naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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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.
To some extent I feel this is the only really interesting bit of this episode. And it does feel to me like there is another shoe to drop in the plan.
Butcher civilians and especially a bunch of good looking young females = Israel goes Old Testament on Gaza = ?????
The first Israel response seems an obvious second step in this event.
If Hamas had no foreign help then one could argue they hoped that Hezbolla and Iran would all jump into the fight. Hezbolla seems reluctant since who wants to jump into Old Testament wrath and Iran leader has strongly denied any involvement.
This play is lacking Act 3. Which would make sense if Hamas was hoping for Act 3 but didn’t plan with outside parties. The other alternative would be that Israel hasn’t done something too far to bring in Act 3 Casus Belli yet.
So far the only Act 3 has been some dumb Harvard students. Which basically helps Israel by outing some people that would support Palestine for punishment in the west (no jobs for those Harvard kids). It likely increased Trumps likelihood of being elected perhaps even pulling in some Jewish votes since he’s solid Israel.
I’ve upgraded this attack to truly a September 11 type event. Which helps Israel because it means they get to take the gloves off for the Old Testament Retribution. US had about 6-12 months of do wtf you want to global support.
Imagine we were in a small French town in the 700s that just suffered from a viking attack. Women and girls raped, the priest has been beheaded and the church looted, etc, etc. Imagine someone surveying the carnage and asking "But what larger strategic goal does this serve for the northmen?"
This is the goal. This is the point. People try too hard to imagine large strategies and 3D chess.
I agree it's not complicated, but I don't believe the Viking analogy holds.
The Vikings were there for loot. Simple as. They might have enjoyed killing monks and raping nuns, but that's not what got them to sail across the North Sea in a tiny boat.
The Palestinians aren't looting Israel. The foot soldiers are there out of pure hate. And the leaders are playing from the standard terrorist playbook.
Commit atrocity
Provoke larger atrocity from enemies
Win powerful allies to defeat enemy
This is their strategy. Their strategy sucks. It's not going to work. Peaceful mass resistance would work a lot better. Imagine unarmed Palestinians being shot as they climb the border wall to try to "immigrate to a better life in Israel". That's a message that would play well in the current zeitgeist.
In a world where a lot of financial and material support for the vilings relies on a large portion of the world not thinking they're the baddies, taking into account the larger strategic goal (or blunder) does in fact make sense.
Act 3 of the Hamas' ideal outcome involves international condemnation of Israeli human rights violations, televised slaughter of Arabs, and the hardliners within Saudi Arabia vetoing a normalizing of Israeli-Saudi relations. The beginnings of this were already visible in the Asian news tonight: the official Korean national broadcaster (KBS) had a segment focused on the blockade of humanitarian resources (with mention that fuel cuts impact hospitals) which segued into a report that Israel has dropped white phosphorous bombs. (The NYT reported one day ago that "the Israeli army denied the use of white phosphorus, saying soldiers had deployed only illumination flares." Footage was from broad daylight, so either the footage is old/repurposed, the denial is out of date, someone is lying and it was white phosphorous, or it was actually anti-SAM flares.)
A lot of terrorism has no deep political motive beyond bloodlust. Yes you can argue that Islamist attacks on civilians in the West had the motive of killing enough people that the US pulled out of the Middle East, but there’s a lot of ‘Step 2: ???’ involved with this even if you accept the premise that attacking a people doesn’t create a lust for vengeance. Much of it just desire to hurt another people as much as you think yours have been hurt.
I've read a fair amount about the IRA's guerrilla war / terrorism campaign. One of the things I noted is that quite a lot of the violence they carried out was not executed with a great deal of care - things like, making sure you're killing the right person, making sure there aren't any bystanders who you would also have to kill in addition to the planned target, making sure it's done at a time and place without too much witnesses or evidence, etc. There was only a relatively small number of hardcore members who were capable of carrying out savage violence with careful planning. I concluded from this that it's genuinely hard to find people who are both prepared to carry out gruesome acts against innocent-seeming targets and also sane and rational enough to be intelligent and careful about it.
9/11 looks slightly more defensible in historical context I think. At the time America pulled out of Somalia over comparatively minor losses, and refused to engage with the Rwandan genocide that they probably could have stopped relatively easily.
I'm honestly not even sure if Osama's plan - as opposed to post-hoc cope - was the conflict that happened. Yes, America bled and arguably has not recovered from the loss of trust in institutions and the cost but it wasn't bleeding out from the conflict. Hindsight makes it clear that the US could absorb such a loss.
He may have expected either to shock and awe the US or some sort of invasion followed by a general uprising of Muslims* or the US giving up relatively quickly. After all, it has the entire Western hemisphere to itself. Just how many Americans are willing to die in the Middle East?
This? I dunno. America stayed in the ME for a generation, and Israel has nowhere to go and is even more determined. Hamas knows this better than anyone else.
Much of it just desire to hurt another people as much as you think yours have been hurt.
Islam is a triumphalist religion. Muslims aren't supposed to be in this position. If they are, they always have the Khalid bin al-Walid out: love death more than the infidel loves life. You fight and win, or you die and "win". Either way you don't have to sit around wondering how you went from ruling the world to...this.
