I don't have anything in detail to say about today's surprise Hamas attack on Israel. Except this: what are they thinking? Hamas has never won a war against Israel and never will. They must know this. They'll inflict some pain, get crushed, and Gaza will end up even worse off than before. None of this makes any sense at all.
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None of this makes any sense at all.
My first thought was Iran. That regime considers the Saudis and Israel to be two of its three most hated enemies, and they're talking. If you can provoke Israel into a muscular response ending in a large death toll of Palestinian Arabs, maybe the Saudis will have second thoughts.
Hamas buys into the plan both because they get millions annually from Tehran and because they, too, don't want to see a Saudi-Israel deal.
If Israel comes to that conclusion and decides to retaliate things could get really bad.
It makes no sense because it's basically impossible that Hamas, the most infiltrated organization on the planet, was able to coordinate a massive attack like this without Israeli and U.S. intelligence hearing a peep. Never mind that we can spot troop and missile movements from orbit, well before any large-scale attack can be launched.
This whole thing defies any believability. Not to get all conspiratorial, but what else could be going on here? Israeli intelligence inviting an attack to oust Netanyahu? Netanyahu inviting an attack to leverage war for his political purposes? I don't know, but anything is more believable than what we're being told now.
I think this is all a positive for Netanyahu. A war distracts from all his other problems, and unites the people behind him.
But eternal conflict helps leaders on both sides. There are a lot of unhappy Palestinian males age 16-25 who might make trouble for leadership unless they are also distracted.
It makes no sense because it's basically impossible that Hamas, the most infiltrated organization on the planet, was able to coordinate a massive attack like this without Israeli and U.S. intelligence hearing a peep.
The numerous instances of an attack occurring without its being picked up by the intelligence community would suggest this is very far indeed from "basically impossible."
Also, it may be that "a peep" (ie, chatter) was picked up but not yet fully analyzed/pieced together and acted upon.
Small attacks, sure. But a coordinated country-wide land/sea/air attack? Yeah, I dunno man... seems like that would have produced more than a few peeps.
Small attacks, sure. But a coordinated country-wide land/sea/air attack?
The attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan in 1941 wasn't a small attack. Nor was the 1973 attack by the Arab states on Israel. Nor Hitler's invasion of the USSR in 1941. Nor Israel's preemptive attack on the Arab states in 1967. Nor the Tet Offensive in 1968. Nor the 911 attacks. Nor the attack by PLA forces against UN armies in December, 1950. In all of these cases the attacked parties were caught off guard. I'm sure there have been others.
Again, military history is replete with examples of highly damaging, often quite wide scale attacks launched at parties who possessed robust intel resources that, in retrospect, weren't sufficiently effective.
I really don't see why the Hamas offensive is so hard to believe.
Outside of 9/11, which really was a handful of guys, I don't think you can compare intelligence gathering in the 1940's though the 70's with the kind of signals intelligence we have today. Never mind that Hamas is practically Mossad's entire focus.
You do realize there's tons of reporting available on this failure of Israeli intelligence, right? Here's an excerpt from an AP article:
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-intel-a5287a18773232f26ca171233be01721
There's tons of stuff like that available. And it drives home an essential truism about terrorism: the people guarding against it have to succeed every time. The terrorists only have to succeed once (the Israelis have foiled attacks we know of, and probably some we don't know about).
I'm going with Occam's razor on this one: sometimes intelligence agencies—even with their fancy, high tech tools—get it wrong. Even spectacularly so.
But you do you!
And what "political purposes" might those be? Bibi's coalition doesn't hide their hatred of the Palestinians still left on their land. A big all-out war could be the key to a "Final Solution" ... and get rid of any further "two countries" talk.
I guess you weren't paying attention to what was happening in Israel just before this attack... Bibi attempting an authoritarian takeover of the country, and a large swath of Israelis, including the military, not particularly thrilled about it. War has a way pushing everyone in the direction of authoritarians (assuming he avoids blame for the attack).
No, that, too. Things rarely have a single cause or rationale.
But what is an alternative? The status quo ante? To maintain Gaza as the world's largest concentration camp to infinity and beyond?
