Israel is Coming Apart at the Seams, It Seems

The population of Rhode Island is 1.1 million people, it is roughly ten times the size of the Gaza Strip. I'm not sure we could evacuate the entire population of that state in 24 hours because, for example, a hurricane was coming, and Israel expects the UN to get that many people out of a fucking war zone in that period of time? WTF?

People are too afraid to criticize the Israeli government because people will label it as anti Semitism...

https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/10/...gency-in-florida-because-of-israel-hamas-war/

Paul Mason has a good article on both Substack and the Speccie.

The multi-polar world being chaos is an interesting one, the rules-based system is/was very Western orientated and was essentially policed by Pax Americana - international law being something of an agreed fiction, when it's actually national laws that individual nations agree to implement, respect and maintain in alignment, frequently with their fingers crossed behind their backs, so you need a Global Policeman of some form to enforce matters, it just doesn't need to be the US, and you need a bit of QCIC going on as policing always attracts corruption.

On the electricity cutting off bit too, looks like an element of that was down to, errr, Hamas. Israel is just refusing to fix the damage.

Looks like the Gazans have been used to blackouts too - they've plenty of diesel gennies (no fuel though now) and solar, as some of the infrastructure damaged in previous Israeli responses hasn't been repaired - utilities not quite as exciting as rocket launchers when it comes to purchasing goodies, despite monies being provided for just that.

Looking at the amount of cash funnelled into Gaza from Iran and more salubrious origins, such as international aid, and the obvious ability to circumvent Israeli restrictions, it strikes me that the biggest Fuck You they could have delivered to Israel was to turn Gaza into something spectacular and really get pressure placed on Tel Aviv.

Obviously that was never going to happen, Iran wants its investment to provide a good return in dead Israelis, not the betterment of the Palestinians, but it really does inform about how simplistic the Iranian and Hamas leaders think.

I'll answer, but you aren't forcing me into "yes" or "no", because it's a complex, loaded question, deliberately used as a "gotcha".

States do not have any rights that are distinct from the rights of their people. People in Prussia decided to be part of Germany and nobody suggested that Prussia had a right to exist. Many legitimately seek the breakup of the United Kingdom, or to secede from Spain. And some peoples don't have a state for various reasons - does Kurdistan have the right to exist if that is on the territory now constituting Turkey and Iraq?

Nation states are problematic in general concept in any event. They are by definition exclusionary in some sense, giving precedence to one people at the expense of others within a given territory. This has led to enormous problems in areas of the world (including the middle east) where populations are not homogenously packaged into tidy little territories that borders can be drawn around. There are other models, realised imperfectly in some areas that include federation, joint authority and multinational states that aim to mitigate the issues.

The rights of people to form nation states is a more meaningful concept than the rights of states. I'd suggest that people generally do have a right to do that, including Israelis. But that right is not unlimited and must be balanced with the rights of others.
As a matter of practical reality any solution to this mess should include the existence of an Israeli state. But that state must be constituted in such a way to ensure that it is not continually stealing land from its neighbours or violating human rights. Nor can it be a Jewish supremacist state, as it currently is. And it is a legitimate aspiration to seek the breakup of that state, even to resist its violence.

Of course, nobody is doing more to make the existence of such a state fundamentally illegitimate than those using it to massacre a defenceless civilian population.

I had to google the term “Levantine”.

Don’t really care, as I said so from the beginning. I do know the history. And I do know the UK has a less biased media than both the US and Canada. so, yea, I’ll take RickDeckard (or any other Brit’s views) of the situation over anyone from the US or Canada.

Thanks for the comprehensive and well-articulated answer.

Interesting that you vociferously apply that logic to Israel, but are strangely silent on the many other nation-states that basically act in the same manner as Israel does.

Such as?

As a Brit, my view is that that is EXTREMELY idiotic. Just because the BBC/ITV/et al is less biased than FOX etc doesn't mean individual Brits can't be just as wrong-headed or ill-informed as your own countryfolk.

Nigel Farage and Laurence Fox are prime examples of folk whose opinions should NOT, under any circumstances, be given attention beyond recognizing the dog turd they are and stepping around it.

Yeah, and I'm not a Brit.

HAMAS doesn’t want its human shields leaving.

This post neatly encapsulates why I don't bother much with the internet, beyond work, these days.

I wonder how long it'll be before they start "encouraging" people to stay.

They do not expect it. They know that the transport infrastructure and the situation do not allow it and that people in hospital can't leave. But they are using this warning as diplomatic cover in order to treat whoever remains as a target. There is a possibility that they will seek to entirely demolish the city.

And here we are, now denying the very concept of innocent civilians. This is the same logic as used by Hamas, that of the 9/11 attacks, and other assorted psychopaths.

It's been well-documented by organizations such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees that Palestinians are treated as second-class citizens in most Arab nations.

Yeah, that needs pushing back against.

