Israel-Gaza war

[strangerinthealps]

Israeli public relations has been, broadly, successful even with the ongoing bombardment of Gazans because it's victims are effectively 'named'. Their story, the hostage stories, interviews with family etc are rightly, out there and discussed.

What's painful is that Gazans are either in a literal blackout or their plight is seen as conditional. They are unseen.

Countless, nameless, thousands are dead and the best we can get are Western based Palestinians recounting frantic phone calls. Or no phone calls.

The problem for Israel, being a democracy, is that a ground war will have to allow for the expected media access that goes with such an operation. And independent access to war zones. And sites they have already bombed.

Now if Israel is correct that lobbing missiles into apartment buildings is based on accurate intel, and is an appropriate response, a partial ground invasion shouldn't be an issue for them. It would justify current and past tactics and journalistic and independent verification would support them.

But that means allowing the world to be embedded in Gaza with them.

I honestly feel like, at this point, imbedded media helps their case.

The entire Arab world, and a few folks here, still believe that Israel bombed a hospital, killing 5000 people, and that isn't likely to change.

Embedded media would at least give them a fair shake of what is going on in Gaza.

The media we rely on have as much as admitted that they have no credible sources within Gaza and are reliant on Hamas to provide them news from within Gaza. We all know how reliable that is...

[strangerinthealps]

There is literally no way for Israel to win isn't there?
Launch a ground invasion -> fight on multiple fronts -> suffer heavy casualties -> get bogged down -> lose western support
Back down -> admit defeat -> restart an even more vicious internal unrest

Not really. This has been very well executed.

[Associate Justice PiT]

There is literally no way for Israel to win isn't there?
Launch a ground invasion -> fight on multiple fronts -> suffer heavy casualties -> get bogged down -> lose western support
Back down -> admit defeat -> restart an even more vicious internal unrest

That is the thing. There is literally no way to defeat Hamas without a massive ground invasion or a massive bombing campaign, both of which would be deemed as war crimes and get condemnation from the international community . The fact is sometimes there is no good options and you cant expect nations to put "international law" over their own self interest especially when those laws would make it so you cant respond effectively at all.

     International law as it exists today is largely predicated on an assumption of easily-identifiable, uniformed armies. Asymmetric warfare is so effective in the modern age in large part due to exploiting this blind spot. Winning a war against a terrorist organization is extremely hard because of the ease with which they blend in among innocent civilians.

[OSR stands with Israel]

There is literally no way for Israel to win isn't there?
Launch a ground invasion -> fight on multiple fronts -> suffer heavy casualties -> get bogged down -> lose western support
Back down -> admit defeat -> restart an even more vicious internal unrest

That is the thing. There is literally no way to defeat Hamas without a massive ground invasion or a massive bombing campaign, both of which would be deemed as war crimes and get condemnation from the international community . The fact is sometimes there is no good options and you cant expect nations to put "international law" over their own self interest especially when those laws would make it so you cant respond effectively at all.

     International law as it exists today is largely predicated on an assumption of easily-identifiable, uniformed armies. Asymmetric warfare is so effective in the modern age in large part due to exploiting this blind spot. Winning a war against a terrorist organization is extremely hard because of the ease with which they blend in among innocent civilians.

Yeah I agree , and really the best model to follow is probably the war against ISIS in which case we conducted a pretty major bombing campaign while the Iraqi military did the work on the ground . The main difference is Israel would have to do both given we won’t intervene the same way we did against ISIS

Vosem posted this thread before and I think it’s well worth reading 

https://twitter.com/MelekTawuse/status/1713609325162205197

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

International law is more of a guide aimed at moderating the power of mighty modern militaries, than an actual law. People will still do what they feel is absolutely necessary to get the job done regardless of what international law says on the matter.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

https://twitter.com/Yesh_Din/status/1716437234658799700?s=20
Thread from an anti-occupation Israeli NGO. If Hamas's actions on 10/7 were terror (which I'm not disputing) surely this was as well.

[ingemann]

Israeli public relations has been, broadly, successful even with the ongoing bombardment of Gazans because it's victims are effectively 'named'. Their story, the hostage stories, interviews with family etc are rightly, out there and discussed.

What's painful is that Gazans are either in a literal blackout or their plight is seen as conditional. They are unseen.

Countless, nameless, thousands are dead and the best we can get are Western based Palestinians recounting frantic phone calls. Or no phone calls.

The problem for Israel, being a democracy, is that a ground war will have to allow for the expected media access that goes with such an operation. And independent access to war zones. And sites they have already bombed.

Now if Israel is correct that lobbing missiles into apartment buildings is based on accurate intel, and is an appropriate response, a partial ground invasion shouldn't be an issue for them. It would justify current and past tactics and journalistic and independent verification would support them.

