How Hot is Israel Gonna Get?

[sburke]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Oh this is a good one.  As this thing unfolds over the news stream I have been asking myself the exact same question:  What is the Hamas strategy here?

So overall with regard to this war, I think I can see what Hamas is doing but I am still not sure "why".

Gawd, where to start.

To try and understand the Palestinians perspective (not Hamas but rather the general population) - They have no true friends or allies.
The Arab gov'ts would mostly prefer they just go away as it is an embarrassment that they are unable to do anything about (nor really care to I suspect).
Their own political leadership has always been too corrupt and unable to effectively offer a path to anything.
They have no legal recourse to defend their homes and lands.  Even when the Israeli supreme court backs them, the settler community just ignores the rulings.  They seize land and homes illegally until eventually they get recognized- rinse and repeat.
This is their reality.  They feel they have no recourse, no local body they can go to for justice and no international community that will do more than just try and alleviate some of the suffering in the camps.

All this creates a problem in that with no alternatives there are those that seek only to strike out - to inflict pain.  In one sided conflicts like this it always seems to be the worst that rise into positions of influence.  Back in the late 70s I was involved in different campaigns to support the movements in Southern Africa.  At the time right and wrong seemed so clearly defined with little gray area.  Turned out when ZANU took power in Zimbabwe, they were basically no different than some of the Palestinian leadership, corrupt, power hungry, uncaring for their own populace and only concerned with maintaining their own privilege.  ANC is not much better.  In Angola I saw first-hand living conditions in Luanda during a company trip.  Girls barely in their teens working as prostitutes outside the main hotels while the dos Santos family raked in money from a country rich in natural resources.

As to recent events, I suspect Hamas did not expect to find the IDF so exposed.  They had no military strategy so I wouldn't spend a lot of effort looking for one.  It was/is violence for violence sake. In their view they achieved their goal.  The death of so many of their own countrymen isn't part of their equation, just more "martyrs". In their view, what have they lost?  Even assuming Israel goes so far as to occupy Gaza, it isn't like they will eliminate Hamas or Islamic Jihad or whatever the flavor of the month group ends up being.  Israel has already seen signs of the spread of autonomous groupings in the west bank.  Granted these groups are capable of only small, disjointed actions, they are however also harder to track.  So the violence continues.

Somehow the Palestinians and Israelis need to come to some kind of agreement and a political structure that can actually address the needs of both.  That requires both sides to recognize and support the aspirations of the other.  I've done enough acid at Dead shows and even I don't see that happening anytime soon.

[The_Capt]

50 minutes ago, sburke said:

As to recent events, I suspect Hamas did not expect to find the IDF so exposed.  They had no military strategy so I wouldn't spend a lot of effort looking for one.  It was/is violence for violence sake. In their view they achieved their goal.  The death of so many of their own countrymen isn't part of their equation, just more "martyrs". In their view, what have they lost?  Even assuming Israel goes so far as to occupy Gaza, it isn't like they will eliminate Hamas or Islamic Jihad or whatever the flavor of the month group ends up being.  Israel has already seen signs of the spread of autonomous groupings in the west bank.  Granted these groups are capable of only small, disjointed actions, they are however also harder to track.  So the violence continues.

Well they are outside the conventional definitions of war then.  If this is just a game of "let's see how many Israelis we can kill", that is not a political objective.  I think an Israeli occupation of Gaza is definitely in the cards - the whole damned thing is starting to look like a ghetto cleaning.  If the objective was "Death to Israel" this was a really strange way to go about it.

It is a case study in all war being personal. 

[sburke]

13 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well they are outside the conventional definitions of war then.  If this is just a game of "let's see how many Israelis we can kill", that is not a political objective.  I think an Israeli occupation of Gaza is definitely in the cards - the whole damned thing is starting to look like a ghetto cleaning.  If the objective was "Death to Israel" this was a really strange way to go about it.

It is a case study in all war being personal. 

yeah, there is nothing conventional about this.  I don't think we even have another example to go by for a roadmap. 

