[Tainari88]

But all the rhetoric so far has been about deterrence, which as you say is actually irrelevant in this situation (for both sides). The public discourse is therefore nonsensical.

Hamas knew Netanyahu was not Rabin. So they knew what was coming. They did it anyway.

Deterrence was never the point.

[wat0n]

Unless the one that was undeterred wasn't Hamas but one of its patrons. Hamas may have as well decided gambling on an Israeli response was better than losing the financial support it needs to keep functioning as a political and military force.

The possible explanations I mentioned earlier are consistent with deterrence theory.

[Tainari88]

Unless the one that was undeterred wasn't Hamas but one of its patrons. Hamas may have as well decided gambling on an Israeli response was better than losing the financial support it needs to keep functioning as a political and military force.

The possible explanations I mentioned earlier are consistent with deterrence theory.

It is not hard to figure out extremist groups and their agendas.

Extremist groups are always the result of ineffective policies implemented by bad leaders who never deal with reality and pragmatic and humane solutions to conflict. They want to win and do not care who is hurt in the process. Usually it has to do with egos and greed or egos about power and having absolute control.

They never learn that absolute anything in the world is rare. Too many unpredictable elements.

What are world empires? World empires are nation states, monarchies, or any other organized political and social government that wants empire. They want expansion and they want control. Mostly in places that do not belong to them or they do not directly control.

So they need to come up with lies of why the invasion or aggression is necessary. For the greatness of the Ottomon Empire, the Roman Empire, the x or y Empire. Got to invade. Got to kill, maim and destroy, pillage and ruin.

For my King, my ruler, my flag, in the USA's case they talk a bunch of shit about bringing democracy to the cavemen and the inferior or the dummies and civilizing the savages. It is all bullshit. They are there to enrich a bunch of greedy bankers, businessmen and investors. The Bush family had close ties with the Saudis due to the Bush family's ties to the oil business in Texas among other investments.

The 9/11 families wanted to sue directly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for damages to their families via dead husbands, fathers, mothers, relatives, etc. The US government BLOCKED it. Until recently. The fight was very long and hard.

The attorneys fighting for the 9/11 families basically said that the US government cared more about their profits with the Saudi connections than they did about justice for their own citizens.

Is it shocking? No. They are siding with $$$ and dirtball people. Dirtball autocratic governments with enormous human rights violations on every level.

They do not care. The profits are flowing in.

Yet, here you sit talking about how freedom, and democracy....they are all fabrications and lies and smokescreens to hide the fact that someone is making money from conflict, and from injustice and that soldiers die, civvies die to pay for that blood money and ambitions that have to do with the powerful in many nations.

The USA is really bad in that sense. They claim to be the beacon of democracy and so on and the example to follow to other nations. They are hypocritical pieces of lying shit.

The Saudis never claimed to be a democracy or be liberal or anything. They just are autocratic authoritarian freaks with a bunch of extremist theocratic violent Saudis like Osama and others who are a product of that mentality. Theocratic and they hate all that liberalism in the Western world. But worse than that they hate how HYPOCRITICAL they are. Wanting Saudi oil and wanting to control an entire region from afar and interfere and dictate without any real understanding or respect for the entire interactions of that region.

No one respect liars and hypocrites. They win no one's respect.

[Politics_Observer]

@Potemkin @Wellsy

You also have to consider that if Israel doesn't respond to the Hamas attacks with severe punishment and it certainly does warrant severe punishment in return towards Hamas, then other Arab countries and Iran or Hezbollah will think "Hey! Israel is an easy target now! They won't fight back and will just take it! We can just go over to Israel and steal their lunch money and not pay a price or high price for doing so! Look at the fact they didn't respond severely to Hamas!" So, you know, Israel's response is not just only for Hamas. It's also for Arab countries and other terrorist organizations to take note and think twice about attacking Israel or they too will pay a severe price in return for doing so. Israel also has to demonstrate they are willing to take heavy casualties in protecting their citizens and will inflict an unacceptable high cost on anybody who attacks their citizens.

Even though Hamas wasn't deterred, much like Al-Queda wasn't deterred in attacking the United States (and Al-Queda attacked the US because they thought they could get away with it without paying a high price in return as Bin Laden cited he believed he wouldn't pay a high price for launching a terrorist attack on the US and hence why did it), Israel still needs to respond severely to ensure that others are in fact deterred. Lastly, I doubt Israel will ever completely destroy Hamas, but they can certainly severely punish them and severely degrade any capabilities they might have to make them irrelevant.

So, it's very foolish to discard deterrence theory and you do so at your own peril if you do as you will no longer be able to offer security to your people. For example, if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, I seriously doubt that Russia would have invaded Ukraine in 2014 or 2022. But Ukraine didn't have them, so Russia believed they wouldn't pay an unacceptably high price to themselves by invading Ukraine. You don't see Russia attacking other nuclear powers because of that potential for the use of nuclear weapons and causing unacceptably high costs in return for attacking those nuclear powers.

Israel shouldn't worry or care about earning anybody's respect because you can't control what others think. What they should worry about is establishing credible deterrence in the eyes of their enemeies as demonstrated through their actions and put people on notice that it just doesn't pay to attack Israeli citizens and that it indeed, will not serve your own interests for doing so. Israel shouldn't worry about winning any sort of popularity contests and simply focus on doing what they must to ensure the safety of their citizens. Who cares what other people think? Just worry about what you got to do to keep your citizens safe and don't worry about winning approval from others.