We must have done this before. Just turning the other cheek and cracking on with life three days after October 7th wasn’t a serious option. Hezbollah had started their stage of a coordinated attack by then.
That was two years ago. The 24 months of sustained brutality which followed hasn’t only turned Gaza into a pile of rubble and dead bodies; it’s had the same effect on Israel’s international reputation. Let’s hope something constructive comes out of the next two years, because if it doesn’t the whole region is pretty much ****ed.
On the bright side, Hamas are far weaker with several leaders dead. Hezbollah are a tiny fraction of the threat they were, the Houthis are even more of a joke than they were, Assad is living in a penthouse in Moscow addicted to World of Warcraft, Qatar know they aren’t untouchable and Iran have been put well in their place. This was their big shot to wipe out Israel from several fronts. They miscalculated terribly. Gaza is fine and they were in pristine malls buying iPhone 17s and eating kebab platters a day after the end of the worst genocide ever.
Conflict only seems to strengthen the grip on power of the extremists in both Iran and Israel. Both countries have an educated, mostly liberal middle class, but both are governed by religious fundamentalists and bitter old men. Hopefully that will change, not sure how or when though.
There’s just no equivalence between the two. Israel will have an election at most a year from now and Netanyahu will probably lose even with Israel’s mental voting system. This ends when Iran and its proxies learn to accept Jews exist on a tiny slither of land the size of Wales. If they want to kill each other in the meantime they’re welcome to.
People thinking that Iran and Israel are basically interchangeable and can be 'solved' in the same way is one of the reasons the region is such a mess. The only thing they have in common is the first letter of their name.
I think it was more the fact that Israel could have had all of the hostages released within 2 days, but chose not to because Netanyahu wanted to use them as leverage for a war inside Gaza. The article is worth a read because it’s from the guy who set up the hostages support and pressure group as the Israeli govt and IDF did nothing in the first few days and weeks regarding the hostages. Their only concern was with a war on Hamas ‘We left the meeting very disappointed because Netanyahu talked about dismantling Hamas as the goal of the war. He didn’t promise anything regarding the demand to return the hostages. He merely said a military operation in Gaza was needed to serve as leverage for the hostages’ release.
The overwhelming majority of Israelis wanted Hamas dismantled after what happened on Oct 7th. As did the overwhelming majority of decent human beings. It wasn't just Netanyahu. The methods subsequently used to dismantle it are of course up for debate, but the end game was beyond question.
If that’s the case, then why not get the hostages out and then dismantle Hamas. Netanyahu admitted that he used the hostages as leverage for his campaign in Gaza, and whilst he didn’t admit it, it was ethnic cleansing. Backed by his ultranationalist fascist freaks, it was a campaign to destroy Gaza remove Palestinians from the strip it’s only stopped because Trump finally reeled Netanyahu in
So renege on the deal? Doubt that would’ve gone down brilliantly and gives Hamas and the others a massive excuse to do what they want with even more immunity than they’ve had. It’s been a crap two years but the threat to Israel and Israelis is far lower for the next 10-20 as a result.
I think Piskie comes at the issue with logic and knows what he knows even if his conclusions are the opposite of mine. Far better than people mindlessly cooing over Palestinians like helpless puppies.
The primary was dismantling Hamas. Hostages was always secondary. Huge numbers of Israelis supported this, including the entire war cabinet - not just the right wing nutcases. I don't get what your fuss is all about, unless you're prepared to publicly explain why you don't think Hamas needed dismantling, which would be quite a disturbing read no doubt.
Isreal reneged on the first ceasefire deal, so they have a track record of pursuing conflict come what may. Netanyahu has used the hostages as leverage, to pursue a long war that was designed to flatten Gaza, remove Palestinians and attempt to annexe it for future Israel occupation. I think there has been at least 4 or 5 occasions in the last two years where all of the hostages were offered for release.
For the Israeli govt this was the primary objective. Probably not for the families of the hostages. The point being, that Israel were largely given free rein to do whatever they wanted in Gaza, with the backing of the US to dismantle Hamas. They could have got the hostages out and still taken out Hamas. But Netanyahu chose to use them as leverage for a long war designed to collectively punish the entire population of Gaza and appease the ultra right nationalists who are propping up his leadership who wanted to annexe Gaza for Israeli occupation
Anyway, the hostages are out now. What’s left of them. What Hamas did to those people was barbaric. I just feel that Netanyahu, despite all the talk about the hostages, put his desire to pursue war far over and above their lives. As was demonstrated when he rejected their release on a number of occasions
I don't disagree with this. You know full well by now what I think about that man. But at the same time, it is beyond question that Hamas needed to be ended once and for all after what it did. The means to that ends are open to scrutiny, the ends are not. Could Israel have achieved that end in a way that reduced civilian casualties? Probably. Could it have achieved it in a way that produced exponentially more casualties? Definitely.
The argument that Israel was defending itself and simply operating to dismantle Hamas was lost a long time ago. 70k known dead and likely tens of thousands more under the rubble along with the deliberate attacks on medical workers, journalists, refugee camps, a campaign of starvation and some of the most egregious war crimes committed against women and children speaks for itself. Netanyahu is wanted for war crimes and rightly so. His actions and those of the IDF turned Israel into a pariah state.
