“No one is looking at us or the extent of this disaster or the crimes that we are experiencing in Gaza,” he said. Still holding his microphone, he slid off his flak jacket marked with the word PRESS and unstrapped his helmet.
“These protection jackets and helmets don’t protect us,” he said, flinging the equipment to the ground. “Nothing protects journalists. … We lose our lives for no reason.”
I’m sure this will work about as well as the US attempt to get rid of the Taliban. Or as well as any of the other instances in the past of trying to get rid of an ideological group through violence.
It doesn’t work. It makes everything worse. It radicalizes survivors and kills lots of innocent people.
Some day maybe humanity will collectively abandon these cycles of hatred and violence played out over decades. But I doubt it.
You have a point, but it’s not really the same thing and there’s a very good recent counter-example too. ISIS was effectively dealt with despite being spread out over a much larger area. Taliban won, but it had a whole huge country to work in and was nowhere near as violent as Hamas, so it had more support. Gaza is tiny in comparison, blocked on all sides and neighbors of Israel don’t want anything to do with them either, even if they don’t like Israel. There is also at least some alternative in Fatah, which didn’t lose the 2005 elections by that much.
Imo it’s clearly possible to get rid of Hamas, though I’m not making any claims about the probability that it will happen.
Mostly, I don’t really see an alternative. Some radical action needed to be taken because anything else would be interpreted as a clear proof that large terrorist attacks against civilians work, and Hamas should continue committing them. You cannot appease someone whose reason for existence is violence. And keeping Hamas sort of in check, only killing or capturing the worst terrorists, which is what was being done in the last two decades, clearly did not work either.
You don’t see any alternative to the slaying of people in a 10 to 1 ratio in what is an offensive reprisal attack? I mean Machiavelli would agree with you.
Why does “radical action” always mean “radical violence”?
“Radical action” can and should include radical kindness in which past wounds can be forgiven and a cooperative future can be built. Right now, all the violence is doing is ensuring that Hamas will be enumerated and maintained for generations by the people that Israel is considering to be sub-human and disposable. Radical violence creates radical ideologues and only ever begets further violence in the absence of total and absolute annihilation.
Radical kindness will specifically tell Hamas “yes, brutal terrorist attacks work, keep doing them”. That is unfortunately not an option. It’s also just a fantasy because it would understandably never be supported by Israeli population for this reason.
I’m interested in seeing alternative solutions that could actually work and be realistically implemented, but outside of understandable positions like “ease off with the fucking bombing and do more work on the ground” that don’t change the goal of what is being done I have not seen any.
This reads like “we don’t care about the hostages or their families. We must complete our noble work of eradication of the people we deem “hostile.” Also anyone that gets in our way is fully excusable and at fault for their own death by being around where we decide to kill.” Do you even possess empathy for anyone you don’t directly support? Wild.
It’s naive to say that kindness is going to stop violence from a group who in their founding charter call for the death of the opposing group. Hanas isn’t a good faith group and no amount of kindness will change that.
Any solution that will be durable requires that Hanna’s is not a part of it.
Sure, this is why the American Britain war is still waged today. It’s also why France has been relentlessly attacking England. And obviously, the British bombing of Ireland is what ended the IRA.
Besides peace, genocide is the only way to end Hamas. And that’s what you are cheering for. Israel is creating the next generation of terrorists by terrorizing the Palestinians.
Fundamentally it comes down to who is more at fault for the death of a human shield, the one who is using the human shield or the one who is attacking.
Clearly Hamas is more at fault. If you want peace tell Hamas to surrender and return the hostages.
How does “clearly” go against all societal norms in your mind? You seemingly know nothing about hostage negotiation, popular culture or just being human. Wolf Blitzer is more human than you. Think on that.
If the citizens of Gaza aren’t offered anything better, why would they gamble what little they have on overthrowing the local oppressors? They don’t really have anything to gain by overthrowing Hamas and trying to do so would be putting their lives and their families at risk. If Israel and the wider international community can offer them something better than life under Hamas and the Likud, they’d be much more likely to eschew Hamas’ control.