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The main difference between Gaza and other conflicts (such as Ukraine or Iraq) is that Hamas has and uses the willing (even if coerced) cooperation of the civil

The main difference between Gaza and other conflicts (such as Ukraine or Iraq) is that Hamas has and uses the willing (even if coerced) cooperation of the civilian population as part of its military strategy. Using humans as meat shields and using teenagers and young men in offensive combat roles is exactly what Hamas does. In comparison, in Iraq or Ukraine, the Iraqi and Ukrainian militaries made/make a clear distinction between military and civilian personnel (which their adversaries didn't respect). Even the Taliban makes sure to not use civilians as part of their military strategy (if we're going by the comparison with resistance fighter groups). The Gaza situation is more akin to Vietnam, where also the civilian population was actively integrated with the military and helped them in more ways direct than indirect. The key difference here being that Vietnam was invaded by France and then the US, while Hamas were the ones who stirred up the hornet's nest in Israel.

lostlogin 2y ago
> The key difference here being that Vietnam was invaded by France and then the US, while Hamas were the ones who stirred up the hornet's nest in Israel. Doesn’t this depend on when you define the conflict as starting? When do you think it started?
- fakedang 2y ago
  Tbf this isn't Hamas' first rodeo. They've been firing rockets into Israel since their conception. Then there was that ceasefire and the pullout by Israel from the Strip, but Hamas never really believed in a ceasefire. 15 years later, we ended up here.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    Thats exactly it. And this didn’t start 15 years ago. There is not much point in arguing about what kicked it off either - that won’t fix it.
    - fuzzfactor 2y ago
      To me you're making sense a lot, and that's hard to do in a case like this, where the choices are worse or far worse. What's tops on the list of things "you can't fix" anyway? You've got to draw the line somewhere, recent past or way back, you've got to declare peace, give & accept forgiveness, starting some number of years back and going forward from there. You could even start right now. Forget everything bad that came before. That's got to be the most meaningful blessing any faithful or spiritual person could have. All blessing and no cursing makes Jack a real holy man. When he grows up. Look at how the relationship between Vietnam and the rest of the world is now, compared to how it was at its worst. There was a time when it was under consideration for annihilation. "The dogs of war won't negotiate." The only thing left in the toolbox is to visualize world peace and quit running the other way. Almost the whole world tried this after World War II, under the worst of conditions, and it really worked. Almost everywhere for a very long time. Tragic operators in leadership positions do so much damage because they can't visualize anything that could lead them anywhere good, but people follow them anyway. This seems hard to fix too. After thousands of years, and everything in the 20th century, why are there still kings being unceremoniously overthrown at the same time armies massing in the desert, building "bravery" in the face of potential extermination themselves, in the same old "holy land", in biblical proportions relative to the known world today? Is that too much of a coincidence? Why can't people get over it? Doesn't that make it the longest running conflict zone anywhere, coincidentally one that is more likely to exterminate a population within their "known world" when much less of it was known the further you go back? Since it was more cutthroat when civilization was not very advanced -- ancient times it looks like? Surely over that much period of time and that far back. Is that the holiest land this planet is ever going to have, or what? That's as embarrassing as can be, surely we could have done better. Hell, it's been done before, same shit different century. How does that represent us in the universe anyway? We know there were times people failed to try hard enough to prevent extermination, not nearly as far back as biblical times so I guess it's always been a lurking possibility, for how many centuries nobody knows. What? Since the dawn of time? There was no humanity whatsoever back then . . . OTOH I remember a significant leap in humanity when Vietnam ended, and for the country as a whole, since then saw no equivalent step downward, just a gradual grinding away. With occasional off-ramps on the road to prosperity, but nothing to refuel on or any way to continue meaningfully toward a receding destination that has never been completed yet, and not open for full occupancy at all. This is what people feel and I can't put it into words very well. Nothing like my father had after World War II ended, he said it was great afterwards like nobody had ever seen. Not for everybody everywhere I know, but almost everywhere people were so much better off not having such a military burden. It was like a roll of the dice though, which hadn't really ended right when the major powers quit shooting. You had to make the best of what you got and go from there. Nobody who had been through WWII, soldier or not, was going to roll those dice again. The stakes were too high, and unfortunately have gotten higher since then. Who wants to take the chance of it coming up snake eyes and you lose everything because you started