...one has to wonder what the latest Blinken round of visits to the Middle East was supposed to accomplish, since all it did was expose our impotence. Even the Financial Times could not hide that the meetings with Netanyahu and then Arab leaders were a train wreck. Netanyahu rejected even any itty bitty ceasefire, branded a humanitarian pause, to get relief in, demanding that Hamas release all hostages first. The fact that Israel has welched or underperformed on its past begrudging promises to let trucks from Egypt in, would make that a non-starter even before getting to Hamas being sure to stick to its position of wanting to trade hostages for Palestinian prisoners. And of course the Arab states are not about to budge. Blinken got a more pointed version of what he was told before.
Antony Blinken faced intense pressure from regional allies to facilitate an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, laying bare the stark gap between US support for Israel and the outrage in Arab capitals over the siege and bombardment of the strip….
Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, demanded an unconditional ceasefire, a commitment that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly rejected after meeting Blinken on Friday.
Blinken had been expected to “brainstorm” with Arab diplomats the future of Gaza, home to 2.3mn Palestinians, after the war ends. Safadi bluntly rejected those talks as premature. “How can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know how Gaza will be left?” he asked Blinken. “Are we going to be talking about a wasteland? Are we talking about a whole population reduced to refugees?”
This comes off as the sort of thing someone who had just read classic texts on negotiating trying to put in practice: “Gee, let’s get a dialogue going! Let’s get to ‘Yes’ on some less fraught issues to pave the way for further agreement!” In addition, “brainstorming” is cringemakingly American. You don’t do that with people who are mad at you. You don’t do that in a crisis. Between independent entities, you do not do that at the top level. You have low level people or emissaries float ideas. So why this exercise? The worst is that Biden and Blinken come off as so disconnected from reality that they though they might get someone to accommodate US needs.
Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
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.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
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.
The Country of the Week is still Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
You're going to have to (hex)bear with me on the update this week. Have you been feeling generally pretty terrible this last month or so? So have I, and doomscrolling and archiving it all is my quasi-job at this point. Not good, folks, more and more people are saying it. I'll get over it eventually.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
https://streamable.com/5z0bsx
Hamas "A videographic with the details of the great crossing in support of Al-Aqsa and in response to the crimes of the occupation" on the one month anniversary of Al-Aqsa Flood.
Translation of contents:
spoiler
Saturday, October 7th 2023.Al-Aqsa Flood.
The largest attack by the Palestinian resistance, which created a security and military earthquake inside the "israeli" entity.
Five days after the operation was executed, the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam appeared, Abu Obeida. In a video speech, he revealed the details of the operation's planning and implementation .
Abu Obeida:
The leadership of Al-Qassam and the movement decided that the upcoming battle must make a significant difference in the future of the struggle with the occupation.
The Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood began based on an analysis of the operational area. In parallel, the intelligence situation was assessed through a study of the enemy's battle system, and as a result, the operational situation was estimated in light of studying the capabilities of both the enemy and the ally.
The operational plans included the fire support plan, which aimed to secure the force's approach using artillery, by stabilizing military positions in the "Gaza Division," stabilizing air bases and logistical support bases, as well as supporting the movement of maneuvering forces outside the Gaza Division.
[3,500 rockets and mortars were used to stabilize the military positions; 1,000 rockets were used to stabilize the logistical support and air bases; 1,000 rockets were used to stabilize the movement of IOF reinforcements].
The operational plans also included an assault plan to blind the enemy from monitoring the forces' approach towards the separation barrier, and also the implementation of a plan to breach the gaps in the barrier systems and maneuver plans.
[- Action: To blind the enemy, surveillance towers, transmission towers, and signaling systems were targeted (01:26)
Breaching plan in the separation wall systems; Goal: securing the transit of forces. (01:34)
Maneuver plans: Action: Defining goals, their priorities, and the approaches leading to them (01:37)]
We implemented plans for storming positions and withdrawal plans with prisoners, as well as a plan to cut off reinforcements to the enemy.
[Action: To cut off reinforcements, they were targeted with drones and anti-armor weapons (01:45)]
On top of this, a communications plan, a logistical support plan, a media plan and the transmission of the image, a command and control operations plan, a deception plan to deceive the enemy at both the strategic and operational levels, and the execution of a series of live maneuvers that simulate the targets, continuous readiness checks of the forces.
[3,000 forces were used in the initial attack, with 1,500 support forces (02:14)].
Finally, the implementation of the call-up and mobilization of the forces leading up to the zero hour when the operation was initiated and the battle was opened in a coordinated and synchronized manner to destroy the Gaza Division in the enemy's army, and to develop the attack inside the enemy's southern area, where the attack was launched on all positions of the Division, numbering fifteen military sites, in addition to the attack on ten military intervention points, and the attack on the first line of protection forces located in each of the 22 kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope.
Then the attack was developed towards targets outside the Division in the southern area.
[These include: "Zikim," Katsa Maritime Intervention Point, War Emergency Command Center, "Yadmo Redkhai" base, "Urim" SIGINT base (surveillance base for Unit 8200), "Tze'elim" base (headquarters of the Sina Reserve Division), and the "Mishmar Heneghin" Logistical Support Base. (02:57)]
pretty amazing. someone should subtitle this with English and repost!