Bulletins and News Discussion from September 23rd to September 29th, 2024 - The War In The North
Image is of a Hezbollah missile attack on a military camp west of Jenin.
The situation between Hezbollah and Israel is rapidly escalating, with massive bombing campaigns on southern Lebanon by Israel predominantly on civilians (as the tunnels in South Lebanon are mostly unreachable to the Zionists, just like in Gaza), while Hezbollah and its allies respond with missile attacks predominantly on Israeli military facilities. Israel is spreading an evacuation order to the residents of southern Lebanese villages while also bombing their routes of escape and civilian infrastructure, similar to a terror tactic used widely in Gaza.
Northern Israel is currently under military censorship to hide their losses, so we get very little information other than what the Resistance provides and what videos and images get through the censors.
I don't know if Israel will dare a ground incursion soon, but it seems fairly likely in the coming days or weeks.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful. Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section. Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war. Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis. Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language. https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one. https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts. https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel. https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator. https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps. https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language. https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language. https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses. https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
I saw a TikTok video the other day with Shir Hever, a political economist born in the illegal zionist entity. In his view the zionist project is effectively over as "any regime that commits genocide also commits suicide".
He claims that every sector of the entity's economy is collapsing due to the genocide: tourism has disappeared, academic exchange with the rest of the world is ending and investment in the high tech sector is drying up fast. The settlers themselves are moving their money out of the entity as well with zionist pension funds increasingly preferring investments abroad over domestic.
Settlers are also leaving the entity like never before. Up to half a million settlers has left since the Al-Aqsa Flood and it is especially the highly educated with resources and prospects abroad who are leaving. It has become very hard to get a doctor's appointment due to the number of doctors leaving. Even the regime itself has no clear idea of how many are leaving, as the people at the central bureau of statistics who were supposed to do the calculations has also left.
According to Hever the zionist project has come to an end and the current system of injustice is coming apart. To him, emulating South Africa's transition away from apartheid is the only way forward of "Israelis" are to have a future in Palestine.
I think it's something that's increasingly true as time has gone by.
As in, it started as "not at all true and if anything actively benefits the country doing the genocide" in the period of European colonial expansion (1492 to ~1900). But from that point onwards, when the concept and material basis of national identity was spreading from the imperial core to the frontier (as capital was exported abroad and development meant that revolutionaries could obtain weapons and means of agitating), the genocides began to produce the opposite effects and generated resentment against their ruling regimes which would then fuel liberation movements. Not necessarily immediately, sometimes populations were cowed, but the children of those affected would learn of what happened from their parents and by that point, colonial domination would yet again be weaker and development had yet again continued, so they'd try again. And again and again until colonialism had perished.
Israel is the last major holdout but the process has continued: from a place of fighting with a big disadvantage initially decades ago, you can now see just how ideologically principled the Resistance is and how they actually have, if not technological parity, then definitely effective destructive parity with Israel. As in, Israel can bomb a shitload of civilians, but in terms of military targets, Hezbollah's tunnel metropolises mean that Israel is at a substantial disadvantage in hitting Hezbollah soldiers (whereas Hezbollah can strike at Israeli bases with much less difficulty). The battlefield has been levelled, so to speak, between the imperial core and the developing world. Both because of the aforementioned historical processes and also because neoliberalism is crippling the productive capacity of the imperial core. So in this situation, yes, genocides do mean suicide, because they can't just do the equivalent of marching in with their Maxim guns into Zulu territory and murdering thousands of people; now, the Zulus also have Maxim guns.
there's those Productive Forces™ again! (not the guns themselves but the productive capacity to manufacture them and other weapons locally from commodity components)
Here in Canada I've found a lot of dark humour in turning the "but they were there first!" zionist propaganda around on Israel's defenders, demanding that our country be returned to rule under the ethnic and religious groups who were here 2000 years ago.
Could you draw a date where it starts being true? The early colonial era doesn't apply, but what about after WWII? I think the answer is still probably no, but it's a much stronger statement that way, at least.
I hate to say "it depends" but it sort of does on how you are defining it. Like, what do you consider what the US did to, say, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, etc? I think you could make the case that at least some, if not all of those, were genocides post-WWII but the US still survives (as does SK). On a long enough timeline, it may be true, but also defeats the meaning of the statement. I just don't think it is a true description of objective reality unfortunately. It relies on a large enough resistance to the genocide to force the existential crisis of the state, which is not necessarily a given. You could argue that, in the case of Is***l, it does not have the defensive depth or bredth to survive this attempt in the face of its resistance, but that also discounts the role that the US and Western European powers play in this particular genocide. Is the US committing suicide by committing this genocide in Palestine? Again, the answer may just be
Even the regime itself has no clear idea of how many are leaving, as the people at the central bureau of statistics who were supposed to do the calculations has also left.
Up to half a million settlers has left since the Al-Aqsa Flood
A small but important correction: up to half a million left between October and December. Given that's how many left in 3 months, I think it's reasonable to conclude that quite a bit more have left in the 9 months since.