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[Starver]

Actual scarcity would not be beneficial to Hamas. They need food and, especially, fuel, too. They also need people under their rule not to be desperate enough to riot against their rule and demand surrender.

Hamas may be effectively unopposed because they've become good at deflecting local opposition. Put yourself in someone else's sandals. Why would anyone riot against Hamas, if they're mostly seeing their suffering as being at the hands of Israel/etc? Or, if they're even a bit more informed, too busy just trying to survive? And between the totalitarian regime directly in your face with a smattering of armed men vs. the everpresent threat of being bombed from above if you even look like being an organised armed group (regardless of who you are arming against), what chance do you have?

Yes, Hamas is probably nurturing/shifting the blame as much as possible, twisting the mixed messages to their benefit ('the West' is against Gazans, hence the attacks, but 'the World' is supporting Gaza in its struggle, hence the aid, for example). That's just politics, as much as anything else. But, whatever your (or my) outsider feelings about who is primarily/mostly/totally to blame, the feelings of the grass roots and general population decree who is supported/opposed. Turkeys can be persuaded to vote for Christmas, and it wouldn't necessarily be the turkeys' fault if they do.

This is not a perfectly logical world of perfectly critical constituents who all have perfect knowledge of who is helping and who is oppressing. And scarcity can totally be beneficial to Hamas. They won't be the first to starve, but they do get first dibs on telling those who starve (in leiu of them) whose fault it is that this happens.

They won't actually say "we're shaving off the lions' share, leaving you with nothing", if they're doing that, except maybe to encourage someone to join the pride who looks like they might want to be a lion. (But as likely will be used as a sacrificial lamb, solving both manpower and rationing problems!)

PPE:

edit: this is @Strongpoint (see end 'PPE' for my slightly surprising response to Bumber!) ...the problem with that (the absolute shunning of Gazans) is that you're assuming that the whole of the Gazan population is a "Warrior Race", equally culpable and every man-jack (and woman-jill, and child-jojo) determined to fight, fight, fight as part of an genetically ingrained martial philosophy that goes against all 'civilised' reason.

Have you looked at polling from Gaza?

If you mean in terms of 'general support for Hamas's position', I've dealt with that (actually, just done it more explicitly, above, but you won't have read that until just now). Because you can't be somehow saying that polls reveal that Gazans are, from birth, Klingons/Tyranids/Magog-and-slash-or-Nietzscheans and irredemably martial in nature.

[Maximum Spin]

PPE:

edit: this is @Strongpoint (see end 'PPE' for my slightly surprising response to Bumber!) ...the problem with that (the absolute shunning of Gazans) is that you're assuming that the whole of the Gazan population is a "Warrior Race", equally culpable and every man-jack (and woman-jill, and child-jojo) determined to fight, fight, fight as part of an genetically ingrained martial philosophy that goes against all 'civilised' reason.

Have you looked at polling from Gaza?

If you mean in terms of 'general support for Hamas's position', I've dealt with that (actually, just done it more explicitly, above, but you won't have read that until just now). Because you can't be somehow saying that polls reveal that Gazans are, from birth, Klingons/Tyranids/Magog-and-slash-or-Nietzscheans and irredemably martial in nature.

I assumed that "genetically ingrained" was obviously retarded hyperbole. It doesn't matter whether it is from birth or not.
What matters is that, even though HAMAS as an administrator is actually fairly unpopular and used to be routinely blamed for the problems Gaza has (probably because people there can see that the West Bank doesn't have those problems), attacks on Israel and the general idea of genocide of Israelis have always been a reliable poll-winner. People there aren't blaming Israel for their suffering, they just hate Jews.

[Strongpoint]

Hamas may be effectively unopposed because they've become good at deflecting local opposition. Put yourself in someone else's sandals. Why would anyone riot against Hamas, if they're mostly seeing their suffering as being at the hands of Israel/etc? Or, if they're even a bit more informed, too busy just trying to survive? And between the totalitarian regime directly in your face with a smattering of armed men vs. the everpresent threat of being bombed from above if you even look like being an organised armed group (regardless of who you are arming against), what chance do you have?

You are separating HAMAS fighters from the population while they are a part of it. Hamas is not made of some aliens, all those people with weapons are also Gazans with their own families and desire to live comfortable lives. Or just live. If they are living comfortable lives in tunnels why would they do anything? Sure, there are people on Israel's kill list and they have no road back but for many surrender is an option.

