The Institute for the Study of War says Russia’s propaganda machine will likely use the conflict in Israel to erode the West’s support for Ukraine.
“The Kremlin is already and will likely continue to exploit the Hamas attacks in Israel to advance several information operations intended to reduce US and Western support and attention to Ukraine,” wrote the Washington-based think tank on Saturday.
The ISW wrote in its report that after the Hamas attacks on Saturday, the Kremlin amplified information campaigns that accused the West of ignoring Middle East conflicts to support Ukraine. These campaigns also pushed the message that global attention — in particular, resources from the West — would shift from Ukraine to the Middle East.
The institute cited examples like Russian TV host Sergey Mardan stating in his Telegram channel that the West “will take its mind off Ukraine for a while and get busy once again putting out the eternal fire in the Middle East.”
I also noticed that both here on Lemmy and over on Reddit that there’s been a push of pro-Russian talking points and a huge push towards Islamaphobia for the past few days, starting just before the attacks this weekend.
I understand there’s going to be some natural anger over the attack, but the amount of accounts I’ve seen, especially noticeable here on Lemmy because we just don’t have as many users, who are saying things like, “This is just what Muslims are like,” and, “Western countries accept these kinds of people, so expect them to do the same there,” and other racist bullshit talking points. They’ve also been painting the ongoing conflict as unquestionably one-sided in Israel’s favor.
It’s depressing but kind of to be expected that there’s a psyops campaign going on trying to get people outraged at not just Hamas, not just Palestine, but all of Islam right now while simultaneously trying to paint Ukrainian surrender and pro-Russian propaganda. This horrible act of terror was either in part planned by Russia or at the very least is seen as an easy opportunity to try and weaken Western support of repelling their invasion of Ukraine. Just spending a little time in the wrong circles on social media should make that obvious.
I’m thankful that the consensus opinion here so far seems to be relatively balanced, even if there are a small minority of asshats either trying to paint Hamas’ actions as justified or trying to claim Israel did nothing wrong.
I’m saying this as a secular non-Israeli Jew who wishes Likud would just leave politics entirely and let Israel have a slightly less insane government for once.
There’s also been a number of suspiciously enthusiastic Cornell West voters in the comments of political communities the last few weeks.
? what’s suspicious about being excited for an independent, leftist candidate?
This is wierd asf. Why do you pretend Russia needs to spread Islamophobia as a propaganda tool? It’s already there in European and European adjacent countries.
This Hamas attack was for sure 100% a russian or mossad or even a co op between the two backed event. Hamas leadership is literally nothing but druggies and child rapists after thirty years of mossad/russian/western intervention and warfare. Competent Palestinian leaders are killed, the incompetent and war hungry let to live. That has been everyones standard operating procedure for years. Now Isreal is going to be not just supported, but cheered on as they establish a fascist ethno state. The rest of the world will soon be following in its steps as the climate change migrants will start moving in the next decade.
Hmm. That’s definitely a compelling argument. Multinational cabal committing a false flag operation to create a racially pure dictatorship.
I have another idea let me know what you think.
Iran has been funneling Hamas weapons for years. There’s a supply chain from Iran -> Syria -> Palestine. During the Syrian civil war the Israelis found smuggling tunnels in Palestine and warned about how a destabilized Syrian border is permeable to Iranian weapons. This scale of this attack is likely the result of a persistent effort to stockpile munitions. It is funded by Iran, not Mossad, because Iran explicitly wants to destroy Israel.
Now, my theory isn’t quite as cool as yours. Mine is a little boring and yours is like a spy novel.
could it be that you’re both a little right: war is good for business, so turning a blind eye while iran arms hamas and then letting them start a conflict satisfies some of israel’s long-term goals?
Echelon, mk ultra, and prism were all spy novels too.
We now know the Egyptians were (according to them, no comment from isreal) warning the Isrealis atleast ten days ago about a “major and unusual” hamas operation being planned. That dosent sound like the mossad we all know and love(fear?)
While Iran supplying weapons to hamas is indeed problematic, I seriously doubt an influx of Iranian weapons made this any more possible now, then it was a decade ago. Rockets, dirtbikes, and powered hangliders? Hamas has been using all of these for decades.
Hamas, plo and any other Palestinian political movement I can think of has done a pretty decent job considering the tools and training at their disposal, to not target people that would cause them to loose what little western support they already had. Now with pretty little white eu and isreali girls being torture raped to.death on camera that has evaporated. These people are not dumb and knew what the response would be.
From my end it’s 9/11 all over again, everyone knew it was going to happen, at the very least allowed it to happen. Perhaps even assisted in the early stages of planning / logistics then extracting all involvement well before the deed goes off and poof. No more real objections as isreal absorbs the remaining Palestinian areas with extreme prejudice.
I will say, one thing they said about this in The Daily today, was how shocking it was that there were no border defense forces. They kept hitting that point. How even if you believe the intelligence failures, the way columns of vehicles were allowed to ram through a fence and get miles into Israel was even more shocking, considering Israel’s insane density of advanced military hardware.
Can you list the competent Palestinian leaders who have been killed by Israel? All the people targeted by Israel that I know of were Hamas / IJ / Al Qaeda leaders or Iranian military.
I am not qualified to give you a comprehensive list of specific Palestinians murdered. However,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinations Is a good start, yes lots of those are legitimate war targets. You can always cross reference news articles from the days after the dates, and see a often recurring pattern. Young charismatic leaders who preach anything other than the total destruction of isreal are offed. Those who do are captured and used for trades. Further radicalizing everyone.
My point was that this has been a generational operational idea pruning away any Palestinian leaders who voiced direct opposition without Isreali genocide, and now all they had to do was stand down for two weeks and they’re at exactly the point they wanted to be in back in the 90s/00s. Except even better as the “occupied terretories” as they love to call it are smaller and more tightly packed then ever before. And the world will be turning a blind eye as they finally get to build their fascist apartheid