As of the declaration of the humanitarian cease-fire last Friday, several things about the current conflict are clear, and none of them are to Israel’s benefit. Carpet bombing north Gaza with 2,000-pound bombs that destroy an entire block is creating a situation that looks more and more to the rest of the world like the Waffen SS destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. With the IDF playing the role of the Waffen SS.
I thought of Winston Churchill. He was right about One Big Thing, and he gave his all. But when the war ended, the British voted him out. Churchill didn't want a second front, but that wasn't because he wanted the war to continue.
Netanyahu may or may not be right about some things. But I cannot escape the thought that he knows that if and when this war ends, he's finished. And all he cares about is being prime minister. So ....
I kinda think that there's some level on which he knows he's finished, no matter what happens. it reminds me of that thing that happens when you stub your toe and it doesn't hurt yet but you have all this suddenly wonderfully expanded sense of time during which all you can think about is how bad the pain's gonna be when your brain finally works it all out...it's Bibi, and he just wants to expand that time a little bit longer...
and yeah, I'm willing to bet that when he thinks about expanding the time, he's also hoping for an intervention elsewhere...as long as TFF thinks Bibi will stay HIS useful idiot.
The further tragedy of the Israeli approach is that not only aren’t they finding command centers, et al., they can kill every Hamas member who participated in the October event and still not have Hamas’s head. The real leaders are in Qatar, while money and weapons flow from Iran, Russia, and other states. The only way they could really prevail is to win the hearts and minds of the Palestinians, difficult at best, and highly unlikely at this point.
Unfortunately, they blew that chance long ago, thus precipitating the Hamas attack to keep the issue of the Palestinians in the minds of all "Normalizing" Israeli/ Arab relations.
"Carpet Bombing" is not about bombing a target -- this brutal air war is about pulverizing a grid. Who is going to remove the rubble, the debris in the "Kill Zones" and do the necessary Post Mortems?
I went back and re-read Jimmy Carter's books about peace in the Middle East, and even back at the time he was writing his books the Israeli settlers were already violating the Camp David Accords. The rise of the Haradim Jews (ultra-fundamentalist) and their ongoing battles with Palestinians in the West Bank, plus what Hamas and Hezbollah have been doing, truly show what a scourge religious fundamentalism is, regardless of the faith. Conditioning aid to Israel is long, long overdue, and I'm glad to see leadership on this issue.
Aid needs to be conditioned to BOTH sides, not just Israel. For too long fools like the UN, UNRWA, various NGOs and Arab countries have wittingly or unwittingly done the bidding of both the radicals and the Iranians.
Thank you. Clearly written. Some help please, though I know you’re not my Google. Tell me more about the West Bank interlopers. I wasn’t aware of their radical views. Second, how long will Netanyahu jettison humanity to stay out of jail? Sounds fucking familiar.
The Settler movement has been heavily influenced by the radical Kach Party since the mid-1970s. This group is primarily composed of American fundamentalist followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was an early advocate of ethnically cleansing the West Bank and forcing Palestinians into Jordan; here in the United States they were the Jewish Defense League
for some reason, I think I'm mixing things up but I'm recalling that Kahane (whose tragic flaw was not being murdered MUCH sooner) was assassinated by one of his followers who was even more "radical" than he was. am I misremembering?
I tried so hard to put him out of my memory that I succeeded. I think that was it. Wikipedia says he was assassinated by an Egyptian-born US citizen, El Sayyid Nosair. He was initially charged and acquitted of the murder. Nosair was later convicted of the murder in U.S. District Court for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Prosecutors were able to try Nosair again for the murder because the federal indictment included the killing as part of the alleged terrorist conspiracy. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and later made a confession to federal agents.
thanks, Tom. I might have been mistaking him for Rabin, who actually WAS killed by a Jewish True Believer, which can be as unpleasant a thing as you'll find anywhere...
Perfectly reasoned and expressed—I couldn’t agree more. The Israeli right wingers are so full of rage they can’t think straight, and Hamas has been leading them around by the nose—a perfectly orchestrated terrorist action.
