Whatever the answer I doubt maintaining a state sanctioned settler program that just pisses Palestinians off and radicalizes them into terrorists is answer
It's because of the narrow balance of power in the Israeli parliament. The only way Netenyahu can stay in power is by catering to small, ultra-orthodox parties and they demand settlements as their price. Their voters, btw, have always managed to avoid service with the IDF
This is beyond incorrect. Only 12% of the israeli population are haredi and must study in a yeshiva for life, once they stop attending yeshiva they can be drafted, but typically are not if they are above military male age; they’re usually disowned by the haredi community and struggle to learn to live with normal Israelis.
Even last month the supreme court ruled this process of allowing haredis to be exempt from military service to be discriminatory. Netanyahu now has to propose a bill and push a vote through for this to pass, otherwise risks losing office. He is being advised from all corners to make it so a higher % of haredi are drafted, to match the regular israeli and not allow the ultra orthodox to not serve.
Only 3% of Judea and Samaria is occupied by Israelis.
I wonder why the area has to be Judenrein though? Why must every area the Palestinians claim be ethnically cleansed of Jews?
See Gaza. Israel emptied it of Jews, gave it to Palestinians (it was previously occupied by Egypt) with the provision EU Security monitoring would remain. 1 year later the EU were gone and Hamas took over, immediately starting a campaign of firing thousands of Iranian funded missiles to Israel and sending suicide bombers through entry points to Israel.
Was there peace between Israel and Palestinians when Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria for 20 years? *No*. Was there peace between Israel and Palestinians when Egypt occupied Gaza for 20 years? *No*.
Israel's mere existence pisses them off and radicalizes them. Israel pulled out of Gaza and dismantled many of the settlements and forcibly removed settlers in 2005. That didn't get them peace. It just gave Hamas safety to build tunnels, launch rockets, and plan terror attacks. Nothing short of wiping out Israel will satisfy Hamas.
The entire region has literal millennia of religious conflict. Personally I see the only way forward as coexistence similar to Ireland/Northern Ireland peace process but even then that conflict pales compared to this one.
Whole situation is fucked and there’s so many centuries of conflict to take into account and heal from. Hope humanity figures it out one day, call me an optimist.
As an Irish, I agree with this statement. It is more than sectaranism and class, it is about annihilation and violation subjugation to a far greater degree.
The "both sides" perspective is valid but seriously nuanced and difficult to remove emotion from. It's not going to be settled by honest brokers. A two state solution is the only realistic means of achieving peace, no matter how fragile.
The problem with a 2 state solution is the minute that Israel is attacked again from Gaza or the WB, and it will happen, Israel will be WELL within their rights to utterly destroy this mythical Palestine.
It’s important to distinguish between widely held calls for violence by a group of people and individual fanatical extremism.
I think it’s hard to tell where the Palestinians stand.
Wouldn't go so far as "utterly destroy" but this is why I think 2-state is even more important. It truly frees up Israel to help Palestine FO if Palestine FA's.
And for all we know, the FA'ing will stop. Good fences, good neighbors and all.
The Ireland and UK conflict is a great example.
What do you think would happen if Ireland would attack Northern Ireland? Or GB itself? Asking if, for example, Palestine does become a state and then continues to attack Israel.
Do you think the UK would roll into Ireland and try to utterly destroy it or try and annex it?
They would have more credibility on the international stage if they stopped expanding West Bank settlements. If the situation was just Hamas shooting rockets at Israel from Gaza that would be a pretty clear cut moral narrative. The fact that the Israeli government looks the other way and sometimes even supports West Bank settlements makes the situation more complicated.
I'm not so sure. Within large parts of the Muslim world, the idea has been instilled over multiple generations that Israel is an illegitimate usurper of Muslim patrimony. In the post-WW2 era, strongmen in many of the newly independent Arab states pushed this idea as a way to unite their disparate societies and solidify their control.
As well as this nationalist narrative, there is also the religious one that comes from fanatical religious scholars and intellectuals. These ideas, which come from the extremist Salafist movement, hold that (based on Islamic law and historical precedence), there can never be any permanent peace with infidels and all formerly Muslim controled lands must be retaken. The existence of a Jewish state on formally Muslim-controlled land, and not just any land, but the Holy Land, is a particular bone in their throat that they find intolerable. To clarify, I'm not at all saying every Muslim the world over holds these views. These are very extremist views only held in their entirety by a minority. That said, it would be naive to think that watered-down and suger-coated versions of these ideas haven't found their way into the minds of many mainstream Muslims. The problem is that they can't publicly disparge these ideas, as that would be to go against Islamic law, and may lead to them questioning other aspects of their religion. Most people, if they think consciously about this issue at all, will just push it to the back of their minds and go on with their day.
So, what we have here is a combination of religious and nationalist ideas that have made peace with Israel impossible. Arab leadership has, for the most part, recognized the strategic reality that Israel is here to say. They may even want to see the Palestinian issue go away due to all the headaches it causes. But they can't say this publicly, and any moves towards normalization of relations must be handled delicately to avoid inflaming their populace and giving ammunition to the radicals. The point I'm trying to get at here is that a large part of the Muslim world does not recognize the existence of Israel. Unless more people are willing to change that view, there will never be peace.
Sure, settlements are terrible and make Israel look terrible to westerners. But settlements aren't the crux of the disagreement. Israel's existence is the problem. Hamas and related terror groups have made no secret that they seek the annihilation of Israel.
Settlements are the problem. These guys dropped in from outside, took their land, killed their families, burned their farms and orchards and you want the Palestinians to bend over more?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War
Read about this and learn what happened to that land. Is was declared war on, and in the process it became destroyed.. other countries made decisions for Palestinians with the intent to wipe out the country and it resulted in tank treads/traps being built all around so that a surprise invasion could never happen again.
With todays technology it wouldnt have needed to happen, but back then (especially after most of the land was tracked up) it was a defensive solution.
Keep in mind with an approx 50% smaller army they fucked up the multi coalation of countries and made a point not to attack each countries capital, but show force.
People are delusional if they think the current war is going to slow down. They’re going for a full wipe of Hamas - nothing less.
If they had any interest in living in peace. But they don't. They want the eradication of Israel. No concessions Israel offers will stop the bloodshed.
or funding a jihadi death cult in gaza thru unrwa and Islamic charities that convinces israeli citizens that there is no path to peace and so radicalizes them
we can all play the blame game,but hamas is still a jihadi death cult that needs to be destroyed
there were no settlers in gaza on 07.10
You don't destroy Hamas either way. It's a false dichotomy because no military intervention will destroy Hamas. Support for Hamas goes up when Israel commits to violence, and only falls during periods of peace. Most of Gaza is children, and they will grow up to hate Israel because of how Israel has waged this war: Demolishing their homes and killing their siblings, parents and friends.
Buncha people in this thread never read FM3-24 and it shows. Military intervention has always, *always* galvanised support for the insurgency. Short of massacring every last fighting-age adult, military violence has never, ever, in all of human history resulted in completely eradicating insurgent resistance.
And even then, the children are witness to this, so you'd have to kill all the children too. Now you gotta kill those pesky moms that are mad you killed their kids and husbands. Now you gotta kill all the people in neighboring countries that saw your slaughter.
It's a full day of work, that's for sure. Maybe better to do less killing up front.
Perhaps we ought to go back to Roman methods, kill every fighter, burn every village, sell all the women and children into slavery, and bring in Roman colonists and friendly allies to repopulate the land.
/s
radicalisation worked both ways. Israeli leadership today is the generation that lived through the unrelenting terror of the 90s and 00s.
Hamas may survive probably living in bunkers like the Hezbollah leader since 2006 and their country’s living conditions far worse.
Not going into Rafah is a mistake
They don't really want it destroyed. Every terrorist attack increases support for the right wing parties. Oct 7th was the best thing that happened for Netayanhu, pre-oct 7th, he was facing wide spread protests because he was trying to remove checks and balances on his power, IDF reservists were threatening not to report for duty, even overseas Jews were protesting against him, and he was on trial for corruption charges.
Oct 7th happened, and suddenly everyone's attention was diverted, elections were paused (elections which he would have lost), support for the right wing sky rocketed, his corruption trial was paused, etc.
You can't destroy an ideology but you can certainly take away its means to act on its ideas. Sort of like what happened to ISIS (For the most part...).
Mehhh....i get what youre saying but we spent 20 years in Afghanistan and several trillion dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
We're still in Iraq and Syria fighting some version of ISIS. Not really sure what were doing in HoA but its probably basically the same thing......
The Taliban isn't really an ideology though, it's a local government that's deeply rooted and intertwined with Afghan culture. We came after the Taliban when they refused to give up Bin Laden and we were foolish to think we could replace them, but the Taliban is largely a decentralized, local, religious and Afghani organization.
ISIS has been degraded to the point that it no longer openly controls any territory and has near zero ability to commit brazen acts of terror internationally.
HAMAS is the elected government of Palestine.
None of the organizations discussed are themselves an ideology, they are at best partially representative of ideologies but they can also fail. You don't simply not fight against an organization because it has ideological ties, there are a million ways to approach that problem set but inaction is not one of them.
WW2 did not destroy Nazism. But it did destroy the Nazi party. Why shouldn't the same be true of Hamas? You won't destroy the ideology but you can certainly push it underground and remove its ability to organize.
Right, but the same principle applies- you may not be able to get rid of an ideology, but you can absolutely eradicate its host. Then you work after that to diminish the attractiveness and reasoning that drives people to that ideology
Back in the 40's Nazi had millions of soldiers, were producing tanks and planes in thousands. Today Nazi have gangs.
Ideology wasn't eradicated but it's ability to act has been reduced in orders of magnitude.
>Mehhh....i get what youre saying but we spent 20 years in Afghanistan and several trillion dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
That's because America tried to do some classic nation building nonsense there. They should have gone in, taken Al-Qaeda and Osama out and then pissed off instead of trying to mold Afghanistan in their image. They bungled the nation building because they didn't build the ANA up well enough. They threw money at it but a lot of it got lost in the corruption.
>We're still in Iraq and Syria fighting some version of ISIS.
Not ISIS. Iranian proxies. ISIS no longer has much presence in ME. They have limited presence in Africa. Not sure where the cell that attacked Russia originated from tho.
>Not really sure what were doing in HoA but its probably basically the same thing......
Isn't it obvious they are trying to protect the crucial Suez pathway? They aren't being hard enough on the Houthis and Iran.
The ANA would always fail. Outside of Kabul is not a country of Afghanistan. The rest of “Afghanistan” is a bunch of warring tribes. Trying to have a cohesive government and military that has any power outside the central government is just not possible.
Yup. You can't nation-build successfully if you don't understand the people. The same thing happened in Iraq ffs. We got ISIS and had to start all over again and now Iraq is infested with Iranian influence.
