It's good to read a piece that attempts to add a little narrative to the extreme positions that are consistently posted and protested. I am no fan of Netanyahu. He's the Trump of Israel and the West Bank settlements are plain wrong. Netanyahu had to respond to the attack but there's a point to stop and Israel is way past it. And using it to move, like the USA, to totalitarianism.
Hamas is a terrorist organization who killed 1500 people, took hostages and raped Israelis. But it is also the government of Gaza. It has been given billions of dollars in aid and has not used a dime to help Gazans. And the actual terrorists in Hamas hid within its citizens. Makes for difficult to not kill civilians.
I concur with the author, but ask the pragmatic question of how to respect, even protect and defend, these “Gazan dissidents,” while rooting out Hamas for good. That Hamas is a terrorist organization, which mistreats its “own people,” does not strike me as a reason to pursue their destruction less diligently. I agree it should be done as efficiently as possible with the least possible collateral damage. But their amoral approach to their own civilians will ensure miserable collateral damage. Hamas will not go gently into that good night. How does the author propose to achieve their removal and destruction? We also cannot be blind to the fact that many Gazans do support Hamas, and getting rid of the “Hamas structure” may simply set Israel up for another Oct 7.
I agree this is not a binary issue, but let’s not trade one false binary for another. If anything, the growth of an anti-Hamas element in Gaza highlights the need to get rid of Hamas.
Let Hamas unconditionally surrender (like the Nazis and Japan at the end of WWII), and prove to those Gaza dissidents that they'll have better lives under Israeli rule (and amid the presence of Jews) -- and ultimately, as citizens of Israel -- than they ever did under Hamas (or in any incarnation of "Palestine")!
Since 2005, there has been 0 Israeli presence in Gaza and there have been billions and billions in foreign aid supplied from all over the world. The conditions for peace were there. And, they had been offered several times in the past but were spurned each and every time by Arafat and others on more than one occasion.
So what do you mean by "create the conditions for peace"? Because it appears from history that the starting point for those in Gaza and the West Bank must include the non-existence of Israel or there can be no peace.
The question is whether Gazans can be transformed into tolerable neighbors for Israel. I recently read anpeacenopan that recommends re-education analogous to De -Nazification to counter decades of anti-zionist, anti-semitic indoctrination. The moderate Gazan rebellion against Hamas is encouraging in that context, as are the 2 million Arab Israelis.
Do you think it’s possible?
If not, it seems the only alternatives are perpetual conflict of mass relocation.
Granted it's important to present "both sides" of the story but it seems these authors are in danger of propagating a false equivalency. No matter how heinous Hamas's actions may be, no matter how brutal and repressive they may be, nothing justifies the genocide being perpetrated by the United States and Israel. Remember how this situation arose in the first place. Remember who the actual architects of this obscene status quo are. This is poor journalism in my eyes if it does not properly contextualise its criticism of the resistance. Nat Turner's slave rebellion was an horrific atrocity. It was also completely predictable and inevitable. The American slave owning class bear ultimate responsibility for that atrocity. As do the United States and their vassal in this situation. What's hard to understand?
Come on, man. Hamas watched their homes being burned and their parents killed before they became Hamas. They didn't come out of the womb longing to grow up and become terrorists. They came out of the womb and were terrorized...and then they became Hamas to terrorize in return.
It is the old question to what extent do the ends justify the means.
Probably never, for sanity.
Probably always, when one feels trod upon.
And then again much less terrorism might occur on both sides if both sides quit terrorizing the other. Peace will come only when the leaders call for peace and not vengeance---again, the leaders across the board.
In any country that instigates war and violence against others, I would suspect that there are indeed individuals who don't support the government in power. But while those people shouldn't be "ignored", the overwhelming task at hand is stopping and up to the fully justified point of total destruction of those who are the source of the aggression and violence. Should the Allies have held back from defeating Germany because there were some who didn't like Hitler? Same question for Japan who didn't like their wartime government.
Innocents die in war. And the moral blame for that is on those who aggressively instigate the violence and war. To the extent that there are Gazans who genuinely wish for an individual rights respecting government that acknowledges and accepts the existence of Israel and renounces attacks on it and the treatment of Jews, then those people do deserve moral support. But I question if that description applies to those who participated in the recent demonstrations against Hamas. Are they really pro-freedom and pro-individual rights or just anti-Hamas because they recognise the horror and destruction that their elected government has brought to them? I would need to see iron-clad evidence to be convinced given the decades long terror that Israel has been subjected to well before Hamas came to power.