I agree with C. Towers here. The fog of this war obscures its causes and actual instigators with each passing day. But I think it is Putin who's derived the greatest benefit from it. He couldn't be more happy that support for Ukraine in the US is flagging, that his unity with Iran and its supply of drones is solidifying, that his influence in the ME is growing, that villain status has shifted to Netanyahu and Hamas, etc. I will not be surprised to see him leap in front of a peace parade and offer to broker a two-state agreement, as absurd as that sounds.
the first time I saw Netanyahu, I had the same sinking feeling in my gut I got the first time I saw Rudy. "high school bully," was my immediate, extremely visceral response.
he's been a terrible, terrible "leader," and entirely too dependent on the US providing him with whatever he's thought he needed.
the international response to these provisional cease-fires is heartening and if Bibi thinks he's gonna be able to finesse the current vibe, I sure hope he's wrong. even assuming Bibi might at one time have been an appropriate PM (which I am not prepared to grant), his sell-by date was a long time ago.
can be really be calculating that he's still supposed to "destroy Hamas?" what the fuck does that even MEAN at this point?
if there ever was an historical phenomenon that mirrored a piece of Greek mythology it's gotta be the Hydra (chop off one head, nine grow in its place) and Palestinian "leadership."
one little piece of history that needs to be more front-and-center is Bibi's deep involvement in keeping Hamas going, mostly because he thought he knew they were the cynical scumbags he could work with.
if the joke was just on him, no sweat. but there are all these dead people and obviously, it's very bad for everybody.
the one thing that mystifies me: if the people who are supposedly souring on Biden are doing so because of his pro-Israeli stance, I assume that nobody's stupid enough to worry that they're gonna turn into TFF's minions. this is what I assume, but who the fuck knows how much they don't know?
"As of the declaration of the humanitarian cease-fire last Friday, several things about the current conflict are clear, and none of them are to Israel’s benefit. Carpet bombing north Gaza with 2,000-pound bombs that destroy an entire block is creating a situation that looks more and more to the rest of the world like the Waffen SS destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. With the IDF playing the role of the Waffen SS. Against 1,200 Israelis and others who were killed on October 7 by Hamas, the death toll in Gaza now approaches 16,000 according to informed estimates."
This is certainly gone way beyond a proportional response. Time for Netanyahu to go.
The level of losses in civilian life and the David and Goliath feelings that have generated protest and abhorrence of this war have been effective. Hamas is not a nation or government. It is like ISIS. It has initiated a war, but not with expectation to win or take down Goliath and release the victims, in my opinion. I fear, that like so many things, it seems, Hamas is about performance, disruption, influencing, and creation of chaos in the ordering of power and nations. Yes, they are Palestinians and share the issues facing other Palestinians or suppressed people or minorities held in captivity. But, I think, their objective is performance on behalf of creating not governance but power outside the order of nations from among the rabble and impoverished and disaffected. A new strategy, not unlike street gangs and warlords across the world. They will not create anything, whether in the arts or science or medicine or governance because, like other borderless examples, the numbers, the gain, the brilliance is in how their acts play off the fears and paranoia of the supposed victims, nations or an identifiable people, Jews in this case and their supporters, the U.S., democratic countries, peoples with those who feel the pain of the child and are steeped in the history of the Middle-east and Europe in the 20th century. In the short term, it has achieved a disproportionate, not measured response from Israel and Israel's friends, revenge without compassion for those trapped on the field of retribution. I sense a stain growing where out of the blood of children and non-combatants a loss of empathy may form in which the world becomes weary in looking out for the persecuted, whether Jew or Palestinian or Ukrainian or Afhghanstanie or oppressed and forgotten people, perchance in our own country gets lost. Let the mob perform and we cheer the excitement, the battle of strong and weak, while we munch on pretzels and our beer, bereft of the facts or consequences for our way of of life and values once fought for. This war just might be one war too many, for some of us, as war seems to be the script endlessly rewritten to elongate a popular dystopian series only satisfying and followed by cliff-hangers and plot twists.
