Hamas 'could not have anticipated' Israel's response to October 7, official says

[The Magistrate]

47. War Is A Very Simple Thing, Sir

The ultimate in 'heightening the contradictions'.

You are approaching this as if it were a punitive expedition, someone attempting enforcement of a guilty verdict, and zealous no innocent be punished even if the guilty go free.

But that's not what it is.

This is war.

War is not some sporting event, where dead people are points, and at some juncture 'enough' have been accumulated so the war ends. But that does seem to be how many guide their understanding of it.

War is the attempt of one party to a dispute to impose by violence what it cannot secure by purchase or reason. It ends when the party first resorting to violence secures its object against the violent objection of the other, or acknowledges its violence has failed to do so, and ceases to fight.

In war one does not so much strive to kill people in order to end their lives, as one kills people to convince other people they'll be next if they don't give up, or flee, or at the very least keep their heads down a while.

It is true that if one party to a war fields a soldiery who actively courts death, killing a good deal more is required than in the average run: such soldieries are not common to history.

It is also obvious that such a death-desiring soldiery, establishing itself in facilities and fighting positions beside, under, or over the dwellings of non-combatants, is going get a great many persons killed in course of war against them, who will suffer for no better reason than that they were in the way of people fighting the men here to fight till they died.

I suppose you might say that is worth it, if you favor the resolution of the dispute they are contending for, certainly no one opposed to it would agree.

If people do take up for a side which fields soldiery of this sort, and disposes them in that manner, they ought at least to be clear about what the goal actually sought by that side is.

That's something a good many people aren't at all clear on....

All criticism of Israel on grounds of cruelty or excess founder one simple fact:

Not one bomb would be being dropped on Gaza, not one person there killed or maimed or harmed in any wise, were it not for the spree of sadistic rape, torture, murder and kidnapping Hamas treated its killers to on October 7.