WWIII. Shouldn't give anybody ideas I guess :\ Of course the US had confiscated gold from Americans not that many years before the war, and all but the very few high-rollers had recovered financially that quickly. Then there was war and people were really ready for it to be over, so they could utilize the same level of effort, on something that's not destructive and it would be great. Anything has got to be great after you've faced Kamikazes too, so there is that. Also looks like to stop the madness some people will use enough force to make the power of suicide missions seem insignificant by comparison, if there is no other way. And stop the madness instantly. In "biblical proportion" to the known world today. Not much differrent than god was widely reported to do. This should not be necessary. Too bad almost no fighters in the whole Middle East any more even have grandfathers who went through WWII, much less fought in it as teenagers. For some it's not even in their great-grandfather's generation. The history of ancient times is now more vivid in some cultures than what remains of the lessons of a truly planet scale war, where there are just now almost no veterans remaining anywhere. Not only in the Middle East, or related to this conflict, but scattered all around and none of the total hesitation was supposed to be allowed to fade. People on a group basis are not as wary as they used to be. Even some of the same people who once were more cautious. Go back a thousand years or two, and there were bound to be a couple adversaries who exterminated each other "as much as they could" while still being there centuries later. Otherwise at least one of them wouldn't be there centuries later. What about focusing on exterminations that did happen, but were never recorded whether they happened in the holy land or not? That would be the "regular kind" of extermination, since very few things were recorded that far back anyway, or those records don't exist because even if they did, almost all records are always completely lost. You know it, without a record of course. You never know, from time to time there might be a tendency to cover up something like this. History is more of a mystery than anything else after you go back different amounts in different places. The more powerful the force, the more rapidly extermination could take place. Sounds pretty final to me. Who would want that? Wait, it's the 21st century, probably somebody by now? Have you seen what some people do to get attention on Twitter? And that was when it was Twitter :\ But could it even happen unintentionally, or completely accidentally, which are two different things themselves? What if there was just a little bit of intention?
  - afiori 2y ago
    Hamas was created after decades of Israel firing rockets and missiles at Gaza (with significantly higher casualties that anything hamas did)
nickserv 2y ago
> The key difference here being that Vietnam was invaded by France and then the US Not quite. Indochina was a French colony which rebelled and escalated into open conflict. The rebellion was successful, the French were expelled, and Vietnam was formed. However conflict in the area continued as a civil war between the two dominant factions in Vietnam (communist vs capitalist) for control of the new country. The US intervention was a failed attempt at suppressing the communist faction. Gaza is different in that it was conquered by Israel during their war with Egypt. The Israelies even started building settlements there. Israel then got out of Gaza and removed all their settlers as part of a peace accord (if memory serves). However Gaza never really accepted peace with Israel and kept on attacking them, culminating in the Oct 7th attack that got us in this mess.
- aguaviva 2y ago
  It never fully pulled out of Gaza, only partially. It continued to maintain control of borders, maritime and airspace, to maintain control over key resources, and to bomb and invade the territory on multiple occasions. That's why the territory is considered to be "occupied" per UN statutes. "We pulled the settlements, therefore it's all good and people don't know what they're complaining about" is just the government's spin.
cloverich 2y ago
> The main difference between Gaza and other conflicts (such as Ukraine or Iraq) is that Hamas has and uses the willing (even if coerced) cooperation of the civilian population as part of its military strategy. I find this IoW report of the situation a compelling expansion of that line of thinking[1], for anyone interested; excerpt: > Hamas’ long-term effort to embed itself in Palestinian society and politics makes defeating and replacing it very difficult, but not impossible. Hamas’ combination of social services and outreach with coercive measures have ensured that Hamas retains significant support in Gaza relative to the very limited number of other entities that could replace it, despite the extremely destructive war that Hamas initiated. Hamas’ coercive apparatus makes it extremely difficult for possible Hamas alternatives in the Gaza Strip to begin to build their own governance system because to do so while Hamas remains militarily active risks near-certain death. It is not impossible to destroy Hamas’ political and military system, but doing so will require Hamas’ military defeat and a long transition to a new Palestinian-led government in the Gaza Strip. [1]: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/hamas%E2%80%99-view-october-7-war https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/hamas%E2%80%99...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