[Centurian52]

7 minutes ago, sburke said:

I don't think we even have another example to go by for a roadmap. 

Not in the history of warfare, no. At least not that I can think of on short notice. But if you look at more minor forms of human on human killing, there is an example that actually fits pretty well. Terrorist attacks.

And I hate that I'm going there. I'm usually the first to point out that our fear of terrorism has been blown way out of proportion to the threat it actually poses. But the motivational pattern fits perfectly. Terrorist attacks are conducted without any realistic hope of achieving any tangible political objective. They are conducted by angry people who don't see any way of having their grievances addressed, just lashing out and trying to kill as many people as possible. In that respect the October 7th attacks look a lot more like a really big terrorist attack than like a military operation with a definable political objective.

[Probus]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I think an Israeli occupation of Gaza is definitely in the cards - the whole damned thing is starting to look like a ghetto cleaning.

Gaza is and has been a quagmire.  Nobody (except maybe the Houthis) wants any part of it.  There is no good solution that will make everyone happy.  

Yes.  A Ghetto cleaning in which the occupants of the Ghetto were asked to go South or suffer the same fate as the terrorists.  But even going south is just a delay because Hamas is there also.  I know Israel will push into southern Gaza at some point.  Maybe they can then allow the occupants/refugees of S. Gaza back into N. Gaza using some kind of military checkpoints cleansing (as best you can) Hamas from the population.  Then start rebuilding Gaza from the ground up like the USA did Japan?  Maybe?  I'm not sure that would work either but Israel has to do something to protect themselves.

This conflict will be hard to simulate without tunnels and a number of other features.  IEDs and drones just to name a few.

[Probus]

Sounds like the ceasefire is over.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67589259.amp

Edited December 1, 2023 by Probus

[Erwin]

On 11/29/2023 at 3:29 PM, Centurian52 said:

Terrorist attacks are conducted without any realistic hope of achieving any tangible political objective.

Disagree there.  One could argue that all attacks in Afghanistan were terroristic, but it got the US out (eventually).  Ditto the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing) was part of the effort to create Israel and get the Brits out.

[Centurian52]

15 hours ago, Erwin said:

Disagree there.  One could argue that all attacks in Afghanistan were terroristic

One could argue that, I but think they'd be wrong. We called everyone who fought against us in Iraq and Afghanistan terrorists because it was fashionable at the time to call everyone we didn't like terrorists. Not because it actually made any sense to characterize their actions as terrorism. For the most part, when they were targeting US or coalition forces, I think it would be far more accurate, and far more consistent with how we treat pre-21st century wars, to characterize them as guerrilla fighters.

[The_Capt]

35 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

One could argue that, I but think they'd be wrong. We called everyone who fought against us in Iraq and Afghanistan terrorists because it was fashionable at the time to call everyone we didn't like terrorists. Not because it actually made any sense to characterize their actions as terrorism. For the most part, when they were targeting US or coalition forces, I think it would be far more accurate, and far more consistent with how we treat pre-21st century wars, to characterize them as guerrilla fighters.

I think the Viet Cong probably provide a better counter-point.  Terrorism normally has political objectives, the disconnect occurs on the relative term of "realistic".  Terrorism can often be non-linear in nature - ends way, and means tend to blur until options emerge.  As such a whole lot of relative rationality is at play.  It is incorrect, and dangerous to label all terrorist as blood-thirsty revenge seeking monsters - that was a narrative from the GWOT days. It came about because "we do not negotiate" etc.

The reality is that terrorism, is a tactic of violent extremism and asymmetric warfare (among other labels) and almost always has some sort of political objectives, they can just be hard to see or understand from the outside:

- OBL - Caliphate 2.0 (with him at the top no doubt).  Terrorism was a way to get the US into a grinding ground war in Asia that would break it a la Vietnam.  It was an inductive action to garner a response.

