yes, point made. man, i feel like my hands were caught in the cookie jar. you just killed me with kindness. with brevity now: there is very little evidence to support the notion that Hamas have been in any way effective in waging a "war" since early 2014. that means that after the IDF "Won" (and this did not take long after Oct 7th) they spent close to two years bombarding gaza and flattening it, which by all accounts is collective punishment. i dont need to read Reuters, the BBC or Al Jazeera to support this notion, but I do. You yourself have said in past as have others here - i.e. that there is nothing wrong with collective punishment, and you are a reasonable person. therefore if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and all the other animals in the zoo tell me its a duck, then its a duck. when people go around reinforcing the notion of barbarians, hamapalastinians, no food water or electricity, and worse, then I will accept these comments at face value, AFTER i have verified them, from chatgpt.
finally my argument remains: by doing this, it is not a big deal for israel at face value. the world does not really care about gaza or the west bank, but this is creating the possibility of a mistake by Israel, that would hurt Israel alot. what that mistake is i dont know, but when you treat an entire population like this, for decades, the risk of incidents like Oct 7th, will increase. and Oct 7th was a symptom, not the MISTAKE that i fear may happen. If a mistake comes along, there really wont be much to say about it, noting cause and effect. regrettably.
I’ll address the two main points you’ve presented:
The first, Hamas not being effective in waging war and Israel collective punishment to the Gazans. I’ll like to remind everyone that Israel has been subjected to bombardments by Hamas for years. People in this thread belittled it, belittle Hamas’s capabilities ands that’s a mistake. From security logic, if your neighbour actively declares that he’ll like to murder you (from whatever justified reason it may be) you shouldn’t wait for him to do it. You don’t wait for him to buy a gun and you don’t belittle his capabilities of executing it with a knife.
We should not belittle anyone capabilities.
Another reason for continuing the military campaign after Hamas’s capabilities went down the drain, is that Hamas controls Gaza. Hamas therefore must lose and at least not be a winner. It’s a dangerous situation if Hamas will be able to present itself as a winner.
The second part of your post about Oct.7 and the possibility of Israel to see similar events in the future -
That’s absolutely correct.
I have no solution. But who knows, Germany and England fought for hundred of years. Maybe, some day..