Comment by nojvek
1 year ago
We could have said this about Germany and Japan after WWII.
Every human no matter their race and religion cares about having food, water, safety, opportunity, live in a law abiding society where their rights are respected and they get “some” choice to vote for their future.
Germany and Japan were conquered and unconditionally surrendered, after massive civilian casualties. Nazis were tried and executed. If Israel is should model itself on those examples, it's doing the right and moral thing in waging war until Hamas is destroyed, or unconditionally surrenders.
The point is that it’s possible for relations to improve over time even when previous generations were bitter enemies. There are plenty of other examples in history apart from WW2.
Investing heavily in Palestine is likely Israel’s cheapest option for stability in the long term. They certainly aren’t going to bomb their way to stability.
If they had gone after Hamas leadership specifically with targeted operations while increasing humanitarian aid, rather than terrorizing the entire population of Gaza, they would have had the world and likely a decent percentage of Palestinians on their side. Instead they have utterly and completely botched it and put themselves in a terrible situation strategically.
> gone after Hamas leadership specifically with targeted operations while increasing humanitarian aid, rather than terrorizing the entire population of Gaza
The aid was going first to fighters, then to stockpiles, then to the people. To the extent it could be traded for weapons it was. Now we’re seeing allegations UNRWA employees participated in the October 7th attacks [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/world/middleeast/un-aid-i...
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> Investing heavily in Palestine is likely Israel’s cheapest option for stability in the long term. They certainly aren’t going to bomb their way to stability.
Even that is non trivial. Money going into Gaza first goes through Hamas. After buying arms and building expensive tunnels, and paying its men, the leftovers go to the rest of the population.
> Germany and Japan were conquered and unconditionally surrendered
Israel has already done that to Palestine, many decades ago, but they failed to do anything like the Marshall Plan to invest in the occupied lands and create a lasting peace.
If we hope to learn from WW2, we should consider the postwar history of Eastern Europe. Like Israel, the Soviets also failed to invest in the lands they occupied, instead trying to suppress rebellions with violence. Now all of those nations are Russia's enemies.
> Soviets also failed to invest in the lands they occupied
Soviets occupied lands more developed than them. They did not fail to invest, they looted the lands, for example the Uranium from Czechoslovakia [1].
[1] https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-historiques-de-l-electr...
>Like Israel, the Soviets also failed to invest in the lands they occupied
Don't know about Israel, but you definitely know nothing about the Soviets.
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This myth that Hamas can be destroyed and that if they are, everything will be alright, is completely disproven by the fact that there is no Hamas in the West Bank and Israeli extremists continue to perpetrate crimes there.
There's also the myth that settlers are responsible for all Palestinian grievances. There are no settlers in Gaza since 2005.
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Where are you getting the idea that tbere is no Hamas in the West Bank? There are very much Hamas militants there that would love nothing more than to commit another Oct. 7th.
With the support of IDF collaboration (and funding from private US organizations). Downvoters don’t like the facts I guess.
There are two ways to get peace. One is for one side to completely dominate the other at massive cost, and with risk of blowback even after domination. The other is for cooler heads to prevail. Plenty of examples from history of both. And supposedly we had, as a modern world, decided that we prefer the latter path to peace over the former. Hence the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, etc.
Ethnically cleansing a population is not right or moral in any case whatsoever.
Hamas's stated aim and goal is to destroy Israel and ethnically cleanse Palestine of the jews "from the river to the sea".
When somebody tells you they want to destroy you, over and over for years, and then builds up terror factories and uses it to intentionally target women, children and elderly civilians on Oct 7, maybe -- just maybe, Israel has no choice other than to deal with Hamas as they are.
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Germany was reduced to rubble, their population submitted to complete and total surrender, and their leaders were all executed. Japan was firebombed into oblivion and then had two atomic bombs dropped on their civilian population. And both were then completely occupied and had their government dismantled and replaced by their conquerors.
What Israel is doing right now seems to be far closer to what happened in Germany and Japan after WW2 than whatever diplomatic solution you are proposing.
And the world decided we didn't want to have wars like that ever again, and gave the defeated countries a path to prosper. Sadly, Palestinians have no such path.
Hamas has spent the aid and all their funds on funding terror. It's no wonder they have no path to prosper. Hamas made it this way.
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>and gave the defeated countries a path to prosper.
You're not very familiar with the history of the countries behind the Iron Curtain, are you?
I think the allies (largely the US) were able to effect massive cultural changes in Japan and Germany after WWII from aggressive, totalitarian, racist societies committed to military victory by any means necessary to relatively peaceful, even pacifist societies only via:
1) Forcing unconditional surrender on Germany and Japan, whereby virtually every citizen of those countries was convinced that they had lost the war and that resorting to armed struggle for their goals was a complete failure for Germany and Japan, and,
2) A lengthy occupation in those countries that accomplished many things, including the "de-nazification" of educational system.
This only worked because enough was invested into the defeated countries for their populations to prosper. Case in point, after WW1, we got WW2.
The prospects Palestinians are faced with, as proven by the West Bank, are very bleak, making any peace very very unstable.
If Germany or Japan is your guideline here, maybe Israel should get a Bomber Harris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Harris#Second_World_War) or a Truman (see nuclear weapons dropped on Japan) on the scene?
People are saying that what Israel is doing right now is a genocide. You have seen nothing yet: With either of them at the helm, there would either be an unconditional surrender by Hamas or no Palestinian alive anymore - and by November 15, last year.
We don't do such things anymore, and for good reason, but that means that these past situations are unsuitable as example for the present.
What Israel is doing right now should be viewed from the point of view of the goal of removing the Hamas threat as such. The logic here is "Hamas should go - what's the best way to make that happen?" and from this POV the situation is not too grim. It's obviously best to avoid casualties as much as possible, but we are far from perfect wars.
Germany and japan returned to their pre war borders after the war. Gaza does not have the land or resources to sustain its population. It literally needs to expand to have any amount of stability.
No they didn't. Germany lost a large chunk of its eastern lands that was "given" to Poland (but in reality conytrolled by the Soviets) and Japan's large prewar empire in northern China and Korea (since the early 1930s) was taken away from the Japanese leaving them only the home islands. A bit of basic historical knowledge is good if one is going to argue.
As for Gaza not being able to sustain its population, i'm doubtful. It's a tiny territory almost devoid of material/natural resources, but then there are many places and enclave countries in the world that are similar in size, heavily populated and with good standards of living. The reason why: They're not unremittingly belligerent with their neighbors, run by a government explicitly dedicated to the erasure of one of those neighbors, and overall allowed to exchange with the rest of the world fully.
With that said, the hardline stance of Netenyahou and those who support him is doing little favors to Israel either, if a path to peace is what Israel wants.
I think the WWII example is really useful here - completion of hostilities and post-war work. Expansion of Gaza may be not necessary at all, looking at Singapore example, not to mention West Bank.
It is unimaginable to me for Gaza to ever resemble singapore. Singapore had massive advantages that took hundreds of years to create and its biggest continues to be its position along the straight of malacca. If singapore was not along the straight theres no doubt in my mind that it would be in a much much worse position today. Singapore actually has long standing hostilities with Malaysia. The only reason it exists today in its current form is the economic advantage given by its location.
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Germany and Japan were occupied after WWII. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/united-states...
Their borders were restored.
Except where they weren't. The German borders after 1945 or after 1990 are unlike any other shape of any German nation (or collection of German states) before.
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