[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

the current level of engagement between Israel and Hezbollah lends itself to miscalculation and misinterpretation—and possible escalation by accident [or intentional escalation made to seem like an accident---for example if Netanyahu wants to remain in power longer ...]

“It’s easy for both sides to guess wrong about where the other’s red lines are. So they can think they’re doing an attack that they think is limited, but the other side could interpret it another way,” [...] “It’s also quite possible that both sides will see the other as determined to attack them and decide to launch a preemptive strike.”

[...]

“The bar for Hezbollah and Iran to get involved in this conflict is pretty low, and the bar for the United States is pretty high and they know that,” [...]

“As Americans we tend to underestimate the ideological piece of what they [Hezbollah] do and I think we tend to underestimate their eagerness to get involved in a violent situation,” Harding said. “From their perspective, it’s much more: ‘This is the cause—pushing back against Israel is the cause.’”

The Wild Card in Israel’s War That Threatens a Global Crisis (yahoo.com)

Quote

Netanyahu has always known what he wants his political epitaph to be. “I would like to be remembered as the protector of Israel,” [...] “That’s enough for me.” [...] It is the core case he has made for himself to the Israeli people, part of a winning electoral argument begrudgingly credited even by some of his critics. You may not like me and you may not trust me, he would imply, but only I can keep you safe.

[...] Israel exists to stop the next pogrom. But over the past two weeks, its people have been subjected to an endless stream of images that evoke Jewish history’s worst traumas[...] “I’m a child of Holocaust survivors,” one Israeli woman told reporters. “I grew up hearing stories of the camps. I thought those were the worst stories. These stories are worse. And I think that’s the hardest thing for me. I never thought I would live to see something worse than the stories I grew up with.”

[...] Fifty-six percent said that Netanyahu should resign after the current war ends. [...] The latest survey has the current hard-right coalition shrinking to just 42 seats out of 120, compared with 78 for the opposition—an astonishing collapse. Only 29 percent of voters said that they felt Netanyahu was still fit to be prime minister.

[...] when [Netanyahu] wasn’t hobbling his more competent officials over their internal dissent, he was empowering incompetent ones. He spent years driving out career civil servants and replacing them with ideological cronies. To maintain his tenuous hold on power while on trial for corruption, he personally facilitated the entry of a far-right alliance into Parliament, then gave its inept and inexperienced members key positions. [...]

[...] the disaster of October 7 was the overdetermined outcome of years of Netanyahu’s poor choices. In the end, the man known as “Mr. Security” failed by his own standard

The Shattered Myth of Benjamin Netanyahu (msn.com)

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

Biden Speculated to Israel’s PM About Wiping Out Canadians

In 1982, [... Senator] Biden met with Israel’s leader amid its bloody invasion of Lebanon. [...]

[... Biden] said: “What did you do in Lebanon? You annihilated what you annihilated.”

[...] I was certain, recounted Begin, that this was a continuation of his attack against us, but Biden continued: “It was great! It had to be done! If attacks were launched from Canada into the United States, everyone here would have said, ‘Attack all the cities of Canada, and we don’t care if all the civilians get killed.’”

EXCLUSIVE: In the ’80s, Joe Biden Speculated to Israel’s PM About Wiping Out Canadians (jacobin.com)

Quote

Israel has vowed to launch a military attack against Iran[...] if Hezbollah enters the war with Hamas.

[...] warned that they would "eliminate Hezbollah" if [it] opened up a second, northern front in the war, but he added "we will actually target Iran."

[...] "If we find they intend to target Israel, we will not just retaliate to those fronts, but we will go to the head of the snake, which is Iran."

[...] He added that Israel has a "very clear message" to their enemies.

"We are saying to them, look what's happening in Gaza – you are going to get the same treatment if you attack us. We are going to wipe you off the face of the Earth."

Israel vows to attack 'head of the snake' Iran if Hezbollah enters war | News | gazette.com

[Cause]

I think your overly worried about a worst case scenario Azath. Netanyahu is not a dictator or a tyrant. He can single handedly order wars, and any escalation as I said is a severe threat to Israel and israelis. People won’t allow it anymore than trump could have seriously started bombing Mexico to cancel the elections.

[Werthead]

When Israel sends ground troops into Gaza, Hezbollah will likely respond with an increase in attacks. If Iran deems Hamas to be in existential threat of its existence, which is a very key question, they may upgrade that to Hezbollah launching mass rocket strikes on Israel. Israel and the United States will respond with massive air strikes against Hezbollah, and at that point the whole Middle East could go up in smoke. Iranian ground forces in Syria could assault Israel's Golan Heights border, the US and Israeli air force could bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran itself could launch ballistic missile strikes on US bases and Israel (and maybe Europe) which Israel could well interpret as an existential threat and launch a nuclear strike on Iran in response. Russia's response when one of its closest allies in the region is in danger of total destruction would be unpredictable.

