Israel vs Hamas

[Herbert Derp]

Based on the discussions in the Ukraine thread, we need a dedicated topic for this. So let’s keep the discussion over here rather than in Ukraine!

[Herbert Derp]

Israel is now telling the top half of Gaza to evacuate to the bottom half. Wonder how that will go? What percentage of the population will actually move, I wonder.

My heart goes out to those forced to flee their homes, especially when electricity, food, and water has been cut off. It’s going to be really rough times ahead.

Also I’m a little curious about how Hamas is Sunni and Hezbollah is Shia, yet these two groups are apparently allies. The Sunni and Shia in Iraq are in some sort of everlasting blood feud that is itself reminiscent of Israel vs Palestine. I’m curious how this applies to Hezbollah and Hamas.

[blue_green_sparks]

I have the unpopular opinion that the root cause of much hate and violence is religion. People will blame racism and nationalism of course and give religion a free pass as usual. Unfortunately, I don't see any non-violent answers for the "promised holy lands" as long as people are worshipping bronze and iron age ideologies. The real answer is to ditch the myths and just go and grab a good meal together. One can imagine, right?

The swords of David and Mohammad are drawn once again, and the horror is relived as it has been for centuries. It is no accident that the worse places for humans to thrive and grow are always the most religious.     

[Freedomin5]

Well, Hamas just declared today (10/13) to be an international day of rage and told their followers to attack Israelis and Jews around the world. An embassy worker in Beijing was stabbed today. My friend works at an international school where there are several Israeli families so now my friend and the school is on high alert because there may be attacks on innocent little kids. I went to a public high school in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood and have many Jewish friends. So it’s hitting a bit close to home right now.

[GilesMM]

I have the unpopular opinion that the root cause of much hate and violence is religion. People will blame racism and nationalism of course and give religion a free pass as usual. Unfortunately, I don't see any non-violent answers for the "promised holy lands" as long as people are worshipping bronze and iron age ideologies. The real answer is to ditch the myths and just go and grab a good meal together. One can imagine, right?

The swords of David and Mohammad are drawn once again, and the horror is relived as it has been for centuries. It is no accident that the worse places for humans to thrive and grow are always the most religious.   

I thought it was a decades-old dispute about territory, security and rights of Palestinians.

[LaineyAZ]

I don't know all of the history in that region but I've always been suspicious of the word "settlers." 

The word sounds peaceful but anyone familiar with the expansion of the U.S. from the East coast to the West coast knows that "settlers" meant the original inhabitants, Native Americans, were pushed out and confined to reservations.  Reservation acreage which shrunk over time, especially if valuable resources were discovered there.

So I'm wondering if it's the age-old reason:  land and water and mineral rights, but using religion as the cover for the hatred and violence.

[FINate]

I have the unpopular opinion that the root cause of much hate and violence is religion. People will blame racism and nationalism of course and give religion a free pass as usual. Unfortunately, I don't see any non-violent answers for the "promised holy lands" as long as people are worshipping bronze and iron age ideologies. The real answer is to ditch the myths and just go and grab a good meal together. One can imagine, right?

The swords of David and Mohammad are drawn once again, and the horror is relived as it has been for centuries. It is no accident that the worse places for humans to thrive and grow are always the most religious.   

I thought it was a decades-old dispute about territory, security and rights of Palestinians.

Yeah, the whole "blame religion" trope is lazy and conveniently ignores the enormous bloodshed of the 20th century, much of which was very clearly irreligious. Estimates for number of deaths associated with Marxist regimes, officially atheist*, range from a low of 10M upwards to around 150M.

While religion is often employed as a means to aid war, the root is a fear of others (ethnic, racial, etc.) and a desire for control and power.

*To be clear, I'm not saying all atheists are murderous thugs, or that atheism inherently leads to bloodshed. My point is just that bad stuff is done in the name of all sorts of ideologies, because ideas exist in the minds of people who are fallible and capable of great evil.

[PeteD01]

I have the unpopular opinion that the root cause of much hate and violence is religion. People will blame racism and nationalism of course and give religion a free pass as usual. Unfortunately, I don't see any non-violent answers for the "promised holy lands" as long as people are worshipping bronze and iron age ideologies. The real answer is to ditch the myths and just go and grab a good meal together. One can imagine, right?

The swords of David and Mohammad are drawn once again, and the horror is relived as it has been for centuries. It is no accident that the worse places for humans to thrive and grow are always the most religious.   

I thought it was a decades-old dispute about territory, security and rights of Palestinians.

Trying to boil the unrest in the region down to a religiously motivated conflict is really simplistic and doesn´t explain much of what is going on there.
(For that matter, if this was a religious conflict, it would be between Shia and Sunni muslims both of whom actually do not have much of a problem with Judaism when compared to their own sectarian divisions.)

This is not the place to rehash the complicated history of the near east but a few pointers to develop a perspective for further study may be given.
First and most importantly, the near east cannot be understood if the effects of decolonialization are not taken into account.
Basically, with the fall of the British and other empires, a bunch of nation states were created by the colonizers, with borders taking into account the interests of the former colonizers which often meant cutting right through ethnic and prior historical political entities. Egypt is a notable exception. (Iran also is largely in the area of its historical territories but was never colonized.)

As former colonies that were intentionally left behind weakened, the newly created nation states were ill equipped to develop efficient bureaucratic states with democratic representation. As a consequence, largely incompetent autocracies (that´s redundant of course) took a hold over the entire region.

Now, the special case of Israel is due to a number of factors: The borders of Israel were not drawn by a former colonizer and the nascent Israeli nation actually fought the British occupiers.
The influx of diaspora Jews to the territories of the future Israel brought with it a highly educated and motivated nationalistic elite that was well equipped to create a modern nation state with all the bells and whistles and democratic representation to beat.
The open conflict with the British soon ended and the nation of Israel began to receive massive western support. This was due to a variety of reasons of which the cold war was not an unimportant one.
But the most important factor was that western liberal democracies see themselves in the state of Israel and western populations reward that familiarity with sympathy, which, in turn, allows western governments to support Israel with little pushback.

Israel belongs to the club of liberal democracies and, as these go, has a strong civil society, a decent economy with a homegrown high tech sector, extensive international trade relations, effective anti-corruption policies, an independent judiciary, a powerful military with important alliances, and, tellingly, the ability and willingness to use overwhelming military force if necessary.
Again, these characteristics are not so much an Israel special case but rather how liberal democracies conduct business - looking at Israel, western liberal democracies  are looking in a mirror of sorts.

Israel is surrounded by autocracies with weak administrative states and civil societies.
The weakness typical for autocracies relying on internal repression to keep the autocrats in power makes them no match for a modern liberal democracy with well developed international relations.
The autocrats, who live in fear of their own populations, have for generations stoked anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiments in their populations as part of their strategies to deflect attention from their own shortcomings.
Unfortunately, autocratic tendencies in the western democracies as well as in Israel have begun to seriously weaken civil society and, consequently, the competences and diplomatic relations arising from an empowered civil society.
 
Next thing that happened is that wannabe autocrats from the US as well as Israel began to negotiate among themselves ignoring their own populations as well as the Palestinians in the process.

This strengthened the hands of countries not part of the negotiations, i.e. Iran, and non-state actors such as Hamas or Hezbollah with the abandoned Palestinian population in the Gaza strip subjected to ever increasing repression by Hamas in the face of deteriorating living conditions.

Ironically, the terrorist attacks most likely put a hard stop to the Trumpian dismantling of civil society in Israel by getting rid of the wannabe incompetent autocrats (again redundancy here) in the current government.

Just to be clear, all populations in question have put or are going to put pressure on their respective governments: Gaza strip Palestinians are suffering from Hamas governing incompetence, the Israeli government has been under serious pressure, and the populations of the other autocracies could take to the streets any time, and imperil their own governments that could become victims of their own propaganda.

In short, all that backroom dealing of the rulers, Israeli and previous US governments, Hamas, and assorted autocratic rulers, is blowing up as we speak.

There are more holes in what I wrote than anything, but regional history is so complicated that it is really difficult to make sense of anything. And this is compounded by ignorance or the the agenda of many who write about it.
So adopting the perspective outlined above will certainly be helpful to sort out the many issues at hand.
In a nutshell, a perspective that looks at the matter as one of a postcolonial situation makes the conflicts appear to be of a modern sort and not a situation created by conditions that are impossible to effectively address because they are supposedly rooted in ancient history or religion - which is actually a fatalistic take as differences based on such things are almost by definition unsolvable.


