Israel/Hamas War Superthread

[masonbengals fan]

My reluctance comes from not wanting to get into a war of words/opinions on a subject that self admittedly I know only what I have read & see every day on the TV. Obviously a long and hard history with no simple solutions. This thread is at 33 pages and still no solid real answers but mostly just back & forth bickering between regular posters. I have little interest in that. Although I fall victim (My own fault) to the back and forth myself at times.

My post about Biden being wrong all the time may have been my 1st post in this thread. Without looking I believe that it is.

The truth is I believe Joe is just an empty jar at this point who will do & say anything to stay in power. A self-serving, rudderless ship who thinks he's FDR captained by I don't know who & backed up by Kamala waiting in the wings for her turn. That VP decision alone would prohibit me from ever casting a vote for him.

Wow... I'll bow out now. Don't want to hijack this thread any longer. Have a good day.

[GMDino]

He says “You are shredding the UN Charter with your own hands” as he shreds the UN charter with his own hands

— Walid Freiha (@walidfreiha) May 11, 2024

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[Dill]

(05-11-2024, 12:24 PM)masonbengals fan Wrote: My reluctance comes from not wanting to get into a war of words/opinions on a subject that self admittedly I know only what I have read & see every day on the TV. Obviously a long and hard history with no simple solutions. This thread is at 33 pages and still no solid real answers but mostly just back & forth bickering between regular posters. I have little interest in that. Although I fall victim (My own fault) to the back and forth myself at times.

I have a bit more positive view of what is going on here and hope you'll continue to at least follow.

People can learn a lot through "back and forth"--provided discussants avoid personal attacks, respect evidence and logical consistency,
and view discussion as  a means of exploration. Even if some don't do that, enough do to make following discussion worth while.
So discussion open to cross-examination is a way of "testing" one's own knowledge and advancing it. That's important to me.

I learn far more about random voters' actual attitudes and knowledge from sites like this than I can get from opinion polls.

Also people post links to stuff I'd never have found on my own. So I see a lot of value here, a good supplement to other sources.

[masonbengals fan]

I've followed for 33 pages. No sense quitting now.

[masonbengals fan]

"The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers," reports the Washington Post.

Why would we be holding back information that would help pinpoint the locations of Hamas leaders and tunnels ?

How does this make sense ?

[Belsnickel]

(05-13-2024, 07:38 AM)masonbengals fan Wrote: "The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers," reports the Washington Post.

Why would we be holding back information that would help pinpoint the locations of Hamas leaders and tunnels ?

How does this make sense ?

Some of the most likely reasons are that disclosing the information could expose assets we have in place and do not want to risk them being outed. Or potentially there has been a risk analysis done that the US feels acting on the information would be more harmful if Israel acts on it, but now with the potential for higher civilian casualties if Rafah is invaded it changes that calculus.

Obviously, these are just suppositions based on my general knowledge of policy analysis in the intelligence community. There are any number of reasons that we withhold information like this from allies, including to use it as leverage in situations such as these. Information is currency among nations.

[GMDino]

(05-13-2024, 07:38 AM)masonbengals fan Wrote: "The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers," reports the Washington Post.

Why would we be holding back information that would help pinpoint the locations of Hamas leaders and tunnels ?

How does this make sense ?

Link with context:

https://www.jns.org/report-us-offers-israel-sensitive-intelligence-on-hamas-to-avoid-rafah-op/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20Biden%20administration%2C%20working%20urgently,tunnels%2C%20according%20to%20four%20people

Quote:(May 12, 2024 / JNS)

The Biden administration will share key intelligence with Israel about the whereabouts of Hamas’s leadership in Gaza if Israel agrees not to go ahead with its military operation in Rafah, according to The Washington Post.


“The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers,” said the report.


The United States is seeking to delay the operation, concerned that Israel is not doing enough to ensure the safety of the over one million Gazans sheltered in Rafah should a full-scale invasion move forward, according to the sources cited by the Washington Post.


