> Is there a number of civilian casualties after which Israel is not allowed to keep fighting to eradicate Hamas?
Murdering over 13,000 children not only does nothing to “eradicate” Hamas, it does the opposite: It creates more Hamas-like groups. All of these women and children Israel has murdered have families, friends, etc. who miss them and will be even more determined now to avenge their deaths.
Isn't the logical extension of this supportive of complete genocide? I don't care about either side in this conflict, but I fail to see how anything short of genocide stops this.
This is what I see:
P: Hamas attacks civilians
I: Responds by saying that this is will never happen again, and they will put their youth into urban combat to ensure it never happens again by eradicating Hamas
P: Engages in urban combat via insurgency, including using civilians as human shields
I: Continues to try and eradicate Hamas. Civilian shields are murdered.
H: If you keep killing civilians, you'll only make more of us!
I: Then come out and fight!
H: No! Keep killing our children.
At some point you have to place the safety of your population over the safety of another population that is currently murdering your civilians and actively stating they want to continue doing so. Plus to my knowledge P still has hostages that they refuse to release.
The problem with your breakdown is the implication that this all started with October 7th, as if Hamas is simply a terrorist group that attacked Israel, unprovoked, for no legitimate reason. I know this is the narrative Israel wants everyone to believe, but the reality proves otherwise.
If the average American had to live for even just a full week under the conditions that Palestinians live under, they would categorically classify the Israeli government and the IDF as the terrorists. I mean, Israel literally has, as a political and military strategy, the concept of “mowing the grass” [0] [1] to periodically terrorize Palestinians and they aren’t even particularly subtle about it.
My phrasing was specific to the Oct 7 attack because that event was the provication of the current conflict.
Despite policies like "mowing the grass" being catalysts for the Oct 7 attack, my point is that Isreal has stated a clear objective: elimination of Hamas. Their terror tactics are described in the Wiki link you provided appear to be supportive of that goal too.
Hamas has also stated a clear objective so far as I know: destruction of the Isreal state (potentially also of all Jews, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say just the state).
I'm undereducated on the issue, but to me it seems that there is no reconciliation of these goals. They are not simultaneously achievable.
My estimate is this conflict could end today if Hamas conceded. What would become of Palestine is a different matter. Their current authority, the PA, seems to have a policy of paying familes for insurgent deaths. Isreal probably won't want them running the show,and they definitely won't want Hamas running it. Other bordering countries like Jordan and Egypt seem to want nothing to do with Palestinians. The Palestinian children appear to be raised to hate Isrealies and are taught to murder, perhaps justifiably (and maybe this is wrong and only propaganda).
I want this fixed, and I can see a path forward where Palestine embraces sovereignty and becomes a mecca of the world by operating as a tax haven for businesses. But in order to do that they need to determine their goal is peace, and ally with other countries for protection against Isrealie aggression. But that is a hard path forward when starting at current state, including the world view held by Palestinians.
And maybe I'm entirely wrong in this post. But my GP post was specific to my perceived, orthogonal objectives of both sides.
