From what I can gather this conflict as been going on a long time and the Hamas group has existed for a while too. Why are all the news cycles suddenly focusing on this the past few weeks?
Something like 10,000 civilians dead in the period of a month. Tends to draw the attention
OP has a point. There are other conflicts that have high body counts that don’t drive front page stories. Yemen. The stuff going on in Myanmar. Uyghurs. Even the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.
You’re right that this is a significant conflict, but our news industry doesn’t assign column inches to body count.
Not the volume of deaths, but the continuousness of deaths.
Everyday another ~300 people die on average.
Not to mention media availability, because it’s basically a prison having rockets thrown at it, media can get really good information. They’re not really in a war zone. It’s a one-sided killing field more or less. So great reporting conditions great visuals. Conflicts really concentrated. Just put the cameras right there. You’ll capture most of it.
If it bleeds it leads.
Hamas led the largest attack on Israel in decades, Israel has responded with their most significant attack on Hamas in decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hamas_attack_on_Israel?wprov=sfla1
Hamas announced the start of the operation, stating that it had fired over 5,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel within a span of 20 minutes. Israeli sources reported that at least 3,000 projectiles had been launched from Gaza. At least five people were killed by the rocket attacks.
They overwhelmed the air defense systems through sheer numbers. Proving a bit of theoretical weakness
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the thousands of violent deaths may have something to do with it.
Have you heard about Yemen recently?
No? Then it must be quiet there. No deaths at all.
Because this time it really could lead to WWIII. The middle east has always been a powder keg, but this time, both sides have committed such atrocities that there’s no coming back from it, unless they sit back at the negotiation table. (They won’t).
For the Israeli side, it’s the 1400 dead and mutilated bodies and the 200 hostages they somehow forgot about. For Hamas, the last decades of living in an open air prison, harassment and dehumanising of their people. Also they have nothing to lose at this point. And the violence is not letting up.
If Israel continues with this bloodlust thing they’re doing by bombing civilians, journalists and UN workers indiscriminately to death, chances are the Hezbollah’s will get involved in Lebanon. They’re much more organised and subsidized. When they get seriously in, it means the US will be obliged to counter attack. When the US counterattacks, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Egypt, all the Arab countries (with A SHIT TON OF MONEY) will get involved too in this war. This means more death and a war that no one will win, only more dead civilians as usual.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is Netanyahu’s end goal. Forcing the US to join in on the war is their only way of winning this genocidal war. And to do that they have to antagonise all the regional players to a point that they can no longer look away from all the kids dying and start a real war on them so the Israeli can play the victim and be supported by the US and some (not all!) EU countries. This can break the world, divide the unity of the EU and pit them against the US. Africa will get involved too. Actually pit everyone against everyone…
And then we have China and Russia…this is literally their wet dream. They’ll swoop in and take over after everyone of importance dies.
Sorry, just very drunk and it is still a worst case scenario…
You mentioned Israeli casualties drive it started.
Last I heard dead Palestinian numbers were at like 6500 dead more than half of those being actual children.
This place has been the expected start of WWIII for the duration of the Cold War and a bloody mess of atrocities on all sides for longer than that.
But there really is a less world-destroying end to this. When the hostages are returned and sufficient Hamas leadership is dead and resources destroyed, Israel will pull out. US will pour in aid, with the help of neighbors like Egypt.
Then comes the hard part, but much less violent: diplomacy. How do we get some sort of working agreement between the parties such that Israel feels safe and Palestinians aren’t too repressed? Everyone thought we had this a few years ago but then Hamas took over with the promises of terrorisn and destruction.
Because it’s recently escalated from a simmering series of minor conflicts to full-blown war. Hamas launched a coordinated series of strikes against Israel on Oct. 7th, massacring lots of people, and Israel has responded by bombing Gaza indiscriminately, killing thousands of civilians in their attempts to slay Hamas leaders.
This is “new,” in other words. It’s receiving a lot of attention because it’s a big change from the state of things prior to 10/7/23.