And don't assume that people of Gazans are morons who think that Israel does what it does just because it is evil. I think many of them do understand that as soon as Hamas will surrender and Israel will get (bodies of) hostages back the active war will be over. The future won't be bright but it will be better than the current one (and far better than an alternative reality in which Palestinian society wouldn't be kept somewhat stable with international aid).

[Starver]

You are separating HAMAS fighters from the population while they are a part of it.

Conversely, you're painting everyone within spitting distance of Hamas as entirely being them.

I assumed that "genetically ingrained" was obviously retarded hyperbole. It doesn't matter whether it is from birth or not.

Well, from me it would be, but from some people I don't at all know that it is.

What matters is that, even though HAMAS as an administrator is actually fairly unpopular [...]

...ah, I thought you were saying "Had I seen the polls in which Hamas were actually popular, right now...", or similar. (I hadn't, but if you ask the right questions, or compare with the right alternative... Thr equivalent to asking whether you'd prefer Biden or Trump, and even those that find neither at all attractive as an option might still have a very definite opinion which they'd prefer.)

People there aren't blaming Israel for their suffering, they just hate Jews.

How much do they hate Jews because of their suffering? Because they know what the IDF is currently doing, because they have been told what the IDF did before they were born, because they get taught what the founding of the state of Israel did to their ancestors, why they're here now.

They probably aren't told how their apparent oppressors were originally themselves refugees and escapees from a different kind of genocide. Or they disregard it and say that just know what their 'own' particular form of genocide feels like. The more educated culturally-experienced amongst them might actually have a more nuanced perspective on the situation, but what hpe does any voice like that have when surrounded by such a desparate melting pot of humanity just trying to survive (if they are indeed surviving, given the demographic skew, and that any voice too vocally non-Hamas might well have been 'suppressed' under the cover of all the chaos.)

[Maximum Spin]

People there aren't blaming Israel for their suffering, they just hate Jews.

How much do they hate Jews because of their suffering?

Given that all the evidence is that they don't strongly blame Israel for their suffering, that's probably not it. It's impossible to say for sure (nobody just asks "why do you hate Jews?"), but it looks a lot more like they hate Jews for the same ethnoreligious reasons their ancestors did when those ancestors refused the UN two-state solution and declared war on Israel in the first place, then lost, leading to the present situation.

You can argue all you want that the socioeconomic situation leads to more resentment, and that's certainly true, but it's ignorant to follow that by assuming everything would be able to resolve just fine otherwise. That has, in a very real sense, been tried. It makes me think that you don't know the history of how the Gaza strip came to be in the first place.

[bloop_bleep]

And of course, the supply of important war material like food, fuel, and medical supplies didn't stop. There only were calls for MORE aid to that side of the war. It is the main reason why HAMAS's rule didn't collapse yet.

Yes, the reason Hamas is in power is that not enough people have been starved to death, not enough hospitals have been bombed, and not enough homes and shops have been razed and looted. Perhaps the IDF should rape and torture the whole lot of them so we can teach these Palestinian animals their "lesson," right?

[Strongpoint]

How much do they hate Jews because of their suffering? Because they know what the IDF is currently doing, because they have been told what the IDF did before they were born, because they get taught what the founding of the state of Israel did to their ancestors, why they're here now.

They probably aren't told how their apparent oppressors were originally themselves refugees and escapees from a different kind of genocide. Or they disregard it and say that just know what their 'own' particular form of genocide feels like.

They hate Jews because it is the core aspect of their national myth, something they learn in schools and from propaganda and from parents. It has roots in religion and Arab culture, it was strengthened by horrors of many wars and by Islamist and Soviet (Socialist) propaganda.

Remove the hatred of Jews, remove the mytholized memory of Nakba, remove the genocidal goal of "from the river to the sea", remove admiration of "heroes that fought Israel" What will remain? What will differentiate Palestinians from Arabs of other countries (including Arab citizens of Israel who don't self-identify as Palestinians while they are certainly from Palestine)? What core national elements will still be there?

Nations are formed by shared experiences and this young nation was formed by an experience of being in a constant war with Israel. Reforming this is a tremendous task. It should begin with a proper humane occupation by someone(preferably NOT Israel) and a very different school curriculum, without people like UNRWA among teachers.

