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e: /\/\ dude this idea was literally tested in the 30's. It did not work out. Vagabong posted:I do think people need to be more careful about overemphasizing the cosmopolitan nature of Middle-Eastern cities under Ottoman rule. Its an aspect of Ottoman society that often gets overemphasised in part due to western travel writing during the period along with later Western nostalgia for the more soft handed imperialism that was being practiced in the reigion by the French and English. It was hardly an Idyllic situtation; religious populations were often heavily segregated and tensions could often boil over into violent persecution. Yeah, ask the Armenians how great it was being an ethnic minority in the Ottoman Empire.
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May 17, 2021 00:02
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Flannelette posted:The US and the CCCP never said the quiet part out loud though, they always said we won't fire nukes until they did first. The Israel, NK, I guess India/Pakistan blackmail tactic of "gee I hope no one invades helpless little us and we have to let off a nuke and start a chain reaction that destroys the world" is not the same as MAD. That's not true. 'No first use' is the policy of China and India. The USSR made a no first use pledge in 1982 (nobody believes they were sincere) which Russia rescinded. NATO explicitly rejects no first use. e: pretty much everyone talks in terms of 'minimum credible deterrence', but there's an awful lot of wiggle room on how you define 'minimum', 'credible', and what you are trying to deter. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 09:50 on May 17, 2021 |
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May 17, 2021 09:47
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It's a bit irrelevant anyway because the most obvious high risk scenario for Israel deciding to use nukes doesn't involve them targeting cities at all.
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May 17, 2021 22:51
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icantfindaname posted:This sort of seems like a clear win for Hamas/loss for Israel, do we agree? Seems the ethnic conflict among Israeli citizens proper and the degree of global hostility caught them off guard. Israel may have picked all the low hanging fruit as it were in its occupation, proceeding further is going to have greatly increasing costs Uh, Israel demonstrated that it can act with impunity, that it's defences have improved to the point where Hamas's traditional tactics (rocket barrages, tunnelling assaults) have been effectively negated, and now has a population slightly more radical and happy about the above, including some pretty clear signalling that the government seems confident that future conflicts won't involve conscripts getting send into new-Stalingrad again. The status quo endures, which is one in which Israel has effectively total freedom of action. The only way this is a win for Hamas is that their credentials as the leadership of the resistance movement remain good and the saving of Netanyahu has probably delayed his replacement on the Israeli right by someone considerably less moderate for another few years. e: Hamas's clearly stated objective was that Israel had to remove security forces from the Temple Mount, immediately after the ceasefire Israeli security forces stormed the Temple Mount mosque. This was very much about both sides signalling a willingness to fight without actually wanting a full-blown conflict so the stated objectives are a bit of a red herring, but I imagine the Israeli government is pretty satisfied with how things panned out. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 08:55 on May 22, 2021 |
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May 22, 2021 08:51
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Palestinian armed resistance has always been centred on the theory that they are fighting a traditional colonial war of liberation against Europeans and that if they continue a long attritional struggle then it will go the same way as other colonial conflicts and the settlers will eventually decide the cost of occupation is too great and go home. But that fundamentally isn't the conflict that they are in. Worse, every round of violence only entrenches Israeli opinion that the only safe place for Jews in the world is in an ethnostate that represents them.
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Oct 8, 2023 16:08
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Germany has just spent 18 months on a journey of 'okay maybe we have to take defence seriously and maybe there is such a thing as a good war' and yesterday got a very strong push on public opinion towards Israel.
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Oct 8, 2023 19:51
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I think the one thing we can all agree on is that the first test of new twitter in a major global event proves it has been completely destroyed as a source of semi-reliable info. It was always a dumpster fire but the counter-disinformation efforts tended to limit the noise. The last few days have been an absolute tidal wave of bullshit made up by clout chasers.
