A seriously interesting question about Modern Warfare is – What is the appropriate response when an organization like Hamas fires its barely-guided missiles from civilian sites like schoolyards and hospital parking lots, and buries its command & control installations and weapons stores underneath such sites?
All the Best People are spouting the expected condemnations of the aggressive actions that Israel is taking against those locations – but none of them are suggesting what would be a better alternative (other than giving Hamas a free pass).
The best alternative would clearly be for Hamas to forego putting military assets in those kinds of places. The second-best alternative would be for the Gazans to refuse to allow Hamas to place its weapons of war in their civilian installations – but Hamas is effectively a criminal gang, terrorizing the Gazans into unwilling support. Military assaults on those kinds of locations is clearly a distressingly bad option, but it may be the least-unacceptable defensive action.
An analog might be the Allied choice of near-indiscriminate bombing of German & Japanese cities in WWII as the only effective way to cripple German & Japanese war production.
Consider the source - Soros - a man whose efforts and money have had the desired effect of lawlessness/chaos of American cities. His advice for Israel (which he despises more than the US as Constituted) might well not be seen as beneficent by 9 million Jews surrounded by 500 million plus Muslims awash in oil money - yet which still harbor/foster “refugees” from 1948! (despite their brothers being culturally identical) to keep open and purulent the “wound” in Arab pride which IS the successful State of Israel. How can one seriously recognize an enemy whose first and immutable work is your destruction? Actually, before the latest atrocity, Israel had de facto been taking steps to work with Hamas. The result was clear.
Though history is never relevant when it comes to Israel, it is worth recalling that upon evacuation from Gaza, Israel left a good bit of valuable infrastructure intact as a gesture of good will. True to form, Hamas and/or its progenitors destroyed every bit of it and has repeatedly refused over many years to even eliminate from its charter its one central purpose: destruction of Israel - NOT a two state solution. It will only accept a one state solution, one that is, once again, judenrein. Actually, a recording of one of its leaders just surfaced, reminding us that the US and the rest of the world are next on the Jihad hit list. This explicit agenda will, of course, be dismissed by our ‘leaders’.
The never-uttered fact is that Arabs who live peaceably as Israeli citizens have far more political and civil rights than in any Arab regime anywhere. Also never stated: were the “Palestinians” interested in peace, they could have had it most any time since 1948. All they needed to do was abandon their hatred and negotiate in good faith (not a strong virtue in that tribal, low trust, part of the world). Israel has traded “land for [so-called] peace” to no avail. Who in their right mind would give statehood/sanctuary to a group whose sole purpose is not to govern in peace, but to destroy their neighbors, “from the river to the sea” with eternal lust to commit genocide writ large, for which Oct. 7 was a mere demonstration. It is apparent that the money given to aid in Gaza governance and to improve the lot of its people, instead went to weapons and tunnels. Their gratitude is shown in the fact that that we aren’t first, but must patiently wait our turn to be slaughtered.
I would take issue with this description. There is no evidence that the majority of Gazans are opposed to Hamas or Hamas’ style of “engagement” with Israel. THAT is at least ONE of the dirty little secrets that the media and ruling elite don’t want people to glom onto.
?Is there a “solution” to Hamas. Depends on how serious you are at getting rid of that menace. Notice there wasn’t any ISIS while Trump was around. Hamas can have the exact same future if one is set on doing to it what we did to ISIS. That would include taking out the three big leaders who comfortably reside in Qatar I believe - or one of the opulent Arab states not at war with Israel. Interesting how some are and some aren’t, but ALL espouse the same BS lines about Israel the aggressor.
We in the US have been privy to multiple examples of what can easily be described as real insurrection. Prosecution of ALL those as*****les who participated might be a start to “cleaning up” this mess. Our constitution guarranteed the people the right to peacefully petition their government for redress. Anything otherwise, whether justified or not, IS insurrection. So, while there doesn’t seem to be any real evidence of Jan 6 “insurrection” except by a very small number of instigators (and government plants), there is ample evidence of muslim insurrection - not just in the riots but in carrying out sharia law.
?Isn’t it time we clean our house, then allow Israel to do likewise. Tossing random rockets at the citizenry shouldn’t be allowed anywhere. Failure to stop such is a sign of an illegitimate government, as the “protestors” have gotten the upper hand - just like OUR Founders envisioned with the 2nd Amendment. But when outside forces keep a nation from surviving, that’s not “kosher”.
I suppose this question requires some thought about the size and composition of the organization in question. The response to a few such-minded individuals would be different from a whole slew of same. But the response would only be a question of degree.
If you have a couple individuals who are basically anarchists, then the appropriate response is to hunt them down and either capture and try them or eliminate them. The former should be undertaken with a liberal “rules of engagement”. That means that while usually we expect our police to demonstrate restraint in their interactions with citizens, even in deadly circumstances, in this case, that usual restraint should be significantly relaxed to where no one is unnecessarily exposed to potential significant injury or death. IOW, not quite " shoot to kill on sight" - but close.
In the situation where there is, in effect, a “nation” involved, as one can reasonably call Gaza, particularly since they themselves have taken on the mantle of “Palestinians” as a political division, for purposes of furthering their cause, then apply the same idea as above but on a much larger scale, destroy whatever you need to.