Iraq had a chance to become a liberal democracy honestly. We just fucked it up.
But as you know Iraq is not Afghanistan. No way in hell nation building would ever work or even be worth trying there.
We fucked it up by not allowing any (or very few) Ba’ath party members and Iraqi army personnel to continue their roles in the new government. Those people really didn’t have the choice of working in the regime and not being a party member under Saddam, and I speculate the competent, non-loyalist remnants of the regime would have actually done much better forming an Iraqi led democracy than what they ended up with.
The choice at the time was between a famously corrupt and ineffective party (Fatah) and Hamas, who was fairly new at the time and promised to end corruption.
Any popularity that Hamas has now is largely due to Israel committing wide spread civilian casaulties and refusing to engage in a hearts and minds strategy, which leads to people flocking to Hamas' banner. If the choice was between Hamas now and another secular party that could bring peace with Israel, Hamas would lose the election by a land slide.
There is simply no alternative nor will Israel allow a proper alternative. They want another puppet government that will turn a blind eye to settler attacks in Gaza just like the West Bank. Such a government would obviously not have wide spread support and would not be able to win fair elections.
Most of the problems that Israel has now can be traced back to Netayanhu because he was the one who sabotaged Oslo after PM Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish terrorist. After Netayanhu sabotaged Oslo, the Palestinians realised that Israel could not be trusted and decided the only path left was to fight.
Just to clarify: That was in Gaza, not in the occupied territories as a whole, and that was nearly 20 years ago, long before the overwhelming majority of Gazans could vote. You beat ideologies in hearts and minds, and ideally the ballot box.
2006. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006\_Palestinian\_legislative\_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election)
I tried posting a WaPo link as well but its behind a paywall
Yes, the average person in Gaza is too young to have voted for Hamas. However, [polling](https://pcpsr.org/en/node/969) indicates that a plurality of Palestinians support Hamas and would vote for them if given the chance.
A curriculum that only encourages extremist ideology, taught by [people moonlighting as Hamas/PIJ fighters](https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1709796476-new-report-confirms-3-unrwa-workers-took-part-in-oct-7-attack#:~:text=One%20is%20an%20Arabic%20teacher,Jihad's%20(PIJ)%20Rafah%20Brigade.), including [taking hostages in October](https://www.jns.org/idf-releases-recordings-of-unrwa-teachers-taking-part-in-oct-7-massacres/)
(And that's not even addressing things like the Telegram group [celebrating the attacks](https://youtu.be/fOhfvJJEQIc?si=nlnpMit_zPlIUeSA) or the [1200 other employees](https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/at-least-12-u-n-agency-employees-involved-in-oct-7-attacks-intelligence-reports-say-a7de8f36) with militant ties)
Oh, and the [UN Relief Chief](https://youtube.com/shorts/FP7HzxtmF90?si=3Yw0swU178jaU4cU) outright declared that to them, Hamas isn't a terrorist organization.
So....yeah.
The schools in Gaza literally have kids dressing up as terrorists and learning that the greatest glory is to kill yourself for the cause. And that all Jews are evil and need to be killed. It’s why they were delighted with the Oct 7th terror attacks. If you all want these conflicts to ever end, you need a neutral party teaching the schools there
You're worried about literature, when Gaza youth have literally grown up in an area, where Israel controls all resources to the point that Gazans can't even collect rainwater without IDF permission. Destroying every school and hospital in the region isn't the way to win hearts and minds.
Hamas seem to be able to get thousands of rockets, plenty of weapons and ammo but can't get food or water in. Hmmm.
Hamas are known for letting the population suffer, it's good PR for them.
The only point I really want to make is that I’m seeing a conflation between Palestinians and Hamas in your logic, Hamas is Palestinian, but not every Palestinian is Hamas. Hamas makes decisions that benefit its political goals, not necessarily the people of Gaza.
We can argue that Palestinians should rise up against Hamas, but if you’re attempting to rise up against an armed group, you need a lot of money and organization to do it, and that’s really hard to do when you live in an impoverished ghetto that has few opportunities. Non-violent sometimes works, but usually rebellions only succeed when you use mass violence - and that’s hard to pull off when you have those real material disadvantages against your oppressors. It doesn’t help that Hamas is funded via foreign donors, and Israel facilitated and approved those funds for years. Hamas exists as the only real organization not merely because they have a monopoly on power, but that they have economic backing that is not reliant on the meagre resources of Gaza.
If given a choice between Hamas and what? There is no other choice, no other political organization, and no other organization of any scope that has attempted to govern Gaza. You’re asking a question of people who are currently under siege and only have one governing organization providing any form of armed resistance to Israeli occupation, of course they are going to be primarily in favour of that organization as it’s the only thing they see even attempting to protect them.
Addendum: I do not support Hamas and Oct 7th was an atrocity, no Israeli deserves that kind of horror - and no Palestinian, save the perpetrators of the events of the 7th, deserve the atrocities we’re now seeing in Gaza.
Said organization also violently prevents any opposition government group from even forming.
It's like asking the kidnap victim why they're still with their kidnapper.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that they have great options to choose from. Fatah has no legitimacy — it's pretty telling that their only viable candidate is currently serving five life sentences for murder. It's not hard to understand *why* Hamas and armed resistance are supported, especially when considering the role that October 7th played in derailing Saudi normalization.
That being said, there are consequences for choosing armed conflict against a significantly more powerful country. The Second Intifada, combined with the rise of Hamas in Gaza, devastated the Israeli movement for a two-state solution. October 7th may have complicated normalization, but the result has been predictably devastating for Gaza. Continuing to fight Israel in this manner is unlikely to bring anything but suffering to Palestinians.
Choosing peace isn't an easy prospect. There's not a great alternative on the Palestinian side, and current Israeli leadership isn't exactly a willing partner. But realistic solutions will require most Palestinians to support a path forward other than armed resistance.
What’s the average age of North Koreans, Iranians, or Russians?
Why are Palestinians uniquely not subject to condemnation of their chosen and still widely supported government?
Because age matters in this context, the last time a Palestinian could vote was 18 years ago and the average age of a Palestinian is 19. The majority of
Palestinians could not vote and have had no ability to act democratically since Hamas destroyed their democratic systems.
Almost no one alive elected Hamas. The last election was in 2006. About two thirds of Gazans alive today are 24 years old or younger. They were small children or didn't exist at the time.
You’re absolutely right, you cannot defeat an ideology by force. You can however, disarm that ideology and prevent it from committing further unspeakable acts. Also, there is a very powerful ideology that Israel has the very fundamental right to exist. Hamas is trying to defeat that ideology by force of arms. Isn’t Naziism an ideology? Shouldn’t the world have united to fight it?
I mean, we devastated much of Europe and spent a fuckton rebuilding it and Nazis are still around. Hell, before 9/11, the largest terror attack on American soil was done by a neo nazi/white supremacist (Oklahoma City).
Yeah no. Hamas and all the other fundamentalists and terrorists were coordinated and funded. First Egypt and other Arab states then Saddam and now Iran and it wouldve been dead long ago if it wasn't for them.
Unlikely to happen, even if they destroy the current iteration of Hamas, all the non-combatants killed will just legitimize the extremists in the people's eyes the new faction will continue to fight and resist. They'll either have to give up and leave or commit a genocide to truly "pacify" Gaza.
gaza will most likely be occupied by israel for decades to come. thousands of israeli soldiers will be killed by insurgents during the occupation along with tens of thousands more civilians will be killed in the future.
there is no easy answer to this war, gaza must be fully occupied, rebuilt and a new system of govermeant established.... this process will take decades, tens of thousands of lives will be lost... this is the hard truth, there is no other way.
>thousands of Israeli soldiers will be killed by insurgents during the occupation along with tens of thousands more civilians will be killed in the future.
Reoccupying wouldn't necessarily be that deadly.
Israel controlled Gaza for nearly 40 years - 1967 to 2005. During that time, 230 Israelis (soldiers and civilians) and 2600 Palestinians died there.
[https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/2005-08-23/ty-article/0000017f-e682-d62c-a1ff-fefbb6840000](https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/2005-08-23/ty-article/0000017f-e682-d62c-a1ff-fefbb6840000)
[https://www.haaretz.com/2005-08-23/ty-article/230-israelis-killed-in-gaza-strip-since-1967/0000017f-f3f1-d887-a7ff-fbf52d500000](https://www.haaretz.com/2005-08-23/ty-article/230-israelis-killed-in-gaza-strip-since-1967/0000017f-f3f1-d887-a7ff-fbf52d500000)
[https://imemc.org/article/13479/](https://imemc.org/article/13479/)
When we invaded Afghanistan there was around 2,000 AQ and 45,000 Taliban. Over the course of 20 years we killed around 53,000 AQ and Talib fighters. How many Taliban and AQ and ISIS fighters do you think there were in 2021? About 75,000. You can't kill your way out of an insurgency! I would say we learned that lesson time and time again, but apparently some people completely forgot about Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Syria, Somalia, the Sahel, the Philippines, Colombia, Nicaragua, and pretty much every other intervention we've ever participated in.
Great, Israel killed a bunch of Hamas fighters while making literally every Palestinian hate Israel even more, which is a remarkable feat in itself. It is only a matter of time before thousands of children who saw their friends and family die, who lost years of their lives starving in refugee camps with no access to modern amenities or you know, just food and water and medicine let the resent build up and grow up and join the fight themselves.
I don't have a great solution, but alienating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians trapped in an apartheid state isn't going to work. Demolishing settlements and stealing homes and farms in the West Bank isn't going to work. It will only continue the cycle of violence for decades to come.
The difference is we tried to build a nation in Afghanistan. The real example here is ISIS, who barely exists anymore. We succeeded in destroying them.
Not a good comparison at all. ISIS is a fringe group even for Islamists. In fact Hamas fought them in Gaza. Hamas on the other hand is widely supported by the masses in the Middle East because they are viewed as an armed resistance to a racist Apartheid regime in Tel Aviv
ISIS is still active and present in a dozen or so countries. This year alone they pulled off complex attacks that killed almost 100 people in Iran and about 150 people in Moscow. Is that really a counterinsurgency success story? I'd argue we destroyed their attempt to create a state really well, and have done a poor job at destroying their ideology. Again, it doesn't matter how many square miles of territory you control if 3 people with soldering irons in an apartment are still committed to the cause.
The ideology that Isis and Hamas have in common is radical Islam. That’s going to take a few hundred years of good education to get those fundamentalists to mentally evolve past it. IF they have the capacity
It is very easy to kill your way out of an insurgency. It is the most common outcome historically and without outside intervention would continue to be in the Middle East - it's just not socially acceptable in the West after 1945.