But that means allowing the world to be embedded in Gaza with them.

Yes, maybe it was a little stupid by HAMAS to film their war crimes, of course not behaving like the armies fighting the 30YW would have been even smarter, but small steps.

[ingemann]

There is literally no way for Israel to win isn't there?
Launch a ground invasion -> fight on multiple fronts -> suffer heavy casualties -> get bogged down -> lose western support
Back down -> admit defeat -> restart an even more vicious internal unrest

I doubt they will lose Western support, Hamas has crossed a border which means the Western government will allow Israel a free hand as long as they don’t start a genocide. While this may not be popular among all Western populations, most people will not care enough to vote against theri governments over it.

[afleitch]

Israeli Ambassador to the UN having a normal one.

https://twitter.com/giladerdan1/status/1716837646813614354

[afleitch]

Shopping centre struck.

https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1716808351542075465

[GALeftist]

There is literally no way for Israel to win isn't there?
Launch a ground invasion -> fight on multiple fronts -> suffer heavy casualties -> get bogged down -> lose western support
Back down -> admit defeat -> restart an even more vicious internal unrest

That is the thing. There is literally no way to defeat Hamas without a massive ground invasion or a massive bombing campaign, both of which would be deemed as war crimes and get condemnation from the international community . The fact is sometimes there is no good options and you cant expect nations to put "international law" over their own self interest especially when those laws would make it so you cant respond effectively at all.

     International law as it exists today is largely predicated on an assumption of easily-identifiable, uniformed armies. Asymmetric warfare is so effective in the modern age in large part due to exploiting this blind spot. Winning a war against a terrorist organization is extremely hard because of the ease with which they blend in among innocent civilians.

Yeah I agree , and really the best model to follow is probably the war against ISIS in which case we conducted a pretty major bombing campaign while the Iraqi military did the work on the ground . The main difference is Israel would have to do both given we won’t intervene the same way we did against ISIS

Vosem posted this thread before and I think it’s well worth reading 

https://twitter.com/MelekTawuse/status/1713609325162205197

Israel has probably killed almost as many civilians in Gaza as died in the yearlong siege of Mosul.

[strangerinthealps]

Shopping centre struck.

https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1716808351542075465

Times of Hamas? That is basically a Hamas propaganda feed.

https://www.wired.com/story/x-israel-hamas-war-disinformation/

https://www.euronews.com/video/2023/10/24/israel-hamas-war-this-viral-image-of-a-baby-trapped-under-rubble-turned-out-to-be-fake

[strangerinthealps]

Israel has probably killed almost as many civilians in Gaza as died in the yearlong siege of Mosul.

News out of Gaza is that they've only killed civilians...

[Yellowhammer]

I think this whole thing has the potential to cause a serious fracture on the left. You have about a 50-50 split between Palestine and Israel sympathizers, and people are facing serious consequences wrt  jobs, future prospects, and social standing if they are willing to criticize Israel.

I'm enjoying my popcorn as the establishment left is losing its marbles now that the far-left activist wing it has coddled, encouraged and wielded as a weapon for so long (so long as its activism was anti-white and anti-American, but NOT anti-Israel) is turning around to bite the hands that have fed it.

[strangerinthealps]

I think this whole thing has the potential to cause a serious fracture on the left. You have about a 50-50 split between Palestine and Israel sympathizers, and people are facing serious consequences wrt  jobs, future prospects, and social standing if they are willing to criticize Israel.

I'm enjoying my popcorn as the establishment left is losing its marbles now that the far-left activist wing it has coddled, encouraged and wielded as a weapon for so long (so long as its activism was anti-white and anti-American, but NOT anti-Israel) is turning around to bite the hands that have fed it.

If I'm being honest, I'd love a fracture of the Uni-Party/2 Party system.

We need 5 or 7 different parties to keep our public servants in check.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I think this whole thing has the potential to cause a serious fracture on the left. You have about a 50-50 split between Palestine and Israel sympathizers, and people are facing serious consequences wrt  jobs, future prospects, and social standing if they are willing to criticize Israel.

I'm enjoying my popcorn as the establishment left is losing its marbles now that the far-left activist wing it has coddled, encouraged and wielded as a weapon for so long (so long as its activism was anti-white and anti-American, but NOT anti-Israel) is turning around to bite the hands that have fed it.

Is the establishment left losing its marbles though. Biden is far more pro Israel than Obama would have been and isnt playing the insufferable "we must understand both sides bs" that Obama played so much in his 2nd term.