Here are a couple of articles addressing current events:

Netanyahu Is Losing the War at Home Incompetence against Hamas and indifference to Israeli suffering has the public boiling over.
OCT. 12, 2023, By Noga Tarnopolsky

“The bunch of imbeciles leading the country we live in, the country where my beloved little brother was killed protecting the homeland that forgot us — not because it was inevitable but because this disgraceful government is involved in everything it should not be involved in. My beloved brother was murdered by hate-filled terrorists, but those who disgracefully opened the door for them are the Israeli government, from the minister of national security and his messianic friends — clowns who busy themselves creating violent, idiotic slogans — to the prime minister, who is doing everything in his power to disintegrate the State of Israel.”

Shay was referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a racist provocateur elevated to high office with several other extremists to cobble together a government after the last election. That government is facing a growing chorus of criticism from all corners of Israeli society since Hamas’s surprise attack with the military caught off guard and taking hours to reach towns where terrorists massacred over 1,200 people.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/in-the-israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-is-losing-at-home.html


 

What Iran Stands to Gain From Hamas’s Attack
OCT. 12, 2023, By Benjamin Hart

Hamas’s calculations may have been slightly different. Hamas is not Hezbollah — it has its own agenda and its own objectives. In that sense, it’s different in terms of its relationship with Iran. Their motivation may have been, to some extent, to scuttle what is happening, to inflict damage on Israel, which always works for them. So the two sides may have overlapping motivations and slightly different ones, but the conclusion that they both arrived at would be that they should do something on the Israel front. They both sense regional politics, I think, better than Israelis or the Saudis or the Americans, because they seem to have understood that what’s agreed on in conference rooms can be undone by the street. They understood that street politics still mattered. A lot of people in America didn’t.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/what-iran-stands-to-gain-from-the-israel-hamas-war.html

[ATtiny85]

...
The word sounds peaceful but anyone familiar with the expansion of the U.S. from the East coast to the West coast knows that "settlers" meant the original inhabitants, Native Americans, were pushed out and confined to reservations.  Reservation acreage which shrunk over time, especially if valuable resources were discovered there.
...

Yeah, of course US expansion took care of things somewhat finally, but a lot of those Native Americans had also pushed and killed other Native Americans from other tribes over the centuries. Quite a few tribes were brutal.

Yeah, the whole "blame religion" trope is lazy and conveniently ignores the enormous bloodshed of the 20th century, much of which was very clearly irreligious. Estimates for number of deaths associated with Marxist regimes, officially atheist*, range from a low of 10M upwards to around 150M.

While religion is often employed as a means to aid war, the root is a fear of others (ethnic, racial, etc.) and a desire for control and power.

*To be clear, I'm not saying all atheists are murderous thugs, or that atheism inherently leads to bloodshed. My point is just that bad stuff is done in the name of all sorts of ideologies, because ideas exist in the minds of people who are fallible and capable of great evil.

The "control and power" piece is so important. It seems so clear and simple, but still is wildly complex how a single person, then a group of people, morphs into full scale warfare. I guess it often comes down to just getting enough people to poke the wrong hornets' nest. A handful of attackers and planner on 9/11 created quite the storm of mayhem, but how many thousands of innocent lives did the US military kill after that? 5x 9/11? 50x 9/11? 500x 9/11? Some figures say even more, up to 1500x I think, but tough to keep track over such a long period. And some of them were not 'innocent" I suppose.

[snic]

I have the unpopular opinion that the root cause of much hate and violence is religion. People will blame racism and nationalism of course and give religion a free pass as usual. Unfortunately, I don't see any non-violent answers for the "promised holy lands" as long as people are worshipping bronze and iron age ideologies. The real answer is to ditch the myths and just go and grab a good meal together. One can imagine, right?

The swords of David and Mohammad are drawn once again, and the horror is relived as it has been for centuries. It is no accident that the worse places for humans to thrive and grow are always the most religious.   

I thought it was a decades-old dispute about territory, security and rights of Palestinians.

Trying to boil the unrest in the region down to a religiously motivated conflict is really simplistic and doesn´t explain much of what is going on there.
(For that matter, if this was a religious conflict, it would be between Shia and Sunni muslims both of whom actually do not have much of a problem with Judaism when compared to their own sectarian divisions.)

This is not the place to rehash the complicated history of the near east but a few pointers to develop a perspective for further study may be given.
First and most importantly, the near east cannot be understood if the effects of decolonialization are not taken into account.
Basically, with the fall of the British and other empires, a bunch of nation states were created by the colonizers, with borders taking into account the interests of the former colonizers which often meant cutting right through ethnic and prior historical political entities. Egypt is a notable exception. (Iran also is largely in the area of its historical territories but was never colonized.)

As former colonies that were intentionally left behind weakened, the newly created nation states were ill equipped to develop efficient bureaucratic states with democratic representation. As a consequence, largely incompetent autocracies (that´s redundant of course) took a hold over the entire region.

Now, the special case of Israel is due to a number of factors: The borders of Israel were not drawn by a former colonizer and the nascent Israeli nation actually fought the British occupiers.
The influx of diaspora Jews to the territories of the future Israel brought with it a highly educated and motivated nationalistic elite that was well equipped to create a modern nation state with all the bells and whistles and democratic representation to beat.
The open conflict with the British soon ended and the nation of Israel began to receive massive western support. This was due to a variety of reasons of which the cold war was not an unimportant one.
But the most important factor was that western liberal democracies see themselves in the state of Israel and western populations reward that familiarity with sympathy, which, in turn, allows western governments to support Israel with little pushback.

Israel belongs to the club of liberal democracies and, as these go, has a strong civil society, a decent economy with a homegrown high tech sector, extensive international trade relations, effective anti-corruption policies, an independent judiciary, a powerful military with important alliances, and, tellingly, the ability and willingness to use overwhelming military force if necessary.
Again, these characteristics are not so much an Israel special case but rather how liberal democracies conduct business - looking at Israel, western liberal democracies  are looking in a mirror of sorts.

Israel is surrounded by autocracies with weak administrative states and civil societies.
The weakness typical for autocracies relying on internal repression to keep the autocrats in power makes them no match for a modern liberal democracy with well developed international relations.
The autocrats, who live in fear of their own populations, have for generations stoked anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiments in their populations as part of their strategies to deflect attention from their own shortcomings.
Unfortunately, autocratic tendencies in the western democracies as well as in Israel have begun to seriously weaken civil society and, consequently, the competences and diplomatic relations arising from an empowered civil society.
 
Next thing that happened is that wannabe autocrats from the US as well as Israel began to negotiate among themselves ignoring their own populations as well as the Palestinians in the process.

This strengthened the hands of countries not part of the negotiations, i.e. Iran, and non-state actors such as Hamas or Hezbollah with the abandoned Palestinian population in the Gaza strip subjected to ever increasing repression by Hamas in the face of deteriorating living conditions.

Ironically, the terrorist attacks most likely put a hard stop to the Trumpian dismantling of civil society in Israel by getting rid of the wannabe incompetent autocrats (again redundancy here) in the current government.

Just to be clear, all populations in question have put or are going to put pressure on their respective governments: Gaza strip Palestinians are suffering from Hamas governing incompetence, the Israeli government has been under serious pressure, and the populations of the other autocracies could take to the streets any time, and imperil their own governments that could become victims of their own propaganda.

In short, all that backroom dealing of the rulers, Israeli and previous US governments, Hamas, and assorted autocratic rulers, is blowing up as we speak.

There are more holes in what I wrote than anything, but regional history is so complicated that it is really difficult to make sense of anything. And this is compounded by ignorance or the the agenda of many who write about it.
So adopting the perspective outlined above will certainly be helpful to sort out the many issues at hand.
In a nutshell, a perspective that looks at the matter as one of a postcolonial situation makes the conflicts appear to be of a modern sort and not a situation created by conditions that are impossible to effectively address because they are supposedly rooted in ancient history or religion - which is actually a fatalistic take as differences based on such things are almost by definition unsolvable.


