The US and allies dumped money into the Japanese and German economies after WWII, and Germany in particular had learned the lessons of going it the bitter route after what they went through from the end of WWI to the beginning of WWII. Israel isn't exactly dumping money into the rebuilding of Gaza and the Germans and Japanese had started…
The US and allies dumped money into the Japanese and German economies after WWII, and Germany in particular had learned the lessons of going it the bitter route after what they went through from the end of WWI to the beginning of WWII. Israel isn't exactly dumping money into the rebuilding of Gaza and the Germans and Japanese had started the total war approach before having it turned against them by the allies later in the war. Palestinians aren't exactly reducing whole swaths of Haifa or Tel Aviv to rubble, but the Israelis are doing that in Gaza by comparison.
One significant difference between Israal/Gaza and US/Germany-Japan is that in the latter, there was an unconditional surrender. An acknowledgment that they did not have any further intention of being in conflict with the US. Nothing like that has happened with respect to Gaza.
Right, that's definitely true. But then again it took dropping a novel atomic bomb onto Japan a couple of times (after firebombing some 67 of their cities) in order to extinguish their martyrdom culture at a time when both sides were engaged in "total war." I don't think we're going to get to that place in Gaza with Israel dropping an A-bomb in the middle of the city. A better modern example of extinguishing Hamas probably comes from the US getting Iraqi Sunnis to turn on AQI. The IDF could learn some lessons from that application of counterinsurgency to extinguish a terrorist group embedded in a local/urban civilian populace.
That's a very large amount of money for such a small area, as compared to (West) Germany and Japan. A fraction of the populace too.
So, please explain what the PA/Hamas did with $40Bln over 26 years? Why is it they are absolute desolate areas?
With that much $$ why are they still wanting to destroy Israel - based on your assertion that by giving aid to rebuild, any country would be peace loving?
Hint: Because Hamas/the PA want war, and condition their people to hate.
You cited money going into Gaza from *international* countries rather than from Israel, but how much of all of that money came from Israel and went directly into the hands of the families of the Palestinian civilians it has killed rather than the international money that went to the PA or to Hamas?
When I was in Iraq and we killed civilians on accident (or via escalation of force policy frankly), the guys from the civil affairs group went personally over to the bereaved family and gave them an honest message of condolence and a blood payment of $10k+ in USDs per family member lost. Does Israel do this? No they don't. Know what we didn't do in Iraq though? Level entire swaths of say Baghdad or Mosul just to get at a handful of AQI terror cells. It's kind of hard to win the "hearts and minds" war of separating Hamas from the Palestinian populace it relies on for support if you're not even trying at all to do hearts-and-minds counterinsurgency--which involves weighing tactical means against strategic goals via cost-benefit analysis, and if you're not doing that then all you're doing is setting yourself up to fight another generation of Palestinian terrorists a decade down the road. That's where Israel is fucking up when it comes to money and investment in the Palestinian populace and trying to drive a wedge between the Palestinians and Hamas. Israel isn't really even trying by American standards. They're just converting structures to rubble--killing thousands of children in the process--and then wondering aloud why Hamas still exists and why Palestinians don't like the IDF. So it ain't just Hamas that wants this war to continue, it's the Israeli government by their own tactics. They're just kicking the can down the road to the tune of thousands of dead Palestinian children and then wondering why their grandkids are still going to be fighting the insurgency in Gaza and the West Bank.
Who cares where it came from? It's still money. Why wasn't that money used to build stuff other than missiles and tunnels?
Oh, and weren't you one of the ones lambasting Netanyahu for giving money to Gaza - aka Hamas?
So which is it? Israel giving money to Hamas would have led to peace and prosperity, or "it's Israel's fault" for Oct 7 because they gave money to Hamas?
I never lambasted Netanyahu for giving money to Hamas, you clearly have me mixed up with someone else on that one. And when did I (or anyone I guess?) say that 10/7 is Israel's fault for giving money to Hamas? The rate at which you're building strawmen here is nuts.
And it very much matters where money comes from if you're talking about wedging the Palestinian populace away from Hamas--which is the only way you're going to defeat that organization generationally. Killing Palestinian civilians "on accident" without so much as a condolence message and blood payment *to the families of victims* is literally the least Israel could do if it wants to show itself as someone who cares more about the Palestinians than Hamas does. It is failing in that endeavor--badly.
