I think this is slightly too dismissive of Israel’s own agency in the conflict. I do think that destabilizing the Middle East in this fashion (not just spreading chaos and death in Iraq and Syria but it actually meaningfully impacting both Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the other monarchies) isn’t in America’s best interests. I think if you asked the top people in the deep state “If you had a choice between having a war between Israel and Hezbollah and not having that war, which would you pick?” then they’d answer ‘not having a war’. America has actively benefitted from the status quo over the last century, has shaped the region as best it could to align with its geopolitical interests, and now this genocide and war threatens to upset that project. The endangerment of various private military corporations rampaging through the Middle East is fairly unimportant, they’re just there to take the losses and do the dirtiest work. Losing Israel, or it even being massively weakened, is actually catastrophic, but also fairly possible to achieve because Israel is tiny and surrounded by very angry regional forces. The entire “deterrence” paradigm was established specifically so this exact situation would not be allowed to occur. Israel getting caught up in an existential war should not have been allowed to happen. That this situation has now occurred is a blow to the US.

The issue is that there’s no interest, or at least concentrated will, inside the US government to tell Israel that they’re endangering their imperialist project in the Middle East. It’s at least partially sunk cost, and at least partially that if Israel is forced to back down, then the deterrence paradigm is still shattered, which means that another war in 2, 5, 10 years could happen. If Biden called Israel tomorrow and was like “That’s enough. We are stopping all military and financial aid unless you end the siege of Gaza and sign a deal with the Resistance,” then even if Israel did that, then Hezbollah and Hamas and everybody else isn’t going to go “Well, all in a year’s work! Time to disband and stop fighting Israel! They might be in a historically weak position, but we got the deal we wanted!” They’re going to rebuild and prepare for the next round, and with Iran strengthening due to the help of Russia and a rapidly ascending China, and the US failing to maintain industrial production of key military equipment and instead burning trillions on F-35s, the next war will be even more lopsided against Israel.

So there’s no way out. Iran and friends have manuevered the empire into a trap, just as Russia did in Ukraine. Just as the US has/will find it extraordinarily difficult to surrender in Ukraine because of all the implications of that move and so feel compelled to keep fighting even if their analysts know that they’re doomed, the same situation is occurring in Israel. If they keep fighting, it means the further destruction of the imperial architecture that took decades to build. If they give up, they’ve gained nothing, they’ve lost a lot (of both physical military equipment and soft power around the world), they’ve been dealt a big psychological blow, and they know that the next round of fighting (a cold or hot war) will be even worse. Europe being substantially weakened as an imperial rival is the only significant achievement that they’ve managed. It’s a pretty good one, but does that make up for everything else? Europe was already stagnating for years and years before the Ukraine War began.

Syria’s air defense prevents Israel from hitting Syria whenever they want, though some strikes do inevitably get through

Israel is just going to keep ratcheting up the horror until Hezbollah decides they have to do something (which they won’t, Hezbollah’s only offensive capabilities are with missiles).

This isn’t entirely true, Hezbollah does have more conventional army forces that could be used to try and invade and hold territory; from my comment a couple months ago, quoting from an interview with Amal Saad, probably the single most knowledgable person on the planet on Hezbollah outside of those actually inside the Resistance’s command:

Jeremy Scahill: If Israel does commit and they do want war with Hezbollah, what does that look like from the Lebanese side, based on the history of these conflicts and wars and Hezbollah’s response to Israel? If Israel does send in ground forces or engages in a very heavy, wider bombing campaign, what could we expect Hezbollah’s response to look like?

Amal Saad: Well, I think the Israeli intelligence is quite aware because I’ve read a lot of these analyses in Israeli and U.S. intelligence reports and others, which is that Hezbollah—first of all, I don’t think we would see what we saw in 2006. I don’t think Israel would even get to invade Lebanon in the same way. I don’t think it would be able to stage a ground incursion, definitely not of that magnitude. And Israel would not be in a purely offensive position. Israel would be also in a defensive position because Hezbollah would also infiltrate and make incursions into Israel proper. So, it’s going to look very different, just in terms of the overall strategy of the war, that it will be an offensive defense on Hezbollah’s part. It won’t just be defense.