The escalatory ladder in this conflict is more dangerous than the one over Ukraine, in terms of a massive war with millions of casualties being much more possible. Maybe not probable, but the chance is uncomfortably high.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 22 October 2023 - 08:52 PM

[Chance]

Werthead, on 22 October 2023 - 06:54 PM, said:

Maybe not probable, but the chance is uncomfortably high.

With these things any chance above 0 is uncomfortable. A lot is probably done behind the scenes to de-escalate but it could really go to hell in a few hours if some escalations happen.

This post has been edited by Chance: 23 October 2023 - 09:35 AM

[Cause]

I dont know why Russia who is struggling to prosecute its own war and who has received only limited support from Iran would do anything drastic to protect Iran in turn? The are allies of a limited sort?

Israel and Russia also had decent military ties until the Ukraine War. Israel now neither wants to support Russians invasion nor piss russia off so they wont send/sell arms to either side at the moment. Israel has quite a high percentage of Russia speakers and Russians citizens. A lot of the original Israelis where Russians who were trying to escape persecution. Might undermine Putins argument that everything he does is to protect russian language speakers.

Iran attacking europe would trigger article 5 and Iran without nukes would enter the stone age. Why would Iran do this? Hezbollah exists to shield Iran as a proxy, Iran wont risk their own destruction to protect hezbollah its supposed to be the other way round.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 22 October 2023 - 06:49 PM, said:

I think your overly worried about a worst case scenario Azath. Netanyahu is not a dictator or a tyrant. He can single handedly order wars, and any escalation as I said is a severe threat to Israel and israelis. People won't allow it anymore than trump could have seriously started bombing Mexico to cancel the elections.

Gantz should hopefully be a moderating influence---so long as the emergency unity government isn't dissolved in favor of another coalition with the far right. Netanyahu is far from the only one on the right who might want to expand the war, even to Iran....

1. Experts say Netanyahu will probably want to extend the war as long as he can to remain in power.

2. Experts also say that the exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah could easily 'unintentionally' provoke a war.

3. Expanding the war would be an easy way to make it last longer.

4. While you're right that Netanyahu would want to make it seem to Gantz, Biden, and much of the Israeli public like he's not trying to expand the war 'unnecessarily', it would be relatively easy for him to do so 'unintentionally' by provoking a sufficient response (and then appealing to the far right to affirm that it's sufficient).

5. War with Iran is apparently much less likely, but the prospect of attacking Iran directly in response to attacks by Hezbollah seems popular among members of the far right in Israel's government, at least in their public rhetoric.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

The idea was that Iran-backed armed groups, joined into the so-called Axis of Resistance, would coordinate operations against Israel [...]

Collaborative planning and operations have been facilitated by the fact that leading Hamas officials have relocated to Lebanon in recent months [...] the head of Islamic Jihad, which has long had close ties to Iran, is also based in [Lebanon ...] Although support for the Palestinian cause is at the heart of Iran’s and Hezbollah’s identity, many Lebanese[...] remain wary. [...] That Hezbollah has not factored this into its calculations is surprising.

For Hezbollah, one reason for overlooking the domestic discontent may be that throughout the Middle East, Iran’s effort to increase its influence is succeeding. [...]

[...] “Iran is redeploying [pro-Iranian] militias from northern Syria[...] to the country’s south” for a possible conflict there. Israel has bombed the Damascus and Aleppo airports, almost certainly because it anticipates that Iran will open a Golan front in a wider war and use the airports to ferry in weapons.

[...]

Iran had warned Israel that, although it did not seek a regional conflict, any land invasion of Gaza would bring about an Iranian intervention. The Biden administration is conducting back-channel talks with Iran, suggesting that the message reached Washington too.

[...] the real message of the past two weeks is that Iran has an extensive network in place to back up its challenge to U.S. priorities in the Middle East.

The Axis of Resistance Has Been Gathering Strength (msn.com)

[Mentalist]

Cause, on 23 October 2023 - 02:54 PM, said:

I dont know why Russia who is struggling to prosecute its own war and who has received only limited support from Iran would do anything drastic to protect Iran in turn? The are allies of a limited sort?