Here are a couple of articles addressing current events:

Netanyahu Is Losing the War at Home Incompetence against Hamas and indifference to Israeli suffering has the public boiling over.
OCT. 12, 2023, By Noga Tarnopolsky

“The bunch of imbeciles leading the country we live in, the country where my beloved little brother was killed protecting the homeland that forgot us — not because it was inevitable but because this disgraceful government is involved in everything it should not be involved in. My beloved brother was murdered by hate-filled terrorists, but those who disgracefully opened the door for them are the Israeli government, from the minister of national security and his messianic friends — clowns who busy themselves creating violent, idiotic slogans — to the prime minister, who is doing everything in his power to disintegrate the State of Israel.”

Shay was referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a racist provocateur elevated to high office with several other extremists to cobble together a government after the last election. That government is facing a growing chorus of criticism from all corners of Israeli society since Hamas’s surprise attack with the military caught off guard and taking hours to reach towns where terrorists massacred over 1,200 people.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/in-the-israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-is-losing-at-home.html


 

What Iran Stands to Gain From Hamas’s Attack
OCT. 12, 2023, By Benjamin Hart

Hamas’s calculations may have been slightly different. Hamas is not Hezbollah — it has its own agenda and its own objectives. In that sense, it’s different in terms of its relationship with Iran. Their motivation may have been, to some extent, to scuttle what is happening, to inflict damage on Israel, which always works for them. So the two sides may have overlapping motivations and slightly different ones, but the conclusion that they both arrived at would be that they should do something on the Israel front. They both sense regional politics, I think, better than Israelis or the Saudis or the Americans, because they seem to have understood that what’s agreed on in conference rooms can be undone by the street. They understood that street politics still mattered. A lot of people in America didn’t.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/what-iran-stands-to-gain-from-the-israel-hamas-war.html

This is a really good, clear-eyed analysis. I especially agree that so much that has been published is driven by individual (or collective) agendas. For example, many explain Hamas' attack as a product of anti-Semitism, but that is clearly oversimplistic. There seems to be little room in public discourse for dispassionate analysis that asks about root causes and how they can be addressed. Anyone who makes an attempt at a nuanced explanation gets shouted down as a "Hamas supporter" because offering an explanation seems to be interpreted as offering a justification. I think the lack of reason in the public debate plays into the hands of extremists on both sides.

[snic]

...
The word sounds peaceful but anyone familiar with the expansion of the U.S. from the East coast to the West coast knows that "settlers" meant the original inhabitants, Native Americans, were pushed out and confined to reservations.  Reservation acreage which shrunk over time, especially if valuable resources were discovered there.
...

Yeah, of course US expansion took care of things somewhat finally, but a lot of those Native Americans had also pushed and killed other Native Americans from other tribes over the centuries. Quite a few tribes were brutal.

Yeah, the whole "blame religion" trope is lazy and conveniently ignores the enormous bloodshed of the 20th century, much of which was very clearly irreligious. Estimates for number of deaths associated with Marxist regimes, officially atheist*, range from a low of 10M upwards to around 150M.

While religion is often employed as a means to aid war, the root is a fear of others (ethnic, racial, etc.) and a desire for control and power.

*To be clear, I'm not saying all atheists are murderous thugs, or that atheism inherently leads to bloodshed. My point is just that bad stuff is done in the name of all sorts of ideologies, because ideas exist in the minds of people who are fallible and capable of great evil.

The "control and power" piece is so important. It seems so clear and simple, but still is wildly complex how a single person, then a group of people, morphs into full scale warfare. I guess it often comes down to just getting enough people to poke the wrong hornets' nest. A handful of attackers and planner on 9/11 created quite the storm of mayhem, but how many thousands of innocent lives did the US military kill after that? 5x 9/11? 50x 9/11? 500x 9/11? Some figures say even more, up to 1500x I think, but tough to keep track over such a long period. And some of them were not 'innocent" I suppose.

An article I read recently put the number of dead as a consequence of the post-9/11 "war on terror" at 400,000, most of them entirely innocent, so about 133x the number killed on 9/11. I would not be at all surprised to see a similar ratio in Gaza.

[dividendman]

Does anyone have any solutions besides genocide though? What will solve the current situation and result in a lasting peace for the future? Seems like nothing...

At least in the Ukraine/Russia scenario you could see eventually some end where Ukraine loses some territory (or none) and joins NATO and would be safe from future aggression. Or, it's consumed  into Russia.

With Israel and the Palestinian territories, I don't see any solution.

[bacchi]

Ironically, the terrorist attacks most likely put a hard stop to the Trumpian dismantling of civil society in Israel by getting rid of the wannabe incompetent autocrats (again redundancy here) in the current government.

Did they? Gvir (once convicted of aiding a terrorist group) and his party are in the unity government and Lapid/Yesh declined for that reason.

This war only strengthens Netanyahu's hand as nothing unites a country around its ruler (even if he's a crook) like war. The dismantling of the High Court will continue under the flag of patriotism and nationalism.

The Egyptian peace deal would've pushed the far-right parties, on both sides, into the wilderness.

[bacchi]

Does anyone have any solutions besides genocide though? What will solve the current situation and result in a lasting peace for the future? Seems like nothing...

At least in the Ukraine/Russia scenario you could see eventually some end where Ukraine loses some territory (or none) and joins NATO and would be safe from future aggression. Or, it's consumed  into Russia.

With Israel and the Palestinian territories, I don't see any solution.

A two state solution is a good start.

"An agreement with the Palestinians, based on two states for two peoples, is the right thing for Israel's security, for Israel's economy and for the future of our children."

[Just Joe]

My Christian friend made a point to stop by this morning and quote several parts of the Bible to me. The events are the beginnings of the end times my friend insisted. I'm not particularly religious but friend continues to share... ;) Whew...

[PeteD01]

Ironically, the terrorist attacks most likely put a hard stop to the Trumpian dismantling of civil society in Israel by getting rid of the wannabe incompetent autocrats (again redundancy here) in the current government.

Did they? Gvir (once convicted of aiding a terrorist group) and his party are in the unity government and Lapid/Yesh declined for that reason.

This war only strengthens Netanyahu's hand as nothing unites a country around its ruler (even if he's a crook) like war. The dismantling of the High Court will continue under the flag of patriotism and nationalism.

The Egyptian peace deal would've pushed the far-right parties, on both sides, into the wilderness.

Actually, the events are really bad as far as Netanyahu's political future is concerned - that does not necessarily mean that Israeli politics are not going to lurch further right, even without Netanyahu.

There is something else though: autocrats love to present themselves as being more efficient and stronger than messy democratic governments.
The reality is that they are largely incompetent and beset by infighting.
They are so busy with maintaining and expanding their fragile power that everything becomes about themselves and anything else is neglected.
Combined with their fetish of violence and delusions of grandeur, the outcome is predictable: the orgies of violence we are now seeing in many places.
These autocrats are chaos agents and nothing more.

So in case Netanyahu's government survives in something like the current form, things will continue to deteriorate. And in Israel's situation that means national security will be more and more compromised - not something Israelis tend to accept easily.

I think that the question is more like when and not if Netanyahu will be dethroned together with his gang of clowns.
The failures and negligence of the government are so serious that this might even happen before completion of the initial operations, but no later than that.

But I might be wrong - we'll see.

[waltworks]

Does anyone have any solutions besides genocide though? What will solve the current situation and result in a lasting peace for the future? Seems like nothing...

At least in the Ukraine/Russia scenario you could see eventually some end where Ukraine loses some territory (or none) and joins NATO and would be safe from future aggression. Or, it's consumed  into Russia.

With Israel and the Palestinian territories, I don't see any solution.

You probably have to fully militarily conquer and then colonize/rebuild Gaza ala Japan or Germany in 1945.

I'm not sure the motivation or money to do that is there, though. And the idea of taking away sovereignty and reprogramming a whole population probably wouldn't fly in today's world as it's not very PC.

Otherwise, we'll just keep repeating this stuff until someone finally gets their hands on a nuke or two and then that's probably the end of Israel (and a lot of other things in the area).

-W

[GuitarStv]

Does anyone have any solutions besides genocide though? What will solve the current situation and result in a lasting peace for the future? Seems like nothing...

