"Imagine suggesting that the Allies cannot bomb the Nazi's out of power, and should instead support the German people in overthowing the Nazi armies. Is that a pragmatic or idealistic alternative?"
I think this is a pretty troubled analogy.
First, and most importantly, Germany was the sole aggressor in WWII. I won't bore you with a history…
"Imagine suggesting that the Allies cannot bomb the Nazi's out of power, and should instead support the German people in overthowing the Nazi armies. Is that a pragmatic or idealistic alternative?"
I think this is a pretty troubled analogy.
First, and most importantly, Germany was the sole aggressor in WWII. I won't bore you with a history lesson on the decades long conflict in Israel/Palestine. I'm sure you're aware of it. But the situation in Israel/Palestine is obviously very different to that. The Jews in Germany weren't blockading German civilians for decades or responding to antisemitism with bombardments or claiming that a strip of German land had "always been theirs."
Second, the Germans military and civilian population weren't confined to a single area. With all of their military installations and civilian infrastructure in the same 25-mile stretch of land. Civilians had a realistic route to escape the worst of any bombardments/ground assaults.
And thirdly, it’s not enough to bomb Hamas out of power. They don’t care about being in power or running Gaza. It’s about bombing them out of existence. And I think this is totally unrealistic. Just as unrealistic, in fact as the idea that you could bomb the Nazis out of existence. The Nazis are still alive and well today. Because Nazism is an ideology. They aren't starting a new World War for two main reasons. First, because the conditions that made people desperate enough to support them have ben largely ameliorated. And second, because they lack the support and financing they'd need.
Hamas has neither of these problems. Right now, Israel is compounding the conditions that make Gazans support Hamas beyond anything seen before. And Hamas' financial support is secure and isn't conditional on whether Palestinians vote for them. They'll still attack Israel even if Gaza is completely levelled. Most of Hamas' senior leadership isn't even *in* Gaza.
All that said, if I'd been writing during WWII, I'd have been advocating for peace and diplomacy then too. I'd have been condemning the deaths of civilians, especially when those civilian were the primary casualties of an attack, not "collateral damage" (how I hate that term). And I'd have condemned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with all the rhetorical force at my disposal. Apparently, in terms of cumulative explosive power, Israel have dropped a similar amount of firepower on Gaza in the past month to the bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Almost all wars end at the negotiating table. It's just a question of how many civilians die first. And given Israel's significant faults in this conflict, I think you can only compare Israel/Gaza to The Allies/Nazis if you ignore a lot of history.
I have read detailed accounts of the Japanese surrender process, and whether or not to surrender was hanging by a thread, even after (1) The fire bombing of Tokyo had killed more people than nuclear weapons would, (2) Two fission bombs were dropped with the threat of continuing city by city until surrender, and (3) The USSR had declared war on Japan.
This makes me doubt those who think that a surrender outcome would have obviously happened anyway without the nuclear bombing; I think that's based more on wishful thinking (or desire to support a pre-determined narrative). Was there some talk of it within parts of the government? Yes, the later examination of records reveal that it was discussed in some quarters. Were the advocates of surrender in control of the government? No, they were not, and even after the bombings they barely managed to get their way in the end.
Would the Japanese people have fared worse by not surrendering, and instead fighting it out (leaving out nuclear bombs)? I believe so. Read more about what happened in Okinawa (and other Japanese held islands). Very few surrendered and survived. I think the estimates of well over a million Japanese deaths from resisting a mainland invasion (or from conventional bombs etc along with possible starvation) are well justified; even leaving aside hundreds of thousands of deaths among the Allied soldiers and sailors.
And I think that the American public might have been less motivated to be generous in victory, if the total American deaths from WWII had been increased by 50-100% by the invasion of mainland Japan.
Obviously, we can at best estimate counterfactual history, and cannot run the experiment both ways and compare. But I find the proposition that the fission bombs spared a huge number of Japanese lives as well as those of the Allies to be very credible, even if not certain. Trying to optimize for the immediate ends (avoid the deaths from the atomic bombs) can potentially lead to worse outcomes in the long run (even more deaths from other means).
There are opinions in both directions which cannot be proven. My own take is based on my reading of the arguments on both sides, with no narrative of my own to support (eg: love whatever America does, hate whatever America does). Others are free to hold and defend their own opinions.
