Israel-Gaza war

[Hollywood]

IDF has now taken full control of the Southern Border after eliminating all positions taken by Hamas soldiers.  They are still looking for terrorists that may be hiding around the community.  Residents have been given the 'green light' to leave their bomb shelters.  

Significant build-up of IDF soldiers on Lebanese Border.  All signs point to a significant attack by Hezbollah, but experts aren't sure whether this will come to fruition.  Large movement of Lebanese Civilians towards Beirut from Southern Lebanon.  

Source on the second paragraph? Very concerning if true.

They discussed it on I24 and TV7 Israel.  I have I24 on Xfinity.  

I found it on the I24 Homepage.  It's at the top. 
https://www.i24news.tv/en

[Hollywood]

IDF has now taken full control of the Southern Border after eliminating all positions taken by Hamas soldiers.  They are still looking for terrorists that may be hiding around the community.  Residents have been given the 'green light' to leave their bomb shelters.  

Significant build-up of IDF soldiers on Lebanese Border.  All signs point to a significant attack by Hezbollah, but experts aren't sure whether this will come to fruition.  Large movement of Lebanese Civilians towards Beirut from Southern Lebanon.  

Source on the second paragraph? Very concerning if true.

I'd take it with a grain of salt, given that Hollywood also casually pinned the initial invasion on Egypt earlier in the thread.

No I didn't.  I told my co-worker about a theory I had about factions in Egypt being involved, but I didn't claim to know anything.   

You should read more carefully. 

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

If you want some actual analysis on the situation--Hamas didn't do this seeking or expecting international sympathy for killing civilians, but their principal aims have been against the IDF as a military, and their goal is to strain the power of an IDF that has been acting almost entirely as an army of occupation in the West Bank and lost its last ground war against Hezbollah in 2006.

We all know that Israel can brute-force a total takeover of Gaza between air power and ground troops, but such an operation would lead to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of dead Israeli soldiers, and would be bogged down for weeks or months, and that's before the occupation. Is the Israeli military, government, and society actually ready for that? Not a rhetorical question, and if they aren't, then Hamas will have exposed their limits.

[PSOL]

Hundreds of thousands of people are going to die all because of settler movement and photo-ops in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

There were so many ways to have avoided this confrontation, but to no avail to people defending their chops

If you want some actual analysis on the situation--Hamas didn't do this seeking or expecting international sympathy for killing civilians, but their principal aims have been against the IDF as a military, and their goal is to strain the power of an IDF that has been acting almost entirely as an army of occupation in the West Bank and lost its last ground war against Hezbollah in 2006.

We all know that Israel can brute-force a total takeover of Gaza between air power and ground troops, but such an operation would lead to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of dead Israeli soldiers, and would be bogged down for weeks or months, and that's before the occupation. Is the Israeli military, government, and society actually ready for that? Not a rhetorical question.

You think the idiots in Europe prior to WWI would have figured that out and deduced things by cost…Nope!

A regional war in the Levant is almost certainly going to devolve into a nasty state war across the Middle East. It’s been decades in the making with every chance at peace stonewalled by Republicans or Bibi’s ego from the Axis of Evil speech to the Settler movement.

At this point I say f••• it, the more trash like Sepahis or fascists gone the better, it’s fundamentally out of our hands.

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

https://twitter.com/Worldchairman_1/status/1711553099565826232?s=20

This is a horrific statement, 'human animals' these fascists say? Apparently it took a couple of days for Ultra-Zionists to start spouting the same nonsense Hamas spouts about Jews after decades of prison like conditions, which this statement proves and confirms.

Israel uses it's immense power to effect horrible conditions in the Palestinian Territories and especially Gaza, these conditions foment unrest and resentment which leads to these attacks and back-and-forth skirmishes which leads Israel to again worsen conditions. And thus the cycle continues.

[Anti Democrat Democrat Club]

Two thoughts:

1. Wow this thread sucks.
2. Wow you guys SUCK.

If there's a thread that makes a solid argument for me leaving this forum because of insane ass bullsh**t, this one is it.  I've heard enough genocide fantasies on both sides to make me understand why some folks want to live in Mars.