Yes, the reason Hamas is in power is that not enough people have been starved to death, not enough hospitals have been bombed, and not enough homes and shops have been razed and looted. Perhaps the IDF should rape and torture the whole lot of them so we can teach these Palestinian animals their "lesson," right?

*Yawn* You speak in slogans. You didn't make the tiniest effort to understand what  I was saying. I was saying a very simple thing - if a side in a war gets assistance in the form of supplies it prolongs the war. If it doesn't - it collapses and loses sooner. Only people like you can invent any advocacy for rape and torture in this simple idea.

[bloop_bleep]

"I don't like when Nazi Germany razes cities, mass murders Jews, and employs slave labor."

"Why are you speaking in SLOGANS?"

[Maximum Spin]

Yes, the reason Hamas is in power is that not enough people have been starved to death, not enough hospitals have been bombed, and not enough homes and shops have been razed and looted. Perhaps the IDF should rape and torture the whole lot of them so we can teach these Palestinian animals their "lesson," right?

What broke the fighting will of Japan or Germany in WWII? What broke the Southern fighting spirit in the American Civil War? What broke the spirit of the Tsarists in the Russian Civil War?

"I don't like when Nazi Germany razes cities, mass murders Jews, and employs slave labor."

"Why are you speaking in SLOGANS?"

I really do feel bad for you.

[McTraveller]

I'm starting to think the way to end most wars is to simply mandate that the actual soldiers from each side share a meal with each other and just, you know, get to know each other as people.

The only way people can live with themselves after killing others is to convince themselves the "other" is not a person.

If you rely on one side simply beating the other into submission so they can no longer put up a retaliation so they sue for peace... you haven't really solved any problem.

[bloop_bleep]

Yes, the reason Hamas is in power is that not enough people have been starved to death, not enough hospitals have been bombed, and not enough homes and shops have been razed and looted. Perhaps the IDF should rape and torture the whole lot of them so we can teach these Palestinian animals their "lesson," right?

What broke the fighting will of Japan or Germany in WWII? What broke the Southern fighting spirit in the American Civil War? What broke the spirit of the Tsarists in the Russian Civil War?

Your chosen reply to the concept of starving, raping, and looting in war is "terrorism is sometimes necessary"?

EDIT: This is without even addressing the basic fact that, wow, the Allied soldiers who did rape and loot were actually not vital to the war effort, and neither was mass carpet bombing, but I figured I would start with the most glaring of the many elephants that entered the room with your statement.

[Maximum Spin]

I'm starting to think the way to end most wars is to simply mandate that the actual soldiers from each side share a meal with each other and just, you know, get to know each other as people.

The only way people can live with themselves after killing others is to convince themselves the "other" is not a person.

If you rely on one side simply beating the other into submission so they can no longer put up a retaliation so they sue for peace... you haven't really solved any problem.

That's incredibly naive.

Most people can live with themselves just fine after killing others. What you're saying is a modern, western myth that has been wholly debunked. Not only is history filled with cases of people who were more than happy to kill each other after sharing a meal and getting to know each other as people, sometimes one side even becomes the next meal afterward.

Also, one side beating the other into submission so they can no longer put up a retaliation so they sue for peace is how nearly every modern nation came into existence (the only exceptions that come to mind are cases like Switzerland, which banded together to stop the Holy Roman Empire from doing that to them, and Iceland, which was unpopulated when it was settled and is probably the most peaceful nation in history) and how geopolitics has been conducted all over the world for thousands of years.

"I don't like when Nazi Germany razes cities, mass murders Jews, and employs slave labor."

"Why are you speaking in SLOGANS?"

Let me elaborate on this.

