Hamas attack on Israel

[monkey]

<Removed due to libel - mods>

I just watched his video because I saw people were complaining about it. I did not get that impression from it, so I think this is a sh.tty take on it.

However, I did get the impression he was out of his depth as a on this, which would not be the first time with Jones.

He's not innocently out of his depth, he's defended antisemites and antisemitism from his side for the entirety of his political career to the point those of us who challenged Corbyn and his supporters' antisemitism nicknamed him Squealer. He's deliberately casting doubt on very well attested atrocities and he either knows what he is doing or is entirely high on his own supply. Either way he deserves every ounce of scorn he'll get and more, and anyone who chooses to employ him at this point is making an exceptionally poor decision.

Scorn him for that then. Not stuff that's been made up.

[Sciolus]

What is it Stalin said? One child forced to watch people being brutally slaughtered is an atrocity; a million of them is a statistic.

[EACLucifer]

I wonder if people will recognise that Hamas gunning down civilians on the streets of Jerusalem is a ceasefire violation, or if they'll wait for the pause to end and Israeli operations to resume before claiming that?

[Lew Dolby]

I wonder if people will recognise that Hamas gunning down civilians on the streets of Jerusalem is a ceasefire violation, or if they'll wait for the pause to end and Israeli operations to resume before claiming that?

I wonder if people will recognise that the IDF gunning down children on the streets of jenin is a ceasefire violation, or if they'll wait for the pause to end and Israeli operations to resume before claiming that?

[EACLucifer]

I wonder if people will recognise that Hamas gunning down civilians on the streets of Jerusalem is a ceasefire violation, or if they'll wait for the pause to end and Israeli operations to resume before claiming that?

I wonder if people will recognise that the IDF gunning down children on the streets of jenin is a ceasefire violation, or if they'll wait for the pause to end and Israeli operations to resume before claiming that?

Pictured...






I wonder if any Pro-Palestinian will hesitate for a second about Palestinian militants using child soldiers

[El Pollo Diablo]

I'm temporarily locking this thread pending a discussion between the mods.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Hi everyone,

This thread has been concerning us for a while, hence why it was locked for us to discuss. We've unlocked it now, and are happy for the discussion to continue, subject to the following:

1. There has been a decided lack of compassion in the discussion so far, both for those killed and kidnapped in the Hamas terrorist attack and subsequent fighting, and for those killed in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. Yes, parties are at fault and it's okay to discuss that, it's obviously okay to be angry at the horrors that have been unleashed, but please keep the tone respectful and understanding of the innocent people who have been killed on both sides, and their families, and the fact that others might be upset at different things to you. Failure to do so is distressing to onlookers and puts the forum in a bad light, and will lead to the thread being permanently locked.

2. Libel and abuse of people external to the forum is expressly forbidden in the rules, and will not be tolerated. If there's any more of it, the thread will be locked and bans may ensue. I don't care if you dislike or even hate them, misrepresenting what someone has said and encouraging violence towards them or people associated with them is unworthy of discussion here.

3. Good faith debate is also part of the rules. There are a whole host of positions people may take on the current crisis in Israel and Palestine which are liable to be disagreed with, such as agreement (or not) with a two-state solution, culpability for the situation in Gaza prior to the October attacks, and so on. Some may find these positions distasteful or offensive. But if you can't discuss calmly, respectfully and in good faith then stop discussing this issue here, or, if that doesn't satisfy, start a thread in The Pit.

Everyone here is responsible for sticking to the above conditions.

[IvanV]

I'm going to put this here rather than the humanitarian crisis thread, as I think it is more relevant here, although it is currently being discussed there.

Whether to call for a ceasefire has been a conflicted issue in relation to this war, resulting in the Labour Party tearing itself apart for example, even though their influence on whether one is called is probably close to zero. My own reaction was, what's the point, when the party least likely to observe one was Hamas. So let's wait for Hamas to ask for one, which eventually they did, for a bit. Presumably Hamas thought it was worthwhile giving up some hostages for a very short ceasefire and the release of a modest number of Palestinian prisoners. Though I don't really understand what was going on there, and the media haven't enlightened me.

But then I thought, maybe some people are really calling for a unilateral ceasefire by Israel, but without wishing to be clear that is what they are saying. Do we think that is what Guterres is asking for?

[EACLucifer]

But then I thought, maybe some people are really calling for a unilateral ceasefire by Israel, but without wishing to be clear that is what they are saying.

Or even without understanding that that is the implications of what they are saying.

