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So a quarter of American soldiers - who had suffered zero effects back home, other than a bit of minor rationing - still "really hated" Nazis. And that wouod be, to my understanding, before really being too aware of the Holocaust. Imagine if the Nazis had committed the same atrocities to Americans on American soil as Hamas did on 10/7.
They had Pearl Harbor, but Americans didn’t hate the Japanese much either, from 1940s Gallop polls you can find online. Of course they did use nuclear weapons at the end, which would be a fair comparison.
Or we can just look at 9/11? America didn’t bomb every Iraqi dwelling until every member of the Taliban surrendered. That would be sociopathic. And this caused more casualties than in Israel.
Leaving aside the conflation of Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s a ridiculous comparison, because neither Iraq nor Japan nor Germany were entirely or mostly or even substantially urban.
In reality, footage of postwar Dresden, Berlin and Tokyo looks pretty similar to footage of urban Gaza today. 5% of Germany’s civilian population died in the war by most estimates, more in many major cities. Again the numbers in Gaza are similar (WW2 was longer, but the pitched phase of urban fighting that saw most of those casualties was actually much shorter). Iraq saw far fewer civilian casualties because the Baathist government was deeply unpopular, its military was a traditional uniformed military built on the failed Arab military model of the 1970s and the majority Shia population eagerly dismantled what remained of Hussein’s regime. Go back to America’s last genuinely major conflict in Vietnam (again, predominantly rural at the time of fighting which inherently means a much lower civilian casualty rate) and the civilian casualties spike accordingly, because the enemy had morale.
That is, by the way, what it takes to root out a highly entrenched urban guerilla force that doesn’t wear uniforms, has an extensive tunnel network and embraces hiding among the civilian population. The only alternative Israel’s detractors can offer to the way the war has already been prosecuted amounts to ‘just leave and negotiate from a distance’. That is a valid approach, and a fair argument (and one I agree with), but it is not and can never be a military strategy, only a diplomatic one. Militarily, strategists offer no alternative. If you were in charge of the IDF and were given the order to militarily destroy Hamas with the soldiers Israel has and the equipment it has, you could likely come up with no military strategy that had fewer civilian casualties than the current approach.
Falluja was fought against insurgents in Iraq. While 60% or more of the buildings in Gaza are destroyed, after this battle (the worst of the urban combat in Iraq) only 20% max were destroyed. Why didn’t America just bomb the city until everyone died? Al Qaeda was fought in the battle of Ramadi. Years long urban battle. Why didn’t America just blow up every single dwelling? Same for in Baghdad, over 2 years.
Comparing Hamas, with limited offensive capabilities, to Nazi Germany, doesn’t make much sense. They were compared in the above to show that even the comically worst enemy of history weren’t despised with genocidal intent as Israelis despise Palestinians. But you can’t compare Hamas and their kidnappings / killings to a Nazi invasion of continental Europe. The best comparison is our fight against Al Qaeda and insurgents. They launched an attack on American soil that killed twice the number as Oct 7. We went after Al Qaeda and Baathists as a result. We didn’t aim to starve them to death. This is the closest thing to a 1-to-1 comparison. Vietnam was a notably bad war, people still bring it up all the time as an example of what not to do.
This is unfalsifiable. The few accounts we get from the ground indicate little regard for human life. The recent video of the ambulance workers being killed is an example. You can do what Americans did in Iraq and go into Gaza on the ground. You can enter tunnels and raid homes like we did in Vietnam. If they are unwilling to do this out of fear, then Israel should give up and make compromises. I don’t think the answer is starvation and trying to destroy everything in Gaza.
The battle of falluja was less than 2 months long and there weren't extensive tunnel networks dug out specifically to prevent the forces from being effectively routed. This is the type of war Hamas specifically prepared to fight and provoke. You need to deal with there being two agentic sides to this conflict.
This has a lot to do with holocaust justification for the war being post hoc and Americans just not really caring a much about a conflict half the world away as evidenced by the long resistance to entering it.
Afghanistan just isn't in any way comparable to Gaza.
A call for an alternative strategy is definitely falsifiable although it's a weird term to use. The relevant question is what do you actually do if you're Israel and recognize that your neighbor is lead by a death cult that legitimately will go to whatever ends are within their ability to kill as many of your people as possible and have extensive tunnel networks that make actually rooting them out nearly impossible. Your options are basically extreme violence, as we see now, or just enduring regular attacks.
Tunnels are not something that would prevent Israel from being on the ground, it would simply add to the casualties. If you think they should blow up and starve all of Gaza because they don’t want to take on-the-ground casualties, then you have to ask why America allowed any on-the-ground casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why not bomb and starve the countries entirely? There were two battles of Falluja separated by seven months — because there was always a sustained insurgent force among civilians. There was a sustained insurgent force through much of the Iraq war, with IED events getting worse as the war went on, peaking in 2007. The tunnel excuse is equivalent to destroying all of Iraq because you don’t want to take casualties from IEDs. Only ~400 soldiers killed in Gaza ground operations so far.
Nazis invaded countries and killed many millions of people. This was well known at the time. And there was a lot of war propaganda about rape and civilians being killed. The American soldiers just weren’t sociopaths. They didn’t want to genocide people for losing a war.
You can stop blockading the Gaza Strip and stealing land in the West Bank and illegally imprisoning Gazans, which were the ascribed motivations for the attack
You can not use the Hannibal Directive, which killed some unspecified % of the hostages and civilians (it’s crazy we still don’t know the extent of this)
You can implement the most asinine security measures to prevent any future attack, starting with a common sense “don’t throw raves right next to Gaza”
You can pursue diplomacy based on returning encroached land in the West Bank
blockading? Do you mean controlling what goes in to the territory where the governimg body uses the pipes meant for water supplies to make rockets? Yeah, no country is going to allow supplies in unexamined in that situation.
I agree, the settlements should not happen, but the Palestinians should have by now come up with state borders which would have prevented this rather than clinging to the delusion that they're going to retake Israel. We should have two people negotiate proper borders but the Palestinians are uninterested in this.
What percentage of the deaths on October 7th do you think died to Hannibal directive? The policy rescinded in 2016.
Do you attribute any agency at all to Gazans? Are they just animals incapable of higher reasoning in your estimation? They can't be expected to differentiate right from wrong?
Would hamas accept a two state solution on these borders?
This was debunked, I’m pretty sure.
That’s also false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel and there’s also a good TheGreyZone article on it.
Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if every non military age male was killed in the Hannibal Directive rather than by Hamas. Because I don’t think Hamas went in with the RPGs required to —
Though a video was “”released”” showing a militant with one, the original footage doesn’t show it. And by the time the IDF was firing at cars, each insurgent already had a car full of hostages. But Zionists wouldn’t stand 1000 hostages in Gaza and only militant-aged deaths, because this would mean that they would have to take their demands for freedom and justice seriously. This is my theory.
I think so, yes
Mysterious force of nature it seems.
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