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punishedkissinger posted:The IDF themselves are saying 1/5 of their casualties in Gaza are friendly fire, the majority of hostages killed since 10/7 have been killed by the IDF. we have testimony confirming they fired high explosive shells into buildings occupied by their own civilians and they had to revise their death toll by hundreds after realizing hundreds of burnt bodies were Hamas and not their own. If it was fairly well established you'd be able to establish it with actual sources instead of simply repeatedly asserting it.
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Dec 25, 2023 23:29
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punishedkissinger posted:the majority of hostages killed since 10/7 have been killed by the IDF You're going to need to show a source on this. There are a number of hostages killed where it was uncertain who killed them, so I strongly doubt it.
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Dec 26, 2023 00:40
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Netanyahu visits Palestine on Christmas
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Dec 26, 2023 00:55
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Kalit posted:You're going to need to show a source on this. There are a number of hostages killed where it was uncertain who killed them, so I strongly doubt it. We can start with these three, definately killed by the IDF: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna130912 quote:The three Israeli hostages had been in captivity for 65 days when they received a glimmer of hope. A group of Israeli soldiers arrived at the building in Gaza where they were holed up with their captors. It probably can't be definitively proven that the IDF is responsible for all of the hostages who have killed, because when hamas says that 20 were killed in an airstrike, it can't be corroborated because Gaza is in the middle of a genocide. But when you look at which actor is responsible for randomly conducting airstrikes up and down the strip and killing over 20,000 civilians, you'll just have to decide for yourself. Does it make sense that hamas is killing the remaining hostages they have just because? Do hostages have magical shields that protect them from airstrikes or hopped up IDF conscripts shooting through walls? Here is another story from a day ago: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-five-gaza-hostages-died-tunnel-circumstances-being-probed-2023-12-24/ quote:JERUSALEM, Dec 24 (Reuters) - Five Israeli hostages killed in Hamas captivity were recovered from an underground tunnel network in the northern Gaza Strip, the military said on Sunday, showing footage of a white-tiled bathroom and work room linked by dark concrete-lined passages. You'll just have to decide for yourself if you believe that Israel randomly found 5 dead hostages in a room or not. There is no single authoritative source that is going to make that decision for you. To date, Israel has only rescued one single hostage by force in gaza. It's interesting to note that they only ever find dead hostages, not live ones, and it's something you should consider.
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Dec 26, 2023 02:07
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Irony Be My Shield posted:I think Hamas probably had the same (extremely stupid) mindset that a lot of posters in this thread did - that the IDF response would be similar to their previous campaigns and they would stop after a few weeks and negotiate for hostages. They didn't appreciate that the biggest pogrom since WW2 would (very obviously) lead Israel to go insane and brutally kerbstomp Gaza until Hamas is destroyed no matter the consequences. As we are currently witnessing. So when you say here, "brutally kerbstomp Gaza until Hamas is destroyed no matter what the consequences", what kind of final situation are you thinking about? I'd like to hear about the end state you envision this coming to.
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Dec 26, 2023 16:41
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It is very obviously not Hamas that Israel is interested in destroying.
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Dec 26, 2023 16:51
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The attacks on 10/7 were not a pogrom and Hamas likely expected an incredibly harsh response but probably not something quite this psychotic. Either way Israel played into their hands as Hamas's standing with the Palestinians has increased since Israel's brutal response began. If elections were held today they'd win at slightly higher levels than in 2006 if the polling is accurate.Ratoslov posted:It is very obviously not Hamas that Israel is interested in destroying.
