BBC journalists held at gunpoint by Israeli police
BBC journalists held at gunpoint by Israeli police
A BBC Arabic team was driving to back to a hotel when they were stopped and dragged from their car.
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Israel is doing exactly what the Hamas terrorists wanted them to do. Overreact.
Israel doing what it’s always done regardless.
Every year you hear of them killing a journalist or reporter, or two.
Hah. Israeli police suppressing European press, "I cant believe Hamas done this"
Don't know who's down voting you, but yes, this is actually textbook strategy for insurgent warfare.
Little guy makes a move with the goal of provoking big guy to create a security clampdown and overreact. This feeds little guy's PR and recruitment efforts, as well as potentially overstretching big guy's resources.
I even have a recent and precisely on topic video that covers it:
https://youtu.be/UKvzOF-toIA?si=ge1cJA2H7_NtDJcu
He even references the ACTUAL DOD MANUALS that detail this strategy.
Yeah, especially considering the initial attack was likely somewhat related to trying to stop Israel and Saudi Arabia's growing friendship, but can anyone name a country that wouldn't demand vengeance after the atrocities at the music festivals and overrun communities?
The attack was designed to be brutal to force a brutal response, probably designed to be like that by Iranian religious fanatics who couldn't care less about the Palestinian population as long as they're a good weapon to use against Israel.
None of that justifies Israel doing awful things but it does make it harder to think about.
The other option is to be sad about the atrocities, not angry. Yes I know that basically doesn't happen especially anymore with everyone on such high edge.
But, if we want to not immediately go this route every time to not play into the hands of terrorists then the answer is sad. Empathetic. Feel the pain and hurt of all the people lost and what it would take for someone to do something horrible. It needs to be a tragedy first and an excuse for a slapping contest after.
It won't work on everyone but it's a far better response, and will get people on the side of the victims more than the terrorists and then with a slower response less needless casualties.
But what leader have you seen been upset about this and not just excited to finally do something interesting like war? Empathy hasn't been important to society for too long now.
Serious question- and I’m
It being argumentative- this is a question I have wrestled forth myself.What would proportionate response look like?
Probably something less than genocide and killing unaffiliated reporters
Agreed. So - what?
A well executed police raid to drag Hamas' leadership out
This is 1,000,000% corruption coming from the head, so chopping off the head will go a long way towards ending Hamas' problem causing.
Problem is that Netenyahu trying this is what got Hamas into power in the first place because he decided he wanted a replacement govt to be a hateable enemy so I'm not too hopeful
I think that sounds absolutely right. But I worry about while it sounds good from my armchair, to what extent it’s really possible given conditions on the ground and the hostages.
… How do you identify government leadership in a group that notably violates the Geneva conventions at least as often as Israel by going plain clothes and hiding in the civilian population? Do you think Israel has police forces in Gaza still?
Well we know who the literal president of Hamas is, start with him and work your way down the list of more and more obscure leaders
Additionally, Mossad is one of the most successful and widespread intelligence agencies in the planet. I don't buy anyone saying they don't already have lists a mile long and the resources to carry it out.
Others have pointed out but Mossad are a different branch of the Israeli intelligence apparatus than the folks who'd likely be handling this, but the point most likely stands either way that this whole incident represents an abject failure of intelligence ops in preventing a large scale attack.
Speaking out of my ass and for America, we would use our "intelligence" and latest spy equipment.
Edit: What did I say that is so upsetting?
It took us years to track down Osama Bin Laden.
That may have taken us years but I don't think we have an open policy of shutting down whole cities with threat of annihilation.
These quick comments are not enough to do justice to these topics but I do not mean to upset anyone.
A lot has changed since 2001.
Permanently Deleted
Ground invasion to search and destroy Hamas, while securing and protecting civilians.
Well first of all military response, proportionate or not, is meaningless in such a conflict. Israel is feeding Hamas who's in turn feeding Israel etc etc, so the answer is to work on securing peace rather than radicalize the Gazan population more (because God knows after this shit they'll be out for blood), but if there needs to be a military response it should at least follow Israel's own roof knocking policy, which they're not following in these attacks, where they drops small non explosive rounds to warn civilians to evacuate before bombing their homes (which is also bad but less bad than indiscriminate murder). See also: Not using actual fucking white phorphorus, not bombing routes and locations they designated as safe, and definitely not bombing hospitals and ambulances. These are all things the IDF has been confirmed doing in the past few days. Usually the response to Hamas attacks is airstrikes, but the last time anything like what we're seeing now happened was in 2014.
Ignoring morals and ethics and focusing mostly on historic precedent?
Firebombing a few city blocks. Possibly letting the angry young soldiers run wild on the civilian populace under the guise of getting "justice" for the civilians that hamas brutalized.
That is more or less "war". You raid one of my towns, I'll raid two of yours. Ends when one side has been beaten into submission.
Actively attacking third party civilians is not. The IDF has a very long history of doing this.
That is more or less “war”. You raid one of my towns, I’ll raid two of yours. Ends when one side has been beaten into submission.
Actively attacking third party civilians is not.
I don't think I agree -- This is an awesome blog post you should totally read if you're interested in history. https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-ii-foraging/
I'd say anything post train you're going to try to capture infrastructure to make war, so saying we're sieging cities sounds more ancient to me.
If you read that post, you'll see 'foraging' really meant robbing and brutalizing local populaces for their food since anything but the smallest sized army can't feed itself for more than a few weeks. Not to mention once we are sieging a city and starving all the people out.
What are some modern examples of 'letting your army run wild on the populace'? I know that happens quite a bit but I can't think of any sanctioned ones unless we go to wwii Japan maybe? and that was more than a little wild. Seems like most of the time a platoon or w/e just goes berserker.
There is strategy and there is retaliation. Shockingly, retaliation usually results in a prolonged war and long term rebellion.
But if your goal is to hurt them for hurting you?
As for recent wars where soldiers commit horrific crimes against civillian populaces. Off the top of my head:
- EVERY army in WW2. Japan took it down to a science but The Allies and the rest of The Axis were no saints
- Vietnam with US soldiers commiting horrific atrocities against the Vietnamese people
- Pretty much every civil war in Africa
- The Yugoslav Wars
- Russia's actions in Ukraine (every time they invade)
It is mostly that the US shockingly went hard on stopping troops from those kinds of massacres during the various invasions of the Middle East. That isn't to say we didn't find OTHER horrible shit to do but...
As for logistics and resupplies: Gaza is literally within Israel's borders. Supply chains won't be an issue.
I don't think you can call My Lai 'sanctioned' or official even though it was done by a commissioned officer who was court martialed (but got off). Even then they gave the heli pilot that landed between US troops and a group of civilians about to get murdered a silver star -- https://www.britannica.com/event/My-Lai-Massacre
Japan wwII definitely tactical and sanctioned but that one is weird because all of the military operated so independently.
I don't know enough about your other examples. It makes sense though and I like the word you use 'retaliation'
A good modern war planner isn't going to waste energy on retaliation but when you get onto the ground and have a bunch of killers that don't think of the enemy as all the way human (so you can convince them to do so much killing) retaliation would come up often. Also if you have some crazy strong man dictator, he may need retaliation to keep the image or drive his paranoia.