As Israel's actions and land appropriation on the West Bank show, official policy towards Palestinians appears to be "do it our way or else."
At some point things are going to blow up, since there is no Rosa Parks option.
Palestinians laughed that off decades ago.
This Land Is Mine. Animated by Nina Paley. Somewhat dark but appropriate for the day, I think:
https://youtu.be/8tIdCsMufIY?si=ZFS-bMWntkA9nmvY
It's hard to see how this could make things better for the Palestinians. However, it's hard to see how anything they could do would make things better for the Palestinians.
"None of this makes any sense at all."
Being oppressed by ruthless overlords does not promote rational thinking.
It illustrates the eagerness of the social conservative mind to make itself available to be used to create any kind of injury even when most of the injury is to your own people.
Like +10.
Somewhat feels like an attempt to divert US' attention away from Russia's war with Ukraine.
As has been noted by some, Hamas' senior leadership has been to Moscow several times this year.
When you treat people like crap they get angry and act out. The Palestinians got pushed off property they'd owned for hundreds of years and have been living under Apartheid for generations. Guess what? People are mad.
And "GUESS WHAT": there is no plausible response to this that does not involve the reduction of Gaza to a smoking ruin. So go ahead and shrug "people are mad"
Oh, that's exactly what Israel will do eventually. Life isn't worth much in Gaza.
So if I understand you correctly, because Hamas killed 250 Israelis today, Israel should kill 2 million Gazans, including women and children?
Is that really your point?
I am not advocating anything. I am simply observing what will happen. There is no Israeli politician or military leader anywhere who could at this point advocate anything but the total elimination of Hamas. And they are dug in like at tic in Gaza. So ... FAFO
Jews have been there for thousands of years.
Native Americans have been all over North America for thousands of years too, but absolutely nobody would support their claims today based on that historical fact that they should get an independent country carved out of the existing US or Canada. You know, like the Jews got when creating Israel and displacing the people already living there.
Property ownership is real and almost always the current owners get to stay where they are and exclude whomever they want from their land, no matter who used to live somewhere and whether they were involuntarily pushed off that land or not. For some reason though, Palestinians were not afforded that same right to property ownership post WWII, and it’s no surprise that they’re pissed. If modern day New Yorkers or Alabamians were pushed off their land to restore property rights to Native Americans today, they’d be pissed and violent too, especially if given no compensation.
Jerusalem, the city of God, was not anywhere near Native Americans. Totally different situation. Jerusalem has been holy for thousands of years.
Please leave religion out of this. A faulty, inconsistent, poorly written bunch of politically cherry picked (at Nicea, for instance) fables does not confer ownership of a piece of land for all time. The jews were largely gone - repeat: gone - from Palestine for 2000 years and the right of ownership long ago passed to the people who actually did live there.
You may want to do some more research before you make gross simplifications.
Do you know that Israel withdrew from Gaza years ago, and left it to the Gazans? Do you know their response?
Do you know that during partition in 1948, Israel accepted the agreement, but Arab states attacked immediately?
Do you know that after the Six Day War, Israel wanted to negotiate, but the Arab states flatly refused to even talk?
Do you think that under Apartheid, the oppressed minority has members of Parliament, and the president of the largest bank is a member of that minority?
I am not saying it is simple, and Israel is right. I am disgusted by many things Israel has done and is doing.
But Israel did not unilaterally attack civilians on a large scale with no hope of any benefit.
On the other hand, an Israeli military sniper sure did shoot Shireen Abu Akleh in the back of the head in broad daylight even though the word PRESS was written all over her flak jacket.
Gaza should have been evacuated decades ago, the residents transported to wherever they wanted to go, given solid financial support for two years (or more), and compensation for assets left behind.
Forced movement of people is decried and prohibited, but sometimes there is a situation that will never be stable, and forced displacement should be considered. Gaza is small (12 sq mi) , overpopulated (16k/sq mi - double the City of London), with minimal economic assets or advantageous geographical location, and is isolated from cultural counterparts.
Gaza is an exclave of the State of Palestine, which is hostile to the State of Israel - the primary bounding country of Gaza. There are strong cultural and racial animosities between the two.
