I’ll take a shot at answering Jesse’s question about kids being maimed and killed not making Israel safer. To do a throat clear, I’m a non-Jewish American, would probably be considered a moderate on the situation (I’m for a 2-state solution on 1967 borders and am against settlements) but am a lifelong student of military history and know every single war involving air powers since aerial bombing was invented.
This is not making me trying to influence anyone here’s moral judgements, but what Israel is doing not surprising in an air superiority military sense involving an enemy dug into tunnel networks. Seeing as no one cared about civilian deaths in the campaign against ISIS, because the whole world was against ISIS, it may surprise you that 10’s of thousands of civilians were killed in the campaign to destroy ISIS, including 10,000 in Mosul alone. Mosul had a bit over 10,000 fighters who weren’t dug into tunnel networks. Hamas has 50,000+ dug into the most advanced tunnel system maybe in the history of warfare under a densely packed city-state.
Israel’s main strategy is, and logically has to be if they want to destroy Hamas, the complete destruction of those tunnel networks, the creation of which was where most of the “humanitarian” resources actually went over the last 16 years.
In aerial bombing campaigns, even with guided bombs, even when the enemy is completely on the surface, you will get kids being blown up. Again, another throat clear, I’m not justifying this, I’m just describing recent aerial bombing campaigns. Israel is in a pickle. They (from their strategic perspective) need to clear those tunnels. The normal strategy would be to go in on the ground, block every tunnel entrance and let all of Hamas die of thirst, but they can’t do that because Hamas has hostages, including foreign hostages. So they need to clear the tunnels bit by bit in the worst tunnel warfare ever. To avoid that, they seem to be trying via bunker buster to blow up tunnel sections from the sky to minimize the amount they need to go into individually. The tunnel systems they can hit are all under civilian areas, ingeniously placed by Hamas under places they know will cause the most international backlash via civilian deaths if Israel bombs them. Using human shields, Hamas is trying to demand the IDF go into one of the worst deathtraps ever, because “from the Al-Qassam Brigades to the Zionist soldiers, the Al-Qasdam Brigades love death more than you love life.”
I can go on but I’ve already written an essay here, but if you want an example of trying to destroy an enemy army dug into tunnels, look up Iwo Jima and Okinawa, neither of which had tunnels as advanced or extensive as Hamas does. During WW2, the doctrine of Total War meant on all sides, there wasn’t an expectation of preventing civilian casualties if there was a military purpose. If you want to see what true carpet bombing looks like, true indiscriminate destruction to dig out an entrenched army from tunnels, look at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The United States turned those islands into the surface of the Moon.
I was going to email Jesse a response to his question, but then noticed this comment was better than what I would've written, so thank you.
I would add one component to the analysis, the notion that Israel's current military campaign will lead to even more people being sympathetic to Hamas and even joining their ranks. This is true, but ignores the importance of leadership/experienced fighters and also ignores that Hamas has control over the schools in Gaza.
The problem is that the status quo is unacceptable for Israel. Doing nothing also strengthens Hamas over the long run by allowing them to pick the time and place of their next atrocity, train even more fighters, and flood the next generation with anti-Semitic propaganda. As long as Hamas exists, lasting peace is not possible. Hamas itself has said as much. This leaves Israel with only bad options. Destroy Hamas entirely and unavoidably inflict massive civilian casualties in the process, or leave Hamas intact and watch its ideology become even more firmly entrenched (and option that encompasses everything from doing nothing to limited "proportional" strikes). Israel clearly sees option one as the less bad of the two, and the only chance at eventual peace. Doesn't mean that the choice is correct, and it does have a ghastly price tag in human lives, but it does make logical sense. I have yet to hear someone sympathetic to Israel provide a realistic alternative.
This idea that fighting terrorists will lead to more terrorists is a myth that needs to die (along with the terrorists).
Do you know how many Vietnamese children the US napalmed in the Vietnam War? Heck, the US bombed Cambodia and Laos too for basically no reason. Do we have a big Laotian terrorist problem today?
For people left of... some point on some dimension, it's a certainty that they default into assuming must be true, for sure, and don't show any real empirical interest in being more thorough never mind questioning than that.
People on the right on the issue do tend to assume it's fully not-true no matter the circumstances, or even as one sometimes-applicable variable in a complex system of factors.
And honestly how many people you kill. If you actually defeat people its a lot easier to stop recurrence. Look at WWII.
If the allies had "come to terms" with Germany/Japan in 1942 there would have still been Nazis and Japanese imperialists for much longer. Sometimes violence really is the answer.
I know this wasn’t really your point but I’m always surprised when I hear/read people say that we bombed Laos for no reason. I think the Vietnam war was absolutely terrible and based on a lie, so I’m not seeking to defend the war itself, but… have you just taken a look at the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and which countries it went through?[1]
Additionally, Laos was basically used like Pakistan was by the Taliban (well, except worse because the Vietnamese were trying to topple the government of Laos as well.)
At one point, the North Vietnamese actually came into Laos via the Ho Chi Minh trail to take out an airplane guidance system that we had placed there with the permission of the Laotian government. In this battle, the North Vietnamese killed 13 US Air Force members who were there to protect it (even though that force was clearly far too small for the task, Laos wouldn’t let the US place any more people there), which was “the largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members during the Vietnam War.“ [2]
Do you disagree that those things are true? Why do you think it was “for basically no reason”?
Of course I can, and I just did. Do you admit that just because someone got bombed that doesn't mean they are 100% guaranteed to turn into a terrorist later?
Sorry the comparison is absurd. Period. Vietnamese are not Palestinians. Vietnamese wanted to kill Americans for what we did but the Pacific Ocean is very wide.
Quit calling people terrorists. That is neo con ideology.
It is human nature to seek revenge. We have been doing it for millions of years. You kill my family, I am going to kill yours.
If it’s “human nature to seek revenge,” why wasn’t Europe filled with gangs of marauding Jewish terrorists during the centuries when European Jews were getting constantly pogromed?
I agree the 'bombing civilians will only lead to them hating you more' isn't quite the truism people seem to think. The reality is maybe it will maybe it won't. Hamas controls the school system there and pretty much rachets up the hate to 11 already. And notably, the allies killed A LOT of German and Japanese civilians during WW2. Like a lot a lot. Children included. We didn't see them develope long lasting hatred for the allied Nations. Even in a place like Iraq where the completely unjustified invasion of Iraq killed probably 1 million people, the reaction of the Iraqis is more mixed. Even Vietnam is pretty friendly with the US these days.
Probably partly because the invasion of iraq only killed about a tenth of that million, the rest killed by other iraqis, while the US tried ineffectually to stop it. The Iraqis are too busy hating and fearing their neighbors to hate and fear the US, especially since they understand that the US is their de facto protector against their sectarian enemies.
Nonsense. Germans and Japanese definitely wanted to kill Americans for what we did to them. They didn’t have the means to do it after their country was annihilated.
Everyone is friendly now. Sure, but deep down there is still hatred.
Us Americans are so naive and happy faced. This is what I see with these comments. Come on people, Americans are hated and most of the world wants us dead. Wake the F up.
No trolling. Just pushing back on what I see as happy history with a triumphant America who bombed the hell out of its enemies and those enemies came to love Americans.
Resentment and revenge are wired into humans, no matter what us happy rainbows and unicorns Americans think.
Is it seriously your contention that under the decades of peaceful cooperation, friendly interactions, cultural exchange and mutual admiration Germans and Japanese people still secretly hate Americans and hope for us to be hurt?
To clarify, I don't think fighting resulting in even more terrorists is automatic in any war. To copy Jesse's catchphrase, it's complicated and depends on a number of factors. However, given the current confluence of factors with Hamas (religion, nationalism, past history, etc.), I think that assumption is fairly justified in this specific case.
The percentage of people who are willing to fight to the death in a truly hopeless cause is actually rather small - and I suspect most of them are already enrolled in the Hamas militias. Dropping bombs will push some people into this category - but it will also kill a lot of them if your aim and your intelligence is good. And of course, leaving the fanatics in charge to propagandize the next generation will also move more people into the “fight to the death” category.
I think Israel has erred in the past in treating Hamas as a tolerable threat, a counterweight to Fatah, a nuisance that can be handled by Iron Dome and an occasional decapitating strike into Gaza to prove your point. But really they’ve run a dangerous middle ground - aggressive enough to anger Palestine and their allies, to provide propaganda fodder, but not decisive enough to actually end Hamas. I think that has flipped now, and the utter destruction of Hamas is the objective. How many Gazan civilians die is largely tied to how many Hamas prevents from leaving the combat zone.
The other part of this is that Hamas leadership are craven cowards that aren't even in Gaza. They're very likely in Qatar or Iran (Iran hosting Sunni militants seems out of place, but the enemy of my enemy and all that).
I mention this not only because they're reprehensible pieces of shit, but because Israel is going to kill them at some stage. In order to do that they're going to need to find out where they are and how much opportunity they have to pull it off. Bombings, and the rush of communications that flow out in the wake of them, may provide opportunities to do this.
It's easy to hide, unless you're forced to talk to everyone you used to know. Killing Hamas leadership in Gaza will create those opportunities.
I find it very interesting how no one seemed to be concerned with civilian casualties when France was bombing ISIS in response to the Bataclan massacre (with one fourteenth the number of killed on 10/7). In fact the Wiki page doesn't mention civilian casualties at all:
I think the real difference is that ISIS were globally renowned as reprehensible cunt monkeys across the globe, whereas Hamas is being conflated with the Palestinians. The Palestinians have a far softer reputation, globally, particularly in left wing circles.
That's their reputation globally, at least. When I was in Jordan they had a horrid reputation, but that may have had something to do with Black September in 1970.
The Lebanese aren't huge fans of them, either, as they had a lot to do with sparking the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.
None of that makes them all culpable for what's happening now, or for anything that happened back then. The vast majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with any of it. This courtesy is rarely extended to the Israelis.
So... the further away you get from Palestine, the more glowing the view of them tends to be. ISIS never received praise of that nature, except from people with severe mental health issues.