I hope this doesn't stimulate a bad reaction, but I wish to respectfully clarify my point.
Analogies are ALWAYS inexact, as no two situations are the same. We use analogies to assert that some fragment of one situation may apply to some fragment of another. A common and easy way to brush aside any analogy, without exception, is to point out some difference in the two cases. The question often not addressed is "how relevant is that difference" to the point being made.
For example, whether bombing is or is not a potentially key component of a strategy to remove an enemy from power does not depend on whether that enemy was the sole aggressor (or was even an aggressor at all). That's not relevant to the facet of the analogy being asserted, any more than the fact the the Nazi's spoke a different language than the Arabs in Gaza. When we shift between "moral justifications" and "military effectiveness" as if they were the same thing, we can get confused. One can assert that (1) bombing Gaza has no military effectiveness (regardless of whether it's morally justified), or that (2) bombing Gaza (whether it is effective or not) is not morally justified. I was addressing the former only in the quoted segment; the latter is a good but different question.
As for the evacuation - again, not very relevant to the question of military effectiveness, but possibly relevant to debates about morality.
Nobody is trying to make a general or broad comparison of Israel/Gaza to Allies/Nazis. I was comparing a SINGLE FACET of one situation to a single facet of anther, and that IS possible by paying attention to history, not ignoring it. I hope the difference is clear.
There is a possibly accidental strawman involved here as well. I'm a fairly rational person, so I never suggested that bombing alone would be sufficient to remove Hamas from power, and I have never seen anybody anywhere so assert, so that's built of straw. Certainly the IDF has no such illusions, or they would have reduced their casualties to near zero by avoiding the bloody ground invasion and just using bombs. The ONLY thing in question (in either side of the analogy) is "can the task be accomplished without bombing" (debatable), not "could it be accomplished by bombing alone" (EVERYONE agrees that it could not).
Can Hamas be completely eliminated by military means (with or without bombing) - every single person? Of course not. Nor can their Islamist radicalism be eliminated from the world. But there is no need to eliminate them, only to greatly reduce their ability to cause harm to others. Can the ability of Hamas (or a successor) to attack Israel be greatly reduced such that it would take at least a decade before they could attempt such an attack again? That might be militarily possible. Hamas has spent over a decade and billions of dollars preparing for this event (financed by diverted aid money, and taxes on tunnel smuggling from Egypt, their main sources of income; and supported by arms from Iran), and their explicit promise to keep doing it could be interrupted/delayed by destroying much of that infrastructure. And it's possible that their support from Iran would dry up in that period of time. That is, they might lack the "support and financing they need" in your words. No guarantees, but it's not an absurd proposition, especially if Israel can in the meanwhile restore their normalization process with Saudi Arabia, which Hamas felt to be an existential threat to their power.
“A common and easy way to brush aside any analogy, without exception, is to point out some difference in the two cases”
Of course. And yes, I’m aware that analogies are never perfect. But I didn’t just brush the analogy aside, I explained, in some detail, why the two situations have almost nothing in common except that civilians are being bombed. Analogies don’t work if the two situations being compared are too dissimilar.
Comparing just the single facet of bombing civilians without acknowledging the enormous differences in why they’re being bombed or what led up to it or what else could be done to avoid it *requires* that you ignore a lot of history. And that history is extraordinarily relevant. It’s not clear to me at all how you think you’re paying attention to it.
For example, I talked about who was the aggressor because it speaks to moral justification. Otherwise, why not talk purely about whether the Nazi’s strategy was militarily effective and ignore everything else? How else were they to achieve their goal of world domination with the fewest Nazi casualties possible?
Yes, bombing is almost always an effective strategy for killing or weakening your enemies. Was that the point you were making though? I don’t think it was. Otherwise an analogy was unnecessary. Israel’s bombs are doing an excellent job of killing Palestinians.
So maybe the question was, “will bombing Gaza into oblivion weaken Hamas’ fighting ability?” And yes, no doubt it will. But then why not go the nuclear route? That would certainly be militarily effective in reducing Hamas’ fighting ability even further. And, of course, the sole reason, which is sadly not persuasive to some in Israel’s military, is that the cost of innocent civilians would be too great to morally defend. War always involves moral considerations.