If Nazi Germany had originally agreed to a peaceful UN-mediated two-state solution between Germans and Jews, but the Jews formed a coalition and declared war on them, only to lose badly and sue for peace in a reduced territory, to which the Nazis agreed and tried to leave the Jews alone, only for the Jews continually to violate the armistice borders, leading the Germans to retaliate in an increasing back-and-forth over the years until a diplomatic incident with a Jewish ally state neighboring Germany developed into a war in which Nazi Germany occupied the Jewish German regions as well as large portions of the ally state (which would soon be returned), more or less successfully bringing the conflict down to a simmer for years before eventually unilaterally withdrawing and allowing the Jews to self-govern again, only for one of the Jewish regions to be taken over by a terrorist organization, with strong support from the Jewish population, which routinely fired missiles into German cities from civilian buildings for decades, which Nazi Germany more or less tolerated with minimal response until finally an overwhelming attack by the Jews of that particular region, on a German holy day, resulted in the capture and murder of German civilian hostages, inflaming public sentiment to the extent that the Nazis finally decided to invade and crush the insurgency as thoroughly as they could - but all the while, Nazi relations which another, larger region of Germany with a larger Jewish population remained stable, if strained, because that region was not committing terrorist attacks against the Nazis...
... then I think we would view Nazi Germany a little differently from the way it went in reality.

ETA:

Your chosen reply to the concept of starving, raping, and looting in war is "terrorism is sometimes necessary"?

Yes. All those things happen in war. Actually, you didn't mention raping at all, but that happens in war too, although it's usually more of a side consequence of the fact that soldiers aren't robots and you can never control them completely.
How do you think sieges are won?

[Strongpoint]

"I don't like when Nazi Germany razes cities, mass murders Jews, and employs slave labor."

"Why are you speaking in SLOGANS?"

Yes, if you respond to something unrelated with this you do speak in slogans. All of us do this sometimes. It is a big problem when it becomes the basis of any discussion.

I am disgusted by this war. I understand what war is less than people who experienced actual bombing but way more than most posters of this thread. For me, the fact that this war lasts half a year and is nowhere close to concluding is awful and depressing, an indication of how screwed the world is... It could end in weeks if the West and Arab countries would act differently.

For you... Well, I think it is a reason to celebrate that your ideological enemy, evil Israel, hasn't prevailed yet and HAMAS is still alive and kicking and indigenous Arabs are still valiantly resisting evil Jew colonists.



Western "Pro-Palestiners", give zero Fs about the people living in Palestine. They happily deny them basic rights like the right to flee as a refugee because "it will help Israeli ethnic cleansing". They make zero effort to do anything against corrupt Palestinian leaders who rob and exploit their people. They encourage Palestinians to wage their "ideologically correct"  war instead of seeking lasting peaceful solutions. They propagate an "innocent victim - demonic oppressor" scheme that leaves no chance of pulling Palestinians out of the hatred cycle. They happily forget about the appalling state of Women and LGBT rights of Palestinians because it is inconvenient...

The only vaguely pro-Palestinian thing "pro-Palestinians" do is pouring free stuff there, as if free stuff ever fixed major problems (especially if most of the free stuff is stolen by corrupt and\or violent elements). I think it is because that a part of pro-Palestinians get a share of this free stuff.

I'm starting to think the way to end most wars is to simply mandate that the actual soldiers from each side share a meal with each other and just, you know, get to know each other as people.

Beyond naive. You are forgetting that we live in the era of the Internet. Enemies can and do have a chat over there. It includes Palestinians and Israeli or Russians and Ukrainians.

[hector13]

Max forgets to mention that the Nazis in his hypothetical are also building settlements in lands claimed by the Jews, expanding them by confiscating land and resources from the Jews and fragmenting Jewish communities by building Nazi only roads, subjecting Jewish citizens to military law while the Nazis living among them live under Nazi civil law. All of this is in violation of international law - including the Geneva Convention - but the Nazis claim otherwise, even when the highest courts in Naziland also say they’re illegal.

Oh, Jews can also be arrested without charge, and without trial for six months, though that can be extended without a cap on the number of extensions… in private, without the presence of the suspect, who doesn’t have to be informed of why they’re being held at any point.

[McTraveller]

What does "the Internet" have to do with actually sitting down and actually talking to people, understanding that they are all people, that in reality really nobody is really that different from each other.

Consider two fathers, probably both just looking to make sure their kids are going to be OK, taught that the other guy is out to get them, when in reality they probably really are just like "wait, you're only 'trying to get me' because you think I'm 'trying to get you'?  No man, really I just want to go to work and make sure my kid ends up better than I do!"

The stuff about hate and "they are out to GET YOU" is really propaganda from the higher-ups, whipping people into a frenzy.  The Internet is a tool of propaganda, not a tool of Unity.

That said - now that things are already to the point of clashing swords, it's difficult (impossible?) to walk back.