This is a tough discussion to have with emotions running high and these images streaming in. But here goes:
1. The rhetoric on here is tending towards full-on genocide of Palestinians. Dehumanizing the Palestinians is helpful only if your ultimate goal is to justify killing all of them. I get where that desire comes from--anger. And for the Israelis--fear. I feel the draw of it, too. But there are nearly 2 million Palestinian human beings living in Gaza. Are they all at fault? The babies? The little children? The common man? (If the goal posters are talking about is destroying Hamas (and Hezbollah?) as an organization and its people, I agree. But as we've seen over the last 20+ years, killing a pernicious ideology isn't something we are very good at.)
Up front, I don't necessarily want to see children killed and I am not advocating genocide but what I am probably going to advocate is going to sound really, really harsh. That said, here we go.
I have a dim view of Islam. That view is even more dim as it is practiced in the Middle East. I view it as the religious equivalent of Nazism. The religion is built on antipathy (at best) down to hatred of those religious groups and people's who do not believe as they do. I think polling of Islam's adherents around the world, and particularly its Middle Eastern adherents, would show that the terrorists like Hamas aren't extremists. They are those most committed to carrying out the beliefs of the majority. And the majority hate Jews and they hate us.
So why that backdrop? Because I am of the belief that places like Gaza need to be convinced to reform. Think of it like de-Nazification. You can't do that until they have been beaten to the point where their defeat is not in question. Total war like we visited on the Japanese and Germans.
2. This is a travesty and it's going to get much worse. The current horrors were inflicted by groups of Palestinians. They are the most directly at fault for what will come. And they can only have undertook these horrible, inexcusable actions because they looked upon the Israelis as evil animals. From what I've seen, that outlook is rampant in Palestinian society. The flip-side of that coin is true, too, but less so among Israeli society, where a lesser % feel Palestinians are evil and need to be exterminated. But there are enough, I think, to make this a real concern and puts a Palestinian genocide in play as a real risk.
They won't face genocide. The Israelis are Western in their outlook. They do things like tap buildings to warn people to get out before they level them. If anything the Israelis are over concerned with collateral damage and that often lets the intended targets escape along with the people they hide behind.
3. No, I am not drawing a moral equivalence between the two societies, and no, I don't consider the IDF and Hamas morally equivalent, either. Obviously, Israel has to protect itself. To do that, it is now going to have to kill a lot of people, and because of the way Hamas operates, that's going to include more innocents than it would otherwise.
But we don't have to be gleeful about it and we don't have to be callous or ignorant of the human suffering that is about to occur to innocents throughout the region, do we?
I have no love for those people. They bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut when I was 4. They murdered people in restaurants in Israel throughout my teens. They bombed the WTC when I was 15. When I was 16 they bombed a Argentine/Jewish mutual cooperation center in Argentina. When I was 22 they destroyed the WTC, attacked the Pentagon, and crashed another plane in Pennsylvania. Then came 20 years of dealing with them. These are just small points. And almost all of these were celebrated across the Muslim world. And this is where someone says that these were all acts perpetrated by different groups. And I say exactly. Different groups, different countries, one common thread. Do I wish for civilians to be targeted? No. Children? Obviously not. However, do I feel hostility to people from that part of the world and their religion? Yes. And I have over 40 years of experiences and incidents to support why. And the civilians support these people....so when the blow back hits them, kind of hard to feel sorry they are facing the consequences of their support.
4. In terms of US interests or even Israeli, is it really a good idea to "level" Gaza? Exterminate all Palestinians within Israel? Think of the regional repercussions. Think of how the Muslim community will blame the world-wide Satan, the USA for it. This is EXACTLY what Hamas wants--they know they can never militarily defeat Israel, so they want to keep provoking it and chipping away at its international legitimacy so that the regional powers will come in and destroy it. They do this by downplaying their acts and then amplifying, televising, tweeting, etc. all IDF acts as much as possible.
Exterminate? No. Make them the recipients of Total War? Yes.
5. If we aren't sending troops to Ukraine, do we really want to put boots on the ground again in the Middle East? How many wars can we fight? How many can we afford?
We don't need boots on the ground and I don't believe in the idea of us trying to bring these people into the present. We don't live close enough to them to have that as a necessity. Our job is to let the Israelis do what needs done in the face of antisemitic fueled criticism they always receive when they defend themselves. I would like revenge for our citizens Hamas killed. I blame them and Iran. We don't have to go whole hog, but things like assassinating Soleimani should be on the table for Iran and Hamas.
I have seen the videos. I want blood.