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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   27781 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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There is a lot of talk right now about whether the Israel-Hamas ceasefire / hostage release deal is a good thing or not.

One thing I don't see brought up is that maybe the best thing for Israel to do would be to sign the deal, get the hostages back, and then immediately just ignore the deal and spend the next couple of years killing every Hamas member on the face of the planet.

I don't really see much downside. What would people do in the future as a result? Not trust Israel as a deal-maker? By and large, groups that would be in the position to sign a deal with Israel already either don't trust Israel or have no choice because Israel has overwhelming military force. Political entities generally do not sign peace agreements because they trust each other, they sign peace agreements because they view doing so as being better than the alternatives.

Another possible downside would be that in the future, groups would just kill Israelis instead of taking any hostages... but again, would this really be that bad for Israel? Would 10/7 have been much worse for Israel if Hamas had killed every single person that they ended up taking hostage immediately instead of taking them hostage? Well yes, for the few currently surviving hostages it would have been worse, but I figure that overall probably more Israeli lives would be saved by Israel making it clear that hostage taking is an ineffective approach than by Israel right now signing a deal that effectively signals that taking Israeli hostages has some degree of effectiveness.

One thing I don't see brought up is that maybe the best thing for Israel to do would be to sign the deal, get the hostages back, and then immediately just ignore the deal and spend the next couple of years killing every Hamas member on the face of the planet.

I mean, the current deal doesn't get all the hostages back. It merely sets up future negotiations over getting them returned. There's still several dozen (living and dead) remaining with Hamas for the near future, if not longer. Everyone calling this a "win for Israel" seems to be ignoring/accepting that.

Seems like they are more focused on carving off pieces of Lebanon and Syria now anyways so I don't see why they wouldn't take the deal to keep in Trump's good graces.

What are they carving off of Lebanon?

Yeah, I mean it’s a good deal for Israel and probably got delayed for political reasons.

Certainly a good thing for Israel. They would prefer an ethnic cleansing fully realized, but a sea of ruins, 100k-200k dead and maimed, Hamas and allies crippled, with US support unwavering, is still satisfying, I imagine. I wonder if they will make serious efforts to keep the conditions in the area abysmal, and try to push the locals to emigrate, or take a different approach.

We'll see. There has been a lot of talk over the last year and a quarter of ceasefire / hostage release deals, and while I wouldn't be surprised if Hamas were to time a deal with the US presidential transition, I also don't believe that the American politics angle is the most relevant to either Hamas or its key foreign enablers, some of whom have more FU-feelings for the incoming Trump administration than the outgoing Biden administration.

Is this a Nixon Goes To China moment? Hamas/Qatar thinks they could extract more from vulnerable Democrats, but Trump will order the Sixth to just slave all munitions to Israeli fire control and at least give some kill marks to the US. If Trump is known to be maximally unsympathetic, then rushing a sellable victory is more important than holding out for Harris breaking with the Israelis.

I doubt it, though that may just be me fixating on the metaphor.

Israel-Hamas ceasefire / hostage release deal is a good thing or not.

Yeah, it's a good deal.

War is heavily negative sum which is why both sides usually lose. Unless victory is assured, it almost always makes sense to stop fighting rather than to pursue maximal war aims.

This is a particularly bad war. Neither side is able to win. Israel can't defeat all its enemies because whenever enemy deaths get too high, Israel loses the support of Europe and the US. And of course the Iran/Palestine coalition can't win either due to ineptness.

So without a negotiated peace, the war would just go on and on forever with Israel killing lots of its enemies but never enough to achieve victory.

Is it perfect? Is it permanent? No, of course not. But it is net positive.

I think a permanent peace, even if it means being a temporary pariah state works better. The constant cycle of terrorism->Israel bombs the shit out of Gaza/West Bank -> temporary truce while militants rearm and reorganize -> terrorism -> repeat cycle serves no one. It’s not even really peace. Peace would mean that Israel could more or less stand down, and not need to put in all the apartheid regime stuff that it does because Palestinians are no longer a potential threat. Palestine could rebuild itself and either become part of a federated state within Israel or a small state perhaps in West Bank that would not be bombed every 5-10 years.

