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Paladinus posted:Has Israel stopped reporting on losses or is there just not much going on resembling an armed conflict anymore? Could it be that Hamas is already essentially neutralised, as in they don't have enough resources to pose any real short/mid-term danger to Israel? there's one complication that adds to the greater mystery of if hamas is neutralized, and its mostly about how it pretty much doesn't matter if they're neutralized or not because israel is determined enough to just cleanse the land and salt the earth that they could keep going on in spite of any long term concerns it piles unsustainably on the state of israel
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 05:30 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 02:17 |
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Haaretz reports Israeli military casualties (usually with a bit of a delay) and they seem to be reporting 1-2 a day.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 09:24 |
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Staluigi posted:there's one complication that adds to the greater mystery of if hamas is neutralized, and its mostly about how it pretty much doesn't matter if they're neutralized or not It clearly doesn't matter to Israel, that is known. However, should Hamas leadership make a statement that they basically don't have any troops left, even the US wouldn't be able to justify continuing the campaign in any capacity. Mission accomplished, go home already. kiminewt posted:Haaretz reports Israeli military casualties (usually with a bit of a delay) and they seem to be reporting 1-2 a day. Thanks, just checked it. I know that some Arabic media suggested that Israel might not be releasing the full statistics but I don't think there was any real evidence of that in the end. And with how previous losses were reported, I wouldn't be surprised, if 1-2 a day are just Israeli soldiers dying due to friendly fire, heart attacks, or due to booby traps and mines, not in real combat. I can't find any mentions of anything that could be considered even a skirmish in the last several weeks. Doesn't look like there are any new videos by Hamas of close-range combat either. The most recent thing I could find, and maybe it's just Google being poo poo, is a rocket launch from four days ago. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-identifies-and-kills-hamas-operative-minutes-after-he-launched-rocket-at-ashkelon/ And before that there was another rocket attack more than three weeks ago. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-fires-rockets-central-israel-army-intercepts-some-them-2024-01-29/ So it looks like Hamas/PIJ had already fired almost all their rockets last year and now it's just whatever they could finish assembling in the last couple of month. It makes me wonder what's Hamas' plan here. Hoping that Hezbollah and Ansar Allah can destroy Israel on their own? That the international community will finally do something concrete to stop the ongoing genocide? That Israel will suddenly plunge into a civil war?
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 13:05 |
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Hong XiuQuan posted:One of the coordinating points of Zionism in the first half of the 20th C was a rejection of pluralistic Jewish identity. I don't mean in terms of certain religious differences but in making various Jewish identities subservient to the Zionist dream. So you get, eg, Jospeh in Koestler's 'Thieves in the Night' saying: 'I became a Hebrew because I hated the Yid'. Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic (etc) have all been slowly squeezed out. It's part of the same package as the erasure of Arab or North African identities. It's OK to bring some parts of culture you can assimilate into this Israeli identity. So Houmous is OK but Arabic and Judeo-Arabic are not. Shakshuka is the rage but you have to now be called Mizrahim. This musical style is acceptable but only if you reject the idea that it's possible to be both an Arab and a Jew. Are there any books or documentaries that go more in-depth about this?
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 13:26 |
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Main Paineframe posted:That's just semantics. Ultimately, I choose "ignoring" because it's not like US policy toward Israel changed* after Israel started bombing Gaza. Biden continued the USA's decades-long policy of "continue to send military aid to Israel no matter what happens", regardless of what Israel may or may not be doing to Palestinians at any given moment. Thus the word "ignoring". It's not like they sent the aid because Israel was bombing Gaza, but it's not like they stopped aid because Israel was bombing Gaza either. Israel's attitude or actions toward Gaza just aren't really a consideration in US actions, at all - no matter what Israel does, the US ignores it and continues to shovel the aid over. To you it may be "just semantics," but to me it reeks of the weaponization of the passive voice that seeks to absolve the United States and others of their share of the responsibility for the massacres that Israel is committing. The United States is not simply allowing this to happen. It is, in large part, making it happen.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 14:35 |
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:To you it may be "just semantics," but to me it reeks of the weaponization of the passive voice that seeks to absolve the United States and others of their share of the responsibility for the massacres that Israel is committing. The United States is not simply allowing this to happen. It is, in large part, making it happen. The US is not out there forcing Israel to commit genocide. Nor is it playing some absolutely vital role here where the genocide would be impossible without their help (unlike, say, Egypt, whose active cooperation in blockading Gaza's southern border has been crucial to Israel's starvation policies). The US is accountable for supporting Israel despite its genocidal policies, but Israel was perfectly capable of genocide long before the US government started aiding it (and, indeed, was successfully carrying out this genocide for decades before the US government started giving it significant aid).
