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> are going about it in a terrible manner How could Israel defend itself against Hamas in a manner that wasn't "terrible"? What non-terrible options do they ha

by pdonis 2y ago

> are going about it in a terrible manner How could Israel defend itself against Hamas in a manner that wasn't "terrible"? What non-terrible options do they have?

octopoc 2y ago
I mean they're all terrible at this point, but Israel has been digging this hole for a while, it's not going to be easy to get out. Doesn't mean it's not worth trying to stop digging.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > Israel has been digging this hole for a while No, Israel has been trying to defend itself against Hamas, a terrorist organization which has explicitly declared that its objective is to destroy Israel. What options does it have to do that that would meet with your approval, or even grudging acquiescence? There is no stable middle ground here. That's what much of the commentary on this situation seems to be missing. This is an existential conflict between Israel and Hamas (note that I said "Hamas", not "the Palestinians"--they're not the same): the only stable endpoint is that one or the other ceases to exist. And Hamas is the side that chose to make it that way. So I'm really struggling to see what possible options Israel has other than what they are doing.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    > What options does it have to do that that would meet with your approval, or even grudging acquiescence? They could form a state with equal rights, including right of return, for Jews and Palestinians.
    - mupuff1234 2y ago
      That would be the end of Israel as a functioning state (Jewish or not) You really think a country can double it's population overnight bringing even more division without it crumbling? You'll just end up with another Lebanon. A two state solution is the only thing that can make sense short/medium term. Longer term after decades of peace you can open the borders and create perhaps a union of sort. A one state solution is detached - it's just not a viable option, and even if you believe it's the right thing to do it just doesn't seem wise.
      - octopoc 2y ago
        A single state solution is the only long term solution. Unless we accept that ethnostates are good for everyone. Israel will have a hard time bringing in the Palestinians, but the US created reservations and the native American population isn't trying to kill everyone else. Israel needs to learn by doing it that diversity is their strength. Prosperity can do a lot towards killing the shared stories that cause people to want to go kill the people in the neighboring country. Grandpa's story about losing his home won't be as stirring when you're not being bombed and starved by the same group of people who stole Grandpa's home. Especially when they give back Grandpa's home.
        mupuff1234 2y ago
        I'm all for prosperity, which is why I think trying to merge two cultures over overnight will just result in chaos and violence. Especially since the groups are around the same size and the territory is tiny - if you actually think about the practically of such a solution you'll realize it's not viable. Do you really think the new nation wouldn't just delve into chaos Lebanon style? Might as well just sentence everyone to eternal conflict. How is starting with two states and later on creating a union type entity not better for everyone? Let's say you had to approach this as an engineering problem of merging two very different branches/companies/etc, how would you approach it? And re US, they basically committed genocide and ended up absorbing a minority, the situation in Israel is different as it's similar sized populations on a fraction of the land.
        pdonis 2y ago
        > the US created reservations and the native American population isn't trying to kill everyone else. Not now, but there was a long period during which native Americans were seriously pushing back and a lot of people on both sides were killed.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - richrichie 2y ago
    > which has explicitly declared that its objective is to destroy Israel This is not a serious argument. Israel has arguably the strongest military in ME. Forget the ragtag Hamas, no country in ME - including Turkey - can destroy Israel. Israel has nukes and Hamas has hand gliders for airforce. Hamas rockets are like glorified firecrackers. There are crazies all over the world with all kinds of crazy manifestos. That is not a license to kill and starve civilians en masse. Oct 7 was a serious security lapse on the part of Israel. It is clear that the guilty are busy distracting the population from an objective investigation and trials to punish people who are responsible for the lapses, just like what happened after 9-11. Doing that improves Israel’s long term security. But it is unlikely to happen.
harimau777 2y ago
They could have not supported Hamas as a strategy for dividing Palestinians. They could make meaningful steps towards a one or two state solution in order to undercut Hamas' power.
- pdonis 2y ago
  These same proposals were given decades ago when it was the PLO Israel was having to deal with. Israel followed them, at the behest of the international community. They didn't work--we know this because it's now decades later and the same problems still exist. Isn't the classic definition of insanity trying the same thing over and over again but expecting different results?
  - jeltz 2y ago
    So the better thing to do was to strengthen Hamas? Hamas is an enemy Israel helped create.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > Hamas is an enemy Israel helped create. In the sense that Israel failed to reach a stable endpoint to this conflict once before, in 2009, yes, I suppose this is true. They should have destroyed Hamas then, and they didn't. Which would suggest that Israel should finish the job this time.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    It's pretty well established that tactics that produce widespread civilian casualties just create the next generation of insurgents. In that respect, Israel's current actions seem to match the definition of insanity.
somenameforme 2y ago
Like you would any other crime. Investigate, insert moles, offer "extremely large" bounties + protection for arrests leading to conviction, and so on. The current situation is not only an ineffective means of combating Hamas, but is likely growing their numbers. The reason these sort of conflicts never end is because each time you bomb an area with innocents, you may or may not kill your target, but you definitely just turned all the friends, family, and so on of the innocents killed into new "real" enemies.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > Like you would any other crime. The criminal model does not work for war. This is a war. > each time you bomb an area with innocents, you may or may not kill your target, but you definitely just turned all the friends, family, and so on of the innocents killed into new "real" enemies. So when Hamas fires rockets into Israel, killing innocents, or sends a terror squad into Israel, killing innocents (and kidnapping others), it makes more Hamas enemies. Yes, indeed.
jcranmer 2y ago
Counterterrorism is necessarily a difficult and fraught process. Ultimately, it's political; military force is useful only so far as it can convince people there is no better way than your political aims. Looking at the example of successful counterterrorism conclusions, such as The Troubles in Northern Ireland or Colombia's efforts against FARC, the general pathway to success is to build up successful alternative political institutions that have the legitimacy to disarm the terrorist groups, which also means to a degree making some concessions towards the political aims of terrorists, and perhaps also requires co-opting the more moderate terrorists into legitimate political parties. Notably not on that list is such things as targeting enemy leaders with artillery rounds. Indiscriminate damage is one of the best ways to fuel an upsurge in terrorist violence; what Israel is doing now looks in many ways like what the British did in Northern Ireland to start The Troubles rather than what it did to end them.
- pdonis 2y ago
  I agree that Northern Ireland and Colombia v. FARC are useful examples. However, they both share one key property that the Israel-Hamas conflict does not have: the international community fully supports the existence of both the UK and Colombia as legitimate nation-states. That is not true for Israel; there is a large and vocal segment of the international community that does not want Israel to exist, and that segment has enough political clout that it cannot be ignored.
  - jcranmer 2y ago
    The segment of the international community that matters is fully on board with Israel's existence. The largest country to not formally recognize Israel is Indonesia. Largely only Iran is intransigent about Israel's nonexistence; the Arab countries have in the recent past explicitly endorsed proposals to recognize Israel in exchange for durable progress on Palestinian statehood. (Which, really, is one of the principal causes of the current situation: Netanyahu has in the past sought to undermine the ability of the Palestinian Authority to effectively govern Palestine--including covert support for Hamas--so as to be able to claim that there's no partner for peace to avoid having to make any progress on the statehood issue.)

