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orange juche
Mar 14, 2012



Luceid posted:

I seriously thought y'all were better than this yeah. what the gently caress

nah it's pretty much just one person

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psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Yeah this doesn't seem like something Iran would have ordered. Some of the reporting suggests they were made aware of it ahead of time (and I don't see Hamas doing something like this without a courtesy notice to one of their biggest benefactors), but between their domestic upheaval and their halting attempts to re-engage with Western diplomats to ease sanctions, the timing doesn't make any sense. I'm sure they're not complaining about the fraying of Israeli-Arab relations, though.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Grand Fromage posted:

I would agree polling right now isn't very useful but I'd guess there's still a solid majority support for Israel. Majority probably don't pay attention to news at all, then the ones who do mostly get it from... I don't even know. Do people watch TV news, other than the olds watching Fox?

Like I don't think most people would be pro blowing up ambulances and children but I also don't think most people are aware that's happening. They heard Israel is killing terrorists and that's about it.

"Support for Israel" does depend a bit on what you define it as and what polls you're looking at, for instance, every poll I see has a narrow to large majority in favour of a ceasefire and humanitarian support for Palestinians,

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2023/10/19/voters-agree-the-us-should-call-for-a-ceasefire-and-de-escalation-of-violence-in-gaza

Just as the first example I could google up.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/472070/democrats-sympathies-middle-east-shift-palestinians.aspx

But overall, yeah, support for Israel in the US seems to be slimming but still present.

knox_harrington
Feb 18, 2011

Running no point.

Iran is definitely not involved in the Houthis firing Iranian ballistic missiles at Israel.

https://www.armyrecognition.com/ham...nst_israel.html

Cugel the Clever
Apr 5, 2009
I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA
Winning hearts and minds among young Westerners
https://twitter.com/Israel/status/1721457922859729398?s=20

@Israel posted:

"I'm not antisemitic, I'm racist fluid." - random @Columbia student

A.o.D.
Jan 15, 2006

That seems fishy to me.

Grip it and rip it
Apr 28, 2020
"I am composed entirely of bigot spit, nut, and sweat." - A real Columbia student in 2023

Edit: Jesus I just watched that video. Israel can gently caress off with its critiques of American college campuses. Who could have thought thats a good idea?

Grip it and rip it fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Nov 6, 2023

notwithoutmyanus
Mar 17, 2009

What kind of garbage is this? Is this like a worse attempt at satire? At least Onion has some good stuff.

US support of Israel was never a universal thing at any time, much like how not all Israelis want to genocide Palestinians and vice versa. People are capable of diverse views. I would not paint either situation with a broad brush.

A lot of people in both examples are not happy with the battling going on in Gaza, full stop. Whether it means they'll do something about it or even can do something about it is more an issue with government themselves. To which, the US has been pretty ambigous about supporting Israel and having reservations about Israel's current actions, despite people being willing to demonize "the west" at every opportunity.

mrmcd
Feb 22, 2003

Pictured: The only good cop (a fictional one).

It's for lead brained boomers so they can feel comfortable writing off anyone who might object to indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians.

Al-Saqr
Nov 11, 2007

One Day I Will Return To Your Side.
Hamas puts out an informational video about their TBG room clearing RPG that they use to clear out israelis from apartments they try to hole up in, double warhead, one for penetration, the other for the inside of the room targeted.

https://twitter.com/TurkiShalhoub/status/1721561441365262405?s=20

Knives Amilli
Sep 26, 2014

Quackles posted:

Hey, need some crash course advice in media literacy.

Various people in the politics channel of a Discord I frequent are, uh, doomposting about how popular support for Israel in the US is cratering, and how this affects both what the current government should do now, and their re-election chances.

Meanwhile, the historian, Bret Devereaux, says that the main reason the US allies with Israel is because it enjoys significant popular support.

Obviously, the validity of both of these perspectives depends on the actual state of the level of popular support in the US for the government of Israel.

So what do you all advise for cutting through any prevalent BS and determining the actual level of US popular support for Israel right now?

I believe that on the more left side of politics, there’s always been a very critical voice about Israel and the data shows the western youth are becoming more left as time goes on. So yes among more progressive minded people I do think support for Israel is lower than it’s been in previous decades .