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Oct 9, 2023 07:50
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paul_soccer12 posted:The beginning of the Ukraine invasion was even more impenetrable imo Eh, there was a lot of fog of war but if you filtered out the obvious Kremlin shrills crowing about how the Ukrainian army had evaporated or that Kyiv was encircled or that the Donbass was encircled (I know not everyone managed to do that) then there was actually a pretty clear consensus on what we could know was happening. E: anyway, consequences: (I suspect this is media upreading a quote and it won't happen, but is demonstrates how far the needle has moved in Europe): https://twitter.com/derJamesJackson/status/1711026132156318120?t=XQDyiGZgWnqljLTxKv7cSA&s=19 Alchenar fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Oct 9, 2023 |
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Oct 9, 2023 08:13
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The 16 year olds running out to shoot up Israeli towns absolutely knew that the vast majority of them were never coming back
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Oct 9, 2023 12:33
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FlamingLiberal posted:A ground assault in Gaza is going to be a nightmare for the IDF At a total guess, I would suspect this is why the electricity and water have been cut. They're going to smash Hamas from the air a bit (particularly going after the leadership), do a few incursions, and then at some point an offer will be made along the lines of 'we don't care who runs Gaza as long as it isn't Hamas and as long as that person acknowledges the reality that you are totally dependent on Israel for basic utilities and if we are fighting then they are getting turned off'.
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Oct 9, 2023 18:34
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Typo posted:both sides actually have strong incentives to end it That's really not it. It looks that way on the surface level, but every time someone digs down into what Israelis and Palestinians actually mean when they define the peace they want they are worlds apart.
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Oct 9, 2023 20:57
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FlapYoJacks posted:Again, what is his source? He keeps saying "were." Clearly he is getting this info from the IDF. He's literally there with the bodybags right behind him.
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Oct 10, 2023 19:50
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Oz Katerji is a mixed bag because the reason he's an independent journalist is that he's burned bridges with everyone whoever offered him a job. I would say he's broadly safe though; he wears his opinions and biases on his sleeve, distinguishes between factually and partial reporting, and generally has a good nose for bullshit.
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Oct 11, 2023 13:10
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The problem is that we are far closer to a three state solution than a two or even one state one.
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Oct 11, 2023 16:11
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shades of blue posted:There will never be peace without a Palestinian Right to Return. Everything else is negotiable but we have seen time and time again, for decades now, that the single biggest sticking point is the Right to Return. Previous peace talks offered up parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in exchange. Unless Israel changes it's mind, there will never be peace. Never happening. The best thing Palestine can hope to get is a peace deal that finally defines Israel's borders, because that is the actual road to stopping further colonial encroachment.
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Oct 11, 2023 17:34
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DelilahFlowers posted:They're still settlers. What do you think is the function of a colonial project right next to the frontier? Okay if your position is that Israel has no right to exist then you need to be upfront about that because most people will use the definition of settler as 'anyone beyond the 67 borders'.
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Oct 11, 2023 17:50
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Just wanted to post this Peter Zeihan video about the whole situation. Zeihan is a bit of strange fellow, he does futures predictions for companies about how the world is going to be in the next 10-30 years. He does a good job summing up what's been going on, and brings up a few thoughts that hadn't occurred to me (and from watching the thread, most others), such as the factionalization in the Gaza Strip that may have contributed to the initial Hamas butchery. Thought the thread might appreciate it. Yeah Zeihan is a weird guy with a very broad but shallow understanding of the world (in the context of intelligence analysts rather than the average person - he's knowledgeable but would come short against an actual expert in any specific topic). Very macro socioeconomic driven analysis where on youtube he is significantly more deterministic than is perhaps wise. He is certainly worth listening to for a worldview that significantly discounts ideology and looking at things from that perspective.
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Oct 14, 2023 19:14
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Snowmanatee posted:Having only done a few minutes of googling, it seems clear to me his source is talking about a MOP like the GBU-57A/B. Do you have more info of why it's implausible Israel would use a bomb like it or is it a gut feeling? Well the misnaming is a clear sign that just like his 'reporting' on Russia/Ukraine issues he's clearly being taken for a ride by someone who is either deliberately misleading him or doesn't know what they are talking about, and he's completely lost the ability to smell bullshit. e: ^^ yeah, and basic facts like that. e2: the test isn't 'is this plausible?' because basically anything passes that test (except this), the test is 'did this come from a credible source?'
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Oct 15, 2023 13:41
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Main Paineframe posted:It's a growing problem, but I don't really think it would have contributed too much to the security failures. The ultra-Orthodox parties don't really have an opinion on the military aside from "we want to be exempt from conscription". As long as they get that exemption, they don't really meddle with military policy, and they don't make up enough of the population for the IDF to be running low on manpower just yet. Yeah I don't think it's that significant a factor now (although it may have been one of the factors contributing to the IDF being entirely deployed to the West Bank), I think Zeihan is more on point with the observation that one of the traits of Israeli politics is an intense unwillingness to silence or 'leave behind' any part of the Jewish community.