However, your original post was about the PTSD the Palestinian child was going to have because Israel destroyed their buildings. Are you saying that the Germans didn't "hate" the allies for killing their friends/family just because we gave them some cash?
That's not why Germany and Japan became pacifistic states in the (near) extreme. It's PRECISELY BECAUSE we brought so much destruction to bear, that they didn't want to relive that again.
In any combat situation - person to person or state to state - the goal is to breakdown the other's will to fight. If you stop short, the means might not be there, but that will is still there - and inevitably they will try again (see: Germany post WW1, and Hamas 2007-2023; Hezbollah 1982-present)
"It's PRECISELY BECAUSE we brought so much destruction to bear, that they didn't want to relive that again."
This was at a time when the *world war* had already escalated to "total war"--whereby entire nations are mobilized and civilian infrastructure is considered fair game because both sides are population-bombing at scale at a time when the best anyone had munitions-wise were dumb bombs (non-guided) used in carpet bombing. Right now, Israel isn't facing a "total war" from Hamas at the scale that the European/Asian land masses had been facing from Germany/Japan, and they're also not limited to using scaled-up bombing campaigns using dumb munitions. That's why bombing at that scale was justified in WWII and why it's not justified in Gaza during what should be a counter-insurgency strategy rather than a punish-the-civilian-populace strategy that the IDF is employing.
"In any combat situation - person to person or state to state - the goal is to breakdown the other's will to fight."
This is not true at all. We didn't break down Al Qaeda in Iraq's will to fight, we simply took away their *means* of being able to fight from the shadows by wedging the civilian populace they relied on away from them. AQI wasn't fighting anymore after 2009 not because they didn't have any fighters left or lost their will to fight, they just understood that if they continued to fight without the support of the Sunni populace they were all going to fucking die there without any winning being possible on their end. Their will to fight only ended *after* their *means* of fighting disappeared, leaving them too vulnerable to survive and fight with no logistical support from the Sunni populace and no replacement fighters to recruit from them. That's my larger point vis-a-vis isolating Hamas from the larger Palestinian populace. Israel can kill thousands of enemy Hamas terrorists every year, but if Hamas recruits the same number of fighters then the math is still set to zero losses for Hamas on paper. That's why Israel needs to cut off their recruiting and support pipeline from the Palestinian populace and Iran respectively rather than trying to turn Gaza into a moonscape and setting themselves backward on the Hamas manpower math front.
They can not have Hamas raiding to rape, burn and kill at will. That means Hamas MUST be destroyed.
If you think that is overblown, I strongly recommend you listen to what the leaders of Hamas are saying: "Hell yeah we did that! And we are going to do it over, and over, and over again!"
If you think 10/7 is "total war" then you really don't understand the concept of total war. There's a big difference between persistent threats of terrorism that even the US lives with and the concept of total war. Total war gets closer to what Russia is doing to Ukraine than what Hamas is doing to Israel. There's a scale of killing civilians involved that Israel hasn't come close to tasting yet. Go look at the civilian casualty toll in Ukraine and then compare it to the number of Israeli civilian lives lost since 10/7 and you'll see the difference. Go look at the civilian casualty rates in Russia during WWII and you'll see the difference.
Hamas must be destroyed, I agree there, but the way to do that is not by punishing the civilian populace. It comes from wedging the civilian populace away from Hamas. Israel isn't doing the latter, it's doing the former.
Again, I am not the one saying it is total war - it is the view of the Israelis that this is an existential threat to their survival.
I suggest you read reporting from Tom Friedman
"Their goal is to collapse the confidence of Israelis that their defense and intelligence services can protect them from surprise attacks across their borders — so Israelis will, first, move away from the border regions and then they will move out of the country altogether.
I am stunned by how many Israelis now feel this danger personally, no matter where they live "
Well then the Israelis are wrong if they think they're at total war. And you said plainly that "for Israel this *is* total war" which echoes that mistaken sentiment.