Every once and a while I look at the Wikipedia page for the war against ISIS solely because the opponents section is probably the longest for any war ever, pretty much every country, every militant group, every other Jihadist group, were all opposed to ISIS. It’s the one time something that could even be tangentially called an army declared war on the entirety of Earth.
Because the largest US military base in the Middle East is in Qatar. Obviously the Qataris are playing both sides here to a degree, but in this case it probably renders any direct action on Qatari soil off limits.
Drones get a lot of press, but for targeted assassinations they're not that great. If you want to guarantee the kill, you basically guarantee civilian casualties, which would be unwise on foreign soil with a country they're not at war with.
Also, we all think they're in Qatar, but I can't guarantee that. The rats are likely darting all over the place in fear of Israeli assassins. It'll take work to pin them down.
I have learned more about the military challenges facing Israel from this comment thread than I have from anything else I have read or listened to in the last four weeks. (And I have read and listened to a LOT.) Kudos and a huge thank you to all of you who took the time and effort to offer such detailed answers.
I probably will on other threads. The biggest problem I’ve noticed, especially on the Pro-Palestinian side, is lack of context around death tolls, and as I always say, it’s not that I agree with everything Israel does, I definitely don’t, but in my eyes, you can’t use the word Should under you know what Is.
The history of warfare has been taught horribly for decades. Knowing past wars, when I saw those tunnel networks, my view on the war altered greatly and I though “yeah this is gonna be a nightmare for everyone involed.”
Iwo Jima was an uninhabited rock, so turning it into Lunar 2.0 was unproblematic from a collateral damage standpoint. Okinawa was, and is, a densely populated island, and as far as I know the US never really went heavily after the major population concentrations there, but I don't think it needed to (for whatever reason, the Japanese did not heavily fortify Naha, the largest city on the island). That said, there were scads of civilian casualties on Okinawa, quite possibly more than the military dead.
Where we did wade full-bore into a heavily populated and fortified urban area was in Manila, and that was a humanitarian catastrophe. The whole old city of Intramuros was essentially erased from the earth and it's estimated that over 100,000 civilians were killed (compared to around 20,000 military dead, of which over 90% were Japanese). Not all of that can be laid at the feet of American tactics-- the Japanese themselves engaged in a nihilistic orgy of some of the worst war crimes ever seen-- but a lot of them were just buried in rubble from artillery and aerial bombardment.
US tactics at the time, which had proven highly effective at generating enormous kill ratios of Japanese to American military dead (see that 90% figure), called for essentially burying Japanese fortified positions in ordinance from distance. That worked well in places like New Guinea* where the fought-over places were mostly thinly-populated malarial lowlands (especially since the Japanese were also dying of disease almost as quickly as the Americans could kill them). It was not well-suited to capturing a heavily built-up modern city.
The "blow things to rubble and then bounce the rubble repeatedly" strategy didn't work particularly well on Iwo Jima, either, the chief problem there being that "from distance" is impossible to achieve on an island of eight square miles. It didn't work on Peleliu* or Tarawa either. Frankly, the idea that repeated bombardments are going to do serious damage to a well-built tunnel network strikes me as folly. In this case, however, and unlike in Manila, the civilian population is hostile, so it's not clear to me that the IDF actually cares whether the tunnel-bombing is effective or not. In some ways, it would be better for it not to be, because that allows the collective-punishment-with-a-fig-leaf-of-military-justification to go on indefinitely.
*The US military did a study of the battle of Peleliu measuring the amount of ordinance expended per enemy soldier killed, and it is absolutely astounding to read about-- one of the major histories of the battle quotes from it, and it's where I came across the figures. I don't remember them exactly, but it was several hundred bullets and dozens of artillery and mortar shells of various calibers per kill.
It’s 100% a fair point on Iwo Jima, I realize that sentence was didn’t split that out, mainly I wanted to point out what an area of land looks like to get out an entrenched enemy when you don’t care about the landscape.
Manila is interesting in a few ways, first because the sadism inflicted by the Japanese there, especially when they knew it was going to fall was so sickening I think it even tops their behavior in the Rape of Nanking. Die via bomb or die via IJA? I’ll take the bomb, not that that was the American calculation, they just wanted to kill all the Japanese. IIRC, the entire Philippine campaign at the time was controversial because people viewed it as MacArthur wanting to fulfill his promise more than it being necessary to take the home islands. Once the Navy was destroyed, the US could’ve boxed out the Philippines. Not saying this would be morally correct.
As for bouncing the rubble, the normal bombs, and especially the artillery the Americans were using true, did not go deep, but look at the crater from the refugee camp bombing. I’m not defending the bombing, note, but with the depth of that crater, it would’ve destroyed a tunnel. I can see the argument that part of this is collective punishment, it may well be, I can’t read minds, but humans are known to do such things. The phrase “glass the place” is said too often amongst warmongers.
However, you agree the IDF wants revenge, no? Well to get their true revenge, they need to clear those tunnels, which they desperately don’t want to wade into, so if they Could bunker-buster as many as they could. 100 ft less of tunnel is 100 ft less of the worst warfare imaginable. Trench warfare like Ukraine via Russia is a special kind of hell, but 300 miles of concrete tunnels is something out of a damn horror movie.
If you want even more wasted ammunition, see the figures from US soldiers in Afghanistan, the ratios are astronomical.
Appreciate the long reply, most people I know, even ones who talk endlessly about this war, never concretely talk about the military aspects, which is probably why I’ve spent so much time writing. Although I probably should write not just off the top of my head.
Like you, I will not wade deeply into the general morality of the Philippines campaign. I think aspects of it were militarily useful in regards to closing shipping lanes through the South China Sea (and the widely-mooted alternative target, Taiwan, would have had similar collateral-damage concerns). I also think the US went waaaaaaay overboard invading practically every island in the entire archipelago, long after the Japanese garrisons had been island-hopped into irrelevance, and that was due to MacArthur's mania and hubris. In regard to Manila itself, I think we should have taken one for the team and gone in on foot without the heavy bombardment, knowing that this would increase US military casualties, rather than put all the burden of suffering on the Filipino populace.
Back to Gaza: armor-piercing and bunker-busting ordinance is effective at neutralizing specific point targets even when they're heavily fortified. If what you want is to collapse the Fuhrerbunker, you can do that with modern munitions in a way that I don't think was really available to the Soviets at the time.
What it's not effective at is neutralizing vast fortified areas. The very nature of precision armor-piercing munitions-- their ability to not blow up as soon as they hit something-- makes it difficult for them to have a broad area of effect. And if all you're doing is knocking out individual nodes of a tunnel network, it's going to take literally forever, in the sense that the enemy is going to repair or replace them faster than you can blow them up. Imagine a chessboard, with 64 squares. Now imagine that instead of bombing a square, you are bombing the EDGE of a square. Suddenly you have 128 targets, not 64. Now imagine the enemy draws additional lines through the middle of each square-- now you're dealing with 512 targets. Etc etc ad infinitum.
There's no alternative to going square by square and physically occupying them.
Also I restacked this post and tried to highlight your comments. You’ve made really good points and if I could bump this exchange to the top, I would. I appreciate all the likes I’ve gotten but you’ve made solid counters that I think people should see.
I realized I may have replied to myself with my last comment, scroll down for the fuller response but you chess board analagy isn’t 100% what would happen. I don’t know how good of a map Israel has of the tunnels, in particular where the intersections are, but if they did know where the intersections are, but I doubt they’re evenly spaced. Say you blow up 2 intersections, trapping, maybe 1,000 ft of tunnel. Anyone in the stretch of tunnel is now trapped. I’ll give Hamas that they are probably the most skilled by-hand tunnelers in the world, raised by the shovel if you will, but a section trapped with destroyed intersections, that section has been neutralized. Drawing additional lines would assume that they Could draw those lines with the resources they had while trapped in the tunnel section, which has suddenly become pitch black.
This, granted, rests on a ton of assumptions, mainly on the exact layout of the tunnels, which I would love to see a full rotatable 3D map of, but the tactics of bunker busters collapsing certain segments isn’t completely pointless.
That is, if your goal is to kill all of Hamas while minimizing your own deaths, not saving as many hostages as possible.
And, not saying this is a good thing, but I believe the IDF wants to kill all of Hamas more than they want to save all the hostages, grim as that may be.
Solid assessment on the Philippines there, and I think when it comes to the tunnels, there’s a possibility that Israel is flailing somewhat just because of the insane task they have in front of them, they could be having, for lack of a better term, tunnel vision.
In the end, you’re correct on square by square has to be the way it’s done, but just, there are so many miles of tunnels. Hamas has spent 16 years making the Caliphate of the moles. In other eras, or in other armies, say figure the Russian army, or especially the Syrian army would say “the hostages aren’t worth it, find the entrances, block them all, let them surrender or die slowly.” Or most famously, General Sherman, that ending war quickly is the only way to fight a war.
But doubt they’ll do that, frankly I’m not sure how this plays out with those tunnels, there isn’t a true apples to apples comparison where you have to clear anything that extensive that thoroughly and that individually. As I mentioned before, none of what I say is the “morally correct” thing to do. Mainly I’m just looking at what concretely Israel would have to do to achieve its strategic goals, and whatever that may be, if they’re truly dedicated to this path, it’ll be extremely painful.
Thankfully I’m just an armchair general and don’t actually need to plan this personally for the IDF. Let’s rewind the tape a bit. Hamas shortly after the attack said they’d execute 1 hostage for every civilian area bombed by the IDF. Israel called their bluff, knew they wouldn’t do that because half of Hamas’ strategy is a PR campaign to get the population of the world that doesn’t warfare cause-and-effect to forget they’re holding hostages in the first place. This has worked, seeing as people are tearing down posters of the hostages, but if they killed them on live TV, Western college students might have a harder time sympathizing with them.
Hamas is insane but not completely stupid. And when I say insane, I mean insane. They are maybe the only governing body I’ve heard of to rip out their own water supply and hand water control over to their enemy. Why did they rip out their water supply? Of course to turn into unguided rockets to shoot randomly into towns in the desert to accomplish no military goal. It cannot be overstated that Hamas is one of the craziest governments ever and have dedicated themselves to be Jihadist mole-people.
