Of course, unless you think state-sponsored terrorism is a good thing, or that it actually works to "fight fire with fire" (hint: fighting fire with water is far more effective).
War is horrible, but it's sometimes the optimal strategy for independent actors to achieve their objectives.
War is based in basic game-theory.
In the case of Israel, they are intentionally failing the negotiation part as they commit an active genocide. Their motto has always been "do 10x to your enemy as they've done to you" and at some point it completely fails.
Most other nations don't get this fanatical.
People think war has rules because most wars on television are completely lopsided affairs.
Arguable genocides in war are extremely common in war, and are probably the rule, not the exception. In recent years we've effectively seen an equivalent in the Sri Lankan Civil War, DRC, Darfur, Burma, I could go on. War is fucking terrible, and people should take every reasonable avenue to avoid them.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing>
Power organises. Subordinated peoples attack that organisation, and it has long been this way.
Power, of course, resents that tactic. In large part because it is effective.
Most particularly given the responses made to similar methods used currently against the party which had executed KDH, as it turns out that there is in fact precedent. The personnel in the KDH event are significant both historically and politically, one later serving as head of state. And I find most people are entirely unaware of the incident, as I was until the past decade or so. (That's "recent" for me.)
I don't recall the specific inspiration for my search in which I'd learned of the event, but I think it was simply looking for what the first modern use of terrorist-type explosive attacks was. There are of course many earlier instances, and the notion of the bomb-throwing anarchist is reduced to cliche. But in terms of a significant planned attack intended to inflict mass casualties against an asymmetric foe, the KDH instance is an exemplar.
As I've said in several recent comments on pager/radio threads, I'm not a partisan to either side, I both condemn actions taken by both, and have a deep sympathy for uninvolved civilians (which is not, of course, all civilians). What I do believe is that a deep understanding is best served by a realistic view, understanding that most hats are at best grey, and that there's more history than many people are aware of. I'm trying to help spread that awareness.
That said, you were specifically responding to this comment:
> Too bad militants don't really follow those same rules regarding uniforms etc. Trust was lost long ago, before even the first suicide bomber wearing civilian clothes set themselves off in a crowded market.
My point was that this is long enough ago, and before Israel was even founded, so bringing it up as a counter-example of Israeli behavior, which is what you seemed to do, is very fraught. Israel didn't even exist at that time!
Again, it surprised me to learn this, and I find many others are similarly unaware. And again: the situation is complex and nuanced.
Also, I'd point out that the attack on the King David Hotel was widely condemned by almost all mainstream Jewish and Zionist organizations, including the official Porto-army of Israel which turned into the IDF, and including by Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister.
Btw, if you want a fact that's sure to wow people - I'm fairly certain that, to date, the KDH bombing was the deadliest terror attack in the Palestinian/Israeli territory. (Excluding October 7th, of course, which I'd personally categorize as an invasion, not as a single terror attack.)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombings>
(As I've said: all sides here.)
NB: Skimming that article right now, the bombing seems to have pre-dated Hezbollah (generally given to have formed in 1985), though Iran's hand in affairs is fairly likely, and "Islamic Jihad" may have been a label adopted by Hezbollah or a nascent precursor group. The event is somewhat coupled to events in Palestine given the PLO's involvement in Beirut.
Is children's trust that the football field is a safe place not violated now?
This is far from confirmed and is effectively just an opinion (not that children were killed, but that Hezbollah was responsible).
> I don't read the Hezbollah channels
ok... [1]
> The only reason to sow doubt is to protect these monsters.
i personally dispute misinformation because, well, it's misinformation and it's used by state actors to escalate violence. [2]
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[1] "Hezbollah, the most powerful paramilitary and political force in Lebanon, was quick to say it was not behind the attack, a rare denial from a group that normally claims every attack launched."
[2] "With Israel vowing retaliation for what was the highest civilian death toll in Israel-held territory since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, diplomats rushed to prevent an escalation that could spiral into an all-out war after months of exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah over the Lebanese-Israeli border."
source: https://apnews.com/article/israel-golan-heights-soccer-rocke...
> > I don't read the Hezbollah channels
I read the Gaza channels. They republish things from other channels. Right now I'm subscribed only to Gaza Now as that seems to be the source of much information that the other channels republish, as much news being made is being made in Gaza.
> i personally dispute misinformation because, well, it's misinformation and it's used by state actors to escalate violence.
The idea that this missile was not from Hezbollah is misinformation. They claimed it then retracted it. People there state that it came from Lebanon, apparently backed up by the direction of the debris and video. And the Druze - who famously abhor conflict - state that it came from Lebanon and they petitioned the Israeli government not to retaliate. If there were any doubt, the Druze themselves would be saying it.
