Israel - Iran and regional players | Please post respectfully

B. Munich said:

Wasn't the 1982 Lebanon war the result of the PLO moving to South Lebanon and continuously staging attacks on North Israel for several years?

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That was the casus belli but Israel had much grander goals in 1982 than simply putting an end to the cross-border attacks.

Buster15 said:

Now that is fanciful in the extreme isn't it.
For what purpose are they working so hard to develop their nuclear weapons capability.

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The same reason Pakistan and India did, so there are no future wars as it means mutually assured destruction.

B. Munich said:

Most likely not because a significant part of the population supported the Nazis. Not only in Germany but also in many occupied countries.
And that's exactly my point. Hamas must have significant support within the population of Gaza to hold on to power for over 15 years, built the tunnel systems sand stockpile weapons and rockets. Even until today they must enjoy strong support as the IDF despite all the force they used wasn't able to destroy Hamas. Again without the support of the local population Hamas wouldn't have survived this onslaught.
Therefore the conclusion that at least significant parts of the population in Gaza isn't as innocent as many here claim.

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Yes of course there was some support. Hamas won the election by a big majority.

Dr. StrangeHate said:

The same reason Pakistan and India did, so there are no future wars as it means mutually assured destruction.

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But the situation in India/ Pakistan is quite different.
Having nuclear capability doesn't mean there would be no future war does it.

Buster15 said:

Yes of course there was some support. Hamas won the election by a big majority.

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It did not.

Here are the full results of the 2006 elections.

Hamas: 44.45%
Fatah: 41.43%
PFLP: 4.25%
Independent Palestine: 2.72%
Third Way: 2.41%
Palestinian Popular Struggle Front: 0.72%
Palestinian Arab Front: 0.44%
PLF: 0.30%
National Coalition for Justice and Democracy: 0.18%
Palestinian Justice: 0.17%

Buster15 said:

But the situation in India/ Pakistan is quite different.
Having nuclear capability doesn't mean there would be no future war does it.

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It means if anyone wants to go to war with you, they won't do it on a whim anymore, they'll only do it if they're willing to get wiped off the map alongside you.

Historically thats meant no more direct conflicts.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middl...ay-have-dampened-escalation-risks-2024-04-14/

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday that Iran gave neighbouring countries and Israel's ally the United States 72 hours' notice it would launch the strikes.

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One senior official in U.S. President Joe Biden's administration denied Amirabdollahian's statement, saying Washington did have contact with Iran through Swiss intermediaries but did not get notice 72 hours in advance.
"That is absolutely not true,” the official said. “They did not give a notification, nor did they give any sense of ... 'these will be the targets, so evacuate them.'"

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Iraqi, Turkish and Jordanian officials each said Iran had provided early warning of the attack last week, including some details.

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Seem like the US are lying now to make Iran look more reckless than reality for propaganda purposes.

Buster15 said:

Now that is fanciful in the extreme isn't it.
For what purpose are they working so hard to develop their nuclear weapons capability.

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They probably saw what happened to their neighbour Iraq as well as the likes of Libya and decided they wanted to protect themselves from whatever wonderful 'nation-building' was likely in store for them.

B. Munich said:

Therefore the conclusion that at least significant parts of the population in Gaza isn't as innocent as many here claim.

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They're not innocent in the sense it's ok to kill them in thousands?
You're looking at the whole situation extremely black and white.
You said Israel made mistakes.
Did German population get what they asked for cause significant part of it supported the Nazis?
Also one will never know which amount, that's dictatorship for you. Its not that Nazis made surveys about the support they had back then.

B. Munich said:

Many countries have laws which others don't agree with. I'm living in Thailand and here you will go to jail for many years, if you criticize the king. The monarchy is an extremely sensitive topic here and so is the Holocaust and antisemitism in Germany.

I think everybody knows admit this. If people don't like it's fine but they better don't organize congresses with a clear antisemite agenda in Germany.

The allies deemed the bombardments of German cities as legitimate, because of the support or toleration of the Nazi regime by the German population.
A significant amount of Palestinians still support Hamas as without this support they couldn't hold out that long. Therefore, I said the population isn't as innocent as many here claim.

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If the population isn't innocent, surely that makes 10/7 legitimate as well? By your logic at least.

Kaos said:

That's precisely my point. A (fair) resolution to the Palestinian situation weakens Iran's moral and power leverage, and is a path that benefits everyone (except the Mullahs and Israeli supremacists).

