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17 October 2023
The surprise and savage attack by Hamas against Israeli civilians and military installations last week unquestionably can be termed a massacre. Many might add that it was also a colossal blunder and self-defeating act in the political sense that it will help neither Hamas nor the Palestinian cause. This observation deserves greater scrutiny.
Hamas was probably quite aware of a n inevitable brutal Israeli response. Yet this operation was probably quite deliberately designed precisely to send a message of deliberate shock– to Israel and to the world–in which the operation has more than succeeded. And of course the ability of the Israeli state to wreak ferocious vengeance \upon all Palestinians and their institutions vastly outweighs the blood and damage that Hamas was able to impose upon Israel –in any physical or military sense.. But even that is not the whole story. As a strategic, even geostrategic and psychological operation, the ultimate verdict is not yet clear. Let me be clear that we are talking here about the political language of global relations and not the more complex issue of trying to weigh competing moralities.
( Read more... )
The surprise and savage attack by Hamas against Israeli civilians and military installations last week unquestionably can be termed a massacre. Many might add that it was also a colossal blunder and self-defeating act in the political sense that it will help neither Hamas nor the Palestinian cause. This observation deserves greater scrutiny.
Hamas was probably quite aware of a n inevitable brutal Israeli response. Yet this operation was probably quite deliberately designed precisely to send a message of deliberate shock– to Israel and to the world–in which the operation has more than succeeded. And of course the ability of the Israeli state to wreak ferocious vengeance \upon all Palestinians and their institutions vastly outweighs the blood and damage that Hamas was able to impose upon Israel –in any physical or military sense.. But even that is not the whole story. As a strategic, even geostrategic and psychological operation, the ultimate verdict is not yet clear. Let me be clear that we are talking here about the political language of global relations and not the more complex issue of trying to weigh competing moralities.
( Read more... )
