There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

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:

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account.
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.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

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

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The weekly 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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
    ·
    11 months ago

    West Asia may be headed toward a large-scale war that will extend well beyond the Gaza Strip and southern Israel, now mired in violent conflict.

    "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” carried out by Hamas at dawn on 7 October, has already led to the killing of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and settlers, the capture of about 200 of them, and the destruction of Israel’s lauded deterrence. Whether the war will bleed into multiple borders and arenas now depends entirely on what Israel does or does not do in the days and weeks ahead. Predictably, Tel Aviv – with the US and EU standing firmly behind it – has begun by launching a military operation in the Gaza Strip to eliminate the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) resistance movements.

    After a round of consultations held with a number of western heads of state - led by US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed in statements that his western allies have granted Israel full freedom to eliminate the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.

    ...

    These galvanizing gestures to excite public sentiment are reminiscent of events in March 1996, when the west and its allies gathered in Sharm El-Sheikh to ostensibly ‘combat terrorism.’ Their goal was not to halt terror, but to destroy the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon. That conference was the green light for Israel to launch “Operation Grapes of Wrath” on Lebanon one month later. That military fiasco ended with Hezbollah winning points, increasing its domestic role, and establishing the resistance group as a Lebanese protector against Israeli attacks. Last weekend, Israel once again captured the west's undivided attention. Tel Aviv, along with Washington and other western capitals, are dead-set on restoring the deterrence destroyed by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

    ...

    Hamas did not coordinate its military operation with any of its Resistance Axis allies. It also did not plan to achieve the stunning results that were soon to follow. The Qassam Brigades' immediate goal was only to destroy Israeli army positions around the Gaza Strip and capture as many soldiers as possible, which they could later exchange for the thousands of Palestinian captives in Israeli prisons. But the Palestinian resistance forces were taken by surprise at the laxity of the occupation army. Contrary to expectations, they stumbled upon security vacuums and poorly guarded military sites in which a large number of enemy soldiers and officers were fast asleep. It was this unexpected opportunity that prodded the Palestinian fighters to reach for bigger gains.

    Very few knew details of the comprehensive attack plan. Even Hamas' allies in Lebanon and Iran learned of the operation at zero o'clock and not a moment before, according to well-informed sources in the Resistance Axis.

    Even for this axis, the Hamas operation went beyond all possible expectations. Although true that many of the Hamas tactics employed are shared among the Axis' fighters in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, the innovation in the Al-Aqsa Flood operation was the signature of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and particularly its brilliant leader Muhammad Deif. The operation was coordinated with remarkable professionalism: accurate and detailed intelligence was amassed, high-level training exercises organized, secrecy was paramount, and superior coordination was established between the myriad drones, paratroopers, and vast majority of Hamas fighters who crossed into the occupation state, through tunnels and above ground. Al Qassam also planned to target Israeli communications towers and all military sites surrounding Gaza. From a military perspective, this was a near-perfect operation that led to the destruction of all the facilities of the Israeli army's “Gaza Division" and the annihilation of entire Israeli brigades. For Israel, this was a total humiliation - something it had never experienced before, even in the devastating 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

    Hopefully this puts to bed the "Hamas has no idea what hell it has unleashed" thought-terminating cliche. They knew exactly what they were doing. They continue to know exactly what they are doing.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      11 months ago

      But the Palestinian resistance forces were taken by surprise at the laxity of the occupation army. Contrary to expectations, they stumbled upon security vacuums and poorly guarded military sites in which a large number of enemy soldiers and officers were fast asleep.

      This is the exact moment they had the realisation "our enemy are paper tigers".

        • Awoo [she/her]
          ·
          11 months ago

          None of this shit changes.

          Good training and professional units combined with a lazy enemy set in their bad habits and ways.

          Honestly not surprised the response from Israel is to seek the complete destruction of Hamas. This has demonstrated that their leadership and organisation is fundamentally better than Israel's now, they're just under-resourced and lack personnel. I would want to remove the organisers responsible for this before they get the supplies and people they need.

        • Dessa@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          11 months ago

          I keep thinking about his line of always leaving a retreat for your opponent, and how this siege of Gaza is just going to make condemned souls fight harder

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            11 months ago

            Very true. I don't recall anything in Sun Tzu where he discussses exterminating the enemy, though that might just be my memory. He seemed to view converting the enemy to your side and earning their loyalty to be of great importance, both to minimize the destruction of warfare, to avoid creating bad blood that would haunt you after the conflict, and to improve your own military and economic position. I think it's likely that, not having the concept of nation-states, and perhaps not considering the destruction of entire ethnicity to be desirable, people of his day had differing views towards "victory" than modern ethno-nationalists and colonialists.

            • Dessa@lemmygrad.ml
              ·
              11 months ago

              Sun Tzu was all about winning a fight without fighting. Pressing an enemy that can't retreat is the exact opposite of this.

              • Frank [he/him, he/him]
                ·
                11 months ago

                Strong agree. It's foolish militarily; They're even bombing the Rafah crossing to keep it closed. Maybe to prevent materiel and personnel from entering Gaza from Egypt, maybe to contain Palestinians in place so they can be killed. Fascism is truly an insane philosophy.

      • star_wraith [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        And if the IDF is a paper tiger, just imagine what the US military is like should they ever come into conflict with a country they can’t just bully around like China or tbh even Iran or the DPRK.

        • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          11 months ago

          I mean literally, we’ve seen how the Ukrainians keep telling them “yo man y’alls tactics for modern peer-to-peer warfare are dogshit and are going to get us all killed”, and instead of learning, westerners are saying they’ve obviously revealed themselves as just another country filled with asiatic hordes too stupid to understand glorious and genius western tactics instead of recognizing that maybe NATO needs to change their tactics.

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      11 months ago

      72T I have been following your threads since the beginning. That excerpt you posted here is maybe the most inspiring and hopeful thing I have read that you have shared yet.

    • VILenin [he/him]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Love how some people think that Hamas somehow didn’t know that Israel would retaliate

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
        ·
        11 months ago

        people who have read approximately two articles per year on the Israel-Palestine situation: "Hamas has no idea what it has unleashed. They are utter fools. They cannot imagine the firepower that Israel will array against them."

        Palestinians who have been living in an open-air prison getting harrassed/starved/bombarded by Israel for decades: "bro, we knew what was going to happen, did you think this was a one-step plan?"

        • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          11 months ago

          people who have read approximately two articles per year on the Israel-Palestine situation: "Hamas has no idea what it has unleashed. They are utter fools. They cannot imagine the firepower that Israel will array against them."

          Also, people who have no idea (generally through willful ignorance) what would have happened—what had happened and would have continued to happen—if there had been no resistance. It's amazing how even the most gross and cruel of state and capitalist violence can be utterly invisible to liberals if it is simply stamped with the status quo seal of approval.