Facebook is not a safe space to say this, so I will say it here:
What the fuck was Hamas thinking? What did they think the outcome was going to be?
The blood of all dead Palestinian kids is on their hands. I know so-called "honor culture" is disparaged in modern American society, but what Hamas did was an insult that had to be repaid with …
Facebook is not a safe space to say this, so I will say it here:
What the fuck was Hamas thinking? What did they think the outcome was going to be?
The blood of all dead Palestinian kids is on their hands. I know so-called "honor culture" is disparaged in modern American society, but what Hamas did was an insult that had to be repaid with blood, and they had to have known this going in.
There was no universe where October 8th wasn't going to see massive, massive payback from a smart, organized, very well armed, and very angry nation who could push them right into the sea if it wanted to.
Hamas wants this to happen. This is literally their strategy - they want as many dead Gazans as possible so they can be used as propaganda to break up the Arab states’ attempts to normalize relations with Israel, get the UN to put even more pressure on Israel, and draw in Hezbollah and maybe the other Arab states into the war against Israel. This is why they store weapons in mosques and build headquarters under hospitals. They know the Israelis must strike at them, and in striking at them, dead civilians are inevitable.
Hamas considers Gazan civilians killed by (or blamed on) the IDF a good thing. Remember this, and their actions make much more sense.
Yup. Hamas’ main strategic goal at the moment, and I’m not exaggerating here, is to maximize the number and perceived number of civilian casualties. That means making sure civilians stay over the tunnels, to the point of (allegedly) having snipers shoot people if they try to leave, it means falsifying death reports, etc, etc. Beyond even preparing for the ground offensive, they need the civilian death toll to get the people in the surrounding countries to view Israel as genocidal and make it so opportunistic nihilists like Erdogan can deflect attention away from their own schemes.
The actual ruling monarchies of the local Arab states want Hamas blasted with a low orbital ion cannon because they’re a nuisance but they use the “Palestinian Cause” as a political football to control their populace. Sisi would be ecstatic to get rid of Hamas once and for all, but will he actually help Israel get rid of them? Of course not, that would require effort.
`Yup. Hamas’ main strategic goal at the moment, and I’m not exaggerating here, is to maximize the number and perceived number of civilian casualties. That means making sure civilians stay over the tunnels, to the point of (allegedly) having snipers shoot people if they try to leave, it means falsifying death reports, etc, etc.'
Not sure how you possibly know their strategic goals.
Israel will take care of civilian casualties, Hamas does not need to try to affect them.
People aren't leaving because they don't trust that Israel will allow them back to their home (or now rubble). Israel does have a bit of a reputation for doing this.
The Gaza Health Ministry has provided accurate numbers in the past and there's been some preliminary reporting that suggests current numbers aren't being forged.
Unless Hamas is catastrophically stupid, that has to be their main strategic goal. If you think Hamas cares about civilian deaths, I’ve got some beachfront property on the Moon to sell you. One of their mottos is “We love death more than you love life” and they mean it. If there’s one type of people you should believe at their word, it’s Jihadists.
Take a step back. What is Hamas’ long term strategic goal? Well, just read their charter, it’s via death or expulsion (preferably death) the removal of all Jews from what the British called Mandatory Palestine. Now, this is an insane goal of course, and they’ll never achieve it, but that’s what they say they want and I believe them.
Israel has a modern army and nukes, so, how does a group whose expertise lies in lunacy, digging tunnels, and shooting rockets randomly into towns defeat a modern army? Well, they don’t, because they can’t. But what they can do is make it so to defeat them, it requires killing a staggering amount of civilians. Hamas knows most of the UN hates Israel (it’d take another essay to explain, via human nature via humiliation and insecurity why) and especially the Islamic countries just look for any excuse to go after Israel.
Ramp up the civilian death toll, get more countries to pressure Israel, finally get the US to get Israel to stop, and you ‘Win’, your beloved tunnels and Caliphate of the Moles is safe and you can go back to randomly firing rockets.
Hamas teaches children from grade school to glory in the deaths of martyrs, to want to be martyrs, everything is about the glorification of death. It’s a deliberate strategy to maximize death to make it impossible for Israel to defeat them due to international backlash. If Hamas’ just fought like a normal militant group, even a normal Jihadist group, Israel would’ve destroyed them 15 years ago. However, when no only do you not care about your own civilians dying, but you actually want more of them to die, it opens up previously unherd of tactics in warfare, tactics that wouldn’t work if their was no international community that hated Israel.
Hamas’ existence depends on using Palestinians as human shields. Without that grisly tactic, they’d instantly be obliterated.