Secondly, the fact that Hezbollah has now fully conventionalized, it’s no longer even a hybrid force. I’ve spoken to military experts here, and I’ve been curious myself to see what they think. Where is [Hezbollah] on the spectrum of guerrilla to conventional army? Is it sort of in the middle, like in 2006? They’ve said, “No, it’s actually a fully fledged conventional force now. But obviously it has these sort of capabilities of an irregular armed force. It still retains them and has that experience.” So we’re talking here about a much more sophisticated military organization with well over 100,000 fighters, well over that number, over 150,000 missiles and rockets. You know, back in 2006, Hezbollah had just a few thousand fighters, far fewer rockets, much less sophisticated missiles and rockets. Basically everything that Iran has, all the weapons Iran has, you can be certain Hezbollah has them, too. That’s what we know. And that’s aside from the things that Hezbollah is manufacturing domestically, like it’s drone technology—it’s manufacturing its own drones now. So, we’re talking here about a vastly different military creature than 2006.

And, again, the tactics will not just be purely defensive. They will be offensive. And that’s not even factoring in other actors in the resistance axis who are itching to join the fight and have declared their intent to send hundreds of thousands of fighters, such as the Houthis [from Yemen], to Lebanon.

From all the information I’ve been gathering, it would actually lead to the unraveling of the Israeli state. We’re not talking here about just a defeat for Israel like in 2006. It would be the sort of defeat that would actually lead to its demise. This is why, when we talk about “the great war,” which is not a matter of if, it’s when, when that war happens, which is an inevitability, [Hezbollah] have always said that that is going to be the war that will change the face of the region. So, we are talking here about a scenario which would definitely lead to the destruction of a lot of Lebanon — no one is discounting that or belittling that. But at the same time, it would lead to the destruction of Israel and while it would lead to the destruction of Lebanon in material terms, that destruction would not lead to the unraveling of the Lebanese state in the same way that it would lead to the unraveling of the Israeli or Zionist regime. I think that’s one way of looking at it.

Would Hezbollah actually use these forces to make incursions, and would they be significant if so? It’s possible that we’d see Hezbollah incursions simultaneously with Israeli incursions in order to disrupt the Israeli army and force them to divert resources away from the offensive force to try and defend. It’s possible that they’d focus on defending first and then only go on incursions after the Israeli army has been sufficiently weakened. It’s possible that they don’t think they need to do any incursions, and that displacing settlers and doing barrages on military bases near the border is sufficient. I suppose we’ll see quite soon, given how things are escalating. But I would caution 1-to-1 comparisons with Hamas. They aren’t just quantitatively bigger - they literally have more manpower and ammunition, of course - they’re also qualitatively bigger.

None of us know what the Hezbollah war plan is, though Nasrallah’s recent speech indicates that it’ll be to allow Israel to breach the border so that Israeli forces can be more efficiently destroyed on friendly ground. To what degree Hezbollah will allow Israel to breach into Lebanon, I have no idea. Are we talking “Hezbollah will take a Hamas-esque strategy of having a very fluid defense that doesn’t particularly care what Israel does above-ground; they could go all the way to Tyre and beyond for all we care, because we’ll be attriting them the whole way and they’ll eventually be forced to retreat”? Are we talking “We’ll let Israel get a few miles in before we start strictly defending territory, creating a more conventional pre-prepared cauldron upon which we can rain fire into until the losses become too much”? I don’t think anybody could truly tell you outside of Hezbollah’s leadership.

broke: global trade networks will solve all ills and make things more efficient
woke: we must work towards more local and regional supply chains for the benefit of self-sufficiency and weakening imperialism
bespoke: we’ve gotta make sure everything important is made solely inside anti-western countries or Israel will plant explosives into everything to cause massive terrorist attacks

as a side note, this is yet another example among thousands of Western projection. we’ve been warned for years and years that buying goods from China is unsafe because who knows what malicious things those godless communists are putting into those devices. then, Israel literally plants explosives into thousands of devices that were then imported into Lebanon and then detonated, injuring thousands, and that’s not only not regarded as malicious, it’s actually regarded as clever. I have a feeling that if China revealed that if they’d been putting explosives into a bunch of their goods and then exploded them and it injured thousands of Americans, Western social media would not be applauding China’s genius. They’d call them utter cowards. They’d probably go out in huge protests demanding that every square inch of China is turned into radioactive glass, demonstrating that they “haven’t broken the American spirit” or whatever.

