I would be curious, to those on the side of “if they cooperated with Hamas they made their choice to be enemy combatants and therefore it’s fine to kill them”:
Would you organize rallies against Hamas in Gaza? Would you be an informant to the IDF about hostages, knowing you were risking the lives of yourself and your family?
I commend you if you would. I would personally die a quick death to save the life of another, but I don’t know if I could turn on the prevailing local powers knowing I might be tortured, let alone my family.
I think its easy to think all of us personally would do the most moral sounding action (including supposedly being willing to sacrifice your own life).
Seriously though, I have no idea if the results are a good thing or not. I don’t know the parties involved well enough. I suspect that the lesson in humility for the loosing side will be a good thing. Assuming it is taken to heart. IDK if the parties that gained power here will be any better. Likely just better in some ways, worse in others, like normal.
Surprisingly hard to find reports, I see 11 hostages rescued (7 by February + 4). Others were mostly exchange deals or a few voluntarily released.
So they’ve achieved 1 rescue per 3,181+ killed. Let’s say fully 90% of those were at least complicit with Hamas, that would leave us at about 318 innocents killed per hostage rescued - which of course, pushes the survivors toward radicalization.
Let’s not pretend that all of those casualties were about hostage rescue. The vast majority of them are a results of trying to degrade/destroy Hamas’s attack capabilities. You know, destroying rocket launchers, weapon caches, and killing brigade members before they go another mission that intentionally targets civilians and just happen to go on a rape spree while they are burning kids to death with their grandparents.
Try to be at least somewhat honest in analysis. I could say that ice cream sales are highly correlated with murders so we need to reduce ice cream sales. Be a close equivalent to that analysis.
I don’t think this offensive is for one singular reason. I think there are some very positive reasons, such as retrieving hostages, and sure, some within the Israeli government probably think that the offensive is the best way to restore order to Gaza and, on a long time scale, improve the lives of Palestinians.
I also see a number of darker explanations, like the continuing land seizure both officially by the government and unofficially, and wiping away the embarrassment of the Israeli government’s hand in allowing Hamas to flourish under a weakened PA, and I don’t believe that any of the above reasons are the solitary reason for the war.
We’re also seen a number of individual quotes, videos, and acts by IDF troops saying they want to kill Palestinians, forcing women and children into embarrassing poses (with womens’ hijabs removed) and making them chant pro-Israeli messages, sharing these on social media, etc. So I solidly believe there is an element of racism and xenophobic hate.
Edit: I thought it was equally abhorrent when American troops in Iraq released video of themselves gunning down fleeing known civilians and laughing about it. Of course, individual atrocities will happen. I don’t brush them aside like “boys will be boys” while they murder.
Try reading all the caveats in the way the report was put together.
Basically Israel is being listed as committing violations because it is waging a war in an urban environment with a high percentage of children. Also because the world press, with the support of Hamas’s propaganda machine, is providing the verifications needed. No one is doing that in Darfur, Myanmar, Somalia…
BTW: By your counting Israel should recover its reputation sometime in the 3100’s at this rate. LOL
It’s not a very glowing review to say “the only reason these atrocities seem as bad as Darfur is because of where Israel is waging war and because the other warzones are underreporting dead children.”
Look, at a certain point “armed conflict” becomes sadistic barbarism when you start targeting women, children, the old, the sick etc. Thats where we are now with Israel and Gaza.
Israel’s international reputation won’t recover until some of the people that have commited these attrocities are put on trial (ICC charges are very serious and even the US cannot make them fully go away).
So, how likely do you think that is?
Right, since that is unlikely to happen they will keep doing their usual DARVO (Deflect, Attack, Reverse Victim, and Offender) routine and will become increasingly internationally isolated because nobody is buying it anymore.
Which is why I said “decades”. I would be surprised if it happens before then because people in the ME have long memories (just look at Iraq and the US, or Iran and the US) and they will demand it.
I agree, and we all have our biases on where we think the percentages are. I suspect that there’s a lot of people who are at a minimum supportive of Hamas and also of eliminating Israel and Jews. Probably ‘most’ people involved. But… I’ve no knowledge on the ground, so that’s just my bias speaking. I’m prepared to be corrected after the fact when this mess is over. I don’t think I will be, but I’m aware that it’s possible. the media is a mess on this, no real trustworthy information.
Most of the discussion here seems to be based on the bias that a lot fewer people involved are hamas or hamas-adjacent than I believe is the case, and some of those folks refuse to acknowledge that they don’t actually know any more about the reality than I do.
Take a look at Hamas’s actions and your comments. Israel is not intentionally targeting civilians. They are just willing to accept more civilian casualties than you are to achieve their goals in a shooting war. That is a very different thing.
If they weren’t trying to reduce civilian casualties the artillery and air support would have started falling seconds after they secured the hostages in the rescue. Not after they were spotted and their transport broke down.
