Sometimes the path is not easy. Are you too young to remember the early 90s. You completely ignore the fact that the world has responded to crisis in the past.
And by now, it should be pretty clear that we all have to live on this spinning rock. Climate change doesn’t care about humans having trouble agreeing on things. It’s either work it out or become fossils. If we want to survive as a species, we best get crackin.
I’m not saying the world can’t respond, I’m saying it’s the wrong question to ask. The more meaningful question to me is what each individual power should do, when taking into account how the whole will respond.
Same with climate change-- we can talk about different ways to get China on board, and we can talk about what we (pick a definition of we) should do apart from China, but just saying “the world needs to reduce emissions” is obvious and meaningless.
How is it better to ask the question without referencing collective action? That route seems to lead no where.
What exactly is the plan you have in mind? I outlined mine, your turn.
So your idea is that Israel specifically should be doing nothing until someone else helps them? And if so how?
I haven’t criticized Israel yet. My response was 28 days ago…
I guess, in the short term, the PM needs to show strength, so that means blowing up a bunch of shit. They need to “do something”. Ideally that would mean blowing up bad guys, but blowing up random neighborhoods might work fine.
In the longer term, say over the next week, I think “reasonable” means preventing future terrorism while minimizing collateral damage. And if Israel does the opposite on both measures, then it will be judged harshly by the world.
So, like, these war crimes-- blowing up hospitals, cutting food, water, and power, closing all humanitarian corridors. They will either need to have a purpose, or they are unreasonable. If they somehow (say by a ground invasion) lead towards less terrorism, then reasonable. If lots of innocents die and this furthers terrorist interests, then unreasonable.
Just having some way out will go a long way to allowing Israel destroy the city. But without that, eventually children are going to starve, and there will be widespread protests, as well a cause celebre for terrorists everywhere.
Perhaps you’re missing an important qualifier to your statement?
“The world” is an abstract concept to which there isn’t a clear point-of-reference for responsibility. Saying "the world should . . . " is not much different from saying “society should . . .”; in each case, who exactly should be held accountable for the action taken (or for the failure of taking appropriate action)?
I’m thinking that Sredni’s idea and yours are very similar, but he’s calling upon world leaders to be held accountable.
Well said. The “world” does indeed mean humans, and the leaders of their respective nations.
I am surprised that so little is remembered re the balkans in the 90s. That was a tense moment. Russia was smarting, desperate to demonstrate world power. They had had a bit of a bumpy ride. But they were clearly unwilling to accept the UN fighting against the Slavs of Serbia. (Tribalism or an excuse? Does it matter?)
But a coalition was formed. The bloodshed was stopped. UN peace keepers are not unicorns. They exist today. The trick is avoiding some major player actively opposing the mission.
What should Israel do? Well win as much support with the world leaders as possible. Be flexible. De escalate whenever possible. Air strikes in Gaza are not helping that effort.
The reality is that Israel and Hamas have now put the entire world at risk. The situation is far more fragile than the Balkan Wars.
At worst, we could have a world war (the tribal mentality in the ME is materially worse than what we saw in the Balkans. Once somebody from tribe A kills someone from tribe B, they don’t stop trying to get revenge for the death. And it usually snowballs from there. Similar to what was seen in Iraq).
At best, the conflagration sends oil prices higher (think $150/barrel) and damages the global economy when it is already very fragile after the twin shocks of the Pandemic and Ukraine.
Table of Oil Price rises after conflicts:
My expectation here is 3 months of long-range bombardment by Israel, severe infrastructure damage in Gaza (with 2M displaced), many of the hostages dead due to collateral damage, and then Iran will get involved via proxies.
It will be a case of “we need to do something” because of internal politics back in Iran (I do have direct understanding of this as my parent was in Iran for 3 years for Diplomatic reasons). Thats when things will kick off. And yes, Iran can do a lot of damage.
They can mine the Straits of Hormuz (for example)
They can also get Hizbollah to attack Israel (opening up a 2nd front) and the Houthis to attack Saudi Arabia (opening up a 3rd front). The US would not be able to respond as the US military would be too stretched to be effective.
The US is trying to project force into the region via the two carriers in order to avoid this problem.
I’d guess they’re “using” more than “projecting”. At least more than is publicly realized.
