Image is of the aftermath of an Israeli bombing of Beirut in 2006.
We are now almost one year into the war and genocide in Gaza. Despite profound hardship, the Gazan Resistance continues its battles against the enemy, entirely undeterred. Despite Israeli proclamations throughout 2024 that they have cleared out Hamas from various places throughout Gaza, we still see regular attacks and ambushes against Zionist forces. Just today (Monday), Al Qassam fighters ambushed and destroyed another convoy of Israeli vehicles. The predictions early on in the war were that Israel would defeat Hamas in mere months, needing only until December, then January, and so on. This has proven very much untrue. Israel is stuck in the mud; unable to destroy their enemy due to their lack of knowledge about the "Gaza Metro" and, of course, a lack of actual fighting skill, given how many times I've seen Zionists getting shot while they gaze wistfully out of windows.
The same quagmire will occur in Lebanon, only considerably worse. Both Nasrallah and Sinwar possess a similar strategy of luring Zionist forces onto known, friendly territory, replete with traps and ambushes, to bleed them dry of equipment, manpower, and the will to continue fighting. The scale of the invasion could fall anywhere on the spectrum from "very limited" - more of a series of raids on Hezbollah positions than truly trying to occupy land - to a total invasion which would seek to permanently take control of Southern Lebanon. Neither is likely to destroy, or even substantially diminish Hezbollah's fighting abilities. This is not wishful thinking: Hezbollah has convincingly defeated Israel twice before in its history, pushing them from their territory, and both times Hezbollah had almost no missiles and a limited supply of other equipment, relying on improvisation as often as not. The Hezbollah of 2024 is an entirely different organization to that of the early 2000s.
Attempts to drive wedges between Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanon are also unlikely to succeed. Hezbollah is not just a military force, it is extremely interlinked into various communities throughout Lebanon, drawing upon those communities to recruit soldiers. Throughout its history, it has provided education, healthcare, reconstruction, and dozens of other services one would attribute to a state. Amal Saad's recent suggestion of using "quasi-state actor" as a more respectful replacement for the typical "non-state actor" seems advisable. And the decentralized command structures, compartmented leadership, strong succession planning, and aforementioned community ties almost entirely neutralizes the effectiveness of assassinations. Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem has confirmed that Hezbollah's path has been set by Nasrallah, and his martyrdom will not stop nor even pause their efforts. Additionally, he confirmed that despite the recent attacks by Israel which nominally focussed on destroying missile depots, Hezbollah's supply of weapons has not been degraded, and they are still only using the minimum of their capabilities.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
Good polling data.
There's an outright majority of people in each of the listed countries that has an unfavourable opinion of Israel, with a supermajority or near supermajority for unfavourable in most of them. Highest levels of favourability are France, Germany, and Sweden, with an absolute maximum of 26%.
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Topline_Eurotrack_Aug24_lEbyhNM.pdf
Spain is the objectively the most based country in Europe, with 16/17% favourable, 71/70% unfavourable.
The cowards didn't even bother to poll Ireland, because I'm sure their numbers would blown Spain's out of the water. Most recent poll found that over 70% of Irish think Israel is committing apartheid; have to image the "unfavourable" numbers would be even higher.
Yeah the perception the state is giving off clearly does not align with the population.
That can't be right... I've been assured European countries are democratic. Surely the political class wouldn't just disregard what the people want.
A part of me wonders if given the rise of the AfD, those numbers are inflated by actual antisemitism despite I'm pretty sure the AfD being pro Israel
Israel has the highest approval rating among AfD voters out of any German party. Nazis recognize Nazis.
Sweden's rep as a lefty country is so undeserved. Cool you have no national minimum wage because unions are so big they can still negotiate minimum wages sector-wise, big deal, you also love israel and nato apparently
Why is Spain the best country in Europe on this?
Least infected with racist white supremacist brain worms and Protestant cuckery. Catholic nations don’t seem to fall under whatever spell that Protestant ones do when it comes to Israel bootlicking
And then you have Biden, probably the most unabashedly zionist catholic of all
Then again i guess american brainworms are a unique variety compared to the euros
American Catholics are just Mormons (aka Protestants)
Tbf
is Catholic and we can't get enough hog shit. Maybe it has something to do with Al-Andalus history, some lingering elements in Spanish culture lol
Maybe Quebec is, the rest of the country is UK orangemen-style protestant colonialists freaks (and whatever denominations native-descendants and recently immigrated people are doin').
Average white Canadian.
I dunno, I'm pretty catholic raised, never met a protestant in person. My whole town is basically catholic, shit so is my province. Are you Canadian? Whats your insight here?
Rural Ontario, but looking it up it seems Canada is pretty evenly split between Catholic and protestant, Catholicism getting being topped up by immigration. If I bike down my street or through nearby towns I think there's like 1 catholic church and a bunch of Anglican and various Protestant/Presbyterian churches.
Amerikan/Kanadian Katholicism is basically protestantism, much like Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans are just white guys
I feel vindicated in my belief that no normal people support Zionism. It remains a hobby horse for weird right-wing bozos.
I would however not interpret the lack of support for Zionism with the presence of support for Palestine, Lebanon or other victims of colonial violence. Based on my own anecdotal evidence, I believed that the mood of most westerners can best be described as white supremacist indifference: "It's the Middle East, those savages have been killing eachother over religion for millennia. What can you do?".
I still have seen little evidence that any significant amount of westerners question their governments' messaging about Hamas and Hezbollah being "terrorist organisations" or about Iran basically being Mordor.
GB
2/3 unfavorable LMAO!
Multiple decades of the left supporting Palestine and the right feeling forced to make weak condemning statements historically has led to a population that fairly well understands the conflict. Most Brits are generally anti war and absolutely draw the line at bombing babies. They're also not dumb enough to fall for the stream of lies on television, if anything the way the media has handled it has hardened people's views towards Israel.
None of this is helped by the anti-semitism campaign against Corbyn which people now again view as having been made up. If you told people that Corbyn met Hamas or Hezbollah leaders today it wouldn't draw negativity either.
I wonder how many people actually believed the antisemitism smear campaign against Corbyn. Was it just people who have opinions for a living or did the average Brit believe that Corbyn hated Jews?