Sensible essay. Especially the observation that a ceasefire works to the long term detriment of the two forces that prolong the suffering, and that’s the key to resolution.
Curious, TC, but may we ask you to draw upon your military historian’s framework to assess this bombing campaign? Considering the tunnels are the key to Hamas’ tactical strength, and that the Israelis aren’t dropping anything like a GBU-43/B MOAB, are the Israelis just delaying an inevitable small unit tunnel crawl?
It depends on how those tunnels are built. They could be collapsing under fallen buildings. But the IDF has stated they don't want to go into the tunnels because there is too much chance of an ambush and soldiers taken captive - remember it took 4 years to get the last Israeli soldier Hamas captured returned.
I hope its not impossible because then any ceasefire will be just another pause in the madness and the aid will continue to be stolen while the people continue to suffer.
It is necessary to hold possibly contradictory thoughts at the same time to have any hope of understanding what is going on.
Example: clearly there are many people dying in Gaza, and even one is too many; also, the "Health Ministry" that provides Gaza casualty estimates is an arm of Hamas, who have a propaganda interest in high numbers.
Example: Netanyahu failed on many dimensions - corrupt, authoritarian, etc etc; and most of the country wants him gone; *and* the only way Israel has a chance of continuing to exist is if Hamas, which is openly dedicated to the brutal murder of all Jews and getting better at it, is destroyed.
Example: tragedy in Gaza (see example one) *and* the hostages of all ages (babies to eighties) must be returned, why is there not an international outcry insisting on letting the Red Cross deliver medecine to hostages and check on them? *and* the deliberately brutal rapes and murders of more than 1200 civilians in Israel by Hamas on October 7 were massive war crimes on behalf of genocide.
The data the Health Ministry was publishing before the big assault was proven so accurate that President Biden apologized for publicly doubting it. At the present time, there's no one counting the dead because there's no one to pull them out of the ruins.
Exactly how were Hamas claims proven accurate? Pressuring a public figure into an apology proves nothing: it has been done plenty of times without accuracy. Hamas rules Gaza with brutality, threats, thuggery and fear. That rather decreases the number of people who would do anything but agree with them. Also, like the stopped clock, being right occasionally would hardly be proof of general reliability.
The process has not been detailed, but it seems to me that the president would not publicly change his position without an evidence-backed strong argument to do so.
You can as easily say he would not have taken whatever position in the first place without strong evidence. The man is human, he makes mistakes, he may have said something without strong enough evidence and then backed down. That doesn't mean there was strong evidence against whatever he said first, just not strong enough evidence for it.
Even if whatever figures you are referencing were accurate at that particular time, it doesn't change the fact that most of what Hamas says is pure propaganda, and that they have a vested interest in the highest casualty rates they can get anyone to repeat. These are men who have diverted resources from their own people for years for the sake of terror and death, who built tunnels for themselves and only themselves, who gleefully butchered families in their homes and uploaded videos from their body cams, who raped murdered burned over twelve hundred civilians in one day. A woman named Vivian Silver was a friend of friends of mine. She had dedicated her life to working across the border for peace, was missing after October 7 and thought to be a hostage. Archaeologists identified her DNA in the ashes of her home. Do you think the men who did that care about truth?
Joan, lets say Hamas is exaggerating the death toll by thousands, proving Hamas lies to its benefit; what does that change? What number do you accept? Is that number enough to agree that it makes little difference what Biden said before and after? The problem and solution remain the same
Hamas needs Netinyahoo, he needs them. Seems to me the root problem is obvious. Figuring out how to neutralize them is a long road. Lets start now
The only neutralizing of Hamas currently available is being carried out by the Israel Defense Forces. Protecting Hamas from the IDF without an effective alternative amounts to enabling them to continue to murder Israelis and terrorize Gazans. Get rid of Hamas, and the Israeli voters will dump Netanyahu. Which makes the primary question, who will destroy Hamas and how? If not the IDF, then who, how, and when?
Great argument Joan, and I appreciate your viewpoint. But we must look forward towards a resolution. The destruction, regardless of casualty numbers, is apparent. I hope that the argument Hamas, and Netanyahu are finished proves prescient.
