Since it's been a while since we had an Israel/Palestine thread...

[padraig (u.s.)]

and Jews of the diaspora almost never lived in conditions comparable to Palestinians, and when they did, some of them fought back

to expand further on this

the only place and time besides the Holocaust where diaspora conditions approached Gaza/WB was the Pale of Settlement

many Jews there lived in miserable conditions. so did most of their serf (after emancipation, peasant) neighbors.

and indeed pogroms etc were a major factor in the disproportionate number of Jews who became revolutionaries, i.e. fought back

every other place time and where diaspora conditions approached Gaza/WB, Jews lacked the numbers/concentration for armed resistance

try fighting back when you're expelled from Spain or England cos a medieval king doesn't want to pay his debts. good luck with that.

 

[Clinamenic]

As far as mainstream sensemaking goes, I think Noah's pretty rational here. I'm interested to see how narratives start solidifying and mutating throughout all of this, seeing as a good bulk of these conflicts nowadays are waged in viral information and stories.

EG already claims/counterclaims around faked footage of killed children on both sides. It does seem pretty easy to fake a good piece of footage, and then it becomes an information warfare equivalent of a viral marketing campaign.

 

[Clinamenic]

Also will be interesting to see what role, if any, generative AI plays in the online media dimensions of this conflict. Raw AI-generated footage is still mostly primitive enough to detect, especially with the scrutiny entailed by a serious conflict like this, but AI-generated speech and translation I think is more mission-ready.

Just saw an example of a falsely translated clip of Putin saying that Russia will back Palestine if US backs Israel. Pretty sure it was false, anyway.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

i'm also surprised by this, plus, how were they able to plan and prepare this without being noticed by us/israeli intelligence?

U.S. intelligence wouldn't know closely what's going on inside Gaza. for the Israelis, a near inconceivable intelligence failure.

there's no way to know, but complacency sliding into arrogance seems like one answer. that was largely the case in 73.

another is the decades long Palestinian effort to identify and execute informants. maybe it's more difficult to find sources of information.

or U.S. intelligence missed 9/11 thru, as far as is publicly known, a mix of incompetence and disastrous interservice rivalry

if Israeli intelligence doesn't know how it failed, it's unlikely we'll know any time soon

 

[droid]

I think it probably comes down to very careful planning, low tech, high security methods. Notes, cut outs, cells within cells. It is pretty remarkable when you consider the human intelligence the Israelis gather on a daily basis. The arrests, torture, intimidations, targeting vulnerable people at checkpoints, blackmail etc. The Shin Bet make the Stasi look like toddlers.

 

[droid]

The Egyptians are now claiming they warned Israel but were ignored.

 

[sus]

My sole political opinion is that we should perma-ban Tea for starting an Israel Palestine thread. Bonkers thing to do

 

[mixed_biscuits]

My sole political opinion is that we should perma-ban Tea for starting an Israel Palestine thread. Bonkers thing to do

Indeed, we have no evidence that Hamas would have attacked had this thread not existed.

 

[sus]

*BUMP*

In case I didn't make the title of this thread eye-catching enough, the gist of the news piece is that Bush has said "Israel must end occupation of Arab land to enable the creation of a viable Palestinian state", which seems a pretty unequivocal statement that the US will not indulge Israel indefinitely. Anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning! Anyone?

He even bumped it. To make sure that everyone on the board was talking about a topic so divisive it may as well have been engineered in a lab to rip apart communities of friends

 

[Clinamenic]

He even bumped it. To make sure that everyone on the board was talking about a topic so divisive it may as well have been engineered in a lab to rip apart communities of friends

He'll take any opportunity he can to feign his rivalry with Biscuits.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I think it probably comes down to very careful planning, low tech, high security methods

it's a good point that it shouldn't just be seen as an Israeli intelligence failure but a Hamas operational success

surely there must have been some kind of evolutionary process

anyone still alive and high up enough to be planning such a major operation must have gotten very good at operational security

easy to focus on the Israeli failure because it's so staggering

not too useful to compare this to a massive conventional invasion, but even in 73 they knew what was coming, just not the size or exact moment

 

[droid]

2014.

Hamas once again demonstrated that it is a learning organization. It studies its experience in battle, develops lessons, and incorporates them into its combat doctrine, forces, and operations. It plays down the effects of Israeli actions publicly, does not admit losses or mistakes, and presents a face of victory. Inside the organization, however, Hamas engages in a serious learning process. Major improvements by Hamas in its latest war with Israel included: enhanced range and numbers of rockets, improved protection of its military infrastructure from Israeli attack, a system of offensive and defensive tunnels, and increased effectiveness and cohesion of its ground combat forces. Taken together, these improvements allowed Hamas to conduct sustained strikes deep inside Israel, even while under siege from Israeli military operations, to conduct offensive ground actions inside Israel and to present significant opposition to Israel’s ground incursion. This was a clear improvement in performance since the Hamas-Israel war in 2009.