Hamas have violated two ceasefires in the last couple of months. This doesn't mean a functional ceasefire is impossible, but it does make it a lot more difficult, especially as Hamas have also made it very clear they intend to carry out more October 7th style attacks if they can. That would put a large and permanent border security burden on Israel, and also likely see the blockade not just reinstated, but probably more strictly than the current embargo on arms/other military materiel and dual use equipment used to manufacture such.

Do we think that is what Guterres is asking for?

The knowledge of conflicts he's displayed in general is worryingly lacking - or would be if the UN's opinion was especially relevant, which it isn't - so it's possible he's in the category I describe above.

And end to the violence is very desirable, but no nation with the power to do anything about it would tolerate Hamas operating on their borders nor continuing to hold hostages. Don't expect a unilateral ceasefire from Israel when neither the US nor any European military power I am aware of would offer one if they were in Israel's place.

[IvanV]

Don't expect a unilateral ceasefire from Israel when neither the US nor any European military power I am aware of would offer one if they were in Israel's place.

A unilateral ceasefire would appear to be an unrealistic expectation. Which is why it might help the discussion if people were clearer about what they were asking for. It would also help if there was a more universal approach to distinguishing populations from their rulers: many people do that, but others are less careful about it, in a way that they are less likely to do when talking, for example, about Russians and their rulers in relation to the Ukraine war.

But ultimately those are just words, and whilst people tear themselves up over them, ultimately they won't have much impact on what is actually happening. I see nothing but a terribly dismal outcome from all this. A settled peace is much more remote and unlikely than it was in 2000 (Camp David Summit), when it was already much more remote and unlikely than it was in, say, 1960 (before Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza).

Israel's (by which I mean its rulers') proximate objective is to substantially reduce Hamas's military potential. It has said so, quite clearly. It has been surprised by how much military potential Hamas created within the restrictive conditions of Gaza since Israel's last operation there. It will attempt to destroy Hamas's present military infrastructure much more thoroughly than it did before. It has said that is what it is doing. Since the military is strongly integrated into civilian infrastructure, and hard to find, and the occupants oppose this action, so the damage to civilian infrastructure and populations will inevitably be enormous, even if it is possible to be rather more careful about it as the US has demanded.

And what next? All I can imagine is that Israel will try to devise conditions in Gaza that make it harder for Hamas to rearm once the present operation is over. I wonder what very unpleasant things that might involve. And so Gaza will be an even nastier place than it recently was. As the ratchet has tightened after every episode of conflict, so once again the ratchet will tighten further, and being Gazan will be an even unhappier and more unpleasant experience.

[Woodchopper]

But then I thought, maybe some people are really calling for a unilateral ceasefire by Israel, but without wishing to be clear that is what they are saying. Do we think that is what Guterres is asking for?

We can read the text of the letter recently sent to the Security Council here: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/fil ... r_gaza.pdf

The final paragraph calls for a 'humanitarian ceasefire' without specifying by whom, so we should assume that the ceasefire would be by both parties.

A debate in the Security Council is significant in that it is the one body that could enforce a ceasefire via the threat of sanctions or military action. Though I think that either is unlikely at this stage. The US would veto any threat against Israel, and as for military action, Israel is too strong and the Security Council couldn't threaten Hamas with anything that isn't happening already.

[IvanV]

But then I thought, maybe some people are really calling for a unilateral ceasefire by Israel, but without wishing to be clear that is what they are saying. Do we think that is what Guterres is asking for?

We can read the text of the letter recently sent to the Security Council here: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/fil ... r_gaza.pdf

The final paragraph calls for a 'humanitarian ceasefire' without specifying by whom, so we should assume that the ceasefire would be by both parties.

Indeed we should. But that lack of a clarity is a problem. I wonder if there are people who interpret it otherwise, both those who read it, and those who wrote it.

[Woodchopper]

But then I thought, maybe some people are really calling for a unilateral ceasefire by Israel, but without wishing to be clear that is what they are saying. Do we think that is what Guterres is asking for?

We can read the text of the letter recently sent to the Security Council here: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/fil ... r_gaza.pdf

The final paragraph calls for a 'humanitarian ceasefire' without specifying by whom, so we should assume that the ceasefire would be by both parties.

Indeed we should. But that lack of a clarity is a problem. I wonder if there are people who interpret it otherwise, both those who read it, and those who wrote it.

Normally ceasefires are bilateral. Unilateral ones exist, but they are comparatively rare. The letter starts by condemning the 7 October massacres. So I expect that most people would interpret it as a call for a bilateral ceasefire.

[EACLucifer]

But then I thought, maybe some people are really calling for a unilateral ceasefire by Israel, but without wishing to be clear that is what they are saying. Do we think that is what Guterres is asking for?