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 15:59 |
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It feels weird to deflect blame to Egypt when their current government took power in a US-backed coup
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 16:14 |
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https://twitter.com/AP/status/1759968055835173364 It should be noted that there is only one Arab nation (Algeria) on the Security Council right now.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 17:05 |
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Nucleic Acids posted:https://twitter.com/AP/status/1759968055835173364 There's only ever one Arab nation on the UNSC (since '67) just like there's always two from Latin America and one non-permanent member from Eastern Europe. That's how the rotating country slots are allocated. Apologies if you personally already know this but your phrasing makes it sound like an anomaly.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 17:12 |
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Kagrenak posted:There's only ever one Arab nation on the UNSC (since '67) just like there's always two from Latin America and one non-permanent member from Eastern Europe. That's how the rotating country slots are allocated. Apologies if you personally already know this but your phrasing makes it sound like an anomaly. Oh, I am, it’s just the AP using the presence of an Arab nation to be blatantly racist.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 17:18 |
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Nucleic Acids posted:Oh, I am, it’s just the AP using the presence of an Arab nation to be blatantly racist. The resolution was literally put forward by Algeria on behalf of Arab States. E: forgot the link https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1146697
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 17:26 |
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Nucleic Acids posted:Oh, I am, it’s just the AP using the presence of an Arab nation to be blatantly racist. The proposal was specifically crafted by the Arab nations though and this is how AJE characterizes it as well: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/20/us-vetoes-another-un-security-council-resolution-urging-gaza-war-ceasefire posted:Arab nations, led by Algeria, put the draft resolution to a vote on Tuesday with the expectation that it would not pass after the US – Israel’s key ally – had warned it would not back the text and proposed a rival draft instead. The Saudi foreign ministry also characterizes it as "submitted on behalf of the Arab nations" https://twitter.com/KSAmofaEN/status/1760064626790748667
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 17:26 |
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“Arab backed” sounds like fearmongering. It’s definitely making me remember that one old lady who spoke to John McCain and said she didn’t trust Obama because he’s Arab. At the very least, it’s indelicate. Al Jazeera’s “Arab nations, led by Algeria” is a much better handling of it.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 18:01 |
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Paladinus posted:Thanks, just checked it. I know that some Arabic media suggested that Israel might not be releasing the full statistics but I don't think there was any real evidence of that in the end. And with how previous losses were reported, I wouldn't be surprised, if 1-2 a day are just Israeli soldiers dying due to friendly fire, heart attacks, or due to booby traps and mines, not in real combat. That's true of most conflicts. Causalities are always downplayed to keep up moral.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 18:04 |
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Main Paineframe posted:The US is not out there forcing Israel to commit genocide. No, it's just shoveling money and weapons at them so they can continue to do it. But I suppose it's not forcing them to (what would that even look like? how do you force another country to commit genocide?)
