I think Hamas has significantly overplayed their hand here, likely thinking they wouldn't be as successful as they have been in their terrorism. They lost the sympathy of the world and have essentially handed Israel a card blanche (at least in the short term) to do whatever they want in Gaza. This is a once in a century chance for Israel to go in, remove whomever they want and then install a puppet government (or turn the whole area into a giant refugee camp). There is no doubt in my mind that they have planned their next steps in prepatory war games for the last 50 years. Unless this drags out, world sympathy will not shift back to the Palestinians after the images that were released (and unfortunately Palestinians and Hamas will conveniently be painted with the same brush).
Hamas has no options. If they graphically execute hostages, the western world (and arab world) will further support Israel. Any remaining rockets will inflict marginal damage at best now. Their best case scenario is that Gaza becomes a war zone for enemy combatants of Israel and inflicts maximum damage, but you have to sustain that level of fighting in the place you live. In the interim, the US and other neighbors will ensure that nobody else gets involved (outside of maybe Syria). None of them want to be overwhelmed by a refugee crisis and have their own internal Arab conflicts.
This is different from September 11 in that the US was not under direct neighborly or existential threat. For Israel, this is existential and as such the population will be a lot more supportive of a longer (more painful) conflict. They won't respond/prioritize hostage negotiations.
There are a couple of loose ends that I wonder about:
1. Hamas clearly didn't think this through, which leads me to believe that it was either a very isolated event or that they were incentivized by others. This could suggest Iranian or Russian involvement.
2. The last domino to fall (and I am making the assumption that both Lebanon and Iran will not actively get involved as: US presence, Israel power and the incentive to avoid WW3 will act as deterents) is Syria...Again, if Russia/Iran want to use a proxy, this would be where the aggression comes from.
All of the above is really a worst case scenario for all involved. Palestinians get further away from getting their own state and have now lost significant empathy. The world goes closer to WW3 and has moved focus away from the attrocities that Russia is committing in Ukraine. Israel has experienced a disgusting terrorist attack. Hamas will not exist after this outside of fringe extremists and Israel will ensure that there is enough "buffer" that this never happens again. The only question is whether or not they carry that buffer all the way to the coast.
Hamas knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted to terrify Israel, push them into a massive response that got Hamas' civillian shields killed in huge numbers. And the Western world would quail and condemn Israel for an over reaction in a couple of weeks when they forget about the Casualties and brutalization of Israel.
Israel under international pressure (This is Hamas thinking) will agree to a ceasefire and Hamas gets a huge cheque from Iran and a bunch of new weapons and time to rearm.
The bonus option is that America gets involved, the other nations get involved and Hamas gets the apocalyptic war that they desire.
but they might have miscalculated here, and are finding out that Israel is not interested in any kind of truce talk with Hamas and that this is a war of extermination of that terror group. that none of the other Middle Eastern Nations are going to do much, and that the UN doesn't have much power here to enforce a cease fire plan.
Hamas isn't a military under uniform so they have no legal protection under the auspices of war crimes trials or under any UCMJ. I would think that the only prisoners that Israel is all that interested in are Hamas top leadership. Everyone else is probably just going to either die where they are or be summarily executed.
Egypt and Jordan are not going to get involved, they're not interested in taking in refugees from this conflict, they don't want to risk the contamination of Hamas coming to their nations.
Yes the tremendously sad thing is that there are going to be thousands of civilian casualties in the strip, they have no where to go, and no one wants to take them in. but this was part of Hamas plan. They would be fine if a huge chunk of the civilians were wiped out. Its a death cult that has adapted ISIS practices.
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And…. lovely video of a large pro Palestinian rally in Australia with loud chants of “Gas the Jews!!!”.
Seems anti-semitism is more than alive and well in the land down under.
CBS News reporting anti-semitism rhetoric up 500% since the Hamas atrocities of Saturday. What a ####ed up world.
Yeah, Anti-Semitism is prevalent everywhere. We had these same lunatics demonstrating in Canada, as has the UK. Looking at these rallies though, it appears that the vast majority are Palestinian and Arabs. This is why we need to be careful about who we let into our countries. If these people are not already protected by Canadian paperwork, they should be sent right back. Canada recognizes Hamas as a terrorist group, and anyone supporting that should be deported back if possible, or facing criminal charges if they are already naturalized Canadians.