- ISIL - Armageddon 2.0.  A real mish-mash in this crew but they were looking for some sort of decisive battle that would trigger the Second Coming.  Can't negotiate with that so we killed them.

- White Supremacy - Looking for the inverse John Brown moment that would spark a race-based civil war in the USA (the oldies never go out of style)

You can go through the long list back to the Zealots, thru Order of Assassins, Religion based, Anarchists, the -isms and now whatever the hell all this is.  All of it is about weaker opponents trying to induce a larger one to make mistakes, or somehow garner support to the point they can take it to the next level of Revolution.  Rarely works but we can't seem to shake the idea.

What should be bothering Hamas is that all of the terrorism wins had an external state backer(s) that provide safe haven and support.  History is not kind to terrorist/VOEs who are in relative isolation.

[Probus]

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/israel-gaza-situation-report-ceasefire-ends

[Erwin]

3 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

One could argue that, I but think they'd be wrong. We called everyone who fought against us in Iraq and Afghanistan terrorists because it was fashionable at the time to call everyone we didn't like terrorists. Not because it actually made any sense to characterize their actions as terrorism. For the most part, when they were targeting US or coalition forces, I think it would be far more accurate, and far more consistent with how we treat pre-21st century wars, to characterize them as guerrilla fighters.

Fair comment...  "Guerrilla warfare is violent action taken within the normally accepted rules and procedures of international diplomacy and laws of war. In contrast, the violence in terrorism is directed mainly against civilian targets, and the terrorist's goal is publicity."

But, another example closer to home is the terrorist actions of the colonies vs the British in 1776-83.  To the Brits the revolutionaries were terrorists - until they got big and organized enuff to be recognized as an official army.  It's a question of which side of the table one is on.  One's side's "terrorists" is the other side's "freedom fighters". 

The process of legitimization appears to be:  Once a terrorist "organization" gets big and strong enuff it can become reclassified as a "guerrilla" conflict.  Once it gets more recognition (esp internationally) the conflict can become recognized as an "Insurgency".  If it continues to win and gain support, it becomes an "official" army.  It's rather like how a cult, once it gets enough members, money and power, can evolve into an accepted "religion".  

https://books.openedition.org/pulm/15688?lang=en

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/problem-definition-guerrilla-terrorist-political-transnational

The only statement I was disagreeing about was that terrorism has "no realistic hope of achieving a political objective".  I get the impression that when terrorism succeeds and they become a legitimate new political power or even a government, we witness the phenomenon of history being swiftly rewritten to ignore/eliminate the terroristic genesis and make it appear as if the struggle was always legitimate and fair.

[Splinty]

On 12/2/2023 at 12:10 PM, Centurian52 said:

One could argue that, I but think they'd be wrong. We called everyone who fought against us in Iraq and Afghanistan terrorists because it was fashionable at the time to call everyone we didn't like terrorists. Not because it actually made any sense to characterize their actions as terrorism. For the most part, when they were targeting US or coalition forces, I think it would be far more accurate, and far more consistent with how we treat pre-21st century wars, to characterize them as guerrilla fighters.

Actually the same people who were attacking us in Iraq, were also blowing up gas stations full of civilians lined up waiting for gas, shooting up crowds of students waiting to sign up for school, and/or blowing up busloads of people heading out on a pilgrimage or the Hajj. So although they might be guerillas when they attacked Coalition forces. They were terrorists in every other sense of the word.

[Anthony P.]

Guerillas/insurgents can (and frequently do) commit acts of terrorism, without necessarily becoming classed as terrorists. Much of what the Viet Cong resorted to was unabashed acts of terrorism, but they were and are still overwhelmingly considered guerrilla.

The distinction between guerrilla/insurgent and terrorist is typically a question of perspective/political bias as there exists no commonly agreed upon definition to tell one apart from the other.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Anthony P.

[Bulletpoint]

4 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

Guerillas/insurgents can (and frequently do) commit acts of terrorism, without necessarily becoming classed as terrorists. Much of what the Viet Cong resorted to was unabashed acts of terrorism, but they were and are still overwhelmingly considered guerrilla.

