Israel And The Palestinians (now with added Iran/Lebanon)

[Dunning1874]

23 hours ago, Theyellowbox said:

Israel now killed the head of Hamas in Gaza. You'd assume that would provoke some kind of response from Iran, but I'm not sure they will.

The actions of Israel over the past few weeks in Lebanon and beyond and Irans powder puff response make Iran look pretty weak and in danger of making its proxys come to the conclusion that Iran cannot and will not help them when needed.

I think Israel feel emboldened and the hardliners in government might just think that to keep going might force a regime change in Iran. It won't and it will just cause more unnecessary bloodshed, but they might think they are up for war crimes anyway, so what's a few more. 

I don't think the response does make Iran look weak. Obviously it's hard to judge as neither the Israeli or Iranian governments are a remotely trustworthy source on the extent of the damage done and Israel has gone fully into censorship with their own media in reporting the extent of the damage, claiming allowing reporting on how many missiles made it through and successfully hit their targets would risk giving intelligence to Iran.

Israel and allies would like to portray it as a failure to show off the success of their defensive measures, while simultaneously casting Iran as such a big threat that they must be stopped by military means. They must be weak and strong at the same time, which sounds familiar, but on Iran's own terms it appears to be a success - although considering their own likely inability to deal with a retaliatory attack on their oil or nuclear facilities that may change.

The targets of Iran's attack were military bases and Mossad HQ. Their claim that 90% of the missiles hit their targets will likely be heavily exaggerated, but clearly several missiles did make it through - there are satellite images showing destroyed F-35s at one of the airbases they hit. By the looks of it they failed to hit Mossad, but nevertheless they've clearly demonstrated that the Iron Dome can't stop them as it can Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, and they've shown they can successfully carry out targeted attacks on Israeli military bases from within Iran.

That one of the Israeli retorts as proof of Iran's failure here has been "Haha, you didn't even kill a single Israeli civilian, what a failure" is very much telling on themselves: sometimes when a state says they're carrying out an attack on a military target they actually mean they're aiming for a military target rather than deliberately blowing up dozens of children in a residential tower block.

This is where "deescalation through escalation" takes us. If Israel argues it's a necessary step to carpet bomb Beirut out of spite because Hezbollah are repelling their ground invasion and the Rules Based International Order says nothing, then said international order loses any authority to say that Iran are out of line in launching missiles at Israel that only hit military targets due to the obvious hypocrisy, and we are rapidly spiralling out of control with two despotic regimes who despise each other being given no reason not to escalate further.

[Claudia Gentile]

20 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Israel doesn’t seem too committed to a two state solution either…

To paraphrase Frankie Boyle, they are. Liquid and gas for the Palestinians.

[Granny Danger]

22 minutes ago, Claudia Gentile said:

To paraphrase Frankie Boyle, they are. Liquid and gas for the Palestinians.

There is not another country in the world that gets a free pass on hypocrisy, lies and atrocities in the way that Israel does.