> Hence, it is clear that under some circumstances, the moral obligations of soldiers would reduce to that of police (when the opposing beligerent force is nearly eliminated). The degree to which this is the case depends on the tactical state of play, which is unclear (and likely to remain so).
This is clearly not the case - the IDF is still actively fighting Hamas militants, Hamas is still firing rockets at Israel, IDF soldiers are getting killed every day, etc. Not to mention, the population itself is not fully cooperating with the IDF, I believe.
For contrast, Israel has ordered many Israelis to leave areas for their own protection, I believe around 100-150k Israelis have evacuated their homes. No one is talking about them being "ethnically cleansed", and whil there is internal political pressure to help them, no one thinks it's immoral that they were asked to relocate. Clearly the situation in Gaza is different, because many people are outraged that Gazans were similarly asked to evacuate their cities for their own protection.
> I have to say that it's also unclear to me personally whether the current rate of civilian deaths could be justified under any circumstances. Since Israel has not stated what it wants the end-goal of the war to be, we don't know how it could justify it either.
Israel has stated it wants the hostages returned, and Hamas destroyed. Whether this is achievable, or what exactly counts as "Hamas being destroyed", are open questions, but not impossible to answer. (And frustrating as it is, it makes sense that Israel doesn't want to publicize its exact goals.)
Regarding the rate of civilian deaths - this if of course hard to exactly know, given the incentive of both sides to manipulate numbers. I trust the Israeli side far more, and I think everyone should given that the other side is Hamas, but I'm also obviously biased.
That said, the IDF has said it thinks it's killing 2 civilians per 1 Hamas fighter. This is a ratio that, as far as I know, is roughly in line with other conflicts by Western countries. The rate itself is fairly high but it's likely to be far shorter and lead to orders of magnitude less killed than in other conflicts.
I do want to mention that, while I talk about these numbers as statistics, every civilian death is a tragedy. Hell, every death is a tragedy - if Israel could manage to not kill any militants, it would be morally better, because every death is a tragedy.
> That said, the IDF has said it thinks it's killing 2 civilians per 1 Hamas fighter. This is a ratio that, as far as I know, is roughly in line with other conflicts by Western countries. The rate itself is fairly high but it's likely to be far shorter and lead to orders of magnitude less killed than in other conflicts.
The idea that this war is winnable seams incredibly naive. The idea that hitting hard now prevents future conflicts is an untested hypothesis at best.
Are there any examples of a war where an entrenched gorilla group with broad civilian support have been successfully "defeated"?
You can't compare what was essentially conventional warfare between states of vastly similar military capabilities and a fight between a gorilla force and a conventional military.
I don't think an organisation which is internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation are a government in any real sense of the word.
I mean, I'm not sure why you think that. Gaza is governed by Hamas, though not very well, obviously. Israel left Gaza and doesn't (until now) didn't have forces in there, Hamas acted in all respects like a government.
I'm not sure what distinction you're making here. More importantly, I'm not sure why you think that makes the war unwinnable. Presumably there is a scenario in which Hamas surrenders, and if not, that Hamas are slowly all taken out. This is a pretty awful scenario, and would probably involve Israel having to govern Gaza for a while, but it is something that can happen.
There's a chance it won't because Hamas doesn't really care about anyone, including its own populace.
Because it has neither the means not the ability to act as a government. They are restricted in their ability to build structures, import or export goods, ability to import fuel, even taxes are collected by Israel on their behalf (and sometimes withheld, delayed or used to unilateral settle debts).
The distinction is that militaries typically fight wars on battle fields, even the current Russia / Ukraine war looks like this with battle lines being pushed this way and that way as one side advances or retreats.
There is nothing like that in Gaza. The difference between a Hamas militant and a civilian is simply whether they are currently holding their AK-47.
The more civilians are killed the more angry young men are drawn to the cause. Short of flattening the whole area and killing everyone I don't see an end.
It is much more aptly compared to the battles against Al-Qaida, ISIS or the Vietcong than the Nazis.
I think we mostly agree on this, and there's a reason the mantra "Hamas=ISIS" was so common.
Two points we disagree on:
> The difference between a Hamas militant and a civilian is simply whether they are currently holding their AK-47.
That's true in terms of what they seem like visually (which is maybe what you meant). Not true in the sense that most Gazans are not members of Hamas.
That does make it a lot harder to know who is Hamas and who isn't, but it's still possible (maybe) to effectively take out Hamas by capturing/killing all the known leaders, anyone who is actively holding hostages, anyone in tunnels, etc. I don't think Israel would need to kill literally every Hamas militant, nor should it.
> The more civilians are killed the more angry young men are drawn to the cause. Short of flattening the whole area and killing everyone I don't see an end.
I hope you're wrong, for everyone's sake.
But it really is true that the US killed a lot of Germans and Japanese, and now the Germans and Japanese are allies. It's not automatic that everyone will turn to violence. Also, if there is no organizational structure around it, then "angry young men that turned to violence" don't actually have anything to do with their anger.
> That's true in terms of what they seem like visually (which is maybe what you meant). Not true in the sense that most Gazans are not members of Hamas.
Yes, sorry I didn't mean to imply that everyone is Gaza is a member of Hamas. That's clearly not true. But visually they are indistinguishable, or could very easily become so.
That said, I do suspect that these organisations are much more fluid than the binary distinction we're prone to make in the west.
I was thinking about what the process was after the second world war by which people normalised relations with the German people. Unfortunately my amateur conclusion was that we just created new enemies to redirect the anger.
This is clearly not the case - the IDF is still actively fighting Hamas militants, Hamas is still firing rockets at Israel, IDF soldiers are getting killed every day, etc. Not to mention, the population itself is not fully cooperating with the IDF, I believe.
For contrast, Israel has ordered many Israelis to leave areas for their own protection, I believe around 100-150k Israelis have evacuated their homes. No one is talking about them being "ethnically cleansed", and whil there is internal political pressure to help them, no one thinks it's immoral that they were asked to relocate. Clearly the situation in Gaza is different, because many people are outraged that Gazans were similarly asked to evacuate their cities for their own protection.
> I have to say that it's also unclear to me personally whether the current rate of civilian deaths could be justified under any circumstances. Since Israel has not stated what it wants the end-goal of the war to be, we don't know how it could justify it either.
Israel has stated it wants the hostages returned, and Hamas destroyed. Whether this is achievable, or what exactly counts as "Hamas being destroyed", are open questions, but not impossible to answer. (And frustrating as it is, it makes sense that Israel doesn't want to publicize its exact goals.)
Regarding the rate of civilian deaths - this if of course hard to exactly know, given the incentive of both sides to manipulate numbers. I trust the Israeli side far more, and I think everyone should given that the other side is Hamas, but I'm also obviously biased.
That said, the IDF has said it thinks it's killing 2 civilians per 1 Hamas fighter. This is a ratio that, as far as I know, is roughly in line with other conflicts by Western countries. The rate itself is fairly high but it's likely to be far shorter and lead to orders of magnitude less killed than in other conflicts.
I do want to mention that, while I talk about these numbers as statistics, every civilian death is a tragedy. Hell, every death is a tragedy - if Israel could manage to not kill any militants, it would be morally better, because every death is a tragedy.