Shockingly, this article failed to include last weeks brutal reprisal murder of Anti-Hamas protest leader Oday Nasser Saadi Al Rabay, a 22-year-old Gazan, who was tortured and murdered by members if Hamas. This is part of the way Hamas remains in power.
Yes, Hamas will not go quietly into the night. The only solution is for the majority rejection of Hamas by the residents of Gaza and for the rest of the Arab / Muslim world to show some humanitarianism for its one people by publically and repeatedly condemning the motives and methods of Hamas and doing all that they can to see that another similar extremist group doesn't fill the void.
Do these moderates exist in the Muslim/Arab world? If so, where are they and will they remain mostly silent?
I'm not optimistic that will happen due to the grip of Muslim fundamentalism on the Islamic world.
What percentage of Gazan's were in favor of the Hamas massacre on October 8? Estimates of 60-80% have been given. The war needs to be won and Hamas utterly destroyed. Civilian casualties are actually low as a proportion of the population - lower than for any other modern urban conflict. Palestinians will suffer just as the Germans and Japanese did from WWII. Hamas is solely responsible for this war, and those victimized should bear that in mind and not expect Israel to leave Gaza capable of producing this kind of pogrom again.
You are correct - I omitted a word. I should have written:
>>Civilian casualties are actually low as a proportion of the population killed.
I left off "killed" - of those killed, the percentage of civilians is low compared to other modern urban wars. The IDF is taking care to avoid non-Hamas casualties.
Yes, I am bloodthirsty enough to want all the baby killing rapists prevented from ever doing it again.
It's good to read a piece that attempts to add a little narrative to the extreme positions that are consistently posted and protested. I am no fan of Netanyahu. He's the Trump of Israel and the West Bank settlements are plain wrong. Netanyahu had to respond to the attack but there's a point to stop and Israel is way past it. And using it to move, like the USA, to totalitarianism.
Hamas is a terrorist organization who killed 1500 people, took hostages and raped Israelis. But it is also the government of Gaza. It has been given billions of dollars in aid and has not used a dime to help Gazans. And the actual terrorists in Hamas hid within its citizens. Makes for difficult to not kill civilians.
I concur with the author, but ask the pragmatic question of how to respect, even protect and defend, these “Gazan dissidents,” while rooting out Hamas for good. That Hamas is a terrorist organization, which mistreats its “own people,” does not strike me as a reason to pursue their destruction less diligently. I agree it should be done as efficiently as possible with the least possible collateral damage. But their amoral approach to their own civilians will ensure miserable collateral damage. Hamas will not go gently into that good night. How does the author propose to achieve their removal and destruction? We also cannot be blind to the fact that many Gazans do support Hamas, and getting rid of the “Hamas structure” may simply set Israel up for another Oct 7.
I agree this is not a binary issue, but let’s not trade one false binary for another. If anything, the growth of an anti-Hamas element in Gaza highlights the need to get rid of Hamas.
Create the conditions for peace that allows a non-extremist governing entity to emerge.
That’s a nice idea, but how?
"Conditions for peace"?
Let Hamas unconditionally surrender (like the Nazis and Japan at the end of WWII), and prove to those Gaza dissidents that they'll have better lives under Israeli rule (and amid the presence of Jews) -- and ultimately, as citizens of Israel -- than they ever did under Hamas (or in any incarnation of "Palestine")!
Since 2005, there has been 0 Israeli presence in Gaza and there have been billions and billions in foreign aid supplied from all over the world. The conditions for peace were there. And, they had been offered several times in the past but were spurned each and every time by Arafat and others on more than one occasion.
So what do you mean by "create the conditions for peace"? Because it appears from history that the starting point for those in Gaza and the West Bank must include the non-existence of Israel or there can be no peace.
The question is whether Gazans can be transformed into tolerable neighbors for Israel. I recently read anpeacenopan that recommends re-education analogous to De -Nazification to counter decades of anti-zionist, anti-semitic indoctrination. The moderate Gazan rebellion against Hamas is encouraging in that context, as are the 2 million Arab Israelis.
Do you think it’s possible?