This is where Western interference is causing the problem. Because the Hamas/Fatah movements are never completely defeated, they simply call for ceasefire, and in some future time it starts again. Probably with better weapons and with the lessons learned from this round.

This is where Western interference is causing the problem.

The majority of people who matter in the west don't see this as a problem because they don't want the conflict to end with an Israeli victory. We saw this for instance when the pushes for a ceasefire in Lebanon started really picking up steam (driven by people like Macron) at the exact point it was clear how effectively the IDF was dismantling Hezbollah.

If they become a pariah state they lose their peace with Jordan and Egypt, so that doesn't help.

Jordan and Egypt at war with Israel is a massive loss for those 2 countries. The inertia of peace keeps them from rattling the sabres to sate domestic bloodlust. Being in a belligerent state makes obvious the precarity of their domestic military and economic capabilities, exposing the regime to internal threats that are much more willing and capable of stringing the existing leaders up from lampposts. Its better for Sisi and Hussein to shrug their shoulders and say 'the US is forcing this peace on us' than to actually mobilize and expose how weak they really are.

Once Israel is a 'pariah state', 'the US is forcing this peace on us' is no longer usable.

This is a particularly bad war. Neither side is able to win. Israel can't defeat all its enemies because whenever enemy deaths get too high, Israel loses the support of Europe and the US.

This situation will only get worse due to demographics. Makes it hard to see postponing the war as a good thing.

Not totally sure what you mean by “get worse” here; you mean both sides will only continue to experience more and more casualties in future, because of their above-replacement TFR resulting in net positive population growth?

American and Western public opinion of Israel will get worse due to a growing Muslim population and an anti-racist younger generation.

And the fact that Israel is costing a ton of money, genoiciding christians and filling Europe with migrants. We have 250 000 Syrians in Sweden and now the country has been taken over by jihadists with fancy foreign weapons who got air support.

Israel is not genociding anybody, but the behaviors which are worst are aimed at Muslims. Israel soft-supported the Maronites in the Lebanese civil war and Israeli Christians are a model minority.

Israel didn’t force Sweden to let in Syrians though. That’s a self own.

The just push migrants to Europe while helping them cross the Mediterranean while their NGOs are the biggest lobbying groups for mass immigration.

Doctors and engineers are a valued commodity, so the trick is to redefine every military aged male who declared their intent to be an aspiring rapper. From aspiring rapper to charity case thinking about turning his life around, this refugee will surely accrue positive value for Sweden in n=ERROR years.

Even the white and right leaning younger people in the west aren't as fond of Israel since they are either more isolationist or further right are more ethnonationalist and so oppose helping non-whites.

It was a bad war, but what other choice did Israel have? Not retaliating or trying to get the hostages would have been politically untenable. Immediately entering negotiations for the return of the hostages would have had the effect of legitimizing hostage taking as a means of diplomacy. the only real option was to invade and hope that Hamas kept the hostages alive for leverage and wait until Hamas was sufficiently weakened to be in a position to make a deal. And that's just a deal, not necessarily a good deal.

It was a bad war, but what other choice did Israel have?

Other choice? Accept the deal and do a prisoner exchange in return for the hostages. No war, no ICC prosecutions, no IDF members committing suicide due to the depravity of their actions, Israelis would be able to travel/holiday without worrying about getting convicted for crimes against humanity/genocide, no Hezbollah rocket campaign destroying their economy, no Houthi rocket campaign making their ports go bankrupt...

Israel refused to take the hostages back multiple times because they preferred to go in and wipe out Gaza in order to try and ethnically cleanse and then settle the territory. Itamar Ben Gvir said multiple times that he had made sure to sink any deal involving the hostages being returned, and there's a decent chance that Smotrich resigns from government because getting the hostages back isn't worth not being able to murder more Palestinians and steal their territory.

Enemy kills 1200 people and takes 200 hostages?

Just make peace with them in exchange for getting the 200 back.

It's the perfect solution!

This statement becomes a lot less pithy when you factor in the actual history of the region. I may as well talk about how Israel brutally and evilly attacked Palestine for no reason on October 8 - you can make either side look good by arbitrarily choosing the moment at which you start counting the trading of blows.

