Hamas Launches Offensive Against Southern Israel

[Skallagrim]

Cut off all access to food and water and impose conditions for surrender that you believe to be impossible

I think "I plan to kill them" is a perfect description of the plan outlined above, notwithstanding that the plan is hypothetical. But I have been wrong before on things I thought were equally obvious, so I invite you to correct me.

I "believe" it impossible because I'm writing this months after the fact, and we now know that many hostages were brutally murdered on short notice. So, in retrospect, I can write about something I know "believe" to have been a certain way, because we know it was that was.

We didn't know that then. And I outlined the above suggestion at least twice before in this thread, including shortly after the terrorist acts that murdered thousands and instigated the conflict, and then proposed returning the hostages as a condition. Whivh I still firmly believe should have been a hard condition, because taking hostages must never be rewarded.

"Return them all alive" is a fully reasonable request.

In retrospect, we know it was impossible, because they never took the hostages in (relatively) "good faith", but went on a rape-and-murder bonanza right away. So writing in retrospect, I can say that the inevitable result would have been that we all know they can't meet these criteria, so the consequences of their monstrous actions are... their own demise. Additionally, I also indicated that I don't believe Hamas would surrender even if they had the hostages alive, because they're that fucking stupid. Which is entirely their own fault.


To summarise:


1) The long-standing aggressor in this conflict initiated this round of the conflict by way of an unprovoked attack on civilian targets that killed thousands.

2) This aggressor took hostages.

3) Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, they raped and murdered a bunch of them right away.

4) We have ample video evidence (and loudly stated opinions, and poll data) to show beyond doubt that the vast supermajority of Gaza's populace happily, eagerly and festively reacted to all of this... and participated in it. (Note that all freed hostages tell of being kept in the homes of supposedly "normal citizens" of Gaza.) The Gazans are thus culpable to the same degree as the Germans for Hitler and the Japanese for Tojo. Reprisals against all Gazans are thus as justified as the bombings of Dresden and Munster, or Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

5) This being the case, reasonable demands in response should include the return of all hostages alive, and the unconditional surrender of Hamas. These are by no means unreasonable goals, and represent the bare minimum of what's acceptable as a response.

6) To force compliance, I outlined steps (the only steps) that would work to ensure it.

7) After the fact, it has become clear that Hamas and the vast majority there that supports them is even more monstrous than most imagined, and that meeting the minimum conditions would be outright impossible, because they already compounded their numerous war crimes by yet more irreperable violations.

8) Due to this, the reasonable demand that I outlined would have, entirely due to horrific actions of the aggressors themselves, have unavoidably led to the annihilation of Gaza.

9) While regrettable, this would be their own fucking fault. Nobody asked them to butcher civilians. Nobody asked them to take hostages. Nobody suggested they should rape and murder a bunch of said hostages. They did that of their own accord. The consequences are on them.

10) "Fuck around and find out," as the saying goes.


Anyway, I'll justify myself on this no further. I'm convinced my position is both clear and morally just insofar as a position can be just in the chaos of a conflict. I don't claim it is pleasant, but that decisive action was (and due to nt having been taken, remains) necessary to break the enemy. If the enemy had not been a bunch of the vilest monsters ever to walk the Earth, this could then have been achieved by the infinitely preferable (and originally intended-by-me!) outcome of all hostages being released, Hamas fully surrendering, and a reasonable settlement being achieved. (I proposed deporting all disarmed Gazans to the West Bank, and all Jewish West Bank colonists to Gaza, as a reasonable first step to sorting things out.) That this was never possible only became clear after the fact. But I'll take no blame for the monstrosities of the Arabs, which bitterly made it so.

Their evil intentions will, I now clearly see, make the solution I've outlined inevitable. Delaying it is pointless cruelty, and I may be hard of heart at times, but I am not pointlessly cruel. I leave that to Hamas, and to their supporters, and to all the useful idiots whose lily-livered bullshit keeps delaying a clear end to this festering conflict. Whereas all my ideas have purely been in service of achieving that goal.

Here's the summary, for the real knuckle-heads who still somehow don't get it, in the form of a quote attributed to Golda Meir (although I'm always critical of those, on the internet):

“If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”

And that's the long and short of it.