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I'm not sure. Whether Palestine is a state or not doesn't necessarily change its usefulness to an Iran seeking to grow its regional influence. Morally it'd be better for the Palestinians but politically, any state would be weak, in need of alliances, untrusted by Israel and always seeing itself in opposition to Israel - I don't think the Mullah's views would change much tbh.

2cents said:

Just finished the Bergman book last week, it’s completely mental isn’t it?

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Israeli secret services do not feck about. It's a fantastic book, incredibly well researched!

Real Name said:

They're not innocent in the sense it's ok to kill them in thousands?

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Where did I say this?
In redcafe the overwhelming majority consider the civilian casualties in Gaza as totally innocent. I just tried to highlight that they aren't as long a significant part still actively supports Hamas.

I'm no military expert but it's common knowledge that urban warfare comes with high casualties including many civilians. Especially, if one party is hiding behind and amongst them.
I'm open for your suggestions what the IDF could have done better to protect the general population and still achieve their goal to destroy Hamas.

B. Munich said:

Where did I say this?
In redcafe the overwhelming majority consider the civilian casualties in Gaza as totally innocent. I just tried to highlight that they aren't as long a significant part still actively supports Hamas.

I'm no military expert but it's common knowledge that urban warfare comes with high casualties including many civilians. Especially, if one party is hiding behind and amongst them.
I'm open for your suggestions what the IDF could have done better to protect the general population and still achieve their goal to destroy Hamas.

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By the same metric, bombing Dresden was the right call

That_Bloke said:

It did not.

Here are the full results of the 2006 elections.

Hamas: 44.45%
Fatah: 41.43%
PFLP: 4.25%
Independent Palestine: 2.72%
Third Way: 2.41%
Palestinian Popular Struggle Front: 0.72%
Palestinian Arab Front: 0.44%
PLF: 0.30%
National Coalition for Justice and Democracy: 0.18%
Palestinian Justice: 0.17%

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Ok thanks.
It won the election anyway by gaining the most seats 74 v 45 which is quite a big majority.

B. Munich said:

Where did I say this?
In redcafe the overwhelming majority consider the civilian casualties in Gaza as totally innocent. I just tried to highlight that they aren't as long a significant part still actively supports Hamas.

I'm no military expert but it's common knowledge that urban warfare comes with high casualties including many civilians. Especially, if one party is hiding behind and amongst them.
I'm open for your suggestions what the IDF could have done better to protect the general population and still achieve their goal to destroy Hamas.

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What an absolutely brutal and inhumane thing to say. Imagine that being the official line in IHL. How can you even back that statement up? We're fast approaching 20 years since the last official election, where Hamas didnt even get the majority of the votes. Oh, and approximately half the current population in Gaza weren't even born when that election took place.

AfonsoAlves said:

Their most "advanced" stuff doesn't warrant that. Arrow 3 is the most expensive Israel has. USN doesn't have hoards of SM-3's in that region.

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They've got at least 4 SM3 equipped ships in the Persian Gulf. It's enough to live test a few on Iranian ballistic missiles.

Kaos said:

They probably saw what happened to their neighbour Iraq as well as the likes of Libya and decided they wanted to protect themselves from whatever wonderful 'nation-building' was likely in store for them.

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They've been stirring the pot since long before Iraq and Libya.

hellhunter said:

By the same metric, bombing Dresden was the right call

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Where did I say it was the right call? And btw it's not only Dresden that got bombarded.

I said the bombardments of civil infrastructure and resident areas has been done on the assumption that the German population wasn't innocent or deserved protection because many supported the Nazi regime. Civilian targets were even chosen on purpose target with the intention to break the will of resistance in the population.

I also never heard anybody calling this kind of warfare a genocide.
Your example Dresden lead to approximately 25,000 deaths in one raid alone.

All I try to highlight is thati have the impression people here apply different standards.

AfonsoAlves said:

Which I've already said here, is an absolutely made up number for political reasons. No Air defense system in the world can sustain that cost.

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I doubt it was made up but really I can't prove it either way. Interception is way more expensive. I agree that no air defense system can sustain that cost. That is the exact problem Israel has. I see no reason why they would lie about it though. They are a very open society.

langster said:

Please provide links and evidence to prove this.

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Well Hamas are an Iranian proxy and Hamas carried out th October 7 massacre. Is any of that controversial? Or questioned?

11101 said:

They've been stirring the pot since long before Iraq and Libya.

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Correct.

