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[burningpet]

Raids. And no, soldiers don't count.

That's another thing you need to understand about israeli mentality. Israeli soldiers prefer to see israeli soldiers casualties. Israeli civilians prefer to see israeli civilians casualties. This make our soldiers protect our civilians, and our civilians protect our soldiers. (thats a bit of a dramatic exaggaration, but at the least, israeli civilians see soldiers lives as equal to theirs)

That's why to us, soldiers most definitely count.

[Darvi]

But it's a soldier's freaking job to go out there and do the dangerous jobs so the civs don't have to do it. That's the entire point of having a military.

[burningpet]

Playing whack-a-mole even if maybe slightly less efficient resource-wise for tunnels is a CHOICE, versus rolling in to shut them down from inside and inviting a lot more collateral street battles.

Impossible to tell where the tunnels are without going in. and when the mole pops out in the middle of a kibbutz dining room, no, the option for just waiting for them is absurd.

[Darvi]

Playing whack-a-mole even if maybe slightly less efficient resource-wise for tunnels is a CHOICE, versus rolling in to shut them down from inside and inviting a lot more collateral street battles.

Impossible to tell where the tunnels are without going in.

Pretty sure South Korea manages it.

[smjjames]

The problem with integration is you can't force it, really. You have to let it happen on its own. Maybe make it easier, but if the people don't want to integrate, there's nothing you can really do to make them.

American Civil Rights movement? Desegregation?

That had nothing to do with immigration, it has it's roots back to slavery and the CIvil War.

[GavJ]

Impossible to tell

Lol? Perhaps you have this confused with the 17th century?

If they can measure exactly where the Earth's mantle is 50km underground, they can find a stupid tunnel.

It's simply more expensive than running in and killing a lot of people and looking around. $$$ > lives and morals (they certainly have plenty of the former). That is their choice.

[Phmcw]

I'm not suggesting that you sit around and do absolutely nothing aggressvie at all (although that IS indeed another very real possible choice. You not happening to like that choice doesn't mean it's not a choice. Buddhists make that choice all the time, for example, including haven effectively given up a country for it. Which is actually a pretty close parallel).

I'm suggesting that dropping an area effect bomb is a choice versus other tactics like as Darvio mentioned, raids. And/or espionage. And/or fortifying in-range areas more. blah blah. Shooting a cloud of nails in a general direction from a tank is a choice versus, say, sniping exactly the combatants.

Not really. Americain view of war is completely unrealistic, and if you look at other militaries, no one do that. "Surgical strikes" are a technical imposibility that wassold to the public to make war eaasyer to accept. Beside, what would be the point?

Hamas is not a small isolated organisation, they are the embodiement of the will of the palestinians to destroy Israel. if you want to wage war against the hamas, you have to break that will. As that is impossible by internationally acceptable means all you can do is to make every strike as painfull as possible, to deter future attacks for a time. A rather sterile choice, but using "surgical strikes" would only cause more Israeli casualties.

[Descan]

Sometimes I think the only way for peace in the south Levant will be for Israel to complete it's ethnic cleansing, kick out the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, and for the Palestinians move on to other nations.

And of course, during that time, horrible crimes. Lovely.

[Detonate]

I'm not suggesting that you sit around and do absolutely nothing aggressvie at all (although that IS indeed another very real possible choice. You not happening to like that choice doesn't mean it's not a choice. Buddhists make that choice all the time, for example, including haven effectively given up a country for it. Which is actually a pretty close parallel).

I'm suggesting that dropping an area effect bomb is a choice versus other tactics like as Darvio mentioned, raids. And/or espionage. And/or fortifying in-range areas more. blah blah. Shooting a cloud of nails in a general direction from a tank is a choice versus, say, sniping exactly the combatants.

Not really. Americain view of war is completely unrealistic, and if you look at other militaries, no one do that. "Surgical strikes" are a technical imposibility that wassold to the public to make war eaasyer to accept. Beside, what would be the point?

Hamas is not a small isolated organisation, they are the embodiement of the will of the palestinians to destroy Israel. if you want to wage war against the hamas, you have to break that will. As that is impossible by internationally acceptable means all you can do is to make every strike as painfull as possible, to deter future attacks for a time. A rather sterile choice, but using "surgical strikes" would only cause more Israeli casualties.

I wonder why Palestinians vote "the embodiment of the will of the Palestinians to destroy Israel" into power. It's probably because, as you're saying, Israel is literally just killing civilians for the sake of killing civilians. They're not even making up excuses about "oh, human shields! they're hiding missiles!". Now whenever Palestinians die, they're saying it was an accident. Blowing up Palestinians is not going to make Hamas stop launching shitty rockets that hit the desert. It is going to, and already has, made them vastly more popular.

e: Not to mention it's making the entire world except America turn on Israel.