At least in the Ukraine/Russia scenario you could see eventually some end where Ukraine loses some territory (or none) and joins NATO and would be safe from future aggression. Or, it's consumed  into Russia.

With Israel and the Palestinian territories, I don't see any solution.

You probably have to fully militarily conquer and then colonize/rebuild Gaza ala Japan or Germany in 1945.

I'm not sure the motivation or money to do that is there, though. And the idea of taking away sovereignty and reprogramming a whole population probably wouldn't fly in today's world as it's not very PC.

Otherwise, we'll just keep repeating this stuff until someone finally gets their hands on a nuke or two and then that's probably the end of Israel (and a lot of other things in the area).

-W

Palestine has been under de facto Israeli rule for decades now.  They were fully militarily conquered when the occupation started some 60 odd years ago.  The Palestinians have no real sovereignty at all.  Israel controls all goods that enter and leave Palestine.  Israel polices Palestine.  Israel controls the buildings that are built, the foreign aid that is given.  Armed Israeli 'settlers' routinely kick down doors and steal from Palestinians with full backing and support of Israel.  Palestinians are held without charge or due process in Israeli prisons (before the war there were more than 1000 kidnapped Palestinan citizens, including more than a hundred children).  The overwhelming majority of Palestinians ruled by Israel are denied the right to vote to democratically change things.  Murder of Palestinians by Israeli citizens is virtually never punished in Israeli courts.

You talk about 'taking away sovereignty' as not being very PC . . . that's certainly true.  But it is also true that it seems to fly just fine with the western world.

In no way to I condone the actions of Hamas targeting civilians in Israel - that's a horrible and reprehensible action and I'm 100% against it.  It's just as horrible and reprehensible when Israel does the same (either referencing the many incidents prior to this recent Hamas attack or the impending ones). . . and we appear to be losing this half of the message.  I don't support Israel starving and bombing Palestinian children as is currently going on.  I don't support Israel telling half of the Gaza strip to leave 'or else' when the UN says that a relocation of that magnitude is not possible without humanitarian catastrophe.  I don't support Israeli military officials dehumanizing Palestinians and calling them 'animals'.  Israel certainly appears to be marching to ethnic cleansing and genocide in the name of defense.

[ChpBstrd]

Does anyone have any solutions besides genocide though? What will solve the current situation and result in a lasting peace for the future? Seems like nothing...

At least in the Ukraine/Russia scenario you could see eventually some end where Ukraine loses some territory (or none) and joins NATO and would be safe from future aggression. Or, it's consumed  into Russia.

With Israel and the Palestinian territories, I don't see any solution.

An outbreak of atheism would immediately solve the problem. Either the Israelis would make a deal and do a land swap with Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan, or the Palestinians would say f*** this place and move somewhere less dangerous. If the outbreak affected both sides, they would set up a democracy, live together in peace, and hardly be able to decipher each others' ethnic history two generations later. As it is, the fight is over the belief that specific plots of land offer magic blessings to people who live there, and the belief that god wants you to commit genocide against anyone else who tries to occupy it, as both Moses and Mohammad did. The amount of blood and money spent fighting over this desert wasteland far exceeds any value it might have.

The choice between atheism and genocide reoccurs throughout history and across geography.

My Christian friend made a point to stop by this morning and quote several parts of the Bible to me. The events are the beginnings of the end times my friend insisted. I'm not particularly religious but friend continues to share... ;) Whew...

Religious prophecy is easy when religious people can make the events happen. I have a prophecy that tonight's dinner will be mac n cheese with sauteed collard greens.

[PeteD01]

...
The choice between atheism and genocide reoccurs throughout history and across geography.
...

That's a false dichotomy/false dilemma.

[GuitarStv]

...
The choice between atheism and genocide reoccurs throughout history and across geography.
...

That's a false dichotomy/false dilemma.

Agreed.  It's very easy to find atheist states that were genocidal . . . communist Russia, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, North Korea, communist Vietnam, etc.

Religious people and atheist people . . . we're all just people.  And people like to commit genocide.

[dignam]

Just dropping my two cents, which scanning above appears to agree with some others here.  What Hamas has done is awful and there is no justification for it...and sadly not really anything new, but maybe just a bigger scale.  I'm trying to view this pragmatically and not stir the religious pot; though that is definitely a factor here.

That said...why do we (most western nations) still support the state of Israel?  I get that it gives us a buffer in the Middle East with Israel being very good at intelligence gathering.  But I hate that our support both depends on and fuels the bloodshed.

What REALLY irked me about this recent news cycle is how they showed over and over the slaughter caused by the Hamas attack, and only briefly mention the slaughter Israel is doing right back inside Gaza.  The Israeli military are in no uncertain terms bombing civilian areas on purpose just the same as Hamas.  Then our elected officials come out and condemn Hamas, rightfully so, but say nothing of the retaliation.

[Michael in ABQ]

Just dropping my two cents, which scanning above appears to agree with some others here.  What Hamas has done is awful and there is no justification for it...and sadly not really anything new, but maybe just a bigger scale.  I'm trying to view this pragmatically and not stir the religious pot; though that is definitely a factor here.

That said...why do we (most western nations) still support the state of Israel?  I get that it gives us a buffer in the Middle East with Israel being very good at intelligence gathering.  But I hate that our support both depends on and fuels the bloodshed.

The west supports Israel because of: 
1. they are a democratic state among a sea of Muslim autocracies that have historically tried to conquer the west.
2. the special place Israel holds in Christianity (the Holy Land) which is the dominant religion in the west (at least culturally).
3. guilt over the Holocaust.
4. Israel provides a counterbalance to prevent any other regional power from becoming dominant (Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, etc.) - this is more of a specific US geopolitical strategy than the rest of the western world.

What REALLY irked me about this recent news cycle is how they showed over and over the slaughter caused by the Hamas attack, and only briefly mention the slaughter Israel is doing right back inside Gaza.  The Israeli military are in no uncertain terms bombing civilian areas on purpose just the same as Hamas.  Then our elected officials come out and condemn Hamas, rightfully so, but say nothing of the retaliation.

There is a difference between going to a village and shooting every civilian in sight and bombing a building that you know or suspect to contain armed enemy fighters/weapons knowing that civilians may be present. Hamas certainly didn't broadcast to Israel to leave the area around Gaza because they were going to launch an attack. We can argue about the feasibility of that, but at least Israel has tried to limit civilian casualties while Hamas has done everything in it's power to cause civilian casualties. The two are not morally equivalent.

Hamas and others learned long ago that if your enemy will hesitate to blow up a mosque, or school, or hospital then that is the best place to store weapons or launch rockets from. Hamas has zero restraint because they're not trying to only attack military targets, they are purposefully trying to cause terror by attacking civilian targets.

[waltworks]

Yeah, it's really bad to kill civilians when you're trying to kill combatants, but it happens in all wars.

It's a VERY different level of bad to deliberately kill any random civilian you can find and take hostages/torture people/etc.

I think for many people Hamas hit a level of bad that means they're now ok with Israel carpet bombing Gaza, where they were not before.

I'm personally not there - I'd prefer to see *intense* pressure (to the point of military action) on countries that fund or harbor Hamas and it's leaders. Without money and allies Hamas is toast. Carpet bombing Gaza probably in the end makes them stronger, not weaker.

But threatening half the countries in the region is probably not practical either.

-W

[ATtiny85]

There is a difference between going to a village and shooting every civilian in sight and bombing a building that you know or suspect to contain armed enemy fighters/weapons knowing that civilians may be present.

You say. Try telling that to someone who lost their grandma while she walked to the market and the building next to her evaporated with our bombs.

[waltworks]

There is a difference between going to a village and shooting every civilian in sight and bombing a building that you know or suspect to contain armed enemy fighters/weapons knowing that civilians may be present.

You say. Try telling that to someone who lost their grandma while she walked to the market and the building next to her evaporated with our bombs.

I think the vast majority of people make a distinction between those things, but I guess you can see it that way if you want. If that's the case you can't really fight wars at all, since almost anything you do runs a risk of killing civilians.

Don't get me wrong, pacifism is a legitimate belief system. But it's also not how most people actually act or live their lives.

-W

[snic]

Does anyone have any solutions besides genocide though? What will solve the current situation and result in a lasting peace for the future? Seems like nothing...