I think we’re just seeing a re-application of the anti-Russia propaganda narratives (“Putin is humiliated, he’s isolated and being told what he wants to think, he’s delusional and his speeches are just angry and impotent, a trillion Russian generals have been killed by Ukraine, Russia’s running out of missiles”)

Hezbollah’s already at 16 operations today so there’s no diminished military capability. What’s probably going to happen is that when Hezbollah’s operations inevitably just keep going with no brakes, the media will either go “ah, well, nevertheless” or go “no actually it’s fine, ignore this, they’ll probably stop soon, they’ve been owned so they’ve gotta stop soon”

yeah, it’s kinda weird that Hezbollah didn’t get the memo from reddit that they’ve been destroyed and scattered to the winds. somebody should write Nasrallah a letter telling him that continuing to attack Israel is an insult to the Israeli propaganda narrative, which is more real than reality itself

What a truly multinational effort. A Taiwanese corporation linked to one in Hungary, which is linked to one in Bulgaria, which is now linked to Norway, used by Israel. The beauty of globalisation.

All to perform a terror attack in Lebanon large enough to make ISIS blush.

Interesting observations:

• The reason why the Israelis did not blow everything all at once was to use the second wave as a threat towards Hezbollah to try and get them to give in, which they did not do
• Hezbollah’s communications and command were not disrupted by the attack, at least not critically
• Hezbollah’s strategy in a war with Israel will likely be to “allow” them to make gains into their territory in order to destroy their formations in known territory with prepared ambushes and such; they will not try to defend the border. The doomers are really gonna have a bad few weeks when they see that Israel’s reached X miles in Lebanon. Please keep an eye on your local doomers and make sure they’re doing okay during those difficult times.

I mean, sure, but those 100 fighter planes also achieved approximately jack shit. sometimes subverting a threat is superior to attempting to neutralize it. much less expensive to set up a hundred dummy missile platforms to distract the fighter jets and render them ineffective, than to buy a shitload of expensive air defence systems to shoot down a couple

Nasrallah’s speech, courtesy of political_aya on Twitter:

The reason for my speech today is the updates during the past 2 days. I had not intended to speak before October 7 on the anniversary of Al-Aqsa Flood to give an overview and assessment of the past year, but these events require a speech. I must first, before everything, congratulate all Muslims on the birth of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and the birth of his grandson Imam Jaafar Sadeq (AS). We were also meant to commemorate the late Sheikh Hassan Trad today. However, the events do not allow for that.

I must extend my deepest condolences and warmest congratulations to the families of the martyrs, both the ones who rose during the past 2 days, and the ones on the frontlines too. We must also thank the Lebanese authorities, the Ministry of Health, hospitals, clinics, medical centers and organizations, nurses, and doctors. We must also thank everyone who rushed to donate blood and those who offered their organs. We must thank every person who helped transport the wounded to the hospitals. Some people carried them and rushed them to the hospitals, others on motorcycles and their cars. The medical sector is working tirelessly day and night to treat the wounded. One of the blessings of the blood that was shed is the unity we have seen in Lebanon, which we had not seen for a very long time. We extend our thanks to all parties, nations, leadership figures…who condemned this act and offered their condolences, and thank the nations who have sent aid and helped transport the wounded for treatment.