Sorry for the tangent but point is, I figure, Hamas has the hostages in the deepest parts of the tunnel complex, so deep that a surface nuke wouldn’t kill them. They need them alive for international PR points, or something, it’s hatd to tell with them. The IDF knows their psychology and the layouts better than a Substack Jester hanging out in the States. I’m not saying the IDF is correct in their strategy, especially not morally, I never make moral points in war, but they must know something about the tunnel system where they’re hitting that it isn’t the hostages and are expecting to use special forces to clear the potential hostage areas grid by grid.
If you read this, and care about the hostages, from a cold eyed perspective, I think most of them are going to die. I think the IDF thinks this, but they want to destroy Hamas so badly they accept it. If not for international backlash, in their fury, they probably would bury every tunnel entrance, like we would’ve done in WW2. Or, frankly, any non-Western military would do.
I'd agree with you that most hostages will probably die. It's a pretty cold calculation, but it doesn't make sense to risk the lives of thousands of soldiers to rescue hundreds of hostages. I expect some highly publicized special forces operations to rescue a couple of them, but then, when a special forces operation is made public, it's almost always for political reasons.
I have no idea why I’m so obsessed with this, I’m a noninterventionist who thinks war is hell and is haunted by images of the burned corpses of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo as an American even though I wasn’t alive at the time but learning about every single war in human history is something I fixated on probably since I first played Command & Conquer: Red Alert when I was 4.
My husband would very much appreciate your analysis. You are not alone in your stance on war and an obsession with it. My husband was a conscientious objector during Vietnam. He is particularly obsessed with that war and the German side of WWII, but really anything military. He read War and Peace at a very young age and became a Hindu priest at age 18. He left the monastery for reasons I won't go into here, but he is fascinated with human nature. He has obsessively followed military commentary regarding Ukraine and now Israel/Hamas. I have not been able to hear about what he hearing because I am engrossed in the project of getting my Dad with Alzheimer's into assisted living and cleaning out his house. He and our son get to listen to me every night blather on about the intimate details of my father's dementia and experience of moving. I am looking forward to getting home and hearing what he has been learning. I am not a big Ezra Klein fan, but I did listen yesterday to an interview he did with Peter Beinart and Spencer Ackerman that I thought was good. I am more interested in the political side of this and the social maybe even anthropological side of it than the military, but I also don't think you can separate these tracts of study. I have read a couple of books on Israel/Palestine but not nearly enough to feel I understand it - I tend to have more questions than real understanding. And have been listening to Darryl Cooper's Martyrmade podcast which has been helpful.
Unfortunately, they probably don’t. This isn’t being spoken about openly by leaders in Israel for obvious reasons, but if you look at how Israel is operating, they seem to have accepted that the hostages are not going to be rescued alive.
Thanks! My friends tonight I believe thought I was in a deep texting conversation with someone but nope, just living on the Blocked & Reported threads.
This is the smartest thing I've read on the internet in a long time. If you have written more on this topic, I'd love to read it. Same goes for Ukraine.
Thanks! I’m kind of surprised that, of all subjects, that this is the one that I’ve gotten the most interest in. Israel/Palestine isn’t something I spend much time thinking about, beyond the historical aspects unless it comes up in the news.
As for Ukraine, my thoughts aren’t that complicated on it. The war should’ve ended in a ceasefire a year ago but instead Boris Johnson scuttled it and 10’s of thousands have died for no reason since then. Simply militarily, based on resources, manpower, and the fact Russia has nukes, Ukraine can’t win. The Russians have fortified that line so heavily it’s going to be trench warfare forever and we’re also running out of munitions we desperately need if we care at all in protecting the semiconductor plants in Taiwan. Seeing as modern civilization rests on those plants not falling to Xi, I think that’s a bit more important. Support for Israel makes logical sense because there is an achievable end state, which Ukraine does not have. It’s going to end up Status Quo Antebellum, and I’d rather have it end up there with less dead Ukrainian (and Russian) young men. I don’t like needless death.
Also, the Democratic Party’s obsession with the primacy of Ukraine funding above any other issue sets off alarm bells with me, and hell, Jamaal Bowman actually set off an alarm to delay a vote that lacked Ukraine spending in it.
All the Democrats voted against auditing all the money sent. At the very least I’d say we can’t send more money without a full record of where and what was already sent. Don’t be fooled into thinking Bob Menendez and his gold bars is the only corruption in Washington. He’s not uniquely corrupt, he was just uniquely stupid about it.
I probably will stick to writing about the subject if I’m doing specific responses but my main interests lie more in the realm of what reporters like Matt Taibbi, Lee Fang and especially the great Jacob Siegel (you should check him out in Israel stuff, he’s much more knowledgeable than me, was in the military, and lives in Israel) have expose regarding internet censorship and the warping of social media from 2016 onwards. Jacob Siegel’s Tablet Magazine piece “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century” is the best piece of journalism of my life time.
Vietnamese tunnels were all over the place but were low in depth and mostly propped up with wooden braces. RT has a video showing Hamas’ tunnels, tough to find RT on the internet these days but it’s worth looking for. Hamas’ tunnels are on a whole nother level and are fully concrete. It’s like something you’d expect for a nuclear fallout shelter. I was absolutely baffled as to how it was possible they made them but remembered you can do a lot with dedication and 16 years.
Couple things. 1. There are hundreds of miles of tunnels, really try to comprehend that. Even nuking Gaza wouldn’t destroy ALL the tunnels. They’re going bit by bit.
2. There’s no way to do this not sloppy. Again, unlike most people, I’m not giving you a morality play here, your morals are your own, I’m just trying to guess what the IDF are doing.
3. If you hate Netanyahu, don’t worry, he’s toast after the war is over. I heard one of his old supporters say he should have already resigned and never shown his face in public again. The level of Israeli support for Netanyahu is about the level of people who believe Queen Elizabeth was a lizard.
They are going after Hamas. We have no way of knowing how many of the hostages are even still alive.
I think the massive Palestinian protests going on in the USA are actually having the opposite effect they intend. Thousands of people chanting for Jews to be killed ( from the river to the sea ) is deeply unsettling to normal Americans. I think it is going to lead to real political consequences for the Dems.
Yeah, seeing those people scaling the fence at the White House (just when they got Major out of there...), climbing up Ben Franklin's statue, and vandalizing monuments... that doesn't play well outside of the echo chambers the protestors live in.
I'm really curious to know what percentage of Americans (e.g. not just Democrats) support Hamas/ Palestinians here. The %'s I see seem to focus on Democrats/ the left, as though there weren't also a right wing. Might be hopelessly naive, but I'm hoping that a broader count would be a little bit less pro-terrorist.
The CCP is deliberately warping the Tiktok algorithm to forcefeed the English speaking world anti-Israel propaganda. Xi Jinping isn’t a Jihadist, obviously, but he does everything in his power to sow discord in the West to give him a better chance of success at seizing the semiconductor fabrication plants in Taiwan.
What effect is this having? Unfortunately, probably a lot among young people if the amount of time I hear they spend on that platform is correct.
I’m 31 and know people my age and older generally across the political spectrum, and all the people I know except for those who fell into the “woke” trap post 2017 could probably be considered “Pro-Israel”.
If there are any college age people in the comments section, I would be curious to hear the extent of this.
The CCP can access any user data it wants. “Stored in the US” doesn’t mean “Inaccessible from anywhere outside the US”.
Frankly my main source is they would be idiots not to be doing that and Xi is many things, but he ain’t stupid.
I’ll give one example of a different platform doing this. ‘Project Owl’, which Google implemented to mess with their search algorithm to boost “authoritarive sources” to fight “misinformation”, which was really just to get the Democratic Party off their backs during Russiagate. Google messes with their algorithms all the time.
I like to play a game called “I want the semiconductor fabrication plants in Taiwan. What should I do?”
Well, one longterm strategy you do is with the social media you control, shatter the social cohesion of your enemies by massively separating the beliefs of those who use your platform (the youth) and those who don’t (older people). The default is Pro-Israel? Push Pro-Palestine. Every aspect of what is called “woke”, for lack of a better term, gets amplified, which is useful because it can divide young from old better. A country’s soldiers are by definition young, can’t have them being stoic and patriotic, now can you? Is much of this organic? Of course. You can’t build a good psyop out of thin air, but Chinese Tiktok is very very different than Western Tiktok. Western Tiktok is an ingenious weapon of psychological warfare. This doesn’t mean I think it should be banned outright, I don’t like banning things, but it’s important to know what it is.
Never before in our lifetimes have there been 2 superpowers focused on 1 specific thing, the most valuable resource of all time, the semiconductor fabrication plants in Taiwan. I’m not saying that’s the lens you should look at Everything, that way lies madness, but it’s a useful lens to see the proxies within proxies for this terrifyingly inevitable, apocalyptic battle for who controls the island on which modern civilization is built.
That is my perception too, but I am far from college age. My workplace is not super woke, but it is solidly liberal, and the sentiment is firmly on Israel's side among most.
You have to scroll down, and they use "Palestinian people" which is going to get a more positive answer than Hamas. Americans are still broadly sympathetic to Israel, with Rs more so, as you correctly assumed.
You know the very real "woke" backlash that Democrats pretended didn't exit?
The backlash to the Pro-Hamas/Palestine crowd is coming even faster. It took years for anti-woke to move out of the fringes of the right into the middle. It's only taking a month with respect to the Pro-Hamas folks before I'm seeing pushback from the middle.
`from the river to the sea' is *not* a call for genocide and it's ridiculous that the right is attempting to frame it that way.
It is a call for a one state solution with equality for all. When Fatah started using that slogan they were calling explicitly for a single nation of Arabs and Jews. They dropped it/didn't use it as much when they agreed in principle to seek a two state solution (this resulted in much backlash for Fatah). After that it was used in a general way to express freedom and equality for the Palestinian people.
Seeing as how Israel made a two state solution impossible, what with settler activity, etc., the slogan has again become relevant again and reverted to its original meaning.
I heard no Jew hatred at the rally over the weekend. The protestors were regular Americans, young and old, mostly black and brown, some naturalized but most first or second generation Palestinian American, and the idea that they hate Jews let alone want to murder them if fantastical.