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Dec 26, 2023 16:53
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Groovelord Neato posted:The attacks on 10/7 were not a pogrom and Hamas likely expected an incredibly harsh response but probably not something quite this psychotic. Either way Israel played into their hands as Hamas's standing with the Palestinians has increased since Israel's brutal response began. If elections were held today they'd win at slightly higher levels than in 2006 if the polling is accurate. Stating that Israel played right into Hamas’ hands makes it sound like Hamas was planning on sacrificing [Gazan] civilians for increased popularity. That sounds like a terrifying plan, but then again, I try not to see civilians as disposable… Kalit fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 17:32
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Ratoslov posted:It is very obviously not Hamas that Israel is interested in destroying. Clearly, and it's infuriating to see the current atrocity being referred to in the news as the "Israel-Hamas war" as if it wasn't principally a massacre of innocent Palestinians.
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Dec 26, 2023 17:56
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Kalit posted:Stating that Israel played right into Hamas’ hands makes it sound like Hamas was planning on sacrificing civilians for increased popularity. That sounds like a terrifying plan, but then again, I try not to see civilians as disposable… More so that they are the ones resisting the invasion not that they've "sacrificed" civilians. Every time there's a new update on IDF casualties it makes them look better. Bombing the ever living poo poo out of Gaza doesn't really play into their hands but sending in poorly trained conscripts to get blown up on video does. Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 18:32
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Hamas is made up almost entirely of Palestinians who’ve lived their entire lives in their open-air prison. They’re not some pernicious outside force. E: Grip it and rip it posted:How do I get people that post like.this to lay down and die slowly? Koos Group could you ensure your Hitlers remain at the appropriate level of calmness please, I expect much more civility in their advocacy and cover for genocide. Thank you in advance (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Jakabite fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 19:39
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Groovelord Neato posted:The attacks on 10/7 were not a pogrom and Hamas likely expected an incredibly harsh response but probably not something quite this psychotic. Either way Israel played into their hands as Hamas's standing with the Palestinians has increased since Israel's brutal response began. If elections were held today they'd win at slightly higher levels than in 2006 if the polling is accurate. What polling and why do you think that polling during an ethnic cleansing is reliable? I would have some serious reservations about any polling of the citizens of Gaza under this attack they're experiencing. Not that I'd doubt the general notion, these types of experiences tend to garden resolve rather than defeat it.
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Dec 26, 2023 21:31
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Jakabite posted:If you think that oppressed people should just lay down and die slowly then just say that dude. You'd be amazed at the number of people I've debated I/P issues with who eventually settle on "lay down and die slowly" as the acceptable outcome. or no you probably wouldn't be amazed.
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Dec 26, 2023 22:04
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Jaxyon posted:You'd be amazed at the number of people I've debated I/P issues with who eventually settle on "lay down and die slowly" as the acceptable outcome. Hey come on at least then they get to keep the moral high ground as they and their entire family burn to while cowering in their homes. And that’s the real fight
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Dec 26, 2023 22:11
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Oscar Wilde Bunch posted:South Africa, India, the 1989 revolutions, the color revolutions that followed. Portugal, The Philippines. The defeat of the Soviet coup in 91. End of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Overthrow of the South Korean Junta. End of one party rule in Taiwan. indian independence was accompanied by the largest ethnic cleansing campaign in history. There was plenty of violence, it just wasn't directed at the colonial administration but against neighbors.
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Dec 26, 2023 22:39
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Tankbuster posted:indian independence was accompanied by the largest ethnic cleansing campaign in history. There was plenty of violence, it just wasn't directed at the colonial administration but against neighbors. The Indian independence struggle included violence directed at the colonial administration, for example Udham Singh's assassination of Michael O'Dwyer. I think "could a completely nonviolent decolonial movement succeed" is both practically useless and impossible to answer by real-world example, because in any context where there's enough outrage and organization to put together a potent nonviolent movement, there'll inevitably be cliques with enough outrage and organization to pursue the same goals violently.
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Dec 26, 2023 23:10
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Oscar Wilde Bunch posted:South Africa, India, the 1989 revolutions, the color revolutions that followed. Portugal, The Philippines. The defeat of the Soviet coup in 91. End of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Overthrow of the South Korean Junta. End of one party rule in Taiwan. I’ll not comment on the rest but South loving Africa? You know they didn’t just lock Mandela up for being a good orator right? This thread would’ve been decrying him as an immoral terrorist monster if it existed at the time.