On Tuesday, the “israeli” enemy conducted an attack through detonating pager devices simultaneously. These devices are used by many sectors of Lebanese society, and even in the world, and not only by Hezbollah personnel. On Wednesday, the enemy repeated the attack, detonating walkie-talkie devices. It is not necessary for a brother to be carrying the device to be harmed. It is enough for it to have been set on a table. The enemy has crossed all red lines and all laws in this attack. This is a massive terrorist attack, genocide, a massacre. “The Tuesday & Wednesday massacres” is what we will call them. This is a war crime, a declaration of war…you can call it anything. When the enemy planned out this attack, they assumed there were at least 4,000 pagers spread out across all of Lebanon. This means that the enemy had the intention of murdering 4,000 people in a single minute. By repeating the attack on Wednesday, the enemy had the intention of murdering at least 5,000 human beings. God the Almighty saved us with His Mercy and Generosity. The number of martyrs was lower than the enemy had aimed for because of how the people, ambulances, medical workers…all rushed to save lives. Some pagers were also out of order. Thankfully, this saved many lives.

We formed an extensive investigative committee to study all scenarios, possibilities, and theories, and have reached an almost-definitive conclusion. We are realistic people; this attack was certainly a huge blow on the security and humanitarian level. This attack is unprecedented in the history of Lebanon and our battle against the Zionist enemy, and possibly even the history of the world. This was certainly a huge blow, but this is war; one day our enemy harms us, the other we inflict harm upon them. This enemy is backed by the US and the entire West and has the most advanced technologies recruited for their benefit. I can tell you with utmost certainty that this attack did not break us and will not break us. On the contrary, it will only increase our resolve and determination to continue on in this battle.

Why did the enemy do this? When the blessed Al-Aqsa Flood began, the Southern Lebanese support front was opened. This front has inflicted huge losses upon the enemy since October 8, as they have repeatedly admitted themselves. I am not concerned with what those who do have input or data say, and those who do not follow up on what the enemy says. The enemy cries, “We have lost the North!” They say this is the first time they receive a defeat of this nature in the North. The Southern Lebanese front has been a very effective front alongside the other support fronts. The enemy has repeatedly sent us messages to close this front. They resorted to threats of war, and attempted to differentiate between Lebanon & Gaza. Tuesday afternoon, after the first attack, the enemy sent us a message through official and unofficial channels, threatening that if we do not close our front, they have more in store for us. And so the attack on Wednesday came.

In the name of the martyrs, the wounded, the ones who lost their eyes and palms, and in the name of every person who has taken on the responsibility of supporting Gaza, we tell Netanyahu and Gallant: the Lebanese front will not stop until the war on Gaza ends. Through this attack, the enemy wanted the people of the Resistance to turn against the Resistance. This goal failed on Tuesday and Wednesday when we all saw the stances of the people and the wounded who hope to recover to return to the battlefield. The enemy thought they would destroy the formations and command and leadership units of the Resistance to create a state of chaos and confusion in Hezbollah’s leadership. This did not happen for even a moment. What happened these past 2 days did not bend us, nor did it break our spirits or affect our capabilities or leadership. It did not affect our presence on the battlefield. On the contrary, it increased our strength and resolve.

Recently, the entity had been talking about shifting the center of gravity to the North in order to return the settlers. Does Netanyahu think he can achieve that? They think they can create a security zone in South Lebanon so that the settlers can live in peace. I tell Netanyahu: You cannot bring your settlers back to the North. Do as you wish; whatever you do, you will not bring them back unless you end the war on Gaza. This is a challenge between us, and I assure you, by God’s will, they will not return.

The commander of the Northern region said their troops will enter South Lebanon. We wish they would do that! It requires massive intelligence efforts to track the troops at the border to target them. It would make our job easier if they came here. We would “welcome” these troops if they came to the South. You may see it as a threat, but to us, this is a historic opportunity! The security zone you dream of in the South will be turned to hell for you troops. You will face the ones you attacked on Tuesday and Wednesday, who have only become more determined to fight.

