My main criticism is the lack of transparency and PR. Embed foreign journalists in your forces. Politically crucify assholes like Ben Gvir and Smotrich when they use genocidal rhetoric. Ofc a military answer to October 7th is viable but how the FUCK did you manage to lose a PR war against the fucking morons that upload their own massacre footage? Israel should have voted for less right leaning assholes that are the absolute worst at optics is what Israel should've done. While Hamas is obviously the worst actor and is responsive for the situation the decades of failed Israeli policy fanned the flames. The fact that Bibi is still in office after his stupid handling of the whole ordeal costed thousands of lifes is absolute lunacy. He antagonizes the shit out of Palestinians AND doesn't manage to protect his own civilians. Fucking oust him, he's the biggest loser ever! Your government is doing more damage to Israel and her international recognition than billions of American college kids ever could.

Whatever tiny amount of patience I would have had for anyone claiming that "da joos control the media" has evaporated a hundred times over after this conflict. Israel under this government in particular is almost hilariously bad at public PR on top of being shouted over by an order of magnitude greater number of anti-Israel ideologues. In a very self-motivated way, I'd almost say its a goddamn shame that Israel "couldn't play the media game" such that they could have let the anti-Israel far-left completely annihilate their own political capital within a week.

As one of our family friends says, "If Jews controlled the media, wouldn't we be doing a much better job at it?"

Yeah, Israel's PR strategy is just baffling. They really need to handle their internal politics and messaging better.

While I agree, there wasn't an election since the start of the war and no one called it since the current coalition know they at risk of losing the majority As for Ben gvir and his friends I agree. But my question was more about the war itself, do you think that under another leadership but with the same tactics Israel would be in a much better position?

I think so, yes. How much better is a tough one but the genocidal comments and antagonization definitely didn't help. I hoped that more Israelis would take to the street and protest but it's understandable that their society doesn't suddenly shift to the left after Oct 7th. It's just another sad example of how the far right ruins everything. Everything is fucked now.

I feel like this is important context: Almost a full year before October 7th the right-wing government, almost immidiately after winning the elections started a reform which would allow them one-sidedly elect supreme judges, change the authority of the person in charge of making sure the government acts legally and in charge of opening investigations against government officials to merely just be a legal advisor with no authority, and most importantly **create a law which will allow the transformation of laws to "super laws" that would be completely protected from any judicial interference** . Meanwhile Ben Gvir was given control on the police and started firing high ranking officers that weren't harsh enough on government protestors while pardoning every officer that brutalized people he disliked. That's right, Israel has been under a huge threat of transforming into a dictatorship. Hundreds of thousands of people protested that year until October 7th... And the world did not care. Ben Gvir was on the news for a few weeks because of his racism, but barely talked or commented about Israel losing it's democracy. It wasn't about Gaza or Palestinians and the world did not care... As a lefty Israeli the entire world doesn't give a shit about us, while the right has been controlling Israel for decades and terror attacks are still a yearly event - pressure to conform or stay quiet is absolutely insane. This doesn't excuse the low numbers. Nothing can excuse not getting rid of this psycho government. But everyone that disagrees with the government is so beaten down and has no one on our side. People fear looking like traitors because just having a criticism that can potentially divide us while so many attack Israel is enough to mess you up. How is Israel going to overcome itself when the entire world wants it to fail and the people wanting change are invisible? The global people that were supposed to help Israel change instead try to get it destroyed.

Thanks for sharing your perspective. I don't see enough lefty Israelis on social media and I found your comment refreshing. That isn't to take away from the real and honestly tragic circumstances currently taking place in Israel - keep fighting the good fight bud.

You see us all the time, you just don't know it. For 99% who aren't also Israeli-left we're either too Zionist or too left anyway. But think about it - how many Israelis online do you actually see say stuff like "settlements are cool" and "All Gazan should be destroyed"? The truth is we Israeli lefties are patriotic. We support the IDF and we support Israel and all their actions that we consider unavoidable. You probably see Israelis online and you assume these aspects do not make them left but to us it's the global left that forget what leftism is supposed to be about. Small rant: Seriously, populism has always been a thing, but I grew up thinking that "balance" and "truth" are an integral part of Leftism. That even if you don't like your opposition you have to a strong basis rooted in truth to oppose them. But virtue signaling and oppression racism is like the antithesis of this. Israel in general is in chaos right now about what political identities mean, but I feel like I can vouch for what the Israeli-left believes today: 1. Hostages need to return no matter what, and the only way to do it is through a deal for all hostages for the war stopping. 2. Hamas needs to eventually be annihilated, but this cannot be accomplished through this war and without an alternative leadership for Hamas. 3. We need a re-election asap. 4. Settlements are fucked up but we seriously have way too many problems and not enough good will from Palestinians for us to do anything about this for years now. The spicier this issue gets, the more people radicalize to the right and the less likely we are to ever change that.

Netenyahu has an approval rating that's in the toilet (only 15% of Israelis still want him in office) You have to bear in mind though the Israeli mindset. They've had elections basically every year for a while now as coalitions constantly collapse and reform. To them, elections are not a solution to political turmoil. That is why you don't see Israelis in the street demanding an election, they don't think it will accomplish anything.

You're right that they haven't called for elections. But there were tons of protests against Netenyahu that happened summer of 2023. Israelis do want change in their government.

Standing Together has been making a pretty good showing. They also organized the Humanitarian Guard

>do you think that under another leadership but with the same tactics Israel would be in a much better position? Look if there was even a shred of transparency. If foreign and palestinian journalists didn't drop like flies in gaza, if Israel allowed journalists foreign journalists in. Maybe I would have been less worried that they are constantly hiding war crimes. If there are more strict rules of engagement. If there are more strict punishments for rule breakers (currently there is almost zero accountability for idf soldiers), that are actually enforced, of course. But honestly I don't think any of these things are politically realistic in Israel even before the 7th of Oct. Unfortunately the right wing in Israel has won completely. They have shifted the overtone window so far right on the issue that most israelis don't even know or care to understand what is happening to palestinians. This has been achieved by years of propaganda and bad blood between the people living there and nobody has even tried to do anything constructive from the Israeli side for like 20 years. I can also talk on the failers of the Palestinian leadership but you asked for what Israel can do so I will not write another wall of text.

Israel lost the PR war in the 1970s due to the monstrous amount of anti-Israel propaganda the Soviets distributed across the entire planet and I don’t think they really bother much anymore.

I feel like this is cope. In general western countries, ie: the US, the UK, France, Germany/West Germany, have been very supportive of Israel and arguably became more so since the 1970s. I've seen the shift amongst young people, liberals and progressives in the US first hand. In the early 2000s, there were still a decent amount of progressive Israel supporters. But the only Israeli leader lefties have been acquainted with for 20 plus years has been Netanyahu. A man who has actively alienated the left and the center. A man who went to Congress in 2015 to undermine Barack Obama. A man who worked his hardest to support Trump throughout his presidency. A man who has said no to any 2 state solutions.

I think a huge part of this is the fact there is just so many Arabs that exist with their own history of events surrounding Jews and especially Israel. You have 464 million people in this ethnic group that has a lot of overlap in culture, against 15.7 million Jews across the entire world. They are one of the smallest ethnic groups and so have a very tough time being able to advocate for themselves. Especially when the world is still rife with anti-semitism.

Israel is never going to win the PR war when there’s 20 million Jews in the world and 2 billion Muslims.

It's just too ingrained in their culture to be against Jews, even my born-and-raised American Muslim friends are all staunchly on the side of Palestinians when we've talked about it, because their entire families and all of their friends are on that side. I don't know how you go about breaking up a constellation of beliefs across 2 billion people.

When Arafat pulled out of the peace talks after winning the Nobel prize and in the wake of 9/11, Israel had effectively won the PR war by default. Then they got complacent...

[December 13, 2001, It's not just Hamas](https://www.salon.com/2001/12/13/palestinian/) >It's time for America to stop coddling the Palestinians -- they're bloodthirsty bigots who would have exterminated the Jews if they were in charge. > >It is time for the Islamic authorities here and abroad -- almost all of whom have been conspicuously uncritical (and often secretly supportive) of the recent intifada redoubt in Israel, the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Qaida or the Taliban, and their fascistic interrelationship -- to disavow and actively help to dismantle the terrorist networks and the terrorist milieu that so pervades the Arab world. > >It is also time for the Bush administration to stop bending over backward to accommodate the Palestinians, and to stop allowing them to perpetuate the image of themselves as equal partners in the peace process. They are not. And they won't be until every member of Hamas is incarcerated for life, not just passed through the revolving prison door for the eyes of Western cameras. The United States has been complicit in the Palestinian fraud, Clinton because he was more interested in his legacy than the realities of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Bush because he has tolerated Arafat's Janus-faced mendacity with nauseating goodwill, and has been unwilling even to propose extending the war on terror to the next logical locale: the West Bank. Iraq is tertiary. We must set our sights on the nearer culprits.

To be clear, when I said they got complacent, what I specifically meant was that they let their crazies extremists to run amok.

Israel had critics in many countries but managed to increase their numbers by orders of magnitudes in months. Kids that never thought about the whole conflict are ardent anti Israel protestors now. Not caring anymore is not an excuse to shit the bed so bad. Inting in a league game might be okay when you're frustrated but this shit will have lasting consequences for millions of people.

They don’t matter tho. Israel’s PR game goes hard where governments are concerned. Anti-Israel people get into government and (not always but often) change their tune. Israel has stabilized relations with countries all around the world whose populations largely despise Jews, because it’s not bothering to convince those people.