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Dec 26, 2023 23:18
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also a large part of the nonviolent parts of indian independence included striking, disobeying tax laws and boycotting goods - the latter of which have been tried against israel and have had loyalty pledges mandated by US state legislatures.
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Dec 26, 2023 23:26
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Civilized Fishbot posted:The Indian independence struggle included violence directed at the colonial administration, for example Udham Singh's assassination of Michael O'Dwyer. I'd also add that there's an obvious vested interested on the part of the oppressors to claim that it was totally the non-violent parts of the resistance, exclusively, that accomplished the desired goal. Also, probably an interest on the parts of the non-violent elements of the resistance to claim that they alone were responsible and violence accomplished nothing. At the same time, you see a figure like Mandela, who was imprisoned, and refused to denounce violence as a condition of a potential release -- and yet, is considered one of the great peacemakers of our time (correctly, in my opinion). He spoke about the need to find peaceful solutions, and certainly assumed a position where he was willing to forgive and facilitate forgiveness, and yet at the cost of his own freedom he did not categorically denounce violence. This makes him, in my mind, a far stronger figure, a superior moral philosopher, and a better person than Gandhi or MLK Jr.
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Dec 26, 2023 23:37
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Kalit posted:Obviously, hostage taking usually doesn't involve immediately killing of said hostages. But there was absolutely zero explanation on them taking hostages on that day. The IDF soldiers, Israel government, or families of said hostages had no way of knowing what Hamas' plan was in that moment. They just knew there was a lot of murder and some abductions. Generally speaking, it's a combination of "all of the above". The occupier's government seeks to minimize the domestic political cost of the occupation by reducing the impact of the occupation on its own civilians as much as possible. In response, the occupied group seeks to increase the political cost of the occupation by doing things that have an impact on the lives of the occupiers' civilians. Terrorist violence, threatening the safety of the occupier's civilians (and, by extension, demonstrating that the occupier is unable to protect its own civilians), has an extremely outsized impact on the feelings of the occupier's civilians, which can transform it into a powerful political force. Hostage-taking takes that one step further, by not only demonstrating that the occupier's civilians are unsafe but also forcing the occupier to the negotiating table to make political concessions in exchange for having its own civilians returned without further harm. It's relatively powerful political leverage, especially in cases like this where the occupied group is able to present a credible ongoing threat. punishedkissinger posted:The IDF themselves are saying 1/5 of their casualties in Gaza are friendly fire, the majority of hostages killed since 10/7 have been killed by the IDF. we have testimony confirming they fired high explosive shells into buildings occupied by their own civilians and they had to revise their death toll by hundreds after realizing hundreds of burnt bodies were Hamas and not their own. The Israelis saying that a substantial portion of their casualties in Gaza are friendly fire doesn't mean "the Israelis did an unusual amount of friendly fire", it means "the Israelis took extremely few casualties from Hamas". To put things in perspective, the Allied operation to retake Kiska during WWII took 313 casualties (92 killed, 221 wounded) out of a total force of 34,000. This is despite the fact that there wasn't even a single enemy soldier present: the Japanese, realizing that their position there was both untenable and pointless, had secretly packed up and left weeks before without the Allied force realizing. That didn't stop the Allied soldiers from losing about 1% of their force to friendly fire, vehicle accidents, blundering into leftover mines, and other things along those lines. Any large-scale military operation (especially one being carried out by conscripts) is inevitably going to have people getting each other killed by mistake - it's just that usually, that small number of accidental deaths is massively outweighed