Hamas has been considerably weakened. Their arsenal of rockets and weapons is depleted. At the beginning of the war thousands of rockets were being shot into Israel and now there are very few and the ones that are are quite crude.
Hezbollah entered the war immediately and said the only way they would exit is if Hamas exists. Israel retaliated, killed their leader, decimated their forces, and negotiated a ceasefire that got Hezbollah to back off on their original terms. Lebanon just elected an anti-Hezbollah President.
During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong.
So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed.
The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves. They may have reduced the likelihood of another Oct 7 in the near term, but 50 years is not something I would count on
Probably the most efficient way of creating multiple generations of anger and hate is letting a radical terrorist movement control 2 million people, which can completely mold the education curriculum and free to draft anyone to their quasi-army
So whatever it has done, it cannot possibly be worse than pre-war
This is the narrative that the extremists want to push, but it’s hardly the truth. Hamas was not some grassroots movement of frustrated Palestinians. It was an Iranian proxy force masterminded, funded, supplied, trained, and instructed by Iran.
There are certainly many angry Palestinians before and after but this is foreign meddling through and through. Hamas would not exist in this form and have done the things that it did otherwise.
They already hated Israel. So much that they attacked them and started this war in the first place. I doubt Israel is any worse off in terms of being hated than they were before the war.
Hamas is not a rational actor. Their stated goal is to destroy Israel and kill every Jew. That's it. There is no scenario in which they are going to stop hating Israel. They don't care if every Palestinian also gets killed, if they get to destroy Israel it's worth it to them.
There are multiple generations of hate in the West Bank as well. Israel isn't threaten by them as much as they have much more difficulty accumulating weapons.
> Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves
Israel would have created multiple generations of emboldened anger and hate against themselves if they failed to respond to the massacre and mass kidnapping.
I don't understand how is this different to all wars? back then when the Nazis started the war and we had to declare war against them. Or when we nuked 2 cities of Japan, were we also afraid that we will create multiple generations of anger and hate? how is this different?
I'm not comparing Israel or Palestine to Nazi, it's just a bitter fact that war always create anger and hate. Something had to be done though?
The right way to fight an independence movement is to either do so from within/in a more targeted fashion, or barring that, meet their demands in some shape or form. Escalating the violence to the point where you’re destroying and displacing a people might settle things down in the short term, but the movement will not die, and will more than likely grow.
The difference being that the new manpower has zero experience, is mostly kids and has no leadership. They reverted from a terrorist army, to an unorganized guerilla
Not only is Hamas weakened, Hamas' and Iran's supporter (China, Russia) has been severely weakened compared to the start of the conflict. Russia is in a stalemate in the Ukraine invasion, and has lost significant economic and military resources since. Russia also lost significant influence in Middle East, with the Assad regime fall. China is a severe economic decline. Also, China distanced itself from Iran, most likely due to wanting to not get sanctioned by US and Europe. https://thediplomat.com/2024/11/china-is-recalculating-its-m....
And we've yet to see whether this is a good thing.
Gaddafi was seen as one of the most oppressive figures in the world during his lifetime. A few countries made it their goal to take him down and liberate the people of Libya.
Gaddafi was killed, Libya was free, and the media celebrated. Just like with Syria, media coverage was down to basically zero about a month after that happened and everyone was left thinking it was a job well done. Turns out Libya has been worse than it ever was under Gaddafi. Having an oppressive albeit relatively secular leader who maintained a stable hold on the country turned out to be better than an oppressive non-secular mess.
Good points there. Still not sure how much the ouster of Assad was connected with the war (though no doubt that the weakening of Hezbollah must have contributed a lot to it) but it definitely changed the playing field.
> Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas
Well, Israel started and has been funding Hamas (I'm assuming, but who knows, that it stopped with this war) since the PLO/Arafat days to the tune of (at times tens of) millions a month.
That's not actually true. First Israel didn't fund them, they allowed others to fund them, second the Hamas back then was not the terrorists of today, they changed.
The monsters are still there and already planning their next attempt in genocide. While the hostages coming back is a welcome news, none of war objectives were achieved. All the sacrifices were pointless if Israel exits Gaza and leaves Hamas in control (weakened is but still in control).
Netanyahu again showed that he is a coward and easily pressured and has a pathological fear of a conflict.