To date, there has been no independent verification of the weapon's remains. At this point it is very much a case of "he said, she said". On that basis I can only ask, why would Hezbollah deliberately target the Druze civilian population? You seem to imply that they did so deliberately (i.e. deliberately targeted these civilians). That, in my opinion is simply your opinion and not based on verifiable fact. There is not even a likely motivation for such an act.
To be clear, I am fully willing to accept - given the available evidence - that Hezbollah may have made a miscalculation and are responsible for the deaths of these children. Deliberately though? Very, very doubtful.
However, I do owe you an apology. In an earlier comment I claimed that you had implied that Hezbollah was deliberately targeting civilians in this latest conflict and after rereading it seems you haven't made this claim. Sorry.
What level of proof are you looking for? Hezbollah even claimed responsibility then retracted it when it was found to have hit a non-military target.
It seems pretty clear that independent verification of the debris would settle this conclusively. Hasn't happened. Why?
Because it was used as justification for a major escalation.
> Hezbollah attacks against Israel - and there have been literally thousands of such rocket attacks recently.
It does. Hezbollah denied it. They haven't been in the habit of doing that.
> This isn't the type of rocket that Israel uses at all.
Again, you are making claims without possibly being sure of them - unless you take the Israeli government's word for it - you cannot possibly be sure. Neither can I.
Anyhow, as it's clear that you are unwilling to entertain the possibility that this was not a Hezbollah rocket, I don't think there is anything to be gained from continuing this discussion.
I note that you are commenting from Israel. I am not. I'm a long way from this conflict. I hope that you and your loved ones are safe and can soon enjoy the kind of security and freedoms that most of us take for granted.
I'll just quote Wikipedia here:
> Israel blamed Hezbollah for carrying out the attack with an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket equipped with a 53-kilogram warhead.[7][9] Hezbollah said it had targeted a nearby military base and that the football pitch was hit by an errant Israeli Iron Dome air defence projectile. Western sources dismissed this claim, citing expert opinion that the rocket had been fired by Hezbollah or another militant group in Lebanon.[9][10][11][4][12]
Even if Hezbollah is correct that it was an errant Iron Dome projectile (which as you can see, is widely disputed), that would still be Hezbollah's fault, because the whole reason Iron Dome rockets need to be fired is because of Hezbollah's attacks on Israel.
What level of convincing do you think we need to take this from "unconfirmed" and "just an opinion" to confirmed?
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Wikipedia aside, Hezbollah has fired thousands, maybe tens of thousands of rockets at Israel over the last year, causing ~80k people to have to flee their homes, destroying parts of cities, and causing massive fires. They've been targeting civilians non-stop for almost a year.
Given this massive prior, I think on balance it is far more likely that this strike was another case of these thousands of other cases, and the reason they're denying it is because this one specifically wasn't intercepted and killed a lot of kids.
You really think that that's not more likely?
Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization, shoots thousands of rockets, claims them all, including initially attacks 3km from that field, but then when it turns out it killed a bunch of kids, denies responsibility. And you think taking their word for it is the more likely correct thing here?
You appear to be making the argument that my claim that this has not been conclusively confirmed is wrong because of what is likely/unlikely. That is fallacious and frankly comes across as disingenuous.
If you are going to make the strong claim you need to back it up with real evidence or you risk being accused of promoting misinformation for the purposes of justifying further death and suffering.
To the best of my knowledge the source of the rocket has not been confirmed. Are you claiming that it has (IDF or US repetition of IDF claims not withstanding)?
> What level of convincing do you think we need to take this from "unconfirmed" and "just an opinion" to confirmed?
Independent verification of the debris would settle this conclusively. Hasn't happened. Why not? Especially given that it was used to justify an escalation. Without verifiable evidence to support it that just looks like cynical use of these children's deaths to inflict more suffering for political purposes.
Well, all of our trust that our phones aren’t surprise explosive devices. As well as the devices in the pockets of the people next to us in a crowd.
I've had friends and coworkers murdered, kidnapped, and at least two that I know of had their children burned to death. My older daughter's friend was murdered along with both his brothers and both his parents - there was nobody left alive so this child didn't even have the traditional prayer said at his funeral. My younger son's camp counselor was kidnapped and later his body was retrieved. Shall I go on? Or would you believe me that this war has far worse inconvenienced us and we're doing what we can to end it as quickly as possible - including maiming 3000 enemy fighters in an attack so targeted that a single civilian child died among over a dozen dead militants and 3000 injured militants.
