Israel, Palestine and Iran

[Awol]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

SigInt aircraft (like our sadly scrapped Nimrod R). Monitor Hezbollah comms and stuff, no doubt. 

I remember talking to you that day on here, JCBs working before Cameron had even unpacked the removal van..

[blandy]

1 minute ago, Awol said:

I remember talking to you that day on here, JCBs working before Cameron had even unpacked the removal van..

That was the MR2 s, but the R1 was binned after Libya and replaced by Rivet Joint

[DJBOB]

4 hours ago, Awol said:

Once the IDF has destroyed the Hamas infrastructure north of the Wadi, I expect them to pivot and focus on repeating the operation in the south.

I don’t know how they’ll go about that, but the one way I can see that working logistically is to set up a control line on the wadi, and filter the population now in the south back through that into the north. 

That would require the IDF to push up the Egyptian border to the sea, then shepherd the population north over a period of weeks, conducting an extremely challenging combination of combat, humanitarian aid, and hostage rescue operations, simultaneously. 

Were the Israelis to cease operations and withdraw once the north is secure, they’d be leaving the majority of hostages in the custody of their Hamas kidnappers. That isn’t going to fly with the population of Israel and was one of the key objectives of invading Gaza in the first place. 

Bottom line, this is very unlikely to be over soon - unless Hamas release all the Israeli hostages. If they did that then international pressure on Tel Aviv would increase significantly to call it a day.

Bleh - ugly just thinking about it. The logistics of keeping the insurgency from going out of control north of Wadi and then ferrying civilians back to the north.

[OutByEaster?]

I think the idea of being able to separate the terrorists from the population very neatly is wishful thinking.

If we think back to Ireland and the IRA - there were probably at any given time a couple of thousand IRA members active and engaged in armed struggle - a couple of hundred thousand people who agreed with their principles and supported armed resistance - and then another few million people who supported the aims of a struggle for independence but didn't agree with terrorist acts and were completely against killing.

I've seen absolutely nothing in the Israeli mindset for this conflict that suggests they're in the mood for any sort of separation of people based around those sorts of things - in Gaza, there are people carrying guns they want to use against Israeli soldiers - they're legitimate targets - then they are a lot of people who will agree with the idea of a Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence that will have been horrified by the actions on October 7th - but separating those people is almost impossible - if the terrorist puts down his gun and walks a road next to someone who shares the larger parts of his ideals - how do you know which is which?

Israel I think is simply going to kill both.

It'll be impossible to separate Hamas from the regular people of Gaza - just as it would be impossible to pick out an active IRA man whose identity you didn't know from the home end at Croke Park in 1978. We're talking about it like you can make an announcement on the tannoy* asking all the normal people to go to one end of the ground and the terrorists to stay where they are so they can be shot.

Israel will not be able to remove Hamas from Gaza - it's not logistically possible - they can remove Gaza itself completely, or they can encourage Gaza to remove Hamas politically, but you can't take the eggs out of the omelette once it's cooked, even if some of the eggs are bad. 

[PaulC]

Yes its impossible to separate and Israel have no interest in doing so.  There's no doubt that many of the  Gaza population will think Hamas are the good guys as well and Israel and the west the bad guys. 

[Chindie]

Ideas are bulletproof.

The idea of bombing Gaza to wipe out Hamas is pants on head stupid. They could wipe out everyone that ever has for a moment thought Hamas are good (which obviously they can't do, but let's run with it) and they still wouldn't have destroyed it, because the idea remains and by trying to destroy it they've actually reinforced for many the reason the idea exists or has any draw to it at all.

The only way they can defeat Hamas is to make it irrelevant. Unfortunately they won't do that because to do that requires Israel to give up on things it wants, both short and long term (revenge, all of the land), and give up on ideas of Palestinians being an inherent threat to Israel and therefore give up on making Gaza an open air prison.

Ain't happening.

[DJBOB]

15 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Ideas are bulletproof.

The idea of bombing Gaza to wipe out Hamas is pants on head stupid. They could wipe out everyone that ever has for a moment thought Hamas are good (which obviously they can't do, but let's run with it) and they still wouldn't have destroyed it, because the idea remains and by trying to destroy it they've actually reinforced for many the reason the idea exists or has any draw to it at all.

The only way they can defeat Hamas is to make it irrelevant. Unfortunately they won't do that because to do that requires Israel to give up on things it wants, both short and long term (revenge, all of the land), and give up on ideas of Palestinians being an inherent threat to Israel and therefore give up on making Gaza an open air prison.

Ain't happening.

I think the thorny issue is that even in the ideal dream world that Israel gives up everything (revenge, land) - it won't stop Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian backing in the region from continually attacking Israel. To which people say - oh just go after Hamas and the terrorists specifically - which as highlighted is not a separation of idea and body that is wholly possible. Or the other option - just take it and shore up their defenses within their own land.

For as much as we can say - oh the US and the UK did this and that and create more terrorists - their borders are very far away. For Israel, it is not.

[chrisp65]

Could they not just kill every male between the ages of 14 and 60? Surely that would get rid of many Hamas. Yes, some innocents would be lost as well, but we have to be realists here.

