Image is of fires in northern Israel set off by Hezbollah, to force settlers to retreat from their occupied areas, in response to attacks on civilians in Lebanon.

I’m not gonna lie to you - I thought Israel would have started shit with Hezbollah by now which would have derailed whatever megathread theme I had planned, so I didn’t bother planning one.

If you want a decent couple pieces going over what Hezbollah has done to Israel, then have a look at How ‘Israel’ Has Lost The North and Hezbollah’s Quarterly Report. It’s not exactly the most professional analysis, as you’ll see if you read it, but it gets the point across and relies on evidence. In essence, Hezbollah has pushed the Israelis back tens of kilometers and decimated their border infrastructure, all while unveiling anti-aircraft missiles that have forced Israel to reconsider bombing runs. They still probably have the ability to turn various towns and cities in Lebanon to rubble, but Hezbollah can do massive damage back to Israel in turn. This has gone on so long with so little meaningful opposition by Israel that border settlements are going a little haywire and tentatively declaring independence from Israel and saying they don’t want IDF troops there anymore. I don’t take these terribly seriously from a military standpoint but it is indicative of the Zionist settler mindset crumbling over the last 9 months.

We’re now at the point where Israel kinda has to go to war against Hezbollah or the entire Zionist ideology of military deterrence and expansion via illegal settlements simply no longer functions, but that war will also lead to massive destruction for military and civilian facilities (ports, power stations, war factories, etc) which is a massive problem for Israel’s continued existence. Hamas continues to function inside Gaza despite the surface occupation of significant areas, including the Gaza-Egypt border, and attrition there is leading to big materiel and psychological losses for Israel too. And Yemen has, for all intents and purposes, prevailed against America’s failed attempt to thwart their blockade - with some in the army claiming it’s the most intense naval battle America has faced since WW2 - and missile strikes are tentatively beginning to hit or at least threaten ships in the Mediterranean Sea.

Nukes are still lurking quietly in the background, of course, but the Resistance is perfectly aware of that and still seems confident to go ahead with operations, so I can’t really do anything but shrug and say that I trust them to do what’s right.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

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.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

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.

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.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

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.

  • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    85·
    3 days ago

    An interesting comment posted on Naked Capitalism by a traveler to occupied Palestine who sheds a little light on what it looks like far from the front:

    spoiler

    I just returned yesterday from a business trip to Israel. Some anecdata to share:

    • the flight there was three-quarters full; the return was entirely full. Lots of families on both. At passport control on the US side of the return most of the people on the flight went through the Israeli passport line, not the US passport line. So it was mostly Israelis leaving, not tourists.
    • news in Tel Aviv does not show much about what is going on in Gaza. The nightly news was more focused on the fires at the Lebanon border and the death of multiple IDF soldier in a Rafah attack. Nothing really about the counter-attacks and communal responses.
    • there are protests almost nightly in front of the IDF headquarters and many nights in front of Netanyahu’s personal residence in Jerusalem. The protesters are mostly the secular types (or “State of Israel” types as defined in the Pappe piece linked here yesterday).
    • even the secular types are rabidly racist against anyone deemed ‘arab’. Was subjected to a six-hour tour of Jerusalem organized by work where the tour guide ranted about ‘the arab mindset’ and went to great pains to point out how Israel was not an apartheid state because a single muslim woman was working as a tour bus driver. Israeli execs at company dinner made multiple casually racist comments about employees at a vendor with Persian surnames being arab terrorists (the vendor and employees are canadian, didn’t matter).
    • People in Tel Aviv are partying and behaving like nothing bad is going on. If you had been there since last October and were only exposed to local news I doubt you’d have any idea of how bad the situation in Gaza really was. And this feeds into the paranoid/delusional mindset around ‘the arabs’ and ‘antisemitism’.
    • the touristic industries have completely collapsed. There were no lines in Jerusalem for the big religious sites, we walked right into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and there were maybe 30 people inside the entire complex and no real lines on the tomb and site of the crucifixion. The tour guide said it had been like this since the war started and many in his line of work had gone bankrupt.
    • most of the big tourist hotels are being propped up by direct payments from the government in exchange for housing settlers from the north who were evacuated. Our hotel, right on the Tel Aviv beach, was at least half full of these people who had been living there full time for months. On the weekends Israelis from outside of Tel Aviv would fill up the hotel for beach going but during the week it was empty except for the housing. We only realized this because there were tons of children during the week who were being shuttled to and from schools and it didn’t make sense that would be happening for tourists.
    • as an American what stood out to me was the lack of homeless people in Israel because this is utterly inescapable in the US. I guess I’m glad my taxes are ensuring people somewhere are staying off the streets but it made me angry that my taxes are being used to prop up a foreign social safety net at the expense of mine here. The housing market in Tel Aviv is grossly overpriced relative to wages. Most of the people I talked to wanted to immigrate to the US for the higher salaries.