I've read Tom Friedman pieces before, and I've read a couple of his books, including "From Beirut to Jerusalem." This is the same Tom Friedman who wrongly predicted that no two countries with a McDonald's would ever go to war with each other via his "Golden Arches" peace-through-globalism theory that turned out to be bullshit.
I think its purpose was to video themselves killing innocent children and babies and goading Israel into overreacting. I'm a peaceful person but I wanted to drop a bomb on people who were gunning children and laughing about it.
"they just understood that if they continued to fight without the support of the Sunni populace they were all going to fucking die there without any winning being possible on their end."
This is taking away their will to fight.
The difference with AQI was they were killing their own population, who didn't support them to begin with, there were just the enemy of my enemy.
For Gaza - the populace DOES support the overall goal of destroying Israel and pushing the Jews into the sea.
THAT is the mentality that has to be broken - that trying to destroy Israel just means EVEN MORE destruction for you. Best to live side by side in peace vs having half your family wiped out every 10-15 years.
But for now, the Palestinians believe it's worth it. That whole, "They love death more than they love life" thing. Well, they are about to experience a whole lot of death.
Right, you get to the point of taking away a terror org's will to fight by taking away their *means* of fighting. AQI was not killing their own population, they were killing Iraqi Shia, coalition forces and Iraqi gov forces, and only turned their killings onto the Sunni populace if they suspected a family of supporting the Americans.
In Gaza, not every Palestinian supports the destruction of Israel. Sure, many do, but not all of them. And in order to get the math to work out, you have to not be a dick and not level entire swaths of urban sprawl just to get a handful of Hamas fighters that will be replaced by the sons of all the civilian families you just killed with said airstrikes. It always comes back to the civilian populace when we talk about uprooting terror orgs from a supportive populace, and if you're not trying to wedge that relationship--which Israel isn't--then the math is never going to work out between EKIAs and replacements.
Cmon, man...Do you not know about the Sunni Awakening Councils?
They came about PRECISELY because AQI was attacking the Sunni populace.
"Sunnis formed Awakening Councils in response to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)...As Awakening Councils were formed, they began a shift in momentum for the Sunni population. AQI is formed primarily of Sunnis, and as Awakening Councils gained in strength and popularity there was a shift of support away from AQI. Insurgents stopped working for AQI and began to support the
Awakening Councils and Coalition Forces (CF). The efforts of the Awakening Councils have led to the near demise of AQI. In response to the Awakening Council’s pressure on AQI, AQI has begun to target members of the Awakening Councils. Since December of last year, there have been over 100 members of
the Awakening Councils killed, as well as 6 of their leaders."
Lol, you're proving my points for me. Like I said, AQI turned their weapons onto the Sunni populace whenever they got suspicious of Sunnis working with the coalition, and when AQI started doing this the Sunni Awakening happened. So likewise, if the Israeli government started working *with* the Palestinian populace to try to get rid of Hamas, Hamas would likewise probably start killing Palestinians that they suspected were working with Israel--which would further deteriorate their support among the Palestinians and eventually lead to a "Palestinian Awakening." Connect the dots dude. The Sunni Awakening Councils came about because AQI was targeting *certain* Sunnis it suspected of doing things it didn't like (working with the coalition), and so if Israel starts working with Palestinians then Hamas will start getting paranoid and killing the same civilian base it relies on for support.
PS: Sunni Iraq (Al Anbar province) was my old stomping grounds from 2005-2008, so I know a thing or two about what happened there.
And I doubt that Hitler and the NAZIs ever had a moment of sadness over all the millions of innocent people they killed. And I mean unarmed women and children. You all should read The Splendid and the Vile about Germany's bombing of England during the Blitz. Hitler bombed cities in England for years trying to kill as many people as possible in order to make England surrender.
Thank you. I feel horrible about the Palestinians, but why do they keep voting for a terrorist organization like Hamas? If they had a functioning, reasonable leadership, The US and Israel would have poured even money into their territory. Please don't forget the attack of civilians by Hamas and videos of them joyously killing children and raping women. They did that to illicit a violent response.