Hamas is a learning organization and will study this conflict to develop its own set of “lessons learned.” One Israeli analyst has described Hamas’ “learning” in these terms: “Hamas has proven strikingly adept at steering its fighting doctrine away from Israel’s strengths. If Israel has precise munitions, then Hamas has positioned its weaponry and command centers in hospitals and in extreme proximity to civilian centers. If Israel has highly advanced signals intelligence capacities, then Hamas has turned toward runners and other primitive forms of communication. If Israel controls the skies and sees all from above, then Hamas has carved out a subterranean network from which it launches ambushes and rocket strikes. And if, among other things, Israel’s engineers have manufactured a means of striking Hamas’ rockets out of the sky, then Hamas has moved toward mortars, which have a limited range but are largely immune to Iron Dome’s capabilities.

The Combat Performance of Hamas in the Gaza War of 2014 – Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

In its war with Israel in the summer of 2014, Hamas displayed a wide range of combat capabilities, including new offensive and defensive tactics.[1] Hamas’ evolution on the battlefield presented serious challenges to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and, when combined with Israeli operations...

ctc.westpoint.edu

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

The Combat Performance of Hamas in the Gaza War of 2014 – Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

In its war with Israel in the summer of 2014, Hamas displayed a wide range of combat capabilities, including new offensive and defensive tactics.[1] Hamas’ evolution on the battlefield presented serious challenges to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and, when combined with Israeli operations...

ctc.westpoint.edu

the surprise would be if they didn't try to learn and improve from conflict to conflict

I'd assume longitudinal studies have been done on the improvement of irregular forces over time in long-term asymmetric warfare, which seems inevitable as their survival depends on it, both as a group and individually.

as I said upthread I suspect they think they can - without even mentioning the hostages - at least make a major Israeli push into Gaza too costly to sustain. seems like a precursor for this attack, and for the sea change from a victimhood PR strategy ("look at this enormously disproportionate Israeli response") to a full-on ISIS style declaration of strength thru atrocity.

 

[version]

Also: when does the Israeli/jewish people living outside Israel go into the streets and cheers when the IDF commits atrocities? Now it's like 9/11 when Death to America was chanted in streets of Western cities

Israeli crowds chant racist slogans and taunt Palestinians during contentious Jerusalem march

Some of the youths wore clothing identifying themselves as members of Lehava — a far-right Jewish supremacist group.

www.nbcnews.com

Thousands of Jewish nationalists, some of them chanting “Death to Arabs” and other racist slogans, paraded on Thursday through the main Palestinian thoroughfare of Jerusalem’s Old City, in an annual display that caused new friction between Jews and Palestinians in the tense city.

This Is Not Fine: Why Video of an Ultranationalist Frenzy in Jerusalem Is So Unsettling

Israelis tried to contain the damage from video of religious Zionists celebrating the conquest of Jerusalem as flames leapt above the Aqsa mosque compound.

theintercept.com

Israel's defenders tried to contain the damage from video of religious Zionists celebrating the conquest of Jerusalem as flames leapt above the Aqsa mosque compound.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

To make sure that everyone on the board was talking about a topic so divisive it may as well have been engineered in a lab to rip apart communities of friends

btw I wasn't sure I was going to mention this, but I have three half-brothers (my dad has lived there since 1988, remarried, new family, etc) who've been called up as reservists. two in the south by Gaza, one up north.

so I'd be talking about it either way. tho so would plenty of people without personal connections.

it's banter alrite, and I don't want to be some anti-banter puritan, but I don't feel much like it

lot of dead people and a lot of soon to be dead people, for essentially no reason, or no good one anyway

just makes feel weary and sick

(and this is place is not a community of friends lmao jesus christ)

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Thousands of Jewish nationalists, some of them chanting “Death to Arabs” and other racist slogans, paraded on Thursday through the main Palestinian thoroughfare of Jerusalem’s Old City, in an annual display that caused new friction between Jews and Palestinians in the tense city.

I think a lot of non-Israelis fail to grasp how internally divided Israel is and how even more than in most countries its domestic politics very largely determine its foreign policy, how unstable those domestic politics are, how fucking deranged the Israeli right-wing is, etc

 

[Mr. Tea]

He even bumped it. To make sure that everyone on the board was talking about a topic so divisive it may as well have been engineered in a lab to rip apart communities of friends

Point duly noted. I'll be sure only to start threads on topics such as "Who here likes puppies?" from now on.

 

[Clinamenic]

(and this is place is not a community of friends lmao jesus christ)

I for one would grab a beer with any of you, with the possible exception of @CorpseysEvilTwin

 

[chava]

Israeli crowds chant racist slogans and taunt Palestinians during contentious Jerusalem march

Some of the youths wore clothing identifying themselves as members of Lehava — a far-right Jewish supremacist group.

www.nbcnews.com

Thousands of Jewish nationalists, some of them chanting “Death to Arabs” and other racist slogans, paraded on Thursday through the main Palestinian thoroughfare of Jerusalem’s Old City, in an annual display that caused new friction between Jews and Palestinians in the tense city.

This Is Not Fine: Why Video of an Ultranationalist Frenzy in Jerusalem Is So Unsettling

Israelis tried to contain the damage from video of religious Zionists celebrating the conquest of Jerusalem as flames leapt above the Aqsa mosque compound.

theintercept.com

Israel's defenders tried to contain the damage from video of religious Zionists celebrating the conquest of Jerusalem as flames leapt above the Aqsa mosque compound.

These are ultra orthodox and not so often you see that outside the country

 

[chava]

Lebanon is a democracy that shares a land border with Israel

not a perfect one certainly but literally a functioning democracy

Eh, yeah ok not really perfect