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 18:09 |
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Marenghi posted:That's true of most conflicts. Causalities are always downplayed to keep up moral. I would agree if Israel didn't publish names along with their numbers, and even later reveal how exactly they died. If they suffered substantial losses but a lot of names were missing from their official reports, even with military censorship, it would be trivial to catch on to for groups that currently oppose Netanyahu both from the left and from the right. There would be posts on social media from relatives, morgues over capacity, not to mention that this topic would have some presence at recent anti-Netanyahu protests. As it stands, I'm not aware of any real evidence whatsoever to suggest that Israel outright lies about losses.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 18:22 |
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Marenghi posted:That's true of most conflicts. Causalities are always downplayed to keep up moral. Doesn't mean you can continue to make up your own facts about how people died, increasing the disinformation out there doesn't help anyone.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 19:17 |
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Paladinus posted:A lot of news about more and more civilian casualties but not a lot recently about any actual fighting. Are there still any signs of resistance by Hamas apart from Israel calling anyone their soldiers shoot Hamas? Has Israel stopped reporting on losses or is there just not much going on resembling an armed conflict anymore? Could it be that Hamas is already essentially neutralised, as in they don't have enough resources to pose any real short/mid-term danger to Israel? Israel will never consider Hamas neutralized even if they raze every school, kindergarten and hospital in Middle East, because Israel needs Hamas to justify its genocidal tendencies.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 20:52 |
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Paladinus posted:It clearly doesn't matter to Israel, that is known. However, should Hamas leadership make a statement that they basically don't have any troops left, even the US wouldn't be able to justify continuing the campaign in any capacity. Mission accomplished, go home already. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-six-week-drive-hit-hamas-rafah-scale-back-war-2024-02-19/ quote:Furthermore, according to Hamas, the total victory promised by Netanyahu won't be quick or easy.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 21:19 |
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socialsecurity posted:Doesn't mean you can continue to make up your own facts about how people died, increasing the disinformation out there doesn't help anyone. Yeah your options are: 1) Report on a slightly delayed basis (this isn't even for OPSEC, you need to actually confirm death, then inform family, and only then go public. That takes a few days) 2) Say 'for national security reasons casualties are a military secret'. ie. you are Ukraine fighting a full conventional war and releasing casualty numbers would give your opponent critical information. 3) Lie. Be Russia. Yeah the ship caught fire, exploded, and sank but there were only 3 people on it at the time. The thing about 3) is that even though it can obscure the truth, it's incredibly obvious to everyone that you are lying. Given that Israel has chosen to report deaths it would make absolutely no sense for them to be lying about numbers.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 22:08 |
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Szarrukin posted:Israel will never consider Hamas neutralized even if they raze every school, kindergarten and hospital in Middle East, because Israel needs Hamas to justify its genocidal tendencies. As I said, it's less about what Israel will think and more about what countries who back Israel will think, and what they might do in case Israel continues its genocidal campaign without even the thinnest excuse of self-defence. Irony Be My Shield posted:I can see the logic but I don't think Hamas really has this option - their rivals within Gaza would likely take over if Hamas admitted defeat like that. Plus there's a high chance Israel is planning to occupy Gaza rather than withdraw when it thinks Hamas is sufficiently damaged. Interestingly though they have recently acknowledged taking major casualties for the first time this war (I don't think they've ever reported on their own losses other than individual leaders before this point): Interesting. It's not clear from the quote, but if they meant 6,000 dead, even with the abysmal ratio of 1 killed to 1 seriously wounded, Hamas have lost almost half of all their fighters. The ration may be even worse, though, considering what Israel did to the majority of Gazan hospitals. If they meant 6k was total losses, it's ~20% of all fighters. Hard to imagine they have a way right now to mobilise and more importantly to train more people, so their military perspectives are probably pretty grim based on that number alone.
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# ? Feb 21, 2024 23:53 |
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Paladinus posted:As I said, it's less about what Israel will think and more about what countries who back Israel will think, and what they might do in case Israel continues its genocidal campaign without even the thinnest excuse of self-defence. I think that's a novel idea, I think it would take a rather significant admission of defeat from Hamas before Israel backs down. I mean it's not like Hamas and Israel aren't still negotiating using go betweens. Israel cannot unilaterally declare victory here without serious embarrassment and I doubt Hamas leadership would be willing to even give any superficial surrender serious consideration knowing that Israel's position is getting worse over time. At least the scenario I'm picturing here is that Hamas negotiators say alright, we're done, we surrender and Israel just takes them at their word and leaves? That would have to be accompanied by full release of hostages and fighters going into Israeli captivity for Israel to take it seriously.