Israel and Russia also had decent military ties until the Ukraine War. Israel now neither wants to support Russians invasion nor piss russia off so they wont send/sell arms to either side at the moment. Israel has quite a high percentage of Russia speakers and Russians citizens. A lot of the original Israelis where Russians who were trying to escape persecution. Might undermine Putins argument that everything he does is to protect russian language speakers.

Iran attacking europe would trigger article 5 and Iran without nukes would enter the stone age. Why would Iran do this? Hezbollah exists to shield Iran as a proxy, Iran wont risk their own destruction to protect hezbollah its supposed to be the other way round.

Majority of those Russian-speakers are actually from Ukraine. Jews weren't really a thing in core Russian regions until the Revolution due to the whole Pale of Settlement thing.

Public opinion in Israel is turning pretty sharply against Russia due to Putler basically advocating for Hamas. But they won't address it until the current crisis is over.

Putler isn't going to openly confront the West. That's not his style, and he doesn't start fights he thinks he can lose. At the same time, the more the West has to commit to the Middle east, the more he will feel he has leverage in Ukraine. His wet dream would be if Korea flared up right now, but Kim isn't an idiot and unlike Putler he realizes that the threat of escalation is only effective until you have to put up or shut up.

[worry]

The whole piece is extremely worth reading, but I figured I'd pull an Azath and post some excerpts as well.

Quote

900, 1000, 1500, 1800, 2600, 3500, 4600, 5000, 5900, 6500. The fatality figures, with which no one can keep up, are augmented every few hours with another twenty here and thirty there as this building or that is brought down in a cataclysmic burst of fire, smoke, and rubble. Three or four hundred people—or more—are being killed every day. At one point, health sources in Gaza reported 100 fatalities in a single hour. For every person killed there are two or three or more wounded, often severely. Almost half the dead and wounded are young children; some of the most painful images coming out of the current bombardment of Gaza, as in the ones past, are those of dead children, battered, ashen, covered in soot and dust, wrapped in the final embrace of parents who were killed trying to protect them. So far, with no end in sight, Israel has killed almost three thousand children. The dead and wounded or often simply recovered body parts—charred legs, trunks, heads—are taken to hospitals overflowing with casualties, running out of medical supplies and fuel for their emergency generators. Hospital beds have long since been fully occupied; new arrivals to Gaza’s hospitals crowd together in their own blood in hallways or on the pavements outside; doctors report napping on operating tables on which they now have to operate without anesthetic by the light of mobile phones, using household vinegar to clean wounds because they’ve run out of everything else.

Quote

“The specter of death is hanging over Gaza,” warned Martin Griffiths, UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs. “With no water, no power, no food and no medicine, thousands will die. Plain and simple.”A few days ago the Israelis said that it would be best, on the whole, for the entire population of the territory—over two million people, half of them children—to leave, either to Egypt or to the Gulf. We aim, the Israeli analyst Giora Eiland said approvingly, “to create conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable.” As a result, he added, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”¹⁵ Major-General Ghassan Alian of the Israeli army, echoing the Defense Minister’s recent reference to Palestinians as “human animals,” said, “human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”¹⁶

What kind of people talk like this, with a godlike sense of their power over literally millions of people? What mindset produces such genocidal proclamations on the disposition of entire populations?

Quote

What we are witnessing before our eyes is, I think, unprecedented in the history of colonial warfare. Ethnic cleansing, in itself, is unfortunately not as rare an occasion as one would like; only a few weeks ago, 130,000 Armenians were driven in terror from their homes in Artsakh by (not coincidentally Israeli-armed) Azerbaijan. In the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, thousands of people of the “wrong” religion or ethnicity were expelled at a time from their communities in Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia. Almost all—90 percent—of the Christian and Muslim population of Palestine itself was ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948. And we can go back to the 19th, 18th, and 17th centuries and recall the sordid history of genocide, extermination, and slavery with which Western civilization made its enlightened presence felt all around the planet.

But in no instance that I know of has ethnic cleansing been accomplished through the use of massive ordnance and heavy bombardment with ultra-modern weapons systems, including the one-ton bombs (and even heavier bunker-buster munitions) used by Israelis flying the latest American jets. Such matters are normally conducted in person, with rifles or at the point of the bayonet. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 was carried out almost entirely with small arms, for instance; the Palestinian civilians massacred at Deir Yassin, Tantura, and other sites to inspire others into terrified flight were shot with pistols, rifles, or machine-guns at close range, not struck by thousand-pound bombs dropped from F-35s flying at 10,000 feet or higher.

