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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   13849 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #3

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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Think they may do a couple more big raids like this and then call it a day. Saves a tiny amount of face for the government saying they were going to go in and destroy Hamas but isn’t an actual occupation which “ex-IDF” and “ex-Mossad” types are now openly briefing the Israeli and Western press as a suicidal move.

There are only couple of ways to deal with tunnels with acceptable casualties.

Flood them. Gas them. Blow their entrances. Start sending a shitload of automated roombas that carry grenades inside. All while you forfeit the hostages and hope hamas are honorable enough to give them a quick and clean death and not go pro streamed flayings, impalements and crucifixions.

There are only couple of ways to deal with tunnels with acceptable casualties.

You have drones now. Dealing with tunnels when finding out what's beyond the bend doens't involve coming into physical danger is much ,much easier.

I literally wrote roombas with grenades. But that doesn't mean that they have enough of them.

Drones with cameras go for about $500 these days.

You don't raelly need the roombas though, just knowing what's out there is usually good enough.

Israel is supposedly throwing smoke charges inside, sealing them, and then bombing all places where the smoke starts coming out. They don't seem to care at all about going down there, killing people inside is sufficient for them.

Drones with cameras go for about $500 these days.

How practical are these things for navigating tunnels? I imagine you'd need a pretty good operator not to crash into walls in such an unfamiliar and cramped setting, and who knows how many of those they have, along with the crews required to maintain the equipment and protect the operator so he doesn't get attacked (I imagine the ping, the unreliable infrastructure during battle, and the blocking nature of tunnels makes it so that drone operators need to be somewhat close to the drones). And logistically, even if they cost just $500 each, do they have sheer shipping ability to keep replenishing them as quickly as they get destroyed?

And logistically, even if they cost just $500 each, do they have sheer shipping ability to keep replenishing them as quickly as they get destroyed?

You buy them off Alibaba. Or assemble them from components bought there. Russia, Ukraine are going through hundreds weekly, easily. Maybe thousands.

Why not hope that they'll go pro stream hostage torture? You can then broadcast the Hamas atrocities to the entire world from all channels you have.

The previous round of Hamas atrocities haven't reduced the membership of Hamas's university fan clubs, so why would a new round of atrocities be any different?

Because I don't want my people tortured.

It increasingly feels like the best shot to prevent as much of that as possible is to obtain a casus belli to bomb Hamas into the stone age.

If October 7th did not already provide adequate justification, then adequate justification does not exist.

It seems the adequate justification has a short shelf life and needs to be renewed every few weeks or months.

We're talking about justification for killing more innocents to get at Hamas, not justification for a fictional surgical operation that kills only Hamas. After the initial Hamas raid, people clearly thought that the number of Palestinian civilians that can be killed and cityscapes that can be devastated in the process of exacting revenge is not zero; only recently has public opinion started turning towards "that was too much". Yet, we clearly haven't hit the absolute ceiling of how much collateral damage the public thinks could ever be acceptable; see WW2 or even ISIS in Mosul. Presumably if Hamas got closer to ISIS or Hitler in terms of total volume of achievements that piss off the Western public, there would be room for the public to tolerate more destruction of Gaza in return, up to the point of accepting literal glassing.

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