If not, it seems the only alternatives are perpetual conflict of mass relocation.
Granted it's important to present "both sides" of the story but it seems these authors are in danger of propagating a false equivalency. No matter how heinous Hamas's actions may be, no matter how brutal and repressive they may be, nothing justifies the genocide being perpetrated by the United States and Israel. Remember how this situation arose in the first place. Remember who the actual architects of this obscene status quo are. This is poor journalism in my eyes if it does not properly contextualise its criticism of the resistance. Nat Turner's slave rebellion was an horrific atrocity. It was also completely predictable and inevitable. The American slave owning class bear ultimate responsibility for that atrocity. As do the United States and their vassal in this situation. What's hard to understand?
Come on, man. Hamas watched their homes being burned and their parents killed before they became Hamas. They didn't come out of the womb longing to grow up and become terrorists. They came out of the womb and were terrorized...and then they became Hamas to terrorize in return.
It is the old question to what extent do the ends justify the means.
Probably never, for sanity.
Probably always, when one feels trod upon.
And then again much less terrorism might occur on both sides if both sides quit terrorizing the other. Peace will come only when the leaders call for peace and not vengeance---again, the leaders across the board.
In any country that instigates war and violence against others, I would suspect that there are indeed individuals who don't support the government in power. But while those people shouldn't be "ignored", the overwhelming task at hand is stopping and up to the fully justified point of total destruction of those who are the source of the aggression and violence. Should the Allies have held back from defeating Germany because there were some who didn't like Hitler? Same question for Japan who didn't like their wartime government.
Innocents die in war. And the moral blame for that is on those who aggressively instigate the violence and war. To the extent that there are Gazans who genuinely wish for an individual rights respecting government that acknowledges and accepts the existence of Israel and renounces attacks on it and the treatment of Jews, then those people do deserve moral support. But I question if that description applies to those who participated in the recent demonstrations against Hamas. Are they really pro-freedom and pro-individual rights or just anti-Hamas because they recognise the horror and destruction that their elected government has brought to them? I would need to see iron-clad evidence to be convinced given the decades long terror that Israel has been subjected to well before Hamas came to power.
Shockingly, this article failed to include last weeks brutal reprisal murder of Anti-Hamas protest leader Oday Nasser Saadi Al Rabay, a 22-year-old Gazan, who was tortured and murdered by members if Hamas. This is part of the way Hamas remains in power.
Yes, Hamas will not go quietly into the night. The only solution is for the majority rejection of Hamas by the residents of Gaza and for the rest of the Arab / Muslim world to show some humanitarianism for its one people by publically and repeatedly condemning the motives and methods of Hamas and doing all that they can to see that another similar extremist group doesn't fill the void.
Do these moderates exist in the Muslim/Arab world? If so, where are they and will they remain mostly silent?
I'm not optimistic that will happen due to the grip of Muslim fundamentalism on the Islamic world.
Shkoyekh!
What percentage of Gazan's were in favor of the Hamas massacre on October 8? Estimates of 60-80% have been given. The war needs to be won and Hamas utterly destroyed. Civilian casualties are actually low as a proportion of the population - lower than for any other modern urban conflict. Palestinians will suffer just as the Germans and Japanese did from WWII. Hamas is solely responsible for this war, and those victimized should bear that in mind and not expect Israel to leave Gaza capable of producing this kind of pogrom again.
You are entitled to your blood-thirsty opinions but not facts: "[C]ompared to the percentage of the population killed," Spagat says he assumes it is already among the top five. Spagat is a researcher of war and armed conflict and monitors the number of casualties in conflicts. "If we factor in the amount of time it took to kill one percent of this population, then it could be unprecedented," he said. Since this piece was written, 10,000 more have been killed. https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2024-08-14/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-death-toll-in-gaza-is-bad-even-compared-to-the-wars-in-ukraine-iraq-and-myanmar/00000191-50c6-d6a2-a7dd-d1decf340000
You are correct - I omitted a word. I should have written:
>>Civilian casualties are actually low as a proportion of the population killed.
I left off "killed" - of those killed, the percentage of civilians is low compared to other modern urban wars. The IDF is taking care to avoid non-Hamas casualties.
Yes, I am bloodthirsty enough to want all the baby killing rapists prevented from ever doing it again.
Genocide is not war. Get an education. Read some proper books about the Middle East.