The distinction between guerrilla/insurgent and terrorist is typically a question of perspective/political bias as there exists no commonly agreed upon definition to tell one apart from the other.

It is one of the most often misused words, but I still think this definition holds true:

Terrorism is violence directed against random civilians in order to promote a religious or political cause.

[Centurian52]

6 hours ago, Splinty said:

Actually the same people who were attacking us in Iraq, were also blowing up gas stations full of civilians lined up waiting for gas, shooting up crowds of students waiting to sign up for school, and/or blowing up busloads of people heading out on a pilgrimage or the Hajj. So although they might be guerillas when they attacked Coalition forces. They were terrorists in every other sense of the word.

Fair enough. If they hadn't been attacking civilians as well then I wouldn't have had to qualify my statement with "when they were targeting US or coalition forces". But I still think my assertion that "terrorist attacks are conducted without any realistic hope of achieving any tangible political objective" holds up. I think our eventual decision to leave Afghanistan came despite, rather than because of, Taliban attacks against Afghan civilians. If they never attacked US or Coalition forces, there would have been no pressure for us to leave (and apparently we are still maintaining some personnel in Iraq, so militant attacks on civilians in Iraq have been especially ineffective at getting us to leave). As far as I know, no person or non-governmental organization has ever achieved a tangible political objective by killing civilians*.

*I had to specify non-governmental organizations because obviously governments have sometimes achieved political objectives by killing civilians. The objective of crushing unrest has been achieved on several occasions by massacring protestors. And the objective of justifying a war has been achieved on several occasions by conducting false flag attacks that resulted in civilian deaths. This caveat probably doesn't ruin my point though, since when governments kill civilians it normally isn't considered a terrorist attack.

[Anthony P.]

15 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

It is one of the most often misused words, but I still think this definition holds true:

Terrorism is violence directed against random civilians in order to promote a religious or political cause.

Absolutely. What's absent is a definition creating a distinction between terrorism and guerrilla warfare.

[Centurian52]

3 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

Absolutely. What's absent is a definition creating a distinction between terrorism and guerrilla warfare.

Guerrilla warfare is conducted against military forces. It is distinct from conventional warfare in that the guerrilla fighters do not try to (or are unable to) take and hold ground. Instead they rely on raids, ambushes, sabotage, assassination, or any other form of action against the occupying military forces, occupation government, or people who collaborate with the occupying forces that allows them to avoid conventional attack/defense engagements. The guerilla fighters themselves may be professional military personnel (such as troops that have been cut off in a rapid enemy advance or special forces that have been inserted behind enemy lines), semi-organized local militias, or they may have no form of organization whatsoever. When multiple different guerilla militias spring up, especially if they are motivated by different ideologies and lack any centralized command, they may spend as much time fighting each other as the occupying military forces. Ill disciplined guerillas, or guerillas that have adopted a brutalist mindset, may commit horrible atrocities against captured occupying soldiers, against rival militias, or against civilians that they believe have been collaborating either with the occupying forces or with rival militias. While these atrocities are unquestionably awful, it gets murky to what degree they are terrorism and to what degree they are a sort of medieval law enforcement.

The difficulty isn't in defining guerilla warfare. It's in defining terrorism. The term has been so broadly applied over the last few decades that it has started to lose any consistent meaning. At times it feels like terrorism is whatever politicians feel like calling terrorism at the time. In less politically charged environments the most consistent elements are that terrorist attacks must be conducted against civilians (attacks against military personnel or equipment are not terrorism), they must be ideologically motivated (your run of the mill mass shooting isn't terrorism), their main objective is to instill terror, and they cannot be conducted by a government (the firebombings of Tokyo, Russian attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, and the Blitz were not examples of terrorism)*. In addition to those widely recognized requirements, I usually add one more of my own. Since attacks against civilians are so common in rebellions, civil wars, and even to a more limited extent by ill-disciplined soldiers in interstate wars, I generally don't count any attack that occurs in a warzone as a terrorist attack. There are just so many edge cases in warzones that I find that additional rule really helps to simplify things. Best to call attacks against civilians in a warzone war crimes or atrocities.

