Hamas has launched a major attack on Israel

Citysnaps said:
A what if thought experiment...

What if Hamas somehow managed to build a massive underground tunnel network (a few hundred miles worth) into Israel, say North/Northeast of Gaza, under Israeli cities and infrastructure.

And from that network of tunnels under Israeli cities, Hamas terrorists repeatedly staged hit-and-run attacks against Israel causing many Israeli casualties.

Would you expect the IDF to retaliate in the same manner as they did in Gaza to efficiently kill Hamas terrorists (with thousands of bombs dropped from aircraft, artillery, etc), resulting with the consequence of killing thousands of innocent Palestinians? Except in this situation it would be thousands of innocent Israeli citizens being killed as a consequence.

Or would you expect the IDF to eschew efficiency due to the resulting adverse consequences of thousands of innocent Israeli's being killed, and instead develop a more refined plan to deal with Hamas terrorists more directly, having a high regard for protecting innocent Israeli civilians?

If the latter, that would suggest a much greater value is placed on Israeli innocent civilians than Palestinian innocent civilians.

From afar, I suspect many people would place equal value with respect to both.
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This is not the clever analogy you think it is. If the tunnels were in Israel, then the IDF could attack them differently because they wouldn't be surrounded by armed combatants as they are in Gaza. That simple fact would allow an alternate strategy.

Unfortunately in Gaza that is not the same situation and you are implying not that Israel should place equal value on Palestinian lives but in fact more value on them by not attacking the stockpiles of equipment and rocket launchers that are being used to kill its own people or do so in a way that would cause huge numbers of IDF casualties.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
This is not the clever analogy you think it is. If the tunnels were in Israel, then the IDF could attack them differently because they wouldn't be surrounded by armed combatants as they are in Gaza. That simple fact would allow an alternate strategy.

Unfortunately in Gaza that is not the same situation and you are implying not that Israel should place equal value on Palestinian lives but in fact more value on them by not attacking the stockpiles of equipment and rocket launchers that are being used to kill its own people or do so in a way that would cause huge numbers of IDF casualties.
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Clever? What in the world would be "clever" about what I posted? I don't get it. What it is, is sickening.

There are always options in how a war is prosecuted. Israel chose its method (thousands of bombs released from the safety of aircraft), which is certainly efficient and with little risk. The consequences of that is the death of roughly 15,000 innocent civilians, and likely a huge number horribly maimed. I'm glad Biden is taking issue with that.
 
rdrr said:
Proportional means that for every Hamas militant killed by IDF, they have killed 2 Palestinians, and that should not be marginalized. That is unacceptable, and quite frankly it is a disgusting statistic that Israel and those to chose to defend the current conflict shrug their shoulders at. You keep on punching the word Hamas in your responses to defend Israel action, and just whistling by the innocent lives lost. I am merely pointing out the sheer numbers of Palestinians that have been caught up in this conflict and the lives have been just surmised down to a shoulder shrug. Not every Palestinian is Hamas.
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I really don't know what you are talking about. If the militants that are attacking Israel and that have vowed to repeat Oct. 7 are embedded in civilian areas, what is Israel supposed to do? Give them free rein to continue their assault? Suffer more Israeli casualties in order to avoid Palestinian ones? Would any nation in the world even consider doing that?

No one is shrugging their shoulders at the loss of life in Gaza. It's terrible but some here want all the blame on Israel. Of course I "punch the word Hamas" in my responses. They started this war with a barbaric attack that proportionately would amount to tens of thousands of American casualties. They took hostages. They continue to fire rockets into Israel. They prevent their citizens from moving out of danger. Their continuing to fight despite almost zero chance of winning is further endangering lives on both sides.

By the way, what is the source of your 2:1 statistic?
 
Citysnaps said:
There are always options in how a war is prosecuted. Israel chose its method (thousands of bombs released from the safety of aircraft), which is certainly efficient and with little risk. The consequences of that is the death of roughly 15,000 innocent civilians, and likely a huge number horribly maimed. I'm glad Biden is taking issue with that.
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How can you put out such an obviously untrue statement, that Israel is only prosecuting the war from the safety of aircraft? Israel ground forces are in Gaza. Of course, no one mentions their casualties, lives lost unnecessarily because Hamas decided to start a war. I just know that in the first day or so of combat dozens were lost.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
Because your analogy, which was intended to prove Israeli indifference to Palestinian life, was faulty.
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Huh? And *if* it were faulty that somehow makes it clever? Still not getting it.

EDIT: And btw, I'm not trying to prove anything. The world is coming to their own conclusions by just watching the news, and seeing the consequences of what's happening in Gaza.

Thank god for the very brave journalists and camera operators reporting what they see.
 
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mac_in_tosh said:
How can you put out such an obviously untrue statement, that Israel is only prosecuting the war from the safety of aircraft? Israel ground forces are in Gaza. Of course, no one mentions their casualties, lives lost unnecessarily because Hamas decided to start a war. I just know that in the first day or so of combat dozens were lost.
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I didn't say only. The majority of ground forces came in after the bombing runs made it easier for them to do so.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
I really don't know what you are talking about. If the militants that are attacking Israel and that have vowed to repeat Oct. 7 are embedded in civilian areas, what is Israel supposed to do? Give them free rein to continue their assault? Suffer more Israeli casualties in order to avoid Palestinian ones? Would any nation in the world even consider doing that?

