...one has to wonder what the latest Blinken round of visits to the Middle East was supposed to accomplish, since all it did was expose our impotence. Even the Financial Times could not hide that the meetings with Netanyahu and then Arab leaders were a train wreck. Netanyahu rejected even any itty bitty ceasefire, branded a humanitarian pause, to get relief in, demanding that Hamas release all hostages first. The fact that Israel has welched or underperformed on its past begrudging promises to let trucks from Egypt in, would make that a non-starter even before getting to Hamas being sure to stick to its position of wanting to trade hostages for Palestinian prisoners. And of course the Arab states are not about to budge. Blinken got a more pointed version of what he was told before.
Antony Blinken faced intense pressure from regional allies to facilitate an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, laying bare the stark gap between US support for Israel and the outrage in Arab capitals over the siege and bombardment of the strip….
Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, demanded an unconditional ceasefire, a commitment that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly rejected after meeting Blinken on Friday.
Blinken had been expected to “brainstorm” with Arab diplomats the future of Gaza, home to 2.3mn Palestinians, after the war ends. Safadi bluntly rejected those talks as premature. “How can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know how Gaza will be left?” he asked Blinken. “Are we going to be talking about a wasteland? Are we talking about a whole population reduced to refugees?”
This comes off as the sort of thing someone who had just read classic texts on negotiating trying to put in practice: “Gee, let’s get a dialogue going! Let’s get to ‘Yes’ on some less fraught issues to pave the way for further agreement!” In addition, “brainstorming” is cringemakingly American. You don’t do that with people who are mad at you. You don’t do that in a crisis. Between independent entities, you do not do that at the top level. You have low level people or emissaries float ideas. So why this exercise? The worst is that Biden and Blinken come off as so disconnected from reality that they though they might get someone to accommodate US needs.
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 Lebanon! 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.
You're going to have to (hex)bear with me on the update this week. Have you been feeling generally pretty terrible this last month or so? So have I, and doomscrolling and archiving it all is my quasi-job at this point. Not good, folks, more and more people are saying it. I'll get over it eventually.
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.
https://streamable.com/jvz176
Tanks getting blasted. Possibly already in the thread somewhere but I didn't see it so.
Honestly think the place being in ruins makes it significantly harder on the IOF. Ruins are actually easier for infantry to move around in than streets, but significantly harder for tanks. It's also way harder to see infantry in ruins.
How much damage are those RPGs doing? Never seen the aftermath of a tank getting hit with one, probably because it's very wise to get the fuck out of there ASAP after pulling the trigger. Are the tanks completely totaled or do they just need some repairs?
I doubt every hit is a kill, but the moral/e and propaganda victories are worth it on their own tbh
Even if a tank doesn't explode spectacularily it can't be forgotten: a disabled tank is just as good. If a tank can't move it's dead meat in an urban environment, mobility kills count for a lot
The yassin 105 has 60 cm penetration in metal according to them
Hard to say. Merkavas are very well protected. Those warheads we're seeing in almost every video are tandem warheads - The first bulge is a small explosive intended to detonate Explosive Reactive Armor bricks. Once the ERA is gone the second explosive is conventional shaped charge HEAT round. Modern tandem RPG rockets are about the best armor-penetrating weapon you can have before you start having to use very heavy and hard to move anti-tank guided missiles, but they're still limited against first-line modern MBTs like Merkava IV and V, Abrams, and various other modern tanks (I don't know what the current gen tanks in India, China, etc are). Allegedly Abrams in Iraq shrugged off dozens of RPG rounds, but I don't know if that was standard RPG HEAT rounds or the heavier, more powerful tandem rounds we're seeing.
At any rate, what they've got is the best weapon available for this kind of hit and run urban combat. It's not like you can miss at those ranges.
As @ItsPequod@hexbear.net says, Mobility kills are almost as good as a hard-kill. A mobility kill is when an armored vehicle is damaged such that it can no longer move. This might be damage to the tracks or engine, or some other component that renders the tank unable to move. At that point the tank is extremely vulnerable. The crew either has to abandon the tank and run for it or wait and hope they get rescued. There's an old, old, very cold-blooded theory to sniper warfare - It's desirable to wound and enemy solider in a manner that is extremely painful and incapacitating, rather than killing them outright. The wounded soldiers comrades will almost certainly try to rescue them. You can then wound another soldier. This creates incredible stress on the targets as they're forced to choose between risking their lives to save their comrades or leaving their comrades to die. It's one of the key reasons that the proper way to deal with snipers is to call in artillery to flatten the entire area where you suspect the sniper is. The same principle can apply to armoed vehicles - Disabling the vehicle forces the enemy to stage some kind of rescue. Alternately, you may be able to capture the crew.
Buy contrast, a hard-kill is when the vehicle is irreparably destroyed. This is often due to ammunition being hit and cooking off, that is all the ammunition in the tank igniting and then detonating. If you see a tank with it's turret blown hundreds of feet in to the air, or jets of fire twenty feet tall coming out of every hatch, that's a cook off. Probably the most desirable tank kill. There's no coming back from that. Merkavas specifically store their ammunition in the hull of the tank to make this less likely to happen. Many tanks store ammunition in the turret so it's easier to load. Merkavas are heavily built around survivability. The engine is in the front of the tank. If an ATGM manages to pen the front armor it still has to go through the engine before it can kill the crew. The ammo is stored inside the hull so it has the most possible protection. The whole turrent is characteristically slanted so that any round impacting it is likely to splash due to the angle. If it does penetrated it has to go through a very thick cross-section of armor compared to a 90* impact. The Merkava has an as far as I know unique rear-hatch so that the crew can evacuate the tank through the rear instead of having to climb up out of their hatches. The whole thing is built around survivability. As tanks go it's a very good one. It still has most of the disadvantages of a tank though - A large target with poor visibility and very limited urban mobility.
Merkavas also seem to lack a weapon system I consider essential for urban combat. Remote weapon systems are remote-controlled turrets placed on top of armored vehiicles like APCs, MRAPs, and tanks. They're usually equipped with a machine gun or a grenade launcher, thermal and visible optics, and sometimes other sensors and equipment. For clarity, this is a small turret placed on top of the main turret. The key advantage is that the whole thing is controlled by the commander from within the safety of the tanks armor. The remote turret can be used to cover the tank's rear and sides, engaging infantry at angles that the main gun can't necessarily reach. It's an enormous advantage in urban combat and I'm kind of shocked it isn't standard on Merkavas.
Interestingly, Narmer APCs do have remote control weapon systems.
Turning the IOF's greatest strength into their greatest weakness.
Oof. How the fuck is Israel letting people get that close to their tanks? Do they just not have infantry screens at all?