After 15 months of genocide - and resistance to it - the Israeli regime realized that they could not win a military victory against Hamas, and were forced to sign a humiliating ceasefire in order to get their hostages returned.
With much of Syria under the control of Al-Qaeda, and an increasing level of covert infiltration into Lebanon, the crisis in the Middle East is not over, and we may still be in its beginning stages, as the center of hegemony continues its gradual shift away from the United States. Their navy, once considered the best in the world, is likely also not very happy about their ships and aircraft carriers being forced to retreat by Yemen, one of the poorest countries; and all eyes are on Iran, who has, over the last year and a half, demonstrated a newfound confidence and strength to directly strike Israel.
The recovery for Gaza will take, at a minimum, decades; it could indeed never fully recovery to even how it was before, considering it is not in Israel's interests to see their concentration camps recover. But Hamas has proven to be steadfast and the tunnel network has proven its resilience, despite facing some of the most powerful conventional bombing in history. This shows that Palestine's liberation is a when, not an if; and hopefully a much sooner "when" than expected before October 7th.
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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.
So did the Palestinians win?
This thread has had enough West Asia doomers lately, but it is true that the outlook for the Palestinian cause is going to revolve around the US policies. Trump was much more clever than Biden with respect to Palestine. His gambit in Term 1 was the slow suffocation of the Palestinian cause by bribing countries to sign onto the Abraham Accords for Israeli normalization. The Saudis under MBS were giving strong signs of being imminently about to sign on when October 7th happened. This would have been the grand prize: if the "center of Islam" recognized Israel, then all the other Gulf monarchies could opportunistically ride in on its coat-tails and the notion of normalizing relations would have been itself definitively normalized. This was Trump's asphyxiation strategy against the Palestinian cause.
Then the Al-Aqsa Flood took place and the Israeli rampage under Biden turned the Arab world completely against any arguments for normalization, to the point of potential violence against their governments if they pursued that course. Whatever military boondoggles that the US promised the Saudis became secondary to the risk of their own royal standing being threatened by alienating their populace and the fear of their prestige as the "Custodian of the Two Mosques" being diminished if they pursued normalization post-October 7th and so they put it on pause.
Trump will definitely try to restart the normalization campaign but public mood might still prevent countries like Saudi Arabia from signing on, even though MBS clearly would like to. This is the real achievement of October 7th, which is reigniting the Palestinian cause in the consciousness of the populace of the potential Abraham Accord countries. However, the overall West Asia situation is decidedly much less favorable than it was prior to October 7th. Hamas and Hezbollah are badly diminished and Iran is still evidently wracked by trauma at Soleimani's assassination by Trump and so their new "Reformist" leader is openly throwing everyone else under the bus to try to appease the US (including restarting the whole nuclear talks circus) so that it would turn its attention to another global theater. Syria has been completely flipped into simultaneously a comprador and a salafist entity and how this regime will appropriate Syria's resources, leftover military materiel and populace to serve US and Turkish interests once they've consolidated their grip on power is still unknown. The Russians are now completely out of the picture in West Asia after being evicted from their Syrian military bases. All in all, the only upside is the strengthening of Palestinian solidarity potentially stymying normalization efforts as the only thing the regional Arab governments care about more than taking bribes from the US is having popular discontent threaten their own positions.
I don't see any evidence for this
I do. It's called a plain fact.
Both lost many heroic martyrs including their top leadership like Yinwar and Nasrallah. Every martyr lost diminishes them. Life is more precious to their cause than to Israel's. Whether they are still an effective resistance and can source more combatants is another matter entirely from the reality that this great act of resistance has diminished them.
This is the same circumstance which happened to the Red Army in WWII. Yes, at the end of the war, they had deeper combat experience and refined materiel procurement lines and could have potentially still resisted the West if the latter tried to pull off that Operation Unthinkable because Western capabilities were also diminished compared to their pre-war states, so it is all a matter of relativity. Yet, it was clear what having such a proportion of the population, including the most dedicated comrades and Party members by self-selection, martyred in the cause against fascism cost.
It is difficult to define an outcome as victory when hundreds of thousands died on the way. Nevertheless, Israel explicitly outlined several goals on 10/8/23, none of which were achieved, while hamas' stated goal of hostage exchange has been achieved, releasing 200 more with this hero among the liberated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakaria_Zubeidi
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/an-icon-of-the-second-intifada-who-is-zakaria-zubeidi-profile/
So while I would never dare to call it a victory from the comfort of my armchair, it appears that israel failed and the resistance succeeded, despite the Palestinians paying an unimaginable cost
I think it's pretty safe to say the Israelis lost. But I feel it came at such a huge cost to the resistance in general, even calling it a pyrrhic victory is a stretch.
Yes, the war ossified Israel's social and economic contradictions and set it on the road to collapse
It's now a matter of how many millions they will kill over the years before the settler state implodes
In the sense that they prevented their adversary from even approaching their strategic goals, yes
yes
You're asking one of the most biased places.
IMO it is wrong to look at simply as some strategy game where you "win" or "lose" based a on a check list of victory conditions.
To answer this truthly you can't turn away from the absurd monstrosity of the war crimes and the severe destruction and death. By no rational standard you'd say the victorious side is the one that got all the civilian infraestructure destroyed including hospitals and a significant part of the population lost.
The real point is what is the price Israel had to pay for it and it is a mixed bag.
On the positive side it shattered a lot of the liberal order consensus, Israel kills UN workers, that whole condemn Hamas meme, it made them a pariah, Palestine become more popular among the younger generations in the west. We saw the elections where Palestine was significant political issue something the Democrats refuse to acknowledge.
But on the other hand the neoliberal order bowed entirely and the lines are even further drawn. You see state level support by Germany and others on a level pretty much only a few steps removed form literal WW2 nazism. Now Europeans will "choose" between the current neoliberal fascists and actual Nazi far right parties with not even a hint of shame. Now how do you see further support for Zionism in the west given this future?
I wont say much more about Trump but Elon toying with his childish edgy Nazi shit but history may look at this just like that Nazi gathering in the Madison Sq Garden before WW2.
Meanwhile we got absolutely nothing from the rest of the world. I've already made the point multiple times China is completely not to be taken as a leftist principled position on these issues. Those who want to resist the US are currently on our own. No sanctions against Israel or the US, on the contrary they've maintained relations and trade throughout. Worse still is they've even more actively pursuing further investments and relations with the current KSA and others. Without the prospect of a new cold war against the socialist threat there may be nothing to stop the US from supporting the genocide at any point in the future.
Likewise we saw that even Ukraine was merely a distraction, the US chose military support for Israel over Ukraine and the EU/NATO. It should tell you the relative ideological strength right now and probably into the future. Trump was already willing to kick EU libs so it shouldn't be news but Biden tried to push both buttons but only came through for Israel.
People will say Israel is heading towards collapse. Be mindful with these thoughts. In the long term the entire world is fucked by climate change. Likewise even in the best case optimistic scenario it will take years if not decades for Palestine to rebuild. You should look away if you don't want to imagine what will happen to the ME even 50 years from now given the current trends. Climate change will hurt the least developed countries first and foremost.
Israel will collapse? Possibly. The US will collapse? Certainly. Will you be happy living in the climate change hell of 2100? As I said in the beginning, its not a checklist of items where Israel won or lost.
So did Palestine win? The genocide may continue at a later date is the only thing you can say right now imo.