I fully concede that the American public's political responses to stimuli often make no sense (e.g. getting super-mad at Obama for a recession caused by Republicans), but it would be weird to blame Democrats for not being sufficiently pro-Israel when I quite literally do not know how they could possibly be more pro-Israel than they actually are. Like what additional pro-Israel actions would people even want? Sending American ground troops into Gaza?
Israeli President (Herzog) is great. He's very popular here and abroad. The Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, is a flaming dumpster fire disaster, as is pretty much the entire government, save for Gantz's National Unity Party, which joined after the war started to stabilize things a bit. So they all have to go. They weren't that popular before the war, and, by and large, they're managing terribly now. Their response up to this point has been atrocious. The reason we're getting through this is (1) the Army and Security Services have woken up and are pulling their shit together and (2) ordinary citizens have been rallying to massive extents to provide for the internally displaced, the soldiers, etc.
Regarding the hostages--not a military expert by any stretch here. But my gut feeling is that while the Army will do their best to get people out, and they (please God!) will succeed, it's safe to assume that some aren't going to make it. To a certain extent, the army has to fight as if there were no hostages. We literally have hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people right now. (Hotels in my city, Jerusalem, are full of refugees from the South and the North). Large swaths of the South and the North are more or less unlivable until the threats are neutralized.
We do have to think about the hostages, but there's a limit to how much the Army can allow that to dictate their actions. It can't be easy, and I'm very glad I'm not the one who has to make those decisions. Every time I open up one of the local news sites I'm literally praying I'll see another update that they managed to rescue another hostage.
I can’t imagine how rough that’s gotta be and I’m hoping for the best for y’all. Grim as it is, I’m glad you’ve got a more realistic take on the hostages. I’m no military general, just a Jester, so figure the brass at the IDF know better than me, but I truly don’t know how they get a large amount of hostages out of the tunnels without a local surrender of at least a group of Hamas, but the Jihadist mole-people seem as fanatical as the Imperial Japanese. I’m an optimist though in general, so we’ll see. By the way, if you want a good clear-eyed take on things, check out Jacob Siegel on the Manifesto! podcast. He’s an American write, ex-military intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently lives in Israel, he’s tied with Matt Taibbi as the best analyst of American intelligence agencies schemes but also is really nuanced about the whole situation over there. I’ll admit, a lot of the tunnel analysis I took from him.
Thank you for the podcast recommendation. My father was a WWII history buff and I was always bored hearing about it as a kid, but when things like this happen I'm grateful that there are people out there who DO study military history.
I think there’s a lack of care about HISTORY as a general topic.
Historically speaking, if this whole thing had happened only 100 years ago, Israel’s right to do what it’s trying to do to defend itself would have been obvious. None of the current confusion and tip toeing would have been a thing.
I think about the long line of conquests, wars and conflicts that have shaped our world and see that to the victor goes the spoils, and if you can’t defend what you have then you don’t deserve to have it. The story of the human race in a nutshell.
Hi. I've read some of the responses below regarding Hamas/ Israel. It looks like those with more of a military bent have responded. I'm weighing in as an Israeli citizen who lives in Jerusalem.
1) "Proportionality"--I don't think that this word means what you think it means, at least not in warfare. Jesse, you honestly sounded like the crazy trans activists you complain about who throw around empty phrases and /or redefine words to suit their agenda, and ignore any evidence that they don't like. The goal of war isn't to be proportional. The goal or war is to win. You're a journalist, and a good one. Look that one up. Speak to people who really know this area. There are no shortage of journalists, legal and military experts and pundits from the left and the right who, even as they come to different conclusions, are honest brokers. (Consider Haviv Rettig Gur, Yossi Klein Halevi, Gershon Baskin* to start.) Wildly different conclusions but each come from a position of caring about Israel (and living here).
2) Speaking of honest brokers, why *would* we listen to the UN or other Palestinian apologists? They condemn us constantly while flat out ignoring mass murders going on in other places (e.g. China, Syria or Sudan). They appointed Iran to be the head of the UN Human Rights Council. They literally couldn't manage to condemn Hamas for the October 7th attacks! But we're supposed to take them seriously, assume that they have our best interests in mind? We should have faith that the UN and/or others have condemning us have looked at the situation, considered them carefully and genuinely believe, based on an in-depth analysis of both sides and the needs, safety and security of both? Maybe you can be that delusional. We can't afford to be.
Or, as a lot of people have pointed out in respect of the calls for a cease-fire, there WAS a cease fire, on October 6th. It was a cease fire which featured thousands of Palestinians from Gaza working in Israel, legally. Earning better salaries. Using that money to build homes and raise families. And, sadly, using the opportunity to collect intelligence information which it fed back to Hamas. Hamas used this information to simply devastating effect when it broke the cease-fire on October 7th. Now they want a new cease-fire? I bet they do. Fuck them.
3) And speaking of people showing us who they are (and the importance of believing them)... Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have flat out told us who they are. They have admitted--proudly--that their goal is the destruction of Israel (and the West) and the annihilation of Jews. They have admitted that, if they have a chance, there will be another October 7th, and another and another. Hamas has admitted that they use civilians as human shields and they have no responsibility for the welfare of Gazans. They're a psychopathic death-cult. It's a shame that the Gazans chose such a shit government, but they did (after we withdrew completely from Aza, by the way). We're supposed to accept periodic massacres and constant rocket attacks in order to spare the poor, poor Palestinians? Thanks. Tried that. Didn't work. Not again.
To wrap up, a quote from Golda Meir. “If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we'd rather be alive and have the bad image.” While you might see things differently (FWIW, you do come across here as trying very, VERY hard to be one of the 'good, it's just cultural!, not like THOSE Jews, Jews) from what I can see, folks only like us when we're dead and/or battered victims. Fuck that too.
(For the last point, I recommend Dara Horn's "People Love Dead Jews". )
* Re: Gershon Baskin, I was seriously injured in a suicide bombing attack in 2002. A few years later, I was invited to participate in one of his initiatives "Warriors for Peace". This brought together former terrorists and victims of terror for dialogue. I went to a few events. The last event I went to was a group 'discussion' between Israelis and Palestinians in which the Palestinians went off about how Israelis were so terrible and the Israelis were expected to agree. And I realized that the initiative was doomed. Baskin was also an architect of the Shalit deal, which gave Hamas the brilliant idea that, if they kidnapped enough of us, we'd give up with a mild whimper. So I'm not a big fan.
I think people's thinking in America are skewed by the absurd level of existential safety we have. America is protected by an ocean in each side and the most powerful military ever to exist. Outside of nuclear war (which I don't think feels real to anyone these days) there's no realistic way anyone is going to do existential level damage to America any time soon. China could take Taiwan and that would be bad, but it would still be a story most Americans read once and then sort of forget about. Sure America has 'lost' wars in recent memory, but our version of 'losing' is getting tired of inflicting 10 to 1 casualties on a population that doesn't want us around. It lacks any real ability to scare the average citizen. Israel has faced the very real prospect of losing something like a total war in recent history, with the consequences of that being pretty grim.
"Proportionality" refers to tactics, not strategy. It means you can't drop a nuke on a city just to kill a single guy with a gun. It doesn't mean, and has never meant, if the other country kills X number of your people, you are only allowed to kill Y number of theirs.
There are a fair number of people who know this area very well and who are experts in the area of international law/ human rights law/ Geneva Accords and the like. I'm not one of those people; I'm a middle aged accountant who knows her lane. From listening to enough of those people, however, I do know that proportionality isn't what Jesse implied it is.
And by this standard Israel is committing war crimes. They are bombing convoys of ambulances because they suspect some fighters may be in one; they are bombing refugee camps where 50--100 people were killed to take out two `commanders'.
For the last fifteen years they treated Gazans as though they were prisoners, intentionally failing to do anything to bring peace and keeping Hamas around to be sure, and are turning the prison into rubble.
Also, over a fifteen year period if they're constantly killing 10*X civilians then their tactics need to be revised, otherwise they discount Palestinian life at ten-to-one.
Do you always trust everything Hamas tells you? And why don't you recommend a change in tactics, since you are clearly more knowledgeable about such things than the IDF?
I’ll take a shot at answering Jesse’s question about kids being maimed and killed not making Israel safer. To do a throat clear, I’m a non-Jewish American, would probably be considered a moderate on the situation (I’m for a 2-state solution on 1967 borders and am against settlements) but am a lifelong student of military history and know every single war involving air powers since aerial bombing was invented.
This is not making me trying to influence anyone here’s moral judgements, but what Israel is doing not surprising in an air superiority military sense involving an enemy dug into tunnel networks. Seeing as no one cared about civilian deaths in the campaign against ISIS, because the whole world was against ISIS, it may surprise you that 10’s of thousands of civilians were killed in the campaign to destroy ISIS, including 10,000 in Mosul alone. Mosul had a bit over 10,000 fighters who weren’t dug into tunnel networks. Hamas has 50,000+ dug into the most advanced tunnel system maybe in the history of warfare under a densely packed city-state.
Israel’s main strategy is, and logically has to be if they want to destroy Hamas, the complete destruction of those tunnel networks, the creation of which was where most of the “humanitarian” resources actually went over the last 16 years.
In aerial bombing campaigns, even with guided bombs, even when the enemy is completely on the surface, you will get kids being blown up. Again, another throat clear, I’m not justifying this, I’m just describing recent aerial bombing campaigns. Israel is in a pickle. They (from their strategic perspective) need to clear those tunnels. The normal strategy would be to go in on the ground, block every tunnel entrance and let all of Hamas die of thirst, but they can’t do that because Hamas has hostages, including foreign hostages. So they need to clear the tunnels bit by bit in the worst tunnel warfare ever. To avoid that, they seem to be trying via bunker buster to blow up tunnel sections from the sky to minimize the amount they need to go into individually. The tunnel systems they can hit are all under civilian areas, ingeniously placed by Hamas under places they know will cause the most international backlash via civilian deaths if Israel bombs them. Using human shields, Hamas is trying to demand the IDF go into one of the worst deathtraps ever, because “from the Al-Qassam Brigades to the Zionist soldiers, the Al-Qasdam Brigades love death more than you love life.”