lostlogin 2y ago

> The key difference here being that Vietnam was invaded by France and then the US, while Hamas were the ones who stirred up the hornet's nest in Israel. Doesn’t this depend on when you define the conflict as starting? When do you think it started?

fakedang 2y ago
Tbf this isn't Hamas' first rodeo. They've been firing rockets into Israel since their conception. Then there was that ceasefire and the pullout by Israel from the Strip, but Hamas never really believed in a ceasefire. 15 years later, we ended up here.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  Thats exactly it. And this didn’t start 15 years ago. There is not much point in arguing about what kicked it off either - that won’t fix it.
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    To me you're making sense a lot, and that's hard to do in a case like this, where the choices are worse or far worse. What's tops on the list of things "you can't fix" anyway? You've got to draw the line somewhere, recent past or way back, you've got to declare peace, give & accept forgiveness, starting some number of years back and going forward from there. You could even start right now. Forget everything bad that came before. That's got to be the most meaningful blessing any faithful or spiritual person could have. All blessing and no cursing makes Jack a real holy man. When he grows up. Look at how the relationship between Vietnam and the rest of the world is now, compared to how it was at its worst. There was a time when it was under consideration for annihilation. "The dogs of war won't negotiate." The only thing left in the toolbox is to visualize world peace and quit running the other way. Almost the whole world tried this after World War II, under the worst of conditions, and it really worked. Almost everywhere for a very long time. Tragic operators in leadership positions do so much damage because they can't visualize anything that could lead them anywhere good, but people follow them anyway. This seems hard to fix too. After thousands of years, and everything in the 20th century, why are there still kings being unceremoniously overthrown at the same time armies massing in the desert, building "bravery" in the face of potential extermination themselves, in the same old "holy land", in biblical proportions relative to the known world today? Is that too much of a coincidence? Why can't people get over it? Doesn't that make it the longest running conflict zone anywhere, coincidentally one that is more likely to exterminate a population within their "known world" when much less of it was known the further you go back? Since it was more cutthroat when civilization was not very advanced -- ancient times it looks like? Surely over that much period of time and that far back. Is that the holiest land this planet is ever going to have, or what? That's as embarrassing as can be, surely we could have done better. Hell, it's been done before, same shit different century. How does that represent us in the universe anyway? We know there were times people failed to try hard enough to prevent extermination, not nearly as far back as biblical times so I guess it's always been a lurking possibility, for how many centuries nobody knows. What? Since the dawn of time? There was no humanity whatsoever back then . . . OTOH I remember a significant leap in humanity when Vietnam ended, and for the country as a whole, since then saw no equivalent step downward, just a gradual grinding away. With occasional off-ramps on the road to prosperity, but nothing to refuel on or any way to continue meaningfully toward a receding destination that has never been completed yet, and not open for full occupancy at all. This is what people feel and I can't put it into words very well. Nothing like my father had after World War II ended, he said it was great afterwards like nobody had ever seen. Not for everybody everywhere I know, but almost everywhere people were so much better off not having such a military burden. It was like a roll of the dice though, which hadn't really ended right when the major powers quit shooting. You had to make the best of what you got and go from there. Nobody who had been through WWII, soldier or not, was going to roll those dice again. The stakes were too high, and unfortunately have gotten higher since then. Who wants to take the chance of it coming up snake eyes and you lose everything because you started WWIII. Shouldn't give anybody ideas I guess :\ Of course the US had confiscated gold from Americans not that many years before the war, and all but the very few high-rollers had recovered financially that quickly. Then there was war and people were really ready for it to be over, so they could utilize the same level of effort, on something that's not destructive and it would be great. Anything has got to be great after you've faced Kamikazes too, so there is that. Also looks like to stop the madness some people will use enough force to make the power of suicide missions seem insignificant by comparison, if there is no other way. And stop the madness instantly. In "biblical proportion" to the known world today. Not much differrent than god was widely reported to do. This should not be necessary. Too bad almost no fighters in the whole Middle East any more even have grandfathers who went through WWII, much less fought in it as teenagers. For some it's not even in their great-grandfather's generation. The history of ancient times is now more vivid in some cultures than what remains of the lessons of a truly planet scale war, where there are just now almost no veterans remaining anywhere. Not only in the Middle East, or related to this conflict, but scattered all around and none of the total hesitation was supposed to be allowed to fade. People on a group basis are not as wary as they used to be. Even some of the same people who once were more cautious. Go back a thousand years or two, and there were bound to be a couple adversaries who exterminated each other "as much as they could" while still being there centuries later. Otherwise at least one of them wouldn't be there centuries later. What about focusing on exterminations that did happen, but were never recorded whether they happened in the holy land or not? That would be the "regular kind" of extermination, since very few things were recorded that far back anyway, or those records don't exist because even if they did, almost all records are always completely lost. You know it, without a record of course. You never know, from time to time there might be a tendency to cover up something like this. History is more of a mystery than anything else after you go back different amounts in different places. The more powerful the force, the more rapidly extermination could take place. Sounds pretty final to me. Who would want that? Wait, it's the 21st century, probably somebody by now? Have you seen what some people do to get attention on Twitter? And that was when it was Twitter :\ But could it even happen unintentionally, or completely accidentally, which are two different things themselves? What if there was just a little bit of intention?
- afiori 2y ago
  Hamas was created after decades of Israel firing rockets and missiles at Gaza (with significantly higher casualties that anything hamas did)