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Oct 15, 2023 16:50
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Darth Walrus posted:Beta Israel excepted. There's a long and grim history of institutional racism in Israel against Ethiopian Jews, with the involuntary sterilisation scandal merely being the most notorious example. So on the one hand yes (and that example is pretty awful), on the other hand Beta Israel is a community that had been totally isolated from every other bit of Judeism for between one and two thousand years, and Israel still decided 'yes officially you are Jews, you get right of return'. I think literally any other country in the world would have just left things at 'lol no you are not one of us'.
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Oct 15, 2023 17:15
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They've evacuated 100,000 people from the area around Gaza and conducted a mass mobilisation. There are enormous costs to doing that and even if they are going to fight a protracted deliberate campaign they will need to start moving once the mobilisation process is complete (it looks like they're doing refresher training and unit familiarisation right now). Everything they've done, from cutting the water, to demanding an evacuation of North Gaza, to a frantic pace of bombing, indicates an intent to go in and have a fight with Hamas as soon as possible.
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Oct 16, 2023 22:37
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AccountSupervisor posted:Apologies some of my language will be off as Im still trying to grasp the history. I am referring to the settlers purchasing land in the area, I often see references to early tensions referring to this time period. I used the term Zionists very loosely for this time period, like you said there with Zionist elements but not the full on aspirational ideology. I think you can probably follow the book references from wikipedia here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sursock_Purchases In a nutshell the tipping point is 1920 and the British Mandate, because before then the Ottoman Empire was routinely denying major land purchases and after then the floodgates were opened.
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Oct 18, 2023 19:07
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Trying to argue that Hamas doesn't mean it when they say they want to kill all Jews looks ridiculous when not 2 weeks ago they were going house to house slaughtering entire families, including infants, in what ended up being the worst massacre perpetrated against Jews since the Holocaust. Their actions made it abundantly clear what their charter means. It also just feels strangely inconsistent to look exclusively at Hamas's statements towards Western facing outlets and take them at face value.
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Oct 21, 2023 11:18
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Noise Complaint posted:What would you suggest the "moral" solution is for Palestinians is considering when they try peaceful marches they get murdered and crippled en masse like at the Great March of Return. Okay I'm going to regret this because it's not like this argument hasn't played out exactly the same way a million times and there isn't really anything new to say, but the Palestinians have rejected every single peace deal that's ever been on the table. Now you might not think that any of the deals they have been offered were any good or should have been accepted but the course of the conflict has been that the Palestinians have repeatedly made the strategic decision to reject offers in the expectation that in the long term they will be able to get better terms, with the reality being that every time they have done this the terms on offer have gotten worse. Yeah Israel has all the power and that makes it incumbent on Israel to be the party driving for a serious peace, but one of the big blockers to be overcome that is in the Palestinian camp is that getting to a deal is going to require their society to come to terms with the fact that their national strategy for the last 75 years has been a disaster.
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Oct 21, 2023 16:26
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Shageletic posted:Controlling your own borders is a pretty important feature of governance. You brought up the Egyptians controlling their side of the border before 2005, which made me look up to see if that was true. Which it seemingly isn't. Palestinians have never had the "chance" to control their own borders. The blockade in Gaza only changed in location and a level of severity in 2005. So I'm still wondering how the Palestinians had the chance to show the world how they could govern before that. Not necessarily. The Good Friday Agreement very deliberately fudged that issue in order to settle Northern Ireland. The Palestinians should be able to wear Israel paying for and delivering their border security if they insist. Security is not something Israel will ever give up on, so concessions on security are the things Palestine should be making in abundance in exchange for something elsewhere.
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Oct 23, 2023 21:10
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VitalSigns posted:This isn't necessarily true. The ANC also had Nelson Mandela, who was both a credible leader of the resistance but was also just about able to convince De Clerk that dismantling apartheid wouldn't lead to an instant massacre of the whites. And he basically had to devote his presidency to national reconciliation. And South African politics is still hosed up 30 years later and lately the country has been locked in a downward spiral. There are zero of the conditions anyone would expect for a one state solution to be remotely viable, not least that nobody who actually lives in Israel/Palestine is seriously proposing it. e: but I broadly agree with the thesis on this page. The most successful movements are the ones that match the use or threat of force with a credible diplomatic offer.
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Oct 24, 2023 21:32
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At 0.26 right before the cutaway you can see something suspiciously atgmy coming in hot on the tank column. (or it could just be a bird, you really have to stop and rewind a bit)
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Oct 28, 2023 08:15
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40% support for the guy who's literal first act last time around was an actual muslim ban.
