Israel vs. Palestine Rebirth

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

Any histrionic off-topic ramblings will be met with a 'bad Shmuly.'



An excellent post will be rewarded with a 'happy Shmuly."

[Florstadt]

Clownel, ever the eccentric character, indulging in his peculiar pastime yet again, hunting for a rival to satisfy his psychopathic urges. His peculiar penchant for engaging in discussions about death, terror, and destruction knows no bounds. Take 3 unfolds as Clownel seeks a worthy adversary, ready to spar in the dark realms of his twisted imagination.

Breaking news in the whimsical world of Clownel: a riveting turn of events as he prepares for an intense discussion with none other than himself. Brace yourselves for a solo performance, where Clownel takes center stage, preaching to the choir in a surreal tête-à-tête with the myriad voices inside his own twisted psyche. Spoiler alert: this one-man show promises a carnival of chaos and a symphony of sinister soliloquies.

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

Clownel, ever the eccentric character, indulging in his peculiar pastime yet again, hunting for a rival to satisfy his psychopathic urges. His peculiar penchant for engaging in discussions about death, terror, and destruction knows no bounds. Take 3 unfolds as Clownel seeks a worthy adversary, ready to spar in the dark realms of his twisted imagination.

Breaking news in the whimsical world of Clownel: a riveting turn of events as he prepares for an intense discussion with none other than himself. Brace yourselves for a solo performance, where Clownel takes center stage, preaching to the choir in a surreal tête-à-tête with the myriad voices inside his own twisted psyche. Spoiler alert: this one-man show promises a carnival of chaos and a symphony of sinister soliloquies.

That deserves two bad Shumly.

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

Dave DeCamp returned to Antiwar Radio this week to discuss what’s happening in Gaza and Ukraine. They start with the breaking news about an apparent IDF massacre of Gazans rushing a convoy of aid trucks. They also talk about what we know of the scale of the death and destruction that’s been forced on Gaza so far. They finish with a discussion of Ukraine and the report about the CIA’s activities in the country before Russia invaded.

[~Elizabeth~]

Nasrallah: Israeli army exhausted, will lose war even if it invades Rafah


"...The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement says the Israeli army, which is waging a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip, is in a state of exhaustion.

"The Israeli army today is tired and exhausted on all fronts, and the number of its dead is very large and much greater than announced," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address on Wednesday.

The army, he added, was certain to suffer defeat even if the regime proceeds with, what it has promised in terms of, a ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah..."


https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/0...Rafah-invasion

[Florstadt]

Within the spectrum of terror organizations, Hamas emerges as a striking example of cowardice, failing to meet even the most rudimentary benchmarks of valor and fortitude:


A battle area like this includes several streets whose occupation could last for many days. Clearing a single building, with 24 apartments, requires an entire platoon. A few days ago, when the fighters burst into one of the apartments, they encountered a terrorist hiding behind his mother and sister, firing over their heads. Such situations are not uncommon, the commanders recount.

"Every building like this is a combat zone," says the commander of the commando unit. "There is no house where we have not found ammunition. There is no house where enemy operatives have not been. There were face-to-face battles here while an uninvolved population was in the middle of the room. Terrorists don't care that it's their family. There are also many undercover operatives here, including those who participated in the October 7 massacre."

In the window of the room we are in now, facing the wave of rubble that until two days ago was a residential building, two soldiers from the reconnaissance unit are holding position and scanning the outside. "We've been in Gaza for four and a half months," says Avichay from Kiryat Yam. "I lost two team members last month, Neria Belta and Ido Zrihan, may their memory be blessed, and I am ready to fight until the last drop of blood to perpetuate them and so that their families know that they did not fall in vain.

- https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/...medium=organic

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

Within the spectrum of terror organizations, Hamas emerges as a striking example of cowardice, failing to meet even the most rudimentary benchmarks of valor and fortitude:


A battle area like this includes several streets whose occupation could last for many days. Clearing a single building, with 24 apartments, requires an entire platoon. A few days ago, when the fighters burst into one of the apartments, they encountered a terrorist hiding behind his mother and sister, firing over their heads. Such situations are not uncommon, the commanders recount.

"Every building like this is a combat zone," says the commander of the commando unit. "There is no house where we have not found ammunition. There is no house where enemy operatives have not been. There were face-to-face battles here while an uninvolved population was in the middle of the room. Terrorists don't care that it's their family. There are also many undercover operatives here, including those who participated in the October 7 massacre."

In the window of the room we are in now, facing the wave of rubble that until two days ago was a residential building, two soldiers from the reconnaissance unit are holding position and scanning the outside. "We've been in Gaza for four and a half months," says Avichay from Kiryat Yam. "I lost two team members last month, Neria Belta and Ido Zrihan, may their memory be blessed, and I am ready to fight until the last drop of blood to perpetuate them and so that their families know that they did not fall in vain.

- https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/...medium=organic

I laughed so hard at the bold. Did they find 40 beheaded babies in the room also?

