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Josh's avatar

Wikipedia as a source? Seriously? Did you actually read that Lancet letter? It's transparent nonsense.

What can be said with certainty about the Israel-Gaza war?

(i) It was horrible for Hamas

(ii) It was horrible for Gazan civilians

(iii) It was horrible for Israeli hostages and their families

(iv) It was horrible for Israeli soldiers and their families

(v) Many people were killed from all of the above groups and we should be sad about all of them except (i).

(vi) War is hell. It should be avoided.

I do not accept that there is a great moral failure here, except insofar as Israel has demonstrated that it is no more saintly than other Western countries. This is upsetting to those of us who dream of Israel being a light to the nations but hardly abnormal by 21st century human standards.

In terms of strategy, it has indeed been chaotic and incoherent. The war was fought on the battleground of Hamas's choosing, fought at the time of Hamas's choosing, and while Hamas held Israel by the balls (hostages). That's a shit place to start a war and the big strategic failure was getting into that starting position. Heads should roll for that. Given the starting point, it was never going to be pretty.

Once Oct-7th had happened, however...

"Turn the other cheek" is not serious. Can you name a single other country that has done that in all of human history? Do you think America could have responded to Pearl Harbour or 9/11 with "We have seen enough blood. Nothing is to be gained by shedding more of it. Let's negotiate with Japan / Al Qaeda."?? (And Pearl Harbour was far less traumatic than Oct-7th for a host of reasons.)

Oct-7th was the start of a war that Israel had no choice but to fight and it had no choice in the primary war aim: eliminating the threat of Hamas.

In theory, a superior strategy might have been to secure a humanitarian zone in Gaza and then besiege the rest of the territory. This was my view on Oct-12-2023 prior to the ground invasion (https://bigthinkisrael.blogspot.com/2023/10/siege-is-humane-strategy.html) It sounds cleaner but might well have taken years and would Israelis have had the sang froid to stick with it when Hamas started releasing the severed fingers of hostages? Probably not.

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LikudLogic's avatar

My first time reading this blog and it seems like humbug unfortunately, hiding plain facts with nice prose.

If your self-declared enemies demonstrate to you clearly that they are a serious military threat to your civilian population, then a government's duty is to go to war, as the goals of war are defined by international law, namely to weaken your opponent's military capabilities. This is about as classic a war as it gets. In an ideal world, you wouldn't just weaken your enemy's military capabilities, but comprehensively destroy them militarily and politically, remove them from power, and drive them into insignificance, but of course it is not all or nothing. So far from having no strategy, Bibi and Israel have a completely reasonable strategy of weaken Hamas militarily, until the military threat they pose to Israel is reduced, and Israelis can live in relative safety.

It remains to be seen whether Hamas can be driven from power, as they have a civilian population who's culture and education leads them to hate Israel and Jews, even if they don't like Hamas or their tactics. It is clear that the first stage of war was limited heavily by Biden, and by a more doveish IDF and defence secretary. It is very possible that without any restrictions from the US, and with a more aggressive defence secretary and Ramatkal, the next stage of war will see the defeat of Hamas. This would be the cherry on the cake. But what Israel has achieved already in Gaza is monumental, and has left Israeli civilians far safer than they were pre-October 7. This is a classic war, it has gone remarkably well up North, it is going well in Gaza, with the majority of live hostages being released and Hamas severely weakened. Israel's deterrence has been improved, and there is a chance that things will get better.

In relation to civilian casualties, this is just an ethical question of how much preference one gives to one's own people, over the enemy population. If we prioritised Israeli's completely over Gazans, we would starve/bomb everyone there, without losing any soldier's lives. If we value our civilians equal to their civilians, we would not go to war at all as more civilians will die than not. Whilst you can't really argue about these sort of ethical questions without some shared framework, most people believe that one should prioritise the welbeing of one's family, friends, community and nation in concentric circles, and that governments have an ethical duty to prioritise their own civilians over foreign civilians, especially enemy populations. The liberal West, and the nebulous system of international law, start from a basis which emphasises the equality of civilians, rather than a more Israeli/conservative/nationalist position which prioritises ones own civilians. Thus every decision is a trade-off between enemy civilians and Israeli civililans. Understanding that the vast majority of Gazans despise Israel, are happy for Israelis to be murdered, and want their country liquidated, is enough to make most Israelis and conservatives very content that Israel's current balance is perfectly reasonable, and in fact far too skewed towards Gazan civilians.

In conclusion, the war is going well, it will probably get better, the strategy so far is the obvious, reasonable strategy to take, it has produced excellent results, ethically it is a classic case of prioritising one's own over the enemy, completely normal and reasonable, and Bibi is doing a stellar job to keep it going until the ניצחון המוחלט.

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