* Maybe some weird vanguard party logic of "lighting the spark". Not the first time it's failed.
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Notes -
To some extent I feel this is the only really interesting bit of this episode. And it does feel to me like there is another shoe to drop in the plan.
Butcher civilians and especially a bunch of good looking young females = Israel goes Old Testament on Gaza = ?????
The first Israel response seems an obvious second step in this event.
If Hamas had no foreign help then one could argue they hoped that Hezbolla and Iran would all jump into the fight. Hezbolla seems reluctant since who wants to jump into Old Testament wrath and Iran leader has strongly denied any involvement.
This play is lacking Act 3. Which would make sense if Hamas was hoping for Act 3 but didn’t plan with outside parties. The other alternative would be that Israel hasn’t done something too far to bring in Act 3 Casus Belli yet.
So far the only Act 3 has been some dumb Harvard students. Which basically helps Israel by outing some people that would support Palestine for punishment in the west (no jobs for those Harvard kids). It likely increased Trumps likelihood of being elected perhaps even pulling in some Jewish votes since he’s solid Israel.
I’ve upgraded this attack to truly a September 11 type event. Which helps Israel because it means they get to take the gloves off for the Old Testament Retribution. US had about 6-12 months of do wtf you want to global support.
Imagine we were in a small French town in the 700s that just suffered from a viking attack. Women and girls raped, the priest has been beheaded and the church looted, etc, etc. Imagine someone surveying the carnage and asking "But what larger strategic goal does this serve for the northmen?"
This is the goal. This is the point. People try too hard to imagine large strategies and 3D chess.
I agree it's not complicated, but I don't believe the Viking analogy holds.
The Vikings were there for loot. Simple as. They might have enjoyed killing monks and raping nuns, but that's not what got them to sail across the North Sea in a tiny boat.
The Palestinians aren't looting Israel. The foot soldiers are there out of pure hate. And the leaders are playing from the standard terrorist playbook.
This is their strategy. Their strategy sucks. It's not going to work. Peaceful mass resistance would work a lot better. Imagine unarmed Palestinians being shot as they climb the border wall to try to "immigrate to a better life in Israel". That's a message that would play well in the current zeitgeist.
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In a world where a lot of financial and material support for the vilings relies on a large portion of the world not thinking they're the baddies, taking into account the larger strategic goal (or blunder) does in fact make sense.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Act 3 of the Hamas' ideal outcome involves international condemnation of Israeli human rights violations, televised slaughter of Arabs, and the hardliners within Saudi Arabia vetoing a normalizing of Israeli-Saudi relations. The beginnings of this were already visible in the Asian news tonight: the official Korean national broadcaster (KBS) had a segment focused on the blockade of humanitarian resources (with mention that fuel cuts impact hospitals) which segued into a report that Israel has dropped white phosphorous bombs. (The NYT reported one day ago that "the Israeli army denied the use of white phosphorus, saying soldiers had deployed only illumination flares." Footage was from broad daylight, so either the footage is old/repurposed, the denial is out of date, someone is lying and it was white phosphorous, or it was actually anti-SAM flares.)
More options
Context Copy link
A lot of terrorism has no deep political motive beyond bloodlust. Yes you can argue that Islamist attacks on civilians in the West had the motive of killing enough people that the US pulled out of the Middle East, but there’s a lot of ‘Step 2: ???’ involved with this even if you accept the premise that attacking a people doesn’t create a lust for vengeance. Much of it just desire to hurt another people as much as you think yours have been hurt.
I've read a fair amount about the IRA's guerrilla war / terrorism campaign. One of the things I noted is that quite a lot of the violence they carried out was not executed with a great deal of care - things like, making sure you're killing the right person, making sure there aren't any bystanders who you would also have to kill in addition to the planned target, making sure it's done at a time and place without too much witnesses or evidence, etc. There was only a relatively small number of hardcore members who were capable of carrying out savage violence with careful planning. I concluded from this that it's genuinely hard to find people who are both prepared to carry out gruesome acts against innocent-seeming targets and also sane and rational enough to be intelligent and careful about it.
More options
Context Copy link
9/11 looks slightly more defensible in historical context I think. At the time America pulled out of Somalia over comparatively minor losses, and refused to engage with the Rwandan genocide that they probably could have stopped relatively easily.
I'm honestly not even sure if Osama's plan - as opposed to post-hoc cope - was the conflict that happened. Yes, America bled and arguably has not recovered from the loss of trust in institutions and the cost but it wasn't bleeding out from the conflict. Hindsight makes it clear that the US could absorb such a loss.
He may have expected either to shock and awe the US or some sort of invasion followed by a general uprising of Muslims* or the US giving up relatively quickly. After all, it has the entire Western hemisphere to itself. Just how many Americans are willing to die in the Middle East?
This? I dunno. America stayed in the ME for a generation, and Israel has nowhere to go and is even more determined. Hamas knows this better than anyone else.
Islam is a triumphalist religion. Muslims aren't supposed to be in this position. If they are, they always have the Khalid bin al-Walid out: love death more than the infidel loves life. You fight and win, or you die and "win". Either way you don't have to sit around wondering how you went from ruling the world to...this.
* Maybe some weird vanguard party logic of "lighting the spark". Not the first time it's failed.
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