by pdonis 2y ago

> are going about it in a terrible manner How could Israel defend itself against Hamas in a manner that wasn't "terrible"? What non-terrible options do they have?

octopoc 2y ago

I mean they're all terrible at this point, but Israel has been digging this hole for a while, it's not going to be easy to get out. Doesn't mean it's not worth trying to stop digging.

pdonis 2y ago
> Israel has been digging this hole for a while No, Israel has been trying to defend itself against Hamas, a terrorist organization which has explicitly declared that its objective is to destroy Israel. What options does it have to do that that would meet with your approval, or even grudging acquiescence? There is no stable middle ground here. That's what much of the commentary on this situation seems to be missing. This is an existential conflict between Israel and Hamas (note that I said "Hamas", not "the Palestinians"--they're not the same): the only stable endpoint is that one or the other ceases to exist. And Hamas is the side that chose to make it that way. So I'm really struggling to see what possible options Israel has other than what they are doing.
- harimau777 2y ago
  > What options does it have to do that that would meet with your approval, or even grudging acquiescence? They could form a state with equal rights, including right of return, for Jews and Palestinians.
  - mupuff1234 2y ago
    That would be the end of Israel as a functioning state (Jewish or not) You really think a country can double it's population overnight bringing even more division without it crumbling? You'll just end up with another Lebanon. A two state solution is the only thing that can make sense short/medium term. Longer term after decades of peace you can open the borders and create perhaps a union of sort. A one state solution is detached - it's just not a viable option, and even if you believe it's the right thing to do it just doesn't seem wise.
    - octopoc 2y ago
      A single state solution is the only long term solution. Unless we accept that ethnostates are good for everyone. Israel will have a hard time bringing in the Palestinians, but the US created reservations and the native American population isn't trying to kill everyone else. Israel needs to learn by doing it that diversity is their strength. Prosperity can do a lot towards killing the shared stories that cause people to want to go kill the people in the neighboring country. Grandpa's story about losing his home won't be as stirring when you're not being bombed and starved by the same group of people who stole Grandpa's home. Especially when they give back Grandpa's home.
      - mupuff1234 2y ago
        I'm all for prosperity, which is why I think trying to merge two cultures over overnight will just result in chaos and violence. Especially since the groups are around the same size and the territory is tiny - if you actually think about the practically of such a solution you'll realize it's not viable. Do you really think the new nation wouldn't just delve into chaos Lebanon style? Might as well just sentence everyone to eternal conflict. How is starting with two states and later on creating a union type entity not better for everyone? Let's say you had to approach this as an engineering problem of merging two very different branches/companies/etc, how would you approach it? And re US, they basically committed genocide and ended up absorbing a minority, the situation in Israel is different as it's similar sized populations on a fraction of the land.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        > the US created reservations and the native American population isn't trying to kill everyone else. Not now, but there was a long period during which native Americans were seriously pushing back and a lot of people on both sides were killed.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- richrichie 2y ago
  > which has explicitly declared that its objective is to destroy Israel This is not a serious argument. Israel has arguably the strongest military in ME. Forget the ragtag Hamas, no country in ME - including Turkey - can destroy Israel. Israel has nukes and Hamas has hand gliders for airforce. Hamas rockets are like glorified firecrackers. There are crazies all over the world with all kinds of crazy manifestos. That is not a license to kill and starve civilians en masse. Oct 7 was a serious security lapse on the part of Israel. It is clear that the guilty are busy distracting the population from an objective investigation and trials to punish people who are responsible for the lapses, just like what happened after 9-11. Doing that improves Israel’s long term security. But it is unlikely to happen.

