. What we're seeing is just basic human depravity in the absence of control and leadership.
 
Field executions, torture, and threats of rape: In Gaza, Israel’s army replicates the crimes committed by Zionist gangs in 1948

"One of the released men, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that they were ordered to take off their clothes after being handcuffed and blindfolded. They were then put in trucks and taken to the seashore, where they were kept shackled for about 19 hours. According to the young man, they were subjected to insults, severe beatings, threats of being shot in the head, and had numbers written on their hands. They were also deprived of drinking water for many hours.

Upon their release, they were transferred naked to Salah al-Din Street, south of Gaza City, where the soldiers ordered them to walk on foot towards the central areas of the Gaza Strip".

"Ms. M.Z., a resident of Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood who was displaced to Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, in the southern part of the Strip, said that an Israeli soldier pointed his gun at her head and threatened to kill her even though she had told him she was five months pregnant. The soldier ordered her to take off her clothes and threatened to rape her".
 
Smores said:
The photos were for an internal audience and I'm sure they were well received. When you have a leadership using extreme language and demonstrating hatred its almost impossible that these things don't happen. What we're seeing is just basic human depravity in the absence of control and leadership.
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Absolutely. There's this Q&A interview with Omer Bartov, a historian of the Holocaust, about whether what is being done in Gaza constitutes genocide, in which he specifically warns of what you've said: extreme hatred and dehumanising language from leaders filters down to soldiers and incites more violence in war rooms and on the ground.

I get that the photographs were for domestic consumption, and even if they may have been immediately well-received by the intended audience it doesn't absolve it from being in my opinion another major misstep and act of self-harm to the IDF's reputational damage. They were choreographed to be humiliating and project an image of defeat, but apart from those who will be unwaveringly defensive of any IDF action it probably doesn't come across as much else but uncomfortable, barbaric, or vacuous.

Basically I feel that regardless of one's view of the IDF, it has for decades sought to present an image of itself as moral and acting with surgical precision informed by an all-knowing intelligence. For those who do buy into this perception, there will have been countless reference points within this war that would've undermined this, including these photographs.
 
stevoc said:
Did they miscalculate though?

There's an argument to be made that they knew exactly what the response to those attacks would have been. What Israel are doing in Gaza is ultimately strengthening Hamas in the long run as they'll have no shortage of volunteers now.
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That would've worked if they went into Israel on 10.7 and kidnapped a few Israelis and the Israelis responded with bombing, after which negotiations would've begun and probably ended in them getting their hostages back in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

As it stands today, the amount of damage done in Israel on 10.7 will result in the complete destruction of Hamas in Gaza followed by a probable Israeli occupation, so there likely won't be a meaningful or relevant Hamas in Gaza for new members to join.

Hamas did get a couple of things out of this. They got a temporary pause in the Israel-Saudi normalization deal, which had it been implemented, would've been bad business in terms of Arab support for Hamas; particularly as the Israelis are also normalizing relations with Arab states through the Abraham Accords (which included Bahrain, UAE, Morocco, and Sudan). They also did manage to bring the Palestinian issue back into the news, but not in any meaningful or productive way to their goals, particularly as they themselves are probably not going to exist for much longer.
 
Raoul said:
As it stands today, the amount of damage done in Israel on 10.7 will result in the complete destruction of Hamas in Gaza followed by a probable Israeli occupation, so there likely won't be a meaningful or relevant Hamas in Gaza for new members to join.
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I think you're fixating too much on the name. Maybe hamas will be gone, but israel is creating plenty of individuals with an hamas mindset every single day. They will be around for a long time.
 
maniak said:
I think you're fixating too much on the name. Maybe hamas will be gone, but israel is creating plenty of individuals with an hamas mindset every single day. They will be around for a long time.
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I guess that depends on what happens next in Gaza. If it gets rebuilt alongside a new technocratic government where extremist and miltant groups are outlawed, it would be difficult for Hamas, PIJ, or similar groups to exist at all. The blueprint that appears to be discussed is a new government in Gaza with the UN peacekeeping force maintaining internal security and coordinating rebuilding, and the Israelis on the perimeter (and available for internal security where needed). UN peacekeeping missions have been previously deployed regionally in places like Syria, Kuwait, and even Israel and Egypt after the Yom Kippur war.
 
Raoul said:
I guess that depends on what happens next in Gaza. If it gets rebuilt alongside a new technocratic government where extremist and miltant groups are outlawed, it would be difficult for Hamas, PIJ, or similar groups to exist at all. The blueprint that appears to be discussed is a new government in Gaza with the UN peacekeeping force maintaining internal security and coordinating rebuilding, and the Israelis on the perimeter (and available for internal security where needed). UN peacekeeping missions have been previously deployed regionally in places like Syria, Kuwait, and even Israel and Egypt after the Yom Kippur war.
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What do you mean by technocratic government?
 
2cents said:
What do you mean by technocratic government?
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Its the Israeli way of saying secular governance with strong democratic institutions (and of course containing no Israel hating parties with political platforms seeking to destroy them).
 
Frosty said:
Which surely would have also to mean no Netanyahu, given his statements on the PA.
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Agreed. I can't see Netanyahu being around much longer. He's not polling well because of the attacks, the previous domestic issue involving the judiciary, and his ongoing legal cases. The sooner the Israelis ditch him, the better.
 
Raoul said:
I guess that depends on what happens next in Gaza. If it gets rebuilt alongside a new technocratic government where extremist and miltant groups are outlawed, it would be difficult for Hamas, PIJ, or similar groups to exist at all. The blueprint that appears to be discussed is a new government in Gaza with the UN peacekeeping force maintaining internal security and coordinating rebuilding, and the Israelis on the perimeter (and available for internal security where needed). UN peacekeeping missions have been previously deployed regionally in places like Syria, Kuwait, and even Israel and Egypt after the Yom Kippur war.
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I can't see the hatred caused by the current situation to just disappear like that.
 
RedTiger said:
How are they gonna do that while keeping the status quo going?
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You could probably make a pretty convincing case that a demilitarized Gaza without Hamas would no longer be the status quo. They would still have to deal with settlements on the WB though.
 
Ah the magical world where removing Hamas suddenly makes Gaza a utopian democratoc nation content. Great stuff and not at all confusing cause and effect.
 
Smores said:
Ah the magical world where removing Hamas suddenly makes Gaza a utopian democratoc nation content. Great stuff and not at all confusing cause and effect.
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It worked in afghanistan, so why not here?
 
As well as the actual war, there’s an ever evolving online war too… interesting to see how followers of both sides spend ages seeing if posts/videos are real or fake.

Lots of people suggesting that this recently released video is Israeli propaganda (and said poster has apparently already been shown up for this before). If true, I for one am shocked.

https://x.com/avivaklompas/status/1731335430807908717?s=61&t=ZvGzfV2Qafn11jKrPfufuA

As I don’t know whether someone sounds fluent or not (any Arabic speaking Caffites welcome), one of the responses has kindly given an idea of how bad the Arabic/accent allegedly sounds to people who’d know. Queue Kevin Hart…

https://x.com/blues19_05/status/1731841635678318961?s=61&t=ZvGzfV2Qafn11jKrPfufuA
 
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