BarstoolProphet said:

What an absolutely brutal and inhumane thing to say. Imagine that being the official line in IHL. How can you even back that statement up? We're fast approaching 20 years since the last official election, where Hamas didnt even get the majority of the votes. Oh, and approximately half the current population in Gaza weren't even born when that election took place.

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And all the children that Israeli terrorists have orphaned for decades, they're just supposed to suck it up, play it 'smart' and oust hamas.

11101 said:

They've been stirring the pot since long before Iraq and Libya.

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As has pretty much every nation since the height of the cold war, but once the travesties of Iraq and Libya unfolded, non-proliferation was always going to be a no-go for any nation under the cross-hairs of the US and its allies. Its hardly a surprise they've been ramping up their nuclear program since.

Real Name said:

They're not innocent in the sense it's ok to kill them in thousands?
You're looking at the whole situation extremely black and white.
You said Israel made mistakes.
Did German population get what they asked for cause significant part of it supported the Nazis?
Also one will never know which amount, that's dictatorship for you. Its not that Nazis made surveys about the support they had back then.

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He's (willfully) blind to the fact that the bombings of cites during WWII, including the German ones, is one of the reasons why we have the Geneva Conventions.

The Nazis also won the last free elections in 1934 without ever having the majority of the votes (43.9%) despite their massive campaigns of intimidation and violence. So while it's true that a notable part of the Germans were behind the Nazi regime and its premises, there never was an overwhelming support. The rest of the population oscillated between apathy, fear, and soon the need to jump from one anti-air shelter to another whilst searching for a crust of bread.

Aside from a completely fecked perception of the world and a glaring lack of empathy, there are cosmic gaps in the poster's History knowledge especially when it comes to the Middle-East, and his lazy shortcut linking Nazi Germany and Gaza is factually wrong at every single level. He's not the only one guilty of it, but seeing him stubbornly doubling down on it even when presented with facts is a sight to behold.

glazed said:

Well Hamas are an Iranian proxy and Hamas carried out th October 7 massacre. Is any of that controversial? Or questioned?

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Hamas is not an Iranian proxy, they have ties and have received support but Hamas acts autonomously from Iran and does not act on their orders the way a proxy like Hezbollah would.

The consensus as far as I'm aware is that both Iran and even Hamas' political leadership in Doha were taken by surprise by 7 October - they would have been alerted that an operation was being prepared but they did not know the scale or extent of the plan.

4bars said:

For the hundreth times 1:
For the hundreth times 2:
For a billionth times

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Of course there is a lot of truth in what you say. Everything you say happened did indeed happen, more or less. But it is only one side of the story. The British had control of that territory because the Ottoman Empire declared war, joined the side of the Germans in World War I, and then lost. Arabs had already lost sovereignty of what became the Palestine protectorate in 1918 through their own military failure. Much of that land was then purchased legally by Jews, albeit that would not have been allowed under Ottoman rule because it oversaw a highly xenophobic society, as it remains today. In 1948 the Arabs started another war and lost again. In the real world that has consequences. That's what happens when you lose a war.

Very many of the Jews who subsequently went to Israel were expelled from other Arab countries where they were third class citizens. And of course they want both a Jewish state and a democracy, so allowing Palestinians to return en masse is never going to happen. The first thing a Palestinian majority would do would be to change the name of the country to Palestine and do the same kind of ethnic cleansing Israel is obviously wanting to do in Gaza.

They are where they are. Israel is not going anywhere. It's not going to destroy itself to please Jeremy Corbyn, the Redcafe head bangers or some Tehran Ayatollah. The best Palestinians can ever hope for is a two state solution and the worst is ethnic cleansing. The Palestinians also have the capacity to make political choices, and now is the time to encourage good ones, not get swept away in a frenzy of jew hatred and another war they can't win. Israel has shown it doesn't give a toss about the lives of Palestinians who are now seen as a collective enemy. Is it really smart to provoke them and entrench that view further?

B. Munich said:

I'm no military expert but it's common knowledge that urban warfare comes with high casualties including many civilians. Especially, if one party is hiding behind and amongst them.
I'm open for your suggestions what the IDF could have done better to protect the general population and still achieve their goal to destroy Hamas.

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It's fairly clear at this point that the IDF is intentionally or near-intentionally killing civilians. There are numerous analysis of this from media outlets of various ideological persuasions. Some people guessed this would be the case early on, for some people it took time to see the situation developed. Talking about 'human shields' and 'destroying Hamas' in mid-April 2024 is akin to waiting for the WMDs to be found in 2017.

