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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29411 thread views

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.

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Again, this is a stupid question.

If you were to fire your gun blindly into a crowd and kill someone, do you believe that claiming that you never intended to shoot that person in particular would be a valid defense against the subsequent criminal charges?

  • -10

Please see my edits. This is a factual question, not a moral one.

While moral culpability is certainly part of the question (I think the answer is easy enough to be uninteresting: you are right), my question is literally which parts were in the plan?

Which parts they implicitly expected would happen, vs which parts were explicitly in the plan, vs what instructions were propagated to the men, vs what actually happened.

This is a factual question

I'm curious, because your initial post was just a link to a Tweet with one statement that basically paraphrased the Tweet without adding context, what is the significance of these factual questions in this context? For instance, "How many of the attackers wore matched socks, instead of mismatched?" is also a factual question with a factual answer that has some objectively true answer, but knowing this positive integer figure doesn't seem particularly important or even meaningful in this context. Your factual questions seem only marginally more relevant to the situation than my own made-up theoretical one. But as someone who's only been tangentially keeping track of this situation (I must admit that I grew bored of the whole Israel-Palestine saga two decades ago), I could be missing some context that illuminates the importance of the questions you asked.

It is meaningful to understand what plans the Hamas leadership has. If they intentionally directed the civilian atrocities, that means something different in terms of how they plan for the situation to play out compared to mere wanton disregard for life.

It is meaningful to understand what plans the Hamas leadership has.

I'm not convinced it is. As I said below, any model of Hamas' behavior must start from the assumption that "Hamas will behave in the manner that Hamas has been observed to behave" if it wants to make any claim to accuracy.

If they intentionally directed the civilian atrocities, that means something different in terms of how they plan for the situation to play out compared to mere wanton disregard for life.

I get that this is the contention, but the part I don't get is, what is the actual meaningful difference there?

Im not discussing morality, I'm discussing facts and hypotheticals. If you were to fire your gun into a crowd, what would you expect to happen?

  • -13

Jesus christ lol. Are you being deliberately obtuse? I am asking "was the guy aiming for the specific person he hit, or just firing wildly into the crowd", "did he leave the house in the morning intending to shoot up that mall or did he see it on the way", "was he trying to start a race war, or to impress Jodi Foster". Not as a leading question but because I want to know what literally happened.

Give up. Most human beings are apparently incapable of distinguishing between an empirical issue and a normative issue, and most people who post here are very much not an exception, in my experience.

Most human beings are apparently incapable of distinguishing between an empirical issue and a normative issue, and most people who post here are very much not an exception, in my experience.

You are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. Sweeping, unflattering claims about "people who post here" are toxic to the community, for a variety of reasons; often they're wrong, often they're insulting, often they're subtly consensus-building. If you want to engage in some high-effort demographic-checking, have at it, but low-effort sneers do not meet that threshold.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

No, I'm trying to figure out what you're actually asking.

Are you trying to smuggle the idea that there are "legitimate reasons" to shoot up a mall in under the radar?

  • -13

I read the question as "Did hamas wanted the gang rapes and decapitated babies or they didn't bother putting leash on their fighters because they didn't think they would survive long enough"

Terror like everything else is a tool. That level and kind of terror will drive whole of Israel howling for blood.

The question whether it planned or unplanned is important. At least from the Know your enemy. In the first case there may be a way of achieving Israel goals short of the complete eradication of Hamas once the punishment is over (everyone in the command chain, booths on the ground foreign consultants, political machune that was involved in this must die no questions about that) . In the other case Hamas must go and Israel must pay with enough of it's blood to achieve it.

Lives of IDF members also matter. With a huge discount (from Israel pov) so does the gaza women and children's. And depending on the expected casualties it is important to know where you can stop.

Maybe this is my degenerate honor culture upbringing talking but i don't think the distinction matters all that much. Any mental model of Hamas' behavior must start from the assumption that they will if it is to have any claim to accuracy.

I think @bro is asking which tactical objectives were pre-planned and which were simply targets of opportunity. For example, did Hamas decide to attack the nightclub months ago or did they only learn about it after the breach and thought "YOLO LET'S GO"?

I find that to be a slightly more sensible question but at the same time kind of irrelevant. What military objective is served by targeting music festivals, agricultural schools, and day-care centers (as opposed to say Police stations, IDF Barracks, and Israeli government buildings) other than to terrorize the populace?

...and if we concede that Hamas' primary objective was to sow terror, it seems kind of dumb to quibble over the precise quantity of terror intended.

You're missing the point. It isn't about the "intended quantity", it's the quantity of intent. Premeditated murder is different than murder without premeditation, even if the same body is just as dead.

If the extent of the plan is to knock down the fences and wreak havoc, then maybe they're simple barbarians getting high on "allahu akbar". If the plan was explicitly to navigate to the children's hospital to behead babies, then they're more cold and calculating. The former may have goals which would have been better served by attacking government buildings, or no real coherent goals at all. If the level of sophistication is no more than a pack of wild dogs, then it makes sense to respond as one might to a pack of wild dogs.

In contrast, the latter at least thinks that the optics of beheading children is more important than whatever you think they could do with government buildings. If this is the case, they look to have thought this through and have likely anticipated what your knee jerk response will be. And if your enemy is that deliberate and intentional about provoking you, then it might serve your interests to think a bit harder and make sure you're a step ahead not a step behind.

The type of evil you're fighting matters. If you can't distinguish between thoughtful and thoughtless evil, then you're the one that ends up the predictable animal when faced with the former.

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