I can go on but I’ve already written an essay here, but if you want an example of trying to destroy an enemy army dug into tunnels, look up Iwo Jima and Okinawa, neither of which had tunnels as advanced or extensive as Hamas does. During WW2, the doctrine of Total War meant on all sides, there wasn’t an expectation of preventing civilian casualties if there was a military purpose. If you want to see what true carpet bombing looks like, true indiscriminate destruction to dig out an entrenched army from tunnels, look at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The United States turned those islands into the surface of the Moon.
I was going to email Jesse a response to his question, but then noticed this comment was better than what I would've written, so thank you.
I would add one component to the analysis, the notion that Israel's current military campaign will lead to even more people being sympathetic to Hamas and even joining their ranks. This is true, but ignores the importance of leadership/experienced fighters and also ignores that Hamas has control over the schools in Gaza.
The problem is that the status quo is unacceptable for Israel. Doing nothing also strengthens Hamas over the long run by allowing them to pick the time and place of their next atrocity, train even more fighters, and flood the next generation with anti-Semitic propaganda. As long as Hamas exists, lasting peace is not possible. Hamas itself has said as much. This leaves Israel with only bad options. Destroy Hamas entirely and unavoidably inflict massive civilian casualties in the process, or leave Hamas intact and watch its ideology become even more firmly entrenched (and option that encompasses everything from doing nothing to limited "proportional" strikes). Israel clearly sees option one as the less bad of the two, and the only chance at eventual peace. Doesn't mean that the choice is correct, and it does have a ghastly price tag in human lives, but it does make logical sense. I have yet to hear someone sympathetic to Israel provide a realistic alternative.
This idea that fighting terrorists will lead to more terrorists is a myth that needs to die (along with the terrorists).
Do you know how many Vietnamese children the US napalmed in the Vietnam War? Heck, the US bombed Cambodia and Laos too for basically no reason. Do we have a big Laotian terrorist problem today?
Yeah, it definitely CAN add fuel to the fire. And killing people is bad regardless. But who's left in charge seems to matter more.
For people left of... some point on some dimension, it's a certainty that they default into assuming must be true, for sure, and don't show any real empirical interest in being more thorough never mind questioning than that.
People on the right on the issue do tend to assume it's fully not-true no matter the circumstances, or even as one sometimes-applicable variable in a complex system of factors.
Depends on culture, ideology and religion.
And honestly how many people you kill. If you actually defeat people its a lot easier to stop recurrence. Look at WWII.
If the allies had "come to terms" with Germany/Japan in 1942 there would have still been Nazis and Japanese imperialists for much longer. Sometimes violence really is the answer.
Those conflicts ended, those countries have peaceable relations with the US. This is an ongoing multigeneration conflict. absurd comparison.
I know this wasn’t really your point but I’m always surprised when I hear/read people say that we bombed Laos for no reason. I think the Vietnam war was absolutely terrible and based on a lie, so I’m not seeking to defend the war itself, but… have you just taken a look at the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and which countries it went through?[1]
Additionally, Laos was basically used like Pakistan was by the Taliban (well, except worse because the Vietnamese were trying to topple the government of Laos as well.)
At one point, the North Vietnamese actually came into Laos via the Ho Chi Minh trail to take out an airplane guidance system that we had placed there with the permission of the Laotian government. In this battle, the North Vietnamese killed 13 US Air Force members who were there to protect it (even though that force was clearly far too small for the task, Laos wouldn’t let the US place any more people there), which was “the largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members during the Vietnam War.“ [2]
Do you disagree that those things are true? Why do you think it was “for basically no reason”?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_trail#/media/File%3AHoCMT.png
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lima_Site_85
Absolutely nonsense comparison. Failing grade. You cannot compare the war in Southeast Asia with the Israel Palestine conflict. Nonsense.
Of course I can, and I just did. Do you admit that just because someone got bombed that doesn't mean they are 100% guaranteed to turn into a terrorist later?
Sorry the comparison is absurd. Period. Vietnamese are not Palestinians. Vietnamese wanted to kill Americans for what we did but the Pacific Ocean is very wide.
Quit calling people terrorists. That is neo con ideology.
It is human nature to seek revenge. We have been doing it for millions of years. You kill my family, I am going to kill yours.
The Israel and Palestinian war will never end.
If it’s “human nature to seek revenge,” why wasn’t Europe filled with gangs of marauding Jewish terrorists during the centuries when European Jews were getting constantly pogromed?
This completely flies in the face of history. All wars end, eventually. Go away now.
I agree the 'bombing civilians will only lead to them hating you more' isn't quite the truism people seem to think. The reality is maybe it will maybe it won't. Hamas controls the school system there and pretty much rachets up the hate to 11 already. And notably, the allies killed A LOT of German and Japanese civilians during WW2. Like a lot a lot. Children included. We didn't see them develope long lasting hatred for the allied Nations. Even in a place like Iraq where the completely unjustified invasion of Iraq killed probably 1 million people, the reaction of the Iraqis is more mixed. Even Vietnam is pretty friendly with the US these days.
Probably partly because the invasion of iraq only killed about a tenth of that million, the rest killed by other iraqis, while the US tried ineffectually to stop it. The Iraqis are too busy hating and fearing their neighbors to hate and fear the US, especially since they understand that the US is their de facto protector against their sectarian enemies.
Baloney. What Iraqi thinks now that our illegal invasion was good? We are their protector. Oh sure.
Our invasion of Iraq was the most brutal and unnecessary act we have ever done. As bad as Vietnam and a war crime.
Nonsense. Germans and Japanese definitely wanted to kill Americans for what we did to them. They didn’t have the means to do it after their country was annihilated.
Everyone is friendly now. Sure, but deep down there is still hatred.
Us Americans are so naive and happy faced. This is what I see with these comments. Come on people, Americans are hated and most of the world wants us dead. Wake the F up.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not
No trolling. Just pushing back on what I see as happy history with a triumphant America who bombed the hell out of its enemies and those enemies came to love Americans.
Resentment and revenge are wired into humans, no matter what us happy rainbows and unicorns Americans think.
Is it seriously your contention that under the decades of peaceful cooperation, friendly interactions, cultural exchange and mutual admiration Germans and Japanese people still secretly hate Americans and hope for us to be hurt?
To clarify, I don't think fighting resulting in even more terrorists is automatic in any war. To copy Jesse's catchphrase, it's complicated and depends on a number of factors. However, given the current confluence of factors with Hamas (religion, nationalism, past history, etc.), I think that assumption is fairly justified in this specific case.
Yes, but *not* bombing them seems to produce terrorists too. So what do they do, because they can’t give Hamas what they demand?
There will be peace when the Palestinians are out of Gaza/WB or when the Jews are out of Israel. I know which world I would rather live in.
The percentage of people who are willing to fight to the death in a truly hopeless cause is actually rather small - and I suspect most of them are already enrolled in the Hamas militias. Dropping bombs will push some people into this category - but it will also kill a lot of them if your aim and your intelligence is good. And of course, leaving the fanatics in charge to propagandize the next generation will also move more people into the “fight to the death” category.
I think Israel has erred in the past in treating Hamas as a tolerable threat, a counterweight to Fatah, a nuisance that can be handled by Iron Dome and an occasional decapitating strike into Gaza to prove your point. But really they’ve run a dangerous middle ground - aggressive enough to anger Palestine and their allies, to provide propaganda fodder, but not decisive enough to actually end Hamas. I think that has flipped now, and the utter destruction of Hamas is the objective. How many Gazan civilians die is largely tied to how many Hamas prevents from leaving the combat zone.
The other part of this is that Hamas leadership are craven cowards that aren't even in Gaza. They're very likely in Qatar or Iran (Iran hosting Sunni militants seems out of place, but the enemy of my enemy and all that).
I mention this not only because they're reprehensible pieces of shit, but because Israel is going to kill them at some stage. In order to do that they're going to need to find out where they are and how much opportunity they have to pull it off. Bombings, and the rush of communications that flow out in the wake of them, may provide opportunities to do this.
It's easy to hide, unless you're forced to talk to everyone you used to know. Killing Hamas leadership in Gaza will create those opportunities.
I find it very interesting how no one seemed to be concerned with civilian casualties when France was bombing ISIS in response to the Bataclan massacre (with one fourteenth the number of killed on 10/7). In fact the Wiki page doesn't mention civilian casualties at all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op%C3%A9ration_Chammal
I think the real difference is that ISIS were globally renowned as reprehensible cunt monkeys across the globe, whereas Hamas is being conflated with the Palestinians. The Palestinians have a far softer reputation, globally, particularly in left wing circles.
That's their reputation globally, at least. When I was in Jordan they had a horrid reputation, but that may have had something to do with Black September in 1970.
The Lebanese aren't huge fans of them, either, as they had a lot to do with sparking the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.
None of that makes them all culpable for what's happening now, or for anything that happened back then. The vast majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with any of it. This courtesy is rarely extended to the Israelis.
So... the further away you get from Palestine, the more glowing the view of them tends to be. ISIS never received praise of that nature, except from people with severe mental health issues.
Every once and a while I look at the Wikipedia page for the war against ISIS solely because the opponents section is probably the longest for any war ever, pretty much every country, every militant group, every other Jihadist group, were all opposed to ISIS. It’s the one time something that could even be tangentially called an army declared war on the entirety of Earth.
Why doesn't Israel Drone hamas's leaders in Qatar? Mossad excels at extrajudicial assassinations. Or get the Qatari government to hand them over?
Because the largest US military base in the Middle East is in Qatar. Obviously the Qataris are playing both sides here to a degree, but in this case it probably renders any direct action on Qatari soil off limits.
Drones get a lot of press, but for targeted assassinations they're not that great. If you want to guarantee the kill, you basically guarantee civilian casualties, which would be unwise on foreign soil with a country they're not at war with.
Also, we all think they're in Qatar, but I can't guarantee that. The rats are likely darting all over the place in fear of Israeli assassins. It'll take work to pin them down.