I would say its the far left and Obama style liberalism thats losing here as you have seen:

- US taking actions without permission from these international organizations. We are finally starting to realize again that liberal internationalism doesnt really mean much in actuality and what matters is the US taking actions

- Academia now being put under question. Even Democrats are now starting to doubt whether we should unquestionably give them blank checks given their disgraceful reaction to this. This is a loss for both Obama Era Liberalism and the far left

[PSOL]

I think this whole thing has the potential to cause a serious fracture on the left. You have about a 50-50 split between Palestine and Israel sympathizers, and people are facing serious consequences wrt  jobs, future prospects, and social standing if they are willing to criticize Israel.

I'm enjoying my popcorn as the establishment left is losing its marbles now that the far-left activist wing it has coddled, encouraged and wielded as a weapon for so long (so long as its activism was anti-white and anti-American, but NOT anti-Israel) is turning around to bite the hands that have fed it.

If I'm being honest, I'd love a fracture of the Uni-Party/2 Party system.

We need 5 or 7 different parties to keep our public servants in check.

History shows that the most of what will happen is a massive triaging of Democratic politicians and candidates by the few conservadems and Republicans using this to their electoral advantage, followed by general purges across society aided and abetted by useful idiotic liberals who don’t see this is an attack on them too until it’s too late.

A purge and blacklist in a new age of McCarthyism will last for a decade, but it won’t produce the policy and societal changes wanted by Republicans, and it especially won’t result in material dominance and wealth creation to reactionary rats as society breaks down as the only few public servants who do a good job are purged to own libs.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Gaza and West Bank on fire with 400 Israeli airstrikes launched on 24 Oct killing, according to the Palestinians, over 700 people within their borders.

PBS News Hour investigates the effect of airstrikes on Gaza. Will the Gazan's blame Hamas?

The question is:

"The longer this siege goes on, will the average person in Gaza look carefully at what brought this to their land?"

Doesn't look like it.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-look-at-life-inside-gaza-amid-airstrikes-and-worsening-humanitarian-crisis


The rubble of buildings hit in Israeli air strikes on Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip © Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

First public account of an Israeli hostage in Gaza.

Yocheved Lifsh**tz, 85

https://youtu.be/FZwmzHSIbwo?t=779


Hamas Militants in balaclava's illustrating how much they care for little old ladies (Hamas Video)

Hamas made a video of their soldiers serving tea to the two 80 y.o. hostages and being kind to them upon their release. Meanwhile, Yocheved has said she was thrown across a motorbike and beaten with sticks so hard, she could not breathe. She thought they had broken her ribs.

Her intelligence may be false for finding hostages. The tunnels will be a ordinance-ridden trap. She did say something interesting about the Israeli Government not taking the previous threats from Hamas to southern Israel seriously.

Senior Advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister, Mark Regev, also talked to PBS News Hour about the Israeli assault. He sounds like an Australian, honest and direct.

Mark revealed:

(a) Israel does not want to stay in Gaza;
(b) There will be no cease fire;
(c) Israel will win. No more Hamas.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

There is literally no way for Israel to win isn't there?
Launch a ground invasion -> fight on multiple fronts -> suffer heavy casualties -> get bogged down -> lose western support
Back down -> admit defeat -> restart an even more vicious internal unrest

I doubt they will lose Western support, Hamas has crossed a border which means the Western government will allow Israel a free hand as long as they don’t start a genocide. While this may not be popular among all Western populations, most people will not care enough to vote against theri governments over it.

Okay, but it doesn't just end with "Israel with a free hand automatically wipes out Hamas". For one thing, it isn't remotely a given that the IDF is currently capable of winning in its current state against well prepared Hamas positions and tunnels that have been found going as deep as 70 meters, well beyond the range of even the beefiest bunker busters. This isn't just my opinion, both American and Israeli officers recognize that the IDF is in no state to support a sustained offensive. Allowing Israel to take a heavy handed approach is one thing but if defeating Hamas required Western support I suspect the objections would quickly start piling up from all directions.

The other problem here is that there's a whole chain of escalation that is just being brushed off. There's a very dangerous path that goes like this: Israel attacks Gaza and gets bogged down then Hezbollah attacks Israel, the US responds to Hezbollah by declaring war on Iran and then the Russians and Chinese, inexorably tied to each other through shared enmity of the US and energy dependency respectively, use the Iranians to indirectly fight America just as America has indirectly used Ukraine to fight Russia.

