The calls to stop the violence and spare the civilians in Israel are so dishonest it beggars belief people are making them. There is no conflict without the participation of two different sides. What’s the point of calling for a ceasefire when only a few days ago Hamas murdered 2,000 civilians, showing it’s not planning to cease anything and has a particular enmity towards civilians?
It’s exactly like the calls to deescalate and seek peace with Russia. How one is supposed to deescalate unilaterally and seek peace where none is offered or remotely desired is never explained.
These “pro-peace” utterances are nothing but virtue-signaling. “I’m against war! Look at how noble I am!” Everybody is against war, you absolute snowflake, until a bomb hits their building and an armed savage shows up on their doorstep.
Clarissa's Blog 
“and spare the civilians in Israel”
You probably meant “civilians in Gaza.”
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Saw something interesting about Palestinian Authority :
\ PA will pay $2,789,430 to families of 1,500 dead Hamas terrorist murderers, this month
In addition, the PA will pay $17,590 in salaries to 50 new Hamas prisoners, this month
Total PA monthly payment will be $2,807,021 this month to reward Hamas terrorists for Saturday’s massacre
…
The Palestinian Authority should be sending a big thank you to the EU countries and Norway, currently the largest funders of the PA because the PA could not possibly make these terror payments without them. These donor countries like to pretend that it’s not their money rewarding terrorists, but everyone knows that the PA could not reward terrorists without this generous foreign funding. When payments to teachers, police, and street cleaners are taken care of by international donors, the PA has the hundreds of millions available it needs to pay for terror.
https://palwatch.org/page/34650
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Regarding targeting civilians, it’s not limited to Israeli \ Palestinian conflict.
A few days ago, Romanenko linked to a fantastic article on the concept of ” a saturated terrorist attack” in today’s asymmetric warfare. Highly recommended:
Атака на Францию как воплощение концепции насыщающего террористического нападения
“ХВИЛЯ” 14.11.2015
https://hvylya.net/uk/analytics/82762-ataka-na-frantsiyu-kak-voploshhenie-kontseptsii-nasyishhayushhego-terroristicheskogo-napadeniya
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An excellent article but it has one glaring fault. It assumes that the South is capable of the long-term planning, concentration, dedication and goal-setting as the North. But if the South knew how to be all that, it would have become the North a long time ago.
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” if the South knew how to be all that, it would have become the North a long time ago.”
Arestovich kept mentioning Russian long will (длинная воля) and how Ukrainians need to adopt it. I am not quite sure what he means by it, probably since haven’t studied Russian history.
Hamas is more than capable of long term planning, when the goal is to kill maximum number of Jews. It seems less successful in improving life for Palestinians, but perhaps it’s not its true goal as hard as it’s to believe for me. If Putin’s regime views Russians as a resource to use and abuse, why wouldn’t Hamas be capable of doing the same?
Huge parts of Arab population around me are great at keeping concentration and remaining dedicated regarding erasing Israel from the map.
We should differentiate between parts of the South being capable of achieving positive goals for themselves (which they cannot) and the new global underclass in terror organizations and some countries like Iran adopting some of the techniques described in the article and doing great damage to the global West. Especially if this West is reluctant to wake up and divided within itself.
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Wanting something and being able to carry through are very different things. The multistage, complex strategy in the article you linked requires restraint, intelligence, planning. What I’m saying is, I wouldn’t worry about that scenario.
Which, of course, doesn’t mean that no bad things can happen.
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Israel has a right to retaliation against Hamas. However, I don’t think they really have a clue what do with with a ground offensive into Gaza. That could be a bloodbath on both sides.
Hopefully cooler heads prevail.
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ed, Stringer Bell, other readers and naturally Clarissa — I read this article and thought it was very good at explaining Israeli position and realities, so recommend (posted some quotes here, but it’s better to read it in full):
// This is a war against the return of Jewish helplessness.
…
We need to make our case against Hamas not by seeking the world’s pity but its understanding.
We are not engaged with the Palestinians in a competition for victimhood. The Palestinians will always win that competition, and rightly so. In opting for power, the Jewish people opted out of the victimhood competition. There is a price to pay for the loss of innocence. We have no choice but to own it.
This is a war to restore Israeli deterrence.
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Hamas’s blow was devastating precisely because it was the weakest of our enemies
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Not to react decisively carries potentially greater danger for Israel than military miscalculation. If this war ends in another Hamas-Israeli stalemate, the Iranian front along our borders will become far more emboldened.
This is a war against the Iranian axis.
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This war is a test of the moral credibility of the international community.
The challenge for outsiders to this conflict is to sympathize with the innocents suffering on both sides, without obscuring the difference between Israel and Hamas.
