The most relevant comparison seems to be with the Russians. Russia has no credibility in the West and Israel is rapidly losing any they had, at least with younger people. My general impression is of a Russian-level intensity of destruction, too.
But perhaps these impressions are wrong. I would normally assume the Israelis aren’t complete idiots. I’d like to read a “steelman” case for this military campaign, if anyone knows of one. Why are these impressions misleading? What’s really going on?
(Yes, a major difference is that this is a counter-attack, but beyond that?)
I'm at a loss of words. What kind of explanation are you missing?
However, as we saw after 9/11, that doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever war a government proposes is a good idea. A counter-attack could still be foolish or unnecessarily brutal (as it seems to be). It might still result in a strategic failure.
The kind of explanation I’d be interested in would be why the way Israel is prosecuting this war is something the US (and other countries) should support.
(Your comment is about what Hamas did, and that’s a different sort of thing than a justification for what the Israel military is doing.)
But invading Afghanistan to capture/kill the al Qaeda organization, to prevent another 9/11? It is widely understood that the US was in the moral right and on the right side of international norms for its policy actions in 2001-2002.
If one accepts that, then how is what Israel is doing in Gaza any different?
You do make a utilitarian justification with your claim that attacking al Qaeda helped to prevent another 9/11 attack. I haven’t studied it enough to know whether it did that. There have been similar terrorist movements since then. Perhaps increases in airline security did more against that particular attack?
Also, al Qaeda was hiding in the mountains, not under a city. The consequences for civilians are different enough that I don’t think it’s a fair analogy.
For historical background about changing attitudes towards civilian casualties, Bret Devereaux’s latest post [1] seems pretty good.
[1] https://acoup.blog/2023/12/08/fireside-friday-december-8-202...
On October 7th Hamas killed or captured ~1400 Israelis in an indiscriminate and violent cross-border attack, then unleashed a barrage of rockets on Israeli cities. Many failed, and the iron dome intercepted most of those that got through, but not all, and at great cost.
This was an active state of war, started by Hamas, not Israel. Hamas uses the people of Gaza as disposable human shields. These militants will use every unfair trick to gain advantage and kill more Israelis. They have consistently violated cease fires in the past, and turned humanitarian aid into instruments of war (the rockets, for example, are built using water pipes provided by European countries for the Gazan people).
Evil regimes that treat their own people as disposable need to be gotten rid of, and are unwilling to negotiate in good faith for a settlement. War is really the only viable option here, and the IDF tactics have been chosen to make this war as quick as possible, for a variety of reasons including the safety of the populace.