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How is Israel Going to Retaliate Against Hamas?

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Oystein said:
Israel will NOT target civilians
Israel will NOT kidnap cilvilians
Israel will NOT torture or rape civilians
Israel will NOT rob civilians
Israel will NOT murder captured civilians nor dance on their mutilated bodies.
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What alternate universe do you live in?

Israel will absolutely indiscriminately target Gaza for airstrikes, killing many civilians, as they have done many times before. If they conduct a ground invasion, they will shoot and kill many noncombatants, including journalists, medics, and children, as they have done many times before.

The Israeli state systematically robs Arab citizens within their territory all the time. All these "settlements" are state backed armed robberies of ancestral homes. Settlers conduct pogroms of the few remaining Palestinian areas within Israel proper and the state stands by with lethal violence should any of them resist.

It's not like Palestinians haven't tried non-violent approaches before. The problem with nonviolence is that it depends on the rest of the world being outraged by the oppression. Israel guns down children and journalists and indiscriminately bombs apartment towers and the world doesn't even blink. The UN will never act because the US has a final veto.

Nonviolence relies on shame, and Israel has no shame and the world has no interest in punishing them for that. Nonviolence has not worked.
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
Israel could win big points on the international stage, probably even salvage the Saudi Deal, if they proceed with utmost caution and with as much buy-in of Palestinians as possible - this could be the watershed moment to once and for all highlight the difference in respect for Life and Rule of Law of Israel vs. Hamas.

But that would be antithetical to the militant right-wingers in government.
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Any Israeli leader who tried this would be at high risk of being assassinated by a Zionist hard liner, which is exactly what happened to the last PM who made meaningful strides towards a lasting peace.
 
from the perspective of affected Palestinians, it might be hard to tell the difference between an arrest with ages of pre-trial detention and a kidnapping.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
What alternate universe do you live in?

Israel will absolutely indiscriminately target Gaza for airstrikes, killing many civilians, as they have done many times before. If they conduct a ground invasion, they will shoot and kill many noncombatants, including journalists, medics, and children, as they have done many times before.

The Israeli state systematically robs Arab citizens within their territory all the time. All these "settlements" are state backed armed robberies of ancestral homes. Settlers conduct pogroms of the few remaining Palestinian areas within Israel proper and the state stands by with lethal violence should any of them resist.

It's not like Palestinians haven't tried non-violent approaches before. The problem with nonviolence is that it depends on the rest of the world being outraged by the oppression. Israel guns down children and journalists and indiscriminately bombs apartment towers and the world doesn't even blink. The UN will never act because the US has a final veto.

Nonviolence relies on shame, and Israel has no shame and the world has no interest in punishing them for that. Nonviolence has not worked.
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Wow. You are not simply excusing Hamas, your cheering them on. Amazing.
 
lionking said:
Wow. You are not simply excusing Hamas, your cheering them on. Amazing.
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I would guess Israel would be better off dealing with a secular organization like the PLO, but they made their decision to back the Islamists.

Blowback is a bitch sometimes.

But did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)

“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.
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https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
 
lionking said:
Wow. You are not simply excusing Hamas, your cheering them on. Amazing.
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I don't get that from the post :
it must be possible to condemn Hamas without having to uncritically accept anything Israel does.
The fact is that Israel could easily do better, and they don't.
And that includes killing journalists for no better reason than "they are armed with cameras" (real quote from IDF spokesman) .
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
And would also need Israel to commit to a peace plan based on an independent Palestine on the 1968 borders (the legitimate borders under international law). But that would be antithetical to any Israeli governmnet.
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Since you are going to offer your opinions here, at least base them on actual historical facts.

Fact one, the Israeli attack against Syria, Egypt and Jordan in June1967 (not 68) was made across the military cease-fire lines that had been established in 1949 at Rhodes. At no point have there been established "legitimate borders under international law" regarding Palestinian claims to lands.

Secondly, Israeli governments, one after the other since the conclusion of the Six Day War, have tried to devise some mechanism for Palestinians to work towards statehood, providing them with a high degree of political and social autonomy, and committing to live in peace with the Palestinians.

