Maybe, but we have 50 years of experience with what doesn’t work. Trying to repeat the same thing over and over again is not just naive, it’s dumb.
Instead you have decades of rocket launches and using humanitarian aid to build terror networks and other things of that nature
To say we've done the same thing over 50 years is naive of the history of the region
Hamas in particular has shown that they're only goal is the elimination of the state of Israel they have no other goal
So my ongoing question to the people that believe that believe that there is a solution for peace in the region do you believe that the elimination of the state of Israel is on the table to obtain that peace
Just, leaving and stopping the wonkyness on the west bank would go a long way I think. Stop blockading it, stop faffing around. Recognize the microstate of Palestina. Invade the whole shizzle and actively police it (Iraq style).
Like, literally anything but turtle up and airstrikes. Yes, you are saving the lives of your soldiers that way, but you are not making the problem go away, just making it worse.
What you need is for the people in the region to believe that having Hamas is worse than having Israel. I’m fairly certain literally everyone in the Gaza strip has lost people to Israel. Never mind that that happened because they were sitting on a stash of Hamas guns in a hospital. Do you think that matters to the children that just lost their father? They’ll just keep hearing that it’s all Israel’s fault from literally everyone around them their entire life.
Those kids must _want_ peace, and if you regularly keep bombarding and persecuting them that will always seem like a pipe dream, ergo, joining Hamas and at least getting back at those assholes seems like a viable option. Maybe you’ll die, but then, you might die just sitting in your house, lying in a hospital bed, or anywhere else, so what does it matter?
In line with that: The Israeli government and its supporters have become so accustomed to unwavering American support that they have started to take actions with a sense of ill-deserved impunity. The /tantrum/ that the Israeli government and the IDF threw has eroded good will all over the world.
Based on its actions, recently and over decades, Israel is no longer seen as some unwavering force for good and right that it claims to be. The sooner Israel recognizes its increasingly precarious position of having unwavering western support, the better - both for itself, and the world.
wow... so in response to 1400 people being murdered what do you believe the correct response should have been,
Asked Hamas nicely to stop murdering people? Was any military action "justified"
Maybe don't do this:
> At least 43% of all housing units in the Gaza Strip have been either destroyed or damaged since the start of the hostilities, according to the Ministry of Public Works and Housing in Gaza.
Or this:
> More than 6,500 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes and more than 17,400 injured.
Not only was what it did morally wrong, but Israel has just created a generation of martyrs. It has created a humanitarian crisis for over 2 million people. Over 3000 children dead. Is that justified? Or is it a tantrum?
The one thing that I think has changed between now and the last time there was a major conflict is that the internet exists. The news media is not the final arbiter of mass information. If someone, like you, challenges people by saying "it's complicated" or "those numbers are fake", I can easily point to wikipedia and a dearth of well respected and in depth research websites. It's a new world.
People who have unconditional support of Israel are now finding themselves having this information repeatedly thrown in their face, causing them to topple off of the moral high ground they believed they held. What you are feeling is likely this.
Can you remember the last time the public was so largely outraged by Israel's actions? Did it ever have this tenor? Did western countries' support waver? If "young people" is your answer, then you are about to be blindsided.
... and then go on to describe the containment strategy that they've tried since 2005.
The reality is that after Hamas' declaration of war, war was a terrible necessity.
The extent of that necessity will be debated until the end of time, but I haven't seen the large public outrage that you describe. Yes, there's plenty of it, but as a whole just as much understanding of Israel's position and why so many civilians in Gaza died in the bombings.
You can waffle about if it was or wasn't necessary, but the end result is that Israel is, if nothing else, facing a massive blow to public and western support as a result of their response - a response which seems more punitive than effective. This is incredibly dangerous for Israel, and what they've done may have hurt them in the long term more than help them. The American invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan has some parallels....
I don't have all the answers, I just call it like I see it.
This is literally what you're saying...
And with rhetoric like this you wonder why people call Israel an apartheid state... You literally are proposing that here.
And what happened to "give me liberty or give me death", "you will not tread on me", "no taxation without representation", and all of that stuff so popular in the US? Guess that doesn't apply to the Arab...
> And what happened to "give me liberty or give me death", "you will not tread on me", "no taxation without representation", and all of that stuff so popular in the US? Guess that doesn't apply to the Arab...
Americans culturally would not tolerate any of that. I think it would be good for Gazans to fight Israel for its independence on proper terms. Perhaps that would lead to a proper state instead of this barbarity. At what point did the continental army decide to kidnap children and rape women instead of engaging the British directly?
But like I said before, perfect should not be the enemy of good. I have traveled extensively. Americans have a very unique culture. Most people around the world value order, while Americans mainly value the ability to run their own affairs at the local level. The Gazans have shown no interest in American-style democracy. Fine.