[smjjames]

You know, the whole talk about tunnels makes me think of those tunnels and warrens that the Viet Cong dug out during Vietnam. Not sure how comparable a situation it is though.

[Phmcw]

Blowing up Palestinians is not going to make Hamas stop launching shitty rockets that hit the desert.

In my previous post, you'll see that I mentioned Israel have no invective to stop them from doing so. Hell, peace could make the international community adamant about giving back some of the territories and certainly would stop the extension of colonies into Palestine. At the end of the day, peace would cost lands to Israel and power to the Hamas. I expect this war to explode sporadically for at least a century.

[burningpet]

Impossible to tell

Lol? Perhaps you have this confused with the 17th century?

If they can measure exactly where the Earth's mantle is 50km underground, they can find a stupid tunnel.

It's simply more expensive than running in and killing a lot of people and looking around. $$$ > lives and morals (they certainly have plenty of the former). That is their choice.

No, i am pretty sure digging the entire gazan border down to the aquifer would be far far cheaper. i and many other have predicted that the next national inquiry committee would be around the subject how the hell IDF or the israeli Intelligence didn't know about them or prepared against them 6-10 years ago.

Playing whack-a-mole even if maybe slightly less efficient resource-wise for tunnels is a CHOICE, versus rolling in to shut them down from inside and inviting a lot more collateral street battles.

Impossible to tell where the tunnels are without going in.

Pretty sure South Korea manages it.

I thought i addressed that claim.
They didn't, they stumbled on 3 by chance and 1 by intelligence. also, korean land is rocky, while the gazan border is sandy. that makes it far easier to dig and far harder to spot the diggings.

Also, currently, IDF found more than 25 offensive tunnels. hardly the 4 the koreans had to deal with.

I'm not suggesting that you sit around and do absolutely nothing aggressvie at all (although that IS indeed another very real possible choice. You not happening to like that choice doesn't mean it's not a choice. Buddhists make that choice all the time, for example, including haven effectively given up a country for it. Which is actually a pretty close parallel).

I'm suggesting that dropping an area effect bomb is a choice versus other tactics like as Darvio mentioned, raids. And/or espionage. And/or fortifying in-range areas more. blah blah. Shooting a cloud of nails in a general direction from a tank is a choice versus, say, sniping exactly the combatants.

Not really. Americain view of war is completely unrealistic, and if you look at other militaries, no one do that. "Surgical strikes" are a technical imposibility that wassold to the public to make war eaasyer to accept. Beside, what would be the point?

Hamas is not a small isolated organisation, they are the embodiement of the will of the palestinians to destroy Israel. if you want to wage war against the hamas, you have to break that will. As that is impossible by internationally acceptable means all you can do is to make every strike as painfull as possible, to deter future attacks for a time. A rather sterile choice, but using "surgical strikes" would only cause more Israeli casualties.

I wonder why Palestinians vote "the embodiment of the will of the Palestinians to destroy Israel" into power. It's probably because, as you're saying, Israel is literally just killing civilians for the sake of killing civilians. They're not even making up excuses about "oh, human shields! they're hiding missiles!". Now whenever Palestinians die, they're saying it was an accident. Blowing up Palestinians is not going to make Hamas stop launching shitty rockets that hit the desert. It is going to, and already has, made them vastly more popular.

This is wrong on so many levels, i can't tell where to start from

And no, hamas is at its lowest in terms of popularity. if there were elections, proper elections, it would have been kicked out. that's why there weren't since 2006 and that's why it needed a desperate kidnapping operation using those tunnels.

You know, the whole talk about tunnels makes me think of those tunnels and warrens that the Viet Cong dug out during Vietnam. Not sure how comparable a situation it is though.

Pretty comparable, although, the palestines ones i saw were bigger than the vietcong i seen while visiting vietnam.

[GavJ]

they are the embodiement of the will of the palestinians to destroy Israel.

No. Most Palestinians by far want to cease hostilities. Just like most Israelis do.
Rest of argument rests on this and thus collapses.

Also, even if every Palestinian were a member of Hamas, that STILL would not mean wiping them out was the only available choice. There are a dozen other choices. Just focusing on defense indefinitely. Or pacifistically settling elsewhere. Or paying the extra money for surgical raids only, which are yes more expensive, yes riskier, yes slower, but perhaps more MORAL. Which is more important to you? Your answer is a choice.