Thirdly, the idea of an "independent" Palestine is not practical, based on a number of considerations.
At a minimum, the non-contiguous nature of the land areas they are claiming as theirs.
Also, the lack of a cohesive central authority (Palestinian society is dominated by tribal loyalties, and various jihadist groups with guns).
Not to mention, the lack of natural resources that both Gaza and WestBank suffers from, requires a cooperative and coordinated confederation with Israel, Jordan, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia (70 miles down the coast of the Red Sea).
Any future Palestine State cannot exist within an "independent" bubble that somehow excludes Israeli involvement and connection.
 
webfusion said:
Since you are going to offer your opinions here, at least base them on actual historical facts.

Fact one, the Israeli attack against Syria, Egypt and Jordan in June1967 (not 68) was made across the military cease-fire lines that had been established in 1949 at Rhodes. At no point have there been established "legitimate borders under international law" regarding Palestinian claims to lands.

Secondly, Israeli governments, one after the other since the conclusion of the Six Day War, have tried to devise some mechanism for Palestinians to work towards statehood, providing them with a high degree of political and social autonomy, and committing to live in peace with the Palestinians.

Thirdly, the idea of an "independent" Palestine is not practical, based on a number of considerations.
At a minimum, the non-contiguous nature of the land areas they are claiming as theirs.
Also, the lack of a cohesive central authority (Palestinian society is dominated by tribal loyalties, and various jihadist groups with guns).
Not to mention, the lack of natural resources that both Gaza and WestBank suffers from, requires a cooperative and coordinated confederation with Israel, Jordan, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia (70 miles down the coast of the Red Sea).
Any future Palestine State cannot exist within an "independent" bubble that somehow excludes Israeli involvement and connection.
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Sounds like a lot of reasons why running an Apartheid state is wildly impractical.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
Sounds like a lot of reasons why running an Apartheid state is wildly impractical.
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The Palestinians want a State that is judenrein/judenfrei.
In my view, THAT would be impractical and counterproductive.

Let's keep in mind that 'Palestine' and Israel are joined at the hip, and they will not be separated.
The use of the words Apartheid or Genocide, to describe the Israeli treatment of Palestinian Arabs, simply dilutes those words to gibberish.

Gaza is presently closed to the outside world, as there's no electricity, no incoming or outgoing cargo transfers, no fuel supplies, no local fishing, and no workers permitted to go to their employment in Israel.

And amid all this, Mohammed Deif is a walking dead man. (to regain focus on the thread topic question and my specific answer)
 
I'm sure the Western press is going to report that what Israel is proposing is a war crime that completely dwarfs anything Hamas has ever done, or, in their present capacity, could ever do.

It's not like human rights or rules of war are something cynically deployed against only one side of this conflict, right?

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says he has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, as Israel fights the Hamas terror group.

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.

“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.
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https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/

The population of the Gaza strip is 2 million people. Israel is openly telegraphing their intentions to commit genocide and the Western world is silent.
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
I'm sure the Western press is going to report that what Israel is proposing is a war crime that completely dwarfs anything Hamas has ever done, or, in their present capacity, could ever do.

It's not like human rights or rules of war are something cynically deployed against only one side of this conflict, right?



https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/

The population of the Gaza strip is 2 million people. Israel is openly telegraphing their intentions to commit genocide and the Western world is silent.
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The support of Joe Biden, other criminal corrupted pilitical leaders and some forumers toward Israel on this site are their contribution to the genocide planned by Netanyahu in Gaza. We live in a world more corrupted than ever.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Israel could win big points on the international stage, probably even salvage the Saudi Deal, if they proceed with utmost caution and with as much buy-in of Palestinians as possible - this could be the watershed moment to once and for all highlight the difference in respect for Life and Rule of Law of Israel vs. Hamas.

But that would be antithetical to the militant right-wingers in government.
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Of course. The burden to act civilized is always on Israel, never on Hamas. And Hamas need never suffer the consequences of its brutality.

You are suffering under a common but still extreme delusion, that the difference in respect for life and law isn't already as plain as day. It is and always has been. If you think that Israel playing nice now will somehow change anyone's mind, you've completely lost it. Those who somehow thought that there was any sort of moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas don't have a functioning moral compass, and nothing Israel does can ever fix anyone else's inability to recognize evil.