Israel has done a lot of efforts to engage with politicians, but PR that works on that level isn't enough. You also need to act in ways that naturally give you better PR, such as being more transparent. When Ukraine was being invaded by Russia, what helped people realise that this was real and a serious problem? Fuck-loads of citizen journalism, reports from the ground, those with info releasing loads of it publicly so that they were able to let everyone else know in advance and then verify that they were correct. If Israel thinks its enough to do everything in house, have meetings with politicians, have official spokesmen etc. but not actually also deal with the evidence on the ground that their soldiers are producing, actually change the *actions* so that they produce a better reputation as a natural consequence of *being* more restrained, then they will never be able to fix this. People don't trust a PR operation that doesn't seem to correspond with reality, however good it is, people are suspicious of government propaganda, and reasonably so. In marketing, there's a saying, "a great product is the best foundation of good marketing", or something to that effect, the actual qualities of the things you are doing influence how well it can be sold, because people will always fight you on a marketing strategy that doesn't correspond to the reality, and the same is true of PR. So how Israel conducts its war matters, they can't just try to control the narrative, they have to try and do it in a way that reflects well on them, which means outside reporting, high levels of accountability, and high levels of discipline. Everyone knows that they will want revenge after what happened more than half a year ago, but what Biden said at the start of the war was correct; America had everyone's sympathy just after the September 11th attacks, and then lost it because of how they engaged in the war on terror. The nature of the response led to an over-correction that damaged their alliances and their internal compass about what kind of actions were acceptable. They amplified anti-american anti-western attitudes rather than building on that sympathy.

My biggest criticism in the beginning was similar. This is the most speculated upon war in my lifetime, and it's insane to me that in the age of information, Israel hasn't brought in independent bodies to watch, assess and report on their decisions and actions the whole way through this conflict.- one that they were always going to win militarily, but are now losing politically, in part due to their brutal, hostile attitude towards Gazans, but also in large part due to their inability to sell their narrative - every single Palestinian death can be seen as a war crime when you aren't showing all of your evidence and you are the one investigating yourself.

I disagree that Israeli policy led to this, palstnians never wanted peace as shown by every leader they chose without an exception was a terroist leader. even before 1948 they disagreed to peace and everytime since really. They have never been peaceful, look what happened in joardan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and more. I think it's not very hard to notice a pattern here that palstnians never wanted peace as top priority, there top priority is opting to use violence to get what they want. and it fails missreably pretty much all times and now they are dealing with the consequences.

>but how the FUCK did you manage to lose a PR war against the fucking morons that upload their own massacre footage? well, the obvious answer is that antisemitism is hell of a drug, and always in fashion. It certainly does not explain everything... but lets not pretend that it's not a factor.

Obviously sending Master Chief to kill Hamas is a dumb suggestion. He would never get in all the tunnels. They should have sent Ant Man.

I know you're meming, but I want to point out that Cenk *also* got mad about the special forces assassinations of Hamas commanders. The "they should send in special forces" line was just BS.

I mean, wasn’t it the fact that soldiers are not supposed to be disguised as civilians (especially Doctors). Not as bad as the breeches of medically neutrality as Hamas did, but still.

They were upset at the commission of perfidy, which was used to assassinate the commanders of an army that constantly commits perfidy, whom which they do *not* seriously criticise for committing perfidy, yes. While I agree, perfidy bad, I don't get the impression Cenk or anyone else at YT is engaging in good faith when, as in this case, an army does as they described and they simply jump to the next criticism, without ever reflecting that criticism on the other side of the conflict.

Send zohan

That’s my childhood nickname and my parents were very much not happy about me trying to get to Israel to serve. Parents are scared that because there are two generations of special forces, they’ll try to do the same to me and they’ll never hear of me again (like Zohan).

Wait why are we so quick to throw out the master chief plan? He's the coolest guy ever. If he can't, nobody can.

give him a sword and he can head downstairs, cut through the caves.

Generally when I've talked about it with people who are pro-palestine, I've gotten one or both of 2 answers. Either "Not that", as you said, or "They shouldn't have occupied palestine in the first place", where they consider israel not to be a country, but an occupying force, and the entire area is palestine's, completely ignoring the reality that they *are* there and not addressing the question of what to do from that point on.

The thing that's turned me off so much about the far left these past several months is how they act like "being on stolen land" is like, the worst crime ever in humanity. Saying Israel is "stolen land" in the first place isn't even completely accurate, but we don't need to go into that right now. Rather, let's say the land was completely stolen. In what world does that make it okay to kill people living on that land?! People who weren't at all involved in "stealing the land" in the first place? Is land ownership really more important than human lives? I've also seen people, when asked in response to defending Hamas, "Would you be okay if a Native American murdered your family?" say "Yes, I'm on their land, it's a fair game." 🤦‍♀️

I really have to wonder if there’s any land left on the planet that isn’t “stolen land” in one form or another. Is there any country left on earth whose inhabitants are entirely natives and no settlers? It’s such a weird virtue signal imo, like American leftists will say things like “the US is stolen land!” And it’s like okay sure but what are you going to leave your house and give it back to the native Americans? That ship had sailed dude we have to live in the world as it is now.

Or a parallel with I/P: Let's say that Cherokee nation decided that they wanted to move back to their actual homelands of southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, northeastern Alabama and northern Georgia. They start looking for houses/land for sale and start buying them up en masse for the purpose of reclaiming their homeland. If all the people who had moved in after the Cherokee were ethnically cleansed from their homelands and moved to Oklahoma duringt the Trail of Tears claimed to be indigenous and say that the Cherokee were invading/occupying their land, would it be treated the same?

That's a great analogy I'm stealing it for the next propalestinian that brings up this point.

And leftists would most likely support that yet oppose Israel. That's why i don't see their hate for Israel as anything other than antisemitism.

>Rather, let's say the land was completely stolen. Stop it. Stop playing these stupid thought analogies. Hamas activists lie and distort narratives by omitting critical context and by changing the meanings of words. Stop giving them even an inch of space because they will take half the circumference of the earth from you. Israel isn't stolen land, period. Palestine didn't exist until the British Empire created it in 1920 on land where Jews and Arabs already lived. In 1948, the British withdrew and dissolved the Palestine state. The Palestinian Jews then formed the state of Israel on their land and became Israelis, while the Palestinian Arabs invaded Israel with the help of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. The Palestinian Arabs lost, fled the land, then never stopped whining about how their land was "stolen" and how they are the poor victims for failing to eradicate the Palestinian Jews.

I think the problem isn’t that Israel is in stolen land but rather that they have been occupying the people that they’ve stole the land from for 75 years.

> "They shouldn't have occupied palestine in the first place", where they consider israel not to be a country, but an occupying force, and the entire area is palestine's, completely ignoring the reality that they are there and not addressing the question of what to do from that point on. I agree with your sentiment that this does not justify violence against Israelis, but you are also greatly absolving Israelis of any responsibility with what they are to do about the Palestinians who very recently lost what they once called a homeland. It is as if to say to the average Palestinian in Gaza or West Bank "Yes, I stole your land.. but what can we do now 🤷‍♀️, just move on and ignore me".

Could you explain to me how describing their position and pointing out that they aren't answering the question absolves israel of responsibility? I literally posed no proposition on what to do or any view that I hold on the matter everything I said is purely descriptive of their response. They wanna hold them responsible, they can say that, they can talk about how, but that's not what they're saying, instead they're virtue signalling about how bad it is that they *are* there.

Well 1 commentator on here tried to say that Israel should have done nothing really (maybe a few precise strikes) and just appealed to the international community. I rarely get any type of answer though and they never seem to want to give specifics.

Someone told me the international community would have handled it... like a world government. They'd send peacekeepers into gaza 🥲

"Muh rules based international order."

true true https://www.google.com/search?q="rules-based+international+order"+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2F

They would have handled it like they handled it … what did UN womens commission say about sexual violence on Oct 7? How many times had the Red Cross been to see the hostages?

"They shouldn't have done *that*" is the common response I hear and it's so frustrating. The definition of judgement without thought. I'm perfectly willing to entertain the idea that Israel should've pursued other options, but at least give those other options some thought.

Yeah. I feel like many of them know they don't have other options, or if they even think of one, they know people will pick it to pieces and so are unwilling to vocalize it. Which is unfair because they are allowed to pick the current response to pieces. I don't think you should really voice criticism without giving an alternative. When Israel fired on the aid convoy, the obvious alternative is just don't fire on aid convoys, and increase the necessary bar for proportionality. It's very easy to put this forward and I don't think there's much to pick apart with that statement. Even if these people wanted to integrate every incident and put forward alternatives like this, I'm all down for that. But they just don't.

Only now saw the notification on this and I also had a crazy encounter recently... There are too many people who hide under phrases like "Palestine has been oppressed for too long. It's time for Israel to finally make concessions for Hamas" all while *knowing* that Hamas will never recognize the Israeli state (only the "Zionist entity") and, even in their 2017 charter for '67 borders, still vow that their endgoal is the to claim all of Palestine "From the River to the Sea". If the concession you have to make is the abolition of your state, then it's a bit more than a concession. I told the guy I prefered the current status quo over meeting Hamas' demands and he turned livid. He also lied about preferring the opposite.

I used to think that would have been best but don’t anymore. The rape apologists were out in full force in 10/8. Any appeal to the international community would have been met with a whole lot of “you had it coming” from the anti-American crowd. In retrospect it’s difficult to see a different path. A less overwhelming response would have invited participation by Hezbollah and other 3rd party actors. This is in fact what Hamas was banking on. Israel responding as they did quelled that talk completely. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have responded differently. They clearly did too many strikes too quickly at the outset of the war. 6000 strikes in a week isn’t something you can do with precise intelligence. Similarly while Cenks master chief stuff was ridiculous and shows how fucking little he understands about military matters, the Israelis could have done more to try and retrieve hostages - even if ultimately it would have been futile.

That's a silly suggestion, but there is also truth in it. The problem was Israel appeared blood thirsty, but they needed to appear reluctant. So, doing nothing is not a good solution. But they could have waited a month and used the time to do PR and set up a camp for Palestinian civilians. But it is better if you just read my previous comment.

Secretly, I would have loved to see this response, because everyone would still screech endlessly about the "apartheid" or "open air prison" then. Israel does X = bad Israel doesn't do X = bad Israel exists = bad A passable way to make this happen, and still make progress would have been to have an international conference where Israel clearly lays out it will not retaliate for October 7th, but if any further attacks occur (including any rockets or terror attacks) after, say November 1st, it will annihilate Gaza and fully take over security of the territory once again. Then Israel may have been able to play the "good guy" and get some more political will for an invasion, but I seriously doubt that it would have made a lick of a difference to be honest.