They’re going to need a lot more bombs and bullets for this plan to have a chance of working, it’s going to be around a million dead for it to have a chance of working.

Can’t even just ship them all overseas in to exile, that was the solution in the 1980’s when they flattened much of Beirut and shipped the PLO off to Tunisia to finally sort this problem out once and for all. It’s almost getting like the violence is quite an inefficient way of dealing with this.

Or, they just keep the murder more random rather than targeting one societal group, include the nans and the babies for equality and just limit the murder to the tens of thousands for performative revenge purposes and we’ll worry about the next next revenge in 2030.

I think we can get behind that. Well, there’s no think about it. That’s what we are currently supporting.

 

[Chindie]

9 minutes ago, DJBOB said:

I think the thorny issue is that even in the ideal dream world that Israel gives up everything (revenge, land) - it won't stop Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian backing in the region from continually attacking Israel. To which people say - oh just go after Hamas and the terrorists specifically - which as highlighted is not a separation of idea and body that is wholly possible. Or the other option - just take it and shore up their defenses within their own land.

For as much as we can say - oh the US and the UK did this and that and create more terrorists - their borders are very far away. For Israel, it is not.

Yes. But none of that justifies levelling a densely populated city.

The sad fact of the matter is it's impossible to truly stop terrorism. Israel will be impacted by that for many years to come, they are in the backyard of a number of states that hates  and despises them for numerous reasons, going back to good old religion and being joined by political power struggles and alliances and funding, and then there's some resentment at the way Israel acts in relation to Palestine and the 'Holy sites', and it's proclivity to act unilaterally and clandestinely to preemptively attack any perceived threats... Israel will not be free of attack for many, many years to come. But that doesn't mean they can do whatever they want, and it doesn't mean they can make Gaza suffer, and it doesn't justify them wiping it off the map (no matter how many times their elected representatives hold up maps that do exactly that).

[DJBOB]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

Yes. But none of that justifies levelling a densely populated city.

The sad fact of the matter is it's impossible to truly stop terrorism. Israel will be impacted by that for many years to come, they are in the backyard of a number of states that hates  and despises them for numerous reasons, going back to good old religion and being joined by political power struggles and alliances and funding, and then there's some resentment at the way Israel acts in relation to Palestine and the 'Holy sites', and it's proclivity to act unilaterally and clandestinely to preemptively attack any perceived threats... Israel will not be free of attack for many, many years to come. But that doesn't mean they can do whatever they want, and it doesn't mean they can make Gaza suffer, and it doesn't justify them wiping it off the map (no matter how many times their elected representatives hold up maps that do exactly that).

Of course not. But I think a lot of people wish for them to just suck it up and 'take it.'

Kind of with that attitude of - you can't stop it, but you can't do it to anyone else either. I don't know - I can sometimes see the perspective of the Jewish people with the essential line to them, "If you leave them alone, they'll eventually stop - I promise!"

Shit situation all around.

Edited November 16, 2023 by DJBOB

[Chindie]

28 minutes ago, DJBOB said:

Of course not. But I think a lot of people wish for them to just suck it up and 'take it.'

Kind of with that attitude of - you can't stop it, but you can't do it to anyone else either. I don't know - I can sometimes see the perspective of the Jewish people with the essential line to them, "If you leave them alone, they'll eventually stop - I promise!"

Shit situation all around.

I don't think that's the case.

The problem is Israel specifically chooses to deal with it in ways that immediately and obviously reflect either ulterior ambitions or outright callousness that everyone outside can see is wrong. Had Israel reacted to this with a limited, focused, special forces based, combined with police and intelligence services led, campaign, there would be far less push back. Instead they just bomb an incredibly densely populated area and flatten it, and react to any criticism in the most grim, aggressive, hostile and threatening manner, making out any criticism is either anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist or somehow a threat to Israel.

People aren't asking them to 'just take it'. They're asking them to react with more care for innocents and not engage in a campaign of collective punishment and not use this as justification for a land grab and an ethnic cleansing. That's not a high, or special, bar. Its something that would be expected of any state.

[DJBOB]

1 minute ago, Chindie said:

I don't think that's the case.

The problem is Israel specifically chooses to deal with it in ways that immediately and obviously reflect either ulterior ambitions or outright callousness that everyone outside can see is wrong. Had Israel reacted to this with a limited, focused, special forces based, combined with police and intelligence services led, campaign, there would be far less push back. Instead they just bomb an incredibly densely populated area and flatten it, and react to any criticism in the most grim, aggressive, hostile and threatening manner, making out any criticism is either anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist or somehow a threat to Israel.

People aren't asking them to 'just take it'. They're asking them to react with more care for innocents and not engage in a campaign of collective punishment and not use this as justification for a land grab and an ethnic cleansing. That's not a high, or special, bar. Its something that would be expected of any state.

Yeah fair enough. Though I disagree with the bold in any capacity as the asymmetrical warfare of Hamas makes the isolated special forces tactics near impossible and also disagree with the bold that people aren't asking them to 'take it.'

[meregreen]

3 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think the idea of being able to separate the terrorists from the population very neatly is wishful thinking.

