naraburns nihil supernum
2yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
If a full scale invasion results in rescuing any significant percentage of hostages, I'll be shocked. As distinct from some kind of commando lightning strike rescue deal. Hostage deaths once discovered will simply goose the throttle on that meat grinder.
There is no amount of pain they can be inflicted to convince Hamas to return them.
Yes, to be very clear I don't expect the IDF has a good plan to rescue the hostages alive, or that such a good plan exists or is even possible. They just have a plan to release time pressure. Gush Etzion was 2014.
To be charitable, again we're talking a lot of babies or the elderly, a few chronically ill or recently-injured, and a lot of women. There's worse things than death, and years of negotiations give a lot of time for those worse things to happen and then death, followed by the disappearance of the bodies. To be less charitable, part of wartime leadership is not giving orders you know won't be followed.
There's no amount of pain that they can inflict that will get Hamas to return them, and there is no plausible ransom Hamas could demand that Israel will be willing to pay.
I mean is Israel particularly good at hostage rescue to begin with? I suspect not, that the US are the main power that is actually decent at solving that particular military problem, and this particular situation is probably too difficult even for us, let alone a force with looser rules of engagement(which Israel seems to have).
Again, I don't expect them to succeed, at least at the sort of scales required to avoid "Pyrrhic" from being the go-to term. I just don't see anyone pulling a rabbit out of a hat in Qatar.
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Notes -
If a full scale invasion results in rescuing any significant percentage of hostages, I'll be shocked. As distinct from some kind of commando lightning strike rescue deal. Hostage deaths once discovered will simply goose the throttle on that meat grinder.
There is no amount of pain they can be inflicted to convince Hamas to return them.
Yes, to be very clear I don't expect the IDF has a good plan to rescue the hostages alive, or that such a good plan exists or is even possible. They just have a plan to release time pressure. Gush Etzion was 2014.
To be charitable, again we're talking a lot of babies or the elderly, a few chronically ill or recently-injured, and a lot of women. There's worse things than death, and years of negotiations give a lot of time for those worse things to happen and then death, followed by the disappearance of the bodies. To be less charitable, part of wartime leadership is not giving orders you know won't be followed.
There's no amount of pain that they can inflict that will get Hamas to return them, and there is no plausible ransom Hamas could demand that Israel will be willing to pay.
I mean is Israel particularly good at hostage rescue to begin with? I suspect not, that the US are the main power that is actually decent at solving that particular military problem, and this particular situation is probably too difficult even for us, let alone a force with looser rules of engagement(which Israel seems to have).
They're better at it than the Germans, as the morbid joke goes, but that's damning with faint praise and Hamas has put a lot of effort into making past hostages very hard to recover at all and especially recover alive. (Cfe Shalit's 400-meter claymore zone.
Again, I don't expect them to succeed, at least at the sort of scales required to avoid "Pyrrhic" from being the go-to term. I just don't see anyone pulling a rabbit out of a hat in Qatar.
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