In addition to intelligence, American officials have also offered to help provide Israel with assistance for Rafah evacuees, including “thousands of shelters so Israel can build tent cities—and to help with the construction of delivery systems for food, water and medicine,” the sources said.


Israel’s military has already evacuated hundreds of thousands of people from eastern Rafah to an expanded humanitarian zone at Al-Mawasi as part of a limited operation in the city that began on May 6. As part of the operation’s initial stage, Israeli forces took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah Crossing between the Strip and Egypt.


IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Saturday night that dozens of terrorists have been killed, underground tunnels uncovered and weapons confiscated during the operation so far, stressing that the activities there “remain limited in scope and focus on tactical advances; tactical adjustments; and military advantages—and have avoided densely populated areas.”


The Rafah operation, which Israel estimates will last around two months, is being carried out in phases as opposed to a sudden, full scale invasion, according to Israel’s Channel 12.


The phased nature of the operation allows for it to be paused should a hostage release deal be reached between Israel and Hamas, according to the report.


The Biden administration last week announced the halt of offensive arms shipments to Israel over the looming operation in Gaza’s southernmost city.


In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden said, “If they [the IDF] go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities—that deal with that problem.” 


He went on to state that his administration wasn’t walking away from Israel’s security and would “continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently,” such as Iran’s April 14 ballistic missile and drone attack.  


However, with regard to offensive armaments of the type that would likely be used in Rafah, “it’s just wrong,” he continued. “We’re not going to—we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells,” he said.

The announcement led to widespread backlash both in Israel and the United States.


“This may give them encouragement, the enemies of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel,” said Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan.


“If Israel is restricted from entering such an important and central area such as Rafah, where thousands of terrorists, hostages and the leaders of Hamas are still present, how exactly is the goal of destroying Hamas supposed to be achieved?” he continued.


According to Israel, defeating Hamas’s remaining four battalions in Rafah are essential to winning the war and securing the return of the hostages still being held by the terrorist group.


Rep. Ritchie Torres tweeted, “As the leader of the free world, America cannot claim that its commitment to Israel is ‘iron-clad’ and then proceed to withhold aid from Israel. The mixed messaging makes a mockery of our credibility as an ally. No one will take our word seriously.”


Biden’s CNN announcement came a few days after Israel was blind-sided by Hamas’s public “acceptance” of a ceasefire deal the Jewish state had not even seen.


According to Axios, Israeli officials were reportedly surprised to see “many new elements” in the deal, that were not contained in the previous proposal to which Israel had agreed and which had been presented to Hamas by the American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators 10 days earlier.


The U.S. and the other mediators had drafted “a new deal” and were not transparent about it, two Israeli officials told Axios. The officials went on to state that they suspect the Biden administration gave Hamas guarantees via the Egyptians and Qataris about ending the war, which the terror group demands but which Jerusalem says is a nonstarter until Hamas is defeated, the hostages are released and Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.



[color=var(--color-black2)]Just before you scroll on...
Israel is at war.
JNS is combating the stream of misinformation on Israel with real, honest and factual reporting. In order to deliver this in-depth, unbiased coverage of Israel and the Jewish world, we rely on readers like you.
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Israel will agree to nothing until the fictional end of Hamas.

They have no way of knowing when they have "completely destroyed Hamas" but they will continue their "Self defense" until they are satisfied.

I believe the US sees this as impossible as most people would and wants to avoid more civilian deaths and whatever Israels decides it "has to do" next to reach their impossible exit strategy. 

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(05-09-2024, 05:42 PM)Dill Wrote: Kudos for a great thought experiment, which I'd like to explore,
including the question of whether that is the right question, 

and how "end this conflict" is  to be defined--no more violence, a general peace with a few disrupters on each side,
a reduction of violence over time (a decade, two decades?) to almost none?

I'd say the general peace option.

Quote:It forces me to look at all sides from a different angle. 

Do I FORCE people to move first, or to sit at the table together first? 