Even just using conventional weapons, Israel could kill every single person living in Gaza, including all the Hamas members obviously, without a single IDF soldier setting foot in the Gaza Strip. Near 100% military effectiveness. A little shakier on the moral front though.
So no, the only question is not can the task of removing Hamas be accomplished without bombing.
The questions (plural) are, can it be accomplished without bombing and killing 11,000 (and counting) civilians and destroying the homes of over a million? Can it be accomplished by ending the illegal occupation in the West Bank? Can it be accomplished by ending the blockade on Gaza? Can it be accomplished by accepting a two-state solution according to the 1967 borders? Can it be accomplished by convincing Iran to stop supplying weapons and funding to Hamas? Can it be accomplished by relinquishing the idea that one particular piece of land has been reserved for Jews by the creator of the universe?
The answers to many of these questions is on the “probably/yes” end of the spectrum. And none of these options were available to the Allies as they fought the Nazis. This is why I think the analogy is flawed.
> "why not go the nuclear route? That would certainly be militarily effective in reducing Hamas’ fighting ability even further. And, of course, the sole reason, which is sadly not persuasive to some in Israel’s military, is that the cost of innocent civilians would be too great to morally defend."
Could you provide any links to those in the Israeli military who have stated that using nuclear weapons on Gaza would be morally acceptable as a means of eliminating Hamas? I've never seen that but I would like to know about it if true.
You said "I don't believe Hamas can be bombed out of Gaza."
My basic response was to that specific point, full stop. I was not saying what the best answer was, or who was more moral, or any of the other important issues. I was NOT trying to distill the entire conflict down to one question, I was only addressing that one question on its own.
From your response, I think you may have construed my answer far more broadly than I intended it, and then pushed back on that broad interpretation.
My point is that there is nobody saying that bombing alone could eliminate Hamas as a force to contend with (where by bombing we are discussion the kind which Israel is actually doing and you are critiquing, not some fictional nuclear leveling).
Where there could be different opinions, is whether Hamas can be effectively eliminated without bombing as a part of the effort. That is, there is no "bombing alone" question on the table, but there could be a "bombing plus other things" vs "no bombing, only other things" debate.
Reread the quote from you at the beginning; were you saying that you don't believe that bombing alone can remove Hamas, or that you don't believe that bombing can even be a component of a broader effort to remove Hamas? Since nobody is questioning the former, I thought you were closer to asserting the latter. That seems to be the more respectful interpretation, not the more easily impugned.
You are correct that there are MANY, MANY other questions (including those you list) which also bear on the overall problems, and if you believed my narrowly focused dissent about bombing as a component was attempting to bypass or supercede all of the other considerations, then I can see how you would disagree. I would too. But my intended clarification was much more modest in scope.
"And I'd have condemned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with all the rhetorical force at my disposal."
I am holding in my hand a crude bracelet made of woven solder. The material came from a roll of solder that went into the Hiroshima bomb. I used to have a copper thimble that was also made from stock that went into the bomb, but it is lost. An employee of my grandfather was on the project but I don't know why she gave them to me.
I've seen films of survivors being treated in Japanese clinics. There is one utterly horrifying memory of a young boy whose lips are gone, along with about an inch of flesh around them. He was not blind. It's hard to argue with horror like that.
But I must try. Japan would not have surrendered without the bombs, and would have put ever younger children into uniform for two more years until they were utterly destroyed. I would hate to be the one to make that decision but the bombs ended the war before tens or hundreds of thousands of children would have died.
War imposes grim choices. But that boy's burned-away face haunts me.
"Japan would not have surrendered without the bombs, and would have put ever younger children into uniform for two more years until they were utterly destroyed. I would hate to be the one to make that decision but the bombs ended the war before tens or hundreds of thousands of children would have died."
Opinion is divided on whether Japan would have surrendered or was already in the process of surrendering. I don't know enough to say with real confidence. But I'm not convinced the death toll would have been higher if the bombs hadn't been dropped.
Italy and Germany had surrendered 3 months prior, Japan had been defeated on Okinawa and several other countries had recently declared war on Japan. Would another 200,000 people have been killed before Japan realised it was hopeless? Not to mention the human suffering you allude to. I don't think so.
Fifty years ago (apox) I read Hiroshima by John Hersey. The thoughts of survivors. A compelling book that influenced my views on nuking cities. And yet Lemay boasted that his fire bombing campaign killed more Japanese people than the nukes.
