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naraburns  nihil supernum  6mo ago (text post)   29934 thread views

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.

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I thought the invasion would have started within a couple of days after the first attack, and certainly within a week.

Surely Israel has detailed war plans ready for such a scenario. They certainly struck back lightning-fast in 1973.

It seems to me that it is clear the US higher ups are threatening Bibi with quite a bit if he does anything beyond some special forces incursions.

Netanyahu has been fucking the security state over a barrel for political reasons; normal bullshit that crops up all the time in these types of situations.

The types of boring prescription lenses in aviator frames wearing megadeath calculating blood drinking reptilian motheruckers you need to run an effective 1st rate military don't do well in particularly ideological regimes.

You gotta have the type of bastard who isn't a sociopath but can imagine a mile high pile of corpses and not feel bad or need to justify it to plan out how they are gonna get the pile high enough to reach god.

Yeah they launched some initial raids after their evacuation notice last week and I thought a full assault wouldn't be too far behind. I know there were reports that they were delaying it due to the weather. Perhaps it is taking longer than they anticipated to reactivate their reservists and get them into position? Speed isn't as essential in this case from a tactical standpoint, but I do think the window is closing on the time when the world will turn more of a blind eye to any collateral damage they might inflict.

I have also come across a bit of speculation that IDF leadership knows that this will turn into a massive bloodbath and fiasco and they are delaying against the wishes of the politicians and trying to work out alternatives to an invasion. Sounds like a sensible scenario to me.

The whole of Israel knows that they will be blamed for everything that happens. A fat guy has a heart attack 12 miles from a place the IDF conducted a raid. Israels fault. Etc. Hamas houses most of its weapons and operatives in schools, mosques, hospitals, etc. So its basically a long debate for the IDF whether they want to be even mildly effective in their response and have to defend themselves in front of antisemites at the Hague, or if there is another means of resolving the situation.

If this was 1833, there wouldn't be a single Gazan alive by Christmas. And this would be just.

But this isn't 1833. And I don't mean in the sense of the moral fads turning sour on military might, I mean in the sense that we have explosives and small arms that make urban combat, even with air support and artillery, a protracted gruesome horror for everyone involved.

Blood feuds have a way of hardening the heart, but I would be surprised if the IDF is cheery at the perspective of getting shot at from a million angles, dodging VBIEDs, collapsing buildings and your own ordinance to the tune of screams of women and children getting melted alive by Willie Pete.

You stated a lot of reasons it should be easier for Israel to be rid of Gaza permanently. Their ability to do what Rome did to Carthage is orders of magnitude greater.

Do they need "boots on the ground" in that sort of conflict though? Couldn't they just bomb and shell every square foot until there's effectively no one and nothing left? Of course, it isn't that sort of conflict (yet).

It would be reasonable to delay it because of the Biden visit. But if they don’t invade within a day or two of Biden leaving then I would just assume that they’re not going to.

Seems to fit in with the general pattern of developed nations opting for drones and airstrikes, and being squeamish about directly putting boots on the ground.

If they don't do a ground op after all this huffing and puffing, won't they just look completely bitchmade, literally the paper tiger the Arab militant sources portray them as? Hard to see how that wouldn't majorly boost Hamas, Hezbollah etc.

In my view, the maximally rational response to this would be

  1. significantly beef up wall security and air defense
  2. continue very surgical strikes into Gaza to kill Hamas and destroy military hardware
  3. find and use non-headline grabbing ways of depriving Gaza of resources
  4. otherwise go about life as normally as possible and not show any signs of being terrorized

So, +1 for not immediately invading.

That said, they're all clearly terrorized and look bitchmade. So, time to roll in and fill underground tunnels with fuel and burn Hamas to a crisp. Probably, as a matter of taste, it would be good to wait until the President of the US is safely out of the neighborhood.

I genuinely don't know how (2) and (3) are supposed to work. Israel's intelligence on the whereabouts of Hamas are clearly not that great, Hamas has every incentive to embed with civilians, and even genuine mistakes will be photographed and treated as more proof of how evil Israel is. With regard to resources, the current Western stance appears to be that Israel is obliged to provide resources. If they fail to do so, Hamas will use that as a propaganda opportunity and Western media will oblige them.

From a propaganda and optics perspective, they've simply been outplayed. There is no action they can take other than sitting passively that won't result in screeching about genocide.

They could never not be outplayed, that’s the reality of the situation, there’s no way to conduct this war in a way amenable to the sensibilities of the Western PMC.

The only way they could have done a ground invasion is if they went in on day one, but if they did that they’d have been walking into a huge trap and would have taken (and still will, if they do) unbelievable casualties.

Unironically pumping spironolactone into the water would be a better tactic than going in on foot.

I don't know about 3, but they apparently thought they were hot shit at 2. This is a moment of reckoning.

I think you’re entirely correct!

Yes, thoroughly bitchmade. If that happens, I'll assume that they were cowed by Biden and the United States diplomacy apparatus. Were I a militant anti-Israel Arab, I would view that outcome as hilarious.

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