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Israeli military announces ground invasion of Southern Lebanon
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Israeli Forces Conduct Raids Into Lebanon as Troops Gather at Border
- Published
- Sep 30 2024
- Word count
- 2132 words
Link’s dead. Here’s another source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-ground-invasion.html?unlocked_article_code=1.O04.-Hao.3sttG6_ak6Uf&smid=url-share
Iran is apparently going to get directly involved. I assume they have made various guarantees to their proxy forces, and are obliged to do this.
White House believes Iran is preparing imminent ballistic missile attack against Israel
That link seems to be broken. Here’s a similar article from WSJ: White House Says Iran Missile Attack on Israel Is Imminent
Fixed the link.
I wouldn't recommend r/combatfootage 99% of the time, and I usually stay very far away from it, but there's usually quite decent footage of big events, including the Iranian attack. Peruse at your own discretion though
I'm sure this will go fine. sigh
Well the Lebanese army supposedly pulled back to basically allow this? It’s not like Lebanon loves Hezbollah.
This could obviously become a fucking nightmare real quick but it’s supposedly going to be much smaller and targeted (not that you can trust any military on their supposed operational goals but it’s not like we have more to go on right now).
I'm hoping this allows the Lebanese Govt/AF to take better control of southern Lebanon. Not that I think Lebanon and Israel are about to be friends, but the Lebanese Govt cannot afford a conflict with Israel, especially given all the economic crises they've suffered through in the last few years. So at the very least, Israel and Lebanon can coldly ignore each other. That's still peace, after all.
Oh, I read that as them retreating to more defensible positions (or at least behind UNIFIL). If you're the Lebanese in this situation, would you have any faith in Israel being better at separating Lebanese and Hezbollah than they are at separating Palestinians and Hamas?
I don't mean this as a defense of Israel's actions, so please don't take it that way - but the short answer is yes, because the situation is very different. Gaza is basically one big city. There's nowhere for civilians to go, there's no clear terrain; from a military perspective it literally doesn't get any worse. By contrast in southern Lebanon we're talking about villages that can basically be abandoned.
Again, that's not me saying that this is all fine. But it does mean that it will be easier for Israel's forces to separate civilians from combatants.
That's a perspective that benefits from the external POV and not being there right now and reasoning through the military process. I don't think I'd feel safer as a civilian in Lebanon because my village could be abandoned. I heard terrified teenagers after the pagers exploded. They weren't affiliated with Hezbollah, they're just kids. I don't think I'd feel better that my small town is "easier" to evacuate than a larger city if we were being invaded. Nor make me more confident I wouldn't be collateral damage or that the military would bother to try to avoid it. It doesn't really even matter who that military is.
All wars have collateral and his answer stands: It will be easier to identify friend from foe in Southern Lebanon than it is in Gaza.
"if you're the Lebanese" I don't think you'd agree. And I'm referring to the regular folks*. I'm aware "all wars have collateral" but I would think that doesn't make the collateral feel any better about it.
Wouldn't make me feel better if I were them. You did the same thing, looking from an external, impersonal lens. Which is not the experience of the people on the ground. Also, it's only collateral damage when it isn't your people (it should be any people but well, humans suck), for whatever category "your" is in the moment. Israel is sort of explicitly not brushing off collateral damage done to its people right now.
*The initial phrasing could be read to refer to the government. But I'm not sure the government would have any greater confidence in whether Israel will act differently even though they might be able to do better.
Apparently obligatory: This isn't a statement on the countries involved but on how we refer to civilians in "war" and that there are very scared people who are very much not ok with being considered collateral damage in any conflict. My answer would be the same if the US were being invaded by Mexico.
All I mean to say is that you're inserting an emotional argument into a factual one. It doesn't make you in the wrong for thinking about the people, but arguing against the individual dangers is not necessarily the position the other person took either. There is a very clear distinction between urban warfare versus insurgents intermingled with civilians, and a region of a country where the official army pulled back and the civilians have a potential retreat.
There will be collateral, but there will be far fewer in Lebanon on account of the difference in scope. Chancing I'm right, although do correct me if I'm wrong, I do not think @R3qn65 said anything more than that.
And let me be clear: every collateral civilian death is a tragedy. I'm not trying to give the impression that I do not care.
