> I'm curious, is your claim that one of the current leaders of Hamas said this? If so I'd love to read the quote.
I saw a video of this today, the quote was from 2019 though (and he was condemned for it and walked it back), so maybe this shouldn't be taken "too seriously" (it was on my mind cause I saw it today, mostly):
> In July 2019, Hamad urged members of the Palestinian diaspora to kill "Jews everywhere". His comments were characterized as incitement to genocide by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America[18] and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.[19] His rhetoric was widely condemned by other Palestinians and he later stated that he supports the Hamas policy of "limiting its resistance to the Zionist occupation that usurps Palestine’s land and defiles its holy sites".
> One counterargument is that taking out Hamas, if they succeed (I'm not bullish), is likely to just result in another possibly more radical group rising to power. Doubly so when we've seen something like 20,000 casualties in the last two months, overwhelmingly civilian, which is very obviously going to breed another generation that is full of hatred and vengeance.
Firstly, I'm not sure what you mean by "overwhelmingly civilian". Hamas doesn't publish numbers of militants vs. civilians, as far as I know the only good source for that figure is the IDF, which says more or less a 2:1 ratio (civilian:militant). Is that "overwhelmingly" civilian?
Secondly, what's the alternative? Leave Hamas in power, trying to do this again and again? It's true that Israel doesn't have many good options here, it's all variations of bad, but taking out Hamas is a decent way to gain a lot of security. (And is better for the long-term peace process, IMO, and better for Gazans.)
> [...] I frankly think it should be possible for Israel to prevent another October 7 even in a universe where Hamas is still in power.
I thought so too, but after talking a lot about this I think you're wrong. Hamas aren't idiots - they're a smart, increasingly well-funded enemy. Israel has a lot of capabilities, but Hamas is right on the border. They are fully capable of waiting a few years and then launching another attack using other means. They are fully capable of eroding Israel's ability to defend the border by sending "peaceful civilians" to the border, putting Israel in a position of either shooting at civilians or accepting many thousands of people on the border (similar happened in 2018).
Their rockets are getting better, their intel gathering is getting better, etc. It is incredibly naive (and arrogant!) to think you can forever outwit an enemy. Guerilla armies have beaten larger forces many times.
Not to mention, the more defense you throw at them, the more economically costly this is for you,
Israel's IDF claims 55 commanders and perhaps 5000 Hamas fighters killed, while 17,700 civilians have been killed (over 3:1 ratio). Apparent targeted killings of journalists and aid workers don't help.
> I saw a video of this today, the quote was from 2019 though (and he was condemned for it and walked it back), so maybe this shouldn't be taken "too seriously" (it was on my mind cause I saw it today, mostly):
Thanks so much for the quote. Very interesting context. Also as an aside the fact that the name is "Hamad" makes my brain keep reading it as Hamas because my subconscious is trained to consider the nearest keyboard key when evaluating typos :P
I haven't heard of this Hamad guy, in the past couple months I've been reading about current and future Hamas leadership but I still have plenty of gaps.
I find the life stories of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Yassin and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Deif really fascinating. The former because it's so obvious why he became radicalized (his whole village was ethnically cleansed by the IDF), and the latter because the idea of someone who's limbless and wheelchair-bound and spends his remaining days sitting in dark tunnels plotting vengeance upon Israel is a really haunting image.
> Firstly, I'm not sure what you mean by "overwhelmingly civilian". Hamas doesn't publish numbers of militants vs. civilians, as far as I know the only good source for that figure is the IDF, which says more or less a 2:1 ratio (civilian:militant). Is that "overwhelmingly" civilian?
Simply put, yes, killing two civilians for every one combatant is overwhelmingly civilian, although I don't believe that 2:1 ratio for a moment. And I'm struggling to see how anyone who's not ideologically possessed could believe such numbers. Even if we do the classic imperialist playbook tactic of considering every male >= age 16 as a combatant, the number of children and women killed alone probably approaches half of all casualties if not already north of that.
I don't consider the IDF a "good source" at all, like all government organizations they lie constantly although I suspect they lie more than most :P But in context I take your usage of "good source" to mean "those actually providing hard data".
> Hamas aren't idiots - they're a smart, increasingly well-funded enemy. Israel has a lot of capabilities, but Hamas is right on the border. They are fully capable of waiting a few years and then launching another attack using other means
Their means are limited. They could maybe get creative and fly some drones over the border and drop some grenades or something, but I don't see the potential for a mass casualty event like happened in October 7, if Israel is actually watching its border properly and not ignoring obvious warnings of impending attack as has been frequently reported regarding Oct 7.