There are many such examples in history. Look at the Romans, just as an example of a long-standing nation that defended their “borders” vigorously. Not saying I agree with either what Rome stood for nor how they went about setting up these borders; just noting that they managed to exist for multiple centuries basically unchecked. THEY dealt with opposition rather harshly. They didn’t kill ALL the Jews, but they left no one alive at Masada. Go to WWII and note that we carpet-bombed large sections of German cities to gain our war objectives. Yes, it was nasty, but we didn’t start it; the Germans did, with their bombing of England. Late in the war, as we moved across western Germany we ran into multiple small towns in the low rolling hills of the region. The Germans would put a couple snipers in the village, who would knock down a couple GI’s, then DI-di-mau outta there. We put a stop to that by immediately as we received such fire, targeting the village with arty - to level the place! It didn’t take the villagers long to refuse to allow the die-hard Nazis into their villages as they knew what the result of that would be.
Today we are faced with a 4-day “cease fire” in Gaza, which I have no doubt Hamas will use to attempt to dissuade Israel from destroying Gaza. But Gaza needs to be destroyed - if for no other reason than to give Hamas - AND all their followers some idea what awaits such bad behavior.
Reprisals can be difficult things to carry out though. Recollect the Nazi Germans had a policy that for each German the conquered civilians killed, they would kill 10 civilians. They did that in Sweden I believe (or maybe Norway). The resistance killed some 4 Germans and the Germans lined up 40 civilians and shot them. THEN the resistance blew up a ferry with some 200 Germans on it and sent the German High Command a note - “Your turn.”
That is pretty much the conclusion I regretfully reach. It is easy to go all Leftie and condemn the Israeli killing of women & children (or at least the killing of children in these days of equality for women), but what is the person on the receiving end of something like the attacks of Hamas to do?
Ideally, any organization like Hamas would never put its military assets in civilian structures like schools & hospitals. And if it did, it would face universal condemnation from everyone in the world for such an egregious breach of the rules of war. But in this less-than-ideal world, it seems the only practical response is to follow Hamas’s lead in setting aside the normal rules of warfare and give them no quarter, no refuge. Otherwise, all any aggressive military organization anywhere in the world has to do is set up their base in a hospital and they are home free.
Hamas isn’t just hiding underneath hospitals. They are deliberately provoking strikes against the hospital in an attempt to garner international disdain for Israel. They believe (as far as I can tell) that Israel cannot exist on its own without subsidies from other countries. If they can get those subsidies cut off, then Israel will no longer prosper, Israelis will leave, and they will get “their” “country” back.
Attacking hostile military forces using a hospital as a base, weapons depot, or shelter for troops is not a violation of the normal rules of warfare. Here is the International Committee of the Red Cross “Frequently asked questions on the rules of war” on the issue. (Bold italic emphasis mine)
If armed forces are using a hospital or school as a base to launch attacks or store weapons, are those places then a legitimate military target?
The laws of war prohibit direct attacks on civilian objects, like schools. They also prohibit direct attacks against hospitals and medical staff, which are specially protected under IHL [International Humanitarian Law]. That said, a hospital or school may become a legitimate military target if it contributes to specific military operations of the enemy and if its destruction offers a definite military advantage for the attacking side.
If there is any doubt, they cannot be attacked. Hospitals only lose their protection in certain circumstances - for example if a hospital is being used as a base from which to launch an attack, as a weapons depot, or to hide healthy soldiers/fighters. And there are certain conditions too.
Before a party to a conflict can respond to such acts by attacking, it has to give a warning, with a time limit, and the other party has to have ignored that warning. Some States have endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration and Guidelines, which aim to reduce the military use of schools.
The cited “Safe Schools Declaration” has been endorsed by 118 states, including “Palestine”, but the U.S. and Israel are not among them (nor are Russia, China, Japan, India, or either Korea).
Of course, the same thing applies – with bells on – to Gaza, which is wholly dependent on subsidies from the US (!), the UN, Arab states, and those foolish Euros.
This is an interesting twist on war. Which side can persuade the other side’s backers to give up first?
Anduril Industries, a private U.S. defense company founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, previously founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, have announced Roadrunner, a “Twin-Turbojet VTOL Autonomous Air Vehicle (AAV)”.
Roadrunner is a reusable, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL), operator-supervised Autonomous Air Vehicle (AAV) with twin turbojet engines and modular payload configurations that can support a variety of missions.
Roadrunner-M is a high-explosive interceptor variant of Roadrunner built for ground-based air defense that can rapidly launch, identify, intercept, and destroy a wide variety of aerial threats — or be safely recovered and relaunched at near-zero cost.
To expand the topic to not-so-modern warfare – I fooled myself into going to see the current movie “Napoleon”. I was interested to see a representation of how charismatic a leader had to be to keep on being able to get massive armies to follow him into the killing fields. Alas, poor Joaquin Phoenix was not given a script that could have let him do this. The one scene that might have given an opportunity for a charismatic leader to give a rousing speech – Napoleon’s return from exile in Elba, when he convinced the regiment the French government sent to arrest him to instead join him and march on Paris – failed to do that.
The movie had magnificent recreations of a few of Napoleon’s battles – at Toulon, Borodino, and Waterloo – and tremendous special effects such as the burning of Moscow, but overall the movie should have been retitled “Napoleon Loves Josephine”.
This got me thinking about our current wars. Where are the charismatic leaders? Zelensky is obviously a fabrication, and the shadowy leaders of Hamas rarely leave the bar in Doha. President Putin may be a very smart statesman, but he is not charismatic, and is about as long-winded as I am. Europe & Israel have no political or military leader who fits the bill, and let’s not even dignify Biden with the title of leader.
