Israel trying to pass the hospital bombing off as Palestine doing it is utterly disgusting and guarantees Netanyahu a spot in the deepest pit of Hell for all eternity, obviously, but do not forget that
a) the only reason why Westerners will believe it is because they want to believe it - they are not being brainwashed and this is not some masterful propaganda being weaved around us to turn kind-hearted people into monsters,
b) no Westerner opinions matter at all. In most Western countries there is no real anti-Israel option to vote for even if they did realize that Israel was a giant factory for crimes against humanity, and Westerners protesting against things in general almost never achieves anything (tens of millions protested for BLM in 2020 and not only did the situation not change, it got worse), and
c) the people whose opinions do matter (both the people in the region, and the leaders who aren't already Zionist compradors) already know that Israel is full of shit and that they just murdered nearly a thousand civilians in a single bomb attack.
It is despair-inducing to think that the genocidal Zionist entity is so brazenly, so smugly getting away with bullshitting this away into a cloud of confusion, as they release their metaphorical squid ink just like they did with the stupid babies story, but the propaganda and the media narrative that they are creating isn't what matters. It cannot address the fundamental contradictions ripping the country, the region, and the world apart any more than masterfully-applied makeup can fix a stab wound. It can merely obfuscate.
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.
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! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly update isn't coming because I'm sick and too focussed on the collapse of the Zionist entity.
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.
If a ground invasion of Gaza is imminent, how likely do you think the IOF will resort to chemical warfare in order to flush out militants from their tunnels? I really don't see them having the courage to go to the tunnels themselves, and bombs can only do so much.
The Russians tried this at Azovstal and it failed. They wanted to flood the tunnels with sewage.
I think it's unrealistic. Gas won't work because it will just escape via the vents, and the quantity of water you would have to pump in won't work either.
You can't construct tunnels 80 meters deep without also having ventilation ducts and ways of managing build up of gas down there.
Doubly so since there are fuel-powered generators down there
Next, we try flooding tunnels with spiders
I'm personally very interested to see how they've dealt with the bunker buster problem. They've been around for many years now and the really big one was used on ISIS in 2017, so it's not some unknown new weapon. If Hersh is right, then Israel clearly thinks that it has a lot of potential to work, and the depth to which they work corresponds to the depth of Hamas' tunnels. Part of the article stated that others were skeptical, or that boulders and rocks underground could disrupt it working as well.
That all being said - how do we know that their tunnels are 60 meters deep? When was this last known? Are there some that are significantly deeper to hide in? And I brought this up a few days ago - I don't think all their tunnels are exclusive to the Gaza City underground, which is where Israel seems to want to bomb.
Any military nerds' input would be appreciated.
My assumption is that it'll be mixed. Only the actual underground fortresses will be that deep, the others will be 5-30 in depth and specifically for the purposes of maneuvers and launch sites.
I don't think it matters that much that some aren't deep though. You can't hit them if you don't know they're there and you don't know they're there until they're used against you or your infantry stumble on them. It's not that easy to target a corridor-width underground target without knowing its exact location in advance.
You can figure out where underground voids are with some geology equipment but good luck doing that over Gaza for weeks on end, yeah
They are already using chemical warfare in the West Bank to suppress the riots there
Ok, but tear gas is different from poison to kill you
Tear gas can kill in sufficient quantities or on children, it's killed several dozen in just the last few years. Besides that, nothing in chemical weapon bans in warfare mentions the chemicals must be deadly. Any type of chemical or gas weapons are banned. Israel is in breach of yet another International law, add another warcrime to the list.
Yeah not defending them here, just saying that chemical warfare to describe tear gas, while true, is misleading. Having your lungs liquified by mustard gas is a lot worse than tear gas, and chemical warfare beings to mind the first one.
If Russia used tear gas against Ukraine America would nuke them
Tear gas is specifically banned because the signatories didn't want escalation from tear gas to mustard gas.
As I previously mentioned downthread, chemical weapons in open warfare is like, DEFCON 2
Poison depends on the dose.
idk how feasible it is in modern conflicts but in ww2 the go to move for clearing bunkers and tunnels in CQB scnearios (i.e. you can't just bomb it) was the flamethrower. the germans had a handheld white phosphorus incendiary device that was carried and used kind of like a 1 use shotgun/pistol. we probably have some kind of incendiary weapons for this purpose, maybe some kind of thermobaric weapon could work, even starting a fire at a cave entrance can deplete it of oxygen, but the tunnels are unknown in size, complexity, and number of entrances/vents/ etc.
The IDF with flamethrowers and a mandate to destroy everything is like something from a horror movie.
which probably means it will definitely happen, but somehow worse.
IDF flammenwerfers vs palestinian snipers making them go pop
Now we use thermobarics. Don't need to go inside. Detonate the bomb at the entrance and it'll burn up all their air inside. Anyone whose lungs aren't ripped out by the negative pressure suffocated.
So this is what you meant by thermobarics. When you first mentioned it to me, I thought you were talking about thermobaric bombs dropped from planes. But detonating it at the entrance makes a lot of sense.
Pretty sure you can drop them from planes. Just figure out where the entrances are and set the bomb to go off near ground level. The bigger the blast, the bigger the vacuum it generates after the explosive.
if they do will he be called "Zyklon Bibi"