I don't know that Israel is losing everywhere else. A lot depends on what will happen in the next year, its still possible for Israel to turn this around and create a better reality both for itself and for Gazans.
Israel took 2 major hits - one was the terrible loss of lives and the hostages situation on October 7th which traumatized and will continue to traumatize Israelis for many years to come.
The other is the diplomatic hit and Israel's image in the West which now seems to have stabilized in the current low its at.
Both of these are not terminal hits, depending a lot on what Israel chooses to do next and what will transpire.
Israel never had great alternatives after October 7th happened, it could have tried fighting more surgically perhaps but would have paid with this war lasting much longer and many more soldiers dying. Hamas is so entrenched above and under the ground in Gaza this doesn't really seem feasible. Or, Israel could have avoided going to war with Hamas altogether and tried to release the hostages with a deal by giving in to all of Hamas demands (after suffering a huge massacre). This is obviously a bad choice and would have only postponed this war a few months or years ahead since Hamas is bent on bringing Israel down by force. I can't imagine any other country on earth taking that option - should the U.S have negotiated with al qaeda after September 11th?
So long story short this is a complete mess but its very early to declare winners and losers.
> Or, Israel could have avoided going to war with Hamas altogether and tried to release the hostages with a deal by giving in to all of Hamas demands [...] can't imagine any other country on earth taking that option
I do wonder whether history backs up this statement. When I hear about hostages taken by terrorists in the news, most of the time, if they are released, and if I remember accurately, they are released via negotiations. I think I hear politicians talk about not negotiating with terrorists, but in reality I think hardly any nation has that as an actual policy, and do in fact negotiate the release of hostages. Even Israel falls into this camp.
I don’t think we have any examples in recent history of a country going on a genocidal rampage to free hostages. So I do in fact think that most—if not all—other countries would have indeed reacted in different ways here, and negotiated to free at least all the civilian hostages within a few months, and the military hostages over the next year, and I do think most—if not all—countries would have done so with exactly 0 civilian casualties.
You are ignoring the fact that Hamas wants to bring Israel down by force, it explicitly said it would repeat October 7th. So getting back the hostages is only a part of the problem, there is the issue of existential threat to Israel. And this is all speculation anyway, who knows if Hamas would have been willing to free all hostages - why would it, it could have kept humiliating Israel right after massacring its population and released only small numbers of the hostages.
As for examples from history - we have the allies bombing of Germany, the allied reaction to September 11th, Afghanistan etc. Almost no one considers any of them 'genocidal rampages' although they all left millions of dead, we save that rhetoric only for Israel.
There's simply no comparison between the Afghanistan occupation and what Israel is doing in its occupied territories.
Stupid and ultimately futile though the former mission was, the allied countries never thought they had a historical claim (or even any specific interest) in Afghanistan the way Israel covets (and certain factions within it openly proclaim their intent to fully displace the native population from) the West Bank and Gaza.
We save that rhetoric [accusations of genocide] only for Israel.
Plainly false, given the plethora of genocide rampages in recent decades.
And the extremely prominent media coverage of these situations, which cannot possibly have escaped your notice.
> Stupid and ultimately futile though the former mission was, the allied countries never thought they had a historical claim (or even any specific interest) in Afghanistan the way Israel covets (and certain factions within it openly proclaim their intent to fully displace the native population from) the West Bank and Gaza.
There's no much talk of historical claims on Gaza from Israelis besides very fringe groups who don't number a lot of people. Palestinians on the other hand are pretty much 100% united in their view that history necessitates they "free Palestine from the river to the sea", so if there are major historical claims they mostly come from the Palestinian side and their fans in the West and the Muslim world.
> Plainly false, given the plethora of genocide rampages in recent decades.
> And the extremely prominent media coverage of these situations, which cannot possibly have escaped your notice.
No not really, there was nothing resembling the circus around Israel not even close. Which ones do you mean were vastly talked about or protested against even with 1/100 the amount this does?
There's no much talk of historical claims on Gaza from Israelis besides very fringe groups who don't number a lot of people.
They're certainly quite obnoxious, these groups. But they can't be called "fringe" anymore, now that they've been made coalition partners in the 37th government (receiving very prominent cabinet positions to boot). Meanwhile Israel's expansionist claims on the West Bank have been the de-facto national consensus (and have been supported by every government to one degree or another) since the late 70s.
If there are major historical claims they mostly come from the Palestinian side
These aren't "claims" coming from their side as it has always been their land to begin with.
What is the complication in West Bank? It is under occupation by all means. And also under apartheid. Occupying West Bank completely might also be just fringe ideas, that are not worth paying attention to?
Is it the complication of Smotrich price-tagging Palestinians by creating as many illegal occupations as the number of countries recognising the Palestinian people's lives?