Remember, we're taking godlike power here.  you blink and they're wherever you want them to be.  If you want to convince them first then go ahead, take as much time as you need.  But remember, all the while the current situation continues.

Quote: Give me a day or so to work something up.

In the interim: How long does my authority last? The answer to that will determine a lot.

You can redraw the map, essentially create a nation if you choose,  Establish a border and move populations as you will.  You cannot change hearts and minds.  Essentially, you have the ability to magically create the  "two state solution" that so many claim to have wanted for decades.  Once this is done you're done.  You won't be able to stop people from immediately fighting each other again.

Quote:And if I can "move people freely without violence"--that means my authority is such they won't fight back?
If this is like magic, people's minds are blanked and then suddenly they wake up in a new place, like
Israel West Bank settlers suddenly Scotty-beamed into new homes in Tel Aviv, then I foresee an impossible test.

No, to the first.  No to the second. and yes to the third.  I think you're already onto the ultimate ending, and point, of this thought experiment with your last sentence, but again I am intrigued to read to answer.

[Dill]

(05-13-2024, 01:43 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I'd say the general peace option.

Remember, we're taking godlike power here.  you blink and they're wherever you want them to be.  If you want to convince them first then go ahead, take as much time as you need.  But remember, all the while the current situation continues.

You can redraw the map, essentially create a nation if you choose,  Establish a border and move populations as you will.  You cannot change hearts and minds.  Essentially, you have the ability to magically create the  "two state solution" that so many claim to have wanted for decades.  Once this is done you're done.  You won't be able to stop people from immediately fighting each other again.

No, to the first.  No to the second. and yes to the third.  I think you're already onto the ultimate ending, and point, of this thought experiment with your last sentence, but again I am intrigued to read to answer.

I've been pecking away at this for several days. First I reviewed the causes ('47,'67), the history since then, and somewhat Oslo II and current balance of political forces in the Israeli gov. and the PA. Not sure yet where I should be concentrating my energy; probably with the latter two subjects. And I've been looking at maps of current administrative districts in what was the former Mandate. 

One thing that stood out to me through all this is the power imbalance. That always been a problem 

Moving people around is not going to do much if the moment I turn in my God card, Israel just does what it wants (e.g., returns to its West Bank settlements.). If I can't stop people from fighting by simply redrawing borders, maybe I should be looking elsewhere for a solution. 

That's got me to thinking about some power diplomacy. 

I'm committing to a two-state solution, for the moment, since that rests on concessions Palestinians have already given and an administrative structure already partially in place--the PA.  But if that is to work, other states and the UN really need a prominent role here. (If a better option appears while exploring this one, I'll consider that one. As recently 2014 I backed a one-state solution.)

The players I want: 1) Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and possibly Iraq as an Arab block both prepared to back Palestinian interests and as a resource for invasive monitoring of PA activities in the West Bank and Gaza. These are needed for multiple reasons--Qatar communicates best with Hamas, Jordan has the most respect from Western partners and Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are regional military and economic powers. Iraqi buy-in would help stabilize the region (and perhaps Iraq too). 

2) The US, Britain, France as a balancing force.  3) the UN and EU as "moderators."  

Any serious solution is likely to curtail Israeli power and control over the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has never accepted that. And the US has never accepted a solution that Israel doesn't want. But if the US et al. side with Israel on this then nothing changes.

I think the previous two-state proposals would have worked if Israel had not a very kinetic veto power over anything the PA did, controlling the borders, economies and physical movement of everyone in the occupied territories, while the PA has no such leverage over Israel. If Israel agrees to curtail settlements but just continues expanding them, there is not a thing the PA can do. If armed PA police impinge, or are perceived to impinge, upon Area C, they can be immediately and violently ejected.

So at the moment, the goal or "solution" will turn on getting Israel to agree to a two-state solution which means actual sovereignty for Palestinians, and violation of agreements would mean consequences with teeth. I think that means, among other things, the US, especially, must be ready to withhold aid and to take UN resolutions seriously. 