-The Man

The irony is that Hamas played into Israel's hand. They have undercut the Palestinian cause for the next 20-30 years, perhaps even longer.

The Palestinians are too weak to fight back against Israel stealing their land, so there isn't much else they can do anyway.

There’s still better alternatives to murdering concert goers and going around neighborhoods hunting for Jewish people to indiscriminately kill

I am sure that the Palestinians see it as revenge.

Every minute that goes by, Israel steals more and more Palestinian land, and the two-state solution becomes a more and more remote possibility.

If they could defeat the Israelis and take back occupied territories, they would have.

Instead, the Palestinians are so weak that the best they can do is to lash out periodically against the Israelis.

Peepee Poolitics

[Hollywood]

If you want some actual analysis on the situation--Hamas didn't do this seeking or expecting international sympathy for killing civilians, but their principal aims have been against the IDF as a military, and their goal is to strain the power of an IDF that has been acting almost entirely as an army of occupation in the West Bank and lost its last ground war against Hezbollah in 2006.

We all know that Israel can brute-force a total takeover of Gaza between air power and ground troops, but such an operation would lead to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of dead Israeli soldiers, and would be bogged down for weeks or months, and that's before the occupation. Is the Israeli military, government, and society actually ready for that? Not a rhetorical question, and if they aren't, then Hamas will have exposed their limits.

LOL... I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that Hezbollah wasn't looking for International Sympathy when it killed women and children.  I give it about 72 hours before they beg for it.  

Unfortunately, I don't think Hamas has done anything to strain Israel's resources.  To the contrary, they are receiving resources from the United States, and the entire nation is now unified.  

In 2006, Israel wasn't prepared for the scale of support provided by Iran to Hezbollah, but it was hardly a victory for Lebanon.  The Civilian Infrastructure was severely damaged, and over 1 million Lebanese were displaced.  The IDF Military has become better experienced at hitting targets in high terrain areas.  

A ground force invasion would result in many Israeli deaths if they conduct actions like they did in the past.  I doubt they will use the same restraint this time around.  In fact, I imagine they will cut-off the border from Egypt, and turn Gaza into a fire cauldron.  

[PSOL]

Hezbollah, and a significant amount of Palestinian groups in Syria and West Bank just itching to get involved, have only increased their conventional capabilities after the long war in Syria. The anger the Akhunds are feeling after the Mahsa Amini protests means that they’ll be willing to give more support at a lot greater capacity to get back at the Israelis. That and whoever else has grievances to be willing to fight.

We have two fronts and counting in this possible conflict, and per Israel’s own security analysis Syria’s army has recovered yet I doubt the bitterness for the past several years have gone down. Iran’s expeditionary capabilities and assistance to its proxies has not been weakened by the past few years.

At best, maybe Jordan will join in for Israel, but that’s risking a civil war right there. I can only see a bloody stalemate.

[HillGoose]

Lockheed up 8.9% today, GD up 8.4%, wow!

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Again--where is this diversity of opinion in the American (or especially British in the past couple years) press?
https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1711391086609117660?s=20

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Lockheed up 8.9% today, GD up 8.4%, wow!

One wonders if they'll also be up tomorrow.

[Vosem]

We all know that Israel can brute-force a total takeover of Gaza between air power and ground troops, but such an operation would lead to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of dead Israeli soldiers, and would be bogged down for weeks or months, and that's before the occupation. Is the Israeli military, government, and society actually ready for that? Not a rhetorical question, and if they aren't, then Hamas will have exposed their limits.

Legitimately an interesting question; the scale of the Israeli mobilization is such that the occupation of Gaza (at least; this is a largest-since-the-1970s mobilization and virtually certainly involves a crackdown on the West Bank/quite possibly southern Lebanon) is going to be attempted. The commentary I've seen from Israelis themselves suggest that the "left" (including, like, Meretz MKs) are much more enthusiastic about this than the "right", who have been afraid of a military coup which might derail court reform, and now appears likelier to happen in a de facto way where Netanyahu is sidelined.

https://twitter.com/YairGolan1/status/1710769681039012260

This man was considered the single left-most MK from a Jewish party. Not a whole lot of subtlety there.