*Of course language is constantly shifting. There seems to be a trend towards dropping the "governments can't conduct terrorist attacks" part of the definition. This is probably a healthy trend towards holding governments more accountable. But it does have the drawback of making an already murky term even murkier. I've actually advocated trying to drop the term altogether on the grounds that its meaning has become so murky and politically charged over the last few decades that it tends to confuse more than it clarifies (which is exactly what seems to have happened on this thread and is why I regret bringing it up). At the end of the day any attack that kills lots of people is horrible regardless of what term we use to categorize what kind of attack it was.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Centurian52

[Anthony P.]

19 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

The difficulty isn't in defining guerilla warfare. It's in defining terrorism. The term has been so broadly applied over the last few decades that it has started to lose any consistent meaning. At times it feels like terrorism is whatever politicians feel like calling terrorism at the time. In less politically charged environments the most consistent elements are that terrorist attacks must be conducted against civilians (attacks against military personnel or equipment are not terrorism), they must be ideologically motivated (your run of the mill mass shooting isn't terrorism), their main objective is to instill terror, and they cannot be conducted by a government

I'd say that most academic/experts broadly agree with your definition of terrorism.

The issue which I see isn't the verb terrorism, but the adjective terrorist. Many guerrilla fighters/insurgents have resorted to terrorism (sometimes arguable, sometimes blatant), but it's rare that there's a broad agreement that this makes them terrorists. Resistance fighters fighting for liberal democracies in their occupied terroritories during WW2, guerrillas like the Viet Cong, etc. committed plenty of terrorist acts (typically the extrajudicial executions of suspected informants, collaborators or sympathisers, but also acts such as raising "voluntary taxes for the cause" from civilian populations, coercing civilians in key positions to take part in resistance activities, etc.) without being widely described as terrorists in democratic societies.

My comment did fail to describe that though, as I opted for "terrorism and guerrilla warfare" instead of "terrorist and guerrilla/insurgent".

[Bulletpoint]

6 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

Resistance fighters fighting for liberal democracies in their occupied terroritories during WW2, guerrillas like the Viet Cong, etc. committed plenty of terrorist acts (typically the extrajudicial executions of suspected informants, collaborators or sympathisers, but also acts such as raising "voluntary taxes for the cause" from civilian populations, coercing civilians in key positions to take part in resistance activities, etc.) without being widely described as terrorists in democratic societies.

I don't think any of those acts are terrorism though, even though they are bad crimes in themselves.

In the first example, civilians are killed, but they are not chosen by random. Would say that counts as political murders.

In the second example, I would say that counts as extortion, not terrorism.

Third example would be coercion.

 

6 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

The issue which I see isn't the verb terrorism, but the adjective terrorist. Many guerrilla fighters/insurgents have resorted to terrorism (sometimes arguable, sometimes blatant), but it's rare that there's a broad agreement that this makes them terrorists.

I think the confusion arises from many people using terrorist as a political label rather than a word with a specific meaning.

In my view, "terrorist" is a specific adjective just like "murderer". It talks about a specific crime. You cannot apply it to a group without proving that all the members of that group are guilty of that crime.

Organisations such as Hamas operate on many different levels, and we cannot just call everybody working for Hamas a terrorist, even though the organisation as a whole is heavily involved in terrorist activities.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Bulletpoint

[Centurian52]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

In my view, "terrorist" is a specific adjective just like "murderer".

Absolutely. A "terrorist" is "someone who is guilty of committing a terrorist attack". Just like a "murderer" is "someone who is guilty of committing a murder". That still leaves the remaining uncertainty around who is or isn't guilty of conducting a terrorist attack, which is mainly down to uncertainty about which attacks are or aren't terrorist attacks.