I don't think they said anything factually wrong, my point was that they answered the wrong question. Similarly I don't think I'm injecting emotional argument into a factual conversation, I think the factual response missed the heart of the question. It wasn't a "will Israel be able to do better at avoiding civilian casualties" it was "will the Lebanese have faith that Israel will do better" and that is as much emotional as it is factual. They could theoretically do better but they may not. And I wouldn't likely have the faith that they would, if it were me they were invading.
(I also don't believe that any sort of complex conversation can or should be fully emotional vs factual. Israel's response isn't fully reasoned, it's deeply emotional. The US knows that from our response post 9/11. We were deeply in our feelings when we invaded Afghanistan.)
But if it's possible to only do one or the other, the question certainly led me to thinking about the Lebanese's feelings - their faith in Israel - rather than Israeli factual capabilities. And if Israel doesn't do better it doesnt really matter much to the Lebanese of they could have.
I mean there’s 0 doubt the plan is “kill basically everyone they see”. Militaries in these situations aren’t checking ID. It’s still going to be awful, it might be less awful than it could be. War rarely is much else
The US are Israel’s enablers. Israel wouldn’t (and probably couldn’t) do any of what they do without support from the US.
Every time the US looks to be bringing some stability they just make some weak comment like “we don’t want the situation to escalate”. Without clearly doing anything about it. Maybe it’s all through backchannels and we don’t hear about it, but given Israel’s actions this seems unlikely.
I've heard two theories regarding the US participation in this, but it would take someone smarter than me to determine the degree of truth they hold.
I think it's simpler than such conspiracy theories. The English created a clusterfuck of a situation and now there exists a nation that wants to exist surrounded by people that don't want it to exist. Now the UK is massively weaker than at their height of power and have no way of protecting the consequences of their actions so the US steps in. If the UN wasn't completely useless (see the joke that is resolution 1701), perhaps there could have been stability without any individual country intervening.
When Israel was the underdog in the region, sympathies were with them. Then they won multiple wars back to back, negotiated peace with multiple actors in the area, and only smaller groups are left opposing Israel so Israel looks like the big bully on the block and have lost sympathy.
As US leaders are confronted with what it really means to abandon a nation that is so strongly hated by neighbors, one of which is almost a nuclear power, the idea of abandoning them loses appeal. Make no mistake, if Harris wins, she will temper her opposition to Israel's actions because the reality on the ground make it easier for all parties to continue the status quo than to embrace the brave new world. This is not a value judgement.
It's wishful thinking to believe that the US is behind the instability in order to further its own dominance because it takes away the agency to be evil on the part of all regional actors there. Surely they don't have their own self-interest; it's just us being greedy! And if we stop, peace will come about as Israel backs down and Hezbollah pursues peace through diplomacy.
No, that wouldn't happen. Again, see UN resolution 1701 for what would happen if one side backs down a bit or the last year for what happens when Israel barely responds to Hezbollah: nothing. Hezbollah keeps doing Hezbollah things.
I will tell you why I stopped trying to think too hard about the US's "motivations"... I think it's probably not as deep or mysterious as people want it to be. This is the example that stands out to me but there are many more.
In the 70s, Nixon was using a back channel to repair relations with China. They needed to use a back channel because the US didn't recognize China's government as legitimate up to that point. It became clear as everyone was becoming a nuclear power that they needed to at least be able to talk to each other, so the way they did this was through East Pakistan then leader Yahya Khan. When Khan lost an election, he kicked off a whole ass genocide about it to stay in power. No one knows the true number and never will, but estimates put it near a million. The US backed this SIMPLY BECAUSE Nixon didn't want to appear weak by engaging with China directly and saying "sorry we were wrong, let's restore relations with each other". They had a violence-free option. They sent weapons to Khan illegally, ignoring an embargo. Nixon is also on record calling India's then leader a bitch, and saying he respected Khan because he didn't run his country like "some woman". They sanctioned India to try to prevent them from squashing Khan. They wanted him to go genociding because it made their lives sliiiiightly easier. That was it. They even joked about it. Kissinger said "Yahya hasn't had such fun since the last Hindu massacre!".
My point is, the US has shown that they will sacrifice any amount of lives for any reason however small or large. It doesn't even require a conspiracy theory. The motivation could be "i wanted my raytheon stocks to go up" and I would not be surprised in the slightest. We have consistently backed war criminals.