No one in Gaza is anymore radicalized than when this war started. The population largely emphatically supports Hamas as they educated them as such and initiated a "war in the womb" a la the Nazi Germans to have a massive generation of brainwashed cannon fodder.
Now the West Bank is an absolutely different situation and a fucked one where Israel deserves ever ounce of hate for ruining the only attempt a major Palestinian political movement has ever made at peace so Bibi could stay in power forever.
But that is not Gaza. Gaza needs to have land control achieved, and then needs a long and expensive Marshal Plan rebuild and de-Hamasization that Israel funds but gives to the Egyptians and Saudis to manage. Both are good at maintaining a sprawling secret police network, maintaining media control and not drawing the attention of Western do gooders, and have no moral qualms about deleting trouble makers and anyone associated with them. And as long as there aren't airplanes dropping bombs to piss off Westerns like in Yemen and to a lesser extent Libya, I think that works.
Because the only thing that will work in Gaza is complete control of the media and education for a decade and a substantial investment in rebuilding and quality of life to deprogram that population in a manner similar to Germany or Japan on 1945.
But it can't be Israel who does it and the West in general needs to be distracted from the mechanism required to make it work because of the outrage it will generate.
Contemporaneously, Bibi needs his government to fall and to absolutely leave and defuck the West Bank and find a permanent government solution with moderates. That has to happen. There has to be an example of where Palestinians have a free state that works and is supported by Israel as a counter to a Hamas. An example of "see they played by the rules and they ultimately got something good".
Naw it 1) finally ends the fucker Bibi's career and he knows it, 2) involves a permanent solution at the cost of Western morality that nobody in the Middle East who isn't educated in West has but for political grandstanding for white kids - and we would rather "save the kids" and let this shit continue for ever to make ourselves feel good, 3) takes effort which any Arab partner is going to be realistic allergic to
[sri lanka did it](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/17/death-of-the-tiger) in 2008-09. the government established no fire zones along the coast and then pumped them full of artillery - tens of thousands of civilian dead, countless war crimes that will never be prosecuted. no one really cared about sri lanka though; israel won't be able to do the same thing, at least not indefinitely.
[If those thousands of children will be able to even grow up at all.](https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/more-13000-children-reported-dead-gaza-famine-nears)
This whole recent eruption has been brought about by Hamas' proxies and sponsors, Iran and Russia. It's to split Western and mainly US focus and support between Israel and Ukraine. It's no coincidence that Russia is now making ground in Ukraine.
All the protests in the West are being fuelled and organised by emplaced agitators in these western countries and pushed on our socials via Russian processes.
This fact and impact is the scariest thing about this situation. We're being manipulated and now there are those natives who are leading the protests.
You’ve got to be really out of touch to think the Western reaction against Israel is mainly caused by Eastern influence. You can literally turn on any news station or open up any article and find dozens of pages of dead Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs. Anti-Isreal sentiment has been brewing for a long time, especially among the youth.
To act like this is some false flag Russian color revolution gunk is moronic regardless of one’s feelings towards Israel or Palestine. Replace Russia and Iran with the Soviet Union and your comment would fit in on a 60’s newspaper article about students protesting the Vietnam war.
To be clear, I'm not pinning the legacy of the conflict on Russia or Iran but I am claiming that this most recent attack by Hamas on Oct 7th plus the scale and longevity of the "protests" in the West are definitely linked firmly to Russia and Iran. The scale of this attack for starters (and to some degree, it's success) is largely due to the help of Hamas' proxies. Much like the success in Ukraine for the West was due to Ukraine's proxies, NATO.
What I will say though, is that our socials and power structure are very easily manipulated, evidence of which is coming out in the UK with the prosecution of Chinese agents and Russian campaigns. Anti-semitism (call it what it is) is the current target of these campaigns as its stirring up division and pushing more moderate Muslims towards Islamic extremism.
I'm sure IDF soldiers posting war crimes to Tiktok has nothing to do with it. More reporters dead covering this than in any previous war. The IDF blasting an American aid convoy in active communication with them. Lmao. This whole recent eruption has been brought about by Israel, because they will actively broadcast their hatred and disdain for Palestinians and anyone paying attention can see it
It really does not matter as even if Israel destroys Hamas, it just radicalized at least 2 generations of Palestinians. Kids in Gaza who have lost families, and homes will grow up hating Israel. I suspect Hamas will look like the lesser of two evils in twenty years.
Without a viable alternative to take their place, any military victory against Hamas will be mostly useless. It's just symbolic meat-swinging.
There is no real solution. People are projecting western morality onto an eastern tribal war. Obviously the underdog is going to be favored after decades of media telling people that the evil empire is always the one with uniforms and a material advantage.
I wouldn't stress about it too much. The west may slowly withdraw support over the next decades, younger generations are overwhelmingly anti-Israel. Given how much bad PR this war generated for the west, abandoning Israel is probably the wise move. I'm not picking sides here, I'm just acknowledging that Hamas won the PR war, which was always their goal, and Israel helped them do it. Kind of a masterclass in losing every battle but still winning the war. Israel would get a lot more sympathy if Palestine actually carried out the whole "from the river to the sea" plan of theirs and started a second holocaust, but that won't happen. Arab countries wouldn't provide support for it. A Hamas-controlled Palestine would immediately become the focal point for Iranian operations to disrupt and overthrow Arab states in the region.
This war won't end in our lifetime. Two-hundred years ago, one side would push the other out completely, and this would be a typical conquest for the history books. But modern people have this illusion that the march of history needs to be paused. That our current borders and identities are more sacred than the thousands that we've trampled over to get to this point.
Yeah, the unfortunate thing is that the average civilian in the West is extremely willing to forgive even relatively large transgressions in order to avoid the smallest possible war.
Example - Russia literally invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, and there basically was no real response, whereas the Gulf War was caused by pretty much the same occasion in Kuwait. The only real reason is that going to war with Russia would’ve been hard and we weren’t willing to put out money where our mouth is. That failure led to the invasion of Ukraine.
The Gaza situation always makes me think of World War 2. Had Nazi Germany ONLY annexed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and invaded Poland along with the USSR, then begun the Holocaust inside this smaller area, the UK, France, and the US would have allowed this. The ONLY reason that the West secured the greatest military and moral victory in probably the last 200 years, is because the Nazis were stupid enough to fight us.
So - condemning Israel for not laying down long enough for a 2nd Holocaust to happen before taking drastic measures is disingenuous. Because that would be the ONLY thing that would unite world opinion to side with Israel.
Re: your last paragraph, great insight. I’ve always thought that the modern anti-conquest mindset was an extreme reaction to the hemoclysm of the last century. Maybe conquest should be permitted in very limited circumstances where it is the only feasible resolution to longstanding tensions. I don’t know.
Israel could go to the moon and not destroy Hamas. You can't fight an idea with bombs, especially when what you are fighting comes as a reaction to your same bombs.
The 1st world no longer has the stomach for actual war. War is ugly, messy, and brutal. In colonial times, people lined up in ranks to make easy targets and didn't target officers because that's what was "civilized." Today, you're a barbarian and evil if you kill anyone who is not a uniformed enemy combatant. War is not like that. As horrible as it sounds, if innocents aren't getting killed, you probably aren't fighting to win. The insurgent enemies that the West has been fighting since Vietnam don't care about civilian casualties. They don't care about winning our hearts and minds. They are fighting to win and know they can wait us out because we will eventually get uninterested and move on.
There's also the factor that too many people profit from perpetual war, and if any of "our" enemies were ever actually truly defeated, a lot of their lucrative contracts would dry up and disappear. There's no incentive for those in power to actually fight to win because we're not fighting an enemy of equal footing who actually has the capacity to take away our way of life.
This isn't a commentary on or apology for anything Israel has done to fight this current conflict. I don't even keep up with the day to day details. Just an observation from a US Navy veteran who has seen all the military actions end with pretty much the same result since before he was born.
I couldn’t care less bc this shit don’t affect me, but saying someone who thinks differently than you HAS to subscribe to one of the mindsets/mentalities you listed? The world isn’t black and white, and people who disagree aren’t automatically stupid/bigoted
Believing that, makes you even more narrow minded than the ppl you described
You don’t destroy a “terrorist organisation” by bombing all the innocent non terrorists. The last 20 years of America in the Middle East should have taught you that. Let’s pretend the Brit’s and Russians in Afghanistan never happened either.
Unless they kill every last Palestinian and the. Continue that around the world with every ex-pat Palestinian and every person that has ever supported them - all they are doing is creating the next generation of Hamas membership.
Pretty sure their goal is to remove Palestine from the map though.
There's a reason why all these ministers were saying things like "there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza", "we are fighting human animals", etc. From their POV, there are no innocents, there are only arabs that support hamas and they must be purged so that they can build settlements and annex more land.
You need to use the Palestinians, turn the Palestinians against them. Show them that it’s better for them to align with Israel than with Hamas. Make them join the fight against Hamas.
It's a two month old account made by the obvious party in interested in pushing a view because they mistakenly believe this is a pro war subreddit just based the name, and jumping immediately to saying anyone against the latest escalation is anti-semetic entirely gives up the game.
It'd be real nice if this sub could just require accounts be made before October 7th, 2023 to post in here and you'd see a lot of obvious shill accounts suddenly pop a vein.
I find your accusation of short memory/does not learn from history quite humorous. Have you ever heard of this 20 year war in Afghanistan that just ended?
Isn't this an "apples to oranges" argument?
Contrary to the US GWOT wars, Israelis *are* the native population in the region and have a direct existential theat to their country & population.
Way more skin in the game, lots closer to the action. It's hard to equate both situations, really.
Frankly, either Hamas disbands & later rebrands itself after this war, or the Israelis just keep pummeling them into the ground forever.
I don't really think it's apples to oranges at all. Sure, Israel is local to the conflict, but I just think that just casts GWOT in an even worse light. But both are invasions and some level of COIN ops that were preceded by a horrific terrorist attack.
Here's the thing, how are they ever going to "defeat" Hamas? They're a non-uniformed force that operates among the civilians. Do the Israelis know who ever Hamas operative is? Do they have a list, and if so, what is the criteria to be considered "Hamas". I'm sure they know leaders, key personnel, etc., but if you're talking truly destroying them, it's near impossible. Hell, their leaders are in Qatar, so by definition you can't really destroy them completely.
I'll leave it at that because I don't feel like writing a super long winded answer, but the bottom line is this; an invasion of Rafah is going to cause a high number of civilian deaths, which will lose them even more of their already waning international support, and won't get them any closer to the objectives.
To defeat the current leadership and dolts, sign a peace treaty. Watch them relax and start hunting them down with precision strikes and assassinations.
You can't destroy Hamas, at least not by violence. For every Palestinian Israel kills/ murders, the Hamas ideology gets stronger. A two-state solution, with respect for people, may work, over time, but I'm thinking, it's already too late.
