Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @argumento @HistoPol @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
How many Gazans who've died so far are Hamas? Is there even a clean line between Hamas militants and noncombatants?
Before you answer, consider this: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-780307
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
(1/2)
"The footage shows a terrorist presenting himself as a civilian while hiding an RPG-type rocket under a blanket in a civilian area. This strategy, and the use of Gazan citizens as human shields, has been a well-recorded tactic of Hamas."
I have at least two issues with this:
1). The source is hardly objective.
2.) Even if the above were true, and I do not doubt that, the point where ...
@dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @argumento@hispagatos.space @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@TruthSandwich
@dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
(2/n)
..."some" civilians became "#CollateralDamage" has long been past.
Dislocating the inhabitants of a whole region while oblitering all civilian infrastructure cannot be justified by self-defense anymore. The legal commentaries that I've heard agree with this stance that international law does not sanction the #IDF's brutal actions as ordered by the ult-right #Likud government.
In an (international)...
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@TruthSandwich @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
(3/n)
...order governed by "law and order" one party (#Hamas) committing savage atrocities (i.e. #HumanRightsAbuses, #terrorism, and #WarCrimes), does *not* legitimize the attacked party to commence an all-out war in the sense of committing crimes against civilians. Most of the #Gazans are non-combattant civilians.
Once the #IDF leaves and journalists do not become "collateral damage" on an enormous scale...
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@TruthSandwich @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
(4/n)
...anymore, international pressure on the Israeli government will mount and it will eventually fold.
Hopefully, not too late, though it is already too late for thousands of Gazans...and Israelis (to a lesser extent.)
//
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
(1/2)
"Hamas wanted Palestinians to die en masse, to be martyred for their cause."
I can actually agree with this. Seeing things from a strategic 🪖 perspective, your argument, alas, makes a lot of sense. The #Hamas' leadership might even want to force the more powerful #Hezbollah's leader in #Lebanon to join the fight against #Israel: at what point will the outcry in #Lebanese
streets about the...
@dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
This is not one data point, and it is not peripheral. Every bit of evidence points in the same direction: Hamas has removed any distinction between civilian and military.
They committed war crimes by using hospitals, homes, and schools as military command centers and weapons caches. They dug deep tunnels under civilian areas and likewise used them for these purposes.
By design, there is no way to attack Hamas without hitting their human shields.
Given this, and the fact that they intentionally started this war, we can only conclude that Hamas wanted Palestinians to die en masse, to be martyred for their cause.
You don't get to cause something and then complain about it. If Hamas hadn't wanted these deaths, they wouldn't have happened.
Call me coldblooded or whatever, but I refuse to be manipulated by sociopathic Realpolitik.
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@TruthSandwich @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
(2/2)
...mass dieing and deprivation of their #Gazan brethren become too loud to ignore. I believe that this is #Hamas's game plan.
//
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@dung_eater
Did so in my final post, but this is a multi-tgread discussion, you might be better of to just mute the convo.
gregor samsa
@HistoPol @TruthSandwich @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Please detach me from this discussion, thank you.
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@TruthSandwich
"Palestinians are dying so that Trump can take over America."
This is a very provocative way of putting this. Disagree with the wording.
Your analysis mirrors my findings, though, alas. 😢
@dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@HistoPol
@dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Hamas timed its massacre to to interfere with talks to normalization of relations between Israel and the Arabs.
The proximate goal was to trigger a war with massive civilian casualties in Gaza and play this forced tragedy for cheap PR wins against Israel.
From the POV of their Iranian masters, this aided Russia by distracting from its ongoing invasion, and it could be leveraged by their useful idiots on the American far left as an attack on quote-unquote #GenocideJoe to get Trump back into power.
Palestinians are dying so that Trump can take over America.
Mina
There's no doubt: Hamas wanted every single person who died in Gaza to do so.
The bad thing is that, the incompetent and criminal government of Israel is playing Hamas' game.
@HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
"there are positive signs lately. Flooding the tunnels is a much more targeted attack, as was assassinating that Hamas leader."
On the one hand, yes.
On the other hand, #Netanyahu needs to prolong this war to stay in power, possibly to not be prosecuted, so opening another front in Lebanon makes great sense to him at this point as Hamas' days are numbered.
@mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@mina @HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
You won't see me defending Bibi, either in his goals or competence, but I'm not sure what the alternative would have looked like.
In other words, if there'd been a saner PM, how much more targeted would the retaliation have been?
As much as Bibi is apathetic about killing Palestinians, a lot of the collateral damage can only be blamed on Hamas for committing war crimes by intermingling military assets among civilians, whether in hospitals, homes, or schools... or the tunnels beneath them.