B. Munich said:

achieve their goal to destroy Hamas.

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The goal of destroying Hamas in a military campaign was a questionable one from the start. This was understood by many at the onset of the war, and is increasingly accepted now. You could read these two articles from a 'normal' liberal publication to get a sense of that case.

jadaba said:

The consensus as far as I'm aware is that both Iran and even Hamas' political leadership in Doha were taken by surprise by 7 October

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That's not the consensus. That's what they claimed afterwards when they left Hamas in the lurch and left the Gazans to get obliterated by a vengeful Israel.

For the Western/Israeli perspective there are many people that argue the opposite. For example:

https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/the-evidence-shows-irans-lead-role-in-october-7-pgzng3q0

My own view is that Iran did know and sanction October 7 but were not expecting the scale and brutality of what happened. As with 9/11 and al-Qaeda, Hamas were the victims of their own success.

That_Bloke said:

He's (willfully) blind to the fact that the bombings of cites during WWII, including the German ones, is one of the reasons why we have the Geneva Conventions.

The Nazis also won the last free elections in 1934 without ever having the majority of the votes (43.9%) despite their massive campaigns of intimidation and violence. So while it's true that a notable part of the Germans were behind the Nazi regime and its premises, there never was an overwhelming support. The rest of the population oscillated between apathy, fear, and soon the need to jump from one anti-air shelter to another whilst searching for a crust of bread.

Aside from a completely fecked perception of the world and a glaring lack of empathy, there are cosmic gaps in the poster's historical knowledge especially when it comes to the Middle-East, and his lazy shortcut linking Nazi Germany and Gaza is factually wrong at every single level. He's not the only one guilty of it, but seeing him stubbornly doubling down on it even when presented with facts is a sight to behold.

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Exactly, his comparisons and knowledge about these themes is schoolboy stuff.

Japan population overwhelmingly supported the militarist regime in ww2. So they weren't exactly innocent so its only natural Hiroshima happened.

Am I doing this right?

MDFC Manager said:

And all the children that Israeli terrorists have orphaned for decades, they're just supposed to suck it up, play it 'smart' and oust hamas.

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You just know when they grow up they'll support Hamas so Isreal made a preemptive strike.

Iker Quesadillas said:

It's fairly clear at this point that the IDF is intentionally or near-intentionally killing civilians. There are numerous analysis of this from media outlets of various ideological persuasions. Some people guessed this would be the case early on, for some people it took time to see the situation developed. Talking about 'human shields' and 'destroying Hamas' in mid-April 2024 is akin to waiting for the WMDs to be found in 2017.

The goal of destroying Hamas in a military campaign was a questionable one from the start. This was understood by many at the onset of the war, and is increasingly accepted now. You could read these two articles from a 'normal' liberal publication to get a sense of that case.

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Not only that, everybody forgot about hostages. Netanyahu doesnt care one bit about them.

glazed said:

That's not the consensus. That's what they claimed afterwards when they left Hamas in the lurch and left the Gazans to get obliterated by a vengeful Israel.

For the Western/Israeli perspective there are many people that argue the opposite. For example:

https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/the-evidence-shows-irans-lead-role-in-october-7-pgzng3q0

My own view is that Iran did know and sanction October 7 but were not expecting the scale and brutality of what happened. As with 9/11 and al-Qaeda, Hamas were the victims of their own success.

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On Iranian influence, the US said "we haven’t seen hard, tangible evidence that Iran was directly involved," similarly Israel said "we have no evidence, no intelligence proof of Iranian involvement in this situation." Netanyahu was also asked about it and couldn't say that Iran was involved in the operation, and we know how he'd be happy to peddle that theory.

Meanwhile Iran said it wasn't involved (and was reportedly angered that the attack took place without warning in the first place) and Hamas said the same.

Not sure how many more adversarial actors would be required to say the exact same thing for it to not be considered the consensus. And if the types of people who are pre-empting responses to their argument of Iranian involvement start their opinion pieces with: "the sympathisers and the sceptics will immediately cry, “There’s no evidence” –conveniently pointing to the Biden administration’s insistence on this," then I don't think their argument is a compelling one.

Kaos said:

As has pretty much every nation since the height of the cold war, but once the travesties of Iraq and Libya unfolded, non-proliferation was always going to be a no-go for any nation under the cross-hairs of the US and its allies. Its hardly a surprise they've been ramping up their nuclear program since.