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 00:55 |
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Szarrukin posted:Israel will never consider Hamas neutralized even if they raze every school, kindergarten and hospital in Middle East, because Israel needs Hamas to justify its genocidal tendencies. IMO, this isn’t true. They’ve been genociding Palestinians since well before Hamas existed. They’ll just find some new excuse to keep genociding until, at a minimum, Palestine no longer exists. Or until there’s enough pressure from US/etc to finally stop Kalit fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Feb 22, 2024 |
# ? Feb 22, 2024 01:04 |
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Paladinus posted:It clearly doesn't matter to Israel, that is known. However, should Hamas leadership make a statement that they basically don't have any troops left, even the US wouldn't be able to justify continuing the campaign in any capacity. Mission accomplished, go home already. Feels like a distinct underestimating of israel's lobby for the war to continue as long as their right wing wants it to The best direct comparison is the US deciding "mission accomplished" doesn't mean no more wmd's or anything, it means however long we like. Or generations of Eastern European history i guess, but the point is is that whether there's any Hamas resistance anywhere should be considered potentially (and likely) irrelevant to the goal of ethnic cleansing and incorporation
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 01:11 |
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Zionism is a fascist ideology, it will always need an enemy. If Israel were ever to manage to cleanse Palestine (they won't), they would look further afield to Lebanon and Jordan. The US would still support them in this, as they are fully aligned with Zionism. The only way to prevent genocide is to destroy Zionism.
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 01:37 |
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WarpedLichen posted:I think that's a novel idea, I think it would take a rather significant admission of defeat from Hamas before Israel backs down. I mean it's not like Hamas and Israel aren't still negotiating using go betweens. Israel cannot unilaterally declare victory here without serious embarrassment and I doubt Hamas leadership would be willing to even give any superficial surrender serious consideration knowing that Israel's position is getting worse over time. See, I'm just not sure that Israel's position is getting that much worse as opposed to Netanyahu's position. Chances are that should Netanyahu resign or get ousted only to be replaced by someone marginally less bloodthirsty, it wouldn't result in any appreciable change for Gaza. Maybe Israel will allow even more aid, maybe they'll give more time for people to evacuate before bombing their houses, maybe some generals will be pressured to retire and some soldiers will be punished, maybe Israel will 'cooperate' with UNRWA, etc. Basically, just enough token gestures to placate Western countries and scale the conflict down without ending it. While Western countries either pretend to be or are unhappy about tens of thousands of civilians killed by Israel, I don't think there was any shift in perception of Hamas as an organisation, so it's very hard for me to imagine how from the current situation everything can go back even to the pre-Oct 7 status quo, not to mention moving forward to the recognition of the Palestinian state without Hamas either dissolving or completely changing their leadership and messaging. I've already asked this, but do Hamas leaders have any sort of plan? The only leverage they have is hostages, and with how much Israel cares about their safety, there might not even be any hostages left in a couple of months. What then?
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 01:38 |
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Paladinus posted:I've already asked this, but do Hamas leaders have any sort of plan? The only leverage they have is hostages, and with how much Israel cares about their safety, there might not even be any hostages left in a couple of months. What then? I feel like no, they don't, at least any more. I don't know that they ever thought the 7 October attacks would ever get so far or do so much, in military humiliation or in the numbers of civilians killed and taken hostage. I think they thought that they would be stopped earlier and that Israel's response would be more like Cast Lead and other times the conflict has gone hot, but that maybe they could leverage the hostages they did take for better leverage in negotiations. Given all that's happened, if they once had a plan at this point it's completely off the rails and they're just trying to figure out how to get through this without their organization crumbling and/or losing legitimacy in the strip.