 

[Blasterbot]

1) The long-standing aggressor in this conflict initiated this round of the conflict by way of an unprovoked attack on civilian targets that killed thousands.

slight addendum. they did not just hit a civilian target. they hit specifically parts of the civilian population that were pushing for peace and negotiation. The concert they hit was a pro-Palestine event.

 

[strunkenwhite]

I "believe" it impossible because I'm writing this months after the fact, and we now know that many hostages were brutally murdered on short notice. So, in retrospect, I can write about something I know "believe" to have been a certain way, because we know it was that was.
...
In retrospect, we know it was impossible, because they never took the hostages in (relatively) "good faith", but went on a rape-and-murder bonanza right away. So writing in retrospect, I can say that the inevitable result would have been that we all know they can't meet these criteria, so the consequences of their monstrous actions are... their own demise.

You wrote: "5) Waiting calmly, in the bitter knowledge that many hostages are already dead, and that Hamas won't surrender."

i.e. your scenario posits that the Israel of the scenario has knowledge that the plan it is carrying out at that time has criteria that make it impossible for anyone within to survive. That is what I meant by "imposing conditions for surrender you believe to be impossible" without involving any future retrospectives.

“If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”

Pithy, but false.

I agree that we're approaching the practical end of this discussion but here is my thought on your view that a "final solution" is inevitable and the only way to avoid it happening to the Jews is for the Jews to do it to the Gazans. If a genocidal "kill-everyone-in-Gaza-but-it's-not-genocide" ending to the current conflict was really inevitable, I'd agree that there's merit in getting it over with as quickly as possible, but I don't accept that it is or even that it's realistically possible to know that with sufficient certainty in a situation where both parties are currently constrained by physical inability to pose a genocidal threat on the one hand and political considerations on the other hand.

 

[Skallagrim]

I agree that we're approaching the practical end of this discussion

Yes. Although it's certainly interesting, you want to talk (clearly) about a certain facet, but as I've mentioned, the historical context and the evaluation thereof (which I feel is the true matter at play, and which must be hashed out comprehensively to make any exchange sensible) is something which seems not to hold your interest. Which makes meaningful agreement, even on premises, rather difficult if not impossible

Added to this, I must object to (and to some degree am truly irked by, as the tone of my previous post's final lines may have indicated) your insistence on things like the phrasing:

your view that a "final solution" is inevitable

a genocidal "kill-everyone-in-Gaza-but-it's-not-genocide" ending to the current conflict

After all, you asked for my definitions, I gave them, I elaborated upon them with every question, and I've remained consistent. You may disagree on premises, but I've explained how I reason, and what I actually believe. Assuming that I mean something other than what I answer you when asked will automatically prohibit normal discussion. When you insist that what I say must be described as the "final solution" and then very ironically "retract" the accusation of it being genocide... that doesn't invite any further discourse.

If we disagree on terms and premises, fine. But word games like that will always sabotage any honest exchange of ideas.

If [the sort of ending to the current conflict descibed by Skallagrim] was really inevitable, I'd agree that there's merit in getting it over with as quickly as possible, but I don't accept that it is or even that it's realistically possible to know that with sufficient certainty in a situation where both parties are currently constrained by physical inability to pose a genocidal threat on the one hand and political considerations on the other hand.

That, on the other hand, is a valid position under reasonable circumstances. Indeed, it's a view I held for some time-- hopeful fool that I was. So I cannot blame you for an error of which I have been guilty. But I do feel it is an error.

Let me posit a question, not to demand an answer (indeed I suggest thinking on it at some length, while observing events over the months, if not years) but to invite careful consideration:

How much more suffering, and stretched out over how long a time, would you consider "enough" to conclude that I did have it right, in retrospect, and that "if only they'd dealt with the issue then, as Skall wanted" becomes a reasonable position for you? In other words: how much more suffering must be incurred, before you conclude that letting things drag on was worse than ending it (even ending it brutally) at a given earlier point?

Does that take another two rounds of war over Gaza? Another five rounds? Does it take twenty more years of suffering? Fifty more years? Does it take a century, or two, with perhaps ten or more additional rounds of "Gaza wars" before you conclude that prolonging those horrors cannot be justified and pretty much any definitive action is preferable to letting it go on? Or is there no such point, and do you feel that we must let the horrible wound fester basically forever, because you will never accept the burden of getting the saw and amputating the rotten limb?