I think the best way to go about it is to:

1. Admit that things can, and usually do, fall under more than one category at a time. Someone can be both a guerilla fighter (someone who engages in guerilla warfare) AND a terrorist (someone who is guilty of conducting a terrorist attack). An attack can be a terrorist attack AND it can take place in the context of a guerilla war (unless we adopt my approach of just blanket ruling out all attacks that take place in a war zone (seriously, there are just a huge number of edge cases in war zones, especially in intrastate wars)). And obviously someone who is a terrorist is probably also a murderer (or at the very least complicit in murder or an accessory to murder).

2. Take each attack one at a time, and ask if it meets all of the criteria of a terrorist attack. If it was:

1. Directed against civilians.
2. Ideologically motivated.
3. Intended to instill fear.
4. Not conducted by a government.

then it was a terrorist attack. But if it fails to meet any single one of those criteria, then it was not a terrorist attack. Points 1 and 4 should be easy enough to establish most of the time (although there are grey areas around who does or does not qualify as a government). Points 2 and 3 can be pretty tricky though, since they require establishing intent. Since no one has ever developed the ability to read minds, intent is notoriously difficult to establish unless the attacker(s) release a statement in which they just tell us what their intent was.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Centurian52

[Bulletpoint]

10 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

1. Directed against civilians.
2. Ideologically motivated.
3. Intended to instill fear.
4. Not conducted by a government.

then it was a terrorist attack. But if it fails to meet any single one of those criteria, then it was not a terrorist attack. Points 1 and 4 should be easy enough to establish most of the time (although there are grey areas around who does or does not qualify as a government).

Not sure I agree that terrorism by definition can't be done by a government. Many of the groups labelled as terrorist groups are funded and controlled by nation states. The US has a list of four official state sponsors of terrorism, and I am pretty sure the real list is longer than that.

[Centurian52]

38 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Not sure I agree that terrorism by definition can't be done by a government. Many of the groups labelled as terrorist groups are funded and controlled by nation states. The US has a list of four official state sponsors of terrorism, and I am pretty sure the real list is longer than that.

We generally only admit that states can sponsor terrorism, not that they can commit terrorism. I'd be all for dropping the "goverments can commit terrorism" requirement. If we do drop that requirement, then we should be prepared to reopen uncomfortable questions around, for example, whether the firebombing of Tokyo was a terrorist attack.

[The_Capt]

On 12/4/2023 at 6:20 PM, Centurian52 said:

As far as I know, no person or non-governmental organization has ever achieved a tangible political objective by killing civilians*.

Assassins.  Carved a pseudo-state out of the Persia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Assassins

Interestingly terrorism did not start out as random attacks on civilians.  It started as directed political assassinations (or at least within recorded history).  

Hamas is arguably achieve a tangible political objective right now - sever any rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world.  While at the same time damaging Israel’s political narrative.

In fact terrorism does often work to a degree, particularly when it is designed to induce change.  OBL wanted US in a land war in Asia…and he got two of them.  ISIL wanted Armageddon, and they got a version of it.  AQ wanted Spain out of Iraq and pulled it off.  Problem with terrorism is achieving longer term strategic results.

[Centurian52]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Interestingly terrorism did not start out as random attacks on civilians.  It started as directed political assassinations (or at least within recorded history).

It seems like a stretch to count targeted political assassinations as terrorism. But I think that does bring us back to my earlier concern that the term "terrorism" seems to confuse more than it clarifies these days, so we may actually be better off dropping the term altogether. Pretty much anything that has been called terrorism can be described as something more specific, and equally heinous, anyway. A bombing, a mass shooting, a political assassination, an extrajudicial execution, and so on.

Whatever we end up doing with the term, whatever we end up deciding counts as terrorism, and whoever we end up deciding counts as a terrorist, I think I've derailed this thread enough by bringing up the subject in the first place. We should probably try to return to talking about the war.