by the toll that enemy fire inflicts. Compared to Kiska, the IDF has actually done quite well. At Kiska, the US and Canada saw 92 soldiers killed out of 34,000 in the course of a single day. In Gaza, the IDF has seen 105 killed out of a total ~40,000 over the course of months, about 20 of whom were due to IDF mishaps (and out of those 20, only 13 were friendly fire, with the rest being stuff like vehicle accidents or misfired munitions). National Parks posted:We can start with these three, definately killed by the IDF: Of course it makes sense that Hamas is killing hostages. That's what hostages are for. "Negotiate with us if you want the hostages back alive" comes with an implicit threat that the hostages won't be returned alive if negotiations are rejected. And in fact, Hamas spokespeople did explicitly make that threat in the early days of the invasion, though they walked it back soon after. That's one of the primary challenges in hostage rescue - when someone is under the complete control of an armed hostage-taker, it's extremely difficult to stop the hostage-takers from killing the hostages as soon as they realize it's impossible to hold off the rescuers. This is, incidentally, why no-negotiation tactics based entirely around using military force to rescue hostages have a rather poor success rate. Naturally, it's plausible that some portion of hostages has indeed been killed (intentionally or unintentionally) by Israeli attacks. But it's also entirely plausible that the hostage-takers killed the hostages, a rather common event in failed hostage-rescues. What we can say with some certainty is that it'll likely be a long while before we have any clear idea of what (or who) was responsible for each hostage's death. In the meantime, that doesn't mean that the lack of evidence gives us a free pass to start treating speculation as fact. When we don't know and can't prove anything, that means we don't know - the lack of facts or proof is no excuse to just "decide for yourself" what the facts are.
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Dec 27, 2023 00:49
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Main Paineframe posted:
When exactly would these failed hostage rescues have taken place? Cuz it sure seems Israel has literally done zero of that in favor of lobbing shitloads of armaments
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Dec 27, 2023 01:17
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A big flaming stink posted:When exactly would these failed hostage rescues have taken place? Cuz it sure seems Israel has literally done zero of that in favor of lobbing shitloads of armaments It's likely speculation. Israel censors the poo poo out of their media and doesn't trumpet failures unless they're public.
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Dec 27, 2023 01:20
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A big flaming stink posted:When exactly would these failed hostage rescues have taken place? Cuz it sure seems Israel has literally done zero of that in favor of lobbing shitloads of armaments There's been both successful and failed hostage rescue attempts publicized in Gaza, despite the fact that Hamas has made it very difficult for the IDF to locate hostages and plan rescue attempts. And of course there were numerous attempts to rescue Israeli civilians during and immediately after Oct 7 in Israel itself. Putting that aside, the reason hostage-rescues so often end in the hostage-takers killing the hostages is because the hostage-takers can usually tell when a hostile military force is attacking, and it really doesn't take very long to shoot a bunch of unarmed hostages and then make a break for it (or engage in a suicide attack, or just fight to the end, or whatever other end suits the hostage-takers' ideology, doctrine, and plans). The thing is, that doesn't apply solely to things that are specifically direct rescue attempts. When IDF forces are advancing on a place where hostages are being kept, it doesn't really matter to the militants whether the IDF knows the hostages are there. Either way, they're in danger the hostages being recaptured alive by the IDF - and they're likely to take measures to prevent it from happening, one way or another. The thing is, we don't need to make up wild speculation about the IDF killing hostages to make Israel look bad or make it seem like it's neglecting the lives of hostages! The fact that Israeli is reluctant to negotiate and prefers a military solution is, by itself, evidence that Israel is neglecting the hostages, given the poor success rate of rejecting negotiation and instead pursuing military solutions.