nickserv 2y ago

> The key difference here being that Vietnam was invaded by France and then the US Not quite. Indochina was a French colony which rebelled and escalated into open conflict. The rebellion was successful, the French were expelled, and Vietnam was formed. However conflict in the area continued as a civil war between the two dominant factions in Vietnam (communist vs capitalist) for control of the new country. The US intervention was a failed attempt at suppressing the communist faction. Gaza is different in that it was conquered by Israel during their war with Egypt. The Israelies even started building settlements there. Israel then got out of Gaza and removed all their settlers as part of a peace accord (if memory serves). However Gaza never really accepted peace with Israel and kept on attacking them, culminating in the Oct 7th attack that got us in this mess.

aguaviva 2y ago
It never fully pulled out of Gaza, only partially. It continued to maintain control of borders, maritime and airspace, to maintain control over key resources, and to bomb and invade the territory on multiple occasions. That's why the territory is considered to be "occupied" per UN statutes. "We pulled the settlements, therefore it's all good and people don't know what they're complaining about" is just the government's spin.

cloverich 2y ago

> The main difference between Gaza and other conflicts (such as Ukraine or Iraq) is that Hamas has and uses the willing (even if coerced) cooperation of the civilian population as part of its military strategy. I find this IoW report of the situation a compelling expansion of that line of thinking[1], for anyone interested; excerpt: > Hamas’ long-term effort to embed itself in Palestinian society and politics makes defeating and replacing it very difficult, but not impossible. Hamas’ combination of social services and outreach with coercive measures have ensured that Hamas retains significant support in Gaza relative to the very limited number of other entities that could replace it, despite the extremely destructive war that Hamas initiated. Hamas’ coercive apparatus makes it extremely difficult for possible Hamas alternatives in the Gaza Strip to begin to build their own governance system because to do so while Hamas remains militarily active risks near-certain death. It is not impossible to destroy Hamas’ political and military system, but doing so will require Hamas’ military defeat and a long transition to a new Palestinian-led government in the Gaza Strip. [1]: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/hamas%E2%80%99-view-october-7-war https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/hamas%E2%80%99...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]