What that they may not have expected is that, to a certain extent, we are past caring about 'international pressure'. I just came back from a Shabbat lunch where my fellow guests--formerly super liberal, peace and love, co-existence, left wing types--were literally quoting Ben Shapiro. (I'm going to listen to his speech from Cambridge now; they recommended it).
We realize that this isn't another limited engagement; this is a war for survival. If the way to survive is to fight Hamas on it's turf, with that associated cost, then that's how it's going to go down.
Speaking as an ordinary citizen, and not as a military expert, of course.
That Oxford student who said that the UK didn't bomb civilians in Germany during WW II! The audience *laughed* at her -- and they were mostly on her side in terms of supporting Hamas.
> were literally quoting Ben Shapiro
People say I get all my talking points from Ben Shapiro. That's not true, and I'm going to tell you why. But first, let me tell you about ExpressVPN.
Thanks for telling me about the Ben Shapiro event at Cambridge.
I've never listened to a large chunk of him before. Clearly very smart and right on some things, wrong on others. But his defense of Western ideals was fiyah.
Provoking a response was the strategy. They want to kill Jews, they want a war and the response will cause even more terrible suffering in Gaza and more destitute young men with no future will chose religious extremism and join Hamas. Every death in Gaza is a win for them.
Hamas doesn't view the safety of the Gaza population as their responsibility, one of their spokespersons said so in a recent interview. They have put the screws on the people there, terrorising them, extracting money from them, diverting humanitarian aid, brainwashing their children in their despicable death cult. Even if they didn't count on being as "successful" as they were on 10/7, they new there would be some retaliation, as it always happens. And when that happens, they were counting on the killing of Palestinian. To them, the more Palestinian civilians dead the better, because they know the horror of it will push public opinions in Western countries to call for a ceasefire before Hama's military capability degrades too much. After that, they would just have to regroup for a while, and be ready to do another attack.
I was listening to Sam Harris's interview with Graeme Wood, and he believes it's quite likely that Hamas are basically the dog that caught the car. They had not been planning for the operation to be as successful as it was and, given the lack of direct command Hamas has over their own combatants let alone affiliated jihadist groups, the violence and bloodshed basically spiralled well beyond their ability to control. Grame believes that Hamas likely can't even account for all of the hostages, because many of them were captured by other groups. Not to say they have any moral problem with how this played out, but it does seem possible this did not align with the strategic objectives of Hamas leadership
Facebook is not a safe space to say this, so I will say it here:
What the fuck was Hamas thinking? What did they think the outcome was going to be?
The blood of all dead Palestinian kids is on their hands. I know so-called "honor culture" is disparaged in modern American society, but what Hamas did was an insult that had to be repaid with blood, and they had to have known this going in.
There was no universe where October 8th wasn't going to see massive, massive payback from a smart, organized, very well armed, and very angry nation who could push them right into the sea if it wanted to.
Hamas wants this to happen. This is literally their strategy - they want as many dead Gazans as possible so they can be used as propaganda to break up the Arab states’ attempts to normalize relations with Israel, get the UN to put even more pressure on Israel, and draw in Hezbollah and maybe the other Arab states into the war against Israel. This is why they store weapons in mosques and build headquarters under hospitals. They know the Israelis must strike at them, and in striking at them, dead civilians are inevitable.
Hamas considers Gazan civilians killed by (or blamed on) the IDF a good thing. Remember this, and their actions make much more sense.
Yup. Hamas’ main strategic goal at the moment, and I’m not exaggerating here, is to maximize the number and perceived number of civilian casualties. That means making sure civilians stay over the tunnels, to the point of (allegedly) having snipers shoot people if they try to leave, it means falsifying death reports, etc, etc. Beyond even preparing for the ground offensive, they need the civilian death toll to get the people in the surrounding countries to view Israel as genocidal and make it so opportunistic nihilists like Erdogan can deflect attention away from their own schemes.
The actual ruling monarchies of the local Arab states want Hamas blasted with a low orbital ion cannon because they’re a nuisance but they use the “Palestinian Cause” as a political football to control their populace. Sisi would be ecstatic to get rid of Hamas once and for all, but will he actually help Israel get rid of them? Of course not, that would require effort.
`Yup. Hamas’ main strategic goal at the moment, and I’m not exaggerating here, is to maximize the number and perceived number of civilian casualties. That means making sure civilians stay over the tunnels, to the point of (allegedly) having snipers shoot people if they try to leave, it means falsifying death reports, etc, etc.'
Not sure how you possibly know their strategic goals.
Israel will take care of civilian casualties, Hamas does not need to try to affect them.