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Dec 27, 2023 01:47
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Main Paineframe posted:There's been both successful and failed hostage rescue attempts publicized in Gaza, despite the fact that Hamas has made it very difficult for the IDF to locate hostages and plan rescue attempts. And of course there were numerous attempts to rescue Israeli civilians during and immediately after Oct 7 in Israel itself. The failed hostage rescue you cite was a story about IDF going into a house and finding a bunch of "known terrorists" and killing them. There were no hostages found despite Israeli intelligence saying they would be there. quote:IDF Special Forces involved in a failed hostage rescue operation in the Gaza Strip were severely wounded on Friday night when they raided a known Hamas compound and eliminated terrorists who took part in the kidnapping and holding of hostages. The article then goes on to say that hamas claims another hostage was killed by IDF forces to which the IDF responded "no it was Hamas they are conducting psychological warfare and misinformation". The IDF rescued one guy in October and then has been indiscriminately killing everyone else with zero regard for the hostages. The IDF hasn't located or rescued hostages because they don't care, and are busy conducting a genocide. Which leads back to the original point of this discussion. The IDF is likely directly responsible for the majority of hostage deaths in Gaza.
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Dec 27, 2023 06:55
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ummel posted:What polling and why do you think that polling during an ethnic cleansing is reliable? I would have some serious reservations about any polling of the citizens of Gaza under this attack they're experiencing. Not that I'd doubt the general notion, these types of experiences tend to garden resolve rather than defeat it. You have a loving Ukraine tag. What the gently caress do you think the average Ukrainian civilian thought of the Russian invasion. Does the average western liberal even have the ability to form a theory of mind. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 27, 2023 07:53
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:You have a loving Ukraine tag. What the gently caress do you think the average Ukrainian civilian thought of the Russian invasion. Well if you ask some big brains around here, they'd say Ukrainian citizens welcome the liberation from the evil NATO homonazis.
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Dec 27, 2023 11:42
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Jakabite posted:I’ll not comment on the rest but South loving Africa? You know they didn’t just lock Mandela up for being a good orator right? I’m not the person you’re quoting but fwiw I did think that’s why they locked him up. I thought he was like the South African MLK, which is how he is usually portrayed in Western media. It’s not like the apartheid regime exactly needed a real violent revolt reason to lock someone up. Still since it was like 30 years before the anti apartheid movement gained real momentum, I’m not sure it’s necessarily wrong to portray him as a non-violent revolutionary. Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Dec 27, 2023 |
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Dec 27, 2023 11:50
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Saladman posted:I’m not the person you’re quoting but fwiw I did think that’s why they locked him up. I thought he was like the South African MLK, which is how he is usually portrayed in Western media. It’s not like the apartheid regime exactly needed a real violent revolt reason to lock someone up. Suggest you look into Apartheid, the ANC and Nelson Mandela.
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Dec 27, 2023 11:52
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How many high-profile anti-apartheid activists did Nelson Mandela kill (along with their children)? There are a lot of degrees of resistance that can happen between 'no violence whatsoever' and 'go house to house slaughtering everyone we can get our hands on, even if they are famous advocates for our cause/random guest workers who obviously have nothing to do with the conflict/actual literal infants'Stringent posted:So when you say here, "brutally kerbstomp Gaza until Hamas is destroyed no matter what the consequences", what kind of final situation are you thinking about? I'd like to hear about the end state you envision this coming to. I can't predict what this endstate would actually look like - there are too many question marks. For instance, there is no reliable way to know how successful Israel has been at attacking Hamas' inner strongholds. Certainly Hamas has lost many significant figures including the head of their Northern division, but it's possible that their senior leadership is far better protected or hidden. But if your actual question is whether Israel would slaughter everyone in Gaza if they fail to find another way to root out Hamas... yes, of course they would. Happily. I don't know why people keep putting this to me like it's some gotcha, nothing in this conflict has suggested that Israel gives a single gently caress about either the lives or the opinions of the civilians of Gaza.
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Dec 27, 2023 11:59
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Does any of the military operation we have seen over the past almost 3 months indicated that is what Israel is looking to do? Because that may be the rhetoric, but it does not seem to be backed by actions. For instance the exchange of hostages earlier on in the year seemed like something that returned far more kidnapped people than anything else, but that was then immediately ended in favour of more attacks, bombings and family murders.
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Dec 27, 2023 12:08
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Josef bugman posted:Does any of the military operation we have seen over the past almost 3 months indicated that is what Israel is looking to do? Because that may be the rhetoric, but it does not seem to be backed by actions.
