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.
Hezbollah are using recoilless rifles vs tanks and according to reports it is working because these weapons are so fucking old that modern design is not actually considering them at all.
I find it interesting that there is no video being released demonstrating this, but much gossip about it. Seems like an advantage Hezbollah are keeping close to their chests and not releasing footage of for a reason.
I'd be curious about what model and make they're using because as far as I'm aware only the Swedes, Chinese, and maybe Brazilians, still manufacture their own recoilless rifles.
The Gustaf at least has a very broad export market, so they're bound to wind up all over the place
The thing is, that since it's a modern design, there's bound to be counter-designs in mind for it's existence.
of course there's always the possibility that what's actually occuring is that recoilless rifles that're being used are small man-portable devices - like the carl gustaf - and that the successes that're currently hear-say are those of mobility kills or possibly if occurring in more urban zones actual vehicle kills if struck from above.
They are relatively low velocity compared to other similar offerings, so that's where my thinking was focused.
One of the things I've seen about defeating modern western tanks is its about convincing the crew to leave (compared to the more total destruction of ammo cook off in soviet tank). There are some crew kills, but there's only so long you can hunker down in a dark box.
Thought occurs that as tanks become more electrified, knocking the battery(ies) out might be a way forward.
this is the projectile velocity being too much for reactive armour to do anything about yeah?
Or ADS maybe?
Recoilless rifles still use HEAT warheads which set off era
Other than the turret front, tank armour isn't that much better than late WW2 armour.
EDIT: maybe lower velocity allows for short ranged arcing fire in dense terrain which we know ADS is already not good at
The one I heard was something about projectiles being too fast, maybe mach 1.3 or something? I am talking completely out my ass and have no idea what I'm talking about other than relaying what I'd heard elsewhere, possibly on that vid of the dude going over the recovered "attack plan" documents?
Edit: yep https://hexbear.net/comment/4114764, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvYwfl7dgTY
15:00 material inventory, 16:00 material weaknesses, 17:30 trophy system & recoilless rifles
I'll check it out when I get home
He suggests the SPG-9 which is an older Soviet recoilless rifle that does have some projectiles that go a bit faster, and given the list of users they are available seems plausible. I do also find it interesting that he doesn't think of the Gustaf, since it's pretty famous for being both very widespread and a modern recoilless rifle design. But it was largely speculation (as is ours). Obviously, the specs of modern anti-missile systems are kept tightly under wraps. My assumption is that ADS systems usually have a lower limit for incoming projectile velocity, as you wouldn't want it to go off from kids throwing rocks or slingshotting dummy projectiles at you. At the upper end, if you know you definitely won't hit an incoming projectile, might as well not fire. Anti-tank projectiles (in the grand scheme of missiles) tend to be on the slower end, SPG-9 seems to have one of the faster projectiles out there for anti-tank infantry (700 m/s for the fastest projectiles compared to Kornets/RPGs 300ish m/s). The Russians claim their latest Arena system is capable of taking out multiple mach incoming projectiles, but haven't demonstrated it so idk.
I do know that Hamas have knocked out multiple modern Merkavas (the ones with the UFO looking turrets), so obviously the defence systems aren't invulnerable one way or the other. Drones definitely seem to be slow enough to not trigger ADS, but also high density urban terrain is also poor for ADS. There are also other conditions where the crew doesn't turn them on, e.g. if there are friendly troops hunkering down near the tank.
I was going to watch some videos of tank kills from this conflict and see if I could sus anything out.
Merkavas, like most western tanks, don't have reactive armor. The Merkava 4 is just like the Merkava 3, only with more turret spaced armor, kina like Leopard 2A4 and Leopard 2A6, which of course both got got easilyin the Ukraine.
Israel apparently went hard for the APS magic cloak. Maybe those recoilless shells are too slow for that. I stillam not convinced it's such a great system, after all the Soviets tinkered around with it in the 70s and said it was not a good idea.