Allow me to speak with a different tone today, for this attack was done covertly: the reckoning will come, and it will be severe. I will not speak about a date or time. You will know of it when it happens; you will not hear about it before. We will keep plans and intentions for our severe response limited to our tightest circles. You will not hear anything, you shall only see. I hope the Lebanese people hold on to the sense of unity we witnessed the past 2 days, and pay no mind to the petty ones who try to create strife and division.

The enemy’s foolish, narcissistic, savage leadership is leading the entity to its demise, to the abyss, God-willing. If they choose to escalate against Lebanon, that will only cause more settlers, these occupiers and land thieves, to flee from the North. I pray to Allah the Almighty to aid our Palestinian people in Gaza, who are being massacred before the world. I pray for the speedy recovery of the wounded to they could return to the battlefield. Your words for us are deeply moving & leave us embarrassed. The enemy does not understand the deep cultural and sentimental relationship the people and the Resistance have. They have failed and will fail to achieve all their goals. God-willing, grand victory awaits us. The days, weeks, months, and maybe even years are between us. This is a huge battle, and it may be a long one.

You’re not wrong, it’s just that they were becoming a little too frequent and generated nothing useful, when I think most people come here to gain information and not so much to have fun and shoot the shit

back in late August I was thinking “wouldn’t it be hilarious if they did it on October 7th? nah, probably not”

now I’m beginning to think that they might

I love how often the “warm-water port” thing comes up, it’s like Baby’s First Geopolitics. It’s not terribly incorrect that they would like other ports than Sevastapol and St Petersburg but because it’s such a cliche, it leads people into saying bizarre things (like the image above, or that part of the motivation for invading Ukraine was that they want a warm water port). Maybe the average American just has terminal navybrain or something?

Russia invaded my bathroom because they needed a warm water port for their Navy (my bathtub)

even more doomer opinion: every single Resistance fighter will die. perhaps 80 years from now, but even so

I’m personally not in favour of banning pessimism, that would be an odd thing to do, and I think that there’s a subcategory of it which can be genuinely enlightening - more of a sort of “here’s how things suck about XYZ, here’s how the left has been beaten down in that arena, here’s some suggestions about what could be done next (but I don’t have a ton of hope that it’ll happen)” quasi-doomerism than a defeatist “well, that’s it. we might as well surrender.”

perhaps it just requires a tightening of the rule that requires nothing low effort or off-topic in top level comments, as that would strangle a lot of the just outright defeatist stuff. very few people are gonna write up paragraphs and paragraphs detailing every single reason why socialism is impossible and fighting back is less than worthless - I’m curious as to why they’d even be here posting if that was the case, they should be on r/politics or something - they’re just gonna go do what defeatists do (grill, I assume)

ultimately it doesn’t really matter, Nasrallah isn’t looking at Hexbear going “…fuck, they’re beginning to doubt us…” we could all give up tomorrow and say that Israel and the US will rule for the next thousand years and all it would do is make the site a) unbearable if you’re, like, a minority/nonwesterner who’s trying to actually find ways to fight back, and b) incorrect

it’s mainly just “would I rather read a bunch of pessimistic shit about how doomed we all are or a bunch of positive messages about how doomed the empire is? would I eventually leave if everybody here was just depressed about everything all the time?” and the answer to the first question is ‘positive messages’ (well, technically it’s ‘I would like to read well-reasoned analysis regardless of whether it comes to a conclusion that makes me feel good’ but Hexbear is not a serious scientific site, it’s a vibes-based site with relatively frequent good analysis on it) and the answer to the second question is ‘yes’

it’s not that I believe that by posting pessimistic takes that they will manifest in the real world and so we must silence them, it’s that I believe that if I (and many others) read like five comments in a 10 minute span about how “it’s so over, everything is doomed, they’re gonna get away with it” then I (and many others) would be like “wow, this place sucks to be in. I’m gonna go find somewhere else that’s not a drag on my mental health, and has some real insightful comments and historical comparisons with which to enrich my understanding of the situation”

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.

I think this is the issue when it comes to the long-term planning as opposed to short-term actions. Long-term, you’re likely not going to see the results of it for a painfully long time, and it feels like nothing’s really changed. Meanwhile short-term actions might not end up panning out in the long run, but they sure do make it feel like you’re winning by constantly making headlines and being very in-your-face.