Just like after World War I (imperfectly) and World War Two, forced displacement took place. Sometimes people weren't physically moved, but instead, politically moved (borders were re-drawn). The primary reason was the experience of multiple exclaves and the frictions they spurred*, repeatedly leading to wars. Gaza might be similar in that regard.
* often exploited by an imperial power looking to expand
"Gaza should have been evacuated decades ago, the residents transported to wherever they wanted to go, given solid financial support for two years (or more), and compensation for assets left behind."
I, too, had this thought, and since I live in a university town with a large number of people from the Middle East, I repeatedly asked them why this wasn't a solution.
They all said the same thing. No one wants the Palestinians living in their country.
Not Israel, not Iran, not the Saudis.
Some people said this in much stronger and more elaborate terms than I used here.
Now I'm wondering why they all said that. I mean, everyone I spoke to said the same thing.
I don’t think the plan put in place to avoid another genocide was to have another genocide, and yes that’s what you are suggesting: the extermination of the Gaza people and their historical enclave. Maybe we can do Haiti next and perhaps terminate the Indian reservations? Gaza is a singular entity and deserves to be its own country.
I think you’re conflating Gaza City with the larger Gaza Strip which has an area of 140 sq miles, and yes the strip as whole has a pop density of 16k/sq mi but Gaza city where most everyone lives has a density of 34k/sq mi. There’s actually quite a bit of empty space in Gaza which is one of the challenges in preventing incursions.
The only place the residents of Gaza want to go is what is now Israel. I don't think Isrealis want them to be relocated there. Any Palestinian who wnted to leave the area has, years ago. Remember they haven't been compensated for what was taken from them when they were forced into Gaza in the first place so I don't think whey would trust any relocation proposal now.
I don't think we can see this outside the context of Russia's great game.
Is it a coincidence that Serbia all of a sudden decides to menace Kosovo, beginning with a terrorist incursion?
(Also, the trick of overwhelming a defense strategy was the same way they brought down a stealth bomber in the Balkan War, where they just fired blindly into an area where they knew the plane had to be).
I can’t help but think about the 2005 movie, Paradise Now, which described how one could evolve into a terrorist bomber. No it’s not at all rational, but the response of a group that feels they have no other way to respond.
One theory is that the attack, or at least Iran's support of it, was launched as an effort to disrupt the pending deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Nothing in that part of the world will make any sense until the Palestinians give up their delusion that the Israelis are going to disappear, and the Israelis give up their delusion that the Palestinians are going to disappear. Neither side has a grip on reality.
I wish that I could give this a million "up votes"
The whole "historical claim" to anything is utterly delusional; anybody can pick some different freeze frame to justify their claim, and there are many dozens of such freeze frames over the past couple millennia that result in very different views. The only resolution must involve the current realities. (and I'm not suggesting that there is any realistic possibility of that; just observing)
Let that be your last battlefield.
The Blackwhites must be exterminated if we want to be safe and live in peace. Oh yeah.
As others have said, Hamas's (and Iran's) goal here is most likely to provoke Israel into a retaliatory response so bloody-minded that the Saudis are forced to abandon any thought of normalizing relations with Israel.
Of course this is only a "win" if you don't care about the loss of Palestinian life and the increased immiseration & oppression of the Palestinian people, that will be the direct result. But I think we can stipulate that such concerns carry virtually no weight with either the Iranian regime or the leadership of Hamas.
So the Palestinians attack on Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah.
Already the Israelis have retaliated.
What I suspect is that the answer to "why" will involve some event or decision that isn't very widely known or credited, and certainly not by the western public. This is a freakishly complicated situation and many of the people and groups involved have very different frames of reference than our basically short-term pragmatic understanding of the world.
What's most clear right now, I think, is how completely flat-footed and unaware these attacks caught the Israelis. At the very least that has to mean there are communications channels in Gaza and among Hamas that they have absolutely no access to, something they were sure could never happen. And that in turn could mean their retaliation, no matter how intense and far-reaching, will be less effective than it should be, and will almost certainly be less effective than they'll want. And this failure should be a warning to other countries about the comprehensiveness of their own intel.