harimau777 2y ago

They could have not supported Hamas as a strategy for dividing Palestinians. They could make meaningful steps towards a one or two state solution in order to undercut Hamas' power.

pdonis 2y ago
These same proposals were given decades ago when it was the PLO Israel was having to deal with. Israel followed them, at the behest of the international community. They didn't work--we know this because it's now decades later and the same problems still exist. Isn't the classic definition of insanity trying the same thing over and over again but expecting different results?
- jeltz 2y ago
  So the better thing to do was to strengthen Hamas? Hamas is an enemy Israel helped create.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > Hamas is an enemy Israel helped create. In the sense that Israel failed to reach a stable endpoint to this conflict once before, in 2009, yes, I suppose this is true. They should have destroyed Hamas then, and they didn't. Which would suggest that Israel should finish the job this time.
- harimau777 2y ago
  It's pretty well established that tactics that produce widespread civilian casualties just create the next generation of insurgents. In that respect, Israel's current actions seem to match the definition of insanity.

somenameforme 2y ago

Like you would any other crime. Investigate, insert moles, offer "extremely large" bounties + protection for arrests leading to conviction, and so on. The current situation is not only an ineffective means of combating Hamas, but is likely growing their numbers. The reason these sort of conflicts never end is because each time you bomb an area with innocents, you may or may not kill your target, but you definitely just turned all the friends, family, and so on of the innocents killed into new "real" enemies.

pdonis 2y ago
> Like you would any other crime. The criminal model does not work for war. This is a war. > each time you bomb an area with innocents, you may or may not kill your target, but you definitely just turned all the friends, family, and so on of the innocents killed into new "real" enemies. So when Hamas fires rockets into Israel, killing innocents, or sends a terror squad into Israel, killing innocents (and kidnapping others), it makes more Hamas enemies. Yes, indeed.

jcranmer 2y ago

Counterterrorism is necessarily a difficult and fraught process. Ultimately, it's political; military force is useful only so far as it can convince people there is no better way than your political aims. Looking at the example of successful counterterrorism conclusions, such as The Troubles in Northern Ireland or Colombia's efforts against FARC, the general pathway to success is to build up successful alternative political institutions that have the legitimacy to disarm the terrorist groups, which also means to a degree making some concessions towards the political aims of terrorists, and perhaps also requires co-opting the more moderate terrorists into legitimate political parties. Notably not on that list is such things as targeting enemy leaders with artillery rounds. Indiscriminate damage is one of the best ways to fuel an upsurge in terrorist violence; what Israel is doing now looks in many ways like what the British did in Northern Ireland to start The Troubles rather than what it did to end them.

pdonis 2y ago
I agree that Northern Ireland and Colombia v. FARC are useful examples. However, they both share one key property that the Israel-Hamas conflict does not have: the international community fully supports the existence of both the UK and Colombia as legitimate nation-states. That is not true for Israel; there is a large and vocal segment of the international community that does not want Israel to exist, and that segment has enough political clout that it cannot be ignored.
- jcranmer 2y ago
  The segment of the international community that matters is fully on board with Israel's existence. The largest country to not formally recognize Israel is Indonesia. Largely only Iran is intransigent about Israel's nonexistence; the Arab countries have in the recent past explicitly endorsed proposals to recognize Israel in exchange for durable progress on Palestinian statehood. (Which, really, is one of the principal causes of the current situation: Netanyahu has in the past sought to undermine the ability of the Palestinian Authority to effectively govern Palestine--including covert support for Hamas--so as to be able to claim that there's no partner for peace to avoid having to make any progress on the statehood issue.)