We can read the text of the letter recently sent to the Security Council here: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/fil ... r_gaza.pdf

The final paragraph calls for a 'humanitarian ceasefire' without specifying by whom, so we should assume that the ceasefire would be by both parties.

A debate in the Security Council is significant in that it is the one body that could enforce a ceasefire via the threat of sanctions or military action. Though I think that either is unlikely at this stage. The US would veto any threat against Israel, and as for military action, Israel is too strong and the Security Council couldn't threaten Hamas with anything that isn't happening already.

There absolutely are actions that can be taken against Hamas that aren't already happening and that's actions against the Iranian regime and the IRGC specifically, as well as actions against those states that house their cowardly leadership, like Qatar, to force them to expel or better yet extradite them.

[discovolante]

What is Israel's longer term plan for this? By what metric would it consider Hamas defeated and what are its intentions once that's achieved, if it's achieved?

I doubt that Israel has a long term plan. It's far from clear that anyone, on either side or on the outside looking in, has a realistic long term plan. I certainly can't think of one.

Israel's plan is (1) get the hostages back, (2) "teach the bad guys a lesson", and (3) when those are done, think about what comes next. Which is a sh.t plan in the long term, but understandable and predictable and probably politically unavoidable in the real world.

Coming back to this, and assuming there is still no long term plan, when you say 'politically unavoidable in the real world', what do you mean by this? Politically unavoidable in this context presumably means unavoidable because absolutely anything else would be unacceptable to a particular audience you want to keep on side. Who's the audience here? The electorate? Israel's allies? Hamas? Someone else? And whoever it is, why is no other option available?

[bolo]

Politically unavoidable in Israel, by any realistically imaginable Israeli government. The audience is the Israeli electorate.

[EACLucifer]

Politically unavoidable in Israel, by any realistically imaginable Israeli government. The audience is the Israeli electorate.

The Israeli electorate is probably one of the bigger forces that can and will realistically push for a ceasefire, but it will only happen if that involves the return of the hostages. Given they've already shown willingness to release three convicts, including attempted murderers, car bombers etc for every hostage released so far, that's a major political priority, and given how unpopular Netanyahu is right now, if people thought they'd turned down a reasonable deal to get the hostages back, the reaction would make the Anti-Judicial-Reform protests look like a few cranks at Speakers Corner by comparison.

For context, the Anti-Judicial-Reform protests saw some of the largest protest participation per capita in decades, with only city states like Hong Kong and Bahrain surpassing them.

As for punishing the "bad guys", that'll be where the Mossad come into play, which means Qatar extraditing Hamas leaders would be in everyone's interests, including those Hamas leaders.

[discovolante]

I'm worried that so far I haven't come across, here or anywhere else, an explanation of what defeating Hamas actually means, or what the medium to long term plan is after that. In fact, all I've heard is that there isn't a explanation or a plan, which doesn't seem to bode well. But I don't read about this subject anywhere near as widely as a lot of people, which is why I asked on here; I wasn't being rhetorical. I'm not pretending there are any easy or even moderately difficult solutions that are just being conveniently ignored, but deciding how you will know when your goal has been achieved, and if it is then what happens next seems fairly important.

[IvanV]

I'm worried that so far I haven't come across, here or anywhere else, an explanation of what defeating Hamas actually means, or what the medium to long term plan is after that. In fact, all I've heard is that there isn't a explanation or a plan, which doesn't seem to bode well. But I don't read about this subject anywhere near as widely as a lot of people, which is why I asked on here; I wasn't being rhetorical. I'm not pretending there are any easy or even moderately difficult solutions that are just being conveniently ignored, but deciding how you will know when your goal has been achieved, and if it is then what happens next seems fairly important.

What happens next is, the can will continue to be kicked down the road.

For the studied and decided policy of the present rulers of Israel is to kick the can down the road.

And in relation to the flare-ups that inevitably occur, they deal with them and then repress even harder to attempt reduce the risk/frequency/scale of them in future. What I have called, "rinse and repeat". Though the repetition is always at greater intensity.

Clearly Hamas can't really be permanently defeated. But its military infrastructure can be eliminated in the present, a temporary defeat. That is their stated present aim, and I think that's what they mean by a defeat.

The unknown is what kind of greater hell they have in mind for the continuation of life in Gaza after this. For after they have rinsed more thoroughly than they have rinsed before, they will wish to devise an even greater repression that reduces the risk of Hamas, or whoever replaces Hamas, building up to the level of military strength that they were able to achieve under the recent levels of repression. Whether that is really possible another matter.

