Israel-Gaza war

[Open Source Intelligence]

Don't know if this is true, but holy the incompetence if it is.

There's no evidence that it happened.  It's from an Anonymous Source that was supposedly told about a conversation (hearsay upon hearsay), and Israel says its disinformation disseminated to divide the country.  The Egyptian claimed something "big" was going to happen in Gaza.  

I find it ridiculous that this grand planned attack went on invading into Israel, and no one intelligence anywhere knew anything. When this is all over, some Mossad leadership are going to be told by the country's leadership to go find another job. This is CIA 9/11-level intelligence failures by Mossad.

(I've seen one explanation of Hamas have gone to doing everything by courier, avoiding using electronic messaging means at all. Considering how tech-heavy modern-day American and Israeli intelligence are, it's a great way of going underneath if your adversary has no human intelligence. Compare and contrast how the U.S. were telling everyone for months the Russians would invade Ukraine and all their allies thinking it would never happen, compared to not a peep here. If that were the case of Hamas are intentionally not computerized, I would expect Egypt to have human intelligence inside Hamas if Egyptian intelligence was worth ten cents. Although Israel should run circles around Egypt and apparently had no idea what their top adversary were planning or doing. Even for tech intelligence though which Israel probably focused more on, you don't see missiles being moved around?)

In these cases, a credible press organization, such as the AP, the NYT, or WaPo, will “lend” their credibility. A good example of this in action is Watergate, when testimony from someone called “Deep Throat” was rightly deemed credible thanks to WaPo. Absent that testimony, the public would never have learned key details regarding Watergate.

Which with hindsight was not the journalistic slam dunk it was portrayed as for decades when the perpetrator was a guy upset he didn't get made FBI Director where Nixon rightfully wanted to take control of the FBI from the J. Edgar Hoovers of the world, so over a bureaucratic appointment sleight it brought down a whole presidency. Woodward and Bernstein got used as young naive reporters.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Don't know if this is true, but holy the incompetence if it is.

There's no evidence that it happened.  It's from an Anonymous Source that was supposedly told about a conversation (hearsay upon hearsay), and Israel says its disinformation disseminated to divide the country.  The Egyptian claimed something "big" was going to happen in Gaza.  

I find it ridiculous that this grand planned attack went on invading into Israel, and no one intelligence anywhere knew anything. When this is all over, some Mossad leadership are going to be told by the country's leadership to go find another job. This is CIA 9/11-level intelligence failures by Mossad.

(I've seen one explanation of Hamas have gone to doing everything by courier, avoiding using electronic messaging means at all. Considering how tech-heavy modern-day American and Israeli intelligence are, it's a great way of going underneath if your adversary has no human intelligence. Compare and contrast how the U.S. were telling everyone for months the Russians would invade Ukraine and all their allies thinking it would never happen, compared to not a peep here. If that were the case of Hamas are intentionally not computerized, I would expect Egypt to have human intelligence inside Hamas if Egyptian intelligence was worth ten cents. Even for tech intelligence though, you don't see missiles being moved around?)

2. The Netanyahu government knew this attack was coming and let it happen.

There's the possibility they deliberately let it happen in order to benefit from a rally around the flag effect, and get a casus belli to get rid of Gaza civilians/Hamas, increase antipathy to the Palestinian cause etc.

Zelenskyy became very popular after Ukraine got attacked because of the rally around the flag effect. There were domestic issues in Israel. It might be that Netanyahu wanted to benefit as well from that.

There's always been in this country a fringe comment "Roosevelt knew the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor to use that as a pretext to enter into World War II in Europe" when Americans due to World War I were heavily isolationist. The reality is he did not, it was more in the vein of "the Navy knew Japan were up to something but did not know what, and pieced it all together too late".

There's a difference between "Intelligence knows something is up" and "Intelligence knows they are attacking at this location at this time with these soldiers and that artillery". Mossad here it sounds like they didn't even know something was up.

[Open Source Intelligence]

I have never in my life seen a clearer example of fighting evil with evil.