This is not hypocrisy. The flags say 'Don't tread on me', not 'don't tread on them'.
individual liberty is the ultimate goal. One way we have been able to get that is via a limited democratic process (key word limited)
Democracy unrestrained is just Mob Rules and almost always ends in Dictatorship, or Authoritarian Theocracy
>>and all of that stuff so popular in the US?
Tell me you do not know anything about American history, or US politics with out telling me...
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of which ideology they like or dislike—it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you want to keep commenting on HN, we need you to stop doing this. More explanation here in case it's helpful: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Do to Hamas attacks. If the IDF could avoid killing a single civilian they would, but we've seen how Hamas hides in schools, hospitals, and civilian housing.
What other country builds tunnels under hospitals and transports anti-tank missiles in a baby stroller? Google it!
>What other country builds tunnels under hospitals and transports anti-tank missiles in a baby stroller? Google it!
It doesn't matter. More than twice the number of victims on 10/7 have died in Gaza, and they're all children. Four times if you include adults.
The best you can accuse Israel of with those kind of numbers is _incompetence_.
Like I said, a sick trap. And it looks like Israel fell for it. And now Israel, the dominant power in this conflict, gets to pay the price.
I would put it slightly differently. News has been more democratised - and we can argue whether that's good or bad - but people are more and more compiling their own version of events rather than relying on a tiny handful of elite journalists at prestigious institutions to compile it for them. There are also now a lot of English speaking Arabs online, which means their voices are heard more and more often.
Actually, and this is an aside, one of the reasons there's been such dissonance from western countries on this issue is the US' power has had a marked decrease since the Iraq Invasion. An invasion that was part of a long tantrum response to another atrocity. History repeats itself.
Also citing Wikipedia as your bastion of respected information is laughable
After creating martyrs the entire educational system of Gaza is dedicated to bringing their children up in a way that makes them hate all Jews this is well documented and well recorded so I don't believe these actions really created any new martyrs they were already there.
So much so that's the reason why Egypt and other Muslim nations will not take refugees from that region
For the record I do not have unconditional support for Israel I honestly don't think the US should support Israel at all monetarily militarily or anything else we should also not condemn them or stand in their way for how they choose to defend themselves The US should not be involved in this conflict at all either for or against
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskMiddleEast/comments/17r1xhs/isra...
I don't think you are right here. Hamas did once have an anti-Jew mentality, but that's not the case anymore because innocent Palestinian Jews are facing oppression from Israel too.
This is fundamentally not true. In fact, media figures in the 2010s lost their jobs for supporting Palestine.
> Also citing Wikipedia as your bastion of respected information is laughable
It's well cited and provides tables that show the different claims between different forces (Hamas, IDF, US, independent NGOs). Who do you uncritically believe?
Israel has been creating martyrs for ages. Even if they stopped now they’d deal with the problem for the next 20 years, and rightly so.
Ding ding ding. The reality is it's already here. What the US did in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. What Israel has been doing in Palestine. Why do you think the median age in Palestine 19 years of age? How do you think that affects a population. I don't think I would have responded to well at that age to being behind a fence watching the other side luxuriate in wealth while controlling my movement, access to resources and all the while actively chipping away at my homeland either. Ceasefire isn't enough, these people need resources, access to education, etc...
Well this is because Hamas has a very explicit policy goal of massively increasing their population to make it harder for Israel to kick them out. Their birth rate is madness.
I don't think most people quite appreciate the situation Israel was in on October 7th, or the initial response. People think of it as a terrorist attack - it wasn't just that, it was an invasion. An invasion that was ongoing for three days almost. Together with an invasion, rockets were fired at Israel throughout those days (and throughout the entire time until the ceasefire).
Israelis were glued to the TV for hours, as people were hiding in their homes while armed militants were searching them out. They were calling in to families, calling to news networks, as everyone watched them. (This was, among other things, a massive failure of the IDF's initial response, partially caused by a fairly successful attack on some of its forward bases.)
This was nothing less than a declaration of war. I don't think any country in the world, having been invaded by thousands of armed militants and being fired at, could do anything except strike back massively.
What's more, there were serious, concrete threats that the war would escalate. Instead of just having armed militants running around inside Israel while Israel was being shot at from inside Gaza, there were very credible threats that a multi-front war would start, which would be, at the very least, very difficult for Israel. There was probably little chance of Israel outright losing, but "a small chance we will all die" looms pretty large in your mind.
I think people in the West are just too far removed from being themselves in any physical danger from war, to really appreciate how you react.
And the easy way to see I'm right is that people in the West react exactly the same way when fighting wars. Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam!, if you think Israel is behaving differently than other countries did you're just unaware of any history.
I don't know if the initial or ongoing response is the "correct" one, but I still haven't heard anyone saying what Israel should've done differently, at least initially. The ongoing situation is more complicated, but almost any serious person agrees that destroying Hamas is critical (and completely justified) at this stage.
> The one thing that I think has changed between now and the last time there was a major conflict is that the internet exists. The news media is not the final arbiter of mass information. If someone, like you, challenges people by saying "it's complicated" or "those numbers are fake", I can easily point to wikipedia and a dearth of well respected and in depth research websites. It's a new world.