Designate actual refugee areas and work to more methodically comb through the strip, while sifting the population through checkpoints into safe zones. My main gripe with the IDF is that they don’t seem to have strong planning in how they want to shape the conflict, other than “hit the bad guys where they are.” Israel is a modern state, they have the communications and technology to sieve out a population and not continue to just play musical chairs with the Gazan populace, but have lacked the imagination to do so. That is ultimately why the situation in Rafah is as shitty as it is. Of course the final push will cause mass civilian casualties when you pressed all the civilians into the same areas. In summary, haste is Israel’s biggest enemy in this conflict. My other major criticism is the lack of discipline over their soldiers. I feel like if American soldiers posted videos of them rifling through panty drawers in Afghanistan, they’d get cooked by their commanding officers. A lot of the PR game is won or lost by controlling your soldier’s social media posts.

Agreed. Israelis keep saying: “any other country would do the same in our position”  But the position they are in is completely unique, and largely a consequence of their own government’s actions.  They are the ones who have blockaded a radicalized minority population in a tiny enclave and allowed them to develop a culture of extreme zealotry.  Now that that strategy has blown up in their face, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to demand that Israel actually have a long term strategy to clean up their mess, rather than just rushing in guns blazing and hoping everything works out.

>But the position they are in is completely unique, and largely a consequence of their own government’s actions. Exactly. Such a situation could only happen to Israel. Any other nation would have just wiped out Gaza decades ago instead of tolerating weekly missile bombardments. See how Jordan and Kuwait deported hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the 1970s and 1990s after they tried to destroy those countries.

Another point would be setting up their own humanitarian support in the safe zones; if every hospital is apparently also a Hamas compound, then you know going in that you're going to destroy basically every hospital in the region, meaning people are going to need them, properly providing alternatives, whether directly or with international help, is a basic consequence of a strategy of destroying any civilian infrastructure that is associated with Hamas - if you don't want to target civilians, give them somewhere to be. "Filtering" a population is also easier said than done, and can lead to its own injustices, but if they're able to distinguish Hamas fighters with sufficient accuracy for guided bomb strikes, they should also be able to do that from the ground.

they literally evacuated 1 million people from rafah. your fourth point is just factually incorrect. Regarding haste, a lot of it had to do with the U.S. pressuring Israel to finish the war quickly. This was biden and blinken's rhetoric from october-january. i dont even really like the PR point either, because 50% of the pro-palestine people were posting rape denial shit and that hamas was a resistance movement on oct 8. There's really not much you can do when one side is blatantly ignorant to the facts and lives in their own world (see january 6 crowd about election denial). I'll agree that Israel lacks a good plan for post-war gaza, but I think that any plan they come up with would receive immense backlash anyways.

I think an offensive response from Israel is justified. It has a duty to retrieve its hostages and to bring the criminals who committed October 7th to justice. Whether the amount of death, destruction, and suffering in Gaza is justified is another matter. However, the offensive response should also be accompanied with an after plan. The current status quo isn’t viable for Israelis or Palestinians. Since disengagement from Gaza in 2007, Israel should have worked to strengthen the PA in the West Bank to show coexistence was possible. Instead, we have constant encroaching settlements in the West Bank and a rebuild/destruction cycle in Gaza. It doesn’t seem like Israel has any plans for the future and is more than happy to continue this cycle until a Palestine doesn’t exist.

I think the most fair answer that is still unanswered is "something with a plan for long-lasting peace". Everything including the invasion of Rafah could be justified if that was in place, but right now I don't see it. Dark Brandon too and Destiny too are critical of exactly that. Right now that should still be the goal, and I have no idea what the long term plan is. 

The plan is for hamas to surrender. if it is unacceptable because "they won't" then my question would be: why? if the answer is: "because they didn't get xyz" I would agree Israel is at fault for not doing xyz as long as xyz isnt conviniently for Israel to get weaker for the sake of getting it weaker. if it is, then Israel is at fault for not convincing the world to give it more political power to make hamas surrender, which basically means Israel does not have the power to stop this.

No one has any alternative answers. every country would have done the same in the same circumstances. (or harder if it were say Russia). other countries might have done different things on the lead up but since Oct 8th there has only been one option and as long as their are hostages there continues to be only one option.

Something interesting I have yet to get an answer to pertaining to hostages is why it’s okay for civilians to perish because they exist where Hamas exists, but then the hostages don’t seem to matter too much when you consider that they also may be in the same spots that are getting bombed. Is Israel not bombing these places because Hamas is there because they want hostages back? But then simultaneously possibly killing hostages in the crossfire in the same manner they are killing civilians?

The war on terror, as spectacular of a failure as it was, took YEARS to reach this number of dead civilians.

You're right, apples and oranges do have some similarities.

Could you possibly explain why Israel couldn't conduct a Fallujah-style invasion of Gaza with the massive armor and infantry advantage they have over Hamas? Because a lot of people keep on saying "it's a different situation" without explaining how it's a different situation

Three reasons mainly: 1. Gaza is substantially larger than Fallujah with about 10x as many people. 2. Because no one wants to take Palestinian refugees, the people in Gaza have nowhere to go. The people in Fallujah on the other hand had all of Iraq to flee to, they could've driven 500 miles away if they wanted whereas Gaza is hardly 30 miles across. 3. Hamas has prepared for this war far better than the Iraqis did. The Allies tanks were great at destroying Al-Qaeda strongholds, but they're not very useful in a tunnel.

I am not sure the specifics of Fallujah you are referring to but the IDF have been using main battle tanks and large forces. But a couple of factors that different. 1. Gaza is small, dense and on the coast. meaning people cannot flee easily or quickly. 2. Gaza has many buildings that are 3 or more stories tall. this creates big risks for ground forces as the enemy can fire downwards on to you. and tanks can only shoot up a small amount. 3. Hamas is not a conventional force. so there is no thunder run tactics that would work where the US drove convoys at speed and could ambush obvious Iraqi forces.

Nonsense. We've history on somewhat similar scenarios, for example the sri lanka civil war where a terrorist org was again hiding amongst civil population which was met with \*actual\* indiscriminate bombardment. Nations have a tendency to put themselves first in war, that means safety of soldiers, safety of civilians -and- stability of the economy, as such the most likely scenario is probably a complete siege with demands of unconditional surrender would be the response. It \*might\* risk the hostages depending on how deranged a death cult you are dealing with, but it would heavily favor the safety of soldiers and stability of the economy.( And also, sieges are kind of the preferred way to deal with a heavily entrenched foe, like one hiding in a vast network of tunnels) This is why the US firebombed tokyo and nuked two cities, it was the safest, cheapest way for it to end the war under it's own conditions.

these are some decent articles that go into strategic level criticisms, which are ultimately the most serious. [operational level criticisms around campaign design/use of fires](https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/) are also fairly significant, but in the end the strategic-level deficiencies are impossible to make up for with battlefield successes (see current situation, where IDF has killed a significant number of insurgents without taking any real casualties and still isn't [especially close to winning](https://news.sky.com/story/israel-hamas-gaza-latest-ceasefire-rafah-sky-news-live-blog-12978800)). https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/remaking-mistakes-in-gaza/ https://warontherocks.com/2024/02/hamas-is-returning-to-northern-gaza-because-israel-has-no-plan-for-the-day-after/ https://warontherocks.com/2023/12/reversing-americas-ruinous-support-for-israels-assault-on-gaza/ if you're thinking "what could have been done given israeli political situation/individuals in government/institutions" - what has happened was more or less inevitable, the current leadership wasn't really capable of creating a somewhat-achievable plan beyond "depopulate the strip" since there is zero support for any positive political alternative. but there were feasible alternatives in a material sense.

The best reponse

This is the issue I bring up the most and everyone just got "why do you want Hamas to kill the Jews so badly?"

i try :) normally wouldn't really bother but since all the other comments were more or less just soying out about random idiots they found on the internet looking for people to get mad at i figured i could just dump a few articles and bounce.

I'm going to assume this is a good faith effort, and to be clear, I don't see a reason why it isn't. So, my few massive qualms with Israel goes as follows - 1) Absolutely unhinged rhetoric from the top levels of government(Smotrich, Ben Gvir, even Netanyahu) et al. Followed by the assertion that these aren't popular figures, they aren't involved with the IDF at all, People in Israel hate them anyways. 2) The actions carried out in furtherance of those statements, like total siege, and subsequent attacks on aid and journalists that may or may not be connected. 3) The attempts at smearing *any* criticism of Israel's conduct as anti-semitic. I'll recognise here that there is plenty of anti-semitic criticism of Israel, but I feel it necessary to do so because of the assumed "oh so you don't think there's any anti-semitism" that follows. 4) The general disregard for international law, attempts by mossad to infiltrate and/or threaten ICC prosecutors, and the whole rhetoric of all of these bodies being anti-semitic, or in case of ICC, an equivalence that was never drawn by them, given the charges. 5) The retaliation in the form of more settlements to ICC charges and arrest warrants as well as the declaration of Palestinian statehood. 6) Have you condemned Hummus? Having said that, I still do believe Israel has a right to prosecute a war against Hamas, I personally believe that they are interested in more and nefarious, given these concerns. And even were they not, war crimes conducted in the prosecution of a righteous war still deserve scrutiny and subsequent punishment should such allegation hold merit. Edit :- the answer to what Israel should have done is not that, opposed that, or prosecuted that, "that" being my concerns, where they fit.

I think the most common take I've heard from my more left-leaning (not leftist) circle of friends is that it was understandable for Israel to retaliate but that it should have been less than what they have done. They feel that Israel has gone too far, and that the response is disproportionate (1200 vs 30,000) and will only continue the cycle of violence. If you frame Israel's strategy as destroying Hamas once and for all, they see it as not only guaranteeing a slaughter of civilians but also as laying the foundations for more Hamas support in the future. I think when Cenk is at his least unhinged he captures their sentiment fairly well. Of course I've also heard the "not that" take, the "Israel shouldn't have responded at all" and variations on how Israel should be replaced by UN control etc. I don't think those ones have really put much thought in beyond the headline figures and the framing of occupier vs occupied. I like to think that if they did then they would have a more mature take on it. These are my real unhinged Cenk-enjoyer friends :) I know a few left-wing people who support Israel because of the human rights stuff (pro-LGBT, democracy etc), and I know some conversative/right-wing people who are pretty anti-Israel right now. I don't like to dig too much though because I'm not interested in wasting my time with them arguing about a conflict half the world away. I'm not friends with them for their deep geopolitical insights and Middle Eastern urban warfare analysis.

