Hamas has an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers(1). That's about 6% to 8% of the entire adult Gazan male population. It's impossible to have that many soldiers without widespread support. Maybe not a majority. But certainly a significant minority.
Like it or not, a significant percentage of the adult Gazan population are responsible for Hamas because they're actively fighting for Hamas or directly supporting them. Pointing out that those people are accountable, and can choose a different future, is not genocidal language. It's stating the facts of the situation.
Germany also faced the same choice after WW2. They chose to eradicate Nazism, which is a big part of why Germany is the successful country it is today.
> It's impossible to have that many soldiers without widespread support. Maybe not a majority. But certainly a significant minority.
Israel wanted Hamas to rule Gaza though and supported it financially while working against moderate Palestinians:
> Netanyahu said: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas, ... This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
This means that this attacks of Hamas by Israel is unlikely to lead to a better situation post war, because Netanyahu's position is to always have a reason why the Palestinians should not have freedom.
It is more likely that things just get worse for the Palestinians after this war.
> If Israel did nothing other than kill the ~40,000 Hamas soldiers, along with destroying military and economic infrastructure, they'll easily buy themselves another 10 years of relative safety. At which point they can do it all over again.
Oh, okay. You are fine with just repeatedly bombing a captive population. It takes all kinds I guess.
> I already linked you this survey that showed that Hamas doesn't have widespread support
You're survey shows frustration with ineffective governance. There are lots of governments out there that people are frustrated with, yet still support.
> Oh, okay. You are fine with just repeatedly bombing a captive population. It takes all kinds I guess.
I'm not fine with it. But that doesn't change the fact that from Israeli's point of view, it is a better option than doing nothing. Allowing Hamas to conduct another massacre in the future is unacceptable. It's also unacceptable to allow Hamas to continue to rain down missiles on Israel - they're still launching them into Israel every single day.
So, let's for a moment assume that Israel is successful in eradicating all of Hamas. Unlikely, but for the sake of the argument let's assume that it works.
Then, two days later they kick a bunch of Palestinians out of their homes and bulldoze it, hand the land to a bunch of settlers.
> Then, two days later they kick a bunch of Palestinians out of their homes and bulldoze it, hand the land to a bunch of settlers.
There aren't settlers in Gaza. There are in West Bank, and in the West Bank those settlers do in fact illegally and immorally force West Bank Palestinians from their land. On occasion settlers also murder them. But in Gaza the Israeli government forced all the Jews in Gaza to leave when Israel deoccupied Gaza in 2005.
> What's to stop a new Hamas to rise again?
Like it or not, Israel can easily get another 10 years or so of relative safely even if Hamas rises again simply by blockading Gaza after a successful military operation to exterminate Hamas. Which is a better outcome for Israel than the status quo, where Hamas will likely conduct another massacre of Israeli's in the near future. Not to mention, continue to launch rockets into Israel.
I didn't say the settlement was in Gaza. These things are not as disconnected as you seem to believe.
> There are in West Bank, and in the West Bank those settlers do in fact illegally and immorally force West Bank Palestinians from their land.
And what is exactly being done about this?
> On occasion settlers also murder them.
And what is being done about that?
> But in Gaza the Israeli government forced all the Jews in Gaza to leave when Israel deoccupied Gaza in 2005.
They not only forced them to leave: they also demolished the buildings they left behind.
> Like it or not, Israel can easily get another 10 years or so of relative safely even if Hamas rises again simply by blockading Gaza after a successful military operation to exterminate Hamas.
10 years is nothing and again, this is the sort of thinking that keeps on fueling this conflict: you don't need a solution for 10 years, you need one that actually works. And killing large numbers of people rarely solves problems. If anything history should have taught us that.
> Which is a better outcome for Israel than the status quo, where Hamas will likely conduct another massacre of Israeli's in the near future.
They just might: now what could Israel possibly do to stop that from happening? If the answer is 'nothing' then it's really just a matter of time.
Rabin had the right idea: de-escalate and normalize. All this ego and religion driven talk of supremacy, god given rights and violence has to stop. Realize that Hamas or its future replacement will use what happens today as their most successful recruiting drive ever. The #1 goal should be to stop that recruiting drive, not to deal with Hamas in the present in strictly military terms. But for that to happen Israel would need to address some of its own faults. Fat chance of that happening in the current situation though and so I've already more or less accepted that this conflict will last for another century or so.
