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This whole Israel-Palestine issue has made it even more clear than ever that politicians and many of the "elites" have literally no critical thinking skills or the ability to reason out one or two steps into the future. First there is the "Cease Fire People". It's understandable that people are upset seeing what is going on in Gaza with women and children, but what do they think a cease fire will accomplish? It is literally just kicking the can down the road again. Do they think Hamas will be more reasonable and someone people can negotiate with? If not, you are literally just allowing them to regroup and commit another terrorist attack that could destabilize the Middle East again in a few years. It's really that simple. If you want peace in the region, Hamas cannot be allowed to be in charge in Gaza. And if you asked the Egyptian government, they'd probably tell you the same thing since they just had their own issues wit the Muslim Brotherhood.
Then you have the people who think there will be peace if the Palestinians get their own state. Throwing out for a minute whether or not the Palestinians will attack Israel, the real question is how quickly they will start attacking each other an a civil war. We already know there was a Fatah–Hamas conflict recently, and why would they not fight each other again in a civil war that could very possibly be even worse than what's going on in Gaza? Looking at the neighboring countries, it's not exactly a place known for political stability.
I understand people seeing things on television that makes them sad and they just want it to stop. That's understandable. But has anyone in the State Department revolting against the Biden Administration for their stance on Israel given any reasonable plan for what comes next after a cease fire with Hamas? And I say this as someone who is not a Zionist or a huge fan of Israel.
Westerners just don't seem to be able to understand Muslim extremists. Hamas fighters are literally Islamists that can't be reasoned with. This should be obvious by now to everyone on planet earth after Al Qaeda and ISIS, but apparently some people still haven't learned this obvious fact. I don't know if it's because Westerners don't think that people could actually sincerely believe in their religion like that so they must be ACTUALLY motivated by something else (wrong, as their writings tell us), or their belief that inside everyone is a Westerner waiting to come out who supports gay marriage and diversity, a combination of this, or something else entirely. But if these people think that a cease fire with Hamas will lead to a long standing peace then they are delusional.
I apologize if this comes off as straw-man-y but if your argument is functionally "Hamas is so evil they should not be allowed to continue to exist so it's fine when Israel kills thousands of innocents to stop them" then your argument is missing a few steps! Someone put this more pithily than me on Twitter but if Israel killed my whole family, who have nothing to do with Hamas, in pursuit of killing some Hamas member my first response would be to start Hamas 2. Do you imagine that a lasting peace is going to be achieved by killing thousands of innocents to get rid of Hamas?
I suspect a majority of the people who are calling for a ceasefire agree you that Hamas is evil. I've seen lots of people make points about how Hamas oppresses Palestinians in Gaza. How they haven't allowed elections in almost 20 years. Those people just disagree that Hamas is "murdering thousands of innocent people to stop them" evil.
I don't think most people think a present ceasefire will lead to long standing peace, I think they are much more focused on the immediate goal of preventing the deaths of thousands (tens of thousands?) of innocent civilians.
That's not really my argument. My argument is if they do a cease fire with Hamas, we will literally just be here in 5-10 years from now at best. They knew what the response to this would be and they did it anyway. These are people who put weapons under schools and hospitals and dares people to blow them up. We may get Hamas 2.0 after this, but if we do a cease fire and Hamas stays in power, we 100% get Hamas 1.0 in power no matter what.
What will a cease fire even accomplish? Allow these people to move to safety? Move where? Hamas uses them as human shields and will embed themselves in the population. And there's nowhere safe to move them because nobody wants these people. Egypt, Europe, America, and other Arabs don't want them.
Have any of these cease fire people proposed any plan for how we won't be here again very soon? Possibly in just a few weeks. Can Hamas even be trusted with a cease fire? We know they will commit terrorist attacks as soon as possible and take advantage of any kindness offered to them.
No, you're the one incapable of critical thinking or looking at consequences a few moves ahead right now. Hamas didn't do this in spite of the Israeli response, they did it to provoke the Israeli response. Hamas' end game was exactly this scenario: torpedo the Israeli-Arab rapprochement created by the Abraham Accords for another generation, so that the can gets kicked down the road another 50 years.
The reaction of much of the global public, especially the Muslim population, to the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza is not something that Israel is in a position to change. Braying like a jackass that the human terrain isn't acting rationally to your standards is as useless as politicians who complain about the voters.
The ground invasion is what Hamas wanted from the start, it's a trap. It's sad to me that so many people are so brain poisoned from watching too many Hollywood action films that they see a trap and say "Well a real hero goes in anyway and figures out a way."
Al Qaeda thought they were setting a trap for the West with 9/11. Now, Bin Laden and his contemporary lieutenants are dead and Al Qaeda is scattered and broken, fighting over scraps in sub-Saharan Africa, and the West is mostly annoyed that it had to spend the time and money to do that to them.
Sometimes, it really does work out that the 'hero' goes in anyway and figures things out just fine. Provided the Biden administration doesn't knuckle under to its Left flank and start applying real pressure to get Israel to stop, Hamas is going to be crushed in the ground invasion and Israel will re-occupy the Gaza Strip, probably eventually handing over (Non-democratic) control to the PA.
https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-takeover-anniversary-explainer-10711b53a73638f46f2eb534b15b1a63
And yet...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism_in_Europe
This list seems to have entries running all the way up to 2021.
Did you know that Osama Bin Laden, no bullshit, was a big Asimov fan? And that one way to translate "The Foundation" into Arabic is "Al-Qaeda?"
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Al Qaeda lost, but the idiotic heroism here also lost. Aside from the economic and human costs, we spent two decades with our energies focused on fighting illiterate goat herders and incels instead of countering the actual threats to a US-led world order.
A tiny portion of our energies, maybe. It's not like these things are mutually exclusive.
Of course, a huge part of that was that the American people didn't really care, at the end of the day, once Bin Laden was dead. Israelis will care about what happens in the Gaza Strip.
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