One year on. Hundreds of thousands are dying or dead, millions are displaced, the Middle East is undergoing its greatest changes in a generation, Iran has directly attacked Israel twice in one year, and Yemen has proven that the US Navy ain't worth shit. We are the closest we have been to nuclear war (discounting accidents) in decades, but also the fall of Israel.
Because one day, the prisoners of a concentration camp paraglided over a wall.
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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.
I've seen a lot of articles and youtube videos about how this war triggered Israel's death throes, and the parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa & Rhodesia, but those media which highlighted the internal contradictions of Israel, its collapsing economy and international standing, often overlook how desperate the US is to have a satellite state in the West Asia enough to brazenly establish its support for Israel.
All this, despite the damage to US prestige and diplomatic credibility (notwithstanding that the US state does not nor needs to care about internal dissident or crisis) because the US can brute force its support and suffer little to no economic or political repercussions.
Israel is a nuclear powered state with very powerful supporters in the US and Europe, as part of a symbiotic relationship these powers have with each other, to ensure the economic and political dominance of the larger political community known as the "West".
My larger concern is what Norman Finkelstein has been saying recently: Israel has defeated Hamas in Gaza by destroying Gaza itself. Therefore, the probability that Israel has the power and support needed to enact its depraved agenda of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and survive its repercussions on the world stage for a decade before it goes back to the status quo of pre October 7th, is a very plausible future.
Israel has managed to pursue this for over a year now.
How do they "win" when they kill everyone? They don't gain anything from this. They won't get a victory screen when they kill more people.
Also, they can't go back. They just started a 4-front war. They will never go back ever. Liberals always double down. They'd sooner declare war on China than go back.
That is a fair point, but Israel is trying to get the US military officially involved, far beyond the current capacity that it is now, to overwhelm and intimidate their enemies in West Asia into compliance and submission. Israel's gambit of making the outcome of their existential crisis synonymous with US hegemonic influence is a viable strategy to ensure Israel survives the outcome of this crisis, even if it has to be on US life support.
(I guess my parent post is a plea to be "counter-Finkelstein-pilled" regarding his analysis on Gaza. )
You (and Finklestein by extention) aren't really thinking about what "direct us involvement" that is somehow massively beyond what it already doing really means and how limited it really is. The United States is not a god and cannot simply wish for its enemies to vanish. If you really cannot help yourself from seeing the resistance in Gaza and Lebanon as finished (you didn't mention Hezbollah but they also have to defeated for Hamas to be truly finished) if nothing else, the "status quo" you are worried about basically involves Iran vanishing in less time then it took for the united states to fail to completely control iraq and to run away from Afganistan saigon-style. There is no real path to that happening without magic or humanity in its entirety being a month at best away from extinction. You need keep reminding your brain that all the members of resistance axis are at least as effective at combat as the Taliban.