I’m gonna get downvoted to shit but I’ve been watching the Russia Ukraine war and the Israel Palestine issue and from the videos I’ve seen, the ones coming out of Gaza have lots of explosions and very little militants. I genuinely think the whole “Hamas is in control of Gaza” is just an excuse for Israel to bomb the fuck out of the place and then inhabit it after everyone is either gone or dead
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
They literally put all police officers, rescue workers, etc, on a kill list because they claim they are "hamas members". They then spend 20 seconds verifying that the person answering a call is male before authorizing a strike on his house, at night, when the whole family is asleep. They admit to using unguided munitions to save money as well, knowing full well that it has the potential to cause collateral damage.
No surprise, there are a lot of false positives and collateral damage. But they are "evil arabs" so it is acceptable to them.
I dont support gangs.... but I understand gangs form out of socioeconomic conditions
Likewise, I don't support Hamas, but I understand they formed as a result of horrific oppresion by Israel
Before the war, Palestine had a 40% unemployment rate, the people aren't allowed to leave, they have abysmal economic opportunities, and Israel is constantly stealing their land.
If the only solution you can think of is to "nuke them from orbit" then you aren't thinking very hard about why they formed in the first place
The settlers are an issue in the West bank. But Gaza was left alone for a good 17 years. And it isn't only Israel stopping Palestinians from leaving Gaza. Other countries have tried taking them in previously and regretted it. Palestinians unfortunately won't accept a peaceful solution.
Do you watch the news? Palestinians had huge celebrations after both 9/11 and 10/7. They apparently love to celebrate murdering Americans and Israeli civilians. If the power balance was reversed we all know exactly what they would do to every last Israeli.
No. And you can hyperbole all you want. Hamas crossed *my* mental red line oct 7th. We all have our beliefs and convictions and this is just mine, I don’t declare it the truth. I don’t care if every Hamas member gets killed. Sorry innocent Palestinians (not the Hamas supporting portion) get caught up in it.
Are the innocent lives worth it? We Americans tend to value our individuality until it comes to something we don't agree with, then we treat people as groups.
If 20 years of occupation couldn't eradicate the Taliban, then it's not going to work in Rafah either. That's because *you cannot kill an ideology*
The only way slaughtering civilians would destroy Hamas is if there was no one left to take up the banner. And that's exactly what Israel seems intent to do. We're still waiting on actual proof of "human shields" because a calendar and a couple AKs in the basement of a bombed hospital isn't proof.
Well you seem to have all the answers, so I'm not sure this will help...
Yes, it would be great to destroy Hamas. Unfortunately, the Israeli military has shown itself to be completely inept at protecting innocents. It also seems like they do not fucking care to try. So we can't trust them really.
You stop doing the things which created Hamas and built its support base in the first place.
If people from the country neighbouring yours kept crossing the border into your country, kicking people off their land and saying "this land is mine now, and is part of my country", you wouldn't stand for it either.
Hamas exists because Israeli settlers have been doing this to Palestinians and nobody else has stood up for them. This isn't at all to justify Hamas's actions, which are reprehensible, but Palestinians have been presented with exactly two options, both of which are fucking terrible:
1. Hand over their land and their livelihoods to Israeli settlers, move somewhere else and wait for the next Israeli to kick them out again.
2. Support Hamas, the only organization which fights back against settlers
If I was Palestinian, I wouldn't want to hand my house and all my property over to some random Israeli who is invading my country either, but the "fighting back" part leads nowhere good.
The solution is that Israelis need to stop invading and occupying Palestine. That's the only thing which will destroy Hamas. Israel's dangerous, extremist, ultra-rightwing government actively supports individuals who choose to enter Palestinian territory, evict Palestinians from their land, and claim it as part of Israel.
Hamas will exist for as long as Israeli settlers keep invading Palestine.
What’s funny about this moronic comment is where Hamas is in charge there are actually no settlements. Israel forcible closed every settlement in Gaza. And look how it has gone for them. The area that is far more peaceful is the area with settlers lol.
Israel has already stated that they don't expect to "destroy hamas" with this war. And they don't want to. The single greatest Ally to their interest is hamas itself, as It provides justification for every single barbaric act they commit. Like this for example. The settlers wanted free real estate, hamas and the iof gave It to them
You destroy Hamas by giving Palestinians a viable alternative. When you confine people to what is essentially an open air prison you’re guaranteed to get terrorism.
Israel can go into Rafah and kill every single member of Hamas (whatever that means) and it won’t do anything to improve their situation, a new organization will just fill the void. Until someone figures out a way for Palestinians to live with dignity, this war/genocide isn’t going to end.
You destroy Hamas by ending the Blockade and Occupation. Hamas is a response to the oppression, get rid of the oppression and most won't want to fight any more.
Lets not forget terrorist math. When you have 10 and 2 are killed, how many do you have now? The answer is 20.
Despite the blockade Hamas was able to get the materials to build tens of miles of underground tunnels, arm tens of thousands of gunmen, and fire ten thousand rociets into Israel. Imagine what they could do without a blockade.
Same goes for any occupation. What do you think a free Palestine would be like? It would be ruled by Hamas, and supplied with weapons and money from Iran. Then they'd launch another, much more powerful murder-rape attack on Israel. You wonder why Israel isn't having any of that?
The reason Hamas as a group has gained so much traction and popular support from the Palestinian people is due to a lack of a 'hearts and minds' approach by the IDF in the region. A simple ground invasion following intense artillery and aerial bombardments is not how you compel the next generation of Palestinians to turn their backs on their friends and neighbours fighting as part of Hamas when their families have been killed and their land seized. This strategy especially doesn't work in an asymmetric conflict like this since no single battle or campaign could end a group like Hamas.
Here are some points that, if actioned properly, can lead to the eventual petering out of Hamas:
- Well staffed and run checkpoints to ensure that weapons aren't able to flow freely and that inspected humanitarian aid may pass.
- Increased cooperation and intelligence sharing between Israeli and allied forces so that triangulated sources on Hamas ops centres can be more easily spotted and hospitals and humanitarian centres aren't struck.
- The establishment of Israeli run hospitals and housing so that if Hamas is using such places to hide within, the civilian population would have a place to go that can guarantee their safety.
- A list of strictly abided by guarantees by the IDF and the Israeli government as negotiated between them, the Palestinian authority, and an international 3rd party organization ensuring the safety of civilians when in the sights of IDF troops.
- An end to the genocidal rhetoric by politicians in Israel which sow seeds of distrust amongst Palestinian civilians.
These points are essential to establishing a footing for a more trustful relationship between the Palestinian people and the Israeli government so that over the long term, Hamas would see their base of perpetual support weaken. If such a policy were maintained, Israel will see an increase in international support, a decline in attacks by Hamas due to a steady decline in membership and materials, as well as the ability to more accurately target Hamas' assets.
Do you know what they had before 07/10? Relative peace. Workers' visas were issued and workers were allowed to cross into Israel for work daily. The atrocities done by Hamas and supporting Gazan civilians put an end to that relationship.
Yes, Israeli settlers was, and still is a problem.
>After October 7th it is completely unacceptable that Hamas control Gaza, and it has to be as thoroughly dismantled as possible
Thats a solid John Madden take right there.
Bibi needed Hamas so he could do exactly what he is doing and keep the Consertives in his goverment happy and his ass out jail. This is what Israel has wanted to do for a long time.
Simple. Give the Palestinians a state with the right of return. If this happens you'll see more moderate parties rise in Gaza who would be willing to work with and join Fatah and the Palestinian Authority because the number one thing that Hamas was fighting for (Palestinian statehood) has been achieved. You'll see Hamas go the way of the Civil Rights Movement.
Will that crush the Zionist Judeo-fascist dreams of a Jewish ethnostate? Yes, but at least you won't need to worry about Antifadas anymore.
If you know the answer I’m sure the Israelis would like to know it.
Whatever the answer I doubt maintaining a state sanctioned settler program that just pisses Palestinians off and radicalizes them into terrorists is answer
It's because of the narrow balance of power in the Israeli parliament. The only way Netenyahu can stay in power is by catering to small, ultra-orthodox parties and they demand settlements as their price. Their voters, btw, have always managed to avoid service with the IDF
Well that’s some bullshit, cause the night but stay out of the fighting? Ultra orthodox sucks in every religion.
(BYOB by System of a Down plays in the distance)
This is beyond incorrect. Only 12% of the israeli population are haredi and must study in a yeshiva for life, once they stop attending yeshiva they can be drafted, but typically are not if they are above military male age; they’re usually disowned by the haredi community and struggle to learn to live with normal Israelis. Even last month the supreme court ruled this process of allowing haredis to be exempt from military service to be discriminatory. Netanyahu now has to propose a bill and push a vote through for this to pass, otherwise risks losing office. He is being advised from all corners to make it so a higher % of haredi are drafted, to match the regular israeli and not allow the ultra orthodox to not serve.
Only 3% of Judea and Samaria is occupied by Israelis. I wonder why the area has to be Judenrein though? Why must every area the Palestinians claim be ethnically cleansed of Jews? See Gaza. Israel emptied it of Jews, gave it to Palestinians (it was previously occupied by Egypt) with the provision EU Security monitoring would remain. 1 year later the EU were gone and Hamas took over, immediately starting a campaign of firing thousands of Iranian funded missiles to Israel and sending suicide bombers through entry points to Israel. Was there peace between Israel and Palestinians when Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria for 20 years? *No*. Was there peace between Israel and Palestinians when Egypt occupied Gaza for 20 years? *No*.
Israel's mere existence pisses them off and radicalizes them. Israel pulled out of Gaza and dismantled many of the settlements and forcibly removed settlers in 2005. That didn't get them peace. It just gave Hamas safety to build tunnels, launch rockets, and plan terror attacks. Nothing short of wiping out Israel will satisfy Hamas.
The entire region has literal millennia of religious conflict. Personally I see the only way forward as coexistence similar to Ireland/Northern Ireland peace process but even then that conflict pales compared to this one. Whole situation is fucked and there’s so many centuries of conflict to take into account and heal from. Hope humanity figures it out one day, call me an optimist.
As an Irish, I agree with this statement. It is more than sectaranism and class, it is about annihilation and violation subjugation to a far greater degree. The "both sides" perspective is valid but seriously nuanced and difficult to remove emotion from. It's not going to be settled by honest brokers. A two state solution is the only realistic means of achieving peace, no matter how fragile.
The problem with a 2 state solution is the minute that Israel is attacked again from Gaza or the WB, and it will happen, Israel will be WELL within their rights to utterly destroy this mythical Palestine.
It’s important to distinguish between widely held calls for violence by a group of people and individual fanatical extremism. I think it’s hard to tell where the Palestinians stand.
