naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed 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.
orthoxerox
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1yr ago
The hostages may be designed to coerce us to do something for them (free the prisoners) but the killings were not designed to coerce us to do anything in particular. They just really really want to murder all of us and got a running start to do as much as they could, until we stopped them.
Maybe it's more obvious when you live in Israel close to Hamas that an attack that is only about getting a higher kill count before you are inevitably killed is something someone would actually plan an execute, but I can't stop thinking that there were additional reasons behind it, just like 9/11 wasn't just about crashing as many airplanes as possible into as many Americans as possible.
I wrote about it elsewhere in the thread, but my working hypothesis is that it's about disrupting the growing learned helplessness of the Palestinians. "You can't do anything against Israel, it can and will bulldoze your olive or orange trees with impunity if you so much as look askance at its settlements, let alone try to fight against them. I guess the only option is to keep my head down and color inside the lines." And then Hamas goes and shows that Israel is not invincible at all, that you can literally bathe in the blood of the innocents if you try hard enough, that like that heron-strangling frog, you should never give up.
Combine it with the fact that it was planned and executed by a state-level entity (even if Gaza is not officially a state). It wasn't a terrorist attack. It was a massacre that started a war, a war we're fighting for our lives and intend to end with complete destruction of the state-level entity that tried to massacre us.
There's a comment by @Kinoite in this thread that explains my position better than I could myself. It's a war that also isn't one against a state that also isn't one, depending on what's more convenient. A special military operation, if you want.
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Notes -
Maybe it's more obvious when you live in Israel close to Hamas that an attack that is only about getting a higher kill count before you are inevitably killed is something someone would actually plan an execute, but I can't stop thinking that there were additional reasons behind it, just like 9/11 wasn't just about crashing as many airplanes as possible into as many Americans as possible.
I wrote about it elsewhere in the thread, but my working hypothesis is that it's about disrupting the growing learned helplessness of the Palestinians. "You can't do anything against Israel, it can and will bulldoze your olive or orange trees with impunity if you so much as look askance at its settlements, let alone try to fight against them. I guess the only option is to keep my head down and color inside the lines." And then Hamas goes and shows that Israel is not invincible at all, that you can literally bathe in the blood of the innocents if you try hard enough, that like that heron-strangling frog, you should never give up.
There's a comment by @Kinoite in this thread that explains my position better than I could myself. It's a war that also isn't one against a state that also isn't one, depending on what's more convenient. A special military operation, if you want.
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