Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is still Palestine, though we will switch next week to a new country.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly (biweekly?) update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week’s discussion post.
People have been rationalizing Hamas’s attacking civilians in a whole bunch of ways, but like…
The second Intifada used a lot of “terror” tactics. Stuff like attacking civilians, suicide bombings in public places, that kind of thing. Before that, the PFLP engaged in attacks against civilians.
Hamas probably did kill those people deliberately, and they probably did it because they’ve seen it work. The second Intifada yielded the camp David talks.
I think we should get crystal clear on this: targeting civilians is an intentional tactical choice of both Hamas and the PLO.
I agree. I’m sure that the IDF has greatly exaggerated the level of violence committed by Palestinian fighters, but there’s a tendency in western leftist spaces to present violence against settler “civilians” as unjustifiable and argue that it was accidental or that it didn’t happen.
I’ve said it before: when you’re being colonized, it’s ridiculous for the colonizers to expect you to limit any violence you might commit in your struggle for liberation to only targets they say you can attack (heavily fortified military positions armed to the teeth, so that you can be pointlessly slaughtered).
The settlers forced Palestinians into a ghetto and murdered and abused them for decades while living on the stolen land. These tactics are the only option Palestinians have left, because Israel has made it clear that violence is the only language it’s willing to speak. It doesn’t mean that every person that dies deserves to, but that’s not the point. Israel holds all the cards. All the violence in this conflict could stop today if they chose it. This is only happening because all other options were foreclosed to the Palestinians.
I think you need to introduce the qualifier innocent when making moral judgements on uprisings like this. Not wearing a uniform doesn’t mean you’re not part of the violence and without guilt. A child is an innocent civilian, someone who was born into the settler class and have no options for leaving might even be an innocent. A settler who made the choice to go to Palestine to get some Lebensraum at the expense of the indigenous population might be a civilian but he is not innocent.
And even for innocent civilians it seems like a war is the wrong place to apply individual morality. This is a war of liberation, not a legal proceedings. You can be without guilt personally and still be a valid target in warfare. Should we condemn the allies for bombing German factories during WWII, thereby killing the undoubtedly civilian and in many cases innocent factory workers? Of course not, stopping the Nazi war machine was a valid military objective just as stopping the settlements in Palestine is.
It is natural and human to recoil in disgust when you see people murdered, especially if those people did nothing wrong. Violence is horrific and war is hell but sometimes the short violence of the war for liberation is the only thing that will stop the long-lasting violence of settler colonialism.
This was explicitly stated as the reason to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a terror strike on an armament factory and associated worker housing and civilian population, and I do condemn that.
The Second Intifada began in Sept 2000, after the failure of the Camp David talks in July 2000. You may be thinking of the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit in 2005, which ended the Second Intifada.
You’re right, I am