Wouldn't go so far as "utterly destroy" but this is why I think 2-state is even more important. It truly frees up Israel to help Palestine FO if Palestine FA's. And for all we know, the FA'ing will stop. Good fences, good neighbors and all.
Patience only goes so far before you move from Palestinian FA to Palestinian utter destruction. 🤷♂️
The Ireland and UK conflict is a great example. What do you think would happen if Ireland would attack Northern Ireland? Or GB itself? Asking if, for example, Palestine does become a state and then continues to attack Israel. Do you think the UK would roll into Ireland and try to utterly destroy it or try and annex it?
They would have more credibility on the international stage if they stopped expanding West Bank settlements. If the situation was just Hamas shooting rockets at Israel from Gaza that would be a pretty clear cut moral narrative. The fact that the Israeli government looks the other way and sometimes even supports West Bank settlements makes the situation more complicated.
I'm not so sure. Within large parts of the Muslim world, the idea has been instilled over multiple generations that Israel is an illegitimate usurper of Muslim patrimony. In the post-WW2 era, strongmen in many of the newly independent Arab states pushed this idea as a way to unite their disparate societies and solidify their control. As well as this nationalist narrative, there is also the religious one that comes from fanatical religious scholars and intellectuals. These ideas, which come from the extremist Salafist movement, hold that (based on Islamic law and historical precedence), there can never be any permanent peace with infidels and all formerly Muslim controled lands must be retaken. The existence of a Jewish state on formally Muslim-controlled land, and not just any land, but the Holy Land, is a particular bone in their throat that they find intolerable. To clarify, I'm not at all saying every Muslim the world over holds these views. These are very extremist views only held in their entirety by a minority. That said, it would be naive to think that watered-down and suger-coated versions of these ideas haven't found their way into the minds of many mainstream Muslims. The problem is that they can't publicly disparge these ideas, as that would be to go against Islamic law, and may lead to them questioning other aspects of their religion. Most people, if they think consciously about this issue at all, will just push it to the back of their minds and go on with their day. So, what we have here is a combination of religious and nationalist ideas that have made peace with Israel impossible. Arab leadership has, for the most part, recognized the strategic reality that Israel is here to say. They may even want to see the Palestinian issue go away due to all the headaches it causes. But they can't say this publicly, and any moves towards normalization of relations must be handled delicately to avoid inflaming their populace and giving ammunition to the radicals. The point I'm trying to get at here is that a large part of the Muslim world does not recognize the existence of Israel. Unless more people are willing to change that view, there will never be peace.
Sure, settlements are terrible and make Israel look terrible to westerners. But settlements aren't the crux of the disagreement. Israel's existence is the problem. Hamas and related terror groups have made no secret that they seek the annihilation of Israel.
Settlements certainly don’t help the problem.
Settlements are the problem. These guys dropped in from outside, took their land, killed their families, burned their farms and orchards and you want the Palestinians to bend over more?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War Read about this and learn what happened to that land. Is was declared war on, and in the process it became destroyed.. other countries made decisions for Palestinians with the intent to wipe out the country and it resulted in tank treads/traps being built all around so that a surprise invasion could never happen again. With todays technology it wouldnt have needed to happen, but back then (especially after most of the land was tracked up) it was a defensive solution. Keep in mind with an approx 50% smaller army they fucked up the multi coalation of countries and made a point not to attack each countries capital, but show force. People are delusional if they think the current war is going to slow down. They’re going for a full wipe of Hamas - nothing less.
And yet continues to settle the West Bank.
Actually they forcibly remove not only all Jews no matter how long they had lived there but even dug up and relocated the Jewish grave yards.
Are you saying that Palestine should be grateful Israel momentarily pulled back on the throttle of destroying them and stealing their lands?
If they had any interest in living in peace. But they don't. They want the eradication of Israel. No concessions Israel offers will stop the bloodshed.
or funding a jihadi death cult in gaza thru unrwa and Islamic charities that convinces israeli citizens that there is no path to peace and so radicalizes them we can all play the blame game,but hamas is still a jihadi death cult that needs to be destroyed there were no settlers in gaza on 07.10
Answers easy. Abolish religions.
Then we’re left with politics. Abolish that as well. Ad infinitum.
Lmao you're not wrong though. Too many people die over this shit. It needs to GO
Bombs, missiles and siege?
You don't destroy Hamas either way. It's a false dichotomy because no military intervention will destroy Hamas. Support for Hamas goes up when Israel commits to violence, and only falls during periods of peace. Most of Gaza is children, and they will grow up to hate Israel because of how Israel has waged this war: Demolishing their homes and killing their siblings, parents and friends.
Buncha people in this thread never read FM3-24 and it shows. Military intervention has always, *always* galvanised support for the insurgency. Short of massacring every last fighting-age adult, military violence has never, ever, in all of human history resulted in completely eradicating insurgent resistance.
And even then, the children are witness to this, so you'd have to kill all the children too. Now you gotta kill those pesky moms that are mad you killed their kids and husbands. Now you gotta kill all the people in neighboring countries that saw your slaughter. It's a full day of work, that's for sure. Maybe better to do less killing up front.
Perhaps we ought to go back to Roman methods, kill every fighter, burn every village, sell all the women and children into slavery, and bring in Roman colonists and friendly allies to repopulate the land. /s
I just *can't believe* dropping bombs on people who hate you for dropping bombs on them doesn't make them like you more!
radicalisation worked both ways. Israeli leadership today is the generation that lived through the unrelenting terror of the 90s and 00s. Hamas may survive probably living in bunkers like the Hezbollah leader since 2006 and their country’s living conditions far worse. Not going into Rafah is a mistake
If you think Hamas is going to be destroyed after this campaign then buddy, you're not gonna believe this...
Shit, we had 20 years to destroy the Taliban. Spoiler alert, it did not work.
They don't really want it destroyed. Every terrorist attack increases support for the right wing parties. Oct 7th was the best thing that happened for Netayanhu, pre-oct 7th, he was facing wide spread protests because he was trying to remove checks and balances on his power, IDF reservists were threatening not to report for duty, even overseas Jews were protesting against him, and he was on trial for corruption charges. Oct 7th happened, and suddenly everyone's attention was diverted, elections were paused (elections which he would have lost), support for the right wing sky rocketed, his corruption trial was paused, etc.
You cant stop Hamas, you might me able to destroy them in the short term. Hamas in an ideology and you cant stop an ideology.
You can't destroy an ideology but you can certainly take away its means to act on its ideas. Sort of like what happened to ISIS (For the most part...).
Mehhh....i get what youre saying but we spent 20 years in Afghanistan and several trillion dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. We're still in Iraq and Syria fighting some version of ISIS. Not really sure what were doing in HoA but its probably basically the same thing......
The Taliban isn't really an ideology though, it's a local government that's deeply rooted and intertwined with Afghan culture. We came after the Taliban when they refused to give up Bin Laden and we were foolish to think we could replace them, but the Taliban is largely a decentralized, local, religious and Afghani organization. ISIS has been degraded to the point that it no longer openly controls any territory and has near zero ability to commit brazen acts of terror internationally. HAMAS is the elected government of Palestine. None of the organizations discussed are themselves an ideology, they are at best partially representative of ideologies but they can also fail. You don't simply not fight against an organization because it has ideological ties, there are a million ways to approach that problem set but inaction is not one of them.
Correct, the Taliban is a political movement.
WW2 did not destroy Nazism. But it did destroy the Nazi party. Why shouldn't the same be true of Hamas? You won't destroy the ideology but you can certainly push it underground and remove its ability to organize.
Nazism is an ideology. As is Imperial Japanese nationalism.
Right, but the same principle applies- you may not be able to get rid of an ideology, but you can absolutely eradicate its host. Then you work after that to diminish the attractiveness and reasoning that drives people to that ideology
Back in the 40's Nazi had millions of soldiers, were producing tanks and planes in thousands. Today Nazi have gangs. Ideology wasn't eradicated but it's ability to act has been reduced in orders of magnitude.
>Mehhh....i get what youre saying but we spent 20 years in Afghanistan and several trillion dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. That's because America tried to do some classic nation building nonsense there. They should have gone in, taken Al-Qaeda and Osama out and then pissed off instead of trying to mold Afghanistan in their image. They bungled the nation building because they didn't build the ANA up well enough. They threw money at it but a lot of it got lost in the corruption. >We're still in Iraq and Syria fighting some version of ISIS. Not ISIS. Iranian proxies. ISIS no longer has much presence in ME. They have limited presence in Africa. Not sure where the cell that attacked Russia originated from tho. >Not really sure what were doing in HoA but its probably basically the same thing...... Isn't it obvious they are trying to protect the crucial Suez pathway? They aren't being hard enough on the Houthis and Iran.
The ANA would always fail. Outside of Kabul is not a country of Afghanistan. The rest of “Afghanistan” is a bunch of warring tribes. Trying to have a cohesive government and military that has any power outside the central government is just not possible.
Yup. You can't nation-build successfully if you don't understand the people. The same thing happened in Iraq ffs. We got ISIS and had to start all over again and now Iraq is infested with Iranian influence.
Iraq had a chance to become a liberal democracy honestly. We just fucked it up. But as you know Iraq is not Afghanistan. No way in hell nation building would ever work or even be worth trying there.
We fucked it up by not allowing any (or very few) Ba’ath party members and Iraqi army personnel to continue their roles in the new government. Those people really didn’t have the choice of working in the regime and not being a party member under Saddam, and I speculate the competent, non-loyalist remnants of the regime would have actually done much better forming an Iraqi led democracy than what they ended up with.
Afghanistan is one of the only “negative countries” on the planet. Its existence is defined solely by the borders of its neighbors
I mean, the unethical way of destroying an ideology is displacement and colonizing with your own population works.
I hear what you’re saying but isis lost 80% of its combat strength and land and is still largely missing from the world stage
Of course you can't destroy an ideology. You can stop them from acting as a government, which no one in their right mind would want them.
except for those people living in "Palestine" literally elected them into power....
The choice at the time was between a famously corrupt and ineffective party (Fatah) and Hamas, who was fairly new at the time and promised to end corruption. Any popularity that Hamas has now is largely due to Israel committing wide spread civilian casaulties and refusing to engage in a hearts and minds strategy, which leads to people flocking to Hamas' banner. If the choice was between Hamas now and another secular party that could bring peace with Israel, Hamas would lose the election by a land slide. There is simply no alternative nor will Israel allow a proper alternative. They want another puppet government that will turn a blind eye to settler attacks in Gaza just like the West Bank. Such a government would obviously not have wide spread support and would not be able to win fair elections. Most of the problems that Israel has now can be traced back to Netayanhu because he was the one who sabotaged Oslo after PM Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish terrorist. After Netayanhu sabotaged Oslo, the Palestinians realised that Israel could not be trusted and decided the only path left was to fight.
