I think you fundamentally misunderstand the strategy of terrorists. They are looking to provoke a violent overreaction in order to radicalize the populace. It is a response to our ability to blow them up, and not one we have developed an antidote for.
Sure, but those rich elites themselves like to live well and somehow it turns out they when it comes to their own they really don't like to die or see their big prosperous families die. You can't rule radicalized impoverished populations if you yourself are dead. Letting them see that their target can retaliate in this way is not cheap.
Given current events, I don't understand how you can hold this view? We've recently seen a truly horrifying terrorist attack, and the response was as brutal as you would expect. Surely the people who planned and executed it knew that better than we do, since presumably it's their business to know such things.
Surely that's a constructive proof that this notion is mistaken?
> We've recently seen a truly horrifying terrorist attack, and the response was as brutal as you would expect.
Indeed. And the reason why such an attack happened is because the people who did the attack were the ruling government body of 2 million people for almost 2 decades, and were left to their own devices to build up a large scale attack, involving 1 thousand+ combatants.
And in a few months, those combatants and military infrastructure will be destroyed and not much of a threat.
It turns out that killing your enemies leaves them no longer able to attack you. And leaving them alone and in charge of a psuedo country, lets them built up the capacity to harm you.
Uhm, no, they are not the "ruling body," I think you should revisit the fundamental facts of the situation and reevaluate your perspective.
To be frank your comment has a really disturbing undertone of bloodlust. I don't know a nice way to say that. You should really reexamine what your attitudes are here and how you came to them, this is not an appropriate way to discuss the deaths of thousands of people.
> Uhm, no, they are not the "ruling body," I think you should revisit the fundamental facts of the situation and reevaluate your perspective.
After Israel voluntarily withdrew its military and displaced all Jews out of Gaza, Hamas painted it as "powerful Hamas won" to get elected and since then is in fact the ruling party in Gaza territory (even if not very popular among the citizens there anymore for obvious reasons). What are the alternative facts?
They're a fig leaf and asset [1] for those who use them as an excuse for collective punishment and genocide. With predictable and predicted [2] results.
That's great. The claim was "the reason why such an attack happened is because the people who did the attack were the ruling government body of 2 million people for almost 2 decades". And that's transparent nonsense in service of the colonialists committing genocide right now. Do you disagree?
My claim was that Hamas is the ruling body in Gaza, which is a simple fact. It responded to a comment saying that Hamas was not the ruling body in Gaza. That comment was false. Your political advocacy isn't relevant to what I'm saying.
Bazelel Smotrich is a fringe right-wing character, reviled by a significant fraction of Israelis and even more so by Jewish people in the US. Along with Itamar Ben-Gvir, he found his way into Netanyahu's cabinet after Netanyahu lost support from a significant chunk of conservative Israelis in the wake of legal scandals, which included a recently-repudiated attempt to disempower Israeli courts in an effort that was in part designed to keep him out of prison owing to an unusually strong corruption case against him. Netanyahu clung to power by building a coalition of lunatics like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.
The US State Department just today issued a statement saying that the Israeli government, and Netanyahu himself, have repeatedly reassured the US that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir aren't speaking for Israel.
Neither Smotrich nor Ben-Gvir were in power in 2005 (Smotrich might still have been in school), when Sharon disengaged from Gaza, and dispossessed Israeli Gazan settlers. Nor were they in power in years where Netanyahu was recorded saying Hamas was his preferred partner in Palestine. Put simply: Smotrich isn't the reason Hamas rules Gaza.
Regardless: Hamas took power in Gaza in 2006, in a combination of coercive force and a public election. It has not allowed elections since then. Until recently, Hamas was the dominant security force in Gaza, and the governing authority.
I appreciate your context but not really sure what it adds. I know who all the players are and I know how many left-leaning Americans and secular Jews feel about religious people, I think you are presenting a very one sided view of things, but that's not really relevant. I was interested in what johnnyworker was really trying to say, as it's not really coherent at the moment.
My interpretation of their subtext: that you may believe Gaza is/was ruled by Hamas, but it doesn't count, because Netanyahu's governing coalition found Hamas preferable to the PA, to the point where they arranged some amount of funding for Hamas. Thus, in reality, the governing authority of Gaza was Israel.
(I do not buy into this narrative).
I'm only adding this because you said you didn't know what I was trying to add before. It's totally reasonable to want 'johnnyworker to just tell you in their own words what they're trying to say.
How is that not civil? And if someone says "it seems you're excusing killing Jews", I actually do have to respond to that. You see problem with one and not the other, that's noted.
Can you please stop haranguing people like this? If your arguments are as strong as you clearly feel they are (for instance: you have responded to people challenging them by simply repeating them verbatim), you should be able to make them without this kind of incivility.
A casual survey of the site suggests that, if one is forced to distill the conflict down to two simple sides, "Israel" and "Palestine", the side you fall in enjoys majority support among commenters on HN. You do that side no favors by writing so shrilly about it.
If you're going to call out this person multiple times, will you acknowledge that the other commenters are also haranguing them? They were responding here to a comment deliberately twisting their words. They were responding elsewhere to a comment that accused them of supporting murder. You even replied to that one, without identifying it as "uncivil."
I agree this conversation has gone off the rails, but you're putting it all on one person quite unfairly.
If you're unwilling to call people out in an even handed way, I think it's better to just send the link to dang and let him do it. Otherwise it creates the appearance of abusing civility to silence just one particular party when everyone is throwing mud. (I don't think that's your intention, to be clear. Just that it creates the appearance.)
This is a fascinating take: what do you suggest the proper response would be to the current event you referenced in light of your opinion that any response will only radicalize the local population?
First let me say, I'm not trying to make a policy prescription. I'm pointing out what I thought was a misconception about how terrorism works.
But to answer your question, I have absolutely no idea. I follow a military news YouTuber named Ryan McBeth, and something he says that makes sense to me is that effective strategies present adversaries with dilemmas rather than problems, where each option is terrible but you have no choice but to pick one. The reason terrorism is effective, to the extent that it is effective, is that no one has discovered an effective means to counter it.
When I initially engaged with you in this conversation I did so because you appeared to be discussing things honestly but based on other comments you've made here its clear you are in fact trying to push an agenda that denies reality and instead excuses murder.
You forcefully made a claim that was totally false that essentially firmly excused murder. I see you finally kinda corrected in it a follow up, but of course the follow up will not get nearly as much attention as the very false initial statement.
I think you should take a step back and engage differently. You say you're here to engage in good faith, but you're interpreting people's statements with very little charity. It seems like you're very quick to jump to the conclusion that someone who says something you don't like is a supporter of mass murder, you've accused two people in this thread. Which is both uncharitable and straight up flamebait.
Remember, Hamas was openly throwing rockets at Israel and probing its defenses for years. (From outside it may sound unreal but for many years even in fancy glittering Tel Aviv people are really familiar with air defense sirens and sitting in air defense shelters because they do it a few times a year.) You can't say that about US.
So two things how I hold this view.
First in all those years Hamas didn't manage to make a dent in Israel. Which makes me really think even Hamas leaders didn't expect this attack to go this far. But it so happened Israel was unprepared with its military all busy defending illegal Jewish settlements on the West bank. Maybe they got complacent. Or a conspiracist might say Netanyahu set it all up (but I doubt it). Whatever it was, Hamas did way more damage than anyone expected so things got out of hand
And second in all these years of throwing rockets, smuggling weapons and all the stuff they were getting away with they got no serious retaliation. Paradoxically because Israel's defenses were so good. So maybe Hamas also got a bit complacent and thought they are immune camping there under civilian hospitals and schools.