To be clear though, I agree that Hamas are smart and are evolving their tactics. Apparently Deif is to blame/praise for the latter. Ignoring the morality, the attack of Oct 7 was quite brilliant and integrated a number of different attack vectors, so I'm with you there.
Where Hamas really shines, like many insurgent groups, is fighting on their home turf. If you're curious you can go watch the Hamas propaganda combat videos (Asa Winstanley on Twitter has them all if you click on the Media tab), and it's a really interesting look at what insurgent warfare looks like on the ground. It's really hard to fight an enemy that can pop out of tunnel exits disguised to look like a vehicle or a house or a bunch of bushes, quickly fire a locally-manufactured Yassin RPG, or place a point-blank IED on a tank, and then disappear back into the tunnels.
This is why I don't see how Israel will actually succeed in destroying Hamas. They will certainly kill many Hamas militants, and probably score some kills on some upper leadership, but I don't see them taking down the entire leadership network nor eroding popular support for Hamas (I've seen no data but I expect that support for Hamas is as high as it's ever been since that's always what happens in war, doubly so when your land is the one being counter-invaded)
> Not to mention, the more defense you throw at them, the more economically costly this is for you,
This is just not a concern. The money US gives Israel every year vastly eclipses the amount they would need to spend on actually defending themselves properly.
> Simply put, yes, killing two civilians for every one combatant is overwhelmingly civilian, although I don't believe that 2:1 ratio for a moment. And I'm struggling to see how anyone who's not ideologically possessed could believe such numbers.
Well, Gaza's MOH put out the 17k number, without breaking it down into militants vs civilians. How many militants do you think have actually been killed? If you are assuming that the IDF is targeting civilians, I guess it makes sense, but if you start from the assumption that they are trying to kill militants, then several thousand militants killed is reasonable.
> I don't consider the IDF a "good source" at all, like all government organizations they lie constantly although I suspect they lie more than most :P
So this is an ideological point, but worth going into. I don't think anyone should implicitly trust any source. But the IDF is part of a democracy - they have checks and balances in the form of government oversight, more importantly Israel has a free press that can check up on claims. Not to mention, hundreds of thousands of Israelis serve in the army and, Israel being a democracy, can speak up and report any abuses that happen or lies that get told.
Given that context, the IDF for sure can still lie, but most likely they will eventually be found out.
I want to contrast this with other sources of numbers - e.g. Hamas can lie with impunity, because no one is checking up on them and they can (and do) execute people for saying the wrong thing. We know they've lied about numbers, e.g. the hospital bombing that they claimed was an Israeli attack that killed 500 people, only everyone now agrees that it wasn't Israel, and didn't kill so many people.
(Though also worth stressing that the total figures given by Gaza MOH are more or less in line with what the IDF is saying, except for not breaking it down by civilian vs. militant.)
> This is why I don't see how Israel will actually succeed in destroying Hamas
Maybe. You could definitely be right. Though there are outcomes here that don't depend on total destruction of Hamas. E.g. Hamas surrendering.
I feel like people forget what winning a war actually looks like. Most wars in history were actually won, when one side did so much damage to the other side that they realized it wasn't worth continuing to fight, and surrendered.
Most of the wars that e.g. the US has engaged in were just not that important to US's security, in the long run - so they had no real need to win. So most wars didn't really end, they "fizzled out".
This war is different. Israel looks at it as a matter of survival. That's a very different dynamic.
> Their means are limited. They could maybe get creative and fly some drones over the border and drop some grenades or something, but I don't see the potential for a mass casualty event like happened in October 7, if Israel is actually watching its border properly and not ignoring obvious warnings of impending attack as has been frequently reported regarding Oct 7.
Do you think the army can be on high alert for five years? Ten? Defend against possible other creative paths that we have no idea about? If I were Hamas I could think of dozens of other things to try at this point.
Also, it's not like Israel was purposefully ignoring obvious threats, this is an "in hindsight" perspective. There's a cost to addressing each potential threat, both monetarily, but also in lives lost. And Israel (rightly) doesn't have any confidence that 4 years from now, whatever actions it takes will be considered legitimate, even if there is evidence it's a new Hamas plot.