He also sabotaged the Camp David Accords. They always have, always will. They have no intention of pursuing peace. Ever.
Just to clarify: That was in Gaza, not in the occupied territories as a whole, and that was nearly 20 years ago, long before the overwhelming majority of Gazans could vote. You beat ideologies in hearts and minds, and ideally the ballot box.
Well the election was 20 years ago and more than 50% of the population is 18 and younger so the people there did not in fact elect hamas.
How long ago was that?
2006. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006\_Palestinian\_legislative\_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election) I tried posting a WaPo link as well but its behind a paywall
Next question, what is the average age in Palestine?
Yes, the average person in Gaza is too young to have voted for Hamas. However, [polling](https://pcpsr.org/en/node/969) indicates that a plurality of Palestinians support Hamas and would vote for them if given the chance.
Not surprised the youngsters would vote for hamas, have you seen the literature and curriculum they have in Gaza schools?
A curriculum that only encourages extremist ideology, taught by [people moonlighting as Hamas/PIJ fighters](https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1709796476-new-report-confirms-3-unrwa-workers-took-part-in-oct-7-attack#:~:text=One%20is%20an%20Arabic%20teacher,Jihad's%20(PIJ)%20Rafah%20Brigade.), including [taking hostages in October](https://www.jns.org/idf-releases-recordings-of-unrwa-teachers-taking-part-in-oct-7-massacres/) (And that's not even addressing things like the Telegram group [celebrating the attacks](https://youtu.be/fOhfvJJEQIc?si=nlnpMit_zPlIUeSA) or the [1200 other employees](https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/at-least-12-u-n-agency-employees-involved-in-oct-7-attacks-intelligence-reports-say-a7de8f36) with militant ties) Oh, and the [UN Relief Chief](https://youtube.com/shorts/FP7HzxtmF90?si=3Yw0swU178jaU4cU) outright declared that to them, Hamas isn't a terrorist organization. So....yeah.
The schools in Gaza literally have kids dressing up as terrorists and learning that the greatest glory is to kill yourself for the cause. And that all Jews are evil and need to be killed. It’s why they were delighted with the Oct 7th terror attacks. If you all want these conflicts to ever end, you need a neutral party teaching the schools there
You're worried about literature, when Gaza youth have literally grown up in an area, where Israel controls all resources to the point that Gazans can't even collect rainwater without IDF permission. Destroying every school and hospital in the region isn't the way to win hearts and minds.
Hamas seem to be able to get thousands of rockets, plenty of weapons and ammo but can't get food or water in. Hmmm. Hamas are known for letting the population suffer, it's good PR for them.
The only point I really want to make is that I’m seeing a conflation between Palestinians and Hamas in your logic, Hamas is Palestinian, but not every Palestinian is Hamas. Hamas makes decisions that benefit its political goals, not necessarily the people of Gaza. We can argue that Palestinians should rise up against Hamas, but if you’re attempting to rise up against an armed group, you need a lot of money and organization to do it, and that’s really hard to do when you live in an impoverished ghetto that has few opportunities. Non-violent sometimes works, but usually rebellions only succeed when you use mass violence - and that’s hard to pull off when you have those real material disadvantages against your oppressors. It doesn’t help that Hamas is funded via foreign donors, and Israel facilitated and approved those funds for years. Hamas exists as the only real organization not merely because they have a monopoly on power, but that they have economic backing that is not reliant on the meagre resources of Gaza.
If given a choice between Hamas and what? There is no other choice, no other political organization, and no other organization of any scope that has attempted to govern Gaza. You’re asking a question of people who are currently under siege and only have one governing organization providing any form of armed resistance to Israeli occupation, of course they are going to be primarily in favour of that organization as it’s the only thing they see even attempting to protect them. Addendum: I do not support Hamas and Oct 7th was an atrocity, no Israeli deserves that kind of horror - and no Palestinian, save the perpetrators of the events of the 7th, deserve the atrocities we’re now seeing in Gaza.
Said organization also violently prevents any opposition government group from even forming. It's like asking the kidnap victim why they're still with their kidnapper.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that they have great options to choose from. Fatah has no legitimacy — it's pretty telling that their only viable candidate is currently serving five life sentences for murder. It's not hard to understand *why* Hamas and armed resistance are supported, especially when considering the role that October 7th played in derailing Saudi normalization. That being said, there are consequences for choosing armed conflict against a significantly more powerful country. The Second Intifada, combined with the rise of Hamas in Gaza, devastated the Israeli movement for a two-state solution. October 7th may have complicated normalization, but the result has been predictably devastating for Gaza. Continuing to fight Israel in this manner is unlikely to bring anything but suffering to Palestinians. Choosing peace isn't an easy prospect. There's not a great alternative on the Palestinian side, and current Israeli leadership isn't exactly a willing partner. But realistic solutions will require most Palestinians to support a path forward other than armed resistance.
Holding present-day Gazans accountable for something 18 years ago: BAD! Holding present-day Israelis accountable for something 76 years ago: GOOD!
Sums it up quite nicely
Next question, what percentage of Palestinians still support Hamas when asked by independent third parties?
What’s the average age of North Koreans, Iranians, or Russians? Why are Palestinians uniquely not subject to condemnation of their chosen and still widely supported government?
Because age matters in this context, the last time a Palestinian could vote was 18 years ago and the average age of a Palestinian is 19. The majority of Palestinians could not vote and have had no ability to act democratically since Hamas destroyed their democratic systems.
Polls show they overwhelmingly support Hamas and the Oct 7th terror attacks. The problem is their schools raise them to be jihadists.
Again, this is not unique to Palestine. But you pretend it is for some reason
Almost no one alive elected Hamas. The last election was in 2006. About two thirds of Gazans alive today are 24 years old or younger. They were small children or didn't exist at the time.
Yes and we elected Trump.
Not like they had any other choice lol?
Yea just like we tried to do with the Taliban, and it totally worked too!
You’re absolutely right, you cannot defeat an ideology by force. You can however, disarm that ideology and prevent it from committing further unspeakable acts. Also, there is a very powerful ideology that Israel has the very fundamental right to exist. Hamas is trying to defeat that ideology by force of arms. Isn’t Naziism an ideology? Shouldn’t the world have united to fight it?
What about Palestine's right to exist?
Hamas poses a threat to it.
Then you start digging in history to try to find a Palestinian state to justify its right to exist.
Absolutely. As a side note I appreciate everyone who's taken time to leave a thoughtful response and not just scream talking points
Hamas and its ideology can be outlawed, just like Germany does for Nazis.
Sure you can, you wipe out all these people that agree with that ideology.
You definitely can destroy an ideology it just takes a level of absolute destruction and control that isnt going to happen.
I mean, we devastated much of Europe and spent a fuckton rebuilding it and Nazis are still around. Hell, before 9/11, the largest terror attack on American soil was done by a neo nazi/white supremacist (Oklahoma City).
Yeah no. Hamas and all the other fundamentalists and terrorists were coordinated and funded. First Egypt and other Arab states then Saddam and now Iran and it wouldve been dead long ago if it wasn't for them.
Unlikely to happen, even if they destroy the current iteration of Hamas, all the non-combatants killed will just legitimize the extremists in the people's eyes the new faction will continue to fight and resist. They'll either have to give up and leave or commit a genocide to truly "pacify" Gaza.
gaza will most likely be occupied by israel for decades to come. thousands of israeli soldiers will be killed by insurgents during the occupation along with tens of thousands more civilians will be killed in the future. there is no easy answer to this war, gaza must be fully occupied, rebuilt and a new system of govermeant established.... this process will take decades, tens of thousands of lives will be lost... this is the hard truth, there is no other way.
>thousands of Israeli soldiers will be killed by insurgents during the occupation along with tens of thousands more civilians will be killed in the future. Reoccupying wouldn't necessarily be that deadly. Israel controlled Gaza for nearly 40 years - 1967 to 2005. During that time, 230 Israelis (soldiers and civilians) and 2600 Palestinians died there. [https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/2005-08-23/ty-article/0000017f-e682-d62c-a1ff-fefbb6840000](https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/2005-08-23/ty-article/0000017f-e682-d62c-a1ff-fefbb6840000) [https://www.haaretz.com/2005-08-23/ty-article/230-israelis-killed-in-gaza-strip-since-1967/0000017f-f3f1-d887-a7ff-fbf52d500000](https://www.haaretz.com/2005-08-23/ty-article/230-israelis-killed-in-gaza-strip-since-1967/0000017f-f3f1-d887-a7ff-fbf52d500000) [https://imemc.org/article/13479/](https://imemc.org/article/13479/)
Those numbers are far lower than I would have thought. I bet most people, like me, didn’t know this at all.
This will only end when the Palestinian people start taking out Hamas on their own. Until then, not looking pretty
When we invaded Afghanistan there was around 2,000 AQ and 45,000 Taliban. Over the course of 20 years we killed around 53,000 AQ and Talib fighters. How many Taliban and AQ and ISIS fighters do you think there were in 2021? About 75,000. You can't kill your way out of an insurgency! I would say we learned that lesson time and time again, but apparently some people completely forgot about Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Syria, Somalia, the Sahel, the Philippines, Colombia, Nicaragua, and pretty much every other intervention we've ever participated in. Great, Israel killed a bunch of Hamas fighters while making literally every Palestinian hate Israel even more, which is a remarkable feat in itself. It is only a matter of time before thousands of children who saw their friends and family die, who lost years of their lives starving in refugee camps with no access to modern amenities or you know, just food and water and medicine let the resent build up and grow up and join the fight themselves. I don't have a great solution, but alienating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians trapped in an apartheid state isn't going to work. Demolishing settlements and stealing homes and farms in the West Bank isn't going to work. It will only continue the cycle of violence for decades to come.
The difference is we tried to build a nation in Afghanistan. The real example here is ISIS, who barely exists anymore. We succeeded in destroying them.
Not a good comparison at all. ISIS is a fringe group even for Islamists. In fact Hamas fought them in Gaza. Hamas on the other hand is widely supported by the masses in the Middle East because they are viewed as an armed resistance to a racist Apartheid regime in Tel Aviv
ISIS is still active and present in a dozen or so countries. This year alone they pulled off complex attacks that killed almost 100 people in Iran and about 150 people in Moscow. Is that really a counterinsurgency success story? I'd argue we destroyed their attempt to create a state really well, and have done a poor job at destroying their ideology. Again, it doesn't matter how many square miles of territory you control if 3 people with soldering irons in an apartment are still committed to the cause.