I can’t disagree with this. I don’t think it’s a question of if Iran will get involved, it’s a question of when. My guess is that Iran is going to see how involved Israel gets in Gaza and how things go. If (when?) the IDF gets bogged down / has to commit a bunch of its resources to Gaza, that’s when I’d expect Iran (via its proxies) to strike at Israel on the other side.
The risk of a larger regional conflict is high at that point, especially if Saudi Arabia gets dragged in which I think is more likely than not the longer operations in Gaza go.
So if KSA gets dragged in, how are they dragged in? @The_Polymath suggested Iran gets the Houthis to attack KSA. But then what side is KSA on? They won’t be on Israel’s side. Or is that just more sides fighting? Would that then pit KSA against Iran? And the US helping both KSA and Israel against Iran and their proxies? Then which side do all the other ME countries side with?
I might say Hamas and Israel and mostly Hamas.
Israel is already sending ground troops into Gaza. It is going to get worse more quickly than 3 months.
I’m not a political scientist, so I can’t say “… and here are scenarios in which KSA gets brought in” - but I suppose one could be Iran playing proxy war vs. Israel, KSA voicing non-support (but not even half-objection) over it and Iran going full Sith, “either you’re with us or you’re against us” and then lashing out at KSA through proxies when KSA doesn’t fall behind in full support. KSA has to strike back, Iran uses that as see, we told you all you couldn’t trust the Saudis, they’re with the Jews too! and KSA gets drawn in having to fight anti-Israel interests determined to inflict some kind of damage as punishment for not defending Iran vs. Israel. I don’t think it’s an intentional move to pull KSA in, I think it becomes a series of events where, like history, every transgression must be responded to and not ignored.
Alliances in the Middle East are somewhat like Republican primary opponents for President: everyone else may hate one person, but they won’t team up together to fight that one person because they also don’t like each other for imagined slights from years past / beliefs of divine intervention on their behalf at the expense of everyone else. It’s just that with the ME, there’s larger players on the global map helping influence the players in the region.
I would think the Saudis would concentrate on the Iran-backed Houthis. I can’t see KSA getting involved in Israel. Thus it would be the KSA indirectly against Iran via the Houthis in Yemen. The ME is a mess.
The whole middle East has gotten together to attack Israel 3 times already. Israel won all three times pretty handily. I’m not to worried about Iran at this point.
A few years ago I would’ve been worried about Russia’s response, but they’re kind of busy ATM.
Ideally someone will agree to rule Gaza who isn’t hamas and things will be sorted inside a year. Looking at Ukraine or Syria, that’s about the best I can hope for now.
Good news: we finally have an ambassador to Israel.
Bad news: … remember, it’s only a war crime if the other side does it. Like, say, bombing a refugee camp because you’re trying to kill an opposing commander and you kill scores of civilians - if the other side does it, it’s heinous and a crime against humanity. If your side does iti, t’s cool and as an IDF commander said, civilian deaths are “the tragedy of war.”
What surprised me is that people on this very thread are still asking “Why isn’t Europe supporting Israel” and they invariably go down the “Europe is anti-Israel” path.
Sorry folks, but Europe is not supporting Israel right now because Israel is committing serious war crimes, and in the age of social media these are now impossible to hide.
500 women and children are being killed every single day in Gaza. 500. This is a huge number of non-combatants.
There is no way to spin this as “we are protecting ourselves” that does not end up making the speaker sound like a hypocrite.
I hate to think how many innocent people were killed to kill the one senior Hamas official that Israel claims to have killed in the refugee camp.
The problem with their actions is that it forces Iran to attack via proxies due to their domestic politics (they have extremist war hawks as well on their end vying for more power, and the moderates cannot afford to ignore these kinds of events as they would get pushed out of power)
Right after the refugee camp attack this happened:
I don’t see the Saudis attacking Israel as they are building better relations with them. I could even see the Saudis try to intercept any missiles from the Houthis directed towards Israel. Saudis have a lot of sophisticated military equipment purchased from the US over the years so this is a good excuse for them to use it.
The Saudis would never attack Israel because of US link.
They will however do little to stop the Houthis attacking Israel in this way because if they do respond the Houthis (Iran) will target their oil infrastructure.