Is this really an important argument? Over and over again Israel responds to attacks with overwhelming death and destruction. Why? The goal is and has always been to remove arabs from all of what was greater Palestine. I’m sure the goal is not to kill them all, but it is clearly to make life so degraded that they will choose to leave, and this is what has continually happened since 1948.
You can as well say that "Arabs"(ignoring that the families of half of Israeli Jews were expelled in the early 1950s from Arab countries where they had lived for close to a thousand years) care only about obliterating Israel - the surrounding countries have certainly tried often enough, and less than two months ago Hamas carried out an attack that slaughtered more than 1200 civilians in their homes. The extremists on both sides believe in one country with one people "from the river to the sea"; they disagree only on which people it will be.
A minimum step toward peace is for the rest of us to acknowledge that the extremists are not the majority on either side.
I agree with your last sentence. And that’s the tragedy. Brian Klaas in his book “Corruptible” has an interesting idea that is related to what you wrote. Perhaps those who lead are exactly the people who should not.
As Stalin said, “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” And a hostage is a prolonged tragedy, a gift that keeps on giving to the terrorist, of whatever stripe.
I thought of Winston Churchill. He was right about One Big Thing, and he gave his all. But when the war ended, the British voted him out. Churchill didn't want a second front, but that wasn't because he wanted the war to continue.
Netanyahu may or may not be right about some things. But I cannot escape the thought that he knows that if and when this war ends, he's finished. And all he cares about is being prime minister. So ....
He could try to hold on in hope his buddy Trump wins next years and saves him. Even more reason to cut him off from his piggy bank.
He is trying to stay out of jail, just like his buddy and cares nothing about innocent deaths, as so his buddy.
By the way Tom, did you get my email and the PDF?
yes
Just like Putin is holding on. So much evil, just waiting…
I kinda think that there's some level on which he knows he's finished, no matter what happens. it reminds me of that thing that happens when you stub your toe and it doesn't hurt yet but you have all this suddenly wonderfully expanded sense of time during which all you can think about is how bad the pain's gonna be when your brain finally works it all out...it's Bibi, and he just wants to expand that time a little bit longer...
and yeah, I'm willing to bet that when he thinks about expanding the time, he's also hoping for an intervention elsewhere...as long as TFF thinks Bibi will stay HIS useful idiot.
of course, he'll always be Jared's, won't he?
The further tragedy of the Israeli approach is that not only aren’t they finding command centers, et al., they can kill every Hamas member who participated in the October event and still not have Hamas’s head. The real leaders are in Qatar, while money and weapons flow from Iran, Russia, and other states. The only way they could really prevail is to win the hearts and minds of the Palestinians, difficult at best, and highly unlikely at this point.
Unfortunately, they blew that chance long ago, thus precipitating the Hamas attack to keep the issue of the Palestinians in the minds of all "Normalizing" Israeli/ Arab relations.
Yup.
I thought Qatar was “neutral.” Guess there are different levels of neutral.
"Carpet Bombing" is not about bombing a target -- this brutal air war is about pulverizing a grid. Who is going to remove the rubble, the debris in the "Kill Zones" and do the necessary Post Mortems?
Probably us
Like to see the International Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders do the Job ... even just one collapsed apartment building.
I went back and re-read Jimmy Carter's books about peace in the Middle East, and even back at the time he was writing his books the Israeli settlers were already violating the Camp David Accords. The rise of the Haradim Jews (ultra-fundamentalist) and their ongoing battles with Palestinians in the West Bank, plus what Hamas and Hezbollah have been doing, truly show what a scourge religious fundamentalism is, regardless of the faith. Conditioning aid to Israel is long, long overdue, and I'm glad to see leadership on this issue.
Aid needs to be conditioned to BOTH sides, not just Israel. For too long fools like the UN, UNRWA, various NGOs and Arab countries have wittingly or unwittingly done the bidding of both the radicals and the Iranians.