The US and allies dumped money into the Japanese and German economies after WWII, and Germany in particular had learned the lessons of going it the bitter route after what they went through from the end of WWI to the beginning of WWII. Israel isn't exactly dumping money into the rebuilding of Gaza and the Germans and Japanese had started the total war approach before having it turned against them by the allies later in the war. Palestinians aren't exactly reducing whole swaths of Haifa or Tel Aviv to rubble, but the Israelis are doing that in Gaza by comparison.
One significant difference between Israal/Gaza and US/Germany-Japan is that in the latter, there was an unconditional surrender. An acknowledgment that they did not have any further intention of being in conflict with the US. Nothing like that has happened with respect to Gaza.
Right, that's definitely true. But then again it took dropping a novel atomic bomb onto Japan a couple of times (after firebombing some 67 of their cities) in order to extinguish their martyrdom culture at a time when both sides were engaged in "total war." I don't think we're going to get to that place in Gaza with Israel dropping an A-bomb in the middle of the city. A better modern example of extinguishing Hamas probably comes from the US getting Iraqi Sunnis to turn on AQI. The IDF could learn some lessons from that application of counterinsurgency to extinguish a terrorist group embedded in a local/urban civilian populace.
Please...
So what about East Germany? Why aren't they hell bent on taking France?
Some history: US aid to Japan was about $15B in 2005 dollars; to Germany it was about $30Bln. This was over 6 years (1946-1952)
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RL33331.pdf
How much has Gaza/PA got in 26 years? About $40Bln
https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/international-aid-to-the-palestinians-between-politicization-and-development/
That's a very large amount of money for such a small area, as compared to (West) Germany and Japan. A fraction of the populace too.
So, please explain what the PA/Hamas did with $40Bln over 26 years? Why is it they are absolute desolate areas?
With that much $$ why are they still wanting to destroy Israel - based on your assertion that by giving aid to rebuild, any country would be peace loving?
Hint: Because Hamas/the PA want war, and condition their people to hate.
You cited money going into Gaza from *international* countries rather than from Israel, but how much of all of that money came from Israel and went directly into the hands of the families of the Palestinian civilians it has killed rather than the international money that went to the PA or to Hamas?
When I was in Iraq and we killed civilians on accident (or via escalation of force policy frankly), the guys from the civil affairs group went personally over to the bereaved family and gave them an honest message of condolence and a blood payment of $10k+ in USDs per family member lost. Does Israel do this? No they don't. Know what we didn't do in Iraq though? Level entire swaths of say Baghdad or Mosul just to get at a handful of AQI terror cells. It's kind of hard to win the "hearts and minds" war of separating Hamas from the Palestinian populace it relies on for support if you're not even trying at all to do hearts-and-minds counterinsurgency--which involves weighing tactical means against strategic goals via cost-benefit analysis, and if you're not doing that then all you're doing is setting yourself up to fight another generation of Palestinian terrorists a decade down the road. That's where Israel is fucking up when it comes to money and investment in the Palestinian populace and trying to drive a wedge between the Palestinians and Hamas. Israel isn't really even trying by American standards. They're just converting structures to rubble--killing thousands of children in the process--and then wondering aloud why Hamas still exists and why Palestinians don't like the IDF. So it ain't just Hamas that wants this war to continue, it's the Israeli government by their own tactics. They're just kicking the can down the road to the tune of thousands of dead Palestinian children and then wondering why their grandkids are still going to be fighting the insurgency in Gaza and the West Bank.
Who cares where it came from? It's still money. Why wasn't that money used to build stuff other than missiles and tunnels?
Oh, and weren't you one of the ones lambasting Netanyahu for giving money to Gaza - aka Hamas?
So which is it? Israel giving money to Hamas would have led to peace and prosperity, or "it's Israel's fault" for Oct 7 because they gave money to Hamas?
I never lambasted Netanyahu for giving money to Hamas, you clearly have me mixed up with someone else on that one. And when did I (or anyone I guess?) say that 10/7 is Israel's fault for giving money to Hamas? The rate at which you're building strawmen here is nuts.
And it very much matters where money comes from if you're talking about wedging the Palestinian populace away from Hamas--which is the only way you're going to defeat that organization generationally. Killing Palestinian civilians "on accident" without so much as a condolence message and blood payment *to the families of victims* is literally the least Israel could do if it wants to show itself as someone who cares more about the Palestinians than Hamas does. It is failing in that endeavor--badly.