Israel is nothing if not expansionist. The settler movement runs the government and ownership of land is fundamental to personal identity and authenticity in their religion.
As I have said, they plan to expand into indisputable sovereign nations and I doubt the USA will do anything about it, but will continue to send them weapons to kill Syrian and Lebanese. Those countries' defense will be labeled "terrorists" and "gunmen."
As for "antisemitism" and "terrorists" and "Hamas," (HamsterAss, jesus christ), if a kid carries the mutilated corpse of his mother out of the remains of their house, he is not going to grow up pro-Israel. He comes from an honor-driven society and his life will be dedicated to revenge.
I think the problem is 90% Israel and I have pre-48 evidence to support. It is a rogue nation.
Chris, could you name the specific "indisputably sovereign nations" which you believe Israel is intending to expand into? Jordan? Egypt? Lebanon? Syria? Or jump over to Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia? I can think of none that fit your description.
There certainly IS a very troubling settler movement in the West Bank territory, but I don't think it's objective reality to assert that the West Bank is an indisputably sovereign nation.
... as Israel, based on some claims from thousands of years ago. And that's just Likud.
Others like Shas and Jewish Home argue for "unlimited" settlement expansion, as in respecting no borders.
I say that any further diplomatic relations with "the state of Israel" should be contingent on removing all settlers from the West Bank; since their original countries don't want them back, they would need to move into Israel, where they would cause NO END of trouble.
which would appear to be contrary to your assertions, but perhaps the current charter is much more aggressively expansionistic in the ways that you assert. I'll read any links to a Likud charter you can provide.
While discussion often includes opinions (expert or not), let's start by being clear about the underlying and verifiable objective facts, like the contents of the Likud charter. So let's look together at what the Likud charter you have based your assertions above upon actually says. While I was never any fan of Likud, I have not seen any assertion matching yours, and if validated that could shift my views on the situation. So show us the Likud charter you are referencing.
"Imagine suggesting that the Allies cannot bomb the Nazi's out of power, and should instead support the German people in overthowing the Nazi armies. Is that a pragmatic or idealistic alternative?"
I think this is a pretty troubled analogy.
First, and most importantly, Germany was the sole aggressor in WWII. I won't bore you with a history lesson on the decades long conflict in Israel/Palestine. I'm sure you're aware of it. But the situation in Israel/Palestine is obviously very different to that. The Jews in Germany weren't blockading German civilians for decades or responding to antisemitism with bombardments or claiming that a strip of German land had "always been theirs."
Second, the Germans military and civilian population weren't confined to a single area. With all of their military installations and civilian infrastructure in the same 25-mile stretch of land. Civilians had a realistic route to escape the worst of any bombardments/ground assaults.
And thirdly, it’s not enough to bomb Hamas out of power. They don’t care about being in power or running Gaza. It’s about bombing them out of existence. And I think this is totally unrealistic. Just as unrealistic, in fact as the idea that you could bomb the Nazis out of existence. The Nazis are still alive and well today. Because Nazism is an ideology. They aren't starting a new World War for two main reasons. First, because the conditions that made people desperate enough to support them have ben largely ameliorated. And second, because they lack the support and financing they'd need.
Hamas has neither of these problems. Right now, Israel is compounding the conditions that make Gazans support Hamas beyond anything seen before. And Hamas' financial support is secure and isn't conditional on whether Palestinians vote for them. They'll still attack Israel even if Gaza is completely levelled. Most of Hamas' senior leadership isn't even *in* Gaza.
All that said, if I'd been writing during WWII, I'd have been advocating for peace and diplomacy then too. I'd have been condemning the deaths of civilians, especially when those civilian were the primary casualties of an attack, not "collateral damage" (how I hate that term). And I'd have condemned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with all the rhetorical force at my disposal. Apparently, in terms of cumulative explosive power, Israel have dropped a similar amount of firepower on Gaza in the past month to the bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Almost all wars end at the negotiating table. It's just a question of how many civilians die first. And given Israel's significant faults in this conflict, I think you can only compare Israel/Gaza to The Allies/Nazis if you ignore a lot of history.
As to Japan and WWII.