Syria was worse being honest. It's just Arabs were killing Arabs so no one cared, including Obama.

Putin and Zelensky have given their thoughts and its quite telling

https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-israeli-ground-operation-gaza-will-result-civilian-losses-2023-10-13/

Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned Israel on Friday against laying siege to Gaza in the same way that Nazi Germany besieged Leningrad, saying a ground offensive there would lead to an "absolutely unacceptable" number of civilian casualties.

Putin said Israel had been subjected to "an attack unprecedented in its cruelty" by Hamas militants, but was responding with cruel methods of its own.

He said there had been calls even in the United States for a blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on a par with "the siege of Leningrad during World War Two".

https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/zelensky-israel-hamas-war-gaza-visit-netanyahu

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to visit Israel in a show of solidarity with the country amid the fighting in Gaza, two Ukrainian and Israeli officials told Axios.

It's pretty par for the course if you're paying attention. The world has divided in two:

Group 1 is the USA and Canada, almost all of Europe ex-Russia, Hungary, Serbia, and states like Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Group 2 is pretty much everyone else.

Neutral-ish states at the moment are the likes of India, the Saudis, Turkey, etc.

This is the new Cold War. Putin and Zelenskyy are each representing their side.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Bellingcat is probably fun right now.

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1719823625719537831

Well tbf much of the initial Israeli invasion plans were telegraphed a bit in advance.

If Israeli Military Planning is worth 10 cents they had a stock plan sitting on a hard drive titled "Plans for the Invasion of Gaza" drawn up years ago, no different than how the U.S. had a plan for war with Japan long before Pearl Harbor.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Wow. Looks like the US is starting to tire of Israeli games. I haven't seen the US defy Israel at the security council since Obama was a lame duck.

https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/1724900144808947883?t=7ZxqOT6nBGkPGFhGxX5q...

The vote was 12-0 with 3 abstentions. The abstentions were the U.S., the UK, and Russia.

[Open Source Intelligence]

UN vote on a resolution demanding Israel to "withdraw from all occupied Syrian Golan to the line of June 4, 1967."

Fairly predictable and representative of the current world alignment on Israel-Hamas

To generalize, without the exceptions here and there:

White Anglos - Against
Other Western - Abstain
Non-Western - In Favor

The against list to explicitly state them:

Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, the UK, and the U.S.

Remove the 3 that are effectively South Pacific protectorates of the U.S., that is such a limited but distinct set of countries. It's just missing New Zealand which abstained, as did Japan, South Korea, and all of the EU.

[Open Source Intelligence]

No, any conclusion in which Hamas does not surrender unconditionally, and agree to implement the directives of the Israeli government, is unacceptable.

How many times post-World War II has one side agreed to surrender unconditionally? That's not how war works anymore.

[Open Source Intelligence]

No, any conclusion in which Hamas does not surrender unconditionally, and agree to implement the directives of the Israeli government, is unacceptable.

How many times post-World War II has one side agreed to surrender unconditionally? That's not how war works anymore.

Just off Wikipedia, Pakistan Eastern Command unconditionally surrendered to India in 1971, and in 2021 the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan unconditionally surrendered to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (ie, the Taliban). It absolutely does still happen.

Have you paid attention to the Middle East for the past 25 years?

[Open Source Intelligence]

No, any conclusion in which Hamas does not surrender unconditionally, and agree to implement the directives of the Israeli government, is unacceptable.

How many times post-World War II has one side agreed to surrender unconditionally? That's not how war works anymore.

How many times prior to WW2 did one side agree to surrender unconditionally

Prior to World War II, countries would declare war and hostilities would formally end with treaties. We don't declare war and we don't do lasting treaties anymore, so conflict just ebbs and rises like waves in the ocean. Was there ever a declaration of war or treaty of any kind in regards to Syria, a conflict that was not really a civil war but more a pan-Arabian Peninsula War with Saudi Arabia and Friends on one side against Iran and Friends on the other? No, the Syrians with outside help "won" and Assad remained in power, but they still only control about 2/3rds of the country.