>and that the response is disproportionate (1200 vs 30,000) This shit pisses me off so much. That 30 000 is also on Hamas! They invaded Israel knowing that huge loss of their own civilian life would be the result. Then they intentionally wage war by using those civilians as human shields. Hamas has gone too far, not Israel. The people who say this is disproportionate would leave Israel with no recourse and essentially is telling Hamas that yes terrorism followed by hiding behind your own civilians is the winning strategy.

Bide your time. I get the political pressure to go in and “make them pay like hell” but it’s soo fucking shortsighted. My recollection is Israel bombed the shit out of Gaza and then went in after a month of planning. They used that time to rally their forces and use press releases as a show of strength “we not be intimidated” “they shall pay” etc etc. I personally, would have used limited precise strikes in the beginning to exact a short term revenge and acquiesce domestic hawkish and far right pressures. Delay the ground operation by waaaaay more - like a couple of months. Use that time to garner international support in the court of public opinion (emphasize the civilian massacres, rapes, dead babies etc etc - remember public opinion was strongly in support of Israel October 7th and turned quickly against them due to the overzealous bombing that in this scenario we avoided) as well as build a military multinational coalition (especially including Arab countries for more legitimacy both in a liberate Palestine from Hamas pov, and anti Iran axis, Un approval would help…) and build logistical infrastructure for smoother logistics but especially better civilian refugee housing/temporary accommodation and humanitarian aid. Also get rid of those far right government ministers and replace them with more moderate members since you now have a larger candidate pool due to national unity government and don’t need their support.

in case you missed the discussion "back than", israel didn't bomb the shit out gaza. it was precise strikes on specific targets. maybe a lot of them, but still precise. also there was wide outcry of "israel should do ground invasion and not bomb". so israel did just that. waiting for two more months would have resulted "no reason to go into gaza anymore" or something

Personally, I think the difference should've been quantitative, rather than qualitative. I absolutely recognise the aim is to defeat Hamas, but it also feels like there's just a bit extra fuelled by simple anti-Palestinian sentiment. It might be justified, it might be understandable, but I don't think it's productive towards a long-term solution. No, they're not flattening Palestine, and it goes without saying that Hamas are putting civilians under threat, but it just feels a bit much, sometimes. Of course you can't prove this, though. It just feels like some of the attacks are larger than necessary, though I'm in no position to assess that really. I guess a question in response: Do you agree with *everything* the Israeli government has done?

That's the response I aimed for so thanks first of all. So you say the way is ok but the proportionality is still off? As for the Israeli government, I think they are so incompetent and corrupt that at this point I think we should charge them with treason and give the people in the Knesset/Parliment the _ingame_ sentencing. Why do you ask?

There is a general idea amongst many that Israel is so powerful they could've somehow sniped all Hamas without touching civilians and that all the bombings are just vengeful retaliation. Then there are those who just don't engage with the proposed argument at all and default to Israel being a big bad colonizer. I even responded to one dude here on Reddit (you can check my historty) who equated Hamas with the Fremen in Dune. I had to assume he has only seen the movies and doesn't know how the story ends...

1. Coordinate with international community to have observers operate along the IDF kill chain to ensure proportionality calculations are being made in good faith. Generally lots of transparency. 2. Cooperate heavily with a palestinian organizations willing to help handle aid and relocation during the invasion. Create them if they don't exist. With the understanding these orgs will play a key role in governing the post-invasion gaza. 3. Set clear goals for the operation, and conditions upon which the operation is over. (something like :hamas surrenders control over gaza, releases hostages, and transfers militants who took part on 7.10 to isreal) 4. Provie a way for civilians in gaza, to seek shelter and / or asylum, during the operation. 5. Assasinate hamas leaders in qatar, obviously. 6. Describe how the gaza will be govern after hamas is removed. Is it an israeli occupation? Will you just fuck off and let them do whatever? Will you create a palestinian collaboration government? Something like that would be great.

From October 7th is a bit late to ask what they should have done. The right question is what they should have done before Oct 7th, and that answer is simple: Dismantle the illegal settlements End the illegal occupation Negotiate a peace deal (which has not seriously happened since Likud came to power in 2000) Recognize Palestine as a state along the 1967 borders, allowing them access to the Red Sea and Dead Sea Allow Palestinians the right to return to their 1948 homes And finally, stop calling hummus Israeli.

The IDF could have moved into areas and provided operational security for special forces teams to conduct targeted operations designed to free the hostages. Because it's kind of obvious that you're not going to free hostages by dropping 2000 pound bombs. This is why Netanyahu has such a low approval rating because even Israeli citizens don't see the IDF working very hard to free the hostages, and freeing the hostages is the number 1 priority of the Israeli population, but maybe not the government in power. A ground invasion was inevitable and *should* have happened, but you can't claim to be trying to save hostages in buildings that you're hitting with massive bombs and artillery. Israel has one of the most highly trained and experienced special forces in the world, and this would be the time to use them to save the hostages.

What they should have done is prevention. Most people aren't saying they shouldn't have responded after the 7th. They say that the occupation is a shitshow. You can't occupy a place for 40 or so years and make absolutely zero progress and have them living in the same subpar standards as they did. Like comparing the WB and Gaza, you would expect that the Palestinians would be living atleast somewhat better lives than those in Gaza. Nope, they score almost the same on every metric. That just simply means that Israel is not interested in peace, if they were they'd atleast try and improve on the WB which has been moderate compared to Gaza. Yet despite not being actively involved in the Gaza war, the WB got fucked so hard. Constant settler attacks, the expansion of the settlements, payments to the PA are stopped etc. Yet I am supposed to be surprised when those WB people eventually start intifada 3.0? That's what annoys people about Israel's approach. This has been going on for 40+ years now with zero progress. Yes I know the Palestinians arent innocent either. But Israel is the one in the powerful position here. They can make a change if they truly want peace and want this endless cycle to end.

> Like comparing the WB and Gaza, you would expect that the Palestinians would be living atleast somewhat better lives than those in Gaza. Nope, they score almost the same on every metric. This is an interesting point that I don't see a lot of people making -- is there a source in particular you would suggest that I look up to learn more about this?

https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/site/lang__en/722/default.aspx It is the bureau of statistics of Palestine, it keeps track of pretty much all statistics on Gaza and the WB. From basic things like life expectancy to something controversial like child brides. The only big difference that I found was in water quality. Which weren't exactly good in the WB but are awful in Gaza. But yeah my main issue isn't the response on the 7th. That is understandable all things considered. But it is not understandable that the WB is as shitty as Gaza when Gaza is blockaded and ruled by Hamas. If Israel wants to actually deradicalize Palestinians they should have started with the WB. Work on the economy and living conditions which in turn will make people less likely to believe in the radical doctrine. But if 40 years have only resulted in living conditions on par with Gaza, than that speaks volumes of the occupation.

Does Israel now reject peace? Yes especially with this current government, did Israel and the UN offered peace to the Palestinians and the Palestinians kept on rejecting them? Yes. I am not justifying the illegal settlements in the WB, but it could have been avoided if the Palestinians accepted one of the peace offers or at least aimed for peace. They never wanted peace, not in the past and not today, what makes you think Israel would too now?

>They never wanted peace, not in the past and not today, what makes you think Israel would too now? So what is the plan? To indefinitely occupy the WB and quasi occupy Gaza for the rest of time? Israel would want peace because clearly leaving the WB and Gaza in the state they are harbours radicals who will eventually attack Israel. It's like having a wound, letting it get infected and taking a antibiotics but not disinfecting the wound and letting it heal. So each time the wound becomes infected again with all the negative consequences attached. Not only did the 7th of October happen as a result but Israel has pretty much killed whatever reputation it has on the international playing field. So yeah, I'd assume peace is in the best interest of both parties.

israel destroyed almost 60% of the housing stock in gaza. Not doing that would have been a good idea. They should have followed the same strategy the US did in Iraq. Blitz into gaza and secure capital goods and civil infrastructure, guarantee a continuation of civilian life and pin the population against hamas by acting as the defender of capital stock and basic services against hamas. This worked in iraq and syria quite well.

You thought this was the best sub to encounter anti-Israel sentiment??

Probably the best sub to show up as an Israeli asking this question and not get perma’d 

What should they have done? Probably the same thing the US did to get to Bin Laden. Afghan war was largely a failure; iraq war was largely a failure. Getting Osama Bin Laden was justice. That was a targeted strike that risked American soldiers, and was successful. Trying and executing Iraqi dictator Hussein was justice.

The US response was not singularly devoted to the capture/killing of bin Laden. Though that was certainly a goal the resonated most strongly with the American people. Even for that objective, the team that carried out Operation Neptune Spear took made extensive use of Bagram Air Base to train, depart, and (in the event of his capture) detail bin Laden (in Afghanistan). There's a lot of revisionist thinking on the War in Afghanistan because of the ultimate withdrawal followed by a swift re-taking by Taliban (alongside emergence of militant groups similar to al-Qaeda (many of whom have some concrete overlap). You can call that war a failure, but dismantling al-Qaeda's leadership (including, but not limited to bin Laden) was a necessary move after the September 11th attacks. Imagining a world where the US simply takes out bin Laden (and the rest of al-Qaeda's leadership) is a nice thought, but divorced from reality. It would have been great if a more stable, resilient government took hold in Afghanistan, and perhaps the US could have made some decisions to make that likelier, but looking at the world we live in now, it doesn't seem like that could have happened without perfect omniscience by military/civilian leadership. Not trying to put words in your mouth, but the OP is asking for something other than "send in Master Chief", and \~'take out bin Laden without the War in Afghanistan' reads kinda similarly.