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 01:53 |
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Your Brain on Hugs posted:If Israel were ever to manage to cleanse Palestine (they won't), ... only way to prevent genocide is to destroy Zionism. If you're confident that Israel won't complete the Nakba, and that this can only be prevented by the destruction of Zionism, that means you expect Zionism to end as an idea, right? I'd like to see that, but I don't sure your confidence, or your view of it as a very powerful idea. The Holocaust was ended without the end of Nazism, Apartheid was ended without the end of White Supremacist ideology, American internment of Japanese-Americans was ended without the end of anti-Japanese racism. What ended all these was that the state was either dismantled or lost the structure of incentives and impunity that produced the atrocity, not the destruction of the "-ism." If there weren't an actual settler-colonial project then it wouldn't matter whether people read Herzl or Kook or not, there wouldn't a genocide because there wouldn't be a state capable of it and interested in it. And if you somehow wiped out all memory of Zionism before that changed, then it would be reproduced because the material interests of the local ruling class are in dispossessing new land and extracting labor from imperiled minorities. So I think you're mixing up cause and effect here. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Feb 22, 2024 |
# ? Feb 22, 2024 02:14 |
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You're correct, I was using Zionism as a stand in for the current state of Israel. It's certainly possible for Jews and Arabs to live together in Palestine under a single secular democratic state. A great many dedicated Zionists see this as the same as death though, and would either flee or die fighting. You're also right that it won't kill white supremacist settler colonialism, it'll just be reabsorbed and push out elsewhere as long as the western white supremacist hegemony is in charge.
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 02:40 |
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Kagrenak posted:I feel like no, they don't, at least any more. I don't know that they ever thought the 7 October attacks would ever get so far or do so much, in military humiliation or in the numbers of civilians killed and taken hostage. I think they thought that they would be stopped earlier and that Israel's response would be more like Cast Lead and other times the conflict has gone hot, but that maybe they could leverage the hostages they did take for better leverage in negotiations. Given all that's happened, if they once had a plan at this point it's completely off the rails and they're just trying to figure out how to get through this without their organization crumbling and/or losing legitimacy in the strip. I was going to ask a similar question. I have no idea what Hamas was trying to accomplish back in October, but it doesn't seem to be working very well?
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 05:26 |
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Your Brain on Hugs posted:Zionism is a fascist ideology, it will always need an enemy. If Israel were ever to manage to cleanse Palestine (they won't), they would look further afield to Lebanon and Jordan. The US would still support them in this, as they are fully aligned with Zionism. The only way to prevent genocide is to destroy Zionism. This is true. Even Netyanahu talks about the idea of Greater Israel.
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 09:29 |
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Angry Avocado posted:Are there any books or documentaries that go more in-depth about this? I’d probably start with Avi Shlaim’s ‘Three World’s’ which as a memoir serves as a (self-)exegesis on the tensions between Zionism and non/anti-zionism within global Jewish communities (in Shlaim’s case a kind of Iraq-Britain-Israel axis) and an epitaph for the loss of Iraqi Jewish culture. It’s a highly readable book and to my mind probably the best way to start to understand everything in the context and tensions of overlapping identities. I’d then consider trying to understand how Arab identity manifests. So much discourse at the moment sees Arab and Jewish as diametrically opposed - which is nonsense - or sees them as biologically utterly distinct (also nonsense). For that try: Arabs: A 3,000-Year History - Tim Mackintosh-Smith Imagining the Arabs - Peter Webb From the Mountain - William Dalrymple (which focuses on Christian Arabs) And finally I’d consider something which is a bit harder to get into and is probably drier than the author intended. He didn’t finish it before he died but what exists of it is essentially a series of essays and they’re edited well-enough to hold together extremely well. Recently translated into English and when I read it last year I found it to be fantastic. Written in 1967 it examines Zionist literature as fundamental to the Zionist movement and how it intersects with Palestinian identity: Ghassan Kanafani - ‘On Zionist Literature’ Have deliberately shied away from books on Jewish history here (of which there are myriad). These tend to be well-represented in discourse and are written from a predominantly European Zionist perspective. The books recommend here flip that by looking more at Arabic identity and how Zionism has impacted that. E: and for an interesting exploration of that kind of inevitability of the Holocaust (as well as Jewish identity), it’s worth looking at ‘The Netanyahu’s’ by Joshua Cohen. The framework for the novel is a slapstick visit by Benzion Netanyahu & family but the first half of the novel focuses on a college professor’s position in the US, experience of low-level antisemitism etc Hong XiuQuan fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Feb 22, 2024 |