Throw on top of all that Hamas is not a state because Palestine is not a state nor are they the governing authority de jure (Abbas is), so they cannot unconditionally surrender when Israel does not recognize the authority of their leader nor the existence of the State of Palestine. So from who and where are you receiving this hypothetical piece of paper and what gives said person the authority to give it? This is a Prussia-francs tireurs conflict. It's not like the francs tireurs ever formally surrendered to the Prussian military.

[Open Source Intelligence]

I get impression most Israelis for a two state solution and issue is more against right of return from Palestinian refugees created in 1948 and over exact boundaries (keep Jerusalem in Israel and exchange some Arab towns for Jewish settlements near Green Line).

Parallel with Cyprus/Turkish Cyprus again.

[Open Source Intelligence]

No, any conclusion in which Hamas does not surrender unconditionally, and agree to implement the directives of the Israeli government, is unacceptable.

How many times post-World War II has one side agreed to surrender unconditionally? That's not how war works anymore.

How many times prior to WW2 did one side agree to surrender unconditionally

Prior to World War II, countries would declare war and hostilities would formally end with treaties. We don't declare war and we don't do lasting treaties anymore, so conflict just ebbs and rises like waves in the ocean. Was there ever a declaration of war or treaty of any kind in regards to Syria, a conflict that was not really a civil war but more a pan-Arabian Peninsula War with Saudi Arabia and Friends on one side against Iran and Friends on the other? No, the Syrians with outside help "won" and Assad remained in power, but they still only control about 2/3rds of the country.

Throw on top of all that Hamas is not a state because Palestine is not a state nor are they the governing authority de jure (Abbas is), so they cannot unconditionally surrender when Israel does not recognize the authority of their leader nor the existence of the State of Palestine. So from who and where are you receiving this hypothetical piece of paper and what gives said person the authority to give it? This is a Prussia-francs tireurs conflict. It's not like the francs tireurs ever formally surrendered to the Prussian military.

Describing Hamas as francs-tireurs is kind of odd because the Hague Conventions explicitly do not protect francs-tireurs.

I'm completely aware of that and is why during the Iraq War the Geneva Conventions explicitly did not protect al-Qaeda because they never openly identified themselves as members of a military or partisan force.

But since they're not a state group, they're never going to unconditionally surrender. Because if the head surrenders and then gets shot in the head by his next-in-command, that surrender agreement is not worth ten cents. So what you are really arguing for is permanent war and occupation.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Why should maintaining a Jewish majority even be a factor? Nobody cared about maintaining a white majority in Rhodesia or South Africa. Israel should be held to the exact same standard.

Because history has shown wherever not a majority they tend to face persecution.  There are loads of countries with white majorities so no need for Rhodesia or South Africa to be one.  By contrast there is only one country with a Jewish majority, Israel.

That is just beyond stupid. Should we then have a country for the Quebecois and your First Nations?

As an American (by American I mean from the Americas, not the U.S.), the notion of states based on ethnicity is this horrid 20th-century European monstrosity pushed by that complete dumbass of a President Woodrow Wilson which clearly influenced Hitler's thoughts when it came to what the nation-state should look like and created several wars and deaths with people drawn on the wrong side of the line. You can't have an ethnic-based state and for example be for immigration, because immigration naturally makes your state less ethnically pure therefore robbing the state's raison d'etre, yet the free movement of people is considered a cornerstone to the modern cosmopolitan world.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Theoretically, I agree with the idea Israel should just drop the idea of being a Jewish State simply because I think defining your country excessively through a religion or race is naturally bigoted - but that multicultural interpretation can also be validly interpreted as something that weakens the idea of national identity that many places have and WEAKENS diversity too because of that.

Like, if Israel isn’t a Jewish majority State, then where you would find a Jewish majority State?

"If Utah isn't a Mormon majority state, then where would you find a Mormon majority state?"

