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Weekly Middle East war megathread - week of October 28
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Middle East war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
South Africa Files Evidence in Israel Genocide Case
South Africa’s legal team says ‘intent is clear’ in Israel’s Gaza genocide
Israel has damaged or destroyed nearly a quarter of buildings in Lebanon’s south (Washington Post)
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This boils my blood. Hundreds of religious sites centuries or thousands of years old just completely annihilated... And they cheer.
EDIT: Not hundreds, probably dozens. Was being hyperbolic
I promise this comment is in good faith. Where are you getting that hundreds of centuries-old religious sites were destroyed? From the above comment, it was 9+ sites which is a far cry from the 200+ religious sites in your comment.
You're right, I was being hyperbolic, apologies - it is in the dozens.
Technically it's 9+. Perhaps it's in the dozens in actuality, but there are only 9+ visually confirmed by WaPo as of this moment.
You are still being hyperbolic. Nine does not equal dozens.
The lesson of Israel’s unfathomably cruel war: ours is still a world where might is right
“Might makes right:” generally true of war. Also, war is a situation where moral considerations usually take a back seat to winning, or at least not losing. Survival becomes the excuse for all sorts of terrible things.
But one thing is particularly unusual compared to other wars: civilians cannot leave because they are trapped, landlocked, and nobody will take them. In other wars, there’s a flood of refugees outside the war zone, to neighboring countries, which shows that they could leave.
Displacing people from their homes is terrible, but what’s worse? Trapping them.
I would argue that Egypt is just as responsible as Israel for the trapping part in Gaza for most of the war. They chose to lock down the border at Rafah and only allow people to leave through it at extortionate prices.
The policy of the surrounding Arab nations since they lost the war they declared in 1948 has been to use the refugee population as a moral cudgel against Israel. UNWRA has assisted that in its unique policy of considering its clients refugees by descent, even if they have become citizens or permanent residents of another country. There are "refugee camps" that are decades old towns with multi story apartment buildings.
By contrast, the refugees who came to Israel after being expelled or chased out from the surrounding Muslim countries were fully integrated as citizens. And that wasn't a small number: more than 600,000 Mizrahim migrated to Israel. Several of the countries they were leaving barred them from taking more than personal effects with them, those people arrived nearly penniless. The camps they were immediately settled in were dissolved in 1963.
I am not saying that bad things haven't happened, and that Israel is morally pure, but I am saying that the surrounding Arab countries have historically chosen their policies to maximize damage to Israel, even when that also maximizes damage to Palestinians.
Fair enough. I disagree with you, but, this is a topic with a lot of bad blood, and can be upsetting. However, if you find this topic so , I suggest avoiding this thread. I avoid it when I'm unwilling to see material that might make me angry.
Have a nice day. I hope the weather is as beautiful by you as it is by me today.
I wouldn’t put it that way. However, I do think it’s frustrating that very indirect, long-term ways of putting pressure on Israel (for example, financially) get more attention than helping people in Gaza more directly, and that the ways that the UN and other aid providers do try to help, while good in themselves, don’t remove people from danger in the way that evacuating would.
Where are the ships and planes? Why aren’t there activists demanding ships and planes to get people out? Where are the UN resolutions? Are Gazans not worthy of evacuation efforts?
The West doesn't want them because a)anti-immigrant bias is currently high, and b)some percentage would plan terrorist actions on allies of Israel. The calculus is that it is better for hundreds or thousands of potentially productive new residents to stay trapped in Gaza than for one terrorist to be allowed in, especially in the current climate where allowing any immigration from anywhere is politically difficult.
The Arab countries don't want them because that would relieve pressure from Israel.
Everybody sucks here.
Yeah, you're probably right. But not everyone is anti-immigrant. Maybe those of us who aren't should bring it up more.
Even if a more immigrant-friendly locale allowed people in, any difficulties (and there would inevitably be some difficulties) would represent a propaganda field day for reactionary media all over the world. We saw this during the Syrian refugee crisis, and we're seeing it now during the US border crisis.
Yes, quite possibly there might be a backlash, but it's sort of like the time when a ship of Jews was turned away by Cuba, the US, and Canada in 1939. Were they worried about the reactionaries then? Maybe not, as World War II was already under way. Lots of atrocities back then.
Immigration policy is not really up to us, but I think we can at least be clear about what's right and wrong. It doesn't mean it's easy.
Former British special forces soldiers could soon be dispatched to help build Hamas-free “gated communities” in Gaza.
Hmm...
Iran's missiles are incredibly inaccurate. What does that mean for the current state of affairs?
That title is my editorialization, but I found this particularly interesting because it explained why Iran's actions so far have been ineffective, but also why Iran is still a threat. A land war is infeasible for both countries, because neither has the logistics capability to get troops to the other.
While Iran has the missiles to bombard Israel, those missiles aren't accurate enough to hit military targets effectively, meaning they would only really do damage to civilian targets like major cities; a massive escalation that would be existential to Israel.
US flies 10% of Yemen GDP over Yemen to destroy Houthi weapons storage
edit: Title correction, posted wrong article. My Apologies there
Where did you get that title from? Are you just making things up?
It seems I accidentally posted the wrong middle eastern conflict. I've just fixed it, my apologies.
long-range B2 stealth bombers are 10% of Lebanon's GDP - tongue in cheek way of saying they're spending alot of money for bombing insurgents, essentially.
Though I think it's actually Yemen, It is funny they're using cold war era B2 bombers which were designed for conventional targets in mind.
It's not a rocket - they're not destroying the plane afterwards. Operating costs for bombers are not that high.
"Person carries 3% of yearly salary out the door with them each morning" sounds kind of fun though.
True, operational costs are much less than building the machine and it's not like they built them specifically for this mission - though it's interesting they're being used
Do you mean Yemen instead of Lebanon? If you meant Lebanon, it would be closer to 30%.
Yes, sorry for that. I've corrected it now. Thanks!