Thank you. Clearly written. Some help please, though I know you’re not my Google. Tell me more about the West Bank interlopers. I wasn’t aware of their radical views. Second, how long will Netanyahu jettison humanity to stay out of jail? Sounds fucking familiar.
The Settler movement has been heavily influenced by the radical Kach Party since the mid-1970s. This group is primarily composed of American fundamentalist followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was an early advocate of ethnically cleansing the West Bank and forcing Palestinians into Jordan; here in the United States they were the Jewish Defense League
Fascists all.
for some reason, I think I'm mixing things up but I'm recalling that Kahane (whose tragic flaw was not being murdered MUCH sooner) was assassinated by one of his followers who was even more "radical" than he was. am I misremembering?
I tried so hard to put him out of my memory that I succeeded. I think that was it. Wikipedia says he was assassinated by an Egyptian-born US citizen, El Sayyid Nosair. He was initially charged and acquitted of the murder. Nosair was later convicted of the murder in U.S. District Court for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Prosecutors were able to try Nosair again for the murder because the federal indictment included the killing as part of the alleged terrorist conspiracy. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and later made a confession to federal agents.
thanks, Tom. I might have been mistaking him for Rabin, who actually WAS killed by a Jewish True Believer, which can be as unpleasant a thing as you'll find anywhere...
but you already KNEW that.
Thank you. Heading to gain information and stay out of rabbit holes. ; )
Perfectly reasoned and expressed—I couldn’t agree more. The Israeli right wingers are so full of rage they can’t think straight, and Hamas has been leading them around by the nose—a perfectly orchestrated terrorist action.
I agree with C. Towers here. The fog of this war obscures its causes and actual instigators with each passing day. But I think it is Putin who's derived the greatest benefit from it. He couldn't be more happy that support for Ukraine in the US is flagging, that his unity with Iran and its supply of drones is solidifying, that his influence in the ME is growing, that villain status has shifted to Netanyahu and Hamas, etc. I will not be surprised to see him leap in front of a peace parade and offer to broker a two-state agreement, as absurd as that sounds.
the first time I saw Netanyahu, I had the same sinking feeling in my gut I got the first time I saw Rudy. "high school bully," was my immediate, extremely visceral response.
he's been a terrible, terrible "leader," and entirely too dependent on the US providing him with whatever he's thought he needed.
the international response to these provisional cease-fires is heartening and if Bibi thinks he's gonna be able to finesse the current vibe, I sure hope he's wrong. even assuming Bibi might at one time have been an appropriate PM (which I am not prepared to grant), his sell-by date was a long time ago.
can be really be calculating that he's still supposed to "destroy Hamas?" what the fuck does that even MEAN at this point?
if there ever was an historical phenomenon that mirrored a piece of Greek mythology it's gotta be the Hydra (chop off one head, nine grow in its place) and Palestinian "leadership."
one little piece of history that needs to be more front-and-center is Bibi's deep involvement in keeping Hamas going, mostly because he thought he knew they were the cynical scumbags he could work with.
if the joke was just on him, no sweat. but there are all these dead people and obviously, it's very bad for everybody.
the one thing that mystifies me: if the people who are supposedly souring on Biden are doing so because of his pro-Israeli stance, I assume that nobody's stupid enough to worry that they're gonna turn into TFF's minions. this is what I assume, but who the fuck knows how much they don't know?
This is a military FUBAR.
Tom, you stated things clearly here:
"As of the declaration of the humanitarian cease-fire last Friday, several things about the current conflict are clear, and none of them are to Israel’s benefit. Carpet bombing north Gaza with 2,000-pound bombs that destroy an entire block is creating a situation that looks more and more to the rest of the world like the Waffen SS destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. With the IDF playing the role of the Waffen SS. Against 1,200 Israelis and others who were killed on October 7 by Hamas, the death toll in Gaza now approaches 16,000 according to informed estimates."
This is certainly gone way beyond a proportional response. Time for Netanyahu to go.