By saying its more complicated I meant to say that the settlements in the West Bank don't really have mainstream support in Israel as the parent comment suggested. There's a very powerful national religious minority that is able to keep them alive but that's more due to political deadlock than due to widespread support (I'm not arguing some support exists but its not huge, and Smotrich btw is expected not to make it into the next parliament because he's leaking tons of voters). Curiously, the most religious Israelis (the ultra orthodox) generally don't care about the settlements at all.
Now dismantling the settlements would be very hard now but that's much more due to a reluctance of most Israelis to see a Palestinian state in the West Bank due to fear for their security - not out of love for the settlements.
If conditions for peace ever arrive I don't think the majority of Israelis would have a problem to dismantle them (Israel already did dismantle quite a few settlements in the past, also in the West Bank). But yeah we'll cross the 'peace bridge' when we get there.
When it comes to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, 40% of the public say they help Israeli national security, while 35% say they hurt. An additional 21% think settlements don’t make much difference to the country’s security.
Plus there's the fact that the country, despite all its internal divisions, managed to put a certain Benjamin Netanyahu -- who has declared the expansion of the settlements to be a "top priority" -- in office 3 times (for some 17 years total so far). And all the mainstream society hate for Oslo and 2SS, and so on.
These are just a few of many obvious indicators. Of course many feel conflicted about the settlements, and only support them the perceived "security" advantages, and so on. But it's just not tenable to say that the settlements "don't really have mainstream support".
When by all indications, the imperative to support and maintain them has been national consensus for several decades now.
This is all on top of the fact that these settlements—even without expansion—are unambiguously breaking international law. Popular support against it—real or not—does not make this more complicated. A politician who does not support dismantling these settlements, return the land to Palestinians, and pay reparations, is obviously wrong. This describes almost all Israeli politicians, and is not fringe, nor complicated. The existence of politicians who go further only complicates matter in making things worse by providing a possibility for illegal policy not only maintained, but also expanded.
That said, I agree with you, I don’t believe this is only a fringe position that has no relevance on current or future policy which breaks international law.
That some Israelis believe the settlements help security makes much more sense considering what happened after Israel disengaged from Gaza and uprooted all settlements there - things became much much worse (both for Israel and for Gaza) as I think we all can agree.
Another thing is that Israel is in the middle of a horrible war so the public mood for obvious reasons goes much more to the right. If you ask the Palestinian public questions about peace prospects you wouldn't hear a lot of great things either.
If push came to shove most Israelis wouldn't care at all if settlements are uprooted again just like Israel did in Gaza, the only Israelis out protesting last time Israel took out settlements were religious Zionists: determined, loud, sometimes violent but definitely not mainstream. No one else cared much.
Even the pew numbers you are showing tell that even now the settlements at the very least are controversial in Israel and definitely not mainstream (no majority is saying they help security).
That some Israelis believe the settlements help security only makes sense in the same way white Rhodesians believed counter insurgency made them safe[1]. The settlements are unambiguously illegal and they do infringe on civil rights of Palestinians. There is nothing complicated here. The Israelis that believe this are just wrong, and probably racist, and they have no rights to these wrong beliefs to be entered as policy.
Relevant here is what actually gets enacted as a policy and at what time. The Israeli government knows full well that these settlements are illegal, that they are morally wrong, and that they strip Palestinians of their civil rights, but they keep it as policy to maintain and expend them anyway. With that knowledge we can assume they don’t care about Palestinian civil rights. And as long as the Israeli electorate doesn’t see this as a deal breaker—which demonstrably, they don’t—we can (and honestly should) assume similar policies in Gaza. At the very least we should belief elected official when they claim they want to violate human rights of Palestinians. Especially now as they have demonstrated they are both willing and capable of committing a genocide.
> That some Israelis believe the settlements help security only makes sense in the same way white Rhodesians believed counter insurgency made them safe[1]
I have no idea what happened in Rhodesia and I don't think yet another comparison (let me guess - it makes Israel look bad right?) is helpful.
The reality is the last disengagement from Gaza went absolutely horribly. Palestinians should also have a big burden to prove they can handle Israel disengaging - so far they absolutely haven't - in Gaza they've been using all their money and energy to try create armies and infrastructure to bring Israel down. We should also believe them when they're saying October 7th was just the start and that "from the river to the sea" Palestine is theirs - this is not some "far right" Palestinian talking point but pretty much a unanimous Palestinian position.
I'm not going to engage your genocide allegation, you're free to believe what you want and we're not going to change each other's minds on this.
No worries. We all learn bit by bit. But I think you could have a look at it. Many of the security beliefs that you shared above related to Israel are not new, but like all the others they are wrong, and dehumanising. Those so called security issues were backbone of violent colonisation and Genocides. Americas, Africa and Asia alike.
The notion that the rest are savages, who can't govern for their interest and we must do it for them, is not new, and is inhuman and wrong. And it is not even new to Zionism, which after all, has unfolded to be a pretty sophisticated colonisation process.
