this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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You say the strike would not achieve any of their objectives, but I challenge you to name a single alternative that would.
I'm challenging you to give Hamas an alternative. That's it.
Did you forget when Palestinians held peaceful marches and Israeli snipers blew their knees out? It didn't matter. It never does.
You sound like Ghandi telling the Jews that they should have resisted the Nazis with nonviolence and peaceful demonstration. Grow up.
And do you actually honestly think that support from America or various European countries has anything at all to do with moral integrity? Vietnam was undone because they killed and brutalized the invading US soldiers until the American appetite for war turned sour. Afghanistan. Iraq. Did American appetites for conquest and war end because Al Qaeda held peaceful marches and hunger strikes?
Should Ukrainians hold peaceful demonstrations and let themselves be sitting targets for Russian bombs?
What Hamas did was show the Israeli public that they aren't safe, and they did so at the same time that the Netanyahu regime was facing unprecedented public opposition from within Israeli society. They did so at a time when the US government had no House Speaker or can easily solve it. They did so at a time when the West was occupied with an endless war in Ukraine and brinkmanship with China over Taiwan.
Hamas has actually seriously damaged the occupation with this attack. Will you acknowledge this?
Fair points, you've got my upvote.
They killed and brutalized US soldiers. The vast majority of victims on 7 October were civilians.
This was poignant timing, yes.
This was mostly luck, although there some remote possibility of a wider conspiracy.
I give 50/50 odds on whether this was coincidence or not. Suffice it to say, the main reason for the timing is almost certainly to do with Netanyahu - who has previously promoted support of Hamas.
I acknowledge that the strike was incredibly effective, moreso than even the people doing it thought it would be. But I feel like the strike was ultimately more in pursuit of indirect political objectives rather than military objectives. In that sense, it has arguably served Israel more than it has served Palestine - Palestine is under seige, likely to lose land, Netanyahu is still in power and while the polls put Netanyahu down they aren't driving meaningful change. It could still swing either way though, we won't know until much later.
Well a lot of them were "civilian" IDF reservists and veterans, but yes, civilian casualties definitely soured liberal support for Palestinian resistance (and gave the IDF ammo for fake atrocity propaganda, like the nonsense about beheading 40 babies and mass rape and shit like that). I don't think it's entirely alienated them from all support, though. I still see a lot of support for Palestine and resistance to Israel's response, especially in the Global South. This feels different than the psychotic response America had to 9/11, y'know?
It comes down to how things escalate with the imminent ground invasion. What will Hezbollah do? What will Iran do? What will Jordan do? Egypt? The Taliban government? Hell, what will the big dogs like Saudi Arabia do? We don't know, but Hamas is politically savvy.
I would hesitate to give Hamas credit for being politically savvy, more than to say that they have backers that instruct them on how to be politically savvy.
The ground invasion is such bullshit though. I really hate how Israel keep making out that they're "defending themselves", when they're clearly not in a defensive posture. The time for defense was 7 October, when it was conspicuously absent. They're performing a counter-attack, into foreign territory, with only a vague attempt at focusing on military targets.
Reexamine your prejudices. You might not mean it this way, but this is textbook colonial paternalism - an assumption that the colonized can't possibly be clever or disciplined or intelligent, that they must have puppet masters that helped them win against the superior occupying Israeli forces. Guerilla fighters in every colonial resistance throughout history have been characterized the exact same way. Angola. Nicaragua. It's always the same, it's always some outside puppet master that's behind every success of the resistance because the guerillas are too uncivilized and backwards to ever possibly achieve any kind of wins on their own or to strategize on the bigger picture.
If they can steal resources and dig up water pipes to make rockets out of them, then they can organize an attack against some dumb pieces of shit, who moved troops from the border to terrorize people elsewhere.
People should remember that the side which can withstand bombardment, blockades and live off of minimal resources probably has decent leaders, and an angry population.
Sure, there could be someone in Hamas who is politically savvy in such a manner. That's pretty unlikely though, less likely than outside influence in this case. I've edited my comment a little bit to better reflect that.
If Hamas were truly politcally savvy I think they would be far better at garnering widespread international support.
I think they've been good at gathering international support from Qatar, Iran, Lebanon, and Turkey. With this latest act showing the weakness of Israel and the genocidal brutality of Israel's response, they might just win support from other regional powers as well. If this blows up in a regional war, Israel isn't going to have a lot of local allies because Hamas has cultivated a strong base of support in West Asia.
And it's not like gaining support from Westerners matters. Our governments are 100% behind Israel no matter what, so what's the point?
You're underestimating the political acumen of Hamas. Remember, they did get elected in Gaza. They're politicians and guerillas.
There were lots of supporters on both sides of the war in Syria, also.
The point is that 100% support can still be undermined.
I've yet to learn the full details of the Palestinian electroral system, other than that it is quite complicated.
I'm amazed you still believe that, honestly. As far as I can tell Israel's government support is iron clad and nothing can undermine it.
It definitely is, especially since the P.A. and Hamas can't (won't) form a government together and so elections have been suspended.
My point is Hamas isn't just a gang or something. They are a political organization filled with people who know what they're doing. It's a mistake to assume that they are merely the puppets of other actors like Iran. They have their own ideas, agenda, and understanding.