Reactionary Libertarian:

The notion of states based on ethnicity has led to unprecedented peace in Europe.

It helped create World War II and led to the Yugoslavian genocides, which were only 30 years ago.

If you believe in states based on ethnicity, you're saying Hitler was justified for the Anschluss and taking the Sudetanland. You're saying modern-day Republika Srpska should be ceded by Bosnia and become part of Serbia. (The Balkans as a whole would be greatly redrawn, I'll appoint you to be the guy that gets to deal with the aftermath of that.) You believe Turkish Cyprus should be recognized as a country because the people on that side of Cyprus are ethnically different from those in the South. Quebec should be its own separate country on the American border, splitting the rest of Canada in two. All Indian and First Nations reservations in the U.S. and Canada become sovereign. Sections of the American Southwest should become a new Latino-based state. You believe that the state of Belgium should disappear. You believe that there needs to be a bunch of Arab/Muslim-based island states all around Europe that would make it look like all the German minor states prior to confederation. You believe Hungary should get larger. You believe that all Russian-dominated exclaves outside Russia's borders should be assumed into Russia proper. While Russia would probably then separate into, I don't know, 10-20 different countries. Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq should get disintegrated. Israel should be made smaller to have a section ceded for its residents that are Arabs.

That is your principle you stated of nation-states based on ethnicity.

[Open Source Intelligence]

It helped create World War II and led to the Yugoslavian genocides, which were only 30 years ago.

If you believe in states based on ethnicity, you're saying Hitler was justified for the Anschluss and taking the Sudetanland. You're saying modern-day Republika Srpska should be ceded by Bosnia and become part of Serbia. (The Balkans as a whole would be greatly redrawn, I'll appoint you to be the guy that gets to deal with the aftermath of that.) You believe Turkish Cyprus should be recognized as a country because the people on that side of Cyprus are ethnically different from those in the South. Quebec should be its own separate country on the American border, splitting the rest of Canada in two. All Indian and First Nations reservations in the U.S. and Canada become sovereign. Sections of the American Southwest should become a new Latino-based state. You believe that the state of Belgium should disappear. You believe that there needs to be a bunch of Arab/Muslim-based island states all around Europe that would make it look like all the German minor states prior to confederation. You believe Hungary should get larger. You believe that all Russian-dominated exclaves outside Russia's borders should be assumed into Russia proper. While Russia would probably then separate into, I don't know, 10-20 different countries. Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq should get disintegrated. Israel should be made smaller to have a section ceded for its residents that are Arabs.

That is your principle you stated of nation-states based on ethnicity.

I don't think you're saying any of these things.

I disagree, I think that's what he's saying, and if you apply this half-thought out principle to one selective case and ignore everything else that principle means, it is the definition of hypocrisy. That or you don't really believe in your principle and it's a convenient excuse to get the end result you want. Because there's such a thing called history we can look at and conflicts happen all the time over the most invented reasons. Ethnicities on the wrong side of borders has always been a great invented reason for a war to serve ulterior means.

You are simply saying that countries can choose to represent ethnicities, and this is fine so long as other minorities are treated with respect.

Who makes that definitive determination, and does everyone agree with it without complaint?

Immigration policy is usually central to this, and indeed it sometimes exists on a subnational level; Canadian law permits Quebec to choose Francophone immigrants.

Yeah, that is hardly uncontroversial to say the least.

The problem in the Israeli case is that an independent Palestine obviously makes sense from everyone's point of view, but that the political organizations which would run it in a way not hostile to its neighbors (most obviously the Israelis but not just the Israelis) don't exist. This is partially, as the polls OSR posts describe, because Palestinian society is f**ked up, but also substantially because of foreign efforts to keep it f**ked up, as with teaching racial hatred in UNRWA-run schools. Fixing it has to begin with the destruction of things like the UNRWA, which treat Palestinian liberationism as normal or obvious, and preventing Palestinian governments from doing things like hanging people who sell land to the wrong race. (The victims of this policy should see memorials built to them and be described as Lei Feng-style heroes in the education system.) That has to mean that sympathy for Palestinian liberationism dies abroad.