But for right wing people I will say this:

from my point of view im not seeing a whole lot of pro Israel support from those I know who are 35 and younger and extremely right wing. I think the west entering late stage capitalism has created a exaggerated sense of self preservation and paranoia among the younger right wing which results in extra scrutiny of the United States international alliances. Especially alliances that are being supported by Democrat presidents. in addition to the radicalizing of the younger right wing has created a lot of hostility for Jewish people as they are seen as the puppet masters globalism and socialism and communism. it does not help matters that the right wing has invited the crazies in the room for the last 40 years so the ones who most fervently supported Israel the most literally created a sect of right wing crazies who arent too fond of Jewish people.

All of my observations completely anecdotal but Marjorie Taylor Green ask as a very dependable barometer of rising right wing extremism and her stances. She’s not exactly keen on Israel/Jews and is currently refusing to vote yes for additional aid unless some vague conditions are met involving punishing Muslim people or something. 20 years ago she would be excommunicated from the Republican Party for not being a staunch supporter of Israel and belief in biblical end times prophecy. That should tell you where the right wing is going.

Lum_
Jun 5, 2006

notwithoutmyanus posted:

What kind of garbage is this? Is this like a worse attempt at satire? At least Onion has some good stuff.

Eretz Nehederet is Israel's version of Saturday Night Live, so the heavy handed "humor" is on them as a private entity, even if the official Israel twitter is pushing it.

Remember SNL did this back in the day.

https://twitter.com/queeralamode/status/1426990554584256512

They're usually more left leaning (this is a Springtime for Hitler parody of Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel's most popular fascist politician) so I guess the war is breaking brains.

https://twitter.com/Eretz_Nehederet/status/1572687851854102529

Lum_ fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Nov 6, 2023

Dopilsya
Apr 3, 2010

Quackles posted:

Hey, need some crash course advice in media literacy.

Various people in the politics channel of a Discord I frequent are, uh, doomposting about how popular support for Israel in the US is cratering, and how this affects both what the current government should do now, and their re-election chances.

Meanwhile, the historian, Bret Devereaux, says that the main reason the US allies with Israel is because it enjoys significant popular support.

Obviously, the validity of both of these perspectives depends on the actual state of the level of popular support in the US for the government of Israel.

So what do you all advise for cutting through any prevalent BS and determining the actual level of US popular support for Israel right now?

People tend to consume media in an echo chamber and in such a way that it reinforces whatever prior biases they have. It creates a bad tendency- especially online- for people to be wildly hyperbolic and overconfident about whatever they're predicting, so whenever anyone claims seismic shifts they're pretty much always pulling straight from their rear end. I guess my point in all this is we don't really know since everything's in flux, but keep in mind that on the left exists a subset of terminally online types who are convinced every new event is the death knell of the liberal establishment and the rules based international order. For someone in that group, reading a couple of articles on Gray Zone and seeing a Noam Chomsky interview is really all the support they need, it's clear the liberals are done for. I don't know if that's the situation in your Discord, it could be just be overly anxious centrist liberal Biden democrats chicken littling about how this will sweep Trump back into the White House, but if that's the case, as the news cycle shifts they'll find something else to terrify themselves about with each new event.

In any event, here's what information I've seen and how I interpret it, though I'm just some goober on the internet as well:

As for how Americans feel about the situation, you can check it here https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-the-israel-gaza-war-changing-us-public-attitudes/.

My read of it is that Americans felt a lot of support for Israel in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, but think Israel's response is too punitive and are slowly becoming less supportive as that goes on. So support, while still higher than pre-October 7th is likely to regress to the mean and perhaps beyond as long as the Israelis continue/are perceived to continue a collective punishment campaign in Gaza. But just because what data we have seems like that to me, doesn't mean anything. I don't think it's an unreasonable conclusion for me to draw, but also it agrees with how I expect public opinion on these matters to go so I may just be seeing what sounds right to me.

As for what that means for what the government should do to win an election. That article cites a poll which asks some questions to that effect - https://criticalissues.umd.edu/sites/criticalissues.umd.edu/files/UMCIP_October2023_Israel-Gaza_Results.pdf. The Republican responses can be discounted since they weren't going to vote for Democrats anyway. Pres. Biden's response is improving his support with Democrats. Independents...I"m not sure how to make sense of what they want seeing as how they're the most pro-Israel group, but also think he's too pro-Israel??? So I think it's likely Biden will continue to publicly support Israel, while slowly increasing pressure to be more discriminate in the military response, as that seems to be his best move for re-election. Barring some sort of unspinnable atrocity that creates a significant shift in how Americans perceive Israel.