My bad.
However, your original post was about the PTSD the Palestinian child was going to have because Israel destroyed their buildings. Are you saying that the Germans didn't "hate" the allies for killing their friends/family just because we gave them some cash?
That's not why Germany and Japan became pacifistic states in the (near) extreme. It's PRECISELY BECAUSE we brought so much destruction to bear, that they didn't want to relive that again.
In any combat situation - person to person or state to state - the goal is to breakdown the other's will to fight. If you stop short, the means might not be there, but that will is still there - and inevitably they will try again (see: Germany post WW1, and Hamas 2007-2023; Hezbollah 1982-present)
"It's PRECISELY BECAUSE we brought so much destruction to bear, that they didn't want to relive that again."
This was at a time when the *world war* had already escalated to "total war"--whereby entire nations are mobilized and civilian infrastructure is considered fair game because both sides are population-bombing at scale at a time when the best anyone had munitions-wise were dumb bombs (non-guided) used in carpet bombing. Right now, Israel isn't facing a "total war" from Hamas at the scale that the European/Asian land masses had been facing from Germany/Japan, and they're also not limited to using scaled-up bombing campaigns using dumb munitions. That's why bombing at that scale was justified in WWII and why it's not justified in Gaza during what should be a counter-insurgency strategy rather than a punish-the-civilian-populace strategy that the IDF is employing.
"In any combat situation - person to person or state to state - the goal is to breakdown the other's will to fight."
This is not true at all. We didn't break down Al Qaeda in Iraq's will to fight, we simply took away their *means* of being able to fight from the shadows by wedging the civilian populace they relied on away from them. AQI wasn't fighting anymore after 2009 not because they didn't have any fighters left or lost their will to fight, they just understood that if they continued to fight without the support of the Sunni populace they were all going to fucking die there without any winning being possible on their end. Their will to fight only ended *after* their *means* of fighting disappeared, leaving them too vulnerable to survive and fight with no logistical support from the Sunni populace and no replacement fighters to recruit from them. That's my larger point vis-a-vis isolating Hamas from the larger Palestinian populace. Israel can kill thousands of enemy Hamas terrorists every year, but if Hamas recruits the same number of fighters then the math is still set to zero losses for Hamas on paper. That's why Israel needs to cut off their recruiting and support pipeline from the Palestinian populace and Iran respectively rather than trying to turn Gaza into a moonscape and setting themselves backward on the Hamas manpower math front.
This is what you fail to understand:
For Israel, this IS "total war."
They can not have Hamas raiding to rape, burn and kill at will. That means Hamas MUST be destroyed.
If you think that is overblown, I strongly recommend you listen to what the leaders of Hamas are saying: "Hell yeah we did that! And we are going to do it over, and over, and over again!"
If you think 10/7 is "total war" then you really don't understand the concept of total war. There's a big difference between persistent threats of terrorism that even the US lives with and the concept of total war. Total war gets closer to what Russia is doing to Ukraine than what Hamas is doing to Israel. There's a scale of killing civilians involved that Israel hasn't come close to tasting yet. Go look at the civilian casualty toll in Ukraine and then compare it to the number of Israeli civilian lives lost since 10/7 and you'll see the difference. Go look at the civilian casualty rates in Russia during WWII and you'll see the difference.
Hamas must be destroyed, I agree there, but the way to do that is not by punishing the civilian populace. It comes from wedging the civilian populace away from Hamas. Israel isn't doing the latter, it's doing the former.
Again, I am not the one saying it is total war - it is the view of the Israelis that this is an existential threat to their survival.
I suggest you read reporting from Tom Friedman
"Their goal is to collapse the confidence of Israelis that their defense and intelligence services can protect them from surprise attacks across their borders — so Israelis will, first, move away from the border regions and then they will move out of the country altogether.
I am stunned by how many Israelis now feel this danger personally, no matter where they live "
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/opinion/israel-hamas-war.html
Also worth reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-national-crisis.html
Well then the Israelis are wrong if they think they're at total war. And you said plainly that "for Israel this *is* total war" which echoes that mistaken sentiment.