What I learned from Israelis - and this must be cultural - is they think the more outrageous the lie the more likely people will believe it (hence 40 beheaded babies, baby in oven, etc.) That may work on Israelis but it doesn't work with other people. In the West, the politician's lie isn't exaggerated or dramatic and so people are more susceptible to believing in the lie because it doesn't sound ridiculous.

5 hour debate

Israel-Palestine Debate: Finkelstein, Destiny, M. Rabbani & Benny Morris | Lex Fridman Podcast #418

I don't understand why that guy Destiny was there. He's not an academic. He isn't anyone of note on the subject. He's just a youtube debater who just learned about the subject in October.

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

"Every building like this is a combat zone," says the commander of the commando unit. "There is no house where we have not found ammunition. There is no house where enemy operatives have not been. There were face-to-face battles here while an uninvolved population was in the middle of the room. Terrorists don't care that it's their family. There are also many undercover operatives here, including those who participated in the October 7 massacre."

'This is why there are well over +10,000 dead women and children!!! Human shields!!!!"

- Corporal Schlomo

This is such pathetic propaganda to try to explain such extraordinarily high rates of civilian (thousands of children) deaths.

Funny enough if they had actually gone house to house, and room to room they would have found those three Israeli hostages that the IDF later shot. They murdered three hostages because they thought they were Palestinians.

Anyway...

[~Elizabeth~]

The IDF opened fire on Palestinians waiting for food aid - Athens News


Israeli troops again opened fire on Palestinians waiting for food aid in Gaza City, killing six and wounding at least 83, media reported.

Late last night, Palestinians were rushing to receive humanitarian aid and were crowded at the Kuwait roundabout, which lies between the central Strip and Gaza City, when Israeli troops opened fire, residents and medical workers said.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident. The attack came hours after Israel bombed a UN food distribution center in the southern city of Rafah, killing at least five people, including an employee of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

On February 29, Palestinian health authorities announced that Israeli soldiers had killed more than 100 Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid in the Gaza City area.

Famine in Gaza

A senior European Commission official said there were already “pockets of hunger” in Gaza. Janez Lenarcic, the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, told media that famine could spread throughout the region. He called on Israel to open more roads to get aid into Gaza, saying air and sea routes cannot compensate for opening more land routes for aid. He also called for increased funding.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning the “catastrophic” situation in Gaza

The European Parliament adopted a resolution that condemns the “catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, including the risk of imminent starvation,” the statement said. It was put to a vote after Wednesday’s debate.

The statement said members of parliament call on Israel to open all crossings into Gaza for humanitarian aid and call on all sides to immediately stop attacks on civilians seeking aid.

The Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip has entered its sixth month, and the Knesset has approved a supplementary budget for 2024 that includes a significant increase in spending to finance the war.

Israeli troops continue raids throughout the Gaza Strip, and the US appears ready to support a “limited IDF operation” in Rafah to destroy high-value Hamas targets.

Since October 7, as a result of Israeli attacks at least 31,341 Palestinians were killed and 73,134 injured in Gaza.

[Florstadt]

John Spencer is considered one of the world’s leading experts on urban warfare. In addition to personal experiences from 25 years as an infantry soldier and officer in the US Army, including urban battles of Iraq in 2003 and the Battle of Sadr City in 2008, he has spent over a decade researching, publishing, and lecturing on all facets of urban warfare. He has conducted field research all around the world. Just in the last five years he has conducted research in India, Israel, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Ukraine. He has served as an advisor to the top four-star general and other senior leaders in the U.S. Army as part of strategic research groups from the Pentagon to the United States Military Academy. He has also trained multiple militaries in urban operations. His research focuses on all military operations in dense urban areas, megacities, and urban and subterranean (aka tunnel) warfare.

Caroline Glick speaks with the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute John Spencer:



"Hamas is globally known for using human shields, which is the practice of using civilians to restrict the attacker in a military operation. The group wants as many civilians as possible to be harmed by Israeli military action—as one of its officials put it, “We are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” It wants the world’s attention on the question of whether the IDF campaign is violating the laws of war in attacking Hamas tunnels that are tightly connected to civilian and protected sites. It wants to buy as much time as is needed to cause the international community to stop Israel. Its entire strategy is built on tunnels."

"Almost all of Hamas’s tunnels are built into civilian and protected sites in densely populated urban areas. Much of the infrastructure providing access to the tunnels is in protected sites. This complicates discriminating between military targets and civilian locations—if not rendering it entirely impossible—because Hamas does not have military sites separate from civilian sites."

" Israel has demonstrated some of the world’s most advanced units, methods, and capabilities to find, exploit, and destroy tunnels. From specialized engineer capabilities and canine units to the use of robots, flooding to clear tunnels, and both aerial-delivered and ground-emplaced explosives, to include liquid explosives, to destroy them. Arguably, no military in the world is as well prepared for subterranean tactical challenges as the IDF. But the strategic challenge is entirely different. To destroy many of the deep-buried tunnels, the IDF has required bunker-busting bombs, which Israel is criticized for using. And most importantly it has required time to find and destroy the tunnels in a conflict in which Hamas’s strategy is aimed at limiting the time available to Israel to conduct its campaign."

- https://mwi.westpoint.edu/gazas-unde...n-its-tunnels/