It's never going to. Do you think sympathy for IRA liberationism in the U.S. ever died? No, it didn't. What happened is they had a peace process and the temperature on the conflict went significantly down. It used to infuriate the hell out of a Scottish friend of mine present in Belfast one day a bomb went off around him that he could go into a bunch of bars in the U.S. where on the counter money could be put in a jar with a label saying it was to be used on bullets to kill British soldiers.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Theoretically, I agree with the idea Israel should just drop the idea of being a Jewish State simply because I think defining your country excessively through a religion or race is naturally bigoted - but that multicultural interpretation can also be validly interpreted as something that weakens the idea of national identity that many places have and WEAKENS diversity too because of that.

Like, if Israel isn’t a Jewish majority State, then where you would find a Jewish majority State?

"If Utah isn't a Mormon majority state, then where would you find a Mormon majority state?"

Reactionary Libertarian:

The notion of states based on ethnicity has led to unprecedented peace in Europe.

It helped create World War II and led to the Yugoslavian genocides, which were only 30 years ago.

If you believe in states based on ethnicity, you're saying Hitler was justified for the Anschluss and taking the Sudetanland. You're saying modern-day Republika Srpska should be ceded by Bosnia and become part of Serbia. (The Balkans as a whole would be greatly redrawn, I'll appoint you to be the guy that gets to deal with the aftermath of that.) You believe Turkish Cyprus should be recognized as a country because the people on that side of Cyprus are ethnically different from those in the South. Quebec should be its own separate country on the American border, splitting the rest of Canada in two. All Indian and First Nations reservations in the U.S. and Canada become sovereign. Sections of the American Southwest should become a new Latino-based state. You believe that the state of Belgium should disappear. You believe that there needs to be a bunch of Arab/Muslim-based island states all around Europe that would make it look like all the German minor states prior to confederation. You believe Hungary should get larger. You believe that all Russian-dominated exclaves outside Russia's borders should be assumed into Russia proper. While Russia would probably then separate into, I don't know, 10-20 different countries. Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq should get disintegrated. Israel should be made smaller to have a section ceded for its residents that are Arabs.

That is your principle you stated of nation-states based on ethnicity.

I think you have grossly misunderstood me. I am saying that empires, multiethnic states and states with a large ethnic population outside their proper borders have more war. You listed a bunch of examples where this happened. Yugoslavia has a war because it was multiethnic! Breaking it up into states for Serbs, Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, etc. has lead to peace! The solution to Hitler wanting to take areas where Germans lived was forcing all those Germans to move to Germany, thus voiding the claims.  This isn’t a question of whether people “should” be able to get along in multiethnic states, in an ideal world. It’s just noting reality and the fact that when each ethnicity has its own state, there is much more peace. It doesn’t mean we should actively try to redraw borders, but it does mean that borders that divide different ethnicities are more peaceful. And it means saying Israel and the Palestinians should NOT share one secular state is the pragmatic, pro-human rights position.

I think you need to read history more.

(You realize the ethnic-based states were all created after World War I, not World War II right?)

[Open Source Intelligence]

Failure to stop Oct 7th was a massive intelligence failure by Israeli authorities and the Netanyahu government.

Naw, more like a massive intelligence DGAF.

Netanyahu clearly did not believe in the Palestinian capability to actually do well in conventional warfare out of sheer racism.

Conventional warfare this was the Tet Offensive, where after an initial surprise wave attack the North Vietnamese were repelled by the U.S. The failure of Tet was more the U.S. constantly stating the North Vietnamese were on the verge of surrender, so that they even did a military attack that surprised the Americans went against the American narrative of the war. There's elements of that present here.

Talking in purely conventional warfare terms, Israel are now in South Gaza. Hamas as a military force can't fight conventionally pushing and taking control of territory and holding it as the Israelis in Gaza, the Russians in Ukraine, and the Azeris in Artsakh have done the past few years.