Israel's rulers recently learned that its policy not had been "successful", well at least not to standards they believed they had created. They always expected some flare-ups and losses. And maybe they will have to lower their expectations of what they can achieve by it. For Hamas' action has fallen a long way short of the kind of existential threats, and widespread violence, seen in some earlier iterations of these conflicts. So a lower level of "success" was nevertheless achieved.

Israel have set off down this fateful road some extended time ago, and having made that fateful decision, they think that no other road is now available to them. Well, that is my present dismal view. 30 years ago I was more optimistic. Since then the situation has been pushed into a far more intractable condition, and quite deliberately so by the rulers of Israel.

[EACLucifer]

and quite deliberately so by the rulers of Israel.

Israel didn't make Arafat reject the Clinton deal in 2000, or Abbas walk out of a deal that would have also granted Palestinian statehood on - according to Erekat, who was party to the talks - more land than the 1949 Armistice Lines would have done.

[IvanV]

Israel didn't make Arafat reject the Clinton deal in 2000,

As I previously mentioned, that one is a bit of a myth. It's what Clinton says, so it's much quoted, but it doesn't really stack up. The deal was not written down, at least not in full, so who knows what it actually was, certainly not Arafat, because how can you keep someone to something that isn't written down. (Wikipedia article on Camp David Summit) Allegedly it was also incomplete, there were key sticking points left unresolved, but without it being written down, who can know the truth of that? And then Arafat was given a very narrow window of time to accept it, so he couldn't consult over it, it couldn't even point to a document that defined it.

If you were offered a deal like that, from someone you mistrusted badly, would you sign up to it?

...or Abbas walk out of a deal that would have also granted Palestinian statehood on - according to Erekat, who was party to the talks - more land than the 1949 Armistice Lines would have done.

This appears to refer to the discussions in 2008 between Olmert and Abbas. Abbas "...said that Olmert did not give a map of the proposal, and that he could not sign without seeing the proposal." (Wikipedia article on Abbas)

So, why didn't Olmert produce a map that Abbas could sign? Abbas was still trying to negotiate for something nearer the 1949 border, but Olmert could at least have made clear exactly what he offered.

So, if there were bona fide offers at these points, why were they never properly defined?

[discovolante]

I think the past is certainly relevant to understanding the present (although, it doesn't seem to me that there's a huge amount of consensus of what the past actually is, and understanding the differing interpretations of the past seems maybe more relevant than trying to figure out some possibly non-existent truth) but it's also the past and can't be undone, and how far back do you go? (The very very recent past seems to be that Israel's military and intelligence failed to respond to a lot of intelligence about the October 7th attack - Hamas were still the attackers of course, but that's quite troubling.)

So while the stated goal is understandable (without getting into what Israel is currently doing to achieve it), it doesn't seem unreasonable to be concerned about what Israel would consider to be a success, and how it would respond if other options presented themselves and what its long term goal is, for the sake of everyone in the region.

[EACLucifer]

Israel didn't make Arafat reject the Clinton deal in 2000,

As I previously mentioned, that one is a bit of a myth. It's what Clinton says, so it's much quoted...

You also thought things the Arab League and AHC did in late 1947 were a response to things the Haganah didn't do until April 1948.

[IvanV]

So while the stated goal is understandable (without getting into what Israel is currently doing to achieve it), it doesn't seem unreasonable to be concerned about what Israel would consider to be a success, and how it would respond if other options presented themselves and what its long term goal is, for the sake of everyone in the region.

You hope for something that is not unreasonable? That seems a big wish in that part of the world.

[IvanV]

You also thought things the Arab League and AHC did in late 1947 were a response to things the Haganah didn't do until April 1948.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I can't believe I mentioned the Arab League and AHC (who they?). I don't know specifically what they did in 1947, and wouldn't have said so without knowing that. I make no claim to have attempted to set out a specific detailed history of that period. I don't recall saying anything much more specific than the partition plan was rejected - but by people such as the Grand Mufti rather than "the Palestinian people", who were hardly asked.

I have half a memory you may have said something like this before, when it was then utterly mysterious to me, but I didn't react to it, as it seemed anyone could see it was a non sequitur. But there seems to be something there you have taken to heart, which I don't understand. And if some error of detail was made, which you have interpreted as meaning that, can you explain that, and what difference it makes to the point, probably a high level point, I was making? (And was probably my recollection of something I read in Ian Black's Enemies and Neighbours, which I don't have to hand as my father took it.)

On this more recent occasion, I did check my facts and quote sources for them.