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Many around the world – and not only Israel-haters – are raising the argument that the occupation drives Palestinians to terrorism. But the reverse is no less true: Terrorism has reinforced the occupation, by convincing Israelis that withdrawal from the West Bank would turn it into another Gaza.
…
The failure of the Palestinian national movement, in all its factions, to understand that it is facing not a colonialist entity but a re-indigenized people whose story is unique in history is the main reason why this conflict has been insoluble. Until that perception changes, even Israelis like myself who see a two-state solution as an existential necessity for Israel will also see it as an existential threat.
This war is a chance for Israel and its friends to change the narrative of colonialist Israel that has taken hold in much of the West, and to restore a measure of complexity to the discourse on the conflict.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-this-war-is-about/?_gl=1*1czjgoz*_ga*MTM3NDQyMDI2MS4xNjk2Njg3MTA4*_ga_RJR2XWQR34*MTY5NzU2NDY0OS4yMC4wLjE2OTc1NjQ2NDkuMC4wLjA.
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The energy I’ve seen coming from Israelis, the way they’ve stepped up in the face of adversity, makes me think they will be one of the countries that will thrive in the upcoming world order, much like Ukraine. I think about how Americans would respond in the face of similar adversity, and I worry because I can’t imagine the same kind of response. I would foresee a lot of bitching and moaning, tbqh. Maybe I’m wrong though.
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https://bookriot.com/scholastic-book-fairs-exclude-diverse-books/
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Oh, thank God! This is excellent news. I’m tired of having to curate these book fairs.
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I was thinking of asking you about this. We know the reality is that the Hamas rats are probably safe in their underground bunkers and their leaders are enjoying lavish lives abroad, so the bulk of casualties will be civilians (fuzzy term, I understand). I also understand Israel has to respond otherwise it loses credibility in the eyes of its citizens for failing to uphold their most basic duty of protecting them.
How do you respond to the age-old argument that the Palestinian people are being subjected to collective punishment in these bomb strikes? I’ve never been able to rebut that.
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When the Allies were fighting in Nazi Germany, the German civilians were subjected to absolute horror. Several German cities were pretty much wiped out. Even now it’s painful to think about everything that was done. Wars are horrible, and civilians always suffer the most.
Nobody has invented a way to avoid war. It seems to be something that humans do as part of being human. But what has been invented is a way to win. We can grieve the existence of war, which is noble but futile. Or we can survive and win. It’s more cynical but also more realistic.
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The last major battle on US soil was the Battle of Wounded Knee. So we’re a bit out of touch with some of the effects of war.
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Winning is the easy part. What do they plan to do afterwards? Institute a Marshall Plan for Palestine? Incorporate them into Israel and govern them as a province?
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\ Winning is the easy part. What do they plan to do afterwards? Institute a Marshall Plan for Palestine? Incorporate them into Israel and govern them as a province?
You ask great questions that no one seems to have answers for.
We definitely aren’t going to incorporate Gazans into Israel.
Today read this opinion piece:
// Outline of the war plan to change the situation in Gaza
The effort to dislodge the rule of Hamas will be carried out with patient fighting in stages like a “protective wall”, in parallel with humanitarian measures that will preserve legitimacy in the world. After them, a security perimeter with a width of 1-3 kilometers will be demarcated in the strip. The goal is to stabilize the 5-10 year series under a civil-local government that will rely on international power. The vision: Gaza will get a monitored port. And yet: no one has a prescription for a long-term settlement or a general solution to the conflict.
(The article is in Hebrew, but can be read with Google Translate
https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/skvr6rcbt )
Egypt is afraid of another solution:
// El-Sisi Rejects US-Israeli Proposal for North Sinai Refuge for Gazans
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“Moving them to Egypt is a military operation that could last years. … The peace we [Egyptians] have worked for would slip from our hands, as would a resolution to the Palestinian issue,”
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Ezzat Ibrahim, editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Weekly and a member of the Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies advisory board, said that Israel’s approach is exacerbating problems for Egypt. He said he believed that it had been the Israeli plan since the 1980s “to weaken the Palestinian cause by supporting the emergence of Islamist movements as an alternative to the secular PLO, thereby undermining the Palestinian Authority and blocking the path to statehood.”
…
“Israeli politicians and generals now talk about the ‘mistake,’ from their point of view, that they did not carry out a mass transfer deportation of the residents of the West Bank in 1967. We now fear a revival of Netanyahu’s national security adviser Giora Eiland’s proposed Palestinian state on Egyptian territory,” Gad said.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1tcmsazp
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PaulS, this article appeared in English translation here:
// Here’s an outline of a war plan to change the situation in Gaza
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sysmhx1fp
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Israel already lost, unfortunately. This could have been won with an immediate counteroffensive. But if you sit there for weeks, trying to figure something out, you look not like a justified person defending yourself but as a coldly calculating one.