What we are witnessing, in other words, is perhaps the first fusion of old-school colonial and genocidal violence with advanced state-of-the-art heavy weapons; a twisted amalgamation of the 17th century and the 21st, packaged and wrapped up in language that harks back to primitive times and thunderous biblical scenes involving the smiting of whole peoples—the Jebusites, the Amelikites, the Canaanites, and of course the Philistines.

[worry]

Along with intentionally bombing journalists and/or their families this past week (and doctors, and UN schools, etc.), the IDF has desecrated the shrine to Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist they assassinated last year without consequence. I suppose one could argue that this was an unintentional byproduct of a bombing gone awry, unfortunate collateral damage... except it wasn't bombed at all. It was bulldozed by the IDF in the middle of the night.
https://www.ifj.org/...n-the-west-bank

[Lady Bliss]

Thanks for the summary QT. While I didn’t know all of the details, I knew the basics from history lessons that weren’t loaded with the history people want to believe. I know other countries do it, but I’ve been saying all my adult life that the US is one of the worst offenders when it comes to using propaganda.

This post has been edited by Lady Bliss: 27 October 2023 - 02:43 PM

[worry]

QuickTidal, on 27 October 2023 - 02:55 PM, said:

This broke me. You're talking about the Al-Jazeera journalist Wahoud right? My gods, I can't imagine bombing someones family because they report the news.

Him but not only him. And not only Palestinians -- aside from the deaths, an Israeli journalist had to flee his home and is in hiding due to right-wing threats (same article covers him some too, he's named Israel Frey).

[QuickTidal]

Oh geez, I hadn't seen that. That's awful.

[worry]

Internet, landline, and cell phone service cut off in Gaza. Information blackout.

Coincidentally, Israel is now claiming Hamas has a major hub under Gaza's largest hospital, Al Shifa. Where approximately 50,000 Gazans are currently sheltering.

[amphibian]

One overlooked little detail is that the month before before Rabin was assassinated, Netanyahu was organizing, driving, and appearing at rallies that featured people bringing Rabin's coffin out, noises for Rabin - and Netanyahu was speaking about how Rabin was a traitor that was going to bring disasters upon Israel + encouraging violence towards him.

From a 2019 NY Times article:
"Footage shows Netanyahu speaking at a big rally on Oct. 5, 1995, a month before the assassination. As he speaks, chants rise from the crowd: “Rabin is a traitor,” “In blood and fire we will get rid of Rabin.” Posters were raised of Rabin in Nazi SS uniform. David Levy, a prominent member of Likud, left. Netanyahu carried on.

On March 4, 1994, at an anti-Oslo protest, Netanyahu led a procession bearing a coffin with the inscription, “Rabin kills Zionism.” Whether the coffin was for Zionism or Rabin is disputed but hardly relevant."
https://www.nytimes....ment-movie.html

Rabin's death changed the entire trajectory of the Middle East. One person usually can't change something as bloodily complicated as this, yet the transition from Rabin to Peres who lost almost immediately to Netanyahu and the right wing was catastrophic to peace efforts.

[Werthead]

During the Siege of Beirut, the United States threatened to suspend arms shipments to Israel and even said it would consider sanctions against Israel to stop it from launching a final assault on the city. Allegedly, Reagan was so angry about Israeli tactics that he described the assault as a "holocaust" to Prime Minister Begin, who was apparently genuinely shocked at the use of the phrase. Building American anger over Israel's actions in 1982 was fairly instrumental in Israel eventually ending the operation, as well as dramatically growing Israeli popular opposition to the war, and government concerns that Sharon was becoming an unhinged lunatic (history would later go on to judge them correct on that score).

As a sign of how more deadly weapons have become, the Siege of Beirut lasted two months and killed between 4,000 and 5,000 people. In Gaza, almost twice as many people have died in less than half the time.

[QuickTidal]

The UN passed a ceasefire a few hours ago (which the USA voted no on again), Israel has vowed to ignore it and has been bombing Gaza in the dark for hours now.

We’ve heard nothing from the eyes on the ground there since earlier today.

I’m so frightened for all those civilians and terrified to see what dawn will bring.

[worry]

Absolute dread (and disgust).

[QuickTidal]

Motaz and Plestia survived the night and are alive as of an hour ago. They can’t communicate though.

Egypt is going to set up a tower for internet at the Rafah border so Palestinians in Gaza can get back some service.

I’m sick….I’ve been seeing videos this morning of the carnage, making sure to not look away. Im so broken by all this. It’s the worst humanitarian crisis and genocide I’ve seen as an adult.

Every country (including my own) who abstained or voted against a ceasefire last night bears responsibility.

We failed Gaza. We failed Palestinians.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 28 October 2023 - 11:38 AM