I have concluded, as you can imagine, that the point has been reached. That letting this go on is already an unconscionable cruelty. But since you so vehemently disagree, I do wonder where you might draw the line. Here, I think I'll go for another... pithy quotation, which goes to my perception of such things. This one I can cite with confidence. It's Theodore Roosevelt:

"In any situation, the best thing to do is the right thing, the second-best thing to do is the wrong thing, and the worst thing to do is nothing."

Even if you feel that I'm advocating for the wrong thing... at least I'd wish to do something about the mess. And that's always better than leaving things to fester. I hope that you, and all sane others, will come around to my way of thinking. And I'm confident that for most people, events and experience will steer them in this direction.

 

[IndyFront]

Genuine question what should they have done? they have been as collateral avoidant as physically possible. they have actively abandoned military objectives if it would result in too many. Hamas actively uses their civilians as human shields. they build tunnels under hospitals, schools, and UN Aid stations. Billions of Aid dollars have been funneled into making this a hell to do anything with other than besiege it.

I would've preferred they collaborated with the international community rather than working against it. I'm personally pro-law and pro-rule of law so I cannot in good conscience support Israel breaking international law. Israel could've called on its allies in NATO to assist in some ways, and with greater coordination with other countries such as the U.S. with things like logistics, intelligence special forces and law enforcement Hamas leadership would've been utterly crushed like when the U.S. sent in SEAL Team Six to get Bin Laden. Very minimal civilian casualties and the mission to get the terrorists is accomplished.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

I myself feel like there’s a vast gap between “beating the death cult’s piss inside out” and “wholesale slaughter of half a million people.” Call me a pussy, but I don’t think we should try to cross that gap.

 

[strunkenwhite]

After all, you asked for my definitions, I gave them, I elaborated upon them with every question, and I've remained consistent. You may disagree on premises, but I've explained how I reason, and what I actually believe. Assuming that I mean something other than what I answer you when asked will automatically prohibit normal discussion. When you insist that what I say must be described as the "final solution" and then very ironically "retract" the accusation of it being genocide... that doesn't invite any further discourse.

If we disagree on terms and premises, fine. But word games like that will always sabotage any honest exchange of ideas.

I apologize for being flippant there. What I should have articulated is that I am calling it genocide, and you are calling it not genocide despite acknowledging, I believe, that the proposal was to deliberately choose to kill every human being in Gaza.

Let me posit a question, not to demand an answer (indeed I suggest thinking on it at some length, while observing events over the months, if not years) but to invite careful consideration:

How much more suffering, and stretched out over how long a time, would you consider "enough" to conclude that I did have it right, in retrospect, and that "if only they'd dealt with the issue then, as Skall wanted" becomes a reasonable position for you? In other words: how much more suffering must be incurred, before you conclude that letting things drag on was worse than ending it (even ending it brutally) at a given earlier point?

Does that take another two rounds of war over Gaza? Another five rounds? Does it take twenty more years of suffering? Fifty more years? Does it take a century, or two, with perhaps ten or more additional rounds of "Gaza wars" before you conclude that prolonging those horrors cannot be justified and pretty much any definitive action is preferable to letting it go on? Or is there no such point, and do you feel that we must let the horrible wound fester basically forever, because you will never accept the burden of getting the saw and amputating the rotten limb?

Long term consideration of the question is wise, but let me attempt an immediate answer. I think it would be a mistake to look at the total amount of suffering when answering that question, because most people would rather suffer than die. Let us look at the Israeli suffering. Have two million Israelis been killed by so-called Palestinian jihadists? At the current rate of attrition, how long would it take for the number to approach the number of people that your proposal would have killed? I don't think it's reasonable to stretch the current conflict out into infinity. Even if you trace the roots of it to an overarching conflict stretching back five, ten, or however many centuries, I hope you'd agree that not all parts of that conflict must necessarily end in ethnic cleansing. The specifics of the Israel-Palestine conflict either will or won't necessitate it in particular to end that way.

Long before the actuarial tables point to the complete extermination of everyone occupying Gaza as of October 2023 as a form of harm reduction, the world will change vastly in ways we can't predict that may well change that grim equation completely. For the better, maybe; for the worse, possibly; but in the uncertainty, we cannot justify that slaughter.

