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It's not technically culture war, but Hamas has just attacked Israel en-masse, overwhelming the Iron Dome with 5000 rockets and even sending raiding parties into Israel. It looks like Haman and/or Shabak haven't done their job at all, and Israel has been caught with its pants down.
For the culture war angle, I think the biggest question is of retribution. On one hand, Israeli public will now demand a reaction that makes the ongoing Hamas attack pale in comparison. On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?
The best thing Israel could do for the Palestinian people is to straight up occupy Gaza and the West Bank and declare them to be parts of Israel and their inhabitants citizens. Then punish the attackers as common violent criminals.
Also this really doesn't look good for Mossad. I expected better from them...
Yes, yes they should. It sucks but there is no alternative. Israel is too far advanced and strong now compared to the Palestinians, end of story. The time to compete was 50 years ago, and the way to compete was not rockets and bullets but rather a singular focus on economic growth to the point where your soft power grew so much you could influence the players that really matter (lets be honest here, both Palestine and Israel are too small to influence the world by themselves) to put extreme pressure on Israel because they wanted to trade with you (which is what Israel is doing now to the Palestinians, see the proposed normalization of relations with parts of the Arab world).
Violence no longer works on large scales in the 21st century (see Russia v Ukraine) if you want to create a peaceful country and prosperity for your people. The only reason it works for Israel doing the reverse is that the Palestinians are much weaker (to the point that it's no longer two equals fighting - which leads to a lot of damage to the world; but more like police subjugating a riot - minimal damage to the world if the police handle it right), and because Israeli economic heft will mean other countries turn a blind eye to what is going on, were Palestine to try the same, they would rightfully be sanctioned into the ground. Until Hamas understands this the very people they want to help will suffer even more than they would in a counterfactual world where Hamas suddenly disappeared off the face of this planet.
Even if Hamas wants to take the fight to Israel physically, the way to do it is not through the sticks and stones tier rockets but rather through diverting economic resources into high end military research to make yourself a plausible equal of Israel in the domain, and then threaten them (this is never going to happen, but it's still the right way to do things if you choose this path).
The taliban defeated NATO after NATO spent 2 trillion dollars fighting them. If anything tech is helping Palestine. We have seen cheap drones that are mass produced take out an Israeli tank today. With every Palestinian having a cell phone and most of the middle east on social media it has become harder for Israel to brutally suppress Palestinians. Israel can no longer control the narrative when so much of the public's view comes from the internet and not pro Israel media organizations. The Palestinians are increasing in numbers and fighting an ongoing insurgency at home is cancerous for a society. Furthermore, Israel is already deeply split between conservatives, an extremely woke portion of jews and sectarian fundamentalists that are breeding at a high rate.
The US could absolutely have won in Afghanistan if it was willing to accept extreme civilian casualties, wipe out villages etc. The reality of an occupation is that if you have fuel, food and resources, mostly you really can just kill people until a population is pacified. It would have worked even in Chechnya, Putin just didn’t have the guts.
Pacifying Chechnya was difficult and extremely costly. There are twice as many Palestinians as Chechnyas and they have phones. Russians at least weren't continuously filmed during their operation. Israel has falling support in the polls and going full Chechnya won't improve that.
If Israel kills every palestinian tomorrow, in 5 years all will be forgotten. The half assed genocides get remembered. The full one don't.
That's basically one of only three stable solutions, too. The second one is the Palestinians kill all the Jews, the third is the Jews all go somewhere else far away.
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