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Notes -
Why Not Simply: Gaza, some more.
As I understand it,
It seems that one way to defuse Hamas' tactic of using a civilian populace as an all-purpose shield and moral justification is to separate Hamas-ans from Gazans, prevent the Gazan class from providing aid to Hamas, prevent the Gazan class from attacking Israel, and then avoid mistreating the Gazan class. In other words, stop-the-world filtration:
(Yes I know it's evil, but it's less evil and seems back-of-envelope more practical than what they're doing now)
I don't understand why Israel isn't doing this, and prefers to do horrific things to civilians and take the international consequences on the chin. Is it just because it's reinventing concentration/filtration camps, and not even Israel can handle the international blowback of that tactic at that scale? Is the scale impractical? Is the expense impractical? Is the needed bandwidth of processing humans not doable within Israeli manpower constraints? Do they simply not care that much? Do Gazans prefer to live freely in the current war zone that much more than food, board, and light prison regimentation? Is "after combat operations end" too fuzzy of a line to trust? Is there no trust in being released after internment, or good conditions during?
If you take possession of Gazans then you are now seen as responsible for anything that goes wrong. If Hamas is in possession then they are responsible.
I also found this tweet interesting
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has a message for the 'Ceasefire Now' people and its 🔥🔥🔥
“One of the things that I have found somewhat absent from the [media] coverage is that what we are talking about in the first phase is women, elderly, and wounded civilians.
Those who would like to see a ceasefire in Gaza. A ceasefire is on the table today for six weeks to be built on into something more enduring if Hamas would simply release women, wounded, and elderly.“
https://twitter.com/avivaklompas/status/1767692156179726699?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
So when things are real this administration seems to know what a women is?
I believe it’s Hanania who has made comments that if you take a liberal woman and asks her beliefs on a host of woke topics she will answer correctly. But then make a comment about her weight and she will become upset and apparently all women aren’t beautiful, etc.
And for the record I 100% think women should get special treatment in times of war.
He is talking about the women, elderly and wounded among Israeli citizens being held hostage by Hamas, right? Or so I hope?
Because if he is talking about Palestinian civilians, that's absolutely insane. The women and children living in the Gaza strip live there. Why should Hamas kick them out of their own country, just to make it easier for Israel to massacre the remaining adult male Palestinians (regardless of Hamas affiliation) without looking like the bad guy?
Even talking about hostages it seems like a frankly insane demand to make: “Hey, we want to murder all of you, but if we kill a few hostages in the process, that would make us look like the bad guys. Crazy, right? So can you do us a big favor and release your hostages so we can go ahead and kill you all without any repercussions? Thanks, Hamas! ... Oh, you refuse? How unreasonable of you!”
Given that the public terms of the ceasefire Hamas rejected was predicated on 1) Proof of life for the remaining hostages and 2) releasing the hostages, that is the plain reading of the tweet. Hamas was unable or unwilling to provide proof of life for any of the remaining hostages.
If Hamas agreed to release the hostages, then there would have been a ceasefire for at least six weeks, possibly forever.
Again, how is that supposed to be an enticing offer? “Hey Hamas, we want to murder all of you, but we can't do it while you have hostages! So we propose that you release the hostages, and in return we promise to wait six weeks before we murder you.”
From one perspective, what Hamas would get from a ceasefire is time to rearm, reorganize, and thus, once the ceasefire ends, make it harder for Israel to continue pushing their shit in. We'll never know that counterfactual for sure, though, it seems like.
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