[Open Source Intelligence]

IDF missiles have names of what they consider their political enemies across the USA political spectrum.

I laugh at Jake Shields. I one time had a "dream matchup" of the greatest most boring MMA fight ever of Jake Shields vs. Jon Fitch.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Without changes of leadership on both sides, I think this conflict ultimately ends, sadly, with a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank.

Tbh this learned helplessness is a bit tiresome. The outside world *does* have the power to prevent Israel carrying out such a monstrous and utterly evil act, and should exercise it if necessary.

And yes, that may involve helping to force Netanyahu from power.

So we're for global military deployment in the Middle East and we're for regime change.

I remember a certain conflict, say 15 to 20 years ago. I'm sure everyone is arguing the exact same then as they are now and no one is being a hypocrite.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Without changes of leadership on both sides, I think this conflict ultimately ends, sadly, with a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank.

Tbh this learned helplessness is a bit tiresome. The outside world *does* have the power to prevent Israel carrying out such a monstrous and utterly evil act, and should exercise it if necessary.

And yes, that may involve helping to force Netanyahu from power.

So we're for global military deployment in the Middle East and we're for regime change.

I remember a certain conflict, say 15 to 20 years ago. I'm sure everyone is arguing the exact same then as they are now and no one is being a hypocrite.

Except regime change in Iraq required a ground invasion and occupation, whereas "regime change" in Israel would simply require that the US not send them billions of dollars and provide them unlimited logistical support.

So us overthrowing foreign governments is fine in your eyes, as long as not one soldier's foot hits the ground? Just clarifying for future and past reference. You've also not worked out the logistics of how that's going to occur when supporting Israel with aid enjoys massive majorities in both houses whether you like it or not. Be a realist, this is the world you live in. A clear majority of the two political parties that have power in American government at the very least quietly support what Israel is doing in Gaza. If a person doesn't like that, we have elections next November. Run against Trump, Biden in primaries, vote for an anti-Israeli war third party next November, run against people in Congress whose views you disagree with, donate to those politicians if you're legally allowed to donate.

[Open Source Intelligence]

The latest reasonable and not at all genocidal statement from an Israeli official: lets turn Gaza into Auschwitz

https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1736454261276393886

So us overthrowing foreign governments is fine in your eyes, as long as not one soldier's foot hits the ground? Just clarifying for future and past reference.

In an ideal world I'd prefer America follow the Washington-Jefferson policy of non-intervention, which would mean zero money for Israel's war machine (or anyone else's, for that matter).

Short of that, if America is going to have an empire then it should at least exercise some control over the conduct of its vassals. Israel is currently bringing America an enormous amount of grief for minimal benefit besides lobbying money and subsidies to the Military Industrial Complex. Even putting aside morality, if your only goal is maintaining American hegemony then unconditionally supporting a campaign of vengeance against a civilian population is obviously only going to create problems. We're already starting to see this with the ongoing Red Sea crisis. Hell, even if your only priority is the benefit of Israel you would be doing them a favor by preventing them from totally destroying their reputation in a short sighted rage.

You've also not worked out the logistics of how that's going to occur when supporting Israel with aid enjoys massive majorities in both houses whether you like it or not. Be a realist, this is the world you live in. A clear majority of the two political parties that have power in American government at the very least quietly support what Israel is doing in Gaza.

Okay, the Israel Lobby owns Congress. We all know that, but so what?

Find evidence of corruption or support people in elections that are not owned by the Israel lobby in your view. No, I'm not kidding.

Nixon told Golda Meir to not attack Cairo and she fell in line.
Reagan told Menachem Begin to stop his indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon and he fell in line.
HW Bush told Yitzhak Shamir to not retaliate when Saddam hit Israel with Scud missiles to avoid screwing up his anti-Saddam Arab coalition and he fell in line.