At least in the Ukraine/Russia scenario you could see eventually some end where Ukraine loses some territory (or none) and joins NATO and would be safe from future aggression. Or, it's consumed  into Russia.

With Israel and the Palestinian territories, I don't see any solution.

You probably have to fully militarily conquer and then colonize/rebuild Gaza ala Japan or Germany in 1945.

I'm not sure the motivation or money to do that is there, though. And the idea of taking away sovereignty and reprogramming a whole population probably wouldn't fly in today's world as it's not very PC.

Otherwise, we'll just keep repeating this stuff until someone finally gets their hands on a nuke or two and then that's probably the end of Israel (and a lot of other things in the area).

-W

Palestine has been under de facto Israeli rule for decades now.  They were fully militarily conquered when the occupation started some 60 odd years ago.  The Palestinians have no real sovereignty at all.  Israel controls all goods that enter and leave Palestine.  Israel polices Palestine.  Israel controls the buildings that are built, the foreign aid that is given.  Armed Israeli 'settlers' routinely kick down doors and steal from Palestinians with full backing and support of Israel.  Palestinians are held without charge or due process in Israeli prisons (before the war there were more than 1000 kidnapped Palestinan citizens, including more than a hundred children).  The overwhelming majority of Palestinians ruled by Israel are denied the right to vote to democratically change things.  Murder of Palestinians by Israeli citizens is virtually never punished in Israeli courts.

You talk about 'taking away sovereignty' as not being very PC . . . that's certainly true.  But it is also true that it seems to fly just fine with the western world.

In no way to I condone the actions of Hamas targeting civilians in Israel - that's a horrible and reprehensible action and I'm 100% against it.  It's just as horrible and reprehensible when Israel does the same (either referencing the many incidents prior to this recent Hamas attack or the impending ones). . . and we appear to be losing this half of the message.  I don't support Israel starving and bombing Palestinian children as is currently going on.  I don't support Israel telling half of the Gaza strip to leave 'or else' when the UN says that a relocation of that magnitude is not possible without humanitarian catastrophe.  I don't support Israeli military officials dehumanizing Palestinians and calling them 'animals'.  Israel certainly appears to be marching to ethnic cleansing and genocide in the name of defense.

Well said. What gets completely drowned out in the current noise is the fact that if you add together all the atrocities Israel has committed against Palestinians over the last few decades, they add up to at least the number of atrocities Hamas got away with just now. Where was all the howling in condemnation over the last few decades? Why the double standard?

Like you, I don't condone violence of any sort, and I condemn both Hamas' attack and Israel's response. I also think that it is hugely counterproductive to the goal of peace and coexistence when one side always gets to justify its violence by saying it's all a matter of defense (which, as you point, is not even remotely true), whereas the exact same justification on the other side is dismissed out of hand.

Someone asked above how to solve the conflict. I don't know, but I do know one thing: that the conflict is never going to be solved without help from the rest of the world (just as the conflicts in South Africa, Ireland, etc required outside help), and in order for the main players who are in a position to exert influence from the outside to have a positive effect, they need to be fair. That can only happen if they reject the "I'm doing this violence in defense" justifications given by both sides.

[waltworks]

Have aliens (or fake ones) take over all the holy sites so they've got a common enemy ala Watchmen.

-W

[seattlecyclone]

There is a difference between going to a village and shooting every civilian in sight and bombing a building that you know or suspect to contain armed enemy fighters/weapons knowing that civilians may be present.

You say. Try telling that to someone who lost their grandma while she walked to the market and the building next to her evaporated with our bombs.

The person is just as dead either way, but most people agree intent matters. That's why, for example, our legal system draws a distinction between first degree murder vs. manslaughter.

I think this whole conflict is just sad. I wish that the people in that area could agree to share a secular democracy where both major religions were respected, Muslims and Jews could live on the same block in harmony, but that's clearly not where we are right now.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

 I think that the big narrative here was the brutality as was mentioned. Someone said adding up the atrocities on Israel's side would be as much as what Hamas did.

I'm not sure that's true at least from a level of atrocities standpoint. The big deal and change for people's perception, as has been said, seems to be how bad the bad things were. I personally doubt a few rockets launched against Israel even with many civilian casualties would have garnered the level of anger that I'm seeing.

Genuine question. Has Israel ever done the things that Hamas did? Is there documented evidence of them torturing civilians, even children? Have they opened fire on civilian gatherings with military people shooting unarmed civilians directly?

I'm not saying what Israel does is right by any stretch or that their actions didn't push things in this direction or that in some scale balancing sense Israel's tons of bad things don't somehow balance out. I just hear in conversations like these that Israel has done things just as bad, and I'm wondering.... Have they?

[Radagast]

"Israel vs Hamas"
Israel. Easily. Hamas is the greater of two evils. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and its people, no compromise, no tolerance. A two-state solution is not possible with Hamas. No solution will ever be possible with them, only cycles of violence. Hamas deliberately maximizes both Israeli and Palestinian civilian casualties with maximum possible cruelty all around as a matter of strategy and policy. They seek to maximize Israeli civilian casualties to encourage revenge strikes, and then seek to maximize the resulting Palestinian civilian casualties to drum up new support and supporters. If Israel cleans them out then great.

"Israel vs Palestine"
Palestine by a small margin (60/40?). Israel has the ability to take the moral high ground and respect Palestinians as well as international law and UN agreements, but they don't. Their settlers continue to clean Palestinians off of land which is an obvious affront to humanity, creating death and poverty along the way. They routinely treat Palestinians as subhumans. If you want to get the true measure of a people look at what they do when they have absolute power over others, and the Israelis aren't coming off in a good light here (which goes for Hamas weekend foray too by the way and Hamas was much worse).

US policy
I am aghast at how quickly US media and politicians got behind Israel, while leaving Ukraine dangling. Russia is working overtime to destabilize our government and create a civil strife and is increasingly succeeding, while our politicians boil in a pot with us. Ukraine is another democracy domino falling east, and is the clear strategic and moral priority.

Path forward
If not genocide, then the way out is both sides teaching tolerance, and making halting good will gestures for generations. Any group which is dedicated to opposing tolerance and paltry good will gestures can be genocided for all I care. Militant tolerance! No tolerance for the intolerant. Those who would genocide may be genocided with a clean conscience, at least until they give up and espouse tolerance.

[GuitarStv]

I think that the big narrative here was the brutality as was mentioned. Someone said adding up the atrocities on Israel's side would be as much as what Hamas did.

I'm not sure that's true at least from a level of atrocities standpoint. The big deal and change for people's perception, as has been said, seems to be how bad the bad things were. I personally doubt a few rockets launched against Israel even with many civilian casualties would have garnered the level of anger that I'm seeing.

This whole thing was kicked off by Hamas killing several hundred Israelis in one big attack.  Prior to this (and this year alone), 248 Palestinians were killed by Israelis.  Hamas did it all at once.  Israel takes it's time.

You have to remember that Israel fully controls and polices Palestine.  Israel regularly imprisons people (including children) without evidence or trial.  Because the Palestinians have no political voice over their Israeli rulers, there exists no real system of checks and bounds to reign in military excesses and slip ups.  And that doesn't even bring into account Israeli 'settlers' - Jewish people who kick in Palestinian doors to perform armed robbery . . . a practice fully supported by the Israeli government and backed up by the Israeli army when Palestinians try to recover what has been stolen from them.

Genuine question. Has Israel ever done the things that Hamas did? Is there documented evidence of them torturing civilians, even children? Have they opened fire on civilian gatherings with military people shooting unarmed civilians directly?

I'm not saying what Israel does is right by any stretch or that their actions didn't push things in this direction or that in some scale balancing sense Israel's tons of bad things don't somehow balance out. I just hear in conversations like these that Israel has done things just as bad, and I'm wondering.... Have they?

Yes, Israel has a long history of using lethal force on Palestinian children without repercussion.  https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/28/west-bank-spike-israeli-killings-palestinian-children

Yes, Israel has a long history of directly opening fire on civilians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2023/palestine-shooting-nablus-videos/
https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200203_trigger_happy
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-says-it-is-keeping-pressure-on-israel-over-open-fire-rules-after-abu-akleh-death/

You probably haven't heard much about it because we don't get fair reporting here in North America when it comes to Israel/Palestine relations.