The level of losses in civilian life and the David and Goliath feelings that have generated protest and abhorrence of this war have been effective. Hamas is not a nation or government. It is like ISIS. It has initiated a war, but not with expectation to win or take down Goliath and release the victims, in my opinion. I fear, that like so many things, it seems, Hamas is about performance, disruption, influencing, and creation of chaos in the ordering of power and nations. Yes, they are Palestinians and share the issues facing other Palestinians or suppressed people or minorities held in captivity. But, I think, their objective is performance on behalf of creating not governance but power outside the order of nations from among the rabble and impoverished and disaffected. A new strategy, not unlike street gangs and warlords across the world. They will not create anything, whether in the arts or science or medicine or governance because, like other borderless examples, the numbers, the gain, the brilliance is in how their acts play off the fears and paranoia of the supposed victims, nations or an identifiable people, Jews in this case and their supporters, the U.S., democratic countries, peoples with those who feel the pain of the child and are steeped in the history of the Middle-east and Europe in the 20th century. In the short term, it has achieved a disproportionate, not measured response from Israel and Israel's friends, revenge without compassion for those trapped on the field of retribution. I sense a stain growing where out of the blood of children and non-combatants a loss of empathy may form in which the world becomes weary in looking out for the persecuted, whether Jew or Palestinian or Ukrainian or Afhghanstanie or oppressed and forgotten people, perchance in our own country gets lost. Let the mob perform and we cheer the excitement, the battle of strong and weak, while we munch on pretzels and our beer, bereft of the facts or consequences for our way of of life and values once fought for. This war just might be one war too many, for some of us, as war seems to be the script endlessly rewritten to elongate a popular dystopian series only satisfying and followed by cliff-hangers and plot twists.
Thank you.
Thank you, TC.
Sensible essay. Especially the observation that a ceasefire works to the long term detriment of the two forces that prolong the suffering, and that’s the key to resolution.
Curious, TC, but may we ask you to draw upon your military historian’s framework to assess this bombing campaign? Considering the tunnels are the key to Hamas’ tactical strength, and that the Israelis aren’t dropping anything like a GBU-43/B MOAB, are the Israelis just delaying an inevitable small unit tunnel crawl?
It depends on how those tunnels are built. They could be collapsing under fallen buildings. But the IDF has stated they don't want to go into the tunnels because there is too much chance of an ambush and soldiers taken captive - remember it took 4 years to get the last Israeli soldier Hamas captured returned.
So if they really want to eliminate Hamas, in addition to assassination teams in Qatar, they would need to level Gaza. Doesn’t sound feasible to me.
Not and keep their status as "civilized." That's the problem.
Anthony Blinken is on his
way, or has already arrived
in Israel. Let's hope he's laying it down for Bibi, what
will happen to U.S. support
if any bombs fall on south Gaza.
Tom, with your extensive war
knowledge, do you have any
insight on the tunnels in Vietnam? Remember the
tunnel system under CuChi?
Were they ever cleared out?
I had read "The Tunnel Rats"
many years ago, about the
U.S. soldiers who went down
into the tunnels to clear out
VC strongholds. These were
mud tunnels, nothing as
sophisticated as Hamas has
built. My impressions, after
reading about the Hamas
tunnels, is it will take a
specialized bomb team to
destroy the network.
Who would enforce the ceasefire, who hasn’t failed before?
Who would assure aid would get to the people, who hasn’t failed before?
Impossible job to look for the ones “who haven’t failed before.”
I hope its not impossible because then any ceasefire will be just another pause in the madness and the aid will continue to be stolen while the people continue to suffer.
It is necessary to hold possibly contradictory thoughts at the same time to have any hope of understanding what is going on.
Example: clearly there are many people dying in Gaza, and even one is too many; also, the "Health Ministry" that provides Gaza casualty estimates is an arm of Hamas, who have a propaganda interest in high numbers.
Example: Netanyahu failed on many dimensions - corrupt, authoritarian, etc etc; and most of the country wants him gone; *and* the only way Israel has a chance of continuing to exist is if Hamas, which is openly dedicated to the brutal murder of all Jews and getting better at it, is destroyed.