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

It seems like a stretch to count targeted political assassinations as terrorism. But I think that does bring us back to my earlier concern that the term "terrorism" seems to confuse more than it clarifies these days, so we may actually be better off dropping the term altogether. Pretty much anything that has been called terrorism can be described as something more specific, and equally heinous, anyway. A bombing, a mass shooting, a political assassination, an extrajudicial execution, and so on.

Whatever we end up doing with the term, whatever we end up deciding counts as terrorism, and whoever we end up deciding counts as a terrorist, I think I've derailed this thread enough by bringing up the subject in the first place. We should probably try to return to talking about the war.

I think it is kinda central to the war actually.  The term Violent Extremist has gotten traction but it is not well defined either.  Insurgents for example can be labeled as VEOs while not actually engaging what we consider terrorism.

Key components of terrorism from a legal perspective appear to be cause, effect and how.

Cause is political, religious or ethnic.  It is collective, not individual (eg he slept with my wife) cause.  This means there are larger objectives and certainties at play.  One could argue it is all political but perhaps that is too narrow.

Effect - terror, intimidation.  There is not discerning of the target audience in this.  So political elites of Persia or peasants it does not really matter.  If one is trying to terrorize for collective cause towards a larger objective, one is in the wheelhouse of terrorism.

How - illegal violence.  So lawful warfare is not terrorism even though it can definitely terrorize.  In fact intimidation of a population is core to warfare, even if it is indirect.  Unlawful violence, so assassinations to car bombings, is a framework that encompasses the legality of the violence (the act) and the intended target.  So Taliban IED attacks on coalition troops were not legally terrorism.  In fact anyone in uniform could be considered a lawful target.  Attacking civilians is of course a different story.

You can go and look at all sorts of legitimate national legal definitions and they pretty much all have components of this.  I say “legitimate” because oppressive states will make all sorts of things illegal and define them as “terrorism”.

So what?  Well Hamas clearly conduct terrorism before during and after Oct 7th.  They continue to break the LOAC to this day.  The use of civilians as cover for military operations is a big no-no.  As such Hamas can and should be eliminated as a political entity.  Some countries would see Hamas as a criminal organization and this whole thing as one big security operation.  But I think based on scope, scale and open political declarations this has moved into war.

Within the context of a war the IDF is skirting lines here and the international community is getting uncomfortable.  The major issue appears to be proportionality.  It is a violation of the LOAC to employ over-kill particularly if it causes undue or reckless civilian casualties.  I have seen more than enough videos of IDF dropping JDAMs into buildings to kill a “Hamas Leader” to raise an eyebrow over proportionality.  LOAC also does not give license to throwing out the rule book because the other guy has.  In fact Israel has opened itself up to state-based terror charges in all this.  If proven unlawful in violence then the next question will be if that unlawful use was designed to use terror to get the Palestinian people to do X.

That is a slippery slope.  It will ask questions like “what did the IDF do to remove emotionally compromised soldiers and commanders from the kill chains?”  “What were the ROE and collateral damage templates? “ Does this thing stop being viewed as a military operation against a terror organization and move to an ethnic cleansing?

Note that I am not proposing or promoting either position.  I only raise it because it is definitely becoming a strategic consideration.  In the end terrorism is all about induction - giving rise to.  It is designed to 1) be high profile and widely seen, dramatic, 2) induce fear - in the name and 3) induce broader reactions from that fear.  The reaction Hamas was looking for here was likely (and I say likely because I do not think we really know yet) to induce Israel into a heavy handed response that would ensure its continued regional isolation.  There may have been other undertones that may come out over time but the big one it so ensure Israel-Arab reconciliation does not happen on a meaningful level.  Hamas vehemently opposes this as it would in effect leave them entirely isolation (even more so than they already are) and in a greatly weakened position with respect to external support.  Insanely enough they appear to have adopted a “winning-by-losing” strategy.  And frankly given the shifting political narratives, they may be pulling it off.  

It has happened before but it is rare - Hamas/Gaza may have just done a suicide-state action.

Edited December 6, 2023 by The_Capt