 

[IndyFront]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-announces-tactical-pauses-gaza-aid-supplies-2024-06-16/

JERUSALEM, June 16 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized plans announced by the military on Sunday to hold daily tactical pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into Gaza to facilitate aid delivery into the Palestinian enclave.

Looks like the military has finally had it with Netanyahu's idiocy. I don't see him lasting long after this.

 

[Terthna]

We didn't kill every German in Nazi Germany, or every Japanese in Imperial Japan; because we didn't have to. We just had to kill their cultural identity at the time; which unfortunately necessitated a great many deaths in order to force them to submit, to acknowledge in their hearts that they had been defeated, but far from all of them. That said though, the fanaticism of the "Palestinians" will likely make achieving such in their case far more difficult, and require exponentially more death inflicted upon them before they'll lose their taste for inflicting it on others.

 

[Skallagrim]

We didn't kill every German in Nazi Germany, or every Japanese in Imperial Japan; because we didn't have to. We just had to kill their cultural identity at the time; which unfortunately necessitated a great many deaths in order to force them to submit, to acknowledge in their hearts that they had been defeated, but far from all of them. That said though, the fanaticism of the "Palestinians" will likely make achieving such in their case far more difficult, and require exponentially more death inflicted upon them before they'll lose their taste for inflicting it on others.

Proportionally, that's depressingly likely. In absolute terms, thankfully not. But this is why I'm so surprised at certain people taking such an... abstractionist, "high horse" position here. Surely, we all want to do what is best, but we don't live in a utopia of reasonable people. We have to deal with monsters, too. We should aim to protect the innocent, as best we can, but sometimes dealing with the worst kind of beasts does involve collateral damage.

This is why, faced with Germany under Hitler and Japan under Tojo, the Allies bombed entire cities to the ground. This led to vast numbers of civilian deaths; and most of those civilians just had the bad luck of being born in a country run by monsters. The proportion of actual fanatics was limited. Amongst the Arabs in Israel, the proportion of fanatics is much higher.

And remember: in the case of Japan, the Japanese military attacked a military target, and they never had any real ability to even strike at the continental USA. And yet, America prosecuted the war in a way designed to end it decisively. Which involved fire-bombing Japanese cities, and then nuking two cities. It was not the civilian inhabitants there who had attacked Pearl Harbor, or even had any part in the decision to go to war.

By contrast, we have Hamas acting against the civilian populace of Israel, not against military targets, and the populace of "Palestinian" Arabs overwhelmingly approves of this and supports it, and very often participates in various manners.

All this means that, logically, if the Allies in World War II fought a just war, then similar measures against the "Palestinian" Arab civilians would not just be equally justified, but more so. You can't argue otherwise without either being a total hypocrite, or finding that Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, and such figures as 'Bomber' Harris were all "genocidal" and "war criminals". Which is something argued only by the extreme left, and neo-nazis (but I repeat myself).

This is why it's so surprising -- even perplexing -- to me that sane people like @Lord Sovereign and @strunkenwhite react so vehemently, even as if motivated by deep emotion about the morality of it all, even though I rather doubt that they'd call the Allies a bunch of war criminals. Even though they killed loads of civilians, in operations specifically targeting civilian centres.

Don't you guys remember that we're allowed, and to a considerable extent obligated, to act against evil? Bombing Dresden wasn't a happy thing, either. But the good guys did it anyway, to end the war. Same as nuking Hiroshima. Same as expelling German civilians from Poland and Czechia and the French borderlands. These things happened, because despite the fact that many individual Germans may have been innocent, Germany had created such unacceptable horrors that a definitive settlement to end Hitler's war and prevent any future repetition of same had to be imposed.

Well, guys. Same applies here. Still not nice. Still better to at least try other options first. But that's been done, and as with Herr Hitler, it didn't work. Stop being Chamberlains, and admit that when words fail-- the bomber gets through.

 

[prinCZess]

We didn't kill every German in Nazi Germany, or every Japanese in Imperial Japan; because we didn't have to. We just had to kill their cultural identity at the time; which unfortunately necessitated a great many deaths in order to force them to submit, to acknowledge in their hearts that they had been defeated, but far from all of them. That said though, the fanaticism of the "Palestinians" will likely make achieving such in their case far more difficult, and require exponentially more death inflicted upon them before they'll lose their taste for inflicting it on others.

