Israel starts Gaza ground offensive

Hardly surprising? I'm shocked they waited this long.

Yes, well this is unfortunate...

Ugh. Yes it is.

On one level, the fact that things have proceeded to this level of dehumanization (on both sides) is not suprising, but it's unfortunate and certainly nothing to be excused.

In a related vein, Fred Kaplain has a good article up on why this action is likely to be a long-term strategic mistake for Netanyahu. The short version is that if he succeeds in dislodging Hamas from Gaza, he then either has to keep an occupying force there (in close proximity to what's likely to be heavy and long-term resistance), or he risks opening an ISIS-style power vacuum. Not to mention the impact of things like the deaths of those four Palestinian boys on a beach, which will only serve to isolate Netanyahu further.

The article also has some good recent-historical background on the implications of Bush-era changes in policy towards the conflict that led to the type of attitudes seen in the link mccardey posted.

These rocket attacks: they've killed 28 people in Israel over the last 14 years.

Torgo, what's your point?

Torgo said:

These rocket attacks: they've killed 28 people in Israel over the last 14 years.

Click to expand...

As opposed to 230+ Palestinians in the past few weeks.
Including the shelling of 4 Palestinian kids playing hide and seek on beach.

Doesn't take a genius to work out who's got the more effective weaponry here.
The term 'using a sledgehammer to crack a nut' springs to mind.

sassandgroove said:

Torgo, what's your point?

Click to expand...

My point is that there's a tendency for onlookers to say that there are incessant terrorist rocket attacks on Israel from Palestine, difficult situation, fault on both sides, terrible cycle of violence etc etc. But the rockets are pathetically innocuous in statistical terms, which is something I didn't myself realise until I looked the stats up.

raburrell said:

The article also has some good recent-historical background on the implications of Bush-era changes in policy towards the conflict that led to the type of attitudes seen in the link mccardey posted.

Click to expand...

Bush's (and Israel's) biggest blunder was letting Hamas participate in Palestinian elections, thinking they would lose, and then refusing to recognize and negotiate with them when they actually won the election. Much that has occurred since in the conflict can be traced back to that miscalculation.

clintl said:

Bush's (and Israel's) biggest blunder was letting Hamas participate in Palestinian elections, thinking they would lose, and then refusing to recognize and negotiate with them when they actually won the election. Much that has occurred since in the conflict can be traced back to that miscalculation.

Click to expand...

so, democracy?

Torgo said:

My point is that there's a tendency for onlookers to say that there are incessant terrorist rocket attacks on Israel from Palestine, difficult situation, fault on both sides, terrible cycle of violence etc etc. But the rockets are pathetically innocuous in statistical terms, which is something I didn't myself realise until I looked the stats up.

Click to expand...

Attempted murder is attempted murder. If someone tried to repeatedly shoot me with a musket and missed, I'd take it just as seriously as if the weapon was an M16.

Lhipenwhe said:

Attempted murder is attempted murder. If someone tried to repeatedly shoot me with a musket and missed, I'd take it just as seriously as if the weapon was an M16.

Click to expand...

The problem here is collective thinking and collective punishment. I'm pretty sure those kids killed on the beach had nothing to do with the rocket attacks, yet they were made to pay with their lives. This is about groups of radicalized individuals shooting rockets and a nation launching a ground invasion after airstrikes against any and all the people in the region those groups came from. Collective punishment.

It would be like, if say, the US invaded the Middle East after 9/11...oh, wait...

I'm not sure what those kids on the beach were shielding, exactly.

firedrake said:

As opposed to 230+ Palestinians in the past few weeks.
Including the shelling of 4 Palestinian kids playing hide and seek on beach.

Doesn't take a genius to work out who's got the more effective weaponry here.
The term 'using a sledgehammer to crack a nut' springs to mind.

Click to expand...

This (pretending I hadn't heard anything about this conflict before) REALLY makes me scratch my head. With losses like that, one would think those with the less effective weaponry would stop.

Diana Hignutt said:

The problem here is collective thinking and collective punishment. I'm pretty sure those kids killed on the beach had nothing to do with the rocket attacks, yet they were made to pay with their lives. This is about groups of radicalized individuals shooting rockets and a nation launching a ground invasion after airstrikes against any and all the people in the region those groups came from. Collective punishment.

It would be like, if say, the US invaded the Middle East after 9/11...oh, wait...

Click to expand...

"Any and all the people in the region"? Israel isn't Syria or Russia, and its allowed for truces and humanitarian aid into Gaza even after it elected a government devoted to killing them all. In the current conflict, its Hamas that's rejected the truces offered, and continued their indiscriminate rocketing on Israel. (You could call that collective punishment).

Those children shouldn't have died, and their deaths are a tragedy. Whatever the circumstances, there needs to be accountability for their deaths. I don't think anyone on the boards here will say otherwise.

Thing is, that this latest offensive started because of the tragic deaths of three Israeli teenagers.

Israel was very quick to pin the murders on Hamas. Although I don't recall seeing any proof that Hamas killed these kids.

However, if someone has that proof, then please, post a link here.

It strikes me that the death of those teenagers just furnished the pretense for yet another Israeli offensive.