War with Iran today would be absolutely nothing like the 2003 war with Iraq. In 2003 America's military was at its peak, flooded with motivated post-9/11 volunteers while Saddam's army was an overstaffed joke. American public support for the invasion was absolutely overwhelming, whereas there's already widespread opposition to arming Israel, let alone joining them in a regional war. Today, Iran is geopolitically more powerful than ever with allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and an enormous stockpile of rockets while America has spent the last two years sending its excess munitions to Ukraine and enriching the military industrial capacity with overpriced hardware at the expense of the sort of basic munitions that actually win wars. Whereas in 2003 America had allies across the region that provided staging grounds and logistical support for the invasion, today Israel has somehow managed to unite all the worst enemies of the Middle East against them: Turks and Kurds, Sadrists and Sunnis, Persians and Arabs. In the event of war with Iran thousands if not tens of thousands of American personnel across the region but particularly in Iraq and Syria would be instantly stranded in enemy territory and beyond any realistic hope of resupply. Iran is heavily mountainous and, like Hezbollah and Hamas, the Iranians have learned to use deep and sophisticated tunnels to make aerial bombardment ineffective. Actually defeating Iran would require a serious ground campaign across hostile terrain and that would require a draft.

Even if the Iranians and Hezbollah would rather not escalate, the tit-for-tit exchanges currently going on along the Israeli-Lebanese border could force their hand regardless. Just as the IDF is under political pressure to go hard against Gaza, Hezbollah is expected by its constituents (the Shiites of southern Lebanon plus some anti-Israeli minorities) to respond to each loss and atrocity with its own escalation in violence and so far they've demonstrated a skill at retaliation that far exceeds any past Arab army.

https://twitter.com/HadiNasrallah/status/1715501947375997064

Everyone is talking about this purely in moral terms but even from a purely realist perspective it isn't clear that going "hands off" is going to do anything but escalate the situation beyond anyone's ability to control. Even if you don't care about Palestinian rights or war crimes you should recognize that if we fail to pressure our leaders to deescalate the situation now we could well end up replicating the mistakes that led to the First World War, except this time the Great Powers have nuclear hypersonic missiles.

I think this whole thing has the potential to cause a serious fracture on the left. You have about a 50-50 split between Palestine and Israel sympathizers, and people are facing serious consequences wrt  jobs, future prospects, and social standing if they are willing to criticize Israel.

I'm enjoying my popcorn as the establishment left is losing its marbles now that the far-left activist wing it has coddled, encouraged and wielded as a weapon for so long (so long as its activism was anti-white and anti-American, but NOT anti-Israel) is turning around to bite the hands that have fed it.

Israel/Palestine is a very tug-of-war meme sort of issue that shatters the binary Red vs Blue tribal dynamic. The right might not have a pro-Hamas contingent but we're also seeing a divide between hardline Zionists like Ben Shapiro and isolationists like Tucker Carlson. Back in the day they'd just shove Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul in a closet whenever the topic came up but now their intellectual descendants can't just be ignored by the standard platitudes.

https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1716574971206500570

[afleitch]

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1717015483843576248

[CumbrianLefty]

OK then.

Still literally zero evidence that it was caused by "an Israeli airstrike that killed 500 people".

And if not that, then what?

[jaichind]

[Jingizu]

I’m pretty sure most of Israel is on the same page regarding Bibi and Likud: a corrupt, authoritarian, petty, and above all incompetent leader who, judging from the international reactions a browse of Wikipedia garners, has led Israel into its worst national security situation since at least 1982 if not further back. Bibi and Likud have already managed to squander much of the goodwill and sympathy that Hamas’ barbaric attacks had gained Israel, and that’s before the ground invasion has even started. The absolute eclipse of Israeli soft power - and, to a shocking extent, hard power as well - that Bibi, Likud, and their even more horrifying coalition partners have been responsible for would justify an IDF coup in my opinion to save the country by trying and imprisoning those who were willing to destroy not just one but two nations in the pursuit of money and power. Oh, and draft every single eligible Haredi and send them in the first wave into Gaza because they’re responsible for this sh!tstorm too. I’m not surprised one bit that Bibi’s son is a draft dodger: like father, like son in putting their own desires ahead of their country’s. Maybe Israel could trade members of the extremist coalition for the release of hostages so that they could at least do one thing for their country before their inevitable and justified demise.

Surprised you posted this jaichind, Bibi seems like your type of guy.

[afleitch]

OK then.

Still literally zero evidence that it was caused by "an Israeli airstrike that killed 500 people".

And if not that, then what?

He considers that -

'Our analysis does not answer what actually did cause the blast or who was responsible, but it does undercut one of the most-publicized pieces of evidence used by both American and Israeli officials.'

Which is the issue. A key piece of evidence being provided by Israel, to the media that show it was a Gaza launched misfire doesn't show that. The 'audio conversation' provided by Israel has also been debunked.

A democracy shouldn't be fabricating evidence to show what it wants to show when it doesn't. When in reality it could have said nothing and given nothing and the 'on balance' conclusion it was a misfire could have still prevailed.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Bellingcat is probably fun right now.