I have learned more about the military challenges facing Israel from this comment thread than I have from anything else I have read or listened to in the last four weeks. (And I have read and listened to a LOT.) Kudos and a huge thank you to all of you who took the time and effort to offer such detailed answers.
"I can go on but I’ve already written an essay here."
I would be interested in reading more, if you have more thoughts that come up as the conflict goes on.
I probably will on other threads. The biggest problem I’ve noticed, especially on the Pro-Palestinian side, is lack of context around death tolls, and as I always say, it’s not that I agree with everything Israel does, I definitely don’t, but in my eyes, you can’t use the word Should under you know what Is.
The history of warfare has been taught horribly for decades. Knowing past wars, when I saw those tunnel networks, my view on the war altered greatly and I though “yeah this is gonna be a nightmare for everyone involed.”
Iwo Jima was an uninhabited rock, so turning it into Lunar 2.0 was unproblematic from a collateral damage standpoint. Okinawa was, and is, a densely populated island, and as far as I know the US never really went heavily after the major population concentrations there, but I don't think it needed to (for whatever reason, the Japanese did not heavily fortify Naha, the largest city on the island). That said, there were scads of civilian casualties on Okinawa, quite possibly more than the military dead.
Where we did wade full-bore into a heavily populated and fortified urban area was in Manila, and that was a humanitarian catastrophe. The whole old city of Intramuros was essentially erased from the earth and it's estimated that over 100,000 civilians were killed (compared to around 20,000 military dead, of which over 90% were Japanese). Not all of that can be laid at the feet of American tactics-- the Japanese themselves engaged in a nihilistic orgy of some of the worst war crimes ever seen-- but a lot of them were just buried in rubble from artillery and aerial bombardment.
US tactics at the time, which had proven highly effective at generating enormous kill ratios of Japanese to American military dead (see that 90% figure), called for essentially burying Japanese fortified positions in ordinance from distance. That worked well in places like New Guinea* where the fought-over places were mostly thinly-populated malarial lowlands (especially since the Japanese were also dying of disease almost as quickly as the Americans could kill them). It was not well-suited to capturing a heavily built-up modern city.
The "blow things to rubble and then bounce the rubble repeatedly" strategy didn't work particularly well on Iwo Jima, either, the chief problem there being that "from distance" is impossible to achieve on an island of eight square miles. It didn't work on Peleliu* or Tarawa either. Frankly, the idea that repeated bombardments are going to do serious damage to a well-built tunnel network strikes me as folly. In this case, however, and unlike in Manila, the civilian population is hostile, so it's not clear to me that the IDF actually cares whether the tunnel-bombing is effective or not. In some ways, it would be better for it not to be, because that allows the collective-punishment-with-a-fig-leaf-of-military-justification to go on indefinitely.
*The US military did a study of the battle of Peleliu measuring the amount of ordinance expended per enemy soldier killed, and it is absolutely astounding to read about-- one of the major histories of the battle quotes from it, and it's where I came across the figures. I don't remember them exactly, but it was several hundred bullets and dozens of artillery and mortar shells of various calibers per kill.
It’s 100% a fair point on Iwo Jima, I realize that sentence was didn’t split that out, mainly I wanted to point out what an area of land looks like to get out an entrenched enemy when you don’t care about the landscape.
Manila is interesting in a few ways, first because the sadism inflicted by the Japanese there, especially when they knew it was going to fall was so sickening I think it even tops their behavior in the Rape of Nanking. Die via bomb or die via IJA? I’ll take the bomb, not that that was the American calculation, they just wanted to kill all the Japanese. IIRC, the entire Philippine campaign at the time was controversial because people viewed it as MacArthur wanting to fulfill his promise more than it being necessary to take the home islands. Once the Navy was destroyed, the US could’ve boxed out the Philippines. Not saying this would be morally correct.
As for bouncing the rubble, the normal bombs, and especially the artillery the Americans were using true, did not go deep, but look at the crater from the refugee camp bombing. I’m not defending the bombing, note, but with the depth of that crater, it would’ve destroyed a tunnel. I can see the argument that part of this is collective punishment, it may well be, I can’t read minds, but humans are known to do such things. The phrase “glass the place” is said too often amongst warmongers.
However, you agree the IDF wants revenge, no? Well to get their true revenge, they need to clear those tunnels, which they desperately don’t want to wade into, so if they Could bunker-buster as many as they could. 100 ft less of tunnel is 100 ft less of the worst warfare imaginable. Trench warfare like Ukraine via Russia is a special kind of hell, but 300 miles of concrete tunnels is something out of a damn horror movie.
If you want even more wasted ammunition, see the figures from US soldiers in Afghanistan, the ratios are astronomical.
Appreciate the long reply, most people I know, even ones who talk endlessly about this war, never concretely talk about the military aspects, which is probably why I’ve spent so much time writing. Although I probably should write not just off the top of my head.
Like you, I will not wade deeply into the general morality of the Philippines campaign. I think aspects of it were militarily useful in regards to closing shipping lanes through the South China Sea (and the widely-mooted alternative target, Taiwan, would have had similar collateral-damage concerns). I also think the US went waaaaaaay overboard invading practically every island in the entire archipelago, long after the Japanese garrisons had been island-hopped into irrelevance, and that was due to MacArthur's mania and hubris. In regard to Manila itself, I think we should have taken one for the team and gone in on foot without the heavy bombardment, knowing that this would increase US military casualties, rather than put all the burden of suffering on the Filipino populace.
Back to Gaza: armor-piercing and bunker-busting ordinance is effective at neutralizing specific point targets even when they're heavily fortified. If what you want is to collapse the Fuhrerbunker, you can do that with modern munitions in a way that I don't think was really available to the Soviets at the time.
What it's not effective at is neutralizing vast fortified areas. The very nature of precision armor-piercing munitions-- their ability to not blow up as soon as they hit something-- makes it difficult for them to have a broad area of effect. And if all you're doing is knocking out individual nodes of a tunnel network, it's going to take literally forever, in the sense that the enemy is going to repair or replace them faster than you can blow them up. Imagine a chessboard, with 64 squares. Now imagine that instead of bombing a square, you are bombing the EDGE of a square. Suddenly you have 128 targets, not 64. Now imagine the enemy draws additional lines through the middle of each square-- now you're dealing with 512 targets. Etc etc ad infinitum.
There's no alternative to going square by square and physically occupying them.
Also I restacked this post and tried to highlight your comments. You’ve made really good points and if I could bump this exchange to the top, I would. I appreciate all the likes I’ve gotten but you’ve made solid counters that I think people should see.
I realized I may have replied to myself with my last comment, scroll down for the fuller response but you chess board analagy isn’t 100% what would happen. I don’t know how good of a map Israel has of the tunnels, in particular where the intersections are, but if they did know where the intersections are, but I doubt they’re evenly spaced. Say you blow up 2 intersections, trapping, maybe 1,000 ft of tunnel. Anyone in the stretch of tunnel is now trapped. I’ll give Hamas that they are probably the most skilled by-hand tunnelers in the world, raised by the shovel if you will, but a section trapped with destroyed intersections, that section has been neutralized. Drawing additional lines would assume that they Could draw those lines with the resources they had while trapped in the tunnel section, which has suddenly become pitch black.
This, granted, rests on a ton of assumptions, mainly on the exact layout of the tunnels, which I would love to see a full rotatable 3D map of, but the tactics of bunker busters collapsing certain segments isn’t completely pointless.
That is, if your goal is to kill all of Hamas while minimizing your own deaths, not saving as many hostages as possible.
And, not saying this is a good thing, but I believe the IDF wants to kill all of Hamas more than they want to save all the hostages, grim as that may be.
Solid assessment on the Philippines there, and I think when it comes to the tunnels, there’s a possibility that Israel is flailing somewhat just because of the insane task they have in front of them, they could be having, for lack of a better term, tunnel vision.
In the end, you’re correct on square by square has to be the way it’s done, but just, there are so many miles of tunnels. Hamas has spent 16 years making the Caliphate of the moles. In other eras, or in other armies, say figure the Russian army, or especially the Syrian army would say “the hostages aren’t worth it, find the entrances, block them all, let them surrender or die slowly.” Or most famously, General Sherman, that ending war quickly is the only way to fight a war.
But doubt they’ll do that, frankly I’m not sure how this plays out with those tunnels, there isn’t a true apples to apples comparison where you have to clear anything that extensive that thoroughly and that individually. As I mentioned before, none of what I say is the “morally correct” thing to do. Mainly I’m just looking at what concretely Israel would have to do to achieve its strategic goals, and whatever that may be, if they’re truly dedicated to this path, it’ll be extremely painful.
Not disagreeing with you, but I’m also curious how they can get hostages out if Hamas has the hostages hidden in tunnels.
Thankfully I’m just an armchair general and don’t actually need to plan this personally for the IDF. Let’s rewind the tape a bit. Hamas shortly after the attack said they’d execute 1 hostage for every civilian area bombed by the IDF. Israel called their bluff, knew they wouldn’t do that because half of Hamas’ strategy is a PR campaign to get the population of the world that doesn’t warfare cause-and-effect to forget they’re holding hostages in the first place. This has worked, seeing as people are tearing down posters of the hostages, but if they killed them on live TV, Western college students might have a harder time sympathizing with them.
Hamas is insane but not completely stupid. And when I say insane, I mean insane. They are maybe the only governing body I’ve heard of to rip out their own water supply and hand water control over to their enemy. Why did they rip out their water supply? Of course to turn into unguided rockets to shoot randomly into towns in the desert to accomplish no military goal. It cannot be overstated that Hamas is one of the craziest governments ever and have dedicated themselves to be Jihadist mole-people.
Sorry for the tangent but point is, I figure, Hamas has the hostages in the deepest parts of the tunnel complex, so deep that a surface nuke wouldn’t kill them. They need them alive for international PR points, or something, it’s hatd to tell with them. The IDF knows their psychology and the layouts better than a Substack Jester hanging out in the States. I’m not saying the IDF is correct in their strategy, especially not morally, I never make moral points in war, but they must know something about the tunnel system where they’re hitting that it isn’t the hostages and are expecting to use special forces to clear the potential hostage areas grid by grid.