But it's unrelated to "nobody in the whole world can trust anything with a lithium battery anymore" and the cost of that over time will be much higher than your dead family and friends, in terms of say, people dying in hospitals over the next 30 years because pagers stop being used, or all kinds of anything where a battery powered device would save a life
If you were in Lebanon, that would be a different story, but making it some global feeling is pretty bs.
My point is a lot of crap in the world happen, I don't see this being something that will actually occupy anyones mind unless they're in job/role that puts them in harms way.
More worried than I was a few days ago, at least.
But it's emphatically not most Israeli's perspective. Israelis are very much in the front lines of this - around 80k Israelis have literally had to abandon their homes are internally displaced, because the North of Israel is under rocket attacks from Hezbollah every day for the last 11 months. Cities have been partially destroyed, and fires have raged across the North. And if a wider war with Hezbollah happens, most likely all of Israel will be under immediate fire.
So this perspective of "trust" that the author talks about does not, at all, exist between Israel and Hezbollah. Which is why Hezbollah are designated a terrorist organization among so many countries.
> The reason we don’t see exploding battery attacks more often is not because it’s technically hard, it’s because the erosion of public trust in everyday things isn’t worth it.
For the US that is maybe, maybe, true.
But for Israel that is absolutely not true. The reason Hezbollah doesn't do this kind of thing is because they can't. But they have been doing things they can do, like shooting rockets, and they have also tried to cause terror attacks inside of Israel.
I do think there's a difference between the relatively peaceful times though, and the current situation, for all parties.
> The Israelis have chosen to maintain a continuous military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza for almost six decades, rather than integrating them or letting them be independent, which locks the region in permanent conflict of varying levels of intensity.
You seem to imply that all the blame for the region having conflict is the occupation, which is... not quite true. Israel was founded and immediately attacked, and was attacked several more times before the military occupation; one major reason the occupation even happened in the first place was because Israel feared further attacks from neighboring countries, and wanted more of a buffer.
Look, I'm no fan of the occupation, to put it mildly (very mildly). But it's not the whole reason for the conflict. And more importantly, it's not just Israel "choosing" a military occupation instead of "letting them be independent".
There were very serious attempts to try and reach a settlement with the Palestinians that would give them an independent state, and indeed that was the birth of the current Palestinian government/state in the form of the PA, with what independence they do have. But the Palestinians refused and walked away from getting a state.
And Israel did leave Gaza, to at least some extent - they then elected Hamas and started firing rockets at Israel two years later.
I'm obviously a bit biased towards the more pro-Israel narrative, though I try to see things from the Palestinian perspective as well. But I don't think you can completely lay the blame on one side, as you seemed to do (and sorry if I misunderstood you).
From what I have heard, the idea the Palestinians were ever actually offered a state may be a myth, but I think the more important thing there is that Rabin was assassinated and that torpedoed the process. Netanyahu has never really seemed interested in peace, his political career depends on it not happening.
> From what I have head, the idea the Palestinians were ever actually offered a state may be a myth [...]
It absolutely isn't a myth. It was widely known and accepted by most people that the Palestinians walked away from very good deals, probably the best Israel can do. I'm not sure why there's a modern movement to change that knowledge, when reading the accounts of most people surrounding the negotiations gives a pretty clear picture.
Specifically, Barak offered a decent deal in 2000, the Clinton parameters of around 2001 were an even better proposal that seemed to give the Palestinians almost everything they wanted, and Olmert made a proposal that was really, really good. The Palestinians walked away from these deals without any alternative offer, without saying what would work for them. Don't trust Israel's word for it - trust Clinton's! Or trust numerous other US negotiators.
> [...] Rabing was assassinated and that torpedoed the process.
This is wrong, he was assassinated in 1995, all the offers I talked about happened afterwards, from 2000 to 2008. Israelis voted multiple times for people who vowed to pursue a peace process, and even Sharon, who was a very hawkish PM, ended up doing the Gaza withdrawal.
What really torpedoed the peace process was that Israeli steps towards peace, including the Oslo process that founded the PA and gave them semi-control over the land, was met with the second intifada's terror attacks. Israelis saw steps towards peace being met with more violence, not less.
The same happened again with the Gaza withdrawal - the hawkish Israelis warned that withdrawing the army and giving Palestinians full control of Gaza would end with them using it as a terror base, and that's exactly what happened. Again, to Israelis - a step towards giving Palestinians more control ended with far, far more violence.
> Netanyahu has never really seemed interested in peace [...]
This is absolutely true, and the major correct criticism of Israel is in its actions under Netanyahu over the last 15ish years. Israel has not only not continued to pursue peace because of the destruction of the Israeli left, but under Netanyahu, actively thwarted peace in many ways, weakening the PA at the expense of Hamas to keep the conflict going.