> This is just not a concern. The money US gives Israel every year vastly eclipses the amount they would need to spend on actually defending themselves properly.
I don't think that's true. The US's aid is about 10% of the IDF's budget, a figure I'm not sure takes into account the current war btw. But the economic cost of e.g. having 50k more people serving in the army is also the opportunity cost of them not working in industry in this time, etc.
Sibling post goes sufficiently into why the IDF cannot be taken at their words as well as how the Gaza Ministry of Health can by (btw. the Gazan MoH is as much a part of Hamas as the UK department of health is a part of the Conservative party).
However I’d like to talk a little about the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh. At first the IDF claimed she was shot by Palestinian resistance, then they claimed she was shot on accident, and finally—in light of overwhelming evidence—they admitted to have targeted her. The soldier that shot her has not been named, let alone punished. There has been no legal action taken against anybody within the Israel army, no checks, not balanced introduced to prevent a murder like this in the future, no nothing. A murder without consequences of a journalist does not exactly inspire free press.
Now regarding the al-Ahli hospital bombing on October 17th. There is nothing conclusive about who is at fault. Not everybody agrees that it wasn’t Israel. What we do know is that, (a) yes the number of casualties was probably inflated, (b) it was likely not an Israeli airstrike, (c) the evidence originally cited by Israel showed an Iron Dome rocket intercepting a Hamas rocket in Israel too far from the hospital to have been the cause. This leaves number of possibilities, including: another misfired Hamas rocket, an artillery shell fired from Israel. News sources seem to lean on the former, but there is no consensus.
What we do know is that Israel shouted a bunch of unrelated stuff which they claimed were evidence of it being a Hamas rocket, evidence which was later proven insufficient, unrelated, or just wrong. Officials within the IDF also claimed to have lied in the past, but this time they were being honest.
I'd say Hamas numbers have been reliable based on past conflicts. So, I don't know why you're dismissing them.
>> Given that context, the IDF for sure can still lie, but most likely they will eventually be found out.
Tell me more about the accountability and the cost of those lies and crimes by the IDF. How many IDF soldiers rot in prison for the crimes they committed and the crimes that have been documented by HRW? It's zero.
Even when the crimes are fully recorded, they get a handful of months and a commuted sentence.
I saw a video of this today, the quote was from 2019 though (and he was condemned for it and walked it back), so maybe this shouldn't be taken "too seriously" (it was on my mind cause I saw it today, mostly):
> In July 2019, Hamad urged members of the Palestinian diaspora to kill "Jews everywhere". His comments were characterized as incitement to genocide by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America[18] and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.[19] His rhetoric was widely condemned by other Palestinians and he later stated that he supports the Hamas policy of "limiting its resistance to the Zionist occupation that usurps Palestine’s land and defiles its holy sites".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathi_Hamad
> One counterargument is that taking out Hamas, if they succeed (I'm not bullish), is likely to just result in another possibly more radical group rising to power. Doubly so when we've seen something like 20,000 casualties in the last two months, overwhelmingly civilian, which is very obviously going to breed another generation that is full of hatred and vengeance.
Firstly, I'm not sure what you mean by "overwhelmingly civilian". Hamas doesn't publish numbers of militants vs. civilians, as far as I know the only good source for that figure is the IDF, which says more or less a 2:1 ratio (civilian:militant). Is that "overwhelmingly" civilian?
Secondly, what's the alternative? Leave Hamas in power, trying to do this again and again? It's true that Israel doesn't have many good options here, it's all variations of bad, but taking out Hamas is a decent way to gain a lot of security. (And is better for the long-term peace process, IMO, and better for Gazans.)
> [...] I frankly think it should be possible for Israel to prevent another October 7 even in a universe where Hamas is still in power.
I thought so too, but after talking a lot about this I think you're wrong. Hamas aren't idiots - they're a smart, increasingly well-funded enemy. Israel has a lot of capabilities, but Hamas is right on the border. They are fully capable of waiting a few years and then launching another attack using other means. They are fully capable of eroding Israel's ability to defend the border by sending "peaceful civilians" to the border, putting Israel in a position of either shooting at civilians or accepting many thousands of people on the border (similar happened in 2018).
Their rockets are getting better, their intel gathering is getting better, etc. It is incredibly naive (and arrogant!) to think you can forever outwit an enemy. Guerilla armies have beaten larger forces many times.
Not to mention, the more defense you throw at them, the more economically costly this is for you,