Israel/Palestine thread

Saudi Arabia got their asses kicked by the Houthi. and they had American weaponry and planes.

its a pretty good analog actually. SA couldnt beat the Houthis and got wrecked on the ground so they decided to starve the population and massacre them from the air. the USA helped in this by providing weapons and actively blockading.

there isnt a reliable death toll but it is proly in the 100s of thousands.

hey it turned out exactly like some people said it would.

yeah interesting to hear that. so much for israels so powerful army

yeah, but did they give them everything? probably not right?

its holding back, right? they dont even want to.

the Sauds are not a good army. they have a pretty good air force and are able to mainline American bombs, but they got their asses kicked so hard on the ground by the Houthis that they had to resort to mainly poor mercenaries who also got their asses kicked.

lol

yeah I dont get that they dont have a better army, but they probably dont even need one.

I think they gave them everything they intended. I mean, they didnt want to do a real war where a bunch of Saudis die in an invasion and occupation.

similarly, is Israel giving everything? well yes and no. they clearly dont have the stomach do what is required to eliminate Hamas which would require storming the tunnels and losing 10s of thousands of soldiers. hell, Israel doesnt even have infantry to protect tanks which is like war101, esp in urban combat. thats why they keep getting blasted by Yassins (an ingenious locally designed and built weapon btw) and losing millions of dollars in tanks every day.

so Israel is giving everything it can allow. they are not willing to do the things required to eliminate Hamas. and that is bc it is not worth it to them. Hamas is not an existential threat. nor do they really care about Hamas.

This is not what I said at all.

There is an existential threat if Israel doesn't fight when attacked.

It's why it needs to fight.

Existential threat isn't the bar for the use of force anyway. Hamas has repeatedly announced its intent and demonstrated its capability to continuously attack Israel and putting Israeli lives at risk. Israel has the right to defend itself. That cannot be in doubt.

It follows from what you said. There's no current invasion and you see no scenario where isreal couldn't successfuly fight later. Even without usa support - let alone with it.

So that just leaves defending these action against the palastinians because of what hamas did. It's monstrous.

That's not what I think btw. I think there is a real existential threat to Israel. One that has been increased by Israel's response. The idea that losing usa support would be no big deal because they can always turn to china illustrates it pretty well.

yes, they even wanted hamas, so there is division,
so they wouldnt have to do a 2-state, right?
why else would bibi say that?

All the Arab countries suck at the whole "modern army" thing. They never really culturally evolved from the whole 7th century tribal raid your enemy and steal their women form of warfare (see Hamas), which worked well in the 7th century, but not so much anymore.

That is why even when they go 4 vs 1 against Israel, they still get their ass handed to them. What they are good at is refusing to make peace for the greater good (with the exception of Egypt in the Yom Kippur War) and essentially force you to either kill them all or just give up.

For example, it would be trivially easy to defeat the Houthis. Yemen literally has no food or water. They live completely off of foreign aid. Block the food/water aid and it is game over. But they would never give up and would force you to actually follow through with it; and they aren't a big enough threat that it is worth doing it, so they "win."

If Israel decided to do a real full siege of Gaza, and demanded Hamas release the hostages before any more food goes in; there is no doubt Hamas would sit in the tunnels with their stores of stolen aid and let all 2 million Palestinians die before giving up a single Israeli hostage.

That is just how Arabs Islamists generally operate. Anyone who dies fighting the Jews is going to go to heaven anyways, so why ever make peace for earthly reasons? And I guess it is working well enough, as Hamas by all accounts has high approval.

No, you're making unfounded assumptions about what I said.

Israel could destroy everyone nearby... at the destruction of its future prospects.

It's the credible threat of mutual destruction that keeps it alive.

It doesn't fight tooth and nail to destroy Hamas, Israel loses that credibility and will just gradually be chipped away to death or be sucked into a bigger war to re-establish credibility.

Even more, a lot more, would die in that eventuality.

You're also making the unwarranted assumption that losing USA wouldn't be a big deal. I said we have tried cutting them off and it just didn't work in terms of altering Israel's behavior. That does not mean Israel did not, or will not, pay a price to switch to Germany/China/Russia for its arms production. What I said is Israel has the ability to make the price high enough to credibly deter the US and the west broadly from trying to cut them off again, rendering the threat of cutting Israel off western arms supplies non-credible.

The civilian deaths in Gaza are horrible and results of monstrous actions, such. But even now I am pretty sure more of the blame lay at Hamas' feet because Hamas has spent practically every moment of its existence to put as many civilians as possible as de facto human shields in front of the IDF.

Israel's conduct around Gazan civilian refugees since Oct 7th, especially since like late December (I could understand logistics to supply aid not being ready for a couple months), has been horrific.

This is de-facto what they are already doing.

Sending propaganda videos telling Gazan cilians that American MREs are inedible while they are at it.

I think it will be a huge deal if Israel loses USA support. A massive deal. The price will be among other things a large increase in existential risk. You seem to dismiss it as no biggee which I did find bizarre

The credibility argument makes little sense to me. This is a response to a terrorist attack not an invasion or existential threat.

We agree on that (apart from the blame bit). This whole segment was about world 'good will' being lost and I just dont think that can be dismissed as not being of any negative consequence to the risks to israel's future security.

Western nations generally lose wars when fighting 3rd world countries with high tolerance for deaths of their own civilians, exactly because those countries put Western nations in a spot where they have to choose high civilian casualties or give up, and they invariably give up.

Which is fine, because no Western nation has fought a war they felt they really had to win in a long time. Israel seems to feel they need to win this war, so the civilian human shield strategy doesn't seem to be working as well as it has in the past.

There is also the possibility that after 80 years in the Middle East, dealing with the dysfunction that is endemic to this region, Israel is becoming a true Middle Eastern country, and starting to act accordingly. You become what you hate.

Israel can negotiate with Russia and China. wtf not? As easily as they can a right-wing American administration that actively seeks to pogrom jews in America, while providing foreign aid to Israel

The emerging leftist ideology in America would deny aid, do the pogroms, then deny the pogroms

funny you should mention pogroms of Jews in other countries with regards to Israel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80...

There was a number of bombings, and only 3-4 people killed total. When Muslim Arabs commit terrorism, especially against Jews, they go for high civilian body count. Seems plausible it could have been Zionists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhud
For example, when the British defeated and expelled the pro-Nazi Iraqi govt in 1941, the pro Nazi Iraqi Muslims responded with riots killing over a hundred Jews, and injuring over 1,000. This was one of many pogroms that swept the Arab world by pro-Nazi Arab Muslims during this time period, that ultimately saw the Jews expelled from pretty much all their ancestral homelands in the Arab world.

I did spell it out

Zionists are the friendly terrorists!

well, except in Lebanon in the 80s.

What's the motivation exactly? Like the truthiest US Government on 9-11?

gg

the motivation is in the wikipedia. go back to cheering on genocide and harassing trans people. let the rest of us talk.

Well, juxtaposed to entire communities of Jews being completely genocided by pro-Nazi Muslim Arabs; yeah, I would say you call call it "friendly" in comparison.

Have Christian factions or sects within Islam ever warred, or had a perverse idea?

Vic, go act up in public

The trans' and Palestinian' causes disown you for stupidity