# ? Feb 22, 2024 10:51 |
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:I was going to ask a similar question. I have no idea what Hamas was trying to accomplish back in October, but it doesn't seem to be working very well? One of their principle goals was preventing the Israel Saudi normalization, and that has been a complete success
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 12:48 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya-dN9D4Y0E Minister for Social Equality and the Advancement of the Status of Women of Israel: "I am personally proud of the ruins in Gaza. Every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did." It's amazing how they keep spouting bullshit straight from Warhammer 40k and world is still like "but what about Hamas???"
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 15:57 |
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Szarrukin posted:Minister for Social Equality and the Advancement of the Status of Women of Israel: "I am personally proud of the ruins in Gaza. Every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did." Just wish “Every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did” wasn’t another Zionist or Antisemite? question.
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 16:07 |
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Main Paineframe posted:The US is not out there forcing Israel to commit genocide. Nor is it playing some absolutely vital role here where the genocide would be impossible without their help (unlike, say, Egypt, whose active cooperation in blockading Gaza's southern border has been crucial to Israel's starvation policies). This argument is ridiculous. As you mention, Israel has been doing a slow genocide for decades. America's support of Israel isn't a recent thing. Fully half of all UNSC vetoes by the US relate to Israel. America is also responsible for crippling many of Israel's enemies, who might otherwise have been in a position to stop Israel. We know from past experience that America is capable of yanking the leash on their dog. They're not willing to do that this time, and have in fact been doing the opposite: Making it clear that support to Israel is unconditonal, and that red lines simply do not exist. So it's completely reasonable to say that this genocide is the responsibility of the US, because there is little reason to believe that Israel would have been such a dominant position absent American financial, military and political support. But even if all that were untrue, and Israel were fully able and willing to do the genocide on its own, that doesn't somehow make America less culpable when they keep sending them money, bombs and blocking political action at the UN.
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 18:45 |
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A big flaming stink posted:One of their principle goals was preventing the Israel Saudi normalization, and that has been a complete success It's a bit unusual to ask what their goals were when they put out a short document not long ago stating exactly what their goals were. The opposition to normalisation being a key one.
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 20:16 |
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Marenghi posted:It's a bit unusual to ask what their goals were when they put out a short document not long ago stating exactly what their goals were. Generally you should not trust a politician or political party when they say what their goals are. I do agree that they wanted to prevent normalization, but it's not at all unusual to ask what a party's goals are/were, even and especially if they offered their own answer to that question.
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 21:40 |
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Hong XiuQuan posted:I’d probably start with Avi Shlaim’s ‘Three World’s’ which as a memoir serves as a (self-)exegesis on the tensions between Zionism and non/anti-zionism within global Jewish communities (in Shlaim’s case a kind of Iraq-Britain-Israel axis) and an epitaph for the loss of Iraqi Jewish culture. It’s a highly readable book and to my mind probably the best way to start to understand everything in the context and tensions of overlapping identities. I did not expect such a lengthy response. This list is fantastic, thank you very much
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 21:47 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 02:17 |
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A big flaming stink posted:One of their principle goals was preventing the Israel Saudi normalization, and that has been a complete success
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# ? Feb 22, 2024 22:48 |