Example: tragedy in Gaza (see example one) *and* the hostages of all ages (babies to eighties) must be returned, why is there not an international outcry insisting on letting the Red Cross deliver medecine to hostages and check on them? *and* the deliberately brutal rapes and murders of more than 1200 civilians in Israel by Hamas on October 7 were massive war crimes on behalf of genocide.
The data the Health Ministry was publishing before the big assault was proven so accurate that President Biden apologized for publicly doubting it. At the present time, there's no one counting the dead because there's no one to pull them out of the ruins.
Exactly how were Hamas claims proven accurate? Pressuring a public figure into an apology proves nothing: it has been done plenty of times without accuracy. Hamas rules Gaza with brutality, threats, thuggery and fear. That rather decreases the number of people who would do anything but agree with them. Also, like the stopped clock, being right occasionally would hardly be proof of general reliability.
The process has not been detailed, but it seems to me that the president would not publicly change his position without an evidence-backed strong argument to do so.
You can as easily say he would not have taken whatever position in the first place without strong evidence. The man is human, he makes mistakes, he may have said something without strong enough evidence and then backed down. That doesn't mean there was strong evidence against whatever he said first, just not strong enough evidence for it.
Even if whatever figures you are referencing were accurate at that particular time, it doesn't change the fact that most of what Hamas says is pure propaganda, and that they have a vested interest in the highest casualty rates they can get anyone to repeat. These are men who have diverted resources from their own people for years for the sake of terror and death, who built tunnels for themselves and only themselves, who gleefully butchered families in their homes and uploaded videos from their body cams, who raped murdered burned over twelve hundred civilians in one day. A woman named Vivian Silver was a friend of friends of mine. She had dedicated her life to working across the border for peace, was missing after October 7 and thought to be a hostage. Archaeologists identified her DNA in the ashes of her home. Do you think the men who did that care about truth?
Joan, lets say Hamas is exaggerating the death toll by thousands, proving Hamas lies to its benefit; what does that change? What number do you accept? Is that number enough to agree that it makes little difference what Biden said before and after? The problem and solution remain the same
Hamas needs Netinyahoo, he needs them. Seems to me the root problem is obvious. Figuring out how to neutralize them is a long road. Lets start now
Dave, I agree with what you write.
The only neutralizing of Hamas currently available is being carried out by the Israel Defense Forces. Protecting Hamas from the IDF without an effective alternative amounts to enabling them to continue to murder Israelis and terrorize Gazans. Get rid of Hamas, and the Israeli voters will dump Netanyahu. Which makes the primary question, who will destroy Hamas and how? If not the IDF, then who, how, and when?
Great argument Joan, and I appreciate your viewpoint. But we must look forward towards a resolution. The destruction, regardless of casualty numbers, is apparent. I hope that the argument Hamas, and Netanyahu are finished proves prescient.
Israel is still a democracy. Netanyahu is on his way out.
Hamas rules Gaza by force: who will remove them?
Get the men dedicated to war away from the levers of power. Then the two peoples can work out how to live without killing each other.
Is this really an important argument? Over and over again Israel responds to attacks with overwhelming death and destruction. Why? The goal is and has always been to remove arabs from all of what was greater Palestine. I’m sure the goal is not to kill them all, but it is clearly to make life so degraded that they will choose to leave, and this is what has continually happened since 1948.
You can as well say that "Arabs"(ignoring that the families of half of Israeli Jews were expelled in the early 1950s from Arab countries where they had lived for close to a thousand years) care only about obliterating Israel - the surrounding countries have certainly tried often enough, and less than two months ago Hamas carried out an attack that slaughtered more than 1200 civilians in their homes. The extremists on both sides believe in one country with one people "from the river to the sea"; they disagree only on which people it will be.
A minimum step toward peace is for the rest of us to acknowledge that the extremists are not the majority on either side.
Your last sentence is the keeper.
I agree with your last sentence. And that’s the tragedy. Brian Klaas in his book “Corruptible” has an interesting idea that is related to what you wrote. Perhaps those who lead are exactly the people who should not.
As Stalin said, “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” And a hostage is a prolonged tragedy, a gift that keeps on giving to the terrorist, of whatever stripe.
Sadly true.