I'm wondering if some of the operational details of the Iron Dome defense system could have found their way into the Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
One might just as well ask why the Irish in the nineteenth century didn't simply accept that they were now part of the United Kingdom. Or why the Algerians didn't reconcile themselves to living in French departments. Or why Tibetans refuse to accept that they are really part of China. Resistance to colonisation regardless of the price in blood seems to be a powerful human characteristic.
While that's true, how is this helping to change that?
I didn't suggest it was.
It's nothing like that at all, the Palestinians have never been an independent country, they've never had a national identity, they're a criminal organization with a captive population they can use as a gimmick.
Just about everyone in the world who's tried to find a solution to the conflict has favored some kind of independent Palestinian state. Expecting the Palestinians to accept Israeli intransigence without resistance is wholly unrealistic.
Every circumstance that would lead them closer to their own state finds the Palestinians forcing some excuse to avoid doing it, and they've found their perfect foil in social conservative Israelis.
The main impediment, other than themselves, is they could never have a state in two discontiguous parts and no one will volunteer any territory the West Bank could move into or that Gaza could move into.
And even if that did happen what would it be? You'd have an internationally recognized Palestinian crime state, like the best of North Korea, Russia and the Lebanese civil war all at once.
“The main impediment, other than themselves, is they could never have a state in two discontiguous parts…”
Lots of countries, including the US and Russia, have a state in two or more discontinuous parts. It’s not inherently impossible to do so. The Palestinians just don’t want to do so but that’s different from saying they couldn’t do so.
Anyone with any actual knowledge of Palestinians and the history of the area would know better. While there wasn't a country called "Palestine", that doesn't change the fact that the people who lived there were (part of) a nation and that they were (part of) an independent country in their own right.
Israeli occupation has taken that away.
That's completely wrong.
They were part of the Ottoman Empire, citizens of the empire and where they lived in it was as incidental as if you lived in Ohio or Oregon. The entire history of the Arab population of Palestine was as a part of an external empire.
Go ahead and tell someone from upstate New York that they are being forcefully moved to Mississippi with no compensation. They won't care: they're still in the same empire, right?
No one asked them to start a war then flee in panic.
I suspect Hamas had three reasons: 1) They really hate Israel and want to kill Israelis. 2) A lot of Hamas' legitimacy and reason for being accepted by the Gazans as their rulers rests on the concept that they are the only Palestinians who actually fight the Israelis. and 3) They need to do something to shake up the status quo. Nothing positive is happening for Hamas or Gazans or Palestinians these days. Recall that it was 50 years ago that Egypt launched an unwinnable war against Israel, and while they did lose it, they ended shaking things up, which eventually lead to the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai.
Say what! !?!? Kevin, practically everyone knows that Israel is slow-wlaking the destruction of Palestine. And their doing this walk as fast as they can but slow enough to ensure their 'allies' don't squawk too loudly. This was the intent from the beginning; Israel was never going to agree to any and every two-state solution from the git-go.
Duh.
Sorry, what does that have to do with today's events, and Kevin's comments?
Sorry, would you please acknowledge that my precise of the situation is both complete and correct? [1] I don't see how we can proceed without your explicit statement that this is the case.
Neither one of us want to be tainted with accusations of bad faith rhetorical dishonety, amirite?
[1] For all you 'Doc' Smith fans out there.
Like +25! Moreover, this "provocation" by Hamas will be taken by the current Israeli government as entitlement to commit genocide. Considerably faster than they've been doing up until now.
I see most people here blaming Israeli oppression of Palestinians as the underlying cause of everything. This is a factor of course in all problems there. However, Palestinians had started a project in democracy, free speech, etc. – but then it failed almost completely once the voters picked Hamas to lead them. After that, elections stopped. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority hung on to power in the West Bank, and Hamas took over Gaza in 2007. Hamas rules Gaza as their personal, authoritarian fiefdom. There is no transparency in government, including in the decision-making for initiating military attacks or a war. There are no checks and balances – the Hamas overlords do attacks when they feel like it.