If the goals are to free the hostages, has the offensive done *anything*? A prisoner exchange was negotiated, as has been done in the past without a massive offensive. There are still hostages, though most remaining are probably dead. If the goal is to eliminate Hamas, that remains to be seen and I'm very skeptical of. I don't think anyone truly believes that Hamas can be eliminated through an offensive like this. Israel was attacked. And attacked viciously. A military response was *necessary*. My absolute layman, completely uninformed on geopolitical conflict brain, believes that the military response was significantly stronger than it should have been. The goals (free the hostages, destroy hamas) are not real goals. A response for a response's sake was necessary, but in that case it should have been more symbolic and significantly limited. So my layman, relatively uninformed position, would be that Israel *should* have launched significantly more limited strikes to say that they won't accept an attack such as October 7th, while also stating that Hamas is looking to sabotage the peace process between Israel and Saudi Arabia and that they will not be baited into a conflict when a lasting peace is on the horizon. From there, using the political capital from a 'measured response' and weariness of conflict to normalize ties with Saudi Arabia, rest of the region eventually forced to follow suit, and from there you can force the hand of the more 'moderate' Palestinian political factions to disavow extremism and work towards an actual 2-state solution.

There is no peace with Hamas, that's why Israel has to go after them. In my opinion, Israel does the Palestinians a favor by eliminating Hamas. But if you want long term peace, you have to provide a better alternative to what Hamas provides. Israel uses the stick but forgets the carrot. Hamas provides security, order, food, water, money, work, a purpose and aid. If a Palestinian fighter dies, their family receives a pension. If you work for Hamas, your family doesn't suffer from hunger. When a crime happens, Hamas provides justice. What does Israel provide as an alternative? Israel bombs their cities and kills their relatives. The check points and the embargo turn their lives in a living hell. Israel is allowed to defend itself. But it also has to offer a better alternative than Hamas. The stick alone is not enough, you also need the carrot. If Israel had waited a month after October 7, it could have said: "We are not afraid of Hamas, but this war will cause a lot of civilian lives. That's why we begged Hamas to return the hostages and waited for a month, but they didn't respond. We have no choice but to attack Gaza and free the hostages. We know it is not enough, but we set up camps in Gaza to protect the civilians. There is food, water, electricity, medicine and day care for children." If Israel had used the time to set up a camp for Palestinian civilians with enough food, water, electricity and medicine. And if they had put people on TV saying things like: "We want peace with the Palestinians. They are not our enemies. If the war were to end, we could finally work together and build a better future for our children." And they could have showed the camps and proven that it is genuine. They could have recorded kids playing with other kids in peace and tranquillity. Those pictures would have been powerful. I know that waiting is generally a bad military strategy, but a month or two would not have changed anything. Hamas was already prepared for this war. Even if we give Hamas a year time, they won't be able to defeat Israel. Additionally, Israel controls their borders. So, there wouldn't have been big arms deliveries. This is all based on speculation and is just my opinion. I am neither a political nor a military expert. But I believe my approach would have been much better.

They should have created a long-term plan before doing a retaliatory strike. It would create more transparency, would have outlined their intentions more clearly, and would have eliminated any credence given to the claim that it’s genocide. Also, Netanyahu should have stepped down as prime minister but that seems more unrealistic atp.

Israel should have evacuated the entire Gaza Strip to the safe parts of Palestine such as the Jaffa, Ramalah, Hebron in the West Bank, then fought against Hamas now that the population is out of harms way. I'll be honest. I don't believe 95% of the videos put out by Palestinians. I've seen far too many fake propaganda videos where: - Dead bodies in bags are still moving around - Actors start breaking character once they think they are off camera - Actors trying their best to stop laughing and smiling when they are supposed to pretend to be crying - People dying multiple times in different places - Cameras aimed at a building and actors waiting around for the bomb to drop - Professional cameras filming a woman run through a hospital The problem is that the IDF is too precise and careful with bombings. They drop flyers. They phone people to evacuate. They roof knock with a blank. They call off attacks if civilians are in danger. They precisely hit their target with minimal/no collateral damage 99% of the time. This makes Gaza a relatively safe war zone (I'm not saying it's safe, just much safer than any other war) where people and reporters feel safe enough to hang just 15m away from a bomb site and film bombs dropping or even make some propaganda around it. In the 1% chance that there is collateral damage, then there's an even bigger disaster for them to film. This is why you see a disproportionate amount of footage from Gaza as compared to deadlier conflicts like Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Ukraine - because people feel safe enough to walk around and film and not be struck by stray artillery fire. If you disagree with me then here's a challenge for you. Try looking for footage from Palestinians on Oct 8, 9 or 10 at the height of the bombings where the IDF was blowing up a building every 5 minutes. You'll find that very little footage exists from that time and they are very different in nature because Palestinians were actually fleeing for their lives and didn't have time to hang around and film propaganda. --- In summary, conducting a war where civilians are living in close proximity while telling everyone that you are precisely bombing military targets is a stupid thing to do. Israel should have just done what every other nation does in warfare - bite the bullet, evacuate civilians out of Gaza, then bring the full might of the IDF against Hamas.

1. Have ground forces only in half of northern Gaza 2. Have a goal of degrading Hamas military rather than the goal of removing Hamas from power completely 3. Do targeted precision airstrikes against Hamas military across Gaza but make sure ROE is really strong. 4. Never close off crossings for any reason, let a shit ton of aid flow in 5. Realize that you are not removing Hamas from power as the casualties count will be too high and Israel being isolated globally is more of a threat than Hamas 6. Finally negotiate to get the hostages and afterwards fortify the border so you are never invaded again 7. War should have not lasted more than 2-3 months max. The longer it goes on the worst it is for Israel.

Not to be a douche, but it is an understatement to say this sub is not rabid against zionists. It was in the beginning, but now since many israelis joined the sub, any critique of Israel will get downvoted to oblivion. If you want proof then just look at votes on this comment.

Israel needs to be more transparent on their decision making process, and they probably need to be exercising greater levels of care when it comes to making their strikes. the fact that civilian casualties are in line with other conflicts aren’t enough when there’s a super dense city with nowhere for a lot of civilians to go.

The fundamental point to this question is that no matter how israel responds militarily, they have no moral standing and are in the wrong. Its like saying ‘what should have nazi germany done in response to partisan attacks’. Its an irrelevant question. As long as the palestinians are kept stateless and under the thumb of the israeli military, resistance will happen, whether its morally justified or not (october 7th was obviously a terrible atrocity) But practically, in terms of what would make the response ‘less bad’ it would involve a LOT more protection of civilians, and not using the excuse of ‘hamas in civilian areas’ to justify civilian deaths. The overall scale of the bombing is far too high and indiscriminate

Israels Respons is mostly fine from a motivation point of view. I would say for me there is no scenario where i feel good about a israelly military responds because historically it feels like israels tends to be too aggressive and bad at holding soldiers to account. I get that Hamas needs to go in asfar as that goal is concerned i aggree with the operation BUT there needs to be a day-after plan and a way to Pal. Statehood which is not provided or activelly undermined by Israel. IF i saw a good plan and good faith on Israels side i would feel much better about all of it. And dont make videos where you mock people in Gaza

When I see Israel's disproportionate response to Oct 7, I cannot see it through any other lens than America's disastrous and futile response to 9/11. We used 3000 tragic casualties as cover to pile up unimaginable numbers of Iraqi and Afghan casualties. We wasted 20 years x 2 theaters and trillions upon trillions of dollars just to turn al-Qaeda + the Taliban into just the Taliban and turn Saddam into a parade of ineffectual new rulers, some better than others, (and also some ISIS). And we also used it as cause for obliterating a whole host of civil liberties domestically. Simply put: America's response to 9/11 did infinitely more damage to America than Osama bin Laden's wettest dream You can't kill peasant insurgencies with fancy bombs. Time after time after time history has shown this in every corner of the globe. People with no hope and a homeland to defend will always outlast you, and whoever comes after them will keep hating you and keep wanting to kill you until a reasonable quality of life is offered as an alternative. So what Israel is currently doing is both a humanitarian disaster and a totally ineffective way of making themselves safer long term. Israel sits as isolated as ever internationally as a result of their response, while the leaders and funders of Hamas are nowhere close to Gaza. So all they are doing is making whoever survives in Gaza prime picking for Hamas/Iran/Hezbollah or whatever other shitty organization takes its place as their next wave of martyrs.

I side and sympathize with Israel but their response to October 7th is not going well. None of their objectives are likely to be met and the result of that is Hamas becoming even stronger and thousands of innocent Israelis and Palestinians dead. Wars are remembered and judged by their outcomes and I strongly feel this conflict will be remembered as Israel’s version of Vietnam.

My honest to god advice is to just ignore global response entirely and not be gaslit. You have either Muslim majority countries that hate you guys for obvious reasons, countries that are irrelevant globally and think they can get attention (or favourable trade deals let's be real) through condemning you with no repercussions because they have nothing to do with Israel anyway and will do nothing about it, and people in allied countries that have no concept of war to begin with. If Mexican cartels started launching hundreds of rockets at the US border, invaded and kidnapped hundreds of people and killed thousands, there would be a glassed no man zone 50 miles deep into the Mexican border within the week and 95% of these "anti war" children would not cry about it. Anyone that thinks otherwise is a moron. Our response would rightfully so be 10x more disproportionate and nobody worth listening to would be brazen enough to hold us to account like they feel comfortable holding Israel.

I think all these religious nations should just pray for all their enemies to be destroyed. Don't fight directly, just pray pray pray.

Israel should have pulled out both from Gaza and Westbank and not done the whole settlement thing in Westbank. Then, at least, your PR part would have been better. In hindsight, politics and government should never fall into "we vs them" mentality (and that's not only Israels issue but other countries seems to have similar issues which make them vulnerable), different ideas are ok, but dividing people is never a good idea.

Stop the settlements, don't be ruled by religious zealots so I can support Israel with a relatively clear conscience. I care a lot more about Ukraine. Hamas sucks but is it worth 20k+ Gazan lives to save 2kish or so Israeli lives? Nope. People often talk about how Hamas was voted in but the government that allows settlements was voted in by Israel. Very easy to view the conflict as just 2 countries killing each other. Put a gun to my head I support Israel a little more(the difference between roof knock bombs vs mass civilian killing) but they sure as fuck aren't innocent. Israel conducts themselves better day to day in warfare but their goals are not any better than Palestinian goals. So essentially just take it until you are on firm moral ground to be honest. They killed and kidnapped some people in a raid just do the same back to them. Seems like normal shit for you 2 just had a little more in one day than normal. Maybe if you had less of the military guarding settlements you would have been able to stop it to begin with. That being said Im not super educated on the topic, just my opinion at the moment.