I have read detailed accounts of the Japanese surrender process, and whether or not to surrender was hanging by a thread, even after (1) The fire bombing of Tokyo had killed more people than nuclear weapons would, (2) Two fission bombs were dropped with the threat of continuing city by city until surrender, and (3) The USSR had declared war on Japan.
This makes me doubt those who think that a surrender outcome would have obviously happened anyway without the nuclear bombing; I think that's based more on wishful thinking (or desire to support a pre-determined narrative). Was there some talk of it within parts of the government? Yes, the later examination of records reveal that it was discussed in some quarters. Were the advocates of surrender in control of the government? No, they were not, and even after the bombings they barely managed to get their way in the end.
Would the Japanese people have fared worse by not surrendering, and instead fighting it out (leaving out nuclear bombs)? I believe so. Read more about what happened in Okinawa (and other Japanese held islands). Very few surrendered and survived. I think the estimates of well over a million Japanese deaths from resisting a mainland invasion (or from conventional bombs etc along with possible starvation) are well justified; even leaving aside hundreds of thousands of deaths among the Allied soldiers and sailors.
And I think that the American public might have been less motivated to be generous in victory, if the total American deaths from WWII had been increased by 50-100% by the invasion of mainland Japan.
Obviously, we can at best estimate counterfactual history, and cannot run the experiment both ways and compare. But I find the proposition that the fission bombs spared a huge number of Japanese lives as well as those of the Allies to be very credible, even if not certain. Trying to optimize for the immediate ends (avoid the deaths from the atomic bombs) can potentially lead to worse outcomes in the long run (even more deaths from other means).
There are opinions in both directions which cannot be proven. My own take is based on my reading of the arguments on both sides, with no narrative of my own to support (eg: love whatever America does, hate whatever America does). Others are free to hold and defend their own opinions.
I hope this doesn't stimulate a bad reaction, but I wish to respectfully clarify my point.
Analogies are ALWAYS inexact, as no two situations are the same. We use analogies to assert that some fragment of one situation may apply to some fragment of another. A common and easy way to brush aside any analogy, without exception, is to point out some difference in the two cases. The question often not addressed is "how relevant is that difference" to the point being made.
For example, whether bombing is or is not a potentially key component of a strategy to remove an enemy from power does not depend on whether that enemy was the sole aggressor (or was even an aggressor at all). That's not relevant to the facet of the analogy being asserted, any more than the fact the the Nazi's spoke a different language than the Arabs in Gaza. When we shift between "moral justifications" and "military effectiveness" as if they were the same thing, we can get confused. One can assert that (1) bombing Gaza has no military effectiveness (regardless of whether it's morally justified), or that (2) bombing Gaza (whether it is effective or not) is not morally justified. I was addressing the former only in the quoted segment; the latter is a good but different question.
As for the evacuation - again, not very relevant to the question of military effectiveness, but possibly relevant to debates about morality.
Nobody is trying to make a general or broad comparison of Israel/Gaza to Allies/Nazis. I was comparing a SINGLE FACET of one situation to a single facet of anther, and that IS possible by paying attention to history, not ignoring it. I hope the difference is clear.
There is a possibly accidental strawman involved here as well. I'm a fairly rational person, so I never suggested that bombing alone would be sufficient to remove Hamas from power, and I have never seen anybody anywhere so assert, so that's built of straw. Certainly the IDF has no such illusions, or they would have reduced their casualties to near zero by avoiding the bloody ground invasion and just using bombs. The ONLY thing in question (in either side of the analogy) is "can the task be accomplished without bombing" (debatable), not "could it be accomplished by bombing alone" (EVERYONE agrees that it could not).
Can Hamas be completely eliminated by military means (with or without bombing) - every single person? Of course not. Nor can their Islamist radicalism be eliminated from the world. But there is no need to eliminate them, only to greatly reduce their ability to cause harm to others. Can the ability of Hamas (or a successor) to attack Israel be greatly reduced such that it would take at least a decade before they could attempt such an attack again? That might be militarily possible. Hamas has spent over a decade and billions of dollars preparing for this event (financed by diverted aid money, and taxes on tunnel smuggling from Egypt, their main sources of income; and supported by arms from Iran), and their explicit promise to keep doing it could be interrupted/delayed by destroying much of that infrastructure. And it's possible that their support from Iran would dry up in that period of time. That is, they might lack the "support and financing they need" in your words. No guarantees, but it's not an absurd proposition, especially if Israel can in the meanwhile restore their normalization process with Saudi Arabia, which Hamas felt to be an existential threat to their power.
