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> However supportive of Israel one may be and how repulsed one should be by Hamas, I'd say that we should not fool ourselves in that the military operation in G

by acdha 3y ago

> However supportive of Israel one may be and how repulsed one should be by Hamas, I'd say that we should not fool ourselves in that the military operation in Gaza is Israel defending itself ("Israel's right to defend itself" is now a commonplace phrase) rather than avenging itself. I’ve felt that as well, and I would add that even if you feel every action is justified I am skeptical that it’s not counterproductive. Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end up giving Hamas more recruits than they’re losing. I especially liked this FP piece where the author mentioned that the big driver they saw for terrorism was loss of land. That’s forced so much conflict and it seems likely to keep this raging for years to come. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-failed-bombing-campaign-gaza https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-failed-bombing...

mminer237 3y ago
I think an even bigger driver of terrorism than conflict is the fact that most people in Palestine have lived their entire lives in a state wholly governed by terrorists. From birth, children constantly hear how murdering Jewish civilians is one of life's holy accomplishments, how Jews are all racist liars, how Israel shouldn't exist, how Hamas is their rightful glorious leaders, etc. You shouldn't underestimate the impact of decades of racist, nationalist propaganda on young minds. In reality, war and terrorism are awful, and I wonder if the reality of it doesn't disillusion people of its glory. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/world/middleeast/to-shape-young-palestinians-hamas-creates-its-own-textbooks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/world/middleeast/to-shape...
- acdha 3y ago
  I don’t want to discount the effects of that but most people are also capable of knowing when they’re not getting the whole story. Only around a quarter of Palestinians approved of Hamas before the war.
  - yyyk 3y ago
    >most people are also capable of knowing when they’re not getting the whole story. Most people are conformists. >Only around a quarter of Palestinians approved of Hamas before the war. But a lot more approved of violence and terrorism, and they did prefer Hamas over alternatives (that's why no election for 17 years - because everyone knew Hamas would win). Basically, there's nothing Israel can do that will compare with the main driver in Gaza: Hamas control of media and education or ability to just conscript. If there was nothing Hamas could use as propaganda, they'd just invent something. You can't compare the ability to recruit of a terror organization to that of pseduo-state. The state will always win. The state has a tax base, police, media, ways to make one conform. The terror org always needs to compete with the local power and that makes it way more difficult.
    - acdha 3y ago
      > But a lot more approved of violence and terrorism, and they did prefer Hamas over alternatives (that's why no election for 17 years - because everyone knew Hamas would win). That makes no sense: why prevent an election you’re going to win? Palestinians don’t like the way Israel treats them, with no small amount of past incidents to base that on, but that doesn’t mean that Hamas is the only option. > Basically, there's nothing Israel can do that will compare with the main driver in Gaza: Hamas control of media and education or ability to just conscript This is just propaganda designed to absolve the Israeli right-wing of decades of bad decisions. If the Israeli government had done anything to help Palestinians have viable jobs or elections, for example, then the Hamas leaders would have had to justify their positions rather than blaming all of their problems on Israel. The underlying problem is that Netanyahu liked having Hamas as a justification for why they couldn’t allow Palestinians to have a state, and as a bogeyman to point to any time they needed political support. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-to-hamas-part-of-strategy-to-keep-palestinians-divided-583082 https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-... https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  That article is factually misleading about Beersheba, the ad hoc committee switched it from the Jewish to the Arab state in 1948 but it was taken in the war.
ejb999 3y ago
>>Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end up giving Hamas more recruits than they’re losing. Both Japan and Germany have been pretty well behaved since the Allies ground them to the dust during WW2 - why do you think it couldn't work here?
- acdha 3y ago
  I’m not saying it’s impossible but that it’s a numbers game: if you have a messy battle with Hamas and kill a dozen people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s a dozen lotto tickets for the n% chance that one of the people who knew them succumbs to the propaganda saying the answer is to join Hamas and strike back. Angry people make rash decisions, especially if they think they don’t have choices. I would highly recommend reading the FP article I linked. The author has researched this for years and one of the things which has made this so depressing for me is more cogently discussed in their work about what causes people to resort to violence. Japan and Germany had their share of angry losers, but they also had productive opportunities for most people – the U.S. wasn’t taking their land for American settlers and crowding them onto reservations. If you’re a Palestinian teenager aware of the outside world but resigned to a life of subsistence farming or living on foreign aid, and then someone destroys your family’s farm and says that the land they stole is theirs now, violence is going to look more reasonable because pretty much everything else has been removed. That’s completely unlike WWII, or even Vietnam, and I don’t think we’ll see anything good come from it. Now, imagine some fantasy where Israel leaves occupied Palestine to a UN peacekeeping mission or, say, the United States gives a big chunk of BLM land to anyone who wants to emigrate (not saying this is politically possible, just for the sake of argument). You’re that same Palestinian teenager who’s been shat on your entire life but now you have the option of likely being killed fighting on behalf of people you couldn’t vote for and clearly don’t care about you … or you could do literally anything else with your life and have a much better chance of living to age 30. Having options is hugely transformative and I think any path out of this has to involve finding one.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    >or, say, the United States gives a big chunk of BLM land to anyone who wants to emigrate For people who don't know, especially non-Americans, "BLM land" refers to unoccupied rural, wild land mainly in the western US states that's owned and managed by the federal government's Bureau of Land Management. It has nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter movement.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end up giving Hamas more recruits than they’re losing. I am not so sure about that. I don't recall a bunch of anti-British terrorist Germans out for revenge for Dresden after WWII. Nor have there been a bunch of anti-American terrorist Japanese out for revenge for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even in the US, there really isn't a terrorist movement among indigenous people for revenge for the atrocities perpetrated on them by the United States (Wounded Knee being only one of many). I think revenge can be a factor in radicalizing, but I think it has to be tied to some hope of advancing a goal beyond revenge for it to pick up steam.
- acdha 3y ago
  I addressed the same point in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38620617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38620617 Basically, I think it comes down to options. After WWII, the average person in Germany or Japan wasn’t forced out of their home and livelihood, and the Marshall plan was quite effective at giving people peaceful options to be proud of. What I’m not seeing now is how Palestinians get something similar, and if you push people into a corner even non-violent people will conclude they have no alternative.
  - w7 3y ago
    What do we consider "forced out of their home and livelihood". Allied bombing of Japan in WWII destroyed upwards of 3.4 million homes and rendered the areas unlivable for a period of time.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
      Also, areas of Germany were given to Poland and the Soviet Union post WWII and many Germans were displaced.
      - acdha 3y ago
        In this case it’s also complicated by the lead up to the Cold War: I’m sure plenty of Germans resented that but even the ones who would consider violence knew that there was no likelihood of being able to win a military confrontation with the USSR. Attacking an Allied military occupation in Germany would not only have had no direct effect, it might have made things worse if that lead the American army to withdraw and leave the troublemakers to the tender mercies of the Red Army. Again, my point was that while those countries didn’t have it great, they had peace after brutal wartime conditions and the prospect of rebuilding. Yes, having to flee would be unpleasant but they ended up in another part of their country where they were unquestionably welcome, spoke the language, and were able to participate in the government (which certainly hadn’t been the case for the previous decade for anyone who wasn’t a committed Nazi), and then the victors were rather generous in helping them rebuild.