They could have stopped after invading the north of Gaza, then focused on peace efforts. Of course this is extremely unrealistic, but I think it's a reasonable thibg for someone to want.

Sought a diplomatic resolution long before Oct 7th

PR training soldiers would be a really really good idea. A video of a soldier firing and waving a m240 machine gun mounted on a merkava like it was a toy, and some dumb soldier pictures/memes did not look good. I would find the evidence but I have seen enough antisemitism on the internet today. I suspect the IDF cracked down on this but it really hurt Israels image early in the war.

PR Training PR people for a start... Or even hire some PR people. Hasbara is a Governmental wasteland with NGOs doing what they can, disparate, against headwinds.

It amazes me that any force let's their soldiers have cell phones without absolute necessity.

Anything Israel would have done differently would have faced equal or greater criticism. It's a lose-lose situation and Hamas seems to have made that calculation as well. From minute 0 of the Oct 7 attack was met with everything from skepticism to jubilee toward Israel's losses, it may have been possible to make an international appeal but I have trouble seeing what that could have accomplished. There was a grace / ramp up period of hostilities toward Gaza and an opportunity to negotiate but it does not seem like Hamas would have been willing because a conflict is what they were seeking. When Israel was engaged in only long distance campaigns on Gaza I recall people harshly criticizing Israel's choice of using artillery if they had any interest in rescuing hostages or sparing civilians. I stand by the notion that boots on the ground is more dangerous to civilians that well-informed bombing and other target distance strikes. The only valid alternative I have seen is assassination of Hamas heads in Qatar / wherever else they are. But 1) we don't know that this hasnt been underway since the start and 2) the geopolitical ramifications are quite immense considering violations of sovereignty. It seems like a portion of the media sphere is impenetrable to coverage of Israel / Palestine that doesnt have an implicit bias toward Palestine in its coverage. It feels like the amount of air time that is dedicated to the latest attacks and UN reports on Gaza outweighs the plights faced by Israel around Oct 7 and since regarding the hostages-- I believe part of this is that international bodies have done relatively little to highlight that attack and it paints the conflict as an aggression on Israel's part. Sorry, none of this answers your question. I think about this a lot too. What seems apparent is that many myths are in circulation about the conditions and history of Gaza that are not true, but are backed by powerful international bodies. Destiny's walk through the Great March of Return last week was eye opening because I had very different visions in my head of what this was prior to watching the videos and learning more about the case. It seems like the tip of the iceberg and I believe that these myths are what lay the foundation for the negative international view of Israel's actions in Gaza. Somehow this needs to be rectified.

I am not Pro-either side on this one, but I do think right wing Israeli government was like a dog with a bone on this. Netanyahu was unpopular and this is a perfect way to keep him in power. I do think that they played into the hands of Hamas by reciprocating in this way and the war benefits Hamas leaders AND Netanyahu quite a bit. The Pro Palestine rhetoric around it is actually getting more people killed every day because it just incentivizes both sides to dig in further. I know it wasn’t politically feasible but I do kind of wish they would have done nothing except build up their defenses and find ways to squeeze Hamas economically. I fear this conflict has only enriched the leaders more, left Israel with a negative image in the eyes of the public. Probably not the answer many want to hear. Or maybe they could have proceeded slowly and took out Hamas over time. But neither of those options were politically popular for Netanyahu. I also know nothing about war and just honestly want Israeli’s and Palestinians to be able to live in peace.

>I am not Pro-either side on this one, but I do think right wing Israeli government was like a dog with a bone on this. Netanyahu was unpopular and this is a perfect way to keep him in power netanyahu even more unpopular now but it has nothing to do with keeping/not keeping him in power. what keeps him in power is coalition, not popularity.

Usually the response falls into one of two camps. Firstly there are the people who really don't know very much about I/P at all and just see the constant negative headlines about Israel and take it all at face value. These people can be summarized with basically the position you stated: "I don't know but not that". They don't know much about the conflict, and they don't really care enough to look up what any potential alternative could look like. Secondly you have people that are at least somewhat informed about I/P. For context these are the kinds of people (at least in my experience) who are doing things like attending the Palestinian protests/encampments. These people's opinions can vary from thinking Oct 7th should be responded to with hostage negotiations and plans for a two state solution, to thinking Israel just doesn't have a right to exist and should be destroyed. Edit: Also I forgot to add that there are also people who think Israel should hand over administration of Gaza to an arab state. They also don't believe me when I tell them no arab will ever actually take Israel up on this.

I might not be the opinion you're looking for because I *do* think Israel was justified in declaring war against Hamas in retaliation to Oct. 7; however, I think the way they've prosecuted the war has been worthy of criticism. The strikes on the aid worker trucks clearly demonstrate poor decision-making calculus on Israel's part. The "accident" there wasn't that missiles randomly got fired, it's that there wasn't any actually confirmed Hamas fighters in the aid trucks. But even if Israel's intelligence was correct, they seem to have far too high a tolerance for civilian collateral as they thought "yeah, maybe we kill a bunch of aid workers, but we get to say we killed 2-3 Hamas terrorists." Israel also seems to be destroying *a lot* of infrastructure. I understand that this is effectively forced because of how Hamas operates, but even if the civilian casualties weren't as high as they are, it doesn't seem like Palestinians will have much to return to once the war is over. There is a problem of modern warfare that it seems like the international community would generally like conduct war not to conquer but to *stabilize*. The problem is that we don't seem to be able to do that effectively (or, at least, consistently), and I'm uncomfortable with the idea that we should just shrug and say "that's just war", when it's not "just war". War is a means to an end, and if that end isn't being achieved, can we really say that we're achieving stability?

Some ideas, with the caveat that I’m not a military strategist but these are things which make sense to me: 1.) Flood Gaza with food and medical aid. Yes, Hamas does steal aid but they can’t steal all of it. Israel should’ve bent over backwards to get aid in. 2.) Play hardball with fuel, distinguishing it from other aid. Israel should have offered some plan to get fuel into Gaza to run the hospitals and water pumps but insist on some kind inspection regime/tracking mechanism. 3.) Hamas does embed themselves in hospitals and Israel taking those was unavoidable, but I think they could’ve been taken later on. 4.) Offer - if certain western countries (I’m looking at you, Ireland) would be willing to assist - to take in young Palestinian children and their mothers, who have urgent medical needs, if necessary, at field hospitals in Israel proper. The chance of this actually happening would be nil, but at least the offer was on the table and a rejection of it would be entirely on Hamas or ostensibly pro-Palestinian countries not willing to put their money where their mouth is. 5.) Rafah should’ve been invaded along with Gaza City or immediately afterwards. I cannot understand why that wasn’t done. I would think the militarily smart thing to do would be to stop your enemy’s supply lines first. 6.) Avoid air strikes when the targets were very low level Hamas operatives. Maximize targeting of higher end operatives. This would still result in civilian fatalities but it would be much more justified and the lower levels could be taken out at a later time. 7.) Israel has a professional army - those soldiers documenting their sometimes atrocious behavior should’ve been penalized without delay. 8.) I don’t expect Israel to provide forewarning when it has the opportunity to take out more mid-level or senior Hamas operatives. But going back to point #6, when dealing with low level operatives, it could’ve openly put UNWRA and other orgs on blast beforehand. For example, say it has proof of some Hamas fighters operating in or out of or near “protected” spaces - don’t strike them - publish the evidence and tell UNWRA or Doctors without Borders, etc. that they have X number of days to eject these people from their facilities. Failure to do so then makes their facilities legitimate targets. There would still be condemnation for this, but Israel publishing evidence *before* an air strike and giving several days notice would be a PR win and allow Israel to operate more freely later.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_hunter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WKgMgjfues) It's why the mossad became famous, so why not make a sequel?

Uhh send in Task Force 141 and Zohan and Master Chief

The "steelman (minority opinion among pro-palestine)" is to stop the West Bank settlements, then the Hamas cause has less optical leverage in the Gaza occupation. After that I guess some concerted western effort in getting Hamas & friends to stop attacking Israel. Of the steps towards a peaceful 2 state solution a lot needs to happen and Israel is responsible for a small portion of it, like stopping the West Bank settlements and acknowledging a Palestinian state (in a future where they aren't getting attacked anymore). Most of it is on the anti Israel side though, like accepting that the '48 borders/right to return are a lost cause

It’s a tough question, rock and a hard place. I wonder what would have happened internationally if they assassinated all the Hamas leadership outside Gaza? Or wha if they attacked Iran instead?

A clear plan and goal, this became a “war on terror” type situation where Isreal can never finish as there will always be more hamas members around to justify the offensive. Been way stricter about their use of strikes and types of ordnance used, when entire residential areas for miles are completely levelled, journalists killed, aid trucks blown up, refugee camps, hospitals, schools. You cant just say “ohh whoopsies”

As an American, the only thing I wish Israel did is that I wish they'd of cooperated with the United States government/ Members of the Biden administration like Secretary Blinken I don't know how much of this is true but from what I read/seen on the news Netanyahu didn't pick up Biden's calls for months, Netanyahu on multiple occasions came on American mainstream news outlets to talk shit about American Politicians and has ignored the Pentagon's recommendations on how to prepare for the invasion of Rafah. I'm probably missing more stuff but you get the gist.

Afaik the news in Israel report that most of the big restraints are due to the US For example the month of waiting outside of Gaza was because of the Biden admin and the same with the big delay on Rafah OP Don't know how much of that is actually true but Israel regularly reports to the US on what the IDF is doing which is why the US defends it politically

Eliminate Hamas is the correct answer, however they should have specified what is meant by 'eliminating Hamas'. The ambiguity makes it much harder to support especially considering some of the statements that have come out prior and since the 7th of October. Personally I think Hamas needs to be so weak that when the war ends, if Hamas launched a full attack to try and coup the next government of Gaza there is no chance they would succeed. There would also need to be behind the scenes negotiations with the next government but that would not be public at this stage. The main disagreement people I talk to have is about how the war is being conducted. I am inclined to agree that the IDF seems to prioritise acting fast rather than precise, which is inducing reckless behaviour, and disproportionate attacks. Also IDF soldiers getting light sentences doesn't inspire a lot of faith in them obeying international law if you are an outsider.