By contrast leaks have generally suggested -- though this is rumor mill stuff, treat it as word on the street rather than news -- that behind the scenes it is Netanyahu and the Haredi parties are the ones urging caution and that less extreme measures be taken in response.

(What you are leaving out is that it is obviously within Israel's capabilities to bomb Gaza hard enough that the ensuing occupation wouldn't be that challenging, although the scale of mobilization suggests that is not actually what they're planning on doing.)

~~

https://twitter.com/HeTows/status/1711513514429284796

I'm not sure that the Israeli left, in the sense that we have understood it after 1994, actually currently exists right now. The Overtown window shifted very far over the course of, like, half a day. (Which isn't to say that it couldn't come back at some point, but I don't know how relevant opinions from even a few days ago are to what is about to happen.) The anger and desire for escalation feels much greater in Israeli-left than Israeli-right commentary.

I wonder -- just on Atlas and Twitter -- how much this also applies to other countries. The right in many places has been pro-Israeli for many years, but everywhere you look there are a huge number of center-left people that have been radicalized overnight.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

What I've definitely seen is "normie" Democrats, mostly older, who defaulted to soft Israel support get galvanized into more vociferous Israel support, along with a lot of very loud voices from the sorts of KHive circles (and some weird cult called the school bonds wolves who dox people? IDK if you've heard of them) who got negatively polarized into aggressively supporting Israel. I have not seen minds changed outright.

I've also seen Left-Zionists simultaneously advocate aggressive force against Gaza as well as an end to the West Bank occupation and an openness to discussing the occupation (in and of itself and as something which strained the IDF due to the right's fixation on it).

[NOVA Green]

In Israel there is talk about RZ and Otzma having to leave the government for the sake of national unity, but I would actually argue it's the Haredim who need to go now. You don't deserve to decide on the (way of) deployment of the army if you fight vehemently to have everyone in the country serve in it except for your own community.

Yeah, I've been wondering if this will be the moment that would finally force the Haredim to do their fair share to defend and support the country that protects their way of life. I agree with them that Torah study should be part of the fabric of a Jewish state, but certainly not at the expense of literally everything else. Their kollelim don't defend themselves.

Military needs are much higher than they were 3 days ago, and Israel can't afford to have 20% of its Jewish population not contributing.

So you want Israel to be even more of a theocracy than it already is.

Jewish men are commanded to study Torah daily. A large proportion of Israeli Jews are religiously observant and follow this and other commands. Would you prefer to ban them from studying their holy texts, somehow?

The more you post, the more I realize you have a (very America-brained) child's understanding of this conflict, and of this part of the world more broadly.

This is absolutely silly talk (bolded quote).

You make Israel sound like a theocracy (which it is not).

I suspect you might have been intending to make another point altogether, but perhaps from the perspective of American Evangelical Christians who believes Jews should be converted to Jesus, this might make sense.

My Brother-in-Law, married to my older Sister, grew up in a Liberal Catholic background, but converted to Orthox-Judaism (Long story short), and would spend a significant amount of time attending their local Shul.

Sorry, Americans Jews, let alone Israeli Jews are completely done with the Christian Fundi attempt to "Convert Jews to Jesus".

Maybe I completely misinterpreted where you are coming from when you appear to be promoting the relaxation of laws protecting Ultra-Orthodox from IDF service?

[PSOL]

The centre left tends to engage in campism, this isn’t new this is basic WWI history.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The centre left tends to engage in campism, this isn’t new this is basic WWI history.

Ironic that you of all people would disparage people for engaging in campism.

[PSOL]

The centre left tends to engage in campism, this isn’t new this is basic WWI history.

Ironic that you of all people would disparage people for engaging in campism.

Thanks for projecting

[pppolitics]

Again--where is this diversity of opinion in the American (or especially British in the past couple years) press?
https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1711391086609117660?s=20

Don't you realize by now?

If you are not a Jew, but you criticize Israel, it is antisemitism.