My headcanon about this is that there's a secret agreement between Bibi and the Don about how the Israelis can play nice until they get their people back (or whatever's left of them), and immediately following that they have America's blessing to glass gaza entirely.

Obviously not going to happen.

More likely they play nice until Hamas's sudden but inevitable betrayal.

You forgot "utterly unexpectable".

It's a Firefly reference.

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Israel was engaging in acts of war against Palestine. They bombed Gaza before october 7th, they had killed hundreds of Palestinians earlier in 2023, they were engaging in an illegal blockade and stealing land.

I again remind you that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2004, evicting Israeli settlers from the strip. Then the gazans elect Hamas and start bombing Israel, after which Israel blockades Gaza. A blockade is completely reasonable in response to such an act of war from the gazans.

Your beliefs seem to be:

  1. That Israel should have taken no action after October 7 accept to comply with Hamas's demands for the return of the hostages.

  2. That Israel wants to kill or remove all 2 million people from Gaza and settle the area themselves.

Would this be accurate?

My personal belief is that Israel should adopt a single-state solution with full democracy and franchise for everyone within the borders of Israel and Palestine. As for number 1... yes, I would prefer if they negotiated a return of the hostages. It might seem like a bit of a weak response if you hatched out of an egg on October 6th and have no prior knowledge of the region, but Israel has done far more and far worse to the Palestinians in the past. It would have been better to bury the hatchet and sue for peace on October 6th, but... well, 2 is accurate. I don't think there's any real arguments against this claim given that it is the official position of many members of the Israeli government. Not only do they want to do this, they have sunk multiple deals to return the hostages in order to keep the violence and ethnic cleansing going.

single-state solution with full democracy and franchise for everyone

I like this, but only as a Christian state. The best outcome would be for the conversion of all involved parties to Christianity and the removal of others from the holy lands.

The failure of all parties involved to acknowledge the 1099 borders, under which Jerusalem clearly belongs to the Holy See, has brought untold death and destruction on the region for centuries.

/s

Yes, I'd also be happy to see the region returned to Rome.

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And the Palestinians would promptly elect a government that at least attempts to do far worse to the Israelis than the Israelis are doing or have done to Palestinians.

In a federated system, I’m not sure how much it matters. If three states in the southwest USA voted for the Nazi party, the entire government doesn’t go along with it.

Honestly, I think something like the American Indian reservation system might work. A disarmed population with reasonable control of its own territory might be a decent option.

Maybe the ADL can explain to its home country that such conspiracies are racist and that social media companies should ban people who spread such hate.

I don't believe that would be the case if there was a legitimate, good-faith effort to bring the two populations together and live in peace. It'd be a complicated process that required a lot of time and effort, as well as participation from the international community - you would of course have to have protections against retributive genocide. It wouldn't be easy or free of complications, but I think it'd be much better than the current apartheid situation.

protections against retributive genocide

This is incongruent with the population of Gaza being given political power. Even if Israel for the last 50 years had engaged in solely defensive actions, accepted mass bombings as a thing that happens, and never did any counterstrikes, the Arab Palestinians would still try to genocide them.

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But why would Israel take that deal? You want one side (the stronger side) to just give the other side everything it wants, and in fact, to do so after an incident in which thousands of its citizens were killed, tortured, and raped in the most horrific ways possible.

This would be true Christlike turning of the other cheek from Israel.

But in the real world, that never works. To fail to defend yourself only invites contempt and more aggression, which applies as much in international politics as it does on the school play yard. If Israel did what you said, they would inevitably lose their country. And I would say they deserved it. Nothing is so contemptible as a person who doesn't defend their rights.

Turn the other cheek when there is a promise of heavenly rewards. In real life continued cooperation in the face of defection just makes you a chump ripe for the taking.

The Palestinians have played the game right. Continued defection when cooperation is externally imposed by greater powers, promising violence in arabic and pleading innocence in english, lying to internal stakeholders to keep momentum going.

There are plenty of well meaning Israelis who believed that defense is itself an aggressive proposition, that opening their homes and businesses to Gazans would foster cooperation and love. Those people set up open air festivals and farming villages next to Gaza to facilitate such endeavors. For their efforts they were slaughtered and raped on livestream, to the cheering delight of the very Gazans they tried to help.