With thousands of monsters being released back into Gaza I fear the next 7 October will be worse.
It really depends what people have to lose. If they're left without families, place to live, purpose in life other than revenge... what exactly could be "even worse" at that point?
The framing here is pretty ridiculous. Israel definitely punches back much harder than Hamas, but comparing October 7th to a punch and Israel's response to running over babies with a bulldozer is absurd.
Hamas blatantly escalated the conflict by a large margin, there's no denying that. You can't cry over your adversary's response when you do something like that, I'm sorry. Next time keep your hands to yourself, or perhaps just continue throwing rockets at civilians: Israel seems to be willing to tolerate that.
By conservative estimates (see the 2024 Khatlib paper in the Lancet), roughly 7--9% of the population of Gaza will perish as a result of the actions of Israel on the strip. Many more will flee. According to UN, clearing the rubble in Gaza will take 15 years. That's just clearing the rubble, not rebuilding the damaged buildings, which is about 66% of the total.
There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.
There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF.
Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.
This makes no sense to me. If 8% (171,000 people) of Gaza were to perish, that would leave Gaza with the population it had in 2020. The ceasefire reportedly will have Israel pulling out from Gaza fully and a massive influx of humanitarian aid is expected to enter Gaza. If the ceasefire goes through, the death rate will drop greatly and the population will begin to grow again.
As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
> If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed
This take is incredibly callous. Suppose 8% of everyone you gets killed. This is a shockingly brutal thing to happen to a population. Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so people don't say "there's still Jews left so technically the Holocaust wasn't a genocide". The holocaust was a genocide, and this is a genocide (yes, "is", they're still dropping bombs on a population half of which is under 18). There's a reason the relevant cases haven't been thrown out of the ICJ and ICC.
Israel is definitely more secure, because of the on front confrontation with Iran and its proxies.
1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared.
2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses.
3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.
There is an argument to be made that Iran and Hezbollah have been degraded, which makes the entire region safer. I'm not going to claim this, as I'm no expert, but there is a an argument to be made.
For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)
Gaza has been its own country / Palestinian State since 2006 and they have been recipients of foreign aid for many years, which is how they fund these attacks.
That (security) was never Hamas' intention; they were worried about being forgotten, after Israel and KSA were close to normalizing relations, and now they've managed to gunk up the gears of any peace process, at the cost of 40,000 Gazan lives. So... a victory for Hamas? They've never been interested in peace anyways.
Israeli's are (not that they think it was worth it), Gazan's are not. This war severely weakened Iran, Iran's proxies (Lebanon/Hezbollah, and Syria) and also interestingly Russia.
Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it.
Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
[Reposting a comment from ChocolateGod that was flagged and made dead despite being a legitimate good faith question]
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Can you concretely suggest what each side should have done at some point in time, to avoid being where we are now? I feel like you're making a rhetorical statement that's hard to map to specific actions.
Hamas was built over a long period by Iran, through Syria. Iran is much weaker than before, Syria is no longer a route to send supplies, and Hezbollah has been gutted.
Concretely, Israel will not be caught offguard for an Oct 7-style attack for quite a while. So the macguffin (hundreds of hostages) will probably not come up again.
Oh please. Israelis could have voted in a different party/leader that would have taken another path. West Bank settlement expansions could have been halted and reversed (to a sensible degree of course). These are bread and butter suggestions that everyone who thinks honestly about this conflict sees clearly.
There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.
Israel has a bunch of land that is politically and practically simpler to annex, than before. Israel is more secure by far, knowing that the US will continue to fund them even in the face of being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
Israeli leadership in 2006 gave up Gaza and forcefully evicted thousands of Jewish people in what was supposed to be an exchange for peace. That was supposed to be the end of the rockets and the attacks.
In case you are not aware, the exact opposite happened.
To be clear, we very much do want Gaza. We had homes there. and we have Jewish roots there going back long before the time of today’s Palestinian colonists.
Above all of that though, is that we want peace. And so if we have to be patient for a time when we can peacefully live in Gaza again, we will be patient.
In the meantime, the most important thing is the safe return of loved ones who were taken hostage on October 7th (and before!) and safety for those living in rocket’s range of Gaza.
Google's Ngram viewer isn't working for the term "Ben Gurion Canal" for some reason, but it would show approximately when renewed interest started getting traction since the proposal was declassified in 1996.