It is worthy of mention here that, somewhat in relation, I believe, to @Skallagrim 's point, Hamas, Fatah, and basically every group that has been in power in the West Bank or Gaza makes regular practice of dehumanizing Jews as an enemy and lauding any act of violence against them, and propagandizing the next generation into similar viewpoints via active control of schooling in the region--and such has been ongoing for decades at the least.

It is not insignificant or unworthy of notice that proponents for peace, ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal/negotiation, and rapprochement with Palestinians are quite significant inside Israel (or, at least...they were) while Palestinian voices pushing such, if they exist (I have legitimately never heard one), can be safely and easily said to not have any sort of influence or broad base of support.

Hoping for a Good Friday style agreement between Israel and Palestine that lessens the violence without majorities on both sides who actually want peace and lessened conflict is...premature? A necessary condition for such an outbreak of calm really was significant numbers (even majorities) of both Ulstermen/British and Irish wanting the violence to end . Palestinians--at least by the admittedly inaccurate vehicle of their unelected but popular governments--do not seem to have any similar desire for the violence to end and have generational building of the glorification of martyrdom against the vile Jewish enemy.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Hitler’s Reich and Showa Japan possessed some of the largest war machines in history, and the will to use them.

Hamas are an insane death cult waging an unwinnable war against Israel. Wholesale genocide is disproportionate (not to mention the PR win of the century for the bastards). No one is saying “don’t beat the piss inside out of them” as Hamas are an insane death cult that has to be eradicated, but again there is a vast gap between that and “kill them all.”

Edit: This is the road to Hell. Let’s not walk it.

 

[AmosTrask]

Hitler’s Reich and Showa Japan possessed some of the largest war machines in history, and the will to use them.

Hamas are an insane death cult waging an unwinnable war against Israel. Wholesale genocide is disproportionate (not to mention the PR win of the century for the bastards). No one is saying “don’t beat the piss inside out of them” as Hamas are an insane death cult that has to be eradicated, but again there is a vast gap between that and “kill them all.”

Edit: This is the road to Hell. Let’s not walk it.

Then spare the children too young to remember and raise them as proper people far from the Islamist plague.

 

[Blasterbot]

Hitler’s Reich and Showa Japan possessed some of the largest war machines in history, and the will to use them.

Hamas are an insane death cult waging an unwinnable war against Israel. Wholesale genocide is disproportionate (not to mention the PR win of the century for the bastards). No one is saying “don’t beat the piss inside out of them” as Hamas are an insane death cult that has to be eradicated, but again there is a vast gap between that and “kill them all.”

Edit: This is the road to Hell. Let’s not walk it.

Guy they are willing to use their civilians and your morals as a shield as they kill civilians who are pushing for peace. Hamas has something like a 70% popularity rating. They are the government. They are waging war. their civilian casualties are part of their strategy. They specifically move civilians to become collateral. they take pipes meant to give clean water to their population, convert it into shitty rockets that fall on themselves 1/3rd of the time, and then bitch that they don't have enough water and it is the fault of Israel. They have built up a bunch of tunnels and bunkers not to shelter their civilians but so they can hide their weapons and military. because that is their priority.

I would've preferred they collaborated with the international community rather than working against it. I'm personally pro-law and pro-rule of law so I cannot in good conscience support Israel breaking international law. Israel could've called on its allies in NATO to assist in some ways, and with greater coordination with other countries such as the U.S. with things like logistics, intelligence special forces and law enforcement Hamas leadership would've been utterly crushed like when the U.S. sent in SEAL Team Six to get Bin Laden. Very minimal civilian casualties and the mission to get the terrorists is accomplished.

That hasn't worked for them. they have been condemned by the UN more than China, North Korea, or any other awful regime you would care to name. Israel doesn't need its allies to do anything other than be big and scary enough to keep the rest of the middle east from ganging up on them. Hamas needs to be removed from power. that is the war goal. that is the proportional response. to achieve that they need to win the war and break Hamas and their ability to be a functional government and military. Hamas's strategy is best represented by a picture

The babies are the civilian population. and instead of a monologuing villain it is a brutal regime of barbarians who raid and reave across your border and then cry foul when you fight back. I don't care anymore. They created the situation. they forced this shit to happen. they don't get to bitch about losing a bunch of wars they started.

 

[Terthna]

Hitler’s Reich and Showa Japan possessed some of the largest war machines in history, and the will to use them.

