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Notes -
I should clarify that I support Israels right to exist (just like I support Belgium's right to exist), but am very much not a supporter of the current Israeli government. Apart from Iran, Netanyahu was the biggest ally Hamas had before Oct-7. His strategy of "let us support the religious nutjobs who definitely want to murder all Jews so that the Palestinian cause will be divided" backfired spectacularly. I am totally bewildered by the fact that the Israeli people are still suffering him to lead them.
Now, Hamas did try very hard to convince the world that they need to be wiped from the face of the Earth, and they certainly convinced me of that. If a few thousand Gazan civilians died in the process of wiping Hamas out, that would be sad, but I would not be very upset by it, as a German I understand that sometimes you will be accidentally killed in a bomb blast simply because your parent's generation voted for murderous nutjobs. My problem with the IDF is that from what I can see, that they are just dicking around, going in and out of Gaza, rescuing a hostage here, shooting one there, dropping a bomb on a refugee camp whenever the most senior not-yet-assassinated Hamas leader is there, or starving another thousand out of which exactly zero will be Hamas fighters. Unlike many, I do not think that the IDF is trying to genocide the Gazans out of existence, they know all too well how effective genocides work and this ain't it. But fuck if I know what they think their theory of victory is. "We just have to kill a few more Hamas fighters before their resistance will finally collapse!"? GWB's invasion of Afghanistan seems positively sane by comparison -- at least he had some plan to win the Afghan's hearts and minds through something other than morale bombing. Needlessly to say, if the point of the IDF operations in Gaza is to make the IDF feel less bad about their colossal failure on Oct-7, I am a lot less willing to cut them slack wrt civilian casualties.
Tbf to Israel they do seem to be arming and feeding and propping up some kind of Quisling tribal coalition that might evolve into a new Gaza government. But if that's the plan it's a ways away.
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