Of course, what the government *should* do maybe shouldn't be calculated as how to win an election. I'm of the view that Israel is right to target Hamas, but has committed unconscionable war crimes against civilians in Gaza and while they have rolled some of those back, partially due to US pressure, they still continue to do so, so my view of what Pres. Biden should do doesn't line up with his current moves.

All that being said, electoral politics in the US creates strange outcomes. Representative's districts will have disparate views, so we should continue to see a variety of public responses from different Democratic politicians. As for how it would effect the US presidential elections next year, it's hard to say. Note that in the polls a majority of Democrats and Independents "lean toward neither side". That could be a desire to be an active participant as an honest broker in the conflict, but I suspect a huge portion of that is voters viewing it as just another dust-up in an intractable conflict over there and aren't particularly animated by it. In any event, that election is still a long ways away and I have my doubts that there's some sort of critical mass of voters in a swing state who will key their vote to support for Palestine. Or even foreign policy in general, really, American voters tend to be fairly insular.

Bored As Fuck
Jan 1, 2006

I HAVE A MICROPENIS AND I WON'T REST UNTIL YOUR CHILDREN DIE FOR IT
Fun Shoe

Al-Saqr posted:

Hamas puts out an informational video about their TBG room clearing RPG that they use to clear out israelis from apartments they try to hole up in, double warhead, one for penetration, the other for the inside of the room targeted.

https://twitter.com/TurkiShalhoub/status/1721561441365262405?s=20

Holy gently caress that's terrifying.

M_Gargantua
Oct 16, 2006

STOMP'N ON INTO THE POWERLINES

Exciting Lemon

Bored As gently caress posted:

Holy gently caress that's terrifying.

Not really, you can see how absolutely shoddy that construction is. Its designed to be cinematic. Those aren't as bad as most of the improv drone weapons we're seeing.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

That is... a PG-7R Tandem HEAT round. Or a clone thereof. https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/rockets/105mm-pg-7r-rocket

bulletsponge13
Apr 28, 2010

Thermobaric weapons in enclosed places are horrific things. The US and The Soviets both used variations in AFG, and the accounts of the teams that did the Battle Damage Assessment both said similar things- they'd find people dead with their some of their insides ripped through their mouth; a Spetznaz team wrote that they found fighters with their lungs tore out and laying on their chest, though that is probably some exaggeration. Overpressure and enclosed places = bad stuff to soft goo

Borscht
Jun 4, 2011
Hamas taking a page out of the trump handbook: “nuh-uh”

Hamas leader refuses to acknowledge killing of civilians in Israel https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67321241

Unrelated, but if Israel offered a ceasefire, would they even take it? A strategic victory is basically impossible and they seem totally ok with producing as many martyrs as possible. Why even cease fire at all?

At least Hamas and the IDF can agree on one thing: gently caress civilians.

Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003

Alchenar posted:

That is... a PG-7R Tandem HEAT round. Or a clone thereof. https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/rockets/105mm-pg-7r-rocket

According to hamas it is a separate weapon. They appear to just be mass producing that specific shape for their locally produced rounds as both the tandem and the thermobaric apparently use it. To my eye they might be slightly different in shape, though I haven't seen enough good pictures to say and currently we've just got hamas' promotional stuff to go off wrt the latest two models of it and they are extremely selective about what they show. There's some question about just how much it is a clone vs a dressed up pg7v round. the previous iteration was much more apparently not a clone.

Hamas is currently pushing a whole messaging campaign about how effective their homemade rpg rounds are, which is why people are seeing these promo videos popping up everywhere. They're asserting that it can take out merkavas in particular and are claiming for instance that they destroyed 6 tanks with it yesterday, though as of when I looked yesterday there was no documentation of that anywhere to be found

Some words from someone way more knowledgeable about the evolution of the direct precursor to that weapon

https://calibreobscura.substack.com/p/hamas-mysterious-anti-tank-weapon

Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

M_Gargantua posted:

Not really, you can see how absolutely shoddy that construction is. Its designed to be cinematic. Those aren't as bad as most of the improv drone weapons we're seeing.