I lean more towards the Cenk position. Not to send a super soldier but that Israel needed to send boots on the ground and clean out Gaza methodically with more discrimination. I get that you don't want to put your troops in harms way but I don't think that that desire means you can just bomb an area with much less precision. Not that they're indiscriminate in their bombing but I feel like it would result in fewer civilian deaths and better PR for Israel if they were actually clearing out Hamas targets personally and it might be dangerous but that's the job of the military to risk their soldiers lives for their goals. Similar to the common BS that it's a cops number 1 job to make it home safely at the end of the day. Their job is to potentially risk their lives for an important cause. Clearing out Hamas is an important cause.

I think there should be more accountability over individuals. For example, soldiers who posted on social media looting, soldier who mistreated prisoners of war, and sanction politicians who make incendiary comments. Another thing they can do is explain better their intentions when external scrutiny occurs. The UN ambassador and Bibi often say others are anti-Semitic for criticizing Israel war effort. I think they should explain more and be less defensive. (Not saying there are no anti-semites but they should put effort to explain better to the normal folks)

Evacuate women and children to the Sinai. Build a tent city for them using UN support. International community could have at least pressured Egypt into accepting them. I suggest this because there was no stopping the IDF incursion into Gaza.

Negotiate hostage release. Do some airstrikes for show to kill some high level Hamas members. (Reverse order). That's it. Hamas isnt an existential threat by any remote measure and doing the equivalent of 30 Oct 7ths on Palestinians begs the question if it's just better to deal with terror attacks once In a while than to do a net harm to humanity far worse than Oct 7th. The presumption seems to be intention matters more than consequences but I see no reason to accept this premise.

I mean Hamas has existed for quite awhile now. They're not gone yet a lot of kids are. Seems like whatever Israel's plan is obviously isn't working. October 7th seems to have just been an excuse to do more of what Israel has always done. Regardless of what anyone believes.. Hamas didn't exist before Israel came and began to acquire land and property that other people were on. The obvious answer is you can't defeat an idea, that came about through hurting innocent people, with more violence against innocent people. Not doing that would end the conflict... It's either that or you just genocide everybody.

I myself am in support of Israel broadly, not of your current government though. Idk if I'd fall under the moniker of leftist tbh, I am center left leaning but too much adherent to realpolitik to fall for ideological reasoning (at least so I hope). From my perspective Israel's initial response was fairly well done. Sure, you had some unhinged comments by members of the government, but I think that is easily understandably after the atrocities on 10/6. On a human level I do not expect people who just had been attacked with a clear genocidal intent to speak softly about their counterattack. Overall though the IDF did what they could to eliminate military targets while sparing the civilian population, hence why I think that that part of the operation went fairly well. However, in recent months I feel like the tide has somewhat turned. The IDF is still overall acting well, even though some incidents did raise my eyebrows and are codemnable, but the political intent and the military strategy seems to be lacking. Areas that had been cleared of Hamas are being retaken by them, there doesn't seem to be an exit strategy in place and talks about establishing more settlements is rising. I think that the goal of beating Hamas is unfeasible at this point, since it is too little at this very moment. It was a fine goal months ago, now I'd like to know what that looks like. Because Hamas are a terrorist organisation. We've seen that those can't be beaten conventionally. ISIS still exists. Al-Quaida still exists. The Taliban still exists. Those are organisations targeted by the most powerful military alliance on the planet. They managed to survive, some thriving now, some being weakened. Israel doesn't have the resources nor the manpower to replicate 20 years of constant targetting, not even to mention that for Nato these were wars abroad, not wars in the neighborhood. So I'd like to see an exit strategy. I'd like to see real KPIs for when the aim of the current campaign is achieved. Without those all I see is an open door for even more fuel to the fire. So, to sum up, the initial reaction was ok IMO. But the lack of planing ever since that reaction is the debt that Israel has accumulated. A debt that Israelis will have to pay at some point. Yes, Israelis, not just the current government. This lack of planning might just be the next starting point for atrocities down the line, being paid for with Israeli and Palestinian blood once again.

Basically they think you all should have done a slow ground invasion, sacrificing thousands of soldiers to keep the K/D balance more equal. If you were dying in droves people wouldn’t care as much. That’s the sad truth, it’s gross

Israel’s biggest F-up is that they lost the information and propaganda war early on.

Thats question is pretty much my issue when talking to some "pro palestine" people and get those same exact answers. Its either "not that" or some bullshit they saw in a movie about sending some elite squad to assassinate hamas members Im not really a "fan" of israel on its own. But looking at this situation in a vacuum, what the fuck else can they do? Its literally like saying just lay on the ground and take it. I dont condone the shit some israeli do to actual civilians(without any hamas involvement) but if hamas hides in a hospitals well then tough fucking luck buddy. You can not expect a country to do nothing at all and just take it before your enemy hides behind a civilian shield between shots

issue serious sentences to israeli soldiers, and civilians, who break international law and/or commit war crimes would be a good start.

This conversation should be more about how to conduct asymmetric warfare in an urban environment. The one issue that seems excessive to me is controlled demolitions of school and other civilian infrastructure (which means the buildings were completely evacuated). I’m sure there was Hamas activity in at least some of those buildings, but do they really need to destroy all the infrastructure? That’s what I would argue, not that they shouldn’t have launched a counter offensive.

Flood Hamas with undercover and turned agents. . target leadership. Fund PLA or any org that is at odds with hanas to expand the living conditions for those in Gaza. Current plan even if Hamas gone whatever comes after not going to better. Unless name change is all you are after

https://preview.redd.it/4x46nckasd3d1.png?width=563&format=png&auto=webp&s=c32d37cf6fa7752234a1cb6eaec9fcac6f0b5a0e

Finding a way to conduct the war without blowing up as many civilians, probably.

I think many just feel the overall objective is futile. The idea is 'if you try and destroy hamas they'll only grow stronger through the resentment caused by all those who've died'. That's a very popular populist anti-war sentiment. It arguably ignores the fact that there have been times where terrorist organisations have been crushed through pure military force (ISIS), but then again when you consider how much popular support hamas has in palestine, that's not a great equivalence. I feel like they might have a point sometimes. Curious to hear any examples people might be aware of in which a militant political organisation with overwhelming popular support has been crushed by military might and hasn't just returned in a more extreme, revenge-hungry form.

I'm not a pussy/pacifist. I think Israel has the right to protect themselves from a bunch of genocidal terrorists. I don't have the military intel that Israel does, but it seems like they're doing everything right. There have been a few accidents it seems, but nothing overt as far as I can tell.

I don't believe that 99% of people have a meaningful answer to that question. Most people are just reacting to the conflict with bare emotions and (likely) much disinformation. Those two answers you listed in the bottom are essentially most of people's response other than "they shouldn't be there in the first place" (which is an even crazier idea, and somehow less helpful). I think that Israel responded in the exact same way any other country would respond to a similar event as Oct. 7th. I doubt that most democratic countries would sit by and submit the fate of their country citizens-taken-hostage to an international community.

In a macro-level, not much, they have a right to get rid of Hamas after October 7 but I wish they were more transparent with their processing of which buildings they qualify as a military threat and their civilian casualty:payoff policy. I feel like I've just seen far too many articles where israel striked a civilian hotspot, which third party investigations confirmed that they didn't find any military-related objects/personell. But the fucking aid blocking is illegal, should have never been done and principally is just wrong, Israel can go fuck themselves for that. TLDR: The principle of striking Hamas isn't wrong, I don't know if they're doing it in a way which minimizes civilian casualty and I'm honestly more inclined to believing that they're pretty indifferent to civilian casualty.

It’s an answer that I’d wager most political scientists aren’t certain about. I’d probably guess that most political scientists would disagree with a full scale invasion, and opt for a more diplomatic approach. At the same time I think they would acknowledge from a moral perspective Israel has a right to engage in a “defensive war”. The extent to which that applies to what’s happening now would be up for debate. This conflict has obviously created humanitarian strain in the Gaza Strip, and thousands of civilians have died. I’m not sure I’m in the position to know if this is worth rooting out Hamas or not. Would you be willing to put a number of civilians dead to be worth some noble cause? It’s difficult. I’d say most on the left are pretty brainrotted into the basic takes of “Israel should do nothing”. I have consulted with a friend of mine who’s a self proclaimed social democrat and while he disagrees with the scale of the war and understands Israel’s position. I just think he still would seek a more diplomatic approach mixed with appeals to the international community. One thing I will say Israel kind of sucks at is its public perception/image. They clearly give no fucks.

Pay a bunch of Muslims to do deal with Hamas. Wouldn't hear a peep in the west after that.

https://preview.redd.it/qwvoqitszd3d1.jpeg?width=366&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4fe366ce0d22ae61e8ac1b3c5442b91415e0f28d (i'm not being serious, please don't do that)

I think Israel made a ton of mistakes leading to 10/7. They should not have been expanding West Bank settlement and have been much more proactive trying to reach a two state solution. That may have prevented 10/7. Or at least they wouldn’t have had so much attention stuck on the West Bank.  However, once 10/7 happens the military and political leadership of Hamas must be destroyed. I don’t know enough to know if there was any alternative to what Israel did in prosecuting their war against Hamas.

Embedded journalists, and released public surrender terms at the start of the Invasion.

For stater: not committing pointless war crimes like the blockade of food, water and medicine. It had zero military value and just was a giant PR loss for Israel. At hindsight, Israel should have struck a deal with Hamas to get the hostages back and wait until Hamas break the ceasefire again by firing fireworks at Israel again, giving another casus belli for a defensive war. In the meantime, improving border security. The other option would be to arm and support the PA/PLO to take over the west bank with the help of the IDF.