[Aurelius2]

In Israel there is talk about RZ and Otzma having to leave the government for the sake of national unity, but I would actually argue it's the Haredim who need to go now. You don't deserve to decide on the (way of) deployment of the army if you fight vehemently to have everyone in the country serve in it except for your own community.

Yeah, I've been wondering if this will be the moment that would finally force the Haredim to do their fair share to defend and support the country that protects their way of life. I agree with them that Torah study should be part of the fabric of a Jewish state, but certainly not at the expense of literally everything else. Their kollelim don't defend themselves.

Military needs are much higher than they were 3 days ago, and Israel can't afford to have 20% of its Jewish population not contributing.

So you want Israel to be even more of a theocracy than it already is.

Jewish men are commanded to study Torah daily. A large proportion of Israeli Jews are religiously observant and follow this and other commands. Would you prefer to ban them from studying their holy texts, somehow?

The more you post, the more I realize you have a (very America-brained) child's understanding of this conflict, and of this part of the world more broadly.

This is absolutely silly talk (bolded quote).

You make Israel sound like a theocracy (which it is not).

I suspect you might have been intending to make another point altogether, but perhaps from the perspective of American Evangelical Christians who believes Jews should be converted to Jesus, this might make sense.

My Brother-in-Law, married to my older Sister, grew up in a Liberal Catholic background, but converted to Orthox-Judaism (Long story short), and would spend a significant amount of time attending their local Shul.

Sorry, Americans Jews, let alone Israeli Jews are completely done with the Christian Fundi attempt to "Convert Jews to Jesus".

Maybe I completely misinterpreted where you are coming from when you appear to be promoting the relaxation of laws protecting Ultra-Orthodox from IDF service?

I am a Jew.

This command comes from God through the Torah, not from any temporal power.

I am not particularly observant by any measure but I recognize that this mitzvah exists.

My point is that Torah study will be widespread in Israel whether the state promotes it or not.

[Vosem]

What I've definitely seen is "normie" Democrats, mostly older, who defaulted to soft Israel support get galvanized into more vociferous Israel support, along with a lot of very loud voices from the sorts of KHive circles (and some weird cult called the school bonds wolves who dox people? IDK if you've heard of them) who got negatively polarized into aggressively supporting Israel. I have not seen minds changed outright.

Well, "stuff I've seen" is for me basically never representative. I'm glad you agree on the KHive stuff, though -- I pointed out back in our discussion back in 2021 that there had already been a significant pro-Israel turn among plugged-in centrist Democrats (and that, in particular, volunteers for the Biden and Buttigieg campaigns seemed to be commonly drawn from pro-Israel organizations at the university level). There had already been some amount of negative polarization, where those who disliked Sanders/Warren had already become fairly stridently pro-Israel. Few Democratic communities were against Sanders and Warren in quite the way the most strident Kamala supporters were in 2019. The current movement is among those sociologically similar to those people, but not so tuned in that they would've gone and worked for a campaign.

(In general -- while I did not call that an attack like this would happen and my guess was that Hamas would get in trouble for sheltering some foreign terrorist group -- I want to note that I was correct in saying that Palestinian liberationism would behave in ways cartoonishly evil enough that the trend of it losing international support would continue after 2021. I also called increasing Israeli radicalism not being very relevant to opinion abroad.)

I've also seen Left-Zionists simultaneously advocate aggressive force against Gaza as well as an end to the West Bank occupation and an openness to discussing the occupation (in and of itself and as something which strained the IDF due to the right's fixation on it).

I haven't really seen that; I guess I've seen Haaretz not change its position. But the Haaretz editorial line has been very extreme for a while; back in 2016-2017 I recall it getting condemned for anti-Semitism by both quite left-wing Israel-skeptical American Jewish journalists and also the Israeli left at that time, and links to it have dropped precipitously since that time. Their business model had been based for a long time on getting attention by writing provocative things, so being behind a paywall is very strange.

But what I've seen from politicians within Israel is Meretz members advocating courses of action that would've been considered edgy and controversial among the hawkish right, like, last week.

