Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

Last night Israel bombed two of the Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon. Ein El-Hilweh in Sidon and Al-Bas south of Tyre. Israel's genocidal intensions towards the Palestinian people extends beyond the borders of Palestine.

— Ghassan Abu Sitta (@GhassanAbuSitt1) October 1, 2024

For those that dont understand Swahili, these women are saying their bosses fled and left them behind and even refused to give them their passports so they cant evacuate & some were left/locked in the houses. Some were killed. This is the situation of African workers in Lebanon https://t.co/A2SdgHbsq0

— inqilāb (@tastefullysaucy) September 30, 2024

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/30/us-israel-military-hezbollah-00181797

US officials quietly backed Israel’s military push against Hezbollah

The officials urged caution and stressed the need for diplomacy. But the timing was right for such a military shift, they concluded.

Presidential adviser Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, told top Israeli officials in recent weeks that the U.S. agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s broad strategy to shift Israel’s military focus to the north against Hezbollah in order to convince the group to engage in diplomatic talks to end the conflict, the officials told POLITICO.

Incredible this could be reported with a straight face.

Israel has apparently been crossing the border and raiding Hezbollah sites for months already

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forces-have-carried-out-raids-lebanon-months-military-says-2024-10-01/

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/01/world/israel-lebanon-hezbollah?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

iran planning imminent ballistic attack

More than 15 years ago I was giving a talk on the Arab-Israeli conflict at the University of Texas’ Law School. I recognized in the audience Admiral Bobby Inman (former deputy director of the C.I.A). During the Q and A, somebody asked me about Hezbollah and Nasrallah and whether Israel would take the decision to assassinate him.

I answered the question as best I could. Afterwards, Inman came up to me, introduced himself, and took me aside. He talked about that particular question, about the potential Israeli assassination of Nasrallah and said in blunt terms: Israel would not dare take Nasrallah out.

I said: why not?

He said: simple. Because the U.S. government told the Israelis categorically and repeatedly that they would not kill Nasrallah because of the repercussions for the region and U.S. interests.

Knowing that Biden has put no red lines on Israel since Oct. 7, he would be the one U.S. president who would also lift that one red line.

Nasrallah, unlike Nasser, leaves behind a doctrine and a strong organization that is likely to survive Israel’s unrelenting campaign of assassinations and slaughter. Hezbollah suffered a very severe blow, the worst since its formation, but it is likely to emerge again as a different organization under new leadership.

It is possible that U.S. opposed the assassination because it knew that no one but Nasrallah could control such a dangerous (from the U.S. point of view) organization.

After Nasrallah, the organization could become less disciplined and perhaps more dangerous to U.S. interests.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/30/asad-abukhalil-the-middle-east-after-nasrallah/

Amazing to be doing this so close to an election. If US personnel are lost it could impact the election? Its just crazy.

xpost

I'm guessing what's changed in the past 15 years is that the US no longer fears endangering its relationship with Saudi Arabia and other states when Israel assassinates Nasrallah.

I'm assuming Saudi Arabia were happy to see Nasrallah dead.

I'm finding the kind of blase way US ILXors and others say foreign policy doesn't matter in US elections a bit unnerving.

not sure when the history books are written nasrallah will be missed by many tbh

like most politicians esp those who started as warlords seemed like a bad dude

Has his plusses and minusses.

From The Guardian:

"Explosions can be heard above Tel Aviv and the sound of warning sirens wailing across the city, Israel’s largest urban and economic metropolis.

In Jerusalem, explosions are also being heard, witnesses have told Reuters.

Israeli media is reporting that Iran has launched more than 100 missiles at Israel. It’s unclear whether missiles are hitting home or being intercepted in the sky above the cities. This is a rapidly unfolding, ongoing situation.

The Israeli military is now reporting that sirens are sounding across the country."

⚡️🚨 Footage from impacts on Tel Aviv

3000 years old native settler is panicking in the video in his native language pic.twitter.com/5wyJJTprnC

— Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) October 1, 2024

Crowds in Gaza break out in ecstatic cheers watching Iranian missiles land on Israel. pic.twitter.com/uUkDxTOMBb

— red. (@redstreamnet) October 1, 2024

Is this how WWIII begins, or just more of the same?

Do I still have to pay rent today though?

Weve been in wwiii for the last two years

Paid it yesterday :-( xp

Does Israel now come clean about its nukes? And does Germany now come clean about its submarines that will fire them?

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) October 1, 2024

here's hoping this is a largely performative volley by Iran to avenge Nasrallah's death, as they said they would do

That is what I think is likely. And yet history is full of brutally destructive wars that nobody wanted and yet somehow happened.

Breaking: CNN’s @jimsciutto confirms Israel is using human shields, strategically positioning its command and control center in densely populated civilian areas pic.twitter.com/ApaA1KArau

— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) October 1, 2024

I'll bet they have tunnels as well

To answer the question on everyone’s minds: No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs.

