Comment by tptacek
3 days ago
This completely misapprehends the conflict. Hamas wasn't simply a terrorist organization; it was a organized, well-armed military adversary, supported by other large irregular armed forces in the region as well as by Iran, with extensive infrastructure and supply chains, and a command and control structure with decades of experience and training. Netanyahu bears significant responsibility for allowing them to develop those capabilities! He positioned them against the PA to derail the two-state outcome.
Whatever else Hamas is now, whatever improvised explosives they blow up in Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem, they are as a military force with a complex and carefully designed order of battle done, utterly broken. WSJ reports Al-Qassam isn't even communicating with the Hamas political branch. Of course they're going to recruit terrorists. There's no such thing as stopping that kind of activity.
That’s great but all you have done is basically kick the can down the line and killed many innocent people in the process.
It’s not like you haven wiped out Iran permanently (not advocating for this obviously, I’m Iranian!) or achieved anything of significance really, perhaps Iran has been slightly weakened, though even that remains to be seen depending on what happens with Syria, or have lost any major allies permanently.
You are naive if you think the infrastructure wont be rebuild with their allies and networks won’t be established, all it takes is time, funding and support which now they have plenty of thanks to Israelis actions.
This isn’t the same celebration you should be having like Russians have just marched in Berlin in WWII.
I suppose the good news is that bloodshed will stop (hopefully) for a few years and a stable long term solution can be figured out meanwhile.
I'm fine with disputing the logic of Israel's military goals here as long as we're all on the same page about what those goals are. When we start talking about how many new terrorists have been recruited because of the Gaza invasion, we're no longer on that same page.
I'm loathe to reveal too much about what I think about this situation personally, because it immediately poisons the rest of the thread, but my take on the situation is not as far from yours as you may think it is.