How Israel plans to checkmate Iran
By Israel taking out Syria’s air defense systems, this makes a major Israeli attack on Iran easier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1mQC71wplA
Tag: Middle East
“This is not a war” – Former Green Beret Discusses Combat Operations in West Bank/Gaza
IDF killing civilians and lying about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy-1yz87Yus
Terrorism, Israel, and Dreams of Peace (with Haviv Rettig Gur) 11/18/24
The suicide bombings of the second intifada shattered the Israeli left and ended the Israeli belief that a peace process could work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aFbNJALXBw
Afghanistan’s New War: Al Qaeda Returns as Taliban Falter
Taliban is dealing with difficult insurgencies and is still partnered with Al Qaeda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDPIxTSoGRE
Syria’s Rojava Revolution Is in Grave Danger
“Kobane, Syria, was home to one of the most famous military turning points in history. A small force of Kurdish guerrillas, pressed between the advancing Islamic State group and the Turkish border, was supposed to have fallen quickly in a tragic last stand. Obama administration officials said as much. Instead, the Kurds of Kobane successfully held out for six months, enough time for the cavalry—the U.S. Air Force and rebels from elsewhere in Syria—to arrive.”
…
“Kobane came under attack again. With the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Damascus and the uncertainty over what comes next, Turkey has been seeking an opportunity to wipe out its Kurdish opponents and carve out a puppet state in Syria’s north. With air cover from the Turkish Air Force, militias known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) overran the nearby city of Manbij and marched toward Kobane.
“In the last war, the people fled to Turkey. This time, it will be a genocide,” Berivan Hesen, a member of Kobane’s local government who lived through the Islamic State group’s siege, said via text message on Tuesday. “They are all ISIS by a different name.” Hesen notes that many of the people living in Kobane now had fled from other parts of Syria under Turkish and SNA control, such as Afrin, where the same forces have committed looting, rape, and torture since occupying it in 2018.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to “American mediation” with Turkey, the SDF’s Gen. Mazloum Abdi announced on Tuesday night, withdrawing forces from Manbij in hopes that Kobane would be spared. (The next day, Turkey launched drone strikes across North and East Syria.)”
https://reason.com/2024/12/11/syrias-rojava-revolution-is-in-grave-danger/
Will Turkey Eliminate Syrian Kurdistan?
Will Turkey Eliminate Syrian Kurdistan?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMS_5qGTUag
Biden missing in action as Turkey inches closer to full-blown war against US-allied Kurds in Syria
Biden missing in action as Turkey inches closer to full-blown war against US-allied Kurds in Syria
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-missing-action-turkey-inches-205703408.html
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Has Fueled a Surge in Campus Censorship
“Last year, student-led protests over the Israel-Hamas war broke out at dozens of college campuses. With the new school year well underway, student demonstrations have begun again in earnest.
While many students expressed their opposition to the war in Gaza through peaceful means, some protests devolved into property destruction, trespassing, and even violence on a handful of college campuses, including at some of America’s most elite universities. Many students erected large encampments claiming public space on campuses—a form of protest that colleges are generally free to limit under reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), attempts to deplatform speakers were surging by this April. Of the 67 attempts it had recorded from January to mid-April, 73 percent involved controversy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So how did a year of raucous—and occasionally disruptive and destructive—protest affect student opinions on free speech?
In September, FIRE released its fourth annual College Free Speech Rankings. The survey, which polled almost 60,000 undergraduates from more than 250 colleges, asked students a wide range of questions about free speech and the campus climate affecting it. The survey—as in past years—also asked questions about whether they would find it acceptable for students to engage in various kinds of disruptive protests of a hypothetical controversial speaker on campus.
About 37 percent of respondents agreed it was “sometimes” or “always” acceptable for students to shout down a campus speaker; last year, only 31 percent said the same. In all, fewer than one in three students said that it would “never” be acceptable to shout down a speaker.
Less than half of all students said it was “never” acceptable to protest by blocking other students from attending a controversial speech—a decline from last year’s 55 percent. Nearly one in three said they would support violence to stop a campus speech in at least some circumstances. In 2023, only 27 percent of students said the same.
These results don’t necessarily show the percentage of students who would engage in these activities themselves—rather, they reveal the proportion of students who might condone actions from other students that restrict speech. ”
https://reason.com/2024/11/16/censorship-on-campus/
The War in Gaza Is Far Worse Than You Thought
“Airwars, a team of conflict researchers affiliated with the University of London, went back and cross-checked the casualty lists from the first 25 days of the Israeli air campaign against news reporting, social media, and other local sources. And unlike the Palestinian ministry, they differentiated between civilians and fighters, using data such as social media funeral notices to determine Hamas affiliation.
The Airwars report, released on Thursday, shows a rate of civilian slaughter “incomparable with any 21st century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented.” The Palestinian ministry reported 8,525 wartime deaths, including 3,542 children, from October 7, 2023, to October 31, 2023. Airwars was able to verify a minimum of 5,139 civilians killed by Israeli air raids in that timeframe, including at least 1,900 children.
Most of them were not the collateral damage of combat against Hamas. Out of 606 incidents of civilian casualties studied by Airwars, only 26 overlapped with the death of a militant. And in those 26 incidents, the killing was still incredibly lopsided, with 32 militants killed in total, at a cost of 522 civilian lives.”
…
“”Families were killed together in unprecedented numbers, and in their homes,” the Airwars report states. Over 90 percent of women and children killed by Israeli air raids died in their homes, and in 95 percent of cases where a woman was killed, at least one child was also killed, according to the Airwars report.”
…
“Although the Israeli government and its supporters often argue that its military tactics are more humane than the American “war on terror,” Airwars found the exact opposite to be true. Before October 2023, the deadliest month for civilians ever recorded by Airwars was March 2017, when a U.S.-led coalition was battling the Islamic State group for Mosul, Iraq. That campaign killed 1,470 civilians, only one-fifth of the verified Palestinian civilian death count in October 2023. Children made up 9 percent of casualties in Mosul overall, and 36 percent of casualties in Gaza in October 2023.
These numbers are a conservative estimate, based on the minimum reported casualties in cases that Airwars was able to verify were Israeli bombing rather than Hamas misfires. And the study only covers one month of the war. More than a year later, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reports that 45,600 people have been killed and 11,000 are missing. Again, unlike the Airwars report, these numbers don’t distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters.
But with hospitals overwhelmed, communications cut, and thousands of bodies left in the street or trapped under rubble, 45,600 deaths is possibly an undercount. Other researchers have estimated that the total death toll from war, starvation, and disease in Gaza could be greater than 100,000 or even 300,000.”
https://reason.com/2024/12/13/the-war-in-gaza-is-far-worse-than-you-thought/
IDF publishes videos said to be Palestinians tortured by Hamas
“Video clips purporting to show torture of Palestinian civilians by the Hamas militia in the Gaza Strip during the years 2018 to 2020 were published by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Sunday.
The IDF said the material had been found during its operations in the area and proved “severe abuse perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist organization against the civilian population,” along with human rights violations and oppression of those opposed to its rule.
The videos are reported to show torture carried out by Hamas operatives in so-called “Outpost 17″ in Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The material shows people with bags over their heads, tied up, sometimes into twisted and painful positions. One of the men is suspended by his feet from the ceiling and beaten on the soles of his feet with a stick.
The victims are reported to include political opponents of Hamas, suspected collaborators with Israel, suspected adulterers and homosexuals.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/idf-publishes-videos-said-palestinians-152724530.html