BTW, Israel never fully disengaged from Gaza, you can look up on Gaza Freedom Floatilla raid. Those are not the actions of a disengaged regime, but a colonialist entity doing crimes in the name of security. And although they are now separated by occupation, Gaza and West Bank are not different people. One can't continue to occupy one region, storm their holy sites, while repressing other region to be a an open air prison, and say that we have disengaged.
By saying its more complicated I meant to say that the settlements in the West Bank don't really have mainstream support in Israel as the parent comment suggested.
No "mainstream support"?
It's run as an administrative area of the State of Israel, "administered by the Israel Defense Forces Central Command, and military law is applied":
I meant there are no real intentions to settle Gaza with settlers, not in government or civil society.
In front of an impassioned audience of thousands of right-wing activists, 11 government ministers and 15 coalition lawmakers pledged Sunday night to rebuild Jewish Israeli settlements in the heart of the Gaza Strip, with some also encouraging the emigration of the Palestinian population after the war with Hamas is over.
Speaking amid a carnival-like atmosphere at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party, extolled the virtues of creating new settlements, declaring: “God willing, we will settle and we will be victorious.”
The allied bombing campaign and the US war on terror are hardly patterns in history (and neither were responses to hostages). A much more common pattern is what we saw e.g. after the Madrid train bombings in 2004, or the recent Moscow concert hall attack, where there is increased police presence and perhaps domestic political persecution of some groups by the police and with discriminatory laws. Nothing close to a genocidal rampage.
There are plenty of terror groups which the rulers of plenty of countries say are existential threats to those countries, some of them even take hostages, Israel alone responds to those attacks with genocidal rampage.
I think the closest behavior to Israel here is ironically Turkey who engages in brutal military campaign against Kurdish communities on a regular basis. But those reactions don’t come anywhere close in scope as the Gaza genocide.
EDIT: And just to flip the narrative here a little bit. The terror attacks by Hamas is actually something we see quite often in history. Occupied peoples usually resist, and if political means of resistance is not available, they almost always use violent and armed forms of resistance. You want to make the case that Israel’s behavior is to be expected. I don’t believe that, but if you do that, you should also apply the same logic to Palestinian resistance.
> There are plenty of terror groups which the rulers of plenty of countries say are existential threats to those countries, some of them even take hostages, Israel alone responds to those attacks with genocidal rampage.
Such as ? When the U.S felt it was under existental threat it definitely responded.
The Madrid/London attacks don't resemble at all the situation between Hamas and Israel - even if Spain wanted to go to war against the terrorists - where would the war happen? Who would they attack?
Hamas is right on the border, hell bent on recreating October 7th again and again (their words). And its not just their words Hamas has built an entire army with whatever means they could find, and had fired rockets on Israel repeatedly throughout the years. Madrid and London was one or more sophoisticated terror cell, without knowing what happened there in detail I find it hard to believe it was more than a hundred people involved. Hamas has/had tens of thousands of members, rpgs, explosives, tunnels and tens of thousands of rockets (low quality, but still).
Not to mention the fact Israel was immediately attacked by Hezbollah and later on Iran. This comparison to Spain or the UK is simply silly. You simply choose to view Israel as uniquely evil due to your political ideology/own biases and thought processes.
Israel is now in a similar position to South Africa in the '80's for a considerable population of the world. Defending actions that others find indefensible. Enshrining societal culture and positions that for most is extermely unpalatable, at best.
I don't see how Israel come back from it's current position, even with U.S. backing. Deliberately killing and maiming children and the vulnerable in the many thousands is not something that a lot of people can overlook, regardless of what type of context is provided.
You are right few societal/cultural choices are irreversible, the case of South Africa being a case in point. They are just extremely rare to occur. I do think you miscategorise those that have misgivings. The US and Israel are very isolated currently.
The challenge for Israel is that there appears to be few limits on what they are prepared to do. Putting aside more recent examples, the decades long encouragement of settlements and displacement of the Arab population and accompanying violence is something I'm not sure how Israel reverses.
I'm not sure most, or even many, people see Israel as the root of all evil. Where does that perception come from? Unfortunately the actions Israel is involved in now most would classify as evil and deliberately so. Rightly, or wrongly they are perceived to have the backing of the majority of the population, which is what makes me think that Israel is not going to fully recover from this period, unless of course they can change course in a similar way to South Africa.
> I'm not sure most, or even many, people see Israel as the root of all evil. Where does that perception come from?
I think there is a huge proportion of Muslims world wide who believe this is the case and also a pretty sizable amount of left wing (especially 'Woke') people in the West. Unfortunately some of these people don't even make a full distinction between Israelis and Jews, so it became bad news to Jews everywhere. I can go on and give a bunch of news stories and anecdotes (your own comment - the words you choose to use btw kind of reinforces my theory) but I don't think anything I write here will change your mind.
Lasting peace would require some changes in Israeli Regime and military doctrine.