The Palestinians have played the game right. Continued defection when cooperation is externally imposed by greater powers, promising violence in arabic and pleading innocence in english, lying to internal stakeholders to keep momentum going.

Let's grant their strategy has worked. What I'm then curious about is: why wouldn't it have been better to go even farther? Take whatever deal Clinton was trying to organize and then defect later from a stronger position?

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But why would Israel take that deal?

To save the lives of the hostages. They've given up and lost far more than they would have if they simply accepted the first deal that was offered to them - this is a worse outcome from any perspective other than "we need to wipe out the Palestinians for more lebensraum", and even that's debatable. Look at the big list of negative consequences from my earlier post and remember that none of this would happen if Israel just took the first deal.

But in the real world, that never works. To fail to defend yourself only invites contempt and more aggression, which applies as much in international politics as it does on the school play yard. If Israel did what you said, they would inevitably lose their country. And I would say they deserved it. Nothing is so contemptible as a person who doesn't defend their rights.

Actually, in the real world, when you ethnically cleanse undesirable populations for having the wrong religion you engender disgust and hatred in the majority of the rest of the world. Germany would have been better off if they simply gave the Jews the ability to vote and lived together with them - but they took your suggested course of action instead, and now Nazi Germany has been consigned to the dustbin of history. We're already seeing Israeli war criminals fleeing to Argentina to escape prosecution, but it is an open question as to whether or not history finishes the rhyme.

Actually, in the real world, when you ethnically cleanse undesirable populations for having the wrong religion you engender disgust and hatred in the majority of the rest of the world.

Ah yes, this is why Azerbaijan is having so much trouble selling their oil, considering their behavior towards Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh.

And why the world NGO-cracy condemned any attempts to help the Hutu genocidaire refugees in Congo, considering how they kept going after any Tutsis they could get their hands on.

It also explains why Turkey's continued repression of the Kurds got them kicked out of NATO, and why there's massive protests on every college campus about the genocidal atrocities being committed by the Sudanese Arabs towards the Christian and animist black Africans of South Sudan.

/sarcasm.

The Jews of Germany were not trying to kill every ethnic German they could get their hands on.

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It was a bad war, but what other choice did Israel have?

None. Revenge was the best option, IMO.

Sometimes the least bad outcome is the best one, and I think that's what Israel settled for. They have acted rationally throughout this conflict, IMO.

Agreed. I think this war becomes a lot easier to understand when you take the frame that there are no good guys, and this is just the latest iteration of same 3000+ year old conflict that has infested Judea since Old Testament times.

I don't see any peaceful resolution that will be permanent, and in the final calculus, I'd prefer the genocidal IDF to a genocidal Hamas.

The only difference is that the Jews finally managed to organize into a cohesive unit as opposed to a billion squabbling factions and their enemies have somehow gotten even stupider than they were in the past. The only smart thing Israels enemies did was cut loose the most worthless dead weight. Jordan and Egypt both refusing to return to the 1966 borders where West Bank and Gaza were not under Israeli occupation is the singular political masterstroke that has made all their military defeats worth it.

Indeed. Pan-Arabism was well towards dying at that point, but it's hard to find a better case of screwing over one's co-ethnic co-religionists for the sake of national interest.

I hope they do. The frustration of the whole thing is that because Hamas survived and is getting a deal, they’re going to use this plan again. It essentially worked. They’re getting their prisoners released, most of who, are members of Hamas, the Strip will be rebuilt, and they not only get to keep power, but because they have the sympathy of the Arab world, can rearm easily.

At the same time, Israel has essentially capitulated. They get nothing except the hostages. They are also much more hamstrung as to what kinds of action can be taken when Hamas rearms for another round. The propaganda networks are in place, and the Palestinians have learned to play PR rope a dope by making sure that anything Israel does is seen as genocide.

The propaganda networks are in place, and the Palestinians have learned to play PR rope a dope by making sure that anything Israel does is seen as genocide.

