I've come to the conclusion that I don't understand the Middle East

There's that cartoon about the outbreak of WW1 showing the escalation from Serbia to Austria-Hungary to Russia to Germany to France and the UK:
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/cade1c1b-60b9-4206-98c4-09bfc5a271eb.jpeg
- Ooh dang, love it. John Bull on the very edge, love the details of each character's clothing.

I don't want to trust any group that celebrates by shooting rounds of ammo in the air.. seems like they make bad choices.
- Rest my case 😆
- Wasting ammo is a sin. It's worse than wasting good beer, but not as bad as wasting meat. Source: my cosmology.
- Well, the HTS leader explicitly told them not to do so, but there's not much that can be done to enforce that

If by "paragliding" you mean thousands of drug fueled antisemitic "Palestinian" Arab Jihadis invading Israel to rape and murder 1200 Israeli citizens, and take hundreds as hostages back to gaza where those who weren't murdered outright are still held today, in the single worst loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust, then yes, that's exactly what precipitated where Syria finds itself today
- I could have done without the “Palestinian” erasure, and the conflation of IDF and civilians killed on Oct 7th - just like it’s important to delineate between 7,000-17,000 Hamas fighters and at least 20,607 dead civilians the IAF bombed callously with AI driven targeting.
  But otherwise you’re mostly right; Iran/Hamas set the stage for the Israeli overreaction, Hezbollah attacking the north in ‘solidarity’ and Iran loosing their chess pieces, whilst Russia was bled out in Ukraine and distracted.
- The Hannibal Directive lays the single largest claim on that death tally, but do go on.