Ultimate authority here lies with the President and if he said Netanyahu can't continue his campaign with American support then that would be the end of that. That's how it works when normal countries are completely dependent on American support: they fold the instant that support is seriously threatened. Strange that even Republicans like Reagan and HW understood this but Biden apparently doesn't.

Barack Obama's foreign policy was heavily influenced by thoughts on "The Post-American World". Part of that post-Iraq War operating paradigm is that the U.S. should be withdrawing from certain areas of the world and we should be less an empire. The two areas that foremost threatens due to our tentacles of control in those places are Europe and the Middle East. Obama who Biden served as VP under was wholesale withdrawal from the Middle East. I think both individuals were also for slowly getting out of Europe (to instead more focus on the more strategically important Indo-Pacific) but the Russo-Ukrainian War forced us to get back in. An America out of the Middle East means Israel as well as other countries in the region like Saudi Arabia are more independent in decision-making. Pretty confident the Israelis and Saudis want a huge American presence there, it's a nice add-on for their individual state security. Americans want to withdraw and what happens? Iranians instigate a coup attempt in Bahrain that the Saudis deploy into Bahrain to stop, in response to that the Syrian Civil War starts to oust the Iranian-backed Assad, which was not really a Syrian Civil War but was instead a war of the entire Arabian Peninsula between Saudis and Allies vs. Iran and Allies. There's then allegedly the Saudis and Emiratis were going to invade Qatar which played into why Rex Tillerson got fired as Secretary of State when he warned everyone locally. For Israel, Gaza does a flash attack inside southern Israel and Israel made the decision they are going to fix their security with Hamas once and for all. Nature abhors a power vacuum. Israel and Saudi Arabia are both acting like America has much less influence over their decision-making, but we're still selling them arms.

How much of Biden's foreign policy is influenced by Obama I think is a good question. In some ways, I find Biden's foreign policy a complete rejection of Obama's foreign policy and it's closer to Clinton and the 2 Bushes than Obama. It'd be a good thesis topic for historians in the future. But if Biden told Netanyahu we're cutting off aid, Netanyahu I think would call his bluff. He knows Biden doesn't speak for the State Department and that Congress supports Israel en masse and there's an election next year where Biden is constrained by "we have to win an election at all costs against this existential threat to the Republic named Donald Trump". You think all these foreign countries don't have their own political analysis on American politics? When that becomes your thinking of "we must win at all costs", you start conceding what you ultimately believe in because it serves the much greater purpose. You've already seen the administration is backing away from Democratic immigration policy. It's much easier to be principled when you know you're going to win easily or know you're going to lose.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Israel would last somewhere between a week and a month without American backing. They'd run out of munitions and their planes would be grounded for lack of spare parts.  Then they'd go bankrupt from the economic pressure, and that's without South Africa style sanctions.

Wishful thinking.

Israel would suffer without US support, but most of what they are currently sourcing is bought, so the Biden administration would have to go after contracts to stop those.

Every foreign arms export (not just equipment but information and repair) requires a license under ITAR. The buyer is controlled with what they can do after receipt and is struck from doing an A sells to B who sells to C because A won't sell to C. Remove the license, those companies would not be able to sell if they want to stay in the good graces of their main buyer, the U.S. government.

That's the polite version. The practical version is there's lobbying involved not just with foreign governments and their supporters here, but also defense contractors who provide lots of jobs in certain areas.

[Open Source Intelligence]

One thing I would like to add.

Let me present the following axioms that I would guess most anti-Israel liberals would agree with:

1) Hamas is an evil organization, and their elimination would be a great good for the world

2) What Hamas did on October 7 was so egregiously evil that it makes their destruction a matter of immediate urgency

3) The only way to destroy Hamas is via military action

4) Israel has been genocidal, or at least indiscriminate and brutal, in their treatment of the Palestinians over the course of this conflict, in a way that is completely unnecessary and avoidable

5) Israel's conduct is so abhorrent that in the great value tradeoff, it is better for them to end operations (allowing Hamas to continue to exist) than to continue operations (committing more atrocities)

#3 is wrong.