I've read Tom Friedman pieces before, and I've read a couple of his books, including "From Beirut to Jerusalem." This is the same Tom Friedman who wrongly predicted that no two countries with a McDonald's would ever go to war with each other via his "Golden Arches" peace-through-globalism theory that turned out to be bullshit.
I think its purpose was to video themselves killing innocent children and babies and goading Israel into overreacting. I'm a peaceful person but I wanted to drop a bomb on people who were gunning children and laughing about it.
Agreed. And Hamas is doing it expressly for the purpose of keeping the support of the Palestinians.
"they just understood that if they continued to fight without the support of the Sunni populace they were all going to fucking die there without any winning being possible on their end."
This is taking away their will to fight.
The difference with AQI was they were killing their own population, who didn't support them to begin with, there were just the enemy of my enemy.
For Gaza - the populace DOES support the overall goal of destroying Israel and pushing the Jews into the sea.
THAT is the mentality that has to be broken - that trying to destroy Israel just means EVEN MORE destruction for you. Best to live side by side in peace vs having half your family wiped out every 10-15 years.
But for now, the Palestinians believe it's worth it. That whole, "They love death more than they love life" thing. Well, they are about to experience a whole lot of death.
Right, you get to the point of taking away a terror org's will to fight by taking away their *means* of fighting. AQI was not killing their own population, they were killing Iraqi Shia, coalition forces and Iraqi gov forces, and only turned their killings onto the Sunni populace if they suspected a family of supporting the Americans.
In Gaza, not every Palestinian supports the destruction of Israel. Sure, many do, but not all of them. And in order to get the math to work out, you have to not be a dick and not level entire swaths of urban sprawl just to get a handful of Hamas fighters that will be replaced by the sons of all the civilian families you just killed with said airstrikes. It always comes back to the civilian populace when we talk about uprooting terror orgs from a supportive populace, and if you're not trying to wedge that relationship--which Israel isn't--then the math is never going to work out between EKIAs and replacements.
Cmon, man...Do you not know about the Sunni Awakening Councils?
They came about PRECISELY because AQI was attacking the Sunni populace.
"Sunnis formed Awakening Councils in response to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)...As Awakening Councils were formed, they began a shift in momentum for the Sunni population. AQI is formed primarily of Sunnis, and as Awakening Councils gained in strength and popularity there was a shift of support away from AQI. Insurgents stopped working for AQI and began to support the
Awakening Councils and Coalition Forces (CF). The efforts of the Awakening Councils have led to the near demise of AQI. In response to the Awakening Council’s pressure on AQI, AQI has begun to target members of the Awakening Councils. Since December of last year, there have been over 100 members of
the Awakening Councils killed, as well as 6 of their leaders."
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA494945
Lol, you're proving my points for me. Like I said, AQI turned their weapons onto the Sunni populace whenever they got suspicious of Sunnis working with the coalition, and when AQI started doing this the Sunni Awakening happened. So likewise, if the Israeli government started working *with* the Palestinian populace to try to get rid of Hamas, Hamas would likewise probably start killing Palestinians that they suspected were working with Israel--which would further deteriorate their support among the Palestinians and eventually lead to a "Palestinian Awakening." Connect the dots dude. The Sunni Awakening Councils came about because AQI was targeting *certain* Sunnis it suspected of doing things it didn't like (working with the coalition), and so if Israel starts working with Palestinians then Hamas will start getting paranoid and killing the same civilian base it relies on for support.
PS: Sunni Iraq (Al Anbar province) was my old stomping grounds from 2005-2008, so I know a thing or two about what happened there.
And I doubt that Hitler and the NAZIs ever had a moment of sadness over all the millions of innocent people they killed. And I mean unarmed women and children. You all should read The Splendid and the Vile about Germany's bombing of England during the Blitz. Hitler bombed cities in England for years trying to kill as many people as possible in order to make England surrender.
Thank you. I feel horrible about the Palestinians, but why do they keep voting for a terrorist organization like Hamas? If they had a functioning, reasonable leadership, The US and Israel would have poured even money into their territory. Please don't forget the attack of civilians by Hamas and videos of them joyously killing children and raping women. They did that to illicit a violent response.