Hamas are an insane death cult waging an unwinnable war against Israel. Wholesale genocide is disproportionate (not to mention the PR win of the century for the bastards). No one is saying “don’t beat the piss inside out of them” as Hamas are an insane death cult that has to be eradicated, but again there is a vast gap between that and “kill them all.”

Edit: This is the road to Hell. Let’s not walk it.

Whether it's with a tank, a bomber, or a rock; death is death. Neither the dead, nor their loved ones, care how it was inflicted.

"Beating the piss out of them" might feel good in the short term, but it does nothing to solve the problem; which Hamas are a symptom of, not the cause. They are not the first organization representing the "Palestinians" that have chosen to focus all their efforts on killing Israeli civilians, nor will they be the last if nothing is done to stamp out the death cult culture that produced them.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Yeah, the “wholesale murder of half a million people” thing really sinking in for you lot, is it?

God help you. You’ve no idea what road you walk.

 

[Blasterbot]

Yeah, the “wholesale murder of half a million people” thing really sinking in for you lot, is it?

God help you. You’ve no idea what road you walk.

No it has. the problem is that the Palestinian people support a government that alternates between trying to murder Israelis at any given opportunity and then crying foul if they receive any retaliation. This has gone on since Israel was founded after WW2. there has been 75 years of this shit. there is no other solution. one group of people has determined that either their neighbors die or they will. The neighbor is winning. this will not stop until Palestine changes governments. It is awful. it is tragic. it is a horrendous waste of human lives. it is going to continue until the Palestinians get a clue or Israel gives in to outside pressure. in which case they can expect another attack like October 7th.

What would you have Israel do? Lie back and think of the poor people who want to murder their children? that is never gonna fly. Negotiations have never worked with Hamas. maybe the next government will be able to be negotiated with.

 

[Skallagrim]

Yeah, the “wholesale murder of half a million people” thing really sinking in for you lot, is it?

God help you. You’ve no idea what road you walk.

With respect -- because I really do appreciate your comments almost always -- it seems to me that the arguments raised aren't "sinking in" for you, because you are fixated on a fundamentally moralising position and ignore that everything has a context. You very much don't want to budge an inch on it, so you've ignored basically everything that counters your view; but refusal to recognise an argument's existence (even regardless of its validity) that doesn't validate your position. Naturally, you're entitled to your view, but your way of aporoaching this is not convincing to people who only accept consistent arguments as a means of being convinced.

The worst thing is: your own clearly euphemistic "beat the piss out of them" certainly also brings civilian deaths. So your moral position is placed on quicksand. It's actually just an arbitrary border that you've drawn up for yourself. "This many, acceptable. That many, not acceptable."

To me, that's a pointless distinction. If you're prepared to accept one civilian casualty under certain circumstances, then you should logically be prepared to accept a million -- or a hundred million -- under certain other circumstances. You implicitly admit that you also believe that, by immediately claiming that the scale of World War II was different. So scale (of conflict and threats involved) apparently decides how many deaths are acceptable?

That's fine. Perfectly valid metric. I don't even fundamentally disagree. I just use a different valuation of the same basic scale. And that is personal and subjective. And so is your position. Yet you claim some higher morality, and lecture us about the "road to hell". But that is an absolutist, deontological basis to reject the "unacceptable evil" you say you perceive. If you want to claim that basis of reasoning, you must reject any collateral damage. If acts can be so intrinsically evil that committing them is categorically wrong no matter what, then they are always wrong, on every scale. If you want to take the high road like that, then even one civilian death is unacceptable. As soon as you accept that one, you accept them all. Because you admit that the act is not intrinsically evil. You admit that there are circumstances where innocent deaths are a price that must be accepted, even though it's bitter and regrettable. The only question is: how many are acceptable under what circumstances?

By your own statements, although carefully euphemistic, you've already embraced that some civilian deaths must be accepted as unavoidable. "Beating the piss out of them" sounds nicer than the truth, but you know what it entails in reality. You're not stupid.

So. There we are. On the same road after all. You condemn me for walking faster, while pretending to be on a different road. But you're not. You just... tip-toe. The reason for that is again perception. Because you see a road to hell, and I see a road through hell. I don't deny that it's hellish. War is hell. But as Churchill said: when you're going though hell... keep going. So I march, where you tip-toe. So that we can go through the dark, and come out on the other end all the sooner. If not clean, then at least victorious.