[GuitarStv]

There is a difference between going to a village and shooting every civilian in sight and bombing a building that you know or suspect to contain armed enemy fighters/weapons knowing that civilians may be present.

Yeah, the difference is that one side can afford bombs and fighter planes.

Other than that?  Dead is dead.  Intent to kill civilians is the same.  The justification that enemy fighters are in the building with those children is not really any different than the justification that the civilians being gunned down supported a corrupt and oppressive apartheid.

When you remove that jingoistic fervor that we've been fed about Israel, there's no honest way to argue that the actions are materially different.  There is no clear 'good guy' in this fight.

[Kris]

Does anyone have any solutions besides genocide though? What will solve the current situation and result in a lasting peace for the future? Seems like nothing...

At least in the Ukraine/Russia scenario you could see eventually some end where Ukraine loses some territory (or none) and joins NATO and would be safe from future aggression. Or, it's consumed  into Russia.

With Israel and the Palestinian territories, I don't see any solution.

You probably have to fully militarily conquer and then colonize/rebuild Gaza ala Japan or Germany in 1945.

I'm not sure the motivation or money to do that is there, though. And the idea of taking away sovereignty and reprogramming a whole population probably wouldn't fly in today's world as it's not very PC.

Otherwise, we'll just keep repeating this stuff until someone finally gets their hands on a nuke or two and then that's probably the end of Israel (and a lot of other things in the area).

-W

Palestine has been under de facto Israeli rule for decades now.  They were fully militarily conquered when the occupation started some 60 odd years ago.  The Palestinians have no real sovereignty at all.  Israel controls all goods that enter and leave Palestine.  Israel polices Palestine.  Israel controls the buildings that are built, the foreign aid that is given.  Armed Israeli 'settlers' routinely kick down doors and steal from Palestinians with full backing and support of Israel.  Palestinians are held without charge or due process in Israeli prisons (before the war there were more than 1000 kidnapped Palestinan citizens, including more than a hundred children).  The overwhelming majority of Palestinians ruled by Israel are denied the right to vote to democratically change things.  Murder of Palestinians by Israeli citizens is virtually never punished in Israeli courts.

You talk about 'taking away sovereignty' as not being very PC . . . that's certainly true.  But it is also true that it seems to fly just fine with the western world.

In no way to I condone the actions of Hamas targeting civilians in Israel - that's a horrible and reprehensible action and I'm 100% against it.  It's just as horrible and reprehensible when Israel does the same (either referencing the many incidents prior to this recent Hamas attack or the impending ones). . . and we appear to be losing this half of the message.  I don't support Israel starving and bombing Palestinian children as is currently going on.  I don't support Israel telling half of the Gaza strip to leave 'or else' when the UN says that a relocation of that magnitude is not possible without humanitarian catastrophe.  I don't support Israeli military officials dehumanizing Palestinians and calling them 'animals'.  Israel certainly appears to be marching to ethnic cleansing and genocide in the name of defense.

Agreed.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

I think that the big narrative here was the brutality as was mentioned. Someone said adding up the atrocities on Israel's side would be as much as what Hamas did.

I'm not sure that's true at least from a level of atrocities standpoint. The big deal and change for people's perception, as has been said, seems to be how bad the bad things were. I personally doubt a few rockets launched against Israel even with many civilian casualties would have garnered the level of anger that I'm seeing.

This whole thing was kicked off by Hamas killing several hundred Israelis in one big attack.  Prior to this (and this year alone), 248 Palestinians were killed by Israelis.  Hamas did it all at once.  Israel takes it's time.

You have to remember that Israel fully controls and polices Palestine.  Israel regularly imprisons people (including children) without evidence or trial.  Because the Palestinians have no political voice over their Israeli rulers, there exists no real system of checks and bounds to reign in military excesses and slip ups.  And that doesn't even bring into account Israeli 'settlers' - Jewish people who kick in Palestinian doors to perform armed robbery . . . a practice fully supported by the Israeli government and backed up by the Israeli army when Palestinians try to recover what has been stolen from them.

Genuine question. Has Israel ever done the things that Hamas did? Is there documented evidence of them torturing civilians, even children? Have they opened fire on civilian gatherings with military people shooting unarmed civilians directly?

I'm not saying what Israel does is right by any stretch or that their actions didn't push things in this direction or that in some scale balancing sense Israel's tons of bad things don't somehow balance out. I just hear in conversations like these that Israel has done things just as bad, and I'm wondering.... Have they?

Yes, Israel has a long history of using lethal force on Palestinian children without repercussion.  https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/28/west-bank-spike-israeli-killings-palestinian-children

Yes, Israel has a long history of directly opening fire on civilians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2023/palestine-shooting-nablus-videos/
https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200203_trigger_happy
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-says-it-is-keeping-pressure-on-israel-over-open-fire-rules-after-abu-akleh-death/

You probably haven't heard much about it because we don't get fair reporting here in North America when it comes to Israel/Palestine relations.

Fair enough. Sounds like the only thing not covered that occurred/is occurring is the torturing hostages and publicly requesting that Jewish people are targeted worldwide. Still, a pretty depressing picture for Israel certainly. The situation is such a mess...

[PeteD01]

The thread title might as well be changed to US+Israel vs Hamas to make it more accurate.

There are likely at least 27 US citizens that were murdered and an unknown number of hostages taken.
That is considered an attack on the US and its interests and an ongoing threat by a non-state actor, with everything that this implies in terms of a response.

The reason that the US is not directly engaged in the fight against Hamas is that the IDF does not need that kind of support at this time.

There is also no chance for Hamas to regain its status as the quasi-authority of the Gaza strip which it unfortunately had in the eyes of some in the west, to the detriment of many exposed to the terrorist group, not least the Gaza Palestinians themselves.

Here is a video clip going over how the US stance towards Hamas changed after the news of US victims emerged.

So yes, things are different this time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU5lyiKlZPk

[partgypsy]

I have to admit I don't know much about international politics. But this is distressing and disturbing to watch. I was horrified at the Hamas attack. I identified with the festival goers. And the settlers in their homes, being attacked and hiding, and rooted out and killed or kidnapped (prob worse than death). I am now distressed to hear now for days, there is no electricity, water in the gaza strip, and that there are no escape routes. Not even taking into account the bombings, doing those things is and will cause mass suffering and death. And even if u give a warning going to bomb a building, what about old and infirm people who can't move easily? I don't know what the answer is. But this seems like it's going to just fuel the cycle of intergenerational trauma and hardened views and continued conflict... As far as religion. I watched a video that says the biggest identities are: tribal who you are related to, land, and then religion. It's complex because they are interrelated and reinforcing. But it's not so simple to say just religion.

[Metalcat]

I have to admit I don't know much about international politics. But this is distressing and disturbing to watch. I was horrified at the Hamas attack. I identified with the festival goers. And the settlers in their homes, being attacked and hiding, and rooted out and killed or kidnapped (prob worse than death). I am now distressed to hear now for days, there is no electricity, water in the gaza strip, and that there are no escape routes. Not even taking into account the bombings, doing those things is and will cause mass suffering and death. And even if u give a warning going to bomb a building, what about old and infirm people who can't move easily? I don't know what the answer is. But this seems like it's going to just fuel the cycle of intergenerational trauma and hardened views and continued conflict... As far as religion. I watched a video that says the biggest identities are: tribal who you are related to, land, and then religion. It's complex because they are interrelated and reinforcing. But it's not so simple to say just religion.

Religion also doesn't exist in a vacuum. Religions are geopolitical entities, they cannot and do not exist outside of their cultural and historical elements.

If an alien were to learn about Islam they would never in a million years expect religious conflict between Muslims and Jews. It's actually a major part of Islam to protect Christians and Jews.

So anyone who says this is religious doesn't understand the religions involved, and definitely doesn't understand the history of why there is conflict.

If you put Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad together they would probably have a really lovely time talking about their various hallucinations and then Moses would roll his eyes at the two illiterate hippies spouting off about peace and love and putting way too much faith in their buddies to write down their idealistic ramblings, especially all the feminist stuff.

Saying the problem is religion is like saying the problem is politics. It doesn't mean anything.

There is so much behind the current conflict. I've been reading about this shit for years including taking multiple courses on middle Eastern history and religion and I just barely feel like I understand any of it.

