I don’t think this one has a clear cut answer.
In other words, it’ll come down to opinions rather than facts or truths.
There’s at least three likely possibilities, in my opinion.
First is that hamas is decentralized well enough that taking out leadership only is kinda pointless.
Second, the goals of the current actions aren’t solely about hamas, and taking out leaders would weaken the goals as they appear.
Third, mossad may not be able to achieve the goal, and failing would be too risky considering how much pressure is already building against israel. If they try to assassinate people in other countries, and they fail, that’s going to make more enemies than they already have, despite those countries themselves already being less than friendly to Israel.
I suspect that the matter was considered, but discarded quickly. It just wouldn’t achieve anything useful for them, despite the purported goal of destroying hamas.
Now, there’s also the chances that the real goal is purely to destroy Palestine, and take full ownership of the land. That’s a distinct possibility, imo. If that’s the real underlying goal, doing anything to take down hamas before that’s achieved would not happen.
I don’t think that anyone can trust what a world leader engaged in a military action of any kind, so taking the stated goals as truth is a bad idea. But they could be, and if that’s the case, then using assassination as a tool would weaken their position. It’s kinda frowned on.
You missed the key issue: Excuse for the extermination of Palestinians.
Further to that third point as well, there’s probably also a question simply of opportunity. You could take the Munich situation as evidence of capability, but it may also have been opportunity plus capability. Intelligence seems like it’s a pretty difficult game and perhaps the successes in operation bayonet had to do with fortunate and unlikely intelligence scoops that they have not luckedh upon this time around and can’t rely upon as a strategy. Also, while I don’t know much about the post-Munich assassinations, it sounds like they went on for over twenty years, didn’t really take out many of the actually important, directly involved individuals and a lot of the people they would have logically wanted to target successfully went in to hiding out of their reach so if the strategic goal is to behead the organisation that carried out attacks as a defensive strategy to weaken their capacity to do it again, 20 years just to take out relatively minor unimportant figures isn’t really going to work.
That said, it also looks, as many have stated, like “taking out Hamas” is more a convenient political smokescreen for a much more sinister goal so a very successful intelligence operation that rapidly took out all their leadership at once would actually run counter to their true objectives in this scenario.
Err… did I misunderstood the question, or do (nearly?) all commenters have no idea what they’re talking about?
You’re asking why Israel doesn’t assassinate Hamas’s top leaders, right? Or did I misunderstood and you asking Israel doesn’t ONLY assassinate Hamas’s top leaders? Or are you asking why Israel responded differently to Munich?
To answer the first question, well… they are. Hamas’s top leaders according to BBC are:
- Ismail Haniyeh - Killed.
- Mohammed Deif - Probably killed.
- Marwan Issa - Killed.
- Mahmoud Zahar - Alive. is 79 years old and might not be active/influential in the leadership.
- Khaled Meshaal - Alive.
- Yahya Sinwar - Alive.
Also, keep in mind that the response to the Munich massacre took about 2 decades.
As to why Israel dosen’t ONLY assassinate Hamas’s leadership, the simple answer is that it won’t solve anything. It won’t bring the hostages home (It will probably have opposite effect as a. it will leave Israel without a centralized entity with whom to negotiate and b. Sinwar might be using hostages as human shields, which also might explain why he’s still alive), and it will still leave Israel with a terrorist entity next door. The official Israeli version is that the assassinations, among other things, serve as leverage on Hamas leaders to secure a deal. Obviously, this is only effective if there is some leadership left.
If you’re asking why Israel responded differently to Munich, it’s because the situation is totally different in numerous ways. But the question itself is also factually wrong - Israel didn’t only assassinate the leaders of Black September. Firstly, the goal was to “assassinate individuals they accused of being involved in the 1972 Munich massacre”, not just the leaders. Not only that, Israel also responded with raids and bombings (for example: 1973 Israeli raid in Lebanon).
None of what’s happening squares as a reasonable response. Munich is some horrible memory. Maybe someone else is obsessed with it, but the genocide occurring now is the concern.
OK, I’ll just answer plainly, and if I misunderstood you, feel free to correct me:
OP asked about the difference in Israel’s response to Munich and Gaza. I tried answering that to the best of my ability, as it seems most other answers didn’t correct the implicit assumption that Israel doesn’t go after Hamas’s leaders. If you think someone is “obsessed with Munich”, you should respond to the OP.
However, I get the feeling some people here took the question as “let’s use this question to further convince ourselves/others that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza”. In this context, your reply makes more sense when it’s addressed to me.