People aren't leaving because they don't trust that Israel will allow them back to their home (or now rubble). Israel does have a bit of a reputation for doing this.
The Gaza Health Ministry has provided accurate numbers in the past and there's been some preliminary reporting that suggests current numbers aren't being forged.
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/31/gaza-death-palestine-health-ministry/
Unless Hamas is catastrophically stupid, that has to be their main strategic goal. If you think Hamas cares about civilian deaths, I’ve got some beachfront property on the Moon to sell you. One of their mottos is “We love death more than you love life” and they mean it. If there’s one type of people you should believe at their word, it’s Jihadists.
Take a step back. What is Hamas’ long term strategic goal? Well, just read their charter, it’s via death or expulsion (preferably death) the removal of all Jews from what the British called Mandatory Palestine. Now, this is an insane goal of course, and they’ll never achieve it, but that’s what they say they want and I believe them.
Israel has a modern army and nukes, so, how does a group whose expertise lies in lunacy, digging tunnels, and shooting rockets randomly into towns defeat a modern army? Well, they don’t, because they can’t. But what they can do is make it so to defeat them, it requires killing a staggering amount of civilians. Hamas knows most of the UN hates Israel (it’d take another essay to explain, via human nature via humiliation and insecurity why) and especially the Islamic countries just look for any excuse to go after Israel.
Ramp up the civilian death toll, get more countries to pressure Israel, finally get the US to get Israel to stop, and you ‘Win’, your beloved tunnels and Caliphate of the Moles is safe and you can go back to randomly firing rockets.
Hamas teaches children from grade school to glory in the deaths of martyrs, to want to be martyrs, everything is about the glorification of death. It’s a deliberate strategy to maximize death to make it impossible for Israel to defeat them due to international backlash. If Hamas’ just fought like a normal militant group, even a normal Jihadist group, Israel would’ve destroyed them 15 years ago. However, when no only do you not care about your own civilians dying, but you actually want more of them to die, it opens up previously unherd of tactics in warfare, tactics that wouldn’t work if their was no international community that hated Israel.
Hamas’ existence depends on using Palestinians as human shields. Without that grisly tactic, they’d instantly be obliterated.
What that they may not have expected is that, to a certain extent, we are past caring about 'international pressure'. I just came back from a Shabbat lunch where my fellow guests--formerly super liberal, peace and love, co-existence, left wing types--were literally quoting Ben Shapiro. (I'm going to listen to his speech from Cambridge now; they recommended it).
We realize that this isn't another limited engagement; this is a war for survival. If the way to survive is to fight Hamas on it's turf, with that associated cost, then that's how it's going to go down.
Speaking as an ordinary citizen, and not as a military expert, of course.
That Oxford student who said that the UK didn't bomb civilians in Germany during WW II! The audience *laughed* at her -- and they were mostly on her side in terms of supporting Hamas.
> were literally quoting Ben Shapiro
People say I get all my talking points from Ben Shapiro. That's not true, and I'm going to tell you why. But first, let me tell you about ExpressVPN.
Thanks for telling me about the Ben Shapiro event at Cambridge.
I've never listened to a large chunk of him before. Clearly very smart and right on some things, wrong on others. But his defense of Western ideals was fiyah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtX1-OBeEQU
Provoking a response was the strategy. They want to kill Jews, they want a war and the response will cause even more terrible suffering in Gaza and more destitute young men with no future will chose religious extremism and join Hamas. Every death in Gaza is a win for them.
Hamas doesn't view the safety of the Gaza population as their responsibility, one of their spokespersons said so in a recent interview. They have put the screws on the people there, terrorising them, extracting money from them, diverting humanitarian aid, brainwashing their children in their despicable death cult. Even if they didn't count on being as "successful" as they were on 10/7, they new there would be some retaliation, as it always happens. And when that happens, they were counting on the killing of Palestinian. To them, the more Palestinian civilians dead the better, because they know the horror of it will push public opinions in Western countries to call for a ceasefire before Hama's military capability degrades too much. After that, they would just have to regroup for a while, and be ready to do another attack.
I was listening to Sam Harris's interview with Graeme Wood, and he believes it's quite likely that Hamas are basically the dog that caught the car. They had not been planning for the operation to be as successful as it was and, given the lack of direct command Hamas has over their own combatants let alone affiliated jihadist groups, the violence and bloodshed basically spiralled well beyond their ability to control. Grame believes that Hamas likely can't even account for all of the hostages, because many of them were captured by other groups. Not to say they have any moral problem with how this played out, but it does seem possible this did not align with the strategic objectives of Hamas leadership
There were written instructions in Arabic to do all tne depraved crap that these barbarians did.