These options and many others exist. Israelis just happen to not prefer their side effects, that's all. So they don't choose them. That does not mean they don't exist as options.

Their current actions are only "inevitable" if you make a whole bunch of assumptions as bedrock facts that simply are not.
-It is not an absolute given truth than Israelis must end up in israel at the end of the day. They could simply leave and take refuge elsewhere. This being acceptable or not is an opinion, not a fact.
-It is not an absolute given truth that killing somebody to save your own life is necessarily more moral and running away or turning the other cheek (hundreds of millions of people in the world believe it is not)
-It is not an absolute given truth that the lives of your countrymen MUST be considered more valuable than the lives of foreigners, even enemies.
-It is not an absolute given truth that XYZ amount of dollar bills is worth a human life -- any amount of cost could potentially be justified versus a number of lives saved, and where to draw the line on spending how many million dollars to sound out tunnels for example versus just killing people to find them is a personal opinion, not a fact.
-It is not an absolute given truth that causing destruction with one intent in mind is better or worse than causing destruction with a different intent in mind. Again, hundreds of millions of people in the world believe opposite of you folks on that point. This is opinion, not fact.
-Etc. etc. etc.

No, i am pretty sure digging the entire gazan border down to the aquifer would be far far cheaper.

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. You can have a single plane with modern technology (available to Israel) that can fly over an area and find any and all tunnels across many square miles in minutes. Small private companies, let alone governments backed by world superpowers, do this all the damn time and find oil pockets and other things that are much deeper and hidden under much more noisy data than near surface tunnels are, and which have much weaker differences between reflective densities than the difference between air and soil, and which exist in much more complicated topography than deserts. And they already have resolution plenty capable if flying low (which is not very dangerous in their own territory near the border where Hamas has poor anti aircraft technology)

[palsch]

IDF testing new tunnel detection system. It sounds like a sophisticated ground penetrating radar system. These systems tend to be short ranged and relatively unreliable unless the soil is fairly uniform.

And GavJ, an article about why detecting tunnels is hard, based on the American DHS's efforts.

You might think that the technology used to find oil and mineral deposits for decades could solve the problem. After all, geologists can find salt domes on top of oil deposits, or seams of coal.

Senior program adviser David Masters oversees the effort at DHS, and he said that in some ways the miner’s tools have proved almost useless in the search for tunnels.

“The miner is looking for gold, the oilman’s looking for oil, and the rescuer is looking for trapped miners,” Masters said. “So what they end up doing is excluding everything else except the specific thing they are interested in. And that particular thing does not have anything to do with a tunnel.”

They go on to note that you have to have a very good model of the local geology. My guess is that part of the new Israeli system will be building up such a model and then watching for any changes that suggest new tunnelling. Which obviously doesn't do that much for existing tunnels.

[burningpet]

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. You can have a single plane with modern technology (available to Israel) that can fly over an area and find any and all tunnels across many square miles in minutes. Small private companies, let alone governments backed by world superpowers, do this all the damn time and find oil pockets and other things that are much deeper and hidden under much more noisy data than near surface tunnels are, and which have much weaker differences between reflective densities than the difference between air and soil, and which exist in much more complicated topography than deserts. And they already have resolution plenty capable if flying low (which is not very dangerous in their own territory near the border where Hamas has poor anti aircraft technology)

If that's so easy, how come israel didn't know about the ones going under dining rooms in kibutzim near gaza? or the ones where hamas operatives merged out, managed to walk around for an hour unnoticed and get back with only 1 casualty (0 israeli casuaties, yet, that was pure luck)

Hint, Its not that easy as it seems and oil pockets and such are found based on likelyhood in specific locations due to certain known natural formations and even then it takes considerable time to find them.

The second israel started searching for them, was the second this whole thing escalated with hamas shooting rockets.

Don't get me wrong. me and my friends have asked ourselves the very same questions. there was definitely a catastrophic intelligence failure here and i am pretty sure the next national committee inquiry will involve those very same questions. (i have seen one scientist that presented the security branch with a technology he developed, but they didn't give him funding and told him: "We gave them gaza back, why worry about tunnels?)

Sometimes I think the only way for peace in the south Levant will be for Israel to complete it's ethnic cleansing, kick out the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, and for the Palestinians move on to other nations.

And of course, during that time, horrible crimes. Lovely.

Except that it isn't the palestines that are the problem. its radical islam, funded by Qatar/Saudi Arabia that is praised by the west for being an advanced and progressive country, despite actually being a women stomping, barbaric radical islamist that fund terror organizations from africa to asia.