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.
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.
if Hezbollah and others don't intervene sooner or later and they just let Israel raze Gaza to the ground then it honestly does prompt the question of what these organizations are even, like, doing. "Oh, my militant group that I basically explicitly formed to fight Israel isn't going to get involved because Israel didn't spin three times in a circle, clap their hands, and say "Abracadra" as we warned them would be our condition for entry, so now, instead of hitting Israel when it is at its weakest in the last 50 years, we'll just wait for them to demolish every Palestinian settlement and then hope that something comes around in 2035 I guess. Maybe the US will lose all its aircraft carriers in a hurricane or something."
Like, I'm not saying that Hezbollah and Iran and whatever should be fervently marching into a potential nuclear scenario if that isn't what the "pragmatic, realist, sensible" analysis of the situation dictates. Like, as utterly callous as it might be, if Iran and friends had decided in like 2010 that "It sucks, but we just can't do anything because the threat that Israel will nuke Tehran and Beirut and other places is too high, and would lead to more suffering than if we tried to help Palestine, so we're disbanding our groups," then I would at least be like "Well, Gaza and the West Bank are on their own, then, and they can't really rely on outsiders to march in to save them." No, Iran and Hezbollah still exist and are still pretty fervently anti-Israel and want its destruction one way or another, and want to help the Palestinian people, and have massive arsenals of weaponry and rockets and drones and thousands and thousands of trained men and so on, seemingly despite the potential nuclear (or indeed conventional) threat from Israel and the West. So if they don't help now then I can't see what exactly would be the impetus for anti-Israel actions in the future once Gaza is a depopulated pile of rubble, even if a substantial amount of the Israeli army was destroyed in the process. Once the Palestinians are gone, whether all killed or forcibly moved elsewhere - and I don't see why Israel's government would allow Gaza and the West Bank to exist as Palestinian settlements any further from this point on if there's a possibility that October 7th could happen again in a few years - then like... that's basically it, surely? Not much point if there's nothing and nobody left to save?
Really hoping that they're just saying that they'll only hit Israel if they invade Gaza, but are actually buying time to get everything in position and hoping that they can scare Israel into not rampaging in, and will just start blasting out of nowhere one day. I understand that it takes time to rev everything up for war, get supply chains set up, get units in position, get intelligence, etc, and Hezbollah didn't know anything in advance so couldn't really prepare in advance.
I get that, I guess my point is that I don't see the point in making threats about what they'll do if Israel enters Gaza if they've already decided that they can't face Israel.
If they made a statement like "We have agreed that we won't intervene but we strongly want Palestinians in Gaza to be respected and be moved away and not killed in great numbers, and we want a ceasefire between the two sides" or even made no statements at all to be totally ambigious in their intentions then I would understand their calculus. But leaving it all up to a specific thing that Israel must not do or they will invade from the north just seems strange to me. "Oh, you can totally destroy Gaza from the sky, that's fine with us, just level the whole place if you wanna, turn every single building into rubble, sure, no biggie, but if you send one soldier in there, that's where we draw the line buddy!" why even make the threat?
there's just a big contradiction at the heart of this that I can't resolve. If Hezbollah/Iran/etc can and does want to fight Israel, and Israel looks very weak, then why not step in (once equipment etc is in place which it may or may not be) instead of locking it behind a precondition? If Hezbollah/Iran/etc cannot and doesn't want to fight Israel, then why make that threat at all?
Iran's government making statements about how Israel is dying with such certainty is also kinda interesting but that is likely just the standard shit-talking that these nations give each other so I don't read too much into it
worth noting that Russia has been sending jets and air defense to Iran (and I have to imagine there's under-the-table shit going on too) but I assume you mean in "flood the whole region with arms" way
A few thoughts that might be a partial answer.
By threatening to enter, Israel will have to keep more resources in the north, making things slightly easier for Palestine in the south. It also makes it harder for Israel to know where the next attack is coming from. It has to keep it's forces spread out.
If Hezbollah, Iran, Syria etc had joined in already, that would surely pull more resources northwards. But it could make it harder for Palestine to target smaller groups of Israeli forces.
If Hezbollah, Iran, Syria etc had said they weren't ever going to enter, it might've allowed Israel to move troops southwards and/or attack Gaza. At the least, the current threat means Palestine can fight on its terms without having to fight a defensive ground war in Gaza and an offensive war elsewhere. I.e. the reluctance of it's allies might be giving Palestine an advantage for now.
I'd assume that Palestinian groups are and have been in contact with Hezbollah, Iran, Syria etc. I'd also assume they will be listening and trying to do what the Palestinian resistance asks for, if they can.
This won't help much because it's conjecture. But this whole thing is one suprise after another, in favour of Palestine overall, I think. So I'm assuming the Palestinians are in control of the situation and causing a lot of deliberate fog.
Assad is probably hugged to the phone negotiating concessions from someone so that he can confirm development resources to Syria prior to joining the conflict.
He knows that Russia and China both have goals in the region and needs to milk the situation to stay alive.
Anyone threatening a ground invasion of Israel has to contend with the very real possibility that Israel will nuke their populations. They're dealing with absolute zero fascists with nuclear arms. The situation is very bad.
Israel's use of nukes will be the end of civilization as we know it
I think they're just waiting for Friday honestly
In many Arab countries the mosque is practically a political forum as well as a religious one, millions of people every Friday crowd in for prayers but the mood can quickly become political, and it's definitely gonna become political tomorrow
It's not a coincidence that many "Day of Rages" during the Arab Spring happened on a Friday
Well it hasn't even been a full week yet.
Let's wait and see what decades the next week has in store for us.
Breaking: Hezbollah said you should :vote: harder