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.
Would someone be willing to spell out for me the likely consequences of Israel taking the nuclear option? I am not condoning this but I am curious about it and find very little serious discussion about it.
What I mean by "nuclear option" isn't the use of nuclear weapons, not necessarily. What I mean is the IDF literally turning all or at least the northern half of Gaza into rubble without any semblance of discretionary targeting. What would the fallout be? Would the US withdraw all support and could Israel survive the ensuing revenge from arab countries? Are groups within the Israeli government seriously considering options like this?
I don’t know how western states will react. My gut says “they’ll probably do nothing”, but I’m not sure. History shows that the world at large is actually very tolerant of atrocities, especially if they happen fast enough. It’s not like they can be undone after the fact anyway.
In the case of other terror orgs, I think it will substantially lower the violence against Israel. The arab orgs are much weaker than the IDF, and so far relied on Israeli good will to survive, basically. If they’ll think that Israel might cleanse them, they won’t be as trigger happy.
No telling what other Arab states will do. They don’t seem to actually care about the Palestinians, but they do have to keep up appearances.
Israel could probably kill half or more of Gaza’s population while making it look like an accident which everyone can react to by saying ‘we strongly condemn civilian casualties’.
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Notes -
Would someone be willing to spell out for me the likely consequences of Israel taking the nuclear option? I am not condoning this but I am curious about it and find very little serious discussion about it. What I mean by "nuclear option" isn't the use of nuclear weapons, not necessarily. What I mean is the IDF literally turning all or at least the northern half of Gaza into rubble without any semblance of discretionary targeting. What would the fallout be? Would the US withdraw all support and could Israel survive the ensuing revenge from arab countries? Are groups within the Israeli government seriously considering options like this?
I don’t know how western states will react. My gut says “they’ll probably do nothing”, but I’m not sure. History shows that the world at large is actually very tolerant of atrocities, especially if they happen fast enough. It’s not like they can be undone after the fact anyway.
In the case of other terror orgs, I think it will substantially lower the violence against Israel. The arab orgs are much weaker than the IDF, and so far relied on Israeli good will to survive, basically. If they’ll think that Israel might cleanse them, they won’t be as trigger happy.
No telling what other Arab states will do. They don’t seem to actually care about the Palestinians, but they do have to keep up appearances.
Israel could probably kill half or more of Gaza’s population while making it look like an accident which everyone can react to by saying ‘we strongly condemn civilian casualties’.
1 000 000? Nope, that would not work as "accident"
It's widely believed that the war in Iraq caused a similar number of deaths, and nobody ever really cared.
Not even the Lancet got to a cool million.
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