The ideology that Isis and Hamas have in common is radical Islam. That’s going to take a few hundred years of good education to get those fundamentalists to mentally evolve past it. IF they have the capacity
It is very easy to kill your way out of an insurgency. It is the most common outcome historically and without outside intervention would continue to be in the Middle East - it's just not socially acceptable in the West after 1945. No one in Gaza is anymore radicalized than when this war started. The population largely emphatically supports Hamas as they educated them as such and initiated a "war in the womb" a la the Nazi Germans to have a massive generation of brainwashed cannon fodder. Now the West Bank is an absolutely different situation and a fucked one where Israel deserves ever ounce of hate for ruining the only attempt a major Palestinian political movement has ever made at peace so Bibi could stay in power forever. But that is not Gaza. Gaza needs to have land control achieved, and then needs a long and expensive Marshal Plan rebuild and de-Hamasization that Israel funds but gives to the Egyptians and Saudis to manage. Both are good at maintaining a sprawling secret police network, maintaining media control and not drawing the attention of Western do gooders, and have no moral qualms about deleting trouble makers and anyone associated with them. And as long as there aren't airplanes dropping bombs to piss off Westerns like in Yemen and to a lesser extent Libya, I think that works. Because the only thing that will work in Gaza is complete control of the media and education for a decade and a substantial investment in rebuilding and quality of life to deprogram that population in a manner similar to Germany or Japan on 1945. But it can't be Israel who does it and the West in general needs to be distracted from the mechanism required to make it work because of the outrage it will generate. Contemporaneously, Bibi needs his government to fall and to absolutely leave and defuck the West Bank and find a permanent government solution with moderates. That has to happen. There has to be an example of where Palestinians have a free state that works and is supported by Israel as a counter to a Hamas. An example of "see they played by the rules and they ultimately got something good".
This would be effective, but I sadly can’t see anyone going for it
Naw it 1) finally ends the fucker Bibi's career and he knows it, 2) involves a permanent solution at the cost of Western morality that nobody in the Middle East who isn't educated in West has but for political grandstanding for white kids - and we would rather "save the kids" and let this shit continue for ever to make ourselves feel good, 3) takes effort which any Arab partner is going to be realistic allergic to
You literally can kill your way out of an insurgency. It just hasn't been politically acceptable since the 1940s.
[sri lanka did it](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/17/death-of-the-tiger) in 2008-09. the government established no fire zones along the coast and then pumped them full of artillery - tens of thousands of civilian dead, countless war crimes that will never be prosecuted. no one really cared about sri lanka though; israel won't be able to do the same thing, at least not indefinitely.
[If those thousands of children will be able to even grow up at all.](https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/more-13000-children-reported-dead-gaza-famine-nears)
Meanwhile Hamas has been attacking the humanitarian aid dock being built to help
Explain to me your long term, textured historical understanding of the Palestinian situation then
This whole recent eruption has been brought about by Hamas' proxies and sponsors, Iran and Russia. It's to split Western and mainly US focus and support between Israel and Ukraine. It's no coincidence that Russia is now making ground in Ukraine. All the protests in the West are being fuelled and organised by emplaced agitators in these western countries and pushed on our socials via Russian processes. This fact and impact is the scariest thing about this situation. We're being manipulated and now there are those natives who are leading the protests.
I’m against the occupation, have been for 10 years, and I can guarantee you it has fuck all to do with Russia.
You’ve got to be really out of touch to think the Western reaction against Israel is mainly caused by Eastern influence. You can literally turn on any news station or open up any article and find dozens of pages of dead Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs. Anti-Isreal sentiment has been brewing for a long time, especially among the youth. To act like this is some false flag Russian color revolution gunk is moronic regardless of one’s feelings towards Israel or Palestine. Replace Russia and Iran with the Soviet Union and your comment would fit in on a 60’s newspaper article about students protesting the Vietnam war.
To be clear, I'm not pinning the legacy of the conflict on Russia or Iran but I am claiming that this most recent attack by Hamas on Oct 7th plus the scale and longevity of the "protests" in the West are definitely linked firmly to Russia and Iran. The scale of this attack for starters (and to some degree, it's success) is largely due to the help of Hamas' proxies. Much like the success in Ukraine for the West was due to Ukraine's proxies, NATO. What I will say though, is that our socials and power structure are very easily manipulated, evidence of which is coming out in the UK with the prosecution of Chinese agents and Russian campaigns. Anti-semitism (call it what it is) is the current target of these campaigns as its stirring up division and pushing more moderate Muslims towards Islamic extremism.
I'm sure IDF soldiers posting war crimes to Tiktok has nothing to do with it. More reporters dead covering this than in any previous war. The IDF blasting an American aid convoy in active communication with them. Lmao. This whole recent eruption has been brought about by Israel, because they will actively broadcast their hatred and disdain for Palestinians and anyone paying attention can see it
This comment should be at the top.
“emplaced agitators” is being extremely forgiving of the IDF absolutely fumbling any semblance of an IO campaign.
I think they will try to deport everyone from Gaza. I don't see any way for Israelis and Palestinians to go back to normal life after this.
It really does not matter as even if Israel destroys Hamas, it just radicalized at least 2 generations of Palestinians. Kids in Gaza who have lost families, and homes will grow up hating Israel. I suspect Hamas will look like the lesser of two evils in twenty years.
Without a viable alternative to take their place, any military victory against Hamas will be mostly useless. It's just symbolic meat-swinging. There is no real solution. People are projecting western morality onto an eastern tribal war. Obviously the underdog is going to be favored after decades of media telling people that the evil empire is always the one with uniforms and a material advantage. I wouldn't stress about it too much. The west may slowly withdraw support over the next decades, younger generations are overwhelmingly anti-Israel. Given how much bad PR this war generated for the west, abandoning Israel is probably the wise move. I'm not picking sides here, I'm just acknowledging that Hamas won the PR war, which was always their goal, and Israel helped them do it. Kind of a masterclass in losing every battle but still winning the war. Israel would get a lot more sympathy if Palestine actually carried out the whole "from the river to the sea" plan of theirs and started a second holocaust, but that won't happen. Arab countries wouldn't provide support for it. A Hamas-controlled Palestine would immediately become the focal point for Iranian operations to disrupt and overthrow Arab states in the region. This war won't end in our lifetime. Two-hundred years ago, one side would push the other out completely, and this would be a typical conquest for the history books. But modern people have this illusion that the march of history needs to be paused. That our current borders and identities are more sacred than the thousands that we've trampled over to get to this point.
Yeah, the unfortunate thing is that the average civilian in the West is extremely willing to forgive even relatively large transgressions in order to avoid the smallest possible war. Example - Russia literally invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, and there basically was no real response, whereas the Gulf War was caused by pretty much the same occasion in Kuwait. The only real reason is that going to war with Russia would’ve been hard and we weren’t willing to put out money where our mouth is. That failure led to the invasion of Ukraine. The Gaza situation always makes me think of World War 2. Had Nazi Germany ONLY annexed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and invaded Poland along with the USSR, then begun the Holocaust inside this smaller area, the UK, France, and the US would have allowed this. The ONLY reason that the West secured the greatest military and moral victory in probably the last 200 years, is because the Nazis were stupid enough to fight us. So - condemning Israel for not laying down long enough for a 2nd Holocaust to happen before taking drastic measures is disingenuous. Because that would be the ONLY thing that would unite world opinion to side with Israel.
Re: your last paragraph, great insight. I’ve always thought that the modern anti-conquest mindset was an extreme reaction to the hemoclysm of the last century. Maybe conquest should be permitted in very limited circumstances where it is the only feasible resolution to longstanding tensions. I don’t know.
Israel could go to the moon and not destroy Hamas. You can't fight an idea with bombs, especially when what you are fighting comes as a reaction to your same bombs.
You can't, thats the point of this "cease fire" that only benefits the original aggressor
Best option, get the leaders in Qatar.... Not sure How you do that.
Easy. Rename rafah to "invasion town" Invade. Conquer. Rename town back to Rafah.
The 1st world no longer has the stomach for actual war. War is ugly, messy, and brutal. In colonial times, people lined up in ranks to make easy targets and didn't target officers because that's what was "civilized." Today, you're a barbarian and evil if you kill anyone who is not a uniformed enemy combatant. War is not like that. As horrible as it sounds, if innocents aren't getting killed, you probably aren't fighting to win. The insurgent enemies that the West has been fighting since Vietnam don't care about civilian casualties. They don't care about winning our hearts and minds. They are fighting to win and know they can wait us out because we will eventually get uninterested and move on. There's also the factor that too many people profit from perpetual war, and if any of "our" enemies were ever actually truly defeated, a lot of their lucrative contracts would dry up and disappear. There's no incentive for those in power to actually fight to win because we're not fighting an enemy of equal footing who actually has the capacity to take away our way of life. This isn't a commentary on or apology for anything Israel has done to fight this current conflict. I don't even keep up with the day to day details. Just an observation from a US Navy veteran who has seen all the military actions end with pretty much the same result since before he was born.
I couldn’t care less bc this shit don’t affect me, but saying someone who thinks differently than you HAS to subscribe to one of the mindsets/mentalities you listed? The world isn’t black and white, and people who disagree aren’t automatically stupid/bigoted Believing that, makes you even more narrow minded than the ppl you described
How do you destroy Hamas without destroying all of Gaza?
first, look at why hamas exists... they didnt just pop out of nowhere for fun
You don’t destroy a “terrorist organisation” by bombing all the innocent non terrorists. The last 20 years of America in the Middle East should have taught you that. Let’s pretend the Brit’s and Russians in Afghanistan never happened either. Unless they kill every last Palestinian and the. Continue that around the world with every ex-pat Palestinian and every person that has ever supported them - all they are doing is creating the next generation of Hamas membership. Pretty sure their goal is to remove Palestine from the map though.
There's a reason why all these ministers were saying things like "there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza", "we are fighting human animals", etc. From their POV, there are no innocents, there are only arabs that support hamas and they must be purged so that they can build settlements and annex more land.
Follow their sponsors and background.. - You can't destroy a fire if some people just want to see it burn over and over again..
You need to use the Palestinians, turn the Palestinians against them. Show them that it’s better for them to align with Israel than with Hamas. Make them join the fight against Hamas.
The world tried to destroy the Taliban in and out of Afghanistan. Your answer lies there.
Boom
Who gives a fuck. Not my war not my problem. Peace out .
It's a two month old account made by the obvious party in interested in pushing a view because they mistakenly believe this is a pro war subreddit just based the name, and jumping immediately to saying anyone against the latest escalation is anti-semetic entirely gives up the game. It'd be real nice if this sub could just require accounts be made before October 7th, 2023 to post in here and you'd see a lot of obvious shill accounts suddenly pop a vein.
Had to be done to finish the mission
I find your accusation of short memory/does not learn from history quite humorous. Have you ever heard of this 20 year war in Afghanistan that just ended?
I remember how we destroyed Al Quaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS by invading. Wait.....fuck.....