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Any new country trying to acquire nuclear weapons should be prevented from doing so, especially such ideologically driven countries as Iran. That serves nobody well but themselves.

11101 said:

Any new country trying to acquire nuclear weapons should be prevented from doing so, especially such ideologically driven countries as Iran. That serves nobody well but themselves.

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Agreed, but I also see their reasons for choosing to do so. Similarly we should also be putting pressure on the sole nuclear power in the region (another ideological ethno-fascist state run by Messiahic maniacs) to also do away with their nukes.

jadaba said:

On Iranian influence, the US said "we haven’t seen hard, tangible evidence that Iran was directly involved," similarly Israel said "we have no evidence, no intelligence proof of Iranian involvement in this situation." Netanyahu was also asked about it and couldn't say that Iran was involved in the operation, and we know how he'd be happy to peddle that theory.

Meanwhile Iran said it wasn't involved (and was reportedly angered that the attack took place without warning in the first place) and Hamas said the same.

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Well why would there be hard evidence? The Republican Guard don't do freedom of information requests. I suppose you think Israel didn't blow up the Iranian consulate either? That's not how this game works.

If it suits your politics to say Iran isn't orchestrating regional proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, then you believe what you want to believe. But don't expect to be taken seriously.

glazed said:

Well why would there be hard evidence? The Republican Guard don't do freedom of information requests. I suppose you think Israel didn't blow up the Iranian consulate either? That's not how this game works.

If it suits your politics to say Iran isn't orchestrating regional proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, then you believe what you want to believe. But don't expect to be taken seriously.

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I don't think anyone is contesting Iran's affiliation with Hamas, the debate rather is centred around whether they directly ordered the attack themselves. While its not beyond the realms of possibility or even likelihood that they did, you could also make a compelling point as to why they'd wanted to avoid it. Iran for all their posturing seems pretty keen on avoiding directly getting involved in direct confrontation with their adversaries, so they must have known that an event like October 7th would have needlessly dragged them into the crosshairs. Its one thing smuggling weapons to Hamas, its another telling them to carry out a large scale attack on Israel.

Their relationship with Hamas also isn't as direct as the one with Hezbollah. The latter are a direct proxy in every sense, with their combatants pledging allegiance to Ayatollah Khameini directly, the same can't be said for Hamas. In fact during the height of the Syrian civil war both Hamas and Iran found themselves on opposing sides in the proxy struggle.

glazed said:

In 1948 the Arabs started another war and lost again. In the real world that has consequences. That's what happens when you lose a war.

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This is used again and again as an excuse for Palestinian land being absorbed by Israel. But the people of Palestine did not declare war on Israel. As far as I am aware it was Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. I know it is called the Arab Israeli war but lumping in the Palestinians under the general term of Arab is like lumping French, Belgium, Dutch and English together because they're all European.

There were certainly Palestinian militias involved, but nothing to justify the violent displacement of the Arab population and Israel's expansion beyond the initial mandate.

glazed said:

Well why would there be hard evidence? The Republican Guard don't do freedom of information requests. I suppose you think Israel didn't blow up the Iranian consulate either? That's not how this game works.

If it suits your politics to say Iran isn't orchestrating regional proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, then you believe what you want to believe. But don't expect to be taken seriously.

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The article you linked to is called "the evidence shows Iran's lead role in October 7th". It is perfectly reasonable to ask what this evidence is.

It is particularly relevant when the claim comes from a guy who used to work for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Tony Blair, the guy famous for taking the UK to a war in the Middle East based on dubious evidence.

Kaos said:

I don't think anyone is contesting Iran's affiliation with Hamas, the debate rather is centred around whether they directly ordered the attack themselves. While its not beyond the realms of possibility or even likelihood that they did, you could also make a compelling point as to why they'd wanted to avoid it. Iran for all their posturing seems pretty keen on avoiding directly getting involved in direct confrontation with their adversaries, so they must have known that an event like October 7th would have needlessly dragged them into the crosshairs. Its one thing smuggling weapons to Hamas, its another telling them to carry out a large scale attack on Israel.

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Yes that seems more plausible. What we are really discussing is whether they approved the scale of the attack, not the fact of it. I'm not sure even Hamas expected so many Israeli dead. It was a massive Israeli intelligence failure. Had Hamas known the scale of it they would have known that the Israeli response would be exactly what it was, which was an unintended consequence. We now live in a world of further unintended consequences.