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\ if you sit there for weeks, trying to figure something out, you look not like a justified person defending yourself but as a coldly calculating one.
But one must be coldly calculating to survive in the dangerous environment we are in. It’s not only Hamas, it’s a probable huge war with Iran and its proxies. They would be only glad if we reacted impulsively w/o preparation in the stupid attempt to make Harvard-likes like us 0.001 second more.
Besides, would you want your child to enter Gaza blindly because “the world” is waiting for Israel to do something stupid, leading to hundreds of dead Israeli soldiers and thousands of dead Palestinians, btw? This “world” would turn against us anyway because of the huge civilian casualties in this scenario and blame us for not giving them time to evacuate.
Being liked by everyone is not a war we can win.
That’s why I do not agree with ” This could have been won with an immediate counteroffensive.”
Just today I read that “The military leadership reported to the government: measure the duration of the war not in weeks, but in months.” An operation on this scale is not like previous rounds with Hamas.
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// the Palestinian people are being subjected to collective punishment
“Hamas rats” are those who represent Palestinian people after winning in democratic elections (that America insisted upon). I am sure, today Hamas would win elections in Gaza too.
Moreover, they would also win in the West Bank (**) and turn it into the second Gaza with full support of the people. People make collective decisions in their nation states / areas like Gaza, and naturally reap the collective consequences, whether good or bad.
( Btw, aren’t Russians also subjected to collective punishment when the remains of Russian economy are destroyed and EU doesn’t give them refuge to hide from the draft? The Palestinian street supports Hamas much more than Russians support Putin.
Germans also supported Hitler in WW2 in their majority. )
When people talk of two state solution, they don’t see that we have no other credible side to negotiate with in the first place. Mahmoud Abbas is weak and 87 years old. I am afraid that after his death Fatah will fall apart completely and Hamas will turn the West Bank into a battlefield. It won’t become Gaza since, unlike in Gaza, many Jews live in the West Bank. However, the conflict there would dwarf anything we’ve seen in Gaza so far. Imo, if this nightmarish scenario comes true, there will be calls in Israel to annex almost the entire West Bank.
How would any Palestinian leader negotiate with Israel, if the slightest concession leads to waves of terrorism ( intifada in Arabic) and this:
// Palestinian security forces in central Ramallah fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters throwing rocks and chanting against President Mahmoud Abbas, as popular anger boiled over after a deadly blast in a Gaza hospital which Hamas blamed on Israel on Tuesday. Clashes with Palestinian security forces broke out in a number of other cities in the West Bank late on Tuesday, according to witnesses. (Reuters) //
I had always been for two states for two peoples, but now am afraid it may be truly impossible and arrive to us vs. them at some stage.
(**) [May 2023] In blow to Abbas’s Fatah, Hamas wins university elections in Nablus
It was the second victory by a Hamas-affiliated group in student elections at a Palestinian West Bank university since last May.
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“We lost the elections because many people hold Fatah responsible for all the bad things the Palestinian Authority does.” – Veteran Fatah activist
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In 2021, Abbas called off parliamentary and presidential elections that were supposed to take place later that year on the pretext that Israel had refused to allow the vote to take place in Jerusalem. But Palestinian political analysts believe the real reason behind the decision to call off the elections was Abbas’s fear that Fatah would lose due to internal divisions and disputes.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-743338
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“age-old argument that the Palestinian people are being subjected to collective punishment”
What were the Oct 7 attacks if not collective punishment? What about Munich? What about every Palestinian attack aimed at civilians (a concept Palestinians apply to themselves but not Israelis)?
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Yesterday Hamas was telling everyone that Israeli rocket destroyed a hospital, murdered 500 people.
Today’s photos show only 10 burnt cars on a parking lot close to the hospital.
Hamas is fighting for its life and, if necessary, imo is capable even to follow Russian footsteps in murdering their own people.
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Here’s the thing, though. There’s already been a huge outcry and a mountain of explanations from Israel over a parking lot with a 10-inch “crater” created by Hamas itself. It isn’t looking like Israel is actually prepared to do much of anything.
Do you know how Ukraine eviscerated the Russian Black Sea fleet? By not announcing it. The US couldn’t forbid it, the usual suspects couldn’t denounce it as WW3 because they didn’t know it was going to happen.
Neither did anybody know what Hamas was going to do on October 7. So nobody could pre-empt it with an international campaign of global outrage. The longer Israel drags it out, the harder it will get to actually do anything at all.
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