Better for the occupants if the walls blow off though

knox_harrington
Feb 18, 2011

Running no point.

bulletsponge13 posted:

Thermobaric weapons in enclosed places are horrific things. The US and The Soviets both used variations in AFG, and the accounts of the teams that did the Battle Damage Assessment both said similar things- they'd find people dead with their some of their insides ripped through their mouth; a Spetznaz team wrote that they found fighters with their lungs tore out and laying on their chest, though that is probably some exaggeration. Overpressure and enclosed places = bad stuff to soft goo

I did BDA where we used Hellfire-N. Obviously not nice but I didn't see that kind of thing.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Okay well war-aims defined - Netanyahu plumbing for full re-occupation.

https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1721689621266842044

Fragrag
Aug 3, 2007
The Worst Admin Ever bashes You in the head with his banhammer. It is smashed into the body, an unrecognizable mass! You have been struck down.

Al-Saqr posted:

Hamas puts out an informational video about their TBG room clearing RPG that they use to clear out israelis from apartments they try to hole up in, double warhead, one for penetration, the other for the inside of the room targeted.

https://twitter.com/TurkiShalhoub/status/1721561441365262405?s=20

So that last shot of the RPG being fired in-doors, the cameramans hosed right?

standard.deviant
May 17, 2012

Globally Indigent

Fragrag posted:

So that last shot of the RPG being fired in-doors, the cameramans hosed right?
I don’t know, but I laughed that they left that in the released video

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug
Pillbug

Alchenar posted:

Okay well war-aims defined - Netanyahu plumbing for full re-occupation.

https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1721689621266842044

"See that? That's where I held up that lovely bomb poster"

Count Roland
Oct 6, 2013

Alchenar posted:

Okay well war-aims defined - Netanyahu plumbing for full re-occupation.

https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1721689621266842044

He sure likes his props doesn't he.

bloody ghost titty
Oct 23, 2008
Former deputy chief of staff to the Israeli military on BBC just now comparing Hamas to 1945 Nazis...this...feels bad? Like, quiet part loud bad?

Grip it and rip it
Apr 28, 2020

bloody ghost titty posted:

Former deputy chief of staff to the Israeli military on BBC just now comparing Hamas to 1945 Nazis...this...feels bad? Like, quiet part loud bad?

More like completely delusional.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug
Pillbug

bloody ghost titty posted:

Former deputy chief of staff to the Israeli military on BBC just now comparing Hamas to 1945 Nazis...this...feels bad? Like, quiet part loud bad?

"Hamas is the Nazis, so that's why we're going full on Warsaw Ghetto on the Gaza Strip" :stare:

orange juche
Mar 14, 2012



Hamas isn't even close to an existential threat to the Israeli state, it's such a bullshit take and also massive projection too lol

not caring here
Feb 22, 2012

blazemastah 2 dry 4 u
So Israel is just middle east Russia now, huh. Russia with big friends, that is.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug
Pillbug

orange juche posted:

Hamas isn't even close to an existential threat to the Israeli state, it's such a bullshit take and also massive projection too lol

Its like the lesson the Israeli Government learned from the Holocaust was: Next time, be the boot rather than subject to the boot.

ThisIsJohnWayne
Feb 23, 2007
Ooo! Look at me! NO DON'T LOOK AT ME!



There's a, what must by now be a classical observation, about when Israeli schoolchildren do the specific holocaust course, half of the children walk away with the lesson being "this must never happen again" and the other half with "this must never happen again to us".

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

ThisIsJohnWayne posted:

There's a, what must by now be a classical observation, about when Israeli schoolchildren do the specific holocaust course, half of the children walk away with the lesson being "this must never happen again" and the other half with "this must never happen again to us".

Considering how few votes "let's not oppress the Palestinians and maybe give them back some of their stuff"-parties get in Israel, I think that "half" is an overly generous split.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 18 days!
https://x.com/TheWapplehouse/status/1721534080934633675

Cugel the Clever
Apr 5, 2009
I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA
Yeah, the former half tragically seems more "this must never happen again to anyone, but our largely rhetorical opposition to our inflicting it will do nothing more than slow-roll the process; when the victims inevitably resist, we'll adopt a slightly softer version of the exterminationist rhetoric" these days.

Lum_
Jun 5, 2006

Alchenar posted:

Okay well war-aims defined - Netanyahu plumbing for full re-occupation.

https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1721689621266842044

Pretty sure the goal is for the Palestinian Authority or a similar cut-out to have "governing responsibility" in Gaza while being disarmed and with Israel having the ability to go in and arrest whomever they want at will. That's been the situation in PA-run areas of the West Bank for the past 20 years. Technically not occupation since IDF troops aren't posted there full time, but far from anything approaching sovereignity.

Israel doesn't WANT Gaza. It's a trashed enclave with no natural resources and 2 million people who very much do not want to be compliant Israeli citizens. There are some extremist/religious fundamenalist nutbags who want to annex and re-settle Gaza because it's another step in Eretz Israel annexing God's gifted land to the chosen people aka Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq, but they are a (loud) minority.

Lum_ fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Nov 7, 2023

Lum_
Jun 5, 2006

PurpleXVI posted:

Considering how few votes "let's not oppress the Palestinians and maybe give them back some of their stuff"-parties get in Israel, I think that "half" is an overly generous split.

The political split in Israel is roughly:

8%: anti-Zionist leftists/Israeli Arabs/Palestinians (note this is voting results, not actual population, the Israeli Arab minority is more like 20%)
7%: pro-Zionist leftists (the aftermath of Oslo and the intifadas effectively destroyed them as a political force)
32%: Centrists (happy with the status quo, might agree that a two-state solution is the ideal but "no one on the Palestinian side will talk to us!")
28%: Right-wingers (generally OK with the status quo, most want some form of annexation in the West Bank)
11%: Fascists (the argument here is "should Palestinians be forced to leave or simply killed")
14%: Ultra-orthodox (don't care about any of this as long as they get paid, have been losing votes to the fascist parties)

This is from last year's election. Polls indicate that if an election were held tomorrow Benny Gantz' centrist party would win in a landslide, which is why there won't be an election tomorrow.

Cugel the Clever
Apr 5, 2009
I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

Lum_ posted:

Israel doesn't WANT Gaza.
Important distinction: Israel doesn't want the Palestinians in Gaza. At the end of the day, the Israeli PM may just take a page from their founding father's playbook. Yitzahk Rabin's memoirs retell how, when asked how the nascent IDF should handle several troublesome Palestinian towns, the legendary Ben-Gurion refrained from saying anything explicitly, but made a gesture that unmistakably conveyed ethnic cleansing—a cleansing that was carried out and erased from Israeli history books.

We'd like to think that it can't happen again with the whole world watching, but the US, and especially the UK and Germany, give nothing publicly but tepid lip service to humanitarianism while enabling the worst of Israel's excesses.

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Lum_
Jun 5, 2006

Cugel the Clever posted:

Important distinction: Israel doesn't want the Palestinians in Gaza. At the end of the day, the Israeli PM may just take a page from their founding father's playbook. Yitzahk Rabin's memoirs retell how, when asked how the nascent IDF should handle several troublesome Palestinian towns, the legendary Ben-Gurion refrained from saying anything explicitly, but made a gesture that unmistakably conveyed ethnic cleansing—a cleansing that was carried out and erased from Israeli history books.

We'd like to think that it can't happen again with the whole world watching, but the US, and especially the UK and Germany, give nothing publicly but tepid lip service to humanitarianism while enabling the worst of Israel's excesses.

No, most Israelis really don't want Gaza period. The ex-settlers who want to go back to their ex-homes are a tiny minority, most Israelis were quite happy with Gaza stuck behind a big wall and no longer existing in their world. If Egypt would take it Israel would give them Gaza in a heartbeat but Egypt doesn't want the place either.

There have been people in Israel talking about ethnic cleansing Gazans into Egypt (such as the leaked document from the "Intelligence Ministry" which isn't Shin Bet/Mossad but a sinecure dreamed up to keep a Likud member busy that has no impact on actual decision-making) but again, Egypt very much isn't going to cooperate. Benny Gantz, who effectively is running the war, yesterday told an Israeli from the border region who asked "will I see the ocean from my house when the war is over" explicitly no, at the end of the day there will still be a Gaza with Gazans in it.

Lum_ fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Nov 7, 2023

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