No one is shrugging their shoulders at the loss of life in Gaza. It's terrible but some here want all the blame on Israel. Of course I "punch the word Hamas" in my responses. They started this war with a barbaric attack that proportionately would amount to tens of thousands of American casualties. They took hostages. They continue to fire rockets into Israel. They prevent their citizens from moving out of danger. Their continuing to fight despite almost zero chance of winning is further endangering lives on both sides.

By the way, what is the source of your 2:1 statistic?
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By Israel itself, and they called it “tremendously positive” again with the shoulder shrug. Oh well…


So lets say there are a total of 50,000 Hamas fighters. By their tremendously positive ratio, Israel would think that 100,000 dead Palestinians would be an acceptable collateral damage. “Nothing to see here folks! We are the good guys!”
 
There is no acceptable number for collateral damage. Period.

There is no pressure on Hamas to comply with a ceasefire, whereas there is pressure being put on Israel. Remind me again, which of the two started this most recent war? And also remind me which it was who did not act in good faith, causing the few short days of peace to end.

Until the world makes the same demands on Hamas that they’re making on Israel, the war will continue. Until the world can agree that the bad guys are Hamas, nothing will change.
 
Alli said:
There is no pressure on Hamas to comply with a ceasefire, whereas there is pressure being put on Israel.
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I'm guessing that's because the world expects a civilized country to highly value and protect innocent civilians, and adhere to the various international conventions of war.

And there's little or no expectation a terrorist organization would do the same.
 
Citysnaps said:
I'm guessing that's because the world expects a civilized country to highly value and protect innocent civilians, and adhere to the various international conventions of war.

And there's little or no expectation a terrorist organization would do the same.
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When you think about it, such lowered expectations are quite racist (I'm sure there's a better word) - they marginalize a group of people as not capable of acting with any sort of human decency or following any established acceptable behavior. So Hamas does horrific things but, you know, they're terrorists so we don't expect any better?
 
Citysnaps said:
I'm guessing that's because the world expects a civilized country to highly value and protect innocent civilians, and adhere to the various international conventions of war.

And there's little or no expectation a terrorist organization would do the same.
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So because Israel is a civilized country, they should put down their weapons and allow Hamas to just ravage the country and its people? In what world does that begin to make sense?

Hamas is a terrorist organization. Unfortunately, they are also the official governing power of Gaza.

Give us a solution that doesn’t include suicide.
 
rdrr said:
So lets say there are a total of 50,000 Hamas fighters. By their tremendously positive ratio, Israel would think that 100,000 dead Palestinians would be an acceptable collateral damage. “Nothing to see here folks! We are the good guys!”
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Most of that "collateral damage" is Hamas' fault for using human shields, placing its launchers on rooftops and preventing people from fleeing combat areas. But I guess you want all the blame to fall on Israel. Israel should do nothing to stop rocket fire (which intent is specifically to cause as many civilian casualties as possible) and just accept constant bombardment.

Just curious, what was the ratio of civilians to soldiers on Oct. 7 by the good guys?
 
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Alli said:
Give us a solution that doesn’t include suicide.
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Yes, I've been asking for that but despite all the hand-wringing have no answer that saves civilian lives in Gaza as well as in Israel. Israel could stop its assault and withdraw completely and Hamas would continue to fire rockets and hold the hostages. Then what?

I'm going to take a break from this discussion but I'll end with an analogy: Your fanatical next door neighbor starts firing into your house, killing some family members. You have no one to call for help. If you fire back you will certainly kill some of his family who he prevents from leaving. What to do?

Some of the saintly people here won't fire back and continue to lose family members in order to avoid innocent casualties in the neighbor's house. They are against causing any loss of innocent life, to the detriment of their own family. Others might be less saintly - they would fire back but only until the number of the neighbor's casualties equals theirs, even though the neighbor will continue to fire into their house, and only resume responding when additional members of their family are killed. Those are the advocates of proportionality.

I have no doubt most people would use whatever means they had to protect their family. And I think that if some of the posters here actually experienced the horrors of war, instead of watching one on t.v., they might have a different view of battlefield realities.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
When you think about it, such lowered expectations are quite racist (I'm sure there's a better word) - they marginalize a group of people as not capable of acting with any sort of human decency or following any established acceptable behavior. So Hamas does horrific things but, you know, they're terrorists so we don't expect any better?
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I understand you feel differently - and that's OK... but for me, when a group of people (nazis, hamas, the Pol Pot regime, etc) have repeatedly and viciously demonstrated they have zero respect for innocent human life, I'll stick with having no hope they'll magically become decent human beings and thus allowing me to have hope in expecting they will somehow change for the better valuing innocent human life, and worthy of sitting down at the negotiating table with them. Best to eliminate them and move on.

When you think about it, such lowered expectations are quite racist (I'm sure there's a better word)"
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So my lowered expectations of terrorists who massively and brutally kill innocent human beings makes me a racist?

I can't begin to find the words to respond to such an assertion.
 
Alli said:
So because Israel is a civilized country, they should put down their weapons and allow Hamas to just ravage the country and its people? In what world does that begin to make sense?
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What?

Absolutely not. I NEVER made that assertion.
 
Citysnaps said:
So my lowered expectations of terrorists who massively and brutally kill innocent human beings makes me a racist?

I can't begin to find the words to respond to such an assertion.
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Suppose someone said that black people are incapable of acting in a civilized manner. Wouldn't that be racist? Isn't that what you're saying about Hamas? Aren't you saying that Israelis are somehow superior and thus more is to be expected from them? I know I'm being somewhat provocative here, but my point is that people too often place unrealistic conditions on what Israel should or shouldn't do, whereas Hamas is given something of a pass because, you know, they're just terrorists.
 
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