As the stronger party, I think Israel has a moral duty to pursue peace, and to help foster leaders that can bring peace.
Oh c'mon -- you're not giving Bibi his fair share of the credit, here:
“They asked me before the election if I’d honor [the Oslo accords],” Netanyahu said. “I said I would, but … I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ’67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I’m concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.”*
Smiling, Netanyahu then recalled how he forced former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher to agree to let Israel alone determine which parts of the West Bank were to be defined as military zones. “They didn’t want to give me that letter,” Netanyahu said, “so I didn’t give them the Hebron agreement [the agreement giving Hebron back to the Palestinians]. I cut the cabinet meeting short and said, ‘I’m not signing.’ Only when the letter came, during that meeting, to me and to Arafat, did I ratify the Hebron agreement. Why is this important? Because from that moment on, I de facto put an end to the Oslo accords.”*
So Netanyahu may have talked a big game, but his POV wasn't winning at that time.
Of course, that all changed when he came into power and stayed there for the last 15 years. But part of the reason he originally won, and continues to win, is because the left has been so thoroughly discredited.
Perhaps a more pertinent question to ask would be: do you consider the settlements (at more or less their current scale) as being helpful to Israel's security interests -- or unhelpful? (For the purpose of this question, we can just allow ourselves to imagine that it was somehow possible for civil society in Israel to get its act together and implement a working freeze on settlement footprint, and perhaps even roll back some of its more egregious recent expansion).
But it's not the whole reason for the conflict.
Not the whole reason, of course. But the occupation (and the settlements issue in particular) does seem to be an integral component of the "magic sauce" that's been keeping the conflict going for far too many more decades more than the international community should have ever allowed it to.
It basically seems to be its center of gravity, in fact.
No, I think keeping a war going with your neighbors, not to mention occupying another people, is a pretty terrible long-term idea from a security perspective, even without looking at the moral dimension. At least in the long term.
I'll try and defend the other side for one second here; there are basically two reasons to have settlements in the West Bank:
1. Some people think we are "entitled" to that land for religious or other reasons.
I obviously don't subscribe to this view and think it's immoral nonsense. This is a minority view, but a minority that unfortunately has gained political power because, frankly, they're the only people still willing to work with Netanyahu.
2. There is a real argument that in the short term, the settlements do help Israel with security. E.g. when Israel decided to leave the Gaza strip, and uprooted all Jewish settlements there, they elected Hamas and almost immediately started firing rockets at Israel, not to mention long-term planning October 7th.
The argument settlers sometimes make is that they provide a defensive line, and that if there weren't settlements in the WB, Israel would just have another Gaza strip situation on its hands.
This has some merit, in the short term; though I think that if Israel really wants to, it can just use the army to protect against the WB even without settlers, and rogue citizens providing security is a terrible situation (leading to the terrible settler violence happening in the WB all these years, and especially over the last year).
In any case, this argument falls apart long-term. The only real long-term security is to make some form of peace with the Palestinians. Obviously there'll need to be security guarantees to Israel somehow, and similar guarantees to the Palestinians somehow, but that's the only real long term solution.
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Btw, when the WB and Gaza (and Sinai) were initially captured, there were far bigger reasons to hold on to them - Israel had just been attacked by Jordan and Egypt, and those territories provided buffer zones that were very necessary to help defend the country. Nowadays, of course, Israel has semi-peaceful relations with Egypt and Jordan, that has held for half a century - so that reason is no longer very relevant.
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> Not the whole reason, of course. But the occupation (and the settlements issue in particular) does seem to be an integral component of the "magic sauce" that's been keeping the conflict going for far too many more decades more than the international community should have ever allowed it to.
This is actually complicated and not the whole story, though you are somewhat right nowadays. I personally think the real, fundamental, problem is that the Palestinians still believe they are entitled to, and going to get, all of the land of Israel. That's the underlying reason that the peace accords failed, it's the underlying reason they continue to use violence to try and, in their minds, "drive the Jews back to where they came from", etc.
If they truly were willing to accept a two-state solution, they could have had one at multiple times throughout history. It's the reason the occupation is ongoing - because the only way practical way to stop it is through a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, but as long as they refuse to accept Israel's continued existence, such a settlement can't happen!
Of course, over the last 15 years, Israel has done plenty to go against any chance of having a peace, including deliberately hurting the Palestinians who did try to work towards a resolution. So while the underlying goals of most Palestinians is to blame here, Israel is also to blame for fostering those underlying goals.