I just think it's really hard for folks from a young, secular, modernized, democratic country to really grasp the reality of thousands of years of tribal conflict, autocracies, etc and religion/governance/tribalism not being actually separate things.

That particular region has some of the most fascinating, rich, complex history in the whole frickin' world.

Think about how complex American history is with its settler history, it's slavery history, the history of religion and how it interacts with politics and the intersection of religion and white nationalism, etc, etc. It's complicated shit.

Yet it's checkers compared to the Middle East's 4D chess.

A regions history and conflicts are a lot easier to understand when the current society came in and just wiped out the existing residents a few hundred years ago.

Just trying to understand the Sunni/Shia divide is a whole fucking clusterfuck of history of tribal power struggles and geopolitical knowledge that cannot be boiled down to a chapter in a textbook that explains how it started.

This is an area that has seen thousands of years of intense conflict.

People want a simple explanation, but there just isn't one. Nor is there a simple solution.

[dignam]

Just dropping my two cents, which scanning above appears to agree with some others here.  What Hamas has done is awful and there is no justification for it...and sadly not really anything new, but maybe just a bigger scale.  I'm trying to view this pragmatically and not stir the religious pot; though that is definitely a factor here.

That said...why do we (most western nations) still support the state of Israel?  I get that it gives us a buffer in the Middle East with Israel being very good at intelligence gathering.  But I hate that our support both depends on and fuels the bloodshed.

The west supports Israel because of: 
1. they are a democratic state among a sea of Muslim autocracies that have historically tried to conquer the west.
2. the special place Israel holds in Christianity (the Holy Land) which is the dominant religion in the west (at least culturally).
3. guilt over the Holocaust.
4. Israel provides a counterbalance to prevent any other regional power from becoming dominant (Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, etc.) - this is more of a specific US geopolitical strategy than the rest of the western world.

...

There is a difference between going to a village and shooting every civilian in sight and bombing a building that you know or suspect to contain armed enemy fighters/weapons knowing that civilians may be present. Hamas certainly didn't broadcast to Israel to leave the area around Gaza because they were going to launch an attack. We can argue about the feasibility of that, but at least Israel has tried to limit civilian casualties while Hamas has done everything in it's power to cause civilian casualties. The two are not morally equivalent.

Hamas and others learned long ago that if your enemy will hesitate to blow up a mosque, or school, or hospital then that is the best place to store weapons or launch rockets from. Hamas has zero restraint because they're not trying to only attack military targets, they are purposefully trying to cause terror by attacking civilian targets.

Right, like I said I understand the reasons why we support Israel.  It was more of a rhetorical question of: "is it worth it?" 

Come on now...Israel is not being at all careful about choosing targets in Hamas.  Sure, they gave a warning to get out while you can, but that is basically impossible with how densely populated Gaza is.  They knew there would be high civilian losses.  There is a large portion of it that is pure retaliation and it will not end.  Israel is good at putting on the guise of moral high ground, I'll give you that.  Either way...is it still worth it to support Israel?  I doubt things will change though.

+1 on how baffling it was that our politicians so quickly got behind Israel on this one, and sort of brushed aside the Ukraine war which is by far more impactful.  Russia is doing a lot to destabilize things all over the world.  Whether or not there were directly involved with the Hamas attack, they most certainly benefit from it.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Just dropping my two cents, which scanning above appears to agree with some others here.  What Hamas has done is awful and there is no justification for it...and sadly not really anything new, but maybe just a bigger scale.  I'm trying to view this pragmatically and not stir the religious pot; though that is definitely a factor here.

That said...why do we (most western nations) still support the state of Israel?  I get that it gives us a buffer in the Middle East with Israel being very good at intelligence gathering.  But I hate that our support both depends on and fuels the bloodshed.

The west supports Israel because of: 
1. they are a democratic state among a sea of Muslim autocracies that have historically tried to conquer the west.
2. the special place Israel holds in Christianity (the Holy Land) which is the dominant religion in the west (at least culturally).
3. guilt over the Holocaust.
4. Israel provides a counterbalance to prevent any other regional power from becoming dominant (Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, etc.) - this is more of a specific US geopolitical strategy than the rest of the western world.

...

There is a difference between going to a village and shooting every civilian in sight and bombing a building that you know or suspect to contain armed enemy fighters/weapons knowing that civilians may be present. Hamas certainly didn't broadcast to Israel to leave the area around Gaza because they were going to launch an attack. We can argue about the feasibility of that, but at least Israel has tried to limit civilian casualties while Hamas has done everything in it's power to cause civilian casualties. The two are not morally equivalent.

Hamas and others learned long ago that if your enemy will hesitate to blow up a mosque, or school, or hospital then that is the best place to store weapons or launch rockets from. Hamas has zero restraint because they're not trying to only attack military targets, they are purposefully trying to cause terror by attacking civilian targets.

Right, like I said I understand the reasons why we support Israel.  It was more of a rhetorical question of: "is it worth it?" 

Come on now...Israel is not being at all careful about choosing targets in Hamas.  Sure, they gave a warning to get out while you can, but that is basically impossible with how densely populated Gaza is.  They knew there would be high civilian losses.  There is a large portion of it that is pure retaliation and it will not end.  Israel is good at putting on the guise of moral high ground, I'll give you that.  Either way...is it still worth it to support Israel?  I doubt things will change though.

+1 on how baffling it was that our politicians so quickly got behind Israel on this one, and sort of brushed aside the Ukraine war which is by far more impactful.  Russia is doing a lot to destabilize things all over the world.  Whether or not there were directly involved with the Hamas attack, they most certainly benefit from it.

I mean it's not very surprising to me. Couple American citizens dying in a terrorist attack with hostages and potential torturing threats to hostages and a call for Jews to be targeted worldwide... It's a lot.

Ukraine is "old news," and it's very reasonable to solidly and unequivocally condemn Hamas. They've even posted videos highlighting their own war crimes.

Of course the situation is nuanced, but when you can easily get some punches in against a legitimate bogeyman, when wouldn't politicians go for that?

[GuitarStv]

And the settlers in their homes, being attacked and hiding, and rooted out and killed or kidnapped (prob worse than death).

Israeli 'settlers' include an awful lot of murderers and thieves.  They are 'settling' into land they don't own and have no rightful claim to, and many of them do so by forcibly moving the people who have been living there for generations.  There is a very long history of 'settlers' indiscriminately killing Palestinians who don't want to hand over their property.  And they always win, as they operate with full support of the Israeli military.

This obviously doesn't justify torture and murder, but might shed some light as to what could motivate the kind of anger that drives these actions.

I mean it's not very surprising to me. Couple American citizens dying in a terrorist attack with hostages and potential torturing threats to hostages and a call for Jews to be targeted worldwide... It's a lot.

Ukraine is "old news," and it's very reasonable to solidly and unequivocally condemn Hamas. They've even posted videos highlighting their own war crimes.

Of course the situation is nuanced, but when you can easily get some punches in against a legitimate bogeyman, when wouldn't politicians go for that?

It's not even the punches against the boogeyman that bother me.  Hamas objectively sucks.  It's that they're 'punching' an awful lot of civilians (including a shocking number of children) to death in the process.  You can't take the moral high ground by sinking to the lows of the people you say are immoral - it just doesn't work that way.

[PeteD01]

And the settlers in their homes, being attacked and hiding, and rooted out and killed or kidnapped (prob worse than death).

Israeli 'settlers' include an awful lot of murderers and thieves.  They are 'settling' into land they don't own and have no rightful claim to, and many of them do so by forcibly moving the people who have been living there for generations.  There is a very long history of 'settlers' indiscriminately killing Palestinians who don't want to hand over their property.  And they always win, as they operate with full support of the Israeli military.

...

There is some geographic and political confusion going on here.
The "settlers" are often right wing extremists and even terrorists but are active mostly in the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

There are no "settlers" in southern Israel but there are kibbutzim in the area, which happens to be Israel proper and not occupied territory,  and, apparently, many of the victims were left-leaning Kibbutz members.
In general, kibbutzniks are not politically aligned with the "settlers" but rather considered to be at the other side of the Israeli political spectrum.

[GuitarStv]

And the settlers in their homes, being attacked and hiding, and rooted out and killed or kidnapped (prob worse than death).