As for the Saudis, I do not know how they respond. There is an internal power struggle within the nation between factions that support the Palestinians and those who do not, and from the outside I've got no idea what the balance of power is. But how Israel responds probably has little to do with who wins that power struggle, so it should not be at the top of the list of concerns for Israel.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
The population of the Gaza strip is 2 million people. Israel is openly telegraphing their intentions to commit genocide and the Western world is silent.
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What will you say when this is over if no genocide occurred? Will you admit you were wrong? Or will you claim that they intended genocide, but something stopped them?
 
Ziggurat said:
What will you say when this is over if no genocide occurred? Will you admit you were wrong? Or will you claim that they intended genocide, but something stopped them?
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Israel has been engaged in a decades long project of ethnic cleansing. It's already been demonstrated, this is only an intensification of that process.
 
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Ziggurat said:
What will you say when this is over if no genocide occurred? Will you admit you were wrong? Or will you claim that they intended genocide, but something stopped them?
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Do you assume that no innocent person will die as a result of a complete blockade?
 
lobosrul5 said:
Israel cannot blockade Gaza. Theres a border with Egypt that Egypt could open if they really decide they care about Palestinians and aide can flow that way.
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Ok.

And if Egypt doesn't open their borders, what % responsibility will Israel have in starving out 2 million people? How much direct responsibility for mass murder is acceptable?
 
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lobosrul5 said:
Israel cannot blockade Gaza. Theres a border with Egypt that Egypt could open if they really decide they care about Palestinians and aide can flow that way.

Unless you are suggesting Israel is going to go to war with Egypt??
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Blockade doesn't have to be 100% to hurt a lot of people
 
TurkeysGhost said:
Israel has been engaged in a decades long project of ethnic cleansing. It's already been demonstrated, this is only an intensification of that process.
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Ethnic cleansing of Gaza? How's that supposed to work, when the Palestinian population has been consistently increasing? The only ethnic cleansing of Gaza that Israel ever did was of Jews. Israel ethnically cleansed the area of Jews, not Palestinians. Was that genocide? Did you complain?

The Great Zaganza said:
Do you assume that no innocent person will die as a result of a complete blockade?
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I didn't say that. There may well be. There will almost certainly be innocent civilian deaths from military operations against Hamas, because Hamas acts to ensure that. But the claim was genocide. Do you think Israel is planning genocide?

ThatGuy11200 said:
"If"? Are you not sure whether or not this is a call for genocide?
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I'm conceding the possibility for the sake of argument, not because of what I believe. Are you unfamiliar with such rhetorical methods?
 
TurkeysGhost said:
Ok.

And if Egypt doesn't open their borders, what % responsibility will Israel have in starving out 2 million people? How much direct responsibility for mass murder is acceptable?
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They're not going to starve 2 million people. Red Cross food aid will likely be allowed in, in a day or two. If they don't, Joe Biden will put pressure on them to do so.
 
Who is responsible for Hamas' barbaric acts? My opinion is that these acts are the response to the injustice to the Palestinian people and to the inaction and cowardice of the international community, so the real culprits are those who provoked them like the support to injustice by the US government and the Israel government itself.
 
lobosrul5 said:
They're not going to starve 2 million people. Red Cross food aid will likely be allowed in, in a day or two. If they don't, Joe Biden will put pressure on them to do so.
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So you would agree that, hypothetically speaking, Israel interfering with the distribution of humanitarian aid would be a war crime, yes?

I wish I shared your optimism.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
So you would agree that, hypothetically speaking, Israel interfering with the distribution of humanitarian aid would be a war crime, yes?

I wish I shared your optimism.
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Yeah if they don't let legit NGO aid organizations in... it might get to that level. I believe Gaza has a port as well... is the Israeli Navy blockading it?

They are not going to starve out 2 million people TG. The pressure put on them by the USA and EU after video of starving kids become available would be immense.
 
lobosrul5 said:
They're not going to starve 2 million people.
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It almost feels like TG wants them to, in order to prove him right about how horrible Israel is. C.S. Lewis described the type:

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?​
 
Gaetan said:
The support of Joe Biden, other criminal corrupted pilitical leaders and some forumers toward Israel on this site are their contribution to the genocide planned by Netanyahu in Gaza. We live in a world more corrupted than ever.
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No
 
lobosrul5 said:
Yeah if they don't let legit NGO aid organizations in... it might get to that level. I believe Gaza has a port as well... is the Israeli Navy blockading it?