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Dec 27, 2023 12:20
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Saladman posted:I’m not the person you’re quoting but fwiw I did think that’s why they locked him up. I thought he was like the South African MLK, which is how he is usually portrayed in Western media. It’s not like the apartheid regime exactly needed a real violent revolt reason to lock someone up. Yes, lots of people in the west think that, that’s why so many westerners have no clue about anything - they don’t even know the very basics of modern history. Mandela was the head of the military wing of the ANC. He blew up civilian targets as a matter of course. And it worked to free his people. Irony be my Shield: do you think that a) it’s possible to defeat Hamas while material conditions in Gaza deteriorate? Without killing pretty much every male in Gaza, anyhow. I’ll assume the answer is no, because I’m sure you realise as soon as you kill a Hamas fighter, his sons/brothers/friends have even more incentive to join up. That being (hopefully) settled, do you think b) that Israel realises this? I think they do because they’re not completely pants on head dumb. Therefore, how do you justify the idea that their primary goal in the wanton destruction and murder being carried out in Gaza is the destruction of Hamas? It seems clear to me that the destruction of Hamas is a fig leaf for the ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide of Gazans and more widely Palestinians as a whole, as their current tactic is about the worst thing you can do to defeat and insurgency comprised of angry, desperate people fighting for their very existence.
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Dec 27, 2023 12:27
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I think Israel knows very well that they can't remove Palestinian terrorism or resistance while keeping Gaza under blockade as an open air prison and colonizing West Bank. And they do not want to stop their slow annexation of West Bank, so brutalizing Gaza until it ceases to be a thorn on their side becomes the point of their military strategy. Sure, they might speak about annihilating Hamas, but in their view the only way to do so is to destroy Gaza. All the leaked documents and murmurs coming from Israeli establishment of removing the population of Gaza to Egypt or other neighbouring countries and their current actions in making Gaza unlivable supports this. Israeli end game is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and making West Bank Palestine even more of a bantustan totally at the mercy of IDF and Israeli settlements. And they might very well succeed in it as long as US support remains steady. It almost seems like they are walking a tight rope and looking at US while increasing their brutalization of Gaza, and as long as US doesn't blink, they'll continue doing so with the hopes that they might achieve their ultimate objective.
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Dec 27, 2023 12:50
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Jakabite posted:Irony be my Shield: do you think that a) it’s possible to defeat Hamas while material conditions in Gaza deteriorate? Without killing pretty much every male in Gaza, anyhow. e: to be clear I do think that Israel is absolutely engaging in collective punishment - they want to make an example of Gaza, although I think in a theoretical scenario where they break Hamas they will allow anyone remaining to continue living a miserable existence in their shattered tent city/anywhere they decide to forcibly relocate them to. My goal with this line of argumentation is not in any way to defend Israel, rather to demonstrate how comprehensively Hamas has hosed itself and how this is absolutely not a strategy that any resistance movement should seek to emulate Irony Be My Shield fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Dec 27, 2023 |
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Dec 27, 2023 13:35
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What would you recommend they do otherwise? It was a huge gamble, and because of the nature of the arena they took the gamble in, it was a gamble with lives. That’s what politics is. But it does appear to have destroyed any chance of normalisation, and could well make Israel a devil to western populations. It’s also shown that a) the US won’t jump in to defend Israel with boots on the ground b) the IDF’s power was only ever a myth. You might think it’s wrong to sacrifice human lives to achieve these goals, but I’d like to see what you’d have suggested they do to prevent the slow, grinding ethnic cleansing that was on the verge of accelerating rapidly once relations with the Arabic world were complete.