They don't actually need to "play PR rope a dope" - what Israel is doing is nakedly and obviously an attempt at ethnic cleansing and genocide, to the point that high-ranking officials admit it and are currently wailing and moaning that they won't be able to continue the genocide due to the hostages being returned. When Israel starts talking about concentration camps and preparing settlers for the parts of Gaza they flattened and bulldozed, people don't need Yahya Sinwar whispering in their ears that something is wrong in order for them to correctly and accurately label something an attempted genocide. The majority of the civilised world can just look at the footage and evidence of what's happening in Gaza and call it what it is, and they would still have been able to do so even if all the Palestinian journalists had been killed.

  • -10

I mean, during the US Civil War you had Union leaders talking about sending Northerners to take the land and houses of people in the South, but that didn't make it a campaign of genocide.

Yes, and that means they met one part of the definition - but not the rest. If there's historical evidence of an actual attempt to ethnically cleanse the south and replace them with yankees, it would be news to me.

I mean both sides were playing the media game. Palestine did it much better. There were numerous times when the media was shown images of “good Palestinians who just wanted to help”, except that they were often actually active members of Hamas. There were also faked reports where they’d claim freezing conditions when the actual weather in the region was in the 70s.

I mean both sides were playing the media game. Palestine did it much better.

To my knowledge, most of the "playing the media game" Palestinians did was sharing clips of what Israel had actually done to them on tiktok and other non-western social media. Have you seen the clip of the man carrying his child's headless body? Visuals like that are extremely confronting, even if the Israelis insist that the four year old was an enemy combatant. It wasn't some Palestinian marketing masterstroke that made Hind Rajab a household name, but the brutality and cruelty involved in her death and foiled rescue attempt.

I dont know if the Palestinians necessarily played the game better. I think it's more likely that they were simply working with a massive headstart, given the general anti-west/third-world ideology if western elites.

Palestinians played the game badly, but they are a useful player for antiwest types to cheerlead, and thats where the Palestinian momentum comes from. Jews have been a lousy cause to advance, because they are actually winning. They achieve on their own merit, so there is no glory to share. By contrast the Palestinians, should they win and kill every Jew, will OBVIOUSLY credit the brave warriors of the Columbia BDS executive committee for achieving such a great victory, letting these children bask in the glow of their participation trophy.

even if all the Palestinian journalists had been killed

It really was extraordinary just how many “Palestinian journalists” were killed. How many there were in general, even. There appeared to be more “Palestinian journalists” in Gaza than American journalists in NYC, which is quite impressive given that there are likely more in NYC than in any other Western city. Every third man in Gaza appears to have been a Palestinian journalist.

I mean the bigger deal is that Journalist is now a protected class on the same order of Doctors, Clergy and Messengers. It is definitely just a coincidence that the moral case for this class upgrade was promulgated by journalists themselves.

Its the same as Women and Children. Given the footage of fi refights, it seems that Gaza has speedrun progressivism by allowing gender conversions for its fighters, and even age conversion for its grown men to suddenly be 'children'.

Its the same as Women and Children. Given the footage of fi refights, it seems that Gaza has speedrun progressivism by allowing gender conversions for its fighters, and even age conversion for its grown men to suddenly be 'children'.

Hind Rajab's death was reported on CNN as "the death of a Palestinian woman" despite her being five years old. In the mainstream media at least the opposite of this was true, but I'm very willing to believe that it was the case on social media.

Hamas leaders have a lot of skin in the game. They will think twice before trying this again because at a minimum it will lead to their own deaths.

Israel has proven that they can get to anyone. They executed Hamas's top leader. They destroyed nearly the entire leadership of Hezbollah.

"But they're religious zealots who will gladly die for the cause!"

I don't think so. Would a religious zealot steal hundreds of millions of dollars from his people to live in luxury in Qatar like Khaled Mashal did? These are corrupt, evil people who don't want to get their crotch blown off by a cell phone.

Nothing can bring back the dead hostages. Nothing can undo the rapes and beatings they suffered at the hands of evil men. Sometimes, the only thing one can do is exact revenge. And Israel's revenge has been terrible. It's time now for peace.

These are corrupt, evil people who don't want to get their crotch blown off by a cell phone.