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Oct 31, 2023 20:23
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MikeC posted:The situation would be fundamentally different. Unlike in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it was essentially impossible to regulate the flow of fighters, weapons, and ammunition into the country, Gaza would represent a tiny area where all access into and out of the area can be tightly controlled provided that whoever ends up administering the strip has sufficient personnel to enforce borders and law and order. The question would be whether this third party has any ability to really impact the long-standing political, territorial, and economic issues of the Gaza Strip and whether they can win buy-in from the populace. Just like the fantastic success Israel had controlling the flow of fighters, weapons and ammunition into the country for the last 20 years with complete control of all the borders but the one with Egypt!
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Nov 1, 2023 00:00
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All of the above presumes that Hamas were expecting the success they had, and that the plan wasn't to rattle the prison bars a bit, derail the Saudi normalisation talks, but otherwise rapidly return to the status quo ante. The risk of Hezbollah causing trouble in the North is a factor that will always constrain Israel from wanting to concentrate entirely on Gaza, but Hezbollah absolutely does not want another fight with Israel and Hamas blew way past the threshold of Israel not being willing to pay the costs of another period of active conflict.
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Nov 2, 2023 23:55
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Stringent posted:Does the IDF have an obligation to immediately inform families of casualties? Yes and for obvious reasons they wouldn't try to hide deaths because of the consequences when the families start talking to the media. The alternative is that for some reason they are daily announcing some deaths but not others, which would make absolutely no sense and would quickly be found out. You don't lie about this sort of stuff in an open society. What they are doing is conspicuously not talking numbers when it comes to wounded, which implies those numbers might not be so great.
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Nov 5, 2023 12:23
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Neurolimal posted:They're still slow rolling IDF casualties from Oct 7th, so that might be notable. It's people dying in hospital.
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Nov 5, 2023 12:44
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Well there's daily OS satellite footage of good enough quality that abandoned burnt out vehicles would be clearly identifiable, so at a minimum we can tell that the IDF is recovering any vehicles that do get hit.
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Nov 5, 2023 17:06
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I too get my news from *checks notes* an Australian paid by the Assad regime to promote the use of chemical weapons on civilians?
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Nov 5, 2023 20:24
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Main Paineframe posted:Militants attacking kibbutzes reportedly set fire to a number of houses on Oct 7th, killing many civilians who'd taken refuge in fortified safe rooms. The problem Israel will have had is that everyone disappeared from the area because they were either killed, kidnapped, or fled, and they'll have spent the last month trying to work out first who was in the area and then trying to track them down and establish where they are. That's a pretty huge problem.
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Nov 11, 2023 09:01
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Josef bugman posted:But it hasn't. The vast amount of people now in the UK seem to favour a ceasfire and the protests about it have reached about half a million + people. Eh, it's a mix and 50-50 at best. https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Sky_Israel-Palestine_231108_W.pdf. You also have to be careful how you define 'ceasefire' because half of that is 'I support Israel's offensive but they should give civilians a few days to get out of the way'. The plurality opinion seems to be 'well this sucks and I don't like people dying but I have no idea what can/should be done about it'. E: on aggregate I'd say that poll says the UK population is actually either actively or passively pro-Israel by some margin. (and just to define that, while the poll has a higher margin of sympathy for Palestine than for Israel, I'm saying that once you add in all the 'both sides equally' and 'don't knows' and look at their answers as basically being happy with the status quo or not thinking the UK should get involved and count that as being pro-status quo Israel then you end up with that) Alchenar fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 12:55
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I said come in! posted:Well Biden is our president for at least another term. So I don't really see a reason to focus on anyone else? But realistically you're probably right, that any other president would openly support genocide like Biden has. You guys are absolutely going to get Trump round two.
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Nov 13, 2023 21:30
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I mean if that happened it didn't last very long did it?
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Nov 13, 2023 22:20
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I suspected that after this is all over we'll find out there was a good reason why Israel swept the coastline first. I bet Hamas's defences are all orientated towards the border wall on the assumption that they'd get to fight a phased withdrawal into the city from that direction.
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Nov 14, 2023 22:42
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It's a decently rich country that has mobilised the most economically active 4% of its population. This has been a dilemma Israel has always had: it has to fight short, decisive wars because when they his the mobilisation button the economy goes on pause.
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Nov 18, 2023 19:50
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