If we think back to Ireland and the IRA - there were probably at any given time a couple of thousand IRA members active and engaged in armed struggle - a couple of hundred thousand people who agreed with their principles and supported armed resistance - and then another few million people who supported the aims of a struggle for independence but didn't agree with terrorist acts and were completely against killing.

I've seen absolutely nothing in the Israeli mindset for this conflict that suggests they're in the mood for any sort of separation of people based around those sorts of things - in Gaza, there are people carrying guns they want to use against Israeli soldiers - they're legitimate targets - then they are a lot of people who will agree with the idea of a Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence that will have been horrified by the actions on October 7th - but separating those people is almost impossible - if the terrorist puts down his gun and walks a road next to someone who shares the larger parts of his ideals - how do you know which is which?

Israel I think is simply going to kill both.

It'll be impossible to separate Hamas from the regular people of Gaza - just as it would be impossible to pick out an active IRA man whose identity you didn't know from the home end at Croke Park in 1978. We're talking about it like you can make an announcement on the tannoy* asking all the normal people to go to one end of the ground and the terrorists to stay where they are so they can be shot.

Israel will not be able to remove Hamas from Gaza - it's not logistically possible - they can remove Gaza itself completely, or they can encourage Gaza to remove Hamas politically, but you can't take the eggs out of the omelette once it's cooked, even if some of the eggs are bad. 

I don’t think the Israelis are naive enough to think they’ll eradicate every Hamas gunman. What I think they’ll settle for, is destroying the infrastructure that enables Hamas to operate from a tunnel network that took years to construct. Expect a new barrier to be constructed after this is over, that will be infinitely more sophisticated than what was there on 10th of October. They may also retain a heavily armed presence in Gaza. Either way, the limited autonomy the Palestinians enjoyed prior to this conflict, is likely to be even more limited after.

Edited November 16, 2023 by meregreen

[magnkarl]

I get the intelligence and special forces argument, but at the same time, when did anyone ever succeed with this strategy?

The world’s largest and most powerful military alliance took two invasions and 10 years to get Bin Laden, ISIS is still terrorising Iraq and Syria and The Taliban is stronger than ever after SEAL team 6, SAS and most European SOF teams camped in their country for 10 years.

I don’t think Israel has the military utility to take out the leadership of Hamas as Iran has the next leader lined up if they do. Hamas is defeated with prosperity and opportunity. Make Gaza a prosperous nation with jobs and rights and Hamas will go back to Iran. Isolate Iran and decapitate their bases abroad, and try to remove suffering for the people they are using as human shields for their despicable state. Palestine/Hamas is the latest iteration of Irans ‘axis of resistance’ where millions have died as a result.

Edited November 16, 2023 by magnkarl

[Thug]

3 hours ago, magnkarl said:

I get the intelligence and special forces argument, but at the same time, when did anyone ever succeed with this strategy?

The world’s largest and most powerful military alliance took two invasions and 10 years to get Bin Laden, ISIS is still terrorising Iraq and Syria and The Taliban is stronger than ever after SEAL team 6, SAS and most European SOF teams camped in their country for 10 years.

I don’t think Israel has the military utility to take out the leadership of Hamas as Iran has the next leader lined up if they do. Hamas is defeated with prosperity and opportunity. Make Gaza a prosperous nation with jobs and rights and Hamas will go back to Iran. Isolate Iran and decapitate their bases abroad, and try to remove suffering for the people they are using as human shields for their despicable state. Palestine/Hamas is the latest iteration of Irans ‘axis of resistance’ where millions have died as a result.

This is bang on.

it'll take a long time to come to fruition, but this is the answer.

It’s a lot easier to sell the idea of resistance to oppressed, unemployed people full of the feelings of injustice.  When there’s not a lot to live for, you’re happy not to be alive.

People with jobs, and a decent standard of living and dignity have a lot more to lose - and subsequently don’t want to lose it.

It would be a very, very slow solution - You’re looking at several generations.  And in the meantime, there will be ongoing pockets of ‘resistance’ or mischief makers on both sides.  
 

October 7th should never happen again.  For the sake of both sides.

 

[omariqy]

In every one of these videos I think of my son or daughters and if it was me in that position. It’s not graphic but I feel every inch of the pain.
 

 

Edited November 16, 2023 by omariqy

[VILLAMARV]

21 hours ago, Jareth said:

I think that is almost guaranteed to be the case, if Trump gets back in. Biden I'm not so sure, he holds Northern Ireland up as a model - and of course the UK will do what the US says. The people of Gaza will want blood in return for what has happened - keeping Israel out the reconstruction is the other difficult element - it won't be easy.

Biden will do what he's told. Just like Trump.

[blandy]

27 minutes ago, VILLAMARV said:

Biden will do what he's told. Just like Trump.

Told by who? 

[omariqy]

This doesn’t surprise me tbh.

[foreveryoung]

10 hours ago, omariqy said:

In every one of these videos I think of my son or daughters and if it was me in that position. It’s not graphic but I feel every inch of the pain.
 

 

I have just one 8 year old lad and watching this I can feel the pain of the innocents, I'm with you 100%.