Hamas can never be destroyed militarily since it is as much an ideology as a militant group.

The only way to destroy Hamas is for the people to reject it.

Instead, Israel is driving people right into Hamas's arms.

You know, this has been commonly cited since Che said it, but it is wrong; ideologies can and have been destroyed by force. The Soviet Union destroyed both Nazism and the Basmachi, and many/most varieties of the White movement. (Hell, the Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s were actually pretty successful at destroying Guevarism, which in its classic form survives only in the most backwards parts of LatAm, like Nicaragua and Cuba).

If people who are driven into Hamas's arms are driven to take self-destructive actions, well, it once again seems like a victory (and not even really a disputable one) for the Israeli state.



The image is of an ideology very like that of Hamas being destroyed, present-day Uzbekistan, 1920. You don't even need 21st-century guided missiles for this.

You're reaching. Let alone the notion of destroying ideologies in an era of the internet...good luck.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Israel's chief media whip on Fox News suggests Israel will move 2 Million Gazans to South America, Europe and other regions to get de-radicalised before cleaning out all of the military capability in Gaza.

Who is transporting them, if Israel these apparently radicalized Gazans will then agree to be processed by Israeli military and fly on Israeli planes, and what countries are accepting them and then paying for the refugees, now having the "duty" of de-radicalizing them when it's clear from Europe some have not been?

If the Israeli government thinks this is a serious proposal, it's clearly delusional.

I've yet to hear a good proposal from Israel that ensures their long-term peace other than we're going to kick them all out and de facto take the land. It's not all that different from Russia's mentality in eastern Ukraine. And that still doesn't ensure your long-term peace unless you go and kill all the boys under 18 or sterilize all the girls.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Not sure if this was already posted.

While support for the Palestinians is still quite low, only 39% of Americans say they side with Israel. Ukraine is still very popular.

https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1742606406765756778?t=86PQQRZXBV9C7QX6t...

I think its a good thing that a solid majority (55%) of Democrats either sympathize more with the Palestinians or equal. Another 20% unsure. For total Americans, its about 40% with 20% unsure

I think once Gen Z starts voting in mass and the American public gets fully educated on the issue, we might get a South Africa situation. Sanctions on Israel might no longer be taboo, to pressure for a two state solution.

No one can deny, the tide is turning when it comes to public opinion. Compare this poll to 10 years ago. Not even Vosem

Love that you're leaving out the ugly part about that.

GenZ, for all the hype about being the first generation "immune to propaganda" is in fact the most indoctrinated out of any generation in the US ever. This isn't just because of TikTok, but demographics mean that these people will be in charge of our political system, universities, and corporations.

The people I grew up with don't deserve to be homeless because nobody will hire Jewish people. Their kids don't deserve to be rejected from colleges anyone else would get into because they are Jewish.

That's what America is headed towards.

I think it's more down to how race is treated and taught. You talk to blacks, Latinos, they see Jews as just white people, which means they're a majority group not due any special status. In 1900, Irish and German were races as race was defined at the time. Now, there's no such thing, because race left ethnicity and became defined by skin color.

People want a "less white America" which is what we're heading for if you just look at demographics. We're not becoming more black, they're staying about the same, but our geopolitics is going to naturally become more latinized. Latinos I don't think see Jews as this unique group really matter to them (I don't think blacks as this unique group matter to them either, which is another can of worms). To determine such you would have to get into the education systems of states like Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Venezuela, other Latin American states that we see high immigration from, and how the parents there were taught history which they would kinda sorta pass on to their kids. Religiously, support of Israel is a heavily Protestant-driven thing. Latinos are overwhelmingly Catholic if they are religious.

Regardless, it's pretty clear we'll get a massive sea change in our politics as the Baby Boomers quit voting, retire from politics, and die just due to the size of that generation and how people from the early-to-mid 1940s have continuously held the Presidency the last 31 years, excepting Obama's 2 terms. It's obviously going to carry on into our geopolitical relationships.