If this was the case the October 6th status quo was perfect for Hamas. And yet...

Yeah, eventually Gaza will forget what happened and the cycle will begin again.

But that's not a reason for a forever war.

The ideal solution in the eyes of the western left is the complete Israeli capitulation and return of the holyland to the muslims as part of the wider "decolonization" movement. The the muslims are themselves conquerers and colonists is conviently ignored.

The ideal solution in the eyes of the western right is the final destruction of Hamas, Hezbollah, Et Al. At the hands of the IDF through a combination of support for a long-term ally and a sentiment of "rabid dogs get put down".

Forever war is the compromise position.

Yeah, eventually Gaza will forget what happened and the cycle will begin again.

There's no reason to frame what happened as Gaza forgetting (as opposed to jihadis simply trying again), except that it undermines your point. People who continually talk about overturning or avenging a crime done against them almost a hundred years ago are not suffering some sort of cyclical memory wipe.

There's strong evidence that both Jews and Palestinians can hold on to a grudge and ruminate on past injustices. And understand basic cause and effect.

Please be clear about what you are advocating for.

What would you do if you were Israel right now?

As a civilian or soldier I'd want my people back so we can go lick our wounds and hope the next cycle is after I'm dead or past conscription age. As a leader...I don't know. Stay, kill more, try to suffocate Hamas as much as possible.

People who continually talk about overturning or avenging a crime done against them almost a hundred years ago are not suffering some sort of cyclical memory wipe.

What they are forgetting is not the offense, but how badly they got whipped last time they tried "avenging" it.

The Looney Tunes theory of the Israel-Palestine conflict?

Bibi needed an excuse to do a deal (which the IDF and Mossad and wider Israeli secular-ish establishment, including the banks and anyone remotely interested in the Israeli economy sorely wanted) over the heads of the Kahanists like Ben-Gvir and other extremist religious Zionists.

Witkoff (by all accounts a relatively zionist person himself) being “tough” provides Bibi with the excuse needed to throw up his hands and say “look, we have to do it, we don’t have a choice, it’s going to happen” and accept the deal that most of the Israeli establishment wanted anyway. It had to be Trump’s man because if it was Biden’s guy, the Kahanists would demand to wait until Trump’s guy was in in the hope that he would offer a better deal.

This concisely explains the situation. In the end this is the best deal, the IDF didn’t want to spend years mired in Gaza which would be terrible for morale, Hamas was always going to reform and - with Hezbollah severely weakened, a much stronger border and Iranian foreign policy in shambles - Hamas is less of a risk now anyway. Its full destruction was impossible without permanently destroying the ongoing lucrative reconciliation process with the Gulf Arabs, which can now slowly resume.

I don't really see why the IDF spending years in Gaza would be bad for morale. After 10/7, it's hard for me to imagine any Israeli soldier not being happy to spend a few months patrolling an occupied Gaza, especially given that now that Hamas' military strength is mostly broken, an Israeli soldier would be unlikely to die over there. But then, I'm neither an Israeli nor a soldier. I guess in practice, it would not be that great. For one thing, it probably does sap morale for most non-insane people to patrol an occupied population.

I'm surprised that the IDF and Mossad would want a peace deal. My mental model of both those groups is that they are controlled by hard-liners who want to destroy their opponents. But I don't know much about the inner politics of Israel and I'm pretty sure that you know much more about it than I do.

The situation with the Gulf states is one that I probably didn't spend too much time thinking about when I made my original post. I did think of them, but my initial thought was that pretty much no matter what Israel did short of an actual genocide, they would figure out how to spin it to their populations as being close enough to a draw that they would not face any major unrest, and even if they did face unrest as the result of such an outcome, they would not be seriously threatened. But when I think over it again, I can see how maybe an Israel that does a deal with Hamas that leaves Hamas effectively destroyed for the near future is better for the region's stability than Israel going all-out to destroy its enemies. After all, Israel has in the last year shown that it is not a country that you want to fuck with if you have the typical second/third world minor country type of corrupt, ineffective, and technologically/organizationally relatively primitive military.

After all, Israel has in the last year shown that it is not a country that you want to fuck with if you have the typical second/third world minor country type of corrupt, ineffective, and technologically/organizationally relatively primitive military.