If you read this, and care about the hostages, from a cold eyed perspective, I think most of them are going to die. I think the IDF thinks this, but they want to destroy Hamas so badly they accept it. If not for international backlash, in their fury, they probably would bury every tunnel entrance, like we would’ve done in WW2. Or, frankly, any non-Western military would do.
I'd agree with you that most hostages will probably die. It's a pretty cold calculation, but it doesn't make sense to risk the lives of thousands of soldiers to rescue hundreds of hostages. I expect some highly publicized special forces operations to rescue a couple of them, but then, when a special forces operation is made public, it's almost always for political reasons.
The benefit is purely political and probably not to be minimized.
It’s like a saving private Ryan situation.
Wins like that is what infuse the public with the will to persist.
Thanks for explaining. That makes sense.
Frankly, I trust the IDF on this. They know their enemy better than any armchair experts in the west, and they know what is at stake.
I have no idea why I’m so obsessed with this, I’m a noninterventionist who thinks war is hell and is haunted by images of the burned corpses of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo as an American even though I wasn’t alive at the time but learning about every single war in human history is something I fixated on probably since I first played Command & Conquer: Red Alert when I was 4.
One problem is, as bad as war is, unilaterally declaring you won't fight one won't actually get you less war necessarily.
My husband would very much appreciate your analysis. You are not alone in your stance on war and an obsession with it. My husband was a conscientious objector during Vietnam. He is particularly obsessed with that war and the German side of WWII, but really anything military. He read War and Peace at a very young age and became a Hindu priest at age 18. He left the monastery for reasons I won't go into here, but he is fascinated with human nature. He has obsessively followed military commentary regarding Ukraine and now Israel/Hamas. I have not been able to hear about what he hearing because I am engrossed in the project of getting my Dad with Alzheimer's into assisted living and cleaning out his house. He and our son get to listen to me every night blather on about the intimate details of my father's dementia and experience of moving. I am looking forward to getting home and hearing what he has been learning. I am not a big Ezra Klein fan, but I did listen yesterday to an interview he did with Peter Beinart and Spencer Ackerman that I thought was good. I am more interested in the political side of this and the social maybe even anthropological side of it than the military, but I also don't think you can separate these tracts of study. I have read a couple of books on Israel/Palestine but not nearly enough to feel I understand it - I tend to have more questions than real understanding. And have been listening to Darryl Cooper's Martyrmade podcast which has been helpful.
Unfortunately, they probably don’t. This isn’t being spoken about openly by leaders in Israel for obvious reasons, but if you look at how Israel is operating, they seem to have accepted that the hostages are not going to be rescued alive.
I believe this was intended as a response to Mike’s concerns below. Great analysis Jester.
Thanks! My friends tonight I believe thought I was in a deep texting conversation with someone but nope, just living on the Blocked & Reported threads.
This is just a superb write-up, thank you.
This is the smartest thing I've read on the internet in a long time. If you have written more on this topic, I'd love to read it. Same goes for Ukraine.
Thanks! I’m kind of surprised that, of all subjects, that this is the one that I’ve gotten the most interest in. Israel/Palestine isn’t something I spend much time thinking about, beyond the historical aspects unless it comes up in the news.
As for Ukraine, my thoughts aren’t that complicated on it. The war should’ve ended in a ceasefire a year ago but instead Boris Johnson scuttled it and 10’s of thousands have died for no reason since then. Simply militarily, based on resources, manpower, and the fact Russia has nukes, Ukraine can’t win. The Russians have fortified that line so heavily it’s going to be trench warfare forever and we’re also running out of munitions we desperately need if we care at all in protecting the semiconductor plants in Taiwan. Seeing as modern civilization rests on those plants not falling to Xi, I think that’s a bit more important. Support for Israel makes logical sense because there is an achievable end state, which Ukraine does not have. It’s going to end up Status Quo Antebellum, and I’d rather have it end up there with less dead Ukrainian (and Russian) young men. I don’t like needless death.
Also, the Democratic Party’s obsession with the primacy of Ukraine funding above any other issue sets off alarm bells with me, and hell, Jamaal Bowman actually set off an alarm to delay a vote that lacked Ukraine spending in it.
All the Democrats voted against auditing all the money sent. At the very least I’d say we can’t send more money without a full record of where and what was already sent. Don’t be fooled into thinking Bob Menendez and his gold bars is the only corruption in Washington. He’s not uniquely corrupt, he was just uniquely stupid about it.
I probably will stick to writing about the subject if I’m doing specific responses but my main interests lie more in the realm of what reporters like Matt Taibbi, Lee Fang and especially the great Jacob Siegel (you should check him out in Israel stuff, he’s much more knowledgeable than me, was in the military, and lives in Israel) have expose regarding internet censorship and the warping of social media from 2016 onwards. Jacob Siegel’s Tablet Magazine piece “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century” is the best piece of journalism of my life time.
That and open source AI, I love open source AI.
Thx
How do the Vietnamese tunnels compare? I’ve read about those and it’s mind blowing.
Vietnamese tunnels were all over the place but were low in depth and mostly propped up with wooden braces. RT has a video showing Hamas’ tunnels, tough to find RT on the internet these days but it’s worth looking for. Hamas’ tunnels are on a whole nother level and are fully concrete. It’s like something you’d expect for a nuclear fallout shelter. I was absolutely baffled as to how it was possible they made them but remembered you can do a lot with dedication and 16 years.
And billions of dollars in misspent relief money.
Where did that money come from? The west? The UN?
Yep - I think it comes to the tune of a billion per year.
And donations from the US! To groups like: https://www.pcrf.net/ That money goes directly to fuel terrorism
Also Arab states (e.g. Qatar) and Hamas shaking down the populace and stealing everything that's not nailed down.
Great post.
This is a great podcast for anyone wanting to hear more about the military perspective:
Tech, Ethics, and the City in Israel's Looming Urban Battlefield - War on the Rocks
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6kgnEHAQqxyGXHmP1xkJdv?si=NIJSqpxTRhqbki5semF_vg&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=copy-link&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A5ec5TBvVh3w4aobgx0qgYj&_branch_match_id=1250532454816877061&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAA8soKSkottLXLy7IL8lMq9TLyczL1i9JyvQ2CC3NMXBJAgActw4tIAAAAA%3D%3D&nd=1
Couple things. 1. There are hundreds of miles of tunnels, really try to comprehend that. Even nuking Gaza wouldn’t destroy ALL the tunnels. They’re going bit by bit.
2. There’s no way to do this not sloppy. Again, unlike most people, I’m not giving you a morality play here, your morals are your own, I’m just trying to guess what the IDF are doing.
3. If you hate Netanyahu, don’t worry, he’s toast after the war is over. I heard one of his old supporters say he should have already resigned and never shown his face in public again. The level of Israeli support for Netanyahu is about the level of people who believe Queen Elizabeth was a lizard.
They are going after Hamas. We have no way of knowing how many of the hostages are even still alive.
I think the massive Palestinian protests going on in the USA are actually having the opposite effect they intend. Thousands of people chanting for Jews to be killed ( from the river to the sea ) is deeply unsettling to normal Americans. I think it is going to lead to real political consequences for the Dems.
Yeah, seeing those people scaling the fence at the White House (just when they got Major out of there...), climbing up Ben Franklin's statue, and vandalizing monuments... that doesn't play well outside of the echo chambers the protestors live in.
I'm really curious to know what percentage of Americans (e.g. not just Democrats) support Hamas/ Palestinians here. The %'s I see seem to focus on Democrats/ the left, as though there weren't also a right wing. Might be hopelessly naive, but I'm hoping that a broader count would be a little bit less pro-terrorist.
The CCP is deliberately warping the Tiktok algorithm to forcefeed the English speaking world anti-Israel propaganda. Xi Jinping isn’t a Jihadist, obviously, but he does everything in his power to sow discord in the West to give him a better chance of success at seizing the semiconductor fabrication plants in Taiwan.
What effect is this having? Unfortunately, probably a lot among young people if the amount of time I hear they spend on that platform is correct.
I’m 31 and know people my age and older generally across the political spectrum, and all the people I know except for those who fell into the “woke” trap post 2017 could probably be considered “Pro-Israel”.
If there are any college age people in the comments section, I would be curious to hear the extent of this.
`The CCP is deliberately warping the Tiktok algorithm'
Source? I don't even think that accessing American user data is easy for the CCP, let alone changing the algorithm .
The CCP can access any user data it wants. “Stored in the US” doesn’t mean “Inaccessible from anywhere outside the US”.
Frankly my main source is they would be idiots not to be doing that and Xi is many things, but he ain’t stupid.
I’ll give one example of a different platform doing this. ‘Project Owl’, which Google implemented to mess with their search algorithm to boost “authoritarive sources” to fight “misinformation”, which was really just to get the Democratic Party off their backs during Russiagate. Google messes with their algorithms all the time.
I like to play a game called “I want the semiconductor fabrication plants in Taiwan. What should I do?”
Well, one longterm strategy you do is with the social media you control, shatter the social cohesion of your enemies by massively separating the beliefs of those who use your platform (the youth) and those who don’t (older people). The default is Pro-Israel? Push Pro-Palestine. Every aspect of what is called “woke”, for lack of a better term, gets amplified, which is useful because it can divide young from old better. A country’s soldiers are by definition young, can’t have them being stoic and patriotic, now can you? Is much of this organic? Of course. You can’t build a good psyop out of thin air, but Chinese Tiktok is very very different than Western Tiktok. Western Tiktok is an ingenious weapon of psychological warfare. This doesn’t mean I think it should be banned outright, I don’t like banning things, but it’s important to know what it is.
Never before in our lifetimes have there been 2 superpowers focused on 1 specific thing, the most valuable resource of all time, the semiconductor fabrication plants in Taiwan. I’m not saying that’s the lens you should look at Everything, that way lies madness, but it’s a useful lens to see the proxies within proxies for this terrifyingly inevitable, apocalyptic battle for who controls the island on which modern civilization is built.
That is my perception too, but I am far from college age. My workplace is not super woke, but it is solidly liberal, and the sentiment is firmly on Israel's side among most.
