I hate Halloween, was very surprised AO fan was posting anti Israeli stuff…
Ok. I clearly stated Hamas is bad. That is not in question. But I do not see anything in your “because” post that speaks to how Israel should or should not prosecute the war. Help me out here?
Have to remember to look at the name at Halloween time.
Because Israel sending fuel to Gaza may not be used to turn in the water, it may be diverted by Hamas for military purposes.
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I am all for some international entity administering Gaza to get civilians aid.
While hamas is administering, the group that just killed 1400 civilians, I understand why Israel doesn’t want to give hamas aid.
That’s the problem, distinguishing between Hama’s and civilians and frankly distinguishing between Hama’s and Hama’s sympathisers, some of whom will become Hamas given 10 seconds notice.
I mentioned before that I suspect, without proof, that Hamad is pretty well entrenched in society there. Possibly a lot of combatants or possible combatants are civilians until they’re not.
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As posted before. Hamas is not trusted in Gaza.
If anything, destroying Gaza and its infrastructure to try to get to Hamas will increase the amount of people in Gaza who turn to Hamas.
Israel’s strategy here is a bit poor. They are reacting based on vengeance rather than reasoned strategy. It all has a very hard-right nuance to it (I suspect that the hard right folks were excluded from the War Cabinet because they are basically incompetent. Problem is they are loud and have political backers).
The US is very likely telling them the same thing, while providing cover so that Iran doesn’t enter the fray.
The additional dimension here is that some of the current collateral damage happens to be the Israeli hostages Hamas took.
Thats a huge problem for Bibi & Co domestically (their families are getting very loud and politically vocal about getting them back). Internationally, the various countries also want their kidnapped citizens back.
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Winning the peace will be difficult.
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From a veteran of the 2014 War.
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It also requires hunting from “tunnel to tunnel” rather than just “house to house” in Gaza. Good article in the NY Times today about the challenge of tunnel fights.
It looks like they are trying to destroy as much of the tunnel network as they can from above before moving troops in.
Even so, military advantages above ground will mean little down in those tunnels. Not even low light gear works down there.
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Maybe we should hire disaffected Hamas members to make subway stations. I would guess they would make much cheaper and sturdier ones, judging from the difficulty Israel is having getting rid of them.
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Thx, nice contribution. I sympathize with the author because I too am confounded on the inability of anyone to admit there’s a problem with their side.
And I agree that the USA is necessary to get an international commitment. But that won’t be sufficient. That coalition has to include ME nations, including Iran. If you want Iran, then the only external leverage available as far as I know, is China. China buys 91% of Irans oil exports in 2023. Best to get the landlord on board.
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I wonder what those on the thread wagging fingers about Israel, what they would have said about the US and Truman after the US dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people, most civilians, I’d guess. Was Truman was wrong to do that? If yes, should he have been convicted of a war crime?
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, mostly a military installation, they didn’t even pick an all-civilian target, when they entered the war.
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A lot of people think that Truman was wrong. Near as I can tell, the Truman was justified camp is large, the Truman was wrong camp is also large. The “it’s complicated” camp seems to be smaller than the other two.
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I haven’t heard anyone say Truman was wrong, let alone he should have been convicted of war crimes. Wikipedia has this “In polls of historians and political scientists, Truman is generally ranked as one of the ten greatest presidents.”
I’ve heard it a lot, particularly hitting Nagasaki. Most historians think Japan was about to surrender anyway and that shot 2 was more about testing the tech and trying to send Russia a message.
There’s an argument the nukes saved lives over fighting on ground across the islands.
Realistically America wanted to stop Russia from getting a piece of Japan like they did Germany.
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This is what I’ve heard most.
If that were true, the first one still killed lots of civilians.
If historians are still voting Truman as one of the top presidents, I’d guess most of them think that regardless of whether they thought he should have done something different, they think he did something reasonable. I don’t think anyone would rank a president highly if they seriously thought he was a war criminal.
That is a very poor analogy.
Gaza is not a threat to Israel militarily speaking.
Its not even close.
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