‘Urban warfare is absolute hell’: The Takeaway: Three key insights from Robert D. Kaplan’s Hub Dialogue
"Fallujah at the time was far less densely populated than Gaza is now. It had no underground tunnels or anything like that. You didn’t get the feeling you were in a really intense urban environment. It was more like a suburban environment with ratty buildings and a lot of dust. But it was nothing like apartment houses right next to each other which you have in Gaza City… Even though on paper Fallujah was far less daunting than what the Israelis face now, I can tell you as a journalist, it was absolute hell…"
What is there to discuss?
Open warfare should be an anachronism. Urban combat is a chaotic nightmare for the combatants and more so for the hapless civilians caught in the crossfire.
The geopolitical fallout, assessment of the ‘winner and losers’, and identifying new negative global risks from this tragedy may be immediately relevant in each of the world’s nation’s various ‘state departments’, but the unacceptable human cost of this should be the primary focus, despite our near powerlessness, of every other feeling human being.
18th October 2023 at 11:06 am
A.Chezzi
What is happening in Gaza is insanity not self defense. Could it be that the world, supporting Netanyahu, is using Gaza as a scapegoat for all its frustrations and fears?
18th October 2023 at 8:38 am
Marinus Enden
of course war is hell, in any place. The prince of darkness is the driving force , , he wants this to be hell-on-earth
18th October 2023 at 8:08 am
Christopher Porozny
No offence intended, but I must ask: Is every writer here Jewish? Story after story about Hamas’ jailbreak from Gaza, and not a single one builds a context of any kind before trawling their nightmares for appropriate labels to properly impugn the legitimately elected representatives for the population of Gaza.
What would you do if you were imprisoned for 20 years not for any crime but merely for not being Jewish. Should it matter that your ancestors have lived here for dozens of generations? Nope. You’re not Jewish, so shut the fuck up and get in before we kill you.
I’m not Jewish, but the only time my life was ever directly threatened came from an obese settler from New York who pressed the barrel of his assault rifle against my forehead just outside the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem. Why? Because I interfered as he (unsuccessfully) chased some boys playing soccer in a parking lot, waving his weapon like a club. Fuck that. But I had some passages of the Talmud explained to me, about how it’s perfectly fine for a Jew to murder a non-Jew but not the other way around. But you’re the victims.
Okay, okay, four thousand years ago, the whole ‘chosen’ thing and the tribal unity it instilled was probably responsible for Hebrew survival, but it’s time to put the fairy tale to bed. It’s just not healthy. In fact, an ironic statistic says more Jews believe God gave them Palestine than there are Jews who believe in God. Curious, no?
Anyway, I digress. Hamas didn’t just appear like genies freed from a lamp, but there has been nothing to explain what might have motivated this quite desperate act of violence. How does occupying another peoples’ land and imprisoning over 2 million in an open ghetto for 20 years fail to warrant a mention? (Here is why my initial question).
Balfour SPECIFIED that Jewish immigrants were welcome in Palestine AS LONG AS THEY LEFT THE INDIGENOUS POPULATION IN PEACE. It’s not a complicated philosophical treatise, nor a theoretical physics paper. ‘Welcome. Try and get along.’ What began in the 1920s is still tearing along today, and in fact is exponentially more cruel, more brutal, more barbaric–more inhumane–than ever.
This attack was inevitable, and Israel only has itself to blame. Why can Israelis not be satisfied by their success but the value of that success depends on how much you can deny and deprive others? That’s fucking sick. Seriously.
Eventually, though, there will come a day when you realise in order to strip the humanity from another, you must first abandon yours.
18th October 2023 at 8:36 pm
Michael F
You know you’ll be branded as an anti-semite for this right? I bet this comment doesn’t last here for an hour.
18th October 2023 at 9:31 pm
Michael F
The IDF will not win a conventional military victory in Gaza. A protracted invasion will only foment the conditions to bolster the ranks of Hamas. Netanyahu cynically fostered the split with Fatah and Hamas for his own political ends. Now he is reaping what he has sown.
Comments (6)
What is there to discuss?
Open warfare should be an anachronism. Urban combat is a chaotic nightmare for the combatants and more so for the hapless civilians caught in the crossfire.
The geopolitical fallout, assessment of the ‘winner and losers’, and identifying new negative global risks from this tragedy may be immediately relevant in each of the world’s nation’s various ‘state departments’, but the unacceptable human cost of this should be the primary focus, despite our near powerlessness, of every other feeling human being.
What is happening in Gaza is insanity not self defense. Could it be that the world, supporting Netanyahu, is using Gaza as a scapegoat for all its frustrations and fears?
of course war is hell, in any place. The prince of darkness is the driving force , , he wants this to be hell-on-earth
No offence intended, but I must ask: Is every writer here Jewish? Story after story about Hamas’ jailbreak from Gaza, and not a single one builds a context of any kind before trawling their nightmares for appropriate labels to properly impugn the legitimately elected representatives for the population of Gaza.
What would you do if you were imprisoned for 20 years not for any crime but merely for not being Jewish. Should it matter that your ancestors have lived here for dozens of generations? Nope. You’re not Jewish, so shut the fuck up and get in before we kill you.
I’m not Jewish, but the only time my life was ever directly threatened came from an obese settler from New York who pressed the barrel of his assault rifle against my forehead just outside the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem. Why? Because I interfered as he (unsuccessfully) chased some boys playing soccer in a parking lot, waving his weapon like a club. Fuck that. But I had some passages of the Talmud explained to me, about how it’s perfectly fine for a Jew to murder a non-Jew but not the other way around. But you’re the victims.
Okay, okay, four thousand years ago, the whole ‘chosen’ thing and the tribal unity it instilled was probably responsible for Hebrew survival, but it’s time to put the fairy tale to bed. It’s just not healthy. In fact, an ironic statistic says more Jews believe God gave them Palestine than there are Jews who believe in God. Curious, no?
Anyway, I digress. Hamas didn’t just appear like genies freed from a lamp, but there has been nothing to explain what might have motivated this quite desperate act of violence. How does occupying another peoples’ land and imprisoning over 2 million in an open ghetto for 20 years fail to warrant a mention? (Here is why my initial question).
Balfour SPECIFIED that Jewish immigrants were welcome in Palestine AS LONG AS THEY LEFT THE INDIGENOUS POPULATION IN PEACE. It’s not a complicated philosophical treatise, nor a theoretical physics paper. ‘Welcome. Try and get along.’ What began in the 1920s is still tearing along today, and in fact is exponentially more cruel, more brutal, more barbaric–more inhumane–than ever.
This attack was inevitable, and Israel only has itself to blame. Why can Israelis not be satisfied by their success but the value of that success depends on how much you can deny and deprive others? That’s fucking sick. Seriously.
Eventually, though, there will come a day when you realise in order to strip the humanity from another, you must first abandon yours.
You know you’ll be branded as an anti-semite for this right? I bet this comment doesn’t last here for an hour.
The IDF will not win a conventional military victory in Gaza. A protracted invasion will only foment the conditions to bolster the ranks of Hamas. Netanyahu cynically fostered the split with Fatah and Hamas for his own political ends. Now he is reaping what he has sown.