[MasterJedi]

Gut feeling is Israel is going to forcibly depopulate the Gaza Strip. People are either going to die in the fighting (the minority but still way too many) or they’re going to forcibly be sent to the West Bank or thrown into Egypt (who don’t want them).

Nothing good to come of this.

[pppolitics]

Gut feeling is Israel is going to forcibly depopulate the Gaza Strip. People are either going to die in the fighting (the minority but still way too many) or they’re going to forcibly be sent to the West Bank or thrown into Egypt (who don’t want them).

Nothing good to come of this.

They won't be sent to West Bank because Israel want to annex West Bank (without the Palestinians).

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

Again--where is this diversity of opinion in the American (or especially British in the past couple years) press?
https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1711391086609117660?s=20

Oh... So diversity of opinion means ever country has to have a press that parrots your opinion?

We get it.  2 million Gazans are stuck in an open prison that they can leave anytime they wish. They just can't go into Judea, because they can't be trusted not to murder and rape Jewish women and children.  

Where are they 'free to leave anytime' to? The Mediterranean Sea presumably? Israel doesn't even allow married Gazan's to travel between the strip and the West Bank afaik. I'm truly dumbfounded by this statement.

[PSOL]

Meretz were always opportunists trying to social climb their way out of middle class precarity, same phenomenon we have seen in the DSA or with the Chilean hipsters in government, so of course this is their way to get power. Hadash and their amazing Jewish leaders who made the personal decision to cut ties to this nonsense long ago are still on the nose.

What most people don’t accept are journalists, you can complain and do protests all you want, but threatening the order of things seriously through muckraking is not going to get you accepted in the fold even if you want to.

Gut feeling is Israel is going to forcibly depopulate the Gaza Strip. People are either going to die in the fighting (the minority but still way too many) or they’re going to forcibly be sent to the West Bank or thrown into Egypt (who don’t want them).

Nothing good to come of this.

They won't be sent to West Bank because Israel want to annex West Bank (without the Palestinians).

This is going to be a drawn out catastrophe that shouldn’t happen for the best of many parties involved but will.

[Hollywood]

In Israel there is talk about RZ and Otzma having to leave the government for the sake of national unity, but I would actually argue it's the Haredim who need to go now. You don't deserve to decide on the (way of) deployment of the army if you fight vehemently to have everyone in the country serve in it except for your own community.

Yeah, I've been wondering if this will be the moment that would finally force the Haredim to do their fair share to defend and support the country that protects their way of life. I agree with them that Torah study should be part of the fabric of a Jewish state, but certainly not at the expense of literally everything else. Their kollelim don't defend themselves.

Military needs are much higher than they were 3 days ago, and Israel can't afford to have 20% of its Jewish population not contributing.

So you want Israel to be even more of a theocracy than it already is.

Jewish men are commanded to study Torah daily. A large proportion of Israeli Jews are religiously observant and follow this and other commands. Would you prefer to ban them from studying their holy texts, somehow?

The more you post, the more I realize you have a (very America-brained) child's understanding of this conflict, and of this part of the world more broadly.

This is absolutely silly talk (bolded quote).

You make Israel sound like a theocracy (which it is not).

I suspect you might have been intending to make another point altogether, but perhaps from the perspective of American Evangelical Christians who believes Jews should be converted to Jesus, this might make sense.

My Brother-in-Law, married to my older Sister, grew up in a Liberal Catholic background, but converted to Orthox-Judaism (Long story short), and would spend a significant amount of time attending their local Shul.

Sorry, Americans Jews, let alone Israeli Jews are completely done with the Christian Fundi attempt to "Convert Jews to Jesus".

Maybe I completely misinterpreted where you are coming from when you appear to be promoting the relaxation of laws protecting Ultra-Orthodox from IDF service?

I am a Jew.

This command comes from God through the Torah, not from any temporal power.

I am not particularly observant by any measure but I recognize that this mitzvah exists.

My point is that Torah study will be widespread in Israel whether the state promotes it or not.

I'm a Conservative Jew that grew-up Modern Orthodox.  You are correct.  It's in Deuteronomy 6:7.  

I agree that they need to relax rules protecting the ultra-orthodox from service.  It just can't be sustained.