I wouldn't be surprised if the 2021 Evergreen fiasco was contributory to this renewed interest but this is pure speculation on my part.
This is not in dispute. None of what I initially posted is in dispute.
I would propose this "war" was relatively cheap in Israeli civilian lives lost for what was gained.
Demonstrably increasing the reach of Israel action without external repercussions, makes it a security win for Israel. None of the international community will put troops in front of Israel to benefit Palestine. That's worth something to know (converting an unknown to a known).
Hamas has been considerably weakened. Their arsenal of rockets and weapons is depleted. At the beginning of the war thousands of rockets were being shot into Israel and now there are very few and the ones that are are quite crude. Hezbollah entered the war immediately and said the only way they would exit is if Hamas exists. Israel retaliated, killed their leader, decimated their forces, and negotiated a ceasefire that got Hezbollah to back off on their original terms. Lebanon just elected an anti-Hezbollah President.
During all of this, Assad was deposed. Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas and Hezbollah, and were the key ally of Assad. They attacked Israel multiple times during the war and Israel responded in kind, the assesments seem to be that Israel's responses were quite strong.
So prior to October 7, Iran had strong proxies and allies all over the region. They are now either in shambles or deposed.
The goal of the war for Israel is to prevent another October 7th style attack from occuring. I'd say they have made significant steps towards accomplishing that from a military perspective.
Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves. They may have reduced the likelihood of another Oct 7 in the near term, but 50 years is not something I would count on
Probably the most efficient way of creating multiple generations of anger and hate is letting a radical terrorist movement control 2 million people, which can completely mold the education curriculum and free to draft anyone to their quasi-army
So whatever it has done, it cannot possibly be worse than pre-war
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This is the narrative that the extremists want to push, but it’s hardly the truth. Hamas was not some grassroots movement of frustrated Palestinians. It was an Iranian proxy force masterminded, funded, supplied, trained, and instructed by Iran.
There are certainly many angry Palestinians before and after but this is foreign meddling through and through. Hamas would not exist in this form and have done the things that it did otherwise.
They already hated Israel. So much that they attacked them and started this war in the first place. I doubt Israel is any worse off in terms of being hated than they were before the war.
Hamas is not a rational actor. Their stated goal is to destroy Israel and kill every Jew. That's it. There is no scenario in which they are going to stop hating Israel. They don't care if every Palestinian also gets killed, if they get to destroy Israel it's worth it to them.
There are multiple generations of hate in the West Bank as well. Israel isn't threaten by them as much as they have much more difficulty accumulating weapons.
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> Israel has likely also created multiple generations of anger and hate against themselves
Israel would have created multiple generations of emboldened anger and hate against themselves if they failed to respond to the massacre and mass kidnapping.
In 50 years there will be no Palestine :c
I don't understand how is this different to all wars? back then when the Nazis started the war and we had to declare war against them. Or when we nuked 2 cities of Japan, were we also afraid that we will create multiple generations of anger and hate? how is this different?
I'm not comparing Israel or Palestine to Nazi, it's just a bitter fact that war always create anger and hate. Something had to be done though?
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Perhaps weakened them from an equipment & infrastructure standpoint - along with the rest of Gaza - but not from a manpower standpoint: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-14/blinken-s...
The right way to fight an independence movement is to either do so from within/in a more targeted fashion, or barring that, meet their demands in some shape or form. Escalating the violence to the point where you’re destroying and displacing a people might settle things down in the short term, but the movement will not die, and will more than likely grow.
The difference being that the new manpower has zero experience, is mostly kids and has no leadership. They reverted from a terrorist army, to an unorganized guerilla
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Not only is Hamas weakened, Hamas' and Iran's supporter (China, Russia) has been severely weakened compared to the start of the conflict. Russia is in a stalemate in the Ukraine invasion, and has lost significant economic and military resources since. Russia also lost significant influence in Middle East, with the Assad regime fall. China is a severe economic decline. Also, China distanced itself from Iran, most likely due to wanting to not get sanctioned by US and Europe. https://thediplomat.com/2024/11/china-is-recalculating-its-m....
> During all of this, Assad was deposed.
And we've yet to see whether this is a good thing.
Gaddafi was seen as one of the most oppressive figures in the world during his lifetime. A few countries made it their goal to take him down and liberate the people of Libya.
