While I agree that the system needs to be restructured, and rehabilitation and limiting of guns would be very very good policy. The idea of defunding the police exists for a reason.
US courts have ruled that police are not obligated to put themselves in danger for you. So if you are being attacked, and the police believe the attacker could pose a threat to them, they don’t have to do anything to help you or stop the attacker. So next time you’re being assaulted or robbed, it may still very well suck to be you even with the police in line of sight.
Furthermore, the police spend the budget that they do get on military equipment rather than training their officers in de-escalation.
So at what point do we stop funneling so much money into the police for them to waste it on things that make situations worse. We either have to defund the police and put the money towards other services such as social workers who can de-escalate through non violent means, or start putting restrictions on how the police are able to spend the money, and having stronger guidelines/requirements for the training they go through.
Not going to pretend to be able to read the minds of Hamas. But it seems like the idea was that taking hostages would give them leverage to negotiate. Because although the Israeli government generally regard Palestinians as subhuman barbarians, surely they wouldn’t risk the lives of the hostages by retaliating full force. And it seems in general they were partially right. The general population of Israel is calling for a ceasefire because they are concerned for the safety of the hostages and want their friends and family back. But Netanyahu seems to have very little interest in negotiations.