You tip-toe, and it'll just keep you there for longer. Much longer.

That's my view of the situation, and that's why I believe as I believe and why I propose what I propose. Now, you see it differently. That's fine. But your moralising is misplaced. We both seek to do what yields the "least bad" results in a deeply imperfect situation. We just disagree about what's least bad. You want to avoid something evidently horrible, while accepting the distinct danger that a less-immediately-visible kind of horror gets dragged out and out. I want to avoid that dragged-out horror because I see it as a certainty, and therefore accept the get-it-over-with kind of horror because I can at least define its bounds.

That's a valid disagreement, and only time will reveal the truth. I'm convinced it'll prove me right, and I'm sure you're convinced it'll validate your position instead. Again, fine. But don't moralise to me as if your position isn't just as practically-minded as my own. Your view isn't categorically different from mine at all, ethically speaking. We both want to minimise needless suffering, which is the same categorical position. We just disagree on method.

So let's disagree, without trying to paint each other as somehow morally perverse. I assure you that I mean well, and I trust that you do, too. Neither of us are actually in a position to determine the outcome of all this anyway, and frankly I'm sure we'll both have to witness a trajectory of events that neither of us will find acceptable, either.

Next war in another 20 years? We can re-evaluate then.

 

[Jormungandr]

Whether it's with a tank, a bomber, or a rock; death is death. Neither the dead, nor their loved ones, care how it was inflicted.

"Beating the piss out of them" might feel good in the short term, but it does nothing to solve the problem; which Hamas are a symptom of, not the cause. They are not the first organization representing the "Palestinians" that have chosen to focus all their efforts on killing Israeli civilians, nor will they be the last if nothing is done to stamp out the death cult culture that produced them.

No it has. the problem is that the Palestinian people support a government that alternates between trying to murder Israelis at any given opportunity and then crying foul if they receive any retaliation. This has gone on since Israel was founded after WW2. there has been 75 years of this shit. there is no other solution. one group of people has determined that either their neighbors die or they will. The neighbor is winning. this will not stop until Palestine changes governments. It is awful. it is tragic. it is a horrendous waste of human lives. it is going to continue until the Palestinians get a clue or Israel gives in to outside pressure. in which case they can expect another attack like October 7th.

What would you have Israel do? Lie back and think of the poor people who want to murder their children? that is never gonna fly. Negotiations have never worked with Hamas. maybe the next government will be able to be negotiated with.

The next "government" after Hamas will be exactly like Hamas because Hamas are the Palestinians, and the Palestinians are Hamas.

Hamas is an expression of the same disease that'll pop up in another form the minute Hamas is exterminated and replaced.

That disease is rabid zealotry based on an utter lie from a population of death cultist fanatics. The only "innocents" in Gaza are children literally too young to comprehend the brainwashing they're being exposed to, since even kids as young as 8 or 9 are fully indoctrinated by that point, and in just a few more years will inevitably join the next crop of "freedom fighters" as young teenagers.

And their families encourage it.

The only way to save those young kids from being the next round of "meat for the grinder" is to do something completely monstrous and rip them away from their families, so they can be raised outside of the death cult. You know, like the utterly horrific decisions the Australians and Canadians did with their indigenous populations?

And as for people comparing WW2 Germany? The difference is that while many average Germans did support the Nazis, the entire population weren't as batshit crazy and as devout as the most hardcore Schutzstaffel who fully drank the kool-aid and dove straight into the rhetoric as though it were gospel. As a parallel, the average Palestinian isn't like the average German back in the 30's and 40's.

As someone up-thread said, there are no "good" options to ending this; only bad, very bad, worst, and very worst options. And the longer this mess goes on, the more atrocities the Palestinians will commit.

They don't want, nor would they ever accept, a peace that doesn't involve Israel being destroyed and every Jew pushed into the River or Sea to drown; a "Two State" will never happen.

And let's not forget all the dumbass Lefties in the West supporting "the Cause" without actually know what the "Cause" actually is, or those Palestinians that migrated to Western countries and all they do is spread their poison overseas -- right down to students in universities.

 

[Zachowon]

Let me make it simple. This isn't a war against a nation state.
This is a war against an idea. Against a religion.
You can't win unless you force them to no longer believe in that idea, which will only increase if you kill them or don't.