God help them. The slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining
I don’t see how “wait and see” is pessimism. There are lots of immediate consequences that can be reasonable inferred (like the death toll from a Israeli land invasion), and those immediate consequences are on the whole bad, so a realistic, not pessimist take on the situation is that the next few days are going to be very unpleasant for the Palestinians even if they do achieve strategic victories in the end. Maybe I’m taking a more consequentialist tack than you, but a move that is justified on principles but strategically folly is still a bad deal in the end.
The “real lives at stake” will be at stake no matter how we feel about it, because our input has literally no bearing on how Palestinians choose to resist.
At least we agree on that.
I don’t see how “wait and see”
I don’t see how “wait and see” is so important of a principle that you must ensure everyone adheres to it.
but a move that is justified on principles but strategically folly is still a bad deal in the end.
But you don’t have any special knowledge to evaluate whether it’s a bad deal at this current moment. That’s what’s I’m describing as pessimism, and that pessimism is no more justified than optimism is.
To say that we all must share that pessimism does not seem to be necessary as a matter of principle, especially when the people who are putting their lives on the line clearly must have some degree of revolutionary optimism themselves or else they would not have acted. And they are in a much better position to judge whether their course of action is strategically sound than you or I are in.
must ensure everyone adheres to it.
I don’t get to ensure everyone adheres to it, but if someone asks the hypothetical “why shouldn’t I be happy about this right now”, I’m going to chime in.
But you don’t have any special knowledge to evaluate whether it’s a bad deal at this current moment
The bad aspects are baked into the cake. The only thing certain right now is that Israel is about to kill thousands of Palestinians, and I take it that we both agree on that. That’s going to happen whether or not they achieve any strategic aims. It’s not pessimism to acknowledge that any gains are going to have a steep cost, and that such gains are no where near as certain as the cost. Maybe they will come out on top, but they’ve taken a gamble and I don’t feel bad for saying we should wait to see which side the coin comes up before celebrating.