by acdha 3y ago

mminer237 3y ago

I think an even bigger driver of terrorism than conflict is the fact that most people in Palestine have lived their entire lives in a state wholly governed by terrorists. From birth, children constantly hear how murdering Jewish civilians is one of life's holy accomplishments, how Jews are all racist liars, how Israel shouldn't exist, how Hamas is their rightful glorious leaders, etc. You shouldn't underestimate the impact of decades of racist, nationalist propaganda on young minds. In reality, war and terrorism are awful, and I wonder if the reality of it doesn't disillusion people of its glory. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/world/middleeast/to-shape-young-palestinians-hamas-creates-its-own-textbooks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/world/middleeast/to-shape...

acdha 3y ago
I don’t want to discount the effects of that but most people are also capable of knowing when they’re not getting the whole story. Only around a quarter of Palestinians approved of Hamas before the war.
- yyyk 3y ago
  >most people are also capable of knowing when they’re not getting the whole story. Most people are conformists. >Only around a quarter of Palestinians approved of Hamas before the war. But a lot more approved of violence and terrorism, and they did prefer Hamas over alternatives (that's why no election for 17 years - because everyone knew Hamas would win). Basically, there's nothing Israel can do that will compare with the main driver in Gaza: Hamas control of media and education or ability to just conscript. If there was nothing Hamas could use as propaganda, they'd just invent something. You can't compare the ability to recruit of a terror organization to that of pseduo-state. The state will always win. The state has a tax base, police, media, ways to make one conform. The terror org always needs to compete with the local power and that makes it way more difficult.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > But a lot more approved of violence and terrorism, and they did prefer Hamas over alternatives (that's why no election for 17 years - because everyone knew Hamas would win). That makes no sense: why prevent an election you’re going to win? Palestinians don’t like the way Israel treats them, with no small amount of past incidents to base that on, but that doesn’t mean that Hamas is the only option. > Basically, there's nothing Israel can do that will compare with the main driver in Gaza: Hamas control of media and education or ability to just conscript This is just propaganda designed to absolve the Israeli right-wing of decades of bad decisions. If the Israeli government had done anything to help Palestinians have viable jobs or elections, for example, then the Hamas leaders would have had to justify their positions rather than blaming all of their problems on Israel. The underlying problem is that Netanyahu liked having Hamas as a justification for why they couldn’t allow Palestinians to have a state, and as a bogeyman to point to any time they needed political support. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-to-hamas-part-of-strategy-to-keep-palestinians-divided-583082 https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-... https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
selimthegrim 3y ago
That article is factually misleading about Beersheba, the ad hoc committee switched it from the Jewish to the Arab state in 1948 but it was taken in the war.