The question is, then--what would it take to get the US to make such a stand, and to get Israel to the table for serious negotiation.  Passing over the problem of convincing the US for a moment, I think that means working out an agreement that a majority of Israelis could accept without an appearance of coercion.  Probably not possible, but that is what I am thinking about. They always complain about "security," and that is an authentic concern for many, but there is also now a large block of voters who will use security to block the two-state solution and continue the gradual settlement of the West Bank, and on, eventually to Eretz Israel.

The other side of this is the PA, which cannot inspire confidence in ANY of the players in its current shape. The PLO and FATAH need to step up, and that means a change in leadership, probably via coercion that doesn't appear as such, but which can come with verbal support from the US, material support from a UN perhaps coordinating with the other Arab regional powers to rebuild Gaza. Hamas cannot be a part of the solution now; and is a problem for everyone; but if people recognize how Israeli violence strengthens it (as many Israelis now do), and that it cannot be simply exterminated, then that lends some direction towards a solution--undermine it with a Palestinian politics that doesn't make the PA an arm of Israeli security covering the advance of settlements, but a genuinely sovereign state capable of ensuring Palestinian self determination. 

What shape should be proposed for the two-state solution on the ground? Still thinking about that. Settlements and security have traditionally bedeviled all map-drawing here. I think Israel should give them up, or maybe half of them it something else in way of land is conceded the Palestinian state. Trading sections of the Negev has been proposed before. You can see this is all still rather amorphous, but I think am understanding the problem better reviewing it like this. Also wondering how to reduce it to a few elegant proposals eventually. Back to the drawing table. . . . 

[Dill]

Interesting bit of investigative reporting from the NYT. It's a longer read, in three parts. I've quoted a bit from each to give people a flavor of the whole. People who want to deepen their background knowledge of the current Gaza should find it worthwhile to read the whole article.

Also, there is a lesson here for people interested in holding on to US democracy as well--HOLD PUBLIC OFFICIALS ACCOUNTABLE TO RULE of LAW. 

The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel
After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html
By Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti  May 16, 2024

This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.

PART I. IMPUNITY  

By the end of October, it was clear that no one was going to help the villagers of Khirbet Zanuta. A tiny Palestinian community, some 150 people perched on a windswept hill in the West Bank near Hebron, it had long faced threats from the Jewish settlers who had steadily encircled it. But occasional harassment and vandalism, in the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, escalated into beatings and murder threats. The villagers made appeal after appeal to the Israeli police and to the ever-present Israeli military, but their calls for protection went largely unheeded, and the attacks continued with no consequences. So one day the villagers packed what they could, loaded their families into trucks and disappeared.

Who bulldozed the village after that is a matter of dispute. The Israeli Army says it was the settlers; a senior Israeli police officer says it was the army. Either way, soon after the villagers left, little remained of Khirbet Zanuta besides the ruins of a clinic and an elementary school. One wall of the clinic, leaning sideways, bore a sign saying that it had been funded by an agency of the European Union providing “humanitarian support for Palestinians at risk of forcible transfer in the West Bank.” Near the school, someone had planted the flag of Israel as another kind of announcement: This is Jewish land now.

Such violence over the decades in places like Khirbet Zanuta is well documented. But protecting the people who carry out that violence is the dark secret of Israeli justice. The long arc of harassment, assault and murder of Palestinians by Jewish settlers is twinned with a shadow history, one of silence, avoidance and abetment by Israeli officials. For many of those officials, it is Palestinian terrorism that most threatens Israel. But in interviews with more than 100 people — current and former officers of the Israeli military, the National Israeli Police and the Shin Bet domestic security service; high-ranking Israeli political officials, including four former prime ministers; Palestinian leaders and activists; Israeli human rights lawyers; American officials charged with supporting the Israeli-Palestinian partnership — we found a different and perhaps even more destabilizing threat. A long history of crime without punishment, many of those officials now say, threatens not only Palestinians living in the occupied territories but also the State of Israel itself....