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anti-Semitism has always been a weird one to me. Obviously anecdotal but I've never experienced/seen/heard anything about it except online.
I'm sure I'm just ignorant on the subject but anything people could possibly hate the Jews for has to have happened almost 100 years ago right?
As for this conflict, I hope Israel does it's damnedest to wipe Hamas off the map. It sucks there will be so many civilian casualties but at the end of the day you have to draw the line somewhere. I don't believe there's a place for the kind of hatred they stand for in the world and steps need to be taken to eradicate it. You can argue both sides have been purports of hatred and violence along the way and you wouldn't be wrong.
That being said if you have to pick a winner, it should probably be the one who will lead to less violence, less suffering and more stability for a region that sorely needs it. Hamas has no real end game, only more violence and more suffering. It's their mandate and it's what got them voted in in the first place. That's my piece anyways.
anti-Semitism has always been a weird one to me. Obviously anecdotal but I've never experienced/seen/heard anything about it except online.
It's pretty terrible, to be frank. They make up less than 0.2% of the world's population but are at the very top of the list in reported incidents of groups receiving hate crimes.
I'll tell you what. How about Israel lays down their arms instead? This whole racist colonialism thing isn't a good look. This is 2023 for God's sake.
Hamas just shown what it does to people that lay down their arms. It shoots them in cold blood. Only today the bodies of 40 mutilated children were discovered piled together in one of the close settlements.
Israel is going to annex Gaza because it has shown no capability of self governance. It is Gaza's choice now . Lay down your arms release the prisoners or be destroyed.
You think Israel belongs to you? How many of the people currently living in Gaza were born before 48? Before 67? The Palestinian people didn't exist until recent history. The Jews in Palestine under the British Mandate also had Palestinian passports. Both sides had the ability to build something with their strips of land. One side did, the other didn't.
As soon as the UN accepted Israel's independence the Arab countries declared war. They lost territory in that bloody war. Then the Arab side was massing armies again next to the Israeli borders in 67. Israel attacked first preemptively. The Arab sides returned the favor in 73 catching Israel off guard. Israel returned a lot of the territories it captured to Egypt and Jordan for peace. They're still at peace. Israel tried to sign a peace treaty with the Palestinians as well. It fell through after Rabin was murdered.
Most of what Israel does is reactionary. 25 years ago Israelis could go to Gaza, there wasn't this huge wall. Israel reacted to bombing in its territory originating in the Gaza strip. The bombings became ineffective and harder to execute. Then the first Qasam rockets were build. Up until recently(2 years ago) Israel has allowed trucks with cash to be sent to Hamas so that it can keep the municipal services afloat.
Last edited by gvitaly; 10-10-2023 at 10:38 AM.
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anti-Semitism has always been a weird one to me. Obviously anecdotal but I've never experienced/seen/heard anything about it except online.
I'm sure I'm just ignorant on the subject but anything people could possibly hate the Jews for has to have happened almost 100 years ago right?
As for this conflict, I hope Israel does it's damnedest to wipe Hamas off the map. It sucks there will be so many civilian casualties but at the end of the day you have to draw the line somewhere. I don't believe there's a place for the kind of hatred they stand for in the world and steps need to be taken to eradicate it. You can argue both sides have been purports of hatred and violence along the way and you wouldn't be wrong.
That being said if you have to pick a winner, it should probably be the one who will lead to less violence, less suffering and more stability for a region that sorely needs it. Hamas has no real end game, only more violence and more suffering. It's their mandate and it's what got them voted in in the first place. That's my piece anyways.
#### Hamas and #### their supporters.
Not 100 years.
It's more like 1000-2000+ years of Jews being stigmatized by the dominant cultures of the Middle East and Europe who were predominantly Christian and Muslim. The Jewish people lost their state during Roman times and for two millennia, the diaspora basically spread out over the Middle East, Western, and Eastern Europe. However, the jews were always the "outsiders" who were blamed for a lot of social issues. Similar to how in modern times, racism might involve blaming illegal immigrants, etc. In Christian times, they were also the only ones allowed to lend money for interest (usury) while Christians were not permitted to do so which led to accumulation of wealth and further violence and hatred perpetuated against them (and the modern day conspiracies about their wealth and power).