ejb999 3y ago

>>Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end up giving Hamas more recruits than they’re losing. Both Japan and Germany have been pretty well behaved since the Allies ground them to the dust during WW2 - why do you think it couldn't work here?

acdha 3y ago
I’m not saying it’s impossible but that it’s a numbers game: if you have a messy battle with Hamas and kill a dozen people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s a dozen lotto tickets for the n% chance that one of the people who knew them succumbs to the propaganda saying the answer is to join Hamas and strike back. Angry people make rash decisions, especially if they think they don’t have choices. I would highly recommend reading the FP article I linked. The author has researched this for years and one of the things which has made this so depressing for me is more cogently discussed in their work about what causes people to resort to violence. Japan and Germany had their share of angry losers, but they also had productive opportunities for most people – the U.S. wasn’t taking their land for American settlers and crowding them onto reservations. If you’re a Palestinian teenager aware of the outside world but resigned to a life of subsistence farming or living on foreign aid, and then someone destroys your family’s farm and says that the land they stole is theirs now, violence is going to look more reasonable because pretty much everything else has been removed. That’s completely unlike WWII, or even Vietnam, and I don’t think we’ll see anything good come from it. Now, imagine some fantasy where Israel leaves occupied Palestine to a UN peacekeeping mission or, say, the United States gives a big chunk of BLM land to anyone who wants to emigrate (not saying this is politically possible, just for the sake of argument). You’re that same Palestinian teenager who’s been shat on your entire life but now you have the option of likely being killed fighting on behalf of people you couldn’t vote for and clearly don’t care about you … or you could do literally anything else with your life and have a much better chance of living to age 30. Having options is hugely transformative and I think any path out of this has to involve finding one.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  >or, say, the United States gives a big chunk of BLM land to anyone who wants to emigrate For people who don't know, especially non-Americans, "BLM land" refers to unoccupied rural, wild land mainly in the western US states that's owned and managed by the federal government's Bureau of Land Management. It has nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter movement.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

> Each civilian killed by mistake has family, friends, and neighbors who might be inclined to avenge them and it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end up giving Hamas more recruits than they’re losing. I am not so sure about that. I don't recall a bunch of anti-British terrorist Germans out for revenge for Dresden after WWII. Nor have there been a bunch of anti-American terrorist Japanese out for revenge for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even in the US, there really isn't a terrorist movement among indigenous people for revenge for the atrocities perpetrated on them by the United States (Wounded Knee being only one of many). I think revenge can be a factor in radicalizing, but I think it has to be tied to some hope of advancing a goal beyond revenge for it to pick up steam.

acdha 3y ago
I addressed the same point in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38620617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38620617 Basically, I think it comes down to options. After WWII, the average person in Germany or Japan wasn’t forced out of their home and livelihood, and the Marshall plan was quite effective at giving people peaceful options to be proud of. What I’m not seeing now is how Palestinians get something similar, and if you push people into a corner even non-violent people will conclude they have no alternative.
- w7 3y ago
  What do we consider "forced out of their home and livelihood". Allied bombing of Japan in WWII destroyed upwards of 3.4 million homes and rendered the areas unlivable for a period of time.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    Also, areas of Germany were given to Poland and the Soviet Union post WWII and many Germans were displaced.
    - acdha 3y ago
      In this case it’s also complicated by the lead up to the Cold War: I’m sure plenty of Germans resented that but even the ones who would consider violence knew that there was no likelihood of being able to win a military confrontation with the USSR. Attacking an Allied military occupation in Germany would not only have had no direct effect, it might have made things worse if that lead the American army to withdraw and leave the troublemakers to the tender mercies of the Red Army. Again, my point was that while those countries didn’t have it great, they had peace after brutal wartime conditions and the prospect of rebuilding. Yes, having to flee would be unpleasant but they ended up in another part of their country where they were unquestionably welcome, spoke the language, and were able to participate in the government (which certainly hadn’t been the case for the previous decade for anyone who wasn’t a committed Nazi), and then the victors were rather generous in helping them rebuild.