When the Palestinian Authority held elections, there was a real possibility of a basic democracy taking hold, along with the political freedoms and rights that go with that. There was hope for a brighter future. If democracy had survived, the level of respect toward Palestinians and their government would have been altered greatly for the better worldwide.
A return to democracy in West Bank/Gaza is still the path for one day achieving a two-state solution. Without a democracy – with the transparency, freedom, rights, and check and balances this brings – why would Israel ever agree to a two-state solution? Do a deal with Hamas in Gaza to give them their own country? Give me a break. But if Gaza and the West Bank together were governed by the Palestinian Authority, and their representatives were fairly elected, the moral authority for the Palestinian government, and Palestinians as a people, would be improved dramatically. There would be far more international pressure on Israel to seriously work on a two-state solution. And Israelis themselves would be far more interested too.
You may say that democracy in the West Bank and Gaza is impossible due to Israeli oppression. Okay, then that means there is simply no path to a two-state solution ever. By default, Israel wins. They gradually take more territory and move in more settlers. Game over.
How many functioning Arab democracies are there? There are like 16 Arab countries and the closest that they have is Iraq. We all can speculate about the reasons for that... but my bet is against real democracy emerging in Gaza or the West Bank anytime soon.
Yes, I see your point. Perhaps a joint PA / UN-managed government might work until decent a government takes root, corrupt controls are in place, and so on. But dreaming up solutions does seem pretty far-fetched. In the end I suppose Palestinians themselves must demand democratic governance. Whether they grasp the necessity of this, I don't know.
"Hamas has never won a war against Israel and never will. They must know this. They'll inflict some pain, get crushed, and Gaza will end up even worse off than before. None of this makes any sense at all."
As KenLovell's reply succinctly indictates, when a people are confronted with destruction, futile acts can make perfect sense even if they have no chance of saving them or improving their lot. There are many examples of people rising up despite the certainty that they will be crushed.
Native Americans during the latter part of the 19th century, after Americans had largely destroyed their way of life as part of a concerted attempt to reduce their numbers and suppress their culture, rose up on occasion even though it was obvious that they had no chance. Bad as the outcome was, they had little or no hope that their fate would be better by not resisting.
People resist being destroyed and some will inevitably choose resistance, however futile, and certain death rather than submit to their oppressors, especially when, as in this conflict, Palestinians have no realistic hope of escape from their misery. Israel will likely succeed in its long, relentless quest to dispossess the Palestinians, especially since its efforts to do so are effectively backed by the U.S. and many European governments. But it is far from historically unprecedented that some of those Palestinians choose death and the opportunity to inflict pain on those seeking to destroy them.
This, along with Ken Lovell.
Yes - Hamas stands no chance of winning and millions will be made worse off. But it’s not like the status quo wasn’t also leading to… millions being made worse off year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation. Eventually the status quo was bound to collapse.
Israel needs to level Gaza and be done with these terrorists.
Maybe you should move there and see what it's like.
Issreal? I couldn’t imagine living in a small area surrounded by counties that want to annihilate you.
As mentioned above, are you advocating the killing of 2 million Gazans, including women and children, because 250 Israelis died today?
No. Israel would lose its current sympathy. But I would love to see them destroy anything closely related to Hamas. Always a tragedy when civilians are killed but the world will understand Hamas brought it upon themselves. How much restraint can we expect Israel to have?
Right. It’s totally easy to destroy anything related to a terrorist group without destroying everything related to bystanders around them. And doing so never creates more terrorists - bystanders don’t mind losing all their possessions or family members when a missile misses its target. Easy peasy. Trump/Atticus 2024!
Austin/Hamas 2024!
Co-dependence of the warmongers.
Works better when jingoistic leaders have the discipline to do just enough saber-rattling to stay in power, even have some proxy wars, but not so much as to destabilize the whole system.
I find it hella depressing too, because poisoning any real chances for peace seems a winning strategy for the Israeli right and Hamas each to stay in power.
Did the Warsaw Ghetto uprising make sense?
An appropriate response is to call on Congress to end all military and economic 'aid' to Israel.