“A common and easy way to brush aside any analogy, without exception, is to point out some difference in the two cases”
Of course. And yes, I’m aware that analogies are never perfect. But I didn’t just brush the analogy aside, I explained, in some detail, why the two situations have almost nothing in common except that civilians are being bombed. Analogies don’t work if the two situations being compared are too dissimilar.
Comparing just the single facet of bombing civilians without acknowledging the enormous differences in why they’re being bombed or what led up to it or what else could be done to avoid it *requires* that you ignore a lot of history. And that history is extraordinarily relevant. It’s not clear to me at all how you think you’re paying attention to it.
For example, I talked about who was the aggressor because it speaks to moral justification. Otherwise, why not talk purely about whether the Nazi’s strategy was militarily effective and ignore everything else? How else were they to achieve their goal of world domination with the fewest Nazi casualties possible?
Yes, bombing is almost always an effective strategy for killing or weakening your enemies. Was that the point you were making though? I don’t think it was. Otherwise an analogy was unnecessary. Israel’s bombs are doing an excellent job of killing Palestinians.
So maybe the question was, “will bombing Gaza into oblivion weaken Hamas’ fighting ability?” And yes, no doubt it will. But then why not go the nuclear route? That would certainly be militarily effective in reducing Hamas’ fighting ability even further. And, of course, the sole reason, which is sadly not persuasive to some in Israel’s military, is that the cost of innocent civilians would be too great to morally defend. War always involves moral considerations.
Even just using conventional weapons, Israel could kill every single person living in Gaza, including all the Hamas members obviously, without a single IDF soldier setting foot in the Gaza Strip. Near 100% military effectiveness. A little shakier on the moral front though.
So no, the only question is not can the task of removing Hamas be accomplished without bombing.
The questions (plural) are, can it be accomplished without bombing and killing 11,000 (and counting) civilians and destroying the homes of over a million? Can it be accomplished by ending the illegal occupation in the West Bank? Can it be accomplished by ending the blockade on Gaza? Can it be accomplished by accepting a two-state solution according to the 1967 borders? Can it be accomplished by convincing Iran to stop supplying weapons and funding to Hamas? Can it be accomplished by relinquishing the idea that one particular piece of land has been reserved for Jews by the creator of the universe?
The answers to many of these questions is on the “probably/yes” end of the spectrum. And none of these options were available to the Allies as they fought the Nazis. This is why I think the analogy is flawed.
> "why not go the nuclear route? That would certainly be militarily effective in reducing Hamas’ fighting ability even further. And, of course, the sole reason, which is sadly not persuasive to some in Israel’s military, is that the cost of innocent civilians would be too great to morally defend."
Could you provide any links to those in the Israeli military who have stated that using nuclear weapons on Gaza would be morally acceptable as a means of eliminating Hamas? I've never seen that but I would like to know about it if true.
Sorry, not in the military, a politician.
https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-minister-amichai-eliyahu-suspend-benjamin-netanyahu-nuclear-bomb-gaza-hamas-war/
Ah. I think I may see what's going on here.
You said "I don't believe Hamas can be bombed out of Gaza."
My basic response was to that specific point, full stop. I was not saying what the best answer was, or who was more moral, or any of the other important issues. I was NOT trying to distill the entire conflict down to one question, I was only addressing that one question on its own.
From your response, I think you may have construed my answer far more broadly than I intended it, and then pushed back on that broad interpretation.
My point is that there is nobody saying that bombing alone could eliminate Hamas as a force to contend with (where by bombing we are discussion the kind which Israel is actually doing and you are critiquing, not some fictional nuclear leveling).
Where there could be different opinions, is whether Hamas can be effectively eliminated without bombing as a part of the effort. That is, there is no "bombing alone" question on the table, but there could be a "bombing plus other things" vs "no bombing, only other things" debate.
Reread the quote from you at the beginning; were you saying that you don't believe that bombing alone can remove Hamas, or that you don't believe that bombing can even be a component of a broader effort to remove Hamas? Since nobody is questioning the former, I thought you were closer to asserting the latter. That seems to be the more respectful interpretation, not the more easily impugned.