PART II. WARNINGS

“You have to understand why all this is important now,” Ami Ayalon said, leaning in for emphasis. The sun shining into the backyard of the former Shin Bet director was gleaming off his bald scalp, illuminating a face that looked as if it were sculpted by a dull kitchen knife. “We are not discussing Jewish terrorism. We are discussing the failure of Israel.”

Ayalon was protective of his former service, insisting that Shin Bet, despite some failures, usually has the intelligence and resources to deter and prosecute right-wing terrorism in Israel. And, he said, they usually have the will. “The question is why they are not doing anything about it,” he said. “And the answer is very simple. They cannot confront our courts. And the legal community finds it almost impossible to face the political community, which is supported by the street. So everything starts with the street.”

By the early 1980s, the settler movement had begun to gain some traction within the Knesset, but it remained far from the mainstream. When Kahane himself was elected to the Knesset in 1984, the members of the other parties, including Likud, would turn and leave the room when he stood up to deliver speeches. One issue was that the continual expansion of the settlements was becoming an irritant in U.S.-Israel relations. During a 1982 trip by Begin to Washington, the prime minister had a closed-door meeting with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to discuss Israel’s invasion of Lebanon that year, an effort to force out the P.L.O. that had been heavy with civilian casualties. According to The Times’s coverage of the session, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, then in his second term, had an angry exchange with Begin about the West Bank, telling him that Israel was losing support in this country because of the settlements policy.

But Israeli officials came to understand that the Americans were generally content to vent their anger about the issue without taking more forceful action — like restricting military aid to Israel, which was then, as now, central to the country’s security arrangements. After the Jewish Underground plotters of the bombings targeting the West Bank mayors and other attacks were finally brought to trial in 1984, they were found guilty and given sentences ranging from a few months to life in prison. The plotters showed little remorse, though, and a public campaign swelled to have them pardoned. Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir also made the case for pardoning them, saying they were “excellent, good people who have erred in their path and actions.” Clemency, Shamir suggested, would prevent a recurrence of Jewish terrorism.

In the end, President Chaim Herzog, against the recommendations of Shin Bet and the Justice Ministry, signed an extraordinary series of pardons and commutations for the plotters. They were released and greeted as heroes by the settler community, and some rose to prominent positions in government and the Israeli media. One of them, Uzi Sharbav, now a leader in the settlement movement, was a speaker at a recent conference promoting the return of settlers to Gaza.

PART III. A NEW GENERATION

The ascent of a far-right prime minister did little to prevent the virulent, anti-government strain inside the settler movement from spreading. A new generation of Kahanists was taking an even more radical turn, not only against Israeli politicians who might oppose or insufficiently abet them but against the very notion of a democratic Israeli state. A group calling itself Hilltop Youth advocated for the total destruction of the Zionist state. Meir Ettinger, named for his grandfather Meir Kahane, was one of the Hilltop Youth leaders, and he made his grandfather’s views seem moderate.

Their objective was to tear down Israel’s institutions and to establish “Jewish rule”: anointing a king, building a temple in place of the Jerusalem mosques sacred to Muslims worldwide, imposing a religious regime on all Jews. Ehud Olmert, who served as Israeli prime minister from 2006 to 2009, said in an interview that Hilltop Youth “genuinely, deeply, emotionally believe that this is the right thing to do for Israel. This is a salvation. This is the guarantee for Israel’s future.”...

[Mike M (the other one)]

With holding the info that could end the conflict with minimal casulaies isn't very bright, not to mention making it public. Do you really think Hamas is going to sit still where they were once the info became public? No they will move as they likely have been doing all along.
In this case, when you have current info, you should strike quickly.

[Dill]

(10 hours ago)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: With holding the info that could end the conflict with minimal casulaies isn't very bright, not to mention making it public. Do you really think Hamas is going to sit still where they were once the info became public? No they will move as they likely have been doing all along.
In this case, when you have current info, you should strike quickly.

???where when what how and to whom??

[Mike M (the other one)]

(9 hours ago)Dill Wrote: ???where when what how and to whom??

stop acting stupid