Gaddafi was killed, Libya was free, and the media celebrated. Just like with Syria, media coverage was down to basically zero about a month after that happened and everyone was left thinking it was a job well done. Turns out Libya has been worse than it ever was under Gaddafi. Having an oppressive albeit relatively secular leader who maintained a stable hold on the country turned out to be better than an oppressive non-secular mess.
Good points there. Still not sure how much the ouster of Assad was connected with the war (though no doubt that the weakening of Hezbollah must have contributed a lot to it) but it definitely changed the playing field.
It was 100% driven by the weakness in Hezbollah and Russia and Iran. There’s no doubt.
> Israel's main adversary is Iran. They are the ones who fund and supply Hamas
Well, Israel started and has been funding Hamas (I'm assuming, but who knows, that it stopped with this war) since the PLO/Arafat days to the tune of (at times tens of) millions a month.
That's not actually true. First Israel didn't fund them, they allowed others to fund them, second the Hamas back then was not the terrorists of today, they changed.
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The monsters are still there and already planning their next attempt in genocide. While the hostages coming back is a welcome news, none of war objectives were achieved. All the sacrifices were pointless if Israel exits Gaza and leaves Hamas in control (weakened is but still in control). Netanyahu again showed that he is a coward and easily pressured and has a pathological fear of a conflict. With thousands of monsters being released back into Gaza I fear the next 7 October will be worse.
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What was Oct 7th retaliation to, exactly?
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It really depends what people have to lose. If they're left without families, place to live, purpose in life other than revenge... what exactly could be "even worse" at that point?
The framing here is pretty ridiculous. Israel definitely punches back much harder than Hamas, but comparing October 7th to a punch and Israel's response to running over babies with a bulldozer is absurd.
Hamas blatantly escalated the conflict by a large margin, there's no denying that. You can't cry over your adversary's response when you do something like that, I'm sorry. Next time keep your hands to yourself, or perhaps just continue throwing rockets at civilians: Israel seems to be willing to tolerate that.
By conservative estimates (see the 2024 Khatlib paper in the Lancet), roughly 7--9% of the population of Gaza will perish as a result of the actions of Israel on the strip. Many more will flee. According to UN, clearing the rubble in Gaza will take 15 years. That's just clearing the rubble, not rebuilding the damaged buildings, which is about 66% of the total.
There are some clear indications that the intention of the Israeli government is to destroy in whole, or in part, the Palestinian people, for example by killing members of the group, or inflicting upon it conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.
There's a wealth of quotes from high ranking officials, going all the way up to the Knesset, stating almost exactly that. One quote I think of from time to time is "Erase them, their families, mothers and children." given in a motivational speech directed at the IDF.
Given that this is their intention (and I have every reason to believe it is), I'd say that this has been a pretty successful affair for Israel. Sure, Jews worldwide (including Israel) are much less safe now than they were two years ago, but the Israeli government does not give me the impression that this is at all their goal.
This makes no sense to me. If 8% (171,000 people) of Gaza were to perish, that would leave Gaza with the population it had in 2020. The ceasefire reportedly will have Israel pulling out from Gaza fully and a massive influx of humanitarian aid is expected to enter Gaza. If the ceasefire goes through, the death rate will drop greatly and the population will begin to grow again.
As horrible as the destruction has been, this is nowhere close to eliminating the people of Gaza. If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed.
> If genocide was a goal of any of the Israeli leadership, they abjectly failed
This take is incredibly callous. Suppose 8% of everyone you gets killed. This is a shockingly brutal thing to happen to a population. Aside from that you're wrong on a factual level. The "in part" part of the '51 convention is there precisely so people don't say "there's still Jews left so technically the Holocaust wasn't a genocide". The holocaust was a genocide, and this is a genocide (yes, "is", they're still dropping bombs on a population half of which is under 18). There's a reason the relevant cases haven't been thrown out of the ICJ and ICC.
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Israel is definitely more secure, because of the on front confrontation with Iran and its proxies.
1. Hezbollah suffered heavy blows and lost significant political and military power in Lebanon. Didn’t retaliate nearly as heavy as feared.
2. For the first time Israel struck with its military directly in Iran and showed real abilities by destroying most of Iran’s air defenses.