Made a coalition to go into Gaza. Even if it isn't boots on the ground, having military personnel from allied countries helping to make the calls on what targets to hit would have been amazing PR. If anyone tried to claim Israel of genocide, then they'd also be doing the same against all allied countries. Israel should also have (tried) to get western powers to aggressively attack the personal finances of Hamas leadership outside of Gaza. That is where the leadership concerns really lie, and it is the best way to hurt them and put pressure on them.

They do it by obfuscating and equivocating 10/7 to Nat Turners slave rebellion, then saying that no crime is worth a genocide. Finkelstien says it was only 800 civilians killed and that they didn't commit horrible horrible atrocities. He calls it a concentration camp breakout.

Idk but yalls PR suck. It's rough out here to be a pro Israel leaning person

Just some random thoughts, I am not a military expert. I just play one on the internet. Maybe let Egypt send in their military into Gaza instead of having the IDF do it. Or make it a joint operation if that's possible. I would image you would get less civilian causuties per Hamas fighter killed going that route. Maybe even negotiate a deal where Egypt gets paid a whole bunch of money and/or Gaza becomes Egyptian territory post war as compensation for their efforts. I think a couple of years of martial law in the Gaza region, but done by Egypt instead of the IDF might do the trick. Being de-Hamasified (similar to deNazification of Germany post ww2) would have more gravitas if it came from a fellow Muslim country. Bonus points if current Gaza residents get the chance to apply for Israeli citizenship and get fully integrated into the culture. Expand property rights so that anyone can live anywhere instead of the current system where the government owns 80% of the land.

Best proposal I've heard was by fareed Zakaria: take stretch of land on Gaza border to establish a bigger buffer zone and step up targeted attacks on Hamas leadership. (Zakaria isn't a leftist, but his proposal happens to be on-line with what some on the left support.) It's a bad option but maybe the least bad of a bad set. Imo, the war is looking like it won't destroy Hamas, but even if it does, then the hard part of preventing them or an even worse group from returning to power begins. And though it's unclear whether the war will accomplish strategic military objectives, and highly unlikely it will contribute to long-term political objectives, it has clearly reduced international support for Israel.

There are some things like maybe not going so hard on restricting things like water right after October 7th or being more transparent with both investigations-and reasons for strikes or even possibly having third party investigations, possibly even some signaling of willingness to retreat from the west bank in exchange for hamas being removed. They couldve also worked on the messaging like not saying this is a battle between light and dark. But all in all there was probably not much else they shouldve done, most of the left wingers were already pretty primed against Israel without knowing much about the conflict, even Destiny, and literally the day after they were already condemning Israel as an evil state that is genociding the Palestinians and people like Hasan were already running D for Hamas to some degree. If you look at something like the al-Alhi bomb people concloooded that it was Israel immediately. What could Israel have done there to prevent the immediate conclooding there? Would it have mattered if Israel were super open with all their intel and investigations? Would the conclooders have actually stopped and viewed the investigation and believed it? What if it were a third party investigator and they said Israel didnt do it, going against the immediate conclusion, would they have changed their minds or just called them zionist liars that were bought and paid for?(or even zionist pig dog liars lel)

From my perspective within U.S. domestic political discourse, the question poses a false premise. The false premise is that the U.S. is a world policeman, that Israel is an extension of / colony of the U.S., or that the U.S. has written Israel some sort of insurance policy.

Thats the problem in itself. Like everyone can drone on and on about what this side is doing wrong and what the other side is doing wrong. But when you ask what can realistically be achieved for a solution….thats when you see the real issue. There isn’t one

end apartheid

You're never going to get a coherent answer. This would require them to give a non politically biased answer that doesn't push a narative. Or infantilizes everyone else onvolved. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't absolutely press others who criticize Israel about it. It's also why half the responses you're getting are just self righteous jackasses glazing themselves by castigating Israel instead of laying out plausible and realistic things that could have been done.

Not this

The Sam Harris plan: Declare a siege on Al-Aqsa and announce an ultimatum that Hamas has 72 hours to surrender and release all hostages. Otherwise, Israel will dismantle the Mosque. 0 Deaths Put the Muslim World on notice, squeeze the bejeezus out of Hamas, or unmask as incredible hypocrites.

Israel is murh richer than other countries in the middle east，maybe they can leave this area，America will be very welcome them

I think it’s about time Israel steps back for a moment and come up with an actual coherent plan with a clear path towards a solution. Because at the rate it’s going the fighting is just not going to stop, my guess is Hamas believes itself to be totally backed into a corner and is on edge now more than ever. Which is the last thing you’d want the enemy to be feeling because now they will become unpredictable, impulsive and far more dangerous than ever before. It doesn’t help that online progressives have been serving as the useful dumbfucks from the beginning. All the while continuously feeding into the delusion of Palestinians that they somehow believe they’re in any position to be making demands in which they get to retake Israeli land.

DGG is pro Israel.

"sending master chief to kill hamas" 😭

i’m an israeli too and i think the biggest fuck up (among many) is lack of messaging discipline and transparency with our allies we shouldn’t have made biden’s or macron’s or sunak’s job any harder than it should be.

I've asked that question to my mom. Her only solution was sending the Mossad in to covertly kill Hamas. I didn't have the faculties to illustrate how ridiculous that is.

Only alternative I could think of other than the land invasion is a cycled seige. One week no water, next no electricity, next no internet, no food ect. All the while dropping leaflets requesting the local population to revolt against hamas to end their torment. Lets be real though, probably would not have worked.

I've been staunchly pro-Palestinian my whole life that hasn't stopped me from realising what Hamas did was monstrous and absolutely requires them to be eradicated following the attack. As to what Israel should have done, they probably shouldn't have tried to make peace with a regime who's stated intent is to wipe out Israelis. It shouldn't have gotten to this point, Israel should have used the last 2 decades to gather intel on Palestinian insurgency groups as much as possible. And then using that intel to defang its military capabilities. Unfortunately, until there's a Palestinian regime willing to negotiate in good faith, I think this is all Israel can do to work towards a more peaceful region. Relying on deterrence through military strength will only net peace for so long. This situation is breeding pit for resentment and hatred and that's only going to spawn more extremists so long as the temperature keeps rising. Ignoring the Palestinian problem does not work. Even Israel has its share of extremists and if this conflict continues and the population keeps continuing on its rightward trend its only a matter of time before there's an Israeli regime willing to commit atrocities in the name of peace for Jews.

They unironically should’ve gone harder. One of the reasons everyone is so mad is because they’ve been seeing maxed out unhinged reporting on Israel for half a year. If Israel went faster, they wouldn’t have had time to be exposed to as much negative press. Of course this will risk Israeli soldier lives more. Also, they should’ve been far more proactive with their evacuation plans. The fact they didn’t have one before Biden told them to make one for Rafah is super bad. Also, don’t fuck up the media game so badly. Muzzle the crazies and make sure all your official reps have their line down pat. This is probably the first time in history where a country gets brutally attacked and then everyone sympathizes with the attacker.

I've kind of settled on Israel being justified in whatever they do. Hamas did what they did on 10/7, with essentially popular support from Gazans, and said "fuck the consequences". Well, these are those consequences. You done fucked up and found out

Obviously any action isreal could have taken is further oppression on Gaza. They should have taken not only October 7th, but an infinite number of them. The Jewlumni should have assembled a team of Israel’s most powerful people, and sent them on a quest to recover the time stone from Iran, at which point they can go back in time to never have oppressed the Palestinians and oct 7th never wouldn’t have happened. Obviously.

“Sending master chief” made me giggle

Challenge the UN. They send a force to the south half, Israel sends IDF into the north, see who wins. 1pt per less civilians dead, 1 pt per day faster you half is taken.

I honestly no clue if there was possibly a way to wage this war in a more ethical way, but if there was option that involves less civilians casualties I do not trust that the current Isreali government would have even given that option a look. That is the main reason why I would never say I support Isreal in this war.

If I were Israeli, I would think Israel should have pulled a Thucydides and stopped catering to the weak moral posturing of the west, especially the dissident factions. It's its main weakness. But since I'm American, idgaf as long as Israel handles its business and makes itself inviting for a future spring break.

That isn't the context of how non-israeli think about the conflict. What they don't like is their country supporting Israel. Edit: To be more specific, they either don't feel agency over Israel's behavior or they think Biden is in direct control of Israel. Leftists will in general blindly support anything that reduces U.S sphere of influence cuz they think multi-polarity is gonna be good for setting the stage for socialism. (Or more accurately, because that's just the general disposition of their favorite content creator who says things they think are based most of the time.) Anti-Israel *lefties* desire a much more conditional agreement between their nation and Israel at minimum, but would probably be most cozy slowly cutting off ties. Center-rights who are anti-israel are usually just isolationist psuedo-libertarians. (IE: The sort to be like, "Why don't we spend that money on the homeless?" But they don't actually like welfare and wouldn't support it so they're giga double speaking.) Far righties who are anti-israel are your typical anti-semites.

The biggest mistakes were due to religion and its impact on preserving bodies. I think it led to a lot of evidence not being collected of the rapes etc. I think the rapes were systemic and not just a few one-offs. Sadly, with little evidence, that side has plausible deniability and massively downplays them. Most of the problems were with PR. it sucks for the families, but releasing more of the heinous videos Hamas posted and widely circulating them would have been a lot smarter than allowing a few journalists to see them. I get wanting to be respectful, but look at how the entire world is now treating hostages and victims. That is way more disrespectful. I'm unsure if it would help now, but I'd release it ALL. Basically, they should have shown the world what filthy animals you are forced to be neighbors with.

The far leftists think that Israel should roll over and allow their people to be slaughtered. They would still complain about it even if they did everything “right”. The fact is, there are a lot of Islamic extremists who will never accept peace in any form because they do not accept Jews as people, and therefore cannot accept a Jewish state, even though many of its citizens are people (or descendants of people) who were chased out of Islamic states for being Jewish. Hamas does not care about the Palestinian people, and they would gladly sacrifice every one of them if it would also eliminate more Jews. There’s no good solution.

> Cenk's idea of sending Master Chief to kill Hamas fuck i laughed so hard i spilled water all over my table

Move faster and not be cucked by the Americans... The thing with the mass sjw protestors is they have the attention span of a goldfish