You are correct that there are MANY, MANY other questions (including those you list) which also bear on the overall problems, and if you believed my narrowly focused dissent about bombing as a component was attempting to bypass or supercede all of the other considerations, then I can see how you would disagree. I would too. But my intended clarification was much more modest in scope.
Peace.
"And I'd have condemned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with all the rhetorical force at my disposal."
I am holding in my hand a crude bracelet made of woven solder. The material came from a roll of solder that went into the Hiroshima bomb. I used to have a copper thimble that was also made from stock that went into the bomb, but it is lost. An employee of my grandfather was on the project but I don't know why she gave them to me.
I've seen films of survivors being treated in Japanese clinics. There is one utterly horrifying memory of a young boy whose lips are gone, along with about an inch of flesh around them. He was not blind. It's hard to argue with horror like that.
But I must try. Japan would not have surrendered without the bombs, and would have put ever younger children into uniform for two more years until they were utterly destroyed. I would hate to be the one to make that decision but the bombs ended the war before tens or hundreds of thousands of children would have died.
War imposes grim choices. But that boy's burned-away face haunts me.
"Japan would not have surrendered without the bombs, and would have put ever younger children into uniform for two more years until they were utterly destroyed. I would hate to be the one to make that decision but the bombs ended the war before tens or hundreds of thousands of children would have died."
Opinion is divided on whether Japan would have surrendered or was already in the process of surrendering. I don't know enough to say with real confidence. But I'm not convinced the death toll would have been higher if the bombs hadn't been dropped.
Italy and Germany had surrendered 3 months prior, Japan had been defeated on Okinawa and several other countries had recently declared war on Japan. Would another 200,000 people have been killed before Japan realised it was hopeless? Not to mention the human suffering you allude to. I don't think so.
Please don’t think I’m saying the bombing was justified. I too have read many opinions on how much longer they would have fought.
Those clinic films haunt me.
Fifty years ago (apox) I read Hiroshima by John Hersey. The thoughts of survivors. A compelling book that influenced my views on nuking cities. And yet Lemay boasted that his fire bombing campaign killed more Japanese people than the nukes.
Israel is nothing if not expansionist. The settler movement runs the government and ownership of land is fundamental to personal identity and authenticity in their religion.
As I have said, they plan to expand into indisputable sovereign nations and I doubt the USA will do anything about it, but will continue to send them weapons to kill Syrian and Lebanese. Those countries' defense will be labeled "terrorists" and "gunmen."
As for "antisemitism" and "terrorists" and "Hamas," (HamsterAss, jesus christ), if a kid carries the mutilated corpse of his mother out of the remains of their house, he is not going to grow up pro-Israel. He comes from an honor-driven society and his life will be dedicated to revenge.
I think the problem is 90% Israel and I have pre-48 evidence to support. It is a rogue nation.
Chris, could you name the specific "indisputably sovereign nations" which you believe Israel is intending to expand into? Jordan? Egypt? Lebanon? Syria? Or jump over to Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia? I can think of none that fit your description.
There certainly IS a very troubling settler movement in the West Bank territory, but I don't think it's objective reality to assert that the West Bank is an indisputably sovereign nation.
The Likud charter claims
* all of Lebanon
* all of Syria
* a third of Iraq
* a third of Iran (good luck with that one)
... as Israel, based on some claims from thousands of years ago. And that's just Likud.
Others like Shas and Jewish Home argue for "unlimited" settlement expansion, as in respecting no borders.
I say that any further diplomatic relations with "the state of Israel" should be contingent on removing all settlers from the West Bank; since their original countries don't want them back, they would need to move into Israel, where they would cause NO END of trouble.
Which serves them right.
Chris, could you provide some links to support your assertions regarding what land Likud claims?
I can find things like their original platform:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform-of-the-likud-party
which would appear to be contrary to your assertions, but perhaps the current charter is much more aggressively expansionistic in the ways that you assert. I'll read any links to a Likud charter you can provide.
While discussion often includes opinions (expert or not), let's start by being clear about the underlying and verifiable objective facts, like the contents of the Likud charter. So let's look together at what the Likud charter you have based your assertions above upon actually says. While I was never any fan of Likud, I have not seen any assertion matching yours, and if validated that could shift my views on the situation. So show us the Likud charter you are referencing.