Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
- 15
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Effectiveness is the function of goals - to evaluate effectiveness, you need to see how the goals are being reached. The problem is, Israel declared two goals here - elimination of Hamas and release of hostages, and these two goals are contradictory. Additionally, there's a longer term goal - not letting October 7 repeat itself - while also avoiding taking full control over Gaza as occupying power long term. This goal is also self-contradictory, since as soon as IDF moves out, Hamas moves back in.
This has nothing to do with casualties. The Hamas caucus in the US has been screaming about genocide and singing "from the river to the sea" next day after October 7, long before there even were any casualties. And they will be always screaming that, because they do not recognize Israel as a legitimate state and their ultimate goal is its destruction, so nothing Israel does would ever be good enough for them, short of ceasing to exist completely. The slogan is "Free Palestine", and "free" here means "Judenfrei". It's not "reduce civilian casualties". It's "no Jews, period". They may be fine with some Naturei Karta posers, but that's about it.
Israel has more then enough power to do that. What Israel doesn't have is the desire and political will to do that, because it replaces the current problems with much more complicated and painful set of problems, which Israel already experienced and decided to get rid of them by evacuating from Gaza. Israel wants Gaza to be outside and treat it as foreign thing, not a persistent festering sore on its own body. The problem here is that this desire is not matching the reality, and it's not the question of manpower. This is the problem of the political desires of Israeli society not matching the sad reality on the ground. And it will only be resolved, ultimately, by Israel giving up on one of the contradictory requirements. Previously, Israel gave up on security to get rid of Gaza, and got October 7 as the consequence. They can do it again and get it again in another 15 years or so. Or they can accept Gaza as their problem and get another set of problems instead. There's no other "solution" - at least not practical one. So yes, one could say it's not "going well" if somebody expected the contradictory requirements somehow be fulfilled. But it's going exactly as expected for somebody that understands the contradiction from the start. The IDF would do as much as the politics allow it, and then the politics will take over and go to one of the possible outcomes.
You mean on Israel's side? If you knew anything about Israeli society, this would be laughable, it's impossible to hide this many dead in a small country where literally everybody knows everybody within a couple of handshakes. I mean I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but I actually know a thing or two about that country, having lived there for many years, and it's just not something that can happen. Hiding a couple of deaths would be tough, hiding a thousand is plain crazy talk. So I will address this no more.
Ok, so what is the casualty total? We don’t know because it’s never been reported. Haaretz said it was 260 as of April 2024. Al-Jazeera said 860 five days ago. I’m sure you can tell me all the reasons those are wrong, but won’t actually be able to tell me a number.
That figure is probably correct. Haaretz is an extremely leftist publication which is very hostile to Likud government, and if that government went crazy enough (which it wouldn't because as I said that would be idiotic) to try and hide massive death toll, they'd expose it gladly. Except in this case there's nothing to expose.
Al Jazeera is full of shit. And I mean it as the most general assessment possible, anytime they say anything about Israel you can assume they are full of shit and you will be right pretty much every time. If there ever is a conspiracy in Israel government, whatever it be, Haaretz can be plausibly the one that would uncover it (of course, given it's a Likud government, otherwise they'd just shut up, they wouldn't attack a leftist government), but not Al Jazeera.
How would they even do that? How many sources in top Israel government positions would leak to freaking Al Jazeera? Let's assume Israeli government and IDF and the Home Front Command and Hevra Kadisha and everybody else are all in on the conspiracy to hide hundreds or thousands of casualties. How the fucking Al Jazeera would know then? From where exactly? Who would tell them? When they have a at least half dozen of perfectly good media outlets in Israel itching to stick it to Bibi? Again, that would be completely idiotic. I like conspiracy theories but a conspiracy theory must make at least a minimal sense.
I don't know where Al Jazeera pulled that number from, and I wouldn't even bother to check. If you are interested in real numbers, get some from some place that isn't full of shit. You could use Haaretz if you want to - if they link to official figures, they usually wouldn't lie about it. Haaretz publishes a lot of lies, but lying about what could be easily checked against official figures would be too stupid, they don't work this way.
I don't know the exact number, I haven't looked it up, so I'd estimate it as several dozens from Iran thing and about the same from Gaza activities, overall probably between 50 and 100 casualties in the last 3 months.
Did you try checking Wikipedia? While it's not the most reliable of sources, they have a habit that most traditional press neglects, that is linking to primary sources, and those links usually contain such information. I'm pretty sure every death in Israel, be it civilian or military, is reported (though military deaths are reported after a delay due to family notification requirements). You just need to look it up.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link