He’s just that fucking good.

— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) July 12, 2024

How does he do it folks?

Ok so we are having escalation...can we de-escalate?

There was also a shooting.

"Now back to that shooting incident in the Tel Aviv area that was still unfolding as Iranian missiles began raining down on Israel less than 90 minutes ago.

Four people were killed and seven wounded in the shooting attack in the Jaffa neighborhood of Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Israeli police said in a statement, Reuters reports.

The police said there were two shooters and they had both been “neutralised”.

Law enforcement added that the situation was “under control”. The authorities previously called it a “suspected terror” shooting targeting Jewish residents."

I'm finding the kind of blase way US ILXors and others say foreign policy doesn't matter in US elections a bit unnerving.

“Foreign policy doesn’t matter” to a domestic American audience because for most people, this shit almost never gets covered in any accurate way and holds little to no salience. Its important as hell, but rarely addressed in ways that aren’t cheerleading for either an American effort or American proxy. Hell, Americans are in the Imperial Core, most of us here don’t know a goddamn thing and if my coworkers are any indication, just view the stuff as remote distraction that shows up in a newsfeed.

I think this idea was forged as CW in 1992 when George H.W. Bush got 37% of the vote in spite of having waged what was seen as the best war ever.

also if you only listen to sports talk radio 89.5 THE SPREAD, you maybe are not really hearing much foreign policy news

not hearing much on this thread either

Early signs are all military targets.

The next 24 hours will see journalists and politicians pretending Iran carried our indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas.

— Philip Proudfoot 🇱🇧🇵🇸 (@PhilipProudfoot) October 1, 2024

Heck, as a resident of Arlington Virginia I am a human shield for the US Military.

Oh yeah, you'll get it first

Multiple IRGC-affiliated Iranian outlets & Telegram channels report, "Iran has warned the US: if you target our refineries, we will set fire to the refineries and oil fields across the entire region, including those in Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain."

— Sina Toossi (@SinaToossi) October 1, 2024

I guess the U.S. has already started helping intercept Iranian rockets

Israel writing checks that its butt can't cash, expecting we'll come in to help

Well they ain’t wrong

...The invasion of 1982, which triggered the Second Lebanon War, was ordered by then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Overseen by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, a former general, the incursion’s objective initially was to stop Palestinian attacks from Lebanon and to push back the Palestine Liberation Organization north of the Litani River.

But it snowballed into a more expansive operation to install a pro-Israel Maronite Christian government and Israeli forces remained in southern Lebanon for 18 years.

“Recall that Israel’s incursion in 1982 was also billed as a limited and localized incursion,” noted Lebanese commentator Michael Young. “But as Sharon understood, there will always be someone shooting at you from the next hill, so self-defense mandates that taking that hill …until they reached Beirut,” he added in a post on X.

Young suspected Israel would want more than just to eject Hezbollah from south of the Litani. “They will demand more,” he warned.

There are also signs that the underlying thinking driving the incursion, code-named Operation Northern Arrows, suggests much grander ambitions.

The “escalate to de-escalate” strategy risks being subsumed by greater Israeli ambitions and Hezbollah resistance, fears retired United States general, Joseph Votel, in a comment released to the media.

Votel worried that Hezbollah could pursue an attrition strategy “to draw Israel into a prolonged conflict that will undermine its government, economy, and global standing — buying time to recover from their recent setbacks and perhaps creating an opportunity for a strategic blow of their own.”

Really interesting thread on the various scenarios.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1841240358178500946.html

The very first engagement between the IDF and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has turned out to have been extremely deadly for Israeli forces. IDF has admitted to six soldiers being killed, five more injured.

— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) October 2, 2024

Further blasts in Beirut just now..

there was a tweet upthread comparing current Israel to the final days of apartheid-era South Africa... multiple wars on multiple fronts (Angola, Namibia, etc.) the unrest in the townships (sorta like the West Bank & Gaza).. It's an interesting comparison but there are some key differences. South Africa at that time had few allies (ironically, the Israelis continued to sell them weapons when no one else would) whereas Israel has the backing of the good old U.S.A. and possibly some Sunni oil republics looking to hamper Iran's influence, it's honestly hard to tell. But they are starting to take on that same pariah status internationally, it'll be interesting to see how this pans out politically... though it looks like Bibi's approval ratings have been given a bump by all this bloodshed

Yeah I doubt history will repeat itself re: South Africa comparison. Its quite a different calculus going on.

1980s South Africa isn't very close analogy to 2024 Israel. They do compare, but only in the broad outlines. Mainly, worldwide sentiment has turned even more strongly against them and their generally favorable US reputation has huge cracks forming in it.

SO FUCKING DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT pic.twitter.com/CtKI8zTdyl

— Aaron Regunberg (@AaronRegunberg) October 3, 2024

Israel turning Hezbollah into the heroic defenders of the Lebanese nation. Good work there, morons!

Israeli used white phosphorus on civilian residences?