Then what happened is in the 19th/20th century, the British controlled the entire area of modern Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and much more swathes of the Middle East. They artificially created borders and land lines (much like what they did to India and Pakistan which is another can of worms) and a movement started to grant the Jews their own state (related to Zionism) in their historic lands. This obviously does not go over well with the majority populations which were mostly Muslim. For centuries, there were religious edicts that allowed Jews to live peacefully among them but they had to pay a tax to the Muslims (Jizya) and there were times where peaceful coexistence was the norm. However, that hasn't been the case since the formal creation of Israel after WWII and constant wars have happened both from Israeli expansion to forcibly take more land (6 day war and modern day settlement expansion) and pushback/invasions of Arab states and terrorist groups (Yom Kippur war, etc.).
For me as an outsider, I think this is all incredibly stupid. I saw protesters for both sides all over downtown today and it's sad that people are caught up in these wars as they view it as part of their heritage and culture and religion. All of it is over tiny stretches of land that would be smaller than a tiny slice of Alberta.
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 10-10-2023 at 02:38 PM.
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I'm all for one loving their country and wanting what's best for it, especially given the situation there. But does anyone find all these rallies in the day or two after the massacre to be in poor taste? It sort of comes off like they're celebrating the incident itself.
I love my country but I don't think I'd be attending a "Yay Canada" rally literally a day or two after elements of their government were involved in an international incident like that, it's a bad look.
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I'm all for one loving their country and wanting what's best for it, especially given the situation there. But does anyone find all these rallies in the day or two after the massacre to be in poor taste? It sort of comes off like they're celebrating the incident itself.
I love my country but I don't think I'd be attending a "Yay Canada" rally literally a day or two after elements of their government were involved in an international incident like that, it's a bad look.
It's brainwashing and many people have inherently tied their cultural and religious identity to these causes (on both sides). It's incredibly stupid to me and irritating to see all the rallies and young Canadians honking horns and cheering on mass murders.
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I have to say i'm super impressed by that Iron Dome System. It's like someone playing Missile Command and never losing.
Does South Korea have this system? $40k a missile though..
Maybe they made the production more efficient but it used to be $100k/missile. Which is still much cheaper than Patriot/Hez/David's Sling which come with the price tag of millions.
The system is far from flawless and is mostly designed to target "dumb" short range missiles. The economics of war still work against it as the rockets the Hamas fires cost an order of magnitude less.
Today will be an even more traumatic gut-wrenching day as details of the level of atrocities are revealed. The world has not seen this type of systematic execution of Jews since the Nazi pogroms. Never Again happened last Saturday. The difference this time is that the response will be overwhelming.
Some explanation of what kind of tunnel network may exist in Gaza, and how difficult it may be for Israel. Finland is another place you'd think twice about.. their tunnel networks are insane.
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Today will be an even more traumatic gut-wrenching day as details of the level of atrocities are revealed. The world has not seen this type of systematic execution of Jews since the Nazi pogroms. Never Again happened last Saturday. The difference this time is that the response will be overwhelming.
I saw in the news that they just found a community of about 100 people where everyone was slaughtered, including babies.
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The other thing I find odd is that almost every video from Gaza where residents were hit, there is usually a dead child or baby, but the adults seem fine. Father with a dead child, or a mother with a dead child. Where are they putting the babies where their deaths are guaranteed, while the adults are fine. Maybe they should be sleeping with their babies and holding them the whole time while air raids are happening. As a parent, that is what I would do.
No offense, but that's a pretty weird thing to say. There are a bunch of reasons why you might be seeing that:
-infants and kids are far more fragile and less likely to be able to respond to avoid injury than adults, so they're more likely to die from blunt impacts like that
-in cases where a whole family dies in an air strike, you're obviously not going to see videos of a living parent holding a dead kid.
-related to the above, you're being fed propaganda from the Palestinian side and dead kids works great for that. In reality, the number of children dying in Gaza airstrikes is significantly below their share of the population.
But that doesn't mean none are going to die and it certainly doesn't mean we should undermine the tragedy of little kids being killed in war by blaming their parents.