Thank you! Mossad did kill Ismail haniyeh
Interestingly this article is no longer available idk why , archive.org works tho
A ton of the Hamas leadership have been assassinated since the war began, there’s always replacements though
Almost like the goal isn’t taking out Hamas leadership. Hmmm…
Nor do they want to rescue the hostages. It’s all an excuse to carry out death. In Gaza and the West Bank.
Yes, hammas leaders over the years were assasinated by mossad. Including just a month or so ago. Top leader Ismayil Haniya was assasinated by the mossad on Iranian Soil. Gaza is a whole different story. Though mossad is involved there as well. You cannot just go to Gaza and pretend you are gazan. There are so small subtleties as to be “gazan” that can be picked right away by any local. Its a small community where everyone knows everyone.
Mistaarvim, which is a special unit of the police in Israel specializes on exactly that. Pretending to be arab gazan or arab west bank and conduct operations there. And they have presumably rescued hostages and assassinated specific hammas people. You might as well consider them a specialized unit of the mossad if you will.
Waging war on Gaza is to a. Put pressure to rescue the hostages and b. To eradicate Hammas on its people, infrastructure and weapons. So that OCT 7 will never happen again. You cant use Mossad operations to do that. You do that with actual war and shit.
All that “the war is to kill all Palestinians” is BS. This war will stop the moment hostages are released and hammas surrenders. Israel isnt putting 10% of its capabilities in was into Gaza. They could eradicate Gaza in just a few days if they wanted.
The goal is not to destroy Hamas. This is a ridiculous excuse. Their true objective is to remove all the Palestinians from their homes, so they can occupy the land. iSSrael is a fascist, imperialist actor that tries to manipulate everyone through propaganda distributed through international media.
Even according to Netanyahu’s own statements, the Israeli war aims are the complete destruction of hamas. That’s more than leaders. Before this began, estimates put the al-Qassam Brigades at 30-40k strong. So if we take Netanyahu at his word (which I don’t recommend) then that would be the minimum for killed/captured before he could declare victory.
The goal is not to eliminate Hamas. The goal is to depopulate Gaza.
Look at what they do, no need to listen to what they say.
Israel is a bad faith actor.
The intention is to “liquidate” Gaza like the Wermacht liquidated the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. It is an annihilation. Hamas and the hostages are just the excuse.
Zionists did the same thing to the rest of Palestine in the Nakba of 1948. Israelis now call this the Gaza Nakba.
The “war” in Gaza isn’t meant to take out Hamas. It’s meant to eradicate the Palestinian people.
Ok I have seen many replies saying the same thing but the question I got if say they take Gaza what are they going to do with it? Just focus on the West Bank?
Occupy it? Same thing they’ve been doing to all Palestinian land, piece by piece since the 40s
Presumably. They want to kill all Palestinians or drive them out. Either is acceptable to them.
Because the genocide is the goal.
Wrong question and framing.
Israel’s goal is not to get rid of Hamas or their leadership.
Their real goal has been to continue the genocide of the Palestinian people so as to take 100% control of the Palestinian land and to kickout the natives.
Because Israel’s goal is the kill all Palestinians. According to the 3000 year old fairy tales they believe in, anyone who is not an Israelite must be killed driven off from their promised land.
Israel is a religious theocracy run by crazy genodical maniacs.
Currently it is very heavily run by the genocidal religious nuts. Netanyahu needs them to stay in power, which is the part that he cares about. The only part he cares about probably, though I doubt he cares about Palestinians or even believes that they’re human. Like most religions, their divided opinions. But since the nutjobs have the keys right now, Netanyahu will do absolutely everything they demand if it keeps him from being ousted (and likely arrested).
the genocide did not start with netanyahu. take this example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre
The seeds were planted in early 20th century. Zionist started migrating, armed up and kicked off the entire genocide campaign. 100 years later I think we finally got over the “she said, he said” stage of the debate…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_and_massacres_in_Mandatory_Palestine
Because most of the Hamas leadership isn’t in gaza. They’re protected in other countries that are funding and arming Hamas.
Yea but that didn’t stop Mossad from assassinating the people who were responsible for Munich all over the globe.
They weren’t being protected there, though; they were just there
Not to forget people who had nothing to do with Munich.
Because the genocide is the point.
Israeli leadership have admitted to funding Hamas’ displacement of the secular moderates with predictable results - the only credible explanation for this is that it was to manufacture the pretext for their current actions.
#justautocraticfascistethnostatethings