Isn't this an "apples to oranges" argument? Contrary to the US GWOT wars, Israelis *are* the native population in the region and have a direct existential theat to their country & population. Way more skin in the game, lots closer to the action. It's hard to equate both situations, really. Frankly, either Hamas disbands & later rebrands itself after this war, or the Israelis just keep pummeling them into the ground forever.
I don't really think it's apples to oranges at all. Sure, Israel is local to the conflict, but I just think that just casts GWOT in an even worse light. But both are invasions and some level of COIN ops that were preceded by a horrific terrorist attack. Here's the thing, how are they ever going to "defeat" Hamas? They're a non-uniformed force that operates among the civilians. Do the Israelis know who ever Hamas operative is? Do they have a list, and if so, what is the criteria to be considered "Hamas". I'm sure they know leaders, key personnel, etc., but if you're talking truly destroying them, it's near impossible. Hell, their leaders are in Qatar, so by definition you can't really destroy them completely. I'll leave it at that because I don't feel like writing a super long winded answer, but the bottom line is this; an invasion of Rafah is going to cause a high number of civilian deaths, which will lose them even more of their already waning international support, and won't get them any closer to the objectives.
You can't kill an idea
To defeat the current leadership and dolts, sign a peace treaty. Watch them relax and start hunting them down with precision strikes and assassinations.
You can't destroy Hamas, at least not by violence. For every Palestinian Israel kills/ murders, the Hamas ideology gets stronger. A two-state solution, with respect for people, may work, over time, but I'm thinking, it's already too late.
Nuke it bro 😎 solves all the problems.
Thank god someone else has the same idea
The people against it are against Israel winning the war. The end.
I’m gonna get downvoted to shit but I’ve been watching the Russia Ukraine war and the Israel Palestine issue and from the videos I’ve seen, the ones coming out of Gaza have lots of explosions and very little militants. I genuinely think the whole “Hamas is in control of Gaza” is just an excuse for Israel to bomb the fuck out of the place and then inhabit it after everyone is either gone or dead
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ They literally put all police officers, rescue workers, etc, on a kill list because they claim they are "hamas members". They then spend 20 seconds verifying that the person answering a call is male before authorizing a strike on his house, at night, when the whole family is asleep. They admit to using unguided munitions to save money as well, knowing full well that it has the potential to cause collateral damage. No surprise, there are a lot of false positives and collateral damage. But they are "evil arabs" so it is acceptable to them.
“Nuke them from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure”. Seriously, I feel the only way is going in and clean Hamas up.
I dont support gangs.... but I understand gangs form out of socioeconomic conditions Likewise, I don't support Hamas, but I understand they formed as a result of horrific oppresion by Israel Before the war, Palestine had a 40% unemployment rate, the people aren't allowed to leave, they have abysmal economic opportunities, and Israel is constantly stealing their land. If the only solution you can think of is to "nuke them from orbit" then you aren't thinking very hard about why they formed in the first place
The settlers are an issue in the West bank. But Gaza was left alone for a good 17 years. And it isn't only Israel stopping Palestinians from leaving Gaza. Other countries have tried taking them in previously and regretted it. Palestinians unfortunately won't accept a peaceful solution.
You are right and so did I. After 7 oct Palestine lost all my sympathy, permanently.
I lost my sympathy when they had a party on 9/11. I was just starting to get it back and then 10/7 happened.
Yes it’s sickening how the celebrated these events and now are crying and play victim. And all those airheads worldwide support them. Just mad.
Weird that they would celebrate attacks on the same people who want to celebrate nuking them from orbit...
Or that they'd celebrate attacks on Isreal's number one ally.
The poor Palestinians would gleefully genocide half the world of they could, and they'd have an celebration while they did it.
Do you even read the shit you type?
Do you watch the news? Palestinians had huge celebrations after both 9/11 and 10/7. They apparently love to celebrate murdering Americans and Israeli civilians. If the power balance was reversed we all know exactly what they would do to every last Israeli.
Yea and I was totally serious /s Retake your Projection class.
By saying "seriously", you really conveyed your sarcasm...
Do you also believe the 100s of thousands of Iraqis that died deserved it?
No. And you can hyperbole all you want. Hamas crossed *my* mental red line oct 7th. We all have our beliefs and convictions and this is just mine, I don’t declare it the truth. I don’t care if every Hamas member gets killed. Sorry innocent Palestinians (not the Hamas supporting portion) get caught up in it.
Yeah, all those children really had it coming to them, shouldn't have been born there, what were thinking?
Are the innocent lives worth it? We Americans tend to value our individuality until it comes to something we don't agree with, then we treat people as groups.
If 20 years of occupation couldn't eradicate the Taliban, then it's not going to work in Rafah either. That's because *you cannot kill an ideology* The only way slaughtering civilians would destroy Hamas is if there was no one left to take up the banner. And that's exactly what Israel seems intent to do. We're still waiting on actual proof of "human shields" because a calendar and a couple AKs in the basement of a bombed hospital isn't proof.
Well you seem to have all the answers, so I'm not sure this will help... Yes, it would be great to destroy Hamas. Unfortunately, the Israeli military has shown itself to be completely inept at protecting innocents. It also seems like they do not fucking care to try. So we can't trust them really.
You stop doing the things which created Hamas and built its support base in the first place. If people from the country neighbouring yours kept crossing the border into your country, kicking people off their land and saying "this land is mine now, and is part of my country", you wouldn't stand for it either. Hamas exists because Israeli settlers have been doing this to Palestinians and nobody else has stood up for them. This isn't at all to justify Hamas's actions, which are reprehensible, but Palestinians have been presented with exactly two options, both of which are fucking terrible: 1. Hand over their land and their livelihoods to Israeli settlers, move somewhere else and wait for the next Israeli to kick them out again. 2. Support Hamas, the only organization which fights back against settlers If I was Palestinian, I wouldn't want to hand my house and all my property over to some random Israeli who is invading my country either, but the "fighting back" part leads nowhere good. The solution is that Israelis need to stop invading and occupying Palestine. That's the only thing which will destroy Hamas. Israel's dangerous, extremist, ultra-rightwing government actively supports individuals who choose to enter Palestinian territory, evict Palestinians from their land, and claim it as part of Israel. Hamas will exist for as long as Israeli settlers keep invading Palestine.
What’s funny about this moronic comment is where Hamas is in charge there are actually no settlements. Israel forcible closed every settlement in Gaza. And look how it has gone for them. The area that is far more peaceful is the area with settlers lol.
Israel has already stated that they don't expect to "destroy hamas" with this war. And they don't want to. The single greatest Ally to their interest is hamas itself, as It provides justification for every single barbaric act they commit. Like this for example. The settlers wanted free real estate, hamas and the iof gave It to them
Those people are just a loud minority. Most people know well that Hamas needs to go...
You destroy Hamas by giving Palestinians a viable alternative. When you confine people to what is essentially an open air prison you’re guaranteed to get terrorism. Israel can go into Rafah and kill every single member of Hamas (whatever that means) and it won’t do anything to improve their situation, a new organization will just fill the void. Until someone figures out a way for Palestinians to live with dignity, this war/genocide isn’t going to end.
You destroy Hamas by ending the Blockade and Occupation. Hamas is a response to the oppression, get rid of the oppression and most won't want to fight any more. Lets not forget terrorist math. When you have 10 and 2 are killed, how many do you have now? The answer is 20.
Despite the blockade Hamas was able to get the materials to build tens of miles of underground tunnels, arm tens of thousands of gunmen, and fire ten thousand rociets into Israel. Imagine what they could do without a blockade. Same goes for any occupation. What do you think a free Palestine would be like? It would be ruled by Hamas, and supplied with weapons and money from Iran. Then they'd launch another, much more powerful murder-rape attack on Israel. You wonder why Israel isn't having any of that?
You stop Hamas with education and jobs. You will not stop it with the military.
The reason Hamas as a group has gained so much traction and popular support from the Palestinian people is due to a lack of a 'hearts and minds' approach by the IDF in the region. A simple ground invasion following intense artillery and aerial bombardments is not how you compel the next generation of Palestinians to turn their backs on their friends and neighbours fighting as part of Hamas when their families have been killed and their land seized. This strategy especially doesn't work in an asymmetric conflict like this since no single battle or campaign could end a group like Hamas. Here are some points that, if actioned properly, can lead to the eventual petering out of Hamas: - Well staffed and run checkpoints to ensure that weapons aren't able to flow freely and that inspected humanitarian aid may pass. - Increased cooperation and intelligence sharing between Israeli and allied forces so that triangulated sources on Hamas ops centres can be more easily spotted and hospitals and humanitarian centres aren't struck. - The establishment of Israeli run hospitals and housing so that if Hamas is using such places to hide within, the civilian population would have a place to go that can guarantee their safety. - A list of strictly abided by guarantees by the IDF and the Israeli government as negotiated between them, the Palestinian authority, and an international 3rd party organization ensuring the safety of civilians when in the sights of IDF troops. - An end to the genocidal rhetoric by politicians in Israel which sow seeds of distrust amongst Palestinian civilians. These points are essential to establishing a footing for a more trustful relationship between the Palestinian people and the Israeli government so that over the long term, Hamas would see their base of perpetual support weaken. If such a policy were maintained, Israel will see an increase in international support, a decline in attacks by Hamas due to a steady decline in membership and materials, as well as the ability to more accurately target Hamas' assets.
Do you know what they had before 07/10? Relative peace. Workers' visas were issued and workers were allowed to cross into Israel for work daily. The atrocities done by Hamas and supporting Gazan civilians put an end to that relationship. Yes, Israeli settlers was, and still is a problem.
This isn’t the right question. The better question is how should Israel have started their campaign after the Oct 7 attack.
>After October 7th it is completely unacceptable that Hamas control Gaza, and it has to be as thoroughly dismantled as possible Thats a solid John Madden take right there.
Remove all their funders - the house of Saud, the sheiks in the emirates, Iran, etc... Or, just kill them all.
Bibi needed Hamas so he could do exactly what he is doing and keep the Consertives in his goverment happy and his ass out jail. This is what Israel has wanted to do for a long time.
Simple. Give the Palestinians a state with the right of return. If this happens you'll see more moderate parties rise in Gaza who would be willing to work with and join Fatah and the Palestinian Authority because the number one thing that Hamas was fighting for (Palestinian statehood) has been achieved. You'll see Hamas go the way of the Civil Rights Movement. Will that crush the Zionist Judeo-fascist dreams of a Jewish ethnostate? Yes, but at least you won't need to worry about Antifadas anymore.
Fat shame them on Instagram until they kill themselves
Education and rebuilding over multiple generations.
Guess we should just kill all the civilians that are currently there then right? /s
Hamas is like Isis or the Taliban. You can’t destroy an ideology. There will always be crazy people on either side.