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Yeah, Israel should have been good boys and waited around for Hezbollah to attack them as they promised to.
As others have pointed out, this is about the least collateral damage that could be imagined. But no matter what it does, Israel can't win with its critics. What the critics really seem to want is for Israel to stop defending itself. As if Hezbollah would deliver one final punch and then both sides are even and the boys won't fight anymore.
Israel can defend itself and stop trying to use terrorist tactics to draw the United States into another ME war.
I am very curious to know what you and @functor would consider to be the ethical options available to Israel when it comes to defending themselves.
Fundamentally the solution to this war can't be from an Israeli perspective. We have hundreds of millions of middle easterners and then we have Europe close by. The solution needs to be one that benefits arabs and Europeans.
They have been kicked out of countries 109 times and seem to be a fairly nomadic people. If they want to settle somewhere it has to be on land that is available and doesn't cause a constant headache for the rest of us. The jewish autonomous oblast is bigger than Israel and available to jews.
That seems like a terrible deal in every way for the Israelis. Why would they agree to it?
"They're just Jews, they don't really mind wandering around, and we can stick them in a bumfuck corner of unproductive land under the control of a country that historically pogromed Jews often and is currently their enemy" is a proposal only someone who deeply hates Jews would think serious and reasonable.
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You act like it's a hard question, but the United States has managed regime change and military occupations, Israel can follow that playbook if they want to go to war. Calling this "self defense" is not even a stretch, that's obviously untrue, it's a major act of provocation.
Israel should negotiate a settlement, but also their conduct in waging war should be held to US standards to receive US support.
How? With who? Why would they think the other side would abide by said agreement? Why would YOU?
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The last 80 years of history would suggest it is.
I find it difficult to believe that if Israel went all-in with the regime-change-and-occupation playbook, you would be less critical of their actions.
What settlement should they negotiate with an adversary whose only win condition is "You stop existing"?
I am actually not all that sympathetic to Israel, except in comparison to their enemies. But their enemies have made it clear that there is no permanent negotiated settlement that leaves Israel extant. Israel's options are to do what you suggest, and just put a boot on half the Middle East, or keep playing a tower defense game while hoping the Arab world eventually has a generational change of heart.
I think if we were fighting a war against an asymmetrical adversary who uses terrorist tactics, setting off bombs in enemy combatants' electronic devices (and accepting a small amount of civilian collateral damage) would be within our standards. It has certainly done less collateral damage than we did with drone strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They are clearly not aligned with our geopolitical objectives. If we were a serious country we would withhold aid, confiscate military weapons that have already been delivered, and demand Israel align with US objectives in the region. But our news media, University system, and government are all controlled by Zionists so there's nobody to stop them.
Israel escalating the conflict with IED tactics that not even the US has used in its wars/occupations is a level of insolence that is only accepted because we are an occupied government.
We did fight wars against asymmetrical adversaries who used terrorist tactics. We did not, nor would we ever, boobytrap civilian office supplies with explosives and send them among the civilian population. That is an IRA tactic or a tactic of the Iraqi insurgency.
This is not clear to me. You might disagree with our geopolitical objectives, but Israel and the US seem to be pretty much on the same page about them, even if we don't always agree on strategy and tactics.
When you said:
I claimed that you would not, in fact, consider that to be more ethical than what they are doing now. So you have now admitted that that's correct. My original question was "What can Israel do in its own defense that you would consider ethically defensible?" So the answer from you is clearly "Nothing" and the answer from @functor is "They can cease to exist, or they can fuck off to a backwater of Russia (and cease to exist)."
So now that we've gotten that out of the way:
"Insolence" implies they owe us fealty, which is ironic when you then claim we are an "occupied government." How can ZOG both be insolent and secretly ruling us?
That's not remotely close to what the IRA or the Iraqis insurgents did. I notice how very carefully you phrased this: "boobytrap civilian office supplies." It must have taken you some small amount of time to figure out the best way to describe "boobytrapped communications equipment used by the Hezballah" in a way that sounds like they were doing something like planting bombs in copy machines. Golf clap for the clever wording. But we've all seen the news and the videos. They targeted Hezballah pagers and walkie talkies, and almost nobody but Hezballah were injured. Yes, I'm sorry for that 10-year-old girl who was killed (I am certain, in fact, that I feel more genuine regret for this than you do), but no war in history has avoided civilian casualties.
Now let's be real here: you aren't morally offended by Israel's tactics. If they sent snipers to take out Hezballah leaders, you'd be accusing them of escalation. If they dropped bombs and rockets, you'd be accusing them of war crimes. If they sent troops, you'd be accusing them of unprovoked aggression and imperialism. If they used Jewish space lasers to target Hezballah leaders from orbit, you'd accuse them of space terrorism. If they had Harry Potter wands and could Avada Kedavra Hezballah soldiers with zero collateral damage, you'd accuse them of black magic. You don't actually care how Israel responds to its enemies. You object to the fact that they exist.
Which brings me to my other question which I'm sure it just slipped your mind to answer, as you so often forget to answer inconvenient points when pressed:
With who? What settlement? What is your brilliant plan for peace in the Middle East? @functor's idea is at least rather straightforward about acknowledging that he doesn't think Israel should exist. But you speak of a "settlement" as if you think there is some meaningful and workable deal the Israelis could actually make that allows them to continue to exist but isn't "insolent" or doesn't cause you to shed crocodile tears over dead Arab children. I remain fascinated to hear what it is.
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This is Israel defending itself against a group which has, over the past 11 months, fired tens of thousands of explosive rockets (you know, explosive devices) at random into civilian areas (i.e. your definition of "terrorism"), forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Israelis from hundreds of square miles of territory.
We have ZERO evidence that the U.S. was involved in any way in this, and since I'm given to understand the U.S. generally sucks at the types of infiltrations that sabotaging all of Hezbollah's pagers would have required, I place a low likelihood on the U.S. being significantly involved.
Does it? I know nothing about this area, but I'd have assumed the US would have the resources to become top performers in any field related to national security.
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What Israeli tactics are not "terrorism" in your book?
The chances of the U.S. getting drawn in are very low now. Israel is winning militarily and Iran has been absolutely humbled. It's not that they don't want to do something, it's just that they can't because they are weak.
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