Meanwhile on the International front....

Very good, very thoughtful essay in the London Review of Books.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21/adam-shatz/vengeful-pathologies

 

Most of that is accurate and all of it is fair. None of it justifies the actions of Hamas, which targets civilians rather than not bothering to avoid them and has a stated goal of wiping Israel out of existence.

 

So can wars started by a series of attacks almost exclusively aimed at slaughtering civilians and bringing back hostages to use as human shields.

 

No, it's not accurate or fair. OOP, you should have trusted your gut here even if there was no one else backing you up. It is so disheartening to see this and Graybeard's other posts racking up likes like a Bubbler parody.
I don't recall the attack by extremists you're referring to, but if it's an accurate p0rtrayal of what happened the perpetrator is likely in jail. As is Yigal Amir who assassinated Rabin. Individual criminals and crazies like Amir and Baruch Goldstein are almost universally denounced and marginalized (almost because they're not the only crazies) by Israeli leadership and citizens. Israel does more than any army in the world to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas has since day one targeted civilians intentionally and formally and make no secret of hiding and firing from hospitals, schools and UN offices in the hope of drawing return fire. Have we learned nothing from the hospital story? When you hear a number of children killed or injured or any other statistic reported by the Palestinian Ministry of health - that's Hamas. When they ask for Israel to supply the citizens of Gaza with food, water and electricity, the way to get it to the people while it was being demanded was to hand it to Hamas who has demonstrated over and over and over that they will take it and fire it back at Israel killing as many innocents as it can.
Rabin's assassination didn't cut Rabin's peace effort short. Arafat did that earlier when he said no to an offer that most Israelis felt was militarily irresponsible.
The intellectual dishonesty of the Kristoffs & Zwillicks of the world (and anonymous message board posters the world over) who spend 10 minutes affirming Israel's right to defend its citizens before pretending that none of this ever happened is head-spinning. On an NPR show on Friday they were talking about the biggest story of the weekend and after a couple of Jim Jordan references, someone said getting provisions to the humanitarian crisis, and they all tripped over each other to agree. I'm not surprised that the slaughtered victims were an afterthought - nothing to do about them. But what about the 200+ hostages? If everyone who was demanding the aid get through (which we all knew it would as soon as Israel felt they could do it without simultaneously allowing Hamas to import more weapons) demanded that the hostages be released, maybe they would start to feel enough pressure to free more than 2 Americans (they still have many relatives who are not yet free). Has anyone, anyone come up with a way to make sure this doesn't happen again other than ending Hamas?
Netanyahu is a talented politician who held on too long and will be held accountable for his numerous failures and his corruption. Israel has paid for its internal squabbling and will hopefully learn from it. He is exhibit A for term limits, and not trusting the electorate to take care of it themselves. It is morally obtuse or worse for someone with decades of experience observing human nature to equate him with the leadership on the other side, or worse, find HIM the objectionable one. There was no moderate leadership on the other side; there never has been. The moderates all still call for Israel's destruction, teach it in their schools and give monetary rewards to the families of suicide bombers.

"after Hamas took control of the enclave" - Nice language. Any recollection how they took control?

And that last quote is the ugliest. Experience doesn't equal wisdom and practice doesn't always make perfect. I hope that with your next decades observing human nature you do a better job analyzing the vast amounts of data that you collect.

 

OK.

Stipulate everything you say is true.

Now what?

 

Spare a thought for our colleagues.

Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza conflict - Committee to Protect Journalists

The Israel-Gaza conflict has taken a severe toll on journalists since Hamas launched its unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 and Israel declared war on the militant Palestinian group, launching air strikes and ground raids on the blockaded Gaza Strip. The conflict has since widened to neighboring Lebanon.

As of October 23, at least 23 journalists were among an estimated 6,000 dead on both sides since the war began on October 7.

 

I think you've seen me post here long enough to know I don't give a shit about people backing me up. I have an even harsher view of Netanyahu than you do. I also think he is willing to play to the extremes to feed his own corruption.

He is right about people who have been bullied becoming the bullies, though I was thinking more of the Palestinians who do side with Hamas. I didn't think any of that particular post was accusing the Israelis of targeting civilian casualties, but I am concerned that they might not be doing enough to avoid them this time around. Then again, for the reasons you stated, that might not be possible. Hamas goes out of its way to draw fire at hospitals and other civilian targets to try to make Israel look bad. I posted about the same thing earlier in the thread.

Nothing in that particular post of his questioned the horror of Hamas's actions, or I would have told him to fuck off again.

I am also a little disturbed by just how many people seem to be buying into the narrative of the Israelis as the bad guys. Hamas wants Israel to be destroyed. They want all Israelis dead. They want all Jews dead. That isn't all Palestinians, but it is Hamas, so anybody who supports them or tries to justify their actions is truly lost.

 

I wish I knew. I only see a menu of bad options, though different degrees of bad. Let me turn the question to you.
Now what?

 

Guy, you and Azreal have defined the problem in two words. The situation has deteriorated to the point Israel IMO no good or even realistic options to achieve its security goals. Every choice short of some miracle way of decapitating Hamas (and I'm skeptical of that, remember all those Al Qaeda numbers threes that we killed), leaves them facing a worse problem than before. I haven't commented on this thread because I have no ideas of what anyone should do. Except if the people of Gaza slit every Hamas throat tonight, that'd help. If only 40 percent of them weren't under 12.

 

They do. But it's more common than you might think.

Ukraine: Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians