A piece in Mondoweiss acknowledges the attack by Hamas that killed around 1,200 Israelis on October 7th of last year but states flatly that Israel, in retaliation, is engaged in genocide,
...leveling entire residential blocks, destroying education and health institutions, eliminating the basic infrastructure needed to sustain a society, and burying entire families under the rubble.The West Bank has not been spared from Israeli attacks, either.
Israeli settlers set out to forcibly expel Palestinian rural communities and steal the lands of Palestinian towns and villages. The Israeli army ramped up its spree of raids on refugee camps, destroying their infrastructure, and systematically forcing inhabitants to live in a situation similar to the one lived in Gaza.
Palestinians refer to their original
1948 expulsion from their ancestral lands the "Nakba," the
Catastrophe.
In the terms of the Vietnam War, the Northern Gaza town of Jabalia should have long since been "pacified." Of course back then the US didn't really understand what motivated the Vietnamese to keep on fighting against what Americans considered to be impossible odds, but we're supposed to have figured out from several low-level conflicts since then that insurgencies have to be defeated by political means. Israelis should have learned that from Americans, but Israeli intelligence indicated that "Hamas was attempting to 'rebuild its operational capabilities in the area.'” Had Israel made a political deal with the Palestinians of Jabalia, Hamas would not have been able to regain a foothold in the area.
Going onto Xitter, I see lots of people blaming the Biden Administration for Israel's genocidal conduct. But Biden and the Democrats in general demonstrated a distinct lack of enthusiasm back in May.
Yes, Democrats are still voting to send aid to Israel, but Democrats also have constituents that they are listening to who oppose such aid and Republicans largely don't. If I were consulting for either the Israelis or Palestinians, I'd say that, at the moment, the two parties are six of one, half-dozen of the other. They're both anti-Palestinian. So the question becomes one of which party is more persuadable.
According to a Jerusalem Post article, VP Harris has been pro-Israel for her entire career. As for Trump:
Also, Evangelicals, a large constituency in the Republican Party, don't support Israel for rational, secular reasons, but because Israel plays a role in Christian prophecy. Bottom line is that there's a reasonable chance that Democrats can be persuaded to support Palestinians, there's zero chance that Republicans can be persuaded.
"Is Donald Trump a fascist? A fascism scholar says he certainly sounds like one"
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a history professor at New York University, scholar on authoritarian leaders and the author of the book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.” She says the kind of rhetoric Trump is using on the campaign trail is not a surprise.
This is rather concerning. Trump's campaign isn't taking any steps to ensure that there's a smooth transition of power in the event he wins the election. One of the big items in the transition is to get security clearances for people who need them in order to deal with classified information. One of the alleged problems with failing to detect al Qaeda activity in 2001 was the delayed transition that meant the younger George Bush didn't have a fully staffed team in time to be aware of the threat. Trump doesn't care. He wanted his son-in-law Jared Kushner to have a top security clearance even though the national security establishment felt he was completely ineligible. Trump just wants his cronies given security clearances whether they're tied to Russia or Saudi Arabia or whoever.
Drone warfare is
fundamentally different from "artillery, mortar, tank assaults,
missile and aerial bomb strikes" as drones are small and quiet and can
hover without people on the ground being aware of them. By august 2024,
drone strikes on Kherson has reached 100 per day.
The new mode of warfare affects everyday life and safety in Kherson. Drones deliberately target civilian areas rather than military objects.
These attacks of course violate the Geneva Conventions, but Russians don't care about that.