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Dec 27, 2023 14:22
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Jakabite posted:Yes, lots of people in the west think that, that’s why so many westerners have no clue about anything - they don’t even know the very basics of modern history. Mandela was the head of the military wing of the ANC. He blew up civilian targets as a matter of course. And it worked to free his people. UMkhonto we Sizwe killed less than 40 white civilians over 30 years of armed struggle, mostly as collateral damage to attacks on military and economic targets. Had they killed many more, Mandela would hardly have come to power via the consent of an all-white electorate. The level, type, timing and targeting of violence by Hamas against Israeli Jews is strategically inconsistent with any comparable solution. Just as much as that of Israel. There was a Hamas-comparable group in SA, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army, slogans ‘one settler one bullet’ and ‘aim our guns at children’. Like Hamas, they received aid from elements of the opposing security state precisely because their greater use of violence made them a more containable threat.
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Dec 27, 2023 14:40
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Jakabite posted:What would you recommend they do otherwise? It was a huge gamble, and because of the nature of the arena they took the gamble in, it was a gamble with lives. That’s what politics is. But it does appear to have destroyed any chance of normalisation, and could well make Israel a devil to western populations. It’s also shown that a) the US won’t jump in to defend Israel with boots on the ground b) the IDF’s power was only ever a myth. You might think it’s wrong to sacrifice human lives to achieve these goals, but I’d like to see what you’d have suggested they do to prevent the slow, grinding ethnic cleansing that was on the verge of accelerating rapidly once relations with the Arabic world were complete. This is the question I keep coming back to as well. We saw with the March of Return how Israel will respond to non-violent protest: assassinating hundreds and maiming tens of thousands of peaceful Palestinians with no more regard for the humanity of their victims than they are demonstrating in the current conflict. At a certain point when you brutally oppress people, give them no option for escape, and make it clear that non-violence will only be met with further oppression, you have to expect that some of them will quite reasonably conclude that violence is their only remaining option. Even if it won't improve conditions, for some people it becomes a question of dignity and self-respect. Do you roll over and let your oppressors kill you slowly, inflicting misery and humiliation all the while, or do you at least try to take out some of the bastards with you?
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Dec 27, 2023 15:50
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Atahualpa posted:Even if it won't improve conditions, for some people it becomes a question of dignity and self-respect. Do you roll over and let your oppressors kill you slowly, inflicting misery and humiliation all the while, or do you at least try to take out some of the bastards with you? The dignity and respect Hamas achieved on October 7 should be carefully weighed against the dramatically worsened conditions for everybody in Gaza in addition to the thousands of dead and maimed.
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Dec 27, 2023 16:04
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National Parks posted:The failed hostage rescue you cite was a story about IDF going into a house and finding a bunch of "known terrorists" and killing them. There were no hostages found despite Israeli intelligence saying they would be there. That "likely" is missing something very important: literally any evidence at all! Your "the IDF doesn't care [about hostages]" is also missing something important: again, literally any evidence at all! You're just making wild, sweeping claims that go well beyond anything we have any actual backing for. Yes, the IDF has launched very few hostage rescues. The reason for this is pretty well-known, as Israeli authorities have complained about it pretty much constantly since the start of the war: Israeli intelligence does not actually know where most of the hostages are! And that's certainly a credible claim. After all, in the first few weeks of the war, the hostages were often hidden so well and dispersed so widely that even Hamas claimed that they didn't know where all of the hostages were. Presumably, the IDF assumed that as they occupied more of Gaza City and explored Hamas' underground infrastructure, they would be able to discover some of the hostages' prisons - and, even more importantly, Hamas command centers that could contain key information such as tunnel system maps or lists of hostage locations. As things have actively developed, it's starting to look like those assumptions were overly optimistic. It appears that Israeli intelligence knew even less about the Hamas tunnel systems than they thought they did, and Israeli hopes of capturing Hamas command infrastructure appear to have been mostly disappointed. Moreover, IDF doctrine and organization on the ground have proven to be not up to the standards necessary for such complex operations as ad-hoc discovery and rescue of hostages on the