Kharkiv in September 2022 is a good example of this. Russia fucks up by assuming that all their soldiers are gonna stay and not wanna go home to their families, Ukraine storms into Kharkiv and takes pretty much the whole oblast, they then later have to withdraw from Kherson City, mass panic by the pro-Russia side. The sky is falling, NATO is winning, Russia is on the verge of total defeat, this is merely Stage 1 of the grand Ukrainian plan to roll up Russia back to the border, and then… nothing really happens. I mean, Putin announces they’re mobilizing more troops but there’s no grand, sudden response which totally paralyzes Ukraine in a the-gloves-are-off moment. Russia looks insanely cucked and cowardly for not declaring outright war and merely firing missiles in barrages at the electrical grid. Doesn’t Putin know that you HAVE to respond tit-for-tat?! Then, months later, Bakhmut eventually falls after a grueling siege. Then, the gradual construction of defenses in Zaporozhye pays off when Ukraine fails to make progress there. Then there’s almost nothing else for all of 2023 and a big part of 2024. Then Ukraine invades Kursk, stalls almost immediately, and Russia accelerates the clearing of the Donbass. The triumph of long term planning over a mere sequence of short-term semi-victories.

I feel like the bloomers and the doomers (and I count myself in the first camp, I’m no impartial observer) are more or less talking past one another because we simply disagree on fundamental tenets like whether the Resistance should perform flashy short-term operations, or whether every action by Israel necessitates an immediate reaction in the same style (if Israel strikes us with a missile, we must strike them with a missile instead of something potentially more effective but more subtle). I’ve witnessed enough conflict management over the last couple years to know that the most effective strategy for military commanders is almost always to just sit, calm down, think through what the consequences of an event are likely to be, think about whether you must respond, and if you must, in what timeframe, and so on.

Anybody who’s fairly good at chess knows that when your opponent slides in and takes your piece in a bombastic move, often the instinct for beginners is to immediately take back, even if repeatedly doing that will quickly lose you the game. Instead you have to look at the whole board and consider options for counterattacking or defending. Iran, Hezbollah, Yemen, etc should not feel pressured to make a response to an Israeli attack if performing that attack leaves them in the same or a worse position. They might be called cowards by people online, but I’d prefer them to be like “Well, our best analysts and informants have concluded that if we respond in three weeks/months rather than three hours, then it’s likely that it’ll have a bigger effect because of our other operations weakening this aspect of the Israeli military etc, so we shall do that.” They’re trying to win a war, they have zero interest in helping you look less foolish online because you promised some Zionist lib that Hezbollah will DEFINITELY rain down missiles on Tel Aviv soon, and oh boy, you BETTER be scared! and then that didn’t actually happen.

incoming doomer opinion: the Battle of Huế proves that South Vietnam and the US are still absolutely in this fight and we’ll probably see this war wrapped up soon as the Tet Offensive is failing

Based on yesterday’s MoA post though, it seems that Israel is gearing up for a war with Hezbollah, which would make the story of the discovered explosions more plausible. So the possibilities are like:

1. Israel intended to use the device explosions to hamper an initial Hezbollah response, but they were discovered and it had to be done early, which is unfortunate for them if Israel intends to invade in the coming days or weeks. The most popular explanation here, I think? It’s what my opinion is.

2. Israel did not intend to use the device explosions to hamper an initial Hezbollah response, just general disruption of Hezbollah (and any civilians that die are a “bonus”), therefore the discovered explosions story is false/irrelevant because it’s fine if it’s activated at any time. This seems kind of a strange thing to do, but there’s a lot of unknown unknowns here.

3. Israel did not intend to use the device explosions to hamper an initial Hezbollah response because they think that it would not be effective for whatever reason (perhaps Hezbollah has several backup communication methods?), it was purely for terrorism and to boost internal support (and any soldiers that die are a “bonus”). This seems to be what MoA is arguing if we want to keep their posts consistent.