Yes, there was non-Hamas who took part in the attack, but that's not the same as the entirety of Gaza.

And they were meant to rise up against Hamas? Is he saying that Jews under Nazi regimes had a responsibility towards the Holocaust? They should have fought harder?

Hopefully they'll get walked back those words, I can totally understand that Israel has quite literally gone mad with rage over the attack - much of Israel's actions are born of fear - but this is when allies tell you that you've crossed a line.

There are multiple reports of this already happening but HAMAS has denied it.

deSantis "How many other militaries give notice before a bombing campaign?"

To which I would answer: "Which militaries bomb civilian population centres? Because we need to put them in the fucking Hague for war crimes, which is what that is".

Well, the day of rage has it's first victim outside the war zone. Shouting God is Great a terrorist killed a French teacher and wounded two others.

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1712776733903004155

@Dr. Krieg anyway to see the location of the USNS Comfort? She still at Norfolk?

So what do you do about an attacking force that cowers behind civilians? Are we saying there is no difference between deliberately targeting civilians, and hitting them incidentally when you shoot at the guy hiding in their house/school/mosque/hospital?

The question is if the IDF is specifically targeting civilians or if it is attacking Hamas locations that also includes civilian casualties. To this point I'd say it points to the former, but if it devolves into the later, and it might, then the blood bath is going to be the worst we've seen in decades. Let's hope saner heads prevail.

And anyone who says their government would accept an attack on their people and then not respond if they were going to kill civilians - you are wrong, and if you want to see wrong open a history book to pretty much any page. Any country that has ever fought a war has inflicted civilian casualties, and some, like the UK, prioritized their own military over civilians time and time again. See: Bomber Harris.

Yes, I knew as soon as I typed it, someone would bitch about it.

How about any UK citizen?

As well as … Northern Ireland has had a similar struggle with England as Palestine has had with Israel.

SIMILAR.

Not saying it’s the same.

Either way, regardless of which side of the argument you fall on, I’d still take the perceptions of the situation from someone from .. ANYwhere in Europe over someone from the US or Canada.

Government of Iran tries to hold a HAMAS rally but everyone around them just lays on the horn to block it out.

https://x.com/emilykschrader/status/1712806795452842101

Ali Baraka. a senior Hamas official, on why Israel fell for it.

“In the past couple of years, Hamas has adopted a ‘rational’ approach. It did not go into any war, and did not join the Islamic Jihad in its recent battle,” Ali Baraka said in an interview that ran on Russia Today and was translated by Memri. “We made them think that Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians there, and has abandoned the resistance altogether. All the while, under the table, Hamas was preparing for this big attack.”

He also says that Russia has licensed the ammunition it uses to Hamas, that Russia is happy about the attack because it takes away from the Ukraine war, and that Hamas targeted American hostages so they could release them for large numbers of Hamas in custody.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ali-baraka-hamas-russia-today-interview-gaza-israel-59dffb69

That's kind of the problem though, isn't it? They're not just civilian population centres. They're militarised ad-hoc, you launch a rocket from the top of a hospital, you've just added the attribute of "military target" for a period of time, which is no help to poor bastards in it, and nor can you blame the target of said rocket attack wanting to halt it by returning fire.

Asymmetric warfare is difficult to morally police as you either accept being attacked, or you deal with moral grey areas where you will damn yourself, and you will place a higher value on your own citizenry than the opponents.

Israels attempt to square that circle is Iron Dome, and it turned its back on Gaza expecting that to deal with the frequent attacks.

And let's not forget Hamas has been merrily targeting civilian targets in Israel for years, and maybe all that muted opprobrium towards those attacks can be placed down to Iron Dome, and maybe some of it could be down to less savoury thinking (not necessarily anti-semitism).

Hamas wanted Israel to re-engage with Gaza, well, what's that old adage about being careful what you wish for?

I think the 24 hours for 1 million people to get out is the issue. The area is surrounded, what is the rush?

We also did the ‘Get out if you aren’t bad’ thing at Baquba* but we gave a much smaller population days to do it.

*I’ve told the story before but quick recap, Al Qeada in Iraq (AQI) had joined with other Sunni extremist groups to form the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC). Well in the summer of ‘07 once they kicked the pussies of 1st Cav out of Baquba they renamed themselves the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and Baquba their capitol that they would fight to the death to hold.

3rd Brigade 2nd ID was reconstituted (while everyone else was in Taji we in 1/23 INF had been in Baghdad as Regional QRF) and sent to Baquba to retake it. We surrounded them on the land sides, dropped leaflets telling decent folks to get out and after a couple days did a full invasion. Rough fighting for a couple days but they eventually fled in the night to the river, left hundreds of cars, swam the Diyala and made their way to Syria from whence they were never heard of again.

Israeli employee of their embassy in Beijing attacked in public in broad daylight, stabbed multiple times, in stable condition.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-diplomat-repeatedly-stabbed-by-assailant-in-beijing/