Israeli 'settlers' include an awful lot of murderers and thieves.  They are 'settling' into land they don't own and have no rightful claim to, and many of them do so by forcibly moving the people who have been living there for generations.  There is a very long history of 'settlers' indiscriminately killing Palestinians who don't want to hand over their property.  And they always win, as they operate with full support of the Israeli military.

...

There is some geographic and political confusion going on here.
The "settlers" are often right wing extremists and even terrorists but are active mostly in the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

There are no "settlers" in southern Israel but there are kibbutzim in the area, which happens to be Israel proper and not occupied territory,  and, apparently, many of the victims were left-leaning Kibbutz members.
In general, kibbutzniks are not politically aligned with the "settlers" but rather considered to be at the other side of the Israeli political spectrum.

Thank you for clearing up the confusion!  You would hope that Hamas would at least be less likely to attack the Israelis who are sympathetic to their cause, rather than converting more to hatred.  Unfortunately I think they're stuck on a cycle of anger and retribution that's just working to make the day to day situation worse for the Palestinians they purport to represent.

[LaineyAZ]

I thought I read years ago that Israel never negotiated for hostages, and that if your loved one was taken hostage then you should start mourning them as if they had died.  As a result, there were almost no instances of Israelis being taken hostage because there was no benefit to the kidnappers.  Has that policy changed?

I also remember that for many years, U.S. presidents have meekly admonished Israel about its increasing land grab, i.e., "please don't build additional settlements."  Which Israel ignored.
A few years ago I watched an interview with one of these "settlers" who insisted that the land belonged to them because "it said so in the Bible."  That's when I realized this was going to be a never-ending issue.

[PeteD01]

And the settlers in their homes, being attacked and hiding, and rooted out and killed or kidnapped (prob worse than death).

Israeli 'settlers' include an awful lot of murderers and thieves.  They are 'settling' into land they don't own and have no rightful claim to, and many of them do so by forcibly moving the people who have been living there for generations.  There is a very long history of 'settlers' indiscriminately killing Palestinians who don't want to hand over their property.  And they always win, as they operate with full support of the Israeli military.

...

There is some geographic and political confusion going on here.
The "settlers" are often right wing extremists and even terrorists but are active mostly in the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

There are no "settlers" in southern Israel but there are kibbutzim in the area, which happens to be Israel proper and not occupied territory,  and, apparently, many of the victims were left-leaning Kibbutz members.
In general, kibbutzniks are not politically aligned with the "settlers" but rather considered to be at the other side of the Israeli political spectrum.

Thank you for clearing up the confusion!  You would hope that Hamas would at least be less likely to attack the Israelis who are sympathetic to their cause, rather than converting more to hatred.  Unfortunately I think they're stuck on a cycle of anger and retribution that's just working to make the day to day situation worse for the Palestinians they purport to represent.

There are going to be questions about the focus of military operations in the occupied areas/settlement areas at the expense of people less likely to support a corrupt government partially made up of right wing nutters bent on weakening Israeli civil society.

The Palestinians' cause is not the same as the Hamas interests.
In fact, the more havoc the right wing nutters wreak the better for Hamas.
The same is true for attacking left wing Israelis as Hamas benefits from further Palestinian isolation and loss of support.
So, from the perspective of Hamas, attacking Kibbutzim makes perfect sense.

Many Palestinians in the Gaza strip have fallen victim to the despotic Hamas rule and Hamas certainly only acts in its own interest - not in the interest of the Palestinian people. Saying otherwise is just falling for terrorist propaganda.

[PeteD01]

More on right wing incompetence and its violent consequences:

Will the United States Be the Next Israel?
War in the Middle East is a warning of what can happen when politicians put their own ends above national security.
DANIEL W. DREZNER
10/12/2023

Americans are watching the Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war with horror, mourning the death of innocent civilians, thinking about their family and friends, and worrying that the violence in Gaza will trigger an even more violent conflagration in the Greater Middle East.

There’s another reason Americans should be worried.

What’s happening in Israel now is a disturbing example of what can happen when elected officials use partisan and personal motivations to warp national security. For years, Republicans in Congress have attempted to sabotage what they call the “Deep State.” This includes placing holds on political nominees and castigating diplomats, officers and analysts employed in the government as captives to “Big Woke.” They might see it as political theater, necessary to boosting profiles and fundraising. But as this week shows, there can be a price.
Reporting suggests that the hardline elements of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition were openly hostile to warnings from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and security agency Shin Bet that settler violence would increase the security threat to Israel. One Likud member of parliament complained: “The ideology of the left has reached the top echelons of the Shin Bet. The deep state has infiltrated the leadership of the Shin Bet and the IDF.” Another Netanyahu coalition member stated, “We see there is confusion as to who is an enemy.”


https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/12/us-israel-terrorism-political-polarization

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

And the settlers in their homes, being attacked and hiding, and rooted out and killed or kidnapped (prob worse than death).

Israeli 'settlers' include an awful lot of murderers and thieves.  They are 'settling' into land they don't own and have no rightful claim to, and many of them do so by forcibly moving the people who have been living there for generations.  There is a very long history of 'settlers' indiscriminately killing Palestinians who don't want to hand over their property.  And they always win, as they operate with full support of the Israeli military.

This obviously doesn't justify torture and murder, but might shed some light as to what could motivate the kind of anger that drives these actions.

I mean it's not very surprising to me. Couple American citizens dying in a terrorist attack with hostages and potential torturing threats to hostages and a call for Jews to be targeted worldwide... It's a lot.

Ukraine is "old news," and it's very reasonable to solidly and unequivocally condemn Hamas. They've even posted videos highlighting their own war crimes.

Of course the situation is nuanced, but when you can easily get some punches in against a legitimate bogeyman, when wouldn't politicians go for that?

It's not even the punches against the boogeyman that bother me.  Hamas objectively sucks.  It's that they're 'punching' an awful lot of civilians (including a shocking number of children) to death in the process.  You can't take the moral high ground by sinking to the lows of the people you say are immoral - it just doesn't work that way.

Certainly. They're supporting a position that will lead to/has already lead to civilian deaths. Even though they have not, as I'm aware of it, provided material support right now, simply by being so supportive, they are providing aid to Israel.

I'm not excited by the US position. I'm also not excited by the position of the morons who spoke up right after the Hamas attack saying this is 100% Israel's fault. It's clearly a back and forth situation and every political entity involved is culpable.

[PeteD01]

Benjamin Netanyahu is going to end up disgraced or worse, and the rest of his troupe of violent clowns won't fare any better.

Here is a view from the victims of Hamas:

Worst Failure in Israeli History: Netanyahu Abandoned the Very Heart of Israel
GET OUT OF HERE
The kibbutz has been a cherished centerpiece of Israeli life for 75 years. Many kibbutzniks believe Benjamin Netanyahu failed us all and he has to go.
Gitit Ginat
Oct. 14, 2023

The feeling of devastation stems not only from the terrible losses but from the sheer magnitude of failure, perhaps the worst in Israeli history: the kibbutz members waited for the IDF for hours, and the IDF didn’t come. The Kibbutz Movement, which on Thursday had its flag lowered to half-mast, released a statement a few hours after the attack: “More than 10 hours have elapsed, and our many friends in the kibbutzim are struggling alone with bloodthirsty terrorists. More than 10 hours of heroism and helplessness. More than 10 hours that children, toddlers and the elderly are abandoned to their fate. We demand from the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Forces to snap out of their shock, go on the attack and liberate the kibbutzim, moshavim and towns of the South!
“The Kibbutz Movement is grieving its sons and daughters, men, women and children who were murdered in cold blood in their own homes. Words cannot express the pain, horror and shock we feel at this loss of life. Our heart is torn and weeping.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/worst-failure-in-israeli-history-netanyahu-abandoned-the-very-heart-of-israel?ref=home?ref=home

[Just Joe]

Have aliens (or fake ones) take over all the holy sites so they've got a common enemy ala Watchmen.

-W

You mean Mexicans?

[Just Joe]

A few years ago I watched an interview with one of these "settlers" who insisted that the land belonged to them because "it said so in the Bible."  That's when I realized this was going to be a never-ending issue.

Religion seems so much like cultural baggage at this point. Baggage that needs to be shed when it amounts to a negative force within a person's life or community.

No good reason to hate your neighbor because of 2000+ year old grudges.