Still, I think there are positive signs lately. Flooding the tunnels is a much more targeted attack, as was assassinating that Hamas leader.
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
(1/2)
"there'd been a saner PM, how much more targeted would the retaliation have been?"
I am not a military expert, but the IDF is one of the most advanced militaries globally, as proven by this surgical drone strike you mention.
Moving in in force and obliterating...
@mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@TruthSandwich @mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
(2/2)
...only buildings where there is opposition should have been possible or flooding the tunnels earlier.
I am sure there would have been a lit of ways if the War Cabinet had given this more thought.
//
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
Don't disagree about #Iran at all, as explained earlier in this convo.
However, I literally heard a senior military IDF spokesperson(?) last week talking about the potential of a 7-front-war, the 2nd being #Hezbolla.
@mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@HistoPol @mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
It's not another front. Again, this was never just about Hamas. Hamas was always acting in Iran's interests.
Mina
I am neither a top politician nor a military person, but what I know is that, indiscriminate violence against the entire population has never in history worked as a solution to a conflict, or only if you're willing to kill basically everybody (what the Romans did in Carthage after the third Punic War).
Perhaps, the Mossad could have killed the Hamas leadership in Qatar?
@HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Mina
Are Hamas' days numbered?
I have the feeling, this is a Hydra. You hack one head off and three new ones grow.
@TruthSandwich @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@mina
(1/2)
I do think so.
Its financial infrastructure, apart from Iran, has mostly vanished, I'd say.
To fight a guerrilla war, you need a place to hide inconspicously.
No Gaza. No population. Lebanon overflowing with earlier refugees and no one even wanting the civilian #Gazans? Their tunnels being flooded or destroyed?
The Gazan population is being starved, so potential new recruits..
@TruthSandwich @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@mina @TruthSandwich @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
(2/2)
...will be physically weak.
#PhyrricVictory for #Hamas. Unless they draw in #Hezbola and then become martyrs for their cause...assuming their perspective.
//
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@mina @HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Iran is behind both, and it's more dangerous still.
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@TruthSandwich @mina
Agreed. @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Mina
Hezbollah is far more dangerous than Hamas ever was.
@TruthSandwich @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@mina @HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Yes, that's accurate. Whereas Bibi is apathetic towards Palestinian deaths, Hamas actively sought this result.
Mina
The difference between Bibi and Hamas is: Bibi doesn't give a shit about dead or suffering civilians. Hamas wants that killing and suffering.
@HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@mina @HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Well, the stated goal of the retaliation is to remove Hamas' ability to execute further massacres.
There are good and bad ways of doing this, but while the headlines are full of casualty numbers, they don't actually break down how many of the dead are soldiers.
So I'd say that Israel's reaction is overkill but largely effective. They would have been wiser to combine the carrot and the stick, ruthlessly rooting out Hamas while showering Gazans with kindness by avoiding a humanitarian disaster.
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@HistoPol @mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
I suspect the answer is somewhere in the middle. The IDF clearly could have done this with less collateral damage because, as far as I can tell, they made little to no effort to minimize it.
Having said that, it's not clear just how much it could be minimized. Pretty much any apparent civilian could be a danger, as Hamas is still broadly popular and does not follow any sort of rules of war.
Mina
The question is: Does retaliation actually make sense at all?
Flooding tunnels, targeted personal attacks on leaders, hostage rescue operations is not retaliation. Everything else, the Israeli government has done, is.
Of course, it was understandable. However: We don't elect our leaders democratically so that they behave like children on a schoolyard.
@HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
Israel, yes, absolutely.
Netanyahu, no, for the reasons just explained.
@mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@HistoPol @mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Maybe, but Bibi is not actually committing genocide, and even actual genocide rarely entails complete destruction; some people always escape, and that's often intentional.
So, sure, Hamas' base of operations is bombed to pieces, but millions of Palestinians remain alive and they will be enraged at Israel, therefore easy to convert into supporters and even soldiers.
You really can't shoot your way into a lasting peace.
Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
@mina @HistoPol @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
Hamas is just the Iranian puppet in Gaza. If it goes, Iran remains and it has other puppets.
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
(1/2)
"Hamas is just the Iranian puppet in Gaza."
Disagree.
There recently was a pod with The Economist's senior security and military correspondent.
He explicitly stated that Hamas is not a puppet and also pursues its own goals while it was even financially quite independent due to forced "taxes." Iran being the largest foreign donor does wield considerable influence, though.
" If ...
@mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
@TruthSandwich @mina @dung_eater @palestine @NoFlexZone @Lastresponder @Outpatientzero
(2/2)
...it goes, Iran remains, and it has other puppets."
Agreed.
//
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