spot, and they certainly have not been capable of doing so with sufficient speed and surprise to catch Hamas jailers before they can react (an absolutely necessary factor in any hostage rescue). But it is one hell of a jump to go directly from that to "The IDF is likely directly responsible for the majority of hostage deaths in Gaza". What we can say with any degree of certainty is that the Israeli government shares substantial responsibility for the hostage deaths in Gaza. After all, military rescue of hostages is known to be a risky course with a substantial probability of failure at the best of times, and the particular set of circumstances in Gaza are especially unfavorable toward hostage rescue operations. By being so reluctant to engage in negotiations and placing their hopes on a military solution instead, the Israeli government has bet the lives of many of the hostages on long-shots, and bears some responsibility not only for the hostages they accidentally kill but also for the hostages Hamas intentionally kills, since they knew full well that there was a substantial risk that Hamas would kill the hostages this way but pursued this course anyway. Saladman posted:I’m not the person you’re quoting but fwiw I did think that’s why they locked him up. I thought he was like the South African MLK, which is how he is usually portrayed in Western media. It’s not like the apartheid regime exactly needed a real violent revolt reason to lock someone up. Although Mandela was originally committed to nonviolence, he eventually grew to believe that it wasn't accomplishing anything, so he renounced non-violence and worked to found an armed branch of the ANC to engage in paramilitary activities. While the government had temporarily imprisoned him before solely for his non-violent activities, his eventual conviction and life sentence was on the basis of his links to the ANC's armed wing, something which he freely admitted at his own trial. As he himself said in a speech during trial, "we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy" and that "it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force". His portrayal in Western media is heavily influenced by the priorities of Western media itself, which as a fundamentally non-revolutionary institution dependent on the system and with ties to the socially and economically powerful, tends to de-emphasize and discourage revolutionary violence in modern contexts. Though in this case, it's helped by the fact that Mandela was caught very early in the history of the ANC's armed wing, and therefore had relatively little direct involvement in its activities. Jakabite posted:Yes, lots of people in the west think that, that’s why so many westerners have no clue about anything - they don’t even know the very basics of modern history. Mandela was the head of the military wing of the ANC. He blew up civilian targets as a matter of course. And it worked to free his people. Whether you or IBMS personally think it's possible isn't really relevant to the question. What's important is whether the Israeli government thinks it's possible. And it's quite credible that it does. Even today, there's still plenty of people who honestly believe that it's possible to destroy an insurgency via military force if you just bomb them hard enough, or bomb them fast enough, or bomb the right places, or pair it with the right repressive measures. And plenty of those people are in Western politics and military, or at least vote for politicians in Western countries. And honestly, it's not completely wrong. There have actually been historical cases of militaries crushing insurgencies with sufficient levels of military force and repressive policy. Of course, it requires considerable brutality and extremely harsh measures against civilians - concentration camps were first invented as anti-insurgency measures, after all - and it also depends on certain circumstances that aren't present anywhere. Personally, I don't think that high-ranking IDF officers don't particularly believe it's possible to destroy Hamas with military force alone (at least not within the current political and physical constraints of the I/P conflict). However, they're stuck taking orders from a set of Israeli politicians who very much need it to be possible if they're to have any hope at all at saving their jobs and preserving their power. And Israeli governance, for all its many faults, still maintains effective civilian control of the military.
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Dec 27, 2023 16:15
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Owling Howl posted:The dignity and respect Hamas achieved on October 7 should be carefully weighed against the dramatically worsened conditions for everybody in Gaza in addition to the thousands of dead and maimed. I agree; my point is that when you make it clear that people will be treated as animals and terrorists no matter how peacefully they protest, don't be surprised when some of them say "gently caress it, might as well try violence then". (I'd also argue that the fault primarily lies with the state actually inflicting those dramatically worsened conditions and not the people who decided to push back against the brutal conditions said state had already been inflicting for decades prior, but that's a topic that has already been covered exhaustively in this thread.)
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Dec 27, 2023 16:18
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