3. As a result of the two points above and other reasons, there was significant shift of powers in Syria which led to Assad regime collapse (significant amount of supplies to Iran’s main proxy Hezbollah went through Syria), but the affect of the regime change in Syria is yet to be determined.
There is an argument to be made that Iran and Hezbollah have been degraded, which makes the entire region safer. I'm not going to claim this, as I'm no expert, but there is a an argument to be made.
For the Gazans, the next months and years will be more determinative. Will they get the support and aid they need to rebuild and keep terrorist organizations from running their country? (They should have their own country instead of being effectively an open air prison)
Gaza has been its own country / Palestinian State since 2006 and they have been recipients of foreign aid for many years, which is how they fund these attacks.
That (security) was never Hamas' intention; they were worried about being forgotten, after Israel and KSA were close to normalizing relations, and now they've managed to gunk up the gears of any peace process, at the cost of 40,000 Gazan lives. So... a victory for Hamas? They've never been interested in peace anyways.
Israeli's are (not that they think it was worth it), Gazan's are not. This war severely weakened Iran, Iran's proxies (Lebanon/Hezbollah, and Syria) and also interestingly Russia.
Gazan's now have a ruined country with exactly nothing to show for it.
Depending on how you interpret it, this war was actually a good thing for Lebanon (they have a government for the first time in years), and Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
[Reposting a comment from ChocolateGod that was flagged and made dead despite being a legitimate good faith question]
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster. Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
> Syria who finally overthrew their sadistic monster.
Not saying Assad wasn't a sadistic monster, but do you really think an ISIS-related group running the state is going to be any better?
Christians are already being persecuted.
> Christians are already being persecuted.
Do you have a source for that?
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The strengthening of the "us Vs them" mentality and terror politics
Can you concretely suggest what each side should have done at some point in time, to avoid being where we are now? I feel like you're making a rhetorical statement that's hard to map to specific actions.
If neither side has really changed what's to prevent them from going to war again?
It happened for a reason and unless that reason has changed then one should expect the same outcome.
Hamas was built over a long period by Iran, through Syria. Iran is much weaker than before, Syria is no longer a route to send supplies, and Hezbollah has been gutted.
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Concretely, Israel will not be caught offguard for an Oct 7-style attack for quite a while. So the macguffin (hundreds of hostages) will probably not come up again.
The Europeans should have stayed in Europe.
Oh please. Israelis could have voted in a different party/leader that would have taken another path. West Bank settlement expansions could have been halted and reversed (to a sensible degree of course). These are bread and butter suggestions that everyone who thinks honestly about this conflict sees clearly.
There are of course many more suggestions I didn't state. To pretend that there was just no way to avoid this is shameful.
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Israel has a bunch of land that is politically and practically simpler to annex, than before. Israel is more secure by far, knowing that the US will continue to fund them even in the face of being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
If Israel wanted Gaza, they wouldn’t have given it up twenty years ago.
Israeli leadership in 2006 gave up Gaza and forcefully evicted thousands of Jewish people in what was supposed to be an exchange for peace. That was supposed to be the end of the rockets and the attacks.
In case you are not aware, the exact opposite happened.
To be clear, we very much do want Gaza. We had homes there. and we have Jewish roots there going back long before the time of today’s Palestinian colonists.
Above all of that though, is that we want peace. And so if we have to be patient for a time when we can peacefully live in Gaza again, we will be patient.
In the meantime, the most important thing is the safe return of loved ones who were taken hostage on October 7th (and before!) and safety for those living in rocket’s range of Gaza.
My understanding is that there's been renewed interest in building the Ben Gurion Canal proposed by Howard D. MacCabee in 1963.
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/453701.pdf
Google's Ngram viewer isn't working for the term "Ben Gurion Canal" for some reason, but it would show approximately when renewed interest started getting traction since the proposal was declassified in 1996.
I wouldn't be surprised if the 2021 Evergreen fiasco was contributory to this renewed interest but this is pure speculation on my part.
> being convicted of humanitarian crimes.
The UN and ICC have both shown they're absolutely powerless and useless.
This is not in dispute. None of what I initially posted is in dispute.
I would propose this "war" was relatively cheap in Israeli civilian lives lost for what was gained.
Demonstrably increasing the reach of Israel action without external repercussions, makes it a security win for Israel. None of the international community will put troops in front of Israel to benefit Palestine. That's worth something to know (converting an unknown to a known).
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