As for the Palestinian children, I guess disobeying their fathers' orders makes them fair game for Israeli shells. This account in The Guardian contains a chilling sentence "It was there that the second shell hit the beach, those firing apparently adjusting their fire to target the fleeing survivors."

William Haskins said:

israel warns civilians when they are going to shell the homes and hideouts of hamas militants in their area.

hamas tells the civilians that the warnings are psychological warfare.

the kids, in this instance, had been told to stay away from the beach by their fathers.

but if you think the IDF is just looking to cherry-pick kids playing on a beach, go for it.

Click to expand...

The warnings are a good thing and all, but I'm not entirely sure where Gazans are supposed to go.

As to the bolded, there is some question on that point, sadly:

Alon Ben-David, a well-sourced Israeli military affairs analyst, said on Israeli television that the first beach blast targeted a structure that Israel believed was used by Hamas. He said the second blast might have been aimed at the running children, perhaps mistaken for militants. He added that given the military’s technologically advanced surveillance equipment, “it is a little hard for me to understand this, because the images show that the figures are children.”

Click to expand...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/world/middleeast/gaza-strip-beach-explosion-kills-children.html
(warning on the above link - the NYT had a reporter in the immediate area of the attack, and there's a very graphic picture of one of the dead children)

I don't think Israel, or the IDF, by and large, targets children intentionally. I do think they have their own militant factions which aren't above it. Whether or not that's what happened here, it's certainly a common perception taking root around the world regarding the incident.

William Haskins said:

maybe israel could turn off their sirens and the iron dome to make things more fair.

what the stats don't tell you is that how palestinian civilians are used as human shields, how hamas will trade the deaths of children for propaganda points, store rockets in schools and what-not.

but yeah, fuck israel.

Click to expand...

If they have the fancy stuff that stops all the rockets, then perhaps they can spend as much to break the human shield in a not so carnally assymetric manner.

At the very basic level, Bibi is telling Palestine that the beatings will continue until moral improves (we will continue bombing until the rockets stop.)

benbradley said:

This (pretending I hadn't heard anything about this conflict before) REALLY makes me scratch my head. With losses like that, one would think those with the less effective weaponry would stop.

Click to expand...

Might makes right? I think it's easy to say that when you have nothing at stake.

raburrell said:

The warnings are a good thing and all, but I'm not entirely sure where Gazans are supposed to go.

As to the bolded, there is some question on that point, sadly:



http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/world/middleeast/gaza-strip-beach-explosion-kills-children.html
(warning on the above link - the NYT had a reporter in the immediate area of the attack, and there's a very graphic picture of one of the dead children)

I don't think Israel, or the IDF, by and large, targets children intentionally. I do think they have their own militant factions which aren't above it. Whether or not that's what happened here, it's certainly a common perception taking root around the world regarding the incident.

Click to expand...

Hamas, to be completely fair, does not have quite as many options is Israel does for shielding civilians. But the overlooked point is that they refuse to use the resources they have - and Palestinians, btw, receive more foreign aid than any other group of people and out of two UN agencies for refugees, one is dedicated to Palestinians (who some how qualify as refugees a full 60 years after the 1948 Israeli Arab Wars) and the other is dedicated to every other refugee group in the world - and Hamas does exactly nothing in terms of using these resources to shelter civilians.

The coverage about these wars distorts it, and I am sure not only conservatives but many liberals and progressives, particularly those who still have very strong ties to their Jewish faith, wish that liberals and progressives would do more to promote fair coverage of these types of wars. Honestly, if you ask Israelis what news station in the US gives the most fair coverage of what they are dealing with, they would by and large say Fox News, and it's not even close. Yeah, I know, sad but true.

From Hamas's perspective, they have little incentive to prevent citizen deaths, including their own. In a cold-hearted sense, they're probably even a net benefit, as dead kids = sympathy for the Palestinian cause. In that sense I think Israel is playing right into their hands, sadly.

Unfortunately, they're also the only game in town, as Netanyahu has effectively marginalized Abbas. As I posted above, I agree with Kaplan that the longer-term implications of Israel's actions here have the potential to be very, very bad. The Israeli military is made up in very large part of 18-20 year old kids, and there's a very real possibility that a high number of them are going to end up having to pacify whatever is left of Gaza. Think Fallujah circa 2004, and think what's going to happen to Netanyahu's support within Israel if a bunch of its sons and daughters are suddenly much closer to harm than they were in the days of mostly-impotent rockets being launched at Sderot.

William Haskins said:

maybe israel could turn off their sirens and the iron dome to make things more fair.

what the stats don't tell you is that how palestinian civilians are used as human shields, how hamas will trade the deaths of children for propaganda points, store rockets in schools and what-not.

but yeah, fuck israel.

Click to expand...

Your words, William, not mine.

I imagine a principled Hamas would keep their largely ineffective rockets in their extensive military bases miles away from civilian populations? In my perfect world Palestine would resist like Gandhi. But in the world we live in this all seems desperately disproportionate.

Cereus said:

Might makes right? I think it's easy to say that when you have nothing at stake.

Click to expand...

If that were true, wouldn't Hamas, and maybe even all of Palestine be swatted off the map already?

Why hasn't that happened?