They are not going to starve out 2 million people TG. The pressure put on them by the USA and EU after video of starving kids become available would be immense.
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Yes, the Israeli Navy controls access to the Gaza ports. They allow fishing out for a few nautical miles and regularly intercept and inspect any shipments arriving that way. Presumably it would quite easy for them to enforce a total naval blockade if they follow through on their threat to isolate Gaza.
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
So you would agree that, hypothetically speaking, Israel interfering with the distribution of humanitarian aid would be a war crime, yes?

I wish I shared your optimism.
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What do you consider "interfering"? Delaying for a few days? Making aid go through a screening process to ensure no arms are being smuggled in? "Interfering" is quite the broad category.

And again, Egypt can let as much aid into Gaza as it wants. It doesn't have to go through Israel. Do you really think Egypt is going to block food aid? If people end up starving in Gaza, it will be because Hamas wants them to starve. And you're the reason why they might find it useful to do so.
 
Ziggurat said:
It almost feels like TG wants them to, in order to prove him right about how horrible Israel is. C.S. Lewis described the type:

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?​
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why make an actual argument when using a strawman is so much easier and quicker?
 
webfusion said:
Since you are going to offer your opinions here, at least base them on actual historical facts.

Fact one, the Israeli attack against Syria, Egypt and Jordan in June1967 (not 68) was made across the military cease-fire lines that had been established in 1949 at Rhodes. At no point have there been established "legitimate borders under international law" regarding Palestinian claims to lands.

Secondly, Israeli governments, one after the other since the conclusion of the Six Day War, have tried to devise some mechanism for Palestinians to work towards statehood, providing them with a high degree of political and social autonomy, and committing to live in peace with the Palestinians.

Thirdly, the idea of an "independent" Palestine is not practical, based on a number of considerations.
At a minimum, the non-contiguous nature of the land areas they are claiming as theirs.
Also, the lack of a cohesive central authority (Palestinian society is dominated by tribal loyalties, and various jihadist groups with guns).
Not to mention, the lack of natural resources that both Gaza and WestBank suffers from, requires a cooperative and coordinated confederation with Israel, Jordan, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia (70 miles down the coast of the Red Sea).
Any future Palestine State cannot exist within an "independent" bubble that somehow excludes Israeli involvement and connection.
Click to expand...

The goal of every Israeli government has been Eretz Ysrael, something that should e noted has no historical nor pseudo-historical basis. Eretz Ysrael includes all of what was Ottoman Palestine plus quite a lot of land owned by countries neigbouring it. Hence why the state is waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing and slow genocide in both the West Bank and Gaza.

Frankly anybody who can say with a straight face that Israel is a good actor in this conflict knows sweet fanny adams about the hustory of the country.
 
Ziggurat said:
That's ironic, coming from you. And I made my arguments against TG's position quite clear, they haven't exactly been refuted by you or him. If I'm wrong about TG's attitude, he's free to explain how.
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that was a QUESTION, but it seems that you are projecting so much that you can't tell.

It is strange how hard it is for you to see this from anyone's but Israel's point of view.

But simply according to international law, cutting a population off from the essentials for survival, or event the attempt to do so, is illegal and a violation of Human Rights.
Objectively, Israel is doing something horrible by trying to blockade Gaza, and that is true regardless of what HAMAS has done or will do.
 
Ziggurat said:
What will you say when this is over if no genocide occurred? Will you admit you were wrong? Or will you claim that they intended genocide, but something stopped them?
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The Great Zaganza said:
Do you assume that no innocent person will die as a result of a complete blockade?
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Gotta say this is one of the wildest leaps I've seen on ISF for a while, and I've seen plenty of wild ones.
 
GlennB said:
Gotta say this is one of the wildest leaps I've seen on ISF for a while, and I've seen plenty of wild ones.
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only if you think of it in a very specific way.

Note that I never called the blockade a genocide, attempted or not; a detail both you and Zig have missed.

I wanted Zig to clarify how many lives the blockade must cost before one could call it an attempted genocide, since the target is very much a specific population and not targeted at enemy combatants.
I hope no one here thinks that it can only be genocide if you actually manage to kill most of an ethnic group.


And no, I don't think that is Israel's aim here - it depends too much on cheap labor for that.
 
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