Less than was being done before, now that Hamas has slaughtered over 1000 Israeli civilians, taking attention away from Israeli crimes in the West Bank. In fact, it appears that settler extremists have used this as cover to step up their crimes, murdering a bunch of West Bank Palestinians in the past few weeks.
I hope you can see how people might see this situation as a lesson that the West Bank approach of encroachment and murder _is_ in fact the correct approach, and letting Gazan's form a state was a mistake that lead to the slaughter of over 1000 Jews.
> They not only forced them to leave: they also demolished the buildings they left behind.
What is your point? Settlers were demolishing and dismantling buildings _they_ had built and owned. If anything, Israel tried to at least hand over many greenhouses intact. But Gazan's looted many of the intact ones after the handover. This is all well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz...
> 10 years is nothing and again, this is the sort of thinking that keeps on fueling this conflict: you don't need a solution for 10 years, you need one that actually works. And killing large numbers of people rarely solves problems. If anything history should have taught us that.
10 years is a lot better than 3 years. And if Israel makes a concerted effort to destroy Hamas now, and keeps Gaza from redeveloping, the next attack by the next Hamas is likely to kill a lot less people. That's a win for Israel.
> Rabin had the right idea: de-escalate and normalize.
Much safer to attempt that after Hamas is utterly crushed. After all Israel just tried the de-escalate and normalize approach over the past few years. Hamas used that deescalation to plan and prepare for their recent attack. They've even bragged about the fact that they deceptively did that, duping Israel into thinking Hamas was focusing on their economy: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-was-dup...
The tens of thousands of Hamas members who planned and carried out the recent massacre are monsters. Simple as that. They need to be thoroughly wiped out.
The sort of people who rape and murder on a huge scale in cold blood are not the sort of people who are worth negotiating with. Diplomacy has its limits. Negotiating with the Nazi's proved to be a mistake. Negotiating with Hamas is no different.
You need to get out of the mindset that there is a 'win' to be had here. The only thing that can be achieved is for either side to lose less, winning would require turning back the clock. More massacre is just going to prolong the conflict and ultimately will make it worse, possibly much worse.
> The tens of thousands of Hamas members who planned and carried out the recent massacre are monsters. Simple as that. They need to be thoroughly wiped out.
This is how you spell 'genocide'. To be able to solve this Israel will need to make some concessions that may well be impossible for the hard liners within Israel to accept and likewise the various Arab countries that back Hamas will have to accept that Israel - regardless of the the various historical mistakes - is there to stay.
But neither side is willing to do that and so you can look forward to a lot more blood spilled. The illusion that by perpetrating more violence this can be solved is utterly depressing.
Ok, that's just silly. The legal definition of genocide(1) is actions, like violence, with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The types of groups that are protected are intentionally limited. There are lots of types of groups that are clearly not protected in the legal definition of genocide.
Hamas are a group of genocidal terrorists who are both a political party - not a protected group - and a military force - also not a protected group. Hamas's founding charter called for the extermination of Jews, a protected religious group. The idea that you can't destroy a group of genocidal terrorists is ludicrous, no different to how we don't call it genocide when criminal gangs get rounded up and arrested regardless of how many gang members are involved.
It wasn't genocide when 5 million German soldiers were killed in WW2. The Nazis aren't a protected group, and it was a good thing that the Nazis were destroyed as a group. Hamas is no different.
It’s a dictatorial regime. Just like Iran. The amount of soldiers as % of population is totally irrelevant when people are forced into it.
You are putting the blame of the situation on the civilians. That is the problem. Do you think they chose to live in such a place? Did you read on how Hamas came into power and who helped them?
That was after the allied powers realized their mistake in exacting retribution on Germany after WWI. The desire to take a future away from Germans directly led to the rise in Nazism. Ironically enough that's the same reason Hamas has widespread support. It's easier to sacrifice everything when you have nothing.
Maybe we should learn the lessons of WWII, and allow Palestinians a future. Otherwise it is genocidal language.
Israel and only Israel is reponsible for what it's doing to Gaza. So if it will chose genocide, it will have to live with that PR nightmare for a long time. It may lose alies, and life without alies may not be so good.
Like it or not, a significant percentage of the adult Gazan population are responsible for Hamas because they're actively fighting for Hamas or directly supporting them. Pointing out that those people are accountable, and can choose a different future, is not genocidal language. It's stating the facts of the situation.
Germany also faced the same choice after WW2. They chose to eradicate Nazism, which is a big part of why Germany is the successful country it is today.
1) https://www.axios.com/2023/10/21/palestine-hamas-military-po...