Image is of fires in northern Israel set off by Hezbollah, to force settlers to retreat from their occupied areas, in response to attacks on civilians in Lebanon.


I’m not gonna lie to you - I thought Israel would have started shit with Hezbollah by now which would have derailed whatever megathread theme I had planned, so I didn’t bother planning one.

If you want a decent couple pieces going over what Hezbollah has done to Israel, then have a look at How ‘Israel’ Has Lost The North and Hezbollah’s Quarterly Report. It’s not exactly the most professional analysis, as you’ll see if you read it, but it gets the point across and relies on evidence. In essence, Hezbollah has pushed the Israelis back tens of kilometers and decimated their border infrastructure, all while unveiling anti-aircraft missiles that have forced Israel to reconsider bombing runs. They still probably have the ability to turn various towns and cities in Lebanon to rubble, but Hezbollah can do massive damage back to Israel in turn. This has gone on so long with so little meaningful opposition by Israel that border settlements are going a little haywire and tentatively declaring independence from Israel and saying they don’t want IDF troops there anymore. I don’t take these terribly seriously from a military standpoint but it is indicative of the Zionist settler mindset crumbling over the last 9 months.

We’re now at the point where Israel kinda has to go to war against Hezbollah or the entire Zionist ideology of military deterrence and expansion via illegal settlements simply no longer functions, but that war will also lead to massive destruction for military and civilian facilities (ports, power stations, war factories, etc) which is a massive problem for Israel’s continued existence. Hamas continues to function inside Gaza despite the surface occupation of significant areas, including the Gaza-Egypt border, and attrition there is leading to big materiel and psychological losses for Israel too. And Yemen has, for all intents and purposes, prevailed against America’s failed attempt to thwart their blockade - with some in the army claiming it’s the most intense naval battle America has faced since WW2 - and missile strikes are tentatively beginning to hit or at least threaten ships in the Mediterranean Sea.

Nukes are still lurking quietly in the background, of course, but the Resistance is perfectly aware of that and still seems confident to go ahead with operations, so I can’t really do anything but shrug and say that I trust them to do what’s right.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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. - 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.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

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.
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.


    • Xx_Aru_xX [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      Here’s a post from their facebook page

      For those who don’t have facebook

      spoiler

      🇵🇸وزارة الصحة بغزة||
      التقرير الاحصائي اليومي لعدد الشهداء والجرحى جراء العدوان الاسرائيلي المستمر لليوم ال 267 على قطاع غزة
      ▪ الاحتلال الاسرائيلي يرتكب 3 مجازر ضد العائلات في قطاع غزة وصل منها للمستشفيات 40 شهيد و 224 اصابة خلال ال 24 ساعة الماضية.
      ▪ لازال عدد من الضحايا تحت الركام وفي الطرقات لا تستطيع طواقم الاسعاف والدفاع المدني الوصول اليهم.
      ▪ارتفاع حصيلة العدوان الاسرائيلي الى 37834 شهيد و 86858 اصابة منذ السابع من اكتوبر الماضي.
      ▪نهيب بذوي شهداء ومفقودي الحرب على غزة ضرورة استكمال بياناتهم بالتسجيل عبر الرابط المرفق، لاستيفاء جميع البيانات عبر سجلات وزارة الصحة.
      🇸الرابط الجديد👈
      https://sehatty.ps/moh-registration/public/add-order
      وزارة الصحة الفلسطينية بغزة.
      2024 يونيو 29

      translation

      Health ministry in Gaza
      Casualty number for today is 267 in the Gaza strip

      • The Israeli occupation commits three massacres against families in the Gaza strip reaching 40 martyrs and 224 injuries in the last 24 hours
      • There’s still a number of victims under rubble and streets and emergency services and civil protection can’t reach them
      • Number of casualties from the israeli aggression so far has reached 37834 martyrs and 86858 injuries since 7th of October
      • We ask the families of the martyrs and the lost ones in Gaza to write their information in the following link.

      Palestinian health ministry in Gaza
      29 June 2024

      • iie [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        do they have cumulative estimates for the conflict anywhere?

        *https://old.reddit.com/r/InformedTankie/comments/1drhzm1/why_has_the_death_toll_in_gaza_seemingly_frozen/

        This video claims their current conservative estimate is 95,040 dead and 227,760 injured, with another 24,750 dead from starvation, 42,000 missing and/or abducted by the Israeli military, between 20k–100k dead from the embargo on medicine, and around 255,000 dead from widespread illnesses and infectious disease.

        **and around 380,000 buildings destroyed


        ***the numbers appear to be math estimates from this analysis published on electronic intifada

        https://electronicintifada.net/content/math-proves-israels-stated-goals-are-epic-lie/47371

      • What_Religion_R_They [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        do you think it’s true that they have an interest to underreport the casualties? I know they can’t count because of infrastructure failure, but also from a purely political perspective the logic of showing 2x or in the worst case maybe 5x more casualties might make them unpopular for “launching” this offensive.

        • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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          With over 30,000 civilian dead in less than a year with another 90,000 injured, not including the people dying of things like starvation and lack of hospitals for general health things it kinda doesn’t matter at this point whether the Gaza Health Ministry is intentionally under/over reporting to manage PR.

          Literally, Israel could have just spent the first few weeks after the October 7th raids “retaking” the locations where the raiders hit with limited incursions into Gaza and called it a day and be cheered on by Zionists supporters worldwide. And Hamas would have been condemned by everybody and the Israeli military/political response would have been defended.

          Israel didn’t do that, the Zionist entity decided to turn a subtle quiet slow genocide that was easy to ignore or justify piecemeal into an open slaughter against civilians, civilian infrastructure, cultural sites, etc. Israel can’t spin what they’re doing as justified to the rest of the world in any other way than “we’re doing a genocide against Palestinians.”