I wish this were true. Military leaders may recognize that their corrupt inept armies cannot take on Israel at all, but there are plenty of stupid jihadis on their private telegrams who celebrate having defeated Israel comprehensively in every engagement. In these telegrams and social media the Israelis have retreated in shame from every battle, having lost thousands of soldiers who spontaneously disapparate to spare the jews the shame of having dead soldiers paraded before the victorious Palestinians. Palestinians keep crowing about their indomitable will and ingenuity coming up with novel solutions to defeat the Israelis and western sympathists are eager to signal boost the victories of the underdog because victory=moral support. In this information environment, the Palestinians do not think they have lost anything. So long as a single Palestinian is alive, the Jew is defeated, and the Jew being defeated means the Palestinians have won every battle. The logical order does not follow, but Palestinians and their supporters are uninterested in using logic, much less understanding it.

In these telegrams and social media the Israelis have retreated in shame from every battle, having lost thousands of soldiers who spontaneously disapparate to spare the jews the shame of having dead soldiers paraded before the victorious Palestinians.

I believe this is the same phenomena playing out on Wikipedia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_engagements_during_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war

Oh, it's been changed since I last saw it. It previously had a result column that listed Hamas as the victor to most engagements. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_military_engagements_during_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war&oldid=1265753911

Wikipedia is particularly captured. Source pollution and semantic abuse have allowed pro-Palestinians to cite dubious sources as fact instead of opinion. The page you cite already stares Oct 7 is a tactical Hamas victory, and on its Oct & attack page it cites a Haaretz article for the IDF being responsible for killing its own people oer the Hannibal Doctrine, conveniently locking the Haaretz article behind a paywall.

There is endless denial by Palestinian supporters that there was any crime committed by Hamas, and that if Hamas did do it then that it was glorious and the Jews deserved it anyways. Bafflingly the most prominent apologists are privileged western (including Israeli* like Haaretz journalists who write for leftist publications such as Vox or Jacobin) activists who do all the intellectual laundering to sanewash Palestinian objectives. A cursory glance of what the Palestinians themselves say they want - mass extermination of Israelis as per the Hamas charter, repeats of Oct 7 as often as possible - is ignored in favor of paeans to theoretical harmony that would exist the moment Israel lays down its arms. This utopianism flies in the face of reality for a theoretical unified Palestinian state, for the Palestinians have been engaged in Fatah-Hamas civil wars since... pretty much the beginning of the PLO.

A charitable interpretation is that underdog support blinds pro-Palestinians to the genocidal intent stated by the Palestinians themselves, using evolving language of 'trauma' to whitewash such language as temporary maledictions brought about by (maximally traumatizing) ongoing Israeli actions. Such an interpretation required willful self deception regarding what the Palestinians themselves openly celebrate and have done to great glee.

I'm surprised that the IDF and Mossad would want a peace deal. My mental model of both those groups is that they are controlled by hard-liners who want to destroy their opponents

IIRC the IDF is one of the few militaries that sits(very slightly) to the left of Israeli society as a whole, because everyone serves except the most hardline conservatives.

Wouldn’t that get balanced by the lack of conscription for Israeli Arabs?

Israel’s economy and security situation can’t afford a permanent occupation of Gaza. Israel would need to keep 250,000 reservists mobilized, a significant proportion of their reserve force. Those guys all have day jobs, participating in the economy. The occupation force would be taking a small amount of casualties, every month, for as long as it was there. And it would leave the IDF badly undermanned in the event of any of the many, many other nightmare scenarios, like a full uprising in the West Bank, a major flareup by Hezbollah in Lebanon, an invasion by a neighbor, or a major civil conflict.

Hamas' military strength is mostly broken, an Israeli soldier would be unlikely to die over there. But then, I'm neither an Israeli nor a soldier.

There are enough handgrenades left and little kids to carry them to the soldiers.

I suspect you’re wildly underestimating how much it sucks to spend months in a combat zone, regardless of how often someone you know dies.

Most of those arguments applied equally well in spring 2003. 15 years later, people were a lot less enthusiastic.

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