naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
They probably didn't know it was one. It was just there and easy to hit as a soft target.
The Hamas objective appears to have been to kill as many civilians as possible, to maximize the initial terror and perception of Israeli impotence. This, in turn, is likely for the strategic purpose of derailing Saudi-Israeli normalization, which has been in the works for some time. It may have also had a tertiary goal of trying to draw out an assessed increase of Palestinian support in various (particularly European) countries to demonstrate/lead to Israeli diplomatic isolation in the response.
For this purpose, a music festival meets the nominal purpose of the objective. It will probably turn out that the music festival was the single biggest source of deaths during the night, as you have a combination of large numbers of people, density, poorly defended, and isolated from response or natural strongpoints to rally a defense.
However, I doubt it was chosen per see. The time-day timing of the attack was almost certainly done for historical, not contemporary, purposes, while the rave was for a weekend because they were expecting to need time to sober up / get over the drug use before the weekend.
Further, the rave almost certainly wouldn't have been targetted deliberately had the multinational nature been known. The night without the raid was a disaster for Israel, but the prominent multinational victims- most notably the German girl- killed and worse internationalized the impact to a much broader audience in a way not-good for the likely intended 'we think this is bad, but you shouldn't retaliate too much' goal Hamas was likely going for.
I have been to similar raves in that area. It is a popular place for such events because lots of open space and the desert at night is beautiful. It is not like this was the event of the year in Israel or something. (I feel like the natural demographics of the Motte might not be super interested in such things but there are a lot of music festivals everywhere all the time if you are into that sort of thing and Israel has a massive techno scene)
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Notes -
They probably didn't know it was one. It was just there and easy to hit as a soft target.
The Hamas objective appears to have been to kill as many civilians as possible, to maximize the initial terror and perception of Israeli impotence. This, in turn, is likely for the strategic purpose of derailing Saudi-Israeli normalization, which has been in the works for some time. It may have also had a tertiary goal of trying to draw out an assessed increase of Palestinian support in various (particularly European) countries to demonstrate/lead to Israeli diplomatic isolation in the response.
For this purpose, a music festival meets the nominal purpose of the objective. It will probably turn out that the music festival was the single biggest source of deaths during the night, as you have a combination of large numbers of people, density, poorly defended, and isolated from response or natural strongpoints to rally a defense.
However, I doubt it was chosen per see. The time-day timing of the attack was almost certainly done for historical, not contemporary, purposes, while the rave was for a weekend because they were expecting to need time to sober up / get over the drug use before the weekend.
Further, the rave almost certainly wouldn't have been targetted deliberately had the multinational nature been known. The night without the raid was a disaster for Israel, but the prominent multinational victims- most notably the German girl- killed and worse internationalized the impact to a much broader audience in a way not-good for the likely intended 'we think this is bad, but you shouldn't retaliate too much' goal Hamas was likely going for.
I have been to similar raves in that area. It is a popular place for such events because lots of open space and the desert at night is beautiful. It is not like this was the event of the year in Israel or something. (I feel like the natural demographics of the Motte might not be super interested in such things but there are a lot of music festivals everywhere all the time if you are into that sort of thing and Israel has a massive techno scene)
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