Firstly, there have been many conflicts since the Web existed, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, etc.
> People who have unconditional support of Israel are now finding themselves having this information repeatedly thrown in their face, causing them to topple off of the moral high ground they believed they held.
I think the media not being the "arbiter" of information doesn't make anybody more accurate, it makes everyone able to have their own version of the story.
Do you know how many people on Twitter are convinced by ridiculous propaganda? I can think of numerous examples, but my latest "favorite" is the nonsense of people looking at picture of released hostages, seeing them smile and wave (while still under captivity!), and decide that they were for sure treated well. I hope they were treated well! I really do. But to conclude something so stupid, as if people had never heard of coercion, is just... truly beyond me. Every day new arguments of this kind emerge online.
> Can you remember the last time the public was so largely outraged by Israel's actions? Did it ever have this tenor? Did western countries' support waver? If "young people" is your answer, then you are about to be blindsided.
Unfortunately, Israel almost always has this kind of criticism. It is almost never judged the same as other countries, in my opinion.
More importantly, some of this criticism started before Israel's response even began. People were calling for a ceasefire from Israel while the attack was ongoing. It's as if people already made up their mind about the situation, and nothing could change their opinion.
Those figures are from Israeli sources[1]. We must be careful using figures from active combatants to assess something. To paraphrase an earlier post of yours [2] "All of those come from Israel, is that a source you trust?"
Was any military action "justified"
Yes. I don't think many people would have been upset with extrajudicial assassinations by the IDF in Gaza. But displacing 1.7 million people[3] is disproportionate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israe...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38453490
[3] https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-repo...
Yes... It is
>>But displacing 1.7 million people[3] is disproportionate.
This is where we disagree. These was no way to do it any more surgical then they did. All militaries soften a entrenched enemy with Ariel bombing. That is standard practice.
People that claim "they should have just killed Hamas only" are highly ignorant of military tactics and have unrealistic expectations for military conflict
If bombing was off the table, then you are effectively saying there is no reponse what you would find justified
I find it holy ironic that given the opportunity to build internal infrastructure instead they build rockets and bought guns and then relied upon their "enemy" for their basic needs
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occu...
Israel has been demonstrated to wildly lie. Not as much as Hamas, but they've been caught red handed many, multiple times in the past few weeks.
> If bombing was off the table, then you are effectively saying there is no reponse what you would find justified
Boots on the ground. Progressive capture of terrain. That's one way to do it.
One of the interesting things of this "war" is that it shows the IDF to be way weaker than it was 20 years ago, btw. This is changing the calculus in the region.
Name any conflict in which the side going into a nation has aerial superiority that did not do aerial bombardment to soften the target before going boots on the ground to limit casualties on your side
It is absolutely naive and asinine to say they should have gone boots on the ground without doing any bombing whatsoever
As far as it being weaker I don't know if they're weaker I do believe they became complacent just like in many ways the US military has
Firstly, you fight to win, not to be proportionate. If the Americans were proportionate in WW2 they would never have invaded Nazi Germany because the Nazis never invaded the USA.
Secondly, displacing people is so they don't die. Apparently you'd prefer them to be human shields.
[0] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/john-hagee-hitl...
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230605-the-israelis-...
[2] https://jewishcurrents.org/the-gops-plan-to-build-the-third-...
It was obviously a mistake, but only with hindsight.
What you're saying is the typical accusation that Jews are responsible for their own attackers, like blaming Jews for the Holocaust.
That was the more extreme version of Hamas, vs the Hamas that Netanyahu was funding in 2009, so you’re arguing against itself.
Either way, funding Hamas, who is dedicated to destroying Israel, in order to create a more friendly group? That makes no sense.
Preventing a united Palestinian organization, that actually makes sense.
> It was obviously a mistake, but only with hindsight.
At which point did you realize it was a mistake?
Perhaps the person who made the mistake is not who we should be lending our support to?
Bringing up the Holocaust here is an admission that you would rather distract with emotions than engage with the topic.
So we should forever oppress these people? Or what exactly is your solution here?
For example do you believe the American occupation of Afghanistan was oppressing the people of Afghanistan do you believe employing democracy and allowing women to get an education and not be property at the hands of the Taliban is oppression
Do you believe the people of Afghanistan are better off today than they were with American military occupying the country
I find allowing an authoritarian theocratic government to reign in a region to be oppressive even if it is supported by the majority of the citizenry of that region
The idea that if Palestinian was "free" would end the violence is a naive one, not would it result in freedom for the Palestinian people, it would instead be just another Authoritarian Theocracy in the same vein as Iran...
The young and old divide highlights nicely the ignorance of the former as a result of a total failure of our educational system.
The catch phrase "F' Around and find out" comes to mind for these supporters especially ironic is the ones opposed to western society that are of the "marginalized" communities that want to support a system of governance that would welcome them up to roof tops.