Here's a poll that breaks it down by party: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-israel-ukraine/
You have to scroll down, and they use "Palestinian people" which is going to get a more positive answer than Hamas. Americans are still broadly sympathetic to Israel, with Rs more so, as you correctly assumed.
I think you're right!
You know the very real "woke" backlash that Democrats pretended didn't exit?
The backlash to the Pro-Hamas/Palestine crowd is coming even faster. It took years for anti-woke to move out of the fringes of the right into the middle. It's only taking a month with respect to the Pro-Hamas folks before I'm seeing pushback from the middle.
`from the river to the sea' is *not* a call for genocide and it's ridiculous that the right is attempting to frame it that way.
It is a call for a one state solution with equality for all. When Fatah started using that slogan they were calling explicitly for a single nation of Arabs and Jews. They dropped it/didn't use it as much when they agreed in principle to seek a two state solution (this resulted in much backlash for Fatah). After that it was used in a general way to express freedom and equality for the Palestinian people.
Seeing as how Israel made a two state solution impossible, what with settler activity, etc., the slogan has again become relevant again and reverted to its original meaning.
I heard no Jew hatred at the rally over the weekend. The protestors were regular Americans, young and old, mostly black and brown, some naturalized but most first or second generation Palestinian American, and the idea that they hate Jews let alone want to murder them if fantastical.
Pleasant, nice, regular people.
I so hope that this is the way most feel. It would be wonderful if they could all just live in peace together.
I fully concede that the American public's political responses to stimuli often make no sense (e.g. getting super-mad at Obama for a recession caused by Republicans), but it would be weird to blame Democrats for not being sufficiently pro-Israel when I quite literally do not know how they could possibly be more pro-Israel than they actually are. Like what additional pro-Israel actions would people even want? Sending American ground troops into Gaza?
Israeli President (Herzog) is great. He's very popular here and abroad. The Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, is a flaming dumpster fire disaster, as is pretty much the entire government, save for Gantz's National Unity Party, which joined after the war started to stabilize things a bit. So they all have to go. They weren't that popular before the war, and, by and large, they're managing terribly now. Their response up to this point has been atrocious. The reason we're getting through this is (1) the Army and Security Services have woken up and are pulling their shit together and (2) ordinary citizens have been rallying to massive extents to provide for the internally displaced, the soldiers, etc.
Regarding the hostages--not a military expert by any stretch here. But my gut feeling is that while the Army will do their best to get people out, and they (please God!) will succeed, it's safe to assume that some aren't going to make it. To a certain extent, the army has to fight as if there were no hostages. We literally have hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people right now. (Hotels in my city, Jerusalem, are full of refugees from the South and the North). Large swaths of the South and the North are more or less unlivable until the threats are neutralized.
We do have to think about the hostages, but there's a limit to how much the Army can allow that to dictate their actions. It can't be easy, and I'm very glad I'm not the one who has to make those decisions. Every time I open up one of the local news sites I'm literally praying I'll see another update that they managed to rescue another hostage.
I can’t imagine how rough that’s gotta be and I’m hoping for the best for y’all. Grim as it is, I’m glad you’ve got a more realistic take on the hostages. I’m no military general, just a Jester, so figure the brass at the IDF know better than me, but I truly don’t know how they get a large amount of hostages out of the tunnels without a local surrender of at least a group of Hamas, but the Jihadist mole-people seem as fanatical as the Imperial Japanese. I’m an optimist though in general, so we’ll see. By the way, if you want a good clear-eyed take on things, check out Jacob Siegel on the Manifesto! podcast. He’s an American write, ex-military intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently lives in Israel, he’s tied with Matt Taibbi as the best analyst of American intelligence agencies schemes but also is really nuanced about the whole situation over there. I’ll admit, a lot of the tunnel analysis I took from him.
I'll check him out, and thanks for the positive thoughts. The Call Me Back podcast with Dan Senor has featured some really insightful interviews.
"Jihadist mole-people," I'm totally using that.
Thank you for the podcast recommendation. My father was a WWII history buff and I was always bored hearing about it as a kid, but when things like this happen I'm grateful that there are people out there who DO study military history.
I think there’s a lack of care about HISTORY as a general topic.
Historically speaking, if this whole thing had happened only 100 years ago, Israel’s right to do what it’s trying to do to defend itself would have been obvious. None of the current confusion and tip toeing would have been a thing.
I think about the long line of conquests, wars and conflicts that have shaped our world and see that to the victor goes the spoils, and if you can’t defend what you have then you don’t deserve to have it. The story of the human race in a nutshell.
The Prime minister needs to go but newsflash. The broad Israeli public supports this war. For existential reasons.
We need to replace Bibi with Daniel Hagari. At this point, I think he's the only person that we all trust.
Hi. I've read some of the responses below regarding Hamas/ Israel. It looks like those with more of a military bent have responded. I'm weighing in as an Israeli citizen who lives in Jerusalem.
1) "Proportionality"--I don't think that this word means what you think it means, at least not in warfare. Jesse, you honestly sounded like the crazy trans activists you complain about who throw around empty phrases and /or redefine words to suit their agenda, and ignore any evidence that they don't like. The goal of war isn't to be proportional. The goal or war is to win. You're a journalist, and a good one. Look that one up. Speak to people who really know this area. There are no shortage of journalists, legal and military experts and pundits from the left and the right who, even as they come to different conclusions, are honest brokers. (Consider Haviv Rettig Gur, Yossi Klein Halevi, Gershon Baskin* to start.) Wildly different conclusions but each come from a position of caring about Israel (and living here).
2) Speaking of honest brokers, why *would* we listen to the UN or other Palestinian apologists? They condemn us constantly while flat out ignoring mass murders going on in other places (e.g. China, Syria or Sudan). They appointed Iran to be the head of the UN Human Rights Council. They literally couldn't manage to condemn Hamas for the October 7th attacks! But we're supposed to take them seriously, assume that they have our best interests in mind? We should have faith that the UN and/or others have condemning us have looked at the situation, considered them carefully and genuinely believe, based on an in-depth analysis of both sides and the needs, safety and security of both? Maybe you can be that delusional. We can't afford to be.
Or, as a lot of people have pointed out in respect of the calls for a cease-fire, there WAS a cease fire, on October 6th. It was a cease fire which featured thousands of Palestinians from Gaza working in Israel, legally. Earning better salaries. Using that money to build homes and raise families. And, sadly, using the opportunity to collect intelligence information which it fed back to Hamas. Hamas used this information to simply devastating effect when it broke the cease-fire on October 7th. Now they want a new cease-fire? I bet they do. Fuck them.
3) And speaking of people showing us who they are (and the importance of believing them)... Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have flat out told us who they are. They have admitted--proudly--that their goal is the destruction of Israel (and the West) and the annihilation of Jews. They have admitted that, if they have a chance, there will be another October 7th, and another and another. Hamas has admitted that they use civilians as human shields and they have no responsibility for the welfare of Gazans. They're a psychopathic death-cult. It's a shame that the Gazans chose such a shit government, but they did (after we withdrew completely from Aza, by the way). We're supposed to accept periodic massacres and constant rocket attacks in order to spare the poor, poor Palestinians? Thanks. Tried that. Didn't work. Not again.
To wrap up, a quote from Golda Meir. “If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we'd rather be alive and have the bad image.” While you might see things differently (FWIW, you do come across here as trying very, VERY hard to be one of the 'good, it's just cultural!, not like THOSE Jews, Jews) from what I can see, folks only like us when we're dead and/or battered victims. Fuck that too.
(For the last point, I recommend Dara Horn's "People Love Dead Jews". )
* Re: Gershon Baskin, I was seriously injured in a suicide bombing attack in 2002. A few years later, I was invited to participate in one of his initiatives "Warriors for Peace". This brought together former terrorists and victims of terror for dialogue. I went to a few events. The last event I went to was a group 'discussion' between Israelis and Palestinians in which the Palestinians went off about how Israelis were so terrible and the Israelis were expected to agree. And I realized that the initiative was doomed. Baskin was also an architect of the Shalit deal, which gave Hamas the brilliant idea that, if they kidnapped enough of us, we'd give up with a mild whimper. So I'm not a big fan.
I think people's thinking in America are skewed by the absurd level of existential safety we have. America is protected by an ocean in each side and the most powerful military ever to exist. Outside of nuclear war (which I don't think feels real to anyone these days) there's no realistic way anyone is going to do existential level damage to America any time soon. China could take Taiwan and that would be bad, but it would still be a story most Americans read once and then sort of forget about. Sure America has 'lost' wars in recent memory, but our version of 'losing' is getting tired of inflicting 10 to 1 casualties on a population that doesn't want us around. It lacks any real ability to scare the average citizen. Israel has faced the very real prospect of losing something like a total war in recent history, with the consequences of that being pretty grim.
Supporting Hamas is a luxury belief for those that live in the US.
"Proportionality" refers to tactics, not strategy. It means you can't drop a nuke on a city just to kill a single guy with a gun. It doesn't mean, and has never meant, if the other country kills X number of your people, you are only allowed to kill Y number of theirs.
There are a fair number of people who know this area very well and who are experts in the area of international law/ human rights law/ Geneva Accords and the like. I'm not one of those people; I'm a middle aged accountant who knows her lane. From listening to enough of those people, however, I do know that proportionality isn't what Jesse implied it is.
And by this standard Israel is committing war crimes. They are bombing convoys of ambulances because they suspect some fighters may be in one; they are bombing refugee camps where 50--100 people were killed to take out two `commanders'.
For the last fifteen years they treated Gazans as though they were prisoners, intentionally failing to do anything to bring peace and keeping Hamas around to be sure, and are turning the prison into rubble.
Also, over a fifteen year period if they're constantly killing 10*X civilians then their tactics need to be revised, otherwise they discount Palestinian life at ten-to-one.
Do you always trust everything Hamas tells you? And why don't you recommend a change in tactics, since you are clearly more knowledgeable about such things than the IDF?
Do you always trust everything the IDF tells you? The US recognizes the same figures.
New tactics: stop bombing civilians and treat Palestinian life as though it were as valuable as Israeli.