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Israel completely dominated the Hamas-Palestians.

This might be an issue we could agree on.

But Jim, how many months did Biden have to solve this?

And Jim, would you agree that Elon Musk had the greatest advice on this?

Hamas & Hezbollah usually damand hundreds of prisoners released for each hostage they've taken in the past.past. they got hundreds released this time as well.

Of course, this exchange rate was once again determined by Hamas. They could have stopped the carnage by first leaving the peace undisturbed and not killing children in their homes, and later by releasing the hostages. But, one of their now dead leaders was quoted as saying the Gazans were taking acceptable losses. He felt the deaths of Gazans (not Palestinians, who live elsewhere) would be good leverage against Israel. Obviously he misjudged the situation, but that doesn't change the fact that he was fine sacrificing the lives of his supporters and constituents.

The weird thing is that we, the West, including Israel, value the lives of the Gazans more than Hamas does.

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Hamas started a war by targeting innocents.

Wars kill people...lots of non-combatants as well.

That leaves only two options for Israel:
(1) Israel surrenders to Hamas to avoid killing non-combatants, and Hamas puts all Israeli's to death; or
(2) Israel fights back and teaches Hamas a lesson while trying to minimize non-combatant deaths (e.g., by warning the population to move away before attacks, and to not allow Hamas to use them as human shields).

Clearly, option 1 involves more deaths and evil moral goals winning the day, and option 2 involves less death, and admirable moral goals (e.g., trying hard to avoid innocent deaths of Gazans, while trying to stop future attacks on innocent Israelis). The morality seems clear here, unless Israel wants to behave in a pacifist manner, and I would say that option was shown to be a mistake in Nazi Germany. Remember, we are talking about "from the river to the sea" people here...basically modern day Nazis seeking to exterminate the Jews.

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Hamas intended the civilian deaths as an end when they attacked. They wanted to cause outrage by killing families in their homes.

Israel intends to destroy Hamas, and the civilian deaths are not-intended as an end. Israel knows that outrage is detrimental to itself. They just weren't willing to let Hamas use its civilian population as a shield...but they weren't trying to destroy the shield (as we can see with so many survivors), but instead were trying to destroy the shield bearer (Hamas).

But Israel could have shown much more restraint in their response.

If we say they killed 10K de facto Hamas terrorists and 58K innocent civilians, is that an acceptable ratio to you?

And don't you think that the response makes it easier for Hamas to recruit?

Here is what Elon Musk said about it that I agree with:


Link: https://thehill.com/policy/international/4304954-elon-musk-israel-thwart-hamas-with-acts-of-kindness/

Israel has been nice in the past. They've agreed to the 2 state solution several times. I'm not sure Arab terror organizations understand niceness as anything other than weakness.

Unlike Hamas leadership, I don't know what an acceptable ratio of death is. Bare numbers don't tell the whole story, when you are talking about Hamas going house to house killing peaceful families, raping women in front of their families, and killing children in front of their parents, and killing parents in front of their children...as the main goal of their attack, not as unintended byproduct of combat. Remember also that they are fighting genocide, something they suffered not too long ago. I'm glad I didn't have to make the decision to do what Israel did, but I also have a hard time condemning Israel for their reaction.

Some way or another we need to eliminate war as a method for conflict resolution. Or where warfare is necessary it needs to be precisely targeted to avoid civilian deaths.

I have to admit, the wikipedia page entry is a mess on this, and I haven't looked at any other sources. 1M just seems very, very high.

Iraq was a mistake, because we ended up taking out a secular authority in the Middle East. Obama continued this, taking out Qadaffi after he came to our side (totally insane), and opposing secular authorities in Egypt and Syria. The great thing about secular authorities is that they don't want to die, and can therefore be negotiated with.

Regarding eliminating war as conflict resolutuion: People have been wanting to that for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. I don't see another option being put on the table any time soon. Pacifists and their families tend to get killed in the world in which we live. And, it is hard to target only combatants when those combatants use hospitals and mosques and apartment complexes for their command and control facilities.

Israel has the technology to destroy the tunnels (funded by USAID and UNRWA, BTW) and take out paragliders. They have the ability to provide food, supplies and medicine to Palestinians. They have the ability to target Hamas through covert and targeted means. Killing innocents will never end the cycle of war in this situation.

Another 3M dead if Hamas decides to kill Jewish "collaborators."

Hamas thought that end result was worth risking what they risked.

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I wish I could say I am surprised.

This feels like the "They were provoked" argument. 68K dead Palestinians, how many were de facto Hamas?

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Over 100 Palestinians killed.

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